Mary and Martha - Choosing What Matters Most

Jesus came to the house of two sisters.

It was a house where their brother was Lazarus.

And so it was a family very familiar with Jesus.

And in fact, Mary and Martha and Lazarus were really Jesus closest

friends outside of the 12 disciples.

And when Jesus got to the house, excuse me, Martha immediately

went to work, you know, preparing the meal, taking care of

everything.

And in those days, the meal was central to hospitality.

If somebody came to your house, you always had a meal, often

giving them the very best food, showing love and admiration.

That was part of the tradition and the culture of those times.

And so Mary chose, though, her sister, instead of helping with that

meal, to sit at the feet of Jesus.

Now, the scripture tells us in this story today that she sat at

the feet of Jesus, which was the position of a disciple in those

days.

A disciple, you didn't sit in a chair and listen, you sat at their

feet.

And Mary was not simply resting while Martha worked, but

Martha was in the kitchen making all this stuff happen.

And Mary sitting there quite quietly listening to Jesus in the

other room or maybe the same room, I don't know, depending on

how the house was built.

But Martha became terribly frustrated.

Mary wasn't helping her sister.

And Jesus asked, I mean, Martha asked Jesus to make her sister

get up and do something.

And you can just imagine these two sisters kind of having his sister

direct argument like they could have easily over this thing

because Martha's knocking herself out and Mary essentially,

in her perspective, is doing nothing.

But Jesus gently told Martha that she'd become worried and she'd

become distracted and she'd become too busy about less important

things.

And Mary chose what mattered most.

And that's the story we're going to look at today about priorities.

How do we choose the priorities of our lives?

And how do we understand where to put our energy?

Putting good things ahead of better things is what Jesus is talking

about here.

We usually don't get our priorities wrong by choosing bad

stuff.

I mean, most of us don't do that.

We get them wrong by putting good things ahead of better things,

and the better thing gets pushed out.

The tension in this story is not between good and bad.

It's between good and best.

And it's two people both wanting to follow Jesus and doing

it in very different ways.

Now the story's recorded for us.

If you caught it last week about the end of the book there,

when he said the many of these things were not recorded, but they

tell about the story of Jesus.

Well, there were many things about Jesus not recorded, but this

one is recorded on Purpose in great detail because it tells us

about a very important principle of being a follower of

Christ.

How to put the best things before the good things.

So here we have.

I'll break it down a little bit.

Martha serving and Mary worshipping at Jesus feet.

Two very different contrasts of two people trying to be followers

of Christ.

Martha is working and Mary is growing in her faith.

Martha is managing the meal, being responsible, and Mary is meeting

with Jesus.

Martha is busy for Jesus and Mary is being with Jesus.

Martha is doing something for Jesus, and Mary is allowing Jesus

to do something for her.

It's a pretty big contrast.

See, the issue was not that Martha was doing bad things.

In fact, she was doing very good things.

Be it, she allowed something good for Jesus to become more important

than her relationship with Jesus.

And this story describes a lot of Christian people.

We're trying to do good things, to build the most out of

our lives, take advantage of the gifts and strengths God's given

us to serve, to be in ministry, to do all kinds of things.

And in the process of all that busyness, we can miss the opportunity

to be with Jesus.

We focus on following, by doing.

Not just by doing, but by being.

We've got to be and spend time with Jesus.

And that's what the message of this story is recorded to help us

understand.

You see, spiritual lives do not deteriorate because we reject

God.

People don't do that for the most part.

But Jesus gets crowded out.

That's why our spiritual life suffers.

So we have class and we've got practice, and we've got rehearsal,

and we've got work, and we've got friends, and we've got relationships,

and we got social life and we got ministry.

And most of those things are not wrong.

There's probably nothing wrong with any of them.

But everything can't be first, everything can't be.

Priorities are not simply what you say matters most.

Priorities are what you consistently give your time to and

secondly, your best energy to.

And that tells you where your real priorities are.

Christ was essentially saying to Martha, look, there will always

be another meal, there will always be another time, but Jesus

won't always be sitting here in your house.

Mary recognized the moment.

And most importantly, she recognized her spiritual need.

That although she needed to help her sister, more importantly,

she needed Jesus and she needed to be in relationship with

Him.

You see, spiritual formation rarely screams for our attention.

Deadlines scream for our attention and demand it.

Phones scream for our attention.

Coaches scream for our attention.

Professors scream for our attention.

Work, family, they all scream for our attention.

But your spiritual life quietly waits until you purposefully

make room for for it in your life.

You probably all have seen this illustration of the jar and

the rocks and the sand and the pebbles.

Okay, you've seen that illustration.

You know, if you don't put the rocks in first before you put in

the sand and the pebbles, there's no room for the rocks.

And that was basically what Martha was dealing with here.

She hadn't put the rocks in.

She filled up her life with the sand and the pebbles.

And so the thing that mattered most, she couldn't fit in the rocks.

And her time with Jesus only fit in the leftover space of her

life.

You know, But I don't think that's the bigger problem.

I think the bigger problem is most of us have too many big rocks

and we've got an endless collection of pebbles, and there's

just not room in the jar for everything.

But we keep trying to cram it all in.

So priorities.

Putting good things ahead of better things.

Martha was trying to do something genuinely good.

See, in the story, Martha wasn't lazy.

Martha wasn't selfish.

She wasn't rebellious.

She saw a need.

We got to feed Jesus.

He's come to our house.

That is the culture of the day.

You feed and you put on a banquet because of that.

And there's something really admirable about Martha's dedication.

I mean, Jesus is the one who said to serve, not to be served.

It's so important to us.

We have it in the center of campus to serve, not to be served.

We want to take that spirit.

And that's what Martha was trying to do.

Serving matters, doing good matters, holding up your responsibility

matters, hard work matters.

But the problem was her service began to crowd out her relationship

with Jesus, and she was feeling empty.

And look at what begins to happen here in a little bit.

You see, Jesus does not ask us to choose between worship and service.

He asks us to make sure our service grows out of our worship.

We serve in order to honor him.

That's an expression of our love for him, not that he'll reward

us.

That's not why we're serving.

I saw a politician the other day who was interviewed, and they

said, are you going to get to heaven?

He said, well, I got to do better, more better things if I'm

going to get to heaven.

No, it doesn't work that way.

Your better things will never be get you to heaven.

It's not going to happen.

You are going to heaven only by the redemption of Christ in your

Life.

The better things you do come out of your love for him and your

love for the people that he loves.

And that's why we do the better things.

You see, we need both, but we need service that's rooted in worship.

And if it's not rooted in worship, it just becomes chores.

We can become so busy doing things for Jesus that we have very

little time left for our relationship with Jesus.

You know, years ago I was part of pulling together a really huge

major international conference of key Christian leaders from all

over the world.

We met in the Philippines and we brought in like 5,000 people.

This thing was incredibly expensive.

All the top evangelical leaders of the world were there and

I was privileged to be part of the leadership of that group.

And we had the best speakers non stop for six days on all kinds

of critical topics of evangelism and relationship with

Christ and all that kind of stuff.

Stuff.

And I raised the money to make that happen as my responsibility.

And one of my donors was the founder of Domino's Pizza.

And he had come to the event and a wonderful Christian guy.

And I remember about the third day, he said something to me that

absolutely shocked me.

Now here we had speaker after speaker after speaker, the best speakers

in the whole world.

And he was coming out of the big auditorium and I stopped and

I talked to him and said, tom, how's it going?

Are you enjoying this?

Yeah, it's great.

He said, I just got to get away from this for a bit to spend

some time with Jesus.

Wait, this whole thing is about Jesus?

No, he had to get away from that for his relationship with Jesus

to be what needed to be filled back up.

It's kind of amazing.

We can be caught in the middle of wonderful Christian work and get

disassociated from Jesus.

And our relationship with him hurts even while we're trying to

do all this good.

And that's exactly what Martha got into.

So we need to be careful when we're doing everything right on the

outside, we can be spiritually running empty on the inside.

It's like your phone.

You can go all day all through the apps and all the stuff and the

things you do and you make it happen.

But if you don't periodically plug that into the power source,

it's not going to do any of the stuff it's supposed to do.

You've got to periodically plug it into the power source.

And we've got to periodically make sure our relationship with Christ

is what it needs to be, not just our doing things for Christ.

So we have a warning really?

In this scripture, Martha's busyness begins to change her.

And watch what happens here.

Martha says, lord, doesn't it seem unfair to you that my sister

just sits here while I do all the work?

Watch the progression.

Okay, Martha is serving, trying to do good things, and then

she feels overwhelmed.

And then she gets frustrated.

And then she starts comparing herself to Mary, and then she gets

resentful.

And then she goes so far as to even tell Jesus what she should do

should be the other way around.

You see, when we're doing so much, even for Jesus, we become disconnected

from our relationship with Christ.

Christ.

And so service can turn into resentment.

And that's what we are getting warned about in this story.

It begins with, I'm so privileged to get to do this for

the Lord, whatever it might be.

And then I have to do everything is the next phase.

And then the next phase, why isn't anybody helping me?

And then next phase, why didn't anybody appreciate everything

I do?

And eventually God, why are you letting this happen to me?

This is a pretty important warning for Christians.

See, you're trying to succeed, and you should.

God's talented you and given you gifts, and you're trying to meet

expectations, and you're trying to keep up, and you're trying

to carry responsibilities, and life becomes a long list of obligations.

And that's when comparison takes over.

And that's when comparison starts to grip your life.

So you start comparing over grades, over friends, over relationships,

over athletic success or performance, success or appearance,

or somebody else had more fun than you did, or opportunities or

future advantages.

All these comparisons start to take over our life.

You see, what happened in the story is what.

Martha stopped looking at Jesus because she was totally focused

on her comparison with Mary.

And that's where it fell apart.

Temptation for comparison is strongest when our priorities become

disconnected from the source of our power, which is Christ.

Well, how does Jesus respond?

Typical compassion, Total understanding.

Here's what he says to Mary, to Martha.

He says, dear Martha, you're worried and you're upset over all

these details.

There's only one thing worth being concerned about.

Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her.

Now, Jesus knows Martha loves him.

Martha's not rejecting Jesus.

He knows that, but he's helping her see what's happening

on the inside.

When she gets so busy and doesn't have time for her relationship

with Christ, she gets too busy.

And when she gets too busy, then she gets worried, and then she

gets upset, and then she starts feeling pulled apart, and

then she Starts comparing, and then the resentment comes.

It's a natural progression.

And it happens to all of us when we get disconnected in our relationship

with Christ.

Jesus says there's only one thing worth being concerned about.

Jesus is not saying there's only one responsibility.

There are lots of responsibilities.

He's saying there's only one relationship that matters most.

There's lots that's important, but there's only one thing that matters

the very most.

Well, in our process of being followers of Christ, we are shaped

by his teaching as we move up the path to following Christ.

Jesus in this teaching, is teaching Mary and Martha and the

world to come because they recorded the story for all of us

about worship, about growing, about priorities, about resentment,

about responsibilities.

You know, Jesus is always teaching very weighty things about

sin and eternity and transformation.

But Jesus also teaches us some very practical stuff.

He teaches us how to manage our time.

That's also in this story, how to manage our time.

Now, the only thing we all in life get the same thing of, the only

thing is time.

Now, we don't get the same number of years, but we all, at least

in the day, we get the same number of hours.

And the Bible is very practical when it comes to time management.

And so I want to pull four ideas from the story about time management

that also are being taught here that may be helpful to you.

The first is this time management is about choices and priorities,

not just a schedule.

Choices and priorities, not schedule.

See, Mary and Martha each made a choice about their priorities for

that day, and their actions fit around that.

Martha prepared the meal.

Mary sat at the feet of Jesus.

The most important things in life, the relationship with Christ,

is often the easiest to postpone because the schedule gets

overloaded.

It would have been easiest for Mary to go help her sister, but she

made a choice of priorities, not just simply because that was

impressing on the schedule.

Schedule gets loaded and the things that become important get

overlooked.

You know, you're not going to cut out.

You're going to go to class, you're going to go to practice, you're

going to go to work, you're going to, you know, connect on your

phone.

You're going to be with your friends.

And after you get all that done, is there really time for prayer

and scripture and reflection and worship?

Too often not.

Because those things don't usually shout at us and say, hey,

I've got to have your attention like a class does or a

practice does.

You see, Jesus didn't say the meal's not important.

He just said, put the first things first, it doesn't mean you

don't do the other.

But the first thing is the priorities, not schedule.

Second idea out of this scripture is that anticipation and

planning, not reaction, is time management.

If.

If you can anticipate and plan rather than react to the moment.

Jesus had been in Mary and Martha's house many times.

This was not the first time he'd been there.

And Mary anticipated that Jesus was coming back.

And it seemed like what she must have said to herself is, when

he comes back, I'm not going to go in there and help my sister.

I'm going to spend time with Jesus because I don't know how many

more times I'm going to get with him.

So she planned it.

She anticipated that it was going to happen.

Martha, on the other hand, reacted to the urgency and the need.

We got to get this meal done.

Very different actions and very different results.

If you will develop a pattern of anticipation about what's on your

agenda for the weeks ahead, it will change how you manage your time.

Now, I do this, I've been doing it for years.

I operate in blocks of about three to six weeks.

I can tell you almost everything on my schedule for the

next six weeks.

I can't tell you much after that.

And I can work back from that and tell you exactly what I got to

get done when in order to hit all of those benchmarks.

And I anticipate that for me, it works about six weeks.

Your schedule, it might work shorter than that.

Maybe it's one week, maybe it's two or three, I don't know.

But here's the key.

You got to write it all down.

Not in little scraps of paper.

You got to write it down in one place.

And then you've got to reevaluate it.

Often the last thing I do every night before I go to bed, I

have two pads at my chair where I kind of finish up the day

every night.

And one pad is tomorrow.

And I only put things on there that will move the dial tomorrow.

I know exactly what those things are that to be done today.

And then I've got the other pad that's laying out about three

to six weeks ahead of time.

I'm trying to anticipate.

And if I can anticipate, I can get things done on time.

If I just wait for the reaction of the moment, I'm always,

always behind, and you will be too.

And that's what Jesus is telling us here.

Mary anticipated that Jesus was coming back to their house and

she made a decision Ahead of time.

She was going to make that the priority.

Well, the third thing we take out of this story on time management

is time management is discipline and focus, not emotion.

It took discipline and focus for Mary to not help her sister.

Can you imagine?

I mean, these women were close.

And to not help her sister, that was a pretty big deal.

She loved her sister, she loved her family.

She's the one who cried so much when Lazarus died and Jesus

rose him from the dead or their brother.

But Martha was caught up in the emotion of the moment.

These people have come and I'm sure the disciples were with them.

So it's a big group.

All these people have come.

I got to get this meal done.

I got to make this happen.

And you know what happens when you get your schedule set by emotion?

You always make make the wrong choice.

We have to decide ahead of time.

There's no other way.

If you know you need to study for a test tomorrow and your friends

come in at seven o'clock tonight and say, hey, let's go eat,

you're going to go.

Unless you decided ahead of time.

No, tonight I got to study.

And then if you did, you can do that.

You see, the emotion of the moment is always going to take you

to the easiest thing to do.

The decisions take you to, and discipline take you to the things

that matter the very most.

If you wait till you feel like studying, it's not going to happen.

If you say, you know, the morning of class I'm going to decide

whether or not I'm going to go, you're going to miss.

You have to decide that ahead of time.

You know, the number one determinator of grades in college

is attend every class and don't touch your phone in class.

That's the number one indicator of grades in college.

Those two things, if you do that, you'll do well every single

time.

But you have to decide that ahead of time.

If you wait for the motion or the moment, you won't make that decision.

In the same way, you see, you have to think about time as a budget,

just like you do your financial budget and you only have

so much of it.

So what are the absolutes and then what are the discretionary things?

And if you're having trouble with time, things I've recommended

to people through the years, just keep a list for one week of

everything that you do, how much time you spend on this, that

and the other, and pretty soon you'll see it as a budget just like

you would a financial budget.

Where did I spend those minutes I have, and it will help

you to readjust some things.

And when you're looking about discipline and focus, my suggestion

is do the hardest stuff first.

If you do the hardest stuff first, it's amazing how much the

rest of the list takes care of itself.

And figure out how to reward yourself.

You know, some of you may not have long attention span.

I don't.

I get really distracted really easily and I want to do stuff.

So sometimes when I've got to do something, I'll say for 30 minutes,

I am not going to touch that phone.

I'm not going to do anything else.

I got to focus on this.

And at the end of 30 minutes, then I get to do that.

If you will create small times where you focus and then reward yourself,

you can find that you can start to lengthen those times as

you mature and develop.

Reward yourself for small blocks.

It makes a big difference.

But that takes discipline and that takes focus.

And that's what we see in the story of Martha and Mary.

Mary had incredible discipline and focus to do this.

And then we see in the story, be realistic, not idealistic.

Martha wanted to make it a great meal.

She wanted to please everybody.

And I'm sure she thought, I'm going to do this meal, everybody's

going to be happy, we're going to have a fabulous time.

And then I'm going to have time with Jesus when this is all

over.

And of course, it didn't happen that way because it always

comes in last.

Jesus gave Martha permission to not be idealistic.

He said, there will always be another meal.

Let it go.

Let it go.

He gave her permission.

And so many of us, especially high achieving people, are so idealistic.

They get gripped in time management because they get overwhelmed.

So let me give you four quick tips that might be helpful to you.

The first is set reachable goals and then reevaluate.

Set reachable goals.

You can say, well, you know, I get this story and this is really

important.

I got to say, spend more time with God.

I'm gonna get up an hour early every day and read my Bible and study.

No, you're not.

So don't set that goal.

It's not gonna happen.

You're gonna fall back asleep just like I would too.

Set a reasonable goal and then reevaluate it.

Do it for a while and then reevaluate it.

It doesn't have to be a life goal.

You can change it after a bit, but get into it and then reevaluate.

So start there.

Second, everything takes longer than you Planned.

If you understand that, it really helps you manage your time.

You have to plan the time you have, not the time you wish you had.

Because we all have this idealistic picture of how fast we

can get it done.

It doesn't happen that way.

Third thing I'd suggest to you is use your best hours for what's

most important.

Protect those best times for the things that matter the most.

And that's different for everybody.

We are all wired differently.

My best hours are 7pm to midnight.

If I'm going to write, if I'm going to think, if I'm going to do

something really important, that's the time I do it.

That's when my best times are is 7pm to midnight.

And I know that.

So I bulk up meetings, I bulk up other kinds of things during the

day so I can protect that time at night for projects and other kinds

of things I need to do.

Whatever your best time is, protect it carefully.

And then I would suggest to you, purposefully put spaces in your

schedule we can schedule so tight you don't have any room left

for your soul.

Leave some room to breathe.

Jesus said it's okay if the dinner's late.

It's not a problem if the dinner's late.

You see, an idealistic schedule assumes that everything

will go perfectly.

But a realistic schedule assumes you are human and life is

messy and it is.

Martha in this story needed more than a better schedule.

She needed to be realistic about a view of what actually could

be done and a view of what mattered most.

And here's a key time management principle from the story.

Jesus was teaching Mary and Martha to prioritize the things whose

value of lasts beyond the moment.

What lasts beyond the moment?

Mary's chosen what is better and it will not be taken away from

her.

Your time at Belhaven is more than to prepare you for a career.

To help you develop habits, deal with stress, how you treat people,

how you balance challenges.

You know, what you do when nobody's watching.

It's decision to build.

It's a decision you have to make whether to build your life around

Christ or to try to fit Christ into what space remains.

And that's a core decision that Jesus is asking us about in

this story.

If Jesus only gets what time is left over when everything else

is finished, Jesus will always come in last, every single time.

And life's not going to get any simpler after college.

I hate to tell you, it's only going to get worse.

You see, Jesus is saying, don't spend all your time on the

Things whose value ends when the task is finished.

And that doesn't mean spiritual things.

That football team will never forget that game Saturday night.

The rest of their lives, they will relive that game and all the

things that it took to win that game.

So it's not just about a spiritual thing.

It's the things that last, the things that matter.

Now I get it.

Sometimes, you know, you need a break.

You need to flip your phone.

You need to, you know, just to, you know, turn your mind off

for a minute.

Or maybe you want to look for more pictures of me, you know, Abby,

where's that picture?

Doing this thing that you got me to do.

You know, maybe you want to do that, that's okay.

And I do the same thing.

But we got to move along to the things that matter the most.

Invest your time with shapes you into who you're becoming.

Your relationship with Christ, your character, your wisdom, your

determination, your focus, your relationships.

Some things we spend time on are finished when the day's over.

And other things become part of who we are.

You see, Jesus is teaching to put the first things first.

Here's a quick, quick assignment for you.

We got two minutes to go.

Don't get wrestled yet.

We got two minutes to go.

We're not done yet.

Practical challenge.

Practical challenge.

And this challenge is not for when you first wake up in the morning,

but set the tone for the day.

For the next seven days, give Jesus your first meaningful attention

of the day.

Your first meaningful.

You know, if you come flying out of bed to class, I mean, out

of bed and go straight to class, that's not the time to do

it.

Maybe it's after class, maybe it's after lunch.

Whatever your most meaningful moment of the day is, give that attention

to Jesus.

Here's what I want you to do.

Spend 15 minutes, read the scripture.

Not long.

We're only going to do this for 15 minutes.

Read the scripture, a short passage, think about what it says

to you, then read it again.

And then ask God to teach you something about it.

It's as simple as that.

And if you're not used to reading scripture, start with the

Gospel of John.

It's the third gospel in the New Testament.

Start there and read just a page.

That's all you gotta do.

Do it.

15 minutes a day for the next seven days.

I challenge you.

And God will speak to you.

The point C is not to complete another task.

The point is to build the relationship.

Mary was at the feet of Jesus not because it was on her schedule,

but because Jesus was worth stopping for.

You and I are always going to have more stuff to do than we could

ever could or wish we could get done.

But you'll never have more than one life to become the person

God's calling you to be.

Following Jesus means we always need to learn to choose what

matters most.

That's what he's teaching us in the Scripture.

So ask him to help you to do that so you can see it, so you can

imagine it, and so you can hear it.

As our benediction says, no eye is seen, no ear is heard, no

mind is conceived, but God has prepared to those who love Him.