You know, several weeks ago, my wife Brenda forwarded to me an email, and when I opened it, here's what it said. It said, Spring classes for men at the Adult Learning Center. Class number one, how to fill up the ice cube trays. Step by step demonstrations. Class number two, the toilet paper roll.
Does it change itself? Group discussion. Class number three, dinner dishes.
Can they levitate and fly into the kitchen sink? Round table discussion. Class number four, the oven. What it is and how to use it. Live demonstration. And finally, class number five, fundamental differences between the laundry hamper and the floor.
Graphics and group practice session. I don't see any men clapping. Now, when she did send this to me, I will have to say that Brenda was kind enough to end the email by saying, thought this was funny, but it doesn't apply to you. Love, Brenda. And you know, that's really true.
It is. I really work hard to try to help out around the house. I really do try to make myself useful. But hey, let's be honest and admit that even though we men really do try to help when it comes to the day by day workings of the house and the family, we need to be honest enough to admit that in most cases it is women who do the majority of the heavy lifting around the home. And you know, this creates some unique challenges for women, especially for mothers, when it comes to balancing all the demands that marriage and motherhood place on their time and their energy. And this is what we want to talk about today on Mother's Day weekend 2009. But just before we begin, please let me say that I realize that for many ladies here, Mother's Day brings a special kind of pain each year. Some of us here lost babies this past year. Some of us here are still single and we're starting to wonder if we're ever going to be moms.
And some of us here have been trying to get pregnant or maybe trying to get pregnant again and we've been unsuccessful. And so this is a very difficult day for people in that situation. And so I ask myself, what can I as a pastor offer women who are in these situations here today? Well, what I can offer you, ladies, is I can offer you God, the living God of the universe, the true God of the Bible, the God who knows everything about every situation in every life and the God who cares about every pain and every heartache that we carry. The God, as Vance Havner once said, who is too wise to make a mistake and too loving to do anything cruel, and the God who has promised, Romans 8.28, that all things will work together for good to those who love Him and to those who trust Him, whether we can understand how that could be right now or whether we can't. And so today, if this is a really hard day for some of you, I want to urge you to find your solace in God, to find your comfort in God in the fact that in His wisdom He has made no mistake in what is going on in your life, and in the fact that in His love He is not being cruel and unkind in the choices that He's made for your life or for my life. Folks, I hope that you ladies and I hope all of us who are facing tough circumstances in life can find that comfort and that solace in God as He is designed.
Now, having said that, I want to move on now and talk to the people here who are moms and who are grandmoms, and I want to talk to you about setting the right priorities spiritually in your life as a mother and a grandmother. And to do this, I want to look at two women that Jesus met in the Bible. Their names are Mary and Martha. So here we go, a little bit of background, Luke chapter 9 verse 51. The Bible says, As the time approached for Him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. Here we find Jesus and His twelve disciples setting out to travel from the Sea of Galilee up north down to the city of Jerusalem where He will eventually be crucified. On this journey, Jesus had to pass through a little village named Bethany, and it's here in Bethany where we pick up the story, Luke chapter 10 verse 38. As Jesus and His disciples were on their way, He came to a village, that is Bethany, where a woman named Martha opened her home to Him. And remember, it wasn't just Jesus to whom Martha opened her home and invited Him in for dinner. It was also Jesus plus twelve disciples and maybe more people.
We don't know. But at least these twelve other men were with Him. These were twelve grown men who had been walking all day. These were twelve grown men who were really hungry, and she invited all of them in for dinner.
This would be like inviting Jim Zorn and the starting offense for the Redskins over for dinner after practice. You understand what I'm saying? Verse 39, and Martha had a sister named Mary, and by the way, they also had a brother named Lazarus, who sat, Mary did, at the Lord's feet listening to what He was saying. Obviously, after Jesus and His disciples crowded into Martha's little house, Jesus began to talk about spiritual truth.
Jesus began to teach spiritual things, and Mary was sitting there listening to Him as He taught. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. Now every woman gets this.
Every woman gets this. Martha's running around the house like a chicken with her head cut off, washing dirty dishes from lunch, setting the table, putting ice in all the glasses, making sure the hors d'oeuvres are hot, sending Lazarus to the store for a few last minute items, making sure the rolls don't burn. And then suddenly she looks around and there's Mary, her sister, sitting calmly in the living room, listening to Jesus talk. And right then and there, Martha blows a gasket. Verse 40, then Martha came to Jesus and said, Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself, tell her to get up and help me. I'm sure Martha's attitude was, you know, Lord, I'd love to sit in here and relax too.
I'd love to sit down and listen to you talk too. But if I do that, nobody's going to get a whole lot of dinner tonight, so please tell Mary to get her lazy self up and get in the kitchen and help me. Now I can identify with Martha, can't you?
Yes? Absolutely. Well, watch what the Lord Jesus says to Martha. He says, Martha, Martha, the Lord replied, you are worried and upset about so many things. But only one thing is really needed, Jesus said, Mary has chosen what is better, the thing that will not be taken from her. Now please notice that Jesus did not say that what Martha was doing was bad, nor did he say that what she was doing was wrong. I mean, trying to put on a nice dinner for Jesus and all of his disciples was a good thing to do.
Jesus' issue with Martha here in Luke chapter 10 is not a matter of good versus bad. It was a matter of good versus best, a matter of picking the right priorities for her life. And it was as though Jesus were saying to her, Martha, given the choices here tonight, Mary has chosen to do the best thing. She's chosen to do the highest thing. She's chosen to sit and listen to me and drink my words into her soul. Mary has chosen to put her spiritual life first. So let's summarize. Here in Luke chapter 10, Jesus doesn't condemn Martha for trying to put on a nice dinner.
He simply challenges her to do a better job of setting spiritual priorities for her life, to do a better job of making sure that she places her spiritual life above everything else, a better job of keeping the main thing, the main thing, in spite of all the hustle and bustle and demands of life. Now that's as far as we want to go in our passage today, but we want to stop now and ask our most important question. And I know you've had a couple weeks off, so you might be just a little rusty. But I really want us to get back in the groove here. And all you folks at Loudon and all you folks on the Internet, we want you to do this too. So are you ready? You ready? All right, here we go.
One, two, three. Oh, that felt good, didn't it? Yeah. You say, all right, Lon, so what? I mean, I hear what you're saying and I understand the story of Mary and Martha. But for Mother's Day, I mean, what difference does any of this make?
Well, let's see if we can help with that. Here's my question for you today, ladies. As a mom, my question is, when you look at the story of Mary and Martha, which of these two women do you most closely identify with? Last night I had a lady say to me, I don't like that question.
I said, why not? She said, because, Lon, you know the answer. The answer is I more closely identify with Martha. And, you know, unless I miss my guess, I would suspect that the vast majority of moms here in the Washington area would have to say that they, too, identify more with Martha. I mean, as moms, you have carpools and school meetings and doctor's appointments and piano lessons and ballet lessons and soccer games and baseball practice and basketball games. And homework and science projects and children's therapy appointments. And then there's the laundry to fold and the meals to fix and the dishes to wash and the floors to vacuum and the bathrooms to clean. You go, Lon, I'm exhausted already.
Stop. Well, and on top of that, there's our marriage to tend to. And then on top of that, for many of us, there's our job.
There's work with all of the proposals and the hearings and the deadlines and the projects and the general stress. I mean, how can any mom in Washington, D.C. not feel like Martha sometime? You say sometime.
Well, a lot of the time. And, you know, here's what I'm here to tell you. I'm here to tell you that the danger is that if we're not real careful as Christian moms, you can begin to make the very same mistake that Martha made. Namely, as a mom, you can become so overwhelmed with doing good things for your family that just like Martha did, you fail to do the best thing for your family and your children.
And look at me. Listen here. The best thing any mother can do for her family is for her to cultivate her own spiritual life, for her to cultivate her own walk with God, for her to be a woman, to seek to be a woman of spiritual authenticity and spiritual depth. Want to give your children the greatest gift you can give them?
Then give them this. And, you know, when I think of this, I think of Timothy in the Bible, Timothy's mom, a lady named Eunice, and Timothy's grandmother, a lady named Lois. The Bible tells us that Timothy was a mighty man of God, that he was the apostle Paul's right-hand man, that he became the pastor of the mighty church of Ephesus after Paul's death. Listen to what Paul says about Timothy, Philippians chapter 2. He says, I have no one else like Timothy, for everyone looks out for their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. But, he says, you know how Timothy has proven himself, because as a son with his father, Timothy has served with me in the work of the gospel. Now, coming from the apostle Paul, this is an awfully high compliment, but what I want us to see today is that Timothy did not arise out of a spiritual vacuum. 2 Timothy chapter 1 verse 5, Paul wrote Timothy and said, I am reminded of the sincere faith, look at this, that first lived in your mother Eunice, and then in your grandmother Lois, and which I am convinced now lives in you too, Timothy. You see, what the Bible tells us is that a key reason why Timothy became the man of God that he did was because every day growing up, he saw a sincere faith. He saw an authentic walk with God on display in the life of his mother Eunice and in the life of his grandmother Lois. Timothy saw his mom and his grandmom reading the Bible, he saw them sharing their faith, he saw them seeking God in prayer, he saw them relying on God in crisis, he saw them talking about God in their everyday conversations.
In other words, Timothy grew up in a home where Jesus was alive, but don't miss this, the reason Jesus was alive every day in Timothy's home is because Jesus was alive every day in his mother's heart and in his grandmother's heart. You know, as a Christian mom or grandmom, I'm sure you realize this, that nobody has a greater platform to influence your child for Jesus Christ, to influence your child for good or bad than you do. I mean, no matter how bad your child's friends may be, no matter how rotten your neighborhood may be, no matter how corrupt your child's school environment may be, no matter how ungodly or spiritually disinterested your child's father may be, as a Christian mom, your godly influence can overcome all of this. But, look here, here's the big so what of the day, but without doing what Mary did in Luke chapter 10, without deliberately setting aside time to cultivate your spiritual life as a mom, you simply cannot maximize this position of influence that God has given you in the life of your children.
And let me tell you why. It's because, as a mom, without spending consistent time with Jesus, you simply won't have the patience, you simply won't have the tenderness, you simply won't have the consistency of life, you simply won't have the personal spiritual healthiness that it takes to make the highest impact for God on your children's lives. And you know what else? Without consistent time with Jesus, ladies, you won't have the spiritual depth that it takes to show your children how, in the deep waters of life, they can stay focused on Jesus. They can be stayed upon Jehovah.
In short, to repeat what I said earlier, the best thing any mother can do for her children and for her family is not to drive the carpool or to join the PTA or to fix gourmet meals, nothing wrong with this. But the best thing she can do is to take time every single day to cultivate a deep and authentic walk with the living God in her own life, just like Mary did. Now let me conclude and say that I've noticed something in reading the great biographies of men and women of God down through the ages and from reading the Bible.
And here's what I've noticed. I've noticed that down through the ages, most of the great men and women of God, whether they're in the Bible or whether they're in history, most of them did not have godly fathers. In fact, very few did. However, almost every single one of them without exception had godly mothers and godly grandmothers.
Hey, this was true. Think about it with Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and Moses and Samuel and John the Baptist. And here we even saw with Timothy and down through history. This was true with Jonathan Edwards and David Brainerd, the great missionary to the American Indians, and John and Charles Wesley and Hudson Taylor, the great missionary to China, and Fannie Crosby, the great hymn writer, and Jim Elliott, who gave his life to reach the Auca Indians in South America.
My point is this. If you will trace the hand of God down through history, folks, you will find godly mothers and godly grandmothers at every single milepost. And the point today is that God wants you as a mother. God wants you as a grandmother to join this band of godly moms who left indelible impressions for God on their children. And so let me say in closing that if you're a Christian mom here in spite of all the pressures that you feel every day to do all kinds of things, and I know that pressure is very real, from carpools to snack bar duty, I'm here to challenge you today on behalf of God simply with this point. Remember what Jesus said to Martha.
What did he say? He said, Mary has chosen what's better, the thing that will not be taken from her. She has chosen to put her spiritual life above all else. And you know, this is not just a message for moms. This is true for all of us, whether we're moms, whether we're dads, whether we're single people.
All of us need to follow in Mary's footsteps. You say, but Lon, you don't understand how busy my life is. Maybe I don't, but I might. You say, you don't understand how hard it is for me to find the time to do this.
Well, yeah, I do. But I think, friends, my suggestion is we just need to be a little creative, you know. We need to figure out when is that time that works for us. Maybe it means getting up 30 minutes earlier than everybody else in the house when things are completely quiet and you can be alone with God. Or maybe it means at work finding that secret place where you can go for lunch, where it's only you and your Bible and your salad and God.
That's it. And you can spend some quality time with God. Or maybe it means keeping the Bible on the nightstand next to your desk and making it a ritual that before you turn off the light every night, you have your time in the word and your time in prayer after everybody else is asleep.
Look, I don't know exactly what works for your schedule, but something has to work and it will if you want it to. And friends, you and I cannot be the moms, the dads and the followers of Christ that we need to be without that kind of time. This is what Jesus wanted Martha to understand, that Mary was cultivating something in her life that could not be taken from her, her personal walk with God. And friends, everything else that we go after so hard in this world, it's all going to be taken from us, but not our walk with God. And so my challenge to all of us today is, hey, when is it that we've got this time set aside every day to do the greatest thing we can possibly do to give the greatest gift we could ever give to our children?
Ladies, when is it? And if you can't put your finger on a time and say it's here, then my challenge to you today is we need to rearrange some things so we can put our finger on it and say it's here. Let's pray together. Lord Jesus, you know that Washington, D.C. is a crazy town. The schedules people keep here are crazy.
The traffic is crazy. The pressures on our time are crazy. And yet, Lord Jesus, we need those quiet moments with the living Christ every day. If we're going to be the moms and the grandmoms and the followers of Christ that you want us to be in this town and in our families. And so, Lord Jesus, for all the folks who talked to you today about needing to rearrange some things, I pray you'd give them the courage, the discipline, the tenacity to make those changes and let them stick. Teach us, Lord Jesus, that what Martha did was not bad, but what Mary did was better. And make us Mary's, Lord. Help us put our spiritual life ahead of everything in this crazy town. That our lives might shine and reflect the glory of Christ to our children and to everyone around us. Change the way we live because we were here today, this Mother's Day weekend. And we pray these things in Jesus' name.
And God's people said, Amen. Ladies, please have a wonderful Mother's Day. God bless you and thanks again for all you do. See you. Thank you.
