Priorities Series

INTRODUCTION

• Busyness is not just about put in too many hours on the job.

• Just as people struggle with overworking, so they can also struggle with staying busy when they are not working their “day job.”

• There is a constant state of busyness between work and everything else that fills our “leisure” time.

• Think of your to-do list for the weekend: kids’ soccer games, baseball travel teams, fixing the car, going to the grandparents’ house, lunch with friends to plan for, and volunteering at church.

• Our calendars fill up with good things, goals we want to achieve, and experiences we want to cherish.

• But we can become stressed and overwhelmed with our good things.

• The rest that God desires for us is not just from our employment, but sometimes, from the good things in life that crowd our schedules, hearts, and minds.

• We need rest from our days off!

• One scene in the Gospels describes the struggle with staying busy and missing out on what God desires.

• In our passage today, Luke 10:38-42Jesus and his disciples enter the home of two sisters.

• One sister, Martha, is the hostess striving to take care of her guests while Jesus teaches.

• Martha’s sister is Mary, and she is sitting in front of Jesus and taking in every word he says.

• I love this event because when we read it, depending on how we are wired, we will relate to either Martha or Mary.

• In this story, you will either think that Mary is a lazy bum who, if she helped her sister, things would get done much faster; or you will believe that Mary is doing the right thing by paying attention to their house guest.

• On the other side of the coin, you will look at Martha in one of two ways.

• First, you will think she is a whiner who is so focused on everything being PERFECT that she cannot possibly enjoy having company and that her real job is to make everyone as miserable as she is.

• Or you will admire Martha’s hard work and meticulous attention to every detail of the home, along with her commitment to making her home an astounding picture that belongs in Southern Living Magazine!

• The story of Martha and Mary is much deeper than one sister being an uptight workaholic freak and one sister a lazy bum.

• From this encounter, we will see what can happen when busyness is a priority in our lives.

› Big Idea of the Message: Our world is obsessed with being busy. It can be hard to slow down and take time to prioritize Jesus.

• Let’s begin with Luke 10:38-40.

Luke 10:38–40 (CSB)

38 While they were traveling, he entered a village, and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home.

39 She had a sister named Mary, who also sat at the Lord’s feet and was listening to what he said.

40 But Martha was distracted by her many tasks, and she came up and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to serve alone? So tell her to give me a hand.”

SERMON

Busyness can lead to..

I. Missed opportunities

• What an exciting day!

• Jesus and His disciples were in town.

• Bethany, where this event takes place, is just over the Mt of Olives, about 2 miles east of Jerusalem.

• Jesus and His entourage had been doing a lot of traveling; they were coming from Jerusalem, probably in December as the Feast of Dedication for this short visit with Martha and Mary.

• Martha sees Jesus and His disciples and invites them into her home.

• This has to be an exciting time!

• Later in John 11:1-ff we find that Mary and Martha are sisters of Lazarus, whom Jesus would later raise from the dead, and from John 12:2, we will find that Mary washed the feet of Jesus with expensive perfume while wiping them dry with her hair.

• This day is a story of two philosophies of life; one seems to be task-oriented.

• The task at hand is the most critical priority.

• In defense of Martha, she was doing what was culturally expected and accepted; she would be serving the men.

• In their culture, women were considered by many to be inferior to men intellectually, physically, and spiritually.

• By the way, it was Jesus who corrected that false thinking!

• Martha wants everything to be just right, and she wants to be a good hostess and make sure they have something to eat.

• This is a hard choice because you want Jesus to see that you are neat because, after all, cleanliness is next to godliness according to...