It is a scene that is unmistakable. This scene is so identified with the birth of our Lord, that is has been banned from display in public places because it might offend those who do not believe it ever happened.
The scene is in a stable. Mary and Joseph and a wooden manger before them in which the baby Jesus is lying. Around them are shepherds with their canes and with some sheep beside them.
This scene touches our hearts, but what our sanitized scene does not present is the fact that the stable would have been dirty and the smells not too appealing. Jesus was actually laid in a feeding trough for animals. The night air must have been cold. Not the kind of place any of us would have liked to have been born in let alone to give birth in. Any hospital inspector would have condemned the room and closed it.
But that is not the major thing that is wrong with this scene. The thing that is wrong is that baby Jesus should not be in the stable in the first place.
I. What’s Wrong with this Picture?
A. Jesus doesn’t belong here.
1. After all - He is the eternal God, the second person of the Godhead, the one who rules over all.
2. We might argue that He should not even have come into our sinful world at all.
3. But that was His choice - because of His great love for us.
B. But since He did come should He not at least have been born in a place that would represent who He is - in the inn, perhaps even in the royal suite or the presidential suite.
C. Something seems very wrong about God being born in a stable.
1. God could have done something about it. He could have arranged things a little differently - after all He just has to say a word and the world comes into being.
2. With a word he could have made better arrangements.
3. Luke tells us why Jesus was born in a stable.
"...because there was no room for them in the inn." Cf Luke 2:7
II. Why Did God Allow This?
A. The journey to Bethlehem.
1. They came because there was to be a census.
2. Mary and Joseph came to an inn - a place of lodging.
3. Because so many had come for the census their was no room left.
4. What kind of an inn it was we do not know - Bethlehem was no tourist center so the inn probably left at lot to be desired.
5. We aren’t told of even there being an innkeeper, but someone must have turned them away.
B. It must have been hard for Mary and Joseph.
1. I think of times when we have been on a journey and couldn’t find a room.
2. It seemed that every motel we went to had no vacancies.
3. Nothing quite as frustrating, but think of what it must have been for them that night.
4. After that journey to only find a stable that may have offered little comfort.
C. God could have changed that, but He choose not to do so.
1. God in Jesus was coming to His people again.
a. God created us in the first place to have fellowship with us
b. And yet we seem to reject that fellowship.
2. We see it over and again in the OT.
a. We see it in people of Israel who had been in bondage in Egypt.
1) God comes to them thru Moses and thru miracles to rescue them.
2) He leads them thru the desert in a cloud during the day and a fire at night.
3) He has them build an ark to remind them that He is with them.
b. But they reject Him.
1) They would rather not have a God who tells them what is for their own good.
2) Like a rebellious child they refuse to take His advise as to what is best for them.
3) At every turn it seems that they keep rejecting God’s leadership in their lives.
c. The rejection keeps on happening throughout the OT - they had no room for God in the nation or in their lives.
d. How many times would God be rejected before He would stop coming to them?
e. We would have left them to their own destruction long before God did.
3. Yet God makes His plan to send His Son, to come in flesh and bones so that He can die for their sins and take their place on the cross.
a. Certainly we would not reject someone who would bear the punishment for our sins.
b. They did and many still do today.
c. "He came unto his own, and his own received him not." Cf Jn. 1:11
4. God knew that Jesus would be rejected
a. Note: Isa. 53:3
b. "He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not."
c. The fact that there was no room for Christ's birth was a sign that there was no room for Him in this world.
d. He was rejected at His birth and He was rejected at His death.
e. Yet silently, as a lamb, He gave His life and he looked out at them and said "Father, forgive them"
f. After all that, surely there is room for Jesus and God.
III. Is There Any Room for Jesus?
A. Thanks to God through the Holy Spirit many of us have made room.
1. When we say yes to the convicting power of the Holy Spirit...
2. When we accept the finished work of Christ as the atonement for our sin...
3. We can be saved...Jesus enters into our life.
4. But have we given Him as much room as we should?
5. Each of us must consider how much room we have for Him - how much room in our hearts.
B. There doesn’t seem to be much room for Christ in the world we live in.
1. The world tries to take Christ out of Christmas.
2. The world says that there are too many other things to do at Christmas.
3. Example of woman on a bus tour in England.
4. Many say there is no room for God in this modern, fast-moving, self-sufficient world.
5. They say that they no longer need His law, His love, or His sacrifice for us.
C. Are we among those who have no room for Him in our lives?
1. Things are going quite well and we don't need the extra baggage of Christianity.
2. We don't need His promises because we are doing fairly well without Him.
3. We don't have room for his way of doing things because they don't fit in with our way.
4. We don't have room on the throne of our lives because we want to sit there ourselves.
God keeps coming back to us even though we reject Him, but we need to warned that there is a limit as to how many times we can reject Him. We never know when we will breathe our last - then it will be too late. There will also be a time when God says "enough".
(John 3:36) He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.
(John 12:48) He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.
And so Christ comes to us. We are the innkeeper of our hearts, of our lives. Is there room for Him? Is the inn is full? Can we make room? A story is told of little boy who was to play the part of the Innkeeper in the annual children’s Christmas play at his church. Each time during the rehearsal it came time for him to tell Joseph and Mary that there was no room, he couldn’t say his lines. The director finally asked him why he was having so much trouble. He told him, "I just can’t send Jesus away! He can have my room!" There is room in the inn if we will make the room for Him. The inn was too full for Christ to come in. Throughout Scripture we see that there is no room for God. Is there room in your home, your life and your heart for Him?