Gospel Prism

Then his mother and his brothers came to him, but they could not reach him because of the crowd. 20 And he was told, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, desiring to see you.” 21 But he answered them, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.”
Luke 8:19-21

Introduction

For those of you who were not here last week, I am continuing on the second part of this sermon from Luke 8:19-21. Last week, I shared that Jesus’ words in Luke 8:19-21 remind us that though we must have a very high view of the family because it reflects the character and nature of God, our love for our family must never be prioritized over the worship of God. To do so is to engage in idolatry, in worshipping the created things (family) rather than the Creator.

As one application of this reality, I had shared with you that there will be a temptation for many of us to worship our parents rather than honoring them. Well, I’d like to conclude with two more applications that we are tempted with in view of the family, one this week and the other next week and then a conclusion from the text. The first is regarding marriage, where we can either love our husband or wife or we can idolize them. The second is regarding our children, where we can either parent them biblically or idolize them. But in conclusion, there is good news that flows out of this text and it comes from verse 21. Jesus reminds us that we must trust Him with our families, that we must remain faithful to Him by keeping Him our greatest priority, and by doing so, the result will not only lead to an ever-increasing delight in worshipping Christ, but in the greatest and sweetest joy we can have for one another as family members.

The Family That Worships the Family Is Idolatry (vv. 19-20)

Let me first summarize the point from Luke 8:19-20. Luke records: “Then his mother and his brothers came to him, but they could not reach him because of the crowd. 20 And he was told, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, desiring to see you.” Remember, we learn much about what Jesus says here from Mark 3. In Mark we saw that Jesus’ mother and brothers thought He had gone berserk. They viewed Jesus only through an earthly lens. In this way, they idolized their family structure (which included Jesus as the obedient son who should perhaps return home to the family business) rather than having their family structure aligned with their worship of God. And so Jesus questions their premise by asking all those around: “Who are my mothers and brothers?” That is, as important as the family is, it is not more foundational than our relationship to God through Christ.

And we are prone to have the same view of the family as well. We are tempted in every way to think like Mary and his brothers. We can have good intentions, a desire to uphold the family which has been given to us by God to enjoy, but even these intentions can become distorted, and our priorities skewed when we no longer worship God, but instead worship our families. Thus, the second relationship where this distortion can take place is in marriage.

Marriage, as we learn from Genesis 2:18-21, is a gift from God. In Ephesians 5:22f. Paul makes it clear that marriage in the Lord mirrors Christ’s love for the church. But as Romans 1:25 warns us of, anything, even the best of things, can lead us down the path of idolatry when we worship gifts and created things rather than the Giver of those gifts, and marriage is no exception. So in what ways do we see idols in marriage?

1. Marriage becomes our end goal in life.

For those who are yet to be married, this will become quite a temptation for you. You can easily be consumed with the concept of marriage, where no longer is marriage a gift of the Creator, but rather a replacement of the Creator. For many of you, this question might come to your mind frequently, especially as you encounter new people, “Is he/she the one?” A person can get consumed by such thoughts throughout their lives. Of course, marriage is an important and encompassing part of life. Of course, it is something to pray about and to think through deeply. But the line between deep thinking and obsession can become quite blurred. And then of course, once marriage no longer has a rightful, biblical place in our hearts, it becomes our end goal, or in effect the god we worship. God suddenly becomes displaced and instead, marriage becomes lifted onto the throne of our hearts. If you are constantly thinking of, dreaming of, anxious over, angry and frustrated by prospects for marriage, be forewarned, you might have the idolatry of marriage in your heart. Gradually marriage becomes your god. How should we guard ourselves from this temptation?

The answer has to be to trust in the goodness, wisdom, and sovereignty of God. We have to believe, like David in Psalm 139 where he says, “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made,” that God has our lives completely in His hand. And according to Paul in Romans 8:28, God will work out all things for the good of those who love Him. God has made you exactly to be as you are, and that even includes you marital status. Jerry Bridges makes this important observation about our self-worth:

I am who I am and you are who you are because God sovereignly and directly created us to be who we are. Self-acceptance is basically trusting God for who I am…We need to think like George MacDonald who said: ‘I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God’s thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest, and most precious thing in all thinking.’ (Jerry Bridges, Trusting God, 162-163)

My brothers and sisters who are yet to be married, God has made you incredibly special. Your marital status cannot and must never keep you from believing that you were created by a glorious God who made you, like David, fearfully and wonderfully.

Therefore, may you never fall into the trap of self-pity about your marital status. You are not to be pitied at all. Instead, may you experience the wonder of God’s grace as a single person, so long as He should call you to singleness. There is a promise in Scripture for singles, whether that is for 1 year, 10 years, that you can honor the Lord in a way that is unique and far different than any married person ever can. Paul says in 1 Cor 7:32-33, 35:

The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. 33 But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife… I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord.

God’s promise to singles is that so long as you trust in Him and make Him your end goal and not marriage, He will release a joy in you that even surpasses a joy for a future husband or wife. This doesn’t mean you will not be married, but it does mean that you walk by faith that remaining sexually pure, by fixing your eyes on Him, by desiring Him even more than marriage itself, by looking to marry someone who also has this same desire to honor Christ, He will give you this joy, whether you marry or remain single for the rest of your lives.

And so John Piper gives this call to singles in light of this Christ-saturated joy:

As long as you are single, this is your calling: to so live for Christ as to make it clearer to the world and to the church:

1. That the family of God grows not by propagation through sexual intercourse, but by regeneration through faith in Christ;

2. That relationships in Christ are more permanent, and more precious, than relationships in families;

3. That marriage is temporary, and finally gives way to the relationship to which it was pointing all along: Christ and the church—the way a picture is no longer needed when you see face to face;

4. And that faithfulness to Christ defines the value of life; all other relationships get their final significance from this. No family relationship is ultimate; relationship to Christ is.

Marriage has its unique potential for magnifying Christ that singleness does not have. Singleness has its unique potential for magnifying Christ that marriage does not have. (John Piper, This Momentary Marriage, 113-114)

Thus, may you worship God as your end goal knowing that whether it is marriage or singleness, both can be a wonderful gift that is a means to that end.

2. Your spouse is your life and hooks your idols.

I can honestly say that I love my wife more than any person on the face of this earth. When I come home, the first thing I want to do is talk to her. I want to make her happy. I delight when she is delighted. There is a joy in my marriage with Shua that continues to surprise me. But there have been moments when I have considered this question, “Do I idolize Shua?” Can my love for her actually displace my love for my Savior? The answer to that question is, “Yes.” Sadly, something that is meant for my good can be used by my sinful heart to turn God’s gracious gift into a perverted idol. So how does this happen and what does it look like?

James 1:14-15 teaches us how our heart begins to worship something other than God: “But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. 15 Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.” The temptation begins by a desire. Notice James doesn’t qualify the desire as an ‘evil’ desire, but rather keeps it general. The reason for this is that anything, as Romans 1:26 reminds us, can be used as a temptation to sin. James then says that such a desire can lure and entice. These words in the Greek have a fishing context, where a person who is tempted by desire is suddenly caught on the hook and is slowly reeled in. Once the desire conceives, like childbirth, it is no longer merely a temptation, but now it has taken over the heart, much like a metastasized cancer has covered the body. And like cancer, sin leads to death.

Now, you’re probably wondering how can this happen in marriage? How can a person’s love for a spouse lead to such an event? Well, think of what marriage consists of, two sinners who come together as husband and wife. And often times, the beginnings of marriage have sin and self-centeredness at the root, hidden behind self-justifications and deceptions. For example, when Shua and I first began our relationship, we had decided to pray and fast for a whole summer to see whether this was a relationship of the Lord. It seemed the ‘spiritual thing to do,’ especially for two seminarians and a future pastor. So when the summer drew to a close, I decided that I had put it enough spiritual work to make this thing a go, only to find that Shua had not felt that she was inclined to begin a relationship. Rather than seeing that maybe this wasn’t the Lord’s timing and feeling a sense of peace regardless of the outcome, I was self-righteously angry against God and Shua. How dare she say no after I had put in all of that time and spiritual energy in prayer? How dare God take my work for Him and throw it in my face? Such was the heart of a self-righteous, pompous sinner. And it is this same heart that I brought into marriage. Behind the guise of spiritual maturity was deep self-righteousness and self-centeredness, the same heart that could love my wife but could use that love and even use my wife for my selfish purposes rather than to God’s glory and my joy. I wanted my needs met (the desire for this relationship to begin in my timing, under my control, no matter how much my fasting and praying portrayed otherwise). And throughout marriage between two sinners this battle for our hearts, the worship of self or God continues.

You see, you can tell your heart is idolizing your spouse when your personal needs, or meeting his/her personal needs are more in the forefront of your life than God’s glory is. This is not how God created marriage to be. If we look at Ephesians 5:22-32, perhaps Paul’s magnum opus when it comes to the blessings and glory of marriage, look at how often Jesus is mentioned, “as to the Lord” (v. 22), “as Christ is the head” (v. 23), “Savior” (v. 23), “submits to Christ” (v. 24), “as Christ loved the church” (v. 24), “he might sanctify her” (v. 26), “he might present the church to himself” (v. 26), “just as Christ” (v. 29), “his body” (v. 30), “to Christ and the church” (v. 32). It’s so unmistakably clear, marriage must have Christ at the center at all times or it will veer away towards idolatry. The self will be worshipped, and such self-worship can be under the guise of outwardly magnanimous gestures (washing the dishes and cleaning the house for the sake of my romantic evening), or corrective words (I need to fix him because there are so many things he needs to change about himself), or spiritualizing sermons (you need to pray about it to see the [my] truth or you need the Gospel, which is why you need to change). This worship of the self is not only self-defeating, it will eventually suck all lasting joy out of that relationship.

So I can say that I am loving my wife more because I fawn over her or delight in her or am helping around the house more or caring for my kids more or buying her more expensive gifts or enjoy her company more, but unless that is rooted in my identity as a saved sinner, such delight will always be temporary. I might feel great about Shua, wanting to communicate with her, wanting to enjoy her, until she disrupts my being the king of my world, and then I begin to realize just how temporary that delight can be. Thus, the real test of the idols of my heart is conflict and hardship, and since we are still sinners this will happen until we see the Lord face to face. Such times will reveal whether I worship Christ in our marriage, or whether I worship me.

The thing about conflict is that it reveals what is at the core of your heart. At least that’s what Jesus tells us in Matthew 15:18-19:

But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. 19 For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.

Whatever comes out of our mouths and how we act, is what is truly in our hearts. A mouth that curses simply reveals the heart that curses God and others. Well, the heart that spews forth hurtful words towards a spouse, a thought of anger or vengeance towards a spouse in the heat of battle, according to Jesus is not to be merely cast off as a heat-of-the-moment mistake. No, this is the reality of our hearts. Someone, even our precious spouse, has hurt us, has injured us, and we want vengeance. We no longer love this person. We can even come to despise the person we lay down next to. A preacher once said to an audience of singles that as lonely as it might be to not have someone to lie down next to, it is far lonelier to lie down next to someone in a king size bed and feel lonelier than he or she ever felt when he/she was single.

You see, conflict only reveals the sin that already resided in your heart, far before you ever met that man or woman you call husband or wife. You did not marry someone who created new sin in you. No, you married someone who John Bettler calls, the person who “always hooks your idol.” (Quoted from Dave Harvey, When Sinners Say I Do, 69)  Whether you married your spouse or another person, that idol would have been hooked because it was always there. Dave Harvey notes that when the idols of our hearts are revealed by our spouse, we go into hiding mode, and one way we do so is to follow Adam’s lead through blameshifting by saying things like: “I wouldn’t be so angry if YOU didn’t nag me.” “If you would just stop yelling at me, then I wouldn’t yell at you.” “If you helped out around the house, then maybe I would be kinder to you.” “If you were more the spiritual leader of the family, maybe I would listen to you.” “I would be willing to communicate more with you, if you just gave me some down time when I got home.” Every one of these statements hooks the idol of the self, self-control, self-rule, self-worship. And here’s one more, “I will love you more, when everything is going great.” But what if they don’t do great? What about the covenants we took, in sickness (if your wife is paralyzed in an accident and can no longer make love to you or if you are unable to have children due to physiological reasons), for poorer (if your husband loses his job and you have to go from owning to renting and no longer have nice vacations and other luxuries), etc.? Those words we spoke when we said, “I do,” were meant to say, “There is nothing that will stand in the way between my love for you and my worship of my Savior, nothing at all.”

The promise of Ephesians 5:22f. is that the marriage that is sustained by faith in Christ with a desire to honor Him and worship Him and keep Him in view, despite any and all circumstances that come your way in marriage, will not only give you the lasting joy and delight of marriage that keeps you going, but it will also allow you and your spouse to be sanctified, growing more and more in love with Jesus and with one another.

I have told some of you this story. Perhaps the second most difficult time in our marriage was after Sarah, our second child was born. The church was relatively young with few members and a number of people were leaving the church. This was in the heyday of the internet boom and bust and the real estate boom. We were just scraping by to live month to month. We had a young toddler who was put-putting around. We had no family nearby and few people were in the church who were in our life stage. We felt incredibly alone. I was doubting my call here to the Bay Area and often wondering if we should be somewhere else. I was also incredibly selfish as you will see to my shame, and treated my precious wife with unfeeling insensitivity. One day, I came home after preparing my sermon, feeling tired and worn in many ways. Shua, who had been caring for a young toddler and a newborn, was also feeling weary as well. So she asked if I might be able to put Charisa down every other night, to cleanse her, to brush her teeth, and to tuck her in. I was flabbergasted. Didn’t Shua know what I was going through, how much I did to help with this family (you can almost see the smoke of self-righteousness coming out of my head)? How could she expect me to do this when I was so tired, and 4 times a week?! What did she do all day that she would need me to do this? Well, after some furious back and forth and arguing and pouting, I finally conceded, feeling at some level, a bit self-congratulatory. About a couple of weeks later, Shua again approached me. But this time, she asked me to put Charisa down every night! That was it. I was floored. I couldn’t believe my ears. What did she expect me to do, raise her by myself while she lived the ‘free’ life? The arrogance in my heart, looking back now, was sickening to say the least. But I see it now, Shua hooked my idols, the idolatry of comfort, of control over my own life, of laziness. It was an idolatry that I carried with me for a long time, where my mother treated me so well, who did everything for me, including all of my laundry in college. It was idolatry of entitlement. I deserve to be treated a certain way. And as long as this idol festered in my soul, I would never fully come to appreciate who Jesus was in my life and what He did for me as a sinner, not really. You see, I felt entitled to be in control not just with my life, but before my Savior. Grace wasn’t necessary for me because I didn’t need it. In fact, I felt entitled to it, just like everything else. And for the first time, that idol was being challenged. It took my wife and her longing for me to love her in a vastly different way than I had ever loved anyone, that I would come to see just how dark and diseased and idolatrous my heart was.

Well, I had a missions trip coming up to Asia with a few people from the church. And when we were in Mongolia, we went to a church where the pastor preached a sermon completely in Mongolian. And rather than sit there with glazed eyes, I decided to listen to a sermon that I had on my CD player by Gordon Hugenberger, the pastor of Park Street Church on Ephesians 5. And in that sermon, his words hit my like a ton of bricks. He noted in verse 25-28, Paul wrote: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. 28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.” And from this text, he said, “Do you know what the purpose of marriage is according to Paul? It’s for the husband to sanctify his wife just like Christ sanctified the church. It’s for the husband to do all that he can to love his wife, to do anything he possibly can so that his wife might come to love Jesus more and more as His precious Savior.” That was devastating to me. I replayed the past events between me and Shua through my mind and I came to realize that my heart was so selfish and so idolatrous that I failed to see that my self-centeredness was actually drawing her away from Jesus. And by doing so, not only was she miserable, so was I. But husbands, look at what Paul says in 28, “In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.” That is, when you make the end goal of your life to worship Christ and to lead your wife to worship Christ so that she might be sanctified, that you are willing to do ANYTHING (get a new job so you can spend more time with the family, help around the house, cook meals, begin family worship, pray together, lead her through God’s Word, spend time in meaningful conversation, anything) so that both of you grow in love with your Savior, then…here is the promise, “HE WHO LOVES HIS WIFE LOVES HIMSELF.” Jesus will give you the joy and the love that will not only have a right passion for your spouse, but where you will actually love yourself even more. You will have more delight in who you are, the joy that the Lord gives you. God is not against joy. He is the ultimate author of it. Husbands, when you love your wife as Christ loved the church, when you are willing to love her as your delight BECAUSE you worship Jesus as Lord and Savior, you will have more peace, more contentment and more joy in who YOU are. The worship of the self is the road to conflict, blameshifting, frustration, anger, emotional and physical abuse, and divorce. The worship of Christ leads to a love for your wife in new, fresh, and exciting ways, a leading her to love Christ, your own love for Christ, and your own joy and love for who God made you to be. That’s the promise.

So I went home and when I did, I shared with Shua everything and she had tears of joy and relief. And I told her that it would be my joy and desire to serve her that way. [Dishwashing story where I did it because I loved to, because I love her, because I love my God, what a change?] Have I loved Shua perfectly since that time? No. I still deal with my idols. But I know the truth and as Jesus told us the truth sets me free.

And that truth rests in this one powerful message, the message of the Bible that I am reminded of by the apostle Paul in 1 Timothy 1:15-17: “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. 16 But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. 17 To the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.” Oh how great is the lavished grace of Jesus Christ, that He should save someone like me who could treat his most beloved person in such a way. The story I just told would be nothing without the riches of Christ’s atoning work on the cross for me, because all of us have been convicted by a sermon before, or a circumstance (some trial or even a tragedy). All of us have promised we’ll change, but oh the slowness or sometimes failure of change. We don’t change fast enough and we expect change far too quickly from another. But we forget the change did not begin from within but from outside ourselves. It started from God’s beloved Son shedding His blood for failures and broken and empty promises. It was for people like me who was convicted by my own sin, and then failing to keep promises to even my beloved wife. And yet, Jesus’ love was for me on that cross even though He knew I would commit such sins. Husbands and wives, where will you place your hope? Will it be in the change of a man or woman whose heart is filled with idols? No it must not be. You will be sorely disappointed.

So singles, what will you worship, the concept of marriage or the God who created marriage, but even more so, gave you His Son so that you will enjoy a fellowship with Him that will far exceed marriage? Marriage is for a moment but your relationship with Christ in joy will be forever?

Wives, will your hope be in your husband’s change to love you more, to be a ‘better man’ or will it be in the God who never changes who sent His Son for your frustration, for your desire to control the man who lies down next to you, who is your ultimate satisfaction?

Husbands, will your desire be for your self-worship, your comfort, your control, or will it be the God who gave His Son for you, which will empower you to love your wife and to do whatever it takes to do so, and by doing so, you will love yourself?

Next week, I’ll close with Parenting and Idolatry and then the awesome conclusion of Luke 8:19-21 found in verse 21.