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You from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, to him who loves us and has washed us clean from our sin in his own blood, and made us to be a kingdom of priests to serve God and his Father. To him be all glory, honor, and dominion forever and ever. Amen. There is a locatedness to God. God always gives himself a location at which he may be found. God has always condescended to a location for the sake of his creation. And God has always made himself known at that place. Regarding places, for humans, places give us identity. This is true for any person. Just think about it for a minute, and you'll realize this is how we identify each other. After meeting someone and receiving their name, the very next question on our lips is often, where are you from? The place identifies the person. Right or wrong, we often have preconceived notions about people by the location they're from. Which also then tells us about one's character and reveals something about their identity. The Latin word for habito is where we get the word habitat from. It describes the place we reside. And furthermore, our habits are formed out of our habitat. What we do is formed by where we're from. People have always given themselves to be known by the place they come from. Everyone here resides in Southern California, I'm 99% sure. But it's part of your identity. Ask anyone here, and they can tell you about the wild fires that they've lived through and the earthquakes that have shaken up their lives, and the people they know and the conversations they've had. It all impacts the way we see ourselves and the way we relate to one another. But without a place, people will feel as though they lack identity. So it is also with the people of God. After the exodus of Israel from Egypt, God promised his people a place, a land flowing with milk and honey. And from then on, they identified themselves with that place. God has always located himself at a place for his people to know him, which impacts their identity also. This is all over the scriptures, mind you. In the Old and New Testaments, Jesus, sorry, just as he did for Jacob when he dreamt about the ladder between heaven and earth. It's not a coincidence that when Jacob awoke, he set up a pillar there and named it Bethel, which literally means house of God in Hebrew. Jacob understood what was happening at that place. When he said, How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven, even though it was on earth. Where God places his name, that is where he resides. Wherever he resides, there his name is also. He explains this in Exodus when he says, In every place where I cause my name to be remembered, I will come to you. Moses met God on the mountain of the Lord in the burning bush. I'm sure everybody remembers. The Lord gave his name in that place, Yahweh. I am the one who is, or as you more likely know, I am the one, I am who I am. There at that same mountain, that place, God wrote the Ten Commandments with his own finger in stone tablets. It was there in that place where God gave Moses the blueprints to the tabernacle, the tent of meeting. Everybody follow me so far? Later it was that place, the tabernacle, where God would meet with Moses and literally dwell with his people. There at the tabernacle, the glory of the living God would fill that tabernacle and surround it with thick smoke, so that the people of Israel knew that the presence of the living God was there in that place. And they would gather around the tabernacle where the Lord had given himself to be known by them. Aaron the priest was instructed in Leviticus to put God's name on his people so that they could dwell with him. So God has always established a place, a locatedness for himself to dwell with his people. Likewise, God always gives himself a location at which he may be found. If last week's sermon was about receiving what the Lord has for us through the means he gives it to us, then this week is about receiving what the Lord has for us in the place he gives it to us. Like it's been said, God is a God of certainty. What he does for your salvation and where he does it is for your certainty, it's for your benefit. And God shows us that the place where he locates himself remains important even today. He points out this fact in St. Luke's Gospel. What Matthew tells us in his gospel that Emmanuel means God with us by pointing to the Christ child, Luke demonstrates with his gospel the events like Jesus, as the 12-year-old boy being found where? At the temple. And by this event, our Lord continues to reveal that he really is God in the flesh and found, and the importance of receiving him where he gives himself to his people. Listen closely. Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover, and when he was twelve years old, they went up according to custom. Now Jesus is the Christ. He is God in the flesh. But even though he is God, as man, he remains to be about the things of mankind, about earthly customs. The Jewish customs of his day weren't bad. They were God-ordained traditions. God gave his people then, as he does now, word and sacrament, sacrificial traditions, liturgical calendars, feasts and festivals. Traditions are not just things they did because their fathers did them. Traditions were handed down as teachings with feast days and events and rites and rituals. And God's faithful followed them. So Jesus is found where? In the temple, in Jerusalem. This should be of no surprise to any one of you. It is Jesus we're talking about. He was born a Jew, after all. His parents follow Jewish custom. They traveled every year to the temple for the feast of the Passover. A feast about the single most redemptive act by God that the nation of Israel had ever known. Thus, the feast of the Passover was the most important feast the Jews could celebrate, just as Easter is the most important feast day for the church to celebrate. And from our perspective, Passover foreshadowed the single most redemptive act the world would ever know in its deliverance from sin and death through Jesus Christ. And when the feast was ended, and as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know, but supposing him to be in the group, they went a day's journey. But then they began to search for him among their relatives and acquaintances, and when they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem, searching for him. Where did they go? To God's holy city. It's God's city. It's the place where God had promised to dwell with his people. And after three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions, and all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. Three days. It's as though God is indicating something to his hearers here, bearing witness about something that may be coming. It isn't a mistake that it takes three days to find Jesus. To be lost and then found are motifs in St. Luke's gospel for dying and rising. They represent death and resurrection. St. Luke's captures this in Jesus' parable to the prodigal son. This is where the Father explains that it's fitting to celebrate because your brother was dead and is alive. He was lost and is found. And so three days later, Jesus is found, and he's most definitely alive. And when his parents found him, his mother said to him, Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you with great distress. And he said to them, Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my father's house? Why were you looking for me? It's the kind of question that kind of smacks you in the face. It's kind of like asking, why didn't you know? But Jesus wasn't just found anywhere. Notice where our Lord places himself. The word made flesh is dwelling where the word of the Lord is given. You cannot put God where he hasn't already placed himself. Notice how he refers to it. Did you not know that I must be in my father's house? He doesn't refer to it as the temple or a mere building, but his father's house. It is the house of God, just like Jacob confessed. It's not a coincidence that God in the flesh came to be where God had promised to dwell with his people. Notice Jesus doesn't retort and say, Well, this temple is no longer valid because I'm God tabernacling with you in the flesh. No. Rather, he pointed to the place where God had always promised to be with his people. It didn't matter whether the ark of God was not in the temple anymore, regardless of whether the Holy of Holies was empty, it was still God's house. And Jesus knew he must be in the place where God offers himself to his people. But now in flesh appearing, both word and sacrament. Yes, the temple was destroyed during Israel's exile. Yes, it was rebuilt. Yes, it was made out of stone and mortar, and none of these things made it less holy. It remained holy because God dwelled with his people in the ways he promised. But like Jesus' parents who should have understood, they didn't understand. Just like many Jews, our Lord's own people, failed to believe and recognize him for who God had identified him to be. Remember, he came to his own, and his own did not recognize him. So it is with people today. Even people around us, our own family of Christians, God's own people might not understand that he is present for you now, in the gifts that God has for you, all of you, through the means he gives himself to you, in the place where he promises it. Or take this building, for example. This building we're currently worshiping in, sure, it may be made of concrete and brick and wood and glass, but the Lord's presence here is not less than there. This place is set aside for his worship. It is a holy place. It is God's house. And how do we know this? Well, because the name of the Lord is here. His word and his sacraments are here, and we who are his baptized children are gathered together here to receive his gifts, his means of grace. His most tangible gifts that he gives to his church are found here in this place. His word, his absolution, his baptism, his communion. And our God locates himself in every one of those for you. Just like we know with certainty, where his body and blood are, there he is also. Lo, he is with us even to the end of the age, dear beloved. For where the word of God is, there he is also. God's word and spirit go together. God never works apart from himself. Wherever the Father is, there is the Son. Wherever the Son is, the Holy Spirit is also. Wherever the Spirit is, the Father and Son are working. So this place that we're gathered in is holy. Not because we're gathered here, but because God is holy. God does that. Remember, you cannot put God where he hasn't already placed himself. Yes, God has tabernacled with his people. That means made a tent for himself in Jesus. And Jesus tabernacles with us even today in his gifts of word and spirit and body and blood, the whole Jesus just for you. Therefore, receive the Lord's gifts for you in the place where he gives himself to be received. This is true evangelism. We invite those who are outside to come in, come into the place where the most certain God gives himself with the most certainty in word and sacrament, especially this very place, Peace Lutheran Church. And just like Jesus had to be in his Father's house, so you also, dear beloved, baptized, blood-bought children of God, must be found in God's house, where his gospel is purely preached and his sacraments rightly given. Didn't you know that you must be in the house of your father? After all, this is part of your identity with this place. Never forget it. And depart today from this place and know that your sins are forgiven in Christ Jesus. Amen. Now the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.