Bible Reading Program Comments

GRACE to You

Comments from Reading The Gospel of Luke - Chapter Two

5th Grade Special BIBLE Reading Program

By  George Nielsen

Truth-Statements that we learn from reading the Holy Bible are statements or descriptions of events that present us with a law or a highly significant principle of our faith.  The law/principle applies to everyone, not just the people in that particular narrative or Scripture passage.  

I am also doing the Special Bible Reading Program, along with the students, and today I finished my written report for Luke, Chapter two.    Chapter 2 continues the story of Baby Jesus, and then gives an incident from Jesus’ boyhood that is important for both children and parents.   There were five things that I saw in this chapter that I could take away from it as principles of faith and of Christian living.    These comments describe two of those principles, both taken from verse 40, and both connected to the principle of Grace.   Verse 40 says:

40 And the Child grew and became strong in spirit, filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was upon Him.   [NKJV]

Godly Wisdom

This verse begins by saying that Jesus grew.   We understand from this that Jesus had what we would consider to be a normal childhood, meeting His developmental milestones just as would be expected.  There is nothing in the Scriptures to indicate otherwise.   But, there is one domain of child development that Jesus excelled at -- the spiritual domain.    Many Scripture texts teach that we are to be strong and courageous.  This verse says that as a boy, Jesus was strong spiritually.    Then it says why that was the case -- He was “filled with wisdom”.

So, the first truth-statement I took from this verse was:

Godly wisdom brings strength, that is, strength of personal character and the resolve to be strong spiritually (a strong commitment to our faith) .   

Mary and Joseph are the people who are directly responsible for Jesus being filled with wisdom.   Holy Spirit gave Jesus insight and revelation from the Scriptures, after Mary and Joseph had made sure that Jesus read and was taught about those Scriptures.    Jesus and His family would have read and studied the entire Torah in fifty-two weekly portions, every year.   He would have memorized the entire Shema prayer from Scripture, as a young boy, so that He could say it every morning.   He would have sang many of the Psalms, and been taught from Proverbs and other Writings.  He received the blessing of the children, from the elders, every week at the Sabbath worship gathering at His synagogue in Nazareth.

Mary and Joseph were “on-the-same-page” with Holy Spirit, as far as their parental responsibilities were concerned.    They no doubt also said the Shema every day, and knew, with no doubt at all, that they had to teach Jesus diligently, as Deuteronomy 6: 7 states.    So a principle for application of the truth-statement is:

Parents need to teach Godly wisdom to their children.

There will be lots of teachable moments, day by day, and hopefully, parents will have the opportunity and make the effort to use those moments, and build-up their child’s supply of Godly wisdom, from the Holy Bible.    Parents shouldn't expect to have the kind of structure in place for teaching, like Mary and Joseph did.    But, they need to have some structure to their efforts in training their child spiritually.  Our church provides part of the structure for this, with Children’s Sunday School at 9.15 AM on Sundays.     So when parents are instilling spiritual disciplines in their child, to develop Godly wisdom, besides the personal devotional disciplines like prayer, I definitely also recommend the discipline of Christian Education by attending Sunday School.

  

GRACE to You

The final clause of the sentence in verse 40 states that the Grace of God was upon Jesus.   How did people know this?    Prophets like Anna and Godly people like Simeon had revelation from Holy Spirit, so they were able to recognize it even when He was a baby.   But other people could tell because they saw how Jesus lived and how He interacted with the rest of the community.   There was a notable difference in Jesus, above and beyond what they saw in the other boys in their community.    I believe that the answer to why this was so was -- that Joseph, and his household, including Jesus, served the LORD and God responded to this with blessing and special favor.   This  included spiritual gifts that Jesus received and that the people could see, as He used those gifts.   This principle is described in Romans 5: 5b - “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us.”   The special love of God, that we call agape love, is distributed by Holy Spirit to all of God’s children, and Jesus received it in even greater measure.   And this love is love that is expressed in actions.   We use the phrase “Love Does” to emphasize that we are not talking about just feelings of love, but also about doing things that express that love.  

Jesus did “Love Does” -- in such a notable way that people recognized that this was the result of God’s grace, even  when Jesus was a boy.  

 The second truth-statement can be simply stated as:

God watches over His children -- being gracious to them.

Paul the Apostle, in particular, is known for invoking the Grace of God upon people through his own spoken or written word.    He has written, in several epistles, the phrase “Grace to you, and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”   The spoken word releases our delegated authority, as followers of Jesus, to verbally make an  impartation of Grace.   Speaking that as a faith-filled expression, to people, allows Holy Spirit to act, in a way that the Spirit knows is God’s will, to bring that Grace upon that person.   As the person receives that Grace, and walks in it, they will have that blessing in their life.   

People saw that Grace, in Jesus’ life.    One of the principles for application of this truth-statement is:

You can, and should, speak to impart the Grace of God upon people, so that the opportunity can be there for the special flow of God’s Grace -- just like what was described about Jesus (in Luke 2: 40).  

The popular singer, Taylor Swift, when speaking about songwriting and the impact of her lyrics, said “Make your words count!”  (in a televised interview on the program ‘60 Minutes’).    Speaking “Grace to you”, particularly over your own household, can make your words really count, for God’s Kingdom and to bless people.