The Two Crucial Years

126:4.1With the com­ing of his fif­teenth birth­day, Je­sus could of­fi­cially oc­cupy the syn­a­gogue pul­pit on the Sab­bath day. Many times be­fore, in the ab­sence of speak­ers, Je­sus had been asked to read the Scrip­tures, but now the day had come when, ac­cord­ing to law, he could con­duct the ser­vice. There­fore on the first Sab­bath af­ter his fif­teenth birth­day the chazan ar­ranged for Je­sus to con­duct the morn­ing ser­vice of the syn­a­gogue. And when all the faith­ful in Naz­a­reth had as­sem­bled, the young man, hav­ing made his se­lec­tion of Scrip­tures, stood up and be­gan to read:

126:4.2“The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, for the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the meek, to bind up the bro­ken­hearted, to pro­claim lib­erty to the cap­tives, and to set the spir­i­tual pris­on­ers free; to pro­claim the year of God’s fa­vor and the day of our God’s reck­on­ing; to com­fort all mourn­ers, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy in the place of mourn­ing, a song of praise in­stead of the spirit of sor­row, that they may be called trees of righ­teous­ness, the plant­ing of the Lord, where­with he may be glo­ri­fied.

126:4.3“Seek good and not evil that you may live, and so the Lord, the God of hosts, shall be with you. Hate the evil and love the good; es­tab­lish judg­ment in the gate. Per­haps the Lord God will be gra­cious to the rem­nant of Joseph.

126:4.4“Wash your­selves, make your­selves clean; put away the evil of your do­ings from be­fore my eyes; cease to do evil and learn to do good; seek jus­tice, re­lieve the op­pressed. De­fend the fa­ther­less and plead for the widow.

126:4.5“Where­with shall I come be­fore the Lord, to bow my­self be­fore the Lord of all the earth? Shall I come be­fore him with burnt of­fer­ings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thou­sands of rams, ten thou­sands of sheep, or with rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my trans­gres­sion, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? No! for the Lord has showed us, O men, what is good. And what does the Lord re­quire of you but to deal justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God?

126:4.6“To whom, then, will you liken God who sits upon the cir­cle of the earth? Lift up your eyes and be­hold who has cre­ated all these worlds, who brings forth their host by num­ber and calls them all by their names. He does all these things by the great­ness of his might, and be­cause he is strong in power, not one fails. He gives power to the weak, and to those who are weary he in­creases strength. Fear not, for I am with you; be not dis­mayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and I will help you; yes, I will up­hold you with the right hand of my righ­teous­ness, for I am the Lord your God. And I will hold your right hand, say­ing to you, fear not, for I will help you.

126:4.7“And you are my wit­ness, says the Lord, and my ser­vant whom I have cho­sen that all may know and be­lieve me and un­der­stand that I am the Eter­nal. I, even I, am the Lord, and be­side me there is no sav­ior.”

126:4.8And when he had thus read, he sat down, and the peo­ple went to their homes, pon­der­ing over the words which he had so gra­ciously read to them. Never had his towns­peo­ple seen him so mag­nif­i­cently solemn; never had they heard his voice so earnest and so sin­cere; never had they ob­served him so manly and de­ci­sive, so au­thor­i­ta­tive.

126:4.9This Sab­bath af­ter­noon Je­sus climbed the Naz­a­reth hill with James and, when they re­turned home, wrote out the Ten Com­mand­ments in Greek on two smooth boards in char­coal. Sub­se­quently Martha col­ored and dec­o­rated these boards, and for long they hung on the wall over James’s small work­bench.