ABOUT THE FATHER'S BUSINESS

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover. When He was twelve years old, they went up to the festival, according to the custom. After the festival was over, while His parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. Thinking He was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends.

When they did not find Him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for Him. After three days, they found Him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard Him was amazed at His understanding and His answers. When His parents saw Him, they were astonished. His mother said to Him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for You.”

“Why were you searching for Me?” He asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in My Father’s house?”

But they did not understand what He was saying to them.

Then He went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But His mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.

Luke 2:41-51

This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

In yesterday’s devotion, we looked at how the Gospels of Matthew and Luke fast forward through portions of Jesus’ life, particularly in His early years. Both tell different parts of Jesus’ life up through the age of 2 or a little more than that but they both end up in the same place, Nazareth, where Luke tells us Jesus “grew and became strong…filled with wisdom” with the “grace of God…on Him” Luke 2:40.

Well, from this point we lose a lot of particulars as Jesus grew up through His elementary years. Nothing from the time Joseph and Mary returned with Him from Egypt through Him reaching His twelfth birthday. But then we get a glimpse into an event that is nothing short of a biblical missing persons happening with that missing person being none other than the young Messiah, the teenage Son of God and Savior of the world. Look at this passage from chapter 2 of Luke’s Gospel:

Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover. When He was twelve years old, they went up to the festival, according to the custom. After the festival was over, while His parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. Thinking He was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends.

When they did not find Him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for Him. After three days, they found Him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard Him was amazed at His understanding and His answers. When His parents saw Him, they were astonished. His mother said to Him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for You.”

“Why were you searching for Me?” He asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in My Father’s house?”

But they did not understand what He was saying to them.

Then He went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But His mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.  Luke 2:41-51

Now we might not have many details about the lives of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus through what was a nine or ten year period but we do know through the opening verse in this passage that the family did not miss going to Jerusalem annually to observe the Passover in obedience to Jewish law and custom. The visit in Luke’s account was in Jesus’ 12th year of life.

We see the scriptures pick up at the place where the festival had ended and people flocked out of Jerusalem to return to their hometowns, an exodus which included Joseph and Mary among the throng as they started back to Nazareth, a walk believed to take around five days. Given this, think about the distance away from Jerusalem Joseph and Mary traveled before they realized Jesus was not with them. Our passage tells us it had been a day into the journey when Joseph and Mary began looking for their son among “their relatives and friends.” He was nowhere to be found.

Imagine how you would have felt at that point?

You had traveled an entire day out of Israel’s capital only to discover your child was not with you. It would bring panic and fear to any person even if they had a steadfast faith in God as Joseph and Mary did.

And so Jesus’ parents broke company with the horde of people traveling home and headed back to Jerusalem, which of course would have been another day’s journey. Now Jesus had been on His own for two days. Add two or three more days to the separation because Luke’s account tells us that Joseph and Mary had looked for Him for three days but one of those days may have been the day travel back to the city. Regardless, we know Jesus was abandoned in Jerusalem for at least four days. The searching had to be exhausting for Joseph and Mary, no doubt worried about what may have happened to their precious boy, given to them by God through divine conception.

Now we don’t know what led Jesus’ parents to the temple courts but we do know they ended up there where they discovered Jesus “sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.” There was no sense of panic in Jesus. No alarm communicated by Luke which might show us that Jesus was alone and afraid. No, Jesus was at home and very comfortable in the temple of His Father, abiding in His presence as He received instruction and saw His wisdom increase even more. And we read where the teachers He sat among were “amazed at His understanding and His answers.”

Well, the scene left Joseph and Mary “astonished” perhaps because they expected to find Jesus in peril or suffering from being by Himself unsupervised and cared for. We sense Mary’s motherly frustration start to boil over a little as she asks Jesus:

“Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for You.”

They were words that resonated blame being placed on Jesus for what had happened but Jesus turns the accountability around to His parents and posed His own pair of questions:

“Why were you searching for Me? Didn’t you know I had to be in My Father’s house?”

I actually like the New King James Version translation of this verse better as I believe it is closer to the intended meaning Jesus tried to convey:

“Why did you seek Me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?”

Joseph and Mary did not grasp what Jesus was saying at the time but He was fully in command of His words. Through these words, we find Jesus grasping at a young age that the reason He was born into the world was to carry out His Father’s business. Whatever the Father’s will for Him would be, that’s what Jesus would do. At the young age of twelve, He understood this and thus felt very much at home learning in God’s temple, receiving direction and information that would be critical to His ministry work as He grew older.

Indeed, Jesus was always about His Father’s business and there would be much more business to conduct beyond the days He spent in the temple unaccompanied by His parents. Much more.

The scriptures tell us that Jesus departed Jerusalem with His parents and returned to Jerusalem where He was obedient to them while He “grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” He would remain in this place until His early thirties when His adult ministry would start and He would again carry out His Father’s business, all the way to Calvary’s cross.

Friends, as Christians, take a guess as to how we are to carry out each day?

Hopefully after reading this devotion, you realize that we are to follow Jesus’ lead as His disciples and be about our Father’s business. For when we live every day as Jesus did (as we are supposed to as Christians), then we can be assured that we will carry out each day in accordance with God’s word, will, and way.

We will live in His favor because we are taking care of business for Him and in His name.

In Christ,

Mark

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