Preached at Holy Cross Evangelical Lutheran Church in Rocklin, California on The Second Sunday After Christmas, January 3, 2021 by Pastor John-Paul Meyer
The bulletin is available at https://holycrossrocklin.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/2021-01-03.Second-Sunday-after-Christmas-Pre-recorded7x8.5-Main-Layout.pdf
Sermon Text: Luke 2:22-40
Sermon Theme: “Who Is This Child?“
Old Testament: 1 Kings 3:4–15
Epistle: Ephesians 1:3–14
Holy Gospel: Luke 2:40–52
The Lord Jesus Is Found in the Temple of His Church
The Lord Jesus “grew and became strong” (Luke 2:40); He “increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man” (Luke 2:52). As His body grew and developed, His mind also increased in knowledge and understanding. For as our brother in the flesh, that we might “have redemption through his blood” (Eph. 1:7), He lived by faith in the Word of His Father. Thus, He was catechized by His parents, who took Him up “to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover” (Luke 2:41); and when He was of age, He gave attention to the Holy Scriptures in His Father’s house (Luke 2:46, 49). Christ Jesus is still found in His Church, in “the word of truth, the gospel,” by which we are adopted by His Father and sealed with His Spirit (Eph. 1:5, 13). Thus do we gain “an understanding mind” to go about our vocations, discerning “between good and evil” (1 Kings 3:9). And so do we also go up to Jerusalem, to stand “before the ark of the covenant of the Lord” (1 Kings 3:15), that is, in the Holy Communion of His body and blood.