Martha, Martha

Luke 10:38-42

Key Verse 10:41,42  

"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."

Today we would like to think about how we can secure a close relationship with the Lord so that through the Lord’s help we may all grow up to his greatness, carrying out his will for His glory.  In addition, the passage can serve as a good guide for all of us in serving the Fall Bible Conference, so through the conference we would not be busy-minded, but rather go into a deeper level of our relationship with Jesus Christ and be blessed by Him.  

First, Martha opened her home.

The first thing we need to do to secure a close relationship with the Lord is to open ourselves to Jesus Christ. Martha set a good example. Let us think about what Martha did for Jesus and his disciples in verse 38. “As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him.” Martha opened her "home". Here the word "home" indicates she opened her heart first in welcoming the Lord and his disciples. She loved the Lord and the Lord’s ministry. When she heard that the Lord was coming, she was overjoyed. In love, she started making all the preparations necessary. Then, when the Lord arrived, it was Martha who went out and greeted the Lord first. Then, as soon as the Lord and his disciples got settled in, she ran to the kitchen, and started cooking something. In this way, Martha opened her home. 

It has been said that you can purchase a house but not a home. A house has only physical dimensions. But a home has spiritual dimensions. From a spiritual standpoint, our physical body can be compared to a house. Our heart devoted to the Lord can be likened to a home. Our heart is meant to serve as the Lord’s throne room, the place where the Lord can establish his presence within us. Martha devoted her heart to the Lord first and then her physical home. So Martha did what is right. But not all people do what Martha did. 

One of the reasons for people not opening their hearts and their homes to the Lord is because of their lack of understanding. What do they not understand? They do not understand God’s principle of blessing: God blesses each person from inside. As one opens one’s heart to the Lord and lets the Lord come in and take residence there, the Lord starts blessing that person and that person’s possessions. This is the Lord’s principle. This principle never changes. The Lord God is the same yesterday today and forever. And every one must give this principle a chance to work, for it will prove true to everyone who practices it. 

Just in case not all of us are fully convinced of this truth, let me take two examples from the Bible: first, let us think about Abraham in Genesis. From Genesis 12 and beyond, the book of Genesis has many beautiful stories about Abraham’s relationship with the Lord. Of all the stories recorded there the episode described in Genesis 18:1-10 serves as a supreme example; it gives us a glimpse of what an intimate relationship with the Lord Abraham and his family members enjoyed. In the first part of Genesis 18, we see Abraham opening his home and serving three guests from God the Father. Reading this passage itself makes one feel good. The service Abraham provided for the Lord was good not just because of the contents of the meal but mainly because of the “love” Abraham had for the Lord. His heart was there. After all, the Lord does not dig food as much as we do. But the Lord truly appreciates us giving our heart to the Lord. After the eating fellowship was over, the Lord felt truly “satisfied.” He then said, "I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son." As the Lord had said, the Lord God blessed Sarah, and allowed her to give birth to the long awaited son Isaac. And Isaac means “laughter.” 

Here is the second example. It is recorded in 2 Samuel 6. It was in the day of Israel when David was a king. As many of us know, it was Solomon, David’s son, who built the Lord’s temple in Jerusalem. The Lord’s temple came with many pieces such as a table, a lamp-stand called the Menorah, curtains, etc. But of all the furnishings, the Ark of God was the most important item because the Lord promised that it was ‘there, above the cover between the two cherubim that are above the ark…, the Lord will meet with the Israelites. Exodus 25:22.  Now, prior to the temple coming into existence in Jerusalem, there was a period of time when the Ark was housed in different locations. And locations included an individual house among the Israelites. And each time the owner of a house “welcomed” the Lord with a loving heart the Lord richly blessed the house. 2 Samuel 6:11 is the case in point for it reads, “The ark of the Lord remained in the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite for three months, and the Lord blessed him and his entire household. Here ‘household’ refers to everyone and everything in his house. The Lord God blessed Obed’s person(s) and his possessions. 

Martha opened her home to the Lord. The Lord blesses the one who opens himself to the Lord with a loving heart. In the case of Martha, the Lord blessed her to be one of the blessed witnesses of the Lord’s love and power, especially the power of resurrection, for it was in the household of Martha that the Lord God raised Lazarus back to life. Lazarus had died and his dead body remained in a tomb for four days. His body started decaying so much so that a bad smell had begun to ooze out. But Jesus said to dead Lazarus, “Lazarus, come out!” Then, Lazarus came out. After witnessing this miracle, Martha and Mary were never the same. 

If anyone desires to see the full power of Jesus’ power of resurrection working in his life, he must first open his heart fully to the Lord. This coming weekend, we would like to hold a Bible conference with the theme title, “The Christ of God.” I pray that this conference would serve as a wonderful opportunity for everyone to meet Jesus personally and secure a deep personal relationship with Him. In preparation for this prayer topic, I would encourage everyone to come to this conference by praying to open his or her heart fully “to the Lord”. 

Second, Mary sat at the Lord’s feet, listening to what he said.

After opening one’s heart to the Lord, the next thing one must do in securing an intimate relationship with the Lord is to follow through the step called “Mary’s choice.” What is Mary’s choice? Look at verse 39. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said. "Mary's choice" is to sit at the Lord's feet, listening to the Lord. 

The Lord said that Mary made a better choice. So we are exhorted to follow Mary’s example and do what she did as much as needed. Let everyone ask a question, “How often do I do what Mary did?” If you do not do this quite often, please ask yourself another question: “Why is it that I do not go for Mary's choice as often as I should?” Or “What might help me to do what Mary did?” 

Personally I try to sit at the Lord’s feet and listen to what he says, every once in a while, but it does not come as easily as I desire. On so many occasions, I get so easily distracted that it is very difficult to concentrate on the Lord. Why is this so? I can think of several reasons such as the lack of discipline (in terms of sleeping habits, eating habits, and the good habit of eating daily bread, etc...); lack of planning (of time to go to bed, the time to rise to read the Bible before the daily schedule begins etc.) and a lack of prayer. 

One of the ways to overcome these problems is to set up a priority list, so at the top of the list the first priority would be given to securing QT(Quiet Time) with the Lord and with His word (at least three times a day such as in the morning time, noontime, and before going to bed.) Daniel, in the book of Daniel, set a good example in this. Daniel 6:10 reads, “Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before.” By that time Daniel became the prime minister of the Babylonian Empire. As such, he must have been as busy as Mr. George Bush, the President of the U.S.. Despite such a busy schedule, however, three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to His God. It is interesting that he did not offer that many prayer topics. He kept his prayer life simple: just giving thanks to Him three times a day. The Lord then blessed him abundantly. One of the great blessings was revelation. The Lord God revealed the full spectrum of God’s work to arise in and through the Savior to come. To this very date tons of Bible scholars are hung up on studying the revelations given to Him, still being unable to figure out the depths of the revelations built in there. 

Again, Daniel prayed three times a day. When I say, “Three times”, you may say, “Oh, my! Three times?! That is way too much! My schedule is too tight for that.” But, let us be practical, and mean business in securing our QT. Let us ask how many minutes or hours we take to eat three meals a day, or how many hours do we spend in just “killing time”; doing nothing significant? And speaking of doing daily bread, it should not take that much time. 

Normally, on Sundays, I skip daily bread. But I repented. And this morning in the business of my so-called “busy Sunday morning schedule”, I spent three minutes to do the daily bread. And it was a great blessing for me. In the daily bread the Lord showed Amos the vision of the Lord standing by a wall that had been built true to plumb, with a plumb line in his hand. This vision provides us with the Lord’s wisdom to build our life on a rock foundation. Many people struggle hard to build a secure life not knowing how to build a life that is truly secure. In this fast moving society everything seems to be becoming increasingly insecure – jobs, marriages, children, relationships with one’s neighbors at school or even in church fellowships, sound increasingly volatile. Nothing seems reliable. But originally, God did not design man’s life to be this way. And there IS a way for man to build his or her life on a foundation which is as solid, safe, sound, and secure as a rock! Do you want to marry a marriage partner who will always love you with a deeper love than ever? Do you want to even see your career becoming stronger than ever? Do you want to see your children becoming truly successful, not just physically but spiritually as well? In the first place, do you want to see you yourself becoming more and more steady, stable, and strong? Today’s daily bread passage has all the answers to all these questions. Build your ventures – your personality, your employment relationships, your marriage life, your everything, all according to the living word of God. In Psalm 62:1, King David says, “He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will never be shaken.” Then he asks, “How long will you assault a man? Would all of you throw him down—this leaning wall, this tottering fence?’” As I read it, by ‘this leaning wall’ or ‘this tottering fence’, David refers to all human beings in general. Because of man’s fallen nature, man is bound to go astray. He (his judgment, his ideas, his integrity, his everything) is as unreliable as a leaning wall or a tottering fence. And each and every day we need to get ourselves “corrected”, and correction must come “daily”. Unless we get ourselves corrected and keep ourselves busy trying to accomplish this or that, if we are lucky to accomplish something at all, what we think we accomplished will eventually come to nothing. It is not going to be conducive to enhancing the quality of our life in the true sense of the word “life”; it will only operate as a source of anxiety and nervousness. If it enhances anything, it will increase the possibility for you to get hit by a heart attack. And the only way to avoid this kind of ill consequence is to go for Mary’s choice: sit at the Lord’s feet listening to the word of the Lord, the plumb line. 

Again as we pray for the upcoming Bible conference, it is my prayer that all of us would to go to the Thousand Pines in Big Bear with Mary’s choice, that is, with the decision to sit at the Lord’s feet listening to Him, the plumb line. 

Third, Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made.

But to sit at the Lord’s feet and listen to him is more easily said than done. Why? Martha can explain the reason why. Look at verse 40. “But 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!"” The answer is in the word “distracted.” Yea! Distraction! We are never short of the sources of distraction. And during a group Bible study Shepherd Jonathan made a good point saying, “I even look for sources of distraction!” At the conference, we will deal with this problem, that is, the tendency to look for distractions. Because like Shepherd Jonathan, all of us have this evil inclination.  Let us pray that the Lord would help us to completely overcome this problem as we listen to the living word of God, particularly the word to be proclaimed by Shepherd James Hopeman who apparently maintains a rigid personal regiment to keep himself focused on the Lord and His word daily.

But for now, let us stay local and focus ourselves on what we have. And I want everyone watch the two words: “all” and “reparations”, in the expression “all preparations that had to be made.” Remember Martha thought that all these preparations had to be made.  

Martha’s example indicates that preparations can be a source of great distraction from our relationship with the Lord. This is true with our Fall Bible Conference as well. The conference comes with a lot of preparations that had to be made, such as packing and unpacking, looking for baby sitters, singing practices, dance practices, preparations for the video presentations, fighting traffic on the way to the Thousand Pines etc. and so forth. 

When we allow all the preparations to distract us from the Lord, like Martha, it is very likely that we might end up complaining to the Lord saying, “Lord! Don’t you care?” Or “Lord, I don’t understand why do “I” [alone] have to suffer like this?” In this way, we will inadvertently end up blaming the Lord for otherwise innocent people like Mary. 

One way to overcome the problem is to go by the principle of, worship first: service second. In fact, worship and service should not be separated. They must go hand in hand like Mary and Martha working as siblings belonging to the same Lord. And all services must be done in the context and for the sake of worship. Then the moments of preparations will naturally become opportunities for our spiritual growth; they will even come as a bonus with experience of divine pleasure, not torture. Every physical activity, which we do such as packing or unpacking, driving up and down the mountain, will turn out to be opportunities to learn “spiritual lessons.” 

Fourth, only one thing is needed.

As I mentioned earlier, Martha loved the Lord. Her love and faith in the Lord was genuine, and there is no question about it. We can see this being true in the way she brought her problem to the Lord. Remember that when she felt greatly stressed out, she brought the problem to the Lord, not to people like her sister Mary. She did not dump her bad feelings on Mary but on the Lord. Not all Christians do that. Only those who are mature do this. King David had a lot of problems with King Saul. But he did not personally “attack” Saul. Rather, in prayer, he cried out to the Lord whining and complaining to the Lord. And the Lord loved David and blessed him. So if you are stressed out, do not attack your neighbor. Do not dump your feelings on people such as your wife, your husband, your parents, your children, your common life brothers, or even your church pastor. Bring the problem to the Lord. Dump all the bad emotions on the Lord. 

Why? If you try to seek a solution from people by dumping your bad feelings on people, you will always make the matter “worse”. But if you bring the problem to the Lord, the result is always the opposite: complete solution. And you grow up in leaps and bounds. 

Now, how did the Lord bless her? Let us read vs. 41-42 altogether ^“"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." Here again we find tons of wisdom in the expression “only one thing is needed.” What is this one thing? We already know the answer; securing the relationship with the Lord. 

Why is this so? We also know the answer, for as we already studied in the previous Bible passages, the “parable of a good Samaritan”, when we secure a personal relationship with Jesus, He empowers us to love God the Father and love our neighbor. In the case of Martha, because she was distracted a little bit, she ended up doubting the love of the Lord. She also entertained wrong ideas about Mary. She did not regard Mary her sister as better than herself. But if we love the Lord Jesus and remain in Him, he enables us to never doubt the love God has for us. In good times, He enables us to remain humble and offer songs of praise to the Lord; in bad times, he exhorts us to sing songs of praise even for hardships and troubles, for if anyone is in the Lord, every trouble works as an avenue to God’s greater blessings in the oven. Then, in the Lord in all circumstances, we can respect our brothers and sisters in the Lord with many thanks, always finding something good to learn from each of them. 

^“"Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, "you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed.” May the conference be a good opportunity for us to grow up in the Lord and learn this one thing: loving the Lord and loving our neighbor better than ever. 

One word: only one thing is needed

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