The Wisdom of What Matters Most

Yeah. Luke chapter 10, from verse 38. Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And 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. And she went up to him and said, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me." But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. And Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her."

This is the word of the Lord. When we look at this scripture reading, we will be looking at Mary and her sister Martha, and especially at the wisdom that Jesus shared with them over a long time. And then I want to add to our scripture reading one verse from the Old Testament coming to us from the wisdom literature. And it speaks and flows on from what Quentin was saying earlier. In Ecclesiastes 12, verse one, it just reads like this: "Remember also your creator, spelled with a capital letter, in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near, of which you will say, 'I have no pleasure in them.'"

Just want to read the first part of this verse again. "Remember also your creator in the days of your youth." Wisdom is not something that is just reserved for elderly people. Wisdom is not something that you can put a human perspective on it, saying it is someone who has studied a lot, it is someone with a number of degrees. Wisdom is coming from an understanding of what God has given you.

To see Quentin up here, and to know that these young people are wise enough to reach out to others with the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, that is wise. And you can be a wise man or a wise woman, even in your younger years. And when we look at this true story of Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus, it is all about her understanding, her way of life, wanting to pick up all the truth and all the wisdom of everything that Jesus was saying. All of us make choices, and on Mother's Day, we celebrate the choices our mothers have made and the mother figures in our lives have made. I still have one little card from my Sunday school teacher. Her name was Inna.

I can't even remember her face. I remember sort of what she looked like, but she was a loving woman who put up with young boys being naughty. And there's a little verse in there of wisdom, and I've decided to keep that little card until the end of my life. A woman of wisdom, just a Sunday school teacher to a primary school cool kid. Our mums are really the glue that keeps us together.

When we look at our families, it always comes back to mum. And today, we want to look at what it means to be a woman of wisdom and where wisdom comes from and what wisdom really is. We want to celebrate our mums for the love which flows from their wisdom of knowing what to give and what to withhold, their strength of being upright when things are falling over, their faithfulness when things look hopeless, and I remember my own mother never being afraid, never shying away, but just always constantly being there, quietly and oftentimes making sacrifices. And then we look at these two sisters, Mary and Martha. Mary sitting still and really listening to the words of Jesus, and Martha serving Jesus.

So the question is, did she serve Jesus in good faith? And the answer is yes, she did that. She decided to do that a long time ago, and in our story, we will see how the choices that she's made put her in a position that day to be serving our Lord. But looking into the Old Testament and understanding how the wisdom of Jesus works, we have read, "Remember that God created us. Remember to think of your creator."

When we think at Mary, and when we think at Martha, they have been created by God. So today, when we look at our mothers, we need to remember that they've been created in the image of God. Godly women have been created in His image, and the wisdom that they have received, they have received from God Himself, because wisdom, godly wisdom, is what a mother needs to fulfil her role in a household, to fulfil her role in society. Wisdom is the result of the choices that we make, and we will see how the choices that Martha made let her do what she was doing serving the Lord, and how the choices Mary has made let her do to sit at the feet of Jesus. We all make choices, some harder than others.

The very fact that you are here today is saying to me that you've made a choice to come. The places you have visited the past week or the holidays that you are planning, it is a choice that you make, it is a thing that you want to do or places that you want to experience. The clothes you wear, the car you drive, some people believe in diesel, some people believe in electricity and battery operated cars, some motorbikes, some people believe you have to drive it like this. That's the bike they want. Other people want an adventure bike, where they can go off road and they can do their thing.

But when we come into life, into the more difficult situations, it is what we have had in our youth. It is what we have had as part of our way of life that will shape the choice and the choices we make. In life threatening situations, sometimes, we need to make that decision in one second. In other ways, where mothers are and where they are quietly listening and looking onto their kids and guiding them and coaching them and mentoring them into life, into their future, it takes a little bit more time. The circumstances under which we make decisions can sometimes influence people's decisions, and we will come to that shortly with Mary and Martha.

But some people panic when the situation is there, and it is a situation of pressure, and they decide quickly, and sometimes they just make the wrong decision. Other people always, just because of the way of their lives and the way they live their life, is to not make a choice. They don't choose, that is their choice, because it will result in the least change, and that is what they don't want. They are threatened by change, so they rather choose not to choose. Some people think that if I don't make a difficult decision, things will just go away, things will sort themselves out.

That is not wisdom. And this morning, earlier, we said and we asked one question before we read the Ten Commandments, one question before we opened the word of God, and this is what Mary knew, that when you listen to the words of Jesus, when you listen to the words of God, you will find wisdom. And the question we ask is, "Am I in the truth? Am I in the wisdom of Jesus Christ, my Lord?" The choice that Martha and Mary made was so different.

They had the same choice to make. It was important to both of them to serve the Lord, but both of them did something different. My question today to each one of us, not only the mothers, but each one of us, is when we are tested, when those life situations that are really difficult come our way, what will we choose? Because what we choose today will shape our future tomorrow. Our mothers have made choices back in the day, and they've given us, they've served us, they've loved us, they have been faithful to our dads, they have been faithful to the Lord through their lives, and that has influenced our lives as kids.

So the way we live, let's look into the way that Martha chose to live, and the way that Mary chose to live. But before we do that, I want to use an example, and it is just an example of how people, when life gets tough, or when there's temptations, people can find many excuses to make wrong decisions. People can blame the devil, they can blame Satan, they can blame the world, they can blame a lot of things, but in the end, we are not in the truth if we don't listen to the word of God. We need to understand the word of God. And this is what Mary knew, and I will come to the example after this.

Mary had the wisdom because of the fact that she chose to sit at the feet of Jesus. She heard His words. She heard the truth, and therefore, she was in the truth. When we reconstruct what was happening, Jesus was visiting Martha, Maria, and their brother Lazarus. He was a household friend of theirs, he used to come around, and he was with them again.

And again, Martha was serving Jesus and all the other people, and Mary was just sitting at Jesus' feet, as was her way of life, her habit. But when we not only look at Mary, but at Jesus, what is happening here is actually so totally different to all other rabbis of the time. All other rabbis would sit, and at their feet, you would find only men. Young men training up to be men of wisdom, to be men of character, to be the men of the future, but no rabbi had women sitting at his feet. But Jesus allowed Mary to sit at His feet and to listen to His wisdom and to acquire His wisdom for her way of life forward.

Now, we said we also would look at Martha. She didn't make a poor choice. She chose to serve the Lord, and she was always serving, working in the kitchen, serving food to people, like many of our mums did. My mum's name was Maria, but she was more of a Martha than a Maria. Serving others with everything that they had.

But in that choice that Martha made, she was annoyed by the fact that her sister wasn't helping her serving. She was so busy serving the Lord that she forgot about the word and the words of the Lord. So we can also, in the choices we make when we serve the Lord, become so busy with serving the Lord that we forget the wisdom part of it, that we forget the truth, that we forget what Jesus is all about. And then we can actually be serving the Lord, so we can be seen as serving, and so that our serving actually serves ourselves. And this is what we need to be aware of, because when Jesus answers Martha, He looks at her and He says, "Wait a bit, I am allowing Mary to sit at My feet because she chose what matters most."

That is the wisdom of Jesus. And now I want to apply the example of an everyday life situation. There's the story about the Titanic, and I just want to briefly say how people can get it wrong. So only when you hear the word Titanic, people thought that this boat was unsinkable, it wasn't. So sometimes in our lives, we can think that we will back something, buy something, do something that is unsinkable, and it is unwise to think so, because only God has everything and holds everything in His hand.

That ship was not unsinkable. There were several wrong choices made with that ship. For one, they didn't have enough lifeboats if it sank, because they made the wrong choice in thinking this boat will never sink. So, they didn't put enough lifeboats there. But the one story I want to highlight today is of a woman making a poor choice, running back for all of her jewels before she got onto the lifeboat because they decided women and children need to go first.

And then running towards her jewels, she saw a basket full of oranges, and in a split second she made that choice, she took the oranges and she left the jewels. What a wise choice, because later in that lifeboat, she could feed the people on her boat oranges, and they survived before they were picked up by another boat. So that is how life works. The choices we make, we make from a point where we have chosen a way of life. When we look at Mary and the example of Mary and what Jesus actually said to Martha, this is the point in this story where the truth lies.

This is where you and I can be in the truth, in Jesus. If our way of life is one of quietly listening like we are doing this morning to His word, when we pick up His written word inspired by the Holy Spirit, when His word speak into our lives, and we go out with the word in our hands, that is wisdom. This is our way of life. This is the way that we should be serving the Lord. Yes, we should be making coffee, we should be serving each other our meals.

We should be inviting each other to come and eat with us. But in the end, it is when we close our eyes and when we pray for the food, and when we have communion with the Lord that the real us comes out. When we make our decisions, when we choose what we choose to put into the lives of our children as mothers, it is making that wise choice. It is making the choice of what matters most. And do you know what it is?

Yes. Maria, Mary chose to sit at the feet of Jesus, and to quietly listen carefully to all of His words, so that she can acquire the wisdom necessary to lead her life, to have a way of life in the truth. This is what Jesus is giving to each and every one of us. We have to serve the Lord by listening to His word. By choosing to serve the Lord even from a young age, will help us in those difficult moments to make the right decisions.

We have been inspired by His word. So taking Jesus' word and His words into the life that we live, that is our calling. To be serving Him with integrity, not to just be serving Him, not to have our serving Him become empty of just being servants, but to be serving Him with a purpose, to be serving Him in a way that changes our life, in a way where we say, "Let's put everything down, let's stop with what we are busy with, let us not make the mistake of thinking that I am unsinkable, but coming to His feet and asking for His wisdom and pouring that wisdom as fathers and mothers into the lives of our children, by giving them the words of Jesus, by understanding the wisdom that was shared with us right from the Old Testament through the New Testament, and in the words of Jesus." May we make the same choice like Mary did, the choice of what matters most, the eternal choice. The choice because the words of Jesus all led to His resurrection, and this is what we have celebrated over Easter.

Our Lord is not dead. Our Lord is risen. Our Lord is sitting at the right hand of our Father God in heaven, and He holds everything in His hand. May we have the wisdom to understand that when we pray for world peace. May we have the wisdom to understand that when we see our children stray away from the Lord.

May we have that wisdom when we find it difficult with people working with us that are non Christians, and making our lives tough. May we find that when we look at our brothers and sisters like Martha looked at her sister and wasn't being happy with her, not helping her, not serving alongside of her, she felt alone. May we, with the wisdom of God, make another choice. You know, when you look at the Ten Commandments and it says, "You shall not murder," it also means that you shall not shut somebody else out, that you should not take a brother or sister of yours in Jesus Christ and stop talking to them, stop praying for them. The wisdom is to love each other and to sit at the feet of Jesus and to listen to His words, and His words were simply coming to us saying, "You have to love the Lord your God above all, with everything that is in you, and you have to love your neighbour," that means that swearing guy, that's blasphemous to our Lord.

It means loving that person that's making your life difficult. It means loving unconditionally, even those who harm you, to pray for them. That's why I said it is so hard to listen to the Ten Commandments, because in ourselves, we fell short. We ask the question, "Am I in the truth?" And it will show when life gets difficult.

It will show in the decisions that we make. But may we, by the grace of God, sit at the feet of Jesus, remember, listen, read His word and follow His guidelines for our lives. This is my prayer for you and me today, that we will choose wisely in every situation. Mums, when you think about your children and when you make decisions that will shape their life, may it be made by a godly woman who understands what matters most. May we put eternal value into the lives of our children, whether we be mums, dads, teachers, role models, grandmothers, may we choose wisely to share the wisdom of God.

May God give us all grace to be godly men and godly women this week. May we sit at His feet quietly listening to His word. May we become less. May we live in Him who is the way, the life, and the truth. Yes.

We are in the truth because we are in Jesus Christ. Amen. Father God, when we become quiet before You, we are like Mary. We realise there is so much more that we need to learn. But this morning, we want to come before You because we do not want to deceive ourselves.

Lord, we come before You as sinful people who sometimes think that we are indestructible and unsinkable, and we want to pray for Your forgiveness in our lives. We want to pray for Your guidance if we don't have that wisdom understanding that You hold everything and everyone in Your hands. Please forgive us. Please shape us this morning. Please help us to sit at Your feet, listen to Your words, and take Your wisdom on board.

Help us to live as godly people into society. Help us to remind people of the fact that You are the creator of everyone and everything that we see around ourselves. Help us to show the love of Jesus Christ to everybody that is in need of that. Yes, Father, we want to pray for all of our ministries, and we want to pray that when You call us into ministry, that we will do it in such a way that it will only be honouring to Your name. Help us not to serve You just for being servants.

Help us not to lose focus while we are serving You. Lord, You have called us to serve You, and this morning You have called us to serve You in wisdom. And that is what we pray for, that You will give us all wisdom, whether we be young or old, men or women, whether we're just a primary school boy or a teacher that shapes the life of a primary school boy without even knowing that. May we live godly lives inspired by Your word and inspired by Your Holy Spirit. This is what we pray for in the wonderful name of our Lord Jesus Christ alone. Amen.