Opening the Road to the Kingdom of Godਨਮੂਨਾ

JESUS - THE PROMISED CHILD KING

MAIN IDEAS

• Those who belong to God are interested in matters that concern God. Worldly people leave you talking to yourself when you bring up biblical or spiritual topics.

• Our priorities are indicators of our spirituality.

• Children’s disobedience against their parents is only justified when kids are asked to do something contrary to God’s will.

At twelve years of age, young JESUS was very interested, preoccupied, and informed about all things spiritual, more so than the things of this world. We can see this in the annual visit He and His parents made to Jerusalem, for Passover. The Feast of Passover had already ended and His parents had left, not noticing that JESUS was missing from the caravan. After three days, He was still in Jerusalem among the Temple leaders and teachers of the time, probably engaged in all sorts of discussions about God. This was His greatest priority and pleasure. It is hard to understand how a twelve-year-old could show not only such a great interest in but also a deep knowledge of God’s work. On the one hand, JESUS was surprised that His parents did not understand His priorities and the pleasure of being in “My Father’s house”, since they were actually disturbed by His gesture. On the other hand, it was important for His parents that He should return home with the other children of the family and carry out His daily activities. For Jesus, even though he was only twelve years old, spiritual things took priority and fulfilled Him. His parents did not understand Him; even though at His birth they had undergone great and supernatural experiences, they seemed to have completely forgotten them.
JESUS was a good, obedient, and respectful child towards His parents, but God, the Heavenly Father, was His absolute priority. The principle that we see applied here by JESUS is that we should listen first to God, not to people. Looking at things from a worldly perspective, His parents could not understand Him. The priorities in one’s life are an indicator of their spirituality. Spiritual people will always give greater value to spiritual things, to the detriment of earthly things. For spiritual people, the spiritual will always take precedence over the natural. It is a biblical principle that we can see in the life of JESUS, beginning with His childhood.