Back to the Future
By: Matt King
Tags: Bible, Bible Study, Devotional, Student Ministry

“Wait a minute, Doc. Are you telling me you built a time machine…out of a DeLorean!?”

If you’ve ever seen the movie “Back to the Future” those words might ring a bell. If you haven’t that’s ok, just go look up a DeLorean, it’s basically an old-school space car that’s pretty awesome! So the premise in the movie is that Marty and Doc are able to travel back in time and then go back to the current year all in their DeLorean time machine. Throw in a bit of a love story and some comedy, and you get the movie.

For this week, we are going to go back in time, we just won’t use a DeLorean! What I want to do this week is begin to look at Jesus when he came to earth. Now, I’m not going to just look at the Christmas story because chances are you’ve all heard that many times. Instead, I want to go to before the Christmas story, actually to well before the New Testament, well before Jesus ever stepped onto earth and fully God and fully man. This week, we’re going to look at Old Testament prophecy that tells the story of Jesus long before he gets here. It’s worth looking at, trust me on this!

Let’s begin…

We could look all the way back at Genesis 3 to see what many believe is the first prophecy about Jesus, but that’s a pretty loaded passage and we’ll save that for another day. What is important to know is that God had a plan to redeem his creation through his son and throughout the Old Testament we will see people that were given snapshots of this plan and how it would unfold in the future.

Where I want to start is Deuteronomy 18 with Moses, who you should all be familiar with from 2 weeks ago! Deut 18:15 says, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him.” These words were spoken by Moses, a prophet himself, as a way to point towards someone far greater than himself. In fact, he goes on in verses 17–19 to say, “The Lord said to me: “What they say is good. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites, and I will put my words in his mouth. He will tell them everything I command him. I myself will call to account anyone who does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name.”

Now Moses was a leader of leaders. This is the guy who has led Israel out of exile from Egypt, directly challenged Pharaoh, and did a ton of miracles through the power of God! For him to say that someone would come after him speaking words that must be followed or else God would hold those who don’t listen accountable, that’s saying something, and Moses’s listeners would know this. Now, did they know exactly who Moses was speaking about? No, they figured this was just another prophet, albiet a powerful one with God-given authority, but to say that they knew this was talking about Jesus, the Messiah, is simply not true. Add in that fact that many future prophets came along in Israel’s time that were incredible people! Think of Elijah, Elisha, Jeremiah, Isaiah, just to name a few.

But, this passage is meant to begin something for us. It’s to show us that God has always been in control and with a plan. So let’s continue to see the beginning’s of the plan…

The main passage I want to focus on is in Isaiah, specifically chapter 7 (and we’ll briefly point to chapter 9, but that will be explained in detail later in the week). In Isaiah 7, we’ve got a couple of characters present that need to be explained. First is Isaiah, and we know him as a prophet, he would deliver the words of God to the people. Second is a king named Ahaz, who probably ruled around 720–735BC, and he was King of Judah. Ahaz was not necessarily a bad king, but he did refuse to listen to Isaiah and did not fully trust God when Rezin, king of Syria, and Pekah, king of Israel, brought war to his doorstep.

So Isaiah specifically tells Ahaz to trust in God when these other kings bring war to Judah. Ahaz struggles to do so, and so the Lord responds to this allowing Ahaz to ask him for a sign that God was with them. Ahaz refuses saying that he won’t put God to the test, even when God told him he could! Because of this, Isaiah responds that Ahaz has tested God’s patience and then delivers a prophecy in light of Ahaz’s refusal to trust God and this is where we will camp for a few minutes.

Isaiah 7:14–17 says, “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. He will be eating curds and honey when he knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, for 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. The Lord will bring on you and on your people and on the house of your father a time unlike any since Ephraim broke away from Judah — he will bring the king of Assyria.”

This is a really peculiar prophecy for a couple of reasons. First, you may have caught the word virgin and may have instantly said, “Oh, that’s talking about Mary!” And you may have seen the name Immanuel and said, “Oh, that’s Jesus!” Let’s slow down just a bit before we jump to conclusions. If you continue reading the prophecy, it also talks about how before the boy knows how to reject right and wrong, the land of the two invading kings will be laid to waste. It also says that the Lord will bring the king of Assyria into the mix to essentially rule the house of Judah. So how do we make sense of all of this?

Well, Ahaz would eventually align himself with the king of Assyria. This ensured Judah’s victory, but it also made them under the authority of Assyria and eventually Assyria brought in their own religion and culture and it corrupted the kingdom of Judah. Clearly this is not what God intended for Judah, but Ahaz refused to trust God and this is the result of his failure.

But the major question is, if Assyria takes over Judah during the time of Ahaz (720–735BC), how could this prophecy be talking about Jesus when he isn’t born for another 700+ years?

So, here’s what a lot of scholars have come to agreement on. This passage could be talking about Jesus, but it might not be. Now don’t start yelling at me because I said that, because they’re actually right! Let’s take a shallow dive into the language of the passage, specifically the Hebrew language. So the word for virgin in Hebrew that is used in this passage is the word “alma” and this word means “young woman” and not necessarily “virgin”. There is also another Hebrew word that could’ve been used and that is the word “betula” and scholars also agree that this word could mean “young woman” and not have to mean “virgin”. So what is this all saying? The point of this passage is not that this young woman is Mary or even a virgin, but rather that she is young and being chosen by God to bear this future child who would be called Immanuel.

What we also don’t know is what this child named Immanuel would actually do, based on this passage. If we look at other parts of Isaiah, it appears that Immanuel will have some role to play in the kings of the line of David and that he would be a godly king, but we don’t know if this means he will be an actual king in the line or if this is speaking of the Messiah to come. We also know that this child will eat curds and honey, which refer to a more nomadic style of life and not this lifestyle you would think of a king living.

Here’s where things also get complicated. In the Hebrew language, the text uses a word it hasn’t used before in verse 16 when talking about the boy. This is weird because you would think the author would simply use the word son or the specific name of Immanuel, and yet it doesn’t, it uses a generic term for a young boy and it’s not specific about who the boy is. What we do know is that when Isaiah gave the prophecy to Ahaz, he brought his young son, Shear-Jashub (imagine a substitute teacher reading that on the attendance sheet!) with him. It is a very real possibility that this portion of the prophecy, that speaks of how the land will be laid to waste and eventually the king of Assyria will take over, could actually be talking about Shear-Jashub and how when he comes of age to know right and wrong, Judah would fall and be taken over.

So I just gave you a boatload of info, so let me sum it up for you.

The virgin in the prophecy is better seen as a young woman who could potentially be pointing to Mary, but not necessarily. Immanuel could be Jesus, but he could also be another king to come or godly ruler and not necessarily pointing to Jesus. This Immanuel would not live like a normal king, he would be a more nomadic king living in a time that is rough and difficult. Eventually Judah will fall to Assyria and that may be by the time Shear-Jashub, Isaiah’s son, is of age to know right and wrong, not Immanuel.

Why is this important? Why is it important that I tell you that this prophecy might not mean what you’ve always been told it means? Well, for starters, I’ll always go back to context is key. We can’t just take everything we read at face value, we talked about that in our study of Thomas. But also, this is important to know because it continues a pattern that God had been doing where he doesn’t just give away all the information at one time. He has a process for how he does things and this is part of it. He sees the current situation with Ahaz and Judah at war, but he also is looking ahead and is showing that one day, Immanuel will come and he will be an example to the people of what a godly ruler looks like, whether that means Jesus or not. We have to see God’s bigger picture here. Again, if God gave us all of the information at one time or before things happen, we would probably do a lot to change the outcome or make it what we want it to be. If Ahaz had tested God like he should have, maybe God would have done something vastly different with Judah and who knows how that would’ve impacted the line of David and the eventual birth of Jesus.

I think the most important aspect is this, that no matter what this prophecy means, God was always in control. And I even get this sense of exciting mystery of “who is this Immanuel?” I mean his name means “God with us” so who could it possibly be that would represent God so well? I can imagine that Isaiah was both disappointed at Ahaz’s response, but also full of anticipation at the words from God about one who is yet to come that would symbolize God being with his people.

And what’s funny is that we aren’t done with Isaiah and this story because Isaiah 9 opens this all up again and gives us even more to understand…but we’ll save that for tomorrow!

Passage to read: Isaiah 7:1–17

Prayer to pray: God thank you for being in control. It can be hard to understand what you are doing and I may not see everything that you do, but I trust that you remain in control. God thank you for letting nothing stop your plan of sending Jesus to earth to save us on the cross. In this season, I want to say thank you for sending Jesus to do what I couldn’t do, to pay the penalty for my sins. Remind me of that this week and help me to maintain a spirit of gratitude for what you and Jesus did. In Jesus’ name, amen.