Truth Changes Everything • Jan 01, 2014
FROM ETERNITY PAST TO 12 YEARS OLD • Jul 01st 1984
Jesus’ First 12 Years: The Mystery of Christ’s Childhood
What was Jesus like during His childhood, and what was happening within the Son of God before He began His earthly ministry? In this profound Christian teaching, Gene Edwards explores the childhood of Jesus, the incarnation of Christ, Jesus at age 12, and the extraordinary union of the human and divine in the life of Jesus Christ.
Beginning before Bethlehem, Edwards takes us back to Christ before creation and considers the spiritual and physical realms, God’s creation of man, the fall of Adam, and humanity’s separation from the heavenly realm. Against that background, we encounter the astonishing mystery of the incarnation: the eternal Son of God entering human existence.
The teaching then follows the biblical story through Zechariah and Elizabeth, John the Baptist, Gabriel’s announcement to Mary, the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, and the heavenly celebration surrounding the coming of Christ.
But the central question becomes even more fascinating: What was it like for Jesus to grow up?
Gene Edwards invites us to consider Jesus not simply as God appearing to be human, but as the Son of God who truly entered human life and grew. As Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, Edwards explores how His human life existed in perfect fellowship with the divine life within Him.
This brings us to one of Scripture’s remarkable glimpses into the childhood of Christ: Jesus at age twelve in the Temple. When Mary and Joseph finally find Him, Jesus speaks of being in His Father’s house and about His Father’s business.
For Edwards, this moment points toward something much larger—the Son’s growing awareness of and fellowship with His Father. Jesus knew the heavenly realm as His true home while simultaneously living a genuinely human life on earth.
Ultimately, this message is not only about Jesus’ childhood. It points toward the Christian’s own calling to fellowship with the indwelling Christ.
Gene concludes by turning our attention to the beautiful fellowship between the Son and His Father—and the possibility of knowing Christ inwardly in our own Christian life.
The Son says, “Yes, Father. Yes, Father.” He sees water, and He remembers the River of Life. He sees a well; He remembers drinking the water of life. He looks up at the sun, and He remembers the light from the throne of God. He looks at the sheep, and He remembers that those sheep were created in His image. He picks up a lamb, and He remembers He created that lamb in His own image. He watches the children play in the marketplace. He watches the sower sow the seeds beside the road. He watches the harvesters harvest. He sees a field full of grain, half tares, half wheat. Saints, He doesn’t think of you or how He’ll condemn you with all these awful parables. (laughter)
He made the wheat. He made the lamb. He created water; a picture of the real water. He sees them all, and in them He and His Father have living fellowship. Outside of the Fall, outside of your needs, outside of my needs, they fellowship over these things, the common things of everyday life. He and the Father walk along and fellowship together in the perfect innocence of one, not only sinless but perfect…who has God in Him. If we could look inside Him, He would literally be billowing and bursting with light. Revelation is breaking forth with every moment. He is seeing Earth through the eyes of one who has seen the heavens.
He is seeing you and me and our needs, but right now He’s only 29 years old. He is simply growing in stature and wisdom to prepare Himself to tackle the human problem; when He comes to the man factor, when He comes to save. Right now, in all these things He will later speak about and tell us, and awe us with, He is having a pure, unbroken fellowship with His Father about them. A beautiful, holy, unperverted, uncorrupted, unfrightening, glorious experience with His Father. Later He will share them with us, perhaps at the level of our need, but this week we will discover the pure fellowship between Him and His Father before He ever shared it with man.
Something is going on between a man and God, and it ought to be going on within you—the Son’s fellowship with an indwelling Father. There is a fellowship of the man, the Christian, with the indwelling Son, and all I want you to do is look and look and look and look at that glorious fellowship within Him.
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Sow to the Spirit • Nov 23, 2013