"One Thing" Luke 10:38-42 Sunday Evening Worship Service

Invite you to open your Bibles now to the gospel of Luke chapter ten.

That's one of those songs that uh is the sermon, you know?

But we will turn to Luke 10 regardless.

I'll read the passage for us tonight, and then let me pray and then I'll read it and we'll dive in.

God, we're thankful for your word, which is alive and is a window into your own glory.

And so as we look through the window tonight, we gaze, we do what David said in Psalm 27, we seek to gaze at you, Yahweh, in your beauty.

We want to see you through the window of your word tonight.

And this is your own work, your Holy Spirit's work in our hearts to open our eyes to behold wonderful things.

And of course, you alone are truly wonderful.

And so we want to behold you through your written word tonight.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Luke 10, verse 38.

Luke 10:38

As they went on their way, and Jesus entered a village, and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house.

She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching.

But Martha was distracted with much serving.

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.

This is the word of the Lord.

I was planning on preaching this passage this morning and doing something else tonight, but when it clicked to me that this is the deacon recognition service, and this is a passage about serving, it seemed too providential to let it pass by.

The phrase in this passage that should jump out at you is the phrase one thing at the start of verse 42.

One thing is necessary.

Only one thing.

That phrase comes from Psalm 27, of course, verse 4, which we looked at last Lord's day, where David said, There is only one thing necessary, only one thing that he wants, only one thing he seeks and that he desires, and that is to see the Lord or to gaze upon the Lord is the word in the Hebrew, not just a glance, but to really take in the Lord's glory in the temple, is what David asks.

And you remember that David, when he wrote Psalm 27, was in exile.

He was banished from Israel.

He was really forced to walk of shame as he was run out of the city.

We know that there's so much going on at that time period.

Absalom was the one who led the revolt.

David, before Absalom's revolt, had asked God if he could build a house for God in Jerusalem.

And God told him no.

God did more than tell him no.

He said, You're not going to build me a house, David.

I might build you a house.

And of course, we understand in the New Testament how this ultimately gets answered that God turns David into the house.

God doesn't build a house for David.

David doesn't, in strictly sense, build a house for God.

God turns David's offspring into the temple.

And so there's this twofold way that this passage is fulfilled.

David becomes the house, and David's descendant is the house.

David does build the house in a sense, is his descendant, the Savior being both God and man.

And so this comes into focus in John chapter 2, when Jesus says, tear the temple down, I'll build it back in three days.

John 2 · chapter mention

And they say, How is that possible?

They thought he was talking about the actual temple.

They didn't realize that Jesus is identifying himself with the temple.

So Jesus is the house of God in his incarnation.

The house for God is built on this earth.

It is from David, but God is the one who built it, not David.

And that's going to be, you know, substantially and radically important as we look at Martha and Mary tonight.

As we think back to Psalm 27, though, I do want to go a little bit deeper into some terms I used it uh last Sunday that we didn't have time to.

Uh Sunday morning, I can kind of branch out more on Sunday night.

So I do want to just give you a couple uh definitions.

Uh let me tell you this.

I would describe holiness.

There's lots of different ways to describe holiness, but I would describe holiness as God's essential godness.

My spell chat kept trying to change that to goodness, so I'm thankful that it got on the screen finally as godness.

Holiness is God's essential godness.

You've heard holiness described as the sum of God's attributes or the essence of who he is, and that's that's all true.

And just I like the concept of holiness being God's godness.

Holiness is what makes God God.

Now, I'm sure you also understand that God is one being.

He's not a collection of different parts, he doesn't have all kinds of different attributes that come together in him.

He is one undivided being.

So he has, in a sense, the attributes of holiness and righteousness and justice and goodness and beauty and love and communication and all these things that God, in a sense, possesses, but not in it, he doesn't truly possess them.

He is those things because he's one being.

They are all who he is in his entirety.

If you keep peeling down in God, you recognize that each of his attributes is all of who he is.

His holiness is not at war with his love.

He is entirely holy, he is entirely love.

But holiness is a word that the authors of different books of the Bible use, I think, just to describe the totality of who is who God is.

And we're not holy.

We're not holy.

You know, we are opposed to God often.

We're born into sin.

Even Adam in the image of God has the capacity for holiness.

There's some holiness resident in him as he's in the image of God, but through sin that image is marred.

He hides from God, he runs from holiness.

People are born into the world to use John's language in John chapter 3, loving the darkness and hating the light, running from God.

John 3 · chapter mention

You know, they hate holiness, not because they hate holiness as a thing.

They hate holiness because they hate God.

Holiness really is who God is.

Now, one more word, I think we'll help this all come together when we get back to Mary and Martha.

Glory is God's holiness or Godness on display.

So when the Bible speaks of God's glory, God's glory is his holiness or who he is on display.

Again, Jesus is the glory of God because he is the image of God, he is the totality of who God is communicated into a second person, the Son.

And so Jesus is the entirety of God's holiness, and of course, he is the entirety of God's glory.

But we're gonna see in our passage tonight that Jesus is also uniquely God's glory because he is God's glory made visible in this world.

So if you have an encounter with God's glory now, you're gonna have a mixed response.

When you encounter God's glory now, your response is going to look like terror and worship.

When people encounter God in the Bible, that's their response.

When they encounter angels in the Bible, they have those mixed responses, you know?

They go from, oh my goodness, I'm gonna die, to let me build an altar and worship.

No, I'm not supposed to do that.

Let me, I mean, they're just trying to do something.

When somebody comes face to face with the Lord, they they're overcome with terror and they respond with worship.

Isaiah sees the temple of the Lord filled with glory.

What does that mean?

God's holiness on display.

Isaiah sees it and he remembered responds, I'm a man of unclean lips.

I'm not fit for this.

This is often the response people have when they encounter God.

Terror, but also worship.

That's Psalm 27, isn't it?

David wants to get back to Jerusalem.

He wants to see the glory of God more than having his family restored.

Remember, his son led the rebellion.

His wives were taken from him, he lost everything, more than getting that back.

The context of Psalm 27, he says he's not concerned about winning back his family.

In fact, in Psalm 27, remember, he says, My parents abandoned me.

His priority was not his family.

One thing was important to him, and that was finding the Lord.

Looking at him.

Looking at him.

So David wants to respond with worship.

He wants to find God.

It's the one thing important to him.

Now that's that's now, but we know in the future, when we see the Lord face to face, we will have pure joy or pure worship.

The terror will be driven away.

When we see God as he truly is, perfect love drives out fear, we will be conformed more completely into his image.

Progressive sanctification will become glorification.

Sanctification stops in that sense in heaven, and you're glorified.

You see the Lord face to face, you see his beauty face to face.

Theologians through the years have called this the beatific vision.

When you wake up in glory, you see the Lord, and you see him in all of his beauty with no terror anymore.

Because you've been made holy, you've been glorified.

And so pure joy.

That's how John describes it in 1 John, fear driven away.

That's the beatific vision.

You get images of it in the Bible, don't you?

On the Mount of Transfiguration, you see Jesus transfigured, and of course, Peter doesn't want to go anywhere else the rest of his life, right?

Let's build a house right here, Lord.

I'm not moving.

You know, once you've tasted that, how do you go back down to the other, you know, nine apostles that got left behind?

How do you go back to those losers?

You know?

You just saw the Lord in glory.

Let's let's live here.

When you get to heaven, that's gonna be your vision.

You're gonna want a house there.

You're gonna want to live there.

People say, oh, well, there'll be longing for this world.

Will there be wanting to go back in this world?

Did Peter want to go back down the mountain?

No, there's no, there's nothing.

There's just you're so filled with joy and delight at the beauty of the Lord.

But if you think about this critically for a second, you're gonna see a space between the now and the then.

If God's glory is the full display of his holiness, and his holiness really is his godness or his otherness, how can you receive that?

How can you comprehend?

Like, wouldn't you be melted more so in heaven than here?

I mean, here at least there's some distance, you know.

You can look at the sun for a few seconds without going blind, but not if you're on the sun.

Then the sunglasses aren't gonna help if you're on the sun, you know.

You melt.

Isn't the glory of the Lord like that?

You know, for here, distance in this life, it's removed.

We see through a glass, but dimly, and sometimes we think of the dimly as you know, judgment, that you know, we're frail, and so we can't see God uh purely, but sometimes that dimly is working to our advantage because it obscures, it blocks out, it's like tinted windows here, it keeps the UV out, and so you don't melt from God's glory.

So, how in heaven will you be able to have a full expression of God's beauty unvarnished in front of you and for you to still respond with joy?

Something's missing, and the missing piece there is obviously a mediator.

You need a mediator.

Now, the mediator, in a sense, could be a person, the mediator could be uh distance, the mediator could be a book or a filter of some kind.

Think about how sunglasses operate, or uh, I'm getting ready to go skiing this week with my family, and we have different goggles out and different lenses depending on the sunlight to give you the, you know, it mediates the light.

It puts through.

Some lets in more light and others let in less light depending on the snowy conditions, and you think that's what you need for the Lord.

Some kind of goggles that can filter out the overwhelming degree of holiness so I can actually see what I'm looking at.

And that is true.

You do need that to look at the Lord.

You do need some kind of mediator.

His glory has to be mediated for you to even have the capacity to understand it.

Now, with that as the background, we go back to Mary and Martha, verse 38.

As they went on their way, Jesus entered a village.

Now, Jesus is um teaching here.

He's journeying from Capernaum down to, he's traveling through along the Jordan River from Capernaum and Galilee down to Jerusalem.

Uh he's casting really curses on the cities he's passing through who don't believe uh the message.

If you look at chapter 10, verse 13, Khorzin, Beseda, these are places that were destroyed, by the way.

Verse 15, and you Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven?

You'll be brought down to Hades.

The high school students from our from our high school here are in Capernaum today.

They went to visit Capernaum on their ICS uh field trip.

It sounds weird to call it going to Israel a field trip, but there you go.

And it's just it's of all the places in Israel, I think it's my favorite.

You know, it is just it's ruins.

It's small, first of all, it's a tiny, tiny place, and it's ruins.

And Jesus did ministry there for three years.

I mean, his miracles were not in Tiberias, which is right across the Sea of Galilee, right along the shore.

There's a big city.

He could have gone there and everybody would have come to see him.

He could have gone up the Jordan where John was, and there were just boatloads of people.

He could have gone to Jerusalem.

You know, the times he goes to Jerusalem are so few and far between, and sometimes he even sneaks in, you know.

Yeah, he did everything in Capernaum, really, and they didn't believe.

At the end of his ministry there, they just didn't believe.

Staggering stuff to imagine seeing the miracles of Christ for years and just deciding at the end of those years, yeah, I don't think so.

I don't know.

I mean, he raised the dead there, he healed leper, the leper who was healed in Matthew 8 was there.

I mean, there's so much happened there.

And so Jesus curses them in verse 15 of chapter 10, and it says, You're gonna be thrown down to Hades.

And of course, Jesus, who Jesus cursed it, it happens, you know, Beth Seda, just massive ruins now, a huge city destroyed, right after the life of Christ, Capernaum destroyed by an earthquake after the life of Christ, you go there.

There's a reason you go there and sit in the ruins of an old synagogue instead of an actual synagogue.

Because the Lord cursed it.

Well, as he's journeying around in his ministry, verse 25, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test.

Now, this is very important for understanding the Mary and Martha exchange.

I think critical for understanding what happened with the Mary and Martha and Martha being busy and Mary sitting at the feet of Christ.

You really need the the Good Samaritan story to lead you into it.

Uh a lawyer put Jesus to the test, which is a classic lawyer move right there.

Let me trap Jesus.

Saying, Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?

Jesus said, What's written in the law?

How do you read it?

The lawyer said, You'll love the Lord your God.

This is verse 27, with all your heart, soul, all your strength, all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.

Now, this is often referred to as the two tables answer of the law that the lawyer divides the law.

So it was a very broad question.

What does the law say?

Law is a word for Torah.

Sometimes the word law stands in for all of the Old Testament, even.

When you read Psalm 119, for example, the word law is often used there to mean anything God commands, anything written down.

The word law, the narrowest sense is the Torah, the first five books of the Bible.

But the broader sense is anything God commands.

He could mean that, he could mean the whole testament here.

Who knows?

It's a very broad way, Jesus asks him, what is written in the law?

The guy gets to make his own answer.

Jesus tells him to.

How do you read it?

Now his answer was to divide the law into two categories, which is a very common answer.

This guy is a lawyer.

He's versed in law.

It's a very good way of answering it.

And I think it's helpful even for you to know this answer that the law can divide into two categories or two tablets.

The first tablet is your relationship to the Lord, the first four commandments.

And the second tablet or the second table, it's sometimes called, is the the next six commandments, how you relate to others.

Love the Lord and love others.

The whole law can be reduced to that in some sense.

Not in every sense, but in some sense, the whole law can be reduced to that.

Obviously, there's debate on some things.

People debate the fifth commandment.

Is that about your relationship to God or is that about your relationship with others?

There's lots of debates.

The law isn't given in that strictly speaking that sense, but it is a good summary of it.

And we know that's a good summary because Jesus tells him, verse 28, you answered correctly.

So we have the answer key here.

I like that.

Jesus says, yes, that's the right answer.

You can divide the law that way.

Do that and live.

Well, do what again?

Keep the law.

The question is, what does the law say?

Yeah, do that.

Keep the law.

The whole law can be divided in love of God and love of neighbor.

And Jesus says, exactly right.

Do it.

Love God perfectly, love your neighbor perfectly.

Go for it, and you can have eternal life.

Now his response is pretty clever and lawyerly.

Verse 29, he desired to justify himself.

Again, classic lawyer move.

Justify himself.

He says to Jesus, Who is my neighbor?

Now this produces the story of the Good Samaritan.

We're not going to go through all of it because that's not my focus tonight.

You know the story of the Good Samaritan.

The guys beat up, the Samaritan is, uh the uh uh guys beat up and left on the side of the road, and the Samaritan finds him, takes him in, clothes him, checks him into the hotel, leaves the credit card, says whatever he needs, charge it.

I got you covered.

And Jesus answers with do that and live.

Okay?

So what does it look like to love your neighbor?

That's what it looks like.

Do that.

But do not lose sight of the fact that the story of the good Samaritan was written or given by Jesus orally to respond to the lawyer who said that he does do the law.

He's fine with the loving God over the law's heart part.

The second half neighbor, well, who is my neighbor?

The guy's trying to get out of obedience to the law.

Which you can't do.

So Jesus gives the good Samaritans to like, okay, fine, you want to plead no contest on loving the Lord your God.

You want to focus on plead not guilty on loving your neighbor, you won't be found not guilty.

You can't do this.

You can't love your neighbor like this.

You will fail.

But don't forget the fact that the guy totally leapt over the love your God with all your heart parts.

Like, oh, that's easy.

And of course, in the Jewish mind, they had such a reductionistic approach to the first three commandments and a legalistic approach to the fourth commandment that the guy probably was being relatively sincere.

He doesn't have any idols in his house.

He wouldn't take the Lord's name in vain.

He has lots of rules about the Sabbath, and believe you me, he keeps most of them.

He just goes right by that.

And of course, he leaves condemned because he can't love his neighbor like the law commands him to.

So the right response to the Good Samaritan story should be I can't do this, I can't love the Lord like that, I can't love my neighbor like this, I need mercy.

That's the right response, but of course, not his response.

The very next verse is the Martha and Mary story.

So critical in that context.

Nobody really knows the exact chronology of these things because Luke is moving pretty rapidly over all of Galilee and down into Jerusalem area, even here.

So Luke is ordering these stories to make the point that I want to bring you tonight.

As they went on their way, Jesus entered the village.

A woman named Martha welcomed him into her house.

Jesus is traveling with seventy two.

We know that from verse 17 of chapter 10.

Now I don't know if all seventy two are with him on every stage of this journey, but he has.

It's an entourage.

And Mary and Martha bring them into the house.

Well, strictly speaking, Martha brought him into the house.

Mary is there.

And Mary sits down.

Jesus comes in with his crew.

Mary sits down at the Lord's feet and listens to him teaching.

So Mary is submissive here.

This language of like sitting at the Lord's feet.

Mary is there.

She has her notebook open.

She's got her scrolls with her.

She's taking notes.

She's catching everything.

She's soaking in the Lord's teaching.

This is the right response to having Jesus in your house.

And I just, this is one of those places where I want a few more, a few more details, Luke.

You know, Luke wasn't here.

Luke's investigating afterwards.

But I just wish that.

What did Jesus teach in Martha's house?

What did he teach?

Is he telling the story of the Good Samaritan again?

Like, and then I said this.

Is he working his way through numbers like he does in John's gospel?

What's he doing?

I don't know.

I just I really wish I would have.

It'd be fascinating to know what Jesus does at a home Bible study.

Would have been incredible though, I'm sure.

And Mary's taking it all in.

What a contrast with Martha, though.

Luke uses the word distracted.

And that's easy enough to see.

Mary is taking it in.

Martha's distracted.

What would that look like in a home Bible study?

Well, she's looking around.

She's moving around, obviously.

She's setting up food in the kitchen, probably, or a place to eat.

There was a church I preached at regularly in out in the bush in South Africa.

I preached there for, I think, a month or six weeks or something every Sunday.

And about halfway through the sermon, all of the married women in the church stood up and left every single Sunday.

And they were making the lunch for everybody.

And it just drove me crazy.

I was like, can't, and this is my American thing coming through.

Like, can't the husbands get up and go make lunch some Sunday?

And the ladies thought that was hilarious, by the way.

One of the funniest things they've ever heard.

Like, should I preach shorter?

And like, no, they'll just leave at an earlier time, you know?

It's, oh man.

But it's distracting.

You know, to get people standing up and walking out and not listening.

And that's what's happening to Jesus here.

And that encourages me, by the way.

I'm not comparing myself to Jesus here, but the distraction element, you know.

Some Martha's moving around.

And she's serving, which is a good thing, isn't it?

Serving is good.

If you've had a home Bible study in your house, if you've hosted a home Bible study with any kind of regularity, you know that there is stuff that goes into having a home Bible study in your house.

It was an epiphany to me when I went to my first regular home Bible study out in California at this house, and it was like 80 people in the house at this point, and we were the house was just wrecked.

It was college students, and this family was so kind, and they're gonna be closer to the Lord in heaven than me for sure.

And one night I'm staying back and I'm helping like clean up, and I'm like, well, where did these chairs go?

And do you keep the you know the cup here?

And the the lady Stephanie was her name, just looked at me and she's like, No, Jesse, we don't keep empty red solo cups on our floor all week.

Oh, like light bulb.

You clean up.

I get it now.

It's a lot of work that goes into a home Bible study.

This is the deacon evening.

Many of you are deacons that are here tonight, which means you are a super servant.

You serve regularly and faithfully.

You have these kind of Bible studies in your house, you host them.

You're many of you, each of you have your own story, but many of you are doing this kind of thing.

So serving is good, but at this instance, it is distracted from the teaching.

People gotta eat, it's probably what Martha's thinking.

But here's Martha's just gotta be an incredible woman.

Look at verse the middle of verse 40.

She went up to him.

Now, what's Jesus doing when Martha goes up to him?

Teaching.

So she works her way through the group and comes up to Jesus.

This is probably not her plan A.

Her plan A was probably walking behind Jesus, looking at Mary, like you know, showing the tray that's empty.

But plan B was coming the front approach and telling Jesus, don't you care?

That's what she says.

Don't you care?

What a thing to ask Jesus.

This is the question that Peter asks on the boat when the storm comes, remember?

Peter says, Jesus, don't you care?

What a question.

Well, Martha asks it here.

Don't you care that my sister left me to serve alone?

So just chase that down a little bit.

Who left whom here?

Martha welcomed him into her house.

Mary sits down for the teaching.

Martha is not there for the teaching, but moving around.

She left me to serve alone, and I love that Martha has her own answer to her prayer request here.

I'm calling it her prayer request, she's just talking to Jesus.

She tells Jesus the problem, my sister has left me to serve alone, and Martha has her own solution.

Jesus, tell her to help me.

This is again, the room is filled.

Jesus, tell my sister who's sitting at your feet, to get up and help with the bread.

This is a bold statement, of course.

We don't know what Jesus is teaching, but the contrast with Martha is great.

I mean, Jesus is teaching about the life-changing power of the gospel, for sure.

We don't know what text he's using, but that's the that's the sermon.

And Martha wants that paused because there's food to be served.

Enough of the bread of life, Jesus.

We've got actual bread.

Can she help us with that?

I'm going beyond what's written here, but only just.

I think there's some stuff that's implied here.

This idea of Jesus, you your teaching is not all that's important today.

Teaching mixes with serving.

There's this implication that Jesus is prioritizing his teaching over the serving that is important to allow the teaching.

That's a very pointed criticism.

What makes you think your teaching is so important, Jesus?

When there is serving to be done.

How should Jesus respond?

He responds very interestingly.

Martha.

It's a way kinder response than I think most preachers would give.

Martha.

Poor Martha.

You're anxious and you're troubled.

Those are not good descriptions.

Be anxious for nothing.

The scripture says, bring cast your cares on Jesus.

Martha's holding on to her cares.

There's a certain way that this group needs to be entertained, needs to be served, and Martha can't do it herself, and so she's vexed at this.

She wants her expectations about what service should look like to be met, even if it rubs up against the teaching and pulls Mary out of it.

She's not willing to lower what kind of food they're gonna have.

She's not willing to lower the tea being ready when they're all done, you know, whatever it is.

And I'm not being condescending when I'm saying that.

I mean it sincerely.

I mean, that's probably what this is right here, is will the tea or whatever they're drinking be ready when the message is done?

It has to be.

And Jesus says, just you're troubled about it, Martha.

You don't need to be troubled about it.

It's not that important.

It's hugely important to her, isn't it?

But Jesus says it's it's going to be okay.

Only one thing is necessary.

Just one thing.

Now that should immediately, your Psalm 27 radar should be blaring right now.

Only one thing?

I know what the one thing is.

To seek the Lord in his temple.

That's the one thing.

To see the beauty of the Lord.

Let's go.

Pack your bags.

Let's finish the walk to Jerusalem.

If this exchange is in Bethany, they're just a few miles away.

Let's go see the temple.

Let's go see the Lord.

Is that where Jesus is going?

Because that's where David goes with this.

Only one thing has the priority.

Only one thing is worth devoting your life to.

Let's go do that.

Let's go see the Lord in the temple.

But that's not where Jesus goes.

He says, Mary has chosen the good portion, which in reference is Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus.

Now this is incredible.

This is a New Testament transference here of the glory of the Lord in the temple to the glory of the Lord in Jesus Christ.

That's the change that's happening here.

That's what I want you to see from this passage.

It's incredible that Martha, who is distracted from the teaching, gets this lesson in a very direct way.

The glory of God in his temple that David longed for is in your house, Martha.

The beauty of the Lord that David said, take the kingdom from me, take my crown and give it to Absalom.

Leave my parents with the Ammonites.

Just give me the glory of the Lord.

Martha, that's in your house.

Jesus does not direct Martha to the temple.

He does not direct Martha to Torah.

James Edwards in his pillar commentary notes that the rabbinical answer to this question, what is the one thing necessary, is always to direct the readers back to Torah.

So Jesus' answer is a common Judaic expression here, only one thing is necessary.

And they, the rabbis of Jesus' lifetime, would have said the one thing is necessary is the Torah.

But Jesus does not say Torah, he says himself.

The one thing that is important is to sit down and listen to the word of the Lord.

Mary chose to set aside the urgent for the sake of listening to Jesus.

And when she made that choice, she chose the better thing.

She chose the good portion.

Now the Greek in verse 42 is confusing.

The ESV renders it very, very well.

One thing is necessary here, but the Greek really is there's lots of things, but only one important.

Lots of things, but only one.

Mary chose that.

And you can't take it away from her.

That can't be taken away.

Do you remember a sermon you heard last year?

Probably not.

I talked to some of the high school kids today, Riley, preaching the high school ministry, and he told them, I'm preaching the sermon today, I preached a year ago.

And I asked a bunch of the kids, and they're like, honestly, I don't remember the sermon a year ago.

You don't remember the sermon.

Even last Sunday.

It's hard for me to remember what I preached last Sunday, and I'm the one preaching it.

I'm so sorry for you guys.

I have sympathy.

So, what does it mean when it can't be taken away from her?

That she's not going to forget what Jesus just said?

There's something more important than that.

Mary, the way sermons work is the impression the Lord makes on your heart while you're listening to it.

Not that you remember the facts three years from now, not that you remember the text even on Wednesday.

But the impression the Lord makes on your heart while you're listening to it.

That's how sermons work.

The Lord convicts you of sin and puts in truth in your mind that you might not be able to remember.

It's just building layers.

That's how sermons work.

Jesus is giving a sermon to Mary and tells her it's it won't be taken away from her.

She will never undo this experience.

Now she may not remember the text, and it's likely she doesn't because Luke didn't include it, and she was a source.

But she remembers the impression.

She's looking at the beauty and the glory of the Lord.

And that can never go away.

Jesus is directing his followers not to the Torah, not to the temple, but to himself.

Connected back to Psalm 27, the one that David longed to see in the temple is now manifest in the flesh.

This hits at the heart of Christian ministry.

Jesus and his entourage were in Martha's home under the authority of Jesus, being served by Martha.

And so now is the question: what is important in Martha's house to facilitate the worship of the triune God on display, manifest in Jesus Christ?

What is important?

And the answer isn't the serving behind the scene.

The answer is the taking in of God's glory through the person of Jesus Christ.

This is the perfect picture of where the vertical intersects with the horizontal.

Horizontal is all the serving, everything that has to happen.

And some things do have to happen.

People do have to eat.

Jesus is aware of that.

He's going to feed the 5,000, remember, in the exact kind of situation where they're too far away for food and they gotta eat, and Jesus miraculously feeds them.

Jesus is not ignorant of the horizontal.

There are things that have to happen for a church to function.

There are parking lots, the car's gotta park in.

There's children's ministry, the children have to be children in.

There's things that gotta happen that need servants to do that.

They have to happen.

But the danger is when the horizontal crowds out the vertical.

The danger is when the vertical relationship, the impact of the word of God on the heart, gets blocked by the horizontal.

This is why it's so challenging to be a deacon, really.

It's so challenging to be a deacon that is devoted to theology and the word of God, because there is such horizontal pressure and horizontal demands.

It is easy for the business of ministry to crowd out the truth of Psalm 27 or the truth of Luke 10, verse 42.

Luke 10:42

It's easy for meetings and budgets and committees and reports and minutes and other committees to crowd out the horizontal relationship with the Lord.

It's not that the horizontal demands of life are insignificant, they're very significant, but the Christian must have to be able to avoid making much ado about the significance.

That's a Eugene Peterson line.

You have to be able to say, yes, these things are important and significant, but I'm not going to make much of them.

Peterson goes on to write, how can a pastor lead people beside still waters if he himself is in perpetual motion?

MacArthur, in his book, The Master's Plan for the Church, writes, quote, Faithfulness on the job, in the home, and in the church has a place, but must not be allowed to replace faithfulness to divine truth.

Now, this is true for every single Christian, but modeling it is the task of the deacon.

A godly deacon has to be convinced in his or her heart that the church is healthiest when it gazes at Christ the most.

And a conviction like that has consequences.

If you're truly convinced that the church is healthiest and best served by an unobstructed view of the Lord, then you cultivate that in your own life, which is not accidental.

You don't accidentally get captured by the beauty of the Lord.

You make decisions to prioritize the contemplating the thinking of Christ through his word.

And understand this: the glory of the triune God is Christ's glory.

And so I want to go back to this slide.

Do you remember what I said the difference between now and then is?

Now you've got terror in worship, then you'll have pure joy.

But what is missing?

You need that glory mediated.

You can't look at the sun without sunglasses.

You can't swim on the sun and live.

You can't take in the glory of the Lord without a mediator.

It has to be given to you in some manifest way.

And this is what Jesus is doing.

He's the glory of God manifest in human flesh.

That's Psalm 27 brought to life, in a literal sense, brought to life.

He's living and dwelling among them.

So when you think of Jesus and God's glory, don't think that Jesus displays God's glory at moments of his life.

Like, here's the miracle, oh, he's showing the glory of God.

There's a miracle, oh, he's showing the glory of God.

Certainly miracles are miraculous, but everything Jesus does is showing the glory of God.

His existence is displaying the glory of God.

It is God's glory mediated in human flesh.

That's the glory of the Trian God.

So if you recall Psalm 27, the beauty of God.

Something is beautiful in as much as it relates back to God.

Jesus is the beauty of God incarnate.

So you look at Christ and you see the beauty of God.

Now he's not.

When Luke writes the gospel, the ascension has already happened.

You know, Luke's writing after the events in the book of Acts have taken place, of course.

So what is Luke trying to convey to you?

How do you see the glory of God?

What's the one thing important for you?

And you see the Lord through the word of God.

That's what you see.

You look at the beauty of the Lord on display for you.

That's why I describe the Bible not as a picture of God's glory, but as a window to it.

It's you're you're looking into the person of Christ.

John Calvin in his institutes describes, well, contrasts the beauty of God to a person who finds a hidden spring.

And he says, imagine you're wandering in the woods and you find a beautiful hidden spring.

The birds are there and the animals are there, and it's incredibly beautiful.

It's well off the beaten path.

You would treasure it in your heart.

And you try to remember the way.

And you would try to go back there with some regularity, but there's always the concern that you would lose the way or somebody else would find it and damage it and whatnot.

And so God, had he not sent Christ to us, his beauty would be like that, to be compared to a hidden spring somewhere that you might stumble upon and try to direct others to, maybe, or remember the way.

But that was not what God was content to do.

God instead brought the spring to life, brought it to earth, put it on display for all to see in the person of Christ.

So the beauty of Christ, Calvin says, is the beauty of God incarnate.

And of course, the phrase that Luke 10 42 gives is from Psalm 27, where David says, My priority is to see the Lord face to face.

And Jesus says, I'm here for you.

I am the beauty of the Lord.

I put it on display.

It is what God wants us to see in the person of Christ.

Jesus is the mediator.

So as you're deaconing this year, or as you're serving the Lord this year, have this passage be in your mind.

Have your priority to be seeking the face of the Lord through his word over and above everything else.

Know that the horizontal demands of life and the horizontal demands of ministry will latch on like barnacles to any vertical attitude you have.

Anything you is going up towards God, the horizontal tries to pull down.

But be committed in your own heart.

And to remember that only one thing is truly life-changingly important.

When we see the beauty of the Lord, it will never be taken away from you.

God, we're grateful for the example of Mary and really of Martha here as well.

We're thankful that she expressed her frustration and her anxiety while we maybe poke fun at her in our hearts.

We are indebted to her boldness, that she took her anxiety to you.

She went to the right person.

She came to the she was anxious about things and she brought them to you.

That too is the example for us.

We're thankful for your answer to her.

Remind us that only one thing is truly necessary, and then drive us to your word, Lord.

Keep the distractions of this world away from our vision and help us while we're in church and with the word open to drink from your word.

Help us when we're at home in our devotional life to hear from your word.

We want to gaze at the beauty of the Lord.

I'm thankful for the servants in this church who will be busy this year.

As we are busy about many, many good things, Lord, help us keep focused on the one thing that changes life, the gospel of Christ.

And it's in his name we pray.

Amen.

And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.