EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR
4/16/2026 6:10 PM
My Worship
Time Focus: PT-4 “The Incident At Twelve”
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: Luke 2:41-51
Message
of the verses: “41 His parents went to
Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover. 42 And
when He was twelve years old, they went up there according to
the custom of the feast; 43 and as they were returning,
after spending the full number of days required, the boy Jesus
stayed behind in Jerusalem, but His parents were unaware of it. 44 Instead,
they thought that He was somewhere in the caravan, and they
went a day’s journey; and then they began looking
for Him among their relatives and acquaintances. 45 And
when they did not find Him, they returned to Jerusalem, looking for Him. 46 Then,
after three days they found Him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the
teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions. 47 And
all who heard Him were amazed at His understanding and His answers. 48 When Joseph
and Mary saw Him, they were bewildered; and His mother said to
Him, “Son, why have You treated us this way? Behold, Your father and I
have been anxiously looking for You!” 49 And He said to
them, “Why is it that you were looking for Me? Did you
not know that I had to be in My Father’s house?” 50 And yet they
on their part did not understand the statement which He had [made
to them. 51 And He went down with them and came
to Nazareth, and He continued to be subject to them; and His
mother treasured all these things in her heart.”
I would like to be able to finish this section in this
evenings Spiritual Diary, and then in tomorrow mornings SD do the last section
in this second chapter of Luke. I
believe that this section that we have been looking at is one of the great sections
found in the Gospels. I will begin with
quoting more of what MacArthur wrote in this section, along with giving
comments that I have too.
“It was Jesus’ claim to be the Son
of God above all else that infuriated His Jewish opponents and led to His
execution. In John 5:17, Jesus defended
His healing of a crippled man on the Sabbath by saying, ‘My Father is working
until now, and I Myself am working.’’ The Jewish authorities were outraged, and
as John noted in verse 18: ‘For this reason therefore the Jews were seeking all
the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also
was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.’ In John 10:36, they accused Him of blasphemy
for calling Himself the Son of God.’ At
Christ’s mock trial it was His affirmation that He was the Son of God that gave
the Sanhedrin the excuse to declare Him guilty of blasphemy and thus deserving
of death (Matt. 26:63-66). After Pilate
pronounced Jesus innocent ‘the Jews answered him, ‘We have a law, and by that
law He ought to die because He made Himself out to be the Son of God’ (John 19:7). And when Jesus was on the cross, they mocked
His claim to be the Son of God (Matt. 27:40, 43).
“The reason Jesus’ claim to be the
Son of God infuriated the Jewish leaders is that such a claim, as they
understood perfectly, was a claim to deity, to full equality with God. The title Son of God describes Jesus as the
second person of the Trinity, God incarnate.
The full, rich meaning the title Son of God is not evident from the
English concept of sonship. In Jewish
culture ‘son’ denoted more than just a male offspring. A young underage child was considered a boy;
only when that boy had become an adult was
he a son in the fullest sense. It
was then that he became equal to his father under the law and in terms of adult
responsibility, and received the privileges his father had reserved for
him. ‘Son,’ in this more technical
sense, came to mean ‘equal to’ or ‘one with.’
“There are a number of examples in
Scripture where ‘son’ identifies a person’s nature. Barnabas’s name means ‘son of
encouragement. Jesus called James and
John ‘Sons of thunder’ (Mark 3:17), identifying them with that term because of
their bombastic personalities. Similarly,
He described some people as ‘son[s] of hell’ Matt. 23:15 because they had the
characteristics of those who are hell bound.
In much the same way, both Judas (John 17:12) and the Antichrist (2
Thess. 2:3) are called sons of perdition or destruction (the same Greek word is
used to describe both individuals), identifying them with their eternal
destiny. Ephesians 2:2 calls unbelievers
‘sons of disobedience,’ while Matthew 13:38 describes them as ‘sons of the evil
one’ (cf. John 8:44). Luke 16:8 and John
12:36 call believers ‘sons of light;’ and Luke 20:36 calls them ‘sons of the
resurrection.’’
“Son’ in the above examples does not
refer to origin, but to nature. The term
is used to refer to Jesus Christ to establish His being of the same essence and
nature, with the same rights and privileges, as God Himself. As noted above, the Jewish leaders understood
perfectly that by claiming to be the Son of God, Jesus was claiming deity and
full equality with the Father.
“Some might argue that the terms ‘only
begotten’ (monogenes; John 1:14, 18, 3:16, 18; 1 John 4:9) and ‘firstborn’
(Prototokos; Rom. 8:29; Col. 1:15, 18; Heb. 1:6; Rev. 1:5) indicate that
Jesus came into existence, and thus was not God from all eternity. But neither of those terms refer to origin. Monogenes means ‘one of a kind,’ and
distinguishes Jesus as the unique Son of God from believers, who are sons of
God in a different sense (cf. 1 John 3:2).”
(1 John 3:2)
“2 Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what
we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be
like him, because we shall see him as he is.”
“The Bible
calls Isaac Abraham’s monogenes (Heb. 11:17), even though Isaac was
neither Abraham’s oldest son nor his only son, because he alone was the son of
the covenant (Gen. 21:12; cf. Rom. 9:7).
Prototokos, when used of Christ , does not refer to chronology,
but to preeminence. Both Colossians 1:18
and Revelation 1:5 call Jesus the ‘firstborn from the dead,’ because of all who
will ever be resurrected, He is the preeminent one. In Exodus 4:22, God refers to Israel as His
firstborn; though Israel was not the first nation to come into existence
chronologically, she was the first among the nations in preeminence.
“To argue that the terms ‘firstborn’
and ‘only begotten’ mean that Jesus was a created being is contradictory. Jesus could not be both the ‘only begotten’
and the ‘first begotten.’ Nor could He
be the creator of the universe (Col. 1:16) if He Himself were a created being.
“Joseph and Mary did not fully
understand the profound statement which Jesus had made to
them. They understood that He was
the Messiah, the Son of David, conceived in a virgin’s womb by the power of the
Holy Spirit. But the full meaning of His
divine sonship eluded them. This would
not be the last time that His followers would fail to grasp what Jesus was
saying (cf. Luke 9:44-45; 18:34; John 10:6; 12:16).
“But the time for Jesus to leave His
parents’ authority had not yet arrived, so He went down with them and came
to Nazareth, and He continued in subjection to them. His relationship with His heavenly Father did
not yet abrogate His responsibility to obey His earthly parents. His obedience to the fifth commandment was an
essential part of Jesus’ perfect obedience to the law of God.
“Here was the first fulfillment of
Simeon’s warning to Mary in 2:35, as she treasured all these things in her
heart. She had much to think about
as she pondered Jesus’ amazing reply.
Mary had to realize that her Son was her Savior, and she would have to
exchange her parental authority over Him for His divine authority over
her. The sword would pierce her heart
again later in her last appearance in Luke’s gospel (8:19-21), when Jesus
distanced Himself from His human relationship with her and His siblings (cf.
11:27-28). Ultimately, the sword would
pierce Mary’s heart as she watched her Son suffer and die on the cross.”
This section of Luke’s gospel has
brought much meaning to me as I studied it by not only reading from MacArthur’s
commentary but also listening to around three hours of his sermons on this
section. We have one shorter section to
look at, and then move onto the third chapter of Luke’s gospel and Lord willing
will do it in tomorrow morning’s SD.
4/16/2026
6:55 PM
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