Jesus At Home in the Temple
Dean Goulburn. Luke 2:46 And it came to pass, that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the middle of the doctors, both hearing them… It is easy to understand that the Temple must have had a wonderful attraction for Him, so that He found it very difficult to tear Himself away from it. Our Lord, having now ceased to be an infant, and become a child, was fully conscious who He was. He was now able to look back to His former state of existence, when He lay in His Father's bosom from all eternity, and was worshipped as a Person in the blessed Trinity by the holy angels. As His faculties opened, it would dawn upon His memory what He had been. Now, therefore, mark the effect upon Him, when He sees for the first time the services of the Temple. The Temple was a little figure or model of heaven; the Temple music of the praises of God continually sung in heaven; the Temple services of the pure and holy worship which the angels continually offer in heaven (Hebrews 8:5). When He saw the Temple services for the first time, they struck a chord in His memory, which vibrated sweetly and solemnly. The priests and Levites, offering their sacrifices and their incense, and singing their psalms, reminded Him of the blessed angels paying their homage to God and chanting His praises in heaven. He had never been the like upon earth before; and it is quite probable that, in a world of sin and sorrow, the blessed Jesus (even as a child) felt out of place, and away from His true home. Can you not imagine a person who had passed his early childhood in a southern clime, where there were birds of rich plumage, lovely stars at night, being suddenly banished to the North Pole, where his eye rests upon nothing but ice and snow, and all the beauties of nature seem to be locked up by a perpetual winter? Suddenly a bunch of bright flowers, or a bird of beautiful plumage, is brought to him as a gift from the south. It reminds him of his native country, and brings back in a moment the flowers, birds, and landscapes of that happy land. Something of this sort may have been our blessed Lord's memories, on seeing in early childhood the services of the Temple. He would feel that the Temple gave a true idea of His Father's house in heaven — was His Father's house on earth. Now a Father house is a home; and what dutiful child is there who does not love home; who is not drawn towards home, when away from it; who does not feel it to be a place of shelter, security, happiness, and peace, and cling to it accordingly? (Dean Goulburn.) Parallel Verses KJV: And it came to pass, that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions. WEB: It happened after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them, and asking them questions.