No Room At The Inn

Introductory Considerations

1. 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.

2. 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. Magi stand before the crib bearing gifts.

3. The scene touches our hearts.

4. But what our sanitized scene does not present is the fact that the stable would have been dirty and the smells not to appealing. Jesus was actually laid in a feeding trough for animals. The night air must have been cold

5. 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.

Teaching

1. 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.

a. After all - He is the eternal God, the second person of the Godhead, the one who rules over all.

b. We might argue that He should not even have come into our sinful world at all. But that was His choice - because of His great love for us.

c. 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.

d. Something seems very wrong about God being born in a stable.

e. 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. With a word he could have made better arrangements.

2. Luke tells us why Jesus was born in a stable. There was no room for them in the inn.

a. After the long journey to Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph came to an inn - a place of lodging.

b. Because so many had come for the census their was no room left.

c. 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. Not even told about their being an innkeeper but someone must have turned them away.

3. Must have been hard for Mary and Jospeh. I think of times when we drove from early morning till late in the evening with 3 children and a trailer behind the car - it seemed that every motel we went to had no vacancies. Finally we found one but it had been a frustrating night.

a. After that journey to only find a stable that may have offered little comfort. Try sleeping in someone’s barn on Christmas Eve.

4. Although Luke says it was because there was no room at the inn, God could have changed that but He choose not to.

5. So we take a look at why God let His Son be born in a stable.

6 God in Jesus was coming to His people again - not the first time although this certainly was different.

a. God created us in the first place to have fellowship with us - and yet we seem to reject that fellowship. He comes to us and we let Him know that we would rather not have Him here.

b. We see it over and again in the OT.

i. We see it in people of Israel who had been in bondage in Egypt. God comes to them thru Moses and thru miracles to rescue them. He leads them thru the desert in a cloud during the day and a fire at night. He has them build an ark to remind them that He is with them.

ii But they reject Him. They would rather not have a God who tells them what is for their own good. Like a rebellious child they refuse to take His advise as to what is best for them. Reject promised land. (Num 11:1,20, 14:31; Deut 31:20).

c. The rejection keeps on happening throughout the OT - they had no room for God in the nation or in their lives. How many times would God be rejected before He would stop coming to them?

d. We would have left them to their own destruction long before God did.

7. 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.