Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: Years and years ago when Stuart used to travel a lot, I got involved working with young people. A whole lot of young people came to Christ, and the little Methodist churches where we lived didn't have any preachers. At that time, Stuart always says that's because they didn't have any people. Anyway, they did need people to go and talk on a Sunday, even if there were a few people sitting in the pews. So we organized these young people into little teams, and then the question was: "What do we do when we get to the church?"

Well, Stuart wasn't home too much, but when he was, I'd sit on the front row and I'd copy down assiduously everything he said. There was one particular sermon I liked very much. It was about Lazarus. Lazarus was dead, Lazarus was defeated, tied round and round with the grave clothes. Jesus said, "Loose him and let him go." And then Lazarus was dangerous because people began to believe in Jesus because of him and all the rest of it. It was a super sermon. I decided if Stuart was going to be in America for nine months of the year, then somebody ought to preach that sermon around Britain. And so I thought I'd do that.

So the little team and I would go around these little churches. One day, Stuart came home and he took off to a big church in Manchester. As he went out the door, I was busy with the three children under school age and I didn't quite know where he was going. He threw back over his shoulder, "Oh, I'm going to that big Methodist church down in Manchester. See you tonight." And off he went. As the car drove out of the driveway, I just went cold all over and I thought, "Oh no. Lazarus."

And then I started to pray very fervently. "Lord, blot it out of his mind. Just let him forget he ever had a sermon called Lazarus," or something. It was a miserable day. At the end of it, he walked back in. I took one look at his face and I said, "Lazarus?" And he said, "Lazarus." He said, "Jill, at the end of my sermon, this woman came barreling up to me and said, 'Oh, you stole your wife's sermon!'"

So then he suggested I go and find one of my own. I remember saying, "But I can't do that. I'm not creative, I'm not original. I don't know how to use the tools of the Bible. I can't find a message or a story that would help people." He showed me how to do that. He taught me how to look at the scriptures and be able to find the people in there and make something meaningful out of it.

So I went back to that sermon on Lazarus and I peeked around the corner of the verse, which is what we must do if we're going to see the color and find who's standing in the shadows. I found a lady standing there called Mary, Mary of Bethany. I began to go around with my little team of people, and instead of preaching Stuart's sermon, I began to talk about a woman who became my friend. I would like to share her story with you today.

You'll find her in Luke's gospel, chapter 10. We'll read a few verses together, verse 38: "As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet listening to his word. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. So she came to him and she said, 'Lord, don't you care that my sister's left me to serve alone? Tell her to help me!' 'Martha, Martha,' the Lord answered, 'you're worried and upset about many things. But only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is best, and it will not be taken away from her.'"

What was it that Jesus was so appreciative of about this woman? I want to find that out, because I would like to think that he would say those sort of things about me. Now, in John's gospel 11:5, it says this: "Now Jesus loved Martha and Mary and Lazarus." He loved them. Nowhere else in the Bible do you find this, that Jesus specifically is said to have loved somebody.

This is an intriguing thing. As I looked at this lady and tried to get to know her and peeked around the corner of the verse and tried to find out why did he love her, what was it that made her so very lovable to Christ? Did she die as a martyr on the mission field? Did she give her life for Christ? What was it that he loved about her?

Well, there were many, many things, but basically four things I want to talk about. The first was quite simply that she had given her heart to Christ. I don't know where she first found him; we're not told that in the Bible. Did she see him opening the eyes of a blind man? Did she see a leper cleansed? Did she see him raising the dead before he ever raised her brother Lazarus? We don't know.

I don't know where she first saw him, but I do know that she met him. After hearing of him by the hearing of the ear, her eye saw him, and she was lost. She loved him and she gave her heart to Christ. We talk a lot about giving our heart to Christ. What did it mean to Mary? Well, she as a Hebrew believed that the heart was the absolutely deepest part of us, the part where all the emotions and the personality and the deepest decisions are made.

That's the part that God has given us that makes us different from just animals. We're not just little dust people living in dust bodies, eating dust food, driving in dust cars, singing from dust hymn books. God dignified dust with divinity. He borrowed a dust body and he lived within it for 30 years—God in Galilean cloth making our hearts smile, if you like. God became a babe and he borrowed a body.

Mary knew that we were more than dust. There was a heart, a soul, the deepest part of us that needed to be given to God, the part of us that matters more than anything else. The problem, of course, is that we're supposed to love God as Mary loved him. We're supposed to give our hearts to Christ, if you want to use that phrase, but we have heart trouble. We are born with heart trouble. Man looks on the outside, but God looks on the heart, and he sees the heart of man is only evil continually. In fact, Jesus said, "Out of the heart of man come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, lies, and slander."

How then can we love God with hearts like that? Are not our churches full of people trying to do it? How frustrating. How can we love God with a heart that is desperately wicked above all things? Well, maybe we need a bypass. Maybe that'll do it. God actually says it won't.

In Ezekiel 36:26, he says, "Listen, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I'll remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I'll put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws." He talked about a great transaction that needed to take place, which would need a great physician. We need a transplant if we're ever going to give our hearts to Jesus, if we're ever going to love him as Mary loved him.

But the problem with a transplant is you need a donor. I remember standing in this church listening to a young man from Ghana thank the congregation for their part in bringing him here with his brother that a kidney transplant might be effected. I remember thinking how wonderful, but surely if somebody that I loved needed an organ or needed a bone marrow or whatever transplant, then I would surely be willing to do that. And then I thought again: "But what about a heart? Would I give my heart? Would you?"

Have you ever heard of anyone alive offering their heart to someone that has heart trouble? I never have, except one. Jesus Christ said to his father, the great physician, "Here's my heart. Take it." And on an operating table the shape of a cross, God did and offered the heart of Christ to the world, because without his heart we cannot love him properly. These old hearts of ours are not going to love him with all our heart and mind and soul and strength. So we can become partakers of the divine nature, and we can become, with all the valves open, to know what it is to truly love him. God has to even lend us beggars the love to love him with. We have to ask him for that, for his nature. We can be partakers of that divine nature. We can give our hearts to Christ, and he can give his heart to us. I did that years and years ago, and I would ask you: "Have you given your heart to Jesus?"

That's the first thing Mary did. The second thing she did was give her home to Jesus. Now, this was going to entail a lot of work. When you think about it, it wasn't just Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus and Martha running around in the background getting a meal for three. No, no. There were 12 disciples with him. There were certainly eight or nine women; we learn in Luke's gospel that there were prominent women like Mary and Martha that traveled around with him and helped him and provided means that he might do his ministry.

So there were women, there were the disciples, there were a couple of healed lepers, I'm sure. There were a couple of demoniacs that hadn't been healed yet, I'm sure of that. There were the hangers-on. Probably she was preparing a meal for 30 or 40 people, maybe more. In the middle of this, just at mealtime, we have this incredible story of Jesus expecting Martha and Mary to sit at his feet while he explained something terribly important to them. I believe that this was possibly the last opportunity he had to explain the cross.

And Martha, she was worried about the soup, and she warranted a rebuke. It was not Martha's activity that Jesus rebuked, but her anxiety over the activity. For we read that she was distracted by her much serving. I know what it's like to be a Christian mom and give my home to Jesus and have it filled with all his friends. And he has some weird friends, I can tell you that. To bring into our home all that he would, not all that I would perhaps, but all that he would, takes a lot of work. Takes a lot of physical work, takes a lot of planning.

Of course, in Martha's day and age, she had to go and get the water from the well, and she had to go and find the servants to get the fire going. She had to knead the dough for 30 people, and she wasn't just making toast and tea. She was, as the scripture tells us, providing a seven-course meal because she was Martha. She just got worried about it. She was a worker, she was worried, and that became very destructive and disruptive. Her relationships got in the way. "Don't you care, Lord, that she—" (that's Mary she's talking about, her sister) "—has left me to serve alone? Don't you care, Lord?" It disrupted her relationship with Christ, it disrupted her relationship with her sister, and I'm sure it disrupted her relationship with herself. She got mad with herself as well as mad with everybody else.

You can be distracted by the very service you're rendering to Christ. I've discovered that. I'm a Martha, I am not a Mary. All my life I've had to make the Mary choice. And you know something? I don't believe that Mary was a Mary either. We don't know whether she was this mystical, quiet, passive, unworking mother who loved to pray. We presume because she's sitting at his feet she liked to be there, but how do you know she liked to be there? How do you know she wasn't a Martha?

Somebody has said in a commentary—I think it was Spurgeon—"Mary was Martha before she was Mary." Mary was Martha before she was Mary. And perhaps she was. The difference between her and Martha was that she made a choice. She made a choice. Jesus said she's chosen the better part, or the best dish. She's chosen the best dish. In fact, he uses playful words to soften his rebuke. "Martha, Martha"—it's a diminutive, it's a love way of addressing this woman. "I appreciate all the trouble you're going to, Martha," in essence he said. "Mary has brought me the food I like best. Her heart and her sympathy, she's nourishing, she's refreshing my spirit. This one dish I would wish for you to bring, not the many courses. Martha, Martha, we don't need seven courses. We need one dish. Mary's chosen the best dish." It's a play on words that you lose in the English translation. Mary has chosen that good part.

So perhaps all of us, whether we be Mary by temperament or whether we all be Marthas as perhaps Mary was, and certainly Martha was, we need to make a choice. Or we can be distracted with our housework, with our mothering, with our church service, with our business, distracted by much serving, by all the preparations that had to be made. Distracted, we become agitated and we become frustrated, and our relationships suffer. We have to give our home to Jesus in more ways than one.

As he begins to use our lives as mothers at home, or as mothers in the workforce and at home, and as fathers in the workplace, and as fathers everywhere else, we have to remember that we must not become distracted with our much serving. Then it will be noised abroad that Jesus is in the house. We can give our house to Jesus because in the midst of it, we learn to be Mary. At mealtime, we learn to be Mary. We are relaxed, we are at rest in the middle of the activity. The two things have to go together.

I remember our wedding verse. It was this: "It was noised abroad that Jesus was in the house." It comes from Mark's gospel, when the fellows were taking the roof to pieces to get at Christ because they knew he was there. I remember saying to Stuart, "I want a home like that. I want a home where people talk about the fact that not Stuart and Jill live in that house, not David and Judy and Peter, but Jesus is in the house." I want it to be noised abroad, for people to talk about it so much that the whole town gathers at the door.

God heard my heart prayer, and he gave us a home like that, that the world literally has tramped through. That's a lot of hard work, and I loved it. I have loved every moment of our lives of service and ministry. Jesus has indeed brought his friends to our house. But I also know what it's like to be distracted by the very serving that I love, and to have to make a choice to sit at his feet and to listen to his word.

Martha ticked and kept time. I love that little phrase. Do you tick and keep time? Are you one of those sort of people? Can people actually hear you as you walk past going, "Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick," because you are so scheduled and you've got everything in little boxes and it's all tied up? That's fine, as long as you are sitting at his feet and you are not distracted by the very tick of the clock, the control that you have allowed to come into your life.

Martha ticked and kept time. Mary made time to run around the corner without her. She had to linger to meet someone she loved. Her heart lay open to his presence as a flower to the dew, as the grass to the rain. Martha loved him no less but allowed herself to be distracted by all the things that had to be done. One thing is needful, only one thing. Everything else is wonderful in your life, but one thing is needful. Somewhere along the way, you got distracted from Jesus by what? All the work you really felt had to be done before choosing the best part.

I remember coming to this part in the scriptures and, knowing myself a Martha, asking God to make me a Mary and giving him my willing cooperation, which is what it takes, and writing this: "I'm not a knot, Lord. No, I'm not. Well, not at the moment. Keep me untied, Lord. Straighten me out. Get hold of the frayed edges. Hold them securely in place. Help me lay still in your hands while you tease out the tightness. Tied in tight against myself, twisted over in knots of knotness, I'm no good to you or to me or to the people that I love. Help me, Lord, not to be a knot." And he will. And he does.

When in all my Martha-ness I come to him and I kneel at his feet and I look in his face, oh, I say, "Where've I been?" What's more than that, I hear him say, "Where've you been? Where've you been, Jill? I've been waiting for you. I've been waiting for you." It takes a bit of humility to sit there as she sat, a penitent acknowledging her unworthiness, a disciple confessing her ignorance, a receiver admitting her emptiness. But she sat there long enough to get hold of the fact that Jesus Christ had something very important to tell her.

Have you given your heart to Christ? Have you given your home to him yet? Are you that far? Thirdly, she gave her hurts to Jesus. Her hurts. It was an amazing thing, but Lazarus, the beloved brother, fell sick. It was very obvious, unless Jesus came and healed him, the doctors could do no more and he was going to die. So the sisters in John chapter 11 sent a message. They sent a message saying, "Lord, he whom thou lovest is sick." They did not send a message saying, "Lord, he whom loveth thou is sick."

No, here it is again: Jesus loved Martha, Jesus loved Mary, Jesus loved Lazarus. "He whom thou lovest is sick." That would do it. After all, Jesus had made no secret of his love for the three. He will come running. He would make sure he got there in time to save their brother. He had healed others; surely he would heal the one that he loved. But Jesus, hearing, stayed where he was in the same place for three days, and Lazarus died.

I saw a child once. I was sitting on a train, and the little kid was running around. It was nice because train travel you can do that. It's very hard to take children in a car, isn't it? They start as soon as you get in the car, "Are we nearly there, Mom? Are we nearly there, Dad?" And you have to say, "No, we haven't started yet." This little child was in a train, and so they were running up and down. They would go to one person and another. I thought, "This child is wonderfully sociable. I wonder who she belongs to." I started to look around trying to find the parents and I couldn't tell because the child would first of all clamber up beside one passenger and then take a little book that they had in their hand and run to another passenger and then talk to another. I thought, "I wonder who the parents are."

Suddenly there was a whistle, and the train entered the dark tunnel. Then I could tell who was the mother. The child made a beeline for the mother, for the tunnel was dark and she was frightened. And you can tell who belongs to Christ—the one when trouble comes heads straight for him.

The sisters and Mary, they headed straight for Christ. But they were puzzled because he didn't come and Lazarus died. When eventually he did turn up, both the sisters ran and knelt down, their body language saying, "You are our Lord," but their heart saying, "Why didn't you come?" and their mouths: "Lord, if you'd been here, my brother had not died. Why didn't you come? Why?"

They were hurt. They'd given their heart to Jesus, they'd given their homes to Jesus, but they'd never given their hurts to Jesus. And maybe that's where you are. You've given your heart, you've given your service, you've given your home, but you've never given your hurts to him. Your body language says all the right things—you come to church, you sit in place, you sing the hymns, you do the service, you teach the Sunday school class, you sing in the choir. But inside, there's one great big "Why?" even though the outside of you kneels.