Luke 2:40–52

0:00 All right, I got a question for you. It's a fun question, not a challenging one yet. What is your favorite Disney movie song? Get it in your head. Your favorite Disney movie song. All right, now I'm going to force you all to be a little bit brave because I'm going to throw out some songs and we're actually going to take a little bit of a poll here. And I literally want you to raise your hand when I say the name of your favorite Disney song.

0:30 We're going to just see. Now, my guess is that one of them is going to be overwhelmingly the favorite. And so we're going to start with that. Raise your hand if your favorite Disney song, Disney movie song, is Let It Go by Elsa. We even got some whoops out of that one. It's actually not that many of you. I'm shocked at that. I bet if we went to the, like, younger generation, Elsa would win in a landslide. Is any of your favorite song Part of Your World by The Little Mermaid?

1:02 That's pretty much. No, really? All right. I'm kind of striking out here. What about that song? I don't know the name of it where Moana talks about the horizon and basically says, I am Moana. Thank you for your honesty, Alex Duke. Well, what am I missing here? Like, what's the big one? Hakuna Matata. Can you feel the love tonight? What else? Like, call that some more. I'm just curious at this point. Like, we're well beyond my point here.

1:33 But that's 90% of you. We haven't even hit it yet. What? What's yours, Woods? Kiss the girl. All right. I don't know, man. And we do not poll. I don't know that we have ever polled the congregation on anything like by email. But we may just have to because I'm curious what your songs are. Feel free to come tell me at the door. Here's one thing I've noticed watching Disney movies over my 48 years of life, though.

2:06 Disney and a lot of animation companies, in fact, most children's entertainment companies, seem probably in an effort to cover their own tales. to have come up with one lesson that they are willing to teach children, and that's basically all they are willing to teach children. And that is that you, as a child, have to find yourself. You have to figure out who you are, despite everybody else's expectations, despite everything else that everything like tradition and ritual and history and all the rest is telling you, you've got to find out who you are and then throw off the shackles of authority, restraint, and tradition so that you can be everything you're supposed to be.

2:49 When you start thinking about it, it's literally everywhere. I mean, think about the movie Moana. What's the whole point of Moana? Moana bucks her father's command to stay on the island, and she embraces her true identity as a voyager. I am Moana. And her self-realization leads her to reject the people's tradition of staying put, and she becomes a hero for doing that. Ariel and the Little Mermaids, the same way. Her father, King Triton, says that she's a mermaid, she's a fish, but she feels that she belongs in the human world, and so I want to be where the people are.

3:23 I want to see them dancing on, what do you call them, those, oh yeah, feet. And she literally leaves her family behind and sacrifices this beautiful voice that she has to be who she really is. Hercules, I don't remember if this is a Disney one, but it's the same thing. Hercules doesn't fit in, right? He wants to find out where he belongs. And he goes on this long journey. And through his journey, he basically comes to understand that he doesn't actually need the God's approval. But he's got to define himself by his own actions and his own choices, not other people's expectations.

3:59 It's all so tedious, isn't it? And then you got Elsa, the great. Let it go. It took the world by storm. Have you ever listened to the words of that song? Have you ever listened to the words, no right, no wrong, no rules for me, I'm free. And she casts off all the societal restraints, all the internal restraints, all the traditions of her family and her people, and she becomes herself. It's a story of self-liberation.

4:34 Now, I know it's true that in some of these movies, by the end of it, the characters kind of get their comeuppance. right? The Little Mermaid figures out that she, you know, this isn't actually going to work and there are costs to be paid. They learn that self-liberation isn't always all it's cracked up to be. But even so, even if Disney throws the parents the bone at the end of it by saying you might want to not go, you know, absolutely hog wild in your self-liberation, what's the high point of every one of those movies? What's the song that everybody goes away singing? Apparently for Woods, it's kiss the girl.

5:08 But for the kitties, you all know, it's let it go. No right, no wrong, no rules for me. I'm free. That's what sticks. It just seems to be kind of hard-coded into our modern minds that all these sort of normal, traditional ways of doing things, all the rules and all the expectations, even the concept of right and wrong itself, it's all just holding us back. from being who we're really supposed to be, from becoming who we really are.

5:40 That's what the world tells us. Our text this morning, though, challenges that whole narrative. We're going to be looking at the very end of chapter 2 of the book of Luke, which is the end, and really it's the climax of this first section of the book of Luke. The first two chapters are the first section, and so this passage that we're looking at this morning is the climax of all that. Luke has been telling the story of Jesus' infancy, And now we've come to the point where the whole point of it comes down to this. If you've not been with us over the last several weeks, let me give you a running start. We've been watching as Luke has told us about the very earliest days of Jesus' life.

6:14 He told us about the angel's announcement first to one couple, Zechariah and Elizabeth, that they were going to have a son named John the Baptist who would be the forerunner of the Messiah, the last of the Old Testament prophets. We saw the announcement of the same angel to Mary and Joseph about the birth of Jesus, the Messiah. And through all of that, we've been learning bits and pieces about who Jesus, the Messiah, is going to be. So there have been hints here and straight-up declarations here by the angel about who he's going to be. And two Sundays ago, the last time we were together in Luke, we saw two old prophets, like think 80 or 90 years old, Simeon and Anna, who see this baby and grab him and hold him up and declare in the temple and the hearing of everybody that's there that finally this baby is what we've been waiting for for like 2,000 years.

7:04 All the prophets, all the law, everything that we read about in the Old Testament, everything God was doing for that whole 2,000 years has come to fruition right here. This baby's going to be a savior, a king, a suffering servant who's going to save his people from their sins. That's where we left it off last time. Well, today we're going to pick up the story in chapter 2, verse 40, which really, if you look at it, you can go ahead and turn over there. Luke chapter 2, verse 40. If you're using a red pew Bible, it's on page 858. But if you look at verse 40, it's a fascinating verse because in those few words of that verse, you actually have covered a time period of 12 years.

7:45 The whole rest of the first two chapters covers a period of maybe six months. It's basically about six to nine months is how long that covers. This little verse, 40, covers 12 years. And what's fascinating about it is that it's 12 years about which we know absolutely nothing. It's like you get all this detail about the infancy of Jesus and then a veil drops and you get nothing. It's like his childhood is protected from prying eyes. None of the gospel writers, none of the rest of the New Testament writers say anything about Jesus' childhood.

8:19 There are some, yeah, almost ancient, almost old documents that tell some stories about his childhood. but none of those are included in the Bible for some very good reasons, the most important of which is that they're just made up. They didn't happen and there's no reason to think that they weren't made up. And the fact is, Jesus' years from 0 to 30 are basically unknown to us. He lived in this earthly life before his crucifixion and resurrection until 33 years old. That's the way the math works. And for 30 of those years, zero to 30, we know absolutely nothing except for one brief moment.

8:57 For one brief moment, like just a couple of days, Luke here in Luke 2 lifts the veil and shows us one single thing that happens when Jesus is 12 years old. Now, why does he do that? You know, you're supposed to ask that question in the Bible, right? You're not supposed to just read the Bible and sort of take it at face value. It's constantly wanting you to ask the question, why is this here? The gospel writers, the rest of the biblical writers, they don't just put stuff in for the fun of it. It's not just because it was laying there as a kind of thing and they needed to increase the word count so they stick it in.

9:27 You're supposed to be asking, why does Luke tell us this story? Of all the things that could have happened in those 30 years of Jesus' life, the one thing that we are told about is this story about Jesus in the temple. What's Luke trying to tell us with it? We're going to talk about that, but let's read it first. Look with me at Luke chapter 2, verse 40. When they didn't find him, they returned to Jerusalem searching for him.

10:20 After three days, they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him, they were astonished, and 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 he said to them, Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my father's house? They did not understand the saying that he spoke to them. He went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them.

10:52 And his mother treasured up all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man. All right. Now, I know that most of you, if you've been Christians for very long, you know about this story partly because of its uniqueness. It's the only thing we get of Jesus when he's a child, right? But it's also one of those stories that we tend to read over pretty quickly because we kind of think that there's not a whole lot to it. The thing that grabs our attention most, in fact, is, ha ha ha ha, you say that Jesus never sinned, you Christians, and yet his mama's mad at him.

11:29 What's up with that? That's the thing that tends to grab us. We'll talk about that, but it's not the most important thing going on here. I mean, at first glance, you're right. There's not a whole lot that goes on in this story. There's not a whole lot of action. There's not a whole lot of tension. And what tension there is, is resolved insanely quickly. And the tension in the story is, oh, no, Jesus is missing. And then a sentence later, it's, okay, they found him. Right? It's just the tension is resolved insanely quickly. There are no miracles.

12:01 There's no extended teaching here. There is no Pharisee that gets cooked by Jesus' hot wisdom here. In fact, it's so straightforward. It's so kind of a boring story that we tend to shrug it off and even maybe, if we even ask the question, wonder why it's here. But I hope by the end of the story today, or the sermon today, you'll see it a bit differently. Because this story actually is a critical point in the story. Listen to this. This is the point. It's the moment when Jesus came to understand in his human nature who he really is.

12:36 And therefore, what his mission is going to be. This is the moment when in his human nature, everything about who he is in the context of Old Testament promise clicked for Jesus. And he understands who he is and what he's going to be all about. But what that leads to, I think, is pretty surprising. And not at all what the Disney Corporation would have us to think. And what it leads to actually ends up having enormous ramifications. Not just for Jesus in the story, though there is that, but also for us right now.

13:07 So let me give you the main idea. The main idea of this story, the main idea of this whole thing is Jesus knew who he was, and therefore he knew what he had to do. Jesus knew who he was, and therefore he knew what he had to do. Great theologian John Calvin once said that there are two fundamental things that human beings ought to strive for. The first of those things was to know yourself, and the second of those things was to know God. What this text starts to teach us anyway, and it's going to play itself out through the rest of the New Testament, is that when that happens, when you come to know yourself and you come to know God at the same time, all of that knowledge leads us to live a life that becomes fundamentally at odds with the world's constant insistence that we let it go and become who we truly are.

13:59 Instead, when we know ourselves and we know God and we understand the ramifications of that, it leads us to live a life in service to God and in service to others. We become not about ourselves, like Moana and Ariel and Elsa, but we become for God, like Jesus. I want to unfold this text in two points today, first looking at verses 40 and 52. So, you know, it's a little bit of a different structure. We're not stepping through it kind of verse by verse or paragraph by paragraph. We're going to look at the two ends, right, 40 and 52, and then we're going to look in the second point at the middle, the bigger story in the center.

14:35 But looking at 40 and 52 first, the first point of the sermon is the boy who grew in wisdom. And second, looking at the story in the middle, the boy who knew his father. Now, before we dive into it and look at some of the details of it, I want to be careful as we go about this sermon this morning. Because there are two ways to preach this, two ways that I could preach it, and there are two ways that you could hear it that would be absolutely and fundamentally wrong. The first wrong way for me to preach this and the first wrong way for you to go away hearing it is for you to hear me saying something like, this story about Jesus doing this and doing that is really most of all just a morality fable for you.

15:20 It shows you some good things that Jesus did and then you need to do those things for yourself and that's it. So it's all about what you need to do. It's all about what you need to do for yourself. And that's that. That would be a wrong way of approaching it. The other wrong way would be for you to hear me saying or for you to go away hearing that, look, this story is unique stuff that happened to Jesus. And therefore, it has really nothing to do with you. It's all about him.

15:52 And there's nothing in it that we're supposed to emulate. That would be wrong too. So two extremes, two things that you should not hear me saying. It's all about you, and it's all about Jesus, not about you at all. Those are the extremes, and both of them are wrong. Well, the truth is sort of somewhere in the middle. You're supposed to take those two things and put them together. This text does, in fact, tell us some things about Jesus that are utterly unique to him. And I think as we go along, you're going to see that. You're going to realize, ah, that's not me. That's Jesus, and that's not me, and I shouldn't claim that it's me, except maybe in him, right?

16:26 I think you're going to see that. But in telling us those unique things about Jesus, it also points us to him as an example in some things for how we ought to live our own lives. So, just to kind of give you the answers up front, we are not going to grow in wisdom the same way that Jesus did. And we are certainly not going to be wisdom as Jesus is. And yet, we should grow in wisdom as Christians. we're also not going to know the Father like Jesus did.

16:58 We're not going to have that unique relationship with the Father that Jesus did. But we should know the Father. And when you come down to it, I want you to hold those two extremes together. Because ultimately it's a matter of doing both things at once. It's about knowing Jesus and knowing ourselves and doing all of that in the right way and letting it lead us to the right kind of life. So keep those two warnings in mind and let's get started. Number one, point number one, the boy who grew in wisdom. So if you look at verse 40, first of all, that's always been recognized as transitional.

17:32 So what it's doing is that it's moving us quickly from one time point to another. It's moving us very fast from the days of Jesus' earliest infancy to a point in time, another point in time, about 12 years later. Now, people have often wondered why Luke summarizes 12 years of Jesus' life in this one sentence in verse 40. I mean, why do we not get any more detail about Jesus' childhood? He's the Son of God, right? He's the incarnate second person of the eternal trinity. Surely there's some interesting stuff going on in his childhood, and we ought to know about it.

18:05 And so what people have done through some of the earlier centuries of the Christian world is that in order to fill in that gap that Luke leaves for us, people have just kind of made stuff up to fill up the gap. But the fact is the Bible tells us absolutely nothing about it. And any story that you might run across in some almost ancient document from the third century or something like that, any story you might run across that seems to make Jesus' childhood super interesting, it's just made up. It's just Christians trying to fill in the gap that the Bible leaves for us.

18:37 So you hear a story about Jesus playing with some clay pigeons with his friends, and he says, oh, well, watch this, and he makes the clay pigeons come to life. Or you hear another story about Jesus getting beat in some game, soccer or something. He curses his friends to death. Or he's working with his father as a carpenter and Joseph cuts the board. One of the board's a little bit short and Jesus says, watch this. And he stretches the board to make it fit just perfectly. It's all made up. But why do people feel a need to fill in the gap? And why does Luke leave a gap? Well, the answer, I think, has got to be that for all we might say about, well, this was the son of God.

19:14 Surely he did some interesting stuff in his childhood. I think the answer has got to be, no, he didn't. He had an entirely normal childhood. He had an entirely normal, even young adulthood, all the way up to 30. Nothing miraculous happened. He was a perfectly normal first century Jewish boy. He probably went to school. He played with his friends. Maybe he worked with his dad a little bit as a carpenter. But it wasn't a time filled with all of those weird, bizarre miracles.

19:45 All that's just made up. And we know that because John the Apostle in his gospel is careful to say that the turning of the water into wine at the wedding in Cana was Jesus' first miracle. There were no others prior to that when he launched his public ministry. So all we're given, all that's said is this little sentence in 40. The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, and the favor of God was upon him. Now that's a short sentence, but for all its shortness, it is absolutely packed with meaning.

20:19 And it starts to signal to us who Jesus is going to be, even more than what has been said about him so far. The same thing is true of 52, if you look down there. It covers all the years, 18 of them, when Jesus was 12 to 30 years old. 52. Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God. And man, it's all we get about Jesus from 12 to 30, presumably because those years, too, were entirely normal. But taken together, 40 and 52 end up telling us some critically important things about both Jesus and, I think, ourselves.

20:54 So I want you to look at a few details here. Look first at the fact that both of those verses tell us that Jesus grew. You see that? In verse 40, the word is grow. In verse 52, the word is increased. But both of them tell us that he grew. He increased. In fact, they tell us that he grew in several different ways. So if you look at 40, he grew in strength. He was filled with wisdom as he grew in strength. In 52, he grew in three things, maybe even four. If you look at it this way, he grew in wisdom. He grew in stature, meaning physically.

21:26 And he grew in favor with God and in favor with man. Jesus grew. He increased. He went from being, and it's interesting to see how Luke even changes the word as he goes along in these first two chapters. He went from a baby to a little child to a child, and finally in 52, just Jesus. He's growing. He's changing. In his human nature, he's growing up from a little tyke into a teenager into a young man. Now, I want you to stop and think about that, because I think when you stop to think about it, it's incredible.

22:03 Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, the creator of the universe, the eternal second person of the Trinity, made man, grew. He grew in strength, he grew in wisdom, he grew in favor. Now, that teaches us, I think, a couple of really important things. For one thing, even though I don't think this is kind of a question probably to most of you, it just firmly establishes yet again that Jesus wasn't like some superhero that just lightning bolted down from heaven and blah, you know, here he is all of a sudden.

22:36 It's not how God did it. It's not how God ever does it. Though he was fully God, he was also fully human. So just like all of us in his human nature, he grew, he got more knowledge, he got more wisdom. He went from being a baby to a little child to a child to an adult. He grew, he was just like us in that way. And it's important that we never forget that. besides that that pretty obvious point I mean it wasn't always obvious right the church had to wrestle with that whole thing for about 300 years but you know for the last 1700 years or so since the council of Nicaea we've had that pretty well nailed down but besides that I think there are a couple of other sort of pastoral points that we need to take to heart here here's here's one here's one thing that I think we can learn from this as Christians it's okay to need to grow as a Christian it's okay and even right to need to grow as a christian and the reason that's important is because we as christians tend to get impatient with our spiritual growth we want spiritual

23:40 maturity to happen yesterday and at least now we want to know it all we want to be able to have those theological conversations around the around the campfire or on the boat with the people who are more educated than us. We want to know it now. We want this pattern of thinking or this pattern of action to stop now. I think that's especially true of young Christians. I mean, we at Third Avenue, we're blessed to have those doors back there for baptism open extremely often here. We're baptizing people a lot here at Third Avenue, which means that a lot of you are new Christians.

24:15 And I know that when you're a new Christian, when the doors sort of open and you realize, Oh my gosh, there's this whole spiritual world out there, and I don't know anything about it. You just want to drink it in as fast as possible. That's a great impulse. It's a great impulse when you, you know, I've been knocking on Disney, but I'll say nice things about Disney now. When you get through this turnstile at Disney with your ticket, and you realize there's this whole Disney, you want to ride every ride at once, and you want to eat everything at once. You want it all now. That's a good feeling.

24:45 That's a good feeling because it points to enthusiasm about the things of God. The danger in it, though, is that it can very easily lead you, especially as a young Christian, to be impatient. To get impatient even with God that he's not growing you as fast as you want to grow or certainly in the places that you want to grow as fast as you want to grow. But listen, if you're a new Christian and maybe even if you're not a new Christian, listen to me. Spiritual growth happens slowly and gradually.

25:20 It happens over time, not in some explosive moment. So, brothers and sisters, don't get impatient with God. Don't get impatient with the Holy Spirit. Give spiritual growth time. And you know what you need to be doing in the meantime? You need to be doing the things that Christians do. You need to be sitting under the preaching of the Word. And you need to be reading the Word. And you need to be gathering with God's people and singing praises to the Lord. And over time, those things will begin to change you and shape you and mold you into who God wants you to be.

25:53 And people ask me sometimes, does it bother you that you put all the work into these sermons and then you, you know, go up there and preach them. And then two weeks later, you know, if you were to ask somebody, what did I preach on two Sundays ago, 95% of them wouldn't remember a thing that you said. Does that bother you? And I said, you know, it did when I was a young man. But as I have gotten older, I've suddenly realized that on a lot of Sunday afternoons, I can't remember what I preached on two hours earlier. So I don't blame anybody for that. But an even deeper thing that I've come to realize is that the point is not so much to remember actively what was said.

26:29 It's that every time you're sitting in this room, you're like a moldable ball of clay. And every time I make a point from the scriptures, hopefully the Holy Spirit is taking that and slamming a fist into your ball of clay and leaving an indention. You may be aware of it. You may not be aware of it. But as the Holy Spirit, in love, pummels the heck out of you week after week after week, he's shaping you through the preaching of his word, even if you can't remember all these main ideas. So, you know, maybe that'll be some encouragement to you.

27:01 Maybe you think, well, I can't remember what he says by the time we get to Thursday. So what's the point of going? The point of going is that the Holy Spirit's molding you and shaping you, even if you can't remember it. Spiritual growth is slow. And it's okay and right for you to need to grow as a Christian. Lean into that. But here's the other side of that coin. Though it is okay and even right to need to grow as a Christian, it is also true that you need to grow as a Christian. You need to be growing as a Christian. That is the normal expected course of things.

27:33 As many people have said through the centuries, living things grow. And when things stop growing, they've died. Friend, if you're a Christian, you will, in some way, whether you can see it or not, be growing in wisdom and knowledge and love for God and others. Which I think is a challenge to us because some of us might look honestly in our life and realize, you know what, I don't think I am. I'm not growing. And if that's the sort of judgment that you come to about your own life, that's worth thinking about and talking about with other believers.

28:07 And one thing you ought to do is go to other believers who know you well and say, hey, what do you think? I don't see a lot of growth in me over the last couple of years. What do you think? You may find yourself pleasantly surprised. That person may say to you, but, brother, I see it. Like, you may not see it because your eyes are on that apple right there all the time. But look at that apple and that apple. There's fruit, brother, and you need to rejoice in that. On the other hand, you may get, you know, yeah, I kind of agree. Like, I don't see a whole lot of fruit in you.

28:39 You know, you don't gather with God's people. You don't, you know, you don't seem excited to be there. It's just a duty to you, and I can see that in your face and your eyes. I can see it in the way you just stare down at the bulletin when the rest of the congregation is singing. I can see that there's not a whole lot of fruit. And then you need to ask questions. Why is that? Why is there no growth? Is it because you're not putting yourself under the means of grace because you're starving? Your tree needs water and it needs food and you're not giving it to it? Is it some sin in your life that's poisoning your tree's growth? Those are the kinds of questions you need to ask.

29:11 But you need to be growing as a Christian. And if you come to the conclusion that you're not, friends, that's a five-alarm fire that you deserve to give some, that you need to give some attention to. I want you to see something else here. Both of these verses, 40 and 52, say that Jesus had favor with God. They do it in a slightly different way. 40 says just in a kind of, you know, statement. It's an indicative statement. The favor of God was upon Jesus. What that means is that Jesus was the particular focus of God's attention.

29:45 There was a special thing that God had for Jesus to do. Now, that's not unique of him. The same thing is said in these chapters of John the Baptist. The same thing is said about Mary. It just means that those people, John the Baptist, Mary, Jesus, they all have a special role to play in God's plan. He was marked out as one who specially had God's eyes and attention. It's an indicative statement. 52 is a little bit different. That verse says that he grew in favor with God and, of course, with men. Well, what does that mean? Well, what that means is that as Jesus lived his life, as he got educated and as he interacted with people and as he probably worked as a carpenter, he managed through his actions and his words and his interactions with people to please both people and God more and more.

30:34 He increased in their favor. Now, I've been around in life long enough for that to astonish me just a little bit. He increased in favor with man. Because I know that as you live your life, you're not always going to increase in favor with man. I mean, usually it's a kind of combo, right? You're going to have some people who you increase in favor with. They come to like you more. And you're going to have other people that you precipitously decline in favor with. They're not going to like you.

31:07 But notice that's not true with Jesus. Through the early years of his life, he proved himself to be the kind of man who increased in favor with everyone he met. Now, that's pretty astonishing and gives you a little bit of glimpse of the kind of person he was. But there's something even more astonishing here, and that is that through the course of his life, he increased in favor with God. Now, that's something you don't usually tend to stick on, but I want you to think about it for just a second. And I want you to do it by asking yourself a question and be honest about it.

31:38 Do you think, as you look back over the course of your life, however long that life has been, 8 years, 10 years, 12 years, 50 years, 70 years, as you look back over the course of your life, have you lived a life that has made God go, that's pretty good, oh my gosh, that's amazing, wow, look at that guy, look at that girl go. Do you think that's been God's reaction to the way you live your life? Have you, through the course of your life, increased in favor with God?

32:15 My guess is probably not. And yet that's what's so astonishing about this statement about Jesus. Through the course of his life, the way that he lived, the way he talked, the things that motivated him out of his heart were sinless, perfect, doing nothing wrong at all in the eyes of God. And through the course of his life, his favor, even with God, increased more and more. So here's a question for you.

32:46 If your life and the course of it hasn't earned the favor of God, if the amount of favor you have with God, if the amount of pleasingness you have with God has actually kind of been on a downward course, and it has, what do you do now? Because the most important thing you could ever have in this life, in this world, is the favor of God. It's the most important thing you could ever have. For God to look at you and say, that's good, and therefore your eternity is secure. It's the most important thing you could ever have. Most of the things you strive for in this life are nothing.

33:19 The favor of God is everything. So how do you get it? Do you just buckle down and say, all right, from here on out, I'm going to be on the upswing. From here on out, I'm going to get better and better and better. I'm going to hope it just all works out in the end, and I have more good stuff than bad stuff to show God. But it's never going to work. The only way, the only way you're ever going to have the favor of God is if somebody else earns it for you. And that's exactly what Jesus did. The theologians call it imputed righteousness, which means that Jesus lives a life that wins the favor of God.

33:55 And then when you become a Christian, when you put your faith in him, you're united to him in such a way that his perfect life is imputed or credited or given to you. So that when God looks at you, he no longer sees you, this creature of disfavor. He now sees his son, Jesus, the one who is favored. Because if you're going to be favored by God, you've got to get it from Jesus. He's the only one in the history of the world who has ever earned it outright. And the extraordinary thing is that he didn't keep it for himself.

34:28 He offers it to every single person who will come to him in faith. It's an incredible gift. I want you to see another thing here. Both these verses, 40-52, say that Jesus was a person of wisdom. So 40 says he was filled with wisdom as he grew. 52 says he increased in wisdom. Now, I think at first glance that's not all that striking. You would expect a person to grow in wisdom as they grow up. though. You know, those of you who are parents, especially of adult parents, know that that's not always the case, not a given for every single human being to grow in wisdom. But for Jesus, it was. But I think beyond that surface layer, there are a couple of layers of meaning here that I want you to see. So here's one of them. Track with me on this. The word for wisdom here is not the most common word for wisdom. There's a word that means wisdom, and it's the most common.

35:22 It's like, you know, most of the instances where you want to talk about wisdom, you would use one particular word, and that's what you'd kind of expect here. But here, it's a different word for wisdom, and it means something very similar. It means insight, looking deeply into things, seeing their true nature, but it's not really the definition of it that's important. What's important are other places in the Old Testament where this word is used, because this particular minority word is used at two critical points in the Old Testament. The first time that it's used is when Solomon is asked by God, I'm going to give you one thing in all the world, one thing that will mark you above all else. What do you want in all the world? And what does Solomon ask for? He asks for wisdom. And he uses this word right here. Second time that word is used is when Isaiah in his prophecy is describing the priestly suffering servant, this servant of God who's going to stand as a priest before God, between the people and God.

36:25 And he's going to, this servant is going to die for the people. So he's acting as priest. And so Isaiah says in chapter 11, there shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse. So it'll be Davidic, right? And a branch from his roots shall bear fruit and the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon this Messiah, the spirit of wisdom and understanding. And it's that second word, understanding, that's the same word that's used here. So do you see the point? Now here's the thing that puts it all together. Here's what sort of locks it all in. Verse 52, in its description of Jesus is an almost word-for-word quotation from what is said about Samuel, the first prophet.

37:11 Okay, so do you see what Luke is doing here? You see what Luke's doing by piling up these words? He uses a word that is used famously to describe Solomon, the king, and the suffering servant, the priest and he quotes a sentence about the first great prophet he's just screaming at you even through these subtle little clues that this Jesus who is growing in wisdom is prophet and priest and king all these threads of Jewish hope all the story of the new testament is being pulled up into him.

37:52 Friends, it's critical that you see this. It's critical. We want to grow in wisdom. Don't we? We as Christians want to grow in wisdom. And yet, growing in wisdom is not just about reading a book or finding an older mentor. It's not even just about living in a school of hard knocks for a few years. It's about knowing the one who is himself the epitome of wisdom. And throughout the New Testament, there are places that are going to say he even is the wisdom of God. given to us. In John 1, when John talks about Jesus was the word, in the beginning was the word, that's another word for wisdom. In the beginning was wisdom, and the wisdom was with God, and the wisdom was God's. Because if you want to be wise, if you want to be a person who is wise, you're only going to find that in Jesus. So he was the boy who in his humanity grew in wisdom, and yet who in his divinity was in fact wisdom itself. That's the first point. Here's the second, the boy who knew his father. So not just the boy who grew in wisdom, but two, the boy who knew his father. That's really

38:56 the main point of this story that runs all the way from 41 to 51. It's that this trip to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover with his family at 12 years old, this was the moment when in his 12-year-old human nature. It all clicked. He came to understand who he is as the Messiah and therefore what he'd come to do. And so that's why Luke lifts the veil on it. It's why of all those 30 years, the sort of one thing that we get is this story right here, because we learn right along with Jesus who he really is. And the story itself is pretty straightforward. If you look at verses 41 to 42, you can see that the family sets off from Nazareth, from Galilee, sorry, to Jerusalem. It's about a four-day journey, probably 80 miles that they had to go. So if you're in a caravan with horses and, you know, supplies and all the rest, you can make about 20 miles a day, it seems like. And so that's probably what they did. They got together and a whole group of people from that region, and off they headed down the road toward Jerusalem. Verse 42 there says that Jesus was 12 years old. That's

39:56 important because it was at 13 years old that a Jewish boy became what they called a man of the promise. So prior to that 13th year when you'd become a man of the promise, bar mitzvahs, bat mitzvahs, those didn't come for sometime later. But there was still this tradition that at 13 years old you become a man of the promise, right? You're a man of God now. But at 12 years old, the rabbis said that fathers ought to start educating their children in advance of that 13-year-old transition. And so that's what Joseph is doing here. And we don't know if Jesus had come to this Passover celebration before? Probably the way the language sounds, even in the English, it just sounds like they did this every year, right? In fact, it says it. His parents went to Jerusalem every year. Was Jesus with them? Don't know, but it kind of seems like maybe he was. In fact, this whole thing right here, the trip to Jerusalem for the Passover, seems to have been a kind of family tradition for Joseph's family. Every year at the Passover, they'd get together, they'd have this caravan of

41:00 their family and their friends from Nazareth, and off they go down the road to celebrate the Passover together in this week-long festival. Now, I think it's worth pausing. This is not the main point of the passage, but I think it's worth pausing and thinking about this. Do you in your family have those kinds of traditions that tend to honor God? Do you have family traditions baked into the rhythm of your family's life that honor God.

41:32 Now, I know you've probably got traditions, right? But I am not talking about traditions like, well, yeah, we go to wherever and we watch the 4th of July fireworks or we put up a Christmas tree or this ornament has to go at the top. I'm not talking about that stuff. I'm talking about things that are bricks in your family's life that are immovable that teach your children and your family about who God is and what he expects of them. I mean, a lot of you have heard me talk about this before, but I think, you know, if somebody's asking me for parenting advice or family advice, it's one of the most important things I can say.

42:06 Have family traditions that are immovable and let them be the things of God. You know, you can think about your life as a kind of chaotic stream of stuff that's constantly moving. You have this obligation and that responsibility and this and that. And as the kids grow older, the river becomes rushing as it goes. One of the things that you need to do very early in your family's life is put some stones, some bricks in the water so that everything else in your life has to swirl around those stones.

42:39 Now, what am I talking about in particular? You need to put a stone in your life that this family goes to church. We gather together with the people of God and everything else in life has to swirl around that. You know what most evangelical Christians are busy putting into the stream of their life as their bricks? Things like competitive soccer leagues. They put a brick in the middle of the river of a competitive soccer league for little 12-year-old Billy over here.

43:15 And everything in life, including the things of God, swirls around Billy's soccer. Why? Because I want my child to be everything that he can be. Well, A, okay, Walt Disney. But B, what are you really expecting from that? Are you really expecting little Billy to make a million dollars playing professional soccer?

43:48 The odds of that are a billion to one. And yet you're sacrificing your family's spiritual life so little 12-year-old Billy can play soccer. Listen to me, your role, your responsibility as a parent is not to help Billy find his potential as a soccer player. It is to help Billy know Jesus Christ, his Lord. And you're never going to do that. You're never going to do that if the traditions of your family are worldly instead of godly.

44:22 Be like Mary and Joseph. Put bricks in your life. It's a critical thing to learn. I mean, Luke doesn't actually tell us anything about what happened at the feast. I mean, we know some details from ancient sources, and especially if Jesus had never been or if he was the kind of kid that, you know, in this year just started paying attention, right? You know how that goes? You know, your kid can go to something forever and ever and ever in one time. You know, their eyes just kind of open. They're like, what was that about? And you're like, you've seen that 100,000 times. What do you mean what it's about? But their eyes open. You know, so if Jesus had never been or if this was kind of his first time for paying attention, it would have been an incredible experience.

44:57 Because as the caravan kind of came over the ridge and looked down at the city, the city was thronged with 200,000 people. You had people buying lambs and money being exchanged for the sacrifices and all the rest. And then at 3 p.m. on the day of the Passover, you'd have the slaughtering of the lambs. Thousands of people slaughtering lambs and priests taking the blood and throwing it up against the sides of the altar. And each family would take their lamb and they would go home and they'd prepare it in the way the Old Testament said they would prepare it by roasting it with herbs and certain spices. And then they'd have a kind of ritualized dinner as they ate the lamb together.

45:31 And one of the most interesting things to think about is that one of the key questions of that ritualized dinner was reserved for the oldest son of the family to ask the father. So Jesus would have asked this question of his father. Father, why is this night different from all other nights? And then the father would answer his son and the rest of the family by telling the story of Exodus, of the Passover. And then once the dinner was gone, probably they went back out into the city. There's more celebration and torches lit all over the city.

46:01 And then after that night, for an entire week, there was just this running amazement of festivities and rituals in the temple. more sacrifices taking place, the rabbis, all 24 divisions of the priesthood were in the temple for that week, not just one for every two weeks like it usually was, but 24 times the normal number of priests in there in various places in the courtyard teaching from the Old Testament, having conversations with the people. It was just a festival of learning about God and His promises, and you can imagine little 12-year-old Jesus running around, soaking it all in, watching the lambs being sacrificed, watching the blood being thrown against the altar, listening to the priest talk about David and talk about the prophets and their promises.

46:49 And as it's all coming in to his little mind, he's realizing for the first time in his human nature, this is talking about me. It's talking about me. 43, he picks the story up, and of course this is where you get the main tension. The family heads out, and after one day of traveling, they realize Jesus is missing. Now, you know, in today's day and age, we have this question. How did you get an entire day out without knowing where your kids are? Well, it's because Mary and Joseph weren't helicopter parents.

47:21 First century Jews weren't helicopter parents. They didn't need to be. They had this huge caravan of family and friends that they'd known for years, and so for, you know, a kid to sort of run around with his friends in the caravan was no big deal. It's just that at night, when it's time to go to sleep, all the families gathered back together, and lo and behold, Jesus is not there, right? So, they're one day out, they come one day back to Jerusalem, and then the next morning when they get back, they finally find him in the temple. So, that's the three days. One day out, one day back, spend the night in Jerusalem, they find him in the temple the next day.

47:53 And where do they find him? Well, in the temple, sitting at the feet of the teachers, talking with them, asking them questions. And everybody's just amazed at his understanding, his insight, his ability to understand the scriptures. I think verse 48 there is just imminently relatable because Mary, his mother, gets up in his face in front of everybody. His parents saw him. They were astonished. His mother said to him, son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been searching for you in great distress.

48:25 Now, there's a question that comes up here that Christians have wrestled with for centuries. Did Jesus sin here? Did Jesus do something wrong? Because it really seems like in 48, Mary kind of thinks he did something wrong, right? I mean, did Jesus just get all, you know, did he just like what was going on in Jerusalem so much that he thought, yeah, I should probably get back to the family. But you know what? I don't care about them. You know, I'm going to make a deliberate decision to not go back with my family, and I'm going to do that regardless of how it affects them.

48:58 Is that what he did? Because that would be bad, right? That would be sinful in a 12-year-old boy. So is that what happened? I don't think so. But for one thing, there are just too many New Testament passages that tell us that Jesus was sinless for his entire life, right? So we've got that benchmark to deal with. So if we're going to believe those things about the Scripture, how do we explain that Jesus was not with his family? Well, I'm going to read you a couple of paragraphs from one particular commentator because they are by far the best explanation that I have seen.

49:32 So listen to what this guy says. The explanation for Jesus' behavior here rests, I think, in the genuineness of his incarnation and therefore his growing awareness of who he really was. Accepting the incarnation at face value means that Jesus was genuinely a 12-year-old. Though fully God, he was also human and he was also 12. As a child, therefore, he had to learn that 2 plus 2 equals 4.

50:03 And as a 12-year-old, he was still learning about everything in life, including relationships. So as a 12-year-old boy, he didn't have the fine-tuned social awareness he was going to have later at age, say, 30. The point is, Jesus, as a 12-year-old boy, was capable of unknowingly causing his parents distress. Of course, as a sinless being, he was incapable of knowingly doing so. So here, Jesus unknowingly brought anxiety to Joseph and Mary.

50:38 Moreover, he unintentionally caused his parents to worry because his 12-year-old mind was totally absorbed with the massive realization of his identity as the Messiah that had come to him that week. The combination of his authentic adolescence and the immensely absorbing revelation regarding his own person so occupied his mind that he didn't imagine that staying in the temple would cause anyone alarm. Jesus did not sin in any of this. The sinless 12-year-old son of God was simply following the logic of the massive spiritual revelation of that week.

51:10 I am the son of God. I need to be with my father. Look there at how Jesus answers his mom's question in 49. At first, it just seems to be an answer about location, right? You should have known that I was here. I mean, I'm in the house of my father, and why didn't you think to look for me in the house of my father? The reason that sounds to us as just like a not-so-interesting answer about location is because we misunderstand how big a deal it was when Jesus called God my Father.

51:42 We totally misunderstand it. We think it's an answer to Mary about location when actually it's an answer to Mary about identity. And if you're going to understand it, you have to understand how mind-blowing it was for Jesus to say, God is my Father. Now, let me try to put it in your mind. In the entire Old Testament, 39 books, over half a million words, God is called Father 14 times.

52:19 Only 14 times is God called Father in the Old Testament. And it's never, never not once, any individual saying God is my father. In fact, it's usually God saying to the whole nation of Israel, I am your father. But individuals don't do it. Individuals do not call God my father. But here, Jesus thinks about the God of the universe, the creator of the entire cosmos. And without missing a beat, as if it's the most normal thing in the world, he says he is my father. In a way that he's not the father of anybody else.

52:51 In a way no one has ever even claimed it. He is my father. And then for the rest of the New Testament, that's how Jesus refers to God. All his prayers are to my father. Over 60 times in the gospels, Jesus refers to God as my father. You know the time, most famous time that he doesn't refer to God as my father? It's on the cross when he cries out, my God, my God. Why have you forsaken me? You see the point? The point that Luke is trying to get across to you is that all of a sudden, Jesus understood who he was.

53:28 He's not just another Jewish boy. He's not just another carpenter. He's the son of God, the fulfillment of the entire Old Testament hope. And because of that, he now knows what he needs to do. He needs to know this God who is his father. He needs to be with him. And so he goes to his father's house. you know I think if you look at the end of the story 51 you can think that it comes to a kind of anti-climatic ending look at 51 so Jesus all of a sudden knows who he is and what happens as a result of that he went down with them and came to Nazareth and obeyed them for 18 years does that I wonder if that strikes you as kind of strange I mean I mean this is like the climax of the Disney movie, right? Jesus now knows who he is. He's the Son of God, and so therefore he obeys his parents. It's weird. It's not much of a movie there, is it? But friends, this is part of

54:36 what I want you to understand from this. When you come to know who you are as a Christian, as someone who is united to Christ, what you're going to see is that that self-realization of who you are in Christ leads you now, not to a life of rebellion, not to a life of throwing off everything so you can become your true self, but it leads to a life that will please God, a life that will worship Him and love others and obey authority in your life and live a quiet life so that you can provide for and serve other people around you.

55:09 And then what's the result of that? Jesus knows himself, he obeys his parents, he does the normal stuff of life, and then what happens? Well, in 52, the result is growth. He grows. Friend, do you want to grow spiritually? Do you want to grow as a human being who knows Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior? You know what you have to do to do that? Nothing dramatic. You've got to have, like Jesus, a heart that's eager to obey God, A heart that's eager to do what's right.

55:45 And how do you get that? By knowing more and more deeply who you are in Christ. That you owe everything to him. And that he is the source and fountain and essence of all the wisdom in the world. And therefore you ought to obey him. And then what results from that? The thing you're looking for. growing growth, and knowing God more and more.

56:15 Let's pray. Lord, we thank you and we praise you this morning for who you are. You are the Son of God. You are the eternal second person of the Trinity who became man so that you might become our prophet who reveals God to us, our priest who stands in our place and dies for us, and our king who rules over all and promises to bring us home to you. Our Lord Jesus, we pray that you would help us to remember these things. We pray that you'd help us to put them to work in our lives.

56:46 And Father, we pray that even the rhythms of our lives, even the traditions that we put in place in our lives would honor you. And we pray all of this in Jesus' name. Amen.