Good morning and grateful for this opportunity to open God’s Word with you today. Grateful for the chance to give our senior minister, David Strain, a chance to catch his breath before he leads us through Daniel in the month of January, a rich study that will be. I hope you’ll all be sure to take advantage of it.
Let me draw our attention to a couple of verses. By the way, you didn’t mind singing Christmas carols again this morning, I know. I thought one more Sunday of carols would do us some good before we take a turn into the rest of the year. Maybe it fits into the overall theme of this message today as we look at two different verses in two different places in Luke chapter 2, but the same idea – the idea of treasuring up. Before we look at God’s Word in Luke chapter 2 verse 19 and verse 51, let’s go to the Lord briefly in prayer.
Father, thank You for speaking to us and speaking to us about Yourself and Your Son and His work on our behalf. And so now open our minds, open our hearts, let us hear Your Word. Holy Spirit, be our teacher this day. Soften us to the truth of God. We ask it, Father, in Jesus’ name, amen.
Chapter 2 verse 19. This verse coming at the close of the report of the account of the nativity of Jesus, the visit of the shepherds in particular:
“But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart.”
And then verse 51 of chapter 2, following twelve years later, Jesus staying after the family following the Passover feast, and they went back to Jerusalem to search for Him:
“Mary, His mother, treasured up all these things in her heart.”
The grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God shall stand forever.
I’ve got a very straightforward, Wiley P. Lowry outline for us! Two points, straightforward, no gravy! What treasuring up meant for Mary and what treasuring up means for us.
Let’s think about treasuring up for Mary first of all. What an amazing concentration of divine activity in the life of one young girl and one young family in such a short amount of time. Think about it, the unlooked for and shocking announcement from the angel, Gabriel, the miraculous pregnancy, and Joseph’s reaction – he took the pregnant Mary to be his wife. How many husbands or husbands-to-be did that? Jesus’ birth in the stable and His bed, a food trough. The shepherds’ visit and their strange tale of angels in the night. The words of Simeon and Anna in the temple. And then some time later, while still in Bethlehem, the visit of the Magi from the East, their gifts and their worship of the child. Immediately, right away afterwards, the flight to Egypt just ahead of Herod’s henchmen with orders to slaughter every male child in Bethlehem two-years-old and under, again, their flight prompted by an angelic message. Another angelic message bringing them back to Nazareth after Herod’s death, and then later when Jesus was twelve, Mary and Joseph finding Him in the temple after the three-day search all over Jerusalem following the Passover, which He stayed back. And His curious response, “Did you not know that I must be in My Father’s house?” So much to try to make sense of. So many pieces to arrange in her head. And what insights could she gain from the Scriptures? All of that going on in Mary’s head and in her heart.
In the passages that we are considering this morning, there are two different Greek words that translate, “treasured up.” Luke chapter 2 verse 19, “suntereo,” is the Greek word that means “to keep closely together, to preserve, to protect from loss or ruin.” She’s pondering these events in her heart. She’s pulling them together. She’s comparing and letting one event or account as she’s heard from shepherds, as she’s heard from Joseph, one event or account explain and add to another. She’s mulling, she’s meditating, she’s turning over and over and over in her heart all the things she’s experienced and the things that other people have told her they’ve experienced in these events.
In chapter 2 verse 51, the phrase “treasured up” takes place some, describing events, some ten or twelve later. You know the story. Joseph and Mary take their young family ever year to the Passover in Jerusalem. When Jesus is twelve, He remains behind as the caravan returns home. And of course by then, Mary and Joseph have other children, they’re traveling in a company of other travelers, it’s easy to see how one gets kind of lost and misplaced in a crowd, and they think He’s someplace else. And He is indeed someplace else at a place they didn’t expect; He stayed there. Trying to find Him at the end of the first day, they realized “He’s not with our company.” They returned to Jerusalem, they searched for Him for three days, when they finally find Him, He’s in the temple where apparently He’s been the whole time. He’s been talking with the rabbis, asking questions about the Scriptures and answering questions related to His own understanding of the Scriptures. Upon His mother’s rebuke, “Why have You treated us this way? Your father and I have been searching all over for you in great distress,” He makes what sounds to her and Joseph an unexpected reply, “Why have you been searching for Me? Did you not know I had to be in My Father’s house?” Luke says, think upon Mary’s recollection, “They did not understand the saying that He spoke to them.” They did not know what that meant, “How could you be searching for Me?”
And again, Luke says of Mary, who is describing these events to Luke most likely as he is compiling his gospel, that she “treasured up all these things in her heart.” But she uses a different word. She uses the word “diatereo”, which is related to the word of 2:19, “suntereo,” which with the prefix “dia” is an intensifier in Greek. Luke is telling us that Mary “carefully treasured up” these events, as completely as possible, not losing sight of a single episode, of a single moment of the action. These events are precious to her and not to be lost or faded with time. She keeps them as fresh in her mind as she possibly can, not just then, not just in those days, but in the years to come. She is pondering them. She is treasuring them up. They are precious to her. They mean more to her than just about anything else that she could name outside her own sweet family.
Why is it important for Luke to make this point regarding Mary, and why was it important for Mary to emphasize that point with Luke as he is, no doubt, talking with her as he is compiling his gospel? Luke, it seems, tells Mary’s story in these opening chapters of his gospel. Matthew apparently talks more to Joseph, tells more of Joseph’s story in the opening chapters of his gospel. Mary is the Lord’s servant, just as you and I are if we trust and follow Him. And neither Mary nor Joseph had a clear understanding of what the future held for them or their firstborn son. We remember the angels’ message to Mary in Luke chapter 1. “He shall be great. He will be called the Son of the Most High. He will reign on the throne of His father, David. Of His kingdom there shall be no end.” And Simeon’s words about Jesus as they presented Him in the temple. That He shall be “for the rising,” or rather “the falling and the rising of many in Israel” – that cryptic warning of “a sword piercing Mary’s own soul.” It’s not at all plain how He comes to the throne of His father, David. What that means in light of the times in which Jesus was born, there is no throne of David, no true throne of David actually exists. The Davidic line was thrust from power generations before. Judea was, by this time, a garrisoned and groundout Roman province ruled over by a puppet king.
How will Jesus’ Messiahship be carried out? What will His Messianic work look like? Nobody knows at that time what that will look like. What’s clear is that Mary’s faith is fortified as she treasures up the memories of these amazing events. She can’t determine any more than we can how it is that God becomes Man or exactly what a Messianic mission will involve. But in treasuring up, in pondering in her heart these memories of God’s amazing works, she seeks to draw the blessedness out of them. She wants to draw the blessedness out of them. If she can’t understand exactly what this means, she wants to draw the blessedness out of them.
You can hear it in her own song recorded in Luke chapter 1 soon after her pregnancy begins. “My soul magnifies the Lord. My spirit rejoices in God, my Savior.” She is not taking time to understand how to figure all the pieces out. She is rejoicing; she is magnifying the Lord. She sees His mercy. His mercy is for those who fear Him, from generation to generation. She sees the fulfillment of the promise He made to Abraham – “He has helped His servant Israel remember of His mercy as He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever.” She recognizes the covenant promise that has defined her nation’s experiences are coming to fulfillment right at the moment. Right at that moment she carries that fulfillment in her own womb. She is drawing, beginning to draw the blessedness out of the great works of God in those days. She is not going to write a theology, but she is going to praise. She is going to praise the God who is doing such amazing things in her family, in her own body, to bring forth the fulfillment, the hope of the ages. “My soul magnifies the Lord.” She is treasuring up, she is pondering, she is turning them over again and again and again. “What has God done?”
Well what does treasuring up mean for us? Well, let’s admit, even at this time of the year there is a little bit of Scrooge in all of us. There’s more than a little bit of humbug. You see, unbelief lives naturally with us. It is our heart’s native language. We live with the echo of Eden always in our hearts. What’s that echo? “God is not good. God is not good.” It was the serpent’s message to our first parents, Genesis chapter 3, and we hear it still. Bad things happen to us and what do we want to say before we even think? “Well, if God loved me, I wouldn’t have failed that test. Well, if God cared for me, I wouldn’t have lost that contract. Well, if God were truly watching out for me, I wouldn’t have had that wreck.” You see, our default position is to say that God doesn’t care, God isn’t good. Before we think it, before we have the chance to think otherwise, so often those are the words that form in our heads and form in our hearts. “If God loved me, this wouldn’t have happened. If God loved us, we would be doing better things.”
You see, it takes our treasuring up of the truths of God to overcome our natural skepticism and cynicism about Him. We find it in all of our Bible heroes. Think about it. Abraham, known as the man of faith, and watch Genesis trace his understandable struggle to believe God regarding the promise of a son to be born to him in Sarah in their old age – Abraham 100, and Sarah 90, well past childbearing age. With Moses, who struck the rock that God commanded he speak to, God commanded he speak to it, he struck it to provide water for the people in the desert, and he paid the price for that disobedience. With David, one of our greatest heroes, who after the many deliverances he enjoyed, he had enjoyed at God’s hand, said in 1 Samuel 27, “Now I shall perish one day by the hands of Saul.” You know what David is saying? He’s saying, “In spite of all I’ve seen God do, I really live by the law of averages, and so one of these days the averages are going to work against me and Saul is going to get me. I’ll die by his hand.” After all that he’s seen, after all that he has seen of God work on his behalf. And so it becomes the very best idea in the world for him to retreat to the land of the Philistines where he has killed their hero and he is going to go there and live in peace in the blessing of God? You see how backwards we think when we don’t recognize this tendency of cynicism and skepticism, that echo of Eden – “God is not good.”
We don’t know the future any more than Mary did. We stand at the beginning of a new year, the end of an old one, the beginning of a new one. In the midst of that whirl of miraculous events, she found her bearings by treasuring up these amazing things that she saw God do. She found her bearing by pondering those things in her heart, thinking through them, thinking, examining, reexamining, remembering, re-remembering. Let me ask you a question. One the wrapping paper is all put away and the Christmas tree stowed away or thrown away and everything goes back in the box and the house looks normal again, we’re not singing Christmas carols, when we go back to regular life, how often do we let our minds wander over the events of the incarnation? How often do we think about the first coming of Jesus? Do we think about it in March? In July? In August and September? Of course not. Of course not.
We fail to remember the steadily advancing momentum of covenantal and Messianic promises that rolls through the Old Testament revelation. It’s like a drumbeat – He’s coming. He’s coming. He’s coming. He’s coming. He’s coming. We don’t think about the virgin’s miraculous pregnancy or that birth in the stable or the manger for His crib. We don’t think about the angelic message to the shepherds, the Magi from the East. All these accounts and so many more are stored up in our hearts and we bring them out every December. Most Christmas carols we can sing at least the first couple of lines of without even looking at the words. But do we treasure those accounts? Do we treasure those truths? Do we ponder them? Do we run through them in our heads? Do we mull over them? Do we listen to the carols that we sing? Those precious memories are the answer to the echo, “God is not good.” Those accounts of God’s amazing works to bring salvation to His people are the antidotes to our hopelessness with our own hope plays out and we know that it does.
What do we do when our own hope plays out? Look at how improbable for a Savior of the world to be born in a stable and not some great palace. A child whose death is sought by a ruthless king with all the resources of a great empire at his disposal. A Savior whose family subsists on the margins of society and can give Him none of the advantages that great leaders are supposed to have. And yet, God prevailed. Jesus conquered death and hell for all those who trust in His work to make them right with God. Yet God prevailed, and in His Son, “born of a woman, born under the Law, He redeemed those who were under the Law that we might receive adoption of sons, and by Him cry, ‘Abba! Father!’” Yet God prevailed and in Christ He reconciled the world to Himself. Here is the call of the Gospel – be reconciled to God! “For our sake, He made Him who knew no sin to be sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” When our own hope plays out, look at all the hope that God has brought to light in Jesus Christ – His person, His coming, and His work.
Let’s unwrap Christmas again. Let’s unwrap Christmas again, and like Mary, treasure up, treasure up and ponder these miraculous, amazing events. Christian, when you treasure up these great moments of redemptive history as they are recorded for us in the Scriptures, will you let them break the hold of your native unbelief and strengthen your grip on the God who is good and reveals His goodness in Jesus Christ? Will you? Christian, will you do that? Some of us here maybe have not made up our minds about Christ. We’re here because maybe we want to know, somebody made us come this morning. Maybe it was family, peer pressure that brought us here this morning, and we have no interest in Christ. Non-believer, let me ask you – Will you hear the call of the Gospel? Be reconciled to God and embrace Christ by faith. Enjoy the rich blessing of adoption as the Father’s son or daughter through faith in the work of Christ to cleanse you of sin and make you right with Him. Will you do that? Will you consider the claims of Christ and consider all that God did to bring redemption to bear in a lost and dark world, keeping the promise He made for generations? Will you think of Christ? Will you embrace Him by faith?
For all of us, hear the inspired words of Paul the apostle. “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also graciously with Him give us all things?” Hear the goodness of God displayed in the Scriptures. Hear the greatness of God’s care and love and goodness. See it displayed in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Hear it and see it again in the miracles of Christmas that God is for us. Who can be against us? God has kept His promise, He has kept His covenant, the promise He made to Abraham – “In you, all the nations of the earth will be blessed.” We live in that day because of the great faithfulness of God, because of the great faithfulness of God and His love for His redeemed. Do you believe Him? Do you believe it? Is it too good to be true? It is too good, and it’s all true. It is too good and it’s all true.
May God bless us, everyone. Let’s go to Him in prayer.
Father, we give You thanks that You would rescue such as us. It wasn’t because we were the most numerous, it wasn’t because we were the most faithful, it wasn’t because we were anything but lost and dying that You rescued us, You kept Your promise, You sent the Redeemer. Father, enlighten our hearts with that miracle every day. Would we be like Mary, treasuring up these things in our hearts. Father, we need Your help. That’s more than we can do. We need Your help to do so. Indeed, help us now. We thank You, our Father. We make our prayer in Jesus’ name and for His sake. And all God’s people said, “Amen.”