Wonderful Counselor
Notes
Transcript
Good morning, and welcome to the first Sunday of Advent. Advent is a churchy word that means “coming.” In our church, we celebrate the four Sundays leading up to Christmas as the season of Advent.
Please open your Bibles to the book of Isaiah, chapter 9.
Before we do anything else this morning, I want to recognize people with December birthdays. Anyone? Anyone have a birthday within a week on either side of Christmas Day? Anyone ON Christmas Day?
Be honest— when you were growing up, did you kind of hate having a birthday so close to Christmas? Maybe you still do. Because you grew up hearing those two dreaded words: combo gift. You grew up with birthday presets wrapped in Christmas paper.
My sister Susan was born on December 22. And every year, she got combo gifts. One earring on the 22nd. The other on the 25th. One roller skate for her birthday, one for Christmas. My family joked that when my sister turned sixteen, she was going to get a car with two wheels. We thought it was funny. Susan, not so much.
As you get older, you might feel a little guilty about hating that you have a December birthday. If you are a follower of Jesus, you know that you are supposed to keep the focus on Jesus. But deep down, you still kind of hate it. Even though you know the Bible says it is more blessed to give than receive (Acts 20:35), you still wish your birthday was in March.
So I want to start off by telling you something that may sound a little weird. A little prosperity gospel-ish. But here it is. Here is the big idea for our Advent series this year:
Before Christmas can be about giving, it FIRST must be about receiving.
Isaiah 9:6 says, (ESV)
6 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
A child is born for us. A son is given to us. Maybe the most important thing someone needs to hear this morning is that Jesus was born for you. God gave his son to you. That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown. When we get fixated on finding the perfect gift, or throwing the perfect Christmas party, then we making Christmas more about what we give, not what has been given to us.
We are going to camp out on the verses leading up to this incredible prophecy, but first I want to back up a little so you can get a sense of what the world was like for Isaiah. But first, let’s pray together.
[PRAY]
Some background: The Who and When of Isaiah
Isaiah was a prophet to the Southern kingdom of Judah for forty years, from 740 to 700 BC. This was about 200 years after Israel had a civil war and split into the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the southern Kingdom of Judah.
We know from Isaiah 1:1 that Isaiah’s ministry spanned the reigns of four of Judah’s kings. Uzziah was a great king, then Jotham, who was pretty good, then Ahaz, who was horrible. In 733 BC, two years into the reign of Ahaz, the Assyrians annexed the land that had belonged to the tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali and claimed it for Assyria. File that factoid away because it’s going to help us make sense of Isaiah 9. But it was pretty much what Putin did to the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine. At the same time, the king of Aram marched against Jerusalem the capital of the Southern Kingdom and besieged it. Ahaz promises tribute to the King of Assyria if Assyria will rescue Jerusalem from the Arameans. Then he strips the temple of all of its gold and bronze and gives it to the king of Assyria.
Then, about 10 years later, Assyria invaded Israel and basically wiped it off the map.
Finally, in 701 BC, Assyria besieged Jerusalem anyway. Ahaz’s son Hezekiah was a good, godly king, and refused to bow to the Assyrians. God miraculously defeated the Assyrian army, killing 185,000 of them overnight. It’s a great story, and you can read it for yourself in 2 Kings 19:35-37
I tell you all of that because I want to emphasize that for the entire time of Isaiah’s ministry, God’s people were living in fear of Assyria.
So with that in mind, let’s look in Isaiah 9 at the verses leading up to the prophecy in verse 6: Beginning in verse 1:
1 But there will be no gloom for her who was in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he has made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.
Remember that the first to fall to Assyria was Zebulun and Naphtali, up in the north around the Sea of Galilee.
Isaiah says that in the future God will bring honor to this region. And if you are familiar with the gospels, you know that Galilee played a huge part in the ministry of Jesus.
Verse 3 says that the Lord multiplied the nation (other translations say “enlarged the nation.”
Remember that during Isaiah’s lifetime the nation had actually shrunk. So this news gets better and better! Look at verse 4:
4 For the yoke of his burden, and the staff for his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. 5 For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire.
What a great image! Isaiah is reminding the people of Gideon’s great victory against the Midianites in Judges 6. Then he says that there will come a day when the people of Israel will use their enemies boots and armor as fuel for their fires!
But here’s how it will happen. It won’t be because of awesome military might or strategy. It won’t be because the right people get elected to public office. It won’t be because Israel secures its borders. It will be because of verse 6:
6 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
In this verse, you see at least four names for the coming Messiah. Five if you see Wonderful and Counselor as two separate names. But since most translations don’t put a comma between the two, we are going to treat that as one name. So—
Wonderful Counselor
Mighty God
Everlasting Father
Prince of Peace
And we are going to touch on each of those during this season of Advent. This morning, we are going to talk about what it means that Jesus is a Wonderful Counselor.
Let’s pray together.
The phrase Wonderful Counselor combines the idea of doing something “wonderful, extraordinary, miraculous” with the skill of “giving wise advice, making plans, counsel.” So this child that is born is going to exhibit “miraculous acts of God” while at the same time being the greatest teacher, the wisest advisor, and the most compassionate friend a human being can have.
I’m gonna give you a really easy way to remember the Hebrew for wonderful. When I was growing up, and I suspect this is true for a lot of you that are my age, people were just starting to pay attention to soccer in the United States. Today, there’s probably lots of soccer players that are household names: Christian Reynaldo, Lionel Messi, Roy Kent, Jamie Tartt. But when I was growing up in the 70’s, there was only one soccer player anyone had ever heard of. Pele.
And that is the Hebrew word for wonderful. Pele. The Hebrew really means miraculous, extraordinary. Hard to Understand. And in the Old Testament, it is almost never used to anything other than God’s acts of judgment and redemption.
So what made Jesus wonderful?
First, Jesus had a wonderful birth. He had a miraculous, extraordinary, difficult to understand, Pele birth. Isaiah 7:14 is another incredible prophecy about the coming Messiah. Through Isaiah, God told King Ahaz:
14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
There are liberal theologians who like to argue that the birth of Christ wasn’t necessarily miraculous. That the Hebrew word for virgin could also be translated “young woman of marriageable age.” But before you write off the virgin birth, turn over to to Luke 1:34, when Mary says to Gabriel,
34 And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”
She doesn’t say, “How can this be, since I am a young woman of marriageable age?” Mary knew it was possible for a young woman to have a baby. But not a virgin. The Greek here is better translated as “How can this be, since I have never been with a man?”
Jesus is the only baby ever born who did not have a human father after the flesh. Why is that important?
As Christians, we believe that every human being inherits a sin nature. The Puritans put it this way: “In Adam’s fall sinned we all.”
Job 25:4 asks the question,
“4 How then can man be in the right before God? How can he who is born of woman be pure?”
But through the virgin birth, God brought a child into the world who did not inherit a sin nature. He made it possible for a sinful woman (Mary) to give birth to a sinless baby (Jesus) who would redeem sinful man. The Apostles Creed begins with “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth; and in Jesus Christ His only begotten son our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary.
So, Jesus had a pele birth.
Second, Jesus had a pele life. A miraculous, extraordinary, life. When Peter was giving his sermon on the Day of Pentecost, he told those assembled that Jesus was…
22 “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know—
Jesus didn’t just live a good life, He lived a perfect life without sin. Hebrews 4:15 tells us that Jesus, in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.
When He taught, even His enemies were astonished. One time the Pharisees sent the temple guards to arrest Jesus, and when they returned empty handed, they asked, “Why didn’t you arrest him?” And all they could say was, “No one ever spoke like Him” (see John 7:44-46). He spoke with authority and power. He spoke and the sick were healed, the deaf heard, the blind saw, the dumb spoke. He spoke and the lame jumped and ran, and the crooked limbs were straightened. He spoke and the dead heard His voice and and were raised to life.
Third, Jesus made a wonderful sacrifice.
You’ve heard the hymn, “When I survey the wondrous cross.” When I was younger, I didn’t really understand what could ever be wonderful about the cross. Jesus died on it. What made it wonderful? What made good friday good? But I came to realize that it wasn’t the cross itself that was wonderful. It was the sacrifice the cross represents.
Earlier we talked about why the virgin birth matters. We talked about how orthodox Christianity understands that sin is more than just the bad things we do; sin is the nature that we all inherit. We are born with a fatal heart condition called sin, and the only way to save us is to give us a new heart, one that doesn’t have the same condition. I mean, if you were in need of a heart transplant, you would need a healthy heart to replace your diseased heart. That’s why Jesus is the wonderful sacrifice for our sin. The Bible says that God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
2 Corinthians 5:21
21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
There is a reason that the symbol of our faith is a cross, and not a ladder. A ladder would say, here’s what you have to do to reach God. You have to climb. You have to strive. You have to prove yourself. You have to follow the eightfold path. You have to obey the five pillars. You have to ascend to higher levels of confidence.
But the cross says, it is finished. The cross says there’s nothing to do, because it has already been done.
Finally, it was a wonderful resurrection. We must understand that without the physical, bodily resurrection of Jesus, literally nothing else would be wonderful. Not his birth, not his life, not his death. Please turn to 1 Corinthians 15. Paul couldn’t have made it any more clear that the resurrection is the hinge point of everything we believe as Christians:
1 Corinthians 15:3–5,
3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.
Why does Paul say it is “of first importance?” He lays it out in verses 12-19:
12 Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. 15 We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19 If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.
For the Messiah was wonderful in all things. It was wonderful love by which God gave him, and by which he came; the manner of his birth was wonderful; his humility, his self-denial, his sorrows were wonderful; his mighty works were wonderful; his dying agonies were wonderful. But it was His resurrection, above all other things, that gives meaning to all other things. Because it means death doesn’t have the final word. It means there is a cure for our fatal congenital heart condition. Jesus rose, he ascended, and he is alive today. And one day he is coming back for us.
And because He is living today, he will always be with us to counsel us.
[Matha’s list]
Three points:
A counselor brings clarity
A counselor provides comfort
A counselor issues a challenge
