Receive Your King!
It’s been said that it’s not books that change you, but sentences in books that change you — it’s not the whole soup of 50,000 words that make the impact, but the carefully crafted line of 24 words with a sharp end. And the more of these lines there are in one book, the more memorable the book — the more impact it effects. And so I’ve got a sentence for you this morning, from a book full of sentences like it, written by an author who did not make the best-sellers list from this past decade. He writes:
I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.
The writer writes this sentence as a lament to the busyness that surrounds him. Everyone is hurried, preoccupied, and distracted. They fill their lives with stuff, and then give the rest of their time in pursuit of the ability to acquire more stuff. Most of their energy is given to the attainment of things they do not yet have rather than the enjoyment of things they already have — and it’s an epidemic, this writer says.
There is something wrong with us that we cannot be quiet in our rooms. In another sentence he says, “Our nature consists in movement; absolute rest is death.”
So we only do more to get more to have more under the illusion that with just a little bit more we can finally relax — but we don’t really want to relax. The thought of staying quietly in our rooms sounds like punishment, and when it’s all said and done, we actually prefer the busyness we complain about.
That’s the conclusion of this writer as he observes the hurry and busyness that surrounds him … in France … in the 1650s.
The writer is Blaise Pascal who wrote about the problem of busyness 370 years ago — which was a long time before the iPhone … or the phone … or electricity … or a thousand other things we think we can’t live without. Can you imagine what the 1650s looked like?
And if Pascal observed unnecessary busyness in that day, could you imagine what he would think if he lived one day in our world?
Because in our world, everybody is busy. And why is that?
Where’d Time Go?
“Why doesn’t anybody have any time today? Where did all the time go?”
Have you ever wondered about that? It doesn’t really make sense. Pretty much every technological advancement over the past hundred years has included time efficiency as a main ingredient. We are always inventing and using more hacks to save time while we simultaneously have less time. We spend more and more time and energy doing things meant to save us time and energy. This is the great conundrum of modern life. One present-day philosopher says it like this:
We ought to have much more time, more leisure, than our ancestors did, because technology, which is the most obvious and radical difference between their lives and ours, is essentially a series of time-saving devices. . . .
Your [great]-great-grandmother scrubbed clothes on a scrubbing board and cooked on a coal stove. You push buttons on washing machines and microwave ovens full of prepared food. Yet your [great]-great-grandmother had more time to talk to her daughter than you do. Why? [Peter Kreeft]
And I should mention this was written in 1992! — which was still a long time before smartphones, which of course are the ultimate “time-saving devices” … and which we “check” on average 85 times a day. Another study says the average smartphone user “touches” their phone 2,617 times a day — and I don’t know the difference between “checking” your phone and “touching” your phone, but the point is that we use them a lot, or maybe they’re using us. One study found that for the average millennial — which is a few of us in here — we spend five hours a day on our phones … these phones that are supposed to be saving us so much time.
Truth is, here in America, on the brink of the year 2020, we are the busiest, most hurried, distracted people in human history.
And it is a spiritual problem. One writer has said “hurry is a form of violence to the soul.” Because we cannot crowd our lives without crowding our hearts.
Which means, if we’re honest, the space in our hearts is as jam-packed as the inn of Luke Chapter 2, verse 7. We’ve got no room for a king.
The Manger Context
Jesus as newborn was laid in a manger, and we all know this because it’s an important part of the Christmas story. Now a manger is another word for trough. And so, just to clear, we’re talking about a bowl that holds animal food. This is the sort of thing that is found in stables and barns, with all the sights and smells that come with stables and barns. Jesus was born there, and wrapped in swaddling cloths there, and laid in a manger there — because there was the place where mangers were. We know this part of the story. Luke mentions the manger three times in chapter 2.
But don’t forget the little detail in verse 7 that explains why the manger is part of the story. The only reason Jesus was born in a stable and laid in a manger is because there was no place for him in the inn. This means there was a moment before verse 7 that was the first moment of countless repeated moments to follow — when Jesus came somewhere that did not receive him.
Can you imagine what that must have been like?
For whatever reason, I can sort of see how this whole thing unfolded. I think it’s from a Bible cartoon my parents showed us as kids. I had to reread the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke just to double-check that this is my imagination. And it is. This is not in the Bible, but I can sort of see it — we can see it … Joseph and Mary are in Bethlehem, like verse 4 says, and Mary is having contractions, like verse 5 implies.
We can see Joseph walking up to the inn, something like the Bethlehem La Quinta, and he of course ignores the neon No Vacancy sign because he has to. He’s running out of options here, so maybe someone checked out already, or maybe the sign was turned on by accident. I mean, he’s got to try, right? And so Joseph walks into the front office, and he asks if they a room, just a little room, even a Smoking room, but the man in the front office, behind the counter, shakes his head because the sign is true. Literally, they don’t have room.
And what a moment that must have been.
We can be guaranteed that the enemy is taking notes here. The enemy had been trying to rid the world of this coming son for centuries. The enemy was willing to do whatever he could to defeat this son. He has even turned kings against all sons in lethal rage — rage against all newborns and pre-borns and anyone who stood in his way. Even in the moment of Joseph approaching the counter of this front office, the enemy has been working on Herod by feeding his insecurity, but now, in this moment, all attention is on Joseph at this motel, at this front office, elbows resting on this counter, talking to the man behind the counter who had his name tag clipped a little crooked on his two button shirt.
And as that man shook his head, the devil wrote it down.
Because the man who was shaking his head wasn’t saying No to Jesus, he was just saying he didn’t have room. And that sounds like the start of this epidemic we still suffer from today.
Busy Bethlehem did not have room for Jesus, and the devil wrote it down.
Busier Than Bethlehem
Because the devil doesn’t need people to say No to Jesus as long as they’re just too busy for him, as long as they’re too crowded, as long as their hearts are jam-packed with other things.
So the devil wrote this down, and even better — he must have thought — if he can make people think they’re actually saying Yes to Jesus when they give him a place in the stable, but not a seat on the throne.
We don’t know how Joseph found the stable. In my memory of the Bible cartoon, I think it was the innkeeper who tipped him off, but Joseph could have just found it himself. Maybe Joseph walked away from the motel without a plan — he didn’t know what he was going to do — but as Mary’s contractions grew worse he became more desperate. And you have to think he expected God would show up here, right? I mean, this is a special child, for crying out loud, and so maybe there was another motel down the street, or maybe a mansion around the corner. How did they end up in a stable?
Because Mary is in pain, and there’s nowhere else to go because the little town of Bethlehem is hopping thanks to Caesar Augustus, and well, over here is a stable, and in the stable, there’s a manger. Because a stable was the place where mangers were. And so, that’s where Jesus entered this world. “Because there was no place for them in the inn.”
How many times has this happened since?
You don’t have to say No if you say Not Here.
You could even pretend you’re saying Yes if you say Yes, but not here. What a tactic! Of course the devil wrote this down. Because who can blame the person who says: Sorry — all the places of my heart are filled, but there’s a stable round back. That’s not a bad guy. That’s just a simple No Vacancy sign.
Like the Bethlehem La Quinta, so is our hearts. We’ve got no room for a king.
The Rhino in Your Living Room
And here is the terrible irony of our condition. This is the current landscape of human sinfulness: it’s not just that our world is fallen, but that it’s so fallen we’ve backpedaled and misstepped our way into being too busy for salvation. And the busyness is actually a diversion from our need. The main problem of busyness is that it disguises our main problem, and that is the problem of despair.
We are a people who walk in darkness (see Isaiah 9:2), who dwell in a land of deep darkness, and that darkness is sin and death. And sin and death is like a rhinoceros in our living rooms, as one writer puts it. Imagine your living room for a minute. Try to get the picture of your living room in your head.
Now imagine a rhinoceros in your living room, standing square in the middle of your living room. You have to walk around the rhinoceros to sit on your couch, and it’s there every single day. You wake up in the morning to the rhinoceros in your living room. At night you lock the doors and turn off the lights, and it’s still there, the rhinoceros in your living room — and this rhinoceros represents the reality of sin and death. You can’t really live unless you ignore the rhinoceros, but it’s hard to ignore the rhinoceros because it’s in your living room. So maybe you try to hide it. But how in the world do you hide a rhinoceros in your living room? Maybe by covering your living room with a million mice. [Peter Kreeft uses this illustration.]
Now you can’t see the rhinoceros … but of course it’s still there. And now you also have mice.
This is the reality of modern life.
We actually want to be hurried and busy. We want the distractions, the crowded calendar, the never-ending to-do list — because we’re too tired and afraid to have nothing to do. We cannot stay quietly in our rooms because that means we’ll have to think, and that means thinking about the rhinoceros. And technically, we can’t ever stop thinking; we can only stop thinking about one thing by thinking about another — and we’d rather think about mice.
Pascal said that the happiest people are the least distracted, because they have less misery from which to distract themselves. And if that’s true, what does it mean that our entire society is distracted? Are we that miserable? Are we so sad that we have to stay so busy?
The answer is Yes, we are. We dwell in the land of deep darkness. Our problem is despair. We’ve got no room for a king.
That Is the Grace
Truth is, Jesus came to save a people too busy for him, and maybe that is the darkest corner of our depravity. Our grossest wickedness is our indifference. It’s that we’re content to keep Jesus round back in the stable — because we told him we’ve got no more room, and quite frankly, we don’t really care. He’ll be fine.
How in the world does Jesus save people like that? How does Jesus save people like us?
The answer is grace.
Grace is the only thing that could lead Jesus to come to a people who don’t deserve him. What else could it be? We could call it love, because love is the heart of God that has always been there, but grace is the word we use for love in action. Grace is love in contrast to the condition of its recipients. Grace is Jesus being laid in a manger.
Nobody had room for him, but he came anyway. We told him we were full, but he took the stable. He didn’t count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, humbling himself to the point of death, even death on a cross that started in a manger (see Philippians 2:6–8). As one writer puts its,
We weren’t expecting.
We weren’t interested.
We weren’t involved.
We didn’t ask.
We didn’t deserve.
We didn’t help.
We didn’t even imagine.
And yet: “To us a child is born; to us a son is given.” (see Isaiah 9:6) [Sam Allberry, tweet, December 24, 2019.]
And in a manger of all places.
This is grace.
And this is grace that runs deep, starting back before the foundations in the world when God the Father chose us in Jesus. Even before creation God predestined us for adoption as his sons and daughters, brothers and sisters of Jesus, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace (see Ephesians 1:3–6).
See, Jesus took the stable and he endured the cross, despising the shame, because of the joy that was set before him (see Hebrews 12:2). It’s because Jesus knew, as he would later tell Paul (see Acts 18:10), I have many in this city who are my people.
Jesus entered a world of darkness, all sin and crowded hearts, but he knew there would be some from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation who would be born again to open wide their hearts and give him the place for which he came — not the place he came, the place for which he came. We don’t point him to the stable anymore, now we surrender the throne of our hearts.
Jesus, who was first laid in a manger and then crucified on a cross, is now highly exalted, risen from the dead, seated at the right hand of the Father — so that we, the busiest, most distracted people ever would prepare him room.
Grace makes us make room for the King.
One writer puts it,
If Jesus is King, everything, quite literally, everything and everyone, has to be re-imagined, re-configured, re-oriented to a way of life that consists in an obedience following of Jesus. [Eugene Peterson]
This means that Jesus doesn’t rule from the periphery of our lives, but from the very center of our lives. Because Jesus who is King over all is Jesus who has come.
And he has come now to rule in our hearts, but one day he will come again to take his seat on the throne of this earth (which will be a new earth) in the city of Jerusalem (which will be a new Jerusalem). The real Jesus who has come will come again, and he is coming to not just reign spiritually, but to reign physically, visibly, when his will is done on earth as it is in heaven because earth will be like heaven forever.
That is the grace.
And what do you do with that? You preach it. You go tell it on the mountain.
You can’t sell it, because it can’t be bought. You can’t suggest it, because it’s not advice. This is the news of what Jesus did!
So we preach, and we tell, and we sing as a proclamation. This is a matter of fact. Jesus Christ has come! Therefore, receive him! Prepare him room! Sing!
Joy to the world, the Lord is come! Let earth receive her king! Let every heart prepare him room! And heaven and nature sing! And heaven and nature sing! And heaven and never sing!
Those are the exhortations brought by grace. That is what you do. Receive him. Prepare him room. And sing!
And that’s what we do at this Table.
The Table
Jesus has told us remember his death for us by eating this bread and drinking this cup as a symbol of his body and blood. And each week as we come to Jesus’s table he invites us to freshly yield to him the throne of our hearts. We receive him again. We prepare him room again. We sing again.
And if you would do that this morning, we invite you to this Table. If Jesus is your king, if you trust in his grace, come eat and drink with us at his table.
Sources cited:
Peter Kreeft, Christianity for Modern Pagans: Pascal’s Pensees, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 168.
Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism: Choosing Focused Life in a Noisy World (New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2019), 6.
John Mark Comer, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, (Colorado Springs: WaterBrook, 2019), 36.
Eugene Peterson, The Jesus Way: a conversation on the ways that Jesus is the way, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 20007), 9.
