THE MATURING GOSPEL: “FAMOUS FIRST WORDS” - GROWING STRONG IN 2021
Luke 2:40-52: LIFEWAY WINTER QUARTERLY 2020/21 SESSION 5
“I regret that I have but one life to give for my Country” – Nathan Hale. “I die in the Faith in which I have lived” - William Mosby Eastland (namesake of Eastland, TX in a final letter to his wife before his execution in the Mexican War- 1843). “With malice towards none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds…” –Abraham Lincoln, 2nd Inaugural Address 1865. These are examples of “famous last words” that sealed and cemented lasting legacies for famous American and Texan figures. But all legacies have a beginning. All legacies must start somewhere; as a Senior Adult Pastor and Adult Education Minister I have done several funerals and reflections at the end of people’s legacies and the lives they have lived, but one thing that makes for gracious and lasting legacies of last words are “the first words,” are the first “adult” thoughts spoken into resolution and resolve in a person’s spiritual walk. The first words and commitments, the first promises, the first trusts, the first willingness and eagerness to grow, learn, train and mature is important to setting the path forward for the last. First words of commitment to the faithfulness of God in Christ Jesus Our LORD properly matured and grown in faith and trust will leave a life of faithfulness behind them (Prov 22:6) and a powerful witness and effective testimony of the Gospel. The benefits reaping joy, meaningful relationships, peace, the work/profession of our hands, the promises of heaven and eternal treasures that will secure and anchor us in our Faith! Through these benefits we will experience the eternal blessings of God in even the hardest and most sorrowful seasons of our lives! “First words” are important; first words set the “drumbeat” of our faith.
One thing I love about the Gospel of Luke is how he clearly shows Jesus as both the “Son of God” and the “Son of Man”. Jesus is not only our Lord and Savior- a gift given from heaven- from Father God, a gift received, and a gift proclaimed as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, but Jesus is also our example of living the Gospel, of living and maturing in God’s Word and growing in testimony and witness. Jesus never asks His followers to do anything, or learn anything or train in anything that He Himself was not willing to do or learn as the humble and righteous Son of Man (see Phil 2:1-16). Jesus is our example and our illustration in the Gospel of Luke and Luke begins the example with Jesus’ “first words” in Chapter 2 verses 40 through 52. In our lesson today we will see the importance of growing maturity, humility, listening, and resolution for Jesus’ beginning of His journey from the inauguration of His ministry, to the sacrifice of the cross, and the triumph of the resurrection. For ourselves, we will see an example and an encouragement to continue to learn, grow, mature, be humble and remember as we do so, and to start strong in 2021 in order that we might end strong and establish a solid testimony/witness to and for others. Let’s begin!
At the end of Luke 2 we have the only account and story of Jesus as a boy in scripture. There are many other ancient extra-biblical texts and accounts of Jesus’ boyhood but they are unreliable and “apocryphal” in nature. Luke is the only one who gives us an account of Jesus before the beginning of His public ministry. The difficulty in understanding and spiritually applying the account deals with its “fit” contextually. The story is an extension of the other birth narratives but doesn’t fit the Old Testament “feel” and fulfillment of the previous narratives nor does it seem to fit well with Chapter 3 and the inauguration of Jesus’ public ministry. Is it a standalone epilogue of Chapter 2 or a prologue of Chapter 3 and the rest of the Gospel? For our interpretive purposes I am going to treat it more as a prologue to Chapter 3 but it could “fit” either way contextually. Our understanding of the passage hinges on the repetitive nature of verse 40 and 52… Luke simply begins and ends with the emphasis that Jesus “matured” and specifically that He matured in wisdom, knowledge and favor with God and man. So what does it mean for Jesus, for us, to mature in our faith and walk with God, and how is this accomplished? Luke’s passage answers these questions.
The first step in growing in Christian maturity according to Luke is “observance”. Verse 39 and 41-42 show the devoutness of Mary and Joseph as Jews and their emphasis on training up Jesus as an “observant” and dedicated Jew. Adult Jewish males were supposed to visit Jerusalem 3 times a year for the specific holidays of: the Feast of Passover, the Feast of Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles. These Feast lasted more than a few days each, and the costs, time, animal sacrifices, preparation and travel made attending all three festivals let alone one near impossible for most families. Luke is showing an extraordinary and unusual level of devotion to Torah and Levitical Law for Mary and Joseph by letting us know they attended “every year. Luke’s point is not that Mary and Joseph were “legalist” but that they took their faith and corresponding actions seriously and that the observances mattered to them. Furthermore, Jesus was 12 years old and one year out from His Bar Mitzvah (In Hebrew- “Son of the Commandments”) and becoming an active adult member of the Jewish faith. Bringing Jesus at this age would prepare Him for adulthood and allow Him “to see and touch” His faith in a way that staying in Nazareth would not have allowed.
What are ways, traditions, observances, and actions that you have passed on to younger members of your family and that you observe yourself that help you mature and grow in your faith? Are they simply motions that you go through that have lost their meaning, and freshness in strengthening your faith or are they helping you to grow? How do you feel when you observe them? What encouragement and new revelation is given to you through their observance? The way we observe our faith has changed drastically for many of us in 2020 and it will be different in 2021 as well, but the point is not how we observe but that we do observe that we find ways to stay connected and our faith is strengthened. I am convinced that God can strengthen anyone’s faith that is devoted to Him, and grow that devotion and spiritual life in maturity for our witness and His glory (hence these lessons). Staying “connected” to God and one another is harder than ever, but think of this- so is the reward if we don’t give up if we continue to seek Him and find new ways to fellowship with one another till we are together again.
Worship is and should be costly; convenient worship is hardly worship at all- we need to continuously bring “the sacrifice of praise” to God. Perhaps we have been separated physically by this pandemic because there has been too much familiarity and convenience in our worship, it’s been too easy, it hasn’t cost us anything, it had lost its freshness to familiarity and that familiarity had bred a level of contempt in our praise that God wants to eradicate from among His people. Perhaps the changes we have endured God can use to develop a deeper observance/observation of His intimacy holiness and love, power and sovereignty that He wants to exercise over our lives. Some of you remember V.E. and V.J. Day 1945 and how those remembrances of loss, hardship and victory stirred hearts by the Holy Spirit and sparked the revivals of Billy Graham and transformed lives. Let’s keep those observations in mind first and what we can gain in knowledge and relationship with God now before we lament and long for the 2019 days of the past in 2021 it will keep our hearts in proper perspective for the New Year. God is at work in our maturity and He will “restore the years that the locusts have eaten’ (Joel 2:25). Don’t give up! Revival is coming; let’s prepare ourselves for it!
The second step in growing in maturity is humbleness and humility in learning. Luke juxtaposes Jesus’ deity and humanity here- look at verses 43 through 46. In verse 43 Luke specifically calls Jesus a “boy” (pais). Yet, as Luke has shown Jesus is no “mere boy”; He is the Son of God yet as the Son of God He was also the humble Son of Man who grew and matured from boyhood to manhood who didn’t approach the religious leaders in the Temple as an Encyclopedia Brown who had all the answers but asked thoughtful and “amazing questions”. Was Jesus as the Son of Man seeking knowledge and revelation of God the Father to know Him better and share Him with others? Or was Jesus as the Son of God seeking humble hearts in learned men to reveal Himself as the incarnate Father to them? I think the answer is, “yes”. There is an elaborate collaboration between Heaven and Earth between the common and the glorious in Luke’s Gospel and it shows in the “incarnate” God-Man of Christ Jesus Our LORD.
Philippians 2 tells us that Jesus “did not consider equality with God something to be grasped but emptied himself and took on the nature of a servant” yet there is also a strong component in the Gospels for His followers to learn from Him (see Matt 7:24, 11:29, John 14:6-7) as the Son of God. Jesus modeled as the Son of Man what it means to “lean not on our own understanding” (Prov 3:5-6) and the humility that is required to learn, mature and grow in Wisdom by fearing God first and being submissive to His authority both heavenly and earthly. As the Son of God gifted from Heaven Jesus gave us the beatitudes, but as the Son of Man He illustrated how to live them. Biblical maturing involves both receiving and proclaiming knowledge (revelation) and proclaiming and receiving the benefits of such through wisdom and maturity. Are you actively learning, memorizing and meditating on scripture and God’s Word? Are you learning from other believers in fellowship and joint study and are you dependent upon the Holy Spirit for all guidance into Truth? On the other hand, are you passing on the knowledge and revelations that God has given you to others that they may grow and mature in their faith as well? We are never too old to learn, or to young and unimportant to share the knowledge God has given us. In our passage the “boy Jesus” did both at the Temple.
Finally we come to Jesus’ “Famous First Words” and the third step in growing in Christian maturity: Biblical learning and maturity values obedience to God the Father. Joseph and Mary come looking for Jesus. Luke shows that the couple had some pretty good ideas of where to look for Him but that they were still anxious and distraught over His supposed disappearance (the 3 days included one day of Jesus missing, one day going back to Jerusalem, and some hours locating Him in the 34 acre Temple complex.) I ‘have a good pastor friend in Louisiana who knows what it’s like to have a missing child. He and his wife lost hold of the hands and sight of their four year old daughter in a massive crowd in the middle of Mardi gras in the French Quarter, New Orleans. They, their friends and the NOPD found her four hours later safely asleep in the bed of a Pick-up truck. My friend told me, “Darrin I didn’t know what fervent prayer in distress was till that 4 hours!” That was the kind of distress that was rising in Joseph and Mary as they went to find Jesus. The point Luke is making here is not that Mary and Joseph were careless (they were in a large caravan of extended family and thought Jesus was somewhere in the group) or that Jesus was disobedient (He was compelled to stay). Luke wants his listeners to know that Jesus obeyed Father God and valued His relationship to and with Him.
Mary starts to scold Him and express her anxiety and Jesus answers her with a question: “Why were you searching for me? Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house (or about my Father’s business- some translations)?” Jesus was a good son, and obeyed His parents but He obeyed God the Father as well and that was His number one priority and value. All of the previous 2 chapters and fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecies confirmed that Jesus would be, is and was completely obedient to the Father and His famous first words in the Gospel express this. This is also the first time that God is called “My Father” by Jesus in the Gospel and it was a confession that in His public ministry proclaimed His identity, the world’s hope of salvation in His name, and the dangerous confession that would lead Him to the cross, and the glorious resurrection and it was the same proclamation that would establish the testimony, proclamation, and persecution of the Church for ages to come- even today! Maturity, spiritual strength, and solid witness only comes to the obedient and Jesus not only preached and commanded it but lived it and expects His followers to do the same and grow and do great things in and through His name as a result.
Has 2020 been an anxious year for you? Does 2021 not look like it will be much better? We don’t have to be anxious and afraid when we obey God and are growing through His Spirit at work in us. Not only that, we don’t have to be anxious about the fortunes and fates of those we love when they are being obedient to God and the Spirit is moving in them because God keeps His promises, as John says in his letter: “He is faithful and just” (1Jn 1:9) and watches over those who love Him, call on His name, confess, submit, repent and obey Him. Jesus’ question to Mary Luke says she “treasured” and I’m sure Mary reflected on the boy Jesus’ calm response as she heard the angel’s calm response to the women’s anxiety over Jesus’ next disappearance- His resurrection- where in 24:5 the angel asks: “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here; He is risen! Remember how He told you while He was still with you in Galilee: ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’” You see spiritual maturity, “the maturing Gospel” in our lives REMEMBERS God’s WORD. It remembers the “famous first words” that lead us down that faithful path of maturity and blessing of a life WITH Christ. A maturing faith, a maturing Gospel remembers, obeys and values the Words that really matter- the gift of Christ Jesus Our Lord that was given, the gift that you have received by grace through faith (Eph 2:8-10) and the gift that has been proclaimed (taught) to you and that you have been trained up in- knowing and trusting full well that God keeps His promises made over and to you. We can have faith instead of fear because of those words, we can have hope instead of despair, and we can grow strong in 2021 and continue to mature and be a solid witness for others because of Jesus! Take heart today, and leave yourself plenty of room to grow strong in Him this 2021! Have a joyous and blessed New Year! Love to you all and all the best! Darrin.