41 Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover. 42 When he was twelve years old, they went up to the festival, according to the custom. 43 After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. 44 Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. 45 When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. 46 After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48 When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.”49 “Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” 50 But they did not understand what he was saying to them. 51 Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart. 52 And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man. ~ Luke 2:41-52
At this point in this redemptive narrative, according to v.41-42, the Lord Jesus is twelve years of age. He and His family have made the seventy five to eighty mile trek to Jerusalem, again, in order to celebrate Passover. From day forty of His human life, the first twelve years of His life is covered in one verse.
In Exodus and Deuteronomy, instructions are given on certain feasts that God ordained for Israel. These feasts were memorials to God's faithfulness to Israel, and there were many feast but the three main feasts were held every year. There was the feast of Passover in late March or early April, fifty days later there was Pentecost, and then, in October, the feast of Tabernacles.
Combined with the Feast of Unleavened Bread was the feast of the Passover which was one day and the Feast of Unleavened Bread lasted seven days. During this feast, the nation of Israel commemorated the exodus of Israel from Egypt. During this week long celebration, the population in Jerusalem would swell considerably. In v.41, every year Jesus’ parents would make the 75-80 mile trek to Jerusalem. The trip would take them three to four days.
It was their custom to travel in large caravans with a large company of people. The Lord Jesus just one year away from his rite of passage into adulthood, which would happen at his thirteenth birthday, was in this caravan. In these large caravans children would often be mixed in with the other families who were relatives and friends.
After the Passover, according to v.43-45, they traveled the full first day’s journey assuming that the twelve year old Jesus was just hanging out with other children or other families. But when they got ready to make camp that night, they could not find Him anywhere. Since at nighttime the travel was dangerous, they could not go back to Jerusalem until the next day. When they got back to Jerusalem to look for Him, they eventually find Him “after three days” in the Temple.
According to v.48, there they find the twelve year old Lord Jesus seated with a company of people under the teachers and participated in the question/answer session. And, everyone was amazed that this boy had such a deep understanding of God’s Law and of God Himself. This subtle display of His deity underscores the fact that He is the Son of God come to be the Lamb of God.
In response to His parents, in v.49, the Lord Jesus said, “Why were you searching for me? Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” The Lord Jesus didn’t mean that they shouldn’t have come looking for Him, He is simply asking, “Why didn’t you come here first when I was missing? Shouldn’t you have assumed that this is where I would be? Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house, doing my Father's will? ” He understood His unique calling as the Son of God, He knew that He was the ultimate Passover Lamb. He was there at the Temple to tell the people what His Father had in mind for them, a personal relationship with Him through the real Passover Lamb.
But Mary and Joseph did not understand, despite the fact that they went through the miraculous sequence of events, angelic visitations, the virgin birth, angels’ appearing to shepherds, and meeting Simeon Anna. This is one reason the Lord emphasizes the ceremonies that enable us to remember what He has faithfully done in the past.
When the Lord Jesus embraced the calling for which He has been born, He was misunderstood by other people, even His parents. This serves as a reminder that when we walk in the paths that are laid out for us by God, many will not understand, even those who are closest to us.
As parents, if we are going to encourage our children to really be devoted to God, then we have to be willing to endure the pain of letting them go. In our last blog, Joseph and Mary brought the Lord Jesus to the temple to be dedicated to the Lord. They met Simeon, who offered a word of prophecy and encouragement to them, but then Simeon turned to Mary and said these telling words: “And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”
God may take our children to places that we would have never designed for them, had the choice been ours. That pain is part of the process of letting our children go and trusting Him with them. And because we’re going to have to learn to endure the pain of letting our children go, we have to learn to trust God with them, to believe that God and His call on our lives and the lives of our children is completely trustworthy.
Do we look at our lives with a sense of calling? Do we see our lives as marked out by God, as a gift for God, to be lived for His glory? Do we believe that we are not here randomly but He has created us for a purpose, to love Him and to love others in His name?
In v.49, the Lord Jesus said, “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 the same parental oversight over Him as they did before. Now, God His Father is going to determine His life and what He does, and how He does it.
According to v.51, we are told that Mary "treasured all these things in her heart." This verse shows that Luke got much of his writing of this gospel narrative from Mary. Luke often throughout this Gospel gives inside perspective of how Mary saw these things and how she felt about it.
Finally, In v.52, we read, "And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man." God could have sent a full-grown Christ, but He didn’t. The two greatest commands are to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves. True human growth is not Godward at the expense of love. True human growth is not man-ward at the expense of love. No human, not even the God-man Himself, skips the growth and maturation process, and no true growth is one-dimensional, but both toward God and man, with all the love and the problems and pains that come with it. Even the negative plays a role in the redemption of man and the glory of God.
