Before You Serve, Sit

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Charla and I are trying to hire some tree work done at our house. We’ve got some of you been out there and seen the massive elm trees that are out in our pasture. And some of them have gotten old and they’re just kind of, I feel like they’re dangerous to walk underneath because they look like they could come down at any time. And so we called somebody, we had an appointment for them to come out Friday and look at them and give us an estimate. And after they talked with us, I’m not sure if I’ve ever spent that much money on a car. So I was not inclined to go with their estimate. And I told Charlie, I said, you know, I could get a longer chainsaw, a whole lot cheaper than that. She said, when are you going to have time to take down those trees and cut them apart and dispose of them? I said, well, I’m not paying that.

So I can go next week and buy a chainsaw if you would like to call the company we’ve used in the past. I thought I’d save some money and call the company that we’ve used here at the church, but they were crazy expensive at my house. I said, if you want to call the company we’ve used in the past, go ahead. You have a few days before I go and invest the money in a chainsaw. So we’re going to try to have them come out and do the work because those elm trees are, The wood is hard. The trees are about this big around. They’re about three stories tall. And some of the guys from here at church and me managed to cut one down, and then it took me two years. I still couldn’t make a dent in trying to disassemble it once it was on the ground. But these guys had it carted off, it and took another one down. They had it carted off in, Well, by lunchtime, the day they started.

And I was asking the owner of the company, how do you do that? I said, I’m assuming you have better chainsaws than mine. He said, well, that’s part of it. He said, but we set aside time and make sure we keep our chains sharp. He said, if there’s not a job going on right then, we’re going to sit down and we’re going to sharpen our chains. If it’s raining outside and we can’t go out and cut trees and do whatever, he said, we sit down and sharpen our chains. And see, that was part of my problem. When I started all of that, I was new to living on land, more than a little postage stamp size in town. And so I didn’t know that you had to sharpen your chainsaw. I thought it was a chainsaw. It’s just sharp. I mean, if I put it up to my leg, it’s going to cut, right? So I just assumed it was sharp.

And here I was spending weeks hacking away at this tree and putting in the work and trying to brute force the thing and never taking time to just sit down and sharpen the chain. And as we study through Luke, Luke chapter 10, the story we’re going to look at reminds me of that story where somebody was trying to forge ahead and do the work but never take the time to sit and sharpen the chain. We’re going to be in Luke chapter 10 this morning, and I’m going to share some things with you this morning that feel crazy for me to say. The reason I say they feel crazy for me to say is I have never been in a church where there were enough volunteers and enough workers. Rodney, have you ever pastored a church where there were enough volunteers and workers? Okay. And we have more people volunteering here than I’ve ever seen at any church. We have more workers. We have more stuff going on.

But what I’m going to tell you this morning is not that we shouldn’t work and that we shouldn’t serve and that we shouldn’t volunteer, but it is that in order to do those things well, we can’t do those things all the time. That’s why I’ve given you the title this morning, Before You Serve, Sit. I thought about it this morning, I could have called it, Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There. Most of you will be familiar with this story, but if you’re not, you’ll see what I’m talking about here in just a moment. Luke chapter 10. Hopefully you’ve turned there with me. If you haven’t, go ahead and turn there with me now. We’re picking up where we left off with the Good Samaritan last week, and we go starting in verse 38 to the next story as they’re traveling along. And once you find it, if you’ll stand with me as we read together from God’s Word.

And if you don’t have a Bible or can’t find Luke chapter 10, that’s all right. It’ll be on the screen for you as well. Short story here that Luke tells, starting in verse 38. It says, Now as they were traveling along, he entered a village, and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister called Mary who was seated at the Lord’s feet, listening to his word. 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. But the Lord answered and said to her, Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things, but only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her. And you may be seated.

Usually, in church, we are focused on the fact that we really need more people to work and serve. But sometimes, we need to stop and consider that before we work and serve, it’s more important that we worship. Now, I don’t want you to hear things this morning that I’m not telling you. I am not telling you that the work we do for the Lord is not important. I’m not telling you that we shouldn’t serve. I’m not telling you if you’re serving, stop. What I am telling you is that there’s a matter of priority here. And I don’t want to get too ahead of my own notes. But I want to tell you, we can go too far one direction or the other, sometimes. We can get so deep into our work, and don’t get me wrong in this either. I feel like this will come up tonight in our Q&A time. You can worship through your work. The way you serve God is part of your worship. But it can’t be all of your worship.

And we can go so deep into the work that we’re focused on what we’re doing for Him that we forget about Him. At the same time, we can get comfortable with the idea of sitting and worshiping to the point that we don’t care about doing any of the work. And both of those are issues, but I tend to think that if we are truly worshiping Him, if we’re truly focused on His goodness and His greatness, I think that it will drive us to work out of that. So if we’re going to focus on one over the other, I think this passage teaches us that it needs to be the worship. that we focus on. And if we do that right, if we come to him in the right perspective from that direction, then the work will take care of itself. But we see Mary doing something unusual here. She’s sitting at the feet of Jesus. And this for us is the highest privilege that we have.

The highest privilege that we have is to sit at the feet of Jesus. If you think about how the Bible describes us, that we are sinners, that we are estranged from God, that we are undeserving of His kindness, the very fact that He would love us, that He would forgive us, that He would save us is incredible enough, but Jesus invites us in to sit at His feet and learn from Him and be close with Him. That’s not something that you or I earn or deserve. That’s a privilege that He grants us just because He is good, and it’s because it’s what He wants. What He desires is that closeness with us. So it’s a privilege that we shouldn’t take for granted. Jesus came to this house, and He was welcomed here as an honored guest. And it wasn’t unusual for somebody to come and sit at the feet of a rabbi, of a religious teacher, and come and sit at their feet and learn from them.

What was unusual in this circumstance is that Mary was a woman. I guess it’s not unusual for Mary to be a woman. It’s unusual that Mary as a woman would sit at the feet of Jesus. A rabbi would not allow that to happen because they were looked at as inferior. They were looked at then as not worth the rabbi’s time because she can’t understand the things a man can understand. Same reason why they didn’t want to mess with children. They can’t understand the things that an adult can understand. No self-respecting rabbi was going to allow this to happen. No self-respecting woman was going to put herself in this position. But Jesus was different, and Jesus’ love for his people, for those who followed him was so great that he did what no other rabbi would do. And Mary’s devotion to the master was so great that she didn’t care whether it was the proper thing to do or not.

She didn’t care whether she was going to be embarrassed, whether she was going to be talked about. She didn’t care whether her sister was going to be mad. She just sat at the feet of Jesus. It’s the greatest privilege we have. She sat there, verse 39 says, at the Lord’s feet, listening to His word. And not only did Jesus allow this, Jesus actually encouraged it. That’s why he says in verse 42, she did the good part, or she had chosen the good part. She had chosen the right thing, the best thing. I do want us to understand through the course of this message, as we look at this story, both the work and the worship are good. There’s nothing wrong with either one. But the worship is better. and the worship will drive the work. But he said she had chosen the good part. By sitting at Jesus’ feet, she was showing her devotion to her master, to her teacher.

She was putting herself in a place of subjection to him. And that word sounds so harsh the way we talk. She’s saying, he’s above me. I’m beneath him. I have so much to learn from him. My job is to follow him. She wasn’t approaching him as an equal. And you and I don’t approach him as equals either. But we have this incredible privilege of even being able to sit at his feet and to spend time with him and to learn from him and to be changed by him. Now, you and I don’t have the opportunity to sit at his feet physically. the way she did. Wouldn’t that be an amazing thing? That would be an incredible experience, but I feel like in that moment I would probably be Martha, jumping up, making sure everything’s just right. Did we remember to start lunch? Did we tell people he’s here? Did I adjust the thermostat? Is he comfortable?

You know, we would start to think about all the things that we have to do. We don’t have the opportunity to sit at his feet physically the way she did, so what does this mean for us? How does this apply to us? By sitting there, she was showing her devotion to Jesus, and she was learning from him. And you and I have the opportunity to do that as well. We can’t sit at his feet physically at the moment, But the way we consider it metaphorically is to show our devotion to him through worship and prayer and by learning his word. That’s what she was doing. She was communing with him, and the way we commune with him is worship and prayer, and she was learning his word. And this is a reminder to us that we need to take time, not just take time, we need to make time to sit at his feet. We need to make time to slow down and spend time with him.

Not just worrying about what we’re going to do, not even worried about what we’re going to do for him, but to spend time just abiding in his presence. That can be a hard thing to do. I’m not sure there has ever been a time in history when we were busier which is crazy when you think about it if you compare the life that we live to the lives that people lived 300 years ago and you see all of the things they had to do just to survive that we don’t have to do because of technology, because of supply chains, because just the world is not in a moral sense, but the world in a material sense is a much better place than it’s ever been. We have far more leisure time compared to our ancestors, far more leisure time than any generations ever had, and we just fill it up with stuff that may or may not matter.

and then sometimes we throw things on top of that that we’re doing for the lord that he didn’t ask us to do and i’m guilty of that and we stay so busy that we get to the point we don’t have time to slow down and sit at the master’s feet. And then we wonder why we’re burned out. We wonder why we don’t want to serve him. We wonder why it becomes a drudgery to think about doing that thing that he’s called us to do. A few weeks ago, we talked about how Jesus went over the things that we have to rejoice about as we’re out on our mission. Serving the Lord is hard work, but he never intended it to be a drudgery.

he never intended it to be a day in the minds because even as we’re working hard we find the joy and the rest that comes from just being with him and in his presence and Martha is the poster child of that now I don’t want to be too harsh on Martha Marcia sure Jan I don’t want to be too harsh with her because I don’t want to be confronted in heaven about throwing shade at her. I think she is viewed as a uniquely schedule-driven, task-driven individual that, oh, we should never be like that. She’s just representative of so many of us. She was not uniquely uncaring. She was doing what so many of us do on a daily basis. But do you ever get burned out just on the stuff you’re supposed to do? The day-to-day tasks of life and the stuff that God’s called you to do in ministry? It happens for me. And I’ll sit there and wonder, why do I have such a bad attitude about this?

or why do I dread doing this or why is it so hard to get motivated to get started with this and I’m a little slower on figuring this out than I would like to be but usually I come to my senses and realize that’s a red flag that’s saying I’m not abiding in him the way I’m supposed to be and I’ll have to ask myself did you rush through your time with him today were you so consumed by the things you had to do and the things you had to fix and the things you had to take care of that you just made a perfunctory effort to spend time with him or did you really spend time sitting at his feet because i will tell you that without exception when i find myself at that moment of burnout and thank the lord it is only moments of burnout it’s not it’s not the pattern of life but when i find myself in those moments where i cannot go on any further in the work, without exception, I find that I have not been sitting at his feet the way I’m supposed to.

Go back and deal with that, and everything else falls into place. Sitting at his feet is our highest privilege. We can’t allow busyness to distract us from sitting at his feet, and it’s so easy to do. I’ve already kind of hit on this. I shouldn’t have to spend too much time explaining this to you. You know how busy you are. I know how busy I am. We’re busy and it distracts us. When sitting at his feet should be the most important part of our day, the thing that we build everything else around. I’m not saying you have to do it first thing in the morning. I’ve heard preachers emphatically say you should get up and first thing in the morning should be your quiet time with the Lord. If the Lord wants me awake for quiet time, that’s not going to happen.

I get here to the office about 7.50 every morning We open at 8.30 but I’ve got kids that go to school here So I get here earlier And I may get started working But about 9 o’clock I’m fully alert It’s much better for me to take some time right before lunch Or right after lunch not so late after lunch that you know you’re slipping into a coma again but there ought it ought to be the priority of our day to spend some time sitting at his feet not i’ll fit it in when i’ve got time because we will chase that time all throughout the day and it won’t happen but that ought to be the thing we build our day around that ought to be the thing we build our life around. You’ve probably seen the illustration of the jar and you’ve got the sand and you’ve got the pebbles and you’ve got the big rocks and trying to fit all of it in there. And if you try to put the sand in first, everything doesn’t fit.

The big rock, spoiler alert, if you’re ever called on to do this, the big rock goes at the bottom, then you fill it in with the pebbles, and then you fill the sand in around that. Sitting at Jesus’ feet needs to be the big rock that is the focus of our lives every day, and then we fill in the other stuff around it. It’s so easy to get distracted, and for Martha, this problem quickly grew beyond just being distracted. It actually changed her view of what was going on. It poisoned her view of what was going on. It poisoned her view of Jesus, and we see some ways that her focus, her wrong focus caused her to act wrongly and think wrongly. She was so focused on her own preparation that it made her self-centered and unconcerned about Mary’s spiritual growth. So we can get so focused on being busy that it makes us self-centered.

and that is such a convicting statement for me because I have to have the reminder I have to have the talk with the Lord all the time a lot of times the things that we consider interruptions in ministry are the actual ministry and I hesitate even to say that because now you’ll be afraid to call on the phone or stop by the office don’t. That’s why I’m here. And it’s not every time somebody calls, but I’m in the middle of this project. There are certain projects that for me, it’s like an itch in my brain, and I can’t focus on anything else until that itch is scratched. And that’s when the phone rings. Now, the phone rings at other times, that’s fine. You know what? Figuring out what this Greek word means is not the ministry. The interruption is the ministry. But she had gotten to the point of self-centeredness, to the point she didn’t care that Mary was learning from Jesus.

She just barges in in verse 40 and says, my sister has left me to do all the serving alone. And I want you to think about what that means because it sounds like a reasonable statement. I need help. Until you think about what was going on in that room. Mary was sitting at the feet of the creator of the universe who walked away from the splendor of heaven to take on human flesh and come down here and be around us and to be among us and to die for us, taking responsibility for our sins. That creator was sitting there in her living room and her sister was taking advantage of this amazing opportunity to sit at his feet and abide in his presence. And Martha said, I don’t care that you’re getting to do that. I need help getting the salad out. When you think about it that way, it’s not as reasonable a request. But we can start to see people as interruptions.

We can start to see people as obstacles if we get focused on our busyness. Her focus on her busyness made her bitter, made her convinced that Jesus didn’t care. That’s why she says in verse 40, Lord, do you not care? I’m going to give you one of the answers on the test Does Jesus care? Yes The answer is always yes Every time he was asked by somebody in the gospels Do you not care? The answer is yes, he cares He’s aware of what’s going on here And he cares more than you do Just his priorities are in the right order But sometimes we can get so focused on our busyness that something happens and something comes along and something doesn’t work or somebody gets in the way and we get mad, we get mad at them, we get mad at the Lord. Well, why’d you put me here to do this anyway?

If you’re not going to let me finish it or if it’s not going to work, we get mad because we’re focused on the task instead of being with Him. And then her focus on her own busyness made her arrogant to the point that she was willing to order Jesus around. If we get to the point where we’re willing to give instructions to God, something has gone deeply wrong in our minds. And it’s probably because something’s gone deeply wrong in our hearts. She said, Lord, or she said, tell her to help me. And we could see this as a plea for help. But the Greek phrasing there is a command. Tell her to help me. Would you please tell her to help me? Oh, that would have been so much nicer. We know the difference. If somebody says, even forcefully, would you please do this? That doesn’t hit us quite as wrong as do this. Somebody asks me to do something, I will bend over backwards.

If somebody tells me to do something, it is a fight with the flesh, not to just refuse out of spite. Now, Jesus doesn’t have that battle with the flesh there. But she tells him, imagine the thought process that gets you to the point of saying, God, here’s what you need to do.

my agenda is on the line my plans are on the line what i’m trying to do is on the line you need to do this again if we get to the point where we are commanding or presuming to command the god of the universe something has gone deeply wrong and it all started just from a little bit of distraction a little bit of I am so and again I don’t want to be too harsh with her I think her motives were probably right the master is here we want to make everything perfect for him you know what the master can say a word and the banquet appears you have the opportunity to sit at his feet she was trying to do a good thing but she got so focused on the task she forgot about the Lord himself and ultimately I think the point of this passage is that what we do with Jesus takes priority over what we do for Jesus and that seems so backwards that seems so crazy to say because we are always trying to get people to volunteer and do more and think of all the things that that could be done if everybody would just do all the things God called them to do we want people to serve We want people to work.

There’s nothing wrong with it. And your work can be part of your worship. I don’t know if you realize this, but what I’m doing right now, this moment, part of my job. But the preparation for it, the delivery of it, I try to stay prayed up so that it’s not just a task, but I’m worshiping the Lord through what I’m studying and taking in and what I’m putting out. You can worship the Lord through your work. It just can’t be all of your work. I mean, it can’t be all of your worship. But what we do with Him takes priority over what we do for Him. Because if we just push, oh, you have to do this for Him. Step out and do this for Him. And it’s always the stuff you do for Him. Then we end up, we end up with a church full of people who are burned out, who don’t want to serve anymore, are tired of all of it, because they’re not abiding in the presence of the Lord.

They’re not finding the joy in serving Him. And it’s a tragedy because Jesus came that we would have life and have it more abundant. It’s not wrong to work. As a matter of fact, all through chapters 9 and 10, as we’ve studied through Luke, have been about preparation for the work. the problem is just a matter of the priority. When we get to verse 41, he tells her, Martha, Martha. And by the way, repeating her name like that is something they would do in that culture as a display of love, of tenderness, to repeat her name. It shows he cared about her. But he tells her, you are worried and bothered about so many things. And as I researched those words and how they were used, one tends to be used about mental anxiety, and one tends to be used about emotional distress. The woman was a wreck. That sounds harsh. Our poor sister was a wreck. Was a meal needed?

Yeah, these people have been traveling. They were going to be hungry. But again, the master could snap his fingers and the banquet would appear. He had done it before. You know what? He had done it before. He had made the food appear so he didn’t have to stop teaching. Did Jesus need the elaborate spread? Did he need everything she was working on? He didn’t need that. The only thing that really mattered, according to verse 42, is what Jesus came there to do in the first place, and that was to teach his people and be with his people. And both of these sisters, when Jesus came into their house, they had a choice to make, whether to work or to worship in that moment, and Mary, not Martha, chose correctly. Now, Martha’s the one being critical, saying, she’s not even helping me at all. Mary’s the one doing what she’s supposed to do.

and this convicts me because it’s hard for me to sit still now you may see me sitting still sometimes I guarantee my mind is still working on three different projects and I’m a perfectionist about some things now you look at my truck you will not see there goes a perfectionist you look at my office you will not see there goes a perfectionist but there’s a reason why I asked Marilyn to take over the bulletin because something we’re putting out in print I will spend 11 hours working on that to make sure it is exactly everything’s laid out exactly right there are no typos now when I fill in I may forget what date it is and that ate at me for days but there are things I’m a perfectionist about that don’t matter that much we have an opportunity to focus on things that kind of matter versus the things that ultimately matter. We should choose to focus on the things that ultimately matter.

That’s what Mary had done. We are supposed to work for the Lord, but our priorities make the difference. If you’re worshiping Him, you’re spending time in His presence every day, you will just naturally work for Him. You won’t even have to make yourself do it. You’ll be so closely connected to him that you’ll know where he’s leading you to go. And you’ll do it. And you’ll love doing it. Doesn’t mean every moment of it will be easy. But you’ll love doing it. If you prioritize the work, you’ll say, well, I’m going to spend time with him. But you’ll get drawn deeper and deeper into the work until there’s never time to sit at his feet.

the difference is the priority we can work for the lord without giving the relationship a second thought we can do that but if we’re focused on our relationship and worshiping him with everything we have then naturally the work will result so when we look at this and we see mary versus martha it’s not oh just slow down take time to smell the roses the lesson here is to make Jesus the priority and the work will follow if you find yourself burnt out go back and make Jesus the priority then you’ll find you probably won’t be as worried about the things that you thought you couldn’t live without make Jesus the priority some of you may be sitting there this morning saying, but how can I have that kind of relationship with him? How can I sit at his feet? I don’t even know him. It’s very simple. Jesus came for us to know him.

Jesus came because we were separated from God by our sin, and there’s nothing you or I could do to fix it. And so Jesus came and took responsibility for that sin because God is a just judge, and that sin had to be punished. Jesus took responsibility for our sin and he was punished in our place. That’s the whole reason he went to the cross and shed his blood and died, so he could pay for our sin. So that that slate could be wiped clean. And God could take the righteousness of Christ and put it in our account so that when he looks at us, instead of seeing sinners who are under his condemnation, he sees children who he loves who are dressed in the righteousness of Christ. And today, you can have that. you can have your sins forgiven. You can be somebody that God looks at as his righteous child, not because of any good you do, but because Jesus paid for your sin.

And all that you have to do is believe that he did that and ask God for that forgiveness. And he’s promised you’ll have it.

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