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It Takes a Family
by Roberta Hestenes
Text: Luke 2:46-50
Topic: How God forms children through family life
Big idea: The incident of Joseph and Mary losing 12-year-old Jesus in Jerusalem tells us much—and encourages us—about how God uses normal, fallible, human families.
Keywords: Children; Family; Parenting
Introduction:
- Jesus' words to his parents: "Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?"
How could good parents lose Jesus?
- Imagine your feelings if your 12-year-old child was missing for three days.
-Illustration: Hestenes and her husband frantically waited up for their teen daughter who was late coming home from a babysitting job around the time the Hillside Strangler was killing young women in that area.
- Mary and Joseph immersed Jesus in the traditions of Passover and their faith.
- They couldn't find Jesus because they weren't looking in the right places.
Even Jesus perplexed his parents.
- Mary is a very human mother of a very perplexing son.
- At 12, Jesus wasn't acting his age; he was acting much older.
- Jesus said, "Isn't it obvious where I should be and what I should be doing?"
- One can almost hear in Jesus a typical teen complaint: "Why don't you trust me?"
- If Mary and Joseph, hand-picked by God, couldn't understand Jesus, we should not be discouraged at our own difficulties communicating with our children.
Family life prepares children for God's purposes.
- Families do not have to be picture perfect to be used of God.
- Family life is in danger of being relegated to a low priority in our society.
- The church needs to pray for and support families, inside and outside the church.
- Families are not add-ons to other things in life; rather, they are foundational, growing us into what we become.
Conclusion:
- God came down into a family. May he enter our families through Christ as well.
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