This week Ross preaches on Luke 10:38-42
The One thing that's Necessary
Ross Tenneson / General
Connection
Revelation
English Standard Version Chapter 10
38 Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house.
Verse 38 begins, “now as they went on their way…” As we have mentioned, Jesus is on a journey to Jerusalem where he will fulfill his life’s purpose. The next several chapters in Luke will be the story of Jesus on a journey and the different people he meets and situations he encounters. His teaching and life along this journey serves as a model for what our lives should be as we journey through this world toward eternity.
Each step in this journey is going to illustrate an important aspect of the Christian life. We need all of these different pictures of Jesus and his teaching so we get a complete picture instead of a lopsided one.
So much of Jesus’s teaching in the last few chapters have called for a radical renunciation of all we have in this life and a call to follow him and make disciples. These calls from Jesus are so important, yet if we don’t get what he shows us in this story, we will fall apart as we try to radically follow him. Today, Jesus will show us the one thing that’s necessary to sustain a life of faith and obedience, without which we will certainly fail and our Christian lives come apart. In fact this one thing sustains and empowers a life of obedience and Christ-likeness in all the diverse ways Jesus has called us to be like him.
What if I told you there was one habit that could have an impact on all other habits and overflow to help you be like Jesus in every way? Would you want to know what this habit is and how to practice it and grow in it?
Our text this evening is going to teach us about this one habit we need above all others.
Now, let’s introduce the setting and the characters. Luke says, “Jesus entered a village.” What village? Luke doesn’t even specify its name, pointing to its insignificance. Martha, the woman who welcomes Jesus into his house is also someone we learn next to nothing about from Luke. She was likely a very ordinary person.
Jesus will reveal a most significant truth in an insignificant place. What does this mean? That Jesus loves to work in ordinary lives in ordinary places and give the greatest treasures in the world to anyone who comes to him. If you feel insignificant today or unimpressive, Jesus has a word for you.
English Standard Version Chapter 10
39 And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching.
We quickly learn that Martha has a sister named Mary. These two women each represent a different kind of heart posture we can have toward Jesus. Their body language will illustrate for us two different ways our hearts can approach Jesus.
How does Mary approach Jesus? She (1) sits and (2) listens to his teaching. Mary’s chief concern is hearing the word of God. Her posture of sitting as the feet of Jesus shows her humility and eagerness to receive from him.
What is Mary seeking in this situation? She is seeking closeness and intimacy with Jesus. There is no other way to be close to Jesus except to come to him in humility and with a desire to hear his words. There is no other way to be close to Jesus than to come to him how Mary did. You can’t become close to someone if you don’t communicate with them. If we will be with Jesus, we must listen to Jesus.
It takes a little consideration to think about how this applies to us today. How, since Jesus is no longer present with us in his body on earth, can we seek closeness to him?
While Jesus is no longer with us in the same way, he’s still with us, and the Bible teaches he is actually more available rather than less available than he was to Mary. After ascending to heaven, he sent his Spirit to his people so that he would be completely available to all his people at all times through prayer and the Scriptures.
When we come to Jesus in word and prayer, we come to him in the same manner that Mary did. What is prayer but a demonstration of the same humility Mary had before Jesus? In prayer, we admit our humility and our dependence on Jesus by our very act of praying. Those who don’t pray live as if they don’t need his help.
And when we open the Scriptures and read God’s word, we shows the exact same desire for the words of God that Mary did. In listening to God’s voice speak to us through his Word, we get to enjoy the same closeness to Jesus as Mary. Prayer and the word throw open the door to closeness with God like nothing else in the world can.
When we think of it that way, how could we go a single day without it? If being with Jesus is better than everything else the world has to offer, and reading the Word and praying is a crucial way to spend time with him, then wouldn’t approaching him daily in this way be the most important thing in our lives?
Why does Luke put this story here right after the parable of the good Samaritan and the call to love without limit?
Because if we try loving like Jesus, without enjoying our relationship with Jesus, we will start to drift from Jesus (like we see in the case of Martha). The reward we get for loving like Jesus is primarily being nearer to Jesus and enjoying more of his presence. Yet, if we cut ourselves off from the way Jesus has invited us to come and be with him, we will be mere servants who don’t get to enjoy relationship with the one we serve. Then, our hearts turn bitter and cold rather than warm and tender. If we try to love like Jesus yet neglect being with Jesus, our relationship with Jesus will fall apart.
How can this happen? How do some of us find ourselves in this place?
Let’s take a look at verse 40 to see,
English Standard Version Chapter 10
40 But Martha was distracted with much serving.
Now we get to see Mary’s sister, Martha. She shows us an alternative heart posture toward Jesus. Luke says, “Martha was distracted with much serving.” Martha, on the other hand, makes doing for Jesus her priority over being with Jesus. Luke says Martha was “distracted.” A distraction is something that takes your attention away from what you want to focus on. Martha’s serving was a distraction from deep and close relationship with the one whom she was made to be with.
I want to ask you a question, was Martha’s serving Jesus with hospitality a bad thing in itself? Was it wrong for her to give Jesus food and water and a clean place to rest?
Absolutely not! Giving Jesus, while he was in the flesh, a good meal and place to rest was probably one of the best things someone could ever do. What’s the point? No matter how good and important something is, if it takes away from the best thing, it becomes a bad thing.
Perhaps one reason some of us struggle to spend time with Jesus are all of the really good things we are devoting our lives to: our families, our jobs, our friends, even our ministry to others. Yet, no matter how good any of these things are, if they take away from us having a genuine and deep relationship with Jesus, then they are distractions. We must not compromise; we must not trade knowing Jesus for any other priority, no matter how good it seems.
We see in Martha’s next words that her making serving her priority was not an innocent mistake, but rather reveals a heart problem,
English Standard Version Chapter 10
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.”
We can see that Martha’s actions of serving while Mary listened to Jesus grew into resentment in her heart toward her sister. What is going on here? When we serve Jesus and do things for Jesus without being with Jesus, something harmful happens in our hearts: we start to measure ourselves by what we’ve done for Jesus rather than measuring ourselves by what he has done for us.
Why do I say she was measuring herself by what she did? Because she compares herself to her sister. Comparison is a sure indication that you are basing your identity and worth in some way off of what you are comparing with others. If you tend to compare how much you make with others, make no mistake, you also tend to base your worth off of how much you make.
When we work for Jesus but don’t spend time with him, we reinforce the false concept that he needs us rather than the truth: we need him.
Jesus sees right through Martha’s heart and responds,
English Standard Version Chapter 10
41 But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things,
Jesus responds to Martha and her distracted heart. He speaks directly to her, yet he speaks gently. The double use of her name signals a gentle rebuke.[1] What does Jesus rebuker her for? The anxiety and preoccupation in her heart. Her concerns with other things besides Jesus (even good things) keep her from being fully present with Jesus.
You can often feel this in conversations with people: when you are carrying anxiety about something around with you, it can keep you from focusing and being present with the person right in front of you.
Anxieties and distractions about life can keep us from focusing on Jesus when we are with him, or worse, can crowd our schedules out so that we don’t spend any time with him at all.
Jesus teaches in chapter 12 about anxiety,
English Standard Version Chapter 12
22 And he said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. 23 For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. 24 Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds!
In other words, God’s good heart is demonstrated in how he cares for the birds. Since you are more important to him than birds, you don’t have to worry. Let’s put these thoughts together:
If worry and distraction keeps us from being present with Jesus and spending time with him, and we experience worry and distraction when we lose sight of God’s goodness, then not spending time with Jesus comes from losing site of the goodness of God. In other words, when we start to become suspicious of God’s good character or lose site of his goodness, it becomes easier and easier not to spend time with him. We become distracted by otherwise good things that we use as substitutes for the goodness of God.
In Martha’s case, it’s showing hospitality. She manages her own home to a fault, looking for the affirmation, wholeness, and security in her serving that she was supposed to find in being with Jesus.
The reason we can pause from ministry, pause from family time, pause from work, pause from house work, pause from serving our neighbors, pause from our hobbies, pause from current events, pause from entertainment, pause from anything and everything that keeps us from spending time with Jesus is this…
because his heart is good and he is willing to give us what we truly need and that nothing else in this world can give. Jesus then says this in his teaching on worry and anxiety,
English Standard Version Chapter 12
32 “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.
It is his and his Father’s good pleasure to give what we need most: the acceptance, the affirmation, the security, the hope that we only find in a rich relationship with Jesus yet we look for else where. It’s God’s “good pleasure” to give it. It’s because it’s his good pleasure to give us all that we need that we can hit the pause button on everything else in order to spend time with him.
A restlessness that keeps us from spending time with him says, “I’m not sure if I can really receive what I need from being with him so I need to go and do this and that instead and try to calm my heart’s discontentment on my own...”
But friends, the verse says it is his “good pleasure” to give to you what you need most. You can rest from your restlessness because his heart is good. Come and listen to his voice each morning by opening your Bible and listening to his voice, it’s actually what you need more than anything else, and he is glad to give you what you need.
Nothing less than his death on the cross was the price that he paid so that we could deeply relate to him. When Jesus died, God ripped something in two, from end to end. Do you remember what that was? That’s right, the torn curtain represents the unhindered access we all have to the presence of God. You may ask, how can I be sure he wants to give himself to me? How can I be sure it’s really worth it to spend my time seeking him day by day? You can be sure because the price he paid to be able to give himself to you was nothing less than his own life. He completely paid for and forgave our sin so that there would no longer be any barrier between us and him.
Now getting back to some reasons we struggle to be with God, on the other hand, some of us might feel too restless to spend times with Jesus, but rather feel indifference. Time in the Word may feel dry, lifeless, or uneventful. We struggle to believe it’s as important as we hear it is. I think those in this situation struggle with the same heart problem, struggling to grasp the goodness of the heart of God.
If we believed that what he is giving to us is himself, and that he wants to give himself, he’s not holding himself back, then our indifference would turn to desire to be with him. Often times it’s not like a switch in our heart that changes from indifference to desire, it’s rather a process of growing in knowing he is good and cultivating an awareness of our need for him in our hearts. Yet, we get this no other place than being with him and listening to his voice. The way to shake out of our indifference to be with Jesus is to be with Jesus and listen for his voice and ask that God would transform us to want to be with him more than anything.
Where ultimately do we want our hearts to be? How does Jesus describe the importance of this part of his relationship with us,
English Standard Version Chapter 10
42 but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”
Jesus uses a phrase that should catch our attention. “one thing is necessary.” If Jesus says that there is one thing that we need above everything else, the only response we can muster is, “what is that one thing that I might have it?” That one thing is spending time with him by listening to his his voice and responding to his voice with your own. Relating to Jesus this way leads to the intimacy with Jesus that we were made for.
It’s not that being with Jesus in our Bibles is the only thing that we were made for or the only thing that we need, but so central to who we are and so central to everything else in the Christian life that Jesus uses this striking phrase, “one thing is necessary,” to talk about it. If we are not meant to do anything for God apart from relationship with God, then time to cultivate that relationship becomes the central, necessary thing.
I have had times where I have loved and served people just because I made myself do it. I have had other times where I felt God’s help and presence and it made serving others life-giving rather than life taking. Who here knows the difference of what I’m talking about. What I’m trying to share is that our lives of being with Jesus and going to make the biggest difference of whether he’s with us when we are serving others.
I want us to see something: Jesus is not just holding out a value for us. He is asking us to have the exact same value his whole life exemplified. When Satan tempted him in the wilderness to turn stones into bread, Jesus responded by quoting Deut 8:3,
“Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”
When we are listening to Jesus, we are listening to his Father who speaks through Jesus. Jesus depended on the Words and the relationship he had with his Father to live a completely God-pleasing life and to defeat sin and death.
I want to ask us a question:
If Jesus needed to hear the voice of his Father in order to live a pleasing life to his Father, how could we live as if we didn’t?
When we neglect daily habits of Bible reading and prayer, what our lives are communicating is that we don’t actually depend on deep relationship with our God in order to live in a way that pleases him. And since we all know deep down that relationship with Jesus is what we need, let’s make time with him our “one thing.”
In each season of life, we all tend to gravitate toward “one thing” that we look to escape to for rest and joy to give us the strength to persevere in the rest of life. I look to a number of different refuges at different times:
Intellectualism and books (even books about God) can become my one thing. Politics and watching my candidate win can become my one thing. When I was younger, sports and video games were my one thing.
What’s your one thing in this season of life?
By, God’s grace, I am moving closer to having my one thing being time with him (although I still have further to go). There has been a shift in my thinking that has helped me grow in this direction. I used to think of my Bible and prayer time in the morning as the greatest part of my being with God.
I don’t quite look at it this way anymore. I see morning prayer and Word time as a necessary part of my relationship with God, but I see it more as preparation to relate with God throughout the day rather than the the biggest part of my being with God itself.
What does it look like for me to relate to God during the day then? In addition to praying at moments I get a chance, I’m looking for a space in my afternoon or evening. This can be a slot that’s ten minutes long (but hopefully longer). It can be alone or with other people. It’s the slot I’m looking forward to in my day.
I then go for a walk outside and talk out loud to God. I also read some more Scripture and listen to his voice. There’s something about doing this a little later in the day that my mind if more engaged and there is something about doing it outside that frees me to express myself more freely to God and makes me more aware of his presence.
I think a lot of us struggle to pray for extended periods of time because we don’t know what to say or it doesn’t seem engaging. Try praying while walking outside, and thinking of it as an escape from life to do what you want to do most of all. Here’s a key verse that you can use to shape this time:
English Standard Version Psalm 62
8 Trust in him at all times, O people;
pour out your heart before him;
God is a refuge for us. Selah
I’m not to the place where I can pour out my heart to God at all times, but I can do it once a day during this time. I pause and listen for his voice and meditate on the Scriptures I have read so that it’s me listening to him and not just me speaking to him. And wow do I feel refreshed in my soul when this becomes a daily part of my rhythm. I want us to have this church so that when we come together we are coming together with other people who are full of God.
Jesus then concludes,
English Standard Version Chapter 10
Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”
Jesus said that Mary’s pausing to listen to him is the “good portion.” That’s a curious word. What is Jesus referring to? The “good portion” is language that refers to the part of an inheritance that belongs to an inheritor. When it comes to God and his people, the Scriptures use this Word to refer to the Promised Land.
Yet, as the OT unfolds, it becomes clear that the inheritance of the Promised Land, this beautiful and abundant place to live, serves as a place holder, or an image, of what God is like. What is God like? He is like a field full of green plants, plants, and animals providing you with all of the nourishment you need to live. In the OT, one of the twelve tribes didn’t receive an inheritance in the land because they were going to serve as Priests in God’s temple instead. Listen to this verse that describes their inheritance,
English Standard Version Chapter 18
20 And the Lord said to Aaron, “You shall have no inheritance in their land, neither shall you have any portion among them. I am your portion and your inheritance among the people of Israel.
In other words, Martha is working to do what she believes will bring life to herself and others. Meanwhile, Mary is sitting with the source of life himself. You tell me which is a better choice.
And finally, it won’t be taken away from her. Everything we work for, strive for, and build can be taken away from us, except for our relationship with Jesus. Only the relationship we cultivate with him and the love we show to others through him will last beyond death.
It may seem like Mary is doing an ordinary thing. Yet, the ordinary act of listening to Jesus and being with him is the only real action that reaps benefits forever that no one can ever take away with you.
[1] Barry, J. D., Mangum, D., Brown, D. R., Heiser, M. S., Custis, M., Ritzema, E., … Bomar, D. (2012, 2016). Faithlife Study Bible (Lk 10:41). Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
