Let's Be About God's Business

Luke 2:49 KJV 1900

And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?

Luke 2:40–52 NLT

There the child grew up healthy and strong. He was filled with wisdom, and God’s favor was on him. Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Passover festival. When Jesus was twelve years old, they attended the festival as usual. After the celebration was over, they started home to Nazareth, but Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents didn’t miss him at first, because they assumed he was among the other travelers. But when he didn’t show up that evening, they started looking for him among their relatives and friends. When they couldn’t find him, they went back to Jerusalem to search for him there. Three days later they finally discovered him in the Temple, sitting among the religious teachers, listening to them and asking questions. All who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. His parents didn’t know what to think. “Son,” his mother said to him, “why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been frantic, searching for you everywhere.” “But why did you need to search?” he asked. “Didn’t you know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they didn’t understand what he meant. Then he returned to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. And his mother stored all these things in her heart. Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and all the people.

Introduction

Much has been said about Jesus’s last words from the cross, but during the next few weeks we will concentrate on some of the things Jesus said early in his ministry. Although the words we will use this morning are unquestionably the first recorded words of our Savior, subsequent Sundays will not be quite so easy. We will depend, however, on the best scholarship to guide us step by step in the unfolding life of Jesus. By comparing the Gospels, we will seek to trace chronologically the events in the early part of Jesus’s life and his reaction, as well as his comments concerning both the happenings and the people associated with them.

This morning we see Jesus in the temple at the age of twelve. He had accompanied his mother and father to the Passover feast. When the feast was concluded, Mary and Joseph traveled along in the caravan back toward home thinking Jesus was with the group. Suddenly they discovered he was missing, and they retraced their steps to Jerusalem. They found him talking with the learned men of the day in the temple. When they expressed their concern for him at their discovery of his absence, he replied that they should have understood he must be about his Father’s business. These words have gone down in history as expressing the early awareness of the young boy that he was a special person on a special mission for God.

Crabtree, T. T.. The Zondervan 2018 Pastor's Annual: An Idea and Resource Book (Zondervan Pastor's Annual) (pp. 30-31). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

1. The Divine-Human Jesus

No one has ever been able to answer satisfactorily the question of when the boy Jesus first realized his unique relationship to God. He was completely divine, but he was also completely human. As a boy he must have studied the Scriptures (our Old Testament). On the other hand, God must have revealed to him early in his life his role as Savior and Redeemer. Nevertheless, the Father’s business was not preaching and working miracles, but remaining at home as an obedient child, happy that he could be of help to his parents and developing as an industrious growing man.

There are times in our lives when we must take time for preparation. Part of that preparation is accepting discipline. There are two kinds of discipline— being subject to others and controlling oneself. Both are important. This divine-human Jesus was completely God and yet completely man. Years later, when Christian theologians tried to define the nature of Jesus Christ, they wrote that he was one man with two natures and that we should never seek to confuse the natures nor divide the person. It is difficult, if not impossible.

Crabtree, T. T.. The Zondervan 2018 Pastor's Annual: An Idea and Resource Book (Zondervan Pastor's Annual) (p. 31). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

Crabtree, T. T.. The Zondervan 2018 Pastor's Annual: An Idea and Resource Book (Zondervan Pastor's Annual) (p. 31). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

2. The Work of Jesus

The time came, however, when Jesus had to launch out into God’s work. His years of preparation were important even though we do not have a record of them. Some of the fanciful tales that are told in noncanonical literature concerning his childhood should not be taken seriously. Traditions and stories have come to us about how he astounded his playmates by performing miracles as a child, but these have never been historically proven. They are fanciful and contrary to the life and ministry of Jesus as we understand him. He did not begin his work of redemption as a small child except that he lived a sinless life that could be accepted later by God in sacrificial death for our sins.

The work of Jesus was redemptive. Even as the Old Testament is not a history of Israel, but a history of God’s redemptive work, so the New Testament is not a record of Jesus’s life nor the life of any other person, but rather a record of God’s redemptive work. The gospel writers were not compiling a biography of Jesus. They were telling of God’s redeeming grace through this God-man, Jesus Christ. This was the work in which Jesus was constantly engaging.

Crabtree, T. T.. The Zondervan 2018 Pastor's Annual: An Idea and Resource Book (Zondervan Pastor's Annual) (p. 31). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

3 The World Does Not Understand

Luke tells us that his parents “understood not the saying which he spake unto them” (2: 50). This is the reaction of the world today. Those who do not know Jesus Christ in personal redemption do not understand the mission of Christian people. Those who are born again have a task. They are to witness concerning the grace of Jesus Christ and of the change that can come when the Holy Spirit transforms a life. The secular world simply does not understand. An outstanding preacher was once attacked by a secular newspaper reporter who wrote, “I simply do not understand how a red-blooded he-man could devote his life to preaching such a message.” The minister replied the next day from the pulpit, “I agree with that newspaper reporter. He does not understand.” Those of us who know Jesus Christ as our Savior and friend do understand and consider it a great privilege and joy to invest our lives in the business of the Kingdom of God.

Crabtree, T. T.. The Zondervan 2018 Pastor's Annual: An Idea and Resource Book (Zondervan Pastor's Annual) (p. 32). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

4. To Do God’s Will Brings Fulfillment To Our Lives

One of the greatest statements ever made about a young man was made concerning Jesus when the gospel writer says that he “increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man” (). Often we hear people speak of the sacrifices they made to follow Jesus. Actually, no one ever left anything for Jesus without being fully and completely rewarded many times and in many ways.

Once, during the ministry of Jesus, Simon Peter said, “Lo, we have left all, and followed thee” (). Jesus replied, “Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children, for the kingdom of God’s sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting” (vv. 29– 30). We become more in this world by following Jesus than we could ever become without him.

A Baptist pastor from years ago, Dr. M. E. Dodd, used to speak laughingly of how people told him that he would have made a great businessman if he had not gone into the ministry. He once said, “At one time I began to feel sorry for myself when I thought of how much I had left to follow Jesus. Then I remembered who I was and what I was before I surrendered to him. I was a little country boy hid away on a farm in West Tennessee. I realized that all that I had become was because I had followed Jesus.” Dodd used to love to say, “The only thing I left to follow Jesus was a flop-eared mule, a bull-tongued plow, and a patch of new ground in Gibson County.”

Jesus was constantly busy with his Father’s work, and this made him great.

Crabtree, T. T.. The Zondervan 2018 Pastor's Annual: An Idea and Resource Book (Zondervan Pastor's Annual) (p. 32). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

Conclusion

Where do you fit into God’s work? This is closely related to the question of God’s will for your life. Not only preachers, but laypeople as well, are to be busy in the Father’s business.

William Carey, founder of the modern missions movement, used to say, “My business is preaching the gospel of Christ. I mend shoes to pay expenses.” So the layman ought to consider his secular employment as only the means for earning a living so that he may give himself completely to the Kingdom life. It is important to have full-time ministers such as pastors, evangelists, teachers, and missionaries, but if the world is ever won to Jesus Christ, it will be because non-ordained people, the rank-and-file Christians, take seriously God’s work and give their best to it.

As Jesus grew from innocence into holiness by being obedient to his Father and being about his work, so we will grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord as we commit ourselves to his work. We shall never, of course, be like Jesus in the ultimate sense of the word, since he was the eternal Word of God become flesh. On the other hand, we can grow into his likeness as we are busy for him in serving and witnessing.

Let’s always, wherever we are, be about our Father’s business!

As we launch this year, I would like for you to come to this altar and commit to being about the business of the Kingdom this year. I would like for you to consider one unsaved friend or one unsaved co-worker or one unsaved family member that you will focus on being a witness to this year by the help of the Holy Ghost and the grace of God.

Crabtree, T. T.. The Zondervan 2018 Pastor's Annual: An Idea and Resource Book (Zondervan Pastor's Annual) (p. 32). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

Crabtree, T. T.. The Zondervan 2018 Pastor's Annual: An Idea and Resource Book (Zondervan Pastor's Annual) (p. 32). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.