Luke 2:39-40--The Return to Nazareth

Luke 2:39-40
English Standard Version
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The Return to Nazareth
39 And when they had performed everything according to the Law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. 40 And the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom. And the favor of God was upon him.

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So much happens in these two short verses, but we have to go to another gospel, particularly the gospel of Matthew, to find out about those events.  Of particular note during this time frame would be events of Matthew 2--the last couple of verses seem to correspond to with part of what happened in today's verses).  Note that Luke does not say that they left from Jerusalem and immediately headed back to Nazareth.  That may be our assumption by the parts of the story told in Matthew 2 not being included, but Matthew doesn't say much about the events recorded in Luke 1 and 2 either.  The gospel of Mark will simply start at the beginning of Jesus' ministry when He was 30 years old, and the gospel of John goes all the way back to the beginning to let us know that Jesus is the eternal second person of the Trinity, God the Son, and that He is the Creator God.  He did not somehow become divine, but He always was divine.  Matthew and Luke also have different audiences, but it's interesting to me that that although Matthew had a very Jewish audience, he chose to talk about the wise men from the East (Gentiles) that came to worship the King of Jews--that was what was important about the story to Matthew as he would come back to this phrase later, since it would be the "crime" that Jesus was charges with by Pilate when He would be crucified and Matthew wanted to point forward to that.  Luke on the other hand seems to be focusing on the "good news of great joy that will be for all the people."  We see the first witnesses in Luke's gospel were all Jewish people, yet the gospel is pronounced very clearly that it is for the whole world.  The events of Matthew 2 connect Jesus with Israel because, like with the Church, the LORD looked at true Israel, the saved saints of the Old Testament, and saw His Son.  He even calls Israel His "firstborn son" in the Old Testament and there is a prophecy that "I have called my Son out of Egypt" that Matthew will point to in Matthew 2.  I'd encourage you to read Matthew 2 today along with this passage just so you can tie together some of the pieces of what are happening during the years that these two verses span.

Okay, let's get back to today's passage now.  Last we saw Jesus, He was about 1 month old and we saw Simeon bless Him and Mary and Joseph, and we saw Anna in the Temple praising the Lord for His salvation and redemption that was near.  We won't see Jesus appear front-and-center again in the book of Luke until He is 12 years old (His last year of Jewish childhood, probably not long before He would have is Bar-Mitzva when a Jewish boy would "come of age."  That's tomorrow's passage though).  Between one month old and 12 years old, there's a lot of growing up to do and a lot of us wish that we know the details of what happened during that time, but it's not important for us to know and the gospels seem to indicate that nothing would have happened during that time (or from the time He was 12 until He began His ministry when He was 30) to reveal who He was.  The only thing that people might notice about Him that was special was that He never sinned.

Luke says that they (meaning Mary and Joseph) performed everything required according to the Law of the Lord (the circumcision, redemption of the firstborn son, and the sacrifice of purification for Mary) before they eventually returned home to Nazareth in Galilee where Jesus would spend most of His childhood growing up.  This was not the ideal place to raise a child from what we know of Nazareth for it would be said, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?."  Think of it like we think of Las Vegas, Nevada being called "Sin City" here in the United States and how you expect moral depravity and not to hear anything good that comes out of it.  That is the kind of environment that Jesus grew up in, and yet, He was not a victim of circumstance or culture, because we are told that He grew and became strong, and was filled with wisdom (we'll see evidence of that in the next story Luke tells).  We're also told that God's favor was upon Him and we'll see that verbalized by God the Father both at the baptism and the transfiguration that will be recorded later.  "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.  [Listen to Him]." (That last part is from the Mount of Transfiguration, but not recorded as part of what is said at Jesus' baptism).

That's pretty much all that we know of Jesus' childhood.  So, if you see movies about the life of Christ and they show Jesus doing miracles and revealing His divinity when He was a child, I can assure you they are based off of myth, legend, and old wives' tales, and are probably totally inaccurate since it seems that when we read the Gospel of John that Jesus had a definite desire for His identity to not be revealed too early, and was concerned that that His first miracle would set things in motion too quickly.  I'll also make one other note here connected to today's passage, and that is that we see a pattern of Joseph and Mary always being faithful to take Jesus to celebrate the required Feasts in Jerusalem (definitely all the pilgrimage feasts) and it was probably one of these feats, the Feast of Passover, when we will see Jesus appear next.  We see Jesus continues this practice and interesting things always occur when He visits Jerusalem to celebrate one of these feasts during the three years of ministry that He had here on earth.