Welcome, if if you are new, my name is Grant and I'm one of the
pastors here at the church. And it's good to have you with
us. Good to be worshipping together
and good for you, we believe, for all of us to make this a
part of your weekly rhythm. So thanks for whether you've
been here for many, many, many years longer than I have been or
whether this is your first time. We do want to say welcome and
we're glad that you're here. Glad that you're leaning in.
We're going to be looking at Loop Chapter 8 in in a couple of
moments. But before we jump into that and
before we pray, I just wanted to say a quick thank you from
myself and from the other staff here from the elders.
So this past week, we were invited into like some
intentional time of prayer for Peter and Angela and Holly
Freswick. And Holly, you may know or may
not, is in the NICU, the neonatal intensive care unit at
McMaster. And Peter and Angela sent a
request asking for prayer. And so very quickly, there was a
group saying, well, we can jump on Zoom on Wednesday evening and
we can pray. And that's what you did.
And very quickly, we sent out an invitation to our entire church
for Friday to be for us a day of prayer and fasting.
And we know that many of you leaned in, in very intentional
ways to that day to in, in the way you prayed, in the way you
fasted and the way you paused and slowed down and really made
that an intentional move toward prayer and prayer for Holly.
So I, I simply want to say thank you.
You should know there's a group of elders going down this
afternoon and who will continue to pray with Peter and Angela
and Holly. And as they give us updates,
those things will continue to go out on the prayer chain and in
other ways. But that was a significant week
for us as a church. And I just want to name that.
And I just wanted to say beginning here, thank you for
doing it and thanks for doing it well.
We received many different messages from people saying,
hey, we're in, we're doing it. This is what we can do.
This is how we can pray. And so I wanted to begin by
simply saying thank you for that, right?
If you wanna take a moment to find Luke chapter 8, I'm gonna
pray. I'm gonna settle us into some
time of reflection and study together.
Luke is most of the way through a Bible.
But if you also want to pull it out on a phone, you can follow
along that way. It'll be up on the screens as we
move through the passage as well.
Yeah. Thanks for your love.
Thanks for your grace. Thanks for settling us into
these moments. Thank you that you are with us.
Thanks that long before we woke up.
God, you're working in this day. Long after we go to bed, fall
asleep, turn the lights off, put the book away like whatever it
is you will continue to be at work.
Thanks that we can find great hope and comfort in that.
We want to continue to pray for Peter and Angela and Holly.
We got thanks for invitations to prayer and we ask for healing
for Holly as she continues to grow.
Yeah, we asked now that as we turn to Luke 8, these few
verses, Jesus interaction with his family and with his
disciples, with some crowd, Yeah, that you would remind us
of what it means to be family inside the Kingdom of God.
So thanks for the ways that we get to lean in as the community
and thanks for moments where we can be reminded that there is a
place for belonging inside this thing that we call the church.
So thanks. Teach us, do what you can only
do. We pray in the strong name of
Jesus. Amen.
So Luke 8 versus 19 to 21. That's it.
That's all we're going to cover today.
We'll see how long it goes. Usually when I have more, excuse
me, less verses to cover it, it ends up being a longer sermon.
So no promises here on this one. OK, but Luke 19 to 21 this is
how it sounds. It says now Jesus mother and
brothers came to see him, but they were not able to get near
him because of the crowd. Someone told him your mother and
brothers are standing outside wanting to see you.
He being Jesus, replied. My mother and brothers are those
who hear God's word and put it into practice.
So I want to get one thing out of the way really quick, one
thing just we're not talking about.
This is not a sermon on how to avoid doing what your parents
have told you to do. I can say that now that I'm a
parent, this isn't like a how to avoid the request of your mom or
dad or grandma or grandpa. Like this is not how to get out
of doing what you have been asked to do what you've been
told to do. Like the next time your mom asks
you to clean your room or do something, don't turn around and
say to her, like, my mother and brothers are those who don't
make me do these things. This isn't this isn't that.
And it's not a how to avoid your family 101 seminar either.
Like, this isn't, I'd really rather put my family over here
and just kind of wall them off and live life over here.
But listen, boundaries are good. Boundaries are healthy.
This is also not a sermon about healthy boundaries, but it's not
about how to avoid your family either.
Family is an interesting thing. Family is an interesting word.
I, I had an experience this. So I had to be away for the
weekend, last weekend. And it, I was packing and
getting ready to go. And whenever that starts to
happen, like I don't leave very often without my kiddos, but
like I was packing and like they knew something was up and they
kept coming in and we told them I had to be away.
And this was like, come and hang with me while I'm packing up a
suitcase and things like that. And then I'm getting ready to
go. And finally the time was like,
OK, I had picked up the rental car and I was getting ready to
drive and one of my daughters, I won't tell you who it is, came
up to me and said to me right before she was she was like,
she's like, time to say goodbye, right?
So like hugs, like I'm about to walk out the door and she just
comes up to me and I kneel down and I'm like, this is ready to
say goodbye to her. And she looks up at me and she's
like, they had why do you want to leave us?
And so I had to explain to her, I was like, listen, like, I
don't want to leave you. I don't want like this isn't
something that I'm like, just I can't wait to get out the door.
And God, like I had to sit there for a few.
So might it delayed my departure a little bit because I felt like
it would have been very, very wrong to simply say, Hey, love
you kid. OK, bye.
So I had to explain to her like this is something that I have to
go to and I am looking forward to to going.
This is a friend who I'm going to be with.
And this friend you should know, like when you were young, kiddo,
you called this friend uncle. Like that's how involved they
were in in our life and in your life as a little kid.
And and this was a friend who when mom and dad, when we were
down at seminary in in the States, this friend drove down
to visit us and he came and stayed with us and hung out and
got to know your mom. And then when we got engaged, he
took the photos for us. He did an engagement shoot.
And then when it came time for us to move back home to Canada,
he drove down and with a truck, helped us move our stuff back
up, like risking getting stuck at the border with all this
random stuff in the back of his truck.
And then he stood like, hey, kiddo, like you should know, he
stood up with mom and I at our wedding.
When we got married, he was there.
So like, this is something that I, as much as I don't want to
leave you, I need to go and do these things with this friend to
be there to support him as he's getting married.
Like this is something I need to do.
And so for us, like family, family can sometimes mean
biological family. And I think we also have
language for including others into what we would consider
family or certainly something that like friend falls short of.
And so when we read, at least when I read this passage, I can
run the risk of missing how radically upside down and
backwards what Jesus has just said actually is.
Because I have, in my experience, language for these
friends who I would consider much deeper and closer than
simply a friend. I would consider them closer to
family. And really, at the end of the
day, that's what Jesus is intending to do, is to reshape,
reconfigure what it means to be family inside the Kingdom of
God. But it is a little bit
surprising and it's more surprising the more we unpack
and look into what Jesus has just said to his disciples and
to the crowds and by extension to his biological family who's
waiting outside his mother and brothers.
NT Wright offers this analogy for us because he says, listen,
it's, it's very difficult for us to enter into this passage and
properly understand and grapple with how radical Jesus is being
here. And so he offers us this sort of
this word picture. And I want to talk us through,
he says, picture CEO of any Fortune 500 company, like these
are the Walmarts and the Amazons and the Apples and the Googles
of the world. So we're talking like big, like
CEO, one of the biggest companies in the world.
Now picture highest stake meeting like stakeholders,
shareholders, staff, like you picture the highest stake
meeting that you can imagine with the biggest kind of
decision that needs to be made. And maybe this is how you
picture. Maybe you can picture yourself
sitting in that room, like maybe you're around a board table or
maybe you're like hovering off in the distance, like around
you're kind of watching things unfold in front of you.
But picture the CEO who needs to make the biggest decision of
their year for this organization.
Every single person around the table has budgets and staff and
teams and you know, products to launch.
And this decision is going to shape all of the next year for
this company, this organization. So that's the meeting.
And in the middle of making the decision, all eyes are on the
CEO. Like everybody's just waiting to
see what direction their lives are about to take for the next
365 days. The door opens and an assistant
enters the room and that assistant walks up to the CEO
and leans over and says, excuse me, but that like that important
phone call you're waiting for just came in and, and the CEO
doesn't say anything. It closes the the, the binder
that he's working on turns away. The CEO just walks out of the
room and leaves everybody there in silence, not saying a word.
No, like take 5, No, I'll be right back.
Nothing. Like immediately you're saying
like this, this has to be an important phone call.
Like if this is a phone call that takes over all of what
we're doing and like maybe 5 minutes goes by, maybe a few
more, like can we go? Can we also leave?
Like what should we be doing here?
But just as you like, maybe you're about to leave the the
door opens again. The CEO, that CEO comes back in.
The CEO sits back down at the table and like with the biggest
smile that that CEO can muster, turns around and says that was
my daughter. She had a swimming race and she
won. And then I go back to business.
Like the indictment of our hustle culture is that a story
actually unfolding like that would be shocking.
Like you'd be surprised and maybe even like a little bit
angry. Like you made us wait for that.
That was more important to you than this.
Like we might expect the CEO to ignore the phone call and make
the decision, get the meeting over and then follow up.
Like, if this is all that's about, then like, what are we
doing here? Like, let's we'd say things like
lead well, like let's be strong. It might surprise us for someone
to prioritize their family in a moment like that.
We wouldn't expect it. And that's what's going on here
for Jesus and the disciples and his family, but in reverse.
Because in Jesus's day, there was nothing that superseded that
family bond. Like that was what defined who
you were. All of the purpose that your
life has, the direction, it's what gives you identity and
security belonging. All of it belonged to your
family, your family of origin, your biological for like the
family that you grew up in, like that's what shaped your life.
And for the covenant people of God, for the people of Israel,
it is what defined your belonging to that community was
the family that you were born into, that you came from.
And so for Jesus to not drop everything and either go to his
family and speak to them and then maybe perhaps even bring
them in past the crowds and past the disciples so that they can
sit close with Jesus. For Jesus to not do that is is
just as, if not more shocking than that CEO who are in the
middle of a massive decision for his company, walks out to take a
phone call from his daughter who was at a swim tournament.
And until we wrestle with like that level of uncomfortable,
backwards, kind of upside down nature, we don't fully
understand what Jesus is doing by then turning to his disciples
and saying, my mother and brothers are those who hear the
word and do it. Because with that one word, he's
turning away in the sense from everything that they thought
should have defined him for the people, from the people rather
who should have been on the absolute inside of inside
circles, like the inside list of inside circles.
That's not a word. Don't quote me.
It's upside down. It's a little bit backwards.
What Jesus is saying is that in the Kingdom of God, family,
kinship, belonging, community looks different.
No longer was flesh and blood the strongest bond that could be
imagined. No longer was every other
relationship subservient to that of biological family.
And like I said, most shockingly, membership within
the chosen community, the people of God, would no longer be bound
by flesh and blood or kinship. It would not be determined by
those things. Who you were related to mattered
less and what we're going to see, Gina says.
Something else takes its place. So just to recap, there we go.
Now Jesus mother and brothers, it's one group came to see him,
but they were not able to get near him because of the crowd.
That's the second group. Someone told him.
So maybe from the crowd, maybe one of his disciples, your
mother and brothers are standing outside wanting to see you
because of the crowd. So they cannot get to Jesus.
Maybe Jesus mother and brothers were showing up to drag him
away. So Mark tells this story a
little bit different. In Mark's Gospel, when his
family comes, it's in the midst of conflict.
Jesus has conflict with Pharisees and with teachers of
the law. He has conflict with then his
family who shows up. And in Mark it sounds like this.
When his family heard about this, they went to take charge
of him for they said he is out of his mind.
But we don't get that here. Maybe they've come to take him
away, like Mark writes. Maybe they've just showed up a
little late and they couldn't find a seat.
Maybe they decided to come and see what he's doing and because
of the crowd they can't get near him.
For whatever reason they are waiting out outside and I want
us to see 3 distinct groups, mother and brothers, that is
family here. OK, that's one.
The crowd, that's two, and then his disciples, which we're gonna
see in a minute here. 3 The Order, I think, is important.
Disciples, crowds, biological family who is on the inside is
wrong. It's slightly backwards.
Anybody in Jesus's day would have prioritized biological
family over the disciples, certainly over the crowds.
And I think what Jesus is doing is pushing against what family
or what considered what was considered to be family during
the time of Jesus. There are ways of talking about
organized groups or groups that come together and organized.
It's also mathematical language. I say that because you need to
know this. I am not a mathematician, but
there are two dominant ways that groups can organize themselves.
And one of those ways that groups organize is called
bounded set. So you can think of things
organizing together in this language bounded set.
Now a bounded set looks a lot like this.
A square that is a group of people who are all close enough,
similar enough that they are inside of that square.
I like to talk about country clubs or golf clubs because in
golf clubs it's very clear who is inside and who is outside.
There are very clear sets of requirements to be inside and if
you don't make or achieve those, if you don't qualify, you don't
get to be a member of the group. So what are some of those things
at a Golf Club? I play golf, so let's not be too
hard on all our golfer friends. But typically there are dues,
right? There are fees that you have to
pay and it's very clear. You pay the fees and you're in.
You don't pay the fees, you're out.
What are some of the other things that you need to do?
There's a dress code. You dress a certain way and
you're in. You don't dress a certain way.
You are perceived to be out and in a bounded set.
It's very hard for members to move across this line.
It doesn't happen because things are very fixed.
You are either in or you are out.
It's very hard for those who are out to move in.
It's very hard for those who are in to move out.
Bounded sets, They focus on what is excluded on qualifiers like
in and out. Neat, it's clean, it's tidy.
You are in and you are out. Family in Jesus's day would have
been considered some level of bounded set.
You're in or you're out based on lineage, based on the family you
were born into. It's fixed.
We we still consider families somewhat more fixed, very little
movement across these lines. But Jesus uses the arrival of
his biological family to say that this is not how we are
going to think about family now inside the Kingdom of God,
inside the Kingdom of heaven as it is unfolding, as it is being
brought near, as it is arriving. One of the things that will
change is the way in which we organize ourselves.
It's not going to be neat and clean.
It's not going to be tidy. It's not going to be like if you
achieve a checklist of like one check, 2 check, three check 4
check, you are in and as soon as you like.
If you miss one, then you're out.
Family will be different and so that's why it's shocking, he
says. So someone told me, Brother,
brother here standing outside, wanting to see you, he replied.
My mother and brothers, my family says, are those who hear
God's word and then put it into practice.
Family to Jesus, what defines you as included in the family of
God, he says, are those who hear the Word and who put it into
practice. In other words, Jesus family are
those who hear his teachings, who embrace them, who allow them
to transform their lives so that the way of the Kingdom is lived
out through them. Those who hear the word, those
who put it into practice, it might be easy to think that
Jesus has just simply like constructed another box, right?
Like in or out, Do or don't. There is no try.
Kind of like Yoda esque Christianity, but this verb to
do like put it into practice here.
Other translations just simply say do it.
Those who do it. That verb there, poio means to
make, to do. I like put it into practice
because it kind of hangs in the air.
There's this like continuation of implied by it.
It's not simply like those who hear the word and do it check.
I've done it. It's those who hear the Word and
are doing it, are living it out, are practicing it.
Those who hear, who embrace, who live into the teachings of God
in a way that allows their shifts, their changes, their
life so that they live differently in perpetuity.
It is a continuing conversion of your life and your heart and
your mind and your spirit and your soul toward the things of
God. It's not simply I heard it, I
did it, I'm done, I'm in, he says.
It needs to be put into practice.
It becomes not just something you do, but who you are.
I like golf, so I'm sorry I picked on country clubs, but I'm
not a golfer. There's a difference.
I like 2G. It's frustrating, but I am not a
golfer. Why?
Because I play charity tournaments like once or twice a
year. Those are best ball.
If you don't know what best ball is, it's the greatest invention
in golf because four of you hit the ball and then if you're me,
you go into the woods and spend 10 minutes finding your ball and
then you get to pick it up and take it to where the best ball
lies. It's fantastic and if you are
really like me, you plan for that and you take extra balls so
that you don't even have to go into the forest to look very
long. You just take a ball out of your
bag and say I'll hit where you hit.
It's great, that shot becomes your shot.
You hit from there like it's great.
The game continues and you just always get to have the greatest
shot of the day. Couple weeks ago I played my
first round of golf this year, 18th hole.
Like I'm tired, my hands are sore, I'm having a great time,
big smile on my face for like my back is sore, my hands are sore.
I went to see a physiotherapist afterward.
I like. By the end of it, I went home
and I wanted a nap. I am not a golfer, but I enjoy
golf. The golfers are ones who go and
play around and then leave that round and go to the driving
range and hit 1000 balls at the driving range and then leave the
driving range and go to the putting green and maybe put for
a few 100 times trying to figure out lies and reads and how
they're gonna actually change their game.
Like by the time I've had a nap and a shower and like, I'm like
halfway to bed, they're still putting in the work, they're
still practicing, they're still living it out in a very
different way than I am. I don't want the lifestyle
associated with being a golfer. I just wanna golf and have a
great time. And if I, you know, have to
Chuck the club into the woods or into the lake because the ball
went in the lake, like, that's fine with me.
I don't want the lifestyle that's required in order to be a
golfer here. The word Jesus says and put it
into practice. It's about lifestyle.
What Jesus is saying here is that to be a member of the
community, to be part of the Kingdom of God, to be part of
Jesus family changes and shapes your entire lifestyle.
It's not just about checking a box, it's not just about
qualifying. It's not just about like making
it in, but just barely. It's about allowing the gospel
and the message of Jesus's life, his death, his resurrection.
It's about all of his teachings getting into your life in such a
way that it reorders and reorients your entire life
style. How you live changes.
That's the mark of the family of God.
According to Jesus. Life inside the Kingdom of God
and family inside the Kingdom of God is marked by your entire
life being shaped around hearing and practicing the Word.
Now here's the grace of it, because I think we can often
hear that message, something similar to it, and kind of get
thrown into fear and shame. Like I can't do that.
I don't do that. Like not my entire lifestyle,
like not everything, like absolutely everything.
Like like how, how do I, where do I start?
Like you're talking about entire lifestyle.
Like help me just take the first little step.
Maybe I, I, I won't be good enough.
Maybe I won't measure up. Like maybe I can't do that.
Maybe I'll start down the road and, and it'll become too hard.
Like, how do we avoid all of that?
Here's the good news of the gospel right Membership within
the family of God is earned, but it's earned through the death
and the resurrection of Jesus. That's the qualifier.
It's earned through the life and the teaching of Jesus.
It turned entirely on the merit of who Jesus is.
It's demonstrated through the lives of those transformed by
the love and the grace of God. That's the difference in First
John 3/1. We've got Oht.
Not sure what's happening there. That's fine.
That'll go away. See what great love in First
John the Father has lavished on us that we should be.
This is not gonna work, children of God, and that's good works up
there. That's great.
And that is what we are, and that's what I want you to hear.
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we
should be called children of God.
And that is what we are. Scripture repeatedly points to
you being enveloped into what Jesus calls family, brought into
the family of God for it to be declared over you that you are
part of God's family in love. God calls you his child in John
13. Jesus says this a new command I
give you love one another. As I have loved you, so you must
love one another. By this everyone you will know
that you are my disciples if you love one another, he says.
What is the mark of a disciple that you love each other?
What is the mark of one who is included into the family of God?
You hear the Word and you and you do it.
It demonstrates who you are and how you are.
Jesus takes membership and instead of being centred, set,
bound or bounded set, rather he puts himself at the centre and
he says membership to the community, no longer bounded but
governed by direction. And so you could be out here.
And if you are hearing the word, putting it into practice says,
hey, the direction of your life is moving toward the centre,
toward Jesus. You could be here and moving.
You could be way out here and moving.
The other reality is you could be here and moving this way.
What direction is your life taking?
What direction are you moving? Are you moving closer to Jesus?
Who is the centre? Are you moving further away from
Jesus? Who is the centre?
Because my mother and brothers are those who hear the Word, put
it into practice. And far from being a limiting or
confining factor on who can and can't be part of God's family,
what it does is it blows open membership into God's family to
anyone. Because it's not about the
family that you're born into. It's not about whether you're
born with like a spiritual silver spoon in your mouth or
like on third base, like what Head Start were you given.
It's about the direction that your life is taking, and it's
about how we are allowing Jesus to define that direction.
If you're part of my family, you're gonna naturally start to
do the things that I do. And so one Sunday, I showed up
into this room to like sound check or something.
And I walked around the corner and Elizabeth was up here, my
youngest, like, she's 19 months. And she was up here blabbering
away and just like 2 standing up here and I'm like, man, like,
yeah, well, listen, like we just whether she whether she becomes
a pastor preacher who like that's listen like that's that's
where my mind goes. But like, that's not what's at
stake. Children do the things they see
their parents doing. They they start to become like
their family, their aunts and their uncles, like their
grandparents, those around them, those who are raising them.
They start to look like and sound like and copy.
They they mimic the things of their family.
And so if one of my kids comes and says like, well, we're gonna
make bracelets out of this thread, then you better bet that
all three of them are now making bracelets out of that same
thread. They are like one another and
Elizabeth sees me up here enough that she got into this room and
came up here and wanted to preach all sermon, got words to
say. You will be like your family.
You will be like those around you.
You will be like Jesus. That's the call at the end of
the day, is to move your life in the direction of the Kingdom and
along with the direction of the Kingdom, enveloped by the
Kingdom of God in a way that it transforms your life so that you
become more like the things of the Kingdom, so that your life
has lived toward greater love, so that you demonstrate more
patience and less anger. Maybe you start to experience
this, this incomprehensible non anxiousness.
As you move, the things of the Kingdom will naturally start
flowing out of you because you are becoming more and more like
Jesus. They will flow out of you just
like they flow out of Jesus and and through you like this is our
prayer that each one of us becomes Kingdom people in a way
that changes those around us. Last thing I want to say, this
gives a beautiful image of what it means to be family for those
who may not have a great relationship or any relationship
with their biological family. And so for those of us who have
found ourselves inside this thing that we called the church
for a long time, like the onus is on you and on us to be
family. To come alongside and deliver a
meal and to pray for and to check in on and to show up
alongside for the people in this community.
The people you rub shoulders with and have coffee with.
The people you dig in the garden beside, the people you pray for,
the people you fast for. That's the call of the church is
to become the community that Jesus describes here.
His family, his mother, his brothers, those who hear the
word, those who are captured by it, and those who do it.
Let me pray, God, thanks for your love.
Thanks for your Grace. Thanks for that.
We have all of it to experience, not in isolation, loneliness on
our own, but in community together.
God thinks that you continue to challenge us to live in the
greater community, to allow all of our life to be transformed by
your teaching, to allow our our hearts and our minds to be
captured by the message of the gospel.
Your life, your teaching, your death, your resurrection spirits
presence with us. So God, I pray that you would do
that again today, that you would capture our hearts, capture our
minds, our spirit in a way that transforms us.
God, I pray that each one of us would long to live life like
inside of what you've designed in alignment with the Kingdom,
hearing your word, doing the things of the Kingdom,
practicing it, living it out. We gotta pray that you would
challenge us to be that for one another, to be family, to be
community, to be these deep, meaningful relationships for one
another. Friendships that feel like
family feel a little bit more than just friends.
Because we know none of us is best in isolation or loneliness,
each one of us created to be in community.
So yeah, I I would pray that you would do that.
Make us into the community that you need, not the community that
we want. Make us into the people that you
need, not the people we want to be.
Yeah, that pretty. Make us more like Jesus and, and
in doing so, God, I pray that you would turn our hearts and
our minds to the world in a way that is deeply convicted, in a
way that grieves in, in a way that rises with like righteous
anger for the evil that is around us.
Not in a way that is paralyzed or silent, but in a way that
works in our corner of the world to push back against the
darkness. So God, as we continue to
worship and as we move from this place, the parking lot to
transportation home into our houses, into the week to work,
to school, into different groups of people, how would each one of
us take the Kingdom as we go, where we live out what it means
to be called family of Jesus? And will we do it in a way that
is loving and is non anxious and is peacemaking in a world to God
that we know is deeply broken and in the midst of grief and
sorrow and sadness? So you gotta make us ones who
carry your love and your light into the world.
We pray these things in the strong name of Jesus, Amen.