[Machine transcription]
In the name of Jesus, amen.
Dear Saints of God, we want to meditate on the great mysteries in this text.
How, for example, can Jesus, who is both God and man, how can Jesus learn and grow in wisdom
if he knows all things?
Or this question, did Jesus sin in staying in Jerusalem at the temple while his parents
thought he was with them on the way home?
Or, what does Jesus mean when He says that I had to be about my father’s business?
But first, I just want to, before we dig into the Gospel text, I just want to pick up a
couple of key things from the Old Testament and the Epistle.
The first is this, this Old Testament text from 1 Kings chapter 3 is a really key text
where Solomon, the Lord promises to give to Solomon anything he wants, and Solomon asks
for just the right thing.
He asks the Lord for wisdom.
And this is important because we, in these gray and latter days, need probably more than
anything else wisdom.
James has promised us, James chapter 1, if anyone lacks wisdom, let him ask the Lord
who gives to all generously.
So we need to pray this prayer with Solomon and understand it too, because the original
prayer of Solomon, it’s almost always translated, 1 Kings 3 verse 9, give your servant an understanding
mind to govern your people,
but the thing that Solomon
asked for is for a hearing
heart. It’s just hard to
translate. I mean, in
English it sounds funny,
so it always is an
understanding mind. But
this is what Solomon asked
for and I think it’s a key
prayer for us, that we
would have a hearing heart
and a heart that would
hear two things. A heart
that would first hear the
Lord’s word. That’s what
that’s what Psalm 119 is
praying, that I’m wiser
than my elders and my
teacher because I’ve
meditated on your word,
so that our hearts would
number one, hear the
Lord’s word, and then
number two, that our own
hearts would be open to
hear the things that are
happening around us,
especially the needs of
our neighbor and the
distress of the world so
that we might apply the
light and the wisdom of
God’s word to those who
are around us.
So let us join with Solomon
in praying this prayer.
Next is the epistle, which
is just a couple of
sentences.
It’s a lot of verses but
just a couple of sentences
and this is how Paul will
write it.
It’s very, very dense but
I want you, as you consider
and meditate on this text,
I want you to notice one
thing that Paul repeats
over and over in the text
and that is the word
in him.
He’s dealing with a lot of
mysteries, with
predestination, with grace,
with prayer, but it comes
back to that phrase over
and over. Verse 3, He has blessed us in Christ. Verse 4, He has chosen us in Him. Verse 7,
in Him we have the redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. Verse 10,
that He might unite all things in Him. Or verse 11, in Him we have obtained an inheritance.
Verse 13, in Him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation,
and believed in Him were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. So that our life, and this is good
for us to think about, especially right on the cusp of this New Year, our life, our hope,
our confidence, our peace, our courage, our wisdom, our everything is in Christ.
Jesus said it like this, He said, I am the vine and you are the branches.
If you abide in Me and My Word abides in you, you will bear much fruit. But apart from Me,
you can do nothing. So we
find our life in Christ.
Now to the Gospel. John,
the, remember the Gospel of
John says that if all the
things that Jesus said and
did were written down,
there wouldn’t be enough
room in the entire world
for all the books. So we
know that the Lord Jesus
did so many things and
blessed so many people and
yet, the things that we
have in the Gospels in
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and
John are curated for us by
the Holy Spirit to give us exactly what we need, exactly what we need to know about Jesus.
It may be not be, it might not be everything that we want to know about Jesus, but it is
exactly what we need.
We learn of the announcement of Jesus’ birth when the angel Gabriel came to Mary and also
the angel came to, to Joseph and said his name shall be Jesus, he’ll save his people
from his sins.
We hear of the birth of Jesus, that was last week, born suddenly in Bethlehem where they
went to register for the census. With no place, he had to be laid in a manger. But
we presume that the holy family stayed in Bethlehem for a little while, procured a house
where they could live, visit the temple for all that was needed to⦠seven days after
the birth of Jesus and forty days after His birth. So they were in the temple there. Jesus
was circumcised there. His name there. They visit Simeon and Anna. They’re traveling
back and forth from Bethlehem. And we think that they’re in Bethlehem for a few weeks,
at least maybe a few months because when the wise men from the east see his star and they
go to Jerusalem, the scribes point them to Bethlehem, and they go to Bethlehem and find
Jesus in a home in the lap of Mary. So we get to hear about that. In fact, we’ll think
about that a lot on Thursday on Epiphany. Herod has these wicked designs to destroy
Jesus and so the angel warns them to flee. The Magi go back home the back way. The holy
family goes down to Egypt and then back to Nazareth, and then the Scriptures are silent
about Jesus.
So from a few months old until his baptism in the Jordan River by John the Baptist, age
30, we don’t hear anything at all about our Lord Jesus, with the singular exception of
this passage today, which tells us of Jesus with Mary and Joseph, it’s by the way the
last time we hear about Joseph in the Bible too, Mary and Joseph and Jesus visiting Jerusalem
for the Passover.
Now, apparently it was the custom of Mary and Joseph every year to go from Nazareth
when they were living there, to go from Nazareth down to Jerusalem for the Passover.
And that was required by the law of Moses.
It was a pilgrim feast, so any Jewish person who was able to go to Jerusalem was required
to do so.
But it seems like the text indicates that Mary and Joseph would go every year, but this
was Jesus’ first time.
So Jesus goes with them and their family.
They would have traveled in a pilgrim group down the, probably the Jordan River Valley
and then up the mountains past Jericho through the wilderness of Judea and up into Jerusalem
singing the Psalms of ascent as they go and you can see and imagine the pilgrim throng
heading up there. Now I like to imagine Jesus with John the Baptist. I don’t know why, from
my, when I was a kid I used to think of Jesus, 12-year-old Jesus and 12-and-a-half-year-old
John the Baptist walking up the mountain together, talking of the Scriptures. But I don’t, I
I actually think that’s wrong.
Because remember, John and his family
were from the mountains of Judea.
So they were from that region already.
But Jesus and his family was from Nazareth.
But no doubt they would have been
with a lot of family and people traveling together,
which is why Mary and Joseph could have missed Jesus.
They wouldn’t have noticed that he wasn’t with them
as they were traveling home.
So they go up to Jerusalem.
They offer the sacrifice.
They would have brought the lamb
to the priest in the temple to sacrifice, and they would have taken that lamb home and
would have eaten it in the Passover feast in a home in Jerusalem or one of the surrounding
areas with family and friends.
But I want to make sure that we have this idea right because, you know, when God gave
Moses the instructions for the tabernacle, it was a pretty small, and the whole tabernacle
could have almostâ¦
I mean, the tabernacle itself could have fit in the sanctuary here.
Maybe even the courtyard and everything could have fit here.
It was a small thing, but when the Lord gave the gift of Solomon to build the temple, it
got bigger.
And then, even though it was destroyed, it was built back by Herod, remodeled, even bigger,
so that the whole temple complex, which included the court of the Gentiles, the court of the
women, the court for men, the court for the Levites, it had apartments for the priests,
it had shops, places where you could go buy and sell, and there were synagogues also in
the temple, the whole temple complex was huge. It was probably over half of Jerusalem was
taken up by this huge temple complex. So a lot of the time that the Holy Family was there
would have been up there, including in this synagogue or church that was there, where
the rabbis would go to teach and talk about the Scriptures and debate questions of the
law of Moses and so forth and so on. And Jesus, can you imagine Jesus going into the synagogue
dog in the temple was simply
taken by the teaching and he
was listening and he was
learning the Scriptures and
he was asking questions.
And the questions that he
was asking were so astute,
were so sharp and so
perspective, had such a
perception that the
teachers of the law were
amazed. Here is this
twelve-year-old boy
learning the Scriptures, but already so wise. I think it’s amazing just for us to consider
this, and this is something that we’ll⦠we can meditate on all of our entire lives,
but to think that there is Jesus who inspired the Scriptures to be written, who’s now
learning from them, and what is He learning? I mean, we know the Bible, the books of the
prophets are about Jesus. He’s learning about Himself. He’s learning about His own
office, His own work, His own role. He’s learning about His own death and His own resurrection
and what it all means.
Now there’s a lot of mysteries here for us to consider. The first is, as we think about
Jesus, how can this be? I think it’s hard for us because we know that Jesus is omniscient.
That means He knows all things. It’s hard for us to imagine Him learning. But so it
is that Jesus, true God and true man, also learns. He has to learn how to speak and write
in Hebrew. He has to learn how to read. He has to learn the prophets and learn the law
of Moses by studying it. He has to go to catechism class and he’s got to learn these things.
And this reminds us that Jesus is a man just like us, just like you, just like me.
But, but here comes a second mystery, and I think this is a really good one for us to
think about, and that is this question, did Jesus in remaining in Jerusalem sin?
He goes to the temple and he’s, he’s there in this conversation with all of these rabbis.
Mary and Joseph think that Jesus is with the family or the pilgrim group as they leave,
so they go a day’s journey and then it’s time to go to bed at night and they’re looking.
Have you seen Jesus, Jesus anywhere?
where it seems like they probably looked all night amongst the people, and they didn’t
find Him. So they go a day’s journey back to Jerusalem, and they’re looking around
the town, and they are, as you can imagine, distressed. That’s the word that Mary uses
when she finally, at last, finds Jesus and says, we are distressed. Did you not know?
And the question is, did Jesus sin? Whenever I’ve been talking about this, or teaching
about it, did Jesus ever sin? There’s two moments, two incidences in the life of Jesus
that people always bring up. And it’s interesting to me, I was trying to⦠they’re both in
the temple. I just realized that this morning, and I’m trying to figure out what that means.
The two times when people think that Jesus might have sinned are here when He remained
in the temple when Mary and Joseph left, and then when He cleansed the temple, when He made
the cord and the whip out of the cords, and He drove the money changers from the temple
in anger saying, you’ve made my father’s house, it’s supposed to be a house of prayer, you’ve
made it into a den of thieves. We know that Jesus did not sin. We know that Jesus was
perfect in every way. Hebrews 4.15 says this, we do not have a high priest who is unable
to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we
are, yet without sin. Jesus was perfect and holy and without sin, which means that His
remaining in Jerusalem was not sinning against Mary and Joseph. And here’s an application
for you parents. Are you ready? I’m going to preach to myself also for a little bit
here. Parents, your children are not sinning against you when they do not meet your expectations.
We can let that sink in.
But here’s a second application for all of us.
You are not your sin.
People say, Pastor, how could Jesus be a person, a human being, a man just like us without
knowing what it was like to sin?
We think that to err is human.
We think that to sin is what it means to be a human being.
But Jesus was the perfect man and never sinned.
And that means that your sin is not who you are.
God created you.
He didn’t create sin.
Jesus became a man.
He did not become sin.
Jesus redeemed you.
He did not redeem sin.
sin, God will raise you on the last day. He is not going to raise your sin. There is a
difference between you and your sin. There are so many applications of this particular
fact, but we just need to let it sink in, is that when we sin, we are not acting like
men and women. We are acting like demons. It’s the devil who sins. That’s his nature.
He lies and kills. He did it from the beginning. He will do it in the end. But your sin is
not who you are. This is one
of the ways that the devil
tempts us, is it not? That
we start to identify with
our sin? That we let our
sin identify us? That’s
wrong. Jesus, true God and
also true man, was perfect
in every way. That should
be some joy for us. But now
at last we get to the
to the mystery of Jesus’ sermon.
These words recorded for us are the first words that the Holy Spirit has caused to be
written from the lips of our Lord Jesus Christ. So this is His first sermon and His first
teaching. It’s preached to Mary and to Joseph when He’s only 12 years old. Mary found Him.
She was astonished. His mother said to Him, Son, why have you treated us so? Behold,
your father and I have been
searching for you in great
distress.” And Jesus
responds to Mary with a
slight rebuke,
Why were you looking for
me? Why was it hard for
you? Didn’t you know
already that I must be in
my father’s house? Some of
you remember the old King
James, I think it said,
I must be about my
father’s business.
Well, which is it,
business or house?
The answer is it’s
actually neither.
It’s in Greek, it’s, it
would be something like
this, didn’t you know that
I must be about my
father’s stuff?
The the of my father.
Didn’t you know I must be
fatheringly things or
something like this?
But I think both words are
fine.
The father’s business, the
Father’s house, because it was the Father’s temple. It was the Father’s altar, the Father’s
priesthood, the Father’s sacrifices, the Father’s holy of holies, the Father’s throne, the Father’s
well, the Father’s blood, the Father’s sacrifice, the Father’s forgiveness. And that’s what
Jesus is about, the work of the Father, which is the work of salvation.
His Father’s things, the blood of bulls and goats and priests offering sacrifices day
and night and praying to the Lord and studying His Word, it’s all about what Jesus would
do on the cross.
And He knows that this is
why He’s come, so that He
might, like the lambs that
were being brought to the
altar, so that He might
carry all of your sins.
That He might suffer for
all that you’ve done
wrong.
That on His perfect
shoulders would be laid
the distress of all of the
world so that He could do
the Father’s work and come
to you and say that you
are His, that you belong
to Him, that you will live forever in His glory.” Didn’t you know that I must be about
my Father’s business in my Father’s house? And He still is. Jesus is still doing the
same thing. He’s in the family business. It’s not carpentry, that’s His stepfather. His
Father’s business is the salvation of the world and Jesus is still doing that work, covering
all that you’ve done wrong
with His holy and
precious blood.”
So may God grant us the
joy and the confidence
of this sermon of Jesus.
Do we know where He is?
Yes.
He’s here in the Word,
on the table with His
body and His blood.
Do we know what He’s
doing?
Yes, His Father’s
business.
Do we know where to find
Him?
God be praised.
He has found you.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ
our Lord.
Amen.
