What can we learn from Mary & Martha (Part 1)
If your car only started once out of every two or three tries, would you consider it to be a good car? If the postman only came to your house a couple times a week, would you consider him to be reliable? If the electricity only worked occasionally when you flipped the light switch; would you call the electric company to complain? We tend to set a high standard of expectation in the things we want, what if we applied the same standards to church as we do other areas of our lives? Faith Service Worship Vision There may be times when you find it difficult to reconcile God’s truth to your own opinion or worldview, God’s truth is eternal, it does not change, our understanding of the truth does change as we allow God to work in our hearts and minds. These sessions are not about opinion, they are about learning truth, the truth contained in the Bible, together we are going to focus on how we apply God’s truth, black & white in a grey world. To set godly priorities, grow in Christian character and live according to God’s standards so that we are a living witness to others.
The basis of our belief: Session 11
Ashingdon Elim Bible Study 29 June 2010
If you only go to church once or twice a month would you expect to be called a faithful Christian? We expect loyalty and reliability from things and other people - isn’t it reasonable then that God just might expect that same level of reliability and loyalty from us when it comes to worshiping His Son? What brought you to 20:20 this evening? Was it your desire to fill your heart with more of knowledge of God? Was it an eagerness to gain a deeper understanding of the Bible? Or was it a sense of obligation? Was it habit? Is going to church something you do, or something you need? One Sunday morning, a mother yelled upstairs to her son who just wouldn’t get out of bed. She said, ‘This is your last chance! You get up so you can get ready to go to church!’ The son yelled back down, ‘I don’t want to go to church today!’ The mother said he had to because he was the Pastor! There are times when all of us might have to just stay home for one reason or another, but there should also be one underlying reason that keeps us coming back, and that one reason should be our desire to worship our Saviour; having a feeling of closeness with Him that is so personal we could no longer stay away from church than we could keep from eating. The passage I want us to consider in this study is LUKE 10:38-42. Lets put these verses into context - Jesus had just given the parable of the Good Samaritan to show how we are supposed to love our neighbour, and now he is using this situation with the two sisters to show how we are supposed to love our God. As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. ‘She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!” ‘Martha, Martha,’ the Lord answered, ‘you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.’ (Luke 10:38-42) 1
Focus
Martha’s home was located in the small village of Bethany, which was just outside Jerusalem.
Everything we do and every relationship we have demands focus. When we focus properly, we succeed. When we lose our focus, we begin to fail. The longer we go without focus, the worse our circumstances get. Lets consider the story of Mary and Martha and see what it might teach us about the cost of losing our focus.
Some bible scholars say that the way the bible describes this place as her home, would suggest that perhaps Martha was a widow and, therefore, was now the head of the household. In verse 38, it says, ‘Jesus came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to Him.’
Martha was the sister of Mary and Lazarus and they Feeling sorry for herself lived with her. These were friends of Jesus, and He had been here many times before. He found love Have you ever had unexpected guests show up for here, but we are going to see that the sisters expressed dinner? How did you react? their love for Him in very different ways. LUKE 10:40 describes Martha’s preoccupation with Have you ever noticed that people have different her household duties: ‘Martha was distracted by temperaments? all the preparations that had to be made. She came to Jesus and asked, ‘Lord, don’t you care that Some people are active and these people always my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell need to be busy, never able to sit still. Others are her to help me!’ thoughtful, willing to sit back and think things through. If you have had unexpected guests show up for dinner you can identify with how Martha felt. The Martha is a very activity-oriented person; her sister verse says that Martha was ‘distracted.’ Mary, however, appeared to have a more thoughtful nature. Maybe it was more of a sense of being pulled away from something else she wanted to do. Which of the sisters are you most like? Which sister do you think you should be? The implication is that she also wanted to sit and listen to Jesus, but felt compelled to put that off so I have heard some preachers say we should always be like Mary and less busy than Martha. And I have she could take care of everyone else’s needs. heard other preachers say we should be more like We should take our responsibilities seriously, but not Martha; always being productive with no idleness in to the point where we lose our proper perspective on our lives. other things going on around us. I believe the Lord wants us to be like Mary in our The problem was not what Martha was doing; it was worship, and like Martha in our work. If we were, the attitude she had while doing it She let herself we would receive a balance of both. become unbalanced. She wanted to sit and listen, but felt compelled to go and do. Mary is content to sit at Jesus’ feet soaking up the Word, while not doing anything else. But her big Do you ever have the wrong attitude in your life? sister, Martha, looked around at all the guests and Something may not go our way, or we think we have saw the need to prepare food so they could have been slighted and we start carrying a grudge. something to eat. The problem with this is; it is not a Christian Martha was the type of worker who would see the behaviour. It is sin. And we are told to not sin in our situation and say, ‘What a privilege it is for me to anger. prepare a meal for the Master!’ But when we hold something against somebody, it Mary on the other hand would have said, ‘What a only festers bigger and bigger. If we cannot forgive privilege it is for me to sit at the feet of the Master.’ someone else, God said He will not forgive us. Is one right and the other wrong? Within the church, we find a very unique problem No. Duty and devotion are both necessary but there that most of society does not have - and there are must be a balance. A balance where neither one two extremes to the problem: would hinder us from exhibiting the other. 2
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people who want to be involved and serve in every way they can, and they throw all of themselves into it. They still have jobs, families, and other obligations in their lives and many are overworked, or end up having too much on their plate.
Our task is to recognise that whenever we feel this unloving feeling towards others, that means we are out of line with God’s will and must immediately go to Him and ask forgiveness and strength. In EPHESIANS 4:26, we are told to not sin in our anger. But if we lose our focus, we will end up sinning, just like Martha did. She started finding fault with her sister.
people who do not want to be involved or serve in anyway at all. They often become masters of excuses and reasons why they ‘can not’ when the reality is they ‘will not’. Everything is used as an excuse - jobs, families, or other obligations.
Tell her to help me! In the second part of verse forty, Martha finally explodes and comes boiling out of the kitchen, probably in a huff, and says to Jesus, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone?” In other words tell her to help me!
A tendency to be constantly busy can cause us to lose focus. If we are trying to do too many things without having enough time to any of them properly. This was where Martha found herself; too busy to focus. It was her loss of focus that made Martha feel sorry for herself, and it was that lack of focus that also caused her to be angry.
At this point, Martha is so upset she doesn’t even call Mary by name, but refers to her as ‘my sister.’ As much as Martha had a need to serve others, Mary had a need to worship Jesus. Martha represents all of us at different points in our lives. We begin to think only of what we need, or what we want, and we forget that other people may have different needs and wants.
Angry at her sister Mary Our world is full of distractions. And the more the pressure, the more tempting it is to focus on the distractions rather than the important. I think Martha wanted to honour Jesus, but she saw her priority as fixing a meal to make sure others were taken care of. Maybe you can identify with that, perhaps you have begun the task of making a huge meal (like Christmas dinner) and you start with the greatest of enthusiasm, but as the day progresses, you begin to realize that you are running out of time and you cannot possibly finish everything that you planned to do. When that happens, you might get angry – angry with yourself for being in this situation, and angry with anyone else who might have hindered you in accomplishing your goal. Martha was like that, the harder she worked the more worked up she became.
This is very important; to be true Christians, we must love people enough to let them have their priorities. When a genuine problem comes up, conflicting their priorities and our priorities, a loving conversation must take place, not an upset commentary. Martha’s loss of that Godly focus caused her to get upset, but it also caused her:
Questioning Jesus care! As Mary goes in to talk to Jesus about her problem, there is a spirit of selfishness in her voice. It’s like she is saying, ‘Lord, make sure I get my way on this!’ And in so doing, she is accusing Jesus of not caring. Martha linked Jesus’ caring about her to His telling Mary to get in the kitchen and help her fix dinner for everyone. But that isn’t how Jesus shows we care, is it?
Some people ‘burn out’ in service to others, but that day, Martha was ‘burned up’ in hers. It is bad enough to feel as if everything rests on your shoulders. It is even worse when we see someone who doesn’t seem to be pulling their own weight and it puts that puts even more pressure on us. That is what we see happening to Martha.
Do we ever accuse Jesus of not caring because He didn’t give us what we wanted at the time?
We become tense and pressure increases when we try to perform wrong tasks, or when we try to do too many things in a short period of time. We end up developing a spirit of negativity, and that causes us to judge others and only see how they are hindering us from accomplishing our goals. 3
Martha’s problem was that she expected Mary to serve and worship Christ in Martha’s way, not Mary’s way. And I think we sometimes expect others to love, honour, and worship Jesus just like we do, and if they don’t, we automatically consider what they do as wrong.
What can we learn?
‘Then, six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany. There they made Him a supper; and Martha served, but Lazarus was one of those who sat at the table with Him. Then Mary took a pound of very costly perfume and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped His feet dry with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of that oil.’ (John 12:1-3).
Jesus responds to Martha by saying: ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried about many things. But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.’ (Luke 10:41-42). Jesus responds with tenderness. He did not rebuke her for making the meal. Martha’s problem was not that she was preparing food for her guests, but that she gave too much importance to it. Today we still have to be careful that we do not let the things we do become more important to us than the One we serve. Martha thought what she needed most right then was to have her sister help her in the kitchen.
She was severely criticised by at least one disciple for her ‘wasteful’ action. Did Mary quit because of criticism? No. She was one of the women at the tomb on the morning of the resurrection. When you sit at the feet of Jesus you learn not to quit because other people criticize you. You learn to turn the other cheek and keep going.
In reality, what she needed most was a new perspective. Jesus gave her what she needed, not what she thought she needed. And Jesus continues to do that for us today, too. He shows us, through the Holy Spirit, where we need to change; what attitudes we need to keep; and what attitudes we need to lose.
In MATTHEW 26:13, Jesus honours Mary, ‘wherever this gospel is preached in the world, what this woman has done will also be told as a memorial to her.’ These two passages, concerning Martha’s confession and Mary’s worship, give evidence that both these sisters achieved the balance between duty and devotion.
Every Christian must remember this truth: ‘If we forget Jesus while serving Him, we will end up quitting Him.’
Where is your focus? Have you been more concerned with accomplishing your duties, without taking the time necessary to personally worship Jesus? Have you been so involved in worshiping Him that you haven’t actually accomplished anything for Him?
How can we serve Him if we do not worship Him? How can we worship Him if we do not serve Him? Unless we take the time to worship Him personally, we will not really know how to serve Him properly. n
Worshiping without serving is powerless
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Serving without worshiping has no direction
We must have the right balance in our relationship with Jesus.
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Serving after worshiping produces power and balance
How can you accomplish the correct balance in your own life?
We need to understanding the part these sisters play in Biblical history. There are two great confessions about who Jesus really was. One was given by Martha: ‘Yes, Lord,’ replied Martha, ‘I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.’ (John 11:27)
‘Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourself. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word, but does not do what it says, is like a man who looks in the mirror, and as soon as he walks away, forgets what he looks like. But the one who listens to the word, and then begins to do what it says, will be blessed in what he does.’ (James 1:22)
The other great confession is found in Matthew 16:16, when Jesus asked Peter who he thought Jesus was: ‘Peter answered, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ Mary is also found elsewhere in Scripture. Each time she is at the feet of Jesus. One of them is perhaps the most moving picture of sacrificial worship in the Bible.
Why do you go to church? Do you go to worship Jesus? Do you go to serve Jesus? We are called to worship Him, and then take what we learn and put it to active use in our life to serve Him. Either one without the other is incomplete. 4