Starting in Luke chapter 10 this morning, we're looking at a few places. And we're going to, this morning, just track with the life of this young lady named Mary that we read about here in the text this morning. Here on these alternating Sunday mornings, go to the book of Psalms, go to chapter 119 there. We've been looking at portions there. And then on the following week, looking at something that has to do with the life, the ministry, the impact of Jesus Christ, the way in which the Lord touched lives and made the Word of God real and applicable to the lives of those with whom he dealt. And here we're looking at the life of Now, this takes place, it says in our text, it says that he entered into a certain village in verse 38. A certain village is the village of Bethany. We know this from the other accounts of where Mary, Martha, and their brother Lazarus They lived in Bethany, which was a town that was not too far, what one would call a Sabbath day journey from Jerusalem. Relatively short distance outside of the city of Jerusalem. And Jesus would pass through there fairly often. And these two sisters and their brother were disciples of the Lord. They came to be believers and followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we're going to see just some wonderful things that this family says to and says about the Lord Jesus Christ and the faith that they show. This is one of the earlier accounts here of Jesus's time and his investment in Mary and Martha and Lazarus, this special family that comes up several times in the Gospels here. And so, of course, this is a familiar story. I think it's one that certainly can challenge us regularly as we come around to it. Some of you may have a pattern of reading the Gospels fairly frequently. Something that I would even recommend is that read through the Gospels on a regular basis. If you read a chapter a day or something like that, just add that into your Bible time is just to spend time reading about the life and the ministry of Jesus Christ. So we come to this more often than maybe some other parts of the Bible. And that's a good thing. There's some wonderful truths here. And this is a special but convicting passage here because when I have to be honest with myself about which one of these two individuals I'm more like in my character, I'm one who is more like Martha in my spirit and my attitude about how I relate and serve the Lord. Martha, I feel like she gets a little bit too much criticism. We tend to read this story, I think, a lot in the same way that we read the story of Peter stepping out of the boat onto the stormy sea and then sinking. And we tend to point out the failures of their actions. And we, I think, failed to put ourselves in that place. I mean, we say about Peter stepping out of the boat, the other apostles didn't, right? Peter was the only one who had enough faith to even step out of the boat. And he got a few steps out there before he began to sink. He's walked on more water than I have, you know? And we tend to criticize Peter for being human, But he was able, by faith, for a few moments even, to do something pretty incredible. And when I think about the situation here, ladies especially, think about this. If you knew the Lord Jesus Christ was coming over to your house this afternoon, you might have skipped church this morning to stay home and clean. Right? I might have skipped home, skipped church this morning to stay home and clean. I mean, you know, been busy this week, but probably need to mow the yard, you know, probably need to get things looking real, real nice. I'd probably be home with a nice brisket on the smoker or something. I don't want to give him a good meal, right? You know, Jesus is coming to Central Texas. We're feeding him brisket, right? So let's just be honest for a moment here and understand that Martha gets criticized for how she's acting here, but what she is doing makes a lot of sense. And you've had those family events. You've had those family holidays where you got someone who's just freeloading, man. Everybody else is in the kitchen getting Thanksgiving dinner ready, and they're watching football. You know, and you're getting a little frustrated, like, hey, man, you could help. You know, something you could do. You could at least brought some ice or something. I mean, you could do anything today. I understand Martha. I understand Martha's attitude all the way through this. I think we all, if we're honest, we can identify really with how she was feeling. She is hosting an important person. Now, at this point, it's not clear whether, Mary, Martha, Lazarus, whether they were what we would consider to be believers. You know, we get to a later story here. We know that they came to early faith in Jesus Christ. They believed that he was the Son of God. They believed he was the Messiah. We don't know if that's the case yet. It's really the first time, probably the earliest time that we see Mary and Martha named in the ministry of Jesus Christ. But they understood that he was special. They understood he was important. They had him over to feed him a meal because they understood that there was something different about Jesus Christ, that he was maybe more than just a rabbi. He was maybe more than just a teacher. There was something special about Jesus Christ, and they wanted to find out what that was. If you were having someone important over to your house, even if it wasn't the Son of God, if you're having someone important over to your house, you would want to have a nice, clean house, and you would want to serve a really nice meal to that special guest in your home. We can understand that. And that's what Martha was doing, right? And so before, again, before we get too critical of Martha this morning, let's first put ourselves in her shoes and understand that this was a very natural way to act in this situation. But Mary seemed, for whatever reason, to have a different level of insight into who Jesus was. She seemed to understand that there was something more than just special, something special about Jesus Christ, but that Jesus Christ was more than that. Though she could have busied herself with her sister cleaning and setting the table and putting on the meal, she understood, for some reason, she understood that it was far more important for her in that moment to just hear what he had to say. In fact, we look at this and often we think, the way this interaction takes place is that Martha was condemned by the Lord for serving rather than sitting at his feet the way that her sister was. And really, when you read the text, it's not Jesus who brings this up at all. Martha was busy about serving, and it was Martha who comes to Jesus and says, my sister won't help. Will you tell her to? She's not listening to me. She's listening to you. Will you tell her to help? And Jesus, when he responds to Martha, he really doesn't even respond with condemnation. He doesn't say, your sister's better than you. He just gently admonishes her with the fact that what she is doing needs to be done. And it's not a bad thing of what she's doing. What she's doing is not wrong. It's not something that is condemnable in her conduct. But what her sister is doing is something that is more important. And Mary's choice here has what I believe a long-lasting effect on her relationship and her responsiveness to the Lord. I think it also has an impact on this interchange here, this confrontation, really, helps Martha also. I think that's something that really has a deep impact on the whole family, but Mary's choice here, I believe, has a long-lasting effect on her relationship and ultimately her responsiveness to the Lord, because Mary was learning to worship. She was learning to worship, and by learning to worship, her whole life is going to be different. As she sits and she listens to the words of Jesus Christ there in her home, rather than busying herself and distracting herself and doing things that maybe by some definition needed to be done, by sitting and hearing his words, she is learning who Jesus is, and she's learning to worship him, and because of that worship, her life is going to be different. Now again, Martha is busy, and she's doing things that she feels like need to be done, but the comparison that we can draw here is that Martha, in trying to serve the Lord, failed to worship the Lord. And we'll talk about this in a minute because service is a part of our worship, but service is not a replacement for worship, and service is not the sum total of worship. Service is a piece of that pie, but service in itself is not all of what worship is. And Martha was serving, and in serving, she was not getting to know the Lord. In serving, she was not hearing the words that he was speaking. And in serving, she was so busy that she never took time to sit at the Lord's feet herself and hear His words, at least not in this instance. Now, at some point, it had to have happened because Martha changes too. And Martha makes one of the boldest confessions of her faith to the Lord. We're going to get to that in John chapter 11. She learns this at some point too, but Mary caught on a little bit faster than her sister did. And we'll look at some different passages here, but I want to note that Mary's example of worship I think is really markedly different than what we tend to think of when we hear the word worship. Her worship here obviously wasn't relegated to a certain place or time or day of the week. This was, for all we can tell, this was on any given weeknight that Jesus was over at their house, and it was there in her own home, and she was learning to worship Jesus Christ there right where she was. her worship wasn't performative in any way. In fact, those who are watching, if you would have asked the question of the other observers, the other maybe disciples or apostles that would have been there on this occasion, if they would have asked who loved Jesus more, most of the observers of this scenario would have said that it was Martha because she was doing all the work. In fact, Mary's worship actually, this first level of learning worship, actually didn't look like very much at all. But she was getting to know the Lord, and her sister was doing things for the Lord, at least in her own mind. It wasn't a performative kind of worship. It was sincere. It was authentic. Understand that it also wasn't public either. And we have public worship services. We have corporate worship services. But understand that the essence of worship is not something that is corporate or public. When we come together this morning, I'm not saying that you didn't worship the Lord this morning or that we're not here to do that. But understand that worship is something that is private. And I can be worshiping the Lord in sincerity and in truth while I'm standing next to you and you're doing the very same thing in a church service. That's why you shouldn't be ashamed to go for that high note at the end, right? Because we're just making a joyful noise unto the Lord, and without necessarily consideration for the person to our left and to our right. If you're here to worship the Lord this morning, there's something that's going on in your heart between you and God, and we're all here together for it, but there's people around. Just because it's private, it's in your own heart, doesn't mean that there aren't people around. I think there's value to having a private place where you worship the Lord through the week, a place where you go and you pray, and a place where you go and you spend time in the Word of God. But you can worship God privately in a public setting. In fact, if you're going to worship God, you're worshiping God privately, even if you're in a public setting, because it takes place in your heart. Worship is not participation in a song service. Worship is not participation in a church service. Worship is God having His rightful place in your heart wherever you are. And so if you sang that song well or poorly this morning, it doesn't matter, but if you sang it from your heart, God was glorified by your worship. You can be the best singer in the room, not I, but you can be the best singer in the room, but if you were singing to perform for the people around you, that's not worship to God, and therefore it's not honoring to God. Because worship is not performative. Worship is always, always private within your own heart, even when there's other people around. And her sister didn't understand that. People aren't always going to understand that. As we can worship the Lord together, I guess if you wanna say corporately, but only to the degree that each of us are worshiping God simultaneously. Better word than corporately. When we come together for a church service, we're not worshiping God corporately per se, we're worshiping God simultaneously if we all come with a heart of worship for the Lord. We're all singing the same song at the same time in concert, but each heart individually has to be lifted up to the Lord for it to be part of that worship that's taking place. I believe we can learn about worship from the life of Mary and from the example of this family that we're introduced to here in the Gospels, Mary and Martha and Lazarus, What do we see here from this passage? First, I want to say, we see from this passage that worship is greater than service. And there's a few reasons for them. I'm going to try to qualify everything that I say here this morning. And I want you to bear with me here. Service is important. Worship is greater than service because service is a piece of worship. One of the ways that we do worship the Lord is through the service that we do for Him, but that's not all of what worship is. And someone like me, and again I said I can understand Martha. For me, I tend to want to do things and I'm willing to do things even if I'm the only one doing them. I like to be busy about things and one of the ways that I show that I'm invested and I care and that I appreciate someone or something is that I try to do things for them. That's what Martha was doing. She was trying to show Jesus that she thought he was important and respectable and special by serving and meeting his needs. but worship is greater than just merely the service that we do for him. Worship is recognizing that you need God more than he needs you. Again, to look at these two sisters here, I believe that Mary realized that Christ could meet her needs more than she could meet his. The ministry of Jesus Christ, He was active. I mean, you read the book of Mark. You know that most, most verses, pay attention to this next time you read the Gospel of Mark. More verses in the Gospel of Mark start with the word, and, than any other word. And it is like nearly half the verses in Mark start with the word and because Jesus was going from one thing to the next thing to the next thing. You read certain passages in the Gospels and you'll read five or six or seven different special accounts of things that happened and when you realize then they all took place like on the same day. Jesus in his ministry was busy. There's a reason why the end of John, it says that if everything that Jesus did and said in his ministry, in his three and a half year ministry was written down, the world could not contain it. Jesus was busy. And so by the time he sits down to have a nice meal, he needs his feet washed, because they're dirty. And he needs a nice, comfortable place to sit. Hopefully a nice, clean, comfortable place to sit is provided for him. He's probably pretty hungry, and it'd be a good thing for someone to put a meal in front of him. And one sister was trying to make sure all of that was happening for Jesus. Jesus had these physical needs of his sister. stomach being filled, and his feet being washed, and him being made comfortable in a place for him to take some physical rest and respite after a long day. And then the other sister realized that in spite of all of that, she had bigger needs on the inside that only Jesus could meet. I mean, anybody could pour Jesus Christ a cold cup of water. Only Jesus could fill the longing of her soul. And when we come to the Lord in our perception of worship, that it's what I do for Him rather than it is what I need Him to do for me, we've got it backwards. Worship is when God has put in His rightful place the Lord of my life. And while yes, that is going to lead into some things that I do for Him, necessarily some things that I do for Him, it first starts with things that He has to do for me first. We're foolish to think that God needs us in the way that we need Him. I like to be useful. I like to believe that God uses me and uses my life, and it's a wonderful thing to feel that. I think many of you understand what I mean. It's nice to know that there's a place where you're needed, where you're wanted, where you're helpful, where you're investing in what God is doing here through this church and in this community. That's a wonderful thing. Never forget that you need God more than He needs you. Moses, better Christian than me. Moses kind of got an attitude that he was a little bit irreplaceable and then God replaced him. Right? Anytime we get a little bit lifted up in our own hearts and our own minds, I'm doing so many things, man, I'm so necessary to this church. I'm so necessary to the work of the Lord. It's a dangerous place to be because God's going to start looking for your replacement. I think Elijah and Elisha is a better example. Elijah started to get that syndrome. God, I'm the only one. I'm the only one. I'm the only one who serves you. I'm the only one who believes in you. I'm the one who's preaching righteousness. And God said, don't worry. There's 7,000 who have endowed their need to bail in Israel, and I've got your replacement lined up already. In fact, go anoint him to be your replacement and start training him. But what happened? It was a moment, a spirit in Elijah's life that God needs me. What an act and attitude of pride and hubris. God needs me. The Book of Psalms says that if God had a need, he wouldn't tell us. I mean, it literally says that, right? If God needed something, he wouldn't tell you. He wouldn't tell me. He wouldn't come asking to borrow money from me. God didn't borrow, right? But if God needed something, he doesn't come to us for it. Because we don't have anything to offer. All the things that we think we own, the things we think we have, the things we think we can do for him, he's the one who gave it to us in the first place. The talent, the gift that you offer back to him in your service is something that he gave you in the first place. And if he gave it to you, you can give it to somebody else. I'm not the only one who can preach a message on Sunday mornings. If I get to a point in my life where I think that God needs me to be the pastor of this church, that's the first step of me being taken out of the way. Worship is greater than service and more than just mere service. Real worship, however, does lead to effective service. We have this one instance, Mary sits at the Lord's feet. hearing His words and listening to Him and learning from Him and getting to know Him and coming, literally coming to faith in Jesus Christ as her Savior, as her Messiah in this moment. And we're going to see that she goes on to live a very, very, very productive life of service to the Lord and commitment to the Lord. She is going to then be changed by this, results in service. I believe if you get to know the Lord and if you are truly engaging in worship with the Lord through the week and when you come to church, that it is going to lead to things that you will start doing for the Lord in his service. But to start with service is a mistake. Sincere, diligent service cannot replace worship, but it will issue forth from a spirit that is overflowing with worship. Worship prepares us to use the gifts that God has given us, the calling that God has put on our lives. Worship prepares us to use that in a service. Worship teaches us and reminds us of the reason why we do that service in the first place. You ever caught yourself doing something and you forgot why you were doing it? And why we still do things the way we do things, why? What's even the point of this? You ever ask yourself that question about something you do at work or something like that? And you're like, why do we even do this? This doesn't even make sense anymore, right? If you get away from your relationship of worship with God, you're going to forget why you do the things that you do in His name. You're going to forget why, and you're going to stop caring why and how you do those things. And when you get away from your spirit of worship, it's gonna be easier to miss a church service. It's gonna be easier to ignore the impulses of leadership of the Holy Spirit in your life. If you get away from a heart of worship for the Lord, where God has this rightful place in your life, you're not going to have any desire to witness and share the gospel with anybody else. You're not going to have a desire to help others who are in need, and God puts a burden on your heart to help them. You're gonna get away, if you get away from worship, you're gonna stop doing all of those things. Those things will fade out. Worship is what truly empowers and inspires the service that we do for the Lord. One thing is needful. Worship, worship is greater than our service. We'll find here in, if you would go to John chapter 11, and we know the story taking place here also. These stories about Mary and Martha are pretty familiar. This is where Lazarus had fallen sick and he dies, and before Lazarus died, Jesus was told that Lazarus was sick and that it was looking pretty bad, and they wanted Jesus to come right away, and they wanted him to heal Lazarus, because Jesus had healed a lot of people at this point. Jesus has healed a lot of strangers at this point, and Lazarus was his friend. And they thought, well, surely the Lord will come and he'll heal Lazarus. And Jesus waits, so Lazarus has died and he's been buried for four days. And they said, man, the Lord couldn't make time for his own friend. That's unfortunate. That's a shame. Jesus shows up and runs into the scissors first. Jesus said to Martha, he said, thy brother, in verse 23, thy brother shall rise again. And Martha said to him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day. And Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this? And then, as I said earlier, Martha makes one of the boldest confessions of faith here in verse 27. She says, she saith unto him, yea, Lord, I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world. I mean, that's about verbatim what Peter said to him in Matthew chapter, 16. That was a bold statement. I mean, a bold statement of her faith in Jesus Christ. And Mary didn't come to Jesus right away. In verse 28, this is when she had so said, she went her way and called Mary, her sister, secretly saying, the master has come and calleth for thee. And as soon as she heard that, she arose quickly and came unto him. Jesus was not yet come into the town, but was in that place where Martha met him. Jews then, which were with her in the house and comforted her, when they saw Mary, that she rose up hastily and went out, followed her, saying, She goeth unto the grave to weep there. And then when Mary was come to where Jesus was, she saw him and fell down at his feet, saying unto him, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. I want to, just to, not to focus on the grammar here too much, but understand that what she says there in verse 32 is not followed by an exclamation point. She's not, she's not, she's not, making a statement of strong emotion or accusation here at Jesus Christ. She's not saying, Lord, you failed me. She's making a statement of genuine faith. That's my interpretation of it, I think, but she's not making a statement. There's some grief behind that statement, but it's not an accusation. It's not a faithless statement. It's actually a statement of great faith. Lord, I know that if you would have been here before he died, he would have been healed. Listen, Mary and Martha here at this point are in a time of deep sorrow. They've lost their brother in this day and age. It seems as though they were unmarried and that their parents were probably deceased and their brother took care of them. And this was in a time where Women really couldn't earn an honest living outside of the home. It was very, very difficult. There were really not many good options. This was a devastating thing for their provider, for their brother, to have died in this situation. And it was just a desperate situation. But this worship that Mary and Martha had, and the spirit of worship they had developed, was something that was a great comfort to them in a time of sorrow. And nobody wants to think about times of sorrow. We all are going to go through those. We're all going to go through times of loss and grief and trouble and tribulation. And that makes us, in one way, that makes us no different from anybody else on this planet. Looking at the book of Ecclesiastes in the teen class, and one of the things that Solomon keeps remarking on is that the same thing that happens to the righteous is the same thing that happens to the unrighteous. that nobody is exempt from the problems of this life up to and including physical death, that everybody is going to experience the kind of troubles that life brings. But there is one key difference between believers and unbelievers, is that we can have the comfort of the Lord, the presence of the Lord in our times of sorrow through worship. There's no greater comfort and sorrow than the presence of the Lord. It's a wonderful thing that people, our family and our friends and our loved ones will rally around us and they'll come and they'll sit with us and they'll comfort us in our times of sorrow, but there's no greater comfort than the comfort of the Lord Jesus Christ because he is ever present. He promises that he will never leave us and he'll never forsake us. That's a wonderful thing. But it is when we draw an eye to the Lord, it's when we enter into his presence that we truly experience that comfort. maybe sorrow in our times of grief, we are to enter into the presence of the Lord. Worship during sorrow helps us to be reminded of the promises that God has made to us. It helps us to trust in God's power. It helps us to trust in God's wisdom. It helps us to trust in God's goodness. In those times where there's not a lot more questions than there are answers, but we can trust in the fact that God is wise, God is powerful, God is good. Helps us in those times to avoid the temptation of the flesh, to respond with faithlessness, with anger, with harmful behaviors, with despair. 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, I'm sorry, 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 tells us that we don't have to sorrow as those which have no hope. when we lose a loved one. Because we have the promises of God. We have the presence of the Lord. We have the sure word of His promise that we will be reunited with our loved ones one day. We may have questions, but we don't have to have doubts. We may be sad, but we don't have to despair. We may be hindered for a time while we don't have to be utterly stopped in our tracks and in our relationship with the Lord. We may be hurt, but we don't have to be destroyed. And we can experience that as believers by entering into His presence. The Lord didn't leave you, but sometimes during these times, we get away from the Lord, and that's the place where we need to go to the most, is a place of worship before the Lord. And then one chapter over in chapter 12, And at the beginning of this chapter, this is an interesting follow-up to the previous chapter. Of course, we know that Lazarus is raised again by the Lord in chapter 11. And then in chapter 12, verse one, it says, Jesus, six days before the Passover, came to Bethany, where Lazarus, which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead. There they made him a supper, and Martha served. Again, praise the Lord. But Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him, Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the odor of that ointment. And then saith one of the disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, which should betray him, why was not this ointment sold for 300 pence and given to the poor? This he said, not that he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief and had the bag. and bear what was put therein. And said Jesus, let her alone. Against the day of my burying she hath kept this, for the poor always ye have with you, but me ye have not always. What inspires a sacrifice like this? Let me talk about this ointment that she brought. And Judas says that it could have been sold for 300 pence. Understand that a pence was a day's wages. This was like 10 months worth of daily wages. And if you took your Sabbaths off and other few holidays, this is a year's worth of pay. This was something that often was gifted by parents to daughters as kind of a special gift for them for their wedding day. Something they would use to perfume themselves for their wedding day, the most important day in a young girl's life. And here she is bringing a great offering of sacrifice to the Lord. And probably not even really understanding that the Lord was about to be crucified and buried and risen again, probably not really understanding that, but knowing that she loved the Lord and that she was willing to sacrifice anything for Him. What produces a spirit that is willing to offer the best that we have to the Lord? For the Lord's use, for the Lord's purposes, worship. A true spirit of worship. Sacrifice has a proper and an important role in our worship. Sacrifice is anything that is over and above our obedience. The parable, one of the parables that the Lord said is the servants, they go out in the field and they come in from the field. And when they come in from the field, they don't sit down at the table and then serve the master, to be served by the master their dinner. But then they come from the field and they go into the kitchen and they prepare the master's meal. and they serve Him, and then afterward, they take care of themselves, because that's the role of a servant. And then at the end of all of that, when they've done all that they were supposed to do, they still have to say, we're unprofitable servants because we have done what is our duty to do. We've made no sacrifice, we've done what our job is. We've just been obedient. Here, this was not something that the Lord commanded her to do, this was not an act of obedience, this was an act of sacrifice. We've got certain things in our lives, the things that God has called us to do and called us to be, the roles and responsibilities that God has given to us. And in those things, by doing those things and doing them faithfully and doing them for the glory of the Lord, we are simply obedient. And yet there are times of sacrifice where we go above and beyond and we do something more than just obedience. We do something out of a heart of love and worship for the Lord. This is what Mary was exemplifying here. was an act of sacrifice, that which is over and above mere obedience. By that definition, obedience must be first accomplished before sacrifice can really be in effect. This was something that Samuel said to Saul. Saul didn't want to obey the Lord, but he wanted to perform sacrifices. And Saul had to condemn his sacrifice because the obedience wasn't there. The true definition of sacrifice is over and above obedience. And so if the obedience isn't there, the sacrifice isn't sacrifice. The sacrifice is a performance. The sacrifice is an empty gesture without the obedience. But what helps us to first be obedient and then at times, for the right reasons, to then perform sacrifices for the Lord in certain areas of life, it is worship. Sacrifice is acceptable when it is offered the right way. A true sacrifice is made with no expectation of reciprocation, of reward. It's made with no ulterior motives. Jesus said to the Pharisees, He said, if you only do things for people who can do the same thing for you or more, you're not that good of a person, right? If I only help you move, so that you'll help me move. I haven't made a sacrifice. I've traded favors. If I only do for God because I expect God then to do for me what I really want, then I am trying to obligate God. I'm not being obedient. I'm not being sacrificial. I'm trying to be manipulative. I'm trying to manipulate God into doing what I want him to do. True sacrifice is offered to God. This is something that means something to me. It's special to me. And God, it's yours. No strings attached. God, if my situation changes, not at all, or even if it gets worse, I'm not gonna say that you're unrighteous or you're unfair. Because you don't owe me anything. And Mary here, she expected nothing back from the Lord. Great sacrifice, with no expectation, no ulterior motives, just to show her love to Jesus Christ. True sacrifice is given without hesitation. without holding back, without justification, just given. And Mary's, for the little that we know about her, Mary's a special character, a special example in the Word of God of what worship looks like and what worship does for us. I said at the beginning, these are stories that challenge me and convict me because I know that I fall short in these things. One thing is needful, Jesus said to Martha, one thing is needful, and that was to learn to worship the Lord, because from that worship was going to come all of the other aspects of the Christian life that needed to be there, all part and parcel to it. But if we try to just take bits and pieces of that, we're going to miss out on the greater understanding of why we are called to do what we are called to do in the name of the Lord. Mary learned something very important and very early about worship that helped her throughout. Learning to worship the Lord in sincerity and in truth is of paramount importance. If we're not doing what we're doing for the glory of God, then why are we doing it? What's even the point? Mary figured this out early on. Listen, we'll close with