I know I've told you this before, but I don't care. I'm going to tell you this again. My favorite athlete in the whole wide world right now is, do you know? How well do you know me? We're playing a little game right now. Who is it? Who's my favorite athlete? That's right. I heard you there in the back row. It's Nikola Jokic, center for the Denver Nuggets. I think he is a delightful man. I like the way he plays basketball. I think it is elegant and fun. And I'm just having a blast as a Nuggets fan watching him do what he does. I also think that it is rad that we get this picture of Nikola Jokic, who grew up in war-torn Serbia as a kid. Yet there is a picture of him as this pudgy little like four-year-old wearing an old school, like Dekembe Matumbo era Denver Nuggets sweatshirt. What? It's fun, right? Like it's a portent of things to come. It's a predictor. It pays off later. Well, likewise, here in Luke chapter two, and and better than likewise, Jesus is much better than Nikola Jokic, presumably even a basketball, if you know I would think. In Luke chapter two, we're seeing young Jesus, like in an old grainy snapshot. And we don't get a lot from him here, but we do get one detail that really relates and really helps explain the behavior that we see from Jesus when he gets pretty assertive in John chapter two. Oh my goodness, how funny. Do you remember yesterday I set up that whole thing with my granddad and the time that he bowed up on somebody? They clearly what I was setting up there was like, and you know, Jesus, he got real mad in the temple in John chapter two, but I just never got around to paying that off. Oh well, we'll probably pay that off today or tomorrow. That'll be fun. But for now, here's what Jesus did back in Luke chapter 2 when he was a young man. Here's the story. I'm just gonna read it to you. Luke 2, 39. When Joseph and Mary had done everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth. As the child grew and became strong, he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him. Luke really drills that home. He's gonna say basically the same thing again in 12 verses. Every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover. Aha! We were talking about that yesterday. When he was 12 years old, they went up to the feast according to the custom. Did you catch it? Now you're noticing it everywhere. They went up to the feast, even though they're going south, but they're going up in elevation to Jerusalem, to a high place where they worship God, not like a pagan high place, but like physically a high place where the temple is located to worship God, to do all of these things. They get done, they celebrate, no doubt, Passover and the festival of unleavened bread, as we discussed yesterday. And then verse 43, it says, After the feast was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. And when they didn't find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. Side note, it is very easy here to gaffaw at what terrible parents Mary and Joseph must have been. How could you not even notice? You just gotta understand, times were different. All of Nazareth was probably traveling together. Heck, there might have been people in this party who were traveling north who ended up getting married at the wedding at Cana. Like it was probably just a regional extended family group, and everybody's with everybody. Some of us have families where we do that. We go, you got a bunch of siblings and a bunch of nieces and nephews and all of that, and you just go to some place, you rent a big place for vacation, and they all just do crap. For some of us, this sounds shocking. In the age of literally everyone tracks their kids, which you and I can agree to disagree on that one. But in an age where everyone tracks their kids, you know, for safety, this is going to be shocking to us. However, in an ancient context, the way Luke's writing it, I don't think it's meant to be shocking. Okay, that was my little note in defense of the parenting skills of Joseph and Mary. The story continues. When they didn't find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him, obviously. After three days, imagine how excruciating that was. They found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. And when his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you. Good line. That's probably, I mean, that's what she ought to say. Remember, this is Luke, so we've heard a lot about Mary here in this very chapter. She comes off wonderfully. We're not meant to read this and be like, oh, she's being pretty mean to Jesus. This is a reasonable question from a mom to a twelve-year-old. This is where it gets important for what we're looking at in John chapter 2. Jesus answers, Why were you searching for me? Didn't you know I had to be in my father's house? But they didn't understand what he was saying to them. Then he went down to Nazareth with them, down, see, again, up north, but down in elevation, and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart, and Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men. Well, yes, he did grow in wisdom and stature and favor with God and men. And now we flip back over to John chapter 2, and we're well into this age of wisdom and stature. And now Jesus is once again on the road back to Jerusalem. Who knows? Is this like his 25th time? I assume he had to sit out a few of these when he was little and living in Egypt. 20th time there, 25th time there, who knows? But he's been doing this a lot. He's used to it. And well, now we know because we just read that passage. He feels a unique familiarity with Jerusalem and with the temple. For everybody else, it's the temple. For Jesus, it is his father's house. So what do you mean back there, back in Luke chapter 2? Well, remember all that stuff that we've talked about, you know, in this season a little, in other seasons a lot, about the presence of God. It's a through line motif through the entire Bible that God is with his people, and he shows up in tangible ways. I mean, he's physically tangibly manifest in the garden, all the way back in early Genesis. But then after the fall and the division between God and man, God keeps showing up in ways. He dwells among his people, and there's fire and there's smoke in the temple. And then there's a question as we leave the Old Testament about where is God now? Is he still in the temple or is he not? And that question is really becoming poignant by the time we get to the beginning of the Gospels. And then the Gospel of John opens saying, like, he became flesh, the word became flesh and tabernacled among us and made his dwelling among us. So for Jesus, the idea, he is a part of that through line of God's presence with his people, and the temple was a house ordained by God to house God's presence with his people. The temple from the perspective of the people at this time is it's a place where we do sacrifices, it's very, very holy. But Jesus, God in the flesh, the Son of God from time eternal, he's going to conceive of this space differently. To him, this is kind of weird. I think I'm on okay footing saying this, but to him, it's kind of like a reverse thin spot between heaven and earth. He doesn't need a thin spot between heaven and earth. God moves freely wherever he wants, but you know, the the temple of God is like the one place on earth when God dwelt there in ancient times where you could go there and you're like, you're in the presence of God. He's behind that curtain, but God lives here with his people. Well, picture it the other way. Jesus from time eternal has dwelt in unbroken, perfect fellowship with the Father and the Holy Spirit. I know it's a confusing concept, but it's what the text holds out. And now for the first time ever, he's taken on flesh and he's here. And I I don't think Jesus is just doing religious obligation when he goes down for the Passover all these years. I don't I I think there's I think there's a reason he doesn't want to miss it. He's not just trying to prove like, hey, I was a good Jew, so you guys can trust me and believe in me and become Christians now. But he wants to go because these festivals mean something to him because it affords him the opportunity when he is God in the flesh, to be in this place that historically and in its ideal form is a thin spot the other way from from here to that perfect fellowship that I don't know, he's fully God and he's fully man, right? So he misses it. I don't think that diminishes Jesus at all to say that he misses it. The temple meant a lot to Jesus, and he knew that from the time he was a little kid. He didn't just know it, he said it overtly, and even if people didn't understand it, this is my father's house. Like, I want to be here. Like, was it disobedient of Jesus to stay back? I don't know what the details were, the itinerary or whatever, but I'm gonna side with Jesus every single time, even the 12-year-old version. So, hey, even kid Jesus really wanted to be in this space for all kinds of reasons that you and I have just discussed, and for all kinds of reasons that I didn't think of or that we can't even conceive of. He holds it in very high esteem. And he's about to walk into it in the next verse that we'll look at tomorrow and discover it being profaned. And he doesn't take well to it. And this is what I was introducing yesterday with the story about my granddad. He's gonna bow up on the people who are doing the profaning. He's gonna do something about it, and his disciples are about to see a side of him that they have not seen yet, in the same way that I saw a side of my grandfather that day that I had not seen before. Cool. Tomorrow we're flipping over some tables with Jesus. It's gonna be a blast. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.