December 1927
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No Room In the Inn B y D r . G. C ampbell M organ From a Sermon
If we think of Him as God, and forget the human, we shall be misled. If we think of Him as man, and forget the Deity, we shall never see Him,. It is all mystery. I am not going to attempt to solve it. If you can solve the mystery of Christianity for me, I shall cease to be a Chris tian. I do not want any religion that you can explain to me perfectly in the first five minutes of a rapid conver sation. It is mystery indeed. This'Person is the God- .Man. He is at once the Revelation of God and the Inter preter of humanity. W hat I t S uggests A bout G od and M an When I want to know God I go to Him, and when I want to understand humanity I go to Him. Now, in the light of that fact, let us ponder this historic statement— “There was no room for Him in the.inn” —attempting to consider a little what it suggests as to God and as to man. There was ‘no, room for Him in the inn. O f course not. This is the Word, Who was in the beginning with God, of the very nature of God. This is the One Who, according to subsequent interpretation of the deep and prevailing mystery of His Personality, fashioned the ages, created all things, the One by Whom all things consist, are held together. There is no room. Of course not. The inn could not have contained Him. When you are thinking of Him in that way, Herod’s palace was very little better than the inn by comparison. All the vast buildings, of pomp and pageantry and splendor erected, on the slopes of the Seven Hills of Rome could not contain Him. There is another reason which makes us say, “Of course not.” There was no room because the earth was entirely unable to appreciate Him. Men were blind to the true facts of life everywhere. Men saw only the material, and that perpetually divorced from the spir itual. No one would look in that neighborhood at that time for any great personality, except sttch as were God- guided men, like the shepherds or the Magi. But again, go and look into that crib. What do you see? Just a Baby that, in alb probability, you .would hardly have been able to distinguish from any other baby in Judea, except that I am certain that He was perfect physically; but in com mon with other babies, the same little fingers, the same little toes, the same little eyes,—just a baby. Well, you say, there ought to have been room for a baby in the inn. No inn ever contained a baby. There was no room for Him in the inn as a baby. Supposing that they had made room for Mary and her Baby in a corner, the inn could not have contained Him. No inn could contain a baby, not that Baby only, but any baby. Hundreds of them were born in London last night, and to find the baby is to find God. Are you challenging that? Let Jesus speak to you: “Whoso shall receive one such little child in My name receiveth Me.” There was no room for Him in the inn, neither as God nor man. And supposing there had been, just on the level of the material and the actual and the historic, and they had got room inside somewhere for Him
E are all familiar with the declaration. I wonder whether we really have ever gathered its full significance as a mere fact in history. What do toe mean when we read of an “inn” there ? What is the real significance of that word “inn” ? ; There are two words which are both translated “INN” in the New Testament. They have different sig nifications. In the parable of the Good Samaritan our Lord speaks of the fact that he took the man to the inn, and that word is accurately apprehended as we read it, as referring to a hostelry, having its host and its place of accom modation. But when we read that there was no room for Him in the inn,
we are not to think of a hostelry. This was not an inn of that kind. The Greek word here, “kataluma,” is trans lated in two ways in your New Testament, and the two ways constitute a somewhat strange contrast. Mark and Luke say that Jesus sent His disciples to find the “kata luma,” the guest-chamber in which He should eat the Pass- over with them. That is one use of the word. The other use is the one we have here. “There was no room for them in the inn.” Here the word “kataluma” was used to describe an inclosure in which travelers sheltered for the night. The “kataluma” was distinguished from the inn which is a hostelry by two or three things. In this kind of inn there was no host; no food or comfort provided, but it was always near water. Sometimes there were no build ings beyond its outer wall; sometimes there were build ings in the court, some of them for human beings, others for the shelter of cattle. The “kataluma,” in that sense, was just a sheltering place for the night, into which peo ple turned who perhaps were benighted, who could not go into the ordinary inn or hostelry. They could bivouac there for the night, but there was no food, no host, but always water. That is the inn referred to in this text. There was no room for Him even there. Even in the rough and rude “kataluma,” where they made no provision for any kind of personal hospitality, save the hospitality of the walls that protected from robbers and beasts. For the mother in her supreme hour, no room even in the inclosure where people rested for a night, and so she had to take refuge in some outhouse of a building or dwelling. For the Baby in the supreme moment of His earthly existence, the beginning, the drawing of the first breath, no room even in the inn; that first breath was drawn in an outhouse. When the Magi arrived some eight or ten days later He was no longer in the manger, in spite of all your pictures. When the Magi came He was in the house; somebody had had pity on Mary and had taken her in. This was the coming into the world of the God-Man. No contemplation of the Person of our Lord is complete which ignores at any point both sides of His Personality.
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