In the sermon 'Freeze Frame - When God Meets With Man' by Scott Brown, the focus is on Isaiah 7:1-13, where Ahaz encounters the prophet Isaiah. The sermon explores the theme of critical moments, termed 'freeze-frame moments,' where decisions significantly impact one's life and future. Ahaz, faced with a crisis, is advised by Isaiah to trust in God rather than in political alliances and personal strategies. However, Ahaz's reluctance and self-righteousness lead him to reject God's offer of a sign, missing the opportunity for redemption. The sermon highlights the importance of responding to God's calls for repentance and faith, contrasting Ahaz's failure with Isaiah's own obedient response to God. It emphasizes the dangers of relying on oneself and the consequences of hypocrisy and self-righteousness. Brown encourages believers to seek God's will and recognize the mercy and patience God extends, offering multiple opportunities for repentance and trust.

Good morning. This morning's text is Isaiah 7 verses 1 through 13. That Razan king of Syria and Pekah the son of Emilia king of Israel went up to Jerusalem to make war against it but could not prevail against it and it was told to the house of David saying Syria Syria's forces are deployed in Ephraim so his heart and the heart of his people were moved as the trees of the woods are moved with the wind. Then the Lord said to Isaiah, Go out now to meet Ahaz, you and Shir Jeshub your son, at the end of the aqueduct from the upper pool on the highway to the fuller's field, and say to him, Take heed and be quiet, do not fear or be faint-hearted for these two stubs of smoking firebrands, for the fierce anger roused in Assyria and the son of Remilia. Because Assyria, Ephraim, and the son of Remilia have plotted evil against you, saying, Let us go up against Judah and trouble it, and let us make a gap in its wall for ourselves, and set a king over them, the Son of Table.

Thus says the Lord God, It shall not stand, nor shall it come to pass, for the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Resin. Within sixty-five years, Ephraim will be broken, so that it will not be a people. The head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is Ramelius' son. If you will not believe, surely you shall not be established." 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.

But Ahaz said, I will not ask, nor will I test the Lord. Then he said, now hear, O house of David, it is a small thing for you to weary men, but will you weary my God also? Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for this section of Scripture. I pray now that you would be with Scott Brown as he comes to exposit these Scriptures.

Help us understand these Scriptures and help us apply them to our lives. Thank you for this day in allowing us to gather and study your Word. In the name of Jesus, amen. Here in chapter 7 we find a very dramatic moment in a man's life, Ahaz, as he meets with the prophet Isaiah. And what's here before us are so many issues that speak of a man's personal life, the fate of an entire nation, and the effect of the Word of God on a people.

But one thing that's so fascinating about this chapter is that Isaiah is, he's really displaying before us one of the most profound situations that ever happens between God and man. And it has to do with a meeting with God, because what happens is that God is meeting with a man at the aqueduct, at the end of the aqueduct, from the upper pool on the highway to the Fuller's Field. It's a meeting of God and man. And what happens when God meets with man makes all the difference in the world. And it makes us think that there are critical moments of time in your life where you take a position or you make a decision and it affects absolutely everything.

This is a moment in the life of a man, Ahaz, as he meets with God. And it's a moment of opportunity. And what we see is that Ahaz squanders his moment of opportunity. And yet, in those moments when God meets with us and He speaks to us something of importance, or He convicts us of a sin, He exposes us in some way, we either humble ourselves and repent of our sins or we miss the opportunity and it will not go well with us. These opportunities come over and over again in our lives and and this is an opportunity that came before a man and I just want us to think about the many opportunities that God has given us as He has met with us.

Of course, we'll see how it worked out with Ahaz, and I'm confident we'll see even many connections with the meetings with God that we've had in our own lives. But there's a message in this chapter that runs through it, and that is stop trusting in yourself, stop trusting in your schemes, stop trusting in your alliances, stop trusting in your resources, Stop trusting in your relationships and trust in Christ alone. Throw yourself upon His ways. And it's also a very fascinating chapter in the sense that It sits in a particular place in the prophet Isaiah. It's chapter 7, which succeeds.

It's chapter 6, which was this meeting of Isaiah with God himself. It was another kind of meeting. Again, there's various meetings. Isaiah is such a rich testimony of the various ways that God deals with his people. And there's a sermon in chapter one, And then the next sermon in chapters two through five, which is really a sermon which many have called a sermon with bookends of grace, where you have these visions of the grace of God in heaven on each side of the sermon, and then also a disclosure of what's happened to mankind.

You're filled with Eastern ways. You're walking in your own ways. And then when you get to chapter 5, it's so beautiful. It's a song. And Isaiah says, let me sing you a song about my beloved.

And you see his love for God. And yet you also see the judgment of God as a result of the nations rejecting him. And then you get to chapter 7 and it's a meeting with God. Isaiah meets with God. And Now Ahaz meets with God.

But it's a fascinating contrast if you look at chapter 6 and chapter 7 in comparison, and look at the different positions that the different men had in their meetings with God. When it comes to cleansing, Isaiah receives it, but Ahaz says, do not touch me. When it comes to sending, Isaiah says, here am I, send me. And Ahaz says, I don't want to know where you want me to go at all. When it comes to purity, Isaiah says, I'm a man of unclean lips.

And Ahaz says, oh, I would never test the Lord. I am so holy. When it comes to the threat at hand, Isaiah minimizes it as under the control of Almighty God. Ahaz maximizes the threat and is running around like a chicken with his head cut off, shaking like a leaf. Isaiah sings a song of confidence while Ahaz is shaking like the trees.

Because Isaiah had a whole heart before God, and he said, hear my sin me. Isaiah trembled at his holiness, but Ahaz shrugged his shoulders and walked the other direction. Because Ahaz does not desire Immanuel. He does not want a sign from God, and nor does he want to know the will of God." So that's sort of an overview of what we see here. Now the message of this chapter really introduces the messages of many chapters ahead in Isaiah.

In chapters 7 through 12 we find many of these same themes coming up, where the message is, don't trust intrigue, don't trust in strategy, don't trust in political alliances, don't trust in man-made reliances, Trust only in the Lord your God. That's really a message that will run all the way through. And this message really begins with a crisis that Ahaz is experiencing. And it's a real live crisis. Already 125, 000 have perished.

But still, the message from God is, trust me. It's also the beginning of prophecies of the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, we're entering the season where everybody celebrates the incarnation. We're going to be in these passages of Scripture during this season. Chapter 7, verse 13 and on, we begin to see the testimony of Emmanuel, God with us.

So it will be a special way to celebrate through these passages of Scripture, because the great Messianic prophecies are here between chapter 7 and chapter 12. Now, at this meeting, at this meeting at the aqueduct by the Fuller's Field, the fate of Jerusalem is fixed for the next 700 years. Because when you have a meeting with God, it really matters which way you turn. Okay, let's go into the text. Verses 1 and 2.

You see Ahaz shaking with fear. Now it came to pass in the days of Ahaz." You know, these first words, now it came to pass, they should just plunge you into a time of meditation, of considering the works of God in history and in your own life, because we're living in times that have come to pass by the will of God. And that's what's happening here. There are these holy moments. And in many ways, every moment is a holy moment.

But there are very particular moments that are so critical in our lives. But it came to pass. It just makes me ponder what has come to pass. What's coming to pass in my life right now? What's coming upon me?

What has God brought upon me right now at this very moment in the confluence of my own life and all of history? The things happening in my family, the things happening in my community and in my nation and among my friends. What's happening as it has come to pass. Well, they're very dramatic moments that have come to pass in the days of Ahaz, the son of Jotham. There are these external events that are causing fear.

And what you find here is not only do you have a fearful man, you have a fearful nation. And remember the situation that was created here, there was a political situation that was caused by evil that had taken root. And it resulted in a divided kingdom. David's son, Solomon, was judged for his alliances with foreign nations and his compromises with women and the resulting idolatry that took place. And his son, Jeroboam, would preside over the Northern Kingdom.

It would be called Israel. Ten tribes split off from the other two in the South, called Judah. All the kings of the ten tribes in the northern kingdom, also called Ephraim in this passage a number of times, were wicked. All they had were wicked kings. What a tragedy that was.

Look what idolatry does from one generation to the next. In the southern kingdom were the descendants of David. Some of the kings were godly, only I think five, and the rest were evil or they were half-hearted. And the king of Syria, Rezin, came into alliance with Pekah, the king of the northern kingdom at that time. And they mounted an initiative to come and destroy the Southern Kingdom, Judah, where Ahaz was the ruler.

And so there's a war going on here. And Ahaz is in the Southern Kingdom as the king, and he is the son of Abraham. He is of the seed of David. He's aware of the covenants and the promises and the beautiful things of the pure, converting Word of God. He has seen them firsthand, And yet he has rejected the very best things in life.

He's like those in Romans 1, they were not thankful, nor did they glorify God. And so what's happening here is that you have, Uzziah has died, as we just read about in chapter 6. And this event takes place 16 years later, at least. Uzziah's son Jotham becomes king for 16 years. And he does not tear down the high places.

But then after Jotham, Ahaz succeeds him and he's not a good king at all. And there's much that we can say about him. And we learn about him very distinctly in 2 Kings chapter 16. I'd like you to open your Bibles to 2 Kings 16. We'll get a view of who Ahaz is.

I think it's very important that we understand the activities, the pressures that were upon this man and his heart, because it's revealed there in this passage. Second Kings, chapter 16. In the first verse, we learn something of the time frame, his age and the length of his reign. In the seventeenth year of Pica, the son of Remaliah, Ahaz the son of Jotham, king of Judah, began to reign. Ahaz was 20 years old when he became king, and he reigned 16 years in Jerusalem, and he did not do what was right in the sight of the Lord.

And then you see his spiritual condition in verse 3. He walked in the way of the kings of Israel. Indeed, he made his son pass through the fire according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord had cast out before the children of Israel. He sacrificed and he burned incense on the high places, on the hills, under every green tree. I just want us to understand who this man is.

Because this is the man that God sends a prophet to, to comfort him and to appeal to him. He has actually sacrificed his children on the altar of Baal. It's remarkable what he's done. And then in verse 5, you see the pressures and the difficulties that are upon him. And then, Resin, king of Syria, and Pekah, son of Ramaliah, the king of Israel, came up to Jerusalem to make war.

So they besieged Ahaz. But what the writer of 1 Kings doesn't tell us, but Chronicles does, in Chronicles 28, that when Pika and Resin came against the southern king, and they killed 120, 000 in one single day. It's astonishing what happened. This king that God comes to appeal to has been in the crossfire of such a dramatic destruction. The judgment of Almighty God is upon the land.

He's felt the pain already. Do you remember when Isaiah said in chapter 1, why should you be stricken again? You'll revolt more and more. God has been striking the nation to help them to repent and they would not turn. And it gives us a picture of what happens in our lives, how God brings difficulties and calamities to us.

He convicts us of sin, but we don't turn. We misinterpret the matter, and in our self-congratulatory way, We dismiss what God has done and the difficulties that come upon us. And we don't turn, we don't bow our knee down. But here Ahaz has already experienced in one single day, 120, 000 of his people perish. It's astonishing what happened.

And then as a result of this, Ahaz goes to Tiglath-Pelisar, the king of Assyria. You have the king of Syria, reason, and the king of Assyria, Tiglath-Peleser. Get that straight in your mind. And Ahaz sends messengers to Tiglath-Peleser in verse 7, if you see it there, And he says, I am your servant and your son. Come up and save me from the hand of the king of Syria, from the hand of the king of Israel, who rise up against me.

So instead of trusting in the Lord, Ahaz turns to the kings and he says, I am your son. He turns to the political, legal machinery, the military prowess that would save him rather than God. How often we do that. How often we think we can turn the dials and strategically make everything happen to make it turn out right when actually God is in control. 2 Chronicles 28-21 says that he did not help him.

Tiglath-Paleaser didn't lift a finger. He submitted himself. Ahaz did. But the one to whom he submitted himself did not lift a finger to help him. So he put his trust in a false place.

And then Ahaz, his heart continues to devolve and He changes the worship of God. He dismantles the treasures that were in the temple, and He sends them to Tiglath-Phalizer in verse 8. And He took the gold and the silver, which was found in the house of the Lord, and He sent it as a present to the king of Assyria. He took the holy things dedicated to the service of God. He took all the things that spoke of the beauty and the goodness of the Lord, all the things that Jesus Christ fulfilled, all the elements of the temple worship he took and he sent them as a gift to this pagan king.

And then in verse 10 we learn that he copied the pagan altar of Tiglath-Peleser and he worshiped there. It's a terrible picture of syncretism and the inventions of man and worship replacing the true worship of God with profane things, which has always been the tendency of men. One of the things that you learn when you study the history of the nation of Israel, and it should really startle us, and that is this. When Israel sets aside the highly defined worship of God, God destroys their nation. When people engage in worship in their own way, when they raise up their inventions and they prefer their own inventions in worship to the worship of God, God destroys nations.

He destroys families, as He did the whole line of Eli. He kills people when they worship in a way that is not defined by Him. Which means that we should be a humble people. You know, when we gather here together, we really are gathering to do a holy thing. It's separate from the rest of life.

It's very different. We come for a time to meet with Almighty God. And it's a holy moment. It's a meeting with Him. And He's defined what we ought to do.

That we should sing, and that we should pray, and that we should preach, and we should partake in the Lord's Supper. And everything is focused on God. And all distractions are taken away. And we have a time where we gather together, and we knit our hearts together. And we so need the work of the Holy Spirit to bind us together to have all of our focus in God, Because we're beset with so many distractions, our minds wander, we have our own preferences, and we find it sometimes difficult to focus on the words and the songs and all those things there.

But God has created a holy moment for us, and it's something we should prepare for, and it's something we should highly focus on, and we should not be going to the bathroom during the worship of God. We should be focusing on the worship of God. It's a holy time set aside for Almighty God. And what Ahaz was doing is he was copying the ways of the nations to find something more gripping and interesting and helpful to him. He was feeding his flesh, which is so often the reason that worship is compromised, because we're feeding our flesh.

We just want things our way rather than His words in His ways. And so here we find a picture of the defilement of the worship of God which is so so common in the way that worship is compromised even in our own day. Ahaz's problem is our problem as well. We do the very same thing when we try to invent worship in our own way. So he copies this altar.

It's such a gripping moment. I just wanted us to understand who this man was. This man that God met with. Because there are critical moments of time in your life when God meets with you and You take a position or you make a decision and it affects everything. And then we see in verse 3 that God has mercy.

This moment really was a moment of mercy that God gave Ahaz. It's so remarkable. The man that burned his children on the altar, God is now meeting with. God meets with sinners. God calls sinners.

He issues a call to all sinners. He calls out to repent. He calls to the very worst. Has anyone done anything worse than that? I doubt it.

And yet, God comes to this man. People often come into a church and they think, I'm so despicable, there's no way God could ever speak to me. There's no way God could ever speak to me. There's no way God could ever love me or minister to me or save me. He couldn't rescue me out of this pit of sin that I've fallen into.

It's too deep. And God says, no. He asks you who have sacrificed your children, you who have committed immoralities of various kinds. Paul says to the Corinthians, such were some as you. But you were washed, but you were cleansed.

But God issues a call to sinners. We should never think that anyone is too far. No one is too far. It's for us to call. Just like Isaiah.

It was for Isaiah to call. It was for God to determine whether the call would be heard and whether there would be a repentant heart. We don't know who would repent. Often the very hardest are the ones that fall before God in worship. We should never be deceived by appearances.

You think about what you think are the worst people out there that you're ministering to. Don't think they are the worst at all. Don't think that they cannot fall. God is in control. So God has mercy, Verse 3, then the Lord said to Isaiah, go out now to meet Ahaz, you and Shier Jeshub, your son, at the end of the aqueduct from the upper pool on the highway to the fuller's field.

This is that moment. That moment of time, that time that frees frame in history that affects everything. You know, it's so important that when we come to those freeze-frame moments where God speaks to us and we know that we ought to repent or that we ought to commit ourselves to a direction. These are such critical moments. I was speaking with a man who lives here in this town, in our own hometown of Wake Forest, who had been caught in a sin.

And he said, I only wish I had repented sooner. I only wish I had repented at the moment when I knew it was wrong. But I waited, and I waited, and more happened, and more happened, and I waited. I said, what have you learned about this situation? He said, repent immediately.

Do it right away. Don't wait. Don't think that it won't come out. Don't think that it won't get worse. Don't think that it'll be healed by silence and covering it up.

Don't do that. And this was a man, he was the happiest man I'm sure in Wake Forest because God had delivered him and healed him and rescued him. But he said, my lesson is this, I wish I had repented sooner. Is there anybody here like that? You're waiting.

You think it will go away. You think time will heal it, but it won't heal it. And you keep going back. You keep going back to the pig's sloth. But God, every time you go back, He gives you an opportunity.

And He says, turn to me. Come to me. Confess. And it might be because you're so afraid of confessing your sin to someone that it's holding you back, you're afraid your reputation will be ruined. But don't think that way.

Your reputation will be far, far more ruined the longer you wait. And that's the reality when you meet with God. Because there are critical moments in time where you take a position or you make a decision and it affects everything. It's a freeze frame in life. And God gives us so many of them.

Isn't it remarkable? You see the mercy of God. How many opportunities do you think God had already given Ahaz? Many, many opportunities. And now he comes again to this man.

His mercies are new every morning and he he's patient and he doesn't destroy in a moment but there will be that day when his anger and his wrath will come down in a fury to all those who do not repent. Now, it's interesting here that Isaiah has his son with him. God commands him to take his son, And his son's name is a prophecy. His very presence is a witness to the sovereign mercy of God. Sh'er Jeshub, the remnant shall return.

What a great name. The remnant shall return. You know, there are other places in Scripture where God calls His people to name their children names of significance. In Hosea chapter 1, the Child is named Jezreel, meaning I will avenge bloodshed. In Hosea 1.6, lo, Ruhama, no mercy.

Verse 9 of Hosea 1, lo, Ami, for you are not my people. There's the story of Eli and his sons. When Phineas dies, God kills him. And his wife has a son, Ichabod, for the glory of the Lord has departed. I have many grandchildren whose names bear witness to God and His work.

It's a sweet thing. And here, here Isaiah has a son, and his name is, the remnant shall return. What an encouraging presence that is. Wherever he goes, that's his witness. There's a boy walking around the world along with Isaiah, his own son, and his own name means God is faithful, God is going to redeem, God will restore.

But it's interesting here that God sends a prophet to such a wicked man. He's already received such mercy. God pursues man. There's so much in scripture about God pursuing man. Man is not the seeker, by the way.

We've gone through this insane season of church history where somehow everyone is trying to appeal to the seeker and that happens to be man. Well, the truth is God is the seeker. Man doesn't seek God. He's dead in his trespasses and sins. He's got a hard heart like a rock and something has to soften it from the outside.

Man is not the seeker, really. It is true that God does activate the conscience and the will of a man and he becomes one who seeks God. But he isn't that way by nature. But God is the seeker by nature and he seeks wicked the wickedest of wicked men Think of it, you know think back think back in your life before you're converted the state that you are in Give thanks that God seeks out wickedness Wicked people He has mercy on those who've hurt their lives so terribly, who've gone the wrong way, started thinking so wrong, done so many wrong things, hurt so many people, sinned against people in different ways. And yet God, God seeks man.

And here God sends a prophet to a wicked man. And he sends him to the place where the water supplies the city at the end of the aqueduct from the upper pool on the highway to the Fuller's Field, this place. It's interesting to me that God, in His Word, so carefully and clearly identifies this place. There's meaning here. And there's much meaning to it, but the only meaning I really want to extract from it today is that there are critical moments in your life where God meets with you and you take a position or you make a decision and it changes everything.

And then God speaks to Ahaz. There are six messages that God gives to Ahaz, beginning in verse 4. Four of them are imperatives. They're commands. I'm just going to walk through these six messages that God gives to Ahaz.

Remember, this is a moment, a freeze frame in time where God meets with a man. First he says in verse 4, listen, listen up, it's a command. The term that Isaiah uses has to do with being a watchman, looking beyond the moment, lifting up your eyes. It's almost as if the prophet is saying, you're looking too low, you're looking too small, You're looking to yourself and your own interests. Look up, be a watchman.

Your world is too small, it's too confined to you. You're only thinking about your own perception, your own strategy, your own skin. Turn, look, you listen up, listen to me. And then the second message is be quiet, verse four. Be quiet.

And the terminology here speaks of quietness, peacefulness. To be undisturbed, to be still and know that I am God, to be quiet. He was not quieted in his soul. You know, the mark of a Christian is that he can be quieted in his soul by the Lord, because his trust is in God. He can walk through the fire and not be burned.

He can run through the raging storm and not be blown down. He walks in confidence, not in himself, but in God's law. Have you known times like that where you knew the quietness and peace of the Lord was upon you, even though everything was raging around you and there was a storm, and yet you knew that God was in control. And you were not moved at all. What a blessing it is to have the hand of God and to know it and to be quiet.

And the next message, the third message is, do not fear. This addresses his anxiety and his dread and his terror. And it ought to bring up in our minds the various things that we might fear. You know, I'm putting together a book that I hope to complete next year that I've titled Man Killers. And I've been thinking about it for a couple of years.

And There are several things that I'm going to identify as man killers. One thing is fear. It'll kill you off. You get overcome by fear. The fear of man.

The fear of God is a blessing. The fear of man will absolutely unravel everything good. And this is what Ahaz was struggling with. And God is coming to him and he's saying, do not fear. You know, I love Psalm 46, you know, which ends with, Be still and know that I am God.

I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge. This is what we need to recognize in times of fear.

He begins the Psalm by saying God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we shall not fear. But he is addressing his fear. And whenever we're studying the scriptures, we should always ask ourselves, am I like that? Who am I in the story?

Am I like Ahaz? Filled with fear, not quiet, running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to turn the dials to fix everything. The next message of the fourth is don't be faint-hearted. Verse four. Don't be faint-hearted.

Verses, verse four, don't be faint-hearted. He's speaking of a condition in your soul where you lack courage And you're sort of drained of the ability to move. You know, when someone says of someone else, I think he's just given up. You ever heard anybody say that about someone? Often it happens in old age, when a child looks at his father or mother and says, well, I think he's just giving up.

But this is what was being confronted here with Ahaz, don't be faint-hearted. It's a condition that comes upon you when you just want to throw up your hands and say, I can't take it anymore. I don't even know if I care anymore. Have you ever reached a point like that where the pressures were so great and you just said, I don't care. I don't need this.

And yet God has called you to that. And it's not the time to throw up your hands and be fainthearted to submit to your lack of courage. This word that he uses has to do with an inward resolution. You know, David said in Psalm 27, I would have lost my heart if I had not known I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. I think that's the only real hope for those who've lost their heart.

Again, I don't know, is there anybody like that here today who they've just lost their heart in? I don't know if I can go on. I don't have any courage to go on. It's been drained of me. I don't even know if I care anymore.

Well God comes to people who are like that. God's so kind to come to you when you're like that so that he would lift you up out of the miry clay. This is why he does this. He comes to you in this situation. Isaiah makes something very clear to Ahaz.

While it is true they've killed 125, 000, God brings the truth to Ahaz about these enemies, and he says this, for these two stubs are smoking firebrands. What he's saying is that they're just smoke. They are smoke and they're blowing smoke. And all those things that you fear are just smoke, because God is in control. The devil is always blowing smoke.

He's always trying to tell you something that's untrue. David says, you always fill my heart with songs of deliverance. The devil is always blowing so much smoke in your face that there's no hope for you, and that all these forces that are going on around you are going to destroy you, and you're just going to end up a big nothing. That's a big lie. I don't know how many times that lie gets told to the people in our church every week.

But I'm pretty confident that lie gets told. And the Lord says, He's blowing smoke. You know, this is kind of like what Isaiah says to Ahaz is a lot like what Jeremiah said about Egypt. He said, Egypt is a noise. He's just a noise.

He's passed by the appointed time. This is God's view. Everything that you fear is nothing but smoke and noise in the face of God, because God is sovereign. God controls everything. And it might be appropriate just to quote the Lord Jesus, O you of little faith, and to ask, why are we so afraid?

The fifth message of Isaiah to Ahaz is this, they will fail. Verses 7 and 8. They will fail. He says, it shall not stand, nor shall it come to pass, for the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is raisin, within 65 years Ephraim will be broken, so that it will not be a people." So the message is they're going to fail. They're going to fall away.

They won't be anymore. Now, there are a number of things that really I hope can speak to us. The first thing is that, when he speaks of 65 years, something is going to happen. Now, God sets dates. That's what I want us to see.

God sets dates. This is a drop dead date for the Northern Kingdom. God sets dates for the events that he desires. Now we often make dates and God breaks them, but God sets the dates. And it's a good thing that it's his dates that run the world.

It's his timeline. He's established in His sovereignty, in His sovereign mercy, He's established the timeline of history. He has established the raising up and the taking down of every king. He was the one that established your birth date. The various dates that have composed your life, the day you were born was ordained by God.

The moment you were formed in your mother's womb was ordained by God. You were conceived of before the foundation of the world and He set forth this timeline for you and for the whole world. God controls everything. He ordains everything. Even your birth date.

Even the date of your marriage. Some of you are maybe wondering when that day of your marriage will happen. Or maybe it will never happen. But I guarantee you this, God has a date. He sets all the dates.

Man is running around trying to turn the dials to move the dates, to pull them in or push them out. When we refuse to repent of our sins, we're trying to push out the chastisement of the Lord. When we engage in our little strategies to get more and more and more, we're trying to pull in things. We do it in various ways, but God sets the dates. I think it's also helpful to recognize that the timetable for comfort and relief that God has is different than Ahaz.

I'm sure Ahaz wanted immediate relief from the threat. He would get relief, but it would be 65 years later, by the way, he'd be dead by then. Isn't that interesting? God is comforting him, telling him what is going to happen, but it isn't going to happen in his lifetime. Well, there's a lot to say about that.

We want things to happen on our timeline. We want our prayers to be answered on our schedule. We want life on our terms. We want our personal comfort now, rather than the comfort of the Lord, in the way that He delivers it. We want the comfort our own way.

We want to define what goodness looks like and then arrange everything accordingly. When the Lord says in Romans 8.28, He causes all things to work together for good, to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose, He even means many of the difficult things. He even means waiting for 65 years. He means all those things. But you have to think of how good God is and what His plan is, how He's bringing many sons to glory, how He's driving everything toward heaven, How He's made many dwelling places for His people.

And He'll wipe every tear from their eyes. He's already kept all of your tears in a bottle. He's established the step of every place that you walk. Every thought that you have, he knows before you have it. But even the difficult things God ordains.

We've been singing that song, whatever God ordains is good. His will is just and holy." I love that song. That song has been so helpful to me in these days. So there's the sixth message to Ahaz. You will not succeed unless you believe.

Verse 9. The head of Ephraim is Samaria and the head of Samaria is Ramaliah's son. And here is the big lesson. Here is the gigantic message. It really sums up everything God's been trying to say to Ahaz, if you will not believe, surely you shall not be established.

If you will not believe, surely you will not be established. Now a Couple of things to point out. First of all, this is an address to the nation, because he is speaking in the plural. He says, if you, this is plural. He's not only addressing Ahaz.

He's addressing Ahaz and all of those who are under his care as the ruler. And he says, if you will not believe. That's a very important word here. The word believe is the word amen. We have the word amen.

It means to confirm. It means to say yes. It means to support something. It's used here to indicate that you trust in it. You say yes to it.

You believe something is trustworthy and you rely on it. But if you do not believe he is trustworthy, then you do not believe that he is good. You do not say amen in your heart. To believe is to say amen here. It's to say yes to the Lord.

And here Isaiah is revealing to Ahaz that there's a connection between being destabilized and belief. That those who do not believe are completely destabilized. But those who do believe are established, who are set upon a rock. You know, He sets my feet upon a rock. The wise man built his house upon the rock, but the foolish man upon the sand.

Well, those who believe are stabilized and established. Those who do not say amen will always be destabilized, always be running, always be in fear, always being trying to pull in or push out something that God has for them by their own power. They are destabilized. Here's something that is so critical that we understand from this statement. If you cannot say, Amen, to God, there will be no Amen from God.

You do not say, Amen, to Him, you can never be established. Second Chronicles 20 says, Believe in the Lord and you shall be established. Believe His prophets and you shall prosper." Well, here's this moment where, you know, at the end of the aqueduct, there by the fuller's field, There's a moment in time, and there are moments in life when you take a position or you make a decision, it determines everything. And then God presents an opportunity in verses 10 and 11, if you could look with me there. 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." So God is giving him an opportunity for a sign. He's really giving him a blank check, very, very much like what God did with Solomon, where He said, you can ask anything you want. Solomon, though, his heart was turned toward the Lord, and he said, I desire wisdom. And God blessed him with wisdom and riches, far beyond anything he imagined. God gives this man now here an opportunity to see a miraculous sign.

He says ask it either in the depth or in the height above. In other words, ask as big or as little as you want for a sign. God is giving him a chance. God is giving him an opportunity because there are moments of opportunity that God gives you and it matters what you do. And then in verse 12 the opportunity is rejected.

But Ahaz said, I will not ask, nor will I test the Lord. So this is An example of a person who does not go before the Lord. There's something going on in his heart that's holding him back. It's self-righteousness. It's religiosity.

It's posing. Posers are the most dangerous things in the Kingdom of Heaven because they speak such religious words. They know how to use all the right terminology, but they're posers. It's so dangerous to the church. And here a man is leading a nation and he is nothing but a poser.

And he uses this religious language, oh no, I would never test the Lord. It's self-righteousness. It's hypocrisy. I think in Bible study somebody said it was sort of like a picture of the publican and the sinner. The sinner who is broken for a sin and the publican who was so righteous.

Here Ahas stands as the self-righteous man who sees nothing wrong in himself at all, But he refuses the offer. And you know what that means? It means that he does not even want to know the will of God. He doesn't want the will of God. This is the greatest tragedy that can happen inside of a human heart when you don't want the will of God.

He's afraid of the will of God. So many times we're afraid that if God's will is done, that bad things will happen to us. This is the voice of the devil. He does it so often in matters of repentance, where we think it's really better for us if we hide it. And it doesn't turn out that way at all.

It's not better at all. The will of God is always better. It's always sweeter. You can always trust in God. This is why, you know, when David was given the opportunity to be cast on the judgment of man, or the judgment of God, he said, I'll take God.

I'll take the judgment of God. It's better. And here is a man who's fearful that if he follows the Lord, it'll hurt him. He does not need God. He's sufficient.

He has his alliances. He's going to get on his own way quite well. He has his backup plans. He's got it all figured out. He's got his political alliances with unbelievers.

That's all he needs. And how tragic it is when people refuse him. But Ahaz refuses because he cannot say amen. And he is tempting the Lord. And he's displaying one of the ways that hypocrisy works.

You use your pious words and you have your big plans, but your heart is far from God. There are critical moments in your life. There are these freeze frames that take place. And then Ahaz wearies both God and man in verse 13, the last verse that we'll deal with here today. Then he said, here now, O house of David, is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will you weary God?

Now he's speaking of the whole nation again. He's turned from his individual words to Ahaz, and he's now speaking of the whole nation. And the whole nation is now a picture of Ahaz. Ahaz is just like his people, and his people are just like him. They're doing and thinking the same things the same way.

And it probably helps us to see how important it is, what happens to the head of anything. Because where the head goes is where everyone else goes. Where the head of a household goes, so goes the children and the wife. Where the heads of the church go, so does the church. Where the head of a nation goes, so goes the nation.

It's a terrifying fact of leadership that every man in here is either a head over something or will be someday. And it just speaks of the power that God has invested in leadership. But he says here that he's been wearying men, and now he's wearying God, making God weary. Isaiah has already spoken about this in chapter 1. He says, your new moons and your appointed feasts, my soul hates.

They are trouble to me. I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. Even though you make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood.

Wash yourselves. Make yourselves clean. Put away The evil of your doings before my eyes. Cease to do evil, learn to do good. Seek justice, rebuke the oppressor.

Defend the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, let us reason together, though your sins be a scarlet, they shall be white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool. To weary God is to be fake, is to be opposer, to be like Ahaz, who so self-righteously uses all the God words, but his heart is far from him. That's how you weary God.

You weary God by being phony. You weary man by being phony. There's no better way to weary your children and to wear them out for a father to be a fake. To live one way outside of the home and then act like some kind of a righteous man when he walks in the house. To demand all kinds of things of his children.

He cares nothing about them in self and his heart. He really just likes the outward appearance of them. He likes children who say, yes ma'am and no ma'am, but he doesn't say yes or to his boss or to his elders or to his head of state. Head of state. Because he's a phony.

Phoniness in a father, phoniness in an elder, phoniness in a civil leader is a disaster. And it makes God fed up. He's just fed up. He's weary of it. It infuriates Almighty God when we're phony.

When there's no genuineness. When we're just playing a part. We're doing a role. We're trying to be somebody. We're trying to look like something.

This is why it's so helpful to consider what David said. He said, one thing have I desire of the Lord that will I seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in His temple. What he's saying is, I want my life to come from the beauty of the Lord, Not my own beauty, not my own righteousness, not my own ways, but all coming from the Lord. It's our only hope for not wearying one another and wearying God is that we seek the Lord, that our hearts are truly longing for God. It's our greatest need.

It's really the headwaters of absolutely everything in our lives. It defines who we are and our whole identity. And it really confirms what the legacy of our lives will be. It might be ourselves and our own alliances and our own power. But it might be God.

And that's what's being appealed to here. We weary God when we say, I don't even want to know your plan for me. I don't even want to know. Do you want to know God's plan for you? Like if you knew, if God revealed something to you that you ought to do, would you do it with all of your heart?

Or do you say, I don't even want to know? I don't want to pray because I don't want him to reveal anything to me. I don't want to read this book because he might put his finger on something that I like. You know, there really are people, I've met them, that do not want to read certain chapters in the Bible. They don't want to read them.

And there's a reason, because they're just like Ahaz. They don't even want to know what God's will is. Testing the Lord. Testing the Lord comes in different ways. Wearing the Lord.

You know, in the wilderness, the children of Israel tested the Lord many times. In Psalm 81, verses 7 and 8, you get a real insight on what it looks like to test the Lord. You know, God had delivered them. He led them out of Egypt. He gave them a treasure trove of gifts coming out by the hands of the Egyptians who tore off their gold and silver and gave it to them and sent them on their way.

That was a miracle, by the way. And then God prepared their way, parted the Red Sea. He gave them water from a rock. He gave them manna from heaven. And then they said, what have you done for me lately?

They faced another crisis and they said, oh God, what have you done for me lately? Psalm 81 says it like this, verse 7, you called in trouble and I delivered you. I answered you in the secret place of thunder. I tested you at the waters of Meribah. Testing the Lord often happens when you're asking for proof for something He's already proven.

Okay? You're asking for proof for something He's already proven a million times. Okay? How many times does God have to rescue you? How many times does God have to feed you to show you that He will feed you?

How many times has He given you clothing to put on to show you that you will not be naked in this world? How many times does He put a roof over your head to show you day after day that He is going to put a roof over your head. And yet some of us, some of you may even be fearing that you might not have enough money or might not have enough clothing or might not have enough shelter for you. When in fact, he has absolutely proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, not just you, but with the billions of people in the world, that most of them hate him, he still gives all those things too. Even the Gentiles seek these things, and God provides them.

But testing the Lord can include asking for proof for something that has already been proven. Now, you know, I don't know how many times this has happened to me. It might be daily. It could be daily. I've seen the hand of God work, and yet sometimes I fear.

And I ask for proof of something that's already been proven a thousand times already. And so I'm not as free as I could be, because of my unbelieving heart. Unbelief is really bad for the soul. And it causes you to weary God. Are you wearying God?

I mean, are you just begging Him and begging Him, but you already know He's decided to provide for you. He says, look at the lilies of the field, how they grow. Look at the birds of the air. Look around. Even these worthless birds he takes care of.

Don't you think he'll take care of you? Well, it's wearying God to ask for proof for something he's already proven. Well, then, the sign is given. God gives Ahaz a sign he was not expecting and a sign on God's timeline, not his own, a sign far better than he ever even could even conceive of. We'll talk about that next week.

Let me give you some applications. Number one, whole nations can become like this not wanting the will of God. It's a tragedy when a nation doesn't want the will of God like their leader. They don't even want to know. But you know, that can be healed.

It can be healed by the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ when they want to know. They want to seek the Lord. They want to search it out. They want to be good Bereans. They want to understand the will of the Lord.

And they go to the perfect, pure, converting place for it. The Word of God. It can be healed. And it's healed one way, the desire to know the will of the Lord. Let's talk about worry.

Ahaz was a worried man. He was trembling. He was shaking like the trees. You can imagine, you know, the pictures that you see when hurricanes or typhoons move through, you know, a tropical area and the trees are just moving like this and then sometimes they come down. But that's what the people were doing.

They were just getting pushed around by all the fears that were besetting them. You know, worry is conceiving of a world of threats, a world of calamities without God. You see that? It's conceiving of this world, swirling, harmful, destructive world, but it's a world without God. That's what drives worry.

When you think God's not there, you don't think God is in the place where the plan is being hatched against you. He is in that place. And he's in controlling the brains of those who are hatching the plots. And he gives them rumors. He gives them thoughts, feelings.

He makes things happen that divert them. God's in control. Worry is projecting a future that may never be. Worry is forgetting the faithfulness of God. Worry is ignoring the power of God.

Worry is rejecting the sovereignty of God. Worry is envisioning a bleak future that you don't even know about. It just seems so bleak to you because you've already decided how bad things will be. It's the nature of worry. You know, I'm really thankful.

You know, all the stuff I've worried about in my life, You know, I don't even know if one percent of the things I've worried about have happened to me. Not much of what I've worried about has come to pass. Now that should, shouldn't that be a wake-up call for me not to worry? Somehow though, somehow I do sometimes find myself worried. You see here the sovereignty of God over nations and people.

You see the mercy of God toward sinners. We should give thanks for the mercy of God in it. We've seen hypocrisy and phoniness and how destructive it is to the soul. But I'd like to end with this. How many moments have you had like this, when you were in a meeting and you knew what you should do?

You were in that freeze frame. You had that critical moment of time where you were going to take a position or make a decision and it affected everything. In the same way that Ahaz, when he was in his freeze-frame moment with Isaiah at the end of the aqueduct by the Fuller's Field, what he did in his heart at that moment sealed the fate of Jerusalem for 700 years. Life is like that. He gives us moments.

And they're so defining. The mercy of God is that He somehow, for some reason, He keeps giving us moments to repent. He keeps speaking to us. It's such a remarkable blessing how patient He is with us. And I really want to end with that, with the patience of the Lord, with the loving kindness of God, to create so many moments from so many directions, from people, from words, from sermons, from sights, how God, in a moment of time, He comes to you and life freezes.

And you either say, I don't even want to know your will. Or you say, when you said seek my face, my heart also said, your face Lord I will seek. That's always the beginning of life. It's the beginning of salvation, and it's the continuing on of the sanctification of the believer. See the mercy of God.

There's so much hope there. There's so much goodness and beauty in His mercy when He stops you in a moment of time. Here's one thing I believe. God has just stopped us in a moment of time. Well, it's been an hour of a moment of time.

He stopped us to put us in a freeze frame and ask, Lord, is there anything you have to say to me? I want to seek your face. Would you pray with me? Lord, you've played before us a story that you ordained with Isaiah and Ahaz and a kingdom and alliance and other kings and dead people on the ground to show us your glory. Oh Lord, I pray that you would give us such hearts within us to love your will, that you would take the tired and the weary here among us today, you'd breathe new life, that you would take those who've lost their courage, you'd say, I just don't even know if I care anymore.

Oh God, that you would fill them up with the knowledge of your will and refresh their souls by the power of your Holy Spirit and the work of your Word which is so helpful to us like water on the grass like the dew on the field. Oh Lord, saturate us with your goodness. I thank you for your mercy. Amen.