What to do when you are overbooked, overworked, and overstressed
: Doing a day with Jesus.
If you’ve opened your Bible to Luke 10, you’ll notice that we’re going to be thinking about Mary.
Martha and Jesus.
Martha lived with her sister, Mary, and their brother Lazarus. Their home was a place that Jesus
had been to many times, a place that he knew He was loved and accepted. In the home of
Martha, Mary, and Lazarus Jesus and his disciples sit down for some relaxation away from the
press of the crowds.
On this occasion, the two sisters invited Jesus to a meal at their house. Martha, the older of the
two, gets busy with preparing and serving while Mary gets caught up in conversation with
Jesus. A conflict quickly arises between the two sisters. Let’s read…
38 Now as they were traveling along, He entered a village; and a woman named Martha
welcomed Him into her home.
39 She had a sister called Mary, who was seated at the Lord’s feet, listening to His word.
40 But Martha was distracted with all her preparations, and she came up to Him and said,
"Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to do all the serving alone? Then tell her to
help me."
41 But the Lord answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered
about so many things;
42 but only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be
taken away from her.”
Luke 10:38-42
If we didn’t know the punch line of this story and if we were honest, we’d side with Martha.
We’d expect Jesus to come down hard on her sitting sister. Our culture promotes busyness.
To do my day with God, I will…
1. … welcome Jesus into my world. v. 38
38 Now as they were traveling along, He entered a village; and a woman named Martha
welcomed Him into her home.
2. … deal decisively with my distractions. vv. 40-41
40 But Martha was distracted with all her preparations that
The sense of the word translated “distracted” here is “to be pulled away” or “dragged away.”
Literally, it’s pulled around in many different directions. It seems that the idea is that Martha
wanted to hear Jesus herself. She wanted to be seated at his feet too, but she was pulled
away by her sense of her “duties.”
Did you know there are two Noahs in the Bible? One was a man, the other a woman. There is the Noah
who built the ark, and there is Noah, who was a daughter of Zelophehad (Num 27:1).
The story of Noah and her sisters—Mahlah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah—is a remarkable account of
God’s love, mercy, grace, and provision.
A Special Case of Inheritance
Numbers 26 records that God had ordered Moses and Eleazer, the high priest, to take a census of the male
Israelites twenty years old and above. This census would determine property allocation for each tribe of
Israel once the nation entered the Promised Land.
In Numbers 27, we discover a special case of inheritance not specifically covered in the Law of Moses: a
man named Zelophehad had five daughters, no sons, and had died before the census was taken.
What would happen to his five daughters? Were they entitled to a share in the Promised Land, even
though their father had not been counted in the census (he had “died in the wilderness,” Num 27:3, before
the census was taken)?
Also, inheritance passed from father to son, not from father to daughter. Through no fault of their own,
these daughters of Zelophehad were unmarried, fatherless women with no prospect of inheritance rights.
How could they live and support themselves in the Promised Land?
What to do?
In many ancient cultures, women did not have personal or property rights. Thus, it is noteworthy that
Noah and her sisters had the confidence, faith, and freedom to approach Moses and Eleazer with their
question about inheritance: “Why should the name of our father be removed from among his family
because he had no son? Give us a possession among our father’s brothers” (Num 27:4).
They were asking for two things: they requested that their father be counted posthumously in the census
since he had no male heir to be counted, and they asked that they be given the land that would be rightly
theirs if they were sons.
These are impressive women: they are intelligent, articulate, and familiar with the Law. They believed
God’s promise that their generation would enter the land, and they believed that the Lord would favor
them; otherwise, they never would have approached Moses, Eleazer, the leaders, and the entire
the congregation in the first place.
Moses and the other men could have easily told these women to go home, get married, and not worry
their pretty little heads with this legal issue. But these men did not do that. This speaks highly of the
woman’s place in Israelite culture, as opposed to a woman’s place in the pagan cultures surrounding them.
Moses took this case to the Lord, and the Lord agreed with the women. He told Moses to give them their
portion of the land. But not only that. Numbers 26:33 mentions Zelophehad and his daughters in the
census count.
Why?
Because the census was adjusted to include Zelophehad posthumously for the sake of his five daughters.
Did you catch that?
Zelophehad and his entire generation, except Joshua and Caleb, had died in the wilderness, yet God
allowed the census to be adjusted so that Zelophehad could be named in it for the sake of his daughters.
Now that is grace!
Thanks to Noah and her sisters, the order of inheritance was made clear: son, daughter, brother, paternal
uncle, nearest family member.
These women asked by faith, and God graciously and lovingly honored their request.
There are many lessons we can glean from this account.
