No Room in the Inn

Text: Luke 2:7

Series: Restoration Sermons

Date:

Speaker: Ed Rangel

Location: Waupaca Church of Christ

Bible Version: NASB 1995

Sermon Type: Expository

Learning Objectives

By the close of this lesson the hearer should be able to:

1. Explain why the inn's refusal is theologically significant — not merely incidental to the nativity story but an emblem of the pattern that follows.
2. Identify at least five specific episodes in which the world rejected Jesus during his earthly life.
3. Explain the three ways the world today still has no room for him — in commerce, education, and polite society.
4. Describe how a church can crowd out Christ — what the three signs of a Christ-displaced church look like.
5. Answer the question: Is there room for him in your own life?

Thesis

The statement "there was no room for them in the inn" is not incidental. It is the emblem of everything that follows. The world that had no room in the manger had no room in Nazareth, no room in the synagogues, no room at the table of polite society, and no room in the end except on a cross. The pattern does not belong to the first century. The world still has no room — and neither, in many cases, do the churches that carry his name.

Burden

Many significant statements are recorded about Jesus. Some have escaped our attention. This one is among the most significant: the creator of the world arrived in the world and found no vacancy. The inn's refusal was not malice — it was simply that the inn was full, and there was no one standing at the door who recognized what had just been turned away. That is the sermon's concern: the refusal that comes not from hatred but from fullness — from being occupied with other things.

Introduction

"And she gave birth to her firstborn son; and she wrapped Him in cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn" (Luke 2:7). A simple sentence. Children can hear it and understand it: there was no room. The simplicity of the telling is itself part of the statement — the greatest event in the history of the world is recorded in a subordinate clause explaining where the baby was placed, and the reason for the placement is the absence of a room.

What is missing from this sentence is any indication that the people who had filled the inn knew what they were doing. They did not. The travelers who arrived before Joseph and Mary took the available rooms in the ordinary way — they arrived, they paid, they settled. No one at the inn understood that the room being used for their own convenience was the room that the Son of God needed. They were not villains; they were simply full.

This is the quality that makes the statement so searching: the exclusion of Christ is rarely malicious. It is usually a matter of prior occupancy.

I. The Birth of Jesus

The story of the birth is a study in contrast between what was happening and how it looked.

A simple story, simply told. Luke's nativity account uses no elevated language, no catalogue of angelic hosts descending in force, no thunderclap to announce the event. The narrative is domestic: a woman, a pregnancy, a journey, a birth. Children can follow it because it is told at their level — which is also, apparently, the level at which the event chose to arrive. The God who could have commanded a palace prepared a manger.

Joseph and Mary lived in Nazareth. The Roman census required them to travel to Bethlehem — Joseph's ancestral city, the city of David. The journey was not optional; imperial administrative power required their compliance. And yet the compulsion that brought them to Bethlehem was the fulfillment of what Micah had recorded centuries before: "But as for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you One will go forth for Me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from long ago, from the days of eternity" (Micah 5:2). Caesar's decree and Micah's prophecy converge on the same stable.

Bethlehem was crowded at that time. Others had arrived before them. The inn was full — not because anyone was hostile, but because everyone else had arrived first. Joseph and Mary were forced to the stable, and it was there that Jesus was born and laid in a manger. The Son of God arrived in the world in the place reserved for animals, not because of hatred but because of prior occupancy. The inn was not closed — it was simply full.

II. The World Did Not Want Him

The refusal of the inn was not an isolated moment. It was the opening statement of a pattern that continued throughout his life.

Herod sought to kill him. Before Jesus could walk or speak, the political power of the region treated his existence as a threat. Herod's response to the news of a newborn king was not curiosity or welcome — it was the massacre of every male child under two years old in Bethlehem and the surrounding region (Matt. 2:16). The world did not want a king it had not appointed.

The rulers of the Jews rejected him. The religious establishment — those whose entire purpose was to recognize and receive the Messiah when he came — rejected him systematically. The trial before the Sanhedrin, the coordination with Pilate, the insistence on the crucifixion: these were the actions of people who had decided that this particular claimant was not acceptable, regardless of the evidence.

Many years of silence in Nazareth. Between the temple visit at age twelve and the beginning of his public ministry, the record is silence. The city that would later cast him out received no record of anything remarkable. He lived among them without recognition, worked among them without honor. "Is not this the carpenter's son?" (Matt. 13:55) — the question that expressed contempt for the claim that this familiar neighbor could be the Son of God.

Cast out of Nazareth (Luke 4:28-29). When he stood in the synagogue of his own hometown, read from Isaiah, and said "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing" — they drove him out of the city and tried to throw him off a cliff. The rejection by his own people was not gradual or reluctant; it was immediate and violent. He had grown up among them, and they would not have him.

The Gadarenes did not want him (Matt. 8:34). After he cast the demons from the two men in the Gadarene region, the townspeople "begged Him to leave their region." He had done them a service — freed two men who had terrorized the area — and the response was a request for his departure. The cost of his presence had been their pigs. The pigs were worth more than the man they wanted gone.

The Samaritans rejected him (Luke 9:53). When the disciples sent ahead to a Samaritan village to arrange hospitality for Jesus and his disciples, "they did not receive him, because He was traveling toward Jerusalem." The rejection was not personal; it was territorial. He was going the wrong direction.

A homeless wanderer on earth. "The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head" (Matt. 8:20). He owned nothing. He had no house, no land, no property. When the temple tax was due, there was no money to pay it — it was retrieved from a fish's mouth (Matt. 17:27). The one who owns the cattle on a thousand hills lived without a house.

Finally, they crucified him. The rejection that began at the inn, that continued through Nazareth and Gadara and the Sanhedrin's chambers, ended at Golgotha. The world that had no room for him at his arrival made room for him at his death — on a Roman instrument of execution, outside the city, between two criminals.

III. No Room for Him Today

The pattern of the first century is the pattern of every century.

The world still has no place for him. Commerce has no room for him: the marketplace that runs on greed, on the exploitation of the weak, on the subordination of every consideration to profit has no category for a Lord who said "You cannot serve God and wealth" (Matt. 6:24) and who drove the money changers from the temple. Education has no room for him: the educational system that treats the question of God as outside the domain of legitimate inquiry, that defines knowledge as what can be measured and verified by unaided human reason, has systematically excluded the one who said "I am the truth" (John 14:6). Polite society has no room for him: the social world that manages appearances, that carefully avoids offense, that treats all convictions as equally valid and therefore equally negotiable, has no place for the one who said "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me" (John 14:6).

He has been crowded out of many churches. This is the most searching indictment in the outline and the most pressing application for congregations: the church that carries his name can be the inn that has no room for him. His truth is rejected — replaced with what people want to hear rather than what he said. His worship is perverted — organized around human preference, human creativity, human comfort rather than the pattern he gave. His wisdom is crowded out by human wisdom — the conclusions of current culture substituted for the authority of the New Testament. A church in this condition would find Christ, if he appeared, as unwelcome as the inn.

He is needed today as badly as he has ever been. The world that has no room for him has not solved its problems by excluding him. The absence of Christ from the marketplace has not made commerce more just; the absence of Christ from education has not made education more true; the absence of Christ from social life has not made human relations more peaceful. The pattern of exclusion has been maintained; the need that the exclusion was meant to escape has not been met. He is not less necessary because he has been pushed out — he is more necessary, and the vacancy his absence creates is not filled by anything that takes his place.

Application

Three questions follow from the three sections:

Was there room at your inn when he first arrived? The person who first heard the gospel and deferred, who heard the invitation and found reasons to wait — the inn was full. Not hostile; occupied. The deferral that delays a response to the gospel is the same structure as the inn's refusal: not malice, but prior occupancy.

Is there room for him in how you conduct your life? In business, in how you treat people who can't fight back, in whether your decisions are governed by what he said or by what the market rewards — is there a room reserved for him, or has the inn been filled by prior tenants?

Is there room for him in your church? The congregation that has replaced his truth with comfort, his worship with performance, and his authority with tradition has repeated the inn's error at scale. The question is not whether the name is on the sign outside — it is whether he would find a room if he came in.

Conclusion

"There was no room for them in the inn." The sentence is a subordinate clause. It explains where the baby was placed. But it also explains everything that followed — the years of rejection, the homelessness, the cross. And it raises the question that every hearer must answer: Is there room?

The world that has always been too full for him is still too full. The inn does not empty itself. The prior tenants do not leave on their own. Room is made — deliberately, by the person who decides that the one asking for a room is worth more than what currently occupies the space.

Invitation

The one who found no room at the inn is the one who stands at the door and knocks: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me" (Rev. 3:20). The position has reversed: the one who was turned away is now the one who seeks entry. The one who was given no room is now the one offering the room.

Believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God. Repent of the prior tenants — the things that have occupied the place that should be his. Confess his name. Be baptized for the remission of your sins (Acts 2:38). And make room.

Word Study

Scripture Interlock Table

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Converted from H. Leo Boles, Outline 139. Primary text: Luke 2:7 (stated by Boles). OCR corrections: "Hl." → "III."; "bas ever been" → "has ever been." Doctrinal audit: the world's rejection of Christ developed historically (birth through crucifixion) and applied to the present (commerce, education, polite society, churches); the displacement of Christ in congregations named for him developed as the outline requires — truth rejected, worship perverted, human wisdom substituted; Rev. 3:20 used of the Laodicean church (its proper context) rather than as a generic evangelistic text; the invitation retains the full obedient response (Acts 2:38).