Luke 2:52

Luke 2:40 , Luke 2:49; Luke 2:52

(with Mark 6:3; John 4:34; John 10:18; John 10:30)

The Germ of Christian Manhood.

Man and God are in eternal relation. As you cannot have an upper without an under; a brother without sister or brother; a son without a father or mother, so you cannot have a true conception of man without God. It lies in the very nature of the Father that He will not leave us men, and it is in our structure that we cannot rest without our Father. Man had lost God. Jesus Christ is the incarnation of God's mighty and age-filling effort to put Himself within the throbbing heart of humanity.

I. This perfect correspondence between Jesus the Son and God the Father is the source of all true and enduring growth. Man getting into his true relationship to the Father gets to the source of all life and progress. Apart from God true manhood is an impossibility. We must come into fellowship with Him, be partakers of His nature. That is the one and only garden in which the plants of righteousness can be grown.

II. Such trust in a communion with the Father is the source of cheerful patience and serene self-control. It is hurry that enfeebles us and takes the beauty out of our work. We will not mature. Our "hour" is always come, and we are restless for the tented field. We do not compel leisure, or seek the strength that is born in solitude, and so we are poor weaklings, beaten by the first foe we meet and able to offer nothing to God that will stand the test of His consuming fires.

III. The spontaneity of self-sacrifice, one of the surest marks of a perfecting manhood, is due to this trust in the Father, and consequent acceptance of His will and work, as the absolute rule and business of life. Nothing reveals the prodigious interval between us and Christ like the difficulty we find in sacrificing ourselves for the welfare of His Church and of the world.

IV. This, too, is the secret of the plenary power of men. If there is one thing science has fixed beyond all question, it is this, that you cannot get the living from the dead; that a man must bein order to do. Jesus Himself partakes of the fulness of the Father, and so becomes the fulness of the Godhead, and out of His fulness we receive grace for grace. Partaking of God's nature, by being possessed of the mind of Christ, we live His victorious life, and get His full use of nature, His fine self-control, and His ever-fruitful service.

J. Clifford, The Dawn of Manhood,p. 34.

References: Luke 2:40. G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines,p. 72; Church of England Pulpit,vol. v., p. 34; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. iv., p. 89; B. F. Westcott, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxvii., p. 17. Luke 2:40. R. Lorimer, Bible Studies in Life and Truth,p. 119; Preacher's Monthly,vol. i., p. 127; W. Hanna, Our Lord's Life on Earth,p. 31.

Luke 2:52

The text naturally divides itself into four heads. There is a twofold development spoken of, and a twofold result or concomitant. We are called upon to observe the growth of Jesus: (1) in bodily stature; (2) in wisdom, and as a concomitant of these, to behold Him increasing; (3) in favour with men, and (4) in favour with God.

I. We know that among the Jews no one was qualified to be a priest who had any bodily defect or blemish. It behoved the sacred historian therefore to show that our great High Priest had no bodily disqualification for His office. He was destined, after thirty years' spiritual obscurity, to lead a life of energetic labour and endurance of hardship for the space of three years. In this a frame capable of ordinary fatigue was surely necessary. Even for the toil of this daily employment, Jesus needed those bodily powers of which St. Luke briefly describes the increase.

II. We may assume that, whatever the age of our Lord was, His wisdom corresponded to His age. There is a prescient wisdom, sometimes found in early years, which gives way to and is succeeded by the maturer wisdom of the man, just as that in its turn passes on to the grave and retrospective wisdom of the elder. Jesus increased in growth and in that wisdom which suited His years. He is represented to us, in the sacred narrative, not only as receiving wisdom from above, but as acquiring wisdom by communication with others. In the development of Jesus there was nothing like forcing, no hurry or impatience, no attempt either to produce a sensation, or to impress His brethren and neighbours with an idea of His extraordinary powers.

III. We see the Child Jesus increasing in favour with men all, that is, who came into communication with Him. The favour of men is a test of certain qualities, without which no Christian character can lay claim to even relative perfection. No selfish, or ill-tempered, or peevish, or morose, or arrogant, or deceitful person can ever secure the favour even of relatives, much less that of any mixed society. The Child Jesus commended Himself to all who knew Him by every amiable and lovely quality, and grew up like some tender plant in the quiet vale of existence.

IV. And we are called upon to regard Him as increasing in favour with His heavenly Father. This is a sure concomitant of spiritual growth. We have to contemplate the Child Jesus, not as possessing at once the full favour of God, but as increasing in favour with Him. This shows the Saviour to be one of us. This marks His life on earth as progressive, passing through successive stages each perfect of its kind, but one kind of perfection being higher than another.

G. Butler, Sermons in Cheltenham College,p. 27.

Silent Growth.

I. Times come to all when the great realities of life and death stand out clear, if it is but for a moment, and the heart sees and feels what is of value and lasting and true. We want such times: the beginners want them to teach them how to begin; the older want them to encourage them to go on. But yet these critical times are as nothing compared to the daily, hourly, momentary appeal that is being made to everyone. Whether we know it or not, not a moment passes which does not add or take away something of our power of judging and seeing the things of God. This power of judging and seeing the things of God is a power of the Spirit, and is given by the Holy Spirit of God to those who open their hearts to God's truth, and live by it. This power of seeing, of putting the feeling in accord with higher feeling, of the getting the heart to thrill with the thrilling of Divine truth, and the mind to think out God's thoughts, is wisdom. It is the harvest gathered from life. God's world is all about us God's world of created nature, fields and trees, rivers and sky; God's world of men and women, with all their hopes and fears; God's world of right and wrong, with all the strange permitted evil, and all the wonderful bringing out of good. To read God's thought in God's world is wisdom. "And Jesus increased in wisdom." The little valley and the country town, the lonely life, the quiet village amongst the hills, the grass beneath, the stars above, the life within the narrowing heights, the life views that streamed over them from outside, gave all the material wanted for wisdom. To Christ the sower that went forth to sow was a presence touching the heart, the mustard-seed cast into the ground a message of heavenly power. Not a sparrow, but His eye knew it as a part of God's alphabet. The women grinding corn, the very leaven in the daily bread, all were to Him thoughts thought out and passed on to us, lighted up with the light of the everlasting.

II. What a lesson of patient waiting this gives! The mind feels a sort of breathless awe when it tries to call up the idea of the Lord of lords, sitting a poor Man on the hillside, and day by day, for thirty years, holding within His heart the wondrous knowledge of a Divine mission, and all the time treated by the villagers as one of themselves. All the sense of inward power, the thoughts that pierced the secrets of the world, the reformer's eye that saw through the tangle of human life, of its sorrows and its sins, conscious of the Redeemer's power to heal; the gathering greatness, the danger and the sacrifice grew more and more distant day by day to the solitary unacknowledged King on the hillside; and yet He waited and waited, and gathered in new thoughts daily where others saw nothing, and grew in wisdom and was strong in spirit; and being strong in spirit did not move before His time.

E. Thring, Uppingham Sermons,vol. i., p. 213.

References: Luke 2:52. S. James, Church of England Pulpit,vol. xiv., p. 76; R. Heber, Parish Sermons,vol. i., p. 112; H. G. Robinson, Man in the Image of God,p. 167. Luke 3:1. F. D. Maurice, The Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven,p. 37.