Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3163
“Martha was cumbered about much serving.” Luke 10:40.
THE preacher will have one hearer tonight to whom his text will be amazingly applicable—himself! Here we have meeting after meeting and engagement after engagement. We are always working as hard as we can, but we have put on much extra canvas just now, serving much and not being exempt from Martha’s sin of being cumberedwith much serving. I should not wonder but what there may be some others here besides the preacher who may have fallen into the same state of mind and, perhaps, just now while engaged more than ever in God’s work, it may be well for us to pull ourselves up a little and look around us, and see what state we are in, lest, like Martha, we get more and more cumbered, till at last we speak as we ought not to speak and begin to upbraid others who are less wrong than ourselves!
I. We will first say a little on this point—WHAT WAS IT THAT MARTHA WAS PROBABLY CUMBERED ABOUT?
Her fault was not that she served. Oh, that is no fault! The condition of a servant should be the condition of every Christian. “I serve,” should be the motto of all the princes of the royal family of God! It was not her fault that she had “much serving.” We cannot do too much. Let us do all that we possibly can—head, heart and hands—let every single power and passion of our nature be engaged in the Master’s service! “Hereby shall you be My disciples, if you bring forth much fruit.” It was no fault of hers that she was busy preparing a feast for the Master. Happy Martha to have an opportunity of entertaining so blessed a Guest! And happy Martha, too, to have the spirit to throw her whole soul so heartily into the engagement. But her fault was that she grew “cumberedwith much serving,” so that she forgot Him and only remembered the service! She overrode her union with Christ by her service of Christ—and herein was the mischief.
I do not know what particular part of the service it was that cumbered her, but I do know that any part of it cumbers me, sometimes, and that as the minister of this Church, with our large college and with all sorts of work from morning till night, it is the easiest and most natural thing in the world to get “cumbered with much serving,” and to get into such a state of head and heart that it is almost impossible to sit at the Savior’s feet and at the same time to be serving Him as we ought to do. We ought to be Martha and Mary rolled into one. We should do much service and yet have much communion at the same time.
Martha’s fault, then, was that she grew cumbered. In thinking this matter over, I thought she might, perhaps, have been cumbered in this way. She was the housewife and there were a great many guests coming—more than she had expected—and she thought there was not enough in the house for them. “Surely,” she said, “I have provided for only fifty, and here are a hundred! What shall I do? I did not ask that person over there to come, I am sure, but there is no getting rid of him. I wish I had laid in more store, I told Mary so. I told her there would be more, but she said, ‘No, provide for only so many.’ I do not believe there is enough.” So she fretted over that—and any good housewife might be supposed to do the same. How often have you and I, who are serving God, fretted in the same way? We have said, “Oh, what can our poor little Church do? How can such a sum of money be raised? There is much more needed than we shall ever get!” The minister has come before his congregation and has felt—“One, two, three, four, five, yes, five loaves—and these only barley loaves—and a few fishes, and these but small. What are they among so many? I wish I had a narrower sphere of labor and had fewer people dependent upon my exertions!” This is how we have sometimes thought. Then at other seasons we have said—“How shall I keep on? I have so little strength. I have scarcely had power to do good up till now, how
shall I be sustained to the end of the journey?” We begin calculating and fear there is not enough meat in the house. With a sincere desire that every child of God should be supplied and that not a single guest at the table should go unfed, we begin to be cumbered because we think there will not be enough!
I do not know what it was that cumbered Martha, but I should not wonder if she got cumbered about the servants. She had said to one, “Now, you must prepare the dish and mind it is to be done in a certain way. And you, Mary, are to prepare the other dish, and you the other one.” There is an old proverb which says, “The more servants, the more plagues.” I do not think it is a true proverb, but some people have found it to be so. Perhaps Martha did. Perhaps there was one letting that roast burn, and another spoiling another roast—and so, turning round from one to another, Martha said, “It seems as if I ought to be everywhere. There is nothing done unless I am looking after all these people. They are sure to be getting into some mischief or other! I need a hundred hands to do everything myself, or else a hundred eyes to look after those who are doing it.” How often Christian ministers, especially, and each Christian in his own position, gets into this same state. You think, “Surely I thought I could trust such-and-such a Believer with such a work, but how he blunders at it! I can never give it to him to do again!” Then you try another with a certain duty that is very important and that goes wrong. If you have a great machine to work, it is not often, but when there is some cog gets off, or some band that gets snapped, or some wheel that gets out of order—and when one has to look after all these things and to see not only to one’s own personal work, but to the work of all these different people and to be sure that they are all kept in their proper place, it is no wonder that one sometimes feels—“Dear me! I cannot manage all these people!” And so one gets “cumbered with much serving.”