Being about Our Father’s Business
(Luke 2:41–47)
Ted Burleson
At age twelve, the boy Jesus walked with His family on the trip from Nazareth to Jerusalem to observe the Passover (Luke 2:41). His family members were Israelites, and God commanded the Israelites through Moses: “Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the LORD God” (Ex. 23:17; NKJV).
The seven-day Feast of Unleavened Bread followed the Passover (cf. Luke 22:1). The Passover was a memorial to the flight of the death angel over the houses in the land of Egypt while the Israelites were still in slavery (cf. Ex. 12:12–14). The first-born males of the Egyptians died while God spared the first-born sons of the Israelites. This feast helped the Israelites remember that God allowed them to escape from Egypt (cf. Ex. 23:15). For every ten people, Israelites offered a sacrificial lamb at Passover. At sundown, the families or group of relatives and friends gathered together for a meal of unleavened bread, bitter herbs, and lamb.
Women and children did not have to participate in the Passover pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The Bible indicates that some women made pilgrimages with their husbands for worship and the yearly sacrifice, including Hannah at Shiloh (cf. 1 Sam. 1:3, 7). Jesus’s parents fulfilled the requirement and stayed in Jerusalem at least the two days and may have stayed for the entire eight-day feast. Joseph and Mary’s strict observance of the Jewish feasts suggests that Jesus’s childhood home observed strict adherence to the Law.
According to Jewish regulations, a boy started observing the Law at age 13 in a ceremony similar to modern “bar mitzvah.” His twelfth year was the last the boy Jesus would make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem as a boy for the next year He would be considered a man with adult responsibilities.
In making the annual pilgrimages, families and friends would join together and form a large number of travelers. The traveling-party would reduce the demands on the individual. This method of travel would also be safer, since they would need to pass through the unfriendly Samaritan territory and to avoid attacks by robbers like the injured man in the story of the Good Samaritan.
It is easy to understand why Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. He was in the transition from boyhood to adulthood. The women and young children in a Jewish caravan returning from a feast would travel ahead of the men and older boys. Jesus’s parents likely assumed that He was going with friends or relatives from Nazareth. He was close enough to be still a child that Joseph probably assumed He was with Mary. He was so close to being a man that Mary probably thought He was with Joseph. Parents can sympathize with Joseph and Mary.
The traveling party traveled a “day’s journey” before they realized that Jesus was not with their relatives and friends. The length of a day’s journey would depend on the distance they had to travel to reach an excellent campsite with plenty of water. Twenty to twenty-five miles is a reasonable estimate of an average day’s journey with baggage, animals, women, and children.
When Jesus’s parents returned to Jerusalem, they found Him. He was “in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers” (Luke 2:46; NASB). The rabbis taught in the temple precincts or at a neighboring synagogue. Hearers sat on the ground at the feet of the teacher. Approximately eighteen years later, Jesus would teach daily in the temple (cf. Luke 19:47). These teachers did not know that the child was the very Messiah for whom they longed to see.
The method rabbis often used to teach was to answer the probing questions their pupils would ask. Picture Jesus, an eager student with zeal to learn and intelligence that amazed the teachers. What surprised them about His understanding and His answers? Although Jesus was not teaching the teachers, His observations concerning the Law were apparent in the questions He asked, astonishing those who heard Him.
No doubt, with agony Mary and Joseph searched for Jesus, fearing and grieving the worst. When they found Him in the temple listening to the rabbis, they were astonished. Mary asked, “Son, why have You treated us this way?” (Luke 2:48; NASB). Mary’s question to Jesus implies that an obedient or responsible son would not have acted in this way.
It is Jesus’s reply to Mary’s question that is the focus of this lesson. In Luke 2:49, we read the first recorded words of Jesus. He asked something very revealing as to His mindset, even at age twelve. Jesus’s question depends on the translation from which you are reading. There are two possible translations of Jesus’s question. The New King James Version that says Jesus’s question was, “Why did you seek Me,” illustrates the first translation of the question, “Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?” The other translation of Jesus’s question is illustrated by both the New International Version and the New American Standard Version, which translates Jesus’s question in a very similar way: “Why is it that you were looking for Me? Did you not know that I had to be in My Father’s house?” What did Jesus mean when He asked this question? Is there something in Jesus’s question that would help us please Father God in our daily lives? If there is, we need to know about it.
The apparent context of the verse is that at that moment, Jesus was in the temple, the house of the Heavenly Father. It is this translation that was accepted by the early church. Years later, as He was driving the moneychangers out of the temple, Jesus calls the temple, “My Father’s house” (John 2:16). The writer of Hebrews would record, “Christ is faithful as a son over God’s house” (Heb. 3:6; NIV). Jesus surely felt a deep-seated relationship with God and felt comfortable in His Heavenly Father’s house, the temple.
But if Jesus said that He had to be about His Father’s business, we would understand a little more about this twelve-year-olds understanding of His mission as the Son of God. “In My Father’s house” means that He must be doing the things of God. Luke shares with his readers the first of six “must” actions for Jesus. First, as we have just read, Jesus had to be about His Father’s business (Luke 2:49). Second, Jesus said that He had preached the kingdom of God (Luke 4:43). Luke tells us in one verse, Luke 9:22, about the next four things Jesus had to do. Jesus said, “The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day.”
Jesus spent His life doing the business of His Father. Doing the Father’s business was essential for Jesus. He once said, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work” (John 4:34). He so devoted His life to His Father’s business that on the night before He died, He told the Father in prayer, “I have finished the work which You have given Me to do” (John 17:4).
If our goal is to be like Jesus, then we should be about our Heavenly Father’s business as well. But how do we go about doing our Father’s business? The New Testament gives us commands and examples of being about our Father’s business. Let us observe three of these precepts and patterns.
First, we can be about our Father’s business by setting our minds on God’s interests. In Mark 8:31, Jesus began to prepare His disciples for His suffering and crucifixion. The Scriptures say, “Then Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him” (Mark 8:32; NKJV). Jesus then rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind Me, Satan; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s” (Mark 8:34; NASB).
It is easy to set our minds on human interests instead of what is essential to God. Seeking social benefits is not a new problem. Paul wrote to the Philippian Christians, “For all seek their own, not the things which are of Christ” (Phil. 2:21; NKJV).
Second, we must be about our Father’s business in supporting the work of the Lord financially. To demonstrate this point, please consider Luke 20:20. The religious leaders of Jesus’s day hated Him so much they wanted to kill Him and eventually did. In one of their attempts to catch Him in some statement they could use against Him, they sent spies to ask Him whether or not it was lawful for a follower of Christ to pay taxes. He told them to show Him a denarius and asked whose likeness and inscription was on it. They said, “Caesar’s.” He then made the famous statement to which I just alluded. “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Luke 20:25, NKJV). We can be about our Father’s business by financially supporting His work.
Third, we can be about our Father’s business in the same way Paul encouraged Timothy to be about the Father’s business in 1 Timothy 4. Paul was advising Timothy to be a good servant of Jesus Christ. He wanted him to overcome the obstacles of being a young preacher and be an example to all believers. In 1 Timothy 4:13, Paul wrote, “Until I come, give attention to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation and teaching” (1 Tim. 4:13, NASB). He further explained, “Take pains with these things: be adsorbed in them, so that your progress will be evident to all” (1 Tim. 4:15; NASB). We need, like Timothy, to tell others about Jesus and what He is doing for us.
How will you be about your Heavenly Father’s business? There are a million and one ways to serve Him.
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