Preparing for Worship - January 5, 2025

This is the Second Sunday after Christmas, with January 6 as the Epiphany, remembering the coming of the Wise Men, the Magi, led by the star to Jerusalem and then to Bethlehem. The Christmas season then ends, and next week, we begin the Sundays after Epiphany, looking at the ministry of Jesus beginning with His baptism.

The Old Testament lesson tells us of Solomon, King David’s son, who sought to follow the Lord as king and did not ask for personal riches and benefits but for wisdom in governing God’s people and in telling good from evil. God gave him a wise and discerning mind and other blessings but called him to walk in His, the Lord’s, ways. Solomon then made offerings to the Lord before the ark of the covenant in the Tabernacle in Jerusalem. (Sadly, the seeds were already there for Solomon’s drift away from the Lord over time. Already he had married Pharaoh’s daughter for political reasons (1 Kings 3:1) and later married many other women who worshiped false gods and helped turn his heart away from the one true God. He sometimes offered sacrifices at high places of false gods, too. See 1 Kings 11ff. When Solomon died, his kingdom split into two kingdoms, Israel and Judah. There was never again one united earthly kingdom. Our Lord Jesus finally came, of course, from the line of King David, but His kingdom would not be of this world, but in the hearts of those who were brought to listen to His voice and believe in Him as Savior. See John 18:33-37.)

The Psalm is Psalm 119:97-104. The psalmist loves and meditates on God’s Word, including its laws and precepts and testimonies. God’s Words are sweet and give wisdom and understanding. They give more understanding than many teachers and aged people and help us avoid evil and false ways. (The psalmist has to admit also, though, in the last verse of this psalm, Psalm 119:176, “I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek Your servant.” Like all of us, he had not always followed God’s Word and needed His forgiveness and mercy and “longed for His salvation,” which would eventually come in Jesus (Psalm 119:174).)

The Epistle lesson is Ephesians 1:3-14 and is one of the most complete and beautiful descriptions of the Triune God’s saving plan for us and our fallen world. In the Greek, it is one long, complicated sentence describing God’s work for us, for which we bless and praise Him. Before the creation of the world, God knew that we would sin, and yet, in love for us, had a plan for our redemption, choosing us. God the Father, in His glorious grace, sent His “beloved” Son, Jesus Christ, to redeem us through His blood for the forgiveness of our trespasses in the fullness of time. This forgiveness comes to us personally, through the Gospel of our salvation, through the Promised Holy Spirit, as we are brought to faith, to believe in Christ, through God’s Word of Truth and our Baptism. We do not understand how all this can be, but we trust the Triune God’s “purpose, the mystery of His will” and “counsel” and “plan,” centered in Christ. Though heaven and earth will pass away as we know it (Matthew 24:35), our eternal inheritance is guaranteed in Christ and through the Holy Spirit. We can only sing praise to God’s glory!

The Gospel lesson, Luke 2:40-52, takes us now to Jesus going to Jerusalem with His parents, Joseph and Mary, for the Passover Feast. They lost track of Him when the festival was over, and it took a few days to find Him in the temple sitting with the teachers, listening and asking questions. All were amazed at Jesus’ understanding and answers as a twelve-year-old. His parents were astonished, too, and Mary asked why He had treated them this way, giving them “great distress.” (The same word is used to describe the rich man’s “anguish” in hell in Luke 16:24.) Jesus was surprised that they did not realize that He must be in His Father’s house, hearing and discussing God’s Word. They certainly did not understand what He meant by “His Father” and “His Father’s house.” Jesus then willingly went home with Mary and Joseph and was “submissive” to them, as the fourth Commandment requires. We don’t know how much Jesus Himself knew as true man at this point. He was true God and yet also a real human young man, increasing in wisdom and stature and strength, as Luke 2:40 and 52 tell us. He had God’s favor and was doing God’s will in a perfect way, as other Scriptures tell us. (It is hard for us to imagine what a sinless child would be like!) We are also simply told that Mary treasured (kept and considered carefully) these things in her heart. We know little about the years following. Jesus learned Joseph’s trade of being a carpenter. We hear nothing more of Joseph, so many think he then died at an early age, and Jesus took over leadership and support of His family as a carpenter until his public ministry began at about the age of 30. We read that when Jesus came home to Nazareth in Mark 6:1-6, people said, “Where did this man get these things?… Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary, and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” (These would be the children of Joseph and Mary, born the usual way after the virgin birth of Jesus. See Matthew 1:24-25. Some groups, like the Mormons, say that Jesus traveled to other places, even America, but there is no Biblical basis for that at all. We hear next of Jesus at His baptism by John the Baptist.)