Call To Worship September 10 2017
Expository Thoughts on the Gospel of Luke
J.C. Ryle
Luke 2:41-52
JESUS AND HIS PARENTS AT THE PASSOVER
These verses should always be deeply interesting to a reader of the Bible. They record the only facts which we know about our Lord Jesus Christ during the first thirty years of His life on earth, after His infancy. How many things a Christian would like to know about the events of those thirty years, and the daily history of the house at Nazareth! But we need not doubt that there is wisdom in the silence of Scripture on the subject. If it had been good for us to know more, more would have been revealed…Let us, in the last place, draw from this passage, an example for all true Christians. We have it in the solemn words which our Lord addressed to His mother Mary, when she said to Him, “Son, why have you dealt with us thus?” “Know you not,” was the reply, “that I must be about my father’s business?” A mild reproof was evidently implied in that reply. It was meant to remind His mother that He was no common person, and had come into the world to do no common work. It was a hint that she was insensibly forgetting that He had come into the world in no ordinary way, and that she could not expect Him to be ever dwelling quietly at Nazareth. It was a solemn [reminder] that, as God, He had a Father in heaven, and that this heavenly Father’s work demanded His first attention.
The expression is one that ought to sink down deeply into the hearts of all Christ’s people. It should supply them with a mark at which they should aim in daily life, and a test by which they should try their habits and conversation. It should quicken them when they begin to be slothful. It should check them when they feel inclined to go back to the world. “Are we about our Father’s business? Are we walking in the steps of Jesus Christ?” Such questions will often prove very humbling, and make us ashamed of ourselves. But such questions are eminently useful to our souls. Never is a Church in so healthy a condition as when its believing members aim high, and strive in all things to be like Christ.