05 The Child Jesus Sitting in the Midst of the Doctors both Hearing Them, and Asking Them Quest...

V THE CHILD JESUS SITTING IN THE MIDST OF THE DOCTORS BOTH HEARING THEM, AND ASKING THEM QUESTIONS

Luke 2:41-51 A young child’s life ripens far faster in the East than in the West. A child is still a child with us when he would already be quite a grown-up lad with them. And a mere lad with us would already be quite a grown-up young man with them. And thus it is that when the Child Jesus is said to have been twelve years old, we are intended to think of a young man of sixteen or seventeen years of age among ourselves. And then it is not so much the evangelist who calls Jesus a child: it is rather the Child’s mother who still uses that mother-like word. The sacred writer takes down the word from the living lips of the Child’s mother. "Our Child," was the very word that Mary still used as she told the sacred writer all the things about the angel, and about her husband, and about herself, and about her Child, that she had kept hidden in her heart for so long. Jesus remained a child to His mother long after He had ceased to be a child, either to Himself or to any one else, but to His mother. Certainly He was no longer speaking as a child or thinking as a child when He sat among the astonished doctors in the temple that day. And Mary had kept in her heart all the things she saw and heard her Child say and do in the temple that day, till she opened all her heart to the third evangelist in her fast-ripening old age. All this temple-scene, as Calvin says, would have faded before long from the memories of men, had not Mary laid it all up in her heart, to bring it out long afterwards, along with other treasures of the same kind, for the enriching of all men who should afterwards read her marvelous story. But with all that there was one thing in Joseph and in Mary that Passover-week that always greatly amazes me. Why did they not proceed to the temple at once when they returned back to the city to seek for their child? I cannot imagine what could have been in their thoughts. Had any of you, who are fathers, been in Joseph’s place that week, and had any of you who are mothers, been in Mary’s place that week, what would you have done? I think I can answer for you as to what you would have done. You would have gone straight to the temple, would you not? You would have said to one another as you hastened back to the city--"Let us go first of all to the temple to look for our child. He is sure to be still tarrying there. For He was absolutely possessed with the temple, and with all that He saw and heard in the temple. Early every morning He was waiting at the posts of the temple doors, and we could not get Him to turn His back on its closed gates at night. There is no use in our seeking for our child anywhere else. Come, let us go at once to the temple." So, I feel sure, you would have said. And why Joseph and Mary did not say that and do that I cannot imagine. To be three whole days, searching the whole city up and down sorrowing, and never once to think of going to the temple--it quite baffles me to think what the parents of the child could have had in their thoughts all those three sorrowing days. It is a mystery to me, the more I think of it. "And it came to pass, that after three days they found Him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions." There is a passage in Isaac Walton’s "Life of Hooker" that always comes to my mind when I think of the Child Jesus and His questions and answers in the temple. "Mr. Richard Hooker’s speech was always of a great earnestness, and of humble gravity. And it was observed that at his being a schoolboy he was an early questionist, and quietly inquisitive. Why was this? And why was that? And why was that not? Why this was granted? And why that was denied? This being mixed with a remarkable modesty, and a sweet, serene quietness of nature, made his master and others to believe him to have an inward, blessed, divine light, and therefore to consider him a little wonder." Those who have read what Richard Hooker grew up to write, will not wonder at the best things that even Isaac Walton can write about Hooker’s childhood. But to come back to the temple. What do you think would be the subject of those questions and answers of the young Christ that so astonished the doctors that day? Did it ever occur to you to stop in your private reading of this passage, or in your family worship, and ask yourself, and ask your children, what some of those questions and answers of His in the temple that day would to a certainty be? You may not have the time to stop and enter into these things with your children. But there is a class of men among us who are enabled and enjoined to give all their time and all their thoughts to nothing else but to such inquiries as these. I refer to that elect, and honorable, and enviable class of men that we call students of New Testament exegesis. Surely they are the happiest and the most enviable of all men, who have been set apart to nothing else but to the understanding and the opening up of the hid treasures of God’s Word and God’s Son. But it is not our so-called New Testament students only who have understandings to be enlightened in the knowledge of Christ and imaginations to be sanctified. We must all be New Testament students in these respects. And we must all imitate our Great Example, and continually, and as long as we need knowledge, ask unceasing questions. But then it is not enough simply to ask unceasing questions, because we all do that already. We all do little else but that. Large parts of our time and our thoughts are taken up with little else but the asking and the answering of questions. "For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing." But of what nature were the new things that so interested and occupied the Athenians? And of what nature are the questions and the answers that most interest and most occupy you and me? To what world of things does our curiosity for the most part "run out?" Just what are the new things that from day to day and from hour to hour most kindle our interest and most whet our curiosity? What, for instance, is the nature of the books we are so eager to buy or to borrow as soon as they are announced? What newspapers, and conducted in what interest, do we rush to read every day and every week? And what pages in our newspapers do we devour with such hunger? And what other pages in them do we never open? Let me answer to myself such questions as these and I will not need to ask any more questions as to what my character is and my worth. What is my curiosity so much set upon? What kind of questions do I most frequently and most eagerly put? And what answers do most delight and astonish me with their truth and their wisdom? And to what doctors do I betake myself to sit among them till those who seek me will always find me sitting in the midst of them? O my soul, above all other earthly knowledge, know thyself!

Plutarch, in his masterpiece, is very proud of the child Alexander. How when the Persian ambassadors came to his father’s court the young prince put no childish questions to them, nor talked to them about trifling matters. He showed no interest in their golden vine, nor in their hanging gardens, nor in the way they dressed and crowned their kings. All Alexander’s questions were directed to the distance and the size of their country, the nature of their great roads, and how they had carried their great roads up into the high countries of Asia. And just what power their crowned kings had, and what power their great princes had, and what power their people had. As also how their king bore himself to his enemies after they were subdued, as well as to all his neighbors round about. Till, so Plutarch tells us, the ambassadors were astonished above measure at the maturity and the wisdom and the statesmanship and the soldiership of the young prince. And stop till I do not wonder that Dr. Field, the great New Testament exegete, dwells delightedly on the illustrative parallel that obtains to him between our Lord’s wise and ripe childhood and that of Alexander the Great. The young prince of Macedonia was already beginning to lay the foundations of his future greatness by the way in which he so rose above all childish things, and already showed, as his proud biographer says, his noble mind and his determination one day to attempt great enterprises. And what great enterprises were already possessing our Prince’s noble mind, we would see if we were able to recover and to realize some of the questions and answers that He addressed to Himself and to the doctors in the temple that day. Questions and answers that enraptured those doctors even more than those questions did that the young Alexander addressed to the Persian ambassadors as they sat at his father’s table.

"A wise question," says Bacon, "is already half the answer." And it was the wisdom of the Child’s questions that so enlightened and so impressed all who sat by and heard Him that day. If you take time and look well at the text you will see in it this remarkable and arresting thing, --the text, with all its exactness, and with all its circumstantially, does not say that the doctors asked any questions at the Child Jesus. But the text distinctly and emphatically says that the Child gave to Somebody’s questions that day the wisest and the most astonishing answers. Now what can all that mean but just this that Bacon says? What can it all mean but just this that the Holy Child became both questioner and answered Himself that day? What can it mean but just this that His questions were so wise that they more than half answered themselves? Yes; this must be the true exegesis of this enigmatical passage, that the Child Jesus framed His questions so wisely and so well that before such and such a question was fully stated, the true answer to it had already risen in the Child’s own mind and heart, and in the minds and the hearts of all who heard Him. Yes; that was it; that must have been it. And from that let us all aim henceforth at imitating our youthful Lord in this fine feature of His early self-education also. Let us frame all our questions, and all our other inquiries, with such wisdom, and with such love of the truth, as that all our wise questions also shall be more than half their own wise answers. And Bacon is such a wise and such a fruitful questioner and answered himself, that once we open his books we can scarcely lay them down again. The honourablest part of a debate, or of a conversation, he says, is to put in a question so as to moderate the debate and to lead the dance. Now if you will observe you will see the wisdom of these words of his every day and in every company of conversing and contending men. For nothing is more honorable surely than to be able to turn the stream of dishonorable talk by a new question skillfully cast into the angry current. A new question so stated as to lead the dance to a new tune, and to direct it into a new direction, is a question quite worthy of being ranked with our Lord’s so wise and so timeous questions themselves. Such divine wisdom is there, and such divine worth, in a well-planned and a well-planted question. Watch your opportunity then and be ready. Watch for the honourablest part of the talk, and be ready to take it. Never let the talk, or the contention, or any kind of conversation whatever, run long in an evil channel, if you can help it Have a question or some other moderating remark ready that will both interest and carry captive your company to wisdom and to love. And by so doing you will both save yourself from many wounds and many remorses, as well as so save those who have the happiness to sit beside you.