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In the name of Jesus, amen.
Dear Saints of God, we want to meditate on the great mysteries in this text. How, for example, can Jesus, who is both God and man, learn and grow in wisdom if he knows all things? Or this question: Did Jesus sin in staying in Jerusalem at the temple while his parents thought he was with them on the way home? Or, what does Jesus mean when He says, “I had to be about my father’s business”?
But first, before we dig into the Gospel text, I want to pick up a couple of key things from the Old Testament and the Epistle. The first is this: this Old Testament text from 1 Kings chapter 3 is a really key text where the Lord promises to give Solomon anything he wants, and Solomon asks for just the right thing—wisdom. This is important because we, in these gray and latter days, need probably more than anything else, wisdom.
James has promised us in James chapter 1, “If anyone lacks wisdom, let him ask the Lord who gives to all generously.” So we need to pray this prayer with Solomon and understand it too, because the original prayer of Solomon is almost always translated, “Give your servant an understanding mind to govern your people.” But the thing that Solomon asked for is a “hearing heart.” It’s hard to translate; in English, it sounds funny, so it’s always rendered as “understanding mind.” This is what Solomon asked for, and I think it’s a key prayer for us: that we would have a hearing heart, a heart that would hear two things.
First, a heart that would hear the Lord’s word. That’s what Psalm 119 is praying— that we are wiser than our elders and our teachers because we meditate on His word. So that our hearts would, number one, hear the Lord’s word, and then number two, that our own hearts would be open to hear the things happening around us, especially the needs of our neighbor and the distress of the world so that we might apply the light and wisdom of God’s word to those around us.
So let us join with Solomon in praying this prayer.
Next is the epistle, which is just a couple of sentences. It’s a lot of verses but just a few sentences, and this is how Paul will write it. It’s very, very dense, but I want you to notice one thing that Paul repeats over and over in the text, and that is the phrase “in Him.” He’s dealing with a lot of mysteries—predestination, grace, prayer—but it keeps coming back to that phrase over and over.
Verse 3: “He has blessed us in Christ.” Verse 4: “He has chosen us in Him.” Verse 7: “In Him we have the redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.” Verse 10: “That He might unite all things in Him.” Verse 11: “In Him we have obtained an inheritance.” Verse 13: “In Him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.”
So that our life, and this is good for us to think about, especially right on the cusp of this New Year, is that our life, our hope, our confidence, our peace, our courage, our wisdom—our everything—is in Christ. Jesus said it like this: “I am the vine, and you are the branches. If you abide in Me and My Word abides in you, you will bear much fruit. But apart from Me, you can do nothing.”
So, we find our life in Christ.
Now, to the Gospel. The Gospel of John reminds us that if all the things that Jesus said and did were written down, there wouldn’t be enough room in the entire world for all the books. So we know that the Lord Jesus did so many things and blessed so many people, and yet the things that we have in the Gospels in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are curated for us by the Holy Spirit to give us exactly what we need to know about Jesus. It may not be everything that we want to know about Jesus, but it is exactly what we need.
We learn of the announcement of Jesus’ birth when the angel Gabriel came to Mary and also when the angel came to Joseph and said, “His name shall be Jesus; He’ll save His people from their sins.” We hear of the birth of Jesus, that was last week, born suddenly in Bethlehem, where they went to register for the census. With no place, He had to be laid in a manger. But we presume that the holy family stayed in Bethlehem for a little while and procured a house where they could live, visit the temple for all that was needed seven days and forty days after the birth of Jesus. So they were in the temple there. Jesus was circumcised there, His name given there. They visit Simeon and Anna, traveling back and forth from Bethlehem. We think they were in Bethlehem for a few weeks, at least a few months, because when the wise men from the east see His star and go to Jerusalem, the scribes point them to Bethlehem, and they go to Bethlehem and find Jesus in a home in the lap of Mary.
In fact, we’ll think about that a lot on Thursday on Epiphany. Herod has these wicked designs to destroy Jesus, and so the angel warns them to flee. The Magi go back home the back way. The holy family goes down to Egypt and then back to Nazareth, and then the Scriptures are silent about Jesus.
So from a few months old until His baptism in the Jordan River by John the Baptist at age 30, we don’t hear anything at all about our Lord Jesus, with the singular exception of this passage today, which tells us of Jesus with Mary and Joseph visiting Jerusalem for the Passover.
Now, apparently, it was the custom of Mary and Joseph every year to go from Nazareth, where they were living, to go from Nazareth down to Jerusalem for the Passover. That was required by the law of Moses. It was a pilgrim feast, so any Jewish person who was able to go to Jerusalem was required to do so. But it seems like the text indicates that Mary and Joseph would go every year, but this was Jesus’ first time. Jesus goes with them and their family. They would have traveled in a pilgrim group down the, probably the Jordan River Valley and then up the mountains past Jericho through the wilderness of Judea and up into Jerusalem, singing the Psalms of ascent as they go. You can see and imagine the pilgrim throng heading up there.
Now I like to imagine Jesus with John the Baptist. When I was a kid, I used to think of 12-year-old Jesus and 12-and-a-half-year-old John the Baptist walking up the mountain together, talking of the Scriptures. But I don’t actually think that’s correct. Remember, John and his family were from the mountains of Judea, so they were from that region already. But Jesus and His family were from Nazareth. No doubt they would have been with a lot of family and people traveling together, which is why Mary and Joseph could have missed Jesus. They wouldn’t have noticed He wasn’t with them as they were traveling home.
So they go up to Jerusalem. They offer the sacrifice. They would have brought the lamb to the priest in the temple to sacrifice, and they would have taken that lamb home and eaten it in the Passover feast in a home in Jerusalem or one of the surrounding areas with family and friends. But I want to make sure that we have this idea right, because when God gave Moses the instructions for the tabernacle, it was pretty small and the whole tabernacle could have almost—I mean, the tabernacle itself could have fit in the sanctuary here. Maybe even the courtyard and everything could have fit here. It was a small thing, but when the Lord gave the gift of Solomon to build the temple, it got bigger.
Even though it was destroyed, it was built back by Herod, remodeled, even bigger, so that the whole temple complex, which included the court of the Gentiles, the court of the women, the court for men, the court for the Levites, apartments for the priests, shops where you could buy and sell, and synagogues also in the temple—the whole temple complex was huge. It probably occupied over half of Jerusalem. So a lot of the time that the Holy Family was there would have been up there, including in this synagogue or church that was there, where the rabbis would go to teach, talk about the Scriptures, and debate questions of the law of Moses and so forth.
Can you imagine Jesus going into the synagogue at the temple, being taken by the teaching? He was listening and learning the Scriptures and asking questions. The questions that He was asking were so astute, so sharp, and had such a perception that the teachers of the law were amazed. Here is this twelve-year-old boy learning the Scriptures but already so wise.
I think it’s amazing for us to consider this. This is something we can meditate on our entire lives, but to think that there is Jesus, who inspired the Scriptures to be written, learning from them. What is He learning? We know the Bible, the books of the prophets, are about Jesus. He’s learning about Himself. He’s learning about His own office, His own work, His own role. He’s learning about His own death and His own resurrection and what it all means.
Now there’s a lot of mysteries here for us to consider. The first is, as we think about Jesus, how can this be? It’s hard for us because we know that Jesus is omniscient. That means He knows all things. It’s hard for us to imagine Him learning. But so it is that Jesus, true God and true man, also learns. He has to learn how to speak and write in Hebrew. He has to learn how to read. He has to learn the prophets and the law of Moses by studying it. He has to go to catechism class, just like us. This reminds us that Jesus is a man just like us—just like you, just like me.
But here comes a second mystery, and I think this is a really good one to think about: Did Jesus, in remaining in Jerusalem, sin? He goes to the temple and is there in this conversation with all of these rabbis. Mary and Joseph think that Jesus is with the family or the pilgrim group as they leave, so they go a day’s journey. At night, they are looking for Him: “Have you seen Jesus anywhere?” It seems they probably looked all night amongst the people and didn’t find Him. So they go a day’s journey back to Jerusalem and look around town, distressed. Mary uses that word when she finally finds Jesus and says, “We are distressed. Did you not know?”
The question is, did Jesus sin? Whenever I’ve talked about this or taught on it—did Jesus ever sin?—there are two moments in the life of Jesus that people always bring up. It’s interesting to me; they are both in the temple. I just realized that this morning and am trying to figure out what that means. The two times when people think Jesus might have sinned are here when He remained in the temple while Mary and Joseph left, and when He cleansed the temple, making a whip out of cords, driving the money changers from the temple in anger, saying, “You’ve made my father’s house—it’s supposed to be a house of prayer—into a den of thieves.”
We know that Jesus did not sin. Hebrews 4:15 says, “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” Jesus was perfect and holy, without sin, which means that His remaining in Jerusalem was not sinning against Mary and Joseph.
Here’s an application for you parents. Are you ready? I’m going to preach to myself for a little bit here. Parents, your children are not sinning against you when they do not meet your expectations. We can let that sink in.
But here’s a second application for all of us: You are not your sin. People say, “Pastor, how could Jesus be a person, a human being, a man like us without knowing what it was like to sin?” We think that to err is human; we think that to sin is what it means to be human. But Jesus was the perfect man and never sinned. That means your sin is not who you are. God created you; He didn’t create sin. Jesus became a man; He did not become sin. Jesus redeemed you; He did not redeem sin. God will raise you on the last day. He is not going to raise your sin. There is a difference between you and your sin.
There are so many applications of this particular fact, but we just need to let it sink in: when we sin, we are not acting like men and women; we are acting like demons. It’s the devil who sins; that’s his nature. He lies and kills. He did it from the beginning and will do it in the end. But your sin is not who you are. This is one of the ways that the devil tempts us, is it not? That we start to identify with our sin? We let our sin identify us? That’s wrong. Jesus, true God and also true man, was perfect in every way. That should bring us joy.
Now, at last, we get to the mystery of Jesus’ sermon. These words recorded for us are the first words that the Holy Spirit has caused to be written from the lips of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is His first sermon and His first teaching. It’s preached to Mary and Joseph when He’s only 12 years old.
Mary found Him, astonished. His mother said to Him, “Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress.” Jesus responds to Mary with a slight rebuke: “Why were you looking for me? Why was it hard for you? Didn’t you know already that I must be in my father’s house?”
Some of you remember the old King James; I think it said, “I must be about my father’s business.” Well, which is it, business or house? The answer is it’s actually neither. In Greek, it would be something like this: “Didn’t you know that I must be about my father’s stuff?”
But I think both words are fine. The Father’s business, the Father’s house—because it was the Father’s temple, the Father’s altar, the Father’s priesthood, the Father’s sacrifices, the Father’s holy of holies, the Father’s throne, the Father’s blood, the Father’s sacrifice, the Father’s forgiveness. And that’s what Jesus is about: the work of the Father, which is the work of salvation. His Father’s things, the blood of bulls and goats, priests offering sacrifices day and night, praying to the Lord, studying His Word—it’s all about what Jesus would do on the cross.
He knows that this is why He’s come, so that He might, like the lambs brought to the altar, carry all of your sins. That He might suffer for all that you’ve done wrong. That on His perfect shoulders would be laid the distress of all of the world so that He could do the Father’s work and come to you and say that you are His, that you belong to Him, that you will live forever in His glory. “Didn’t you know that I must be about my Father’s business in my Father’s house?” And He still is. Jesus is still doing the same thing. He’s in the family business.
It’s not carpentry; that’s His stepfather. His Father’s business is the salvation of the world, and Jesus is still doing that work, covering all that you’ve done wrong with His holy and precious blood.
So may God grant us the joy and the confidence of this sermon of Jesus. Do we know where He is? Yes. He’s here in the Word, on the table with His body and His blood.
Do we know what He’s doing? Yes, His Father’s business.
Do we know where to find Him? God be praised. He has found you.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
