Luke 10:38-42 ESV
“Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And 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.’”
Good and Best
Let me just say this before we move on. What Martha was
doing was not a bad thing. When we have house guests, someone has to prepare
the food and set the table and serve the food and then clean off the table and put
the food away and then clean up the dishes. For the food does not make itself
or serve itself or clean up itself. So, it was perfectly reasonable that since
they had a house guest that Martha would be doing what she was doing.
And this is not teaching that it is better to be lazy and
slothful and irresponsible and to stick others with all the work while we do
nothing but just sit around listening to others talk. For we are taught in the
Scriptures to be hospitable and to be good hosts or hostesses and to treat our
guests with honor and respect. And we are taught the importance of serving
others, so this is not unreasonable that any of us might be doing what Martha
did.
So, what is the lesson to be learned here? I believe, for
one, that it has to do with priorities, i.e. with choosing between what is good
and what is best. Martha chose what was good, to be a good hostess, and to
serve the Lord, but Mary chose what was best, to sit at Jesus’ feet and to
learn from him and to be taught by him. Yet, this does not mean that we neglect
our other responsibilities, but that we make Jesus our top priority.
A Time for Everything
There is a time for everything. And the Scriptures do teach
that if we don’t work, we don’t eat (2 Thes 3:6-11). And the Scriptures do
teach that laziness (slothfulness, idleness) is a sin (1 Tim 5:8-13; Prov 10:4;
Matt 25:24-29; 1 Thes 5:14; Tit 1:12; Rom 12:11). And there are works required
of us (Eph 2:10; 1 Co 15:58; 2 Co 9:8; Gal 5:6; Php 2:12-13; Col 1:9-14; 2
Thess 1:11-12; 2 Tim. 2:21; Tit 2:11-14; Jn 15:1-11; Tit 3:8; Jas 2:17).
So, it isn’t even that it is best just to sit and read the
Scriptures all day and just listen to what Jesus has to teach us. For if we do
not do what they teach us we are not doing what is best (James 1:22-25). For we
are to be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving ourselves. For if
all we do is just listen but we don’t do what we are being taught to do, then
it is useless to us. For the gospel is not a “do nothing” gospel.
So, this is definitely not teaching us that all that is
required of us is just to sit and listen to Jesus and that serving others and
doing for God is evil. But we do have to be good listeners first so that we
know the doing that he requires of us and so we know how that is supposed to
work, with us first of all dying with Christ to sin and then living to him and
to his righteousness and in his power and strength (Rom 6:1-23; Eph 4:17-24;
Rom 8:1-17).
So, serving God/Jesus and others is a good thing to do. And
being doers of the word and not hearers only, and those who do the works that
God requires, by his grace, are excellent in God’s sight. So, how do we
distinguish between what is acceptable to God and what isn’t, or what will
please him, and what won’t please him? We first of all have to study the Scriptures
in context to learn what they teach us.
We Decide, or God Decides
Martha, thus, would be an example of someone who decided
what she was going to do for the Lord in her own power and strength, hoping
that he would be pleased. But she didn’t first sit and listen and learn from
him so that she would know what would please him and what he required of her.
So, she was operating in her own flesh and not in the power of God, and she was
doing what she preferred but not what he preferred.
And all throughout the Old Testament God chided his people
for making sacrifices to him which were not pleasing to him because they weren’t
first listening to him to find out what pleased him. They were just doing what
they wanted to do hoping he would be pleased without inquiring of him as to
what would be pleasing to him and what he considered was best. Now they had an
additional problem of making sin their practice while they did this.
So, the point of this is that works and service are not bad
things. They just need to be directed by the Lord and be what he wants from us
and not just what we are willing to give, especially if we are withholding our
love and devotion and obedience. And especially if we are deliberately and
habitually doing evil in his sight and we are hoping that if we do enough good
works that it will somehow wipe out the bad that we are doing.
But it doesn’t work that way. We can’t just do for God out
of our own minds and out of our own choosing while we also choose to sin
against him. It is not love if we do some kind things for others, either, while
we willfully, habitually, deliberately, and premeditatedly do evil against them
by sinning against them and doing what we know is going to harm them.
You can’t habitually cheat on your spouse and then expect him/her
to believe that you love him/her. And the same goes with God. You can’t do what
you think will please God by serving in the institutional church or by going to
church gatherings or by giving to the poor while you trample on the spirit of grace
and deny the Lordship of Christ over your lives by deliberately and habitually
sinning against the Lord and plotting evil on your beds.
What is Best
This passage in Luke 10 does not give us a full picture of
what is God’s best for us and of what all he desires and requires of us if we
are to be his followers. What it does is set the stage to let us know that we can’t
make it up ourselves. We can’t decide in our own thinking and reasoning what
God wants. And we can’t cherry pick the Scriptures we like while we reject the
bulk of the rest of them and then interpret them out of their context to agree
with our own ideas of what our salvation should look like, either.
And this passage lets us know that first priority is that we
need to be sitting at Jesus’ feet listening to what his word teaches us. And we
don’t do this just by listening to sermons or reading little feel-good
devotionals, nor by reading books written by mere mortals not under the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit, in order to tell us what the Bible teaches. We
need to be students of the word (the whole counsel of God), studying the
Scriptures in their context, and then we need to be doers of the word and not
hearers only.
And then we will know what God requires of us in the way of
thought, word, and deed. And then we need to be doing what the word teaches to
us who are followers of Jesus Christ and not just doing what we want to do
without regard for what God wants. And in this way we will be honoring our Lord
by doing what pleases him and by choosing “the good portion.” For we need to be
those who are honoring our Lord with our lives.
[Lu 9:23-26; Jn 6:35-58; Jn
15:1-11; Rom 6:1-23; Rom 8:1-17; Eph 4:17-24; 1 Pet 2:24; 1
Co 6:9-10, 19-20; 2 Co 5:10, 15; Tit 2:11-14; Jas 1:22-25; Gal 5:16-21; Eph 5:3-6; Gal 6:7-8; Rom 2:6-8; Matt 7:21-23; Heb 10:26-27; 1
Jn 1:5-9; 1 Jn 2:3-6; 1 Jn 3:4-10; Rom 12:1-2; Eph 2:8-10]
Angels We Have Heard on High
By Anonymous
Angels we have heard on high
Sweetly singing o'er the plains
And the mountains in reply
Echo back their joyous strains
Shepherds, why this jubilee?
Why your joyous strains prolong?
Say what may the tidings be
Which inspire your heavenly song?
Come to Bethlehem and see
Him whose birth the angels sing,
Come, adore on bended knee,
Christ the Lord, the newborn King.
Gloria, in excelsis Deo
Gloria, in excelsis Deo
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