Well, hey everybody, I'm Adam Schell, the pastor of Melbourne Heights, and welcome to our sermon podcast. And I just want to start out by thanking you for spending part of your day with us. And if you're blessed during our time together today, let me invite you to come and worship with us live on Sunday mornings at 10.30 a.m. Eastern Time.
You can worship with us live on our church website at mhbclouisville.com slash live, or if you're in the Louisville, Kentucky area, we would love to have you come and join us in person. With that, let's get right into this episode's sermon. If you've spent much time around our church during previous Christmas seasons, then by now you've probably realized that one of my favorite parts of this time of year are the movies. I mean, it seems like at one point or another, I have preached on a sermon inspired by just about every Christmas movie imaginable at some point over the years.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas and It's a Wonderful Life. I've talked about National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, and I have talked about the Santa Claus. I've even talked about Jingle All the Way and One of My Christmas Servants. And of course, that list could keep going on and on.
But if you really know me, then you know that there is one particular Christmas movie that is my absolute favorite, and that is A Charlie Brown Christmas. And A Charlie Brown Christmas has been my favorite Christmas movie for as long as I can remember. When I was really small, I enjoyed watching the movie just so I had the chance to watch the P-Nex gang break out their best dance move when Schroeder was jamming away on his little piano. Then when I got a little bit older and I became a Christian myself, I couldn't wait to hear Linus remind us of what Christmas is all about.
But now as an adult, there's another reason why I've come to love this movie so much. And the reason why I love this movie so much can be found in the opening scene for A Charlie Brown Christmas. And if you remember in that opening scene, snow is falling from the sky, covering everything the eye can see with a blanket of white. And that's when Charlie Brown and his best friend Linus step out of their nice warm houses so that they can go ice skating with their friends.
And as they're walking along those snow-covered streets that no one has even tried to salt or plow, they start talking. But they're not talking about the plans for their snow day. No, instead, Charlie Brown and Linus start talking about what every kid starts looking forward to when fog gets away to winter every year. They start talking about Christmas.
And that's when Charlie Brown looks over at Linus and says, I think there must be something wrong with me. I just don't understand Christmas, I guess. I might be getting presents and sending Christmas cards and decorating trees and all that, but I'm still not happy. I always end up feeling depressed.
And that line has resonated with me for years because I think we have all felt that way. We all understand what Charlie Brown is going through. We've all felt the way that Charlie Brown does at the beginning of this movie. Even though we might be getting presents and we might be sending Christmas cards, even though we might be decorating our houses and getting the chance to eat our favorite Christmas cookies and spending time with our loved ones.
When the final present is unwrapped. When the final Christmas card is dropped in the mail. When the final decoration is perfectly placed on our trees. When the final Christmas cookie is polished off.
When the final visitor from our holiday brunch heads back home. We end up feeling sad. We end up feeling a little disappointed. We feel a little depressed.
We feel a little let down at Christmas. We feel a little let down at Christmas. And I know that's not the emotion that we like to talk about during this time of year, but seriously, is there anybody that's worshiping with us right now, whether you're here in person, whether you're joining us online, who hasn't felt at least a little bit let down at one point or another when Christmas has come to an end? Maybe you felt that way when you were picking up the last shreds of wrapping paper on your living room floor after all the presents were opened up.
Maybe you felt that way when all of your guests started leaving when your holiday party was over. Maybe you felt that way when you had to start taking down all of those Christmas decorations that you've been putting up over the last month. But haven't we all felt a little let down at Christmas? I mean, if I'm being completely honest with you, then I have to admit that's probably the way that I end up feeling at the end of Christmas most years.
Now don't get me wrong, it doesn't mean that I don't like Christmas. I get excited to spend time with my family. I get excited to open up cool new presents. I even get a little bit excited to decorate my house in the church for Christmas, as long as I don't have to spend too much time fluffing Christmas trees.
But when it's over, I end up feeling that disappointment. I end up feeling that sensation of being let down. But I don't want to feel that way, and I'm sure you don't want to feel that way, and Charlie Brown didn't want to feel that way either. And that's why throughout the rest of the movie of Charlie Brown Christmas, he's going to do everything that he can think of to try to avoid feeling let down at Christmas.
So this Christmas season at Melbourne Heights, I want to talk about some of the things that Charlie Brown and the rest of the Peanuts gang did to try to avoid feeling let down at Christmas so that maybe we can learn something from him. And the very first thing that Charlie Brown does to try to avoid that feeling of being let down at Christmas in the movie is he goes and he visits Linus' sister Lucy at her psychiatric booth. And after he pays her the five cents and she gets all excited about the rattle of a nickel in her can, Charlie Brown explains to her what the problem is. And Lucy, in that infinite wisdom that only an eight-year-old can have, tells Charlie Brown that his problem is that he's not busy enough.
He's not doing enough things. So she basically tells him if you don't want to feel let down at Christmas, what you need to do is you need to do more Christmassy things. And I think all of us have had that thought at one point or another at Christmas in our lives. When the magic of Christmas just hasn't felt as real as we want it to feel, we think the answer is to do more Christmassy things.
So we go and we buy more Christmas presents, we bake more Christmas cookies, we attend more Christmas gatherings, we put out more Christmas decorations, hoping that they'll make us feel different. So Charlie Brown spends the rest of the movie doing Christmassy things. He volunteers to direct the Peanuts gang's Christmas play. He helps his sister Sally write her letter to Santa Claus that year.
He goes out and he picks out the tree that the kids need for their Christmas program. He goes ice skating with his friends. He does everything he can think of. And he's constantly busy, he's constantly moving, he's constantly doing Christmassy things to try to keep from feeling let down.
But when we reach the climax of the movie, Charlie Brown still feels depressed. He still feels like something is missing. He still feels let down because he has filled his Christmas season with so many activities that there hasn't been any room left for what Christmas is actually about. And this problem, it's not exactly a new problem.
People have been filling their Christmas seasons with so many events and activities, so many things to do and accomplish, that we've missed out on experiencing what Christmas is really about since the very first Christmas. As a matter of fact, in the Christmas story, we actually find a character who's never directly mentioned in the story, who is a feeling or would have had to have ended up feeling the exact same way that Charlie Brown felt. He had been so busy through the Christmas season that he missed out on experiencing what Christmas is all about. Today, I want to talk a little bit more about this character story.
So if you've got a Bible close by or Bible out on your phone, I encourage you to go ahead and open it to Luke chapter 2. Luke chapter 2. And as you're finding it, I will point out to you, we're going to be talking about somebody that missed out on that first Christmas experience because they were so busy. They were there, even though they're not directly mentioned in the story, but they had so much going on in their lives that they missed out on what was happening right underneath their nose.
So let's take a look at this story together. We're starting in Luke chapter 2, verse 1. This is what Luke writes. He writes, Let me read that last line for you again.
Now, the Greek word that we translate as end here literally refers to the dissolution or the breaking up of a journey. So this word simply refers to any place that people lodge when they are away from home, when their journey breaks up or dissolves. This is the places where they stay. So we don't 100% know what this word actually means, aside from knowing that it means a place where people stay when they're away from home.
So this word, it could be referring to an actual end like we're used to hearing about, but it could also be referring to a guest room or it could be referring to a spare bedroom in one of Joseph's relatives' homes. But even though we don't know exactly what this word may refer to, what we do know is that there would have been someone who was responsible for whatever these lodging accommodations were. And for simplicity's sake in this sermon, we are going to refer to that person as the innkeeper. And that's who we're going to be talking about today.
We're going to be talking about this innkeeper. So what do we know about this innkeeper? Well, even though they're never directly mentioned in the Gospel of Luke or any other Christmas story, there are a few things that we can infer about this innkeeper for what Luke tells us. And the first thing that we can infer about this innkeeper is that they live and work in the town of Bethlehem.
Now for us, on this side of Christmas, we know how big a deal Bethlehem is. We know that Bethlehem is not only the hometown of Israel's greatest king, David, we also know it's the place where the Messiah is born. We know this is where Jesus was born. But when Jesus was actually born in Bethlehem, Bethlehem wasn't that big of a deal.
As a matter of fact, that old Christmas carol, A Little Town of Bethlehem, does a really good job of describing to us what this town was like. And the song starts, of course, with a line, A Little Town of Bethlehem. And Bethlehem was a little town. Chances are that there were only a few hundred people that lived in the town of Bethlehem when Jesus was born there.
And I don't know if you have ever lived in a small town yourselves, but I once lived for about four and a half years, five years in a town that had a total population of 1,972 people the entire time that we lived there. So I understand what small town life is like. So when the song A Little Town of Bethlehem talks about how still we see the life, still is a pretty good way to describe life in a small town, especially when the sun starts to go down. When the sun goes down in a small town, there is nothing to do in that town whatsoever.
So again, when the song A Little Town of Bethlehem continues on by talking about the dark streets, probably just talking about the fact that they hadn't invented electricity or anything along those lines. It's talking about the fact that nobody is out on the streets of the town of Bethlehem at night because there's no place for them to go. There's nothing for them to do. This is a still, quiet, peaceful town.
And this is where the innkeeper is from. This is where their inn or their guest room or their spare bedroom is at. But it's in the little town of Bethlehem, this little place where nothing ever happens. And then Caesar Augustus issues a decree that a census is going to be taken and that every person has to go back to their hometown to be registered.
And that means that the little town of Bethlehem is about to get a lot busier. Why is that going to happen? Well, again, I lived in a small town for about four and a half years. I can tell you what happened in that town whenever somebody graduated high school.
When somebody graduates high school in a small town, what almost always happens is that they end up leaving that town. They leave that town so they can go to college someplace else. They leave that town so they can find a job someplace else because there just aren't that many opportunities for them in a small town. And that's what Bethlehem was probably like.
When kids reached adulthood, they probably quickly left town because there just weren't that many opportunities for them. There was only a need for so many carpenters or bakers or innkeepers in the town. So they simply would have left. But when Caesar Augustus issues this decree that everyone has to go back to their hometown to be registered, that meant that all of these people who had left town to find jobs or go to school elsewhere or whatever had to come back home.
And that meant that they all needed a place to stay. So Caesar Augustus issues this decree that innkeeper probably had more requests to rent a room than they had had in years. So imagine what it could have been like when Mary and Joseph showed up at that innkeeper's door, especially if he was actually running an inn. Imagine what it would have been like when they knocked on that door.
The innkeeper had been busy all day long. He'd been checking in guests who had come from all over Israel. He'd been helping them carry their bags to their rooms. If it was a bed and breakfast, he may have been preparing their meals for them.
He would have been dealing with their complaints about things that were going wrong. And he would have had countless people showing up asking if he had any rooms left that they could rent. So he'd been busy. And then when Mary and Joseph show up and they knock on the door, it's not hard to imagine that this innkeeper would have been ready to move on to the next thing twice about who it was.
It was asking if he had a place that they could stay. Because the reality is, Mary and Joseph would have been just another couple who had shown up at his door that day. Mary may not have even been the only pregnant woman that he saw at his inn that day. So he probably would have thought twice when he turned them away telling them, I'm sorry, I don't have any rooms left to rent.
But hey, you know what? If you're really desperate, you can always stay out back with the animals. But imagine what happened a little bit later on in the innkeeper's story. Because at some point, the innkeeper would have found out the truth of what happened.
It may have happened for him the very next day when he was cleaning up after breakfast and he heard some of his guests talking about the lady who had been in labor out behind their room the night before. Or it could have happened a few days later when other guests were checking out and they told them about some shepherds who came knocking on their door trying to get directions because an angel had told them that the Messiah was going to be born there. It could have taken weeks or months or maybe even years for this innkeeper to get the whole story. But eventually, he would have found out what happened and he would have known that the Messiah, the person that he had heard about since he was small, the person that everyone and all of Israel had been waiting for, was not only born in the little town of Bethlehem, but he was born at this innkeeper's inn.
How do you think the innkeeper would have felt in that moment when that realization of what went on finally happened? Do you think he would have felt a little disappointed? Do you think he would have felt a little let down? Do you think he would have been upset with himself that he was so busy trying to get his guest checked into the room that he missed out on what Christmas is all about?
Do you think he would have been angry that he had been so busy that first Christmas that he left no room, not only in his inn, but also in his life for what mattered the most? That same thing happens to us. It feels like every single Christmas. At this time of year, we get so busy that we miss out on what matters most.
We get so busy picking out and purchasing presents and wrapping our gifts that we miss what matters most. We get so busy planning our holiday meals and working on our travel itineraries that we miss what matters most. We get so busy trying to make sure that our decorations all look perfect or that we can find the best ugly Christmas sweater possible that we miss what matters most. And then when it's over, when all of the wrapping paper has been picked up, when all of our guests have gone back home, and all of the decorations have been packed away, we feel disappointed.
We feel let down, just like that innkeeper must have felt when he realized what he missed that first Christmas. But how different do you think this story would have been if the innkeeper had realized who was knocking at his door that day? If the innkeeper realized that the Messiah was at his door that day, do you think the story still would have ended the way that it did? Do you think the innkeeper still would have turned Mary and Joseph away, telling them that he didn't have any room left for them?
Do you think he simply would not have cared about the problems they were facing? Because I've got to tell you, I think if the innkeeper knew who was actually at his door that day, the story would have had a very different ending. And instead of telling us that she gave birth to her firstborn child, a son, wrapped him snugly and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the end, I think the story would sound more like this. She gave birth to her firstborn child, a son, wrapped him snugly and laid him in a nice warm bed, because the innkeeper made room for them in the inn.
And that's the lesson that we can all learn from the innkeeper. If we don't want to feel let down this Christmas, if we don't want to feel like we've missed out on something important, we have to make room in our lives for Jesus. We have to make room in our lives for Jesus. But that's not what we do most Christmases.
That's not what we do most Christmases. Instead of making room in our lives for Jesus, we end up filling our lives with too many other things, just like Charlie Brown did. But instead of volunteering to lead a Christmas program or to go out and find a Christmas tree like Charlie Brown did, we end up filling our lives by making countless trips out to the mall or spending countless hours scrolling on Amazon, trying to find the perfect presents. We fill our lives by slaving over a stove for hours so that we can roast the perfect hullet ham or so that we can bake the perfect Christmas cookie.
We fill our lives by spending hours meticulously placing every little ornament on our tree or going through every single light bulb in our outdoor display. And because we fill our lives with so many other things, there's no room left for Jesus. Because we fill our Christmases with so many other things, there's no room left in it for Jesus. So here's my challenge for you.
If you don't want to feel let down this Christmas, here's what I want you to do. I want you to learn from the innkeepers to save. And I want you to make room in your life for Jesus this Christmas season. And here's how I want to challenge you to do that.
I want to challenge you to do that by giving up one thing. Just one thing that you usually do at Christmas time and spend that time with Jesus instead. So instead of making that extra trip out to the mall or whatever stores you're shopping in, spend that time singing some of your favorite Christmas carols. Instead of making one more batch of Christmas cookies, spend that time re-reading the Christmas story.
Instead of reworking your decorations that are on your tree already to try to fill in that one empty spot, spend that time talking to Jesus. Find a way to make room in your life for Jesus this Christmas season. Because everything that we usually fill our times with at Christmas, all the presents that we buy, all the time we spend preparing food, even the time we spend planning and attending family get-togethers and gatherings, all those things won't last. Our Christmas presents will get wrapped up and they'll get put away.
All the food that we made will get eaten or thrown away. All the time that we spend planning and preparing for our Christmas gatherings, those gatherings will end. None of those things that we usually focus in on at Christmas last forever. They come and they go just as quickly as December 25th does every single year.
So the part that matters the most at Christmas is never going to be the gifts that you give or receive. It's never going to be the food that you get to eat. It's never even going to be the time that you spend with your family and friends. The part that matters most at Christmas is that Christ part.
And if we don't make room in our lives and in our Christmas times for Jesus, we're always going to have that feeling of being let down. So let's make room for Jesus. Let's pray together. God, if we come to you in this time of prayer, you know how busy we already are.
Thanksgiving was just a few days away, a few days ago, God. You know how busy we were preparing our Thanksgiving meals or traveling to be with our family. Black Friday was just a couple of days ago. You know how busy some of us were going out to stores, trying to find the best deals we could snag or getting ready for all the cyber shopping we plan to do tomorrow.
God, you know how busy the next few weeks are going to be for us as we continue purchasing presents and wrapping them. You know how busy it's going to be as we reach out to our parents, our kids, our friends, whoever it is, to try to coordinate travel schedules to figure out when everybody's going to be able to get together this year. You know how busy we'll be decorating our houses and preparing for our parties. God, you know that more often than not, we get so busy this time of year that we forget what this time of year is actually about.
It's not about presents. It's not about parties. It's not about eating our favorite holiday foods. This time of year is about you.
It's about the time that you sent your son into this world for us. So God, let us remember that. Let us remember that you love us so much that you sent Jesus into this world, that Jesus literally became one of us. You had flesh like ours, bone like ours, blood like ours.
You did that because you love us so much that you don't want anything to keep us from being close to you. God, remind us that that's what the season is all about. Let us make more room for Jesus instead of filling every spare moment of our lives with some other activity just to try to feel like we're in the Christmas spirit. Remind us of what Christmas really means.
We pray this all in Jesus' name. Amen. You can do that by joining us on our website at mhbclouisville.com slash live. Or if you're in the Louisville, Kentucky area, you can also worship with us in person.
And that's going to do it for this episode of our sermon podcast. But I want to invite you to come back and join us again when our next episode drops next week. But until then, I'll be praying for you. I hope that you have a great week.
And we'll see you back here soon for another sermon podcast.