2020 Christmas Message

Hi, my name is John Snyder, and I want to say a few things during this Christmas season about the person and work of Jesus Christ. And I would like to do it maybe in a way that we haven't thought of before, because I find personally that it's so easy to read the account of Christ's birth and to take for granted these statements that we've heard so many times, and to forget how real they really are and how radically they ought to affect us.

David’s Psalm and the Meaning of “No Room in the Inn”

So what I want to do is to take a statement from the birth of Christ in the Scriptures and then compare it to a statement made by the royal ancestor of the Lord Jesus Christ, King David, written about a thousand years prior, when he wrote his fourth psalm, a prayer to the Lord.

So let's start with the well-known Christmas account. Mary and Joseph are headed from Nazareth to the town of Bethlehem. Now, the reason that they're headed at this really inopportune moment when she's very pregnant is because the Roman Empire has required a census to be taken in every region that they rule.

And so that includes Israel. As they travel back home to register for the census, they come to Bethlehem, and because everyone's traveling, there's no room for them in the inn. And so you know the account.

They go to basically the stables, and they bed down there that night, and lo and behold, Mary gives birth, and Christ is born and put into a manger, to a feeding trough. When you read the account, you come across this statement, there was no room for them in the inn.

And that's become really a very kind of sentimental cliche. Poor Jesus, no room for his mother and him in the inn, and so she has to have a baby in the stables. I want to contrast that with the prayer that David wrote a thousand years earlier.

And in that prayer, Psalm 4, it opens with this statement, Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness, you have relieved me in my distress. Now you might not notice the parallel between the statement that there was no room for Christ in the inn, and David saying, you've relieved me in my distress.

But actually in the original language, there's a very close parallel. In the Hebrew language, literally, you could translate it this way, you, God, have made room for me in my distress. So that's the contrast.

The son of God, there's no room made for him in an inn. And David, a sinner, crying out to a holy God, again, based on his past kindnesses, asking him again to be kind to him, and reminding God how often he had relieved David in his distress.

Or literally, made room for David when he had found himself in a tight place. What I'd like to do is just look at three ways that the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ at Christmas has made room for those people who have sinned against God to be brought to God, to have peace with God.

Christ Has Made Room for Us in His Kingdom

And so we're going to look at some very simple pictures. And the first is this. The Bible says that Christ has made room for us in His kingdom. Now, one of the ways that the Bible describes our spiritual condition is that we are either in a kingdom of darkness or we are in the kingdom of the Son of God's love, a kingdom of light.

Listen to what Paul says in Colossians chapter 1. He says, He, that is God, rescued us from the domain, or the kingdom of darkness, and transferred us into the kingdom of His beloved Son. So you think of a kingdom of darkness.

Life in a nation that has only known darkness would be one of confusion, of danger, and fear. And the exact opposite of that is a kingdom of light, where there's clarity, and there is hope, and there's happiness.

God transfers us from a kingdom of darkness to a kingdom of light through the work of His Son. One way Paul describes this kingdom of darkness is, he says, it's like being enslaved spiritually. No matter what freedom living for yourself promises you, no matter what sin promises us, it only pays us after a lifetime of sacrifice, where we've devoted everything to getting what we feel we desperately need for fulfillment, for happiness.

In the end, we are paid off with shame, and guilt, and ultimately death. Paul says to the Romans in his sixth chapter, he says,. Therefore, what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed?

So he points them back to their old life. Before Christ was your King, and you were free to do everything you wanted, and to live for yourself, what ultimate benefit did you really receive? It's a good question.

And Paul says, you are ashamed of it now. Now, there's bad news and there's good news. The bad news is that no one migrates from a kingdom of darkness into a kingdom of light. We might think that we can make ourselves better people, and that means we end up in a kingdom of light.

But that's actually not how it happens. You know, maybe we take a ladder, a spiritual ladder, and we place it up against this wall that divides the two kingdoms. And imagine that the ladder has ten rungs, like the Ten Commandments.

And we convince ourselves that if I could just keep these rules that God has given me, and I could keep them well enough, then I would move from a kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of His Son. But it never works.

We climb a few rungs, and we're pretty proud of ourselves, and then we find that we begin to fall, and the rungs break underneath of us. We cannot keep those rules well enough to move from one kingdom to the next.

The good news is that God does transfer people. No one migrates, but God sent His Son to be one of us, to do a work on our behalf that would, in a sense, kill the old us. And raise a new us in a new kingdom, the kingdom of His Son.

Now, when you think of the kingdom of His Son, it is a kingdom. So there is a king, and there is authority, and there is rule. But there is such a difference between living under the tyranny of selfishness, and living under the perfect friendship of Jesus Christ.

Christ Has Made Room for Us in His Family

Now, let me give you another picture of how Christ makes room for us in our distress. He makes room for us not only in His kingdom, but also in His family. Think of it. Living for yourself, selfishness, sinfulness promises us that we'll be surrounded by a whole group of people, and there'll be these significantly satisfying relationships.

But does selfishness really ever produce that? Have we not seen that it destroys families, marriages? It alienates children from parents, and parents from children, and siblings from each other. It destroys our friendships.

Sin alienates us, but primarily it alienates us from God. The Bible says that there really is only one thing that God hates, and that means that all the infinite, boundless hatred of God is toward one object, and it's toward sin, and those who unrepentantly embrace sin.

So when we think of the impact of sin on our lives, we think of the alienation it brings between us and God. Paul writes to the Ephesians and says that we, because of sin, are strangers to all the promises that God has given us in Scripture, but we're also without God and without hope in this world.

That's a pretty bitter thing to swallow. Sin has put a distance between me and God. Why? Sin is the object of offense, and until that object is removed, there cannot be a reconciliation between us and our Creator.

When the Bible talks about this in legal terms, it talks about guilt and condemnation, because God is a perfect judge, and God always rules fairly. But when it talks about it in relational terms, it talks about distance.

So when we think about family, sin has removed us from any hope of being in the family of God on our own, and so we're like spiritual orphans. There's no one that really cares for our souls. There's no one that we can really turn to, and that's a terrible place to be.

But not only that, we're part of the wrong family spiritually. The Bible says that we are part of the family of Adam, our physical forefather who chose self above God, and we've all followed in his pattern.

So in a sense, you could say that every time that we come to God on our own, without a mediator, it's like coming to the palace gates and saying, God, I want to talk to you. I want to present my case to you.

I've got some things I need to say, and we're met at the door by a royal messenger, and the question is, well, what family are you from? We say, well, we're from Adam's family. Well, that's the wrong family.

Everyone born from Adam has been born what the Bible calls an enemy of God, a person who opposes God. We naturally oppose God's claims. We oppose God's rule. Christ has come to remove the object of offense between us and our God.

By living a life of perfect obedience, He has satisfied everything that God's law requires. And by suffering as a substitute for us on the cross, He has fully embraced the penalty that the law has laid upon us as people who have broken God's rules.

And having done that, when we turn ourselves to Him and we throw ourselves upon His mercy, everything I understand of me, I hand over to Him. And everything the Scripture tells me about Him, I grab by faith for myself.

When that great transaction occurs, then the offense is removed, and we are brought out of the courtroom, not just forgiven, but into the family room. Listen to this wonderful verse that Paul writes in Galatians.

He says, When the fullness of time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, so that He might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. That brings us to our third, our final picture of how Christ makes room for us in our distress.

Christ Has Made Room for Us at His Banquet

And think of a banquet hall. Sin is promised again to satisfy us. You know, if only you pursue what you want, what you feel you deserve. If you pursue it hard enough, long enough, you'll be happy. But have you ever really been happy living like that?

I mean, I think we all know from experience how empty living for yourself leaves you. Eventually, you feel that gnawing hunger. And if you look at humanity, if you watch the news, it's really one long demonstration of the starving nature of our souls.

We are scraping about, willing to sacrifice anything to get the next meal. If you've ever been to a city, perhaps you live in a city, and you walk down some of those streets around Christmastime where all the nice shops are, and it's a little disturbing to find beggars, people who are starving.

And they're asking you for money as you come out of these nice shops where you've bought your kids or your grandkids or your spouse or yourself something really nice. And then here's a person that has nothing.

Spiritually, sin has brought us into that situation. Separated from God, we can't seem to get satisfied. And you may have become accustomed to that constant gnawing hunger. But it's not good for you, too.

We don't want to be used to that. Christ has come to make room for us in a banquet hall. Imagine a very wealthy man who sees the beggar on the street. He invites him to his home that weekend. The man's throwing a party for his daughter.

She's getting married. And I know it's not what we would normally do, but let's say the man, in great pity, says to the beggar, You may come home with me, and we're going to have a great spread. It's going to be a banquet.

And you can have as much as you want for free. You're my special guest. He brings him there. He gives him clothes that are appropriate to the occasion. He cleans him up, and the man goes in. And he may feel at first a bit out of place.

But when he sees the wealthy man, and the wealthy man looks at him and nods and lets him know, You're where you ought to be, he enjoys the banquet. Christ gave a parable when he was on earth about that type of thing.

A wealthy man throws a banquet. He invites all the wealthy people in town to the banquet, but they're so busy, so self-important, they say to him, Sorry, you'll have to forgive us, but we're not going to come.

And so he says to his servants, Forget the wealthy and the self-important. I want you to go to the lowly. I want you to go to the needy. Wherever you find them, and tell them they can come to the banquet instead.

And the parable ends with the banquet being full of happy people. Christ has, in coming to be our substitute, has made room for us in a banquet that we would have no right to be in. We can turn from the emptiness of living for self to the fullness of living for Christ.

Closing Exhortation: Turn to Christ and Live in the Reality of Christmas

Now with those three pictures, let me just kind of bring this to a close. God sent His Son. No room for Him in the inn. But the Son has made room for us in a kingdom, in a family, at a banquet hall. But I want you to notice that in all three of these cases, these pictures of our spiritual need, you and I are not capable of providing for us the things that Christ has just been explained as providing.

You cannot go from a kingdom of darkness to a kingdom of light. You cannot adopt God as your Father, and you cannot get into this banquet. So don't waste another day saying to yourself, you know, at some point in life, I'll clean up.

I'll do better. I'll be more religious, more dedicated. I'll be a better me, and I'll find myself acquiring these things that I need. You'll never do it. But you can turn to Christ and say to Him, because you've made room for countless thousands of other people, and not one of them deserved it, would you make room for me?

And open your Bible and say to Him, I don't want to be satisfied with any form of religion that doesn't bring me to you, and I don't want any Jesus of my imagination that doesn't really provide what the Jesus of the Bible provides.

Don't stop short of such a transforming work in your life that you could write the same thing David wrote 3 ,000 years ago. Hear my cry, God. You have made room for me in my distress. And for the Christian, I mean the person that really belongs to Christ, what a wonderful picture of what the Christian life looks like.

The Christian life is not just a list of rules and duties. It's really a life that is transformed by spiritual realities that Christ has brought into being by coming in the Christmas account. Christ has brought me into a new kingdom, so I want to wake up this morning and live for this King.

Christ has brought me into a new family, so I want to find that happiness and rest that comes from belonging to a perfect Father. And Christ has brought me into a banquet house, so I want to turn away from the empty promises of satisfaction that selfishness comes each day and gives me.

And I want to turn to the fullness of Christ and demonstrate in my very common life what an uncommon King Christ is. Don't settle for any Christianity that doesn't contain those. Well, I hope you have a good Christmas season and that God would help us to really know that Jesus.