Today is Mother’s Day. I’m aware of that. When I plan the sermon card, charting months in advance what sermon text will be preached on what day, I typically don’t think about Mother’s Day. I’ll look at Christmas and Easter (and perhaps some others) to make sure that the text I’m preaching is somewhat appropriate for that day. Sometimes I’ll even work in a series to make sure that a certain text falls on such a day, at times even altering the schedule to do a specially directed text on Christmas or Easter. I can’t remember having ever done that on Mother’s Day. Just a couple of years ago I preached on a text from 2 Thessalonians about divine judgment on Mother’s Day. Again, I almost never build the preaching schedule around Mother’s Day.
I say that today as a sort of self-defense. Because if there were ever a text you might want to avoid on Mother’s Day, it’d be Matthew 12:46-50 (our text this morning). In short summary, our text this morning involves Jesus’ mother, Mary, showing up outside of a house where he is teaching, someone informing Jesus that his mother and brothers are outside, and Jesus pointing to someone other than his mother and brothers and saying, “Here are my mother and brothers.” That just doesn’t feel very Mother’s Day-ish, does it? But, as I’ve already noted, I didn’t pick this text with Mother’s Day in mind.
On the other hand, this may be the most appropriate text on Mother’s Day. Had I been seeking a text to preach on Mother’s Day that I thought most fitting for the occasion, this may be the very best text to preach. The reason for that is because there are really two sides of a story that are told every Mother’s Day. The brightest side is the one we think of most often. It’s the story of a mother (or even better, grandmother) surrounded by her children (or grandchildren), her children heaping praise and thanks on her, with someone on his or her phone capturing this perfect image for a lifetime. And we should rejoice and give thanks to God if that indeed gets to be our experience today.
But there’s a darker and more painful side to Mother’s Day. Mother’s Day is an annual reminder to the couple that’s known infertility that their road didn’t go as they hoped or expected when they were married. It’s a reminder of the tears and pain that you’d hoped would grow more distant with time. For the couple who’s suffered the loss of a child, whether in miscarriage or after birth, Mother’s Day can be a painful day on the calendar. Even for those of you who have lost your mothers, this day may serve to remind you of loss as well, a loss you so desperately wish could be reversed. And still, for others, perhaps who became believers later in life, this day can be used of our enemy to try to bring feelings of regret where the Lord has brought forgiveness.
And if you know this darker, painful side of Mother’s Day, then there may be no better Mother’s Day sermon text for you than this one. Here’s why: this text teaches every woman in this room that there is a motherhood superior to every motherhood this world knows outside of Christ that you can both fulfill and be on the receiving end a hundred times over. That is to say, this text teaches you that you can be a mother to hundreds of children, and you can know the nurture of a hundred mothers, superior to what even the best of unbelieving families know. In fact, this text is full of hope concerning family in the midst of a world where families are torn apart. This text tells us that if your heart has longed for fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters and children, then we should know that this is a godly desire and that the Lord has established his church, in part, to meet this very desire.
So, this morning, I want us to consider what this brief interaction with Jesus and someone who reports to him that his family wanted to speak to him teaches us about the nature of our families, the church, and eternity. First, I want to draw an obvious note from this text, namely, that:
This point was actually difficult to write. I wrestled over what word best describes what I mean. By physical, I mean that he was genetically linked to his siblings and mother, that is, a biological connection. However, we would be wrong to think that a family much have physical, genetic, biological ties. After all, Jesus himself was adopted by his earthly father, Joseph. He didn’t have Joseph’s DNA coursing through his body, but that didn’t make him any less a son to Joseph, his earthly father. In fact, as we mentioned in the early chapters of this gospel, if adoption did not really make one a father or a son, then our salvation simply can’t be accomplished. After all, Jesus must be the son of David, a descendant from his line if he is to be the promised Messianic, Davidic king. And Matthew specifically traces Jesus’ genealogy through Joseph, the descendant of David (and Luke does the same). So, adoption isn’t some second-tier category of sonship or fatherhood, for if it were our salvation would be impossible.
But this adoptive connection between Joseph and Jesus means that physical probably isn’t the best description. So, I put in parentheses, “natural.” That is to say, Jesus had a family made up of a father, mother, and siblings, just as we might refer to the nuclear family.
The text makes this clear in verse 46 where we read, “While he was still speaking to the people, behold, his mother and his brothers stood outside, asking to speak to him.” That is to say, this group that the text refers to includes Mary (Jesus’ mother) and some of the other children that Joseph and Mary had together after Jesus was born. And I say some of the children because we know from other texts like Matthew 13:55-56 that Mary and Joseph also had daughters, for the text speaks of Jesus’ sisters.
One reason this is important to note is because the Roman Catholic church teaches what they call “Mary’s real and perpetual virginity.” That is to say, they teach that Mary was not only a virgin when Jesus was conceived in her womb by the Holy Spirit and remained a virgin until Jesus was born (something that we confess as well) but also that Mary remained a virgin the rest of her life. Luther also seems to have believed this and Calvin perhaps as well (though I’m much less confident in saying this about Calvin).
But that thought is not only difficult to hold to when we have mention of Jesus’ brothers and sisters, but the text actually speaks directly against it. In Matthew 1:24-25 we read that Joseph took Mary as his wife but “knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.” That is, Mary and Joseph had no physical intimacy until Jesus was born, but then afterward they did, as would be normal and expected in a marriage relationship. And this union produced other children, sons and daughters. We have his brothers’ names in Matthew 13:55-56: James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas (which if you throw “Jesus” into the mix means that Joseph and Mary named every one of their sons names that start with the English “J” except Simon). The fact that Joseph is not mentioned here probably means that he had died by this point.
But it’s clear that Jesus had a normal family, if you will: a father, mother, brothers, and sisters. And we can also say that he valued them and cared for them. We know that Jesus perfectly obeyed God’s law, which means that he perfectly honored his Father and Mother every day of his life. He even rebuked the Pharisees in Mark 7:11 for instituting a practice that allowed children not to care for their parents. And, you’ll remember, from the cross that Jesus made provision to make sure that his mother was cared for after his death as he looked at Mary and John and said to Mary, “Woman, behold your son” and to John, “Behold, your mother,” meaning that he wanted his mother to be cared for by John, and the text confirms that from that very hour “the disciple took her into his own home” (John 19:26-27).
So, Jesus loves the family, values family, and cares for family. He clearly saw the family as a blessed and valuable unit of relationships. Let’s make that clear. In our labors in society to preserve and fight for the family, we are right on page with Jesus. In fact, a society that does not care for the lasting relationship of the family simply cannot be said to care about children and consequently the future of the society itself. Let that be clear. However, there is mention of another family here that is not the physical (natural) family that we’ve been talking about.
Now, the purpose of this text isn’t simply to remind us that Jesus had a mother and brothers. In fact, Jesus’ family simply set the stage for the main point of this text. The main reality being taught in these verses is that there is a family beyond our physical families. There is a spiritual family. Or perhaps the clearest way to think of this in light of what we’ve seen so far in Matthew which puts great emphasis on the kingdom of God and being members of the community of the kingdom of God is to say that members of the community of the kingdom of God actually enter into familial relationship with one another. We become fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, and children in relationship to one another.
Let me first show you how we see this in the text. You’ll note that verse 47 is missing in our pew Bibles. That’s probably the case because the oldest and best manuscripts don’t include it. And that probably indicates that some scribe who was copying the manuscripts of the Gospel of Matthew simply thought to himself that if verse 48 begins with “But he replied,” then we should supply the obvious, which is what we see in the footnote of the pew Bible, namely, “Some told him, ‘Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, asking to speak to you.”
But the reality is that Matthew most likely did not write something like that and knew it was simply understood to be the case. So, after being notified that his mother and brothers were standing outside, asking to speak to him, we are told, “But [Jesus] replied to the man who told him, ‘Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?’ And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother’” (vv. 48-50).
This is not Jesus saying that his natural family means nothing to him. I’ve tried to establish otherwise already. But it is Jesus’ way of saying that there is a greater family for which is natural family only serves as a pointer. All those who are members of the kingdom, who do the will of God, and who have bowed the knee to Christ in faith become related in familial terms. And because we know from John 7:3-7 (among other places) that Jesus’ siblings did not believe (at least until after the resurrection), his natural family was not also part of this spiritual family.
This means that one reason that God established families, which are temporary in nature, is so that it might be an illustration and pointer to a greater, larger, eternal family that exists between members of his kingdom.
Jesus speaks of this same reality to Peter when Peter mentions that he has left everything to follow him, and in Mark 10:29-30 Jesus answers, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and the gospel, who will not receive a hundred fold 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.” But how will we receive a hundred fold brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, and children, as Jesus says, “now in this time”? The answer is, of course, in the church. The people of God provide for us fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, and children that go beyond any natural connections we may and may not have.
And it’s not just Jesus who speaks in these terms. What happens is that the church picks up on Jesus’ words here and begin writing and speaking in regards to this reality. Paul will speak of Timothy as his son and regularly speak of himself as a father in relation to others. The terms brother or sister are not just terms the church decided to greet one another with because they forgot each other’s names. It was reflective of this reality that they understood, that members of the kingdom are members together of a family.
This means that when you look around this room, you can say, as did Jesus, “Behold my fathers, my mothers, my brothers, my sisters, and my children!” And in some real ways, the family that we have as members of the kingdom of God is superior to the natural families that we have. One of the clearest ways in which this is true is in the lasting nature of our spiritual family as opposed to the temporal nature of our natural families.
In his book, This Momentary Marriage, John Piper writes, “Take heed here lest you minimize what I am saying and do not hear how radical it really is. . . . I am declaring the temporary and secondary nature of marriage and family over against the eternal and primary nature of the church. Marriage and family are temporary for this age; the church is forever. I am declaring the radical biblical truth that being in a human family is no sign of eternal blessings, but being in God’s family means being eternally blessed. Relationships based on family are temporary. Relationships based on union with Christ are eternal. . . . Single person, married person, do you want children, mothers, brothers, sisters, lands? Renounce the primacy of your natural relationships, and follow Jesus into the fellowship of the people of God.”1
Based on what Jesus says in our text, I think Piper is right. So, what I want to do with the rest of our time is to flesh out a few implications of this reality of the family of God for us.
First, we need to have it clear in our minds that simply being a part of a natural family doesn’t automatically make us part of the family of God.
This one is simple and straightforward, so I won’t belabor the point. But no matter what family your part of and how dedicated to Christ your natural family members are, in order to be part of the family of God, you must personally repent of your sins and place your faith in Jesus Christ as Lord.
Second, we need to make it our greatest priority in regards to our natural family members to see them become spiritual family members.
Again, I know this is perhaps clear and simple. We need to have a desire in our hearts and labor to see our natural family members come to be part of the family of God. Now, one reason I do think this needs to be stressed is because something that is easy to do is to find yourself willing not to put forth the effort to see your natural family members come to Christ, or repent of sin that is endangering their souls, because we fear loss of relationship. However, when we consider that the loss of relationship we fear is itself temporal and relationships in Christ are eternal, we are actually sacrificing the greater relationship for the lesser one when we fail to hold up the gospel and all its implications before our natural family members.
Third, we need to work to make sure those who lack natural families but are united with us in Christ feel that they have a true, real, and lasting spiritual family.
In other words, I don’t want us to say to the single person who is living apart from natural family members here in Jackson, TN that they are part of our spiritual family but never put forth the effort of making sure they feel and experience that reality. This means that we work to make sure they are in our homes, getting to be brothers to us and fathers to our children.
In my own life here at Cornerstone, I have known that so deeply. Barbara Perry, for example, has been a mother and grandmother to so many of us. I’d even be tempted to ask you all to raise your hands if you’ve known her motherly and grandmotherly care. She has treated me as her own. And I know you could say the same. That’s what Christ intends.
Early in my time at Cornerstone, when things got a bit rocky, I sat and bemoaned to the Lord that I didn’t have anyone who would walk as a father to me. The very next day after praying that, Nathan Young called me, told me he was coming to Cornerstone, and asked why I thought the Lord was bringing him here. I told him that there could be a myriad of reasons. For one, I needed someone to help me to figure out how to get the roof to stop leaking. He then said, “I want to come and in this time of struggle be like a father to me.” He did, and he was. And that shouldn’t be exceptional.
I’ve known others as brothers and sisters and others like children. Seeing Timothy O’Day this past weekend in Salt Lake City was like visiting my son who is only a decade younger than me. And I can honestly say that I’ve experienced love (both receiving love and loving you all) in a way that is no less than the love experienced in the relationship between a father and son or a brother and sister. It is without hesitation or without qualification that I look at this congregation and say, “This is my family, and I love you. And I feel loved by you.” But I don’t want to be exceptional in that way. And that means that we’ve got to be proactive in pouring into one another’s lives.
I began reading a book recently called Same-Sex Attraction and the Church about how to be a believer who may struggle with same-sex attraction but is committed to obeying Christ. The book is exceptional. It’s written by Ed Shaw.
And one of the reasons, Shaw says, that many outside the church (and perhaps some inside the church) think it’s not plausible to say to someone who struggles with same-sex attraction, “Don’t act on your attractions, and remain single if you never find yourself attracted to someone of the opposite sex” is because that’s just too great of a burden. How can you say to someone, “Obedience for you means never experiencing marriage, never having children, never experiencing the ideal family of a dad, a mom, and 2.4 children”?
He answers that we can call one another to follow Christ because obedience, even if it means walking a path of singleness isn’t a commitment to be without a family because we have the church. That is, Cornerstone, we must make sure that the single person knows that the church isn’t simply a collection of biological, natural families living out the Christian life. If that’s what the church is, then Paul or Jesus couldn’t be part of it. But it’s not. The church is itself one big family. That means that we’ve got to live and copy Jesus’ understanding of family in these verses.
Brother, you may never have a natural son with whom to play a game of catch with, but I want to make sure that you feel the freedom to play catch with my sons. Sister, you may never have a natural daughter to sit and read fairy tales to, but I want to make sure that you feel the freedom to read those stories with my daughter. You may not have a natural mother to put your head on her shoulder and cry as you struggle, but I want you to have dozens of mothers to cry with in the church. I want you to have dozens of fathers to help you figure out how to bring that tree down in your back yard, how to buy that next car, and how to change out your outlet without electrocuting yourself (thanks, Jimmy Coleman!).
And what I’m describing isn’t super Christian community, it’s simply the Christian community as described by Jesus – a family whose love transcends even that known by unbelieving natural families. So, let us this morning realize that even as we love Jesus Christ, who lived, died, and was raised for us, so he commands us to love one another, as members of the same family, and only then will people know that we are his disciples. Amen.