Well, this is all pretty obscure, except we know Isaiah is talking about Jesus, five hundred years before the Christ-child’s birth. Five hundred years is a long wait. Maybe you’ve felt, or are feeling, as if you’re in the midst of a five-hundred-year wait. Is it for peace? Hope? Some happiness, again? Is it to get some victory in your life, victory over the old demons, the ugliness that hasn’t yet gone away, even after all this time? It’s a long wait. We’re tired, maybe a little sadder than we want to admit, especially this time of year, when we’re supposed to be so remarkably happy. Happiness comes and goes. Joy abides—if you can get joy.

Or maybe you’re fine and everything’s fine.

God gives us reason for hope, gives us assurance that He is with us in our hard, dry times as well as our blossoming, green times. All this purple is the color of royalty. It’s also the color of bruises, deep bruises. We use the word passion for good things: a passion for chocolate, a passion for horses, a passion for service. The word originally means suffering. This is the purple of passion. Jesus didn’t come among us to live an average, feed the dog and get to work on time sort of life. He came to live a life of passion.

He came for the Ahazes. Who? One of those ancient kings, along with Ahab, Ahaziah, and Athaliah, and all the rest of those Bible names that don’t mean much to us. Long ago, there were two kingdoms in what is now Israel. The northern kingdom was the breakaway kingdom. Once Solomon died, the northern ten tribes were done with being under a king from the southern tribe of Judah. The smaller, weaker, southern kingdom continued to be ruled by descendants of David but being a son of David didn’t automatically make you anything except king. Some kings were good, relatively: Hezekiah and Josiah stand out. Most were mediocre, and some were downright disastrous.

Ahaz was one of the disastrous kings, one of the disastrous sons of David. He saw that the northern kingdom was richer, stronger, and he wondered why. He concluded that people in the northern kingdom were pursuing the right things in the right way, had the right priorities and values. Ahaz decided to imitate them. If you want to succeed, imitate successful people, right?

Ahaz followed in the ways of the kings of the more powerful, wealthier, more prestigious northern kingdom. He would worship the way the northern kings worshiped; he would worship what the northern kings worshiped. They worshiped idols. Ahaz worshiped idols; he had idols made for worship. After he visits prestigious, prominent Damascus, Ahaz orders the chief priest Uriah to have an altar made for the Temple in Jerusalem just like the altar in Damascus. And the chief priest of the Lord made the altar. He moved the old altar, the design and dimensions for which had come from God Himself (Ex 27). The chief priest had God’s altar moved, so that the new Damascus altar would have prominence. The priests wanted to worship a big, strong God, too.

The northern kings worshiped under especially big, old trees, and on the tops of high hills: such places were thought to be especially close to, connected with the gods, places of power. Following the ways of the nations around them, the northern kings passed their children through fire. There’s uncertainty about what that means. Babies or toddlers may have been passed through fire, like running your finger through the top part of the candle flame, only this would be a fire, or else children were actually sacrificed in the fire—there’s archaeological evidence for that. God stopped Abraham, but Abraham’s descendants went ahead, anyway. Children too often are made to bear the consequences of our foolishness, not to say our sin.

As God makes plain through His prophets, such as Isaiah, God did not want to be worshiped in such ways. Ahaz wasn’t worshiping God in any of those ways, because Ahaz was not worshiping God. Ahaz saw that his kingdom was small, weak, and vulnerable, and he wanted a big god, a powerful god. A powerful people are powerful because they have a powerful god: that’s the thinking. Ahaz saw that his people were weak and the northern kingdom was strong. Therefore, Ahaz would stop worshiping a weak God and start worshiping stronger gods.

Well, that’s all well and good, but what has that got to do with anything? We admire strength. We admire power. Oh, we know power can be abused, but that doesn’t stop us from admiring power, and it doesn’t stop us from wanting a little more power in our own lives. Call it ability, call it control, call it freedom. Strength and power come in different varieties. Imperious Will. Buff Bod. Filthy Rich. Crazy Popular. Drugged Numb—by the drug of choice. Don’t Care. I’m Right and You’re Wrong. Strength, power. We talk about relying on God, but do we? Remember that time God didn’t come through for you, when God left you weak and small, when what you wanted was to be strong and big, capable, free, right? It’s hard to worship a God who doesn’t deliver. Our hearts gradually begin to roam, looking for a better deal. What’s in it for me? Where’s the payoff?

It’s looking bad for Ahaz: the Edomites to the southeast revolt. In the west, the Philistines are aggressive. Jerusalem’s cousins to the north are flexing their big muscles, with help from their even bigger, stronger friends from Damascus. So, at last, just in time, Ahaz turns to the only friend he has, the only one who can help him. Ahaz turns to Assyria. Ahaz sends treasures from the royal palace, strips all the fine things from the Temple, and sends these as “gifts” to Assyria. Ever try to buy friendship? Ahaz sends this message to the Assyrian emperor Tiglath-Pileser, “I am your servant and your son” (2 Kings 16:7). Those are words that should be addressed to God alone, and I have to wonder whether Ahaz didn’t know it, too, somewhere in his fearful, angry, stubborn, self-righteous heart.

I wonder, because it is just at this point that God sends Isaiah to Ahaz, just when things look gloomiest, weakest, most forlorn, hopeless, helpless. Enemy armies are threatening Jerusalem: all that worship of other gods hadn’t helped, all that pursuit, devotion, and cost. As it turns out, all their blessing-hunting in other things had brought them to this, because Scripture tells us that this looming disaster is the Lord’s doing: His judgment upon the unfaithfulness of His people, these children of Abraham, this son of David (see 2 Chr 28).

God sends Isaiah to Ahaz to tell the king to ask for a sign, to name the sign for God to give, the assurance that God is God, the only God, the guarantee that the only and true God will show His strength and His glory for His people, even for His less than fully faithful, fickle, confused, headstrong people. Any sign you want, Ahaz: just name it. And what did Ahaz say? No. I won’t. I won’t ask for a sign. He says he will not put God to the test (7:12), and that sounds good, right? That sounds faithful, because we’re not supposed to put God to the test. We read that in Deuteronomy (6:16), and Jesus says it, too (Mt 4:7).

But Ahaz’s refusal does not come from faith or fear of the Lord. To Ahaz, God is old and weak and small, as good as dead. Ahaz will not name a sign because he has no faith in God; he is unhappy with God and wants nothing to do with this God about whom this prophet speaks. Have you never expected a little more than you seem to have received? Be patient, we are told, and then, what feels like five hundred years later? How you wanted Him to come through for you! But He didn’t make you big. He didn’t make you powerful. He didn’t make you wealthy. He didn’t make you popular. He didn’t make you strong. He gave you nothing you wanted. So why bother with this small, old, weak God, who doesn’t give us what we want, doesn’t listen to us when we plead, even humiliate ourselves in front of Him, just wanting from Him what should be so easy for Him to give, so simple for Him to do?

If we’re here, today, it’s because God still matters to us. We know and love people for whom God doesn’t seem to matter. We have heard other people say God matters to them, yet their lives, their words, their actions, have yet to make that clear. Ahaz knew about God. Worship was done at the Temple in Jerusalem.  Neither king nor priest had their hearts in it. They didn’t acknowledge God by their living, through their behavior or in what they desired; their aims, dreams and hopes weren’t directed to God. We know people who live just like Ahaz. There is still some Ahaz in us. And there is hope.

God acts. God speaks. God sends. Must you wear out my patience, God says (7:13). Must you continue your less than fully faithful way, your empty words, that emptiness in your heart that I’ve always been so ready to fill so abundantly? You cry for fullness yet refuse my fullness. Now I will show you my faithfulness, since you are determined to persist in your way. You’ve wanted to rely upon your strength, your wisdom, your self-discipline, your freedom, your standards, your desires, saying you’ve relied upon me. You’ve sought the favor of the powerful, the popular, the beautiful, saying you’ve sought me.

Now, I will name my sign for you. Look, a young woman of no special beauty, no special status, no privilege or power—a true nobody!—will give birth to a son and will name him Immanuel (7:14). Hope will be fulfilled. You who now are afraid, lonely, weak, small, burdened, hurting, feeling unloved and unseen—you will live in peace, confidence, and safety. This is my promise to you. Your God will do this; your God will prove His faithfulness, for it is His faithfulness to Himself and to His promise.

In just a little while. God is not against us. God is against everything in our lives that is against Him. God is with us. He comes to us in weakness, smallness, and helplessness to reveal His supreme strength, His unimaginable glory, and His unstoppable power to save. Into our night, God sings His song of holy light.

Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever!