Jesus and his Family  Ps 27; Mic 7:1-17; Eph 3:14-21; Mark 3:31-35

Introduction https://youtu.be/_mj_K7QgJI8

Before making some comments about Jesus’ family life, I need to make it clear that the fundamental issue in today’s sermon isn’t good families or bad families, close versus distant families, enmeshed or detached households. The intensity of all family life in a fallen world makes family ties an obstacle to consistent discipleship[1]. Effective preaching on family life is very difficult[2] because of the presiding inner power of family bonds[3].

The Bible explains why family life has such powerful control over[4] most of us throughout our lives. Genesis tells us. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen 1:26-28). It has been truly said that this command to reproduce God’s image is the only commandment that humanity has kept; not primarily because people can’t stop reproducing, but because this was a primal command given before the Fall into sin. As Dale remarked last week, the first mother said, ““I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord.”” (Gen 4:1), and a chapter later we read how Adam “fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image” (Gen 5:3). Divine power operates in the creation of the family, corrupted as the human component may be, explaining why the influence of families is so strong for ill as well as for good. Add to that the fact that human infants are totally dependent on adults for survival in a hostile world[5], and the mix is extremely potent. Created by God the institution of the family is good, the only problem is that all the members in families are sinners.

Jesus Above Family

Christians can comprehend that to follow Jesus means putting his Lordship before possessions and reputation, but few escape the hold of natural family life on their lives. When a good family man answered Jesus’ call to follow him with, ““Lord, let me first go and bury my father.”” , Christ replied, ““Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”” (Luke 9:59-60) In expounding the meaning of discipleship Jesus quoted from this portion of Micah (7:1), “For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 36 And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household.” (Matt 10:3-36). These predictions are profound enough, but even more extraordinary and memorable is his command, ““If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26)[6]. What is there to “hate” about family life when it is Jesus who commands us to love our neighbours, and family members are our closest neighbours (Matt 22:39)? We must “hate” the unremitting intensity of the hold which family members have over one another and which takes hold of them.

One of the great things about the God revealed to us in Christ, is that he never asks us to do anything he hasn’t first done himself. Whatever our romanticising and “make believe “about our own families, the Bible does not cover up the difficulties Jesus had with his family[7]

What Sort of a Family?

It is quite “normal” for our families to want everything from us as well as for us, Jesus’ family were no exception. Early in Mark 3 we read, “Then he went home, and the crowd gathered again, so that they could not even eat. 21 And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, “He is out of his mind.”” (Mark 3:20-21)

We must not soften what is being said here about the conduct of Jesus’ family. The verb “seize” in “seize him” always has a hostile intent in Mark’s Gospel[8]. Since ministering the word of the Lord was more important to Jesus than being with his family or eating, in the eyes of mum and the brothers he was obviously “out of his mind”[9], that is “insane”. Have you ever had anyone tell you that you are “mad” when you are quite sure that you are following the Lord? Paul did (Acts 26:24), I have. If no-one has ever called you “mad” or a “freak” for following Jesus something has been wrong with your discipleship. Family opinions concerning our well-being and their own reputation, as in the case of Christ’s family in these passages, need to be challenged by gospel priorities.

A little later we read in the Jesus’ story, “And his mother and his brothers came, and standing outside [they always seem to be outside don’t they!] they sent to him and called him. 32 And a crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers are outside, seeking you.” 33 And he answered them, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” 34 And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.””  Didn’t Jesus care how bad this sort of talk about “real/ultimate” family would make his mum and his brothers feel?[10] No doubt they felt some sort of betrayal. It’s not that he didn’t care how they felt, he did care, but he cared more for how his Father in heaven felt than trying to please his mother and brothers. Let me share what I believe is the ultimate key to a Christ-focussed perspective on family life.

Discerning the Origin

Jesus had a Father-centred perspective on family. He didn’t only grow up in a large family[11] with all the usual fights and moods familiar to our experiences[12],unlike us, he discerned how the total family environment was serving the ultimate purposes of the Father[13]. This is God the Father of whom Paul could say, “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named” (Eph 3:14-15). Jesus believed that his Father’s plan for his life was all inclusive, i.e., it included family life, that the Father was, to quote Ephesians again, the “one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Eph 4:6). Family life was part of the crucible of Christ’s preparation for the cross, it was a part of how he learned to live dependent on his Father. Cf. just like I say to engaged folk, it has a unique crucifying capacity and unique glorifying capacity This is the life of Jesus, what about us?

When you were growing up did you see behind the entanglements of family dynamics the wisdom of God the Father? I certainly didn’t, it took me many years to get a grasp on what was going on below the surface in much of my early life. Unlike us Jesus was the faithful Son of God who through constant submission to the father became the perfection of the wisdom which the home was always designed to teach us but rarely does (Prov 1:8 etc.), and so he is perfectly able to illuminate us about family life (Col 2:3).

It is this framework that makes sense of the following passage from John chapter 7. “After this Jesus…would not go about in Judea, because the Jews were seeking to kill him. 2 Now the Jews’ Feast of Booths was at hand. 3 So his brothers said to him, “Leave here and go to Judea, that your disciples also may see the works you are doing. 4 For no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world[14].” 5 For not even his brothers believed in him. 6 Jesus said to them, “My time has not yet come, but your time is always here. 7 The world cannot hate you[15], but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil. 8 You go up to the feast. I am not going up to this feast, for my time has not yet fully come.” 9 After saying this, he remained in Galilee. (John 7:1-9)

The brothers of Jesus do not believe in him because they are natural born men whilst Jesus is the man from heaven (John 3:13; 6:32-33; 1 Cor 15:49). Without being “born from above/born again” they cannot understand or enter the kingdom of God which has come in Jesus (John 3:3, 5). He refuses to go up to Jerusalem, namely, to death and resurrection, in the company of his brothers, because they are one with a world which hates him. Until Jesus appeared to them after his resurrection (1 Cor 15:7) they were at home and totally belonged to this perishing world (1 Cor 7:31). Living in a family of mostly unbelievers for the vast majority of his time on earth was part of the suffering through which Jesus was “made perfect” (Heb 2:10; 5:9)[16]

Conclusion

By their seemingly infinite power and knowledge parents, and sometimes older siblings, are “like God” to little children, and so idolising the family as a means of survival is a phenomenon common to all cultures and generations[17]. Walking through a Perth cemetery I noticed these words on a tombstone, “To the world you were one, but to us, you were the world.” Whereas it is natural to place family at the top of life’s values, above possessions and personal enjoyment, such a “family first” mentality[18] is an absolute which cannot and must not coexist with a “Jesus first” lifestyle. In the light of Jesus’ clear teaching that we must put following him before family, we must seriously ask of ourselves the question “Do I really know who I am following and understand the cost of discipleship? Rejection by family, at some level or other, because we put Jesus before them[19], is an indispensable application of the cross. That today many sincere Christians in our homeland seem unable to take this “Christ-first” step is a foundational reason why spiritual authority is so lacking in the Australian Church. However the biblical promises to “Jesus first” disciples are truly wonderful, “For my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me in.” (Ps 27:10). “Jesus said, “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, 30 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.” (Mark 10:29-30) Let’s be wise, let’s follow Jesus.

As I was praying with brother Steve this morning before the service the felt the Lord telling me that my sermon, was incomplete. The God who makes all things new (2 Cor 5:17; Rev 21:5) has by his Word and Spirt recreated the family, in Christ we are the household of God gathered around the Lamb of God and the Father. May the crucified and risen Lord give us grace to see and believe in such things by faith alone, and live free from the powerful temporal bonds of broken family life.