New Covenant Family According to Jesus

Introduction

On the one hand, it is an accident that this passage should come up on Father’s Day.

On the other hand, it is no accident. It is perfect for us to understand what Christians ought to believe about family.

Father’s day could be an excellent day for you. Maybe you had an excellent father that loved you well. Maybe he set you up for a successful life, and directed you toward Godly living.

Maybe you are the excellent father. Your children are successful, godly, and they honor you today.

Far more likely, however, is the opposite: ungodly fathers that abuse, unbelieving children who rebel, and my own shortcomings bearing out in real time.

Maybe this is your story. Maybe you are unable to see the passages where God is called a father as relevant because your experience with fatherhood was so terrible!

This passage here in Mark is for all of us.

Context

The first thing we need to understand is that the passage does not happen in a vacuum. It has a context that we need to consider in two parts:

first, we need to consider that the passage happens in a particular type of construction

second, we need to consider that the passage is in a grand story (the Bible) and serves that grand story in a particular way.

Chiastic Structure

Mark loved to use the chiastic structure to communicate concepts through how he arranged his account.

A chiasm is a structure that looks vaguely like an ‘x’ with the vital truth at the center. We will just look at the one in our passage today.

v.20-27 - family and scribes respond to Christ

v.28-30 - Jesus talks about belief and unbelief

v.31-35 - Jesus reveals what the family and scribe responses mean about their belief

What this means is that, whatever Jesus was teaching on, Mark thought it had to do with belief and unbelief.

Grand Structure

The grand structure of the Bible reveals something important that we will need to take with us in studying this passage.

Jesus is making a transition while he was on the earth. Prior to the Resurrection, the Old Covenant was in full force. Jesus belonged to this covenant as a man. However, Jesus’ ministry was always pushing toward Jerusalem, where he was put to death. The death he died shed the blood that was the foundation of a New Covenant. This transition is crucial for us to understand what Jesus is saying.

With both belief/unbelief and Old/New in mind, we turn to Covenant Membership. Then we will look at how God has situated the family. Finally, we will consider what this passage has to say for Fathers.

Covenant Membership

Who are the characters in our story?

First, we see Jesus as the main character. Everything hinges on him. No surprise there!

Second, we have the family of Jesus. They “set out to restrain him.” They responded to Jesus as “out of his mind.”

Third, we have scribes. They came “down from Jerusalem.” Their response was that Jesus was “possessed.”

Finally we have the crowd. They responded to Jesus by listening.

Why is this important?

Old Covenant Membership

Family Authority

The answer is descendents of Abraham. Blood relatives of Abraham belonged under the Old Covenant. Jesus was Jewish; so was his family. The foundation of the Old Covenant was the family unit. God established the family in

Deuteronomy 6:6-8 (CSB)

Deuteronomy 6:6–8 CSB

These words that I am giving you today are to be in your heart. Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them be a symbol on your forehead.

The method God was going to establish for bringing about his good plan of salvation was a bloodline.

It is in this context that God gave families authority over one another. They are supposed to hold each other accountable. They are to protect each other from error, displeasing God, breaking the Law, and so on.

So, Jesus’ family did just that. They came to get him to set him straight. “Obviously Jesus doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

Jesus, being under the Old Covenant, had an obligation to his family. That is part of what makes his response so striking.

Legal Authority

What about governing structures? Who ruled the Jews under the Old Covenant?

The Scribes are not just a group of self-published authors and bloggers in their moms’ basements. They were the lawyers of the day. They had authority given to them from the Jewish eldership, the Sanhedrin, to provide judgement based on the Law of God. These men had real authority in that day.

What’s more, they had God-ordained authority. God gave this office to the nation of Israel under the Old Covenant to protect it from straying from the Law

Deuteronomy 16:18 CSB

“Appoint judges and officials for your tribes in all your towns the Lord your God is giving you. They are to judge the people with righteous judgment.

So, when the Scribes came to judge Jesus, they did have authority in Israel. Also, they were not just regular scribes, but scribes from Jerusalem. These were the cream of the crop lawyers. They knew their stuff! When they condemn Jesus for being demon possessed, they weren’t just spouting off random things. They thought they were rightly applying the Scriptures.

Jesus, being under the Old Covenant, had an obligation to the political structures established in that Old Covenant. That is the other part of what makes his response so striking.

New Covenant Membership

Remember, we talked about the fact that Jesus was making a transition between Old and New. What difference is he aiming at?

The main change is the one we have been considering the last two weeks: belief and unbelief.

Under the Old Covenant, their membership was based upon circumcision and lineage. The Jews had good reason to believe they were God’s people by belonging to the Old Covenant.

But Jesus raises the bar. Instead of outward circumcision and outward keeping of the Law, Jesus shows what the Old Covenant was designed to reveal.

The New Covenant supersedes the Old. Under the New Covenant, membership is not based on the same things as the Old.

New Covenant Membership is based on Spiritual Circumcision, not physical

Rather than a physical marker of membership, belief is the marker of belonging.

New Covenant Membership is based on an Internalized Law, not an external one

Rather than keeping the Law as the basis for maintaining membership, New Covenant members have already had the Law kept on their behalf. They do good works out of love and affection for Christ, not out of obligation to the Law and fear of being out-of-membership.

Maybe you think that is the whole sermon. But there is more! We need to consider now the way Jesus is progressing the idea of Family in this transition time so that we can know how to behave in families today.

Family Ties

God established the family

Way back in Genesis 1:28

Genesis 1:28 CSB

God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth.”

God declared that there would be families.

We have already said the God established the Old Covenant family as the basic unit of the nation.

The Old Covenant family needed to be maintained so that the Messiah (a Jewish man) would be born.

seed of the woman

better Moses

Throne of David

Old Covenant family was for the production of Jesus.

Jesus belonged to the Old Covenant

Jesus was born under the law

Galatians 4:4 CSB

When the time came to completion, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law,

He had to keep the Law for him to be a perfect sacrifice.

Which means . . .

Jesus honored his family

Luke 2:51 CSB

Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was obedient to them. His mother kept all these things in her heart.

John 2:1–5 CSB

On the third day a wedding took place in Cana of Galilee. Jesus’s mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples were invited to the wedding as well. When the wine ran out, Jesus’s mother told him, “They don’t have any wine.” “What has this concern of yours to do with me, woman?” Jesus asked. “My hour has not yet come.” “Do whatever he tells you,” his mother told the servants.

John 19:25–27 CSB

Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple he loved standing there, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.

The New Covenant supersedes the family

We are adopted in Christ

2 Corinthians 6:18 CSB

And I will be a Father to you, and you will be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.

Galatians 3:29 CSB

And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, heirs according to the promise.

Galatians 4:5 CSB

to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.

John 1:12–13 CSB

But to all who did receive him, he gave them the right to be children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born, not of natural descent, or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but of God.

Once we belonged to regular, flesh-and-blood families. Now we belong to a new family—a spiritual family in Christ.

Adoption means something in particular about other relationships. It doesn’t mean you do not have a blood-father or blood-mother, but that you do not view them the same as you view your adopted parents.

“As Christian people we must learn to appropriate by faith the fact that God is our Father. Christ taught us to pray “Our Father.” This eternal everlasting God has become our Father and the moment we realize that, everything tends to change. He is our Father and He is always caring for us, He loves us with an everlasting love, He so loved us that He sent His only begotten Son into the world and to the Cross to die for our sins. That is our relationship to God and the moment we realize it, it transforms everything.” – Martyn Lloyd-Jones

The church is God’s household

Ephesians 2:19 CSB

So, then, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with the saints, and members of God’s household,

Romans 12:10 CSB

Love one another deeply as brothers and sisters. Take the lead in honoring one another.

Galatians 6:10 CSB

Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us work for the good of all, especially for those who belong to the household of faith.

1 Timothy 3:15 CSB

But if I should be delayed, I have written so that you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God’s household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth.

God doesn’t eliminate the household, but instead supersedes it. The households that build the whole assembly are no longer family, clan, tribe, and nation. Instead, it is local church, associations, denominations, and Kingdom of Heaven.

So, what about Fathers today? If God supersedes family with the family of God, what am I to do?

Applications

What you do as a father matters.

Indicative/imperative

You are in charge of your household.

What you do as a father leads your wife and kids toward or away from Christ.

The way you husband and father does reveal Christ—but you can do a good or bad job of it.

Bulletin Quote: “God is the archetypal Father; all other fatherhood is a more or less imperfect copy of his perfect fatherhood.” – F.F. Bruce

You cannot save your kids.

What you do as a father, however, doesn’t have ultimate authority. Your kids will disappoint you. They will do stupid things. They may even be unbelievers.

You are to take responsibility for where you fall short, and leave the rest to God.

The difference between believing children and unbelieving children is not the faithfulness of the parents, but belief and unbelief.

While you are still living, you can still pray and try to win your children for Christ. But it is not up to you.