Eyes On Jesus

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and I'm glad you're watching, if it's

YouTube. I'm glad you're listening, if it's some other Spotify or something like that. I haven't been recording extra shows.

I think I've got six maybe in the can. As you know, we used to go daily, but between just leukemia and other things, just slowed down a little.

Maybe we'll ramp that up in the future. We'll see how we feel, see how I feel, Royal We. But anyway, thanks for praying.

Thanks for watching. Thanks for forwarding things. By the way, I just was on the Pactum podcast that people really enjoy by Pat Abendroth, my brother.

And so you asked to be listening to the Pactum. It has Eclipse No Compromise Radio. I'm happy for that. But I was on the

Pactum talking about sanctification. And so you might wanna pick that up, the gospel and sanctification.

What is sanctification? And I had fun preaching it at the conference because I kind of did it in an adversarial way.

You think you know about sanctification, but I don't really think so. And you know, prove me wrong type of thing. All that to say, today on No Compromise Radio, we're going to talk about what we always talk about, and that is the

Lord Jesus. And today I want to talk about ministry, how to think rightly about ministry and serving.

Now, some of you are pastors and teachers. And so you will identify with this clearly, but many of you, probably most of you that watch or listen, and I guess when you watch, you also listen, unless you do subtitles.

What about local church ministry? I'm sure you probably serve in the nursery or the chair ministry, hospitality ministry,

I don't know, janitorial stuff, kitchen. And by the way, some ministries, they really take a toll because they're week in and week out like childcare.

The people that do our childcare here, I'm so thankful. I couldn't do what I do without them. People that do the kitchen ministry, week in and week out and the food and all that other stuff, but it burns people out.

And sometimes it burns people out because there's no encouragement from leadership. Sometimes it's, they become eyes off of the

Lord Jesus. Sometimes it's just difficult. I mean, ministry is hard for all of us. So how do we keep a good perspective in ministry?

What do you do if you're at a church where people could just be reminded again, why do we do what we do?

And of course, out of God's great grace, because of our great guilt, we wanna respond with gratitude.

And so we have an example today of Mary and Martha that I think will help us as we dive into the passage so that we can think about ministry rightly.

And what's the best portion of ministry? What do we do when we have our eyes off the

Lord Jesus in ministry? And maybe that's gonna be the focus. We wanna walk by faith and not by sight.

I, as a pastor, want to encourage people who work in the kitchen, who work in the chair ministry, who work in the nursery, who just week in and week out, do all those things.

I'm sure I could do better in terms of encouraging or training or helping or coming alongside.

And I wanna do those things. I also say to myself, what's

Jesus's approach? So all that to say, let's get into the passage, Luke chapter 10, verses 38 through 42.

And there's a few side tracks that I wanna take today. Of course, it's ADHD radio. That's just what we do on No Compromise Radio.

But I think you'll be encouraged. I have to tell you upfront, when I first knew

I had to preach this passage, because we just preach first by verse sequentially, I thought, I'm not really that thrilled.

I know it's God's word and I'll do my best. But once I got into it, I thought, oh, this is amazing. It has some powerful truths.

And I think you'll be encouraged. Now, as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village and a woman named

Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called

Mary who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. So remember, we've just got done seeing

Jesus in Luke 10 encounter a lawyer who thinks that he's obeying

God by loving neighbor perfectly. Jesus gives the bad news of the Good Samaritan to him, law.

You need to be loving neighbor like the Good Samaritan 24 seven in order to get into heaven.

At least he's thinking about the love neighbor as self part. And now we move to this section. We're going to see an example of what loving

God is like. There's two great commandments. Remember, love God, love neighbor. We've just seen with the parable of the

Good Samaritan, what loving neighbors like. Now we're going to see in Luke 10, what's loving

God like? What's it look like to love God? What's it look like to respond to God's grace in faith and then have the fruit come from that faith working out in love?

I'm not saying love is a component of saving faith. I'm just saying it's a fruit, it's an evidence. What does loving neighbor look like?

Good Samaritan parables given by Jesus. What does loving God look like? Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus.

Is there anything wrong with welcoming people into your home? Is there anything wrong with Martha thinking, wait a second, it's

Jesus, it's Mary, it's the 12, that's up to 14 people.

And maybe Lazarus is there. We learn about Lazarus later. Is there anything wrong with saying, what am

I gonna do? I've got 15 people that just showed up at my house and there's things that need to be cleaned.

There's things that need to be cooked. There's things that need to be prepared. There's things that managed. 15 people is a lot.

There's nothing wrong with fixing a meal, hosting, preparing, getting ready.

But if your son is home from the army and he has three hours to be with you, probably might just be best to order some food in so you can sit and just talk to your son for those three hours versus two hours and 55 minutes preparing his favorite meal and then talking for five minutes.

Or maybe it would be better to have Jesus come into the kitchen and talk there.

I mean, there's all kinds of illustrations here. She had a sister called Mary who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching.

By the way, this is unheard of. People talk about how the

Bible is so against women and all these other kinds of things. This is revolutionary. She is sitting at the feet of Jesus.

That's more than just she's sitting at his feet. That's language of training. That's language of rabbi to student.

That's language of teacher. That's language of Acts chapter 22, I believe, where Paul says he sat at Gamaliel's feet.

What does that mean? It's a posture of submission, that's true, but it's a posture of learning and it's a technical thing.

It is a relationship of teacher. And women didn't sit at the feet of rabbis.

Women didn't learn things like this in that culture. Here, Jesus, the greatest liberator of women ever, the greatest preacher ever, prophet ever, and he wants to make sure

Martha understands who he is, what he's done, what do the Old Testament scriptures say about him or whatever he was teaching, kind of like a little mini

Emmaus Road type of thing, Luke 24, but to Mary only. It's been said that back in those days, while some rabbis would be a little more liberal in the sense we'll let women study, they weren't ever to be formal students.

They were never to sit at people's feet. I wish I would know what they were talking about, what

Jesus was talking about, but I do know that Mary was preparing, Mary, Martha, they're the same.

Martha's preparing the banquet and Mary is sitting at the Lord's feet.

By the way, women are justified the same way as men, sanctified the same way, glorified the same way, regenerated the same way, elect the same way.

They're equal in every area, right? So I just look at Jesus and I think, what a counter -cultural message he's giving, teaching a woman.

One writer said, this strong affirmation of a woman's right to listen to the Lord speak and to be concerned with spiritual matters gives a clear indication that the kingdom of God is for all who will listen and believe in Jesus.

If in the day, back in Jesus' day, teaching a woman could be a waste of time, that's not how

Jesus thinks of these things. Sitting at his feet. Jesus loves women.

Jesus encourages women. Jesus is being served by women. Jesus so loved this lady that Dorothy Sayers said, finally, we have found a man who neither flatters us or patronizes us, but he respects us and loves us.

Isn't that interesting? Dorothy Sayers, no intellectual slouch. Ligon Duncan said, it's probably impossible for those of us that live in the world that we live in to appreciate the force of Jesus teaching

Mary. If we were in a room full of Muslim women, this passage could knock them over with a feather because of the 600 million

Muslim women that exist in the world. Not one of them has ever heard a word addressed to them from Muhammad in the

Quran as a disciple. The whole Quran is written to men, Duncan says. This is why

Muslim women respond to the gospels because they see how Jesus treats women and how he values them.

I mean, the feast was being prepared by Martha and here the real feast is being enjoyed by Mary, sitting at the feet of Jesus.

I'm sure she was hanging on every word. I'm sure he's talking about death, burial and resurrection. I'm sure he's talking about forgiveness of sins.

I'm talking about, I'm sure he's talking about exaltation. Martha busy, yes.

Mary busy as well, certainly, eyes on Jesus. And by the way, every time you see this

Mary, this is not the Virgin Mary, this is a different Mary. Every time you see this Mary, she's at the same spot, at the feet of Jesus.

Did you know that? This is interesting. She's at the Lord's feet here, John 11.

Now, when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet saying, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.

And then in John 12, we see Mary as well. Therefore, Mary took a pound of expensive ointment made of pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair.

Wow, every time you see this Mary, she's at the feet of Jesus. Listening, learning, it's a good thing.

What's happening with Martha? She is preparing, she's busy.

And here in verse 40, it says she was distracted with much serving. Eyes off of Jesus, bad things happen.

And she went up to him and said, I mean, don't rebuke Jesus. If you're

Peter, don't rebuke him because you're gonna hear a get thee behind me, Satan. And if you're Martha, don't rebuke

Jesus either. Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.

And as theological writers say, you can see what happens. Eyes off of Jesus, not sitting at his feet.

No means of grace, no Bible reading, no Lord's supper. Eyes off of Jesus, not walking by faith, but walking by sight, becoming distracted.

Your gaze isn't on the Lord anymore. You're just glancing, you're distracted. It leads to a pity party.

Oh, look at me, I'm serving, I'm by myself. I'm doing this all alone. Eyes off of Jesus and then it becomes resentful.

It becomes accusatory. It becomes just gross. I think to myself, when I have a bad attitude about ministry,

I have to back up a little bit. Why am I doing all this? Why is it left on my shoulders? Oh, eyes off of Jesus.

So when you're serving, when you're ministering, you do it to the Lord. You're changing those diapers for the

Lord's sake. You are setting those chairs up for the Lord's sake. You are working in the kitchen ministry for the

Lord's sake. You're cleaning the church hallways for the Lord's sake, cleaning the church bathroom for the

Lord's sake. Now there's many other ministries and Sunday school teachers and other things that I could talk about and those all need to be recognized.

But I'm just thinking about those ministries that are the hard ones. That unless you're walking by faith, it's difficult.

Unless the leadership can really come alongside and try to encourage, and I just am so convicted by this, even as I think about it myself, how to encourage people at the church that do the difficult ministries so they do keep their eyes on Jesus.

That's my responsibility. That's my duty. But back to the point here again, eyes off of Jesus in ministry and ministry is good.

Your ministry is good in the church, eyes off of Jesus. I've been doing this for 10 years. Nobody's ever said thank you, but the

Lord knows. He'll reward you. 1 Corinthians 15, verse 58, your labor's not in vain. Your toil's not in vain.

He'll reward you. A glass of cup of water in the name of the Lord Jesus.

And so eyes off of Jesus, that was Martha. I mean, you can just, there's more to be taught here, but you can see this, an example of what not to do.

The example of what to do is to sit at Jesus' feet, means of grace, make sure you're there every Sunday morning. Don't forsake the assemblies.

There's these tangents, but here, eyes off of Jesus in ministry leads to a pity party.

It leads to resentment and or accusing Jesus. And really that's what happens when we're so discontent because Jesus could sovereignly have not made this happen, could sovereignly given me help, could sovereignly made my job easier, could sovereignly given me different gifts so I could be doing other things besides this hard ministry.

She was distracted with much serving. Even with good things, you can become distracted.

You can become distracted even in ministry. Hospitality was important in those days.

It's important in our days. Here, she's cumbered with a load of care,

King James says. Cumbered, pulled in a thousand directions. I looked up cucumber because I thought of cumber and I thought,

I just trying to get the kid's attention. So now I'll take a break and talk about attention here when it comes to ADHD kind of thing.

Cucumber, it used to be pronounced in the 1790s, cow -cumber or coo -cumber.

30 years later, it was called cucumber. And I did like this.

The phrase cool as a cucumber embodies ancient folk knowledge confirmed by science in 1970 that inside the field cucumber on a warm day, it's 20 degrees cooler than the air temperature.

Cool as a cucumber. She was cumbered and cumbered with a load of care.

Matter of fact, what a friend would you have in Jesus? I think cumbered with a load of care. That's Martha distracted, not paying attention, not having her eyes on Jesus.

She's annoyed, she's fuming and she goes to Jesus. Don't you care that my sisters left me to serve alone?

What do you think Jesus is going to do? What do you think Jesus is going to say when literally the

Greek language is she comes barging out of the kitchen? She comes,

I think one commentator said exploding out of the kitchen. Like here comes fussing, fuming

Martha and she's going to rebuke Jesus. Tell her then to help me.

Ordering Jesus never wise, bossing Jesus around never wise. And Jesus is going to be firm in his rebuke, but kind and loving.

And he's not going to say hospitality is wrong. He's not going to say it's wrong to try to serve.

But what happens when you have your eyes off of Jesus? Well, the text says, but the

Lord said to her, Martha, Martha. By the way, double words like that, endearing, close, intimate, friendly, kind of taking the edge off a little bit.

Martha, Martha. You can just hear him say, Martha, Martha. You are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary.

Mary has chosen the good portion. You could use portion as food there. She's got the right meal, my teaching, which will not be taken away from her.

I am not going to rebuke her. I'm not going to tell her to help you. You're the one that needs to have your mind adjusted.

You're the one that needs to repent. You're the ones that have to have your eyes back on me.

We work from distractions to pity party, to resentment and how fast that can happen.

I mean, how fast can you sin even when you're trying to minister, when you have a ministry, when you're trying to help?

Wow, that reminds me of like Lloyd -Jones. He said, you wanna see where sin is the most prominent, where it's the most ugly.

It's not on the street corner with drunks and gang members and all that other stuff.

You know where it's found? He said, it's found when you're praying because you have a hard time praying.

You end up praying for yourself. That's where you see how bad it is. Jesus kindly rebukes, tenderly rebukes.

He didn't say, Mary's done the good part and you've done the bad part. No, no, this is the best part right here. This is the best meal.

You are my refuge, Psalm 142, my portion in the land of living. Psalm 119, the

Lord is my portion. Jesus didn't say, you know what? You're right, send

Mary back in to help. By the way,

I was reading one writer and it said, Martha's problem was that she focused too much on being the perfect hostess, attempting to prepare an elaborate meal when one dish would have sufficed.

What if she had recalled Jesus's miracle of the feeding of the 5 ,000 and simply brought one loaf and one fish to the table?

Do you think they would have gone hungry? Martha, Martha. And that's how the

Lord Jesus dealt with Martha. So today on the show, on No Compromise Radio, I just want you to know, back to verse 42,

Mary has chosen the good portion which will not be taken away from her. I just want you to know to sit at Jesus' feet, to learn, to adore, to honor, to praise, to thank, to love.

This is an example of what this first great commandment is. With the Good Samaritan, it was an example of what the second commandment was, love your neighbors yourself.

That's what the Good Samaritan did, loving neighbor. Here's an example of what it means to love

God. There are other ways to love God, but here's a great example. And I was thinking to myself back in the

COVID day when people just abandoned church and they didn't want to sit underneath the Lord's teaching on the

Lord's day. I wanna remind you that while private study is important, it's in the Westminster and 1689, while secret worship, family worship, they're important to read your

Bible at home, to have family worship at home. It's part of our confession of faith. It's mandatory, it's needed.

The proclamation of the Lord's word on the Lord's day to the Lord's people, Sunday morning, resurrection

Sunday morning, that is every Sunday's resurrection morning is vital to sit at the

Lord's feet, to learn. It's called the means of grace. That's the most important thing. That's why

I say to parents all the time, never say to your children, have your children say, are we going to church today?

Oh, okay, maybe if you're sick or maybe if you're on a 5 a .m. flight or something like that on a

Sunday morning, but I want my children to say, where are we going today? Not, are we going today?

Again, sickness aside, shut -ins aside, I want the family to just know, we go in the

Lord's day, whether we feel like it, whether we don't, whether we are up all night or not. Sometimes moms need to stay home with sick children.

Okay, I get all that. My point is people should say, I need to be sitting at the

Lord's feet as it were to listen and to learn about who Jesus is weekly and dads need to lead. I was reading one study and they said, people attend church usually, members, 75 % of the time.

So you're sick one in four, you're busy one in four, you're up all night, one in four, that seems like a lot.

And so week in and week out, this is what we're going to do. I remember one guy said, one of the best ways to damn your children is just don't take them to church.

And what he meant by that was the importance of sitting underneath God's word because faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ.

And you want to expose them to Sunday morning worship services and Sunday morning praise songs and Sunday morning sitting at the feet of Jesus.

And so if you're doing that, way to go, keep doing it. If you have a ministry, I ask you this question, who are you doing your ministry for?

Ultimately, that's a good question to wrestle with. Who are you doing it for? The children because they need to have diapers changed, the congregation because they need to have chairs set up.

I mean, we just have a small building here in a little town of 6 ,000 people out in the middle of nowhere and the chairs need to get up, put up and sit down all the time because we just have one space.

We have a ladies watercolor night tonight. They're learning how to do watercolor. Chairs up, chairs down, chairs up, chairs down.

I say thank you to those men when I see them, but why are they doing it? For whom are they doing it?

And if it's for us only, well, it's good to serve other people, but it's for the Lord because He's doing it.

They're doing it for the Lord's people. That's really the question. And if you're becoming frustrated with your ministry, certainly you should talk to leadership because maybe they could do like me, a better job in organizing and leading and coming alongside and encouraging.

But you also need to be thinking to yourself, Mary and Martha, Mary and Martha, sitting at the

Lord's feet. Psalm 27, one thing I've asked of the Lord that I shall seek, that I may dwell in the house of the

Lord all the days of my life and to behold the beauty of the Lord and meditate on His temple.

That's the one thing. The best meal is sitting at the Lord's feet. And by the way, just as a personal anecdote, some of my favorite times in my life are sitting, listening to preaching.

And whether that's at church or whether that's at a conference, I mean, I pay to go to conferences to have people preach to me.

I just love it to learn something new about the Lord, to be reminded about something about the Lord and to just sit and feast, knowing, by the way, if you're at a good church, isn't it wonderful to know every time you drive up into that church building, my soul's gonna be fed today.

It's gonna be a big meal. It's gonna be well proportioned with carbs and fat and protein, plated well, looking good, no seed oils, nutritious.

I'm probably gonna have to listen to it online afterward because it's just gonna be such a big meal. Probably gonna have to take my belt and unbuckle it a little bit because man, that was such a hearty meal today.

My soul felt fed. It felt good. It was a portion that was just right.

Man, that was good. I love the anticipation of going to church and learning. I'm the pastor.

So most of the time I'm the one who's preaching, but all week, I mean, it's kind of sad for you guys who aren't pastors because you get 45 minutes of the passage that I'm in and I've been getting hours, five hours, 10 hours, 15 hours, 20 hours of study as the

Lord is feeding me. And you just get the overflow. I'm excited to just tell you, oh, here's what's going on. Is there anything more important than Sunday morning worship?

Is there anything more important than God speaking? God speaks. You get to know Him, not just in nature with His wisdom and strength revealed, but also the intimate knowledge of who

God is and how He's holy, how He's jealous, how He's righteous, how you could uphold the law and have the

Lord Jesus die for sinners, how you could resurrect someone from the dead.

All these details. What does God think? What's His mind like? Job, asking

God questions, and then it's flipped around and then He's asking us questions. So there's one thing needed, priorities.

Loving God, loving neighbor. I think there's a first great commandment is loving God. Second great commandment is loving neighbor.

I think I could probably say it this way, true or false. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

London Baptist Confession. Neither prayer nor any other part of religious worship is under the gospel, either tied unto or made more acceptable by any place in which it's performed.

God is to be worshiped everywhere in spirit and truth, as in private families daily.

So it's good to have family worship. In secret, each one by himself, devotional life, privately.

So more solemnly in public assemblies, which are not carelessly nor willfully to be neglected nor forsaken.

In other words, sometimes people will go and they'll say, see, we didn't have Bibles back in the day and just go to church and you don't need to read your

Bible on a regular basis. Confessionally speaking, that's not true. It's true that they didn't have

Bibles in those days. It's true that it's most important Sunday morning worship service.

But it's also true that privately, we have our Bible. So why wouldn't you read your Bible at home? Why wouldn't you teach your children at home? It's in the confession that we have private, secret and public worship.

As my son would say, try telling Wycliffe or Tyndale that it's not important to have a

Bible at home and read it. So anyway, my name is Mike Ebendroth. Today is, I don't even know what day it is.

Today's sometime in November, Friday, November 14th, 2028. I look like I did three years ago.

You can write me mike at nocompromisedradio .com. Don't forget, we have lots of shows on American gospel.

Well, cancer episodes, I think 16 or 17 shows. Brandon Kimber has those all for free.

They're not behind a paywall because this is an important topic, cancer and suffering from a Christian perspective.

I have the series on sanctification called Sanctify. One on gospel assurance and another on law gospel.

And kind of all those have spun out of the books that I've written. And so if you wanna go to amazon .com and pick up some of those, you can.

And also, I think I forgot to say last time, if you wanna order 10 or more, just write me mike at nocompromisedradio .com

and then I'll give you a 40 % discount, they're drop shipped to your house, et cetera. Some fun projects in the future that we're working on.

So if you are a Patreon person, great, thanks. If not, maybe you wanna consider that. Hit like, subscribe, forward, share,

YouTube, Spotify, podcast, Insta. Do we do Insta? Sometimes my daughter does

Insta. We should probably get on that. And of course, Twitter, at NoCo. I'll try to be more grandpa