Wonderful Counselor
Notes
Transcript
Announcements
Gospel Welcome - Good morning!
Every 5th Sunday we give our Kids Ministry volunteers a week off and invite the kids to worship with us as a family. It’s a simple way to honor our volunteers and remember that we are one body in Christ.
Anyone make it to the bridge lighting last night? The Christmas season has officially begun.
At Gateway, we talk about this season as Advent.
Advent means “coming.” It’s the time of year we remember that God came to save us—from sin, from death—and that through faith in Jesus we have eternal life. And Advent doesn’t just look back; it points forward. Jesus is coming again. Advent is a season of hope.
But we all know there are barriers to hope this time of year. It’s busy. It can stir up past pain or family tensions. It’s dark—literally dark—most of the day. And yet Advent shines like a small light reminding us there is more to come. Darkness is not the whole picture. We have hope in Jesus.
So this morning we gather to worship our King, the One who is our hope.
Advent Giving
And one of the ways we worship is through generosity. God was eternally generous to us. And so we love him by being generous to others. Every Advent we have different ways to be generous, and this year we have 3 opportunities to show God’s love and generosity to others.
The first is the giving tree for our missionaries. You can grab a QR code on the tree over by the Lending Library, and that QR code will take you to an amazon wish list for our Missionaries. If you’d like to bless the Patersons, Poppinos, Eashs, or Harmanings, that’d be a great way to do that.
The second way is Home for the Harmanings. The Harmaning family - Jarrod and Kacha and Sofia and Hugo are coming back to the states in January, and we want to help raise money for their trip. It is expensive to fly from the Czech Republic, to stay here, to buy food for special dietary restrictions and pay for gas driving around. Their trip will cost an estimated $8,000, and we want to do everything we can to help offset that cost. If you want to give please go to the website and hit the fund “Home for the Harmanings.”
The third way is a Food Drive for the food bank. The Sumner Food Bank has unprecedented need right now, and in particular in “Gap products.” Things like cooking oil, condiments, and other items. Bring any of those items on Sundays and place them in the bins from now until the end of the year.
Prayer - Sumner
Intro
This week, I edited my Amazon Christmas wish list.
I took some stuff off that I didn’t want anymore.
And I was left with two things: golf tees and a book.
I live an exciting life.
I used to know what I wanted for Christmas.
Legos. Always Legos.
A Jurassic Park themed Hot Wheels set with a Giant T-Rex that chomped down on the cars.
Life was simple.
Now, it’s harder.
You know what I would love for Christmas?
It doesn’t fit in a stocking.
You can’t find it on Black Friday deals.
I would love wisdom.
I want to know how to live well.
I want to think well about relationships.
How to be a parent, a pastor, a husband.
I want to make wise decisions and avoid foolish decisions that hurt myself or others.
Maybe you can relate in wanting wisdom.
We all want to live well.
We could all use wisdom.
Our society craves wisdom. We clamor for “life hacks.”
We are drawn to influencers who can guide us and experts who can give advice and sort out the complexities of life.
With a click of a button we have access to more “wisdom” than any previous generation, but are we living well?
We crave technique based wisdom that allows us to be self-sufficient and navigate life as the captain of the ship.
Has it made us wise?
Our hearts long for wisdom - a guide, directions, advice, help. And Scripture tells us that it’s not found in strategy, but a person.
Isaiah calls him the wonderful counselor.
This Advent, we look to Isaiah 9:6.
Unto us a child has been born.
To us a son has been given.
To those wandering in the dark of self-sufficiency, God has given us himself.
But what does that mean and how does that help us live well?
Let’s look at Isaiah 9:6 together.
Isaiah 9:6
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.
You may already know
This verse is about Jesus.
As Mark calls him, the Christ, the Son of God, the Messiah.
Here in Isaiah 9 he is the wonderful counselor, the mighty god, the everlasting father, the prince of peace.
But these words were spoken by God’s prophet Isaiah about 700 years before Jesus was born.
Before we look to Jesus, let’s consider why Israel longed for a better king.
Isaiah 9:6 comes when Ahaz was king of Judah.
By some standards, Ahaz was a wise king.
He was an intelligent military leader, politically savvy, and even spiritual.
At one point,
two of his enemies attacked him, and he was skilled enough to hold them off.
He was forward thinking so he called for help from the northern empire of Assyria.
Wisdom, according to Ahaz, was having a big army and not depending on God.
Ahaz expected wisdom to look like human strength.
But Ahaz was not wise. In fact the Bible calls him wicked.
What God wanted and what his people needed was a king who would trust him.
Ahaz was not that king.
So in Isaiah 9:6,
we have a promise 700 years before Jesus given to Israel that one day a child would be born who would be what other kings could not be.
In God’s wisdom, he was not planning to send an army to fight for his people, but a small child.
And this child would become a king. A wonderful counselor.
What does it mean to be a wonderful counselor?
The word wonderful means something unusually beautiful.
Amazing.
Miraculous.
The word counselor brings to mind a therapist.
Someone you pay to help you with mental and emotional help.
I’ve been to counseling before. You sit on the couch in a small office and the tissues are close at hand.
That’s not this kind of counselor, per se.
A counselor in the Bible was often a military advisor or guide.
A king turned to his counselors in battle.
6 for by wise guidance you can wage your war,
and in abundance of counselors there is victory.
A king who listens to guidance is wise.
God himself is wise.
29 This also comes from the Lord of hosts;
he is wonderful in counsel
and excellent in wisdom.
He doesn’t need an abundance of counselors, he himself is wonderful in counsel.
So what we see is that the promised wonderful counselor will be a wise king with the very wisdom of God.
What is wisdom?
Knowledge - what you know.
I know the speed limit on Main St is 25 mph.
I have that knowledge in my head.
Wisdom - what you do with what you know.
I may know the speed limit is 25 mph, but wisdom is how fast I actually drive my car.
It’s what you do with what you know.
In the Bible, wisdom is knowing God and living accordingly.
Wisdom is the knowledge of God - his character, his goodness, his power, how he made the world, his law - and living in light of that reality.
It’s knowing God is God and I am a small person and living out of reverent dependence on him.
The Bible calls this the fear of the LORD.
10 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,
and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.
To be wise is to know God is big and I am not.
To know he is the Holy One, and I am his creature.
To know him and love him and depend on him, that is wisdom.
Why do we often lack wisdom?
Because we don’t know God.
Like Ahaz, we think we know God, or we have certain expectations about God, but if we don’t know him as the holy, good, loving God, we will make decisions in life that are not wise.
We think wisdom is this thing we can grasp and control and master our lives apart from God.
But it fails to see that God is the one who made the world and wants us to live in relationship with him.
Think about the parable of Jesus of the man who had a rich harvest, and showed financial wisdom by building a bigger barn!
We would call that financial wisdom.
But God calls him a fool because he was ultimately trusting in himself and not God.
Wisdom is knowledge of God and living accordingly. It’s knowing that God is trustworthy, good, loving, powerful, and living out of that reality.
But like Ahaz, we can so often think we are wise, when we are actually foolish.
We need a wonderful counselor to lead us back to God.
Who is this wise king?
God promised a better king.
1 There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.
2 And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,
the Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and might,
the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
God promised a king from the line of Jesse (David) who will be full of wisdom.
Eventually, we meet Jesus. He is from the line of Jesse, and from a young age, he is full of wisdom.
We see Jesus’ wisdom in his teaching.
God’s wisdom often surprises us, and the wisdom of Jesus certainly caught people off-guard.
2 And on the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astonished, saying, “Where did this man get these things? What is the wisdom given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands?
Jesus’ teaching is unlike anything people have heard before. He has tremendous wisdom and authority to teach God’s word and announce the kingdom.
Jesus even said that wisdom in our lives is based on how we respond to his teaching.
24 “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.
Jesus says wisdom is listening to his words and living out of the reality of his teaching.
That’s a bold claim!
Wisdom is the knowledge of YHWH, and the teaching of this rabbi from Nazareth?
Who is this guy?
He’s putting his very words on the same level as the words and character of God.
We see Jesus’ wisdom in how he lived his life.
When Ahaz had enemies on his doorstep, he called for help from a vile empire in Assyria whose evil character was well known throughout the Ancient Near East. He called on the bully.
When Jesus’ enemies closed in on him, he called for help not from a political ally, but from God.
Jesus went to Gethsemane and in his darkest hour he prayed.
Jesus knew God. He loved God. He trusted his Father. And he lived out of that reality by depending on him in prayer.
And if that’s the case, wisdom isn’t what we expect it to be.
What if wisdom is not what we expect?
What if it’s not strength, but weakness? What if it’s not avoiding pain, death, and suffering, but trusting God in the middle of it?
What if God’s king, the wonderful counselor came to do something other than beat the bad guys with a sword?
This is a picture of Ancient graffiti.
It says “Alexamanos worships his God.”
It’s making fun of a man named Alexamanos who is worshiping what appears to be a donkey on a cross.
It’s making fun of Christians who worship Jesus, the man who died on the Roman cross.
Why? Why worship a king who was killed in such a shameful way?
Because the wisdom of God is foolishness to the world.
18 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
To a world convinced it was wise but was actually dying in foolishness, God gave a child.
To a world lost in sin and darkness, God has given us a son. A wonderful counselor.
This king was wise enough to know that what the world needed was not just wisdom. We needed more than something, we needed someone.
We needed God himself to save us from our foolishness.
The very wisdom of God died on the cross to save the world. And in dying, he gave us his life.
What does that mean for us?
It means that in our clamor for wisdom, for the tips, tricks, and advice to live our best life, we have to remember that wisdom is found in Jesus.
He is wisdom.
He is the wonderful counselor.
Wisdom is found in a person.
2 that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, 3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
We can search the world for wisdom, but if we don’t find him, we have missed the true treasure.
It was the wisdom of God to forgive foolish sinners by sending his Son to save us by dying on the cross.
Through faith in Jesus, we are given the Holy Spirit to guide us. To give us the wisdom of Jesus so we can live well.
As we approach the busy-ness of the holiday season, how do we live with wisdom?
If we want wisdom, let’s not pursue life-hacks, techniques, and experts, but let’s pursue Jesus.
Let’s listen to him in his word and prayer.
Let’s follow him in self-sacrifice and weakness.
Let’s depend on him because he can care for us.
I once heard a story of a pastor who left a contentious elder meeting and on his drive home, he pulled over to the side of the road, got out, and sat on the front of his car. And in the dark he prayed and said, “God, I’m not moving from the hood of this car until you help me.”
I don’t know how long it took or what God said, but I think that kind of dogged dependence on God is really close to what the Bible calls wisdom. And we see it in Jesus.
Wisdom is not just having the right answer, making the right decision, but it’s knowing Jesus and living in light of who he is.
When conflict with family comes up, we can ask, “Jesus, help me think well of this person? If you were, what would you do?”
When stress at work build up, pray, “Jesus, if you were an employee, a manager, if you were in my role, how would you see this situation? What would you do?”
I don’t really want golf tees or a book.
I just feel bad for not having anything on the list.
But I do want more wisdom. I want to live well. I want to be wise.
And this morning let’s remember that wisdom is knowing Jesus and living in light of who he is.
If we want more wisdom, lets pursue more of Jesus.
