Christmas Eve 2017 - Morning Service

The central message of this sermon is that God's plan of salvation is fundamentally backwards, initiated from the bottom up rather than the top down. It emphasizes that Jesus' humble and obscure birth was not an exception to His life, but a precursor to His rejection, scorn, and ultimate crucifixion. The sermon highlights how God chose to reveal Himself through unexpected means, such as the announcement to shepherds living out in the fields, rather than the high and mighty of Jerusalem society. This "inversion" is not just a one-time event, but a recurring theme throughout Jesus' life and ministry. By emphasizing this aspect of the Christmas story, the sermon advances the idea that salvation comes through God's initiative, rather than human effort or merit, and that it requires humility, sacrifice, and surrender. The takeaway for the listener is to understand that God's ways are not our ways, and that He often chooses to work in unexpected and counterintuitive ways to achieve His purposes.