First Reading: Hebrews 12:25 – 13:15.
Second Reading: Luke 2:1-7.
Focus Text: Luke 2:7.

“And she gave birth to her firstborn, a Son. She wrapped Him in swaddling clothes and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn” (Luke 2:7).

INTRODUCTION

Christmas must be one of the most frustrating times of the calendar for the genuine disciple of Christ. First people give the Lord Jesus a fictitious birthdate which is based on tradition rather than veracity. Then they put a halo on His mother, who was not sinless but in need of a Saviour, as she said herself, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior!” (Luke 1:46-47). Then people go out of their way to convince gullible children that the birth of Christ is somehow associated with their material gain, about which they become so excited that they can hardly sleep as they wait for God Santa to fill up their stockings and give them a new bike or whatever! Then there is the so-called Midnight Mass, which is a honey-trap for sentimentalists based around the idea that Jesus was born at midnight on December 25th, which is of course nonsense. Then we have the myriads of “Sweet-Little-Jesuses” (cos everyone loves a baby) but no mention anywhere about the atonement and why He really came to earth, e.g., “to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8)! Whoa! Mentioning THE DEVIL at Christmas. What a faux pas! Which is precisely why I do like to mention it. 😉

Then we have to put up with the pious platitudes of the media. On television, in religious programmes, one will see Jesus portrayed as being in heaven interceding for all — overdubbed with images of hospitals and down-and-out homes, etc., as if His only mission on earth was to provide food, shelter and clothing — the Social Gospel… always a good crowd-puller to divert attention away from who Jesus really is, why He came, and who He came for. After all, it IS about “good will to ALL people”! (That phrase, alone, is worthy of double exposition sometime!).

On all sides, there is a complete misunderstanding of the meaning of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ and a misrepresentation of who He really is. Hey, just try misappropriating Muhammad and see the outcry — maybe even a fatwa. But misappropriating Jesus? No problem! Go right ahead. Fair game. (Only to be expected in this world).

Incidentally, surely, if this thing called “Christmas” was meant to be celebrated by believers, there would have been some indication left in the Bible as to when He was born; but there is none. In truth, the only commemoration ordained for believers is the Lord’s Supper; but we’re weak, fleshly people, prone to use any excuse for a celebration, especially in midwinter. But hopefully we can turn this worldly festival to some spiritual advantage.

So let us sharpen our understanding of why the Man, Christ Jesus, was born into this world. Our meditation here is the phrase in Luke 2:7: “There was no room for them in the inn”. And I want to ask two main questions: 1) What is the meaning of the phrase? 2) What can we learn from it?

I. WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS PHRASE?

What is the meaning of the phrase, “There was no room for them in the inn”? I think there are two principal meanings implied here.

1. His Rejection by the World

First, it has nothing to do with the hardheartedness of an innkeeper! The poor old innkeeper (or guesthouse host) has had a bad press over the centuries — but it is not deserved. For there was a huge census in operation at the time, so guest-houses would have been full up anyway.

Secondly, it has nothing to do with the typical World Council of Churches or United Nations Christmas messages about refugees! The Incarnation story is often portrayed by such organisations as a good example of homeless displaced people having doors shut in their faces. This is a total Red Herring!

This Child they called Jesus was DESTINED from eternity to be rejected by the world He had created. So even from His birth we find Him outside the normal realms of human hospitality. As the hymn baldly puts it: “Thy couch was the sod, O Thou Son of God” — and this was the case right from the start. [Incidentally, the word “sod” there refers to a sod of earth not the modern way in which it can be used!]. This was a fitting beginning for the One who “was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. Like one from whom men hide their faces, He was despised, and we esteemed Him not” (Isaiah 53:3).

When He came to read the Scriptures and preach to His own townsfolk in Luke, chapter 4, they tried to bundle Him over a cliff. “He was in the world, and though the world was made through Him, the world did not recognize Him. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him” (John 1:10-11). And He has continued to be rejected by the vast majority of the world’s population since that time. Even when countless millions of unbelievers are winsomely singing Christmas Carols and getting off on it, they still reject Him really, confusing human sentiment with true spirituality (lots of endorphins are released when you sing, not to mention the stimulation of the vagus nerve). Few follow the narrow way, but many follow the broad.

“No room in the inn” is a veritable icon of the rejection by the world of the Son of God who came in the flesh.

Secondly, the phrase “No room in the inn” signifies:

2. His Humiliation

His humiliation was right from the beginning, for He came as a substitute for His people, to stand in their place. “You shall call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). The name “Jesus” is the English rendering of the Greek word, Ἰησοῦς, iyaysous, which is a Greek rendering of the Hebrew, יֵשׁוּעַ‎, Yeshua, as it also is in Aramaic. Yeshua is the shortened version of the earlier יְהוֹשׁוּעַ, Yehoshua, or, as we say it in English, Joshua. Thus, the real name of Jesus when He walked this earth would have been Yeshua ben (or, in Aramaic, bar) Yehosef — Joshua, the son of Joseph. The significance of being given that name, “for He shall save His people from their sins”, is that Yehoshua in Hebrew means the Lord saves. So, the very name that Joseph was told to give to his son by the angel of the Lord is essentially His job description. The Lord saves.

To be born and nurtured as a newborn in such humiliating circumstances — in a manger, an animal feeding trough — was part of His standing in our place. Even in His birth was the seed of His death. As He was born, wrapped in blood-stained rags, so He also died and was buried. He came not for His own sake but for ours. From the very beginning of His life as a Human Being, He was the substitute, standing in the place of His own sheep for whom He laid down His life, and who have been given to Him by the Father (John 10:1-18).

We see Him as our substitute at His temptation in the wilderness, Greek: ἔρημος, erémos, wasteland, desolate place (Luke 4:1-2). Where the first representative of the human race, Adam, had failed, Christ prevailed (Romans 5:15). But note that whereas Satan came to our first parents in paradise, he came to Christ the Son of God in the desert, the wilderness, the desolate place. How fallen is humanity and this world! How are the mighty fallen!

We see Him as our substitute at His baptism. He had no need to be baptised Himself. He had no sin of His own. But He was baptised to show His complete identification with us needing to be cleansed.

All through His life in this world, He was our substitute, acting on our behalf, taking what should be our humiliation on Himself. His life was one profound experience of humiliation. God come in the flesh to serve. It had to be that way. For this was the very opposite and inverse of Satan’s behaviour. All the angels (including Satan) were created to be “ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation [i.e., humans]” (Hebrews 1:14); but Satan rejected that role of servant and exalted himself in order to usurp rulership of the world. That was the very foundation of the Fall of humanity. Then God, the true Ruler and King of this world, doing the absolute contrary of what Satan had done, “emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:7-8). So Satan rejected the servanthood with which he had been commissioned (Hebrews 1:14) and set himself up as ruler of this world, whereas the Son of God voluntarily set aside the fullness of the power of His Divinity in order to be a sacrificial servant (Philippians 2:7-8). This is the great paradox of salvation.

As the pinnacle of His humiliation on our behalf, we see Him as our substitute on the Cross, when He was treated as if He was a sinner by the Father when the penalty for sin was poured out on Him when He suffered the pangs of hell (alienation from God) in our place, “My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46). The beautiful exchange: “God made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

“Surely, He took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows; yet we considered Him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. We all like sheep have gone astray, each one has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid upon Him the iniquity of us all … He was stricken for the transgression of My people” (Isaiah 53:4-6, 8b).

So, encapsulated in the phrase “there was no room in the inn” is the fact of His rejection by men and women and His humiliation on behalf of His people.

II. WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THIS PHRASE?

We learn from this phrase, “there was no room in the inn”:

1. That this Baby was Not an Abandoned Reject

The Christmas portrayal of Jesus and His family as merely being examples of helpless refugees and rejects of society for whom we should only feel compassion is completely wide of the mark. There were acute spiritual reasons for His “homelessness” because this world as it is presently constituted is not His home. “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head” (Matthew 8:20).

In fact, we see in the Incarnation a complete contrast with the helpless and abandoned baby that we find in in Ezekiel 16:1-14, which would be a much more fitting image for a refugee! The baby there was utterly helpless and abandoned, whereas the baby they called Jesus was the personification of the love of God for His creation and for His people — destined to go to Jerusalem as the climax of all history. He was born so that He could die — and be a sacrifice for the sins of His people!

So please do not get caught up in the myth that the birth of Christ is about engendering in us compassion for the refugees and the homeless. While it is good to have compassion for people in such hardship, that is NOT the message in the birth of Christ. For He was only born in order to die and then overcome death through resurrection. There is no other reason, for His death and resurrection are the axis upon which all history swings.

Second, we learn from this phrase:

2. That Through His Humiliation we will be Exalted Spiritually

Nothing that He experienced was for Himself. He was born in hyper-humble circumstances. But the big point here is that God Himself took on human flesh. THAT is the real humiliation. Imagine yourself becoming a cockroach in a rubbish dump, then magnify that many billions of times and you may vaguely approximate what it means for God to become Man in that unique situation!

We have already seen that God — in order to effect a transformation of the Fall and the overthrow of Satan — became a Servant. In this role reversal lay the salvation of the cosmos and human creation. The whole creation groans and has done so from the moment that God’s curse fell upon the earth in the wake of the deception of Eve and the transgression of Adam. But when that Baby slithered into the world from the womb of the virgin the whole creation must have given a little yelp of joy in the midst of its groans (Romans 8:22), and the obedient angels sent a hymn across the cosmos in anticipation of the glory that was yet to come (Luke 2:13-15).

Because the Son of God took on human flesh and became that homeless Baby Jesus, human beings can be raised from their pitiful state of sin into a state of glory! The fact that “there was no room in the inn” means that through His humiliation we will be exalted spiritually. As the Apostle puts it: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9).

Third, we learn from this phrase:

3. That We must Follow Him in His Humiliation

The Son of God identified with us when He took on human flesh so that He could take the penalty for our moral failure in His body and soul. When we have believed in and become followers of Jesus Christ, we must identify with Him and follow Him in His humiliation: “Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it” (Matthew 16:24-25).

Once you have become a disciple of Christ you will discover that there is no room in the inn for you either! You will become “the scum of the earth, the wiped-off filth of the world” (1 Corinthians 4:13). [Eat your hearts out, all you megachurches filled with rich people revelling in prosperity theology!]. How could it be any other way? Just as your Saviour was rejected by almost the entirety of humans and was a Man of sorrows, so you will be also in this present evil world. But we are everywhere in Scripture encouraged to identify with the alienated starkness of the cross. That is what is meant in Hebrews 13:12-14:

“Jesus also suffered outside the city gate, to sanctify the people by His own blood. Therefore let us go to Him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace He bore. For here we do not have a permanent city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.”.

Jesus the Christ came into incarnation so that He could be treated as the scum of the earth who was betrayed by all and who even one of His closest disciples would deny. His humiliation had to be complete: Crucified outside Jerusalem (“outside the camp”) on a stinking rubbish dump, utterly forsaken — for out of that humiliation would come the pinnacle of redemption (for that is the nature of the spiritual paradox). He was God, yet, in some extraordinary manner, He set aside the total fullness of the power of that ‘Godness’ — emptied Himself of that fullness — in order to perform the task which He came here to do.

Just as Jesus had no room in this world as it is presently constituted — that is, fallen and corrupt — so neither ultimately do we. We who are disciples of Christ are sojourners for a brief time in a demonic dystopia in which we do not fit and in which we have no real part (for we are the pre-population of the new creation to come), other than to be a magnet for disciples-in-waiting to come into the body of Christ. That is our role.

He suffered at the hands of a crooked and perverse world; and so will we if we are faithful. Just as He identified with us in His life and death, so we identify with Him. “This is a trustworthy saying: If we died with Him, we will also live with Him” (Timothy 2:11). To die with Him reflects Christ saying, “For whoever clings to his life will lose it; but whoever relinquishes his life on account of Me will save it” (Luke 9:24). That is what it means to die with Christ: That we give up our previous life which is lived solely for ourselves and we live to serve His will for us and thus serve others. We will then be in a sacred union with Him: “For if we have been united with Him like this in His death, we will certainly also be united with Him in His resurrection” (Romans 6:5). One basically ‘buries’ oneself in Him (Colossians 2:10 & 12), having finished with one’s former life and taking on a life ‘in Christ’, and then reaps all the spiritual benefits of the fact that He was/is our forerunner! As it is said: “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me” (Galatians 2:20).

There was no room in the inn for Him; and you can be sure that there is no room for us either when we follow Him. For we, like the faithful patriarchs, are “longing for a better country, a heavenly one” (Hebrews 11:16).

CONCLUSION

The bleak rejection inherent in the manger and the Cross is not a hopeless message but one of ultimate optimism. Every single person who has believed and come to Christ knows that He chose to substitute Divine glory for human degradation — to veil the full power of His Deity in servanthood — solely on behalf of those who the Father has given to Him out of the world (John 6:37-39,44; 10:29; 17:2,6,24). In other words, the manger was personal. All believers know that His submission to rejection and obedience to humiliation and ‘mangerishness’ was for them personally. He came for them personally and He knew who He was coming for.

So where does that leave us? There was no room in the inn; but there is all the room in the world in our hearts for Him, if we will have Him. As the hymnwriter, Emily E. Elliott (1864), put it:

THOU didst leave Thy throne
And Thy kingly crown,
When Thou camest to earth for me;
But in Bethlehem’s home
Was there found no room
For Thy holy nativity:
O come to my heart, Lord Jesus!
There is room in my heart for Thee.

Heaven’s arches rang
When the angels sang,
Proclaiming Thy royal degree;
But of lowly birth
Cam’st Thou, Lord, on earth,
And in great humility:
O come to my heart, Lord Jesus!
There is room in my heart for Thee.

The foxes found rest,
And the birds their nest,
In the shade of the cedar tree;
But Thy couch was the sod,
O Thou Son of God,
In the deserts of Galilee:
O come to my heart, Lord Jesus!
There is room in my heart for Thee.

Thou camest, O Lord,
With the living word,
That should set Thy people free;
But, with mocking scorn,
And with crown of thorn,
They bore Thee to Calvary:
O come to my heart, Lord Jesus!
Thy cross is my only plea.

When heaven’s arches ring,
And her choirs shall sing,
At Thy coming to victory,
Let Thy voice call me home,
Saying, “Yet there is room.
There is room at My side for thee!”
And my heart shall rejoice, Lord Jesus,
When Thou comest and callest for me.

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© Copyright, Alan Morrison, 2023
[The copyright on my works is merely to protect them from any wanton plagiarism which could result in undesirable changes (as has actually happened!). Readers are free to reproduce my work, so long as it is in the same format and with the exact same content and its origin is acknowledged]

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