Awesome, awesome. Well, good morning again. And uh thank you guys so much for being here today in the cold win uh weather, rainy weather out there. Like I know that it was a great morning to just kind of roll over and uh turn over in your bed and go back to sleep, but we appreciate you guys being here together just to worship the Lord together. Before we jump into the message this morning, I just want to make you aware of an opportunity that's coming up. Um we have this upcoming Saturday is our Covenant Family Membership Gathering. And so if you're newer to Church of the Grove, or maybe you've been around for a while, but you want to kind of take a next step and uh get connected and uh learn more about the church and how you can become a member here at Church of the Grove, uh, we would love for you to come to that gathering. And so uh you can sign up. There's actually those little tap tags or QR codes in the chair in front of you, and you can just tap your phone to that. You can sign up right there. There's also opportunities for you to take some other next steps uh through that tag as well. And so uh we'd love for you to come and be a part of that. Uh well, we're continuing our series this morning called Onward, and uh we're looking at some of the core values that we have as a church. And it reminded me of a story of when following Jesus was not just maybe inconvenient, but it was actually dangerous. Um, when it wasn't just about risking maybe your reputation, but it was maybe risking your job, your life, and maybe even your family's life. Back in the 1930s and 1940s, um, Germany was under Nazi control. And the government expected the church to fall in line and support Hitler and his agenda, to stay quiet about the great injustices that were happening all around them, and just to simply bless whatever the state demanded. And there was a young pastor that stood in resistance to the Nazi state by the name of Diedrich Bonhoeffer. He was brilliant, he was respected, he came from a noble family, and he had every reason to remain quiet and to protect what he had and to keep himself safe. But Bonhoeffer became convinced that following Jesus meant you couldn't simply go along with evil. And so what he did was he became known as uh the confessing church. And the confessing church came together, and it was believers that ultimately said, our allegiance is to Jesus, not to the state. A good reminder for us all this morning. And many religious leaders they moved in the same direction that the state demanded, but Bonhoeffer and a group of other pastors made a decision that they were going to stick together and that they were going to follow Jesus beyond what the states demanded. And as a result, they were pushed out of official church circles. They watched and were monitored by the government. Their safety and the safety of those around them were constantly at risk. But what they did is they gathered together and they trained together in this underground seminary where they prayed together, they studied scripture together, they ate their meals together, they carried one another through the fear and the uncertainty of the future. And they didn't gather like this just because it was convenient, just because they wanted some like-minded people to be in their lives, but they gathered this way because it was necessary for their own survival and the survival of the German church. If they were going to be faithful in the midst of tremendous opposition, then they had to be together. They had to commit to one another. And out of that season, Bonhoeffer writes a book called Life Together, and in it he says, Christian community is not something we create, but something Jesus creates for us. What Bonhoeffer saw was not that Christian community was a human kind of creation, but it was ultimately coming from Jesus Himself. And for many believers back in this day, following Jesus meant that they were strained and even would cost them their biological families. But what they wanted more than anything else was to stay committed to Jesus. And that's what we're talking about this morning. We're talking about this biblical community and belonging to one another. We all say that we want community. We all say that we want to belong, we all say that we want to be known. But when we talk about a spiritual family and belonging to the spiritual family, there's some of us in the room that are suspicious. Because depending on how you grew up and the family that you're a part of, you might be, you, that might uh uh alter the way that you see the spiritual family that we're called to. Because family, our biological families are complicated. Family for some of us brings warmth and security, and for others of us, it brings disappointment and distance and pain. And we also live in a culture that is celebrating its independence. We pride ourselves in not needing anything from anyone, that we can do it all ourselves. We never we are told to never let other people see our weaknesses. We learn to show up without ever being known. We're comfortable to sit in rows rather than and we avoid circles. It feels safe for us to just kind of keep everybody at an arm's length, to insulate ourselves, to help protect our future. But belonging costs us something. For Bonhoeffer, it cost him really his life. He was eventually executed because of the stands that he took. But belonging costs us something. It requires risk on our part, the risk to be vulnerable in front of others. Belonging means that we are seen and that we are known. And I believe that one of the primary reasons that many people in our culture, in our church culture today, are anemic in their spiritual formation is that they aren't connected in the family of God. They've settled for a private faith, but they don't live it out with other people. We're content to sit in chairs like this, but we're not can we're not committed to sit in circles with others, growing in our faith together. And so this morning I want to talk about one of our core values, belong, that we walk together as a spiritual family. Or you could say it this way, our big idea this morning is that following Jesus means belonging to a spiritual family. That you are not just on your own. You are not told to just go and do this life and do the Christian faith on your own. It's not just about your biological family, but you belong to a spiritual family. And so, Lord Jesus, we ask that you would come now, Holy Spirit. Lord, that we would hear from you. And Lord, we know that there are people that are all on this spiritual journey together, and all of us are on different places in that spiritual journey. Some of us have found the benefits of spiritual community, and we're deeply committed in that, and some of us are leery of it, and some of us maybe don't even know you and are walking in a relationship with you yet. And so, Lord, wherever we find ourselves, Lord, would you speak to each and every one of us right where we're at? Lord, would you open up our hearts and our ears and our minds to be able to hear from you this morning as we open up your word and talk about belonging to a spiritual family? And so come, Holy Spirit, would you speak to us now? And it's in your name we pray. Amen. So if you have a Bible, you can turn to Mark chapter three. And in Mark chapter three, we're gonna see that it wasn't Bonhoeffer's idea for a spiritual family, but it really came from Jesus. That Jesus, in this passage, will completely redefine what family means when it comes to us walking in the Christian faith. Now, to set this passage up, Jesus has just begun his earthly ministry. He's not far along in his journey yet. He's already performed controversial miracles. The Sabbath was a big thing back in this time, and it was something that was treated with the most honor and respect. And Jesus comes on the scene and he claims to be the Lord of the Sabbath. And actually, earlier in chapter three, we read that he restores a man's hand that was shriveled up. And the religious leaders see that he has done this, and there normally would be really great, and it would be awesome that he has done this miracle, but he's done it on the Sabbath, and that's created quite a challenge for them to put in their brains and wrestle with how faith works, because Sabbath was supposed to be a day of rest. And so these religious leaders are deeply offended, and they begin to plot how they can destroy Jesus. They begin to make plans on how they can kill him. And that's where our story picks up this morning in Mark chapter 3, starting in verse 20, it says this Jesus entered a house, and the crowd gathered again, so that they were not even able to eat. When his family heard this, they set out to restrain him because they said he is out of his mind. Now listen, if you have kids in the room and you've ever thought that your kids were out of their mind, they're in good company. Jesus thought by his own family that he was out of his mind as well. And so you're in good company. Your kids aren't completely lost. That's really great news for us. And so Jesus has gained this great following, his popularity has grown, and he's now having a hard time taking care of his basic needs. It tells us that he was unable to eat. And so his family shows up, his biological family, and they're coming to restrain him, saying that he's out of his mind. They think he's crazy. The family that loves him, that knows him the best, but they don't understand who he is and what his mission is here on in this life. He has come from this prosperous family with a carpentry business, and he's left that to become an itinerant preacher. He's speaking against the religious norms of the day, and those religious leaders are out to kill him. He's chosen a ragtag group of disciples that doesn't make sense to anyone. And now he's missing regular mealtimes. He's neglecting his own personal care. Maybe his blood sugar has dropped. He's hangry, he's in a brain fog, he's not thinking clearly, and so his family is coming to rescue him, to restrain him, to bring him back home. And what this ultimately shows us is that following Jesus can disrupt even our closest relationships. The people that you were grew up with, the people that you worked with, the family that you were raised in, that even those close relationships, following Jesus to them is sometimes not going to make sense. Here's Jesus' mom, the one that would have changed his diapers, and they don't even understand what he's called to do and what he's doing in this moment. What they believed was best for him was to bring him home, to nurse him back to health again, and then hopefully, hopefully, he could continue on with his life. See, obedience to God can often be misunderstood even by the people that love us the most. This is why it's so important for us to have spiritual community around us, to hear the echo of God's voice in our lives. What we need here is that we don't just need people that love us speaking into our lives, but we need people who love us and are full of the Spirit to help us navigate through this life. And so many Christians today will settle for just hearing people that love them, but they don't have people that love them and that are full of the Spirit that are speaking into their lives. And if that was Jesus' case, he probably would have just left with his family in this moment, but he doesn't do that. It says in verse 22, it says the scribes who had come down from Jerusalem said, He is possessed by Belzeba, and has he drives out demons by the ruler of the demons. So that these men, these religious leaders, they've been in Jerusalem, the capital city where all the religious kind of hierarchy takes place, and these guys would have been probably the high on the hierarchy of religious leaders. They would have been towards the top. And they're sent down from Jerusalem probably to investigate the claims about Jesus healing on the Sabbath and to make some type of ruling. And the ruling that they come away with is that he's possessed by Satan. That it's the enemy that's at work within him. They are looking at him and they're seeing this incredible miracle take place. No one's negating that, no one's dismissing that, but at the same time, he's done it on the Sabbath, and that's not what they do in the religious system that they are a part of. See, following Jesus is not just misunderstood sometimes by the people that are closest to us, but following Jesus oftentimes will be misunderstood by religious systems that want control. The scribes are threatened by Jesus. They're threatened by the religious power that they had in that day, and it seems like that's slipping out of their grips. The firsthand, I've experienced this firsthand to know that religion and politics in particular, that it has the uh capabilities of getting a hold of good men and women and bringing them into this idea of having more and more power and control. And often, this is a little side note, but often in those circumstances, the church, the people of God kind of have three decisions to make or three responses to make in the midst of that. When the culture comes against us, there's either the flight, fight, or camouflage. When we camouflage, we just try to blend in with culture when we look like everyone else. When we flight, it's just we kind of go out into the desert and we dismiss ourselves, we kind of separate ourselves from reality and the things that are going on around us. Fight is the scariest one, in my opinion, because that's when we try to be culture warriors and we try to get on top and we try to hold on to more and more power. But what God has called us to is to be a distinct people. A people that have called, been called out, that look different from the world around us, but we stand firm on the truth of who God is. And we can't do that in the culture that we're a part of without each other. The religious systems or the political systems of our day will constantly try to grab a hold of more and more control, and following Jesus will look misunderstanding, it will be misunderstood by those that are in control. You can look back about 500 years or so, and this is a similar event that happened in the church back then. The Catholic Church was in control, not just religiously, but also politically. And the church was less about helping people follow Jesus and more about controlling people's access to God. Scripture wasn't available to everyday people. Forgiveness was treated like something that you could earn or even buy. Spiritual authority flowed from the systems that were in place rather than God Himself. And there were a group of men, people like Martin Luther, that started asking dangerous questions that rocked the apple cart. They began to ask questions like, what if salvation really is by grace alone and not by works? What if scripture should be accessible for everyone? What if Jesus, not the institution of the church, is the true head of the church? Luther threatened control of the religious leaders of his day, and instead the religious systems begin to listen to what he was saying and they pushed back. Luther was labeled as dangerous, and others were exiled, imprisoned, and even killed because they stood up to power. And this is a very similar situation to what's happening in Mark chapter 3. The scribes see their power being threatened, and they begin to make bold and false claims, accusations against Jesus. They're making accusations rather than submitting to him. See, following Jesus isn't about putting your faith in a religious system. It's never been about just going through the motions or checking off your religious to-do lists, but it's about following a person. And sadly, the religious systems of the day that are trying to grab a hold of more and more power and authority oftentimes miss Jesus in the midst of that. Jesus pushes back against these religious leaders and the verses that follow. And he says, A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. Their accusations didn't even make logical sense. Why would Satan cast out Satan? Why would Satan try to destroy himself? And then he warns the people that are standing there, the religious leaders and the other people that are there, to not harden their hearts to the work of God. He's exposing the dangerous reality that when people see God at work and they still refuse to surrender, that that's a dangerous place to be. And then we come to the meat of the message this morning, verse 31, if you want to jump down there. Jesus' family, remember, they've come, they think he's out of his mind, they're trying to restrain him, bring him home. Verse 31, it says, His mother and his brothers came, and standing outside, they sent word to him and called him. A crowd was sitting with him and told him, Your mother and your brothers and your sisters are outside asking for you. And he replied to them, Who are my mother and my brothers? Looking at those sitting in the circle around him, he said, Here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother. So Jesus' biological family show up at the door. And he doesn't just immediately take them in, and he doesn't really just he doesn't uh play into the cultural stereotypes of how the biological family was everything back in that day. For them, in this culture, family was your identity, family was your protection, family was your economic safety net, family was directly connected to the religious standing that you had in the community. And for Jesus, brother and his mother to show up and then be completely ignored, it seems disrespectful at best. But Jesus is trying to illustrate a bigger point here. He's saying, hey, under the new way, under the new kingdom, under the new covenant, the relationship with God wasn't about the family that you were born into. It wasn't whether you were Jewish or Gentile, but rather it was marked by faith and obedience. Similar but different today. There are a lot of people that claim to be Christians, but they aren't really living with obedience and they're in really living by faith. Instead, they just call themselves Christian because that's the family they were born into. It's not about a lifestyle of following Jesus in obedience and faith, but it's just simply that's what we grew up as. That's we've always gone to church. I've always been a Christian for my entire life. And what Jesus is doing here is so significant. And it's something that the church of today we desperately need to hear and learn. That Jesus looks around the table and those sitting around there with him and he says, Here are my mother and my brothers and my sisters. Jesus isn't rejecting his biological family, but he is redefining what family looks like in the kingdom of God. He's saying that your family is chosen through allegiance, it's formed through obedience, it's sustained through the shared life with Jesus. Following Jesus means belonging to a spiritual family. Following Jesus means that we belong to a spiritual family. He's not saying that he doesn't care about his biological family, and hopefully, your biological family is also part of your spiritual family. But following Jesus, it means that we are committed to a spiritual family. That takes preeminence in our lives, that we're connected within the body of Christ. Spiritual family isn't just church attendance or membership, but it's marked by faithful obedience to doing the will of God in our lives. And here's the thing: the world will not understand the will of God. Those that are not full of the Holy Spirit, the things of God do not make sense to them. The religious systems, oftentimes that seek control, will live hostile towards the words of God. We need a new family. We need a family that can help us grow in our spiritual formation. The new family that Jesus creates is essential for discipleship. We are called to be disciples of Jesus, followers of Jesus. And without the family of God, without the family that Jesus is talking to, talking about here, we will never become the people that God has called us to become. I'll say it again, what I said earlier. I wholeheartedly believe that one of the primary reasons people are anemic in their spiritual formation is because they aren't connected in the family of God. They've settled for a private faith and they don't live it out with other people. That we just believe that you can go by yourself and you can read your Bible and you can pray and you can show up to church when you feel like it or when it's convenient, and then you can just be a Christian that way, and then you can. Grow in your discipleship. And sure, the word of God is important. Prayer is important. Church attendance is important. Serving is important. Giving is those all those things are really good. But we cannot be the people that God has ultimately called us to be without the community of faith and being committed within that community of faith. We so desire and long to create this type of community here at Church at the Grove. A place where people can belong, no matter what their background, race, economic status, and education might be. We want people to belong, not so that they can have a comfortable place to come to, but rather so people can grow and develop and become the people that God has called them to be. This is a thought that just blows my mind that I've just been thinking about a lot recently is that nowhere else in the world will you come into a gathering like this and sit with all different types and backgrounds of people, different economic statuses, different races, different education levels, different backgrounds, past histories, different families of origin. And we all sit connected together as part of the family of God. The family of God is an incredible thing, and it's something that we desperately need in our lives if we're going to be the people that God has called us to be. You will never become the man or woman that God has called you to be without belonging to and connecting in the spiritual family of God. We need one another. We need one another if we are going to grow in our faith and our relationship with Jesus. So let me be clear and pastoral all at the same time. You cannot follow Jesus the way he intends without re while remaining disconnected from his people. You can attend church, you can listen to sermons, you can read your Bible, those are all really great things, but you can do all of this and still drift because no one is walking with you. Think of uh hot coals. If you've ever made a charcoal fire, I know um many of us don't make charcoal fires anymore because we have pellet grills and gas grills and all that kind of stuff, and it's a lot easier. But if you ever made a charcoal fire, you know, you put all the coals together and you let it kind of you know start burning, and it takes a while to kind of get the fire going, but eventually all the coals start to heat up and they begin to get hot. And as long as those coals are connected together and on top of each other, the fire keeps going and the heat continues to be produced. But you grab some tongs and you take out one of those coals and you set it over here, this pile of coals will continue to burn and still continue to create heat and will last a whole lot longer than the one that you've removed that's been separated from everybody else. Eventually, this coal over here is extinguished and the heat goes out. And it's the same way in our spiritual families today. You take someone out of a spiritual family, or maybe they're never connected in a spiritual family altogether, and eventually, quickly in some cases, the fire burns out. God did not design discipleship to happen alone. Discipleship is not about you just getting more spiritual information, it's not about you just learning the Bible stories, it's not just about you memorizing verses. Those are good things. But discipleship is ultimately becoming like Jesus, becoming a person of love. And you can't become a person of love if you're not connected to other people. And I know the excuses. I'm too busy. I've been hurt before. I don't really need that in my life at this time. My faith is more of a private thing. I don't really want to kind of, I'm more introverted in nature, and I don't want to be around others in that way. Listen, those are all understandable reasons, but they're not biblical ones. If Jesus says, whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother, then saying staying on the margins is not neutral, it's resistance. So here's what I'm saying very, very clearly. If you're not connected, if you don't belong in a spiritual family that is pushing you forward in your relationship with Jesus, then you are being disobedient to God. You're being disobedient to God. He's calling us to something more. This isn't just an optional thing. This isn't just for the super spiritual. It's not just for the people that have extra time on their hands. This is for all believers. We desperately need one another. If you constantly choose isolation, you are choosing spiritual vulnerability. If you avoid being known, you are limiting how God wants to grow in you. If you refuse community, you are cutting yourself off from one of God's primary means of grace. Now listen, there's no judgment here. There's just this reality. If you aren't connected in a spiritual family or type of relationships, it's time to belong. It's time to belong. And listen, Church of the Grove, we do community groups, and I think community groups are great. I think it's an awesome opportunity for you to kind of dip your toes in the water and get connected to people that are like-minded and can help you grow in your faith. But I'm not saying that Church of the Grove community groups are everything. I I don't think you have to necessarily belong to one of our groups, and if you don't belong to one of our groups, then you're a sinner. That's not what I'm saying, and you're you're disobeying God. But I am saying that if you don't have spiritual community, if you don't have some guys that you're meeting with, or some women that you're meeting with, or couples that you're meeting with that are helping you grow in your faith, then you're missing it. You're missing it. And so there's an opportunity for us this morning that if you're not connected, to get connected. To get connected. That's what we're asking you to do. It's a very, very simple action step this morning. Get connected in a group.