The Virgin Shall Conceive

Hello and welcome to Halting Toward Zion, the podcast where we limp like Jacob to the Promised Land and talk about life, the universe, and everything along the way. I’m Emily Maxson, here with Greg Uttinger and Bryan Broome.

We’ve been talking about covenants and contracts. We’re in the Old Testament. We are now approaching the book of Isaiah and we’re going to talk about the virgin birth.

Before we started the recording we said, “This is kind of going to be hard because we don’t have any liberals or neo-orthodox people here to say, ‘But wait!’” because we’re all kind of like, “Yeah, that makes sense. That’s what the Bible says. That historically pans out.” So what are some commonly put forth objections to the virgin birth? And maybe lead us in with why this is the continuation of contracts and covenants.

What we’re doing is working through the history of Kings and Chronicles, and oddly enough the major prophets are set against the latter part of Kings and Chronicles. So as we have moved past Joash, where we started talking about covenants and such, we come very shortly to the end of the northern kingdom and to the reign of Hezekiah in the south, and this is the time when Isaiah is prophesying.

In fact, some of the histories recorded in Kings are duplicated in Isaiah word-for-word, and in other place Isaiah amplifies upon what he said at the time, and gives his entire sermons – the ones he preached first to Ahaz and later to Hezekiah and to the people alive at that time. So we’re not making some kind of huge historical jump, although we are kind of shifting tracks and looking at what the prophet himself wrote, rather than just at the histories.

It's in this context that we come to one of the first really clear prophecies, the virgin birth. It’s not the first prophecy. There’s a lot of foreshadowing, a lot of imagery, and a lot of theology that strongly suggests that if the human race is going to be rescued, it’s going to come from outside the human race. The Savior, the seed, will be the seed of the woman, not something that man or nature or history coughs up on its own. We’ll talk more about that as we go.

When I started studying theology a million years ago, it always amazed me that liberals threw up such a big fuss at the virgin birth. I didn’t understand why, and I still don’t understand why because there are better topics, like the resurrection. If you want to object to something, object to Jesus’s resurrection. But I suppose going for the virgin birth is nipping it in the bud, literally.

If the man who was born isn’t God, if he doesn’t come from outside human history, if he does not come from outside creation, then whatever follows is at best interesting trivia on the order of National Enquirer stuff – big foot, UFOs and such. “Oh, he rose from the dead? That’s odd. There are a lot of weird things we don’t understand.”But once you confess the virgin birth, then you’re confessing that God can intervene in history and in nature and in sexuality, in ways we’re not comfortable with if we don’t love Jesus, if we don’t walk in the fear of God.

The most obvious objection is, “That’s not possible.”

“In other words, you don’t believe in God?”

“No, I believe in God.”

“You just don’t believe that God can intervene in human affairs, which is to say you don’t believe in God.”

“Well, but we can’t conceive of this.”

“So God is no bigger than your imagination, which is to say you don’t believe in God.”

Yeah, it’s all forms of unbelief and atheism and a simple rejection of God. It’s possibly just that the doctrine pricks the bubble. It exposes unbelief for what it is. It’s a whole lot easier to try to come up with some alternate explanation than to stand up in the pulpit and say, “I don’t believe in this and I don’t believe in God, either,” because if you’re a pastor or seminary professor you may be out of a job – no guarantees at all.

There was someone in the Presbyterian Church, a professor at Union Seminary, who basically did that. He went into the seminary chapel and delivered a message denying the virgin birth, and it took a very long time for the Presbyterians to discipline him. Eventually he was allowed to transfer out of their body into another and go on being a theological professor. What’s this?

Have you read or seen North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell?

I have seen the movie. I have not read the book.

Same. It’s not the best historical drama. I have many beefs with it, but the main character’s father is a member of the Church of England in the 1850s during the Industrial Revolution, so Darwin has just released his book. The main character’s father refuses to re-sign on to the statement of faith of the Church of England and his wife is really indignant because she’s like, “Why couldn’t you just sign anyway?” I don’t like any of these characters. Anyway, that was a tangent, sorry.

By the way, North and South does not refer to the United States. It’s not a Civil War drama.

Right, it’s north England versus south England.

Yes, we have had people try to get out of this in a number of ways. Probably the two most common, from my limited reading, is first to say that the Hebrew words “the virgin shall conceive” does not mean virgin, it means young woman and we’re reading way too much into it and we shouldn’t press it, and we’ll come back to that. The other is, “Well, there was a young woman who had a baby about that time, but that young woman bringing forth a baby points forward to Mary who or may not have been a virgin bringing forth the Christ child.” That’s not what the text says.

The comeback – and this is what we’re going to tackle here – is, “But if this is really a prophecy about Mary and Jesus, how does it fit the historical context? It seems to have nothing to do with what’s going on and would be absolutely no comfort.”

Yeah, what does this have to do with Assyria about to invade us?

That being so, let me tell the story for those who don’t know it. Time has passed for years now, for decades. Syria or Aram has been at war with Israel, the northern kingdom. They’ve been back and forth stabbing each other in the back whenever they could, and they just hate each other’s guts on principle.

But suddenly, to the north of that, on the northern side of the Tigris Euphrates valley, this new power – well, it’s a very ancient power, but the shadows have returned, as it were – called Assur or Assyria is growing and spreading and putting out tentacles and subduing everything in its path left and right. It is a war machine. They are very scary people. They have a view of a new world order, and it’s them. Their preferred methods of enforcing this view of the world are terror, violence, and genocide.

For instance, after winning a battle they would go out on the battlefield and skin all of their dead opponents, take those skins to the next city they want to do business with, and nail them to the gate as a message of, “If you don’t give in, this is going to happen to you.”

When the conquered nations got troublesome, or even looked like they might be, they would take them and deport them to the four corners of the earth. The idea would be that the only unity left would be that of the Assyrian empire.

You’re taken from your homeland, you’re settled someplace far away, the guy who lives on the right of you is Egyptian, the guy on the left is an Edomite, the guy across the street is Syrian, the guy down the corner is from someplace in Mesopotamia, and you’ve all got nothing in common except that you’re citizens of the Assyrian empire. There’s going to be no common religious rallying point or good old memories, good old days nostalgia kind of rallying point, no common homeland to defend or seek your way back to. There’s nothing except you’re part of this empire. Get used to it.

They were very powerful and very successful, and Israel and Syria take a moment and decide that maybe for once they ought to really bury the hatchet and not attack each other. Maybe if they form a confederation against the approaching armies of Assyria, maybe that will mean something, and they do a little fishing and find out that Egypt will back them. Egypt still has a name, but not much else. Then they look at Judah in the south and say, “And you want to be in on this too, obviously.”

At that point we have a young king named Ahaz on the throne. He does not fear God. He does not love God. He does not keep God’s commandments. In fact, he is already introducing strange forms of idolatry into the southern kingdom, and when these other kings say, “You’re going to be with us,” he says, “You know? Not so much. No. I have other plans and they don’t include you.”

The two northern kingdoms – Syria and Israel – say, “Hmm. Well, that’s not acceptable, because if we start a war with Assyria we don’t need you at our back with ambivalent loyalties.”

“What ambivalence? I thought I was pretty clear.”

“Yeah, see, that’s the problem. We’re afraid you’re going to turn to Assyria anytime now, so let’s just fix that. We’re going to come and attack Jerusalem and subdue it, and we’re going to get rid of you, and we’re going to put a puppet king on the throne. Then we’ll have this solid power block – Syria, Israel, Judah, all the way down to Egypt – and together we can stand up to the Assyrians. Doesn’t that sound like a good plan?”

It's at this point that Ahaz goes out to check the defenses, and particularly to check the water supply. In Isaiah we’re told that he has gone out to “the end of the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller’s field.” There’s a lot of symbolism going on here. These are waters that rise outside the city that have been channeled into the city, so this is the “stream that makes glad the city of our God,” although a bit artificially, and it starts in the fuller’s field.

A fuller is a laundromat. He’s a guy who makes things white. It’s a place for cleansing. It’s a place of water for the city and cleansing for the city’s clothes, and this is where Isaiah and his son meet with Ahaz.

His son is named Shear-jashub, which means “the remnant will return,” so even his son has a prophetic name. “The remnant will return” – that would imply you’re going someplace, and that only a remnant is coming back, so there’s a lot going on here. And yet, in spite of that, Isaiah’s message to Ahaz is, “Don’t worry about these two powers. This is what God says.”

Go forth now to meet Ahaz, thou and Shearjashub thy son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller's field, and say unto him, Take heed, and be quiet. Fear not, neither be fainthearted, for the two tails of these smoking firebrands, for the fierce anger of Rezin with Syria, and of the son of Remaliah. Because Syria, Ephraim, and the son of Remaliah have taken evil counsel against thee, saying, “Let us go up against Judah and vex it, and let us make a breach therein for us, and set a king in the midst of it, even the son of Tabeal.”

God is recounting what their plans are.

Thus saith the Lord GOD, It shall not stand, neither shall it come to pass. For the head of Syria is Damascus [its capital], and the head of Damascus is Rezin [the king]; and within threescore and five years [65] shall Ephraim [Israel] be broken, that it be not a people. And the head of Ephraim is Samaria [the capital], and the head of Samaria is Remaliah's son [the current king].

In other words, “I’ve got this mapped out. I know exactly what’s going on. There are no surprises here. I hear what they’re saying. You do too, but don’t worry about it because I’ve got this covered.” But then he does drop this on them –

If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established.

Now, God has plans for his covenant people, but they’re bigger than this current generation. They’re bigger than Ahaz. They’re bigger than the Davidic line, and God demands faith. “I’ve got it covered, but if you want to come out of this alive, you need to trust me. You need to believe me. You need to submit to my promises and quick being all panicky and paranoid. And you sure don’t need to go to Assyria and try to cut deals with them. Trust me, fear me, don’t fear the enemy.”

Then the Lord says something absolutely amazing –

Moreover, the LORD spake again unto Ahaz, saying, Ask thee a sign of the LORD thy God. Ask it either in the depth or in the height above.

“Pick a sign. You can have any sign you want. It can be in the heavens. I can make the stars swirl visibly in their courses. I can make the sun stand still again. I can write my name in fire across the clouds. In the depth I can make the oceans boil and the kraken rise from the depths or raise the city of Atlantis. I can do whatever you want. Just ask. It’s all yours for the asking.”

And Ahaz says –

But Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I tempt the LORD.

That’s right.

“Here’s a blank check.”

“Yes, here’s a blank check. You can have whatever you want.” He could have asked to have Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, sink into the ground.

That’s a really good analogy, the blank check, because in essence what the king says is, “Eh, I don’t think you can fulfill this. I don’t think you can cash this.”

He’s being coldly icily polite, with dripping sarcasm.

“Oh please, you don’t have to do that.”

Yeah. In other words, he already has his plan. He already knows what he’s going to do and he doesn’t want God or anyone else interfering. He’s going to play power politics in a big way. He knows how he’s going to come out on top, and God shouldn’t be butting in right now.

Well, Isaiah responds –

And he said, Hear ye now, O house of David. Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will ye weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings.

There’s more and we’ll look at some of it, but this is the heart of the thing and this is why people say, “But what has that got to do with anything?” Sure, if a young woman brings forth a son – Isaiah’s own son has a funny name that means something – and in the next chapter God will send Isaiah back to his wife to conceive another child, and they’ll call him Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz – all of you go out and name your firstborn child that right now…

I have seen it in movie credits. Somebody out there is named that.

Oh no. Anyway, the marginal note says that the name means “in making speed to the spoil, he hasteneth the prey” or “make speed to the spoil, hasten.” In other words, sic ‘em! It’s a command to the Assyrian armies to take out Israel and Judah.

So sons born at the right time with the right name – yeah, they can be signs. And yes, it might, in our limited human wisdom, be a sufficient sign of some young woman somewhere, maybe someone in the royal family bore a child right on schedule – “Oh, we didn’t even know she was pregnant” – and name that child Emmanuel, God with us, to comfort us and let us know that God’s with us in the midst of everything, even the Assyrian nation.

That’s more or less the liberal take on this, and unfortunately sometimes the evangelical take, although they will then say, “But this is a picture of something that will happen much later in history and be much bigger and much more important.”

The problem is, if this is just an ordinary young woman bringing forth an ordinary child, then as a precursor to the virgin birth of Christ it completely ruins everything. If this woman can have a child and she need not be a virgin, then Mary doesn’t have to be a virgin to be the further fulfillment of it. We yank a major prop away from that doctrine and the associated or interrelated doctrine of the incarnation of God in the flesh, so it’s not a little thing.

I mentioned before we started that when I was younger it puzzled me that liberals got so horrified by this doctrine, but I think they rightly see it as this is the door to the supernatural. “Prophets who speak weird stuff and make vague guesses and say weird things about non-specific issues – yeah, we can deal with that. There’s a lot of good morality in the prophets. But when they start specifying one single historical event that defies all the laws of biology, chemistry, and physics, and hangs the salvation of the world upon that one event, then there’s something there we can’t reconcile with our humanism.” So they throw a fit and they attack this doctrine first, even before they get to Jesus’s miracles or the resurrection. This is just something they cannot and will not believe.

My question is why is this a sign? Isn’t Jesus the actual fulfillment? He’s the thing all the signs are pointing to.

It’s a sign to Ahaz. Ahaz is sitting there fumbling around with geopolitics, trying to figure out how to save Israel and Judah, the southern kingdom, and he thinks that a political alliance is a great idea. What Isaiah is saying first of all is, “No, that won’t work.” That in fact was disastrous, and he’s going to go on to explain what will happen if they go that route.

“What you need to do is forget Assyria and you need to trust Jehovah to deliver you. If you don’t, that doesn’t mean that God’s promises will fail. It just means that he doesn’t need you. If you’re not going to make yourself available and useful, then God can just drop you in the waste can on the way out the door and go fulfill his promises along other lines that still will in fact keep his word, but will not be what anybody expected,” and thus the virgin birth.

What’s the significance? To this point everyone assumes, “David had a son, Solomon. Solomon had a son, Rehoboam. Rehoboam…” and we’ve been tracking it down now all the way to Ahaz – father to son, father to son, father to son – and sooner or later one of these fathers will give birth to the great king, the Messiah, the greater David.

What Isaiah is saying is, “Well, forget that. We don’t need a man. We never did. Go back to Eden. It’s the seed of the woman, not the seed of the man. You have a history. You can read Genesis and other historical books of women who had barren wombs miraculously giving birth, when either the husband’s body was dead or the woman’s womb was barren or both.” God can bring life out of death. He’s the God of resurrection in every generation, and he does not need the Davidic line.

Now, how exactly is that going to work? He doesn’t say and we’re left to wonder, but what he’s saying is, “You want a sign? I’ll give you a sign right here. We’re rejecting the Davidic line. God is done with this. God doesn’t need you anymore, and the Messiah will not come father to son, father to son, father to son.”

Now, does that mean the Davidic line has no part to play at all? It has a slight one in that Joseph is a direct descendant of the royal line of kings.

So God manages to be faithful to that promise to David, while also saying, “I don’t need you.”

“I don’t need you,” because Joseph is not Jesus’s father. He’s his legal father and can pass on a legal claim, as fathers can to their adopted children, but he’s not the one who brought Jesus into the world. On the other hand, “but seed of David” – yeah, David had other sons, and some were in the background and quiet.

There’s another line that we hear really nothing about until we get to Luke’s gospel, who then traces a second genealogy that runs through David through another son, Nathan. It completely bypasses the kingly line and comes to Mary, who is not a son, she’s a daughter and a virgin, and God implants that which will be Christ in her womb. So he doesn’t need the kings, doesn’t need Ahaz.

“Ahaz, you want a sign that I’m going to save Judah? I’m going to save Judah but not the way you think, not the kind of salvation you’re even thinking of, but I’m going to do it using a virgin and I’m going to bypass all of your human efforts, human works, human manipulations, human politics, human strategy. All of that’s good for nothing. There’s your sign. I’m a lot bigger than you think I am, and I don’t need you.”

The verb tenses are present because Isaiah sees it happening in front of him, and the only timeframe we’ve got is, as he sees the child envisioned being born, before the child is old enough to even really start talking, to know how to choose the good and refuse the evil, both Israel and Syria will be gone, but there’s a little bit more to it, and here’s some of the rest of the prophecy.

For before the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings. The LORD shall bring upon thee, and upon thy people, and upon thy father's house, days that have not come from the day that Ephraim departed from Judah; even the king of Assyria.

And it shall come to pass in that day that the LORD shall hiss for the fly that is in the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria. [images of the invading armies] And they shall come and shall rest all of them in the desolate valleys, and in the holes of the rocks, and upon all thorns, and upon all bushes.

[then he shifts images] In the same day shall the Lord shave with a razor that is hired, namely, by them beyond the river, by the king of Assyria, the head and the hair of the feet: and it shall also consume the beard.

So first the image of armies coming in like bees and landing everywhere, soldiers everywhere, war everywhere, and then that of a razor just taking off every single bit of hair on the human body until nothing is left. The conclusion is –

And it shall come to pass in that day that a man shall nourish a young cow, and two sheep…

That is, there will be some animals that will survive and wander off, and people will go and grab them, but they’re not going to have a whole lot.

And it shall come to pass for the abundance of milk that they shall give he shall eat butter: for butter and honey shall everyone eat that is left in the land.

In other words, the crops are destroyed. God will be gracious and let you find a few leftover sheep and cows, and they’ll produce abundantly, and he’ll let you find some wild honeycomb, and on that basis you’re going to survive. Thus the child, Emmanuel, is pictured as “butter and honey shall he eat.” He’s pictured as growing up in the midst of this desolation.

It’s a land that’s going to be completely given over to war and desolation. Nothing is going to be left. Isaiah will continue on into the next few chapters, particularly chapter 10, talking about this.

And it shall come to pass in that day that every place shall be, where there were a thousand vines at a thousand silverlings, it shall even be for briers and thorns.

All the orchards and vineyard are becoming thorn fields.

With arrows and with bows shall men come thither because all the land shall become briers and thorns. And on all hills that shall be digged with the mattock there shall not come thither the fear of briers and thorns, but it shall be for the sending forth of oxen and for the treading of lesser cattle.

The idea of the remnant. There’s going to be some godly people who are going to survive this, and God is going to let them stumble on some cattle and they’re going to clear a little bit of land and they’re going to be okay. God is going to take care of them. But the civilization that was Judah, it’s gone, it’s wasted.

The image the Isaiah will pick up in chapter 10 is again that of a forest. It’s going to be as if someone has gone through the forest and chopped down every single tree. The few that are left will be so few that a small child can number them like “1…2…3…4…..5…..Mommy, there’s only five trees.” There’s nothing left.

Then in chapter 11, out of that desolation, out of the root of one of those stumps comes a branch, and we’ll get to that in time. But that’s that story. That’s that prophecy. Ahaz is trying to steer Judah into a mutual affection pact with Assyria, and he actually has some success.

I was just reading a devotion today or yesterday, and this is from 2 Kings 16:5 –

Then Rezin king of Syria and Pekah son of Remaliah king of Israel came up to Jerusalem to war, and they besieged Ahaz, but could not overcome him. At that time Rezin king of Syria recovered Elath to Syria and drave the Jews from Elath, and the Syrians came to Elath and dwelt there unto this day.

So Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglathpileser king of Assyria saying, I am thy servant and thy son: come up, and save me out of the hand of the king of Syria and out of the hand of the king of Israel, which rise up against me.

And Ahaz took the silver and gold that was found in the house of the LORD, and in the treasures of the king's house, and sent it for a present [tribute, bribe] to the king of Assyria. And the king of Assyria hearkened unto him, for the king of Assyria went up against Damascus and took it, and carried the people of it captive to Kir, and slew Rezin [the king]. And king Ahaz went to Damascus to meet Tiglathpileser king of Assyria…

So Ahaz carries through with his plan. He creates a pact, an alliance with Assyria, not that he’s going to be able to contribute much of anything to it, but at least it’s one more nation that the Assyrians won’t have to actually conquer, because they just surrendered.

Ahaz goes to visit the Assyrian king and make nice-nice with him and all that, and bring the present, the treasure, the tribute that he’s collected. And while he’s there he saw an altar that was in Damascus. Damascus is the nation that just got defeated, but Ahaz while he’s there sees it and he thinks this altar is really cool. He wants one.

And king Ahaz sent to Urijah the priest the fashion of the altar and the pattern of it, according to all the workmanship thereof.

He has somebody sketch the thing up in technical detail and sends it on ahead of him to Jerusalem and instructs the High Priest, “I want one of these. Make one.”

And Urijah the priest built an altar according to all that king Ahaz had sent from Damascus, so Urijah the priest made it against king Ahaz came from Damascus. And when the king was come from Damascus, the king saw the altar and the king approached to the altar and offered thereon. And he burnt his burnt offering and his meat offering, and poured his drink offering and sprinkled the blood of his peace offerings upon the altar.

And he brought also the brazen altar, which was before the LORD, from the forefront of the house, from between the altar and the house of the LORD, and put it on the north side of the altar. And king Ahaz commanded Urijah the priest, saying, Upon the great altar burn the morning burnt offering, and the evening meat offering, and the king's burnt sacrifice, and his meat offering, with the burnt offering of all the people of the land, and their meat offering, and their drink offerings; and sprinkle upon it all the blood of the burnt offering, and all the blood of the sacrifice: and the brazen altar shall be for me to inquire by. Thus did Urijah the priest, according to all that king Ahaz commanded.

In other words, he had this new fancy altar made and he swapped it for the altar that God had commanded Solomon to make. He took that aside and made it his own private altar, by which he would inquire – ask God for help and such. “I don’t think God is talking to you these days,” but he missed that part. It’s all about the outward forms. The outward forms are so exciting, and he has this eye for aesthetic beauty in worship.

I won’t read it, but he also orders that the brazen seat that Solomon built be taken off of the brazen oxen it was on and be put on a stone pavement, because that’s more aesthetic with-it, apparently. I don’t know what happened to the oxen. He also designs a place that if the king of Assyria ever comes visiting, he can walk right out of the king’s palace into the temple, as if the king of Assyria belongs in the temple.

This Ahaz, he’s a piece of work. God offers him the world on a string, and he would rather play politics and he would rather create his own designer religion, so it’s no wonder that God says, “We don’t need you. We’re done. We’re doing other things.”

With that in mind, I think probably what we need to talk about is the virgin birth itself. We’ve seen historically why the announcement comes now. We’ve seen what it means for those who would not believe. The question is what does it mean for us? Why is it such a central article to the faith? Why do the ecumenical creeds all say “born of the virgin Mary”? Anything that’s in the creeds is there because these are things that must be believed if one is to be saved, or to put it differently, things that cannot be rejected if you’re going to be saved.

It's possible for someone who hears in the last two minutes before he’s executed, “Here is a very simple presentation of the gospel” and the presenter doesn’t get to the virgin birth somehow – okay, that’s fine. Or if he then goes, “And virgin birth! Virgin birth!”

“Okay, virgin birth, got it. I don’t know what that means but I now believe it because it’s part of the gospel.”

Matthew and Luke both spend a little bit of time with it. Matthew quotes the prophecy, and it might be well to read what he says, because Matthew starts not with Mary but with Joseph. Joseph finds out that Mary is pregnant and thinks that she’s been fooling around and is thinking about quietly divorcing her, when an angel comes and says this –

Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins. Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.
Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife, and knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son, and he called his name Jesus.

The prophecy says “the virgin shall conceive and bear,” so Joseph, understanding in some measure, “Oh wait, that’s what this is all about?” says, “I’m keeping away until the child is born.” For one thing, that’s what the prophecy says, and also that way there’s going to be no confusion. It’s going to be absolutely clear that Joseph had nothing to do with this. This is a divine miracle. This is Emmanuel. This is God with us. This is not something that can be explained by any kind of human signs, by any trick, by any super alien science or anything like that. This is God coming into human history, taking to himself true humanity, to save his people from their sins.

The word that Matthew uses is the same word that the Septuagint had used before, parthenos, which means virgin, not a young woman. Dr. Luke is even clearer in Chapter 1 of his gospel.

And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, to a virgin…

Luke is a doctor. He knows what virgin means.

…espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin's name was Mary. And the angel came in unto her and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women. And when she saw him she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be.

“I haven’t driven any tent pegs through anybody’s skull lately, have I?”

Yeah, “Blessed art thou among women” had only been said of Jael to this point, a bold and brave woman who had rescued Israel in her hour of great need. “You’re putting me in that kind of class? What exactly am I supposed to do here?”

And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favor with God.

That doesn’t mean that she had earned favor. It means God has bestowed favor on her.

And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb…

So there was no child there yet, but there’s about to be.

…and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus.

This is great for our discussion of how prophecy is to be read. He doesn’t say, “Name the child Emmanuel.” His name is Jesus, and that’s Emmanuel.

His name is Jesus, which means Jehovah Saves, and that is in fact how God is with us, by saving us. Yes, some lessons about reading prophecy. Let’s see how the New Testament interprets the prophecy. Her calling him Jesus is the fulfillment of the prophecy he would be called Emmanuel. It’s just a question of how will God be with us? Oh, as our Savior.

He shall be great and shall be called the Son of the Highest, and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David, and he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end.

So a lot of Messianic images and prophecies and language go into that.

Then said Mary unto the angel the most obvious question –

How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?

In other words, “I’m a virgin. I have not had sexual relations ever with anybody. How am I… Joseph? Are we supposed to get married? Please tell me it’s not somebody else, because I really love Joseph. What do you have in mind, Lord?” and this is what the angel says –

The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.

“It’s going to be a supernatural divine creator Holy Ghost kind of thing. You’re not required to do anything. No man is going to be involved in this equation in any way, shape, or form – no male. The Holy Spirit, who gave life to Adam, God who created Adam from the dust of the ground is going to form a human being in your womb, but that human being will be God himself. He will take to himself true humanity, true human nature in your womb, so that the thing that comes forth from you will be rightly called the Son of God.”

And behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren.

God has given lots of children to lots of barren women, but this is way beyond any of that, the ultimate barren womb. It’s completely untouched, virgin in the true sense.

For with God nothing shall be impossible.

I do want to read one other verse. Mary goes to visit Elizabeth, and as soon as she enters and they greet each other, the babe in Elizabeth’s womb leaps for joy, recognizing the presence of the Christ child in Mary’s womb.

Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost and she spake out with a loud voice and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy.

“The mother of my Lord” – there’s some profound things here. First of all, the baby in the womb is already alive and already human. Mary is already the mother of the Lord, “the mother of my Lord,” Theotokos, God-bearer.

The baby that she brought forth is the eternal Son of God. He is not a man who someday will grow up to become God or clothe himself with God-ness or by his moral excellence achieve deity. The child even in the womb was already Elizabeth’s Lord. He in the womb was already eternal deity. He’s God already, and yet what of course is in the womb is the human nature.

Here we have the doctrine of the hypostatic union, the personal union of two natures – humanity and deity – in Jesus Christ, one person, both man and God, from conception and on through birth.

I would just quibble with one thing that you phrased there, and this is not because I relish quibbling. It’s not just that the human nature is in the womb. It is that the person of Jesus is in the womb in accordance with – that is, fitting his human nature. Because even in the womb the person Jesus, like you said, is Elizabeth’s Lord, is Mary’s Lord, is our Lord, but according to the divine nature, God the Son, any of the persons of the Trinity, don’t go into wombs. That’s not what they do.

It's the same way that God doesn’t die, but God the Son dies on the cross in accordance with his human nature. This is the dance that the Church has historically performed in order to avoid the errors of Nestorianism.

Not this, but that. Not that, but this. I will tell you that I actually chose the words very closely because I was avoiding the other cliff, which is “Well, but God can’t fit into the human womb. You’re not trying to cram all of deity into limited space?”

No, it’s the humanity that’s there, and thank you for already going where I was going. This statement is something we call expression of the doctrine of the community of attributes or, looked at a little bit differently, economic appropriation.

Because Jesus is one person – yes, absolutely, as you say, the person in the womb is the eternal Son of God, the Creator – but he is there with regard to his human nature. Of course, with regard to his deity he’s everywhere, so technically he’s there too, but no, not all of deity collapsed.

When people hear phrases like “bring her forth of God” or even mother of God, “You’re saying that God had a beginning?” No, we’re saying the child was really God.

Now, we have to be very careful because that can be completely misunderstood and suggest that because Mary gave birth to the one who is God, that she has some kind of superiority, role as a mediator, super divinity, she’s a little goddess herself. No, no, no, and Jesus makes that really clear throughout his ministry. “Blessed among women” – she’s still just a woman, and on more than one occasion he makes it very clear. “Blessed is the womb that bear thee and the paps that gave thee suck.” No, blessed is he who hears the word of God and keeps it.

“Lord, they have no wine.”

“Woman, what have I to do with you?’

“Do whatever he says.”

You’re very right, we balance there, affirming one person, but because that person is eternal, because that person is the second person of the Trinity, the way we say things gets very difficult. Yes, God gave his blood for the Church. “But God doesn’t have blood.” But the second person of the Trinity, who is God, has a human nature that does have blood, and thus it is the blood of the Son of God, and thus the blood of God that was shed for the Church, because no other blood would do. If it was just the blood of a man who hung out with God a lot, that doesn’t fix anything.

Because of the omnipresence, we all hang out with God.

And we need to make clear too that this is not simply that. This is not, “Well, God is everywhere, so of course he’s with Jesus too.” No, it’s a unity of person. We can come up with a few other words to explain that, but mostly we’re thrown back on the language of scripture. We say what the Bible says.

As soon as we try to explain it beyond the words of scripture, we’re treading very lightly because it’s about three steps before we’re in some heresy or other.

The councils of the early Church did that. They coined a couple of new words and then they defined them very carefully so everyone could see, “This is what we are saying. We are not saying that. We are not saying this. We are saying this, and here are the Bible verses that fill it in,” and there we stop.

It is necessary that our Savior be God, because his death for us and his life for us must have infinite value. He must be God so that he can endure the wrath of God, and yet he must be truly human because God in his own nature can’t die, can’t take upon himself the covenant curse, can’t become a second covenant representative, a second Adam. He cannot suffer and die on the cross. But you can’t do it in two different people because both things have to happen to the same person at the same time, so he’s one person, eternal deity and in the womb of the virgin, true humanity. He’s no less man for being God, and no less God for being man, and that’s where our salvation hangs.

Now, over against that the view of the pagan world is – first of all, there is no creation. There’s just reality or whatever you want to call it that has always been, and reality is eternally productive and reproductive. It’s eternally casting new possibilities, strange and new lifeforms, and anything can happen.

The philosophers from Mars Hill when they heard Paul talk about the resurrection thought, “Oh, that’s what he’s talking about, some weird new thing. We need to hear about this.” But when Paul phrased it in terms of a sovereign predestinating God who demands repentance they said, “Yeah, that’s not interesting anymore. We’ll maybe listen some other time.”

The pagan world was ready for a virgin birth, if that meant that nature just poofed out something brand new out of its own energies, because there’s no ethical issue. There’s no Creator, so there’s no right and wrong, there’s just what is. There’s just the life force of the universe.

Christianity reckons with the God who is distinct from creation, who has commanded creation, and creation – particularly creation’s representative, man – has rebelled against God and sinned, broken his law. And in that depravity, in that sinful state, man is incapable of changing his moral nature, his spiritual condition. He can’t produce anything good. He cannot bring about life.

This is what circumcision said. By cutting the male genital organ it said, “There’s no hope here. You’re not going to produce the next super-child that’s going to save the world.” That which is born of the flesh is flesh. You must be born again and the seed – the true seed, the Messiah when he comes – will be born by a miracle. Humanity cannot pull this one off. This is something that has to come from outside of humanity.

God, who is outside of creation, must enter creation, join himself with it, without at any point creating some kind of continuity of being because that doesn’t work, but some personal union that no one could imagine until they saw this text, and in that existence he will save us and we will stand back and do nothing.

One of the memes that Emily put up on our website – I don’t know who the original characters were, but one said, “So, my position in all this is that I do absolutely nothing!”

“You got it.”

“Let’s do this thing!”

Yeah, that. That’s Christianity. We stand still and see the salvation of our God, and then God will move us to do things. But the salvation, the redemption, the propitiation, the atonement, the reconciliation – that’s God. The new birth, the resurrection – that’s God.

We don’t will ourselves to life, and that’s what the liberals really, really hated. At the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century they were all about progress and human development and the future and how great things were going to be and how man was going to evolve into something new with new potentialities, and the virgin birth says, “No. You’ve got nothing. Bow to Messiah and wish him Merry Christmas by worshiping him.”

And that is a good place to end. Do we have any recommendations for the evening?

I’ve got one just by accident. I just sent Bryan and Emily a copy of a cartoon, and in the process I’m remembering how wonderful Calvin and Hobbes are. If you’ve never seen the collected works, and there are a number of versions, of the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, you really should. The author tells fun stories of childhood, of childish imagination, but occasionally talks about some very profound realities. It's good entertainment and it’s also good mind-provokingness at times and you’ll enjoy it. If you’ve never checked out Calvin and Hobbes, read it.

A fun trivia fact about Calvin and Hobbes – it is revealed in one strip that he is in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, and I have been to Chagrin Falls, Ohio. I was at a dance conference, not in Chagrin Falls but I was staying in Chagrin Falls. My friend’s grandparents lived there and we were staying with his grandparents, and he was like, “You know this town’s claim to fame? This is where Calvin lived.” It’s a fun town. You should go there while reading Calvin and Hobbes.

I’m going to jump in and recommend Thrifty Ice Cream from Rite Aid. Nothing more need be said. That’s the reco.

Chocolate malted crunch is the thing that needs to be said.

Oh, it’s the best. You’re right, I stand corrected.

I’m going to follow up on the ice cream suggestion with something unexpected. Like many Caucasian Americans I am lactose intolerant and it’s a great trial, especially living in Wisconsin. But one of the things I’ve found out is that oat milk is a surprisingly adept replacement for dairy milk.

Yes, this is true.

We have a little tiny electric frother that we got for free with a cold brew pitcher that I got.

You don’t even drink coffee.

I got it for Emily. It was a gift. Oat milk froths up surprisingly well. Whenever we go somewhere out of the house, I don’t want to bother with taking a Lactaid pill, which works probably about 50% of the time anyway, so I just get it with oat milk. I will be completely bougie and do that for the sake of my bodily experience.

But my recommendation is Oatly brand ice cream. It makes really, really good ice cream, too, which I was surprised by because you don’t think that any milk alternative will do the job, but it does. I’m very pleasantly surprised, and Oatly has some very delicious flavors. Their vanilla is lacking, personally speaking, but otherwise is very good, so that’s my recommendation.

Great. Thank you both so much for this conversation. It’s been a pleasure. Thanks also to David, our producer and my lawfully-wedded husband. Thanks to our financial supporters. We appreciate you keeping the show rolling. If you’d like to join their number you can visit our website, anchor.fm/haltingtowardzion.

If you’d like to get in touch with us, you can send us an email at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you. Thanks so much for listening. We’ll see you next time.