You have probably at one point or another wondered about Jesus.

What was the childhood? What was he like? What was he interested in? Could people already tell that he was special?

While the Bible doesn't give us a lot of specifics today on Truth for Life, we'll look at the ordinary and extraordinary details about Jesus that the Scriptures do reveal.

Alistair Begg is teaching from Luke chapter 2.

The Bible has a young boy as a growing young man. There's no question that it does give to us the forefold developmental stages in the life of a young person.

What can't imagine that that's the whole reason that we have this record? What then is the business to which he refers?

Didn't you realize he says that I must be about my father's business? So I said to myself, well I need to understand this business.

What is the activity? Christ's business, if you like, was to make absolutely explicit the free universal offer of the gospel.

And as I listen to some of you regurgitate to me what you think it is I'm saying, I realize how deficient I'm becoming in my instruction.

Because as I listen to some of you talk you sound as though you're becoming increasingly fearful in your evangelism.

Less somehow or another you may goof it up and find that the wrong people are getting saved, you know.

John Duncan, the late John Duncan of Scotland, reasoned it out in this wonderful way. He said, sin is the handle by which I take Christ.

And this is what he wrote, I don't read anywhere in God's word that Christ came to save John Duncan.

But I read this, he came to save sinners. And John Duncan is a sinner and that means he came to save John Duncan.

How can it be simultaneously true that only the predestined are saved and that God commands all men to believe?

Frankly, I don't know. But I do know this that both horns of the dilemma are equally valid.

That the offer of the gospel is a universal offer. Perhaps the key is in the great prayer of Augustine Lord,

give what thou dost command and command what thou wilt. What is God command? He commands faith. And yet he also gives it.

And the faith required is my faith, my believing, my trusting, my doing.

Nobody believes for me, nobody believes in a vacuum on my account. I understand the message of the gospel.

I face the fact of my sinfulness. I come as an individual to trust unreservedly in Christ.

That is something that I must do if I am to be saved. That is why I say to you again and again, the issue is not whether you were confirmed or baptized or grew up in the United Church of whatever it was.

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