January 3, 2010 — Luke 2:40-52 — What Child Is This — Pastor Jerome Teichmiller
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Luke 2: 40-52
Grace. Mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Our text for this mornings meditation is the Gospel lesson appointed for today, Luke, chapter 2, verses 40 through 52, particularly these words: “After three days, they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers.” This is our text.
In the name of our blessed Lord and Savior Jesus Chris, dear Christian Friends. We know very little about the early life of Jesus Christ. We know about his trip down to Egypt to avoid being killed by Herod. We know that Joseph and Mary returned to Nazareth after the danger to the child was over. And from today’s text we know that Joseph and Mary were very faithful in their worship of the true God. We know that they followed the laws and the customs of the Jews, because every year, they made the required pilgrimage to Jerusalem. After this instance at the age of 12, we next see Jesus at the age of 30, being baptized by John in the Jordan River. Today’s text is an important passage of Scripture in understanding just who this child is, the Child of Bethlehem, the child of whose birth the Angels sang, this child the wise men sought and worshiped, this child Herod wanted to kill, this child who is God’s son and promised seed of David, by whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed.
So — who is he? What might it have been like to be a God-boy? What does a God-boy do with the power He has as He plays and associates with his peers? There was a lot of questions like that in the early church. One very imaginative author wrote a book and attempted to fill in these hidden years of Jesus’ early life. His work, known as the Gospel of Thomas (not the apocryphal book of the same name), told of divine powers Jesus used in his childhood: such as, Jesus molds 12 little mud sparrows, and when he is scolded for working on the Sabbath, he claps his hands and they fly away; He causes a child who has run against him to drop dead; he leaps down from the roof of a house and restores life to another child who has fallen off; he reaps a hundred measures of wheat from one kernel which he has sown; He stretches out to its proper length a bed which Joseph had clumsily made too short. All of these stories show an arrogant little wonder boy, little “super-Jesus” if you will, who has a high opinion of himself, uses miraculous powers against all who oppose him, and has the power to escape the consequences of his deeds. This book is an insult to the person of Jesus and His purpose in the world. This is NOT who Jesus was!
So who is this child? At the age of 12, he sits in the temple with the religious teachers of his day and he astounds them with his questions and with his answers. It is one of those mysteries of the Incarnation and of the Holy Trinity. After all, Jesus is God — and God is omniscience — God knows all things. But our text today ends by telling us that Jesus “grew in wisdom.” God who knows all things, grows in wisdom? It is one of those questions which has no answer — But Jesus, as true man, experienced the maturing and growing process like any human being — while at the same time being Omnipotent, Omniscient God. But still, at age of 12, he showed more wisdom and understanding than other children his age, because the teachers of the law marveled at his questions and his answers.
But Mary and Joseph are frantic. They have been looking for Jesus all over Jerusalem. When they finally find him, I’m sure there is a certain relief that he is O.K., but also a certain amount of frustration. Mary’s frustration shows in her question to Jesus, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.”
Jesus’ answer to his mother tells us who he is. Jesus makes quite a distinction and contrast between “My Father’s house” and Mary’s “your father”, pointing to Joseph. “Why were you searching for me? Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” If we translate Jesus’ words exactly, his statement is; “I must be in the things of My Father.” Or that may mean, as some translations state, “About My Father’s business.” But whatever the precise meaning, what is important is that Jesus, in his first recorded words in Scripture, refers to God as his father. Not Joseph — but God! This is not the first, nor the last reference to Jesus as God’s son. Remember the words of the Angel Gabriel to Mary, “Your son will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High.” And at Jesus’ Baptism, the voice from heaven announced, “This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased.” Jesus consistently referred to God as his Father as in this statement made to His disciple; “I came from the Father and have come into the world.”
Jesus is God’s Son. Therefore he must be about his father’s business — and what business is that? It was more than learning and discussing the Scriptures in the temple in Jerusalem. Luke tells us in our text that Jesus went home with his parents, was obedient to them and that he “increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man. And then Luke continues through his whole book to tell the whole story of Jesus life and ministry. He tells us the whole story — all the way to his death on a cross on Calvary just outside the city of Jerusalem. He dares to do it because he knew that the outcome of Jesus’ activity among men was not defeat but victory. Resurrection triumphed over death and that tremendous fact gave meaning to everything. The business of the Father embraced all the things that went into the redemption of the world.
And of these things Jesus says: “I must be about them.” All through the ministry of Jesus there runs this idea of necessity, this “must,” and on occasion he expresses this compulsion, as when he healed the blind man he said: “We must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day; night comes, when no one can work. The greatest necessity from his father that Jesus assumed was the particular giving of himself on the cross, as when he told his closest disciples; “The Son of Man MUST suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.”
The whole purpose of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection — the Father’s business that he MUST be about — is our redemption. He has to live the perfect life which we could not live. He has to die an innocent death — a death that we deserved because we were not innocent. He has to rise again on the third day — to be the first fruits of all those, who would also rise to eternal life. The Father’s business, is redeeming you and me from sin, death and the devil; so that we might be children of God. Even at the age of 12, Jesus knows his true Father in Heaven. Even at the age of 12, Jesus is already beginning the road that leads to the cross and the empty tomb. Even at the age of 12, this young boy Jesus, is God’s son –Your savior and mine — saving us from sin, death, and the devil. May we, as God’s children, redeemed by our Savior Jesus Christ, praise our God and give glory to his holy name. In the name of Jesus! Amen.
