Wonderful Counselor

This recording is from Willow Creek Church in Wintersprings, Florida, where Dr. Pete Allinson is our senior pastor. Today's sermon is by Dr. Steve Brown. It's part one in the 2006 Advent series and is titled Wonderful Counselor. This message is taken from Isaiah, chapter 9, verses 6, and 7. Now here's Steve with today's message. This is the first Sunday in Advent, and I have no idea what I was smoking when I said I'd do this. I don't do well with Christmas. As I told you, I look like Santa and I feel like Scrooge, and people come, and kids come up to me and say, oh Santa, let me tell you what I want for, and I said, just be quiet, kid. You're going to get sticks and colds. Deal with it. I wouldn't do that, but sometimes I don't know why that is, why Christmas is such a difficult time for me. Maybe the adult child of the alcoholic thing. If you suffer from that particular malody, you know what I'm talking about. Christmas is don't have good memories to them, and your big and control and nothing is in control at Christmas, and every time it got out of control, you got hurt. So maybe it's that that memories aren't so good, and the adult child thing haunts me at Christmas, I don't know. Maybe I don't like Christmas because I was a pastor for so long. If you love your people, God help me, I did. If people are depressed, they're more depressed at Christmas. If you've lost somebody at Christmas, it's really, really hard. If the pain is there during the year, it gets magnified at Christmas, and if you love your people, Christmas can be really hard for a pastor. I'm not sure, I'm better than I was, but I still struggle with it. I think that part of it has to do with so many people who miss it at Christmas. This is as close as anybody's going to get. My friend, late friend, Rusty Andersen used to say, he loved Christmas except for the Jesus part. City liked the parties and the family and the gifts and stuff. That was cool, but Jesus, he messed it up. He said every time I was enjoying the other stuff, I would think about the religious stuff and I'd feel guilty. He said, I don't know why we can't have our own Christmas in the summer for believers, and then we'll have a holiday to celebrate whatever at Christmas. I understand that, but there's something in Christmas that you noticed, where people get close and so many miss it. There's not a time, I mean people are funny and Christmas weird. People walk around with a smile on their face. If you go to the mall and I hate the mall any time, but in Christmas, call me. Do you ever think everybody there is there for somebody else? There's something about Christmas that really is warm and fun. I don't feel it, but I can see everybody else feeling it. There's something maybe Jesus at Christmas, and I can see the mother putting her ornaments down in the box from the tree. She thinks, what was that? What was all that about, and then she thinks and says, and she mops the floor or goes to the office. And there's so many like that at Christmas who miss it. I don't know. But I like to talk about Jesus, and we're going to talk about Jesus this morning. Peter and I are going to share the four weeks of Advent. They're four names in the ninth chapter of Isaiah, the first this morning, wonderful counselor, and then the next is mighty God. And then everlasting Father, and Pete's going to do that one, and you don't know it, because he doesn't talk about it much, but he's being used in a wonderful, unbelievable way in men all over this country. And he's the one to talk about the everlasting Father. I've already talked about the Father wound and what that does to you. And then he's going to do the final one, Prince of Peace, and then we do Christmas Eve, my favorite service of the year. By then, if you didn't get the gift, it's too late. If you got the card on December the 23rd and you went, oh, I should have sent one, it's too late. You can't fix it. You can't make it better. What is? Is is. And then you can think about Jesus. I love our Christmas Eve service, so I'm looking forward to that. We get to talk about Jesus this morning, we're going to do that. But the interesting thing is that we're going to talk about Jesus from the lips of a man who lived 700 years before Jesus was born. I loved what our pastor said when he lit the prophet candle about the prophets. This is a prophecy. And it was right. He looked forward and we look back. If you have your Bibles, turn to the ninth chapter of Isaiah, and I'm going to start reading at the Sixth verse. Or 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 counseled. Mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, of the increase of his government and peace, there will be no end on the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it, and uphold it with justice and righteousness, faithfulness. From this time forth and forevermore, the zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. Now just a moment we're going to get down and look at our wonderful counselor, but before we do that, I want to go down one side road, and I want you to know, please, the flowers that grow in the manure are in the dirt. One of the interesting things about Isaiah is the radical change that takes place at the 40th chapter of Isaiah. Through the 39th chapter, it is condemnation, it is judgment, it is prophecy, and it is hard. And then the first verse of the 40th chapter, Isaiah writes, comfort ye, comfort ye my people. Let me use some advice, don't for your evening devotions read anything in Isaiah 1 through 39. Give you nightmares. Make you feel guilty, wonder if you're saved and maybe you're going to hell. But if you want to sleep better, start at the 40th chapter, open Isaiah to any place there and read it. It is so good and so comforting and so uplifting and so inspiring. In fact, it is such a radical change that a lot of scholars, liberal ones in particular have said there isn't one Isaiah, there are two Isaiah's, Isaiah first Isaiah and second Isaiah. There are even some who have said that Isaiah isn't one or two, it is a family. In 1947, a little better when boy was at the bed seat, if you ever been there, that is an awful place. He had a little dog and his dog went into one of the caves around the bed seat and he called his dog and the dog wouldn't come so he took a rock and he threw it into the cave and he heard a crash as in a clay jar breaking to pieces. That was the beginning. I wish I had time to tell you the whole story of the Roman legions that had come up the North Rift Valley of what they found at the Dead Sea, about the monastic community there. It is such a cold story. But that little better when boy started something that became the greatest and most important manuscript find in the history of the Christian Church. Did you know they found manuscripts and it had been a monastic in the caves around the Dead Sea. It had been a monastic community in their library. They found manuscripts to almost every book of the Old Testament. And when they found the Isaiah scrolled, the liberals said, now they are going to see those obscure and disfundies are going to see, man, they are two Isaiah's. They will be two and there wasn't. It was seamless. You see the scholars understood manuscripts but they didn't understand God. And so we have this morning in the ninth chapter, I am going to see later in the first chapter of Isaiah that God goes around planting flowers in the mud. I love missionaries on the field, I don't like them when they come home. They clean up and speak nice and put on a tie or nice dress and say things, they are raising money. But if you want to see a real missionary, you got to go on the field and just dirt under their fingernails. They are doing a hard job in hard places and they are earthy and they are real people. I love missionaries. But when they come home and I understand you got to raise money, you got to pay for this thing. And we had a missionary in the church that I went serve who was in a very bad country and she came home and she was making nice. I invited her into my study and closed the door and I said, how is it really going? She said, it's awful. You had no idea. I said, were you going back? She said, are you crazy? Of course I'm going back. I'm raising money to go back. I said, what are you going to do when you go back? And she said, I'm going to plant flowers in hell. That's what we do. We're not home yet. We're citizens of another country. What are we doing here? We're planning some flowers. But it's very important that when we go through our tough time, that we not miss the flowers. And I almost bring it up and every certain, we went through Andrew, I'm going to get home and meet Noah and he's going to say, you don't know nothing. But we did. It was a hard time. You know, we lost our stuff, Kathy lost her stuff. You were very fortunate to get Kathy up here because she does these decorations for Christmas. You used to drive me nuts. My wife, I'm married to Miss Christmas. You ought to see our house, it looks like her Christmas job, except my study and she wouldn't dare. Besides, she didn't have the key. I stole her key from her. She can't get into my study. But Kathy went through it and we lost it and I love these decorations. I'm not as bad as I sound, but we lost a lot of stuff. And people that say, well I'm a Christian, stuff's not important. They're lying. It's not true. That's a good, don't say that. Now Jesus ought to be more important in your stuff. But if you don't think your stuff's important to you, you ought to lose it one time. See, I had fields. And so we got in the car, we started driving north trying to find a place we could stay. We could find a place until we got to an hour and a half away in Boynton Beach. We stayed in this old hotel there and every morning we'd get in a car and we'd drive back to Miami to our wet, without a roof house, stuff destroyed, kind of try to salvage as much as we could. Let me tell you something that happened. Every day, as we drove back and we left early in the morning, we turned on the radio. And we listened to WRMB in Boynton Beach, Christian Station. And you know, they prayed for us by name, they didn't know whether we were dead. They didn't know where we were. They certainly didn't know that we were staying two blocks from the radio station. But every morning, they would lift up key life and it's staff and Steve and Anna and the family and say, God bless them, be with them and get them through this stuff. And we'd just there with tears going on our face because we had discovered the flowers in the manure. I don't know what you're going through. I suspect some of you are going through some really hard stuff. I know that. This is life that offers this. Maybe you're losing your job. That's a bloomer. Christmas. Maybe you've got family stuff and maybe you're struggling with your academic. I don't know what it is. But if you don't look for the flowers, you'll turn bitter and mean and condemning and it'll mess up your life. So always look because God always gets them. Always look for the flowers in the manure. Okay, now let's turn to the main thrust of the text. Two salient points, I want you to remember. The first is if you're using the King James version of 1611, well, you ought to get a new Bible. If you're using the King James version, they're five names for the coming Messiah and it's wonderful as the first one in counselors the second. That's not the way the text reads. It's one name for a counselor wonderful magnifies points to tells us about what the counselor is like. And the second salient point is this, that the name wonderful means it has overtones of our word wonderful, but in the Hebrew it generally means supernatural as in wow. We're Presbyterians. We do things decently in order as it should be. That's where we've been called. We're supposed to, in a cerebral way, grab the propositions of the Bible and teach those to the entire body of Christ. That's our job. That's the gift that we offer to the body of Christ. But you know, why did you pray this morning? Because for the same reason you took a bath or ate your vegetables or your eggs, I mean we Presbyterians do what you're supposed to do, we're in church because that's what somebody who's proper is supposed to do. And we never sensed the awesomeness and the wildness and the power of a supernatural God. The best thing that could happen to our congregation is that if we all broke out and started speaking in tongues, scare people to death, man, I don't speak in tongues and I'm not charismatic, but it would break through, I mean we would see the power, maybe we could dance naked before the throne, the way David did. It's a metaphor I'm kidding. God turned his blood to say, maybe if I ain't doing that. But what if we really believe that God is God? That there was no reason to despair, that he healed people's bodies. That he got us jobs, that he intervened. We live in a supernatural world, we fight a supernatural battle. That could be that the depression you feel at Christmas doesn't have anything to do with your father. It has to do with him, old slew foot, him's greater as he that is in you, that he was in the world. That's first John 4.4, and we have an amazing authority and power, but we don't use it because we think it's a different battle, it's really not. It's a supernatural battle. And so you've got to preface everything that Isaiah said about Jesus with supernatural. So he's a supernatural counselor, let me tell you what I did this week. I went through the Bible and I looked up some of the references to counselors and I found eight or nine, I'm only going to share three or four with you. So you owe me, put me in your will, let me show you the first one. A supernatural counselor who speaks truth, turn to the 119th Psalm, and I'm going to start reading at the 23rd verse. Even though Princess sit plotting against me, your servant will meditate on your statutes. Your testimonies are my delight and they are my counselors. Hey, listen, I hope you follow me out of the parking lot. Do you know it hasn't rained a single time on Sunday morning since we were there? I think it's my purity. No, I don't think so. But you know, you know, I sort of messed that's going to be when it rains and we haven't had a single bit of rain on Sunday morning. That's God, that's a supernatural God. Well, I hope you follow me out of the parking lot because I've got the coolest bumper sticker you ever saw on my Honda Accord hybrid. That's because I protect the environment and you don't. That's because I care about our children and you don't. And cause of what I just said, God crashed it after having it for two weeks. I backed into a truck, hated it. I thought I can't believe that. My new car and God said, you don't get over this. You're going to be worse. And I thought, well, I'll get it fixed. And God said, no, you won't. You'll look at that place on the back of your bumper. And every time you look at it, you'll remember your self-righteousness. And so I've been until my friend John Whitehead, who is the head of the Rutherford Institute, sent me this cool bumper sticker. God didn't say I couldn't cover up the hole with a bumper sticker. So I've got this bumper sticker. And you know what it says? It says, speak truth to power. And it's right under my pro-life license plate. Confuses the liberals. I mean, that sounds like a liberal statement underneath the pro- I just love it, speak truth to power. It's so me. I love it. I thought when I saw it, that's what God has done to spoke truth to the lies, to the spurious power of our world. And we've been called to do exactly the same thing. Have you noticed how many books are being written by atheists making fun of our faith? What's with that? When I was an atheist, I didn't go write a book about something I didn't believe in. They need to get life. That's crazy. I mean, if I didn't believe it, I mean, it's like writing a book on why there's no fairy or whatever, right? That's crazy. But they do. And some Christians have been intimidated. Don't you do that? You've been given the truth. And it's true truth. When the Civil War was about over, Richmond had been captured and the Union troops had come into Richmond, Jefferson Davis had fled. They took wagon loads of Confederate money out of Richmond. And you know what the Union troops did at night? They played poker with Confederate money, $100,000 a hand, but in meaning of anything. That's what we do. But the poker games of the world, let me say, that's phony, that's not important. At Christmas, especially. I'm not against the commercialization of Christmas, I understand that vendors have got to make a bug. They got to feed their family too. But they tell you stuff is not true. They tell you juice plus will keep you from dying. They tell you that if you just get the right computer and you just got one two weeks ago and they upgraded it. Now you've got to get a new one. They tell you if you didn't have the right iPod so you could listen to music all the time and never think, mesquite with, they tell you that's important, they tell you it's important to use the right. That's not important. That's playing poker with Confederate money and you know it. And the reason you know it is because Messiah, Christmas has come and spoken truth to power. To darkness, reality to the lies. That's a cool place to be because we know. And that's why Christmas is so important to us, the fulfillment of the prophecy that the supernatural counselor would speak truth. And then I want you to go with me back to Isaiah to the first chapter of Isaiah, I'll show you how the supernatural Messiah shares favor. Look at the 26th verse and I will restore your judges as at the first and your counselors as at the beginning, afterward you shall be called the city of right, just as the faithful city. And look 23, Joseph of Arimathea is called a counselor, what's a counselor? Get with power, who's Jesus, somebody who sits at the right hand of God, the father, almighty, I love Garth Brooks song, I'm not good on the social graces, I think I'll slip down to the oasis where I've got friends, I've got friends in the old places, y'all have some friends in the old places, that's why we're here. But y'all have, and remember, you've got a friend in the high place at the right hand of God, the father. I miss my kid brother more than I can tell you. I miss him for a lot of reasons, he was my best friend when he died, I died some, he would probably, seriously, be the governor of North Carolina if you'd lived, there's the most charismatic politician in North Carolina and he was at the light, I ran his media campaign, he was at the light to market, I mean he's just so cool now, he's watching speak at these meetings and I want to jump up and say that's my kid brother, is he, is he something else? I'm missing, I'm missing for a lot of reasons, but I'm missing because he was the district attorney in the 28th congressional district where I grew up and I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks and all of a sudden I had friends in high places, I could get parking tickets fixed. I had, there was one police officer that used to yell at me when I was growing up and now he called me Mr. Brown and I loved having a friend and I spoke for the central Florida mayor's prayer breakfast this year and I got a chance to meet our mayor in Obedo where I live and I thought, I told him it's something to meet you and he thought it was because I thought he was so smart that I didn't do it, I just wanted to be my friend so he could fix parking tickets. Remember that, you should never despair. My brother said one time when he lost his job, he was working on a, as a waiter or once I'm around Cape God, he wasn't depressed and I said brother you don't look depressed to me, he said I'm not, the next minute can change my life. That's true with you, some of you are going through some hard stuff, it's him, don't be afraid. You got a friend in high place, you remember in Matthew when Jesus came walking on the water in the middle of the storm, scared the spit out of the disciples, they thought it was a ghost and they weren't being in the ghost and Jesus said in Aramaic, be cool, don't be afraid, it's me, God can give you your job back, he can heal your body, he can make a difference in your life, you can win the lottery, you don't know. He really, well you should be buying tickets anyway, but if you do when you win, tie the tainted money, tainted enough, I'm sorry, I just wanted to say something there before you started writing me letters about buying a lottery ticket, but God can do something really cool for you in the next second because you got a friend in a high place and he is fond of you and likes to do cool stuff for his own. And then there's one other thing, well two couple other things I want you to see, go to first John 2-1, I put paper clips at my Bible, it's very embarrassing if somebody who does what I do can't find a text, so we're in first John and I want you to look at the first, the second chapter and the first verse, my little children I'm writing these things to you that you may not sin, but if anyone does sin we have an advocate, great counselor with the father, Jesus Christ, the righteous, I wish you knew my friend John, John, he's our lawyer, he's not an attorney, he's a lawyer, he means a snake, cusses like a sailor, does bad things and loves Jesus with all of his heart, I let him to Christ, he came up to the back end of our church and parked his boat, we were on the bay on Kibisgan, got out, had jeans that were torn in barefoot, and I said who are you, and he said who are you, and I said I'm a preacher, and he said I'm a lawyer, don't have a job, but I'm a lawyer, I said let's talk, so we talked and I let him to Christ and it was real man, you know what he's now in the mountains of North Georgia, LJ, or near LJ, where the national park is, and he gets donuts and coffee on Sunday mornings in the season, goes into the park, wakes up the campers, and has church for them, but he was the corporate attorney for Exxon, made a lot of money and wanted to get off the fast track and went to North Georgia, and mean oh I could tell you, I mean you would, I could tell, they, somebody stole our 1-800-Key life number, these two guys got in a fight and it was still not called AT&T and they said they were sorry, it was policy, it was gone, it couldn't be restored for six months and by then somebody else would have it, now you gotta know that's our lifeline, we get thousands of calls on that 1-800-Key life number, so I'll call John up in the mountains and I said John, I mean trouble, he said good, how can I help you, and I said AT&T has our 800 number and they're not gonna give it back and they told me we said I'll fix it, he called me two hours later and he said you got it back, I said how'd you do that, he said I found out who the corporate attorney was at AT&T, I said what'd you say to him, I said to him look I'm a lawyer and I'm gonna sue you for a mother load of money and I've got a suit and I'm gonna win it except that I work for the crazy Christians in Florida and they say I have to talk to you before I sue you, I said well what did he say, he said he gave me the number back, it's so good what time he's sitting on his front porch up in the mountains and he said Brown you love me don't you and I said yeah and he said I love you too and he said the only time we get together is when you're in trouble, Jesus is kind of like that, I think my life would be a lot better except that when I'm in trouble I go running to him, he dispenses mercy and justice and when you're gonna stand before God, boy does that scare you before the time I know we're covered and all but I can see myself standing before God and he tells me stuff I wouldn't tell you because he knows my secrets and he will say do you got anybody to speak for you? I don't know about that time the counselor will come and put his hand on my shoulder and say father I took care of it on the cross and I justified. That's what it means Christmas, Christmas means the wonderful counselor game and you're justified and then finally I want you to note turn if you will to the 14th chapter of John I'm gonna start at the 15th verse not only did Isaiah say the coming Messiah supernatural Messiah would speak truth share of favor secure justice the coming Messiah would supply comfort and I this is the 16th verse and I will ice the father and he will give you another helper if you're using the NIV or the King James version that says counselor to be with you forever now who's that you drop down to the 18th verse I will not leave you orphans I will come to you do you hear about the Convention of Psychiatrist at one of the Disney resort hotels went on for a week the psychiatrist met and a pigeon got in the conference hall and it was three days for any of those guys would admit having seen it that's the way we are the bigots really bad and then finally we turned to him the font of comfort the dove the spirit the spirit even of Jesus who is our counselor we hear when Bev gave her testimony about David and all the stuff they've been through that was so that's so good I mean she was I thought no Bev don't don't lie to us boy she didn't I mean she told us all the bad stuff they've gone through our heart it was now God seemed to have deserted her and the guy that came in said your God sure didn't stick by and boy Bev's talking all this and then she comes to the end and she says and he was there

I one of my books was reprinted one I'd done a lot of years ago and they wanted me to go through it and edit it I didn't have to edit it but they wanted me to write a new introduction to it and I took out the old edition and looked at my picture and I thought good Lord what happened to that young man he had hair his lines no lines in this face so much and I looked at the new picture and I thought gosh no hair lines of pain but life lines too I've done stuff I never thought I'd do I've seen in ways I never thought I'd seen I've gone places I never thought I'd go I've lost my parents and my brother I felt more pain there I thought I would feel I've been so lonely sometimes I thought I'd die their times when I wanted to run away because it hurts so very bad but listen to me I'm an old guy and I bring my witness to you I never once had to do it alone I never once had to do it alone it's an old story you probably have heard Pete tell it it's a preacher's story took place in Scotland that really did take place there was a Scottish gentleman who was on his death bed and his pastor came to visit sat down at the chair by his bed and he said how you doing Mack and he said I'm okay I believe the right things but he says he said God's not very real to me and you can forget about Jesus said I pray I use the liturgy from the church of Scotland but I but Jesus isn't very real and his pastor said let me tell you what to do when you pray picture Jesus sitting in this chair where I'm sitting and just talk to him the way you're talking to me right now and then they talked about some of the things in the pastor left the next morning the phone rang in the church man's and the pastor picked it up and it was the daughter of the man he had visited the day before and she said Father died last night she said and pastor it happens so quickly he said I took in his dinner and then I came back into the room to get the dishes and he was gone and she said but a funny thing said his hand was resting on the chair by the bed you think about that.

Willow Creek Church is associated with the Presbyterian Church in America our website is www.WillowCreekChurch dot org and our phone number is 407 699 82 11