Sermon Tone Analysis

\\ *Text: *New American Standard Bible

*/Luke 10:38/**/ through Luke 10:42 (NASB) /*38Now as they were traveling along, He entered a village; and a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her home.

39She had a sister called Mary, who was seated at the Lord’s feet, listening to His word.

40But Martha was distracted with all her preparations; and she came up /to Him/ and said, “Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to do all the serving alone?

Then tell her to help me.”

41But the Lord answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things; 42but /only/ one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”

 

*Intruduction**: *

      We have become preooccuppied with the little things, and have lost our grip on the important things.

In his book Stress Fractures, Charles Swindoll writes:

   I vividly remember some time back being caught in the undertow of too many commitments in too few days.

It wasn't long before I was snapping at my wife and our children, choking down my food at mealtimes, and feeling irritated at those unexpected interruptions through the day.

Before long, things around our home started reflecting the pattern of my hurry-up style.

It was becoming unbearable.

I distinctly recall after supper one evening the words of our younger daughter, Colleen.

She wanted to tell me about something important that had happened to her at school that day.

She hurriedly began, "Daddy-I-wanna-tell-you-somethin'-and-I'll-tell-you-really-fast."

Suddenly realizing her frustration, I answered, "Honey, you can tell me ... and you don't have to tell me really fast.

Say it slowly."

I'll never forget her answer: "Then listen slowly."

*I.

**Seek First a Worship of the Word Whatever the Work*

*A.     **We must listen to the Word*

***Listening is much more than hearing.

I often heard my Mother, but I did not listen to her.

A writer in the magazine, /Today's Christian Woman /wrote, "   One day my three-year-old granddaughter, Beverly, was playing with her toys.

Her mother, who was folding laundry across the room, noticed Beverly's shirt was dirty and needed to be changed.

After calling two times with no response, her mother gave her the full three-name call: "Beverly Elizabeth Provost, did you hear me?" Beverly answered, "Yes, Mama.

My ears did, but my legs didn't.""

-- Marguerite Provost, Georgia.

Today's Christian Woman, "Small Talk."

 

***   In Listenning, there is an element of involvement that goes beyond  just hearing.

A person wrote into Christian Reader Magazine and said "One morning during our adult Sunday school class, our pastor picked up the podium and walked back and forth with it.

When someone asked, "What are you doing?" he replied, "Well, sometimes you just need to take a stand."

It was a great beginning for a lesson on the importance of strong convictions."

*B.

**We must learn the Word*

***   Not all of us are good learners, but one thing is necessarry in learning, and that is to adopt an attitude of humility.

It is said here that Mary sat at Jesus' feet.

That is an attitude of humility that all student's in her time took when addressed by their teacher as they were discipled by him.

Mary was humble enough to learn from another.

John Bunyan once said that "He that is humble ever shall have God to be his guide."

***   ... read the Bible as though it were something entirely unfamiliar, as though it had not been set before you ready-made.

... Face the book with a new attitude as something new.

... Let whatever may happen occur between yourself and it.

You do not know which of its sayings and images will overwhelm and mold you.

... But hold yourself open.

Do not believe anything a priori; do not disbelieve anything a priori.

Read aloud the words written in the book in front of you; hear the word you utter and let it reach you.

-- Martin Buber, twentieth-century theologian, in a 1926 lecture, quoted in The Five Books of Moses.

Christianity Today, Vol.

41, no. 9.

***   The famous Preacher, George Whitfield once said that "God has condescended to become an author, and yet people will not read his writings.

There are very few that ever gave this Book of God, the grand charter of salvation, one fair reading through."

*C.

**We must love the Word*

***   Eudora Welty was quoted as saying "I'm grateful ... that from my mother's example, I found the base for worship--that I found a love of sitting and reading the Bible for myself and looking up things in it.

How many of us, the South's writers-to-be of my generation, were blessed in one way or another, if not blessed alike, in not having gone deprived of the King James Version of the Bible.

Its cadence entered into our ears and our memories for good.

The evidence, or the ghost of it, lingers in all our books.

"In the beginning was the Word.""

*II.

**Seek First an Attitude of Adoration Above Activity*

*A.     **Focus on the Who, not what*

***   We are called to an everlasting preoccupation with God.

   -- A.W. Tozer, That Incredible Christian.

Christianity Today, Vol.

41, no.

5.

 

***Jesus want's us to focus on Him, and not the work we do for him.

Jesus said that where two or three are gathered together *in My Name*, there will I be also.

The idea of name in the New Testament period encompassed the character of the person.

There are often more than two or threee that gather together in churches, but they do not gather *in His Name.

* They are not concerned so much with Him as a person in their midst, as they are with their agenda, and then they look around one day and ask "where did Jesus go?"

***   In his book Good Morning Merry Sunshine, Chicago Tribune columnist Bob Greene chronicles his infant daughter's first year of life.

When little Amanda began crawling, he records: "This is something I'm having trouble getting used to.

I will be in bed reading a book or watching TV.

And I will look down at the foot of the bed and there will be Amanda's head staring back at me.

   "Apparently I've become one of the objects that fascinate her.

... It's so strange.

After months of having to go to her, now she is choosing to come to me.

I don't know quite how to react.

All I can figure is that she likes the idea of coming in and looking at me.

She doesn't expect anything in return.

I'll return her gaze and in a few minutes she'll decide she wants to be back in the living room and off she'll crawl again."

The simple pleasure of looking at the one you love--what Bob and his daughter enjoyed--is what we enjoy each time we worship God and bask in his presence.

*B.

**Fueled by Endearment, not endurance*

*** Worship does not satisfy our hunger for God; it whets our appetite.

-- Eugene H. Peterson.

Leadership, Vol.

16, no.

1.

 

***   I believe that if we are to be and to do for others what God means us to be and to do, we must not let Adoration and Worship slip into second place, "For it is the central service asked by God of human souls; and its neglect is responsible for much lack of spiritual depth and power."

Perhaps we may find here the reason why we so often run dry.

We do not give time enough to what makes for depth, and so we are shallow; a wind, quite a little wind, can ruffle our surface; a little hot sun, and all the moisture in us evaporates.

It should not be so.

-- Amy Carmichael in Edges of His Ways.

Christianity Today, Vol.

39, no.

 

*C.

**Fed from the heart, not the hand*

***   The Desert Fathers (a protest movement against worldliness in the early church) spoke of busyness as "moral laziness."