One Thing is Necessary
In our busy, distracted, technology-driven life today don’t you wish you could simplify your live down to one thing that is necessary? That must sound like social heresy to so many people who have become engulfed by the great flood of busyness that is drowning us in a myriad of things to do. I’m not suggesting that we all quit our jobs and go into the wilderness, build a log cabin and live off the grid, but I have become convinced that it is possible to make one thing the determiner of everything else we involve ourselves in. Only this one thing is necessary.
And of course I may be branded as the social heretic when you hear what I have to share but this truth may set you free to be all that God calls you to be. Christians are prone to getting swept away in the torrent of busyness that the world offers us. Even our churches seem to equate being busy doing things for God with righteousness. For many reasons we allow ourselves to be doing many things that do not enhance our relationship with God and His people but, in fact, may hurt that relationship.
Luke tells the story of a time when Jesus and His disciples came to Bethany to visit with two sisters Martha and Mary. You may know the story in which Martha gets perturbed that her sister is not helping prepare the meal. Like most of us, she was driven by inner compulsions to do the right thing, in the right way at the right time. So, she did what any overachiever would do; she ran around hectically getting things ready for her guests. Mary, on the other hand, saw the opportunity to sit at the feet of Jesus and hear from Him. Apparently, she knew enough about Him at this point to realize that His words were life changing and she could not resist this opportunity to sit quietly and listen to Him.
Jesus’s reply lets us know the “one thing” that I am sharing with you today. He said to Martha, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:42). What was that “one thing?” — to sit at the feet of Jesus and listen to Him — to put Jesus in the center of her life instead of the “many things” that troubled Martha.
The word translated “troubled” comes from a root which refers to a loud, noisy crowd. The crowd in our lives, if we let it, will distract us from what matters — getting to know Jesus. Everything in our lives must spring from this one desire of our hearts — to know Jesus as fully as possible. This means we must seek the wisdom of God to find out how to tune out that “crowd” and sit quietly at the feet of our Master.
Paul told us that the driving desire of his life was “that I may know him” (Phil. 3:10). He didn’t let his tent-making profession, or anything else deter him from his quest to know Christ in an increasingly deeper way. That devotion produced an explosion of life in the first century. Mary’s way to this goal was to set aside the troubling things and come sit with Jesus and learn from Him about life.
This is a message for individuals but we also need to hear it corporately in our churches. We are concerned about so many things other than the “one thing.” Our churches are concerned with pastors, programs, a big building, liturgy, a loud popular band and worship leader, sermons, denominational activities, theological issues and much more.
It may surprise you to hear that the early church did not consider many of these things as necessary. There were pastors provided by the Spirit but we hear nothing in any of the churches about a lead pastor who sets the tone for the church. Pastors were merely older men who watched over the others like a family (Acts 20:28).They had no special buildings but met in homes in small informal groups (Acts 2: 46; 1 Cor. 16:19; Col. 4:15, et al). They had no liturgy or big bands but simply sang to “one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart,” and shared in fellowship with one another (Eph. 5:18; Acts 2:42). They had few sermons but mostly shared with one another what God put on their hearts (1 Cor. 14:26).
They certainly knew nothing of denominations and considered it rebellion to split off from the body of Christ into separate factions (1 Cor. 1:10). They saw their oneness in Christ, not in the mutual acceptance of certain doctrines. To know Christ and live in fellowship with Him, they believed, would organically produce oneness between them (Eph. 4:15, 16).
They saw doctrine and theology like the leaves and fruit of a healthy tree. The doctrines did not produce life but were the product of life. They understood this as agrarian people who watched how life produced varying expressions. Fruit comes forth from the Spirit effectively living in receptive people but one cannot form doctrines that produce fruit. The doctrines are the explanations of the life within, the understanding of the blessing of Christ living in us.
Today’s Christianity is far removed from these simple truths. We have allowed strange fire, the interference of unscrupulous people to construct the church in their own image. Instead of growing into the image of Christ it has taken on the shape of man’s cleverness and deceitful scheming. Paul said it this way:
…we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ (Eph. 4:14, 15).
We must take our hands off of His church and our own lives and return to the one necessary thing. We sing about it, preach about it and write about it but we fail to really do it. We fail to turn away from the troubling crowds of busyness and daily sit at the feet of the Master. The disciples who did that became part of a move of God that utterly changed the world. They were just a small remnant but they learned the secret of the one necessary thing — Christ.
