His Father’s House

His Father’s House

Read: Luke 2:41-50

“Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?”

Luke 2:49

“To believe in the God over us and around us and not in the God within us—that would be a powerless and fruitless faith.”

—Phillips Brooks

IN WORD Mary and Joseph were perhaps given history’s most sacred charge: parenting the Son of God. And they lost Him! For more than three excruciating days, He was missing. They looked among their traveling companions. They searched all over Jerusalem. Surely their thoughts vacillated between trust in the sovereignty of God over His own Son— after all, the divine plan revolved around Him alone—and the frantic anxiety any parent would feel when a child is missing. When they finally found Him, He calmly reassured them: Where else would He be? The Temple is His home.

Don’t we also search for Jesus? Even though we are assured of His presence, He often seems awfully absent. For days or weeks we may seek Him. Like Mary and Joseph, our thoughts may vacillate between resting in God’s sovereignty with the knowledge of Jesus’ presence and anxiously seeking the invisible Son. “Though you have not seen Him, you love Him” (1 Peter 1:8). While such love results in “inexpressible and glorious joy,” it also stirs an unquenchable longing in our hearts.

IN DEED Jesus does not leave us to despair. What greater commitment could He make than this: “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” We do not need to wonder where He is. He is always about His Father’s business.

Knowing that His Father’s business is to dwell in and work out His plan in believers, we need not fret over His absence. In light of the post-resurrection fact that our bodies are His temple—both individually and corporately (1 Corinthians 3:16 and 6:19; 2 Corinthians 6:16; Ephesians 2:21-22)—what greater assurance of His presence can He give? His own nature compels Him. He must be in His Father’s house, and His Father’s house is us.