Mary or Martha, which are you? (Luke 10:38-42) 7/24/16

Lorde's good turn to Luke 10 tonight Luke 10 we're gonna finish it up tonight Mary and Martha can I have a little bit of a trick question here which one are you which one are you I pray you're a little of both if you're a lot of one or the other maybe you need to listen in quickly get focused now we have this incredible story of these two sisters that Jesus loved which are you you see some people like Martha are definitely too busy to sit at the feet of Jesus he just got too much going on too much to do they have a tough time focusing in on worship they worried too much about stuff tonight as we dig in at verse 38 here in Luke 10 and finish up the chapter I can tell you for a long long long time Connie would bear witness to this I was a Martha Maximus I was like maybe five Martha's all crammed together and when human being it's just like super Martha like you know it had SM on her you know our Cape it's one of those people that almost everything could interfere at times it was sitting at the feet of Jesus and so this is a special passage for me it's a reminder I think for us it's a reminder and so would you pray with me Father thank you for this beautiful picture of these two sisters who obviously loved you who were your friends Lord how we want to be your friends and we're so grateful that you've chosen us and adopted us into the beloved Lord that you would condescend to come to this earth and select us out of this world Lord we're amazed by that this family that also included Lazarus this place that you always stopped at Lord when you came to Jerusalem this was your place of refreshment this is your place of fellowship and we pray tonight that we would just learn and glean and grow be encouraged and strengthened and built up it's so grateful for your people to come out tonight and pray that you'd bless each one that's here with a special blessing fill us with your spirit and anoint us to receive we pray in Jesus name Amen verse 38 here in Luke 10 and now it happened as they went that he entered a certain village and a certain woman named Martha welcomed him to her house and she and her sister called Mary who also sat at Jesus feet and heard his word but Martha was distracted by much serving and she approached him and said Lord do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone and therefore tell her to help me I mean come on I'm pulling my weight hers too how busy jesus answered and said to her Martha Martha you probably throw a few more Martha's in there Martha Martha Martha Martha Martha Martha you're worried in trouble about many things that describe our lives there is a lot to be worried and troubled about when you really stop and think about it I mean there's substantive things that one could say this is what I'm concerned with this is what I'm worried about these are the things that occupy my mind I'm very often they would be really good things and you could you could throw nametags on them well I'm worried about my job I'm worried about taking care of my family I'm worried about mowing the lawn and word that my dogs ran away I'm just worried about my kids I'm worried about school I'm worried I'm just we're I'm concerned and they're all legitimate concerns or things that I should actually occupy my time with Martha you're worried about and troubled about many things but one thing is needed one thing a singular thing one thing is actually needed you're worried about a lot of things you're concerned about a ton of things and notice Jesus doesn't blast her for these things doesn't say like your things don't matter you know he didn't he doesn't go so far as to say oh ye of little faith stop worrying you're worried about a lot of things but one thing is needed and Mary has chosen that good part the one thing the essential thing the necessary thing the the secret medicine if you will to living a life that's blessed to living a life that has less stress anybody want to live a life with less stress your secrets right here in this passage it's in this passage the one thing she's chosen the good part which will not be taken away from her house a couple of things before we get started and really dig into this passage I want you to notice Jesus doesn't come out doesn't really chastise Martha it's not like there's a real huge issue here with her working it is an attitude that's the problem she's doing the right thing with the wrong motivation she's doing the right thing with the wrong spirit she's doing the right thing without having the right manner of living about her she's got a heart that's a mess and a head that's thinking through things straight she's got an issue not with what she's doing but how she's doing it and so very often you're gonna find it in your life it's really not the stuff and it's whether you've looked at that stuff correctly and most importantly that you've taken time to sit at the feet of Jesus and so here in this passage and just start with me Martha double Martha Holy Spirit I think kind of takes a little bit of a pause here because Jesus is on his way into Jerusalem one more time he's gonna leave he's gonna come back this is the last three maybe four months of his life this passage likely happened around the the festival of the dedication of the temple and for those of you that you know love your history 168 or so Antiochus Epiphanes slaughters a pig and the temple and desecrate sit the temple is useless and about three years later judas maccabees comes in and cleanses the temple and relights the giant menorah that menorah used oil olive oil specifically and it was special oil that was blessed and in the temple there was only one flask of oil that was enough supposedly for one night and so as he poured that oil after cleansing the temple and making it so that the temple could be used and the light would shine once again I poured that oil in and it didn't last one night at last eight nights and so the festival of Hanukkah the festival of dedication of Lights is eight nights because the Lord supernaturally extended the light during that time that the temple was rededicated so Jesus is coming into Jerusalem and about our Christmas time about the time that Jesus is birth will later be celebrated but it's the feast of Hanukkah feast of Lights feast of dedication and so he comes into this the city and if you're look at Jerusalem this maps may be a little hard to see but when you travel into Jerusalem the temple mount's almost dead in the middle of that it's kind of that white box you can see outlined by red but Bethenny would be about a mile and a half away you would be on the road heading towards Jericho but down the the canyon and it would wrap around behind the Mount of Olives and and there's not a whole lot of distance less than 20 miles between there and the Dead Sea and it's a it's kind of a Waystation if you will on the way into Jerusalem on the east side of the Mount of Olives and as you travel there today if you're up on the top of the Mount of Olives and you would see looking back now you'd see the Dome of the rock mosque and you would have a very different view because it's completely covered in Jewish graves and in tombstones and the whole side of that the western side of the Mount of Olives would be a place that's just a giant Cemetery but in Jesus day there's a small road that transected that part of the mount of olives or olive groves all over the Mount of if you travel and you go to the what is believed to be the garden of gethsemane it's also along that road it's it's along the but what now is called the Palm Sunday route and so there you would you would find Jesus normally in the late afternoon we find him out on the Mount of Olives all the time but before he would get there he actually came to his friends house present day Bethany actually has a house that they call the house of Mary and Martha and it really is about two thousand years old they believe so it was a place that Jesus rested there was a place where Jesus knew that as he was going to go into the city as he was gonna go in and minister that he was gonna take some persecution he was going to be beat up if that if that was almost always the case when he went he poured himself out when he went to Jerusalem every single time he went to Jerusalem he was poured out he spent time teaching on the southern steps he ministered in and around the Temple Mount and then he would withdraw he'd go back to the Mount of Olives and sometimes we find him at this home because these were his friends these were people he knew people he loved there's several things we can drop in this passage and one of them is even Jesus needed friends sometimes we don't think we think of Jesus as God and very often we dehumanize Jesus but Jesus was also fully man he wept he got tired he was hungry he got sweaty he was he was in need of refreshment and this was a place where Jesus had come to be refreshed before he was going to go into the city of Jerusalem and we can see what happens when you don't take time to sit at the feet of Jesus you can actually kind of suck the joy out of the room and and you can be used at times to quench the spirit on one side of the Mount of Olives was jerusalem on the other side was a road that led down to a little village called Toccoa and 2co if you remember your minor prophets the prophet amos was from that city the gatherer of sycamore figs you know the guy that would wander on and when you traveled to Israel one of the things that you quickly notice is as you descend from Jerusalem wood sits at 25 to 2,800 feet depending on which mountaintop you're sitting on and you just send down some nearly 1400 feet below sea level when you get the Dead Sea you're dropping down 4,000 feet and several climate zones and a whole bunch of heat and it is just a dry dusty road to travel and so Jesus has come up that way he's come from the Jordan Valley which is the end of the African Rift Valley and as he travels up he's he's thinking great I'm gonna get with my friends and I'm gonna enjoy a home-cooked meal now for those of you that have traveled and you've been away from home one of the things you know it doesn't matter how good restaurants are after a while like when we traveled we just went we're in Israel just a few months ago when you travel we that's a huge buffets every day I mean you could gain like 800 pounds and and you know they're gigantic there's everything you could think of it you're sitting there and you're looking at it but by the time you get done if you haven't you'd like to the place I don't want to ever see another falafel you know no more Mediterranean buffet I'm just done sick of that good healthy food I want some fried chicken do you want a good home-cooked fried chicken and bring on the black-eyed peas and cornbread we're from the South just saying okay family we that's Sunday afternoon Boz fried chicken cornbread black-eyed peas you want something home-cooked you you want a fellowship you want to stand in the kitchen and smell the smells and enjoy the fellowship that happens as family as friends you ever had one of those people in your family that all they do is complain about how much work they did to bless you you know what I'm saying it's not that big a blessing to hang out with people like that is it Jesus came for friendship and fellowship and a good home-cooked meal and to sit down with his his friends and just relax and be refreshed what does he get first words out of Martha's mouth I've been working my fingers to the bone I've been preparing this goat for weeks you want it slice thin you see sometimes we can do good things with the wrong heart so one side is sterile desert on the other side - Bruce them in the middle this family's home Mary and Martha and their brother their brother Lazarus he'll spend the next time he comes into town he'll be heading to Jerusalem - to go to the cross and as they gathered around and as they begin to speak and talk through these things you you can you have to kind of read a few things into this conversation to really see the depth of it but you can kind of imagine if you will these two sisters and and they they represent so very often what we would see as two things that are so opposite that they almost have to be mutually exclusive and I want to say to you I don't see it that way I don't believe that that's the case and I believe that there's there's a place in in the world for for the John's who were dreamers and the Peters who were doers I think it's the beauty of the church both types of people are necessary but Jesus is gonna focus in and and you see Martha's she has chosen to serve and Mary chose to sit they both saw the same situation they responded to it very differently it wasn't that responded differently it was the heart with which Martha responded it wasn't that she saw the work that needed to be done it's how she viewed that work and so as you think on these things don't be too harsh on Martha because the world definitely needs some Martha's - we generally find the Mary's of the world kind of holed up in some corner with a book there they're the contemplative types they're the ones that have a tendency to always look at things from that particular side and it's a wonderful wonderful characteristic but I think Jesus is really trying to make a point because I can tell you that that us doers get under the skin of sitters and sitters get under the skin of us doers so it it does take some learning to see both sides with that same spirit that spirit that that binds us together and makes us both useful I don't believe like I said it is an either/or message I believe that it absolutely is a beautiful picture and as Martha chose her way and Mary chose her way I think when you look at what they're doing it kind of gives you a sense of the beauty really of how the body of Christ is supposed to function you you have those who are pragmatist I'm a pragmatist I'm one of those people I'd look at things in a very orderly non-chaotic pretty much linear fashion and I work through the possibilities and all of a sudden it's like okay there's the answer you need those kind of people but I can tell you where people like me get really messed up is I can get so linear and so direct and so goal-oriented that I will just keep going right over the top of people that's my natural tendency I I have to stop to say what is the better thing what's the one thing what's the ingredient the the secret ingredient here that needs be added into this and I'll tell you worship and work can peacefully coexist but you must be a worshipper you must be a worshipper first you've got to be somebody's been sitting at the feet of Jesus in order to have your work have any meaning within the church whatsoever when you think about that there's always places to serve there's always things to do there there's stuff constantly to be done but if our attitudes are such that when we get done with whatever it is that we're doing that the Lord has not been magnified he's not been glorified there there's no there's no aspect of worship to it as a believer then we've missed the whole purpose for which we're here we're not just here to get tasks done we're here to preach the gospel with our lives we're here to glorify the Lord with our very beings we're Jesus people and so we have to sit at the feasts and feet of Jesus to be able to do that and so worship needs to be at the heart of all that we do all that we are it needs to be the dimension with which we lead you see sometimes and you probably all know somebody like this sometimes you have very very very gifted people who are extremely ineffective in ministry because they're very very gifted people but they don't get along with very very broken people they can't love the unlovable and it's usually because they have not sat at the feet of Jesus they forget why they're even doing what they're doing they just see it like I used to see things very literally it's just like that's the goal that's the path will go away in the meantime all of the all the bodies that are in the way just kind of scatter worshipers definitely need to work hard but it's most important that we worship God and I do believe the Lord here in this passage is very definitely putting an emphasis on that one because it's easy to be like a Martha than it is like a Mary it's easier especially in our Western culture our culture here in LA it's easy to be a Martha because there's always stuff to do it's very difficult at times to sit at the feet of Jesus interesting little fact for you all kinds of different polls have been taken and questionnaires filled out but there are two things in the life of most pastors that they will tell you are their two weaknesses I want to take a guess what they are devotional life and prayer those two things you have to be quiet before the Lord you've got to sit at the feet of Jesus to have a personal devotional life where you're receiving from the Spirit of God you're sitting at the feet of Jesus and just want to hear what you happen to say Lord and I just want to talk back you that's what prayer is I want to ask of you and talk with you and have you communicate in my life and so it doesn't matter who you are I think we're all prone to be more like Mary and less like Martha successful people are very much proud and in fact so much so that they oftentimes feel if you really don't need to sit at the feet of Jesus I'm too busy doing work I've had to let a handful of church staff to find another way to take care of their family because they couldn't learn this lesson they were good at what they were doing but they were terrible at how they did it the wake of chaos and hurt people and those that were around them that know God maybe people that didn't want to walk with the Lord anymore because they bumped into somebody doing a good job at something we need to make sure that we're taking time to sit at the feet of Jesus and there's a secret to this and it's really found in a couple very small words it's a contrast between two believers both who love the Lord that we see here but notice here that one was occupied for Christ and the other was occupied with Christ those are two very different things they can be joined together with the right heart but you can be occupied for Christ and actually do things without a christ-like heart and without a christ-like attitude you can just simply be busy and we call that professional ministry there are people who are professionals in ministry they're very good at doing certain tasks and goals they're occupied they can be occupied simply for the lord but they're not occupied vertically with the lord they're occupied horizontally for the lord in other words our stuff to be done but they're not occupied with the lord he's not their focus he's not their goal they're really not trying to hear his voice they're simply trying to do some tasks and get some stuff done service service should never be a substitute for devotion to the Lord when it becomes service ahead of devotion then you lose the heart of Christ you you you lose the purpose for which we even minister in the first place and so service work should not be a substitute for devotion which is our worship where we focus our worship that's who our God is and if you're focusing your worship on work then your God's actually tasks and that's where Martha was she was saying look I worship my work hi she was the world's first workaholic listed in Scripture she worshiped what she did and so that became most important here the King of Kings the Lord of lords has come into her home and she's saying look I got meat to slice I mean the pitas are not cooked yet somebody needs to go get some water and nowhere in this passage do we find Jesus dissatisfied with anything in his surroundings it's not like he's bossing everybody you know Jesus comes in look I'm King of Kings Lord of lords could you kind of take care of him no matter what would have been put in front of Jesus he would have been okay with it if there was a right heart behind it we need to have that vertical fellowship which is our worship vertical fellowship is worship vertical fellowship in other words we can fellowship with each other that's horizontal but vertical fellowship our close knit communion with the Lord that's our worship that's what we want to be we want to be sitting so that we can look up and see his face and it doesn't mean that we can't perform tasks and do things in the kingdom and for the Lord and and still worship at the same time of course we can do that but if we're only seeking to accomplish tasks and we forget that vertical element that I'm doing this not so that I can gain God's approval not so I can get the stuff done but because I'm so occupied with Christ I want to do these things I still want to sit at his feet lord I want to finish this task because I want to spend time with you not I want to finish this task so I can finish out my day so I don't have to spend time with you Charles Wesley wrote one of his hymns one of the stanzas of it says faithful to my Lord's commands still I would choose the better part to serve with careful Martha's hands and Mary's loving heart yeah you want to be careful with your hands you want to let God use your hands of course but you want to have Mary's heart Mary is feeding on the Word of God of that at that sense she was sitting at the feet of Jesus and I love this picture of her you see is Matthew would remind sir in Chapter four Jesus speaking says look man shall not live by bread alone that man doesn't live by all the stuff that you do man doesn't live by the the bread that you pull out of the oven but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God and so Jesus himself was saying look there's a place for eating there's a place for food there's a place for the stuff in your life but the better part is the bread of life to feast on Jesus in that sense Jeremiah 15 says your words are found and I ate them and your words became a part for me of joy and a delight to my heart the words of the Lord when you sit at Jesus's feet you you get to take in things that you are going to miss if you don't sit at Jesus's feet it's that simple and too many Christians spend their whole existence as believers without taking time to sit at the feet of Jesus one of the things that we fight in a church this size is becoming completely institutionalized because there's a lot of stuff that needs to get done to do Church you know three services on Sunday morning thousands of people coming and going in Sunday school classes and all this stuff and just the janitorial things and making sure the cards do all that stuff could just occupy your time at the end of the day you could almost do it as a job it'd be a Christian job it'd be a ministry job Monica but good job and yet the Lord wants us to sit at his feet and learn of him one of the things that you all should know is our whole staff here goes through the Bible every year every year we sit down and we read through the Bible and we sit at Jesus we discuss the Word of God we don't just sit around and teach each other you know so if you have that impression we all sit around you know studying doing you know we actually sit at the feet of Jesus challenge each other encourage each other strengthen each other build each other up because we need to do that we just sit at the feet of Jesus 119th Psalm learn verse 103 and 104 how sweet are your words to my taste sweeter than honey in my mouth your precepts I get understanding and therefore I will every false way their way that you learned to hate the false way the way that you learned to discern what is the wrong way is sitting at the feet of Jesus you see the common thread it's all sitting at the feet of Jesus saying at the feet of Jesus enhances everything else that we do it makes you more effective in your ministry as I look around the room looking at some of the staff here is like and this is one of those things that you can do it becomes institutionalized it becomes like a Martha world and instead of praying about things you just do your best instead of asking God for wisdom you just go check the manual instead of sitting at the feet of Jesus you're trying to do it in your own strength and our arms of flesh don't sustain us for very long we need to sit at the feet of Jesus there are a few things I believe that are more damaging to the Christian life than trying to work for Christ without taking time to commune with Christ I don't think I said there very few things that are more damaging to us because what happens if you just work for him you become self-sufficient you start to rest and trust in yourself and not in the Lord you you're not going needy it's like Lord speak to me tell me something new and in that sense there's there's kind of a crazy thing that goes on here and it took me a long time to see this in Martha's life Martha's saying that she needs help but she actually wearied herself she was so busy and so consumed with herself that what she was doing became a burden to her that's why it was painful for her because she was so consumed with getting it done herself that she forgot it wasn't all on her she didn't even stop to actually pray she didn't we find no record that she went to Mary and asked Mary Mary do you think he could help me with this maybe we can fellowship a little bit while we're finishing up the meal what we find is her complaining in other words she stored those things up in her heart and eventually they spilled out because she wasn't sitting at the feet of Jesus like Mary is gonna do she's busy doing all this stuff and she becomes overwhelmed by her own activity and man I have lived this out oh the stories that Connie can tell you you could ask her she can just share with you all the you know times you just worry and fret do you concern yourself then you realize oh that's right I forgot to sit the feet of Jesus today I had a great plan for how I was gonna fail I see some of you have done that you know you worry yourself into a frenzy and you realize you haven't actually talked to God about it you didn't sit at the feet of Jesus whenever we criticize others we pity ourselves we feel like we're overworked hi i'ma tell you it's time to examine your own life are you spending enough time at the feet of Jesus and perhaps perhaps in all of that busy work instead of being grafted into the vine here's the cool thing about the vine if you're grafted into the vine you don't need to do a thing but be a healthy branch amen you'll bear fruit automatically it's what happened cuz you're part of that you're part of the vine you don't see grapevines out there you know jockeying for position bashing each other around you know trashing each other it's like you brought in lazy vine why don't you get on another part of the trellis it doesn't happen the natural outgrowth of you being grafted into the vine and resting and trusting in Jesus as your gonna bear fruit you'll be productive because you're gonna have what you need you're gonna produce what you're supposed to produce the Lord will see to that it's the beautiful picture that we have there in John 15 look and if we're in him we abide in him we just stay with Jesus we set up our dwelling place in him they're gonna bear fruit and notice it says there in John 15:5 apart from him apart from me Jesus says you can do nothing anyway so I would say it's it's a good thing to sit at the feet of Jesus and wait for him to work in our lives Martha's problem wasn't that she had too much work to do that she allowed her work to distract her from sitting to be Jesus knew that she was totally overwhelmed she just allowed it to distract her to where she no longer satisfy and in that she was serving two masters that's what happened you got the master of the work side it's like you still got stuff to do and Jesus is saying what I'd like you to do is come sit down with Mary and sit at my feet and then maybe I'll send a few people to come help you with that stuff it boils down to three things you see if serving Christ makes us difficult to live with if it makes us our Nury maybe we need to adjust a few things like our priorities a we need to adjust our priorities maybe the Lord is no longer first maybe he's second or third or fifth or tenth but maybe just adjust your priorities a little bit perhaps it's a perspective issue you see a perspective is your viewpoint right when we say perspective like when you go out on a you know you go around on TV and you go out to you know maybe Point Fermin or you're out there someplace and you're standing on the coast your perspective then is you're above the ocean looking out over the ocean and you can see everything is happening out there in the channel between there and Catalina right your perspective is there but when you're down in the water you don't have that same perspective right you're like help I'm drowning you can see everything when you're up on that bluff looking out but you cannot see the same thing when you're in the water the only thing that can help you get that perspective as you get out of the situation that you're currently in and you go someplace to where you can see more clearly in other words you get that divine viewpoint you go to where the Lord is you get his view of things sometimes we just need to adjust our viewpoint that's our perspective and sometimes it's a performance issue to him who knows to do good and does not do it to him it is sin right so sometimes it's just a performance issue look we already know and and I sometimes wonder if Martha already had this conversation because Jesus kind of calls her out a little bit here maybe she was known as somebody who kind of needed to have her performance adjusted a little bit you got to put it into practice when Jesus says sit at his feet you know I think people come to me all the time and they'll say you know my life's a mess no I ask well how does your devotional life well I don't have time you just identified the problem you identified the problem yeah that's a priority issue that's a prospective issue and it will turn into a performance issue only you can do something about that it's got to take time to sit at the feet of Jesus some interesting things about Mary of Bethany every time we see her in Scripture she's at the same place she sit at the feet of Jesus now some people say wow you know she's no work Lee good she's heavenly minded all right but she's no earthly good but she's sitting at the feet of Jesus she sat and listened to his word she fell at his feet shared her woes her concerns and then she came to his feet and poured out her worship on them so every time we find her she's sitting at the feet of Jesus now I want you to notice something in those three passages Luke 10 John 11 John 12 in those three passages they're not the same situation they're very different situations and yet every situation we find her at the feet of Jesus first and the crazy thing in all those situations we don't find that she failed in any one of those we don't we don't find her being a complete failure in life it's not like sitting at the feet of Jesus caused her to be less than she was set out to be by the Lord and in fact it enhanced her relationship with God and with others to the point that she could share her woes and she could share her worship and she could share in the word that the Lord was speaking to her and so Mary and Martha sometimes are contrast and I think wrongly I don't think they're opposites in that sense I think they're complimentary I believe that we need to be a little bit of a worker and a whole lot of a worshipper I think the Lord has put within us a great desire to accomplish wonderful things she sat at his feet she fell at his feet she came to his feet she was at the feet of Jesus and each time it's kind of crazy when you look at these these stories there was some kind of fragrance associated with the whole thing - so she's sitting at Jesus feet and kneeling at Jesus's feet she's worshiping at Jesus's feet they're something that happens there's something that comes from it I think her personalities I think our gifts are different and God knows that but there's one common thing we need to do we to spend time sitting at the feet of Jesus don't miss this it doesn't do you any good you know it's always kind of crazy and I'm sure with people many times you know I used to travel around with Pastor Chuck and we be going our various facilities and doing all kind things it was actually laughable and if Chuck could have you know I mean he he held it in pretty well but there are times when when he would you know speak to me or somebody's been around him a lot says did you see all those people come out of nowhere to start working when I got here and it would they'd find out there'd be like a Chuck alert at one of our conference room buzzer drops on grounds you know and so what would happen is all the sudden people who were not doing a thing 15 minutes before he got there we'd go grab shovels they'd you know they'd be out there digging holes that didn't even need to be dug and all kinds of crazy stuff they would they would they would be trying to work for him instead of with them and the same is true for the Lord sometimes people get busy serving they they get engaged in doing things but they haven't sat down at the feet of Jesus and figured out what this is all about yet so get the first thing first Martha's situation she received Jesus into her home and then neglected the very person that she received into her home that's the crazy that's what being a workaholic can do even if it's a ministry workaholic I've I've talked to people who they're very gifted people but nobody wants to be around them nobody wants to be anywhere near them because they're always seemingly irritated with the people that they're supposed to try and bless ya you really don't want children's ministry people that that hate children it's not a great recipe for success it's rotten stinking kitchen did you know that kids make diapers well yeah that's what they do we're supposed to be lovers of men's souls and you learned to do that by sitting at the feet of Jesus you don't learn that by picking and choosing the things that you want to do in ministry ministries dirty sometimes you need to be a lover of people it's not what we do for the Lord it's what we do with the Lord that matters it's a matter of balance Martha felt neglected after Mary left the kitchen I'm an imagining but when you really think about it Mary actually did care it wasn't like it wasn't like she was a banding or well I'm not gonna be your sister anymore didn't happen she just knew that she had a rare opportunity to sit down and be still and listen to the Lord and she seized it you you need to learn to be wise to that reality in your life because there's a great place for both our duty and our devotion to cohabitate within our lives and the Lord can can do both those things and it's so important that you learn that balance because the Lord really does love doers too but he loves doers that do things with the right heart because it brings him glory and honor and praise not doers that get things done at the expense of others busy in that sense is not necessarily blessed if you're gonna be a worker you need to first be a worshiper if you're gonna be a worker in the kingdom and so make sure that we understand that what we do with Christ is the most important thing not for him but with them those things that we can say we actually have the heart of God in this we know what it's like to sit down at the feet of Jesus and just spend some time with with him that your devotional life pours over into your work life because here's what happens when you do that if you'll allow that devotional love for the Lord to affect your life it will affect your work life you'll become or gentle and kind and tender you'll also become more productive and wise you'll learn to exercise discernment you'll save yourself all kinds of time I often wonder exactly how quickly those tastin Martha had to get done would have gotten done had she actually sat at the feet of Jesus and sought his face and said what's important you see the Lord wasn't looking for a five-course meal he probably would have been just fine with a sandwich but she was so convinced of her own path without seeking his will that she created some of the very work that she was complaining about don't create work for yourself by not sitting at the feet of Jesus because it's pretty crazy what you can get yourself into that the Lord will eventually have to get you out of we have to be careful not to be too much like Martha busy but not blessed but we do need to be like the seventy in this chapter and if you read back through and reread this entire chapter the seventy were sent out and in that sense we're ambassadors for the Lord you can't be a good ambassador if you don't represent the one who sent you Jesus loves people and cares about them deeply he's concerned with everything in their life including their workload but he has a right priority in all things like the like the Good Samaritan we are neighbors to everybody including our family our spouses our children you know sometimes we pull these relationships that scripture talks about as the body of Christ we yank them out and say okay well because this person is my wife or my husband that these things don't apply or this is my son or my daughter and so I I don't have to be gentle and kind and peaceable I you know because I'm dad I can do whatever I want no that's not what it says matter of fact your kids are also your brothers and sisters in Christ if they love the Lord they're also your neighbors so everything that's in here applies to everyone and so like the Good Samaritan we should be good neighbors you get that from sitting at the feet of Jesus and like the sisters we need to be good worshipers and so I pray that if you came in and you were a little leaning towards the Martha side be a good time to get some adjustment and maybe get over there towards the Mary side of sitting at the feet of Jesus and maybe you're one of those people that doesn't find any real use for getting anything actually done and you sit so far on the Mary side that you don't bother to actually realize we're supposed to be doers of the word not just hearers only and so maybe you need to come back a little bit the other way but in all of this please take time to sit at the feet of Jesus amen now the worship team come back up and also how the the guys come forward the pastor's come forward and be available for prayer maybe maybe you got a little struggle going on a little tension between these two sisters maybe there's a too much of one and not enough of the other maybe you lean fully to one and you have none of the other maybe you're just right and you know somebody that needs prayer if you need prayer tonight the pastor's are going to be up front to be able to pray with you take time to make Jesus your top priority get into that vertical mode to where you can honestly say that you you have the Lord's heart in things and so that what you're doing for the Lord is because you spent time with the Lord and that the work that you do flows out of the worship that's in your heart that your duties that you undertake it is because your devotion is supreme and get those things balanced out in your life it's so wonderful it's so important for us to have that joy in that freedom of having that kind of balance blessed is the one lust is the man the woman whose sins are forgiven they're not reversal we we we are blessed in that sense but we can be additionally blessed when we have a right heart and when that joy that is the strength of the Lord that comes to us comes because we're close to him we love him and he loves us and that love flows out of us then in all that we do in say and so as we begin to worship we're just gonna do a couple of songs and then I'm gonna come back up and close in prayer but if you need prayer come on forward be prayed for let the Lord shift whichever way you need to go if your remark said towards marry if you are married towards Martha you

Channel: Calvary Chapel South Bay

Views: 11,061

Rating: 4.6444445 out of 5

Keywords: ccsb, ccsouthbay, Calvary Chapel South Bay, South Bay, Jesus Christ, Lord, God, Jeff Gill, Pastor Jeff Gill, Bible, Scriptures

Id: 6WRQL5GKWvo

Length: 51min 43sec (3103 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 26 2016