People Are Plan "A"

I love what Nathan shared uh during Lord's Supper, really profound, actually, about just receiving God, about letting him in.

I was talking to someone this last week, just a person that I'm kind of going to and asking advice because I want to grow in my relationship with God, so I'm always looking for people who have something I don't have.

I want to want to grow.

And uh and I was really asking this person about the Holy Spirit and wanting to go deeper with the Holy Spirit.

And she said, you know, the thing about the Holy Spirit is that he's a gentleman, and so he will only come in when you invite him in.

He will only enter when you when you ask him to.

And you know what Nathan shared about the times in our lives when we grow and we experience God or those moments where we're just open and we say, hey God, come in.

We invite him in.

And when we do that, individually as a church, he he shows up.

So I'm so glad to be part of a church that invites God's presence into everything we do.

You guys are amazing.

Um last week, we started a new series called The Story, and it's pretty simple.

We are exploring the story of Christmas, the story of Jesus coming into this world leading up to Christmas Eve.

And uh and I'm so excited to do this because it's a story that is as powerful as any story ever.

I mean, really, if you're gonna be honest, and categorize, create a list of the stories that have impacted humanity the most in history.

What stories have had the greatest, longest-reaching impact on the world we live in?

The story of Christmas, I don't know if it can be beat.

Maybe the story of the resurrection, and Jesus has both of those.

The story of Christmas.

It has inspired as much joy, as much life, as much passion and kindness and charity as any story that has ever existed.

Stories are powerful.

Stories can inspire us, stories can move us to change our lives, and they don't even have to be true for that to happen.

But if they are, if a story is powerful and moving and it's true, it goes into this whole other category.

It's a story that can not only change us as individuals, but it's a story that can change the world.

And that is the story of Jesus' birth.

The only problem we face with this story is it can grow tired, it can become routine.

The challenge is to let it be new and exciting in our lives because let's be honest, whether you've been following Jesus for years, or maybe you're new and this Jesus thing is just something you're thinking about, you're not sure yet, it doesn't matter.

You have heard this story before.

You have seen at least one or two nativities in your day.

You know the gist of the story of Jesus coming into this world.

And so what we want to do over the next few weeks leading up to Christmas Eve, we want to explore this story and look at it from several different angles, maybe think about it in ways we've never thought about it before so that it becomes new again.

So that we realize, maybe for the first time, or maybe it's us remembering how unbelievably unique and powerful and original the story of Jesus is.

Because I believe that if we can grab a hold of that, if we can come to grips with how unique and how powerful this story is, the implications for our lives are massive.

It can change us and it can give us what we need to know, how we can go about living our lives with God as a part of our lives.

If you think about it, we're all really good at judging stories.

Everyone in this room is a story connoisseur.

You are.

Because we have all grown up in a world that is inundated with stories.

Right now, in the United States alone, there are 862 television shows currently in production.

Now, that does not count shows that have already come and gone.

I'm not talking about the original Law and Order, okay, or Law and Order Criminal Intent, or Law and Order Texas, or whatever other Law and Order's have come and gone.

I'm just talking about the shows that are currently filming new episodes right now, 862.

That's just in the US alone.

Hollywood has produced over 44,000 feature-linked films.

There are 36,000 titles on Netflix right now.

And who knows how many books have been published in history?

All of them are trying to do the same thing, the same basic thing, to tell a compelling story, to tell you a story that you care about.

Very few succeed.

I mean, think about it.

How often do you see a TV show or read a book or experience some story that's being told and think to yourself, this is unlike any story I have ever heard before.

This is unlike any plot that I have ever witnessed before.

That almost never happens.

Just take movies alone.

Most movies don't even try to be original.

They know they don't have to be in order to entertain and to make money.

I never see superhero movies.

I never watch those.

But every once in a while, someone will come up to me and say, Hey, have you seen the new Batman or Spider-Man or whatever?

And I'm like, no, but I have a question.

Does Batman win?

Oh, he does.

Does he does he like almost lose?

But then it but he wins.

Okay, cool.

I just want to make sure.

I don't want to go and have that happen.

That never happens.

It's the same story every single time.

And we're okay with that.

We don't need it to be original.

I mean, you look at movies alone, that's just one form of storytelling.

They're almost always cliched, copy and paste type stories.

For example, and this is a name you've probably never associated with Christmas, but I hope that from today on you always will.

Tom Cruise, okay?

I have nothing against Tom.

His real name, by the way, is Thomas Mappether, just so you know.

But he changed it to Tom.

No one's born named Tom Cruise.

I mean, come on, it doesn't happen.

But Tom Cruise, he's been in a lot of movies, right?

Those of us who have been watching movies for a while, we've seen our fair share of Tom Cruise movies.

And originality is not what I would use to describe most Tom Cruise films.

Okay?

So if you're familiar with the movies and the legacy of Tom Cruise, really, because he's been doing it for quite a while, all of his movies fall into one of two categories.

I'm sure there are a few exceptions, there always are, but most of his movies, the general rule, one of two categories.

Category one, this is any Tom Cruise movie pre-1995.

Tom Cruise plays a young cocky, and then you just fill in the blank of the profession.

Okay, just whatever he is, who is incredibly talented.

He is naturally gifted at whatever he's doing, like no one else has ever been before.

But then he encounters a challenge and it's a struggle and he has a hard time, and at the very last minute, he puts it all together and he walks away victorious, okay?

That is all Tom Cruise's pre-1995 movies.

For example, Top Gun, okay?

Tom Cruise, Kelly McGuinness, What Happened to Her, two careers that went in very different directions.

Tom Cruise plays Maverick, a young, cocky pilot who is incredibly naturally talented, like the best pilot in the country.

But he encounters a challenge, a heartbreaking challenge when his friend Goose dies.

Goose, yeah.

But it's okay because in the end, he overcomes the challenge and he walks away victorious.

Days of thunder.

Tom Cruise plays a young, cocky race car driver.

He is he is a natural, he is as gifted as any race car driver there has ever been.

But early in his career, he gets in a really bad car accident.

It's a challenge, but it's okay because in the end, he puts it all together and he walks away victorious.

So good.

A few good men.

Tom Cruise plays a young cocky lawyer.

Now he is some kind of lawyer.

He is good, he is a natural, but he encounters this big challenge named Jack Nicholson.

And in the end, he overcomes Jack Nicholson with the truth.

That's important, the truth.

You can't handle it.

And he walks away victorious.

See, they're all the same.

Jerry Maguire.

Tom Cruise plays a young cocky sports agent.

And he is just insanely naturally gifted at what he's doing.

We need to mention that.

He is a he's a natural, but he encounters a challenge and he gets fired from his job, and it's okay.

He shows Cuba Gooding Jr.

the money, and they all walk away victorious.

That is Tom Cruise movie.

It's like Maverick just got a different job in every movie.

That's basically Maverick is a race car driver, Maverick's a sports agent, it's the same thing.

Now, a lot of his movies aren't that anymore because he's not as young as he used to be, but there's another category that the other Tom Cruise movies fall under, and that is simply this: three words, Tom Cruise runs.

That's it.

The whole movie, it's just a plot device to give Tom Cruise an excuse to run.

So, for example, one of his most recent movies, Edge of Tomorrow, it's just Tom Cruise running from explosions in a robot suit.

And and do yourself a favor, uh, YouTube, Google, search this when you get home.

Tom Cruise running, and there are video montages of him running, because it's in, it's he's this very intense run.

It's like blade hands, very aerodynamic runner.

All right, so there's that one.

Uh, if you saw War of the Worlds years ago, it's basically two hours of Tom Cruise running from aliens.

The whole movie is just a dead-on sprint.

There's a movie called Collateral.

I don't even remember what it's about, but he does a lot of running in the movie Collateral.

You guys can put that picture on the screen because it's just, again, the same run.

Tom Cruise runs.

And every Mission Impossible movie ever is just Tom Cruise Running from Explosions.

In fact, if the next Mission Impossible movie's title is just Tom Cruise Runs from Explosions 87, that would be a very accurate title he likes to run.

That is why, by the way, if you want my personal opinion, uh, The Firm is the quintessential Tom Cruise movie.

Because here's why.

Tom Cruise plays a young, cocky lawyer.

And he's very naturally gifted.

Okay?

He's amazing.

And he gets hired by this really prestigious firm because of his natural ability, but then he discovers they're up to no good and he decides to expose them.

And when they find out that he's going to expose them, they come after him, and what does he get to do?

He runs.

He runs.

You'll see it here, he just says Tom Cruise running for his life.

It's such a good thing, it's both categories come together.

Good movies.

A lot of those are really entertaining movies, but are they original?

No, not really.

Christmas and Tom Cruise.

There you go.

See, when a story comes along that is original, when when you witness a plot that has never been told before, that surprises you, that actually has the ability to catch you off guard, that that's something special.

In fact, you can take any decent story, and if it has a twist, a really good twist, it becomes a classic in our minds.

We love a good twist.

When a story has the ability to surprise us, it gets put into a whole other category.

And see, I think one of the reasons the story of Jesus, the story of Christmas, has had the staying power that it has, is because it's unlike any other story ever.

It is completely original.

It is not a copy-paste.

And it has a twist that no one saw coming.

Jesus surprised everyone.

He certainly surprised his mom, Mary.

She didn't see this coming.

We read about this in Luke chapter 1, verse 26.

Luke 1:26

In the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, Elizabeth was related to Mary and she was the mother of John the Baptist.

God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a village in Galilee, to a virgin named Mary.

She was engaged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of King David.

Gabriel appeared to her and said, Greetings, favored woman, the Lord is with you.

Now, if I were the angel, I would have used more specific language.

Because God is with you.

That can be taken several different ways.

Like God is with you in spirit.

He's along for the ride.

But no, no, Gabriel meant no, God is with you, growing inside of you right now.

And you understand her reaction.

Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean.

Don't be afraid, Mary, the angel told her.

For you have found favor with God.

You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you'll name him Jesus.

He will be very great.

He'll be called the Son of the Most High.

The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David, and he will reign over Israel forever.

The kingdom will never end.

Mary asked the angel, but how can this happen?

I'm a virgin.

You get the impression that she just sort of went deaf after the whole pregnancy bomb was dropped.

She's like, Yeah, son of the most high, uh, reign forever, sure.

But uh can we go back to that first part about me being pregnant?

Because I'm a virgin, and this is kind of unbelievable.

Now, here's what's interesting: there were prophecies about this.

Isaiah 7, verse 14 says it.

Isaiah 7:14

All right then, the Lord himself will give you the sign.

Look, the virgin will conceive a child.

The people were waiting for a Messiah, a Savior.

And they were told that the Messiah would be born of a virgin.

In fact, that verse goes on to say he will be called Emmanuel.

It doesn't mean he'll be named Emmanuel, that won't be his physical name, but he'll be called that.

That word Emmanuel means God with us.

So when the angel came and said, God is with you, literally, is fulfilling that prophecy.

But here's the thing: even if you grew up believing that, even if you're like Mary and you grew up waiting for the Messiah, expecting the Messiah, you would never imagine that you would be the one.

You would probably never imagine that your soon-to-be wife would be the one either.

And so Joseph was very surprised by Jesus.

He did not see Jesus coming.

Matthew 1.18 says, this is how Jesus the Messiah was born.

His mother Mary was engaged to be married to Joseph, but before the marriage took place, while she was still a virgin, she became pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Joseph, her fiance, was a good man and did not want to disgrace her publicly, so he decided to break the engagement quietly.

And as he considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream.

Joseph, son of David, the angel said, Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

Joseph had a hard time coming to terms with that.

It took some strong convincing.

The people in the country that Jesus was part of, they didn't see Jesus coming.

Not the way he did, because they had these ideas about who the Messiah would be, and those ideas were kind of cliched, the things you would imagine.

They thought the Messiah would be much more like Tom Cruise than like Jesus.

And so one of his early followers, a man named Philip, went to find a friend to tell his friend about Jesus.

And we see this in John chapter 1.

John 1 · chapter mention

Philip went to look for Nathaniel and told him, We have found the very person Moses and the prophets wrote about.

His name is Jesus.

He's the son of Joseph from Nazareth.

And I love Nathaniel's reply.

Nazareth, does anything good come out of Nazareth?

And see, if you understand Nazareth, it was this nowhere town.

I mean, it was a small, kind of way away from the hub of civilization type place.

Not a bad place, just not a place anyone would expect the Savior of the world to come from.

It'd be like if I told you that the Messiah was born in Waleska, okay?

Waleska's really nice.

I've been there.

I love Waleska, but even if you are a resident of Waleska and way to go making a drive, but if you are, you probably wouldn't expect the Messiah to be growing up in Waleska, right?

It's just not, it's not expected.

The people didn't see Jesus coming.

Even the people in Nazareth, even they didn't expect it.

They were shocked that the Messiah could come from their hometown.

We see Jesus go to Nazareth early in his ministry, Matthew chapter 13.

Matthew 13 · chapter mention

He returned to Nazareth, his hometown.

When he taught there in the synagogue, everyone was amazed and said, Where does he get this wisdom and the power to do miracles?

And then they scoffed, he's just the carpenter's son.

And by the way, I love that because Nazareth is a tiny place.

And the only dirt they have on Jesus, these people that have known him his whole life, is that he's just the carpenter's son.

They don't know some sin, they don't know some behavior, some personality flaw.

They can't find anything to use against Jesus other than the fact that he's just the carpenter's son.

That's all they've got.

And he goes on to say, we know Mary, his mother, and his brothers, James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas, all his sisters live right here among us.

Where did he learn all these things?

And they were deeply offended and refused to believe in him.

Because even if you're waiting for a Messiah, you would never suspect that the Messiah would be your next door neighbor.

You would never think the Messiah was that kid that you used to play hide and go seek with.

If you were the neighborhood bully, you would never expect the Messiah to be that one kid you used to beat up on.

You would not want that kid to become the Messiah.

That is bad news.

That is not the good news of Jesus.

That is the oh no, I punched the Messiah.

I'm in a lot of trouble.

Okay?

I love the fact that his own family struggled with this.

His brothers, for example.

Jesus had brothers and sisters, we saw it in that verse.

One of his brothers, his brother directly underneath him in the birth order, was James.

And James did not believe in Jesus during Jesus' ministry, not as the Savior.

He did become a Jesus follower after the resurrection.

He was one of the leaders of the early church, one of the first people to lose his life because of his faith in Jesus.

Can you imagine James coming to terms with the fact that his big brother is God?

What a nightmare for anyone that has an older sibling.

You know, there had to be some resentment.

He grew up in the shadow of Jesus.

Think about how hard that must have been.

The resentment, the conversations with his parents, you know, you guys, you guys think Jesus is just perfect.

You guys think he walks on water.

Yeah?

Kinda.

See, no one saw Jesus coming.

No one expected this man from the middle of nowhere, this carpenter from a family whose lineage was really important, but a family of no influence, a place of no influence.

And in a time when the nation of Israel was as unimportant politically as any time in their history, no one expected that to be the story, the plot that led to the Messiah being revealed to mankind.

See, Jesus' story was different.

It was unique.

This was not the Messiah they were expecting.

They didn't think it would play out the way it had played out, but the story, it's original.

It's unlike any story ever.

In fact, Romans 5 gives us a synopsis.

And this is this is a lot of verses, but we're just going to read through this and then sort of summarize it.

This gives us the blimp view of the story of Jesus.

And it's not a story that begins with his birth, it's a story that begins back at the beginning.

When Adam sinned, sin entered the world.

Adam's sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned.

You know, it's one of those things that I've had happen where I'm talking to someone and they'll start asking about your beliefs, and they'll say, like, so you believe people are born with sin?

And I'll say, Yeah, because I have children.

And and and it's funny because that actually offends people.

They'll say, Well, I don't, I just can't believe that people are born with sin.

And I'll just say, Well, okay, find me one that hasn't sinned.

Just go find one person that hasn't done it, and you can't, it just seems to lead me to believe that maybe we're born this way.

Still, everyone died from the time of Adam to the time of Moses.

I'm sorry, I skipped, didn't I?

I'll go back.

Yes, people sinned even before the law was given, but it was not counted as sin because there was not yet any law to break.

Still, everyone died from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even those who did not disobey an explicit commandment of God, as Adam did.

Now, Adam is a symbol, a representation of Christ who is yet to come.

There's a great difference between Adam's sin and God's gracious gift.

For the sin of this one man Adam brought death to many, but even greater is God's wonderful grace and his gift of forgiveness to many through this other man, Jesus Christ.

And the result of God's gracious gift is very different from the result of that one man's sin.

For Adam's sin led to condemnation, but God's free gift leads to our being made right with God, even though we are guilty of many sins.

For the sin of this one man, Adam, caused death to rule over many, but even greater is God's wonderful grace and his gift of righteousness.

For all who receive it will triumph over sin and death through this one man, Jesus Christ.

Yes, Adam's one sin brings condemnation for everyone, but Christ's one act of righteousness brings a right relationship with God and new life for everyone.

Because one person disobeyed God, many became sinners.

But because one other person obeyed God, many will be made righteous.

God's law was given so that all people could see how sinful they were, but as people sinned more and more, God's wonderful grace became more abundant.

So just as sin ruled over all people and brought them to death, now God's wonderful grace rules instead, giving us right standing with God and resulting in eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

That is the story of Jesus in a nutshell.

But it's a lot.

There's a lot there.

So if we were gonna break this down, if we were gonna do the sort of C spot run version, it would be simply this.

God made the world and it was perfect.

Then God made man and it stopped being perfect.

Man broke the world.

We sinned, we we broke it.

And here's the thing when you break it, you what?

You buy it.

We've all heard that.

You break it, you buy it.

When you break it, it's your responsibility to pay the price.

So because man broke what God made, it was man's responsibility to fix it.

And man tried.

Man tried the law, following all these rules, all these regulations that.

Would keep us from doing wrong to other people, but we we weren't very good at that.

Man tried religion, which is just another step to rules.

It's taking rules and applying it to faith.

Man tried to serve God and honor God through religion, but it didn't work.

It was all just motions with no heart.

No matter what man tried, man could not fix what man broke.

So God became a man so that man could fix what man broke.

God became a man and fixed it as a man.

So that man could pay the price for what man had done.

That's the blimp view of the story of Jesus.

And see, in that, in that is this twist.

It's this twist that no one expected.

It's this twist that is literally the greatest twist of any story in the history of stories.

It's the most shocking turn, the most unexpected plot development in any story ever told.

And it's that God became a man.

God became a man.

And all the prophecies about the Messiah, even though we can look at it and we can look back through hindsight and see that it's there, no one expected that.

No one expected God Himself to be a person.

That went against every conception of God that anyone had, not just the Jewish people.

The Jewish people believed if you looked at God in the eyes, in a face, you would die.

If that's how you believe God is, how can you even rationalize God in front of you in the flesh?

The Greeks believed that God, their concept of God, was so far removed from the world, he was so much greater than the world, he couldn't even directly interact with the world.

He couldn't do it.

So if that's your conception of God, how do you how do you come to grips with God being a person, becoming a human being?

The Romans, their idea of gods were so off.

They thought the gods were these horrible.

If you read the stories of you know, the Roman gods, it's just they're they're mean.

They're like the Greek gods.

They torture people, they hate people, they use people.

The Romans couldn't have pictured God being a person.

Yeah, Caesar said he was God.

Every time they had a Caesar, he would say, I'm God, and people would worship him, but they didn't believe he was God because those gods had very short life expectancies.

Those are some very unpowerful gods.

They're like, You're God, oh you're dead?

Uh yeah, you're God, sure.

Just don't kill us.

But no one believed that Caesar was God.

No one believed or could even imagine that God, the creator, the maker of everything, would be a person.

That's what happened that night that Jesus was born.

The story of Christmas: God Himself becomes a child.

I mean, think about that.

Jesus was a real child.

He wasn't pretending.

You know, when you see a baby and you talk to it and you start just talking like a baby, you don't, you don't think about it, but your voice instantly goes higher, and you just talk to that child and it's it's variant.

If that was Jesus, if he was just in the baby's body but knew everything already, he would have been so insulted all the time.

Just like, I understand every, you don't, I'm a I'm God.

Please stop goo-goo-ga-gaying to me, okay?

No, no, Jesus was a real baby.

He had to learn things, he had to learn what a tree is, he had to learn what the sun, what the sun is.

He's the one that made the trees, he's the one that made the sun.

This was a shocking twist in the plot of God that no one saw coming.

No one could have imagined God becoming a person because what is more unexpected than a big God becoming small?

What is more hard to believe than an all-powerful God, a God that can do anything, choosing, choosing to become something as powerless as a newborn child.

No one expected that.

It caught the world off guard.

It was a twist.

It was a twist that was unlike anything anyone had ever even dreamed of.

It's a twist that still shocks us to this day.

We we often have a much easier time believing Jesus is God than we do believing he was a person.

See, I I love, I love this twist in the story because we might read this and we might think, well, what on earth would motivate God to become a person?

If you were God, why would you want to be a person?

No, I would not.

I've been a person.

Been there, done that.

If I'm God, the last thing I want to do is take on flesh and be a human being and deal with all that comes along with life as one of us.

Surely we might think this must have been some last ditch effort.

This must have been some contingency plan that God had to put in place because nothing else he had tried had worked.

This was a Hail Mary, literally.

This was this was plan B or plan G or somewhere further down the alphabet.

But see, God never has to do anything.

You can't back God into a corner.

So God does what God wants to do.

It's just that what God wants to do is always good, it's always best because he's God and he knows.

And so God becoming a person was not plan B.

It was the plan all along.

In fact, Ephesians chapter 1, this is one of my favorite scriptures in the Bible.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

I've read it many times in here.

Verse 4 says, even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes.

God decided it was a choice.

He decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ.

This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.

This was the plan all along.

Before the world was created, he knew.

He knew that if he created us and put us in this world, we would break it.

He knew that.

And he did it anyway, and he knew that he would have to fix it.

That may seem like really irrational behavior.

But it's not.

I actually had an experience recently, I didn't even put two and two together until this week.

I love how God works like that.

But I saw these toys at a store and I knew my son would love these toys.

And so I bought them.

But I also knew my son would break them.

Because they're fragile and they're definitely designed for a few ages up from my son.

And he just plays with things like a five-year-old boy.

He is rough.

He is rough.

And so I bought them and I thought to myself, he's gonna break these.

And you know what?

He did.

He broke all of them within a couple of weeks.

But it's okay.

Because when I bought the toys, I bought glue.

At the exact same time.

In fact, the the glue I originally bought did not hold.

He broke them well enough that super glue wouldn't hold.

So I had to go to Hobbytown, USA.

I don't know if you've ever been there before.

I went once.

And I walked in and I said, I need some glue that's like otherworldly glue.

And they're like, oh, we've got some glue.

And I have this wonderful, it's like magic glue.

You put it, it's like plastic and it activates with an ultraviolet light.

It's the coolest thing I've ever experienced, other than God.

But it's awesome.

It's awesome, right?

So so here's the thing.

I knew he would break the toys.

I knew it.

But I did not want to deny him the joy of experiencing those because I knew he would break it, so I bought them anyway.

And when they break, I get excited.

Because I can fix it.

I have magic glue and I love it.

So he'll come to me, he'll be like, Dad, I broke it again.

I'm like, it's I'm excited.

I get to use my glue.

I get to be a hero to my son.

And in all seriousness, I actually get deep joy out of fixing something that he cannot fix himself.

And I actually hope as a father, with his permission and in the moments in life that he gives me that opportunity, that he gives me permission as he gets older.

I I hope for that to be part of our relationship for a long time.

I hope to be the one that he comes to when he can't fix it.

I love that.

See, that's God's heart for you.

Sin did not catch God off guard.

He knew when he made it we'd break it.

He already had a plan, he already had his magic glue.

It was named Jesus.

And he could have done it any way he wanted to.

He could have snapped his fingers and it could have been fixed.

He could have said a word and it could have been forever changed, but that's not the way he chose to do it.

He chose to become a human being, to be born as a child and to live among us and to fix things as one of us, paying the price for us.

Man broke it, so man had to fix it.

God became a man and fixed it as a man.

And here's how that applies to every one of us today.

See, that that means, the fact that that was God's original plan, that means that people have always been plan A for God.

People are plan A.

There's this idea in our understanding of God, and it's an idea I've heard, and it means well, and I understand it to a large degree.

It makes a lot of sense that people are plan B, that when a person has to get involved and fix something, it means God didn't do it.

That if you have a problem and God doesn't miraculously, instantaneously just fix it, and a person has to come along, a doctor or a counselor or a friend or a parent, it means that God didn't show up.

Somehow the fact that a person had to be the one doing the fixing means that God was less involved.

And so we think plan A is God just zapping things.

Plan A is God snapping his fingers and making something happen miraculously, and he does that.

He does it often.

He can do anything he wants.

Miracles happen more often than we realize.

I really believe that, but but God's plan A is us.

And I don't know this, but I wonder if there are times where the miraculous is plan B.

When there are times where we're plan A and we don't do what He's called us to do, and He's like, well, now I gotta do a miracle.

Okay.

When I had to, if you know, if the Israelites would have brought boats, I wouldn't have had to part that sea.

But they didn't bring boats.

They knew there was an ocean, they knew there was a sea, they should have thought that through.

Bring a raft, but whatever.

Do a miracle, because I love you.

No, no, people are plan A.

People are our plan A.

You think about the way people come to Jesus.

Yes, sometimes, sometimes it's miraculous, sometimes it is unbelievable.

And when that happens, it's so exciting.

I get so excited about hearing people experience a miracle in their lives.

Paul, for example, one of the most passionate followers of Jesus ever, came to Jesus in a completely miraculous way.

He was on his way to this place called Damascus.

He was there to persecute Christians.

He was not a Christian.

This is years after Jesus died and rose again and went up to heaven.

He never met Jesus in the flesh, but he met Jesus that day on the road.

A light shone in the sky.

It was so bright, it blinded him for several days.

And God spoke to him.

Jesus himself spoke to Paul, and Paul was forever changed.

Peter, though, was another very important leader in the early church.

Peter was the one that Jesus said, You're the one.

You're the one that's going to be like the captain of my team.

You're the one that I trust to be the leader when I'm gone, when I'm physically gone.

I'm going to leave you the Holy Spirit, I'm going to give you support, but you're the one that's going to do a lot of the work.

And you would think that if Peter was that important to the plan of God, if Peter was so vital to the health of the early church that surely God would not leave Peter knowing him into the hands of people.

Why would God take that chance?

But no, here's how Peter came to Jesus.

One day his brother Andrew met Jesus and recognized that Jesus was the one.

So he went to get Peter and brought Peter to Jesus, and that's how it happened.

It's a great story.

See, that's how the vast majority of people in this world know Jesus.

People are plan A.

People are our plan A.

God's primary agent for changing the world.

He has decided this.

It's us.

See, that means that you are plan A.

That means there is something in this world that's broken.

And you are God's plan A to fix it.

He's created you.

He's created you to have all the ability and the gifting and the personality.

He's made you the way you are because you are the perfect solution to a problem.

You are perfectly wired and put on this earth for such a time as this.

You are put here right now to do something very important.

You are God's plan A.

And if the church, if the people in this world who follow Jesus would just stop looking at problems and saying, why isn't God doing something about this?

But we would start looking at problems and saying, God has broken my heart about this, and maybe that's because I'm supposed to be the solution.

Maybe that's because I'm supposed to be the one that gets involved.

If that, if that was our heart, if that was our attitude, this world would be completely different.

When we look at issues and we say, why not God?

God looks at us and says, Why not you?

Because I made you.

And I crafted you.

And I wired you.

And I put you on this earth in this time because you are my plan A.

So please, please don't make me do a miracle because I'll do one.

But I'd rather use you.

I'd rather share the work with you.

I'd rather do it alongside you than do it for you.

See, that's how Jesus fixed the world, not for us, with us.

Alongside us.

He brought us in, he made us part of the solution to restore this world back to him.

It's beautiful.

Sometimes we feel like he gives us way too much credit.

But he loves us.

Jesus becoming a person proves to us that God's plan is people.

And I'm pretty sure you're a people.

And you're good people.

I love being part of this family.

And I just believe that the more, the more we believe that we are plan A for this community, alongside all the other amazing churches and people that are following Jesus in this community, the more we realize that we are plan A.

The government is not plan A.

It's not.

Some organization out there is not plan A.

We're not supposed to outsource helping people.

We are plan A, so we gotta be that.

We gotta be that.

Sunday mornings are an incredible celebration of what God has done for us.

And I we're really good at celebrating.

That's one of the things we we've got down at his hands, and I'm sure we'll get better at it, but we're good at that.

But Sunday mornings are the celebration that is designed to energize us to go out into the world we're part of and change it.

And I know what goes through a lot of our heads, not me, I'm not, you don't know me.

What can I do?

Well, what can you do?

I don't know.

But you can change a person's life.

And it might be something as simple as inviting them to Christmas Eve, honestly.

I mean, it might be you're like the wife who wrote that story today, and you're just supposed to keep nagging your husband over and over again every week until he comes.

But see, she was plan A.

Because he would not have come if he was not invited.

Maybe it has nothing to do with this church.

Maybe it's something completely separate, completely different, but there's someone that you work with, there's someone that you live close to, and they have an issue, and you are the one.

But you have to believe that about yourself.

You have to believe what God says about you.

You have to believe that the twist of the story of Jesus is not done.

People are still plan A.

So as a church, let's be plan A.

You with me?

All right.

All right, let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, we are so uh grateful that Jesus and Tom Cruise are very different.

Um, Jesus, we are so we are so thankful that your story is not is not a copy-paste, cliched story that we've heard over and over and over again.

We are so grateful that your story is unlike any other.

That you are you are God who gave up being God and all that went with it, all the privilege to become one of us, to live as one of us, to live with us.

And you didn't just come to this earth and tolerate us, you didn't just come to this earth and put up with us, you came to this world and you embraced us and you loved us, you saved us, and then you decided to make us your plan A for this world.

And that's an honor, God.

We don't, we don't feel like we can do it most of the time, but you do, and your opinion is the one that counts.

So I pray this morning that you would fill us with courage.

I pray that we would walk out of here courageous people, ready to do what you lead us to do.

When our hearts are broken for something, I pray that every one of us stops and says, Am I supposed to fix it?

Am I supposed to get involved?

Am I supposed to roll up my sleeves and jump into this?

And we trust you, God, to lead us and to let us know when we we should and shouldn't.

And we love you so much.

And we pray all this in your name, Jesus.

Amen.