Who’s Your Daddy?

Sermon Transcript

I’m not sure if this insult is still in use, but when I was a kid at least, the insult “mama’s boy” carried some weight. It might be used in a situation in which you’re trying to get a kid to join in on something, but the kid expresses hesitation or reservation, maybe because he was actually concerned with what his mom would think, but even if that wasn’t the case, you might call him a mama’s boy anyway. The implication, nonetheless, was that his ultimate allegiance was to his mom. This morning we’re looking at a passage from the Gospel according to Luke, a book of the Bible written to help us get to know the real Jesus, and in the passage on which we’re going to focus today, we are going to see that while Jesus certainly loved and honored his mother, he was not a mama’s boy. Instead, we’ll see that by age 12, if anything he’s a daddy’s boy, only his true daddy wasn’t who he appeared to be. Who gets your ultimate allegiance? Jesus’ Father got his, because Jesus has a relationship with his Father like no other. It gives him a wisdom like no other, it brings him into conflict with others, and it did not exempt him from the humanity common to others.

 

It gives him a wisdom like no other

 

Our passage begins with a description of Jesus’ parents. It tells us that they went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover. God’s law required that the males report to Jerusalem every year for three feasts, of which the Passover was one (Deut 16:16). Women weren’t required to go, but we see further evidence of Mary’s love for the Lord in her choice to also go with Joseph to the Passover, and to bring their son Jesus with them. Throughout these first two chapters of Luke we’ve gotten various glimpses into the lives of the people Luke calls “those with whom God is pleased,” (2:14) and one basic characteristic of them is that they faithfully gather for the worship of God. Back in chapter 1 Zechariah the priest went to the temple when it was his time to serve, and burned incense at the appointed time. With him were gathered people for the hour of prayer. Then in chapter 2 we met Anna who did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day. Now here we see the normal pattern, “the custom” as verse 42 says, for Jesus’ family, was to go together to the appointed feast.

 

After Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, the appointed feast became a weekly one, which we call the Lord’s Supper, on the first day of the week, the day of his resurrection, and it was delocalized from Jerusalem to wherever two or three gather in his name, gatherings the New Testament calls “churches,” but what remains the case is that those with whom God is pleased have a custom of attending those gatherings. It is possible, of course, to attend church gatherings week-in and week-out while remaining dead in your sins and under the wrath of God. You do not need the Holy Spirit’s work in your life to set an alarm, get out of bed, and move your body into the space of a church gathering. So attending church gatherings doesn’t make someone pleasing to God, but it is very rare that someone lives a life pleasing to God who doesn’t prioritize gathering with their local church, even when it is inconvenient to do so. Single brothers and sisters, this is one reason to prioritize marrying someone who not only says they are a Christian, but who is a member of a local church with which he or she faithfully gathers. You want to be able to trust that if you get married, this will be the custom of your family as well.

 

It was Joseph and Mary’s custom, but this time when they went up, and Jesus was 12 years old, something different happened. In the Judaism of the time, instruction ramped up around age 12, because they held that age 13 was when you could start making religious vows to which you’d then be held accountable. So Jesus is right in that time window this year when his family goes up for the Passover, and just like every other year, they spend their week there, and the caravan of people who came from Nazareth to Jerusalem starts heading home. But after a day of journeying, they realize Jesus isn’t with them. So they go back to Jerusalem to look for him and after three days of searching they find him in the temple of all places, and look at what he’s doing: Sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.

 

Now let’s remember what’s already been revealed about Jesus in Luke’s Gospel: He’s been called great, the Son of the Most High, we read that the Lord will give to him the throne of his father David, that he would reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there would be no end. We’ve read that he was conceived by the Holy Spirit himself, with no human father biologically, and that he would be called holy, the Son of God. He’s been called savior, Christ, and Lord. He’s been called the salvation that God has prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light of revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to God’s people Israel. And what do we find him doing at age 12? We find him listening to the teachers of God’s word and asking questions.

 

So if you’re looking for a good path toward wisdom, here’s a start: Spend time with teachers of God’s Word, and do two things with them: Listen to them, and ask them questions. We have three elders at this church who this congregation has affirmed as “able to teach” God’s Word. There are also many ways in which every believer is able to instruct one another (Rom 15:14). Kids, your parents are the first teachers to whom you should be listening and asking questions. One obvious opportunity for listening to teaching in our church is the weekly teaching of God’s Word in these gatherings. How might you listen well to that teaching? Again the most obvious first step is to be here. Yes we provide a recording of the sermon on our podcast for those who are providentially hindered from attending, who want to listen to a sermon again, or who want to send it to a friend, but you will not learn from those at the level you’ll learn if you sit in the gathering and hear the sermon live. Another thing you may notice is that our sermons have a general structure: A big idea, and an outline. One way to listen well would be to listen for that big idea, and then think of a question you’ll be looking for an answer to throughout the rest of the sermon. So for today’s sermon, for example, the big idea is that Jesus has a relationship with his Father like no other. So a question you might ask is, “What is Jesus’ relationship to his Father?” or “Why is it like no other?” and then as you listen, see if you can detect the answer.

 

One discipline I would even just commend to you whether you’re listening to a sermon, reading your Bible, attending a Citygroup meeting, engaging in family worship—any place you’re looking to grow in wisdom—one discipline I would commend is always trying to generate a question to further your understanding. Jesus wasn’t just listening; he was asking questions. One of my favorite experiences on a Sunday is when the service ends, I give the benediction, and I see someone coming up to the front to talk to me. And usually they apologize first, which you don’t have to do by the way, and then they say, “I just had a question about something you said in your sermon.” Preachers LOVE that! Even if you don’t always ask me, think about a follow up question to the sermon that you could ask your friends or family over lunch after church. Listen, and keep asking questions if you want to grow in wisdom.

 

Jesus did that, and in this he shows himself to be an exemplary 12-year-old Israelite. He models what one who fears the LORD does: They seek God’s wisdom, they listen to the teachers of God’s word, and they ask questions to grow in wisdom. But look what verse 47 says happened next: All who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. He’s the one listening, but the people present weren’t amazed at his humility, nor were they amazed with the teachers’ understanding: They were amazed with his understanding. And though verse 46 says he was asking questions, the people who heard him weren’t amazed at his questions, nor with the teachers’ answers; they were amazed at his answers. The scenario here is probably that there was dialogue, common in this form of instruction, and in the back-and-forth, though Jesus is adopting the posture proper to a 12-year-old of listening and asking questions, as the conversation progresses, people start to wonder who’s really the student, and who’s really the teacher.

 

At some levels of education this happens. I once heard a Princeton professor talk about one his doctoral students, and he commented that at times he wondered who was the student and who was the teacher. Maybe the line between a doctoral student and a professor can get blurry, but this is a 12-year-old! And he’s not chopping it up with the proverbial village preacher, either. These are the teachers in Jerusalem, at the temple, during the most significant feast of the Jewish calendar. These are the cream of the crop teachers, and when the crowds hear them dialoguing, the one whose understanding and answers amaze them is the 12-year-old Jesus. How can that be? How was Jesus already this wise by age 12?

 

Well we know from the Bible that the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom (Prov 1:7), or we could state the inverse—that a lack of fear of the LORD, a disposition of rebellion against the LORD, or to put it one word, sin, tends to work against wisdom. So listen to this from Ephesians 4:18, speaking of those who don’t know God – “They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.” There we read that they are alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, but that ignorance is due to their hardness of heart. In other words, if you have a hard heart toward the LORD, then even when his truth enters your mind, something from your heart springs up and rejects it. You don’t want his truth because if his truth were true, then he’d be God, and you wouldn’t be, and a hard heart wants to avoid that at all costs, even at the cost of wisdom. On the flipside, though, if you love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and all truth ultimately has its source in him, then you will love the truth, which makes it much easier for you to acquire it. When you aren’t fighting wisdom, but love it, and are happy to receive it, whatever it is, you will tend to acquire more of it.

 

Now think about this 12-year-old Jesus. Having not been born of the fleshly union of one man and one woman, but conceived supernaturally, he was also conceived without sin. He was the one human who did love God with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength, and so also he was the one human with no hardness of heart inclining him to reject truth. Instead he had a soft heart eager to receive the truth, and so by age 12, he acquired much of it. He had a relationship with his Father like no other because his relationship with his Father was in no way distorted by sin. Therefore, he was eager to receive wisdom from his Father, and acquired more of it than any other 12-year-old.

 

But the uniqueness doesn’t end there. Verse 47 doesn’t just depict Jesus as the smartest 12-year-old in Jerusalem, and the rest of Luke’s Gospel isn’t going to depict Jesus as some kind of savant, as though he were the Einstein of the first century. We wouldn’t expect even a sinless 12-year-old to be giving better answers to questions of God’s wisdom than the best teachers in Jerusalem. Here we can begin to see the rays of Jesus’ divinity shining through his humanity. To him there was an infinite ocean of wisdom available, because from his conception, his humanity was united to the infinite ocean of wisdom himself: God, in the person of God the Son, to whom the Father is eternally communicating all of his wisdom. And now at age 12, as the human Jesus Christ listens and asks questions, that infinite ocean of wisdom begins to bubble up and reveal itself in his humanity, to the amazement of all who heard him. Jesus has a relationship with his Father like no other because he is the eternal son of the Father, who is the eternal recipient of the Father’s wisdom, and that gives him a wisdom like no other. So if you really want wisdom, the teacher you need to listen to above your parents, your pastors, or your friends is Jesus, and the only other teachers worth listening to are those whose teaching accords with his. And next we’ll see that his unique relationship with his Father not only gives him a wisdom like no other; it gives him a mission like no other.

 

It gives him a mission like no other

 

So verse 48 records how when Jesus’ parents finally found him in the temple, here’s what his mother Mary said to him: “Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress,” which is probably what any parent would say to a 12-year-old who did their own thing when their family was leaving. But this was a 12-year-old like no other. So he responds in verse 49 by asking why they were looking for him, and suggests they should have known that he must be in his Father’s house. The Greek translation there is a bit tricky; some English versions say that he must be about his Father’s business, and I think that’s actually a bit better, although it’s obvious that his Father’s business is done in his Father’s house, and that is, in fact, where he is, by being in the temple.

 

Now in a sense of course, every Israelite, every lover of God, was required to love God more than their parents. But not every 12-year-old Israelite was supposed to hang back in the temple when their family headed home from the feast. Certainly not every Israelite could say they must do such a thing, like Jesus says in verse 48. This is again showing us that Jesus has a relationship with his Father like no other. Think about the way he even uses the word “Father.” Mary comes to him and says, “Your father and I have been searching for you,” and Jesus responds that he must be in his Father’s house. Obviously he wasn’t in Joseph’s house, and so here Jesus is demonstrating an awareness of a relationship to his heavenly Father like no other relationship, a relationship that superseded even his relationship to his earthly father and mother.

 

I’ve already alluded to his conception, which was like no other, because his mother, Mary, was a virgin at the time of it. But the Holy Spirit created him according to his humanity in Mary’s womb, and therefore, Luke 1:35 tells us, the child is called the son, not of Joseph ultimately, but of God. And now we see that as he is the son of God like no other, he also has a mission like no other. He knew, even at age 12, that he wasn’t just born a human—he was sent to become human, and sent with a mission that necessitated learning, questions, understanding, and answers. Jesus reveals that mission later in Luke 4:43 when he says, “I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well; for I was sent for this purpose.” Jesus has a relationship with his Father like no other because Jesus existed before he was born, was sent into the world to become human, and then to grow in wisdom to the point that he could go and preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the towns of Israel. And that mission, that sent-ness from his Father, mattered to him more than anything else.

 

Pretty much anytime something matters more to you than the approval of people, it will bring you into conflict with people. In Jesus’ case, it even brought him into conflict with his godly parents. Kids, if there ever is something God wants you to do, but your parents won’t let you do it, you must obey God, not them. Adults, if there ever is something God wants you to do, but you know your parents wouldn’t approve of it, you must obey God, not them. I’m amazed how often this proves to be a snare in the lives not so much of children, but of adults, especially of adults who have godly parents, like Jesus clearly did. They’re so used to thinking of their parents as godly examples and good teachers to them that they almost can’t emotionally handle the thought of doing something of which their parents would disapprove, even if it sure seems like God wants them to do it, and intellectually in every case they can acknowledge their parents are imperfect and capable of erring. I appreciate the desire to honor parents, but we must not honor them at the expense of honoring our Father in heaven. The most obvious place this comes out it is with baptism: Though the Bible teaches we should be baptized in conjunction with our own profession of faith in Jesus, many struggle with the emotional cost of implying that their parents did something wrong when they had them go through a ritual they considered baptism in their infancy. I also think of Christians I know who have considered global missions or adoption but whose parents have expressed reservations, reservations sometimes compelled by godly wisdom, but other times compelled by more worldly considerations. Whatever the case, there’s nothing inherently dishonoring of our parents to gently and respectfully tell them that we must ultimately be about our Father’s business, and where that conflicts with their desires for us, God’s desires must prevail.

 

Godly parents should ultimately appreciate that. We can detect this in Mary’s response: Though verse 50 says she and Joseph didn’t understand what Jesus spoke to them, verse 51 tells us that Mary treasured up all these things in her heart. In other words, she let the words of her son, and even the correction of her son, sit with her, instead of dismissing it out of hand. Parents, may we long for the day when our kids so advance in wisdom that they are able to respectfully correct us. In fact, if you really teach your kids the Bible, don’t be surprised if they are able to correct you and notice ways your conduct is not consistent with it. I can think of multiple times my son respectfully pointed out to me ways I was not speaking to my wife in a godly way, and while my first impulse was admittedly not to treasure that feedback up in my heart, the Lord has used it to correct me and lead me to repentance.

 

Mary treasured these things up in her heart, and does seem to have accepted that Jesus’ agenda was going to be set by his heavenly Father, not by her and his earthly father. We too must realize that we cannot simply incorporate the real Jesus into our agenda. He must be about his Father’s business, and unless we are willing to reorient our lives around that business, we cannot have him at all. There are all kinds of reasons someone might initially explore Jesus: They want to be a better parent or spouse, they want to find a spouse, they want to improve their mood, they think more faith will give them greater material success, they’re looking for community—whatever the reason may be, there aren’t many bad reasons to get started, but if you really want Jesus, you’ll never really get him if you’re trying to just use him as a means to your ends. He will have none of it, even from his own mother, much less from us. If you want Jesus, you too must give up your demands for what your life has to look like, and follow Jesus wherever he leads in his Father’s business.

 

And we as a church, as Jesus’ body on earth, must be about our Father’s business above all else. The world always wants to tell the church what we ought to be doing: Think of how often unbelieving people begin sentences with words like, “Aren’t Christians supposed to be” or “The church is supposed to be.” Granted that the Lord can use anyone, even unbelieving people, to correct us, but taking our cues from the world on which issues we ought to be addressing and prioritizing is a terrible guiding principle. I remember a time here in the city in which I was helping plant trees and when the neighbor I was doing it with learned I was a pastor, she asked me what our church was doing to address our global climate crisis. I said nothing, and I’m still glad to say nothing, because we must be about our Father’s business, and he hasn’t sent us into the world to solve a global climate crisis, end global poverty, solve systemic racism, or Christianize the government. We’ve been sent by him into the world to preach the good news of the kingdom of God. Let’s be about that.

 

Jesus had a mission like no other, but on that day at the temple, he was still a 12-year-old. And so we’ll see finally that though he has a relationship with the Father like no other, it doesn’t exempt him from the humanity common to others.

 

It doesn’t exempt him from the humanity common to others

 

Perhaps surprisingly, after explaining to his mother that he must be at his Father’s house, verse 51 tells us he left his Father’s house, went down with his parents to Nazareth, and became submissive to them. Of course, if the Father had revealed to him that he must stay in Jerusalem, he would have stayed, but as Jesus will say elsewhere in other Gospels, his time had not yet come, and so instead he continues in his ordinary obedience to every precept of God’s law. He returns to Nazareth, and submits to his parents. Honoring parents isn’t something we should do at the expense of honoring the Lord, but the fact that God did give us in the ten commandments this commandment to honor our father and mother means that the way we will ordinarily honor the Lord is by submitting to our parents.

 

Might there be a time to gently and respectfully correct a parent? Yes; Jesus did that here. Might there be a time to disobey a parent out of obedience to the Lord? Yes. But if those things are happening regularly, something’s wrong. Kids, I want you to consider this: If Jesus is the eternal Son of God, if he even at age 12 already had a wisdom beyond the greatest teachers in Jerusalem, and he still submitted to his parents, how much more should you? He didn’t submit to his parents because they were wiser than he or godlier than he is; he was God! But as a human, he still submitted to his parents, simply because they were his parents. He knew part of his Father’s business was submitting to his parents, he knew Joseph and Mary were the parents God gave him, and so he submitted to them. Kids, that’s why you should submit to your parents. They’re the parents God gave you, and if you love him, if you want to be about his business, you will submit to them. On the flipside, if you notice in yourself a resistance to submitting to your parents, recognize that for what it is: A resistance to submitting to God, and instead of fighting God and your parents, fight that sin.

 

Jesus was a true human, so Jesus submitted to his parents. And Jesus was a true human, so he increased, verse 52 tells us, in wisdom and stature and favor with God and man. We’ve already talked about his increase in wisdom some—though he was truly God eternally, and one person uniting divine and human natures in himself the moment he was conceived, according to his humanity, he increased in wisdom. At his conception, he wasn’t already cognizant in his human consciousness of how to get from Nazareth to Jerusalem. But as he went with his parents year after year, he increased in wisdom. At his conception, he wasn’t already cognizant in his human consciousness of how God brought his people out slavery in Egypt, or what festivals God appointed for his worship under the law, in what cases he allowed divorce, and a host of other things, but he increased in wisdom on things like these as he meditated on scripture, sat with teachers of the law, listened, and asked questions. There is, no doubt, mystery here—none of us knows what it is like to be a person with two natures, but we can confess with scripture that Jesus increased in wisdom.

 

The increase in stature is easiest to explain—it just means he got taller, bigger, started growing facial hair, and underwent all the normal processes of bodily development common to us as humans. But finally, verse 52 also tells us he grew in favor with God and man. Favor with man is again fairly easy to explain—as the people who heard him at the temple were amazed at his understanding and answers, so as time went on more would see his wisdom and his conduct, and their amazement at him would increase. But how did he grow in favor with God, when from his very conception, he was sinless? Think of it like this: Your company makes your dream hire, the perfect candidate. The day they start, you know they’re the perfect candidate for the job, and you are thrilled to have them. But on that first day, they haven’t yet accomplished anything positive for the company. So also Jesus, at his conception, has the favor of God. In the verse just before this passage in Luke 2, verse 40, we read that already then, the favor of God was upon him. But as he walked in new good works day after day, as he resisted the temptation to sin again and again, day after day, as he continued being about his Father’s business and submitting to his parents, he also grew in favor with God according to his humanity. He spent his life filling up a resume with nothing but obedience to his Father, a resume that had as its grand finale his greatest act of obedience.

 

This story of Jesus going to Jerusalem on his Father’s business foreshadowed another time when he would go to Jerusalem on his Father’s business, because Jesus was sent not only to his Father’s house; he was sent to bring people into his Father’s house. He was sent not only as the son of God; he was sent that others might become sons of God. Because here’s the problem we have: We were not holy from our mother’s womb. We’re the people that were alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in us, due to our hardness of heart. We’re the people who have been more about our own business than God’s business, and so far from being children of his, the Bible says we were by nature children of his wrath (Eph 2:3).

 

But out of sheer mercy and love for an undeserving world, what God the Father sent God the Son to do was to not only become human and preach the good news of the kingdom; he sent him to make a way for us to enter that kingdom by dying on the cross in our place. The Father’s business, the Son’s mission, was ultimately for him to offer himself for our sins. Nowhere do we see Jesus more clearly saying, “I must be about my Father’s business” than at the cross. In that act of obedience he cut himself off not only from his parents, but from all the living, took upon himself sins that were ours, not his, and bore the wrath we deserved for them. And because he did, his final increase in favor with God was when God the Father raised him from the dead, all the way to heaven, his Father’s true house, only now in such a way that all who receive him are assured of a place there with him one day. Any sinner can now be adopted by this Father, enter his house, receive his favor, and be about his business if they will repent and receive the one who had a relationship with him like no other.

 

Consider the humility of Jesus in this. He who is truly God, to whom we owe all our submission, nonetheless becomes human, and submits to his parents, parents who, like us, were among those who failed to submit to him as God. He who is the source and fountain of all wisdom, the one through whom God made all things in wisdom, nonetheless becomes a human who has to increase in wisdom, and who does so by sitting around with human teachers, humans he made, humans who, to the degree they have any wisdom, got it from him, and he listens to them, and asks them questions. He who is omnipresent, who created the farthest reaches of outer space and upholds them now by the word of his power, who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, nonetheless became a human who was somewhere in the ballpark of 8 pounds at his birth, and 20 inches long, who had to then increase in stature. He who enjoyed the favor of his father eternally in the unity of the Holy Spirit, who is eternally the radiance of his Father’s glory and the exact imprint of his nature, nonetheless becomes a human, who at his conception had a blank resume, who then had to increase in favor with God as he obeyed the very law he gave. He who is worthy of all the praise and honor of the humans he made nonetheless became a human who had to increase in favor with man, who not only demanded the praise of the humans he made, but won it by his life, death, and resurrection.

 

This really is a man like no other, who had a relationship with his Father like no other. So may we then listen to him like no other, follow him like no other, and in union with him, love our Father like no other.