No Room in the Inn

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Turn with me, if you would, to Luke chapter 2. Luke chapter 2. And then if you’ve got your bulletin, you might stick it in John chapter 1.

We’re going to look at both of those this morning. Luke chapter 2 and John chapter 1. I don’t know if any of the rest of you have been affected by this yet, but we are, I’ve lost count, something like 12 days out from Christmas now.

Is that correct? Okay. We have a little snowman calendar on the fridge where the kids point the nose every morning to how many, the nose rotates around and you point it to however many days are left on the snowman, but we didn’t do that this morning, so I couldn’t remember.

We’re not that far out from Christmas time, and it seems like the closer we get to that day, to that time of peace on earth, goodwill toward men, the more chaotic and the more frantic things become. Even aside from Christmas, we’re already such busy people, I think. We sit down and discuss every day, what do you have going on today?

What do you have to do tonight? And the list is just overwhelming. Some day, I’d just like to, I mean, some evening, I’d just like to sit there.

But it doesn’t seem to happen. And then you throw Christmas on top of it. And preparing for that, we’re making Christmas gifts.

And it’s, I don’t know which is worse. taken all the time to make Christmas gifts or fighting with people at Walmart to go buy them. It’s just a busy, chaotic time of year.

And I don’t remember it always being this way, at least for me, but it has been this year. It just feels like there is so much going on in life right now that many of us could not cram one more thing in. There’s no room left.

Interestingly enough, that’s part of the Christmas story, is there being no room. And folks, I am concerned. I’m concerned about me.

I’m concerned about you. I’m concerned about our society as a whole, that there is no room for Jesus, even in Christmas. Christmas has become about everything else.

And I’ll just tell you before I go too far into this, this is not a message about let’s put Christ back in Christmas, as important as that is. But folks, I think it stops short of where we need to be. It really needs to be let’s put Christ back in our everyday lives.

But I think there’s no room for, it’s possible that if we’re not careful, there’s no room for Christ even in Christmas. It’s become about so many other things. We took the kids Friday night to look at Christmas lights and ended up on the north side of Oklahoma City in one of the fancier areas of town because they always put on a big light display.

And one thing I saw, well, really the first thing I saw when we got into this neighborhood, the first thing anybody saw, probably you could see it from space, right, Charla? Was a big, she knows exactly what I’m talking about, a huge display where they had wrapped the columns of this stately old house in different colors of Christmas lights, and they had wrapped the trees in different colors of Christmas lights, and it was the same pattern in the same order over and over and over right down to the lights that outlined the curb were in the same pattern over and over and over and it was the gay pride flag. Now it’s their house.

They can do whatever they want. And it was, I will give them this. It was a clever way to make their statement.

I’ll give them that. But I just looked at Charla and I said, can we not have one thing? Can we not even have Christmas without a political agenda being shoved down our throats.

That one or any other political agenda you might please. Christmas is not about the agenda that you’re trying to push. Christmas is not about, as neat as these displays were too, Christmas is not about celebrating the Oklahoma City Thunder.

There were a lot of orange and blue light displays. Folks, Christmas is not about Santa Claus. Christmas is not about our gifts and presents to each other.

and as much as it pains me to say, Christmas is not even about being together with our families. First and foremost, Christmas is about celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. And as tragic as it is that we seem to have no room for Christ in Christmas, the bigger tragedy is how many days we go through our regular lives and completely push him aside and push aside what he desires for us, push aside his will, push aside his wisdom, and say, you stay over there. I have no room for you here.

Now we’re going to look at Luke chapter 2 first this morning, starting in verse 1. 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.

Now all of these things match up. These are all real historical figures. And I’ve made the point before that you wonder sometimes, why are all these dates and names, why is all this genealogy, Why is this in here?

It sounds like history class. Why is it in the Bible? What does it have to do with us spiritually?

Folks, it’s clues to us that God’s word is true. These things are clues to us that, hey, this is rooted in historical fact. You go to a fairy tale and it says once upon a time.

Well, what time? Just once upon a time. In a country far, far away.

What country? They don’t say. When you’re fabricating something, it’s best to keep it very general, very vague, because you get caught in a lie in the details.

Folks, that’s not what we see in the Bible. We see they name names, they name dates, they name places. This taxing did happen.

It was commonplace in the Roman Empire for them to do censuses. Maybe not every province at the same time, but they declare we’re going to count the entire Roman Empire, and then they’d spend the next 10 years going province by province by province. So Caesar, some people have said, well, there’s no record of an empire-wide census.

Well, no, there wouldn’t be. They didn’t have the logistics to be able to count everybody all at once. So he sends out a decree, we’re going to count the whole empire during the days of Caesar Augustus, and then they go through province by province over the next 10 years or however long it takes.

And it was made, this taxing, this census was first made when Serenius was governor of Syria. And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. Now we call it, historians call it a census, the Bible calls it taxing.

Folks, that’s not a contradiction here. One of the main reasons why the government wants to know where people are so they can tax them. And that’s true today still.

So everybody went back to where they came from to be taxed. And Joseph also went up from Galilee out of the city of Nazareth into Judea and to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David. In a time when people had moved around a little bit, Maybe not as much, they’re not as mobile as we are today, but they were still a little bit mobile.

Okay, to keep better tabs on everybody, go back where you came from. Go back to your father’s, father’s, father’s, father’s, father’s city. Go back there.

And some of you would have to travel far away. I can’t keep track. Are y’all from Louisiana or Ohio or Texas?

You’re from a bunch of places. They don’t even know where they go. There you go.

They’d have a long way to travel. If we’re talking fathers, fathers, fathers, fathers, all the way back, I’d have to be traveling down to Hugo. We would all have to go someplace else.

Go back where your people are from. And so to get a better account of everybody, they said go back where your people are from. And so at that point, Joseph said, come on, Mary, let’s go.

We’ve got to go to Bethlehem. That’s where my family’s from. It says in verse 5 to be taxed with Mary, his espoused wife, being great with child.

Now, they were engaged to be married. Now, there’s a step in the, and you probably are familiar with this, there’s a step in their marriage custom between engagement and actual marriage called betrothal, where they were not fully married, and yet they were so committed to one another, they would have had to go through a divorce. So it’s scandalous at this point that she’s his espoused wife, and she’s great with child.

Now, we know that story that Joseph was a good man. He was willing to put her away quietly. But then the angel of the Lord came and said that this child was the son of God.

And he decided to do the right thing. And just as an aside, we give Mary lots of credit for her faith and her willingness to do this thing that had to be terrifying. This had never happened to anybody before.

Her faith to be willing to say, okay, God, I don’t understand how any of this is going to work. But if you tell me this is what I need to do, then this is what I’ll do. And sometimes I think we overlook Joseph.

There’s a great sacrifice on Joseph’s part here too because think of the shame in that time. Think of the shame just 50 years ago if he’d married a girl who was in trouble and he knew it wasn’t his child. And yet because God said she hasn’t done anything, she hasn’t done anything wrong, this child is the Son of God.

Joseph was willing to believe God and was willing to do something that was not popular and was not easy. and so it was that while they were there the days were accomplished that she should be delivered so when the Bible says she was great with child it was not an exaggeration as we would say today she was ready to pop and she brought forth her first born son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn they got to Bethlehem they got to this town where his people were from and that makes me think there should have been somebody there rolling out the welcome mat. And yet there was nobody.

There’s nobody rolling out the welcome mat. You know, we could speculate were they turned away because of her condition. I don’t know.

I mean, we could speculate, but I won’t teach that as doctrine because the Bible doesn’t tell us. But we know that they went to the inn there in Bethlehem and they couldn’t even find a room there because it was booked up because everybody was moving around, getting back to where they were supposed to be. And and there was no opportunity for her to have a nice place, to be able to rest and to give birth and to prepare herself and to take care of her child.

She went instead to a stable. There was an innkeeper who was kind enough to give her room in a stable. And it says she brought forth her firstborn son and she wrapped him in swaddling clothes.

She swaddled him in rags, what she had. I doubt it was dirty rags. I doubt it was filth, but this is a humble situation.

This is not what we would look at and say, that’s how the king was born. He’s wrapped in swaddling clothes and he was laid in a manger, a feeding trough for animals instead of a crib surrounded by silk and linen and the finest embroidered things. He was laid in an animal’s feeding trough because there was no room for them in the inn.

And I don’t know, I go back and forth on whether or not, should we be hard on the innkeeper for turning her away? I mean, she was pregnant. He should have found some place for her.

Then I also say, he didn’t know. And what of all the other guests he had to take care of? But the fact is, whether it was just through malice or neglect or there was just nothing he could do, they got to Bethlehem and there was no room for the Son of God.

No room for the Son of God. And so he was sent into these conditions that we would look at and say, that’s not how a king comes into the world. And yet that’s exactly how God chose to send the king into the world.

But that wasn’t the only time that he was rejected. See, the innkeeper had no room for Jesus, but he wasn’t the only one. If we turn to John chapter 1, turn to John chapter 1, it says, 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. Now it will go on to tell us in this passage in verse 14, 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. In case you’ve never heard this passage taught and explained before, I want to clarify before we go very far into it at all, that when it’s talking about the word here, it’s not talking about a spoken word or written word.

The word there, word means Jesus. It’s referring to Jesus Christ. That word there in Greek is, I believe, logos, which means a living word. And so it says the word Jesus was in the beginning.

You know, he existed before time. He was there present in Genesis 1. 1 where it says in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

And when it says God said let us make man in our own image, that’s the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit talking amongst themselves. And God said these things. Jesus Christ didn’t just come into being at Christmas.

He’s always been. He was in the beginning, and Jesus was with God, and Jesus was God, and the same was in the beginning with God. Verse 3 says, 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. Okay, so the Bible says that everything was made by him. Everything was made by him.

He is the creator of all things. A lot of people have a wrong idea that Jesus is somehow lesser than God. That he somehow came along later.

No, the Bible teaches that Jesus Christ was with God the Father from the beginning. He has always been God, will always be God, and everything that was created was created by him as part of the Godhead. In him was life.

Our life comes from his life. When God breathed life into Adam’s nostrils, Jesus Christ was part of that. and the life is the light of men.

He brings light to this dark, dark world. As it says in verse 5, And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. So Jesus Christ stepped into a dark, God-hating, sin-loving world, and shone his light, and the darkness did not understand the light.

The darkness looks at the light in confusion. There was a man, verse 6, sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness to bear witness of the light that all men through him might believe.

He was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light. It’s referring to John the Baptist and him coming to prepare the way of Jesus Christ. Verse 9 says, that was the true light. So John was sent to bear witness of that light, Jesus Christ. It was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.

Jesus Christ brings his light and shines it on the entire world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. So Jesus Christ not only made the world and everybody in it, but he was here among us.

And folks, we didn’t even recognize our own creator when he walked among us. The world knew him not. He came unto his own and his own received him not.

He was there among his own people. He was there among the Jewish people. And they had been promised a Messiah for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.

For thousands of years, really. God had been promising that he would send an anointed one who would save Israel from their sins. And they were looking, and they were looking, and they were searching for a Messiah.

They were desperate for the Messiah to come, but they had completely misunderstood and miscalculated what God had been promising. And they were looking for an earthly king. They were looking for somebody who was born in the splendor of the royal palace, and they completely missed that the God of the universe was born in a feeding trough.

They missed it. He came into his own and his own received him not. If anybody should have known him for who he was, it was his own people who he’d been promised to.

But even they did not receive him. Verse 12 tells us though, but as many as received him, as many of those who did receive him, to them gave he the power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name. The Bible says, but there would be some who would receive him.

There would be some who would accept him for who he really is. and to those people he gave power not just to be forgiven. I’ve told you before, it doesn’t stop at forgiveness.

That would be a great enough gift from God. But God doesn’t just take us from being his enemy and through Jesus Christ forgive us and make us his servant. That would be a great enough gift, but he actually goes a step further and adopts us as his children.

To them gave he the 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 man, but of God. See, mankind was so lost apart from Jesus Christ that we didn’t even realize how lost we were. We were so in the dark that when we saw the light, we didn’t even realize what it was.

It was not our idea to say, hey, we need to find a way back to God. It was not our idea to say, hey, we need to repent and find a way to find forgiveness. It was all the plan and the work of God that he accomplished by sending his son Jesus Christ to die in our place.

And now he says to as many of those who receive him, to them gave he the power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name. 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.

I just want to share a few thoughts with you this morning and then we’ll be dismissed. First of all, the innkeeper, as we’ve already talked about, the innkeeper had no room for Jesus. And as I said too, I go back and forth.

I go back and forth on some of these people in the Bible. Were they unreasonable? Were they not?

Would we have done the same thing? Yeah, they made the wrong choice, but should we be too hard on them? I do the same thing with the disciples.

Is it really fair to say, well, they should have known X, Y, and Z? We have the benefit of being able to look back and see how the story ended. The innkeeper.

The innkeeper, whether it was through neglect, he just didn’t know what he was doing, or he didn’t feel he had any other choice, or whether it was through malice, get out of here, I’ve got paying customers, I’ve got wealthy people, I’ve got people who aren’t girls in trouble, I’m going to take care of that. Whether it was through neglect, or whether it was through malice, the innkeeper had no room in his establishment for the Son of God. And folks, there’s a lesson in there for us, that sometimes when we don’t make room in our lives for the Son of God, sometimes it’s through malice.

Sometimes I don’t care what you want me to do. Sometimes that might be our attitude. I hope as a believer that that’s not our attitude.

Sometimes as people, that’s our attitude. I don’t care what He wants me to do. I don’t care what He wants from me.

I don’t care what He wants from my life. I want to do this. I’m going to go do this over here and forget Him and what He says.

there’s a lot of that attitude in our world today there’s a lot of hatred for god and for god’s son says you know what I don’t want any part of you there’s also I would think most of us in here would would shudder at that thought and say no I would never I would never knowingly say that but there’s the neglect on the other side it says well I just didn’t know I didn’t pay attention I didn’t feel like I had any other choice. And so I just crowded my life with these other things. See, whichever way the innkeeper went, we can potentially be guilty of the same thing.

So the innkeeper had no room for Jesus. Second of all, his own people had no room for Jesus. As I said, if anybody should have known who Jesus Christ was, if anybody should have recognized this as the coming of the Messiah, it should have been the Jewish people.

They had entire groups of people within their community who were studied in the law, who had memorized large portions of the Hebrew scriptures, if not all of it, and were familiar with this, and could interpret and divide the law, and could advise people on what to do, and the coming of the Messiah, and they knew prophecy, and they should have been able to recognize what God was saying, that he was sending not a conquering king the first time, but a suffering servant, a savior. And they missed it. God’s chosen people missed it by and large.

There were a few who understood, but by and large, they missed it. They rejected Him. They said, this can’t possibly be Him.

This can’t possibly be what He wants. They had no room for Him. It says, He came into His own, and His own received Him not, in John 1, verse 11.

He came into His own, and His own received Him not. Now again, I don’t want to sound like I’m an apologist for the Pharisees, like I’m letting them off the hook. Because there was a lot that they knew to do that they didn’t do.

And there was a lot of outward concern with the law and a lot of inward coldness toward God. But at the same time, I think we look at them sometimes like cartoon characters and see only bad, and we’ve got to think, do we know anybody who’s, can we think of anybody who’s just that evil all the time? That that’s just, the Pharisees, we forget they’re real people.

And we could look at this and say, some of them were probably trying very hard to discern where God was going to send the Messiah. It’s not that they didn’t care. And we could look at them and say, well, they should have known, because we can look back and see how the prophecies were fulfilled.

But what happened was they got so caught up in their traditions. You know what? Some of the Pharisees might have been good men.

Please don’t stone me later for saying that. We like to hate the Pharisees. Some of the Pharisees might have actually been good people, but they were so wrapped up in and their ideas about what God’s Word said that they missed what God’s Word actually said.

Heaven help us if we do the same thing. We might be prone to the same thing. We complain about tradition.

We complain about tradition and churches elevating tradition over the Word of God, and rightfully so, no church, no group of people should elevate tradition over the Word of God. But we have traditions that we hold very dear to. And there’s nothing wrong with tradition.

I love traditions. I love family traditions. But it becomes a problem when we hold on to our own traditions and say, I don’t care what God wants.

I don’t have time for that right now. Oh, can’t do that. We’ve never done that before.

And all the while, God’s saying, this is what I’m doing. This is what I have planned. And you’re wrapped up in your own traditions.

Heaven help us if God’s people don’t have room for Him. We’ve got to be careful. We’ve got to be careful.

It’s okay. Lest I sound like a radical. It’s okay to have traditions. It’s okay to get together and have singing every fifth Sunday.

I know a lot of churches do that. That’s a tradition. That’s not found in scripture, in case you were wondering.

It’s okay to do that. It’s okay to have traditions. As long as we don’t elevate them to such a place where they’re more important than the word of God.

And when God tells us to do something else, when we’re expected to do something else to follow Jesus, we say, no, we can’t do that. we need to make sure that today God’s people have room for him, that God’s people have room for Jesus. And so he tells us in verses 12 and 13 of John chapter 1, 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 want to look at that just a little bit differently, to as many as received him, to as many as had room in their lives to take him in. And I’m not just talking about I had room to think about Jesus. I had room to like Jesus in my life.

I had room to try to follow his moral teachings. I mean room to receive him as he said he needs to be received, to be received by faith, to be received with the knowledge that he died in our place. He died as our substitute and to trust him for salvation, to trust him as the only one who could possibly save us, to receive his offer of forgiveness, to receive him as our savior.

Folks, to those, to as many as received him, gave he the power to become 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 man but of God. And if we have room to receive him as Savior if we’re not so caught up in our traditions and our own ideas that we can receive him as Savior if we’re not so caught up in the idea that well I can be good enough for God there are a lot of people in the world who are trying desperately to be good people and are going to end up good people in an eternal hell. Because they said, I can do it myself.

I don’t have room for Jesus and His salvation. I don’t need that gospel that offered forgiveness, that grace that I didn’t deserve. I can be good enough if I just try hard enough.

Folks, if we can get that out of the way, get our pride and our self-righteousness out of the way and receive Him as our only Savior, make room for Him as our only Savior by getting out the self-righteousness and the idea that I can do it myself. He promises forgiveness and the adoption as his children. So my question to you this morning is if you’re not a believer already in Jesus Christ, and what I mean by that, you’ve never been born again, you’ve never trusted him to be your Savior, do you have room for him today?

Do you have room for him? Or are you still filling up your life with, I can do it myself, I can be a good enough person. If I can just go to church, if I can just give money over here, if I can just help the poor if I can just generally be a nice person you know I don’t cuss I don’t drink I don’t do any of the big sins if I can just be good enough we can fill up our lives with good deeds and completely push him away so my question to you this morning is if you’ve never trusted him as your savior do you have room in your life to get rid of the idea that you can do it on your own and believe the very simple offer very simple promise that God gives.

Knowing that we’ve all sinned against the holy God, the Bible teaches that. The Bible teaches there’s not one of us who is righteous. Not even one.

We’ve all sinned against God. We all deserve divine judgment. And that divine judgment, the penalty for breaking God’s law, is eternity separated from Him in hell.

And yet God loved us enough to say, even though I have to be away from their sin, God can’t be in the presence of our sin. He would have to destroy us. That God loved us enough that he would look at us and say, even though I can’t just act like that sin is okay, there’s another way that their sin can be forgiven where they don’t have to suffer and pay the penalty in hell.

That God sent Jesus Christ, born as a tiny baby, raised to live a sinless, perfect life, to grow up and walk among us and do miracles and ministry and teach and heal and all these other things, but ultimately to go to the cross and to be nailed to the cross, to be punished in my place and in yours, taking our sin, our punishment to the cross. And he shed his blood and he died. And then three days later, he rose again, proving that he had the power to forgive sins, proving that he acted on behalf of God the Father.

And now God offers salvation freely to us. If we forget about doing it myself, I’m going to fill up my life with good works and good effort. I can do it myself.

I can be good enough. I can give enough money. I can go to church enough.

There’s not enough good we can do. It doesn’t erase the wrong that we’ve done. But if we’ll simply believe that Jesus Christ died in our place, that Jesus Christ suffered, bled, and died for my sins, for your sins.

If we believe that and we ask His forgiveness, we trust Him to be our Savior and we ask His forgiveness, He says He’ll forgive us. He’ll give us eternal life and He’ll give us a relationship where we are the sons and daughters of God the Father. That’s His promise.

And my question is this morning, if you have never trusted Him as your Savior, do you have room in your life to sweep aside all the things that you’re holding on to and saying, I can do it myself. I can earn forgiveness myself and simply trust Him to pay the penalty in your place. If you’ve not done that and feel the need to do so this morning, feel that God’s leading you in that this morning, it really is as simple as believing that He died in your place and asking God’s forgiveness on that basis.

Now, if you’re a believer this morning, then my question for you is, do you leave room for Him in your life? He’s your Savior. He should be your Lord.

Do we leave room to follow him? Or do we cloud up our lives, fill up our lives with all the stuff that we care about, all the stuff we want to do, all of our pursuits, all of our goals, all of our dreams, all of our traditions, everything that we could cram our lives full with to the point where we don’t even have time to follow him. See, it’s a shame.

It’s a shame that the innkeeper didn’t have room for Jesus. I maintain it’s an even bigger shame that his own people didn’t have room for Jesus. Folks, it’s a flat-out tragedy if his people who are already called by his name don’t have room for him today.

So I just want to ask you, is there anything that’s keeping you from him this morning? As believers, is there anything that you think my life is so full, so crammed full of this, that I can’t do what he calls me to do, that I can’t have room for him in my life, either to spend time with him, to grow in him, or to follow him? And if those things are there, we need to ask God to rip them out.

We need to leave room for him in our lives.