On Choosing the Good Part

Is the church today doing everything it can to provide women a firm foundation of truth in Christ Jesus? Well, it's true there's no shortage of candy-coated Bible studies, potluck fellowships available to ladies.

But beyond Sunday morning, are Christian women being properly equipped to stand against the same deceptions that even enticed Eve in the garden? In an attempt to address the need for trustworthy, biblical resources for women, No Compromise Radio is happy to introduce Equipping Eve, a ladies-only radio show that seeks to equip women with fruits of truth in an age that's ripe with deception.

My name is Mike Ebendroth, and I'm pleased to introduce your host, Erin Benziger, a friend of No Compromise Radio and a woman who wants to see other women equipped with a love for and a knowledge of the truth of God's Word.

The Ministry Aim of Equipping Eve

Well, hello ladies, and welcome to Equipping Eve. I am your host, Erin Benziger, and this is the show that seeks to equip you ladies with biblical truth so that we can stand strong on the truth of the Bible, God's truth, God's Word, the only truth that is objective, that can be known to be wholly true, wholly reliable.

And when we stand on that truth, we easily recognize error in both the secular and the sacred, if you will. And we realize that we stand upon a firm foundation given to us in the 66 books of the Bible, so graciously given to us in the 66 books of the Bible by our Lord.

Ladies, you can check us out on Facebook, just do a search for Equipping Eve, or Twitter, that's at Equipping Eve, also EquippingEve .com or .org. Both of those will get you to the website. You can link to the blog there and find past shows.

The links to the shows will take you over to NoCompromiseRadio .com. We're very thankful to NoCo for partnering with Equipping Eve and all of the guys there and all of their help. So that's us, that's how you find us, that's how you find me.

It's really just me. But please reach out, I love to get emails, messages, I may not always be able to respond as quickly as I'd like, and I'm sorry, but please don't stop reaching out. I love to hear from you, I love to hear comments, complaints, criticisms, encouragement, ideas.

I love this. So please share with me, reach out, email, Twitter, Facebook, whatever is your favorite means of social media interaction. Sounds good to me. Sound good? Sounds good. Okay. Ladies, I wanted to start today, we're going to take a look at a passage in Luke 10 if you want to get your Bibles ready, but before we do that, I wanted to start with some audio from a recent Q &A session that Dr. John MacArthur did out at his church, Grace Community Church.

This was recorded in December of 2016, and I don't know if you've ever heard his Q &A sessions before. The website says that this is part 65, which means that John MacArthur has done 65 Q &A sessions over the years, at least that's what we have on record in their media files.

So if you go to gty .org and search on Bible questions and the answer is part 65, you can find this and we'll link to this at the Equipping Eve blog. And it was a wonderful time of Q &A, it was about an hour and 20 minutes, which is really long on a Sunday night, but I can imagine that nobody wanted to leave because I didn't want to stop listening.

I really enjoyed this session. And there was a moment early on in the evening when a woman approached the microphone, a young woman named Joy, and just had a very important question for Dr. MacArthur.

And the way that he handled it was so beautiful and so sweet and so pastoral, and I just thought that we could all benefit from hearing Dr. MacArthur's response to this young woman and be thankful for the minister of Dr. MacArthur in this and just see how God has used him and how God uses us to bring truth and encouragement to others.

And so this might even be a question that has plagued you in the past, I don't know. But I hope that you find this little bit of audio encouraging, so we'll just get to it. So here is Dr. MacArthur and this young woman named Joy.

Assurance of Salvation and the Evidence of Desire

Thank you. All right.

Yes. Thank you. Thank you for answering my questions. My name is Joy. Hi, Joy. And it's an answer to prayer to be here. So here they are. Three real quick questions, a little complicated. How do I know if I am saved if I have blasphemous thoughts?

Should I be taking communion if I am not sure if I am saved? If I am not chosen, would I even care about being saved?

Really good questions, Joy. You have a wonderful name, but sometimes it's hard to live up to, isn't it? I mean, how would you like to be named Joy and have to always be assumed to be possessing all of that?

I can hear the cry of your heart, Joy. I want to make it as simple as I can. The fact that you are asking these questions is evidence of the work of God in your heart. It is evidence of your desire for Him and for salvation and to know Him.

That is evident there. The fact that you would stand up in front of all of us and unbury your heart in such a sweet and honest way is evidence of the hunger of your heart to know Him. And I think that's what you're essentially saying.

The way you know that you are saved is by your desire. Do you desire to know God? Yes. Do you desire that He would know you and love you? Yes. Do you desire to love Him?

Yes. Do you desire to honor Him? Yes. Do you desire to obey His Word? I do, but I can't do it on my own strength. Well, of course not. Join the club. That's why we're all here.

This is the same with all of us. It's all of grace, isn't it? It's all of grace. The Apostle Paul in Romans 7 helps us because this is the Apostle Paul. This is the one that we would elevate as the supreme example of a Christian.

And he says, well, he calls himself a wretched man because he says, I do what I don't want to do and I don't do what I want to do. He said, there is a principle in me that loves the law of God, but I see another principle in me warring against the principle of my mind, and it's the principle of my flesh.

And it causes me to do the very opposite of the things I want to do. And he says, oh, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death? And that's a very interesting illustration.

One of the ways that murderers were punished in the ancient world was that the victim that they had murdered was strapped to their body. And eventually the decay from the corpse would destroy them. Paul feels, even though he's a believer, that he's got the dead body of his sinful nature still tied to him.

So what you're saying to me is essentially the same cry that came out of the noblest of all Christians. And that very cry is evidence of the work of God in your heart, that you desire to know God, to be loved by God, to love God, to honor God, to obey God, and that you know you can't is a statement of a genuine believer because you recognize that you aren't everything you should be and you are utterly dependent upon God himself and upon the Holy Spirit.

That's true of your salvation. You can't save yourself and you can't sanctify yourself. So you're where all honest Christians live. You're saying, I'm not what I want to be, but I know what I want to be.

I'm not what I ought to be, but I know what I ought to be. It's about direction. It's about affection. It's about love. We've talked about that recently when Jesus was restoring Peter. In John 21, he said three times, Do you love me?

Do you love me? Do you love me? And Peter had been caught in disobedience again. And yet he said, Lord, you know, you know me, you know I love you. Then feed my sheep. He accepted the failing life of Peter, the tendency to be disobedient, and even maybe to have ungodly thoughts, which is just part of that remaining sin nature.

But he accepted that man and he accepts all of us if we love him and it calls on us to love him more. So you don't want to evaluate the character of your salvation by your failures. You want to assess the genuineness of your salvation by your desires, by what you love, what you long for, what you want.

And you're here. And that says everything. This is not a place for people running from God. This is a place for people running to him. But asking the question is important. The purest joy, to kind of play on your name a little bit, the purest joy in the Christian life comes when we are obeying him, loving him, serving him, worshiping him.

That's when we enjoy the most assurance. Security is one thing. Security means that I am saved and he will keep me until I see him face to face. I'm secure in him. That's not assurance. Assurance is the confidence I have in my mind of my salvation.

Many people are saved. They're secured by God in that salvation, but they don't always have the assurance. Why do we struggle with assurance? Because we know our weakness, because we know our temptations, because we know we're not what we ought to be, sometimes because we fall into a pattern of sin and we lose our assurance, sometimes because perhaps we have been taught wrongly that you might do something and cause you to lose your salvation, and that generates a certain amount of fear.

But to go back to the main point, the very desire of your heart is the evidence of the work of God in your life because unregenerate enemies of God don't have those desires. Okay? Does that help? Thank you.

Thank you, Joy.

Well, there you go. Sweet, sweet words of wisdom from a man who has been demonstrated over many decades to be faithful to the Lord and to his word and words of comfort. I mean, how many of us have been in Joy's shoes?

How many of us have questioned our salvation at one point? Perhaps that's how you came to salvation. That's part of my own testimony where I professed to be a Christian but then realized that my life was not demonstrating the fruit of that profession.

Am I a Christian? Am I a Christian? And it brought me to my knees when I realized I was not. But I commend Joy and her courage to come in front of a room, a large room full of people like that, recorded for the world, and to ask that question.

That is the cry of someone who desires to love and serve Christ. And we can all be thankful for that young lady and for the words of guidance and comfort provided by Pastor MacArthur. So I hope Grace To You doesn't mind that I used that audio.

Like I said, we will link on the Equipping Eve blog to that particular Q &A session so that you can hear the entire thing. And we're very, very thankful for Pastor MacArthur and his ministry. Okay. Ladies, the words of Pastor John there in that little question and answer session really kind of, in an interesting way, feed into what I want to talk about in the rest of the show.

Mary and Martha in Luke 10

And I want to turn to Luke 10. Hopefully you're there since I gave you warning. Luke 10, verse 38. So we're going to read the familiar story of Martha and Mary. Verse 38 of Luke 10 reads,. Now as they were traveling along, he entered a village, and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home.

She had a sister called Mary who was seated at the Lord's feet, listening to his word. But 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. But the Lord answered and said to her, Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things, but only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.

We heard Dr. MacArthur speak about the desires and the affections of a Christian and that the direction of your life offers you assurance and is evidence of your Christian faith. And I think what we see here in the story of Martha and Mary is an example of that, an illustration of that, where we see two women, both saved, both having put their trust and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

But we see, as MacArthur notes in his commentary on this passage, we see that one is devoted and one is distracted. And so we see in this story ourselves, do we not? And this is not just because these are two women.

Men can see themselves in the story as well. And I want to make that really clear because I think quite often stories, passages such as this, that are narratives about women tend to be applied just to women.

And that's not why they're in Scripture. The whole of Scripture is for the whole of the body of Christ, men and women. And so I want to make that really clear. And I have not chosen this passage because Martha and Mary are two women.

No, no, I've chosen this passage because of what it teaches us. Now, one of the evidences of our salvation would be that we desire the things of God and we desire the teachings of God. As MacArthur had said, this place, this church is not a place where you would go if you're running from God.

This is where you come when you're running to him. This is where you come to know about him, to know him, because the word of God is opened and Christ is revealed in his word. And that's really important.

What we see in Martha and Mary, what we see in Mary, is that desire to know the Lord. The Lord is in front of me. Of course I'm going to sit at his feet and hear what he has to teach and what he has to say.

We see in this passage the importance of women to study theology, ladies, and not just as a means of learning how to practically apply theology to your homemaking skills. Oftentimes we just have a lot of lessons on Proverbs 31 and this is how you keep the perfect home and Martha had the perfect home.

I'm not here to tell you that your house should be a chaotic mess and that your family should be unkempt and chaotic themselves. That would be a bad fruit. But neither should women be excluded from theological teaching in order to attend to domestic matters all of the time.

And so often that is what we see. So we'll just put the women over here in the kitchen or we'll put the women over here with the children and maybe they'll glean a little bit here or there. But ladies, if you are a mother, you are teaching the next generation of Christians.

Timothy's mother and grandmother were vital to his Christian faith and his Christian foundation and we don't want to lose sight of that. J .C. Ryle in his commentary on Luke 10, verses 38 to 42, he makes an interesting point that I'd like to bring up at the beginning.

He says, let us observe, for one thing, how different the characters and temperaments of true Christians may be. And he goes on to explain that both of these women were saved. Grace reigned in both hearts, he said, but each showed the effect of grace at different times and in different ways.

He says, we must not expect all believers in Christ to be exactly like one another. And this is very important. And so that's the danger in turning to a passage like this and saying, be like Mary. Martha, oh, no, don't be like her, be like Mary.

That's not what we're here to say. We're here to look at what, as I said, what this passage has to teach us. But Ryle, I really appreciate that he makes this point early on in his commentary, saying, you know, not all believers are going to be the same.

God did not create us all as little robots. We're not a bunch of Stepford wives running around. He says, we must not set down others as having no grace because their experience does not entirely tally with our own.

The sheep in the Lord's flock each have their own peculiarities. The trees in the Lord's garden are not all precisely alike. All true servants of God agree in the principal themes of religion. All are led by one spirit, all feel their sins, and all trust in Christ.

All repent, all believe, and all are holy. But in minor matters, they often differ widely. Let us not despise one another on this account. There will be Marthas, and there will be Marys. There will be those with different character traits.

There will be those who are more sober. There will be extroverts. There will be introverts. There will be those who are maybe a little more joking in their disposition. But we agree on the essentials, and that's really important.

I've seen churches where you're just expected to conform to this personality and this mindset. That is not from Scripture. Yes, we are to be conformed to the image of Christ and be sanctified. Christ has renewed our mind when we've been saved, and we desire and strive to live in holiness and righteousness to look more and more like him.

But as I said, we're not Stepford-wise. We don't all have the same personalities. We don't all have the same gifts. If we did, the church couldn't function, and that's really, really important, ladies, to understand.

And so I really appreciated J .C. Ryle's note on that. But then he goes on and says, Let us observe, for another thing, what a snare to our souls the cares of this world may be if allowed to take up too much attention.

It is plain from the tone of the passage before us that Martha allowed her anxiety to provide a suitable entertainment for our Lord to carry her away. Her excessive zeal for temporal provisions made her forget, for a time, the things of her soul.

And that is where we linger then today. So Martha got swept up in the things of this world, wanting to make everything, no doubt, just right. The Lord was in her house. I mean, I'd want to make sure everything was swept and cleaned and that the food, there was plenty of food, and that it tasted wonderful and was presented beautifully.

Of course, we would all think along those lines, but she was missing out on the opportunity to sit at the feet of Christ. So if we look at John MacArthur's commentary on this verse, he talks about how this passage does demonstrate the priority of believers.

He says that the highest priority for believers should be the deep transforming knowledge of God. And he explains that this story sets the stage for the last phase of Jesus' ministry. And in his final journey to Jerusalem, the stories in Luke are focused not on Jesus' miracles, but on his teaching of his disciples.

And that's really interesting that this passage fits into that particular phase of his ministry. And then MacArthur writes that the passage illustrates that the supreme priority for believers is to hear the revealed word of God.

It is foundational to the other spiritual duties, all of which are motivated, informed, and defined by Scripture. Mary demonstrated the attitude of a true believer. He says, in Luke 647, Jesus defined a genuine disciple as one who comes to me and hears my word and acts on them, in contrast to those who call him Lord, Lord, and do not do what he says.

Mary understood that the highest priority for a believer is to hear the truth that has come from heaven. And he goes on to discuss Martha and says, unfortunately, even genuine believers can lose their focus on what really matters.

Unlike her sister, Martha was distracted from hearing the Lord's teaching, being preoccupied with all her preparations. The verb translated distracted in this passage literally means to be dragged away.

So she allowed all of these preparations, the meals, and making the house just so, making sure it looked like Martha Stewart. Interesting that both are named Martha. She allowed that to drag her away from the priority of listening to the Lord teach.

Now, it's important to note that we as believers are commanded to be hospitable. We are, as Paul writes in Romans 12, to be constantly practicing hospitality. We see this teaching in Hebrews. We see it in Peter.

We see that the characteristic of hospitality actually marks elders. We see that in 1 Timothy 3 and in Titus 1. And it also marks godly women. But, says John MacArthur, in the process of doing that, Martha got her priorities twisted.

She was fussing and fretting, trying to get everything arranged to her satisfaction, maybe to make an impression on Jesus. As a result, she failed to take advantage of a rare and priceless opportunity to hear in person the Lord of the universe teach and be impressed profoundly by him.

Her misguided priorities finally caused Martha to lose the joy of serving. She became more and more flustered, agitated, and frustrated until finally she became angry. So, here she was serving, doing a good thing, doing what she was commanded to do, being hospitable, serving the Lord by serving others who were there and serving him.

But, she lost the joy that comes with serving the body of Christ and comes with serving the Lord because of her twisted priorities, because her priority was on the serving. Friends, if that has ever been you, ask yourself, where was your priority?

Was it on serving to serve, to say you served? Or was it on serving because you know that you serve Christ in that way? And, did your priority suffer through the serving? If so, then even that good aspect and that good desire of wanting to serve needs to be re-evaluated because it should never trump the desire to hear the truth of the word of God.

MacArthur closes in his commentary and says,. All too often, Christians, like Martha, allow their lives to be regulated by what is not necessary. And, this is what we just heard from J .C. Ryle. Faithfulness on the job, in the home, and in the church.

Notice how he included that. Faithfulness on the job, in the home, and in the church has a place, but must not be allowed to replace faithfulness to divine truth. Think about that. Just because you're faithfully serving the church, maybe you sing in the choir, maybe you serve in the nursery, however you serve, even faithfulness in that serving can end up replacing faithfulness to the truth because you're placing the service above hearing the truth and learning the truth and growing in the truth.

Man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord, says Deuteronomy 8 .3. Only by making that their highest priority, says MacArthur, can believers behold the beauty of the Lord, as David did, and know Christ as was Paul's supreme passion.

To that end, they must commend themselves to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build them up and to give them the inheritance among all those who are sanctified. Thus, in this account, the necessity of being a student of the divine teacher is established and the lessons from his lips will unfold through the subsequent chapters of Luke.

And so, we see the necessity of being a faithful student of the word, and if you're so busy serving in the church that you never get to sit in and hear the sermon, well, there's a problem with that because your service does not replace the growth that comes from hearing the truth of the word of God.

And on that note, ladies, we'll catch you next time. And until then, get in your Bibles and get on your knees and get equipped. Thanks for listening.

Closing and Contact Information

You've been listening to Equipping Eve, a no-compromise radio production. If you'd like to get a hold of Erin, you can reach her at equippingeve at gmail .com, or you can check out one of her two websites, donotbesurprised .com or equippingeve .org.

Thanks for listening.