Sent To Reunite The Lost With The Father

Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church.

Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern Minnesota.

We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg.

The Holy Gospel according to.

St. Luke, the second chapter.

The child Jesus 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 twelve 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 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.

This is the gospel of the Lord.

In the name of Jesus.

Alright, tough text that we have to deal with today.

And I've done some research, did a little reading in the Church Fathers to see how other pastors have

addressed this text.

I call it the original.

Home Alone.

Story, if you would.

You think Kevin McAllister, Home Alone, Home Alone 1, Home Alone 2.

Yeah, this is the original one, if you would.

Jesus gets lost.

And of course, it's during the Christmas season as the text comes up.

But that's kind of missing the point, if you would.

Think of it this way.

Jesus says to His mother, Why were you looking for Me?

Did you not know I must be in My Father's house?

And they did not understand the saying that He spoke.

So I went and looked at other sermons, other pastors through history to see how they have understood this text.

And the one thing I can say with certainty at this point is that there is kind of no unified voice as to what to do

with this.

So I made an executive, well actually not an executive.

I'm not an executive.

I made a pastoral decision that what I would do is work with this text in a way

that folds it into some of the themes of our epistle text.

In our epistle text, you'll note that it begins with these words, Blessed be the God and

Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly

places.

And one of the things I think that it's really easy for us to do as Christians is to really overlook,

in many ways, the love that the Father has for us.

And so as we listen to our gospel text, as we heard it today, every time I've read this, I've

always thought it reminded me of a particular story from the book of Genesis.

And it's one of the details of the story of Joseph and his brothers.

If you remember the story in the book of Genesis, Joseph is the son of Jacob.

Jacob at this point has had his name changed by God himself to Israel, the one who wrestles

with God.

And Joseph is the favored son.

He's the guy with the technicolor dream coat.

The Broadway musical's all about him.

But you get the idea.

But his father loves him.

He is the favored son.

And his brothers, they don't like him so much.

And he has two dreams, prophetic dreams.

So if you've ever heard anyone say, you need to dream audacious dreams, you're totally missing the whole point of the text.

The whole point of the text is that this was a prophecy given by God to him to prepare him for what it is that would

come.

But the details of the dream go that, well, as interpreted, it makes it

sound like his parents and his own brothers and siblings would bow before him, like he was some kind of a ruler or something.

And his brothers were not really keen on him or his dreams.

And so they came up with a great idea.

They thought they would just murder him.

Yay, you think your family's dysfunctional.

So here's the idea.

We're just going to murder Joseph.

Now, one of the brothers prevails over the others and says, rather than murder him,

why don't we do this?

We'll sell him into slavery.

So they betrayed him for pieces of silver, sold him into slavery in Egypt.

And you're sitting there going, I can already start to see some of the themes as they relate to Christ.

And you should because Joseph exemplifies Christ in so many ways.

And then what happens?

He finds himself in Egypt in slavery working for a fellow by the name of

Potiphar.

And then of course his brothers, they lie to dad and tell their father that he

has been torn apart by animals.

They found his tetanus -colored dream coat, covered it in goat's blood to make it

look like he had been thrashed to death by a lion or a tiger or a bear.

You kind of get the idea.

And Israel goes into deep lament.

Very, very deep mourning.

In fact, we learn from these texts that he never really gets over the fact that he has lost

his son.

And that's an important part.

But as the story goes, Joseph then, he goes from

slavery to prison because I like to say, if you read the account in Genesis,

he was doing very well as a slave.

In fact, very well.

His master trusted him with everything.

But his wife had the hots for Joseph.

So we have in recorded history the first recorded case of workplace sexual

harassment.

And he ends up in prison for 13 years after that for a crime that he had never committed.

Well, we all know how the turn of events goes.

There were two fellows who had dreams who worked for Pharaoh himself.

And one of them, the dream went favorably for him and he then remembers that Joseph is

able to interpret dreams later when Pharaoh had dreams.

Dreams that were warning the Egyptian world, the world at that time, that God was going to be sending

seven years of famine and they need to prepare for it.

And after hearing his dreams interpreted by Joseph, Pharaoh takes Joseph from prison to

second in command of all of Egypt and he begins the process of preparing Egypt for the coming

famine that will strike the land.

And when the famine strikes, guess who shows up in Egypt to buy grain?

None other than Joseph's brothers.

And on their first visit, they didn't bring Joseph's

full biological brother with them, the youngest, Benjamin.

And Joseph is a little worried for Benjamin.

And so he makes it clear to them on their first visit that he would not allow them to purchase more grain

unless they brought their youngest brother with them the second time.

And so they did.

But it wasn't an easy discussion with their father because it was Jacob

himself who refused to let Benjamin go.

And in order for Benjamin to go, Judah had to prevail upon Jacob and

basically offer up his life in exchange for his brother's should anything happen to him.

Which in the Types and Shadows is actually quite meaningful if you think about it.

Judah offering his life in exchange for one of his brothers.

And so with that, we know then that they traveled back to Egypt.

They were able to purchase the grain that they had hoped for.

And Joseph's heart, well, he was having a hard time holding it together when his brothers visited him the

second time.

But in order to test his brothers to see what their intent really was, he came up with a scheme whereby

he had all their money put back in their sacks, even though their sacks were filled with grain.

And he hid one of his silver cups in the mouth of the sack of the youngest, Benjamin.

And then they didn't know that they had these things in their sacks.

And they headed off towards home.

And then Joseph sent one of his servants saying, why have you stolen my master's cup?

He hadn't really stolen it.

And they found the cup in Benjamin's sack.

And now it's time to return.

So there's a little bit of a return trip going on here.

But the themes are fascinating.

And so upon their return, Judah says to Joseph, and this is from

Genesis chapter, let's see here, where was I?

Genesis chapter 44.

Benjamin, they all fall to the ground.

When Judah and his brothers came to Joseph's house, he was still there.

They fell before Joseph to the ground.

And Joseph said to them, what is this deed that you have done?

Do you not know that a man like me can indeed practice divination?

Now, he really can't.

But it's all part of the ruse, if you would, the thing that he had

set up.

So Judah said, what shall we say to my lord?

And what shall we speak?

Or how can we clear ourselves?

God has found out the guilt of your servants.

And we'll note here, with a careful reading, a more thorough reading of this story, we know that Judah

and his brothers all believe that they're kind of being messed with, if you would.

And here, Judah speaks on behalf of the whole group, that God has found out the guilt of your servants,

plural.

Ten brothers were responsible for Joseph being sold into slavery and lying to their

father.

And he says God has found out the guilt of your servants.

Now, I want to assure you of this.

God never has to find out your sins.

God knows you thoroughly.

He knows you're waking up.

He knows what you do in the morning.

He knows what you think about while you're sleeping.

He knows what you do throughout the day.

God doesn't find out your sin.

He knows your guilt.

And what's interesting here is that Judah, like many of us, think of God the Father in

terms almost that are synonymous with the concept known as karma.

You guys familiar with karma?

What goes around comes around, right?

And so many times it's easy for us to think, well, I'm having bad circumstances in my life.

Maybe I've lost my job because of COVID.

Or, you know, you get the idea.

Bad circumstances.

And so it's easy for us to sit there and say, what have I done?

And you're thinking a specific thing that God is punishing me for, to make my life so difficult

right now.

But the reality is that that's not how God operates.

And if you don't believe me, let me ask you this.

Have you ever noticed how the rich and the famous, they're not really known for their

piety or their love for God?

And it seems like everything goes really well for them.

They've got all the money.

They've got all the inside connections.

They drive amazing cars.

They live in beautiful houses.

In fact, they themselves, they can afford to defy age and

make themselves beautiful long into their elderly years using plastic surgery, right?

So you'll note that in reality, there are consequences for sin.

This is true.

But often in this world, people do not experience those consequences for their sin.

They experience them later on the day of judgment.

And the blessings that they've had and they've received oftentimes will be held against them for their lack

of faith.

So here Judah is saying God has found us out.

He believes they are being punished for their sins.

But that's not what's going on.

We know the story in its entirety.

And this is where we have to consider something here.

And this is where I want to flesh out just a little bit more the concept of the love of the Father for us.

Famous verse that we all know by heart.

Now stop for a second and back it up just a little bit.

God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.

Do you know that you can change a word in that passage and not do violence to the text?

The Father so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.

It's God the Father that we're talking about.

And I want you to think of this.

In the same way that Jacob lamented the

loss of his son Joseph, truly lamented, and feared the

loss of his son Benjamin.

In that same vein, God the Father has lamented the

loss of his children, you and I.

It has struck him to the core.

And it is out of his great love, mercy, and compassion that he has sought us

out.

And he sent his only begotten son, Jesus, our brother,

if you would, by virtue of the incarnation, in order that we can be reconciled and be

reunited with the Father.

That's what's at work here.

And Joseph knows this.

Joseph knows that the intent of his heart here is not to throw his brothers into prison.

The intent of his heart is to reveal who he is and for him to be reunited

with his father and to return Benjamin to his father unharmed in a

joyous reunion.

And the only way that that can be a joyous reunion is by the fact that he has forgiven his

brothers of their great sin that they committed against him.

Forgiven them.

And that's what we see really going on here behind the scenes.

So Judah speaking, God has found out the guilt of your servants.

Behold, we are my lord's slaves, both we and he also, in whose hand the cup has been found.

So Judah is basically saying, alright, we're all your slaves.

But Joseph said, well, far be it from me that I should do so.

Only the man in whose hand the cup was found shall be my slave.

But as for you, you go up in peace to your father.

But they can't go up in peace to their father without Benjamin.

So Judah then went up to him and he said, O my lord, please, let your servants speak a word in my lord's

ears and do not let your anger burn against your servant.

For you are like Pharaoh himself.

My lord asked his servants, saying, have you a father or a brother?

And we said to my lord, we have a father, an old man

and a young brother, the child of his old age.

His brother is dead and he alone is left of his mother's children.

And his father loves him.

And then you said to your servants, bring him down to me that I may set my eyes on him.

And we said to my lord, the boy cannot leave his father.

For if he should leave his father, his father would die.

Then you said to your servants, unless your youngest brother comes down with you, you shall not see my face

again.

When we went back to your servant, my father, we told him the words of my lord.

And when our father said, go again and buy us a little food, we said, we cannot go down.

If our youngest brother goes with us, then we will go down.

For we cannot see the man's face unless our youngest brother is with us.

And then your servant, my father, said to us, you know that my wife bore me two sons.

One left me and I said, surely he has been torn to pieces and I will never see him.

I have never seen him since.

If you take this one also from me and harm happens to him, you will bring down my gray

hairs and evil to Sheol.

Now therefore, as soon as I come to your servant, my father, and the boy is not with us, then as

his life is bound up in the boy's life, as soon as he sees that the boy is not with us, he will

die and your servants will bring down the gray hairs of your servant, our father, with sorrow to

Sheol.

For your servant became a pledge of safety for the boy to my father, saying, if I do not bring him back,

then I shall bear the blame before my father all of my life.

Now therefore, please, let your servant remain instead of the boy as a slave to my

lord and let the boy go back with his brothers.

For how can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me?

I fear to see the evil that would find my father.".

Wow, that's quite the speech.

Judah has stepped up, and it's appropriate that it is Judah.

Judah has stepped up to take the place to bear the sin of his

brother so that he can go in peace and that his father would not die.

So appropriate, so appropriate.

And then what follows is probably one of the most touching portions of scripture.

At this point, Joseph could not control himself before all those who stood by him.

And so he cried out, make everyone go out from me.

So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers.

And he wept aloud so that the Egyptians heard it and the household of Pharaoh heard it.

And Joseph said to his brothers, Ani Yosef, I am Joseph.

Is my father still alive?

But his brothers could not answer him, for they were dismayed at his presence.

So Joseph said to his brothers, come near to me, please.

And they came near.

He said, I am your brother Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt.

And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here.

For God sent me before you to preserve life.

And that's the point.

Great theme.

And so you'll note then, this is an important aspect of our gospel text today.

Because you'll note that the types and shadows always give way to Christ in one form or another.

And here in our story, we have Joseph again.

But Joseph is not the one in town.

He's the one traveling back home.

And he, in his journey, has cut short and he and his wife are going back to Jerusalem to

look for Jesus.

But I want to point this simple fact out.

That in the incarnation, Jesus never left the Father.

Because you'll note that Christ's prayer life, which is exemplified for us in the gospels,

show that he spoke with his Father daily.

Constantly.

And for Jesus, Jesus knows that he is both the Son of David and the Son

of God in one human person.

And so it says here that the child grew, became strong, he was filled with wisdom, and the favor of God was upon

him.

Of course, how could it not be?

Because in his case, he was keeping God's law perfectly.

Every commandment perfect.

Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover.

And you'll note here that the Mosaic Covenant only requires the men of the household to show up

in Jerusalem for the Passover, for the Feast of Tabernacles, and for what we call the

Pentecost.

And so you'll note that the whole family goes, even though the whole family is not required to go.

Tells you something of the piety of the house that Christ is growing up in.

And when he was 12 years old, they went up according to custom.

And Jesus here, as a 12 -year -old, he is right on the cusp of being a man legally in the

ancient world, in ancient Israel.

Seems like kind of a young age.

13 is a young age for a boy to be considered a man.

But keep in mind that human life was a lot shorter then.

For a man who had to work hard for a living, well, like his father Joseph did, average age

expectancy, somewhere between 45 and 55.

You have a midlife crisis at 22.

It's kind of a serious thing.

So Christ is on the cusp of becoming a man.

He's not quite there yet.

And when the feast was ended, they were returning.

And the boy, Jesus, stayed behind in Jerusalem.

His parents didn't know it.

Supposing him to be in the group, they went a day's journey.

And 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.

And you can see the franticness here even in the way she talks to Jesus.

If you want to get an idea of what this looks like, just again, think of home alone and Kevin McAllister's mother

realizing Kevin is not with the family and going, Kevin!

That's what we're seeing here.

But in her case, she's shouting out, Yeshua, where are you?

You had one job, lady.

Protect the Messiah.

And you lost him.

Kind of a serious thing.

So after three days, there we go again, that three day stuff.

Pay attention to that.

After three days, they found him in the temple sitting among the teachers, listening to

them and asking them questions.

All who heard were amazed at his understanding and his answers.

And this kind of foreshadows the time when Christ would be teaching in the temple.

After Palm Sunday, Jesus spends the week doing what?

Teaching every day in the temple.

But as a 12 year old, he shouldn't be teaching.

He's there to ask questions.

And I would say this, that as a teacher, when somebody asks you a question, oftentimes the question they

ask you gives you an insight as to where they are in understanding the scripture, in their

biblical maturity and understanding.

And so you'll note that the text says that they were amazed at Christ's understanding and his answers, which means

they in turn were asking him questions.

But he's not being impertinent.

He's not being a show -off.

That's not what's going on here.

His inquiries were honest.

So 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 here I want to point something out.

And we need to do this carefully.

But Joseph is not Jesus' father.

Not biologically.

Joseph is Jesus' legal father.

And there is a difference.

But I'm going to note this.

The fact that both Mary and Joseph had no clue where to look for Jesus is another

indicator that they, just like you and I, are deeply impacted by sin.

In fact, that's kind of the point of what Jesus was saying.

Why were you looking for me?

Because without the fog of sin, they would have known

exactly where Christ would have been.

And it would have made perfect sense.

And so you'll note then that Jesus' legal father and his biological mother,

like you and I, can be lumped into the great group of the lost.

Those impacted by sin.

Those who need to be saved.

In fact, Jesus was sent to save them.

And reunite them with the Father.

And all of this was the Father's doing.

So this is why Jesus says, why were you looking for me?

Did you not know that I must be in my father's house?

And there's Jesus.

He gets to Jerusalem and there's the temple.

And how does Jesus see it?

That's my dad's house.

I'm going to go see my dad.

I'm going to hang out with my dad.

It seems like a natural thing for him to do.

There's no mischief on Jesus' part here.

In fact, it's just as natural as natural is.

And you'll note he's never been separated from the Father.

He continues to commune with him throughout his lifetime here.

And for Jesus, this is just an ordinary, common thing that he would do.

So they did not understand the saying that he spoke to them.

And he went down with them and came to Nazareth and he was submissive.

His mother treasured up all these things.

But then Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor between God and man.

So what does it all mean?

What does it all mean?

We have these two accounts of people traveling towards home who end up having to make a return

journey.

Well, think of it this way then through our epistle text.

And hear again these words.

Blessed be the God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with

every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world,

that we would be holy and blameless before him.

You'll note that God knew full well that we would fall into sin.

Before he even created the earth, before he spoke the universe into existence, he knew full well

that we would be plunged into sin and our relationship with God severed

because of it.

We would go from being the sons of God by creation to being the sons of the devil by

rebellion.

And this is true of all of us.

But God so loved us.

He so loved you that it says here in this text, in love, God the Father then

predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose

of his will.

God the Father was not satisfied or wasn't about to let his children all be

snatched and for him to not see them ever again, to be destroyed by the wild animal that the

devil is, if you would.

So much so that he sends his beloved son.

It would be as if, well, Jacob had sent Benjamin to go look for Joseph.

That's the picture that's going on here.

But what Jacob was unwilling and incapable of doing, God the Father is not only willing, he's capable of

doing, and he sends the son, his beloved son, to find his beloved lost

children, you and I.

And so the text goes on to say that this is all according to his purpose and it's to the praise of his glorious

grace with which he has blessed us in the beloved.

In Christ we have received redemption through his blood and the forgiveness of all of our trespasses

according to the riches of his grace with which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight.

And here we got an interesting way of describing God's love for us and what he has given us in

Christ.

I always point out that God doesn't piecemeal the gospel.

He doesn't say, well, you need a little bit of grace, here's a pinch of it, just enough to get you through.

Instead, the text says that he has lavished this grace, these riches of his mercy upon

us, lavished them on us in an insane display, if you would, of his

love and his mercy and even God's own riches in his grace.

And he has made known to us the mystery of his will according to the purpose that he set forth in Christ as a

plan for the fullness of time to unite all things to him, things in heaven and

things on earth.

And here we have to recognize this text is not talking about just any old kind of uniting, it's really

talking about a reuniting.

A true reuniting.

And if you read farther into the text in Genesis, Joseph himself

travels back to Canaan and there is a grand reuniting

of Jacob and Joseph in another one of those tear -jerking moments in Scripture.

But that is a picture, then, of the moment that each and every one of us will see God

face -to -face.

We have been united with him now through the blood of Christ and we will be

united with him in a world without end and he's prepared an inheritance for us and it's as if God

has said, now that I have forgiven you, Christ has accomplished his mission to reunite me to

you by the forgiveness of sins through his blood.

Now in the waters of baptism I have given you the promised Holy Spirit so that you would never be

snatched from me again.

It's a beautiful picture of the love that the Father has even for

rebel sinners like you and me.

And it's pictures like this that sober us up because each and every one of us can think in

our own minds of the different ways in which we have sinned so horribly against God and against others.

And God, knowing all of that, he's predestined us to be forgiven,

predestined us to be clothed in the righteousness of Christ, predestined us to be

reunited with him because of his great love.

He foresaw all of it and he's covered all of it.

And we mention in scripture that it's God's kindness that leads us to repentance.

This love that God has for us, it's hard to fathom that God can be

that merciful, that he can be that kind, that he can be that gracious.

But that's the point.

He is.

The gospel might sound too good to be true, but it's not.

God so loved, God the Father so loved you that he gave his only begotten

son, sent him so that he, being about the work of his Father, might redeem,

rescue, forgive, and reunite you with the Father.

In the name of Jesus.

Amen.

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