On this very day!

Hi, EVERYONE,
On this very day I preached about Martha...
C'mon, you all have heard of Martha, if not here goes:

Distracted from Jesus

Luke 10:38 “Now it happened as they went that He entered a certain village; and a certain woman named Martha welcomed Him into her house.
10:39 And she had a sister called Mary, who also sat at Jesus' feet and heard His word.
10:40 But Martha was distracted with much serving, and she approached Him and said, ‘Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore tell her to help me.’
10:41 And Jesus answered and said to her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things.
10:42 But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.’ ”

Introduction
Martha was working. Martha was doing house work and preparing food for her Guest. Martha was in fact distracted by working. You may have seen the cartoon titled: “The hurriered I go the behinder I get?”
She was worried too. She was busy and upset, and yet Jesus was right there in the house! How could you be worried, rushing around and upset while Jesus was right there in the house?
Maybe, as some wit suggested, she was a Rushin’ Orthodox?
Obviously, she had missed something; she had not seen something. She had not perceived what was happening.
She was distracted, that’s what she was.
Have you ever been distracted? I’m sure you have.
Everyone in this church has been doing something, thinking something, and then somehow they have been taken to a different line of thinking and doing than the one they first pursued.
You have been distracted. You are no longer thinking and doing what you intended to do, what you began to do.
Sometimes this does not matter much…but it matters if you are driving a car!
Most accidents are caused by the driver’s inattention. The driver intended to watch the road, intended to watch that bike or car or truck or pedestrian, but they for one moment failed to do so and they were involved in an accident.
Some people begin a journey wide awake and alert to what is going on around them. Some people can be good drivers but after 30 to 40 minutes or an hour fall asleep at the wheel. Tragic consequences come from being distracted or falling asleep while driving.
The same thing can happen to Christians. We can all lose the plot, get distracted from looking to Jesus in faith or simply fall asleep spiritually, go offline and drift.
Many things may cause this to happen.
Sometimes it because we are too busy doing the Lord’s work!
Like Martha, we may decide that what we do is all that needs to be done, and that what we do is fulfilling what God has asked us to do. Our work is legitimate, the sorts of things set down in the Bible that Christians should do.
But there may well be what Jesus calls that “one thing lacking.”

The one thing that we are lacking and which makes all the difference to the outcome of our lives is to listen to Jesus’ words and obey them.

Martha had missed something important her sister Mary had seen. Mary was commended for seeing and acting on something important.
So Martha was very busy, worried and upset.
She brought a question to Jesus: ‘Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore tell her to help me.’(40)
Martha shows Jesus respect. ‘Lord’ is an appropriate address for a Rabbi or teacher of the Law of God.
But she also makes two accusations:
1. That Jesus does not care about her crisis.
2. That her sister is being a lazy lump!
The disciples asked Jesus the same question when they were worried that they may drown in a sinking boat and questioned Him saying: “Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?” (Mk 4:38)
What did Jesus do? (He calmed the storm. He brought them to safety.)
Jesus cares about you, in your life. He can calm your storm. We have His promise on that.
“Casting all your care on Him for he cares for you.” (I Pet 5:7)
And you can hear it in His voice.
It is not:
“Martha, I am busy with Mary here. Can’t you be more like Mary and sit down and listen?”
Instead the Lord says: “Martha, Martha...” to calm her as a baby is calmed by mother’s voice over the cot.
“Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. I do understand Martha, and I love and care about you. There’s just one thing, and Mary’s doing it…come sit down and rest and listen to what I have to say.”
Jesus is concerned with you and you have to be concerned with Him. Never mind about your sister or brother or anyone else, be concerned with Jesus.
Is there something in your life that distracts you from being concerned with Jesus?
It might be work. It might be someone else. It may be an otherwise innocent thing, but does it distract you from Jesus?

The danger is that it probably has become so much part of your life that you do not consider it a distraction any more.

Indeed you may think it the right thing to do; the thing God has given you to do.
But is it?
What time have you given this last week to listening to Jesus?
And by that, I mean reading God’s Word, since that is the main and most reliable way of hearing Jesus’ voice.
Have you taken your cares to Jesus lately?
Have you listened and responded to Jesus in prayer?
Or are you like Martha, too busy with other things?
Bishop JC Ryle says: “Profits and pleasure are dearly purchased if, in order to obtain them we thrust aside eternity from our thoughts, abridge our Bible reading, become careless hearers of the gospel, and shorten our prayers.” (JC Ryle, Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: Luke Vol 1: Chapter 10:38-42, James Clarke and Co. Ltd, Cambridge and London, August 1858, reprinted 1969)
Think for a moment of your time as something you invest.
Time, as I have said before, is your life. It is all we really have on earth.
Just think what the investment of your time costs you…you should expect a good return on your investment.

What are you using your time for?
Bishop Ryle is saying that it is a poor investment, a poor use of our time… if money or wealth, possessions or pleasure is all we get in this life…for the time we spend here on earth.
If you strive for money, possessions, pleasure and don’t spend any time thinking about your eternal future…for we all have an eternal future…
If you strive for what you want, but spend little time with God in Bible reading and prayer…
If you listen with little or no interest to the preaching of God’s message… and say to yourself: “Oh it’s the gospel, I’ve already heard that…been there, done that!”
All this, says J.C. Ryle, show a poor investment of your effort and time here on earth.
I finish with a story which illustrates the power of God's Word, the Bible, and why we should read it often.
It is the story of Augustine’s coming to Jesus Christ. Augustine is one of what we call ‘The Church Fathers’ who wrote and taught Biblically with great wisdom and effect.
“Gradually he came to accept the plausibility of confidence in the scriptures as the true source of knowledge of God. He "made a beginning," reading the scriptures "with the most intense desire." But he could not yet embrace the truth wholeheartedly.
At last Augustine began to despair of the things he had always expected would make him a happy man: honors, wealth, and marriage. By his thirtieth year, he looked back upon his quest for wisdom, begun at nineteen, and realized he had continually been saying to himself, "Tomorrow I will find it!", always deferring, always looking for a time with more leisure to look into his endless questions. Yet the single factor that he later recognized as preventing him turning to the truth was, "I thought I would be too wretched, if I were kept from a woman’s arms."
http://www.intervarsity.org/gfm/resource/the-conversion-of-a-scholar

Two friends, Ambrose and Simplicianus and his mother Monica’s constant prayers had a great effect on him.
Ambrose’ kindness and preaching kept Augustine in the church as a learner.
Simplicianus related to him a wonderful story of a man who taught in Augustine’s own discipline and who having suffered for Christ became an inspiring example to Augustine.
While at another level his mother Monica’s prayers brought him constantly to God.
As a young man while studying, it was his hearts’ desire that he should find “undying wisdom.”
(“All my vain hopes forthwith became worthless to me, and with incredible ardor of heart I desired undying wisdom."
See under ‘Later Youth’: http://www.intervarsity.org/gfm/resource/the-conversion-of-a-scholar)

In his ‘Confessions,’ dedicating his life and the whole book to God, Augustine writes how one day, in the presence of another friend Alypius, he had to get away and be alone with God:
“I suppose I had said something before I started up and he noticed that the sound of my voice was choked with weeping. And so he stayed alone, where we had been sitting together, greatly astonished. I flung myself down under a fig tree--how I know not--and gave free course to my tears. The streams of my eyes gushed out an acceptable sacrifice to thee. And, not indeed in these words, but to this effect, I cried to thee: "And thou, O Lord, how long?... Wilt thou be angry forever? Oh, remember not against us our former iniquities." For I felt that I was still enthralled by them. I sent up these sorrowful cries: "How long, how long? Tomorrow and tomorrow? Why not now? Why not this very hour make an end to my uncleanness?"
29. I was saying these things and weeping in the most bitter contrition of my heart, when suddenly I heard the voice of a boy or a girl I know not which--coming from the neighboring house, chanting over and over again, "Pick it up, read it; pick it up, read it." ["tolle lege, tolle lege"] Immediately I ceased weeping and began most earnestly to think whether it was usual for children in some kind of game to sing such a song, but I could not remember ever having heard the like. So, damming the torrent of my tears, I got to my feet, for I could not but think that this was a divine command to open the Bible and read the first passage I should light upon.
[For I had heard how Anthony, accidentally coming into church while the gospel was being read, received the admonition as if what was read had been addressed to him: "Go and sell what you have and give it to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come and follow me." By such an oracle he was forthwith converted to thee.]
So I quickly returned to the bench where Alypius was sitting, for there I had put down the apostle's book when I had left there. I snatched it up, opened it, and in silence read the paragraph on which my eyes first fell: "Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof." I wanted to read no further, nor did I need to. For instantly, as the sentence ended, there was infused in my heart something like the light of full certainty and all the gloom of doubt vanished away.”
From AUGUSTINE: CONFESSIONS, newly translated and edited by ALBERT C. OUTLER, Ph.D., D.D.
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/aug-conv.html
Such is the power of God’s Word and when we make good and constant use of it, it changes our hearts and makes us useful to God and to the world. Amen.