01-05-2025

“LOOKING FOR JESUS? LOOK WHERE HE PROMISES TO BE”

Text: Luke2:40-52

Sunday January 5th, 2025 – Christmas 2

Trinity – Creston/Mount Ayr

Grace, mercy, and peace is yours from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!

Our text for this Second after Christmas is from Luke 2:40-52

Let Us Pray: Dearest Jesus, send your Holy Spirit that we may seek you where you promise to be and understand that you have found us and continue to come to us with your gifts. Amen.

Dear Fellow Redeemed in Christ:

Our Gospel from Luke is quite fitting for the first Sunday of the new calendar year. After we read that baby Jesus “grew and became strong, filled with wisdom. And the favor of God was upon him” (v 40), we learn that his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover.

In Exodus 12, when God instituted the Passover, he tells Moses, “This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you” (Ex 12:2). The Passover was ancient Israel’s celebration of the New Year.

Jesus, throughout his childhood, celebrated this feast regularly with his family. There is no better way to begin a new year than to hear and learn God’s Word and receive the promises of salvation and redemption that come to us from the blood of the Lamb.

Celebrating the New Year is good. There is something therapeutic about flipping the calendar to a new year. Many people make resolutions; they search out routines or practices to answer the difficulties of the past year.

The regular pattern we’ve been following hasn’t seemed to work, because every year it’s the same thing. There’s a constant search for answers to problems, a constant search for meaning, a constant search for either avoiding or calming distress, anguish, shame, and sin.

Life seems to be continual searching. Though you know the answer to your sin and anguish is Christ, you still search for solutions to life’s problems. Isn’t that true?

Though you come to worship and hear that Jesus is the one who died for sin and rose again to grant certain peace and resolution to death, aren’t you, like the rest of the world, still searching for resolution to your anguish and distress?

A new year should bring hope and promise. But if Jesus is missing, you can search all day long and never find resolution. Continual searching brings distress and anguish. You can be like Mary and Joseph, who were in anguish over losing Jesus.

“When the feast was ended, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know” (v 43).

We should give Mary and Joseph a bit of a pass here. It is perfectly reasonable that Jesus would be among friends of his own as they made the walk from Nazareth to Jerusalem; they went with a trusted group.

But “when they did not find him” after a day’s journey, “they began and continued to search for him among their relatives and acquaintances” (v 45).

The more Mary and Joseph did not find Jesus, the more stress and anguish they felt. Only finding Jesus would resolve their pain, but they could not find resolution among family and friends.

Many people look for solutions among family and friends. There can be great joy in talking with them about what bothers you. But family and friends are not the answers to your distress and anguish.

If Jesus is not in your conversations, then all you have is sinners seeking answers among fellow sinners. Without the presence of Jesus, the search continues without resolution.

Unless your family and friends know him who has promised to be your peace and salvation, you will not find resolution; you will not find Jesus. Unless family and friends give you Jesus, you will not find resolution from them.

When Mary and Joseph did not find Jesus, they returned to Jerusalem and continued their diligent search for him. The answers to our searching, we may think, must lie in a special place. But for Mary and Joseph, after three days of searching, they come up empty again.

Searching for answers in special places is a common mistake. Some take a hike in the woods to clear their mind, think over things, or marvel at God’s creation. Some like to sit in a boat in the middle of a lake and ponder the movement of the currents. Still others think a shopping spree will solve their problems.

God’s creation is a gift to provide all your daily needs, but the gift of God’s creation has been unsettled and corrupted by man’s sin. Why would we expect Jesus to be found in a place that’s been overrun with covetousness and pollution?

These places are not bad in and of themselves, but searching for resolution to sin without Christ’s Word and promise in your ears, on your heart, and upon your lips—special places are corrupted places that groan under the weight of sin.

Unless a special place gives you Jesus, you will not find resolution there. Will your search ever end?

Yes. It will. Searching ends when one looks for Jesus where he has promised to be.

“After three days [Joseph and Mary] found [Jesus] in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And those hearing him were astonished at his reasoning and his intelligence” (vv 46–47,). Repent from looking high, low, and everywhere for answers to your distress, but

Find Jesus Where He Has Promised to Be, and Have Your Anxious Searching Be Resolved.

At Mary’s word, Jesus responds, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that it is necessary for me to be in the things of my Father?” (v 49). Searching ends when you are found alongside Jesus, hearing him in the Word of God, which resolves your agonizing search.

Your search ends when you hear that he suffered for you, rose again, and forgives your sins of misguided searching.

It is necessary for Jesus to be in the things of his Father, which are his promises being resolved in the Son. It is necessary for you to be in these things as well. The search for the answer to your sin and anguish can only be resolved in the Word that proclaims Jesus.

As with the Emmaus disciples—they were sad because they thought they’d lost Jesus, but their anguish was overcome as Jesus gave understanding to the necessity of the Christ’s suffering, dying, and rising again. Their eyes were opened as they recognized the risen Jesus in the breaking of the bread.

The apostles, likewise, were given intelligence and understanding of the Scriptures as Jesus opened their minds to know the necessity of Christ crucified and risen to bring an end to man’s endless search for answers to sin.

Be certain for yourselves that from this pulpit you hear the necessity of Christ, who brings an end to your search for what is missing. He brings resolution to your search for comfort. He forgives you of your sins of endless, agonizing searching. You don’t have to keep looking, because Christ has told you where he is found.

End your search where Jesus promised to be—in his church, where his Word is taught purely and his sacraments are distributed rightly.

End your search for answers to sin, shame, and anguish by hearing that he took your sin, exposed himself to shame, and felt your anguish on the cross.

Rising again, he is the resolution to all your problems, because he comes to you in the gifts he gives to the church. Find Jesus in God’s Word and Sacraments. Be certain: he is the one who first found you. Amen.

Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. Amen.