At Home with Joseph and Mary – Part 2
The Bible says of the elementary-age Jesus, “And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was on him” (Luke 2:40).
Later, Luke described Jesus during His teenage years as being obedient to His parents and growing “in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man” (Luke 2:52).
Mary was one of the godliest women who ever lived, and Joseph was an honest, wise, mature, hardworking craftsman. But the family of Jesus of Nazareth had its problems, the kind of pain and heartache every home encounters, and the idyllic scenes of our Lord’s childhood home fade into the background as the predicted sword begins its flight toward Mary’s heart (Luke 2:35).
Joseph and Mary began their marriage with accusations of immorality (Matthew 1:18) and a rugged road trip during which Mary went into labor and gave birth inside a cavern-like room. From the beginning the young family was targeted by death threats, causing them to flee for their lives (Matthew 2:13). Joseph and Mary traveled with their child to Egypt because Herod the Great, in his diseased mind, construed the baby of Bethlehem as a threat (Matthew 1:13).
Later, after Herod’s death, the family returned to Israel and settled in Nazareth (Matthew 1:23). There, Joseph and Mary settled into homelife with Jesus and several other children. The names of the other boys are given in Matthew 13:54-57, in the passage about the response to Jesus teaching in Nazareth.
“Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?” they asked. “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph [named for his father], Simon and Judas [or Jude]? Aren’t all his sisters with us?
In the Greek, the word “all” could mean “both.” So Jesus had four younger brothers and at least two sisters.
To His schoolteachers in the synagogue, Jesus looked just like another boy. To His clients in the carpentry shop, He seemed like just another craftsman. As He grew older, she undoubtedly told Him about Gabriel’s message and about His unusual virgin birth. As Luke said, “Jesus grew in knowledge.” I can imagine He took long walks in the lower Galilean hills, pondering God’s calling on His life.
Then one day news came that a spiritual revival had broken out along the banks of the Jordan River in Judea. A powerful preacher had arisen and people were comparing him to the prophet Elijah. Messianic talk was in the air.
People from Galilee traveled down there, and many of them were returning with their lives changed. They said this man, John the Baptist, had plunged them into the river as a token of their repentance and spiritual transformation. Nothing like this had been seen in Israel for centuries.
When Jesus arrived, John the Baptist, who was in the middle of a dynamic sermon, looked up and saw Him.
“Behold!” he said. “The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29 NKJV). Jesus offered Himself for baptism, and as He came out of the water the Holy Spirit descended on Him and anointed Him as the Messiah. The voice of the Father thundered from Heaven, saying, “You are My beloved Son.” (Mark 1:9-11 NKJV).
Immediately the Holy Spirit compelled Jesus into the desert mountains, where He stayed for about six weeks. According to Luke 4:1-2, the devil came at the end of those forty days. I believe this is when God the Father fully revealed to Jesus His identity, His role, His mission, and His destiny.
Jesus returned from Judea to His hometown of Nazareth. He now understood fully who He was and why He was on earth. He now knew His mission. On the next Sabbath, He went to the synagogue as usual. The day’s reading was from the scroll of Isaiah, and Jesus read the passage that described the predicted Messiah. He told them that He Himself was that prophetic Anointed One who had been sent into the world.
Luke continues the story in Luke 4:28-31:
All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff. But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way. Then he went down to Capernaum, a town in Galilee….
Jesus implied that even His own family had turned against Him. He said, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home” (Mark 6:4).
According to Mark’s Gospel, His family followed Him and tried to track Him down, thinking, “He is out of His mind” (Mark 3:21). Even His mother, Mary, who understood better than anyone that God had a special plan for Jesus, was distraught. She probably found herself caught in the middle, like all of us do at some point or another. Mark wrote:
Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone to call him. A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.”
“Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked. Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”
The whole family was frustrated, and in John 7 it came to a confrontation. John 7:1-8 (TLB) says:
After this, Jesus went to Galilee, going from village to village, for he wanted to stay out of Judea where the Jewish leaders were plotting his death. But soon it was time for the Tabernacle Ceremonies, one of the annual Jewish holidays, and Jesus’ brothers urged him to go to Judea for the celebration.
“Go where more people can see your miracles!” they scoffed. “You can’t be famous when you hide like this! If you’re so great, prove it to the world!” For even his brothers didn’t believe in him.
Jesus replied, “It is not the right time for me to go now. But you can go anytime and it will make no difference, for the world can’t hate you; but it does hate me, because I accuse it of sin and evil. 8 You go on, and I’ll come later when it is the right time.”
The next time we read anything about the family of Jesus in the Gospels, only His mother is one the scene, traumatized, standing near the cross and watching her firstborn writhe in anguish as He is tortured to death. The apostle John wrote in John 20:25-27:
Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved [the apostle John] standing nearby, he said to her, “Woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.
Imagine being in a home in which the father died, the oldest Son quit his job just when they needed his income; and he left home hiking from village to village claiming to be God. His brothers feared He was mentally ill and delusional. Some of the children became prodigals and cynics (John 7:5), and rivalry broke out among the siblings (John 7:3-5). And before it was all over, this humble family faced the humiliating spectacle of the public execution of its most prominent member (John 19:26).
This is strangely encouraging, isn’t it? The home is like a magnifying glass in which everything is intensified. Emotions. Joys. Heartache. Fun. Sorrow. Life. Death. Everything!
That’s what happened to Mary’s family, but that is not the end of the story.
After His resurrection, Jesus appeared on earth for another forty days, almost six weeks. He had a personal meeting with His brother, James (1 Corinthians 15:7). And then Jesus ascended into Heaven, and His followers gathered in the Upper Room for the next ten days. Acts 1:12-14 says:
Then the apostles returned to Jerusalem from the hill called the Mount of Olives, a Sabbath day’s walk from the city. When they arrived, they went upstairs to the room where they were staying. Those present were Peter, John, James and Andrew; Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew; James son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.
It’s possible our Lord’s sisters were there too. When the Holy Spirit descended on the 120 believers on the day of Pentecost, it fell full force on the boys who had grown up in the same Nazareth home as Jesus. Our Lord’s family, who had encountered so much pain, were now bound together as the first generation of Spirit-filled believers in the inception of the church.
- The Lord’s brother James became the leader of the church in Jerusalem. James was in the Upper Room. He later wrote the book of James in the later pages of the New Testament.
- The next brother, Jude, became the writer of another New Testament book, the epistle of Jude, which comes just before the book of Revelation.
- As for the others, they became traveling evangelists who took their wives along, spreading the Gospel.
One of the first historians of the early church was named Hegesippus. Eusebius quotes Hegesippus as saying that the nephews of Jesus were still living near Nazareth and ran into trouble with Roman authorities:
Still surviving of our Lord’s family were the grandsons of Jude, who was said to be His brother according to the flesh, and they were informed on [or betrayed to the authorities] as being descendants of David. The [Roman official] brought them before Domitian Caesar, who, like Herod, was afraid of the coming of Christ.
…They were asked about Christ and His kingdom—its nature, origin, and time of appearance. They replied that it was not of this world or earthly but angelic and heavenly, and that it would be established at the end of the world when He would come in glory to judge the living and the dead and reward everyone according to his deeds.
At this Domitian did not condemn them but, despising them as simple sorts, let them go free and ordered that the persecution against the church cease. After their release they became leaders of the churches, both for their testimony and because they were of the Lord’s family, and they lived into Trajan’s time due to the ensuing peace.
One man who has done incredible work on tracing the evidence for the descendants of the family of Joseph and Mary is Richard Bauckham, an English Anglican scholar. He wrote a book entitled Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church.
In the early third century, there was a Christian scholar named Julius Africanus. He wrote that the relatives of Jesus lived near Nazareth and were preaching the Gospel and using the genealogies of Christ as a way of explaining how Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament. They lived in a village near Nazareth and were called by a special title—“The Master’s People.”
Bauckham said, “The meaning is probably that members of the family of Jesus, traveling around the land of Israel and preaching the Gospel to their fellow Jews, used a family genealogy, like that in Luke 3, as a way of explaining the Christian claim that Jesus was the messianic Son of David.”
Bauckham believes that while Peter and Paul took the Gospel westward into Asia Minor and Europe, James the Lord’s brother and his teams took the Gospel eastward toward Asia and India. There are medieval sources that suggest members of Jesus’ family traveled as missionaries through Mesopotamia.
And then we have one final witness to history.
During the persecution of Christians in 250–251 under the emperor Decius, a certain Conon, a gardener on the imperial estate, was martyred in Pamphylia in Asia Minor. According to the acts of his martyrdom, when questioned in court as to his place of origin and his ancestry, he replied: ‘I am of the city of Nazareth in Galilee, I am of the family of Christ, whose worship I have inherited from my ancestors.’
Mary was one of the greatest, godliest, and wisest women who ever lived. And she is our shining example of the primary point I want to bring “home” to you– Expect Pain and Problems in Your Family; But Rely on Resurrection Power to Prevail in the End.
Embedded into this story are two powerful concepts around which we can organize our thoughts in times of perplexity—rehearsal and reversal.
Rehearsal
First, we have to rehearse all the Scriptures God gives us and keep them constantly in mind. The Lord spoke to her through her older relative Elizabeth (Luke 1:29-56); the shepherds, whose words “Mary treasured up…and pondered…in her heart” (Luke 2:19). She never forgot what Simeon and Anna told her in the temple when the baby Jesus was dedicated to the Lord (Luke 2:22-38), nor what Jesus told her at age twelve: “Why were you searching for me? Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house” (Luke 2:49).
Luke adds, “But they did not understand what he was saying to them…. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart” (Luke 2:50-51).
The Christian experience involves a wonderful lifetime of Bible exploration, and God has words for us that will nourish us each day and nurture us through every stress and strain. We can get through every difficulty by rehearsing all God says to us.
Reversal
And then there was the great reversal—the Resurrection of Jesus from the tomb. The Lord not only reversed death itself in a flash of Easter glory; He reversed the direction of those grieving and the duration of their lives; the circumstances around their morale and then mission; and even the course of human history.
Jesus wields resurrection power over the burdens we bear and the prayers we offer. The apostle Paul described resurrection power like this:
I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened [to] know… his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms… (Ephesians 1:18-20).
The same power that resurrected Jesus causes “everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them” (Romans 8:28 NLT).
He can do that; He has promised He will do that. He can turn things round, reverse the tide of the biography of life, and safeguard our hearts and minds with His peace (Philippians 4:7). One day while contemplating this, I wrote a little couplet:
Praise God who works all things for good for those who love His Name.
His Providential Hand shall turn all burdens into gain.
The Risen Christ has done this over and over for us. Your situation is unique, of course. And yet, it isn’t. The Lord can handle it. This remarkable Jesus of Nazareth, Mary’s boy, said:
In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.
(John 16:33)