Of all the visits Jesus made to Jerusalem one stands out as odd. When reading Luke 2 my focus has been on why an obedient boy would forget to leave town with his parents. I totally missed a whole other lesson.
According to A Visual Guide To Bible Events there was another point to be made. The Hebrews often related things to numbers, or in numbers. When the Babylonians destroyed the temple it was seventy years later that God provided a way for the exiles to return and rebuild it. From that time on the Hebrew nation began to look for God's deliverance at the end of a seventy year stretch.
Seventy years from the time the Romans seized Jerusalem people began looking for divine rescue again...and look who walks into the Temple. It's not the well-built-obviously-strong-man who can take on the whole Roman army with a single hand walking in and getting everyone's attention. It's a boy asking and answering questions as he prepares for his first step into adulthood.
Of course the people were wanting, expecting, and looking for a deliverer...not the Sacrificial Lamb Messiah. I knew they wanted Rome gone from their city, but I never quite got why there were so many people naming their babies Jesus, or why so many claimed to be the messiah, or why they didn't see his miracles as coming from the hand of God. Now it all makes sense.
How sad for the people who didn't catch on. I've got to wonder if there is ever a time that Jesus comes into my life as a deliverer and I don't recognize His hand at work because it's not the way I expected it to come. Ouch.
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