THE BOY JESUS
LESSON FOR JUNIORS
Study Scripture: Ecclesiastes 3:1,7 & Luke 2:39-52
Lesson 6 July 11, 2020
Key Verse
“And the Child grew and became strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon Him.
Luke 2:40
INTRODUCTION
Everybody loves babies. They are so tiny and helpless and people like to take them up and hold them and hug them. Some babies are very special especially when people wait a long time to have a baby. In this Study Mary and Joseph had a special baby. God had promised many thousands of years before that there would be a special mother that would have a special child that would grow and be a model child. He would grow up, have a special ministry and do great things such as restoring sight to the blind, healing the sick, helping the poor to see this special light that God brought to them, and many other things.
Everyone in the nation of Israel wanted to be the mother of this special Child that would save all men. But God chose Mary as this mother, Mary and Joseph her husband would now have to raise this child in a godly fashion. They would have the responsibility to teach this new baby about everything that God wanted people to do. He would have to grow and learn how to be wise, caring, and compassionate.
Not many parents would be able to carry out that special job the way God wanted and so God was very careful in choosing the special parents. They had the great task of raising up the special beloved son of God.
Now many children do not know what they want to be, what job they would like to have. Even when many young people are in High school or College they are still trying to figure out what they would like to do and the job that they would like to perform. But in this case even when Jesus was a baby other people knew from the time of His birth who He was and what He would become. Luke 2 tells us all about that.
This story about the coming of the baby Jesus came right on time but no one knew when He would come. The book of Ecclesiastes had taught that for everything under heaven there is an appointed time. There are set boundaries and an appropriate and beautiful time for everything and there is a purpose for everything that happens. God has a fixed purpose and things might go one way or the other way but God’s will control everything for our benefit. That is why we have to learn wisdom so that we can do what is right in the time that God has chosen. God tells us that there is a time to break down and there is a time to heal and we have to follow the leading of God to determine the best way to live.
After Jesus was born and He began to grow up with the help of His godly parents under the guidance of the Holy Spirit Jesus had a lot of questions just like every other children have many questions.
Questions are a good thing for asking questions is how we learn and how we grow. When Jesus was 12 years old He went with His parents to Jerusalem to celebrate they Feast of the Passover. That was the time when the people of Israel celebrated God taking them out of slavery in Egypt and taking them safely into the promised land of Canaan. Jesus’ parents went every year to Jerusalem for this Festival. So we know they were a very godly couple, who were very totally committed to obey God’s Commandments.
Jesus’ parents went to the Feast with many other families and they all travelled together in a large caravan so that they would be safe from robbers. The people were all close and friendly and the children in the caravan would often go to stay with other families and nobody would worry about that.
But after a day of traveling Jesus’ parents did not see Jesus and when they went searching they found that He was not in the caravan. They were extremely worried and their hearts pounded. They dashed back- back to Jerusalem to look for Him. Can you imagine how worried they were? They had lost Jesus who the Angels had told them had a special purpose for coming down from heaven to earth.
After three days they found Jesus sitting in the Temple talking to the most learned and intellectual men in the nation, asking them questions and answering questions that they asked Him. These top class teachers were astounded at Jesus’ understanding and His intellect. They would have thought that Jesus was more than a genius. But Jesus wanted to learn and so He asked questions. He had come to the right place to learn about the Scriptures.
Jesus’ mother and father were only human and so they were upset. They asked Him, Son, why have you treated us this way? They made Jesus understand that they had been worried about Him and had been searching for Him. His mother seemed to have been particularly upset.
But Jesus simply told them that He was in the House of God where He belonged and He was learning and speaking about God. He had to be about the business of God. The Temple was a place where He would have to do a lot of His work. The fact is that He had to be about His Father’s business. He was now about 13 years old so according to Jewish culture He was a man. He had to start doing the work of God.
Jesus’ parents knew that He was a special young boy and they knew that He had a particularly special work to do. But they still did not seem to understand that it was coming to the time when He would have to do the work that His Father the Lord God in heaven wanted Him to do. He had to prepare Himself and so He had to learn as much about God as He could and the Temple was the right place for Him to be to learn now that He was growing up.
But Jesus knew that His mother and father had a job to do in looking after Him and He knew that they would worry about Him so He left the Temple and went home with them and did whatever they wanted him to do around the house.
The lesson for us is that we have to learn to love and obey our parents. But we also have to become wiser as we grow older and that means that we have to study more about God and find out exactly what work or role God had prepared for us.
That means that we have to spend more time learning from people who know more about God than we do so that we will get more wisdom and understanding for that would please God and our parents.
Remember therefore that Jesus was very special. But we are special too. God wants us to learn more and more about Him and become wiser and wiser.
God sometimes takes a long time to teach us and bring us to the place where we can do great work for Him. But remember that He is always there with us.
Do not be afraid to ask questions for that is the way that we learn about things that we do not know about.
Parents and teachers and others are available to help you so that you can understand more about yourself, the world, and God.