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Well good morning. Come on, you can do better than that. Good morning. My name is Matt Altman, and as Nick mentioned earlier, I uh I have the privilege of serving as one of the elders here at Point Community Church. And uh for any sports fans in the rooms, I'm kind of like the backup, backup, backup quarterback. Uh Nick's out of town, Harley's in Australia, Josway preached last week, and so I'm kind of the number four guy here. So I'm excited to be with you this morning and just uh thankful for the opportunity to teach. And uh a couple of quick housekeeping things. If you are on my left, your right, at the bottom of or on the floor there, there's a little black notebook. This is our connection pad. If you'll fill that out and just pass it down to the left, and then whoever gets it on the left, if you'll just set it back down on the floor. Uh that's our way just to keep a record of who's here. And if you're a guest with us, we want to follow up with you. We promise that uh we're not gonna send you junk mail or spam or anything like that. Uh we just want to get to know you a little bit better. Also, just so that you're aware and you can be thinking of this throughout the service, there are prayer request cards uh in the seats in front of you. And at the end of the worship today, you'll have an opportunity to put that in a box in the back. And so if you have specific prayer requests that you would like us to pray for as an elder board or as a staff, uh please uh be prepared to write those down and you can turn those in at the end. Um so again, as I said earlier, my name is Matt Altman, and I I get the privilege of being an eighth grade teacher. Uh that's what I do for a living, and I'm a math teacher, so I'm a real popular guy, as you can imagine. And uh and so I encounter eighth graders every day, uh five days a week, sometimes more than I want to. And so that tends to always find its way into the message in some manner. And so I want you uh really quickly to think back to eighth grade. Okay? I know for some of you maybe you're thinking that's a long time ago. Um for me, it was 1998, and I remember you know the 90s were kind of a weird time for fashion. Think about what you were wearing, uh, stonewashed jeans, uh, the ladies you like to tie your shirt in a knot right here. I remember that was really popular. Um think back to eighth grade, okay? So everyone in the room, think back to being in eighth grade, and uh what you were doing, you're in school, all right, you're getting on the bus that morning. And you're head of the school and you've got a significant other, okay, because those eighth grade romances are a big deal, right? I see them a lot at school, and it's it's really funny to watch the drama that occurs with those. Um but you you you've got this special someone that you just can't wait to see when you get to school, and so you get there and you meet up in the cafeteria, and you're holding each other's hands, and you probably maybe you have a promise ring on or something like that, and you're just staring into each other's eyes, and then out of nowhere, the young lady looks at the boy and says, I'm pregnant. Wait a minute, that this story's not supposed to go like that, right? That's not what you're expecting. All right. How many of you are a little confused right now? Maybe just a little bit. You weren't you thought it was gonna be something else? Well, my hope is to uh give you a little bit of perspective into the story that we're gonna be talking about as we look into the life of Joseph this morning and what he must have been feeling when Mary, who a lot of scholars believe at the time was probably around 14 years old, uh, basically looked across at him and said, I'm pregnant. And this baby is from God. And so we're gonna investigate that story uh this morning and talk a little bit about confusion and what life is uh something we can all relate to, which is when we encounter a situation that doesn't make sense to us. So I want to recap our series real quick as we talk about hope. And uh week one, uh Nick had preached and we discovered the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth. They were old, they were, the Bible describes them as being advanced in years, they were beyond the normal childbearing age, and they had no children. And an angel came and spoke to Zechariah and said, You're gonna have a son, and his name is gonna be John the Baptist. And the theme for that week was that hope wasn't found in a gift, but in the giver. And so while they wanted a baby, ultimately their hope was found in the creator of the child and God Himself. Um, these things that we wrestle with in life and that cause confusion. So if you've got your Bible with you this morning, I want you to open up to Matthew chapter one. Matthew's the first book in the New Testament, and uh we're going to be looking at verses 18 through 25. What are the things that confuse people nowadays? Okay, I obviously uh the situation we talked about earlier would be a very confusing one, but what are some of the things? This is audience participation moment, by the way. So I want your feedback. What are the things that are confusing to you where you are? Not eighth grade, but where you are now? You can shout them out. Technology. Okay? These uh iPhones can be confusing at times, right? What else? Teenagers. Very confusing. I I agree with that one. I'm confused by them every day. Anything else? Values. Okay, making decisions based on those values, perhaps, right? How about questions like, who am I gonna marry? Where am I gonna live? What job should I take? Have any of you ever wrestled with that stuff? Yeah? Okay, so I think at the root of those questions sometimes is a deeper question. Do I listen to God or do I listen to people? Uh who am I gonna follow? Myself or am I gonna follow God? And so this morning we're gonna take a look at Joseph and his response to God. So I want to read these verses with you, and then we'll break them down and take a few, uh take a look at a few reflections and some observations along the way, and then some takeaways at the very end. So Matthew chapter one, verses eighteen through twenty-five, it says this The birth of Jesus Christ came about this way, after his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, it was discovered before they came together that she was pregnant by the Holy Spirit. So her husband, Joseph, being a righteous man, and not wanting to disgrace her publicly, decided to divorce her secretly. But after he had considered these things, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, don't be afraid to take Mary as your wife, because what has been conceived in her is by the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet. See, the virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they will name him Emmanuel, which is translated, God is with us. When Joseph got up from sleeping, he did as the Lord's angel had commanded him. He married her, but did not know her intimately until she gave birth to a son, and he named him Jesus. I want to pray for us real quick, and then we'll dive into this a little bit more. God, I thank you for your word, and I thank you for this amazing story, uh, this uh this true story about the birth of Jesus. I thank you that we can look at it today, two thousand years later, and we can relate to Joseph and Mary and to the situation that in that they're in, and and uh just understanding that they're confused and there's there's life struggles here. And I thank you that that you have related to us through your son Jesus Christ. I thank you that you sent him to be a baby who would grow into a man who would uh sacrifice himself for our sins. And so that is our hope today, and I pray that you would just open our hearts as we continue to investigate this text, that you would speak to us, and that uh you would just give us clarity in the midst of the situations that we may be dealing with today. And I pray this in Christ's name, amen. So give you a little bit of backstory here. Um the situation that's being set up. We've got Joseph and Mary, and they are Israelites, okay? They're part of God's chosen people, they would be called Jews. And uh Matthew, the author of this book, is writing to a very Jewish audience, okay? So we're gonna see some things that he talks about that would definitely explain things that had happened in the Old Testament and that uh are setting up kind of where we are today. So the Old Testament consists of really two big chunks of scripture. There's the law, which is the first five books of the Bible, and that's where uh the rules that God had given, a lot of the commands that he had given to his chosen people, um, they're found there. And then we have a large section of scripture called the prophets. And then in these books, there are several stories of how God spoke to a chosen messenger to go deliver a specific word to the nation of Israel. So all of that had been happening, and then there came this break of about 400 years of silence. Okay, so God hasn't spoken in 400 years, and it's kind of uh one of those things where we don't think about it as being that big of a deal, but this one page between the Old Testament and New Testament represents 400 years of silence. God hadn't spoken anything to Israel, there had been no prophet, and so there's generations of people that know what the Old Testament says. They know that there's a Messiah who's supposed to come, but yet they've not heard anything or seen anything that would confirm that this is actually gonna take place. Okay? So Mary and Joseph are living their life, um, their engagement has been set up, and uh they're just doing what every other Jewish person at that time would have done. And then we get this situation in Matthew 1 where Jesus is gonna be born, and there's this miraculous story that takes place. So, why is that all important? Well, we need to kind of gain some perspective from from that because we look back on it after seeing it that it's all happened, and we can kind of answer some of the questions for them. But in the midst of all of that, there had to be so many things going through their mind where they went, wait a minute. I know that something is supposed to happen. You know, grandma and grandpa told us about this, and their grandparents told them about this, and their grandparents told them about this, but is it really gonna happen? Is this really the promised one that God has talked about in the Old Testament? So I think it's interesting that the gospel writer Matthew here, as well as Luke and the others, they they speak about these things just very plainly. They say this is the how the birth of Jesus happened. Other translations say, now it came about in this way, and then they just tell you this is what happened. This angel came and and this this virgin was here, and they don't make this out to be like it's a big deal or that it's something that you know we look at it and go, okay, I've heard this story. But it was true, it really happened. They didn't embellish the story, they told it exactly as it is. Um, we should investigate the nature of Mary and Joseph's engagement, because the way we think about engagement is not the same as what they had, uh their situation. Engagement for them was a legally binding situation. And if you notice, the text already calls Joseph Mary's husband. It says, her husband Mary, or her husband Joseph, being a righteous man, not wanting to disgrace her publicly, decided to divorce her secretly. So the situation they're in is not just one where they can say, ah, well, we can call this thing off, and it's not really that big a deal. Everyone knew they were going to get married. This was already promised and intended to happen. So now we've got Joseph in the midst of this going, Well, what do I do? Okay. Well, hypothetical question, what would you do if you're Joseph in that situation? Okay, go back to our eighth grade story, and you show up to school, and this is the news you get. Your life would be uh just completely turned upside down. And so Joseph's kind of weighing all the options. And God's word in the Old Testament said that if there was an engagement that was supposed to take place, a marriage, and the woman was found to be pregnant, well, the law said that she should be killed. Okay, so that's kind of Joseph's first option. He can have Mary brought out into the public square and exposed, and people can say, oh, well, she's pregnant, and that's wrong, and we shouldn't have that, so she should be killed. That's that's option one. Um option two is the one that Joseph kind of leans on where it says he decided to put her away secretly. Now I don't know exactly what all the details are in that, but I'm pretty sure it means he didn't want to kill her. Okay? He wants her to be kind of this to kind of be swept under the rug, and he wants to protect her, but he also wants to uh kind of keep her reputation where people, you know, let's just kind of let's push Mary to the side and make sure that this kind of stays a secret, which I don't know about you, but pregnancy is pretty hard to keep a secret after a certain point, right? People are gonna find out about it. So Joseph's wrestling with this and he's trying to decide what do I do? And it says he had considered these things, he decided to divorce her secretly. So he's gonna call this thing off. Okay, that would have been a pretty big decision to make, and that's he's made his mind up, okay. So the first thing I want us to take away from all this is that according to the situation of that time, that was a pretty decent plan. He could do that. Okay, but good plans are not always God's plans. Okay? And thankfully, we know that God didn't let Joseph just divorce Mary and be done with it all. Um He decides that there's going to be an option C, and that's for Joseph to stick this thing out and to trust God, which is typically the hardest option as we stop and think about how we can relate to that today. Proverbs 1921 says this many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand. We got any big planners in the room. My wife should raise her hand. She's our planner, she's our calendar. You like to have it all figured out, right? Nothing wrong with that. That's not me, my nature. I'm very free-spirited. Um, so you can imagine it's fun conversations at home when we're trying to make plans for things. I'm thankful for my wife, who who is a gifted planner. Um we tend to, as people try to get everything figured out, and we want to know what's next. Tomorrow and the next month, and a year from now, and even ten years from now, we plan for retirement, right? We want to have our entire life set up for us years in advance. And I'm I I love that the verse in Proverbs that just reminds us again that those plans aren't bad, but ultimately it's God's plan that's gonna stand. And it's God it's God's plan that's gonna prevail. And so we have to decide if we're gonna be willing to set aside our plans and be flexible and follow God, or if our plans are the ones that matter and we're gonna pursue them no matter what. We're gonna talk about that a little bit more as we go through. Um let's jump to verses 20 and 21. So Joseph's made his decision and it says this. But after he had considered these things, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, don't be afraid to take Mary as your wife. Would you have been afraid in that situation? Have you ever been afraid in your life? Would you love an angel just to show up and say, Don't be afraid? It'd be nice, right? I I I can think of some moments in life where I could have really used that. He says, Don't be afraid to take Mary as your wife, because what has been conceived in her is by the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. Alright? So I don't even know that Joseph knew he had a plan C until this angel shows up. But whatever the case may be, I think that God's trying to tell us through this, he wants this birth of Jesus to happen a very specific way. And he's used three angels in the last six months to set up some things in a certain manner. So if you remember week one, angel shows up to Zachariah and says, You're gonna have a son, and he talks about John the Baptist, and his role was to go before and prepare the way of the Lord. Okay, and then six months later, Angel shows up to Mary and says, You're now not gonna be pregnant with the Son of God himself. And then shortly after that, the angel shows up to tell Joseph the same thing. Okay, so again, I know that God doesn't necessarily uh use angels as often as he did back then, and we would love for that to happen, but there's got to be some other ways that we can hear from God, and we're gonna talk about that as well. Um God leaves nothing to doubt in this situation, it's gonna happen through Mary and Joseph. So our second takeaway is this God intends to bring clarity, not necessarily ease. This path isn't gonna be easy for Joseph. Even though God sent an angel and said, Hey, here's how it's gonna be, don't be afraid. Okay, have you ever had somebody in a situation like that you clearly should be afraid tell you, hey, don't be afraid? And you're kind of like, You have no idea what I'm dealing with right now. Okay? Well, that's Joseph. And yet I would think when an angel shows up, I would be afraid just because the angel is there. And that's typically the way angels are met with in the Bible. We see them, people are scared, okay? But this angel says, Don't be afraid to take Mary as your wife. This is what God wants. So I want us to kind of stop and think that just because God gives us direction in something doesn't mean that it's just all roses and smooth sailing. Okay? Joseph still was gonna have to deal with what people thought about him. He's still gonna have to deal with what people think about. Mary, there's gonna be lots of uh probably the rumor mill is is is generating lots of stuff, and he's gonna have to deal with all of that. But he has confirmation from God that this is what is going to happen. So I want you to hear me say this that if you're in the room and you're you would say you're one of those people that's still exploring faith and you're not really sure about all of this Christianity stuff, do not hear me say that if you follow God, it's gonna be easy. Okay? Because I can promise you that every Christian in the room can tell you that just because they're a Christ follower, it doesn't mean that it's gonna be easy. Okay, now we can have clarity and we can have hope and we can believe God's promises, but it's not necessarily gonna be easy. And we're gonna talk more about some of the other guarantees that God gives us at the end of this message. I think it's interesting that Joseph already knew about the pregnancy. It's clear that he and Mary had talked. Okay, it tells us that in verse 18 that before they came together it had been discovered that she was pregnant, and then the angel comes and confirms it. And so the angel calls Joseph the son of David. Um thinking back to that 400-year period where there was no prophet that had spoken to the Israelites, Joseph being called the son of David would have been a very encouraging thing. Because David, who was one of the great who was he's considered the greatest king in the Old Testament, it was promised to David that one was going to be born who would sit on the throne forever, and he would be called the son of David. So Joseph is in that lineage, and we didn't spend uh today reading the first 17 verses of Matthew, but it's everyone's name, from Abraham to David, all the way down to Joseph. Okay? So this is kind of a reminder and encouragement to him. Hey, you're the son of David. You remember God said that it was gonna happen that way. Well, you're in that line, and I'm addressing you as that so that you're aware that this is part of God's promise. Jesus wasn't just gonna be another baby, he had a specific plan even before he was ever born, that he would save his people from their sins. Uh ultimately, um, Jesus is gonna fulfill prophecies, over 350 prophecies from the Old Testament. And one of them, the largest one, would be that he would come as a suffering servant. He would be one who would be the Lamb of God and he would sacrifice himself for the sins of the world. The birth of Jesus was a monumental part of God's plan, and it was intended to happen exactly how God had orchestrated it. He had a purpose for Jesus to save people from their sins, and in order for this to work, Jesus couldn't just be born as another man. So this is why this whole virgin birth, uh the miraculous conception of Jesus, it had to happen this way because Jesus couldn't just be another man like us. Now, he is fully man and he is fully God, and that's one of the greatest biblical mysteries of all time, and we don't have time to go into that today. But this is something that we can trust that he came to be a man just like us, so that he could put on flesh and Bone and be like us and understand the struggles that we go through. I'm sure there was probably times when Jesus experienced hardship and experienced some pain and He He He knew those things just like we know those things. But he was also the Son of God. And so with that, he was able to fulfill God's promises and he was able to follow God completely in obedience and ultimately be the Savior of the world. When you think about a time in your life that you thought you had it all figured out, that you had your plan, A, B, C, and it was all gonna go the way you wanted it to. And then it didn't happen that way. Um I can think of one time in my life where I um I thought I had it all figured out, and I was dating a girl at the time, and we had a great relationship, and we had been dating for about I don't know, a year and a half, and uh or maybe around a year, and everything on paper looked great. Like the world looked at us, we we were doing things right, we were good kids. I mean, we fit every descriptor that the world would say that's how it should look. Okay? And about a year into it, just out of nowhere, I experienced this just conviction, this great unsettling in my heart that something wasn't right, and that this relationship wasn't what God had for me. And it didn't make any sense to me at all. I was confused because I said, wait a minute, God, like I think I'm doing it the way your word says that I should do it, and I think I'm I'm walking with you and I'm following you the way I should. And God said, No, like this isn't the plan. And I wrestled with God for about a year, and I didn't want to submit to his plan. So much so that I took it from just the dating relationship to getting engaged, and it was like, God, no, you're not right. I'm right. I want control, I want to do things my way, and God was still patient with me, all the way up to a point where in the middle of a summer, God spoke to me through his word in a in a manner that I've never, I mean, it was as clear as as I can, as I'm speaking to you today, and as I was reading scripture one day, it hit me, and God just said, You have to choose. You have to choose me or choose yourself. But you can't continue to have both things. You can't have control in the situation and expect me to bless the situation. It's my way or the highway. I mean, that's literally kind of the way I felt. And I sit there and I wrestled with, well, what are my friends gonna think? Like, I'm just gonna out of nowhere break up with my fiance, like that's crazy. That's that's nuts. No one would do that. Like, why, why, why do that? Um, what are my what are my parents gonna think? What are my what are my uh my co-workers gonna think? What are our circle of friends gonna think? Like, how am I gonna answer to all of these people? And I didn't have an answer, but I did know that God was speaking clearly to me to say, this is what you should do. And it came to a head in the middle of that summer, and I finally just in tears, I said, Okay, God, it's yours. You can have it. If this is what you really say and this is what you really want, I ask for one thing. Would you confirm it for me and would you take away this anxiety? I'd been wrestling with anxiety and depression for over for about a year, and I knew where it was coming from. And I'm not trying to speak into the room if you struggle with those things that that you're somehow doing something God doesn't want you to do. That's not what I'm saying today, but I know for my life personally, I was resisting what God had asked me to do. And so that middle of the summer, one night, I was in Colorado working at a camp, and God just said, This is it, and today's the day. Choose me or choose yourself. And so I knew that the only clear choice was to follow God, and I decided that I would do that. So I called up my fiancee, and I told her, I know this is not gonna make sense, and you're gonna experience what I just experienced in confusion, and you're not gonna understand it all, but this is what God is asking me to do, and I have to be obedient. And I cannot tell you how clear and how plain as day it was that the moment I made that decision and said, God, I'm gonna trust you, that all of those issues went away. My heart and my my gut had been wrestling with this stuff for a year and it was gone. And I mean, I I mean I to this day it was just here it was, and now it's not there. And every day that I tried to convince myself that I should go back and make it work because that's the way it should work, and and I was doing everything right, all of those feelings and issues would settle back in, and God would remind me, no, that's not what I want for you. And so then I'd say, okay, God, I'm gonna follow you. I would experience this great joy again and this clarity. And so, as I mentioned earlier, God wants to bring clarity to our lives, but it doesn't mean it's gonna be easy. And I had to answer to a lot of people, but at the end of the day, the only person I needed to answer to was God. And he made it very clear that that was the right decision for me. And I'm thankful because I look back on it now and I go, wow, like God, you had a far greater plan for my life than I ever could have imagined. And I'm I'm thankful that he gave me the strength to follow him in obedience. So look at verses 22 and 23. This is God's confirmation for Joseph. He says, All this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet. See, the virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they will name him Emmanuel, which is translated God with us. Because Joseph had a willingness to follow God, he could now live with confident anticipation. He didn't have to be afraid, he didn't have to be embarrassed, he didn't have to answer to all of those other people. He could say, This is God's plan. I know it to be true. And he could point them to this same scripture that they all would have known. Hey, you remember back in Isaiah where it said that the Savior was going to be born of a virgin? Yeah, well, that's true, and it just so happens that that virgin is Mary, and so people could choose to believe him, they could choose to reject him, but he has this now renewed sense that I know what God wants. Like I mentioned earlier, Jesus would fulfill over 350 prophecies that were written about him in the Old Testament. So what an incredible thing to be living in the midst of. Like I said earlier, we as 21st century Christians, we look back on all this stuff and go, yeah, yeah, you know, I've heard this. You know, like he's gonna be called the wonderful counselor and the prince of peace, and he would be born in Bethlehem, and we we know all of these things now, but in the midst of it, this was revolutionary. This had never happened before, a birth like this, and it's never gonna happen again. And so all that must have surrounded them, I I can't imagine. Um finally we look at Joseph's response. Verses 24 and 25. When Joseph got up from sleeping, he did as the Lord's angel had commanded him. He obeyed, he followed him. He said, I'm gonna do it, God. I'm gonna stick with Mary, I'm gonna trust you. He married her, but did not know her intimately until she gave birth to a son, and he named him Jesus. So here's the thing. This is where I guess the rubber meets the road. When God leads you to do something, you always have two choices. We can trust and obey God, or we can trust and obey ourselves. Last time I had the opportunity to preach, I think I said it something like this we can choose to build up the kingdom of God, or we can choose to build up the kingdom of self. And whatever plans we make are either going to be focused on one of those two things. We either put ourselves at the center of our plans, choosing to listen to our own voices and follow our own paths with a disregard for God, or we will put God at the center of our plans, choosing to listen to His voice through His Word and trusting what He says. If we do this and we obey Him, life won't always be easy, but we can have real hope, real joy, and real peace. And if you stop and think about what is it the world is calling us to trust in? The world wants us to trust in our finances, right? The world says this is how you have hope, this is how you have security, you rightly invest your money, and when you're older, it'll be there and you'll have a great life. That's what that's the one of the most predominant messages of the world today. And I'm not saying it's a bad thing to save your money because scripture teaches us that we should be wise with what we have. But if that's where our hope lies, and if our if our uh joy and our peace comes from our bank account and whether it's growing or decreasing, then we've misplaced our hope. We've put ourselves at the center of our plans. Uh the hope the world calls us to put our hope in the latest thrills or in pleasure or things that feel good. They say, hey, do this. You know, I mean, I think about the just the myriad of things that we're called to are to call to make us happy. Technology, the latest phone, the latest uh extreme sport. Those guys that get up there and jump off of mountains and do all that kind of crazy stuff, all in the name of adrenaline, right? Because they're seeking the next greatest thing. Their hope is found in something that's temporary. We have the truth here that we can put our hope in Christ, the one who was prophesied about, the one who has come, and the one who has rescued us from our sins. But it means we've got to stop and take ourselves out of the center of the equation and be willing to put God there and say, What is it that you want, God? So here's the last observation. Trying to control my own life leads to confusion and chaos. But surrendering to God's will brings clarity and contentment. You've heard the phrase of the rat race. Right? We're all just out there trying to make this machine turn and make our money and get our lives in order and get our house and have our family and do everything and the rat race, and then we get older and we die. I don't know about you, but that just doesn't sound like a ton of fun. I think I'd much rather have something that I've got real hope in and real peace with that I'm clear on. I want that can't be all there is when I think about our life's purpose. If that's all God wanted us to do was to be born, find a job, get married, make money, retire, and die, that just I'm why did he take so much to write it? It's pretty, you know, that's like five things. If that's all we had to do, then then I, you know, I I can't believe that. So the question really is is are we willing to give up control? Because either we're steering the ship or God is. So here's a couple of takeaways. We want control and God's blessing, but oftentimes we can't have both. The story that I shared with you earlier, I wanted it my way, and I wanted God to bless my way. Well, that typically a lot of times those things don't line up. So are we willing to step aside and say, no, God, I'll put away my plans for the sake of your plans that are far bigger and greater than mine. Which is the second thing I want us to think about as we wrap up here today. God's plans are so much bigger than our plans. I mean, don't you want to be a part of something God-sized? Yes? No? I mean, I want to be a part of a plan that's that's eternal. And I'm thankful for Point Community Church. I'm thankful that we're reminded week in and week out of our identity, that we're a family of Jesus followers, pointing people to life in Him. Because I can give my life to the kingdom of God and to pointing people to life in Christ. Like, that's something I feel like I can live for. Trying to make the next paycheck bigger or trying to, you know, you know, have the best family and make everything look right, like that takes a whole lot of work. All right? But God's plan, while it's going to take work, is something that has eternal significance. These are the lives of people around us that have not put their faith in Christ, that we have an opportunity to pursue that. And so that's something I want to be a part of. Clarity doesn't mean that everything is going to make sense. We will still have questions, but we will be clear on who is in charge, who holds us, who we are in the gospel, and who we can trust. So the last thing I said, you know, all day we've been talking about plans, God's plans, our plans. Okay? Well, if I'm going to get up here and talk about God's plan, it'd probably be kind of nice to at least share a little bit of what I think that is for us. All right, so going back to the two groups of people in the room, if you're a Christian and you said I've put my faith in Christ, I believe God's plan for you is to continue to daily live a life that reflects that generosity that He has shown us through Jesus. To have a heart that says, I've been rescued from my sins, and now I'm going to live in gratitude and in humility and in trust to God that says, What else should I do with this? And I believe God would tell you, go tell people about it. I believe he would say, go show people the life that they can have in Christ as well. A life that's filled with real hope, a life that's filled with real peace, a life that when confusion hits, there's at least some answers there. But if you're on the other side of the room and you say, Well, I'm not I'm not a Christian, then I think God's plan for you is to put your faith in Christ. I think God's plan is for you to hear this message about Jesus and say, submit to Him, trust Him, believe that what He did for you on the cross was sufficient. Stop trying to run your own life, stop trying to be the center of your own universe and trust God and give your life to Him. And so I don't know where you may find yourself today, but I know this God has a plan, and His plan is bigger than our plan. Old Testament, I think it's in one of the books in Samuel, says, God's thoughts are higher than our thoughts, and his ways are higher than our ways. And so we have an opportunity each day to say, Yes, God, I trust you, and I'm gonna follow your ways, and I'm gonna believe what you say is true, and I'm gonna do everything I can to respond with a heart that says, Whatever you say, I'll do it. There's an old hymn, wherever he leads, I'll go. And I love the words to that. Alright? Can we have hope today? Yes, we can have hope today. We can have hope because the God of the universe sent his son Jesus to die for our sins. And he didn't just stay dead, he rose again, he conquered the grave, he conquered sin, and now he lives and he reigns at the right hand of the Father. And one day he's gonna return and he's gonna call us to be with him. And that's gonna be a day filled with joy when all of the issues in the world, all of the confusion, and all of the struggles that we faced are going to be gone, and we're gonna see fully the extent to which God's plan is carried out. And I believe we can hope in that today, and I invite you, if you haven't, to place your hope in Christ today as well.