Lord, thank you that you are a holy God and that you sent your
only son to die for us. That you like we saw you
earlier. You're beautiful beyond
description and yet it sing of Jesus.
God crushed you for my sin. Lord, we thank you that when we
couldn't get the message, you came as the message in person
and we thank you for that. We thank you for what it took to
pay for our sense and we don't take that lightly.
Lord, we thank you for the chance to worship you for that
this morning. We thank you for being able to
sing a little. We just pray for Mark as he
brings your word to us. We pray for our Sunday school is
the kids go out or just just pray that they'll be able to
connect with with you and with your word in in a way that's
relevant and understandable to them.
Lord, we thank you for also as part of our worship, this this
chance to present our offering to you, knowing it all comes
from you in the 1st place. But we thank you for blessing us
far beyond what we deserve. All.
We just pray as we hear your word that it would change us
this morning. We just pray these things in
Jesus name, Amen. Have any of you ever met a
perfect child? No one.
Have any of you ever been a perfect child?
What would a perfect child be like?
Would a perfect child be academic?
Sporty. Photogenic.
Musical. Would a perfect child always be
pleasing to their parents? What kind of metrics, what kind
of measurements should we put on childhood perfection?
And if you were to meet a perfect child, what might you
think and how would you respond? Let's meet 1 today, shall we?
Let's meet a perfect child. Would you turn with me to Luke
chapter 2? And our passage this morning is
from verse 41 onwards, but we'll take up the reading from verse
40, Luke chapter 2, and verse 40.
This is the word of the Lord, and this is a perfect child.
And the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, and
the favour of God was upon him. Now his parents went to
Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover, and when
he was 12 years old they went up according to custom.
And when the feast was ended, as they were returning, the boy
Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem.
His parents did not know it, but supposing him to be in the
group, they went a day's journey.
But then they began to search for him among their relatives
and acquaintances, and when they did not find him, they returned
to Jerusalem, searching for him. 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.
And 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? And they did not understand the
saying that he spoke to them, and he went down with them and
came to Nazareth, and was submissive to them.
And his mother treasured up all these things in her heart, and
Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favour with God
and man. Thanks be to God for his word.
I find this passage surprising. In fact, I find the description
as a whole, or lack thereof, of Jesus boyhood surprising.
In proportion to how long he lived on earth.
This is a fairly significant chunk of time, and this somewhat
strange temple narrative is the only picture portrait we get of
Jesus between 40 days and about 30 years.
This is the only thing I went to a 21st last year and I did not
say who it is because it's someone in this room potentially
and my friend's mum spent half an hour listing my friend's
achievements. There was a sporting
achievements, there were his scholarships, there were the
speeches he said in Year 6, there were the friends he made,
there were the jobs that he'd had, the overtime that he'd
done. And my friend's pretty amazing.
But I think Jesus is perfect and we don't even get a report card
or anything for Jesus. And it would be nice to know for
a perfect child at least who he who was playmates were, maybe
what he ate, just a few more details, what he was like as a
carpenter's apprentice. But this is it.
This is all. And so this, this is really how
we we start our passage is the previous conclusion of the
passage before that Jesus grows in strength, wisdom and favour.
And that's meant to suffice us for 12 years.
That's all that Luke gives us and as we make our way through
this morning, I intend to plagiarise as much as possible
of the structure that Luke gives and will follow this through and
find out some details about our perfect child.
But as Jesus, this is all that we know.
The curtain has closed from 12 years ago with the the strange
somewhat terrifying prophecies in the temple.
And all we know is that Jesus grew up and strength, wisdom and
grace. And we pick up with the word now
in verse 41. And we do find out one thing
about the intervening 12 years. We find that Jesus parents every
year went up to Jerusalem and we think of Jesus seeing this
example year after year of his parents making the trek.
It's not a walk in the park. I checked in the distance is
pretty much the same as from here, this building to the
Auckland Harbour Bridge. But there's no Expressway,
right? The highway.
And those times are filled with bandits, with thieves, and they
travelled in large caravans, being groups of people walking
or leading animals together so as to protect themselves against
robbers. And that's going to become more
relevant in a few minutes. So the journey is geographically
to the South, but it is up to Jerusalem.
The reason being the reason being that it is topographically
up, it's upwards. And so that's why in the Psalms,
there's 15 psalms called Songs of Ascent as the worshipper
prepares to worship God and it's like a mirror of his upward
climb to the temple. So Jewish men are meant to go 3
* a year to the temple. But the tradition at the moment
is because the nation is so spread abroad that those far
away only come once a year. And so that's what Joseph does.
And also we see that tradition tells us that the journey was
not a requirement for women, but Mary has faithfully gone along
each year. What's their festival of choice?
Well, it's the Passover which commemorates celebrates Israel
miraculously being delivered by God out of Egypt.
God killing those first born plans by his Angel of death who
did not have the blood of the lamb on their doorposts, but
saving, passing over the houses of those who had the blood of a
perfect lamb on their houses. And so this is a journey that
Jesus is going to make again one day as the Passover lamb.
Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed for the rights.
But at this point, imagine young Jesus, What might he have talked
about with his companions? What might he have thought about
as he sees their lamb being led along?
Does he know that in 20 years time he's going to meet a fate
far worse than that lamb? I think it's worth mentioning
here that the faithful example of the parents imagine Jesus
singing a sum of ascent. We sometimes sing all glory Be
to Christ which contains a line from one of those sums.
Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour
in vain. Imagine your Lord singing on his
way to the Passover. And so U they go, and Jerusalem
they get there. It's probably Beadlam.
This is like the busiest time of the year.
People from all over the empire are converging on the city.
There's biggers, there's pickpockets, there's lambs
bleating, there's priests slaughtering silent lambs.
It's chaos, really. There's probably Roman soldiers
out on patrol trying to keep a semblance of peace.
And in the calendar, Passover is immediately followed by the week
long Feast of unleavened Bread. And so collectively, they're
often celebrated together. And I can understand those
people who would just go for part of it and then leave.
But we get a hint in a verse 43, when the feast was ended, we get
a hint that they'd stayed for the whole thing.
And these parents are committed to raising their child and the
knowledge of their faith. I think it's worth thinking
about from the perspective of a child.
If you're, if you have the privilege of being a parent in
this room, Do your children see your concern for things of the
faith? Do your parent, do your children
understand the symbolic things of the faith, baptism, the
Lord's Supper? Do you talk about these things
with your children? If that's you in this room, do
they see this kind of example modelled Jesus family stick
around for the whole faced. Now we get to the point the
feast has ended verse 3043 and they're returning.
It's home time. The family are sitting off in
their group and the tide. They've got the same long
journey on the way back, and after a day's journey, I like to
imagine Mary and Joseph having a little catch up, a little chat
about how the day has been. Joseph, it's been a good week.
I'm glad to be going home. I'm quite tired but it's been a
good week, but I just can't shake the nagging feeling that
we've forgotten something and it's really unsightly.
I don't know what it is. Well, well.
Have you have you packed the clothes?
Yes. Yes, of course.
We're we've got the clothes. OK.
Have you packed the food? Yes, yes, we're we're eating the
food. That's that's all Good.
OK, what else is essential? If you what about the lamb?
Ohh, well we, we sacrifice the lamb.
That's that's gone. The lamb's gone.
That's okay. What?
What have we forgotten? You know who I haven't seen all
day? I haven't heard or seen anything
of? Jesus.
I thought he was with you.
You mean he wasn't? He wasn't with you?
Well, I I thought he was with the Cousins, at least.
Surely have we forgotten the Messiah?
Have we forgotten the Saviour of the world?
We've lost Jesus. Who says that sentence, right?
We lost Jesus and justice. Imagine as the panic sets in and
and they search that they're like, you know, is it?
Is he with the cousins? No Is he is he among the baggage
kind of King Saul style? No.
Is is someone sitting on him like Rachel?
No. What else is hide and seek in
the Old Testament? Is there is he under a tint
Aiken style? No, no.
Does anyone know where our child is?
No, has anyone seen him at all? No, no one knows where a child
is. And there's if you're me, like
I've got so many logistical questions going on here.
And I think there's only two things that we do know. 1 is
that the text doesn't blame the parents, even though they forgot
him. Like he's a kid.
It's not Jesus fault, but the parents aren't blamed, which is
interesting. And Jesus is certainly not
disobedient, right? Because that would create a
whole host of other issues for our faith.
So the the text doesn't apportion blame, which is
fascinating. But then I've also got other
questions. What did Jesus eat?
Where did he sleep that night? Like he's got a human body as he
worried, as he concerned about where his parents are.
And we just don't know. The text doesn't stretch that
it's we just know that day one closes with no answers for the
parents and they make the choice on day 2 to trip, to take the
trip back. And it must have been pretty
agonising because no news is not good news in a situation like
this. No phone, no, you know, no
ability to message Jerusalem and raise the alert and start the
search ahead of time. They just have to travel back
and pray and no speculation is going to turn up anything.
They don't know where the child is.
All they can do is travel and pray and imagine them reaching
Jerusalem, this probably still crowded city after the feast.
Have you seen our child? Well what is what is look like?
Ohh, he he looks a bit like Mary.
OK, Do you have a picture of him?
No, we don't have a picture of him.
OK, well where did you last see him?
We had him with the Lamb. We had him when we came.
We hit him in the temple. Should we check in the temple?
OK, let's check in the temple. And Jesus, in the mean time, is
hidden somewhat in plain sight. So imagine, just imagine that
parents were searching, searching, searching, and
they're into the temple and there's a bit of a crowd.
There's some teachers of the law and there's a little crowd among
them. And the teachers are doing
question and answer dialogue with their pupils.
But then they start hearing this familiar voice.
I like to imagine that he asks very intelligent question about
who is the Messiah, what's the nature of his Kingdom, something
like that. And the crowd kind of murmur
and, and he's just, he's in the temple.
He's, he's not, he's not playing hide and seek.
He's just in the temple. And one day he's going to ask
questions which really reveal the Jewish teachers hypocrisy.
But at this point, all we see from his questions is that he's
a boy who really wants to know more of the God of this book.
He loves his father and he wants having this strange opportunity
where he's been left behind. He he wants to be in the place
where his God is worshipped and taught about.
This is the only place we see in the New Testament where Jesus is
receiving instruction. By the way, This is the word of
God, after all. This is the teacher, and he's
sitting at their feet and he's just discussing it in humility,
asking questions, and it's probably not an opportunity he
likely would have had in Nazareth, and so he's making the
most of it. I think it's worth commenting
that this is the perfect child, and if this is the only portrait
of Jesus that we have from 40 days to 30 years, what better
example of how to live our childhood, our youth, our young
adulthood, then Jesus himself? He's hungry for spiritual
understanding. He wants to know more and talk
about his faith. Would we make that all like the
pursuit of knowing God, the the desire and the passion of our
young years will never regret any drop of scripture.
We learn of things, we learn about God.
Don't waste your young years. Imitate your Lord.
It's a somewhat strange scene because Jesus may be poor and he
may be 12 and he may be from Nazareth, which, as we've
learned through this series, is fairly irrelevant.
But he's respected in this scene because he is wise and he is
therefore highly respectable. He's got insight.
His understanding and his answers amazed all those who
hear the word for amazed that is used here in verse 47 is the
same word that Paul uses when he says if we are beside ourselves,
this isn't just like well it's amazing, this is amazing.
This is astonishing that the boy Jesus at 12 years old is the
wisest person in the land, going toe to toe and amazing the elite
religious leaders of the day. It's stunning.
Jesus is wise. You may have heard it said that
there is no such thing as a dumb question.
That's not true. It's very much not true.
But there is such a thing as a dumb question.
But Jesus doesn't ask any dumb questions.
Even the wisest of people would ask dumb questions in every now
and then, but Jesus does not. He's never not wise.
He is always wise. Paul calls him Christ, the power
of God and the wisdom of God. Cause this boy is wisdom, his
wisdom through and through. And so such wisdom is staggering
to the crowd. And it's also staggering to see
this parents who turn up and see this and they're looking for
this lost boy. And here he is debating, you
know, well, not debating, but asking questions and, and wowing
everyone with his wisdom, but in a really humble way.
And and they've got a bit of a complaint at this point.
And I can, I can understand that cause maybe, you know, they've
just spent three days worried about him and maybe they were
hoping that he'd be a little bit frantic, a little bit lost
looking, and he'd see them and burst into tears and ran into
their arms and they'd be able to go, You know, they're there.
It's okay. We've been looking for you and
we've found you and just downplayed the fact that they've
forgotten in Jerusalem and all would be well.
But Jesus is quite calm here. He's quite self assured.
He's, he's okay, He's in his elements.
And so, so Mary asks a fairly natural question in verse 48.
She asks Son, why have you treated us so?
Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great
distress. I think if I was 12 at this
point, I would be really embarrassed.
You know, Jesus, he's, he's talking to the teachers.
He's everyone's amazed at him and here comes his mother and
asks about his wellbeing and accuses him of treating them
wrongly and shows her emotion and it's unclear like this could
be in front of them. We don't know from the text
whether it's a private conversation afterwards or if
it's at the scene. I think I would have been pretty
mortified if I was Jesus. But Jesus is the perfect child.
Jesus perfection extends to the way that he treats his parents.
He doesn't say Mum. That's yeah, no, that's that's,
that's cringe. I'm, I'm fine.
Don't talk, don't, don't ask questions like that.
I'm fine. You know, I was doing fine.
I don't need you. He, he actually shows compassion
to her even in this moment. But he does make clear to her
that he has a mission from God that they need also to learn to
understand. And so he asks, Why were you
looking for me? Did you not know that I must be
in my father's house? This is debated.
The meaning of this if you've got a King James or a new King
James, it will have Did you not know that I must be about my
father's business? And the reason this is debated
is because it's literally, did you not know that I must be in
the dot dot dot? Like there's a gap there of my
father. So how else has been implied in?
But I don't think it's satisfying to have it as my
father's business, because Jesus could have been doing his
father's business in any place. But why was he there in his
Father's house? I think Jesus here is showing
that he understands his identity and his mission even as well,
which is quite amazing. Again, there are a lot of other
questions in this text too. Like when did Jesus learn who he
was that he with his wisdom put to win two together and figure
out I'm the Son of God, I'm the Messiah?
Did his faithful parents tell him?
You know, like try, try, imagine explaining the virgin birth to
your son? Like did his parents tell him?
Did God the Father reveal it to him?
We we don't know, but Jesus knows that in this situation he
needs to be in the place where God has taught and worshipped
and where his presence is expected to dwell.
So this is stunning of Jesus at this age, but far more stunning
than where he is. And his knowledge of where he
should be is who he says he is in relation to God.
What does he say? He says I must be in my father's
house. Now Israel collectively would
probably be happy with saying our Father.
Individuals might be happy with saying my Father in heaven right
with the qualifier. But Jesus doesn't even have the
the qualifier on it at all. He just says my Father.
And Jesus declares himself in this narrative as who he really
is. He is the Son of God.
He's come to earth to make his father known.
He's perfectly the Son of God. What I mean by perfectly the Son
of God? Well, when we talk about being
the son of something, we could mean a couple of things.
Few weeks ago my brother Sam preached here at Hook Annoy and
I called him a couple of weeks ago and it was like, hey, how's
the how the sermon go? Was it all good?
And he was like, yeah, it was good.
I've got some feedback. After the sermon, Isaac Gilling
came up to me and he was like, you know, that was a really
strange experience. Just some constructive feedback.
You know, it's really strange because when you stood up and
you walked to the front, I was like, that's Jonathan's walk.
And then you got to the front and you turned around and you
smiled and you looked at the congregation and I thought, ohh,
but that's Andrew's face. And then, but then you opened
your mouth and I was like, but that's Mark's voice.
I think Isaac nails the understanding that there are two
parts to being the son of something.
And so does Scripture when it talks about the Son of Thunder
or the sons of destruction. There's the obvious way in which
I'm Andrew's son, but there's also the sense in which to be
the son of something means to share its nature, to share its
nature. And so I'm the son of Andrew,
but I'm also, I wish I was also more the son of Andrew and that
I wish I was more like my dad. But the same thing can't be said
of Jesus. He's the Son of God, but he's
perfectly also the Son of God. He completely shares the nature
of God. Bradley preached on this very
topic last week, and he read from these verses long ago.
At many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the
prophets, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son,
whom He appointed the heir of all things, through whom also He
created the world. He is the radiance of the glory
of God and the exact imprint of His nature, and He upholds the
universe by the word of His power.
Jesus in saying, my Father reveals himself to be the Son of
God, and Jesus is uniquely the Son of God.
Jesus is the exact imprint of the nature of God.
He's not just a chip off the old block.
He is the Son of God. He is God as the imprint of God.
He is God of God. As we sing, when we sing.
Ohh come all you faithful at Christmas time Jesus is in the
temple to do the will of the Father because he is by nature
the Son of God. And so his parents, they hear
Jesus statement of did you not know that I must be in my
father's house? And naturally, they don't fully
understand, they don't fully follow at this point.
The implications of this are really going to be the sword
that passes through their hearts for the rest of their lives on
account of Jesus. But see then the gentleness of
Jesus, who, having just spoken of his heavenly Father in front
of his earthly father, who's not his actual Father, to then go
down to Nazareth with them and be submissive to his parents.
I think he's incredibly gracious in these years of submission.
Submitting to parents is harder in some situations than others,
and there's a lot that could be said there.
But think about it. For Jesus, whose actual Father
is perfect, think of the contrast as he comes to earth
and submits willingly, voluntarily, to imperfect
parents. Mary doesn't understand.
We see in verse 51 that she treasures up all these things in
her heart, together with the virgin birth, together with the
prophecies, together with everything that's happened.
Her story is not over. Her story is a hard story, but
she remains trusting in God. But meanwhile Jesus grows.
He grows in stature, wisdom and favour.
And here again Luke closes the curtain on these years of Jesus
life. That's your wisdom in favour
with God and men. Next week we're gonna jump just
about two decades forward, and we're not going to hear anymore
of the time in between. But for now, we have the same
statement reiterated, just as it was at the start.
Luke bookings this with Jesus growing in wisdom and strength
and favour with God and man. And again, just like through the
start of Luke, we've seen the comparison of his birth
narrative with his cousin John. In the same way of John, it was
said that he grew and became fervent in spirit.
But again, Jesus is greater in every way, and he grows in
stature, wisdom and favour with God and man.
To quote Bradley from last week, at the heart of at the beating
heart of this passage, we have the wisdom of Jesus and it's
framed by the wisdom of Jesus and the.
I think that's why we don't need more.
That's why we don't need the report cards, the the
scholarships, the the this is what he created when he was 11
in the workshop. Because Jesus was utterly
consistent. He grew in strength.
He grew as a person. His voice would have dropped.
He would have grown taller and stronger.
He was a man. He bore our frame.
He grew in wisdom as the perfect wisdom of God, and he grew in
favour with God and man. He grew in these moral graces,
like his virtues were always pleasing to God and pleasing to
men. He wasn't obnoxious.
He didn't use his wisdom to stun people and wow people and go
look at me. He wasn't arrogant, he wasn't
obnoxious, but he grew. He grew.
I think Luke really does frame this in this way to show us that
Jesus is perfectly consistent. There's no variation in Jesus.
He doesn't take, as I said, 2 steps forward and one back.
And I think that's important for us to reflect on because
sometimes when we think about the salvation story, we just
think about Jesus coming from coming down and being born of a
virgin and dying on a cross and being raised to life and going
back to heaven. And we trusted him and we're
saved from our sins. And that's true.
Don't get me wrong, that's true. Thus, for Jesus to be the
perfect man in the 1st place, he had to be the perfect child.
We refer to the active and the passive obedience of Jesus
Christ. No one in this room has ever
been a perfect child, let alone a perfect adult.
I know that at 12 I realised the seriousness of my own sin.
But at 12, Jesus was perfect and he was able to be our
substitute. Jesus has to be the perfect
child to save us from our sins. That's why He can be our atoning
sacrifice for us, and He is our gracious Saviour from our ruined
lives. No matter what myths you've made
of your childhood or of your adulthood, Jesus is your
substitute if you will. But trust in Him.
He's lived the life that you have failed to live.
He's lived the life that we never could have and died in our
place. I please, I beg of you, that if
you have not done so, that you would trust in Jesus.
He's lived a life that we could never live.
If Jesus is really all wise, we can trust Him even when life
makes no sense. In that verse we read earlier,
Jesus holds all things by the word of his power.
That would be very bad news if he was either not wise or not
good, but as a as he is both of those things.
And we can trust him, and we must.
If he's perfectly wise, we can trust him.
If he's perfectly the Son of God, we can know God's nature by
looking at him. Learn more of Jesus and I know
I'm heading the same drum that Bradley was last week, but look
to Jesus and learn more of God and if he's unchanging, if he's
faithful, if he's consistent, if his childhood was perfect, he
can save us. Only a perfect child could
become the perfect man. He can save us, He can stand in
our place, and He can save us now to the uttermost to the end.
He stands in heaven waiting to save us.
He can sympathise with you. He learned obedience through
what he suffered. He acts as your high priest.
He can save you. This is Jesus.
He is the perfect child, He's the perfect man.
He's the perfect lamb. He's the perfect priest and with
Jesus parents and with the crowd, we should be amazed at
this perfect child. He is point here is what we
should be amazed at. This is what perfection looks
like, and he is a man and he was a child.
To the only wise God be glory for evermore through Jesus
Christ. Let's pray Father, we thank you
that we can call you Father and we can be your true children.
We thank you for Jesus Christ wisdom from above.
We thank you that He lived a perfect childhood in that being
a perfect child, He is now a perfect man, our perfect Lamb.
He has died in our place and he stands at your right hand to
make intercession for your people.
Thank you that we can look to this one narrative and know and
infer the details that He is perfect.
Thank you that that is good news because we are not perfect.
Help us to trust Him or help us to be amazed at Jesus.
Help us to cling to Him as our wisdom and the wisdom of God and
our true Word. Help us to learn more about you
as we look to Jesus, and help us to cling to Him as the only one
who can save us because of his perfect life.
So Lord, we thank you for your Son, the Lord Jesus, that he's
our wisdom. And Lord Jesus Christ, thank you
that you are our glory and our wisdom and our power, everything
we are and have. We just cling to you, and we
thank you, and we worship you as the wisdom of God for evermore.
Amen.