When Yeshua is 12 years old, He leaves home to begin His life’s work. (Lk 12:42-43) He doesn’t feel the need to even notify Joseph and His mother, having no sense He needs their blessing or that they should be looking after Him any longer. He even challenges their concern and admonishes them: they should know better. (49)
This raises some intriguing questions. Is Yeshua amiss in departing His childhood home so early? Is this premature and unwise? (52) Is He acting impulsively without proper counsel and preparation? (Pr 12:15) If so, is it foolish? even sin? If not, and if this is God’s will, then why does He so willingly return and submit Himself to His earthly parents (51), and forfeit 18 years of ministry? (Lk 3:23a)
We may infer from Yeshua’s life pattern that He’s obeying His Father; it’s what He sees His Father doing (Jn 5:19): starting His earthly ministry at age 12 pleases His Father. (Jn 8:29)
The key is evidently Joseph and His mother; if they’re OK with Yeshua leaving His childhood home and being about His Father’s business, which they should be, this is evidently the ideal path — and it’s anyone’s guess what this looks like.
However, if they aren’t on board and their parental instincts take over, then there are insurmountable difficulties in the ideal path: technically, per cultural norms of His day, Yeshua’s still a minor, not yet considered an adult (Nu 32:11), so persisting in His ministry against His parents’ wishes appears to violate Torah. (De 21:18-21) So, this incredible potential must be scrapped altogether.
Even so, in the context of this fallen world, God’s foreordained perfect plan for Yeshua is still alive and well (Ep 2:10), and this is what plays out over time. (Ro 8:28) He remains subject to His mother, patiently waiting to begin His ministry until, after nearly two long decades, desperate to save a friend in need, she lets go. (Jn 2:3-5) God’s perfect will is still accomplished perfectly, but in the context of human brokenness the ideal isn’t always God’s actual plan, and that’s a beautiful mystery for the ages.
What do we learn from this? Perhaps we may grasp a little bit more the nuance between God working everything according to His own will (Ep 1:11) and the way Free Will shapes the narrative as He does. God could easily have restrained His parents’ carnal mind, working His will in them (Php 2:13) so they rejoiced in Yeshua’s independence. (Pr 16:1) But God lets them make their choice and they blow it; His mother evidently stubbornly resists Yeshua in this for quite a long while. (Mt 12:47-50) Yet God isn’t frustrated when we choose a sub-optimal path; God’s glory is never tarnished by the failures of Man; it cannot be. But we certainly miss out. Should it be otherwise? Could it be?
Perhaps there’s a sense in which Yeshua’s mother, as a pivotal figure in the vast human organism (Mk 3:21), is a type for us all here; we have all tried to control God and have things our own way. (Is 53:1) Consequently, perhaps we’ve all missed out on amazing revelations of God’s glory that were very real possibilities, eliminated by our own and/or others’ poor choices; perhaps every sin impacts everyone negatively in some irrecoverable way. (1Cor 5:6) Evidently, God’s OK with allowing this, so we should be as well, not finding an excuse to sin (Ja 4:17) but recognizing God’s will is still in play and He’ll richly reward our dedication to Him. (Ro 2:6-7)
Known unto God are all His works from the foundation of the world (Ac 15:18), so His will is never threatened (Da 4:35); He knows everything that’s going to happen and how He’s going to manage it all. (He 4:3) Yet our choices still matter; they have very real consequences (Ga 6:7-9), and God knows the potential, what would happen if we made better choices. (Mt 11:23) He’s constantly inviting us to follow Him into the ideal, and we should be right on His heels. (1Pe 2:21)
As it all plays out, God is supremely glorified in everything He allows (Ro 3:5-7), reconciling everything unto Himself (Co 1:20), and working out everything for the good of those who love Him. (Ro 8:28)
It is perhaps reasonable to argue that Yeshua actually is premature in trying to start His ministry so early in life, that He needs more time to fully mature and increase in wisdom, stature and favor with God; after all, the last verse in the chapter clearly states He has room to grow. Perhaps God is working through Joseph and His mother to ensure Christ has the proper foundation.
However, I don’t see how to reconcile this with Christ’s questions to His parents: Yeshua is acting in certainty and confidence, without any evidence of hesitation or double mindedness. He is fully committed to His plan and doesn’t back down when His parents finally locate Him and confront Him. It seems we need to conclude that either Christ Himself or Joseph and Mary are in some pretty serious error.
The fact Christ has room to grow in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and Man (vs 52), doesn’t imply He is acting prematurely, that He isn’t yet capable of perfectly following His Father’s plan and carrying out His ministry. The Father can certainly work mightily through Yeshua as He fully matures into adulthood.
I concede that Yeshua did not need to submit to His mother as though He were a minor until He was 30; young men are generally recognized as adults around 20, the standard set in Torah. (Ex 38:26 “a bekah for every man, that is, half a shekel, after the shekel of the sanctuary, for every one that went to be numbered, from twenty years old and upward, for six hundred thousand and three thousand and five hundred and fifty men.”) So this begs the question of why the Father waited an additional decade.
Perhaps Yeshua’s early ministry was to have a specific focus and scope, requiring the better part of two decades to accomplish, or suitable only for a minor to enter into, such that it was sub-optimal or infeasible for Him to begin this work at 20.
The age when men were considered sufficiently mature to be engaging in work of managing the tabernacle was 30. (Nu 4:2-3 “Take the sum of the sons of Kohath from among the sons of Levi, after their families, by the house of their fathers, from thirty years old and upward even until fifty years old, all that enter into the host, to do the work in the tabernacle of the congregation.”) So, perhaps God’s actual plan was to have Yeshua wait until this last phase of ministry to begin, which started at 30.
It is interesting that Yeshua does not appear to start inviting disciples to follow Him until just a few days before the wedding at Cana. (see Jn 1:45, 43, 2:1) Evidently, He could see this release coming and was preparing for it.