Is it not most striking that in that precious life, up to the moment of His entrance on His public ministry, through thirty years of hardship and trial unsullied by any wandering shadow or breath of evil, one thing only is known?
A veil like that which screened the Holiest of Israel hangs before that cottage door and we dare not lift it. The first utterance of His childish wonder as His eyes opened on earth and sky–the first movement of His lips in prayer–the first simple sayings or questions as He listened at His mother’s knee to the stories of Joseph, Samuel and David, all these one might well wish to know.
In the poverty and lowliness of His birth He touched our nature at its lowest point and passed at a step into the innermost circle of its humiliation. No rich or delicate veil screened His indwelling glory, but the coarse drapery of earth. To few was it given to discern the matchless beauty of the Plant of Heaven, which was to grow up as a root out of a dry ground. Wisely has this been left in impenetrable mystery, that we may grasp with undivided attention the work which He came on earth to do.
Luke alone has preserved for us that lovely incident when, at the age of twelve, the first words that fell from His lips were audible to us. The record was perhaps designed to mark a crisis in His life. The custom of the parents of Jesus was to go up to Jerusalem every year at the time of the Passover. On this occasion Jesus went with them.
Deeply must His heart have been moved all through the stages of that long journey as they passed on their southward way. Every town and hamlet sent forth its band of pilgrims, the numbers enlarging and gathering strength as it flowed on like some mighty river, its morning and evening song of praise swelling into majestic fulness and grandeur. What thoughts were His as He anticipated beholding the Holy City, the royal seat of David, the City of Prophets, Priests and Kings, and chief of all its splendor, the Temple, once hallowed by the divine Presence, and in which still lingered some dim reflection of its ancient glory? Surely such thoughts must have filled Him with a solemn joy and stirred His pure and fervid spirit to its deepest depths.
Now the weary travelers have climbed the last brown ridge and halted on the summit with the shout of triumph: “Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem!” With what emotion He must have caught the first glimpse of the city cresting its battlemented steeps and wearing its coronal of towers.
Silent and solitary though in the crowd, He passed through the gates and heard the murmurs of the Passover multitude as they surged up the stairs of the Temple, crossing the holy thresholds with unsandaled feet, and saw the whiterobed priests and Levites ministering at the altar. What rays of the essential glory shone from His holy soul as He contemplated His work of obedience and self-sacrifice at Calvary, seen in the sacrifice upon the perpetual altar fire.
The paschal rites have now ended and while the multitude of pilgrims pass out of the gates on their homeward way, the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem. His desire to linger is significant; a new call to that mysterious work to which God, His Father was calling Him. He again seeks the quietude of the Temple. Two days have passed and we find Him “sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions.” He listens for a time and then speaks, asking a question. Perhaps these venerable men are expounding some sacred text. Could it be a prediction of the coming Messiah and His glorious reign?
Who can tell? His questions seemed to come from one beyond His years. Notice how carefully the Scripture speaks: it does not speak of learning from them nor of answering their questions. Reverently sitting there we see One, who, fitting for His age, hears what these elders have to say andd answers when addressed as Samuel might have conversed with Eli, and Timothy with Paul. Yet this is so different in mold, for here is the Eternal Son, the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. No breath of sin or error had ever dimmed the clear mirror of His intellect, and the essential holiness of His nature vivifies every word uttered with its own sublime power.
What a moment of motherly relief it must have been for Mary when, after her long and diligent search, she found Jesus sitting in the midst of the doctors. Her pent-up feelings burst forth unrestrainably giving a tinge of complaint to her words, “Son, why hast Thou thus dealt with us? Behold thy father and I have sought Thee sorrowing?” She speaks, to Him as a child, asserting a mother’s right. But not as a child, does He speak to her, for since last she saw Him another right has been asserted over Him to which hers must give way. A voice within has bidden Him tarry by the altar.
To her fond rebuke He replies, “Why is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” Thus gently releasing Himself from the tie of earthly parentage as paramount, He points to a higher claim, reminding them of a holier Sonship and repeating for the first time on earth, the voice of service that had sealed the eternal covenant of God. On this eventful day, these words spoken must have gone deep into the heart of the wondering mother, and shadows from an unknown mysterious future already troubled her.
“I must be about my Father’s business.” So saying, He passed through the porches of the Temple into that broad fair world His hands had created to the poor dwelling at Nazareth, the dusty highways of Galilee, the lonely desert, the bleak mountainside, the wrangle and jar of city crowds, the agony of the garden, the judgment-hall, the cross–all were in the troubled vista before Him. He goes down with them to the Galilean dwelling as a son with a cheerful, loving heart, submitting Himself to His earthly parents. Trained amid the privations of Joseph’s dwelling, He trod on foot the rough pathway exposed to the dust and heat of everyday life.
Most wisely was it thus ordained, “for in all things it behoved Him to be made like unto His brethren,” to know the stern and bare realities of life–to become through a more complete experience, the most human of men–not in hermit sequestration, not in visionary reverie, but in patient endurance and sore travail.
Truly the vision of the coming Messiah has tarried, but now the day is breaking; the first faint steak of dawn is seen, the light though dim and gray begins to appear, peak after peak catches the quickening gleam, for He the Child of Promise is come, the seed of Abraham in whom all the families of the earth are to be blessed–the Prophet raised up among His brethren, at whose feet Moses and all the prophets must bow.