Unplug From The Noise

INTRODUCTION:

We live in a culture that is chock full of distractions. There is noise everywhere. Competitors for your affection of your heart and attention of your mind abound. Emails, text messages, social media, relationships, news, killings, craziness, chaos, and on we could go.

Our heart longs to sit and be still with Christ. Our soul craves communion with God and yet there’s all of this noise and it’s drowning out the call of Jesus to abide.

The more distractions there are in your life the more diligent and disciplined you must be to stay close to Jesus. (

Illustration Walkie Talkie. Lake, forrest, city) Most of us live in the city. Surrounded by noise chaos and distractions.

For me, personally, the source of greatest distraction is my cellphone. It makes studying the Scripture and sitting in silence to enjoy Christ a chore. You’ve got to fight for it.

Introducing the Story

We’re going to look at a story from the life of Jesus this morning that not only exposes the reality of distractions but also what they cost us when it comes to our relationship with Christ. We will also explore how to have a life that is marked more by devotion than it is distraction.

You’ve heard the story before if you’ve been around Broadview because i preached on it not too long ago. I was drawn back to this story because of the campaign we’re about to launch and I want us to look at it with fresh eyes.

Jesus is heading to a town called Bethany and on his way he and his disciples were invited over for dinner by some close friends: Mary, Martha and Lazarus. A family of thee.

Luke 10:38 (CSB)

38 While they were traveling, he entered a village, and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home.

“Doing” VS “Being”

Martha is one of those type A - go getter type people. She more than likely had the gift of hospitality. She loved to busy herself with taking care of things and taking care of people.

How many of you know we need the Martha’s of the world to keep things spinning? Thank you GOD for the Martha’s in my life and on our staff. They keep things moving. (Funerals)

Martha being the one who gave the invitation has taken it upon herself to make everything just right for the Lord’s arrival. She is crossing every T and dotting every i.

Jesus shows up (maybe early maybe not) and Martha’s sister begins to sit at Jesus’ feet listening to his teachings.

Luke 10:39 (CSB)

39 She had a sister named Mary, who also sat at the Lord’s feet and was listening to what he said.

I love this picture of Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus.

Notice the text says “also sat at the Lord’s feet...” The text uses the word also because it was atypical for a woman to sit at the feet of a rabbi.

“At the feet” was a place for disciples and most disciples were men. Even so, Mary is so captured by Jesus and his teaching that she inserts herself into the moment. (don’t you love that Jesus is breaking the norms here)

So Luke 10:38-39 creates a contrast between Mary and Martha and it’s the contrast between “being” and “doing.” Martha is fixated on “doing things” for Jesus whereas Mary is fixated on “being with.” Jesus.

Mary is joining the other disciples at the feet of Jesus, listening to what he has to say. Martha on the other hand is slaving away trying to get everything ready to facilitate the moment.

Distracted By Many Tasks

In Martha’s mind, her sister Mary should’ve been helping but she’s not. Maybe she even tried to get Mary’s cooperation at one point but it was ultimately unsuccessful.

Martha, overwhelmed and distracted by her many tasks, puts Jesus on the spot. (this tells you a great deal about her attitude!)

Luke 10:40 (CSB)

40 But Martha was distracted by her many tasks, and she came up and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to serve alone? So tell her to give me a hand.”

In a move that probably took Martha by surprise, Jesus not only denies her request but defends Mary in the process!

Luke 10:41–42 (CSB)

41 The Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, 42 but one thing is necessary. Mary has made the right choice, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Now I don’t know about you but sibling rivalry being what it is this couldn’t have been a pleasant thing for Martha to hear. Even so, Jesus says it.

This is atypical for Jesus. He wasn’t in the habit of interfering in domestic disputes like this. Why does he this time?

Jesus’ response is a warning that the daily distractions of life can rob us from experiencing that which is most important: communion with Jesus.

So we need to answer two very important questions when it comes to our distractions in life.

What distractions are currently pulling me away from Jesus?

What cost are those distractions having on my relationship with God and other people?

When we have answered those two questions we will be faced with a choice. Will we pursue a life marked by distraction or devotion to God?

WHAT ARE YOUR DISTRACTIONS?

So let’s raise and answer that first question: “What distractions are pulling you away from Jesus right now?”

That’s what the Greek word translated distraction in this text actually means. It means to be “pulled away from a point of reference.” If Jesus is the reference point, what thing in your life are currently “pulling you away” from Him?

You need to know what those things are. If only for the purpose of self-awareness and emotional maturity. You need to be able to answer “what is pulling me away from communion with God?”

Not All Bad

As you think about this question remember this: not every distraction that pulls us away from Jesus is a BAD THING.

Martha wasn’t doing anything bad, wrong or sinful. (pornography, gossiping, wasting time/money) It was the opposite. She was doing something righteous. She was serving the Lord. Making preparations.

So even GOOD things can distract us from time with Jesus.

Serving up at the church to help with ministry needs.

Raising your children to love and fear the Lord.

Work related activities that help put food on the table.

Time with friends and family and leisure to decompress

Just because an activity is a good doesn’t mean it’s not a threat to your relationship with God.

Certainly there are negative things that CAN pull us away from Jesus but I think the emphasis here are those things that don’t look like a threat on the surface but under the hood do serious spiritual damage.

Be > Do // With > For

Some of us are trying REALLY HARD to do well in this thing called the Christian life. We go go go thinking surely if I try hard and do my best then God will be pleased and things will go well.

Even when it comes to THOSE kinds of distractions Jesus says, “I’d rather you BE WITH me than DO FOR me.” It’s not that doing is unimportant. It’s that DOING is LESS important than BEING WITH Jesus.

I struggle with this personally. Any spiritual guilt I feel is usually over what didn’t get DONE for God and not the time that didn’t get spent WITH God. Christianity isn’t about what you do it’s about what Christ as DONE.

This is such a basic gospel truth. Jesus isn’t more or less pleased by your spiritual accomplishments. He’s impressed by humility, dependency and total surrender. BE > DO and WITH > FOR

What are your distractions? Even if they are good things, what are the things currently pulling you away from being WITH Jesus?

Velcro Illustration

Illustration: Velcro - We should be remaining stuck to Christ but the more things there are between you and him the more difficult it is to remain connected.

Personal: For me its social media, it’s entertainment, it’s emails and work related responsibilities, it’s my responsibilities as a dad. What is it for you?

Martha has Jesus in her living room. She has this tremendous opportunity, like Mary, to sit at the feet of Jesus and commune with him. But so do we. In fact we have something EVEN BETTER. Better to have the Spirit of God INSIDE of us than the person of Jesus BESIDE us.

If you’re a Christian then you have immediate access to communion with Christ through the Spirit. All you have to do is create time and space to attend to His Spirit. and the love of Christ will catch fire in your heart.

How Do You Connect With God

That leads to a secondary question. We should not only identify those things that pull us away from God. We should also identify pathways that draw us close.

So how do you connect/spend time with Jesus?

By the way, you need to know it’s okay if your answer to this question isn’t the same as somebody else’s.

Gary Chapman wrote a great book that I recommend often. It’s called “Sacred Pathways.” The subtitle of the book is “Discover YOUR SOUL’S Pathway to God.

In that book he lists no less than NINE pathways of connecting with God. Not everybody has the same personality or the same temperament. What works for one person may not work for another.

Sacred Pathways

Personally I resonate the the naturalist pathway. That doesn’t mean scientific materialism (naturalism.) It means you connect with God through nature.

The heavens declare the glory of God and there’s nothing like being out in the field sitting in a deer blind listening to the good creation of God and pondering the wisdom and greatness of God. (especially if there’s no service in the deer blind!)

Other people love God with the senses. When the truth of God is communicated through beautiful art that attracts the eyes or compelling music that pleases the ears or engages you physically through singing, dancing or raising your hands in worship.

Some are drawn to that and others are not so much. Don’t reject a pathway just because you don’t share it and don’t fail to connect with God because you’re forcing yourself into somebody else's mold!

That’s just the first two. There are so many more.

He has the rituals and sacraments of the traditionalist pathway;

the silence and solitude of the ascetic pathway,

the activist pathway that connects with God through service and making a difference,

the care giver pathway that connects to God by loving others,

the contemplative pathway that experiences God through affection and adoration

culminating with the intellectual pathway of connecting with God through your mind.

Again we don’t have time to go through each one of these but you need to know how YOU personally connect with God. Removing distractions is only half the battle.

WHAT ARE YOUR DISTRACTIONS COSTING YOU?

The second main question is what are your distractions costing you? We get a glimpse on what these distractions were costing Martha in our text today.

Luke 10:40–41 (CSB)

40 But Martha was distracted by her many tasks, and she came up and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to serve alone? So tell her to give me a hand.”

41 The Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things,

Whenever you see two names repeated like that in the Scripture it’s a sign of endearment. It’s not like the “Martha Martha” of the “Brady Bunch.” This is Jesus essentially saying, “Martha I see you, I hear you, I understand you and I absolutely care about what’s going on in your heart.”

Martha was “worried” and “upset” about “many things.”

What Diversion Looks Like

The word translated “worried” is a little Greek word used several times in the NT. I came across a great definition this week. “That which is existentially important, that which monopolizes the heart’s concerns.”

The word translated “upset” is actually a Greek word that means “noise or sound” usually to describe a large unruly group of people.” The result of listening to all of that chaos is to be disturbed. You can’t get any peace. The heart is never able to get still. It’s just a bunch of NOISE.

That was the result of her “many tasks.” She was distracted by “many tasks” and those distractions had the cumulative effect of monopolizing the concern of her heart and filling her mind with so much noise that she could no longer see things for what they actually were.

What it Causes

Look at what these distractions did to Martha’s heart. Ironically these are some of the same kinds of things that happen to us when we allow distractions to dominate our heart and draw us away from Jesus.

Judgmental and Critical

The first thing it creates is a critical or judgmental spirit in Martha. She blames other people for her troubles. She blames her sister for her problems. The judges her for what she is or isn’t doing. Comparison.

We do something similar. When things aren’t going right and we’re not rightly connected with God we play the blame game. We get struck in the comparison trap.

Why? Our heart is not resting in Jesus. Our identity is in crisis mode. We’re trying to perform and impress instead of resting and abiding in the love of Jesus.

Before you know it your eyes are off of the Lord, on to other people and what they have that you don’t or what you are doing that they are not. And you’re trapped. It’s a cycle that just feeds on itself bigger and bigger.

Anxious and Insecure

The second thing these distractions cause is anxiety and insecurity. Martha is no longer secure that Jesus really cares for her or loves her the way she thought He did.

Martha says, “Jesus don’t you care? Jesus do you not see? Do you not care that I’m doing all of this and making all of this effort and my sister just sits there doing nothing and you’re going to take HER SIDE instead of MINE? Jesus do you even really love me? Do you see me?”

We do the same. We can start to doubt the love of God. You question does God really even care about me? If God really cared wouldn’t I have what they do? Wouldn’t I NOT be going through what I’m going through.

Angry and Confused

That leads to the third negative thing these distractions cause: anger and confusion. Insecurity and a critical spirit almost ALWAYS give birth to anger.

If there’s one thing that marks the thing distracting most of us these days it’s anger. Whether it’s hours watching cable news or hours listening to a podcast, Facebook feed or Twitter thread - the algos know how to keep us angry.

In our life it goes something like this.

“I can’t believe they always.... those people will never… If they don’t do x,y, z then it’s all going to blow up and it’s all their fault.”

Or maybe it’s more like Martha

“God can’t you see the mess I’m in? Can’t you see how hard I’ve been working? Can’t you see how much effort I’ve put in to this that or the other thing?”

Demanding and Out of Touch

Finally Martha becomes demanding and out of touch. You could call it developing a God Complex. She’s not just bossy like sometimes women can be bossy. She’s bossing around the Lord of Glory! The Lord Jesus Christ!

For you it might look different. “God are you going to leave me single forever!? Come on! You owe me. Look at what I’ve done for you. Where’s MY job? Where’s MY financial break through.”

Whenever you find yourself bossing Jesus around you know you’ve allowed your distractions to put you in a bad place. She’s absolutely blind to the moment. If you’re “telling God” what’s what instead of LISTENING to God for what’s what you’re out of touch.

Maybe if Martha had a listening spirit instead of a critical and demanding spirit then she would’ve have been in the emotional bondage she was in.

Jesus wasn’t the one telling Martha to do all the things that she was doing. That was a self-inflicted wound. A self-inflicted soul-destroying busyness that was ruining her relationship with God.

What About You?

If these are the things that Martha’s distractions cost her then what are your distractions costing you?

Are the concerns of your heart monopolized? Has the anxiety and stress crippled you yet? We live in a mentally and spiritually UNHEALTHY WORLD because of this reality.

Anxiety and mental health problems are greater today than they have been at any other point in recent history. We’ve got to unplug from the noise because the noise blinds us to the most important reality about ourselves.

We DO NOT RULE THE UNIVERSE. We cannot do it all by ourselves. There’s only one God. There’s only ONE master of the universe and his name is JESUS.

The best thing we can do is exchange self-reliance for dependance. Exchange these distractions with intimacy with the one who really does have the whole world in his hands.

Thats’ what Jesus wants from us more than anything else. It’s not our activity. It’s not our achievements. It’s our surrender. It’s our faith. It’s our affection and reliance on him.

The More The Distractions The More It’s Important

I know that some of you are extremely busy people. You’re like Martha. And they’re not bad things and they’re not all things you can just remove from your life.

We are calling for a social media fast because that’s one thing most of us can turn off and it would improve our spiritual life because it has a tendency to pull us away from Jesus.

Others of you aren’t on social so maybe it’s games on your phone or social media or something else.

But even if you take all those other things away you’ll still be left with plenty of distractions so here’s what i want you to know.

The more distractions you have in your life the harder you’ll have to fight to maintain intimacy with Jesus. It requires an intentional choices to pursue devotion over distraction.

It has to become MORE important to you than all the other things. When you get to Heaven and give an account for why you never read your Bible or engaged in personal worship God will not hear the excuse “but I lived in the most distracted generation of human history.”

Owning an iPhone and having a Facebook are not excuses for why we can’t have intimacy with God. They are just obstacles that we must choose to subordinate to that most important task.

WILL YOU EXCHANGE DISTRACTIONS FOR DEVOTION?

That leads me to a final question out of this text. Will you exchange your life of distractions for a life of devotion? Will you choose the better thing. The thing that is most necessary.

Because if you WILL make that choice. IT will not be taken from you.

Luke 10:42 (CSB)

42 but one thing is necessary. Mary has made the right choice, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Two women. Two totally different personalities. Both loved and wanted to serve the Lord. But Mary will forever be known for understanding something Martha missed.

Mary understood that so long as she remained at the feet of Jesus she could face whatever else life might throw at her. If affection for Christ was the FIRST priority in her heart then nothing else in this life could take that away.

What Matters Most To You?

What matters most to you? It really does boil down to a question of priority. What matters most when it comes to the affections of your heart.

In saying this I’m not suggesting that the only way to live devoted to Jesus is to quit your job, move into a monastery and read the Bible all day. That’s not practical nor what Jesus is commending in this passage.

Devotion to Jesus is not necessarily measured by increments of time. It’s measured by the priorities of the heart. What VALUE do you place on the time you spend with God?

Reading The Bible

The only reason that a man or woman would read their Bible is if they thought it was a valuable use of their time. If they thought “I don’t have it all figured out but Jesus does so I’m going to hear from him.”

However, for the man or woman who never reads the Bible, never prays, never carves out time to spend with God - it doesn’t matter what they SAY they believe about God. How they LIVE communicates the reality of their faith.

If you rarely or never spend time engaging God in the Scripture then it’s likely because you don’t think it’s a valuable use of your time. You believe they have something better to do!

Mary is saying “There is absolutely NOTHING BETTER THAN THIS.” And Jesus is saying to Martha - Mary is right. Learn from her. And what you receive will never be taken from you.

It Will Not Be Taken From You

What does Jesus mean by that phrase “It will not be taken from her?” I heard an illustration the other day that really drove this point home for me so I want to share it again here.

Do you know how when you’re really young the things that matter most to you then are not the things that matter most later on in life?

For example when you’re really young it might be a particular blanket or security boy. You turn five years old and that seems goofy (depending on the child!)

When your in grade school the most important thing is being able to play a certain game or having a certain kind of toy or something.

In Jr. High you realize you you cared about in grade school was silly to what you care about now. GIRLS! BOYS!

In High School it changes again… it’s all about the letter jacket or a degree or getting into the right college.

In college it’s getting into the right sororities or internships. Finding somebody who you can convince to marry you.

You get married and what becomes important is having children or the right kind of lifestyle compared to your friends.

When you get kids it’s the right kind of school and friends and hobbies and activities so they become properly civilized and well balanced.

When the kids leave it’s about having enough money for retirement and when you retire it’s about having enough money to pay for your medical bills.

Somewhere along the way - usually when you get MUCH older in life - you begin to realize the things that are most important are the things that last in every season. The things that are not taken from you.

And the most important thing is the time you spend with Jesus. It’s the communion and intimacy you build with the God of the universe.

Because one of these days everything else WILL BE taken away. Everything except this one thing.

SHARE THE GOSPEL!

CONCLUSION

What will characterize your life on that last day? Will it be marked by distraction or devotion?

Every time you see Mary show up in the Scriptures she is “sitting at the feet of Jesus.” She was the first one to know Jesus was going to die. Why? Because she had been spending time with him, listening to him.

Don’t get to the end of your life and realize you wasted it!

Unplug From The Noise

Join us in this effort to unplug from the noise. Whatever it is that is drawing you AWAY from spending time with Jesus then remove it from your life.

Join us in this social media fast. It’s a declaration that we’re going dark so we can go deep with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Commit to the Bible reading plan. We’ll study the life of Christ and look at the practical ways his Gospel is applied to our every day life.

If you’re not a Christian, then use this season to really explore and wrestle with the question of Jesus as your savior and Lord.