We consider a fictional story about a mischievous boy who refuses to grow up as cute. [Show picture of Peter Pan]. But when the same thing occurs in real life, there is something wrong. And that seems to be happening more and more in today’s culture as illustrated by the opening words from a January 2005 article in Time Magazine:
Michele, Ellen, Nathan, Corinne, Marcus and Jennie are friends. All of them live in Chicago. They go out three nights a week, sometimes more. Each of them has had several jobs since college; Ellen is on her 17th, counting internships, since 1996. They don't own homes. They change apartments frequently. None of them are married, none have children. All of them are from 24 to 28 years old.
Thirty years ago, people like Michele, Ellen, Nathan, Corinne, Marcus and Jennie didn't exist, statistically speaking. Back then, the median age for an American woman to get married was 21. She had her first child at 22. Now it all takes longer. It's 25 for the wedding and 25 for baby. It appears to take young people longer to graduate from college, settle into careers and buy their first homes. What are they waiting for? Who are these permanent adolescents, these twentysomething Peter Pans? And why can't they grow up?
Unfortunately this phenomenon is not limited to the physical realm. There are also far too many people who also refuse to grow up spiritually as well. But as we continue examining the early years of the life of Jesus, we’ll be able to learn from the example of Jesus and develop some principles that we can put into practice in our lives so that we don’t become spiritual Peter Pans.
Although there is all kinds of extra-biblical material with fanciful tales of the boyhood of Jesus, there is actually very little about that part of his life in the Scriptures. At the end of Matthew 2, we have the account of Jesus and His family fleeing from Bethlehem to Egypt to avoid the wrath of Herod, and then later returning to Nazareth, where Jesus spent the majority of His childhood. Originally I planned to include that passage in the message this morning, but for time’s sake we’re going to focus on Luke’s account of Jesus’ boyhood.
So go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Luke chapter 2 and follow along as I read:
39 And when they had performed everything according to the Law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. 40 And the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom. And the favor of God was upon him.
41 Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover. 42 And when he was twelve years old, they went up according to custom. 43 And when the feast was ended, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know it, 44 but supposing him to be in the group they went a day's journey, but then they began to search for him among their relatives and acquaintances, 45 and when they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem, searching for him. 46 After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48 And when his parents saw him, they were astonished. And his mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress.” 49 And he said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?” 50 And they did not understand the saying that he spoke to them. 51 And he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them. And his mother treasured up all these things in her heart.
52 And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.
Luke 2:39-52 (ESV)
These fourteen verses cover the life of Jesus from the time He is a very young child all the way to the beginning of His ministry around the age of 30. Verse 40 takes us from the return of His family to Nazareth all the way to the age of 12:
And the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom. And the favor of God was upon him.
Verses 41 through 51 record a single event that occurs over several days when Jesus is 12 years old. And then we have one more verse – verse 52 – that covers Jesus’ life from the age of 12 to the time He begins His ministry around the age of 30:
And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.
It is that final verse of the chapter that I want to focus on this morning. As part of that process, we’re going to come back to some of the rest of the narrative to better understand what it was that allowed Jesus to increase in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man over those 18 years and how we can implement those same principles in our own lives.
The thing that really strikes me most about verse 52 is how balanced Jesus was in the development of His life. I think intuitively we all understand the need for a balanced life. And that is true both inside and outside the body of Christ. Just for the fun of it this week, I typed the phrase “balanced life” into my internet search engine, and in .08 seconds I had over 14 million hits. And I had my pick of how I could develop a balanced life. Among the websites that came up in my search were these:
• 10 tips on leading a balanced life
• 5 tips for better work-life balance
• 5 steps to creating a balanced life
• How to create a balanced life: 9 tips to feel calm and grounded
• 10 easy tips for a balanced life
I had a really hard time picking out my favorite one – I tend to favor the ones with only 5 tips or 5 steps instead of 9 or 10. But then again, maybe the 10 easy steps is the way to go – after all I like easy.
But seriously, none of these sites are really going to help me develop a balanced life nearly as well as just spending a little time focusing on how Jesus developed such a balanced life and then doing what I can to follow His example.
So let’s do two things this morning. First let’s look at what Jesus’ balanced life looked like, so we can use that as a model for our own development and then secondly, let’s see what actions Jesus took that enabled Him to develop that balanced life so that we can engage in those same activities.
JESUS DEVELOPED A BALANCED LIFE IN FOUR AREAS:
1) Practically – wisdom
When I was first working on this message, I initially labeled this aspect of life as developing intellectually. But wisdom involves much more than just knowledge. My favorite definition of wisdom really does a good job of describing this aspect of our lives:
Wisdom is heavenly instruction applied to earthly life.
In other words, wisdom is applied knowledge. It begins with the knowledge that we find in the Word of God but then it overflows into the way that we live our lives.
And I’m convinced that, from the viewpoint of His humanity, much of Jesus’ growth in this area was a direct result of observing his earthly parents, Mary and Joseph, operate on the basis of wisdom in their lives. The accounts in both Matthew and Luke present Mary and Joseph as being so dedicated to God that they listened to what he had to say and then they adjusted their lives to behave in a manner that was consistent with what they learned from God. That is Biblical wisdom – wisdom that is demonstrated in very practical ways in our everyday lives.
It is interesting that Luke describes Jesus at age twelve as being “filled with wisdom” and yet over the next 18 years He still continued to increase in wisdom. And if Jesus needed to do that, just imagine how much we must continue to increase in wisdom in our lives. And there is just no way we can do that apart from Jesus. As Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, he made it clear that Jesus not only possessed wisdom, He is wisdom.
For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
1 Corinthians 1:22-24 (ESV)
The only way that we can ever develop wisdom in our lives is to commit our lives to Jesus and stay focused on Him.
2) Physically – stature
Jesus also grew in stature, which is a reference to His physical growth. Although we really don’t have a lot of textual evidence about how Jesus grew physically, we do know what a toll His ministry took on His body during the relatively short period of His earthly ministry. So I think it’s safe to assume that Jesus took care of His body as He was growing up so that He would physically be able to carry the ministry that had been given to Him by His Father.
Although we rightly tend to place much more emphasis on our spiritual development than our physical development, there is ample Scriptural support regarding the importance of taking care of our bodies. Even in the Old Testament, many of the commands that God gave His people regarding things like which animals they were permitted to eat were to help their bodies to remain healthy.
For those of us who have committed our lives to Jesus and have the Holy Spirit dwelling within us, the need to take care of our bodies is even more crucial:
Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
1 Corinthians 6:19, 20 (ESV)
Since our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit, then we ought to take reasonable steps to take care of them. I’m not going to make this into a lesson on physical fitness today because for the most part, we all pretty much know what we need to do – eat right, exercise, get enough sleep, etc. Obviously the hard part is having the wisdom to actually put those things into practice so that our bodies are healthy enough to allow us to carry out the ministries that God has entrusted to us.
3) Spiritually – favor with God
It seems pretty odd for Luke to write that Jesus grew in favor with God. After all, He is 100% God. But Jesus was also 100% human and He willingly yielded many aspects of that divinity during His time here on earth. As we’ll discuss some more in a moment, in His humanity Jesus gained favor with God by seeking our His Father’s will and being obedient to Him. Obviously Jesus continued to develop that character during this period between 12 and 30 years of age, because when He initiates His public ministry at His baptism, God the Father expresses His pleasure with Jesus.
And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
Matthew 3:16, 17 (ESV)
Once again, if Jesus needed to grow spiritually in His vertical relationship with the Father, then we obviously need to be doing that consistently in our lives, as well.
4) Socially – favor with man
We’ve probably all heard someone described as being “so heavenly minded that they are of no earthly good.” I really don’t like that phrase because it implies that it is somehow possible to focus too much on the fact that our citizenship is in heaven and that we are commanded to set our minds on things that are above.
But at the same time, we have probably all encountered people who are tremendously mature intellectually, physically and even spiritually, but they are lost when it comes to the horizontal relationships with other people.
The fact that Jesus increased in favor with man certainly didn’t mean that everyone liked Him. In fact, there were many who despised Him and He warned us that as His followers we would be despised as well. So what does it mean to develop our lives in this area? This passage from Acts seems to summarize this part of Jesus’ life pretty well:
you yourselves know what happened throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee after the baptism that John proclaimed: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.
Acts 10:37, 38 (ESV)
What we see here is that Jesus had a heart for people. He worked to understand them and then to minister to them appropriately. He taught them about the ways of God and gave them a vision of the abundant life they could experience by yielding their lives to Him.
Like Jesus, we can’t control whether people favor us or like us, but we can grow in our sensitivity to the needs of others, and we can cultivate our ability to minister to them.
Developing such a balanced life - one in which we constantly mature practically, physically, spiritually and socially – is not easy. It takes commitment, determination and skill. But here in this passage, we find three principles that Jesus employed in order to do that. So let’s see what we can learn from his example.
HOW TO DEVELOP A BALANCED LIFE:
• Commit fully to God’s will
When Mary and Joseph finally find Jesus in the temple interacting with the teachers there, and asked Jesus where He had been, He answered them with these words:
“Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?”
No wonder Mary and Joseph didn’t understand what Jesus meant with these words. Although they knew that there was something special about Jesus, they obviously still didn’t fully understand who He was. From their perspective, they were His parents. In particular Joseph must have been thinking, “Aren’t I your father? What do you mean you had to be in your Father’s house?”
We don’t know for sure exactly when Jesus began to realize that He was God’s Son. And even here at the age of 12, it’s unclear just how much He understands about God’s plan for His earthly ministry. But one thing is clear. Even at this young age, Jesus is fully committed to doing God’s will in His life. And that unwavering commitment continues to characterize His life all the way to the cross. Perhaps that is best demonstrated in His words to His disciples when they return after His encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well:
Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.
John 4:34 (ESV)
If we want to develop a balanced life, it must begin with this same kind of unwavering commitment to doing the will of God. If we don’t do that, then we’ll be stuck trying to develop practically, physically, spiritually and socially in our own human strength and power, utilizing our own human ways. And I can tell you how that works out because I’ve tried that route more times that I care to admit.
And my guess is that most of you have done that from time to time as well. How many times have you committed to read your Bible every day and yet after a week or two you are already out of the habit? How many times have you committed to eat healthier or get more exercise but have a hard time maintaining that kind of discipline? You’re not alone. One study found that only 17% of people who lose weight on a diet maintain that weight loss in the long term. And go to any local gym the first week in January and then come back o couple of months later and notice how many less people there are working out.
But if I commit to get healthy because I’m committed to providing a healthy place for God’s Holy Spirit to dwell, or if I read my Bible because I truly desire to get to know God and His will, rather than view it as an obligation, then I’m much more likely to be able to develop a balanced life.
So if I want to be able to develop a balanced life, I must begin with the same mindset that Jesus had – an unwavering commitment to doing the will of God.
So let’s pause right now to pray and commit to God to follow His will regardless of the cost. I’ll give all of us a short time to do that individually, and then I’ll ask Steve Ponzo to come and pray publically for all of us.
[Prayer time]
• Connect with others
Jesus did not develop a balanced life by isolating Himself. Even just here in this passage, we find that Jesus found it necessary to connect with others.
We see that first of all in his interactions with others at the temple. We see that Jesus intentionally sought out the teachers that were there. Next, we find that He listened to them and asked questions of them and then also answered their questions. And the people were amazed at His understanding.
I think that is a great testimony to the effectiveness of the teaching and training that Mary and Joseph had provided in their home for the first twelve years of Jesus’ life. But I also think it reveals that for all of us who are parents that there comes a time in the life of the development of our children when we also need to involve others in that process.
Even as a pastor, I needed the involvement of other godly people to help my children fully develop into well rounded Christ followers. And I am grateful to the Sunday School teachers and youth pastors and coaches and public school teachers who have all played a role in the overall development of their lives.
We also see that even after this event at the temple in Jerusalem that Jesus returned to the home of Mary and Joseph and willingly submitted to their authority in the household. That’s pretty amazing to me! As we’ve seen, by this time Jesus recognizes, at least to some extent, that He is the Son of God, and yet He chooses not to lord that over His earthly parents, but rather to follow the Biblical pattern of submission to their authority.
Jesus clearly understood the importance of connecting with others in the process of developing a balanced life. So that’s one reason I’m really puzzled by those who claim to be Christians who believe that they can somehow grow into spiritual maturity without being part of a local body of believers – those who I often refer to as “Lone Ranger” Christians. These words from the writer of the Proverbs are particularly relevant here.
Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another
Proverbs 27:17 (ESV)
Just like my knives at home can only be sharpened by bringing them into contact with another piece of metal that is equally hard, I am only going to be sharpened practically, physically, spiritually and socially as I allow other godly people to be that iron that files away some of those rough edges in my life.
Once again, let’s take a few moments to begin to implement this principle right here. Go ahead and find two or three other people around you and spend a few minutes just thanking God for the other godly people that He has brought into your life. Then Loren Hawthorne will come and pray publically for all of us.
[Prayer time]
• Continue the process
It’s interesting that in his account of the life of Jesus, Luke reveals the natural process of growth in the life of Jesus with the words he uses to describe the various stages of life:
And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger.
Luke 2:16 (ESV)
And the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom. And the favor of God was upon him.
Luke 2:40 (ESV)
And when the feast was ended, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem.
Luke 2:43 (ESV)
And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.
Luke 2:52 (ESV)
In less than one chapter we see Jesus grow from a newborn baby in a manger into a 30 year old man ready to carry out God’s plan for His earthly ministry. The fact that Jesus needed to go through this entire process is really instructive to us. In a world where we have instant everything, we expect our spiritual progress to be more like a microwave than a crock pot. But if God incarnate needed 30 years of consistent development in order to be prepared for the ministry God had entrusted to Him, why do we think that we can somehow skip the process in our lives?
The single word “increased” in verse 52 actually teaches us a lot about what this process was like in Jesus life and what it should be like in ours. The Greek verb Luke uses there comes from a word that pictured someone advancing by cutting his way through thick brush. In other words it is progress that is not easily obtained and which requires much effort. And that verb is also in the imperfect tense, which indicates that it was a continuing action that took place in the past. The NASB very accurately translates it “kept increasing.” This development was a lifelong process for Jesus and it must be the same for us.
And we should not expect for it to be an easy process. If we want to mature in each of these four areas of life, it is often going to require us to “hack our way” through all the distractions of life in order to cultivate maturity and develop a balanced life.
Far too often I see sincere Christ followers waiting around for some mountaintop experience, some momentous event, some spectacular spiritual encounter that they think is going to be the key to instant spiritual maturity. But that wasn’t the case for Jesus and it’s not going to be the case for us either. That’s not to say that we won’t experience some momentous times in our spiritual growth. But even then, those are only meant to be one step of a lifelong journey.
So let’s pause one last time to pray. This time I want to encourage all of us to ask God for the strength to continue on our journey of spiritual development for our entire lifetime. Once you’ve had a chance to pray individually, Paul Schneider will come and pray publically for all of us.
[Prayer time]
I doubt if any of us here this morning want to be spiritual “Peter Pans”. So let’s make sure that we develop a balanced life by committing fully to God’s will, connecting with others and continuing the process.
