Wonderful Counselor

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

I want you to be thinking about heroes this morning. I want to get you thinking about the heroes that are in our culture. Who are the people that we lift up as, you know, people worthy of respect or honor, people that embody the qualities that we want to hold up? So you think about some of the cultural heroes, some of them are founding fathers, right? George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, we celebrate their birthdays every year in the country. The qualities that they embody are vision and sacrifice, right? Leadership. We think about maybe activists, right? We think of Martin Luther King Jr. We think of Harriet Tubman. We think of the values that they embody, like courage and determination, even in the face of a lot of adversity. We can even think of mythical heroes or comic book heroes or superheroes, like Superman or or Spider-Man or Iron Man, and what they are supposed to embody, which is kind of justice

and mercy and maybe even humility, even though they're really more powerful than a lot of other people, they embody this kind of humility. These are all the heroes that are in our culture. Maybe you have your own hero, but whoever your hero is, there's kind of a lot kind of packed in to that hero. Some of us have sports heroes. I grew up watching many different kinds of sports, but particularly in football. And I know kids that grew up in Texas, you watched Emmitt Smith and Troy Aikman and Michael Ervin score a lot, win a lot of Super Bowls, and you had a lot of reason to cheer. Maybe those are heroes. But if we look at a different culture, you're going to find different heroes. I want to do is I want to look at the culture of God's people. And I want to look at them throughout history, the culture of God's people. When you look at those at the culture, a few heroes emerge.

A few heroes emerge. We're not there yet. That's okay. We're going to get there. None of the heroes are more iconic than the Messiah. The Messiah is for God's people. was the consummate hero. The Messiah for God's people was the one person sent from God to save his people, to speak God's words, to bring justice to the oppressed, even to build a new city, Zion, where all the nations, after the city was built, all the nations would come and worship God on the mountain in Zion, okay? So the Messiah would come and see all of this chaos and see all this oppression, and the Messiah would come and fix all of it. That was the hero. He was like Superman and Lincoln and MLK and Emmett Smith all rolled into one person. Okay? It's weird. But in the culture of God's people, they really did pin all of their hopes. In fact, many Jews today still pin all their hopes on this Messiah.

Right? This Messiah is going to come and fix everything. In fact, the first 37 books of your Bibles, approximately three quarters of your Bibles, point forward toward a Messiah that is coming to fix everything. Major, major expectations were built up within God's people for this Messiah. And so whenever Andrew, the disciple, tells his brother Simon about Jesus in John 1, he says, he says, we have found the Messiah. That was, I mean, that was groundbreaking. That was earth shattering. That turned their worlds upside down to have found the Messiah. The one that has been prophesied about for thousands of years is finally here. And there's going to be some things that he's going to do that are unprecedented. There's going to be some things that the Messiah is going to do that are going to be crazy, bewildering. However, when Jesus was born, when Jesus is living on the earth and walking around in the

first century, God's people had very differing opinions about the Messiah. In fact, because the Messiah was going to do so much, many people, including many Jewish scholars, thought that there was more than one Messiah, that there were multiple Messiahs. For example, if you look at a lot of the prophecy, it points to a couple of different people. In Micah 5, it says that the Messiah is going to be born in Bethlehem. But in Daniel 9, it says the Messiah is going to arrive to earth riding upon clouds. Okay, so which Messiah is it? Is it the same person that's going to be born in Bethlehem or is it another person that's going to arrive from the clouds? Or you consider Isaiah 53. Isaiah 53 paints a very dramatic picture of a suffering servant, right? Someone who's going to serve the Lord by suffering on behalf of people. But then you also have Psalm 2, where it talks about the Messiah is going to be a conquering king.

So which is it? Is it going to be the suffering servant or is it going to be a conquering king? Is it going to be born in Bethlehem or is he going to be riding on the clouds? In response to all of this, or not response, but commenting on all this, there's a Jewish scholar, Dr. Garrett Smith, and he says this, he says, in response to these two seemingly opposite pictures of the Messiah, Some rabbis decided there must be two messiahs, the Messiah, Ben Joseph, Ben means son of, who would come and suffer, and the Messiah, Ben David, who would come as a conquering king.

Even when we read the famous Isaiah nine passage where it says, for unto us a child was born, a son is given, and the government will be upon his shoulder and his name will be called. You don't get one name, you get four names, wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting father, Prince of Peace. We're given four very distinct titles and it's confusing for Jesus in the first century,

whenever he came, in fact, there's even a question that's given to Jesus. They say like, are you the Messiah or is there another one to come? Or are you the first Messiah or the only Messiah? And that question was asked by John the Baptist. There were people that were living in the first century that didn't know if Jesus was the Messiah, a Messiah, the first of many Messiah, they didn't understand, they didn't know. And it's because all of the things in all the Old Testament pointed forward to this one person who really had to be lots of different things.

And it was confusing. And I really want you to kind of wrap your heart around that idea, that they're looking for somebody and they don't exactly know who it's going to be. When we think of Christmas, we don't really get lost in all that Messiah talk, because we know the end of the story. And so we kind of struggle to relate that to Christmas. However, Messiah in Hebrew means chosen one or anointed one. Messiah means anointed one. Now, in the Old Testament, it's important. In the Old Testament, the language that it was written in was Hebrew. Okay, so in Hebrew, Messiah sounds like Mashiach. Okay, it sounds funky, it sounds weird. That's the Hebrew word, right? Well, the New Testament is not written in Hebrew. It's written in a totally different language. It's written in Greek. And so we have a different name for Messiah, or for chosen one, the Greek word for chosen one is Christ.

So Messiah and Christ are the same word. Jesus is the Messiah or the Christ. And as a child, I thought Christ was Jesus' last name. Okay, I did. I was like, yes, Jesus, first name, Jesus, last name, my first name is Drew, my last name is Capredon, his is Jesus Christ, right? But it's not a last name, it's a title. And so whenever Simon declares in Matthew 16, 16, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God.

What he's pointing back to is thousands of years of Old Testament prophecy that is pointing forward to the Messiah and saying, this guy's coming. This guy's gonna save everybody. This guy's gonna bring healing. This guy's gonna fix it all. This is what Peter means when he says, you are the Christ, you are the Son of the living God. He's speaking directly about the Messiah. He's just not saying the word Messiah because in Greek it means it's Christ. So then Christmas, right? Christmas then is a combination of two words, Christ and mass. And it's not mass in the scientific sense, right? It's mass in kind of the meeting sense or the time sense. So Christ in old English, Christmas means time of the Messiah. Christmas is, it means that it's the time for the Messiah.

We don't think of this when we think of Christmas. Our minds drift to Santa Claus bringing gifts, not heroes ending oppression. Our minds go to shopping and family, not salvation and justice. It's just now where we go. We don't think of it in the same terms that it was written. We don't understand it. We think of vacation plans, and we do not particularly think of an historic event, and an epic moment in history where the world was changed forever. But if we can, if we can take a moment this morning, if we can view it from the perspective of the Old Testament, I believe that we can see Christmas how the Bible describes it. We can behold Jesus in his time, in the time of the Messiah. We can behold Jesus as the Messiah. And so as a guide to doing that, we're gonna do that this week and the next three as we go through our Euro focus. It's ending and we're ending on the Messiah.

We're talking about the Messiah. And to do that, we are gonna use the four title prophecy from Isaiah nine. And so just to read it in maybe more fullness, I wanna look at Isaiah nine, six through seven, it's gonna be up here. It says, 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, of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end. On 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 Messiah. The prophecy, this is pointing toward the Messiah, the one who will rescue God's people finally and fully. And so this Christmas, we're gonna take four weeks.

We're gonna look at him as the wonderful counselor. then the Prince of Peace, then mighty God, and lastly, Everlasting Father. And today, I wanna quickly look at the Messiah as the wonderful counselor, and what all of that has to do with Christmas. So, wonderful counselor. It's funny, wonderful counselor, both words can lead to misdirection. Because we think of wonderful counselor, and we think of like a marriage and family counselor, that kind of counselor, and that they're really wonderful. Like maybe they're just really nice or something. So we think of wonderful counselor and we kind of miss what's going on. So wonderful means awe inspiring. It moves people to wonder. That's what wonderful actually means in this context, wonderful counselor. So somebody that inspires awe. A counselor is actually more like an advisor, a military expert, a leader, a counselor with somebody who would give counsel to achieve

a goal. So if a king is going to war, he's going to take counsel. And so I realize counselor is pretty broad meaning in our context, but in this context, it's pretty specific, the kind of word this is. It's a wonderful counselor then. Whenever it says that the Christ will be a wonderful counselor, it is one whose plans would leave you speechless. A wonderful counselor is somebody whose plans and goals and thoughts and steps to get there would leave you in awe of how they thought of every last detail. A wonderful counselor is someone who is full of forethought, who can see into motives and intentions and then plan accordingly. The wonderful counselor is like a chess player. The wonderful counselor is kind of mystical and advancing, even whenever you're trying to stop them, still advancing. When you look at Jesus's life and death and resurrection, you begin to see that kind of plan unfold.

You begin to see a plan so good, a plan so wonderful that it leaves you wondering how God put everything into place. How Jesus was born at just the right time, how he said just the right things, how it all went according to plan. And even at the end, when it looked like defeat, it was still victory. It was all according to plan. Jesus is the wonderful counselor. Many times, Jesus says something is happening, and this is a quote. He says, in order that the scriptures might be fulfilled. In order that the scriptures might be fulfilled. The night he was arrested, he says, hey, hey, look, everybody's here. You know, you didn't come in the daytime whenever I was teaching, and they opened your coming at night, but you did it in order that scriptures might be fulfilled. Whenever Jesus is praying for the disciples in John 17, he's praying for them and he's saying,

okay, all this is going to happen in order that the scriptures might be fulfilled. What is he talking about? He's talking about the three quarters of your Bible, the first 37 books that's in there. He's saying all of that, all that scripture, all that is being fulfilled in my time. time, it's being fulfilled in me. This is why Jesus says, with no hint of irony, with no wink in his eye, he's saying, all of this, all of this is about me, Jesus says. The whole Bible, all of it's about me. The Old Testament's pointing to me. The New Testament is about me. It's all pointing to me. Jesus is saying, My whole life is going according to this plan that's been laid out for thousands of years, and it's coming to fruition in my time, and I'm a part of that. Jesus is part of this whole plan, and really no one else in Scripture can see this whole plan. They might see parts...

We have the benefit of seeing it in retrospect. We can look back on the Christmas story and say, man, that was just so different. But you know what, we're so familiar with the Christmas story now, it doesn't really have the sense, it doesn't leave us with awe and wonder. But if you were a first century Jew and you were looking for the Messiah or Messiah's and you then figure out through God's revelation to you, You then figure out Jesus is this Messiah and you kind of watch it kind of just all come together in this beautiful plan, it would leave you speechless. You would hardly believe it. No one else really can see it. Even the disciples can't see it, right? Even the Pharisees can't see it. They don't even understand that they're part of the plan or how they're a part of the plan. They're just making choices in real time and trying to do the best they can.

But the Lord is directing all of it. putting it all together. And this plan that we're talking about, this plan that is well thought out, this plan that includes a Messiah coming, is actually a promise. A promise that God made to his people. The phrase that Scripture may be fulfilled is another way to say, this is how God kept his promise. When you look at the first 37 books of your Bible, the first three quarters of it, it's full of God making promises to his people. And all of them are kept in Jesus. The Bible says that every promise is yes and amen in Christ. This is how God keeps his promise. And we find this promise all the way back in Genesis. In Genesis 12, where God is promising Abraham to give him a family. And here's, here's what he says, I'm just going to read it and it's going to be on your screen. This is God making a promise to Abraham. He says, I will make of you a great nation. This

is a, this is a 90 plus year old man with a 90 plus year old wife with no children. I will make you a great nation. He's got, I don't even have kids. How are you going to make me a nation? God says to Abraham promises, I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great. We still speak the name of Abraham today. Why? So that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you, I will curse. And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. The promise that God is making to Abraham. He's saying, I am going to fix everything through you. This is like Elon Musk coming to you and saying, I'm going to give you whatever you need to fix poverty. Okay. Money's no limit anymore. Now what are you going to do? Okay. This is, this is God saying to Abraham, I, I'm going to bless every family on the earth.

I'm going to make your name great. I'm going to make you into a nation so that you will be a blessing through the nation that God establishes in Abraham, which are the Israelites and then the Jews. It's kind of a long story, but Jesus is born from this. Through your nation, I am going to bring blessing. I'm going to bring order out of chaos. I'm going to bring hope out of despair. I'm going to dip. I'm going to bring beauty from ashes. I'm going to do all of that through your family. That's my promise to you. It's no, there's no condition on this promise. This is God making a promise to Abraham, not saying, if you do this, I'm going to do this. No, no, this is God saying, I promise to you. This will happen. Period. Full stop. You just watch and Abraham did not live to see this promise unfold.

But this promise, we see it as it continues to develop throughout the Old Testament. We see that God is going to fulfill this promise, keep this promise through the Messiah, that the Messiah would come and take everything. And I really want you to wrap your minds around this. The promise is this, that the Messiah is going to come and take all that has happened, all that is happening, and all that will happen. He's going to take all of it and he's going to wrap it up. He's going to bring it all together in a way that delivers salvation to many people in a way that that no one expected. It's quite the promise. It's quite the feat. But that's exactly what the Messiah was going to do. If you ask people today how to fix the world that we live in, okay, let's assume that two of you were talking and both of you think there are many problems in our world, okay. I don't think it's a big leap, maybe. But if you would ask someone

how to fix the world away, you might get some answers. You might get like, oh, maybe we should do this. But no one, and I mean no one who is sincere, no one sincerely believes that they have the answer on how to fix the world. No one's sincere. If they do sincerely believe that, they're either delusional or Elon Musk. Okay, all right. It's a joke. No one believes that because it's too complicated. It's too overwhelming. There's just too much. There's geopolitical warring. There's the next generation's self-image. There's the effective housing prices on the poor. There's all that stuff. And that's just stuff we know about. That's just stuff we can kind of think of off the top of my head. That's stuff that we can look at our window and see, but there's so much else going on. There's so much wrong with our world. There's so many things working together, seemingly, to bring down the good and to promote the bad.

God's promise through the Messiah is that He will fix it. And this is what we see happen all through the Christmas story. Christmas is the story of God's wonderful counsel coming to bear on people that neither deserved it nor understood it. Go ahead, pick a character from the Christmas story. Joseph, Mary, Wiseman, Shepherds, King Herod, Anna, Simeon, the animals. Did I miss anybody? I mean everybody, everybody involved, the little drummer boy. We're even going to throw him in. Okay. He's not real, but we're going to throw him in.

Nobody. Okay. Nobody understood that. Nobody, nobody grasped God's wonderful counsel, but it was a plan all coming together. It was an infinitely awe-inspiring plan to bring everything, past, present, future together and to heal it. This is the story of the Messiah. And we can see a really great example of this. We can actually see it all over the Christmas story. I'll just pick one and I'll pick on Joseph because he's an easy target. Joseph is largely, I mean, you could make the case, he's largely ignorant of what's going on in the grand scheme of things. He might have some vague conception of Messiah, he might know, but there's no way he's not anticipating the next thing. He's not, you can tell this and I'll prove it. We'll look at Matthew 2, okay? Matthew 2 where I told you to turn way long time ago. This is Joseph and they have fled to Egypt and he's been told in a dream

to go back to the land of Israel. And here's his reaction. But when he, Joseph, heard that Arkelos was reigning over Judea in places of his father Herod, he was afraid to go, this is Joseph again, and being warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee. And when, sorry, And he went and lived in a city called Nazareth, so that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene. Let me just take a guess here. Joseph is experiencing all of this in first person. Joseph is just sleeping, dreaming, and obeying. Okay? Joseph is relatively passive in all this. I mean, he has to make decisions, of course, but he's not, this isn't the result of Joseph's master plan coming together. This isn't Joseph bringing together past, present, future, and saying, no, no, no, here it is, here's the master plan. We're gonna go to Israel.

I mean, Nazareth, okay? That's not how this is working. Joseph is just trying to keep it in front of him. He's just trying to do what's right for his family, really. I mean, he's just making decisions kind of in the moment. But God in heaven is planning out the entire process, even down to the fact that the Messiah is going to be born in Bethlehem, yet be called a Nazarene.

Listen, that doesn't even sound like it matters. Who cares if he's called a Bethlehemite or a Nazarene? Who cares? I don't care. God cares. God cares so much that he's moving Joseph around. He's telling him to go to one place and then he's warning him a dream not to go there and go in another place so that scripture might be fulfilled. So that the promise might be kept. A promise, a detail and a promise that seems so infinitesimal. It seems so insignificant to you and I. Who cares what he's called? God cares, it's a part of the big plan. It doesn't matter what I think about it, but God cares. This Christmas, you were gonna be wrapping a lot of presents. You might have already decorated your tree if you're the go-getter. If you're not, that's okay, we're not judging you. We have our tree up, by the way, we just don't have it decorated. That's where we're at.

You will be wrapping presents, you will be decorating tree, you will be making family vacation plans, you will be with family, you will be shopping. But I want in the midst of all of that crazy, in the midst of all the commercials and all the stuff, all the Santa's, I want you to remember what Christmas points to. It points to a world waiting for a wonderful counselor to wrap all that has happened up, all that is, all the bad, all the bad history, all the bad that's happening right now and all the bad that's going to happen and all the good and all of those things. And he's wrapping it all up. He's bringing it all together in a plan that will blow your mind, that will bring salvation to many people. This is what the Christmas story is about. It's about the wonderful counselor following a plan, a plan that you can't see, a plan that you couldn't even comprehend.

I counsel people all the time that are kind of younger and they've got a couple of big decisions ahead of them and they say, man, I just wish I knew the future. I just wish I knew kind of what was going to happen in the next five years. And I typically take the moment right then to stifle laughter and say, if you knew the plan for the next five years, you would mess it up anyway. You would think of a better version. You think of a better plan. You thinking that you know the, that you knowing the plan would somehow settle your anxiety? No, sir. No, ma'am. No, ma'am, not going to happen. You having knowledge of the plan is very far from you having control of the plan. So good. But the one who does have a plan is the wonderful counselor. The one who does have all ... and look, let's not go big, let's go real small. all of your past, all of your present, all of your future lined out, wrapped up, ready

to go toward the benefit and the salvation of many in a way that you could not predict. I'm 44. 44. My wife's telling me, yes, I am 44. When I was 24, there was no way I could predict what my life would turn into. I had very different plans for my life that involved a coffee shop. It's a long story. We don't need to go into it. It's not the plan anymore, I promise. But that the Lord is going to bring all of this together in a completely unexpected way. Even the events of your own life. You have things in your past, you have things that you're going through right now, you have things that you're facing that seem overwhelming, that seem disconnected, that seem like it's like your life is just out to get you. Okay. And you're really frustrated. You don't see a way around it and you're praying. You're like, Lord, you're gonna have to fix it. And the Lord's like, hey, listen, it's okay.

I've got a plan. It's okay. I've got a plan, it's coming. You just sleep and dream and obey. Okay. You do what Joseph did. Okay. You make plans based on what I'm showing you, But you don't need 30 steps ahead, you need the next step. And there's nothing wrong with that. Jesus's birth then, with all of that, Jesus's birth is when that promise began to be kept. The promise had not yet been fully completed, obviously. Jesus's life and death, burial and resurrection all had to play out. But the answer had come, the Messiah was here now.

And that is reason to celebrate. This Christmas, man, I mean, enjoy it. Enjoy the heck out of it. I mean, just go Christmas tree shopping, decorate the tree, do all that stuff, but remember what it's pointing to. Remember this plan that you can't really comprehend and wrap your mind around. That plan is unfolding even now. It didn't stop whenever Jesus was born. It didn't stop whenever he ascended into heaven. Got us still in control. Got us still the wonderful counselor. There's still a plan that is happening. If you follow Jesus then, he is your wonderful counselor. You, whenever it says you don't need to fear, it's not just whistling Dixie. It's not just saying, hey, that's a bad habit, you should stop. It's saying, no, really, you don't have a reason to be afraid. The Lord God in heaven has everything under control. Everything. If you follow Jesus, he is bringing the things

in your life together in a way that is unexpected. It's powerful. It's wonderful. Without Jesus, the events in your life, they simply throw you around. They simply throw you around. It's not gonna tie up. It's not gonna lead to salvation. If you're not following Jesus, you're just following your own desires. You're just doing whatever feels good next. You're just kind of floating along being kind of victimized about whatever's happening around you, or you're trying to control whatever's around you. Either way, you're pretty frustrated. Living with a wonderful counselor is the way to go. It's the only way really that life makes sense when there's a plan that you can't see. Today, during our time of invitation, I want to challenge you to make a decision to know Jesus as your wonderful counselor. We're going to sing a few songs as we do. I'm just going to be up here.

No pressure. If you would like to talk to somebody next to you, if you have some questions, if you just need somebody to pray for you, feel free to ask somebody next to you, or you can come up here and I could pray for you, however you want to do that. But during our time of singing, as we're all standing, I pray that you would make the decision to follow Jesus as your wonderful counselor. And if you need to repent, if you need to say, Jesus, I have not been doing that, I need to, I need to give up that anxiety. Then you can pray right there. If you need help praying, just ask somebody next to you. If you want to come pray with me, that's great. All those options are available to you as we sing.

Let me pray for us. Jesus, I pray that as we sing, that you would open our hearts, that you would make us soft to you, that you would help us to reach out, be vulnerable for what we need. In the name that we pray, amen. Let's stand and sing. Of sorrow's lamb of God betrayed The sin of man and wrath of God God has been on Jesus' name. Silent as he stood, O cute and mouthed and scarred, bowing to the Father's will, he took a crown of thorns. And oh that rugged cross by salvation Where your love poured out over me Now my soul cries out hallelujah Praise and honor on To the event of heaven God's own Son to purchase and redeem and reconcile the very ones who nailed into that tree that know that looking across my salvation Where your love poured out over me Now my soul cries out, hallelujah Praise and honor unto thee Now my debt is paid, it is paid in full By the precious blood that my Jesus spilled

Now the curse of sin has no hold on me When the sun sets free, oh, it's free indeed Now my dead is paid, it is paid in full By the precious blood that by Jesus spilled Now the curse of sin has no hold on me From the sunsets free, oh, it's free indeed Know that crooked cross might salvation Where your love poured out over me Now my soul cries out, hallelujah Hallelujah, praise and honor unto thee. And know that rugged cross my salvation, Where your love poured out over me. God my soul cries out, Hallelujah, praise and honor unto thee. the stone is rolled oh behold the empty to God be praised he's risen from the cross by salvation where your love pours out over me my soul cries out hallelu praise Praise and honor unto thee. Praise and honor unto thee.