Grow With God This Year (Luke 2:41-52)

This is ERC Sundays, the messages at Emmaus Rd.

Church in DeWitt, Iowa. ERC is a Church of people

striving to grow in Jesus and make him known to others through

our faith, words and actions. Find out more about our church

at emmausrdonline.org. Here's this week's message.

Well, welcome to the weekend between holidays.

It's there's a, there's a pretty logical reason why we moved to 1

service in between this weekend because there's so there's so

many people traveling and kind of going everywhere.

And maybe you're one of those people who's currently traveling

and that's why you're here. If so, welcome.

It's good to be with you this morning, and I hope that the

community that God is building here in the message of God's

Word, both through song and through His Word, I hope that is

uplifting to you and effective to work in and through your

heart. Well, I'll tell you what, we are

coming to the end of another year very soon.

It will be New Year's Eve and then New Year's Day, and we've

made another full lap around the sun.

Yay. OK, OK, Well, it's fine.

I don't. I don't.

Yeah. Well, here's an aside.

I don't get as excited about New Year's Eve as I used to.

I think it's because I'm in my mid 40s now and I'm just like,

well, here we go again. Here we go.

Anyway, that's not in my notes. Great start.

Anyway. Yeah, as we, as we make a lot

another lap around the sun. I do think this though, and I

tend to think this way every year and it's kind of, and it

kind of goes like this after, as we end one year and as we start

another year, do I feel like I'm better off than when I started

the year? Have I, have I gained, have I

lost? Where am I at in my life?

Now? If you ask yourself a similar

question, really what comes out of that question is it depends

on what you're measuring by, right?

So if you're a person who measures, am I better or worse

off by your finances, if that's your first line of measurement,

then you'll go, well, did I get a raise?

Did I move up in my job? Did I pay off debt?

What what does that look like from end of year or beginning of

year to end of year? Maybe I am doing better off,

maybe I'm doing worse off. I don't know.

You could measure that by career status.

So did I get the promotion that I was really hoping for?

Did I, did I raise in status at my job or did I lose a job or,

or any of those kinds of things? You could look at your living

situation. I know for me, Lord willing,

next year at this time, maybe I'll feel better about my living

situation. You know, as we attempt to move

into a bigger space at some point.

We'll see. I don't know, you could look at

your relationships. You could say, well, I started

off the year single, but now, ha ha, here we go.

Or maybe you're like, well, I started off the year with this

and not so much. And you might still go, yes, I

don't know, maybe not. You can look at your health.

I do think that again, as I continue to get a little bit

older, that is not something I rely on to get better and better

every single year. Not that you give up, but at

some point you're like, man, the knees just do not do what they

used to and all that kind of stuff.

Or another tool of measurement you could use is your faith.

You could say, what is my relationship like with my Lord

now versus at the beginning of the year?

Is it better? Is it worse?

Have I paid more attention to that?

Have I put that as a premium in my life?

Well, here's the thing. What you decide to measure with,

ultimately, that's the thing that you care about most.

So as I was talking through those things, if you're like,

yeah, I'm absolutely measuring the betterment of my life in the

past year through money, well, guess what?

I would tell you that that's what you care about the most,

right? It's just the most obvious thing

that you think about first and foremost.

So it would lead us to believe that depending on how I answer

that question, that's honestly what I'm really worshiping right

now. That's what I'm worshiping.

That's where my head is at. That's where my heart is AT.

And you know, that can be, that can be tricky when we realize

that that's our measuring stick. But I want to make the argument

today, I want to make the argument today that faith, our

relationship with the Lord is the ultimate measuring stick of

how we should be measuring our lives, our success, our peace,

our joy, our happiness, all those things that that is the

key thing that we need to continuously work on and work

through in order to live lives of joy and peace that go outside

of our circumstances. Because here's the thing, Let's

say you're one of the people who at least in your head, you

thought, yeah, my first tool of measurement is money.

Well, guess what? That's going to come and go

pretty quickly. And, and if you if gosh, it goes

out of my bank account at lightning speed sometimes and

I'm like, where did that go? But, but it comes and goes so

quickly and it doesn't last forever.

We should use a measuring tool for our success and our and our

joy based on something that doesn't fade away, something

that doesn't break down, something that doesn't get old,

which is our relationship with the Lord.

That should be our ultimate measuring tool.

And so I, I would hope that all of our goals this year would be

to grow with God. I want to grow with God this

year in some way. And whether you're kind of new

to Christianity, whether you're not a Christian or all, or

you're 60 years old and you've been a Christian your entire

life, there's always room for further closeness and growth

with our Lord. And so here's what we need,

though. Here's what we need.

Growing with God requires obedience.

That is not a word that all of us like to hear.

If you are under 15, you probably hate that word right

now because your parents are calling you to be obedient all

the time and you're tired of it. Well, I'll tell you with your

Heavenly Father, it's not any different.

We need to grow. If we're going to grow with God,

we have to grow in obedience towards Him.

Well, what does that look like? At the end of Luke chapter 2, we

Luke 2 · chapter mention

get the only picture of Jesus between infancy and adulthood

and what Jesus shows us as a young man.

He's only 12 years old. He's a middle schooler, which is

like my favorite age group to hang out with.

Honestly. You'll know that if you see me

on Wednesday nights. But Jesus is middle schooler,

but he still teaches us that what obedience to God looks

like. And it looks like obedience and

listening, obedience and asking questions and obedience in

submission. Some of us are better at some of

those than others. But I think, like I said, young

Jesus, middle school Jesus gives us a pretty clear picture of

that. So that's what we're going to

look at today. We're going to look at Jesus as

a middle schooler and see what comes from that.

That is Luke chapter 2. If you have your Bibles, you can

Luke 2 · chapter mention

open those up to Luke chapter 2. It's towards the end of the

Luke 2 · chapter mention

chapter. It starts in verse 41 and it

goes through 52. Or you can take it on the screen

or there's Bibles nearby or open up your Bible app.

That's awesome too. You can highlight some things

that maybe you didn't notice before, but Luke chapter 2

Luke 2 · chapter mention

starting in verse 41. And we read this in Jesus name.

Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the

feast of the Passover. And when he was 12 years old

they went up according to custom.

And when the feast was ended they were returning.

The boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem.

His parents did not know it, but supposing him to be in the

group, they went a day's journey, but then began to

search for him among their relatives and acquaintances.

And when they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem,

searching for him. After three days they found him

in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and

asking them questions. And all who heard him were

amazed at his understanding and his answers.

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. And he said to them, Why were

you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be

in my Father's house? And they did not understand the

saying. He spoke to them.

And when he went, and he went down with them and came to

Nazareth, and he was submissive to them.

And his mother treasured up all these things in her heart.

And Jesus increased in wisdom, and in stature, and in favor

with God and with man. Here ends the reading of God's

Word. A little dry.

It's like it's winter or something.

Yeah, some of you were quite soggy coming in.

But anyway, here's the thing. What we're listening to and what

we're listening for really matters.

Let me share a short story with you to illustrate that point.

There are two friends walking down the street in New York

City, and it's busy and there's cars and there's honking,

there's traffic and there's just people all over the sidewalk.

It is just humanity on steroids, right?

That's New York City if you've never been there.

But one of the friends, he stops, he stops all of a sudden

and he looks at the other one. He says, did you hear that?

The other friend is like, what? The honking or the people or the

traffic or the noises or the alarms or what are you talking

about? And he said the chirping.

Did you hear the chirping? The other friend looks at him

like he has 2 heads because in the middle of New York City, why

would you hear chirping? So the first friend, he goes

over to some bushes and he just pulls them back a little bit

that are next to the sidewalk and there's a cricket in there

just chirping away. And the friend is like, why or

how would you have heard that amongst everything else going

on? And so the first friend goes,

I'll show you, watch this gets into his little pocket.

He's got a handful of change and he drops it on the cement.

Everybody around them stops and they look and he's like, see,

you can be trained to listen for certain things.

In our world, we are trained to listen for the wrong things.

I was trained to listen for nature.

And his friend was kind of amazed.

Well, consider then this young Jesus, just 12 years old, and

consider what he was listening to and what he was listening for

in this scene. 1st, just Jesus is listening to experts.

I'll describe the scene for you a little bit.

So what happens is during this time of year, what would happen

for about 3 days typically, is that the Sanhedrin would get

together in kind of an open forum conversation.

So you could think about maybe modern day, there's a bunch of

experts sitting along a table and there's an audience and

they're interacting with each other and with the audience and

all that kind of stuff. And the Sanhedrin, of course, is

made-up of of the top dogs of the scribes and the Pharisees

and the Sadducees. So these are all the smartest

people of the day. And so they're experts in their

field and they're having these conversations again, open forum

where people can interact. And that's interesting because

Jesus, with his new found freedom, he is broken away from

his parents and he's in the the city that at least at that time,

probably never really slept. He, he had all this freedom to

go do whatever he wanted. He could run around the city,

you could get in trouble. He could do all this kind of

stuff. But no, what does he decide to

do? He decides to stay in his

father's house in the temple. And he listens and he engages

with the thing that is most important to him, which is

speaking and, and hearing and listening about faith and about

God and all that he has commanded for us.

So that's Jesus, you know, perfect kid.

But, but here's the thing, we have to examine what Jesus is

listening for then because he's listening to experts, he's

engaging with that. That's fine.

But what is he listening for? He is listening for

understanding. He's listening for

understanding. And we know that because he asks

questions. We'll get to the whole question

thing in a minute, but he asks questions and, and the point of

him listening for understanding means that he listens with a, a

highly critical ear. Do you do that?

Do you listen with a critical ear to the things that are being

said around you? Because he is listening for

God's truth. He is listening for the word of

God, which is always true and right and good.

And so when he's not hearing that, what is he doing?

He's asking questions because that's what they did.

That's how they engaged in these big forum conversations often

times. And it's kind of interesting the

rabbi's, they would do that very thing instead of answering your

question in this open forum, they would ask you a question

back. And that's how Jesus is engaging

with them. He's, he's filtering these

things out as he's engaging with the crowd and as he's engaging

with the forum. And so I want to be very

practical here because I don't want to leave it 2000 years ago.

What should we take from that? What should we do with Jesus's

example as a 12 year old? What we can, what can we learn

from that? Well, first, Jesus is teaching

us to seek out wisdom and not and not just waste time with

mere opinion, but truly seek the wisdom that comes from God's

word. Now, if you go out to a little

bulletin board out there, there's this, there's this paper

printed out, and it's all about our statistics as a church from

the Bible app from about September until mid-december.

You know what we hit on that app, Not all of you use it.

That's OK. Sometimes some of you just read

your paper Bibles, you like that better.

But on that app, we hit I think 7154 daily check insurance in

less than four months. So that tells me something.

And it should tell us collectively something that

there is a sense of longing, a sense of wanting to hear an

expert word among us. Now, my goal, and it's a, it's a

personal goal for all of us. If you're using that app to read

your Bible, my goal would that would be that next year in 2026,

we hit 30,000 days checked in. Now, if you do the math on this,

you're like, we're shorts. We're only like 22,000 days.

If we, if we followed the, if we followed the math of what we did

this year, I think we can hit 30,000 days checked into the

Bible. And I think we can do that if we

start putting our faith 1st and we start listening to and

listening for expert words rather than listening to the

noise around us all the time. Because here's the thing just

like Jesus listened to the experts of his day with a

critical ear for the truth, we can do the same thing.

We can train ourselves to listen for the truth, to be sensitive

to it so that we know when the real article is present.

Because I know for sure, and and you probably feel this too, that

we are on a daily basis just absolutely bombarded with

pundits from social media or, or political pundits or even

religious pundits, and they're bombarding us every single day.

How are you filtering that? Ask yourself that question.

Are you filtering at all? Are you just taking it in

blindly? I would encourage you to stop

and think critically. How am I listening to, how am I

engaging this content that I'm receiving because it's all

coming in, but do I have the right filter for it?

Well, we get the right filter for it when we listen to the

Word of God. Then we can do what's really

important. We can start asking the right

questions. And that leads us to that second

point. Let me read verses 46 and 47

again. After three days, they found him

in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and

asking them questions. And all who heard him were

amazed at his understanding and his answers now stimulating

profound thinking. It absolutely starts with asking

questions. That's how that works.

Let me give you a little example of that.

And there's a book that CS Lewis wrote a long time ago and it's

called The Screw Tape Letters. OK, the, the point of the Screw

Tape Letters is that there is a senior devil advising a junior

devil on how to interact with his human subject.

Interesting, right? Well, the very first advice that

you'll find in the 1st chapter from Screw Tape, that's his

name. The senior devil Screw Tape

tells him this is how you interact best with your human,

your human little little guy that you're working with.

You keep him busy. You keep him real busy.

Don't give him time to think. Don't give him time to ask

questions. Instead, you want him focused on

the right now, what's in front of me, the next thing, Check

this box, Check this box. You're moving at 1000 miles an

hour every single day of your life because you got to get all

the things done all the time and you got to make everybody happy

all the time. And the senior devil advises

him, if you can do that with him, if you can keep him moving

and always thinking about just what's directly in front of him,

he'll never stop to ask questions because he'll always

just be moving towards the next thing.

It's an incredible, it's an incredible little book.

I would encourage you all to read it.

But here's the thing, Jesus does the exact opposite.

Think about it. He's in middle school, he's 12

years old and and he's lost and he doesn't panic.

He doesn't get freaked out. He doesn't go searching for his

parents and get more lost in the city.

No, he goes straight to his father's house and he starts to

engage in the word of God and he starts to ask questions.

The Lutheran Study Bible, it's it gives us this picture of

what's going on, and here's what it says.

In order to stimulate more profound thinking, the rabbi's

often responded to people's questions by posing their own

questions. Already as a child, Jesus was

able to engage the best religious minds in that way.

You see, what they're pointing out is that by being steeped in

God's Word, Jesus was able to ask and answer profound

questions, questions that move people beyond the daily grind of

have to do this, want to do this, and on and on and on.

Those questions sparked something and everybody around

him, it sparked the idea, What if there's more?

What if there's more to this life than just checking the next

box and doing the next thing? What if there's more?

What if God has a higher calling on my life?

We just sang that song. I was made for more.

That song is not about being egotistical.

Look how special I am. No, that song is about God is

asking you to ask the right questions, to start asking

society around you. Is this really what I'm called

to do? Is this is what the world tells

me I have to get done? Is that really the right way?

Let's start asking the question. It's been said that the devil,

if he can't make you bad, he can make you busy, right?

You've probably heard that if he can't make you bad, he'll make

you busy. And I absolutely believe that

saying, because we can get so busy that we never stop to

question all the priorities that the world is thrown at me.

All the things that social media and other things are saying, you

have to do this to be happy. You have to do this to live a

full life. You have to go there.

You have to see that. Are they right?

Are they right or is there something more?

Should I be questioning that? I absolutely should Because

friends, we have to be. And this is the big point of

this. We have to be obedient and

slowing down. We have to be obedient and

slowing down because otherwise you know what's going to happen.

Maybe you'll be sitting here next year at this same time and

you'll go, man, that went by fast.

I don't even know what happened in 2026.

It went by so fast. I was so busy, you know,

running, running on the on the, on the rabbit wheel that I

didn't even stop to question if my life was being lived out the

way that God is asking me to and lived out the way that God says.

As I live that way, as I live with him and his word and as I

live with people in his community, man, I can really

grow and I can and I can change you and I can do some things for

you that you never saw coming. I don't want to get to the end

of 2026 and wonder, did I not question everything that was

thrown in front of me? I learned a great lesson from a

professor at the seminary. His name was Doctor Eugene Beau.

And you would ask him a question and he would rarely ever give

you a straight answer, which was frustrating at times, but he

would just say why do you ask? Why do you ask?

The cool thing about putting that into your vocabulary is it

gets you to a deeper level with people.

It gets you to their heart because people will ask you

questions. They'll assume things about you.

They'll expect things from me, from you, and it's good to just

ask them the question. Why do you ask?

What? What?

Why do you want that from me? You know what you're doing when

you do that. You're getting past their

checklist and you're getting into their heart, and then you

have a real opportunity at that point to have conversations that

matter instead of just checking the boxes and moving through

life blindly. Friends, slow down, be obedient

to asking questions, and I bet you'll see your year change a

lot. Now, last thing here, obedience

and submission. In verse 48 through 51, it says

this. Oh, my gosh, I'm getting old.

Oh, it's getting bad. It's getting bad.

Somebody the other day, they were like, well, why don't you

just get bifocals? I know some of you have them.

I understand. I'm stubborn.

I'm really stubborn. I don't want to do it.

I don't want to do it. So I'm just going to do that for

now. Where was I?

48 through 51? Oh, yeah.

So here we go. 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.

Yeah, that's a problem. And he said to them, why are you

looking for me? That's a weird thing to say.

Did you, did you not know that I must be in my father's house?

And they did not understand the scene that he spoke to them.

And then when he went down with them, he went to Nazareth with

them and was submissive to them. Here's the thing, after, after

Mary and Joseph come down from the paralyzing fear of not just

losing their son, but losing the Son of God in the biggest city

that they're aware of, which is that's really something to do.

They started back home together and, and it and it reports that

this middle school Jesus was submissive.

I don't know a lot of submissive middle schoolers, and I work

with them a lot, but I'm glad Jesus was.

Now, I think if you're thinking critically, if you're asking

questions, here's a question that maybe you should be asking

of this text. Did Jesus sin when he failed to

keep up with the group that was traveling outside of the city?

Did he sin? Answer is no, but do you know

why he didn't? You should perk your ears for

this. You see, when here's the thing,

in this culture, in Jesus culture, when a boy was 12, this

is the year of preparation before he becomes a man.

Can you imagine calling a 13 year old boy a man?

In our society? I can't.

But maybe that's because of how we've raised them.

Maybe we've allowed, you know, adolescence to seep into the mid

20s and it's our fault. I think I could make that

argument, but I won't do that right now and right here.

Maybe that's a podcast thing at some point.

But anyway, when a boy was 12, he spent that year spending a

lot of extra time with his father.

Because what happens in that society is young men do what

their father does. That's what they do.

Whatever, whatever the family business is, that's what you do.

There is no, well, actually I was considering my options and I

think I'm going to no, that doesn't exist.

You do what your father does. And so in your 12th year, you're

going to spend a lot of extra time with him.

Well, in the unique case of the Son of God, he was being

perfectly submissive to his father.

How? By spending time in his father's

house, the temple, by listening and asking questions and

submitting to God the Father in worship.

So that means, friends, in this passage, Jesus is not arguing

with his earthly parents. He's not doing anything wrong.

He's doing exactly what he is supposed to be doing.

And here's what he's doing. He's simply reminding them as

they come back. He's like mom, dad, I am being

submissive. I am being submissive to my

father. My father is training me up in

the way that I should go. My father is teaching me what is

going to mean to be the man that I need to become my father.

I'm I'm spending time with him. I'm in his house.

I'm doing exactly what a 12 year old boy should be doing.

And here's the thing, Jesus was with his Father so that he could

become the man that his Father said he had to be and that He

could become the man that the world needed him to be.

You and I, in the entire world, we needed him to be submissive

to the Father in such a way that He would be willing to lose his

life for ours. And here's the thing, of course,

Mary and Joseph were freaked out that for three days they

couldn't find him. We'll Fast forward.

If you know the end of the story, at the end of Jesus's

life, that's exactly what happens.

Again, he lives this life. He performs all these miracles.

The disciples and all those who were really close to him, they

thought, this is it. We found the Messiah.

He's going to kick out Rome. He's going to make our lives

right again. He's going to fix all these

problems for us, and then He's dead.

And for three days they cannot find him because for three days

He lived in a tomb. After He took on all of our sin,

after He took on the cross that was supposed to be ours.

But He took on that cross, He took on that sin.

He took on those three days so that we might live, so that we

may not be lost. And here's the thing, friends,

we are lost like a child in our sin.

I don't know if you know that or not, but we are, we are lost to

our Father and he's searching for us.

He's asking for a relationship with us.

He's asking for us to come home. He's asking for us to be

present. And, and, and it's only because

of the cross of Jesus Christ that we can be found in our

lostness. Because he was lost for three

days, we can be found forever. Amen.

OK, last thing and then I'll let you go or I guess we'll sing

another song. It would be my prayer for all of

us that we don't even have to wait till the new year.

Don't do that to yourself. Start now.

Start being obedient to God in listening.

And you know what that's going to do.

That's going to create real wisdom in your life.

And because you've listened well to the Word of God, you've

listened to an expert word, you're going to then start

asking questions that you never asked before.

You will start questioning the priorities that this world is

trying to shove down your throat.

And that's going to make you weird.

That's going to make you weird. But as I've said from this stage

before, it's pretty fun to be weird.

It really is. You should try it sometime if

you're not. But then ultimately be found.

We get to be found in the gospel because Jesus was lost.

This is the great hope that we have, and this is the hope that

we take with us as we go. Let's pray.

Our Father in heaven, thank you for losing your life to save

ours. Lord Jesus, you decided you

decided to get lost and it's crazy.

You came down from heaven for us.

You left perfection and came into this broken, sinful world

for us. Father, I pray that that is not

lost on any of us. I pray that every single person

in this room and listening would understand that the only way to

be found inside grace, the only way to be found inside your love

and in your life is through your Son Jesus Christ.

Lord, let that idea, let that truth penetrate our hearts today

and forevermore that we might believe and come home to you.

Father, we pray all these things in Jesus name, Amen.

Thanks for listening to ERC Sundays.

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