Matthew 12:46-50 | "Family Matters"

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

You know what we have just done is precious.

And it's beautiful.

There are at least two reasons that it's precious and beautiful.

The first and the greatest reason, of course, is the Lord Jesus, right?

Who he is and what he's done for us.

And because of him, because of who he is and what he's done, we can glorify his name with great praise.

Because he is magnificent.

He is marvelous.

He is matchless.

And you know what?

He would still be marvelous and magnificent and matchless, worthy of all of our praise and all of our glory, even if he had done nothing to rescue us.

That's the defining question as to how you view God.

What if he had done nothing for you?

Would he still be worthy of all of your praise and all of your honor and all of your worship because he is still magnificent, marvelous, and matchless?

But we know, right?

We know that God showed his love for us, and that while we were in the act of sinning against him, Christ died for us.

The ancient of days determined in eternity past to send the divine Son so that all who believe in him might have eternal life with the Father and the Son and the Spirit.

That means that what we have just done together is precious and is beautiful because we've done it as a family.

In a few moments, we're going to go eat as a family.

After that, we're going to hear from one of our family members that we haven't heard from in a long time.

We've sung together already.

We've prayed together.

We've eaten together in remembrance of the Lord's death, burial, and resurrection.

We've done that as brothers and sisters united in Christ.

I'd like you to look with me now.

The end of Matthew chapter 12, at a passage that sets the groundwork, the biblical groundwork for what we have just done, specifically as a family.

Matthew 12 · chapter mention

If you have your Bible or your device, I encourage you to make your way to Matthew chapter 12, verses 46 through 50.

Matthew 12:46–50

And as you're doing so, pray that my voice lasts.

If you can't hear, at the end of a cold and it's settled in my voice.

So I apologize for that, but next week I'll hopefully be better.

Matthew chapter 12, beginning in verse 46, if you have your Bible, I'm reading from the English Standard Version, which is in the pew back in front of you.

Matthew 12 · chapter mention

It says, While Jesus was still speaking to the people, behold, his mother and his brothers stood outside asking to speak to him.

But he replied to the man who told him, Who is my mother and who are my brothers?

And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, Here are my mother and my brothers.

For whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother and my sister and my mother.

Amen.

Matthew records this in the midst of a change in direction in the life and ministry of the Lord Jesus.

As we've already seen in chapter 12, the Pharisees, representing the vast majority of Israel, come as antagonists to Jesus, rejecting him, refusing to see him as the promised Son of David.

Chapter 13 is filled then with parables, one parable after another, that people struggle to understand.

At the end of chapter 13 is another section that refers to Jesus' physical family.

You can see that at the end of chapter 13.

So it shows us that everything in between here is bookended by references to Jesus' physical family.

The Jewish people.

And his own people did not receive him.

In fact, Jesus has just gone through how that generation of people will be condemned, even by people that they thought were more evil than they were.

This all occurs in the same place where Jesus spoke of judgment that would come upon those who refused to believe in him.

So Jesus then clearly says that his disciples who are present with him that day are those who are truly, in the fullest sense possible, his brothers and his sisters and his mother.

Now Jesus doesn't reject his physical family.

What he does is elevate his spiritual family over the physical family.

Let's try to put that in a little bit of perspective if we can.

Imagine someone, an acquaintance that you haven't seen in a really long time.

This is very real for me.

I just had a visit last weekend with a cousin that I haven't seen in about 35 years.

Yes, I am that old.

Imagine, imagine that you you have a conversation with someone that you haven't seen in a really long time.

And they they ask you about your family.

What do you tell them?

How do you go about filling them in on details about your family?

Would you tell them about your spouse?

Maybe a girlfriend or a boyfriend.

Would you tell them about your children, your grandchildren, your parents?

Would you tell them about who's been born, about who's passed away?

Would you give them a little bit of an update about how each member of your family that they're aware of is doing?

Maybe life experiences?

If you're a grandparent, would you would you start pulling out your phone and flipping through pictures of your grandkids?

Telling them how they're doing in school, what kind of activities that they're involved in.

I think it's safe to say that each of us would probably follow a very similar kind of pattern.

I suppose if if the person asking us is a complete stranger, we might be a little suspicious as to why they're asking and why they're interested.

But if we know the person, if they are a close friend, perhaps, we might be very interested in bringing them up to date on the lives of our family members.

Now imagine for a moment that you are helping that friend, that acquaintance, get caught up on your family, and you're working your way through your immediate family members, and you cover the highlights of recent family history.

At what point in the conversation do you begin to mention the people sitting around you today?

At what point in your description of your family do you mention those sitting in the pew in front of you or behind you or beside you?

Maybe across the aisle from you.

Some of you are looking around thinking, I don't even know their name.

Some of you might be thinking, Well, what do you mean?

I'm not related to them.

See, Jesus flips this whole idea of family on its head.

Because he gives greater priority.

He gives eternal priority to his spiritual family.

He has a greater connection to those who believe in him than he does to his physical brothers and sisters and even his own mother.

The spiritual bond then between brothers and sisters in Christ, between believers in Christ, is greater than the physical bond between siblings and parents and children.

Now think through this with me.

What is Jesus doing here?

What is he not doing?

What is his point?

What's he trying to get across in matters of significance?

Let's think about those items for a moment.

What is Jesus doing?

Well, he's using this opportunity that with his family outside the house asking to speak to him as a prime moment to do some teaching.

That's what he's doing.

His family's outside of the house, they're asking to come for him to come out and talk to him, talk to them.

Mark tells us that they think he's crazy and they need to take him home.

He's out of his mind.

But Jesus now uses that.

He says, Now wait a minute, let's think about this.

What's most important when it comes to family?

Now, since we have a variety of Bible translations here this morning, I want to take just a brief moment to address a textual issue here.

Some translations have a verse 47 in the text.

If you have an English Standard Version, you probably have a footnote to the bottom of the page telling you that there are some New Testament manuscripts that do not include verse 47.

And so if you have an ESV, it will go from verse 46 to verse 48 and put verse 47 down at the bottom in small print that you can't read.

Some translations will have verse 47 included in the text.

It will have verse 46, verse 47, verse 48.

Don't let that confuse you.

Now that I pointed it out and confused you, don't let it confuse you.

You have to remember that there were no copy machines.

There were no printers connected to the computer, no printing presses in the early days of the church.

So copies of the Bible had to be made by hand, and if you had a copy made by hand, you paid by the line.

So great care was generally taken in making copies.

But because they were all made by hand, sometimes errors were made in the copy.

Sometimes the copier, that is, the physical person writing the copy, thought that the copy they were copying from had an error in it, and so they tried to correct it.

And you can just see how these things kind of get in there.

As a result, there are some very minor differences in the thousands upon thousands of ancient copies of the Bible that we have today.

But don't worry.

There are no significant differences.

There are no differences that change the meaning and the intent of the passage.

As long as you're using a good literal translation of the Bible, you can trust your Bible.

But the reason that there are sometimes differences in translations is because scholars study all of these ancient copies, and just for the New Testament, we have about 20,000 different pieces or collections of copies.

That's a lot of them.

They're studying all of those, trying to determine as best as possible what Matthew originally wrote.

And so in this case, they're trying to determine if Matthew wrote verse 47, or if that was added by a later copyist, either on purpose or by mistake.

That's just a normal thing.

That's actually a profession.

It's called textual criticism.

There are professionals in languages who are able to pinpoint for the most part which decade a particular writing falls under.

We understand that, right?

Think about 10 years ago.

The way we talked 10 years ago, the languages that, the verbs, the nouns, the way the dictionaries were printed 10 years ago, 20 years ago is a lot different than today.

Language changes.

So that's what's going on here.

In this instance, verse 46 and the variant, verse 47, essentially say the same thing.

But they're doing it in two different ways.

Verse 46 says it in the form of a statement.

The statement is: Jesus' family came to the house and said, Hey, we want to talk to Jesus.

Making a statement, right?

The variant in verse 47 places it in the form of an announcement.

Someone told him, your mother and your brothers are standing outside and they want to speak to you.

Saying the same thing, just doing it in a different format.

So we, as we look at this, don't need to be overly concerned about whether Matthew wrote it originally or not.

Why?

Because it says the same thing.

Says the same thing.

The meaning doesn't change.

Nothing changes in the context in this case.

But some of your Bibles, if you pay attention, will go from verse 46 to verse 48.

Skip a verse.

That's why I want you to know about that.

Alright?

You with me?

Good.

Thank you.

Appreciate that.

If you have more questions, you can ask Anton later.

What is important for us to notice is that Jesus is teaching in a home.

You can see that in chapter 13, verse 1.

That same day, Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea.

Since Jesus has crowds following him, it's likely that this house is packed with people.

He always has people crowding around him, right?

Always, crowds, crowds, crowds.

It's a common occurrence in the book of Matthew.

So there's probably very little chance that his family is going to be able to work their way through the crowds to get into the house close enough to Jesus to even have a conversation with him.

So somebody lets him know, hey, your family's outside and they want to speak to you.

Now what we're not told is what his family wanted to say to him.

Mark, as I said before, Mark chapter 3, verse 21, tells us that some of his family thought he was crazy and that he should be taken home for his own protection.

Mark 3:21

We also know that his brothers and his sisters did not believe in him as their Lord and Savior until sometime after his resurrection, most likely.

But exactly why they're here at this point is unknown to us.

And it's not important for us to know that because Matthew says the important thing is something else.

What is written is that in the midst of his teaching, Jesus' family comes to this place, and the Lord uses their presence as an opportunity to teach yet another lesson to those who are listening.

Now let's ask a different question.

This is what is Jesus doing?

He's teaching, right?

What is Jesus not doing?

Well, he's not rejecting his physical family.

Don't let this idea of what he says take you to that extreme.

To try to illustrate what I mean, try to read it, Jesus' question in verse 48 with a negative tone, a tone that is derisive and rejecting of his family.

I'm not a very good actor, but I'll try.

Try to hear it something like this.

Who is my mother?

Who are my brothers?

As if Jesus is saying, I don't have a mother.

I don't have any brothers.

I don't know what you're talking about.

I don't know who they are.

That's not what he's saying.

We need to avoid approaching the Lord's question in that kind of a way.

Instead, the flow of the context tells us that we need to view this in an instructive way, something like this.

Who is my mother?

And who are my brothers?

Who are my sisters?

See, in this question, Jesus is seeking to redirect his listeners from a physical perspective to a spiritual perspective.

He's not asking who his literal mother and literal brothers and sisters are.

That's not the point.

All he would do to answer that is point out the door.

No, his point is to teach on how to become a part of his family.

Because what he's been doing up until this point is been pointing out how everybody is not a part of his family.

Those who were his own people did not receive him.

That's the case.

How do you become a part of Jesus' family?

He's not speaking here about his earthly family.

Jesus is asking, as the Son of God, as the Son of David, the promised Messiah, who is qualified to be a part of my family?

Who is qualified to come and take part in communion?

Who can be called my mother and my brothers and my sister in a spiritual sense?

Now I'm sure that the house had to have been packed.

It was probably overflowing.

Of those people that had been listening to Jesus from about verse 22 on, many would most likely be wondering about themselves because Jesus had been very harsh on the Pharisees.

And in that world, in that culture, if the Pharisees couldn't get into heaven, if the Pharisees couldn't be forgiven and instead would end up in judgment, then what hope is there for the rest of us?

Who could please God?

It would seem almost impossible to arrive at Jesus' family.

And so in the midst of questioning and wondering minds, Jesus is interrupted by the appearance of his family.

And in that culture, family mattered.

Everyone would understand perfectly and be fine if Jesus stopped what he was doing, had a conversation with his family, and picked up and went on.

Instead, Jesus stops everything and he says, Let me tell you about something more important than my own physical family.

You don't have to be like this evil generation.

You can be separate from them.

And you can become a part of my spiritual family.

And so, to illustrate, upon hearing that his family is outside, he instead starts pointing to his disciples.

And he said, These are the ones.

These are the people that are part of my family.

Now, what is his point?

Why would he do that?

I would suggest to you that it is because he is showing the way to escape the evil generation that he's been condemning.

See, because we're all born into sin, we are all without excuse, we are all headed in the same direction as the Pharisees that he's condemned.

And Jesus says, here's some disciples who have escaped this generation.

Here's how you can be a part of that.

There is a way to be right with God.

The Pharisees failed to obtain it.

But it is possible.

How?

Jesus says by doing the will of God the Father.

Whoever does the will of my Father as in heaven is my brother and my sister and my mother.

To refuse to believe in Jesus is to reject him.

But to exercise faith by believing in him is to become a part of his family.

There's no need.

There is no need for you today to reject the Lord Jesus and to place yourself beyond the forgiveness of God.

There's no need for that.

No one.

No one needs to be hearing the message of Christ and rejecting it and so placing themselves in danger of judgment and even satanic oppression at the verses 43, 44, and 45.

That's not necessary, my friends.

You don't have to be like the Pharisees.

Instead, Jesus says, you can become a part of God's family.

Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is.

That's a present possession.

Not will be, not might be, is.

Is my brother and my mother and my sister.

What is he saying here?

Is he endorsing some form of works religion?

Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven?

No.

No, he's not.

Otherwise, the Pharisees would be just fine.

They'd be in good shape.

They were working very hard.

They did everything, everything to the letter of the law.

No, this is something different.

Hold your finger here and look over at John chapter 6.

John 6 · chapter mention

This is an important passage of Scripture to understand in light of what Jesus says here.

Whoever does the will of my Father.

So he's talking about something that we do, something that we're acting upon, that puts us in present possession of sonship, of sistership, of familial relationship with the Son of God.

What is it that we need to do?

John chapter 6 tells us.

John 6 · chapter mention

There's a question in John chapter 6, verse 28.

John 6:28

The Jewish people said to Jesus, very similar thing.

What must we do to be doing the works of God?

Jesus answered them.

I'll tell you.

Here's the work of God.

That you believe in Him whom He has sent.

Matthew has shown us that Jesus is the one whom God has sent.

And he's shown us that we are to believe in him.

This is then the opposite of the Pharisees.

They saw Jesus heal a man who was demon-oppressed.

And they refused to believe that he was God's promised Messiah, the Son of God given for them.

They rejected him, and by doing so, they declared to the world, yeah, we don't belong to him.

He's not our family.

We're not related to him.

He's not our Messiah.

But anyone who does believe, Jesus says, is part of his family.

Do you remember what John wrote in John 1, verses 11 and 12?

John 1:11

He came to his own, but his own people did not receive him.

But my favorite word in the whole Bible, but.

But to each one who did receive him.

How does it define receiving?

Who believed in his name.

He gave the authority to be called a child of God.

If you believe in his name, that makes you a sibling of Christ.

Now we we consider our familial relationships to be strong ties.

They're important to us, right?

We defend our family even if we're angry at them.

If we've had a fight with a brother or a sister, we'll still defend them if they get in trouble.

But Jesus says that the most important relationship is the one that brings us into his family.

To extend the thought from the previous section in Matthew, there are only two families to be a part of: God's or Satan's.

And the only way to become a part of God's family is to actively trust in Christ.

Once you do, God's Spirit confirms that relationship.

How do we know that?

Romans tells us, Romans 8, verse 16 and 17.

Romans 8:16

The Spirit Himself, God's Spirit, bears witness with our Spirit that we are children of God.

And if we're children, then we are heirs.

Heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.

Notice then that belief in Christ isn't simply just joining another family as though you're becoming a second-rate member of that family.

No, when you believe in Christ, you become a full-fledged son or daughter with all the rights, privileges, and guarantees in that.

God the Father in Christ views all who believe in Christ as though they were Christ.

But don't get confused, you're not Christ.

But he looks at you as though you are his son, his daughter.

My friends, that's why we're exhorted in Ephesians chapter 5, verse 1.

Ephesians 5:1

Therefore, be imitators of God as beloved children.

Children imitate their parents, don't they?

We notice that.

I notice that and I cringe.

I see myself and my children.

But we are exhorted then, as sons and daughters of God, to look to our eternal Father always and forever, so that we begin to think and then act and do like he does.

We become imitators of him.

And the first step in that is the very next verse in Ephesians 5, verse 2.

Ephesians 5:2

And walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.

How do we look to the Father to imitate the Father?

You look to Jesus because Jesus incarnated God.

So we could see.

Now what does this look like?

We don't need to look far to discover what walking in love looks like.

It's evident in the one and other passages of Scripture.

Flip over to Romans.

We'll briefly walk through some of these so you can see it and get a get an idea of what we're talking about.

So follow my thinking here as much as you can.

We believe in the good news that Christ died for sinners.

And we become children of the living God.

As children of the living God, we look to our Father and we imitate our Father.

What does that look like?

Well, big umbrella picture is we walk in love.

Just as Christ loved us and gave himself for us.

Now what does walking in love look like?

As we go throughout our day today, as we go throughout our day tomorrow and the next day and the day after that, what does walking in love look like?

Romans 12, verse 10.

Romans 12:10

Love one another with what kind of affection?

Brotherly.

Brotherly.

That's a sibling relationship.

Why is that important?

Because we are brothers and sisters of Christ the King.

And if we're brothers and sisters of Christ the King, then guess what?

You're my sibling.

You may not want to claim me, but that's your tough problem, not mine.

We're going to be together forever, for eternity, if we're siblings.

And so we love one another just as siblings love one another.

Look down at verse 16.

Live in harmony with one another.

Do not be haughty or proud, but associate with the lowly.

Never be wise in your own sight.

Don't repay evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable, and if possible, as far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.

Chapter 14, verse 13.

Therefore, let us not pass judgment on one another any longer.

But instead decide to never put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother.

Chapter 15, verse 5.

May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Verse 7, therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you.

We ought to never be able to get away from one another on Sunday mornings.

Because we're welcoming one another as brothers and sisters.

2 Corinthians chapter 13, verse 11.

2 Corinthians 13:11

Finally, brothers, rejoice.

Aim for restoration.

Comfort one another.

Agree with one another.

Live in peace.

Galatians chapter 5, verse 13, serve one another.

Galatians 5:13

Galatians 6, 2, bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.

Ephesians chapter 4, verse 2, with all, all overflowing humility and gentleness with patience, bear with one another, put up with each other in love.

Ephesians 4:2

What kind of love?

Brotherly love, right?

Familial love.

Ephesians 4, verse 32, be kind to one another.

Ephesians 4:32

Be tenderhearted.

Forgiving one another as Christ in God forgave you.

Ephesians 5, verse 19.

Ephesians 5:19

Address one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart.

See, in all of this, everything that we've done this morning is family.

Brothers and sisters of Christ the King coming and uniting together.

Because we belong with him.

There are many other one another elements.

You can look them up on your own, but some of them include encourage one another, show hospitality, instruct, exhort, forgive, submit to, greet one another, have fellowship.

Especially if it involves food, right?

Your earthly family may come and go.

Sadly, in a broken world, they may accept you and love you, or they may reject you.

They may move away.

They may die as all of us do.

But if you come to Christ and you believe in him, you are now part of an even greater family.

The family of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Look around you.

Take in those that are around you.

These are the people that will be your family forever.

All of us must remember the lesson that our earthly families are important.

Even Jesus continued to care for his family.

Even while he was hanging on the cross, he cared for his mother and entrusted her to the care of John.

He didn't reject his earthly family.

Jude was his half-brother, and Jude came to believe in him and wrote a book of the Bible.

He didn't reject his family.

But what we need to grasp as believers in Christ, that our earthly families are mere pictures of our eternal family.

So how do we do on loving our spiritual family?

Our spiritual family is not that much different than our physical family.

We have some members who frustrate us, right?

Some of us are hard to put up with.

Some of our eternal family members have great needs.

That might break your heart if only you knew.

Some of them might need encouragement.

Some of them might need you to come up and just say, can I pray with you?

For you right now?

We can go on and on.

We love our physical family members through all kinds of difficulties.

Do we do that with our spiritual family?

We should.

We are told that our love for one another is how the world knows that we are his disciples.

When's the last time that we dropped something cold turkey?

Because one of our brothers or sisters in Christ needed us in that moment.

We would do that for our physical family, wouldn't we?

Some of you have done that are doing that.

You know, we find in the in the first few years of the early church that everyone functioned as a family.

They cared for one another, they met one another's needs.

They did that because they were forced to.

They were persecuted.

They were hated.

They were separated.

They lost their jobs because they claimed Christ.

Some of them died because they claimed Christ.

See, when those outside pressures become more intense, you sort of refocus as a family, don't you?

And it makes you connect more intimately with one another.

One of the ways that we see the early church functioning is through their celebration of a love feast, a fellowship, a gathering together surrounding a meal that either began or culminated with the Lord's table.

And so we see then that the Lord's table is a way for us to remember that yes, this is about Jesus.

But in Jesus, we get to do it together.

We get to be together.

We get to belong to his family forever.

That's what Jesus is saying here.

Yeah, I have a physical family.

But let me tell you something.

Everybody who's my brother or my sister or my mother, through faith in me, gets to join me at the table.

That's what we've done together this morning.

Now our invitation is that you join us afterwards, brothers and sisters, for a meal.

Why?

Not because we're hungry because it's close to lunchtime, but because we're family.

And we do that kind of thing together in Jesus' name.

Now you're all gonna feel guilty if you skip it, aren't you?

Well, that's on you.

I leave that between you and the Lord.

Would you pray with me?

Lord Jesus, we we come to you weak and broken and frail.

So many different needs and characteristics represented among us, just as we have in a physical family.

Lord, I pray that by the power and the grace of your spirit moving among us this morning, that there would not be one person here who cannot say, I am a brother or a sister of the Lord Jesus Christ.

May your spirit grant the gift of faith to believe.

Thank you for the reminders, Lord Jesus, that we belong to you.

Not because of anything that we've done, but because you laid down your life for us.

May we in turn lay down our lives for the brothers and sisters.

In obedience to you, taking up our cross daily to follow you.

Sometimes we will falter and we will need one another.

Sometimes we need encouragement and prayer, sometimes we need a swift kick in the rear end.

But may we be willing to do that for one another because we're all on the same road.

The narrow road, the difficult road that leads home to you.

Grow us, challenge us, cause us to grow in depth and in unity with one another for all eternity.

Because of you.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.