Many times, as a pastor I must broach a delicate subject with people. I often do not consider it a delicate subject, but rather a subject that if addressed in God’s Word is something that as followers of Christ we do need to look at, perhaps study, and ultimately apply to our lives. The key in dealing with these topics or passages of God’s Word that are deemed as difficult is to always do so in love. I thought I would take a few moments to look at a text of the Bible that can be challenging for some. The text for this blog post is Luke 8:19-21.
A short synopsis of the text finds Jesus in the midst of ministering to those who were following Him. As the opening of chapter eights explains to us, “He began going around from one city and village to another, proclaiming and preaching the kingdom of God” (Luke 8:1 NASB). Wow, that verse seems like a great topic for another blog post as we look at the ministry to which all believers are called. Well, stay tune down the road for that blog post. Needless to say, we find Jesus teaching and ministering in our text of Luke 8:19-21. What I find so clear to me here is that even as Jesus was teaching one group, He made sure that even in a moment where something unexpected occurred He was always able to react in love. I do know that Jesus is God so that nothing was a “surprise” to Him, but I know that I can learn from this situation that He was in regarding His reaction.
What I want to spend a few moments on is the reaction to His family that Jesus had. The point that people can make is that family is always first so why would Jesus react this way? The reality of the situation is that this is a style of writing known as hyperbole. It seems like Jesus does not care about His mother and brothers is often the first reaction that people take to this statement. We can see here that what Jesus speaks to is that obedience to Him, and true discipleship as we follow Him results in a relationship with Him that is closer, and more intimate than any of our human relationships. He does paint a picture for us to see that if we claim to be His, than we are to be obedient to Him, and as we read further on in verse 25 of this chapter, we are to have only one place in which we place our faith. Jesus Christ is to be our first and foremost relationship and the center of where we place our faith.
As we grow to love Jesus more and more and He is our main focus we then begin to see how much He loves us. As we see the end to which He went in His love for us, think about how that will change us. We begin to love more and more like Jesus loves us. We can love our families like Jesus loved us. Would that change things in some areas of struggle within our families? God bless each one of you and I pray that you grow to know the love of Christ more and more.