So we're going to have two readings
today. We're going to be reading Psalm
91 first, and then we will go to Luke chapter two for just
a couple of verses. But as we are thinking about
Psalm 91, or as we are thinking about Luke chapter two, really,
I have always enjoyed the thought that Psalm 91 is speaking about
the Lord Jesus Christ growing up. growing from a child into
a man. Now, whether that's your appreciation
and understanding of Psalm 91 or not, I wouldn't argue with
you, but it's always been something that has intrigued me, that these
are the words of the Lord as he is growing from a boy to a
man. Let's just read them together.
Psalm 91. Verse 1. He that dwelleth in
the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow
of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, he is
my refuge and my fortress, my God, in him will I trust. Surely he shall deliver thee
from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.
He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings
shalt thou trust. His truth shall be thy shield
and buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid for
the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flyeth by day,
nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor for the destruction
that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy
side, and ten thousand at thy right hand, but it shall not
come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou
behold and see the reward of the wicked, because thou hast
made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most high thy habitation. There shall no evil befall thee,
neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. For he shall
give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their
hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. Thou shalt tread
upon the lion and adder, the young lion and the dragon shalt
thou trample under feet. Because he hath set his love
upon me, therefore will I deliver him. I will set him on high because
he hath known my name. He shall call upon me and I will
answer him. I will be with him in trouble.
I will deliver him and honour him. With long life will I satisfy
him and show him my salvation. And then Luke chapter 2. Luke
chapter 2. and we'll read from verse 39.
Just a couple of verses. Luke chapter 2 verse 39. And we're speaking about Mary
and Joseph and their time in Jerusalem when they went to make
an offering, a sacrifice, and to present Jesus at the temple
just after he was born. And we read in verse 39, And
when they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord,
they returned into Galilee to their own city. and the child
grew and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom and the grace
of God was upon him. Amen. May the Lord bless these
readings to us. Luke repeatedly reminds us in
this chapter of the importance the law of Moses played in the
lives of Mary and Joseph. Five or six times he mentions
the law and fulfilling the religious obligations of the law. And this is perhaps noteworthy
because Luke himself seems to have been a Gentile and not a
Jew. So that the prominence that Luke
gives to Mary and Joseph's careful attendance to and fulfillment
of the demands of the law suggests at the very least that faith
and worship played a large part in the lives of this couple.
And we're going to read actually in the next study that we have
next week, God willing, how together they, Mary and Joseph, went up
every year to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Passover. Now, men
Jewish men were required to do this and actually there were
two other annual feasts that they were required to attend,
Pentecost and Tabernacles, but it seems not to have been insisted
upon for women. and that Mary was particular
concerning sacrifices and purification implies that she understood something
by faith of the true spiritual significance of both of these
rites. But I think also that Luke's
emphasis on the law also implies something else. It implies that as he was writing
his gospel, he understood the spiritual and the theological
significance of Christ being born under the law in order to
suitably represent and redeem those of God's elect who were
condemned by that law. sinners, as fallen men and women
of the line of Adam. Now let us just take a step back
here and think of the context if we may. Luke and Paul were
fellow travellers on fellow evangelists and fellow preachers. Throughout
the Acts of the Apostles and in numerous times in Paul's letters,
he refers to Luke. Luke is the beloved physician,
so that the evangelist that travelled with Paul and the author of the
third gospel is one and the same people. Luke. Now Luke had likely
been converted under Paul's ministry and he learned his doctrine from
Paul. Paul, when he is explaining the
believers' freedom from the law of Moses to the churches that
were assailed in those early apostolic times by the Judaizers,
wrote concerning the fact that Christ had fulfilled all of the
law, that Christ had been born under the law and that he had
fulfilled it in its entirety. So that, for example, we spent
some time a few months ago thinking about the little book of Galatians
and to the Galatians in chapter four and verses four and five,
the Apostle Paul wrote, But when the fullness of the time was
come, this is Paul writing now, but when the fullness of the
time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made
under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that
we might receive the adoption of sons. So that Paul in his
gospel, Paul in his ministry, Paul in his active preaching
against the Judaizers who were causing so much trouble in the
apostolic churches. referred to this point about
the coming of Christ, the birth of Christ, born of a woman, born
under the law. Exactly the very thing that Luke
is now historically recording for the benefit of Theophilus,
who appears to be a Gentile as well as Luke. So here's where
I'm coming to. I came a long way round of doing
it, but I suspect that Luke was happy to draw attention to the
Lord Jesus Christ's subjection and obedience to the law, and
ultimately to his fulfilment of it. in all of its aspects
in the context of the liberty from the law that Christ has
gained for us and that Luke was happy to emphasise that whenever
the opportunity arose. which it did here in the context
of all the ways in which Mary, Mary Ann Joseph, but Mary in
particular, made sure that she was purified and that she had
fulfilled the obligations of the law in the context of Christ's
birth. And I think it's interesting
It's interesting to me, at least, the different ways that the gospel
writers report one thing in their history of the life of Christ
and pass over another. And here, Luke tells us in the
verse before us, he says that And when they had performed all
things according to the law of the Lord, they returned into
Galilee to their own city, Nazareth. Just when that return took place,
when this return to Nazareth took place, it's not actually
easy to say when that was. It doesn't seem likely that they
went from Bethlehem, where Jesus was born, to Nazareth, and then
up to Jerusalem, where they met Simeon and Anna in the temple. it would be more likely that
they went straight to Jerusalem from Bethlehem to offer sacrifices
and to fulfil the days of Mary's purification. That they'd gone
straight to Jerusalem from Bethlehem where Mary had given birth. Nor does it appear as though
they go now directly to Galilee from Jerusalem? Or if they did,
they very soon went back to Bethlehem again. So it's not easy to work
out the timings of what's going on here. And I say that because
it was in Bethlehem that the wise men found Mary and Joseph
and the child in a house some two years after they had gone
to Jerusalem to make the sacrifices and the purification. And it
was in Bethlehem, by divine warning, that Matthew tells us the young
family fled into Egypt and there remained until Herod's death
sometime later. After that, they came back into
the land of Israel and at that time, it appears, they went into
Galilee and dwelt in Nazareth. for which reason Nazareth is
here called their own city because that's where they lived. But
that might have been some two, four, five, six years after them
being in Jerusalem at the time of the sacrifice and Mary's purification. So that what we see here is that
Luke does not mention the visit of the wise men at all. He doesn't
mention the journey into Egypt at all. He doesn't even mention
the murder by Herod of the infant children. Now, perhaps this is
because That crime was more prophetically meaningful and memorable to Matthew's
Jewish audience rather than Luke's Gentile readers and Theophilus
to whom he was writing. But it's interesting to see the
differences in the ways that the gospel writers write their
history of the Lord's life. What Luke does tell us in this
verse, I think is also very interesting and I dare say again, it is doctrinally
important because we read in verse 40, with respect to the
Lord Jesus, the child grew, he waxed strong in spirit, He was
filled with wisdom and the grace of God was upon him. These four
things are said with respect to the Lord. And here we have
evidence from Luke and confirmation from Luke of the Lord's true
human nature. Sin accepted. The boy Jesus was
just like any other child. He had a body like ours. It required time to grow and
to come to maturity. He was not created as a mature
man like Adam was created, but he was born into the world where
he grew and developed under the same conditions and constraints
as dare I say ordinary men and women like us. I hope you don't
mind me calling you ordinary. We're told that the Lord waxed
strong in spirit, or he increased in spirit, which shows him to
have also had a true soul like us. It seems he had a strong
intellect. It seems he had a keen ability
to learn and he had kindness and affection, what we might
today call character. We learn that he was filled with
wisdom or knowledge as boy and man concerning the world around
him. But again, this does not mean
his divine wisdom as God, but it applies to his natural capacity
or his human traits, his human characteristics of being able
to learn quickly and to apply this skill of his learning judiciously
and sensibly and prudently in his dealings with others. And all that said, it doesn't
appear as if the Lord, during this time, had a particularly
broad education. Because we learn later that the
Jews marvelled at the doctrine of the Lord Jesus, and they asked
this question, how knoweth this man letters, having never learned? The Lord Jesus probably was working
as a carpenter from a very young age. And I'm speculating a little
bit here, but when I say that the absence of Joseph from the
history of the Gospels, from the time that Jesus is mentioned
at the age of 12 going to Jerusalem to the feast, may suggest that
the Lord was the breadwinner of his family from an early age. And the fourth thing that we
learn from this verse with respect to what Luke is telling us here
is that the grace of God was upon him. That is the blessings
of God by way of care and protection and guidance and help and providence. were upon the Lord. It wasn't that he was just abandoned,
but indeed the angels were protecting the Lord during all of these
years of his childhood, and we would expand that to his adolescence,
his teenage years, and into his young adulthood, such as the
examples that we read of in Psalm 91. And again, all of this information
from Luke tends to reinforce our understanding of Christ's
true human nature and its likeness and its union to our own nature. The reason for that is because
that that human nature was essential and necessary to Christ. if he
was to stand in the exact state and the exact place of that nature
of God's elect whom he came to redeem. Christ had to have the
same nature, to be the same as us in every way except without
sin. That's why we later read, it
behooved him to be made like unto his brethren in all things. And he was made in the likeness
of sinful flesh, i.e., with our flesh, with our nature, except
for sin. So in this way, Luke is stressing
the suitability of Christ to be the substitute and representative
for us. Don't ever think that the Lord
did not feel all the troubles that we feel. He did. Only they were without sin, but
he still felt them. To what extent, I don't know. But he was tired. He was hungry. He was thirsty. He was sad. He felt pain. He sweated when
he worked. He bled when he was cut. And he wept when he was grieved. To serve our need, to be our
representative, the Lord must walk in our path and experience
our constraints and bear our troubles, though all the time
without sin. Living all the time, uprightly
before his Father and under the law as the spotless Lamb of God. In the Garden of Eden, the curse
that was placed on Adam brought frailty, it brought labour and
it brought death upon mankind. And so to be our substitute and
our surety, the Lord Jesus Christ had to experience and endure
frailty, toil, and ultimately death. In all his condescension,
in his shame, and in his humiliation, the Lord Jesus Christ proved
himself to be worthy to minister to his people, to serve their
need, to fulfil the great purpose of his coming and the task that
was laid upon him as mediator and redeemer of his people. This
is our Lord. This is our Saviour. This is
Jesus of Nazareth. Amen.