That your Commandments would make us wiser than our enemies, for they would be ever with us. That we might have more understanding than our teachers. That your testimonies would be our meditations. That you would give us wisdom among the agent, that we would keep your precepts, that you would, by your word, hold us back, hold our feet from every evil way. That we might not turn aside to the right or to the left because you have taught us. Father, we pray that your words would be sweet to our taste, sweeter than honey to our mouths. Father, be at work through your word in our life. Spirit, apply it as we have need. And may it praise the name of your son, Jesus Christ, through whom we pray. Amen. Amen. This morning, as we continue our series on discipleship, I’m going to take a look at a few verses in Matthew 3. This is God’s holy and inerrant word. And his mother and his brothers came, and standing outside, they sent to him and they called him. The crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, ‘Your mother and your brothers are outside seeking you.
‘ And he answered them, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers? ‘ And looking about those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers. ‘ For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother, the word of the Lord. Thank you, God. You may be seated. We pray for the preaching of God’s word. Father, as my words are true to your word, may they be taken to heart. But if my words should stray from yours, may they be quickly forgotten. We pray this in the name and in the power of Jesus Christ. Amen. P. D. Eastman’s Are You My Mother? Was a real favorite around the house a few months ago. Susan would read it aloud via Skype to our grandson who loved that sweet story of the newly hatched bird who wanders off to find his mother. He asks all he can find, Are you my mother? And learns that, no, it’s not the kitten, it’s not the dog, it’s not the chicken, it’s not the airplane. It’s certainly not that big thing that goes snort. This is what my grandson’s favorite parts. Now, I won’t tell any more of the story, as I’d hate to ruin the end for you.
But children love to answer along with a kitten and the dog. No I’m not your mother. We can certainly understand how a newly hatched bird might be confused and not know his mother. But for Jesus to ask a similar question in verse 33 is downright startling. Everybody knows the importance of family and especially the honor and the deference to be given to one’s parents, both in private and especially in public. We are commanded to honor our Father and our mother. The Proverbs instruct us again and again not to forsake our mother’s teachings and to disobey or even disrespect one’s mother or father was punishable by death in a strict application of Old Testament law. Now Jesus, in his teaching, is told by those around him, your mother and your brothers are outside seeking you. Instead of the expected response of asking to be excused to see what they want, he asks the shocking question, who are my mother and my brothers? What Jesus was doing here is completely redefining the concept of family for his disciples. We will see in our brief look at this passage this morning that to be a disciple of Christ is to be in Jesus’s family.
In his family, it is to obey his call to follow me. This obedience is especially seen in the disciples being with Jesus and ultimately being sent by Jesus. Yet before we look at this particular passage and its applications for each of us, we ought to realize that this redefining of family wasn’t actually new. Rather, Jesus was reminding them of what they ought to have known from the beginning with Adam and Eve. God, in creating Adam and Eve, charged them with a mandate to fill the Earth and subdue it. That would involve their being sent to obey their heavenly Father. In the cool of the day, God would walk with Adam and with Eve in the garden with them, with and sent. We had the family in the joy of perfect obedience. Of course, And unfortunately, when man chose to disobey his heavenly Father, God, to rebel against him, this was lost. A pastor, Randy Pope, explains, The whiffness of God with man is broken, and their sent-ness is cursed. Sinful man can no longer be in the presence of a holy God, and their labor in filling and subduing the earth is now painful and toilsome.
Well, praise God, Genesis 3 is not the end of the story. But rather, through a series of covenant promises, where God has promised to be our God and that we would be his people, the people are led through wilderness, captivity, hardships into the promised land where God would be with them, dwell with them, where they were to be light to the nations. And through Abraham, through Moses, through David, through the prophets, God faithfully shows his presence to his children. And again and again, his children fail to obey. Finally, as Isaiah had prophesied and promised, God sent the Messiah who would be Emmanuel, God with us. Jesus, God in the flesh, had come to draw a people to himself and ultimately die on the cross for their sins. We’ve seen Jesus beginning to draw the Apostles, the disciples together, to Simon and to Andrew, he calls, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. To James and John, he calls. We read in chapter 1, They left their father Zebedi in the boat with the hired servants and followed Jesus. The call to discipleship, the call to this family can be costly. Yet Jesus had called and they had answered and they were with him.
Jesus, disciples were with him to follow him, to learn from him, to hear him, to copy him, to understand his will, his purpose, and his plan, to see his power, and to participate in the work that Christ was doing. Throughout the Gospels, one ought to notice how often you will read of the disciples being with him and the multitudes being with him. To be a disciple, to be in the family of Jesus, is to spend time with Jesus, to want to be with him. We’ll see this play out in our text this morning, and I encourage you all to open your Bibles if you have them, or grab the few Bibles if you don’t. Mark 3 is on page 838, and I’m going to ask you to look back a few verses at Mark 3: 20. Take a minute to turn there, and as you do, take a drink of water. Also set the context. Jesus has just healed the man with a withered hand, and the crowds began to follow him in force. In fact, the crowds were being so big. Chapter 3 in the earlier section tells us that Jesus asked a disciple to get a boat ready lest the people crushed them.
Then in Mark 3: 13 and following, Jesus begins to name his disciples. Notice verse 14, so that they might be with him, and he might send them out to preach with and sent. Then in verse 20, we read, Jesus went home and the crowd gathered again so that they could not even eat. Now, we’re not told whose home Jesus went to, but we are told that it is so crowded, so packed with the followers of Jesus, people who had left everything to spend time with him, to hear him, to see him perform wonders. Crowds of people pressing Jesus so much that he had no time, no time even to eat. This, of course, would concern any mother, and it does here as well. You read in verse 21, When his family heard it, they went out to seize him. Mary and the brothers, it seems, were apparently concerned for the health of Jesus. At least that’s what we want to think. They wanted to make sure that Jesus was eating right, which is a question we regularly ask all of our college-aged kids. But reading on, we realized that something else is afoot. They went out to seize him, for they were saying, he is out of his mind.
This is different. New Testament scholar Robert Stein reminds us that Mark makes no attempt to explain whether the of Jesus’s family is out of a sincere but misguided concern or whether they are hostile in nature. We ought to note or realize another scholar points out that the Greek translated out of his mind, could also be translated insane or beserk. Furthermore, the word here in the Greek, translated to seize, is only at other times used by Mark in the sense of binding Jesus to deprive him of his freedom. If you look now at verse 22, there you read that the scribes who had come down for Jerusalem were saying, he is possessed by Beelzebo. Here, New Testament scholar William Lane notes a parallel, quote, between the insensitivity and unbelief of the scribes and the attitudes of those who should have been closest to him, end quote. We can understand the scribe’s claim, for they were jealous of Jesus, and they desired to shut him down and to minimize his impact. But what do we make of the claims of his family, those who are closest to him? I think one of the things that Mark is making, one of the points he’s showing, is the similarity between anyone who has a desire to prevent Jesus from continuing his work.
But Jesus will not be bound by blood relatives or by scribes either. To illustrate that, Mark sandwiches a story. This is a technique Mark loves to do. He sandwiches a story between verse 21 and verse 31, showing that he will not only be bound, but he is the one who will bind the strong man. He will plunder the house of his enemies, and in doing so set us free. Edwards calls this, A calculated reminder that those closest to Jesus may indeed oppose him, and that proximity to Jesus, even blood relationships, even being called by Jesus, is no substitute for allegiance to Jesus in faith and following. William Lane notes that it’s against this backdrop of blindness and hostility that Mark introduces the family of Jesus, those who gather about Jesus and perform the will of God. Now, with Verses 21 and 22 in mind, look back at verse 33 and try to picture the scene. The house is packed. People are crowded around Jesus. They’re hanging on every word he speaks. They are odd at his miracles. They’re enthralled at his teaching. And verse 32 tells us they’re sitting around him. Now, picture Mary and his brothers.
Where are they? They are outside. They are outside the house. They are outside the circle, and they are calling for Jesus. Their expectation, their assumption was that Jesus to stop what he is doing and come to them. But Jesus doesn’t respond that way. Instead, we read first that Jesus asks that first shocking question, who are my mother? Who and my brothers? Then secondly, verse 34 tells us that he began looking around at those seated by him. I want you to pause for a moment in your thought and consider this scene. Jesus, in a crowded room with his mother, the blessed Mary and his brothers, misguided as they were at this time, calling for him. Family, insisting on family rights. And Jesus, ignoring them instead, looks around him. Perhaps he looks into the face of one the elder women and he says, Are you my mother? Perhaps he looks into the face of a young lad and he says, Are you my brother? You can imagine how this may have been troublesome to those who thought they were closest to Jesus, who thought they had some a hold on Jesus. His mother, his brother, perhaps one called earliest him, perhaps one who gave the most into his ministry.
They began to realize that Jesus is not held by traditional ties. He has a different criteria for who he considers family. Then imagine what joy the thought may have brought those who were seated there. Perhaps before coming into the presence of Jesus, they had felt so far away from God in their past. Now they were here, and they were hearing Jesus’s words, Here are my mother. Here are my brothers. New Testament scholar David Garland shares the story of life in the Depression era of the 1930s, a grandfather explaining to his grandson the use of the phrase, I kin you, meaning to love and to understand. He shares like this, this is the story. Grandpa said way back before this time, kin folk meant any folks that you understood and had an understanding with. So it meant loved folks. But people got selfish and brought it down to just mean blood relatives. But that actually was never meant to mean that. Jesus us is bringing us back to an earlier understanding. New Testament scholar James Edwards remarks, There are only two kinds of people, those who sit inside at the feet of Jesus and those who stand outside with their false assumptions.
We would be wise to wonder which group we are in. Are we seated around him, listening to his words? Or are we outside, perhaps even with a better claim on him? We might do well to consider what might be some of our false assumptions about Jesus. Assumptions we may need to ask him to rid ourselves of. Jesus makes the terms of being in his family very clear in verse 35, Whoever does the will of God He is my brother, my sister, my mother. This doing the will of God, I’m equating here with the idea the call to be sent. It’s simply going where God calls us to go, doing what God calls us to do. One thing that God has asked us, commanded us, called us to do is to make disciples. You know the verse in Matthew 28? ‘Go, therefore, or as you go, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age, with and sent. ‘ Jesus says he is with us as he sends us, and he sends us to be with others so we may show them what Christ has taught us.
How do you apply this? What if you’re not called to the ends of the earth? Can you still be a part of this charge? Well, the answer is not only yes, you can, but yes, you must. Christ’s disciples are the ones who are with him and who are sent by him. If you are not with him or if not interested in being sent by him, you ought to seriously consider whether you are actually one of his disciples, whether you are actually in his family. It may be that you are one of the ones outside with false assumptions about how Jesus will respond to you when you finally call out to him. It may be helpful to ask yourself some reflective questions. Do I spend time regularly with him in his word? Would the world find you seated around the feet of Jesus, listening to him, desiring to understand him? And if not, why not? Do you not love our savior? Do you not want to hear from our Lord, to learn of our God, to see his faithfulness poured out again and again on his children? Do you not want to be built up into his image, even if it means being torn down and having our pride and our sin rooted out of our lives.
God has given us means of his grace. He’s given us the word to be preached and to be fed the sacruments to be observed and community with fellow saints. Are you availing yourself of these means? Discipleship involves withness. So who are you with? What small group are you a part of? What men’s study? What women’s study? Do you avail yourself to the shepherding potlucks? These are all ready-made groups for you to grow in. If you feel you don’t know anyone or if you don’t know where to start, stretch yourself and sign up for the food, fun, and fellowship. In that program, you’ll meet each month just a few people that you may be able to invite in your journey or that they may invite in yours. I encourage you to hear again or perhaps hear for the first time Jesus’s call on your life. Hear him call, Follow me, and be raised from your guilt that weighs you down. Be lifted and relieved of all that which numbs you and blinds you, and see your savior, your Jesus who knows you, who loves you, and who has worked salvation for you. Follow him and hear the words of Jesus say, You did the will of God.
You are my brother, my sister, my mother. Let us pray. Father, I thank you for your word. I thank you that you have expanded your family. And Father, for those of us were powerless against the sin in our lives, you changed our hearts. You awoken us to the sin in our life and to your beauty. You enabled us to hear this call where Jesus says, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. Father, let us answer that call on your terms. Let us attend to your word. Let us avail ourselves of the fellowship of the saints that we would encourage one another. And Lord, perhaps there are those here that have only stood outside Perhaps trusting in a blood relationship, perhaps insisting on some shared experience, some relationship with the church and with you, but never really sitting at your feet and desiring to hear you speak and desiring to be changed by the words of life. Father, change us into the image of your son, that we may magnify his name, teaching others to observe even what you have taught us. Lord, this we ask in Jesus’ name and for his sake.
Amen.
Discaimer: This sermon text was generated by an automated transcription service.