Dealing with who Jesus is

Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up according to custom. And when the feast was ended, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know it, but supposing him to be in the group they went a day’s journey, but then they began to search for him among their relatives and acquaintances, and when they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem, searching for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. And when his parents saw him, they were astonished. And his mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress.” And he said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” And they did not understand the saying that he spoke to them. And he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them. And his mother treasured up all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.

Introduction:

Today we are going to do something a little different for us. Half of this is going to be a typical expositional sermon and the second half is going to be a bit of a State of the Church address. I wrestled with when to do this, during the sermon time or during the meeting and I decided on this course of action. The passage lent itself to it as well. I will credit God with His good plan in this.

I’m guessing that some of you may never have heard a sermon preached on this passage. After a service back in 2009 when Ligon Duncan had preached on this passage, a man in his church came up to him with his Bible that he had been using since 1973. He recorded what passages had been preached for the sermons he had listened to since then. The man reckoned that from 1973-2009 he had listened to about 1800 sermons that were recorded in his Bible. He told Duncan that this was the first time he had ever heard a sermon on this particular passage. So it’s likely you may have not heard one either.

From the time Jesus is a weaned, young child, until his public ministry begins, this is the only story we have. Why don’t we have more? What we can know for sure is that God knew this was all we needed to understand the very important lesson contained in it.

Luke fills in the gaps with a little more information than we have from “the hidden years” of Jesus’s life growing up.

Immediately questions are raised in our minds… We read it and wonder if Jesus was doing something wrong here. We know, that the Bible teaches that he never sinned. When our modern eyes read it, these questions come up. I think Luke knew that would happen. I can assure you that Jesus had done nothing wrong here. First of all, when the Bible talks about someone who did something sinful it will usually sort of lead in with a clue to that. One example I saw was when David sinned with Bathsheba. He stayed back when the king would normally go to war. He wasn’t where he was supposed to be. Here we have Jesus, in reality where he was supposed to be, doing what he was supposed to do. So the Bible never points to any misbehavior on his part. Secondly, we see him leaving with his parents and being submissive to them. Third, Mary treasured these things in her heart. We see Mary doing this elsewhere in scripture. She was treasuring a few verses ago in the nativity account. How do you suppose Luke knew this? I believe that he talked to Mary. Luke was interviewing eyewitnesses and I think he got his information about the first two chapters of his gospel account from Mary herself. Who else would know about her treasuring these things in her heart? When someone is treasuring something in their heart they usually don’t look over and say, “hey Joe… I’m really treasuring this stuff in my heart right now.” So it most likely wasn’t someone else relaying that message.

And the final reason we know Jesus didn’t do anything wrong here is actually what we find in the main point of this passage. It’s found in what Jesus does and says and how his mother, Mary reacts to it.

In order to get there I’m going to walk through how Jesus’s growth and development and his purpose and having righteous parents lead up to the main point that we find in verses 49 and 50.

First, let’s talk about how Jesus’s mind and body developed like a normal human’s does.

I. Jesus’s mind and body developed as a normal human’s.

He grew up. He grew up like we grow up, yet without sin. That proves that He understands. All the crazy things that happen to you as you grow from a child to an awkward preteen to a teenager and then to an adult are not a surprise to Him. Not only did God create you but He stepped into your shoes and lived life as a human. But He did it perfectly, because you and I can not do it perfectly. And we needed someone to be a sacrifice on our behalf, for our sin, who was perfect and had never done all the heinous stuff that we have thought and done.

Verse 52

Growing up in the little town of Nazareth, Jesus grew in:

A. Height. Physical maturity.

B. In wisdom. Mental maturity.

C. In favor with God. Spiritual maturity.

D. In favor with man. Social maturity.

Why would God want us to know this information? Why is it important enough to be included in scripture?

Because Jesus is God. He’s the Son of God. God incarnate… in the flesh…

It’s important because Luke’s goal in this writing is to give this guy Theophilus and us certainty about what we have been taught about Jesus. We can have certainty that Jesus is who He says He is and that He did, in fact, live without sin on this earth, even as a pre-teen. It’s important because it addresses those questions and objections we might have as we think of the trouble of growing up in our own lives.

As one pastor said, it gives us certainty that this is all real. If this was a made up story you’d be more fanciful with it. However, this is just a plain telling of this seemingly random event in the life of this little family. If you were making something up you’d probably add something else. Why would you even include it if that was the case. But Luke wanted us to have certainty. God wants us to be certain that this Jesus is the Christ.

A second thing in this passage that is quite striking is that Jesus had righteous parents.

II. Jesus had righteous parents.

Per the pattern we’ve seen in the first chapter and a half of Luke, Joseph and Mary were righteous and God fearing people. They followed the Lord. They were obedient to observe His commands. They followed guidance from God through the angel. They trusted God even though in the nativity they didn’t know exactly how that was all going to work.

Joseph had the family where they were supposed to be per his faithfulness to obey God. - In Jerusalem for the Passover.

This festival, celebrating the Jews being released from captivity in Egypt and celebrated with the slaughter of the Passover lamb was one of the three most important fests in Israel. Jewish men were required to come and celebrate, though some did not obey. Joseph did. He was raising Jesus to be obedient to the commands of God.

Let me just encourage parents right now. Thank you for having your kids in church. Just by being here you are teaching your kids that it is important to worship the Lord on the Lord’s day, with the Lord’s people. They catch it.

So they were where they were supposed to be.

But eventually the festival ends and it’s time for them to leave. But Jesus remained behind.

This brings us to our final point:

III. Because Jesus knew who He was, he knew where to be and what to do.

It’s three days. So they take off for home. In those days for safety they would have likely traveled with family or friends from the surrounding area. So when Jesus wasn’t around they just figured He was with family. So they travel for a day and then can’t find Jesus. Then they go back to Jerusalem. So there’s another day. One out, one back, one searching, and they find Him in the temple talking theology with the teachers.

He’s 12 and this would have been his last passover before he was deemed a man. 13 was the age of transition from boy to man marked by the bar mitzvah.

I heard a comedian say something about it being a lot of pressure. Can you imagine losing the Son of God?

When His parents locate Him, they obviously have a question. And in this interaction we get the main idea of the passage.

Luke 2:49–51 ESV

And he said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” And they did not understand the saying that he spoke to them. And he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them. And his mother treasured up all these things in her heart.

Now, it’s key that Jesus was in the temple talking to the teachers. He was in the temple, where God was worshipped to study God’s Word. So, we have Jesus, the Word made flesh, desiring to be with people who knew the Word, studying the Word of God.

Before he was a pastor, John Piper was a professor. I read him quoted as saying, ““In my six years of full time teaching, I have found that only about one person in ten really wants to understand more of God than they already know.”

How much do you want to understand of God? What are you doing about that? We have many avenues for that here at Hope. Will you make a decision to join one of those and study God’s Word with God’s people?

Jesus’s obligation and his desire was to obey God first and foremost. His love for God was in proper relationship to other relationships. His parents did not understand. And if this is just some random story then that wouldn’t make sense but because of who Jesus is, it matters greatly.

Mary should have known. The angel told her about Him. This is the Son of God. Shouldn’t it make sense that He would want to be in His true Father’s house and about His Father’s business. Jesus loved His parents but He treasured God above all. His parents really should have known that. You see that in His response. The bottom line is that Jesus is the Son of God and they didn’t understand that everything in His life was going to be centered around that. His purpose was to live life wholly for the will and glory of the Lord God and fulfill the mission of rescuing people from the shackles of sin by giving His life on the cross in the place of sinners and raising from the dead three days later.

They were going to have to reckon with His identity as the Son of God. You have to deal with this too.

Conclusion:

How will you reckon with Jesus being the Son of God.

Some of you would say, “Pastor, amen. I believe Jesus is the Son of God.” My question for you is this: How does the way you conduct your life show visibly how you have believed that Jesus is the Son of God?

How are your priorities ordered?

How is your money spent?

How is your time spent?

How is your speech?

Are you desiring to commune with God more in his Word?

Some of you may have never been confronted with Jesus as the Son of God and today my question for you is: What are you going to do with Jesus? Maybe you’ve been on the fence about all this gospel stuff. I want to tell you that Jesus is true. He can be trusted. He went to the cross for you and died for your sin. In fact, He even died for your sin of unbelief. You can repent. Turn to Him and trust that His payment for your sin was sufficient and that He, the Son of God wants a relationship with you. Today can be a brand new day for you.

Transition: Speaking of new days, I want to take a few minutes here and move into a little state of church address before we break bread and meet as a church body to talk about the future.

STATE OF THE CHURCH - HBF 2024

three and a half years ago I arrived on the scene

HBF was a hurting church

the attendance had shrunk from approx 130 and bursting at the seems to a faithful core of about 25 people.

the church, as a family had been through a lot of pain and upheaval that would have killed a lot of churches. In fact, maybe most churches would have just folded. But the Lord sustained. He sustained because I believe He has a plan for this body of believers. It looks different than any of us thought it would but it is good. What I want to do with this part of my time today is walk you through a bit of report and a bit of vision of where I see us going in this new year and new season of life for our church.

Today, 2024 is a brand new day for us as a church. So what is the future going to look like?

While all of the particulars are not worked out as far as what happens every day of the year, I want to lay out a vision of who we are going to be and what we are going to be about.

Keeping the main thing the main thing.

Our focus is and will be even moreso on the Gospel and making disciples. This is the main thing and we must keep the gospel the main thing. We can’t let ourselves get bogged down in minutia and things that are less important. It’s true that we have to deal with things of lesser nature sometimes but we will work to never make those the focus because of our great mission to the city of Dixon.

Our mission comes from God and it is laid out in the Great Commission. Make disciples, baptize them, and teach them to obey Jesus. The way we explain that or the way we work that out in process, I’ve described to you for the last few years as Gather, Grow, Go. We gather together to worship the Lord, we grow deep in the things of the Lord together and individually, and we go wide with the gospel. In 2024 we must be more intentional as we aim to see each of these accomplished.

Part of the help that God has sent us to help us realize this bright new day as a church has been in a group of churches coordinated by Park Hills in Freeport who have pledged to partner with us as a replant. They are providing funding to ensure a full time pastor and so that we can stop worrying about finances and keep the main thing, the main thing. A bright new day - partnership. This reminds me of the Gospel partnership that Paul speaks so highly of in Philippians.

As we move into this new day we have some work to do. We need to work on letting our community know that we are here, very much alive, and are a place of healing and hope for their souls because of Jesus. We need to have our reputation either repaired where it has been damaged, or promoted where we have none. We will be known as a church about and for Jesus and the gospel, a place where hurting people can find hope on the ROCK of our Savior.

In 2024 we must do a better job of connecting and assimilation. That’s a big word that just means we need to help visitors move into regular attenders, then members, and servants. People are like helium balloons. IF you don’t tie us down, we float away. We have to do an even better job at welcoming and connecting with meaningful and real relationships based on the gospel with realness and transparency in our lives. Our call to folks is: come and stay, go and tell

There’s so much more I could say but we’ll save it for the meeting and the future. I wanted to tell you these things to show you my excitement and energy for what is to come and encourage you to pray. And that is the last and honestly the glue that holds this thing together. It’s prayer. We have no choice but to be a praying church. I am asking you to pray for the future of our church. Three things inparticular I want to challenge you to pray each day for our church:

For faithfulness to the gospel in our pastor and our people.

For growth - spiritual growth in our people and new people in our seats.

God to be glorified and made more well known and well thought of in Dixon because of what happens with this church.

There will be many more things for you to pray about in the next few months but there are three areas to begin with. At this time I’m going to lead us in a time of prayer.

I want to invite as many as would like to come and kneel at the alter as the band plays and pray for our church. I’ll give you some time and then I’ll close us in prayer. So come and pray as the music plays.

Dealing with who Jesus is

Luke 2:41-52

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I. Jesus’s mind and body developed as a normal human’s.

II. Jesus had righteous parents.

III. Because Jesus knew who He was, he knew where to be and what to do.