¹⁰ The Lord spoke to Ahaz again. He said, ¹¹ “Ask for a sign from the Lord your God. Ask for it either in the depths below or in the heights above.” ¹² But Ahaz responded, “I will not ask. I will not test the Lord.” ¹³ So Isaiah said: Listen now, you house of David. Is it not enough for you to test the patience of men? Will you test the patience of my God as well? ¹⁴ Therefore the Lord himself will give a sign for all of you. Look! The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and name him Immanuel.  (EHV)

Dear Friends in Christ,

You’re a wide-eyed child. It’s Christmas Eve. You’re all excited. You’re looking forward to going home from church and finally opening presents. What will you get? Will it be a video game? A new toy—the one you’ve been asking for three months in a row, every day?

Finally, it’s time to open the gifts. Everyone is gathered around the tree. It’s at last your turn and you open yours. But everyone can see on your face that you’re disappointed. What was it? Socks? Underwear? Plain white ones? Not even the superman kind!

No. It’s not even something you can wear, much less play with. It’s super boring—a bar of gold from grandpa, to be put in a safe and used for college one day. What are you going to do with that? You can’t play with it. You can’t wear it. You can’t eat it. You can’t even lift it! Grandpa thought you’d be thrilled but you start crying, in one of those really obnoxious, whiny kind of ways that everyone hates. No one says it, but they’re thinking, “Maybe we should have named this kid Ahaz.”

How Not to Receive God’s Gift

Over time we all have to learn not only about how to give gifts, but also how to receive gifts. Our text tonight talks about the greatest gift of all time. A truly miraculous gift. Yet part of the story is also about the spoiled brat of a king who couldn’t care less for the gift. He wasn’t just ungrateful. He was also a total hypocrite. He actually even made a fake, pious act out of refusing to ask for a gift when God gave him the chance to do so. “Oh, no, I wouldn’t want to be a bother to the gift giver….”  ¹⁰ The Lord spoke to Ahaz again. He said, ¹¹ “Ask for a sign from the Lord your God. Ask for it either in the depths below or in the heights above.” ¹² But Ahaz responded, “I will not ask. I will not test the Lord.” God’s never fooled by fake piety. Do you think God doesn’t know every one of your thoughts, all the time? He does. He hears everything your inner voice says in your head. He knows every nuance of the attitude in your heart.

Ahaz had wavered from the faith he’d grown up in. His dad and grandpa were among the best, believing kings of Judah. They were faithful to the Lord. But not Ahaz. Ahaz almost brought the kingdom to ruin because he abandoned the true god and sacrificed to the Baals, even offering some of his sons as burn offerings to these fake gods! Because of his wickedness, the Lord allowed his enemies in Samaria and Damascus to muster up their forces against the Kingdom of Judah, planning to attack. Ahaz was so petrified he was planning to ask the even worse king of Assyria to team up—a really awful idea! The Lord sent the prophet Isaiah to Ahaz to say, “Get control of yourself, and remain calm. Do not be afraid…. ⁷ This is what the Lord God says. Their plan shall not succeed. It shall not take place. [But]  … If you do not stand firm in faith, you will not stand at all” (Isaiah 7:4a,7, 9b).

But Ahaz wouldn’t listen to the Lord or to His prophet Isaiah. So God—gracious gift-giver that He is—made him another offer. ‘I really will rescue you if you let me. Let me prove it!’ God was saying: “Ask for a sign from the Lord your God. Ask for it either in the depths below or in the heights above.” What a great offer that was, especially under those circumstances! Ahaz was shaking in his boots. His country was under imminent threat—real danger of total defeat and destruction by two very powerful armies, and here and now God was offering to protect him and Jerusalem and Judah. The Lord was even offering proof! And how does Ahaz respond? With his bratty, unbelieving attitude, trying to sound all pious, “I will not ask. I will not test the Lord.”

That’s called “looking the gift-horse in the mouth.” But this was no horse. It was the living God Himself! What an insult Ahaz gave his Maker. Nobody was fooled by false politeness. Not Isaiah and certainly not God.

As a rule, receiving a gift someone sincerely wants to give you is the right thing to do, rather than making an excuse like, “Oh, I don’t want to put you out. That’s too fancy,” etc. Refusing a good gift is rude, not righteous.

When it’s the Lord Himself who wants to give you a gift, you should never say “no” like Ahaz did! God won’t force His gifts on you or anyone. He won’t force you to accept them. But that won’t stop Him from giving—especially when the gift is His own Son—The Gift of Christmas!

The Gift of God

So Isaiah said: Listen now, you house of David. Is it not enough for you to test the patience of men? Will you test the patience of my God as well? ¹⁴ Therefore the Lord himself will give a sign for all of you. Look! The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and name him Immanuel.

Even if Ahaz wouldn’t accept God’s gift of protection against the armies of Samaria and Damascus, that wouldn’t stop God from promising to send His own, only-begotten Son to save every believer in Judah—and the whole world too. God’s gifts don’t depend on good gift-getters. They depend only on God-the-Giver’s own grace, mercy, generosity and love—His desire to save us all.

The angels were the first to announce the gift of Jesus that first Christmas Eve to some shepherds out “in the fields keeping watch over their flocks by night.” The people whose cattle-shed Mary and Joseph were staying in no doubt got to see the newborn Savior. After they hurried into town and saw the baby, the shepherds began spreading the news to the other folks who lived in Bethlehem and the other guests who were in town for the census. It took time for the people in the big city of Jerusalem to hear, when the Wise Men made a stop there on their way to find Jesus. All in all, the news about God’s Gift of Christmas  started out small.

But that didn’t make the Gift any smaller! No matter how many or few know about Jesus or believe in Him, God would still have sent His Son for all of them. There was never any chance that God would back out of His plan to rescue the world from sin and death, just as Ahaz’s rude and bratty indifference to God’s miraculous promise didn’t stop God from making that astounding prophecy of the virgin birth. God knew there were billions of people who need His salvation, dying sinners in need of the Christmas miracle, including you and me! If Jesus hadn’t been born of the virgin Mary, there’d be no heaven to look forward to.

Can you imagine living in the hopelessness of having absolutely nothing to look forward to but sickness, pain, suffering, and ultimately death? (And of course from Scripture we know there’d be even worse awaiting us in eternity.) But because God gave The Gift of Christmas, we do have hope—real hope! Because God’s Son came to live and die for us, and to rise again from the grave triumphant over death, He has opened the door to eternal life to all who believe in Him, to all who joyfully and gratefully accept and open The Gift of Christmas in faith. The Gift of Christmas is the gift of sure and certain hope.

He offered that gift even to recalcitrant, obnoxious Ahaz and all his fellow unbelievers, but Ahaz wouldn’t have it—not even for free. He was a rude brat about the gift of God, and he got just what he asked for—nothing but a very sad ending. When all was said and done, the people of Jerusalem even refused Ahaz burial in the royal tomb with the other kings of Israel.

Miraculously, his young son who succeeded him when he was dead accepted the gift, became a believer, and is forever famous as one of the best kings Judah ever had—great King Hezekiah! Hezekiah knew how to receive a gift from the greatest Giver, the Lord, and he passed that gift on to the people he served and ruled. This Christmas Eve let us receive the gift God gives gratefully as we celebrate the birth of Judah’s greatest king—our King Jesus. He is not just King David’s and King Hezekiah’s descendant, but also the Son of God, conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary to be our Savior. Let’s unwrap the gift with faith, joy and thanks. Jesus was born to save us from our sins and give us eternal life— The Gift of Christmas. God has given us a miracle! Amen.