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The sermon interprets Luke 2:49 as revealing Christ’s undivided commitment to the Father’s saving business. Spurgeon grounds this commitment in the united work of the Trinity and explains Christ’s mission through His perfect example, establishment of salvation, and expiation for sin. Believers are urged to imitate Christ through total consecration, sincere faith, stewardship, and faithful service in ordinary occupations. The sermon presents such devotion as the path to Christian usefulness, gospel advance, and joy.
Theological center: The triune God saves through the incarnate Son’s willing, obedient, and atoning fulfillment of the Father’s redemptive purpose.
Applications: Imitate Christ’s wholehearted devotion · Serve God in your vocation · Serve God with earnestness · Consider the Trinity’s united salvation
Primary texts: Luke 2:49 · Hebrews 10:7 · Isaiah 61:1
“Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” Luke 2:49 BEHOLD then, how great an interest God the Father takes in the work of salvation. It is called, “his business,” and though Jesus Christ came to accomplish our redemption, came to set us a perfect example, and to establish a way of salvation, yet He came not upon His own business, but upon His Father’s business—His Father taking as much interest in the salvation of men as even He Himself did— the great heart of the Father being as full of love as the bleeding heart of the Son, and the mind of the first person of the Trinity being as tenderly affected towards His chosen as even the mind of Christ Jesus, our Substitute, our Surety, and our all. It is His “Father’s business.” Behold also the condescension of the Son, that He should become the servant of the Father, to do not His own business, but the Father’s business. See how He stoops to become a child, subject to His mother, and mark how He stoops to become a man, subject to God His Father. He took upon Himself the nature of man, and though He was the Son, equal in power with God, who “counted it not robbery to be equal with God,” yet He “took upon himself the form of a servant, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” Learn, then, O believer, to love all the persons of the Divine Trinity alike. Remember that salvation is no more the work of one than of the other. They all three agree in one. And as in the creation they all said, “Let us make man,” so in salvation they all say, “Let us save man.” And each of them does so much of it that it is truly the work of each and undividedly the work of all. Remember that notable passage of Isaiah the prophet, “I will divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong.” God divides and Christ divides. The triumph is God’s, the Father “divides for him a portion with the great.” It is equally Christ’s, He “divides the spoil with the strong.” Set not one person before the other. Reverently adore them alike, for they are one—one in design, one in character, and one in essence. And whilst they be truly three, we may in adoration exclaim, “Unto the one God of heaven and earth be glory, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.” But now I shall invite your attention, first, to the spirit of the Savior, as breathed in these words, “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” And then, secondly, I shall exhort the children of God, with all the earnestness which I can command, with all the intensity of power…