Luke 2:39-52 Leaving Jesus Behind

The Importance of Gathering and the Gospel-Centered Life

Of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsack preaches from his series, King Over All, from the Gospel of Luke. Let's listen in.

Good morning and welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsack, I'm the lead pastor here, and I am glad to be together with all of you. We gather together to hear from God's word, and I just wanna point out a couple of obvious hot takes on our reality.

We have the technology to be able to hear this message from home. We have the ability to study the Bible alone. We can even sing songs alone. We can eat crackers and drink juice alone. And so it might be since COVID, and since that entire wild and crazy couple of years, it might be good for us to refresh ourselves and remind ourselves regularly, why do we gather?

And I would suggest to you, we gather here in this place for two distinct reasons. The first is that scripture indicates that God has made us relational. He's made us to need others. And that's part of the design of humanity is to reflect the triune God who is in himself relational.

And so relationship is at the very beginning and at the very basis of all things. Then secondly, God's word commands us to gather together in the name of Jesus Christ, his son. And so both the way that he's designed us and his command leads us together.

Your first answer might be something different. Like it might be, I like the singing. I like the donuts. I just like being around people. I don't know what your reason might be, but fundamentally it is because of the way that God has designed us and that he commands us.

I hope that that commends itself to you. I've been really encouraged by all of you. When we gather, I feel his presence with us. I'm strengthened by your smiles and your prayers and your words of encouragement.

And I really delight and rejoice in the opportunity to be together with you this morning. This morning, we're gonna be wrapping up our time in the book of Luke. We're not gonna be finishing the whole book, certainly.

We're actually just finishing chapter two, but our section is a final historical account that conveys the only childhood account of the life of our Lord. Now, I say that because there's some infant stuff going on there and all of that, and then all of a sudden he's 12 years old in our text.

There are many other accounts. There are many other accounts of the childhood of Jesus found in ancient writings. But this account here that we find in Luke is the only one that passed the smell test of verifiability that Luke followed in his research.

In other words, this means that this account was corroborated by eyewitnesses, and the historian Luke was confident that the events that we're gonna read this morning actually occurred. There are a lot of things that were written, claimed to be written by apostles, but then they're dated to much, much later, and there's a lot of reason to be skeptical about some of these writings about Jesus's youth.

But this one is recorded for us in scripture for our benefit and blessing. And as far as introducing this passage before we read, I wanna point out that there's always,.

When we're reading history,.

There's always two levels of understanding. There's the actual historical events as they transpired. Those are recorded for us. They are beneficial for us to know what actually happened. But then when we read these historical accounts, we're also meant to be thinking about the significance of these events in our lives.

What we're gonna encounter here in the text is Jesus as a young preteen. Any of you ever met a preteen? Any of you ever been a preteen? Okay, man oh man, there is a lot more that I wanna know than what the Bible says about young Jesus.

Anybody with me on that? Any of you ever been curious about his childhood? Either you are curious or you just don't feel like raising your hand or something, but I am, I've always been curious about his relationship with Mary and Joseph.

What did it look like to try to raise a perfect son? What was it like to be his brother? Now, some of us already had a sibling that could do no wrong in mom and dad's eyes, but Jesus never did any wrong, right?

So, I mean, can you imagine what it would be like in his household? What was he like as a student? We get a little glimpse of that, by the way, today, that he was a really, really good student. But did he, you know, so just on a practical sense, did he joke around?

Was he funny?

Was he fun?

Did he ever play ball? Was he all serious? Did he have good teeth? I mean, there's, you know, just questions, just things that you're just kind of like, what was it like to be around him in his youth?

But here's what we need to understand. The Spirit has seen fit to give us this account. This is what we get. Now, we don't always get what we want. We want all these details to be answered and stuff, but we get what we need.

And the Spirit is interested in letting us know a couple of things in a very practical sense, that Jesus was raised in an obedient Jewish, obedient religious Jewish family. The Spirit wants us to know that Jesus, at least on this occasion, was left behind by his parents.

And the Spirit wants us to know that Jesus would be found in close relationship with his heavenly Father and sought to be close to his heavenly Father. So we're gonna see something of a metaphor here that is often replicated in our own lives as we observe the role of Mary and Joseph in this text, while we also learn something quite important about Jesus that we ought to emulate as his followers.

So we're meant to learn in this text from both Joseph and Mary and what they do, but also to learn from Jesus as well in this text and what he did as well. So let's open our Bibles or your scripture journals or your devices to Luke chapter two, verses 39 through 52.

Again, Luke two, starting in verse 39, Luke 2 .39. And Recast, I love to remind us of this every Sunday morning this is God's holy word, the most valuable, most important, most treasured thing that we have access to is his word, and we get an opportunity to hear it together.

Probably worth the cost of admission right here, just reading and hearing from him. Luke chapter two, verse 39 through 52. By the way, there is no cost to admission, just to clarify, so like this, just joking.

And when they had performed everything according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee to their own town of Nazareth. And the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, and the favor of God was upon him.

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.

Let's pray.

Father, I thank you so much that we have record of your son, the way that he lived, the things that he did, just the character that he exhibited. We don't have a lot from this era of his life, but we have what you have desired to communicate to us.

And I thank you for this example of his parents involved in religious duties, in religious behavior, and doing the things that were required of them while missing out on that, which was most important, your son.

Father, I pray that you would protect us from what would be kind of a central metaphor of this text, doing the religious things, going about our religious responsibilities, doing all of the spiritual things, spending time in your word, coming to church, giving to the poor and giving to the church and all of the various responsibilities and listening to good Christian radio and doing all the things and leaving Jesus behind.

Father, I pray that you would protect us from that, that you would allow this to be a message of bringing Christ back into the center, inviting him into the center of all aspects of our lives. And Father, as a church, we want to keep Jesus at the center of all that we say, all that we do, all that we're about.

Father, I pray that you would protect us from a religiosity that insulates itself from the glory and the majesty of your son, that makes us feel good about ourselves and our behaviors and our actions and all the things that we can do while missing out on the most important thing, that is what you have done for us and your son.

Father, I pray that as we have an opportunity to lift our voices together in praise to you, that you would allow our minds and our hearts and our realities to center on our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

It's through him that we have access to you. It's through him that you hear our praise. It's through him that you hear our prayers. And so, Father, I pray that you would meet us in this place with joy and with gladness over the great gospel, the great central message that you have loved us and you have sent your son to die on the cross for our sins, to rise again on the third day victorious.

And from that place, I pray that you would help us to keep him at the center and for us to obey you in love.

We ask this in Jesus' name, amen.

All right, yeah, you can go ahead and be seated and make yourself comfortable. And you can reopen your Bible or your device to Luke chapter two, verses 39 through 52. It's good for you to have that open on your lap so that you can follow along and see what I'm saying.

It's kind of coming straight from the Bible. Our text is pretty straightforward and anybody could understand it. I think you just read it. It's a historical account. You get the gist of what's going on here.

It's a real event in the life of Jesus and his parents. And this is, for many of us who have been kicking it around the church for a while and you've been around and you kind of know it, this is the one where Jesus is left behind.

How many of you know what I'm talking about?

This is that passage.

And the one when he's 12 years old, the one account. While we might be tempted to use this passage to give solace to those parents who have left a child at church and had to come back for them or left them at the grocery store, I hardly imagine that that is the reason that God recorded this passage for us.

As if the spirit was like, hey, don't feel too bad. Remember, Joseph and Mary misplaced the savior of the world, right? So I don't think that that's the intention behind this. This week, I have an outline that goes like this.

If you're a note taker, here's kind of the pathway we're gonna go through this text. The first, being religious people, verses 39 through 42. The second is leaving Jesus behind, verses 43 through 46. And then where Jesus will be found, verses 46 through 52.

So being religious people, leaving Jesus behind, where Jesus will be found. Our text begins where we left off last week, and it emphasizes the religious commitment of Joseph and Mary. It was emphasized last week that they're very religious in the way that they respond to God.

We saw them go to the temple last week where Jesus was about five weeks old to dedicate him and to make sacrifices for Mary. And our text is going to cover over a decade of the life of Jesus in just a few short verses.

But we begin with the religious commitments of the parents of Jesus. And I've entitled the first movement being religious people because that's where the text goes. In verse 39, it's emphasized that they performed everything according to the law, and then they returned home to Nazareth.

These are people, Jewish people, who lived in an ancient time, and they did what God required of them from even what was written in a more ancient time than where they were living. And so Jesus continued, it says in the text, he continued to grow in physical strength, but also in wisdom, and it was obvious that God's favor was on this child.

All those who knew him, all those who saw him would say, this kid is favored by God. But it's worth mentioning here that Jesus grew just like you and I grew. When you think about Jesus and you start to kind of get a little skewed in your thinking, just remember fully God and fully human.

That's been the church's testimony down through the ages as scholars and students of God's word and just lay people studying God's word, just that's what we come to conclude, that Jesus is both fully God and fully human, meaning that as a human, he had and has nerve endings, he has synapses forming in his brain, he has a will, he has preferences.

Lean into that fully human, lean into that fully God. And so in this sense, Jesus experienced so much of life in common with us. We don't have a God who is distant from us, but one who entered life with us and is able to experience and has experienced many of the same things that we've experienced.

So much of life in common between us and Jesus Christ, except for there being one major really big difference. He was just like us, yet without sin, absolutely. So from that standpoint, I hardly get that, right?

Like that's the part that I don't understand. Like that's the part that's mysterious that I'm not quite able to wrap my mind around. God in flesh grew in strength, the God-man grew in wisdom, and it's a bit of an understatement to say that the favor of the Father rested upon the Son, that the favor of God was upon Jesus, but Luke goes there and actually declares it openly for us.

This one was clearly favored by the Father. But back in the religious commitments, back to kind of like that part of the text that's talking about the religious commitments of his rents, verse 41 tells us that every year they took a trip to Jerusalem for the Feast of Sacrifices.

These were commanded in the Passover laws and Exodus, and so they continue to do that. This is somewhat of a vacation of sorts for them. Just think about like, have any of you like kind of found a routine or a tradition surrounding vacations?

Like you go to the same place. Any of you go to the same places pretty regularly? My wife and I, for over 20 years, we've gone to the Smokies for at least a week out of every year, primarily because somebody has a house down there they let us use.

So if you've got a free place to stay up on a mountainside, take it. So that's been really, really helpful to our family. It's been kind of like a recentering place. We know the things we enjoy there, we know the things we don't enjoy there, and we know the drive very well.

But that's kind of what's going on here is that they are traveling regularly to do this thing, obviously for religious reasons, but everything in verse two, everything in verse two paints a family portrait full of good religious commitments.

And I don't see anything in the text that would move me to disparage that, to say negative things about their religiosity. And the reason I'm even talking that way is because we live in a time where the word religion has come on hard times, right?

I've used it in a negative way. How many of you would raise your hand and say, I've used the word religion in a negative way? Like, that's just religion. But I think it's for good reason. I think there's a good reason we have a little bit of skepticism surrounding the word religion, and primarily because we'll say it's a relationship, not a religion, and all of that, that is all really important.

Because here's what's true and revealed through Scripture. Religion without love from God or to God is railed against in Scripture. Like, guys get angry about this. Like, the prophets get angry about this.

Jesus gets angry towards people who express religious behavior without love for God and love for others. From the Old Testament prophets, you can hear them crying out and calling out and shouting out and shouting down the people who offered empty sacrifices without any love for God or neighbor.

It's all over the Old Testament prophets. And then you can bring that into the New Testament. Jesus giving scathing rebukes of the scribes and Pharisees, who he said, love God with only your lips while your hearts are far from him.

You'll speak grandiose things about your love for God, but you don't act upon it. Religion without relationship is dangerous. Obedience to commands without being first given a new heart will always lead us to pride, which the last time I checked was on the list of sins, right, like religious activity leading to sin.

But it does, and it will, if you have not first been granted a new heart that's acting out of a response to what God has done for you. You see, we are saved by grace through faith, and even that's not of ourselves.

That faith, we don't produce that, but it's a gift from God, not by work so that no one can boast in their salvation. Nobody can say, look at what I've done for God. Look at how awesome I am. It makes sense that God would rescue and save me because I'm so religiously good.

Not at all, but it is all a gift from God. Religious obedience, church, saves nobody. But rather, those rescued by God's Savior through faith in what his son has done for us on the cross, they are the ones able to express true religion, true religious obedience, that as the apostle Paul says in the book of Romans, comes from the heart, an obedience from the heart, a love because we have been rescued by his love and we recognize how much he's loved us and we just wanna please him, we wanna honor him.

We wanna glorify him because look at what he's done for us. I'm not seeking to cast, by the way, any doubt regarding the motivations of Mary and Joseph here for following this religious activity. I'm only pointing out what is clear, the clear teaching of scripture so we don't get it convoluted in our minds.

These religious activities, no religious activities expressed in scripture are to be done in the pursuit of salvation. There's not a law given to us in scripture that is given for the purpose of the pursuit of salvation.

It's all meant to be lived out of relationship and love for God who has loved us first, has rescued us. Now go and pursue good works. Now go and do good for your fellow man and for God. Jesus was raised in a religious household.

That's very clear from this text and yet I believe it's with some intention, it's with intention that there's a juxtaposition of a religious couple, think about this, there's a religious couple misplacing the Savior in the midst of their religious activities.

Think that through. The irony is too obvious to be accidental. This account of Joseph and Mary forgetting Jesus is set intentionally into the context of the fulfillment of religious routines and sacrifices.

Go to the temple, do the thing, come back. Go to the temple, do the thing, come back. Year after year after year.

Oops, where's Jesus?

They would not be the first to miss God in the middle of trying to serve him. They will not be the last to miss God in the process of trying to serve him. But I would suggest to you they might just be some of the most embarrassed for having done so.

The most embarrassed for misplacing the Savior. Religious responsibility, by the way, church is not the problem. Trusting in religious responsibility is the problem. Trust Jesus, church, then pursue obedience.

Getting that reversed will always lead us into a spiritual tangle. And we've already kinda stated what's gonna happen next in the text, it's already starting to blossom here. When Jesus was 12 years old, they took that familiar family vacay to Jerusalem.

They had traveled this road before, three days journey down to Jerusalem, do the sacrifices, come back. And this is by this time routine, just as routine as maybe a family vacation or something like that, or something that you do as a family routine.

Maybe it's some tradition that you just did over Christmas that you barely even have to think about anymore because it's become tradition and you just do it every year. This is normal for them. But on this occasion, something unique happened.

Jesus is 12 years old. They've been doing this since he was born, 12 years. And we come to our second point, the unimaginable leaving Jesus behind, verses 43 through 46.

When the feast had ended.

And the sacrifices had all been made, Joseph's family all packed up and began that journey back up north to Nazareth, to Galilee. But Jesus chose to stay behind in Jerusalem, the text tells us, while his parents didn't know.

And I want you to just kinda see the set up there and go, uh-oh, uh-oh, parents don't know, he stays behind. Now from one perspective, it's obvious that Joseph and Mary lost Jesus. Like if you're telling the story from Mary and Joseph's angle, you're taking them as the center of the story.

What are you worried about? What are you concerned about? They have lost Jesus, right? Is that one way you could put it? Could you, would it be fair to say that? Mary and Joseph have lost Jesus? Yes. But the text, the text takes a different tack.

It tells us something different and unique that we wouldn't know aside from the text telling us. And it's simply this, Jesus stayed behind. Now, as many 12 year olds do, Jesus has a mind of his own. And he willingly, willingly, willingly chose to remain.

Now, what am I saying?

Like, think about this.

As in, Jesus knew the family was packing up and leaving, and he chose not to go with them. Like, this is not Kevin in Home Alone, okay? Forgotten by the family, they took the flights, they left him out in his home trying to solve things, and Jesus was not a victim in that way, not at all.

He chose, there they are, I'm going this way. He has a rationale for this and explains it to his parents later, explains it to us through the text. But just let it sink in that he chose to say, bye family, without them knowing, and he goes back to his business.

He's teaching us something of the value of his relationship with his Heavenly Father over and against even his earthly family, even as a 12 year old. Even as a 12 year old, he is purporting to teach you something.

Say, I'll be your teacher, I'll show you something. And he's doing that in this text. It's obvious that Joseph's family formed some kind of a caravan of sort or whatever. There was a large group, obviously coming from the north.

This is Passover, people are on the road, traveling to make their sacrifices. Not just his family that was required to do this. The roads are busy during this time with people coming back and forth, having made sacrifices in Jerusalem.

And in verse 44, we see that they presumed, the parents presumed, Jesus was with family and friends. Obviously, by this point, he's 12 years old. In that age, he's getting up there. He's maturing, he's a young man.

When you consider that he's probably gonna be married before he's 20, he's already taken on some responsibilities. It's not unreasonable for them. We think a 12 year old, oh my goodness,.

Could he tie his shoes?

So you gotta recognize that in the ancient world, this is, when your life expectancy is not 40, he's cooking. But a day into this three day journey, they haven't seen him. And while I don't think it likely began right away with panic from the first thought, how many of you know it goes there quick?

It doesn't take much to go from the momentary like, hey, anybody know where Stinky is? To like, oh my goodness, where are they? And then all of a sudden, you're running up and down the aisles, looking down every aisle, and you go that way, you go this way.

Where are they?

Do you know what I'm talking about? I mean, the panic sets in for them. Some of you in the room have had that fearful moment when you turned around to one of your kids.

And said, where's your sister?

And then it's like that cold sweat and the hair stands up on the back of your neck and you're like, what have I just done? They couldn't find him. And they begin to backtrack the entire day's journey back to Jerusalem.

Now, it's one thing to do that for your cell phone. It's another thing to have to backtrack and try to find your kid. And I wanna remind you that this is before there were Amber Alerts, not everybody's cell phone went off in the area to kind of like alert them for the, you know, there are no cell phones.

For you younger people in the room, I need to clarify just something that might be mind bending to you, but this was even before the internet. Okay, so the internet hadn't even been invented. I mean, we're talking ancient, ancient times.

And so they spent three days without even knowing where Jesus was. Like, we can't hardly go a few minutes without checking in with each other, right? And they spent three days not even knowing where he was.

The day out, the day back, and the day searching, it seems like the language there is inclusive. So when you go, wait, did they search for three days? It doesn't seem to indicate that. But as I mentioned earlier, there's an irony in misplacing the Savior while on the journey to fulfill religious responsibilities.

While this is a historical account, the connections in it are meant, I think, to be ironic to us. How often, and I'll ask you a mildly cheesy spiritualizing question, but I think it's valuable for us, how often have we lost Jesus in the routines of our religious life?

Seems maybe overly spiritualizing, but I think it's worth asking to all of us. Again, how often have we lost Jesus in the routines of our religious life? Far from being a criticism of Joseph and Mary as parents, I believe that this text serves to show us the place of young Jesus in the religious context of his time.

Where will he be?

What is he here for? Where does he belong in the entire mix of human religion? Where will he be found? Can he truly be found at the center of it all, or is he just a forgettable, is he forgettable in a nation that's steeped in religious routines and traditions?

What about for us?

Could he be lost in a church steeped in religious routines and traditions? We get up on Sunday morning, we come to church, and we leave. Could we do that without Jesus? Without a thought about him? We could.

We can give, we can read the Bible, we can listen to our Christian radio, or we can sing our Christian songs, or we can do a whole lot of things without any thought about Jesus, right? Anybody tracking with me on this?

Of course, Joseph and Mary were beside themselves at the lost state of their son for three days.

It says that they panicked, actually,.

In the Greek text, panic. But nowhere near, and I mean, they were beside themselves, and they panicked, but they were nowhere near as panicked as they ought to have been. And you say, well, how can you judge that?

How do you know how panicked they were? I just know who he is. Because of the fact that I know him, I know there was no way that they could muster within their souls enough panic to match what they had lost.

Do you get what I'm saying in it?

The Savior?

The one who right this moment sits at the right hand of the Father on high?

Where is he?

I thought he was with you. I thought he was with you. I thought he was with our friends. Do you think for a moment that they had an understanding of what they had lost? No, they're fearful. They lost their son.

They lost the king of the universe, misplaced him.

You'd laugh, but it's like, what?

We are meant to consider this from our vantage point centuries later with all the revelation that we have at our disposal. This account exists to remind us to keep Jesus at the center, to not let him slide off to the sides of the camp, to the margins, to not assume he'll come along on those margins with some other family member later.

He'll get back to us. He's probably just out doing his own thing right now. Jesus is never out doing his own thing. Wherever he is is where you should be. Whatever he is doing should be what you're about.

Don't lose Jesus in the pursuit of religion. Don't allow him to be secondary to anything in your life, even religious responsibility. Don't stop fixing your eyes on the Savior. Don't stop allowing Jesus Christ to be the center of your days and your moments in your life.

We have this metaphorical caution about keeping him close here in the text, but we also see something beautiful about where he will be found. You let go of him, and where would you turn to find him? Where will Jesus be when we go to find him?

And that's the third movement in the text, where Jesus will be found, verses 46 through 52, and the answer is simple. It's profound and it's self-evident to him. He says, you should have known where to find me.

As close as I can get to my Father.

That's where you'll find him.

As close as he can be to the Heavenly Father. When you get Jesus, by the way, when you receive him and you accept him as your King and your Lord and you trust in what he did for you on the cross, when you get Jesus, you get the Father and the Spirit, too.

They come to you together. The three persons of the triune God are united in essence and purpose and will, and in essence, in all aspects, united. So where do his parents find him in verse 46? In the temple, where he's listening to the religious teachers, talking about God.

He's asking them questions. It's apparent from his answer and his response later, or just what's said in the passage later, that he was actually answering their questions as well, providing answers, asking knowledgeable questions, listening to their teachings, all about his Father.

And his parents are shocked, but I think as you might imagine, there's a possibility to be a parent that's both shocked and not impressed with your kid. Shocked, but not impressed. And Mary asks, in what I imagine to be a bit of a stern voice, son, why have you treated us this way?

We've been all worked up in a panic, searching everywhere for you, she says. Now, this is where most parents will leverage the often stated, I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed. But apparently that phrase hadn't been invented yet, so that doesn't occur in the text.

Now, we usually make much about 12-year-old preteen Jesus amazing the religious teachers in this account, and that's the way I've heard it preached, that's the way I've heard it taught, is just be in awe of his wisdom and teaching and knowledge.

And man, he's a 12-year-old, his school and the seminary students, and he just knows everything. Anybody ever heard it taught that way? Like, that's what's impressed you the most from this text? But I really was challenged this week to think of this fundamentally about the location of Jesus in the temple, close with his heavenly father.

That's what he tells us why he was there. He doesn't say I was there to completely school and pwn some religious leaders and completely just flabbergast them with all my wisdom.

Is that what he says?

Not at all. In verse 49, he says that he stayed for the purpose of being close to his father. In other words, he wanted to hang around a little bit longer at his father's house. I want you to know where to find me, he says to his parents.

Are you kidding me?

Searching everywhere high and low? Duh, go to the first place. Where do you know I'm gonna be? I don't think he said duh, by the way. He's probably respectful. But the question he asks them is mystifying a little bit.

If you don't really understand what's happening in the text, the question he asks, why were you looking for me? Why were you looking for me? It connects, by the way, in the text with the great distress and frantic searching indicated in verse 48.

Look there. 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 says, why? Why? Why worried? This question in context is basically, why so worried? Why the frantic searching? Didn't you immediately know where I was gonna be? Didn't you immediately know I would be in my father's house?

His response isn't so confusing from our vantage point 2 ,000 years ago, I mean, 2 ,000 years later, without the frantic searching. We haven't lost our preteen. We're not kind of caught in that drama.