Year 5, Day 357: Isaiah 7

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Information

• Information: This is the initial phase of become a disciple of Jesus.  Before we can do anything meaningful we must begin to understand what we are doing.  We may never gain full understanding of God and His ways, but God calls us to study Him, His Son, and His ways as the foundation of being His follower.

Isaiah 7 gives us an interesting perspective through which we can view the concept of information.  I didn’t used to like Isaiah 7.  It has always felt overused and abused to me.  After all, we always read this passage at Christmas – but only at Christmas.  I always felt on some level that modern Christians were not getting the fullness of scripture in pushing this passage into the niche into which it goes.

Then I went to seminary.  I learned deeply about the history of God’s people and the especially the kingdom period.  I remember being taught about this passage of scripture specifically by a teacher who shared my views.  You can read my theological commentary from three years ago if you want to hear about the true depth within this passage.  But what I found was a new level to this passage of God’s Word that wasn’t present in my life before that professor.  (Thanks, Dr. Brooks Schramm!)

What I learned about this passage is that these verses gave King Ahaz information.  The persecution Ahaz was facing from the nearby kings would end in a three year time period.  God had not forgotten about His people.  Furthermore, God told Ahaz through Isaiah that in only a short period of time that many of his opponents would fall instead of his own kingdom!  That’s the history of the passage that we never hear about because we as Christians instead focus on the application of this passage only to Christ – which I’ll readily admit is a very good truth as well.

However, when we go into the history of the passage we can also see how Ahaz makes a mistake.  Ahaz gets the information but doesn’t believe.  He doubts.  He doesn’t assimilate it and live out in faith as a follower of God.  He doubts instead.  Because he doubts, God tells him that Egypt and Assyria will be constant thorns against him.  Historically speaking, they were! 

When we look into the historical context of this passage we get an opportunity to see how God blesses us with information all the time.  We can take that information and apply it to our life and draw closer to God and imitate Him.  Or we can doubt His promise and not trust His Word.  When we do that, we invite disaster into our life as we see happen with Ahaz and the curse that is brought down upon him in this passage.

<><