“If you’ve
ever wondered what the Lord was doing during that 17-year period, Mark 6:3 is
an interesting little verse,” says Jordan. “In Mark 6, when the crowd is
looking at Christ and they’re going to identify Him, they say, ‘Is not this the
carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and
Simon?’
“The Lord had a reputation around His hometown as being the carpenter. If you lived in the Old West years ago and you were the blacksmith, you’d be the ‘Village Smithy,’ as Longfellow would have called it. And so Christ obviously had a life and He was obviously doing things and known in the community as someone who was constructively involved in life and the life of the community.
“The Lord had a reputation around His hometown as being the carpenter. If you lived in the Old West years ago and you were the blacksmith, you’d be the ‘Village Smithy,’ as Longfellow would have called it. And so Christ obviously had a life and He was obviously doing things and known in the community as someone who was constructively involved in life and the life of the community.
*****
“In Luke 2:52,
we’re told of His youth, ‘And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in
favour with God and man.’
“That’s
what was going on during that period and all this stuff about Him—all these
hallucinations you here in mythology about how He went and did this thing over
here and did that thing over there and all these goofball traditions that
people come up with. That’s all they are. They’re just folklore.
“You don’t need to enhance the reputation of
the Lord with spook stories about Him making things levitate and all that kind
of business when He’s a baby.
“He lived, just like you and I live, and, as the verse says, He increased in wisdom and in stature and grew in understanding and in favor with God and man.
“Now, the French writer Godet once made this
statement, and I think it’s an interesting way of putting it: ‘Our Lord had an
inward development which resulted in a state of perfect receptivity for the
measureless communication of the divine Spirit.’
“And what
he’s saying is that’s what Christ did up between the last time we saw Him in
the Book of Luke at age 12. The Lord lived in such communion with God the
Father, and in such communion with the Word of God, that He had a receptivity
to what God would communicate to Him.
*****
“You remember He’s ‘the man Christ Jesus,’ and we’ve
talked about how the Lord laid aside the free and independent exercise of His
attributes of deity—one of which would be omniscience, or knowing everything—and
depended upon God the Father and God the Holy Spirit to provide Him those
things.
“And so
He lives and comes to this consciousness of receptivity with God, so that what
you’re going to see here in Luke 3—it’s important to see that the transition
from His private life into His public ministry came because of the Lord’s
positive response to the signal given in the ministry of the forerunner of the
Messiah, John the Baptist.
“It comes
just from the personal viewpoint of the Lord Himself—not Israel and not the
world having Him introduced to them—but just from the Lord’s viewpoint, and
Luke’s going to focus on that aspect of it.
“When we
read about His baptism and the Spirit descending on Him and the Father speaking
from heaven, you’ll see how Luke . . . In Matthew and Mark it says, ‘This is my
beloved Son in whom I’m well pleased,’ but you look down in verse 22 of Luke 3,
and what the Father says here is, as Luke records it, ‘Thou art my beloved Son;
in thee I am well pleased.’
“Matthew
is making the pronouncement for the audience, but Luke focuses on the fact
that, ‘You know, when the Lord said that, it wasn’t just an announcement for
the audience out there; it was something PERSONAL to the Lord going on here.’
“He says
‘thou art,’ the singular pronoun. ‘In THEE I’m well-pleased.’ It’s that
personal intimacy between the Lord and His Father.
“When you
think about these things, and get involved in looking at it all that way,
you’re going to see this ALL the way
through Luke.
“Luke always keeps that intimate touch, and
sometimes you forget that between the Lord Jesus Christ and the Father was an
intimacy of fellowship as members of the Godhead--one having stepped out of the
independent exercise of His identity; the veil made in the likeness of
sinful flesh like you and me.
*****
“The
fascinating thing to remember about that is what you see in the Lord Jesus
Christ is the Father living in Him, just as He desires to live in us. Just as
Christ has that intimacy with the Father, that’s the kind of intimacy we’re
privileged to have because we’re in Him!
“Luke is
constantly just looking at who Jesus Christ is and, ‘Here’s how He was and how
He related to His (circumstances).’ And so, what Luke is doing is setting the
stage.
“Politically,
Israel is under the heel of a corrupt governmental system—a bunch of corrupt
and abusive Gentiles.
“Our Lord
comes on the scene out of private life where He’s grown in favor with God and
men and is receptive to what God’s doing in His nation and the time schedule of
God’s Word.”
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