December 7

Transcription

(Transcribed by TurboScribe.)

The passage I'm going to read with you this morning, you know so well that I'm only going to read two verses. These verses would have read so differently if only for the change in one decision. Would have changed the whole story.

But, there's a but. But the guy didn't open the door. Read with me.

Look to only verse 6 and 7. I'm reading from the New Century Version. While they were in Bethlehem, the time came for Mary to have the baby. She gave birth to her first son.

But because there were no rooms left in the inn, she wrapped the baby with pieces of cloth and laid him in a feeding trough. I asked myself a question about this. I was actually sitting writing this in the summer.

I was at NBC, Muskoka Bible Centre. And I was sitting there writing the sermon. And I asked the question, Why? Why is Jesus so often turned away? Why was he turned away even before he was born? Just think about it for the first time.

For the first time, someone comes knocking on behalf of Jesus. And the answer is, we have no room. The inn is full.

We have no room for you. Now, I know you can say, come on, Aubrey. It's obvious.

Luke wrote. There was no room. It was full.

I get that. But I still ask the why question. I get it.

That beautiful that we sing about. And boy, we get it so wrong. Little town of Bethlehem, and it's so calm.

It wasn't calm. That census that Caesar Augustus called out, people were flocking there, and this place could not handle that. I'm sure it had only one inn.

If you've ever been to Bethlehem, you've been there. Some of us have been there. It's a bitty little place.

It's not Toronto. What about just one little inn? And the innkeeper couldn't believe his luck. I mean, this place was filled to the brim.

Every room was filled. Every bed had a person in it. Every cot.

There was room for no one. So no wonder when this man with this really far pregnant woman knocks on the door. He says, I have no room.

In my heart, I'm thinking, what do you think, Elizabeth? If in the middle of the night, you were that innkeeper, and here's this young woman standing, and you can see, boy, she's far. And nah, see ya. Wow, why? Why? That's cruel.

That's cruel. Why? But I don't think that was the only reason. Maybe, maybe he thought, oh, it's too late.

Maybe he was in bed. Knock comes, he gets out of bed, looks out through a crack in the door. It's too late.

I have no room. It's too late. If you came a little earlier, maybe I could have made room for you, but now it's too late.

Good night. And he closes the door, goes back to bed. His wife said, what was that? Nah, just two people looking for a room.

But as you know, sometimes it's just too late. Maybe, maybe he thought, the situation could be way too complicated. What if I let this woman and this man in, and all of a sudden she goes into labour right there in the inn, and she's in labour pain, and she starts screaming, and people wake up, and then a baby's born, and the baby's colicky, and the baby's crying, and the people are ticked off to the nth degree to me for letting them in.

It's just too complicated. Or maybe he looked through the crack in the door, and he saw this teenage girl and this man with the calloused hands, and he knew it was just a blue-collar worker, and they were just too common. Maybe if they wear robes, and they looked much better than that, he might have opened the door, but he didn't.

Now I know you're thinking, oh boy, where do you get all this stuff, Aubrey? You let your mind just go in all kinds of places. Do you want to get the answer from where I got that? From me and from you, because those are our answers. He's still standing out there knocking on doors every day.

He's never stopped. Remember what we said three weeks ago when we read Revelation? Do you want to go back there? Where he stood and he said, I stand at the door and I knock, and whoever hears my voice and will open that door, I will come in and I will eat with them, and I will feast with them, and they with me. And that's what Jesus is still doing.

That's what Jesus came to do and will continue to do until that day that he comes back into this world. He's standing there, and he's knocking at the doors of people's lives and people's hearts, pleading, let me in. And we, we are the innkeepers.

And we, the innkeepers, have the decision to open the door or not. And he knocks, and sometimes we'll say, it's too full. There's no room in the inn.

My life is too full, Lord. I'm busy. I'm busy with my wife, with the kids, with my work, with all the deadlines, with all the phone lines, with all the long lines.

I am so busy. It's too full. I have no room for anything more.

I can't open the door. It's just too crowded in there. Here's the thing that the innkeeper didn't know, and sometimes we don't know.

When Jesus comes into my life, he actually simplifies my life. He doesn't come into my life with all kinds of lists. Do this, don't do this, do... He comes into my life with a list, a list of things that he has already done for me.

He's taken care of my sin. He's taken care of my guilt. He's taken care of my fear of all the things in the world.

He's taken care of death and of the grave. He comes bringing gifts when he stands, and he knocks at the door of my life. Sometimes the answer is it's too late.

You don't know my life, Lord. You don't get the stuff that I've done. You just don't know.

It's too late. There's no way that I can open this door. It's too late.

It's never too late. It's never too late for Jesus. Can I remind you of a few people? There was this horrible person who was hanging on a cross for all the stuff that he did.

And Jesus said, Today, you'll be with me. There was this man called Peter. Messed up all three years.

His foot was in his mouth more than anything else. He denied his Lord. He ran away in the middle of the night, and it wasn't too late.

Jesus made an appointment with him right there on the beach. Of the Sea of Galilee. There was this Thomas guy who missed out on the first time to see Jesus when he rose from the dead.

And he said, I can't believe this. And even for him, Jesus made time to say, You want to feel, Thomas? It's not too late. For I have come, said Jesus, to seek and to save those who are lost.

It's never too late. Maybe it can be a little too complicated, Jesus. I don't know if I can open that door.

Life is already tough, and I'm so scared that if you come in, you're just going to disrupt my life. And you know what? He's going to disrupt your life when you open the door. He's going to change my heart.

He's going to change my life. He's going to change these hands. And they're going to become those kinds of hands that would be the hands like Jesus's hands.

Who would look for those who would need something and would provide and care for them. He's going to change those feet, and they're going to become those feet that will walk where he would walk, into those dark alleys, into those places where no one else wanted to go. And he's going to touch those lips so that they can speak the words that he would speak if he walked into those dark alleys.

Yes, he's going to disrupt your life. But aren't you ready for a little bit of a change? Because in that change, he makes that challenge that I preach the whole series for you. Can you remember? Are you weary? Are you tired? Are you worn out? Burned out on this life and all this stuff? Come, he says.

Come walk with me. Come work with me and learn from me those unforced rhythms of life, and you will find peace. Aren't you ready for a change? Let him complicate your life a little bit.

That's okay. Sometimes I think the innkeeper didn't get it, and sometimes we don't get it. We don't get that God works in the ordinary.

The common things. Think about it. Before he put his hands in the wood and had them nailed to a wooden cross, Jesus was an ordinarily little carpenter boy with his hands in the wood with his father.

Before he took this world and held it in his hands, you, brother, me, sister, all of us, he held his mother's hand with a little baby's hand. Before he walked on the water, he made his bed in the straw. The ordinary God who looks for ordinary common people like me.

If only the innkeeper knew what we know, he might have opened that door, Elizabeth. He didn't, but we know, don't we? And we do. We do.

We do when he knocks. So why don't you take a few moments of quiet prayer? Just listen to the Lord, and then I'm going to lead you in a moment, and in a moment of prayer. Lord Elizabeth said it.

It was so cruel that they didn't open that door. Boy, what did they miss out? But Lord, what would we miss? When you stand at that door and you knock, maybe we've heard this so many times that we forget. So I want to challenge you this morning, Centralists, we sit here together in God's presence.

Maybe he's standing right there in front of you, and he's knocking, and maybe for the first time, or maybe for the first time in a long time, maybe you can just say, Lord, can I just open this door as wide as I can? And will you come in? Will you just come in, Lord, and come and clean out? Disrupt this life, Lord, in your way, because when you disrupt, you bring brand new. Will you just do that? And as you sit there, you don't have to stand or put your hand up. As you sit there and you want to make this commitment, will you pray with me? This prayer.

Lord Jesus, I'm a sinner. Recovering sinner. But thank you that as you stand at the door of my life, I can open the door and there is no judgement, that you will come in and you will come and feast with me.

I want you to take over, Lord, and just take my heart and take my life, and let it be yours always. Be the king of my life. Thank you, Jesus.

It is in your name that we pray. With thanksgiving, we say, amen.