One of the biggest questions surrounding this passage is \u201cWhy do we have only one story from the childhood, youth and young adult years of Jesus\u2019 life?\u201d<\/p>\n
The direct answer isn\u2019t given \u2013 but that in itself may be the answer. With all of the time that the disciples spent with Jesus, there most likely were many conversations that took them to topics like his youth and childhood. \u201cHey, Jesus, did you ever hit the winning shot in the ball game?\u201d Or, \u201cWhat was your favorite thing to build in the carpenter shop?\u201d So there probably were things that could be said, but yet God had the New Testament authors record only this one childhood event and in only one Gospel.<\/p>\n
Here are a few interesting observations we do have about this one story. First, the three preceding stories in Luke are all from the temple so this fits right in the sequence.<\/p>\n
Second, Jesus most likely took other trips to the temple between age one and thirty. It does seem though that this may have been the only one that had this significant of an encounter. The next chapter in Luke picks up with John the Baptist paving the way for the launch of Jesus public ministry. When Jesus shows up to be baptized, he doesn\u2019t come with a following. This seems in show that had he been some childhood phenom, constantly was showing His stuff in the temple, one would suspect that He would have not needed the John intro.<\/p>\n
Third, I think we get another hint as to why only one story from His youth when he performs the miracle of turning the water into wine at Cana. He made the statement \u201cMy time has not yet come.\u201d\u00a0 Now rewind to Luke 2. You get the feeling that Jesus could have used that temple experience as the launch of His ministry. Back at that time, age 12 was not perceived of being as young as it is today. It was the edge of perceived adulthood. So Jesus could have used that time to declare who He was, but he choose not to launch.<\/p>\n
Fourth, what He actually did do was what the last verse of the chapter says, \u201cHe returned to Nazareth and continued in submission to His parents.<\/p>\n
I think that this single mention of this one story points to the fact that Jesus\u2019 childhood and youth really established His humanity. He\u2019s living clearly in two worlds. The heavenly world and the earthly world. At the end of three days of His parents\u2019 searching He declares He was about His Father\u2019s business (and by the way, don\u2019t miss the significance of three days \u2013 another foreshadow of what is to come\u2026<\/em>). But then He simply returns home in submission to His earthly parents. We get this picture that we have this supernatural human being who is destined for greatness, but makes it clear that his ministry launch must be at the right time.<\/p>\n Although one of the shortest stories we\u2019ve done in Men\u2019s Life, it was powerful.<\/p>\n So what\u2019s a main takeaway? For me, it is a reminder of looking at things from God\u2019s perspective. His timing is perfect and although hard at times to be patient, waiting for God\u2019s timing is best. There may be times that we will not realize the significance of some event until many years later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the biggest questions surrounding this passage is \u201cWhy do we have only one story from the childhood, youth and young adult years of Jesus\u2019 life?\u201d Is it an issue of focus? \u2013 God wants the focus to be on the three adult ministry years? Was his childhood intentionally secret? Was the rest of His childhood and youth somewhat… Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,12],"tags":[49,42,58,44,59,60],"class_list":["post-618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lessons","category-wrapup","tag-focus","tag-jesus","tag-luke","tag-teaching","tag-temple","tag-timing","xfolkentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/menslifebloomington.org\/bloomenlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/menslifebloomington.org\/bloomenlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/menslifebloomington.org\/bloomenlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/menslifebloomington.org\/bloomenlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/menslifebloomington.org\/bloomenlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=618"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/menslifebloomington.org\/bloomenlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":619,"href":"http:\/\/menslifebloomington.org\/bloomenlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618\/revisions\/619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/menslifebloomington.org\/bloomenlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/menslifebloomington.org\/bloomenlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/menslifebloomington.org\/bloomenlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}