In 8:14 and 15 we have a further indication that Christ is all-inclusive. In verse 14 Christ the Immanuel becomes a sanctuary to God's people. As the sanctuary, Christ is our dwelling place. Christ is a sanctuary to us, but He is a smiting stone to smash the image in Daniel 2 into pieces. He has also become a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel. Christians may know Christ as the rock cleft for us but not as the rock of stumbling. Many Jews have been stumbled by Christ. Moreover, Christ is a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
Christ as Immanuel causes the prophet to bind up the testimony, that is, the law, seal the instruction among his disciples, wait on Jehovah, who hides His face from the house of Jacob, and look eagerly for Him (vv. 16-17).
Christ as Immanuel also makes the prophet and the children whom Jehovah has given him, typifying Christ and the believers (Heb. 2:13b), for signs and wonders in Israel from Jehovah of hosts, who abides on Mount Zion (Isa. 8:18).
Finally, Christ as Immanuel causes God's people not to inquire of the necromancers and the familiar spirits, but to inquire of God, and not to inquire of the dead on behalf of the living (v. 19). God's people were to go to the law and to the testimony, speaking according to this word with the dawn in them, and not going through the land hardpressed and hungry, so that they rage and curse their king and their God, turning their face upward and looking to the earth, but there being nothing except distress, darkness, and gloom of anguish and they being thrust into darkness (vv. 20-22). We should not listen to anything other than God and His instruction. This God today is Immanuel. Thus, we must come to the New Testament and listen to the four Gospels, Acts, the Epistles, and Revelation.