Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church

Matthew 1:18-25, Isaiah 7:10-17

Christmas is the season when we celebrate the miracle of the virgin birth. May I ask a question: If we believe in Christmas, why are we hesitant to ask for miracles in our own lives? On the one hand, we believe that God can perform miracles. On the other hand, we have had so many unanswered prayers over the years, it is easier to simply lower our expectations of God and pray a generic prayer. "God bless us every one."

Tiny Tim’s generic prayer, "God bless us everyone," could have been the prayer of King Ahaz. This Israelite king hesitated to pray specifically. Ruling Jerusalem in a time of crisis, he doubted that God would intervene and perform a miracle to save his kingdom. So he did what most of us do. He tried to solve his problems without God. When the prophet Isaiah encouraged him to trust the Lord, Ahaz did not believe God would do anything. Ironically, it was King Ahaz’s doubt that led to one of the wonderful Christmas prophecies—the virgin birth.

Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz, saying, Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven. But Ahaz said, I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test. Then Isaiah said: "Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary mortals, that you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel. He shall eat curds and honey by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted. The Lord will bring on you and on your people and on your ancestral house such days as have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Judah-the king of Assyria.

Isaiah 7:10-17

Some years ago a fourth grade Sunday school class at a church in South Carolina decided to write and produce their own Christmas pageant. On the evening of their performance, the opening scene showed Joseph and Mary approaching the innkeeper with the following dialogue. The innkeeper said, "Can’t you see the ‘No Vacancy’ sign?" Joseph responded, "Yes, but can’t you see that my wife is expecting a baby any minute?" The innkeeper then said, "Well, that’s not my fault." Joseph responded, "It’s not my fault either!"

For many of us, fourth grade was about the age when we first understood the Christmas story at a new level. As children we may have heard that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary. Then suddenly those words took on real meaning. If fourth grade was the age when we first understood the virgin birth, many of us as young adults faced a crisis of faith, wondering whether God really performs such biological miracles.

In 1922, a famous radio preacher, Harry Emerson Fosdick, sent shock waves through American Christianity with a sermon that openly questioned the virgin birth. Fosdick argued that Christianity would lose its influence in the lives of a scientifically educated generation if it insisted on this archaic belief in a biological miracle. He argued that Christians need not believe in Jesus’ miraculous conception.

The Fundamentalists refuted Fosdick with the argument that eliminating the miraculous birth of Jesus would lead to eliminating other miracles including the miraculous resurrection of Jesus. Soon there would be no healing miracles. Eventually we would end up with a Jesus who was little more than a religious teacher of nice ideas, not the Lord and Savior of the world. They refused to accept a Christianity that did not believe Jesus could genuinely transform people. Christianity without miracles is nothing more than another humanist religion teaching us to love our neighbors.

How could Fosdick refute the virgin birth when it was so clear in Isaiah? Actually, while I disagree with Fosdick’s interpretation, he had a valid point in reference to Isaiah. Isaiah’s original Hebrew word was not actually "virgin." The Hebrew word literally means "a young woman." In fact, many modern Bibles translate Isaiah 7:14 as "the young woman is with child and shall bear a son." Did Isaiah assume that the young woman in his prophecy was an unmarried virgin? Probably. In fact, when the Jews translated their Bible from Hebrew into Greek they choose the Greek word "parthenos" which has only one meaning: virgin.

Matthew quoted the Greek version of this prophecy, "a virgin shall conceive and bear a son ..." He believed that Jesus’ miraculous conception and birth had fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecy. Matthew used this as evidence that Jesus was the Messiah.

I believe Matthew was correct when he interpreted Isaiah’s prophecy this way. I believe in the miracle of the virgin birth. I believe Jesus was and is the one and only God-man. I believe Jesus is the Lord and Savior of the world. However, Fosdick forces us to reconsider Isaiah’s original intention. If Isaiah’s prophecy was only referring to the birth of Jesus, how was it a sign to the doubting King Ahaz? Maybe we have a tendency to jump too quickly from Isaiah’s prophecy to Matthew’s interpretation without pausing to wonder about the sign to Ahaz. In other words, was Isaiah’s prophecy only about Jesus or was it also about something specific in his own day?

Perhaps a little historical background will help us appreciate the original meaning of Isaiah’s prophecy. King Ahaz came to power at a time when the land of Judah was under threat of attack from two northern kingdoms. The King of Samaria and the King of Damascus both wanted to invade Jerusalem and depose King Ahaz. Isaiah preached that these threats symbolized the spiritual problem in Israel. They had stopped trusting the Lord and were turning to their own political devices to solve their problems. Isaiah suggested that Ahaz call the nation back to prayer and faith.

Ahaz doubted that spiritual revival would make any difference. Instead, he desperately attempted to find his own solutions. He negotiated a treaty with the king of Damascus by paying huge sums to keep them from invading. When the armies of other lands marched through his countryside, Ahaz tried to cover his bases by building altars to their foreign gods and even offering some of his own sons as human sacrifices, a pagan practice common among the invading nations. Of course, none of these solved his problems. Meanwhile Isaiah continued preaching the need for spiritual revival. If God’s people would humble themselves and trust the Lord, God would intervene on their behalf.

Finally, Isaiah went to King Ahaz and suggested the king test God’s faithfulness by asking for a sign.

"Go ahead, ask anything you want." Ahaz refused to test the Lord. In frustration, Isaiah announced that the Lord would give a sign. A young woman would bear a son and name him Immanuel, which means, "God is with us." By the time the boy with this name grows up to know right from wrong, God will have turned around the entire political landscape so that the two nations currently threatening Jerusalem would no longer be powerful. Unfortunately, King Ahaz refused to accept Isaiah’s prophecy. To the end of his life he kept trying other ways to resolve his political problems. Hezekiah, Ahaz’s son, saw this prophecy fulfilled. By the time Hezekiah became king, the threat was no longer Damascus or Samaria, but Assyria. Hezekiah did what his father would not do. He trusted God and brought spiritual revival to the city of Jerusalem. As a result, God miraculously intervened to spare the Israelites from the invading Assyrian army.

Let’s be honest. We can relate to Ahaz. Some of us have doubts about whether the God of the Bible works miracles today. We hesitate to pray for an outright miracle in our own lives. Instead, we lower our expectations and hedge our bets by praying generic requests that are nearly meaningless. Dare we expect more of God this Christmas?

Several years ago, I concluded a December sermon with an invitation. I asked the congregation, "If you could ask God for a Christmas miracle, what would it be?" I suggested we experiment with prayer and dare to ask God. Be specific. Trust that God wants to answer our needs even more than we desire to ask.

During the silent closing prayer, my own prayer was for the Lord to help us understand our older son. He had recovered from an encephalitis coma a year before, but he continued to give off serious signs of depression. His grades had fallen. Before the end of his senior year he dropped out. He was giving off clear suicidal signals, but we did not know what to do. Kate prayed something very similar, "Lord, what I want for Christmas is a way to help our son."

The week before Christmas, the doctors correctly diagnosed his genetically-caused chemical imbalance of the brain. As a result of the coma, the chemical imbalance had flared entirely out of control leading to a hellish year. We learned that there was a new medication that could stabilize his brain chemistry. Between Christmas and New Years, he started on the medication that would turn his life around.

God wanted to give King Ahaz a sign. However, Ahaz did not believe God did miracles. I wonder if God is waiting to give us a miracle this Christmas season. If you could have a miracle what would it be?

David A. MacLennan, Church Chuckles (Lime: C. S. S. Publishing Co., 1977) 25."

Bradley J. Longfield, The Presbyterian Controversy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991) 10.

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1952) 22.