PLEASE READ THIS FIRST: Matthew 12:1-21

What do you sense the Lord saying to you in this passage?

“Pointing to his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers.'”(Matthew 12:50)
In Mark 3:21, Jesus’s family is concerns about his mental health.
The crowds are overwhelming him, and he is not eating properly (Mark 3:20).
They go to “take charge of him”; literally to seize, grasp or hold him.
I suspect Jesus knows why they are there; they’ve no doubt talked before.
It is not that Jesus didn’t care about his family.
But there was something that he cared more about.
“My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.” (John 4:34)
The will of God is that we would love our neighbor with Jesus-like love.
Jesus sees this kind of love as a stronger bond than family love.
To say we love God and Jesus is to love God’s whole family (1 John 4:19-21).
It includes loving your family well, but it also loves beyond the family.
Jesus reminds his family, and us, that God’s family is bigger than our own.
As disciples, we are drawn by the love of Jesus, and want to join him in that love.
Do you share Jesus’s love for God’s whole family, and not just your own?
PRAYER
Lord Jesus, help me to see sinners, seekers, strugglers and strangers as family, and to love and serve them with the same love that you have for them.