Love Languages - Quality Time

Life of the Church

Good morning, everyone. Happy Sunday to you, and thank you for joining us in person for our worship service. It’s good to see you here.

I have a few announcements in your bulletins to mention as we begin this morning.

Thank you to everyone who came out yesterday morning to help clean up the outside of the church. It looks great out there.

The men’s group cookout will be held tonight at 5:00. All men are invited to that.

Our monthly deacons meeting will be held this Tuesday at 7:00. If you’re a deacon, please try to attend.

I’ll remind you to keep the Bartley family in your prayers in the loss of William’s mother, Nancy.

And I’ll also ask you to be in prayer for Cathy, Jennifer, and Brynn. All three of them have Covid. I think Jennifer and Brynn are doing okay, all things considered, but Cathy did have to be taken to the ER yesterday for fluids. Covid’s still around. Cases were up 200% in the county last week. So everyone please be careful out there.

Sue, do you have anything?

Opening Prayer

Merciful God, you heal the broken-hearted, and turn the sadness of the sorrowful to joy. Let your goodness be upon all you have made. Remember all those who are suffering this day. Lift up those who are cast down. Cheer with hope all who are discouraged and downcast.

Father on this day we ask that you come into this place and dwell with us, giving us your mercy and your grace and your abounding love. Grant this, O Lord, for the love of him who for our sakes became poor, your Son our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Sermon

Back around the late 1950s, sociologists, psychologists, economists, and just about every profession with an -ist on the end were saying the same thing — the U.S. was about to enter into a golden age of rest and relaxation.

Everyone was about to have more free time than they knew what to do with. And it was all thanks to appliances.

There were new washing machines and dryers that had timers.

Microwaves were invented that could cut down the time it took to prepare a meal by half.

Dishwashers and toaster ovens were becoming more affordable.

There were new kinds of lawn mowers that would make cutting the grass easier than ever before.

The idea was that we were going to spend so much less time on household chores that we’d all the time in the world to enjoy the finer things in life. We’d all be able to slow down. Take it easy. Relax.

So. How’s all that turning out for you?

If you’re like most people, not so great. On the whole, we have it easier than anyone has in our nation’s history. We have more money, more leisure time, more stuff, and more opportunities for rest. But we’ve never been busier.

In fact, we’re so busy that it’s affecting our health. We’re stressed, we’re running ourselves ragged, we’re stuck on the hamster wheel of life. And we’re exhausted. It’s gotten so bad that 47 million Americans quit their jobs in 2021.

Every minute of our lives is packed with thinking or doing or going. And if we do manage to get some quiet time, what do we do with it? We’re on our phones seeing what everyone else is doing, scrolling and scrolling down an endless virtual page of information. Things have gotten so bad, we don’t even know how to be bored anymore.

Every minute of every day we’re bombarded by noise. It’s coming out of our phones, our radios, our televisions. Our attention has gotten so fractured that our ability to concentrate is almost impossible.

My other job is writing. Commercials, social media posts, books, articles, newsletters, that sort of thing. Do you know the number one rule in writing is now? And I’m not kidding, I’m serious here.

I have three seconds to interest my audience. That’s what every writer is told now. That’s the rule.

If I’m writing a commercial, I have three seconds to hook whoever’s sitting in front of their TV. Three seconds to capture their interest before they turn the dial, or keep scrolling, or before they put down my book to go do something else.

Because scientists say that’s what the average American’s attention span is in 2022. Just three seconds.

Pretty sad, isn’t it? What makes it more sad is something that we seem to have forgotten in the age of the internet: our most precious resource in life isn’t our money. Isn’t our things. It’s our time. We show what’s most important to us by what we spend our time on.

In other words, we are what we pay attention to.

We’ve spent the last few weeks talking about the love languages that God uses to show us our worth.

So far, we’ve covered three of the five: words of affirmation, gift giving, and physical touch. Today we’re going to talk about one that we all have to work on a little more — quality time.

We’re going to start out with one of the Old Testament’s most famous but mysterious characters, Enoch. Turn with me to the book of Genesis, chapter 5. We’re going to read verses 22-24:

Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Enoch were 365 years. Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.

And this is God’s word.

Enoch is pretty famous for someone who is so rarely mentioned in the Bible. He appears here in the fifth chapter of Genesis, tucked into a long list of names and ages that follow one after the other.

Then he’s mentioned in the Gospel of Luke in the same way. The writer of Hebrews includes Enoch in the hall of faith. And he’s mentioned again in the book of Jude, where Jude records a prophecy that Enoch made that isn’t included in the Bible at all.

And that’s it. That’s all we have of Enoch. But he’s still one of the most famous people in the entire Bible, and it’s all because of these three verses right here.

Because according to this scripture, Enoch never died. He was here on earth and then he was in heaven. No in-between.

But even that isn’t really so unique. There’s another person in the Bible who didn’t suffer death. The prophet Elijah was taken straight from this world to the next. In 2 Kings 2, chariots of fire and horses of fire surround Elijah and he’s taken to heaven by a whirlwind.

That sounds a lot more dramatic than what happened to Enoch, doesn’t it? All we get here in Genesis about Enoch’s end was that “God took him.” That’s it.

It’s mentioned with so much casualness that the writer of Genesis doesn’t really make it seem like a big deal.

“Enoch? Yeah, he lived and then God took him.”

In fact, it’s almost like Genesis presents it this way to draw our attention from the mysterious way that Enoch left this world so we can focus on the mysterious way that he lived in it.

And that way is mentioned twice in these three verses, once in verse 22 and again in verse 24 — Enoch walked with God.

What an amazing phrase that is. If we are what we pay attention to, if our lives are defined by what we focus on, then Enoch’s life was completely focused on God.

He always set God before him. He lived a life of communion with God’s love and law. He made God’s will his will. He made it his constant aim to please God in everything he did. And that is exactly what we’re all called to do as well.

You are called to live Enoch’s life. It is God’s will that you spend quality time with him. That you walk with him.

But how in the world are we supposed to do that? What does walking with God even mean? Let’s take a look at this scripture and find out.

First, let’s focus on the meaning of the word “walk.” There are a few different meanings of that word, and they all apply to how Enoch walked with God and how we’re supposed to walk with God too.

In the Bible, “to walk” means the same thing as saying “to live.” And so for verses 22 and 24 to say that Enoch walked with God, one of the things the writer of Genesis means is that Enoch lived in a way that pleased God.

This is exactly what the writer of Hebrew says in chapter 11, verse 5:

By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God.

So we have our definition. Walking with God means pleasing God. Now we need to understand how Enoch lived a life that pleased God, because that’s the life we need to live too.

We’re going to use that image of walking with someone. Think of walking beside someone through your neighborhood or in the woods or on a beach. What are you doing?

Well first, you’re not standing still, are you? You’re moving. That’s the picture we have with Enoch. It’s the picture of someone who is right beside God through every scene of life.

It’s knowing that you’re always in God’s presence. Knowing that he surrounds you, knowing that he sees you and hears you. It’s not living like God is only there sometimes, when you really need him. Instead it’s a sense of constant companionship.

In other words, to walk with God means to have your attention on him. Not on your worries, not on your troubles, not on your fears or all those things you have to do today. On him. Because if your attention is on him, he’s going to make sure all the rest of those things that constantly nag your thoughts are going to be taken care of.

And if you’re walking with God, you’re not way up ahead of him, are you? You’re not dragging far behind either. You are right beside him. You’re keeping pace with God. You’re right in the center of his will.

Keeping pace with God means that you’ve given control of your life to him. He’s the boss. It’s what we’ve talked about many times when it comes to Jesus, isn’t it? We all want Jesus as savior. We all want our sins forgiven and our place in heaven secure.

But it’s not enough for us to call Jesus is our savior. We have to call him our Lord, too. And that’s a tough thing to do. Because that means it’s his timing that matters, not yours. That means it’s his will and not yours. That means you have to stop trying to force things and let him work things out in his time.

When we worry or when we’re overcome by fear, we jump ahead of God. And when we don’t take responsibility for our lives, when we get distracted and don’t take care of the things we know we have to do, we lag behind God.

The Bible says don’t do either of those. If you want to be happy, if you want to be at peace, then keep pace with God.

What else can we learn from this picture of walking beside God? Well, how can two people walk side by side if they don’t get along? They can’t, can they? They have to be on friendly terms. They have to know each other.

Now of course God knew Enoch. But this means that Enoch knew God too, and the only way Enoch could know God is through spending that quality time with Him, walking alongside Him, keeping his attention on God and on the things that God wanted him to do.

Two more things I want to mention here. First, the fact that these verses make it a point to say that Enoch walked with God implies that there were a lot of people who weren’t walking with God.

We’ll get more into that in a minute, but for now we can just say that because Enoch walked with God, he didn’t live like the others in his culture. They were wicked, he was good. They were evil, he kept himself righteous because he walked with God.

That is such a hard thing to do. We see that in our own lives. It’s easy to sleep in on Sunday morning and worship online instead of coming here in person, easy to think you’re still attending church when you’re not at all. It’s easy to adopt the world’s ways when you’re completely surrounded by those ways.

Enoch never did that. He walked with God. He could stand firm in God’s ways because he made quality time a priority. He kept his eyes on the next world because he wasn’t distracted by this one.

Second, Enoch kept that quality time with God even though he still had worldly duties. In verse 22, we see that he fathered Methuselah and other sons and daughters.

Enoch was a father. He was a husband. He was a citizen. He was a neighbor. Enoch was still busy.

So much of our lives, and so much of our spiritual lives, depend on the little things. The everyday things. That’s where we meet God most often. Not just in church, but in those small daily activities that we often take for granted.

When we walk alongside God in this life, when our attention and our quality time is given to him, we will continue to walk alongside God into eternity. That’s the promise of the Bible, and that’s what happened to Enoch.

God took him, we read in verse 24. God took Enoch at the age of 365, which is young if you read through the genealogy in Genesis 5.

In Jude’s letter in the New Testament, we learn why God took Enoch at so young an age. It was to get Enoch away from all the evil that was in the world. And that will be the same for all of us unless Christ comes back in our lifetimes.

That’s how we as Christians should think about death. Death isn’t to be feared for us. Death is a deliverance. Death is God rescuing us from this fallen world and delivering us into his own loving arms. Death doesn’t take us. God takes us. And God takes us straight to himself.

But I want to go back to how we can make sure to give quality time to God every day, because that’s so important. And for that we’re going to look at the New Testament. Turn with me to the Gospel of Luke. We’re going to be reading from chapter 10, verses 38-42. Follow along with me there:

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. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”

And this is God’s word.

This is a very famous story in the Gospels, and no doubt you’ve been told over and over again that the lesson here is to be Mary instead of Martha. There’s even a well-known book written by Joanna Weaver called Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World.

And that’s true, we do have a Martha sort of world. And making sure we give quality time to God does mean that we need a Mary heart. But don’t believe anyone who tells you that God doesn’t want you to be a Martha sometimes too.

We see right off in verse 38 that this is Martha’s house Jesus is coming to. She’s probably the older sister of Mary and Lazarus, and it’s likely she’s a widow without children. As such, her role is probably something along the lines of the housekeeper. Martha runs both the family and the household. She’s the boss.

You can imagine, then, what sort of mindset the boss would have if God was coming to visit. Can you imagine God finding a cobweb under your kitchen table? Or dust on your pictures? Those piles of things you have everywhere in your living room, do you want God to see all that?

Of course not. So Martha does what we would all do. She gets to work. She’s going to be a good host.

Her sister Mary, though, does just the opposite. In verse 39, she stops everything she’s doing and sits at the Lord’s feet, listening to his teaching.

The King James translates the first part of verse 39 this way: “And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus’s feet.”

That word “also” is interesting, because it means that Mary was just as anxious about Jesus visiting her house as Martha was. Mary wanted to be every bit the good host as her sister. She just went about it in a different way.

In that time it was custom for students to sit at the feet of their teachers. That way they could show themselves as humble. So we see here that Mary is a disciple of the Lord’s. Martha was running around washing dishes and taking out the trash, while Mary was sitting still listening closely to what Jesus had to say.

And do you think Martha’s going to stand too long for that?

So now, verse 40. I want you to pay attention to one word there, that word “distracted.” That word in the Greek means to be drawn many different ways at the same time. It’s the mindset of someone who is surrounded with so many things to do that they don’t even know where to start.

And who can blame her? Remember, Jesus isn’t the only one visiting Martha’s house. His disciples ate too. It’s all the people following them. It’s people in the town who want to see this great healer and prophet. No wonder Martha’s distracted.

She has to prepare the food, she has to get the servants in order (if she has any), she has to set the table, she has to clean, she has to arrange, she has to make room, she has to move furniture, she has to put on her best clothes, she has to make sure there’s enough wine.

God is coming to Martha’s house, and listen, don’t forget this — Martha loves Jesus. Nothing is too good for Jesus. No cost is too much for Jesus. Martha’s not keeping busy because she’s worldly. She just wants to make sure that she delivers the very best to her Lord.

But she messes up, doesn’t she? How does Martha mess up?

It doesn’t seem like doing all this work is what Martha does wrong. Sure, Jesus makes a point to tell her that Mary’s the one who has the right idea here. But really, do you think Jesus would have said anything about that if Martha hadn’t said what she does in verse 40? I don’t think so, and neither do a lot of commentaries.

Instead, it seems like Martha’s mistake is in what she says in verse 40, and how she says it.

First, verse 40 says that Martha “went up to him.” That doesn’t really go far enough in describing what Martha really did.

The Greek translation is more forceful. Martha literally runs up to Jesus. Jesus is teaching in the house, everything’s quiet, everyone’s paying attention — everyone there is giving God their quality time, except for Martha.

She interrupts all this calmness and runs up to Jesus and just starts yelling. That’s what the original Greek implies. That’s where Martha goes wrong. Because she loses her cool, yes. But more than that, she loses her cool because she compares herself to her sister.

“Lord,” she screams, “do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.”

Now I’m betting that as soon as those words are out of Martha’s mouth, she feels terrible. Here she’s done all she can to make sure everyone is comfortable and enjoying themselves — Jesus most of all. She’s going out of her way to make sure nobody ruins anything, and it turns out that she’s the one ruining everything.

Now Martha’s embarrassed. And now her sister is probably mad. And Lazarus, their brother, is probably just shaking his head and thinking, “I wish I was dead.” Which would be ironic, considering what happens to him.

The disciples are looking at each other thinking, “Oh wow. Martha just yelled at God.”

But what does Jesus do? How does he answer? Look at verse 41:

“But the Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things…”

Do you know what’s so great about Jesus? He’s always there for you. The more stressed you are, the more worried or afraid you are, the more angry you are, the closer he gets to you.

We were talking earlier about how hard it is for some people to call Jesus “Lord.” They’re great with the Savior part, but the Lord part scares them.

Because we want to be our own bosses, don’t we? But also, we look at the people in our own lives who get to make the rules and call the shots. We look at our bosses and our government and we see, at best, how incompetent they are, and at worse how mean.

But Jesus isn’t like that. All these people in Martha’s house right now, they’re probably terrified about how Jesus is going to answer this person who just lashed out at him in anger.

But what’s Jesus say? “Martha, Martha.”

That’s how he begins. Now you have a picture in your mind of what Jesus is doing, right? He’s shaking his head as he says this, sort of the way a parent will to a child who’s misbehaving. “Martha, Martha, what am I going to do with you?”

But that’s not what Jesus is doing.

There are a few other times in the New Testament when Jesus repeats someone’s name.

In Luke 22, he does it with Peter: “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like what, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.”

In Acts 4, he does this to Paul: “And falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’”

In both of those instances, and in this one here with Martha, what is Jesus’s attitude? He’s not angry at all, is he? Not disappointed. Instead he has an attitude of a kind of pitying love. It’s like he’s saying, “I know you messed up, but I also know why, and it’s okay because I love you.”

That’s your Lord. He doesn’t get angry at what you do on the surface, because he knows what’s going on in your heart. And it’s to Martha’s heart that he speaks.

He says to her, “You are anxious and troubled about many things.” And that word “troubled” isn’t used anywhere else in the New Testament. It means to be surrounded by a crowd of people and they’re pressing in on you so hard that you can’t even stand your ground. That’s what’s going on inside Martha.

“You’re so nervous, Martha,” Jesus says, “because of what you’re paying attention to. So just pay attention to me, and you’ll find your peace again.”

Verse 42: “… but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”

Jesus isn’t saying that Mary did everything right and Martha did everything wrong. What he’s saying is that the one thing necessary for us all is salvation. It’s Jesus himself. Everything else has its place, absolutely, but that place is after him. He’s first.

And Jesus says, “I’m not going to tell Mary to get up and help you clean and make sure the house is prepared and cook all this food, because right now her attention is on me. Just like yours should be, Martha.”

And that’s everything in this story. This story is all about attention. It’s about what we focus on. Because if Martha had done just enough to make sure Jesus and the rest of the guests were comfortable, that would have been fine.

But she focused all of her attention on getting those things done, and because she focused all of her attention on that, she didn’t have any attention left for Jesus. That was Martha’s problem.

That isn’t to say at all that we shouldn’t be worried with our responsibilities in this life. Just the opposite. We saw with Enoch that it’s entirely possible and it’s God’s will for us to go about all those things we do every day and still walk with God.

That’s the goal of the Christian life. That’s our purpose, to go to work and raise our families and take care of our homes and pay our bills and go to school and do our homework, all while walking alongside God.

Jesus’s whole point about how he responds to Martha isn’t that we should all be Marys. His point is that we don’t have to choose between living like Martha and living like Mary. We should do both.

In fact, there are a lot of very old sermons preached during the Middle Ages that said if you’re just living like a Mary or just living like a Martha, you’re only living half of the life God wants you to enjoy. You have to put those two halves together to make a whole.

Augustine preached two sermons about Mary and Martha, and in both he described Martha as the church in the world right now, and Mary is the heavenly church that will come in the new Earth. He wrote, “What Martha did is what we are. What Mary did is what we hope for.”

Walking alongside God means a lot more than just sitting at the feet of Jesus. It also means getting up and putting his teaching to work. It means being of good use in this world. It means honoring the days that he gives you.

And let’s face it, a lot of us don’t honor our days. We waste them by staring at screens and filling our minds with fears and worries and worrying too much about what everyone else is doing.

Jesus says we don’t have time for any of that. We should be out there working for his kingdom. We should be out there helping others.

The world outside those doors is on fire right now. What’s it need? It doesn’t need new policies. It doesn’t need new leadership. It doesn’t need new laws. It needs new Christians who go out there and live out the love of God that’s in their hearts.

That means walking with him. That means sitting at his feet. That means tending to the business that God entrusts to us.

And all of that begins with what we pay attention to. It begins with how we spend our time. And we can spend our time focused on the things of this world that are doomed to fade away and die, or we can focus our attention on those things that are eternal.

Everybody in here is saved. That’s wonderful. But now what? What are you going to do with the joy you have? What are you going to do with the love that’s been given to you? Get out there and make a difference. Give God your time. Walk with him.

Let’s pray:

Father our days are so busy. There are so many things we have to attend to, and our to-do lists are so long. We face constant pressures, and we’re pulled from one thing to the next. Help us to understand, father, that you are the most important part of our day. Help us to always make you the priority, knowing that if we have you, then everything else will fall into line. We want to walk alongside you. We want to have our lives centered in you. We’re thankful for the many blessings we must attend to, but help us to know that You are the one who has given us those things, and that we owe you all things, and our time most of all. For it’s in Jesus’s name we pray, Amen.

Benediction

Now may the God of peace who raised Christ from the dead strengthen your inner being for every good work. And may the blessing of God Almighty rest upon you and dwell within you this day and evermore. Amen.