Good morning my “Walking with Jesus” friends on this first TUESDAY of 2023.
For many of you this may be your first day back to work in the new year. How quickly will things get back to some normalcy for you post-Christmas? What will be new for you this first week or two of 2023?
Yesterday I left you in the Galilee town of Nazareth as Joseph and Mary were raising their family which, as I showed you, grew to be quite a large family, according to Mark 6:3. The only glimpse the Bible gives us into those years of Jesus and His human family in Nazareth is found in Luke 2:41-52: “Every year Joseph and Mary went to Jerusalem for the Passover Festival. When Jesus was 12 years old, they went up to the Passover as was their custom. After the festival was over, while Joseph and Mary were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it.”
It’s possible Jesus had not been back to that Temple since 41 days after His birth when Joseph and Mary had brought Him there as a baby to consecrate Him to the LORD. On that occasion they met both Simeon and Anna in the Temple, remember?
At age 12 this would possibly be the Passover Jesus would be recognized as transitioning to adulthood and a small ceremony might have been planned for their time in Jerusalem. We have no record of that event, but we do have a startling account of what happened when Joseph and Mary began their trip returning from the Passover festival days, heading back to Nazareth.
Luke tells us they were traveling with others from Nazareth, and they assumed young Jesus was somewhere in the large group, perhaps with his boyhood friends. But when they stopped for the night, young Jesus was nowhere to be found. Once again great worry welled up inside both Joseph and Mary. Can you imagine the wide range of thoughts which raced through their minds? Immediately they left the group and turned right around heading back to Jerusalem to search for Jesus.
If you’ve ever been separated unexpectedly, from one of your children you have some sense of the anxiety they felt. Luke’s record tells us “After three days they found him in the Temple courts, sitting among the teachers of the law, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard Him was amazed at His understanding and His answers.” (Luke 2:46,47)
This is the first and only glimpse we have into how the remarkable miracle of the incarnation of God into the baby body of Jesus was evidenced to people by any behavior or words of Jesus Himself up until He began to do His miracles as adult Jesus. These identified as ‘teachers of the law’ were scholars who had spent much of their lives studying the Torah and all the Jewish holy writings.
It was very rare for anyone other than this relatively small group of scholars to engage in such religious debate, much less a boy of only 12! But clearly young Jesus was not intimidated by these scholars and His words were evidence for anyone willing to understand, that this boy was very special indeed. It seems clear absolutely no one made any connection between 12 year old Jesus and the 41 day old baby Simeon and Anna had seen 12 years before in this Temple area; nor the Savior announced by angels to Shepherds or the baby they found in the Bethlehem stable manger. Nor was anyone making any connection between this 12 year old Jesus and the child the Magi had traveled to visit and found in Bethlehem. It seems after Herod’s slaughter in Bethlehem both Herod and everyone else assumed that very special baby was dead.
But look at what Luke tells us about Joseph and Mary finding young Jesus in the Jerusalem Temple, after searching for Him: “When Joseph and Mary saw young Jesus with the teachers, they were astonished! His mother said to Him, ‘Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you!’ ‘Why were you searching for Me?’ Jesus asked them, ‘Did you not know I had to be in My Father’s house?’ But they did not understand what He was saying to them.”(Luke 2:48-50)
You and I have had similar experiences, haven’t we, my friends? We’ve come upon a situation, or we’ve stepped into a conversation, or we’ve heard a statement that we simply did not understand. Oh, we understand the words, but we don’t understand what the words imply! Joseph and Mary understood every word Jesus spoke; they just didn’t understand what He meant by those words.
That tells me Joseph and Mary had gotten so busy with life, with raising up a large family of several children (Mark 6:3) that the wonder of what they both had experienced that first Christmas had faded into the busyness of their lives. Those angelic encounters both Mary and Joseph had experienced were buried under more than 10 years of normal, busy life. Jesus had become normal to them, just another of the kids in their busy family life in the bustling town of Nazareth.
Now let’s be careful here my friends, because the same thing is already happening to you and me. Are the wonders of Christmas already lost in the festivities of NY Eve and the frantic rush into this New Year? Are all the very special things God did in your life in 2022 perhaps fading into the challenges of this new year 2023? I wonder what techniques you use to keep your focus, so you don’t lose the wonder of our great God and how He is so majestically involved in our lives and our world?
I understand Joseph and Mary’s frustration of spending three days trying to find Jesus, having to backtrack to Jerusalem after they’d already traveled a full day toward Nazareth. But it seems this event was a ‘wake up’ call to both of them. A call to not miss the wonder that this normal looking boy was “Immanuel”, God with us! (Matt. 1:21)
Of course, when young Jesus said “Why were you searching for Me? Did you not know I had to be in My Father’s house?” Jesus was not being disrespectful nor critical, He was calling them to consider WHO He really is and WHY He had come to earth at that first Christmas. He was also using a phrase that He would use many, many times as adult Jesus… “My Father”. No human being before Jesus ever referred to Almighty God with that phrase, ‘my father’! But not only did Jesus use that phrase often, but He also taught His disciples and others that if we fully trust in Jesus to be the Savior the angels had announced, then we could experience God forgiving us from our sins and adopting us into His family so WE can call Almighty God, ‘my Father in heaven’!! Do you, my friends? Do you speak to God calling Him “Father”? Do you speak to others about God referring to Him as “My Father”?
As Joseph, Mary and 12-year-old Jesus were walking away from the Temple that day and headed north to their home in Nazareth, Luke describes the scene this way: “Then Jesus went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But Mary treasured all these things in her heart. and Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man.” (Luke 2:51,52)
My hope and prayer for you and me in 2023 are exactly those words: ‘grow in wisdom and stature and favor with God and man.’ I’m going to do that by making sure I keep filling my heart and mind with God’s Word and keep growing in my relationship with Jesus. Is that also your desire for this new year? What plan do you have for accomplishing it? Here’s a song to help us contemplate that challenge for the year ahead of us…
Today’s Scripture is Luke 2:41-52.
Choose below to read or listen.
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Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
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Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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