Hope in a Desperate Time

Amen.

Alright, well, hello again.

Hello again.

Uh, real serious question.

Anyone have Netflix in the room?

Okay.

So I'm guessing if you have Netflix or something like that, you've probably binge watched a television show at some point in time.

You know what I'm talking about?

Binge watching is where you sit down and you plan on watching maybe one episode or 30 minutes an hour, and then like six hours later, you kind of wake up and go, what just happened?

Where am I?

Why am I still in front of my TV?

Right?

Whenever Megan and I first got married over 10 years ago, we could not afford uh cable television.

We actually couldn't afford a lot of things, but cable TV was one of those.

We did have a DVD player though.

Someone got us that for our uh our wedding gift.

And I remember early on in our marriage, the first few months, someone, one of my friends, brought us season one of the show 24 on DVD.

Any any Jack Bauer fans, you know, from 24?

Yeah.

He's okay.

So we sat down and and we looked at the at the DVD case and it said 24 episodes.

The show 24 had 24 episodes a season, and I'm like, 24 episodes, that's that's almost 24 hours of of TV, and we'll probably finish this in a few months.

You know, we'll watch one every other night or so, and a couple months later we'll be ready for season two.

The show had been on for like four years.

We had never seen an episode, and then three days later, we finished season one.

Three days.

I mean, it was like it was a blur.

And then all of a sudden we were like junkies.

We were like, I need season two, and who do we know that has season three?

And we caught up to the whole show.

Four years worth, we caught up in like a month.

It was it was kind of embarrassing, I'll be honest with you.

And I remember when we had to adjust from binge watching, watching several episodes at a time, to being caught up with the live show and having to wait a week, like watching one episode, and then it ends on a cliffhanger like those shows always do, and then we have to wait a week to watch the next episode.

That was that was unbearable.

That was awful.

And we we finally got over 24, we finally kicked that habit.

We looked at each other and said, We're never doing this again.

We are never getting this invested in a stupid TV show.

And then two years later, someone brought us season one of Lost.

And it was like things just spiraled out of control from there.

That show had us for years.

There's nothing like a good story that captivates us.

A really good story, doesn't matter if it's a book, it doesn't matter if it's TV, a movie, or just a person sitting across a table.

A really good story, it does something to us.

It stirs things inside of us, it holds us and holds our attention like few things can.

A powerful story can inspire us.

A powerful story can convict us, it can cause us to rethink life, to change our mindset, to change our goals.

That's how powerful a story can be.

I heard a man once say that the person with the best story shapes the culture.

I think maybe that's why Jesus has shaped culture like no other person in history, because Jesus has the best story.

If you think about his life, it's really not fair.

If if anyone else who's ever lived has to compare their life story to Jesus's, it just doesn't, it just doesn't hold up.

And there are some people that have lived some really incredible lives.

But you compare it to Jesus and it's it's hard.

I mean, if you're gonna go highlight real and take Jesus' top ten and compare it with anyone else's, it just it's it's embarrassing.

It's one of those cringeworthy moments.

We're like, yours is pretty good, but his is like it's Jesus, man.

In fact, the only way to make it even seem fair would be to divide Jesus' life into segments.

Say, okay, we'll just look at the three years of his ministry or just his resurrection and after, or maybe just the story of his birth.

And even then, his story, even if you divide it into pieces, his story is the best.

There's never been a story more powerful than the story of Jesus.

Just the story of his birth alone has inspired Christmas.

I know there's this big cultural thing right now where our culture wants to pretend like Jesus and Christmas don't go hand in hand, and I get that.

Some people get mad at Starbucks.

Starbucks is not a church, okay?

Well, I don't know why if you're familiar with the Red Cup controversy, right?

It's a red cup, but whatever.

But but there is this push right now in culture to sort of pretend like Jesus and Christmas aren't the same thing.

Like he is not the reason for all the joy and the cheer and the love and the laughter and the family and all the hope that is associated with this time of the year.

And honestly, it doesn't even matter to me if people pretend, because it's the truth.

Jesus is the inspiration for every good thing that's happening in the world right now.

I mean, Jesus, he's the one that started all of this.

We would not have Christmas if we didn't have Jesus.

The story of God coming into this world is what's inspired so much joy, so much life, so much love.

And so for the next few weeks leading up to Christmas Eve, we're gonna explore that story.

We're gonna spend some time discussing the greatest story in history.

And maybe you're here and you've grown up in church and you've heard this story so many times, and you're saying, hey, I've seen the Nativity scene, I understand the story, I'm good.

You might be tempted to mentally check out, but what my hope is for you is simply this that you would see it like you're seeing it for the first time.

That you would see new angles, that you would see it in a new way, and it would come to life for you almost like you're you're hearing it, seeing it for the very first time.

My son is five, and Christmas is still so new to him.

There are songs he has never sung.

There are Christmas movies he has never seen.

He has no idea who Clark Griswold is yet.

He doesn't even know.

He doesn't know.

And he's five, so it's not in a it's not appropriate for his his age, but one day he'll know.

There's experiences and traditions that he has never had associated with Christmas, and it's so so cool to watch because right now, every year, every Christmas, it's it's new to him.

There's new layers that are revealed, and he just gets more and more excited.

I know that's going to keep happening until one day, naturally, he feels like he's done it all.

He's heard it all, he's seen it all.

And the temptation there is to grow apathetic.

For it's become routine.

And my hope is that for all of us, the Christmas story comes to life in a new way because it is powerful.

Maybe you're here and you're not sure if it's a true story.

You're sort of figuring this whole Jesus thing out, maybe you're just curious and whatever, and that's okay if you're not certain that it's true.

Fake stories can still inspire.

I cried once during Lord of the Rings, one time.

Pretty sure that's fiction.

Almost 100% certain that's a fictional story.

And if you'll just, if you'll just hear the story and think about it and let it sink in, you might find yourself not only inspired by it, but even convinced of its truth.

Because I believe, with every fiber of my being, that every aspect of the story of Jesus, even the most unbelievable aspects, are true.

And here's here's the amazing thing that happens.

If you take a story that's powerful and inspiring and challenging and uplifting, and it just so happens to be fake, it can still inspire.

It can still change some things.

But if you take a story that's powerful and convicting and uplifting and challenging, and it's true, well, that puts it in a whole other category.

See, a story like that can change everything.

A story like that can cause us to believe more, it can cause us to desire greater, it can cause us to live differently.

And so we're gonna explore the story of Jesus, the story of his entrance into this world, because I believe it's the greatest story ever told.

Anyone else up for exploring it for the next few weeks?

Excited?

I am.

It'd have been really weird if everyone would have said no, we really don't want to.

Like, oh, okay, well, kind of already planned it, so just hold on.

If you're gonna really dive into a story, there are some things you need to understand, right?

You need to understand the characters.

You need to know who is in the story.

Who are who's who are the people that are the main actors on the stage?

And today we're gonna look at a character that is never really associated with the Christmas story, but he totally plays a huge part.

He's someone that no one ever talks about.

He's someone that's barely mentioned in scripture, but his story is so closely entwined with the story of Jesus that we almost need to know his story to understand the significance of when Jesus arrived and the situation that was going on when he showed up in our world.

So we're gonna kind of look at an unaccredited actor in the Christmas story.

That happens in movies, by the way.

Someone will land a role in a movie and they'll they'll show up on set and they'll call their mom and dad and say, Dad, I got the big part.

Mom, I'm in the movie, just wait till it comes out in theaters, and then they go to the theater and they're not in it.

They didn't make the final cut.

They're an unaccredited actor.

They still technically get some credit, but no one ever sees them.

There are people like that in the Christmas story as well.

Today we're gonna look at one of those people.

Number two, we're gonna look at the setting of Christmas.

And actually, this character, this character that most of us have never heard about before, this character deeply affects the setting of the world that Jesus comes into.

Because you have to understand the setting in order to understand the story.

If you don't know the setting, you can't understand the behavior and the motivations of the characters in the story.

Anyone ever had an extreme change in the setting of your life?

You moved, you moved to a different location, a place so different that it was like noticeably different.

I moved several times growing up.

I went to three schools in seventh grade or eighth grade, three schools as a sophomore, it was a lot.

And the most significant setting change I ever had was moving to Wisconsin.

And not even like southern Wisconsin, but northern Wisconsin might as well be Canada, Wisconsin.

That's where I moved.

And if you're from that part of the country, do not get offended by what I'm about to say.

But you might get offended by what I'm about to say.

But I'm saying this from experience, having lived there, the people in the far north, they're just not as sugary sweet as the people in the south.

They're just not.

Now, I'm not saying they don't have as high character, absolutely.

They are kind, they are gracious, they are they are really good people.

They're just not as nice to you when you talk to them.

And it's not their fault.

It's not their fault.

And if if you're from like Wisconsin and you're mad at me right now, you're just proving my point, so you gotta calm down.

But but I'm saying this from experience.

If you lived there, if you I'm way less nice because I spent two years in Wisconsin.

Had I spent 10 years, you'd hate me.

Because I it's like a frozen wasteland.

If you grew up there, you would understand why they don't say things like we say in the South.

They don't say things like, oh, bless your heart.

You don't say that when you're frozen.

Like, I moved there in January when I was 12 years old, and I'm not exaggerating, it was one of the coldest winters they had had in a long time, and it did not get above zero degrees for three weeks.

And I remember thinking, as a 12-year-old, why did people settle here?

I knew American history well enough to go, well, they settled here before electricity, before there was heat.

I've been to Iowa, there's plenty of room.

Missouri, tons of open space, 400 people live in Arkansas.

Why did they not continue going south?

It doesn't make any sense.

They said, no, we're gonna stay here where the lakes freeze solid.

Literally, the the lake that we lived on, we lived on a big lake, froze so solid during the winter, three feet thick, that they they brought trucks onto the ice and they built a racetrack on the ice.

That is a horrible idea, but but it's so cold it actually works.

I mean, that's where we lived.

I remember it snowed three feet in the first month that I lived there.

Three feet of snow.

Very few of us have even seen three feet of snow, and we did not get off school the next day.

If one snowflake touches the ground in Georgia, school is canceled for a month, right?

We're like proud of that.

It's not just school, life.

Life.

We all just freak out if it might snow, and it snowed three feet, and I didn't get to miss school.

So just imagine your childhood.

You're a young child, you wake up and you look out the window, and there's three feet of snow, but you don't get to build a snowman, you don't get to take off school and have fun in the snow.

You get to go to school and stare out those stupid school windows at all the snow you could be playing in.

If that was your childhood, you would not grow up sweet either.

See, the setting, the setting they grow up in, it affects them.

We have to understand the setting of a story to understand the characters, to understand their motivations and why they are the way they are.

And if we want to understand the story of Jesus, if we want to see it with new eyes, let it become fresh to us.

We need to greatly understand the setting.

And there's this one character we're gonna look at in a second that affects it very much.

If you could describe the setting of the world Jesus came into, you wouldn't use words like peaceful.

Now, sometimes we we think about that because we've seen the nativity scene, and it seems like a very peaceful moment.

I've been to two live births, um, and it was not peaceful at all.

And that one had live animals, but if you look at a nativity scene, they seem really well behaved, like it's a trained goat, it's a trained donkey, they're just laying there.

Mary doesn't even look tired.

Jesus is never crying in a nativity scene.

It seems like this peaceful, serene moment, and maybe, who knows, maybe that moment was.

But the world at that time was not.

The world that Jesus came into, the setting of his existence on this earth, it was anything but peaceful.

Jesus was born and grew up in the Middle East, and it was just as volatile in his day as it is today.

I know that sounds like an exaggeration, because we know what's happening in Syria and Iraq and places like that, but in Jesus' time, it was just as volatile, it was just as violent, it was just as war-torn.

In fact, 30 years after Jesus' life on this earth was complete, a war broke out between the Jewish people and Rome.

And that war resulted in one million deaths.

The city of Jerusalem was completely destroyed, the temple in Jerusalem was completely and utterly demolished.

In fact, before he died, Jesus predicted that very thing.

In Mark chapter 13, Jesus says this.

Mark 13 · chapter mention

As they were leaving the temple that day, one of his disciples said, Teacher, look at these magnificent buildings and look at the impressive stones in the walls.

And Jesus replies, Yes, look at these great buildings, but they will be completely demolished.

Not one stone will be left on top of another.

See, the world in that time was anything but peaceful.

It was like a powder keg.

And the moment that Jesus came into the world, it was reaching a boiling point.

See, the Jewish people desired political freedom more than anything else.

If you know the history of the nation of Israel, you know that it was a history full of occupation by other nations.

They were ruled by other nations.

They had brief moments of independence, but they didn't last very long.

In 700 BC, the Assyrians conquered Israel.

And then a few years later, the Babylonians conquered the Assyrians and the Israelites changed hands.

And then years later, the Persians conquered the Babylonians, and the same thing happened again.

And then the Greeks conquered the Persians, same thing happened.

And then for a brief period, for 99 years, Israel broke free of Greece and had independence.

But then Rome showed up.

And when Rome showed up, you tended to lose.

Rome took over, and Israel became part of Rome.

And they despised Rome.

The one thing they wanted was freedom, and they had it.

They had it for 99 years, and Rome ruined that.

And so the one thing they longed for was that independence.

And it's understandable.

The one thing they desired most was to be free again, and they only had one hope for that freedom.

And it was a savior.

It was this person they called the Messiah.

A person that was prophesied in Scripture, a person that was promised to them that would come and rescue them.

And they believed they needed rescued from a government.

We do that as people all the time.

What we believe we need rescued from isn't actually what we need rescued from.

We really need rescued from the power of sin, the power of death, but people didn't even think that was a power that could be defeated.

So it only makes sense that they thought that the rescuing was going to be from corruption and from the oppression of the Roman government.

They desired this Messiah.

The Messiah was spoken about often in Scripture.

Moses spoke about him in Deuteronomy 18.

Then the Lord said to me, What they have said is right, I will raise up a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites, and I'll put my words in his mouth, and he will tell the people everything I command him.

Throughout the Old Testament, there's more and more prophecies.

Isaiah 7.14 says, All right then, the Lord himself will give you the sign.

Look, the virgin will conceive a child.

She will give birth to a son, and we'll call him Emmanuel, which means God is with us.

Micah 5:2, but you, O Bethlehem Ephrata, are only a small village among all the people of Judah, yet a ruler of Israel will come from you, whose origins are in the distant past.

Micah 5:2

Speaking about Jesus being born in Bethlehem.

Jeremiah 23, 5, for the time is coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up a righteous descendant from King David's line.

He will be a king who rules without with wisdom.

He will do what is just and right throughout the land.

Often, if you see Jesus in Scripture, people are shouting to him, Son of David, son of David, because Jesus came from the lineage of King David.

There were all these prophecies.

As time went on, the people began to associate the Messiah with a political idea.

Their idea of the Messiah was a man who would free them from the rule of Rome and set up Israel as a sovereign nation once more.

They had this very earthly idea of the Messiah, and even though some of their ideas about the Messiah were misplaced, their desire for a savior had never been greater.

Their anticipation of the Messiah had never been higher.

They were desperate for a savior.

And honestly, if you want to sum up the setting that Jesus came into this world through, if you want to use one word to describe the setting of the world Jesus showed up in, the word would be desperation.

It was a desperate place.

They were desperate for rescue.

See, when you're desperate for something, things can get a little risky.

If you're desperate for a savior, you'll go out looking for a savior and you run the risk of finding someone who maybe seems like the savior, someone who says the right things, someone who hits all the right notes, but they're not really who they pretend to be, but you'll label them as your savior.

It happens all the time, still happens in politics.

People aren't happy with the way things are, so a candidate shows up who says all the right things, makes all the right promises, and people get excited and they begin to think, oh, maybe this one's different, maybe this is the one, this is the one who's gonna fix it all, and they they lobby for that person, they cheer for that person, then a few years later they're like, What happened?

This is exactly like it was before.

It's like a broken record.

And when that happens, we tend to get jaded, get a little bitter.

We don't trust other people who come along and make the same promises anymore.

Our hopes get up, right?

We get very high hopes, but the letdown is intense.

And we end up often lower than we were when we started.

See, the people were desperate for a savior, and there were people that came along.

People that took advantage of that, people that they thought were the Messiah, people they labeled as their Savior before Jesus.

In Acts chapter 5, we learn about a few of these people.

Acts 5 · chapter mention

Acts chapter 5 is a very interesting chapter.

Acts 5 · chapter mention

We're gonna look at this here in a second, but but it's uh it's the story of Jesus' followers.

This is after his death and resurrection.

Jesus' followers are now spreading his message, they're continuing the movement of Jesus, and the Israelites, the leaders, the religious leaders, they don't like it.

They thought that by killing Jesus, they would have fixed the Jesus problem.

Turns out they just made it way, way worse.

Because he got back up.

So they're trying to stop this movement, and they're figuring out what they're gonna do.

They're gonna threaten the disciples, they're gonna perhaps throw them in jail, maybe even kill them.

But this one rabbi, one of their leaders, stands up and says, guys, calm down.

We've seen this play out before.

We've seen people show up and pretend to be the Messiah.

We've seen people believe that so-and-so is the Messiah, only to be let down, and it all fizzes out.

That's what's gonna happen here.

Nothing is gonna happen as a result of this, Jesus.

So just leave him be.

Acts chapter 5, verse 36.

Acts 5:36

This rabbi mentions one of these people that have done this in the past.

Some time ago, he says there was a fellow named Thetis who pretended to be someone great.

About 400 others joined him, but he was killed, and all his followers went their various ways.

The whole movement came to nothing.

And we don't know much about Thetis, only what this scripture says.

Apparently, he was a person that other people thought was the Savior.

They put their trust in him, and then he was defeated.

And unlike Jesus, he stayed dead, and his movement just fizzled out.

It came to nothing.

But then the the rabbi mentions a second person, and this person's actually very significant.

This person is the unaccredited actor in the story of Jesus' birth that we're gonna look at today.

He affects the setting of the world Jesus walks into very, very much.

His name was Judas, Judas of Galilee.

Verse 37, he says, After him, at the time of the census, there was Judas of Galilee.

He got people to follow him, but he was killed too, and all his followers were scattered.

Now, Judas is pretty significant.

Notice that the rabbi doesn't say, and his movement came to nothing.

Because Judas' movement did not come to nothing after his death.

He founded a group in Israel called the Zealots.

And that group grew in power, they grew in influence, and actually, 30 years after Jesus' life on earth, the zealots were the ones that sparked the war with Rome.

Jesus had a follower who was a former zealot, Simon the Zealot.

They were a very influential group, one of the four main political groups among the tribes of Israel.

See, Judas came along and he was the perfect match for their ideal savior.

He was exactly who they thought the Messiah would be.

He was charismatic.

He spoke about all the things they they wanted to hear about.

He said what they wanted to hear about.

Here.

He told the people not to pay taxes, which is always a popular stance.

Taxes were a really big deal for the Jewish people.

You see that in Jesus' story.

One day, some people come up to Jesus trying to trap him and they ask him a loaded question.

Hey, should we pay taxes?

And Jesus says, Well, hey, show me a coin.

They give him a coin, he looks at it, he says, Hey, whose picture is on this coin?

They say, Well, Caesar's.

This is okay, we'll give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, give to God what belongs to God.

And they were mad because it's so good.

Taxes were a loaded thing because in their mindset, how do we pay taxes to Caesar, who believes he is a God, because all those rulers in those days believed they were divine?

How do we pay taxes to him without paying him tribute?

Isn't that the same as worship?

And Judas came along and said, yes, it is, so stop paying taxes.

In fact, he said, We're not just gonna stop paying taxes.

It's time for us to rise up, and it's time for us to reclaim what's ours.

It's time for us to take our nation back from Rome, and that is exactly what the people wanted to hear.

Judas was in Galilee, which is this small region to the north of Jerusalem.

Not a very important place.

Not a place that was filled with large, important capital cities or anything like that.

There were some trade cities, some fairly important places from an economic perspective, but not politically.

This was not the capital of the world, it was not the center of, it wasn't Rome, it wasn't Jerusalem even.

But in Galilee, this man, this man Judas, he starts saying the right things.

He has charisma.

People get excited, they start to think, hey, he's the one.

He's saying all the things we want to hear.

He's talking about the very thing we believe the Messiah will be.

Let's follow him.

And he he created an uprising.

And it had momentum.

And the people, they got their hopes up.

Their hopes were as high as they had ever been before.

Finally, they think they have their Messiah, and they're so close.

They're so close they they think they can taste it.

We've all been there before.

But then Rome comes in, and like we said earlier, when Rome showed up, you tended to lose.

And Rome crushed Judas's rebellion.

And it was swift and it was absolute.

And Judas died, and the rebellion, the uprising in Galilee, it was it was over.

And the people went from having their hopes higher than they had ever been before to that same desperation.

To having their hope lower than they could have ever imagined it being.

And Jesus starts asking questions as they're on this road to a place called Emmaus.

And they're like, haven't you heard what happened in Jerusalem?

This man, Jesus, he was killed, and we thought he was the Messiah.

We thought he was the one, but I guess he's not.

Now we're back to square one.

We don't know what to do.

That's how the people in Galilee felt about Judas.

They thought he was the one.

They thought he would lead them, that he would free them, and now he's gone.

And they have no hope.

They're more desperate than ever.

But see, little do they know that at the exact time that their hope is at its lowest, hope itself is being born into the world.

This is how we see Judas' story start to mesh with Jesus' story in a really powerful way.

In Luke chapter 2, we get some details about Jesus' birth.

Luke 2 · chapter mention

Begins by saying this: At that time, the Roman emperor Augustus decreed that a census should be taken throughout the Roman Empire.

This was the first census taken when Quirinius was governor of Syria.

All returned to their own ancestral towns to register for the census.

And because Joseph was a descendant of King David, he had to go to Bethlehem in Judea, David's ancient home.

He traveled there from the village of Nazareth in Galilee.

He took with him Mary, his fiance, who was now obviously pregnant.

That is a category of pregnancy, by the way, obvious pregnancy.

That's when men, you know, you can ask that question and not worry.

Say, when are you expecting?

Because early in pregnancy, you're like, I'm not taking that bait.

I'm not, you know, because man, if they're not pregnant, what do you do?

But Mary is obviously pregnant.

She's very close to giving birth, and we know how the story unfolds.

She gives birth in Bethlehem.

Jesus is born in a manger.

But but there are two details, two details from these few verses in Luke that go right alongside Judas, and it's such a powerful thing to understand the setting of the world Jesus comes into.

Number one, we know that Mary and Joseph lived, not in Bethlehem, that's where they went for the census, but they lived in Galilee.

The town of Nazareth.

See, Galilee's not a big place.

And so while Mary is pregnant, when she's in her first trimester, people are starting to rumble about this Judas guy.

She's in her second trimester, people are starting to get really excited.

Everyone in the town's talking about Judas, how Judas is the savior, how Judas might be the one, how finally maybe we're gonna have the freedom that we've been promised through this man Judas.

Mary knew the truth, though.

She knew that it was the child she was carrying that would be the savior.

But no one else knew that.

They were from the same exact area.

But even crazier, the timing.

If we go back to Acts chapter 5, verse 37, where this rabbi's talking about Judas, he says this, after him, at the time of the census.

Acts 5:37

There was Judas of Galilee.

At the time of the census.

And when was Jesus born?

At the exact same time.

Jesus was born at the time of the census.

That's why they were in Bethlehem to begin with.

I mean, think about this for a second.

This is so insane.

The people in Galilee believe that Judas is their savior.

They believe he's the one.

And he's defeated, and their hope is crushed, and it's lower than it's ever been before, and they are mourning his death.

They are mourning his death along with the death of their dreams of freedom.

And at the exact moment of their mourning, Jesus, just a few miles away, the real Savior, he's being born.

They are mourning the death of a man from Galilee who let them down.

At the exact same moment that a man from Galilee is being born, who will never let anyone down.

It was in their moment of extreme desperation when their hope was at its lowest that Jesus showed up.

See, desperation was the stage that Jesus walked on to, and it's still the same.

That's the incredible thing about him.

He is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

And it's so often that when we're in those moments, those moments in life that come along, that come along more often than we'd like them to, where our hope shrinks.

Where our hope is crushed and we we feel nothing but desperation.

It's those moments that we so often see God with more clarity than ever before.

And so often in those moments that we are poised to experience God in a way that we never have before.

I do not believe it's a coincidence that Jesus chose, that God chose to come into this world at the exact time when people put their hope in a would-be Savior who let them down, when people experienced their lowest valley.

See if if we're here today and we're struggling, if hope is not what describes our outlook right now, we have hope because we have Jesus.

And Jesus shows up.

That's the biggest difference between Jesus and any other would-be God.

Our God showed up.

He came here.

Years ago I had this prayer that was answered, and it was it was miraculous.

It was crazy.

It involved my son, and he was really sick and in the NICU, and man, I prayed so hard, I prayed so hard.

And someone asked me later when I you know gave Jesus credit.

Like, well, how do you know that was Jesus?

Well, he's the one I asked.

See, Jesus, he's the God who shows up.

He's not this distant God, he's not this distant being that you know blesses us from afar and every once in a while gets close enough so we can feel good.

No, he's he's with us.

He's intimate.

He jumped into the mess of this world.

That's why we're his hands church, because Jesus goes hands-on.

He went hands-on with the world.

He came into it, but he didn't just choose a time when things were rosy.

He didn't choose a time when everything was going according to plan.

He chose the exact time when the people of his home area, when his hometown was at its lowest.

If you are at a low point today, Jesus is about to show up.

If you are desperate today, Jesus knows how to turn desperation into hope.

He's really good at that.

Desperation, it doesn't intimidate Jesus.

See, all of us know what it's like to have a Judas of Galilee in our lives.

All of us have had someone or something that, whether we did it intentionally or not, we we made that thing our would-be savior.

We decided that it's that person, it's this circumstance, it's this job, it's it's this amount of money, whatever it is, we've decided this will be what protects me, this will be what saves me, this will be what makes my life greater, only to find that that thing, that that person led us down.

When that happens, we we get bitter, we get angry, we get we get sad, we get down, we struggle.

And in hopelessness, when we're at our low point, the temptation is to give up, the temptation is to lower the expectations, the temptation is to desire less out of life because we feel like the opportunity's gone.

But see, then there's Jesus.

And he's a game changer, he changes, he changes everything.

Proverbs 13, 12 says this.

Love this verse.

Unrelenting disappointment leaves you heart sick.

But a sudden good break can turn life around.

Do you need a sudden good break today?

I mean, let's just be honest.

Is anyone here just waiting for something to happen?

For something to change?

For that moment to just occur where all of a sudden all the things you've been desiring and hoping come to fruition.

And you've tried to make it happen, you've tried to will it to existence, maybe you've even prayed and you've prayed hard.

And you're struggling because it's not happening, it's not working out.

And if you're gonna be honest with yourself, you just know I need a break.

I need a sudden break.

I need things to turn around, and maybe your life is going really well, but I guarantee you, someone you know, whether you realize it or not, is right at that place.

Jesus, he is the sudden break.

He is the thing that turns it all around.

He is the one who changes everything.

Unrelenting disappointment, that was that was exactly what the people in Galilee were experiencing.

Failed Savior after failed savior, disappointment after disappointment, and in that disappointment, Jesus, the real Savior, the one, the Messiah, he showed up.

He will show up for you.

The Bible says he doesn't play favorites, he is no respecter of persons.

In other words, he doesn't look at us and go, yeah, you're worth me showing up for, you're not.

I know what you did yesterday, sorry.

If you need him, be prepared because he will show up.

That is who he is.

And he tends to do it in our moment, our moment of desperation.

So if that's your moment right now, I pray today that you leave with hope.

That's what we get with Jesus, by the way.

That's the beauty of being a Jesus follower, is we get to, if we choose to, live with unrelenting hope.

We should be the most optimistic people in the world.

Because our God is still alive.

He is still active, he is still working.

He doesn't stop.

He doesn't stop loving us, he doesn't stop working things out for our good.

Even the situations in life that are that are awful, that are horrible, that are tragic, he can take those and he can use it, and he can do more than we could possibly imagine.

Ephesians 3.20 says that God can do more than you could ever imagine, far more than you could even dream.

And he doesn't do it by pushing us around, he does it by working within us, deeply and gently within us.

That is who God is.

And so if you need a sudden break today, I just want you to know that you need Jesus and He's here.

Some of us we have him, others we haven't taken that for ourselves yet.

What's stopping you?

What's stopping you?

If you need him, take him.

And if you have him, share him.

Because there are people you love and they're desperate.

God knows how to handle desperation.

We're gonna pray.

Finish up with one more worship song.

I want to encourage you to come next week.

Next week's gonna be another wrinkle to the Christmas story, and and we're gonna we're gonna give you guys a little taste of Christmas Eve next week.

We're gonna have some fun with music and stuff like that.

It's gonna be a blast.

So be ready for that.

But but today, more than anything, I pray that you leave with hope.

That you have hope in desperate times.

You have hope when it's good, you have hope when it's bad, because Jesus never changes.

So let's pray together.

Jesus, thank you so much for this unbelievable church, for these incredible people.

And more than anything, Jesus, we're blown away by who you are.

The fact that you chose to come into this world at the exact moment in time when your people were at their lowest point, when their hope was gone, when they were living in utter desperation, it speaks volumes, Jesus, to who you are, to your character.

Because when we're at our lowest, you're at your strongest.

When life is darkest, your light shines brighter.

It just does.

We can see it.

And so, Lord, I pray for anyone in this room right now that would say, yes, desperation is the setting of my life today.

I pray that they get their sudden good break today.

And I pray, Lord, that they realize that that sudden good break, it all rests on you.

God, for all of us, just give us lives full of passion and purpose, Lord.

Help us live our lives this week in such a way that we bring hope in other people's desperate times, that we be like you, Jesus, and we show up for people when they need us most.

We love you, we praise you, we ask all this in your name.

Amen.