First Things First - Luke 10:38-42

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Uh in a world that's uh crippled by busyness, much-ness-manyness, hurry, noise, and distraction, I wonder how often we are missing what matters most.

When Jesus visited the home of Martha and Mary, well, we don't know who else may have been in the room, if it was crowded or not.

We do know that as Jesus began to teach, Martha became distracted, we're told.

We'll read that in just a second.

She was worried and bothered that her preparations and her hospitality was some way uh going to be hindered.

But even more so with the fact that Mary was not helping her with the preparations.

Mary, on the other hand, was sitting quietly at Jesus' feet listening to his word.

It didn't take long for a little family-sister conflict to arise.

So let's turn our Bibles to Luke chapter uh 10, verses 38 to 42, and we'll read that.

You're familiar with it a lot.

A lot of you are anyway.

It's the only uh one of the four Gospels that gives us this account.

So if you're familiar with it, it's because you've read Luke before or heard it preached before.

This is a really amazing uh five verses.

And fear not, though it only be five verses, we can turn it into a 30-minute sermon.

So I know you'll be excited about that.

Yeah, that's right.

We were talking about that in our sermon prep meeting.

You know, it's only five verses.

How are you gonna do that?

You know what?

Hey, that's that's like six minutes per verse as far as I'm concerned.

That's really good.

Uh before I read, though, let me pray uh for illumination from the Holy Spirit.

Father, stir within each one of us that delight for you and your word that will make us read it with open hearts, mine its depths for wisdom, believe its timeless truths, receive its comfort, grace, and guidance, trust its counsels, obey its commands and hope and its promises, increase our longing and our love for spending time in your presence and in your word, because it is as you speak to us through your word that we come to know you, that we come to know your wisdom, your will, and your ways.

Holy Spirit, give us a clearer vision of your truth, a greater faith in your power, and a more confident assurance of your love for us as we pray in Jesus' name for his sake.

Amen and amen.

Let's look at those five verses together real quick, and then uh I've got a few things I want to highlight for us.

Verse 38.

Remember, we're in chapter 10, and we're closing that out.

It's been a, it's it's fascinating to me, and I'll I'll mention it just a little bit more about it in a second, but there is a continuity of theme throughout this entire chapter, all the way back out to you know the ascending out of the 70 on mission, and you'll see this kind of wraps up real beautifully this way, uh, uh, what we call chapter 10.

As they were traveling along, this is Jesus and the disciples, they're they were headed toward Jerusalem.

He entered a certain village, and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home.

It seems that perhaps this is Luke recording their very possibly the first time Jesus had met Martha and Mary.

Even though we know in John chapter 11 and 12, we hear about Mary and Martha both, and we hear about Lazarus, their brother, and all of that.

John 11 · chapter mention

But it might be that this is the first time, because he says, traveling to a certain village as if it hadn't been talked about before, and met a certain woman, some of your English translations will say, as if she hadn't been talked about before.

So it's possible.

First time meeting of Martha and Mary.

She had a sister called Mary, Luke writes, who, moreover, was listening to the Lord's word, seated at his feet.

But Martha was distracted.

The word could literally be torn apart.

She was literally, you know, her priorities and all that was kind of mixed up, and she's torn apart by the fact that certain things aren't being done.

With all of her preparations.

And she came to him, meaning Jesus, and said, Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the serving alone?

Tell her to help me.

Now that verse is chock full of all kinds of goodies.

And we'll come back and grab some of them in just a minute.

Well, the Lord answered and said to her, Martha, Martha.

And by the way, if the Lord mentions your name twice, it could be comforting.

I mean, the tone is everything, isn't it?

Martha, Martha.

Or it could be Martha, Martha.

I don't, we're not given that.

We don't know which it is, but I tend to lean in the in the sort of knowing Jesus and his character, that he's he's gracing her too.

He's look- look what he says to her.

You're worried and bothered about so many things.

But only a few things are necessary.

Really, only one, and the word only is just in italics in a lot of our English translations.

That means it's implied.

Really, there's one thing that really matters most.

That first thing first.

Mary has chosen the good part.

Good in the Greek is Agathos.

Um, it is excellent.

She's chosen the excellent thing, the thing of high value in Jesus' eyes.

And that's really important for us.

I won't come back to this, so I've got to hang on this for a second.

We, for a couple of decades, wrestled with whether or not truth existed, and so uh epistemology I thought was the most important branch of philosophy.

What can we know?

How can we know it?

And with how much certainty can we know it?

And then we kind of moved into really a time where we started creating our own realities, artificial realities, augmented realities.

And I really thought reality became sort of the most important branch of philosophy that we could talk about is what is real.

Um I actually think it's value.

Now I actually think we're in a place where there's so many people that actually think they can create their own reality that now the questions become, well, what is good?

Uh, what is beautiful?

Because, you know, we if we each individual, if it's up to the individual, then we're sort of all running around with our own version of what we think is good.

And you can kind of see how that could decay a society.

You can also kind of see those folks that you know and I know who have fallen into, let's say, a slide of deconstruction with their faith.

They don't know what's good anymore.

They're trying to define it themselves all on their own.

And I posit the notion this morning that right here we have Jesus saying, no, good isn't just up to the individual.

Because Jesus is making it very clear right here that there's one thing that is really excellent, that is really good.

He hasn't left us alone in a cold, dark, and silent universe to try and figure that out for ourselves.

I'm no good at my definition of good undulates.

Yours does too, whether or not you would even know it or admit it.

If I'm in a certain mood, one thing is really good and really of high value.

And if I'm in a different mood, something else is of high value to me.

And so Jesus says, Martha, Martha, you're worried and bothered about so many things.

Only a few things are necessary.

Really, only one, for Mary has chosen the excellent part, the good part.

Axiology is the branch of philosophy that studies what is of value, what is good.

And it's an important subject to be thinking about in our day and time.

Which, Jesus says, this last phrase, do not miss the last phrase.

It's so important.

Underline it, which shall not be taken away from her.

That's so beautiful, so wonderful.

All right, let me get to.

I have, as I said, I think I have anyway, six minutes for each of these verses.

And um, if you'll indulge me just a little bit.

Now, I um, as I was preparing the sermon, Kim is always uh a great sounding board for me, and I talked to her all week long, and I said, Is it okay?

What do you think about this?

Am I being gracious enough?

Am I staying faithful to the text and all those sorts of things?

And uh, and she said, uh, what you need is a is a good opening anecdotal uh personal story in in this sermon.

And I thought, well, that's great.

I'm not really good at doing that very much.

And then she offered up this very, what I consider to be a very unusual offering on her part.

Um so before I tell you this, I want you to know this was her idea.

Okay, so it's not, this wasn't me doing this.

When we were newly married, Kim would sometimes prepare dinner, and before we even had a chance to eat together, she would move into cleaning mode.

Washing up the pots and pans, cooking utensils, putting them away, even, or setting the ones that need to air dry on the counter, on a towel, and all that sort of thing, all the while I'm sitting at the table, and guess what's happening to the food?

It's getting cold.

And um, so then I'd complain, you know, as all husbands that are newlyweds do.

Um, trying to get her to sit down and enjoy the meal with me.

Notice I'm reading this, by the way.

I want to make sure I get this right.

Um, but Kim would speed herself up, maybe bang even a few pots and pans, a little irritated that I brought it up.

And then um then she would reply, I'm doing this for you, whereupon there would be a loud clang of something, you know.

I'm doing this for you.

Until one day, and this is this is I'm so glad to get to this part of the story, until until one day it dawned on her that uh she wasn't really doing it for me.

It dawned on her that she was doing it for her.

And uh so while I'm sitting there wanting to eat the meal together, she had become more concerned with doing things a certain way in a specific order, and enjoyment of the meal with me wasn't really possible for her until she had finished the project, including every aspect of the process.

And all that had been completed, then she could sit down and relax.

Did I do it okay?

That was close?

What else do I need to add?

Okay, she said so we can talk later.

No, no.

She uh she was that was amazing to me, that kind of uh self-awareness, self-knowledge.

And yeah, everyone in the room that's married understands and knows uh what it's like to miscommunicate with each other and to learn a little bit about yourself, what's important to you, the way you do things.

Um we've all taken personality tests.

Matter of fact, our staff just took another one of those series of uh working genius tests.

It was really, really fun.

We learned how we work together, how we work things out together.

Um, Luke 10, I'm going back to the text now.

Luke 10 presents us with narratives about alternating themes, the whole chapter.

Um, it's about doing and being both.

Um, verses 1 to 24 that we studied, I think Pastor Matt led us through that.

Jesus sends out the 70 to do.

And then they returned with news of how things went.

Jesus reminds them there to be, with the directive to rejoice over names, their names being recorded in heaven.

People were believing the gospel.

They were born again and saved, their names written with indelible ink in the book of life.

And it all begins and ends with Jesus.

Christ offers himself in our place by living the life we could not live, by dying on the cross, which we will celebrate and give thanks for today, dying in our place, paying a debt that we could not pay ourselves.

We respond in faith to receive his gift of salvation in his name, and the Holy Spirit makes us new creations in Christ and baptizes us into the body of Christ, and we are never, ever alone again for eternity, no matter who we are, married, single, whatever, no matter what age we are, stage we are, no matter how far we've run away from God, we are brought back to him in a beautiful union with Christ.

Doing flows from being.

Verses 25 through 37 of Luke chapter 10.

Luke 10 · chapter mention

Uh, Pastor Tommy led us through this.

A lawyer confronted Jesus, asking, What must I do to inherit eternal life?

Jesus answers with a story of a good Samaritan to drive home the point that you can't do anything to inherit something.

You have to be something.

You have to have that kind of heart that would go across and out of your way and even run against all of the sort of cultural norms of racism and religious bigotry that might exist.

You have to be able to have that kind of heart that motivates you to do courageous things, different things, if you will, selfless things, if you will.

Biography flows from ontology.

Ontology is the study of what kind of being you are.

Biography is your story.

Your story flows from who you are, what you do.

My life story flows from out of the kind of being I am.

And if I am a true child of God, I will love Christ and I will want to please God with my life.

If I'm truly born again, I will begin to see and love my neighbor as God sees and loves my neighbor and even gives his life for them.

No matter who they are, no matter what lifestyle they're in the midst of, no matter which way they vote, no matter what they may believe or not believe, my job and beyond that, my privilege and joy and delight because of who Christ has now made me is to love as Christ would love, to do as Christ would do, including the annoying ones, including those that we might otherwise think of as unlovable.

Now we have come here to this story, and I want you to know this is not some kind of version of an ancient personality test.

It's not a personality test at all, it's a priorities test.

So whether you think of yourself as a Martha or a Mary, um, and I know we we've all heard this sermon, heard this passage before, and usually the preacher will go, All right, how many of you are Martha's?

Raise your hand, you know, and a couple brave and you know, raise their hands, and they say, How many of you are Marys?

And and nobody, yeah, everybody can't say even less, because nobody wants to say, Yeah, I'm really holy.

I got a real burden, you know, love, love and passion for for uh serving Christ and listening to him and all of that sort of thing.

But first things first reminds us that each of these two women at this particular moment had a priority that was kind of ruling their hearts and their minds and their actions.

All of that flowing from just something inside of them.

What they were doing outside just flowed from that.

So, first things first, let's beware the dangers of distraction.

I think disciples of Jesus who want to put first things first, as which is what we really learn here, will want to beware the dangers of distraction.

Look there again at verse 40.

Martha was what?

Distracted with all her preparations.

She was torn apart.

She was divided, she had a divided heart in this particular moment.

Now, I think I believe I believe it's true that most of us organize our lives around three different kinds of categories of things.

The things that we must do, the things that we should do, and the things that we want to do.

All right, let me spell those out just a little bit.

The things that we must do.

I must breathe.

I must there's something incumbent upon me also to work, because I must eat.

And I must have, you know, water or something to drink or whatever.

So I must work, eat, feed my family.

These are some of the must things.

I must get a good night's sleep.

And then I must repeat each and every day some of those very same things.

So you know there are some things that you must do.

They're essential for even being alive at all.

Um, secondly, the things that we should do, we should exercise, we should watch our diet, we should desire more wisdom, we should serve others, we should spend time in prayer and reading our Bible, etc.

etc.

We can think of a lot of things we should do.

The things that we want to do, we want to eat more.

We want to shop more.

Man, that should have gotten a little hallelujah out of somebody.

We want to travel more.

Yeah, yeah, there you go.

We want to play more.

Yeah, we need to do more of that.

So there's so much that we must, that we should, and that we want to do.

This passage is not really a contrast of one personality over and against the other personality.

It's really about priorities.

The lesson we're given is that we can get so busy serving Jesus that we forget to be with Jesus.

In the context of the chapter, we can become so obsessed with doing and doing a certain way and in a certain order that we forget to be with Jesus.

This was a special moment, of course.

I mean, you still have to have what Martha does to be able to eat a meal.

Her gifts are really important.

It's not like Martha is in the back room doing something really heinous, telling lies, planning the overthrow of the government or the overthrow of the disciples or anything like that.

It's not that she's committing some gross sin, uh, some kind of moral failure back there in the kitchen.

No.

It's just that her priorities at the moment are getting this serving thing together that is a good thing in and of itself.

It's just in the moment she actually had Jesus in her house.

And she could be sitting at the feet of Jesus.

So this is in the sermon about you should never serve and you should always, you know, find yourself cloistering yourself away, removing yourself from all of life and reading your Bible and memorizing verses and singing songs that we sing here at the church.

That's not what this is about.

This is about Jesus in this house, in this moment, simply saying there are real priorities in life, and the really highest value thing is this one thing.

You've got to keep first things first.

I suspect some of you have done, much like the earlier story I told with Kim, some of you have done some heavy sighing to communicate something to someone else.

You got a heavy sire in your household?

Anybody?

How about eye rolling?

Anybody do eye who's a good eye roller?

Anybody got some good eye rollers?

Okay, I can see that.

We do a lot of that kind of communicating where we're sort of, you're not getting this right, and I'm gonna let you know, even though I don't even have to say a word to do it.

I can communicate like this.

And with Martha, there just came this point where there's this explosion of her frustration.

Um, and again, I don't think it was just that, you know, that that things weren't going well in the kitchen.

It was more that there was some inequity in her mind's eye that Mary should be not sitting at the feet of Jesus, listening to Jesus.

Mary should be joining her in preparing the meal.

And maybe even, let's give Martha the, you know, some room here.

Maybe it was so that we could do that quicker and get both get to sitting in front.

There's all kinds of ways you could go with this, but the way Jesus went with it is the lesson for us.

And what Jesus decided to do with this moment is say, don't fret, Martha, Martha.

Don't fret over all of that.

There's one thing that's really important, it's the first thing.

And first things need to be first.

So we see with Martha she was duty bound, that is bound to a duty that she had thought she should do.

Perform this action, get it done in a certain way.

And it when you get distracted, the dangers of distraction are that you'll think that the process is more important than the people.

Or that the process and the project is more important than the purpose of the project and all of that.

See?

And so we just get mixed up, don't we, when we get distracted from Jesus.

And that's, I'm gonna say it that way.

That's what happened there.

She's in the other room.

Jesus is right there in this living room or whatever room of that house.

And there may, like I say, may have had a room full of people.

I don't know.

We just are told about Mary and Martha.

Mary, interestingly, in these five verses, doesn't say a word.

The only two people that talk are Martha and Jesus.

And he's observant.

He sees what's going on, how she's churning.

And I think he is being gracious to her.

But she, in the distraction mode, got disgruntled also.

Disgruntled with her sister.

And so her distraction from Jesus that led to an obsession with some project that she was doing, then got in the way of her relationship with her sister.

You see?

And you can kind of see how the dominoes fall, don't they?

And maybe that's happened in your own life as well in some way.

So she got disgruntled.

Then she got disruptive.

How so?

She comes after banging a few pots in the kitchen, I imagine.

And after, you know, if they had a swinging door, and I don't think they did, but if they did, the swinging door flies open.

She comes into the living room, the crowd parts, if there's a crowd, and she walks right up to Jesus and she goes, Don't you care?

And we've all asked that question of God, don't you care?

Matter of fact, the disciples asked that question on the stormy sea.

Jesus, don't you care?

The boat's going down, right?

You've asked the question.

God, where are you?

Don't you see what's going on in my life?

Don't you care about what's going on in my life?

She puts that right up in Jesus' face in front of whoever was in the room.

And even if it was just Martha and Mary, I don't think it was, but even if it was, that's still sort of a really disgruntled person who's coming and being disruptive.

What was he doing?

He was teaching in the room.

Mary was listening, we're told that.

What if he was right at the point where he was going to explain God's sovereignty and the tension with human responsibility?

Just about to release the truth.

And here comes Martha with her rolling pin and a couple pans banging on it, you know?

And everybody misses Jesus' version of the resolution of that tension.

But she's disruptive and then she's demanding.

She moves from disrupting and sort of accusing him of not caring.

And this happens to us.

We move from all of that to demanding.

If you really love me, you'll do it this way and in this time.

And she says to Jesus, don't you care?

I'm doing all this work.

And then she commands Jesus, not a good idea.

Commands Jesus, tell her to help me.

When we get to bossing Jesus, and I'm not, I this is male and female.

This is bossing is not pretty on anybody.

I love our previous next-door neighbor.

They don't live there anymore, but our previous next-door neighbors, we pulled up in front of their house.

They were both out in the front yard working.

And I may have told the story before, but for me, I love telling it.

There was tension in the in the front yard.

Lots of tension, and we could tell.

We pulled up, and uh the wife comes over to us, and I said, What are y'all doing?

What's going on?

Seems like you guys okay?

Have anything you need?

Can you borrow, you want to borrow a tool or something?

No.

Miss Bossy Pants and Mr.

Know It All just aren't getting along.

You know, and that's this sort of tension.

At least she was quite aware of what was going on.

But but Martha comes out and she's demanding, she's bossing Jesus to tell Mary what to do.

We've got to be careful ourselves that we don't prioritize, uh prioritize rather the way we want something done in our relationship with God, in our relationship even with others as well.

We have to be, we have to learn to be humble enough, to be gracious with others, and to be uh always watching for the Lord to reveal what his will might be and the way that he would want things done.

Um there was division in there in her relationship with Jesus because of her coming out so disgruntled.

And then there became division in her life as well as she was disruptive and demanding she and her sister.

Uh how long did that take to smooth over?

I don't know.

Yeah?

We're not it's interesting that it just stops right there with Jesus saying to Martha, this is the right thing and this won't be taken away from her.

And that's where he ends it.

So we don't really know what may have happened after that, other than in John chapter 11 and 12, we'll come back and Jesus will be with these same ones.

John 11 · chapter mention

It will seem that their relationship and their relationship with him has smoothed over quite a bit.

Mary, it's interesting, every time she's mentioned in the New Testament, which I think is uh definitely two, but possibly three times, every single time she's at the feet of Jesus, we're told.

What an amazing resume item for someone's spiritual life to be marked by sitting at the feet of Jesus, or in the case of John chapter 11, falling at his feet because Lazarus is dead and she's weeping at his feet.

John 11 · chapter mention

That's quite amazing to me.

So we then learn about the enjoyment of the delights of devotion here, don't we?

And this is a two-point sermon.

So again, I'll I'll still make sure you get your 30 minutes worth out of it.

But enjoying the delights of devotion, we see this at least illustrated or exemplified in Mary's life.

Not a personality test, it's just here's a person that is devoted to Jesus.

She's sitting at his feet, and what is she doing?

She's listening to him teach.

Really uh important, really illustrative of the delighting and of being devoted to Jesus, I think, really important as well.

Then you recognize that life is full of lots of opportunities to serve, but there comes a point where you need to sit with the Savior.

Um, that there is a time, there is a priority of being with him before you are running out there just doing for him.

If you're just doing for him, you will quickly run out of your own resources and your own ability to do things with his glory in mind.

What happens is if you go out on your own steam, you start to get upset that others aren't doing it the way you're doing it.

Or that others aren't doing it when you're doing it.

And you need to not be looking around worrying about what somebody else is doing or not doing.

Um, you need to be it, your your doing needs to flow from your being.

It's so important.

Priority determines trajectory, priority determines capacity.

Priority determines your destiny, actually, as well.

Am I destined to continue to grow in Christ or am I destined to continue to just be mad all the time at the way other Christians aren't doing something?

You separate yourself from Christ in that sort of performance mode, but if you delight in devotion to Jesus, things are completely different, aren't they?

It's like the ancient psalmist said my flesh faints, my heart fails, but God is the rock my heart fixates on, my portion forever, Psalm 73 says.

Psalm 27, one thing I've asked of the Lord, I will seek after it, to sit in the presence of the Lord all the days of my life, so I may gaze on the beauty of the Lord.

And see, this is so important to us.

We need to get, we need to think beyond.

I don't know how many of you do the one year Bible.

I've been doing the one year Bible for a number of years.

I really, really enjoyed it.

It helps me stay focused in the Word and read something, um, not just because I'm preparing a sermon or a Bible study for it, but read something because I still want to get to know the author of that book and the one that inspired all of that.

And it's really important for all of us to stay in the Word uh and to and to prioritize uh being in God's Word, as I think we see here in Mary's life.

But you you've got to feed on it daily.

You've got to feed on it on a regular basis.

Do I do it every single day?

Do I get it right every single day?

Is the book marking my one-year Bible every is it ever two weeks behind?

Yes.

Yes, it is.

And if I asked you to raise your hand and you you have tried to read through the one year Bible, if you know, if I ask you to raise your hand if you've ever fallen behind, a lot of you would probably raise your hand if you've tried to read the one year Bible.

And you know what?

It's okay.

What's the best thing, next best thing you should do?

Pick up with today.

Start again.

It's never too late to start right now.

And and pick up and move forward in his word and be devoted to him as you do that.

Mary chose good proximity, Jesus' feet, and the right priority.

Hearing the word.

Like Mary, I think we should regularly sit at the feet of Jesus, delighting.

Not just reading it as a ritual or as a rule, but actually reading it and delighting in it, like the psalmist said.

Yeah, read Psalm 119, longest chapter in the book, uh in the Bible, and you just read how he loves God's word.

It's like honey, it's sweet, it tastes sweet to him.

He describes it in so many different ways, how it's a delight to him.

And I think it's so important for us to get past just the duty of reading it, but to delight in reading God's word.

Just as with so many other habits, we can train our hearts to desire being in the presence of the Lord.

But it will be the power of the Holy Spirit at work in our hearts that will stir up a delight and a joy in reading his word.

I mean, in my one-year Bible reading plan right now, I'm in Leviticus for my Old Testament reading.

And it's arduous, it's not easy to get through it all.

But when I when I start to think about how all of those laws, all of those meticulous rules, even down to the kind of you know, bugs you can eat or not eat.

And evidently you're allowed, by the way, to eat the locust and the bald locusts.

How you tell them apart, I do not know.

But you're allowed that but they're apart, but when you see all of those details in the Old Testament law, and then you kind of think through the fact that in here in the New Testament, we have Jesus saying, I'm the fulfillment of the law and the prophets.

And you just find yourself going, don't have to eat bald locusts.

Jesus is my all-in-all.

He's the one that has paid the price in every way and lived the life I couldn't live.

And he's the one I want to sit at his feet and rejoice in the beautiful word of God as it rolls from him.

So, delighting in devotion, we have proximity to Jesus, priority of the word, pleasing to God, choosing what is the better part.

And we have the promises of God, trusting his faithfulness that it will, as Jesus says here to Martha about Mary, Mary's chosen the better part.

That's Jesus saying, This is what is of value.

Here's my axiology, Jesus says.

You want to know what's of high value?

Should be your first thing?

The Word of God.

Spending time getting to know the God of the Word through the Word of God.

And then he promises that it will never be taken away from her.

And that's a beautiful promise as well.

All right, a few quotes and I'll let you go.

Um, Richard Foster, distraction.

It's a primary spiritual problem in contemporary culture.

Frankly, when we are perpetually distracted, we are unable to uh discern the cole Yahweh, the voice of God.

And I think he's right there.

What steps can you and I take this week, each day, to carve out some time to be with God and to spend time in his word?

What then for you, what then for me, is our kitchen?

Because I got a little bit of Martha in me.

I'm not the most organized guy, I'm not the I'm not the aggressive try to finish it across the finish line guy, but I still have a kitchen.

I still have some stuff that I put first.

What about you?

What's at the center?

What do you find all kinds of time for?

You know, and I think I was just thinking and praying that the Holy Spirit would speak to me this week.

And I heard him say things like, What's the first thing you reach for when you wake up, Jim?

Is it to check your cell phone?

Or, like my 92-year-old mama, is to recite the Lord's Prayer and Psalm 23 before my feet hit the ground, you know?

And again, it's justn't about legalism, it's just about priorities.

What am I what is my heart?

You, your heart will make a convert of your head.

What you desire will always distract you from what you thought was really true that Sunday morning you heard this passage taught.

So we have to pray that the Lord, by his power and by his grace, will change our, redirect our affections and that we'll uh set aside the distractions that we need to set aside.

Lewis, you can only get you can't get second things by putting them first.

You can get second things only by putting first things first.

This is from his uh uh his essay, First and Second Things.

Um you can find it if uh if yeah, there was a collection put together called God in the Dock, and it's it's it's uh put together by uh Walter Hooper.

You can find that uh essay if you would like the rest of the essay.

It's really, really wonderful essay, but he says it so beautifully and succinctly there as well.

Here's Tozer as well.

God wants worshippers before workers.

The only acceptable workers, indeed, are those who have learned the lost art of worship.

Martha, and to the Martha in me and to the Martha in you, it's really okay if everything isn't done exactly right in that procedure.

If you're missing out on time with Christ, if you're missing out on time in his word, something needs to change.

Something needs to be set aside.

You're being distracted away from Jesus by other things that you in your axiology have decided are more important than Jesus.

Whether you did that consciously or not, but if I wake up, the first thing I do is reach the phone to see who's texting me or see what emails come in or whatever, that means I think that's the most valuable thing.

I'm making that my decisive validator, not Jesus.

And this, right here, this if I did that, I can tell you that is a never-ending pursuit.

It's like you you've all of a sudden become the gerbil on the wheel, is making a whole lot of noise, annoying everybody around you, and you're never getting anywhere.

Um, and and that's that's what happens when our we try to make things like that our decisive validator.

Martha's uh uh Rebecca McLaughlin says, Martha thinks she's serving Jesus by giving him a meal, but Jesus clarifies that he's the one serving the real food, and Mary is right to sit at his table.

Oh, yeah, I love the way she said that.

Uh, a great book, by the way, um, Jesus through the eyes of women.

And she goes through a number of women in Old and New Testament and uh talks a bit about the way they would see uh Jesus and the offer of the gospel, uh, that the gospel of grace.

So I think she's got it right there.

Uh let's sit at the table of Jesus and feast on the word.

He's the bread of life.

I mean, think about the way this all kind of connects, right?

He's the bread of life.

He's the meal that will last you eternity, not just the meal that satisfies your body for the next 30 minutes until you get hungry again.

And then I want to close with this quote from uh Martin Lloyd Jones.

It's really powerful.

Um, it's a little bit lengthy, so I put I put it up here, but it's on two slides.

The whole art of life.

I sometimes think is the art of knowing what to leave out, what to ignore, what to put on one's side, how prone we are to dissipate our energies and to waste our time by forgetting what is vital and giving ourselves to second and third rate issues.

Does that resonate with you?

Please don't think about the person next to you.

Please don't think about my roommate needs to hear this, my spouse needs to hear this.

Ask how you need to hear this.

Okay.

Now says Paul, and this is in one of his sermons from uh Philippians.

Now says Paul, here you are in the Christian life.

You're concerned about difficulties, about oppositions, and about the contradictions of life.

What you need is just this: the power to concentrate on that which is vital, to leave out everything else and to keep steadily to the one thing that matters.

And Jesus said to Martha, she, Mary, has chosen the one thing, the first thing that really matters, and it won't be taken away from her.

And I think Lloyd Jones is right here as well.

I don't have a slide for this, but I do want to read a short little paragraph from Phil Yancey here.

He's talking about Mary and Martha a little bit, and I think you'll appreciate this.

So a hypothetical scene enters my mind of Mary and Martha gathering around their brother's bedside some 30 years after their encounter with Jesus.

And you remember that this is, if this is the first one, the second encounter with Jesus, John chapter 11 and 12, is when Lazarus gets sick.

John 11 · chapter mention

They send for Jesus.

He doesn't come, he delays, actually, on purpose.

When he shows up, Lazarus is already dead, wrapped, mummified, and laid in a tomb, and they come running out.

If only you had come, he wouldn't have been, he wouldn't have died, and all that sort of thing.

And he says that's where he says that famous line: I'm the resurrection and the life.

This, I mean, it's just really an amazing moment in John 11 and 12.

Read it on your own if you'd like to.

But 30 years later, Yancey posits this idea as another encounter with them.

Lazarus is dying again, and their old grief returns.

It's different this time, though.

They have no lingering bitterness against Jesus.

They watched in agony what he himself went through as part of the mystery of healing the planet.

It was finished upon the cross.

You just read it.

You just sang it.

That's what Jesus went through in the mystery of healing the planet.

No, um, they've had three bonus decades.

They're not, they're not mad now.

They've had three bonus decades with her brother.

And not since he, Jesus, or no, excuse me, he, Lazarus, strolled out like a mummy out of the cave, have they ever doubted Jesus' promise to return to the Father and prepare a place for all of them and for all of us at the table that we shall feast at forever and ever.

Amen?

Amen.

First things first.

Jesus.

The word of God.

That's why we study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel.

Not because we worship the word of God, but because we worship the God of the Word.

And He does speak.

It's really important for each and every one of us.

Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you that the gospel is an invitation.

It offers us a seat at the table of the Lord.

And I can't think of a better response for us this morning than to believe, to receive, and to give thanks as we come to your table.

I pray for each and every heart here in the room, Lord, that you draw us to yourself.

Remind us that yes, indeed, your cross paid at the cross, you paid the price for all our sins, past, present, and future.

Help us now to believe, receive, and to give thanks as we come to the table together.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen and amen.