Thank you. I want to begin this message in Luke 1. I want to read you a verse out of Luke chapter 1. And my desire is Mary's desire here in Luke the first chapter and verse 46. I'll just use this as a A kind of a jumping off place, you might call it, because I want to join with her.

And Mary said, she said, my soul doth magnify the Lord. I want from my soul to magnify the Lord. I want to magnify with my lips, certainly. And I want to magnify Him in this message. Absolutely. And I want to magnify Him in my life, in my manner of living. Absolutely. But I want especially to magnify the Lord from my innermost being.

You see, when she said, my soul, my soul doth magnify the Lord, that's magnifying Him, honoring Him, adoring Him, from deep within, from very center of your emotions, the center of your volition, the center of your being, your soul. I want to magnify him. She said, my soul. So this is a personal matter. I can't magnify the Lord for you. And you cannot magnify the Lord for me. It's very personal. My soul. My soul. Doth magnify.

The word magnify, if we broke it up, the first part of it, it has to do, well, literally it would be mega. To make great. To make great. I'll give you an illustration. Most of us are all past school age, but you remember when we used to have a little something put under a microscope. Could have been a dust mite. I don't know why that comes to mind, but it does. Say a dust mite, and it's underneath the microscope, and the microscope makes it greater than it actually is. It appears great. But you're not making the dust mite or whatever else it is that you're looking under the microscope at. You're not making it any bigger or greater than it is. It just appears that way.

We cannot make God greater than He is. But if the Spirit of God would enable us, He will appear to us to be greater. than we can possibly comprehend. She said, my soul doth magnify the Lord.

Many years ago, Martin Luther said to an acquaintance of his, and his name was Erasmus, sometimes a friend, sometimes an enemy, because Erasmus believed in salvation by works. But Martin Luther said to him, to Erasmus, your thoughts of God are too human. I mean, too low. And I know this, of all of us, our thoughts of God are not as high, not as great, not as glorious as they ought to be. In our innermost being, let us magnify the name of the Lord.

As I said before here in the second chapter of the verses that I read, all we know about our Lord's youth, His childhood, is just this one passage of Scripture. The Spirit of God has in wisdom hidden things that we would be curious to know regarding the upbringing, the lifestyle, the home, the work, the chores that our Lord Jesus had to do. The Spirit of God has hidden those things from us. The Bible is not a book of the history of Jesus Christ. But it is a book of His story as the Redeemer, as the Savior.

You see, there are a lot of things about the Lord Jesus that, though they would be of great interest to us, would not lead us to further understand the reason why he came into this world in the first place. The angel Gabriel talked to Mary and said, his name shall be Jesus. And the same angel spoke to Joseph and said, you call his name Jesus when he's born. Some of the relatives may want him to be called Joseph the second, perhaps, or some name like that. No, you call him Jesus. And here's the reason, for he shall save his people from their sins.

He has a people. They're the people God in covenant grace gave to him before the world ever began. They're his people, his people by gift, his people by election. These are His people. He's coming to save His people. How is He going to do that? Not by being born, though His birth was necessary, but He would save His people by His death. That's why He was born. Hebrews 2 says He was born for the suffering of death. God joined Himself to our humanity, but God can't suffer. God can't feel pain. God cannot die. But the God-man felt pain, and he suffered, and he died. He died that God might be a just God, a righteous God, a holy God, and yet justify, pronounce forgiven and righteous those in whose stead Christ died.

He was a real man. And here in Luke chapter 2, we find this young man of 12 years of age going with Joseph and Mary to Jerusalem. This is one of the feasts that the young men had to go to when they turned 13, 13 years old in a day. Our Lord's only 12. But Joseph and Mary felt it necessary that he go with them. In fact, it wasn't even mandatory for Mary to go. She didn't have to attend especially the three great feasts. Joseph did, but this would give us some indication of Mary's attitude toward God. She wanted to worship. She wanted to be in the house of God, the temple. And so she goes with Joseph and perhaps to prepare him for the next year when he would go as a 13-year-old lad and do the bar mitzvah. Bar means son of. Mitzvah means of divine law. Our Lord Jesus would have done that at age 13 in one day. But he goes now, I'm sure because they said, now Jesus, we're going to Jerusalem to worship God.

Parents, listen up. As Joseph and Mary took Jesus to worship God, you bring your children. That's very important. Doesn't say they left him in a hole. Or you play with your toys while we're gone. We're going to worship God. No, we'll all go together. Oh, what a blessing it is when families gather under the sound of the word of God to worship our Lord, to hear of Christ Jesus, the only Savior. And I encourage children to come. and participate. When we read the Word of God, you read the Word of God. When we sing, you sing. All of us together as a congregation. So our Lord Jesus goes with them.

Of Him, we know this. He's the only Savior of sinners. And every step that He took, had been marked out for him from old eternity. And he did what he wanted to do. I'm sure that Joseph and Mary said, get your things ready. We're going to be gone for a few days. We're going to be there for the Passover. And then the seven days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, we're going to be there in Jerusalem for eight years, and it's going to take us several days to get there, so you've got to pack some extra clothes. And probably Mary said, we'll stop by a brook or something, and I'll wash some clothes on the way. But we're going to worship God. Dads and moms, say to your children, we're going to worship God. Get yourself ready now. Here we go. We go.

So they went on their journey. And typically, they traveled in caravans. And as, say, Joseph and Mary and Jesus, as they got closer to Jerusalem, other families would join. They'd go a little further, and other people would join. Before you know it, there'd be a whole lot of people in this caravan for safety and for fellowship. If you ever read the Jewish historian Josephus, he said that on a typical Passover celebration, there was between two and a half and three million, two and a half and three million people in and around Jerusalem. So we're talking about a lot of people going now. Because it's mandatory for all the men and for all the young men age 13 and above. And so they travel. And this one who is only 12 years of age, know this, he's our only hope for everlasting life.

But he didn't dress different from anybody else. Not in his youth and not in his adult ministry. He didn't stand out from the crowd by his appearance. Preachers today wear collars or robes or something that sets them apart. There are several men here this morning who dress like I do, wear a necktie. We're not trying to stand out. We're not trying to appear to be above you. I'm one of you.

You see, the Lord Jesus at age 12 years, when he went to Jerusalem to the temple, there'd be a bunch of other boys there at 12 years of age. But there was something about him that was very, very different. You know, when our babies are little, we say, it's going to be a perfect baby. And then the glass breaks. And then you realize, well, I didn't get the perfect one. But he was perfect. He always did those things that pleased Joseph and Mary. And more than that, he always did those things that pleased God.

So here he goes to the temple. And I know they didn't have to say, now get ready now, we've got to go. He would have been ready. Because even then, as he told Mary, he was about his father's business. He was about his father's business before the world began. And when he was born in the manger in Bethlehem, he was about his father's business. He came here on business. What was his business? To save sinners. That's why he came. Not to help us save ourselves. And though He was the perfect example, He didn't come to just set an example for us. He came to save. He came to redeem. He came to reconcile us to God. He's the sinner's only hope.

And here He goes with Joseph and Mary into Jerusalem. The Passover comes and goes, and of course, the Passover feast, that's a picture of Christ. Paul says in 1 Corinthians, Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. He is the Lamb of God. In Egyptian bondage, that's the situation of the Israelites hundreds and hundreds of years before this. God ordained that he would bring them out of that bondage. And God set aside a day, Passover day, and gave instructions about the lamb that each family was to take. If it was a very small family, they could share a lamb with their neighbor. But the lamb had to be a male of the first year, perfect, pure, no blotches, nothing wrong with it. Keep it up four days, kill it, shed the blood, catch the blood in a basin, take some hyssop, kind of like a sponge, and go outside and mark the outside of the door on the two side posts and over the upper post. And then they'd go back in, the lamb was to be roasted, and then they'd eat the roasted lamb with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.

The lamb, the lamb that was roasted was for them. The bread was for them. Christ, the bread of life. Christ, the lamb of God, feed on him, believe on him. But know this, that blood on the doorpost, that's for God. No human eye saw that. God said, when I see the blood, I'll pass over you.

Here are two vital truths you can learn from that. Number one, substitution. That male lamb that died of the first year, he died in the stead of the firstborn child. No death of a lamb means the death of the firstborn child. And that, my friend, is substitution. Christ died in the stead of his people. And then there's satisfaction. It's what God demanded. The wages of sin is death. but the gift of God's eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. And so, the blood was shed. God said, when I see the blood, I'll pass of you. The lamb's for us to enjoy. The life's blood, that's for God. And all that's pictured.

Passover day and then the seven days of unleavened bread. So all of that winds up. Pack up your stuff. We're going home. And so everybody packed up. Now, if Josephus is right, any of you, I know you've got Josephus, Ron does, maybe some of the rest of you, I don't know, but you read him, he goes in pretty good detail about it. And he was a reputable writer. back in those days, historically, historically. They'd all pack up and go head back home. Joseph and Mary, they head out maybe in a wagon or riding a donkey or I don't know, but they head back and I remember two and a half, three million people. That's a pretty big crowd and they're all finding the exits, and going home, rejoicing. We've worshipped the Lord.

And so, traditionally, when a big caravan of people was walking, some riding on maybe mules or whatever, the women and the children were up front. And then the men and the older boys were in the back. I don't know this for a fact, but maybe Mary thought Jesus is back there with Joseph. That seems reasonable. And Joseph must have thought, well, Jesus is up there with his mother. So I ain't worried about him. I don't know how it was. But somehow or another it happened, but it happened in the providence of God. So they said, well, it's time to stop. And a whole bunch of them stopped. And they set up camp. And the women start pulling the food out. And then they miss somebody. Have you seen Jesus and Joseph? No, I thought he was with you. Honey, I thought he was with you. Oh, no. We have lost Jesus.

Pause right there. That's what's happened to modern day religion. They've lost the true Lord Jesus Christ, but they don't miss him. That's a sad situation, you know that? Talk about it, use His name. But I don't hear Him talking about He's the sovereign King, that He does His will in the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay His hand. I hear them saying things like, Jesus needs you, Jesus wants you. If you'll just let Him, He'll do wonderful things for you. That's what I hear. That's the wrong Jesus.

But they missed him. And I'm sure like any mother or stepfather, they were frantic, filled with terror. And I'm sure that Mary said something like this, I've lost the Son of God. Where is my son? Where is God's son? Have you seen him? Have you seen him? Nobody's seen him. This is the Lamb of God. This is the great Redeemer. This is Emmanuel. This is Messiah. I've lost the Messiah. Can you imagine how she just went to pieces? And so they slept as best they could. And the next morning they packed up and they headed right back to Jerusalem. Full day's journey. Got there, had to find a place to stay. They're looking everywhere. And then the third day, they go into the temple. There he sat. There he sat.

You know, it says in verse 44, This is back when they were missing him on their way home, but they supposing him to have been in the company when a day's journey. That was a critical mistake. They supposed he was with them. You find that word used one time, one more time sort of in this way, and that's in John chapter 20, when our Lord Jesus had risen from the grave and Mary Magdalene met somebody that she supposed was the gardener. She saw the Savior, but she supposed that he was the gardener. Well, that was a mistake too, but this is a really critical one here.

You who are here this morning, you who are watching, can it be that you only suppose he's with you? Maybe you've been wrong. Have you seen his glory? Have you seen his majesty by faith? Do you perceive him to be the true prophet, priest, and king? Or do you just suppose he's with you because you use his name every once in a while?

Well, in verse 44, watch this. Kind of in the third line in my Bible, they sought him. This is when they're back out there at the camp. They sought him. Verse 46, they found him. You see that? They sought him and then they found him. And you'll not find him until you seek him. The Lord said, you shall seek me and find me when you search for me with what? All your heart, not this heart, but your innermost being.

They found him. Well, he was in there asking questions, answering questions, and people were astonished. In verse 48, when they saw him, they were amazed. And his mother said to him, son, why hast thou dealt with us? Why have you thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing. And here comes a loving rebuke. How is it that you sought me? Do you not understand I must be about my father's business?

He's always been about his father's business. His father's business is to seek and to save that which was lost. He was right where God would have him to be.

Draw a few conclusions and I'll let you go.

Number one, this wouldn't have happened to them if they had kept their eye on Jesus. Can you take anything away from that? Keep the eyes of your soul focused on the Lamb of God. Look to the Lamb of God. See Him ever before you.

And know this, their mistake brought them great sorrow and anguish of hearts, Sometimes it's the people of God. Isaiah talks about believers walking in darkness and just can't see. And there were children of God that just couldn't see. And maybe I'm speaking to somebody who's a child of God and you feel like you're walking in darkness. I've got off track. Oh, may God give you a fresh revelation of the glory of Christ Jesus.

And always remember that the Savior is perpetually about His Father's business. He came seeking to save that which was lost. He accomplished that. He's gone back to heaven. He's guiding us by His providence. He's ruling and reigning over all things.

And if you're seeking the Lord Jesus this morning, you're in a good place. Because this is where He's preached. This is where we worship Him. Somebody told me, Not too long, I said, well, I'm trying out several different churches. I said, well, your search has come to an end. But apparently they weren't satisfied with what they heard. Somebody else told me not too long ago they visited with us and said, you're going to get tired of seeing me here. I'm going to be here at every service. I think she lost our address.

If you're hungry, come and dine. If you want to hear the truth, come and listen. If you want to know about Christ and Him crucified, buried and risen again and exalted, come and worship. Like the hymn writer said, oh come, let us adore Him.

Let's sing a closing song. I'll get you to take your hymn books.