Worship and Service
Out theme this month is the Supernatural Spring of Worship.
And my question for you is this:
Are you faithful in your worship and service?
Perhaps I need to clarify the question a little.
What really brought you here this morning?
Was it your desire to fill your heart with more of Jesus?
Was it the thought of what God might give you?
Did you pause to think of what you might give back to God?
Is it the thought of worshipping God or the possibility of serving God that is your priority this morning?
As we meet together as church this morning is there a real eagerness in your heart to worship the Lord and also the desire to give yourself fully to Him in service?
There are times when all we want to do is worship.
There are times when all of us want the opportunity to just worship God,
to spend time in his presence, to draw near to Him, to sense His grace, his mercy, his love.
To sit at His feet.
But, we should also willingly desire to spend time worshipping him by serving Him too.
Serving Him not out of obligation, but as an expression of worship, as an expression of our love for Him.
The passage I want us to consider this morning is found in LUKE 10:38-42.
Let me put these verses into context - Jesus has just given the parable of the Good Samaritan to illustrate how we are supposed to love our neighbour, and then he uses a situation with two sisters Mary and Martha to show how we can demonstrate our love of God.
LUKE 10:38-42. As Jesus and the disciples continued on their way to Jerusalem, they came to a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. 39 Her sister, Mary, sat at the Lord’s feet, listening to what he taught.
40 But Martha was distracted by the big dinner she was preparing. She came to Jesus and said, “Lord, doesn’t it seem unfair to you that my sister just sits here while I do all the work? Tell her to come and help me.”
41 But the Lord said to her, “My dear Martha, you are worried and upset over all these details! 42 There is only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her.”
Martha’s home was located in the small village of Bethany, which was just outside Jerusalem.
Some bible scholars say that the way the bible describes this place as her home, would suggest that perhaps Martha was a widow and, was now the head of the household.
Martha was Mary and Lazarus’ sister and they lived with her.
These people were friends of Jesus, and He had been probably visited them many times before.
I think its fair to say that the people in this house had a great love for the Lord, yet the sisters expressed their love for Him in very different ways.
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I’m sure you have noticed that different people have different temperaments.
Some people are active, some people always want to be busy, some people never want to sit still.
Some people are thoughtful, some people prefer to sit down and think things through.
Martha seems to be a very activity-oriented person and her sister Mary, seems to have a more thoughtful nature.
I have heard some preachers say we should seek to be more like Mary and less busy than Martha.
And I have heard other preachers say we should be more like Martha; always being productive with no idleness in our lives.
I believe the Lord wants us to be like Mary in our worship, and like Martha in our service.
We should keep a good balance of both worship and service in our lives.
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In this passage, Mary is content to sit at Jesus’ feet soaking up the Word, worshipping while not doing anything else.
But her big sister, Martha, looked around at all the guests and saw the need to prepare food so they could have something to eat.
Martha was probably the type of person who would see the situation and say, ‘What a privilege it is for me to serve and prepare a meal for the Master!’
Mary on the other hand would have said, ‘What a privilege it is for me to worship and sit at the feet of the Master.’
Is one right and the other wrong? No.
Duty and devotion are both necessary but there must be a balance.
A balance where neither one would hinder us from exhibiting the other.
Everything we do and every relationship we have demands focus.
When we focus properly, we succeed.
When we lose our focus, we begin to fail,
and the longer we go without focus,
the worse our circumstances get.
It was a loss of focus that made Martha start:
FEELING SORRY FOR HERSELF
LUKE 10:40 describes Martha’s preoccupation with her service.
‘Martha was distracted by the big dinner she was preparing. She came to Jesus and said, “Lord, doesn’t it seem unfair to you that my sister just sits here while I do all the work? Tell her to come and help me.’
Maybe you have had unexpected guests show up for dinner, maybe you can identify with what Martha felt.
Martha was ‘distracted.’ Maybe she felt she was being pulled away from an opportunity to do something else she wanted to do.
The implication here is that she also wanted to take the opportunity to sit and listen to Jesus.
Martha felt compelled to put that off so she could take care of everyone else’s needs.
Maybe you can understand why she is a little bit on edge.
We should always take our responsibilities seriously, but not to the point where we lose the proper perspective on other things going on around us.
The problem was not what Martha was doing;
it was the attitude she had while she was doing it.
She let herself become unbalanced.
She wanted to sit and listen, but felt compelled to go and do.
All of us have had the wrong attitude about something at some time in our lives.
Something may not go our way, or
we think we are working too hard, or
we feel unappreciated for what we have chosen to do, and get upset or a little angry.
Often, what we perceive as a problem with others, is actually a problem with our self.
And we can allow wrong attitudes to fester, and grow until the point where somethings got to give.
Within the modern church, there is a unique problem that most of society does not have.
Let’s say - You want to be involved in some kind of ministry.
So you find a ministry that you can serve in, and you throw all of yourself into it.
But you still have a job, a family, other obligations in your life.
Then you feel overworked, or like you have too much on your plate.
Many of us are trying to do too many things without having enough time to any of them properly.
This was where Martha found herself; too busy to focus, too busy to worship.
It was her loss of focus that made Martha feel sorry for herself, and it was that lack of focus that also caused her to be:
ANGRY AT HER SISTER MARY
Our world is full of distractions.
And the higher the pressure, the more tempting it can be to focus on the distractions rather than the things of real importance.
I’m sure Martha wanted to honour Jesus,
and she made preparing the meal her highest priority.
Maybe you can identify yourself with that.
Perhaps, you have begun the task of making a huge meal (maybe for a special occasion or Christmas dinner).
You’ve planned every ingredient, every course, and You started preparing the meal with the greatest of enthusiasm,
but as the day went on,
you began to realise that you were running out of time and you could not possibly finish everything that you had planned to do.
When something like that happens, its easy to get angry –
angry with yourself for being in the situation,
and angry with anyone else who you think may have hindered you in accomplishing everything you had planned to do.
It seems Martha was like that, the harder she worked the more worked up she became.
Some people ‘burn out’ in service to others,
but that day, Martha was ‘burned up’ in hers.
Its hard enough to feel as if everything rests on your shoulders.
It can be even worse when we see someone who doesn’t seem to be pulling their own weight that can put even more pressure on us.
We become tense and pressure increases,
and tasks that should be simple go wrong,
or we can try to do too many things and end up doing nothing at all.
We end up developing a spirit of negativity,
which causes us to judge others and only see how they are hindering us from accomplishing our goals.
In second part of verse forty, Martha finally explodes, she comes out of the kitchen, and says to Jesus, “Lord, doesn’t it seem unfair to you that my sister just sits here while I do all the work? Tell her to come and help me.
At this point, Martha is so upset she doesn’t even call Mary by name, but refers to her as ‘my sister.’
As much as Martha had a need to serve others, Mary had a need to worship Jesus.
I think Martha represents us at different points in our lives.
We can begin to think only of what we need,
or what we want,
and we can forget that other people may have different needs and wants.
As Christians, we must love other people enough to let them have their priorities.
And when a genuine problem comes up,
conflict between their priorities and our priorities,
its a loving conversation that needs to take place, not an upset commentary.
Martha’s loss of focus caused her to get upset, and it caused her:
TO QUESTION IF JESUS CARED FOR HER
As Martha goes to talk to Jesus about her problem, It’s almost like she is saying, ‘Lord, make sure I get my way on this!’
Martha linked Jesus’ caring about her to His telling Mary to get in the kitchen and help her make dinner for everyone.
But that isn’t how Jesus shows He cares, is it?
Have you ever accused Jesus of not caring because He didn’t immediately give you what you wanted?
Martha’s problem was that she expected Mary to serve and worship Christ in Martha’s way, not Mary’s way.
Sometimes we expect others to love, honour, and worship Jesus just like we do,
and if they don’t,
we automatically consider what they do is wrong.
SO WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THIS SITUATION?
In LUKE 10:41-42 Jesus responds to Martha by saying:
“My dear Martha, you are worried and upset over all these details! 42 There is only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her.”
Jesus responds with tenderness.
He did not rebuke her for making the meal. Martha’s problem was not that she was preparing food for her guests, but that she gave too much importance to it.
Today we need to be careful that we do not let the things we do become more important to us than the One we serve.
Martha thought what she needed most right then was to have her sister help her in the kitchen.
In reality, what she needed most was a new perspective.
Jesus gave her what she really needed, not what she thought she needed.
And Jesus continues to do that for us today, too.
He shows us, through the Holy Spirit, where we need to change; what attitudes we need to keep; and what attitudes we need to lose.
We need to ensure we take the time to worship God and also take the time to serve Him.
- Worshiping without serving is powerless
- Serving without worshipping is directionless
- Serving and worshipping is the balance we need.
As I close let me revise the opening question: Are you faithful in both worship and service?
Have you been more concerned with serving God than taking the time to worship Jesus?
Or have you been so involved in worshipping Him that you haven’t taken any opportunity to serve Him?
I hope and pray that you are here to worship Him, and then take what you learn and put it to active use in your life to serve Him.
One without the other is incomplete.
Worship does not satisfy our hunger for Jesus, it whets our appetite for more of Him.
And our need for Jesus is not fulfilled by service alone.
We need both worship and service in our lives.
May the Lord transform us by the Power of the Holy Spirit so that we are like Mary in our worship, and like Martha in our service.
Lets pray.
