It had been a long time since the smell of bacon and eggs filled the Clark house. Both parents, with two teenagers and one autistic 12 year old, were living life at full throttle. The morning routine went something like this: dash out of bed, dash through the shower, dash through breakfast, dash out the door. Sometimes there was even time to look at each other and say good morning!

Frustrated by this, mom and dad were in the other room talking about the last time they remembered sitting down as a family to eat. It happened that Thomas, their 12 year old autistic boy, overheard them. Now Thomas wasn’t known for being able to do much around the house. Because he was autistic they were usually taking care of him. Imagine everyone’s surprise when the next morning, perfectly cooked bacon, toast and eggs were all prepared on the kitchen table. As curious family members stuck their heads into the kitchen, they were greeted with the goofy grin of Tom, the one member of the family no one ever expected to be able to cook a meal. It turned out he had a gift for cooking.

We like those kind of stories because they remind us never to underestimate human potential. What other kinds of things don’t people expect? No one ever expects the straight-A student to fall into a pattern of drug abuse. No one expects a life-long Christian to abandon God. No one expects those kinds of things. Think about some famous "unexpecteds" from the Bible. Would you have expected King David to sin with Bathsheba? If you had been a Jew, would you expect the Pharisees to murder the Messiah? Experience teaches us to never underestimate the human potential for unbelief. In fact, Scripture teaches us that while we have no power to come to faith on our own, we do have the terrible power to abandon the faith.

So God sent his son. Already at the beginning of time God had a plan to undo the effects of sin. And his Son came with a message—an invitation, really. He was inviting humanity to believe what he was saying. But the Son also came with a warning so that believers would learn to avoid unbelief. 

And this underestimated Savior, this man who nobody thought could do what he claimed he could do, did it all. He alone paid for humanity's sin. He alone could bring us back to God.

Listen to how Jesus compares himself to some rejected building material that surprises everyone with what it becomes.

Luke 19:17, "Jesus looked directly at them and asked, 'Then what is the meaning of that which is written: The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone?'"

The underestimated stone, Jesus, would indeed become the capstone. He would do the incredible, the unexpected - he alone would save the world.