Pastor Brodie Kalamen | The Wonder In The Story | December 7th, 2025

All right.

How many of you have been feeling the wonder of the moment this morning?

Just uh the wonder of Christmas.

And I pray that this is uh a series and this is a conversation that we're having that can't just be intellectual, it's not just cerebral, it's not something that's just taught, it's something that's caught.

And so all of us, uh, when we approach this kind of environment, when we come to church, I think it's important not only that we open our heart, our head to learn, like we we go into it into with our mind, but we also go into it with our soul.

And we open up our soul.

So would you just open your soul with me today, Father?

We just pray that uh our heart would be open, Lord, to receive, Lord, the wonder of our relationship with you, Lord, that we would just be caught in that moment of amazement, Lord, uh and awe of who you are.

What an awesome God.

Amen.

Amen.

Isaiah chapter 9, verse 6 says this it says, For us, for to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders, and he will be called the wonderful counselor, the mighty God, everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.

Isaiah 9:6

This is one of the most famous passages related to uh Christmas and the birth of Jesus, and it came seven to eight hundred years before his actual arrival, which is pretty incredible.

Seven to eight hundred years is not a short stint of time.

How many of you remember what you had for breakfast this morning?

Right?

It's just like it's just a moment, and this is one moment, it's probably one of the most impactful moments that would happen in history.

Literally, dates would change around this uh birth before Christ and after his after his death, and it's truly a wonder moment to think that we're celebrating the birth of God.

The birth of God.

How many of you are thankful that when we couldn't get to God, God got to us?

That's what's so amazing about Christmas.

I don't know what your traditions look like, but it should be centered about around the reality that a baby was born, his name is Jesus, and he's Emmanuel.

He's God with us.

And so the trees, the presents, the figgy pudding.

How many of you have ever had figgy pudding?

I don't think I have.

Figgy pudding all comes secondary to the reality that he is with us.

God is with us.

The Christmas story is actually very simple.

It's a simple story, but it is very deep.

It's like the analogy of an iceberg.

What you see on the top is a fraction of what is actually happening under the surface.

There's a whole lot more that's going on in this story, but you have to go deeper to explore and find out how much there is there.

In many ways, that's the story of Christmas.

If you're not careful, you get caught in the moment, you get caught in the familiarity, and you become familiar with the language and the places and the people and the times, and you don't realize that there's a whole lot more going on.

It's full of wonder, it's deeper, it's richer, and it's a more profound story than you and I could even understand today versus being in the present moment back at that time.

In fact, I don't know if you even noticed, but in Isaiah chapter 9, verse 6, in this passage, it doesn't say a son was born, it does say a child is born.

Isaiah 9:6

Why?

Because the son always was.

The child was born, the son was given.

And because it's a deeper story than we even consider, that God's salvation story happened from the very beginning.

When I look at the Christmas story, I see a story going backwards, the wrong direction from the very start.

How many of you think that when I serve God, I'll be in the right place at the right time with the right people, going the right way, and everything's gonna work itself out?

Well, Jesus' story didn't work that way.

When God uses people, he uses people, a lot of us would probably overlook.

How many of you have been overlooked before?

The apostle Peter is a great example, and I love him so much.

He's a great ex, he's a great illustration to me of someone who would have been overlooked.

He was brash, he was stubborn, he was a little arrogant, he uh at the same time he denied Christ three times.

He cut off a Roman soldier's ear, he was quick to the sword and quick and quick to retreat.

In fact, when Jesus was crucified, he went back to his old way of life, and yet he was the one Jesus said, On you, Peter, I'm gonna build my church.

And the gates of hell aren't gonna be able to prevail against it.

I would have totally overlooked Peter.

I don't know if I would have even had him as a connect group leader or working at the coffee bar.

I'd be like, You cut people's ears off, man.

You denied even knowing me three times when I was downtown.

Hey Peter, hey Peter, like the brashness and arrogance, and yet Jesus is like, I'm gonna use you, Peter.

When you study the story of Christmas at the bare bones of the story, it begins with a 15-year-old virgin girl and a Jewish carpenter.

At face value, they don't appear like great candidates either, that God could use them.

The fact that they're gonna shift humanity's story, shift history is shocking and nearly unbelievable.

They seem like the wrong people that God would use.

They aren't wealthy, they aren't famous, they aren't educated, they don't have royal blood flowing through their veins.

But within that moment where you look at them and you see nothing wondrous, that is the wonder that God can use things that don't seem full of wonder to make something wonderful.

God sees something that you and I just don't see.

When you were in school, do you remember splitting teams and finding two captains?

And each captain would have to decide who was on his team, and you would do the selection.

How many of you remember that?

That cool, kind of like core memory as a kid of being chosen or not.

We found the one who wasn't.

When you're looking for someone to choose someone, you look for a few criteria.

You're looking for like past performance.

How did they kick the ball last time?

How quick are they?

How strong are they?

Are they nimble?

Are they good working with people?

Are they gonna stick it out to the end?

Do they are they emotionally stable?

Like you're checking out that person.

If you're not looking at their past performance, you're looking at their present condition, and you're like, are they strong?

You know, when you were doing Red Rover, Red Rover, you just wanted the big kid on your team.

Red Rover calls Jack over and he's just like, oh, he's gonna run through.

I think that game, we're not allowed to play that game anymore in school.

You wanted the biggest kid.

You looked at all those criteria, but this is an encouragement for all of us that when God started his uh dream team, they had no past performance, they had no probable, possible present condition that would make them valuable, but he looked at their future potential.

And he sees what he can do with people when he puts his grace upon them.

Your history is not in charge of your destiny, your present situation is not in charge of your future destination.

We serve a God who can use anybody, and that includes me, and that includes you.

God calls the unqualified, he calls people who others think God could never use, and he makes them wondrous, full of wonder.

I love hearing people's stories because it just amazes me where people have come from and why they're in the current place that they're at and how they got there, and just like God did something that we could never do.

So let's take a moment, just look at the story, beginning with Mary.

If you go to it at the very beginning, she's 15 years old, a virgin, and it's very important a man, woman, when they come together, it's the male chromosome that creates the gender of the baby.

So Jesus at his birth is fully, is fully man and fully God.

He has divine DNA in his soul, in his body.

When he was born, he was born sinless, spotless.

He was born to die as a specific sacrifice.

Something for us to really wonder about, that God would send his son to become a sacrifice for us.

This month we celebrate his birth, but we all know that if it wasn't for the uh to be born of the virgin because he was uh God in the flesh, because he was going to pay for our sins and for the sins of the world, Mary made a great candidate.

And it wasn't just because she was a virgin, but because she had great faith in her heart.

The Bible says that God, where man looks at the outside appearance of an individual, God looks at the heart of the individual.

He gauges the intentions of an individual.

You can fool a lot of people, but you can't fool God.

And before the angel came to Mary, an angel Gabriel visited Zachariah.

Now, Zachariah was a priest in the house in God's temple, in the in the temple, and he was older and he was experienced and he was a professional, and when the angel came to Zechariah and Elizabeth, and he said, I'm gonna give you a child, and this child will be named John, and John is gonna be the forerunner of Jesus, he's gonna be announcing Jesus' coming.

Uh Zechariah, as an older professional, said, How can this be?

We're too old to have kids.

And disregard, like imagine challenging an angel.

And this was all in reference to John the Baptist.

And Luke 1 says that before Zechariah, that last word came out of Zechariah's mouth, his heart was exposed, and the angel said, I'm gonna just keep you quiet for nine months.

You're not gonna say another word.

For nine months, Zechariah could not speak a word because why?

Because it's better for you just to be silent if you're not in agreement with God's plan than to say something and just mess it up.

I'm telling you, if God speaks to you and you don't understand, just shh keep your mouth shut.

The same way that same angel goes to Mary and says, Mary, you're gonna have a baby.

You're gonna have a baby, you're gonna name his Jesus, you're gonna name him Jesus, and she also has a question.

Now, God isn't intimidated by your question, but he does care about the intent of your heart, and he knows Mary's got a big question.

She's like, How can this be?

I'm a virgin.

Good question.

A plus.

I don't understand.

And the angel says, My the Holy Spirit will come upon you and you will have a baby.

And both ask the same question, how it's going to happen, but the response is different.

Where Zachariah says, How can I?

How can this happen?

Mary responds with, How will this happen?

In other words, this will happen, but but I'm not sure how it's going to happen.

So instead of disregarding the message, she says, I am your humble servant.

May it be done as you've said.

I trust you.

Sometimes our experience puts us out of the realm of trust.

Instead of actually being like a youthful Mary who says, I don't get it, but I trust you.

I don't want this church, and I don't want to be myself, be someone who asks, How can this happen?

I want to be the one who asks, How will you do this?

That's more intriguing.

It's more curious, it's more like interested that this will occur.

I just don't understand how it's going to occur.

If God can do a lot of God can do a lot of things, he can part the Red Sea, He can tear down walls, he can spit in the ground, make mud, put it on a blind man's eye, and help him to see.

I don't know how he'll do it.

I want to know how he will do it.

Joseph, I think we all need to applaud for Joseph in this story.

Let's give Joseph a Joseph, another character.

It seems like the wrong person.

Again, the story going backwards.

Joseph, he had to stop and he had to really think about what was going on here.

He's engaged to Mary, he hasn't slept with her, and yet she's gonna have a child.

He's probably pretty smart putting two and two together and realizing this is a complicated situation.

I'm sure his Facebook account was it's complicated, really, really, really complicated.

So he's going to do what he thinks is the most honorable thing and divorce her quietly.

This is really impressive to me.

Because instead of applying the law to her, which could have resulted in her being stoned or being cast out from the city, he was a man of mercy and grace.

And I'm so glad that Jesus not only had a heavenly father who understood it, mercy and grace, but God gave him an earthly father that understood mercy and grace.

He was from the house of David.

And I'm sure that again was uh uh re that was representative of a prophetic word that the Savior would come out of the house of David.

But Joseph was also a carpenter, and he was used to building things, and Jesus himself was going to be building this church.

There are a lot of elements, and we think Joseph is maybe the wrong guy, but in fact, he is the right guy.

You move from there and you look at wrong people.

Well, maybe it's a wrong people story, and maybe we have a story where we don't feel like we're the right people, and then maybe we come from the wrong place.

This whole story is a little strange.

There isn't room in the inn, kind of a misstep.

I'm traveling, I don't have a reservation, I don't know where I'm gonna stay.

Kind of the plans got all screwy.

Traveling to a place called Bethlehem, known for olives, wheat, and sheep.

God's born in a barn.

Looks like the wrong place.

Things aren't going right.

Laid in a manger.

Jesus grew up in a region called Galilee.

Think of it like the Okanagan Valley, just a lot more desert-like.

In a little city called Nazareth, and it wraps around the Sea of Galilee.

And I know a lot of people romanticize the idea of a Sea of Galilee.

I was on the Sea of Galilee.

It's a more of a lake, and it's got bony, bony fish in it.

Fish that like you catch a five-pounder, and maybe you get like an ounce of meat off that thing.

It's not as impressive as we like to think of it.

In fact, John chapter 1, verse 45 and 46, Philip finds Nathaniel and tells him, and this is like the story out of the Matrix, we have found the one.

John 1:45

Moses wrote about him in the law.

The prophets have talked about him.

The prophets wrote about him.

His name's Jesus, he's from Nazareth, he's the son of a carpenter, his name's Joseph, and their response is Nazareth?

Can anything good come from here?

Wrong place.

They initially rejected him strictly on the place where he was from.

I don't know who you are today or where you've been in life, but sometimes the thought of where you came from in life can hold you back to where you believe that God is taking you.

Can anything good come out of Vernon?

We always pick on Vernon.

Can anything good come out of Rutland?

Can anything good come out of this marriage?

Out of this bankruptcy?

Can anything good come out of this sickness?

Go deeper and you look for the sur, look below the surface like that iceberg.

Underneath it all, if we're not careful, we can fall victim to the notion that where you come from will determine where you're going.

And it's not with the great not so with the grace of God over our life.

God has the ability to take what appears to be the wrong place and make it the right place.

And it's truly better to be marked by God in the wrong place than marketed by a man in the wrong place.

Many times that's how miraculous uh works out.

It starts out in a ridiculous place.

God takes the unlearned to challenge the learned.

He takes the uneducated to challenge the educated.

He takes the nobodies to make a difference with a somebody.

He takes the weak to make a difference for the strong.

He takes the unqualified to call them out and makes them qualified.

So we look at other places like Bethlehem.

Bethlehem at face value, it was thought to be the wrong place.

And I actually think it was the right place.

It's the house of bread.

Jesus said, I'm the bread of life.

I come out of Bethlehem, bro.

If you eat me, I'll no one will ever, ever get hungry again.

Micah chapter 5, verse 2 says, But you, Bethlehem, something.

Micah 5:2

Though you are smallest among the clans of Judah, the least, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.

What an amazing place.

It was prophesied that out of Bethlehem, Jesus, the Savior, the Messiah, would be born.

And I'm sure people are like, the house of David, the house where David came from, Bethlehem.

Out of that place, our Savior's gonna come.

What did David do?

He took out giants.

Who's this new king that's gonna come out of Bethlehem?

He's gonna take care of more than giants.

He's gonna take care of our problem with sin.

He's gonna take care of bondage.

He's gonna declare freedom over our lives.

He's gonna set us free.

I'm sure that when people heard Bethlehem, they were thinking, yeah, it's small, but out of small places come big things.

What about the wrong time?

So we got wrong people, wrong places, the timing.

How many of you know timing is never right?

It's always the wrong time.

Never enough time.

But God has a timing.

It seemed like the wrong people were there, the wrong place was there, it seemed like the wrong time, and I can see Mary from the very beginning saying, Hey, I'm just a teenager, and you're asking me to bring into this world the savior to the world.

Can you just sit in that for a moment?

The wonder of it.

Galatians chapter 4, verse 4 to 7 says, when the fullness of time had come, this idea that when the fullness, when the perfect time had come, God sent forth his son.

Galatians 4:4–7

In other words, God was waiting for the right time.

He's waiting.

He's thinking, is the world ready?

Is the earth ready?

Is the space ready?

Is the time ready?

Are the people ready?

Are the places ready?

Ah, the time is ready.

Born of a woman, born under the law, redeem to redeem those who are under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.

And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, by which we cry Abba Father.

So you are no longer a slave but a son.

And if a son, you're an heir to and through God.

The full time, fullness of time, the perfect time, God sent his son Jesus.

And that's great news.

And it appeared to be the wrong time, but it was actually the right time.

When you look at the world on many fronts politically, it was a time when the Roman Empire, let's hear it for the Roman Empire.

No, God talked about the Roman Empire, was leading the charge as a worldwide power, and they were persecuting those who would not call Caesar God.

So there was persecution for those who would not call Caesar God, but they were sympathetic to the Jews politically.

When Christianity started, they thought it was just another sect of Judaism, and they thought, you know what, we're gonna lay off these Jews and their different sects and their different disagreements, and in fact, we're gonna let them deal with it and handle it themselves, and it created an opportunity for Christianity to actually grow within the Roman Empire.

In fact, the earliest persecution didn't come from other Romans, it actually came from the Jewish community towards their own people.

Culturally, Alexander the Great had conquered the world, Greek language had been brought into all of the major centers, had spread, reading, writing, letters were being drafted, and education was paramount.

In fact, at this point, letters that were able to be transcribed could be read by most of the people in that whole region, discussed and conversed.

Spiritually, one theologian said this: he said, Where Socrates and Aristotle plowed the ground for the human heart, Jesus and his followers came through and they planted the seed.

People were open to the word of God like nothing before.

In Romans chapter 5, again, you read this point.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

It says this, you see, at just the right time, would you say the right time?

Right time when we were still powerless.

Christ died for the ungodly.

Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person, someone might possibly would dare to die.

But God demonstrated his own love for us in this.

While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

When I was all wrong, Christ made us all right.

And it looks like the timing was all wrong, but the timing was all right.

And when we look at the Christmas story, you can be caught in the wonder of the angels and the story of the virgin birth and the story of the gifts and the magi and the star that led to Bethlehem.

You can be wondrous about all the events leading up to Jesus' birth, but the fact of part of the wonder being in the fact that God doesn't use your right time and your right place and your right people.

In fact, God uses what we consider to be the wrong people in the wrong place at the wrong time to make his most eventful uh arrival.

That is part of the wonder of Christmas.

The right timing isn't always our timing.

And the right in the Christmas story, it looks like all the wrong things leading to a wrong event actually was God using the right things to lead to the right event.

Jesus was created and born on purpose, for a purpose, and his message came with intention for you and I.

And part of the wonder of this message is that you and I might think that we're in the wrong place.

And you and I are at the wrong time, and you and I are the wrong people, but God's intention towards his own family and his own child is similar to his intention for you.

That as we learn today, that before the child was even in the hearts of our us, God had the child in his heart from the very beginning.

Before we were even formed in our mother's womb, God knew and put a plan out for our lives.

And God doesn't make mistakes.

You would look at this story and you'd see a ton of mistakes, a ton of things that we in our mind would do differently.

Maybe use someone with more uh notoriety than Joseph and Mary.

Maybe use put them in a place of influence and power instead of Bethlehem and Nazareth.

What about a timing that would occur that would where the where the empire was at its weakest that God could bring in someone to be the strongest, and he could come in as a king.

But instead, God does it his way.

So the wonder in Christmas is that you might say I'm the wrong person, but Christmas says differently, I'll make you the right person.

It might say that I'm in the wrong place, but Christmas might say differently that you're in the right place.

And you might say, I'm in the wrong time.

But this Christmas story says you are in the right time.

And today is your day.

And today is your day for salvation, and there's no better time than the now time.

Would you stand with me today?

Everyone challenged the people, the place, the timing.

And God says, My plans are the best plans.

How many of you are just gonna submit to his plan?

And they're not just for two thousand years ago, they're for us today.

And so, similar to the Christmas story, there's an invitation for us to actually accept his place, his purpose, his timing for us and for our lives.

Would you bow your heads with me?

Thank you, Father, for the wonder of Christmas.

Thank you for the wonder of this moment and the reminder, Father, that your way is always the right way.

And Father, we may look at our lives today, and we may see all the error and all the I wish it was different scenarios.

But the fact, Father, that we're here today, we're in this church, with this community, with these people at this time in this city, Lord, today we just submit that we're like, we're in the right place at the right time with the right people.

And even though we may not understand it, we're not gonna ask, how can?

We're gonna say, how will you use this moment to make a difference, Lord, for my life and for the life of future generations.

If you're here with me today and you're looking at this story, and you're saying, it sounds like a simple story, but it is deep.

I would say that this invitation and this invitation towards salvation is simple, but it is also deep.

I think of it like the ABCs, A, is you have to accept the fact that we've lived our life in a way that is putting us first.

And we have to accept that our way is not the right way, and that we have sinned, we've missed the mark by doing our own thing.

And B, we need to believe, we need to believe that Jesus came to the earth and took upon himself the penalty for our sins.

That if we confess that we are a sinner, that we've gone our own way, and we confess him as Lord, he will forgive us our sins and place salvation in our heart and lead us into salvation.

And if you're here today and you're looking at the story of Christmas and the advent of Jesus, and you may have never seen the story this way, but you're recognizing something that's resonating in your spirit, and you're suggesting today that I need to be a part of that story for my own life.

I need to have that author of creation illustrating and demonstrating salvation in my life with every head bowed and eye closed.

Would you just raise your hand just between you and me today?

Anyone here, just be bold enough to raise your hand nice and tall for me to see.

I see that hand.

Anyone else today?

I see that hand.

Anyone else today?

I'm gonna take a moment.

You want to become a part of this story?

Let's pray together as a church on behalf of these two that are making a decision to welcome the gift of this invitation of salvation.

Say, Jesus, we accept today our need of you.

I understand that I have gone my own way, and I choose today to repent and turn from that way to follow you.

I believe today that Jesus, you are the Son of God, and you paid the penalty for my sin on the cross, and I confess today that you are my Lord and you are my Savior.

Fill me with that salvation, the joy, the peace, the abundant life that's found in you.

Thank you for loving me enough to come for me.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Let's give the Lord a round of applause today.