Our scripture reading this evening is taken from the gospel according to Luke chapter 2 reading from verse 39 to the end of the chapter that is verse 52 Luke chapter 2 from verse 39 Luke has recorded the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ and then he has recorded the Lord's first visit to the temple as a baby for the ceremonies according to the law reminding us that Christ was born under the law to keep the law for us and for our salvation so Luke chapter 2 from verse 39 so when they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord they returned to Galilee to their own city Nazareth And the child grew and became strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him. His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem according to the custom of the feast. When they had finished the days as they returned, the boy Jesus lingered behind in Jerusalem Joseph's mother did not know it. But supposing him to have been in the company, they went a day's journey and sought him among their relatives and acquaintances. So when they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem seeking him. 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. And all who heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers. So when they saw him, they were amazed. And his mother said to him, son, why have you done this to us? Look, your father and I have sought you anxiously. And he said to them, why do you seek me? Did you not know that I must be about my father's business? But they did not understand the statement which he spoke to them. Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was subject to them. But his mother kept all these things in her heart. Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in favour with God and men. May God bless the reading of his holy word. Our text this evening is found in the chapter that we read from, rather Luke chapter 2 and verse 49. And he said to them, Why did you seek me? Did you not know that I must be about my Father's business? These are the earliest recorded words of our Lord Jesus Christ. And at this Christmas time, and it is technically the last Sunday of the Christmas season, we think particularly on the incarnation, the wonder of Emmanuel, God with us. We think of what it is indeed as we sang, what a tender love was thine. The love of God that sent the Lord Jesus Christ down to us from heaven above. And as we read the history here, we enter into something of what it was for Mary and Joseph to experience the incarnation in that way, in that they were the parents of the Lord Jesus Christ. Joseph, of course, not biologically, but he took the role of an earthly father. And so, this evening, I want to consider the question, the lessons, rather, of the wondrous childhood of the Lord Jesus Christ. We see, first of all, the mistake that Mary and Joseph made. We see, secondly, the mission for which our Lord was sent into the world. And thirdly, the mystery of the Incarnation. The mistake, the mission, and the mystery. And first we see the mistake that Mary and Joseph made. Now, it's very important, of course, when we read the Bible to remember that this is not our culture that we are seeing here. It's easier for some of us here to think in terms of coming into a foreign culture. I know there are some people here who, a lot of people here, in fact, who have come into England from a different culture. whether it's a different European culture or from outside of Europe. And you come in and you look at our culture and you think, well, obviously our culture's a bit weird. But also, you come in and you say, yes, there are different cultures in the world. And so when we come to the Bible, we're coming into a culture that is different from whatever our background may be. And we might think, well, how could it be that parents could lose track of a child? Well, of course, in large groups it's relatively easy to do that. Now, the Lord Jesus' childhood here is seen here, really, and here only in the Bible. And it's so different. from the imaginary pictures that people drew about the childhood of the Lord Jesus. I remember speaking with some Muslims. Muslims have in their Koran a story, at least one story that comes out of one of these legendary ideas that people had. There was this tendency, certainly happened occasionally in the early centuries, people would write what we today would think of as fan fiction. There was one presbyter who was prosecuted, or certainly he was punished by the Church for writing fan fiction about the Apostle Paul. And there is a book out there that's called the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. And whoever wrote it, it wasn't the Apostle Thomas, it was some anonymous individual, just let their mind run riot thinking what would a child Jesus be like. Effectively it's sort of like the old Superboy comics or TV show, a boy with superpowers. But that's not actually what we have. We have a child who is relatively ordinary. The child grew, verse 40, and became strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him. he was the best of children but he was in that sense an ordinary child developing and growing because he took to himself a real human life and lived a real human life and so he grew up and he came to that point in Jewish boy's life when he was to take upon himself what they call the Bar Mitzvah, becoming a son of the covenant, a son of the law. And in preparation for that he would have gone up to the Passover with his parents but of course he's at this point here between being treated as a child and treated in some sense as an adult or certainly as we would think as an adolescent and that's what led to the problem because the children would go up in the crowd with the women but there'd be a different group which would be the men and the boy who has just become an adolescent would go with the men and so the Lord is between these two points in life. And so Mary thinks when he's going back with the men, he's a man now. And Joseph thinks when he's looking after the younger children and he's with Mary and the others. It's not until they meet up in the evening that they go, well I thought he was with you. And it's then, what do we do? And so they go running back to Jerusalem. And after three days, what we're looking at here with the three days would be the one day to go back from where they stopped the night. And then two days they are frantically searching Jerusalem. Where is the child? They made assumptions and they managed to lose him. Now, you and I are not in the same situation that they were, but there's a sense in which we can say that people today make assumptions that lead to them losing sight of the Lord Jesus. We make assumptions, we assume that we know what he's like, we know who he is, and we end up making what a certain pop group referred to as our own personal Jesus, almost. We get our own idea of what he's like. and we miss the real Jesus for some idea of ours. And that's the danger. We make assumptions and we miss the glorious reality, the glorious truth. Now there's a number of ways in which the church can do this. And the chief way in which churches can lose sight of Jesus is by having a one-sided view of who he is. The liberal churches have a very much a one-sided humanitarian Jesus, Jesus the man. I know I grew up in essentially a mainstream Anglican, middle-of-the-road Anglican position. You never quite knew what the preaching would be, depending on who was speaking. And some of the speakers, you got the idea that they had a very humanitarian view of Jesus, that they thought of the man Christ Jesus. Now, that is a vital reality. Jesus is a man, the man Jesus there is as the great Rabbi Duncan. He wasn't a rabbi, of course, he was a Scottish theologian of the 19th century. He said, there's a man in the glory. There's a man in the glory. That wonderful truth that the hymn writer expresses when he says, forever God, forever man by Jesus shall endure. that the incarnation is real, that human heart he still retains, though thrown in highest bliss, and feels each tempted member's pains for our afflictions his, that he is human But if that's all you have, then you miss the great reality that He is God with us. You end up with a domesticated idea of the Lord Jesus Christ. But on the other hand, of course, it's possible to so emphasise the deity of Christ that we forget the humanity. That's very much what happened in the Middle Ages with the Roman Catholic. emphasis on the Divine Christ. Now you went into a Roman Catholic, into a medieval Catholic church and you would see in many, many cases above the chancel arch there would be a painting of the Last Judgment and there would be Christ the Judge seated on the throne. And that's how he was presented. Christ the King, Christ the Judge and not Christ the man. And when the kingship was understood in terms of medieval European kingship, where to get anywhere near the king you had to go through one of the courtiers. That's where you get this whole idea of the intersection of the saints, that if we want to get to Jesus we've got to go through his courtiers, or even better, through his mother. But the reality is the Lord Jesus Christ says, come unto me all you who labour and are heavy laden. His humanity and his sharing our humanity is absolutely vital. I know some fundamentalists and some evangelicals who have spent so much time dealing with the liberals who have a purely human Christ that Any suggestion about the humanity of the Redeemer is anathema to them. They sort of recoil as if, we must be one of those awful liberals. Well no, He is God and man. Immanuel, God with us. The Lord of glory become a man. And we must have, we must Behold the Lord Jesus. We must have the Lord before us and understand who He is. That He is God with us. Our mistakes that we make are very often in terms of thinking that we've got these things figured out. Well the reality is we never have these things figured out. We can't Nobody can say, I fully understand the incarnation. We end up with Mr Hart having to say, how it was done we can't discuss, but this we know is done for us. We don't know, we can't understand, but we can know. We can know him. Who to know is life eternal. the mistake of thinking they had him figure out. I suspect in some ways that Mary and Joseph had allowed the reality of the incarnation to slip somewhat in their minds. And it's easy to see why, because of course they'd settled into the reality, we are parents, we are bringing up a child. And the other children had come along, the brothers and sisters of our Lord, we don't know how many there were exactly, but we know he had several brothers and several sisters. And all that had allowed them to lose sight, perhaps, of the wonder of it all. only to be brought back to the wonder of it all now, here, in this encounter in Jerusalem. So we come, secondly, to the mission. The mission. At the centre of the Incarnation is a mission. The Lord Jesus Christ came for a reason. Well, they have been looking around the Temple, around Jerusalem, and eventually, eventually they turn up at the Temple, and you get the impression that This is fairly low on their list of places where we think he might be, which was, of course, another mistake of theirs. And they found him in the temple sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions. Again, he's a 12-year-old boy, and he is in the position that a 12-year-old boy should be. He's a pupil, but he's the best pupil. He's listening, which every teacher loves to have pupils who are listening listening and also he's asking questions and asking questions means you're thinking the last thing that a teacher likes at the end of a lesson or in a lesson is to say any questions and there's no questions Because no questions usually means nobody's really been paying very much attention. They've been thinking about something else. But the Lord is asking questions and he's asking intelligent questions so they were astonished at his understanding and answers. Because questions would be asked and then he'd be asked questions. and to see the depths of this 12-year-old boy from Nazareth of all places. Because they could tell from his accent he was Galilean. We know there was a Galilean accent. And I imagine that the teachers in Jerusalem took the usual view of people in the capital of people who were not in the capital. If you're in the capital then, yes, you can expect you can be fairly smart. But those who come from Galilee, well, they're bunch of hicks from the backwoods as it were they are these provincials It'd be rather like, I come originally from Norfolk, imagine a fellow with a good Norfolk accent, a lad with a good Norfolk accent, turns up in Westminster Abbey and gets involved talking with the theologians there. And they're amazed, this lad with this thick Norfolk accent is so intelligent. Well, that's what's going on here. They're amazed because he is nothing like they expected. And Mary and Joseph, son, why have you done this to us? Look, your father and I have sought you anxiously. The reality is that they should have made sure, because parents ought to make sure with children, make sure your children are with you when they need to be. and each had assumed that he was with the other one and they hadn't coordinated. And he said to them, why did you seek me? Did you not know that I must be about my father's business? Why, when you realise, didn't you just come straight to the temple? Now, the translation here, about my father's business, literally the things of my father, so you'll find some translations will say, my father's house, others as ours, my father's business. It amounts to the same thing. It amounts to being in the father's house, in the temple, in the house of God. And it's a simple answer, yet it's incredibly profound. Because no ordinary Jewish boy would ever have said it. Because the Jews didn't say of God, My Father. When the Lord Jesus Christ taught His disciples to pray, He did so using the formula they would be comfortable with, Our Father. When Jesus says, My Father, He is saying that He has a relationship with God that nobody else possesses. He has a unique relationship. He is the only begotten son of the Father. And his mission is to do with being about the things of his Father. Because ultimately He is the true Temple. That's why we don't have a physical Temple today. That's why the Temple in Jerusalem was swept away. It had done its job. It had served its purpose. And when the Lord Jesus Christ came, when He died and offered Himself, the Temple ceased to have a function. Because God with man is no longer a place in Jerusalem, it's a person. The man Christ Jesus. And now he dwells by the Holy Spirit in his church, that is in the body of believers. In the assembly, the people who come together to worship him in spirit and in truth. and his mission was so that we would be able to worship him in spirit and in truth. His mission includes the cross and the cross is central in fact to his mission that he died to reconcile God and man. As we were saying on Christmas morning peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled. And that's what the cross is. Christ died for our sins, the just for the unjust to bring us to God. I must be about my father's business. He had a mission to carry out. Now that brings us then to the mystery of the incarnation. Now biblically, first of all, a mystery isn't something that's completely unknowable. It's something that we couldn't know unless God told us about it. A mystery is something that God reveals and we couldn't know unless God told us. And God tells us about the mystery of the Incarnation. It's something that we couldn't bring about. We can't bring God down to us, but He has ascended on I for us, who came down first. He came down to earth from heaven, and now having died on the cross, He's ascended on I, sat down at the right hand of the Father, The mystery of the Incarnation. God made man. And all we can do with the mystery is accept it. We listen to it. We humbly accept the Incarnation. So much trouble has been caused by the inability of people to just accept the Incarnation. People go, we must have some idea of how it worked. Why? What would that accomplish? Now it must be if, well since there is a God, since God exists, and since God is greater than we are, then there are things that we must look at in the creation even that we can't wrap our heads around. How much more are there things about God we can't wrap our heads around? and we look at the Lord Jesus Christ, we look at the Incarnation and we must be like Mary here, he went down with them to Cape Nazareth and was subject to them, but his mother kept all these things in her heart. She pondered them. She was brought back to that position that we read of her earlier in the chapter, Luke chapter 2 and verse 19, but Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. She heard from the shepherds, she heard of the angels, the words the angels spoke. And she pondered what it meant for him to be the Saviour who is Christ the Lord. What does it mean for the Lord Jesus Christ to be the Saviour, the Deliverer, that he shall save his people from their sins? She must have pondered the question that the phraseology that I bring you good tidings of great joy shall be to all people, not just to Jewish people, but to people from all over the world. And that would have been an amazing thing to contemplate. How can this child be a blessing to the entire world? And so, this experience brings her back to the mystery, it brings us to the mystery. To the fact that our proper attitude to the Lord Jesus is one of worship and adoration, to praise him and to worship him. And to remember that we will never really fully understand. But we can know Him. We can know Him. One writer put it this way, we can't comprehend God. That is to say, we can't wrap our heads around God. Because if we could, then we would be bigger than God. but we can apprehend God, we can lay hold on Him and we can do that for only one reason because He has first laid hold on us He has laid hold, says the writer of the Hebrews, He has laid hold upon our human nature and He's done that in the Incarnation that the Lord Jesus Christ is fully man That's why verse 52 is here. And Jesus increased with wisdom and stature in favour with God and men. That's why he was subject to Mary and Joseph because that's the right thing for a child to be. Even a twelve-year-old boy as he becomes an adolescent he was to be subject to his elders. As he grew up and experienced a genuine human childhood for us, for our salvation. And he came to manhood and he, the man, gave himself for us that we through him might be saved. Because sentimentality stays at the manger the Bible won't let us stay at the manger, the Bible takes us from the manger to the cross and it leads us to the foot of that hill where we see his soul was made an offering for sin, where we see him embracing our guilty souls and all our sins are laid upon him and he died for us and we marvel that our God should come for us. That the Lord Jesus, the eternal Son of God, was made man so that we might be saved through him. That's why we shortly come to the Lord's Supper, the ordinance that he has given. where we remember His death until His coming again. Where we remember that His body was broken for us and His blood was poured forth for us. And we remember that mystery of the atonement, the blood shed for sinners, that we might live in Him. It's a marvel, it's a wonder that our life in his death. And so we must ponder, even as Mary pondered, his mother kept all these things in her heart. And we too keep this great mystery of the incarnation in our hearts. We hold together the great truths of God incarnate. of the one who is fully God and fully man the great truth of the divinity of the Lord Jesus and the humanity of the Lord Jesus and that these are both fully and completely true and we must worship we must fall down and adore him because that's the only proper response to that mystery of the incarnation. Where reason fails with all her powers, their faith believes and love adores. O come let us worship him, the Lord Jesus Christ. One who was born for us, who came to do His Father's work, who has fully completed the atoning work His Father gave Him to do. The Saviour, Christ the Lord.