EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/14/2026
10:41 PM
My
Worship Time Focus:
“The Silent
Years of Childhood”
Bible
Reading & Meditation Reference: Luke
2:40
Message of the verse: The
Child continued to grow and become strong, increasing in wisdom; and the grace
of God was upon Him.” (NASB)
We begin this evening’s SD with a
rather short Spiritual Diary, but the next section will probably take more than
one SD as we will be looking at 11 verses in that SD.
This verse is just to say that after
what we looked at in the birth of Jesus along with His time in the temple with
His parents and Siemon and Anna, however if you look at the Gospel of Matthew
you will see that after the “three kings” who came to visit them sometime after
this time period we looked at that they had to go to Egypt until the death of
Herod the king which is all seen in the second chapter of Matthew’s gospel.
Now the statement that the Child
continued to grow demonstrates that Jesus was fully human, which is a very
important statement. Jesus developed as
all children develop, though unaffected by sin.
The phrase become strong really should be take grammatically with
the following phrase, increasing in wisdom.
Now to be sure, Jesus possessed a unique physical strength because
of His sinlessness, which is unlike all other’s born after the fall. But Luke’s primary emphasis is on Jesus’
spiritual development, as He matured in wisdom until, as the Greek text
literally reads, He was “filled with wisdom,” the profound wisdom of the mind
of God. “Jesus did not possess all of
that knowledge as an infant, toddler, or young child,” writes John
MacArthur. “But by the time He was
twelve, the fullness of divine wisdom had come to fruition in His mind. A feature of Christ’s incarnation was that He
relinquished control of His use of His divine prerogatives to the Holy Spirit,
who mediated between His deity and His humanity. By the time He reached twelve, the Spirt had disclosed
the understanding of His identity and mission.
“Hebrews 5:8 reveals that much of
His increase in wisdom came as Jesus ‘learned obedience from the things which
He suffered.’ At every stage of His development, Jesus faced the full, unabated
onslaught of temptation, so that He was ‘tempted in all things as we are, yet
without sin’ (Heb. 4:15).”
Now not only was Jesus filled with
the wisdom of God, but also the grace of God was upon Him. Now John described Him as “full of grace”
grace that God grants to undeserving sinners, since Jesus was sinless. Instead, it was the favor of God granted to
His “beloved Son, in whom God was well-pleased” (Luke 3:22). “He was both the recipient of grace as favor
deserved and the giver of grace as favor underserved” writes MacArthur.
He goes on: “By the time Jesus turned twelve, He had a
complete grasp of His true identity. He
fully understood the wisdom of God and its application to the mission for which
God had sent Him into the world. William
Hendriksen writes, ‘The development of this child was therefore perfect, and
this along every line: physical, intellectual, moral, spiritual; for from
beginning to end progress was unimpaired and unimpeded by sin, whether
inherited or acquired. Between the child
Jesus and His Father…there was perfect harmony, limitless love’ (The Gospel
of Luke, New Testament Commentary [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1978], 180).”
I remember a rather long time ago
when I was listening to a sermon and the preacher who was giving the sermon
stated that it was the Holy Spirit of God who was the One who filled the Lord
Jesus Christ after His baptism in order to do the things that He did while on planet
earth. His preaching and His miracles
were done in the power of the Holy Spirit, and I have thought about this and
believe that what this man was talking about is true.
4/14/2026
11:13 PM
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