An Aerial View of the New Testament - Part 2

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Tonight, we return for the second time to our survey of the New Testament. It's been now a number of months that I made a commitment to you that we would sort of work our way through the Bible. I would spend six weeks surveying the Old Testament from sort of thirty thousand feet looking at the large peaks as opposed to all of the details and then we'd spend one week on the intertestamental period and then six weeks on the New Testament. That has been one of the greatest challenges of my life because there are so many things that I want to say about everything that we pass over, but I'll do that another time. I'm going to keep my commitment. I have so far. I know some of you are shocked. There were actually wagers being made among the high school students I heard and there are going to be some people that lose some free meals or something as a result of that.

If you weren't here last week, let me say that some of what I'm going to share tonight builds on last week and so I encourage you to catch up with us, but I want tonight to begin to look at the gospel record of our Lord's life. Specifically, I want to look at the years between His conception and when He began His ministry. Next time we have the opportunity to deal with this issue and to return again to our survey, we'll look at the three and a half years of ministry of our Lord. But tonight, I want to look at those silent years, those thirty silent years that are often ignored and that so much happened during.

We have to begin, as a couple of the gospel writers do, with the genealogies of Jesus. Matthew and Luke provide us with the genealogical records of Jesus. If you compare these records, there are significant differences. Obviously, when you look at them, Luke goes back to Adam. Matthew only goes to Abraham, and from Abraham to David. The genealogies, the two genealogies, are very similar, almost identical. But there are some difficult differences that come from the life of David and the generation of David down through Christ.

The two most obvious problems with the genealogies when you reconcile them or attempt to is that from David to Christ, the names are greatly different. If you were to lay them side by side or you have something in your Bible that shows that, you would see that and there's a difference in number of generations. The question is why. Now a number of solutions have been proposed. I think the simplest and most obvious solution is that from David on, they are different genealogies and I'll explain what I mean in a moment. The problem, you see, comes with a man by the name of Jeconiah. Jeconiah had the legal right to David's throne. The legal right to David's throne passed through Solomon according to 2 Samuel 7. That's what God promised David. But there was one of Solomon's descendants that was named Jeconiah. And in Jeremiah 22:30, God said that because of Jeconiah's sin, none of his physical descendants would prosper on the throne of David. Now you have a huge problem and this is where the two genealogies come in. They are the genealogies of two different people for very good reason.

So, when you look at the two genealogies, when you look at Matthew 1, verses 1 through 17, you have one genealogy; and in Luke 3, verses 23 through 38, you have another genealogy. They're both obviously of Jesus Christ. They both say so. But Matthew's genealogy is through Joseph, Jesus' legal father, and Luke's genealogy is through Mary, His physical mother. So as a result, you go through two different sons of David. The Matthew genealogy goes through David's son Solomon whereas the Luke genealogy goes through David's son Nathan. And of course, Matthew then, because it goes through Solomon, has to include Jeconiah (he's there) and the curse whereas Luke excludes Jeconiah and the curse.

So in Matthew, what you have is the genealogy through Joseph, Jesus' legal father. And in that genealogy, you have the legal claim to the throne that was passed to Jesus through Joseph. But in Luke, you have the physical claim to the throne that was passed to Jesus through Mary. This is very important. Because Jesus was not physically descended from Joseph, He escaped the curse on Jeconiah, at the same time having the legal claim to the throne—really an amazing work of the providence of God. We just think of the virgin birth, but there was so much more involved in what God was doing. So, keep it in mind: Matthew, the genealogy of Jesus through Joseph; Luke, the genealogy of Jesus through Mary—one the legal claim, the other the physical claim to the throne. Both Mary and Joseph went back to David. So that's the genealogies.

And with that, we move on to the birth. And I want you to turn to Matthew chapter 1. We are so familiar with Luke's account, but really Matthew gives us a lot more information about the background of Jesus' birth. Matthew 1, verse 18: "Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit." Scripture doesn't tell us how old Mary and Joseph were when they became betrothed or engaged, but most men of the time married before they were twenty years old. And most Jewish girls were betrothed just after puberty, somewhere often in the thirteen to fifteen years of age. It's possible that Mary was in her late teens. That wasn't unheard of, but it is unlikely. She was probably in her early to mid-teen years. Usually, families arranged for their children's marriages. By the way, part of the reason for this was the short life expectancy. Normally, and in some cultures, that life expectancy has been shorter and therefore, life was much more precious, and every day was captured. And so, often marriage began early.

Now a first century Jewish marriage consisted of two parts. There was the betrothal period. It was also called the kiddushin. It was much more serious than our engagement. Don't think engagement. It could only be ended by divorce. And in fact, if one of the spouses died, the other was considered a widow or a widower as a result. During this period, the couple did not live together and they were to remain sexually pure. In fact, any form of sexual sin was considered adultery and the guilty party, according to Deuteronomy 22, was to be stoned.

The second part of a Jewish marriage was the huppah. It's when the man went to the home of his wife, with great fanfare and with all of his friends trailing behind him, and he brought his wife back to his home. This was accompanied by as many as seven days of feasting—and you thought the wedding of your children was expensive—and the consummation of the marriage. This was the second part of the wedding, of the marriage.

Now the word that Matthew uses here in verse 18 tells us that Mary and Joseph were in the first period. They were in the betrothal period, the kiddushin. And Matthew adds that it was before they came together. That, of course, is a sort of euphemistic expression for the fact that they had not had sexual relations. So, at some point during the kiddushin, something remarkable happened. She was found to be with child by or out of the Holy Spirit, Matthew says.

Verse 19: "And Joseph her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly." It's hard to imagine the shock, isn't it, when Joseph heard the news. He obviously knew the child wasn't his and her explanation must've seemed incredible. I mean, after all, there hadn't been any word from God for four hundred years and there hadn't been a miracle for seven hundred years. And here is this teenage girl that you're betrothed to telling you that an angel has appeared and told her she's going to be pregnant, and God is going to do it. I'm sure once the shock left him, numbness sort of set in, this sort of "this can't be happening to me. I've been looking forward to my wedding day. I've been looking forward to all that God has for me and now my wife tells me that she's pregnant."

As anyone would, he began to think about his options. For Joseph, there were three options in that culture and only three. The first was to marry her and this was just not done. In fact, Roman law actually treated a husband who failed to divorce an unfaithful wife as a panderer exploiting his wife as a prostitute. Even the Jewish Mishnah forbade the man in this situation to marry the woman. And besides, think of the practical side. If he marries her, it would be like this tacit admission that this was in fact his child, forever tainting his reputation. That was one of his options.

The second option was to disgrace her is how it's put—verse 19: "not wanting to disgrace her." This refers to Joseph making a public accusation against her in a court of law. But such a public proceeding would obviously publicly shame him as well and his family. But you know what's remarkable about Joseph? And this just tells you the kind of righteous man he was. The text tells us Joseph wasn't concerned about his reputation. He was concerned about hers. It says, "not wanting to disgrace her." In Moses' day, if it had been proven in court that a betrothed wife in the kiddushin period was unfaithful, she would have been put to death. But in the first century, the court would've allowed Joseph to impound Mary's dowry—the assets that she brought to the marriage—and perhaps have permitted to him to recoup the bride price if he had paid one at the beginning of the betrothal to her family. That was one of his options.

A third option, Joseph's only other choice, was to send her away secretly as you see in verse 19. The Greek word that's translated "send away" is the same Greek word translated "divorce" in Matthew 5 and Matthew 19 where Jesus discusses the issue of divorce. This is what Joseph was considering. He was going to privately divorce her. And that is exactly the course he decides to take, Matthew says.

Now Mary's in a difficult position because she's explained her story, but at this point, she cannot defend herself. I mean, think about it. There was nothing she could say that would convince Joseph of her innocence. So, the Lord defends her. He sends an angel to speak to Joseph in a dream (verse 20) and this is what the angel said: "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife." "To take Mary as your wife"—that phrase describes the second part of the Jewish marriage when the man comes to her house and takes the woman back to his home. So basically, the angel says proceed with the marriage. And Joseph did exactly as the angel had commanded him. He took the next step. He formally took Mary from her home into his own. But according to verse 25, he kept her a virgin. Literally, he did not know her or he did not have sexual relations with her until she gave birth. Why? Well, the reason is clear. Isaiah had said that a virgin would conceive and that as a virgin, she would give birth to a son.

So that's the background of the birth of Christ. Mary is living with Joseph as her husband. They have not come together as a couple. They have not consummated the marriage. And the details of exactly what the birth was like and the specific events surrounding why they were in Bethlehem and what happened in Bethlehem are all very well-known and so I don't plan to take any time with them tonight. That's the background to the birth of Christ.

So, with that, let's move forward to the infancy and youth of Jesus Christ and there is so much that we can know about what happened. And I hope when we're done, you'll have a lot more insight into the life of Christ in those thirty silent years. Well, the first, most important event that came into His life came at eight days. Eight days after His birth was His circumcision. Somewhere, and by the way, the dates I'm going to show tonight are based on the timeline we put together last week. I'm going to assume them. If you want to know how we got there, you can go back and listen to last week, but I'm going to assume them as true and just sort of give you some hooks on which to hang these events.

At eight days then comes Jesus' circumcision, somewhere in the winter of either 6 BC or 5 BC— December of 6 BC or January of 5 BC. Luke 2:21 says: "When eight days had passed, before His circumcision, His name was then called Jesus, the name given by the angel before He was conceived in the womb." The circumcision had become a ceremony that was important in the life of the child, the male child. It was attended by family and close friends, and this was the occasion at which the name was usually formally announced. If you go back to John the Baptist in Luke 1:59, you see the same thing happen in his case. And in this case, Joseph had been told by the angel that his son was to be named Jesus. The Greek name Iesous was a transliterated form of the Hebrew name "Joshua" or "Yeshua." It means "Yahweh is salvation" or "Yahweh saves." And of course, in verse 21 of Matthew 1: "She will bear a son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins." So, at eight days, this formal ceremony and Jesus is named.

Forty days pass and Jesus is presented at the temple, the formal presentation of the child at the temple. They travelled the six miles or so from Bethlehem to Jerusalem. This is recorded by the way in Luke 2, verses 22 to 38. The offering that they were to bring was to be a lamb and a dove or pigeon. But if the woman was poor and could not afford a lamb, the law allowed her to substitute two turtledoves or two pigeons and that's what she brings. So apparently, Joseph and Mary, like most young couples starting out, were not wealthy. However, we do know that they had some family property because they had to return to Bethlehem for the census for the purpose of taxation and primarily, land was what was taxed in the first century. So, you put the whole picture together and Joseph's trade and Jesus' home was probably a middle-class type home by the time Jesus reached adulthood. But at this point of course, they're a young couple just starting out and they have a piece of property, but very little disposable funds. And so, she offers the basic offering of the poor as she presents her firstborn at the temple as the law had commanded.

After forty days, they return to Nazareth. We're now in the winter, still in the winter of 5 BC, Luke 2:39 says, "When they had performed everything according to the Law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own city of Nazareth." Now there's quite a bit of debate and some confusion about whether this verse happened after the wise men and the flight to Egypt or before. But if you look at that verse, it seems to imply that after they had presented Jesus at the temple, they returned to Nazareth, and I think that's the natural reading of the text. If that's true, and I think it is, then their purpose at this point isn't to go live in Nazareth, but rather to collect their things and move to Bethlehem. Apparently, they had concluded since they were from the city of Bethlehem, the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem, that they needed to live in Bethlehem. So they go to Nazareth to get their things to come back to Bethlehem. How do we know that? Because the next time we find them, it's living in a house in Bethlehem.

Somewhere between forty days after His birth and two years after His birth, you have the visit of the magi—somewhere between February of 5 BC and we know it could be no later than April 4 of 4 BC because that's the date Herod the Great died. And Herod the Great is involved in this story so somewhere in that range and again, that account is recorded in Matthew chapter 2, verses 1 through 12. It's a very familiar one and one in the interest of time I'm not going to spend any time on tonight. So somewhere between forty days, we know that He was presented at the temple at forty days, and we know that He was no older than two years of age because Herod had all the children two years of age and under killed and we know that it had to be before April 4, 4 BC when Herod died.

Now between forty days and two years also came the flight into Egypt. As soon as they hear about Herod's plot, remember the wise men are warned in a dream, they go back a different way. Joseph is also warned in a dream and so they leave the land of Israel. This is recorded in Matthew chapter 2, verses 13 to 18—the flight into Egypt.

You probably all heard the story of the little boy who drew his picture of the Christmas story and when his teacher came by to look at it, it was a bit unusual. And he had drawn an airplane. And he said, "Well, what's the airplane about?" He said, "Well, that's the flight into Egypt." And he said, "Well, okay." He said, "Well, who are these people?" And he pointed to them and there was Joseph and there was Mary and there was the baby Jesus and he said, "Well, who's this sort of rotund guy sitting back there with Jesus and Mary and Joseph?" And he said, "Oh, that's Round John Virgin." And he, the teacher said, "Well, okay. Well, well, who's that up in the front of the plane?" He said, "Oh, that's Pontius the pilot." That has nothing to do with the flight into Egypt. I just want you to know that.

When you look at the flight into Egypt, Nazareth, or excuse me, Bethlehem was not a large town and the children two years of age and younger, it was probably fewer than twenty infants that were killed. Nevertheless, it is rightly called the Massacre of the Innocents. Mary and Joseph leave hastily, probably leaving most of their belongings that they had gathered from Nazareth there in Bethlehem, and they go to Egypt. The population of Egypt was very cosmopolitan. Egypt was accountable directly to the emperor so there was no Roman governor. So it was a perfect place for them to go. It was an easy place to get lost. We don't know where they went in Egypt. There's a lot of speculation. There's a tradition. Some would say the port city of Alexandria. It was the second largest city in the empire, had a large community of Jews there. It's just not possible to know for sure where it is they settled.

We don't know what Joseph did there either. We're not told. He may have used his trade as a carpenter or it's possible that in God's providence, the gifts that had been brought by the magi were the very thing they needed. They sold them on the open market and were able to live off the proceeds. We just really don't know the details surrounding that.

Around eighteen months later, after the flight into Egypt and certainly after Herod's death in April 4 of 4 BC, three significant events occur. Joseph had apparently still planned to live in Bethlehem, but when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in the place of his father Herod and when God warned him in a dream, Joseph takes his belongings and set from Bethlehem, and settles, that should say from Bethlehem and settles his family in Nazareth in Galilee.

Now Nazareth, which was where they were originally from, was not a chief city. However, it was not a tiny village either. It is always called a polis, the Greek word for "city," and never a village. It didn't have a good reputation with the culturally sophisticated. It was kind of a backwater place as it was thought of. You remember Nathaniel said, "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" And Philip said, "Come and see" when he was taking him to show Christ. It was a secluded place. It wasn't on a main road although there was a trade route that passed just south of it. It was fifteen miles west of the Sea of Galilee, about twenty miles east of the Mediterranean. It was large enough to have a synagogue and so it was just the right place. As R. H. Mounce said, "Secluded, yet not isolated, Nazareth cradled the origin of the Christian faith." And that's exactly right. Even God's providence in that was perfect for what needed to occur.

That takes us to Jesus' childhood. There's only one New Testament verse about Jesus' childhood. It's Luke 2, verse 40: "The Child continued to grow and become strong, increasing in wisdom; and the grace of God was upon Him." That is the only word in the New Testament about the childhood of Jesus. Of course, He would've been taught by His mother and His father. And in a city the size of Nazareth, there would have probably been a school typically called the "house of the book."

Alfred Edersheim, the writer historian, says this about Jesus' education. I want you to read this through with me because I think this is interesting. He says,

There is a passage in the Mishnah which quaintly maps out and, as it were, labels the different periods of life according to their characteristics. It is worth reproducing, if only to serve as introduction to what we shall have to say on the upbringing of children. [And so he quotes the Mishnah and he says,] Rabbi Jehudah, the son of Tema, says: "At five years of age, reading of the Bible [that's what began the education]; at ten years, learning the Mishnah [all of the interpretation of the Law]; at thirteen years bound to the commandments [that's when He became a son of the commandment, His bar mitzvah we'll talk about, more about that in a moment]; at fifteen years, the study of the Talmud [more advanced studies in Judaism]; at eighteen years, marriage; at twenty, the pursuit of trade or business [that is, active life]; at thirty years, full vigor; at forty, maturity of reason [there we go men, something to be happy about]; at fifty, for counsel; at sixty, commencement of agedness; at seventy, grey age; at eighty, advanced old age; at ninety, bowed down; at a hundred, as if he were dead and gone, and taken from the world."

Edersheim says, "In the passage just quoted, the age of five is mentioned as that when a child is expected to commence reading the Bible—of course, in the original Hebrew."

So that from the age of six, Jesus would have been taught. At five, He would begin to read. At six, He would've been taught by the rulers of the synagogue. It was a type of elementary school

that was connected with every synagogue in the first century. Edersheim again goes on to describe what it was like:

Every place, then, which numbered twenty-five boys of a suitable age, or one hundred and twenty families, was bound to appoint a schoolmaster. More than twenty-five pupils or thereabouts he was not allowed to teach in a class. If there were forty, he had to employ an assistant; if fifty, the synagogue authorities appointed two teachers. This will enable to understand the statement, no doubt greatly exaggerated, that at the destruction of Jerusalem there were no fewer than four hundred and eighty schools in the metropolis [of Jerusalem].

So attached to every synagogue, there was an elementary school in which the boys would have gone and been taught the Law of God. This would've been true of Jesus as well.

Edersheim goes on to say:

The number of hours during which junior classes were kept in school was limited as the close air of the schoolroom might prove injurious during the heat of the day [growing up in Mobile, I can appreciate that]. Lessons were intermitted between ten a.m. and three p.m. For similar reasons, only four hours were allowed for instruction between July and August [so nothing new under the sun].

For four years, the Old Testament in Hebrew was the only textbook and the first book they studied: Leviticus. Jesus would have learned three languages. In fact, there's evidence in the New Testament that He knew and spoke three languages: Aramaic, when the Jews returned from the seventy-year Babylonian captivity, they came speaking the language spoken by the Persians which of course sort of evolved over time—Aramaic. Jesus and the people of that land spoke Aramaic daily. Also, Hebrew: Jesus read from the scroll in the synagogue. That would've been in Hebrew in the synagogue there in Nazareth where He grew up. Also He would've known Greek. We know this a couple of interesting ways. In John 21, Jesus uses two different Greek words for "love." You've heard that account and read it many times. And Peter uses two different words for "know." That interchange doesn't work in either Aramaic or Hebrew. There aren't those synonyms to make it work. So we know that they were speaking Greek as it's recorded on the pages of the New Testament. Also, in Matthew 16:18, Jesus speaks using a word play on the Greek words petra and petros. So, Jesus spoke and knew three languages: Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek. It was a rigorous study, starting at six in the synagogue school from ten to three each day learning the Law starting with Leviticus.

That takes us forward to twelve years. At twelve years, Jesus celebrates His first Passover in Jerusalem. On our little timeframe we put together, this would be somewhere around AD 7. It's recorded for us in Luke chapter 2, verses 41 to 50. Jesus, at this point, was twelve years old. This is a very significant age because at thirteen, a Jewish boy celebrated his bar mitzvah. He literally becomes a son of the commandment. It means he had come of age. He had become an adult, a son of the Law. And in preparation for that momentous event at thirteen, most Jewish boys went to their first Passover celebration in the temple at the age of twelve. This was to prepare them. And it was in that event that we find the first words of Jesus recorded on the pages of the New Testament. Verse 49 of chapter 2: "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?'" You remember the story. Now that is not disrespectful or insolent in Jesus' part. Remember Jesus never sinned so there's no tone of insolence here. There's no tone of disrespect. Instead, He is making an intentional contrast between what Mary said— "your father and I" —and "My Father," referring to God. What it clearly shows is that Jesus at the age of twelve, before He officially enters into adulthood at thirteen, had a clear sense of who He was and what His mission was. And that's very important for us to understand in the life of Christ—a snapshot from His life that lets us know what was going on in His mind.

Now we move on from that event at twelve to the next many years—from the age of eighteen years, from the age of twelve to thirty when He began His ministry. This is Jesus' adolescence and young manhood from AD 7 to AD 26. This is the summary of what transpired during those eighteen years. Luke chapter 2, verse 51: "He went down with them [that is, with His parents after that interchange there in the temple] and came to Nazareth, and He continued in subjection to them; and His mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men." While there are some things that we cannot know about these years of Jesus' life, there is much that we can learn and I want you to see this. And I really hope that this will open up the viewpoint of what was going on during these years of adolescence and young manhood. They were crucial years and so much was happening in Jesus' life.

First of all, we know that He was a student of the Law of God. On the Sabbath, each Sabbath, He would've attended the worship. He did that faithfully during His ministry as well. It's likely that the family had a copy or a partial copy of the Scripture in their own home. You remember the intertestamental period, the period between the testaments? Josephus tells us that at the time of the Syrian persecutions just before the rising of the Maccabees, it was not uncommon for families, private families, to have possession of portions or the whole Old Testament. In fact, it was common, he says, for part of the persecutions of the Maccabean period consisted in searching for these Scriptures and destroying them, 1 Maccabees 1:57, as well as punishing their possessors, Josephus writes. So it's very possible, in fact I would say in Jesus' case because of the nature of who He was, that His parents scrimped. They did whatever they had to to get in their home a copy of the Scriptures. And of course, there would have been complete copies of the Hebrew Scriptures in the local synagogue. So Jesus studied the Law during these years. He had already studied the Law in school, at the feet of His parents, so that at twelve, you remember, the people who were learned, the doctors of the temple were amazed at what He understood and what He comprehended and at the gravity of His questions. But that continued in the years between His first Passover and the beginning of His ministry.

Another thing that happened in these eighteen years was that Jesus practiced a trade. His father Joseph, in Matthew 13:55, is called a carpenter. Jesus is called the carpenter's son. But Jesus Himself is called this. In Mark 6:3, "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?" So not only was the work of a carpenter the work of His father, but Jesus Himself took on this work.

The word "carpenter" literally means "a craftsman." The Greek word is a very broad word that can encompass a lot of different things. It can include the work of what we think of as a carpenter or a builder or a mason or even woodworking. So we're not sure exactly what Jesus did, what Joseph did. Justin Martyr, who lived very shortly after the time of the apostles, wrote: "When He was among men, He made ploughs and yokes and other farm implements." We don't know for sure, but that's as good a guess as any.

J. Oswald Sanders, in his excellent book on The Incomparable Christ, writes this about Jesus at work. He says:

Jesus saw no incongruity in the Lord of glory standing in the sawpit, laboriously cutting the thick logs into planks, or using a plane and hammer. In days when white-collar workers tend to despise those who work with their hands, contemplation of the life of Jesus during those silent years would wither such contemptuous pride. He was a carpenter, a working man who earned His living, as others of His contemporaries, by manual labor. He was no forty-hour week but a twelve hour day, doubtless with overtime as well. If it was not beneath the Son of God to work as an artisan, then surely it is beneath none of His children. Because He was no stranger to the dust and sweat of toil, sons of labor are dear to Jesus, and He has imparted to a life of toil both dignity and nobility.

Well said—Jesus, the carpenter.

Also during these years from twelve to thirty, Jesus would have, as it was commanded in the Law, annually made the trek to the temple for the three annual feasts that the Law commanded. So three times a year, Jesus would have gone to the temple. Exodus 23 and Deuteronomy 16 both spelled out that responsibility.

But I want to spend a little time dealing with Jesus' family life because I don't think we think a lot about this, but there are insights that we can gain. The key one comes from Mark chapter 6, verse 3. Jesus' critics say, "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary [so they're talking about Jesus], and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? Are not His sisters here with us? And they took offense at Him." Now here in this text, you can obviously see that there are four brothers listed and "sisters" is plural. So, there were at least two sisters. There may have been more. Jesus grew up in a family of at least seven children and perhaps more if He had more than two sisters. I can appreciate that being from a family of ten—very comparable.

But the question here in this text is brothers or sisters in what sense? And that's been an argument from church history. Three answers have historically been offered. The first answer came from Jerome, and he said they were cousins. This is the traditional and remains the primary Roman Catholic position. There's a problem, however. The Greek word for "cousin"—there is a Greek word for cousin and the New Testament writers decided not to use it. In addition to that, the Greek word "brother" is never used to designate a cousin anywhere else ever and so this is not a good option.

A second option that's sometimes offered of who these people were, these brothers and sisters, is that they were Joseph's children by a previous marriage. Joseph had been married before. His wife had died. Mary was his second wife. This would mean that Jesus was the youngest in the family, the only child of Joseph and Mary. Now this particular solution was originally proposed in order to protect the concept of the perpetual virginity of Mary. That's what the Roman Catholic Church teaches. It came into play a couple of hundred years after Christ and they taught that Mary remained perpetually a virgin, that she and Joseph were not married in the full sense of that term.

Well, in addition to obviously denigrating the sanctity of the physical relationship in marriage, there are many problems with this view. Couple of the more obvious ones—there's no mention in Scripture of it that Joseph was married before. Secondly, it erases Jesus' claim to the throne because He would have not been the firstborn. Thirdly, it doesn't match the New Testament picture. When you look at the gospels, Jesus' brothers are always tagging along with their mother. Later in 1 Corinthians 9:5, they're described as having wives. The implication is that they were younger than Jesus, not older. So this solution doesn't work either.

The one that works is that these were children born to Mary and Joseph after Jesus and you see this in several texts. Matthew 1:18, before Mary and Joseph "came together she was found to be with child." What is the clear implication of that expression? That later, they did come together. Matthew 1:25, Joseph "kept her a virgin until she gave birth." Again, the normal meaning of language means that eventually they had and enjoyed a physical relationship in marriage like every other couple. Luke 2:7, Jesus is called the "firstborn son." What does that imply? There were other children that followed. So these were Jesus' brothers and sisters. He had four brothers and at least two sisters, all younger than He.

Now there are several other implications that we can draw from Mark 6:3. "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? [Are they] Are not His sisters here with us? And they took offense at Him." Several important conclusions we can draw from this about those years between Jesus' twelve-year-old trek to the Passover and His beginning His ministry at thirty. The first implication is that Joseph had died. He's not mentioned anytime during Jesus' ministry. He was still living when Jesus was twelve at the incident there at the temple, but there is no mention of Joseph after that. Jesus had at least six younger siblings that He was therefore responsible for.

Secondly, Jesus had taken over the family business. Here it says He was "the carpenter." That means that He worked six days a week to support the family during these years.

Thirdly, it also means that Jesus led the family. In Jewish culture, if Joseph, Jesus' father, died after Jesus' visit to the temple when He was twelve but before Jesus began His ministry as it appears, then it would've fallen to Jesus as the oldest man in the home to teach His younger siblings the Scripture. The course was laid out for Him in Deuteronomy 6, you remember? Speak of them by the way, bind them to your forehead, bind them to your gateposts, teach your children constantly. This would've fallen Jesus' responsibility then.

No family ever had a better teacher, a more consistent example or a more perfect model of God the Father than they did. Yet remarkably, whenever it was that Jesus' siblings first became aware that their older brother claimed to be more than the human son of Mary and Joseph—whenever it was they came to be aware of that, they rejected his claims. They refused to believe Him. In fact, they thought He was out of His mind. Turn over to Mark chapter 3. Mark chapter 3, verse 21: "But when His own people heard of this, they went out to take custody of Him; for they were saying, 'He has lost His senses.'" Look down at verse 31:

Then His mother and His brothers arrived, and standing outside they sent word to Him and called Him. A crowd was sitting around Him, and they said to Him, "Behold, Your mother and Your brothers are outside looking for You." Answering them, He said, "Who are My mother and My brothers?" Looking about at those who were sitting around Him, He said, "Behold My mother and My brothers! [This is my real family.] For whoever does the will of God, he is My brother and sister and mother."

I love that expression because that's us. That's us.

When you go further in Jesus' life and ministry, the attitude of Jesus' siblings toward Him becomes very clear in a later incident that occurs just six months before His crucifixion. It's in John chapter 7. I won't take the time to turn there but look at verse 5: "For not even His brothers were believing on Him." This is six months before His crucifixion.

You know, when I think about this, I think how sad it must've been for Jesus to have His own family, His younger siblings, reject His claims. That may well be why at the cross Jesus gives the apostle John the responsibility to care for Mary, His mother. There were other siblings. There were other boys. He had four brothers, but He didn't give any of them the responsibility because none of them believed in Him.

We know that Jesus willingly limited the independent exercise of His attributes while He was on the earth. It may well be that Jesus Himself did not know that His brothers would ever believe on Him. He may have died thinking that those He had loved, those He had cared for, those He had lived with, those He had taught every day, would always reject Him. You know, when I think about that, I just think if you've ever had a child walk out on the faith and turn his or her back on all you've tried to teach them, Jesus knows from experience what that's like.

So for thirty years, Jesus lived an ordinary life. If He lived today, for thirty years of His life, His life would've greatly resembled many of us. He grew. He studied. He went to school. He was involved in a family. He worked and He worshiped. Doesn't that encompass our lives? A completely ordinary life after His birth until the age of thirty—why? Well, Dean Frederic Farrar, in his famous book Life of Christ, writes:

In these years, Jesus began to do long before He began to teach. They were the years of sinless childhood, a sinless boyhood, a sinless youth, a sinless manhood, spent in that humility, toil, obscurity, submission, contentment, prayer, to make them an eternal example to all our race. We cannot imitate Him in the occupations of His ministry, nor can we even remotely reproduce in our own experience the external circumstances of His life during those crowning years of ministry. But the vast majority of us are placed, by God's own appointment, amid those quiet duties of a commonplace and uneventful routine which are most closely analogous to the thirty years; it was during those years that His life is for us the chief example of how we ought to live.

I think Farrar is right. Certainly, for those thirty years, Jesus set a magnificent example for us, but He was doing so much more. Because more than setting an example, for those thirty years, Jesus was living the life we should have lived. For thirty years, never a sinful thought—growing up in a family, growing up in a large family—never a sinful thought or attitude to his siblings, never disrespectful toward his parents. Never was there an angry word, a sinful, angry word spoken. Never was there a word intended to hurt and cut and maim. Never once did He cheat at His work. Never once did He take something from someone else. Never once did He cross any boundary of God's Law. Never once did He fail to understand the Law of God and to live it. For thirty years, He did everything God wanted Him to do. He loved God perfectly and He loved the people around Him as He loved Himself. And for those thirty years, He was living the life I should have lived. He was living the life you should have lived as our substitute.

You see, it wasn't just at the cross Jesus acted as our substitute. He lived that perfect life so that not only could our sins be imputed to Him or credited to Him on the cross and God treat Jesus as if He had lived our sinful lives, but you remember my favorite verse. Second Corinthians 5:21, "He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf [why?] so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." It's because of our connection to Him. He was our representative as we were reminded this morning. Everything Jesus did, He acted in our place. And for thirty years, He did everything I should have done.

And when I came to Him as Lord and Savior, not only did He take my sin and credit it to Jesus' account, but God, in a mystery of grace I will never understood, took those thirty years of perfect life and He put them in my account. And now God treats me as if I had lived that life. And if you're a Christian, He treats you the same. Those were not thirty silent years. Those were thirty crucial years to the ministry of Jesus Christ. Next time, Lord willing, we'll look at His ministry. Let's pray together.

Our Father, we thank You for the beauty of Your Son. Lord, it amazes us when we really think about what we've said, when we think about the reality of what really after His birth was an ordinary life for thirty years. And yet, Father, we thank You that there was nothing ordinary about it, that it was extraordinary because of what He did for us. He lived here for thirty years in obscurity and silence so that that perfect life, in a display of Your sovereign grace, could be credited to our account. Father, don't let us ever get over what our Lord has done for us. Give us hearts that are overwhelmed with gratitude, that are amazed with grace. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.