Isaiah
7:10-11 Moreover the Lord spoke
again to Ahaz, saying, “Ask a sign for yourself from the Lord your
God; ask it either in the depth or in the height above.”
Here is an interesting issue that you may not have thought of before: Although
“the Jews require a sign” (1
Corinthians 1:22), and this attitude was rebuked by Christ when He said
that “an evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign” in Matthew
12:39, God has given three specific signs with respect to the
incarnation of Christ. There were other signs too, no doubt, such as the star
of Bethlehem, but three events were specifically called signs.
First,
to the unwilling King Ahaz, He said: “Therefore
the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive,
and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” in Isaiah 7:14. Immanuel
means “God with us,” and the sign of the virgin birth, biologically impossible
without a mighty miracle of Divine creation, assures us that the omnipotent (All-powerful)
God has entered the human family once for all.
Second,
that entrance was not made in an emperor’s palace as a great conqueror,
however, but in the very humblest of human circumstances, and this also was a
sign. “And this shall be a sign
unto you,” said the leader of the angelic host; “Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger”
– Luke
2:12.
And
there was a third sign. When the infant Jesus was brought to the temple, the
aged prophet Simeon said: “Behold, this
child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign
which shall be spoken against . . . that the thoughts of many hearts may be
revealed” in Luke 2:34-35.
That
is, the God/man would Himself be God’s great sign to Israel and the whole
world. The attitude of men and women to God, in Christ, would reveal the state
of their hearts and seal their eternal destiny, whether rising again to
everlasting life or falling forever away from God.
If you are looking for a
sign, this is it:
Merry Christmas, Brian
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