The Priorities Of Jesus And His Family Series

Today, as we continue our study in the book of Luke, we come to a rather peculiar passage that provides a rare glimpse into Jesus’ childhood. The other gospels vary in how much they share about Jesus before his public ministry begins. Matthew devotes about 48 verses to Jesus’ early years (some of which includes his genealogy). Mark doesn’t mention anything about his childhood or birth. John poetically writes about Jesus’ existence in eternity past but is rather vague about the specifics of his advent. As we have already seen, Luke goes to great lengths in these first two chapters to talk about the miraculous birth announcements of both Jesus and John. He also lets us see a bit into his dedication at the temple. As we conclude chapter 2 of Luke’s gospel, we get the only picture that we have of Jesus as a middle school aged boy.

At Christmas we celebrate many things around His first coming and His birth. At Easter we focus on his death, burial, and resurrection. In much of the rest of the year, when we are studying the gospels, we focus on three years of Jesus’ ministry - his miracles, teachings, interactions, and more. When we study other parts of the Bible we consider how Jesus is the perfect fulfillment of all that was promised and how we should live in light of what he did for us.

It’s easy to overlook his childhood, because there is little said about it. Like all of us, Jesus grew up. He cried, laughed, played, learned how to walk, speak and eat. He went to school and studied scripture. He likely worked along side his step-dad in the family trade. Luke summarizes much of his childhood in this way:

Luke 2:52 ESV

And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.

As we look at Luke 2:41-52 today, it seems like have both a unique glimpse into Jesus’ family life and we get to understand a bit about their priorities. I think we can learn from Jesus as his parents, that…

We grow in wisdom and favor when we prioritize God’s things.

This passage seems to reveal how Mary, Joseph and Jesus prioritized God’s things in their routines, regards (or affections), and relationships.

Following their example, let’s consider how we should:

Prioritize God’s things in our routines (41-42)

Luke 2:41–42 ESV

Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up according to custom.

As we saw a bit last week when Joseph and Mary demonstrated obedience to the Word of God in Jesus’ circumcision and dedication, here we get to see that they continued to prioritize God’s things in their annual routine.

Now, it was only required that the men would go to Jerusalem each year for the major religious festivals of Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles (Ex. 23:14-17; Ex. 34:22-23; Dt. 16:16). Darrell Bock notes that “in light of the nation’s scattering, the custom of the first-century Judaism was that the pious who lived some distance away from the city [would go] only once a year.” (p. 263) The fact that Mary was a regular participant in this pilgrimage suggests that the whole family was faithful to follow the religious routines (ibid.).

Jesus family is not alone in this. The historian Josephus notes that during these festival times, especially Passover, the population of the city of Jerusalem could swell to over 3,000,000 people (ibid.) from a norm of maybe 25,000.

The annual journey from Nazareth to Jerusalem would be a laborious affair. While only about 90 miles, this would take 3-4 days just to get there. As we’ll see a bit later in the passage, this journey included many others from town. Some have suggested that everyone who was going to the festival from Nazareth would have travelled together - so this was largely a communal activity. The festival lasted 8 days, so it seems like many people would carve out about two weeks to go.

Think about all that would go into a trip like that for us? The planning, packing, routing, the arrangements in town. And then the food, where will we get it?

How much for for them? They did not have our modern means of transportation or communication. They would have had to hand wash clothes. They could not refrigerate things. They couldn’t put things on a card so they are saving up and carrying coins and cash to cover the costs.

They clearly placed high priority on God’s things in their annual pilgrimage routines.

But what about us? Do God’s things prioritize our routines? Now, I realize it seems like a silly question to ask on a Sunday morning. Obviously, we’re here together on a cold winter morning. To some degree God’s things must be a priority. However, if we were to minimize God’s things in our weekly routines, we could treat Sunday like another Saturday and use it as day for chores or fun or excursions or even just to sleep in (though frankly I can’t typically sleep past 7am anyway). We could go to the ballpark and tailgate for hours on end. But instead, together we’ve prioritized this time together to worship God.