Jesus' Family
Modern Family Values • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Then His brothers and His mother came, and standing outside they sent to Him, calling Him.
And a multitude was sitting around Him; and they said to Him, “Look, Your mother and Your brothers are outside seeking You.”
But He answered them, saying, “Who is My mother, or My brothers?”
And He looked around in a circle at those who sat about Him, and said, “Here are My mother and My brothers!
For whoever does the will of God is My brother and My sister and mother.”
Intro:
Intro:
AG: The Bridger Wilderness Area in Wyoming is one of the most pristine areas for hiking in the United States. A number of years ago hikers were asked to fill out comment cards. Here are some of their actual complaints…
• Please avoid building trails that go uphill; escalators would help on steep sections.
• Too many bugs and spiders and spider webs. Please spray the wilderness to rid the area of these pests.
• The coyotes made too much noise last night and kept me awake. Please eradicate these annoying animals.
• A small deer came into my camp and stole my jar of pickles. Is there a way I can get reimbursed?
• A McDonalds would be nice at the trailhead.
• There are TOO Many Rocks...
These comments and complaints reveal that most of us are looking for that which is comfortable and convenient. In a similar way some of us push back when Christ calls us to radical commitment.
TS: In our text today we turn to the natural family of Jesus. We’ll see how Jesus shakes up our sense of comfort in verses 31-35:
RS: Family is foundational but following Christ must come first. There are three things going on in our passage.
Let’s drill down and follow the flow.
1. An urgent request from family.
1. An urgent request from family.
We see in verse 31 that Jesus is in a house teaching to a packed audience:
Then His brothers and His mother came, and standing outside they sent to Him, calling Him.
The word “and” has the idea of “then,” referring to what happens next. There are so many people crowded into the house that his family can’t get close enough to get his attention.
This had to be frustrating for them because they had hiked 30 miles from Nazareth to Capernaum through a lot of rocks to do an “intervention” and now they couldn’t even have a conversation with Jesus.
Remember, Jesus had siblings! Contrary to the teachings of some. . Listen. While his earthly mother Mary was a virgin when she was impregnated by the Holy Spirit, she and Joseph had other children after Jesus was born.
The word “brothers” literally means, “from the same womb.” The word for “relatives” was available but the gospel writers use the word for brother. Let’s ponder a few other passages where we see that Jesus not only had four brothers (half-brothers), but sisters as well.
Is this not the carpenter’s son? Is not His mother called Mary? And His brothers James, Joses, Simon, and Judas?
And His sisters, are they not all with us? Where then did this Man get all these things?”
These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His brothers.
Galatians 1:19
But I saw none of the other apostles except James, the Lord’s brother.
Let’s go back to verse 31 so we see how urgent this request is from the family.
The word for “called” refers to a summons and has a sense of authority behind it. When I was growing up and would be playing in the backyard and my mom would call me in for supper I might eventually meander into the house. But if my dad called, I knew from experience that I better come running. These family members are urging Jesus to stop what He’s doing and to come immediately.
Let me make the obvious point that instead of joining Jesus in what He’s doing, they are trying to get Jesus to do what they want.
We often do the same, don’t we? We want Jesus to bless what we’ve got going on instead of lining our lives up with His plans and purposes. Here’s a good prayer to pray: “God, show me where you’re working so I can partner with you to accomplish your will.”
We see the nature of this urgent request in verse 32:
And a multitude was sitting around Him; and they said to Him, “Look, Your mother and Your brothers are outside seeking You.”
Jesus is told that his family has arrived but He doesn’t stop what He’s doing because He’s following His father. Mary should have remembered what Jesus said when He was 12 in Luke 2:29 :
“Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace, According to Your word;
AP: Jesus demonstrated priorities.
The family is foundational to life, but following Christ must come first.
Just as Jesus put the Father’s business first, our top priority must be Jesus
We are disciples of Christ and children of GOD before we are fathers, mothers, siblings, children, etc.
Remember, God will never lead us to neglect our family, but when what they want contradicts what God wants, we must go God’s way.
As P.K.s, my brothers and I experienced this first hand.
The moves I recall (there was one when I was too young to remember)
Myrtle Springs to Midland after my 6th grade year
Midland to Ferris after my 8th grade year.
Then, while I was in college, they left me in Ferris as youth director and they moved with my youngest brother Joel to Longview.
It meant starting over, saying goodbye to friends and being the new kid
BUT it was for the Kingdom!
I handled it fairly well
Then, when we moved here, my children experienced the same thing!
God’s will must come first!
2. A startling question about family.
2. A startling question about family.
Once the message comes to Jesus that his family is asking for Him, He asks a very startling question, a rhetorical question that must have messed with his mom and shaken up his siblings:
But He answered them, saying, “Who is My mother, or My brothers?”
I imagine those sitting in the house looking around at each other. The tension must have been palpable. The crowd would have fully expected Jesus to stop his teaching and go with his mom and siblings because in that culture, there was nothing more important than family.
This response of Jesus seems radical to us but would have been revolutionary to those listening because the family bond in first century Israel was tight and long lasting. It was normal for children to live close to their parents, sometimes in the same house. Loyalty to the family was equated with loyalty to God.
A rhetorical question is a figure of speech used to drive truth into a person rather than to elicit an answer.
Jesus skillfully asked these kinds of questions to emphasize a point in a powerful but non-combative manner.
In Mark 8 alone, He asks 8 different questions. All of this is designed to get his listeners to slow down, to ponder and to be prepared for what He is about to say.
Jesus was using this question to focus the attention of all who heard Him
AP: We need to pause and pay close attention to Him too.
When we open the word, it needs our attention.
I struggle with this at times. It is easy to nave the news going, and try to read. But that is divided attention.
God deserves our full attention!
3. A radical redefinition of family.
3. A radical redefinition of family.
Instead of easing the awkward tension, Jesus dials up the discomfort they’re all feeling.
In verse 34, He looks around at those seated in a circle and redefines the family:
And He looked around in a circle at those who sat about Him, and said, “Here are My mother and My brothers!
The phrase “looking about” literally means that He “looked round about.” Matthew 12:49 provides this detail:
And He stretched out His hand toward His disciples and said, “Here are My mother and My brothers!
Don’t miss this. Being a half-brother to Jesus didn’t make any difference to their spiritual condition.
In fact, according to John 7:5, his siblings didn’t believe until after the Resurrection.
Even Mary saw herself as a sinner in need of the Savior according to Luke 1:46-47:
And Mary said: “My soul magnifies the Lord,
And my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.
You can be in the best family ever but if you’re not in the family of God through the new birth you are lost.
Verse 35 provides some clarification about how to make sure one is in the family of God:
For whoever does the will of God is My brother and My sister and mother.”
We talk a lot about the importance of not having to “do” anything to become a Christian. Works don’t save us.
So how can Jesus say doing God’s will is an entrance requirement into his family? The key is found in John 6:28-29:
Then they said to Him, “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?”
Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.”
Jesus is raising the bar of “family” beyond physical and making it spiritual. We are in the family of God by adoption when we are saved!
I like how Charles Spurgeon put it: “I will ever maintain that by grace we are saved, and not by ourselves; but equally must I testify, that where the grace of God is, it will produce fitting deeds.”
For those who are prone to give Mary more majesty than is due her, Jesus redirects people away from adoring her to the importance of everyday obedience. In Luke 11:27-28, in response to Jesus’ teaching, a woman in the crowd called out to Jesus,
And it happened, as He spoke these things, that a certain woman from the crowd raised her voice and said to Him, “Blessed is the womb that bore You, and the breasts which nursed You!”
Jesus totally reframes the focus from her womb to His Word:
But He said, “More than that, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it!”
Jesus isn’t’ taking anything away from Mary, but He is again stressing we must follow God!
AP: A commitment to Christ is costly.
Hiking with Him through life is hard. Let’s be clear. Jesus is not repudiating family relationships. He’s just saying that one’s relationship to Him through the new birth is more important than a connection one may have through a natural birth.
The family is foundational but following Christ must come first.
Family Talk
It hit me this week that I play a number of roles in the various relationships I have. I’m an adopted son of the Father through the new birth. I’m a husband to Beth, my sister through the new birth. I’m the father of Emily, Lydia, Becca and Megan and also their brother through the new birth. I’m the father-in-law of Jamie and he’s also my brother. I’m one of the pastors of this dear flock and you are my brothers and sisters in Christ. We are family (no, I’m not going to sing that song). And I’d like to have a family talk.
There are times in our home when I’ve called a family huddle. Imagine that we’re all sitting together around the table for a time of realignment, redirection and relationship building.
1. Spiritual relationships must take precedence over natural relationships. We tend to categorize people today as single, married, divorced or widowed. While we will always celebrate and promote marriage as a covenant between one man and one woman for life, singleness is not a second-class status. Fellow family members, let’s see each other primarily as brothers and sisters in Christ and as spiritual fathers and mothers. 1 Timothy 5:2: “Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.”
2. If you live out your faith, some in your family will think you’ve lost it. If it happened to Jesus, it will happen to you. Maybe your parents don’t understand your faith or your spouse doesn’t get it or your children think you’re too fanatical. After Peter complained about how much they had left, Jesus said these words in Mark 10:29-30: “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.”
This is a mind-boggling statement. Whatever you have lost on account of Christ you will receive a hundred times “in this present age” brothers, sisters and mothers. Where do you get this many siblings and parents? Right here in the church. This is your spiritual family. We are brothers and sisters and we need each other. And this spiritual family is your real family, and it’s more substantial than the genetic bonds of a physical family relationship.
3. Invest time in your family but not at the expense of faith formation. If the sin of parents some time ago was to ignore their family, today it’s to make children the very center of everything. We don’t have a patriarchy or a matriarchy; we have a “kindergarchy” where marriage revolves around children. We do our kids no favors if they think they are the center of our life and existence. We must love God more than our kids. Kevin DeYoung gives a great reminder, “Our children don’t really belong to us. That’s a hard word, but a good word, for there is no better parent than our heavenly Father.”
The best way to love your family is to love Jesus more than your family. You will never love your family more than when you are totally dedicated to the Lord’s will for your life and for theirs. Psalm 127:1: “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.”
4. Don’t let sports or other activities crowd out your commitment to Christ. I’m deeply troubled about how many families are elevating other activities over the importance of gathering with God’s people. Over the years as a pastor I’ve watched families that at one time were faithful in their commitment to Christ and His church, get so involved in traveling sports leagues and other weekend activities that they are now unplugged.
Conclusion:
Conclusion:
The Christian life is not easy. It’s not meant to be. Discipleship is difficult. The path is often uphill and the route is rocky. Your commitment to put Christ first will be tested. Will you complain and seek the easy way or will you follow Christ into hard places? It’s worth it because He’s worth it. Obey the Word of God and embrace the will of God.