ALWAYS AT WORK – Sermons and Biblical Studies

Luke 2:49: Always at Work

And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?'97Luk_2:49 (AV).

1. We know how it sometimes happens that a scene which has been for years familiar and beloved suddenly greets us with a new impression. We have caught it from some unexpected angle, or a flying light has shot over it, bringing out some color or some effect of perspective or of contrast that we never before hit upon. There it is, the old habitual place, which we fancied that we knew by heart, and yet there is a look in it to-day which we had never suspected, which we had always missed. A touch of beauty, a flash of significance, has given it a new consecration. The novelty of the effect is heightened by the very fact that it is brought out of material so intimately known.

Now, is not this often the case with the Four Gospels? Those wonderful books'97how well we seem to know them! From our earliest memories the familiar rhythms have sung '93the old, old story'94 in our ears. We turn the pages only to pass the eye along its usual and anticipated sequences. And then, by a sudden stroke now and again, a fresh gleam of light falls, and some fragment of the gospel story starts into swift and radiant prominence. We had read that bit a thousand times before, yet it lay unmarked; pleasant, indeed, and helpful, one perhaps among many that we liked, yet with no special note. But to-day it stands out as if alone. A peculiar force lies about it. A splendid meaning breaks from it. How is it we can have passed it over so easily? How is it we ever missed its vivid interest?

Some such prominence has fallen in our day on the scene recorded by St. Luke to which the text refers. So strangely alone it is, this tale of the boyhood of Jesus, plucked out of the heart of that silence which broods round the long hours of the Lord’s growth at Nazareth. Ah, how we pine to penetrate within that shrouding silence'97the silence during which the blessed Plant sprang up out of the dry ground. Would that we might follow the unrecorded process in the mystery of which He passed from the unconscious impotence of the Babe, passive in the manger, swathed in swaddling-clothes, to that full, ripe, conscious manhood of His ministry'97complete, self- mastered, sure-footed; clear in aim, in purpose, in decision; calm, measured, deliberate, and determined. Between the two moments lies the whole story of the upward growth.

2. If the veil of silence has fallen on so much that we cannot but desire to look into, with what an outbreak of relief do we fasten on this solitary story which the diligence of St. Luke has been guided to rescue out of all the hidden mystery of growth, for our loving attention! Here he has been allowed to bring before us, not merely the broad or secret process by which His human nature won its advances from him, but a most signal moment of its increase, when it arrived at a new level, as it were, at bound.

Such a moment is never forgotten, the moment at which the boy ceases to see through the eyes of others, ceases to speak, to think, as others do about him; when he sees with his own eyes him, and faces his own world, and seeks for his own interpretation of it. Such moments, when they come, are full of a great awe; we are rapt into a solitude of our own, in which we forget our earlier interests, which have become as a very little thing. We are absorbed in the passion of a spiritual discovery; we are caught up, young though we be, into the solemnity of those swift and sudden intuitions which have the

power to make

Our noisy years seem moments in being

Of the eternal Silence.

Many a man or woman can recall echoes of such times. Perhaps, long after we have forgotten them, we drop upon some fervid or grave resolution, written with our unformed hand, in a youthful diary, the record of some such momentus awakening. We smile as our eyes fall on that record, yet smile with a sigh of sad regret that, with all wiser intelligence, we have not retained the intense and earnest seriousness which makes sacred that old scrawl.

3. The words of our text, then, are the only words recovered from the childhood of Jesus. All the precious memory that Mary kept in her heart de ella appears to have died with her.

She told it not; or something sealed

The lips of that evangelist.

Legends survive, enough; offspring of crude if devout imaginations, and so obviously spurious that there has never been any serious attempt to include them in sacred writ. In thirty years, one saying, and one only, survives. These are the first recorded words of Jesus, and every syllable is precious. The poet Wordsworth says that the child is father of the man; and surely in these words of Jesus we get a hint of all that the man Jesus is ever to become. As in a mountain lake one sees reflected the mountains and the forests and the procession of the clouds, so in this single sentence of Jesus is mirrored the entire New Testament land and sky.

4. What do these words mean? They claim Sonship'97'93my Father'94; they claim also the necessity of obeying the demands of Sonship'97'93I must'94; and they claim that what the Father demands of the Son is Service'97'93about my Father's business.'94 So we have'97

I.Sonship.

II. Surrender.

III. Service.

Sonship

'93My Father.'94

1. In His first words, Jesus claims Divine Paternity, and for Himself Divine Sonship. When His mother said '93Thy father and I have sought thee,'94 she meant Joseph, but when Jesus said '93my Father's business,'94 He did not mean Joseph, for He was not about Joseph's business when in the Temple, questioning, and being questioned by the doctors. We can put no other fair interpretation on the phrase '93my Father'94 than that which makes it refer to God, His Divine Father. It was His business that He was about when in The temple, not Joseph’s.

'93My Father.'94 This was Jesus' name for God. When He spoke to God He always called Him '93Father.'94 When He was successful in His work, He said, '93Father, I thank thee.'94 When He was overcome with grief, He cried, ' 93Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass.'94 When He pleaded for His disciples, He said, '93Father, keep through thine own name these whom you hast given me.'94 On the cross He prayed, '93Father, forgive them,'94 and with His last breath He said, '93Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.'94 This is the word He wanted all men to use.

The first use of the name '93Father'94 by Jesus was to name God, not a man. Our souls first know an earthly father, then climb up as by a beautiful ladder of the soul to the idea of ​​a heavenly Father. Jesus knew first the Father above. He lived under Him, carried Him in the sweetest center of His being, had His will shaped by Him, and was inspired by hope and love and submission to Him. Little children grow up to call the man in their house, who gave them their life and provides that life with home and food, '93father,'94 '93my father.'94 But Jesus grew up to think of God as all this. From the first of him He was inspired by the thoughts of the strength and the love of God, His Father of him, and was a loyal child of the will of God.

I was telling her how sternly children were brought up fifty or sixty years ago; how they bowed to their father's empty chair, stood when he entered the room, did not dare speak unless they were spoken to, and always called him '93sir.'94 '93Did they never say '91father'? Did they not say it on Sundays for a treat?'94 A little while later, after profound reflection, she asked'97'93God ella is very old; does Jesus call Him Father?'94 '93Yes, dear; He always called Him Father.'94 It was only earthly fathers after all who did not suffer their babes to come to them.1

2. Christ’s first saying was not a moral precept, but a solemn declaration concerning His relation to God. He breaks forth on the world at the age of twelve, and claims to be the Son of the Eternal Father. Was it now that the consciousness of this great fact dawned upon Him, or was it present with Him during the whole of His early childhood in Nazareth? The confident calmness with which He utters it suggests that He was previously conscious of the relationship. As a Jewish boy, brought up in a devout religious home, He must have been early instructed in the Law and the Prophets. Before He was born, His mother de ella was visited by an angel, who communicated to her a Divine message of marvelous significance. '93Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favor with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus.'94 Would not His mother tell Him, before He reached the age of twelve, of this angelic visit and of the mysterious message? Could she, as a fond mother, well withhold it? While studying the Law and the Prophets, during the early years of childhood in Nazareth, His eye may have fallen on Isaiah’s significant passage, '93 Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. '94 Would He not at once interpret the meaning and, applying it to Himself, understand that He was the Immanuel who was to be born of a virgin? Had He read, or had there been read to Him, in the secluded home of Nazareth, the passage in Deu_18:18-19, '93I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him'94? Had He a glimpse of Himself when the passage was read? In the Temple, what portions of the Hebrew Scriptures were read in the service? Was it Isaiah 53, or Psalms 2, or Psalms 22, or Psalms 72, or Psalms 110? Were these included in the seven days' service, or in the discussion among the doctors? Did the child of twelve years hear any inward voice, saying, I am He of whom Psalmists and Prophets speak? Was the grandeur of His mission opening out to Him? Was the spirit of His mission possessing Him? Did He now say to Himself, in the mysterious depth of His own consciousness of him, & apos; 93For this cause came I unto this hour, & apos; 94 & apos; 93and how am I straitened until it be accomplished & apos; 94 ? When now He made the great announcement to His mother, that God is His Father and that He is the Son of God, did He not set His seal to the angel's mysterious words, '93He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest’94?

We are not warranted in affirming that the child meant all that the man afterwards meant by the claim to be the Son of God; nor are we any more warranted in denying that He did. We know too little about the mysteries of His growth from him to venture on definite statements of either kind. Our sounding lines are not long enough to touch bottom in this great word from the lips of a boy of twelve; but this is clear, that as He grew into self-consciousness, there came with it the growing consciousness of His Sonship from him to His Father in Heaven.

3. Jesus never speaks of His holding the same relationship as His disciples to God the Father. He never speaks to His disciples of '93our God,'94 or of '93our Father,'94 but of '93your…

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