Intimacy with God[1]

By Pastor Matt Black

02 September 2006
Men’s Prayer Breakfast/Leadership Paradigms
Galatians 5:16; Luke 10:38-42

 

Opening Hymn: 431 I Must Tell Jesus

 

Introduction: Open your Bible to Galatians 5:16.  We will also be looking at Luke 10:38-42.  The title of our study this morning is “Intimacy with God”. 

Galatians 5:16 tells us very plainly, “Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh”.  We are so busy.  We are trying to “keep in step” with the whole world around us.  We want to keep in step with the lifestyle of the American dream.  We try to keep in step with our finances.  Galatians 5:16 says we need to “walk” or literally “keep in step” with the Spirit!  In other words, we need to go at the pace of the Holy Spirit of God.  He is our standard!  We must follow Him—not lag behind Him or go on before Him.

 

We come to our text in Luke 10:38-42, and we see a situation that reminds us to slow down.  Don’t get ahead of the Spirit of God.  Intimacy with God is the number one way to stop sinning!  How can we keep in step with the Spirit?  I think our text gives us a crystal clear example.  We read in Luke 10:38-42, “Now it came to pass, as they went, that he [JESUS] entered into a certain village: and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house.  39 And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet, and heard his word.  40 But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me.  41 And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things:  42 But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”

 

Had Martha known her outburst with her sister would have been recorded for millions of people through the ages to see, here found in Luke’s Gospel, she probably would have kept her mouth closed!   She didn’t though, and her shame is our gain.   This morning we are going to discover through her story how we can have intimacy with God—to “Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh”. 

 

Jesus is journeying through Bethany, a small town two miles outside of Jerusalem. The Bible says in verse 38 that “a certain woman named Martha received him into her house”. 

 

Now Luke doesn’t say, but it’s quite possible that she opened up her home to the disciples as well, which means she had a minimum of 13 extra place settings to worry about! Not only that, but it is unlikely that she had been notified ahead of time.  Every indication is that this was a spontaneous, unexpected visit. 

 

Now just imagine what your wife might say if Jill and I stopped by your place with twelve of our friends.  “Good to see you!  We were just driving by and through we might stop in and have dinner with you!”  You might not be upset, but I would venture to guess that your wife would not be too happy with me!

 

You would at least try to be enthusiastic.  “Great to see you!” you’d say, a smile plastered on your face.  As we came in you might start apologizing for the sink full of dirty dishes, or the lawn mower parts spread out on the living room floor.  Can you imagine your wife rummaging through the cupboard, wondering how she was going to stretch one box of Hamburger Helper into a full-scale banquet?

 

Bethany was not a place that had a Chinese Restaurant.  Martha could not just order a few pizzas from Little Caesar’s.  All of this is totally unexpected.  I’m sure Martha had the best of intentions, but it’s almost inevitable that some kind of struggle and anxiety was going on inside of her. 

 

Martha is probably the oldest.  She must have thought surely my youngest sis will help me with this.  She looks out the kitchen door, and what does she see?  Mary sitting around at Jesus’ feet—listening to Him teach.  Here is Martha sweating in service for the Lord, and Mary is relaxing unaware and unaffected.  Do you think this may have tested her attitude just a little bit?

 

Soon Martha’s dinner was not the only thing boiling in the kitchen.  What begins as an act of kindness has now taken an unexpected turn.  Now she’s angry, and doing her best to unload her frustrations on Mary by unloading on the Lord. 

 

You can imagine at this point the Lord teaching, and Mary can’t stand it any longer.  Her frustration boils over, and she interrupts the Lord’s teaching.  “Lord,” she snaps, “don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work myself?  Tell her to help me!”  Obviously this was a testy exchange on Martha’s part, and she had no idea that it would go on the Biblical record and that we’d be talking about her today.  But at this point she is frustrated, reacting sinfully to what she felt was her sister’s neglect of her cause.

 

Martha has gotten a bad rap over the years, so let me defend her and let us give her the benefit of the doubt.  According to later accounts of her in the Scriptures, she changed and learned from the Lord’s gentle correction.  Also, she did have a servant’s heart.  That is greatly to her credit.  It was not her serving that got her in trouble, but her sinful attitude.

 

Martha made one big mistake though: she thought service equaled spirituality.  We need to learn from this.  Many times we look at serving as in and of itself a spiritual activity.  What she needed to do was stop and slow down and listen to the Lord, and then serve the Lord joyfully with an unencumbered heart!

 

So let’s look at three areas she went wrong:

 

  1. She charged God with not caring for her.  She says in verse 40, “Lord, dost thou not care…?”  This is the attitude we can carry around with us if we leave God out of our lives.   Doubting God’s love is the first step to entering into sin.  We think service equals pleasing God, but we are not in step with the Spirit.  On the outside we look spiritual.  Perhaps we are busy with action for the Lord, but something is wrong.  Our attitude is sinful!  If we do not daily develop the habit of listening to the Lord on a minute by minute basis, we will inevitably begin to doubt God’s love.  We are going it alone, and we feel alone. God has not left us, we have left Him.  He is speaking to us, but we are so busy serving, that we do not listen.

 

Once we stop listening to God, our deceitful heart will begin to interpret our circumstances falsely and we become governed not by the Spirit of God, but by our anxiety, our anger, or our self-pity.

 

When we are not listening to the voice of God, we begin to charge God with all kinds of things.  He doesn’t love us.  It’s His fault for all our problems.  Yet He’s right there with the answers if we will stop blaming Him and start listening.  Yet, few things grieve God more than accusing Him of not caring.  Do you know why?  Because there isn’t anyone who cares for us like God does.  Look at 1 John 4:10.  Turn over there.  It tells us that God loved us so much He gave us His Son to be the shield for His wrath against us.  That’s what propitiation means.  Look at it now—1 John 4:10, “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”

 

Perhaps we feel God does not care. 

·         You work hard, but you have not gotten the promotion that you have prayed for and you know you deserve.

 

·         You have prayed for loved ones to be saved for years, and they are still not saved.

 

·         You tithe faithfully, but you still have too much month left at the end of the paycheck.

 

·         You are going through trials in your life, and you ask God to deliver you, but the trials only seem to get worse.

 

Have you ever been there?  Turn over to Romans 8:32.  What does it say? “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?”  So we make the mistake of getting busy before we listen to God’s voice.  We need to not confuse activity for spirituality.  We need to stop and listen to God instead of accusing Him.

 

You see when we plow ahead in our lives and go in front of the Lord, and fail to wait on Him, we are going to be a lone ranger.  You cannot live the Christian life without the power and presence of God.  And for that power and presence, you must wait on Him.  Listen to this quote from Charles Hummel:

 

“When we fail to wait prayerfully for God’s guidance and strength, we are saying, with our actions if not our lips, that we do not need him.”

 

So Mary’s first mistake was that she charged God foolishly, just like we all do.  We actually believe in our hearts that God does not care for us—that He doesn’t love us.  That is a lie from our deceitful heart.  But there was a second mistake this woman made.

 

  1. She became distracted.  Verse 40 says that Martha was cumbered about much serving.  She was burdened and frustrated.  In case you are wondering frustration, worry, and distraction are not fruits of the spirit.  Martha was distracted instead of listening to the Lord.  The American Heritage Dictionary defines “distracted” as “suffering conflicting emotions; distraught.”  When we don’t make time to wait before God we start to take on the burden of life all by ourself.  Our perspective becomes distorted, our anxiety and anger or self pity begin to churn, and spiritual coldness begins to cover us like a wet blanket in the middle of winter.

 

We are all acquainted with worry and distraction.  When we stop listening to the Lord, worry and distraction come like ocean waves.  We take the burden on ourselves, when God is right there telling us He’s already sent His Son into this world to carry all our burdens.  We become distracted by the cares of this world, whether it be health, relationships, finances, or job.  But when we worry, we are doubting God.  Charles Simpson quotes his father as saying, “Anxiety is a mild case of atheism.”  Worry is a serious affront to God.  When we worry we are in effect saying, “I don’t trust you Lord—I will have to handle these problems myself”.  But when we stop and worship and wait on God, worry is rarely an issue because in God’s presence we receive assurance of His sovereignty, wisdom, and unconditional love for us.  Waiting in God’s presence does not necessarily change our circumstances.  You may still not have that job promotion.  You still have the burden of lost loved ones or financial hardship or health problems.  We may wait on God with these circumstances unchanged.  What listening to God does is gives us an eternal perspective which removes the worry from the heart and replaces it with peace.  Psalm 46:10 says it best, “Be still, and know that I am God”.  Waiting on God tells us that God is all we need.  We really don’t need that job promotion to be happy.  We don’t need people’s praise to be happy.  We don’t need a pain free life to be happy.  What do we need?  We need the approval of God—and that’s it!!  Wait on God and realize He’s all we need.  That will keep you from sinning.  She was so focused on herself that she forgot God!  Matthew 6:25 has a good command from Jesus for us.  He says it several times in that passage.  What does He say?  Six words: “Take no thought for your life.”  In other words, don’t worry about it.  God’s got a plan.  He’s got it all under control!  He’s big enough to handle it.  Just trust Him.

 

Ok, so Martha so far made two mistakes: She blamed God and she became distracted and worried because she took the burden upon herself without leaning on God for strength.  But thirdly she makes another mistake.

 

  1. She accuses and condemns her sister.  Look at verse 40, “But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me.”  C. J. Mahaney puts it this way, “Failure to wait on God and listen to His voice often culminates in criticism of and comparison to others.”  Isn’t that the truth!  We often begin to resent others who seem to appear “more spiritual”.  But if we are honest, we’ll admit that we sometimes react sinfully to others instead of heading their example.  When we react sinfully, it reveals that we have not waited on God.  We can use a false spiritual piety as a weapon.

 

I’m amazed by what Jesus says to Martha.  You know what we would have said to Martha?  What would we expect Jesus to say?  Martha is commanding Almighty God in the flesh to do her bidding!  Jesus could have said, “Do you have any idea who you are talking to?   How dare you command me!  I created you!”  Instead, He sat there, waited until she had finished exposing her sinful heart, and simply said her name: “Martha, Martha”.  (By the way, if the Lord uses your name twice, brace yourself for a rebuke.  It’s time for all seat backs to be placed forward and tray tables to be returned to their original upright position.)

 

Look at verses 41-42, “Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things:  42 But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”

 

Notice Christ does not join in Martha’s pity party.  Despite the zeal that she had which was good, he did not excuse her attitude in the slightest.  No amount of service balances out our sinful attitudes.  Martha’s activity, though zealous, was neither led by the Spirit, nor motivated by God’s grace.  What was it?  It was a work of the flesh, which can snare the Christian in fruitless legalism and dead works.  How do you know the difference between service and dead works?  The result of true service for the Lord is the fruit of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and self-control” (Galatians 5:21-23).  But the result of fleshly service is often pride, frustration, anger, and discouragement.   When we take ourselves out of God’s care, instead of being shepherded by God, we become enslaved to fleshly activities.  Listen to a poem which is the exact opposite of Psalm 23:

 

Psalm 23, Antithesis

The clock is my dictator, I shall not rest.

It makes me lie down only when exhausted.

It leads me to deep depression.

It hounds my soul.

It leads me in circles of frenzy for activity’s sake.

Even though I run frantically from task to task, I will never get it all done.

For my “ideal” is with me.

Deadlines and my need for approval, they drive me.

They demand performance from me, beyond the limits of my schedule

They anoint my head with migraines. 

My in-box overflows.

Surely fatigue and time pressure shall follow me all the days of my life,

And I will dwell in the bonds of frustration for even.

--Martha K. Hornok

 

John 10:27, Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:”  Are you listening to the voice of Jesus and following Him?

 

Let’s conclude by seeing three things in the Lord’s response to Martha.

 

  1. Only one thing is needed.  That’s what verse 42 says, “one thing is needful “. This is amazing.  We often think we are a long way away from walking in the Spirit.  No, there is only one thing needful.  Mary knew what that one thing was.  Stop.  Listen to the Lord.  If you do this you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.  Your anger and desire for your way will cease.  One thing is what you need.

 

  1. Make a choice.  Again verse 42, “Mary hath chosen that good part”  Martha probably thought Mary was lazy and selfish, but listening is far from effortless.  It involves discipline and diligence.  Mary chose the good part—in other words, she chose something better than what Martha was doing. 

 

  1. Recognize what’s eternal.  She invested in intimacy with God, and listen to what Jesus says to her, it “shall not be taken away from her”. 

 

Conclusion: Today you will make a number of decisions, investing your time and energy in various pursuits.  Choose one thing, and all the rest will follow.  “Seek ye first the kingdom of God” and what?... “all these things shall be added unto you.”  Choose one thing.  Choose God.  Let God worry about the rest.  Keep in step with the Spirit  Let that be your choice.  Galatians 5:16, “Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh”.

 

Closing Hymn: 431 I Must Tell Jesus

 


[1] This lesson adapted from C.J. Mahaney’s book Disciplines for Life (Sovereign Grace Ministries: Gaithersburg, MD, 1992), 1-8.