Well, today is both the first Sunday of the new year, but also a day called Epiphany on the church calendar. Not this church calendar, but like the Christian church. And that kind of means that it's talking about the presentation of Christ to the Gentiles, specifically the Magi. When we talked about them a week or two ago, I don't know, this week felt like a long week to me. And I can't believe that's all that's passed.

Sometimes it's like, oh, that's it's already over. And sometimes it's like, how long has it been since I was here? Only seven days, but it feels like it's been a lot longer. So it's. It might have just been last week we talked about the Magi.

Was it? Yeah. You guys don't remember either? Okay, so it's not just me, nobody pays, nobody like actually says, like, what, What'd you talk, you know, like nobody remembers what the pastor talked about most of all, the pastor. We talked about them a little bit.

Oh, we talked about them a lot on Christmas Eve. That's why it feels like farther ago. So anyway, I had to look back at my own notes, by the way. We have these books. There's like a sermon companion guide.

We've got a couple in the back on the table underneath where the offering basket is. And we're doing a year long series pointing out Christ throughout the entire scripture and, and trying to show how everywhere in the Bible somehow points to Jesus. And then we're in this of course, time where Christ has been born, both in the calendar year with Christmas, but also in the scripture that we're in. We've gone past the part where Christ was born and we're gonna be going through his life in this unit that we're in now. We broke the year up into nine different units.

And so today starts unit five. And in that unit where we see it's all about Jesus, unit 5, the Lamb of God. So we're looking at him as Lamb of God and what that meant and how he developed as he was growing up and starting his ministry. And so we're going to be looking at that as we kind of lead up after that towards the lead up to his crucifixion and Easter resurrection. So that's a little bit of an overview.

Of course that sermon guide has a weekly companion for you to look at some details that maybe aren't in the sermon, but go along with it, some supporting scriptures that go along with it and then a place on the second page to take notes. And so those are good. Usually we have a Sunday school class, a group discussion class after the morning service, except on the first Sunday of the month when we do our welcome lunch afterwards. So again, we have the welcome lunch after service. You're invited to come to that.

There's plenty of food, so please come and be part of that. But every other the rest of the Sundays in the month, we have a group discussion afterwards. It meets in the classroom, down the hall, past the bathroom, past the drinking fountain. If you go outside, you went too far, it's the door before you hit that. So I would normally say in one of the greetings that we use a lot of times is Happy New Year.

And, you know, I started thinking about that and Amy and I were talking, I think it was just yesterday at breakfast, about one of the things that sometimes people will do is kind of adopt a word for the year. Has anybody ever done that? You adopt a theme word that you want to kind of live by for the year. I see you guys are bad at this motion. If you do it, you know, just name it.

All right. And so one of the ones that we talked about was content or contentedness, being content with something and what my wish for you would be to have a contented new year. Be content with your possession in your position. That doesn't mean you can't, like, you know, find yourself in a better position, whether it's in work or whether it's in, you know, just your. Maybe if you're broke and you don't want to be broke, you know, that kind of thing.

But, like, may you be content in your position and possessions, not always wanting more, straining and striving for more. May you be content in your position and your possessions, but have a holy discontent for where you are spiritually. In other words, do what Jesus says, that you would hunger and thirst for righteousness, for more of God. And so one of the things that I've been seeing a few people, friends of mine on Facebook and people that I've known over the years talking a lot about, and a few sharing their testimony of how last year went was they're spending a year reading the entire Bible in one year. Some of you, I'm not going to make you raise hands on this.

Some of you have never read the entire Bible in your life. I hear some people on, like, different programs that I listen to online talking about it. They're Christians. They've been growing up as Christians, and they say, you know, I've never really Read the whole Bible. But I'm starting to do that now.

And as a pastor, I'm like, yes. People are like saying like, I'm reading the Bible. And I'm like, I'll tell you guys, if you would read the Bible, I'm not saying you don't have to come to church. Like, I just think our service would be a lot different. You wouldn't be like, all right, now I'm going to sit here and have a guy talk to me about the bible for like 30 or 40 minutes.

40 minutes, okay, I know it is 42 minutes. A lot of times I think is probably the average. But anyway, you're welcome. That it's not an hour. Okay.

I could easily. Anyway, so I listened to a preacher and I was just listening to him this morning and he says, he says, I'm almost done, I promise I am. And I out loud said, no, you're not. And I realized it was in my earphones and like, if anybody heard me, they just hear me saying, no, you're not. But I'm listening to it and look at my screen and he's like literally halfway through, he's not almost finished at all.

He's just getting warmed up. So if you would read your Bible though, like, it would be a lot more two way discussion, I think, than me trying to like, help guide you through it. You'd be like, I've got questions. Like, help me figure this out. That would be the way this would work.

I don't know what that would look like for a church service, but I guarantee I wouldn't have time. Like, I'd be out in the lobby still. People would be like, I've got these questions, Pastor, I was reading this and it doesn't make sense. Or did this really happen? I'm like, it says it did.

You know, like, the question is, do you believe the word of God or not? Do you believe God's a liar? Or that he is truth? And so if you believe God's truth, then let's look into his word and see the truth that he has for us. Because every time you turn on your tv, your cell phone screen, the Internet, whatever it is, there's lies all day long.

But you can come to the word of God for truth. And so I would encourage you to start with me. I know you would think, oh, start on the first of the year. And if you have started on the first of year reading your Bible, doing like a reading plan, which by the way, there's one in the beginning of this book. That you can use.

There's a couple other ones that are available, depending on whether you want to do a chronological reading of the Bible. In other words, where they put the chapters and. And books of the Bible in the order in which things happened, rather than just kind of the layout as it is set. And if you don't know about that, let me tell you, you start reading the Bible, then you read one section, and then you go to another, and you're like, wait a minute, didn't I just read this? Yeah, you did, but it was from a different perspective or point of view and they reiterated in a different way.

And so what it'll do in a chronological plan is set it out where you're reading it in order of events and time. And that's a really interesting way to do it. There's some where it'll take you through, like an Old Testament passage, a New Testament passage in the Psalms and Proverbs, or something like that. And there's all kinds of different ones. And I'd certainly be happy to help you select one of those plans.

If you have a Bible reading app on your phone, they've usually got plans that are in there that you can. That you can use. You know, there's all kinds of different ways. But whatever it is that it would take for you to get involved in the Word of God this year, I pray that you have a contentedness with your position and your possessions, but that you would be discontent with where you are spiritually, that you would hunger for more of God and more of his Word in your life. So along those lines, and along the lines of the Scripture that we're going to be reading today in Luke chapter two, I wonder what it is that you treasure.

What is it that you spend time like, just deeply in your heart, pondering over it, treasuring it. We'll see where Mary, the mother of Jesus, had something that she was treasuring and pondering in her heart. There was things that stuck with her over time that she just couldn't kind of move beyond them. It was like kind of one of those kind of nagging thoughts in the back of your mind that's just always there. Well, she dwelt not on, like, problems and things, but on what is it that God is doing in our midst.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, one of the literally the most unique person ever besides Christ. She had the experience that no one else could or would ever have. And as she miraculously conceived, the Christ child, gave birth to him, had all these visitors showing up like the shepherds that visited on the night that Jesus was born, the angels appearing in the heavens. As these things are happening and as they leave and things get quiet again, Luke tells us that Mary treasured up these things and pondered them in her heart. Now, I want to ask you this.

Luke was a real man. He was a doctor. He was a friend of Peter's. He was a traveling companion of Paul. He was somebody that maybe had or had not met Christ himself in his lifetime, but for sure knew people who were very close to Jesus Christ.

Let me ask you something. Where did Luke. How did he know, like, where did he get it from, that Mary treasured up these things and pondered them in her heart? From Mary. I think Luke had talked with Mary.

I think he sat down very diligently. Like, I think he did what I do. When I approach a scripture passage, something that I want to teach or preach, I start writing down questions that I have. And I bet if you could talk with Mary, you would have had a ton of questions, right? Like.

Like. Like, I don't know. This might flop. Let's see this. What's something you would have loved to have asked Mary?

Shout it out. Anybody?

How about, how scared were you? How scared were you that Joseph was gonna leave you before you were ever married? How scared were you that. That. That you were gonna mess up in raising Jesus?

Like, we all wonder that as parents. Like, what am I gonna tell him wrong? You know, like, am I gonna not spank him enough or too much? You know, like, if you ask some people, like, they don't spank kids enough these days. And you talk to some other people, like, you should never spank your child.

We know which ones you are because we've seen your kids. You know, like, I get it. But anyway.

And so, you know, it's like, I don't spank my child near as much as I used to. But it's not never. There's like, as she grows, there's other punishments that make things work more. Sometimes it's. You don't get a hug for five minutes.

I might not have been giving her a hug in the next five minutes, but if I tell her that, it'll make her cry. And it's like. It's almost like, I can't believe I used that, you know? But it's like, I'm not hugging you for five minutes. She's like, oh, no, that's the worst thing ever for her.

But sometimes I said, like, you're going to get a spanking. She holds her behind Out. I'm like, okay, that's clearly not going to work. You know, like, that is like daring me to do it. I'm not going to fall for that, you know?

So Mary might have been scared that she would do the wrong thing in raising Christ, teach him the wrong things. Remember, he is the word of God. He's the one that was present at the creation of the world. And yet she's got to raise him up as a little boy and teach him the Bible. See, Jesus says he was born, he was born, he was fully divine, and yet fully human.

We call that, in theological terms, the hypostatic union. I don't know really what that means, except there's two things, two natures, and they're in one. And if I say too much more about that, I'll probably be guilty of spouting some heresy that they determined, like in the, you know, four hundreds or something, that they're like, no, that's heresy. So you know what? I'll just leave it at that.

He's fully God. He's fully human in one person. But there are things in his divinity that he left behind. There were things that Jesus limited within himself. For instance, Jesus could do things as God that any human being couldn't do.

Sometimes he did those things. Like, there's a time where he sent his disciples on a boat. There becomes a big storm. Now, I wonder, did Jesus know there was going to be a giant storm? And did he send them into danger on purpose so that he could teach them a lesson?

Maybe. Maybe he's like, hey, you guys go on ahead. I'll catch the next ride over across the lake. I don't know. Like, maybe he knew that, maybe he didn't.

But what does end up happening is he's like, oh, they're in trouble. And I bet they're scared. And I love these men, as dumb as they might be sometimes, I love them so much. And so he goes walking on the water. Now, two things happen here.

One, he fulfills the Old Testament scripture that talks about how God treads on the waves of the sea so that when he does show up to the boat and they're like, hey, it's a ghost. And they're like, no, I think it's Jesus. And Peter's like, it's really you and not a ghost and tell me to come out onto the water with you. And he's like, all right, cool. Come on out.

And so Peter goes. And then he starts to doubt himself, and he sinks. And Jesus picks him up and they get back in the boat and then the water's calm. Now the disciples are in awe because they say, wait a minute. First of all, he walked on the water.

And I remember the scripture that talks about God walking on the water. So who is this guy then that we're following? He's not just any old teacher. If he walks on the water and only God walks on water, then he must be. I'm scared to say it if I say he's God, or am I going to get in trouble?

That was their thinking, that was their mindset. But then also he calmed the sea. Who can do that? We didn't even know God was in the business of calming storms and seas. Right.

They didn't know that it was unprecedented in their time. We talk about it a lot. We pray that Jesus would calm the storms in our lives. Have any of you been through a storm in the last year of any kind? Yeah.

If you haven't been through one, I hate to tell you, maybe this is your year.

Get bulked up spiritually right now for the times when those storms come, because Christ will meet you there in the midst of that storm and he wants to do this for you and he wants to do that. But you have to have the faith to say, lord, I'm willing to step out there in the midst of this storm just to be with you. Peter had no reason to want to walk on water. I think he just wanted to be with Jesus. I think he had just missed him that much that he wanted to be with him.

So Mary, she sees these things and she treasures them in her heart. Let's read In Luke chapter two, we're going to start in verse 40, which, if you have little headings in your Bible that God didn't put those there, people put those there. The little headings that tell you about the different sections. Your heading probably starts in verse 41, but I want to see something neat that happens when you. When you read the Bible without, like, headings or chapters or even verses.

And by the way, they have Bibles that read like a book that doesn't have verse, numbers and all that. And sometimes it's just beautiful because you just keep reading. The way verse 40 starts and the way verse 52 ends are very similar. Verse 40 starts when Jesus is an infant, a baby. And Luke gives us one verse that summarizes the next 12 years of Jesus life.

Matthew tells us a little bit about what happened with Jesus. His family has to go to Egypt to protect him from the murderous King Herod who's seeking his life. But here Luke tells us one verse that tells us about what happened for 12 years. By all means, we want to know more, don't we? He doesn't give us more.

He doesn't think that that's necessary for what he's trying to convey to us. Let's read. And the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, and the favor of God was upon him. I want to pause there and mention to you. There were things that Jesus gave up.

One of the things that he gave up as he was born as a human being was he gave up some of the knowledge that he had as God. He gave up some of the wisdom that he had as God. He gave up his omniscience, which means all knowingness. In other words, Jesus didn't automatically know everything. If he did, he wouldn't have spent nights in prayer communing with the Father.

See, Jesus would know that there were times where he had to spend an extra amount of time praying and seeking the heart of God to get through a situation that was coming up. One of the times that he did that was when he called his 12 disciples. He had more followers than that, more people that had applied to be disciples. But he was going to choose 12 of them specifically. He spent the night in prayer leading up to that.

He spent the night in prayer the day before he went into the temple, fashioned a whip out of cords that he had gotten together and started driving out the people that were buying and selling and taking advantage of people and drove them out of the temple complex. He spent the night in prayer before he did it? Yes. I think he also was fasting. So he was a little bit hungry and angry at the same time.

But it was a very righteous anger. So it wasn't a hangry situation like we talked about a week or so ago about the prophet Elijah. But anyway, Jesus grows in wisdom and the favor of God is upon him. In other words, just because he was God, he was a boy growing up and he had to learn these things. He had to learn discipline, he had to learn wisdom.

He had to grow in these things. Are we tracking good? Verse 41. Now, Jesus parents went to Jerusalem every year for the feast of the Passover. I want to tell you, Mary didn't have to go every year.

The men were required to go. Not the women, not the kids. But his family. Well, they're raising the Son of God. They want to do everything right.

You know, like they're uber religious. Right. So anyway, I don't know if that's the Case, or they just wanted to. They loved it. But every year they went to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Passover when he was 12 years old.

They went up, according to customers. But when the feast was over, as they were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. And his parents didn't know it. Now, some people have a story of, like, maybe driving two different cars to church or to the store or to wherever. And then each one of the parents thinks that their child was with the other one, the husband or the wife, you know, and they get home, they're like, oh, no, where's our kid?

It's usually pastors, I think, that have that story of, like, you know, they went to church and then they both go home in their cars and like, what? Don't you have our kid? No, I don't have your kid. Every pastor I know has a story of leaving their kids at church at some point or another. It's always fun.

Well, they left an entire city and went on a journey home. And they didn't realize they didn't have their son with them. We'll talk about that in a little bit, verse 44. But because they assumed he was in their group of travelers, they went a day's journey. They began to look for him among his relatives and acquaintances.

When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days had passed, they found him in the temple court, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And everyone who heard Jesus was astonished at his understanding and his answers. And when his parents saw him, they were overwhelmed. His mother said to him, child, why have you treated us like this?

Look, your father and I have been looking for you anxiously. But he replied, why were you looking for me? Didn't you know that I must be about my Father's? I'm just going to leave that blank. We'll talk about it later.

Yet his parents did not understand the remark he made to them. Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth. And he was obedient to them. But his mother, listen to this, kept all these things in her heart. She treasured them, she pondered them.

And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature, in favor with God and. And with people. So there were three festivals in the year that was commanded by the law of God for men to show up at. One is the festival or the feast of Pentecost. Then this one that they attended was Passover.

And then there was one called Booths or Tabernacles. I'm not going to get into what they were all about, except for Passover, this feast that they were going to was where they commemorated the exodus from Egypt when they had been slaves in Egypt hundreds and hundreds of years before, thousands of years before, they were slaves. And God led them out, used the man Moses and his brother Aaron to assist in that process. And God leads them out of slavery so they're no longer slaves. Jesus would later become the Passover lamb.

See, there was a Passover lamb where the 10th plague over Egypt was that they were going to. All the firstborn sons would be killed and animals would be killed, but if there was the blood of a lamb on the doorpost, that that house would be protected, that the angel of the Lord that came to bring death would not visit those homes. And so the blood of the lamb on the doorpost was the salvation for them, for their firstborn sons. But Jesus would become the Passover lamb of God that would be slain not to bring us out of slavery to Egypt or another person, but out of slavery to sin. And so that's his tie into the Passover, and it's huge.

But let's use that. Let's talk about that. On a different day, Jesus family goes up and says, according to their custom, and they stayed at the festival for eight days. Would have taken a few days to get there by foot. They traveled on foot in groups.

Usually they traveled in caravans, and they stayed for eight days. Now, there's a verse in there that said, or a phrase that said they had completed the days of the festival. Some people didn't. They would come for the first day, say, I was there. They'd check it off their list, and then they would leave.

They'd just slip out, and everybody's like, huh, I could have sworn on day one, there were a whole lot more people here than at the end, you know, but they would just slip out and say, you know what? I'm following the law, but I'm not really committed to it. I love God, but just not enough to really disrupt my life. And that's how these people would live. And so Jesus family didn't make the journey there just to spend a day.

They spent all eight days of the festival. And when the time was over, they headed off. Now, you would probably wonder, like, how in the world can you lose Jesus? And I'm glad you thought that. You might not have thought it right at this very moment.

But now I've put that thought in your head, you're probably wondering, like, how does that happen? I don't know. Have you Ever lost Jesus at a point in your life? Okay? Like, that's the spiritual side of it, right?

Like, yeah, they physically lost him, though. But I see a parallel here is, like, we go in our lives where we're like, I went through this whole thing, and I didn't ask Jesus to, Like, I didn't seek his company, his wisdom, his guidance, any of it at all. I usually do that when I'm working on a vehicle or some kind of mechanical thing, and I just go about it. I'm like, I've got my knowledge, I've got my tools and YouTube, you know? And, like, I'm like, oh, that's the steps, okay?

And then something happens, and I'm just, like, ready to start throwing things, saying bad words. Dang it. Okay? Worse than that, I'm ready to start saying some bad stuff. And then, like, I never asked Jesus to even help me on this.

You know, I can't tell you how many times. Just like, lord, I'm so sorry. Like, I embarked on this, on my own strength and my own wisdom and my own skills. I'm clearly failing at this. Sometimes it's been.

I lost a screw, and I'm like, it fell somewhere, and I promise I looked. Then I asked Jesus, I'm like, just help me with this. He's like, it's right there. I'm like, oh, my goodness. Why didn't I see that?

You know? Because I needed to see first my need for Christ, even in the small things, like working on my car, like, you know, barclay, you got some truck work to do later. Learn my lesson, you know, like, bring Christ into the situation first. Like, I can't tell you how many times, like, you're thinking, you're a pastor, you should know this. Yeah, I should.

I heard a preacher named R.C. sproul. I was listening to him this week, and he said some of you might have heard of him. He's passed on now, but he is, like, he's a brilliant Bible teacher, theologian, just a man of immense knowledge. And he said, it might be obvious to some of you, but I have never for one minute, even in my life, lived with my heart fully devoted to God.

And that struck home. Wow. Not even for one minute of my life. You know, the scriptures the Jews would recite every morning. Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one.

You shall love the Lord with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your might and with all of your strength. And here's this man, this great man, R.C. spruill, saying, I Haven't even done that for a minute in my life. No matter how hard I've tried, there's always something that seemed to take the place of my passion for the Lord. So Joseph and Mary, they leave to go home.

They're headed back home, probably in a caravan. And the way they tell us, the way historians and archaeologists and all these people tell us, is that what they usually did? And this flies. This is foreign to me as a man. I want to go out the door first and make sure it's safe outside.

There's nothing bad going on. I want to protect my family and lead from the front. But for whatever reason it was, culturally speaking, they would send the women and kids ahead because they traveled slower. They might send them out hours ahead. And the men just kind of hang out a little bit, shoot the breeze, sit around a little, and then they take up the tail end and they eventually end up catching up.

And I'm sure while it's going on, the men are probably talking about different things, like, hey, how's life going? How's business? How's your work? You know, stuff that men always talk about. We don't really get too deep for a long time.

Like, you just start talking about surface level things, but eventually they get around to it. Like, hey, yeah, is there anything I can help you out with when we get back home? How's your family doing? How's your wife? She seems like she's really mad at you right now.

They're like, yeah, that's marriage, you know, like, I don't know what happened, but, you know, whatever it is, they have all these conversations. But here's something that's of note. Luke tells Jesus Jesus is 12 years old. Now, at 13 years old, Jewish males would have their bar mitzvah. And that simply means bar B, A R means the son of someone.

And then mitzvah comes from the old Hebrew word mitzvos, which is the law, means son of the law, son of, like the Old Testament law of God. It means he becomes a son of the law, son of the scriptures of God that command them how to live. In other words, at 13, he's now responsible for his own actions. A bar mitzvahed Jewish male is now responsible for them living on their own cognizance, on their own. They have to make their own decision of how earnestly they're going to follow God.

It's no longer a matter of the parent educating and disciplining the child and ensuring that they follow in their, you know, in the way they want them to live. Now the child gets to make that decision kind of for themselves. And so, you know, the relationship kind of changes at that point. Sometimes, you know, as parents, we're the guardians of our child. Not just keeping them safe, but we safeguard the process for how they are raised, taught, live.

But then at some point or another, it kind of turns to more of like, we're here for guidance. You're kind of making your own decisions now. Let me help you make those decisions. But it doesn't mean that I can just automatically, like, I'm not going to discipline you when you make the bad one. Life is going to do that for you.

Sometimes the law is going to do that for you if you get too far out of line, you know. And so what ended up probably happening here, and here's how I think that they actually lost Jesus, was Mary. Usually the children would be with the women, and they're out front, I think, as they left in this caravan of people that mary assumes. He's 12, he's going on 13, he's about to be bar mitzvahed. He's probably back with the men, you know, just kind of eager to get a jump on manhood.

Makes sense, Joseph. Sometimes we're dumb. He just assumed, by the way, that's the problem, like in so many, like, relationships, marital, family, friends, whatever it is, employers and employees assuming that somebody knows what you want done, assuming that they're just gonna do what you ask them to do. Like, this is uncommunicated expectations, right? Like, I don't meet your expectation if you haven't communicated it to me.

And so, Joseph, he probably just assumes that Jesus is with Mary and the other women and kids. And so he's not thinking about it. He's talking with the other guys. Maybe they're talking about some collaboration they can do on a business project when they get home or whatever it is, and they get to the night stop, wherever they're stopping and staying for the night. Joseph, of course, looking for his family, he shows up.

Hi, Mary. How's it going? Good walk? Yeah, everything's fine. Where's our son?

You know, like the son of God, that one, like the most important son to ever be born. Don't lose him again. The spiritual thing, I just can't get away from it. Like, guys, don't lose Jesus in the midst of your traveling, okay? Like, in the midst of how you go about this year.

Don't lose sight of Christ. But they have this moment of panic and they're worried. Now, the good news is Jerusalem is fairly safe. They don't have to worry too much about him. But nonetheless, they can't just, like, ping him on.

What is that? Life365? Or, like, on your iPhone, where you're like, what's their location? You can't do that. They don't have a GPS tracker, God positioning system.

I don't know. Anyway. Sorry, I just. I shouldn't have.

So they probably stayed the night where they were. They don't want to travel at night. That's less than safe. So they go back the next day. Takes a day to get back there.

They probably looked a little bit. Sun, sunset, they sleep for the night, wherever they're staying. Third day, they find Jesus. I don't know where they look. Luke doesn't tell us where they look.

I'd love to imagine that. But they find him on the third day, and he's in the temple courts, and he is sitting at the feet of. Of the teachers, the teachers of the law, and he's sitting at their feet. And there's probably, like, some Pharisees that are rabbis. You know, they're the ones that are kind of gathered around.

They haven't left yet. They're like, the last ones to leave. They're the most holy guys. They might not live in Jerusalem immediately in that region, but, you know, they're staying until all the travelers have left town because they like to look important and big and knowledgeable. And so, of course, they're hanging out at the temple for a couple extra days.

But Jesus is there now. He's been there. This is the third day without his family even being there. He's just. Who knows where he's been sleeping?

Like, who knows where he's been at? He might not have even known that his family had left. He might have just lost track of the days. Who knows? He is enamored with one thing only.

He wants to be about the Father's. Well, some of your translations say business. Some of yours say, I needed to be in my father's house. How do we get business in house? Like, okay, obviously our English Bible, Jesus didn't speak English, right?

Like, they didn't speak English. They spoke a couple different languages. They spoke Greek, they spoke Aramaic. They knew Hebrew. They spoke and read that and studied that in their Scriptures.

So whatever it was that Luke wrote it down, which was Greek, whatever word he wrote down has to be translated into English, which there's not always a one for one transfer of every single word for any language. But Luke doesn't even really Put a word there. He just puts the word of. It's not house, it's not business. Don't you know?

I need to be about my father's of like of. I need to be about that, about my father's stuff. The things of my father is what he's saying now. Somewhere along the line somebody the smarter than me. And yet people sometimes, I don't know where they stick their head, but it doesn't see too much daylight and they get these translation things so much where they're just like, yeah, we got to put a word in there that makes sense.

He's in the house of God. So I need to be about my father's house. That makes sense. No, it doesn't say that though, because it actually is. There's a plural word in there and house is singular.

So that couldn't have been it. So what he might have been saying was I need to be about my father's business. Yeah, that makes sense. He's doing the business of the father. He's talking about religious stuff.

He's doing all these things. No, I need to be about my father's stuff. My father's things, like the things of the Father are. What's most important to me is what Jesus was saying to his parents. Now Mary feels betrayed by him.

She says, son, how could you have done this to us? How could you have done these things to us? Like put us through torment? How could you have put us through this kind of torment? And he says, it should have been obvious to you what, what I needed to be about.

Now I have a question at this point in the life of Jesus is like, did he understand? He understood who he was. Like he understood he's the Son of God. Did he understand what everything he would do in his life would entail, like his sacrifice? Did he understand at 12 years old that he was going to be calling disciples?

Did he understand that he was going to be leading them? That he would one day be trayed by Judas again when he became, when he became a human. I don't believe he retained his full knowledge of the future. In fact, he even talks about for his return. He says nobody knows when the Son will return, when God will do this, not even the Son.

In other words, he's like, I don't know everything. God the Father knows everything. There's some things that I don't know. Now that doesn't mean that God kept a secret from him. If he asked him, he probably would tell him.

But there were things at 12 years old that I believe Jesus didn't know about his upcoming life. He certainly knew who he was. I believe at this point, he knows he's the Son of God. He knows that he has a divine mission to accomplish and that he knows that something drastic will happen in his life, that he won't live like, let's say, a normal life, even the normal life of a religious leader. And yet for him, it's obvious what he needs to be about the things of the Father.

What do his parents want him to do? They want him to go back and be about the things of religion. Oh, well, you become a bar mitzvah child. He's like, I've been bar mitzvahed my whole life. I've been a son of the law.

I'm responsible for the writing of it. I'm familiar with it because from eternity past, I've been it, I've lived it. It is here because of me. And so Mary and Joseph don't understand things in the way that Jesus does. And so while they are looking for him, they're getting more and more anxious.

He's sitting at the feet of the teachers and the Pharisees and the rabbis. And what that simply means in their cultural history was they would have teachers. And then if you sat on the ground below them, it means you're sitting in the position of a disciple. You're learning all of their teachings, all of their things, and you are absorbing it. You're taking it upon you and just kind of growing within those teachings.

It very well may have been that Jesus was looking for a rabbi that he might want to apprentice under or follow as an official disciple, much like he would later have his own 12 disciples. It could be that he was at that point wanting to do that. Now, that may or may not have been the path that he was going to take, but it's apparent that that is the next step in the schooling that he would have taken had he gone through that. And I remember a time in my life after I graduated high school where I knew God was calling me to ministry, but I also knew that he wasn't calling me straight to, like, college or seminary, that path. And I didn't know what to do.

So for the next three years, I just kept doing what I was doing. I worked the job I had. I lived where I was living. And I just kind of kept doing that the whole time, seeking the face of God, the direction of God. And I said, God, whenever you're ready for me to move and do the next thing, the next step in Preparation for ministry.

I'm willing to do it. And of course, the whole time I was doing that, I was serving in my local church, I was volunteering there. But I knew that God had called me to something additional to that. And I was just waiting to hear the next step. And so Jesus, I think, was doing what was the next thing officially for him to do.

And yet where his parents came and found him and they said, how could you do this to us? It says he submitted to them and went home with them. He ends up learning the trade that Joseph had, which is a craftsman, a tecton was the Greek word. And he ends up learning that trade and going home and doing that. And as far as we know, never being the disciple of a rabbi, of a teacher, there's no record of that having happened.

I'm sure their relationship changed quite a bit at that point. Mary recognizing I'm not here so much as a guardian and more as a little bit of a guide, at this point in his life, that parental and child role had changed a bit. But Luke tells us that Jesus, as he's home in Nazareth, he keeps growing in, it says, wisdom and, and in stature and in favor with God and with people. He had done that for the past 12 years, and he continues doing that over the next several years. But I wonder, he also tells us there that Mary treasured these things and pondered them in her heart.

These things that were happening the three days of agonizing, just this agony that they had, searching for Christ, knowing that they had lost sight of him, wondering what would happen next, finding him at the temple. And not just at the temple, sitting there, but it says he was asking questions of them. That was the typical way that you would actually communicate with your. With a rabbi or a teacher is you would. They would ask a question and you would answer with a question.

And as you would keep doing that, you would finally come to an understanding of it. Jesus was asking questions of them because as he asked questions of them, he wasn't just trying to like stump them or display his knowledge. They were trying to get at the root of the Scriptures. And it says that the teachers were amazed by him. Like, this kid's just 12.

How does he understand this so much? Well, I'm pretty sure for one thing, he had the Scriptures memorized. For another thing, he had an intimate working knowledge, not just of the Scriptures, but of the God of the Scriptures. If you read fiction novels, I don't mean like autobiographies, but pretty much any kind of a book, even documentary type books, or things of that nature. If you read anything other than an autobiography, you don't learn much about the character and nature and likes and dislikes of an author.

You might assume you know a few things based on what he puts into his characters. And you think, oh, maybe part of the author is. Is visible in this character or in these actions. And that might be certainly true. But you can't say beyond the shadow of a doubt that you understand that author based on what you have read that they wrote.

But it's not so with the Word of God. You see, God behind the Scriptures is not just everything directly about the character and nature of God. And yet we see revealed in the Scriptures who God is. As we study the Word God, as we just feast on the Word of God, we draw closer to the author of the Word of God. And so Jesus Christ, having memorized the Scriptures, most likely the entirety of the Old Testament, he would have been so, so close to his Father in heaven.

Of course he knows they're speaking of him. He understands as he reads, like Isaiah 52 and 53, where it talks about the suffering servant. I believe he knows that's about him and that he has some suffering laid out for him. Does he know just how much it will physically hurt? Does he know the pain that he will feel of being betrayed by one of his closest friends, of being abandoned by the rest of his disciples and his friends?

Does he know the pain that he'll see on his mother's face as he's on the cross, dying for her sins and ours, that he sees her there weeping over his death? Remember Simeon? We talked about him a couple weeks ago as he's holding Jesus, he says to Mary, know this, that a sword will pierce your own heart. I think here in the temple might have been the first time. And in those three days that led up to it, might have been the first time that she started to feel the point of that sword piercing into her heart, knowing that there was going to be a time when her son would be ripped away from her and that for three days she wouldn't have him.

Jesus died for us. And for three days he's in the tomb for three days she is in agony over that. Much worse than the three days that she was looking for him when he was at the temple.

What do you treasure?

What things do you ponder? What goals do you have? Not just like New Year goals or resolutions or whatever you might have, but what things do you ponder and say, lord, what is it that you're doing in my life? In My family's life in my city that I live in. What are you doing in the ministry that I'm involved in?

Lord, how can I dream big dreams about what you might be doing and where you might be calling me to do that? How can I serve you more? How can I affect Godly change in the lives of others from whatever my status or position in life is? What things do you treasure and ponder over? I want to encourage you that resolutions are fine.

They're easy to break. Goals are a little bit more trackable because you can kind of measure them. You can say, this is my goal. Here's the steps that I'm going to take to get there, and that's what I want to do, whatever those goals might be. And sometimes I've talked about it, like, you know, it's good to set, like, a financial goal, a physical goal, you know, like, that might be, like, what you eat and how you exercise or, you know, doing less of one and more of the other or whatever.

It might be, you know, usually inverting that because we usually, like, I eat more and exercise less. It's like, let's flip that around, you know, like, we would do better for that. But, like, I walked up some stairs yesterday and it was hard. I'm like, okay, I need to at least walk more. You know, like, that's kind of basic.

You might have so many different goals. You might have some relationship goals with other people. It might be a broken relationship that you want to mend. It might be relationship with one of your children that has just kind of been so much friction for so many years. And you say, I want to do whatever it takes.

I want to humble myself if I have to, as the parent even, and mend that relationship, whatever it might take. They might have done you wrong, but whoever this person might be, but it might be up to you to make things right. Jesus said, blessed are the peacemakers. Peacemaking takes work. It doesn't just happen.

But I would hope that one of your goals would be that you want to grow closer to God in a way that you've never been. And so I'd like to encourage you to adopt a goal of reading the entire Bible this year. I've done it before. I don't do it every year. I don't read the entire Bible every year.

Sometimes I do, and I'm going to start that tomorrow. And I don't have to have a show of hands. There's no signup form. You're welcome to put it on the connection card if you want to do that so that I can keep, you know, not keep track of it, but I can walk with you through that and then give you encouragement, whatever it might be. I'd like to invite you to do that.

Like that's the big invitation, you know, Today is not just walking closer with God, but digging into his word. Guess what? In a year from now, you won't be a Bible scholar. You won't be like, you know, it won't be like you like just automatically have the answer for everything. You won't have memorized all of it.

And like, you can point right where that thing is at. Chances are you'll read stuff and then totally forget you'd read it. And you'll like, you'll be like, you know, I'll preach on it sometime later in the year. And you're like, I read this book, but I don't remember that, you know, and look, I do it too. I read stuff.

I've read the whole thing a bunch of times and sometimes I'm going through and I'm like, whoa, how did I miss that detail? That's the beautiful thing about the Bible. You see this looks like it's just black and white words on a page. It is alive. The word of God is living and active.

Sharper than a double edged sword. It cuts through between the joints and the marrow. It lays bare our lives and allows God to speak into our lives. Show us who we are. Show us who he is.

Proclaim his power, majesty, might and glory over our lives. And then he heals us from what sin has destroyed in our lives. He heals our relationships. He heals our spiritual sickness that we have. And he draws us closer to him and leads us in mission to other people that don't yet know Christ or that need a helping hand along the journey.