Matt Daniel: We're going to look at a scene in this verse as you're turning to
Luke 2 7 where there's, there's a very crowded area and there's going to be a
lot that's, that's going on that we got to, we got to cut through the clutter and
focus on what's, what's really cool here.
And I had a bit of a similar experience where I was at a place
where it was insanely crowded.
Um, in 2021, I got to go to Circuit of the Americas, which is a
racetrack down in Austin, and they were hosting a Formula One race.
Formula One is just basically one of the coolest racing organizations
on the face of the planet.
And this was truly a once in a lifetime experience for me.
It's miles of track.
There are only, there are over 750, 000 people there that, that weekend.
And it was an event that spanned over, over three days.
And again, miles of track, but throughout everything you've got
almost a million people just milling about going to different areas
and seeing different exhibits and getting different food and buying.
Merch from the place.
I mean, it was, I felt like I was in a, in a pack of sardines or something like that.
Like it was, it was tight.
It took us over four hours to get out of the parking lot after, after the race.
I mean, literally just sitting there waiting for, waiting for cars to move.
And I was like, it wasn't even getting back here to Dallas.
You know, that was another couple hours.
It was four hours trying to get out of a parking lot.
Imagine doing that.
That was not that much fun.
Um, but again, we're going to look here at Luke 2 7 for another scene that's,
that's very crowded and in, in the crowds and in everything that was happening,
it's very easy to, to lose sight of what's actually important, which is
we're, we're sitting in turn one, which is where all the fun stuff happens.
We got a good seat, um, where we set our stuff down on the hill
and we were like, all right, we're just going to, we're going to camp
out, we're going to enjoy this.
We're not going to let how crowded and how busy everything is distract
from what we came here to see.
I think we're going to find a similar message in this passage.
So by way of that long introduction, I'm hoping we've had
enough time to get to Luke 2 7.
And we're, like I said, we're just looking at one verse tonight.
So Luke 2 7, you can read along with me.
It says,
And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths
and laid him in a manger because there was no place for them in the inn.
And this is, a Christmas sermon.
And most of this stuff that we're talking about here with, there's the birth
of Jesus, and he's wrapped in these, in a swaddle, and he gets put in a
manger, and there's no room in the inn.
We're all, we're all super familiar with this story, I imagine.
And so that, that means that because of our familiarity, we can really struggle
to wrap our minds around how important.
Hm.
All of this is here.
What's actually being said here, because we just know about it.
We struggle to grasp how impactful it is to us, and I think this is
really important because Christmas is a season that's designed to
celebrate Jesus and to focus on him.
We're celebrating his birth and his, his advent, as we say in Christianity,
as we're his, his first coming.
And the danger with having all of this busyness is that if.
If you miss Jesus during Christmas, if you're looking at all of the other
stuff that's going on, and you, like, all the pomp and circumstance, and
all the fun things, and if you miss Him during Christmas, it's gonna be
very easy for you to miss Him forever.
Again, in a season that's designed to worship Him, and to celebrate Him,
and to focus on Him, if we let our hearts get crowded with other things,
and we miss worshiping Him, it's going to be very easy for us to not be able
to focus on Him when there's not a holiday, when it's not exactly in season.
And so that's why I want in this Christmas sermon to go over some of
these important things that we see in this verse so that we can give special
attention to it because I don't want us to miss Jesus during this season.
Again, I'm going to key in on a specific phrase here that's going to
frame the entirety of this message.
And if you If you look here, it's something that, again, you've heard
of before, but it's this phrase that there's no place for them in the inn.
There's no room.
There's no space that they have.
And the idea that I want us to key in on is, I don't want our hearts during
this season to look like Bethlehem, or like the racetrack that I was at a
couple years ago, where it's so busy.
And has so much going on in it that we can't actually focus on the main
thing, the super critical, super important thing that's happening.
We got to make room for that reality to take root.
And that's, that's point number one.
Again, I'm cheating because I got four sub points, but there's only one main
point that I want you to have tonight.
And it's just this, make room for Jesus, make room for Jesus.
If there's anything that you remember about this sermon, it's
just this, make room for him.
And what do I mean by, by make room?
And we talk about there, there's, there's no space, there's no room for them in,
in the inn for Jesus and his family.
I think the idea of making room, like if you think about, like if you go
to a barbecue or something like that, and you, you go to the front of the
line for like a buffet type thing, they got all of the fix ins, and you
just like see the salad at the front.
And then you're like, no, I'm not loading my plate up with that.
You know, like who even wants that?
And you go and use Mac and cheese, baked beans, brisket ribs.
You just fill your plate up with stuff that you love.
You fill your plate with stuff you care about.
And then, you know, you go, you eat all of it.
You come back for dessert and you never touch the salad.
Right.
Cause like no one wants salad on your, on your plate.
You're going to make room for the stuff that you love.
You're going to make room for the stuff that you really want,
that you really care about.
You're going to give special attention to it.
And in this case, making room for Jesus, there's that idea of giving special
attention to Him during this season, of submitting to Him, of putting your faith
in Him, of entrusting yourself to Him.
There's a lot of different synonyms for this that I can use, but that's
the core of what we're going for.
So let's take a look at a couple of the ideas that are present in this passage
that I want us to keep track of, that again, you're probably familiar with.
But I really want us to take time to think about these realities and have
them make room in our hearts so that they're not overcrowded and busy with
all of the other stuff that's going on.
Because we don't want to miss Jesus during this season when he's celebrated.
So sub point A, when we're making room for Jesus, we got to make
room for Jesus, God in human flesh.
Make room for Jesus, God in human flesh.
That's one of the things that's going on in this passage.
So.
Go ahead and look back at it.
I'll put it up here on the screen so it's easier for you to see.
And it says that she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in
swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger.
Notice all the words that I highlighted up here.
So, Mary, Jesus mom, physically gives birth.
Jesus is a firstborn son.
She wraps him.
And then she lays him down.
You might be like, okay, we know, we've heard this before.
Like, I get it.
It's obvious.
Like, you just basically read the passage again.
But it's really important to think about because if you've ever watched
Star Wars, have you ever seen this?
That Princess Leia, when she's the holograms, help me Obi Wan
Kenobi, you're my only hope.
She's not like physically embodied at this point.
It's a hologram of her.
You could swipe it and she'll go away.
Like, it's not anything of physical substance, right?
And that's what's really important because in this passage, we have to understand
that Jesus is actually a real person.
He's not a hologram.
He doesn't appear to be having a physical body.
He doesn't just look like he's living in space and time.
He just, he doesn't just look like a baby that you were
looking like, Oh, is that a baby?
And then you like go swipe over him and you're like, Oh, it's a hologram of Jesus.
Like.
It's God in human flesh, that this is real.
Again, he's firstborn.
He's a son.
But the point is that this baby born in a manger, though being totally
real, is not like everyone else.
He's truly God, and he's truly man.
He's not under the curse of sin, and yet he's in this manger crying.
Thank you.
with the pangs of hunger and of being tired.
He's reliant upon his mother and his father to take care of him.
Again, we need to make room for this.
We need to understand that for God to come in human flesh, to be the
one who walks the earth in our place.
As you've heard us talk about so much in this ministry, the only one qualified
to take our place, to take on our sins and our wrath has to be a real.
physical person, not a hologram, not just an idea, but God in
human flesh, truly God, truly man.
We have to make room for this.
We need to really contemplate this.
Again, it's God in flesh crying with the pangs of hunger and
tiredness, but not just that.
We need to make room for Jesus born of a virgin as well.
We need to think about this as Jesus.
If you look back at the text, you'll see it says, and she gave birth, right?
That's what we've, I've already read this, but she being married, I think we're all
familiar with that, but she gave birth like physically and really gave birth.
And you might be like, okay, cool.
What's so special about that?
Well, this is, this is a miracle.
This is very plainly and obviously a miracle.
I mean, I think we make a lot of.
exceptions for what we consider miracles today.
Like we just look at stuff that's kind of cool that happens.
We're like, Whoa, that's such a miracle.
I don't know if you've ever seen videos of like celebrities surprising
their fans and how they're all just like, Whoa, like this is so awesome.
This is like so life changing.
This is so miraculous that I got to, I got to meet Harry Potter or whatever.
You know, it's, I mean, if I can be that excited seeing Harry Potter, that'd
be pretty sweet, but I don't know.
So.
We look at stuff that's kind of common, and we can say that it's
super miraculous, but you know what would actually be miraculous?
If you were like, actually, you're gonna meet Beethoven.
You're gonna meet Kobe.
You're gonna meet these celebrities, and you're like, um, problem with
that, they're not exactly alive.
That would be kind of tough if you were gonna, if you were gonna meet them.
But if you said, no, I promise, I've got them in the flesh, raised
from the dead, alive 100%, you're like, that's an absolute miracle.
That would be life changing to know someone that has come
back from the dead like this.
The nature of Christ's birth, that he's born of a virgin, of someone that hasn't
had a relationship with a man to produce a baby, that he's divinely given by God
into Mary's womb, this is a true miracle.
You see, Christ is born in these miraculous circumstances as a
divine stamp of approval saying, he's the one who's qualified.
He's God in flesh.
But it also shows us that there are no lengths that God would not go to, to save
us and to love us and to care for us.
That he comes in flesh and he doesn't, he doesn't say, nah, I'm too good to
be born to this probably teenage girl.
I'm too, I'm too good for that.
But he gets the stamp of approval.
We need to really consider what this means that God will go to such extreme
lengths to solve our sin problem.
That this baby is born in miraculous circumstances, and that he does
miraculous things, and ultimately deals with our sin on the cross.
Again, Christ's birth being something where he is born to walk a life of
suffering in our place, and then to die in our place, and to rise again.
Amen.
We need to consider that His miraculous origin shows the love of
God that He would be sent for us.
The next thing that we need to see in this passage, that we need
to make room for, that we need to ponder in our hearts, we need to
make room for Jesus laid in a manger.
Make room for Jesus laid in a manger.
So you can see here, you see that there's a really genius
way of interpreting this text.
Like when you, when you look at it, you see that it says, That
he was laid in a manger, you just say, yeah, he was laid in a manger.
Like, it's just, it's just there.
Right?
It's not genius at all.
It's actually, I'm just reading the, reading the passage, you know?
But I think this is really important because, again, we've talked
about, okay, Jesus is God in flesh.
We've talked about, he's got this, this divine stamp of approval.
That he's, he's the king and all of this other stuff.
That he's born in a miraculous way.
But, this isn't a fairy tale birth.
This isn't like, okay, like sweet sound.
The trumpets, God is here.
This is so hype.
We're all so excited.
Like get, get everyone to come in and, and celebrate.
The land is going to have a feast for weeks on end.
No, there's no, there's no fairy tale in this.
There's not pomp.
There's not circumstance, but it's actually,
it's actually very humble.
It's not what we would expect from someone.
with this type of royalty.
And I think we, you probably know what a manger is, but I put a
picture on here just so we could really, like, think about it.
Because I don't know about you, but I would A, not want to sleep in that
myself, and B, I would definitely not want to put my baby in one.
This is literally where pigs and other animals, they just,
they just eat out of it.
You just pour a bunch of slop in there and they're like, go eat that, you pigs.
And that's what they do.
And there's literally no room for the son of God to lay his
head except for, for here.
And that's how he's breaking into the world.
He's taking his first cries as a human being among cattle.
And though, though he's laid in this feeding trough as being truly God
born miraculously, we can see that.
from Jesus being laid in a manger that he refused to exercise his
privileges for our good, right?
He could have been born to the daughter of some elite businessman, right?
Maybe the high priest of, of, of ancient Israel could have been
born to Caiaphas's daughter.
That would maybe make a lot more sense for the son of God, right?
To be born to someone who's well educated and well respected.
But we see that The Son of God is laid in a manger that He associates with us
at our most humble and our most low.
I mean, I'm guessing none of you have probably spent the night
in a manger, I'm just guessing.
And so in that sense, Christ is identified with the poorest and the
most needy among us and shown that He is gentle, that He is lowly, that He does
not despise those things, He doesn't look down upon us in our weakness.
But that he has truly entered into it, that he understands any of the
difficulties or the pains that we go through suffering in this life because he
himself was born and suffered in this way.
Again, these are all things that we need to make room for because
we don't, it's so hard to take time during this season to actually
think about why this is important.
Again, I probably haven't said anything.
new to you tonight.
You probably haven't heard anything where you're like, well, I've
actually never thought of that.
Or my parents have never told me that, or I've never heard Pastor Rod say that.
But the point is not so much to give you the knowledge, but to show you
that you need to make room for this.
You need to allow time for you to think about this, to submit
to it, to worship God for it.
I think this is really important because as we've said, um,
This is very hard to do.
And so I want to just think about this as we get ready to close.
I want us to beware the consequences of refusing to make room for Jesus.
I know that's a long point, but that's the last sub point.
Beware the consequences of refusing to make room for Jesus.
Again, we're And we're looking at this, and we see that
Bethlehem is just bustling.
There's so much going on here.
But the divine Son of God breaks into space and time.
That's what's going on in this passage, that's the Christmas story,
but Bethlehem is too busy doing whatever it is they have to do to
notice and to pay attention to this.
And sometimes we're too busy.
Or we don't care enough to make room for Jesus.
We hear the word preached on Wednesday nights, or we hear it on Sunday mornings
at church, but then we say, no, I, it's cool for then, but, you know, I don't
really need to make room for that.
Like, I don't need to give my heart space for that.
And sometimes, We think that we can give Jesus our leftovers and
like, Oh, that's super generous.
Like, that's so generous of me.
I've just got so much fun stuff going on during the holiday season.
I've got, I've got all these fun parties at school.
I've got gifts to give.
All of these, all these great things.
I've got gifts to get too.
That's one of the most fun parts, right?
We're so busy with those things and they fill up our hearts.
But it's not, it's not because our hearts are so big and everything else is
just so wonderful that it's getting in.
It's It's oftentimes because we're too easily contented, that we're cool with
all the stuff about Christmas until it's like, okay, well, Jesus gets in my grill.
I don't really want to think about that.
That's, that's tough.
Again, it's not that we have, it's not that we have big hearts.
It's that we have Grinch hearts, right?
The whole point of the Grinch, since he's all mad all the time is because
he's got, he's got a heart that's three sizes too small or whatever,
probably three, two, three, two.
Three would be worse, man.
That would be a, that would be a tough, that would be a way different movie,
if it was even smaller than that.
I mean, it's, it's, we have these Grinch hearts because we don't, we
don't want to bring Jesus into them.
We're content with too little.
Again, going to, going to F1 was a great time, but let me tell you, that last
day, so they have the races on Sunday.
And we got there.
It was for sure still dark out.
It was probably like 4 30 in the morning and we camped out on turn one.
Literally nobody around us.
Like I'm sunburnt to a crisp.
I looked like a lobster from the day before.
I'm feeling terrible, but I'm like, I gotta, I gotta enjoy this.
Like I can't, I can't miss the race.
And so me and all my buddies were just hanging out there and it still
upsets me to think about this.
30 minutes before the race starts.
We've been there for like 7 hours at this point.
Literally sitting, occupying territory on the hill like we're soldiers
trying to hold the fort down.
30 minutes before the race happens, a guy shuffles through the crowd while
we're all standing at this point because the race is going to start soon, and
he just stops right in front of me.
Just like, I could not see a single thing.
And I was so upset.
I literally, I typically wouldn't do this, but I tapped him.
I was like, dude, can you move?
Like what is, what is happening?
And so, like a very nice man, he scooched forward about that much.
So I tapped him again.
I'm like, dude, what are you doing?
Like, we've been here all day.
And he literally, he literally looked at me.
I'll never forget this because he looked at me Bro, we're all just
trying to do the best we can.
And I was like, what kind of a sentence is that?
Like, you can, you can move forward.
Like, you're literally standing in front of my, I'm like, I'm not trying to watch
the back of your head the whole time.
I'm trying to, I'm trying to watch these guys take the turns.
And he barely moved.
I just asked him, just make a little bit of room, please.
And he kind of refused.
You see, in this, in this season, I feel like sometimes we're like,
we're like that guy when it comes to.
Christmas.
Like we've got the Christmas season.
We've got the month of December.
We've got Christmas music.
We've got all of this stuff, but we're not going to show up to see the main event.
We're not going to show up to see Jesus until right at the very end.
Like we'll roll up on Christmas Eve and we're like, yeah, I'm ready
to, I'm ready to praise the Lord.
Like this is going to be great.
And we just, we show up at Christmas Eve and we're like,
okay, now I give him Christmas.
And then like, boom, we're done.
We got gifts.
We're heading on to the new year.
This is going to be great.
And we don't.
long for this.
We don't actually make room beforehand.
We don't get there and we don't camp out in these realities.
We don't really consider them for an extended period of time and we show
up kind of casually right before we're supposed to celebrate this.
And having that kind of casual approach, like that guy who's going to show up to
a race with 750, 000 people in attendance a half hour before, if we have that
mentality in Christmas and getting ready to make room for Jesus, it's going
to be really easy for us to miss Him.
It's really going to be easy for us to just get caught up in all
the other things that we're doing.
And like I said, if you miss Jesus during Christmas, it's going to be
very easy for you to miss Him forever.
It's going to be so easy for you to not dial into this.
Because the whole, the whole point of going to the racetrack
was to watch the race.
It wasn't to go to all of the, the merch stores that were,
Extraordinarily overpriced.
Like when he's 200 for a hoodie, like, what are we doing?
And the whole, the whole point wasn't like, Oh, I'm going to go check that out.
And I'm going to, I'm going to see like the, like the formula Z or whatever, like
the worst of the worst driving around the track, like the Saturday, the day before
the actual race, like the whole point was we're supposed to be there for the race.
That's the point is if, if this is what we're meant to look at, And
we're going to content ourselves with all these other things.
It's going to be really hard for us to get Jesus when we're not
at the racetrack, so to speak.
When we're not, when he's not like the focus of the season,
he's not the focus of our lives.
And that's my, my main worry for us that I hope that I've given you a couple of
points to start thinking through is if, if we miss Jesus when he's supposed to be in
focus, how can, how can we be confident?
that will respond to the gospel some other time.
The whole point is that at Christmas, Christ is offered freely, and his
story is told in its fullness.
So if you miss him now, and if you refuse to listen now, why
would you bank on another time?
The final thought that I want to leave us with is this, that God
gives us holidays for a reason.
It's not just something that, you know, we made up to make life a little bit better.
We see throughout the Old Testament that God gives holidays to the people of
Israel where they remember the good things that God has done and they celebrate
his character and his acts and his faithfulness throughout all of history.
He gives us holidays so that we can carve out time to reflect and to
align our hearts and minds with him.
He gives us time to dial back in, to lose all of the clutter and just
focus on Him, to make room for Him.
And so I hope that you can take these three points, these three sub points,
and just kind of chew on them a little bit, meditate on them a little bit.
Think about why they're important.
And that you can do that in the time leading up to Christmas so
that you can use this time wisely.
Because you never age out of making room for Christ.
This is something that every single Christian, regardless of their age,
is doing and is working on doing.
And maybe you need to make room for Jesus for the first time this Christmas.
But with all that being said, my prayer for you all is that you use this holiday
season to make room for the King of Kings.
Let's pray.
Our Father in Heaven, thank you for sending Christ.
Thank you for giving us hope.
holidays that we can enjoy, and though you've given us so many other components
and parts of life to enjoy with the holidays, I pray that we wouldn't let
those overcrowd our hearts, that they wouldn't be like Bethlehem, too busy to
notice what's going on, or the reason for why any of this exists in the first place.
I pray that you would make our minds attentive to your truth, that
it would be something that would.
Stir our affections that would change the things that we care about, that they would
make its way down into our priorities.
All of that, God.
And I pray that we would be
weary or wary of the consequences of if we get caught up in too much of those things.
I pray that we would give you the space that you deserve, God, to sit
on the throne of our hearts this Christmas season, and that we would
be worshipping you and adoring you.
In thought, word, and deed, Father.
I pray these things in Jesus name, amen.