For whoever does the will of My Father in heaven is My brother and sister and mother.”For whoever does the will of my Father who is in heaven, he is my brother, and sister, and mother.”For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.For whosoever shall do the will of my Father who is in heaven, he is my brother, and sister, and mother.
3 sermons cite this verse
… here. whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother. Huh, wait a minute. You just said everything that happens is God's will in one sense. I said, yes. Well, that doesn't work here. Because everybody is not his brother and sister and mother. He meant keep the commandments. God's will is don't kill, don't steal, don't lie. Obey your parents. That's God's will. His will of, what should we call it? Command. or this is the will of God, your sanctification. Or, verse 18, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you, to give thanks. Give thanks, that's God's will for you. So which is it in Paul's case in Ephesians 1? Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. He commanded me to be an apostle or he set me apart to be an apostle. Here's Galatians 1.15. He who had set me apart before I was born and who called me by his grace. …
… This is an amazing statement. Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven, whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and my sister. Whoever does the will of my Father, This is why it was the perfect question. What should we do? And John says, I want you to do in your world what God is about to do for the world. And if you do, you'll recognize God when he does it. John knew that if the people listening to him would do compassion and do generosity and do others first and do for one, they would recognize God's work in the world. They would recognize the selfless other first lamb of God that was about to step onto the pages of history. Believers didn't change the world. Doers changed the world. Followers changed the world. The men and women, the men and women whose lives advertise the kingdom of God, the men and women whose lives advertise thy kingdom come, thy will be done right here, right now in my world. …
… Verse 34, looking about at those who were sitting around Him, He said, Behold, My mother and My brothers, for whoever does the will of God, he is My brother and sister and mother." The Lord seized the moment to speak of salvation truth. He was not concerned about the human relationships, that they were not the relationships that mattered. There was no particular privilege for Mary that set her apart from the need for a Savior. She said that in Luke 1, God my Savior. She was not sinless. She needed a Savior. She was His mother in the earthly sense, but not in the kingdom sense until she had trusted in Him as Savior, which surely by now she had done. They knew Jesus, but they couldn't make the step to the reality that He was actually the Son of God. And Jesus here is pushing them past their temporal limitation. I'm not concerned about physical relationships. I'm concerned about spiritual ones. And spiritual ones are defined by doing the will of God. …