A COMING SIGN

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.

Isaiah 7:14

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Jesus’ birth wasn’t an event that came unannounced. God never intended it to be a surprise for anyone.

We know this from the scriptures and how Old Testament prophets were given messages by God to share with His people regarding a future Messiah who would come as their great Rescuer and Redeemer.

In yesterday’s first message to kick off the Advent season, we looked at words from the prophets Jeremiah (23:11) and Isaiah (11:1,10), telling of a “righteous Branch” that would emerge from “the stump of Jesse”, a King who would “reign wisely”, “bear fruit”, and do what was “just and right” while “standing as a banner for the peoples”. Indeed, Jesus came and fulfilled this prophecy through the way He lived before He went to His glorious “resting place”.

Today, we go back to the Book of Isaiah and another prophecy, this one containing a special coming sign that would serve to indicate that the Messiah had arrived. Look again at the prophet’s words here:

Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. Isaiah 7:14

Here we find four critical takeaways. They include:

1. Jesus’ coming was all God’s plan.

Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign.

God wanted His people to know that when the event to come happened, a virgin conceiving and giving birth to a son, He was the One responsible. It was He who so loved the world and the peoples in it that He would send His only Son into the world later to be sacrificed to atone for the sins of all mankind so that whoever believed in that Son would not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).

No one else could claim credit for the redemption plan that God designed.

2. The mother of the coming Messiah would be a virgin when she conceived.

The virgin will conceive and give birth.

Now, on the surface this might not seem to be much of a revelation. Jewish law required that all women remain celibate until they marry and then could only engage in sexual relations with their husband after the marriage was consummated. So a virgin becoming pregnant and bearing a son wasn’t in and of itself unique. It could easily happen once the virgin had married and first had sex with their husband.

It wouldn’t become evident just how unique a situation Isaiah was pronouncing until the event actually happened and the virgin Mary conceived, not by way of any conventional means but rather through the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit. The subsequent birth, the sign from God, would be far from normal for it would be the coming of Heaven to earth as God came incarnate in the form of a baby boy and walked amongst His people.

3. A son would be born.

The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son.

We know that Jeremiah’s prophecy told of a coming King and this meant that the Messiah would need to be a male and because the baby boy was conceived by the Holy Spirit, He was God’s Son who was one with His Father (John 10:30).

4. The baby boy born of the virgin would bear the name Immanuel.

The virgin...will call him Immanuel.

Immanuel was a Hebrew name that meant “God with us”

The son born of the virgin, the One who was the offspring of God Himself and perfectly one with His Father, would live among the Israelites and Gentiles in their midst. Jesus, the coming sign, would be God incarnate and therefore, God, in Jesus, was soon to literally be with His people in the flesh.

Before any of this happened, the people of Israel would experience the dark times of God’s judgment. The northern kingdom of Israel would be overrun by the Assyrians while the southern kingdom of Judah would be destroyed and the people exiled to Babylon for seventy years.

In those times of trouble and hardship, hope would be needed and the words of the prophets would bring that hope. For a coming righteous Branch from Jesse’s stump and a special sign from God Himself would be given.

Better days would be ahead for the punished people of Israel and Judah and we’ll continue to look closer at that hope that would be Jesus in the next eight messages as we further look at the words of the prophets.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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