“Was there jealousy in the family of Jesus?”

Steve Brown:
Was there jealousy in the family of Jesus? The answer to that and other questions on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
This is Key Life, dedicated to the message that the only people who get any better are those who know that if they don’t get any better, God will still love them anyway. That teaching raises a lot of questions, so here’s author and seminary professor Steve Brown, along with Pete Alwinson from ForgeTruth with answers from the Bible that will make you free.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hi Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
Hey man. Here we go.

Steve Brown:
Here we go again. You know, we’ve been doing this so long. We should have grown roots in these chairs.

Pete Alwinson:
They’re different chairs. We’ve worn some of them out.

Steve Brown:
We’ve done this for over 25 years. When we started Pete was in diapers and I was of a young man and now we both look significantly old.

Pete Alwinson:
Mature.

Steve Brown:
Mature, that’s right. That’s Pete Alwinson. And if you just joining us, he joins me every Friday and we do nothing but answer questions. And we do love, by the way, check out ForgeTruth.com if you’re wondering who Pete is. You’ll learn a lot of good stuff, and there’s a great podcast there. But he comes in and we answer questions, and we love your questions, and you. You can call 1-800-KEY-LIFE, 24 7,, follow instructions, record your question, and sometimes we put that on the air. But that’s always available to you and you’ve got a question, don’t put it off. Just pick up the phone and give us a call. Or you can send your question to

Key Life Network
P.O. Box 5000
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in Canada, it’s

Key Life Canada
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or you can e-mail your question to [email protected] and if you can help us, please do. And be as generous as you can. And if you can’t, believe it or not, we really do understand most people can’t. But if you can, stop a moment and say a prayer for this ministry. That we be faithful, that the bills be paid, and that Jesus be glorified. Pete, why don’t you lead us in prayer and we’ll turn to some of these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
You got it. Let’s pray together. Our holy God, we do come into your presence today and give you praise, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. For who you are and what you’ve done. We thank you for Lord Jesus, our salvation, so great, our salvation is in you. And you are the all sufficient one. We can’t add anything to what you have done in fulfilling the law and in taking our curse for our sin on the cross. So, we give you honor and praise and Lord, you know we need you, we need your grace for salvation, but we need it every day. And so. At the end of this week, we ask that you would fill us with a sense of your great love and presence, grace, mercy, and enable us to rest in that secure in you. And this week-end, we do pray for our pastors and priests and leaders and teachers and all those that will lead us in worship and lead us before the throne of grace. Lord, we ask that you would use them in a powerful way and that Lord, you would speak to us very straight-forward, very practically that we could allow your grace to transform us more and more. So, we commit this time of Q&A to you now and pray that you would bless Key Life for your honor and glory. In your name we pray. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. Let’s first off go to our phone lines.

Caller 1:
When Jesus was born and his brothers, were they jealous of him for being maybe the favorite because he was God?

Steve Brown:
I would have been. You know, that’s an interesting question and the Scripture doesn’t give us a lot of details on it, but there is some indication, isn’t there?

Pete Alwinson:
I think there could be. He was the firstborn. He was, when Joseph was gone, he was probably, he became the head of the family. So, there had, and who knows how quickly the others were born after Jesus. So, there might’ve, the boys might’ve been close. There’s always competition, sibling rivalry between

Steve Brown:
Did you actually have that in your family?

Pete Alwinson:
No. Cause I only had a sister, so I never had that, you know, but it’s crazy.

Steve Brown:
What about your nuclear family?

Pete Alwinson:
You had a brother.

Steve Brown:
I did.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
He was my best friend.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Yeah. You didn’t compete?

Steve Brown:
No, he may have on occasion. No, I don’t think so. You know, I looked back at him.

Pete Alwinson:
Was he older or younger?

Steve Brown:
He was younger. He was four years younger. So, that was enough distance. And he became my best friend over the years. And when he died, I died a little bit. What about in, with Joel and John and

Pete Alwinson:
I think so. I think there’s some competition between them.

Steve Brown:
Well, you create that, I mean, you rejoiced in that.

Pete Alwinson:
That was a lot of fun. They’re manly men and I love those boys.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, they really are. They’re such great kids.

Pete Alwinson:
But you know, the, the question stands, it may well be, they weren’t converted, they weren’t convinced right away. It was the ressurrection, it took the resurrection to convert the brothers of Jesus.

Steve Brown:
And then there’s some indication that they were involved in the early church.

Pete Alwinson:
Oh yeah. You know Jude, the half brother of Jesus, clearly he was. And you know, as you’ve said, possibly James, but that James that wrote James might be the James in John. We’re not sure exactly. You know, yeah, his brothers, his family

Steve Brown:
They just don’t give much details, but they were, that was a human normal family. Have you seen The Chosen?

Pete Alwinson:
I have not. Have you watched much of that?

Steve Brown:
Yeah. And I really love it. I just haven’t seen the most recent ones, but all the previous three seasons I’ve watched. And I really believe that I went there. I mean, it was that real. They had at the feeding of the 5,000 people come from all over country to participate in that.

Pete Alwinson:
Wow.

Steve Brown:
And the guys that do it and no matter what anybody’s told you are very committed Christians. They love Jesus with all their hearts. They believe every word of the Bible and they don’t violate what the Scripture says. And so, I like it, but back to that kind of thing. The thing that The Chosen does is that it humanizes the way it was. You know, Jesus did play ball. Jesus, you know, he was in a real family. And real things that happen in real families, happened there too. He had real friends and they laughed and cut up as well as talk about theology. And it’s good for us to see that on occasion.

Pete Alwinson:
Well, that is so true. It’s like when you read the Bible, as some have said, I think R.C. Sproul said this, you’ve gotta read the Bible existentially, which means we have to kind of fill in a lot of things that we just don’t get. And I think that’s what The Chosen is trying to do.

Steve Brown:
You know, I had a friend who was a contemplative who used to say, it was a she, she told me, she said, when you read an incident in the Bible, put yourself in it. And I found that, like on the Sermon on the Mount, I didn’t just listen to what he said. I sat on the mountain and I listened to what he said. And that makes kind of a difference because it reminds you this is not a story, this really happened. Speaking and note the segue here. It only could happen with a professional.

Pete Alwinson:
That was a professional.

Steve Brown:
All right. What did Jesus really look like?

Pete Alwinson:
You know, we used to have a picture of his high school graduation photo, but we don’t have that anymore. So, we don’t know, but he probably looked just like a Jew of that first century. Now, we do know that Scripture says in Isaiah 53 that he was not a super handsome guy.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. We want to make him into that. He’s, I had a Jewish Rabbi, whom I loved. We used to swim a laps together at the Y in the Boston area. And one time he stopped swimming and he said, You know what drives me nuts about you Gentiles? I said, Probably a lot, Rabbi. What drives you nuts? He said, you always pictured Jesus as a blonde haired, blue eyed, tall, handsome young man. And he wasn’t, he was a little Rabbi. And when he said that, I thought, you know, that’s probably right.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Yeah. He was probably a guy that had some strength to him because he worked as a carpenter with wood and stone. So, he knew how to hang out with guys. So, he knew how to carry himself. He knew how to handle himself and knew how to get along with , all kinds of people.

Steve Brown:
That’s true. Have you looked at anything like the Shroud of Turin? Have you ever read about that? That’s really isn’t it?

Pete Alwinson:
It’s a fascinating study.

Steve Brown:
You know, I go for, I included some material on that in a book that I wrote once. And I had to take it out in the second printing because somebody had discovered it was a fake. And then after I’d taken it out and the book had been reprinted, somebody told me, no it wasn’t, the fake was a fake. And so, I’m not sure now, but it is a fascinating study.

Pete Alwinson:
It is. And the man represented there is not a particularly chiseled looking guy.

Steve Brown:
No, no. But he has overtones of the Sallman head of Jesus, though, in a sense. So, it’s interesting. But no, you know, we could have just said, no, we don’t.

Pete Alwinson:
I know. And gone on.

Steve Brown:
And gone on with another question. But we didn’t do that. This is an e-mail. How can I thank God for all things?

Pete Alwinson:
You know, I think you can, if you have a very big view of God as in charge and deeply loving. I think, it’s a very difficult thing to thank God for bad things. But we know that he doesn’t cause bad, but we know he uses evil for good ends.

Steve Brown:
And for that reason we can thank him. But sometimes that’s not a heart thing.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
Sometimes that’s a head thing because you know good theology. You know, I’ve said to God in numerous occasions, I don’t like this a bit. I hate it. I don’t know why you’re doing it. It doesn’t seem like you at all, but you’re God. And I know that in my head, if not in my heart right now. So, I praise you in all things.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
Which I think is legitimate. And then there are some people that you and I know who are so tuned in to that understanding of it’s the Lord that one of the Covenanters when they brought his son’s head on a platter to him, fell on the floor and he got up and brushed himself off and said, it’s the Lord. Great is the name of the Lord.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Yeah. And you know, people, we do, we all struggle with these kinds of things and allow your, give yourself some room to process and spend time with him. And don’t be overly hard on yourself, if you feel angry or frustrated with the Lord.

Steve Brown:
God loves that kind of authenticity too, you know, Well, I’m thinking of 20. We don’t have a time, but you and I both can think of a lot of incidences when it was really hard to praise God about what was happening to people that we love.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. We trust even though it’s hard to praise.

Steve Brown:
That’s true. Guys. We’ve got to go. But before we go I must say Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.