Luke 2:41-52

JESUS TWELVE YEARS OLD

This inspired omission of our Lord's biography the first thirty years of His life, with the single exception of His visit to Jerusalem when twelve years old, has been a puzzle to thousands. It is certainly very plausible, as we are not interested in that period of His life in any essential or saving sense, from the fact that, pursuant to the Mosaic law, He patiently waited the arrival of Jewish majority before He entered upon His official Messiahship. If this had been written, it would make the New Testament too voluminous for the mind to grasp and the memory to retain. Hence the omission of non-essentials is a great blessing. So we proceed now to investigate the only item in His history during the first thirty years intervening between His birth and His baptism.

Luke 2:41-52. We have here the statement that when they journeyed from Nazareth to Jerusalem, one hundred miles, on foot, in order to attend the great annual Passover, when Jesus was twelve years old, having spent the time (eight days; i.e., beginning on the Sabbath, running through the week, and dosing on the Sabbath), and with their company band of relatives and friends traveling together for mutual security and companionship and stopping at nightfall, they first miss the Child, as so many are going along together, they at first suppose that He is with some of the relatives and friends. (I passed by the village of Beeroth, twelve miles north of Jerusalem, where it is certified that the parents first missed the Child.) Getting ready, and starting perhaps about noon, and traveling on foot leisurely, on account of the women and children, they would journey about a dozen miles by the time to stop and fix up for the night encampment, as was their custom, and is yet, in that warm country. When they miss Him, search thoroughly, and settle the matter that He is not in the crowd, they return to Jerusalem. After three days spent ransacking the city, they find Him, sitting in one of the temple buildings, of which there were very many on the Holy Campus, “in the midst of the teachers, hearing them and asking them questions. All hearing Him were astonished at His understanding and His answers. And seeing Him, they were overwhelmed with surprise and delight, and His mother said to Him, Child, why did you do so to us? Behold, both Thy father and I continued to seek You sorrowing. And He said to them, Why did you seek Me? Did you not know that it behooveth Me to be in the affairs of My Father?” In the Jewish economy, a priest was said to become the son of the law at the age of twelve, being then old enough to understand the commandments and keep them. So here, Jesus seems to accept that situation in the attitude of a faithful Priest in His dispensation. Hitherto in the home, lovingly obedient to His earthly father and mother, we do not know that He had given them any direct information relative to His Divinity and His Messiahship. Now we see that He puts all scruple and inquiry on their part to a quietus by a positive announcement of His Divine Sonship, and His mission on earth, not to do the will of earthly parents (which of course He did, subserviently to the law), but to execute the will and purpose of His Heavenly Father, who had sent Him into the world to perform the stupendous work of redemption.

“They understood not the word which He spoke to them. And He went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them. And His mother kept all these things in her heart.” Of course, from the first announcement of the archangel Gabriel, Mary had diligently and enthusiastically remembered everything which seemed to shadow forth the Divinity of her child. Yet doubtless His daily presence with them, thus becoming so familiar and common, as an incessant inmate of the home, they did not apprehend and realize the Divine majesty which so far was hidden in the humanity.

“Jesus increased in wisdom, stature, and favor with God and men.” During the thirty years of His minority, before His reception of the Holy Ghost, immediately after His baptism, His beautiful, amiable, and irreproachable life, brightened with all the loving graces of an innocent and holy disposition, overflowing with kindness and love to everybody as a normal consequence, popular favor and kindly estimation and appreciation turned on Him from all the people. Doubtless all were delighted with Him as an active and prominent member of the synagogue. But you see, so soon as He returned home from the baptism of John and the induement of the Holy Ghost, they all fell out with Him and tried to kill Him. Hitherto He has been an irreproachable member of the Church; now, He is a fire- baptized, Spirit-filled Preacher of the gospel. Therefore His words hew Adam the First all to pieces; then He well says, “The world hateth Me.”

So His favor with men evanesced.