Today’s Podcast
Today’s Bible reading plan:
Read it in a year – Philemon
see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)
Today’s Devotional
Luke 2:49
Jesus: Why did you need to look for Me? Didn’t you know that I must be working for My Father?
What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?
We’ve moved into the gospel of Luke today. The only gospel that has any mention of Jesus’ childhood beyond His birth, the family’s escape to Egypt, and return to Nazareth. All the other gospels pick up His life’s story with His baptism at the Jordan River by His cousin John the Baptist. But Luke, Paul’s physician companion on his missionary journeys gives this brief snippet into Jesus’ childhood just as He is reaching the age of accountability according to Jewish tradition.
Jesus is twelve. He accompanies His family to Jerusalem for the Passover Feast. That was a five day journey for them when the roads weren’t terribly crowded and the weather was pretty good. It’s about 120 miles on foot. And that was how they traveled. On foot. Like most twelve year old boys, He probably ran ahead and played with friends or explored some interesting find on the path while His parents caught up, then ran ahead again throughout the five day journey. With all the pilgrims keeping an eye on all the children at play on the road, parents didn’t worry much about their kids getting lost. They just had them check back every once in a while to make sure they stayed relatively close and safe. He acted like a twelve year old on a five day trek.
But then He saw the temple during the Passover. It probably wasn’t His first time, but for some reason we don’t know, Jesus was invited into the circle of scribes on this occasion. And as He listened to them, He was allowed to make comments. Now that was really unusual. He was only twelve, not yet of age to be heard. But these scribes listened to His opinions because Jesus had wisdom well beyond His years. They were amazed at this young man’s understanding.
Jesus’ family left for the journey home, but instead of leaving with them, He slipped back into the temple and the circle of scribes. Something about this place drew Him close. The scriptures acted like a magnet to Him and the men who surrounded Him welcomed Him because of the things He said. They listened to His thoughts as if He were a seasoned rabbi. Soon, Jesus forgot His family was leaving town and He missed their departure.
Surprising to us, it was three days before Mary and Joseph discovered Jesus’ absence. But remember that almost all of Nazareth would have traveled to Jerusalem for Passover. As many as could, went to Jerusalem for the three great feasts God told Moses to present to the Israelites in the desert – Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles. Mary and Joseph would have made as many of these feasts in Jerusalem as possible. The city burst at the seams with people. It was a time for family reunions and reuniting with old friends. With that many people coming together, Mary and Joseph would easily assume Jesus was with His cousins and aunts and uncles as they traveled.
Finally, Mary and Joseph figured out Jesus was not in the entourage and headed back to Jerusalem frantically searching for their missing son. But as they made inquiries and their search led them back to the temple, there He was confounding the teachers of the law with His amazing understanding of the scriptures at such a young age.
No doubt Jesus was in trouble for the worry He caused. No doubt He didn’t get to run ahead or play with His friends on the rest of the journey home. I expect if they could have done so without raising too many eyebrows, they would have put a lasso around Him and kept Him tied to one of them. So the lesson in these scriptures is not to run away from your parents. That’s not a good thing. Even for Jesus, that was not a good thing. He probably got some fairly hefty punishment for the scare He caused and His failure to leave with the family, even though He was doing something very good at the time. He really needed to tell His parents what He was doing before He scared them to death.
But the other thing we learn from today’s words is that scripture was important to Jesus from a very early age. Remember we closed the book of Mark talking about just how important scripture was to Jesus. We talked about the fact that many of His last words on the cross came from Old Testament Psalms. How was He able to recite those verses under such extreme duress? Because from the age of twelve, whenever you couldn’t find Jesus, just look in the temple or the synagogue or with a group of rabbis or scribes. You’d find Him learning scripture. You find Him reading the ancient texts, learning the prayers of David and Isaiah and Daniel and Moses.
Jesus was a student of His Father’s words as handed down through the writers of our Old Testament. He used them often in His preaching and teaching, in His confrontations with Satan and his minions, in His times of greatest joy and deepest sorrow, and even on the cross. If scripture was so important to Jesus, the perfect Son of God, don’t you think it should be important to those of us who are so imperfect? Pick it and read it today and every day. It will do you good.
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