79

SERMON VII.

JESUS IN OBSCURITY,

ST. LUKE ii. 46.

"And it came to pass, that after three days they found Him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions."

THE few verses read this morning as the gospel for this Sunday ought to be esteemed very precious, for they contain the one only account which we have of about thirty years of the life of the Redeemer of the world,

"What! I hear some one say, 66 our blessed Saviour twenty-eight years in the world, and nothing more recorded of His history during this time than what we find in this day's gospel! This surely cannot be. There must be some mistake here. It cannot be that our blessed Lord, God and man in one person, could have been living all these years in obscurity. He must have been preaching at least for many of these years, and we cannot but have some of His teaching left for our instruction." No : preach during these years He assuredly did not-that we know for a certainty; for when He afterwards did begin to preach in the very town in which He had been brought up, some short time after He

had entered upon His ministry, the people who had known Him all His life were astonished. They had never heard Him before. They asked, "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary; and his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence hath this man this wisdom? Whence, then, hath this man all these things?" (Matthew xiii. 55, 56; Mark vi. 3.) But some one may say, 66 It may be He was not able to preach; perhaps it was given to Him to preach such sermons as the Sermon on the Mount when the Holy Ghost descended upon Him at His baptism!" But neither can this be received for a moment, for there is one thing told of Him during these first years of His life-one only thing that the Holy Ghost has seen fit to record for our learning; and this one thing shows how able He would have been from His early youth to have preached publicly to His countrymen if such had been the will of His Father. This one incident of Christ's life is His disputation with the doctors in the temple, recorded in the Gospel for this morning. "Now His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover. And when He was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem after the custom of the feast. And when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem; and Joseph and His mother knew not of it. But they, supposing

Him to have been in the company, went a day's journey, and they sought Him among their kinsfolk and acquaintance. And when they found Him not, they turned back again to Jerusalem, seeking Him. And it came to pass, that after three days they found Him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions; and all that heard Him were astonished at His understanding and answers.

I shall afterwards dwell upon the meaning and purpose of this incident: suffice it to say here, in passing, that it is clear that our Lord manifested by it His perfect ability to preach God's law, (if such had been His Father's will,) from His twelfth year. He who then commanded the attention of the Jewish doctors in the chief seat of their learning and religion, could well have kept the simple folk of Nazareth hanging on His lips. It was to fulfil His Father's will, then, that He kept for the first thirty years of His life in strict privacy, not even preaching in the synagogues.

Well, but during this time did our Lord do no mighty works? No, not one. There is no miracle recorded in the gospels as done by Him till He turned the water into wine at the marriage feast in Cana of Galilee. Now, was He not God all this time? Yes, there never was a moment from His very conception in which His manhood had existed separate from His

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Godhead.

How is it, then, that we have no account of wonders wrought by Him in His youth and early manhood? Because it was the Father's will that He should spend thirty years unknown and unnoticed, bearing the inconveniences and humiliations of a lowly humble lot, like any other poor man living in a small town.

Now, some presumptuous men in an early age of the Church were dissatisfied with the fact of our Lord having spent so many years in retirement without doing any wonderful work, veiling His glory, and looking like any other good and holy poor man; and so they were wicked enough to forge certain false accounts of Christ's infancy and youth, in which He is made to do all manner of childish miracles; but these stories are their own confutation. The miracles ascribed to our Lord bear all the marks of folly as well as falsehood. They are ridiculous and dishonourable to Him as the holy, humble, obedient, forbearing child. I merely mention them, to show how unable men are to improve on the word of God; how its seeming deficiencies are better than man's knowledge, for the greatest wonder of all is, that the eternal Son of the Father should pass so many years of His life in an obscure private station. This teaches us, if we will but listen to it, far more than the fullest account of our Lord's early life would have done. He was a private person

for thirty years, and He lived as such an one, and the omission of all account of this part of His life is in perfect accord with this. There is no account of Him, just as there would be no account of any other poor man in such circumstances. All we are told is that He lived with His parents, and was subject to them, and that He "increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man."

Before we begin to draw the needful and obvious lesson from this, it may be well to say a few words respecting Christ's disputing with the doctors in the temple. I do not think that its meaning can be realized till we understand aright the words of Christ. "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" The most probable meaning of the original is, "Wist ye not that I must be in my Father's house ? "*

The narrative in the gospels is given very briefly indeed, and if we may be allowed to conjecture, the accompanying circumstances were something of this sort. We know that Jewish youths, when about twelve years of age, were taken to the temple to be examined, just as our children are examined for confirmation, when they are supposed to understand the nature of the vows made for them in their baptism. Our Lord was taken in due course

* Such is the primary meaning of the Greek, and so it is rendered by the Syriac, the oldest version of the New Testament.