Where to Find Jesus: Beyond the Search

• The Incarnation and Childhood of Jesus [00:16:25 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor contrasts the many stories of Jesus' ministry with the single biblical account of His childhood, highlighting His presence in the temple.
• The Role of the Church/Temple [00:17:12 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor identifies the temple as 'church' and 'God's house,' emphasizing that Jesus was found there listening and learning.
• Parental Faithfulness [00:17:23 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor notes that Jesus' parents took Him faithfully to the temple, drawing a parallel to modern parents bringing children to church.
• Family Dynamics and Missing Children [00:29:23 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor uses a personal anecdote about a missing sibling to illustrate the universal fear parents feel when a child is lost, connecting it to the biblical narrative.
• Jewish Law and Tradition [00:33:30 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor explains the context of Leviticus 12 and the purification rites to contextualize Jesus' family's faithfulness.
• Jewish Law and Pilgrimage [00:33:30 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor explains the Mosaic law regarding purification rites and the requirement for Jewish men to pilgrimage to Jerusalem three times a year, highlighting the significant time and financial sacrifice involved.
• The 'Lost' Boy Narrative [00:38:09 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor analyzes the cultural context of Jesus staying behind in Jerusalem, comparing it to 'Home Alone' and 'Huckleberry Finn' to illustrate that Jesus chose to stay rather than being forgotten or running away.
• Jesus' Dual Nature and Identity [00:39:38 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor discusses the theological tension of Jesus being fully God and fully man at age 12, noting his mature wisdom in the temple contrasted with his adolescent behavior and his parents' confusion.
• Biblical Translation and Exegesis [00:44:21 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor breaks down the translation ambiguity in Luke 2:49 ('father's house' vs. 'father's business'), using a grammatical analogy about missing objects in sentences to argue for a combined meaning.
• The Location of Jesus / Finding God [00:50:35 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor argues against the cultural idea that one must 'search' for a lost Jesus, asserting instead that Jesus is omnipresent and specifically found in the Word, the church, and service.
• Critique of Christian Spirituality Practices [00:51:23 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor contrasts complex spiritual disciplines (like breathing techniques) with the simple, biblical mandate to pray and read the Bible, citing a seminary professor's advice.
• Panentheism vs. Biblical Prescriptives [00:53:43 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor warns against panentheism (the idea that God is in everything/nature) and argues that Scripture prescribes specific means of grace (Word, fellowship, service) rather than general nature meditation.
• The Three Means of Grace [00:55:18 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor summarizes the sermon's application: find Jesus by cracking open the Word of God, being among God's people (church), and being about the Father's business (service).
• Spiritual Disciplines and Community Engagement [00:57:03 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor urges the congregation to seek Jesus in Scripture, among the church community, and in service, using the example of the 12-year-old Jesus in the temple.
• Confession and Repentance [00:59:07 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor leads a corporate confession regarding distractions, mixed priorities, and addictions, asking God to draw the people near.

• Sermon Illustration [00:29:56 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor shares a personal family story from the mid-1980s where his mother fell asleep during naptime, woke up to find his preschooler brother missing, and panicked. It was later revealed that his father had unknowingly taken the boy out for errands while he was home, having seen him playing quietly. The mother never saw the 'note' the father left because she was looking for the child, not paper.
• Sermon Illustration [00:38:20 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor compares the story of Jesus staying behind to the movies 'Home Alone' and 'Huckleberry Finn', noting it is neither because Jesus wasn't forgotten nor did he run away, but simply stayed without telling his parents.
• Sermon Illustration [00:35:45 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor uses a personal anecdote about having a good job with paid time off to illustrate the difficulty of taking two weeks off, contrasting it with the immense sacrifice of laborers like Joseph who had to give up wages to travel to Jerusalem.
• Sermon Illustration [00:44:49 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor uses a Christmas gift analogy to explain grammatical context: just as saying 'I can't wait to open them' requires context to know if it's a door or a walnut, Jesus' statement 'I had to be about the... of my father' requires context to understand if it means house, business, or people.
• Sermon Illustration [00:48:02 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor shares a personal anecdote about his childhood in Roaring Gap, NC, where he would find lost golf balls on the course and sell them back to the golfers for a profit, illustrating the concept of 'finding things that are lost.'
• Sermon Illustration [00:51:23 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor recounts a seminary experience where a 'Christian spirituality' teacher led students in breathing exercises and mantras, which was contrasted with another professor, Dr. Cecil Sherman, who simply advised students to 'pray and read your Bible.'
• Sermon Illustration [00:53:13 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor uses an analogy of mountain bikers who prefer 'dirt church' (riding in the woods) over attending the local church, illustrating the modern tendency to seek God in nature rather than in the prescribed biblical community.
• Sermon Illustration [00:57:38 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor humorously suggests that Jesus stayed in the temple after the Passover because His family were the type of people who 'leave at the last hymn' to get an early start at Bojangles, encouraging the congregation to stay for Sunday school and small groups.
• Sermon Illustration [00:57:46 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor humorously theorizes that Jesus stayed in the temple because his family were the type of people who leave at the last hymn to get an early start to Bojangles.

• Pastoral Charge [00:57:15 ▶️ 📄]
  > Set reminders to spend time in God's Word for the purpose of intimacy with Him.
• Pastoral Charge [00:57:54 ▶️ 📄]
  > Participate in Sunday school, join a small group, and increase involvement in church life.
• Pastoral Charge [00:57:15 ▶️ 📄]
  > Set up a phone reminder to spend time in God's Word.
• Pastoral Charge [00:57:53 ▶️ 📄]
  > Attend Sunday school and small groups to get more involved in the church community.
• Pastoral Charge [00:58:07 ▶️ 📄]
  > Volunteer to serve in the community and church.

[00:02:01] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_01]
[00:02:01] Good morning and welcome to Corinth where our mission is to proclaim and worship Jesus as Lord. We are delighted to see you this morning and for a lot of you to see you again. We've been together quite a lot lately and for those of you keeping track we are now on the fourth day of Christmas so if you do not have ten birds in your house by the end of the day you might have some words with your true love. But if you're with us today in person and you're seated along the center aisle we would love for you to grab that black folder. We call that our friendship pad. If you would sign in and let us know that you are here it's really helpful for us.
[00:02:31] for us to have that information. If you're new to Corinth, there's a blue visitor connect card in there. You can pull one out, fill it out in hard copy, or you can scan the QR code and fill out
[00:02:41] the exact same thing online. Either way, we'd love to know about our visitors so we can connect with you. We have just a couple of announcements to highlight for you. The first is that the new year
[00:02:50] begins this week, and the new year is a great time to begin something new. So there are new Bible studies that are starting in January. There's information in your bulletin about those. There are also some new serving teams. So whether you want to learn or you want to serve, there are
[00:03:04] opportunities for you to get involved in those. You can check out, like I said, the Bible study information in your bulletin, Patter's contact information also in your bulletin about our serving teams. And one final note, as we look back over 2025, your gifts have been incredibly,
[00:03:19] incredibly important and helpful as we've furthered this mission of proclaiming and worshiping Jesus as Lord. But with the year end right around the corner, now is the great time to get in that year-end tax-deductible contribution
[00:03:30] if you've been forgetting to do that.
[00:03:32] Make sure you send it in by December 31st if you want your gift on the 2025 giving record that'll be coming your way in a couple of weeks.
[00:03:40] That's all we've got for right now.
[00:03:41] Thanks for being with us and for worshiping at Corinth.

[00:03:44] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_06]
[00:03:44] Psalm 66 wraps up with a paragraph that starts out by saying, come and listen.
[00:03:51] Come and listen, and I will tell you the great deeds of the Lord.
[00:03:53] and I think to myself we roll through Christmas and I mean like I don't know about y'all uh I fell asleep about 10 days ago and I woke up and Christmas was over and all it was a boom and
[00:04:10] went by like that and I don't know that even as a pastor that I came and listened to the work of the Lord and the things that he's done and so this morning we're just going to take just a minute and
[00:04:22] just be still before we come to him in praise and just to come to him in prayer first and come and listen as we think about how amazing our God is, the gift of his incarnation, Emmanuel, God with us,
[00:04:37] the one who died, rose, ascended, and is coming again. Let's take just a minute and be quiet and then answer Him in praise. Lord Jesus, in the still, remind us that we belong to You,
[00:05:11] bought with Your precious blood, that the only reason we know holiness is because we know You.
[00:05:20] And Lord God, that when we stand before You to lift Your name on high, we're able to do so with clean and purified lips because of Your blood. Lord, for coming as a tiny baby, we praise You
[00:05:34] for living among us for 33 years we praise you for revealing to us the truth of heaven we praise you lord let us come and listen to the testimony of your greatness your word amongst your people and in the works of your father be lifted high today and forevermore
[00:06:03] among the churches that call you lord and savior it's in your name we pray lord Amen. Let's stand and praise.

[00:07:13] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_03]
[00:07:13] This is the end, the birth of our Savior He is the greatest ever gift This is the story of the Father's mercy Jesus, Lamb of God, Lord With flesh but fully whole There had the earth seen His Savior's face
[00:07:59] Heaven's author of our story For still he pressed to And never had such a gift been given Never before such mercy showed This is the anthem of the Of our Savior The greatest ever He stood
[00:08:34] This is the story of others Mercy Jesus Lamb Out of thorns on his brow Crushed upon the cross His love poured out And satisfying God's wrath With every stripe on His back Rising from the grave
[00:09:17] We praise Him now This is the anthem of the birth Of our Savior This is the story of the Father Savior, Jesus, Lamb of God God, it's so good to be in your house again today.

[00:14:21] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_02]
[00:14:21] It's still Christmas season, God.
[00:14:23] We're so thankful for all that it means and all that you did.
[00:14:27] So we worship and praise you in this house today, God.
[00:14:29] We invoke your presence in every heart and every mind, God, that you would touch each one in a special way.
[00:14:36] Bless this service, God.
[00:14:38] Bless the scripture.
[00:14:39] Bless the music.
[00:14:40] Bless the spoken word.
[00:14:42] Bless each person that's here, God.
[00:14:43] We give it all to you.
[00:14:45] In Jesus' name, amen.

[00:14:48] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_06]
[00:14:48] So glad you're here to worship this morning.
[00:14:50] Take a minute, greet someone around you, annoy an introvert, and send your kids down front for the children's message.

[00:14:57] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_01]
[00:14:57] Well, I want to take just a minute to greet you who are worshiping with us online.
[00:15:01] My name's Amy, and I'm one of the pastors here at Corinth.
[00:15:03] And like you just heard, Bill Frey, we are still celebrating Christmas.
[00:15:07] It's the birth of Jesus, and we're doing that for seven more days until we move into the next season of the church calendar.
[00:15:12] But as we start a new calendar year, we would love to connect with you in new ways.
[00:15:16] So if you're local to Hickory or you can be local to Hickory at times, we'd love to get you plugged in with a Bible study, a service opportunity, some way that you can make connections right here
[00:15:25] and we can all follow Jesus together.
[00:15:27] Thanks for being with us today.

[00:15:34] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_00]
[00:15:34] Good morning.
[00:15:35] Come on up.
[00:15:38] Merry Christmas.
[00:15:42] You wanna sit by Rachel?
[00:15:44] All right.
[00:15:44] Can you tell me about the best kid you know?
[00:15:48] What they're like?
[00:15:48] the best kid you know. Your mom's like, that kid's really great. What are they like? They're smart.
[00:16:02] Are they kind? Maybe they're really helpful. Maybe generous, right? We know from the Bible a lot of details about Jesus's birth, right? We've just been celebrating that. We know about the Bethlehem and the shepherds and the... Jesus' birthday. That's exactly right. We know a lot
[00:16:25] about Jesus' birthday. And we know a lot about Jesus' ministry. He went around and healed people and he walked on water and he had disciples and he told people lots of things about the truth and
[00:16:39] about God. But the Bible really only has one story about what Jesus was like as a kid. Okay. So in the book of Luke, there's a story about Jesus when he's 12 years old, so just a few years older than
[00:16:51] you. And you know what he was found doing in the story. He wasn't being kind to people. He wasn't healing anybody. He wasn't being generous or funny or helpful. He is at church. He is at the temple.
[00:17:12] He is at church listening and talking and learning about God, just like you're doing today.
[00:17:18] A couple important points. It says that his parents took him faithfully to the temple.
[00:17:23] That's what the Jewish people called the church back then.
[00:17:25] They took him faithfully to the temple, just like your parents bring you.
[00:17:28] Did your parents bring you today?
[00:17:31] Yeah.
[00:17:32] Yes. Just like your parents bring you faithfully.
[00:17:35] And Jesus says, this is my father's house.
[00:17:38] So he's talking about the church as his father's house.
[00:17:41] So I think what God is telling us, what Luke wants us to know, is that the most important thing a kid can do is not be really kind to people or really generous or really helpful.
[00:18:00] the most important thing a kid can do is get to know God, is to talk about him, to ask questions about him, to come to church, to love him, to get to know him. Because when that happens, when we get
[00:18:15] to know God really close, like a friend, all of those other things come after that. We get to know God, we become more like God, more like Jesus, and then we're really kind and really generous.
[00:18:30] and really helpful. And it says in the scripture, Jesus was obedient to his parents. So all of that comes after getting to know God really, really well. So I think that's the story that Luke wants
[00:18:41] to tell us about Jesus when he was a kid. And that's really cool. So I'm going to pray for us.
[00:18:47] Dear God, we're thankful for all of scripture, everything that we learn and you teach us through scripture for this story of Jesus as a kid, the really the only one in the Bible that we have.
[00:19:00] and we're thankful for the example that he was to us of being at your house listening and talking and questioning and learning and getting to know you um just like we need to do in jesus name amen

[00:19:14] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_01]
[00:19:14] thanks abby during our next song you're gonna have the opportunity to share your tithes and offerings there are so many ways that we all participate in the work of the gospel and the mission of this church this is one of those and it's an important part of our worship so if you
[00:19:38] would like to partner with us financially, this is your opportunity to do so. The information about

[00:19:43] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_07]
[00:19:43] how to give is going to be on the screen, and it's also in your bulletin. Our scripture reading this

[00:24:00] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_01]
[00:24:00] morning comes from Luke chapter 2, starting in verse 41. Every year, Jesus' parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. When he was 12 years old, they went up to the festival according to the custom. After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home,
[00:24:18] the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. After three
[00:24:35] days, they found him in the temple courts sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers.
[00:24:45] When his parents saw him, they were astonished.
[00:24:48] His mother said to him, Son, why have you treated us like this?
[00:24:53] Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.
[00:24:57] Why were you searching for me? he asked.
[00:24:59] Didn't you know I had to be in my father's house?
[00:25:03] But they did not understand what he was saying to them.
[00:25:06] Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them.
[00:25:09] But his mother treasured all these things in her heart.
[00:25:13] And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man. This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.
[00:25:22] Would you stand as we sing together the first Noel? The words will be on the screen.
[00:25:27] If any of you have spent time with family recently, okay, some of you are laughing, others look exhausted, so I'm pretty sure that's a resounding yes. Now for our part, Josh and the kids and I head to Pennsylvania tomorrow, so we're going to have a lot of
[00:29:12] Christmas family fun still ahead of us. But there's something about families that I've learned over the years, at least the family that I was born into and the family that I married into.
[00:29:23] And one thing that those two have in common is they both love telling stories. And another thing they have in common is that they don't have an infinite well of stories. So you tend to hear the
[00:29:34] same ones over and over and over again. I think a few of you might have some family members like that. So I was thinking back over the stories that I heard in my family over the last 40 years.
[00:29:49] One of the ones that I've heard the most is actually the tale of a child gone missing.
[00:29:56] Now, this scene opens on a modest, comfortable home in central Pennsylvania in the mid-1980s.
[00:30:04] The mother is a young woman. She's not yet 30. She's home alone with an infant and a preschooler.
[00:30:11] Naptime, this preschooler has learned, means that if your body is tired, you can go to sleep for a while.
[00:30:17] And if your body's not tired, you're going to play quietly for a little bit while everybody else has a rest.
[00:30:24] So naptime rolls around on this particular day, and the preschooler settles in for a nap, and the mother sets to the work of putting the infant to sleep.
[00:30:34] Now, this mother is not the type to normally take a nap, but on this particular day, Tiredness overtook everyone.
[00:30:42] And for reasons that I did not fully appreciate until I had a newborn of my own, a mom who didn't normally nap, fell asleep.
[00:30:51] And this is all well and good.
[00:30:52] Everyone in the house is resting.
[00:30:54] But sometime later, the mom wakes up and she realizes the preschooler's gone.
[00:31:01] She searches the house.
[00:31:02] She searches the yard.
[00:31:04] He's nowhere.
[00:31:05] And it's the 1980s.
[00:31:06] We don't have Find My Friends.
[00:31:08] we don't have cell phones. So panic starts to set in. She grabs the landline, she calls family, she calls the police, and soon the driveway is swarming with people who are concerned about finding this missing preschooler. That mom in the 80s was my mom. That baby was me. And that missing
[00:31:28] preschooler was my big brother. Then my dad pulls into the driveway. He's confused to be greeted by all this commotion at the house. And as dad got my brother out of the car, the reality of the
[00:31:41] situation started to set in for everyone except, well, me as the baby. See, dad had come home during nap time. He had seen my brother playing quietly just like he was supposed to do. He saw the girls
[00:31:53] napping and thought, well, I'll let them keep resting. So he took my brother along to do some errands. It's kind of a sweet gesture if you think about it. Now looking back on this scenario,
[00:32:05] I don't know exactly what would have kept my dad out of the kind of trouble he got into after this, but I can tell you with great certainty, even 40 years later, my mother still shoots daggers out
[00:32:19] of her eyes when my dad hears the story and goes, well, I left a note. It's true. He had left a note, but in my mom's panic, she was not looking for a piece of paper. She was looking for a child,
[00:32:33] and she never saw that note until long after everyone was home safe and sound. This is a story that comes out a lot. It's that fear when you realize your child is missing is all too common
[00:32:47] for parents. And that intense search for a part of your heart that's gone missing, well that's also one that a lot of us have felt at some time. And our scripture lesson this morning is of the most
[00:32:59] uncommon child in the world, Jesus, doing one of the most common things that children ever do, which is scaring the living daylights out of their parents. So this story in Luke 2 picks up immediately after the story of Jesus being presented in the temple. Now, it's not really
[00:33:19] the exact same thing, but we don't do infant presentations. It's a little bit like an infant dedication. But according to the law of Moses, Leviticus 12, a woman who had given birth to a son
[00:33:30] was due to go to the temple 40 days after the child was born to undergo these purification rites and to make sacrifices. So we see in Luke 2 that Mary had done exactly what the law told her
[00:33:43] to do. She had gone there at 40 days with Jesus and presented him in the temple. And that story ends with these short summary lines, verses 39 and 40 in the gospel, where Luke tells us,
[00:33:57] when Joseph and Mary had done everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth, and the child grew and became strong. He was filled with wisdom,
[00:34:07] and the grace of God was on him. So today's story picks up with a reminder that even through this growing time. Jesus' family remained as faithful as ever. So the same parents who obeyed the law
[00:34:20] to bring their 40-day-old child to the temple, we're going to find out in verse 41, made it their practice every year to go to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. This is just like
[00:34:32] that purification, something that the law of Moses, what we would call the Old Testament, sets out really clearly. If you're interested in the backstory of this, you can flip over to Exodus 23 at some point, but Exodus 23 and a few other places tell the Israelites that three times
[00:34:48] a year they're supposed to go to Jerusalem to celebrate. Now, depending exactly what version of the Bible you're looking at, those lists might be different, but in the modern terms, it's the festival of Passover, the festival of Shavuot, and the festival of Sukkot. So ideally,
[00:35:03] all the religious Jews are going to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem three times a year to celebrate what God has done by going to these festivals.
[00:35:12] But in practice, it is a huge commitment of time and resources to make that journey even once a year.
[00:35:19] So if we think about Jesus' family, they're living in a town called Nazareth.
[00:35:22] From Nazareth to Jerusalem, it would take about four days of walking each way.
[00:35:28] So you walk four days to get there.
[00:35:30] You celebrate a seven-day festival, and you walk four days to get home.
[00:35:34] That's two weeks of travel.
[00:35:37] It's two weeks where people who are laborers, like carpenters, like Joseph, aren't earning any income.
[00:35:45] Now, I'm pretty fortunate. I've got a great job that has good benefits, and I have paid time off.
[00:35:49] By the world's standards, I'm incredibly wealthy.
[00:35:52] And yet, it's hard for me to schedule two weeks of paid vacation consecutively, even once a year.
[00:35:59] I can't imagine how much harder it is for someone who is laboring every day for that day's wages to take off two weeks of time three times a year. This is a huge sacrifice. So in practice,
[00:36:13] most families, if they were on the poorer side, and we know that Jesus' family was among the poor in Israel, they would choose one of those festivals, and one time a year they would do it.
[00:36:23] It's still a big sacrifice, but it's a little easier than three. So we don't know if Jesus' parents are in that one time a year or two time a year or three times a year camp, but we do know
[00:36:34] that they were somewhere on that spectrum, because Luke tells us it was their custom every year to go to Jerusalem. We know that they are faithful, observant Jews, but there's nothing extravagant or unusual about their faithfulness. It's just obedience to the law, and that obedience is what
[00:36:52] their ongoing life and practice looks like. So verse 42 tells us they go up to that festival again when Jesus was 12. Again, not a unique religious experience, but it's part of their year.
[00:37:05] But this tells us something interesting. It tells us there's been a 12-year gap between the last story and this one. Now, if you've ever met a baby and you've ever met a 12-year-old, you know a lot
[00:37:18] of stuff happens between 40 days old and 12 years old. There's a ton of growing and development and important milestones, and huge transitions, and Luke tells us none of it. He leaves us to imagine
[00:37:31] what all of Jesus' childhood looks like. We see that he's dedicated, and then 12 years go by.
[00:37:38] In the whole gospel, he actually gives us only this one story to bridge the gap from 40 days old to 30 years old. So if we know absolutely nothing else, we know there's something really important
[00:37:50] about this particular story. Because if you're only going to choose one story to tell from 30 years, you're going to make darn sure it's a good one. So Jesus' family making this journey to Jerusalem, perfectly normal. Jesus' family celebrating the Passover, perfectly normal.
[00:38:09] It's when the festival ends that things start to go a little bit sideways. It's actually really clear to us from the way that Luke tells this story that Jesus chose to stick around a while
[00:38:20] longer, and he chose not to tell his parents, or maybe he just forgot to mention it. I read a commentary earlier this week that said this story is somewhere between Home Alone and Huckleberry Finn, right? It's not Home Alone because Jesus wasn't forgotten, like they just didn't think to
[00:38:37] look for him, and it wasn't Huckleberry Finn because he didn't run away on a quest. He just stayed and didn't tell anybody. There's something important about the fact that this happens when Jesus is 12. Because we tend to think in our culture of 13 as a really significant milestone
[00:38:57] birthday. It's the entry into the teen years, and we tend to give our kids more responsibilities and more privileges and more freedoms. And that was kind of true in Jesus' time and culture as well,
[00:39:07] even more so, because they started giving over those responsibilities and those freedoms at the age of 12. So Jesus is mere weeks or months away from the time when his culture would say, you're a man. And so here we see him at 12 years old, kind of having one foot in the
[00:39:26] adult camp and one foot in the kid camp. And when I say that, I want to be really careful that we don't overhumanize Jesus. My very best understanding of the Bible and Christian theology is that Jesus
[00:39:38] is fully God and fully man the whole time he's on earth. So we don't have like the boy Jesus here anxiously awaiting to get his God card when he turns 13, but we are talking about God living
[00:39:51] among us in a 12-year-old's body. And this is a very typical adolescent thing to do.
[00:39:59] In this scene, we see Jesus acting both mature and immature and grown and childlike, and that is 12-year-olds in a nutshell. The almost but not yet teenage Jesus sticks behind in Jerusalem as parents head for home. And we don't know how many people were in that party, but it was really
[00:40:18] common for extended families and friends and neighbors to travel together, and it would have been really easy for that whole crew to set out and for Jesus' parents to make the incredibly reasonable assumption that their 12-year-old would rather hang out with his friends than walk with
[00:40:33] them. But after a full day's walk, which was maybe 20 or 25 miles, they set up camp for the night and they go looking and they realize at nightfall that the boy is not in the crowd. There's nothing
[00:40:49] they can do at night but worry and pray. And I have to imagine that was a long night spent praying that their boy was safe and that morning would come quicker than morning has ever come before.
[00:41:02] I have to imagine that Mary and Joseph set out for Jerusalem at first light, the very first second.
[00:41:08] it was safe for them to do so. And if it took them a day to walk to where they had gotten, it takes them a full day to get back. They hit Jerusalem around nightfall and get to spend a
[00:41:18] second night worrying and praying and wondering what had happened to their child. And on the third day, they search the city and they finally find Jesus, verse 46 tells us, in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking questions. Now this time in
[00:41:37] history, the temple in Jerusalem was the size of a couple of football fields, and most of it was pretty open, like a courtyard. But around the edge, there would have been some pillars and some
[00:41:46] partially covered areas. And at major festivals, the whole area would have been incredibly crowded.
[00:41:53] But the religious teachers, we think, still kind of set up camp around the edge and would have their little cluster of folks sitting in the shady areas to discuss the sacred texts and the reasons
[00:42:03] that God is doing what he's doing and what we know of God. And Jesus, it seems, has just kind of plugged himself into one of those groups, and he is behaving as an engaged student. Now,
[00:42:17] as I mentioned earlier, Jesus' parents are faithful Jewish folks. They had taught their boy about the law and the prophets, and Jesus also had that, like, holy God thing going on, which I think has to give him some unique insight into wisdom and the scriptures,
[00:42:32] and I don't know exactly how that works, but I think in some way it makes him different.
[00:42:37] And we find out there is something different about Jesus. The people who heard him, we're going to see in verse 47, were amazed at his understanding and his answers. I think this is more than just like a precocious child answering intelligently. Jesus is holding his own with
[00:42:53] scholars and he's talking intelligently and insightfully about the Father. And then his mama shows up. And mama is not amused by this. Luke tells us that the people who heard Jesus, who didn't know him, they were amazed, but the parents were astonished. Now, maybe I'm
[00:43:12] overreaching. I don't think those two words are the same, and I think there are different feelings behind them. But either way, it's an awful lot of shock for one day in the temple. And Mary gets
[00:43:22] right down to business, as mamas tend to do. She says, son, why have you treated us this way?
[00:43:27] your father and I have been searching everywhere for you and Jesus answers in a way that makes sense for a 12 year old and probably wouldn't make most parents very happy and says why were
[00:43:39] you searching for me didn't you know I was gonna be here like the questions if we think about them are kind of odd like why are they searching for him because no decent parent anywhere ever would
[00:43:52] realize their 12 year old has gone missing and go he's probably got it from here I guess it'll be a good life, right? That's not what parents do. You go looking for your kid. Everybody knows why
[00:44:04] they've been searching. I think what Jesus really wants to know is why they've been searching. As in, like, why didn't you just go straight to the temple? Now, his second question is a source of some debate among scholars. I'll give you the short version. Depending what Bible
[00:44:21] translation you're reading along with, you might see, didn't you know I had to be in my father's house. Or you might have something that says like, didn't you know I had to be about my father's
[00:44:30] business? So house and business are not the same word. Your grammar lesson here is that sometimes when we read foreign languages or even English, you have to fill in missing words. A good example for Christmas is like, if I walk into your house and go, wow, what a beautiful pile of gifts.
[00:44:49] I can't wait to open them. In the sentence, I can't wait to open them, I haven't told you what it is that I can't wait to open, right? Them could be a door. I can't wait to open the door. I can't
[00:44:58] wait to open that walnut. Like, all kinds of things you can open. Context tells you, I mean, the gifts. In this sentence, what Jesus says is, didn't you know I had to be about the, of my
[00:45:10] father? And that word between the and father is what's missing. And it makes sense that it could be, didn't you know I had to be in my father's house? Didn't you know I had to be with my father's
[00:45:22] people. Didn't you know I had to be in my father's business? And scholars have made their whole careers debating which of those makes the most sense. And maybe it's a cop-out, but I think some
[00:45:33] combination of it makes the most sense to me, because when he's in the temple studying scriptures and discussing with the teachers, Jesus is in fact in his father's house about his father's business with his father's people. In any event, this question is like the Son of God version of
[00:45:52] duh mom I'm here. Whatever Jesus may have understood at 12 years old about his identity his calling his future he seemed to think at 12 that it was going to be self-evident that he belonged in the temple with the religious leaders discussing the scriptures. But Luke is quick to
[00:46:14] tell us that if that was obvious to Jesus it was not obvious to the rest of the world.
[00:46:19] Mary and Joseph don't understand what the boy is talking about we see in verse 50.
[00:46:25] This is one of the first times that we see this theme of confusion and misunderstanding in Luke's gospel, but it carries straight through from beginning to end. In fact, it's not until Jesus is on the cross dying and the centurion cries out, surely this was a righteous man in chapter 23
[00:46:44] that somebody in the gospel really gets it. But chapter 23 of Luke's gospel is 21 chapters away, and it's 21 years of life away. But right now, in chapter 2, 12-year-old Jesus is still misunderstood. And so this passage, kind of like the one before it, ends with two
[00:47:07] short verses that are going to carry us from age 12 to age 30. This passage wraps up with the words. Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured
[00:47:21] all these things in her heart. And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man.
[00:47:29] And that's it. From Jesus' birth to his baptism at age 30, this is the one and only story that Luke's going to tell us. So it's got to mean something. And Pastor Paul is going to tell us

[00:47:42] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_06]
[00:47:42] what? I'm glad that Abigail and her family is sitting right here, because Abigail asked you a question. Do I or do I not have a spiritual gift for finding things that are lost? I don't know
[00:48:02] what it is, but God has given me the knack to find things that are lost, and it just has happened that way in my life. I think it started when we would go spend some weeks at a place in Roaring
[00:48:14] Gap, North Carolina, and there was nothing for a little kid to do but roam the golf course illegally, I might add. And I find myself, there was a tee right in front of the house where we
[00:48:24] were, not a cup of tea, ladies, a golf tee. And there was a bench there. And I began to realize that my little 10-year-old eyes were much better than the old men's eyes who would slice, shank,
[00:48:38] and hook balls off the tee. And they would begin to look. And the thing about lost things, when you lose something, you really typically haven't lost it. You're just looking in the wrong place. You know, it's true. I mean, there are times when you have a hole in your pocket and
[00:48:56] your keys fall through and Lord help you, you don't know where they are. But most of the time when you lose something, you put it somewhere, somebody moved it, you're just looking in the wrong place. And so these golfers would look in the wrong place for their balls. And then I would
[00:49:10] go to where it was, get my little box, sit it right there on the thing, and sell them their ball back the next day. I'm not kidding. This is how old I am. I sound like my grandpa. I would go
[00:49:23] with a nickel, and I'd buy a whole turkey. I'd sell their balls back to them for like 25 cents or something like that. But one of the things we're talking about this morning is the world
[00:49:36] and even the church has grown in this idea of you need to search for Jesus, or searching for God, looking for God, this quest. And it's come into the church, and it's coming to the church in a
[00:49:51] lot of different ways. But it's not that Jesus is lost. It's not that there's a mystery of where he is. It's that typically, and this includes Christians, we find ourselves looking in all the wrong places for Jesus. Now, Jesus is omnipresent. He's God. He's everywhere. But to
[00:50:13] simplify it, just like his parents in the text this morning, there are all kind of places where we can try to go find Christ, but then there are places where we know he's going to be.
[00:50:23] And so those three places this morning, I'm just going to give you three, are find him in his word, find him among his people, and find him in his father's business. So verses 49 and 50,
[00:50:35] Jesus says to them, but why did you need to search? This is what Amy was getting at. Jesus saying, you're looking in all the wrong places. If you thought about where Jesus might be, where Jesus might be, he would be among his people doing his father's work in his word,
[00:50:55] in the word. Now, real quick, pop quiz. If you want to hear God speak, what do you do?
[00:51:01] open your Bible. If you want to hear the Word of God, if you want to hear God speak, open your Bible. And what's happened in this world is that there's so many things where we've
[00:51:13] gotten to this whole idea of, I need to find God. I need to commune better with Jesus. I'm going to tell you, I went to seminary, and my seminary had all kind of a real hodgepodge of different
[00:51:23] teachers. And one of the teachers was the teacher of Christian spirituality. And then one of the was a teacher of the life and work of the pastor. And I had those two classes about one another on
[00:51:33] Tuesdays, the Christian spirituality and the life and work of the pastor. And we had kind of this guy that everyone thought was just an amazing gentleman, an older, older gentleman that had been a seminary professor all his life mostly. And he would come and say, now we're going to
[00:51:48] talk about Christian spirituality. And then he would proceed to lead us in these things of, and you want to go and practice this breathing technique and and everybody in the class was sitting there going oh this is amazing and me was going this is terrible and so we would sit in this
[00:52:07] class and talk about all these ways that you could get close to God and get close to God and finally one day I left the class and went straight to the class that was that was uh taught by Dr. Cecil
[00:52:17] Sherman I don't know if some of you know him but he's a North Carolina guy he was in his 70s at the time and had been a pastor for over 40 years. And he said, why do y'all look so perplexed today?
[00:52:29] And we just said, I just sat in a class where I'm supposed to go sit out somewhere on a rock and practice going, Jesus, Jesus, and hold my hands like this. And he just sat there and he
[00:52:47] just kind of like shook his head. And he said, I'm going to tell you this one time, pray and read your Bible. It's not that hard. All right, next lesson. And we were like, that's what I
[00:52:56] needed. But it really isn't that hard. Seek him and find him in his word among his people and in his father's business. Society has influenced Christianity, and society has influenced Christianity so much to where people say, you know what, you don't need to go to church to
[00:53:13] be a Christian. You don't need wheels to have a car, but it really helps. You know, the guys that I would mountain bike with back in the day, I would invite them to church, and they would say,
[00:53:25] no, I'm going to dirt church on Sunday morning. And what that meant was they were going to get on their mountain bikes on Sunday morning and go somewhere in the woods and go have their time.
[00:53:33] And you hear this all the time. Well, you know, I don't need to go to church. I don't need to read God's Word. I get that from nature. I want to tell you the danger in that. The danger in that
[00:53:43] is what's infiltrated the church are two things. One is called panentheism, which simply means all is in God. So all is in God. You know, God's in all that. There's pantheism too.
[00:53:56] God's in everything. God's in that rock. God's in that tree. God's in this mountain.
[00:54:00] Panentheism, all is in God, is like, I can go experience God anywhere. And I want to say, yeah, you can, but I want to challenge you to do this. Find me one prescriptive verse in the Bible
[00:54:10] that Jesus or anyone says, if you want to know God, go out into nature and meditate on it.
[00:54:17] it's not there. But instead, what we do find in Scripture is what Jesus would say in Luke chapter 4. He would say to Satan as he's being tempted in Luke 4, 4, man does not live by bread alone,
[00:54:31] but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of God. We would hear from the author of Hebrews in Hebrews chapter 10, verse 25, don't neglect the meeting together. Essentially, in the most eighth grade way to translate it is, don't stop going to church like some people are
[00:54:49] known to do. Jesus is even going to say in Matthew 25, 40, being about the Father's business, he would say, hey, don't you know when you feed someone, when you clothe someone, when you give someone even a cold cup to drink, when you visit them in the prison,
[00:55:05] it's like you were doing it unto me. You see, he's telling you the three ways that you can foolproof, find Jesus, spend time with Jesus is crack open the word of God, be among God's people
[00:55:18] and be about the father's business. I love the fact that the Psalms do this. Now you're going to say, but wait a minute, David in the Psalm says, I look up at the sky at night and I think
[00:55:33] of all the stars and I say, what is man that you would think about that? And I would go, yeah, he said that he didn't prescribe it as the way to find God. Instead, he's also said things like,
[00:55:44] Lord how I love your word and how I love your law I meditate on it day and night through the watches of the night I think about your law and I read it and how precious it is that you would
[00:55:56] give it to us righteous are the ways of the man who walks in the ways of your law and then what's he also going to say he's going to say I would rather be a doorman in the house of the Lord
[00:56:09] than a king in a palace and someone years ago thought it would be a great idea to write this line that's in the psalm for it's better is one day to be in your courts than a thousand anywhere
[00:56:20] else and what's he also going to say how lovely and pleasant is it when brothers are together living in harmony do you know what they're talking about they're talking about worship they're talking about fellowship they're talking about being in God's word they're talking about
[00:56:34] being among God's people and they're talking about being about the father's business so this year I'm getting already on the new year stuff and maybe i'm preaching to the choir because you've had 85 chances to be at church
[00:56:47] in the last four days And you're here on sunday morning. You guys get the gold star. I'll talk to jesus later, but this year It's not a mystery If you're looking for jesus, make sure you're looking in the right places just like he told his parents
[00:57:03] You didn't have to search you knew where i'd be i'm going to be in my word I'm going to be among my people.
[00:57:10] I'm going to be about my Father's business.
[00:57:13] And so I would challenge you.
[00:57:15] Go ahead, if you're that person that needs to have the, get the app on your phone or whatever the reminder to say, I'm going to spend time in God's Word, not because I think He's up there going to give me a gold star,
[00:57:26] but because I want to be closer to Him.
[00:57:29] I want to spend time with God's people because God's among them, just like He was when He was 12-year-old at the temple.
[00:57:36] Come and be a part of it.
[00:57:38] You know, my theory about why Jesus stayed is because I think his family are those people that leave at the last hymn.
[00:57:46] Y'all think that's funny?
[00:57:48] They just want to get an early start going to Bojangles, so they leave to get out the door.
[00:57:52] No, but come and stay.
[00:57:53] Stay for Sunday school.
[00:57:54] Come back to a small group.
[00:57:56] Get better plugged in.
[00:57:57] It's better for you and it's better for us because when you have that family emergency, we'll know because we don't just pass you like dark ships in the night seeing you at a worship service only.
[00:58:07] maybe only knowing your first name and finally get your hands dirty get your hands dirty we offer you so many times and in our community there's so many places where you can serve and be about your father's business and Jesus said when you feed when you clothe when you even give
[00:58:28] a cold cup of water it's like you're doing it to me Paul's gonna say sometimes it was like you are entertaining angels unaware when you do that for the least of those. If you want to encounter
[00:58:41] Christ, be in his word, be among his people, and be about the Father's business just like he was.
[00:58:48] Let me pray for us. Jesus, thank you for encouraging us through this story. God, that you are so accessible to us, that you would walk among us, that you would be a teenager among us.
[00:59:05] Lord, draw us near to you.
[00:59:07] We confess that we are distracted.
[00:59:10] We confess that we have our priorities mixed up.
[00:59:14] We confess that we have addictions, that we have ways that we want to spend our time and our money and our energy, and our priorities are off.
[00:59:25] So, Lord, in your graciousness, call out to us.
[00:59:29] Draw us near to you.
[00:59:31] Let us find you in your word.
[00:59:33] You have promised that your Holy Spirit would guide us into all truth.
[00:59:37] So we pray that you would, Lord God.
[00:59:40] You have promised all of us, Lord, that where two or more are gathered, you are there as well.
[00:59:45] So let us be among your people, fellowshipping, growing.
[00:59:49] And Lord, let us look to what you would call the least of these, knowing that when we are kind, sharing the gospel, sharing goodness with others, as if we were doing it to you, Lord God.
[01:00:02] So patiently and tenderly call us to that, Lord God, that we would walk with you and not be merely spectators in the church. It's in your mighty name we pray, Jesus. Amen. To close out our service, we are going

[01:00:23] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_01]
[01:00:23] to sing together Angels from the Realms of Glory. The words will be up on your screens.
[01:03:17] Two, you just sang a beautiful summary of Christmas. You just sang the line, God with man is now abiding. That's what we celebrate this time of year. Jesus is not in hiding. He is not somewhere far away. He's come to earth to be among us, and he would love for us
[01:03:34] to join him. And so may we be as Pastor Paul encouraged us to be in God's word, among God's people, and doing God's business. Go in peace.