Isaiah 7:10-17; Second Essay; Seeking A Sign THIS Year?

I can't help, however, but take a slight digression (which probably really isn't a digression) and inquire what our attitude towards "seeking signs" from God is today? I think we are reluctant to ask for them for a number of reasons. First, we think that we are too sophisticated to seek signs. Or, we feel that that is not the way God works anymore. We have, we say, the full revelation of God in Christ. Why would one seek a lesser thing to try to understand life? We also may have a "non-interventionist" view of God--where God pretty much stays removed in the Divine heaven while we work out the affairs of our lives here below.

Then, we might not seek a sign from God because of our own lack of clarity of what we might want. I love Is. 7:11, "Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven." We have a phrase in English--'the sky is the limit,' and Isaiah seemed to be able to double that one by suggesting also that Sheol is the opposite limit! If this is the extent of our ability to imagine a request, we might rather be confused by this than liberated. Perhaps it has been so long since something really good has come into our lives that we don't really know what kind of sign from the Divine we would seek.

Then, also, we might not want to seek signs from God because of fear. This sense of fear works as follows: 'If I put all my eggs in one basket and ask for a sign, and if it doesn't enable me to get or do or live the way that I want, then it will either be an indication that God isn't able to/willing to meet my needs or, on the other hand, that I am one miserable failure in life.' We fear to ask for things that we might really want lest, if we get them, we be unable to use them in ways that truly "turn our lives around." I have had friends in the past who said to me, "Bill, if I only had time to write a book on XXXX. I would surely be able to shape the debate on the issue if I had the time." As I reflect on these friends, none of whom actually wrote THE book, I say to myself that one of the reasons they didn't write was the fear that if they did, their book might just be relegated to the $1 table at Barnes & Noble within a few months. Fears of failure can hold us back.

My list isn't exhaustive, but your patience in reading certainly can be exhausted, and I won't go on this any further. Suffice it to say that Ahaz's reluctance to seek a sign from God is mirrored in our own experience. James gently chides us, "You do not have because you do not ask" (4:2). Maybe we should take the Lord's word to Ahaz more seriously and begin to ask for a sign. If you did so, what would yours be for this Advent? For 2008?

The Commonness of the Sign

Now things flow more quickly. Once Ahaz refuses to ask for one, Isaiah gives him one anyway. It is like the old card trick where the dealer says, "Pick a card." If you refuse, the dealer picks for you. Or, alternatively, it is like what is known as a "default provision" in law. If you don't exercise certain options, law chooses one for you. So it is here. Isaiah decides to give a sign to Ahaz, but he can't help commenting on his faithlessness before giving the sign. Ahaz's unwillingness to choose "wearies" God. I know as I get older and I hear people's explanations for their conduct or for what they are doing, it seems as if I have heard all this before. When I look on the TV screen and hear the Presidential candidates stumping through ice-bound Iowa (why should ice be a determinant of the Presidential outcome?), it seems to me that almost everything they say is scripted or predictable. If I feel this and I have only lived 55 years, what must God feel like, the God who is both omniscient and who has been around a very long time? God must be exhausted by humans!

Nevertheless, God will give a sign--that the "coalition forces" will be beaten back. It is a simple one, as simple and common as a child being born. Scholars have tripped all over themselves wondering who this child is. Is it Ahaz's wife that will become pregnant? Another woman? I don't know, but I am sure that Isaiah made it clear enough to Ahaz what he meant. A child would be born and before the child gets very old, the dual forces of Aram and Israel will leave. "The land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted" (7:16). Of course, the verse where Isaiah gives his "big revelation" (7:14), was taken over in our Gospel passage for today (Matt. 1) to refer to Jesus, but its original referent was to a sign that indicated that the enemy would retreat. But the message we derive from the Is. passage is that God's sign to Ahaz was taken from the normal natural realm of things. Nature and grace come together here to highlight the divine sign.

IV. Conclusion--A Mixed Message

Many churches end their reading for the morning at the good news of 7:16--that the coalition kings would retreat before the child of 7:14 is very old. But some churches continue the reading through 7:17, which is actually supported by the way the editors put together our text. Indeed, 7:17 makes sense in connection with 7:10-16 because of the four "on that day's" of the subsequent passages (7:18,20,21,23). A break in the narrative, then, appears to happen between vv. 17 and 18.

But if this is true, we have an interesting way to end the passage. Is. 7:17 isn't crystal clear in its meaning, but it does suggest that judgment is on the way for Isaiah's hearers. Someday in the future a bigger threat will appear on Judah's doorstep--the King of Assyria. Therefore, what is really happening through the sign in 7:10-16 is a temporary respite for the people. The relentless march of history goes on, and one day the people of Judah will have to face the bigger foe-- Assyria. In fact it was Israel, the Northern Kingdom, who faced Assyria in the next generation, while Judah was "spared" for another 125 years, until Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon ended their independent existence. Yet, Isaiah shows us one of the realities of life. Even in the midst of the sign "life happens." The revelation of the sign and the giving of the gift, even the gift of the Christ, doesn't mean that life will simply be "transformed." In a number of ways life just goes on as before, with nation rising up against nation, and danger threatening us from all sides. Yet such realities do not mean that God is absent or that the signs were not real.

Conclusion

I will close with a verse that comes to mind from the Psalms.

"Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritabe, and the ends of the earth your possession," (2:8).

Maybe it is time for us, too, to ask for a sign. What would yours be?

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