Luke reminds us for the fifth time that Joseph and Mary had done everything for Jesus that God's law demanded (Luke 2:22-24; Luke 2:27).  Christ was not above God's law; He was born under its authority, but He was the only person who could fully keep it.  He chose to place Himself under the law in order to redeem us from the curse which the law pronounces on sinners (Galatians 3:13). As Galatians 4:4-5 says, "But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship."

Most parents can relate to the anxiety of not knowing where their child is.  After the Feast of Passover, all the pilgrims returned to their homes.  For those from Nazareth it was at least three days walking.  They would have travelled together, partly in fellowship and partly for security against the threat of robbers (Luke 10:30).  The men and women would talk in separate groups; the girls and young boys travelling with the women, and older boys with the men.  But in the year before manhood, the twelve-year-old Jesus was probably in-between groups.  Presumably, Mary thought He was with Jo

Learning is different to both teaching and understanding.  The person who has learned something is able to demonstrate that the teaching has been understood, by taking the appropriate action.  Hebrews 5:8 says that principle also applied to Jesus, ‘Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered’. That did not mean that Jesus was ignorant of His mission to die on the cross - but that until He had done it, He had not 'learned' what He knew.

John the Baptist was on a mission.  It was not his idea; there was no self-interest in pursuing a long-cherished ambition.  God had commissioned him before his birth (Luke 1:13-17).  So, before Luke narrates what John did, he tells us John’s job specification.  About 700 years previously, Isaiah the prophet had written about a person who would announce God's Messiah.  That man would preach urgently about the need to get all the obstacles out of the way so that the Saviour would be welcomed (Isaiah 40:3-11).  That was John's divine appointment.