Wonderful Counselor

Good morning, church. My name is Joel Dunn, and it is my privilege to read to you this morning, Isaiah 9, verses 6 and 7. For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulders, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end. And the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore the zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. This is the word of the Lord. Thank you God.

You may be seated.

Um, if you can't tell, that last song messed me up.

Y'all did really good. Thank you, choir. Thank you, Caleb and Paul and Kendall for getting all that together.

Honestly, I just felt like, like, I don't, I don't need to preach. We just sing that again and again and again. But good morning. If I don't know you, my name is Ryan. I'm the, the pastor of preaching and vision here at Redeemer. And, um, like Brian said, we're, we're excited for Advent. We're excited for this season.

Um, we're excited to, to roll out our, our prayer guides. I hope that you were able to grab one of those last week. And if you weren't, grab one this week. And we've got a lot. Uh, we printed some extras. So grab one to share with somebody. Um, but really we just can't wait to see, uh, the Lord reveal Himself. to our church this season as we, um, continue to just come before him in prayer and with that posture.

Um, and so we're, we're excited. We're hopeful that he'll reveal himself in new ways, but also in familiar ways. Um, but I want to think for a second because we talk a lot about advent. We talk a lot about Christmas and I don't want to take any language for granted. Um, We kind of hold these two things at the same season, in the same ways, and like the world kind of talks about the Christmas season and the holiday season, and we talk about Advent, and so I want to understand a little more clearly just the relationship between the two, because obviously, right, Christmas is one day on the calendar that celebrates the coming of Jesus, uh, born as a baby.

God himself, born as a human baby. So, um, yeah. Like, I, I loved how Brian put it. The fullness of the glory of God descended into human form as a baby. Incredible. And Christmas celebrates that arrival. The season of Advent, which you won't find on a regular calendar. is part of the liturgical calendar. It's just the observance that the church kind of follows, and we have Easter, and Holy Week, and Pentecost, and Advent, and all of those other things.

Um, Advent is that season before Christmas, that, that four weeks before we celebrate the one day, and the word Advent literally means arrival. And so what Advent does is it puts us into the tension of waiting for the arrival of the Messiah. That for thousands of years God's people waited for the arrival of the promised Messiah.

And why would we enter into that tension? Does anybody like entering into tension and conflict and like emotional turmoil? Does anybody love waiting? We're going to talk a lot about waiting today. Um, we enter into the tension Because we still wait. For thousands of years, God's people waited for the Messiah to come.

Well, He came. God made good on that promise, but before Jesus ascended into heaven, he made another promise, and he said, I'm gonna come back. And so Advent remembers the waiting that God's people did for thousands of years, and then it enters back into the tension of waiting still. We still wait for Jesus to come back for us.

And so what you'll find in the sermon series, what you'll find in the prayer guide, and I bet any other. Uh, Advent series or, or, or remembrance or celebration or book, what you're going to find is both a celebration and attention of waiting. And it's that, that waiting. We'll talk more about this today, but, but for the F the four weeks of the sermon series, we're going to focus on what Joel read, Isaiah nine, six through seven, this passage that has helped God's people cling to the promise and wait for the promise.

to become true. Wait for the reality that God does not give up on his people or his promises. And so here's my main thought for you this morning. If you're taking notes, write it down, but I hope that this just sticks in your mind. Take courage while you wait. Our wonderful counselor will never give up on us.

Take courage while you wait. Our wonderful counselor will never give up on us. And so there's three questions that this statement provokes I want to address today.

The first one is what does it mean? What does wonderful counselor mean? And then we're gonna ask, how is wonderful counselor good news? What does this have to say about the gospel? And then we're gonna ask, what impact does wonderful counselor have on my life?

What does wonderful counselor mean? How is it good news? And how does it impact my life? But let's first talk about waiting. Y'all are excited for this one, aren't you? We love to wait. Um, because God promised to send his son the first time, his people waited, and then he came. Well then Jesus promised that he would come back, and so because God was faithful in his first promise, we trust him with the second, right?

This is, this is the whole tension of Advent. Because Jesus promised to return, what he promised in his return is that he would bring us back into the fullness of creation. And there's something that we say like, oh, as it was meant to be, we're going to go back to Genesis 1 and 2, but there's no going back.

What Jesus promised when he returns is that he would make everything new. He didn't promise he would make it just like it was, he said he would make it And so what we're waiting for is this return of Jesus to bring us, his new creation, back into the new heavens and the new earth. This is the tension of waiting that we find ourselves in.

And waiting is probably the most fun and exciting part of our faith, right? And you don't have to be a Christian to, to find that funny, please. Um, but you don't have to be a Christian to, to really Be familiar with the concept of waiting and the tension and the struggle of waiting. How many times can I say the word tension?

Is anybody counting? It wasn't even in my notes. Good to know. So, the waiting is like sandpaper to our souls. It, it's painful. It's annoying. Like, just go to Whataburger for lunch today.

I'm sorry if anybody works at Whataburger. You're great, but it takes forever, right?

But like sandpaper, waiting can shape and form who we are. It can actually teach us something. It can be good for us to wait. Um, as painful as it can be, um, we, we can just take a second to pause and realize that That waiting, uh, well, the Christian life, excuse me, the Christian life is a life lived at the desk in the school of waiting.

And what I mean by that is that we learn an incredible amount while we wait. And what we learn is not first how to be better Christians. It's not even how to know the Bible more. It's not The eschatology, the, the, the theology of the end times that we understand more while we wait. While we wait, we learn more of Jesus.

We learn more of who he is and who he's made us to be. We wait for our prayers to be answered in this school. We wait for our loved ones to know and trust Jesus in this school. We wait for our own growth and maturity, don't we? But ultimately, we wait for the new heavens and the new earth. We wait to be welcomed into it.

To the fullness of life, in the fullness of the presence of God, for the rest of forever. So we wait. And waiting is hard, in part, because it makes us vulnerable. Waiting makes us vulnerable. And when we're vulnerable, we're prone to doubt. We're prone to ask questions, which is good. Doubt and questions come with this, this difficult sense of fear and vulnerability.

But it's important for us to ask, God, how many times are we going to celebrate Advent? Do we ever just stop and wonder that in this season? How many times, how much longer will we have to celebrate and wait? Can we just like get on with the celebration?

Have you ever wondered if this promise will actually come to fruition? And, and even in the moments when we trust, when we believe that the promise will come, we still want to know, but when? Because waiting is hard. It's no wonder we sometimes ask and most of the time feel the question. And has God given up on us?

Has God given up on me?

Well, just like Israel waiting for the Messiah to come the first time came to an end. Their waiting came to an end. Our waiting for his return will come to an end. You can take courage while you wait. Our wonderful counselor will never give up on us. So let's look at wonderful counselor. What does that mean?

What does wonderful counselor mean?

This word wonderful means that God powerfully works miracles for the good of those who trust him, but he also enacts incredible justice for his enemies. If we could summarize the definition of wonderful into two words, it's miraculous power.

It means that God has miraculous power. If we look at Exodus 15, the story, uh, or the song of Moses just after Jesus. Excuse me, God parts the Red Sea. He saves his people as they pass through the Red Sea and then he crushes the Egyptian army with the waves. Miraculous power for the good of those who trust him and justice for his enemies.

Exodus 15, 11, Moses sings, Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders? See, God's story, God's wonder in the Exodus story is this incredible miracle of salvation that he performed for his people, but also the same incredible miracle performed an act of justice against his enemies.

That's good for us. Like, we, we long for Jesus to come back to judge the living and the dead, because those who are in Christ are found righteous, and those who are against God and his people will be judged. We should love judgment, because if we are in Christ, then we're found righteous and free and welcomed into the new heavens and the new earth.

The word counselor, it connects, it actually connects God's miraculous power to another, uh, two word summary I have, eternal wisdom. It is true that when John speaks of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, and he talks about how Jesus says, I will send you the helper, and he'll guide you into all truth. We think of counselor as like that word really in English, and that is true, but that's not all that's true.

When, especially the Old Testament, but when the Bible talks about God's counsel, It's tapping into the eternal wisdom of God. It's this, this ability, not just to think thoughts and to make plans, but to enact them. And that those plans and thoughts have always existed.

For God to be a wonderful counselor means that it's this combination of his mind, his thoughts. His plans and his power and ability to carry out his will. So there's this connection here. We call God a wonderful counselor. Jesus is promised to us as our wonderful counselor because what he's doing is performing an incredible miracle that's been planned.

For all time.

And it actually, it reveals to us part of the Trinity, the reason that we can talk about it. In truth in the, in the New Testament as the helper being our counselor, we also see, um, the father and the Son as our wonderful counselor, uh, as our wonderful counselor. God the father reaches back into our past and redeems it while also ensuring that his plans.

His counsel, His will for our present and our future restoration continue to be fulfilled. God the Father, our wonderful Counselor, reaches back into our past and redeems our past. But He doesn't stop there. He comes into our present. and holds that tight in his grip and makes sure that our future restoration will be fulfilled.

As our wonderful counselor, God the Son gives himself up, gave himself up, so that we would be cleansed from the stench of death that haunts our souls, our bodies, and our minds. Jesus, as our wonderful counselor, performed the powerful miracle. to save us from the curse of sin and death. As our wonderful counselor, God the Spirit lives within us daily.

He is making us new creations in Christ. He is leading us into maturity until the day of our Lord when we come into the fullness of the resurrection. The Holy Spirit, our wonderful counselor, is our seal, our assurance, that what God has planned, He will bring about. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

God, in His miraculous power and eternal wisdom, is our wonderful counselor. If you haven't learned yet how this is good news, let's talk about that. If

we're a church that learns and lives the good news of Jesus, how does this connect? To our learning and our living. How does this increase my understanding of the gospel of Jesus? And not just, um, a mind level, intellectual level understanding, but also a heart level, a belief. To believe something changes the way you live.

To agree gives you better thoughts. But to believe changes how you live. So we don't just agree with Isaiah 9, 6 through 7. We believe it. And when we don't believe it, we pray for more faith, right? We've talked a lot about Mark 9, the helpless father. God, I believe, help my unbelief. So, I'm actually gonna pause for a second before we talk about how this is good news, because I want to pray that we would actually believe this to be good news.

So let's pray for just a second. Holy Father, um, we stand before your word humbled, that you have given us yourself, you've revealed yourself to us. In Isaiah nine, six through seven, would you break through our hard hearts, make them soft, open our ears and our mouths.

Let us welcome you into our thoughts and into our faith that we struggle to believe. Would you help us to believe? Would you cause us to believe? Would you give us the gift of faith that your word is true? Amen. In Genesis 3. 15, two pages. After creation, God promises to recreate everything. Genesis 315. God knew that just before these verses, sin would enter into the world.

And we like to pin it on Adam and Eve, but guys, if we were there, we'd do the same thing.

Sin entered the world through our decision not to know God, not to trust God, but to be like Him. Something that we weren't made to be. And so we rebelled, but God already had a plan. It was only moments after he called to Adam in the garden, Hey, where'd you go? Why are you hiding from me? That he then said, I've got a plan.

And, and it's going to be painful. It's going to be painful for you. It's going to be painful for me. But, but I've got a plan. I'm going to deal with this forever. And he actually. In Genesis 315, he's talking to Satan. He's talking to the tempter, the one that lured us into sin. He says, I've got a plan. Yeah, it'll be painful for me, but it will kill you.

The promise of Jesus coming to be our wonderful counselor is a promise that he will never give up on us. From the beginning of creation to recreation, God foreknew and planned to send us Jesus as our Savior.

From creation to recreation, our wonderful Counselor will never give up on us. Isaiah really liked this concept of Wonderful Counselor, this miraculous power coupled with eternal wisdom, because he keeps talking about it in Isaiah 25. Actually, if you do a little word study and you look into Really, 9 through, 9, 6 through 7, you're gonna see a lot of conversations in Isaiah about these titles.

But let's look specifically at Isaiah 25, 1. God's promised Messiah, Jesus, our wonderful Counselor. O Lord, you are my God. I will exalt you. I will praise your name. For you have done wonderful things, plans formed of old, faithful, and sure. Guys, I don't have more than four weeks, but if I did, we'd just preach this verse for 52 weeks.

I could preach another sermon today, but I know you're probably already hungry.

What Isaiah is saying is that God's wonderful, miraculous power necessarily comes with his eternal wisdom. He says, you have done great things. So that's, that's a past tense. Part of the conversation. You have done great things. You have done wonderful things. These were plans formed of old. That's an old Hebrew way of saying, they've always been around.

But then he says, Faithful and sure. You have done great things. Faithful and sure. Here's what's happening. The things you've worked out in the past stretch into eternity in both directions. For the good of the people who trust and believe.

It stretches God's miraculous power and eternal wisdom stretches far into the past and far into our future. This is good news because we have the assurance that God will be faithful to his promise. Jesus being our wonderful counselor. is good news because the fact that God promised to send the Messiah was fulfilled in him sending the Messiah, which gives us assurance that whatever other promises he has yet to fulfill, he will fulfill.

We talked about this in the Psalms series too, right? We, why do we sing these songs again and again? Why are there 150 songs given to the Israelites? I to sing in their worship ceremonies over and over and over because when we remember the promises of God fulfilled in the past, we have confidence in the promises of God yet to be fulfilled in our future.

Our wonderful counselor will never give up on us. God promised that his Messiah would come to save Israel and all the world from sin, death, and Satan. And then he came. We are saved. Jesus is the fulfillment of the miraculous power and eternal wisdom. Faithful and sure.

Take courage in the fact that when our sins stained all creation, God was not anxious. He had a plan.

Which means you can take courage in the fact that God is not anxious about you. He's not anxious about you. He's got a plan for you. Faithful and sure. You can take courage in the fact that your past, your sin, and your shame doesn't have the last word about you in Christ. But because God had a plan, a good and miraculous plan before you even born, that you can also take courage that even your future sins,

even your future sins

haven't turned him away.

The shame you have yet to feel hasn't turned him away. The guilt you have yet to experience hasn't turned him away. His promise is faithful and sure. Take courage while you wait. Our wonderful counselor will never give up on us. Okay, these three questions. What is it? Why is it good news? And what impact does this have on my life?

You guys are gonna love this one.

How does this work towards my growth in Christ? How, how does Jesus as my wonderful counselor spur me on into maturity? How can I pray through Jesus as my wonderful counselor? How can I live in light of the hope that I have in this gospel of the miraculous power and eternal wisdom being worked out for my good?

Really, I believe, help my unbelief. What do I do now?

One word answer to all these questions. Wait. I told you you were gonna love it. I could just feel the satisfaction and relief in the room. Wait. Jesus being our wonderful counselor, if you're writing, pause for a second. Jesus being our wonderful counselor means that we are free to wait on him. We're free to wait because we don't have anything to do.

I know it's weird for the preacher to stand on stage and give the application, be like, you ready for this? I'm gonna tell you what to do. And it'd be, wait. I know that's weird. Jesus does weird things. He says weird. He like, he told a crowd of people, if you don't eat my flesh and drink my blood. And a lot of people left.

So I get it if this room is mostly empty next week.

We wait. My hope in this sermon is not to give you more stuff to do. It's to give you courage while you wait. Because you're going to have to wait anyways. You're going to busy yourself and pretend like you don't? Or are you going to listen? You're going to listen to the Spirit of God in these words that just says, wait for me.

My promises are faithful and sure. Our wonderful counselor is way more in control than we give him credit for.

God Almighty, in His sovereignty, His power, and His wisdom, He has you. You can wait.

Practically, this means that we can just relax, right? We can, we can trust Him. We don't have to strive for our own goodness and righteousness and making sure we're doing all the right things and know all the right things. We can just trust Him. We can meditate on and rest in God's miraculous power and eternal wisdom rather than trying to be powerful and wise for our own good.

So this Advent season, these four weeks, I want to start by saying Wait, rest, and your wonderful counselor, he won't give up on you.

A couple of questions that you can ask yourself, um, to get deeper, to get into the heart of your waiting, to understand why waiting does feel like sandpaper to our souls. A couple of questions that you can ask yourself. You can be honest with yourself, if you're willing to do that, be honest with yourself and wonder, how do I strive for my own good?

What am I working so hard to do, chasing my tail for my own good, rather than waiting, being with God while I wait?

There's this, um, part of, we talked about Exodus 15, and we talked about the story of, uh, uh, or the, sorry, the song of Moses, praising God for his miraculous powers. One chapter sooner, one of my favorite verses in all the Bible, Exodus 14, 14. Right before God parts the sea and calls Israel to walk through it, Israel's standing on the bank of the Red Sea, terrified out of their minds.

They turn around and they see the Egyptian army coming for them. Death coming for them. Slavery coming for them. And Moses says, the Lord will fight for you. You have only to be silent.

There's your prayer for the week. God, how will you fight for me? How do I fight for myself? What are you already doing that I don't? I don't know about that. Maybe I have a hard time trusting you to do. And then that, that third question, the second part of that, that verse, God, how are you just calling me to be silent?

How are you calling me to still my soul and be silent and wait?

Advent helps us to have courage while we wait for the healing of our minds and our bodies and our souls. It reminds us to trust in God's miraculous power and eternal wisdom. To yes, fully and finally bring us into the resurrection. Advent helps us take communion. Had to see that one coming. Band, choir, you can go ahead and make your way back up.

It helps us to remember why we take the bread in the cup. And as you do that, as you make your way to these tables on the sides and and one in the back, Um, the bread, by the way, is always gluten free.

But as you do that, I just want to encourage you to, to take the elements and just, just wait. Take them on your own time, but, but hold it and just wait and feel the tension of having the promise, but also waiting for the rest of it. And then as you take rest in the assurance and peace that our wonderful counselor will never give up on you.

Communion is a reminder of the hope we have in Jesus that his body was broken, his blood was poured out for the salvation of all who trust in him. So if this is your confession, that Jesus is your wonderful counselor, we take and we eat. We do this until he comes back for us. Please join me at the table.