| Signs of Christmas December 22, 2009 "Moreover the LORD spoke again unto Ahaz, saying, Ask thee a sign of the LORD thy God; ask it either in the depth, or in the height above." (Isaiah 7:10-11) Although "the Jews require a sign" (1 Corinthians 1:22), and this attitude was rebuked by Christ when He said that "an evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign" (Matthew 12:39), God has given three specific signs with respect to the incarnation of Christ. There were other signs too, no doubt, such as the star of Bethlehem, but three events were specifically called signs. First, to the unwilling King Ahaz, He said: "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel" (Isaiah 7:14). Immanuel means "God with us," and the sign of the virgin birth, biologically impossible without a mighty miracle of divine creation, assures us that the omnipotent God has entered the human family once for all. That entrance was not made in an emperor's palace as a great conqueror, however, but in the very humblest of human circumstances, and this also was a sign. "And this shall be a sign unto you," said the leader of the angelic host; "Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger" (Luke 2:12). And there was a third sign. When the infant Jesus was brought to the temple, the aged prophet Simeon said: "Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against . . . that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed" (Luke 2:34-35). That is, the God/man would Himself be God's great sign to Israel and the whole world. The attitude of men and women to God, in Christ, would reveal the state of their hearts and seal their eternal destiny, whether rising again to everlasting life or falling forever away from God. HMM
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