Bounded Sets and the Family of God – Luke part 24 – Grant Vissers

Welcome, if if you are new, my name is Grant and I'm one of the

pastors here at the church. And it's good to have you with

us. Good to be worshipping together

and good for you, we believe, for all of us to make this a

part of your weekly rhythm. So thanks for whether you've

been here for many, many, many years longer than I have been or

whether this is your first time. We do want to say welcome and

we're glad that you're here. Glad that you're leaning in.

We're going to be looking at Loop Chapter 8 in in a couple of

moments. But before we jump into that and

before we pray, I just wanted to say a quick thank you from

myself and from the other staff here from the elders.

So this past week, we were invited into like some

intentional time of prayer for Peter and Angela and Holly

Freswick. And Holly, you may know or may

not, is in the NICU, the neonatal intensive care unit at

McMaster. And Peter and Angela sent a

request asking for prayer. And so very quickly, there was a

group saying, well, we can jump on Zoom on Wednesday evening and

we can pray. And that's what you did.

And very quickly, we sent out an invitation to our entire church

for Friday to be for us a day of prayer and fasting.

And we know that many of you leaned in, in very intentional

ways to that day to in, in the way you prayed, in the way you

fasted and the way you paused and slowed down and really made

that an intentional move toward prayer and prayer for Holly.

So I, I simply want to say thank you.

You should know there's a group of elders going down this

afternoon and who will continue to pray with Peter and Angela

and Holly. And as they give us updates,

those things will continue to go out on the prayer chain and in

other ways. But that was a significant week

for us as a church. And I just want to name that.

And I just wanted to say beginning here, thank you for

doing it and thanks for doing it well.

We received many different messages from people saying,

hey, we're in, we're doing it. This is what we can do.

This is how we can pray. And so I wanted to begin by

simply saying thank you for that, right?

If you wanna take a moment to find Luke chapter 8, I'm gonna

Luke 8 · chapter mention

pray. I'm gonna settle us into some

time of reflection and study together.

Luke is most of the way through a Bible.

But if you also want to pull it out on a phone, you can follow

along that way. It'll be up on the screens as we

move through the passage as well.

Yeah. Thanks for your love.

Thanks for your grace. Thanks for settling us into

these moments. Thank you that you are with us.

Thanks that long before we woke up.

God, you're working in this day. Long after we go to bed, fall

asleep, turn the lights off, put the book away like whatever it

is you will continue to be at work.

Thanks that we can find great hope and comfort in that.

We want to continue to pray for Peter and Angela and Holly.

We got thanks for invitations to prayer and we ask for healing

for Holly as she continues to grow.

Yeah, we asked now that as we turn to Luke 8, these few

verses, Jesus interaction with his family and with his

disciples, with some crowd, Yeah, that you would remind us

of what it means to be family inside the Kingdom of God.

So thanks for the ways that we get to lean in as the community

and thanks for moments where we can be reminded that there is a

place for belonging inside this thing that we call the church.

So thanks. Teach us, do what you can only

do. We pray in the strong name of

Jesus. Amen.

So Luke 8 versus 19 to 21. That's it.

That's all we're going to cover today.

We'll see how long it goes. Usually when I have more, excuse

me, less verses to cover it, it ends up being a longer sermon.

So no promises here on this one. OK, but Luke 19 to 21 this is

how it sounds. It says now Jesus mother and

brothers came to see him, but they were not able to get near

him because of the crowd. Someone told him your mother and

brothers are standing outside wanting to see you.

He being Jesus, replied. My mother and brothers are those

who hear God's word and put it into practice.

So I want to get one thing out of the way really quick, one

thing just we're not talking about.

This is not a sermon on how to avoid doing what your parents

have told you to do. I can say that now that I'm a

parent, this isn't like a how to avoid the request of your mom or

dad or grandma or grandpa. Like this is not how to get out

of doing what you have been asked to do what you've been

told to do. Like the next time your mom asks

you to clean your room or do something, don't turn around and

say to her, like, my mother and brothers are those who don't

make me do these things. This isn't this isn't that.

And it's not a how to avoid your family 101 seminar either.

Like, this isn't, I'd really rather put my family over here

and just kind of wall them off and live life over here.

But listen, boundaries are good. Boundaries are healthy.

This is also not a sermon about healthy boundaries, but it's not

about how to avoid your family either.

Family is an interesting thing. Family is an interesting word.

I, I had an experience this. So I had to be away for the

weekend, last weekend. And it, I was packing and

getting ready to go. And whenever that starts to

happen, like I don't leave very often without my kiddos, but

like I was packing and like they knew something was up and they

kept coming in and we told them I had to be away.

And this was like, come and hang with me while I'm packing up a

suitcase and things like that. And then I'm getting ready to

go. And finally the time was like,

OK, I had picked up the rental car and I was getting ready to

drive and one of my daughters, I won't tell you who it is, came

up to me and said to me right before she was she was like,

she's like, time to say goodbye, right?

So like hugs, like I'm about to walk out the door and she just

comes up to me and I kneel down and I'm like, this is ready to

say goodbye to her. And she looks up at me and she's

like, they had why do you want to leave us?

And so I had to explain to her, I was like, listen, like, I

don't want to leave you. I don't want like this isn't

something that I'm like, just I can't wait to get out the door.

And God, like I had to sit there for a few.

So might it delayed my departure a little bit because I felt like

it would have been very, very wrong to simply say, Hey, love

you kid. OK, bye.

So I had to explain to her like this is something that I have to

go to and I am looking forward to to going.

This is a friend who I'm going to be with.

And this friend you should know, like when you were young, kiddo,

you called this friend uncle. Like that's how involved they

were in in our life and in your life as a little kid.

And and this was a friend who when mom and dad, when we were

down at seminary in in the States, this friend drove down

to visit us and he came and stayed with us and hung out and

got to know your mom. And then when we got engaged, he

took the photos for us. He did an engagement shoot.

And then when it came time for us to move back home to Canada,

he drove down and with a truck, helped us move our stuff back

up, like risking getting stuck at the border with all this

random stuff in the back of his truck.

And then he stood like, hey, kiddo, like you should know, he

stood up with mom and I at our wedding.

When we got married, he was there.

So like, this is something that I, as much as I don't want to

leave you, I need to go and do these things with this friend to

be there to support him as he's getting married.

Like this is something I need to do.

And so for us, like family, family can sometimes mean

biological family. And I think we also have

language for including others into what we would consider

family or certainly something that like friend falls short of.

And so when we read, at least when I read this passage, I can

run the risk of missing how radically upside down and

backwards what Jesus has just said actually is.

Because I have, in my experience, language for these

friends who I would consider much deeper and closer than

simply a friend. I would consider them closer to

family. And really, at the end of the

day, that's what Jesus is intending to do, is to reshape,

reconfigure what it means to be family inside the Kingdom of

God. But it is a little bit

surprising and it's more surprising the more we unpack

and look into what Jesus has just said to his disciples and

to the crowds and by extension to his biological family who's

waiting outside his mother and brothers.

NT Wright offers this analogy for us because he says, listen,

it's, it's very difficult for us to enter into this passage and

properly understand and grapple with how radical Jesus is being

here. And so he offers us this sort of

this word picture. And I want to talk us through,

he says, picture CEO of any Fortune 500 company, like these

are the Walmarts and the Amazons and the Apples and the Googles

of the world. So we're talking like big, like

CEO, one of the biggest companies in the world.

Now picture highest stake meeting like stakeholders,

shareholders, staff, like you picture the highest stake

meeting that you can imagine with the biggest kind of

decision that needs to be made. And maybe this is how you

picture. Maybe you can picture yourself

sitting in that room, like maybe you're around a board table or

maybe you're like hovering off in the distance, like around

you're kind of watching things unfold in front of you.

But picture the CEO who needs to make the biggest decision of

their year for this organization.

Every single person around the table has budgets and staff and

teams and you know, products to launch.

And this decision is going to shape all of the next year for

this company, this organization. So that's the meeting.

And in the middle of making the decision, all eyes are on the

CEO. Like everybody's just waiting to

see what direction their lives are about to take for the next

365 days. The door opens and an assistant

enters the room and that assistant walks up to the CEO

and leans over and says, excuse me, but that like that important

phone call you're waiting for just came in and, and the CEO

doesn't say anything. It closes the the, the binder

that he's working on turns away. The CEO just walks out of the

room and leaves everybody there in silence, not saying a word.

No, like take 5, No, I'll be right back.

Nothing. Like immediately you're saying

like this, this has to be an important phone call.

Like if this is a phone call that takes over all of what

we're doing and like maybe 5 minutes goes by, maybe a few

more, like can we go? Can we also leave?

Like what should we be doing here?

But just as you like, maybe you're about to leave the the

door opens again. The CEO, that CEO comes back in.

The CEO sits back down at the table and like with the biggest

smile that that CEO can muster, turns around and says that was

my daughter. She had a swimming race and she

won. And then I go back to business.

Like the indictment of our hustle culture is that a story

actually unfolding like that would be shocking.

Like you'd be surprised and maybe even like a little bit

angry. Like you made us wait for that.

That was more important to you than this.

Like we might expect the CEO to ignore the phone call and make

the decision, get the meeting over and then follow up.

Like, if this is all that's about, then like, what are we

doing here? Like, let's we'd say things like

lead well, like let's be strong. It might surprise us for someone

to prioritize their family in a moment like that.

We wouldn't expect it. And that's what's going on here

for Jesus and the disciples and his family, but in reverse.

Because in Jesus's day, there was nothing that superseded that

family bond. Like that was what defined who

you were. All of the purpose that your

life has, the direction, it's what gives you identity and

security belonging. All of it belonged to your

family, your family of origin, your biological for like the

family that you grew up in, like that's what shaped your life.

And for the covenant people of God, for the people of Israel,

it is what defined your belonging to that community was

the family that you were born into, that you came from.

And so for Jesus to not drop everything and either go to his

family and speak to them and then maybe perhaps even bring

them in past the crowds and past the disciples so that they can

sit close with Jesus. For Jesus to not do that is is

just as, if not more shocking than that CEO who are in the

middle of a massive decision for his company, walks out to take a

phone call from his daughter who was at a swim tournament.

And until we wrestle with like that level of uncomfortable,

backwards, kind of upside down nature, we don't fully

understand what Jesus is doing by then turning to his disciples

and saying, my mother and brothers are those who hear the

word and do it. Because with that one word, he's

turning away in the sense from everything that they thought

should have defined him for the people, from the people rather

who should have been on the absolute inside of inside

circles, like the inside list of inside circles.

That's not a word. Don't quote me.

It's upside down. It's a little bit backwards.

What Jesus is saying is that in the Kingdom of God, family,

kinship, belonging, community looks different.

No longer was flesh and blood the strongest bond that could be

imagined. No longer was every other

relationship subservient to that of biological family.

And like I said, most shockingly, membership within

the chosen community, the people of God, would no longer be bound

by flesh and blood or kinship. It would not be determined by

those things. Who you were related to mattered

less and what we're going to see, Gina says.

Something else takes its place. So just to recap, there we go.

Now Jesus mother and brothers, it's one group came to see him,

but they were not able to get near him because of the crowd.

That's the second group. Someone told him.

So maybe from the crowd, maybe one of his disciples, your

mother and brothers are standing outside wanting to see you

because of the crowd. So they cannot get to Jesus.

Maybe Jesus mother and brothers were showing up to drag him

away. So Mark tells this story a

little bit different. In Mark's Gospel, when his

family comes, it's in the midst of conflict.

Jesus has conflict with Pharisees and with teachers of

the law. He has conflict with then his

family who shows up. And in Mark it sounds like this.

When his family heard about this, they went to take charge

of him for they said he is out of his mind.

But we don't get that here. Maybe they've come to take him

away, like Mark writes. Maybe they've just showed up a

little late and they couldn't find a seat.

Maybe they decided to come and see what he's doing and because

of the crowd they can't get near him.

For whatever reason they are waiting out outside and I want

us to see 3 distinct groups, mother and brothers, that is

family here. OK, that's one.

The crowd, that's two, and then his disciples, which we're gonna

see in a minute here. 3 The Order, I think, is important.

Disciples, crowds, biological family who is on the inside is

wrong. It's slightly backwards.

Anybody in Jesus's day would have prioritized biological

family over the disciples, certainly over the crowds.

And I think what Jesus is doing is pushing against what family

or what considered what was considered to be family during

the time of Jesus. There are ways of talking about

organized groups or groups that come together and organized.

It's also mathematical language. I say that because you need to

know this. I am not a mathematician, but

there are two dominant ways that groups can organize themselves.

And one of those ways that groups organize is called

bounded set. So you can think of things

organizing together in this language bounded set.

Now a bounded set looks a lot like this.

A square that is a group of people who are all close enough,

similar enough that they are inside of that square.

I like to talk about country clubs or golf clubs because in

golf clubs it's very clear who is inside and who is outside.

There are very clear sets of requirements to be inside and if

you don't make or achieve those, if you don't qualify, you don't

get to be a member of the group. So what are some of those things

at a Golf Club? I play golf, so let's not be too

hard on all our golfer friends. But typically there are dues,

right? There are fees that you have to

pay and it's very clear. You pay the fees and you're in.

You don't pay the fees, you're out.

What are some of the other things that you need to do?

There's a dress code. You dress a certain way and

you're in. You don't dress a certain way.

You are perceived to be out and in a bounded set.

It's very hard for members to move across this line.

It doesn't happen because things are very fixed.

You are either in or you are out.

It's very hard for those who are out to move in.

It's very hard for those who are in to move out.

Bounded sets, They focus on what is excluded on qualifiers like

in and out. Neat, it's clean, it's tidy.

You are in and you are out. Family in Jesus's day would have

been considered some level of bounded set.

You're in or you're out based on lineage, based on the family you

were born into. It's fixed.

We we still consider families somewhat more fixed, very little

movement across these lines. But Jesus uses the arrival of

his biological family to say that this is not how we are

going to think about family now inside the Kingdom of God,

inside the Kingdom of heaven as it is unfolding, as it is being

brought near, as it is arriving. One of the things that will

change is the way in which we organize ourselves.

It's not going to be neat and clean.

It's not going to be tidy. It's not going to be like if you

achieve a checklist of like one check, 2 check, three check 4

check, you are in and as soon as you like.

If you miss one, then you're out.

Family will be different and so that's why it's shocking, he

says. So someone told me, Brother,

brother here standing outside, wanting to see you, he replied.

My mother and brothers, my family says, are those who hear

God's word and then put it into practice.

Family to Jesus, what defines you as included in the family of

God, he says, are those who hear the Word and who put it into

practice. In other words, Jesus family are

those who hear his teachings, who embrace them, who allow them

to transform their lives so that the way of the Kingdom is lived

out through them. Those who hear the word, those

who put it into practice, it might be easy to think that

Jesus has just simply like constructed another box, right?

Like in or out, Do or don't. There is no try.

Kind of like Yoda esque Christianity, but this verb to

do like put it into practice here.

Other translations just simply say do it.

Those who do it. That verb there, poio means to

make, to do. I like put it into practice

because it kind of hangs in the air.

There's this like continuation of implied by it.

It's not simply like those who hear the word and do it check.

I've done it. It's those who hear the Word and

are doing it, are living it out, are practicing it.

Those who hear, who embrace, who live into the teachings of God

in a way that allows their shifts, their changes, their

life so that they live differently in perpetuity.

It is a continuing conversion of your life and your heart and

your mind and your spirit and your soul toward the things of

God. It's not simply I heard it, I

did it, I'm done, I'm in, he says.

It needs to be put into practice.

It becomes not just something you do, but who you are.

I like golf, so I'm sorry I picked on country clubs, but I'm

not a golfer. There's a difference.

I like 2G. It's frustrating, but I am not a

golfer. Why?

Because I play charity tournaments like once or twice a

year. Those are best ball.

If you don't know what best ball is, it's the greatest invention

in golf because four of you hit the ball and then if you're me,

you go into the woods and spend 10 minutes finding your ball and

then you get to pick it up and take it to where the best ball

lies. It's fantastic and if you are

really like me, you plan for that and you take extra balls so

that you don't even have to go into the forest to look very

long. You just take a ball out of your

bag and say I'll hit where you hit.

It's great, that shot becomes your shot.

You hit from there like it's great.

The game continues and you just always get to have the greatest

shot of the day. Couple weeks ago I played my

first round of golf this year, 18th hole.

Like I'm tired, my hands are sore, I'm having a great time,

big smile on my face for like my back is sore, my hands are sore.

I went to see a physiotherapist afterward.

I like. By the end of it, I went home

and I wanted a nap. I am not a golfer, but I enjoy

golf. The golfers are ones who go and

play around and then leave that round and go to the driving

range and hit 1000 balls at the driving range and then leave the

driving range and go to the putting green and maybe put for

a few 100 times trying to figure out lies and reads and how

they're gonna actually change their game.

Like by the time I've had a nap and a shower and like, I'm like

halfway to bed, they're still putting in the work, they're

still practicing, they're still living it out in a very

different way than I am. I don't want the lifestyle

associated with being a golfer. I just wanna golf and have a

great time. And if I, you know, have to

Chuck the club into the woods or into the lake because the ball

went in the lake, like, that's fine with me.

I don't want the lifestyle that's required in order to be a

golfer here. The word Jesus says and put it

into practice. It's about lifestyle.

What Jesus is saying here is that to be a member of the

community, to be part of the Kingdom of God, to be part of

Jesus family changes and shapes your entire lifestyle.

It's not just about checking a box, it's not just about

qualifying. It's not just about like making

it in, but just barely. It's about allowing the gospel

and the message of Jesus's life, his death, his resurrection.

It's about all of his teachings getting into your life in such a

way that it reorders and reorients your entire life

style. How you live changes.

That's the mark of the family of God.

According to Jesus. Life inside the Kingdom of God

and family inside the Kingdom of God is marked by your entire

life being shaped around hearing and practicing the Word.

Now here's the grace of it, because I think we can often

hear that message, something similar to it, and kind of get

thrown into fear and shame. Like I can't do that.

I don't do that. Like not my entire lifestyle,

like not everything, like absolutely everything.

Like like how, how do I, where do I start?

Like you're talking about entire lifestyle.

Like help me just take the first little step.

Maybe I, I, I won't be good enough.

Maybe I won't measure up. Like maybe I can't do that.

Maybe I'll start down the road and, and it'll become too hard.

Like, how do we avoid all of that?

Here's the good news of the gospel right Membership within

the family of God is earned, but it's earned through the death

and the resurrection of Jesus. That's the qualifier.

It's earned through the life and the teaching of Jesus.

It turned entirely on the merit of who Jesus is.

It's demonstrated through the lives of those transformed by

the love and the grace of God. That's the difference in First

John 3/1. We've got Oht.

Not sure what's happening there. That's fine.

That'll go away. See what great love in First

John the Father has lavished on us that we should be.

This is not gonna work, children of God, and that's good works up

there. That's great.

And that is what we are, and that's what I want you to hear.

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we

should be called children of God.

And that is what we are. Scripture repeatedly points to

you being enveloped into what Jesus calls family, brought into

the family of God for it to be declared over you that you are

part of God's family in love. God calls you his child in John

13. Jesus says this a new command I

give you love one another. As I have loved you, so you must

love one another. By this everyone you will know

that you are my disciples if you love one another, he says.

What is the mark of a disciple that you love each other?

What is the mark of one who is included into the family of God?

You hear the Word and you and you do it.

It demonstrates who you are and how you are.

Jesus takes membership and instead of being centred, set,

bound or bounded set, rather he puts himself at the centre and

he says membership to the community, no longer bounded but

governed by direction. And so you could be out here.

And if you are hearing the word, putting it into practice says,

hey, the direction of your life is moving toward the centre,

toward Jesus. You could be here and moving.

You could be way out here and moving.

The other reality is you could be here and moving this way.

What direction is your life taking?

What direction are you moving? Are you moving closer to Jesus?

Who is the centre? Are you moving further away from

Jesus? Who is the centre?

Because my mother and brothers are those who hear the Word, put

it into practice. And far from being a limiting or

confining factor on who can and can't be part of God's family,

what it does is it blows open membership into God's family to

anyone. Because it's not about the

family that you're born into. It's not about whether you're

born with like a spiritual silver spoon in your mouth or

like on third base, like what Head Start were you given.

It's about the direction that your life is taking, and it's

about how we are allowing Jesus to define that direction.

If you're part of my family, you're gonna naturally start to

do the things that I do. And so one Sunday, I showed up

into this room to like sound check or something.

And I walked around the corner and Elizabeth was up here, my

youngest, like, she's 19 months. And she was up here blabbering

away and just like 2 standing up here and I'm like, man, like,

yeah, well, listen, like we just whether she whether she becomes

a pastor preacher who like that's listen like that's that's

where my mind goes. But like, that's not what's at

stake. Children do the things they see

their parents doing. They they start to become like

their family, their aunts and their uncles, like their

grandparents, those around them, those who are raising them.

They start to look like and sound like and copy.

They they mimic the things of their family.

And so if one of my kids comes and says like, well, we're gonna

make bracelets out of this thread, then you better bet that

all three of them are now making bracelets out of that same

thread. They are like one another and

Elizabeth sees me up here enough that she got into this room and

came up here and wanted to preach all sermon, got words to

say. You will be like your family.

You will be like those around you.

You will be like Jesus. That's the call at the end of

the day, is to move your life in the direction of the Kingdom and

along with the direction of the Kingdom, enveloped by the

Kingdom of God in a way that it transforms your life so that you

become more like the things of the Kingdom, so that your life

has lived toward greater love, so that you demonstrate more

patience and less anger. Maybe you start to experience

this, this incomprehensible non anxiousness.

As you move, the things of the Kingdom will naturally start

flowing out of you because you are becoming more and more like

Jesus. They will flow out of you just

like they flow out of Jesus and and through you like this is our

prayer that each one of us becomes Kingdom people in a way

that changes those around us. Last thing I want to say, this

gives a beautiful image of what it means to be family for those

who may not have a great relationship or any relationship

with their biological family. And so for those of us who have

found ourselves inside this thing that we called the church

for a long time, like the onus is on you and on us to be

family. To come alongside and deliver a

meal and to pray for and to check in on and to show up

alongside for the people in this community.

The people you rub shoulders with and have coffee with.

The people you dig in the garden beside, the people you pray for,

the people you fast for. That's the call of the church is

to become the community that Jesus describes here.

His family, his mother, his brothers, those who hear the

word, those who are captured by it, and those who do it.

Let me pray, God, thanks for your love.

Thanks for your Grace. Thanks for that.

We have all of it to experience, not in isolation, loneliness on

our own, but in community together.

God thinks that you continue to challenge us to live in the

greater community, to allow all of our life to be transformed by

your teaching, to allow our our hearts and our minds to be

captured by the message of the gospel.

Your life, your teaching, your death, your resurrection spirits

presence with us. So God, I pray that you would do

that again today, that you would capture our hearts, capture our

minds, our spirit in a way that transforms us.

God, I pray that each one of us would long to live life like

inside of what you've designed in alignment with the Kingdom,

hearing your word, doing the things of the Kingdom,

practicing it, living it out. We gotta pray that you would

challenge us to be that for one another, to be family, to be

community, to be these deep, meaningful relationships for one

another. Friendships that feel like

family feel a little bit more than just friends.

Because we know none of us is best in isolation or loneliness,

each one of us created to be in community.

So yeah, I I would pray that you would do that.

Make us into the community that you need, not the community that

we want. Make us into the people that you

need, not the people we want to be.

Yeah, that pretty. Make us more like Jesus and, and

in doing so, God, I pray that you would turn our hearts and

our minds to the world in a way that is deeply convicted, in a

way that grieves in, in a way that rises with like righteous

anger for the evil that is around us.

Not in a way that is paralyzed or silent, but in a way that

works in our corner of the world to push back against the

darkness. So God, as we continue to

worship and as we move from this place, the parking lot to

transportation home into our houses, into the week to work,

to school, into different groups of people, how would each one of

us take the Kingdom as we go, where we live out what it means

to be called family of Jesus? And will we do it in a way that

is loving and is non anxious and is peacemaking in a world to God

that we know is deeply broken and in the midst of grief and

sorrow and sadness? So you gotta make us ones who

carry your love and your light into the world.

We pray these things in the strong name of Jesus, Amen.