Jesus and His Family (Mark 3:31-35)

Over the last year and a half or so, I’ve spent a lot of time on the phone with a man halfway across the world in India. His name is Chirag. Chirag was helping me do some computer stuff, and that necessitated being on the phone with him for about an hour several times a week. We became friends.

One of the things that I learned quickly is that life in India is nothing like life in America.

No matter what time it was over there, there was lots and lots of background noise. There were always horns honking and the distant sound of music. Always.

Another thing I realized pretty quickly is that people over there don’t tend to have the same waking and sleeping schedule that we have. They tend to sleep in late into the morning and stay up pretty late at night.

There are a bunch of other differences, too. They are super into cricket. Most people drive motorcycles and not cars. They eat only vegetables, and they drink tea, not coffee. Most Indians never venture very far from their home. Chirag lives in a little city called Rajkot, and even though he’s college-educated, he’s never been more than about a hundred miles away.

But the biggest difference I found out about Indians through my relationship with Chirag is how they think about family. In India, family seems to be everything. We think of ourselves as individuals; they think of themselves as part of a group. It’s their primary identification.

Chirag lives in a house with his parents, his brothers, sisters, and their kids. When he gets married (which is going to happen soon), his parents will have selected his wife, and most likely, his family will continue to live with them.

What we have in the United States and in other western countries is kind of unique. We are a highly, highly individualistic society. But most of the world—especially the Eastern world—is far, far more family-oriented than we are.

I tell you that because our text today tells a little story about Jesus and His family that seems a little harsh to us, but to the people in Jesus’ day and even to people today in eastern cultures, it was beyond harsh. It must have seemed like a nuclear bomb. It must have seemed like a man slapping everything sacred about culture in the face.

Before we read our text, I want to remind you of what we learned last week. In verse 21, we learn that Jesus’ people (our verse says “His friends,” but it’s better read as “His family and people from His hometown”) wanted to lay hold on Him because they thought He was beside Himself. In other words, they thought Jesus had gone crazy and wanted to abduct Him for His own good. They wanted to stage an intervention.

Most commentators and Bible scholars see verses 31-35 as a continuation of that, so let’s read these verses and remember that they are weighted a bit. Mary and Jesus’ brothers aren’t outside just wanting to chat; they are outside wanting to force Jesus to come home.

Let’s read the text:

”31 There came then his brethren and his mother, and, standing without, sent unto him, calling him. 32 And the multitude sat about him, and they said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren without seek for thee. 33 And he answered them, saying, Who is my mother, or my brethren? 34 And he looked round about on them which sat about him, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! 35 For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother.”

I’m going to break this message into two parts. First, we’ll talk briefly about what was going on in this story. Second, we’ll talk about what Jesus was trying to teach us in this story.

Let’s pray and then we’ll jump right into that.

1. What happened in this story

So picture this: Jesus is teaching this vast crowd of people. He’s healing people. He’s casting out demons. Then along comes His family. Maybe they came from the next town over on foot. It’s His mom, His brothers, and maybe some close family friends. They’ve come for an intervention.

They are dead serious about it. This son, brother, and friend that they love has gone too far, they say. He’s lost His mind. He’s acting like a crazy person, and He’s going to hurt Himself. It’s time to make Him come home and straighten Him out a bit.

I imagine they get to the edge of the crowd, and instead of being in awe of it, they are disgusted. The Bible says they stood without. They wouldn’t go in. They wouldn’t participate. They wanted nothing to do with Jesus and what He was doing.

Maybe Mary goes up to one of Jesus’ disciples and says in her sternest voice, “Tell my son His mom wants to see Him.”

I know this isn’t the Mary you grew up imagining, but that Mary is mostly myth. I believe that Mary was a special woman and a godly woman. I believe that she became a follower of Christ later on, but she wasn’t at this point the saint we imagine when we talk about Mary. She certainly wasn’t the “perpetual virgin” as it’s taught. She is there with her other sons. We know at least two of their names. James and Jude would go on to be leaders in the early church and would both write books of the Bible, but at this point, none of them are into what Jesus is doing. They are standing outside in protest.

Imagine with me the whispers in the crowd. They start to see what is going on. This is embarrassing, especially in Jesus’ culture. His family is against what He is doing.

Finally, one of the disciples speaks up and says, “Your mother and brethren are without, and, um, they want to speak with you.” I think whoever said that knew they wanted to do more than speak with Jesus. Jesus certainly knew.

What was He going to do? Imagine the hush that fell on the crowd. People straining their eyes in anticipation.

And Jesus does something absolutely startling. He doesn’t stop what He’s doing. He barely acknowledges His mother and His brethren. He looks at His disciples and at the faithful crowd and He asks a question:

“Who is my mother, or my brethren?” ‭ Then He makes a sweeping gesture with His hands at all of the disciples in the room and says:

”Behold my mother and brethren.”

And adds:

”For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother.”

Can you imagine the shock of this eastern crowd? I don’t think they had any idea what to say or think about this. Imagine the disappointment that Mary and her other sons felt. They were probably doing this in love. It was misguided, but I don’t think they had anything in mind other than the health and well-being of their brother. Yet they are rebuffed and ignored, and publicly, at that.

Jesus didn’t do this on accident. He was trying to teach us something. So let’s look at the second part of our message:

2. What this story teaches us:

There are three things I think Jesus was teaching us in this story. The first thing is...

A. About our relationship with Jesus.

Jesus said that if we do His will, we are His family. If we are serving God, we can expect a closeness and a care that you would expect from a loving family member.

Listen: If you are a saved person, then you are a member of God’s family. You’ve been “born again,” and God is your Heavenly Father, but you might not always feel that way. Sometimes God feels distant. Sometimes God feels far away.

I think what Jesus was saying is that it is when we are obeying God’s will—when we are walking with Him and doing what He asks of us—then we feel this family closeness to God.

I’ll put it this way: Let’s imagine one of our kids comes home from camp and you ask them, “How was summer camp last week?” And they say, “It was boring. So, so boring. I got nothing out of it.”

“Really? Well, did you enjoy the swimming hole and the water slide?”

“No, I didn’t want to do that. It looked too scary.”

“Okay, well, did you have fun during the games? Did you play big ball basketball, human foosball and all those other exciting games? How were those?”

“No. They didn’t look like any fun.”

“Well, what about the services? What about the singing?

“I wasn’t into it. I was playing on my phone the whole time.”

We’d look at a kid like that and we’d say, “Of course you didn’t get anything out of camp. You didn’t put anything into it. You barely participated. You were there and little else.”

And a lot of people say, “I don’t feel close to God. I’m not getting anything out of church. The Bible doesn’t mean anything to me.” And they are barely participating! They might come to church once or twice a month. They aren’t serving. They aren’t reading their Bible. They aren’t praying. Of course it doesn’t mean as much to you! You aren’t putting yourself into it barely at all!

My wife pointed me to an article in Fox News this week about American Christianity. The writer said that 80% of Americans say they believe in God, but yet church attendance is falling off. His point was that people view church as optional. It’s like renters insurance. They look at church as consumers. It’s a very low priority.

And if you look at church that way, then of course you aren’t going to get anything out of it. When the local church has to compete with Hollywood, the internet, and the various clubs and sports you are a part of, of course you aren’t going to get much out of it.

Last week, quite suddenly, we were going to youth camp with our kids. It was great, but it meant that our kids had to miss a very important week of swim. They had their conference meet on Saturday, and they were going to miss the whole week before the conference meet. There was no doubt it was going to hurt their times.

So we went to camp. Then we went to the meet, and neither of the girls had an awesome day. Both of them were a bit slower than previous meets. We were talking about it with them afterwards, and we all came to the same conclusion: Church comes first; God comes first. If we have to do this every summer, so be it. If they went from first to worst, it wouldn’t matter. We’d still go to camp over sports.

Listen: If you are trying to take this book and live it—if you are reading it, trying to act it out day by day, staking your reputation on what God’s Word says, and using it as your standard of practice in your family, in your workplace, and everywhere—I guarantee you that God will mean more to you.

Listen, folks: Jesus is offering this deep family relationship with Himself. He wants to be to you like a brother; in fact, closer than a brother, but like any relationship, you have to engage. You have to talk to Him and listen to Him.

The second thing this passage teaches us is...

B. About our relationship with our spiritual family.

You see, not only does Jesus give us a relationship with Himself, He gives us a new spiritual family. If we are His mother and His brethren, then that means the other people who are doing God’s will are also our spiritual family.

One thing that is super obvious as you read the New Testament is that these Christians meant a lot to each other. They called each other brother and sister, as well as things like “my son in the faith.”

Listen to some of the “one another” verses from the New Testament:

”Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another;” (Romans 12:10)

”Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.” (Romans 13:8)

”Wherefore receive ye one another, as Christ also received us to the glory of God.” (Romans 15:7)

”Salute one another with an holy kiss. The churches of Christ salute you.” (Romans 16:16)

”For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another.” (Galatians 5:13)

”And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” (Ephesians 4:32)

”Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.” (Colossians 3:13)

”Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.”. (Colossians 3:16)

I could go on. Hopefully, you get the point.

I’ve told you so many times, but this story reminds us of it. Christianity was never intended to be this consumeristic, individualistic, designer, fast-food convenience thing. It’s supposed to look at lot more like Chirag’s idea of family than our individualistic culture.

In fact, a huge part of the New Testament is absolutely impossible to obey outside of a local church fellowship.

I thank God for my spiritual family. Some of you are a little bit nuts. There are some crazy uncles in here, but we have those in our regular family, too. We aren’t perfect; we are just brought together by the cross of Christ. Just like our human families should stick together, we need to be there for our spiritual families.

Let me brag on you folks for a minute and say I really believe our church is pretty good at this. You care about each other. You spend time with each other. You pray for each other.

That’s the way it ought to be. There ought to be a spiritual bond in the truth that extends way beyond Sunday Morning service time.

So I’ve talked about what this passage teaches us about our family relationship with God, and I’ve talked about what it teaches us about our family relationship with each other. There is one more thing I want to talk about: What this teaches us…

C. About our relationship with our physical family.

Let me tell you something: I love my family. I love my wife. I love my kids. Without a doubt the greatest blessings God has given me are family blessings.

And you don’t see this, but I really love my extended family, too. I have a bunch of brothers, and we are thick as thieves. I’ve got cute little nieces and nephews. I talk to my parents almost every day. I’ve got uncles and grandparents that are still alive that I’m pretty close to as well. If you were to ask me what the hardest part about being a pastor is, it’s not even close: It’s being away from my family so much.

It’s the same way for my wife: She’s super close to her parents.

We are looking forward to being with both families in a couple weeks and celebrating a wedding with my brother in Tennessee. It’s going to be awesome.

Family is one of the greatest blessings that God gives us, and it should be a God-given priority. God instituted three institutions—the family, the church, and the government—and all of them are important.

But one of the things that this story teaches us is that there are things that are more important than family. Our walk with God and our obedience to Him should come above even our ties to our family.

One of my favorite commentary writers, Kent Hughes, said this:

Many Christians and non-Christians alike have made the family everything. Every moment of every day, every involvement, every commitment, every engagement is measured and judged by the question: how will this benefit my family?

The tragedy is this: Every earthly loyalty, if it is made central, becomes idolatry, and all idolatries eventually destroy their worshippers.

What Hughes was saying was this: Family can be a god, and when family becomes a god, it actually destroys your family because family isn’t supposed to be at the center of our lives. Our relationship with Jesus is supposed to be at the center.

When Christ is at the center, you’ll be a better husband, a better wife, a better son, a better daughter, a better brother, or a better sister. But it has to be Christ first, and everything else second.

Sometimes that means, like Jesus did in this passage, disappointing the ones we are closest to. That might mean sending your young people off to serve Jesus rather than trying to hoard them to yourself. That might mean disappointing your parents or your other family members by making church and God a priority in a way they don’t understand.

Let me close by saying one more thing here: Despite appearances in this story, Jesus did not forsake His earthly family. One of the very last things He did on the cross was make sure His mother was taken care of by one of His disciples.

Much of the New Testament talks about being the right kind of husband; the right kind of dad; the right kind of mother; the right kind of wife; the right kind of kids. Family is important. Family is Christian. It just can’t be paramount. It can’t be all-important.

Conclusion:

• Some of you can’t have a truly Christian family because you’ve never trusted Christ. You need to trust Him.
• Some of you need to make church and Christ a priority again.
• Some of you need to reinvest in fellowship. You need spend some more time with your spiritual brothers and sisters. Why not invite someone new to dinner today or next week?