Jesus at Jerusalem

125:5.1Je­sus’ third day with the scribes and teach­ers in the tem­ple wit­nessed the gath­er­ing of many spec­ta­tors who, hav­ing heard of this youth from Gal­i­lee, came to en­joy the ex­pe­ri­ence of see­ing a lad con­fuse the wise men of the law. Si­mon also came down from Beth­any to see what the boy was up to. Through­out this day Joseph and Mary con­tin­ued their anx­ious search for Je­sus, even go­ing sev­eral times into the tem­ple but never think­ing to scru­ti­nize the sev­eral dis­cus­sion groups, al­though they once came al­most within hear­ing dis­tance of his fas­ci­nat­ing voice.

125:5.2Be­fore the day had ended, the en­tire at­ten­tion of the chief dis­cus­sion group of the tem­ple had be­come fo­cused upon the ques­tions be­ing asked by Je­sus. Among his many ques­tions were:

125:5.31. What re­ally ex­ists in the holy of holies, be­hind the veil?

125:5.42. Why should moth­ers in Is­rael be seg­re­gated from the male tem­ple wor­shipers?

125:5.53. If God is a fa­ther who loves his chil­dren, why all this slaugh­ter of an­i­mals to gain di­vine fa­vor—has the teach­ing of Moses been mis­un­der­stood?

125:5.64. Since the tem­ple is ded­i­cated to the wor­ship of the Fa­ther in heaven, is it con­sis­tent to per­mit the pres­ence of those who en­gage in sec­u­lar barter and trade?

125:5.75. Is the ex­pected Mes­siah to be­come a tem­po­ral prince to sit on the throne of David, or is he to func­tion as the light of life in the es­tab­lish­ment of a spir­i­tual king­dom?

125:5.8And all the day through, those who lis­tened mar­veled at these ques­tions, and none was more as­ton­ished than Si­mon. For more than four hours this Naz­a­reth youth plied these Jew­ish teach­ers with thought-pro­vok­ing and heart-search­ing ques­tions. He made few com­ments on the re­marks of his el­ders. He con­veyed his teach­ing by the ques­tions he would ask. By the deft and sub­tle phras­ing of a ques­tion he would at one and the same time chal­lenge their teach­ing and sug­gest his own. In the man­ner of his ask­ing a ques­tion there was an ap­peal­ing com­bi­na­tion of sagac­ity and hu­mor which en­deared him even to those who more or less re­sented his youth­ful­ness. He was al­ways em­i­nently fair and con­sid­er­ate in the ask­ing of these pen­e­trat­ing ques­tions. On this event­ful af­ter­noon in the tem­ple he ex­hib­ited that same re­luc­tance to take un­fair ad­van­tage of an op­po­nent which char­ac­ter­ized his en­tire sub­se­quent pub­lic min­istry. As a youth, and later on as a man, he seemed to be ut­terly free from all ego­is­tic de­sire to win an ar­gu­ment merely to ex­pe­ri­ence log­i­cal tri­umph over his fel­lows, be­ing in­ter­ested su­premely in just one thing: to pro­claim ev­er­last­ing truth and thus ef­fect a fuller rev­e­la­tion of the eter­nal God.

125:5.9When the day was over, Si­mon and Je­sus wended their way back to Beth­any. For most of the dis­tance both the man and the boy were silent. Again Je­sus paused on the brow of Oli­vet, but as he viewed the city and its tem­ple, he did not weep; he only bowed his head in silent de­vo­tion.

125:5.10Af­ter the evening meal at Beth­any he again de­clined to join the merry cir­cle but in­stead went to the gar­den, where he lin­gered long into the night, vainly en­deav­or­ing to think out some def­i­nite plan of ap­proach to the prob­lem of his life­work and to de­cide how best he might la­bor to re­veal to his spir­i­tu­ally blinded coun­try­men a more beau­ti­ful con­cept of the heav­enly Fa­ther and so set them free from their ter­ri­ble bond­age to law, rit­ual, cer­e­mo­nial, and musty tra­di­tion. But the clear light did not come to the truth-seek­ing lad.