Amen, our scripture again is taken from Luke chapter 2, beginning with verse 41. This is God's own word. Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover, and when he was 12 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. And God blessed the reading and the hearing of his word. Before we began, please let us go before God in prayer. Our Heavenly Father, we bow now before you. As your word is open, we pray God that you would speak. Remove me, remove anything that would hinder your word from going forward. We pray, Lord, that by your spirit, you will bless your word to have effect. We pray that nothing would return void and we know it won't, Lord. And it's in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen. Amen. When you do a comparison of the introductions or the beginnings or the openings of each gospel, you notice that they all began in their own unique ways. Some of them began with a gospel or a birth narrative of Jesus, not all of them. For instance, Mark, Mark has no birth narrative. The gospel of Mark actually opens up with John the Baptist, the prophecy given about John. And then we see John the Baptist in the wilderness preparing away for Jesus. Matthew, on the other hand, does contain birth narrative. It actually begins with the genealogy that leads to Joseph. And that's for various reasons. But then it also goes into the birth narrative of Jesus himself. Likewise, when a similar way in the gospel of John, we get a birth narrative, but it's more so from a spiritual or a heavenly point of view. And we see the word incarnate, the coming flesh, and Jesus, of course, coming into the world. It's not as descriptive as Matthew's birth narrative. We don't see Jesus in the manger, we don't see Jesus as an infant. But we do see him coming into the world. But then that brings us to the gospel of Luke, which is what we'll focus on tonight. And in Luke, we have the longest birth narrative. You'll notice that Christmas time, most of what is preached comes from Luke, if it's a birth narrative. Because there's so much information there. There's so much that Luke gives us, it's very extensive, the longest record that we have out of all the gospels. Luke's record also is the only gospel that gives an account of Jesus as we see here as a child. No other gospel gives us any or such an account, but Luke does. Luke tells us about Jesus. We see him here in chapter two, verses 41 through 52. And this is actually the tail end of Luke's birth narrative. Versus 41, our passage for tonight, Luke 2, verses 41 through 52, is the summation, the ending of Luke's birth narrative about Jesus. So we end here with the 12-year-old Jesus. We end here and we see Jesus going down with his parents. And we'll look at the background of this scripture. But we want to ask a question in Luke's gospel with this account. Why is it here? What's the purpose of Luke including with nobody else includes Jesus as an adolescent? There's a lot of reasons that Luke could have possibly included this. But the one that we want to speak on is the fact that Luke is presenting us with a picture of Jesus, plainly speaking, at an early age. And he's presenting us with this picture of Jesus here at the age of 12 in order to simply prepare us for the rest of Luke's gospel. Luke is showing us Jesus here as an adolescent to prepare us for everything else that's going to come in Luke's gospel about Jesus. Because Jesus doesn't change. Jesus grows, he gets older, he matures. But he doesn't change. He's still the son of God, he's still the Messiah, even here at 12 years old. And if you'll notice and we'll focus tonight, Jesus is rather confusing. When he's older and even here at the age of 12, he doesn't change. So Luke places this here to prepare us for the rest of his gospel. He wants to prime us because we're going to see more of Jesus. And that Jesus that we're going to see, we see him here at 12 and it's not that much of a difference. Our focus tonight will look at the person of Jesus as a child and we're going to wrestle with the idea of simply understanding who Jesus is from this small account. So we'll look at Luke chapter 2 verses 41 through 52. And we're going to wrestle with the idea of who is this Jesus and trying to understand him based on what we see here tonight. And so first we're going to get a sense of what's going on in the passage and then after that I want to quickly look at three points pertaining to Jesus in this passage. So really quickly, just a quick text overview. If we look at verse 41, the first thing that we hear or read is that his parents, Jesus' parents, went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover. We learned also in verse 42 that this was according to custom. This is a tradition that is carried on since the early foundation of Israel as a nation. And so Joseph and Mary are continuing in that foundation. They're traveling down to Jerusalem as they have done year after year after year to celebrate the Passover feast. They would celebrate other things as well over a span of a week and then they would return. Now one thing that this does tell us, though we're not focusing on this part of the passage, but it does show us something about Joseph and Mary, Jesus' parents. And it shows us that they're pious. They're Jews who actually worship and attempt to worship Yahweh, the covenant God. Jesus has a religious foundation. He's brought into a family who serves the Lord God that will be important going forward. We see proof of that that Joseph and Mary are pious. That's the first thing. But then also as we look at verse 42, we see that Jesus, it tells us that when he was 12 years old, they went up according to custom. So Luke is purposely focusing on Jesus and his age at the age of 12. Now why is that important? Well, in that tradition and that custom then, 12 years old, or the age of 12 was a very critical age for young males. And that's because at that age, they were preparing to enter into the age or the year of 13. And at 13, they would become men for lack of a better term. So Jesus or Luke focuses on Jesus and his Passover trip that they've made year and year and year and time and time again, but he focuses here, number one, because of this preparation that Jesus has undergone. Jesus coming here with his father and his mother is again a part of that preparation. They're preparing him to enter into manhood, but not only that, this manhood wouldn't just be to begin working and following his father in the career that his father had or the labor that his father did, but he would also become a son of the covenant. He would be released to practice the law. And so that's important. We see Jesus now as he prepares to become the son of the covenant, to worship God and to be set free as a young man, to worship God and to practice the law, prepared by his father and his mother. Verse 43, we read, 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. Now, we stop here and a few questions probably come up in your minds. Number one, how is it possible that these parents can leave and go that far without realizing that their son is there? Were they irresponsible parents? Is that the point that Luke is trying to make? Was Jesus being disobedient for staying behind and not going with his parents? Well, again, we have to look at that time or the time that this narrative is set in. And during that time, it wasn't an uncommon thing for families to travel together. And we read that also as we look at verses 44 and 45. Jesus isn't just traveling with his mother and his father. He's with the host of relatives. And back then, the family was centered around being an extensive family. So these people were journey, not just mother and the immediate family children, siblings, but also uncle, aunts, grandparents, parents and mother-in-laws, father-in-laws. And so as they would travel, the kids would gather with the kids or maybe with an uncle or an auntie. And so Jesus' parents felt this if he was in safe hands. There was no concern about where he was. And it's not something hard to imagine that Jesus would get lost and left behind as his parents went back home. One more thing, Jesus here isn't a toddler. We read that he's a child, but he's an older adolescent. And again, he's preparing to enter into manhood. So he's at a stage of independence. Those are the things we want to cover in our background as we look at the text. Now what we want to do is actually go ahead and focus on our main outline for tonight. And we'll look at three things. And those three things will actually be centered around verses 50 and 51 and a little bit of 52. And here's the thing that we want to focus on. As we see Jesus, young Jesus here, again we said that Luke is getting us ready for what else is about to come in his gospel. Jesus doesn't change. Jesus here and as we see him presented in scriptures can oftentimes be very confusing, very hard to understand. And so we'll focus on that tonight. And the first thing is this, and we'll read verses 46 through 50, as we do notice, as we said, the first thing that Jesus can be quite hard to understand. Beginning in verse 46, this is what we read. 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? Do you not know that I must be in my father's house? And they did not understand, verse 50, and they did not understand the saying that he spoke to them. Jesus can be quite hard to understand at times, for two groups of people. Number one, for the crowds and the people who don't really know Jesus. You look at the actions that we see Jesus taking and some of the things that he did, even some of the things that he said in this passage. Number one, him staying behind as his parents leave to go home. It's kind of hard to understand why he would do such a thing. Again, he's sitting there, and we look at those who didn't really know him, for instance, the teachers, and those who would have been gathered around with him. And as we read in verse, verse number 46, after three days, when they did find him, they found him sitting among teachers. And Jesus is listening to these teachers, and he's asking them questions. Now the way that these teachers taught would be in the form of questions and answers. They would give a question to the people or the student. The student would give an answer, and then they would switch the question up to see how much, how deep of an understanding they have. But what Jesus is doing is, he's not only answering these questions, but he's throwing back questions that down. And they don't have a category for this 12-year-old. When have you seen a 12-year-old stay behind as his parents leave to go back home, and he's not worried, he's not scared he isn't have any intentions of going back. And he's there at all places, the temple. We don't have a category for that. We look around, sometimes it's hard to find, are you? That's just not something normal that a 12-year-old would do. And then the wisdom that Jesus has, there's no category for this. So the people who don't know Him, it says that they're amazed, but that amazement isn't just wow. It's probably also a lack of understanding Jesus, being confused by this Jesus. We see this elsewhere in the scriptures, with the crowds that follow Jesus, when Jesus performed many of his miracles. The crowds will follow Him, but then we get a glimpse into their hearts and their intentions of why they follow Jesus. They didn't follow Jesus because they really knew who this was, or trusted in Jesus, as Savior, Messiah, the Christ. Remember, they were just following Him for a meal, for bread. They had no idea of who Jesus was, they were confused, and he didn't understand Him. We look at other religions today in our world. They don't understand Jesus. Muhammad, the founder of Islam, 578D. He's born, he established, he travels, he's a merchant, he encounters Christians, Jews, and other religions, and he has the bright idea to come up with Islam. And he has a place for Jesus in Islam, but Muhammad doesn't quite understand Jesus, he's confused. And so he looks at Jesus as a prophet, but nothing more than that. Plenty of religions, the Mormons, you name them. They don't have a category for this man, skeptics, and secular historians. They'll tell you that a Jesus of Nazareth existed. There's no disputing that, but they don't understand who this Jesus really is. God come in the flesh, doesn't make sense. A man with two arms, flesh, blood, but without sin, makes no sense, it's confusing. A man who has come to be a substitute for those who have no righteousness of their own, who are first enemies before they are even made friends, he dies for them. This is confusing. Jesus is oftentimes hard to understand, but not just among those who don't know him. Jesus is also hard to understand by those who do know him. If we look at verse 50, we read that the crowds were amazed, and the teachers were amazed, but in comes his own parents, those who changed his diapers, fed him, took care of him. And in verse 50, we read, they did not understand the saying that he spoke to them. Those who don't know Jesus, they don't have a category for him, it's confusing. But even those who know Jesus, his very own parents, oftentimes are confused by this child, by this man. Think of the story of John the Baptist when his head, no pun intended, was on the line. And he was going to be beheaded. And he sends his disciples to tell Jesus, and they come and they say, Jesus, your cousin is in a hot seat, it's going to be beheaded. And Jesus does everything but go to John. He goes out of his way to make sure that he goes nowhere near John until he is executed. And we don't understand that. We don't understand it. We think of Luke chapter 24. When the disciples are walking down the road and are discussing Jesus, he's dead. We thought he was the Messiah. We thought he was the one who would come and save us, but he's dead. And they had no understanding. And then Jesus walked with him and he opened up the scriptures and he showed them what they failed to understand. Why? Because Jesus is sometimes hard to understand. Not just by his parents who know him, not just his disciples who know him, but saints even by us. A lot of times, we wonder, why is Jesus acting in this way or in relation towards me? Why? Am I going through this? As Jesus is my Savior, he sits on the throne and in him I sit there too. But why? Jesus. Have you treated me in this manner? Sometimes we sound like his parents and we say, as they said in verse number 48, son, why have you treated us so? Sometimes we fail that way. Jesus, why are you treating me so? Because oftentimes Jesus is hard to understand. There's no category for him, especially when we think about grace. The grace that Christ shows us, the grace that God pours out in Jesus, the world doesn't have a category for it. Sometimes we don't. Sometimes we can't understand how can I, with all of the sin that I have, and you know what it is, we can think about our deepest and darkest sin. And we can sometimes question ourselves, how is it that with the mess that I make and the mess that I'm in, God sees me as he sees his son? How can Jesus have that type of effect? Sometimes Jesus is hard to understand. Luke is showing us that because that's what we'll see throughout the rest of his gospel, throughout the rest of the earthly life of Jesus. And even as he ascends into the heavens, even now, sometimes we don't quite understand him. And so that brings us to the second thing. The second point that we want to see is that Jesus, although he is hard to understand, Jesus is at the same time committed to serving those who sometimes don't understand him. And we see this in verse 51, and here's what we read. And he went down, I'll read from verse 50, and they did not understand the saying that he spoke to them. But he went down, 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. Jesus knows their thoughts. He knows that they don't quite catch the saying that he said. Remember they asked him, son, why have you done this to your father and die? And here's how Jesus responds. He says, why were you looking for him? Did you not know that I must be in my father's house and they're confused? And Jesus knows that they're confused. But later on we read that Jesus submits and he returns with his parents. His desire is to be in his father's house. And although sometimes we don't understand Jesus, the picture that Luke has given us is that Jesus understood Jesus even at the age of 12. Jesus has an understanding of who he is, a better understanding than many of his people, even at the age of 12. He knew where he was to be, his parents came looking for him as if he was lost, but in Jesus' eyes, he's not the one who's lost, he's right where he needs to be. Jesus is responding in a way that at first glance looks to be an act of disobedience. It looks like it's rooted in sin, but here's what Jesus is saying. Here's why Jesus responds this way and we still read of him as being without sin. It's because Jesus, as he says, why were you looking for me? He's showing that you may have earthly authority, but as I'm getting ready to prepare to enter into this ministry, as I'm becoming a man, as I hit 13, and that's symbolism there, and as I become a son of the covenant, here's what my focus is on now. It's not serving my earthly father. Remember Joseph at this time would have been preparing Jesus to enter into that manhood, but now Jesus is turning his attention to serving his earthly father. And Jesus says that I must be in my father's house. If you look in the Old Testament, there's not a lot of language use that connects a person, a follower, a believer with Jesus as what God is Father. Jesus is saying something, we hear Father thrown out all the time. God is everybody's Father, right? Even those who are lost, God is the Father of everybody. So we use the term loosely. Jesus, when he used this term, it wasn't thrown around that way. Jesus was saying something that was very, very radical. He has an idea of who he is, he's the Messiah, he's the Son of God, and he's telling his parents, listen, I have authority actually over you. I don't have to obey because I'm really older than you are. I'm the Word who became flesh, who was in the beginning with God and who was in his God. But Jesus, though they don't understand this, here's a good thing about Jesus, he's committed to those who don't understand him. And he serves those who don't understand him. And Jesus came to do just that. Jesus came to observe all of the law for those of us who break the law. Part of the law is being obedient to your parents, your elders. So Jesus shows that I am here and I'm committed to do the will of my Father and I'm here to serve and to be committed to those who don't even understand who I am who are sometimes confused. And so because of that, I'm going to submit and keeping with the law and I'm going to submit to serve. Sounds like something radical. He submits to his earthly parents. We see the same thing and what we looked at two weeks ago with the calming of the storm and his disciples. These disciples are lost. They have no understanding of Jesus. And Jesus, when he gets up and calms the storm after they come to him in panic, Jesus, you remember what he says? Where's your faith? He didn't say you don't have enough faith. He said, where are you placing your faith? They knew enough of Jesus to know who he was, but they weren't placing that faith in him at that time. They had lost touch because of the storm of who this Jesus was. They got a little confused because if Jesus is here, how can a storm be here at the same time? Their mind, their framework was off a little bit, but Jesus is committed to serve even those who don't understand him. Saints, how many times do we question Jesus out of our lack of understanding of who he is? How many times do we ask ourselves, what is going on here? And even in those moments, here's what we see, Jesus is committed to us. He's committed to serve us and he did that. He talks about being about his father's business and some translations or being in his father's house. And what does that mean? What goes back to when he told this disciples in the 24th chapter of Luke, all of this was written and had to come to pass. What was Jesus aware about that we sometimes forget or don't understand? What did Jesus know here? How is it that he has come to serve those who sometimes don't even understand him? Well, his mission from the father, the business that he had to be about, the serving that he did was coming to live a perfect and righteous life just to lay it down so that you and I and anybody who would call upon his name would have salvation. Jesus is committed to serving those who sometimes don't understand him. And that brings us to the third thing as we close. How are we to respond to this? If Jesus is sometimes hard to get, but he's still committed to us even when we lack understanding, which should be our response. That's the third thing. Therefore, saints, we are to trust in him. Verse 51, we see Mary doing just that. She doesn't get the phrase that Jesus throws out at her, but he's still in terms, goes home and he submits to his earthly father and his earthly mother. And in verse 51, we read that he went down with them to Nazareth and was submissive to them. And here's what Mary did, though she didn't have clear understanding at that time. He was still committed. And his mother, we read, treasured up all these things in her heart. She was reflecting on yet maybe another miracle. Another amazing act that this boy is doing. And though she doesn't have clear and perfect understanding, though she was frantic, worried about where her son was. She was in distress. They say it for themselves. Three days, the panic is growing and growing. She's anxious. She's weary from looking as she goes back. She reflects on who it is that Jesus is showing himself to be. He doesn't have clear understanding, but she knows enough. Maybe she thinks about what was said when the angel appeared to her. She thinks about what was told to her, about the son who would be born. She thinks about the scriptures and what they proclaim about Jesus. And though she lacks understanding, there's enough there for her to say despite my lack of understanding, of the situation and what happened of who my son fully is. She trusts in him. She treasures it up in her heart. And she has great joy. Saints, we see Jesus. We have been saved by the very blood, by the very work of Christ. But that doesn't mean that we always understand him. Sometimes we doubt our very salvation. Sometimes we live as if we doubt the work that he did. And that's because we don't always fully understand, or there's times that we act like we don't understand. But the good news is that Jesus is committed to those who he sometimes confuses. When our lives are a mess and we wonder, Jesus, what's going on, he's still committed to us, even when we forget that he's the captain of the ship and he promises to get us over to the other side. And so therefore in light of that, even when we sometimes don't understand, we're exhorted and I encourage you to trust in him. Trust in Jesus who you know and may not always understand. Trust in him and treasure up all these things that we see. Let us pray. Our gracious God and our Heavenly Father, we bow before you now. We'll remind it, Lord of our Savior. Lord, in him, you've revealed things that had not been revealed, things that we've anticipated since the fall of Adam in the garden. Your redemptive plan of salvation has been unfolding since the beginning and it's always been centered and the plan has always been in Jesus and God you given him to us and we see him oftentimes and sometimes we don't understand him. Sometimes he confuses us greatly. But Lord, he's with us. He's committed to us and he's committed to serve us. And so we ask God that you will give us the faith to just trust in him. We thank you for this word in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.