Sermon Tone Analysis

Luke 2:41-52 (NLT)

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.

Intro

Today, we are going to walk through the four action steps of a soldier’s training routine to learn a different kind of battle drill – a battle drill for the festivals.

Pastor Jerry has invited me to share three times this year about the three Pilgrimage Feasts or festivals that gave structure to the Jewish calendar year.

I have a passion for studying these three festivals because they foreshadow the three biggest events in the life of the Church.

Another reason I love to study these three feasts is because I believe they are the best proof we have that the bible is God’s word; that God’s Word is inspired and accurate in its original autographs; and that Christ is the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God the Father, and the Head of the Church.

Over one thousand years before Christ was born, the events we celebrate during the Passover happened in such a way that they would act as a template for the death of Christ.

Christ was sacrificed on the cross on the exact day, and at the exact hour that the Jews were sacrificing the Passover lamb and remembering the Exodus from Egypt – their deliverance from bondage and slavery.

But our story today played out 21 years before that happened.

Jesus and his parents were on their way to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover.

Action Step #1) Know the Field Manual

Not only did Jesus and his family know the field manual, but they also rehearsed it repeatedly, over and over.

It was built into their routine daily (their prayers, Shema, waking up, before meals, etc.), weekly (Shabbat), and annually (feasts and festivals).

Every day, most Jews would recite the Shema (and many still do).

Shema is the first Hebrew word in the prayer.

It’s usually translated as “Hear” (O Israel) or “Listen.”

But Shema means more than that.

It means to “listen and obey”; to “hear and put it into action.”

Here’s my translation of the Shema:

Listen and obey, Israel: Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is unique, one of a kind!

You must love Yahweh your God with your whole mind, your whole being, and all your strength.

(Dt 6:4–5 NET - Modified)

What would happen if, every day – after we woke up in the morning, and before we went to sleep at night – we recited this passage?

Jews observed Sabbath on the seventh day of every week.

Saturday was a Holy Day, or holiday, and was a day where you didn’t have to work.

A day when you trusted God to take care of your business while you rest in him.

Saturday is still the Holy Day that Jews observe.

And every year, the Jews celebrated three extended feasts that commemorated three events: God’s delivering Israel from slavery in Egypt, God transforming Israel into a nation, and God providing for them while they wandered in the desert between Mt.

Sinai and the Promised Land.

The passage Nora read describes one of those yearly Passover celebrations.

Luke 2:41 ESV

Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover.

Passover was a Memorial Day.

Exodus 12:14 (ESV) says,

“This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast.”

And the evening of Passover was a night of watching.

Exodus 12:42 (ESV) says,

It was a night of watching by the Lord, to bring them out of the land of Egypt; so this same night is a night of watching kept to the Lord by all the people of Israel throughout their generations.

Just as God watched over Israel that night in order to bring them out of slavery, the children of Israel would spend the night of Passover as a watch night – remembering what God did on that first Passover night.

We did some of that last year.

Last year on Palm Sunday, we talked about the events that led up to the Passover.

We talked about how Moses ran away from Egypt after his anger and his sense of justice flared up prompting him to kill an Egyptian.

How Yahweh God called Moses from the flaming bush that never burnt up.

How God sent Moses back to Egypt where he had been a wanted man.

We talked about the signs and wonders God performed through Moses, and how each of the ten plagues was a direct attack on one of the gods of Egypt.

These ten plagues revealed that the power of the Egyptian gods was nothing compared to the strength of Yahweh.

And we talked about how, on the night before God led them out of Egypt, he established an annual time of remembrance – a Memorial Day.

Mary, Joseph, and Jesus (and the others celebrating Passover) remembered that a lamb had to be sacrificed – slaughtered for their freedom.

They remembered the blood from the lamb that they smeared on the doorframes of their homes.

They remembered the flat unleavened bread that they ate.

They remembered how they were to eat the Passover meal with their travel clothes on.

And they remembered the wailing and crying throughout Egypt at every home that was not covered by the blood of the lamb.

In each of these homes the firstborn in those households died because they were not protected by the blood of the lamb.

They remembered that their ancestors left Egypt with a new identity.

What they had known for 400 years, a lifetime of slavery for a family that had grown into an ethnic group, was over.

They would eventually become a nation with a God who was completely devoted to them.

But the morning after Passover they were in an in-between time – they weren’t slaves anymore, but they weren’t a nation yet either.

The Passover celebration was about remembering that in-between time.

Are you in an in-between time?

For Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and the rest of the remnant of Jews in Palestine, they were in a different kind of in-between time.

The Northern Kingdom (composed of ten of the twelve tribes of Israel) had been taken into exile by the Assyrians and forcibly relocated into the surrounding nations.

These ten tribes were dissolved, gone, and never came back.

The Southern Kingdom (composed of the other two tribes) had been taken into exile by the Babylonians, who destroyed the Temple that Solomon built – the place where they met with God – the place where God had placed his name.

Over time, a few survivors from the two tribes had returned to the Promised Land.

The Temple was rebuilt by a Gentile, but the Jews were still being ruled by foreign powers.

As the mass of pilgrims swarmed into Jerusalem, they were longing for the Promised Messiah to restore the Kingdom.

So, they studied Torah, they retold the story, they listened, and they asked questions.

This is what Jesus, and his parents were doing by going to Jerusalem for Passover.

They were remembering the deliverance story.

They were asking questions of the rabbis and seeking answers from the Torah.

They were looking to a future where a promised Messiah would one day write a new deliverance story.

Are you looking for a new deliverance story to be written in your life?

When was the last time you asked questions about scripture?

When was the last time you TOOK time to remember all of things God has done for you?

Thanksgiving Bible Study.

This year, Jesus was 12 years old.

He was still considered a child and Luke makes that point very clear in this passage – multiple times.

Next year he would be 13, he would be considered a man, but this year Jesus was a 12-year-old.

In this passage, Luke says that Jesus was still learning.

This shouldn’t surprise us.

Paul quotes from an early Christian hymn in his letter to the Philippian church that Christ Jesus, “who was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.”(Php 2:5–7 ESV) And like every man and woman, boy and girl, he had to learn.

This might stretch your theology about Jesus, but in the passage that Nora read today, in verses 40 and 52, Luke writes very clearly that Jesus was growing – in wisdom, and in stature, and in favor with God and his friends, family, and neighbors.

Jesus was learning.