The most extensive picture God gave us is the Tabernacle He had Moses build in the wilderness. Exodus 25-27, 30 are the instructions God provided for the construction of the Tabernacle and its furnishings.
This Tabernacle shows us both the Temple in Heaven and our Lord Jesus, and the way of Salvation. I will only touch on the high points, in the consideration of space here.
When God told Moses to build it, He said to be sure to follow the "pattern" He had showed him, the Heavenly Temple (Exodus 25: 9). It was to be a shadow of the actual worship center in God's dwelling place.
God started from His perspective: the Ark of the Covenant. This box illustrates that Jesus would have a human body (the wooden chest), but continue to be the Lord God (totally gold, inside and out). Guarded by two cherubim, their wings overshadowing it, their faces toward it. (Ezekiel saw cherubim surrounding the Lord God in chapters 1 and 10.)
The Lord God Himself would "sit" there on that Mercy Seat, between or above the cherubim, and speak to Moses. But our God is dangerous--we in our sin cannot approach Him without burning up. God specially equipped Moses, and Aaron and the rest of the Levites, to be able to withstand the very Presence of the Lord God. Everyone had to be protected.
Let's start with our viewpoint, from the outside in.
God had the Tribes of Israel camp around the Tabernacle in a specific order. They were all to be at a distance from the Tabernacle, and the families of the Levites were to camp between them and the Tabernacle, also in a specific order. Sort of as a barrier to protect the rest of the people.
Then there is the court, bounded by the hangings. These curtains were a fence or wall around the whole outside of the Tabernacle comprising an area of 100 cubits by 50 cubits (150 feet by 75 feet). They were 7 1/2 feet tall, too tall to look over, and it had only one gate or door, 30 feet wide. So there was only one way in. Only one way to God.
The people could enter this door, only with their animal for sacrifice, and the Bronze Altar was right there. The first sacrifice each person was to bring was the personal sacrifice (Leviticus 1), because the blood of the sacrifice needed to cover their sins first thing.
This shows us that Jesus as the sacrificial Lamb of God is our personal Sacrifice that does not just cover, but washes away our sins so that we can approach God.
Then the person left. Only the priests could go further. (Today the children of God are His priests, and we have the authority to approach God closer.) They were required to wash their hands and feet in the Laver that was placed between the Bronze Altar and the door to the Holy Place.
We also need to "wash." Jesus' Sacrifice has washed us completely, but we still live in the world, so confession is our Laver. Jesus told Peter that,
He who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean (John 13: 10),
when He washed his feet at the Last Supper. And we who have been cleansed by His blood need only confess the present sin, and we shall continue to be altogether clean (I John 1: 9).
Tomorrow we'll look at the Tabernacle itself, the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place, where only the priests were allowed to go and why.
O my Father, thank You for giving us this perfect picture of how You have determined we can approach You and be made fit to be in Your Presence and enjoy sweet fellowship with You and one another.
Even so, come soon, Lord Jesus!
The first and most important picture God gave us is one that our enemy has attacked furiously. This enemy hates us, and only wants to steal, to kill, and to destroy (John 10: 10).
This enemy steals what belongs to God, and he twists and manipulates it until it is barely recognizable and even dangerous to us. Then he dresses it up in fun and pleasurable garments to present it to the human race to kill and destroy us.
And the world takes what he gives and runs with it, claiming that those who know God's ways only want to take away their freedom to do what they want, and to prevent what is fun and pleasurable.
We've seen so often that God's ways are good, and healthy, and provides true liberty to be able to do what is right.
This picture we will look at today is marriage.
God made Adam and Eve, and pronounced that they would be "one flesh" (Genesis 2: 24). When a man is "joined to his wife" physically, this is marriage; the husband and the wife join their bodies together in the marital act to become one, and God blesses this union with children.
Paul tells the Corinthian believers,
Do you not know that one who joins himself with a prostitute is one body with her? For He says, "The two shall become one flesh" (I Corinthians 6: 16).
He's asking them if they want to be married to this wanton woman!
A twisted view of this is two people of the same gender; they cannot physically achieve this "one flesh."
God intended that marriage would be exclusive, the man having one wife for life, and the wife having one husband. This is the ideal.
God allowed some variance, as when a man or a king would have more than one wife, and even concubines. But do you think these marriages were happy? Look at Jacob's marriage with Leah and Rachel, for example. (See Genesis 29: 1- 30: 24 for the story.) He had intended to marry only Rachel, but was tricked into marrying Leah, too. This created rivalry and competition and misery.
Do you think that your wife, or you as a wife, would accept other women into your husband's bed? The Chinese character for "misery" is two women under one roof.
God also hates divorce (Malachi 2: 16). He considers it "dealing treacherously" with one who should be cherished.
All these deviations from the ideal tend to distort the picture of marriage as the relationship God wants to have with us.
Paul writes,
But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him (I Corinthians 6: 17).
The Lord God called Israel His wife (see Jeremiah 3: 1-10), and she committed spiritual adultery against her Husband when she took stones and trees and carved idols to worship instead of the Lord.
Christ is the Bridegroom and the church is the bride (Matthew 9: 15; Mark 2: 19-20; Luke 5: 34-35; John 3: 29), as we are joined spiritually with Him by His Holy Spirit in our spirit. He is one Husband to us, and all together we are one bride, even though He knows each of us individually, and loves each one of us, saving us one by one. And He will never leave or forsake us, or divorce us.
God also made marriage the foundational basis of all human societies and cultures and civilization itself.
No wonder our mortal enemy, in wanting to destroy us, has attacked this idea so vehemently. He wants to destroy this beautiful picture that, when followed, builds our families and neighborhoods and cities and nations. And it provides the best home environment for cherishing and appreciating one another, showing our children and the world God's lovely ideal.
But most of all, this enemy wants to destroy our idea of Christ, our Lord God, Loving us as passionately as a newlywed husband is so enamoured with his new bride!
O my Father, please help all of Your children know You well enough to realize how much You Love us, and have married us to Your Son. You gave us this picture so we could realize how faithful You are, and how much You cherish us, and want us to experience Your joy and the legitimate pleasures of Your ways for us.
Father, I don't know what kinds of spiritual enjoyments You have in store for us, but I'm sure that they far surpass any and all of the physical pleasures You have provided for us here.
We can take pleasure, not only in the marital relationship, but also in the joys of accomplishment, and of giving, and of one another's company and family and friendship relationships.
O Father, Your ways really are the best! They keep us safe and secure and healthy and growing. They teach us how to enjoy fun that satisfies, not like the world at all. Your pleasures forevermore will fill us with purpose and enjoyment and satisfaction in governing with You over all the future universes You will create.
And every eye shall see, every knee will bow, every tongue will proclaim that Jesus is our Christ, our Redeemer and Husband, Lord God Almighty, King over all Creation; to the everlasting glory of Almighty God the Father, for ever and ever. Amen.
Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus!
Happy New Year! May we start this new year with greater understanding of God and His ways for us, so we can prosper in all the abundance He placed here for us, both materially and spiritually.
God is very serious about the pictures He gives us to illustrate spiritual realities in a way we can understand. So when we disrespect His picture, there are consequences to bear.
We've seen that when the Corinthian church disrespected the bread and wine that was to remind them of Jesus' body that was broken in death and His blood that splattered the sides of His Cross, the result was that many of the members were weak and sick, and some had even died.
Today we will look at another picture, one God gave Moses.
Moses had led the people out of Egypt and through the Red Sea on dry ground, and now they were in a desert wilderness with no water in sight.
Then the Lord God said:
"Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb; and you shall strike the rock, and water will come out of it, that the people may drink." And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel (Exodus 17: 6).
So Moses struck the rock that the Lord was standing on, and the people were given the water they needed.
So the Lord Jesus was struck once, in death, fulfilling this picture.
But later when the people again had no water, God told Moses:
"Take the rod; and you and your brother Aaron assemble the congregation and speak to the rock before their eyes, that it may yield its water. You shall thus bring forth water for them out of the rock and let the congregation and their beasts drink" (Numbers 20: 8).
So did Moses believe that just talking to the rock would bring the same result? Let's see what he did:
So Moses took the rod from before the Lord, just as He had commanded him; and Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly before the rock. And he said to them, "Listen now, you rebels; shall we bring forth water for you out of this rock?" Then Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod; and water came forth abundantly, and the congregation and their beasts drank (Numbers 20: 9-11).
Oh my, Moses didn't speak to it like he was told, he got mad at the people and lost his temper, and ended up striking the rock instead, twice even. He must have really been upset!
The water was provided anyway, just like before, because God is faithful to take care of His people. But what about Moses and Aaron?
We are told that, all drank the same spiritual drink, for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them; and the rock was Christ (I Corinthians 10: 4).
This rock in the wilderness that has provided for the peoples' needs was a picture of our Redeemer, Christ Jesus, who is the Lord God of the Old Testament. We are told that the Lord was standing on the rock when He told Moses to strike it, and He was only struck once.
When Moses didn't trust God enough to restrain his anger at the people, and struck out instead, he spoiled the picture of Christ the Rock.
It is very important for us to realize how serious God is about His pictures. As far as we can tell, no harm was done, the people still got their water. But Moses and Aaron had to suffer the consequences.
We're told:
But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, "Because you have not believed Me, to treat Me as holy in the sight of the sons of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them." Those were the waters of Meribah [Contention], because the sons of Israel contended with the Lord, and He proved Himself holy among them (Numbers 20: 12-13).
And, when the people were ready to finally enter into that Promised Land, and Moses gave them all the warnings to be faithful to the Lord, putting it all into the Song of Moses, that they will be able to remember, then:
The Lord spoke to Moses that very same day, saying, "Go up to this mountain of the Abarim, Mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab opposite Jericho, and look at the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the sons of Israel for a possession. Then die on the mountain where you ascend, and be gathered to your people, as Aaron your brother died on Mount Hor and was gathered to his people, because you broke faith with Me in the midst of the sons of Israel at the waters of Meribah-Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin, because you did not treat Me as holy in the midst of the sons of Israel (Deuteronomy 32: 48-51).
Moses and Aaron both died before the Israelites entered the Promised Land. Neither of these brothers will set foot in the land they anticipated for so long.
But God did have something for Moses:
"For you shall see the land at a distance, but you shall not go there, into the land which I am giving the sons of Israel" (Deuteronomy 32: 52).
God was gracious to Moses, in allowing him to at least see the land. But neither he nor his brother Aaron could set foot in the land that they worked so long with the people for.
This is how important it is for us to understand God's pictures. When we don't care enough to learn who God is, how He Loves us so much, and how to follow His ways, then we must also suffer the consequences.
God has told us, and warned us, and promised to reward us! The least we can do, for our own sakes, is to find out how to love Him back, and cooperate with how He designed this Earth to operate, in the world we have built on it.
This world is so wrong about so many things! Even completely opposite from what God intended for our good. When we go against His ways, even if we don't realize it because we don't know His ways, then the consequences will still pile on us!
We owe it to ourselves to get to know this Creator who wants to take good care of us. He's done everything possible, and even impossible, to meet our every need, to rescue us when we've gone astray, and to draw us to Himself to save us and re-mold us into the very image of His Son.
But He won't violate the free will He gave to us. He wants us to want Him. Do you?
Every eye will see His coming, and every knee will bow in obeisance to Him, regardless, and every tongue in every place will give Jesus the honor and credit, as our Messiah and Redeemer, as the Lord God Almighty, the sovereign King of all Creation; to the eternal glory of Almighty God the Father, for ever and ever. Amen.
Even so, come, Lord Jesus!
Because God wants us to know spiritual truths, He gives us physical, material pictures to illustrate these things.
The first picture He gave was covering Adam and Eve's nakedness with animal skins. These physical skins showed the covering that the animal blood provided for their sin. God showed them right away that,
Without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness (Hebrews 9:22).
Adam and Eve's first children, Cain and Abel, knew this, and they both brought their sacrifices to the Lord (Genesis 4: 3-5). We see here the difference between Cain's offering of his agricultural products, and Abel's of one of his lambs.
There is no blood in fruits and vegetables, as there is in an animal that must die by shedding its blood. In offering an animal, Abel admitted that he deserved to die, letting the animal be his substitute. So Cain wanted God to accept his own work, instead of admitting that he deserved death.
Later God gave the Law to Moses, codifying the sacrifices. The first sacrifice he wanted His teachers, the Levites, to teach the people was the personal sacrifice, in the very first chapter of Leviticus.
This had the individual person bringing his own animal to the priest. He placed his hand on the head of the lamb or calf, identifying with it, then the priest sacrificed it on the altar, dying in the place of the person. Then its blood was splattered on the sides of the altar, covering the person's sins so he could be forgiven. But animal blood can only cover, never take away the sin.
This is all a physical picture that they acted out, so we could understand the spiritual truth of our deserving death.
God made it possible that if Mankind sinned, then he would need to die in order for a substitute to die for him so he could still live. Adam wasn't subject to death until he disobeyed God's only rule for him. If he had obeyed God, and eaten from the Tree of Life instead, then he would live forever. As created, Adam had both possibilities, and when his DNA was settled toward death, then God had to keep him from also eating of the Tree of Life, which would forfeit the benefit of Salvation.
God told Eve that the Savior would come from her "seed" because Adam would be the one to transmit that damaged DNA that would be called the "sin-nature." He had disobeyed willfully, but Eve had been deceived and bore personal sin.
That's how a virgin could bear God's Child, giving Him a genuine human nature without the sin-part.
Jesus came to fulfill that personal sacrifice for each of us. We are all born to live; He was born to die. He is the sacrificial Lamb of God, who is our perfect Sacrifice. He had to be God to be the eternal Person who could pay our eternal debt in time; and He is a genuine human being, qualified to die the human death we all deserve, in our place.
The sacrifice in Leviticus was a picture of what Jesus would accomplish for us, given so we would recognize His work. And His physical body and blood are another picture of the spiritual work He finished there; not just covering the sin, but washing us in His precious Blood completely clean, as though we'd never sinned.
Now we can be perfectly pure, fit for God to place His Presence in us, putting His Spirit into our spirit, making it alive with eternal life. He had to wash us perfectly clean of every shadow of a trace of sin, so that His very Presence in us would not destroy us. We cannot even look into the Sun without destroying our eyes, and it holds only a small portion of His glory. This is a miracle, as all God's spiritual works seem to be miraculous, not being possible by us in our flesh.
God has planned it all out ahead of time. He planned for Adam to be able to die if he sinned, but also able to live forever. And He gave us all the pictures of the material stuff of this Earth so we would be able to "see" His spiritual Truths.
O my Father, You are so good to us, to have planned out beforehand just how You would send Your own Son for us, and how we would be able to recognize Him when He came. And how to realize how He finished all the work He came to do, to fulfill everything that was written about Him.
We as Your children are in our school of life, learning who You are, who we are, and how to cooperate with Your ways. This is the only way we can enjoy all the benefits You placed in the Earth for us to use. And Your written Word is our nourishment to grow up in Your family as royalty to one Day help You rule Your future creation.
And every eye shall see, every knee will bow, every tongue will proclaim that Jesus is our Christ, our Redeemer, the Lord God Almighty, King of all Creation, to the eternal glory of Almighty God the Father, for ever and ever. Amen.
Even so, come, Lord Jesus!
God has given us pictures, things we can see, to show us who He is, and what He has done for us. He is Spirit, and we are flesh. So for us to understand these spiritual things, we need to relate them to the material things we can see. Hence, the pictures He gives us.
Jesus said that He is the Bread of Life, the Living Bread that came out of Heaven. And He said that,
Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him (John 6: 53-56).
Bread and flesh and blood are all physical things, material things. So they are a picture of what is spiritual.
When Jesus talked like this, many of the people who had been following Him couldn't fathom how they could eat Jesus' flesh and drink His blood, but He wasn't talking about anything physical. He explained to them that,
It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life (John 6: 63).
Life itself is spiritual. When the spiritual portions of a man leave his body, the body is dead. But we can't see the spiritual with our fleshly eyes.
Jesus is the Word of God who became a human Man (John 1: 1-5, 14). So His words are also spiritual. When He says to "eat" His flesh and "drink" His blood, He's not referring to His physical, human body; but that is what we can see and touch and understand.
So He is using the physical as a picture of the spiritual we cannot see. Our spiritual nourishment is His Word, the Word of God. His flesh is the "meat" of the Word, and His blood is the "milk" of the Word. Hebrews 6: 12-14 says,
The elementary principles of the oracles of God, ... [which are] milk, and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature.
The "milk" of the Word of God, the blood Jesus was talking about, would be the basic Gospel that Jesus took our place in death as the Lamb of God and rose from the dead. Even a child can comprehend that.
The "solid food," the "meat" of the Word is His flesh. As we grow in our spiritual lives, we are learning how to love God and love one another. This takes more understanding and discernment.
This also relates to the Last Supper, when Jesus pronounced that the bread was His body and the cup of wine was His blood. He was saying that this solid food and drink that they would partake of regularly was to remind them that Jesus gave His body to be broken in death for them, and that His blood splattered the sides of His altar, the Cross, to wash them clean of all sin.
And it was also the blood of the New Covenant, that God would write His Law in our hearts instead of on tablets of stone or parchment (Jeremiah 31: 31-33). And this would require for us to be mature in our walk of faith, understanding the "meat" of the Word of God.
When Jesus offered to the Twelve the bread and wine, He said to them to do this to remember (I Corinthians 11: 23-26). It's a picture. When we don't understand the seriousness of this picture, then we will suffer consequences, as those in Corinth experienced, with some being weak and sick and some of them had even died (I Corinthians 11: 27-32).
Father, please open our eyes to see the imagery clearly, to obtain an accurate understanding of the spiritual Truths You are teaching us. Show us how serious You are about these things, so we will respond to You in the most appropriate way, in honesty and purity, giving You all the glory for everything You are doing.
And every eye shall see, every knee will bow, every tongue will proclaim that Jesus is our Christ, our Redeemer, the Lord God Almighty, sovereign King over all Creation, to the eternal glory of Almighty God the Father, for ever and ever, Amen.
Even so, come soon, Lord Jesus!
God has given us His "Manufacturer's Instructions" to show us who He is and what He has done for us. So He is very serious about the pictures He gives us to illustrate His Character and His program for us.
Baptism is a picture of our dying with Christ and rising with Him with a new life to live.
This picture is laid out in Romans 6: 3-10:
Or
have you forgotten that when we were joined with Christ in baptism, we
joined Him in His death? For we died and were buried with Christ by
baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious
power of the Father, now we also may live new lives. Since we have been
united with Him in His death, we will also be raised to life as He was.
We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that
sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin.
For when we died with Christ we were set free from the power of sin. And
since we died with Christ, we know we will also live with Him. We are
sure of this because Christ was raised from the dead, and He will never
die again. Death no longer has any power over Him. When He died, He died
once to break the power of sin. But now that He lives, He lives for the
glory of God. So you also should consider yourselves to be dead to the
power of sin and alive to God through Christ Jesus. (NLT)
And Colossians 2: 12 says:
For you were buried with Christ
when you were baptized. And with Him you were raised to new life
because you trusted the mighty power of God, who raised Christ from the
dead. (NLT)
The word we use for baptism is not a translation, but is the Greek word itself brought into our language, a transliteration. The Greek word is baptizo, which is derived from the verb bapto, which means, "to whelm, to cover wholly with a fluid." So the way we administer this ordinance of the church is to completely submerge the person. And we only invite one to do this after they have realized that Jesus Christ has saved them, as a picture we act out in demonstrating what God has done for us.
God has immersed us into the body of Christ, making us His own children, in giving us His Holy Spirit in our human spirit, making it alive, hence called a "new birth" or "birth from above." This is what Peter is talking about when he says:
Water is a picture of baptism, which now saves you, not by removing dirt from your body, but as a response to God from a clean conscience. It is effective because of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. (I Peter 3: 21, NLT).
The baptism that saves us is not the physical picture we act out, but the act of God in putting us into Christ's body, as He is the Head:
Connected to Christ, the Head of the body. For He holds the whole body together with its joints and ligaments, and it grows as God nourishes it (Colossians 2: 19, NLT).
We
are buried under the water like a grave as Christ was buried in the
tomb, and we rise up out of the water as Christ rose from the dead. It
is as though we died when Jesus took our place on the Cross. So as He
was also raised from the dead with a new quality of life, Resurrection
Life, so we also rise up out of the water to demonstrate that we have
New Life now, and will be Resurrected like Christ when He returns. This
is our public witness, and makes us accountable to live our lives
differently now.
When we submit to baptism, this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing when done properly, as Christ died once and rose from the dead. And when He calls us to faith, to trust Him to have taken our place in death on the Cross, then His Blood cleanses us so thoroughly and permanently that it is like we've never sinned, and His Holy Spirit can come into our spirit, making it alive, without His very Presence destroying us.
That's why we are to make a public show of this happening in our lives, to tell the world that we are different, and that we will live our lives differently than we have in the past. And this public display can help to keep us accountable to not slip back into any of our previous sinful habits.
Water baptism has no power in itself, other than the accountability factor. And to baptize a baby has no effect on the baby, and cannot be administered in proper form without nearly drowning the infant. Its only effect would be on the adults to take on the responsibility of training the child up in the faith. So it's not really baptism, but more of a dedication of the parents and sponsors on behalf of the child.
If you were baptized as a baby, or if you submitted to baptism in an effort to be religious, but didn't yet realize Christ's death for you, then you did not partake of the Biblical ordinance yet.
Jesus commissioned the disciples to go into the world to gather students, then to baptize them, then to teach them how to live this new life, in Matthew 28: 18-20
Jesus came and told His disciples, "I have been given all authority in Heaven and on Earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the Age." (NLT)
So we are to preach the Gospel that Jesus died, was buried, and rose again with Resurrection Life, and those who believe are to be baptized; then we are to instruct them in the ways God designed us and this Earth to operate, and to cooperate with His ways.
We are to know Scripture: what it says, what God meant when He said it, and to apply its principles of life to our daily lives. It's as simple as that. But it is not easy; it takes the power of God's Holy Spirit living in us to give us understanding of God's Word, and to give us the power and ability to follow it.
This is the picture God gave us to act out. And we need to understand this picture in order to obey His commands. Because God is very serious about His pictures He gives us.
O my Father, please help us to see as You see, to understand what You are telling us, and to obey Your ways in our walk of life.
You have told us everything we need to know, in order to know You, cooperate with You, and enjoy You. Help us to understand and obey concerning this ordinance of baptism You have given us, so we can be encouraged to follow You in Your plan for each of us, to fit into Your great Plan of the Ages.
And Jesus is coming soon, and we need to be ready to welcome Him.
And every eye shall see, every knee will bow, every tongue will confess that Jesus is our Christ, the Lord God Almighty, King of all Creation, to the eternal glory of Almighty God the Father, for ever and ever. Amen.
Even so, come swiftly, Lord Jesus!
Luke 2: 41-52
Today we will look at the only glimpse we have been given of Jesus's childhood. He had grown from a Child into a Boy, but not yet matured into a Man.
Now His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover.
Passover was one of the three feasts that God had invited His people to come to His house for a week-long party: Passover, the Fifty Days (Pentecost), and the Feast of Tabernacles (Leviticus 23 and Deuteronomy 16). We're not told if they made the trip for all three every year, but I would suspect that they did.
And when He became twelve, they went up there according to the custom of the Feast;
This tells us of one particular year they went for this feast, when Jesus was twelve years old. This was a year before the traditional age of responsibility when a Jewish boy is considered mature enough to take part in the official Hebrew religion, and boys often accompanied their parents to the ceremonies a year or two before this in order to learn of them.
and as they were returning, after spending the full number of days,
They had spent the full week there for the feast.
the Boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. But His parents were unaware of it,
but supposed Him to be in the caravan,
The caravans could be quite large, with the men and women traveling in different groups, the children with the women, and the older boys with the men. So it was not neglectful or unusual for them to not miss Him that first day of traveling.
and went a day's journey; and they began looking for Him among their relatives and acquaintances.
So when they stopped for the night, and Jesus was not with either Joseph or Mary's group, they searched among the other groups of people Jesus knew and might be with. They would not think that He wouldn't be somewhere there.
When they did not find Him, they returned to Jerusalem looking for Him.
So they took another day to return to the city, and a second day looking among all the people and places they had just frequented the past week, where He might have been.
Then, after three days they found Him in the Temple,
Where would a normal twelve year old boy want to hang out? By the third day they finally went back to the Temple.
At church? This would not be expected, no wonder it took them a while to find Him. And why would He hang out there? What was He doing?
sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions.
And all who heard Him were amazed at His understanding and His answers.
Jesus was hanging out with the teachers, increasing His education in the Scriptures, and asking such insightful questions that seemed beyond a twelve year old's understanding. And He was even giving them some answers.
J. W. Doeve suggests that Jesus engaged in a midrashic discussion of biblical texts: "Their amazement must relate to His deducting things from Scripture which they had never found before" (Jewish Hermeneutics in the Synoptic Gospels and Acts [Assen: Van Gorcum, 1954], p. 105). (The Expositors Bible Commentary, Frank E. Gaebelein, General Editor; Vol. 8, p. 852.)
I don't think I would go that far, He was still just a 12 year old Boy, and still learning; even though He was probably more highly intelligent than others, and certainly more aware of spiritual connections (see Isaiah 11: 1-3, "...of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord...").
When they saw Him, they were astonished; and His mother said to Him, "Son, why have You treated us this way? Behold, Your father and I have been anxiously looking for You.
Here we see that those who should have known Him best are still surprised when He went to the teachers to hang out instead of leaving town with the rest of the family. He always was such a good Boy, why would He not be cooperating with their program now?
And they'd looked everywhere a normal twelve year old would be, and were really worried about Him. She says, "Why did You do this to us?" as though He was being mischievous, or even disobedient.
The word she used, anxiously, is unusually strong, often indicating pain or suffering. She apparently took His delay personally! Very human of her.
And He said to them, "Why is it that you were looking for Me? Did you not know that I had to be in My Father's house?"
But they did not understand the statement which He had made to them.
He, in effect, said, "Don't you realize yet who I am? I'm just getting a better understanding of Myself, but you should already know!"
We can forget so much over the years. They hadn't let His personality and character remind them of His divinity, and He was still growing in His awareness and understanding.
And He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and He continued in subjection to them;
So He continued to obey their authority over Him, and went back home then.
and His mother treasured all these things in her heart.
Another item in the treasury of her heart. All these things were always there, but since they were not needed in the day-to-day of family life, they may have been buried pretty deep. That's why she "forgot" to remember them at the times she needed to, to understand, like here.
(And in Mark 3: 21, 31-32, "His kinsmen (family) went out to take custody of Him; for they were saying, He has lost His senses;" and "His mother and His brothers arrived, and standing outside they sent word to Him and called Him. A crowd was sitting around Him and they said to Him, 'Behold, Your mother and Your brothers are outside looking for You.'"
I'm sure He took a moment to go out to them & remind His mother of all the "things she treasured in her heart" about His deity.)
And Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.
So Jesus continued to grow up just like we all do, increasing in His learning and understanding, and in His physical and personal development into maturity, and in His good reputation among people and with His Father in Heaven.
O my Father, thank You for every word in Your Word. Thank You for showing us the humanity of even the most godly of Your saints, which is so encouraging to us. Thank You for Loving us just as we are, but You don't leave us there. We all are "growing up" just as even Jesus needed to grow up from an Infant to a Child to a Boy to the Man He became to be our Redeemer.
May You strengthen us and help us to gain the victory over all the problems and tests and detours that are thrown into our path. Keep our hand in Yours, every step on this journey we are traveling toward that Eternal Day.
Teach us, Father, all Your ways, that we might shine Your Light into the darkness of this world, to the end that all Your lost ones can find their way to You through Your children.
And every created being will comprise Your Heavenly Choir, praising Your Holy Name; that Christ Jesus, born in Bethlehem, brought up in Nazareth, crucified in Jerusalem, and risen from the dead, is Lord God Almighty, King of the Universe, to the glory of Almighty God the Father, for ever and ever. Amen.
Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus!
