Well, good morning again and
welcome to our continuing study in the Gospel of Luke. And we're
in chapter 10. This will be our final lesson
from chapter 10, I think. Today I'd like just to read this,
and then we'll kind of review where we are in context. This
final part, it's just not here by accident. It's not disjointed
from the rest of the chapter. It's for a purpose. So we leave dealing with this
young lawyer that the Lord had been speaking with. In verse
38, through the close of the chapter, it says, And she had a sister called Mary,
which sat at Jesus' feet and heard his word. But Martha was
comforted about with much serving and came to him and said, Lord,
does 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 and troubled about
many things. But one thing is needful, and
Mary has chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away
from her." So quite an interesting passage that we have here. And
again, it's not an accident that it's here in relationship to
the other scriptures that we've been going through here. and it's telling that it says
it was a certain city and a certain woman and it's specific in that
way and there's purpose in telling it and recording it or it just
wouldn't be here. We can trust in that. And today's
lesson kind of in part contrasts what we came to see as the doing
for eternal life that was brought to our attention as suggested
by that lawyer in the previous lesson. And what shall I do to
inherit eternal life? And then we had the part about
the Good Samaritan. So, we want to watch what is
revealed to us here because what's pointed out to us here is that
in religion we have the doing that we're always being counseled
by religion. Well, here's what you need to
do to be saved. You need to clean up your lives. You need to do this. You need
to do that. You need to sign here. You need to repeat this
prayer. all these things. And the Lord pointed out to that
lawyer that that wasn't the case, and it was a spiritual issue
that needed to be dealt with. And here he says that believers,
these two ladies, Martha and Mary, says in other Gospels that
the Lord loved them and their brother, and they were believers. And yet, one of them is kind
of caught up in doing, and they can be losing focus on the
main thing, what's called here the needful thing, that good
part. So we want to look at that. Previously
in our other lesson, we had the record of the parable of Jesus,
our Good Samaritan who came where the person was in need and that
person turned out wasn't helped by religion and that person turns
out wasn't helped by the law. He was helped by Jesus, the Good
Samaritan who went to him and had compassion on him and was
the great physician tending to his mortal wounds and took him
to the inn, paid his debt and whatever debt that he might accrue.
And now, geographically, where we're at today, they've moved
on, they've came to a certain village. The Lord and His disciples,
sometimes we kind of forget that He has this traveling entourage
with Him. And they left where they were
in relation to the 70 that were sent out, and they came back,
and they were so happy that the devils were subject to them.
And he said, well, rejoice not in that, but that your names
are written in heaven. Always keeping the focus on the
main thing of the grace of God, and not all these physical things
that we get enamored with and get caught up in. And they went
out, the 70 went out and came back, and we had this certain
lawyer. Now they've entered this certain village and received
by this certain woman named Martha into her house. And I was just thinking about that. here comes this troop of people. And if she knew they were coming,
well, I know what happens when we find out, we're gonna have
company next weekend. So then we get busy and clean
everything and do a bunch of work and get everything ready
and make preparations. And it's a lot of work. And then
when the guests arrive, then it's even more work. You've got
to see to their needs and take care of them and all these things. So I can imagine Martha saying,
oh, here's like twelve or thirteen people here I've got to take
care of and all the things that go with that. And so we find that situation
here with Martha and Mary. And while we're thinking about
that, in context, we need to keep in mind the church's relationship
with Jesus and our personal relationship with Jesus as individuals and
collectively. on how we view that relationship
and where our focus is. So we have these contrasting
responses that are given to us in this scripture and different
actions, different responses to the presence of the Lord being
there. And you know, sometimes we just
forget things or we just maybe we don't forget them, but we
take them for granted to the point where we don't consider
them anymore. You know, he'd been all over
the countryside doing a lot of stuff, fed the 5,000, healed
lepers, healed people, caused the blind to see, the lame to
walk, the deaf to hear, raised the dead. He exhibited a lot
of capabilities. And time and again, we see the
scriptures where 5,000 people were thronging him. And he said,
we need to take care of these people. And the disciples said,
well, we've only got one young lad here that's got two fishes
and five loaves of bread. That's not enough. And, and they
forget who they're dealing with. And they depend on, they kind
of look to their own resources, I guess is what I'm trying to
point out. They try to, they try to focus on their own abilities
to deal with the situation that really they didn't need to deal
with because he took care of it. And then it finds out that they
had 12 baskets left over after everybody ate till they couldn't
eat anymore. And so here we have Martha, who's
kind of a representative of us in our lives as believers. She was cumbered with much serving. She's, I've got to do, I've got
to, I've got to do this. I've got to do that. I've got
to take care of this. I've got to take care of that. And there's
my lazy old sister sitting over there doing nothing. And, and
you know, uh, this word cumbered, the interesting word, you know,
we, uh, we, we use that word very rarely as Norman was pointing
out another word this morning that seldom used anymore, but
cumbered. It means you're kind of burdened
with something, but in the Greek here, in my Vines Expository
Dictionary, it means distracted. It gives a sense of being drawn
away or of being over-occupied about a thing. And boy, don't
we just fall into that all the time? as believers. That's just something we're just,
you know, every day we're exposed to being drawn away and distracted
by things in this world. And we forget and we take for
granted, you know, the Lord. He tells us all the time, you
know, I'll take care of you. And not that we won't experience
situations or difficulties, but it's like Paul said, you know,
I had a lot of stuff bad happen to me, and it turned out it was
all for the furtherance of the gospel. So I like that hymn we
sang. But at the end there it says,
deliver us from tribulation or something like that. And sometimes
that's not the purpose of the Lord. Sometimes tribulation comes
with a purpose. And it may not be all that pleasant
to us at the time, but maybe there's a deeper spiritual purpose
to it than what we think about at the time. There's plenty of examples of
that in the scripture. I'm sure that the ones that were
hauled off to Babylon didn't think that was a great deal.
But turns out there were some believers in there. Turns out
that God had a purpose for them. Or going down into Egypt, You
meant it for bad, but God meant it for good to save much people
alive. So we have that. So here she is, comfort. She's distracted to the point
of being over-occupied about something, losing her focus on
the main thing, that needful thing, serving. The word serving,
she was covered with much serving, and you're all familiar with
that Greek word that that comes from is where we get the word
deacon from. It's just one who is an attendant
as a servant. And that comes to us from the
example, and that comes from Acts, where they said, boy, we've
got a lot of people here, and we're trying to preach, so we
need somebody to take care of these people. So they appointed
people to do that. Now it's in religion that's kind
of been morphed into a kind of a board of directors kind of
a position in churches, so-called, and it's become an authority
thing more than a person that serves, a person that takes care
of things, a person that mows the lawn and make sure that
everything's working and make sure that everyone has what they
need. So deacons are servants. And she was much-cumbered, it
said, with much serving. So here she is, cumbered. She's
distracted. She's over-occupied about the
physical things that she's being confronted with. and not really
paying attention to what's really going on. She's drawn away from
what she really should have been drawn to. And boy, that's a thing
that the church just falls into so easily. And that's why this
is here. It's not just to give us a little tidy little story
about Martha and Mary. It's for a purpose that we're
to think about that and recognize that. Like Martha, we can just be drawn
away from our first love so easily and get lost in and over-occupied
in things that are not the main thing. I come in here on Sunday
morning and whine to Norm about all the political stuff that's
going on. That's just not the main thing,
not the needful thing. What's called here is, it's not
that good part. And boy, just dwell on that for
a minute. The needful thing. That good
part. That's where we need to be. Martha
complains to the Lord that she's doing it all and her sister's
not helpful. Let's turn over to John 21. You know, Peter is such a representative
of the church. He had so many failings and issues
just like we all do, and thought he could do more, and should
do more, and thought others should do more. He's just like us. So in John chapter 20, The Lord's having a little dialogue
with him and telling him how things are going to be in his
future. And telling him how he was going
to die and said unto him, follow me. And then in verse 20, then
Peter turning about, seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved following,
which also leaned on His breast at supper and said, Lord, which
is He that betrayed Thee? That's what John is talking about. John leaning his head on Jesus'
breast and loving up to Him, just trying to be as close as
he could to Him and enjoying just treasuring being that close
to Him. And saying, which is He that
betrayeth Thee? And remember the Scriptures,
they all said, could it be me? And Peter, seeing him, saith
unto Jesus, Lord, what shall this man do? What shall this man do? Isn't
that kind of the... It's almost so similar of circumstances
where Martha is saying, why don't you have her do something? And
she's got her head on Jesus' breast and leaning on to Him
and thanking Him for grace and praising Him and loving up on
Him and just trying to be as close to Him as she can be. And Peter comes along and says,
why isn't she helping me do the dishes or get these trays out
or whatever. And Martha, she just seems to
be focused on I have to do all this stuff. If I don't do all
this stuff, it's not going to get done." And she doesn't realize
that if the Lord wanted to feed all
those people, He could make that happen. without any undue circumstances. He could feed that 11 or 12 or
13 or however many there was just as easy as he fed the 5,000.
She didn't need to do a lot of preparation, but it would have
been blessed for her to say, oh, my Lord's here. I want to
get in his lap, hug his neck, thank him and praise him. And
maybe a little bit of jealousy about Mary doing those kind of
things instead of the doo-doo stuff that she was kind of got
herself talked into. You know, in one of our previous
lessons about the feeding of so many, in Psalm 78, 19, remember
it said, can the Lord furnish a table in the wilderness? And
the people doubted whether he could take care of that. And
he caused the quail and the manna and all that provision for the
people. And we looked at that in our
lesson there in Luke. And if she would have been focused
on the main thing, she would have known that he could have
furnished a table wherever. What he draws our attention back
to here is not that he's capable of doing all that stuff so much
as what he really loves and appreciates. It's not all the doing and all
of that kind of thing. Well, they used to have all these,
in the previous group that met here, they had all these boxes
out there in the foyer. where they could drop in their
notes and saying, well, here's what I did this week. I visited
5,000 people, or I worked at this place in the soup line,
or I did this, or I did that, or I handed out tracks, or I
stood in front of the post office with my sign for eight hours. Here's all the stuff I did, you
know? But what does the Lord require?
Is to love the Lord with all thy heart, and all thy soul,
and all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself. That's what he said. That's what he told that lawyer
that was the right thing. The lawyer quoted that from Deuteronomy
6 there a couple of lessons ago. And that's what he required here. And that's what he was getting
from Mary, but not so much from Martha. And he kind of points
that out to her subtly, saying, Martha, Martha. It's just a term of endearment.
He says her name twice, but you know, it was a term of, I love
you, but you're like, you're getting tangled up in stuff that
you don't need to be tangled up in. You're being drawn away
by things that don't really matter in the long run. And you're being
bothered about stuff that you don't really have control over
and that In this world, they don't mean
anything. Martha, Martha, thou art careful
and troubled about many things. She's worried. She's this careful. It means she was anxious. She was, you know that word in
parentheses there, it says to make turbid. Well, if you've
ever been to Alaska up there where we live, the water in the
summertime is turbid. It is full of silt. You can't
see through it. It's murky because it's full
of glacier melt and it's full of silt and sand. It makes things where you can't
see clearly. And that's what this word careful means. Thou
art careful. You're muddy in the waters here. about what's the important things
until you can't see what the important thing is. Thou art
careful and troubled about many things. Her mind was occupied
about many things which were not the needful thing. And Mary,
in the simplicity of her heart, knew what the needful thing was.
She knew the good part right away and she wasn't going to
be distracted from it. She was just like going, she
zeroed right in on it and was not going to be distracted from
it. And sometimes the simple things
are too obvious for us and we try to complicate things to the
point where we miss out on the simplicity of the truth of the
Lord and His grace. So it says that Mary sat at Jesus' feet and heard
His word. And that's more valuable to the
Lord than much physical work or doing. It's spiritual hearing
and spiritual doing. Remember back in our lesson in
Luke chapter 8, the Lord said, My mother and my brethren are
these which hear the Word of God and do it. not the physical
doing of the law and all that sacrifice and all that stuff.
It's that part about thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all
thy heart and all thy soul and all thy mind and believing that
He is the Christ, the Son of God. That's the doing of it is
the believing. And you know what we find out
is that we don't even come up with that on our own. We believe
according to the working of His mighty power, and we have faith
that He gives us. It's what it says in Ephesians
chapter 2, by grace are you saved through faith in that, not of
yourselves. And so when we have a chance
to be here, you know, Norm was mentioning the scripture this
morning that where two or three are gathered in my name, there
I am in the midst of them. Boy, we need to be loving up
on him. I remember that we have a dear
brother that's back in the Midwest now and big old guy, big old
teddy bear guy. I loved his prayers. I'm probably
the worst prayer. You know, in our next lesson
coming up in chapter 11, the disciples say, Lord, teach us
to pray. Well, Calvin had the best prayer.
He just said, Lord, we just love you. It was just that simplicity. There wasn't a lot of extra stuff
there. It was just straight from the
heart to the Lord. He says, we just love you and
thank you and praise you. We just love you. And that's
valuable to the Lord. And you know, he tells us as
we get into our prayer thing that we need to bring our petitions
and requests to him and stuff. But you know, at the beginning,
we just need to say, we love you. And so Mary recognizing
that needful thing it says, There's one, but one thing is
needful, he says. There are trouble about many
things, but just one thing is needful, and I'm here. I am the needful thing. Mary has chosen that good part,
that fellowship, that relationship with the Lord, just in the simplicity
of her heart, sitting at His feet, hearing His Word. that good part. She recognized
that right away and wouldn't be distracted from it. And he
said, you know, he always gives us a little bit of gravy on top
of the pork chop here. He says, you know what, that
shall not be taken away from her, not ever. And, you know,
I was thinking about that and I said, well, we should just
go back and read Romans 8. starting in verse 27, because
it tells us so many things that are involved in this situation
here. He that searches the hearts knows
what's in the mind of the Spirit, because He makes the intercession
for the saints according to the will of God, because we don't
even pray like we ought to. We don't even know what we ought
to pray for. Just keep it simple. I love You, Lord, and here's
some things that I'm anxious and troubled about, but I know
that You'll take care of them, and I'm telling You about them,
and I know You already know about them, but the main thing is we
just want to say we love You and thank You for taking away
our issues, our sin, taking care of our heart, We know that all things work
together for good to them that love God. He's working all things
for good. And even though it may not seem
like it at the time, like those Babylonians and Egyptians and
things that we mentioned earlier, and shipwrecked Paul and getting
beaten and stoned. He says, bah, it just was for
the furtherance of the Gospel. I'm being hauled off to Rome. And we find one of his letters
says, I salute you and also the household of some Roman down
there. There were some Romans that believed
because Paul brought the Gospel down there and he was there for
that purpose. So all things work together for
good. to them that love God, to them
who are the called according to His purpose, for whom He did
foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image
of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren."
Boy, what a thing to get your arms around there. And more than
that, he says, moreover, if that wasn't enough good stuff, if
that wasn't enough of that good part, that Mary talked about,
that good part. Moreover, whom he did predestinate,
them he also called. Called by his gospel. And whom
he called, them he also justified. And whom he justified, them he
also glorified. And notice those are all past
tense words because we find in Ephesians that he chose us in
Christ before the foundation of the world. So it's all been
taken care of and we need to just kind of keep that in our
forefront of our mind all the time. What should we say to these
things then? If God's for us, who can be against
us? What should we say? to all these things that seem
to be contrary to us, if God's for us, in the big scope of things,
who can be against us? He that spared not His own Son,
but delivered Him up for us all, How shall he not with him also
freely give us all things? He's given us all things in Christ.
He's blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ. Who shall
lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It's God that justifieth.
Who is he that condemneth? It's Christ that died, yea rather
is risen again, who's even at the right hand of God making
intercession for us. taking care of what we're doing
right now. And who shall separate us from
the love of God? And, you know, we think about
Mary sitting at His feet. We think about John with his
head on the Lord's breast. Who shall separate us from the
love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress
or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? You know,
I was just thinking when we were talking about When the Lord turns on the light
of grace in someone's heart, in their mind, they can't unknow
that ever again. It's with them through eternity. They can't not know that. Nothing can separate that from
them. As it is written, for thy sake
we're killed all the day long. We're counted as sheep for the
slaughtered. Nay, in all these things we're more than conquerors
through Him that loved us. For I'm persuaded that neither
death, nor life, nor angels, nor principality, nor powers,
nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth,
nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the
love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. So we look at
that list of all these things that cannot separate us from
the love of God and Christ, and then we look over here at Mary
has chosen that good part, and it shall not be taken away from
her. Not only shall it not, but it
cannot be. Nothing, nothing can do that. They shall not be taken from
her. Not ever. So, you know, the church in all
ages is subject to these distractions in this world and always away
from the main thing. And that's brought to our attention
here. And also in your last book of your Bible, the revelation
of Jesus Christ, You know, Chapter 2 could be
written about Martha. There's seven churches that are
named there in Chapter 2 and Chapter 3. And I was just looking
them over the other day, and every one of them starts out
I know thy works, I know thy works, but you've gotten yourself
away from your first love or you've got distracted by this.
There's seven things that they've gotten distracted by. I'm not
going to go into them here, but you can read that for yourselves.
He said, write this to this church, write this to that church, and
every one of them starts out with the same exact thing, I
know thy works. I know what you've been doing,
but what you're doing is, you've left your first love.
That's what he said in Revelation 2-4. I know thy works and thy
charity and service and faith and patience and thy works, the
last to be more than the first. Their works turn into more than
their love. And he counsels them against
that. And so here's where we need to
be is sitting at Jesus' feet, hearing His Word. You know, the
Lord by Moses at Sinai said, and it's recorded in Deuteronomy
chapter 33, verse 3. I'm going to paraphrase it here
because we're about out of time. He said, He loved His people. They are all in His hand. They
sat at His feet to hear the Word of God. Deuteronomy 33. It's a little longer than that,
but I'll just kind of paraphrase it here. Because they were distracted.
They kind of got their eye off, even though they had the Lord
right there in front of them in the pillar of fire and the
cloud and all the things that Norm's been teaching us about
in Numbers. He loved His people, and He loved
their loving Him, choosing the good part. Mark 12, 33 says,
and to love Him with all the heart, with all the understanding,
and with all the soul. Boy, we just fall so short of
that. When it says all, you know, we just, that's a hard number
to reach, all. all thy strength, to love thy
neighbor as himself." The Lord said, it's more than all whole
burnt offerings and sacrifices. Loving the Lord is more than
all those burnt offerings and sacrifices. We can substitute
works of whatever kind that we do. We're going to stop there and
focus on choosing the good part. Choose the good part and be free.