Dennis Tuuri

Preparations for Christmas Day by December 21st, which was St. Thomas’s Day, I believe, so that the last three or four days as you approached Christmas Day itself could be spent in quiet contemplation and in singing praises to God for the great gift of Jesus Christ to us, brought that first the day of his nativity and birth.

This morning, I’d like us to do that. Maybe we won’t do it for the next three or four days approaching Christmas. Maybe all of us aren’t quite done with our Christmas preparations. But today, I’d urge you to set aside your mind from those preparations now and turn your attention to what God has to say about that nativity and the blessed reason why we have great cause for rejoicing before him this day and forever.

The passages we read from the book of Matthew earlier have two quotes in them from the Old Testament referring to the birth of Jesus Christ, the Messiah. I think that it’s important that we recognize that the people that heard those quotations and received them understood them in the context of the Old Testament from which they came and it helps us to understand the meaning of the nativity if we understand the meaning of those prophecies that were interpreted as referring eventually to the coming of the Messiah.

So, we’re going to have three short talks this morning. First, we’ll consider for a couple of minutes the first quotation from Matthew 1 referring to Emmanuel. Then, in a few minutes, we’ll talk about the second quotation found in Matthew chapter 2 referring to Bethlehem, the place of the birth of the Messiah. And then finally, we’ll look at a quotation from the Old Testament found in the book of Luke and we’ll look through the eyes of Simeon at what he beheld when he saw the infant Jesus being brought to the temple.

So now we’ll turn to the first quotation in Matthew referring to the coming of Emmanuel. And we’re told specifically in verse 22 and 23 that all this took place, the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, that what was spoken of by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled, saying, “Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which translated means God with us.”

That quotation is from the book of Isaiah, the 7th chapter. And if you’ll turn there in your scriptures now, we’ll consider the things of Isaiah 7 and what the meaning of that sign was at the time and how that meaning is intensified for us today as we live in the new covenant.

In Isaiah 7, verses 1-14, we’ll just go through these verses and then comment on them briefly as we go through them. Verse one gives the historical background of the giving of the sign of Emmanuel.

We read in verse one, “Now it came about in the days of Ahaz, the son of Jotham, the son of Isaiah, king of Judah, the king of Syria, and Pekah, the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, went up to Jerusalem to wage war against it, but could not conquer it.” So the context of what we’re going to be reading here is that there are two adversaries to the king of Judah, which at this point in time is Ahaz.

And we know from other scriptures that Ahaz was not a good king but a wicked king and did not walk in the faith but walked outside of the faith and in idolatry. But he is being besieged here by two kings. One from Syria and the other from Israel. The northern ten tribes of the northern kingdom at this point in time were apostate and were not in a covenant relationship with God anymore and they were now part of a conspiracy with Syria to go up and take Judah for themselves and to set up a puppet king.

That’s the historical context of the first prophecy of Emmanuel.

The immediate context is in verse two. “When it was reported to the house of David, saying, ‘Syria has camped in Ephraim.’ His heart and the hearts of his people shook as the trees of the forest shake with the wind.” He was scared stiff, King Ahaz was, and all the people were as well. They didn’t have the confidence of faith in their God, Jehovah God, to take care of them. They were fearful when they were beset by enemies.

Then in verses 3-9, God does a miraculous thing, particularly in light of the fact that this is a wicked king. We’re talking about Ahaz.

Verse three: “Then the Lord said to Isaiah, who was the prophet at the time of Ahaz, ‘Go out now to meet Ahaz, you and your son Shear-jashub at the end of the conduit of the upper pool in the highway to the Fuller’s field and say to him, “Take care and be calm. Have no fear and do not be faint-hearted because of those two stubs of smoldering firebrands on account of the fierce anger of Rezin and Syria and the son of Remaliah.” God puts them down. Two smoldering firebrands here because Syria with Ephraim and the son of Remaliah has planned evil against you, saying, “Let us go up against Judah and terrorize it and make for ourselves a breach in its walls and set up the son of Tabel as king in the midst of it.”

They had intended to set up a puppet government once they had defeated the people of Judah and had deposed King Ahaz. And God tells them through the voice of Isaiah here tells a wicked king, don’t fear this. I’m going to take care of you in this situation. And he gives some specifics.

Then he says, “For the head of Syria is Damascus and the head of Damascus is Rezin. Now within another 65 years, Ephraim will be shattered so that it is no longer a people and the head of Ephraim is Samaria and the head of Samaria is the son of Remaliah. If you will not believe, you surely shall not last.”

And what he’s telling him here is he says these rulers that you see in front of you now who are camped about you are the end of those particular reigns. That’s the head of that country and that confederation. It will go no further. That is, they are only the heads of that particular group of people. In other words, Rezin will not be head of Judah. He is head of Damascus and he will go no further. And Ephraim, the head of Ephraim, the son of Remaliah, will go no further than being king of Samaria.

So he tries to convince Ahaz that this will not conquer. This will not—their purposes will not be fulfilled in trying to defeat Judah. And then he gives Ahaz a warning. If you will not believe, you surely shall not last. These people won’t last before you. And if you do not believe that I will take care of you in this situation, you won’t last either.

Then the Lord spoke again to Ahaz, saying, “Ask a sign for yourself from the Lord your God. Make it deep as Sheol or as high as heaven.” But Ahaz said, “I will not ask, nor will I test the Lord.” Oh, far be it from me to test the Lord by asking for a sign. Of course, he’s been commanded by the prophet of God to ask a sign of God here.

In case you might wonder what he was trying to do there, he was trying to con the prophet by saying, “I’m a holy man here and I don’t really want to tempt God by asking for some kind of sign.” But God just saw right through that and Isaiah did as well.

And the response is Isaiah says, “Listen now, oh house of David,” and he’s referring to the king of Judah here, Ahaz. “Is it too small a thing for you to try the patience of men, but you’ll try the patience of my God as well?” Who are you trying to kid? You’re going to try to kid men. That hasn’t worked real good. Now you’re going to try to kid God and fool him into thinking that you’re pious and holy and we know you’re just an idolater.

No. Ahaz didn’t want the sign. He didn’t want the counsel of God. He didn’t want to trust in the Lord. He wanted to trust in his own confederacies.

But God then gives him the sign anyway. “Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call his name Emmanuel.”

Whether or not Ahaz wanted to have the sign, it was given to him in confirmation of the fact that God would be his protector and the protector of the nation against these two opposing forces.

Now, the rest of the interpretation of that sign is an evaluation of Ahaz’s wicked refusal to ask a sign for himself. Ahaz was not going to trust God. He was going to trust a confederation with Assyria. He was going to go to outside ungodly people to confederate with them and try to defeat these people. And God as a result of that cursed Ahaz. And he had told Ahaz, as I said a few verses earlier, that if you don’t believe, you won’t stand. And Ahaz didn’t stand. He was brought to ruin.

But it’s important to recognize the historical setting of this sign of Emmanuel and what it prefigured to us then and what it prefigured to the people at the time of the coming of Jesus Christ and of his birth. What it was a sign of encouragement to a people to hold fast to be secure to not be afraid as we looked at the enemies camped round about us.

The sign was given of Emmanuel the son. Now we don’t know exactly how this was fulfilled at the time of the prophecy itself. There’s lots of theories about it. It’s not really important though. We know that ultimately it’s speaking to the coming of the Messiah Jesus Christ and it carries the same message to the people who would worship Emmanuel. The people as we sang in the song earlier, come will come Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel. We recognize our point of need and we recognize Emmanuel is the sign that God will provide through that need through the coming of the Messiah.

And so the first thing that we should read when we read the book of Matthew in the first chapter and read this sign of Emmanuel is we should read into that great confidence and great peace in the midst of a great enemy encamped about against us.

Now this has relevance for us today, doesn’t it? We talked last week about the new rules on child abuse and these can be very fearful things. This week there was a mailing put out by another group that went to the 1990s conference in May where a bunch of people here in Oregon are putting forward their educational plans and it’s even more devastating what we talked about last week.

Just this morning, Richard M. brought me a sign that he had found posted at the Crown Zellerbach Credit Union. If you remember the child abuse history we were talking about last week, it’s interesting to see these sort of things popping up now in public places. This says “Stop the Abuse: mental, physical and sexual.” Mental now too. See Clackamas County is in need of people for awareness. Aware of the children around them like a neighborhood watch only a kid watch. We want you to watch the kids in your neighborhood. Sexual and physical abuse in our county is growing in numbers daily. These children of innocence are being destroyed. They need our help. Underlined. Report suspicions of abuse to your local police department or the children’s services division. Help save a child.

This should let you know what’s going on in our state today. They are going to push this thing now. They said they would once they got the rules adopted in October. They’re going to push this thing for all their worth. You’re going to have people all over trying to convince other people to report suspicions of child abuse.

So, we have a tremendous enemy encamped about us today as it were in the CSD. That’s a domestic enemy. We have enemies in foreign places as well. The Soviet Union rather—I shouldn’t use the word Russia. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics has desires to conquer this country. They’ve said it openly ever since the institution of the Soviet Union and they still believe it today and they have been in the process for the last 30 years of developing a chokepoint tactic through which they can cause our leaders to be submissive to them or they can threaten to cut off these vital places of supply and needs for our country.

So there’s a great foreign element against us as well as domestic enemies. But in the face of all these enemies, in the same way that Ahaz was surrounded by enemies externally, Syria and internal as it were from the covenant community and the head of Israel, the king of Israel at that time, which was by then a wicked confederacy, in the same way where he was confronted with those enemies, so we’re confronted today, but God gives us the sign of Emmanuel.

And at Christmas time, we should remember the coming of Emmanuel who would promise to defend his people against aggressors who would seek to trouble them. He’ll be our defense for us. We can’t rely ultimately on guns or on foreign alliances. I think that one of the great tragedies of the Reagan administration of the last six months with this whole Iran thing—regardless of how much of it is true or manipulated or whatever—the point is that the basis of fact, the basis for the province that he’s now in came about as a result of foreign alliances with ungodly nations attempting to build bridges to a terrorist nation like Iran.

I understand the rationale and humanly it makes sense. But the scriptures tell us we can’t have those kind of foreign alliances if we’re going to be a godly country. We’ve got to depend on Jehovah God to defend us. And Emmanuel, one of the signs of Christ coming in his first nativity should be a sign to us of defense against the ungodly people who would seek to trouble God’s people.

And so this Christmas time should be a great encouragement to us even though we see the problems around us that God himself has given us the sign of Jesus Christ. He’s come 2,000 years ago and as a result, we have confidence to stand before him. But it’s even greater than that because Matthew, another element of this is talked about in Matthew 1 where we read the first prophecy.

Not only are we to be seen in a defensive position of being able to defend ourselves or God will defend us against foreign invaders, but additionally before this verse 23, read in verse 22 that you’ll bear a son. “You shall call his name Jesus, for it is he who will save his people from their sins.”

So we know that Emmanuel also saves us not just from external enemies, it saves us from the internal enemies we have of sin. When we went through Hebrews 10, it says in Hebrews 10 that sin easily besets us. Every person sitting here has a problem with sin. Whether or not you’re aware of it, if you’re not aware of it, you’re in worse shape than the person who is aware of it. You do have problems with sin as long as you walk in this body. You still have methods of sinning in your life that have to be rooted out by God.

And sometimes those sins can be overwhelming for us and they can produce depression. They can produce a chucking of the faith as it were and a desire just to quit and not continue to run the race. But the sign of Emmanuel should be a sign to us also that God won’t simply defend us and have us prosper against wicked enemies. But it says that he’ll save us from our sins. Our sins will not be able long term to have dominion over us. God has released us from the dominion of sin that we might serve God in true dominion in holiness, righteousness, knowledge, and truth.

That’s the great message of Christmas, that God allows us to recognize the fact that we are defended against the enemies of his people.

King Ahaz had a son, Hezekiah, and we talked about this several weeks ago in 2 Chronicles 32. Hezekiah faced a similar situation years later. The Assyrians at this point in time—Syria and Israel had failed just as God said they would by giving them the sign of Emmanuel. But now the Assyrians, the Sennacherib had come up against the king of Judah, Hezekiah. But Hezekiah had acted faithfully. He had rebuilt the country. He had reconstructed the country. And finally, when the king came against him, he encouraged the people. He didn’t quake in his boots the way Ahaz did. He believed the sign of Emmanuel. He was taught that. I’m sure he was taught that through the prophet Isaiah. He was taught it through his understanding of history. And he recognized that God had promised to defend them against ungodly enemies.

And so, he told his people, “Greater is the one with us than he who is with them.” Familiar words, aren’t they? And of course, that’s the meaning of Emmanuel—God with us. Hezekiah recognized that. Hezekiah recognized the sign meant that God would be with those people who believed in him and trusted him for the defense.

And so Hezekiah didn’t fall into the sin of his father, but acted righteously and as a result was delivered from the evil forces of the Assyrians and Sennacherib. They had to go home limping as it were. God had fought for them against their enemies.

So the first thing I want you to remember this morning about Christmas is to be of good cheer, not to be downcast. God has saved us from all the enemies that would come against us of the world, the flesh, and the devil. He saved us from evil oppressors, and he saved us from our own sin. And for that, we should rejoice before God.

Let’s pray. Almighty God, we thank you for yourself. We thank you for the sign of Emmanuel. And we thank you for assuring us through your scriptures that we stand in security before you, having you as our sure defense against external oppressors, against oppressors in our own country, and against our own sin as well. Help us, Father, not to be as Ahaz unbelieving, but help us to be as Hezekiah believing and therefore seeing the victory that you have promised to us. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Verse six: “And you Bethlehem land of Judah are by no means least among the leaders of Judah. For out of you shall come forth a ruler who shall shepherd my people Israel.”

It’s important that we look at that prophecy in the context of that prophecy to see what other things are implied in the nativity of Jesus Christ. This prophecy comes from the book of Micah chapters 4 and 5.

We’ll begin at chapter 5. Micah is one of the minor prophets. And if you can turn to that portion now of your scriptures, we’ll consider some of the verses in Micah 5. There are twelve minor prophets. They follow the major prophets. Micah is the sixth of the minor prophets. If you’re having a hard time finding it, Bethlehem of course was the ancestral home of David the king. It was the home of Boaz, Ruth, Obed, Jesse. And so there were certainly implications to the Messiah being born in the city of Bethlehem that were rather obvious.

Additionally, Bethlehem translated means the house of bread. And that also is significant of course because Jesus Christ is the true bread that came down from heaven to feed his people and so Bethlehem is known as the house of bread.

But the context of Micah gives us even more revelation about the reasons why Christ was born in Bethlehem and what it means to us today as we stand in the new covenant.

Micah chapter 5: “Now muster troops, daughters of troops, they have laid siege against us. With a rod, they will smite the judge of Israel on the cheek.”

There’s a verse, this correlates to the same sort of situation, the same kind of encampment of enemies against the people of Judah as was found in Isaiah 7. And of course, Micah and Isaiah were contemporaneous. These prophecies Micah and the prophecies of Isaiah refer to the same periods of time. They’re linked as it were. And so these prophecies are linked as well. And we see at the beginning here in verse one of the same sort of scenario as in Isaiah 7, verses 2 and 3.

“But as for you, Bethlehem of Ephrathah, too little to be among the clans of Judah. From you one will go forth for me to be ruler in Israel. His going forth are from long ago, from the days of eternity. Therefore, he will give them up until the time when she who is in labor has borne a child. Then the remainder of his brethren will return the sons of Israel.”

Now, this gives us a little more movement as it were of this prophecy. So, you get the context of this. Micah has six chapters in it. The first three chapters in the book of Micah are an indictment of the sinfulness of the covenant people that he’s addressing. Okay? And it’s calling for God’s judgment against sin and God’s wrath against those who are covenant breakers. And then chapters four and five show a marked change, a transition as it were from wrath in the first three chapters to grace in Micah 4 and 5.

And so this verse is contexted by that transition from wrath to grace. Chapter 4 gives a full transition as it were in the first three verses of chapter 4. But then at the end of chapter 4, we read things like this will happen when the woman who travails gives birth. And of course ultimately that’s talking about the birth of Jesus Christ. And that’s why we have this kind of language here that God will give them up until the time when she who is in labor has borne a child.

So we see here a little bit more movement though not just the defense of the people but now he’s told in verse two that one will come forth from Bethlehem to be a ruler in Israel okay and he is one from of eternity days of old so there’s a heightened awareness here of the coming of the Messiah not simply being a defense against the people but this then is pointed out further as we go through the chapter.

Verse four: “And he will arise and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God and they will remain because at that time he will be great to the ends of the earth. They will remain. They’ll be established because they have this great shepherd and ruler over them to defend them against his enemies.”

And then verse five: “This one will be our peace.”

And of course, that’s a tremendous blessing of the Christmas season that Jesus Christ is our peace with God. He’s God with us. His atonement for our sins provided the covenant mediatorial work necessary for us to be in covenant relationship with God. He paid the price for our sins. He established peace between the covenant people and with God by being the mediator for them.

And what’s the implications of that? Our peace with God.

“When the Assyrian invades our land, when he tramples on our citadels, then we will raise against him seven shepherds and eight leaders of men. And they will shepherd the land of Assyria with the sword, the land of Nimrod at its entrances. And he will deliver us from the Assyrian when he attacks our land and when he tramples our territory. Then the remnant of Jacob will be among many peoples like dew from the Lord, like showers and vegetation, which do not wait for man or delay for the sons of men. And the remnant of Jacob will be among the nations, among many peoples, like a lion among the beasts of the forest, like a young lion among flocks of sheep, which if he passes through, tramples down and tears, and there is none to rescue. Your hand will be lifted up against your adversaries, and all your enemies will be cut off.”

Not only are we told in these prophecies in Isaiah and Micah that we’ll have a sure defense against the Assyrians, the Syrians, the ungodly nation of Israel, against any other contemporary enemies that raise themselves against us. But by implication, here what it says is not only will we have the defense, we’ll have an offensive side to this. You’ll go forth, the remnant of Jacob will go forth conquering. You’ll be as dew among the nations. You’ll cover the whole world. You’ll be dew is multitude of numbers. Dew is many elements of dew. So the remnant of Jacob will no longer be a small remnant. It’ll be like dew over the entire world. Water covering the earth. And it’ll be like a lion going forth conquering adversaries, not just being protected against them as we saw in the prophecy in Isaiah 7.

But now the result of that defense will be an offensive character to the people of God as they go out into the nations like a lion. And who can keep the people safe from the lion of Judah as he goes out with his people to conquer the nations? This is a tremendous blessing. But unless we get it, while we may quickly fall into the sin of not understanding the nature of this conflict and how we’re going to conquer other peoples, he goes on to say in verse 10: “It will be in that day, declares the Lord, that I will cut off your horses from among you and destroy your chariots. I will also cut off the cities of your land and tear down all your fortifications. I will cut off sorceries from your hand, and you’ll have no fortune tellers anymore. I will cut off your carved images, your sacred pillars from among you, so that you will no longer bow down to the works of your hands. I will root out your Asherim from among you, and destroy your cities, and I will execute vengeance and anger and wrath on the nations which have not obeyed.”

Here he tells us that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal weapons. Here in the Old Testament, the God of wrath indicates that his wrath will be executed upon the heathen, not by carnal weapons. His people won’t be defended by carnal weapons. They’ll go forth offensively. And their weapons of warfare are specifically said here not to be horses and chariots and guns and other sorts of armament. God will destroy those things from our land. That what he’s saying here is and he correlates those horses and chariots to Asherim to false idols. I don’t want you, he said, putting your trust in those ungodly weapons of war. What I want you to put your trust in is in myself, Jehovah God, and the covenant keeper to come. And his word is what will go forth conquering into the nations after the one comes from Bethlehem.

And this is precisely what’s told about in Micah 4. Remember I said that Micah 4 provides the transition from wrath to grace and sums up in the first three verses what he’s going to talk about for the next two chapters. And then he gives some details as we go through the rest of the chapters.

So what he’s saying here is also amplified in chapter 4 the first three verses.

“It will come about in the last days that the mountain of the house of the Lord will be established as the chief of the mountains. It will be raised up above the hills and the peoples will stream to it and many nations will come and say, ‘Come and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord and to the house of the God of Jacob that he may teach us about his ways that we may walk in his paths. For from Zion will go forth the law, even the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he will judge between many peoples and render decisions for mighty distant nations. Then they will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation and never again will they train for war.’”

These same verses are repeated almost word for word in Isaiah 2. And so we have a double witness here to the reality of this passage of scripture that when the one comes forth from Bethlehem—and I remind you that he will not come forth from Bethlehem again when he returns. It will not be being born in the city of Bethlehem anymore. He’s come from Bethlehem. And it says in Micah 4 and 5 that when he comes, not only will he provide a defense, but he’ll create an offensive weapon through his covenant people to go into all the world preaching the law of God and teaching grace through Jesus Christ.

When Jesus Christ made his triumphal entry when he was an adult into Jerusalem toward the end of his life, people cheered him as the coming king. Hosanna to the King of Kings. And then a few days later, they were crucifying him. Why? Because those people made the same mistake that people in the Christian church make today. They expected Jesus Christ’s weapons of warfare to be horses, chariots, swords. They said he came in here and you know he tips over the money changers’ temple. Wonder what he’ll do now. He’s going to come in as king. But Jesus Christ doesn’t declare his kingship that way with weapons of war. He declares his kingship with the preached word of his scriptures.

The law will go forth from Jerusalem. His people will go out into all the world using his law in their mouths, preaching his word. And the grace of the gospel of Jesus Christ in bringing people to conversion. And it’s that conversion that destroys all the strongholds of the earth.

Not are we’re not simply in a defensive position then against the CSD or against the Russians. What we have to see is our mandate from God on the basis of the Christmas season is to go forth preaching his word and proclaiming it to the nations to proclaim it to the people who work at the children’s services division to proclaim it to the heads of the Soviet Union. And God promises that he’ll accompany that word with power. The preached word, the gospel is the dynamite of God. It tells us in Romans 1, the power of God into salvation.

And that’s the weapons of our warfare. And that’s the weapons that he promises will be effectual as we go forth preaching it. Now, that doesn’t mean that everybody’s going to respond correctly. And it means that history will judge those people who despise the covenant word and who act in unbelief the same way that history judged King Ahaz and cut him off and cut off the Assyrians, the Syrians, and the nation of Israel.

So the mighty nations around us who don’t hear that preached word will also be cut off. But it’s important to recognize then that the second sign of Christmas, Emmanuel, the first sign gives us a sure defense against the ungodly. The second sign, Bethlehem, gives us a sure sense of victory as we go forth to preach word of Jesus Christ into all the nations. That’s what Christmas is all about. We have an obligation then to go forth teaching that law and to singing the songs of grace that God has put in our hearts and in our minds. He’s given us in his psalms to sing.

This afternoon, several people will be going caroling at a nursing home. And that’s important. That’s exactly what we’re talking about here. To carol is to go forth singing the good news of Christmas. And to sing these songs in which the writers of these songs have recognized throughout the ages the implications of Jesus Christ coming, meaning defense and also meaning victory against the ungodly. That’s important. One of the great—