The Amazing Child who is God
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2017 · 19 March 2017
Let us look at Luke 2:39-46, “So when they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own city, Nazareth. 40 And the Child grew and became strong in spirit, filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was upon Him. 41 His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover. 42 And when He was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem according to the custom of the feast.”
“43 When they had finished the days, as they returned, the Boy Jesus lingered behind in Jerusalem. And Joseph and His mother did not know it; 44 but supposing Him to have been in the company, they went a day’s journey, and sought Him among their relatives and acquaintances. 45 So when they did not find Him, they returned to Jerusalem, seeking Him. 46 Now so it was that after three days they found Him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions.”
We are proud if we have an honor roll child. But we may somewhat over estimate their capabilities, when compared with true child geniuses. Wolfgang Mozart, at four he began music lessons with his father. At six he was a virtuoso on the violin and harpsichord, creating a sensation with this ability to sight-read music at six. He wrote his first symphony at eight and at eleven, he passed the test and was offered the salary job of city concert master.
And then many believe the most brilliant child prodigy alive today is Kim Ung-Yong, born in 1963 in Korea. He was talking at five months, writing at seven months. His IQ is estimated higher than any. When he was four years old he was fluent in Korean, English, Japanese and German and he was solving intricate calculus problems on Japanese television before his fifth birthday.
Amazing children, but all of these children are nothing compared with one twelve-year-old boy named Jesus, the child who is God. In a dramatic and moving account of the one recorded incident in the first thirty years of Jesus' life, Luke gives us a glimpse of this child who is God. No human genius, no IQ measurement in excess of the number 200 could even come close to the mind and the capability of this child.
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, but rather this was His true identity. 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.
Now before this here was the testimony of Simeon and Anna as to the identity of the child. And after that we heard from Gabriel the angel that this in fact is the Messiah, the Son of God given to Mary. And Matthew's gospel recorded that he spoke to Joseph as well in a dream. 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.
But now let us hear from the child Himself. Luke 2:38-39, “And coming in that instant Anna gave thanks to the Lord, and spoke of Him to all those who looked for redemption in Jerusalem. 39 So when they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own city Nazareth.” That refers back to verse 22 that requires that after a Jewish woman gave birth to a male child, she was to go forty days later to Jerusalem to make a purification sacrifice.
And that's exactly what they did. Setting apart the male child, verse 23, indicates they were following the Old Testament instruction that had been given in Exodus and in Numbers. And then verse 24, to offer the sacrifice, in their case a pair of pigeons, because they were too poor to afford a lamb. So they made the sacrifice and 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 their own city of Nazareth. However, between the completion of that and the return to Nazareth, there's an important part of the history of the birth of Christ that Luke did not give. It is the visit of the wise men. It is the slaughter of babies by Herod and the deliverance of Jesus through 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. Read Matthew 2:1-23 which tells you the whole story. Well it had to have happened then because they were already living in a house. The wise men came to a house, not to a stable. It also had to have happened then because when they came for purification they were poor so they had to offer two birds as it says in Luke 2:24.
After the wise men came they brought gold and frankincense and myrrh. Literally they brought immense wealth to Joseph and Mary. Certainly providing enough money for them to have purchased a lamb for the sacrifice if in fact the wise men had come before that ceremony was held. But they bought turtledoves, which indicated they had no money, which proves that the wise men had not yet been there.
Everything in Matthew 2 happened between the purification presentation at the temple which included the testimony of Simeon and Anna, and the time they left Bethlehem to go back to their home town of Nazareth. They lived there in Bethlehem for months during which the wise men came, during which Herod wanted to slaughter all of the male children 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 begin to focus on the life of the child who was God, “And the Child grew and became strong in spirit, filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was upon Him.” That one verse and that one sentence covers twelve years, right up until the next two verses when they came to the Passover and verse 42 says, "Jesus had become twelve years old.”
Thirty years of Jesus 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 thirty years of history and only one incident recorded, that that incident is of monumental significance. And we are going to see that before we finish our lesson from this portion of Scripture.
Let us begin by looking at the silent years of childhood, from birth to twelve as recorded in verse 40, “And the Child grew and became strong in spirit, filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was upon Him.” This is important for us to affirm that Jesus was fully man. This is to indicate to us His real and true genuine humanity. He grew from His infancy to being almost a man at the age of twelve.
His growth is uniquely defined as becoming strong. There is a physical component in that and as Jesus grew and was sinless, without the effects of sin in His life, He grew as no other child ever grew. His growth was never hindered, never restricted, or affected by sin. He could certainly do the labor of a carpenter which Mark 6:3 indicates is what He did in His father's business.
This child who is God would have a physical strength and a physical prowess that would be beyond any other human. But when it says in verse 40, “And became strong," the word "strong" really is best linked with the following phrase "increasing in wisdom," so that that it describes the strength of being, literally in the Greek, full of wisdom.
There's real humanity here and yet the wisdom of God came upon Him gradually. He didn't understand that when He was an infant. He didn't understand that when He was 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 was the favor that God gives to one who does. It simply means that God favored Him, similarly to the testimony of God at His baptism in Matthew 3:17 where God says, "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." This is all it says about His childhood.
Jesus also learned from experience. In Hebrews 5:8 it says, "He learned obedience from the things He suffered.” Hebrews 4: 15 says, “For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.” Jesus suffered the temptations that comes to a child, to be selfish and self-centered. He suffered temptations that come to all teenage boys.
Now in Luke 2:41-51 we come to the incident when Jesus was twelve years of age. The only incident recorded during the first thirty years of His life. And the only time He is ever recorded to have said anything. And it took place after that presentation at the temple. It is the moment in which He reveals that He knows who He is and He knows why He came.
Jesus declared Himself as God the Son, in verse 49, “Why did you seek Me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?” That is a monumental statement, the reality of which we will explain further in the days to come. But let us see how the narrative unfolds that leads to that great confession. Verse 41, twelve years later, “His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover." Now this was normal for Jewish people to do, to go to the Passover.
In Exodus and Deuteronomy there are instruction for the Jews to maintain their involvement in three main feasts held every year. These are the feasts of Passover, Pentecost and the feast of Tabernacles. Passover was a one-day feast that happened on the fifteenth of Nisan and attached to the Passover was a seven-day feast called the feast of unleavened bread.
Joseph and Mary lived eighty miles north of Jerusalem in the town of Nazareth. And as the Jews became scattered, typically a Jewish man might only come to one of the three feasts every year and that would be Passover. 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 is recorded in Exodus 12.
It was required traditionally for men to go, even at the time of Jesus, but not so much the women. In fact, for a woman to go to Passover, was to demonstrate on her part a rather unusual spiritual devotion to God, His Word and to obedience. Verse 41, "His parents used to go to Jerusalem every year." So Luke reminds us of the devout character of the faith of Joseph and Mary.
Verse 44 indicates that they went in a large company of people traveling together. And traditional Jewish scholars would say the children were in front, followed by the women, and then the men. Both dominant rabbinical schools, Shammai and Hillel, at the time of Jesus, taught that it should be a family event as Exodus 12:26-27 indicated, for the instruction of Israel is to teach your children that God is the Redeemer of Israel.
At Passover, Jerusalem would have hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from everywhere. They would be trying to find a place to house themselves where they could have their family together for the meal, where they could cook the lamb and all that went with it. They would be purchasing their sacrifices. Some historians tell us a quarter of a million animals would be slaughtered that week.
Seeing the blood dripping off of the altar, and running in a river out the backside of the temple ground down the back hill into the Kidron brook red with blood as it fell down into the Valley of Hinnom to the south, all of that would make it a vivid experience for the twelve-year-old Jesus who is now filled with the wisdom of God and sees it all from a divine perspective.
Then the family would take the lamb home and roast it. And it would be eaten always by candlelight because it was at candlelight that the Passover took place. 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. At the end of the meal, Jesus would have looked at Joseph and would say this, “Why is this night different from all others? That question then gave Joseph, the opportunity to repeat the amazing story of the Passover in Egypt.
Why is it important that Jesus was there at the age of twelve? Well at thirteen Jewish boys were considered to be obligated to the law of God themselves. That is why after Jesus’ time, an official ceremony developed and that is known as bar mitzvah, which means ‘son of the law.’ Becoming a son of the law brought you in touch with your guilt and your need for redemption.
Verse 43, “When they had finished the days, as they returned, the Boy Jesus lingered behind in Jerusalem. And Joseph and His mother did not know it.” Here Luke tells us that Joseph and Mary were godly parents since they stayed for the full 8 days which most of them did not do. Verse 44, “but supposing Him to have been in the company, they went a day’s journey, and sought Him among their relatives and acquaintances.”
Verse 45-46, “So when they did not find Him, they returned to Jerusalem, seeking Him. 46 Now so it was that after three days they found Him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions.” His lingering was not disobedience. He was responsible, obedient, sensitive and thoughtful. He was perfect.
But there was something different. Jesus was moving from responsibility to an earthly parent to a responsibility to God. That's why He says in verse 49, “I must be about My Father's business.” He is drawn into doing the things that have to do with His true identity. He knew exactly why He came and His mind was filled with the things of God. And for that unfolding, we have to wait till next time. Let's pray together.