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Mayball, the innkeeper, a Christmas message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman. Let us continue in worship by giving reverent attention to the reading of God's word, as it is recorded in the Gospel of Luke, the second chapter, beginning at the verse numbered 10. "And it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus

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that all the world should be taxed. And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria. And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. Then Joseph also went up from Galilee out of the city of Nazareth into Judea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be taxed with

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Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was that while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading

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from his holy word. It happened a good number of years ago, but the story is true and well worth the telling. The great American evangelist Charles Kinney was preaching in Rochester, New York. And on the particular night we are now remembering, one of New York's most well-known attorneys,

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indeed a jurist of considerable prominence, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New York, was in the balcony. And as this man listened to Kinney, he was convicted of the Holy Spirit. And he came to the decisive conclusion that everything Kinney was saying was true, and that he should go forward to offer himself to Jesus Christ. But then another

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voice spoke within his heart, a voice that said, "You are a very prominent man. You are well known. This decision will attract considerable attention. You will be mingling with more common people. You will be admitting sin and error in your life." And the conflict grew within the man, and finally to resolve the conflict, lest in the end cowardice wins,

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he got up, left the balcony, walked the length of the nave, and up onto the chancel. Kinney was still preaching, in the very midst of discernment. And coming to the edge of the pulpit, he tugged at the great preacher's sleeve, and when he had Kinney's attention said, "If you will call for decisions right now, I am ready to welcome Christ into my

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heart." Now he was, of course, an exceptional man. The tide of destiny suddenly flowed in his direction, and he was ready to take it. The moment of opportunity was his, and he was ready to clasp that opportunity. The time of vast and momentous decisions suddenly came to him, and without a moment's hesitation he was ready to make the decision that had

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to be made. There was a knock at the door to his heart, and he opened it and gave welcome. And as I say, he was an exceptional man. For most men are not like that. The tide of destiny comes their way, and they scramble to the shore. The moment of opportunity suddenly confronts them, and they leave the opportunity untended to. The time of vast and momentous

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decisions is theirs, and they fail to decide. That's the way most men are. That's the way Nabal, the innkeeper of Bethlehem, was. Nabal might not have been his name, but for purposes of identification it's satisfactory. He was a man, you see, who missed his chair. Perhaps out of all the men of history he is most remembered for that, the man who missed his chair. And

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I want him to speak to us this morning, lest any of us miss ours. And so we shall pray, and when we have prayed, if you will use your imagination, you will hear the testimony of the innkeeper of Bethlehem. Let us pray. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

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I need not introduce myself to you. Your pastor has already done that. But I must say it is no particular pleasure to be here. No one likes to be made a spectacle for other men to stare at. No normal man likes to come before a group of people such as yourself and say, "Do not do as I did, but rather do as I say." No one likes to stand and make public confession

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of the errors which were part of his life. But I'm here. And I'm here for two reasons. First of all, that I might encourage you not to miss the chance that I missed. And secondly, because I'm trying somehow to take the thing out of my memory. It's true, I was at Bethlehem, and Bethlehem was the city of David. And yet David was not the king of our country I remember

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most frequently. The king of whom I think was Manasseh. Manasseh had a godly father, just as I had a godly father. His father, King Hezekiah, one of the noblest kings our nation ever had. And Manasseh assumed the throne at twelve years of age and began a reign which was distinguished by its cruelty, its bestiality, its heartlessness. He murdered,

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he killed at his own caprice. He worshipped false gods, he established their idols throughout the country, and committed the ultimate desecration of raising a statue to a false deity in the very court of the temple. And for this he was punished. Assyria came down, he was captured and led into slavery, publicly mutilated and kept in an iron cage. And there in the midst

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of that situation of agony, he was softened by his suffering and repented of his sins. And in the providence of God he was restored to his throne again. And then he set himself to undo everything he had done before. Where he had been cruel, he was kind. Where he had been unforgiving, he forgave. The idols he built, he tore down. And the people whom he

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had led astray, he now sought to lead into the paths of righteousness. I think a lot about King Manasseh, for I'm very much like him. I sinned, I led others to sin, and now I've been softened by my suffering. And I long to repent and return again. Oh, I suppose you want to hear about that night. Everyone does. It makes no difference how many times

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I tell the story of that evening. People want to hear it over and over again. The thing I remember the most about it was how busy it was. My inn was like a hive at storming times. I was crowded to the door. His Honor Marcus Agrippa and the rest, I'd managed to squeeze in a small caravan that was passing by. It was one of the busiest days of my entire

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career. And I thought the day at last was done. Everybody was bedded down, the animals fed, stalled. It was beginning to become quiet at last, and then there was that knock at the gate. And little did I realize that everything else that happened that day was unimportant. That this knock was the beginning of the most important five minutes of my life.

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I thought a lot about time. Time is a companion who accompanies everyone and yet stays with no one. Time is a servant who is servant to every man and yet ruled by no man. Time whispers with the softest and gentlest of voices and yet even the birds in the air obey its dictates and the fish in the sea turn and follow the path of the sea in accordance with the will

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and the promise of time. Time will put on man's head the crown of gold and into another man's hands the cup of tears. A king, two kings, three kings may come and dwell beneath your roof for many days, but time will never dwell beneath your roof. It comes and goes. So we must make the most of it while it is ours. And as I have thought of time, I have

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discovered that what is time meaning is not its length, but what happens within it. That is to say, a man may live more in a moment than in an hour, more in an hour than in a day, more in a day than in a lifetime. There are centuries which are chiefly distinguished because of events that happen in only 24 hours. Look at my life. I live many years and yet

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what is remembered of my many years? A five minute conversation, late one night by the end of the day. Have you paused to ponder that? That the moment in which you say "yes" may be the most decisive moment in all of your life? That the moment in which you turn away from this or that, this person or that person, that may be the most decisive turning

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in all of your experience? No man knows the day or the hour of his visitation. No man knows the hour of his visitation. Are you ready to confront the fact that these minutes we are spending now may be the most important minute in all of your life? Of course the thing actually started earlier than that night and it started with the Romans. In my day

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everything started with the Romans and finished with the Romans. What they proposed went, what they disposed of did not go. I did not like them any more than anyone else, but I did like the census. My countrymen hated it, but I liked it because it was good for business. Every fourteen years there was this census for purposes of conscripting men into the

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Roman army and also for the purpose of bringing the tax rolls up to date. Now the Emperor Claudius had decreed that we Jews did not have to serve in the Roman army, so that part of the census did not apply to us, but the tax burden did and everyone confronted the fact that when the census came you would have to tighten your belt one more notch as the

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heel of Rome pressed a little more firmly on your neck. So everyone hated the census except myself because I knew when everyone traveled to his own city that meant they had to stay somewhere and I made much more money in profit during those days than the tax bite would ever take away. So I stood atop the gate of Bethlehem and watched them come. First

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the Roman soldiers, they always walked tall and straight. You could tell a Roman even when he was not wearing his armor or carrying his short two-edged sword. They walked as if they not only ruled the world but had made it. Many soldiers out at this time prepared lest there be some revolt amongst the people inflamed by the new taxes. Then after the

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Romans the tax collectors, rich Jews mostly, I called them traitors then, I call them traitors now, for they made their silver shekel from the sweat of their countrymen's backs. They did not generally wander out into the populace afraid of the abuse of the people, but now they came to tax and to be taxed. And as to them, there were of course the poor. I did

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not see many of the poor. My inn was principally designed to serve a higher economic class and so I did not come in contact with them. Tell me, are the poor in your day invisible as they were in mine? Not distinguished by any particular color or race? Not distinguished by their clothing, for their clothing, much like yours, having been handed down from your

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cupboards when you were through with it? You do not easily see them because they live in the byways where you do not find them, or in the sections of the city where you do not choose to go. No lobby, of course, for the poor. Quirinius, the governor, got no letters from poor people, most of them unable to read and write, or not able to read and write sufficiently

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to write a letter to the governor. They were ignored, passive, acquiescent, just letting the yoke of their poverty settle more firmly about their necks. Tell me, are the poor invisible in your time as they were in mine? I remember once my father taking me to see Jeremiah. Jeremiah was one of the stable boys in the inn. He really wasn't a boy, he was older

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than my father, and he used to play with me sometimes by the kitchen door, make little toys and he took sick. And my father, who was a good and generous man by the standards of that day, took me to see him, and we went into the ghetto. And I saw Jeremiah in the room he shared with twelve other people. And there was nothing in the room save three things,

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and all three of those things belonged to Jeremiah, and they were his because my father had just brought them, three of his old robes, two of them torn. And somehow when I looked at him there, I thought to myself, "It is not right that our Jeremiah should be in such a place." And I vowed to myself that I would never go back there again. It's so much easier

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you see to tolerate poverty when you don't have to look at it. And I think that's the first thing that struck me about them that night. I went to the door when I heard the knock, expecting to find some Romans to whom I could say, "Move on, no more room," or some rich Jews to whom I could say, "You'll have to go elsewhere. I

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have no time or space for you." And when I opened the door, there they were, just the two of them, obviously poor. He was middle-aged, she was younger, very pale, great with child on the back of a three-bitten beast. I said, "I'm sorry, I have no room in the ghetto." I said, "I'm sorry, I have no room." And he began to close the door, and he explained

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that it was his wife's time, and that although they could not afford an inn like mine still, he would pay everything he had that she might have some comfort in the moment of her travail. I said, "I'm sorry, I just have no room." And he nodded his head silently, and they turned and went away. As you know, the baby was born later that night in a stable down

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the street. There are some who say that it was my stable, that I did not have room in the inn, and so I took them and put them in the stable which was part of the inn. But truth to tell, in those days an inn was not much more than a glorified stable itself, and there is nothing in the record which implies that I took them anywhere at all. There was

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no room in the inn, and so they had to go somewhere else. That was all there was to it. Why do you look at me like that? Like I'm some kind of heartless, insensitive beast? You know, you twentieth-century Christians intrigue me. You sit and look at those of us whose stories are spread upon these pages, and you condemn us as if the sins which we

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committed were somehow unique and not your own. There's nothing novel or creative or ingenious or new. There's nothing unique about the way in which we sin against God. We simply write our stories over Him. So I said to him, "There is no room in the inn, and you say to Him in the jargon of your day, 'There is no room in my heart. It's crowded

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with people and programs and purposes and things.'" Isn't that really what you say? Oh, it's not that you blaspheme with Christ. It's not that you're anti-Christ or anti-the things of Christ. I wasn't either. I was sympathetic to them. I wanted to help, but there just were too many other things crowding in. You prepare now for the season of His birth, and

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you have lost yourselves in a swirl of activity. Do you remember how He came? He came unbidden. He arrived unwelcome. He stayed under protest. And I, caught up in all the frenzy of the census, missed Him. And I suggest to you that you, caught up now in the frenzy of this holiday, can miss Him too. You drag out your poor pencil, your poor office party. You grut the mail

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with your poor card. You buy poor gifts and give poor gifts and get poor gifts and return poor gifts and in the midst of all of this somehow or other, designed to put Christ back into Christmas. You so crowd yourself with little things that you miss Him altogether. Some of you men can remember the last quote from the market on Friday. But can you remember

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the text of last Sunday's sermon? Some of you ladies could tell me now, every nickel you spent for every Christmas gift purchased in this last week. But can you tell me the worst worship was to you on last Lord's Day? Or are you so caught up living in the sick of very thin things that there is no room? Or do you turn Him away because you're unwilling

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to accept obedience? Are you spiritually sophisticated enough to know that once He enters into your heart, He will demand sovereignty and you are not willing to curb your passion? Is that it? Or don't shy at that word "passion." Too much in this century when you say "passion," people immediately think of things sensuous. A passion can be many things. It is not necessarily

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bad. It can be as pure as the sunshine and as holy as prayer. A passion is simply that which directs or controls or motivates your life. Now is that the reason you turn away from Him? Because you have some passion which controls you that you do not want to subordinate to. You want to be the business. Is that it? Everything. You offer family, you offer faith,

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you offer all of your commitments on the altar of the business. Is that it? Or the family itself? Sacrifice everything. All the dimensions of devotion and of belief. All other responsibilities to keep the heart side happy. Is that it? You are so caught up in the world that you have given yourself to education. The important thing is good grades. Light the fires of your

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mind. Kindle them so they are brighter than the fires of other people's minds. Is that it? Or you have given yourself to sports, to athletics, to music, to art, to drama. You have committed yourself to these things. So all other things must take some subordinate place. Do you remember that day when someone came to you and said, "You are a real businessman.

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You are a real student. You are a real mother. You are a real father." When they said that to you, had they said everything there is to say about you? Is that all you are? When Christ enters a man's heart, he asks only one thing, and that is that everything else must be subordinated to him. Is that the reason there is no room? Or is it because you do

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not want to confess? Do you understand that the Master holds up to a mirror to the personality that you must look into and confront yourself, every flaw and blemish that's on you, that he comes, that mighty personality of his, like some church light that plays upon your soul and reveals everything you don't want anyone to see? Is that the reason you shy

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away? No room. No vacancy. Let any man know that which I want no man to know. Sometimes I fool myself. Most times I fool other men. But him I cannot fool. So no room. Now it's a little strange that you should feel that way. You surely know enough of him to know that he is love, that he can do for all the ugliness in your life what sunshine does to

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dewdrops, turning them from dull gray into golden dense. Do you remember how the ancient prophet went to the potter's house and saw the potter work with the clay, and it did not kneel to the potter's dream and fell upon the floor and broke? What did he do? He did not push it aside. He picked it up and began again and fashioned from it finally something

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very lovely. That's all he wants to do with you, but do you turn away because you are unwilling to make the confession that is first necessary? And if it's none of these things, if your heart is not too full, and if you are willing to make confession, and if you are willing to accept him as sovereign, is your rejection predicated on the fact that

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you do not want to be disturbed? Rather satisfied with the status quo, life going the way in which you want it to go, everything all right, no reason to run risks or indulge in wagers or pitch yourself into some kind of adventure, the end of which you do not begin to understand. Is that the problem? I see young people here this morning. You know your parents. You know

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them when the mask is off. You know how they are at home when others are not watching. So I ask you, do you want to be just like them? Is there in their lives a peace so deep, so broad, so passing of all that is understanding, that you want nothing more out of life than to be just the way they are? You do not want to be just like them. You want to be just

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like them. You do not smile and nod. Perhaps they are too easily satisfied. It's like marriage. That's a risk. That's a wager. That's an adventure. That's a chance you have to take. That disturbs and changes things, but you can never know the blessing if you do not run the risk. You turn away because you are afraid of the disturbance. If it's none of these things, there's only

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one other alternative, you know, and that's the hardest alternative of all. It is indifference. Are you just indifferent? Is that all there is to it? Then it's a threefold sin. It is a sin of conceit to be arrogant enough to believe that you can live without Him. It is a sin against your neighbor for whom you could minister if he dwelt within you. And

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it's a sin against Christ. For indifference is harder upon Him than any crime against Him that is recorded on the pages of this book. To criticize a man is better than just to ignore him. To scourge him is better than to completely overlook him. To kill him, to crucify him, is at least to notice him. At no moment in his life was Christ unnoticed.

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There were always those who cared for him or wanted to crush him, but there were always those at least concerned. Is it then to be said of you that you just don't care? Please turn your cassette to the other side. When Jesus came to Golgotha, they hanged Him on a tree, and they drove great nails through

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His hands and His feet, and they called it Calvary. And they crowned Him with a crown of thorns, and the wounds were red and deep. And those were cruel days, cruel days, and they were dressed with teeth. But when He comes to Glendale, there are some who just pass Him by. They wouldn't hurt a hair of Him. They just let Him die. For they are much

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more tender. They will not give Him pain. They just go passing down the streets and leave Him in the rain. And Jesus cried, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do." And still it rains that winter rain that drenches through and through. And the crowds go home and leave the streets. And without a soul to see, Jesus crouches against the wall and

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cries for Calvary. Well, time is gone. They turned away, and I turned away. They were outside the inn. I was outside the inn. They say that later there was a star, but I was inside the inn and couldn't see any stars. They say that angels were singing out on the hillsides, but how was I to hear them amidst a thousand clamors of an inn? You see, I did

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not know who He was, but you do. You know His name and the name of His people. You know who He was and who He is and who He always will be. You know that the world in which you live, it is that the civilization of which you are a part was fashioned by Him. You know that no personality has so influenced the life you are now living in this society as

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Jesus Christ. You know what I did not know. And so I say to you, behold, He stands at the door and knocks. If anyone open the door, He will come into you. We are the same. Same hurts, same dreams, same hopes, same sins. Only this separates us. I did not know, and you do know. So you see what has happened. The moment of fear and the angels standing

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around this room watching you, the tide of the great battle of human history has at this very moment turned in your direction, and you in this very moment must take your stand. He knocks. Only a step between you and Him. And you know what I did not know. I did not know that He was the Lord. I did not know that He was the Lord. I did not know that

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He was the Lord. I did not know that He was the Lord. I did not know that He was the Lord. Father God, Thou knowest that at this moment there are some in this room who have not opened the door. Thou knowest their names. Thou knowest where they are seated. Thou knowest their thoughts at this very moment. Thou knowest that there are some who wonder if they have.

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And Thou knowest all there is to know of them as well. I cannot then tell Thee anything that Thou dost not know. And so I speak to them right now in this moment. Say in the silence of your own heart, "Lord Jesus, I confess my sin before Thee, and I open the door to You. Come in." And having said that, when this service is done, I ask that you

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come forward to speak here with counselors who can feel the promise now made in your heart. Do not leave with this a secret. Share it now, for this is a moment for you. O God, draw them unto Thyself for Jesus' sake. And the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up the light of His

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countenance upon you and give you His peace. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]