The Gospel writer Luke details Jesus’ birth at Bethlehem, and at Christmas time we celebrate His birth. Luke then proceeds to give us additional information about his childhood, including his annual trip from Nazareth to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. At the age of 12, still young, still a tender shoot, we see how he is beginning to understand his relationship with Father God. What is striking is how he sits with the religious leaders and asks questions and listens to them. These religious leaders, the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Scribes were the ones who would later bring false allegations against Jesus and have him executed. Yet we see Jesus sitting down with them and having discussions with them. Despite the many shortcomings of the religious leaders, Jesus a young boy gave his elders respect.
My wife loves to be in the garden, and when it's winter, she brings the garden into the house, and plants are everywhere. At the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown, my wife and I were often in the garden tending to the plants. Lesley often joked that I pulled up the plants and left the weeds!
We planted new flowers, which were delicate and easy to damage. They were tender shoots; they were not fully grown plants that would be more capable of withstanding strong winds. These were tender shoots that needed gentle caring, they needed nurturing, watering, and feeding. They needed to be placed in the correct place in the garden to get the right amount of light for them to grow.
The Bible says that these tender shoots are like a root out of some dry ground. Any plant out of the ground will die, and the dry ground is where there is no water to sustain life. Any plant, and in particular young tender shoots could not grow in these conditions. In the summer months, Lesley and I could be in the garden for half an hour just watering the plants to make sure each plant was well watered in the dry conditions. Jesus grew up before God the Father like a tender shoot. When he was born, he was just as vulnerable as any newborn baby. Vulnerable to the elements, the heat in the day, and the cold in the night. He would be vulnerable to any personal attacks. As a baby, he would have been completely defenceless. As a baby, he had to be protected by his parents Mary and Joseph even from normal events that happened. Without his parents, the baby Jesus would not have survived for very long. Worse still, the wise men came to Judea and went straight to King Herod the Great and asked him where the baby was born that was going to be king. That was not a very wise thing to do! The baby Jesus was now in danger from one of the rulers of the country. Thankfully, God the Father looked down at His Son and saw the danger the newborn was in and told Joseph to take his fiancé and the baby to a place of safety. So, Joseph and Mary took the baby Jesus to Egypt and stayed there until King Herod died.
Jesus grew up as a carpenter's son. He didn’t grow up in a palace. He didn’t have any servants or wealth or status. Jesus grew up as a normal boy in a normal household. When he was older and was going about his ministry, he told a teacher of the Law that: "Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Jesus didn’t even have a house that he could call home. Later on, when Jesus had to pay some taxes, he told his disciples to go fishing and in the mouth of a fish would be the required amount to pay the tax. Jesus didn’t have any money to call his own. This Jesus was certainly not a majestic king surrounded by wealth and opulence. No, we see a picture of Jesus being in complete and utter poverty. Nothing in his appearance that we would find desirable. This verse certainly comes true in the life of Jesus Christ.
The verse states that Jesus was like a root out of dry ground. Ordinarily, plants/ trees will die if their roots are out of the ground and may struggle even to live in dry ground. But this difficulty didn’t stop Jesus. As an adult Jesus didn’t have any money, and any money that came his way was kept by Judas Iscariot, who was the keeper of the money box. The problem with this arrangement was that Judas was a thief. But this didn’t stop Jesus, as he said that he had another source of “food”. This food was to do the will of God. To reinforce this, Jesus went on to miraculously feed the five thousand and then the four thousand.
Much later on, we see another time when Jesus would not be had any beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. This was at the time of Jesus’ execution. The Bible records, in three of the Gospels, that Jesus was flogged. The account by Mark says, “Wanting to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. He had Jesus flogged and handed him over to be crucified.” Jesus was flogged by the Roman soldiers. This simple statement hides the horror of the event. Jesus would have been whipped by the Roman soldiers using a scourge, or a flagrum, which was a short whip made of three or more leather strips connected to a handle. The leather strips were knotted with a weight at the end, and in the weight were either nails or bone shards. Scourging would quickly remove the flesh, and this would expose a bloody mass of bone and muscle. Jews had people whipped thirty nine times so that they would not break God’s law, but the Romans had no restrictions. What was important to them was that the person was whipped nearly to the point of death. The whipping would result in the removal of flesh all around his body from the legs, arms chest, back even up his neck and onto his face. The person would not be recognisable. The result would also fulfil one of Isaiah’s prophecies in Isa 52: 14, “Just as there were many who were appalled at him, his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being and his form marred beyond human likeness.” Understandably, this wretched creature would be unable to carry his cross, and we see that Simon of Cyrene carried Jesus’ cross. There was certainly no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him at his execution.
But that is not the end of the story! No, fast forward to the Book of Revelation, and what do we see? We see the risen Christ, the ascended Christ not as a king of some lowly country in the Middle East but we see Jesus now as “the ruler of the kings of the earth.” He is the “Lord of lords and King of kings.” He is the one the “living creatures give glory, honour, and thanks to him who sits on the throne and who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever. They lay their crowns before the throne and say: ‘You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things, and by your will, they were created and have their being.” This is our Lord Jesus Christ.
What does this mean for us today? I'm happy to repeat myself time and time again that God was faithful to his Word. God stated that He grew up, that he would be like a tender shoot, and be like a root out of dry ground. That he had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. All this was fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Therefore, we can rest assured that when God speaks to us and promises us something then He will carry that out. Next, we can see the full extent of the horror that Jesus had to go through, and this was for you and me. He didn’t deserve to die, let alone be tortured. But he went through this agony for you and me. He went through pain, and therefore he will understand if we or our loved ones are going through pain and suffering. Jesus, now in the presence of God will intercede on our behalf when we are going through pain. Do we have the faith to believe that God will remove the pain? Jesus said, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” We need to persist in prayer when we or others are in pain. Next, he had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him. But we can see from his self-sacrificing love for us that he will go to extraordinary lengths for us. Now that is real beauty, a really beautiful character. This is what we should be desiring for us. If we are blessed with beauty, then that’s great but the real beauty that we should be desiring is the beauty within. It is with the Holy Spirit’s help that we can become a person with a beautiful character. We should be seeking to become like Christ and love others just as Christ loved others.
