A TIE THAT BINDS FOREVER

Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on June 3, 2020 under AM Bible Study |

AM Bible Study Group: June 3, 2020 from Luke 8:19-21

Theme: Those who hear and keep the word of His Father are those who Jesus counts as His truest family.

(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).

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Over the past while, we’ve been looking together at a particular portion of Luke’s Gospel. It’s one in which our Lord teaches us about how to properly hear the revealed word of God.

It begins in Luke 8:4-8, where Jesus taught the crowds ‘the parable of the soils’. And then, in verses 11-15, He explained that parable to His disciples. He showed them that God’s word bears fruit only upon ‘good soil’—that is, in those whose heart is fit to receive it properly and to allow it to grow. And do you remember what He told His disciples before He explained this to them? He said,

“To you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to the rest, it is given in parables, that

‘Seeing they may not see,
And hearing they may not understand’” (Luke 8:10).

And then, he went on to tell them ‘the parable of the lamp on the lampstand’ in verses 16-18. This was meant to teach them to take heed how they hear; “For whoever has, to him more will be given; and whoever does not have, even what he seems to have will be taken from him” (v. 18).

And now we come to an actual event. It’s an event that is meant to teach us more about hearing God’s word. And in this case, it involves His own family. It was at a time when He was teaching a large crowd of people. Luke tells us, in verses 19-21;

Then His mother and brothers came to Him, and could not approach Him because of the crowd. And it was told Him by some, who said, “Your mother and Your brothers are standing outside, desiring to see You.” But He answered and said to them, “My mother and My brothers are these who hear the word of God and do it” (Luke 8:19-21).

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At first glance, this story might seem a bit disturbing to us; and may even seem to suggest something that is out of character with what we know to be true of our Lord. It seems as if He was being insensitive and dismissive of His own family. On the surface, it almost seems as if our Lord was rude to them,

But we should know that our Lord was never dismissive of the true affections and responsibilities of family. We should remember that, as God in human flesh, He is the Creator of family life. He is the second Person of the Trinity; through whom the commandment was given in His law: “Honor your father and your mother …” At the cross, while He was dying for our sins, He was careful to entrust His own mother to the care of the disciple John; telling her, “Woman, behold your son”; and telling John, “Behold your mother” (John 19:26-27). So; we shouldn’t take this story in Luke to mean that Jesus didn’t care about family ties. He cared very much about them,

But there was a back-story to this event; and it helps to know something about it. We find evidence of this back-story in Mark’s Gospel. In Mark 3, we’re told about how people were gathering around Him in great numbers to be taught by Him, or to be healed by Him, or to see His wondrous works, Mark 3:20-21 says;

Then the multitude came together again, so that they could not so much as eat bread. But when His own people heard about this, they went out to lay hold of Him, for they said, “He is out of His mind” (Mark 3:20-21).

His ‘own people’ was a reference to His own family; because in Mark’s Gospel, it’s just shortly after this that we’re told that His mother and brothers came to call for Him to see if they could take Him away. It wouldn’t be true to say that His mother didn’t believe in Him because she would have remembered His miraculous conception in her womb by the Holy Spirit; and she would have also remembered all that the angel had told her about Him before that conception. But sadly, His brothers—who were, of course, His half-brothers; Joseph being their biological father—did not believe on Him. In John 7:3-5, we’re told of how His brothers all taunted Him; saying,

“Depart from here and go into Judea, that Your disciples also may see the works that You are doing. For no one does anything in secret while he himself seeks to be known openly. If You do these things, show Yourself to the world.” For even His brothers did not believe in Him (John 78:3-5).

And so, it must have been that, seeing all the great crowds pressing in on Him, knowing all the things that He had been teaching about Himself, and perhaps even hearing how the scribes and religious leaders were saying that He cast out demons by ‘the ruler of the demons’, His brothers—and to some degree, His mother also—came to where He was teaching and sought to lay hands on Him and take Him away. This shouldn’t surprise us too much. After all, lots and lots of people misunderstood our Lord and His ministry, But it must have been painful to have experienced such misunderstanding from His own immediate family. As He Himself once said,

“A prophet is not without honor except in his own country, among his own relatives, and in his own house” (Mark 6:4).

But this story becomes an opportunity for you and me to learn an important spiritual lesson about the greater bond we share with the Lord Jesus—and with each other in Him. It’s a spiritual bond that doesn’t do away with the bonds of flesh and blood; but that shows itself to be deeper and more eternal than even the closest and deepest earthly bonds. It teaches us that those who hear and keep the word of His Father are those who Jesus counts as His truest family.

How important it is to our relationship with Jesus, then, that we not only hear God’s word rightly but also obey it as we should! It is key to our relationship by faith with Him.

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Now; looking again at this passage encourages us to carefully count the cost of following Jesus. To follow Him is to follow in a life of hearing and obeying God;’s word. It begins by faith; but that faith is expressed by obedience. And the first thing we see about such faithful hearing and obeying of God’s word is that …

1. IT MAY DISRUPT OUR EARTHLY FAMILY TIES.

This was certainly the case for our Lord. We’re told in verse 19, “Then His mother and brothers came to Him, and could not approach Him because of the crowd.” As we’ve already seen, they weren’t coming to be taught by Him. They were coming instead to stop Him in His teaching and take Him away. It may have been that—to some degree—their intentions were compassionate. But they were clearly motivated by gross misunderstanding and unbelief. And this must have hurt our Lord deeply.

There are lots of us in the family of God who know something of this pain. Jesus Christ has transformed our lives and we now love Him with all our devotion. But unbelieving family members don’t understand that devotion; and they can become very offended by the way it seems to interfere with the values and priorities and commitments that they think a family ought to have. Unbelieving family members don’t understand why just having a little ‘religion’—if we really must have any at all—isn’t enough. Why do we have to be so fanatical and extreme about it? Or if it’s a family that is already committed to a particular religious tradition, they don’t understand why that tradition isn’t good enough. Why do we think we have to have something more? Why do we think we have to have a ‘personal’ relationship with Jesus?

But when, in such cases, we are forced to make a choice between earthly family ties and a wholehearted, total devotion to Jesus, Jesus tells us that we must choose Him first. He once told His disciples;

“Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to ‘set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law’; and ‘a man’s enemies will be those of his own household.’ He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it (Matthew 10:34-39).

It’s not that we desire such family division, or that we ever seek to make it happen. Rather, it happens because of the fact that Jesus demands our whole devotion. Those of us who have felt the pain of such division can take comfort from this passage—knowing that our Lord Jesus felt it too,

But that underscores another lesson we learn from this passage about hearing and obeying God’s word; and that is that …

2. IT TAKES PRECEDENCE OVER OUR EARTHLY FAMILY TIES.

We see this in verse 20. It says, “And it was told Him by some, who said, ‘Your mother and Your brothers are standing outside, desiring to see You.’” Our Lord must have felt—very strongly—the pull upon His heart of the call of His family. His mother and brothers were asking for Him; and they expected Him to stop what He was doing, push His way out through the crowd, and come out to them. But He didn’t do so. He looked upon all the crowd of hungry souls that were being fed the word of truth by Him; and He didn’t stop. He kept right on doing what He was doing for them. It was a little bit like when He as a boy and His family searched for Him and found Him teaching in the temple; and when He said, “Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?” (Luke 2:49). That was, to Him, the highest priority.

Because we must choose Jesus first, that means that the work of hearing and obeying God’s word is greater than our family ties. There’s an interesting story that illustrates this. Do you remember when Jesus once called one of His disciples to follow Him in a more devoted way; and the man said,

“Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Follow Me, and let the dead bury their own dead” (Matthew 8:21-22).

Jesus wasn’t speaking harshly of the man’s father or of his family. Rather, He was making it clear that to follow Him in the path of hearing and obeying the word is to follow the path of life. It takes precedence over all other commitments. We should, of course, always keep true to our family commitments so long as they do not pull us away from our wholehearted devotion to Jesus. But the high demands that He places on us as His followers means that, when Jesus calls us, we must not even let earthly family objections keep us from following.

Now, for many of us, we are blessed with the gift of a believing family. Hearing and obeying God’s word does not involve a loss of family ties; because—praise God!—the other family members also hear and obey. But for some of us, hearing and obeying God’s word has involved a painful cost. Some have suffered the complete rejection of family because of it.

But what we may lose in a temporal sense because of our hearing and obeying of the word, we gain—in a much greater way—in an eternal sense. And this is because …

3. IT BRINGS US INTO AN ETERNAL FAMILY RELATIONSHIP.

We see this in verse 21. Jesus was told that His family wanted Him to stop and come out to them. He felt the pull of His mother and His brothers. “But He answered and said to them, ‘My mother and My brothers are these who hear the word of God and do it.”

There’s a way that this comes across in the original language that you don’t really see in the English translation. Jesus didn’t say, “the Mother of Me” or “the brothers of Me”; as if He spoke in what we might call a ‘quantitative’ sense. Rather, He seems to have turned the attention to the crowds listening to Him, and spoke in a ‘qualitative’ sense; saying (in a more literal translation), “Mother of Me and brothers of Me are these ones hearing and obeying the word of God.” They filled that family role to Him in a deeper and more profound and eternal way than an earthly family could.

The apostle Peter once made the observation to the Lord Jesus that he and the other disciples had left everything to follow Him. And In Mark 10:29-30, Jesus told him;

“Assuredly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My sake and the gospel’s, who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time—houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions—and in the age to come, eternal life” (Mark 10:29-30).

We may suffer the loss of much when we follow Jesus. We may even suffer the loss of family. But in the family of Christ, we gain countless mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters. In taking up the cross and following Jesus, we always gain more than we may lose. And we even gain a union with the Lord Jesus Himself; who after His resurrection said to tell His disciples;

“I am ascending to My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God” (John 20:17).

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Now; before we depart, let’s make sure that we know the rest of the story. After our Lord’s resurrection and ascension, Mary’s heart became fully committed. In Acts 1:14, she was found with the other disciples in the upper room—waiting for the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit would be given. And as for our Lord’s half brothers; after His resurrection, it must be that they believed too, because two of them—James and Jude—both wrote letters that we have in our Bible; and with both of them calling themselves ‘bondservants’ of Jesus (James 1:1; Jude 1).

But in it all, let’s make sure that you and I have grasped the main point. Those who hear and keep the word of His Father are those who Jesus counts as His truest family. Let’s be sure then that we so hear and so obey that we are a part of that family to Him!

EA