The Family of God // Mark 3:31-35

In this sermon, Pastor Evan discussed the significance of relationships within the context of God's family, contrasting the commonly held belief that blood ties are paramount, symbolized by the phrase "blood is thicker than water." Introducing an alternative perspective, stating that "the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb," he emphasized that the relationship with God is the most important connection one can have. The sermon focusing on identifying who truly belongs to the family of God. Highlighting that Jesus redefines familial bonds, indicating that those who follow God's will are his true brothers and sisters, transcending biological connections. We examine two groups of outsiders: Jesus's earthly family, who accused him of being "out of his mind," and the religious elite, viewed as moral and good but not genuinely connected to Christ. He warns against the misconception that a family connection or mere moral living grants one an automatic place within the family of God. Pastor Evan underscores the necessity of following Jesus and being in the will of God, which involves loving God, loving people, serving others, and making disciples. This call to action aims to inspire individuals to pursue a deeper relationship with God and to be active participants in the church community, fostering genuine connections with one another as brothers and sisters in Christ.

Key Points Covered:

• The significance of Jesus' statement in Mark 3:31-35 about who His true family is.
• The importance of relationships and community in the Christian faith.
• How to discern if you are part of the family of God.
• Practical steps to align with God's will: Love God, Love People, Serve Others, and Make Disciples.

Scripture References:

• Mark 3:31-35
• Matthew 22:36-40
• Philippians 2:3
• Matthew 20:26
• Matthew 28:19-20

Additional Resources:

• C.S. Lewis' Lecture on The Inner Ring
• Dr. Emerson Eggerichs' Book: The Four Wills of God

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#Sermon #Mark3 #FamilyOfGod #ChristianCommunity #GodsWill #Discipleship #LoveGod #ServeOthers #MakeDisciples #CSLewis #JohnPiper #EmersonEggerichs

Transcript

Well, good morning. I'm sure all of you have probably heard the phrase blood is thicker than water. According to the Cambridge dictionary, it means to emphasize that you believe that family connections are always more important than other types of relationships. So you might hear this phrase when somebody's trying to. Maybe you've heard it from an uncle or a grandfather or a parent or a brother who's trying to convince you to do something or maybe hide something.

Right. Blood is always thicker than water. Right. But, yeah. So that saying is a very common saying in our world today, the idea that family connections are stronger and more important than any other type of relationships.

However, as I was looking into the origins of this statement or phrase, I came across an alternative saying that takes the blood as thicker than water and kind of changes it into a more christian phrase that I particularly like better. And that alternative saying is that the blood of the covenant, the blood of the covenant is thicker even than the water of the womb, which gives the illusion that it's referencing Matthew 28 or 26 28. When Christ is setting up the Eucharist and at the last Supper, he says, for this is the blood, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. When Jesus is establishing the Eucharist, he says this. And so this alternative saying emphasizes something else, that we often think of family relationships as the closest and most intimate relationships, yet not even those relationships come close to the relationship that God offers us in the family of God and the relationships that we can build with the family of God.

And so I particularly like this alternative saying a little bit more than the common one that we have. The fact of the matter is that relationships do matter. And you'll hear me preach it over and over and over and over again, that scripture teaches that we are to be in community with one another, that we are able, that we are to be in relationship with one another. God designed us to be in relationships. If you look at our lives, he designed the family.

He designed the mom and dad relationship, the son and daughter relationship. He designed the brother and brother relationship. No matter how tense that might get sometimes. He designed the sister and sister relationship, the brother and sister relationship. He designed us to be in relationship, and he designed the family.

And you get the point, right? God designed us to be in relationship with one another, but we are also to be in relationship with God. In fact, out of all of our relationships, out of all other relationships that we have, our relationship with God is the only one of importance. It's the most critical, the most vital relationship in our life. The question is, how do we know that we're in the family of goddess?

How do we know that we are in relationship with God? How do we know that we are counted as brothers and sisters? How do we know that we are in the family of God? That's what we'll be talking about today as we continue our series in Mark. This morning.

We will be looking at what Jesus says about our relationship with him, our relationship with others, and specifically who is in the family of God. After all, we call each other a church family, right? We call each other church family. We call each other brothers and sisters. We should know what we mean by that, what the qualifications are for being in the family of God, for being brothers and sisters in Christ.

CS Lewis, who is a professor and theologian in the early to middle 19 hundreds, he gave a lecture at King's College in London which he titled the inner ring, in which he says, I believe that in all men's lives at certain point periods, I believe that in all men's lives at certain periods, and in many men's lives at all periods between infancy and extreme old age, one of the most dominant elements is the desire to be on the inside of the local ring and the terror of being left outside this terror, this terror of being left outside, being left outside of the family of God or being left outside of your family or being left outside of anything. I believe this is what motivates us and drives us to make up sayings like blood is thicker than water because you need an excuse to make sure that you're not left out. You need something that is higher than you to make sure that you're not left out. That forces somebody to be in relationship with you or to include you in that inner ring. In fact, there are tons of sayings like that about not being left out in the of the inner ring were putting priority of a group above another group.

In my generation, we call it Fomo. You might have heard FOMo before. It stands for fear of missing out, which had to do with more. It had to do with missing out of an event, but it also had to do with missing out of being part of a group.

It also meant that you might not be in that in group that you wanted to be in. Today, though, we're talking about the insiders and outsiders of the most important group, the family of God. Those who are on the inside of the family of God, who are part of the family of God, and those who are outside of the family God, not part of the family of Goddesse. We are going to be looking first at what the outsiders of the group look like. Then we're going to be looking at what the insiders look like and how they became insiders and what it means to be an insider.

And then once we are an insider, what we should be doing. So today we're going to be finishing up mark chapter three, and we'll primarily be in mark 331 35. So if you have your bibles with you, open them up, find mark 331 through 35, and that's where we'll be. Or open up your Bible app on your phone and start scrolling. But before we jump into mark 31 or 331 through 35, we need to go back to mark 321.

And I say that we need to start back in verse 21 because Mark uses verse 21. He's using, he starts what we like to call a Mark sandwich. In the theology world, we call this a Mark Sandwich. I know very technical term, mark Sandwich. And it kind of reminds you of the only thing between you and lunch, and that's me.

So don't go dreaming about the awesome sandwich you're going to be eating later today. Even though I'm going to keep talking about a Mark sandwich, Mark likes to use these little sandwiches throughout the book. This is the first one that we've run across, and we'll run across a few more as we keep going through Mark. The reason why I'm pointing this out to you is that the conversation that Jesus has in Mark 331 through 35 is set in motion by actions taken by his family in Mark 321. And he uses this sandwich for two reasons.

First, to demonstrate the passage of time. Jesus family heard about what he was doing and saying and decided to get up and go get him. Right in verse 21.

This would have taken some time to travel because they were not with Jesus. All right, and that's going to be important. They were not with Jesus, but they heard about what he was doing, and they got up and they said, we're going to go get him. We're going to go seize him because he is out of his mind.

And so he's using this mark. The first reason is that he's using this to demonstrate a passage of time.

He's demonstrating that there's time between verse 21 and 31. And he also uses the sandwich to group two types of people together. As we're reading through, as we've read through 21 through 35, you'll notice there's two primary groups of people that mark is kind of grouping together, and that is Jesus family and the Pharisees and the scribes. And we'll talk about this more as we kind of go on this morning. This should help us to understand what we're going to dive into the word this morning together because this mark sandwich kind of sets up the scene for 31, 35.

Now, if you wouldn't mind standing, we're going to go ahead and read God's word together.

We're going to start in verse 21, and then I'm going to skip all the way to 31. So we'll just do 20. I'm going to read 21. Then we'll skip all the way down to 31 through 35. And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, he is out of his mind.

Remember, this is when the crowds were gathered so intensely that they couldn't even eat right. His family heard about it and they said, we're going to go out, seize him because he's out of his mind. Then you skip down to 31, it says, and his mother and his brothers came standing outside. They sent to him and called him, and a crowd was sitting around him. And they said to him, your mother and your brothers are outside seeking you.

And he answered them, who are my mother and brothers? And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother. You may be seated.

Mark uses locations to define people. So I want us to make sure that we're paying attention to the location language that he's using. As we're walking through the passage this morning, the first thing that I want us to point out, or that I want to point out to you is the first group of people that outsiders can sometimes look like insiders or like they should be insiders, that outsiders can sometimes look like insiders or look like they should be insiders. And so we look at this first group of people that were being introduced to, and that's Jesus's family. His family.

And this is the first group of outsiders that Mark is talking about. We talked about blood is thicker than water. This group seems like if anyone is going to be on the inside of Jesus ministry or on the inside of the family of God, it's going to be his earthly family, right? After all, they are his earthly family. Blood is thicker than water.

If anybody's going to be there, it's going to be them. However, we see in verse 21 that that's not the case. The family is not with Jesus. Right. In verse 21, it becomes apparent that they are not with Jesus in his ministry.

They're not following him. They're not going along with him in his ministry or in his mission. Right? They hear about what he is doing. They hear about the crowds, and they get up and they say, we're going to go seize him.

He has lost his mind. He's out of his mind. And so clearly they are not on board. They are not following Christ, we like to call it these days. They have not committed to the lordship of Jesus Christ.

Now, I can relate to this statement when I can relate to the statement in verse 21, when his family hears about what he's doing and says he's clearly out of his mind. I can personally relate to that, because when I felt the call to ministry, I went home and I told family, I told friends, I asked people to pray for me because I wanted to discern if this is what really God wanted me to do with my life, if God really wanted me and my family to go into ministry. And so in doing that, making it a big decision, I wanted to see what the Holy Spirit had to say in other believers that I knew and trusted. However, in that I had a family member who is not a believer come up to me, and he told me that I was crazy. When I decided to go to seminary and dedicate my life to ministry, he came up to me and he said that I was living in a fairy tale or a dream world and that God was just a fairy tale and that I was wasting my life.

So when I read verse 21, I can personally relate to that. I can personally relate to that. Maybe you can, too. Maybe there are people in your life or family in your life because you're a believer, that they look at you and they say you're living in a fairy tale, you're living a dream that God doesn't exist. Maybe they're angry with you.

Maybe the relationship is broken because of it, because you have chosen to follow Jesus. Or maybe you're sitting here and you haven't chosen to follow Jesus because you're afraid that you might lose your family.

And that's a reality for a lot of people in the world, right? If you're practicing Islam and you convert to Christianity, man, your family is going to cut you out. And in some places, in more radical spaces, they might actually be allowed to hunt you down and kill you because of your blasphemy against their God.

This is a very real, this is a reality that sometimes choosing Jesus, we might have to face. But in verse 21, when saying that Jesus is out of his mind. His family is actually accusing him of being an outsider. Right? They're accusing him going back to Jesus.

They're accusing him of being an outsider, that he has lost his mind, that he is the outsider. But they are not with him because they have to travel to him. They're not with him. And the disciples. And as we go through and we read 31, it says that his mother and brothers came and they were standing on the outside.

Okay? They didn't go inside, right? They came to where he was standing on the outside, and they called to him and sent to him. They didn't go into him. They didn't go into him.

And the crowd says, when the crowd hears it, the crowd hears it, that Jesus mother and brothers are here. And they go. They. They go inside to Jesus and they say, hey, your mother and brothers are here on the outside looking and seeking for you.

And this is the crazy part. Jesus doesn't go out to them. Right. Instead, he responds in a completely unexpected fashion. In a completely unexpected fashion.

And in John MacArthur's commentary, I think he does a great job of capturing this. And he has this to say in his commentary, that Jesus responded in a way that was utterly unexpected. It must have surprised those who heard him speak. Answering them, he said, who are my mother and my brothers? Jesus question was not born out of ignorance, since he obviously knew the identity of his earthly family members, nor did it intend any level of disrespect or antagonism toward his mother and brothers, whom he clearly loved.

Jesus simply used this real life interruption to teach a transcendent spiritual truth to his followers who were gathered around him. Answering his question, Jesus looked about at those who were sitting around him and said, beholden my mother and brothers, for whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother. The Lord's point was that the only relationship to him that matters eternally is not physical, but spiritual. His spiritual family is comprised of those who have a saving relationship with him through faith. So Jesus point is that blood is, in fact, not thicker than water.

Jesus point is that, in fact, blood is not thicker than water, but rather that the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.

Just because they were Jesus earthly family, whom he loved does not give them an automatic pass into the inner circle, into the inner ring, or to be an insider, to be a part of God's family. Rather, there is something that is still needed to be in that inner circle, and that is to follow him. Right. Mark's theme here is following the king, to follow him. When he calls out to the disciples, he says, follow me.

We are to follow him. And nowadays we like to call it declaring him Lord, but following Jesus, which we clearly see that they're not doing in this moment because they are calling him an outsider and calling him crazy and standing on the outside. And this is an unfortunate belief. This is an unfortunate belief that is still around today. The idea, the idea that just because you're part of a family gets you an automatic pass, obviously, I don't mean that people believe that they are related to Jesus today.

That would be crazy. And therefore, again, an automatic pass. But rather, especially here in America, there are a lot of people sitting in pews and in churches today and maybe somebody here today or online watching today that if asked about their relationship with Jesus, their first thought is not about how they have followed him, how they have declared him lord over their life, but rather it's about what I've done in my life or because of what my mom and dad did or because of what my grandmother did.

So I just go to church because my grandmother brought me to church. My grandmother read the Bible to me. My mom and dad read the Bible. They told me to go to church. And they think that they are an insider or they're expecting to be a member of God's family and inside of God's family because they are related to somebody who is an insider, they are making the mistake that because you're related to a member of the family of God, it makes you a member of the family of God.

As a pastor, I hear it all the time that my mom and dad raised me in the church and we went every week and they prayed with me and they read their Bible with me and they did all these things with me. They taught me to value church, but it never changes to. And then I followed him.

And then I followed when he called me. It never changes that my mom and dad or my grandmother or my grandpa invested all this time in me, that finally I saw that Christ was the Lord and savior and I had no choice but to declare him Lord and follow him instead. They look at that and they say, well, they did all this with me, so I'm in, right?

Unfortunately, that is so prevalent in today's church.

The second group of outsiders that we're going to be looking at today is what I like to call religious, spiritual and moral people. Sounds like pretty good people, right? Religious, spiritual, moral people. They seem like they're probably pretty good people, but Mark uses the sandwich here to introduce this group of people to us as well as outsiders. And last week, we talked a lot about these outsiders, right?

We talked a lot about these outsiders last week. So I'm not going to go into everything that Mark points out here. What I want to point out. So these people, this group of people are found in verses 22 to 30, which we covered last week. If you want to know more about them, go listen to last week's sermonous.

But he introduces this group of people to us, as well as outsiders inside this mark Sandwich. And at first glance, they look like they might be insiders to us as we're reading through scripture, right? This is the scribes who came down from Jerusalem. And they look like they might be insiders because they are insiders from Jerusalem ecclesiastically, which just is a big term for church, church wise.

They are insiders, right? They are the professionals handling the things of God. These are the scribes from Jerusalem. They're the professional God followers. I hate that.

And even in the story, as we read through, in verses 22 through 30, we see that even the scribes, unlike the family, even the scribes go inside. They go inside to Jesus, right? So they're inside the house, which is different from what we saw in the family. But they're not true insiders because they're not sitting at the feet of Jesus trying to learn and teach. They're, in fact, arguing with Jesus.

And of course, we talked about this last week, the accusations that they lobbied against him, against Jesus, and how they accused him of being an outsider. They accused him for working for Satan. They accused him of being an outsider. But these religious elites, the teachers of the time, the ones that everyone would look up to and hear and they would go to. To hear what scripture has to say and how to live their lives, these are the ones that look like insiders.

They should be insiders on the outside. Everything is pointing that they are an insider. They are beyond moral. In fact, we've seen in mark that they even made up new rules to make themselves even more moral. They were super spiritual, following all the laws, even making up new laws to demonstrate just how spiritual they were.

Like the fasting law. It's like we're in a fast twice a week. Look at how spiritual we are. Why aren't you fasting every twice a week?

Okay, maybe family doesn't just get a pass and get in, but these people should definitely be on the inside, right? They should definitely be part of the family of God. They're following all the rules. They're following all the laws.

But spirituality and religiosity does not equate to following Jesus. You can, in fact, you hear it in people today. You hear it that they're spiritual but not religious. They're spiritual, but I don't follow Jesus. Or they come to church and they're hyper focused on the morals of Christianity.

And there's parents that literally bring their kids. I've talked to them as pastors. I come in and I say, hey, what are y'all doing here? And they're like, well, we grew up in church, and it taught us good things. And so now that we're adults, we have kids.

We want our kids to learn those same good things. And so we want them to have good morals. And they're not here to follow Jesus. They don't care about Jesus. They just want to learn the morals of Christianity.

They want their kids, they don't want their kids to meet Jesus and see how Jesus can transform their lives. They want their kids to learn rules, how to be a good person, how to be a moral person. They want them to look, they want to learn how to look like an insider, but not actually be an insider. They want to look like they're in the family of God, but they don't care about being in the family of goddesse.

And they see the Bible as a rule book to follow.

But finally, we get to the real insiders, the ones that are sitting around him in a circle at his feet.

It says, the crowd in verse 32. And the crowd was sitting around him.

And then verse 34, it says, and looking about at those who sat around him, these were people who were committed to following Jesus. These were people who wanted to learn, who wanted to genuinely follow him. And so they're on the inside. They're as close as they can get to Jesus, sitting around in a circle, trying to take it all in.

They're sitting around him. This is the crowd. And it consisted of the disciples that he had just appointed. In Mark 314, he just appointed the twelve disciples where Scott went over, the twelve he just appointed. And this crowd also was others that had chosen to follow him.

And so the crowd makeup, we talked about this. All right, so the crowd makeup has to do with being a disciple. Being a disciple. It has to do with discipleship. Mark is outlining a pathway of discipleship for us.

Right? The first one. The first marker in the pathway of discipleship is to actually follow him. Jesus call is to follow him. And then the second marker is to be at his feet, learning to love him.

And we see in mark 314. That being a disciple, so far in Mark, we've only seen really the follow him, call to the disciples, to the apostles that he appoints. And in fact, in mark 314, when he appoints the twelve, so he appointed the twelve so that they, that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach. And so he wants them to be with him, but he also wants them to do something. But I want us to look here in mark 314, the word appointed.

Most of your translations will translate it as appointed. But in the greek, the greek term, and that's a fine translation, and it is a true translation to our understanding. But I want you to understand what the greek word here individually means and why we're translating it to appointed.

The greek word is pea, pardon me, paeo. Paeo. That is the greek word that is being used and translated to appointed. And if you go and look at Pao in the greek dictionary for the Kornate Greek at the time, it means to do or make something. To do or make.

And so Jesus is literally making them the twelve he is appointing, but he is doing the work to make them the twelve. In fact, this is the same word. This is the same greek word that if you read this septuagint, which is just the greek translation of the Old Testament, when they translate Genesis one, one, when God created the world, they use the same Pao to describe God's creation of the world. So God, in that moment in Mark 314, he is creating something new. He is creating discipleship.

He is creating the disciples. He is creating the apostles. And we see here in Mark 33 34 through 35 that he is expanding what it means and who it can be to be a disciple. Because he says, and looking about those who sat around him, he said, here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.

He is expanding this family, not just from the ones that he is specifically creating in mark 314, but also to the ones who are following God, following him.

And he's expanding it to not just those he made, but those who follow and do the will of God. And you notice here he also adds my brother and sister and mother. He is inclusive in that everyone who follows him, it's just not mothers and brothers. It's everyone who follows him is included. And he specifically uses the word for sisters, so that we understand that it is everyone, everyone who does the will of God is in the family of God.

They're an insider. So that's easy enough, right? Just either be created into an apostle, which, by the way, you can't be anymore, despite a ton of other people who might think they can either be created into an apostle. Anybody done that? Nope.

Or just do the will of the father.

Easy enough. Be created into an apostle or do the will of the father. All right, we'll just leave it here today, right? Just go out and do the will of the father. Now let's talk about the will of God, because the will of God is not exactly easy.

Determining the will of God is not exactly easy for us. In fact, it's one of the more common questions that pastors get asked. What is the will of God for my life? Should I take this? Should I take this job?

Is it the will of God for me to take this job? Is it the will of God for me to marry this person? Is it the will of God for me to go on this vacation? Is it the will of God for me to serve in my church or do. This is one of my personal favorites as a pastor, and I'm going to out some people right now.

I haven't heard this from y'all. I haven't been around y'all long enough, but I guarantee I probably will, and I'm gonna call you out for it when it happens. One of my personal favorites is when the people of God use the will of God to Jesus juke. You ever heard of Jesus juking? Well, it means that they use Jesus or the will of God as an excuse to get out of something that they don't want to do, or worse, to justify sin in their life.

That's right. You thought we couldn't tell, but we can.

I'll give you an example. It's not somebody here at this church, all right? So don't be looking around being like, who is that person? I don't want to use. Somebody's here.

I had somebody come up to me, and I'm not exactly sure why they felt the need to tell me this, but they came up to me. I think it was because we were going through a sermon series on giving and tithing and stuff like that, which is always the best sermon series in churches. It's the most comfortable ones. Everybody loves them. Maybe I'll do one, you know, 52 weeks on giving or something like that next year.

I'm just joking.

I think we were going through a sermon series, and they came up and they said, man, we've been praying about it. We've been praying about it. We just don't know about the tithing thing. We don't think it's the will of God in our life to support the church in that way. And we just don't feel like it's the will of God to tithe.

And I was like, man, I don't know who you're listening to, because scripture is very clear on how God wants us to give. And this isn't a sermon on giving, so I'm going to stop there. God wants you to give, but then you'd go back to them. You go back to them and they attend to our church for a while. We go back to them, we'd say, hey, you're not serving anywhere.

Why don't you get plugged in? Serve. And they'd be, okay, we'll pray about it. Six weeks later, they come back and be like, man, we prayed about it. Me and my wife, we sat down, we prayed about it, and we just don't think it's the will of God in our life to serve in the church in that way.

And I'm like, oh, okay, all right. There's a need. You can fill that need. I'm pretty sure that's like, the will of God is for you to serve the church, and you're not serving the church. You're not even giving us a hint of what you might want to do or where we could plug you in, but it's not the will of God.

Okay, all right, all right. That's what Jesus Duke, is the idea that you use some spiritual excuse to get out of something you really just don't want to do or to justify sin in your life. And if it happens here, I'll call you out on it, because I don't have any problem calling you out on it. I just want to let you know I know when it happens. It's so evident because it goes so contrary to what scripture says.

And so if you're coming up and saying, hey, I don't think this is the will of God in my life, man, maybe you should go look at scripture before you come up with that excuse. All right, let's move on from that. The will of God, however, remains a mystery to many people. And unfortunately, this demonstrates to me, and I think demonstrates to us how biblically illiterate we as believers have become and how we need to be better at discipling and better at reading our bibles and being more biblically illiterate. And what that means is knowing what I mean by that is knowing what is in this book.

And the only way you know what is in this book is to open it up and read what it says. I can preach my entire life to you, and you still won't know half of what's in this book. All right? And it's also not my job to make sure that you know everything that is in this book. All right?

If you're a believer, it's your job to get up and open God's word that he has so graciously given to us and figure out what God is saying. You want to know what God's will is, man? Open up the book and it'll tell you what God's will is for your life. John Piper describes God as having two different wills. First, his sovereign will, which will, will and can never change.

Okay, so we see this in scripture. God's sovereign will that there are certain things that God has willed to happen, like Christ's death on the cross, that will happen no matter what, because he is in his sovereignty, willed it to happen.

Then there's other things. John Piper likes to call it the. And what I think we're talking about here, Mark, is the will of command. That's what John Piper calls it, the will of command. Doctor Emerson Egerich, he's a pastor and theologian.

He authored a book titled the four wills of God, which goes deeper into the will. What we're calling the wills of command here, or the commands that are in Bible, that are taken in the Bible to be taken as the will of God for our lives. Now, he explains, he's probably much smarter than me, and he's been a pastor way longer, and he writes this book. And he explains that the key to following the Lord's universally related four wills is summarized by the acronym bags. So, pretty easy to remember, right?

Everybody's got baggage, right? Carrying around a bag, acronym by bags. First, believe in Jesus Christ. Second, abstain from sexual sin. Third, give thanks in everything.

Fourth, submit and do what's right. When you obey these four universal truths, it activates the unique and perfect will of God in your life. And I think this is a. It does a great job if you're trying to discern the will of God. It's a great book for you.

Go look it up. It's called the four wills. I'd highly suggest you read it, and I would recommend it, but for the purposes of this morning, I want to simplify it a little bit more. I think he, I mean, he simplifies it pretty good, right? There's only four things you have to remember to do to be in the will of God, right?

Believe in Jesus. Abstain from sexual sin, give thanks and everything and submit and do what's right. I'm going to simplify it a little bit, a little bit more for us. And granted, I don't have the pedigree of Piper or Egridge has or others that have spent many hours talking about the will of God, and they probably do a much better job than I do. But what I'm going to try and do this morning for us is to simplify it for us a little bit more.

Here we go. I'd say that if you were to ask me, if you were to come up and say, pastor, what is the will of God for my life? Or what is the will of God in this situation, I'm going to point you back to scripture, and I'm going to say, I think the will of God for your life is to love God, love people, serve others, and make disciples. So still four things. But love God, love people, serve others, and make disciples.

And so if you're doing that, you're going to be operating in the will of God. Doesn't matter necessarily who you might marry or what job you take, as long as you're operating in those four, as long as you're loving God, loving people, serving others, and making disciples, you're operating within the will of goddess. Sometimes we get so hung up on the individual infinite details of like, oh, my gosh, if I didn't take a left turn here, was that the will of God? You know, was it the will of God for me to go to the grocery store this morning?

That's not what God is concerned about right now. He is concerned that you're loving God. Loving him, loving people, serving others and making disciples. And I told you I was going to show you in scripture where I'm coming from. These Matthew 22 36 40.

Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law? And Jesus said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

On these two commandments depend all the law on the prophets. So to follow him, to become a disciple, to love God. And if you were asked me to look what a disciple looks like, I'd say it matches up with these things. To learn to love him more deeply, to worship, to come together as a church family on a Sunday morning and worship together, to worship throughout the week by picking up your book, your bible, and reading it and worshiping with God love people, both your new family, the church family that you're a part of if you're a believer, and those around you. And this is what I'm talking about, being in community.

Love God, be in worship. Love people. Be in community, serve others. Philippians two. And that's.

That's. He says, those are two greatest commandments, right? Love God, love people. The next comes from Philippians two three and Matthew 2026. It says, Philippians two three says, do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, count others more significant than yourselves.

This is a problem for us. We are a selfish people. I'm selfish. And if you've never heard it before, you're selfish, too. All right, I'm sorry for breaking the news to you.

We are selfish people. And so one of the commands for us is to serve others. Matthew 2026. It shall not be among so among you, but whoever would be great among you must be your servant. We are called as a people, as believers, to serve.

So if you want to be in the will of God, you should be serving somewhere.

You should be serving. And the reason why you don't want to serve, it's because you're selfish and everyone is. Believe me, I am, too. There are mornings I don't want to get up and come serve. There are times that I want to stay at home and spend time with my family, and I don't want to go to the deacon meeting or.

Or the elder meeting because I'm tired. It's been a long day. I want to be selfish, right?

But we are to think of others more than ourselves and humility, count others more significant than yourselves, and then finally make disciples. And that comes from Matthew 20 819 through 20, the great commission. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Just as we are invited by Jesus to be an insider into his family, into the family of God, we must remember that we are invited into the work that he started while he was here. As insiders also, we should be constantly doing his will, which is less figuring about who to marry or what job to take or which importance or important decisions I should make today, but rather following him, pursuing him, growing deeper in our love for him, in our love for others, serving others, and making disciples.

The most important relationship we have in life is the one that we have with Jesus. We want to be. We need to be the ones on the inside. We need to be counted among the family of God, because if you are not if you are an outsider. The Bible warns us what is waiting for us, and that is death and torment.

We need to also recognize that sometimes those on the outside might look like insiders. Maybe that's you this morning. You've lived your life. Your connection with and your connection to Christ, to Jesus, isn't that you have come to follow him, but rather it's an allegiance to. It's an allegiance to a family member.

Or you might be thinking that another family member's relationship with Jesus is going to get you into the family of God. But we've already talked about that, right? Remember that blood is not thicker than water in Jesus book. Rather the blood of the covenant. The blood of the covenant that he establishes at the cross is thicker than the water in the womb.

Each of us must submit to Jesus lordship. Or you might be here this morning, having come to church for 20 or 30 or 40 years, and you're the religious elite. On the outside you look like an insider, but on the inside you know that you're not genuinely following Christ because your motivations are not to love him more. They're not to love people or to serve others or to make disciples. You don't care about all that.

You might say that you do, but instead you're here to have a good reputation. You want, you want people to think you look good. Or you might be here because you want to make good connections with your business. It's a great way to get people connected with your business. Or because like we talked about it, you're really happy with the morality that Christianity teaches you.

So leaving here this morning, how can you make tangible ways to move into the will of God so that you might be a part of the family of God, right? We started this journey with, how do we become, how do we be a part of the family of God? That was the question we asked. So how do we leave this morning? Moving into the will of God in our lives.

First, if you haven't come to Jesus, come to Jesus. If you haven't followed him, that's the first step, right? The first step in Mark is to follow him. The first step that Mark talks about is to follow him, come to Jesus and start down this discipleship pathway. The second is to love him.

To love him. And that means to worship him. And that means being a part of a church that regularly preaches the word and worships and being here on a regular basis once a month. Don't come twice a month. You know, I understand people take vacations.

They want to, they miss I get that life happens. But if your idea is man, I'll make it to church at least twice a month, or I'll make it to church once a month. Man, that is not loving him and worshiping him. You are putting other things in front of you. Come and worship him.

Find a place, man. If. I'm just gonna say it. If you feel like you can't worship here, then go find a church that you can worship at, that you can be there every week and worship, because that is what you need to be doing. I mean, I'd love it if you're here, but if that's not you, if you can't be here every week because you don't like it, man, go be there.

Find someplace you can. Second love, or I think third love. People get into community with other believers. How do we love people? We think of them first.

We get in community. That's where discipleship happens. You're gonna learn to love God. When you're around other people that love God, they're gonna show you what it looks like to love God, and you're gonna show them what it looks like to love God. You're gonna grow in your relationship with God.

Get in community with other believers. Next. Serve others. Find a place to serve man. If you're walking down a discipleship pathway of what you should be doing and you're stuck in the worship piece, that you've never gone, that I've been sitting in the room for 20 years, and I've never been in community with somebody, man, get in community with them.

Make that step. Take the next step into loving people and getting into community. If you're there, if you're in the community with people, if you're in a Sunday school, in a small group, and you have never served man, find a ministry team that you can serve on, because that is the next step in discipleship, is to serve, to invest in others. I mean, we're meeting, and this is not a. I mean, it's not end up being unplugged for kids ministry, but if you want to make disciples, we're meeting today at 04:00 p.m.

for kids ministry. We need help there. We want to invest. If there is one place that the kids ministry in every church is full of sinners, it's hard to say that, because people look at kids and they're like, oh, they're perfect little angels. We love them.

They're so good. Their family is so good. They're sinners. I don't have any problem telling you that my kids are sinners. Because they are.

The moment they pop out, they're sinners. All right. That little cute baby is a sinner.

Is a selfish sinner. They need the most investment in our church, and oftentimes they get the least investment. Because why? We as believers are selfish and we don't want to invest in that. It's hard.

I get it. It is. I've got five kids. I understand working with kids is hard. Being at home with them all the time.

Kelly will tell you it's hard. I'm not at home with all the time. The time I'm at home with them, it's hard. But find a place to serve. If it's not kids ministry, maybe it's greeting.

If it's not greeting, maybe it's man facilities. The deacons would love for somebody to come up and help with facilities. Find a place to serve, invest. Maybe it's leading a small group. We're starting a small group pilot group in October.

If you're interested in serving in that way, man, come talk to me. Let's talk about it. Lastly, is making disciples. That's what we're called to do. If you want to be in the will of God, love God, love people, serve others, make disciples.

The end. That's what you want to be in the family of God. You want to be the insider. You want to know what the will of God is for your life. It's those things.

Let's be a church that does those four things. Let's pray.