How is your relationship with Jesus going lately? I'm not talking about your relationship with God in general. I'm talking specifically the second person of the Trinity, your interactions with Him. When you post about a relationship on Facebook, there's different options you can have. One of the options is, it's complicated. Have you ever seen someone do, like if you know a teenager, if you ever see a teenager, then they post in a relationship on their Facebook, you watch them and then within about two weeks, it'll say, it'll change to, it's complicated. If we posted about our relationship with a second member of the Trinity on Facebook, that's the designation we would have to use. It's complicated. Not for the same reason that the teenagers use it, but because it really is a complex, multifaceted, Relationship. It's complicated. As your savior, you look to him for salvation and forgiveness of sins. As your king, you bow before his authority. As your creator, you submit to him as the owner of your life. As your mediator, you look to him for justification. As the Son of God, you worship Him. As the perfect man, you follow His example. There's all these different facets. Your relationship with Jesus might be stronger in some of those areas and weaker in others. But if you're like most Christians, you probably never think about or put any effort into or even maybe know about or appreciate this aspect of your relationship with Jesus that we're going to talk about tonight. But it's important, it's emphasized in Scripture, and Jesus brings it up in this text in a very dramatic way. So look at Mark 3, verse 31. Mark 3, 31, Then Jesus' mother and brothers arrived. Now just to refresh your memory of where we're at here in Mark, Mark is showing us the various responses to Jesus' ministry by different people. The scribes decided He was satanic. His family decided He was insane. insane isn't as bad as satanic. So, I mean, the family's reaction isn't as bad as the scribes, but it's still a clear-cut rejection of Jesus' claims. They obviously don't believe that Jesus is who He claimed to be, right? Because if somebody thinks He's God and He's not, then he's a nutcase. That's how you decide someone is insane if they're claiming to be God. Like the guy in the mental hospital that said, I'm Jesus. And then the guy in the bed next to him said, who told you that? And he said, God did. And the guy says, no, I didn't. I mean, that's the stereotype of people in a mental institution, right? They think they're God. And so if someone claims to be God and you put him in a psych ward because, then that means that you don't believe his claims, obviously. So this is a sad scene. It's sad. It'd be painful for any of us to have your family going around saying you're a lunatic. Because it says they were saying this. But for Jesus, I mean, none of us love our families like Jesus loved His family. This is a man with perfect love. And the more you love someone, the more it hurts when they reject you. So we can barely imagine how painful this had to have been for Jesus. But it's an encouragement to those of us who have lost relationships because of our faith, right? Because when Jesus said we must be ready to lose our families in order to follow him, to give up family if need be in order to follow him, he's not asking us to do anything that he didn't go through himself. So if you've ever been rejected by family or friends for your faith, Jesus has personally been through that. He knows what that's like. and not just your family, but the world in general will think that you're crazy. They'll respond the same way they responded to Jesus. John 15, 18, "'If the world hates you, keep in mind he hated me first,' Jesus said." You might remember Joey Behar was in the news recently for calling Vice President Pence insane because he thought he could interact with God in prayer. It's nothing new. The world's been saying that about Jesus' followers for 2,000 years. They said it about Jesus. It's part of how we bear the sufferings of Christ, to join with His shame in that. Let us go with Him outside the camp and bear His shame, right? So, Jesus' brothers think He's a lunatic. Did Mary think that? What about Mary? Because that's hard to imagine. She knew about the virgin birth, right? If there's ever been a person that didn't doubt the virgin birth, it was Mary. She definitely knew about that. Everything we read about Mary at the time of Jesus' birth sounds like she believed, even before He was born. And when John 7, 5 says that Jesus' brothers didn't believe in Him, it doesn't say Jesus' mother and brothers, it just says brothers. So I don't know what's happening here. Maybe she's just tagging along. She doesn't agree with the brothers, but she's tagging along. Or maybe she had a lapse, a temporary lapse in her faith, kind of like John the Baptist. We just don't know. But we do know, at least, his brothers thought he was insane. Scribes think he's satanic. Family thinks he's insane. And for the last several verses, if you can think back to last time, Jesus has been refuting the scribes' claim that he's satanic. And he just demolished their claims. So is he going to do that now with the family? Is he going to refute the family's claim that he's insane? And I would say, I think he already did. Effectively, he pretty much refuted both accusations in one shot, because when Jesus was dismantling the scribes' position with devastating logical proof after devastating logical proof one after another, I don't know about you, but to me, he seemed pretty lucid. Right? I mean, who's really insane? The man who can confound the smartest scholars of the day, every single time, off the top of his head with a few sentences? Or people who think a man like that is insane? Right? If someone looks at Jesus' words, these teachings that have captivated humanity for 2,000 years, have comforted and instructed and built up men and women in every culture and era and transformed millions of lives, and they look at those words and conclude, oh, they must have come from someone who's insane, I think we know where the real mental deficiency lies. So, back in verse 21, Jesus' family decided to come and take Jesus into custody. Now, ten verses later, they finally arrive. It took him 10 verses to get there. Here they come. Mark gets real dramatic here, and he starts using present tense verbs. Literally, verse 31 is, and Jesus' mother and brothers are arriving. So he wants you to picture this in your mind's eye. He wants you to see it. Here they come. There they are, Jesus' brothers, Simon and James and Judas and Joseph, and then there's Mary with them, and here they come. No mention of whether the sisters were there, but he had sisters. What does Jesus say when He sees them coming up, when He sees them arriving, what does He say? He never does see them. He doesn't see them because they don't come in. Verse 31, "...standing outside they sent for Him, calling Him." Why are they outside? Why don't they go inside? Well, they can't. The house is so jam-packed they can't even get in there, according to Luke 8 and 9. And they might not have wanted to go in there anyway. If they're going to... I mean, they're there to tell Jesus that He's insane and we're here to take you into custody. That's just not going to go over very well in front of all Jesus' followers, right? So, maybe they didn't even want to go in. So here the family is standing outside. They're standing outside the house. The crowd is inside, and it's just kind of a striking scene, just ironic, because typically it's the reverse of what you normally see. Usually the family is on the inside of the house, and the crowds are on the outside. Here you've got the crowds inside and the family outside. It's an odd scene, and it's more than just an odd scene. It's a picture of a profound spiritual reality that Jesus is about to teach regarding insiders and outsiders in His kingdom, in the family of God. And in the next chapter, in chapter 4, we're going to see Jesus actually use this language of insiders and outsiders when He gets to the secrets of the kingdom in chapter 4, verse 11. All right, so verse 31, they sent for him, calling him. So they come up to the fringe of the crowd. They can't get in the door. There's some people out there around the fringe, and they just say, hey, can you get word to Jesus, please? Let him know his mom is here, his mother and brothers are here, and we'd like to see him. And the guy's like, sure, yeah, I'll tell. And so he passes the word along, and then they get it to the next guy, and it moves up through the crowd until finally somebody near Jesus gets it and the disciples sitting right in front of him, in verse 32, a crowd was sitting around him and they are telling him, again these present tense verbs, and they're telling him, Behold, your mother and brothers are outside looking for you. Now, the behold means the disciples think this is a fairly big deal. Hey, your mom's here. I mean, she would have traveled all the way from Nazareth, right? Your mom's here. And they interrupt whatever Jesus was saying, whatever he was teaching, in order to say this. Hey, behold, look at this. Your mom's here. And Jesus put up his hand and said, please hold questions and comments to the end. No, he doesn't. He lets himself be interrupted. Whatever it was he was teaching, he just lets himself be interrupted, which he always does, which is good because because this is important. Whatever it was Jesus was teaching never even made it into the Bible, right? But this interruption did. Amazing how many wonderful teachings of Jesus came in interruptions to something else that He was doing. Anyway, He lets Himself be interrupted and takes advantage of this teachable moment that only Jesus could see as a teachable moment. I would have never caught on to this as a teachable moment. This is like the most ordinary kind of a circumstance you could possibly have. Somebody comes up and you say, hey, so-and-so's looking for you. I mean, how many of us would say, oh, teachable moment. I could launch into a sermon on that. If this happened to me, I guarantee I would not have caught that as a teachable moment. I'd say, hey, your mom's here. I'd say, oh, I'll be right out. That'd be the end of it. And even if I did think it was a teachable moment, it's like, I gotta teach something, I gotta teach something. Your mother and brothers are here, family, okay, I'll teach about family. What would I say? Maybe something about the importance of family. It's the most basic building block of society. I could talk about the disintegration of the nuclear family, destroying our culture. That's not the direction Jesus goes at all. In fact, he seems to go in the opposite direction of that. As usual, Jesus is full of surprises. Look at verse 33. Here's His answer. They say, behold, your mother and brother here in verse 33. Who are my mother and brothers? He asked. Then He looked around at those seated in a circle around Him and said, behold. So He takes their word that they just used, behold, and they said, behold, your family's here. And He says, do you want to behold something? Behold this. Here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother. Meanwhile, Mary and the brothers are outside waiting, waiting, waiting. Finally, someone squeezes out the front door. What's the deal? Is he coming out? I don't think so. Why? What did he say? Did you tell him that his mom's here? Did you tell him? Yeah, we told him. Well, what did he say? Well, he made a remark about family. What are you talking about? Come on, what did he... Well, he said, we told them your mother and brothers are here, and he said, who are my mother and brothers? And then he pointed to his disciples and said, here's my mother and brothers and sisters. Mary's face turns white. Sorry Mary, I don't know what got into him. He's not coming out. And Jesus' family stands there in stunned silence. The importance of family in that culture and the shame associated with any kind of disowning of your family. Jesus as the older brother, Joseph is most likely dead at this point, so he's the caretaker of the family. This is just a shock at so many different levels. So they're standing there. Finally, one of them turns and starts walking. The rest of them follow and they start heading back to Nazareth. Must have been an interesting 30-mile walk home back to Nazareth. So what did that event do? Did that event like jar his family into realizing their error? Not yet, because we're going to see in chapter 6 of Mark, a couple chapters from now, we're going to see that In Mark 6, verse 4, Jesus still has no honor among His own family. So what's going on with Jesus here? Is He just upset because they were saying He's crazy or something like that? No. No, Jesus loved His family, and we'll see that. What Jesus is doing here is something much, much bigger than anything to do with His physical earthly family. Jesus is doing the same thing here with family that He did in the previous section with the nation of Israel. In appointing the 12, remember I told you He's recreating the nation of Israel on new foundations? Here, He's recreating the world's most basic institution, the family, on new foundations. So this kingdom that Jesus has been proclaiming this whole time, He's saying it is a nation, like Israel, and it is a family. And so out of the ashes of his earthly family, a new family bursts out of the limits of blood relations and will end up gathering in millions. And later on in chapter 10, Jesus is going to offer that family, this new spiritual family, as the reward that you get if you lose your family for Christ. or lose your family for anything. If you lose your family for anything, you get a reward. You lose your father, you get a hundred fathers. You lose your mom, you get a hundred new moms. In this life, not in heaven, but in this life, and it's talking about the church. And there's so much we could say about that, but I'm going to resist the temptation. I'm going to hold off until we get to chapter 10, because that's what chapter... The focus on chapter 10 is our relationship with each other as family. Here, the emphasis is a little different. The emphasis of this passage is in our relationship with Jesus as our brother or our son, believe it or not. And so that's where we're going to focus tonight, our relationship with Jesus. Verse 34, So he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, Behold, here's my mother and brothers. Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother. So is Jesus just completely disowning his family here? Is this replacement theology with the family, like he's replacing the physical family with the spiritual family? No. Physical family still matters. We'll see that later in the book. Jesus is gonna forbid divorce. He's gonna talk about honoring your father and mother. If a person doesn't provide for his own family, he's worse than an unbeliever. The physical family's still in place, and when Jesus was hanging on the cross, he tells Mary to take care, or he tells John to take care of Mary, I'm sure there are plenty of widows, plenty of women in need in Israel at that time, and He didn't assign any of His other disciples to take care of them. It is His physical mother that He took care of. So, Jesus is leaving the physical institution in place, but He's also creating a much, much greater form of that institution that supersedes it in importance and in every way. So you've heard blood is thicker than water? It's not, not in this family. The water of baptism is way thicker than blood. When Jesus' brothers write a book of the Bible, later on they become Christians and followers of Christ, James and Jude, and when they write their books of the Bible, they introduce themselves at the beginning of the book, not as Jesus' brothers, but as Jesus' servants. Why? Because that's a higher credential. Yeah, we were his physical relations. That's meaningless. We were his spiritual relations. That's what matters. People think they're Christians because they grew up in a Christian home. No one ever grew up in a more Christian home than Jesus' brothers, right? I mean, talk about a Christian home. Christ is in the home. That's a Christian home. And yet none of his family were included in the kingdom until they placed their faith in Jesus Christ. if not even Mary, the blessed Mary, can play the family card when it comes to getting into the kingdom, and nobody can, right? And I mention that because the Roman Catholic Church has made much of Mary's relationship with Jesus as physical mother. Jesus actually corrected that very attitude in Luke 11. In Luke 11.27, as Jesus was saying these things, a woman in the crowd called out, "'Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you!' And he replied, "'On the contrary, Blessed are those who hear the word of God and obey it. She's saying, blessed is your physical mom? And he says, no, no, no, blessed are my spiritual mothers and brothers. So if you think Mary was special because she gave birth to Jesus, she was, but anyone who follows Jesus is more special. Your natural family is important, but it's not ultimate. And this is a good thing for us to hear, because you can make an idol out of family in the evangelical Christian church, and nobody will bat an eye. There's no stigma attached to that particular sin. In fact, you can write a book. If you do that, you can write a book and teach others how to do it, and you'll sell a lot of books. There's a segment of the church where family is ultimate. Nothing ever infringes on family time. And there's almost no investment in spiritual siblings at all because their time is all caught up with their physical family. And the physical family never makes any sacrifices for the church for the spiritual family. And that's wrong. That's just behaving as though this passage didn't even exist. Jesus said, this family's bigger. It's more important. It's more fundamental. when you hear people give their testimony. You ever hear someone give their testimony and they say, oh man, I used to just live for recreation, or money, or my work, my career, and I was just totally, I lived for that, or I lived for sex, or you know, for recreation, or whatever. But then I repented and I became a Christian. You've heard testimonies like that, right? You ever heard anyone give a testimony and say, oh, for me, it used to be my family was the most important thing to me. and I lived for family, but now I repented of that and I became a Christian. You don't hear that one very often. In the movies, you know, they always, they live for money and everything, and then they finally come to their senses, and then they devote themselves totally to family. And what Jesus is saying is, no, the spiritual family is more important, it's bigger. Alright, so it's bigger, so then what does that mean? Who qualifies, then, as a member of God's family? Who's an insider? Everyone? Did Jesus teach the universal brotherhood of all mankind, universal fatherhood of God, like the Unitarian religion teaches? No. No. It's only the insiders who are included. And when we see Jesus' family walking away in this scene, it seems really sad, right? I mean, you just picture that in your mind, it's heartbreaking. First we're sad when we see Jesus' family's rejecting Him. Now we're even sadder when we see Him seemingly rejecting His family, and they're outsiders. But Jesus isn't shutting them out. In fact, in the very next breath, what does Jesus do? He throws the doors of His family, His spiritual family, His spiritual household, wide open so that anyone in the world who wants to can come in. And after His resurrection, they do. His brothers do come in, don't they? So, who are the insiders? Who gets into this family? Jesus describes them in two ways in this passage. See if you can spot them there. What are the two different ways that Jesus describes His family? One is in verse 35. Straightforward. Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother. So the thing that makes you a physical family is shared DNA, right? The thing that makes you spiritual relatives and family is shared spiritual DNA, which is what? Doing God's will. It's the lives that revolve around God's will. That's what makes us family. We want whatever God wants. That's what the word will means, desire. We want what God wants. We're like Jesus in John 4.34. My food, said Jesus, is to do the will of Him who sent me and to finish His work. I just love God's will. Jesus is all about God's will. And if you are all about God's will, you're in His family. But how do you know what God's will is? How can you find God's will for your life? That's an important question because everything is riding on whether you find it. Matthew 7, 21, Jesus said, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, only he who does the will of my Father. You don't go to heaven unless you're doing God's will. So you better know what it is. And if you do know what it is and you're doing it, then you're in, you're an insider. All right, so that's one way of describing the insiders, the family members. The other way of describing them is in verse 34. And I think this is fascinating. He says, He looked around at those seated in a circle around Him, His disciples, these are His followers, and He said, Here are My mother and brothers. So who are the insiders? Who are the family members? His followers. His disciples, right? Not just the 12, but all His disciples, the women and the young and old and everybody. And He says that all of them are His brothers and sisters and mothers. So in one verse He says, what does that tell you about what God's will is? In one verse He says, my family is defined by my disciples. Then in the very next verse He says, my family is defined by those who do God's will. What does that tell you about doing God's will? God's will is to follow Christ. It's the exact same group. Now, no doubt the scribes thought they were doing God's will, right? I'm sure the scribes thought they were doing God's will when they called Jesus satanic. His family probably thought they were doing God's will. Nobody is doing God's will unless they're a follower of Christ. Here's the thing that you might not have realized. Every follower of Christ is doing God's will. Every Christian is doing God's will. Perfectly? No. So you might hear that, it's like, all right, great, but what if I'm not very good at following Christ? I'm a Christ follower, but I'm not very good at it. I constantly stumble, constantly fail, disobey. Am I still in? Well, if you want an answer to that question, all you have to do is watch these very disciples, the rest of the book of Mark. Because Jesus calls them family right here in chapter four. When He calls them family, when He calls this group family that's sitting in a circle around Him, He's not talking about spiritual giants. Anything but that. They were men of little faith and hard hearts. That's all we see, the whole rest of the gospel. You have to scour the gospel to find them doing anything right. But they were followers of Christ and so they were in God's will. You see that? What about the crowds who loved Jesus' teaching? They ate it up. They gathered around Him. They pressed around Him. They were clamoring for His teaching, but they didn't follow Him. They looked to Him for healing, but they didn't follow Him. What about them? Are they included? No. No, Jesus is going to explain that later in chapter 4. this listening but not being included thing. But if you're a follower of Jesus, then you are doing God's will for your life. You are in God's will. And that's great news for people who are struggling to discover God's will for their life. We talk about God's will like it's this hidden mystery that is just almost impossible to discover. God's will is not a hidden mystery that's only discoverable to spiritual giants. Every Christian knows and does God's will. If you strive to follow Christ and you repent when you fail, you are right in the center of God's will for your life. And it sounds a little odd because usually when we talk about God's will, we talk about it in context of trying to decide, make wisdom decisions. This option, this option. Should I take this job, that job? Live here, live there? Marry this Christian or that Christian? Should I take this school or that school? Whatever. Usually when people are talking about God's will, they're talking about deciding between two non-sinful options, and they're just trying to pick the one that'll have the best outcome. The biblical terminology for that isn't really God's will, seeking God's will. That's not the terminology the Bible uses for that kind of decision. It's wisdom. The terminology the Bible uses for that is wisdom. You've got to apply wisdom in those kind of decisions. Now does wisdom matter? Yes, yeah, but not nearly as much as holiness, not nearly as much as following Christ. Very often when people say, I'm seeking to discover God's will in this matter, it has nothing to do with holiness. So often, really what they want is they just want God to reveal to them which option will have the least amount of hardship and trouble and the greatest temporal rewards. Which one of these options is going to get me the most money, the most comfort, the least trouble, the least hardship? And they think they're discovering God's will when really all they're doing is trying to discover which path has the least amount of suffering. But if you think seeking God's will and seeking less suffering is the same thing, you need to reread 1 Peter 4, which says, "...he who has suffered in his body is done with sin. As a result, he does not live the rest of his earthly life for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God. The one who suffers lives in God's will." So seeking God has nothing to do with avoiding suffering. A lot of times it's just the opposite. And it's not about seeking worldly comforts. Which one of these jobs will make me the most comfortable? 1 John 2.17, the world and its desires pass away, but the man who does God's will lives forever. It's not about earthly comforts. So yeah, go ahead and use wisdom, but realize these wisdom decisions we make aren't as important as we make them out to be sometimes. Think of it this way. If you're following Christ, you're striving to obey Christ, repent when you disobey, That's like being on the interstate and going the right direction. If you're on the interstate, you're in God's will. Issues like which career path should I take, who should I marry, where should I live, all that stuff, those decisions are like which lane you're driving in. Now, does that matter? Yeah. You know, if you make a dumb decision about your career or marriage or something like that, but you're still pursuing holiness, you're still following Christ, then you might have to drive in a lane that's got a bunch of potholes, and it's going to be a bumpy ride. But you're still in God's will if you're on that interstate. And hitting those potholes, honestly, might do you more good than driving in the smooth lane next to you would do you. Because a smoother ride is not necessarily a better life. So, God's will? Follow Christ. If you're following Christ, you're in God's will. You're in God's will. Alright. So, let's talk about Jesus as our brother. There's no way we can do any kind of justice to this doctrine tonight. We can't even begin to scratch the surface of it in one sermon. Just to give you a sample, we could do a whole sermon or series on Hebrews 2 where it talks about Jesus became our brother in order to be an ideal high priest, right? The second half of Hebrews 2. He had to be made like his brothers in every way in order to experience all that we experience. And it talks about how Jesus was not one bit ashamed to call you brother. He's not ashamed to be your brother. or earlier in Hebrews 2, it explains how Jesus became our brother in order to fulfill God's plan for the exaltation of the human race. Remember Psalm 8? Remember when we studied Psalm 8 and we found out that God's plan was for mankind to rule, to be supreme over the whole creation? And we look around and it's like, I'm not seeing it. I'm not seeing mankind reigning over the supernovas." And he's like, yeah, we don't see it now, but we see Christ who fulfills that for us. He comes, He reigns over, He became a man, He became our brother, and then how He reigns over everything, that fulfills that whole Psalm 8 plan. We read that Jesus had to become our brother in order to be able to die, right? He had to die to defeat death. He couldn't die as God, so he became a man, he became our brother, so he could die in our place and be exalted in our place. So, I mean, there's just so much we could cover. We don't have time to really talk about any of that tonight. So let's just tonight, in the little bit of time we have left, just focus on the relational aspect. Jesus, our brother. How is your, let's go back to the question at the very beginning of the Bible study. How is your sibling relationship with Jesus going right now? I can actually remember the first time I ever to the lyrics of the hymn, Joyful, Joyful, for the first time, and we're singing, and all of a sudden, there's a line in there that says, God our Father, Christ our brother. I remember the first time I heard that, I was like, what? No. And it sounded like blasphemy to me. It was like, Christ my brother, Christ my King, Christ my God, He's my Creator, He's my Lord, He's my Master, He's not my brother. And I just didn't know the scriptures well enough. I didn't know the Bible taught this. And just going by my own impressions, it didn't feel right. It seemed wrong because brotherhood is kind of a peer relationship, right? Your parents are over you, your siblings are beside you, at your level. And that just like, it didn't compute for me. And it really doesn't seem to compute in the book of Mark here, because the whole book, he's just been portraying Jesus as this unique Son of God, exalted above everyone else, different, unique, in glorious ways. So now, to suddenly describe our relationship with Him as this horizontal, even kind of sibling status is unexpected, to say the least, in the book of Mark. But none of that is a problem. if you just realize that everything that the rest of the Bible says about the supremacy of Christ over us still stands. All of that still stands. He's still our Lord, He's still our God, our King, our Master, our Maker, our Creator, all of that. But there are aspects of brotherly love that Jesus also wants to share with us. He wants to share every kind of love with us. And you can see that if you watch his friendship with the disciples in the Gospels. Just watch his friendship. You know what I told you before when he called the twelve and that they might be with him? He pointed to them apostles that they might be with him and I said that's for training? It was for training, but it wasn't just for training. It was also for companionship. There's no indication in the Bible that Jesus had any other friends besides these guys. And that's striking me because one thing I've noticed is most big shots are only friends with other big shots, right? We were just talking about this last night about some of these big names. Usually big shots are only friends with other big shots. And these disciples, they're not big shots. They're not even medium shots. These are some of the littlest shots there are. I mean, these guys are just, they're nothings, they're nobodies. And yet, Jesus, when Jesus took some time off for rest, he wanted to be with them. In John 13, 1, it says, he loved them to the end. In his darkest hour, the night before he died, when he was just falling apart, he longed for their companionship. He just wanted them to stay with him and pray with him. It almost sounded like he needed them. And if you're a follower of Christ, did you know that Jesus desires that kind of companionship with you? When you're talking to the big boss at work, you know, the CEO or something, you're standing up straight, you're all business, you're all business, right? But when you're just like talking with the guys out at the loading dock or something like that, you let your hair down a little bit more and you're yourself. And you're never more relaxed when you're with your brother or sister. I was watching in church the other day, these two little kids, brother and sister, were sitting in front of us and they were, The sister was sitting so close to the brother, she's watching his Bible, and he's going through, and by the end of the service, she's only like on one third of her chair. She's all just like right up against her brother. It was just perfectly natural. It was just the neatest thing to see. There's a side of my personality that I think nobody has ever seen, really, like my siblings saw it growing up. I've known them longer than I've known anybody else. Right? Except for my parents. But I'm guessing my siblings will outlast my parents, and so that'll be the longest relationship I ever have. This is a special kind of relationship, and Jesus wants that kind of relationship with you. He wants your worship, he wants your awe, he wants your fear, he wants your reverence and your obedience, all that. He still wants that, but he also wants you as a sister or brother. He wants that unique kind of familiar, warm, close, lifelong, uninterruptible love where you share the realities of life, you share the little things, the tiny things in life that you don't talk to anybody else about, that bond of brotherhood, that camaraderie, that family loyalty, that family priority, all of that. He wants our sibling type love, but he wants that from us. But more important than that, much more important than that is we get that kind of love from him. He's the perfect older brother. He's the perfect older brother. And if you don't have a great older brother, yes, you do. Yes, you do. What does an older brother do? What's an older brother's role? When I was growing up, I have an older brother, so I can tell you. My older brother, when we were kids, was a unique combination of companion, teacher, and protector. We shared a bedroom. We talked about things I'd never talked to anybody else about. He was a protector. I'll never forget the day I was flying a kite with Donnie, and we came around the corner, and there was Mark Washington, who was the scariest bully. Mark Washington's terrorized me like no other bully ever did, and I never came out well when I ran into that guy. But this time Donnie was with me. It's the only time I ever ran into Mark Washington was someone else with me and it was Donnie and I jumped behind Donnie. Donnie was kind of a little, I think we were the same size at this point. I don't know that he was any bigger. He might have been smaller than me, but I jumped behind my brother and Donnie stood up. Mark Washington probably could have waxed both of us easily, but Donnie stood up to him, nothing happened. We got away just fine. That was the only time I ever felt safe in the presence of Mark Washington. God made brothers to be protective. And especially of sisters, right? One thing I'll never forget is another thing, when we were little kids, I was just real little, and I remember something dropped off the shelf in the kitchen and landed on my little sister Carolyn's toe and crushed her toe. And she cried so hard and I couldn't stand it. The pain I felt was almost unbearable because I couldn't do anything to help her. And to this day, when that memory comes to my mind, I can't even think about it. I hate that memory. That's the natural kind of protective, compassionate love that God planted in elder brothers for their siblings. It's the way it's supposed to be. Now, if you're one of Jesus' followers, maybe you don't have a sibling like that, but if you're one of Jesus' followers, you realize that Jesus has that kind of love for you, that kind. When something lands on your toe, something threatens you, he feels that special brotherly compassion. He puts himself between you and spiritual danger. And more importantly, he's strong enough to shield you from any spiritual threat if you just jump behind him. Another thing I remember about my brother is the things he taught me. He was a teacher. He taught me all kinds. He taught me how to fly a kite. He taught me all kinds of stuff about science. He loved science and he really sparked my interest in God's creation because he taught me so many fascinating things about science. I loved that. I remember one time he explained inertia to me. Not long after that, we were sledding. We were on a sledding hill with a bunch of other kids. And I was right next to these high school kids, these older, bigger kids. And I made this comment. I don't know. I was probably trying to show off my vocabulary or something. I made this comment. It's like, oh, my inertia is going to carry me all the way down to where I'm going to really get a long run. And this high school kid corrected me. He said, it's not inertia. It's momentum. And I didn't say anything to him. But I remember thinking, I'm going to ask Donnie. Is it inertia or is it momentum? And if Donnie told me it was inertia, it wouldn't matter if Albert Einstein said it's momentum. If Donnie says it's inertia, Einstein's an idiot, right? That's how I felt. Turns out it was momentum is the correct term. Anyway, Donnie attached a pen holder to his Bible. I don't even have my Bible here. You can see it. I got a pen holder on the front of my Bible. That's me walking in my brother's footsteps. I want to be just like him. I remember the day we were in a tent and camping, and he warned me about temptations and various sins and how they're a trap, and he was explaining it. I can remember the exact time and place when he was teaching that to me. Older brothers teach younger siblings in times and places the parents can't reach. No one can reach into those moments and contexts of life like an older brother can, and Jesus does that for us. He wants to play that role in our lives. He's right there beside you in the events of life, teaching you how to think about them, how to deal with them. So that's Jesus as brother. What about this thing about Jesus' mothers? How many of you really think of yourself as Jesus' mother? You just spend a lot of time thinking about Jesus as your son. It's strange, right? It sounds strange, but Jesus mentions it three times. We have to think about it because He mentions it three times in two verses. Mark 4.33, Who are my mother and my brothers? Here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother. Now, again, we can think of this in both directions, our love for Him and His love for us. Regarding our love for Him, there's something very special, there's a very special kind of love that exists only between mother and child. Anybody disagree with that? I mean, there's nothing like it in the world. There is no stronger love. There is not any stronger love. There are a lot of people that I can think of who used to love me, right? But something happened that they turned against me, or they just forgot about me, they moved away, and out of sight, out of mind, whatever. But there's never been a moment when I wondered if mom still loved me. Never. I make myself obnoxious to other people, and they'll turn against me. I make those very same moments, mom doesn't seem to activate more of her love and compassion for all those consequences of my obnoxiousness. If you're a mother, You have capacities for a depth of love that are unique in the human experience. And Jesus wants that kind of love from you. If you're a mother, you have a capacity to love in a way that is unique. So you can love Jesus that way. But again, that's not the most important piece. The most important piece is Him loving you like a man loves his mother. And this is something that all of us, men and women, can appreciate. There was a commercial I saw on TV the other day where this older woman is sitting on a couch and all of a sudden this guy just bursts in her front door and he's flying in the front, he's winded and he's all alarmed and he's like, Mom, I'm here, what did you need? And she says, oh, I just wanted to show you that I figured out how to use the TV room. And it's a funny commercial, but it illustrates the point about how if a man gets a call from his mother, he drops what he's doing and comes, right, to help her. No one has access to you like your mom, right? That's why it seems so shocking in this story when Jesus is sitting there and says, hey, your mom's outside, and He doesn't go outside. It's a shock. Most of us would not do that. We would go out there immediately. Even if you don't have the most blessed woman of all of history as your mom, like Jesus did, still, even if you just have an ordinary mom, still, she calls you on the phone, do you just put her on hold? I don't recommend it. What would happen right now if you got a call right now from your mom saying, I'm in trouble, I need your help, please come help me. Would you just say, sorry mom, I'm in a Bible study, try 911? No, no, you'd just drop what you're doing, you'd go. You'd probably respond right away to any kind of a call from your mom if she wanted you to come. But if she's in danger, distress or something, nothing could hold you back. That's the love of a son for his mother. And that's how we are in our natural sinful state for our imperfect love with our mothers. What kind of love does the perfect man have towards his mother? If someone so much as insults your mom, you get the black eye, right? That's like the classic thing. You don't insult mom. But how do you think Jesus would respond if somebody, like if Mary were in danger and she's screaming for help, how do you think Jesus would respond? How do you think Jesus responded after Joseph died and he walked in the house and he saw his mom crying? what do you think activated in his heart? Whatever natural response of love a man has for his mother, crank that all the way up to perfection and you know how Jesus loved his mother. And what he's saying here is that he has that kind of love for every one of his followers. He loves you like his own mother. That kind of priority, that kind of urgency. I don't know what you think about Jesus' attitude towards you, if you think He's sick of you or whatever, but Jesus is just like us. He enjoys being around family. And so that's where you can find Him. And I'll close with this. You can meet Jesus anywhere, but the place where you're most likely to run into Him is the place you're most likely to find anyone, in their own home, with their family. If you want to draw near to Christ, come to family gatherings. spiritual family gatherings, the church. And if Jesus feels this way about his brothers and sisters and mothers, how should we feel about our spiritual siblings? Matthew 25, 40, the king will reply, I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, brothers of mine, you did for me. Let's pray. God our Father, Christ our brother, All who live in love are thine. Lord, this is just an astonishing truth. And as I found, as I studied this this last couple weeks, I found it hard to live out, hard to remember during the day, hard to commune with you as brother, to appreciate this, that you love me like you love Mary, like an older brother. The moments that it sunk in were wonderful. but it didn't sink in very many moments these last two weeks, Lord. And so I just pray that you would help us. Help us see this, help us appreciate this, help us live like this is really true. We ask it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, our brother. Amen. Questions? John really understood your sermon this afternoon. He spent the whole book of 1 John driving that point home. And he sums it up really well in 1 John 3, 23, where we're going, okay, we're supposed to keep this commandment, so which one? What is God's will? So this is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and we love one another, just as He commanded us. You're doing God's will, you believe in His Son, and you love one another. Right, exactly. What verse is that again? That's 1 John 3.23. 1 John 3.23 sums the whole thing up. You're doing His will. Yeah, I was thinking about what verse to conclude this with, and I was all over 1 John, because I had the same thought. I thought, man, John really gets this. He really, you can just tell in everything he writes. And I got, so I was quoting pretty much the whole book of 1 John, and my conclusion was, well, that'll take too long. But yeah, there's so much in there that's like that. Yeah, I do. I do. That alarmed me. We were at the Seder and the rabbi said Jesus had to become man because he didn't understand. what it's like for us, and I heard him say that, and I thought, I'm just gonna give him the benefit of the doubt. It probably came out a little stronger than he meant it, but then he repeated it about four times. He didn't understand, then he became a man, then he understood, finally he understood, and I was like, finally, I just disagree with this. God knows everything, he understands everything, but he hadn't experienced everything, and that's why he became our brother. He became our brother in order to experience what we went through, because he knows what it's like for us, But we can appreciate His compassion more knowing that He's been through it. That He's actually felt what it feels like. Instead of just knowing about it. Yeah, He knows everything. So He knows what it's like for us to be tempted. He knows what it's like for us to be weak. But to experience it is a whole other thing. And there's other places in the Bible that use that same language. Like when when Abraham is about to kill Isaac and he actually raises the knife and starts to do it, and then he stops him and God says, now I know that you trust me. Did God not know that Abraham had faith? Well, we already know that he knew prior to that. But when he says, now I know, it's that knowledge of experience. Now I've seen it, I've watched it. Right, so if you think that, if you have this idea that you can sometimes get, it's like, okay, I've got to choose. Do I take this class or that class? And if I choose this class and it turns out that class was God's will, now I'm out of God's will. you know, how can I ever get back into God's will? Especially if you get married to the wrong person, then you're forever out of God's will. That kind of thinking is incorrect. The Bible doesn't use the term will of God to describe those kinds of things. So, her question was, if we use wisdom, then we can be assured that we're in God's will? And I would say, even if we don't use wisdom, if we're still following Christ, then even if I choose folly, I do something stupid, I go against wisdom, If I realize that and repent of it later, then I'm in God's will. Now, as far as the best path, it's good to learn as much wisdom as you can, because there are paths that are way more fruitful than other paths. If I'm trying to decide, okay, what path, if I'm trying to decide what path will get me the most money and the most comfort, then that's not the right criteria to use. But if I'm trying to say, okay, what path is gonna be the most fruitful for ministry? If I take this job, then it's going to require all my time, and I won't be able to study the Bible at all, and I can't teach, and my gift is teaching, so I'll just have to not use my spiritual gift and just spend all my time at work in a secular job. Or I could take this job, which allows me to study and learn and teach. then it would be foolish for me to take this job. Wise to take this one. If I don't have enough wisdom and I take the foolish one, then I'm going to hinder my fruitfulness. That's a bad thing. But it doesn't mean I'm out of God's will, because if I'm a Christian, I'm doing God's will. And I can still be a godly person in this bumpy road over here that I've chosen.