Man, I love Christmas. I love Christmas because it's a reminder every single year that in Easter- right, but Christmas is. I love Easter. I need to be clear, because I'm G to say something that's going to get me in trouble with some of you. You're going to leave and say I'm never going to that church again.

Hey, bring me a mic. I love Christmas a little bit more, simply because there's a whole season attached to it. Right, like, we got it. This one's got one. Well, we'll see if Works in a second, but there's a season attached to it, right, you get.

Tell me by a show of hands: , when you start celebrating Christmas, we're going to, we're going to start with. You start after Thanksgiving. Just raise your hand. You put your tree up after Thanksgiving. Okay, how many of you start sometime in November?

Okay, I'm weird, I think one. Thank you for your honesty. I really appreciate your honesty. Oh, yeah, yeah, you came late. Hey, it's okay, be bold in this place today, right?

 God might provide something for you if you're bold today. For me, I think a couple years ago I just likeed the Ambiance cuz I got a pre-lit tree. I got a pre-lit tree. That not. You don't have to wrap lights around it like that's old school.

If you're still doing that, like, let's come forward a little bit, you can do something much better. And what you do is you just put the one portion, then another portion, then another portion and it just all connects. You plug it in and it's immediate Christmas ambiance. I love it. I love the Christmas season because it just I feel.

I know it's sad because it's cold outside, but it just feels better when you have a tree. You get that it's. You don't have a fireplace here. You got that fake fireplace on YouTube. We were playing that this morning while my kids were opening presents.

It was amazing. I love Christmas and when I'm expressly focused on a season like Christmas and as a pastor constantly reminded, don't lose the meaning of Christmas, don't lose the meaning of Christmas. You shouldn't lose the meaning of Christmas. But you know we enjoy buying gifts and all the other stuff that have anything to do with the meaning of Christmas. But when I have to force myself to expressly focus on the meaning of Christmas, then I start focusing a little bit more about the meaning of Christmas.

That is, that God sent his son, Jesus, in the form of a baby to dwell on Earth among all of us who were dealing with stuff that he never had to deal with at that moment. And so I like it, because God starts to reveal to me different things about myself during that Christmas season. Let me say it this way: God provides for me signs that are helpful for me coming closer to him and what I believe today. Even if you hadn't showed up today, I believe God has put some signs in front of you, and my encouragement to you would be to pay Express attention to what he might be putting in front of you, so that you might step into what he's calling you to. So that's my point today, and I've titled this message based on one of the passages of Scripture that my six-year-old son read very, very well.

 I've titled it. This is your sign. This is your sign. Here's what the text says on the Scriptures. It's in, chapter 2.

It's going to be starting in verse 11, I believe. Let's toss it on the screen. There we go. There we go. Today, in the town of David, a savior has been born to you.

He is the Messiah of the Lord, and it says this: this will be a sign to you or for you, that you will find a baby wrapped in cloths in a Manger. That was the sign. And my first point to you is this: I think God uses ordinary signs. Amen, amen. Anyone agree with that?

God uses ordinary Sons. I've been spend my whole life looking for Extraordinary, but he uses. This is not what is supposed to be. You only so many things, TJ Maxx. And so what does it say?

It was a baby wrapped in cloth. Here's some cloths for you. I drapped it nicely over the manger, not a Manger. That was a joke. Y got to start laughing in this place.

You going to get used to it. This is my manger today. This is my cloth today, and I wanted to. I wanted to do something to signify the baby Jesus, but I felt like I through my head: how am I going to represent a baby? I'm accidentally going to hold it.

I'll look at it and I'm going like, quickly go back to my point and just drop it into this manger, this fake manger. That's really a laundry basket that I'm going to take home afterwards wash some clothes and it's going to look nice, rather than that white basket that's sitting in my room anyways. I digress, but God uses ordinary. Look at your neighbor and do this very carefully. Look at him, left or right, I don't care what side you go to, You're ordinary.

I'm breaking some friendships up today. Look at your other neighbor, just so I don't feel left out. You're ordinary too. We are ordinary, like there's me, there's you, we're all sitting in this room. There's nothing inherently special about each one of us.

That's when God gets involved, when he's the ingredient that starts catalyzing growth and adjustments in our lives, right? So we're ordinary. And this sign that he provided seemed ordinary. It's a baby wrapped in cloth in a Manger. Now, if I'm one of these Shepherds- and I'm not- I don't know anything about farming or anything.

So if you have any connections to that, you can come up to me afterwards and tell me how I need to learn my farming Almanac. I don't even know if almanacs have to do with farming. I'm learning here, right? I just moved to a couple months ago. I'm learning this process, but to me, if I'm a shepherd, and the angels, well, the angels are kind of a big deal, right?

That's strange, right, if an angel came to me and it says they were scared, and most people come to me, it's very rare that a person makes me scared. So I believe that this angel- I don't know if it's the way that they looked, I don't know if he- he just had a booming, boisterous voice, but he scared them. See, that's the type of moment many of us are looking for this big sign, but the Angels come to the shepherds in the middle of the night and they tell them: hey, this will be your sign and this is a big deal. This that's- and I connect reading the Scripture and thinking about how ordinary that sign was like. If, if someone told me to go look for the Lord who's about to do something that he has sent the Messiah, I'd go look at all theie hospitals, wouldn't?

He's got to be in the May CL. I don't know if they do birth or anything like that, but he's got to be some what they've got. They got legit stuff. It's not like me. When I had my first baby- right, my wife had our baby and she out of this room, let's go to this room- and they took us into this itty bitty small room.

It wasn't a cave like. I'm not suffering like Jesus here, but I really felt like they cramped us up and it was a very horrible experience. I'm Not Looking In A Manger, I'm not looking in a cave, I'm not looking for some basic white linens and I'm not looking for a baby when I'm looking for the Messiah. But God, in that scene, chose to use an ordinary sign. An ordinary sign- look at your neigh one more time and say: you're ordinary, but that's not a bad thing- chooses to use ordinary signs and many of us have missed the Messiah.

Because we're looking at all the big places, the extraordinary places. You're looking for the big billboard, right. You're looking for the call rafy sign. You're looking for anything that would indicate to you that God has a plan for you, but it's. But we're looking at the big things.

I used to play basketball. I was no good at it, so don't get any ideas. The gym, but it's not. I'm playing here. I'm not good at basketball.

When I used to play, I would this thing where I say God, cuz I was, I was new in my walk with God and I say, God, if you love me, like prove it by letting me make this shot. I know it's so dumb and you're thinking: man, should I even follow this guy he makes? He's looking at dumb. We're looking for God to do something extraordinary in our lives before we're willing to follow him. And this is kind of the amazing thing about Christmas and this is why when you focus on Christmas, it can really be beautiful, a whole season of Beauty for you and your entire family.

Because when you look at this, yes, the Angels were extraordinary, but the sign wasn't. The sign was a baby wrapped in Linens lying in a Manger. So I'm trying to convince you to understand the fact that God can use ordinary signs. For example, when that song popped on in your car when you weren't thinking about God at all and then all of a sudden you start thinking about God. That's not extraordinary, that's totally ordinary.

But that song gots you onto the trajectory of thinking about God. That conversation you randomly had with that coworker that said something about going to church over Christmas and you were like I haven't been to church in a while, but I guess I'll go because they mentioned it. Like that's just, that's totally ordinary, how God can take something super basic, midlevel, and utilize it to do something extraordinary in your life. This is ordinary. Like if you wanted to go somewhere super extraordinary, you should have gone to a different church.

I'm just being honest with you. We're just figuring our stuff out. Right like we got these little TVs half of y'all can't see because the stuff's stuck in China right now and they didn't send it in time. Right like we, we are trying to figure this stuff out and you came here today and I want you to know it's not going to be some bombastic, big, crazy sign that God is going to use necessarily. He does it for some, he didn't do it for me.

For me it was a whole lot of ordinary and all of a sudden, when I look back, I saw that God did something extraordinary. God will use ordinary signs to do extraordinary things in your life. It's so interesting because, like I could give you tons of examples in Scripture, he'll choose an ordinary Shepherd. Way back in the Old Testament, the person David he'll choose choose ordinary Shepherds in Luke, Chapter 2, to go view the baby. And that these Ordinary People God chose in order to do something extraordinary- and it's really just them that we have valid proof from God- would use ordinary signs.

And so funny because Jesus came, he grew up, there was one time where Jesus- I don't- I don't know if he disrespected his mother or whatever, but they lost him. And then he says something that like borderline sart. I looked to him. That was him when he was a child. Then he became an adult and did a full ministry.

The ministry he did, he performed Miracles- that's craziness. But he also went out into the Wilderness to pray- that's ordinary he. He healed people on a regular basis. But he also hung out with people that were totally ordinary, like like Jesus could do the miraculous, but he used the ordinary. I keep saying that word because I'm hoping it's going to stick to you, because no, the number one thing I hear from people is: I'm not enough, or or I need God to show me and if you can start seeing through the ordinance what God might be doing, entire trajectory, life.

And then after Jesus is Ministry: he's blessed a lot of people, he's ticked off a whole lot of other people. Then he dies on the cross and 3 days later we get some ordinary women who see him at the tomb. Right. This is what the Gospel of Mark uses to tell us about the resurrection. He uses people that many people back then would not have listened to.

And then, when they get there, yeah, they saw the Angels, but the only proof that was left when they went back wasn't even a Manger, wasn't a baby, it was Linens. Nothing else there, cuz there was no body in the Tomb and many of us would look at Just Linens in a tomb and think, oh well, I guess they took them. But they saw the Linens and they recognized something. They remembered what Jesus had told them, that he had come to do, that he had come to defeat death once and for all, that he had come to redeem souls to God, the father. That he had come to not just do the miraculous, but take a group of ordinary people to go out and meet a bunch of ordinary people so that they could start the church that is full of ordinary, some crazy people.

And it all started with I wish I, I wish I had the faith of these women. But God validated it after they went back and he revealed himself to them. But at first all they had was Linens. And right now all you have is the people in your family who who have faith. Right now all you have is something that is just crazy, ordinary.

But I want to encourage you, look at it differently. See what God might be trying to do through those ordinary things in your life. See what God might be trying to do through this ordinary season that you're going through, see what God might do through the ordinary people that surround you. I mean, who knows? God might have brought you here today, and he wanted to show you this super ordinary base service on Christmas, and he wanted that to be the sign that would help you recognize that not only did he come on Christmas, but he rose so many years later after being crucified by those who didn't believe he was who he says he was.

And so I guess what I'm trying to encourage you with with is this: that that today you have an opportunity to confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead. This is your sign. I don't know what you're going to get when you leave here, but I know that right here you're getting a good news message from the Bible that says he came, he lived, he died and he rose. So for anyone in here who has never confessed with their mouth that Jesus is Lord, I want to give you that opportunity. So if everybody would bow their heads and close their eyes, I want to Le you in a prayer.

This is not some crazy prayer. This is an ordinary prayer, a prayer of aligning our thoughts to God's thoughts, and if this is you, you might pray something like this: God, I believe that Jesus did come all those years ago and I believe he didn't stay Dead when he died. I believe he rose and so, God, I pray that you would come into my heart, forgive me of my sin, Change Me From the Inside Out and help me begin revolving everything in my life around you. God, today is the day that I start following you. God, I love you and I trust you.

It's in Jesus's name that we pray. Ask. People said: can we celebrate for those who just trusted in Jesus? Amen. As you can tell, I invite a lot of audience participation.

Hopefully that's for you. What I want us to do right now is we're going to go into one more song and we're going to spend some time doing that nostalgic, traditional, the candl light portion of our service. But I