Don't Let the Package Fool You

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, chapter 2, verses 40 -52. 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, as 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 of these things in her heart.

Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man. In the name of Jesus. Amen. Verse 40. The child was growing and becoming strong and while being filled with wisdom passive, by the way, he's being filled, God's doing the filling and the grace of the favor of God was upon him.

So here's our theme for this passage. Here's the idea. Don't let the package fool you. If you remember the movie Forrest Gump, well Forrest Gump had that famous saying, life is like a box of chocolates.

You never know what you're going to get. And the idea is this is simple. When you look at a box of chocolates, they all kind of look like chocolates. But then when you bite into one of them, you might say, Oh, that's really amazing.

Or you might say, Oh, why did I pick that one? That's kind of the idea. So you don't don't let the package fool you. That's the idea in our passage today. So here in this text that we just read, Jesus is making his second appearance in the temple and Jesus and the temple are inextricably linked.

Important thing to keep in mind. And this first verse verse 40, we, in a sense, get the fulfillment of the type and shadow of which Solomon really was the type. Let me let me explain. First Kings chapter three, verses three through twelve.

You remember Solomon becomes king of Israel after his father, David, had passed away. And it says this. Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of David, his father. Only he sacrificed and made offerings at the high places.

And the king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there, for that was the great high place. Solomon used to offer a thousand burnt offerings on that altar. At Gibeon, the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night.

And God said, ask what I shall give you. And Solomon said, you have shown great and steadfast love to your servant David, my father, because he walked before you in faithfulness, in righteousness and an uprightness of heart towards you.

And you have kept for him this great and steadfast love and have given him a son to sit on his throne this day. And now, oh Lord, my God, you have made your servant king in place of David, my father, although I am but a little child.

I do not know how to go out or to come in. And your servant is in the midst of your people whom you have chosen, a great people, too many to be numbered or counted for multitude. Give your servant, therefore, an understanding mind to govern your people that I may discern between good and evil.

For who is able to govern this, your great people? It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this. And God said to him, because you have asked for this and have not asked for yourself for long life or riches or the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right.

Behold, I now do according to your word. Behold, I give you a wise and discerning mind so that none like you has been before you and none like you shall arise after you. The idea is this. In this text, we see that the son of David is asking for wisdom and he grows in wisdom and God gives him wisdom, wisdom to govern his people while he sits on the throne of his father, David.

And so here in the temple, we see Jesus in our text this morning. Well, full of wisdom, wise beyond his years, a child if you would. Now, I'll have to save it for a later time, but there's something significant in the fact that Jesus is 12 years old.

Think 12 tribes of Israel, 12 disciples, and that it takes his parents three days to find him. There's something going on there in the numbers in the Bible, but that's for a different sermon. I'll have to tease that out at a later time.

In this text, suffice it to say that Solomon in type and shadow in the Old Testament is pointing beeline right to Christ. And so when you hear about Jesus growing in wisdom and having wisdom beyond his years, this is the fulfillment that Solomon was pointing to because Jesus himself truly is the son of David who sits on the throne of his father, David, forever.

And God has given him great wisdom to rule the multitude, the great multitude, too well, too big to be numbered as he rules them forever and forever. So we now come back to our text. That's all kind of pretext.

Now, his parents, it says, 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.

Now, there's a lot of fun that you can have with this text. And the reason I say that is because, well, we parents can relate to this story. Many of us, myself included, have experienced the stress and the panic of taking our eyes off of our children only for a moment at the mall or a grocery store and then turning around and not seeing your children where you thought they would be.

We get this. We understand this. But here's the issue. If you've been paying close attention to what the Gospel of Luke has revealed about Jesus, there is truly a sense in which their stress, the stress of Mary and Joseph, is unwarranted and unjustified.

I know that sounds kind of cruel, but let me make my point. Jesus isn't like any other child, and yet they know that. But at the same time, Jesus looks like every other child. But see, Jesus is God in human flesh, and it really is easy to forget that when it comes to Jesus.

There is so much more than meets the eye. So let me be blunt. Jesus is God, God the Son, second person of the Holy Trinity in human flesh, and because of that he's quite capable of taking care of himself.

I know that seems kind of blunt, but we'll kind of come back to this more in a minute. So, Mary and Joseph are in a panic. They've lost the Son of God. Yeah, he's, which, it's just, you think about it, it's just bizarre to talk this way, but it's important that we do.

After three days, they found Jesus in the temple. So on the third day, they find the 12-year-old Jesus in the temple. Again, there's something going on there. Sitting among the teachers, listening to them, and asking them questions.

And so, and all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. Now here's kind of the irony of the situation. Here is the Word of God made flesh, and that's who Jesus is. Remember what John chapter 1 says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

And so here we have the Word of God made flesh, dwelling among us, and the Word of God made flesh and dwelling among us is astounding the teachers of the Torah by his understanding of the Scriptures. Even as a 12-year-old boy, how were they to know who Jesus truly was?

Well, they don't. He looked just like any other 12-year-old boy of the time. So the teachers of the Torah had no way of knowing who Jesus really was. It hadn't been revealed to them, but they were amazed and astounded at his understanding of the Scriptures.

And oh, I wish I could have been a fly on the wall, just listening to Jesus teach and ask the questions of those who were the ones who were supposed to be asking him the questions. He's the catechumen.

This is Jesus in junior high. And junior high kids get asked the questions, but he's the one asking the questions, which I think is fantastic. So, all of this then is part of the mystery and even the scandal itself of the Incarnation.

Here we have the Word of God made flesh, but there's no bright neon light. It's not like Jesus is walking around and he's got a halo over his head as all the medieval artists depict the boy Jesus, right?

No, he's just going about his business, doing his thing, and he looks like every other boy, but he's not. So, this is part and parcel of the mystery of how God comes to us and even works among us today.

I want you to think about this. When we take the Lord's Supper, all we see with our eyes is ordinary bread and, well, cheap sweet wine. But don't let your eyes and your taste buds deceive you. God's Word reveals that in, with, and under the bread and wine is the very body and blood of Jesus Christ, broken and shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins.

When we consider our baptisms, all we see and sense with our eyes and our physical senses is very ordinary Minnesota tap water, but God's Word reveals that when that ordinary tap water is combined with God's Word, it becomes a washing of regeneration that washes away sins, and that in that Minnesota tap water, you all had your sins washed away, your hearts circumcised by Christ, and you yourselves buried and raised with Him.

All through Minnesota tap water added to the Word. When we consider the words of the absolution that we hear week after week, you hear from the pastor's mouth, a man who I can attest is truly an ordinary sinner just like you.

You hear from him that your sins are forgiven. Yet, the Word of God reveals that that absolution that you hear from his, your pastor's sinful mouth, doesn't have its origin in him. But what he speaks is an echo of the absolution that's actually pronounced in heaven.

John 20 verse 23 says this, if you forgive the sins of any, their sins have already been forgiven them. If you retain the sins of any, they have already been retained. You see, it might look like the pastor's getting all uppity.

It might look like the pastor's overstepped his bounds, but in reality the pastor has done nothing of the sort. All he's done is echo what has happened in eternity, and that is the forgiveness of your sins.

So, don't let the package fool you. Twelve-year-old Jesus is, well, he looks like twelve-year-old Jesus, and he truly is twelve years old. But remember, he's God in human flesh at twelve years old, more than meets the eye.

And so now his parents, they find him in the temple. Everyone's astonished by his questions and his understanding of the scriptures. 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... Joseph isn't Jesus' father, is he? No, he's not. See, even Mary is already, by the time Jesus is twelve years old, she's wrestling with this incarnation of who Jesus is. Behold your father and I, we've been searching for you in great distress.

And he said to them, Why were you looking for me? Did you not know I must be in my father's house? Notice that Jesus doesn't break the fourth commandment. He answers her question, which wrongly stated that Joseph was Jesus' father.

And so he asks a question with a question that rightly pointed out who Jesus' father truly is. You see, remember, Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary. Joseph is not his physical father. He might be his legal adopted father, but he's not his physical father.

And so Jesus asks the question, Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my father's house? Jesus' work is intimately wrapped up with and cannot be separated from the work of God happening where?

In the temple. Like a son learning his earthly father's trade. Think carpenter teaching his son to be a carpenter, right? Jesus is learning to be about his father's trade and his father's business. But Jesus' father's business is not carpentry.

What is the father's business? Well, the father set up shop in Israel long ago for giving people sins. Jesus is now hard at work following in his father's footsteps, keeping God's law perfectly and keeping it perfectly for you.

Even perfectly keeping the fourth commandment honor your father and mother by perfectly honoring and obeying his earthly parents. All we are born rebels. We are all rebellious children, regardless of how well compared to other children we've obeyed our parents.

But compared to Jesus, we don't even come close. In fact, Jesus is perfect. Keeping of the fourth commandments just shows us how rebellious we all truly are. Every chore given to Jesus was obediently completed without even a hint of taking back or talking back or lollygagging.

How many of you can say that when your parents gave you chores? You did it without even talking back or without any lollygagging. Jesus never threw a fit when his parents said that he couldn't have something.

Jesus never snuck out of his house to hang out with friends that his parents didn't approve of. Jesus never hid behind the backstop at the schoolyard to sneak a smoke or to swig a beer. Jesus always applied himself wholeheartedly to his homework and to his study of the scriptures and never procrastinated.

Need I go on? But all of this Jesus was doing, he was doing it for you and in your place. He wasn't being obedient in order to save himself. He was being obedient in order to save you and to save me. Because, well, let's be honest, even our best obedience is far from the type of obedience that Jesus rendered.

So many times when we obey and do the right thing, getting up the energy to do it takes some time. And even then, so many times we just go through the motions while our attitudes and our feelings are far, far, far, far behind.

We've even come up with a phrase for describing this kind of obedience. The phrase is, fake it until you make it. But Jesus never once had to fake it when it came to obeying God's law. From day one, Jesus never merely honored God with his lips or mindlessly went through the actions while his heart was far from God.

Instead, Jesus became obedient even to the point of laying down his own life and even doing that in the most painful and shameful way possible by being crucified on a cross. And all of that he did for you so that you can be forgiven, so that you can have a right standing with God.

Back to the text. So 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. It's kind of tough. It's difficult.

Because here's Jesus. He looks just like any other 12 year old. But here, he very politely and in a way that honors his parents, reminds them who his true father is and why he's come to do what he's come to do.

So, they didn't understand it. They didn't. It's difficult to understand. You have to be given this to understand. So, the text then says this. He went down with them, came to Nazareth, and he was submissive to them, obeying the fourth commandment perfectly.

And his mother treasured up all of these things in her heart, wondering what does it mean? And the text ends kind of where it left off. And Jesus increased in wisdom. And he increased in stature. And he increased in favor and grace with God and with man.

And this increasing of favor and stature continued all the way to Jesus' death and his resurrection. And we know this from Philippians chapter 2, which says, though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself by taking on the form of a servant.

Being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. And now this says this. Therefore, God has highly exalted Jesus and has bestowed on him the name that is above every name so that the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of his Father, God the Father in heaven.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

If you would like to support the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, you can do so by sending a tax-free donation to Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950 470th Avenue NW, Oslo, MN 56744. And again, that address is Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950 470th Avenue NW, Oslo, MN 56744.

We thank you for your support. All of our teaching messages may be freely distributed as long as you do not edit or change the content of the message. And again, thank you for listening.