Note: This is the sermon manuscript that Ben carried into the pulpit. Feel free to use it in any way to advance the kingdom of God.
Questions For God:
Is the Lord Pleased With My Priorities?
Luke 10:38-42
Englewood Baptist Church
Sunday Morning, Aug. 10, 2008
Today marks week 3 in this sermon series entitled, Questions For God. We have been examining some excellent questions that people often pose to their pastors. On week 1, if you remember, we explored the question, “Does God Change His Mind?” Last week, we dealt with the question, “What is the Secret to Success?”
Today I am dealing with a question that came to me last week in the kitchen of my house. The question came from my mother-in-law. I was telling her about this sermon series I was doing and she said, “I have a question for you. Maybe you can preach on this sometime: “Why was Jesus so hard on Martha?”
I just stopped in my tracks and said to her, “You know, that is a great question.” She was alluding to Luke 10 when Jesus rebukes Martha for being too preoccupied with preparing a meal. It is a convicting passage of Scripture. It is a commentary on misplaced priorities.
Before we dive into this story, let me ask you a few probing questions. Is God pleased with your priorities? If the Lord returned today, would you be proud of the way that you are spending your time and your energy and your money? Is time with Jesus Christ the #1 priority in your life? Are you so busy doing other things that you ignore the most important relationship you have? Listen to the story of Martha. Put yourself in this story. Are you more like Mary or Martha?
Read Luke 10:38-42
Is it me or does Jesus sound a little bit perturbed? “Martha, Martha,” he says, “you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed.” Apparantly, Martha had committed a big no-no. Jesus was a little annoyed with her. I might be going too far to say he was angry, but he was certainly irritated by Martha’s behavior. And I don’t know very many women who read this passage and don’t want to stand up for Martha. “Somebody’s got to clean the dishes!”
Let’s give Martha some credit here. Imagine what could have been going on behind the scenes of the story. Jesus is coming into town. He’s the most important person that has ever walked the face of the Earth and certainly the most famous person that has ever come to her town. He’s bigger than any king, any president, any athlete that has ever lived, and he is coming to her house to eat. And not just him, but he is bringing 12 hungry men that he calls his disciples. With Mary and Martha, this was a party of 15. That’s a lot of food to prepare, and it’s a lot of pressure for the host. Everything has to be just right. Every woman wants to impress her house guests, treat them well, especially when that houseguest happens to be God with skin on. You can understand the pressure the woman was under. And to make things worse, she is having to do it all herself.
And here is how things might have gone that day. Martha was scurrying around the kitchen cutting up the meat and the vegetable when suddenly it dawns on her that she is out of fresh water. So, she grabs a pail and runs up the hill to the well, fills it up, begins walking back, trips, falls, and spills the whole thing all down the front of her. She goes back, fills the bucket again, runs to the kitchen, hustling and bustling to get it all together with a nice presentation. After all, it’s all about the presentation. And as she is laying out 15 servings on each plate, out of the corner of her eye, she sees her sister giggling. She is sitting at the feet of Jesus just twirling her hair and listening intently. Martha feels like every woman has felt at some point: underappreciated and taken advantage of. So what happens? Her pride wells up within her. She murmurs to herself, “I am no servant, or a slave.” She walks into the living room, gives her sister one of those sisterly looks, one of those, “Wait till he leaves the room” kind of looks.
Just then, Jesus looks at her and says, “Martha, why don’t you pull up a seat next to your sister here and join the conversation.” But Martha was in no mood for chit chat. With arms crossed, she responds, and this is my translation, “Lord, why don’t you tell my lazy sister to get up off the floor and help me in the kitchen?!?”
And look how Jesus responds. It is shocking. He does not rebuke or reprimand Mary for not helping Martha, but instead, He praises her for her decision. Martha was serving; Mary was sitting. And Jesus says, “Mary has chosen what is better. That seat on the floor will not be taken from her.” So why was Jesus so hard on Martha? That’s a good question.
I want you to notice in the text that there are at least two important differences between these two women. Jesus told Mary that she had made the right decisions. What differences are there in these two women’s behavior?
The Difference Between Martha and Mary
1. They had different priorities.
What do I mean by that? Martha was focused on serving Jesus; Mary was focused on enjoying Jesus. And we see that in the text. The Bible says in v.40, “But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made.” That word distracted in the Greek means, “to drag around in circles.” She was doing a lot of good things, but in the end it wasn’t getting her anywhere. She confusing activity for accomplishment. It was like she was running around in circles.
How easy it is to do. Do you ever live under the tyranny of the urgent? There’s always something to keep you busy. If you are a parent, you are reminded as soon as you rise that breakfast has to be fixed, clothes have to be chosen and put on, lunch boxes have to be packed, transportation to school must happen. Bills have to be paid, cars have to be taken to the shop, the refrigerator has to be repaired—it’s not keeping your milk cold! Insurance has to be kept up with, taxes have to be filed, parents have to be called, pictures have to be sent, emails have to be responded to, the leaves must be bagged, the pool is turning green…and the list goes on and on and on with distractions and concerns. And suddenly, your life is marked by a flurry of worry. Is your life a flurry of worry? Does V. 41 describe you? “You are worried and upset about many things.” What is happened? Over time, your priorities have changed. Martha was like that.
But Mary, Mary on the other hand, had a different pace that day. It says that she was “sitting at Jesus’ feet.” Do you know that 3 times in the New Testament Mary appears and all 3 times she is found at the feet of Jesus. Here she is again. I like how the Message Paraphrase reads here. It says, “She was hanging on every word that Jesus said.” She wasn’t preoccupied with a clean house or a gourmet meal. She was focused more on the presence of God in her life.
Now let me qualify this. Do not misunderstand the point here. The Bible is not teaching that housework is unspiritual or that you should never prepare a nice meal for a guest. The Bible isn’t saying that it is wrong to be a servant. Not at all! Jesus said that was part of his mission on earth. He came NOT to be served, but to serve. It wasn’t wrong for Martha to serve. It was wrong for her to neglect her relationship with God in order to serve God.
Sometimes in the church, leaders have to ask laypeople to slow down. Sometimes a person comes along with such zeal that he wants to teach a Sunday School class, serve as a deacon, volunteer for the parking lot ministry, help in Vacation Bible School, take a place in the prayer room, dish out food on the Wednesday night meal, be a part of GO Visitation and sing in the choir. What happens to this person? That person, in an attempt to be all things to all people, winds up being nothing to nobody. He ends up burnt out, with a shrinking heart for God. His private devotional life suffers as the expense of his public ministry.
As I was studying this text, I was reading a commentary and a statement came running off the page and struck my heart. This is what it said, “The most important part of the Christian life is the part that only God sees.” Let me read that again…
This is a book that was given to me years ago and has had a tremendous impact on my life. It is called Ordering Your Private World by Gordon MacDonald. In the book, he says that every person lives in two worlds. There is the public world, which is the easiest to measure. This is the visible part of our lives where we are doing and acting and serving. We tend to put a lot of emphasis on this aspect. But there is a private world also that serves as the foundation for the public world. I want you to hear what MacDonald says about the importance of your private world:
I believe that one of the greatest battlegrounds of our age is the private world of the individual. There is a contest that must be fought particularly by those who call themselves practicing Christians. Among them are those who work hard, shouldering massive responsibilities at home, work, and at church. They are good people, but they are very, very tired! And thus they too often live on the verge of a sinkhole-like collapse…They become too public world-oriented, ignoring the private side until it is almost too late.
Our Western cultural values have helped to blind us to this tendency. We are naively inclined to believe that the most publicly active person is also the most privately spiritual.
--Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World
Do you see his point? We tend to measure people by how busy they are. We follow suit by placing all of our time and energy into our public lives. Why? Because that is the part that people see, but the foundation of our lives is not in our service, no matter how good those services might be. The foundation of our lives is in our worship—by how often we sit at the feet of Jesus.
Where is your focus? Are you focused on doing things for Christ, or are you focused on being with Christ? Mary chose to draw close to Jesus. It wasn’t because she was hard of hearing. It wasn’t because she had a crush on Him. She drew close because she knew that He was her greatest source of strength, and Jesus said, “She made the right decision.”
I want to stop right here and offer a confession. I have resolved never to be a hypocrite from this pulpit. I want to say something candid: I have drifted in the past few months away from my private world. I’m not making excuses, but when our baby was born, the routine in our house changed and I have not made prayer and personal Bible study a priority. And I am recommitting myself today. And this is the freeing, wonderful thing about the God that I serve. I get to start fresh whenever I want. When I let my focus drift off the main thing, the Holy Spirit tells me, and I can re-focus. That’s called grace. And if you are here today, and you have drifted away from Jesus, then re-focus and let today be the start of sitting at his feet again. It’s never too late to start sitting at the feet of Jesus. Take a walk tonight and talk to Lord as if you were talking to a friend. Open your Bible tomorrow morning and read a few psalms. You might read Psalm 27. This is the Psalm of David and this is what he says,
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. Psalm 27:4
Do you get what he was saying, “There most important thing in my life is spending time with God. I just want to be where He is, and be near to him.”
Recommit yourself today to draw near to Him. If you do that, Jesus says, you have made a good decision.
Now there is one other difference between Martha and Mary that I want to note in the text today.
2. They had a different state of mind.
Look how Martha felt, as I pointed out a moment ago. Verse 41, Jesus nails it. He says, “Martha, you are worried and upset about many things.” Notice her state of mind. She was stressed out and bent out of shape. She was in turmoil.
When you turn your eyes off of Jesus, the same thing will happen to you. When you neglect personal time with God, you will begin to carry burdens that you were not intended to carry. And what will happen? It will affect your relationships with other people as well. When your relationship with God is out of whack, all of your relationships suffer. Martha was raging mad at her sister, and she was mad at the world. Why? Because she was trying to carry too much. She needed to lay it down and rest in Jesus. There are worse things in the world than a meal without side items. What Martha needed, more than food, was the peace that comes through drawing near to Christ. He is the Prince of Peace.
The writer of the hymn, What a Friend We Have In Jesus knew what he was talking about when he penned these words,
What a Friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer!
O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.
When you neglect time with the Lord and become too busy to sit at his feet, you forfeit peace. O, what peace we often forfeit.
Martha was not feeling at peace that day. And maybe you aren’t feeling at peace today either. You feel like life is a flurry of worry and stress. Perhaps you are forfeiting that peace by neglecting the one thing that is necessary.
But Mary, oh look at Mary. Did you notice that Mary never defends herself? She doesn’t get all bent out of shape. She does not get defensive or bitter or angry. She’s too focused on Jesus. She was experiencing peace..
You will keep in perfect peace
all who trust in you,
all whose thoughts are fixed on you! Isaiah 26:3 (NLT)
I felt the Lord leading me to do something different this morning. Instead of preaching for another 10 minutes, which I could do. I felt led the Lord saying stop.
There’s a lot of Marthas in this crowd today—male and female. You might be one of them. Solitude, time alone, quiet—these things don’t come often in your life. God wants you to work like Martha, but more importantly, he wants you to worship like Mary. I want you to take the next few minutes and worship the Lord. Just sit at His feet and hear His voice. Let’s worship Him now.
