The story of Jesus is the greatest story ever told. It is moving: that is, the story itself will propel you toward salvation of your soul if you will simply let it be told, let it speak, and listen to it:
(a) When Jesus was to be born, there was no room for Mary in the inn; and that tells us that there is no room for Jesus ever in this dark world of sin. We are all by nature the “innkeeper.”
(b) Our hearts are by nature like the heart of the innkeeper in the story; we must repent even at the very beginning of our contact with Jesus.
(c) Romans 8:7 says our natural human hearts everywhere are “enmity against God”; no one on earth by nature has room for Jesus—He is the Unwelcome One everywhere.
(d) Not one of us fallen humans has ever sought after Jesus; “there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, ... no, not one” (Rom. 3:10-12).
(e) But we are lost apart from Him for only He is the Source of life (“In Him was life; and the life was the [only] light of men” (John 1:4).
(f) Therefore Jesus as the Son of God has taken the initiative to seek after us.
(g) That is because He alone is love [agape]; for agape is the love that does not wait for us to seek it (we would never seek Him!) but He humbles Himself to be the Seeker of our souls.
(h) Jesus represents Himself as standing at the door of our hearts, knocking; our job is to listen to His knocking: “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock,” He says (Rev. 3:20).
(i) If you check the margin of the old KJV Bibles, you will see that it directs you to the Song of Solomon 5:2, for that is where the “knocking” is quoted from; the story of Jesus is a love story of disappointed, rejected love. Its import cannot be grasped apart from the pain that the One who “knocks” must feel when being thrust outside.
(j) Such love as His is a quiet love—the Suitor cannot force His way in; but in the end, the Suitor with His unrequited love will win in the drama; long despised and rejected, He will at last become Judge because “God is agape” (1 John 4:8), and the Judge of the vast Universe must do what is right.
(k) His love speaks now with a quiet voice; but in Revelation 20:11-14 that love will speak like thunder and lightning to the rejecters of His much more abounding grace: “I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away... and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books.”
(l) Those who have spent their lives rejecting the Lord’s much more abounding grace will want to jump into the lake of fire; since “God is love” He will give each man what he really wants.
Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.
