Lord Jesus - Perfection of sonship

Luke chapter 2 and verse number 39. When they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee to their own city Nazareth. And the child grew, racked strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him.

Now his parents went up to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of Passover. You do get echoes of Samuel and Samuel's life here that are helpful to notice. We're not going to deal with that, but just you'll see there are many, many echoes of Samuel's life that we will look at.

They went up year by year, and when he was 12 years old, they went up to Jerusalem after the custom of the feast. And when they had fulfilled the days as they returned, the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem. And Joseph and Mary knew not of it, but they, supposing him to have been in the company, went a day's journey.

And they saw him among their kinsfolk and acquaintance, and when they found him not, they turned back again to Jerusalem, seeking him. And it came to pass after three days, they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions. And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers.

And when they saw him, they were amazed. And his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing. And he said unto them, How is it that she sought me? Wist ye not that I must be about my father's business? And they understood not the saying which he spake unto them.

And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them. But his mother kept all these sayings in her heart. Jesus increased in wisdom, and in stature, and in favor with God.

And God will, I'm sure, bless the reading of these very precious verses to each one of us here today. Now just to take a minute to just again try to make sure we all leave with something, rather than just all of these different ideas and thoughts floating around. When we looked last night at Isaac, we stressed that being a son, being a son brings us into all the blessings God has for us.

As a result of the covenant that God had made with Abraham, Isaac came into every blessing God could give to him. Likewise, we, as in Christ, we have every blessing that God can give to a redeemed heart. Then when we looked at Moses, we were reminded of the obstacles, the perils that face growth, and of the provision God has made in different ways for growth to occur.

We looked at Samson, and we considered something of the potential, and yet the tragedy, of a purpose never fully realized. He never fully was able to deliver Israel from the Philistines. Great exploits, and all that linked with his life, but potential, and yet never fulfilled.

We considered as well Samuel, and a lovely life, and a man, and in him we saw the progression. He grew and he grew on, and the secret of it was it was before the Lord. Everything he did was with the consciousness of God to please him, and not necessarily for the applause and the approval of men.

And we looked at John the Baptist, and saw the great purpose of sonship, to represent Christ, to reveal Christ to men. And now we will look at the perfection of sonship, all that a son ought to be in relationship to his father, as seen in the Lord Jesus here in Luke chapter number 2. It is tempting, you know, if you add back the boys grew with Jacob and Esau, this brings you to the seventh, and you know, those of us who like numbers, this is perfection of sonship, number seven. But since we only had time for six meetings, I couldn't do that.

So this is number six in the series, and here we have the perfection of sonship. I want you to think, first of all, of the badge of sonship. The badge of sonship is growth, and the child grew.

He grew, and we've already stressed that, I think, a number of different ways, that the badge of sonship is growth. But again, I want you to think where this growth occurred. It occurred in Nazareth.

It occurred in Nazareth. We've talked about unlikely places, difficult environments, Samuel at the temple, or rather at the tabernacle, with all of the negative influences around him. The Lord Jesus in Nazareth.

Have you ever recognized that, ever thought, the Gospel of John introduces us to a man, and it says of him, in whom there was no guile. In other words, nothing sinister, nothing critical, nothing sarcastic in Nathanael. He just told things honestly and truthfully like they were, and when he heard that the Lord Jesus came from Nazareth, he said, could any good thing come out of Nazareth? I mean, that was the reputation Nazareth had.

Now, if I take what James says, that heaven is the source of every good thing, and I think that the Lord Jesus chose to live in Nazareth from which nothing good could have ever come, I'm amazed at the humility and grace of the Lord Jesus. He chose Nazareth, and it's remarkable. It is here in Luke, and I think it's also in Matthew, he moves one day in the synagogue, and listen to what the demons say.

We know who thou art, Jesus of Nazareth, the Holy One of God. Nazareth never put a blemish in a holy life. Jesus of Nazareth, the Holy One of God.

We live in a polluted society, but there is no one that can make you sin. We get defiled. That's different than sinning.

We get defiled, but there's no one that can make you sin. Sin is something we choose to do. It is an act of my will when I sin.

Defilement, I cannot help. I contract it all the time. We move among a dead world, if you will, and every contact with death is defiling, but sin is an act of my will, and no one can make me sin except my own will.

Here was a man that lived absolutely pure in a polluted area. It's interesting how each gospel introduces Nazareth. Each gospel, the first mention of Nazareth has a unique setting in each gospel.

In the Gospel of Matthew, you remember that Joseph has been told to return to the land of Israel, that Herod is dead, but he hears that Archaelos did reign in the stead of his father, and he's afraid to go in, and so he turns his side to Nazareth. Why Nazareth? Who would ever look for a king in Nazareth? I mean, you know, it's like looking in Philadelphia for the next president, okay? It's not likely going to be there, okay? So looking for a king in Nazareth. So Nazareth in Matthew is a place of preservation by its obscurity, but when you come to Mark, the first mention of Nazareth is that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized of John.

Suddenly he appears on the scene, and the first mention of Nazareth is linked not now with his preservation, but with his preparation. He is being thrust upon the scene right out of Nazareth. He was prepared there by God, so Nazareth in the Gospel of Mark is the place of preparation.

Here in Luke, it's a place of poverty, marked by poverty, and when you come to the Gospel of John, it is a place marked by a poor reputation. Now, we have underlined this with Samuel. We have touched on it elsewhere, but just to underline it again, environment does not have to control your growth for God.

Your choices will control your growth for God, not your environment, unless you allow it. Write choices, and you can grow in the worst of circumstances. It may sound like a platitude, but there's tremendous truth to it, and that is wherever the guidance of God takes you, the grace of God will meet you.

Wherever the guidance of God takes you, the grace of God will meet you and meet your needs there. If God takes you somewhere, his grace will be there ahead of you and meet you there and sustain you and preserve you if you're moving in his will. So here the Lord Jesus is in Nazareth, and we see him growing.

He was not affected by the environment. He was not affected by a lack of appreciation. We see how little he was appreciated even by his own parents.

John tells us his own family, his own brothers didn't believe in him. There was no appreciation. There was no recognition.

He didn't have wounded pride or offended sensibilities. He just grew. So the badge of sonship.

Could I tell you something of the beauty of sonship? What do I mean? Listen to what it says. He went down, he came to Nazareth, and he was subject to them. Now, I'll tell you ahead of time instead of asking you to think about it.

This is the first mention of submission in the New Testament. The law of first mention says whenever something is mentioned, whenever God mentions an important topic or subject for the first time, there is valuable truth to learn from it. Now, you know what I learned from here? I learned that the greater submitted to the lesser.

I learned that the eternal submitted to the temporal. I learned that the omniscient submitted to the ignorant. I learned that the maker of the world submitted to a carpenter in Nazareth.

I learned, and you want me to go on? I mean, it's endless, the contrasts, the greatness of Christ, all that he was. He was greater in every conceivable way but one. The only way he wasn't greater is in the order he had himself instituted into society, that a child should be submissive to his parent.

He went down and was subject to them. You see, the first mention, the law of first mention teaches me this, that submission has nothing to do with inferiority of person, absolutely nothing, because he was subject to them. Submission is submitting to divine order that God has put into our world, whether it is parent and child, whether it is husband and wife, whether it is in the assembly.

In every sphere, God is a God of order, and he has instituted and brought into every human relationship order, and submission in that order is never an admission or a result of or because of inferiority, ignorance, lesser worth. There are sisters sitting here submissive to their husbands, and you know far more than we do when we're up here preaching. And there are sisters sitting here far more godly than any of us brethren are, and you're sitting quietly submissive.

Nothing to do with worth or intelligence. It's got everything to do with bowing to divine order. So the beauty of sonship, its very first mention negates any idea of inferiority.

It testifies to divine order. It reminds us as well, as we'll see, it is a pathway to usefulness, the beauty of sonship. But I want you to think of the behavior of sonship.

We again, and I have to confess there's always a bit of a risk going outside of scripture for information. But Josephus tells us that some of the rabbis would have taught that the first time a Jewish boy would have gone up to Jerusalem and accompanied his family at the Passover, the three times of the year they had to go, that possibly the first time he did it was at the age of 12. Now, if that's correct, if the Lord Jesus had not gone up every year up until now, if this is the first time as a son of the law, the bar mitzvah year that we call it today in Jewish circles, but if this is the first time as a son of the law he went up to Jerusalem since the day he was presented in the temple, then it adds added significance to what is before us.

What I mean by that is the Lord Jesus Christ says to his mother, how is it that you sought me? You know, how is it that you were looking for me? Didn't you know where I would be? What is he saying? I think what he is saying is just this, didn't you realize by my life and how I have lived for the last 12 years that at the very first opportunity I had to be in my father's house, that's where I would be? You must have realized that those were my interests. That was my whole life. What was my father's business? And the very first opportunity I had, I would be there in the temple.

Didn't you realize that? In other words, there was nothing inconsistent throughout 12 years of childhood that would have made them think anything other than, if we're looking for him, only one place he'll be, in the temple. That's where he'll be. Discussing the scriptures, asking questions, in his father's things.

That's where we should be able to find him. The behavior of sonship. No charge could be laid against the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let me take you to Luke 4 from here. In Luke 4, it tells us, as he was want, he entered into the synagogue on the Sabbath day. And it says that he stood up where he was brought up.

He stood up where he was brought up. I was not saved until I was 21. And it would take a lot of grace for me to go back and, at this point in my life, to face some of the kids I used to do things with when I was small.

Younger. Because they would, it'd have to take a lot of explaining, the change in my life, since I haven't had any contact with them. They would think back to things in my life, and I'd have to tell them all that, you know, you know what I mean.

But there was nothing inconsistent in his life. He stood up where he was brought up. And they could throw no charge against him.

They could hurl nothing in his face, aside from the fact that, who did he think he was, teaching them? Just the carpenter. That's all they could say about him. That's all they could say.

There was no charge. There was no inconsistency. They couldn't go back to something he did as a little boy, or something he did as a teenager, or something he did as a young adult, or some business dealing he had had that maybe he just wasn't quite honest with them, or quite up and up with them, or some shoddy job he had done for them, in terms of his carpentry.

Nothing like that. Whatever he did, it was absolutely beyond reproach. And the only thing they could say, when he came and preached, is to reject him, because of who he was, not because of anything he had ever done, and seek to cast him over the brow of the hill.

Wonderful to think of the absolute consistency. His neighbors could only point to him, when you come to Mark chapter 6, when he returns again, the neighbors could only say, well, he's only a carpenter, why should we listen to him? Again, nothing about anything he had ever done, just they were offended because someone was pointing out their sin and their failure. So, the behavior of sons, absolutely pure in every way.

Can I tell you about the business of sons? What is the business of sons? Listen, sons have many occupations, but one business. We all have different occupations. We all have one business.

Our business is to be in the father's business. Whatever concerns him should concern us. Yes, we have occupations, and we have to give our employers what they are due.

We have to give our employers, whether it's 8 hours, 9 hours, some work 12-hour shifts, whatever it is, we are responsible to give our employers what they are paying us for. So, we have many different occupations. But amidst all that, we really only have one ultimate business in life, and that business is seen here, wish ye not that I must be about my father's business.

It says concerning David, in one of the preaching messages of the Book of Acts by the Apostle Paul, he served, two renderings of it, he served his own generation by the will of God and fell on sleep. Another rendering is he served the will of God in his generation and fell on sleep. Either way, he was a man who served God's interests in his generation.

And that is what each of us is called to do. What really is the father's business? What really interests God in our world? Now, we can all get caught up in things. And when you think of how empty, how empty the pursuits of the world are.

Now, I don't have a television, and I have my own reasons for it. I'm not saying, I'm not preaching against televisions. We lost that battle years ago, and everybody that's got a computer really has a television, in a sense.

So, I'm not here. But I did see on the Internet all of the empty talk about Academy Awards, and who wore what, and who was with who, and how they looked, and how their hair was, and to think that this is what occupies people, and they talk about the empty, frivolous lives, worrying about what people wear, and how they appeared on the red carpet, and what their hair was like, and who they're dating, and who they last divorced, and who they're now going with. And that's the business of the world.

So empty. So absolutely empty. How could anyone ever find satisfaction in that? And yet, that is what the world around us is feeding on.

That's their business. What's your business? What's my business? I say this kindly. God is not really concerned with who wins the World Series.

He's not really concerned with March Madness, and who comes out number one. He's not really concerned with Academy Awards, and Nobel Prizes, and, I mean, whatever's good for humanity, that's wonderful. But God really has one business in this world.

That's the honor and glory of His Son. And that is what you and I are called. That is what you and I have been called to do, is to advance what is for the honor and glory of the Lord Jesus.

And so that is the business, then, of sonship. His Father's things. Wish ye not that I must be in the things of my Father.

My Father's business. A lot of different ways. My Father's house.

However you want to translate it. And we read there that, verse number 48, when they saw Him, they were amazed. Interesting, isn't it? Back in Chapter 1, you have the people being amazed because Zacharias could say nothing.

In Chapter 2, you have the people amazed because of what a boy of 12 is saying, as they hear him asking and answering questions. And he's doing everything appropriately, isn't he? He's not there to teach them, as a boy of 12. As a boy of 12, he's there to ask questions.

And undoubtedly, his questions were piercing, insightful, and would draw out what they would know. And then he would answer their responses to him, their questioning of him. But it was all so appropriate.

Nothing out of place. Took the place of a boy of 12. At every season, the Lord Jesus was absolutely perfect.

He could do nothing better. We're reminded that He brought forth fruit in season. He knew how to speak a word in season.

The thief on the cross said, this man hath done nothing out of season. Nothing was at the wrong time. Nothing was in the wrong way.

Many times, we do right things at the wrong time. Or we do right things in the wrong way. Or we think that having a right to do something gives us the right to do it.

And it isn't always the right thing to do just because we have the right to do it. The Lord Jesus, everything was absolutely in season. In fact, whatever place you, however you would examine His life, it was impossible that anything could have been done in a better way.

But I want to tell you something even greater than that. Nothing could have been done with a pure motive. Not only did God look on the outward, God looked on the heart.

So that when God said, this is my son in whom, not about whom, but in whom, is all my delight. God found everything He ever looked for in a man, in Christ. But He found everything He ever looked for in a man in all of its fullness in Christ.

And He found everything He ever looked for in a man in all its fullness all the time in Christ. We look at the life of Christ and we look at this incident and we see kindness, this incident and we see His grace, this incident and we see His sacrifice, this incident and we look at this virtue and that virtue, that's only because we're so poor with our eyesight. God saw everything at every moment all the time in all of its fullness.

A feast for the heart of a father as He looked on a son who was occupied with his own business. I want to talk to you for a moment not just about the badge of sonship and the beauty of sonship, behavior of sons, the business of sons. Could I just draw your attention to the bounty? If you will, the blessing.

I want you just to allow me to kind of condense two verses and bring them together. I want you to allow me to condense verses 51 and 52 and just put it like this. He went down and He increased.

He went down and He went up. What do I mean? I learned that the pathway up, the way to go up is to come down. He went down and was subject.

Did He lose? Did He somehow diminish? You know, just by going back to Nazareth and obscurity and lowly peasant parents and Nazareth and carpenter shop and no big headlines and no big crowds, was He somehow diminished? No. He went down and He increased. Submission to divine order never negates usefulness.

Just the opposite. Submission to divine order is where ultimate usefulness is found. Now, I'm not saying that because, you know, I'm a male chauvinist and I want women to be submissive, not in the least.

My view of submission may be different than yours. But we won't... It's not our subject now. But I'm just saying now, divine order is a way to usefulness for God.

So where a sister finds her greatest usefulness is as a help me to her husband and with her children. Where a brother, a man finds his greatest usefulness is in submission in whatever sphere he is in, we all have to submit to something, right? I mean, none of us is a law unto ourselves. Even overseers submit one to another.

Nobody is the law. The Word of God is the ultimate authority. So even overseers submit one to another.

And everyone learns that submission is divine order in one sphere or another. And here the Lord Jesus increases. He is seen increasing in wisdom and stature and favor with God and with man.

By going down, He went up. Now, I just want to emphasize that again because we live in a day when submission is a nasty word. Maybe it's secondary to separation as something which is the least popular subject to speak on.

But it's a biblical principle. It is something God has infused into societies. And of course you realize, don't you? One of the great purposes of Satan in gender confusion, in transgender issues and in alternate lifestyles is confusing roles, obliterating roles.

Right? If he can obliterate roles, he can remove God's fingerprints from society. And so that's what he's doing. And so you have so many issues that we face today that seem so totally contrary to Scripture.

And they are. Because Satan is out to remove any remembrance, any memory of God and any fingerprint of God in his world. He has denied God as the creator.

And now he is denying God's right to legislate what marriage is, what family is, what gender means and so on. And all of that is part of his grand strategy to try to erase any thought of God from our world. Divine order is one way that we can preserve that.

And if it is not preserved in society, it should be preserved in the assemblies of God's people, in local assemblies. It is where divine order must be displayed and must be preserved as a testimony to God and who He is and the order He has established both in creation, creatorial order, as well as in assembly church order as well. So the blessing, the bounty of sonship, he went down and yet he grew.

He was full of every grace that God as man could show. But we see as well the balance of sonship. What I mean by that is there was growth in every sphere.

He increased in wisdom, stature, favor with God and with man. Now you just take all that apart. There was intellectual.

There was physical. There was social. There was spiritual.

Now someone is going to come to me and say, how could he increase in wisdom, the one who was omniscient? I think it just means that as he grew, the knowledge he possessed, he applied to every situation in life and showed, displayed the wisdom that he had. Wisdom is the application of knowledge and the Lord Jesus displayed that. He grew normally as a man, as a boy, as a man would grow.

Everything was perfectly normal and yet everything was very, very different. In a sense, in a sense, the Lord Jesus is the only normal man that ever lives. All of us are a bit abnormal.

Sorry. We all have our hang-ups. We all have our bents.

We all have our personality quirks. We all have our, you know, well if you don't, I do. Okay.

We all have them. None of us is really totally psychologically normal. You may think you are, but we all have our buttons, right? And either your kids will find the buttons or your spouse will find the button to push and you'll soon see, I'm not quite as normal as I thought.

Okay. Balance. The Lord Jesus was absolutely balanced in every way.

Every way he was balanced. There was every sphere of growth that was in him and it was there in all of its fullness, perfectly attuned, perfectly right. But I think not only the fullness and the fruit, but I want you to see the focus of his life.

He increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God first, then with man. Live to please God. If you please God, those that really matter, you'll please them.

You can't please everybody in life. If you go around trying to please everybody, if you're a people pleaser, you are in for lots of disappointments. You cannot please everyone.

Some people by nature are people pleasers. They want everyone to be happy, everyone to like them, everyone to... And they get so frustrated because you can't... There are some people, you could sing Dixie and chew bubble gum at the same time and they would think, so what's the big deal? You just can't please them. Don't try to please people.

There's nothing wrong with in your life seeking to be a help to others, but never sacrifice pleasing God for pleasing people and never make pleasing people the goal of your life. Remember, you serve God, not men. Even the Lord Jesus Christ as a servant never was a servant to men.

He was a bond slave of God. And as a result of being a bond slave of God, he ministered to men in his life. If we make others the focus and forget that really we are serving God, we'll be burned out very quickly.

You will get disappointed, discouraged, unappreciated, but as long as you keep your focus right, God first, men next, then you can be successful and avoid burnout in your service. What I find as well, though, is the usefulness the Lord Jesus Christ displayed in these verses did not hinder him. In other words, he has a moment, you might say, of, you know, everybody talks about five minutes or 15 minutes of fame.

Well, here he is in Jerusalem, in the synagogue, and everyone's amazed at this boy of 12 and how he can ask questions and his insight and all that goes with it. And yet he goes back to Nazareth quietly, unobtrusively, just back to... It reminds me of Samuel. I didn't stress it.

Time doesn't allow all this, but... You remember Samuel got that tremendous revelation from God of the message he had to give Eli? And God is bypassing the priest, and God is speaking and giving a message to maybe a teenage boy, could even be younger than that. And you know what it says next? He lay all night. So great was the burden on his heart of what he had to do.

He couldn't go to sleep, he lay all night. You know what he does next? He just opens the doors of the tavern. Just goes about his normal task.

Most of us would have thought, hmm, pretty good. God's bypassing the priest. I'm speaking for God.

God hasn't spoken for years because there's been no open vision and God is speaking to me. I must be pretty good. Boy, I guess my time has really come to be, you know, open the doors.

That's trivial now. I've got bigger and better things to do. No, not Samuel.

Samuel just opens the doors. That was his job. He did it.

The Lord Jesus Christ has his moment in Jerusalem of everyone looking at him. He's the center of attention. He leaves all that, goes back to Nazareth for another 18 years of obscurity.

Now, when I say 18 years of obscurity, 18 years that we don't know about, but nevertheless, he goes back. But those were never wasted years. Day by day, he increased.

Day by day, there was fruit in his life. Day by day, there was pleasure being brought to God. Neither the marveling of men nor the misunderstanding of his parents hindered the fruitfulness of his life.

Let me just mention a couple of things in closing. Just some things I want to just underline. I have mentioned already that wherever divine guidance takes you, divine grace will meet you and meet your need.

Submission suited the son, and submission suits every other son since then. If he was subject, I should be willing to be subject. Submission suited the son, and it suits every other son since then.

So live that the only accusation men can raise against you is that you're a Christian. And they'll make that accusation. I was telling somebody the other week, they were talking about business and collecting debts, and I said, we would send out bills to people.

Once that someone said to me, you're a Christian and you send out bills. I said, well, Christians have to eat too, you know? But I thought, you're a Christian and you send out a bill? Yes, I'm a Christian. I send out bills, okay.

But live so the only thing they can accuse you of is being a Christian. When I look at the Lord Jesus, I learned this lesson. Fit in, but stand out.

He was a normal 12-year-old boy. He fit in in every way. He did everything that a 12-year-old should be doing that was right, but he stood out.

Just fit in, but stand out. Sons have many occupations, but only one business. The way up is the way down.

Submission always leads to usefulness for God. I learned as well that no one can in any way make you sin. The worst of environments, he came out of it absolutely pure.

No one can hinder you pleasing God. That's a wonderful thing to think of. Nothing can hinder you pleasing God except yourself, of course.

Whatever circumstances, whatever people may do, whatever people may say, however little they may understand, misunderstanding, false accusation, whatever is thrown at you, nothing can hinder you pleasing God. Here was a life, lived in the squalor of Nazareth, lived surrounded by misunderstanding and unbelief, and yet he pleased God. The business of sons, the perfection of sonship as seen in the Lord Jesus Christ.

If we could just be a little shadow of it, how wonderful and how pleasing our lives would be to God. May God bless His Word. Shall we pray?