June 28, 2000

• Luke 2:39-52 The Child Who Was God

  

    The Amazing Child Who Was God, Part 1

  Luke 2:39-52

  There are many amazing children in the world.  But all of these children fade into foolishness compared with one twelve-year-old boy named Jesus...the child who was God.  In a dramatic and moving account of the one recorded incident in the first 30 years of Jesus' life, Luke gives us a glimpse of the child who was God.  No human genius, no IQ immeasurably in excess of the number 200 could even come close to the mind and the capability of the child who was God.

  Luke wants us to know not just that the child was God.  He's already told us that.  The prophet said He was God.  The priest Zacharias said He was God, this child who was to be born the light to the Gentiles, the daystar who would arise from on high.  The angel told Mary He would be the Savior, the Son of the Most High God who would rule over an eternal Kingdom.  The angel also told in a dream the father Joseph that his child would be Immanuel, God with us.  Simeon the man in the temple gave testimony to the fact that this was God, this was the one from heaven, the Messiah.  Anna confirmed that this was the one who would bring redemption to Israel.  Luke has made it clear by the prophets and the angels and the testimony of Joseph and Mary and the testimony of Simeon and Anna that this child is indeed the Messiah, the Savior, the fulfiller of all of Israel's hopes and comforts and peace and salvation and glory, that in fact this child is God, virgin conceived and virgin born, Son of the Most High.

  But it is important for Luke to tell us that the child knew that He was God.  That the child understood who He was, that He came to a complete understanding of His nature and His mission. This is not something that came on Jesus later in His life. This isn't some metamorphosis that a human went through say at the age of 30 when some divine element came into His life. This is not some real imaginative idea that Jesus had which He tried to foist on some unsuspecting public when He launched His ministry.  Not something that He personally claimed for Himself only after He would sort of thrust into the limelight by well-intentioned friends later in His life.  Would rather this was His true identity.  He was God and He knew it.  He was the child who was God and He knew He was God and He understood what that meant in terms of personhood and in terms of identity and mission.  And here we have in verses 39 through 52, the end of chapter 2, the only incident ever recorded in the first 30 years of Jesus' life and the only words that Jesus has ever recorded to have said in those 30 years.  And it all happens at the age of twelve.

  By the time He reached twelve He knew exactly who He was and He knew exactly why He came.  And that is the incident that Luke selects because of its monumental importance.  Now we ended our last study at verse 38 with the testimony of Simeon and Anna as to the identity of the child.  Immediately upon completing that testimony, we now have heard from Gabriel the angel, that this in fact is the Messiah, the Son of God.  It has been given to Mary and also in Matthew's gospel recorded that he spoke to Joseph as well in a dream.  We have heard the testimony of Mary herself that God has brought salvation.  We have heard the testimony of Zacharias, the father of John, that a horn of salvation has been raised up in this child born to Mary.  And we have heard the angels in the fields announcing to the shepherds, "Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth," at the birth of the Savior of the world.

  We have been told by Simeon that this is the one whom the prophets promised, would be a light to the Gentiles as well as bring glory to Israel.  And Anna's testimony that this is the one who would bring redemption to Jerusalem.  All of that testimony has been given. 

  But we need to hear from the child Himself.  Is this something that people were forcing on Him?  Is this something that was being pressed on Him so that because of mounting Jewish messianic expectation He sort of pushed Himself into this place when He reached the age of 30 and assumed a role?  Or is this His true identity?

  Well it's critical to understand that it is His true identity and that's why the remarkable incident at the age of twelve is recorded for us so it leaves absolutely no question as to the understanding of Jesus with regard to His true identity.  So we transition out of the testimony of Simeon and Anna in verse 38 to verse 39 where our passage begins.

  And it says, "And when they had performed everything," they being Joseph and Mary, "according to the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own city of Nazareth."

  Performing everything to the law of the Lord...refers back to verse 22.  After a Jewish woman gave birth to a male child, she was to go 40 days later to the temple to make purification sacrifice.  And that's exactly what they did as verse 22 indicates when the days, the 40 days for their purification according to the law of Moses were completed, they brought the baby up to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord.  They went up, they made the appropriate sacrifice. They did what they were to do, setting apart the male child, verse 23 indicates as the Old Testament instruction had been given in Exodus and in Numbers.  And then verse 24, to offer the sacrifice, in their case a pair of turtledoves, two young pigeons because they were too poor to afford a lamb.  So they did that.  They made the sacrifice.  They presented the male child to the Lord.  They uniquely presented this child, this virgin-conceived child to God.

  And then verse 39 says, "After doing all of that, they went back to Galilee to their own city of Nazareth."  However, between the completion of that and the return to Nazareth, there's a very important part of the history of the birth of Christ that is not given by Luke.  Luke jumps from completing the ceremonies in verse 39, to going to Galilee, but there's something that happened in there of tremendous importance.  What is it?  It is the visit of the wise men.  It is the slaughter of Herod and the deliverance of Jesus from that slaughter by warning by an angel that caused them to flee to Egypt and escape that massacre.  All of that occurs between the time of purification at the temple and the time they returned to Galilee.

  Now it doesn't serve Luke's purpose to rerecord what Matthew has already given.  So if you want that entire remarkable story, read Matthew 2, the whole chapter, verses 1 to 23 unfolds that marvelous story.

  You say, "How do you know it happened then?"  Well it had to have happened then because they were living in a house.  The wise men came to a house which was different than the stable where they were at first.  It also had to have happened then because when they came for purification they had to offer birds as it says in verse 24.  That was done only if you had limited funds.  When the wise men came they brought gold and frankincense and myrrh.  Literally they brought a cache of immense wealth and gave it to Joseph and Mary, certainly providing enough money for them to have purchased a lamb for the purification if in fact the wise men had come before that ceremony was held.  The fact that they bought turtledoves, the cheapest of all things next to just offering grain, indicates they had no such money which tells us the wise men hadn't yet been there.

  So, Luke doesn't record that because it doesn't suit his particular purpose, but Matthew does.  And all of it you'll find in Matthew 2 and it happened between the 40 day purification presentation at the temple which included the testimony of Simeon and Anna, and the time they left Bethlehem to go take up their residence back in their home town of Nazareth.  Many months intervened that they lived there in Bethlehem, months during which the wise men came, during which Herod wanted to slaughter all of the male children as to king...as to kill the new king he heard was born and during which they escaped by instruction from an angel into Egypt.  So after all of that, they finally go back to Nazareth.

  Now we pick the story up in verse 40 and it is here that we really begin to focus on the life of the child who was God.  Verse 40 tells us, "The child continued to grow and become strong, increasing in wisdom and the grace of God was upon Him."  That one verse and that one sentence covers 12 years.  It covers 12 years, right up until the next two verses when they came to the Passover and verse 42 says, "Jesus had become twelve years old."  So verse 40 covers birth to twelve...twelve years He lived as an infant, as a little child, as a child, and as one who was on the verge of what the Jews considered to be adulthood at the age of twelve. So the twelve years are covered by verse 40.

  Then verses 41 down into verse 51 cover an incident that happened when He was twelve.  Then verse 51 and 52 cover from twelve to the beginning of His ministry at age 30. So verse 40 covers twelve years.  And then you have an incident at the age of twelve that goes down into verse 51 and then verses 51 and 52 cover the final 18 years until He reached 30 and began His ministry.

  So you have the birth to twelve in verse 40, essentially 12 to 30 in verse 52, and an incident at age twelve in the middle.  This is all we know, folks, about 30 years.  This is it.  This is all we know from the 40-day purification to the time when Jesus began to preach and was baptized by John.  Thirty years of His life are going to pass before us, essentially in two verses, verse 40 and verse 52, with an incident in the middle at the age of twelve.  It is very important to understand that if you have 30 years of history and only one incident recorded, that incident is of monumental significance.  And we're going to see that before we finish our look at this portion of Scripture.

  But let's begin by looking at the silent years of childhood, from birth to twelve as recorded in verse 40.  This one verse covers twelve years and all it says is, "The child continued to grow and become strong, increasing in wisdom and the grace of God was upon Him."  That covers twelve years.  And basically it's a very, very sort of...sort of simple statement that He developed as children develop.  This is something that's important for us to affirm, that Jesus was fully man.  He was man from the very beginning.  There have been all kinds of strange heresies that have Jesus as a phantom spirit or a ghost or something less than human.  This is to indicate to us His real and true genuine humanity.  As all children grow, so this child continued to grow in the very normal physical pattern of growth.  He grew from His infancy to being on the brink of adulthood at the age of twelve.

  His growth is uniquely defined as becoming strong, becoming strong.  Obviously there's a physical component in that and as Jesus grew and was sinless, never sinning, without the stain of sin on His life, without the effects of sin in His life, without the declining entropy effects of fallenness in His life, He grew as no other child ever grew.  I mean, He grew as a child grows but in a manner that's unique, in a manner unaffected by sin.  His growth was never hindered, never impaired, and never restricted, or never affected by sin.  So He developed certainly a kind of physical strength, the kind of physical manliness, a kind of look that would be unique. He could certainly do the labor of a carpenter which Mark 6:3 indicates is what He did in His father's business. He could certainly walk miles.  And, of course, if you live in Nazareth, you can go there today, you never walk anywhere on a flat level.  You're either going up or down because it's on the side of hills.  And all of Galilee is rolling hills.  He could walk for miles...the strength to do that, the strength to endure sleeplessness as He did often in His ministry, praying all night.  The strength even eventually to be tortured, the strength to be crucified and still alive so that His life wasn't even taken from Him by the act of crucifixion, rather He gave it up by Himself.  He had some unique physical capacities.

  Now many men could do the walking and do the carpentry work and do the physical things and maybe endure torture to some degree, but certainly Jesus would exceed them all.  This child who was God would have a physical strength and a physical prowess that would be beyond any other human ever who lived. 

  But His growth was not only physical, it was spiritual and when it says there in verse 40, "And become strong," the word "strong" really is best linked with the following participial phrase "increasing in wisdom," so that that participle describes the strength as the strength of being, literally in the Greek, full of wisdom.  I'm sure He had the capacity to know French and Korean and Japanese and German and Italian and Latin and whatever else.  I'm sure He had the capacity to square any number imaginable.  I'm sure He had the capacity to create symphonies and concertos and music that would know no bounds and no end because in this child is the mind of God dwelling in the mind of a man.  His mind, His capacity to know is only described here in the Greek literally "being filled with wisdom."  And that would be the profound wisdom of the mind of God.  We are said as believers in 2 Corinthians to be growing up into the mind of Christ, as the ultimate.  And the mind of Christ, because He's God, is the mind of God.  Here was the child who could think like God thinks.  There wouldn't be any IQ test that could measure the mind of the child who was God.  He was filled with wisdom.

  There's real humanity here and yet contained in this humanity is the mind of God, the wisdom of God which came upon Him gradually.  He didn't understand that when He was an infant.  He didn't understand that when He was a toddler.  He didn't understand that when He was a little child or a child. But by the time He reached this age of twelve, the fullness of the wisdom of God as to His identity and His mission and the truth of God had come to its fruition in His mind.  At twelve He thought like God thinks, full of wisdom. 

  And it says in verse 40, "The grace of God was upon Him."  Grace, not the kind of grace that comes to sinners who don't deserve it, but grace as the favor that God gives to one who does.  It simply means that God was devoted to Him, that God favored Him, similarly to the testimony of God at His baptism in Luke 3 where God says, "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased."  This is all it says about His childhood.

  William Hendrickson has written, "Those who deny this are in danger of acquiring the mentality that must have marked the authors of certain apocryphal writings.  These picture Jesus as being omniscient and almighty and lions and leopards worshiping Him.  One writer says the infant Jesus says to a palm, 'Bend down and refresh My mother with your fruit.' And it does so immediately.  One writer says, 'At five years of age He modeled twelve sparrows out of soft clay, clapped His hands and they flew away,'" etc., etc.

  That isn't what the Bible says at all.  He grew as a child and He appeared at all points on the outside to be like any other normal developing child.  And there was development as His brain developed.  It was truly human.  As it developed it became capable of receiving more and more of the understanding of the wisdom of God so that finally when He was twelve He grasped it and He thought God's thoughts.

  He also learned by experience.  Hebrews, very interesting passage of Scripture.  In Hebrews chapter 5, and it's a passage that you have to come back to again and again in talking about Christ.  But in Hebrews 5:8 it says, "He learned obedience from the things He suffered."

  What does that mean?  I think as He was growing up He was suffering the onslaught of temptation. Chapter 4 verse 15 says, "He was in all points tempted like as we are yet without sin."  He suffered the constant temptation that comes to a child, temptation to be grasping and selfish and self-centered and demanding.  You know how children are.  He suffered all those temptations that come to young boys through all those developmental stages.  He suffered the constant barrage of temptation against His humanity.  He was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.  It was through those temptations over which He triumphed that He experientially learned what it was to obey God.  So He had a developmental process going on by which in overcoming temptation He developed spiritual strength in the matter of obedience.

  So by the time you get Him at the age of twelve, He is spiritually mature.  He grasps who He is.  He understands the wisdom of God and its application in the mission to which God has sent Him.  He is the sinless child who was God.

  Now in verse 41 we come to the incident at the point of twelve years of age...the incident at twelve.  The first twelve years covered in verse 40, this incident covered, really in verses 41 down to 51.  The only one recorded during 30 years of His life.  And the only time He's ever recorded to have said anything.  Obviously He spoke daily, but nothing He said is ever recorded in Scripture except this.

  And it took place when He was on the brink of adulthood, twelve years after that presentation at the temple in the prior passage.  It is the moment in which He reveals that He knows who He is and He knows why He came.  He reveals it to His mother and to Joseph, His earthly father, and Luke recording it reveals it to the whole world.  It is a powerful incident, it is a poignant incident, it is a profound testimony by Jesus to His own identity.  There is nothing miraculous that happens in this story.  There is nothing supernatural that happens in this story.  And yet it is as profoundly divine as any miracle could be as Jesus identifies Himself as God the Son, and it comes in verse 49.  He says, "Why is it that you were looking for Me.  Did you not know that I had to be in My Father's house?"  That is a monumental statement, the reality of which we will dig into in the days to come.  But let's see how the narrative unfolds that leads to that great confession.

  We pick the story up in verse 41, twelve years later.  "And His parents used to go to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover."  Now this was...this was a very, very normal thing for Jewish people to do, to go to the Passover.  Let me expand on that a little bit so you have an understanding.

  If you go back to Exodus and Deuteronomy, you find there is instruction there as to the Jews maintaining their attendance and their involvement in certain feasts that God ordained for Israel.  There were three main feasts held every year.  There was the feast called Passover.  There was the feast called Pentecost.  And there was the feast called Tabernacles.  Passover was a one-day feast that happened on the fifteenth of Nisan at the beginning of the Jewish calendar year.  In our calendar, it's March or April.  We obviously celebrate Easter in March or April because Jesus was crucified on a Passover.  But the Jewish year began with Nisan.  The fifteenth of Nisan was the day of Passover feast.  Attached directly to the Passover was a seven-day feast called the feast of Unleavened Bread.  So you really had an eight-day celebration called...it became known as Passover in general, though Passover was one day and seven days were unleavened bread.

  Then fifty days later was the feast called Pentecost, the feast of the firstfruits when they celebrated harvest.  And then later on, that would come 50 days after the March or April feast of Nisan.  Then later on in the fall, our fall, would come the feast of Tabernacles which would celebrate the wanderings in the wilderness when they lived in tents and God provided manna for them.  Those were the three feasts, three great festival celebrations.

  According to Exodus 23:1, Exodus 34:22 and 23, and Deuteronomy 16:16, Jewish men were to attend all three feasts every year.  But there was a diaspora or a dispersion of the Jews by the time of Jesus and Jews were scattered over everywhere.  Even Joseph and Mary lived 18 miles north of Jerusalem in the town of Nazareth, which was sort of on the Gentile border, the border of Gentile lands.  And as the Jews became scattered and as they became more traditional and less truly devoted to God, typically a Jewish man might only come to one of the three feasts every year and that would be Passover.  It became the major event. And they would generally come to that one.  It was, as I said, a one-day feast, a one-day time of sacrifice that was succeeded by seven days of the unleavened bread feast which was reminiscent, of course, of the unleavened bread of the Passover.  So it became known as Passover, major celebration. And it celebrated God as the Redeemer of His people, God as the deliverer, the Savior, the rescuer of His people.  It memorialized an event that's recorded in Exodus 12.

  You remember that Israel was taken into captivity into Egypt and they were held as slaves to the Egyptians for 400 years.  They were real slaves in Egypt.  They made bricks, as you remember.  And God raised up a deliverer by the name of Moses.  God said it's time to let My people out, it's time to lead Israel back and bring them to the land of Canaan which I have pledged to give to them, leading them out of bondage.  Pharaoh wouldn't let them go, you remember.  The appeal was made, "Let my people go, let my people go."  Pharaoh wouldn't let them go so God sent a series of ten devastating, killing plagues to Egypt. The tenth plague was called the Passover.  And what it was was the angel of death was going to come and kill the firstborn of animals and the firstborn in every family in Egypt.  And God said the only way to avoid death is to sacrifice a lamb and take the blood and put it on the side post and the top piece of the door. And when the death angel comes and sees the blood on the doorposts, and the lintel, as it's called, he'll pass over and spare the firstborn.  So the Jews did that.  They sacrificed the animal, a lamb of special choice without blemish, without spot, that was a pet lamb that they had to keep in the house for a week and grow to love and then to kill and then to eat and then the blood to put on the door.  And all of that pictured Christ, all of that pictured the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world, who would die for sinners.  And there was the Passover angel coming and as he came he saw the blood and passed by.  So that was the Passover.

  And that was the last plague that launched the Egyptians decision to let Israel go.  And they all gathered, you remember, under the leadership of Moses, they came to the Red Sea, God parted the Red Sea.  They went across the Red Sea and were on their way to the land of Canaan.  Pharaoh and his army tried to follow and were drowned as the sea closed in on them.

  So the Passover was then instituted by God as a memorial to God as the Savior of His people, the great deliverer of His people.  So when they came together they made sacrifices as they had done in Egypt and they ate the lamb, as they had done in Egypt.  And they remembered that the death angel had passed them by and God had spared them death, God had delivered them from death and also delivered them from bondage.  So it's still even today is the greatest of all the Jewish celebrations.

  It was required traditionally for men to go, even at the time of Jesus, but not so much the women.  And so typically not all the women would go to Passover.  In fact, for a woman to go to Passover, according to Jewish tradition, was to demonstrate on her part a rather unusual spiritual devotion, a rather unusual interest in the things of God, a devotion to God and to His Word and to obedience.  How interesting, verse 41, "His parents used to go to Jerusalem every year."  And here again, Luke reminds us of the devout character of the faith of Joseph and Mary.  They were true worshipers of the living God.  They went every year to Passover.  It wasn't something they did now and then, it wasn't something that Joseph alone did out of duty.  They went together.  And even as their little family, Jesus being the firstborn virgin conceived, began to grow as Joseph and Mary had other children, both sons and daughters and it would be more difficult to go. And every year Joseph and Mary would go. And Luke again is showing us a sweet devotion of this young couple of teen-agers, starting out in their life every year going to the Passover. 

  Now twelve years after Jesus was born, they're in their mid twenties and they're still going to the Passover.  It's not an easy trip, 80 miles, three to four days, probably four days if children were in the entourage that went because they had to go from Nazareth and go around Samaria because of the attitude between the Jews and the Samaritans.  So it's an 80 mile trip and it takes three or four days if they can go 20 to 25 miles a day.

  Verse 44 indicates that they went in a caravan. It's the only time that word is used in the New Testament, it means what it says...a large company of people traveling together.  And most of the traditional Jewish scholars would say the children were in front because if the parents got in front they would be going too fast for the kids.  So they put all the children in front, followed by the women, followed by the men, so that the men couldn't, because they tend to stride a little faster, distance themselves.  And they would go in caravans for the sake of friendship and fellowship, family, neighbors and acquaintances.  But also because it put them in a safer position to be able to withstand the traditional onslaught of highway robbers and marauders who would attack people traveling in small groups or alone.

  Now both the dominant rabbinical schools, Shemi and Hillel, dominant at the time of Jesus, taught that young children should go to Passover.  It should be a family event as Exodus 12:26 and 27 indicated it, should be a family event for the instruction of Israel to teach your children that God is the Redeemer of Israel.  So, Joseph and Mary and Jesus, and we don't know whether the other children came or they were at home, but Joseph and Mary and Jesus, for certain, came.  Verse 42, "When He became twelve they went up," you always go up to Jerusalem, you go down the hillsides of Nazareth, down into the Jordan Valley which at its southern end goes 1500 feet below sea level, and then climb all the way up to Jerusalem, always you go up to Jerusalem, down from Jerusalem.  So they went up according to the custom of the feast.

  Now Luke doesn't give us any details but we can...we can fill in some things because of what we know about Passover.  When Joseph and Mary and Jesus arrive for the launch of Passover, Jerusalem would be swelled by hundreds of thousands of pilgrims who had come from all over everywhere, both in the land of Palestine and outside where the Jews had been scattered. And they would be looking for families to stay with if they didn't already have families that they stayed with every year, or distant cousins or relatives.  They would be trying to find a place to house themselves for their time there.  They would also be trying to find a place where they could have their family together for the meal, where they could cook the lamb and what went with it and have the meal together.  They would also be purchasing their sacrifices.  So it would be a bustling and busy, busy time as the people were flooding into the cities from all over everywhere and colliding at all points in their efforts to find a place to stay, a place to eat and animals to sacrifice.

  In fact, there were so many sacrifices, some historians tell us a quarter of a million animals would be slaughtered during Passover week. And at that time, of course, there would need to be the sale of those animals, so you can imagine the whole city bleating with sheep, a quarter of a million animals being sacrificed.  And all twenty-four courses of the priests were there for Passover because of the massive amount of butchering that had to be done.  And you can be sure that all the beggars were out, all out in their crummiest clothes, all finding their way into the most obvious place, assuming to play on the sensitivities of people who were thinking more about God and their duty then than at other times. And the Roman soldiers would be there jostling with the crowds, trying to maintain some level of control.  And the sacrifices would begin and the bleating of animals and the blood and Jesus would go with His family and He would go in for the time of the sacrifice of the lamb that was for His family.  His father Joseph would take in the animal.  The animal would be killed by the priest, the blood of the animal would be sloshed against the altar. And Jesus would see that and Jesus knew at this time that He was the Lamb of God that would take away the sins of the world.  We can only imagine the vividness of His own mind as He ascertained the reality of all of this sacrifice and the fact that He alone would be the sacrifice to take away sin and that some twenty years plus hence from that very time He would be hanging on a cross outside Jerusalem, shedding blood as that true and saving Lamb of God.  The reality of that in His mind must have been overwhelming to Him as a boy.

  The lamb having been killed, the blood splattered on the altar, the priests would be singing the Hillel, Psalm 113 to 118.  So the chaos of the crowd.  The massacre of the animals.  The indelible memory of the blood pouring off the altar, running in a river out the backside of the temple ground down the back hill into the Kidron brook which turned that whole brook red with blood as it fell down into the Valley of Hinnom to the south.  All of that would make it a vivid, vivid experience for the twelve-year-old Jesus who is now filled with the wisdom of God and sees it all from the divine perspective.

  Then the family would take the lamb home after it had been slaughtered and the blood had been drained, take it home and cook it.  They would find some home, somebody would give them a place, some relative perhaps, some friend, they would roast the lamb and it would be eaten...always eaten by candlelight because it was at candlelight that the Passover took place.  It was at dark.  They would sing psalms and they would pray to God and they would worship and celebrate God as their Redeemer as they ate that lamb.

  Now when the meal was over a tradition developed.  You find it in the Mishna, the codification of Jewish tradition.  At the end of the meal a son asks a question of his father, typically the oldest son.  In this case, most likely, Jesus would have looked at Joseph and after the meal was complete He would say this...and still to this very day, Jewish sons ask this question at Passover...the question is...why is this night different from all others?  That question then gave the father, Joseph, the opportunity to repeat the amazing story of the Passover in Egypt.  Then after the story, the whole night was filled with worship and praise as was the whole week.

  Well, verse 42, that's what happened when the twelve-year-old Jesus went up to Jerusalem according to the custom of the feast.  Why is it important that He's there at the age of 12?  Well I think you probably have a little idea about that and I'll just fill in a couple of blanks because we're not going to get beyond this.  At 13 Jewish boys were considered to be obligated to the law of God themselves.  They passed out from under parental authority and they were accountable to the law of God themselves at 13.  That is why after Jesus time, not at Jesus time, after Jesus time an official ceremony developed and that is known as bar mitzvah.  It wasn't the ceremony of Jesus time but later on it developed, but it developed out of the idea, bar mitzvah meaning son of the law, or son of the commandment, that at 13 a son was responsible to the law of God.  After all, Joseph was married probably at 14.  Some Jewish historians say to this then that it was the father's duty to take his son to the Passover, particularly the two years before he reached 13 so that he would have a full understanding of the Passover and of God as His Redeemer from sin.  Very important because becoming a son of the law brought you into touch with your guilt and your need for redemption.  And so according to the Talmud, fathers brought their sons as they approach 13 for this kind of experience and instruction.

  And so, Joseph is right on target.  He's doing what the tradition said.  He's doing what God placed upon his heart to do in obedience to the law of God.  He's going to Passover.  He's taking his twelve-year-old son to expose him to this.

  Verse 43, "As they were returning after spending the full number of days," I have to stop here again.  This again is Luke's wonderful way of telling us about Joseph and Mary.  Let me tell you what it developed by the time of Jesus.

  Very rarely did people stay the whole week.  The majority of the people stayed some portion of that time.  In fact, the common time to stay was two days.  You went in perhaps the day before Passover to do whatever you needed to do.  You were there for the Passover.  You did the sacrifice.  You did the meal and you left without staying for the seven-day week of feast of unleavened bread.  You sort of did your duty and you didn't take up the time unnecessarily from the perspective of it.  From a traditional Jew he would say...I have to take the trip there, I have to take the trip back and I can't afford the other week to be there.  And so he would do the two-day kind of duty.

  Well not Joseph and Mary.  Again as it indicates.  Sure it's a four-day trip down, it's a four-day trip back, but it's an eight-day experience.  That's the way God designed it and that's the way they celebrated it.  It says in verse 43, "As they were returning after spending the full number of days," and again Luke tells us what a remarkably godly young couple Joseph and Mary were.  So that from the human side Jesus could not have had more devout and godly young parents to influence Him.

  Well they left going back the 80 miles. And then it says in verse 43, and here's where the plot thickens, folks.  "The boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem and His parents were unaware of it.  But supposed Him to be in the caravan and went a day's journey and they began looking for Him among their relatives and acquaintances and when they didn't find Him, they returned to Jerusalem looking for Him."

  Here's where the incident is established.  Here we see the stage being set.  Look at that phrase "the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem."  By the way, in verse 40 He's called a child, but here He's called a boy.  And we see Him in His developmental stage even in the usage of the words, and we'll say more about that next time.

  His lingering was not disobedience.  His lingering was not irresponsibility.  There's no hint of that.  His lingering wasn't even the fault of His parents.  I mean, they had never known Him to do anything but exactly what He should have done.  They had never known Him to be anywhere other than exactly where He should have been.  And they've never known Him to do anything other than what was exactly what He expected that they wanted Him to do and to do it precisely and nothing else.  He was responsible.  He was obedient.  He was sensitive.  He was thoughtful.  He was perfect.

  But there was something going on here.  There was a break.  There was a breach.  Jesus was moving from responsibility to an earthly parent to a responsibility to God.  And that's why He says in verse 49, "Look, I have to be in My Father's house," and He is sending a major message to His parents that a transition is taking place, that they're not going to have parental oversight over this child, but that God His Father is going to determine His life and what He does.  You can imagine that He was swept up in all the drama of the Passover and knowing who He was moving through that crowd as a twelve-year-old, realizing nobody knows who I am.  Here is this massive crowd and they look sort of a glancing look at this little boy as He moves, this young boy moving through the crowd thinking absolutely nothing, having no clue that this is God in human flesh, that this child is looking at them with the mind of God, that this child is watching the priests and the sacrifice and seeing it as God the eternal God sees and understands it.  Swept up in these, engrossed in these divine realities, He is drawn in to doing the things that have to do with His true identity.

  And His parents don't know He's gone.  His parents, it says at the end of verse 43, are unaware of it.  They assume that He was up there in the front with the other young men, milling around with the children.  Joseph probably thought He was up near where Mary was and He was still classified as a child, but Mary may have thought that He was almost an adult, maybe He's back with the men.  They weren't aware that He was still in Jerusalem.  Verse 44, they thought He was in the caravan somewhere and they went a whole day's journey, 20-25 miles.  And then when they realized at the end of that day, because the families would then come together, find each other, eat and sleep, they began looking for Him among the relatives and acquaintances, assuming that He would be with somebody they knew.  And, of course, they couldn't find Him there, verse 45 says. 

  There was only one option left and that was to go back to Jerusalem.  They would stay the night.  They wouldn't go in the dark.  Stay overnight, an anxious night it must have been, get up before dawn and start the 20-25 mile trek back down the Jordan Valley, back ascending the hill to Jerusalem to try to find Him.  And it says in verse 46, "It came about that after three days."  Let me tell you what that means.  One day out of town, the next day they came back, and the third day they looked.  So after a total of three days...one day out, one day back, one day looking...they found Him.  "They found Him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions."  And that sets the stage for the most dramatic, profound and penetrating statement from the mouth of Jesus, twelve-year-old, the child who was God, which indicates He knew exactly who He was, He knew exactly why He came and His mind was filled with the things of God. 

  ---

  

  The Amazing Child Who Was God, Part 2

  Luke 2:47-52

  The great story of salvation, the great drama of redemption is unfolded throughout the Bible, and particularly in the New Testament.  It is the New Testament that tells us how it is that God saves sinners from eternal hell.  And that salvation is clearly through the work of Jesus Christ.  And the Bible is clear there is no salvation apart from Christ, apart from faith in His person and in His work.  So it is Jesus Christ who is the theme of Scripture and certainly the theme of the New Testament.

  Because that is true and because there is no salvation in any other than Jesus Christ, the New Testament begins with four gospels, four historical accounts of the life of Jesus, focusing on who He is and what He did.  It is because that great reality is at the heart of salvation.  If you are to be saved from your sin, if you are to skip hell and enter heaven forever, it will be because you believe in Jesus Christ, you believe Him to be who He is and to have done what the Scripture says He did.  Therefore all the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, focus on the identity of Jesus and His mission, His work. They present Him as God, the Son, the Savior of the world, the divine Messiah, the Lord.  Detail after detail unfolds to solidify beyond any question the reality of His person and His work.

  Now we have been for months in Luke chapter 1 and chapter 2, long chapters even by biblical chapters.  Eighty verses in chapter 1, fifty-two verses in chapter 2.  And all of this material has been designed to make very clear, unarguably clear, who Jesus Christ really is.  We have heard it from all kinds of witnesses.  The prophets of the Old Testament said who He would be.  Zacharias, the Old Testament priest and his wife, Elizabeth, affirm the identity of the Messiah whose forerunner would be their son, John.  The angel Gabriel identified who Jesus would be, Immanuel, God with us, Jesus the Savior.  The angels in the field talking to the shepherds identified who He would be.  Joseph and Mary knew who He was and give testimony.  And the old people in the temple, Simeon and Anna, their testimony is added to all the rest.

  So, Luke has made sure that the reader understands that Jesus is Savior of the world, is Messiah, Lord, Christ, Son of David, King over an eternal Kingdom, God in human flesh.  Testimony by angels, testimony by His parents, testimony by a godly Old Testament priest, testimony by two godly people, Simeon and Anna all brought together to affirm the identity of Jesus.

  But Luke isn't finished.  There's one other testimony that is critical, and that is the testimony of Jesus Himself.  And that is the focus of the section to which we look again this morning.

  There have been critics through the years that have said that Jesus was just a man and at the age of 30 He began to realize the fever pitch of messianic expectation.  He could see that the pressure was on to lead a new movement in an apostate kind of religion under a beleaguered people who had been trampled on by Greeks and Romans for literally centuries.  And He was pressed in to acting the role of a Messiah for the sake of what turned about to be an ill-conceived attempt at revolution.  There are others who say that Jesus was simply a human being but around the age of 30 the Spirit of God came upon Him and transformed Him into the living logos, the Living Word.  All of these, of course, are misrepresentation of the fact...the fact is that from His conception on He was God in human flesh. 

  At the age of twelve, as this particular passage points out, He was fully aware of exactly who He was and why He had been sent into the world.  At the age of twelve He had been living in obscurity in Nazareth.  He had no public persona whatsoever. There was no pressure on Him to play any kind of role.  He still had another 18 years of subjection in anonymity under His parents in that obscure place called Nazareth.  There was no therefore external pressure to make Him become something He otherwise was not.  When He declared Himself in this passage in verse 49 to be the Son of God, He did it not because of any external pressure but because He knew full well by that age exactly who He was.  So added to the testimony of men and angels is the testimony of the God/Man Himself.  And this of all testimonies is most penetrating and most dramatic.

  We meet then in verses 39 to 52 the child who was God, who knew He was God and knew why He came and knew where He belonged and under whose authority He was to live and fulfill His life mission.  And by the way, as i mentioned last time, in this passage we have the only recorded incident in the first 30 years of Jesus' life.  From birth to 30 when He embarked upon His public preaching ministry we know nothing by way of biblical record except this one in incident.  Now if God picked out of 30 years one incident and one brief statement of Jesus, that is the only recorded statement of Jesus in 30 years, if God picked one incident and one statement, you can be sure it is of monumental consequence...and indeed it proves to be so.

  The statement focuses on the fact that He knew exactly who He was and why He had come.  It is true that verses 40 to 52 do span all those 30 years.  From birth to twelve is covered in verse 40, "The child continued to grow and become strong, increasing in wisdom and the grace of God was upon Him."  Just a general statement.

  From age twelve to 30 is covered in verse 52, "Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and stature and in favor of God and men."  Another general statement.

  So verse 40, birth to twelve.  Verse 52, twelve to 30. And in the middle is this one incident in verses 41 to 51 which gives us the only glimpse of Jesus and the only words of Jesus that we need during three decades of the incarnate God living in this world.  It's all we know and it's all we need to know.

  Let's look, first of all, by way of review, at the childhood years we discussed last time in verse 40.  The child from birth to the age of twelve when this incident occurred in verse 41, continued to grow.  And that refers to physical development, physical growth, and became strong, and that is modified by the participial phrase "increasing," or "filled with wisdom," and that refers to the spiritual development.

  What you have here then is simply a statement that over twelve years Jesus grew physically and He grew spiritually to the place where He was filled with divine wisdom.  We covered that last time, I'm not going to go over it in detail except to review.  He had reached the age of twelve, it tells us that in verse 42.  And at the age of twelve He was on the brink of adulthood.  The Jews considered the age of 13 the age when you became a son of the law or a son of the commandment and you stepped out from under the shelter of your parents and you became an equal to your father.  That is you were equal under the law of God.  You went from being a boy to being a son at the age of 13.

  It was on the edge of manhood then, at the age of twelve, that the mind had developed, the capacity of the mind had developed to understand and discern the truth of God and be accountable to obey it.  And so, by the time Jesus reached twelve, verse 40 says He was filled with wisdom.  His human mind had developed to the point where it contained the mind of God, that is a really monumental thought.  His human mind had grown to contain the mind of God.  He had developed to a full understanding of divine wisdom.  As God, He knew what God knows.  And then it says also in verse 40, "The grace of God...or the favor of God...was upon Him," and that's because He was perfect, He was sinless, so He received the favor of God resting on Him as God's Son in whom He was well pleased.  He progressed from perfect innocence to perfect knowledge and perfect holiness.  He was tempted in all points, the temptations of an infant, the temptations of a young child, the temptations of an older child, yet without sin.

  Now that brings us to the incident at the age of twelve.  As I said, the only recorded incident in the first 30 years of His life, the only recorded words He is said to have spoken.  It is a monumental moment, it is the moment when He has developed humanly to the place where He fully understands the mind of God, He knows who He is and He knows why He has come. And He is here to reveal that.  This is Luke's affirming testimony of His identity.  It is also the moment in which He identifies Himself not only for all of us, but for Joseph and Mary who needed to much to understand who really was in charge of His life. 

  This revelation comes in a fascinating narrative.  Let's look again at verse 41.  "And His parents used to go to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover.  And when He became twelve they went up there according to the custom of the feast.  And as they were returning after spending the full number of days, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem and His parents were unaware of it, but supposed Him to be in the caravan and went a day's journey, and they began looking for Him among their relatives and acquaintances and when they didn't find Him, they returned to Jerusalem looking for Him."

  Now just a few brief comments.  Verse 42 indicates that He was twelve.  And again, in Jewish tradition because at the age of 13 you were a man, you were accountable, you had reached the point where you had developed physically and mentally to grasp the law of God and to be held to obedience to it, it was traditional because at the age of 13 you made that transition which later became called bar mitzvah and a ceremony was developed.  It was traditional that at the age of twelve and some Jewish writings say at the age of eleven and maybe even earlier, that the son was taken to the Passover so that that child at that point on the brink of accountability and responsibility would get a full and rich exposure to all of the implications of the law of God that were laid out in that wonderful event called Passover which occurred on a Sabbath and then was followed by a seven-day feast called the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

  So here is Jesus really on the brink of adulthood, in the last year that could be identified as childhood, fully conscience of His identity, fully conscious of His mission, taken by His parents to Jerusalem for the Passover that He might be exposed to the full richness of that, that He might fully understand to what He would be accountable very soon.  And so He goes with His parents to Jerusalem.  And as I tried to paint the picture for you last time, He watched the sacrificial lamb being slaughtered for His family to take and eat, and must have fully known in His own mind the imagery there was an image that pictured His own death as the Lamb of God.  There were as many as a quarter of a million animals slaughtered in that period of time in Jerusalem, the blood bath that was going on there must have been more vivid than we could ever imagine as Jesus was exposed to all of the slaughter and the butchery that was going on and the blood letting which all pictured Him, the Lamb of God, who alone could take away the sins of the world.  He knew that He was come to seek and to save that which was lost.  He knew He was a grain of wheat that would fall into the ground and die.  He knew that it was written that the Son of Man had to be lifted up to draw all men to Himself.  He knew that He had to die and three days later rise again.  He knew He was the lamb slain from before the foundation of the world.  The vividness of that captivated His mind, surely, in ways that are too far beyond our imagination to understand. 

  He also knew that His Father was the one in charge of His life.  He also knew that He belonged with the people of God in the temple of God, the place of God.  All of this had come on to His mind as He reached this point in His development where, as I said it in a summary, His human mind had reached the point of maturity where it could grasp the mind of God.  And so they take Him there.  Time for leaving in verse 43 and they go back 80 miles, three to four days, depending on whether they went 20 or 25 miles a day.  They spent the full number of days there. They were devout.  Most Jews spent two days, they spent eight.  And then the boy Jesus had been exposed to it all.

  When His parents started back, it says in verse 43, Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem.  His parents were not aware of it.  I told you they were traveling, as verse 44 indicates, in a large caravan, may well have been hundreds of people and typically the children would go out first so that they didn't wind up leaving them behind.  They would sort of set the pace at whatever pace children could walk.  They would be followed by the women and in the back would come the men.  The assumption was, as we noted in verse 44, that Jesus was with relatives or acquaintances, maybe He was with the younger men, maybe Joseph thought He was with the women, with Mary.  Maybe Mary thought He was back with the older men.  But they didn't think anything of it because Jesus always was exactly where He needed to be, exactly when He needed to be there.  They had never known Him to do anything other than what was right and absolutely appropriate and absolutely expected by His parents.  So they never gave it a thought until they gathered, according to verse 44, at night at the end of the first day's journey some 20 to 25 miles down the Jordan Valley from Jerusalem and realized He wasn't there and they started to look among relatives and acquaintances.  Didn't find Him.

  They would have to have waited overnight until the dawn of the next day and then, verse 45, return to Jerusalem and then waited until the next day, cause it's a full day journey back, and then began on that next day to look for Him.  And that's why verse 46 says, "It came about that after three days," one day out, one day back, and one day looking, "they finally found Him."

  And where did they find Him?  Of all places, they found Him in the temple.  And even that could be challenging.  I mean, there were hundreds of thousands of extra pilgrims in the city of Jerusalem looking for a 12-year-old boy among people who all dressed basically alike.  There weren't any ways to pick someone out of a crowd.  It would be a formidable task and even deciding to go and look at the temple area would be difficult.  I've been on the temple ground when it's filled with masses of thousands of people.  Even today it would be hard to find someone there.  You can only imagine what it had been like in a time when pilgrims were literally jamming the place to try to find one boy.  And so it wound up being a search that probably took a greater part of that third day since it says "after three days."

  They found Him in the...somewhere in the courtyards, the porticos, the porches, the bustling crowds that were in the temple area.  And when they did find Him, they found Him, it says in verse 46, "Sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions."

  They came upon a traditional typical scene, teachers seated.  That's how they taught in ancient Israel.  And seated in the middle of the teachers were the students, the pupils, Jesus being the pupil identified here, sitting in the midst of the teachers. 

  Now this maybe needs a little bit of discussion.  We don't know who these teachers were.  Luke is kind to them.  He calls them teachers, didaskalos is the word, and it's a word that he never uses to refer to Jewish teachers again.  From now on when he identifies them, he'll identify them as nomikos, lawyers, or grammateus, scribes, but he never calls them teachers again.  He reserves that word for John the Baptist and most particularly he reserves that word for Jesus.  Once Jesus became the teacher, nobody else is called by Luke a teacher.  But for now he gives them credit as teachers.

  The Passover has just ended.  Just after the Passover many people would linger, and most notably during the Passover, great teachers who were devout Jews would come from all over the dispersion, Jews have been scattered over the Roman world and even down into Africa.  They would come to the Passover so there would be a great come together of teachers.  This is an opportunity Jesus seized upon.  This is an opportunity that never would be afforded Him in the out-of-the-way place called Nazareth where He lived.  He'll be able to sit in the midst of the great Jewish teachers, those who are expert in the law, expert in the prophets, expert in the hagiography, the holy writings through sections of the Old Testament, the laws, the Pentateuch, the books of Moses, the prophets are the major and minor prophets in the holy writings, everything else law and history...or poetry and history.  And he would not have been exposed to these great minds, great teachers of the Old Testament in His own hometown.  And here He found His way into a gathering of these teachers.  As I said, His mind had reached the point where it could think God's thoughts and He now began to understand the fullness of the mind of God, the truth of God and that would, of course, be His passion.  That would, of course, be His delight.  That would, of course, be His consummate interest and He would not have found anything like this opportunity in Nazareth.  He would have wanted to know how they viewed the Old Testament.  He would have wanted to know how they viewed the prophecies regarding Messiah, how they reviewed the sacrificial system, how they reviewed the law of God because it was all related to divine truth which consumed His mind.

  So there He was.  But His posture is not of a teacher, it's of a student and it says that.  "He was sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions."  He was the listener.  He was the one hearing them.  This is a favorite method, by the way, of Jewish teaching, this dialogue method.  Frankly, I really love this kind of method and we've done it through the years here at Grace Church.  The customary pattern for teaching in Judaism, and even by the Apostle Paul, was for students to gather around the teachers and stimulate discussion by asking questions.  And this would engage the dialogue.  Paul says that in Acts, "He reasoned with them out of the Scripture," dialego, a question and answer format stimulating instruction on the part of the expert, the teacher.  And there was Jesus, not the teacher, but the stimulator.  And by the way, this is the only time ever in the gospels that Jesus is the learner, the only time.  He is the student here.  He will never be the student again.

  He has been growing, as verse 40 tells us.  He has been growing in His physical ability to comprehend.  He's reached the point where He understands the mind of God, He understands the wisdom of God.  He has that wisdom.  He's not asking for answers, I don't think, from these men but He's listening to how they understand the truth of God.  He has a consuming desire for it.  He has a hunger for discussing the truth of God, something that was all there ever was in preincarnate fellowship with God, in the presence of God when they were, of course, in that trinitarian glory before His condescension, He would fully have engaged in nothing but the wonders of divine truth.  And now His heart reaches out for that again.

  Some day He will also ask questions of teachers again.  But He will ask them questions that only He can answer. And as you go through the gospel of Luke and as you go through the other gospels, you'll find other times when Jesus asks questions to the religious leaders, but He always asks questions that they can't answer and then He answers them Himself.  And in so doing He uses this traditional methodology to literally cut through the hypocrisy and pierce to the heart of their apostate religious establishment.  But He isn't going to do that for another 18 years.  That is an immense test of patience, wouldn't you imagine?  Can you just imagine how many stupid conversations Jesus had to listen to over the next 18 years?  But He is here the young learner.

  Verse 47, "And all who heard Him were amazed at His understanding and His answers."  He was stimulating questions, obviously, they weren't capable of giving answers, or at least they sought out His view on things which is pretty remarkable when you think He's a twelve-year-old boy.  They were amazed, it says.  Wonder is associated with Christ.  Back in chapter 2 verse 18, "All who heard it wondered at the things which were told them by the shepherds."  Back in verse 33, "His father and mother, Joseph and Mary, were amazed at the things that are being said about Him."

  You're going to find that repeated throughout the gospel story.  He creates wonder and astonishment and amazement, the kind of wonder created by the presence and power and wisdom of God.

  But there is no conceit or pride here.  There's no self-centeredness, self-promotion, there's no arrogance.  He is a respectful boy.  He is a humble learner.  He is a questioner.  His questions are so penetrating and so insightful and so powerful that they generate astonishment on the part of the great teachers who surround Him.  His questions show deep wisdom.  They show clarity. They show precision.  And He gives answers that are staggering to the minds of these experts.

  Again, remember He knew who He was and He knew why He had come. And the imagery of the Passover was very clear in His mind as the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world.  And He saw a people frenetically engaged in acts that were endeavoring to offer some atonement for the overwhelming burden of their sins.  He could see the power of sin in the butchery that was taking place and in the guilt-ridden lives of the people.  He could see the hypocrisy of Judaism, all of it laid out to His now fully aware and wisdom-filled mind.  The questions must have dealt with those kinds of issues and they astonished these teachers.

  Well, verse 48, "His parents finally saw Him and they were astonished like the other people."  Jesus astonished everybody all the time.  But their astonishment was not so much because of the questions and dialogue that had been generated, but rather because of His location.  Maybe they thought He would be standing somewhere saying, "Where's My mommy...I don't know where My parents are, I'm lost, could you help Me?"  But He seemed absolutely impervious to any human circumstance.  He seemed absolutely lost, as it were, in the moment, without any regard or any concern for the whereabouts of His family and friends.  Here He was three days later.  Where had He stayed?  Where had He eaten?  Those things were not on His mind at all, apparently.  He was concentratingly engaged in a dialogue about the Old Testament.  It was amazing to His parents and then very personally perturbed because for three days they have been without Him, His mother says to Him in verse 48, "Son, why have You treated us this way?"

  She makes an effort to put some guilt on Him as if He had intended this to be somehow inflicting anxiety on His parents if He had done this for the purpose of making them worry or fear.  And by the way, this is the first time the sword pierces Mary's heart.  You remember back in chapter 2 verse 35, Simeon had said that this child is going to put a sword through your heart, Mary.  Well now it had been twelve years and there wasn't any sword.  This child had been nothing but a joy.  After escaping Herod, after escaping the slaughter, they had returned back from Egypt to Nazareth.  They had lived there for these years.  The child had been nothing but obedient, nothing but compliant, nothing but submissive, nothing but loving.  And certainly Mary loved that...that Son like no other child and certainly that Son loved her like no one ever loved her.  One can only imagine what it was like to have a perfect child, the sinless Son, God in human flesh with all the sensitivity and tenderness and kindness and mercy and grace that that child could bring to bear upon her life and Joseph's.  There had never been a sword, but now there's a sword. 

  This was inexplicable and we can understand the reasonableness of her query because she had never seen Jesus behave like this.  He had only done what would have been expected of Him every time, in every place, in every way.  And so, she says, "Why have You treated us this way?" She's taking it very personally.  Jesus never intended it to be personal, He wasn't treating her in any way, nor was He treating Joseph in any way.  It's a normal motherly rebuke and she cranks it up a bit by saying, "Behold," which is an exclamation, "Your father and I have been anxiously looking for You."  Do you realize how much anxiety You have caused us?

  At this point she assumes that He's been hiding from them and that He's inflicted this on them with some amount of will.  But He hasn't been hiding from them.  He hasn't been defying them.  He hasn't been disobeying them.  In fact, if you lost your child for a few days and you found him sitting in the church dialoguing with the theologians, you might conclude that he was in the best place, doing the best thing with the best people possible.  But they're taking it personal because of the stress of three days.  But Jesus didn't mean it in any way as disrespectful.  And the whole scene was necessary because it was necessary to establish His identity.  It was necessary to make an inevitable break between Jesus and His earthly family because they were just very temporary.  He had come to do the will of the Father, as He says over and over and over again, particularly in John's gospel that is recorded.  And though the break will not be implemented for 18 years, it is announced here.  We see that in verse 49.  

   "He said to them, 'Why is it that you were looking for Me?  Did you not know that I had to be in My Father's house?"  That's the crux of this whole text.  This is a profound, profound statement.  The only words recorded of Jesus in 30 years and they tell us who He was and why He came.  Very simple statement, "Why is it that you were looking for Me?  Did you not know that I had to be in My Father's house?"  In other words, you should have come here first, you know who My Father is and you know this is My true house.  I don't really belong in your house in Nazareth.  God is My true Father, I belong with His people in His house.

  You say, "Well, what was their response?"  Verse 50, "And they didn't understand the statement which He made to them."  They knew who He was.  They knew He was virgin conceived.  They had been told that by God through an angel. They knew He was the Son of the Most High God, conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Gabriel had announced that very clearly. They knew He was the Messiah, the Son of David.  They knew He was God in human flesh.  They knew twelve years of perfection.  They knew what kind of a child He was.  And in those days they had a family business, Joseph was a carpenter and the family business would be right there adjacent to the home they lived in.  Children weren't isolated from their parents, the whole family lived in one room.  They were together 24 hours a day for all the twelve years.  They intimately knew this child.  They knew everything about this child.  There was no such thing as a private world in which Jesus existed.  They knew exactly who He was and they could see it manifest in everything He said and did.  Of course they knew who He was.

  But they still didn't understand what He meant by what He said.  It was profound enough to be beyond their grasp, so profound that some of us are still trying to figure out what He meant.  In the ninth chapter of Luke, for example, Jesus is speaking to the disciples and He says, "Let these words sink into your ears, for the Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men."  That's what He says.  "But they did not understand this statement," verse 45.  There were a number of times when Jesus said something to the disciples and they didn't understand it.  And it goes on to say, "It was concealed from them so they couldn't perceive it and they were even afraid to ask Him about the statement so they just stood there befuddled by it."

  Well we understand that.  I mean, there are things in the Bible that Jesus said that we're still trying to get our arms around.  Now what He said in verse 49 wasn't clear to them.  But what He was saying was, "You're very temporary, God is My true Father and the home in Nazareth is very temporary, I belong in God's house with God's people."

  This was the sword, the first sword to pierce Mary.  But the time for implementing had not come, so in verse 51, "He went down with them."  You always go down from Jerusalem.  "And came to Nazareth and He continued in subjection to them...I might add...for 18 more years."  And again I say, how much ridiculous conversation did He listen to?  What constant flow of temptation to be impatient must have existed in His life.  But He continued for 18 years to be subject willingly until He was 30 years old and began His ministry.

  His relation to God, His true and eternal Father from which He was eternally generated, did not preclude or nullify His duty as a human to His earthly parents.  He would obey the fifth commandment, "To honor your father and mother."  He was an obedient child all through His birth to twelve years and He would be an obedient adult, submit Himself to His parents from the age of twelve to the age of 30.  Why is it necessary?

  They didn't understand the statement He made.  But He lived in subjection to them.  And Mary, it says, "Went on to treasure all these things in her heart."  She had a lot to think about, a lot to think about.  Back in chapter 2 verse 19 it says the same thing, when she heard from the shepherds, she treasured up all these things pondering them in her heart.  Mary had a lot to think about.  She had to realize that this Son was to be thought of as a Savior, that she had to exchange authority for submission.  She had to exchange commanding for obeying.  She had to exchange responsibility for redemption.  She had to exchange wonder over the child for worship of the child.

  In fact, a sword pierced her heart is recorded in Mark 3 when she came to find Jesus one time with some of her other children, brothers and sisters. And the crowd said, "Your mother is seeking You."  And Jesus said, "Who is My mother?  Whoever does the will of My Father in heaven, the same is My brother, My sister, My mother."  And He distanced Himself from that human relationship, not because He didn't love her, He loved her with a perfect love, but because she needed not to see Him as a Son to do what she wanted but as a Savior doing what the Father demanded.  In fact, Luke only mentions Mary one more time, just once more is Mary mentioned and that's in chapter 8 verses 19 to 21 where it refers to that very account that I just mentioned from Mark chapter 3.

  Turn to Luke 11:27, let me give you an interesting note.  Luke 11:27.  As you move further into the life of Christ, Luke 11:27, "It came about while He said these things one of the women in the crowd raised her voice."  Jesus was...was teaching, answering accusations and some woman raised her voice and said, "Blessed is the womb that bore You and the breasts at which You nursed."  That was a compliment.  "O my," this lady says, "Your mother is to be blessed, what a Son You are, O bless Your mother."  It would have been a perfect opportunity for Jesus to say, "Hail, Mary," you know?  Right?  What did He say?  "On the contrary," verse 28, "on the contrary, blessed are those who hear the words of God and observe it."  Whoa...perfect opportunity to affirm the grand significance of Mary.  He says, "She just goes right down where everybody else is and she's blessed if she's obedient to the Word of God."  This is the distancing. This is what's happening here in this incident.  This is what Mary kept in her heart and realized this child was God's Son in the truest sense and not her's.

  And then the adult years in verse 52, from the time of this incident when they went back to Nazareth until He began His ministry of preaching around the age of 30, "Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men."  He kept growing, prokopto, to advance, to progress.  He was first referred to in chapter 2 verse 16 as brephos, an infant; chapter 2 verse 40 as paidion, a little child; chapter 2 verse 43 as pais, a child; chapter 2 verse 52 He is Jesus...and the infant, and the child, and the boy, here Jesus.  Here He is in His adult life, still growing stronger physically in stature, still getting a greater grasp of divine truth and growing in spiritual favor with God because of the continual triumph over temptation, because of the continual victory that He wins and growing also in favor with men because of the wondrous perfection of His life.  He grew spiritually, physically, intellectually and socially.

  When Jesus next appears on the stage 18 years later, He will begin His ministry and He will become the teacher and He will make it clear that He is God's Son and He will move to die on the cross and rise again.  But for all those years of His life, up to the year He began His ministry and through His ministry, for all the 33 years of His life, He was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.  He was tempted as an infant the way infants are tempted, to be selfish, to be impatient.  He was tempted the way children are tempted, to be selfish and impatient and to have trivial and superficial thoughts and to be disrespectful and so forth and so on.  He was tempted the same way young people are tempted and the same way adults are tempted.  And as I said, in 18 years of knowing the answer to everything, He must have been tempted to be impatient with the stupidity around Him.  He was tempted, Hebrews 4:15, in all points, at all points He was tempted the same way everybody is tempted...is tempted.  In all the stages of life He was tempted, through every means that the enemy, the world, the flesh, the devil tempts, Jesus received those temptations yet was without sin.  He was holy, harmless, undefiled and separate from sinners.  This is a critical point. 

  You might ask the question, "Why does He have to live all these years?"  And as I have said in some teaching recently, "You know, if I was God and I said...Okay, I want You to go down and die for people.  I don't want this thing to be drawn out, all I ask is that since their redemption depends on Your death and resurrection, could I have You for the weekend?  Just go down on Friday, die, You'll be back Saturday night.  The whole deal is over."  What's the 33 years of grief, hostility, animosity, persecution, patience, temptation...what's the point of that?  And there's not even a record of it.  What's the point?

  The point is that He was living through an entire span of human life in perfection.  Let me show you something.  Hebrews 5:8 and 9, this is one of the great truths of Scripture.  He was a Son, He was Son, literally, you can take the "a" out of it.  "Although He was Son, Son of God, He learned obedience by the things which He suffered."   It's not talking about His death, it's talking about His life.  All through His life He is assaulted with temptation and temptation and temptation at every point as an infant, as a little child, as a boy, as a man, the whole of temptation is pushed on Him.  And He..He knew obedience as God in His mind, He understood what obedience was, of course, in His mind, but He learned it experientially because of all the temptation that He suffered and over which He triumphed.  He experienced obedience and every temptation that came He learned what obedience was like because He obeyed.  And verse 9, "That is what made Him perfect and able to become to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation."

  He had to live a perfect life to be the source of eternal salvation.  You say, "Well I still don't understand that."  Second Corinthians 5:21 says it this way, you know I love this verse, "He made Him who knew no sin...Christ...sin for us in order that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."

  Now you understand what it means "He made Him sin," that is to say He judged Him on the cross for our sin, not His own, He didn't have any.  And the way I like to say it is, on the cross God treated Jesus as if He lived your life.  That is a great truth.  On the cross, God treated Jesus as if He lived my life.  And God literally judged Jesus as if He were me.  God punished Jesus for my sin.  So I say on the cross God treated Jesus as if He lived my life.  That's substitution.

  But that's not where it ends.  Now, listen to this one, He treats me as if I lived Jesus' life.  Can you grasp that?  There had to be a perfect life lived to be credited to your account.  That's the other side of the great doctrine of substitution.  That is just staggering to me.  He was an infant, He was a little child, He was a boy, He was a man, He was tempted at all points all the way through all of that and He suffered those temptations and suffered them to the max because He never caved in so He got the full blow of temptation.  He never sinned.  He therefore became perfect through that and His perfection qualifies Him to be the author of eternal salvation because it is that perfect life that it is...that is credited to your account.  If you didn't have a perfect life credited to your account, you couldn't have eternal salvation.  So He had to take your place on the cross and die as if He lived your life, and then He had to live a perfect life that could be credited to your account.  And when it says you have a righteousness, Philippians 3, not your own but the righteousness of God, it means that the literal, perfect, righteous life of Jesus Christ has been put to your account and God treats you as if you lived His life.  That's a staggering, staggering thing.

  He couldn't come down just for the week-end.  He couldn't just come down and die.  That would be Him taking our place.  He had to come down and live a perfect life so that we can take His place before God.  And for a brief moment here it all comes into focus.  "I'm not really your Son, Joseph Mary, God is My Father.  I don't really belong in your house, I belong in My Father's house."  And here you see the wonder of divine Sonship.  He is the true Son of God who delights to do His Father's will and who lived the perfect life that it might be accredited to the account of a worthless sinner for whom He died.

  ---

   

  The Amazing Child Who Was God, Part 3

  Luke 2:49

  Obviously in the world there are many opinions about Jesus Christ.  Some have called Him a great religious leader.  Some have called Him a misguided revolutionary.  Some have called Him a noble, Jewish rabbi, and it goes on and on and on and on.  Whatever may be human opinion doesn't interest us, we want to know the truth and the truth comes to us in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and the rest of the writers of the New Testament as to the identity of Jesus Christ.

  And Luke is very concerned that we understand who Jesus Christ is.  And so two long chapters begin this gospel...chapter 1 and 2, and they are dedicated to settling the question of the identity of Jesus Christ.  We have heard the testimony of an old priest and his wife by the name of Zacharias and Elizabeth.  We have heard the testimony to the identity of Jesus from Joseph and Mary.  We have heard the testimony of Gabriel, the archangel.  We have heard the testimony of angels who came to the shepherds in the fields.  We have heard the testimony of an old man in the temple by the name of Simeon and an old lady in the temple by the name of Anna.  And Luke has basically assembled all of these witnesses, human and angelic, to affirm the identity of Jesus Christ.  And, of course, the angels who came to announce the birth of Jesus Christ came from God so we have the word of God on this as well given to us in the account of the angels.

  So Luke has really called on testimony to the identity of Jesus from heaven and earth both.  But there's one other testimony that is very important and it really culminates and finishes off these two introductory chapters, and that is the testimony of Jesus Himself.  It's fine to say that Zacharias and Elizabeth knew He was God in human flesh, the Messiah, the Savior of the world.  It's fine to say that Gabriel knew that, the angels knew that, Anna knew it, Simeon knew it.  It's fine to say Joseph knew it and Mary knew it because they had been told by God through angels.  But what about Jesus?  Did He really understand who He was?  Or is this a case of people and angels perhaps telling Him something that He was merely trying to live up to?  And so Luke tells us in chapter 2 verse 49 that Jesus said, "Why is it that you were looking for Me?  Did you not know that I had to be in My Father's house?"  And here you have the only recorded words of Jesus in the first 30 years of His life, the only thing that is recorded in Scripture that came out of the mouth of Jesus in three decades...one simple statement.

  You remember that Jesus was in the temple, He had been there for three days while His parents had started on their way back to Nazareth, returned and looked for Him for a full day and they finally found Him and He was in the middle of all the teachers and He was in dialogue with them and He was asking them questions and they were giving Him answers.  And apparently even asking Him questions to which He gave answers and they were staggered and astonished and amazed at His understanding and His answers.  And His parents walk into the scene and He's not at all flustered, He's not at all worried, even though He's a twelve-year-old boy.  He's been separated from His parents and all alone in a large city of Jerusalem.  He's not all concerned about those earthly matters.  He is busy discussing theology with the...with the elite teachers of Israel. 

  And His parents then ask Him why He has done this, and can't He imagine how worried they had been?  To which He replies, "I had to be in My Father's house."  It is the first time any individual ever claimed God as His personal Father.  It is true that the Jews saw God as the Father of the universe in a creative sense and they saw God as the Father of their nation in a national sense.  He had brought the universe into existence, certainly had brought the nation of Israel in existence when He chose Abraham. But nobody had the audacity to say, "God is My Father," in an intimate personal sense because that had tremendous implications.  But Jesus at the age of twelve had grown physically, mentally, spiritually to a place where His human mind could grasp the mind of God.  He after all was God and man.  And by the time He reached twelve, His human mind had developed where He understood who He was and why He had come.  and so here you have the single statement in three decades of His life recorded in Scripture, and it is a statement identifying Himself as God's Son.  This is monumental.

  It tells us in verse 50 that His parents, Joseph and Mary, didn't understand the statement which He had made to them.  They understood that He was virgin conceived and had no earthly father.  They understood that He was sinless, they had lived with Him for twelve years, they had seen that.  They understood that He was the Messiah, that He was the King fulfilling the Davidic promise, that He was the seed of Abraham to bring about the fulfillment of Abrahamic promise.  They realized that He was the Savior who would bring New Covenant fulfillment.  So they knew that He would fulfill the Abrahamic, the Davidic, and the New Covenant.  They knew that He was conceived by the Holy Spirit. They even knew because the angel told them in Luke 1:35, He would be the Son of God.  They knew that.  But the full meaning of that just was not clear to them.

  When Jesus said to Mary and Joseph, "I had to be in My Father's house," you'll notice "house" is in italics, it's not in the original.  Some translations say, "I had to be about My Father's business," but the preposition here is en which means "in."  I had to be in My Father's...and you could say place or house and be accurate.  It was the place that He was in that He was referring to.  And where was He?  He was in the temple.  You could say, "I had to be in My Father's temple...I had to be in My Father's place...I had to be in the place that's identified with My Father.  My home isn't with you, you're not My parents, really.  My Father is heavenly and this is our home, His temple."

  He was not really Joseph's son, He was not really Mary's son, He was the Son of God.  Now, folks, that becomes the definitive reality of Christian doctrine.  Whenever you find a cult, whenever you find anything that deviates, perverts and twists the Christian gospel, they will do so at the point of the nature of Christ.  Whether Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Science, Mormons, you name it, they will all deny this reality because in so doing you destroy Christianity.  That is why the Apostle Paul said in a blanket statement in Galatians 1, "If anyone preaches another Jesus, or another Christ, let him be anathema."  Any other view of Christ other than that which is true of Him brings a curse.

  So Jesus says God is My Father.  They knew that because the temple belonged to God and that's where He was.  They knew exactly who He was referring to.  He was saying, "God is My Father.  I am the Son of God."  And this was more than their minds could grasp because they could understand at least some of the implications, though not all of them.  With that confession as a twelve-year-old boy, Jesus made crystal clear to everybody who He was.  With that confession we are allowed in some ways to look through the mysterious curtain that separates the natural from the supernatural, that separates the human from the divine and get a glimpse of the wonder of divine Sonship.

  This issue of divine Sonship has occupied theologians for centuries, really, and even today when you've studied all that can be studied about divine Sonship, you're still left with a great measure of mystery because we cannot fully comprehend God.  But by this confession Jesus takes Himself out of the human realm.  He takes Himself out from under His earthly parents and places Himself on the divine realm and places Himself under the will and authority of God who is His true Father.  He is saying God is My Father.  He is saying God is My authority.  I do God's will.  He is saying the force controlling everything in My life is God. And He's saying to His parent...You should have known that.  Why are you looking around for Me?  You should have known that the force in My life, the power in My life, the will in My life, the authority in My life comes down from My Father who is God.  You should have come here immediately and first and known this is where I'd be.

  Jesus is establishing what 18 years later will take place in fact, and that is that He will no longer be under the authority of His parents.  He would step out as a 30-year-old man into the fullness of His ministry that God had called Him to do.  But God was His Father.  God was His authority.  God's will was His mandate.

  In Luke's gospel chapter 10, and I want to unfold this because this is cardinal to Christian doctrine.  In Luke chapter 10 verse 21 Jesus said, "I praise Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou didst hide these things from the wise and intelligent and didst reveal them to babes.  Yes, Father, for thus it was well pleasing in Thy sight.  All things have been handed over to Me by My Father and no one knows who the Son is except the Father and who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son reveals to Him."  Again He links Himself to the Father.  He is the Father's Son.  He is linked to the Father.  It's an incomprehensible identification unless He Himself reveals it to someone.

  The gospel of John is the gospel that makes the most of this.  In fact, look at John chapter 6 for a moment and I'm going to give you a little quick look at these texts.  John 6:37, Jesus again claims to be the Son of God.  This, of course, later on when He had begun His ministry, He says in verse 37, "All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me. The one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out for I have come down from heaven not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me."  Again He says God is My Father and I do precisely what God desires Me to do.  "This is the will of Him who sent Me," verse 39, "that of all that He has given Me I lose none but raise Him up on the last day.  This is the will of My Father that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him may have eternal life and I Myself will raise Him up on the last day."  So He says I came to do the Father's will, the Father's will has to do with salvation.

  In chapter 8 verse 18, "I am He who bears witness of Myself and the Father who sent Me bears witness of Me."  In verse 19, "You know neither Me nor My Father.  If you knew Me, you would know My Father also."  It is true that one cannot grasp, and Joseph and Mary couldn't, and no one can really grasp this relationship unless God reveals it.  It is, after all, a supernatural one.

  Down in verse 28 of John 8 it says at the end of the verse, "I speak these things as the Father taught Me."  I do the Father's will, I speak what the Father tells me to say.  Verse 29, "He who sent Me is with Me.  He has not left Me alone for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him.  I do what pleases the Father.  I do what the Father teaches Me to do. I do what the Father wills for Me to do.  That's all I do."  Again establishing that God is the authority in His life.

  Down in verse 38 of John 8, "I speak the things of which I have seen with My Father."  And again He adds, "I do the Father's will, I do what the Father teaches Me.  I do what pleases the Father.  And I do what I have seen with My Father."  Every possible way He says He does God's will.

  Down in verse 49, "I don't have a demon," they were accusing Him of having a demon, "but I honor My Father."  There you have it again.  "I do the Father's will.  I do what pleases the Father.  I do what the Father tells Me to do, or teaches Me to do.  I do what the Father shows Me to do and I do what honors the Father."

  Down in verses 54 and 55, "If I glorify Myself, My glory's nothing.  It's My Father who glorifies Me of whom you say He is our God and you have not come to know Him.  But I know Him and if I say that I do not know Him, I would be a liar like you.  But I do know Him and I keep His Word."  Again, Jesus reiterating again and again every way you could possibly say it, that He does exactly what the Father tells Him to do.  That is His mandate.  That is what He is committed to doing.

  Over in chapter 10 there are three verses that add to our understanding.  Chapter 10 verse 17, "For this reason the Father loves Me because I lay down My life that I may take it again, no one has taken it from Me, I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down.  I have authority to take it up again.  This commandment I received from My Father."  So He says it again, I do what the Father commands Me.  I do what He wills.  I do what He teaches.  I do what He shows Me.  I do what He takes pleasure in.  I do what honors Him.  I do what glorifies Him.  I do what He commands Me to do, that's what I do.

  That is why in Luke's gospel, as you read through Luke's gospel there's this divine necessity.  As you go through and you watch Christ, there's this divine mandate.  And it says in Luke 4:43 that Jesus must preach.  In Luke 9:22, that He must suffer.  In Luke 13:33, that He must go on His way.  Or in Luke 19:5, that He must stay at the house of Zacchaeus.  Or in Luke 24:7, He must be delivered up, crucified and rise again.  Or in Luke 22:37, 24:26, I must suffer these things and enter into glory.  And in Luke 24:44, He must fulfill all the Old Testament prophecies with reference to Himself.  There's this divine must all the way through which is none other than the Father's will.

  So He's telling His parents here in the text, back to Luke 2, and He's telling everybody who would ever read this that the priority for His life was to do the Father's will.  He was doing His Father's will and that is because God was His Father and He was the Son of God.  That's what He's saying.  This is His great claim to being the Son of God.

  So, His parents need to understand that, and so does everybody else need to understand it.  This becomes definitive, folks.  If you understand this concept, you will understand the flow of the gospel of Luke and all the other gospels as well, because it is this very issue that culminates in the execution of Jesus Christ.  But it's absolutely essential to understand it, so let me see if I can't help you with that this morning, a little bit of theology this morning.

  Luke 1:35, Gabriel says to Mary, "The holy offspring shall be called the Son of God."  So the angels identified Him as the Son of God.

  Mark 1:1, Mark begins his gospel, "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

  John 1:34, John says, "I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God."  Nathanael...John 1:49, Nathanael says to Him, "Teacher, You are the Son of God." 

  Matthew 14:33, "And those who were in the boat worshiped Him saying, 'You are certainly the Son of God.'"

  John 11:27, Martha says, "Yes, Lord, I have believed that You are Christ, the Son of God."

  So as the gospels unfold, the gospel writers are very clear to articulate that this is the Son of God.  The writers say that and they record the testimony of people, like Martha and Nathanael, also saying the same thing as well as those who were in the boat that day.  This is affirmed again and again.  When you get out of the gospels, you get in to the book of Acts.  You read about the Apostle Paul in Acts 9:20, he preached Christ, that He is the Son of God.  That's what Paul preached.  Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

  In Romans 1:4 when Paul wrote the epistle to the Romans, he said that Jesus is declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead.  And all the way through the epistles, for example, 2 Corinthians 1:19, "For the Son of God, Christ Jesus, who was preached among you by us."  Galatians 2:20 refers to the Son of God.  Ephesians 4:13 refers to the Son of God.  And then in Hebrews 4:14, Hebrews 6:6, Hebrews 7:3, Hebrews 10:29, the Son of God, the Son of God, the Son of God.  First John 3:8, 1 John 4:15, 5:5, 5:12, 13, 20; Revelation 2:18, He's called the Son of God.  And I give you those scriptures, obviously you probably couldn't write them down that fast, but it will be on the tape...1 John, Hebrews, it's a lot of places, you can look it up yourself.

  The bottom line is that the gospel writers were clear He was the Son of God. The angels from heaven were clear He was the Son of God.  The apostles who preached Jesus knew He was the Son of God.  Let me go a little further, even Satan knew He was the Son of God.  Satan in Matthew 4 and Luke 4 both record the temptation of Jesus.  Satan, you remember, tempted Jesus in the wilderness and he said to Him, "If..or since You are the Son of God do this...  Since You are the Son of God do this...Since You are the Son of God do this..." and he tempted Him three times.  But he was affirming those temptations on the basis that Jesus was the Son of God.  So even Satan himself gives testimony to Jesus as the Son of God.  The demons in Matthew 8:29 said,  "What have we to do with You, Son of God?"  Even the demons know that Jesus is Son of God.  Luke 4:41, "And demons also were coming out of many, crying and saying, 'You are the Son of God.'" 

  So, whether you're talking about angels or men or Satan or demons, the universal testimony of the New Testament is that Jesus is the Son of God.  Even an unbeliever, the Centurion, who was in charge of the crucifixion of Jesus, standing on the Mount of the Crucifixion in Matthew 27:54, the Centurion says, "Truly this was the Son of God."  Every testimony by every personage indicates that this is the Son of God. That's why John in his gospel, chapter 20 verse 31, says, "These have been written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and that believing you may have life in His name."

  Now, folks, this becomes critical to any understanding of Christian doctrine.  He is the Son of God.  You have it from Satan.  You have it from demons.  You have it from angels.  You have it from people.  And in this particular statement in Luke 2:49 you have it from the lips of Jesus Himself.  You also have it from God.  You find in the gospels that God several times says, "This is My beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased."

  Now this then becomes the single most important claim that Jesus makes.  To say you are the Savior, is one thing.  To say you are the King is something.  To say you are the Deliverer is some...those are important.  But to say you are the Son of God is above those other things.  And I'll show you that.  In fact, it was the claim to be the Son of God that really led to His execution.

  Turn to John 5 and verse 18.  This unfolds and we'll see this as we go through Luke, but in John 5, in Jesus ministry, hostility began early toward Him.  And in John 5:18, well let's look at verse 17, Jesus said, "My Father is working until now and I Myself am working."  Whew...He called God His Father, nobody did that...nobody had the audacity to do that.  To call God His Father and to say that the Father's working and I'm working on an equal level was intolerable, and so in verse 18, "For this cause therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him." They already wanted to kill Him, but they were seeking all the more because He not only was breaking their Sabbath law but was calling God His own Father, nobody ever did that.  And they saw it as making Himself equal with God.  If you want to know what it means to be the Son of God, it means to be equal with God.  That's the way the Jews understood it, that's exactly what it meant.  That's exactly what He was claiming, to be equal with God, to be God.  They understood that because He was using "Son" in their cultural vernacular...and I'll say more about that in a little bit.

  Go over to chapter 10...chapter 10 verse 36.  Now they are accusing Him of blasphemy and so He says, "Do you say of Him, whom the Father sanctified, or set apart, and sent into the world, You are blaspheming because I said I am the Son of God?"  And that's exactly what the issue was.  He said He was the Son of God and they said You are a blasphemer.  You can't make that claim because to say You are the Son of God is to say You are equal to God, it is to say You are of the same essence, nature, rights, privileges and honors as God.  This...this became the intolerable claim of Jesus to unbelieving Israel.

  Chapter 19 of John, "They dragged Jesus before Pilate," this is such a fascinating part of His life, I just in the last few days finished editing the book called The Murder of Jesus and going through all the trial, be out in February, just an unbelievably fascinating record of the death of Jesus.  But they dragged Him before Pilate and they really didn't have any legitimate claims.  And Pilate says in verse 6, "You know, you need to take care of Him yourself, crucify Him if you want, I don't find any guilt in Him."  And then in verse 7 they say this, "The Jews answered him, 'We have a law and by that law He ought to die because He made Himself out to be the Son of God.'"  That was absolutely intolerable. That constituted blasphemy because to say you were the Son of God is to say you were equal with God.  That is the only way you can understand that phrase, that is the way the Jews understood it.  And I'll explain why they understood it that way in a bit.  But in Matthew 26 verse 63, "Jesus kept silent before Caiaphas," another part of His trial, "and the high priest said to Him, 'I adjure You, or I command You by the living God that You tell us whether You are the Christ, the Son of God.'"  That was the accusation.  The high priest says, "You've got to tell us whether You are the Son of God."

  Chapter 27 verse 40, they started mocking Him.  He's on the cross, He's nailed there, He's hanging on the cross and in verse 40 they say, "If You're the Son of God, come down from the cross." Sarcasm, mockery.  Verse 43, "He trusts in God, let Him deliver him now if he takes pleasure in Him because He said I am the Son of God." That was the issue.  At the age of twelve the die was cast.  When Jesus said, "My Father," He was saying He's the Son of God.  Nobody ever said that.  Now this is His identity and it is this identity that truly identifies Him and it is this identity that ultimately ended in His execution.

  Now what does it mean to say you are the Son of God?  And why did it infuriate the Jewish leaders to the degree that it did?

  Simply, the answer is this.  To say you're the Son of God is to claim deity.  It is to claim to be equal with God, and that if not true is blasphemy.  If not true it is blasphemy.  If true, it is not.  And for you to mock Him is blasphemy.

  Now let me make it clear. Every time the title "Son of God" is applied in the Scripture to Christ, it always refers to His essential deity, His absolute, eternal equality with God.  He is a member of the trinity who has always existed as God the Son.  It is not a human title.  It is not an earthly title.  It is a divine title.  And this is essential to understanding the identity of Jesus and sets the stage for everything that unfolds in His life to come.

  Now let me give you a little further explanation. Whenever you see the title "Son of God" in Scripture, it always refers to His essential deity and absolute equality with God, always.  That is what is meant by Sonship, He is equal to God.  The problem we have is that in modern times in the English language, in our conceptions, and even in Greek, it doesn't always give us the significance it should.  For example, if I say someone is the son of Bill and Sally, or whoever, you understand that to mean the first generation male offspring of that couple, so that "son" for us means birth, "son" for us means generation, "son" for us means coming into existence from some source.

  But that is not the primary sense of the word "son" in Jewish culture.  "Son" to them had some idiosyncracies that filled it with different meaning.  When they refer to someone as a son, they were not talking about origin. They were not talking about source. They were not talking about birth.  Son, whether bar in Hebrew or huios in Greek in the New Testament, can be used to refer to a child who is simply born as a son.  But the more technical sense of son is that it reserves itself to speak of someone who has been admitted to the full status of an adult.  I already told you this, but I'll just review it very briefly.  In Luke as the story of Jesus unfolds, first the word brephos was used which is the word "infant."  And then paidos, a little child, and then pais, boy, so you'll notice down in Luke chapter 2 verse 43 Jesus is referred to as a boy. That's pretty consistent with the way we should understand the word son.  A boy was a boy, a child was a child, an infant was an infant.  A son was someone who had reached adulthood.  When the boy became a man, he then became a son so that a son meant he has reached equality with his father.  He has now become a son...a son.  He has entered into maturity, adulthood.  And the Jews eventually instituted what's called bar mitzvah, son of the law.  They did that and they still do it today at the age of 13, a boy at the age of 13 is considered to be a man.  He becomes a son.  He has been a child...he's been an infant, he's been a child, he's been a boy and now he's a bar mitzvah, son of the commandment, son of the law, or he's a son in the sense that he's equal with the father.

  So son in the Hebrew culture didn't look at origin and it didn't look at generation, it didn't look at birth, it looked at adulthood.  It was the time when the son became equal to his father unto the law.  It was the time when the son equal to his father in terms of the adult responsibility.  It was the time when the son began to receive his inheritance and enter in to all of the privileges that the father had reserved for him when he became a son. 

  So that "son" comes to mean "equal to," or "one with."  And I can show you this throughout Scripture.  For example, many, many times in the Scripture you see the word "son" used this way, has nothing to do with origin, has nothing to do with birth, has nothing to do with begetting, it has nothing to do with someone coming into the world through anybody, it's a term that refers to "one with," or "equal."  And that is the Jewish way of looking at it. 

  For example, there was in the early church, according to acts 4:36, a man named Barnabas.  You remember Barnabas?  Barnabas is called a son of encouragement.  Now his mother wasn't named encouragement, neither was his father.  He was a son in the sense that he was so much an encouragement that he was one with encouragement.  He was just equal to encouragement.  Barnabas was synonymous with encouragement.  And that is consistent with the way the word "son" is used.

  For example, James and John are called the sons of thunder in Mark 3:17.  That doesn't mean that their mother's name was thunder or their father's name was thunder. That's not the case.  It simply identifies their primary characteristics. They were "bull in a China closet" type people. They just came thundering in to every situation.  They were called therefore sons of thunder because they were one with that.  They were equal to thunder.  That was a way to describe their personality.

  In Matthew 23:15 there are certain people who are described by Jesus as being a son of hell.  That doesn't mean that hell gave birth to the individual, it simply means that this is a person who has all of the characteristics of those who occupy hell.  Also, 2 Thessalonians 2:3 and John 17:12 refer to a son of perdition, John 17:12, the son of perdition is Judas and 2 Thessalonians 2:3 the son of perdition is the Antichrist.  It doesn't mean they were born of perdition, it means they were equal to perdition.  In other words, they were synonymous with damnation and destruction because that was their character.

  In Ephesians 2:2 every unbelieving person alive is called the son of disobedience.  It doesn't mean you were born out of a disobedient act, it simply means you are one with or equal to disobedience.  Your character is that of disobedience.

  Luke 16:8 as well as John 12:36 refers to believers as sons of light.  It doesn't mean anything about origins, it doesn't mean anything about birth or generation.  It simply means we have all the characteristics of the truth and the light.

  Matthew 13:38 says the tares which are false believers in the church are called the sons of the wicked one.  They aren't the offspring of Satan in some strange and bizarre fashion, they simply have so much identified with Satan's character that they are literally equal to or one with him.

  The same is true in Deuteronomy 13:13 to use a Jewish illustration where men are called bar Belial, sons of Belial. That is they are worthless, utterly worthless, having taken on the characteristics of Belial, which is an Old Testament word for Satan. And they are sons of in the sense that they are equal to or one with Satan.

  In Luke 20:36 there is a wonderful expression, "the sons of the resurrection."  It doesn't have anything to do with origins and it doesn't have anything to do with offspring generation. It has to do with the fact that our character is identified with the resurrection.  We are the resurrection people.  We are characterized by resurrection.  Do you know already you have resurrection life?  So that though your body dies you will never die but you'll enter in to the glory of the Lord, you are already the possessor of resurrection, so you are a son of the resurrection.  That's characteristic of your life.

  Mark 2:19 talks about the sons of the bride chamber. That is those who are identified with the bridegroom when He comes and the great bridal feast, those who belong as the wife of the bridegroom.  In Luke 10:6 a son of peace, somebody who is identified completely with peace.  And in Matthew 8:12 we are called sons of...some people are called sons of the kingdom. They...they're in the kingdom, they're identified with the kingdom. That is the essence of that term.

  Now, just all of those are illustrations, about a dozen illustrations, to show you that the meaning...none of those have to do with origin, none of those have to do with some point of beginning.  They have to do with characteristics.  So when Jesus says He's the Son of God, He doesn't mean He just came into existence, He doesn't mean He was just born in Bethlehem and prior to that He didn't exist, He doesn't mean anything about origins.  He's using it in the classic Jewish sense where son means equal to or one with. And when He says He's the Son of God He means He's equal to God or one with God.  That is He is of the same essence, the same nature, the same character, the same rights, the same privileges as God Himself.  And so that is the point.

  And that's why when Jesus said He is the Son of God, the Jews immediately said He has made Himself equal to God. They completely understood that. He was claiming to be equal with God, John 5:18 and John 10:33.

  Now there are a couple of other terms that can enrich our understanding of this.  John calls Jesus five times the only begotten Son of God. And we might ask the question...well that does bring in begetting, doesn't it?  Doesn't that tell us that there wasn't a Son of God, and then He was begotten by Mary and then He came into existence?  Isn't that what that means, the only begotten?

  Well let me answer that.  The term "only begotten" in the Greek, monogenes, gennao to be born, and mono only, the only begotten can refer to an only child.  I mean, you could use that to refer to somebody who had an only child, the only begotten child.  But again, in the Jewish context of the full meaning of monogenes, it didn't have anything to do with the fact that this is the only child that was born to a couple.  It had to do with the fact that this was a title given to a son who had been chosen by his father to receive the full inheritance.  It's the same as the word prototokos which Paul uses a lot, which we often translate "firstborn."  And it doesn't mean the firstborn in time chronologically, it means of all that have been born the first. And again, monogenes, of all that have been born, this one alone is the chosen to receive the inheritance, the one chosen for privilege.

  Now I can illustrate that.  Hebrews 11:17, you don't need to look it up, Hebrews 11:17, Isaac, now was Isaac Abraham's first son?  Ishmael.  So Isaac was not his only begotten son in the sense that he had no other son.  But Hebrews 11:17, Isaac is referred to as Abraham's monogenes, his only begotten.  Now he had another son, an older brother, half brother.  That was not Abraham's only son, but he was Abraham's monogenes which means he was the choice son to receive the Covenant and receive the inheritance.  It does not mean the only son of Abraham when it says that.  He had...Abraham had other sons, even a son older than Isaac.  But when it says he was monogenes it means that he was the premier one, he was given the special place as primary heir. And that's because Isaac was given the Covenant promise back in Genesis 22.  And Abraham was...in Genesis 22 when Abraham was going to kill Isaac, remember, you often wonder how could he do that.  I'll tell you how cause Hebrews tells us.  Hebrews 11, it says, "Because he believed God would do...what?...raise him from the dead."  Why did he believe that God would raise Isaac from the dead?  Because God had promised through Isaac that he would fulfill His covenant.  And God knew that if He was going to take his life He'd have to give it back again.

  So Isaac was clearly the monogenes of Abraham because he was the son of covenant promise.  It wasn't Ishmael.  It wasn't anybody else.

  So when you see the word "son" you are talking about one who has come to adulthood, to equality with the father...and that's exactly the way the Jews understood it.  You're talking about in the sense that only begotten son, which John uses five times, you're talking about the one who has been selected as the heir of the father, who has been given all the promises of God and who will become the heir of the universe.  And we know that to be the case as we read in Psalm 2, and we'll look at that in a moment.  And you see the familiar word prototokos which is translated firstborn so often used by Paul, it means the same thing, it means the premier one, the heir to all that God possesses.

  So when John writes this is the only begotten Son of God, the Jews know exactly what He's saying.  They're claiming this is one who was equal with God, has the very essence of God, He is the Son of God.  Not only that, He is the select and chosen Son of God who has been given the full inheritance of God.  That is to say He has all the nature of God, He has all the rights of God, He has all the power of God, He has all the privileges of God.  That was the claim Jesus made and that is what they constituted as blasphemy and it was for that that they executed Him, because they refused to believe though it was in fact true.

  So when you see the term monogenes or prototokos, you're looking at the premier not at the only, in the sense that there were no others.  Not in the sense of first chronologically, but in the sense of first in preeminence.

  Let me show you this just briefly.  Psalm 2, I read it earlier and I want to point this out to you because I think it's an important thing to note.  Jesus is the eternal Son of God.  He's the Son by eternal nature and privilege and name and inheritance.  But I want you to notice how this is indicated to us in Psalm 2.  "He said to Me, Thou art My Son," verse 7, God says to the second member of the trinity, God the Son, "Thou art My Son, today I have begotten Thee."  Verse 8, "Ask of Me and I'll give the nations as Your inheritance." There again, you see, He is identified as a Son as evidenced by the fact that He is given the inheritance.  Sonship is connected with inheritance.  It's not an issue of origin because there was never an origin of Jesus, was there?  Not the eternal Son of God. There was an origin of the man, Jesus, born to Mary, but the eternal Son of God had no origin.  He is eternal.  He always was.  He even said, "Before Abraham was, I am."  There never was a time when the second member of the trinity, God the Son, didn't exist.  There never was a time when He was begotten in the sense that He didn't exist and then He came into existence. 

  Rather, His Sonship is not so much connected with Him coming into existence as it is with receiving the inheritance.  Interestingly enough also in Hebrews 1 that same passage is quoted, Psalm 2 is quoted in Hebrews 1.  And it says, "Thou art My Son, today I have begotten Thee," in verse 5, "And I'll be a Father to Him and He'll be a Son to Me."  And then immediately He says when He brings the firstborn into the world, He says, "Let all the angels of God worship Him."  And then in verse 8 He says to the Son, "Your throne, O God, is forever and ever and the righteous scepter is the scepter of Your Kingdom."

  In other words, again Sonship is associated with rank, rule, and inheritance.  Back in verse 4, "He had inherited a more excellent name."  It's about His inheritance His rule, about His sovereignty so that both in Psalm 2 and in Hebrews 1 the emphasis is, listen to this word, on enthronement, the assumption of enthronement and authority. That's what identifies the Son.  He is a Son because He is equal with God.  He is the only begotten and the firstborn because He is the One who will receive all the inheritance, because He is God He will possess all that belongs to God.

  In Hebrews chapter 5 that Psalm 2 is quoted again in verse 5, "Thou art My Son, today I have begotten Thee," and then He goes immediately to say, "Thou art a priest forever."  And then He goes on to talk about the death of Jesus in verse 9, how He became the source of eternal salvation.  So here Sonship was manifested in His work of salvation.  He is a Son because He is the author of eternal salvation.  He is a Son because He is the inheritor of all that God possesses.  He is a Son because He is equal to God.

  When Psalm 2 identifies the Son, it is identifying one who is equal with God, who will enter into the fullness of that Sonship through His death, burial, resurrection, ascension and enthronement.  Some day, as we know, He will have all the full rights and privileges as Son of God in the coming glorious millennial Kingdom and then in the eternal new heaven and new earth.  When it says He's a Son, it's saying all of that.

  Here's a twelve-year-old boy who says to His parents, "My Father...I need to be in My Father's house."  And in so saying He is clearly identifying Himself as God the Son, God the only begotten, the monogenes, the prototokos, the premier one, the one who will receive the inheritance, the one who is equal with God.  The Sonship will  unfold and be manifest through His perfect life, through His substitutionary and atoning death, resurrection, His ascension, His enthronement, His glorious coming Kingdom and His eternal reign.  He will reign as the promise came from Gabriel forever and ever.  That was Jesus' claim and it was that very claim to be God a very God, equal with God, the inheritor of all that God possesses that infuriated the apostate leaders of Israel and drove them to execute Him with what they perceived as blasphemy.  And in so doing, they blasphemed the very God they executed.

  This is the Son of God.  If you understand that, then you understand the gospel story. It unfolds from that great truth. And when someone does not acknowledge that this is God, the eternal God the Son who is the eternal Son, who came into the world to receive all that God had prepared for Him, to obey willingly all God's will, to accomplish redemption and enthronement forever and ever, this is that Son.  If you understand that then you understand the Christian gospel.  If you don't believe that, no matter what you believe, you can't be saved. There's not salvation in any other name then the name of Jesus which embodies all that He is.

  Well Jesus made that claim at the age of twelve in a simple statement.  His mother and father couldn't grasp the full sense of it. I trust we can grasp its significance this morning.  He came as God the Son.  He came to do the Father's will.  He came to die.  He came to rise.  He came to ascend.  He came to be enthroned.  And He will come back to establish His glorious and eternal Kingdom because He is God's Son.  This is the identity that marked Him and marks Him even now and it was this that set the stage for everything that is to come in the rest of the story. 

  

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