Still we are in a Jewish atmosphere. Promises are being accomplished; the babe must be born in Bethlehem. “The city of David” is nothing to the Christian as such, save as showing prophecy fulfilled; to us the Son comes from heaven. On earth the babe is the object of God’s counsels; angels and all heaven are occupied with His birth, but there is no place in the world for Him! Go where the great world registers every individual go to the little world of an inn, where each is measured by the servant’s knowing eye, and place is accordingly awarded from the garret to the first floor, but there is no room for Jesus. And the manger led, in due time, to the lowest place the cross.
What a lesson for us as to this world! What a difference, too, between giving up the world and the world giving us up! We may do the one with comparative ease, but when we feel the world despises us, as Christ was despised, we shall discover, unless He fills and satisfies the heart, that we had a value for its esteem that we were not aware of. When obedience is as important to us in our measure as obeying was to Christ, we shall go right on whatever be before us, without regarding the world.
J. N. Darby (excerpt from Man of Sorrows)