No Room in the Inn

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Well, tonight we will look at the final segment in the Lord’s Prayer, and we’ll finish up our series on prayer tonight. But this morning, I’d like for you to turn with me to Luke chapter 2. Luke chapter 2.

As we prepare for the Christmas season, I really hadn’t intended on doing a quote-unquote Christmas series this year, and yet I find myself, just as so many have, being perplexed and fascinated and captivated once again by this story that I know all too well. And I’d like for us to look this morning at one person who was a participant in this Christmas story, in the story of Jesus’ birth, who perhaps we don’t think about a whole lot. And a reason for that is because we don’t know a whole lot about him.

But we start in Luke chapter 2, verse 1, and it says, And it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria. And I’ve explained before to some of you, I think probably in the senior saints, that people have questioned the authenticity of this story because they say, well, there’s no record of this taking place.

By the way, when it says a taxing of the people, that means a census. They were to count people. I’m sure the government, just as they would today, would find a way to squeeze some money out of the people as they were counting them.

but they wanted to count who all was in the Roman Empire. And what very likely happened, there are records of other censuses being taken by the Roman Empire, and they would go province by province because it was a massive undertaking to count everybody. And so we have records from history of them doing things like this, of taking censuses.

Even if we don’t have record of this one, it’s entirely plausible that it could have happened. And what is occurring here is that since the Romans want to count everybody, they make everybody go back to their ancestral homeland. Where are your people from?

And that’s where you’re to go back to. Many of you have told me and your family, you would go back to Harrison if we were to be counted today. Some of you would go to other states.

Some of, well, you know, if we wanted to look back far enough at where our people came from, some of us would have to go back to other countries. But this was a massive undertaking because people moved around so much just as they do in this day. They said, we need to get everybody back in a stable, where they came from kind of location, not just counting them as they’re moving around.

Everybody go back to where you came from, and we’re going to count you. And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria. It all went to be taxed, everyone into his own city.

And so they went home. The entire area is in an uproar as everybody’s getting up and moving back to their ancestral homeland. And Joseph went up from Galilee out of the city of Nazareth into Judea unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David.

So being a part of the lineage of David, he goes back to the city of David. And it’s remarkable here. I mean, folks, I’ve heard this story as long as I can remember.

I’m sure I was hearing this story before I was old enough to understand English words. And yet it still amazes me how God orchestrated every bit of this to be in line with what He had foretold for over a thousand years. I mean, if you recall back right after I came here, we did a series of several weeks on the signs of Jesus’ first coming and all the things that God had promised through the Old Testament prophets that would be the case with the Messiah, and Jesus fit the bill in every case.

Folks, Jesus’ parents didn’t live in Nazareth. That would have been a real problem for us if God had prophesied through the prophet Micah that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem and yet Jesus’ parents are stuck in Nazareth. So what to do?

God lays it on the heart of the Roman authorities of all people. The Roman government had no interest in doing God’s bidding. The Roman government had no interest in fulfilling messianic prophecy and yet God moved the Roman government and the Roman authorities to say, you know what, everybody has to go back to where their people are from.

And God, working through the Roman authorities, opened the door and made the conditions just right for prophecy to be fulfilled as David and his now espoused wife go back to the city of David. Joseph and his espoused wife go back to the city of David. And Joseph also went up from Galilee out of the city of Nazareth unto Judea unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be taxed with Mary, his espoused wife, being great with child.

And so it was that while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. Now, folks, what has taken place here? This was a long journey.

It would probably be not a long journey today to get from Nazareth to Bethlehem. They’ve built highways and things in Israel. But in that day, you had to walk or ride a burrow, a donkey.

And even at that, folks, the roads and paths that they had aren’t the same as the roads and paths that they have today. And you would have to wind through mountain roads, and there’s no straight line between here and there. And this woman is very much pregnant.

We’re not talking first trimester here. Some of you ladies would not like to ride in the car for three days on a trip across the country at nine months pregnant. Some of you might have done that and could tell us just how uncomfortable it was.

But this woman was very close to delivering and had to make this arduous journey. And when they get there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. It was time for her to give birth to Jesus.

And it says in verse 7, And she brought forth her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn. Folks, the person we’re going to look at for just a moment this morning isn’t even directly mentioned in the text, but if there’s an inn, there’s an innkeeper. And I’ve thought about this man many times over the last few years, this innkeeper.

Now the inn’s, I’m sure, were any place that would cater to travelers. They didn’t have hotels in that day, didn’t have restaurants in that day. They had inn’s.

And any place that would cater to travelers like that would have been doing a booming business when everybody has to leave their homes and go back to where their people are from. And so at this time, the inn would have been, as verse 7 tells us, there’s no room in the inn, the inn would have been absolutely packed with people. And for this, the innkeeper would have been bringing in money hand over fist, I’m sure, putting people up, providing meals for people, taking care of other needs.

oh, your horse has, or your donkey, whatever, has gotten tired and sick on the trip. Here, we have another one you can have. And there’s a lot of business that went on in these inns.

And when I have heard people talk about the innkeeper, there’s always the assumption there that maybe he was a bad man for turning them away. But the fact is he didn’t know who stood before him. He didn’t know who he was turning away from the inn.

And the place was full. But we have to wonder, would it have been any different had he known who Mary and Joseph were and who the baby was? Now, I do have to wonder, it’s obvious from the text that she was clearly pregnant.

And are there not some links he could have gone to provide a place for this woman? And we do know that he allowed them to go out to the stable and have the baby born in a manger. But I have to wonder, is there not a place, was there not anything he could do?

But maybe he had no choice. But the question has always bothered me, would it have been different if he had known? Would it have been different if he’d known who Jesus was?

If there had been some kind of sign hanging out there that said, this baby is the promised Messiah, would it have made a difference? Would it have made a difference if his parents were people of means? You know, nowadays, if you went to a place and it was full, we can’t let you into the hotel, it’s full, it’s booked up, can’t let you into the concert, it’s sold out, can’t let you into the restaurant, we’re all reserved, whatever it is, you can try to buy your way in if you’re a person of means.

Well, you know, would you recheck your list if both of the Franklin twins showed up? That is who’s on the $100 bill, right? Okay.

I haven’t seen one of those in so long. What if all three of the Franklin triplets showed up? Would that be enough for you to recheck your list?

Don’t you know who I am? I have a million and a half hits on YouTube. I’m a celebrity.

I mean, not me personally, but if they were a person of means or importance, would it have been different? The fact is there was no room in the inn. The innkeeper had no room for Jesus.

And we see that very clearly from verses 6 and 7, where it says, The innkeeper had no room for Jesus. And so Mary gave birth to her firstborn son. Mary gave birth to Jesus in a stable, wrapped him in rags, wrapped him up tight as any one of us would do with our children for his security, for his comfort, and then laid him in a manger.

Ladies and gentlemen, a feeding trough because that was apparently the only option. The innkeeper had no room for Jesus. And we assume from this that the innkeeper was a bad man, that he was just heartless.

I don’t think he was completely heartless or he wouldn’t have let her go out to the stable. It may have been the only option he had. But the fact is there was no room for Jesus in the inn in Bethlehem.

And before we assume too much that the innkeeper was a bad man for this, we need to consider that having no room for Jesus is not that uncommon a theme throughout the scriptures. If we turn to John chapter 1, if we turn to John chapter 1, we see that not only did the innkeeper have no room for Jesus, it’s hard to fault him for that when his own people had no room for Jesus. If you’ve been in church any length of time, if you’ve read your Bible much at all through your life, you know what Jesus came for.

You know who Jesus was, who he came to be. Folks, he did not, let me say this as emphatically as I know how, he did not come just to be a great moral teacher and set a positive example for us about humility and self-sacrifice. He did those things, but he did not come just to do those things.

Jesus came to be first and foremost to his people, to the Jewish people, a way back to God. For years, they had been trusting in the law, they’d been trusting in their own righteousness, and the law as a means to have a relationship with God had never been God’s intention for the law. We see in Galatians that the law was a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. The law is to point out where we fall short.

You know, when you go to a carnival or an amusement park, and they have those little signs that say you must be this tall to ride this ride. That sign is there to show us where we fall short. And simply obeying the sign and not going on the ride doesn’t make you tall enough, does it?

Folks, simply looking at the law, the Old Testament law, all the thou shalts and the thou shalt nots and saying, well, I can do that. Folks, the law was never there intended for us to be able to follow it perfectly. The law was there to prove to us that we could not attain to God’s standard of holiness.

See, we fall short of the holiness and the glory of God whether the law was ever there or not. And the law was there to remind the people. Yes, the law was there to be followed and obeyed, but the point of it was never that it could be obeyed perfectly.

And yet, so many of the Jewish people by the time Jesus came along with the Pharisees at the head of this thing had convinced themselves that by following the law, that just by being good enough, we could have a relationship with God. Savior, what are you talking about? I’ve got the sacrifices, I’ve got the ordinances, I’ve got all the practices and the rituals, and surely that’s enough because I’m a righteous man, I follow the law.

Not realizing that there were the matters of the heart connected to the law where they fell far short, fell way off the mark, as we all do. And even they had come to the point of misunderstanding, misreading what God had said about the Messiah and assuming, not even thinking at all that he was coming to be a Savior. The Old Testament says that the Messiah would come and save his people from their sins.

That’s a direct quote from Isaiah, I believe it is. That he would save his people from their sins. And yet they had misread this whole matter of a Messiah and thought, he’s coming as an earthly king, he’s going to set us free from the Romans.

Well, unless your sin is the Romans, that’s not really what it means by saving his people from their sins. And so when Jesus came, when he was born, when he lived a perfect sinless life, when he began to do ministry. It was all for the purpose of coming to die and to provide a payment for our sins.

And yet his people were not willing to receive him. It says in John chapter one, starting in verse one, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. If you’re wondering what word I’m talking about, he spells it out clearly for us later on in the passage that the word, many of you will see in your Bibles their word is capitalized.

That’s because they’re referring to Jesus. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God, the same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made.

In him was life and the life was the light of men and the light shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not. So Jesus Christ came to be a light to his people and his people didn’t even understand the light because they were so lost in darkness. Folks, you look at it and we see all of his early followers were Jewish, but his followers and the majority of the Jewish people.

And this is not an anti-Jewish message this morning, because as we get on further, the majority of the Gentiles rejected Christ as well. But he came to be a light to his own people, and his own people, like all of mankind, were so lost in darkness, they didn’t even notice the light when it was shown to them. There was such blindness.

The darkness comprehended it not. If we skip to verse 9, not because it’s not important, but it talks about John the Baptist, which doesn’t have a bearing on this particular message. That was the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.

He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. Listen to this, verse 11. He came unto his own, and his own received him not.

So Jesus came not only to save all mankind, but to save first the Jews. He was first to be the Savior to the Jews. He was written about by their prophets.

Their law was a testimony to his holiness. Everything about Jesus indicated that he was the fulfillment of God’s promises for 4,000 years to his people. This is the one who’s been promised.

This is the one we’ve been waiting for. This is the one who’ll save us from our sins. That’s why some of them picked up on it.

We look at the man and woman in the temple after Jesus was born and was brought to be presented, and they knew as soon as they looked at him, this is the one we’ve been promised. And one of them said that God had promised they would not die until they saw his salvation. and said, I can die now because I’ve seen the Messiah.

But most of the people missed that. Most of his own people didn’t have room for Jesus. When Jesus came and taught that unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees, you’ll not enter into the kingdom of God.

He was telling the Pharisees that even they were not righteous enough to get to heaven on their own. And they were not having that. When he came preaching such things that we take for granted and teach in Sunday school, but at their time, such revolutionary things like love thy neighbor.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself, and this is the whole of the law. Teaching to turn the other cheek. Teaching them even the things that non-believers look at and say, he was a great moral teacher.

The religious leaders and teachers of the law said, we’ve got no time for this. When he said, I am the way and the truth and the life, and no man comes unto the Father but by me, which is still true, by the way. They said, this doesn’t fit with what we’ve always taught.

When he said, before Abraham was, I am, and claimed equality with God the Father, the people turned on him and eventually called out crucify him. And we talk about this at Easter, and we know how his own people turned against him because we see that we know how the rest of the story goes. That he was put on trial on trumped up charges.

They couldn’t even find anybody to testify against him, so they had to call in people to lie. And it was apparent even to his opponents that their lies were not consistent with one another. And yet so insistent were the people, his own people, many of his own people, that this man had to go, that they ignored their own law and had him crucified.

For his own people, there was no room for Jesus. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. And folks, finally this morning, the third point of this message, and really the most important that I take from this matter of first the innkeeper having no room for Jesus and his own people having no room for Jesus, we could sit around and criticize the Jewish people of Jesus’ day all we want and say how terrible it was that they turned on their Messiah and had him crucified.

But I would ask you the question, do we have room for Jesus? Do we have room for Jesus? If we continue to read on where we left off in verse 11 of John chapter 1, it says, But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name, which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of God, but of man.

And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. Do we have room for Jesus this morning? Now, depending on where you are in your spiritual journey, if we can put it in those terms, this applies to us in different ways.

Some of you may be sitting in the congregation this morning and have never trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior. My Bible tells me, but as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name. And that’s not just a promise to the people in the day that John wrote this, that’s a promise to you as well.

To those who receive him, gave he power to be called the children of God, even to them that believe on his name. Jesus came for us for the very same reason he came for the Jewish people. Now the Bible says that salvation is for the Jew first, but also to the Greek.

And the Greek means the Gentiles, which would be all of us who don’t have Jewish ancestry. He may have come first for the Jewish people, but he came for all of mankind. And when he came, he lived a perfect sinless life because we have this problem of sin that separates us from God.

Each and every one of us have disobeyed God in some way, shape, or form, and most of us do it on an hourly, if not minute-by-minute basis. Disobey what we know God has told us to do. And we can sit there and we can think, I’m so good, I’m so wonderful, I go to church, I help people, I give money.

But all of us have sinned, and that’s just the fact of it. We are all guilty. We’re all guilty.

And our sin separates us from God because God is completely holy. God is completely without sin. God is completely without imperfection.

That includes God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And if you think oil and water don’t mix, folks, holiness and unholiness do not mix. God cannot compromise with sin and just coexist with it and say, it’s all right, because then he becomes corrupted.

And God cannot, God cannot stop being the all-holy God that he is. And so the only option is for sin to be punished, for sin to be dealt with, for sin to be paid for. And not one of us can, it’s kind of a catch-22, not one of us can pay for our sins because we’re sinners.

Think about that. If you need forgiveness, you don’t deserve it. And if you deserve it, you don’t need it.

And not one of us can pay for our sins. And so the whole point of Jesus coming for the Jew and for the Greek alike, bet y’all didn’t realize you were Greek this morning, did you? Romans chapter 1 says, I’m not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it is the power of God and to salvation to all who believe to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

So Jesus’ reason for coming for the Jew and for the Greek was to pay for the sin debt that we could not pay for on our own. That’s why it’s so important. That’s why it matters so much that he lived a sinless life.

because if Jesus had come to earth and sinned, which he couldn’t do, he was God in the flesh. But if Jesus had come to earth and sinned and then died on the cross to pay for sins, he’d have been paying for his own. And yet Jesus came as the perfect sacrifice to die for my sins and for yours.

And when he shed his blood and died on the cross, he wiped the slate clean for each of us. And now the Bible says, to as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name. If you’ve never trusted Christ before, and you’re sitting here this morning, I ask you, do you have room for Jesus?

Is there room to receive Him? And what I mean in asking that is not, do you have room to clean up your whole life and then come to Jesus Christ and ask Him to save you? Folks, it doesn’t work that way.

Again, another catch-22, if we could clean up our lives enough to come to Jesus and deserve it, we wouldn’t need to come to Jesus. But what I’m asking is, do you have room to let go of thinking you’re good enough for God? Do you have room to let go of thinking, well, maybe I could be good enough for God.

If I could just give a little more money. If I could just go to church a little more. If I could just try to be a better person.

Because we are dishonoring God by trying to provide for ourselves what he’s already provided for us. And saying, God, I don’t need your plan of salvation. I can do it on my own.

And incidentally, we can’t. It doesn’t work. Do you have room to let go of trying to be your own savior and believe on his name?

The Bible says that salvation is offered by grace through faith without works. Do you have room to let go of your own works and simply trust that Jesus Christ died to pay for your sins? Do you have room for him this morning?

Come to him, trust him, and then the cleaning up your life he takes care of afterwards. But it applies also, this applies also to us this morning who have trusted him. Because we’ve already been partakers of the promise.

As many as received him, to them gave he power to be the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name. Folks, if you’re here this morning and have already trusted Christ as your Savior, you’ve already received him and been given the power to be called the sons of God. If you’ve trusted Christ as your Savior, you’ve received him and you’ve been adopted into God’s family by believing in his name.

And it says, which were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. That it is God’s desire that we be born into his family, that we be reborn, I should say, into his family, that we be adopted into his family. And then folks, we belong to him.

We belong to him. And so I would ask the believers here this morning, I would ask those who’ve trusted Christ and been born again, do you have room for Jesus? Did you trust Jesus and then put him at the center of your life or is he just an addition?

Does our life give evidence of the fact that we’ve been reborn into God’s family? Or would anybody be surprised to hear that we belong to him? See, as believers, we should be the last people in the world about whom it could be said that we don’t have room for Jesus.

And yet I fear that sometimes that’s the case. In my own life, I fear sometimes that’s the case. See, being reborn into his family, being called one of God’s children because of what Jesus Christ did, entails a change of life after conversion.

That we give him free reign to clean up our lives. That we live according to what he said and we try to follow him. Now, we’ll never be perfect this side of eternity.

but he becomes the center of our life. And so my question is, do you have room for Jesus? Is Jesus at the center of your life, at the way you live?

Is Jesus at the center of your priorities? Is Jesus at the center of your decision-making? Or, folks, is he something we tack on to our lives and say, well, it’s good to have him over here, but I’ve got the rest of this.

An article was sent to me this week. Actually, a couple articles along these lines were sent to me this week, and all of them were very convicting to me personally. But one in particular that stands out is an account that was written by an American Christian who went over to China and met in secret with underground Christians who had come out of North Korea and would go back.

And most of you know that in North Korea, Christianity is illegal as it is in many countries, including China, but the government doesn’t turn the blind eye to it the way they do in countries like China at times. In North Korea, owning a page out of the Bible can get you sent to a forced labor camp for life. Trying to teach the gospel to your child can get you the death penalty.

A lot of times they have to teach their children without the children even realizing what they’ve been taught because the school teachers are trained to extract from the children whether their parents are Christians or not. And as I read this article, the thing that struck me as he’s meeting with these Christian leaders from North Korea, and these people are so dedicated, they said they knew that they were not going to be able to give their kids everything, every instruction in the faith that they would like to be able to have, but they picked a few things that they would be able to remember and pass on. They would teach them the Ten Commandments.

They would teach the gospel using the Lord’s Supper, and they can’t even meet together in underground house churches. They have to worship as they walk down the road in twos or threes, away from prying ears. And the struggles and the sacrifices that these people go through simply to follow Jesus Christ, and this man said to them, how can we Christians in the West pray for you?

How can we Christians in the West pray for you? Folks, I was convicted by the answer where one of the North Korean Christian leaders said, and it sounded almost as though he was offended by the question. You pray for us?

We need to pray for you. And went on to say how the churches in the United States and South Korea that they had seen and been around, the Christians that they’d been around in South Korea and the United States, where we have an ease about our worship. And following Jesus in reality costs us very little in contrast to what they go through.

Said they were disgusted by the self-centeredness and the consumer mentality among so many of us. And folks, I’m not telling you this to make you feel bad. I feel bad about this because I see it in my own heart and life.

Our lives become very quickly about me and what I can get and what I can do and what I want. And church becomes very quickly about me and what I want and what I can get. And folks, they’re right to point that out about us.

I don’t want my life, I don’t want my worship, I don’t want any of these things to be characterized by me to the extent that it’s all about me and I’ve pushed Jesus out of the equation. So believers, this morning I ask you the question, are we like the innkeeper or do we have room for Jesus?