Youth & Outreach Director, Hunter Newton, preached this message on May 4, 2025. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Audio Transcript
It’s no secret that these two ladies, young ladies, are off to doing some great things. I’m guessing some of us in the room are thinking about what was I getting ready to do. I was 17 when I was 18, 19 years old. And the type aers in the room probably were thinking, okay, I was going to go here, I was going to go to this school, I was going to be this program, I was going to do this, that. And maybe the Type B people were like, well, I have an idea, I want to do this, maybe I’ll do that.
And then maybe there’s some others who still are kind of scattered, like, well, I have an a idea. But it became pretty quick, I’m guessing to most of us who’ve graduated high school and to those of us who have not yet graduated high school, it will probably become clear, if it hasn’t already, that there are going to be a lot of things that jockey for our attention. I remember as a kid thinking that most adults had their schedules and priorities figured out and that it’s just not turned out to be the case.
Go here, do this, do that, don’t be that, join your murals, take this upper level management course, learn how, learn a foreign language, raise kids, do this, do the other thing, all these things quickly. As soon as we walk the graduation stage, it seems like there’s things like bills and having to keep a calendar and all these sorts of people, places, times, activities that really just keep and compete for our attention that wants more of us.
And so today, as we look to send off our graduates, well, this message is of course, for all of us too. This message is for everyone. Regardless of how many responsibilities we pick up or how important we become. We must prioritize time with Jesus. That’s our big takeaway.
I’m not trying to hide it here this morning. That’s what we’re trying to do. That’s what we want, something to apply. We must prioritize time with Jesus. So that’s our big takeaway.
That’s our big idea. Two ways we can do that, we’ll look at from the text is going to be we. In order to prioritize time with Jesus, we must avoid the temptation to prioritize lesser things that can be urgent things that can be less important things, really anything. And it’s not an offense to these other things, the other people, but everything is lesser compared to Christ himself. So that’s one way we do that.
And another way we do that is by delighting in Jesus. So that’s where we’re going, we’re going to be in Luke 10:38,42. That’s on page 922 of the Pew Bibles. We give you a moment to go there. No one or no thing should take precedence over time.
With this risen Lord, we must prioritize time with Jesus. Luke 10:38, 42.
It says, while they were traveling, he entered a village and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary who also sat at the Lord’s feet and was listening to what he said. We’ll circle this now. I will touch on it more later. That’s not a small statement, this concept of two women who sat at the Lord’s feet.
It’s another way of saying they were disciples of Jesus. They’re not capital D disciples. Like they’re not one of the 12, but they are disciples. They are followers of Jesus. That’s huge.
We’ll talk more about the cultural implications, how that’s kind of earth shattering in a way. But these two ladies who follow Jesus. We continue in verse 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.
The Lord answered her, Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has made the right choice and it will not be taken away from her. This is the word of the Lord. So our big idea, big takeaway, big thing to apply. We must prioritize time with Jesus.
One way we do that is by one way we prioritize time with Jesus is by avoiding the temptation to prioritize lesser things. We’ll turn our attention to verse 38, 39 and 40 right here. The text doesn’t tell us that Martha is for sure the firstborn, but I’m reading that a little bit into it. Comedian Naper. I’m a firstborn, so I kind of resonate.
Maybe I just have a little bit natural disposition to do that. Comedian Nate Bargetze says. He says, us firstborns, we really have to stick together. Like we show up into this world and our parents are not ready for us to be here. And they don’t have any money, they don’t know what they’re doing, we don’t know what we’re doing.
And by the time the youngest child comes along, your parents are basically trillionaires. And then they’re living in houses you’ve never even seen. My youngest sister, I don’t know if she knows what the word chore means.
A pretty typical trait of us firstborns is, though, is this idea of we want everyone else to kind of fall in line, have the right social etiquette, respect mom and dad, go here, do this, sign up for honors courses. Take care of yourself, be and do the right thing. Do your chores, do your homework, follow the rules, do this, don’t do that. Look presentable, mind your manners. Like I said, we don’t know if Mary or Martha is the firstborn.
Like I said, maybe it’s Martha. But regardless, there’s this kind of profound instinct in her to want to have things in the right order. She is trying to get the house set up just straight. Like, I mean, I’d imagine she’s not stopping at Kwik Trip and grabbing, like, a handful of burgers or chicken sandwiches like we. Obviously, those are good things.
But, like, she’s making, like, filet mignon, busting out china, that she hasn’t, like, that hasn’t seen the light of day since her wedding. Like, Jesus is coming over. God in the flesh is having dinner at her house. That’s maybe a pretty good reaction to want to have things set up right. Her dinner guest is the God of the universe and human flesh.
My natural reaction would probably be similar. I’d want to get the house nice for Jesus, come over. My wife might disagree, but that’s besides the point. It’s clear here that Martha has made the mistake prioritizing lesser things. It’s easy to do, right?
We do it all the time. The urgent kind of rises to the most important, and sometimes that’s a great thing. If a kid’s running into traffic, that’s the most important thing. We need to go take care of that situation. If you realize that your taxes are late, then you need to go to your accountant that day and beg that the Lord would give you an extension some sort of way.
Yet far too often, we’re treating lesser things as if they’re ultimate things. Jesus is giving a kind, gentle, but very firm rebuke here, saying, you don’t realize you’re getting so busy spending time getting this house ready for me that you’re not spending time with me. I’m your greatest need. I’ve not only taken care of your sin, but I’m the source of satisfaction. John 4 says that if we drink from the water that he offers, we will go thirsty no more.
It might feel like getting the house ready for Jesus is more important than anything else that’s really real. I’m Sure, a lot of us get that. I probably care too much about what people think of me. I’m guessing that’s true for plenty of us in here, too. I understand Martha in this passage, but let’s just get really practical.
So if our big idea is we must prioritize time with Jesus, one way we do that is prioritizing by avoiding the temptation to prioritize lesser things. There’s four ways that we see throughout the Scriptures that we can do that. First one is pray. That seems really simple. But man, if we are not a prayerful people, we are a prideful people because we get to ask God for help.
We get to ask God for wisdom. James 1:5 says, if we ask God for wisdom, he’ll give it to us. If you know Jesus, you can have God’s wisdom whenever you want. Whenever we want. How foolish we are to not ask for that.
That’s why 1st Thessalonians 5:17 says that we need to pray without ceasing. We need to seek God’s wisdom and his guidance constantly. We need to ask God, God, search me and know me. The Psalms talk about it over, search me and know me. What ways are wrong in me, Lord?
What’s grabbing my attention that shouldn’t. What’s grabbing my time too much? What am I spending too much money on? What am I doing? Where do I need to be exposed?
Where do I need to repent and fall back in step with your gospel. So step one, prayer. Except to look to the example of Jesus. There’s throughout the Scriptures, throughout the Gospels, we see Jesus going out of his way to not only do ministry, right? We think about John 4.
He stops. He goes out of his way quite a bit to meet with the one, the Samaritan woman. But also it says in Luke 5:16 that yet he often withdrew to deserted places and prayed respectfully, friends, no one in here, no one on planet Earth actually is too busy or too important to spend time with our great God. No one. I love working with teenagers because they’re so honest.
Sometimes just be like, yeah, I don’t want to give up any of my YouTube time. Maybe some of us are thinking like, okay, that’s kind of ridiculous, but I’m guessing we have other things. I don’t want to give up this of my time. I don’t want to give up that of my time. Well, if I don’t have the perfect lawn, then the neighbors are going to think less of me.
Then I’m not going to feel as good. And we maybe think about These patterns, these habits all the time.
If the God of the universe made time for it, the Son of God in human flesh, the most important person to ever live, made time to spend with God. He’s within the Trinity, so it kind of hurts our brains a little bit. But if he made time to spend with the Father, then we should too.
3. Listen to faithful preaching of the Word of God in a local body of believers. I love you enough that even if it wasn’t my job to tell you to sit and listen and be engaged with the scriptures and listen to the Word proclaimed, I love you enough that I would tell you that. And anyways, we need the Word of God not only read in our lives, spoken in our lives, but like her, proclaimed over our lives. The Spirit of God uses the Word of God to make us more like the Son of God.
The Spirit of God uses the Word of God to convict our hearts. Where we need to be convicted and be encouraged by the Good shepherd in ways that only he can. We need to sit under faithful preaching in the Word of God. Whether that’s, that’s true of you, like if this is your home church or whether you’re visiting or a guest or just checking us out, we would say that wherever we need to sit under God’s Word, explained, applied, illustrated and proven to our hearts, we need that constantly. We need the faithful preaching of the Word in a local body of believers.
It’s not enough to sit and listen to a podcast and in a coffee shop and then talk about with some friends. That’s great, we should do that. But we need to do that in a local body of believers. Sunday mornings, the most important time of our entire week, friends. Like when Christ’s church gathers, we are a local embassy of what heaven should look like as we encourage and engage and sharpen one another.
Hebrews 4:12 One of my favorite verses in all the Bible. It says, for the Word of God is living and and effective and sharper than any double edged sword penetrating as far as a separation of soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Amen. When we sit under the Word of God preached, we are convicted in ways that we otherwise wouldn’t be convicted.
We’re also deeply encouraged in ways we otherwise wouldn’t be encouraged. This is why the Sunday morning gathering is absolutely vital to the life of the believer. I’m not saying you have to be go to church to be a Christian, but I’m saying it’s. I would say it’s Just about impossible to flourish as a believer in Christ if you’re not involved in the life of a local body. Sunday morning after Sunday morning four have faithful Christian brothers and sisters in your life.
Friends, we need one another like we need other people in our lives to call out the blind spots, but also to call out the great spots to see. This is what I see God doing in your life. Or maybe, hey, you need to draw some more attention to this. Every Wednesday morning, Sam, Jesse and I get together usually at McDonald’s and we do like bacon, egg and cheese McGriddles. That’s part of it.
But we, it’s just as simple as we confess sin to each other. We maybe point out gently and sometimes firmly sin in each other’s lives. But then also we celebrate wins. Like, hey, this is how I see you growing in Christ likeness. This is what I see God doing in you.
This is what I see God doing in me. So we confess sins, we celebrate wins, and we pray together. It’s as simple as that. Small groups are great. We should be involved in small groups, co ed, small groups, whatever.
It looks like we’ve got plenty out on the board in the lobby. But we need people to know, like people who are in the thick of it with us. People who know and understand not only how we’re sin or that we’re a sinner, but how we’re a sinner. We need people in our lives that know us well. I pray that that’s your spouse, if you’re married, but also like you need your band of brothers and your band of sisters to go through the Christian life with.
You guys know that the phrase one another is used 91 times in the New Testament. 91 times. It couldn’t be more clear if a phrase or a word is in the Bible. One time incredibly important. It’s God’s word.
But if it’s in there 91 times, it’s like trying to smack us over the head saying, don’t miss this. You can’t do the Christian life alone. You need people that know you intimately, know you well, people that know that you’re a sinner, but also how you’re a sinner. We need each other. We need each other and we need others in our lives to draw attention to where and what we lack, but also to celebrate who God is and what he’s done.
Charles and John Wesley were two great 19th century evangelists and they’re also hymn writers, probably two like of the most influential people in American Christian history. They wrote hymns such as like hark the herald angels sing and oh for a thousand tongues to sing. Incredibly, incredibly important. There are also 2 of 14 kids. 2 of 14 kids.
Their parents were busy. They had a lot going on. And so they talk about both, both brothers talk about and other people throughout church history talk about, like their mom, especially being this incredibly Godly woman and 14 kids, you’d imagine she’s got her hands full and then some. But she wanted time with her risen Lord. She wanted time with Jesus.
She fought for time with Jesus. It said that she would sit in the kitchen sometimes, and even if it was just for moments, seconds on a good day, minutes, she would throw her apron over her head and, and just sneak in a few verses of Scripture, sneak in a few moments of prayer, because she wanted time with Jesus that badly. She wanted to know him. She wanted to see what he’s like and wanted to delight in him, to spend time with him. And maybe sometimes we’re very guilty of thinking, okay, when I retire, I’ll have more time for Bible study.
Okay, when the kids are out of the house, then I’ll have more time for this. Well, when this season at work slows down, when this, that, when, maybe when math class gets easier, when this, that or the other thing gets easier, then I’ll make more time for God. But friends, if we are faithful with the few moments of throwing an apron over our head, I guarantee she was faithful later in life when she did have more time to spend with her God. That’s not to say that to beat us up and say you need to spend five hours a day in prayer and in the Word, but also, but like, if you can, that’s a great gift. We don’t need to do that.
But maybe we have. All we have right now is five minutes a day. Well, if we give those five minutes to God, I guarantee he will be fruitful and faithful with them. What we have, God wants to honor and help us to delight in him and see that he is our greatest need. He’s our greatest good.
The point is simple. There are going to be, and I’m sure already are plenty of things to draw our attention. And some of them are really important things. Some of them matter a lot. Plenty of them are good things, like youth sports are a good thing.
Motorcycle trips with friends are a good thing. Hunting is a good thing. Fishing is a good thing. Crocheting, making a shopping trip with friends, family trips to visit relatives, all good things. But we must be careful to not let these lesser things capture our hearts and our Minds above the ultimate thing and that is time with our great God.
One way we prioritize time with Jesus is by avoiding the temptation to prioritize lesser things. Another way we prioritize time with Jesus is by delighting in him. We turn our attention to verses 41 and 42. We prioritize time with Jesus by delighting in him. And I told you this passage shows us a couple of things, two of which are totally countercultural.
We highlighted one of them.
These ladies get to sit at the feet of Jesus. No self respecting rabbi in first century Israel would have had any sort of female follower. It’s just historical truth. Not only would they not have been respected, but they would have been viewed as less than and all the old sorts of like unfortunate derogatives because just women were treated as quite literally second class citizens. And so that’s remarkable that Jesus is making time.
That’s why comments or claims that Christianity is misogynistic are just uninformed. Nobody had a righter, more true, better vision and more right understanding of who women are than Jesus.
He’s no ordinary rabbi. The second countercultural stance. So that first one was countercultural to their time. The second one’s countercultural to our time. But this time in our world, to stop and delight in what the great teacher has to say.
Like the concept of just stopping is foreign to a lot of us. To stop and sit still and to listen and to delight. That’s a word we don’t even probably really know what it means, like delight. What does it mean to delight in something? I would say that delight in like based on we see in the Scriptures and also helpful theological resources.
Delighting is being captured with, amazed by, so consumed with God that we’re unable to focus on other things.
Maybe it thinks, maybe it’s helpful to think about how Psalm 42:1 2 puts it. The psalmist writes there as a deer longs for flowing streams, so I long for you God. I thirst for God, the living God. When can I come and appear before God? And this is not just an image of a deer that’s stopping by a babbling brook to just get a drink.
Like this is a deer that if it doesn’t get water it’s going to die of dehydration. Like that’s what the psalmist is trying to convey so richly, so deeply here. It’s not just man, I really could go for some God time. It’s like, no, I want your presence, Lord, more than life. It’s like I’m going to Die if I don’t get it, if I don’t get you.
That’s what’s being pictured here in Psalm 42. We must delight in Jesus. Just look at the passage with me. It says that Martha was distracted by many tasks. But if we go up in verse 39, it says she had a sister named Mary who also sat at the Lord’s feet and was listening to what he said.
What a picture. She’s sitting at the feet of Jesus, listening, soaking in, like, eagerly longing for the next sentence, the next word, the next breath syllable that this, this great teacher that the Messiah had to say. When was the last time we did that? Like so eagerly longed to hear from God, to spend time in his presence. We sit at his feet, whether metaphorically or physically.
She’s sitting there soaking in everything about the moment. And this makes sense because we make time for the things that we care about, don’t we? It tends to capture our minds, it tends to capture our dollars, even simple things like the little rectangle that sits in our front right pocket. Like, we make time for these sorts of things. I’m naturally drawn to spend time with my sweet wife because I enjoy her and I enjoy being with her.
I also am naturally drawn to watch turkey hunting videos on YouTube because I enjoy. I enjoy that. I enjoy watching turkey videos. The more we delight in someone or something, the more we enjoy that, the more time we’re going to make. Like, the more that we spend time with someone, the more we enjoy someone, the more time we’re going to make for that.
The more attention it’s going to grab, the more dollars we’re going to give to it, whether it’s a hobby, activity, person, or thing to delight in. Jesus is no different. We must get to know him. We must know what he’s really like. And sometimes I’ll hear people say, that’s great.
Yes, I want to delight in Jesus, but we don’t need to get into the doctrine thing, we don’t need to get into the theology thing. And the heart behind that, I think, is mostly good because people are trying to say, I don’t want to get bogged down by the particulars, but it’s ultimately misguided. We can’t have Jesus without doctrine or theology. We need both because we need to define it. If I said that I love Leah Newton, true statement.
But if I say, I love Leah Newton, I love her long red hair, I love that she’s about 6, 6ft tall. And if you’re laughing, you understand that my wife is Beautifully blond haired and five three. If you loved me, you would stop me and say, hey, you’re not describing your wife in the same way. But even more so, if we’re trusting in Jesus, if we love him, we need to have him rightly defined. That’s why theology matters.
That’s why theology is so important. Maybe you’re thinking, I’m not a theologian. I don’t get into that sort of stuff. If you have a thought about God, you’re a theologian. If you have a thought about who God is, you have done theology.
It’s just a matter if you want to do theology right or not.
One of my systematic theology professors was really helpful and he was, he had a nasally voice, so it kind of really got your attention. He would just sometimes stop his lectures, my professor, and he would just stop and say, guys, we’re studying God. What a treat. We get to study the God who made Himself known to us, like he revealed Himself in His Word. God lets us know Him.
And he just. That excitement was contagious to me and it stirred my heart with greater affection. Yes, we do theology to know God better. It’s a gift. We know God by studying His Word and interacting with good works of theology that are rooted in His Word.
We get to know him these ways. I’ve got some on the screen resources that will pull up and in God’s kind sovereignty, one of them is already in your bulletin. And so that’s a little bookmark. And our church has a Bible reading plan and Pastor Robert has organized that for us. And there’s a list of what to read on what days and there’s also some questions to ask.
So if you want to get to know and delight in Jesus, know Him in His Word. Like that bookmark gives us ways to do really practical ways to do that. You don’t have to do like the church one. That’s fine. There’s plenty of other ones.
My personal favorite is the Robert Murray Machene Bible Reading Plan. Having a systematized Bible reading plan is going to help you delight in Jesus. And there’s one that already is already in your bulletin. Next. Another great resource is the CSB Everyday Study Bible.
When a student shows up to youth group and they don’t have a good Bible at home, this is what we give them. The study notes at the bottom are tremendously helpful. They’re worked on by Bible scholars who their whole job is to study theology and help other people love God. So those notes at the bottom, typically in gray, are in some sort of offset to kind of know. There’s a distinction.
Those are great. They’re not inspired scripture, but they will help you understand the scriptures better. So you keep loving and knowing God in a deeper way. Another thing really practical resource is the. Is the New City Catechism.
So those are. Those are the two. Like, we must be reading God’s Word to know Jesus. These other ways help us understand the Word better. So like, that would be the New City Catechism.
We’ve got copies available of that in the library. There’s also an app for. And there’s also like music that you can sing along especially they make a version that’s for kids too. And it’s 52 questions and answers about who God is and who the people of God are. And so questions as simple as who is God?
And it talks about the Trinity and there’s answers for that. And it’s good to know and get this doctrine into our bones, into our guts. The New City Catechism, it’s available if you want a small little copy or you can get the app. And then the book that’s probably had the most impact on me and my understanding of Jesus and He delights in me is Gentle and Lowly the Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers by Dane Orland. In there, he just takes several chapters and unpacks a verse or a phrase about Christ’s very heart.
And I would recommend reading it as a devotional, like reading taking that verse and reading the whole chapter, then reading the chapter. And each chapter is like about 7 to 10 pages. It can very easily be done in a morning’s time span.
I would recommend that Tremendously Gentle and Lowly the Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers by Dane Ortland. And last, it’s a very accessible exposition of our statement of faith. And that’s Evangelical convictions. It’s Produced by the EFCA National Office. It takes each part of our 10 parts of our statement of faith and it breaks it down.
And maybe some of you are like, that sounds nerdy. That sounds kind of weird. Well, friends, we just got done talking about, like, to delight in Jesus, we must know him in His Word and we must study good works of theology because we will never plumb fully the depths of who God is.
So those resources are great ways to do that. We prioritize time with Jesus by delighting in him, by getting to know him and enjoying him. And when we see Jesus for who he really is, like what’s happening here? In the passage we see Jesus for who he really is. When it says here that Mary has made the right choice, he is the right choice, he says we will not be taken from her.
When we see Jesus for who he really is, then we’ll naturally enjoy him all the more. I think that’s been true of probably, I’m guessing, all of our deepest relationships. When we get to know someone deeper and deeper, we enjoy them more and more.
Not only does he take. Does Jesus take care of the sin of those who place their trust in him. Not only does he take that on, that’s an absolutely, absolutely essential part of the gospel. But he’s our friend. And the book of Hebrews says that he calls us brother, he calls us sister.
If our trust is in him, he’s our protector, he’s our defender, he’s our good shepherd. What a treat it is to know him and delight in him. So this is to our graduates, but it’s also to everybody here. The big takeaway, the big idea is we must prioritize time with Jesus. Two ways we do that.
We prioritize time with Jesus by not falling into temptation to prioritize lesser things, by avoiding those pitfalls and by delighting in him some really practical points of application. We pray and ask God for wisdom or to reveal where we’ve fallen short. We look to the example of Jesus. We sit under the faithfully preached word of God. We have brothers and sisters in our life who we can confess sins to and celebrate wins with.
We know Jesus in his word ends by studying good theological resources. And this is just a sentence. Relate just to Morgan and Maddie. I can’t think of much better advice to give you because this is not mine to give. It comes from the Lord.
If you prioritize time with Jesus, I’m absolutely positive that things will go well for you.
As we get ready for our final song, I want to encourage everyone to do to make space to do one of at least a couple of things. If you need to just sit and quietly reflect on the word of God proclaimed this morning, please do that. It’s a really practical time to put into action what we’ve just talked about. Okay, God, how would you have me respond? Where do I need to be examined?
Where am I falling short? Where do I need your grace? But where can I celebrate what you’re doing? If you feel like he’s calling you to repent of something, please do that. Maybe he’s just calling you to simply sit and be still and say, God, how do I need to respond?
I’m going to pray, and we’ll give you time to do just that. God, we thank you for you and this morning, and we thank you for who you are and what you’ve done, and that you are worthy of all worship and honor and praise. But also that we get to spend time with you. We must spend time with you because you are our truest and greatest need. But you’re also our deepest and most wonderful friend.
And we pray that we would be encouraged where we need to be encouraged, and convicted where you need to be convicted. We pray that not only would we prioritize the right things, but that we would delight in you all the more. God, we pray that you’d be with us everywhere and as we go, as we’re guided by your spirit, it’s in Jesus wonderful name we pray.