The Gospel of Luke 10:38-42 Mary & Martha
Luke 10:38-42 · Vern Peterman · Sep 27, 2015
Gospel of Luke, No. 43
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492651630948

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

All right, we will be looking at Luke chapter 10, verses 38 through 42. Here this morning, it's a short passage, but I think there's a lot to draw out of. So we'll be going through it very carefully here. Here's Luke 10.38. Now, as they were traveling along, he entered a village, that is, Jesus entered a village, and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. And we need to give some preface to this here.

Only in Luke and in John, those two Gospels, is the name Martha found. along with her sister Mary, in both of those. Now, I have to say Martha because Mary occurs in a lot of places and there are so many Marys that you have to kind of think about which one is it, right? It turns out, a survey of the ossuary boxes and the names on them, about one in every five women in Israel was named Mary, okay? So you really, you know, it's this Mary and that Mary and you've got to distinguish those, okay?

John 11 1 through 46 we find that their brother Lazarus was resurrected. Okay, Lazarus had been dead for four days So anyway, this is the Mary and Martha whose brother Lazarus was raised from the dead back to this life After he'd been dead for a few days Also in the Gospel of John we find out the village where Mary and Martha and Lazarus lives that a village of Bethany Okay, that means the house or place of unripe figs So anyway, wow. On the eastern slope of the Mount of Olives, as a matter of fact, we say that Jesus ascended from the Mount of Olives. One of the Gospels indicates it's actually from Bethany is where he ascended from. So this is a small village, but a momentous place. Important things happen there.

Here's a colorized photo of Bethany from the year 1900. I think it gives a more genuine picture of what Bethany might have looked like in New Testament times. An awful lot of the pictures that are from modern times don't represent what things look like. Nazareth now, for example, is a very populous place. There's lots of buildings and lots of people, but a lot of it's modern. I like these old black and whites because a lot of them are taken with fairly ancient things in place still.

Here is, to get an orientation, we have the Temple Mount shown on the one side of the photo on the left, on the aerial photo. Then we have this little valley, and then there's the Mount of Olives, and then Bethphage, another village, on the back side of the Mount of Olives, and then Bethany. So you kind of get an orientation, where is this little village. Jesus and the disciples would actually stay there not all the time But fairly often when they would come down for the feasts because it was a short distance coming over there's a short distance over to the temple and in that area when Jesus did the triumphal entry he started at Bethany and went through Bethphage and and Came over the top of the Mount of Olives. Okay, so It was a place where Jesus went to often Now, let's take a look at the archaeology here. Various parts of the village of Bethany have been explored and excavated in the modern era. And the tomb from which Lazarus was resurrected is believed to have been found. And this, they believe, is it. That's it right there.

This was before a lot of this. I got this picture from before a lot of the signage and all the other modern contraptions were put in front of it. And here's the inside. There's actually, it's fairly complex inside, but here's just one shot. There are other tombs and niches off to the side there. So on the bottom part there is the inside and there are stairways that go up from that.

So Lazarus coming out of here would have had to go up these stairs, right? So there's the bigger picture of these two. Charles Clermont-Gonneau, who was kind of an early archaeologist in our modern science of archaeology, explored a burial chamber on the roadside not far from Bethany, and they found these ossuary boxes. This is not the burial chamber, but it's typical. and it had the names of Lazarus and Martha on the boxes.

May very well have been the ones that are mentioned here in the Bible. So very interesting how it all fits together here. Alright, so one of the things we want to take a look at is hospitality was the custom. Being hospitable was the custom among Jews in addition to which those who lived in or around Jerusalem were expected, and if you lived there, you signed up for having lots of guests a lot of the time. And you were not allowed to charge them. That was a part of the tradition too. So you were going to have lots of guests. You were going to be hospitable if you lived in or around Jerusalem.

And so that's what Mary and Martha and Lazarus had signed up for. Here is what is now the Dome of the Rock, but that's where the temple was located. Hope everybody's okay. And then here is the top of the Mount of Olives, and it's right on this backside here where the village of Bethany is located here. Jesus and his disciples would come around the city of Jerusalem and would often stay and eat at the home of Lazarus and Martha and Mary there in the village of Bethany.

Now, while hospitality was the custom, what was not a custom is that the rabbis talking to women. Jesus was considered a rabbi, but the rabbis by tradition They just would not talk to women. And they would certainly not teach women. Teaching a woman was considered to be irresponsible. That was an irresponsible action.

So the rabbis would refuse to teach women. much less talk to them Jesus was not a traditional rabbi in every respect and this is one of them Jesus would not only talk to woman and treat them as real people he would also teach them into the point that Mary and Martha would call Jesus the teacher that's what they do in the gospel of John chapter 11 the teacher and even the Christ and the Son of God they knew who he was they had no You know, false notions that way.

Many people would come to Jesus and they'd call him teacher and they would, you know, say, you know, rabbi and that sort of thing. But they not only called him the teacher, but they recognized that he was the Christ, the Messiah, and the Son of God, recognizing his deity. So Jesus just went completely against the custom and treated women with respect and taught women and specifically we're going to see in this particular passage that he says for them to be a disciple even, not necessarily one of the twelve you understand, but for them to be a disciple was just fine.

Now here's something else, the disciples are slow to catch on to certain things at times And you find that throughout the book of Acts, they're having aha moments. But one of the things that they got was this respect for women. And it comes out in the apostles' writings. You see it here in the Gospels that the respect for women is written into the Gospels. Dr. Luke is writing about Jesus' respect for women. In the book of Acts, where it talks about women who did certain things, right? And in the letters the apostles would address women by name and by person and they would actually talk to them.

So they did understand Jesus' specific respect for women contrary to the culture. Women, in 1 Corinthians 14, 1 Timothy chapter 2, women can indeed learn, okay? Whereas that was, here's Paul, Raised under Gamaliel, and Gamaliel did not teach women. Here's Paul raised under Gamaliel. He sat at his feet, as he says in Acts 22. Raised under Gamaliel, but he turns around and says, nope, women can learn. So he learned this from the Lord. Women can indeed learn, and they should.

And then, a man is to love his wife unconditionally. Even, we talk about the four kinds of love that's in Ephesians chapter 5. Sacrificial love, as Christ gave himself for the church. Sanctifying love, a spiritual care. And then a caring love, caring emotionally and for physical needs.

Then physical love okay, but a man is to love his wife unconditionally those four kinds of love are taught Additionally here's Peter right so here's another Apostle and he's he writes in first Peter 3 7 show her honor as a joint heir of the grace of life Okay, show her honor now.

That is not what the rabbis taught okay, but Jesus is lived this out and spoke it so clearly that these guys got it they understood it Jesus is also not being a presumptuous mooch as he comes here and stays with Mary and Martha and Lazarus while he's a guest on the basis of the Jewish customs he wasn't being presumptuous and he wasn't being an arrogant chauvinist Among these ladies expecting that they would serve him, but he would ignore them as people, right? That's what the culture said to do, but Jesus didn't do that. He wasn't a mooch taking all he could get from his hosts and not giving back something. He would teach and he would have personal relationships with them. He was teaching Lazarus and Martha and Mary and living among them such that they recognized him as the Messiah.

One of the things I'll make a comment about, I use a particular piece of artwork here to demonstrate this, even though I don't vary it as much as I might ordinarily. I don't like a lot of the dramatic presentations. And a lot of the artwork that shows just Jesus and Mary and Martha and that's it. I'm quite convinced in this context the rest of the disciples were there and Lazarus was there as well. So at any rate that's the reason for sticking with one piece of artwork.

And so in Luke 10.39 it says, she had a sister called Mary who was seated at the Lord's feet listening to his word. Now this is actually huge. A Jew reading this would just be stunned because this just would not happen. Let's talk about it. First it says that Mary was actively listening. Actively listening. Since Jesus would in fact teach women, Martha's sister Mary was sitting at Jesus' feet as a disciple. That's what it meant to sit at Jesus' feet. She was listening to the things that Jesus was teaching, actively taking in his message as a disciple.

Acts 22.3 uses the same term Paul said as he talked to the Sanhedrin, he said, I sat at the feet of Gamaliel. Same expression here, she's sitting at the feet of Jesus, learning actively as a disciple.

Later, after the resurrection of her brother Lazarus, this very same Mary will put ointment, nard, on Jesus' feet and it will be Judas who would object to the waste of funds. Of course, he has something else in mind for those funds, right? So that's really the basis of his objection.

So this Mary is actively listening. She recognizes who the Lord is and who it is she's listening to. Now, she's listening and learning. This verse right here reveals the general pattern of the New Testament is that listening and learning are in the active voice in the New Testament. I went through and looked at the different places, and it is very frequently put in the active voice and not the passive voice. It wasn't, I learned, just sitting there passively, but it's actively learning, actively listening.

She was actively listening here. Now, how do you do that? Do you mean you squirm in your seat? What does that look like? It's not a physical thing. She was sitting at his feet, not jumping up and down or anything. But she was actively wanting to take in all that he had. She was soaking it up.

Philippians 4.9, the things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, the Apostle Paul wrote, Practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you. All four of those verbs, learn, receive, heard, and seen, are active. So it's not just, I just sat here and soaked everything in passively, but actively learned, actively received, actively heard, and actively seen.

Here's Luke 10.40, 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. Please! Right? Now, what's not reflected here is maybe there's even exasperation in her voice. Right? Lord, don't you care that my... You know, so kind of like that. Probably not as low as my voice. Anyway, okay.

Martha was distracted. That's one of the things it says. Martha was focused on the preparation of the meals, so she was not able to put any focus on what Jesus was teaching. Mary, in contrast, was totally focused on what Jesus was teaching, even to the point where she was sitting at his feet and actively listening. So, real contrast here. For Mary to take a position at Jesus' feet was counter to the culture.

No other rabbi in Israel would allow such a thing. The rabbi would say, Mary, what are you doing? Get out of here. And the culture would also have said, her place is to serve, not to be taught. So she needs to get busy with taking care of the rest of us. So the culture would have told her, no, you don't get to sit at Jesus' feet. And the culture would have told her, you, you're supposed to get up and serve. You're not supposed to be sitting there learning. So there's a cultural message, not just Martha's complaint. There's a cultural message as to what would be expected. And Mary and Jesus cooperating with it was completely contrary to the culture. So here's Luke 10 41 and the Lord answered and said to her Martha Martha you are worried and bothered about so many things So All right using a double name or a repeated name. Okay in the Bible is a way of making an emphasis Expressing love and care for the person and to get their attention Okay, make sure you have their personal focused attention, right? Examples of this in the Bible.

Here is Abraham about ready to put a knife into his son Isaac. And so the message from the angel of the Lord is, Abraham, Abraham. Right? Double. In Genesis 46, 2. Jacob, Jacob. Right? And then, when Moses is drawn to this burning bush. The voice comes out to him, Moses, Moses, right? Do you, do you, hear me, hear me, right? Okay. Samuel, Samuel is what Samuel, and we could go on, I just ran out of room, okay? There are more and more examples of that.

So Jesus is following a long-standing cultural pattern of using these double names, right? Jesus himself on the cross, my God, my God, right? So the repeated name again, Matthew 27, 46. Now, so Jesus on the cross uses this double name, repeated name pattern.

Now, the word anxious is the same word used in Philippians 4, 6, and 7. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God which surpasses all comprehension will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. That's the same word here in this verse as is found in Luke 10, 41.

Repeated names are also used to prepare people for hard words to follow. Hard words that were going to come after the repeated name. So it's to assure them that I've got your attention and you need to know that I love you and care about you. And so what I'm going to say next, you may not like, but it's still based on love. The repeated name conveys a care and focus on the person being addressed. Even the words that follow are still based on love.

So Martha asks, Lord, do you not care? Don't you care? Don't you care? So Jesus was saying that he does care. Say your name twice. He does care. Even if what he has to say next to Martha is not what she wants to hear. I do care, Martha. That's what Jesus was saying by Martha, Martha.

So here's Luke 10.42, but only one thing is necessary for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her. Is that what Martha wanted to hear? No. A contrast here is we saw many things that Martha is concerned with, one thing that Mary is concerned with. Martha was going all out in meal preparation, making a complex ultimate meal with which everyone would be impressed, even when a simpler meal would have allowed her to listen.

Jesus was not going to stand behind what Martha wanted him to say, even if the culture was all in Martha's favor, and it was. Jesus was definitely counterculture here, because the rabbi said it was irresponsible to teach a woman. That was a bad thing to do. It was irresponsible to teach a woman, and so Mary should have gotten up for that reason, but the other thing is that Martha's place was to serve the food. She certainly should have been helping with that. That's the cultural message.

Jesus said, no, we're not going there. Mary chose the one top priority, sitting at Jesus' feet. Not to be taken away from her, Jesus was not going to tell Mary to help Martha in her preparations. This implies that if Jesus had told Mary to help her sister Martha, she would have gotten up and helped. Jesus expressed concern over Martha's heart condition.

What did he point out? He says, you're anxious and bothered. By the way, that word bothered is a Greek word that's only used here in the whole New Testament. You're really troubled. You're really troubled. So you're anxious and you're troubled about getting this meal all together.

But Jesus expressed concern over her heart condition, spiritually speaking. Jesus was not going to tell Mary to get up, but rather he would support her singular focus on Him. Her singular focus on Him. There are some things that I think are a takeaway from this, several different things. One is about prayer.

Pray, but don't tell God what to do, right? We make requests of the Lord. We don't do, as Martha did here, tell Jesus what to say, right? We don't tell God what to do. Martha wanted Jesus to tell Mary what to do, right? We don't tell God what to do, right? We make requests of Him. We thank Him. We praise Him. We agree with him about things, but we do not tell God what to do.

If Jesus had seen the need for Mary to get up and help at that moment, he could have said so himself. In other words, he could have said, you know, Mary, you really ought to be helping out here. Didn't need Martha's informing Jesus about what he needed to do.

Our job is not to inform God when we pray. Hey, God, did you know this was going on? Yeah, He did. Right? We don't need to inform God when we pray. God desires our prayers. He even values them. Revelation says that the prayers of the saints are kept in golden bowls in heaven. God values them. And as Roger explained, He uses those prayers even in our lives.

But it's not our place to tell God what to do. It just isn't. We can request things. We can ask for it. But we certainly can't tell him what to do. And Martha had no place to tell Jesus what to do. Right? It's not our place either, because what did she do? Don't you care? To question his care. This guy, Jesus, that was there in her house, was soon going to die on the cross for Martha's and Mary's sins. He cares. He cares a lot. Questioning his care is not a good thing to do either.

We as Christians, as we see here, need to beware of legitimate, if I put in quotes, distractions. There are lots of ways to be distracted from our focus upon Christ. Activities. I'm super, super, super busy. So activities can keep us distracted from Christ. I've got so much going on. Or the need for a break from all that frenzied activity can also have us distracted from our focus on Christ.

So both extremes. And probably this one right here, the levels of activity, is something that probably most of America gets overboard with. Important people in your life and people who think they're important. It is possible, you know, we say, boy, my husband, my wife, my family, all these things, we'll say, these are very important people in my life. Can they be a distraction from Christ?

Yeah, they could be. Does it mean I shouldn't have important people? Not at all. Not at all. But distraction from focus on Christ is a potential, legitimate distraction. Here's another one. Today's electronics and technology. Oh boy. You're so focused on this thing. Texts and emails and you know, oh this other thing popped up and you know, so Today's electronics and technology just can can pull you in and distract from Christ Urgent things fighting fires and the next emergency, right?

The tyranny of the urgent and the things that are so urgent pull us away from what's important including our focus upon Christ and Pleasures and pains that draw our focus And by the way, these legitimate distractions, I think there's another word for them idols Some years ago and Nancy and I were living in Carson City and the Vietnam Memorial Wall Was brought to the Capitol building and we went there and just oh tremendously emotionally impacting moment but nearby was a tent and Point Man Ministries was a ministry to Vietnam War vets.

And what they said was that for many coming out of the Nam War, the pain of the war was an idol. That was the spiritual problem is that the pain was an idol. Should they, I mean, is it understandable they're in pain? Yes. But the pain, if it calls the shots above God, is an idol. And pleasures can also be an idol.

So those are legitimate distractions. The demands and urges of the culture, just like we saw here. The demands and urges of the culture said, Mary, you should not be sitting at Jesus' feet, and you most certainly ought to be in there helping. And that's what Martha was expressing. So it's a legitimate distraction. Legitimate in quotes.

Beware feelings and experiences and cultural pressures over, that is, having a higher priority over faith in the facts. Martha's culture was giving her feelings that were accompanied by anxiety and being troubled, right? That Mary should certainly get up and make this a fantastic meal. She should get involved with this, right?

Our culture has been placing a priority on feelings and experiences over faith in the facts of God's Word. Increasingly. Placing our faith in the revealed facts of God's Word is exactly what God has in mind for us. Not making feelings an idol. The feelings are not to lead, but are to follow. So here we have the train analogy here. The faith in the facts is like the train in the tracks, right? And like the caboose, the feelings follow, not lead.

Much of Christendom has gotten to the place where feelings dictate what Christians do in worship services, what Christians do in their personal lives. Christians have done this where the feelings are made to be an idol. ahead of what's the truth of God's Word and walking in with faith in the facts.

One of the other points that comes out of this is Jesus actually supported Mary in her being at his feet and one of the things we saw was Mary was actively listening, just like the Apostle Paul wrote in Philippians 4.9. For us in the body of Christ, it's not a law to be lived out by our own efforts, however. This active learning is to be grace-motivated, not law-motivated, as is the desire for growth which is in Christ.

1 Peter 2.2 and 2 Peter 3.18 put that together. Long for the pure milk of the word, that's an imperative. Long for the pure milk of the word, long is the imperative.

It's not a law-based imperative, it's a grace-motivated imperative. in 2 Peter 3.18, grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Grow is an imperative. It's not a law-based imperative. It's a grace-motivated imperative.

Also, one other thing, and that is, it didn't seem like Mary followed about with the disciples all the time, but when Jesus came, it looks like she would give him undivided attention. For us, too, it's important to look for and to take advantage of the spiritual opportunities that the Lord presents for us. To look for and take advantage of the spiritual opportunities the Lord presents to us there. We can even ask the Lord to make us more aware of those spiritual opportunities. And the other thing is the spiritual focus on Christ.

We're not like Mary who could sit at the literal feet of Jesus and listen to His every word as He spoke them. But we may have something that's even better. And that is we can and are called to look unto Jesus and behold him through his word. And that may be even better because we are transformed as a work of the Holy Spirit as we do so. The transformation is not our own self-transformation. It is a work of the Holy Spirit.

So 2 Corinthians 3.18, But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror, the mirror from the book of James we find is the Word of God, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory. When you see in the Bible like glory to glory, life to life, death to death, faith to faith, that's an expression that means growing in that. Growing in that. From glory to glory means growing in glory.

It is just from the Lord the Spirit. That is, it is a work of the Holy Spirit that we are growing from glory to glory. And so as we look at this, the spiritual focus upon Christ for us is not incidental. It is to be central to how we live life. beholding the Lord.

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for what you revealed in these brief verses here, this short story, if you will, and yet there's a lot in it, and we thank you for that. Thank you for the spiritual lessons and truth, and we just pray as your Holy Spirit works this out in our lives. We just commit things to you. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.