Would You Rather…? (Matthew 12:22-50)

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Well, good morning church. You can go ahead and open up to Matthew 12. Matthew 12, we’ll be starting in verse 22 and going through the rest of the chapter as we wrap up our series in Matthew this morning. Matthew 12, starting in verse 22 as you’re turning there, it is family worship, Sunday. So we’ve got some kids up in the service with us all very exciting. So we’re gonna try and keep things lively here. We’ll start by playing a little game. Instead of the usual doll illustrations that I bring you, we will play, would you rather? If you’ve never played before, you’ll catch on quickly, I’m sure. So first one we’re gonna do here, would you rather? Would you rather hop everywhere or skip everywhere? Hop everywhere or skip everywhere? Just wait. We’re gonna do hands. All right. You know, I love it when you guys talk back to me, but not this time. All right, we’ll do hands here moment. So hop everywhere, skip everywhere. I’m be nice to you. Also, you can choose neither as your third option. Okay, you can just keep doing what you want to do all the time. You can walk, you can jog, whatever else it is, okay. How many only want to hop from here on out? How many only want to skip from here on out? How many of you just want to, like also be able to walk and run and all those things? That was the right answer, by the way, but some of you, I knew that was going to happen this next one, though. This next one, all right. This is an honor of Taylor Swift getting engaged to the baseball player that she’s dating. I love trolling the Swifties in this congregation. I do. So here’s your next one. For the rest of your life, you only get to listen to one song. Okay? Would You Rather the only music you hear from now on the rest of your life to be Justin Bieber’s Baby or Taylor Swift’s red. Okay, now, just full disclosure here, I think it’s important that I be honest, open, vulnerable with you all. As your pastor, I have no idea what either of those songs are. Okay, not a cool pastor. Stop listening to music after Van Morrison, okay, but here we go. Okay, so you got Justin Bieber’s Baby, Taylor Swift’s red or I’ll be nice again. Neither listen to whatever song you want to listen to whenever you want to listen to it. How many for Bieber got some Beliebers out there? Swifties? You’re like, no, she makes so much good music. I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna just listen to one. How many for neither? Yeah, okay, I knew that one was gonna be easy, all right, another one. You’re going to smell like feet or smell like eggs or neither. You can smell like your delightful self. How many for feet? How many for eggs? How many for neither? OK, let’s do one more, at least. How about this? Would you rather get a paper cut every time you turn a page or bite your tongue every time you eat a meal? Okay? Paper Cut or bite your tongue, and that’s it. There’s no third option. How many for the paper cut? How many for a bite your tongue? Okay, all right. You notice what happened there, though, right? It got a lot harder to choose when you had to choose. That’s what makes Would You Rather a fun game. Is, of course, everyone always wants to go neither or both, whichever question it is, but it’s so much harder when you actually have to make a decision. Let’s just do one more. Would you rather have Jesus all of the time or none of the time? That’s the right answer, of course. Except Is it true? Do you really want that? Because most of us, of course, we want Jesus our Savior. We want the healing that we’ve seen in this series. We want the mercy. We want His presence. But do we always want Jesus as our Lord, the Jesus who tells us what to do? And the answer is, No, we don’t always want that, because we keep sinning. And every time we sin, we’re saying, Jesus, I don’t want you as Lord right now. So since Eden, since the very first time that humans said, You know what, no, thanks God, we’ve got this. It hasn’t been an easy decision. So we got three pretty different scenes this morning in the passage we’re gonna look at, but the thread stitching them all together is that choice. Do you want Jesus all the time or not? So Scene one, kids, if you’re new to this whole experience, we got a little fill in the blank. We don’t know what that is, so it’s something about his power verses 22 to 37 we’ll figure it out near the end of this section. Let me read it for us though Matthew 1222, to 37 then they brought him a demon possessed man who was blind and mute, and Jesus healed him so that he could both talk and see. All the people were astonished and said, Could this be the son of David? But when the Pharisees heard this, they. Said, it is only by Baalzebul, the prince of demons, that this fellow drives out demons. Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand. And if Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself, how then can his kingdom stand? And if I drive out demons by Baalzebul, by whom do your people drive them out? So then they will be your judges. But if it is by the Spirit of God that I drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. Or again, how can anyone enter a strong man’s house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man, then he can plunder his house. Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. And so I tell you, every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit. You brood of vipers. How can you who are evil say anything good? For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of. A good man brings good things out of the goods stored up in him, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him. But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken. For by your words, you will be acquitted, and by your words, you will be condemned. So Jesus brings a demonized or they bring Jesus a demonized man so that he can heal in this guy, he can’t see, can’t speak, right, all this stuff. Now you may roll your eyes at this whole idea of demons, Satan and all the rest of that. Let me just encourage you to keep an open mind here, in part, just because of the reality of evil, which, again, we saw this week, even could pick a week at random. Could pick a place at random and see it. There’s a grotesqueness to the evil that humans are capable of that cries out for explanation, and almost certainly a supernatural explanation. I don’t think Darwin can explain where that sort of evil comes from. Like animals are brutal. That’s what the word means, right? Animals are brutal, sure, nature red in tooth and claw, all of that kind of stuff, but animals aren’t capable of the sort of malicious evil that humans perpetrate regularly. And so that’s where I think, okay, we probably have to look deeper than just the for a natural explanation here, any case, they bring Jesus, this demonized man can’t see, can’t talk. The miracle itself is very short. They brought him a demon, possessed man who was blind and mute, and Jesus healed him so that he could both talk and see. This is not the most interesting miracle story that we’ve read, even in our series so far, that means that the focus isn’t on the miracle, but on what follows. The people react. In fact, their very reactions suggest that these miracles really happened, because Jesus is doing inexplicable things, and so they’re all trying to explain what it was exactly. So the crowds ask a question. The way they ask their question shows they are none too sure about this. It really means something like Son of David would be the Messiah. So they’re pretty much saying, like, this, couldn’t be the Messiah? Could it? Actually, they’re highly skeptical at this point, but the Pharisees Jesus’s opponents are even worse, like they are happy to play. Would you rather hear no Jesus, no thanks? Because he’s obviously satanic. All these miracles he’s doing, he’s doing in the power of baalzebel, which was kind of an insulting name for a pagan god. It means Lord of the Flies. And so they’re saying, again, it’s basically satanic. Why do they think that? Because Jesus isn’t doing what the son of David, what the Messiah should do. When Messiah comes, he is going to, you know, get rid of these pesky Romans who are oppressing our people. He’s going to cast sinners out of the land, not welcome them in and have dinner with them. And of course, the Messiah is not going to utter blasphemy every other sentence by claiming to be God over and over and over again. So you can see what’s happened. Though they’ve they’ve made up their minds on certain issues, and so they blinded themselves in the process. They’re unwilling to see what Jesus is, or even to consider who Jesus might be, and that’s why they make this absurd accusation. Why would Satan attack Satan? This would be like bombing your own troops. In order to win the war. It’s a bold strategy. Probably not going to work out for you, right? But that’s the point. They’re not thinking clearly. They’re blind, willfully blind, and so they’ve made up their minds already. They’ve already got their conclusion, and now they’re just retrofitting their arguments so that they can reach that conclusion. Always worth asking this about ourselves if we’ve done the same thing, right, really, in any area, but especially when it comes to Jesus. Have we already said, Well, we know this is the truth about Jesus. And now let me find some evidence to back myself up as a terrible way to approach truth, of course. And so Jesus highlights the absurdity. Quotes Abraham Lincoln, a house divided census. I was hoping you guys would laugh, right? Lincoln was quoting him, if you didn’t know that, just want to make sure, right, a house divided against itself will fall down. A kingdom at war with itself will collapse. So clearly, that isn’t a good argument. And then Jesus points out that, of course, he’s not the only Exorcist, either. In fact, some of the Pharisees, some of their disciples, are casting out demons too. So if they’re casting out demons by, what power are they doing it? And why would that be a different power than the one Jesus is using? No, he says it’s the Spirit’s power at work within him, which means that the kingdom is here, he says verse 28 and if the kingdom is here, that means the King is here. The Messiah has come. But if the King is here, well that means we have a choice to make, would you rather? And that’s what Jesus says in verse 30, right there is the choice. Whoever is not with me is against me. You’re either with Jesus or against Jesus. Neutrality is impossible when it comes to Jesus. Now look black and white. Thinking is often the wrong way to go about figuring stuff out. They even have a word for it in Logic, right? It’s a false disjunctive. You know, you don’t want to be either or. Sometimes there’s some both, and there’s some nuance to be had in it, but, but not always. There are real black and white issues, of course, and there are certainly circumstances that require black and white thinking like you’re probably don’t want to be squishy on Nazi Germany when you’re rushing the beach at Normandy. God’s a good time for black and white thinking, in fact, you probably wouldn’t be storming Omaha Beach if you were squishy on Nazi Germany. Well, so we’ve got a wartime mentality here as well, because it’s this clash of these two kingdoms, Satan’s kingdom and Jesus’s kingdom. So are you with Jesus? Where are you against Jesus? Now he’s speaking to his opponents here, sure, the Pharisees, but we already know they’re not neutral. So he’s really speaking to the crowds, the people who are around them hearing this conversation. They need to choose. Would you rather and you can’t say both, you can’t say neither. You have to pick. Have to pick. Should be an easy choice, as all of you even expressed a moment ago. This is not like. Do you want a paper cut or a tongue bite? No, this is like. Do you want everlasting life or everlasting death. Do you want joy beyond all reckoning, or unrelenting sorrow? Easy choice, you would think. But not everyone chooses, and so he shifts to the unpardonable sin, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. What exactly does this mean? It means that somebody sees, even though they’re blind, of course, they see the Spirit actively working, like an incontrovertible display of the Spirit’s power, what Jesus has just demonstrated. They see the Spirit actively working and yet deny it, or would go so far as to reject it by claiming that it’s actually Satan’s power. It is, as one commentator put it, a conscious disputing of the indisputable attributing to Satan what is accomplished by the power of God. So the unpardonable sin involves this combination of clear knowledge and yet conscious rejection. What’s so interesting is that Jesus says you can actually blaspheme him. You can speak against the Son of Man by rejecting His gospel and still be forgiven, because repentance might come later. In fact, I would guess there’s probably a good chunk of people in this room who would say, yeah, that’s my story. That is my story, by the way, for a certain time when No, Jesus is not God. Jesus is not the savior. Oh, wait, I was wrong. And Jesus says it’s fine, we can forgive that, but to blaspheme the spirit, well, that can’t be forgiven because it’s to reject the truth, to reject the gospel with the full awareness that you are rejecting the truth. It’s willful rejection, by the way, always have to say this when you talk about the unpardonable sin, because somebody right there is going, have I committed it? I’ll just say this if you’re worried you committed it. You didn’t. That’s all you need to know, right? Because do you think the Pharisees at this point, the opponents of Jesus, are going, might I have committed the unpardonable sin? No, they’re just gonna double down in it like that hardness of heart is what you want to fear. So this is a strong passage, of course, and this is a stern warning, but it is so gracious at the same time, think why it’s gracious. First of all, it’s a warning, and a warning itself is gracious, even when it’s strong, like listen to the warning, turn and be saved. So imagine, you know, a neighbor comes out because there’s a power line down and the neighborhood kids are flocking toward it. If that neighbor comes out screaming at them, is he being mean? No, he could come out swinging a golf club to get them away from the downed power line. It would be the most loving thing he could do, if that’s what it took to get them away. So yes, it’s a strong warning, but it is a loving warning at the same time. But second, here’s where it’s so gracious, did you catch it? And so I tell you verse 31 every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven, except just this one, all these other sins can be forgiven. Man, how remarkable is that? Oh, but Jesus, I cheated on my test. Every sin can be forgiven, yeah, but I lied to my every sin can be forgiven. I got my girlfriend pregnant in high school. Every sin can be forgiven. I had an abortion. Every sin can be forgiven, and that’s the gospel. All all of that can be forgiven because Jesus takes that on himself, the punishment that we deserve on himself, so that we can receive forgiveness and mercy and grace instead. But of course, that only happens if you come to him and receive Him as Savior and Lord, but if we do, every sin will be forgiven. Can I just ask you, after hearing that, wouldn’t you rather? Wouldn’t you rather come to him like the choice is so easy. That’s why it actually has that connection. I don’t know if you saw in verse 31 it says, And so like there’s this logical connection, you’re either with me or against me. And so let’s talk about the unpardonable sin. There’s this logical connection. He’s inviting the crowds. He’s inviting us now to choose, to choose to come and receive that forgiveness, but it is so important that we actually choose. So how do we know that we’ve chosen Jesus? Because it would be easy to deceive ourselves. I go to church. I prayed a prayer that my parents taught me. At some point I got baptized, and Jesus shows us how we know because he says our conduct reveals our character. What we do shows us who we are. It’s like chocolate syrup, right? You look hungry. So a picture that that bowl of ice cream. Your flavor choice? Would you rather? I don’t care, vanilla, chocolate, chocolate chip cookie dough. You take it, and you’re thinking to yourself, the only thing that could make this better is chocolate chip syrup. Chocolate syrup. It’s labeled chocolate syrup, clearly, chocolate syrup, and you go to pour it out, I should have flipped this earlier. This is why we have Kyle do these usually, guys, it’s chocolate syrup. That’s what it said on the bottle. I’m a Christian. That’s what I said on the bottle. No, it’s what we do that shows us who we are. It’s what is on the inside, not just what we claim to be. If you’ve got a tree that makes bad fruit, it’s a bad tree. If you’ve got a tree. Tree that makes good fruit. It’s a good tree. Now, when we talk about bad fruit, we’re not talking about rotten fruit, right? We’re not talking about that apple that you forgot I got kind of behind the other ones, and now it’s pretty much a liquid and blue and stuff like that. That’s not the bad fruit we’re talking about here. We’re talking about fruit on the apple tree. But, you know, it never gets bigger than that, it’s as hard as a rock. It’s tasteless at best and bitter at worst. So the rotten fruit, that’s not the tree’s fault. That’s your fault. You’re the one who forgot to eat it, but that little, that’s the tree’s fault. And so if you wanna fix that, you gotta fix the tree somehow. Maybe it just needs to be chopped down entirely. Maybe, I don’t know, help the roots out. Put some fertilizer down, but that’s what Jesus is offering when we choose him to make us into a different sort of tree. And that’s what Kyle read for us earlier. I mean, this is the promise to become a new tree. I will give you a new heart, put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. That’s when He scoops out the mustard and fills it with chocolate syrup. And so our actions change, not just our actions he says, but our words as well. Who we say Jesus is but all of our words, every word, reveals our hearts. I mean, how many of us are like this when it comes to our words, I claim to be sweet and I’m actually quite sharp. Our words reveal who we are. You’ve heard of Freudian slips right, this is the idea where you say something and it wasn’t what you meant to say. And then Freud goes, Yeah, but you really meant to say it. So when you look at your friend and I like, Oh, I really want to hit you. Hug you. Hug you. I meant hug you. One syllable. Word starts with an H, anyone could get confused. And Freud goes, Mm, hmm. There’s some anger there. What Jesus is saying here is, there’s no such thing is a Freudian slip. It all reveals who we are on the inside. It’s not that a lie slipped out. It’s that you’re a liar. It’s not that gossip came out. It’s that you are a gossip. It’s not that harsh critical words slipped out, but that you are a harsh and critical person reveals who you are. And if that felt really strong, by the way, because I was like, You are this. That’s what Jesus says in verse 37 right before this, he’s talking abstractly every word, this word, that word in verse 37 For by your words, you will be acquitted or condemned. So if we need new words, that means we need new hearts. We need to get rid of the mustard, get some chocolate syrup in there. How do we empty the mustard? Fill it with chocolate syrup. Instead, we come to Jesus and we see His power. There’s your fill in the blank. We see his power. Who he is, that is we look at the evidence before us and make a right judgment, choose to believe Scene two, then something about his sign. Let me keep reading verses 38 to 45 then some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law said to him, Teacher, we want to see a sign from you. He answered, a wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but none will be given it, except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah. And now something greater than Jonah is here, the Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon’s wisdom. And now something greater than Solomon is here, when an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places, seeking rest, and does not find it. Then it says, I will return to the house I left. When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there, and the final condition of that person is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation. I find this really amusing, right? Because Jesus just did a miracle in front of them, and now they want a sign like that. Was a pretty good one, wasn’t it? So what gives what’s going on here that word sign is key. Word sign is key. They’re not asking for another miracle. They did just see one of those. A sign is a confirmation of prophecy. So that’s what they want. It’s like they’re saying to Jesus, yeah, sure, you’ve done miracles, but now. Prove yourself to us, prove that you are the Son of David, prove that you’re the Messiah, prove that you’re God, for that matter, make unbelief impossible. Jesus doesn’t like this. He talks about this being a wicked and adulterous generation. Just interesting because it’s just a small group of people asking the question, and Jesus goes, you’re all implicated in this. Alright, there’s something in us that is like this adulterous is an interesting word, actually, because what is adultery? It’s when you can’t decide. Would You Rather this person or this person both? And what Jesus is saying here is, that’s how we are with God. Would you rather God Yahweh or Baal and Israel, time and time again, goes both, both. So this question is representative of the whole generation. And so Jesus, he won’t produce signs on demand for them, he says the sign is already there. For those who believe this is good for us to hear, because a lot of people will say this even today, I would believe in God if, if he gave me a sign, basically, if he proved himself, if he made unbelief impossible. For me, that’s not how God works. The sign is already there. So what sign is already there? Jesus says it’s the sign of Jonah. Okay, how? Well, both Jonah and Jesus were delivered from death. Jonah, if you’re not familiar with the story, swallowed by a sea monster a fish, and he’s there in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights. And I’m not, you know, a marine biologist, but usually, when you get swallowed by a sea monster for three days and three nights, that’s the end of you kind of the whole premise of jaws. If I got that movie right. But not here. This fish spits Jonah out under the shores of Assyria, and he goes and he preaches to Nineveh, looking and smelling like he’d been in the fish for three days and three nights. Needless to say, they’re like, what’s that? We would like to hear more about this? Jesus is the same way. Of course, he is actually killed. That’s the only difference, crucified and then stuffed in the belly of the earth for three days and then rises from the dead. In both cases, that deliverance from death vindicates their message. What they’re saying must be true, because here’s the proof, here’s the sign. But the point that Jesus makes is that Nineveh had a very different response than Israel is having now to Jesus, because Nineveh repented everybody, kings and peasants, even the cows, put on sackcloth and sprinkled dust on their heads to show their repentance. Israel is not doing that with Jesus’ preaching. They’re getting ready to crucify him so that he can give them the sign of Jonah, despite Jesus being greater than Jonah. And actually, it’s the same thing with the Queen of the South. She comes from a distant land, spares no expense to go and sit at Solomon’s feet because she had heard of his wisdom and she just wanted to learn from him. Well now one who is greater than Solomon is here. Are they coming to sit at his feet? No, they’re coming to trap him in his sayings so that they can crucify him again, a very different response, even though Jesus is wiser than Solomon. So the point Jesus is saying is, look, you already have everything you need to make your choice. I’m gonna need you. Ava, come on up. Ava, very reluctantly and graciously, agreed to be my guinea pig here. We’re gonna do a little riddle here with Ava. Because Ava, I know Ava pretty well. I know Ava is you’re very good at math, right? Top subject, okay, what grade are you in fifth grade? So are you in calculus or non linear mathematics this year? One of those, right. Okay, fractions. Is that what? All right, we’re gonna do a riddle. Here. Is it not my riddle. I would like to thank Dr Kim for providing me with this riddle one time when we were out for ice cream, thankfully, with chocolate syrup that time around, what you need to know for this riddle is that you have everything you need to get the riddle correct. The rest of you, you can do this in your heads, I’m gonna invite you not to participate verbally. I know how some of you are, yeah, don’t do that. Don’t ruin my sermon illustration. All right. You ready? Ava, you might wanna stretch first. All right, you’re driving a bus. There’s no one on the bus. You make your first stop. Yeah, eight people get on the bus. Second stop, three people get off, five people get on the bus. Third stop, six people get off, four people get on. Fourth stop, whatever stop we’re on now, 18 people get on, only three get off. This bus is packed now, standing room only. Next one, okay? 11. Get off, four get on, then six get off, six get on. That one was easy, and then the next one, two get off, 13 get on, and then four more get off, because they’re like, This bus is too crowded. Are you ready? What’s the bus driver’s name?
But you do know now you didn’t remember because there’s a riddle. I said you were driving the bus. The bus driver’s name is Ava. Thank you so much. Ava, you can go back down. What was the idea? Right? You have everything you need already, because you have Jesus’s life, death and resurrection, and that is what you need to believe, actually, more than that, because you’re like but I didn’t get to see His life, death and resurrection. Exactly what you have is the word of God, and this is what you need to believe. The Bible is abundantly clear about that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Jesus makes the same point in a parable He tells in Luke 16 he’s got a whole bunch of stuff, but near the end of it, the rich man who is there in hell experiencing torment. It says, go send somebody to warn my brothers so that they repent. He’s talking to Abraham. Abraham says, they’ve got Moses and the prophets. They have the word of God. In other words, let them listen to them. No father. Abraham, he said, But if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent. And Abraham replied, If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be convinced, even if someone rises from the dead, wink, wink, they have the word of God. We have the word of God, and that is all we need to choose. So let’s just see where we are. Okay, what’s the sign? Well, it’s Jonah’s sign, which is Jesus’s death and resurrection. How should we respond to the sign? Like Nineveh, we should repent and believe, yeah. But what if we don’t? And that’s where he goes next with this little parable where the house is swept clean. And the image here is of somebody who gets religion, or maybe even in our culture today, something more like self help. Tell you what I read this and what I think of as Jordan Peterson, somebody who’s going to give you discipline, order and direction, but who is explicitly neutral on Jesus, and that actually makes things worse, is the point Jesus makes here, because Jesus says it’s not enough to empty the house. You got to think of like your heart here. It’s a little temple, right? It’s not enough to just sweep the temple clean. You must then fill it with Jesus. And so there’s the danger of neutrality again, because it can just reinforce sin our self worship. Because when what happens here I get my house in order, and that’s the heart of sin, right there. I do what I want. Would you rather Jesus or self? And most of us go both, both. So how do we get hold of what we need to believe? We come to Jesus, and here’s your fill in the blank. Accept his sign. Accept his sign, not the sign you want, the sign that he gave. Accept his sign. And what that means for us today is read His word and choose then to believe last section, then last scene, something about his will. Last bit of chapter 12, verses 46 to 50, while Jesus was still talking to the crowd his mother and brothers stood outside wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, your mother and brothers are standing outside wanting to speak to you. And he replied to him, who is my mother and who are my brothers, pointing to his disciples, he said, here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in Heaven is my brother and sister and mother. So while this conversation about the sign of Jonah is happening, his biological family shows up. His mother, Mary, Joseph, is most likely dead at this point, his siblings, his brothers, and maybe his sisters as well. We know he’s got brothers like James and Jude. We know from other passages that he’s got some sisters too. This is Proverbs. Essential timing, because it helps him drive home his point still, because if anyone is with Jesus, it’s got to be his biological family, right? Except that they’re not mark in the same story tells us that they actually showed up because they thought he was going crazy. So they’re not showing up because they want to learn truth from him. They’re they’re showing up. It’s an intervention, basically. And so we learn again what we keep seeing. There’s a lot of outside stuff, the label that looks like following Jesus, but isn’t really. Putting a new label on a bottle doesn’t change what’s inside. And so what are some of the labels we might cling to? Well, maybe it’s a physical relationship with Jesus, which is what his mom and brothers have. We share DNA. That’s good, right? Maybe it’s religious performance. Maybe it is a profession of faith, as Michael Green says, Though religious practices and religious pedigree are inadequate, that’s not the dividing line. So kids, this is a great word for you on family worship Sunday, the fact that your parents believe, the fact that you come from a Christian family, is not proof that you have chosen Jesus. The fact that you do certain things, like come to church or maybe read your Bible, those are good things, of course, but they don’t prove that you’ve chosen Jesus. So what is the proof? What does show that what shows that we are part of God’s family, and I want to make sure you heard that clearly. I did not say what makes us part of Jesus’s family, but what shows us that we are already a part of Jesus’s family, and it’s only one thing. But to get there, we got to do a little game first, because I have to have an object lesson in each of my points, it’s the rules of family worship Sunday. Simon says, everybody knows how to play, right? I’m Simon. Simon says, Pat your head. Okay. Simon says, touch your nose. Simon says, tug your right ear. Simon says, tug your left ear. Simon Says, Hug your right ear. Simon says, tug your left ear. Tug your right ear. I got a few of you, not many of you, but some of you, right. We all know how Simon Says works right now. Why do I mention this? Why do we play this game? Because if you’re going to win that game, it does not matter what you think of Simon. It does not matter what you say about Simon. Loves Simon. He’s a good guy. Always gives great advice just every time I’ve ever talked No. All that matters if you want to win the game is, are you doing what Simon says and then not doing what Simon didn’t say? So it is here, Jesus says, whoever does the will of the Father belongs to Jesus, part of his people, part of his family. And so this invites us into a time of self examination. Of course, am I actually doing what God asks me to do and not doing what Jesus tells me not to do, of course. Now that’s a tough question, because we know that none of us is perfect here, and that’s not what’s being talked about. Jesus, in His life, death and resurrection, has taken away the penalty of our sin, and He has broken the power of sin, but the presence of sin lingers in our hearts so frustratingly. So it’s not that you’ve never messed up in the same way that you really wanted to follow Simon, but I tricked you kind of thing, right? That’s not what we’re talking about here. But Are you actively battling sin, actively seeking, striving to obey Jesus, steadily growing in grace, and that can be a hard question to answer. Like kids, that’s a great question to ask your parents, do you see this growth in me, parents, that’s a great question to ask your kids, do you see growth in me? And you’re like, I don’t have kids. What do I do now? That’s why we’ve got community groups and journey groups and Christian friendships. The point is invite input in this area. Am I doing the will of the Father? Increasingly, as the years go by, because this is another place where we cannot be neutral. Oh, I like Jesus. I like Jesus. Yeah, he’s a good moral teacher, except for some of his teachings which aren’t good or moral and so I don’t listen to those. Do you do what Jesus says? When Jesus says, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you? When Jesus says, Flee from sexual immorality, when Jesus says one thing you lack, go sell all your possessions and give to the poor, then come and follow me. You are either with him or against him, and you will know which one it is. As soon as you hear him say what you need to do. Jesus says, if your answer, there is no thanks, and you may think of Him as savior, but you do not know Him as Lord. So how do we know that we’ve made our choice? We come to Jesus and we last fill in the blank. We do His will. We do His will. We choose to believe and then to follow? So you got the point of this passage, right? I mean, this is a time to choose. You can’t say both. You can’t say neither. You have to pick, would you rather follow Jesus or not? We have seen who he is. We have seen what he’s done. You have everything you need to choose, and we know what it means to choose even so here’s your big idea. You could write it yourselves, I’m sure. Choose to follow King Jesus. Choose to follow your king, and I would invite you to choose. Even now, kids again, maybe some of you are here and going, I’m still learning this story. Can I choose? And the answer is yes, absolutely. But adults too confident. There are adults in the room right now who are still in squishy on Jesus, would you rather? I’m not sure yet. I’m not sure yet. This might not be your last chance to choose. I don’t know that. It isn’t no one has promised tomorrow. Of course, I also know that if you don’t choose today and you are given tomorrow, you’ll have a chance tomorrow, because, thank God, we can blaspheme and speak against Jesus and still be forgiven, but we can’t go on rejecting forever. There will come a day when that choice is no longer open to us. We can’t go on pretending to be neutral forever. And so I would invite you to choose, even now. Choose to believe that Jesus is God, that He is our Creator. So we belong to him, that he is our king, and so we must obey Him, and choose to believe that we have sinned, that we have done wrong by him, that we have not obeyed our king, but have rebelled against Him, and honestly, would rather that he were dead. Would love to see a guillotine around, but then choose to believe that Jesus is willing to forgive every sin and every slander, if you will, come to Him, turn from your sin and trust in him. Let’s pray to Him even now, Lord, You have given us everything we need to believe. We know that we can’t go to you. We can’t come to you in faith unless you change our hearts. We are all of us by nature, bad trees that produce bad fruit. So Lord, would you change our hearts even now, take our Hearts of Stone and give us hearts of flesh instead living hearts? Would you take our blind eyes and give us eyes that can see? Would you take our closed minds and give us open minds that are willing to accept the evidence that you have given us. Would you give us the faith to believe in you, Lord, and when we choose to believe Lord, would you help us then to go on following you as our Lord and Savior, to do your will for the glory of your name, amen.