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What If Mary Was a Virgin?

Isaiah 7 tells the story of how King Ahaz, a wicked king in Israel, would not trust in the Lord for deliverance. He was afraid that Jerusalem would be attacked and overtaken. The prophet met with Ahaz and encouraged him to seek the Lord and trust him, even allowing Ahaz to ask for a sign from the Lord to show God would protect his people. But Ahaz declined. And he did it by pretending he was trying to be faithful, saying “I will not test the Lord.”

As a side note, when God literally invites you to “test” him, you can test him. But Ahaz refused. Therefore, Isaiah said there would be a sign anyway, but it would be a sign of dread instead of salvation. He continued, saying there was likely in the audience of the king a woman not yet married, who would marry and have a child, and when that child was a few years old, destruction would come.

Matthew picked up on this story in Jesus’ birth story. This is called a double fulfillment. The prophecy Isaiah gave in Isaiah 7 did come to pass in King Ahaz’s day. It had its own relevance at the time it was given, and is now given even more meaning with Jesus’s coming.

In Isaiah chapter 7, Isaiah promised the line of David would be preserved, and not be cut off. Though foreign powers would eventually take over Judah and Jerusalem, God would one day restore the throne of David in the future in order to bless the world. Enter Jesus.

There are a couple of things that Isaiah 7 combined with Matthew 1 show us. First, it causes us to reflect on how often we miss God’s blessings in our life because we have already decided what we are going to do. If you read Isaiah 6, you’ll see that the reason Ahaz rejected Isaiah’s offer to trust the Lord was because he already made an alliance with a foreign nation. Instead of trusting that God would save Judah, he tried to ally with another nation (which eventually led to Judah’s downfall). He already decided what he was going to do, so he missed seeing God move in a powerful way.

Second, we see that God’s mercy is always a gift. Ahaz was a wicked king. God wanted to give him mercy and Ahaz rejected it. The fact that Jesus was born of a virgin also means that his coming was a gift. God the Father sent God the Son, it was not caused by a man and a woman sleeping together.

Third, Matthew shows us in the birth story of Jesus that God’s faithfulness to you is not dependent on your faithfulness to him. Israel was unfaithful, yet God still held true to his promise all the way back to Abraham that he would bless the world through Abraham’s offspring.

Scripture, more than anything else, is about God’s plan and story of redemption. We couldn’t earn it or force it or make it happen on our own. We needed him to do it, and he did.