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Sermon
The Gospel of Matthew

Who is Jesus’ Family?

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October 5, 2025
Matthew 12:46-50
Steven Lee
Pastor for Preaching & Vision

Identity in Christ

The Church

The Bible

Transcript

0:19Would you join me as we go to the Lord in prayer and ask for his help? Father in heaven, we gather now under your word and we long to hear you speak through it for our good. So blow by the power of your Holy Spirit so that your people would see more of the glory and wonder of the Son. Jesus Christ. We pray this in his precious name. Amen. If you're a basketball fan, an NBA fan in particular, you'll know that in 2024, uh, rather mediocre college basketball player was drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers. In his one year in college playing in the ncaa, he played only 25 games. He started only six of them and he scored on average 4.8 points, 2.8 rebounds, and 2.1 assists.

1:24He was not very good. He stands six foot one and a half inches, which is on the small side for the NBA, yet he was drafted in the second round, the 55th overall pick by one of the most storied franchises in the NBA. And the question is why Very simply nepotism. His dad happens to be LeBron James and he was signed to the very same team and they became the first active father son duo in NBA history. So nepotism is showing favoritism to a family member who doesn't deserve it. It's the dad who promotes his son to vice president even though he has no skills or qualifications. It's the movie director who casts his daughter in the lead role even though she has no acting experience.

2:16Nepotism is unfair and it often lacks integrity. Yet there's a difference between nepotism and sort of family loyalty, right? We, we would say that business owners that passed down the company to their children are just showing kind of loyalty to their family. It's natural to prefer our relatives parents leave the lake cabin to their heirs. The dad uses his connections to get his daughter an internship to open the door. We all privilege our family in some ways, and this is often good and right, that's how family works. Yet in our passage this morning, Jesus gives this remarkable counter-cultural truth about his kingdom.

3:01He reveals that something runs deeper and thicker than blood, takes greater priority over family. And what Jesus does is he elevates his new spiritual family above his blood family. The significance of this though is lost on most of us unless we understand the importance of first century genealogy. So let me just go there for just a little bit. In Jewish culture, one's genealogy was really, really important. It's not so much to us. We have to run blood tests to kind of ancestor.com or 23 and me to figure out what kind of, you know, what were my grandparents and and all of that. But in those days, people tracked their genealogy.

3:49It determined your tribe, it determined your land inheritance. If you remember the story of Ruth and Boaz, Boaz genealogy determined when he had an opportunity to assume ownership of some land and to marry Ruth, your genealogy determined your social standing, the prestige that you had. It's a lot like what you would imagine a caste system in India to look like. Genealogies determined whether your bloodline was pure or whether it was mixed or checkered with scandals and illegitimacy. So your genealogy, your family background was everything. And into this context, Jesus reveals our main point. Spiritual allegiances are greater than family.

4:39Spiritual allegiances are greater than familial roots. Our relationship to Jesus ought to take priority over every other relationship, even those of our own blood family. And then when we're brought into relationship with Jesus, it transforms all of our other relationships. Nepotism has no place in the kingdom of Christ. Rather it's those who do the will of the Father. And so this text serves as a warning to the scribes and Pharisees who assume that they would automatically get into heaven. Well, we're the children of Abraham. We're we're Jewish people. What do you mean that we're not getting in Jesus?

5:26How dare you. And this text also reveals that anyone, whoever can become part of Christ's kingdom, you don't need a prestigious background or an impressive resume. So what we're gonna do this morning is walk through the text in two main parts verses 46 and 47 will be Jesus family. And then we'll look at Jesus teaching in 48 to 50. And if you're using a English standard version, Bible, an ESV, if you look, you, you may notice that verse 47 is missing. And we'll talk about that, but not yet. So first we come to Jesus' family. So last week we saw that the rejection of the scribes and the Pharisees came to this climax.

6:13They reject God's appointed scent messenger. They reject the Messiah. And Jesus responds by calling them this evil and adulterous generation. And and he basically says, you're of your father Satan. He denounces them. He condemns them. And and Jesus' statement way back in verse 30, still sort of hangs in the air, whoever is not with me is against me and whoever does not gather with me scatters. And now we know where the scribes and Pharisee stand. They rejected Jesus. They're not with him. But, but the broader question becomes, well where the, the where the crowds 'cause they're, they've been listening in.

6:55How do the crowds view Jesus? It's in that moment we get verse 46, while he was still speaking to the people, behold his mother and his brother stood outside asking to speak to Jesus. And so Matthew's trying to link this to the previous section that's come before he's still speaking when his family arrives and he's just denounced God's chosen people. He's denounced Israel. So, so the question is, well, if God's chosen people Israel, these Jews don't get in. Who gets into God's family? Who gets in, who becomes a sibling? Who gets into God's family if the Jews themselves don't get in? This is the first mention of Jesus' mother since the birth account in Matthew one and two.

7:43And Mark's gospel tells us that Jesus' family thought Jesus had lost his mind. In John seven, it actually tells us that Jesus brothers didn't believe in him, but Matthew leaves it rather ambiguous. They're just there on the outside waiting to speak with him. Now at first glance, verse 46 doesn't seem all that important, like it's just setting the stage. But it actually highlights something really critical for us to see, especially as we engage with others, maybe family members who hold the different views. Notice that verse 46 mentions Jesus brothers, Jesus brothers, now Roman Catholics believe in something called the perpetual virginity of Mary, meaning that she remained a virgin for her entire life and that she never had intimate sexual relations and so Jesus couldn't have had biological brothers.

8:37So this is contradicted by a passage like this. So what do we to do of this? Uh, do we believe what the Catholic church says or do we believe what the Bible says? Well, in Matthew one it says Joseph knew her not until she had given birth to a son. I think this is well understood, no or new, often referred to kind of the marital relations between a husband and a wife. And so he consummated the marriage after Mary gave birth to Jesus. So Joseph was a good man, but indefinite abstinence from marital intimacy was not one of his admirable traits. Mary was not a perpetual virgin. Otherwise the scriptures would've made that crystal clear.

9:22Or in Matthew chapter 13, verse 55, you could turn there if you'd like. Jesus had just entered into his hometown. So this is where everyone would've known him. This is where he grew up and he was teaching in the synagogue. And the people there say, is this not the carpenter's son, is not his mother called Mary, are not his brothers, James and Joseph and Simon and Judas and are not all his sisters with us. That's Matthew 1355 and 56. In other words, we know this guy. We used to play pickup basketball with Jesus way back in the day when he was just a little one. We know him. He's not anyone special.

9:58They're saying this to denigrate him, but they're also calling out. We know his family, we know his mom, we know his brothers and sisters. So Roman Catholics believe that these brothers and sisters are maybe cousins or children from of Joseph from a previous marriage, not biological siblings. And unfortunately I think this highlights sort of holding to kind of religious dogma beliefs without understanding or taking into consideration the text. And, and so what is our ultimate authority? It it's the Bible. Uh, that belief of Catholics leads them to venerate Mary. They they pray to Mary and it shows how church tradition can be fallible and we should submit all of our beliefs to the scriptures.

10:48This is why we believe in something called Sola s scriptura, which is just Latin for by scripture alone. The Bible is the sole infallible source of authority for Christian faith and practice. And this is why we make such a big deal of preaching from the Bible. If ever you hear a sermon where the Bible is not read, quoted or opened up, you should find yourself a new church.

11:18Now we now go to verse 47 and we're gonna get a little lesson on something called textural criticism, which is the study of how we came to get our kind of Bible, if you will. It's the study of all the various manuscripts. So several Bible versions, Amit, verse 47, especially the ESV. And if you look at the footnote, maybe at the bottom in size like five and a half font, you might see it put on your bifocals or whatever it is that you need. And it says some manuscripts insert verse 47. And then it says, someone told him, your mother and your brothers are standing outside asking to speak to you.

12:02So what's going on here? Why doesn't the ESV include verse 47? Well first let me state that whether or not verse 47 is present in the text doesn't actually change the meaning of the passage. And this is often true of any discrepancies that we have in our different Greek manuscripts of the Bible. And so we have about 50 to 60 complete or nearly complete Greek manuscripts of Matthew's Gospel. We have dozens and dozens of papyrus fragments that contain portions of Matthew. We also have thousands of Greek lectionary, which is our, which is books arraigned for the reading of worship that include passages from Matthew.

12:41So we, we could say that we have roughly about 5,000 plus Greek New Testament manuscripts in our takeaway is that we have ample and accurate records of the scriptures. And so we have a multitude of good English translations that we can read. Now the the question remains, why do some early manuscripts leave out verse 47 and some later manuscripts include it and there's two major possibilities. The first theory is that verse 47 was never in the original, but it was a late edition to make sense of the reading. So if you read verse 48, look at verse 48, it says, but he replied to the man. And your question might be, well what man?

13:24'cause there's no man mentioned in verse 46. And so it could be that someone said, well that doesn't make sense. Let's add verse 47 so that it would make sense. The second theory, which I think is more likely is that a copyist accidentally skipped verse 47 when he was copying the gospel of Matthew. So in those days, no printing press, right? No printers. So they're looking at one, copying another. And if you'll notice the last word, this is more clear in the Greek, but you can see it in the English as well. The last word of verse 46 is the word to speak. And the last word of verse 47 is also to speak.

14:02And so you might have just finished writing that word to speak in verse 46, looked over, see it as the last word in verse 47. And then you start copying verse 48. Uh, I think that is what happened. And this mass matches up with what we get in two other parallel passages in Mark chapter three, verse 32. And Luke chapter eight, verse 20. Now, what does this whole lesson on textual criticism have to do with us this morning? Stay with me here. There's a good payoff. I think it reminds us that we have stunningly faithful copies of the scriptures. We have stunningly faithful translations of the Bible.

14:48This is inspired by the Holy Spirit human authors inspired by the Holy Spirit preserved so that what we have in our hands is a faithful, pure, true, authentic copy of what God intends for us to have with thousands of manuscripts of evidence. And so we should be really, really, really thankful for the Bible and it means we should read it because in here contains the words of life. Even something as simple as that verse has kind of a reasonable explanation where we can understand what might have happened. And we have thousands of manuscripts that point to the reality that we have the true words of God.

15:36So verse 46 and 47, what do we see about Jesus' family? Twice it mentions his family is on the outside and Jesus disciples are conceivably on the inside, inside a house where Jesus is teaching. And that's a visual metaphor. What Jesus for what Jesus is going to teach. So now look with me at verse 48, but Jesus replied to the man who told him, who is my mother and who are my brothers? This is a little riddle like Jesus knows who his biological mother and brothers are, but it sets the stage for his teaching. And then verse 49 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.

16:23And mother Jesus reveals that his disciples are his new spiritual family. His spiritual family takes priority over his physical, biological family. Spiritual allegiances are greater than familial roots. We can see this in Jesus' life throughout his life is, is there a time that you can recall a moment where Jesus prioritized his heavenly Father over his earthly father? Can you think of that time? Jesus was 12. He went with his parents to Jerusalem to observe the feast of the Passover and his parents and the caravan they came with were ready to leave. And so they leave and Jesus, he remains behind in the temple and after three days frantically searching for Jesus, they're like, he's not with us.

17:15So they go all the way back. They find Jesus in the temple sitting at the feet of some of the teachers there. And Mary comes up to Jesus And what does she say to 12-year-old Jesus son, why have you treated us? So behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress. This is Luke 2 48. And how does Jesus reply? He's not like, sorry, mom got carried away with time. Didn't know you guys were leaving. Did you not know that I must be in my father's house? Did you not know that I needed to be in my father's house? In other words, I have commitments, allegiances priorities that are even greater than you Mom and dad.

17:58I have a father who is in heaven. And so the point of our passage that Jesus is trying to make clear is that he must have the first place. Jesus must be our highest priority. If we know and love the Father, we will know and love the Son. And back in Matthew 10, Jesus says, whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. In other words, Jesus is saying, I am the most important relationship that you need to get right. And only then when you place me above even family, will all the other relationships be rightly aligned. Jesus must take priority over our earthly families, our business dealings, our financial priorities over all of our commitments.

18:48What does this look like in our world today? What does it look like for us? It it may mean making the difficult decision not to attend a same sex wedding of a family member because it celebrates what God condemns it. I know of others who have refused to bow down or burn incense at a relative's funeral because it celebrates something that they don't believe. Or some have been cut off from an inheritance for refusing to deny Christ or others have been disinvited to Thanksgiving dinner because of something they've said. Putting Jesus first is costly, but Jesus says obedience to the Father is of the highest priority.

19:30Now look at verse 50. Who can then become members of Jesus family? 'cause he's just said to his generation, you're an evil generation. Your father is Satan. And so the question is, who gets in? Then Jesus who becomes a member of your kingdom. And he says, whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother and sister. And mother. Notice first he says, whoever, anyone, even Gentiles, even those Ninevites are the queen of Sheba. Second, notice how Jesus includes sister here in verse 50. In the first century, women were looked down upon here Jesus elevates women, calls them co-heirs of the grace of life.

20:15And I think it reveals that Jesus is not just talking about his 12 disciples, but he's talking about all anyone, whoever would do the will of the Father can now be a member of his family. Now what does it mean when he says, do the will of my father, do the will of my father? Sounds a lot like works there like you gotta do stuff. Jesus is not saying earn your way into heaven by doing good deeds. But Jesus, in emphasizing discipleship, you cannot say you know God without obeying him. That's the whole point of what we saw throughout the sermon on the mound, Matthew five through seven. And that was the primary problem of the Pharisees, wasn't it?

21:00They would say, we know God. And Jesus would say, look at your actions. You clearly do not know God. You will not receive God's sent appointed messenger, me the Messiah. Your actions show that you don't know the Father Jesus has been teaching. Your actions must match your beliefs. Don't practice your righteousness to be praised by men. But he also said, not everyone who says to me in those final days, Lord, Lord, didn't we do all this stuff in your name? And Jesus says, depart from me. I never knew you. So those dual dangers here, those who are deceived into thinking they know God and do the right things potentially but don't know him.

21:44And then there's those who say they know God but don't do any of those things. So how then can we know the will of God? How then can we do the will of God? Or maybe the question is, what is the will of God in Matthew up to this point, God's will is that his people would listen and recognize and receive his appointed messenger, the Son, the Messiah, and the Savior at Jesus' baptism. What does God the Father say? This is my beloved son. What's the point of that? Jesus already knows that it was an audible voice from heaven. It was so that the rest of the world would see that and that we would then believe in Jesus as the very beloved son of God.

22:37Or what does Jesus do at the beginning of his ministry? He preaches repentance. So what's the will of God that his people would repent of their sins, place their trust in him or at the transfiguration in Matthew 17, again, we hear this is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased. And what does it say right after that? Listen to him. Listen to him. So the will of God is for mankind to see Jesus, to listen to his teaching, to repent and to believe. And when you do all those things, you become a member of Jesus family. So Jesus' teaching here is radically counter-cultural because he places his spiritual family above his blood family.

23:27But Jesus doesn't denigrate his family either, does he? He upholds the fourth commandment. Honor your father and your mother even in his dying moments. He looks out, he sees his mom and he says to his mother to Mary, behold your son pointing at John and then says to John, behold, your mother take care of my mom as if she were yours. So we ought to take care for our families, but Jesus makes clear that our greatest priority must be him. So Jesus teaching reminds us this morning that you're not a Christian just because your family goes to church. And that's what I thought for years and years and years.

24:18I'm a Christian 'cause I'm not. Uh, we're we're going to church all the time. My dad's, my family's going to church. Or I remember a testimony not long ago, well I guess I'm a Christian 'cause I'm not a Muslim and I'm not a Buddhist. So I guess that's just what we do. You're not going to heaven because your parents are good religious people. You're not Christians because c Grandpa Billy was a pastor. We're a missionary. You're only a Christian if you believe in Jesus and if you obey his commands, and it's a reminder that whoever you may be this morning, perhaps you feel like you're on the inside looking in, you too can become a disciple of Christ.

24:58This passage is so encouraging because it's not based primarily on nepotism. Jesus isn't saying, I have my favorites and those are the people that get in. But he says, anyone who does the will of my father, anyone who comes and sees that I truly am the Messiah and the Savior submits himself to me, repents believes can come into this kingdom. It means this is not a country club with a high priced membership. You don't need special connections or a certain background or certain ethnicity. Anyone who does the will of the Father can be a member of Christ family. So to summarize this passage, spiritual allegiances are greater than familial roots.

25:45Spiritual allegiances are greater than familial roots. And so Jesus must be our highest priority. Our greatest allegiance must be to him. And aren't we glad that Jesus doesn't show nepotism? Jesus doesn't show partiality. Anyone can be a member of Christ's family to have God as their father and Jesus as their brother. So I wanna draw out three applications for us this morning, three applications for us. The first is that you, if you're a believer in Jesus here this morning, you have a spiritual family, you have a spiritual family. Some of you have very few biological family members left. It may be because you're estranged or you live far from them or they're mostly deceased.

26:37It may be because you've been disowned for becoming a believer. And Jesus reassures all those who have placed their trust and faith in him with these words. Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for my namesake will receive a hundred fold in the church. You now have a spiritual family in Christ's kingdom. There are no orphans. So one of the primary metaphors for the church is the family, the household of God. We're to refer to one another as brothers and sisters and we're family because we've been united by the precious blood of Christ. We've been brought into union with Jesus.

27:26We're united in one body and one spirit, and one Lord and savior, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father of all. So this morning, if you lack a biological family because of Jesus, you have a spiritual family in the church and you have a spiritual family here, in particular at the North Church second application, we are called to love each other like family. We're called to love each other like family. In John's gospel, Jesus sets forth one of the distinguishing marks of his people. John 1335. By this, the world will know that we are your disciples when we have love for one another. So we're not a mega corporation or a business or a club.

28:18This is not Costco where you now have to show your card to get in and and then you get the special privileges of getting, you know, $5 off this massive bag of whatever it is you buy there. This is a family. This implies intimacy and closeness and love and affection. We live together in harmony and we comfort one another. And I know for many of us, we come, it's an event primarily like sometimes I'll come, sometimes I'll go somewhere else. This is not an event. This is not a a club. This is a family that's been united by the blood of Christ. And so we're called to love each other, to bear one another's burdens, to forgive each other, to teach and to admonish one another, to build one another up, to do one another good.

29:05One of the most heartbreaking things I see is when people get into community and then something hard happens, someone offends you, someone says something harsh, and then you're like, I'm outta here. You find a new small group, you find yourself a new church and you refuse to work it out. That is not how family works. I'm not saying you have to stay in the same small group for the rest of your life, but we ought to work out those differences. We ought to bear with one another, forgive one another, be tenderhearted towards one another. And we're not gonna do that perfectly. We are messy and we are fractured. Jesus.

29:48When he points to his disciples and says, these are my family, this is my new spiritual family, what's all of his disciples gonna do? And Jesus die dire moment in Gethsemane, they're all gonna scatter. Peter's gonna deny Jesus three times. That's his family in his greatest moment, they're all gonna abandon him. And yet Jesus forgives them and restores them and makes them his spiritual family. And so don't be quick to jump from church to church. This is not an event or a club, but an imperfect family. But that by God's grace is being conformed to the image of Jesus and to be that peer and spotless bride on the day of Christ.

30:32Third, so first you have a family. Second, love each other like family. And now third, pray for opportunities to be family. Pray for opportunities to be family. I know we are growing in family like love here at the North Church. I've been here eight years and I've seen it on display. And so I praise God for that. And I'm saying let's do it all the more. So my goal here is to throw more logs on the fire. So let me just highlight a few ways we can spur one another onto love and good works. For some it just means coming in to the family of faith, consider pursuing church membership to formally identify yourself with this local expression of Christ's family.

31:21Uh, I think a lot of people are afraid of commitment 'cause well, if I if I join, then it's gonna be harder to get away. And, and what if they do something I don't like? And, and so maybe I'll just remain sort of a, a tender for the next 5, 6, 7, 10, 15, 20 years never coming in to the family of faith. I don't think you should do that. Second, is there a widow or a widower that you can adopt into your family for the holidays and celebrations? I was so heartened to see that, uh, we had a a, a new widow here in our church and this other family said, we're, we're gonna adopt her or we're gonna take her into our family so that all the holidays she's gonna be with us.

32:07Or is there a college student you can absorb into your family for meals and holidays and give them a front row seat to what a god-honoring family looks like. One of the things our college staff say to me is that a lot of these kids that are in college now, they've never seen their family sit down at the dinner table. Everyone has Netflix up, they have their phones. If you sit down and have a meal where you talk like normal people, they haven't seen that before. Is there someone that you can bring into your family? Is there a, a young family with little kids with no family near nearby who would welcome some pseudo grandparents?

32:44One of our elders, Tim Johnson, all the little kids in his small group, they call him Fapa. It's fake grandpa. I I think that's great. It's amazing. And so they're, he, he's a grandpa for all those kids and he has his own grandkids, but he gets to extend his love to these others. Is there a special needs family that you can pray for and connect with that you can take a special interest in their child? I know we have families with special needs children who are trying to wrestle through what does it look like when I get old and can no longer care for my children and they need your prayers. Is there a single parent home that needs support and friendship and practical help?

33:29Or a child who doesn't have a father figure in their life where one of you might step in to be a godly male mentor? The these are just a few ideas and you can't do everything and some of you are fully engaged, but for others, perhaps this is God nudging you very gently to say, what does it look like for you to move towards someone else with love and intentionality and for us to live out the reality that we are the family of God. Jesus is our brother. God is our father. And this is not a club, but this is a family of faith where we seek to love each other with warmth and the welcome of Christ. I remember when we moved back to Minnesota from kind of the Chicago suburbs about eight years ago.

34:21We had a house under contract and it fell through and people from this church welcomed us into their homes for a hundred days. Our family of seven living with them for a hundred days. Like I could have been a serial killer. And, and they welcomed me into their home. Hopefully not. I was also called as your pastor at that point. But who does that? Who, who lets a family of seven just kind of crash with you when you're off away for vacation except for the fact that we're the family of God. So it could be as simple as saying, I'm praying for you, or kind of pulling someone aside and saying, let's, let's have conversation over coffee or in our tightest two groups or in our one-on-one men's mentoring groups.

35:02But I think the greatest encouragement that we get here in this text is not only that we are the family of faith, but that God is our father and Jesus is our brother. If you're ever tempted to doubt your own identity, it's good to remind yourself what family you're from. And this is your fundamental identity. God is our father and we are his beloved children, holy and chosen. Jesus is our older brother who has gone before us and we receive his righteousness and he provides us forgiveness of sins. And so by God's grace, we have membership in Christ family. We are brothers and sisters in Christ, and God is our father.

35:58Praise be to God. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the fact that you have washed us, clean all those who in your family have repented, who've believed in Jesus are now brought into your family. And we are being united by your spirit to be this spiritual family. You're doing something miraculous and amazing through the blood of Christ. And so thank you for that. And we pray that everyone here in this room and even those watching, oh, that they would treasure Christ above all else. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.

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Sermon Text

Matthew 12:46-50

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