What Do Disciples Do - 3 - Listen

Scripture: Luke 10:38-42

Luke 10:38–42 NIV

38 As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. 39 She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. 40 But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!” 41 “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, 42 but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

7/20/2025

Order of Service:

Announcements

Opening Worship

Prayer Requests

Prayer Song

Pastoral Prayer

Kid’s Time

Mission Moment

Offering (Doxology and Offering Prayer)

Scripture Reading

Sermon

Closing Song

Benediction

Special Notes:

Week 2: Mission Moment

Morgan sharing about Mission trip

Opening Prayer:

Loving God,

open our ears to hear your word

and draw us closer to you,

that the whole world may be one with you

as you are one with us in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Children’s Moment:

Listen

Distractions

Disciples of Jesus value their time listening to Jesus above all else—but let’s be honest: focus is hard.

Show of hands—who gets distracted mowing? Phone buzzes… neighbor waves… dog escapes… grass clogs the deck… keep those hands up if you’ve had three or more distractions last time you mowed.

Driving? Dash alerts, texts, traffic, billboards, GPS “recalculating.” Anyone hit ten distractions on a single trip?

What about your last grocery run? What did you go in to get? What did you come out with? How many distractions did you face in between?

We live in a world engineered to interrupt. Some distractions are dangerous. Some just entertain. Some are designed to guide you, like sponsor messages, targeted ads, and “helpful” recommendations. There are almost always motives behind them, whether we are aware of them or not.

So we build up defenses. There is medicine to help us focus, and Coffee to crank up the morning. Calendars, reminders, color-coded lists. Apps that lock our phones. Spouses, friends, and small group members who ask, “Did you finish what mattered?” We do whatever works for today.

It makes me wonder: If it takes that much effort to stay on task with a lawn mower, a steering wheel, or a grocery list… what does it take to stay focused on Jesus? Luke 10:38–42 provides us with a vivid picture. Martha is busy with good work—important work. Mary stops, sits, and listens. Jesus calls that “the better part.” Beyond meds, beyond systems, beyond our productivity hacks... disciples listen to Jesus first.

Hospitality

To understand the power of distraction in our lives—and especially in Martha’s—we need to understand something most of us don’t think about often: hospitality in the ancient world.

Hospitality wasn’t a talent, a spiritual gift, or something you were just “good at.” It was an obligation, a sacred expectation, and one of the primary ways people honored one another in a society deeply divided by class and status.

When family visited, they were treated with kindness and care, just like we try to do today. But the real difference came with strangers. In the world of the Bible, people believed that a stranger might be a divine messenger—maybe even an angel. The Old Testament and many other ancient traditions reflect this belief.

So when a guest arrived—expected or not—you opened your home. You cleaned, cooked, served your best food, stood back while they ate, and gave them your bed while you slept on the floor. That wasn’t excessive. That was righteous.

You can look through all the Old Testament laws, and you'll find warnings about Jewish people associating with Gentiles, especially when it led to the Jewish people giving up their faith in God, trading Him for the lifestyles of their neighbors. But you won't find a single verse in the entire Bible that gives you permission to treat someone poorly when they come to your home looking for hospitality.

To fail at hospitality was considered a moral failure.

That might sound strange to us. Our culture has gone in the opposite direction. One of the first American laws said you didn’t have to give your house to anyone, not even the government. We’ve taught ourselves to protect our homes, not open them. Hospitality became optional—a luxury.

But for Martha, it wasn’t optional. It was what faithfulness looked like.

She saw Jesus and invited Him in. She did exactly what the law, the culture, and her upbringing told her to do—welcome the guest and meet their every need. So when Martha rushes to prepare a meal, she isn’t distracted because she doesn’t care about Jesus—she’s distracted because she does.

So was she wrong?

While Martha was doing everything right on the outside, Mary was choosing something right on the inside. One wasn’t sinful—the other was simply better.

Listening

Why do disciples need to listen to Jesus? Because it’s the only way we learn how to live—how to serve, how to rest, and how to walk through everything in between.

Martha was doing everything right—and all at once. And we know what that feels like, don’t we?

Monday ambushes us, and we stumble through the morning. By Tuesday, an unexpected call wrecks our plans. By midweek, a surprise bill rearranges our finances. We thought we had a plan. A calendar. A system. But by Friday, we’re exhausted. And by Sunday, we remember Jesus, and we panic.

We pull out our Jesus checklist. We dress up the way we think He wants us to dress, sing the songs we believe He wants to hear, and say the right prayers. We try to love our neighbor and squeeze in a good deed. We shove the chaos into the back closet and hope it holds—just long enough to love God with the scraps we’ve got left.

That’s not just Martha. That’s us.

And here's the hard truth: This passage isn’t just about bad distractions. It’s about good ones. Helpful routines. Spiritual habits. Church duties. Even prayer. Everything can distract us from Jesus if we are doing things for Him instead of with Him.

Martha is doing all the right things—for Jesus—and she’s worn out.

Mary? She’s not doing anything. She’s not helping. She’s not producing. She just sits at His feet, listening.

And that’s the point.

Mary doesn’t try to fit Jesus into her plan. She lets go of her plan. She gives Him her attention—her ears, her eyes, her presence —and by doing so, she is putting her faith in Jesus, trusting that He will not suddenly change His plans and wreck her life and all the relationships she has. She trusts that He is going to show her how to live into that plan and redirect her anywhere she has veered off the path.

Jesus isn't asking us to figure it out on our own or to be led by our hearts, by our feelings, and intuitions. He's asking us to watch Him with our eyes and listen with our ears. And that's hard. We struggle to really see and listen to each other.

That's why when we go to prayer, we often go with specific requests, looking for a yes or no from Jesus, for Him to bless our plans, thoughts, and feelings. And most of the time, there is a specific answer that we hope to receive from Him. And we feel disappointed if we don't get it. We can feel disconnected because we only stay long enough to say what we want to say and hopefully hear what we want to hear. But that's not what Jesus wants. Jesus wants us to spend time with Him, listening to all that He has to say to us.

That’s what disciples do. We don’t just serve Jesus. We sit with Jesus. We don’t just work for Him—we learn to live with Him. We watch. We listen. We follow.

All of Our Life

What do disciples need to do?

Plan time with Jesus—every single day.

Not just when it’s convenient. Not just when life crashes.

Because if you wait for Jesus to interrupt your chaos, you may miss Him entirely.

Mary shows us that listening to Jesus isn’t just a spiritual practice. It’s the fulfillment of the fourth commandment. It’s Sabbath. And Sabbath was never just about stopping work. It was about being still in the presence of God long enough to hear Him speak. Long enough to be filled.

But we’ve forgotten how to do that. We’ve replaced Sabbath with spiritual busyness. We’ve traded resting in God for checking religious boxes—and we call that faithfulness.

Several months ago, I heard a pastor share from one of the early church fathers:

“Pastors today strive to be channels of living water, moving that life from person to person as quickly and efficiently as possible. But what God really wants are deep reservoirs—who share from the overflow.”

And I felt that because I’ve done that.

In fact, as soon as I heard that, I thought, wow, that is so true, and that is so much the way we as pastors can be today. In many ways, it is so often how we've trained everybody in our churches to be. I wanted to write that quote down, post it on our church's Facebook page, share it with our prayer team via text, and possibly even create a short video devotional to share with everyone. But I stopped myself and felt convicted because that was exactly what the problem was - that was precisely what the word was saying I shouldn't do.

We can be like Martha, who could hear two words from Jesus from the other room and decide she was full for the day, and that she could take those two words, spin them, fold them, craft them, and build them, make a sermon series out of them, start a new ministry based on them. Yes, God's word is powerful; it can shake us to the core, and it can move us, and it can fill our gas tanks on it, and we can let ourselves run on just that small piece for years. But he's not calling us to be word slingers and storytellers that gather crowds or go to the crowds and create groups of people who know about Jesus but don't actually know him.

But some words from Jesus aren’t meant to be shared.

They’re meant to stay with us and shape us.

Yes, being a disciple of Jesus means taking the things that he's given you and sharing them with others. When you spend time at the feet of Jesus, listening to him, not just once a week, but every day, you will discover there are some things that he tells you, that he gives to you, that really are just for you.

He wants to have a relationship with us, engage in conversation with us, and work through our issues with us. He wants to take his word and his spirit, not just give us a couple of drops, but fill us until we overflow and cannot hold anymore, and then he wants to fill us some more.

I know this from personal experience, but I also know it from our passage today. There are two different Marys who had a similar experience. In the Christmas story, the mother of Jesus, Mary, after she's had all these strange visitors the night Jesus was born, Luke tells us that she pondered all these things in her heart. But we never know what she thought of them. The night that she gave birth to the son of God, no one stopped to ask her what she thought or how she felt. That was her gift from God, that I'm sure continued to work and move and shape her throughout her entire life.

In our passage today, this Mary, perhaps no older than the mother of Jesus when she took on that call on her life, sits at Jesus' feet while everyone talks around her and Jesus speaks to her. And Mary doesn't say a word. We have no idea what Jesus said to her that day, but Jesus told her and everyone around her that she made the better choice. With all the distractions, good and bad, that could have drawn her to do anything else, she stopped everything. She didn’t try to figure out what Jesus wanted. She didn’t run off to apply it. She just sat. She gave Him her attention. Her presence. Her silence. And Jesus said: “She has chosen what is better. And it will not be taken away from her.”

What will it take for you to sit with Jesus and listen to Him?

When are you going to do it?

What are you afraid He might say to you if you stop long enough to really listen to Him?

Closing Prayer

Lord Jesus, we need You. We want to follow You faithfully. We need Your help to stop what we are doing. Draw us near to You. Help us to see You. Help us to hear You clearly. And help us to listen deeply, unafraid of what we might hear from You. Your voice calmed the storms on the sea. Speak Your Word into our lives to calm the storms we allow ourselves to become in all we do and all we are. Fill us to the depths we don’t know we can hold so that Your will may be accomplished in who we are, not just what we do. In Jesus’ name. Amen.