Advent Counselor

Isaiah 9:6-7 - Advent II Midweek - December 11, 2013           
His Name Shall Be Called Counselor

The prophet Isaiah preached that the God who speaks threats against sin is the very God who covers sin.  How wonderful!  He preached that the God whose thoughts are higher above our thoughts than the heavens are above the earth is the same God who makes his thoughts wholly accessible by sending his Son to be our Savior.  How wonderful!  For Jesus’ sake, God simplifies his thoughts of eternal wisdom so that even a child can understand him: “Come now, and let us reason together,” says the Lord, “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool” (Isaiah 1:18).  The prophet Isaiah further prophesies that the God of glory who makes such wonderful promises is the God who will lay aside his glory and dwell with man in order to keep his promises.  He will be our Immanuel – God with us.  He will reveal his glory not with riches and fame, not with pleasures and admiration from those around us.  No, but in suffering; in rejection.  He will lay aside his glory in order to reveal his glory on the cross.  There God will be glorified because there God will reconcile himself to sinners.  How wonderful! 

Too wonderful.  It is more than we can bear.  It is too much to believe.  And this is not because it is so complicated, but because it is insultingly simple.  God hates sin.  It offends him.  He is right to punish it.  He is right to demand righteousness from us.  And yet in his wisdom he says that it is right to send his Son to fulfill what we left undone, and to suffer what we deserved.  God switches places with willfully disobedient sinners.  He himself takes our punishment and gives us eternal life.   He takes our shame and gives us his glorious robe of righteousness.  He sees our stained robes – he calls them scarlet – crimson – stained with violence – and with his scarlet and crimson blood shed in innocence he makes our robes white.  How wonderful!  He requires nothing of us.  He gives us everything.  He requires everything of his Son, and gains for himself a people made holy by faith in Christ.  How wonderful. 

But I call it insultingly simple because it insults our flesh.  Our flesh wants to make it more complicated.  God insists on making it simple.  God’s wonderful wisdom is insulting to our flesh for two reasons.  (1) God’s mercy requires that we give up – indeed, repent of – our greatest deeds of righteousness.  And (2) God’s mercy can only be known in suffering.  Just as Christ revealed God’s glory by laying his own aside, so he also makes us to share in God’s glory by making us to share in his suffering.  And that is why we need him who is called Wonderful also to be our Counselor. 

God counsels us by teaching us.  By nature, and by habit, we are always trying to compliment the certainty of faith with the certainty of good works.  How do I know for sure that God is with me and not against me?  Well, I am living the life that he wants.  It’s in the back of our minds.  We can’t get it out.  And if a 5 year old struggles not to take a candy cane from the tree, and a 17 year old struggles not to day-dream about what 17 year olds day dream about, then just as surely he who lives in the flesh no matter how old he is struggles with this self-righteousness.  That is what makes the gospel so wonderful – so radical.  It requires nothing of us.  It accepts nothing from the flesh.  It asks for nothing.  Not even for some first step or for a little steam on the way.  The Gospel gives everything – both what the flesh won’t give and what the flesh tries to give.  Repentance is not our part and forgiveness God’s part.  No, he works both.  We cannot give up on our own righteousness unless Christ completely gives us his own.  And he does. 

In Psalm 32, we get those words in the Divine Service, “I said I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and You forgave the iniquity of my sin.”  This Psalm speaks of the blessedness of him who does not keep silent about his sin, but confesses them.  Because it is him who confesses himself a sinner with nothing to offer God to whom God imputes no iniquity, but pardons and welcomes and receives.  What compels us to make such a confession but Jesus, who is himself our Counselor.  In this Psalm the same word for “Counsel” as in Isaiah 9 is used.  God says to those who confess their sins:

I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will guide (counsel) you with My eye. 

Christ instructs us.  He is our counselor.  He counsels us not simply by giving us good advice and encouraging us.  He counsels us by teaching us to let go of all that we are and have and think we deserve, and to find God’s favor in him alone.  “I will counsel you with my eye.  I will show you what I see.  I see God who is pleased with everything I do. And I will show him to you.  Because what I do I do for you” 

Christ counsels us by making the gospel so simple.  

But we still have ways of making it complicated.  Particularly when we must suffer.  We by nature judge according to what we understand.  God’s law is written on our hearts – albeit only dimly, because of our sinful corruption – and so we have some notion of justice.  We depend on this notion.  We understand reward and punishment.  And that is why we are often confused when we must suffer.  Are we being punished?  Mercy ought to bring about pleasure, not pain.  Pain equals punishment, not mercy.  Right?  But what do we know of mercy?  What can we know of mercy until we have seen the mind of God?  And so that’s where we must return – not to what we can figure out, but to where Christ counsels us with his eye.  By our own reckoning, our suffering seems to be at the very best senseless.  But by Christ’s counsel, by his instruction, we see that all we must endure is designed by our gracious Father to drive us closer to what is truly wonderful. 

King David says in Psalm 139, concerning God’s constant care for him: “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it.”  How true.  It is too wonderful.  We cannot attain it.  It is too high above us.  And that is why Christ counsels us by coming down to us.  We don’t figure out the mind of God by wondering why he allows this and that.  But by knowing with certainty why and for what purpose he sent his Son to suffer in our place.  Christ serves us in such a way that he makes a mockery of what we think we know about higher things.  If we want to know what is above, why God does what he does, we must come to know him in things that are below, that are common and despised and avoided by the world.  We need Jesus to redefine for us what wonderful is.  It is not where the righteous are rewarded.  It is where the sinner is forgiven.  It is not where the mighty are confirmed in their strength, or the wise confirmed in their cleverness, but where they are cast down from their seats – where the hungry are fed, where the lowly and afflicted are exalted.  

Jesus counsels us concerning the mind of God – that is, concerning what God thinks of you and why he thinks that of you.  And he does this by delivering to you in the means of grace God’s eternal favor. This is the wonder that man cannot understand: that God is good to us – that he gives us every good thing not because we have earned it, but because he has earned it for us. 

We often want to see the kingdom in more glory. More proof in our lives that we are blessed by God. 

But God’s kingdom and favor will not be found here and there (Gospel Lesson).  It will be found within – where God speaks peace to our conscience in the forgiveness of our sins. 

God hidden in wondrous incarnation. 

God hidden in wondrous means of grace. 

This is wonderful!  But its wonders can only be loved and received if we have our Savior, our Mighty God with us, counseling us, teaching us that what is so is so.  And he does.  He meets us in our suffering, our guilt, our shame, our weakness.  Just as he met the world – light shining in darkness – so he meets our hearts. 

He know our pain and struggle and doubt. 

“The Lord God has given Me
The tongue of the learned,
That I should know how to speak
A word in season to him who is weary" (Isaiah 50:4a).

"Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching" (2 Timothy 4:2).

It is his tongue that speaks to you today just as it his eye that guides you.  He is your counselor.