Focussing on Jesus No.4 Jesus and His Family

Right at the back of our supplement is the creedal statement that we believe as people who have trusted Jesus. I'd like us to say it together. It's coming up on the overheads.

I believe. I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord.

He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. He descended to the dead.

On the third day He rose again. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Amen. Please sit down.

So you believe in the communion of saints. Does that mean that you've got some sort of mystical idea that you can somehow contact the dead and be in touch with them? Or do you really appreciate that the word saint doesn't in the Old Testament, in the New Testament refer to someone who's dead. It refers to someone who is alive.

And that if you trust the Lord Jesus as your Saviour then in effect you are a saint. Now you may have difficulty convincing the Vatican but nonetheless that is the truth in Scripture. You never find the word saint in the singular.

You always find it in the plural. And it's descriptive of the family of God which is really what we're going to be talking about. What's our central theme this evening as we prepare to come around the communion table because, well, as I shall demonstrate Jesus was very much a family man.

I bought just one paper yesterday but the front of most of the papers as far as I could see as my eyes just glanced across the various offerings in the newsagents were more or less the same in terms of the pictures. And there was a stunning picture that was common at least to the tabloids. It was a picture of the Blair family.

Dad, a mum, and the kids. And they were quite proudly outside 10 Downing Street and doubtless if you had been the Blair family you would have liked your picture taken at that particular point. But the thing that was very inspiring whatever your political viewpoints may be is that there you had got a family.

A proper family. Dad, who obviously loved the kids. Mum, who obviously loved if not idolised Dad.

And the whole little group. It really was very refreshing to see that on the front page of the newspapers. And I want to tell you that I do believe that the Old Testament and particularly the New Testament has a lot to say about families and family life.

The ideal family and what compensates in a remarkable way if your family perhaps is not ideal. If you didn't have a good dad or a good mum or you were like one of the street kids in Calcutta who were coming up to me some weeks ago and saying with mischief in their eyes and a smile on their face although what they were saying was actually true no mummy, no daddy, hungry uncle. And they would tap on their stomachs and give you the message not only audibly but visibly as to what they were after.

It's not so easy for boys and girls who live on the streets of Calcutta or anywhere else. It's not so easy for folk who don't feel part of a family circle. Well what does the Bible have to say about that? And am I really right in suggesting that Jesus was a family man? After all he wasn't married.

Didn't have any kids. What can he say that would be of help to those with a regular family circle or those with a broken family circle tonight? Well we're going to be looking at one or two things in that connection. Let's go to the best book for instruction.

The Gospel of Mark just for a few moments. And very often what you find in Mark's gospel as we've discovered already is that the narrator Mark who got most of his material from the fisherman Peter will break off one story shove in another and then pick up the former one when he's got through the one that's caught his attention at that point. And he does this not capriciously not just out of chance.

He does it inspired by the Spirit and the Spirit is always fresh when he inspires men and women who help to write both the Old and the New Testament. So here is Jesus. We pick him up because we're focusing on Jesus and his teaching on these Sunday nights.

We pick him up from the 20th verse and we find that in that third chapter he's entering a house. Then Jesus entered a house and again a crowd gathered so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. When his family heard about this they went to take charge of him for they said he's out of his mind.

To translate it literally he's gone ecstatic. Right, let's go on to the 31st verse because John, or rather John Mark links in with what he's just been saying but he does push in another little incident in between. Then Jesus' mother and brothers arrived.

The family delegation swells. Standing outside where Jesus is ministering they sent someone in to call him. A crowd was sitting around him and they told him your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.

Now read together, verse 33. Who are my mother and my brothers? He asked. Let's read that again.

Who are my mother and my brothers? He asked, period. We're going to look at that later on. Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, join me.

Here are my mother and my brothers. Continue. Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother.

So you see, Jesus has a two tier understanding of what family life is about. Father, we ask that this evening you'll help us to grasp the significance of the teaching of your word. We thank you that it's practical and it's sensitive and that it locks into where we're at in our pilgrimage in the 20th century.

In the name of Jesus, we bless you. Amen. Of course, Sunday is always a very wonderful day if you happen to belong to the tab and to its family.

There's never any difficulty in families, is there? I mean, in the story about two wives going to cameo, at least from cameo, coming in on a Sunday, one speaking to the other and said, did you wake up grumpy? And the other one said, no, I've let him sleep in. That's quite apocryphal because we just don't have that sort of thing. We're families and everything gets on swimmingly as far as mom and dad and the kids are concerned.

Now, I've asked my good friend Ben to read a poem that's got nothing to do with his family at all. I want to make that clear or else I'm going to lose two friends. Ben.

Sunday is a funny day. It starts with lots of noise. Mommy rushes round with socks and daddy shouts, you boys.

Then mommy says, now don't blame them. You know you're just as bad. You only just got out of bed.

It really makes me mad. My mommy is a Christian. My daddy is as well.

My mommy says, oh heavens. My daddy says, oh hell. And when we get to church at last, it's really very strange.

Because mom and dad stop arguing and suddenly they change. At church my mom and dad are friends. They get on very well.

But no one knows they've had a row and I'm not going to tell. People often come to them because they seem so nice. And mom and dad are very pleased to give them some advice.

They tell them Christian freedom is worth an awful lot. But I don't know what freedom means if freedom's what they've got. Daddy loves the meetings.

He's always at them all. He's learning how to understand the letters of St. Paul. But mommy says I'm stuck at home to lead my Christian life.

It's just as well for blinking Paul. He didn't have a wife. I once heard my mommy say she'd walk out of his life.

I once heard daddy say to her he'd picked a rotten wife. They really love each other. I really think they do.

I think the people in the church would help them if they knew. Thank you. The punchline was at the bottom.

I think that people in the church would help them if they knew. Call for honesty and for sympathy and perhaps a call to recognize that the gospel of Jesus and the message of the New Testament is relevant and it is honest. I got a book upstairs in my library.

It's written by Malcolm Mugridge who died some years ago. And he says this of Jesus and the birth of Jesus. He said that Jesus is a ripe case or would have been a ripe case for abortion.

And he blessed my soul. Well, here's this girl, no more than a teenager. And she finds herself to be, to use the lovely language of the authorized version, with child.

Mary, how did it happen? Well, an angel appeared. And there's no boyfriend. Not like that at all.

I'm just in the condition that I'm in as a result of God's intervention. Mugridge with an eloquence that I can never match says that all that would have happened in the 20th century if that had been her condition had she lived now is that probably the average GP would have suggested or maybe the average counselor would have suggested, look, you can't cope. You're obviously deranged.

Let's have it aborted. And you'd go back and pick up the threads of your life where you've left them off. Jesus' birth was not only unusual in terms of the way that Mary, his mother, was enabled to deliver him, but there was the threat of genocide.

I mean, you've been watching the television, presumably, and other things have got in this week besides the politicians and what's happened in Parliament in London, Westminster. I mean, you must know of the Zairean difficulty and the hundreds, if not thousands, of boys and girls whose lives are not only in jeopardy, but many who have lost their lives during the last few weeks. And Jesus, when he was born, was under the threat of infanticide because there was a deranged king who was jealous, couldn't stand a rival, and he wanted Jesus to be done to death.

Now, why do I mention these two things? Because, you see, that's the background from which Jesus emerges. He's not your typical character in an ordinary plot. I mean, the beginnings of his life, considering that at the end it was so spectacular, I refer to the resurrection, is really quite mind-blowing.

And if anyone was going to have a launching into life to qualify them to relate to people who were going through difficulties, then I put to you that Jesus Christ's case, par excellence, qualifies him. The birth was shadowy, under suspicion. The village gossips, wagging their tongues.

And that Jesus ever got to Egypt and survived as a youngster, again, that was quite remarkable. Now, the probability is, I can't prove this, but the circumstantial evidence warrants the conclusion that Jesus' earthly guardian, the man who stood in as his father, he died fairly early on. And Jesus, therefore, because he was the firstborn, assumed the role of the father.

So for the formative years of his life, in his teenage days, in his earliest twenties, he is working very hard, as an artisan, as a carpenter, trying to make ends meet, to look after Mary, his mother, and the rest of the kids. For children there were, boys and girls, in the family of Jesus, where he grew up, in Nazareth, and on to Capernaum, where it seems the family household switched. So when you come across Jesus in the Gospels, this is his background.

It wasn't a cloistered life. He didn't go off to college, didn't go to university, never wrote a book. As far as we know, he never handled any other language but Aramaic.

Never travelled more than 120 miles from the place in which he was born. And yet he stands out, as a friend, a counsellor, and as I shall demonstrate, a family man. I want us to sing about families.

Let's sing for families. Let's sing about the worries in families. 133 in Mission Praise.

And because the words are in the book, we'll also have on the overheads a series of questions that I've put up that actually pinpoint something of the life of Jesus that possibly you've never grasped in full detail. So you can do two things. You can sing.

In fact, you can do three. You can sing. You can look at the questions.

And you can also give to the work of the Lord. 133. 134.

135. 136. 137.

138. Well, our Lord Jesus, the family man, was he married? And the answer, of course, is no. But talk to me this evening.

I'm quite friendly tonight. Who was his cousin? John the Baptist. Therefore, who was his aunt and his uncle? Sounds as though you've gone quietly charismatic.

Ecstatic. I bet you don't get number four. The names of his brothers.

You're doing well, actually. I did pick them all up, and I want to congratulate you. Did he have sisters? Yes.

Was he ever accused of being mentally sick? Yes. In fact, that was the implication. The word ecstatic referred to his mental condition in the reading that I brought to you.

Did they ever try and stop his ministry? And the answer is? Of whom was it said, a sword will pierce your heart? The mother of Jesus. Which of Jesus' family, or who of Jesus' family, was present at the crucifixion? Mary again. And who of Jesus' brothers became leader of a church and author of a book? James.

Who gives us one of the final books of the Bible, which also incorporates into it a saying of Jesus, which is not found anywhere else. I'd like someone at the end of the service to tell me what that saying is. You don't find it in the Gospels, you don't find it in the Acts, and it seems as though he picked it up from his brother, and it stayed in his mind.

Well, Jesus the family man, did he have, and here I don't want you to respond, at least not vocally, did he have a love for children? Or, before that, because Jesus for 28 years, as you come across him prior to the beginning of his ministry recorded here in Mark's Gospel, because for 28 years he'd been a breadwinner, he certainly was qualified to speak about people who likewise have to bring up children. He can talk to the worker about work because, well, he was a carpenter, and according to Jewish law, that is stories that you find circulating outside of the New Testament, but with a degree of authority, at least authenticity, he was known as one of the best carpenters in the area. He made yokes for oxen, and sometimes he would make reference to his previous skill as a carpenter because he spoke not only of the yoke that he put on the beasts, but also the yoke of his teaching.

My burden is easy, and my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. Did Jesus ever want to get married? It's not very often that we're so indelicate as to speak of the sexuality of Jesus. Hebrews tells us that he's tempted in all points as we are.

Now, the Bible will not tell you that sexuality in and of itself is a sinful thing by any means. It's a grace gift from God, as I was working out in the book of Genesis. So to suggest that Jesus had no inclinations in that area would be completely false.

He was a true man, but a man who chose to be celibate because of the particular ministry that he was called to and the uniqueness of his person as son of man and also son of God. But does the fact that our Lord is a bachelor, therefore, coming to the question that I raised a little prematurely a moment or two ago, does it mean that he had no contact with children? Did he have a pronounced love for children? And the answer is definitely yes. Because when you read his teaching, you find that on occasions, he not only welcomes children onto his lap and uses them as an illustration.

He can talk about kids playing in the typical school playground in those days, having an argument, piping and other kids refusing to dance and so on and so forth. The sort of immature conduct that children have today, well, obviously, it was present there 2,000 years ago. Jesus commended the mothers who brought babies to him.

He approves of the Come and Meet Jesus organization, otherwise known as CAMJO, if you work through the alliteration. Jesus appreciated family life, even though he forfeited family life to some degree by the ministry that had been carved out for him. I appreciate Dr. John Stott.

I think he's one of the greatest men that I've ever had the privilege of just occasionally being with. Now, John Stott, he too is a bachelor. And in a very honest letter, he indicated on one occasion how just infrequently he has found it difficult to cope with his aloneness.

Now, Jesus, on one occasion, he seems as though he also had that sort of feeling because, well, after his ministry, the crowds went off to their own home and were told in the Gospels that Jesus actually just went into the hill country where so often he spent the night. But he said, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but I really don't have anywhere to call my home. Not that he wasn't a home-loving person.

For reasons which have become obvious, he's left Capernaum, he's left Nazareth, the native area of Galilee, and he's moved south. That is part of the location where his ministry will be centered. But down in the southern part of Palestine, Judea, there are two precious ladies and a man who have their own household.

They're sisters and a brother. Lazarus and Martha and Mary. They live in Bethany.

And it seems that Jesus took great delight, when he was in Jerusalem, to make Bethany his stopping-off place because, well, there he felt at home, appreciated family life. Do you remember the occasion when he empathized with a man who actually was the ruler of a synagogue? And this little man's daughter was sick. And this man, who must have had a theological bias against Jesus, because, after all, Jesus was preaching something that wasn't generally accepted by the officials in the synagogue, he came to Jesus and told him his problem.

And Jesus went to speak to this man and to his wife. And he went to the home where the little girl was. And he prayed for her.

And he told the folk who had been mourning because, well, it seemed as though she died, that actually she wasn't dead. She was asleep. And he cleared the mourners out because he questioned their sincerity.

And then he goes into her bedroom. If you read my last book, you'll find that I translate the words that Jesus used as he's addressing that child as little lamb. Or, if you like, little love, I say to you, arise.

You see the heart warmth that there is in Jesus. He doesn't have his own home, but he's a home-loving man. He doesn't have his own natural children, but children he has a deep affection for.

What about Jesus and his mother? Now, she's a remarkable woman. If Catholics sometimes make too much of Mary, don't be too critical because, on the other hand, Protestants make too little. She was the most wonderful woman that there has ever been.

Above all her sex, she stands out remarkably. A brave woman. Now, when Jesus is talking to his mum at the beginning of his ministry, he uses a word that seems to be quite cold.

You remember Jesus is at Cana of Galilee, and it's the first public thing that he's done, and he engages in a miracle. He turns water into wine, and he does so. He's triggered at the human level by Mary pointing out to Jesus that, well, the catering staff have really messed things up.

They haven't anticipated the number of guests, and Jesus, look at the difficulty. Why don't you do something about it? That's the implication. And Jesus says, Woman, woman, my hour hasn't come.

And Jesus distances himself a little from Mary, as he will increasingly have to do, because the relationship that he has with her is very much different from the normal relationship that a faithful son will have with his mother, because Jesus will be more than just the son of Mary. He will be the saviour. And she will have to come to a realisation that Jesus stands par excellence different from any other son born in the way that he had been born into the world, naturally as far as her body was concerned, but miraculously as far as the conception went.

And on the cross, what's one of the last things Jesus does? He turns to Mary, and he also alights on John, his close disciple, and he says, John, your mother. Mary, your son. And here is our Lord showing that he really is a family man to the degree that he can be, even in that most crucial point of his life.

He doesn't renege on the family concept. He recognises that honour is due to his mother, and he makes provision for her. So, you see my point.

Jesus is a family man. Jesus is the family man. No, he didn't marry.

But yes, he was committed to the concept of family. But he was committed to the concept of family at two levels. We talk about the traditional family of Mr. and Mrs. Blair and their children as the nuclear family, and that's represented to some degree here in the tab.

Now, not every nuclear family is a happy family. Sometimes dad has gone off, or mother has gone off, and sometimes dad and mum has gone off, and thus you've got the kids, as illustrated on the streets of Calcutta. Now, what is Jesus to say, not only to the nuclear family, but boys and girls, young people who never had the privilege of being bound together in a family solid relationship like the one I've just illustrated.

And Jesus has this to say, that he too has come to establish a family. It's not a blood family in terms of you being literally the brothers and sisters of Jesus, but nonetheless, it is a family circle that is so radical and so real that if you press it to a point, it is more important that you belong to that than what you recognize your nuclear family. So here is Jesus.

He's caught up in ministry. He's a very busy man, and his natural family, his brothers and his sisters and his mother, don't quite understand what he's about. That's excusable, for Jesus is a radical.

He's left his job as a carpenter. He's taken off. He's started to preach.

He's associating with people like tax collectors who, as we gathered from the historical survey we had of taxes and so on and so forth, were unacceptable to the average Jew. He's got within his crew people who are politically involved, who want to throw out the Roman Empire and so on and so forth. No wonder his family were a little bit mesmerized and saying of Jesus, you know, we worry about this man.

We really do. His teaching, well, it's fascinating, but the way that he's living and what he's doing, and so they come along and they try to give Jesus a bit of advice. Your family are outside.

They're wanting to see you. They're wanting to speak to you, and Jesus knows. He knows that the advice they're going to give is actually unacceptable because it's wrong.

And what is more, their concept of the importance of family life needs an additional level to make it complete. So, Jesus' mother and brothers arrive, Mark 3.33. Standing outside, they send someone in to call him. A crowd is sitting around him, and they tell him, Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.

He raises what seems to be a cruel question, but should not now be cruel because I've spelt it out in its context. Who are my mother and my brothers? Then he looks at those seated in a circle around him and says, Here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother.

In other words, Jesus will identify with you and usher you into the spiritual family circle that he has come to enlarge if you do three or four things to which I refer in just one minute. But before then, think of Jesus continuing in his ministry. He's got twelve disciples with him.

Time and time and time and time again, he refers to them as what? His children. Over seventy times, Jesus refers to adult people as children. Time and time and time and time and time again, he refers to the one who has sent him into this world as father.

What is he or who is he referring to? None other than his father who so loved the world that he gave Jesus a mandate to establish the spiritual family circle. So when Jesus gets to the end of his life and you read of it in the Gospel of John, he's got his family with him. He's an avuncular figure.

He's got these disciples. They know that something tremendous is going to happen. He's going to be taken from them.

They don't fully understand, but they read the sensitivity and the empathy in the heart of Jesus. And Jesus says, Family, don't be worried. Why not, Jesus, our elder brother? Well, because I'm going to prepare a place for you.

Where are you going, Jesus? In my father's house. There are many mansions. He's referring to heaven.

He's referring to the future that is yet to be when heaven comes down onto this earth. In my father's house are many mansions. Fellas, there's a great future in store for all who are part of my family circle.

And they said, But Jesus, we really don't understand you. Tell us, how do you get to grasp who father is, what the heart of God is like? And Jesus said, Well, I'm so much like father that if you've understood me, you've read his heart. But Jesus, we don't know the way to heaven.

And Jesus says, Brothers, I am the way, the truth, the life. No man comes to father but by me. You know, I don't trivialize the fact that some of you haven't had good moms and dads.

And when I tell you that I weep sometimes for the kids in Romania and the kids in Africa who I've met and on the streets of Bombay and Calcutta, I am not being unduly sentimental. I recognize the crass need that they represent. But I want to tell you that within the economy of God, he makes it possible for all of us to enter into the second, even more wonderful tier of family, to be sons and daughters of the living God, to trust Jesus as our Savior.

Four characteristics, put them up on the overhead, will you, that help to cement, underline what I've been teaching this evening. What do you have to do to be a member of the family circle of God? Read together the first one, will you please, because I can't see it. Together, one, two, three.

And again, recognize who he is. Recognize that Jesus is God's own Son who's come to establish a family circle. Second, believe what he says.

That's what we're told in Romans, to believe what Jesus Christ says, to believe that he has been raised from the dead. The third one, because he says that if you obey him, you are truly his disciples. The test of being in the family is obedience to Christ.

The fourth one, because John tells us that the Lord Jesus Christ is going to come back and establish his reign on this earth. The greatest manifesto that there has ever been is written into the Christian gospel. And the last one.

And what does he promise? He promises the Holy Spirit to all those who put their trust in him. Are you a member of his family circle? Believe who he is. Do what he says.

Confess your sins. Receive his forgiveness. Know the infilling of his spirit.

And be part of those people to whom Jesus made reference, at least prophetically, when he flung open his arms and says, whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother. Thank God, Jesus Christ was and is a family man. So you see, our Lord really is a family man.

And he expects us to operate at both those levels. Fathers, wives, children, grandparents. Not only just at that level, the level of the regular, normal family, but he expects us to operate at a higher level.

Showing the love of God to those who are now blood brothers, who are made through Calvary blood, our people. If you sometimes do the favor of looking at some of the pictures that we have around the tab, which are changed actually from time to time. You might have spotted just below this stairway that leads up to my vestry, a picture of a man from a slum out in Asia.

That man was only a Christian for about a month when he gave half of his home. And it really is just a shack. You wouldn't put your car in there.

He gave half of his home to the Lord to be used as a school. And I met one little boy who told me, he said, I have no home, but he is now my papa. And the man not only gave half his house, he took this lad in.

And therefore he demonstrated that he had a finer understanding, I speak humbly and lovingly, than some of us have, in terms of this two-tier family, the nuclear family, and the family of the church. The Worthing Tab is only worth its salt, it really is, if we understand both dimensions, and if we're working out the practical implications of those dimensions. So you see how important it is that we lift these concepts from the Old Testament and from the New Testament, and particularly in this series from the New, and focus in on what our Lord Jesus has to say, and has to teach us.

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