Joel Gregory A Brother from the Same Mother

0:00 Well, good evening, Kensington Temple. It's good to be back again this evening. Thank you for your warm, wonderful, winsome hospitality all day today. It's been a joy to meet the pastor, to see friends old and new, to see this evening the Kendall's friends now for decades. Is that right, R.T.? Yes. What a delight to have them here. And thank you for making this connection. It's been so good. My wife, Joanne, is with me. Here she flew in yesterday and woke up from my sermon today. So we're glad that she's here. It is an honor to be here. If I were to write a title over this sermon tonight, I would call it a brother from the same mother.

0:52 A text from 1 Corinthians 15, verse 7. in the midst of this list of the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus. You read this tucked away in verse 7.

1:14 After that, he was seen by James and by all of the apostles. Something you wouldn't know without that. after that he was seen by James I don't know about you, but sibling rivalry has a certain fascination for me. And for some other people, political people, entertainment people, athletic people, where fathers and sons are siblings on the same athletic game. You see it in politics. You see it in entertainment. You see it in athletics. You see it with people who otherwise are unknown, incognito, anonymous families, sibling rivalry. You know, back in the day, in the 70s, the President of the United States was Jimmy Carter, a very distinguished man, had a Ph.D. in physics.

2:14 He was a submarine commander, a graduate of the military institute in Annapolis. Very accomplished man. He had a brother who lived down in the United States, stayed in the south of Georgia. His name was Billy. Billy ran what we call in the States a filling station where they sold petrol. He was most widely known for inventing a beer called Billy Beer. It's quite a contrast. The President of the United States and his brother Bill, and they had a public sibling rivalry. You don't like that? Well, think about Jermaine and Michael Jackson. It's very interesting. That entertainer had an older brother. Some days he's on the media saying, it could have been me, it should have been me, In other days, he praises his younger brother now gone, sibling rivalry.

3:11 Sometimes, funny things can happen. There was a cruel older sister who told her younger sister, the reason our mom and dad are sad sometimes is because you had a twin, but they lost her at the shopping center and we never found her. It was just being cruel. I think she was grounded for a month after that. My favorite report of all of them, though, was a boy who told his younger brother that when the storm sirens went off to indicate that a tornado was coming in that Midwestern town, he convinced his younger brother that they went off when aliens were invading from outer space. and he gave his younger brother a bottle full of sticky green stuff and said the only way you can save our family is to spray us when the siren goes off and you need to start with grandmother. Well the next time the storm siren went off he sprayed his grandmother.

4:06 I don't think he left the house for a year after that. It was like that in sibling rivalry. You know there were there were seven of them. We know the names of the boys because that's the way it was back then. James and Joseph and Simeon and Jude, we got their names. We don't have the names. We just told that they were sisters. We don't know if they were two. They were, sorry, ladies, back in that patriarchal society. That's the way it was. We don't have their names. Maybe one of them was named for her grandmother, Anne. maybe another for a national hero, Sarah. We don't know, but there were seven of them. What we do know from tradition is that that mother became a widow.

5:03 She was married to an older tradesman. Evidently business was good there in their town because they were building in a city called Sepphoris. But just like any family then, and many families today, those seven were hand-me-downs. Anybody know what that means? One sibling handing it down to the next. A thing we often forget of this mother is that most of the time, while the older ones were growing up, she was expecting the next one. In fact, the oldest son in the family four times went to the synagogue in town and watched as his four younger brothers underwent ritual circumcision and heard those babies scream like the world had come to an end. Maybe you've caught on by now.

6:00 I'm sure you have. I'm talking about the Jesus family. One of the easiest things for us to forget, I think, in thinking of his divinity is also his humanity. He grew up in a home with seven younger siblings. I know, I know our Roman Catholic friends say that they were children of Joseph by an earlier marriage, but the Protestant view has always been that they were the natural children of Mary and Joseph. It said he didn't know his wife until after Jesus was born, and so it was likely, I believe, younger siblings. If you try to wrap your mind around the fact, it is an amazing thing to contemplate. For one thing, there was gossip in the village.

6:58 Some old hag, when all the women were at the well, pointed to Mary and said, that oldest boy in the families, he's the son of a Roman soldier passing through here. There was gossip in the back streets of Nazareth. It couldn't have been easy to be a younger half-sibling of Jesus. Can you imagine the comparison? Some of us have heard, why can't you be more like your older brother? I wonder how many times they heard that. James, why can't you be more like Jesus? He always finishes what he started in the carpenter shop. He never sasses us back, talks back. He never snitches on any of the other kids. Why can't you be more like Jesus? It's almost inevitable.

7:52 And then there must have been a favoritism, just like there was in the family of the patriarch, Joseph. It wasn't intentional, but I expected that little house at Nazareth where they all lived in a tiny two-level house, sometimes at night by fair light, about midnight. You know how children will sometimes listen to parents whispering? they must have heard Joseph and Mary talking about those shepherds who years ago came jumping over fences to see the oldest boy in the family. In fact, and this is sacred imagination, maybe sometime when Joseph and Mary were out of the house they went into a little chest in one of the rooms, opened it up, and there was the gleam of gold and the smell of frankincense and some ointment called myrrh. And they wondered how in the world did anybody as poor as we are get treasures like that?

8:53 Growing up with Jesus didn't help how he looked. When he got older, they said, you know, he really looks like a man sorrowful and acquainted with grief. They said, he and James have the eyes of Mary, but Jesus doesn't look like his father at all. I doubt that happened. And then there was that time when he was 12, maybe they went up to Jerusalem for a bar mitzvah. Nobody knows, but there, Jesus, this peasant boy from Nazareth, a town so small, it's not even mentioned in the Old Testament. It's not even mentioned by the great cartographer Josephus in the first century, tiny town. If you put it in your GPS, you wouldn't have found anything. There he was in the middle of the Capitol, in the temple, in the middle of the temple, amazing. The PhDs and the THDs of the day.

9:57 How do you think that made James feel that his older brother was an amazement to the national religious leaders? We don't have any record about it, but at about time when Jesus was 30, I like to picture it this way. He took off his carpenter's apron, neatly folded it up, brushed the wood chips off of himself. And I picture him and his mother Mary sitting down at a table that Jesus had made, putting his hands around a warm cup of strong coffee. Hey, mother, mother, it's time for me to go. Something like this must have happened. Cousin John is baptizing down at the Jordan. The father has told me to go to his Riverside baptistry.

10:58 And walking out, you know, the older son inherited the business, which meant Jesus would have inherited the business. I can almost imagine that walking out, he said, James, you see that table over there? We've got to finish that for the Issachar family. And he was gone. and someday it must have all come crashing down on James. The comparisons, why can't you be like your older brother? The favoritism, they couldn't help it. The brilliance of it, the perfection of his older brother. In fact, you don't even have to guess about it. One of many reasons I know this is inspired God-breathed book is that it tells you the truth about his brothers. In John chapter 7, you read these words, after these things Jesus walked in Galilee for he did not want to walk in Judea because the Jews sought to kill him.

12:00 Now it was the feast of tabernacles at hand and his brothers mocking him, snarky, jealous, depart from here and go unto Judea that your disciples may see the works that you're doing. No one does anything in secret while he himself desires to be made known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world. And then John interprets it for even his brothers did not believe in him. Now there it is they'd lived with him for 30 years. They'd witnessed his coming and his going. They'd seen his perfection. And when his public ministry began, they mock him. It's a hateful, vengeful, resentful remark. Here, struck your stuff down in Jerusalem.

13:00 Take your disciples as Peter and Andrew and these people. Neither did they believe in him. If you think that's something, Mark, the earliest gospel to be written, tells even more about him. It says when his own people heard about this, Mark 321, they went out to lay hands on him and they said he's out of his mind. The word in the Greek New Testament, he is beside himself. I can just see a little family council around that same table in the carpenter's shop at Nazareth. Here's James, Jude, Simeon, Mary. Mother, we need to intervene. We may have to get a court order. He's claiming to heal people. He says he's greater than the Sabbath. He grew up right here in the house with us. They say he's chasing out demons and there was something about a boat sinking because he put too many fish in it.

14:02 You can almost hear it. And it didn't help a few verses later when they tell them that his mother and his brothers have come. He looks around at the people in the house and said, who is my mother and brothers? He said, here they are. Whoever does the will of God's my brother and my sister and my mother. I'm Sir James and others must have said he's absolutely lost his mind. He's disowned us. It's right here in the Gospels. and yet yet this James became the pastor of the church in Jerusalem this James wrote the letter that bears his name in your New Testament this James who joined in the mockery and rejection of His brother began that letter by saying, James, the bond servant of the Lord Jesus Christ.

15:06 This James was martyred for the faith, according to three ancient authorities. Hagisopis, Clement, Eusebius, ancient authorities. He was stoned to death. This James. If you have an ounce of curiosity, if you like mysteries, you're wondering, what happened? My text tells you what happened.

15:29 There are 11 recorded post-resurrection appearances of the risen Lord Jesus Christ. 11 of them. Inside and outside. Day and night. Jerusalem and Galilee. Crowds and individuals. He put in a cameo appearance. It says in 1 Corinthians 15, 7. to James. You ever wonder where it was? Had to be somewhere.

16:02 I pondered that a great deal. If you go up north of my hometown in North Texas, tiny little country cemetery in the middle of nowhere, there's a little stone. It says Bill Gregory. February 5th, 1938. It's a brother. I never saw.

16:27 I replaced the stone not long ago because he's long forgotten. It's occurred to me, what would it be like if all of a sudden I were at my desk studying and I heard a voice that said, Joel, and I turned around and it was Bill. It must have been something like that. I think it was in the carpenter's shop where they grew up. He could be, Jesus could be anywhere he wanted to at the speed of light evidently.

16:55 James is over that workbench. And from behind him comes a voice that in one way it was familiar and another it's not familiar. James! And he turns around. And it is his resurrected brother, the Lord Jesus Christ. It could have been like that. it happened somewhere that suddenly he encountered the risen Lord he knew he'd been crucified he'd heard about that and Jesus appears to him now some of that is holy speculation everything had to happen some way but there is something that's not speculation that I want to hand you and I'll sit down and I want to put it right in your lap. First of all, from this story, you can understand that you can be very close to him and not know who he is at all. It is striking that he was in that little village house for 30 years in front of brothers who didn't believe him.

18:09 they heard his talk they watched his walk and yet he left and the record of John is neither did his brothers believe him you know I've been around church my whole life and I know church folks I know church folks backwards and forward I've pastored little church middle-sized churches big churches I've been in just about every situation you can be in with church folks and let me tell you something I've learned it's not that hard to figure out how to imitate church folks you know say amen at the right time learn a few songs learn the language and you can look just like one but the situation is you can be close to him and not really know him it took for James a personal encounter of his own risen brother for him to become a believer.

19:11 And if this has one person's name on it here tonight, you would know who you are. To be around him and not to know him. I visit museums here in the capital. I like to go to art. I don't know anything about art, but I love to go to art museums and just stare at art. And I've noticed in going to art museums that sometimes people will come up in front of paintings and will break out into tears. They've wanted to see that painting all their life. Or they will paint the painting by special permission. Or they'll take pictures of the painting. But I've noticed something else. The guards that are in those rooms are really not impressed. They're standing in the presence of world-famous masterpieces. And they just want to know, when's my break?

20:02 They're in the presence of greatness. and they want to go get a sandwich. I don't know if you keep up with the National Basketball Association, the United States, but the NBA, anybody a fan of basketball? One of the greatest players now is a Christian young man. His name is Steph Curry. He grew up in North Carolina, which is the number one basketball state in the United States, but nobody offered him a scholarship. His father, Dell, played for the National Basketball Association at West Virginia. They wouldn't even give him a scholarship. North Carolina, North Carolina State, Wake Forest, the great basketball schools, nobody would give him a scholarship.

20:50 He barely got a scholarship to a tiny college called Davidson because the coach there, Bob McKillop, saw something that all the other basketball coaches missed. He'd been watching him since he was a little boy, and he said he had hand-to-eye and hand-to-foot coordination like he'd never seen. Everybody else missed him except one person who looked closely. Now he's been the MVP two times of the National Basketball League, and everybody missed it. Now that's a silly little homely story. On a lower, lesser, lighter level, all the coaches missed greatness when they saw it. Take that up to a higher, holier, heavier level. if something like that's true on a lower lesser lighter level what about a higher holier heavier level and that is to be near to him and not to know who he is come close to me i owe this to you that's why jesus told parables he says there's wheat and there's tares let them grow together one looks like the other good fish and bad fish in the same net at a wedding five wise virgins and five foolish virgins parables of mixed conditions people who were close but didn't know you see it in nature that insect called a katydid a katydid looks just like a leaf but it's not a leaf there's a stick insect that looks just like a twig but it's not a twig there's a pygmy seahorse that looks just like a piece of coral but it's not coral you be close to him what what what when you take the lord's supper what do you say let a what man examine examine himself whether he be in the faith but let me lean into this another way resentment can keep you from knowing him look you read the story they mocked him neither did his brothers believe in him

22:59 you can almost hear the sarcasm go show yourself resentment can keep you from knowing him a long time before the sadducees the pharisees the herodians caiaphas anaphis the sanardine all those cast of characters who resented jesus a long time before then he was resented in his own home by his own brothers who didn't believe in him and who thought they ought to go intervene resentment you know so i read a very interesting definition of resentment it's this resentment resentment is you drinking poison and hoping it kills somebody else You didn't hear me Let me say that again Resentment is when you drink poison And hope it kills somebody else It's a combination of anger And of resentment and they Resented him It's interesting I I've been around church folk and folk who quit church and don't like church talk to thousands of them And it's interesting how people treat the Lord and the church differently Let me tell you what I mean When I was growing up, I had two very bad teachers I mean they were crazy They had no business in a classroom One of them should have been locked up But you know what I didn't quit school. I kept on going. I didn't say I've had it. I'm out of here I'm eight years old and had a crazy teacher I went on and on and on to get multiple degrees or I had a doctor badly misdiagnosed one of my cousins We lost her But I still go to the doctor I fly around a lot preaching the other day a pilot landed the plane so hard That everybody screamed in including the flight attendants. That's pretty bad

25:05 I've had noisy neighbors party all night, keep everybody in the neighborhood awake, but nobody moved. Isn't it interesting how people treat the Lord in the church? Oh, well, the pastor didn't speak to me. The elder didn't say anything to me. A member let me down, and I'm finished. You ever find that to be strange in comparison to the way we deal with other things? The enemy likes to use the bitter root of resentment To keep you away from knowing the risen lord Now there's one somebody out of a crowd of hundreds of people here tonight If this was an art gallery your face would be in that frame truth be told you have a root of resentment and even though no one else may see it or know it, you've made up your mind about the Lord on the basis of that resentment.

26:14 But that's bad news. Let me give you some good news. Good news in this passage is don't give up on family and friends who don't know the Lord. Here's the good news. Don't give up. On those who don't know him he can do whatever it takes To bring them to him Somebody here in this balcony around these transepts are in front of me or beyond here listening. You've just given up Wash your hands on somebody their heart is rock. You said they'll never come don't give up For 30 years these folks didn't believe in him until he did what it took To get his own brother a friend of mine is Paul Ziza he's the president of the Baptist World Alliance that's a that's a network of 48 million Baptist around the world in 200 countries he's a pastor in a township outside of Pretoria told me this story in my own ear long ago as a lady who came in and she'd had a dream about how a certain church looked she wasn't a believer she'd had a dream about how the church look and she just started walking around Praetorium looking for the church and when she saw a church that looked like the church she dreamed about Paul told me in my ear she came to Christ isn't it interesting that he can get down in the synapses and the neurons inside of the brain somebody in a dream in stage four rapid eye movement double dose of I'm beyond sleep and catch them one of my favorite stories about that it'll be familiar to some of you Sadhu Sundar Singh he was a Sikh born in 1898 his mother died when he was 14 he didn't believe in he didn't believe in God but he's funny he got mad at the God he didn't believe in have you ever known anybody like that he didn't believe in God but he got mad at the God he didn't believe in and

28:21 And he said, God, if you're there, you show up before 5 a.m. this morning or I'm going to lay myself down on the railroad track in this little town. You can read about it. He's called the Apostle Paul of India. At 5 a.m. Sadhu said there was a glow in the room, a brightness, and Jesus came to me and said, I died for you. Sadhu Sundar Singh became the Apostle Paul of India. last time they saw him he was preaching marching toward the Himalayas he can do what it takes and the good news of this is don't give up on family and friends who don't know him he can do what it takes could I go back to the story a minute let's go back James he's there in that carpenter shop Jesus makes a cameo personal appearance James I can't even describe it he falls down on his knees in front of his brother I expect after that sometime during those 40 days he made his way back to Jerusalem I wonder if he wasn't on the Mount of olives 40 days after that resurrection for the ascension. I wonder if he stood there with that crowd watching his brother ascend. You ever think about the ascension? We think about how it was to look up at him. You ever think about how it was for him to look down? Over here is Calvary. Over there's the judgment hall of Caiaphas. He's up 5,000 feet. Over here's the Judean wilderness where he overcame the tempter.

30:09 He's up 20,000 feet. There's Bethlehem. 50,000 feet, there's Nazareth. And they watched his brother ascend, went back to the upper room, maybe among those 120, along with mother Mary, the fire, the wind, Pentecost. And they make him the pastor of the church, the brother who didn't believe in the brother from the same mother. pastored evidently something like 30 years and then in a persecution a guess of this Clement Eusebius father church history says he was stoned to death there he was pelted with stones until finally one of them crushed his skull he closed his eyes on jerusalem and he opened them right in the middle of revelation chapter four and five there was a throne and around that throne four living creatures and around them 24 elders and around them myriads of angels and there's james looking at the one on the right hand of the throne and guess who it's jesus he'd worn jesus hand-me-downs but now jesus has a garment that's flashing like lightning he looked in those eyes those tender eyes that had looked at him when jesus picked him up out of the dust of the streets at nazareth and now they're like lasers flashing with fire look at those hands those hands that had picked him up when he was a little boy now those wounds yet visible above in beauty glorified he was looking at his older half-brother Jesus he must have experienced what first John forces when you see him you'll be made like him because you'll see

32:14 as he is now that's special for everybody but it must have been astonishing for someone who grew up in that same nazarene carpenter shop to see his brother there wait a minute i'm talking about james as if he's gone let me give you a clue james is more alive than any of us are we've yet to die he's on the other side what did what did jesus tell the sadducees he's not the god of the dead but the god of the what the living hebrews 12 says we're surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses and up there in that cloud is james more alive than you and i are now come close to me Everyone in here Is going to be somewhere Forever And forever Everyone in here Now you might not think that about yourself But look up and down the pew That person at either end of the pew Where you are That person Is going to be somewhere forever Ann Perryer James is there because finally he fell on his knees and said his brother Jesus is Lord I've got some other folks there I think about it I'm closer to it than I've ever been my grandfather Gregory he's up there now left when he was 90 with cancer of the liver he's whole again in the presence of Jesus his wife Lena Gregory her little frail body out on a farmhouse, standing up straight, glorified in the presence of Jesus.

34:05 My maternal grandfather, who was saved as a middle-aged man, Jesus was so real to him, when I went up to visit with him, I thought Jesus lived in the house. He talked to him all the time. He's with him. A woman in Philadelphia, Eliza Hewitt, had a very bad back condition, And it ended her career. She was bent over almost double.

34:31 She took a pen one day and penned some words. Sung all over the world. When we all get to heaven. What a day of rejoicing that will be. When we all see Jesus. We'll sing. And shout the victory. now for everybody here that's either the most precious thought you can think or the very thought of it to confront him filled you with terror what's it for you you see one day we're all going to join where james and Mary and the redeemed of the ages are in the presence of a risen Lord. I want to say this and I'll sit down. Every one of you here is going to spend forever somewhere.

35:35 There's no mortal in here in the sense we use the word mortal. You will personally exist somewhere forever, either in the glory that I've described for James and that family, or in somewhere so terrible we don't even like to talk about and they got a feeling you know you've got a clue which destiny is yours right now.

35:59 I want to say something else. You can be close to him and not know him. One of the hardest things for proud humanity to do if you've been around the church house is to say, you know, I've been close, but I haven't known him. It's a terrible price to pay to be a lifetime actor. It's good to get real.

36:25 Bitterness. It's where I wish I could sit down, as I said this morning, at a table, just have a cup with you, just talk. Bitterness can keep you from it. a professing christian lets you down but let me tell you about that person they don't have a heaven to give you or a hell where you would go they shouldn't stand between you and eternity because you'll not be dealing with that person who disappointed you'll be dealing with a risen lord even for his half sibling James, he had to make a personal encounter. Now there's one somebody sitting here listening to this message about a brother from another mother.

37:22 And that's what you need. You need him to be more than just a person from history. And that's all he is for somebody here tonight. Now I have historical heroes. My favorite president is president Theodore Roosevelt was president about 110 years ago the United States I love him. I love everything about him. I've got his autograph his wife's autograph his son's autograph I've got deeds that he signed I even have an Avon bottle of aftershave lotion where you can screw his head off and Put it on yourself, but I didn't get up this morning and say oh Theodore

38:03 Because I know it's just a history But I did get up this morning and say Jesus Jesus Help me today Jesus When I stand to preach I need your presence today because I know the difference between Theodore Roosevelt and a risen Lord Is he a historical figure or have you had a personal encounter with him? I want three things tonight. I didn't come just to make a speech about James. I came to argue for a verdict like an attorney would argue for a verdict. is resentment keeping you from him. Deal with it tonight.

38:53 Stab it in the heart. Are you close but not there yet? Take the final step to encounter him. And if you're just an imitator, Come to the real one. Bow your head with me, please. Every head bowed, every eye closed. I don't want you to worry about somebody else here tonight one thing we like to do in church is worry about that person at the other end of the view I just want you in your own private personal prayer chapel right where you are in a holy place right where you are just you and the Spirit of God you and the Spirit of God Would you ask him, am I real? I'm not catering to doubt, but ask him, am I real?

39:55 Somebody else, bitterness has taken a root in your life, a root of bitterness, and it can be resentment. I want to ask you tonight to pull under the Spirit of God that root out and say goodbye to bitterness. It will deafen you to his voice. It will blind you to his word. somebody else just needs an initial encounter with him I want to ask you this no one's looking around before I pray right now I just want to ask you which of those frames do you fit in Lord I pray now that your spirit will speak you've promised us that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God May that self-same spirit that brought Jesus to his resurrected brother be present here these years later and speak to hearts.

41:00 Lord, may there be a voice beyond my voice, a pull and a push beyond anything human. And I pray that people will drop their guard and that they will humble themselves under your hand so that you might lift them up. We plead it in the name of Jesus who promised and gives the Spirit for times just like these.