WWUTT 2148 Jesus Says Who is His Family (Mark 3:31-35)

As Jesus was teaching, he was told that his mother and his brothers and sisters were standing outside waiting to talk to him. And he said, who are my mother and my brothers? And he said, whoever does the will of God when we understand the text.

Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When We Understand the Text is an online ministry dedicated to teaching the Word of God in context, promoting sound doctrine while exposing the faulty.

Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe.

Jesus and His Family in Mark 3

Thank you, Becky. In our study of the Gospel of Mark, we've got one section to finish up in Chapter 3, a section where Jesus talks about who is really his family. So let me begin reading here in verses 31 to 35 out of the Legacy Standard Bible.

Hear the word of the Lord. Then his mother and his brothers arrived, and standing outside they sent word to him, calling him. And a crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, Behold, your mother and your brothers are outside looking for you.

And answering them, he said, Who are my mother and my brothers? And looking about at those who were sitting around him, he said, Behold, my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of God, he is my mother and sister and brother.

I kind of mixed that up at the end. It's, he is my brother and sister and mother. You got the point. So let me remind you of the context here before we come to this particular section. Remember that Jesus has returned home.

It doesn't say exactly where home is, whether he's come back to Nazareth or to Capernaum. But we know that the crowd has come and gathered around him so that he and his disciples can't even eat a meal.

That's what's said in verse 20. The crowd wants to see more miracles. They want to hear more teaching, whatever it might be. So you have the reaction of the crowd in verse 20. And then you have a reaction from his family in verse 21.

His own people tried to take custody of him, it says. We know this has to do with his family. They were saying that he has lost his senses. And then you have the reaction of the scribes and the Pharisees who say that he's only able to cast out demons because he has a demon himself or he is the prince of demons.

And that was something that we had exposited yesterday. And that's a section of the text. We're kind of working backwards here because you have the reaction of the crowds, the reaction of Jesus' family, the reaction of the scribes and the Pharisees.

Jesus responds to the scribes first. And that was the section we looked at yesterday. And then he responds to his family coming to him. And that's the section we look at today. Then when we pick this up next week on Monday, when we come back into our New Testament study, we're going to see Jesus address the crowds.

And then he's going to teach them in parables, as we have in chapter four, the parable of the sower, or as it's also referred to as the parable of the soils. So come back on Monday as we look at at the first parables that Mark writes about here in his gospel.

So with regards to Jesus' family, it says in verse 31, his mother and his brothers arrived and standing outside, they sent word to him calling him. Now, Jesus' reaction here is odd. It's kind of funny.

Why would he just blow them off this way? But it seems that their intentions were to try to take him home. If they're in Capernaum, then maybe they wanted to take him back to Nazareth and have an intervention.

With him.

Hey, stop this stuff. You're attracting crowds. People are going mad over whatever it is that you are teaching and doing. So to calm the crowds, you need to just take a step back here. That may have been their intention, because what we read back in verse 21 was his own people had heard that he had come back into the area and they went out to take custody of him for they were saying he has lost his senses.

Now, this may not have been Mary's intention. I'm just speculating here, but it could have been that she was with them because she wants to see her son. First of all, that's a good reason to want to come along with them.

But secondly, they're using her to try to say to Jesus, hey, just come home and take care of your mother. You're the oldest. You need to provide for your widowed mother. And we know from the Gospel of John that Jesus does provide for Mary.

In fact, as he is dying on the cross, he makes sure that she's provided for in assigning John the youngest of the apostles to take care of Mary, saying to Mary, behold, your son and saying to John, behold, your mother, so that that that she is now his responsibility.

So he does indeed provide for and take care of his mother. And there are other occasions when his mother comes into even his earthly ministry here in this particular occasion. He's not trying to blow anybody off.

He's making a particular point. He's not going to go with his family, though, because they want to take him home. And he's not trying to say that his mother is unimportant. But this is still an incredibly profound statement that he makes here.

And it's something that we as Christians can really take to heart. So let me continue on here and I'll show you further. Verse 32, a crowd was sitting around him and they said to him, behold, your mother and your brothers are outside looking for you.

And again, this, you know, points back to what we read in verse 21. They're trying to get him to take him home. The crowd, though, is preventing them from getting to him and really probably preventing Jesus from getting to them as well, because as we read in verse 20, they gathered again so that Jesus and the disciples are so inundated with the attention of the crowd that they cannot even eat a meal.

So Jesus' family can't get to him. And they say, your brothers are outside, your mother and your brothers are looking for you. And answering them, he said, he means to make for them a spiritual point.

And he said to them, who are my mother and my brothers? And this is a rhetorical question, of course, because Jesus is going to give the answer. Verse 34, looking about it, those who were sitting around him, he said, behold, my mother and my brothers.

For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother. Now we had read this before in Matthew 12, when we were going through Matthew's gospel. And then even when you get to Matthew 25, and Jesus talks about whatever you have done to the least of these brothers of mine, you have done it also unto me.

And that goes back to Matthew 12, where he said that those who do the will of my father in heaven, that's the way it's put in Matthew's gospel. They are my mother and brothers and sisters. And so when he then says in Matthew 25, 40, that what you have done to the least of these brothers of mine, you have done also to me, we understand that Jesus is referring to fellow Christians.

He is not talking about the marginalized in society or the outcast, you know, everybody in a culture who would be the outcast. That's not what Jesus is referring to, although that's often the way that verse gets twisted and applied.

He's specifically saying that your fellow Christians, those who are also followers of Christ, even the least of them, those that the world would consider to be the least, they are Christ's true family, and we need to consider them family as well.

And so that same thing is being said here in Mark three, of course, it's the same account that we read in Matthew 12. But those who are followers of Jesus, they are our brothers and sisters, which is why we refer to our brothers and sisters in the faith, right?

Jesus calls them brothers and sisters, and so we need to consider them our brothers and sisters also. Listen to what Matthew Henry says about this section, verses 31 to 35. He says, it is a great comfort to all true Christians that they are dearer to Christ than mother, brother, or sister as such.

Merely as relations in the flesh would have been even had they been holy, blessed be God. This great and gracious privilege is ours even now, for though Christ's bodily presence cannot be enjoyed by us, his spiritual presence is not denied us.

So Jesus in this section, according to what Matthew Henry is saying here, in this section, Jesus is placing a greater emphasis on his spiritual brothers and sisters than he is even on his own blood relations.

Mary was still a dear woman to him. Absolutely. She is his mother, and she was favored by God, favored among women and worthy of honor as we read about in Luke chapter one. It's not that Jesus is saying Mary is an unimportant person to him here, but who is more important than his own blood relations are those who do the will of God.

Whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother. Mary is so important because she was a godly woman, not simply because she was the mother of Jesus, but we read consistently throughout the New Testament that she was one who understood who Jesus was and was with him even throughout his earthly ministry and even afterward for in the upper room in Acts chapter one, when the Holy Spirit is about to be given to the apostles and they're going to go out at Pentecost and preach the gospel there in Jerusalem.

Mary and Jesus brothers are mentioned there as being among the 120 that are in the upper room there in Acts chapter one. So Mary had been with Jesus and I believe believed in Jesus from the beginning of his ministry even when Jesus had gone and was teaching in the temple as a youth in Luke chapter three, though Mary and Joseph scolded him from leaving them unannounced and going into the temple and teaching.

Yet it says that Mary pondered all these things in her heart. That's Luke chapter two, by the way. I think I said three, but the end of Luke two is where we read of Jesus teaching in the temple when he was young.

So Mary is a godly woman and is worthy of honor, but she is not deserving of the kind of veneration or we might also call it worship that the Roman Catholic Church or the Greek Orthodox give to Mary. They go way overboard in what they say would be honoring of Mary.

It's actually not honoring of Mary. It's dishonoring to make these images of her and to bow down to them and to burn incense to them and to pray to them. Mary does not. She would not approve of any of this.

She would say, pray to my son. Why are you praying to me or pray to the father to whom you now have access because of what the son has done for you? Why is anyone praying to Mary? There's nowhere in scripture that this is modeled that we can be praying to any dead saint and I know Mary's not actually dead.

She's alive in heaven, but she is not with us here on earth and no one who has left us on earth to go and be with God in heaven is communicating with us. We can't talk with them and they cannot talk with us.

And scripture explicitly states that we should not be communicating with the dead. I made a comment on Twitter slash X recently. This is one that I've made before. I've made this post in the past, but I said, Mary, the mother of Jesus was a godly woman worthy of honor, but she was not sinless, cannot save anyone, did not remain a virgin, does not answer prayer, has never appeared to anybody, was not bodily assumed into heaven, would despise Roman Catholicism.

Well, you can probably imagine that the Catholics did not like that very much. But even some Protestants sent me stuff on, you know, you need to be a little bit more respectful on your disagreement of Mary worship.

They try to point me to the fact that some of these traditions that the Catholics have actually are rooted in Jewish history, in fact. And they would point me to this fellow, Protestants and Catholics alike were both pointing me to this fellow named Dr. Brant Petrie and the stuff that he has written on why Mary is venerated or honored the way that she is now.

Brant Petrie is a Catholic. So right away, when I'm looking at that going, you already know where this is going to go. And sure enough, when I open it up and I watch it and I listen to it, none of the arguments that are being presented here are anything new.

Now, one of the things that he talks about is with regards to whether or not Jesus actually had half siblings or if Mary was perpetually a virgin for the rest of her life. I'm going to save that, though, because there's a section that comes up a little bit later on in Mark where Jesus half brothers are mentioned by name.

And I'll wait until we get there to kind of address that controversy or dogma. One of the more common arguments, though, that I've heard made. Is that Mary is the new Eve and Jesus even addresses Mary as the new Eve.

He has a special title for her. That is a title that was borrowed from the way that Eve is referred to in the book of Genesis. Let me go ahead and play here these comments. So this is a fellow that's interviewing Dr. Petrie and then he's giving his responses and I will I'll break in here a little bit and and offer my commentary.

So here we go.

Mary as the New Eve

Now, how do we understand that Mary is in God's plan a new Eve?

Yeah.

Well, there are several texts in the New Testament that would point to this. But for me, the place I like to start with is the Gospel of John. This is really where it's clearest in two key episodes where Mary appears, the wedding at Cana and then the crucifixion of Jesus on the cross.

And one of the things you'll notice about both those episodes is that's strange. That's unusual is that Jesus, when he speaks to Mary, doesn't call her Mary and he doesn't call her mother. He calls her woman.

He addresses her as Gune in Greek, the word woman. And when you read it as an English speaker, you think, oh, man, this sounds rude.

Right.

It sounds like Jesus is dishonoring his mother.

Right.

Because I know I called my mother woman.

It would not be good.

Right.

It wouldn't be good.

But but whenever you see something strange like that in context, it's almost invariably some key to unlocking it in the Old Testament. Well, if you go back to the Old Testament, the book of Genesis, chapter one and two, although we always think of her as Eve, which she is named in Genesis, chapter three.

That's actually not the primary way of referring to the first woman. Twelve times before that in Genesis two, she's called woman, woman, woman, woman over and over again. So that in a sense, the word woman is the principal name for the first woman of the first creation Eve.

Right.

So when you look at the Gospel, John, there's a lot of detail I can't go into right now, but basically the first couple of chapters of John are actually modeled on the book of Genesis. It begins with the words in the beginning, just like Genesis.

And it kind of culminates in the miracle of the wedding of Cana. So when Jesus is being revealed in John, chapter one, as the one who's going to bring a new creation, who's like the new Adam, and then he calls his mother, Gune woman, the same word used to refer to Eve.

Since ancient times, Christian readers and modern scholars have recognized what is happening is that Jesus isn't just being revealed as a new Adam, who's going to bring a new creation, but Mary is the new Eve.

I love that. And that's where you, again, showing that context, knowing the Old Testament background for Eve being called woman and then knowing the early church fathers who interpret that together.

Oh, absolutely.

You see the continuity here.

Now, I've always found this argument to be extremely frustrating. Even when I was really young, I would hear Catholics say this, that Jesus calls Mary woman, which means that she is the new Eve, because that's what Eve was called back in Genesis.

Even when I was young and I heard them say that, I knew that it was wrong. Because what do you do with a couple of chapters later in John's gospel when Jesus calls the woman at the well, woman, the same name, the same title that he uses for Mary and John to at the wedding at Cana?

He also says to the woman at the well in Samaria. But that's not the only place that Jesus calls another woman, woman. He says it to the woman that's caught in adultery in John eight. He calls her woman.

And it's also not exclusive to John's gospel. If you look at the other gospels, there are other places where Jesus addresses a woman as woman. It turns out that that is a common thing to say to a woman in first century Judea at that particular time.

It's like saying ma 'am or miss or whatever to call a woman, woman, Jesus was simply using the language that most people use at that particular time. There's nothing here that is saying that, that Mary is a new Eve.

She certainly has a special place that is above any other woman in history. I truly believe that. But the way that the Catholics take this just goes too far. And Mary would never have approved of it. She would hate it.

She would hate what Roman Catholicism and Greek Orthodoxy do to Mary, making these likenesses of her that probably don't look a speck like her at all. And then bowing to them and praying to them and, and asking that she would do things for them and making these claims that she's made appearances, which has never happened.

Mary has never made an appearance to anybody and granted requests or done miracles or anything of the sort. It's just gone too far. And this, this account right here in Mark chapter three demonstrates to us that Jesus earthly relations were not more important to him than those who were related to the kingdom of God spiritually through faith in him.

Once again, Matthew Henry pointing out, it is a great comfort to all Christians that we are dearer to Christ than his own blood relations would be. He had half brothers that would eventually come to faith and, and I believe would write a couple of books of the new Testament, James and Jude.

But their importance is not because they were half brothers of Jesus. In fact, they don't even call themselves that Jude refers to himself as a brother of James and James has talked about as being the half brother of the Lord in Galatians one 19.

So what, what makes them so important though, is because they are followers of Christ, not because they're related to him by blood, but we are related to one another through the spirit of God who dwells within us.

And in a certain sense, we're related by blood. We're covered with the blood of the lamp, but even you and I are covered with that blood.

Spiritually.

That blood was not physically sprinkled upon us. It is because we have faith in Christ that his blood covers us and our sins are atoned.

For.

And now through faith in Jesus, we've been adopted into the family of God and we can call upon God as our father, whoever does the will of God. And these are the ones who are Jesus brothers and sisters and mother, amen.

Let's stop there. We'll pray. And we come back into our study of Isaiah tomorrow. So please join me again for more great Bible study here on when we understand the text, heavenly father, we thank you for what we have read here in the scriptures.

And we're, we're thankful that you have called us your children. As we read about in first John chapter three, how great is the love the father has for us that we might be called the children of God. And so we are because of what Jesus has done for us, his death on the cross, his resurrection from the grave, all who believe in him.

We are not left as orphans. We are not at enmity with God. We have been gathered into your family and can call upon you as our father who is in.

Heaven.

Hear our prayers today and guide us in righteousness today that we may do what is pleasing to you, the will of God in our lives. It's in Jesus name. We pray.

Amen.

You've been listening to when we understand the text with pastor Gabe Hughes, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a new Testament study. Then on Thursday, we look at an old Testament book.

On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers. Tomorrow, we'll pick up on an old Testament study when we understand the text.