WWUTT 2281 Jesus Grew in Wisdom (Luke 2:39-40)

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Jesus is God incarnate. God who put on flesh and dwelt among us.

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He even grew from infancy into a man and experienced many of the same things that we experience when we understand the text.

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Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know we don't. When we understand the text is committed to teaching sound doctrine and rebuking those who contradict it.

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Visit our website at www .utt .com. Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

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Thank you Becky. In our study of the gospel of Luke we are in chapter 2. Picking up where we left off last week we're reading about Jesus teaching in the temple.

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Now of course there's a lot of passages about this but not passages about him teaching in the temple at the age of 12.

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I'm reading here verses 39 to 52. Hear the word of the Lord. And when they had performed everything according to the law of the

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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.

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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

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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.

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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've 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 that statement there in verse 52 really bookends this account that we have verses 39 and 40 are very similar to that statement in verse 52 and in between of course we read this narrative of a 12 year old

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Jesus in the temple teaching when his parents did not know where he was in the four

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Gospels we don't have anything written for us about anything that happened in the life of Jesus between his infancy and between the beginning of his earthly ministry at the age of 30 except for right here this is the only account that we have of anything happening in the life of Jesus between those two periods from about the age of two because if you'll remember in Matthew chapter 2 when the

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Magi came and visited the baby Jesus he was a little bit under the age of two so from then up to when he begins his earthly ministry at the age of 30 nothing else is written about him except for this account right here in Luke I remember a pastor when

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I was much younger what was baffled by this it just personally expressing dismay at the fact that we don't have anything else written about Jesus when he was a kid or when he was a teenager or even when he was in his 20s there's nothing written for us about the kinds of things that were going on in the life of Jesus and this pastor saying well it wasn't anybody keeping a diary in the house the

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Son of God is in your home isn't somebody writing any of this stuff down but of course the only ones who would have really known who

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Jesus truly was were Joseph and Mary now of course we had the account given of Simeon and Anna so there were certainly whispers among others of Jesus being particularly unique and special especially considering that Mary was a virgin when she became pregnant with Jesus now that wasn't the whispers or the murmuring among the people at the time that Mary became pregnant people weren't talking about her miraculously being pregnant except for Zechariah and Elizabeth I would imagine and everybody else probably thought that Mary had cheated on her husband just as Joseph had thought

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Mary had done until an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream and said the child that was within her was from the

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Holy Spirit and he would take away the sins of his people for those who believe in him so there were there were people that had a pretty good idea this baby

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Jesus was unique or this child Jesus had something special about him but people weren't really looking at him as being the

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Son of God remember that when John the Baptist began his earthly ministry we're gonna get to that later but when he started his ministry people thought he was the

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Messiah and that's because he had a lot more familiarity with the people than this child who was born to the carpenter in Nazareth John was the son of Zechariah one of the priests in the temple and it was well known the crazy thing that happened is

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Zechariah that one time he saw a vision and he couldn't speak anymore and Elizabeth became pregnant with the way of women was not even with her anymore so that was certainly a miracle baby people were looking at John the

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Baptist believing that he was the Messiah but John the Baptist had come to make the way for the

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Messiah and of course the Messiah being Jesus so here we have a pretty interesting account of Jesus in the temple and preaching at the age of 12 there are various different stages that are described by Jews to mark a child's development how is it that we refer to the development of a child in the

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Western world English -speaking how do we speak of this you have an infant then a crawler then a toddler and then you would have what pre -k everything's kind of labeled by grades after that pre -kindergarten or preschool and then you have kindergarten and you know first grade up through grade 12 but in the middle there you'll have an adolescent you'll have a preteen teenagers once they hit 13 to 19 they're considered teenagers and then you have what college age probably the way we might define it 20 years old up through 29 then they're 20 -somethings then they're 30 -somethings on and on it goes after that they're not kids anymore but you know what

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I you know what I mean the way that we refer to the different ages of a child the different stages that they go through as they mature and develop well the

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Jews mark stages of a child's development with nine different terms there's the newborn babe that's

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Isaiah 9 6 there is also the the suckling or the nursing child as in Isaiah 11 8 the nursing child shall play over the whole of the

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Cobra and the weaned a child shall put his hand on the adders den so that leads to the next stage of development which is the weaned child there's also the the nursing child who begins to ask for food then there's the weaned child then there is the child that is clinging to his mother then there is the child becoming firm and strong and then there is the reference to the youth literally the way that term youth is translated is is a child who shakes himself free or the ripened one he would be referred to as a youth he is one who is self -sustaining he's able to be on his own he doesn't have to depend on his mother and his father to be able to provide for him any longer so here at this stage of development we've got those nine descriptions throughout the scriptures of of a child's development what do we have here what is described of Jesus here he is a youth he is old enough to be making decisions for himself old enough to take care of himself verse 42 when he was 12 years old they went up according to custom so Jesus is at that stage of youth now we're not gonna get that far today we're not gonna get down into Jesus actually in the temple and what he was doing there and his parents in distress looking for him let's look just primarily at what we have here in verses 39 and 40 and we'll also consider verse 52 since this goes along with it well so in verse 39 when they had performed everything according to the law of the

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Lord they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth now this was right after everything that we read about in the temple when

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Joseph and Mary went there after Jesus had been circumcised after the time of Mary's purifying and they go into the temple in order to offer a sacrifice and it's there that they encounter

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Simeon the prophet who had been looking for the arrival of the

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Messiah you also had Anna who likewise was old in age over the age of a hundred and she is looking for the coming of the promised one of the

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Messiah and we read of this prophet and prophetess who are in Jerusalem and in the temple ministering and this demonstrating

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God's fulfillment of the time that is past now the the time has come for the

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Messiah to arrive and just as it was prophesied through Joel that both your men and your women will prophesy so you see kind of a precursor to that kind of a sneak peek with Simeon and Anna a prophet and a prophetess who are allowed to witness

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God had promised to them that they would witness the arrival of the Messiah and so they in the voice of prophets have now verified that the

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Messiah has come and no doubt would testify to this among other people as well we kind of see that in the beginning of Luke a testimony to the arrival of Jesus it's announced by these angels to shepherds the shepherds go and see the

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Christ child and then they go and tell other people everything that they had seen and heard it begins with the angels testimony it's given to shepherds they spread this testimony and then even when

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Joseph and Mary get to the temple and meet Simeon and Anna the message of the gospel continues to be proclaimed even there through these two individuals so they performed everything according to the law everything that was required of them to do even there in the temple and they returned into Galilee to their own town of Nazareth now of course we know in verse 39 there's quite a bit of a time jump that happens there because it wasn't right after they fulfilled everything in the temple that they then go back into Nazareth what else happened in between well you know that they actually stayed in Bethlehem for quite a while nearly two years and it was during that time that the

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Magi came and visited as I mentioned bringing their gifts of gold frankincense and myrrh they found the place where Jesus was born because they had gone and visited

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Herod first and Herod consulting his wise men said yeah the arrival of the Messiah is supposed to be in Bethlehem so that's where the

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Magi go they see the star that they have been following resting on the place where Jesus was

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Joseph and Mary along with the Christ Child the light of the star shining on that place and the

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Magi rejoiced they go in and they bow down and worship him and offer their gifts to him but then they are warned in a dream not to return to Herod so they went back home another way

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Joseph is in the meantime warned in a dream that Herod seeks to kill the

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Christ Child so he is to take up Mary and Jesus and there to flee and they go down to the

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Jewish settlement at Alexandria in Egypt and there they remain for a short time it was probably not as long as their stay in Bethlehem and they waited until Herod had died which had occurred according to history that happened not long after the

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Magi would have left so once they heard that Herod had died they moved back into Judah but hearing that Herod's son was on the throne they bypassed returning to Bethlehem and ended up going all the way up to Nazareth so that was that all transpired here in verse 39 basically it's not that Luke is telling a different story or he wasn't on he was unaware of these things

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Luke wasn't even ignorant of what Matthew had written Matthew was the first gospel according to Eusebius Matthew was written about 12 years after Jesus had ascended into heaven so it would have been the earliest possibly the earliest book of the

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New Testament and so with with that in mind Luke surely knew of those things that Matthew had already written it's why

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Luke writes certain things the way that he does because he provides some extra details and accounts that people would not be able to have found in Matthew's gospel there's a lot of similarities because they're both synoptic

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Gospels synoptic meaning same but there are some differences as well and here

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Luke just simply says after they had performed everything after all that was accomplished according to the law of the

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Lord they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth now to say they had performed everything according to the law of the

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Lord that could also be a reference to the fact that the Old Testament mentioned some other things that would take place and once all of those things were fulfilled then

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Joseph and Mary and Jesus went back up to Nazareth because even as Matthew gives that account of the massacre of the innocents in Matthew chapter 2 he's showing even their scripture being fulfilled so they go back up to Galilee which again is in the northern area of Israel and they go to Nazareth and it says in verse 40 that the child grew and became strong filled with wisdom and the favor of God was upon him now one of the things that this demonstrates to us is that God had always intended in the creation of man for us to grow and to learn we would not be born knowing everything

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I've had that question asked of me before if Adam and Eve had not sinned in the

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Garden of Eden and everything remained that paradise the way that God had created it would we be born just knowing everything like a infant comes out being able to talk

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I guess and and maybe even the life cycle would have been a little bit speedier a child grows a little bit faster what sort of things would have happened had

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Adam and Eve not sin well remember that Jesus is without sin and yet he is born as a child and it is explained to us that he grew in wisdom going to verse 52 again

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Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man so there is development that's happening there

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Lucas plainly showing that to us so from the very beginning even in the perfection of the creation at the very start

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God had intended that when we would be born all of us would be learning and we would be growing in that knowledge just as the body grows so does the mind and that's kind of demonstrating that to us here in these passages that Jesus is very man and very

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God and in his humanity experiencing everything as a human would he also grew in knowledge filled with wisdom that statement there in verse 40 that he is filled with wisdom also it kind of coupled with verse 52 indicates a progression that is happening there filled with wisdom being filled with wisdom filling with wisdom so all of the knowledge that he possessed did not come to him at once it came to him as he matured it came to him by degrees he had a true body

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Jesus even had a soul and in both of these things in body and in soul scripture tells us he was strong the child grew and became strong you probably know people who are strong in body but not as strong in mind or in spirit and then there are others that you may know who are strong in spirit but don't have a very imposing physical presence and so Jesus is being described here is one who is strong in body and in mind and in soul he is filled with wisdom just as anybody would learn anything so Jesus in his humanity was also a learner consider what

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John Gill writes about this particular statement about Jesus being filled with wisdom

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Gill says the following he is filled with wisdom and knowledge as man for this is to be understood not of his essential wisdom as God nor of those treasures of wisdom and knowledge which were hid in him as mediator to be dispensed to his church but of his created and natural wisdom as man in which he increased gradually as his body grew and the faculties of his soul opened under the influences of his deity and the power of his spirit and then the last line that we have here in verse 40 is this the favor of God was upon him as the same as saying that the grace of God was upon him because that's what grace is it is

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God's favor toward us we don't deserve it and God just gives it to us in this case though Jesus does deserve it he is the incarnate son of God he is sinless he is one with the father so yes he is very deserving of the favor of God but as it would be said of us when we read about God's favor upon us or him showing his grace to us it is the undeserved favor of God that he shows to sinners but here it means more than just simply favor

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God did show him favor but he was pleased with him he blessed him remember the words that the father said at Jesus baptism this is my beloved son in whom

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I am well pleased remember what the father said on the Mount of Transfiguration this is my beloved son listen to him so the favor of God is upon him because he is

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God he is the God man God showing him favor and pleased with him in his humanity and blessing him as well that he would therefore grow in wisdom and Jesus does not come about this wisdom on his own the wisdom that he comes about is not just merely in his humanity he turned out to be a pretty knowledgeable person it's because the

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Holy Spirit was with him the Holy Spirit of God was upon him and by the blessing of God he gains favor with God and man as we'll read about later in verse 52 so we'll come back to this thought later even as we finish up the section tomorrow we'll look specifically at what happened with Jesus teaching in the temple but here we get those those little hints of what growing up was like for Jesus an entire dozen years or something like that captured in just this simple phrase the child grew and became strong filled with wisdom and the favor of God was upon him the favor of God is upon each and every one of us who are in Christ Jesus unlike Christ we are we are undeserving sinners and yet God shows his favor to us and has given us his son so that all who believe in him will not perish but have everlasting life and so may the growth that we experience now as followers of Jesus be in wisdom we would grow in wisdom in the knowledge of God drawing closer to God increasing in love for God and even for his people as we await the day of Christ's return and we join him in his eternal kingdom

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Heavenly Father thank you for your kindness to us in that you condescended yourself to us

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Jesus taking on the form of a servant and being obedient to the will of the

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Father even to the point of death on a cross dying on the cross for our sins rising again from the dead so that all who believe in him we will not perish but have everlasting life grow us in knowledge of you may we mature as Christians as men and women of God and likewise increase in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man we ask these things in Jesus name amen thank you for listening to when we understand the text with pastor

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Gabe if you'd like to support this ministry visit our website and click on the gift tab in the top right corner of the page join us again tomorrow as we continue our