We see this in Luke 2:7. For, notice, it does not say "because there was no room for him in the inn." It says "for them." That includes Mary and Joseph as well as the infant Jesus.
And who are Christ's mother and father and sister and brother today? Are they not those who do the will of Christ's Father, as He told us in Matthew 12:48-50?
He replied to him, "who is my mother, and who are are my brothers?" Pointing to his disciples he said, "Here are my mother and brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.Are they not those who open their hearts to Him and follow Him?
Well, then, if you have followed Him, the world will have no more room for you than it had for Him.
You must not think that if you follow Jesus you will be praised for doing so. The "angels will rejoice over every sinner who repents," no matter how insignificant in the world's eyes.
But the world will not rejoice.
The world will scorn your decision. The world will seek to put you down. Then, if it cannot get you to renounce your decision or compromise your stand, it will turn its back on you and go its own way, shutting you out.
That is what Jesus foretold. It was He who said, "If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you" (John 15:19).
Jesus said, "Woe to you when men speak well of you" (Luke 6:26).
Jesus said to His disciples, "In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world" (John 16:33).
To be Christ's follower is to be a person without a country. A displaced person. It is to follow Him into the poverty of the early years at Nazareth, the loneliness of the itinerant ministry, eventually to the cross, all the time knowing that the disciple, like the Master, has no place to lay his head.
Taken from The Christ of Christmas, by James Montgomery Boice
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