Word of Salvation – Vol. 32 No. 06 – Feb 1987
The Boy Jesus At Home
Sermon: by Rev. A. I. de Graaf on Luke 2:51, 52.
Reading: Prov. 4:1-18; Luke 2:39-52
Singing: 180; 237; 270; BoW.S.50; BoW.H.450; BoW.H. 214; BoW.H.902
“Christ is King!” we just sang. And He is: “King of kings and Lord of lords!” But He wasn’t always that. There was a time that Jesus, the Son of man, was a young incognito prince, growing up in the low-class home of simple people.
The Bible doesn’t tell us much about that period in Jesus’ life. In a way that is strange because psychologists tell us that one’s youth is the time of life that really shapes us. I am 56 now and still in my dreams I find myself back in the home in which I grew up. But all the Bible tells us about Jesus’ youth we have just read together today. For sure, there are many legends about that youth of Jesus. But that’s indeed what they are: legends, fancy fiction. Pious imagination. Maybe too pious! What all these legends have in common is that Jesus, like the Dutch Dik Trom, was a “peculiar child”. Not quite human. A pint-size magician. But the Bible tells us that He was – apart from sin! – a normal human being. One of us.
In our text we hear of him after age 12, after His Bar-Mitswa, when, as a “son of the law”, He got into teenage. Teenager! So that’s what He went through, too! For Our sake He also lived through that often vexing age. And then our text tells us two things about Him, about the boy Jesus at home:
1. He was obedient.
2. He grew up.
1. He Was Obedient.
Literally it says something even more radical: It was that “He was put under them” – that is: under Joseph and Mary. Or: He placed Himself under them. Yes, one must do that consciously: go stand down under somebody else. Say: “You’re the boss!”
You see, when others do that to you, put you under, put you down, when tyrants do that, it’s bad enough. But here we read Jesus did it Himself. In Philippians 2 we read that Jesus “did not hang on to His dignity as God, but emptied Himself and became obedient…!” Ah yes, but that is obedience to God the Father. But here we see Jesus bending down His neck under the authority… of sinners! People clearly less than He was. And yet: that was obeying God because God wrote with His own finger that Fifth Commandment, “Honour your father and your mother.” (And Joseph was not even his real father, only His step-father!) But, says our Catechism: “it is through their hand that it pleases God to govern and rule us”.
Jesus, in doing this command, truly also became one of us and recognised that this is God’s way to keep human beings together. “That your days may be long…!” Paul says in Ephesians 6 that this command is the “first commandment with a promise”. “It will go well with you if you do this”. When God’s Son comes to save the world… He starts at home! And if for anyone that must have been difficult, as it is maybe for young people here right in church today, then realise that it was much, much harder for Him! Mary remembered in her heart that Jesus is – what He said in the temple – the son of the heavenly Father Himself. But He put Himself under her and Joseph’s authority. Authority was for Him not the swear word that it is for many people in our world today. He came to die for the sins of fathers and mothers. But that did not mean that they were no longer fathers and mothers. Only he who has learned to respect authority can one day be fit to wield authority. Many parents today have rebellious kids because when they were young they were rebels themselves. And the breakdown in modern society begins in the breakdown of family life and Jesus came also to change that. He who was to be King of kings and Lord of lords said: “Yes, Dad”, “Yes, Mum”, in obedience because it was obedience to God who willed it so and still does will it.
Parents may know that they can… and must be rulers in their home and take no cheek from their children. They may and must! – give leadership also in our age. Jesus honoured the command-with-the-promise. God does not just give parents that they may ask obedience in His Name… He even demands that parents do that. And children, especially when they become young people discovering that their parents are sinners much in need of forgiveness, may follow Jesus in this thing and find peace that way. Jesus, their “Hero strong and tender”, has been there, too. He knows all about it. And yet He obeyed. The salvation for the world that He came to bring was not only hope in heaven for the sin-washed soul, but also: the restoration of the family: a way to show a breaking world that things can be different when He rules us by His Spirit. King of kings and Lord of lords. He knows that a whole society, and also a whole church, stands or falls with the health and togetherness of the family.
2. He Grew Up!
To start small means: to be able to grow. To get bigger… wiser! That does not stop, hopefully, after one turns 12… or 55… or 85! One can grow in all kinds of ways and directions. Alas, one can grow in cunning instead of wisdom, in hatred and selfishness rather than kindness. One can grow the wrong way and then criminals get harder and harder. But in our text it says about the Boy Jesus that He submitted… obeyed… and thus grew – increased not only in stature but also in wisdom, and in grace, in graciousness (I suppose that includes good manners) with God and with people. Yes, He grew in wisdom. He started as a baby not knowing anything. That’s part of laying down the privileges of being Son of God. The very Wisdom… by whom heavens and earth were made… grew in wisdom. He came to share that with us, too, that He did not know everything but had to learn. Grow in stature… so he, too, at times found that his clothes were getting too small: his sleeves too short and his shoes pinched. And the money to buy new stuff was not plentiful in that home. But he also grew in wisdom: and wisdom is more than knowledge: it is also the ability to use that knowledge the right way. That is not only hard work… it is also adventure: to find out about things… to get insight also about people. “Hey… is that how it works!” “Oh, is that how he (or she) reacts? I wonder why…?” Also to see new things in the world of God and the world of people.
He went through all that, and without television too! He grew into his culture: the culture of Israel which was then a part of the Roman Empire. He found out what bound it all together. He did not only grab the things that tasted nice and felt good without bothering why and how… that is no wisdom. A consumer society can breed stupid people. No, he grew in wisdom, but especially the wisdom of the Word of God which Israel had received as the Great Gift of His Father. He must have learned it at times from hypocritical teachers, but he learned nevertheless. And those Scriptures began more and more to live for Him…and show Him in it His own work, His own awfully difficult road as the Messiah for His nation and the world. Is it not much good when you start thinking: Now I know the lot, nobody needs to teach me anything any longer. It is even awful when a church thinks that and stops listening to the eternal Word of God. Then you cannot grow any more. But Jesus did grow and in that He, too, walks before us. He was there. But especially He grew “…in grace with God and with people”.
God saw Him grow and was pleased with Him. He gave Him grace: the grace of a human being in whom personality formed and things began to come together beautifully. We are so blessed when we see that in our children! God saw it… but people saw it, too. And it was – for that’s what grace does – something that did them good. They found Him good to be with. That is not only a matter of manners… even though manners do come into it: that you are gracious with people. Build them up and not break them down. And He did that more and more. That’s the lovely thing about growing. You do not stay where you were, you are not “nailed shut”, but you get better as you go along. That is how Jesus grew towards His task, His ministry that is: His service, both to God and man. And because He overcame, He gives us that gift too: not only to have our sins forgiven by His blood, (and what a marvellous foundation for new life forgiveness is when all our old mistakes are thrown away forever). But also that gift of His Spirit that moulds and shapes us as people more and more like Jesus.
In 1Timothy 3:16 we read that famous text about the Bible being the trustworthy, Spirit-inspired Word of God that guides and corrects us, that sets us straight. But then in verse 17 it says why that Word was given us: “that the man of God may be perfect… full-grown!… in full bloom!… fully equipped for the Work of God. Jesus grew… and therefore we may grow. Not just till we are 21 and are given the key of the house, not just till we marry and can “stand on own legs”… that’s when the biggest school just starts! No, but grow till we are fully what God wants us to be. That is not an impossible ideal, a hopeless task too big for you and me, but it is what Jesus came to bring. Because his childhood growing became the growing that Hebrews 5:7-9 tells us of:
“..During those days of Jesus’ life on earth He offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears (hear how hard it was?) to Him Who could save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverent submission. Although He was a Son. He learned obedience from what He suffered and, once made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him.”
He did not take the short cut. He took the hard road. But when you and I follow Him, in obedience and willing all the time to learn humbly, we too shall get there: to perfection. Full and joyful grace with God and with men. Human beings with God’s beauty upon them. My friend, don’t go for anything less.
AMEN.