Matthew chapter six. Matthew chapter six. I'm reading from verse 19. Matthew
chapter six, verse 19. Lay not up for yourselves treasures
upon earth. where moth and rust doth corrupt,
and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up for yourselves
treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and
where thieves do not break through nor steal. For where your treasure
is, there will your heart be also. The light of the body is
the eye. If therefore thine eye be single,
thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be
evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore
the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness. No man can serve two masters,
for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he
will hold to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God
and mammon. Therefore I say unto you, take
no thought for your life, what ye shall eat or what ye shall
drink, nor yet for your body what ye shall put on. Is not
the life more than meat and the body than raiment? Behold the
fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor
gather into barns, Yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not
much better than they? Which of you, by taking thought,
can add one cubit unto his stature? Why take ye thought for raiment?
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They toil not,
neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you, that
Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today
is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more
clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying,
What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall
we be clothed? For after all these things do
the Gentiles say, For your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need
of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom
of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be
added unto you. Take therefore no thought for
the moral, for the moral shall take thought for the things of
itself. Sufficient unto the day is the
evil thereof. Now turn with me to Luke chapter
10. Luke chapter 10. And look at verse 38 with me please. Luke chapter 10 and verse 38. Now it came to pass as they went
that he, that is the Lord Jesus, 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' feet and heard his word. But Martha
was cumbered 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. Jesus answered and said unto
her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many
things, but one thing is needful, and Mary hath chosen that good
part which shall not be taken away from her. Amen. May God bless to us these readings
from his word. If the Lord Jesus Christ were
here this evening, I mean really and literally present, and if
he were to say to you, what do you need? What would your answer be? If
he were to say to you, what can I do for you? What would you
ask for? It isn't just a theoretical question
because in the very next chapter, in Luke chapter 11, he says,
ask and it shall be given you. What would you ask for if he
were here tonight? Now, just to allay any doubt,
let me say that the Lord Jesus Christ is here tonight. He is really and actually here
tonight. He is present with us this evening,
where two or three are gathered in his name, where prayer is
wont to be made, where the gospel is preached. I will be with you
always, says the Lord. God save us from pretending to
be Christians. Let us come into his presence. Let us be aware of his company
with us. Let us not try to put on airs
and graces. Let us try to be real as far
as our dealings with the God-man is concerned. He is with us here
in this place. And when he says to us, what
do you need? Let us hear what he has to say. This passage is just a few verses
long that we've read together in Luke's gospel, Luke chapter
10. And in verse 42, which is the
verse I want to just dwell on, perhaps with greatest emphasis
this evening, the Lord Jesus Christ says in his speaking to
Martha, one thing is needful. And Mary hath chosen that good
part, which shall not be taken away from her. What do you need? The Lord Jesus Christ himself
tells us. He says to us this evening with
such clarity as if he had spoken it for the very first time, though
it was spoken so many years ago. He says one thing is needful. only one, and then everything
else will find its proper place. All the other priorities, all
the other challenges, all the other difficulties, everything
we worry about, everything that causes us to fret and generates
anxiety, even the grief that we sometimes have to encounter
in this Christian walk of ours, All will find its proper place
when this one needful thing is given its place in our lives. In Luke chapter 12, just a couple
of chapters on from here, and verse 31, we find Luke giving
us an account of the words which Matthew earlier spoke in Matthew
6, 33, and we read them together. But Luke says it like this, he
says, seek ye the kingdom of God. What do you need? The Lord
says, Seek ye the kingdom of God, and all these things shall
be added unto you. Luke tells us in this passage
that we've read together that the Lord Jesus Christ entered
into a certain village. I think that's quite interesting
that Luke phrases it like this. There really isn't any doubt
about which village this was, because John, in his account,
tells us it was Bethany. And Bethany's not here this evening,
but her dad's going to tell her that we've been talking about
her. This was Bethany, but Luke doesn't
tell us that. Luke says that it's a certain
village, and he appears to be purposefully vague about it. I don't doubt for a moment he
knew exactly where this was, but he doesn't tell us. Perhaps
the reason for that is simple, that Luke was writing this account
while Martha and Mary and Lazarus were still living there. And
it may well have been an awkward thing, indeed a dangerous thing,
for them to have been identified in his letter. John didn't have
any such compunction. He wrote many, many years after
the event, and probably there was not the same sensitivity
about it. But I like that. I think it's
interesting that Luke has made this distinction. It's just a
certain village. That means it's anywhere, and
it's everywhere. And it means it's here, and it
means it's timeless. Because here is the Lord Jesus
Christ, and he's entered into a certain village. Maybe it's
a village like Tarara, or Nowra, or Shoalhaven, or any other multitude
of places that it could be, but it comes to us with a freshness,
and it comes to us with an immediacy. This is an incident in the everyday
lives of people just like you and me. It's familiar, it's personal,
and it's intimate. In this village lives a lady,
and she is called Martha. Martha is a believer. She is
a Christian. She is also a homeowner. It was her house It wasn't Mary's
house or indeed Lazarus's house. This was Mary's house. Martha's
house, I'm sorry. It wasn't Mary's and it wasn't
Lazarus's house. It was Martha's house. I hadn't
realised that until relatively recently. I'd never really thought
of it, I guess, but it was her house that she invited Jesus
into, and Martha, we're told, received him. That may suggest
that it was a very close-knit group that gathered, because
it doesn't say that she received all of the disciples, although
Perhaps several of them were there, perhaps all of them. Perhaps
there were some guests invited also. We're not told. We're told
that Martha received him into her house. And it was a pleasure
for her to do so, and it was a gracious act on her part. And we're told that when the
Lord Jesus Christ came into her house, that Martha served him. Now this is interesting as well,
I think, because Martha evidently was good at this. She was a good
hostess. She was able and she was doing
something that she took pleasure in. Let's turn over with me to
John's Gospel, if you will. John chapter 12. Now you may just have to take
my word for this, but the suggestion is that based on Matthew 26 and
verse 6, that the place where this event took place was the
home of Simon the leper. And in John 12, Verse 1, we read,
Then Jesus, six days before the Passover, came to Bethany, where
Lazarus was which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead.
There they made him a supper, and Martha served. But Lazarus
was one of them that sat at the table with him. So here we're
discovering that Martha served in someone else's house. So the
suggestion is that it was something that she was able to do, something
she was good at, something she took pleasure in doing. This,
if indeed it is the same instance that's reported in Matthew 26,
you can compare it later if you want, was the home of Simon who
had been a leper, or Simon the leper. And here is Martha doing
the catering in someone else's house. But there was a problem
on this occasion in Luke chapter 10. Something was not right. Perhaps there were too many guests. Perhaps she had been taken by
surprise and didn't have sufficient food in the house. Perhaps she
had been too ambitious and had gone for too many courses. Perhaps she was trying to juggle
too many priorities in her catering. But Martha is obviously on edge. and her feelings spill over and
she publicly reprimands her sister and she even appears to rebuke
the Lord. Believers, and Martha was one,
believers have many faults and many sins. And we can even be
guilty of rebuking the Lord. What a terrible thing. What a
sad situation. And to publicly reprimand her
sister in the way that she did. She comes in and she takes an
air of apparent humility. She asks a question. She says,
Lord, does thou not care that my sister hath left me alone
to serve? But she reinforces that question
immediately by an instruction, a command. She tells the Lord
what he should do. She says to the Lord, are you
careless about the situation that's arisen here? Let me tell
you what you should do about this. You should instruct her
to help me out. Bid her therefore that she help
me. Now I don't know how many people
were sitting around the meal, but I can imagine that there
was quiet when she spoke, and I can imagine that Mary was very
embarrassed about the situation, and the Lord if we may say this,
also would have been taken aback by the force with which she spoke. This dear Lady Saint overstepped
the mark. And I suspect that she would
be affronted to know that all these years later, we're still
talking about the thing that she said that night. It was impetuous,
it was impulsive. She had a sharp tongue and she
made a hurtful comment. Or maybe Martha, bless her, is
just happy. that now we can learn from her
mistake and that the Lord's gracious and careful dealing with the
situation has left us with such a beautiful testimony of where
we ought to find our true priorities and what is really important
in our lives. The Lord's people can get preoccupied
with doing at the cost of hearing. We can be so busy serving that
we can forget to listen. We forget, as it were, to stand
still. We forget to wait on the Lord. And there's a danger, as Martha
proved, that we find our vulnerability in these matters in the very
things that we do best. The very areas where our service
can be most useful. The very things that we are best
doing in our service from the Lord can be those things. that creep in and drive a wedge
between us and an intimate, personal relationship with the Lord. Jesus had come to Martha's home,
and Martha missed the blessing. How sad. Jesus had come there
on the evening and sat at her table or reclined at her meal
and Martha had missed the blessing. In Exodus chapter 14 and verse
13 there's a little verse which speaks about the need of the
Lord's people always to be ready to hear Moses said to the people,
fear ye not, stand still and see the salvation of the Lord,
which he will show you today. Circumstances in that moment
when that verse was spoken could not have been further from the
relative calmness of the domestic scene that we have before us.
There, the Israelites were camped on the shores of the Red Sea.
They had mountains to the right and mountains to the left. They
had a sea before them and they had the hosts of the Egyptians
bearing down from them behind. And there, if ever there was
a situation to engender panic, was a prime example. And Moses said to the people,
just wait, just be calm, just be at peace, just stand still
and you watch. the saving power of God at work,
the deliverance that he will effect, the salvation of the
Lord, which he will show you this day. I think these Old Testament
pictures are lovely because they tell us that no matter what is
happening in our lives, No matter how fraught they may appear,
and how difficult they might have to become, and the things
that we will have to face, there is a place for standing still
and waiting on the Lord. The Lord said to Martha, one
thing is needful. Above all the demands of our
busy lives, one thing is to be sought. One thing is to be enjoyed
above all others, and that is meeting with Jesus. That is being
in his presence. We meet with him when the gospel
is preached in our hearing. Therefore, we ought to be present
when the gospel is preached. We meet with him amongst the
saints when they gather, therefore we ought to be gathered with
them. We meet with him in our hearts
as we sit quietly under his voice and under his word. In verse
42, the Lord says to Martha, Mary hath chosen that good part. Some in the past have criticised
Mary. They've said Mary didn't pull
her weight. There was obviously work to be
done. There was a challenge to be faced
here. And Mary ought to have been more
careful about helping out her sister. Mary, indeed it is suggested,
was benefiting at the expense of Martha. But I don't think Mary was being
unreasonable. Indeed, the implication in verse
39 is that Mary had already been at work in the service of the
hospitality. In Luke chapter 10, verse 39,
we're told, Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet. That little word in there, also,
is meaningful. She had been serving, and she
also sat at Jesus' feet. She had chosen the good part. The final arbiter in any question
or any discussion that we might like to have about the relative
merits of these women's approach to the presence of the Lord with
them in the house that evening surely falls to the Lord, and
He has declared that she chose the good part. because she chose
to listen to the words of the Lord. She chose to hear the words
which weren't from the earth, but were from heaven. She chose
to listen to that which would do her soul eternal good. She was entranced. She was desirous after. The words that fell from the
Saviour's lips. We have a few gathered this evening.
If we had been organizing another kind of event, we might expect
dozens, scores, hundreds even, to be interested to come along
and hear what? Words from the earth. words of man's imagination, words
of human construction, words, high, lofty, ingenious they might
be, but words nevertheless that will pass and be gone and have
no significance, and yet they take men's attention and they
are pursued actively by them. This is where the real importance
lies. It lies in that one needful thing,
and Mary has chosen the good part. That good part is the Lord
Jesus Christ. His words not from earth, but
from above. Others would say of him, never
man spoke like this man. And it does the souls of his
people good to hear the words of Jesus. The good part, Psalm
73 verse 26, tells us what that good part is. My flesh and my
heart faileth, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion. My portion, that's the word that
means here in this passage, my good part. That which strengthens
my heart in this pilgrim way, that which sustains and supports,
that which enables, that good part, that portion is the Lord
Jesus Christ. God, the strength of my heart,
God, my portion forever. What choice was this that Mary
made? Not the choice of the three-willed
preacher who imagines and teaches that man's choice determines
eternal life. John 5, verse 40 says, He will
not come to me that ye might have life. Now, this wasn't the
choice which originated in the will of Mary by some innate,
natural human ability that she possessed. Rather, he who first
loved her, he who first joined himself to her, joined himself
to his people in eternal covenant, stirs up the desire after himself. And he instills a hunger and
a thirst after righteousness. He instills, he brings about
that passion, that desire for the words of eternal life. Those so affected by God the
Holy Spirit, after the things of Christ, they seek him out. They go where he is to be found. There was another situation in
the life of this family where Lazarus got sick and he died. And Mary and Martha mourned for
the loss of their brother. And it was said to them that
the Lord had come. He had delayed. Martha was perturbed
about this as well. She just knew that if the Lord
had got there a day or two earlier, Lazarus could have been saved.
But she heard that the Lord had come and rather than cause a
scene and come into the house where all the Jews were gathered,
going through the formalities of the mourning process, the
Lord hid himself away just outside the town and Martha was told
that the Lord had come and she went to him and she spoke to
him. She said, Lord, if you had just
come, the Lord comforted her and consoled her. And then he
said to her, go and get your sister, go and tell Mary that
I'm here. And Martha went back to the house
and she spoke to her sister secretly, privately, and she said, the
Lord's here. He's outside the village. And immediately, Mary
ran to where the Lord was. And she threw herself at his
feet. It's lovely. Every time we read
about Mary, you know where she is? She's at Jesus' feet. She sat here in the house at
Jesus' feet, listening to what he had to say. When her brother
died, she went to where she knew she could find him. Why? Because Martha told her that's
where he was. And she went to where he could
be found and she threw herself on the ground at his feet. In
that occasion that we looked at in the home of Simon the leper,
where was she to be found? kneeling at Jesus' feet, anointing
His feet with oil. We'll come back to that in a
moment or two. Those who are affected by the love of Christ
desire to be where He is. They go to where He is. It is their choice. It is their
will. They're not forced. This isn't a compunction that
is on them externally. They want to be where the Lord
is. We don't need to entice people
to come to church. We don't need to cajole them
or bribe or bully them to be under the sound of the gospel.
Those who have a heart for these things will be where the Lord
is, and they will be at his feet. Verse 42 goes on to say, the
Lord says, one thing is needful. Mary hath chosen that good part,
and look, it shall not be taken away from her. God's gifts are
without repentance. That means that what he has given,
he will not take back. The good part belongs to the
church. The good part belongs to his
people for all eternity. Mary served the Lord. Martha was concerned about that.
You see, Martha was saying, tell her to come and help. Tell her
that she should be serving. Tell her that she should be serving
the plates. She should be helping with the
distribution. She should be doing the tidying
up. Tell her that she should be serving you, Lord, not sitting
there. But you see, the time for serving
came. And Mary's service was more beautiful
than Martha, bless her, ever appears to have appreciated.
She sat at Jesus' feet and soon she would be sacrificing herself
for Christ. The Lord's people should not
fear sacrifice. We shouldn't be frightened about
the prospect of having to sacrifice. It might seem intimidating now,
but when the time comes, we will give willingly, for he will prepare
our hearts for whatever it is he calls upon us to do for him. I think that Mary grasped spiritual
insights and understanding that no other disciple understood
because of her position at the Lord's feet. I think Mary was
more informed than any of the disciples, certainly at this
time. While they were speaking about
Christ's kingdom upon earth, she saw the imminence of his
death. While they were speaking about
position and power, Mary was bringing ointment of spikenyard
in order to anoint his feet. Because she listened to the Lord
Jesus Christ, she learned the true gospel of God's grace. Through his death, his sacrifice
and his blood, she had insights that were still beyond the best
of the disciples at this time. A little time after on this occasion,
in Matthew chapter 26, we read these words. Jesus was in Bethany
in the house of Simon the leper. There came unto him a woman. I suggest to you that this is
Mary. There came unto him a woman having an alabaster box of very
precious ointment. and poured it on his head as
he sat at meat. But when his disciples saw it,
they had indignation, saying, To what purpose is this waste?
For this ointment might have been sold for much and given
to the poor. When Jesus understood it, he
said unto them, Why trouble ye this woman? For she hath wrought
a good work upon me. For ye have the poor always with
you, but me ye have not always. For in that she hath poured this
ointment on my body. She did it for my burial. Verily I say unto you, wheresoever
the gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall
also this, that this woman hath done, be told for a memorial
for her." Isn't that lovely? She understood that the Lord
Jesus, He whom she loved, He whom she sought out he whose
feet she loved to sit at and listen to the words of his mouth. She understood that soon she
would be parted from him. And in anticipation of his death,
she anointed his body and she blessed him with that sacrifice,
that service that she could bring. The death of the Lord Jesus Christ
secured everlasting blessings for his people. Blessings once
granted, never to be repealed. Blessings of grace, blessings
of mercy, blessings of peace with God and holiness from the
Lord. Blessings of salvation, blessings
from heaven. This is that which is needful. And those blessings, they come to the Lord's people
as their portion, as they wait upon Him. Those who, like Mary,
choose that good part will never have them taken away. They're
yours. for time and for eternity. He is yours. In Luke chapter
11, verse 9, the Lord Jesus Christ says, I say unto you, ask and
it shall be given you. Seek and ye shall find. Knock and it shall be opened
unto you. For everyone that asketh, receiveth. And he that seeketh, findeth. And to him that knocketh, it
shall be opened. Amen.