Keeping It Simple

-Many of us can relate well with Martha. We like to work hard and help people, but when we look around and see others just enjoying the fruit of our labor without even considering how hard we worked for it, we get a little irritated. We may start thinking that nobody really appreciates the hard work we do. Would it really kill someone else to offer to help? They just take me for granted. Maybe I should just quit helping. Then maybe they would know how much work I’ve been doing.

-Now my goal is not to minimize the work anybody does at home, here at the church, or elsewhere in the community. However, if your service has become nothing more than a flurry of worry, then you may need to pay more attention to Mary’s side of the story.

-Loving service is very important! I really appreciate people who are willing to jump right in and help get the job done. Serving, helping, working – we wouldn’t get very far without them. Most of us have plenty to do just keeping our own homes and families in some kind of order. If you work on top of that, life seems to become even more busy. Then, if you are involved in helping out a friend or neighbor here or there, or if you are involved in other activities in the church or community, it doesn’t take much to feel busy all the time. It might be easy for us to single out poor Martha, but how many of us could have had similar stories written about us?

-V. 40 says that Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. The word “distracted” comes from the Greek verb perispao, which literally means “to drag around in circles.” We may be doing a lot of good things and necessary things, but sometimes it seems that we are only running around in circles, never really getting anywhere.

-Now it is important for us to recognize that Jesus was not faulting Martha for her service. Jesus knew what it was to serve others. In fact He said that He had not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many. Martha was serving Jesus out of love and devotion for Him. However, something was missing in all of her efforts.

-TS: Let’s go ahead and take a look at what Mary chose that was so much better than all of Martha’s gourmet cooking and hard work.

II. The Simplicity of “One Thing” (Lk. 10:39, 42)

-Illustration: One New Year’s Day, in the Tournament of Roses parade, a beautiful float suddenly sputtered and quit. It was out of gas. The whole parade was held up until someone could get a can of gas. The amusing thing was this float represented the Standard Oil Company. With its vast oil resources, its truck was out of gas.

[Dutch Sheets, The River of God, using Larson]

-Do you ever get tired and just run out of energy? Even though we know we have all the resources we need in Christ, we still find ourselves running on empty sometimes. Even though we know the One who gives living water, which will make us never thirst again, sometimes we feel dry and parched and empty. How do we avoid letting this happen?

-Well, Jesus told Martha that she was worried and upset about many things, but what she really needed was one thing. Whether the “many things” got done or not, she needed to prioritize the one thing that would make all the difference in her life. What was that one thing? That one thing was the same thing that King David had desired and sought after hundreds of years earlier. In Psalm 27:4, David wrote, “One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.” We could say a lot of things about David’s words here, but in essence he was saying, “The most important thing for me is to spend time with the Lord, enjoying a right relationship with Him. I just want to be where He is, and be close to Him.”