Readings:
Isaiah 7
Proverbs 5
John 21

Isaiah 7

Ahaz is now king of Judah, and this is at a time of increasing tensions between them and Israel to the north. Then they find out that Israel and Syria intend to make war on Jerusalem and depose the king, so all the people are worried and afraid. Israel was the more powerful and wealthy of the two kingdoms, and Syria was the dominant regional power at the time, so both of them together would be formidable.

Isaiah is sent by God to tell the king to not be afraid, because he will strike both of the kingdoms and not allow Judah to fall. To reassure him, Isaiah tells the king to ask God for a sign, and to make it big! But Ahaz replies that he wouldn’t put the Lord to the test like that, and he refuses to ask for a sign.

But here’s the really rich part about his “pious” response that he wouldn’t ask for a sign; Ahaz was not pious at all, and in fact he was one of the most wicked kings to ever rule from Jerusalem.

A’haz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. And he did not do what was right in the eyes of the LORD, like his father David,
but walked in the ways of the kings of Israel. He even made molten images for the Ba’als;
and he burned incense in the valley of the son of Hinnom, and burned his sons as an offering, according to the abominable practices of the nations whom the LORD drove out before the sons of Israel.
And he sacrificed and burned incense on the high places, and on the hills, and under every green tree.

2 Chronicles 28:1-4

He joins a very small list of people mentioned by name that engaged in human sacrifice, he burned his own sons to the god moloch. That’s what king of king we have here, but he’s pretending to be too respectful of God to ask him for a sign.

He won’t ask for a sign, but one is given too him anyway. Isaiah tells him that a virgin will bear a son (or young woman in some translations) and he will be called Immanuel. And before he’s grown up, the kings that are currently threatening Jerusalem will be cast down.

This prophecy is seen to be a messianic one by Saint Matthew when he quotes it in the first chapter of his gospel, but it’s immediate fulfillment in the life of the people who heard it was the birth of Hezekiah, the son of king ahaz. This son would rule and be one of the greatest kings since David, he would restore the temple and bring the people back in line with the covenant.

John 21

We close out the last chapter of the fourth gospel here, and John tells us some finishing stories about Jesus and ties up some loose ends the way a good author would

They go fishing in the Sea of Galilee and they don’t have any success. Then a man calls out from shore and says to throw the net over the other side, and when they do there’s so many fish that they can’t haul them all in. Instantly, John knows it’s Jesus because of a similar miracle earlier in his ministry and when Peter hears that he jumps in the water and swims to shore.

Jesus is sitting by a charcoal fire, and in the entire New Testament that exact description of a fire as a “charcoal fire” is found only here and back in chapter 18. Peter denied Jesus three times in front of a charcoal fire, and now he has a chance to be reconciled and redeemed by affirming his love for Jesus three times in front of the same fire.

And John closes it all out by giving his seal of approval to this testimony as an eyewitness to it all. He even reiterated that this book doesn’t contain every single thing that Jesus done, but these are recorded so we’d know the most important ones.

Tomorrow’s Readings:
Isaiah 8-9
Proverbs 6