Skip to main content

Missing Jesus



Jesus was left behind and was found three days later as narrated by the Gospel writer Luke. Mary and Joseph went to Jerusalem to celebrate the feast of passover with Jesus when He was tweleve years old. When passover was over they began their trip towards home. After they had travelled a whole day’s journey that they had realized that Jesus was missing. Some may criticize the parents for not watching their kids diligently. If we look at another angle and understand a little better on what happened we can get a more non-judgmental opinion. In those days, they travelled in large groups. Men would travel ahead of women and children to prepare the tents for the stay at night. By evening time the women and children would catch up. I guess Mary thought Jesus was with the men's group and Joseph thought Jesus was with Mary. So it wasn’t until evening they found that they had lost Jesus. Regardless, they lost Jesus. “After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.” (Luke 2:46)

It is part of Christian living that we can be at danger of losing Jesus for a while. We take our faith for granted and get caught up in the busy schedule of life. We can even get caught up in the church activities and miss out on Jesus. The Bishop of Oxford, John Pritchard wrote an article called “God Lost and Found” in an issue of 'Christianity' magazine (Dec 2012). He writes, “Have you ever looked around your church and wondered what all these good people are really, thinking about the worship this morning? I fear if you could see the thought bubble above many heads there would be rather less faith than the pastor would like to think.” John Pritchard goes on to say: “The reality is that most of us at some stage of our Christian journey enter a grey period when the vivid awareness of God that we used to delight in has disappeared. What was once bright and shiny is now tarnished and dull. Of course we keep the mask on because it would be just too embarrassing to stay home or go jogging on Sunday morning, but deep down we are going through the motions. The great illusion is that we think he is lost when he has probably settled down in the everyday heart of our lives, in our ordinary experiences and waits for us there."

The church has become more about us than about Jesus. We have a menu with our plans, missions and a long list of activities. We seem to have lost perspective and have become non-authentic. Amid wars, destructive natural disasters and terrorist atrocities committed in the name of religion, it is not surprising that many have stopped believing in God, lost their faith and go through the physical motions like church-going but with no belief. The famous Dutch born Catholic priest and Christian philosopher Henri Nouwen – author of the book “The Wounded Healer” who died in 1996 - said this about his own spiritual journey: “After sixty-three years of life and thirty eight years of priesthood, my prayer seems as dead as a rock. The words “darkness” and “dryness” seem best to describe my prayer today.” Today we have doctrines of all kinds preached in the name of Jesus. You can pick any doctrine that fits your agenda. You can join your choice of church that fits your life style or social status. We can be involved in Church but we can also miss out on where Jesus is. “We must pay the most careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away.” (Hebrews 2:1).

We read about the Church in Ephesus in the Book of Revelations that they lost their 'first love' (Chapter 2). They were strong in both doctrine and the work of the ministry, but got caught up in so many things that they lost their love. The 'first love' has a chronological and a theological meaning. They lost love in time and love in priority. These two meanings overlap and are complementary. The church didn’t go out of its way to walk away from Jesus. They just got caught up in other things. This does not suggest that they no longer had any love for Christ at all. Rather, it means that the quality of their love for Him had weakened and their priority of love has changed. It is the love toward God that translates into the love toward others and not the other way around.

As Christians, we can all lose Jesus for some time at certain points in our Christian life. The good news is that it is not too late to go back to where you left Jesus and start over because He waits where we left Him. He is the same yesterday today and tomorrow. As we prepare for a new year, let us challenge ourselves to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus every day and keep our love for Him strong in time and strong in priority. "Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith." (Hebrews 12:1,2 NIV).

Blessings

Click the link below to hear more

Fulll sermon audio: Mathew Philip 
YouTube:      Mathew Philip

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Puzzle pieces or work of art?

Is life a puzzle or work of art? Life can look like a puzzle. Some get the prizes they expected, and some get suprised at what they get. What is the most exciting time in the process of solving a puzzle? the beginning? or as we get each piece? or is it at the end when all pieces are complete? Regardless of what excites you, the potential beauty that it can become is rewarding. When we first open the box, the puzzle looks nothing like the picture on the outside; it is simply jumbled pieces in a bag. If life is compared to a puzzle, it may be a simple puzzle with a hundred different pieces, or it may be a more complicated thousand-piece puzzle with a picture that’s rather tricky to put together. There may be unpleasant and uncomfortable pieces in life that you feel like not fitting in well. You have been able to put together everything well for years, and all of a sudden find yourself confused as to how to fit in the next event. But whatever the size of the challenge, those events can...
Post a Comment
Read more

In Defense of a Disreputable Woman

Buy my book   " Joy in the Journey " on Amazon now 20% goes to missions               Experiencing sound quality issues?  Please Click here   In Defense of a Disreputable Woman      A woman in the Bible who has no name but being portrayed as deplorable and has been a victim of bad reputation. She has seen her life collapse - she has lost ten children, seen the family fortune disappear, and her husband has a rather disgusting disease with bad smells and slimy sores all over his body. There are only three verses in the Book of Job in reference to Job's wife; they are Job 2:9 (curse God and die), Job 19:17 (My breath is offensive to my wife}  and Job 31:10 (may my wife grind another man's grain). She is not looked upon as a good person. I've heard many preachers and theologians who use Job's wife as an example of a lousy wife. She is the one who told Job to deny God and die. Many Bible...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Ugly child Economics

The Bible is a book that is brutally honest and unsentimentally realistic. We can read about the strengths as well as the weaknesses of the characters. We read about Abraham's strong faith, but also his weakness when lies about Sarah being his sister. We read about David's successes, but we cannot ignore the sins he committed including murder. We read about Jacob who seemed to delight in trickery and deceit to achieve success until he meets Laban. The one who cheated his own father now gets cheated by his father-in-law; not once, not twice, but ten times!!! (Gen 31:7). Jacob and Laban are portrayed as two shrewd business men in the story. Jacob negotiated seven years for Rachel, but ended up working for Laban fourteen years and ended up with two wives which was nowhere in in his business plan. Laban used the 'ugly child hostage' economics here. He thought that chances of Leah getting married was slim, may due to her 'cross or weak' eyes. So he used the princ...
1 comment
Read more

Fathers Day

A father was hiking a mountain with his 3 year old son on his shoulders. After some time the dad said he was tired and asked the son to get down, to which the boy replied, “You can’t be tired. You’re my daddy!” We all have stories to tell about our fathers, or about being fathers. Mark Twain said, "When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in 7 years." Our famiies are facing a great crisis today. More and more fathers are disappearing from the scenes. It is now common to meet young people in our big city schools, foster homes and juvenile centers who do not know their dads. Most of those children have come face-to-face with their father at some point; but most have little regular contact with the man, or have any faith that he loves or cares about them. Statistics show 1 in 4 children live without a father figure in the household in t...
Post a Comment
Read more

God of Jacob

Buy my book   " Joy in the Journey " on Amazon now 20% goes to missions  There are several Psalms in the Bible that are attributed to the 'Sons of Korah' as the author. We dont know the writer of specific chapters because there were more than one sons to Korah. The Korahites in the Bible were that portion of the Kohathites that descended from the Sons of Korah. They were an important branch of the singers of the Kohathite division (2 Chronicles 20:19). The Sons of Korah were the sons of Moses' cousin Korah. The story of Korah is found in Numbers 16. Korah led a revolt against Moses; he died, along with all his co-conspirators, when God caused "the earth to open her mouth and swallow him and all that appertained to them" (Numbers 16:31-33). However, "the children of Korah did not die" (Numbers 26:11). Several psalms are described in their opening verses as being by the Sons of Korah: numbers 42, 44–49, 84, 85, 87 and 88. It i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Baptism

Mile markers are stones buried on the sides of highways that help us to determine direction and distance when we travel. In the USA, they generally increase from the South to the North,and from the West towards East. The exit numbers are generally lined up with mile markers so that you can calculate how long you have travelled and how much distance is left to the destination. Without them, we become lost and vulnerable. If you call for emergency help, they will ask your location about your mile marker or exit number to get to you quickly. These exit numbers give us a sense of comfort and peace in knowing where we are and what direction we are heading. The prophet Samuel set up a stone to commemorate the victory over the Philistines at Mizpah (1 Samuel 7:12). He called it Ebenezer which means 'thus far the Lord has helped us.' It is a mile marker in his life and the peoples' lives. We all have mile markers like birthday, firstday of school, sweet 16, graduation, marr...
Post a Comment
Read more

A touch of faith

A man went to see a psychiatrist because he was extremely depressed. The psychiatrist just could not get him to snap out of it. So he said to the man, “Tonight I want you to go to the circus in town because they have a clown named the Great Rinaldi, he is the funniest clown I have ever seen. Whenever I go to see the Great Rinaldi it always lifts my spirits.” The man responded. “You don’t understand doctor, I am the Great Rinaldi.” Life is made of joys and sorrows. The saying is that misery loves company and, if that’s true, there’s plenty of company. But the Bible teaches that you don’t have to be a victim. God wants you to have victory over them. We read in all the synoptic gospels about Jesus healing a woman with the issue of bleeding (Matthew 9:20–22, Mark 5:25–34, Luke 8:43–48). She had been in pain for a long 12 years, physially, emotionally and spiritually. She must have been under a lot of physical pain with the loss of blood feeling pale and tired. She definitely had a lo...
Post a Comment
Read more

Where is God when it hurts?

A man looked agitated during Sunday School. When he got out and and started pacing up and down the hallway, a friend asked him, “What’s the trouble?”. He replied, “The trouble is, I’m in a hurry, but God isn’t.” It is not uncommon to feel like God is taking a long time or not even paying attention. Silence of God can be scary and frustrating for a believer. David wrote a number of Psalms including Psalm 13 when 'God seemed to be distant in his life. We can see Asaph in Psalm 79 and Elihu in the book of Job asking similar questions. Most of us believe that where God is, there is no misery. We think that all is well when we have faith. But Jesus came to this world to turn that around when He said, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst and mourn". As believers in Christ, we can rest assured that ‘Where there is misery, there is God’. Jesus voluntarily embraced misery in order to share ours. A great author puts it like this, "Where misery is, there is the Messi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Raging Waters

"Faith rests on a firmer basis, and is not to be moved by swelling seas" (Charles Spurgeon). In Psalm 124 David sings “if the Lord had not been on our side the flood would have engulfed us,the torrent would have swept over us, the raging waters would have swept us away.” A mother got paid to nurse and care for her own son. Jochebed, the mother of Moses was the lucky woman to make history (Exodus 2). Her story is a message of a heartbroken woman who turned over her dreams to God. You may have desired a happy marriage, a successful career, developing their talent, or some other worthwhile goal, yet circumstances prevented it. We can only get through that kind of disappointment by turning it over to God. Whenever I passed through raging waters my Redeemer had been with me, sheltering me against the rising tide (Isa. 43:2, Psal 124). When I came out on the other side, which I always did, I was able to say with joy and confidence, “He is a faithful God!” Are you in the middle...
Post a Comment
Read more

Song in the night

"It is easy to sing when we can read the notes by daylight; but the skillful singer is he who can sing when there is not a ray of light to read by" Charles Spurgeon. We all go through difficulties and hardships: illness, broken relationships, loss of loved ones, conflicts, stress, and many other challenges. Sometimes we may feel overwhelmed and discouraged. But as Christians, we can go through these dark times like the saints of old, who sang in the darkness of their lives. Because of Christ’s death and resurrection, we can live with the assurance that the best is yet to come. We can look forward to an eternal life of joy and peace with our Lord and Savior. Asaph, the song writer sings in Psalm 77, "in the time of trouble, I remembered my song in the night".  To brood on sorrow is to be broken and disheartened. We can see the light of God's hope in the songs we sing in the dark. Full sermon: Mathew Philip Blessings Mathew Philip
Post a Comment
Read more