In your Bible, if you would join me in Luke chapter number 10.
I know there's a slight heart attack in your mind thinking what has happened to our pastor. He has gone away from Matthew for just a couple weeks here, but I felt pressed to step into this text as we come to the conclusion of a year and aligning our hearts and minds with the truth that's found here. It says in Luke chapter 10, we'll read verse 38 through 42.
This is such a tremendous passage. It says, Now it came to pass as they went that he entered into a certain village and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house and she had a sister called Mary which also sat at Jesus's feet and heard his word. But Martha was cumbered or troubled about much serving and came to him and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone?
Bid her therefore that she help me? And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful or worried and troubled about many things, if you'd read verse 42 with me, but one thing is needful and Mary has chosen that good part which shall not be taken away from her. Father, we come today with joy. We thank you for the grace that we have received through Jesus Christ.
You are our King. And Lord, this year has come now to the conclusion and I pray that you would grant us the wisdom to step into the next year with the right priorities in our lives. Realign us today. Let our minds be set on things above. The world is yelling and intense about all that goes on, but Lord, you have declared there are some things that are much more important and I pray that we would live a life that matters.
We would live in such a way that in a thousand years from now we would look back and be thankful for how we lived. Grant us such a wisdom. Grant us such an understanding. Give us such a perspective.
Help us to live in a upside down world right side up. We ask it in Jesus name and God's people said, amen. You may be seated today. Well again, I want to congratulate you for being in the last service of the year, the last morning service here. This is a good place to be. It's a blessing to have you and your family making this a priority.
You're ending the year by being in church and I don't know of a better place you could be than that. The end of the year is really a time I think of reflection. To look back is a very important thing. If we don't learn from our past, we're destined to repeat it, aren't we? And there are some things that we can look back on and and and when you when you learn from your past you should be able to realign your future and so it's a great time to do that and and ask yourself what did you accomplish in 2024?
I want you to consider that. What goals did you hit? I like to write down goals. I had about I had 10 specific goals that I wanted to hit this year. I did not get them all completed as much as I wanted to but I got the majority of them done. And I'm thankful I did and I need to continue to work toward the other goals that I have.
So ask yourself some of those things. It's a time also to look ahead to the future. What goals do you have for 2025? You know, goals make the difference between the drifter and the doer.
If you don't have a goal, you're not going to hit it, right? And so what do you want to accomplish with your life? What do you want to do? What do you want to be said of you? Every time I do a funeral I sit down with a family and I ask them how would you define your loved one? Define them. What was the most important things to them?
And I want you to ask yourself what would your family say about you? And sometimes they say incredible things, you know? They love the Lord Jesus Christ. Now I sit down with Brenda Chamberlain and I ask her, you know, describe Mel and I ask the family and the kids, you know, describe, you know, they love their family.
He loved his wife. They love the Lord. They share Christ. They prioritize the things of God. Other people I've had where they said, oh, they love Jeopardy.
They love Jet Boy. They love the, you know, some sports team or some activity and again those things are not wrong. It's just I don't know that you want your life defined by that from your family. And so I just want you to consider, these are things we don't really think about often, do we? But isn't it something we should want to think about? Because it's not just us, it's those living underneath our influence. We're creating a wave, effects upon other people. In the decisions we make, we're having generational effects.
It gets passed down. My daughter was sharing with me something that she had gone through this last year that was very difficult and she said, you know, when I went through that very difficult thing I just remembered what you did and what my grandfather did when they went through difficult times and how you sought the Lord and that's exactly what I did, Dad. And she had written me a letter sharing with me these things and I'm glad that in the difficulties of my father's life that he turned to the Lord because when I went through difficulties in my life I did what my dad did. And that's now becoming something that my children are doing and that's by the grace of God.
And how big a part did the Lord play in your life last year? How can you make him number one as you step into 2025? How do you think you could make the most of your life in 2025? And I want you to think about your life like a book.
It's really like a book. You know, 2024 is a chapter of your life and in what you have written up to this point you have just a couple days left to finish the chapter. The chapter will come to a close, never again to be written in.
It's concluded, it is summed up, it is finished, and we are on the verge of another chapter being opened up. And a new year also brings the sense of some freshness, doesn't it? Some, you know, some decisions that could be made to say, you know what, this year things are going to be different in a positive way or maybe this year I want to continue the things that I did last year and create such a fastidious life on the what is a the right priorities. What do you want to be said of you in 2025? I would ask it this way, how can you live an un-wasted life? How can you live an un-wasted life? Anybody ever waste time in life?
You look back and say, boy that was a wasted season of my life. How can you take advantage of the time God has given to you? And here's the thing, to live an un-wasted life you don't have to be great at a lot of things, you just have to be very good at a few things. You don't have to master a lot of things, but you have to be mastered by a few great things that dominate your life and when they grip your soul then your life can really be un-wasted. I don't believe anybody wants to waste their life, so how can I not waste my life?
How do I live a life that accomplished the most and waste the least? One of the passages I absolutely love, Psalm 40 verse 7 and 8, and we'll throw that up here on the board, but this is repeated in Hebrews 10, but Psalm 40 verse 7 it says this, this is a statement by David, it's also reflected in the greater David, Jesus Christ, then said I, lo I come, in the volume of the book it's written of me. The book writes of my life and this is what the volume of it says. It says that I delight to do thy will, O my God.
And how does one get to that? He says, yea thy laws within my heart. The un-wasted life is the life that can be said that they delight in God, they delight to do his will, and that will happen when the law is within your heart. So if you want to live a life that really matters, it really counts, that will happen when the Word of God dominates you, when it controls you, when you get consumed with it, when you love it more than anything else.
To love the Word is to love the God of the Word, to love its truth, to treat them as the treasure they are, and when you become one who is mastered by the Word of God they will in turn cause you to give the pen of your life into the hand of God. Because when we write the chapters that we live, if we are not careful we're the ones writing them. But when the Word of God becomes the master of your life, you turn the pen over to God and say, now you write this chapter. I've written enough chapters and they don't turn out well.
Y'all with me? There's some stuff back there I don't want to read again. I have to skip ahead, right?
You need VidAngel for some of it. But the life that God defines, you want to read it again. And you want to read it again and say, praise God I did that. Praise God that the life that God gave me, this one thing called life, this one shot that I got from God to live out this little brief vapor-length thing called existence, was not wasted on the trivial.
And so that will happen when the law of God is in your heart. I would ask you today, what place of value does God's Word have in your life? Obviously it is important to you or you wouldn't be here. It has some value and I think that's definitely said by you waking up on a Sunday morning when a large percentage of the culture would not do that. But I want to ask you, do you love God's Word? Do you delight in it?
Is it precious to you? When I was in college, I'll never forget how imprinted on my mind it was when a missionary from China had come to our church. And he pulled out this little book and he began to share with us and he was opening it up and you could see that it was handwritten. And he said, you know in China we don't have a lot of Bibles.
And he said it's banned in some areas, you can't get anything. And so the people, when they get a Bible, they will copy it. So the Bible he held was one that somebody had copied the entire Bible down, writing it down.
I don't know if you understand the feat that that is. To copy the entire Bible by hand, I don't know how many hundreds and hundreds of hours that would take. But what's interesting is they would pass the Word around them and they would go home and they would read it and he said they would often memorize like the whole chapter that was given to them. They'd bring it back and they would pass it around. They cherish it.
They love it. And I sat there with such conviction thinking, my goodness, how little reverence I give to the Word of God. And so Psalms 19 verse 10, I think about the words of the Psalmist as he's talking about the Word of God.
Psalm 19 is in small, Psalm 119 is in large. But he says of the Word, they are more to be desired than gold, yay, than much fine gold, sweeter than honey from the honeycomb. Job 23 12 says, neither have I gone back from the commandment of his lips.
I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary bread. Psalm 119 72, the law of thy mouth is better unto me than thousands of gold and silver. I just wonder if you knew that there was millions of dollars in gold in your backyard and you had a week to find it, what you and I would do to get to it. We would dig in and mine it out as much as possible.
If you say, well, I wouldn't do that, you'd be the first one to do that. I can tell you, what's interesting is everything that's precious metals on this earth, the interesting thing about it, they don't lay on the surface, do they? You always have to mine them out. And the Word of God is like that, it's not some cheap thing that just lays on the ground, it's a treasure.
And you mine into it, and people are like, well, it's hard to understand. You say that because you don't treat it like a treasure. When it's a treasure to you and you meditate on it day and night and it's more precious than gold, the joy is in the digging because you know you're going to come across some gold, you know the truth is there from heaven. The Word was such a priority to Jesus that when people said how blessed his mother was, Jesus said, no, no, no, you think my mom's blessed because I'm her son, yea, rather blessed are they that hear the Word of God and keep it. You talk about putting the Word of God on the top shelf. 1 Peter 2, Peter says, as newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the Word that you may grow thereby. If you want to grow, the Word of God is the nourishment.
It's the rain, it's the sun, it's the nourishment. The Word of God is how you increase your faith. Romans 10 17, faith comes by hearing the Word of God. The Word is what sanctifies.
John 17, the day before Jesus died, he said, I sanctify them through thy truth, thy word is truth. You know when God called Jeremiah the prophet in Jeremiah chapter 1, he didn't feel qualified. It's very interesting to me because God made him to be a prophet to the nations, and when he says, hey I'm going to send you to be a prophet to the nations from the womb I've called you to do this, you know what Jeremiah said? You would have thought, you would have thought he would have been like, you know I felt like I was born for this. I really feel like I was made to be a prophet to the nations. But his response was, God I am a child and I cannot speak.
I can't do it. So if you ever feel that way, you're probably exactly where God wants you to be in the humility of your understanding of yourself. You're not qualified and you're not capable. It's never been about your ability, it's been about your availability, and it's about your surrender, and it's about your willingness to be used in the hand of God. It's not the power of the hammer, it's the power of the carpenter. And so listen to what God says to Jeremiah in Jeremiah 1 verse 9 and 10, then the Lord put his hand and touched my mouth and the Lord said unto me, behold I have put my words in your mouth. And I want you to see what happens when the Word of God goes into a prophet's mouth. Verse 10, see I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms to root out, to pull down, to destroy, to throw down, to build, and to plant. How does someone have power over the nations when the Word of God is in their mouth? The the power of the Word of God is greater than anything else on the planet.
It is so valuable. Six months before the great Apostle Paul died, he's sitting in a prison cell. He'll be beheaded in Rome. He's writing this in the late fall.
By spring he'll have his head removed under the Emperor Nero. Last words are a big deal. Second Timothy 4, he writes to his beloved son in the faith, young Timothy, and this is what he says to him. He said, I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I don't, you cannot get more serious than that. I give you a direct charge and I'm pulling as witnesses God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ who will judge the quick and the dead at his appearing in his kingdom. You know what he says to him in verse 2? Preach the Word. Preach the Word.
That's what you do. That's why when people enter Lighthouse, there's one thing that you want a church to be known for. They preach the Word there. If there's one thing you ever look for in a church it should be, do they preach the Word of God? If you want to go to a Jesus Church, it would be a church that says the Word of God has primacy here because the God of the Word has primacy here. We elevate what he elevated.
We lift up what he lifted up. I know we have a culture today that is music driven. I love music and I love song, but I can tell you music is a lesser form of worship than receiving the Word of God. It is. Jesus didn't go around singing, but he did go around preaching.
Is this true? I'm not trying to de-elevate music, I'm just trying to elevate the Word of God because music is written about the Word, right? But the reading and preaching of the Word is directed only from the Word. It's just pulling it out and laying it before us and we are to receive that. And so if it can be seen the Bible is the greatest of priorities, what priority does it have in your life? What value do you have you placed upon it?
Can I suggest just some practical ways to do this? You need to be taught the Word of God, so it's essential to be in church, to be here like you are today, to be in life groups. It's important to be in a class unless you have learned all that you need to know. I'll be in life group every 52 Sundays of the year unless I'm traveling somewhere and then I'll find a church to go to or somewhere to plug in, but plug into a class, be here on Wednesdays. You know we do have church on Wednesdays. Be here on Wednesdays you say, but I'm tired on Wednesdays. Of course, I would assume that.
But to sit in a cushioned chair with lower lumbar support and a temperature controlled climate, I wonder what the people in China would say about us. Man, if I could have gone there, if I know the Word of God's being preached, if I know it's going to be taught, I promise I won't waste your time. I promise that I'll be studied up and to give you, if we have a snow day and I know the attendance would be 10, I would preach more fervently than ever.
Because if people are going to make the great sacrifice to push through the snow, and I'm not saying if it's bad weather that you need to come, if you can't then you stay home, okay? But I'm saying that if you want the Word of God, we're going to give it to you as clear and as much as possible. I would say also you need to not only be taught the Word, but you need to have a plan for yourself to grow in the Word. You need to have a plan.
And so most people don't have a plan. They don't, what am I going to read this year? You know, I just open a Bible and just kind of wherever I read, that's not a good thing to do. If every day you're just doing that, I can tell you you're going to be, you're not going to get through the Bible, you're not, you're going to be confused. One thing you can do is say I'm going to pick seven chapters of the Bible and read those same seven chapters every day for a month. So you read Matthew 1 through 7, you read those seven days, seven times, or read that one, read them seven chapters, and then you do that for 30 days.
You say oh man, then what do I do after that? You go to the next seven chapters, go to the next seven chapters and finish the book in four weeks. You have read through the book of Matthew 30 times in four months. You say well that would take me forever to get through the Bible. You would get through the New Testament in two and a half years. You have read the New Testament 30 times.
Seven chapters isn't hard either. Especially you can, you can, I would read it, but you can also listen to the Bible. I can listen through the Bible in about two to three weeks very easily, the New Testament I should say. And so have a plan to go through it, keep going through it, fill your mind up with the Word of God, memorize the Word of God. I am, I am a stickler for the importance of memorizing the Word of God. It's just, it's so transformational. I can't, I can't share with you how important it is to have, hide the Word of God in your heart.
It's an unbelievable sanctifying event. It's, it becomes somewhat addictive when you begin to memorize the Word of God and it just fills your heart and mind and you just want to keep doing it. And you have to make time for that though, early in the morning, and then study the Word of God. There's a difference between reading the Bible and studying. When you read the Bible you're, you're, you're hearing it and you're learning about it, but the difference between reading and studying is, is those who study ask questions. People who just read don't, aren't asking questions, but when you, when you, you go from reading to studying when questions start coming up. Like what does that mean? And then you dig into that and all of these things I'm telling you about is what 242 is exactly defined, defined to accomplish.
It allows you to study the Word, it gives you a plan, it allows you to memorize. And then number four, you need to help others grow in the Word of God. It's not enough for you to grow. You have to help others grow. You, you need to encourage other people to grow in the Word of God.
If you're not, there's a problem. It's like being a root that's not helping the rest of the tree. It's, it's, you, you need to pour into other people. It, it's like, you ever have a child that doesn't assist in the family life?
That doesn't, like, do anything? You need to come in here, you know, we're paying the bills, we're doing the, you know, cooking and we're doing all these things and, oh you mean I gotta carry the trash out 20 feet? You know, I gotta do the dishes, ahh. You're, you're part of it. You got to jump in there and I can tell you, if you want to grow, disciple someone else.
242 does that. I'm so thankful for the people who've poured into my life over the years. I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't. It's unbelievable how beneficial that is. Your life is affecting people and, and there's ways you can do that that are good and then there's, there's ways you can do that that it's better.
You can pour into people and the things of the world help them to be better in business, better in sports, better in some other area physical fitness, but to pour into someone spiritually, what more could you do for them? It's, it's the greatest thing. It's the top priority. It's the most important reality and so today we come to this passage of Scripture that I think really highlights the importance of this. I've entitled this, Living with God's Priorities.
Having a life and home that prioritizes these things is so important. So let me just point some things out as we walk through this passage. Just really are telling as we, we list them off. But verse 38 it says here, Now it came to pass as they went that he entered into a certain village and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house. Jesus is just finishing up his Galilean ministry in the north. He's now journeying south to the last portion of his ministry.
He has sent out the seventy before him into towns to preach. He now comes to a town that's about two miles east of Jerusalem. It's a quaint town. It's a peaceful town. The name of its Bethany, it means house of dates because of the number of palm trees that grew there. It was a small village. It was defined as a place that was, quote, remarkably beautiful, the perfection of retirement and repose and seclusion.
Only about 20 families lived here. It was a nice place where Jesus could get away from the hustle and bustle of Jerusalem and all the the preaching and teaching and the antagonism that came against him and he could go there and it was a it was a warm welcoming place. Now why did Jesus go to this house?
Verse 38 really tells us. It says it came to pass he entered into a certain village. That village was Bethany and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house. The reason he stayed there is because they received Jesus and the disciples into the home. The word received there simply could be defined as to receive under one's roof, to receive as a guest. You are hospitable to them. They showed kindness and hospitality to Jesus. Also no matter what they were doing when Jesus came that day, he was welcomed there immediately. They weren't like, Jesus we're gonna need to get some things ready. Today's just not a good day. I mean you just show up unannounced.
Can't you figure out some kind of call ahead seating? But they just received it and I think it's interesting to consider that no matter what was going on in their home, when Jesus showed up he he became the priority. He defined the priority. Whatever they did stopped for Jesus's sake. He now determined the rest of the day.
You determine what we're going to do. When he entered their home I want you to consider the effect it would have had. I think his influence would have been very massive. I imagine that the house would have been filled with people reciting the events. Isn't that amazing when we were going through Jericho and you healed those those two blind men. Oh I know and then you went to Zacchaeus and you know the people were saying oh you know Zacchaeus. Just they would have been rehearsing the stories about Jesus. It would have filled the home. You know when Jesus is in your home, conversation about him comes up regularly. Ask yourself that. Does Jesus conversations happen in your home?
They should. If he is centered there, conversations will be there. His holiness came into the home. Do you think the standard of purity was risen when Jesus entered the home? Did they have to say hey we need to change the channel?
Turn that music off. I think there was a purification that would have happened when he came into the home. We need to have godly homes Christians. Thirdly, his love came into the home.
His kindness, his goodness, his compassion, such grace and favor. His protection would have come into the home. You think that home was safe with Jesus in it? You think you could sleep good when Jesus is in the other room? Jesus went to their home because he was invited in and I believe that's the same for you today. He wants to be the center of your home. The question is, is he welcome there?
Is he welcome there? And so not only if you want to live with God's priorities do you need to have a life and home that prioritizes Jesus, but secondly you need to have a life that's centered on the Word of God. You need to have a life that's centered on the Word of God. It says in verse 39, and she had a sister called Mary which also sat at Jesus feet and heard his word. This is very fascinating to me because Jesus had been traveling, teaching and preaching and now he comes to this home and you would have thought that he would want to relax. You would have thought he would say, you know, let me just take a break from this preaching and teaching ministry. But when he comes into the home the Word made flesh could not talking about the Word. He sits down and the Word is still the priority.
And we know that because she's sitting at his feet listening to his words. If you want to know what the priority of Jesus's ministry was it's extremely clear he was he was just focused on getting the Word of God out through teaching and preaching it. When he started his ministry he came to his hometown of Nazareth in Luke 4-12 and it says he taught in their synagogues being glorified of all. He left Nazareth from there he went to Capernaum, Luke 4-31 and came down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee, and taught them on the Sabbath days.
And they were astonished at his doctrine for his word was with power. After he preached to them there he said in Luke 4-34, and he said into them, I must preach the kingdom of God to other cities for therefore am I sent. And he preached in the synagogue in the synagogues of Galilee. Then you get to the immediate next chapter, 5 verse 3, he entered into one of the ships which was Simon's, prayed him that he would thrust out from the ship. He sat down, taught the people out of the ship. Chapter 5-17, 14 verses later, and as he was teaching chapter 6 verse 6, he entered into the synagogues and taught chapter 13-10 and he was teaching in one of the synagogues. Chapter 13-22, he went through all the cities and villages teaching.
It just never stops. That's why I'm shocked when I hear of churches that put such a low, you know, sometimes they'll ask like how long do you guys preach over there? You know if you go past 15-20 minutes people's attention spans aren't really good and you know you need to, you're kind of disrupting worship there by going so long in your preaching and teaching. Do you think Jesus was a 15-minute preacher? It is interesting in the Old Testament book of Nehemiah they stood up and they read the Word of God for like three hours and then another three hours and they just did it all day.
It's incredible. Acts 5-42, the early church, that's all they did and daily in the temple and house to house they ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ. It just, it was just the primary focus of them in their ministry. And what you find here, if his focus was on preaching and teaching, what should our focus be on? Receiving the Word of God, right? It should be, you know in Revelation 2 and 3 Jesus gave seven letters to seven churches. At the end of each of the letters this is what he said, he that has an ear let him hear. If you have ears to hear let him hear. That's what he said to all the churches.
Basically what kind of soil do you have to receive the engrafted word that's not only able to save you but to sanctify you? And notice to be seated at his feet cost two things. She was seating, she had seated herself at his feet literally beneath him. That was a custom of people that would, they would sit at your feet as a sign that you were the teacher.
Paul talked about Gamaliel being his teacher that he said at his feet in Acts 22 3. And by sitting there it caused two things. One, her undivided attention was given to the Lord.
I mean if you're, she was right alongside his feet, she could not get closer. She was right there, she wanted to suck it all in and receive all the truth. And it says, and she heard his word. The word heard is in the imperfect tense in the Greek. What that means is it's a continual action. It would be like somebody saying they asked for a drink versus they kept asking for the drink.
This is not they, they were, they heard him, but they were constantly hearing him like it was just, it never ended. It was just continually seeking to receive that word. And so is that your priority? If you want to live a life that's un-wasted, that is vertically prioritized by the things of God. It starts with having a heart like Mary that you receive the Word of God, you're hungry for the truth, you prioritize that.
And thirdly, this is very important. To live with God's priorities, you have to have a life and home prioritizing Jesus, a life centered on the Word, but thirdly, don't allow good priorities to replace the God priorities. Martha's priority is found in verse 40, but Martha was cumbered, could be translated distracted, about much serving. I don't know what kind of home maybe you grew up in, but if you grew up in the Bevan family home, my mama is as sweet as you can, she is the sweetest, kindest, loving mom and grandmother, until people come over.
And she becomes a sergeant. I mean, we hated when people came over. She kept the house always clean, but it was never clean enough.
I mean, we're cleaning gutters, we're re-eating the grass that grows up in the forest behind us. I mean, like, she's, you're cleaning every, anybody have a mom like that? Yes, it is just, you know, and she'll put the hammer on you, you get the back of a shoe on your head if you didn't like, I mean, she's a sweet thing, but boy, she could light you up if you. So when I read this, my mom would have been like, you know, she would have been the one that would have wanted to, obviously, I have a godly mother who would love to hear the Word of God, but she is wired to be a good host.
She is a great host. Her house is immaculate, everything's perfect, you go in for Christmas, you're like in a Christmas scene, it's just so, so pristine, everything is exactly, perfectly aligned. I'm like, man, you know, it's just all, all great. My poor father, you know, this has nothing to do with the message, but he used to keep his stuff in the garage, but now he had to get a shed because it's not clean enough when you're a man, right? Yeah, her garage is immaculate now, there's not a tool in there.
You want a happy marriage, you buy the garage outside, amen, somewhere, my dad knows. And so Martha's a great host, she's the person that if you come over, it's like, man, she always does things nice. She's a servant, she always puts others before herself, I mean, she is just straightening up, cleaning up, she is, she is getting after it. Here is Martha, this servant-hearted woman preparing, and you know, today people have call ahead, you know, hey, we're gonna come over for Christmas, everybody has plans for that and different things, but here they just showed up. And for a woman like Martha who wanted to get everything, would have been, this was panic mode for her. This is, this is, this is why verse 40 says she's cumbered about, like this is, this is very difficult for somebody that's wired like that. And to be cumbered is to be distracted, it means she was driven mentally, she was overoccupied, consumed. The verb here in the Greek is also in the imperfect tense, which means she is just constantly consumed and distracted with everything that needs to be done. So while she feels the pressure of not just Jesus, but all the disciples, the most glorious guest you could ever have on the planet, and the twelve, there's a lot of preparation that goes into feeding all of these guys. And to do all of this, as she's doing all this, she looks over and Mary's sitting down. I don't know about you, but if you've ever been in a in a situation where you are time-pressed, and you know you have to get that task done, and then you see somebody who's supposed to be helping you, and they're like on their third break, that twitch, right, it's like, I've had enough, the tea kettle has now hit the top, right, I've had enough. You ever have a child like that, like, hey, I need you to go take that out right now, you know, they're gonna be here in five minutes, and they're like doing something, and then you go and you come back in and they're, well, I was just looking at something, I'll get right to it.
Now if you come back one more, and they, y'all know what I'm saying? Sanctification is being tested right there, yes sir, yes sir. And so Martha has hit the peak of this, verse 40, and she came to him and said, Lord, dost not thou care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? She was not only frustrated with Mary, but she started thinking, how could Jesus allow this? Martha was so focused on what she thought was the most important thing that she could not understand why Jesus didn't see her priorities as being the most essential. All Martha could see was that she had priorities, and she felt they were the right priorities. It was necessary to prepare a meal, it was necessary to do that. And in that culture, it was expected of the ladies to be ones who would prepare a meal for the guys. Mary's not participating in that.
Martha hit the boiling point, speaks her mind about it. And I want you to consider, when your service to the Lord becomes frustrating and irritating, the problem is is that you may be doing too much service and not enough sitting. And what I mean by that is your problem, your problem was with your priorities. When I say sitting, I'm not talking about being lazy and not working, what I'm talking about is being with the Lord. One who serves with frustration in Christianity is running on a spiritually empty take. They need to take time with the Lord before they can do anything effective for Him.
You must take in before you can effectively give out. What we do with Christ is far more important than what we do for Him. And notice how critical her statement is. She says, Lord, dost not thou care that my sister had left me alone?
Don't you care? The most gracious, gracious person that's ever lived, you're asking Him in such a graceless manner? Over 20 years of ministry I've seen some great-hearted servants of God lose their joy in serving because they focus on what others are not doing because of what they are doing. And I just want you to know, just because others are not helping do a certain job you specifically do doesn't mean they don't do anything. I've seen this unfortunately happen over the 20-plus years of ministry. People get frustrated who are on a cleaning team or construction team, teaching team, nursery team, food preparation, visitation, soul winning, setting up, breaking down, big days, bus ministry, outreach.
Just the list goes on. People say, I feel like I'm the only one doing anything. It's kind of like that Elijah effect. I'm the only one!
And God says, I have 7,000 who have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal. You're not the only one. Woe is me.
I'm it. There's literally hundreds of people involved. You know, even in one month just to have church, we have a hundred people that have to serve in nursery just for the services. A hundred different people. A hundred spots that need filled.
Just in nursery. To pull off like a Wednesday service you've got about a hundred and thirty people that are working in different capacities. It's incredible.
There's so much, so much. So if you're not involved in doing something, I can just tell you you're just putting more weight on other people to just keep holding the line. That's why it's important. It's attending is very important, but you need to move from attending to participating.
Does that make sense? We'll talk about that a lot next month because it's encouraging to know the progression that we need to all have. But listen, when you get frustrated with others, realize it's a result of focusing on self over others, focusing on self over the Lord. Parents can do this.
Husband and wives get this way. Instead of focusing on self, focus on the privilege to serve the Lord and to serve others in your family. Be consumed with thankfulness. A selfless person is almost impossible to offend.
And so there needs to be a realignment of what your heart is focused on. The Martha mentality can often come from those who have the gift of serving. They often are the ones who volunteer, they want to help, they love helping, but the danger is they serve without taking time to sit, taking time to be right on the inside. The danger of the Martha mentality can come as they compare themselves what they do with what others are not doing. Their strength can create a weakness, and it's important to know this, every strength has a comparing weakness. I think God wired men in a capacity to be leaders of their homes, and so they are at the front of the line, they should be in so many ways, but they also can have the weakness of being insensitive, overly insensitive. But if they were too sensitive, they would get overwhelmed with being in the front. You see what I'm saying? And so women don't want your husbands crying every other hour, right?
You don't want him to be a dry, hard, cold thing all the time, but you're like, I don't want him to be weeping flowers either. So you see, on the other hand, you have women that have this sensitive, kind, loving heart, but the weakness of that, the strength of that kindness which brings a whole family together for holidays and the matriarchs become that bulwark of that, it also can be the one in the home sometimes that can give in to being too enabling to a child, where the dad's like, oh, we can even put the hammer down, and the mom's like, oh, you know, that's my sweet child. I know that's not absolute, I'm just saying that those things are realities, and in a servant-hearted person, the weakness is sometimes they can serve without learning to sit at the feet of Christ. Martha's demands in verse 40 bid her therefore that she help me. She goes from being irritated to voicing her opinions and now telling Jesus what he needs to do. She thought her priorities were the right priorities, and that Jesus and Mary had the wrong priorities. Listen, Martha's lack of listening to God's Word caused her to make her own standards and priorities, and that's what will happen to you and me. When you don't spend time in the Word, you will live a life thinking that you're doing the right things in life, when all the reality is you've created the standard because you're not underneath His standard. You're not listening to it enough, and so you're creating a reality that's skewed, and you can be very busy doing that, and it typically leads to feelings of being overwhelmed, just overwhelmed, overworked. I can tell you if you live by God's priorities, your priorities will be right, and God doesn't make your life miserable when you live inside of His priorities.
I live a very, very paced life, very paced. That's why when people talk about retirement, I would dread retirement. I can't even tell you the fear I would have of that. If you want to tell me what hell on earth would look like, it would be like a life that I had nothing to do. I don't want to live. If I'd have nothing to do, I don't want to get up and, like, watch TV. I would die doing that.
I would—if I got up and I had nothing to ever do, it's okay to retire, but retire to do something you want to do, and serve God, and, like, live for something important. And so, Christian, it's possible to be doing so much in life but accomplishing so little. The stories told of a young man in the 1800s who approached a foreman of a logging crew, and he asked for a job, and the man said, well, that depends. Let's see how you fell this tree. And the young man skillfully cut down the tree, really, in almost record time. Foreman was very impressed. He said, you can start Monday. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday rolled by. By Thursday afternoon, the foreman came to the young man and said, here's your paycheck.
You can pick it up. And the young man was startled. He said, I thought payday was Friday. He says, normally we do pay out on Friday, but this is going to be your last day. He said, you've fallen too far behind.
He said, somehow, he said, you went from being the first place cutter to the very last place cutter among our loggers. And the man said, listen, I am working early. I'm coming in before, guys. I'm staying later.
I'm even working through my coffee breaks. And the foreman was taken back by that. He said, young man, can I ask you a question?
Have you been sharpening your axe? And the young man said, I've been too busy to. That is the same mentality of the person who says, I've just been too busy to get in the word.
Really. How dull your life and how busy it must be and how little it must be accomplishing. How little must be the accomplishments at the end of a year for any of us. That should be a little bit stinging, if it's true, of any of us.
Because we can do a lot and accomplish so little. Wisdom would slow us down and say, let me prioritize what really matters. And that brings me to the final conclusion here in verse 41. Well, how does Jesus respond to this? Is he like, oh, you're right, Martha. What he says here, Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha.
Repetition is the Jewish way of emphasis. And it was also a kind response. This is how kind our Lord is.
He's not an angry Lord. Martha, Martha. Martha, you are careful, you're worried, you're troubled about many things.
But one thing is needful, and Mary has chosen that good part which shall not be taken away from her. I know you're over there preparing a meal, but so am I. And the food that I'm serving is much better than what you're going to be giving. And I'm glad you're going to do that, but you're missing out on the feast. The real feast is over here.
Have a seat. You're troubled about many things. It's, again, it's not always the sinful and bad things in life that distract us. It's a lot of times very good things, like very justifiable things, things that even God wants you to do. But if the good things take the place of the God things, that's a problem. And Jesus defines the priority.
He said there's only one thing that's needful. When you when you look at your life and the busyness and the pace and the priorities, that's why I believe the Word of God should be the early morning session. I'm an early riser, not because I was born that way, I didn't live that way for the first couple decades of my life, but I have forced myself into that pattern because I don't want to live a day through the day if I've not spent time in the Word of God, and I can't quietly be in the Word of God when there's a racket of the late morning or the evening or anything like that. The blessed life is the Bible-centered life. Deuteronomy 8-3, man does not live by bread only but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. Joshua 1-8, he says, if you want to make your way prosperous, you tell Joshua, this book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but thou shalt meditate day and night that you may observe all that's written therein. You shall then make your way prosperous, then you'll have good success. Psalms 1 verse 1 through 3, the opening Psalm, blessed is the man that walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, doesn't stand in the way of sinners, he doesn't sit in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and his law doth he meditate day and night, and he'll be like a tree planted by the rivers of water.
Brings forth his fruit and his season, his leaf shall not wither, whatever he does it's going to prosper. That's the blessed life. The best parent you can be to your kid is not a Martha parent, it's a Mary parent.
It's not a busy parent, it's a Bible parent. What are the things you can do to make his word a priority? You got to sit and listen. You have to sit and listen. Secondly, you got to remove distractions. You got to weed out distractions. Listen, planned neglect is what you need, planned neglect. It's the secret to success and finding time to spend at his feet.
You have to, you have to neglect other things. Mary did not have time to hear Jesus' words. She had too much to do. Mary didn't have time, but she made time. Mary had to make sacrifice to be at his feet.
Mary had to give up good things in order to keep the main thing the main thing. That's where most of us will battle at that front all year long. It's not sin, it's stuff, isn't it? We all are there.
It's just stuff. I had plans this year, I had plans, I know I get it. What Martha was doing was good, it wasn't bad. If she lived like that all year, it's like, you know, Martha, she had a good year. She served Jesus, she did a lot of good things, but Mary, Mary goes down in history. You know what Jesus said in John 12?
Just look over there real quick. Look at John 12. I just want to show you this.
This is an incredible thing. Mary is an unusual person in the Bible. She shows up three times in the Bible. All three times she's at the feet of Jesus.
All three times. She comes, you come in John 12, this is interesting, then six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany where Lazarus was. This is several weeks later. Lazarus, which had been dead, Jesus raised him. Lazarus was Mary, Martha's brother. There they made him a supper and Martha served.
She is what she does, that's the way she is. But Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him. But then Mary shows up. Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly. That's a very gracious way of saying this was the most precious, valuable thing in her life.
This perfume came from the hills of India. This was a alabaster box of ointment. This was her prized possession for a young lady in those days. She came in and anointed the feet of Jesus, wiped his feet with her hair, and the house was filled with the odor of the ointment. This was so audacious that verse 4, one of the disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, which should betray him, said, why was not this ointment sold for 300 pence and given to the poor?
This he said, not because he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief and had the bag and bear was put therein. You know what's interesting? Both times that Mary's at the feet of Jesus, she gets criticized. When you put Jesus first, like a Mary does, even believers will criticize you sometimes. You're getting too serious about this stuff. You're just, it's too far. It doesn't make it, it, you've crossed a line.
You're radical. Martha's criticizing Mary for what she's doing, the priority. Not only does Judas criticize, but the other Gospels, the other disciples also were saying the same thing.
They're like, this is just too much, you're just doing too much. It's a pretty interesting thought. And what's also interesting, Mary never says anything. She doesn't get mad, she doesn't defend herself, ever.
You know why? Because Jesus defends her. Martha! In other words, Jesus spoke on Mary's behalf. And then Jesus speaks up here in verse 7, then said Jesus, let her alone against the day of my bearing as she kept this.
For the poor always have you with me, but me have not always. And the other place in the Scriptures, and I believe it's in Matthew's account, it's actually in Mark's account, that it says that Jesus says wherever the Gospels preach this will also be spoken of her. She goes down in the eternal record book of God's Word as the person that valued Christ more than anything else.
This is the testimony of somebody who loved Christ. We stand at the precipice of a 2024-2025 chapter. All of us today have a pen, and the pen's called your life. And either you keep writing, or do you say, God, I've written enough. I want you to author this chapter. I want you to define me. I want you to define my days, my life, my mind, my thoughts, my schedule, my priorities. You be God to me.
Be over everything. I want to be a husband that God defined, a father God's defined, a pastor God's defined. I want to be a man that God's defined. I don't want to be what the culture tells me to be. I don't want what the... I want to be defined by Him so that when I get to the end of my life, let it be said in the volume of the book that I have delighted to do His will because His law was within my heart. So I'll stand this morning.
