Why no Room in the Inn - Part 1

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Please make your donation to Visionathon today at vision.org.au. The birth of baby Jesus in a humble stable is described in just a few words of Luke's Gospel, but it resonates with profound meaning for everyone on earth. Today on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah considers the significance of God becoming man, not in the lap of luxury, but in the lowliest of circumstances. From Why the Nativity, here's David to introduce his message, Why No Room in the Inn. Well today we are going to talk about one of the enigmatic questions of Christmas, and that is the birth of Jesus in the humble stable in Bethlehem. We have entitled this message, Why There Was No Room in the Inn. Just imagine for a moment a king or a queen who decided to become a common man for a period of time and that they walked and worked and talked with you.

You would be awestruck, and that is what Christ did for us. He invaded humanity for a time so that someday we can see him in all his glory, and it all began in a stable in the little town of Bethlehem. Well, it's time for us to get started with this question, Why No Room in the Inn. I want to wrap my thoughts today around one very simple verse of scripture found in the second chapter of Luke, Luke chapter 2 and verse 7. Luke chapter 2 and verse 7, let's read together. And she brought forth her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn. Something very incredible is going to happen.

Someone right here, right here among us all. Every store in America is going to close for 24 hours. Only emergency workers will be at work. Families with small children will get up earlier than any other day of the entire year.

The streets and the freeways will be empty. Over $233 billion worth of gifts will be exchanged among the people of America. And all of this is explained by something that happened 2,000 years ago in an obscure village described in the Bible as little among the thousands of Judah. Whatever you may think about Christmas, you have to admit that this is an amazing story. Even people who don't claim to believe in God will celebrate Christmas as described in Luke chapter 2. They will give gifts to one another without even realizing that in the very doing of that, they are honoring the Christ who many of them claim not even to believe in.

There's really nothing like it in all of history and in all of culture. Christmas is truly a magnificent occasion. Before our family moved here back in 1981, as many of you know, I started and pastored a church in Fort Wayne, Indiana for 12 years. Now to say that Fort Wayne, Indiana is in the snow belt is an understatement of all understatements. It was almost impossible for us to go through a winter without canceling at least one Sunday because of the snow. One particular winter I shall never forget, we didn't just have snow. We had an absolute blizzard. It moved into the Fort Wayne area as the weekend was approaching.

It became quite evident that there would not be any church services anywhere in the whole Fort Wayne, Indiana area. We at that time were doing television from our church live. We weren't tape delaying it. It was carried by the ABC affiliate in Fort Wayne, Indiana live from the church.

We had a meeting over the phone about how we were going to have a live television service when there wouldn't be any congregation. Now folks, to get a picture of this, out in front of our church was a major highway. It was covered with snow. They couldn't plow it.

There was a little, someone had gone through and they'd shoveled a little section about this big where you could pull a sled and people were going to the grocery store, putting food on their sled and pulling them back to the home. That was the way it was. I'll never forget it. We had a singer by the name of Star. That was her name.

She sang for us a lot. We picked her up on a snowmobile and brought her to the church. We picked up all of our cameramen on snowmobiles and brought them to the church.

I stayed up all night preparing a sermon on the subject of snow and I preached a sermon that Sunday on snow. We had the largest television audience that they'd ever had in Fort Wayne on a Sunday and it wasn't because we were so great. They couldn't do anything else. They had to watch us. They were snowed in.

I've often thought that's the only advantage I can think of of being in the snow belt. Something else happened that day and it has been repeated I'm sure a number of times in other places. A kind of quiet settled over the city of Fort Wayne like I had never known before. Nobody could go anywhere. Everybody was locked in with their families.

The fireplaces you could see from looking out your window were all going. It was a moment of quietness like none we had ever experienced. One of my favorite writers, Frederick Beekner, tells about a similar situation that happened one time in New York in 1947. He said there was a snowstorm that year that seemed no different than any other snowstorm.

The flakes floated gently down without any wind to drive them and all day the snow fell. Gradually the sidewalks and the parked cars and the buildings were covered with a blanket of white and the streets became slushy and the shopkeepers were out with their shovels trying to clear a path for folks to walk to their doorway and the snow just kept on falling. The plows couldn't keep ahead of it and consequently the traffic nearly came to a standstill and businesses closed and people did their best to get home before nightfall. By the next morning bustling New York was a totally different city. We were in New York and I tried to imagine what this would have been like seeing all of the incredible commerce and traffic that goes on there during this season of the year. Beekner continues, he says, abandoned cars were buried, people just got out of them and walked away from them and left them in the middle of the street.

Nothing on wheels could move. About midday skiers were gliding down Park Avenue and the most striking transformation of all, he said, was the absolute incredible silence. The only sounds were muffled voices and ringing church bells and people listened because they couldn't help themselves. Our world today, he wrote, rarely listens anymore unless there's a crisis of significant magnitude that thrusts a wrench in the wheels of our high-speed technological society. But Beekner said on that day, in New York at least, the world stopped for a moment to listen. There is an annual illustration of this silence that we all experience.

Have you ever gotten a toy for your children or grandchildren that needed batteries and the batteries didn't come with the toy? It's the only time of the year when we all salute 7-Eleven because it's the only place you can find. And you go, I've done this more times than I can remember, and you go out and it's just such an eerie thing because nobody is on the street. When Christmas comes, even without any biblical information, the whole world stops for a moment to listen.

And there is no explanation for it except for the fact that an event happened 2,000 years ago from which we have still not been able to recover. People ask me why we fight for Christmas and what difference does it make. If they would just stop and observe, they would realize this is a magnificent occasion. I am a little boy at heart when it comes to this time of the year, and I hope it never changes. The excitement and the mystery of the season begins to build up in me to the point where, yeah, I'm the one who said, okay, we can have an ice skating rink in front of our church.

Christmas brings all of that out of us, and where does it come from? It goes all the way back to that little verse of Scripture that we read at the beginning of today's message. And Mary brought forth her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling claws and laid him in a manger. If you think what you're to experience is a magnificent occasion, friends, let me tell you it doesn't even come close to the magnificent occasion that started all of this.

For that magnificent occasion brought together two worlds that had never intersected before. On that night when Mary brought forth her firstborn child who was the Son of God, for the very first time ever, deity invaded humanity. Colossians tells us the story like this. It says that Christ is the image of the invisible God, for it pleased the Father that in Christ all the fullness of God should dwell.

Colossians 2, 9 says, for in him, in Christ, dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. Never before in all of the annals of history had God ever so visited man that he would deign to come and be born into a human flesh and become one of us. Deity literally came to be humanity. He never lost his deity, but he was God in the flesh. And that night when Jesus was born started this celebration that we're all experiencing right now when God, who loved us so much, sent his only Son to be one of us and God became a man and he walked around and I've said it over the years, Jesus Christ is nothing less than God walking around in a body. He came to be one of us.

In Christ, in Jesus, in the baby dwells the fullness of the Godhead in the body. This was the moment when God became a man. Suppose it hadn't happened. Suppose we lived in the generation prior to its happening and suppose that we could get some advance notice that on some particular day in some particular place Almighty God was going to condescend from heaven and become a man and walk among us so that we could understand who God is in human terms. We would celebrate his coming in the biggest party of all time. We would probably gather in a place like New York or Los Angeles or Paris or some place around the world that is notable and a huge celebration would be prepared because God was coming to be one of us. God was leaving heaven to come and be one of us and we would celebrate that event. While I'm here to tell you God has come, the party's already started. God has become a man. On that day when Mary brought forth her firstborn son, deity invaded humanity. But something else happened. On that night when Mary brought forth her firstborn son, eternity invaded time.

Let me set it up for you. We understand life in terms of days and minutes and hours and months and years. God in his experience knows nothing of that. God does not live in time. God created time. God lives outside of time and God and in his perspective, everything is in the present. Everything is in the now.

It is only humans who are linear. We see things looking back and looking forward. God does not see that. God sees everything in the eternal present and God who is eternal on that particular day determined for his eternal being to be confined for a few years in time.

It's an amazing thought. Eternity becoming time. God who eternally existed with the Father chose for a few years to come down and be confined in the boundaries of time that pressure us every day of our lives. We know that pressure perhaps more during this season than any other time of the year.

We're mindful of schedules and times and events and parties and deadlines and when the stores finally close for the last time, it's an eternal scar in the minds of men all over the country. But God knew nothing of that. God lived above time. God lived beyond time. But on that night, God was willing as the eternal Son of God without giving up his eternality to come and be born into humanity and for the years he walked upon this earth to live in the boundaries of time. Micah the prophet who gave us the prophecy concerning the birthplace of Jesus in Micah 5 2 says it this way, yet out of you Bethlehem shall come forth to me the one who is to be the ruler in Israel, now watch this, whose goings forth have been from of old from everlasting.

Please hear me. When Jesus was born in Bethlehem, he did not begin. He had always been. On one occasion as an adult, Jesus spoke to some leaders and he said an astounding thing. He said, before Abraham was, I am. And they were confounded by that. How could he, Jesus in his 30s, be older than Abraham?

But they missed the whole point. What Jesus was saying was that before he was born in Bethlehem, he eternally existed. Jesus did not come to begin his existence in Bethlehem. He came to begin his existence in humanity, having had existed for all eternity. There never has been a time when Jesus did not exist, nor will there ever be a time when he ceases to exist. He is the eternal son of God. But listen to me, the eternal son of God determined for our benefit, for your benefit, for all of our benefit to come down here in his eternal being and confine his activities to the days and months and hours and years of time as we know it. What a magnificent occasion when deity invaded humanity and eternity invaded time.

And then thirdly, not only did deity invade humanity and eternity invade time, but royalty invaded poverty. How rich is God? He owns the cattle on a thousand hills and wealth in every mine.

How much richer can you be? He created it all. He owns it all. We may think we have a piece of the action, but we're just stewards for a short period of time. The ultimate owner of everything and all the universe is Almighty God. If you believe you own some of it, somehow we need to connect in the next 150 years and see how you're doing.

Because we only have it for a short period of time, and then it goes back to the owner or back to the next steward. God owns it all. He owns everything. And heaven is the place that is significant of his wealth. And the Bible says to us in 2 Corinthians 8 and verse 9 that because of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, though he was rich, he became poor for our sakes. That we through his poverty might become rich.

Wrap your mind around that verse for a moment. That not only did deity invade humanity and eternity invade time, but royalty invaded poverty. On that day the God who had lived in the unrestricted confines of heaven adorned in the royal robes of deity came to be born as one of us in a stable, in a manger. He became poor says the scripture that through his poverty one day we might be rich. The unmeasured word of creation was coming to talk with shepherds and fishermen on Galilean hillsides and shores.

And the light that once had blinded a wandering people in the wilderness was reduced to the little flicker of life in the breast of a baby. Heaven's throne was about to be removed and turned into a wooden manger. And the one who sat upon the throne would shortly know hunger and cold and would assume the life of a servant. God was about to be born in Mary.

And because he was willing to humble himself and become a man, because he was willing to become a man even to die, because through his death we have life. Keith who was once in the throne room of heaven surrounded by the accouterments of wealth came to be born to a peasant woman. So poor were Joseph and Mary that when they went to the temple to offer their sacrifice they had to bring a turtledove which was the least sacrifice anyone could bring to worship. And in his birth he found as his bed a trough for the feeding of animals and his first guess the despised shepherds from the hillside. Think of his wealth and think of his poverty.

He came down here to be one of us and he didn't start in the middle class nor in the upper class. He started at the lowest echelon of human experience so that no one would ever feel that they were too insignificant to come and receive him as their savior. And then this magnificent occasion in this little verse of scripture we read at the beginning of our message is set off against the most amazing thought in the whole story. The eternal one who invaded time, deity who invaded humanity, royalty who invaded poverty came to be born and the scripture says there was no room for him in the inn. And of course the personal application of that which we will talk about again tomorrow is while we marvel that there was no room in the inn for Jesus we sort of forget the fact that sometimes we don't have any room for him in our lives either. Even as Christians if we're not careful we can go through the whole season of Christmas and Jesus is kind of on the outside looking in. What we're trying to do with these lessons during the month of December is to make sure that we celebrate the person whose birthday is on the calendar.

We celebrate the birthday of Jesus. We'll finish up our discussion of Why No Room in the Inn tomorrow on the Friday edition of Turning Point and I hope you'll join us then. We'll see you right here tomorrow. For more information on Dr Jeremiah's current series Why the Nativity please visit our website where you'll also find two free ways to help you stay connected, our monthly magazine Turning Points and our daily email devotional. Sign up today at davidjeremiah.org forward slash radio that's davidjeremiah.org forward slash radio. Now when you do ask for your copy of David's 365 day devotional for 2021. It's called Strength for Today and it's filled with biblical truth for the year ahead and it's yours for a gift of any amount. And to keep your spirits bright through the holiday season visit the Home for Christmas channel at turningpoint.tv, your free source for Christmas music, videos, messages and more. The Home for Christmas channel at turningpoint.tv. I'm Gary Hoogfleet. Please join us tomorrow as we continue the series Why the Nativity. Let's hear on Turning Point with Dr David Jeremiah.