We're going to continue in our sermon series, "Kingdom Come." We are in Luke's Gospel. We're in Luke 10. So we're continuing there this morning. You can turn with me. If you don't have a Bible, the text will be up on front of you on the screen so you can follow along there as well. Before we do that though, let's just begin with a word of prayer.
Father, Lord, we do want to actively participate in every part of the worship service. Lord, now as we turn to your word, I pray that you would help us to sit under your word, to savor your word, to lean into the teaching of the gospel. But I pray that you would, through your Spirit, help the word, empower the word to have its effect upon our hearts. Lord, we want to be changed by your word. We want to love Jesus more. Two simple things, Lord. Change us according to Your Word and help us to love Jesus. In His name we pray. Amen.
Well, we are only a month or so away from an anniversary of sorts. It was about 2 years ago that we took a missions trip to Bolivia, specifically to Casa de Esperanza. So if you've come to Providence since then, you're maybe not as familiar with that. For those of you who've been here a while, you may be remember helping us fundraise for that trip. Casa de Esperanza is an orphanage in Bolivia in the Yungas region, so it's kind of this area that's between the Amazon River Basin and the high Andes Mountains. And so it's this kind of jungle area, and we went there specifically to volunteer at Casa de Esperanza, that orphanage. And now, as most of you know, Caleb serves there full-time doing missions work and serving at the orphanage. So that was sort of the fruit and byproduct of that initial trip. But when we went down there initially, it was with the region, our Midwest region. It was led by two of the churches in Minnesota. And so we got to go down there with a whole group of people for the purpose expressly of helping them to repair and rebuild the homes where the widows and the orphans live. And so we went down there with all sorts of roofing material and roofing projects. We were going to get some work done. And I went down there basically as a grunt. I have very limited knowledge in how to do roofing, but I can lift stuff and I can work hard. And so I went down there with that mentality and that was exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to accomplish. And we really did. We got a ton done. We were really efficient in how we did it. But for me, with how I was raised, when you go on a trip like that, that's what you're doing. That's why you're going. When my grandpa would have me out to the farm to bale hay, you better bale some hay. You're not around there to, to fool around, right? And so when we went down to Casa de Esperanza, I was expecting and looking forward to, there's going to be heat, and there's going to be sweat, and there's going to be work. And that's how I approached it. And we worked hard, and we put these roofs on these homes, and it was exciting to think about how the orphans and the widows were going to be blessed by this.
But I also realized midway through the week that a strange thing was going on in my heart. I was working hard. I was sweating like crazy. I was getting sunburned. I had a beard back then, if you remember that beard. And so I had earned a nickname from the kids. They were calling me "The Bear," by whatever word that is in Spanish. I found out after the fact Caleb was doing that with them and he didn't tell me about it. I think it was just the beard. It had nothing to do with my size. But I was working hard and I was laboring. And it felt good at night to go to sleep knowing that we had worked hard and we had accomplished the first roof and then the second roof. But as we were working and as we were laboring, I realized it seemed like there were some other people who weren't working as hard. They would kind of disappear, and as the week went on, they would disappear more frequently. Their water breaks got long, and I started to grumble in my heart. What in the world are these people doing? Like, we raised tons of money to come down here and to serve these people, to put roofs on the houses of widows and orphans. You know? Like, that's what's going on in my heart. Like, I had to smile, you know, look at the friendly bear, but in my heart, we're supposed to be helping these people. Come to find out that the people that were disappearing were actually playing with the kids on the backside of the house as the week went on. So it was a rather convicting moment as I realized my self-righteousness was kind of increasing. My frustration was brewing. Why aren't these people working hard? People saved and spent money to send us down here and they're not helping. Instead, they're, they're playing with the orphans, playing soccer and kicking the ball. It was, it was a moment of acute conviction. To summarize it, in a lot of ways, it was my Martha moment. And that's what we see in today's text.
It's the story of Mary and Martha. In Luke chapter 10, starting in verse 38, we close out the chapter with this brief little episode that Luke gives us.
Hear God's holy and authoritative word. Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village, and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving, and she went up to him and said, 'Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.' But the Lord answered her, 'Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.' The Word of the Lord. May He write His truth upon our hearts.
6 · Notes the passage's familiarity and brevity, suggesting Luke's conciseness may itself be a literary device reinforcing the warning against busyness—a short story about being too busy
Now it feels like we're in a section of Luke's Gospel that is just filled with familiarity, right? Last week we saw that famous story of the Good Samaritan. If you grew up in the church, you no doubt remember and have heard before the story of Mary and Martha. It's one of those classic stories. What struck me this week as I was working on the message was just the brevity of the episode. In my mind, there was more detail that was supposed to be there. And yet when I came to Luke at the very end of chapter 10, it's this very concise picture of what happens. And it almost made me chuckle a little bit. I wondered if Luke wasn't maybe making a point. Wouldn't it be perfect? Wouldn't it be the exact way for Luke to finish this chapter with this extra concise scene That is in part a warning about busyness. It's a very concise story to warn people about being overly busy.
7 · States the sermon's first major claim: the passage functions as a warning against the spiritual danger of busyness itself
And that's the first thing I think we see in this passage. Jesus is warning us. Luke is warning us. Beware of busyness.
8 · Exposes the Greek behind verse 40, showing that Martha's condition is not merely busy but passively distracted—dragged away, oppressed by her own serving
Luke gets right to the heart of the matter as he describes it in verse 40. But Martha was troubled was distracted with much serving. Now, distracted with much serving, that kind of sounds like a noble thing, right? I'm building roofs for orphans here! Right? It's that kind of thing. It sounds good. The NIV perhaps puts it in a way that translates it a little more helpfully. But Martha was distracted with all her preparations that had to be made. You get the difference, right? The sense of urgency. It's not in Martha's heart that she's just serving. She has stuff that has to get done. And that verb distracted, the tense that's in the passive, it means to be pulled away or dragged away. And so Luke is showing us that Martha is distracted. She's busy to the point of being overburdened. She's distracted with serving to the point of being overwhelmed. Martha's not just busy. Martha is oppressed by her busyness.
9 · Unpacks the cultural weight of first-century hospitality expectations pressing on Martha as hostess
Part of understanding that is recognizing this is probably Martha's house. That's kind of how Luke introduces us. They went to the house Martha lived in, which means that all the enormous expectations of hospitality that exist in that culture— and this culture has huge expectations for how you host somebody— All of those expectations get set right at Martha's feet. They fall squarely on her shoulders. Not preparing a proper meal for your guests in that culture, in that world, is a huge deal. If you don't do it the right way, it's a social failure. If you don't do it at all, it's a failure to care for the people you've invited into your home. Implicit in the invitation to come to the home is the understanding, I'm going to provide. I'm gonna care. It's not like it is today where it's just, if things aren't going well, if the chicken gets burned, you just call up Papa John's, right? Or call up Jimmy John's and just have something delivered. If you're like me and you call Jimmy John's, it's always freaky fast, but always freaky wrong. They always get it wrong. But they don't have those options then. So that's the strain Martha's under. There's nobody she can call to come bring the food. It's all on her. Maybe to help us get an idea for ladies, if you've ever prepared a graduation party, right? A high school graduation party or a college graduation party, all the detail work that goes into it. It's gotta be right. You're putting your best foot forward. That's kind of the way they approach just general hospitality. So you kind of get the stakes of the pressure that's involved. Husbands, dads, you can imagine how your wife operates and functions in those environments. And you realize, don't tell her she's being overcommitted and overly busy. This is a big deal, right? Well, that's a little bit of what's going on here. That might not perfectly explain the hospitality demands, but it gives us an idea.
10 · Bridges from Martha's cultural pressures to contemporary American busyness, diagnosing technology's false promises, FOMO, and the seductive holiness of constant activity
And even though we don't have the same pressures of hospitality in our culture, We can certainly relate to being inordinately busy, can't we? We face massive pressure. Our culture is a pressure cooker of busyness. People are busier than they seem to have ever been before. And we sort of feel this pressure constantly, don't we? We feel the pressure constantly, and so we're constantly looking for solutions that are supposed to help give us an edge on the busyness. These devices and technology that are supposed to help to serve us to make us less busy, to give us more margin, right? That's what those things are invented for, correct? And so I feel the need, and I mean the deep-seated need, for faster internet. I feel like I have been deprived because Google Fiber has not come to my neighborhood. More than that, Google Fiber has come to my backdoor neighbors because they live in Lenexa, but not to me because I live in Overland Park. I want to be a part of the Fiberhood because my life would be better, it'd be more efficient, I'd be less busy if I had 1,000 megabits per second and not 20. Or so I tell myself. And yet the 20 megabits a second doesn't seem to have made me less busy than 10 years ago when it was 0.2, right? We feel this need for constant connectivity. To be unplugged, right? To be disconnected from the web, from the internet, that almost feels like a curse. And yet when I find myself with a dead computer battery or a dead smartphone, or on a plane with no Wi-Fi, the horror, right? the world actually seems to slow down. It seems to get more manageable. I seem to get more productive. Or that need to be involved, right? The need to be involved in everything that's going on, or to have our kids involved in every possible opportunity. They've even made an acronym for this debilitating malady of when you're not involved in something. FOMO, right? Fear of missing out. People have a psychological condition now, an anxiety, a phobia. What if I'm missing out on something that's happening somewhere and I'm not connected to it? And so we become more and more busy. We see in Martha, though, this temptation to become bewildered by busyness. It's not just a modern one. It crosses all times and cultures. One of the dangers of feeling busy, though, is that feeling busy can also feel very holy, can't it? It feels right to be juggling 1,000 activities and cramming another item onto the to-do list. But oftentimes, being constantly busy is just a sign of a deeper spiritual issue. Being overwhelmed with busyness indicates a deeper spiritual problem, whether it be an overzealous ambition or just enslavement to people-pleasing, inability to say no. Sometimes we try and make ourselves busy, I think, just so we don't have to feel. The busier you are, the less introspective you have to be. The less you have to take account of your life. Kevin DeYoung wrote a helpful book called Crazy Busy. It's actually a very brief book, which I think was part of his point. I'm gonna make a really brief book about being crazy busy. He identifies some very insightful things about the sleight of hand that happens in regards to busyness in our culture. He quotes a New York Times article In the article it writes, it says, "Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness. Obviously, your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, so completely booked, in demand every hour of the day."
11 · Delivers the theological diagnosis: busyness is spiritually lethal not because of what it causes but because of what it prevents—consideration of deeper dangers and time with the Great Physician
You see the sleight of hand? Kevin gets to the heart of this. You know, it's the greatest danger with busyness is that there may be greater dangers you never have time to consider. Busyness does not mean you are a faithful or fruitful Christian. It only means you are busy just like everyone else. And like everyone else, your joy, your heart, and your soul are in danger. We need the word of God to set us free. We need biblical wisdom to set us straight. What we need is the Great Physician to hear our overscheduled souls. If only we could make time for an appointment.
12 · Applies the Martha diagnosis to the congregation: busyness robs us of the capacity to simply be present with God, privately and corporately
Martha, in all of her hustle and bustle, thinks she is more faithful, thinks she is more fruitful than Mary. But that busyness has only distracted her from Jesus. For many of us, in our hectic schedules and busyness, we've completely lost the ability to simply be, to just be present, to just be in the presence of another person. More significantly, more importantly, more tragically, we have lost the ability to just be in the presence of God, both privately and corporately. If we're not doing, then nothing must be happening.
13 · Offers a personal example of silence-and-solitude retreat as an antidote to busyness, diagnosing the body's need for 'busyness detox' and challenging the congregation to prioritize time with God over entertainment
Before I came down to Kansas City, before we accepted the call to come down and and pastor here, I actually, sensing the weight and gravity of the decision, took 3 days and went to this little retreat center in central Minnesota for a 3-day silence and solitude retreat. It's the kind of deal where I had like a little one-room cabin overlooking a lake, and they would like bring me bread and cheese each day, and I was just by myself with the Lord, praying and reading Scripture and sleeping. That was actually one of the things they told me. They said, when you get there, you're going to sleep more than you want to. And it's because your body is essentially going on a busyness detox. You're just going to sleep. And it's God's grace to you. But I sense this is a big thing. I want to pray. I want to seek the Lord. Are you calling us to Kansas City? Right. And so I did that and it was helpful. And, and the Lord, Lord met me. But there's this notion that it was because it was a big decision that I needed to slow down. I needed to pause. I needed to listen. I think the reality is we could all use a little more retreat into the presence of God, a little more unhurried time in the word, unhurried time in prayer. More attention to the Spirit than to our calendar. My hunch is we probably need this a bit more than we need the next round of Netflix binge-watching, right? But which one of those is going to cut through the clutter of our busyness? Because we are very busy, and yet things still went on in our schedules.
14 · Signals a structural shift from the first warning (beware of busyness) to the second warning to come, maintaining continuity while preparing for a new dimension of the diagnosis
Part of what Luke is doing in Luke 10 is he's warning us, beware of busyness. That's not the only thing he's warning us of though. It's not just that Martha is busy.
15 · Exposes the emotional complexity beneath Martha's complaint—not just exasperation but jealousy of Mary's position at Jesus' feet and embarrassment over cultural norms being violated
The demands of hospitality, they've dragged Martha into this sense of just being overwhelmed, and it also has a nasty side effect. It's not just that she's overwhelmed and playing hostess. It's not just that Mary isn't helping. Mary has presumed to sit at Jesus' feet. Women weren't supposed to sit at the feet of a rabbi. It's a place for men. Why isn't she doing the work she's supposed to be doing? She's shirking her duties. You kind of get the picture of Martha running around, "Where is Mary at?" And then stunned to find her sitting at Jesus' feet. Martha's declaration is more, "Lord." Don't you care that Mary deserted me? She stuck me with all the work. And she's sitting at your feet. It's not appropriate. Tell her to come help me. Martha's outburst is this convoluted combination of exasperation and jealousy and embarrassment.
16 · States the second major theological warning: busyness produces resentment as its natural fruit
And the result of all that is what? She ends up yelling at Jesus. That's what happens in Luke 10. "Tell her to come help me!" When she goes back and reads Luke's Gospel, it's probably not one of her prouder moments. Martha's busyness has brought her to a most common fruit, the fruit of resentment. Just as we have to beware of busyness, if we're busy, We probably also have to be careful of resentment.
17 · Diagnoses the mechanics of resentment: fallen hearts mask self-love as selflessness, and the clearest evidence is our response when service goes unrecognized
Martha's scurrying has resulted in this slow burn of resentment. It's this slow heating up of resentment until it comes to a boil. And she's twisted serving the Lord into actually serving herself. There's this peculiar ability of our fallen hearts to mask self-love as selflessness. And it's worming its way into our service of others. We mask things that we do to make ourselves feel better, to make ourselves feel more important, as deeds done in selflessness. The quickest sign we've slipped into this sort of self-love disguised serving is evidenced in how we respond when there's a lack of recognition?
18 · Applies the resentment diagnosis to contemporary church service, showing how unrecognized labor breeds bitterness that escalates into accusing God
Because that's what happens with Martha, right? Mary's teaching. Mary's sitting and listening. Jesus is teaching. Nobody is recognizing. Nobody is giving credit where credit is due. That's what Martha's thinking. So what's our response when the people we serve don't seem to appreciate us? Or when it seems others in the church aren't supporting us in our area of service that we have sovereignly deemed they must serve us in. Or when leaders or the boss overlook us. That's when we often find resentment bubbling and brewing below the surface. And if we aren't careful, we find ourselves imagining that our agenda and our priorities trump everything else and everyone else, God included. Suddenly, we aren't seeking to honor God with our service. Instead, we perversely slither into a posture of feeding our flesh in the guise of serving others. Our service is no longer motivated by grace and love. We're serving because we want to get praised. We're serving because we want recognition. And from there, although we could never have seen it coming to this when we set out, we find ourselves bitter towards God. And God becomes the new target of our dissatisfaction. Before we know it, we're complaining right alongside Martha. Doesn't God know how many hours we've put into this project? Doesn't he know how important, how essential this is? Why hasn't he enlisted the right people with the right kind of support that we know we need, that we deserve? "Lord," we call out in Martha's voice, "tell them to help me! At least tell them to acknowledge me!" Has your heart ever done that?
19 · Returns to the Bolivia roofing illustration as a brief, self-indicting echo of the resentment diagnosis—exposing the pastor's own heart posture
"Lord, we're supposed to be building roofs for orphans, not playing with them, right? Our hearts are fickle things.
20 · Expands the resentment pattern into judgmentalism and spiritual arrogance—we assume our area of service is uniquely important and critique others' perceived failures to support it
It's so easy to become overly concerned about how much or little or in what ways others are serving. When we travel down that path, it's not long before we find ourselves critiquing them in our hearts, judging their motives, or just condemning them altogether. Suddenly omniscient in our ability to perceive why they're failing to serve us. And like Martha, I think we all have a tendency to view whatever we do or we are gifted for or we feel called to as the most important thing to have ever been tried or accomplished for the sake of the kingdom, right? That's how we tend to work. If you've got a passion for serving in an area, That seems like the be-all end-all.
21 · Constructs a hypothetical scenario within the Providence congregation—Noah resenting Patty's invisible prayer ministry while he installs visible lights—to show the absurdity and spiritual danger of comparing and measuring service
I was reminded, you look around, you come into Providence right now, and there are some people who have been serving us so faithfully behind the scenes recently. Noah and John and Day have been putting up canned lights this last week, right? And so kind of our continued do-it-yourself remodeling project in the back room there, they've put in these new lights. They got rid of those hideous funeral home chandeliers. There's now canned lights. They gave up evenings. They gave up an entire Saturday to do this. Scott has spent countless hours painting the walls. I didn't know paint could be this significant, but it is. All of a sudden, the room feels softer and it feels more warm and more inviting. And Scott's been giving his time there. Susan and Brooke have been planning and thinking about how to decorate the church so the ladies' retreat looks pretty and inviting. And I'm grateful for all of these things they've been doing. It's a sacrifice of time and energy. And from everything I've observed, these people have done this with the right motives and the right heart. But it's also very observable. And so what if Noah— now this is a hypothetical. I did not witness Noah doing this. But what if Noah, after spending all these evenings and the better part of a Saturday installing the canned lights, started grumbling? "You know, I gave up an evening with my family. I gave up a whole Saturday with my family. And I have never once seen Patty Snooks up on a ladder installing a canned light. Never once have I seen Patty testing to see if that is a grounded wire or if it's hot." I am the only one risking electrocution in this church. I never see Patty doing it. Doesn't she love this church? Doesn't she care about it? Never mind that all the while, sweet Patty Snooks has been praying in secret. Week in and week out, unobserved, unnoticed, outside of God and the angels in heaven, praying for Providence, praying for its people, praying for its ministries. You see how our hearts can deceive us? Now, that's an extreme example. Again, I I've never observed Noah doing that. But it underscores how ridiculous the entire endeavor of service measuring can get. And in the end, it would have only served to rob Noah of the real joy of his service and potentially damage his relationship and diminish his affection for Patty, his sister in Christ.
22 · Names the existential tension beneath busyness: the gap between finite hours and infinite demands exposes our non-omnipotence, yet we respond by trying to play God—to be endlessly competent and energetic—which only deepens the exhaustion and relational fracture
Beware of busyness. Beware of resentment. We also have to recognize there's a natural tension. There's a natural tension between the hours in the week and the things that we feel called to accomplish, right? There's a big reason why we feel busy. There's stuff that we feel like we're supposed to do and we can't seem to get it done. And we feel, we sense our finiteness, right? To put it another way, busyness is a constant reminder that we're not God. But when we give in to busyness, it's also a constant reminder while we might not be God, we still like to play God, right? Part of the temptation in trying to play God is to pretend that we're omnicompetent and that we're endlessly energetic. When in reality you are endlessly energetic at work and at church, and then you get home and you're exhausted and you're a puddle, and your wife is thinking, why can't you help with anything? Oh, because you're not God. We feel that tension. Even when we're battling busyness, we still run into demands that outpace our hours and outpace our energy. Even when we're trying not to be overly busy, We still sense that pull, don't we? I know I do.
23 · Signals the third major move of the sermon: from diagnosis (busyness, resentment) to prescription (prioritization)
And that's why we need to learn to prioritize wisely. This passage is about prioritizing things? Yes, I think it is. I think the passage is in part about prioritizing wisely.
24 · Exposes Jesus' tone in verse 41—the repetition of Martha's name signals sympathy, not rebuke
That might seem like a strange thing to pull out of Luke 10, but I think it's absolutely something that's at play in this dynamic between Mary and Martha. Look at verse 41: But the Lord answered her, Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her. Now the way Jesus repeats her name, it shows us He's sympathetic to her plight. He's sympathetic to our plight. He knows what it is to feel pulled in a thousand directions. He's the God-Man. He knows what it is to spend eternity with God's omnipotence at your fingertips, and now to be encapsulated in human flesh, needing to sleep, needing to eat, Crowds demanding time and healing, teaching, questions to answer, men to disciple, because you're going to then send them out to evangelize the world. He's sympathetic, but he also wants Martha to see the difference between her and her sister, and that difference is a failure of priorities.
25 · Clarifies Jesus' rebuke: He is not condemning hospitality or service as such but diagnosing misplaced priorities
Martha hasn't just made up things to do. Some people actually do that, I think, to make themselves feel more important. But Martha has a real to-do list, and this to-do list is oppressing her and it's tempting her. But she is disproportionately concerned with worldly cares, and those worldly cares, those misplaced priorities, have distracted her from what's most important. Jesus isn't making an indictment of Martha's hospitality. You don't read this episode and say, "See, you don't have to be a good host. Just throw something out there, some cold sandwiches, let them feed themselves." That's not the point at all. He's just saying that right now, it's not the most important thing she should be doing.
26 · Offers Ed Welch's counseling story of 'Jane' to illustrate the tyranny of the urgent—Jane's chronic lateness and chaotic life stem not from bad intentions but from catastrophically bad priorities
Ed Welch is a guy who's a pastor, he's a seminary professor, he's also a very gifted author and biblical counselor. And he tells a story. About a counselee, and he just calls her the generic Jane, right? Jane, on the day of their first appointment, arrived 45 minutes late. So if this is a generous appointment, maybe it's an hour and a half, and she's missed the first half of it. If it's a typical counseling appointment, she's missed 3/4 of it. She's 45 minutes late, and she's flustered, and she's disheveled, and oh so apologetic. "I'm so sorry." "I was running late and this happened and then the line at Starbucks was long." You know, like the lists that go on. But they all seem very justifiable to Jane. She felt terrible, she apologized, she promised profusely, "It won't happen again." And then the second meeting came and she was just as late. And the third meeting. And the fourth meeting. And so on. At which point in the story I'm thinking, Ed Welch is a much more gracious man than me, because we might not have made it past 2 meetings. The thing is, Jane, Ed Welch tells us, she didn't mean to be so habitually late, any more than she meant for her entire life to just be this disastrous lack of discipline and chaos. She wasn't intentionally doing that. She really did mean well. She even tried to plan well. As they met together, she was really following through on setting up her calendar and trying to think through like, what am I going to do today? What am I going to accomplish? Scheduling out ahead of time. But something always inevitably came up. She'd think of something else that had to get done. She'd be on her way to do something and another thing would pop up and she would divert to do that other thing. There was always something that had to be squeezed in, one more task or one more errand. She was always, always saying yes to the new request. Jane's issue wasn't a lack of intentions. She meant well. It was a lack of priority. So even though she meant well, she prioritized horribly. She lived under the constant tyranny of the urgent. Welch described, you know, she was a nice enough lady, but not anyone you'd ever want to hire. Or assign any sort of responsibility to. Now, Jane might be extreme, but her root problem isn't unique.
27 · Draws the canonical link between Luke 10:25-37 (Good Samaritan) and Luke 10:38-42 (Mary and Martha), showing that the two stories address the dual command: love God and love neighbor
It's no mistake that Luke has this episode immediately following the story of the Good Samaritan. That's not incidental. The lawyer asks the question, right? Remember last week, what was his question? What must I do to inherit eternal life? What does the law say? Jesus asks him. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. Love your neighbor as yourself. So love God and love your neighbor, to which Jesus says, do this and you will live.
28 · Exposes the structural irony: Martha is attempting to obey the second half of the greatest commandment (love neighbor through hospitality) while violating the first half (love God) by excluding Jesus
The irony of how this story is placed right next to it is that's what hospitality is in this culture. If you were going to pick out one thing that exemplifies love of neighbor, it's hospitality. The definition of hospitality is actually stranger love. Hospitality is when the stranger or the sojourner comes into your town and has no place to stay, no place to sleep, nothing to eat, and you, in a form of hospitality, love for the stranger, love for your neighbor, Good Samaritan style, welcome them into your home. So here Jesus has just got done telling the story of the Good Samaritan, and here's Martha trying to do it. I'm trying to love Jesus as my neighbor. I'm trying to be hospitable. I'm doing exactly what the parable calls for. But in her misplaced priorities, she's now trying to love her neighbor at the exclusion of spending time with Jesus. She might be trying to love her neighbor, but she ends up yelling at God. You see, it's not just love neighbor, it's love God and neighbor, right? The point is our priorities should always start with God and start with God's priorities. And if we don't, our priorities, because they're misplaced, will end up stealing our joy, just like they did for Martha.
29 · Delivers the gospel turn: salvation comes not through right priorities or productivity but through Mary's posture—coming to Jesus, sitting at His feet, casting yourself on His mercy
But it's also a reminder. No one is going to be saved by their priorities, right? And no one will be saved by their success in battling busyness. Salvation comes in one way. It comes in the way of Mary. Coming to Jesus, sitting at His feet, sitting under His word, hearing Him and desiring to be near Him. Neither Mary or Martha are going to be saved by anything they do. The lawyer wasn't going to be saved by anything he had done. The whole point of the Good Samaritan was to show him, You can't possibly love enough to perfectly obey this command. Martha, you can't possibly do enough. You can't possibly read enough books about productivity to rightly prioritize your life enough that it's gonna make you worthy of heaven. The point is, You have to come like Mary and sit at Jesus' feet. You have to come and you have to love God and you have to cast yourself at His mercy. That's the thing He is showing us.
30 · Applies the priority diagnosis to New Year's resolutions and spiritual disciplines, diagnosing how easily we become Jane or Martha—good intentions overwhelmed by the tyranny of the urgent, resulting in Jesus being shoved to the margins
Life is hard to prioritize, much less to maintain the priorities we've set and then to figure out how to add new ones to it, right? We start out in January making the resolutions, at least I do. I'm gonna read the Bible this many times, I'm gonna get this far into it by this month, right? I'm going to read this many books. I'm going to exercise this frequently. I'm going to prioritize community in this way, right? All those resolutions, all those things that we prioritize and that we're trying to fit in there. But then we find ourselves nearing the end of February and we realize, if we're honest, maybe we're not all that different from Jane, which means we aren't all that different from Martha. Martha's problem isn't so much that she's serving, it's that she's serving at the exclusion of fellowship with Jesus. And those two things aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, but in the tyranny of the urgent, they have become that way in her life. In other words, her busy serving has shoved Jesus into the corner rather than keeping Jesus at the center.
31 · Closes with Thomas Goodwin's vision of friendship with God—communion maintained not by duty but by delight
I love this, finish with this quote by the Puritan Thomas Goodwin. He asked this: Do we serve out of duty or delight? Mutual communion is the soul of all true friendship. So, you know, so really your hearts coming together. Mutual communion is the soul of all true friendship, and a familiar conversation with a friend has the greatest sweetness in it. We love just grabbing coffee with a friend, right? So beside the common tribute of daily worship you owe to God, Take occasion to come into his presence on purpose to have communion with him. That's what Mary was doing. This is truly friendly, for friendship is most maintained and kept up by visits, and these, the more free and less occasioned by urgent business they are, the more friendly they are. In other words, you're not meeting because you have to. Because you want to, because you love this person. We used to check our friends with this upbraiding. You always come when you have some business, but when will you come to see me? Goodwin finishes, when you come into his presence, when you come into God's presence, be telling him still how well you love him. Labor to abound in expressions of that kind. And I would add, rejoice in the grace of the gospel, that your assurance is not in how much you love Him, but in how much in His Son He has first loved you.
32 · Signals the transition from sermon to closing prayer, inviting the congregation into a posture of reception and response
Would you bow your heads?
33 · The pastor petitions God to arrest busyness, reorder priorities, and produce Mary's posture in the congregation—longing for God's presence
Lord, Our culture and our world, maybe not all that different from other cultures and times and places, presses upon us busyness. Lord, we do not want busyness to be an excuse, to be a distraction. Lord, we want you to arrest in our hearts our first priority. Lord, when you made our hearts hearts of flesh, when you transformed formed them from being hearts of stone, when you regenerated us with the good news of the gospel, you gave us a new first love, and it was your Son Jesus. So Lord, we ask now as we sit under your word, bring helpful, bring sweet, bring precious conviction, Lord, that we wouldn't be like Martha, that we wouldn't be like the lawyer, Lord, that we would be like Mary, earnestly desiring to be in your presence, longing for the courts of the Lord. Lord God, would you do that through your Spirit and give us through that same Spirit the sweet assurance that testifies that we are sons of the living God. In your name, Jesus. Amen.