Transcript
Luke chapter 10, reading at verse 38.
Now it happened as they went that He entered a certain village; and a certain woman named Martha welcomed Him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who also sat at Jesus’ feet and heard His word. 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.’
And Jesus answered and said to her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part which will not be taken away from her.’
They cannot hear, and yet for 60 years they have listened to each other. They cannot speak, but for six decades they have communicated in a silent but joyful marriage. Their names are Leonard and Nanny Perry. As of last December, Leonard was 85 years old and Nanny was 78 years old.
Shortly before Christmas in the Northwood Manor Nursing Home in Carrollton, surrounded by their friends and members of the nursing home staff, Leonard and Nanny Perry celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary. Leonard and Nanny met when he was 25 and she was 18. The remarkable thing about this marriage is that Leonard has been deaf since the age of three and Nanny has been deaf since the age of six.
That means that for sixty years of married life neither one of them has ever heard the other one say so much as a single word. And yet their marriage has been unusually happy and joyful. Leonard, who communicates through sign language, says that the secret of their successful marriage has been their devotion to each other.
One thing is for certain. Their marriage has been productive. Leonard and Nanny are now the head of a clan that includes three children, eleven grandchildren, fourteen great-grandchildren, and two great-great-grandchildren.
Mrs. Nancy Haye is one of their children and she lives right here in Dallas, Texas. Mrs. Haye, along with her two brothers, grew up with the grandparents. And the grandparents were neither deaf nor mute. So Mrs. Haye is able to talk and she agrees with her father’s assessment of the marriage.
In fact, Mrs. Haye paid to her parents one of the highest compliments that a husband and wife can ever get. She said, “I have learned that a person can be happily married and be the same as one person even though they are two. I don’t see them separately. I see them as one person.” And then she adds this, “As a child I thought that was the way it was supposed to be. I thought all the other parents were handicapped, you know.”
Mrs. Haye has a point, doesn’t she? Who is more severely handicapped than a husband and a wife who possess the power of speech but have lost the ability to communicate with each other? And I happen to believe that more real communication has gone on in the marriage of Leonard and Nanny Perry than goes on in lots of marriages all around us where both partners know how to talk.
And there is nothing that can damage a relationship more severely than the loss of communication. And if it is bad to lose communication with one’s partner in marriage, it is even worse, it is even worse to lose communication with God.
This morning I’m going to give you a formula for losing communication with God. That’s right, you heard me right. I’m going to give you a formula for losing communication with God. And I’m going to guarantee to you that it will work 100 percent of the time. And therefore the title of my message this morning is this, “You Aren’t Listening, Are You?”
Did you ever stop to think what a tremendous privilege it would be to have the Lord Jesus Christ as a guest in your very own home? Think of it. The Son of God, the Savior of men, the future King of all the earth, a visitor, a guest under your roof. And that was exactly the privilege that came more than once to two sisters whose names were Martha and Mary.
We do not learn this from the Gospel of Luke but from the Gospel of John. We discover that Martha and Mary had a brother whose name was Lazarus. And the three of them lived in a home in the tiny little village of Bethany, not far from the city of Jerusalem. And evidently their home was one of the favorite stopping places for Jesus and His disciples on their many trips to Jerusalem. And it is one of those visits that we have read this morning in the Word of God.
Now ladies, I’m going to have to admit to you right up front that when it comes to entertaining people in my home, I am a ranked amateur compared to most of you. In fact, I have long since given up entertaining people in my apartment. And one of the last times that I did it was the time years ago that I invited Art and Marianne to come over for a late night snack of scrambled eggs and bread. Not scrambled eggs and toast like you. That was too complicated. Scrambled eggs and bread.
And of course they came over and they ate dutifully and they thanked me graciously. But later I discovered that the eggs that Marianne scrambled were not to mention scrambled eggs and bread. So now when I want to entertain somebody I usually take them out to a restaurant where they can order whatever they like.
But although I am an amateur at home entertainment, even I know this much. Even I know that if you have a traveling teacher and twelve grown men who are His pupils drop in on your house in the late afternoon or early evening after they’ve been out on the road on foot on a hot dusty day, even I know that you’ve got your hands full. And even if you were just planning to serve scrambled eggs, that’s a whole lot of scrambled eggs.
There is really nothing surprising about the way Martha reacted to the arrival of Jesus and the disciples. She flies into the process of getting ready to serve them. And that’s not surprising. But I’ll tell you what is surprising. It’s Mary. It’s her sister Mary.
When Jesus and the disciples settled down in one of the rooms of the house, and it was probably a crowded room because Jesus was usually accompanied by big crowds, Mary goes into that room. And mind you, she doesn’t go stand in a corner of the room. She doesn’t stand in back of everybody else with her back to the wall. She goes right into the center of the circle. She gets down to sit right at the feet of Jesus where she can hear every single syllable that He utters.
And the Bible says that she heard His word. One thing is obvious, isn’t it? Mary is one of those rarest of rare breeds, a good listener, a good, good listener. She is an eager, attentive, interested hearer of the Word of God.
Now there is a famous story about President Calvin Coolidge. You probably have heard it. His wife was sick one Sunday morning. He had to go to church by himself. That was in the day when presidents did go to church. And he went to church. And when he got back he went up to his wife’s room to see how she was getting along. And she assured him that she was doing fine. And then she said, “How did you enjoy the sermon?” And Coolidge gave her a very weak affirmative.
And then she said, “What was the sermon about?” And Coolidge said, “Sin.” And Mrs. Coolidge said, “Well, what did the minister say?” And President Coolidge said, “He was against it.”
Now forgive me folks if I suspect that Calvin Coolidge wasn’t listening too closely that particular Sunday morning to the Word of God.
Andrew Stern used to work for ABC News before he joined the journalism faculty of the University of California at Berkeley. And on one occasion after a news broadcast he conducted a telephone survey of people who had heard the broadcast. His calls ranged all the way from immediately after the broadcast to three and a half hours after the broadcast. And he discovered that 51 percent of the people who had watched the broadcast could not even remember one of the nineteen news items that were covered in the program.
And out of all of those who were called, the average memory was one item, one item. And you know, I think we Americans have developed a tremendous, a wonderful skill for hearing things without listening to them, for hearing things without listening to them. And I’m not just talking about the sermons you hear here on Sunday morning or the discussions at the Lord’s table Sunday night. I’m also talking about the scene of God speaking to you out of His Word.
Suppose somebody were to call you at home tomorrow night at nine o’clock and ask you two questions. Number one, have you read your Bible today? And number two, if you did, what did you read about? Would you be able to answer those questions successfully? Are you a good listener?
A man by the name of A. C. Benson once went to hear a sermon by Dwight L. Moody, the famous evangelist. And after the sermon was over this is what he said. He said, “I have no recollection of how he began the sermon, but he had not gone a half dozen sentences before I felt as if he and I were alone in the world.” And that’s the way it ought to be when we turn our attention to the Word of God, in order to be as if God and I are alone in the world. And God must have my undivided attention.
And that’s the way it was for Mary in Bethany. Evidently a house full of guests, her sister rushing around hither and thither, and Jesus has her full attention. It is just as if He and she are alone in the world. But suddenly there is an interruption, an interruption.
And you’ve got to try to picture this now. Mary is sitting in this room and Martha is flying around the house like a chicken with its head cut off. I mean the Bible says she is distracted with much serving. And every time she passes this room and looks in, her blood pressure goes up ten degrees. There is Jesus teaching the Word of God and there is that sister of hers sitting on the floor doing a big nothing.
And finally Martha can’t take it anymore and she barges in and she comes right up to Jesus and she interrupts the Word of God. And what happens next is not real pretty. It’s not real pretty at all. Because you see, Martha’s words revealed that she was not only irritated at Mary. She’s irritated at Jesus, her guest, the one she is trying to serve.
And she says, “Lord, don’t You care? Don’t You care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore tell her to help me.” Talk about a double-barreled shotgun. That is a double-barreled shotgun. She unloads one barrel on Mary. “This lazy sister of mine needs to get to work.” And she unloads the other barrel on Jesus. “How can You be so insensitive as to let me do everything? Tell my sister to get with it and help me.”
I’m going to give you a free translation of Martha’s remarks. Maybe you’ll recognize the words. “This one I’ve got too much to do and nobody’s giving me any help and it isn’t fair. God doesn’t seem to care.” Did you ever talk like that? Did you ever feel like that?
You know, I’ve got to stop here and tell you about Tab Thacker. I read about Tab Thacker a couple of weeks ago in Time magazine. I don’t mind telling you that I was tremendously impressed. Tab Thacker is a 22-year-old senior at North Carolina State University and he’s a wrestler. And he has just won the NCAA national wrestling heavyweight title. And he has a string of 31 consecutive victories.
It isn’t surprising really because Tab Thacker is a big boy. I mean he is a big, big boy. Listen to this. He has a 58-inch chest. He has a 54-inch waist. He stands six feet five inches tall. And here’s the bottom line. He weighs 447 and one-half pounds. No wonder he’s got 31 consecutive victories.
Of course Tab thinks of himself as just a gentle giant. He says, “I’ve got a 400-pound body and I’ve got a 500-pound heart.” But you ask some of those guys that he’s crushed on the wrestling mat and I bet you they’ll give you a different opinion of that. You know what I think? I bet you 90 percent of his opponents when they stepped on the mat and looked at Tab, the first thing that went through their minds was, “This ain’t fair. That just simply isn’t fair.”
And you know the NCAA sort of agrees with them. And they have passed a rule that starting in 1986 no one will be allowed to compete in heavyweight collegiate wrestling who weighs more than 255 pounds. After all, fair is fair, don’t you agree?
And sometimes folks, when we step on the wrestling mat of life and we look at that big mountain of obligations and responsibilities that we think we have, one of the first thoughts that goes through our minds is, “This isn’t fair. This isn’t fair. The Lord is not really interested in all the burdens that I have got to bear.”
And mark it well. When you start to think like that you’re beginning to lose communication with God. You’re beginning to lose communication with God. The more you complain about your lot the less you will be able to hear God speaking to your heart through His Word.
Don’t you see this contrast? There is Mary, listening, and there is Martha, complaining. And they can’t do those things at the same time. And the more we turn up the volume of our complaints the less of God’s voice gets through to our hearts.
But you know something? I really like the way that Jesus handles Martha. I mean here’s a frustrated, impatient woman. And Jesus says to her, “Martha, Martha.” Can’t you just hear the tender tones in that, the tones of compassion and sympathy? Jesus knew that Martha was a saved person. Jesus knew that she had trusted Him as her Savior, that she had received the gift of eternal life. We find that out from John chapter 11.
And Jesus knew that Martha really loved Him and that Martha was trying to serve Him. And He takes all of that into account. And He is handling her gently. And He said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed.”
Wait a minute. Did we hear that right? Jesus says to this woman, “You think you have a lot of things that you need to do and you’re worried about this, and there’s really only one thing you need to do.”
You know if you stopped Martha a few minutes before this and asked her what she needed to do, she would probably have given you a long list. “I need to see that the meat is cooking properly over the fire. I need to see that the vegetables are being prepared properly. I need to see that there are enough seats around the table. I will be setting for tonight. I’m going to have to go to the door for my neighbor.” Or Lord knows she might have gone on.
Jesus is saying to her, “You don’t need to do all that. There’s just one thing you need to do.” Let me stop right here folks. One of the main problems that we have in the Christian life is that we think we need to do lots of things which we do not need to do.
Stanley and Carla Foster live in Merit, in Collin County. One evening his family was watching TV. Carla asked him if he would do the dishes. And Carla had been busy that day with a business that she worked out of her home. And Stanley sort of jokingly complained about the job. And he had just been watching President Reagan on television. And so he said to Carla, “I’ll bet Reagan doesn’t do dishes.”
Carla disagreed with him. She said she thought that Reagan and Nancy worked as a team and probably Reagan had done dishes. And they got up a little wager. And guess what Carla did? She wrote President Reagan in the White House to find out if he ever did dishes. Of course she didn’t expect to get an answer back because she figured, you know, the President gets millions of letters.
But in a letter dated January the 23rd, President Reagan responded. And he informed Stanley that Stanley had lost his bet. That over the years he had done some dishes here and there. And that in fact when the babies came in the days of cloth diapers he even did those. And the President went on to say that when we go out to the ranch, because I like to go outdoors and clear brush and build fences. But he says we don’t have the time and the opportunity to do a lot of the things to take care of ourselves that we used to do.
And he said frankly, “I really miss that lifestyle.” But I guess the letter had its effects because when the story came out in the paper there was a picture of Stan and Carla in their kitchen. And Stanley was at the sink and that’s what Stanley was doing. He was doing the dishes.
And I agree with the Fosters that it’s surprising that Reagan responded to a letter like that. But I’ll tell you what would have been even more surprising. It would have been even more surprising if Reagan had said he still does dishes in the White House. And that there’s a nursery in the White House. He goes down and takes his turn changing the diapers.
We all know, don’t we, that the President doesn’t need to do these things. In fact he shouldn’t do that. He shouldn’t do that. He’s got bigger things. We all know that. And the strange thing is that as Christians we often do not know what we really need to do.
Now don’t get me wrong folks. You’ve got little babies at home, please change their diapers. I’ve held a few in my time that would have benefited from a change. And if you’ve got a stack of dishes in your sink, please go home and wash them. You’ll feel better about yourself if you do.
But I’m willing to bet that every Christian in this room that is listening to my voice spends a lot of time and a lot of effort and a lot of energy and a lot of nervous activity doing things that we don’t need to do. And because we load ourselves with things we don’t have to do, we don’t have time for the thing we really need. We don’t have time for the Word of God.
Do you suppose that Martha could have just stopped where she was? Do you suppose she could have quit preparing dinner for Jesus and His disciples? Of course she could have. Of course she could have done that. Her visitor was the Son of God. He was the Creator. He was the One who once took five loaves and two fish and fed five thousand people, not counting women and children. And on another occasion He took seven loaves and a few fish and fed four thousand people, not counting women and children.
And if Martha had stopped right there where she was, I don’t think anybody in the house would have gone hungry. You know what Martha needed to do? She needed to find a place on the floor next to Mary at the feet of Jesus. And she needed to hear His word.
And Jesus says to her, “Mary has chosen that good part, that good part which will not be taken away from her.”
What have you chosen? Come on now, tell me. What have you chosen? Have you chosen the rat race that you’re caught up in every day of your life? Or have you chosen the one thing you need the most, the Word of God?
I suppose that just about everybody in this audience recognizes the name of Clara Peller. She’s that delightful little 80-year-old lady on TV who goes into the home of the big buns and she orders her hamburger and she gets this big old fluffy white bun. And inside is a tiny little hamburger patty. And she says, “Of course, where’s the beef?”
And I probably am not telling you anything when I tell you that Wendy’s slogan “Where’s the beef?” is rapidly becoming one of the most successful slogans in advertising history. In fact it has actually spawned a little side industry of its own.
Michael Stone, who is Wendy’s exclusive representative for allowing people to market products with this particular slogan, says that the calls from manufacturers are coming non-stop. And he estimates that by the end of the year sales of “Where’s the beef?” products will amount to about 30 million dollars.
And in case you’re in the market, somewhere you can find this slogan or Clara Peller’s picture on things like T-shirts, record albums, kitchen utensils, greeting cards, packs, mugs, wastebaskets, board games, three-ring binders, stadium cushions, and dolls. If you look hard you’ll find a doll that actually talks and says, “Where’s the beef?”
And if you realize that this slogan is not only getting into politics, it’s getting into religion. And last Saturday night I was driving down to Cleburne and I drove past a church on the side of the road. And up on the marquee of the church, what do you suppose there was? It said, “Where’s the beef?”
Pretty clever, isn’t it? And that inspired a slogan of my own, a slogan which I happen to think we need here at Victor Street Bible Chapel. Here’s my slogan, “Where’s the Bible? Where’s the Bible?”
You know, I think we have people here at Victor Street whose life can be compared to a great big white fluffy bun. And buried way down inside the bread somewhere is a tiny little thing called the Bible. Where’s the Bible at your house? Where’s the Bible in your life?
Is reading the Bible and listening to God speak to you from His Word, is that one of the most important things that you do every day of your life? Is it? Is it? And if it is, like Mary of Bethany, you have chosen the good part. You’ve chosen the good part. And with the Bible in your heart and mind you’ve chosen something that can never, never be taken away from you.
Shall we pray? Father, we often say that we have a precious book and that it’s Your Word that we need it every day. And we acknowledge to you that we do. Help us to become good listeners, attentive hearers of Your voice through Your Word. We pray in Christ’s name. Amen.