‘Behold, the Lamb
of God’
ide
o amnos tou theou
College Study
100th teaching
2.23.2015
“the Childhood of
God”
Luke
2:21-40
“And when the eight days were completed for the circumcision of the
Child, His name was called JESUS, the name given by the angel before He was
conceived in the womb. Now when the days of her purification according to the
law of Moses were completed, they brought Him to Jerusalem to present Him to
the Lord (as it is written in the law of the Lord, ‘Every male who opens the
womb shall be called holy to the LORD’) and to offer a sacrifice according to
what is said in the law of the Lord, ‘A pair of turtledoves or two young
pigeons.’
“And behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon, and
this man was just and devout, waiting for the Consolation of Israel, and the
Holy Spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit
that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. So he came by
the Spirit into the temple. And when the parents brought in the Child Jesus, to
do for Him according to the custom of the law, he took Him up in his arms and
blessed God and said:
“‘Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace, according to
Your word; for my eyes have seen Your salvation which You have prepared before
the face of all peoples, a light to bring revelation to the Gentiles, and the
glory of Your people Israel.’ And Joseph and His mother marveled at those
things which were spoken of Him. Then Simeon blessed them, and said to Mary His
mother, ‘Behold this Child is destined for the fall and rising of many in
Israel, and for a sign which will be spoken against (yes, a sword will pierce
through your own soul also), that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.’
“Now there was one, Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, of the
tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, and had lived with a husband seven
years from her virginity; and this woman was a widow of about eighty-four
years, who did not depart from the temple, but served God with fastings and
prayers night and day. And coming in that instant she gave thanks to the Lord,
and spoke of Him to all those who looked for redemption in Jerusalem. So when
they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned
to Galilee, to their own city, Nazareth. And the Child grew and became strong
in spirit, filled with wisdom and the grace of God was upon Him.”
You may remember that we’re studying
Luke as part of a larger subject known as Christology, the science of Christ. We’ve
only recently entered the earthly life of Christ by witnessing His humble birth
in the dirty manger of Bethlehem. Now we’re coming into a topic which is one
that is full of mystery, which contains many gaps in knowledge, a kind of gray
area in Scripture. It is “the Childhood of God”. We’ll take that as our title
for tonight.
Consider that while historians have
been able to reconstruct the events of the lives of many great men and women
through the ages, even down to their childhoods, there is little to be known of
the childhood of the God-man, Jesus Christ. That alone fills my heart with
wonder. I mean, what was it like having Jesus for a brother? What was it like
growing up with him as a sibling or raising Him as a parent? What sorts of
things did He do? What games did He play? What was His first word? What was He
like as a toddler, or a teenager? What did other children think of Him? What
was it like to lead God by the hand? To show the ocean for the first time to the
One who invented the oceans? To help Him learn to speak and write? To teach Him
the Jewish faith that He Himself once laid down on that fiery mountain hundreds
of years earlier? To introduce Him to people He Himself had knitted together in
the wombs of their mothers?
We’re reminded that the four gospels
are far from exhaustive records. They don’t record every single event that
occurred in the Life of Christ. Even John admits in His gospel that there are
many other things that Jesus did that aren’t included in that account. So then
what sorts of things occurred during His childhood?
Note that the only sources of
insight into the Childhood of Christ are to be found in the gospels of Matthew
and Luke. Mark and John’s gospels do not begin with the birth of Christ as do
Luke and Matthew’s, and any reference they might make to Christ’s childhood, if
at all, would therefore be secondary references, whereas Matthew and Luke are
depicting His childhood as part of their accounts. What is interesting then is
that Matthew includes some details that aren’t in Luke, and Luke includes
details that aren’t in Matthew.
Luke tells us how Jesus’ birth was
announced to His parents and to shepherds, how He was born in the manger, how
He went through ritual circumcision and purification, how the elderly Simeon
and Anna prophesy over Him, the return to Nazareth, how His parents leave Him
behind in the temple, and, in summary, how He grows in wisdom and stature, and
in favor with God and men. That’s all of chapter two. One chapter in Luke
devoted to the childhood of Christ. That’s all.
Now here are a few things Matthew
includes which do not appear in Luke: the Magi, the wise men from the East, the
family of Jesus escapes into Egypt, and the infanticide under Herod. These
things are also found in a second chapter, the second chapter of Matthew.
Briefly, let me say that much has been
said in our time of the apparent contradictions of the gospels. New Testament
scholar Professor Bart Ehrman is a name you should know or certainly will know
if you engage skeptics on the issue of gospel contradictions. Professor Ehrman
has made skepticism his platform regarding what he believes are multiple inconsistencies
in the gospels.
Yet if we’re to compare Luke and
Mathew’s second chapters side by side, do we really see inconsistencies? Yes,
in terms of the details that they include. Luke and Matthew don’t share the
same events that occurred during the childhood of Christ, but do either Luke or
Matthew say that their accounts are mutually exclusive? Are we to believe that
because Luke does not mention the escape into Egypt that it did not happen, or
that because Matthew does not include Christ’s circumcision and purification
that they did not happen, although clearly any good Jewish couple would have
observed those rites for their newborn baby boy?
How exactly the Lukan and Matthean events piece together is a puzzle
that deserves time and study to be worked out, but it isn’t too hard to imagine
how each event fit together. I only bring that up to say that many, not all,
but many of the apparent and suggested contradictions supposedly found between
the gospels are merely slight and superficial readings and comparisons. Simply
to say that because Luke and Matthew don’t share the same events in Christ’s
childhood means that they contradict each other is simply a silly statement. In
fact, it seems rather to prove their honesty, since we might suspect their sat
down and collaborated and concocted their stories together if their records
matched up exactly the same.
But what details we do have of Christ’s
childhood, between Matthew and Luke, are remarkable: He was announced by
heavenly entities, He was miraculously conceived and born to a virgin, He was
brought into the world in one of the dirtiest and most commonplace locations
imaginable, His birth was announced to meager shepherds, He was sought out by
mystics and kings, to be worshiped and to be executed, He was prophesied over,
He was forgotten by His parents, He was relocated many times, and already had a
sense of His own destiny and nature from a very young age. Even before the
miracles and the great words, the healings and the exorcisms and His own
substitutionary death, Jesus Christ the boy had already experienced a dramatic
and adventurous life, and what we
know of that life is but the tip of the iceberg.
I think Blythe and Vanessa would allow
me the following quote. Right now we’re reading through the highly recommendable
Dangerous Calling by Paul Tripp. It’s
a book by a pastor written for pastors on extremely, and I mean extremely, real
and practical personal applications. Though written for pastors, I’d recommend
it for anyone in ministry. What we read recently ties in, I think, with what we’re
looking at tonight. He wrote: “Awe of God is meant to rule every domain of my
existence… Awe of God must dominate my ministry, because one of the central missional
gifts of the gospel of Jesus Christ is to give people back their awe of God. A
human being who is not living in a functional awe of God is a profoundly
disadvantaged human being. He is off the rails, trying to propel the train of
his life in a meadow, and he may not even know it. The spiritual danger here is
that when awe of God is absent, it is quickly replaced by our awe of ourselves.
If you are not living for God, the only alternative is to live for yourself. So
a central ministry of the church must be to do anything it can to be used of
God to turn people back to the one thing for which they were created: to live
in a sturdy, joyful, faithful awe of God.”
Tonight we’ve got the Childhood of God before us. Does that not strike you
with some kind of awe? I addressed this momentarily last week when I talked
about the familiarity that confronts us in studying the birth of Christ. We all
know it simply through having lived through so many Christmases.
But the point is that I want nothing
more than to help every person in this group to draw nearer to your Savior and
to get our lives on track and follow Him whole heartedly, yet that cannot
happen if we do not possess this element, at least: awe of God. You’ve got to
really see Christ. You have to see Him and be in wonder of Him, even His
mysterious and wonder-filled childhood. That’s why the title of this group, I
remember, is called “Behold, the Lamb of God”. I want you to see Christ, and be
motivated to follow Him because you are captivated by His glory.
It is tragic that young adults are
rapidly leaving the church, growing disinterested and indifferent toward the
things of God, perhaps being drawn away by the pleasures or philosophies or
pursuits of the world, but I think that’s happening on a national scale, and
perhaps it could be happening in your heart, or the heart of the person sitting
next to you, or heck, in my heart,
because we’ve failed to see God beyond the familiar passages, the religion and
the tradition of “church”. We’ve failed to see God and be captivated by Him.
The people who leave the church, not renouncing their faith but just dropping
out, are people who have turned away from the true Light to be drawn like moths
after the little lights of the world, all because of not seeing God.
I hope that as we encounter the Child
Jesus in these words before us that He would instill in us a profound awe, a
deep wonder over the unprecedented mystery of His incarnated Son, infinite
divine Spirit that was manifest in the world as the first dividing cells in the
physical womb of a single human girl, growing into a Child and then into a Man
and then becoming the Savior and Redeemer of the world. “Confess your boredom”
and let the mere sight of Christ be the anchor of your wandering soul.
*Luke opens the Childhood of Christ
with three simple acts: naming, circumcision and presentation.
v.21-22,
these are three simple and ordinary acts that all of the Jewish people were
familiar with, but I want you to notice what these three things demonstrate in
the case of the Christ Child.
First,
His naming. They named Him Jesus, and it says specifically “the name given by the angel”. This says
something about Joseph and Mary.
Recall Zacharias and Elizabeth for a
second. Remember how Zacharias was unable to speak until the moment that he
actually wrote down the words that his son would be named John, according to
the word of the angel that was brought to him? Now do you remember why it was at that moment and not any sooner that he became able to speak?
It’s because it wasn’t until Zacharias
made his belief in the angel’s words practical and acted upon them to say that his son would be named John that his
faith was finally proven. It wasn’t until he acted upon the word of God brought
through the angel. Here, in the case of Mary and Joseph we see the same thing.
We don’t know if they were tempted to
change the name of Christ. Maybe name him after Joseph Jr, as Zacharias might
have been tempted to name little John: Zacharias Jr, instead. But the point is
they’re following the word of God. They’re practically acting upon what they’ve
been told. There was no dichotomy, no divorce between what Mary and Joseph
believed and what they did. Theirs was an example of a practical faith, the
only kind of faith there is.
James
2:26 says “faith without works is
dead”. Aptly put, James. What would Mary and Joseph’s faith be like if they
had heard the word of God through the angel but didn’t act upon it? And what
does our faith look like? Do we hear the word of God through the preaching of
His word and turn away from it? I challenge you to a practical faith, a faith
that acts.
Thus they named Him, and in so naming,
an ordinary thing, they demonstrated their faith. And they named Him “Jesus”, Yeshua, which means “the LORD is
salvation”. The name itself is an ordinary and common one, which may come as a
surprise. The name Yeshua and its longer version Yehoshua appear many, many
times throughout the Old Testament, and archaeologists have unearthed the tombs
of several Yeshuas from the time of Jesus, some 71 other tombs according to one
source I found. That assures us that the name Yeshua itself was common. It’s a
great name that points to God as Savior.
But in this case, this ordinary name
takes on a whole new meaning, and that’s because in the case of Jesus Christ
this was the LORD actually being, not just bringing, but being Himself
salvation by being Himself the sacrifice for the decadence of mankind. This was
no ordinary Child whose name simply pointed to the saving qualities of God,
this Child is God. This Child was the same Jehovah that spoke the material
universe into existence, the same LORD who split the Red Sea, who flooded the
earth, who broke the Babylonians, who sent down the plagues, who descended upon
Mount Sinai in fire, here born as a tender human baby. We often forget about
God’s Transcendence. He’s not some old man sitting on a chair up in heaven. He
became a man at His incarnation: eternal Mind, endless Life, immaterial Spirit,
intense Love, immovable Will, irresistible Power, transcendent God becoming a
human baby.
And this same transcendent LORD seen
all throughout the Old Testament would now literally live up to this name Jesus
by being salvation for all people.
There is no more perfect of a name for the incarnate Son of God than the name
Jesus, for in those five letters, in that one blessed word, all of the destiny
of His terrible mission to earth and to the cross is contained.
They gave Him a name that hinted at
His own death. He was not yet two weeks old before His name foretold of the
dark shadow of Calvary and the awful suffering and the intense joy and the
glorious salvation which lay ahead.
Secondly,
His circumcision.
Not exactly a topic I’d like to dwell
on. One of the most difficult teaching experiences of my life was teaching
through the book of Genesis, which happens to be the book that introduces the
Abrahamic covenant, the sign of which happened to be circumcision. Imagine
explaining that to a room full of highschoolers.
Thankfully, I think you’re all old
enough to know what it is. If not, I’ll tell you the same thing I told those
highschoolers: “Go ask your parents”. But we all know this is a Jewish thing.
Mary and Joseph were Jewish. Jesus, ethnically, was born a Jew.
I once got into a strange argument
with a guy who refused to say that Jesus was Jewish because He thought Jesus
was a Christian. It should be pretty obvious that if two racially Jewish people
come together, they’re going to give birth to a racially Jewish baby. And Jesus
was just that. He wasn’t born white, Caucasian, with golden curly hair as is
commonly depicted.
But what His circumcision demonstrates
is this: He identified with sinners. Circumcision was an act of literally
cutting away physical flesh that represented the separation of God’s people
from the carnal people of the world, and interestingly it was a sign that a
male bore upon the very instrument to be employed if he were tempted to join
with the carnal people of the world and not remain separate with God’s own
people. But what the New Testament and even
several passages in the Old Testament do is illustrate that circumcision is a matter
of the heart, most importantly. It represents purity in the heart, separating
oneself to the Lord and “cutting off” our fleshly desires.
Put in those terms, why on earth would
Jesus need to be circumcised? He had no fleshly desires to cut off? He is the
Lord, He was no need to illustrate being separated to the Lord. He was not a
sinner. But His circumcision identified Him with God’s own people and it
identified Him with sinners. The chosen Jewish people were those that were
circumcised, and circumcision illustrated a deeper separation of one’s heart to
God, something that only sinners would need to demonstrate. Jesus was
identifying Himself with both God’s people and with sinners, even at His very
birth. The marks of the cross were there in His name, the marks of His ministry
were there in His circumcision: identification with sinners.
This was precisely the accusation they
brought against Him. Imagine, a good man being slandered for being a friend to
the lost, the broken, sinners. Luke 7:34,
“The Son of Man came eating and drinking,
and you say, ‘Behold a gluttonous man, and a drunkard, a friend of tax
collectors and sinners!”
But aren’t you glad, ladies and
gentlemen, that Jesus Christ was not sent into the world to condemn the world,
but that the world through Him might be saved? John 3:17. Aren’t you glad that our Lord is no despot, no tyrant,
nor pitiless commander? Aren’t you glad He isn’t a harsh taskmaster, a cruel
governor, an unsympathetic master? Aren’t you happy to know that you approach
God through the bridge of Christ your friend, Jesus the Friend of Sinners?
If we’re honest, we don’t practically
approach God in that way. We don’t think of Jesus as our friend. If we’re not
careful, we can easily think of God as being out to get us, angry at every sin,
every flaw, every failure and trespass. But it needn’t be so. Jesus is the
Friend of Sinners. He died to make peace between God and sinners. He died to
ensure that we could approach God not as a cold and distant King but as our own
loving Father.
Thirdly,
His presentation at the temple.
v.22b-24,
two Old Testament laws are being referenced here. One of the them we already
looked at a few weeks ago out of the book of Leviticus chapter 12. You remember that when a woman under Jewish
law gave birth, she had to enter into ritual purification for so many days for
a boy and so many days for a daughter. Mary kept the law by undergoing this
purification: seven days, ending with the eighth day when circumcision took
place. Then she and Joseph brought their sacrifice according to the law, two
turtledoves or pigeons, indicating that they were poor, too poor to bring in a
lamb to sacrifice. Jesus was born into a poor family.
Which definitely also suggests that
this took place before the Magi wise men came to offer their gifts to Christ,
since they brought Him gold. If that were the case before this, then Mary and
Joseph could certainly afford to purchase a lamb for the sacrifice.
The second law being observed here:
the law of the Firstborn. Found in Exodus
13 [turn there] shortly after the
Passover took place, the LORD speaks to Moses and instructs him that all of the
firstborn were to belong to God now. Exodus
13:2 says “Consecrate to Me [that
is, dedicate to me or set apart for me] all
the firstborn, whatever opens the womb among the children of Israel, both of
man and beast; it is Mine.”
You may ask Why? The concept is because during the final plague of the Exodus,
God spared all the firstborn in every house that was marked with the blood of
the lambs. Because He spared these firstborn, He was now to possess them by
right of having saved them.
Further down in v.11 of Exodus 13 it
reads: “And it shall be, when the LORD
brings you into the land of the Canaanites, as He swore to you and your
fathers, and gives it to you, that you shall set apart to the LORD all that
open the womb, that is, every firstborn that comes from an animal which you
have; the males shall be the LORD’s. But every firstborn of a donkey you shall
redeem with a lamb; and if you will not redeem it, then you shall break its
neck. And all the firstborn of man among your sons you shall redeem [that
is, buy back, recover or reclaim].” So though the firstborn were to belong to
the Lord, firstborn human males were to be purchased back from the Lord.
“So
it shall be, when you son asks you in time to come, saying ‘What is this?’ that
you shall say to him, ‘By strength of hand the LORD brought us out of Egypt,
out of the house of bondage. And it came to pass, when Pharaoh was stubborn
about letting us go, that the LORD killed all the firstborn in the land of
Egypt, both the firstborn of man and the firstborn of beast. Therefore I
sacrifice to the LORD all males that open the womb, but all the firstborn of my
sons I redeem.” Obviously, the Jews weren’t into the human sacrifices of
their own firstborn sons. And if you girls are feeling squeamish, note that
this ritual, today known as the Pidyon HaBen, was not performed if the
firstborn was a girl. This applied to firstborn sons only.
But now consider Jesus. There they brought
him in to literally buy him back from the Lord. He was the firstborn son of
Mary. Have you stopped to think about that before, that they redeemed the
Redeemer? Before the Redeemer bought you and I with His blood, He Himself was
bought with the blood of the sacrifice. Fascinating. But don’t miss the fact
that Jesus, as the firstborn son under Jewish law, was automatically dedicated
and set apart to the Lord, of course, because He is the Lord Himself, He
belongs to the Father, He belongs to infinity, to the Trinity. But in buying
Him back, it’s almost as if that simple and ordinary Jewish ritual was showing
that Jesus now belonged to us, to humanity as our redeemer. He was no longer
just a thing of heaven. He was now a citizen of earth. In purchasing Him He was
being set apart not solely to God His Father, but to us, to serve us, as He
Himself would later say that He did not come to be served but to serve and to
give His life as a ransom for many (Mark
10:45).
This little ritual in a sense
illustrates that He came to dedicate Himself to humanity, to save us, that He
left behind the glories of heaven and even ultimately perfect fellowship and
consecration to His Father, by becoming sin for us and dying in our place. This
presentation in the temple might just be some ordinary Jewish law with all the mundane
and repetitive passages that go along with it, but it reminds us that Jesus
went out from His Father and left the perfect dedication of fellowship He and
the Father had known from eternity, to come now and be set apart to the needs
of man. With two pigeons, or two turtledoves, Joseph and Mary are sealing His
fate, buying Him for humanity, setting Him apart for the grisly, glorious
destiny of His earthly life and death, His cross and resurrection.
These are ordinary things, but they
point to an extraordinary truth. To look at Christ is to see the ordinary: a
mere Man, but look long enough and you’ll realize that beneath the veil of His
ordinary flesh dwells the very infinite essence of God! Those that encountered
Him on this earth probably thought He wasn’t much to look at, until they
experienced Who He really is.
With this thought I close: We look at
the Man Jesus Christ and if we see only just a man, we fail. We look at the
Word of God and if we see only just a book, we fail. We look at the church and
if we see only just a building we come to on Sundays, we fail. We listen to the
Bible preached and if we hear only just the words of a man, we fail.
Christianity is about looking deeper.
Christianity is about finding hidden worth. Christianity, as mentioned earlier,
is about the awe of God and you’ll miss it, you’ll miss the irresistible and captivating
majesty of the Lord of glory if all you see is the ordinary. If all you see is
just an ordinary man hanging on a cross two-thousand years ago or if all you
see is just a book like any other book. Well, who cares about what some Jewish
guy did two-thousand years ago? Who cares about what this particular book says,
when there’s a billion other books out there?
And if we don’t get past that, we’ll
walk away. You know what I want you to think about: think about the last time
you thought about walking away. Think about the last time you thought about
leaving the church, wandering away from Christ, leaving behind His Word. For
some of you, that might be the life you’re experiencing right now.
As the hymn writer put so eloquently,
our hearts are prone to wander away. We’ve got a tendency, an inclination to
walk away, especially if all that we’re getting out of this whole Christianity
thing is just something ordinary and mundane like everything else. But it is
only when His grace like a fetter binds our wandering hearts to Him, it is only
when we see beneath the ordinary and realize that this Book comes alive,
realize that we desperately need each other in fellowship, realize that the
church is not just another club, realize that this Savior is unlike any man who
ever lived and that He still lives today to walk with you today that we will
keep walking.
My heart breaks for the many people I
know who have walked away, and those who are facing that temptation. Don’t walk
away. Be in awe and wonder of God. Let yourself be captivated by Him. If you’re
not captivated, maybe you aren’t really looking at Him. But don’t walk away. Don’t
be cheated by the temptations of the world, the cares and enticements.
Where else will you go?
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