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Part 18 of 44Journey Through Matthew
Season 1 Finale - Matthew 12:46-50
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Part 18 of 44Journey Through Matthew
Season 1 Finale - Matthew 12:46-50
Continue exploring
Connected by scripture or shared themes.
Good morning. We want to welcome all of you to 2819 Church—whether you're here in person, joining us digitally across the country, or watching from around the world. To our guests and to those exploring faith, we welcome you into God's presence.
I want to start by thanking everyone who participated in Serve M25 yesterday. Hundreds of men and women from this church went out into the streets to be the tangible hands and feet of the Lord Jesus Christ. During my ten years in outreach, I've been reminded of the importance of loving people in need and seeing their humanity—not looking down on them with condescension.
Most of us are just one check away from being under a bridge. The only reason you have a roof over your head, a vehicle, food on your table is not because of anything you accomplished. You are no greater than God's grace. We are products of grace. You could take credit for nothing good in your life.
I want us to be a people who don't drive by the homeless with contempt. Out there is a mother who lost a job, couldn't pay her bills, lost her house, lost her car, and now eats from a trash can. Then you meet her in her brokenness and look down on her while you drive back to your home. God forbid that His children would treat the less fortunate this way.
We want to be a people not just chained to comfort. It should not take a special event for us to live as the hands and feet of Jesus wherever we are.
I also want to mention something stirring in the spiritual realm. A spiritual son of mine recently texted me that he had a dream where he saw the sky open up, the Lord Jesus coming on the clouds, and heard loud trumpets blowing. As I read his message, I burst into tears.
Over the last couple of weeks, I've heard a growing chorus of this across our nation and around the world. People are having visions of Christ, of open skies, of hearing trumpets. I believe God is letting the world know that time is running out and He is preparing the world for the return of His Son and the rapture of His church.
My question to you is: Are you paying attention, or are you just doing services?
I listen to preaching in America, and I ask myself: What is the end goal? What are we preparing Christians for today? Are we preparing them to beg God for all the stuff they want? Or are we preparing you for the tribulation that's coming? Are we preparing you to stand in the face of adversity? Are we preparing you for the rapture?
We're turning Christians into consumers. We're making Christians more introspective, more self-absorbed and narcissistic—thinking this whole thing is about you and what you want. We're teaching Christians to twist God's arm to bless your monument.
No. God saved you for His glory, not your glory. He rescued you for His glory alone. In whatever state you find yourself—clothed or naked, abounding or abased, bubbling in a crib or under a bridge—we've been rescued for His glory and His glory alone.
Some of you don't even know yourselves because you're trying to discover yourself in all these other things. I pray you would learn identity through seeing Christ clearly. You want to know who you really are? See Christ for who He is, and then you see yourself for who you are.
You're getting visions of your vision board because you have not read Isaiah 6. When Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up, he saw himself rightly—a sinner in need of grace. The only response to being rescued from death is this: "Here am I. Send me." Not "Bless me" or "Give me." "Here am I. Send me."
That's an offering. I wish I had a hundred people who would say right now, "Lord, send me." The only response to salvation is surrender and availability.
I wish some of you would stop listening to so many preachers and start reading your Bible. I wish you would stop treating preachers like gods in the flesh. Stop swinging on them and start reading the New Testament for yourself. Find Jesus in the pages of God's Word for yourself and start checking behind the nonsense you're listening to.
I want you to be more enamored with the Word of God than with oratory. When we think of the Apostle Paul, we think of him as a great preacher, but he himself said his letters were more weighty than his preaching. I want you to be more impressed with the written Word than with the oratory of men.
Churches that are full of entertainment reduce the spiritual maturity of their people. They're telling their people, "You can't focus on teaching without gimmicks." The greatest prop for the gathered body will always be an open Bible.
I need to stop giving glory to the word "coincidence." The word coincidence robs God of what belongs to Him. Coincidence is a thief of glory that belongs to Jesus. When I look at all the fine details of His movements and trace things back, I see that God orchestrates and engineers our lives. Every time I get a glimpse of Him, I marvel over who He is and how He operates.
We are in the final episode of Season 1 of our series, Wisdom and Wonder. As a church, we are walking through the Gospel of Matthew together. Matthew was a first-century Jewish outcast converted to Christianity by the Lord Jesus Christ. He became one of Jesus' chief apostles and an eyewitness of His ministry.
Let's look at this passage. In his State of the Union address in 1985, President Ronald Reagan said, "As the family goes, so goes our civilization." This is profoundly true both naturally and spiritually.
It was God—not society, not some psychological doctor—who created the family. The family is one of the greatest institutions and building blocks of society. In its original design according to Scripture, the family consisted of one husband, one wife, and offspring. Together they formed a family unit that introduced human beings to community, loyalty, and the deep dynamics of mental, emotional, and spiritual formation.
But since its origins, the concept of family has been under attack by an unseen demonic force manifested in the visible realm. Since the very first murder between two siblings, the family that God created has been constantly under attack—designed to dismantle both its original design and its expression in society.
The traditional family as God designed it has been eroding from generation to generation. At the center of that erosion are two powerful questions: What is a family? And who is my family?
First, what is a family? In its broadest biological terms, a family is any group of people united together by blood, by marriage, and by adoption. In that dynamic, we have parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, and step-relations.
Yes. But it's the second question that's at the center of this text, where Jesus blows up the first-century world with one of the most revolutionary statements ever recorded from His mouth.
Remember, Matthew records that in Chapter 12, Jesus began facing opposition from the Pharisees. They confronted Him in a grain field. The battle moved into a synagogue where He healed a man with a withered hand. Jesus left that city, went to another, and the battle continued with another group of Pharisees.
He argued with them about His divine power—whether it came from the Holy Spirit or from demonic forces. He healed a man full of demon possession, blind and mute. He talked to them about knowing trees by the fruit they bear. Then He talked to them last week about demons that leave and come back, and about the spiritual state of Israel. Matthew finishes this discourse with the four verses we're unpacking today.
Listen carefully to verse 46:
While he was still speaking to the people, behold, his mother and his brothers stood outside, asking to speak to him.
Jesus was in a house, teaching inside. The house is packed. Jesus is preaching and teaching, and in the middle of His sermon, His mother shows up with His brothers outside. They're asking the people to get Jesus and bring Him to them. They need to talk to him right now—in the middle of the sermon.
There are four things in this verse I want you to consider: the family of Jesus, the location of that family, the condition of that family, and the interruption of that family.
Jesus was the Son of God in the flesh, but He was born in the first century into a Jewish family. According to Scripture, Jesus was born of a virgin named Mary, who was Jewish. He had a stepfather named Joseph who never touched Mary.
Joseph is not mentioned in this text because of the writing customs of that time, but we can reasonably assume Joseph had died by this point. If Joseph had died, then Jesus, being the firstborn son, would now be responsible for the financial upkeep of the house.
According to Scripture, Jesus had four biological brothers mentioned by name. Two of them would write New Testament letters that bear their names: James and Jude. Scripture also tells us Jesus had sisters, though it doesn't name them or tell us how many. So we know at minimum Jesus had at least two sisters.
So in the home of Jesus, we have: Jesus Himself, four brothers, and at least two sisters—a minimum of seven children. The Catholic doctrine of Mary being a permanent virgin is false doctrine and heresy. Mary did not remain a virgin. After she gave birth to Christ, she had at least six other biological children. One of them was divine—Christ. The other six came from a natural union between Joseph and Mary. They got busy and had kids. They were fruitful and multiplied, creating a biological family.
Now notice the location of the family. They are not inside the room where He's teaching. They are outside the room.
For me as a student of the Word, this is not only descriptive—it's also symbolic. Instead of listening to the Son preach God's Word, His own family is outside the church gathering. They are physically outside the house. But can I go deeper? They are outside the kingdom spiritually.
How do I know that? Because John writes in Chapter 7 that His brothers did not believe He was the Son of God. His own family were unbelievers. They did not put their faith in Him until He was raised from the dead. Until they saw a Man come out of a tomb with pierced hands and feet, His brothers put their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
So whose faith is greater—yours or theirs? They had to see a resurrected Jesus to believe. Yet you can be so close to the Lord Jesus and still not know Him.
As I'm reading this text, I get a flashback of something Matthew wrote. In Chapter 7, Jesus said:
Many are going to come and say, "Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? And did we not perform mighty miracles in your name? Did we not cast out demons in your name? Were we not in gatherings every Sunday? Were we not listening to Christian podcasts? Were we not writing Christian books? Were we not performing signs and wonders and deceiving people?"
And the Lord is going to say to many people sitting in gatherings all across this country, "You were this close. The book is open. Keep playing around and I don't see your name in it."
You had services without relationship. You had religion without relationship. You had Christian lingo without relationship. You had a little bit of Christian behavior without relationship. You were never born again. You were never filled with the Spirit. You never became one of My followers. Depart from Me. You worker of iniquity. I never knew you.
One of the most terrifying verses in all of Scripture. Imagine going to church your whole life, dying, slipping into eternity thinking you were saved—only to not find your name in the Book of Life. Then crying out to God for mercy, only to hear: there is no second chance.
How can you be raised in the same house as the Son of God? You heard the story that your mother got pregnant when she was a virgin. You heard about angels announcing to your mom that she would be pregnant with the Son of God. You lived with Him for thirty years. And still you did not believe.
Examine yourself. Are you really in the faith? I'm talking to everybody in this room. You could sit in a car in a garage all day—that doesn't make you a car. You could sit in this room all day—that doesn't make you a Christian.
When people say, "I tried Jesus and He didn't work for me," you were never saved to begin with. You weren't trying Jesus. You tried religion.
In Mark Chapter 3, verse 20, it says:
When he went home, the crowd gathered again so that they could not even eat. And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him for they were saying, "He is out of his mind."
In His own hometown, people were calling Him crazy. His family probably believed the same thing. They thought, "Why is my brother walking around saying he's the Son of God?" They went to seize Him, perhaps trying to help or protect Him. But maybe they thought He was crazy too.
You can be as close as you want to Jesus and still not be a follower.
He's speaking. They're outside. The fourth thing: what about the interruption? Was not His message important enough to let Him finish? You think what He's talking about is not important enough that you have the nerve and audacity to interrupt Him in the middle of His message while He's proclaiming the gospel to people who actually want to hear what He has to say?
There are people with hunger in the room and people with disregard outside of the room. We have hungry people in the room and people who disregard what He has to say outside. We have people who value what He says in the room and people who don't value what He says outside. We have people who prioritize the gathering and people who don't.
Instead of interrupting Him, trying to get Him to come out, why don't you slip in and hear what He has to say? But before you look down your nose at His followers, you and I do the same thing. We don't have regard for the things He's saying. We treat it like common, like ordinary. You take all these words that are in red and you treat them as common and ordinary. There's no awe. There's no wonder. There's no leaning in. There's no trying to get close so you can hear what He's saying to you.
Let us not just be close physically. Let us be close spiritually. Let us not just creep in on a robe, but let us creep into our prayer closet.
Now, notice in the verse, there's no verse 47 in the ESV. It has been footnoted because it did not show up in some of the earlier manuscripts of the Bible. The translators threw it at the bottom because it's not important theologically—it's just a restatement of verse 46.
Let's go straight to verse 48. But he replied to the man who told him:
"Who is my mother? And who are my brothers?"
They come to him and say, "Jesus, excuse me. Your mother and your brothers are outside." He turns to the man who interrupts Him and asks, "Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?"
If I'm the man, I'm thinking the woman outside, the dudes outside. One of y'all from Nazareth. But Jesus asked a rhetorical question because He's not looking for an answer. The Lord asked a rhetorical question to leverage the question to gain His attention. He's leveraging that question to gain attention to teach us something He's about to create a brand new construct that revolutionized the first-century world.
This is so powerful. You're feeling the effects of it right now as I'm talking to you.
He says to the man: "Who is my mother? Who are my brothers? You think my family is my biological mother and my biological brothers? You think that is the only family that I have?"
Jesus is asking, "Who is my family?" He's about to shift the culture forever.
Now look at verses 49-50:
And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, "Here is my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother."
What Jesus does is make a distinction between your biological family and your spiritual family. Not only does he make this distinction, but he almost silently rebukes his mother and brothers for interrupting him.
But watch what He does: The fact that He would question the man about His mother and brothers being outside showed you where He placed His priority. While we have biological family, the Lord placed a greater priority, greater emphasis on His spiritual family.
He says now that you're in the kingdom of God, your true family are those who do the will of the Father.
Jesus also said, "I did not come to bring peace on the earth this first go around. I came to bring a sword of separation between those who are for Me and those who are against Me. Even the people that got your own last name."
There is a different type of blood that is much stronger than your biological blood. The Lord said: for some of you, you don't even realize your spiritual family are more your sisters and brothers than your unsaved biological family.
Where you don't have a saved father, you have spiritual fathers. Where you don't have a saved mother, you have spiritual mothers. When you have parents who don't understand you, you have spiritual parents who get you.
I'm probably tighter with people in this room than people who got my last name. I could depend more on people in this room than people with my last name. I got deeper bonds with people in my spiritual family than people who got my last name.
You and I should be thinking very deeply about how we treat the people in this room. Sitting on your row is not a male or a female. If they're saved, that is your sister. That is your brother. That is your mother. That is your father.
You are my sister. Jesus said those bonds are even prioritized over people in your own biological family. For some of you, you have greater trust and dependence on people who are your spiritual brothers and sisters than on some of your family who have rejected you for the faith, abandoned you for the faith, disrespected you for the faith.
And some of you, because you don't read the Bible, you give even more honor to people that don't respect your God because they got your same last name than the people sitting on the row next to you who are grinding it out in the kingdom with you.
When the phone call comes between the atheist sister you went to college with and my spiritual sister in the church who wants me to pray with her at 2:00 a.m. because her family's under attack—which phone call do I answer? Which phone call becomes my priority? Which phone call becomes more important in that moment? My atheist sister who doesn't respect the God that I serve? Or my sister in the faith who's going to get the same crown as me when we die?
And some of us are so foolish. You keep crying about the dysfunction of your biological family, and you won't even lean into the gift God has given you in your spiritual family.
You don't even realize some of the greatest blessings you will ever have in your life are sitting right next to you. They don't need the blood that came from your DNA. They have the blood that came from the cross. What are we talking about?
Christ exalted the spiritual family of believers above the biological family. Yes, you got my last name, but I'm prepared to die with the people that are grinding it out with me right here in this room. I ain't dying with you. I love you. I ain't dying with you. I'm going to die with my spiritual family.
Before you start throwing your arm around the person next to you, look at the details in the text. Look at who Jesus points to. He points to His disciples. These are my brothers and sisters and mother. Not pointing to Christians by name only. Not pointing to people who got God first in a profile. He's pointing to His disciples.
So He gives a criteria for who you can call spiritual family: disciples. Then you should ask a question: What is a disciple? Is a disciple a churchgoer? No. A Bible reader? No. A conference attender? No. A Christian poster? No.
A disciple is a learner of Jesus. A follower of Jesus. They do the will of Jesus. They love the people of Jesus. So you're a Christian, but you hate the church? You're a Christian, but you hate the gathering of God's people, but you're a Christian, and I'm supposed to call you my sister and my brother? No.
The Lord gave a criteria for even the people in the room. He points to His disciples—followers, learners, doers of His Word. He said, "These are my brothers and my sisters and my mother."
Christ exalted your spiritual family even above the people that got your last name. Is it just a service I run in and out of on Sunday? Listen to me. I'm serious now. Don't move. Don't disrespect me. Don't disrespect the Holy Spirit. Stay still.
That divides a marriage between a saved wife and an unbelieving husband. He's not your family. He's your husband, but he's not your spiritual family. And it's hard trying to be submitted to a man that's not submitted to God.
There is a division there. That divides friends, gym buddies, work buddies. That divides people on my social media page, people I run with. Why am I going all out for people who are enemies of God, and I don't show that same love to brothers and sisters who are prepared to die for the Lord Jesus Christ? What's wrong with us?
How then, if God exalted this as my family, should I be thinking about my spiritual brother or sister as my family? How does it affect my love for you and your love for me? How does it affect how we serve together and pray together and grind together? And when we have fights, how does this affect how we forgive one another?
The Father gave His children 61 "one anothers"—words about how we're supposed to interact with one another. Love covers a multitude of sin. Carry each other's burdens. Restore each other gently. Pray for one another. Outdo one another in honor. All the "one anothers" about how we're supposed to interact with one another, how we lean deeply into these relationships.
How we keep robbing ourselves by running in and out, in and out, in and out, and never realizing that the best of what God has for you is locked up in your covenant relationships with your brothers and your sisters and your mothers and fathers in the faith.
Ronda Johnson is one of the best things that ever happened to my life because of the blood of Christ. Philip Anthony Mitchell is one of the best things that ever happened to Tiana because of the blood of Christ. When I see them, I see my spiritual family.
So we eat together and open our house. Yeah. We let you crash on the couch. Yeah. We help pay each other's bills because they share all things in common. And we keep each other accountable.
"My sister, you're involved in a lot of sin. That's not fitting for a disciple of Christ. Now, before I out you, let's pray about this so we can lift you from this dark hole that you've been in."
That's how you treat brothers and sisters. I see you struggling and I pray you out. I see you struggling and I lift you out. You disappeared from the family. I run and I get you and I bring you back to the family. I fight to keep us together.
And when you hurt me and when I hurt you, we go back to the authority—the Word of God—which teaches me to forgive how many times? Seventy times seventy.
And I walk into these gatherings and I see a white face and a black face and an Asian face. And I said, "This is my brother. That is my sister." And I love them deeply in my heart because we have been joined together by what? Not just blood. The blood. The blood that came from the cross of Christ.
What are we talking about? Your dysfunctional cousins, your drunk uncles and crazy aunts, the people who hate the God you serve? That's your family by DNA. But God exalted something above them. Your spiritual family.
Watch. I'm closing the first message: So if you're really saved, why do you keep trying to destroy the unity of this family? When you see things out of order, instead of gossiping and being a busybody in the dark, if you care about the family of Jesus, the body of the Lord Jesus Christ, pray for her. Love her. Forgive her. Intercede for her. Have conversations with her.
Fight for her. Provide for her. Stand with her. Die with her. Walk off the field with her. We get retired as old people together and say, "Amen. We've been rocking with Jesus for sixty years, and we've seen miracles for sixty years. And we've seen God answer prayers for sixty years, and we've discipled each other's children."
Your kingdom relationships are your greatest relationships.
I love how the Father sowed His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, in death. That according to the Scriptures, He would be raised the first brother, that He would harvest to Himself more brothers and sisters. That because of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, through the resurrection, we have been empowered to live together as a family.
I ain't got time to judge you to death and critique you to death. I don't like that in you. I'm going to pray for you. I can't speak for no other church because I don't know the angel of those houses and what they're teaching. But for 2819, this end-time body of believers on mission for the Lord Jesus Christ, we're going to spread this glorious gospel and fight and stand together for this faith in the power of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ until we walk off the field together as spiritual brothers and sisters.
Because we are a family. We are family. More than just the church I attend—2819 is a church you are a part of because we are a family. Family.
Eternal God and ever-wise Father, I pray over these your sons and daughters, my brothers and sisters, that You would so deepen the bonds of intimacy and unity among us. I pray You would destroy the works of the devil that attempt to dismantle the move of God called 2819 and the unity of the saints that You have given us.
I pray You would help us to mature spiritually and that we would fight for this union, pray for this union, support this union, believe in this union. That we will grind it out with our brothers and sisters both locally and abroad. That wherever we go and find Christians who have been born again, we have found our true brothers, our true sisters in our family.
Would You in this moment deepen our love for the sacred family of believers? And may in the resurrected power of Jesus, may we live this out as family according to the Scriptures in the mighty and majestic and matchless name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Good morning. We want to welcome all of you to 2819 Church—whether you're here in person, joining us digitally across the country, or watching from around the world. To our guests and to those exploring faith, we welcome you into God's presence.
I want to start by thanking everyone who participated in Serve M25 yesterday. Hundreds of men and women from this church went out into the streets to be the tangible hands and feet of the Lord Jesus Christ. During my ten years in outreach, I've been reminded of the importance of loving people in need and seeing their humanity—not looking down on them with condescension.
Most of us are just one check away from being under a bridge. The only reason you have a roof over your head, a vehicle, food on your table is not because of anything you accomplished. You are no greater than God's grace. We are products of grace. You could take credit for nothing good in your life.
I want us to be a people who don't drive by the homeless with contempt. Out there is a mother who lost a job, couldn't pay her bills, lost her house, lost her car, and now eats from a trash can. Then you meet her in her brokenness and look down on her while you drive back to your home. God forbid that His children would treat the less fortunate this way.
We want to be a people not just chained to comfort. It should not take a special event for us to live as the hands and feet of Jesus wherever we are.
I also want to mention something stirring in the spiritual realm. A spiritual son of mine recently texted me that he had a dream where he saw the sky open up, the Lord Jesus coming on the clouds, and heard loud trumpets blowing. As I read his message, I burst into tears.
Over the last couple of weeks, I've heard a growing chorus of this across our nation and around the world. People are having visions of Christ, of open skies, of hearing trumpets. I believe God is letting the world know that time is running out and He is preparing the world for the return of His Son and the rapture of His church.
My question to you is: Are you paying attention, or are you just doing services?
I listen to preaching in America, and I ask myself: What is the end goal? What are we preparing Christians for today? Are we preparing them to beg God for all the stuff they want? Or are we preparing you for the tribulation that's coming? Are we preparing you to stand in the face of adversity? Are we preparing you for the rapture?
We're turning Christians into consumers. We're making Christians more introspective, more self-absorbed and narcissistic—thinking this whole thing is about you and what you want. We're teaching Christians to twist God's arm to bless your monument.
No. God saved you for His glory, not your glory. He rescued you for His glory alone. In whatever state you find yourself—clothed or naked, abounding or abased, bubbling in a crib or under a bridge—we've been rescued for His glory and His glory alone.
Some of you don't even know yourselves because you're trying to discover yourself in all these other things. I pray you would learn identity through seeing Christ clearly. You want to know who you really are? See Christ for who He is, and then you see yourself for who you are.
You're getting visions of your vision board because you have not read Isaiah 6. When Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up, he saw himself rightly—a sinner in need of grace. The only response to being rescued from death is this: "Here am I. Send me." Not "Bless me" or "Give me." "Here am I. Send me."
That's an offering. I wish I had a hundred people who would say right now, "Lord, send me." The only response to salvation is surrender and availability.
I wish some of you would stop listening to so many preachers and start reading your Bible. I wish you would stop treating preachers like gods in the flesh. Stop swinging on them and start reading the New Testament for yourself. Find Jesus in the pages of God's Word for yourself and start checking behind the nonsense you're listening to.
I want you to be more enamored with the Word of God than with oratory. When we think of the Apostle Paul, we think of him as a great preacher, but he himself said his letters were more weighty than his preaching. I want you to be more impressed with the written Word than with the oratory of men.
Churches that are full of entertainment reduce the spiritual maturity of their people. They're telling their people, "You can't focus on teaching without gimmicks." The greatest prop for the gathered body will always be an open Bible.
I need to stop giving glory to the word "coincidence." The word coincidence robs God of what belongs to Him. Coincidence is a thief of glory that belongs to Jesus. When I look at all the fine details of His movements and trace things back, I see that God orchestrates and engineers our lives. Every time I get a glimpse of Him, I marvel over who He is and how He operates.
We are in the final episode of Season 1 of our series, Wisdom and Wonder. As a church, we are walking through the Gospel of Matthew together. Matthew was a first-century Jewish outcast converted to Christianity by the Lord Jesus Christ. He became one of Jesus' chief apostles and an eyewitness of His ministry.
Let's look at this passage. In his State of the Union address in 1985, President Ronald Reagan said, "As the family goes, so goes our civilization." This is profoundly true both naturally and spiritually.
It was God—not society, not some psychological doctor—who created the family. The family is one of the greatest institutions and building blocks of society. In its original design according to Scripture, the family consisted of one husband, one wife, and offspring. Together they formed a family unit that introduced human beings to community, loyalty, and the deep dynamics of mental, emotional, and spiritual formation.
But since its origins, the concept of family has been under attack by an unseen demonic force manifested in the visible realm. Since the very first murder between two siblings, the family that God created has been constantly under attack—designed to dismantle both its original design and its expression in society.
The traditional family as God designed it has been eroding from generation to generation. At the center of that erosion are two powerful questions: What is a family? And who is my family?
First, what is a family? In its broadest biological terms, a family is any group of people united together by blood, by marriage, and by adoption. In that dynamic, we have parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, and step-relations.
Yes. But it's the second question that's at the center of this text, where Jesus blows up the first-century world with one of the most revolutionary statements ever recorded from His mouth.
Remember, Matthew records that in Chapter 12, Jesus began facing opposition from the Pharisees. They confronted Him in a grain field. The battle moved into a synagogue where He healed a man with a withered hand. Jesus left that city, went to another, and the battle continued with another group of Pharisees.
He argued with them about His divine power—whether it came from the Holy Spirit or from demonic forces. He healed a man full of demon possession, blind and mute. He talked to them about knowing trees by the fruit they bear. Then He talked to them last week about demons that leave and come back, and about the spiritual state of Israel. Matthew finishes this discourse with the four verses we're unpacking today.
Listen carefully to verse 46:
While he was still speaking to the people, behold, his mother and his brothers stood outside, asking to speak to him.
Jesus was in a house, teaching inside. The house is packed. Jesus is preaching and teaching, and in the middle of His sermon, His mother shows up with His brothers outside. They're asking the people to get Jesus and bring Him to them. They need to talk to him right now—in the middle of the sermon.
There are four things in this verse I want you to consider: the family of Jesus, the location of that family, the condition of that family, and the interruption of that family.
Jesus was the Son of God in the flesh, but He was born in the first century into a Jewish family. According to Scripture, Jesus was born of a virgin named Mary, who was Jewish. He had a stepfather named Joseph who never touched Mary.
Joseph is not mentioned in this text because of the writing customs of that time, but we can reasonably assume Joseph had died by this point. If Joseph had died, then Jesus, being the firstborn son, would now be responsible for the financial upkeep of the house.
According to Scripture, Jesus had four biological brothers mentioned by name. Two of them would write New Testament letters that bear their names: James and Jude. Scripture also tells us Jesus had sisters, though it doesn't name them or tell us how many. So we know at minimum Jesus had at least two sisters.
So in the home of Jesus, we have: Jesus Himself, four brothers, and at least two sisters—a minimum of seven children. The Catholic doctrine of Mary being a permanent virgin is false doctrine and heresy. Mary did not remain a virgin. After she gave birth to Christ, she had at least six other biological children. One of them was divine—Christ. The other six came from a natural union between Joseph and Mary. They got busy and had kids. They were fruitful and multiplied, creating a biological family.
Now notice the location of the family. They are not inside the room where He's teaching. They are outside the room.
For me as a student of the Word, this is not only descriptive—it's also symbolic. Instead of listening to the Son preach God's Word, His own family is outside the church gathering. They are physically outside the house. But can I go deeper? They are outside the kingdom spiritually.
How do I know that? Because John writes in Chapter 7 that His brothers did not believe He was the Son of God. His own family were unbelievers. They did not put their faith in Him until He was raised from the dead. Until they saw a Man come out of a tomb with pierced hands and feet, His brothers put their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
So whose faith is greater—yours or theirs? They had to see a resurrected Jesus to believe. Yet you can be so close to the Lord Jesus and still not know Him.
As I'm reading this text, I get a flashback of something Matthew wrote. In Chapter 7, Jesus said:
Many are going to come and say, "Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? And did we not perform mighty miracles in your name? Did we not cast out demons in your name? Were we not in gatherings every Sunday? Were we not listening to Christian podcasts? Were we not writing Christian books? Were we not performing signs and wonders and deceiving people?"
And the Lord is going to say to many people sitting in gatherings all across this country, "You were this close. The book is open. Keep playing around and I don't see your name in it."
You had services without relationship. You had religion without relationship. You had Christian lingo without relationship. You had a little bit of Christian behavior without relationship. You were never born again. You were never filled with the Spirit. You never became one of My followers. Depart from Me. You worker of iniquity. I never knew you.
One of the most terrifying verses in all of Scripture. Imagine going to church your whole life, dying, slipping into eternity thinking you were saved—only to not find your name in the Book of Life. Then crying out to God for mercy, only to hear: there is no second chance.
How can you be raised in the same house as the Son of God? You heard the story that your mother got pregnant when she was a virgin. You heard about angels announcing to your mom that she would be pregnant with the Son of God. You lived with Him for thirty years. And still you did not believe.
Examine yourself. Are you really in the faith? I'm talking to everybody in this room. You could sit in a car in a garage all day—that doesn't make you a car. You could sit in this room all day—that doesn't make you a Christian.
When people say, "I tried Jesus and He didn't work for me," you were never saved to begin with. You weren't trying Jesus. You tried religion.
In Mark Chapter 3, verse 20, it says:
When he went home, the crowd gathered again so that they could not even eat. And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him for they were saying, "He is out of his mind."
In His own hometown, people were calling Him crazy. His family probably believed the same thing. They thought, "Why is my brother walking around saying he's the Son of God?" They went to seize Him, perhaps trying to help or protect Him. But maybe they thought He was crazy too.
You can be as close as you want to Jesus and still not be a follower.
He's speaking. They're outside. The fourth thing: what about the interruption? Was not His message important enough to let Him finish? You think what He's talking about is not important enough that you have the nerve and audacity to interrupt Him in the middle of His message while He's proclaiming the gospel to people who actually want to hear what He has to say?
There are people with hunger in the room and people with disregard outside of the room. We have hungry people in the room and people who disregard what He has to say outside. We have people who value what He says in the room and people who don't value what He says outside. We have people who prioritize the gathering and people who don't.
Instead of interrupting Him, trying to get Him to come out, why don't you slip in and hear what He has to say? But before you look down your nose at His followers, you and I do the same thing. We don't have regard for the things He's saying. We treat it like common, like ordinary. You take all these words that are in red and you treat them as common and ordinary. There's no awe. There's no wonder. There's no leaning in. There's no trying to get close so you can hear what He's saying to you.
Let us not just be close physically. Let us be close spiritually. Let us not just creep in on a robe, but let us creep into our prayer closet.
Now, notice in the verse, there's no verse 47 in the ESV. It has been footnoted because it did not show up in some of the earlier manuscripts of the Bible. The translators threw it at the bottom because it's not important theologically—it's just a restatement of verse 46.
Let's go straight to verse 48. But he replied to the man who told him:
"Who is my mother? And who are my brothers?"
They come to him and say, "Jesus, excuse me. Your mother and your brothers are outside." He turns to the man who interrupts Him and asks, "Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?"
If I'm the man, I'm thinking the woman outside, the dudes outside. One of y'all from Nazareth. But Jesus asked a rhetorical question because He's not looking for an answer. The Lord asked a rhetorical question to leverage the question to gain His attention. He's leveraging that question to gain attention to teach us something He's about to create a brand new construct that revolutionized the first-century world.
This is so powerful. You're feeling the effects of it right now as I'm talking to you.
He says to the man: "Who is my mother? Who are my brothers? You think my family is my biological mother and my biological brothers? You think that is the only family that I have?"
Jesus is asking, "Who is my family?" He's about to shift the culture forever.
Now look at verses 49-50:
And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, "Here is my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother."
What Jesus does is make a distinction between your biological family and your spiritual family. Not only does he make this distinction, but he almost silently rebukes his mother and brothers for interrupting him.
But watch what He does: The fact that He would question the man about His mother and brothers being outside showed you where He placed His priority. While we have biological family, the Lord placed a greater priority, greater emphasis on His spiritual family.
He says now that you're in the kingdom of God, your true family are those who do the will of the Father.
Jesus also said, "I did not come to bring peace on the earth this first go around. I came to bring a sword of separation between those who are for Me and those who are against Me. Even the people that got your own last name."
There is a different type of blood that is much stronger than your biological blood. The Lord said: for some of you, you don't even realize your spiritual family are more your sisters and brothers than your unsaved biological family.
Where you don't have a saved father, you have spiritual fathers. Where you don't have a saved mother, you have spiritual mothers. When you have parents who don't understand you, you have spiritual parents who get you.
I'm probably tighter with people in this room than people who got my last name. I could depend more on people in this room than people with my last name. I got deeper bonds with people in my spiritual family than people who got my last name.
You and I should be thinking very deeply about how we treat the people in this room. Sitting on your row is not a male or a female. If they're saved, that is your sister. That is your brother. That is your mother. That is your father.
You are my sister. Jesus said those bonds are even prioritized over people in your own biological family. For some of you, you have greater trust and dependence on people who are your spiritual brothers and sisters than on some of your family who have rejected you for the faith, abandoned you for the faith, disrespected you for the faith.
And some of you, because you don't read the Bible, you give even more honor to people that don't respect your God because they got your same last name than the people sitting on the row next to you who are grinding it out in the kingdom with you.
When the phone call comes between the atheist sister you went to college with and my spiritual sister in the church who wants me to pray with her at 2:00 a.m. because her family's under attack—which phone call do I answer? Which phone call becomes my priority? Which phone call becomes more important in that moment? My atheist sister who doesn't respect the God that I serve? Or my sister in the faith who's going to get the same crown as me when we die?
And some of us are so foolish. You keep crying about the dysfunction of your biological family, and you won't even lean into the gift God has given you in your spiritual family.
You don't even realize some of the greatest blessings you will ever have in your life are sitting right next to you. They don't need the blood that came from your DNA. They have the blood that came from the cross. What are we talking about?
Christ exalted the spiritual family of believers above the biological family. Yes, you got my last name, but I'm prepared to die with the people that are grinding it out with me right here in this room. I ain't dying with you. I love you. I ain't dying with you. I'm going to die with my spiritual family.
Before you start throwing your arm around the person next to you, look at the details in the text. Look at who Jesus points to. He points to His disciples. These are my brothers and sisters and mother. Not pointing to Christians by name only. Not pointing to people who got God first in a profile. He's pointing to His disciples.
So He gives a criteria for who you can call spiritual family: disciples. Then you should ask a question: What is a disciple? Is a disciple a churchgoer? No. A Bible reader? No. A conference attender? No. A Christian poster? No.
A disciple is a learner of Jesus. A follower of Jesus. They do the will of Jesus. They love the people of Jesus. So you're a Christian, but you hate the church? You're a Christian, but you hate the gathering of God's people, but you're a Christian, and I'm supposed to call you my sister and my brother? No.
The Lord gave a criteria for even the people in the room. He points to His disciples—followers, learners, doers of His Word. He said, "These are my brothers and my sisters and my mother."
Christ exalted your spiritual family even above the people that got your last name. Is it just a service I run in and out of on Sunday? Listen to me. I'm serious now. Don't move. Don't disrespect me. Don't disrespect the Holy Spirit. Stay still.
That divides a marriage between a saved wife and an unbelieving husband. He's not your family. He's your husband, but he's not your spiritual family. And it's hard trying to be submitted to a man that's not submitted to God.
There is a division there. That divides friends, gym buddies, work buddies. That divides people on my social media page, people I run with. Why am I going all out for people who are enemies of God, and I don't show that same love to brothers and sisters who are prepared to die for the Lord Jesus Christ? What's wrong with us?
How then, if God exalted this as my family, should I be thinking about my spiritual brother or sister as my family? How does it affect my love for you and your love for me? How does it affect how we serve together and pray together and grind together? And when we have fights, how does this affect how we forgive one another?
The Father gave His children 61 "one anothers"—words about how we're supposed to interact with one another. Love covers a multitude of sin. Carry each other's burdens. Restore each other gently. Pray for one another. Outdo one another in honor. All the "one anothers" about how we're supposed to interact with one another, how we lean deeply into these relationships.
How we keep robbing ourselves by running in and out, in and out, in and out, and never realizing that the best of what God has for you is locked up in your covenant relationships with your brothers and your sisters and your mothers and fathers in the faith.
Ronda Johnson is one of the best things that ever happened to my life because of the blood of Christ. Philip Anthony Mitchell is one of the best things that ever happened to Tiana because of the blood of Christ. When I see them, I see my spiritual family.
So we eat together and open our house. Yeah. We let you crash on the couch. Yeah. We help pay each other's bills because they share all things in common. And we keep each other accountable.
"My sister, you're involved in a lot of sin. That's not fitting for a disciple of Christ. Now, before I out you, let's pray about this so we can lift you from this dark hole that you've been in."
That's how you treat brothers and sisters. I see you struggling and I pray you out. I see you struggling and I lift you out. You disappeared from the family. I run and I get you and I bring you back to the family. I fight to keep us together.
And when you hurt me and when I hurt you, we go back to the authority—the Word of God—which teaches me to forgive how many times? Seventy times seventy.
And I walk into these gatherings and I see a white face and a black face and an Asian face. And I said, "This is my brother. That is my sister." And I love them deeply in my heart because we have been joined together by what? Not just blood. The blood. The blood that came from the cross of Christ.
What are we talking about? Your dysfunctional cousins, your drunk uncles and crazy aunts, the people who hate the God you serve? That's your family by DNA. But God exalted something above them. Your spiritual family.
Watch. I'm closing the first message: So if you're really saved, why do you keep trying to destroy the unity of this family? When you see things out of order, instead of gossiping and being a busybody in the dark, if you care about the family of Jesus, the body of the Lord Jesus Christ, pray for her. Love her. Forgive her. Intercede for her. Have conversations with her.
Fight for her. Provide for her. Stand with her. Die with her. Walk off the field with her. We get retired as old people together and say, "Amen. We've been rocking with Jesus for sixty years, and we've seen miracles for sixty years. And we've seen God answer prayers for sixty years, and we've discipled each other's children."
Your kingdom relationships are your greatest relationships.
I love how the Father sowed His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, in death. That according to the Scriptures, He would be raised the first brother, that He would harvest to Himself more brothers and sisters. That because of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, through the resurrection, we have been empowered to live together as a family.
I ain't got time to judge you to death and critique you to death. I don't like that in you. I'm going to pray for you. I can't speak for no other church because I don't know the angel of those houses and what they're teaching. But for 2819, this end-time body of believers on mission for the Lord Jesus Christ, we're going to spread this glorious gospel and fight and stand together for this faith in the power of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ until we walk off the field together as spiritual brothers and sisters.
Because we are a family. We are family. More than just the church I attend—2819 is a church you are a part of because we are a family. Family.
Eternal God and ever-wise Father, I pray over these your sons and daughters, my brothers and sisters, that You would so deepen the bonds of intimacy and unity among us. I pray You would destroy the works of the devil that attempt to dismantle the move of God called 2819 and the unity of the saints that You have given us.
I pray You would help us to mature spiritually and that we would fight for this union, pray for this union, support this union, believe in this union. That we will grind it out with our brothers and sisters both locally and abroad. That wherever we go and find Christians who have been born again, we have found our true brothers, our true sisters in our family.
Would You in this moment deepen our love for the sacred family of believers? And may in the resurrected power of Jesus, may we live this out as family according to the Scriptures in the mighty and majestic and matchless name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
