In His Own Words--Chapter 2

-->

Chapter 2 – Jesus and Our Families

The congregation of my first church in rural Wisconsin was so small that I could easily have visited every family once a week. Instead, I went door to door seeking new people. One evening, I ended up in the living room of a family that was watching a Billy Graham crusade on television. When the program was over, I said, “If you had been there, would you have gone forward to receive Christ?”

They answered, “Probably.”

I said, “Would you like to receive Him now?”

They said they would, and they did—all of them. Not long afterwards I baptized them, and they became regular attenders at the church. Unfortunately, conversion did not immediately transform an unhappy family into a joyous one. On more than one occasion, the lady of the house came to me with an unusual request.

She would begin by pointing out passages such as the following.

If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple (Luke 14:26).

And He said to them, "Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive many times as much at this time and in the age to come, eternal life” (Luke 18:29-30).

Then she would beg me to send her as a missionary to another country. Perhaps some of the Lord’s precepts seemed rather burdensome, but not this one. She thought it would be a relief to leave her family for Jesus’ sake. I kid you not. This actually happened.

Though this lady was misguided, her notions were close to actual the experience of many missionaries. Today’s tearful goodbyes at the airport are little in comparison with nineteenth-century servants of Christ considered routine.

John Paton, missionary to the New Hebrides buried his first wife and infant son on an island filled with cannibals. (He slept for some time on their graves to prevent the natives from exhuming and devouring them.) Not long afterwards, he barely escaped with his own life. A few years later, he returned to a neighboring island with his second wife. Though the majority of the indigenous population on this island were eventually converted, the Patons were frequently in danger of losing their lives. They also had to endure year-long separations from their school-age children. For them, as for many missionaries, the calling of Christ meant putting Him above their families.

Family Loyalty in the Old Testament

To put in perspective Jesus’ insistence that we love Him more than we love our families, we need to go back to the Old Testament. I begin with the respect children are supposed to have for their parents.

Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the LORD your God gives you (Exodus 20:12).

He who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death (Exodus 21:17).

Jesus quoted both of these passages in Matthew 15:4 to highlight the respect and care children should have for their parents. Lack of such respect was so serious that it is scathingly denounced in the Old Testament. For example, “The eye that mocks a father and scorns a mother, the ravens of the valley will pick it out, and the young eagles will eat it” (Proverbs 30:17).

On the other hand, parents properly love and care for their offspring: “A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children “(Proverbs 13:22). A mother’s love is so natural and good that we are shocked when a mother murders her child. God’s love is like a mother’s love, only better.  “Can a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, but I will not forget you” (Isaiah 49:15).

What is important enough to warrant breaking the bonds of familial duty and affection? Loyalty to God supersedes loyalty to family.

 If your brother, your mother's son, or your son or daughter, or the wife you cherish, or your friend who is as your own soul, entice you secretly, saying, “Let us go and serve other gods”  (whom neither you nor your fathers have known, of the gods of the peoples who are around you, near you or far from you, from one end of the earth to the other end), you shall not yield to him or listen to him; and your eye shall not pity him, nor shall you spare or conceal him. But you shall surely kill him; your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. So you shall stone him to death because he has sought to seduce you from the LORD your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery (Deuteronomy 13:6-10).

I hasten to add that we are no longer under this provision of the Mosaic Law. That harsh sentence was part of God’s zealous determination to preserve true faith in Israel until Christ came. However, it is clear that loyalty to God trumps loyalty to family.

Loving Family More Than God

I heard recently about a man who gave a Bible to his unbelieving sister. The next day she died in a car accident. This man became bitter and has backed away from church or any discussion of spiritual things. His love for his sister was apparently greater than his love for God. Probably most of us have loved ones who will spend eternity in hell. Oh, how that thought pains us! It torments us. But the question we must face is who holds first place in our hearts?

It is an old, old temptation, for Adam loved his wife more than he loved God, so he followed her into sin and death. Men are supposed to love their wives with a self-sacrificing love as Christ loved the church (Ephesians 5:25), but sin enters when a man loves his wife more than he loves God.

I have often seen children pull their families out of church after the parents have pushed those children into sports. Team sports on Sunday capture the child’s heart. The father’s heart has already been captured by Sunday afternoon football, so he has no moral authority to keep his child from playing on Sunday. The parents love the child’s present happiness more than they love the child’s eternal wellbeing, and more than they love God. The result? Church attendance becomes an occasional event, and ten years later the parents bewail their child’s lack of faith.

Even without that kind of parental short-sightedness, families are divided. Apart from the gracious work of the Holy Spirit opening our eyes, we are blind to Christ and hostile to God. As the prophet Micah put it,

For son treats father contemptuously,
Daughter rises up against her mother,
Daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
A man's enemies are the men of his own
     household (Micah 7:6).

Wait, doesn’t that sound like something Jesus said? Yes, indeed.

Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;  and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me (Matthew 10:34-37).

It is not just an accident or poor family dynamics that creates a spiritual division between two people who would naturally love each other. Jesus divides people. He slices down through those natural ties and demands whole-hearted love for Himself.

Jesus was not asking any more or any less than for Himself than the Lord God required of Old Testament believers. God told Jeremiah not to marry and raise sons and daughters (Jeremiah 16:2). In order to be God’s prophet, he had to set aside his natural human desire for a family. One morning God told Ezekiel that his wife would die, and the prophecy came to pass that very evening. She was “the desire of [his] eyes,” but the Lord would not permit him to weep or mourn for her. God used her death and the hiding of Ezekiel’s grief as a prophetic parable for the people. Wow! That was harsh. It was “A Severe Mercy.”[1]

Does the demand of Jesus—that you put Him first in your life above your family—does this demand shock you? It should. Would it have shocked a first-century Jew? Absolutely. He would have understood that no one but the Lord God has the right to demand such allegiance. 

Hear, O Israel! The Lord [Yahweh] is our God, the Lord is one!  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might (Deuteronomy 6:4-5).

If Jesus was not God, He was setting Himself up as a deliberate rival to God. So, He was either God or a demon from hell. You choose.

Before we leave this topic, are there family ties that threaten to pull you away from Christ and His church? If the devil discovers that a family picnic or a birthday party for Aunt Matilda’s dog is enough to keep you out of church, you won’t be worshiping with other believers three Sundays out of four. Do you resent God because a loved one has died in unbelief and is now suffering the wrath of God? Has God called you to a ministry that would move you away from your family, and are you hesitating to go because you love them so much? Does your faith in Christ create so much friction with your relatives that you are beginning to think following Jesus is just not worth it?

Jesus is worth it. Jesus is more important than your father, your mother, your sister or brother. Jesus is more important than your wife or husband or children. Jesus all by Himself will be enough for you because He is God, but since He loves you, He will give you even more.

 Jesus said, “Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms, for My sake and for the gospel's sake, but that he will receive a hundred times as much now in the present age, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms, along with persecutions; and in the age to come, eternal life” (Mark 10:29-30).

The church will be your family when your family turns its back on you. “If my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up” (Psalm 27:10, marginal reading).

---

[1]  This title of a great book by Sheldon Vanauken is a quotation from Book viii of Augustine’s Confessions.

In His Own Words -- Chapter 1

Chapter 1 – Jesus and the Prophets

Cultural Christians, and most other despisers of the biblical Jesus, approve of the Sermon on the Mount. After all, it contains their favorite verse, “Do not judge so that you will not be judged” (Matthew 7:1). Of course, they fail to notice that later in the same chapter, Jesus tells us how to judge false prophets. Never mind that. Isn’t the essential message of the Sermon on the Mount, “Be nice to everybody, and they will be nice to you?”

Well, in a word, NO! The Sermon on the Mount tells us how to live a life of radical discipleship as citizens of the kingdom of heaven. And who is the king of that kingdom? It is Jesus. Consider what He says about Himself in the opening paragraph of the sermon.

Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you (Matthew 5:10-12).

Look carefully at what Jesus is saying. Persecution for the sake of righteousness is not persecution for being a nice, law-abiding citizen. It is equivalent to persecution for the sake of Jesus. Furthermore, the disciples of Jesus are like the prophets of old who were persecuted for delivering the message of Yahweh.[1]

The disciples of Jesus who proclaim His message are like the prophets who proclaimed the word of the Lord. The prophets were hated for God’s sake. The disciples are hated for Jesus’ sake. These parallels are strengthened in subsequent sayings of Jesus.

Jesus Sends Prophets

Near the end of His earthly ministry, Jesus said to the Pharisees who had rejected Him,

Therefore, behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes; some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city, so that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.... Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her (Matthew 23: 34-35, 37a)!

The whole Old Testament clearly teaches that neither angels nor great men send the prophets. God, and God alone, has that prerogative. Yet Jesus sends prophets.

To the rebellious Jews of Jeremiah’s day, Yahweh said, “Since the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt until this day, I have sent you all My servants the prophets, daily rising early and sending them” (Jeremiah 7:25-26). “Listen to the words of My servants the prophets, whom I have been sending to you again and again, but you have not listened” (Jeremiah 26:4-5). “Also I have sent to you all My servants the prophets, sending them again and again” (Jeremiah 35:15).

God was patient and persistent. He did not send Israel one messenger. He sent them many prophets throughout their long, rebellious history. Likewise, Jesus predicted that He would be sending “prophets and wise men and scribes” who would encounter determined, implacable rejection. Moreover, Jesus places His prophetic messengers on the same plane as the prophets of old who warned to rebellious Jerusalem.

Under His Wings

Earlier in this chapter I quoted only the first part of Matthew 23:37. Here is the whole of it.

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling.

Here, Jesus claims that He is the One who sent the Old Testament prophets in an effort to gather the “children” of Jerusalem under His wings. (In biblical terminology, the “children” of a city are its inhabitants.)

To come under the wings of Yahweh is to find refuge and protection in Him. Boaz blessed the foreigner Ruth because she had left her father’s house and her father’s gods, saying “May the Lord reward your work, and your wages be full from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to seek refuge” (Ruth 2:12). When David fled from Saul, he prayed, “My soul takes refuge in You; and in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge until destruction passes by” (Psalm 57:1). Similar expressions occur in Psalm 17:8; 36:7; and 91:4).

Jesus did not simply invite the Old Testament Jewish people to take shelter under His wings. Hundreds of years before He was born on earth, He actively sought to gather them under His wings. He said, “How often I wanted to gather your children.” This is another work of God. What the Lord sought to do through His prophets, He will effectively do when He gathers the dispersed refugees of Israel at the end of the age.

“If your outcasts are at the ends of the earth, from there the Lordyour God will gather you, and from there He will bring you back” (Deuteronomy 30:4). “For a brief moment I forsook you, but with great compassion I will gather you” (Isaiah 54:7). Similar expressions are common throughout the Old Testament.

Prophets and angels do not gather the people of God to themselves, but Jesus uses prophets and preachers to seek and to gather His lost ones under His wings to protect them from the wrath to come.

When I was a child one of the stories that fascinated me was the parable of The Little Red Hen by Mrs. Floyd McCague. One day a mother hen sensed the danger of a rapidly approaching prairie fire. She clucked to her little chicks to come and find shelter under her wings. After the fire had swept through the barnyard, the farmer returned. There he found the charred body of the little red hen, but when he pushed her over with his foot, her little chicks scurried out from under her blackened wings. One little chick, however, had refused to listen to his mother’s call, and he was found burned and dead a few feet away from her. The lesson to my childish heart was clear. Listen to the call of Jesus. He is seeking to gather His little ones to protect them from the coming fire of judgment.

Hated for Jesus’ Sake

In the sermon on the Mount, Jesus said that His disciples would be hated for His sake. This is a common theme in the teaching of Jesus.

Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death. You will be hated by all because of My name, but it is the one who has endured to the end who will be saved (Matthew 10:21-22).
Then they will deliver you to tribulation, and will kill you, and you will be hated by all nations because of My name (Matthew 24:9).
Remember the word that I said to you, “A slave is not greater than his master.” If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also. But all these things they will do to you for My name's sake, because they do not know the One who sent Me (John 15:20).

Recently, David S. Buckel, a nationally known attorney, burned himself alive as a protest against the widespread use of fossil fuels. The Old Testament, never encouraged people to commit suicide for some cause that is dear to them. That idea is entirely foreign to the biblical way of thinking and speaking. They did, however, suffer for the sake of God.

For Your sake we are killed all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered” (Psalm 44:22).
Because for Your sake I have borne reproach; dishonor has covered my face. I have become estranged from my brothers and an alien to my mother's sons. For zeal for Your house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach You have fallen on me (Psalm 69:7-9).
You who know, O Lord, remember me, take notice of me, and take vengeance for me on my persecutors. Do not, in view of Your patience, take me away; know that for Your sake I endure reproach (Jeremiah 15:15).

The disciples and prophets of Jesus suffer for the His sake just as godly prophets of old suffered for speaking in the name of Yahweh. Jesus commands us to suffer in His name and for His sake. No angel, or no mere man, has the authority to command us to suffer for his sake, but Jesus does. Before He was born, Jesus sent the prophets of the Old Covenant to preach to Israel and to suffer. (Don’t miss the astounding boldness of this claim!) Under the New Covenant, He sent first-century prophets, and He continues to send “wise men and scribes” to suffer in His name. He has the right to do this because He is God.

He has the right to command you and me to speak in His name and to suffer for His sake because He is God. Will you speak boldly and yet gently in the name of Christ? Are you willing to be sent by Him into your workplace, your neighborhood, or around the world?

---

[1] Yahweh is the most likely pronunciation of the Old Testament name for God. This name occurs over 6,000 times in the Hebrew Old Testament, and never in the Greek New Testament. English translations normally represent it by Lord or God, all in capitals. The traditional transliteration, Jehovah, is based on a misunderstanding of the Hebrew vowel points.