Reflective Bible Study

As Luke’s gospel transitions out of sharing about Jesus’ birth and childhood, Luke shares one last event that took place while Jesus was young. This event, while being very scary on one hand, is also especially funny to me on another hand. This event also contains a powerful overall theme, while also containing some amazing insights within the details.

Let’s read about what Luke describes happened during Jesus’ childhood. Our passage for this episode is found in Luke’s gospel, chapter 2, and we will read from the Contemporary English Version. Starting in verse 39, Luke tells us that:

³⁹ After Joseph and Mary had done everything that the Law of the Lord commands, they returned home to Nazareth in Galilee. ⁴⁰ The child Jesus grew. He became strong and wise, and God blessed him.

⁴¹ Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for Passover. ⁴² And when Jesus was twelve years old, they all went there as usual for the celebration. ⁴³ After Passover his parents left, but they did not know that Jesus had stayed on in the city. ⁴⁴ They thought he was traveling with some other people, and they went a whole day before they started looking for him. ⁴⁵ When they could not find him with their relatives and friends, they went back to Jerusalem and started looking for him there.

⁴⁶ Three days later they found Jesus sitting in the temple, listening to the teachers and asking them questions. ⁴⁷ Everyone who heard him was surprised at how much he knew and at the answers he gave.

⁴⁸ When his parents found him, they were amazed. His mother said, “Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been very worried, and we have been searching for you!”

⁴⁹ Jesus answered, “Why did you have to look for me? Didn’t you know that I would be in my Father’s house?” ⁵⁰ But they did not understand what he meant.

⁵¹ Jesus went back to Nazareth with his parents and obeyed them. His mother kept on thinking about all that had happened.

⁵² Jesus became wise, and he grew strong. God was pleased with him and so were the people.

In this event, as we read it just now, I noticed an interesting set of ideas contained in verses 48 and 49. These verses contain Mary’s scolding Jesus for staying in the city, and Jesus’ response to Mary.

First, I think it is interesting and significant that Mary does the talking. While I’m certain she spoke accurately for Joseph, what she says and how Jesus replies would not have the same significance if Joseph had said it rather than Mary. In verse 48, on finding Jesus in the temple, Mary scolds Jesus by saying, “Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been very worried, and we have been searching for you!”

While Mary is clearly referencing Joseph as Jesus’ father, Jesus has a different perspective. In Jesus’ response, He tells Mary, “Why did you have to look for me? Didn’t you know that I would be in my Father’s house?”

While Mary references Joseph as Jesus’ father, which was accurate from one perspective, Jesus shifts perspective and references God the Father as His father. The temple Jesus was standing in was known as being God’s house on earth, and in a subtle way, Jesus reminds Mary and Joseph that He has a much bigger mission because He is God’s Son while also being her Son.

In a similar way, when we accept Jesus into our lives and hearts, we are adopted into God’s family and we too can call God our Father!

However, while that theme is powerful, another theme in this passage is even more significant in my mind. This other theme stresses the importance of staying connected and close to Jesus. While Mary and Joseph only travel one day apart from Jesus, it takes them three days to find Jesus.

For a while, I had thought that the three days of searching included the travel time back to Jerusalem. While the day’s trip away likely was covered in less time going back, the way Luke frames this search is that the three days begins when Mary and Joseph arrive back in the city.

Since time is counted inclusively in first century culture, the first day of searching is day one, and the third day of searching, when they ultimately found Jesus, is day three. After two nights of being without Jesus, I would imagine Mary and Joseph would be very worried. This leads us to discovering a powerful theme that: It is easier to lose Jesus than it is to find Him! One day without Jesus may ultimately result in three days of searching and worry to find Him again!

However, I also wonder if the three days is significant. Looking at the big picture of Jesus’ life, is there another block of three days that stand out?

In my own mind, I can think of no more significant of an event as crucifixion weekend. While Jonah’s time in the belly of a fish is used to foreshadow Jesus’ time in the grave, I wonder if the three days Jesus’ spent apart from His parents also subtly foreshadowed the time Jesus would spend away from His family while in the grave. Luke clearly wrote this event from Mary’s perspective, and I don’t believe this was accidental at all. I wonder if Luke had interviewed Mary when he was gathering material about Jesus’ life.

But the biggest theme I see in this passage is found in Jesus’ reply to Mary: “Didn’t you know that I would be in my Father’s house?”

While it is easy to lose Jesus, and finding Him after we have lost Him can take more time than we might expect, this is only because we don’t understand what Jesus is doing. Perhaps Mary and Joseph’s emotions got in the way of thinking logically, or perhaps they simply didn’t think Jesus would be interested in returning to the temple, but regardless of the reason, it took Mary and Joseph longer to find Jesus because they didn’t go to the place where God had led Jesus.

There are many possible reasons for Jesus spending these three or four days in the temple. However, while we don’t have time left in this episode to discuss these, I find it amazing that even though the Jewish traditions had corrupted the religion God had set up through Moses, God had not left His people or His temple. This tells me that when we are ready to find Jesus, He is ready to be found among people who are seeking after Him, even if they don’t have all the details right!

In our own lives, it is more important that we seek Jesus first and let Him teach us than it is for us to try to get our lives straight and accurate before coming to Jesus. Coming to Jesus first leads us to life, trying to get our lives ready first will always keep us away. Jesus is the only way we can be transformed into people who are savable in God’s eyes!

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do, intentionally seek God first in your life and choose to place your faith, hope, trust, and belief in Jesus. If you find yourself missing Jesus, go to where you see God moving in the world today, go to where people who are seeking God are meeting, and/or go to where there are those God wants to help. In all these places, don’t be surprised to find Jesus show up. The worst thing you can do when having lost Jesus, is give up searching. Those who give up searching will likely never find Jesus again.

Also, continue praying and studying the Bible for yourself to grow closer to Jesus each and every day. While pastors, authors, speakers, and even podcasters can give you ideas to think about, choose to filter and test everything you learn to see if it matches the truth found in the Bible. Any “truth” that contradicts the Bible will not last beyond our sinful world and because of this, it isn’t worth paying significant amounts of attention to.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or abandon where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

As we move forward looking at prophecies in the Old Testament that point towards Jesus, we come to another prophecy that deals with Jesus’ birth, and this one is interesting because of some controversy about it. However, the part of this controversy that I find interesting is how half of the details included are simply ignored. In other words, for this controversy to exist, half of the details of this event must be pushed aside.

To draw attention onto this prophecy and the controversy that surrounds it, let’s read the prophecy as it is found in the book of Isaiah, chapter 7. Reading from the New American Standard Bible, in verse 14, Isaiah writes the message God gives Him saying:

¹⁴ Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin [or maiden] will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel.

While reading this verse just now, I realized there are actually two prophecies included in it. The first one, which has the controversy surrounding it, is the part about a virgin or maiden becoming pregnant with a son.

The second prophecy is that this virgin will name her son Immanuel.

For this episode, let’s spend more time unpacking the first prophecy in this verse, and then take our next episode unpacking the second prophecy.

In the first prophecy, the controversy present is that the Hebrew word for virgin might not mean the same thing that it means for us today. Instead of meaning someone who has never had sex, the argument or controversy centers around this term also being used to simply refer to a young girl, or specifically a maiden.

Ignoring that one definition of maiden is a literal virgin in my dictionary, the argument suggests that Isaiah’s words in this prophecy are not speaking of a virgin miraculously becoming pregnant, but that the Messiah would be born to a young unmarried woman who became pregnant outside of marriage.

However, while some people hold strongly to this idea, they must ignore several key pieces of Biblical evidence for this idea to carry weight.

The strongest argument against this redefinition is by not actually redefining the word virgin or maiden. Instead, we can look up all the other places in the Old Testament where this word is used and look at the context. Looking at the seven times this word appears in the Old Testament, while this word is always used to refer to young females, there is no instance in the Old Testament where it can be proved that this word does not also mean virgin, and several examples where virginity is strongly suggested. The clearest example is when a virgin or maiden is being sought out to be a wife for Isaac in Genesis 24:43.

In the Old Testament, a maiden is also a virgin when we let the Bible define our terms for us.

However, moving to the New Testament, to a passage we have read a couple times already, we see the virgin idea presented even more clearly. While those who persist in this controversy want to draw doubts on Isaiah’s words, they also must push Luke’s gospel and Matthew’s gospel aside, because these two gospels are extra specific about Mary being not just a maiden, but also a virgin.

In Luke, chapter 1, starting in verse 26, Luke writes:

²⁶ Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city in Galilee called Nazareth, ²⁷ to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the descendants of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. ²⁸ And coming in, he said to her, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” ²⁹ But she was very perplexed at this statement, and kept pondering what kind of salutation this was. ³⁰ The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; for you have found favor with God. ³¹ And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name Him Jesus. ³² He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David; ³³ and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no end.” ³⁴ Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” ³⁵ The angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God. ³⁶ And behold, even your relative Elizabeth has also conceived a son in her old age; and she who was called barren is now in her sixth month. ³⁷ For nothing will be impossible with God.” ³⁸ And Mary said, “Behold, the bondslave of the Lord; may it be done to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.

In this passage, Mary was engaged to Joseph, but they had not gotten married yet. While dating and engagement in today’s culture often doesn’t include waiting before sex, that culture was different. At the very least, Mary and Joseph were different, because Mary, questioning Gabriel, asks him how this would happen. Mary knows that the first step of getting pregnant is having sex. She refers to herself as a virgin, or literally as a woman who has not known a man, similar to how Genesis describes Adam “knowing” Eve and that knowing resulting in the birth of children.

In this passage, everything in Mary’s conversation with Gabriel points to Mary being a literal virgin, while also being a maiden. Regardless of what virgin means in Isaiah, we can understand that Mary saw herself as a literal virgin in this conversation with Gabriel.

Also adding weight to this argument is Matthew’s gospel, which describes Joseph’s attitude after finding out that his fiancée is pregnant. In Matthew chapter 1, starting in verse 20, Matthew writes:

²⁰ But when he [Joseph] had considered this [specifically to divorce Mary quietly], behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the Child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. ²¹ She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” ²² Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: ²³ “Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which translated means, “God with us.” ²⁴ And Joseph awoke from his sleep and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took Mary as his wife, ²⁵ but kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a Son; and he called His name Jesus.

In this passage, Joseph was ready and willing to call off his marriage with Mary because he didn’t believe her story that the pregnancy was extraordinary. However, after the dream, Joseph changes his plans and specifically marries Mary but keeps her a virgin until she had given birth to Jesus. There is only one way I can understand this statement, and this understanding weighs heavily on one side of the controversy surrounding the meaning of Isaiah’s prophecy.

Regardless of how we understand Isaiah’s prophecy, everything surrounding Jesus’ birth suggests that Mary was a virgin, and that her pregnancy was a direct fulfillment of God’s promise through the prophet Isaiah.

It is also amazing that Jesus’ entrance into the world marks the arrival of the Messiah God promised to send when Adam and Eve had failed God and eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

In Genesis, chapter 3, starting in verse 14, we read that while God was pronouncing judgment on those who had disobeyed Him:

¹⁴ The Lord God said to the serpent,

“Because you have done this,
Cursed are you more than all cattle,
And more than every beast of the field;
On your belly you will go,
And dust you will eat
All the days of your life.
¹⁵ And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her seed;
He shall bruise you on the head,
And you shall bruise him on the heel.”

In this judgment of the serpent in the garden, God speaks prophetically about one of Eve’s descendants being the one to bring judgment on the serpent. Through Mary, Jesus came into the world as this descendant, and He triumphed over sin and death on behalf of you and me.

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always open by challenging you, intentionally seek God first in your life. When life gets challenging, lean into your faith in God because with whatever happens in this life, when we have aligned our lives with God, we will outlive the challenges of this life even if it appears as though these challenges take us out. With Jesus, we will live beyond the end of sin, pain, and death.

Also, continue to pray and study the Bible for yourself to grow closer to Jesus. Focus on growing your personal relationship with Jesus because Jesus loves you personally. Jesus isn’t interested in having a relationship with you that is mediated by someone else.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or abandon where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!