Good morning. Today's scripture reading is from the book of Luke chapter 10 Verses 38 through 42 and can be found on page 1028 in the Bible underneath the scene front of you. Luke 10 38 through 42 As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him He had she had a sister called Mary who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said 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 Martha Martha the Lord answered you are worried and upset about many things But only one thing is needed Mary has chosen what is better and it will not be taken away from her This is the word of the Lord So we've been talking a lot about discipleship and my series is called dare to be a disciple Well, what is a disciple? We've defined it as a mature reproducing follower of Jesus Christ mature though is kind of a relative term. What does that look like and what we've done here at UPC is we have defined spiritual maturity According to nine things that we call the nine marks of a transformed life now I assure you as I spoke last week too about this Nobody gets there in this world in this life We will never be perfect this side of heaven. We're always getting better We're always working toward these but they do provide us with goals They give us something to shoot for and they give us a measure by which we can take an honest look at our lives and say I do need to grow in this area and in that area if I'm going to be a disciple of Jesus So we've got these nine marks of a transformed life last week. I talked about the first one Which is that a transform person or a disciple enjoys God in worship Today, we're going to talk about the second of the nine marks. They're listed for you inside the worship guide in that Thing we call a sermon discussion guide They're nine of them listed the reason for nine is that there are three groups of three The first three refer to knowing God the second three growing together in the third group of three To serving others So we're still in the knowing God part of the nine marks So today the second of the nine is this That the mark of a transformed person or a disciple is that he or she Engages in God's word through study and prayer To say it again that a transform person or a disciple is someone who engages in God's word through study and prayer and God's word is the Bible. That's what we call the Bible Now, what does that look like? Well, we've defined it further by coming up with three things that we're looking for and we're helping people to do Helping people to grow the first one is to have a regular consistent devotional life To have a time with God on a regular basis that really means something to you personally Also, this means that you are able to find your way around the Bible You may not know you know where this the book of Habakkuk is But you know generally that there are two two parts the old and new testament 66 books and you kind of know the general Lay of the land as it were and then thirdly if you're a person who is described this way You have the ability to explain the basics of Christianity and of the gospel to another person So take a look at this if you will This is what we say is the second of the nine marks of a disciple Meaningful consistent devotional life you find your way around the Bible and you're able to explain the basics of the faith to someone else Now, let's just pause right there and I want to ask you to ask yourself How is it between you and this book here? Do you have a relationship with the Bible to God? Of course through his word the Bible? Are you reading the Bible on something of a consistent basis? Are you familiar with it now? I know that I'm probably talking to some people who are a bit new to Christianity. I hope so anyway Granted you've got a lot yet to learn but are you growing in your familiarity with the Scriptures and those of us who have walked with Jesus for a while Are you Consistently regularly in God's word reading it studying it for yourself Listen if you're going to be a follower of Jesus you have got to be a student of God's word 59% of homes in a man. Sorry 92% of homes in America contain at least one copy of the Bible 92 percent and Most of those homes that do have a Bible have an average of three copies of the Bible But a Gallup poll found that only 59% of Americans read the Bible on anything like an Occasional basis and that's down from 73% back in the 1980s in the 80s 73% of Americans read it at least occasionally Now it's down to 59% and I found a recent survey that was done by leadership magazine and Zonervin publishers that Discovered that only 19% of professing Christians are Bible readers
19% Bible readers Friends the church is fast becoming biblically illiterate and I'll tell you that's a huge problem You know what part of the problem is I think I think part of it is that some of you have been told over and over again How intimidating and confusing the Bible is Some of you have been told all your life that you have to read books about the Bible You can't read the Bible for yourself and and come to an understanding of it. It's too mysterious. It's too confusing and I think that for many of you you would say Yes, that's right. It is very confusing and some of you might even say Nobody has ever sat down with me and shown me how the Bible fits together How it makes sense what the storyline of the Scriptures is and how I can study it for myself That's one reason we're serious about discipleship here at UPC We really want you to find out that the Bible does make sense what it means and how to apply it to your life That's part of what big D groups are all about But today I'm going to use my time on the platform To be of I hope further help to you This is going to be more of a teaching sermon instead of a preaching sermon if there is a difference between the two What I want to do is first say a few things about the passage that Amy read for you a moment ago and then I'm going to show you how Beginning again today if you've never done it before you'll begin today to study and apply the Bible to yourself for yourself Now it's not all that might be said about studying the Bible. You may know steps that I'm going to leave out It's not a complete plan, but I think it's enough to get you on the way I'm going to give you a five-step plan to study the Bible on your own And I hope it will be practical and helpful for you So let me first talk a little bit about this passage and then we'll dive into the five steps to Bible study What I would say about Luke chapter 10 is that Jesus and his disciples are on their way to Jerusalem When they decide to stop in at the home of their good friends Martha and Mary and Lazarus They were three of Jesus very good friends. They lived in a little village called Bethany Which was two miles or so east of the city of Jerusalem? I'm interested to know whether Martha and Mary had any heads up about this You know, I don't know if they were expecting Jesus in the disciples or if they just knocked on the door and said hi We're here. We're hungry or what it was, but whatever the case this passage Tells us that Martha is overwhelmed Understandably so too, right? She is busy getting dinner ready for Jesus and his friends verse 40 Tells us that she was and the word is distracted in my version the NIV She was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made she wanted to make sure that everything was just so Right, I mean these were her friends and so she was working really really hard to make this a special evening for everybody But the problem for her was that her younger sister Mary Was not giving her a helping hand. She was in the family room sitting at Jesus's feet listening to what he had to say So Martha is just Totally overwhelmed and you can imagine what this must have been like for her She hears occasional laughter and the sounds of conversation coming from the other room She hears Mary her sister asking Jesus these intriguing questions and then the low muffled voice of Jesus comes through the walls and And yet there's Martha slaving away in the kitchen all by herself Why they didn't they didn't even apparently walk in and invite her To be a part of the fun. So she's understandably ticked off. This is Mary's house too, you know She was supposed to be in there helping Martha and think about the way that Societal roles were defined back in Jesus day women were supposed to prepare and serve the meal Not sit at the feet of rabbis and listen and discuss and ask questions. That was a man's privilege Why there was a one of the first century rabbis Who said this and I quote that it was better to burn the Torah Then to teach it to women So that was sort of the common understanding of a lot of people toward women and the days that we're reading about here So far Martha finally just storms into the family room says to Jesus Lord Don't you care that Mary is not giving me any help she's left me to do the work all by myself tell her to help me I find it interesting that Martha didn't even speak directly to Mary that would be my hunch that she would say hey Mary I need a helping hand here but no A little bit like Adam in the Garden of Eden the woman you gave me Jesus Has left me to do the work all by myself and the implication that Jesus Gives back to Martha is that Mary has chosen something better than you Martha and you should choose it too He says to to Martha Martha Martha you are worried and you're upset by many things, but only one thing is needed All right, I want to say two things about this passage one is what it does not teach and then we'll move on to see what it does teach What is this passage scripture not teach? It does not teach that it's wrong or unspiritual to be busy Perhaps you have run across this idea before that Martha is so sinful because she's just so busy And that it's wrong to work hard and so on and I think Martha gets a bum rap for that You know she's the worker they say while Mary is the worshipper the implication is that worship is a holier calling than work Martha's the active one Mary is the contemplative one and it's better to be a contemplative I want you to know that's not being fair to Martha and it's not true to the scriptures either Because in the Bible work is presented as a good and holy calling After all Proverbs 31 27 You know Proverbs 31 right ladies? That's the chapter that everybody says you're supposed to be This is the description of the perfect woman Proverbs 31 27 says this That a godly woman Watches over the affairs of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness Well, let's commend Martha Because she's being obedient to that verse She was not being idle She was doing her duty She was practicing hospitality in an excellent way she was taking care of business So today's lesson is not that the contemplative life is better than the active life Or that worship is better than work no the biblical view is that work is worship for the Christian Everything done to the glory of god is Worshipful and glorifying to him right So that's not it. So what does this pass this passage of scripture teach? Well, guess what? I'm not going to tell you We're going to find out together You know, I wish that this were something more of a of an open forum where I could have a couple of microphones out there I could ask questions and you could Could participate In in the answers to these questions We don't have time or atmosphere to do that But instead what I want to do as I said earlier is give you five steps that we are going to apply to this passage that hopefully You can take out of here today and apply it to any passage of scripture Five steps of what many people have called inductive Bible study. It's a questioning approach It's where you dive in and ask questions of the text itself in order to discover its meaning So get your Bible back open again if you happen to close it We're going to find out together what this passage of scripture does teach Five steps. Let's start with step number one What do you do when you want to study a passage of scripture? Whether it's this one or any other one first is you need some raw materials So you need some raw materials you need first of all some time Now this is going to take us another 20 minutes and 15 minutes or so right here But in your own personal study it might take you a half an hour to do a part of what we're going to talk about So you got to have some time you can't be in a hurry and be so busy Like Martha that you can't sit at Jesus' feet You need a place somewhere that you can be quiet and undistracted You need a Bible obviously If you don't have a Bible here are some versions that I recommend the NIV new international version The English standard version the new living translation the new American standard I know there are many others But these seem to be the ones that are most faithful to the text Better yet what I recommend is that you get a study Bible Here's a picture of a few different kinds of study Bibles that I would recommend you have in your own library The English standard NIV and the life application study Bible are good. There are others as well But the good thing about a study Bible that's what I use by the way in my own reading Is that it's got notes down at the bottom that explain things that you might not know At the beginning of every book there's an outline and some information about its purpose It's author and so on and so forth So a study Bible really works well And then you need a notebook or a journal a pen because you're going to take a lot of notes You're going to interact with the text and if you really want to be industrious You should have a Bible dictionary Or if not a Bible dictionary you should use a Bible study website such as this one It's called crosswalk.com And I want you to notice down below there is a space that you can click on this is Bible study tools Bible dictionaries can be found there concordances and all kinds of other aids That will really help your study So all of that is under the general heading of raw materials that's step one Let's move to step two Warm up this is your warm up time And I do urge you not to skip this over Because you need your heart in a proper attitude in order to study God's word My recommendation is this or you can think of other ideas as well read one of the Psalms Or some other kind of devotional material I use a book often called Valley of Vision It's a collection of prayers But many times I'll just flip open the book to a prayer and read it out loud as my prayer to God It just kind of warms my head and my heart gets me prepared to hear God Some people find it good to sing a hymn or a song or read the words of a hymn out of a hymn book But this is what you're doing you're warming your heart up toward the Lord and then certainly you will want to pray And in the scriptures themselves there are several short little prayers That you might want to memorize and use Before you dive into the Bible For instance here is one from the book of first Samuel Speak, Lord your servant is listening Here's one from Psalm 119 verse 18 I use this my own in my own life a lot of times open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law Or you could paraphrase one of the prayers of Paul here's one out of Ephesians chapter 1 Give me the spirit of wisdom and revelation that I may know you better But it's simply a way to pray and ask the Lord to come and speak to you from his word So there's step two we've done raw materials and warm up now the next three of the five steps rhyme They are read need K-N-E-A-D and Okay to hopefully help you remember So let's go to step three which is read You've got to choose a passage of scripture that's manageable that you can tackle in a short amount of time one verse three versus maybe as many as 10 or 12 but focus on a brief passage of scripture And I recommend that you move through if at all possible a book of the Bible I know that there are people who kind of do this type of thing You know let the Bible open and there's the passage I'm going to study and God really speaks that way to us many times But my I think it's a better stewardship of the of the word of God if if you would read through a book of the Bible So that you get a sense of what it's all about So choose the passage and then read through it several times just get familiar with what's going on read it over and over and over again That may be all you do in one of your mornings or evenings whenever you meet with God just that See somebody in the early service thought that I intended everything that I'm about to tell you to be done Every single time you sit down and read the Bible. So let me disabuse you that You take and choose various pieces of this and and one of them might take you Hours conceivably So read read through it several times get familiar and then you want to do a flyover Spend a little time doing a flyover getting familiar with the context of that Passage for instance here's some questions that I think you should ask of that passage who wrote it Here in Luke 10 we know who wrote it because it was written by Luke who was a traveling companion of Paul and a physician by trade To whom was the book written? In this case it was written to a man by the name of theophilus and you would know that by going to the very beginning passage of the book of Luke Theophilus was a wealthy Roman official perhaps he was Luke's patron Whatever he was whoever he was he was a pretty high-up guy back in that day Where does the action take place? Well in our case it took place in Judea Samaria Galilee the Holy Land what we would call today Why did Luke write this book would be another great question to ask and it seems that he wrote it to teach this man theophilus about Jesus Maybe it was to lead him to faith in Jesus or to give him a certainty about his faith in Christ Perhaps it was to rebut the critics of Christianity that were around that in that day But you would know that by sort of thinking about why did Luke write this and perhaps a study Bible would give you that information What's it about would be another great question to ask about your passage? What is it about basically and of course the book of Luke is about the life and ministry of Jesus? Next question. We're still flying over. What kind of literature is it? Is it poetry? Is it narrative? Is it Is it allegory? Is it prophecy? Is it a letter? So what would you say the book of Luke is? It's narrative isn't it's a history of the life of Christ. It tells us stories about what happened in his life The next question to ask about your passage is What just happened before the passage you're reading now? In other words, you look up the page maybe turn back of page or two to find out what took place before the passage that I'm reading right now and then what happens next? Well, you could easily check that out just simply flip the pages around a little bit figure out what Luke 8, 9, 10 are all about what's 11 and 12 and of course you understand where Luke is going right That eventually Jesus is going to encounter growing opposition and that will lead him all the way to the cross What's the atmosphere of your passage? What is the emotional content of it? As you heard Amy reading from Luke 10, did you feel an atmosphere? I feel tension I feel there's tension as thick as a knife in that room when Martha comes back in to meet with Jesus And how overwhelmed she's feeling So you want to connect with the emotional content of the passage in other words in this number three step You're jotting down in your journal or in your notebook anything and everything that hits you Letting God speak just just taking notes letting observations be done All right, let's move on to step four We've seen raw materials we've seen What was it? Oh the the other things that we said and then step three was read and then come step four need K in A D need you know what need is right? That's when you take something and work it and squeeze it and tease it and You're going to mix and mingle with it. You're going to really dive into it That's what need is and now you want to need this text of scripture that you're looking at Here are some questions that you want to ask and we're just going to run through this real fast first What do you find this interesting or puzzling about the passage of scripture that you're reading? Does anything sort of make you curious? For example, I thought Why did Jesus repeat Martha's name? Is there any significance to the fact that he said Martha? Martha Hold on to that. We might come back to it later today Second question. What are some of the words that stick out at you that jump off the page at you This is a real important step as you're needing the text. What are the most important words? I made a list for example of seven different words that sort of caught my eye one of them was the word distracted That seems to be a real big key word and I'm going to say more about it in a moment Next question. What do those words mean if you've made a list of words that jump out at you What do they mean now? There's several different ways to find out the meanings of Bible words The easiest way would be look them up in a what In a dictionary just a regular old English dictionary or an online dictionary I looked up the word distracted and I found this definition of the English word It means to be pulled in conflicting emotional Directions and I thought yeah, that's how Martha's feeling she feels pulled in two conflicting Directions here's another way you might be able to arrive at the meaning of Bible words. There's a website called Biblegateway.com and what you can do does anybody here use this? Oh good a lot of you do what you can do is pick a version of the Bible and compare Oh my oh up to 10 or 12 different versions of the scriptures on that one passage that you've That you've selected it'll help you understand the different words that you're looking at check the cross references What is a cross reference have you ever wondered what those little letters are that are in the text I remember as a new Christian I thought who put those little letters there did Paul You know did Luke right the little letters in the of course not what that is is that those are cross reference markers And if you look over in the margin of your Bible if you have a cross reference edition It'll give you some verses that shed light on the verse that you're looking at because scripture is its own best interpreter And so I really encourage you to use as many cross references as you can And if you're really industrious if you really really want to understand the the meanings of these words that you have highlighted There's another great resource that I'll give you and it's called the blue letter bible dot org Um what you can do is type in the reference right there on the website which I did I typed in Luke 10 38 through 42 and then you get all these little letters over there in the left. I hope you can see this uh if not you'll see it at home when you try it but um Go ahead and It'll give you these little letters you can click on v For versions and it'll give you different versions of the passage that you're looking at or you can click on c Which stands for concordants and then go down it'll give you a series of numbers Every word that you look at has a different number you click on the number And it'll take you to a page out of the strong's concordants which will then tell you what the actual Greek word meant For distracted So that's really if you want extra credit with god all those things Uh, just kidding totally kidding not true Um, but but it is really really important to to dive in all right now We're talking then about trying to find out the meanings of these words that you've highlighted You remember a moment ago? I I said that it caught my eye that Martha Martha was in there And so I started thinking about is there any other place in the bible where god speaks someone's name twice And I did do a little concordants usage and so on and I found that there were at least four five or six different places in the bible Where god speaks someone's name twice Moses Abraham uh Samuel the city of Jerusalem when he's right Jesus is riding in on his triumphal entry He says oh Jerusalem Jerusalem how I would love Together you to my chest like a mother in her chicks He said Simon Simon Satan has asked to sift you as wheat in other words there are these times And it seems like what they have all in common Is that god god's heart is really going out to someone That is hard is almost even breaking for someone and he's inviting someone closer to him and started thinking about that Martha Martha Maybe this whole story is about Martha's need To have a closer walk with Christ and he's inviting her to himself So see what can come of your just ordinary kinds of chasing down some of the clues as you ask those different questions Now let's move on to the fifth and final step heed We've looked at read need and now He'd because the bible does tell us not to simply listen or read scripture right the bible tells us to do it to obey it And to heed it So here are the questions that you now want to ask on this fifth and final step first are there any commands That are in this passage that I should obey Are there any promises that I should believe Is there an example to follow or an example to avoid and what would you say Is there an example to follow or to avoid in this passage? Of course be like Mary don't be like Martha. There's something about the two of them that we should learn from Is there an area in your life where you're falling short where God is asking you to repent Where he wants to bring change about in your life and now these next three questions are Really important and I dare say That most of us don't ask these questions of the text that we're looking at I think we we stop short of these three and we miss the beauty and the gospel So the next question that's on my list is You should look at this passage and say what is God revealing here about human beings What does he revealing here about human beings Well, what would you say about this passage? We get our priorities messed up, right We get mad at our siblings We worry We aim our anger at God. We're very much like Adam like I said earlier The woman you gave me Jesus I don't like her. It's your fault We aim our anger at God. We need to be forgiven. This is what it says right We need to be forgiven and ultimately ultimately This passage so it shows us that human beings are all looking for salvation We're looking for something that only God can supply Martha was looking for something that only Jesus could give her She was desperate because she was trying to justify her existence apart from the love of God See how just that simple question can get you to get down into the real meat of the text The next question asked is what is God revealing about Jesus?
What would you say about this one? Jesus speaks to us Jesus communicates to us. He tells us the truth. He loves us enough to not leave us alone Jesus is gracious and patient with us One obvious thing is that he fellowships and has intimate fellowship with sinners sinners like Martha Mary and his disciples and here was something to hit me Jesus absorbs within himself the treatment we deserve Think about that. It was Martha who was the uncaring one And she said Jesus you don't care Jesus sat there and absorbed in himself The punishment do her sin Do you see the cross there? It was Martha who was the sinner, but she said Jesus you don't care. I'm gonna punish you That's what the cross is all about Next question. Where's the gospel here? You see it, don't you? Do you taste the gospel? The good news of Jesus in this passage Here's the way I would put it Jesus invites broken people like Martha into relationship with him. He is the one that our hearts are seeking See when you get to this point in your Bible study you discover the real meaning of the passage
this passage is not just simply about reading the Bible more faithfully This passage is about the fact that Jesus And his words are sweeter than honey more valuable than fine gold We all want money right? This book is more valuable than that So what do we do with this? Now that we've finished these five steps. What do we do? We treasure God's word We spend time at Jesus feet Because the words of Jesus are too important to pass up. Jesus himself said that the words I have spoken to you are Spirit and they are life. Do you understand this is your life? Do you know that? And if you neglect it you neglect your soul
If I could summarize the passage in one sentence, I would say this and it's up here Martha deserved Jesus' rebuke Not because she worked too hard But because she valued Jesus and his words too little See earlier I said to you and it's true. It's not wrong to be busy But it is wrong to be so busy that you don't have time for God Men and women and young people do you understand that what you and I have in this book here is better than what Mary had? You and I have more revelation between the two covers of this ordinary looking book than Mary would ever have And yet she was at his feet Drinking in the words that dropped from his lips may we too Drink in the words that fall out of this book God breathed this The Holy Spirit who is the spirit of Jesus speaks today through this
So sit at his feet be a student of the word of God choose what is better And it will not ever be taken away from you Let's pray Father would you help us please? To so value what you've given us in this book called the Bible That we would study it Lord. I pray for myself. I pray for my friends here at UPC It is so easy to become like Martha We get overwhelmed with activity and pretty soon we turn around and realize that we have not really treasured your words Father remind us we pray from now on that we need this book. It's our life Help us Lord. We pray to be students of your word and we ask this in Jesus name. Amen