Word of Salvation – Vol. 14 No.46 – November 1968
Christmas, And…. Nowhere To Lay His Head
Sermon by Rev. W. F. Van Brussel, B.D. on Luke 2:7
SCRIPTURE READING: Luke 2:1-14
PSALTER HYMNAL: 349; 417; 352:3; 344:1,2; 346; 345:2
Congregation of the Lord, boys and girls,
Our Christmas text today proclaims the following message: ON THE DAY OF HIS BIRTH, MARY’S FIRST-BORN SON HAD NOWHERE TO LAY HIS HEAD!
And so it was made plain, once for all, that
1.) Jesus was not welcome in our world;
2.) Yet He came!
1.) This message of our text proves that we must be on our guard, and take a good look at ourselves whenever WE sing our songs of WELCOME and LONGING for the Christ of God. We love to sing our Advent hymns during the weeks preceding Christmas-day, but we must be well aware that that is not as normal as we usually seem to think.
Any Christian loves to welcome Christ on Christmas-day, but these songs of welcome certainly do not fit in with the records of the Christmas-event in the Bible.
Let us face that, first of all, today!
When we look at the scene at Bethlehem right before the moment when Mary gave birth to her first-born son, we certainly cannot say that she met with an attitude of understanding and readiness to assist, and to receive. Yet Mary’s critical condition must have been obvious to all who met her. But nobody gave up accommodation in Joseph’s and her interest.
There was no place for them in the inn. They were sent from pillar to post. And finally they came to a place which was not actually destined to accommodate people; for after we are told of the birth of Mary’s first-born son, the story continues that she wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger.
When we think of Joseph and Mary, and watch them as they walked from place to place, looking for a suitable place to stay, we might imagine that people thought: Well, Joseph and Mary of Nazareth, a couple of common people; unfortunately, the woman is about to give birth to a baby, but is this sufficient reason to take special measures for reception in an over-crowded city?
However, something else was going on there, when one inn- keeper after the other said: “No vacancies! No vacancies in my inn!”
People have pretended: the Lord wanted His Son to be born in utter poverty and humility, and it was due to His ruling that all the inns were full. But surely that is a very cheap attempt to solve this shocking problem so easily. Jesus was NOT welcome; that is what was wrong at Bethlehem. It was not by chance that there was no place for Joseph and Mary in the inns. JESUS was not welcome at Bethlehem. Or rather Jesus was not wanted in this world of ours!
Congregation, today we celebrate the beautiful feast of Christmas. It is a most glorious feast indeed. We thankfully commemorate the solemn fact of Christ’s first coming: God’s only Son born as a Man in human flesh.
We commemorate, and celebrate, the fact THAT He came; but let us not forget to remember HOW He came.
Is this not a dreadful trait in the picture of Christmas as recorded by Luke: THAT THERE WAS NO PLACE FOR HIM, really?
It is no use, of course, to blame the people of that particular town for such a shocking situation. And weren’t they terribly busy? It was quite an experience that the whole town was so over-crowded. It meant a great deal of planning and organising for all who were in charge of the accommodation problem. Each one of the town’s innkeepers was glad that he had been able to squeeze in such an unusual number of guests to his limited premises already. And all those guests, too, were so terribly busy and tired.
No, we are not going to accuse any person. But the point we must all consider is that, in this whole town of Bethlehem, there was not a single little corner for the Lord Jesus to come in, among men. And this was the town about which the prophet Micah had sung: “But YOU, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are little to be among the clans of Judah, from YOU shall come forth for Me One Who is to be Ruler in Israel, Whose origin is from of old, from ancient days.”
No room for Joseph; no spot for Mary who was dog-tired. Well, let us say, we can understand that. People are cruel, at times. Especially when they are so terribly busy.
But that there was no room for JESUS! And THAT ought to shock us. Yes, that ought to shock US, for WE always sing before Christmas: O come, O come, Immanuel…!
There was no place at Bethlehem for Jesus to enter. Yet, WE sing our Advent Psalms and hymns. Would that mean that HERE in our town, and at least in our church, and in our homes, He would have been received with open arms?
Well, why was not Jesus born in OUR day, then? And in our town? Everything would have turned out much better for the Lord Jesus, wouldn’t it? WE know how to appreciate our Lord’s coming! And WE always mention His name with due reverence and real gratitude!
At Bethlehem, on that Christmas night, an angel-choir had to come from heaven to fill the gap and sing the “Glory to God” anthem, and so welcome the Christ-child, because there was no-one else to do it.
But WE are entirely different, aren’t we? If Jesus had come in OUR day, we would have received Him in the appropriate fashion. WE would have sung our own, home-made “Glory to God”, right from the heart, and right in the middle of the night! WE would have praised God’s great love for fallen mankind, and His immeasurable mercy in all sorts of jubilant tones.
Is it not time for us to say: WAIT A MINUTE!!!
Let us be sure that the Lord Jesus would not have been welcomed by us, either. Here, in our midst, the only note sounded would also have been: No vacancies!
It WOULD have sounded?? It still sounds, everywhere, the world over: NO VACANCY FOR JESUS!
Oh yes, CHRISTMAS is welcome. And the “special” X-mas atmosphere is appreciated by a great many people; by almost everyone. But the thing that is really welcome is anything that is after the liking of men. A “merry” Christmas: that is what people like.
But the real feast of this day, CHRIST-mas, the feast of the birth of the very Son of God as the Baby Jesus, this feast which is by far not according to man’s taste, nor according to the taste of today’s world; this feast of heavenly origin, this divine gift, is not very well understood and not very much appreciated by the majority of men, women, and children.
The world cannot comprehend it, really. Of course not! But what about the churches? What about the Christians? Do THEY understand what is going on today? Do WE see and acknowledge the real Christmas-issue today?
There is much occasion for wonderment on this point, and for heart-searching.
It is not for the preacher in the church to suspect any particular people in the church, today. He should not condemn anyone. Let us not offend one another, but let us realise that God has a message for us today, in this particular part of our text: “there was no place for them in the inn”. And what must be done in our service today is that we read this particular section of our text, over and over again, and pray for the light of the Holy Spirit as we ponder what it states: NO ROOM FOR JESUS!
Have YOU any room for Jesus,
He Who bore YOUR LOAD OF SIN;
As He knocks (Christmas-bells?) and asks admission,
Sinner, will YOU let Him in?
We know for sure that in numerous hearts and lives there is NO room for Jesus, even among church-people. It is not a matter of course that, when one belongs to a church, he/she has room for HIM.
GOD came to our world in the Person of His only begotten Son. He appeared in OUR human flesh. He is the Highest and Holiest One. Yet He was not, and is not welcome. He came from beyond our world to be IN our world. To be Man together with us; yes, even to be our substitute, to take our place, to act as the second Adam and to restore all the damage we are responsible for: total corruption.
And IF He is NOT welcome with US, then our condition must be changed, completely and immediately! For today it is Christmas, and it is today that the Lord Jesus wants to be welcome in our hearts.
Are WE ready to be “a Bethlehem” for Jesus?
It is impossible to celebrate Christmas unless we HAVE, unless we ARE “a Bethlehem” for Him, in our very own hearts. We must be born again for a genuine Christmas celebration. This is a fundamental issue which may be neither overlooked, nor ignored. Whenever Christ is welcome in a person’s heart and life, such a person will be ready to live a completely new and different life, a life of true and genuine surrender to Christ, a life of true and genuine repentance and faith.
Christ ought to be welcome – today, and all our days.
Did we receive that grace? Did WE ever pray for it? Do we really WANT it? Completely and thoroughly? We cannot take this for granted, although as brothers and sisters in Christ we may, in love, trust and expect that each one of us is eager to receive this grace and to preserve it as his greatest treasure. Yet, we must take this note of our text seriously; it is a message that comes from God, Who alone knows exactly what is in our hearts.
2.) It is true: right from the very day of His birth into our world, the Lord Jesus had nowhere to lay His head.
Yet He CAME!
He was NOT welcome. He IS not welcome today. But He came, all the same! He entered through the backdoor, as it were. How humiliating it all was!
Paul wrote to the Corinthians on the foolishness of the gospel of the cross. Today we are faced with the folly of the gospel of the manger. Not welcome, yet He came. He came the humble way. GOD entered our world the humble way, because He wanted to seek and to save people who are lost. We cannot help but think time and again today of what the Lord Himself said, later on, as recorded by Luke (9:59): “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head”. That was true indeed, right from the outset.
Oh yes, there were one or two friends who welcomed Him: His parents, His uncle Zacharias and aunt Elizabeth; the aged Simeon, and Anna. They, and a few more, had been looking forward to Messiah’s coming. There must have been a number of people who had not bowed the knee to Baal.
Yet, whenever Christ wants to enter a heart, He must ACTUALLY force His way in there. The gospel is a gospel of FORCE, BY GRACE!
The whole world should have rejoiced in that Christmas night, since GOD’s Son had come; since the age-old promise had come true, at last. For that meant that from this night onward, there was salvation; there was contact again between heaven and earth. Contact, made by GOD Himself by means of this great miracle of INCARNATION, the Word in the flesh.
This joy was completely lacking, save in a few hearts. Nevertheless, Jesus was there.
He was born somewhere in a hidden corner of this great world, for it was His adorable desire to be and to live, to suffer and to die among and for His sinful people.
His desire was: to be there. Exactly there, where He was not wanted; where there was no room for Him. HE CAME.
That is Christmas!
And that is why it is such a great miracle of grace, which the angels from heaven came to sing of. God had PUSHED THROUGH. And God CARRIES ON, even today.
Yes, even today! Whether it suits man, or not. What a wonderful story. GOD squeezing Himself into our world – simply because He wanted to be there. He was not wanted by all those millions who, apart from Him, cannot live,
It was such a common event. A mother giving birth to a child. The only peculiar thing about it was that the child was not born in his home-town, but some place rather distant from home.
But the Child was GOD’s Son, even though nobody paid any attention to His appearance. And this Child is the Saviour of mankind; the only One Who truly saves, to the uttermost!
Congregation, can y o u ever swallow this miracle: GOD in HUMAN flesh? That HE came? That He came exactly that way? And that He STILL has to come that way? Unnoticed, the backdoor way, amidst the busy life of a world crowded with events? In OUR life also?
He still has to FORCE His way in, does He not? Do not presume! WE were not on the lookout for Jesus, apart from God’s grace; God’s very special and powerful grace!
Yet, He came!
Even WE who know Christ so well ought to realise that Christmas is an occasion for great surprise. For, so frequently, there is still so little room for Him in our hearts. Let us acknowledge our real condition.
Do we always give room to Him in our lives, in our feelings, our affections, our thoughts, our views of life, our desires, our decisions, our actions, our daily conduct? And thus so often we deny ourselves the greatest privilege of all, and incur the greatest loss to our lives!
No place for HIM.
Yet He CAME. He is HERE, right NOW.
Can we ever grasp this wonder of grace? Oh, let us celebrate a genuine CHRIST-feast, today: HE Who was not at all welcome in our world, HE CAME to save all who truly celebrate this feast of the Christmas-night.
Have YOU any room for Jesus,
As in grace He calls again?
Oh, today is time accepted,
Tomorrow you may call in vain.
Room for Jesus, King of glory,
Hasten now, His Word obey;
Swing the heart’s door widely open,
Bid Him enter while you may!
Amen.