“O that thou wouldst rend the heavens and come down” (Isaiah 64:1). When we contemplate the evil and violence in our world, that is often our plea — for God to come down and to set things right. We need the power of God that can put down tyrants, the love of God that can replace hatred with mercy, the forgiveness of God that can wipe out all the guilty past and restore our hearts and the hearts of all human beings to peace and goodness. And the message at this Christmastime is that God has answered our plea; he has sent us a Savior to cleanse and restore his creation to goodness.

But what are we given for a Savior? A baby! The tiny infant of a lowly peasant woman and her carpenter husband, born in a stable and laid in a feed trough for cattle. A baby! Helpless, dependent, unable to speak or walk or feed himself. Is this the mighty Savior of the world? Is this the one whom God sends as the answer to our plea for rescue?

That also could have been the question that King Ahaz of Judah asked in our Old Testament text for the morning. For Ahaz is threatened by the armies of northern Israel and of Syria. The time is 734 B.C. in our text, during what is known as the Syro-Ephraimitic war. A century earlier, the small states along the Eastern coast of the Mediterranean had banned together and turned back the threatening armies of the Assyrian Empire. But now Assyria is threatening again, and Syria and Ephraim (northern Israel) want to form that alliance once more, with Judah as a partner in it. King Ahaz of Judah, however, wants no part of such an attempt, and he refuses to join his neighbors. As a result, Pekah of Israel and Rezin of Syria assemble their armies to march against Judah, to depose Ahaz, and to put a puppet on the Judean throne who will join their cause.

The word that is given to Ahaz by the prophet Isaiah is that if Ahaz will trust in the Lord, the Lord will preserve Ahaz’ Davidic kingdom and destroy the rulers of Israel and Syria. But what Ahaz needs is to believe that promise. However, proclaims Isaiah, “If you will not believe, you shall not be established” (Isaiah 7:9). Indeed, to prove to Ahaz that God will protect Judah, Isaiah offers a “sign” to Ahaz, and Ahaz can choose whatever sign he wishes (vv. 10-11).

Ahaz, who has already summoned Assyria to his aid, piously and hypocritically replies, “I will not put the Lord to the test” (cf. Deuteronomy 6:16). And that, says Isaiah, wearies the Lord God (v. 13), who cannot stomach such hypocrisy — piety apart from our heart’s devotion is pain and weariness to the Lord (cf. Isaiah 1:14).

Nevertheless, continues Isaiah, God will give Ahaz a sign. A young woman of marriageable age will conceive and bear a son and call his name Immanuel (v. 14). As we know from our gospel lesson, the New Testament understood that as a prediction of the birth of Jesus Christ, reading “young woman” (‘almah in the Hebrew) as “virgin” (parthenos) from the Septuagint. Originally, of course, the reference was not to a virgin or to Jesus. Rather the young woman was simply the wife of the prophet or, more probably, the wife of the king himself. And “Immanuel” was very likely a name that lots of women gave to their infants. But that common occurrence was to be the “sign” to Ahaz that God would keep his promise to him to defend him. God had much earlier promised that there would never be lacking a Davidic heir to sit upon the throne (2 Samuel 7). You can trust that promise, Isaiah was assuring Ahaz. One thing, however, was required of that Davidic king — faith. “If you will not believe, you shall not be established.”

But, continues our text, because Ahaz has not believed and instead has summoned Assyria’s armies to his aid, before the child Immanuel is able to have adult discernment between good and evil, Syria and Ephraim will be defeated, but Judah too will be devastated by Assyria, and the only food available will be not agricultural products, but curds from the herds and wild honey from the forests (vv. 15-16).

Certainly the prophecy by Isaiah proved true. In 721 B.C., the Assyrian Empire under Sargon II defeated Syria and northern Israel, and the inhabitants of the northern kingdom were taken into exile and disappeared from history, never to be heard from again. Under King Ahaz and then King Hezekiah, Judah became a faithful vassal of Assyria until 701 B.C., when Hezekiah, against the advice of Isaiah, entered into an alliance with Philistia and revolted against Assyria, counting on the help of Egypt. Assyria under the rule of Sennacherib, therefore attacked Judah. Forty-six of her cities were crushed, and her complete destruction was prevented only by the payment of a heavy tribute. Judah did not believe in the Lord. Therefore she was not established, and she remained a vassal under the Assyrian yoke through most of the following seventh century B.C.

Ahaz was given a sign, a sign of a baby named Immanuel. And we too are given the same sign in the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem. “This shall be a sign for you,” proclaimed the angel of the Lord in Luke’s Christmas story. “You will find a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” And Joseph in Matthew’s account is told by an angel in a dream to name that child Emmanuel (Matthew 1:23-24). Thus, Jesus Christ comes to us, not as a helpless infant, powerless to save, but as the mighty sign and Son of the God who will establish and save our lives if we trust in him. “If you do believe, you shall be established.”

The Lord, you see, chooses strange ways to reassure us of his salvation, not by rending the heavens and coming down in some cataclysmic display of power, not by overwhelming us with terrifying visions, but by sending a prophet to speak words — words that are then fulfilled in the birth of a tiny child. And in that child lies our deliverance from evil, our forgiveness for sin, our death’s defeat, and our sure hope of eternal life. If we believe that, we shall indeed be saved.