Better Portion

Jesus entered a village. and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house.

We see whatever's going to go on here as an in-house, within the fellowship of Christ, among disciples kind of issue. This isn't like before where the lawyer is coming and testing Jesus from outside. This isn't somebody rebelling against Jesus. This isn't somebody who hates Jesus. This is one of Jesus' friends, Martha, who has regularly welcomed him. Martha, who has loved him. Martha, who makes one of the most profound and clear confessions in scripture. In John 11, verse 27, she says,

yes, Lord, I believe you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming to the world.

That is one of the greatest clear confessions of Christ before his resurrection. Martha's a believer. Here, she's the, okay, Jesus is the main character of all stories. She's the main character here with Jesus. Think about what we learn about her. Her condition, her emotions, what she feels. She's distracted, she's anxious, she's troubled. Her name's used four times and twice repeated by Jesus himself. She's the one who talks to Jesus. Jesus talks to her specifically. This story is about Martha. Martha is who we should ask, how am I like Martha? How can I learn from what Martha is intended to do in terms of a warning? How am I like her? And again, here we see this as an in-house issue, whatever we're heading into. Second point, if you're taking notes, we're looking at, are we distracted or discipled? Distracted or discipled? In the house, something occurs, verses 39 and 40.

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.

That contrast is so important to set up the entire story. She's been welcomed into Martha's house, we're introduced to another character, Mary, and Mary is just doing the one clear thing of sitting at the Lord's feet. He is the honored guest, he is the great teacher, and she is sitting there with Jesus. And the description is so important. Mary sat at his feet and listened to his words, his teaching. Martha was distracted with much serving. Two behaviors, two characters. This contrast creates a story. Now, there's a handful of just fantastic cues in the story we have to appreciate and recognize. One, Mary is sitting at the Lord's feet and listening to Jesus. Now, that might not seem too unusual for us. It might actually seem kind of unusual that, why is she sitting at his feet? Why didn't somebody give her a chair? Why didn't one of these guys get up and give him his chair? No, this is the best seat in the house. that we don't know of any other rabbi that would have invited a woman to sit at his feet. In the Jewish tradition, rabbis could allow a woman to be in the room to hear, but it was the disciples' honored position, the male disciples. Teachers, rabbis would have male disciples, and only they would have that privileged position of sitting at the feet of the teacher. Let's just be very clear here. Mary is invited in in an unusual way that would have been countercultural. Jesus is welcoming her into this wonderful community. She is the model and ideal disciple. Mary, she's the one we should want to be like. I wanna highlight this because we are a confessionally complementarian church. We believe God has ordained specific roles for men and women in the home and in the church. But what we want to be emphatic about here, the one most important necessary good thing is available to all who believe, male and female. Here, the one thing we want, the one thing that we should desire, to be in the closest presence of Christ, that's where Mary gets to be. Old Testament worship was all about teaching distance, so we understood holiness. Women were in the outer court. There was a lesson there in that only one person could go in the Holy of Holies because it was a terrifying place. It was a glorious place. But now because of Christ, anyone who believes in Jesus enters boldly, enters boldly in the glorious presence of God in the name of the Son. Mary is an idol disciple. She's doing what disciples do. She's listening to Jesus. She's learning to Jesus. She's learning from Jesus, she's loving Jesus. The one attribute here that I really want us to see of a disciple, teachable. Teachable. She longs to listen to her Lord. She longs to be in the presence of her Lord. She's a humble, teachable follower of Jesus. Something that's fantastic. She's single-minded. Notice the contrast. She's doing one thing. She's listening to her Lord while Martha is what? Distracted with much. Much. Martha is doing a good thing. Hospitality is, or commanded in Scripture, expected of us. Martha is distracted with much. It's not that she's serving. It's not that she's doing a great job of making sure everyone else can listen. She's distracted. She could go sit with Jesus and do the one thing that's necessary, but she's distracted with a much thing. This isn't saying we should never be serving. If no one's served, no one eats here at Martha's house or even here. Praise God, there's people who have served this morning to make sure that we can take the Lord's Supper. There's people who served this weekend to make sure we have a great new parking lot. People who served this morning so that the Lord's Supper table is finished. Thank you, Cato. People served this morning so we can feast together and fellowship. Service is good. That's not what the contrast is. This isn't, are you a doer or a learner? It's not some kind of teaching that the contemplative life is the only life. Now it's an order of your loves. It's communion with Christ, the one thing that is most necessary. Or are we distracted with much? There's one who is distracted, there's one who's being a disciple. Now we see the tension escalate. We've seen the two actions, we've seen the two behaviors, we've seen the two postures. Now Martha speaks. If you're looking for a heading here, verse 40, alone and burdened, alone and burdened. And she went up to him, that is Jesus, and said,

Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.

The tension escalates because this is in-house, this is in Martha's house, this is between two believers, I think, and now it's also between two sisters, and it is interesting how we can make kind of the harshest judgments on those who are closest to us. But Martha interrupts the teaching of Jesus to teach him. We've got to let that sink in for a moment. Okay, they're doing two different things, but now Martha has escalated her own problem significantly. She interrupted the teacher to teach him. I think Martha could have been happily serving and been right in the Lord. It isn't that the hospitality was wrong. If she was just happily making the dishes and saying, I'm so thankful, I get to listen to my Lord so often, I want to make sure that my sister gets to listen to the Lord. I want to make sure other disciples get to listen to the Lord. I want to make sure everyone has a great meal afterwards and gets to talk about it. That is not sinful. It's the internal processing she's doing. These words ratchet up what's going on in her mind. Lord, okay, that's a good start, but then every word just crumbles that respect. Do you not care that I'm all alone? Tell her to help. I think it's right to assume there's a little sass in the language here, right? There's a little sass in the tone. Now we have to look at these words a little closer. Lord, do you not care? Lord, are you not concerned? Martha has gotten so worked up. She just feels the aloneness of serving. She looks and she's not saying, how can I love God and my neighbor? She started to serve and she's just worked up. I'm alone and just look at her. She's not doing anything. We can relate to this, right? We sign up for something. I want to serve the church. I want to do this. And we start working. It gets a little hard, a little laborious. You start thinking, where's Bill? Not Bill. I always use Bill. Sorry, Bill. I've got to come up with another name. Where's him? Where is he? Why aren't they here serving? We go from joyfully serving to this kind of judgment pretty quickly. Lord. Do you not have any concern? She's so distracted with the much. She's just become so preoccupied with herself, and this has led to some serious self-pity. Notice the question is pretty amazing. The Lord who has set his face to die for her sins, she's asking, do you not have concern for me? Do you not care for me? But now it gets a little worse. Lord, you tell her to help me. This is getting pretty close to idolatry. Commanding God and telling him what he should be doing. Trying to control and manipulate God so that our will, so that our burdens are his priority. The problem here is that getting so angry and then saying my problem is a God problem and everybody else must submit to it. This is bullying. It's spiritual bullying. A wrong view of God has led to this wrong view of her sister, which is now completely overwhelming her with a wrong view of herself. She has a twisted moment. Again, she's the one who makes a great confession of Christ. Believer, we can have these twisted moments. At point, she comes to serving and then jealousy, and we can just think of how this works out. Why am I the only one doing this? Why is Jesus allowing this? Why wouldn't he see how busy I am? I need help. She's doing this because she knows it annoys me. It goes from the self-pity to then just assuming the worst. Whatever good Martha has done, she's just left a horrible mark on him. Her focus is on self-love. It's a warning for us. It's a great opportunity to serve and show hospitality in a way to love God and love your neighbor, but there's a warning. She's been so consumed with self-love. I'm all alone. God doesn't care. She's not doing anything. And all of it self-inflicted. Then Jesus gives her an invitation. The last heading here. Choose much trouble or the one necessary good. Choose much trouble or the one necessary good. The Lord answered her. Martha, Martha. Now again, we can think about how we would call upon somebody. When a parent uses your first and middle name, that means something. That means you're coming with your head down and kind of worried, what did they find out I did? Martha, Martha, this is compassion. This is care. He knows her. He's drawing her attention. Martha, Martha, he cares. He's answering the question, do you not have any concern? He cares.

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.

Remember last week when Jesus turned the lawyer's question around on him? Jesus wants to know, or the lawyer asks, who can I keep my love from? He's asking a question, how can I create the loopholes or keep my loopholes to make sure I don't have to love those people? And then Jesus says, no, it's not about who you're keeping your love from, are you proactively being a good neighbor who loves? Jesus is regularly asking the question, making us ask the question we should have started with. He turns it around on her. He lifts her problem out of her little sibling squabble. He lifts her problem out of her own self-love. He helps her see. Notice there the word many. She was distracted by much. Now she's anxious and troubled about many things. Jesus knows her. He knows her heart. He is helping her see her problem is not serving. Her problem is that she has troubled herself with things beyond the one good necessary thing. Again, we see a contrast that's important. The first contrast, Mary was sitting, Martha was distracted. Now we see this contrast on Jesus' own lips. You're anxious about many things, but Mary, she's chosen the one thing. She's chosen the good portion. Now, let's just go back for a moment, because there's a meal motif in this passage that's really fantastic. Right, so Martha's busy, I believe, making all these dishes. She wants to make sure everyone's eating. That's the right move. She's so busy with all the dishes and the serving and making sure everybody has his feast, and then at some point she gets to the point where she realizes, why am I doing all this alone, and that's self-pity. Notice what Jesus says is a correction. Mary has chosen the good portion, the right dish. The bread of life. There's so many things you could be doing. There's so many good things. There's nothing sinful about what she's doing. It's just she's doing it sinfully. But here, it's the fact that there's one good portion. There's one key thing that's necessary, and it's communion with God. She is distracted with much. She's anxious and troubled about many. She needs to hear, but there's one thing that's necessary. She has not disciplined her time, energy, or affections. She's allowed many things to overcome her. She is being invited in to take and partake of the good portion. At any time, Martha could have sat down with Mary, and Mary would have welcomed her. At any time, Jesus would have welcomed Martha. But she's internalized this. She's become troubled. She's anxious now. Well, what is the one necessary thing? Let's just go back. What is Mary doing that is necessary and good and cannot be taken away from her? Her posture is she's sitting at the Lord's feet. She's with her Lord. She's in the presence of God. She's also listening to his teaching. I believe we can summarize this with simply the word communing. She's communing with God. She's enjoying spending time with God, humbly listening, enjoying Him, desiring to be as close to His presence as possible. Not saying I'm gonna sit next to you or stand over you, I'm sitting at your feet, enjoying that she can be with her God, and this will not be taken away from her. In John 6, Jesus says,

I am the bread of life. I'm the bread that comes down from heaven.

We must believe in Him, consume Him. but partake of him. That means we listen, we enjoy him, we love him. There's a lot of applications we can think of from this text. First, if you're not a Christian, the good life is not about just doing good things. The good life is not just being a good moral person who treats people nice and has simple thoughts of God. No, mere moralism doesn't do it. We just saw the text before this,

love the Lord your God with all your heart.

The good life is knowing your God. The good life is hearing Him declare, you are a sinner, you have fallen short, you have rebelled against Him, and you will pay a consequence unless you believe in Jesus Christ. The good life is knowing who God is and enjoying being in his presence, and we can only be in his presence if our sin is taken away, if our sin is removed. We can work hard to try to wash away our own sin, and we'll realize it's futile. We can labor and try to do more good works than our own bad works, but even here, even our best works are tainted with the sin of some kind of selfishness. Now, there's only one thing that truly washes away sin. There's only one thing that takes away our sin. There's only one thing that will truly bring a absolute forgiveness, and it's Jesus' death on the cross, where he died for our sin, paying our penalty. And the only thing we do is hear that and believe. We believe. We recognize we cannot wash ourselves enough, but he, by the simple belief that he has come to die for us, we can be forgiven. Jesus is the only cure for this kind of sin and every sin. If you're not a believer, please do not leave here without talking to somebody about faith in Christ. Christian, there's so many commands. It's interesting, last week, and I believe these two stories are supposed to be taken together in a bigger picture. There's two commands that summarize the whole law, love God and love your neighbor. Well, now Jesus says there's one thing that's necessary. There's two commands and that summarizes all the law, but what's the one thing that's necessary? Last week was a great doer text. Who is your neighbor? How will you love them? Who is your God? How will you love him? Last week, cut through the loopholes where we try to keep our love from somebody else. This week, cuts the loopholes from what we think is most important. Love God. Prioritize sitting at His feet. It means we prioritize being with Christ, His people, learning from His word, learning together, growing together. Again, we're so busy. But are we busy making sure the one thing that's necessary is what we're most committed to? The memory verse, but one thing is necessary. That's the verse, that's your ammunition. Keep it locked and loaded and ready to go when something wants to keep you from Christ. But one thing is necessary. Are there a thousand good things you could do this week? Yes, but is there one thing that's necessary? Being with Christ. Brother and sister, this is good for us. Drawing us back in, there is one thing that's necessary, and praise God, it's the good thing, being with God. To help us see what we're trying to do here as a church, what drives Sunday morning and Wednesday night is that we do the two things that we believe are essential for communion. Hearing God's word, praying to God, Listening to God, praying to God. That is what it means to be in fellowship, to be in communion. To hear His Word and respond to His Word in prayer. We want to know Jesus. We want to make Him known. I want to explain something. I don't believe this passage is the anti-serving passage. I want to make sure that we are very thankful for the many people who served, because if we didn't serve, we wouldn't even have the Lord's Supper this morning. If we didn't have servers, we wouldn't be able to eat together. The concern is for those who would be so overwhelmed with the many ways in which you're serving either the church, the community, that you're not realizing the one thing that's necessary to slow life down and to prioritize Christ and His worship. I wanna walk through, there's three things I wanna talk about with our philosophy of serving here at Jefferson Park. I hope they're helpful for you. One, we wanna make sure that those who are serving are doing it out of a joyful overflow from worship. No one should be serving constantly. No one should be always in the nursery, or always with the children, or always in the kitchen. No, we wanna make sure everyone is able to spend real time with Christ, with us. So that the service doesn't turn out what Martha does, but the service is such an overflow of joy, knowing the Lord that you wanna serve Him and others. So the first one is, it's a joyful overflow. Secondly, it's a focused effort. I praise God that there's times where we can just say, you know what, we need 10 guys in a gravel lot Saturday, boom, they show up. There's also a way in which we need to make sure we're ordered in that. Every member has some clear, focused effort. That's the key phrase, focused effort. I am relied upon and depend upon for this particular kind of service. This is the particular area of church, whether it be sign language, singing, children, yard, maintenance, whatever that is. There's a way in which people depend upon you and they know you're responsible for it. The third one is team oriented. No one should be doing it alone. There's a real problem there. The whole focus and team-oriented is part of the two sides of the same coin. We wanna make sure that there's a team that's focused together so that everything isn't dependent upon one person and no one feels alone. It's a joyful overflow from worship. It's focused effort. It's team-oriented. If you're new to the church or want to know, all right, how can I be part of one of these teams? How can I be part of one of those focused efforts? Talk to me, talk to Matt, talk to a deacon. We have this particular philosophy because we want to make sure everyone is serving, but we're also protecting some people from always serving. Serving is a good thing, but Jesus says one thing is necessary. Sitting at his feet in communion. This is different than being a consumer. A consumer thinks life is a buffet, and I'm just gonna go through the buffet, and I'm gonna choose the things that I like, and then the things that I like most, I'm gonna go back and get more of. A consumer is this Western mentality that I'm in control of what I'm going to take in and do. No, communion is enjoying, delighting. Communion is receiving from God. The one thing that's necessary, commune with a God who loves you so that you can love him. The one thing that's necessary is communing with your God who speaks so you can listen. The one thing that's necessary is communion with God who is present so you can set aside your anxiety and your worry. One thing that's necessary is communion with your God who's for you so you can courageously fight against sin. It's the good portion. It's the good dish. It reminds me of the C.S. Lewis quote. We're always thinking I'm gonna just feast on these mud pies when God invites us to have holiday. We're so busy doing the things that aren't important that we do miss the grand invitation to dine with Christ. Christian this morning, the question is are we committed to doing what is necessary and good When Jesus says the one thing that's necessary to commune with Him, to hear Him, there are numerous ways we can hear Him, praise God. We've already practiced a number of them. We read Scripture together on Sunday morning, that's one of the ways we commune with Him. We sing with one another, sing to one another, that's one of the ways we can commune with Him. We hear God's Word preached, we're gonna practice God's Word in the Lord's Supper, those are all different ways we commune with Him. Are we listening to God's Word and we praying? How has your life been affected by not choosing the necessary thing? Christian, how's your prayer life? What have you learned recently from God? How have you helped someone recently? No God. Who are you praying for in the church? What are we too busy doing that keeps us from the one necessary thing? One thing that we can be too busy doing is our work. Work is good. Brian just prayed for those looking for jobs or just changing jobs. God designed us for work. Work is in Genesis 2. Sin doesn't happen until Genesis 3. The danger is when you're competent and good at your work, you can keep taking promotion and promotion and promotion until you actually aren't able to do the one necessary thing. Be on guard with how much you're investing in your work that's gonna take you away from your family and the one necessary thing that is communion with God. The second thing that distracts us too much is our children's activities. We want children to be raised with a well-roundedness, where the different activities are great, but are we regularly taking them out of the one necessary thing in order to participate in all these different activities? We can learn something from our Anabaptist friends. The simple life. The simple life. The one necessary thing. Learning how to regularly say but the one necessary thing. Enjoy desiring a simple life. That is not the American dream. Are we listening to God? Or are we worshiping God? One last observation, there's one dangerous distraction. What's concerning about Martha is how she begins to think she's all alone even though she's in a room with a lot of people. Her own sister, her own lord who knows her and loves her. The dangerous distraction that I see often now in our own culture is that we're isolated in worry and anxiety. There's too much fear, too many personal problems. Martha is social, she's being hospitable, but notice she's all alone. She's a prisoner of her own self-deception. How many people suffer from isolation, trapped in their own fear of others? And here with COVID, at one point, it was expected to be alone. Then it became enjoyable to be alone. And that was dangerous to be alone. Communion with God is found through our fellowship with one another. Be careful of that self-isolation that feels so intuitive, that feels so protective, but it's so dangerous. This is what's so dangerous about Martha. She's self-isolated, and now she's just assuming the worst of others, and she's not trusting God. She's missing the opportunity to listen and learn from God. Hear the call to Christ. Come sit at my feet. I've drawn near to you, come to me. Yes, yes, when we come close to Christ, we see more of our sin, but we also see more of his power to overcome our sin. It's the only way to be healed. Are you weary? The clear encouragement from God is to not keep yourself at what you think is a self-distance. No, it's to come into his presence for communion. As we close, we came here busy. I pray there's something that you're able to start thinking, all right, how am I going to implement but one thing as necessary, the good thing. One more opportunity to wrestle with this. We have the Lord's Supper before us. We get to be single-minded for a moment. Here's an opportunity to reflect upon the fact that Christ loved us and died for us while sinners. Know what the beauty of that message is? And that even though we still sin, he still loves us. Our sin doesn't keep his love from us. The whole point of the communion is to remember, I'm a sinner who's coming with nothing but sin to a Savior who has nothing but grace and love and forgiveness. It's an invitation to contemplate. I haven't had the right priorities. I haven't done the one thing that's necessary. I'm not committed to the good portion. Come to the Savior who says, I welcome you. Those are coming to the Savior who helps us realign. so that we are committed to this communion. We'll pray that God will help us to see what is good and necessary and have the grace to choose it. Will you pray with me? Father, we thank you for the simple story that helps us see a model disciple in Mary, helps us see the way our hearts get twisted with our own worries, anxieties, distractions. We thank you, Lord, for the clear words of Christ that help us see there is one thing that's necessary. He is our good portion. He is the bread of life. We cannot lose what He gives us. Lord, I pray that we would come to this table seeking forgiveness for the ways in which we've ignored that one good, necessary thing. And Lord, I pray that we would be greatly encouraged as we come to this table and enjoy that one good, necessary thing, communion with our Savior. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Let us stand and sing. Our song of response, and I want to draw your attention to the last verse.

Take my love, my Lord I pour, at thy feet its treasure store. Take myself and I will be ever only all for thee.