Gospel Prism

Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. 39 And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. 40 But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” 41 But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, 42 but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”

(Luke 10:38-42)

Introduction

In this new year, I couldn’t have planned for a better text to preach from than this one.  As you make your new year’s resolutions, eat less, exercise more, read the Bible more, serve God more, pray harder, be more gracious and kind to your family, etc., this passage of Luke provides an excellent blueprint as to how to address the many different circumstances of life, especially in the midst of to-do lists and on-going busyness.

Like last week’s passage, I am sure many of you are familiar with this story of Martha and Mary.  And if you’re not, I am sure that you are at least familiar with the idea of Martha and Mary.  Some of you are sitting here listening to Martha and saying, “That’s me.”  And some are watching Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus saying, “That’s me, and I would have gotten yelled at by my sister too.”  Usually, Martha gets a bad rap because of this passage.  But if you look closely, Jesus isn’t showing favorites and He isn’t being too harsh.  Instead, as He has done throughout the Gospel of Luke, He is showing Martha and us that He cares about our actions, but they must be actions that flow out of a heart that loves Him and desires Him more than anything else.  So let’s look at the two sisters, first Martha.

Martha

Let me tell you a little about Martha.  Martha was genuinely hospitable.  After all, she ‘welcomed him into her house.’  This was Martha’s home that she owned.  She probably was not married, since there is no mention of a husband.  And given Martha’s diligence, she probably was very capable and able to provide in some fashion, even in a day when it would have been difficult for women to provide for themselves.  So Jesus was warmly welcomed into her home as her guest.  And there seems to be no doubt that Martha genuinely wanted to serve Jesus with every good intention of making his time with them to be something special.

Perhaps that’s when Martha’s to-do list was.  The shopping needed to be done.  The rooms needed to be cleaned as quickly as possible, made sure that everything was in its proper place.  The food would need to be prepared perfectly, displayed beautifully.  The good dishes and silverware would need to be pulled out.  The floors dusted and mopped.  The welcome mat beaten to clean it of the dust.  The tablecloths readied.  You get the picture.  Martha was going to make sure that this dinner was going to be a special one.  And we cannot dismiss the fact that thus far, people were rejecting Jesus continually (the Samaritans, His own disciples) and some were even trying to entrap Him (the lawyer).  So Martha’s hospitality was clearly a sign that she did want to honor Jesus.  But there are four sins that are revealed in Martha’s heart.  And what you have to realize is that these sins do not come from the same heart of the lawyer who was trying to ‘get’ Jesus or the Samaritans who wanted nothing to do with Him.  No, this was coming from a woman who initially had very good motives and intentions to be a blessing to Jesus.  And yet from this heart came these four sins.  So what were they?

The first sin is the sin of distraction in verse 40, “But Martha was distracted with much serving.”  The word ‘distracted’ originally meant to be ‘pulled or dragged away.’[1] So Martha’s heart wanted to serve Jesus with joy and with gladness, but her heart was being pulled away from doing so.  There was an internal struggle going on (perhaps you know this struggle) where she wanted to serve with a happy heart, but she was being dragged away by an unsettling feeling of frustration.  The ‘much serving’ was from a desire to bless Jesus, but she was so caught up in her list of things to do, in her focus on being a ‘good host,’ her desire to ‘be hospitable,’ that she had been pulled away from the reason as to why she even welcomed Jesus in the first place, to be a blessing to Jesus and to receive blessings from Him.

That’s when the second sin kicks in, the sin of self pity in verse 40.  The battle’s over.  She’s been dragged and put up with Mary’s ‘laziness’ long enough.  And so “she went up to him and said, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone?’”  I could just imagine, Martha’s in the kitchen, running around like a chicken without a head, trying to put on the perfect dinner, sweating, running, anxious, while Jesus is in the other room talking with her little sister no less.  Maybe she was having a conversation like this with herself: “Who did she think she was?  I’m the older sister after all.  It should be me in there talking to Jesus and Mary cooking the dinner.  But someone has to cook the dinner!  The least she could do is come in and help.  The nerve of her.  The nerve of Him.  Doesn’t he have any sense?”  I could imagine her clanging the pans and pots a little louder, trying to drop hints to the two of them, but to no avail.  And so, she’s finally had it and says, “Lord, don’t you care.”  You can hear the pouting, the self-pity.  She serving ALONE.  She’s doing all the work.  She’s the only one who is truly hospitable, because true hospitality, in Martha’s eyes, means hospitality on her terms, great dinner, perfect layout, beautiful house, etc.  She wanted Martha Stewart hospitality at its finest, because ultimately, she wanted to hear Jesus tell her, “Martha, you did a great job.  Everything looked great.  You are a great person, a great cook, a great interior designer, a great home maker.”

Do you see how evil sin can be, how quickly it leads from one sin to another?  Do you see how terrible sin within us is that it can take such a wonderful desire, to bless Christ, and turn it into something so despicable?  She wanted to serve Jesus from her heart genuinely.  And yet, as she served she lost sight of who she was serving.  She began to focus more on the service than on the One she served.  And when she was distracted in this way, she felt sorry for herself.  My dear friends, oh how this applies to so many areas of our lives.  It applies to hospitality.  So many of you have been so hospitable.  But beware, that when you open your home to fellow church members, to your homegroup, to friends, to your extended family, to a stranger even, your motive  could have been out of genuine love and desire to honor Christ.  But when the idea of serving has now turned into the reality of serving, beware that you do not become so distracted by what you feel you need to do to make the time in the way you have determined it should be, that you have lost sight as to whom you serve in the first place.  That ultimately you serve the Lord, not even those whom you have over.

But of course this also applies to serving in different ministries of the church, or serving the local community, or serving the Lord on missions teams.  There will always be circumstances in any opportunity of service that will make serving difficult.  It is idealistic to think that serving will come without some sort of sacrifice.  Some of you have decided to serve the Gospel Train and some have even been serving 6 months consecutively missing 6 months of corporate worship so that children can hear the Gospel.  And perhaps as you do so, you might be thinking that the kids will respond to you quickly, and that the parents will deeply appreciate what you do, and the church will always bless you perfectly.  But suddenly you find that the kids aren’t responding the way you though they would.  The parents aren’t as engaged with you in teaching ‘their’ kids about the Gospel.  Suddenly, there is the urge to be pulled away from why you serve these kids, that you love Christ and want them to love Him, and slowly you’re being dragged away to self-pity, “Lord, do you not care…”  “I am serving ALONE.”  Every act of love towards a neighbor will have these temptations of distraction and self-pity.  But it doesn’t stop there.

Martha’s third sin was the sin of anger in verse 40, “Tell her then to help me.”  Notice in this sentence there are two people to blame for Martha’s predicament, Mary and Jesus.  The imperative could read YOU tell her then to help me.  It’s as if she’s saying to Jesus, “Jesus, you’re the reason Mary isn’t helping and why it’s taking so long for dinner.  So you go and fix this by telling Mary to do what she is supposed to be doing.”  Maybe we might not say this to Jesus, but I am sure many of us would have thought these same words.  You see, distraction and self-pity have the effect of creating anger, frustration, and resentment.  James comments that anger flows from a heart that does not get what one wants: “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? 2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.” (James 4:1-2)  Martha had a picture of what the evening would be like.  She would welcome Jesus and she and Mary would work hard to make the food just right and the place would look beautiful.  Jesus would come, enjoy the meal and the warmth of the home, and then leave feeling refreshed.  But Mary and Jesus were ruining everything.  She wrongly believed they were destroying her desire to be hospitable, her desire to serve, her joy in serving.  She was having a war in her soul because as James said, she desired and did not have [the situation she dreamt of, idolatry].

Martha’s anger had blinded her from seeing what Jesus wanted from her all along, simply her heart.  It’s what he wanted from the would be followers in chapter 9, from his disciples, the Samaritans, the lawyer.  For the first time in a while, Jesus finally found a person who simply wanted Jesus for who He was in Mary, and Martha could not see that.  In her self-righteousness, serving Jesus meant doing it Martha’s way, and unless Mary, Jesus, and others conformed to this, they would receive her anger and resentment.  This of course leads to Martha’s final sin, the sin of anxiety. Jesus points this out in verse 41.  If Martha was only there to hear Jesus say on the mountainside when He said: “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” (Matt 6:25)  The reality is that God takes care of everything that we need according to Matt 6:31-32: “Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.”  In Martha’s distraction, self-pity, anger, she will never be free from anxiety.  She’s always concerned with how things are going.  When she invites Jesus over, she begins to worry about her menu, what she needs to do, how she will get it all done.  When Mary doesn’t help out, she’s even more worried about how she’ll get it all done, and she’s anxious about what Jesus will think of her as a hostess.  I bet you after Jesus left, she continued to struggle with worry about whether Jesus forgave her from saying what she said.  She probably thought, “Great, now Jesus thinks I’m selfish and control-freak.”  And I’m sure in the end, she could have easily thought, “You know, this all started when I invited Jesus over.  Next time, I think I’ll spare myself from heartache and skip the invitation.”  Oh how easily we can miss out on being a means of grace by not dealing with the reality that hospitality, service, and ministry is not the issue, but our hearts are.  Anxiety is our attempt to control our own lives and our failure to relinquish all situations to Christ.  John Newton puts it well:

How happy are they who can resign all to him, see his hand in every dispensation, and believe that he chooses better for them than they possibly could for themselves.[2]

Martha’s act of service was not her problem, not at all.  Remember, the parable of the Good Samaritan.  Serving was the outflow of a heart that genuinely had inherited eternal life.  Surely, Jesus was not gently rebuking Martha because she was working hard to be a good host.  Instead, it was that her serving was more focused on what she was giving to Jesus and doing for Jesus than why she was serving Jesus.  She became distracted from what serving Christ is ultimately about, wanting to be with Him in relationship.  And how easily this can and does happen to us as well.  So how does Jesus respond to Martha’s demand?  He responds with a picture of Mary.

Mary

Mary doesn’t say anything in the passage, but we know this about her: she ‘sat at the Lord’s feet and ‘listened to his teaching’ (v. 39).  Again, we need to remember the immediate context.  In Luke 9:37-43, Jesus casts out a demon from a child and the crowd and the man is described by Jesus as a ‘faithless and twisted generation’ who still don’t believe in Him.  In 9:46-48, His disciples are arguing over who is the greatest.  In 9:51-55, the Samaritan village rejects Him because He’s on his way to Jerusalem and James and John, his inner circle of disciples, want to abuse their authority as disciples.  In 9:57-62, some would-be disciples want to follow Him on their terms.  In 10:25, a lawyer is trying to trap Him.  The reality was that Jesus was continuously surrounded by people who ultimately did not care for Him.  They were there to use Him, to get what they could from Him and then get out.  But Mary was there to soak in everything Jesus said.  In other words, His Word was life to her and she didn’t want to miss out, something contrasted by most of the people Jesus had encountered thus far, including Mary’s own sister.

Jesus’ teaching mattered to Mary and most likely the Word of God as revealed through God’s Son, Jesus Christ was the ‘one thing’ in verse 42 that is necessary.  In fact, the very phrase ‘good portion’ means ‘right meal.’  Jesus essentially told Satan these very words in his attempt to tempt Jesus in Matt 4:4: “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”  John tells us in John 1:1 that Jesus was the Word of God incarnate.  And this will never be taken away from her because this good portion, God’s Word, is an expression of God Himself as Psalm 73:25-26 tells us: “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. 26 My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”  Commentator David Gooding explains why this good portion is exactly what Mary desired and Martha needed and what we all need: “Amid all life’s duties and necessities there is one supreme necessity which must always be given priority, and which, if circumstances compel us to choose, must be chosen to the exclusion of all others.  That supreme necessity is to sit at the Lord’s feet and listen to his word.  It must be so.”[3]

Thus, the most important thing a follower of Christ can do is to sit at His feet and listen to His Word and act on them.  It’s what Mary came to realize and it is what Martha needed to do as well.  This new year, please consider once again what it means to sit at the Lord’s feet.  You could DO so many things and think that you love Him.  Like the lawyer trying to trap Jesus in 10:25, maybe you are still wondering, “What can I DO for Him?”  But perhaps there is nothing more vital to your faith in Christ than this ONE thing, that you would desire to know His Word.  This is what is absolutely necessary for you and for me.

Conclusion

It’s important to realize that in Jesus’ response to Martha, He neither condemns Mary or Martha.  Martha is not rebuked for serving.  And Jesus doesn’t tell Mary to go in and help Martha.  Again, Jesus is not telling Martha that she need not serve.  But there is a better way.  Martha needed to have Mary’s perspective in order to serve with joy.  She needed to choose the better portion as well, to sit at the feet of the Lord to listen and enjoy His Word.  And my dear friends, this Word is for you as well.  How easy it is to succumb to our penchant to want to do things for Christ, for ourselves.  We wake up in the morning and we think of how ‘important’ all of the things we need to do are in our lives.  We need to check email, surf the web, buy that sale item at the store before the sale ends, research to find the best deal, spend more time at work and less time caring for our family, for our walk with Christ, promote our career, etc.  But such a life, a life distracted with much, is a life that will quickly slip by.  This past week, my family and I spent some time watching some home movies of our children.  Watching our kids and some of your kids when they were babies and toddlers, I realize how quickly time has passed us by.  Also, spending time with my parents these past 2 weeks, has also made me realize that they will not be with me much longer.  Our time on this earth truly is fleeting.  And to spend such time frittering it away with mere distraction is tragic.  Jesus is telling us that the one thing He offers is not like anything else in this world.  As Isaiah 40:8 reminds us: “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.”

This story doesn’t end in Luke 10.  In John 11, Mary and Martha’s brother Lazarus fell ill and eventually died.  When Jesus arrives on the scene, Martha is grieving and when she sees Jesus, Martha says to Him: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.”  And when Jesus claimed to be the resurrection and the life, and then asks Martha, “Do you believe this?” her answer to him was “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.” (John 11:27)  Martha had learned that her greatest treasure was not her control over her life.  She had released that god, that idol of worship.  She had come to recognize that in the work of Christ as Son of God,  Savior, she would have something that would far surpass anything she could ever do for herself and anyone else.

In John 12, Mary and Martha again show up.  They throw Jesus a party after Lazarus had risen from the dead.  John tells us that ‘Martha served.’  So Jesus’ words were not intended to stop Martha from serving.  Not at all.  But we see a different Martha here.  Because it was here that John tells us in verse 3: “Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.”  Martha had watched as her sister had taken this perfume, expensive perfume, and according to Judas, had ‘wasted it’ on Jesus.  Mary had done what she had always done, she had cherished Jesus above all earthly treasures.  She loved sitting at His feet listening.  But this time, she wanted to sit at His feet and bless Him with her heart that led to action and sacrifice.  And Martha?  Given what Martha was like, you would think she would have jumped up and grabbed Mary and said, “What are you doing?!”  But we only know that she served.  Perhaps Martha had finally learned.  She could serve and watch and listen.  And given what she said in John 11:27, that she believed she was the Christ, I think I could safely surmise that she had learned and found, unlike Judas, believed Mary’s response was one she firmly agreed with.

My dear friends, do you empathize with Martha?  I would imagine we all do in some way.  We are all fluttering around, distracted, wrestling with self-pity, angry, and anxious far too often, even as we do acts of kindness and service and ministry.  And we forget the one thing that is necessary.  We forget that God’s Word is what such a heart desperately needs to enjoy Him, enjoy others, enjoy life, and enjoy ourselves.  Phil Ryken describes this perspective this way: “Jesus is the perfect antidote for all the unattractive attitudes that poison our service when we turn our attention away from him.  His gospel is the cure for our distraction, as we are drawn to the beauty of his grace.  His peace is the cure for our anxiety, as we trust in Him through the worries of life.”[4] This is why we have to preach the Gospel to ourselves every day.  We have to remember His truth, that “Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.”  We’re brought to God in His death.  We’re made alive in the spirit.  This is why we love Him when we serve and we never forget Him in all that we do.  So devote yourselves to His Word.  Make this year a new year to read, dwell, meditate, and memorize the Word.  Sit at His feet.  So let 2010 be a year, a decade, a lifetime, where you will do what you do, you will advance the Gospel found in His Word, believing that this glorious Gospel gives you such delight, that your ministry, your hospitality, your service, your mission, your evangelism, your community outreach, is because He has not even withheld His Son for you.  Happy New Year!

[2] John Newton, Letters of John Newton, 137.

[3] Quoted from Phil Ryken, Luke Vol 1, 561.

[4] Phil Ryken, Luke Vol 1, 563.