Sunday 21st December – Want a sign? God. Human

21-12-2025, advent 4a, God, Human, Isaiah 7:10-16, pastor adrian kitson, Want a sign?

Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz, ¹¹‘Ask the Lord your God for a sign, whether in the deepest depths or in the highest heights.’

¹²But Ahaz said, ‘I will not ask; I will not put the Lord to the test.’

¹³Then Isaiah said, ‘Hear now, you house of David! Is it not enough to try the patience of humans? Will you try the patience of my God also? ¹⁴Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. ¹⁵He will be eating curds and honey when he knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, ¹⁶for before the boy knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, the land of the two kings you dread will be laid waste.

What if one day you sensed or even heard God inviting you ask him for a sign of his power and presence and it could be anything “whether in the deepest depths or in the highest heights” (v11)? Would you pick something and say yes, God. Do the sign?

At first you probably think, “Yes, I would like that sign and appreciate the sign God has offered me”. But if God did that sign, then what would that mean for how you live thereafter? What would that sign mean when on another day at another time, things were really good or really bad, really easy or really hard?

I guess you would remember that sign and either rely on God’s show of promise and power or you would look for another sign and be disappointed of God did not give another one because this sign is too old or not wise enough or not immediate enough…..?

This is where Ahaz, the king of the southern Kingdom of Israel (Judah) is when Isaiah is speaking.

Ahaz, is under severe pressure. The northern kingdom of Israel (called ‘Isreal’ or here Ephraim) is doing deals with the another neighbour, Assyria, who are wanting to expand their territory. Ephraim and neighbouring Syria want the southern kingdom of Judah (Ahaz’ territory) to join them in resisting Assyria, who are a particular bloodthirsty and violent community).

Interestingly, Ahaz says no to God’s offer of a sign.

But Ahaz said, ‘I will not ask; I will not put the Lord to the test.’

I wonder why? Sounds pious, but is it?

Isaiah is saying that Ahaz and his people’s job as the descendent of David and that promise to Abraham of land and place and mission with God in the world is to stand firm in trust in Yahweh if it wants to stand firm as a people.

On the one hand, Ahaz seems to show some integrity. He does not want to put God to some test. That would be arrogant and desperate.

It is probably more the case that Ahaz does not really want that sign because he does not want to live by faith thereafter.

If God does this sign and his people and territory survive and thrive, then it will be obvious to Ahaz and lots of people that the Lord did this (not Ahaz or them). And Ahaz would forever know that and have to live humbly and faithfully to this saving God for the rest of his days.

Maybe Ahaz does not really want to do that. Maybe Ahaz, like all of us, wants to live his life the way we live our life and hopefully get some rewards and be remembered for something good. So, he looks pious and yet, he is just like the rest of us – struggling with ourselves, our needs, our ego and our identity for living our lives.

But then, Isaiah just announces that there is another plan. God is going to stop messing around with all this need and politic and maneuvering and disbelief and do something big and something new.

Enter Advent and Christmas. We know the sign. Every year we tell it, remember it, celebrate it.

It is Mary. Isaiah does not know that, but seven hundred years later, Matthew and Luke did. Mary is the young women pregnant unexpectedly and miraculously. Mary is the sign. John the Baptist is the announcer of its arrival. Jesus is the new David, the new King, the new hope that can not only deal with human territories and places and politics, but with the human heart – all human hearts, not just Jewish.

The Advent question is, do want this sign God gives? If you do, you will forever live knowing that God did this, God is, God knows, God is with you and for you when you are at your best and your worst. With the sign comes the calling – to live in this sign of God’s presence in your life and his power at work in your life and in the world. Do you really want that?

Bonhoeffer is pointed:

When the Bible speaks of God’s promises, it’s a matter of life and death….. The language that reports this ancient story is clear. Anyone who has seen God must die; the sinner does before the promise of God. Let’s understand what that means for us so close to Christmas. The great promise of God – a promise that is infinitely more important than the promise of land – is supposed to be fulfilled at Christmas….The Bible is full of the proclamation that the great miracle (sign) has happened as an act of God, without nay human doing….

This is exactly what Isaiah declares to Ahaz.

¹⁴Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and^[ will call him Immanuel.

Why does God do this? It is who he has always been. Just like in Exodus when “the Lord sees the misery of his people”, he is moved to come and help.

Now, [at Christmas], he was there, not as a mighty one, but in the obscurity of humanity, where there is sinfulness, weakness, wretchedness, and misery in the world. That is where God goes, and there he lets himself be found by everyone. And this proclamation moves through the world anew; year after year, and again this year also.

But, again, are you happy with this sign God has given you? He has given it, whether you wanted it or not, and you know about it. You have seen it most of your life, year after year, but do you want to live in it?

Living in this sign – God, “Immanuel”, human and divine, one of us who would do and say and give everything we know he has, might still not be what you really want. Because living in this sign means living in repentance, humility, faith, not might, smarts, merely human sight…..

Putting to shame the most powerful human efforts and accomplishments, a child is placed here at the midpoint of world history – a child born of human beings, a son given by God (Isaiah 9:6)…… on this alone my life now depends. A child has our life in his hands….

You OK with that? ‘A child has your life in his hands’? Hmm. Surely that is a bit much. Surely you can’t hand over the reins of your life to a kid. What does he know? What does this now fluffy comfortable nice picture of the manger scene we have settled into have to do with my cancer, my spouses dementia, the terrible antisemitic violence on that beach last Sunday, these violent and hateful streams in our current Australia?

How shall we deal with this child? Have our hands, soiled with daily toil, become too hard and too proud to fold in prayer at the sight of this child? Has our head become too full of serious thoughts…..that we cannot bow our head at the wonder of this child? Can we not forget all our stress and struggles, our sense of importance, and for once worship this child, as did the shepherds and the wise men from the East, bowing before the divine child in the manger like children? (The government upon the shoulders of a child, Christmas sermon, 1940, God is in the manger).

Friends, God’s sign is again coming. Our needs and schemes and dreams and struggles and pains are met, face-to-face humanly and yet Godly. Our waiting and hoping and longing in life will be carried again by a young mum bearing down, a man tending, a baby crying in rough straw on a cold winter’s night.

This God is the one who became human as we became human. He is completely human. Therefore, nothing human is foreign to him. The human being that I am, Jesus Christ was also.

God is not asking you for your opinion on what sign think he needs to do. He is giving you this sign again.

In a cold prison cell in a Berlin prison under Nazi guard in 1943) alone most of time, Bonhoeffer pinned his heart and joy and hope on this child.

“… on this alone my life now depends. A child has our life in his hands …”

In his isolation, poverty, depravity of freedom and the love of those closest for no just reason, he is glad for this Christmas sign.

He receives another letter from his fiancé, Maria

And now Christmas is coming and you won’t be there. We shall be apart, yes, but very close together. My thoughts will come to you and accompany you. We shall sing “Friede auf Erden” [Peace on Earth] and pray together, but we shall sing “Ehre sei Gott in der Hohe” [Goory be to God on High] even louder. That is what I pray for you and for all of us, that the Saviour may throw open the gates of heaven for us at darkest night on Christmas Eve, so that we can be joyful in spite of everything (Maria von Wedemeyer to Bonhoeffer, December 10, 1943)

See the sign. Receive the sign God gives by which he is to be found for all needs and longings an desires and pains and wrongs.

This child has your life in his hands.

Ahaz did not want to receive this sign of God’s promise and presence and power for his life or his people. I pray you do because;

“… the birth of a child shall bring about the great change, shall bring to all people salvation and deliverance (The government upon the shoulders of a child, Christmas sermon, 1940, God is in the Manger).