Luke 10:38-42 Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village… But why is this concern which is so complex called one thing? I answer: Though salvation and holiness include various ingredients, and though the means of grace are various, yet they may be all taken collectively and called one thing; i.e., one great business, one important object of pursuit, in which all our endeavours and aims should centre and terminate. 1. It is also said to be one, in opposition to the many things that are the objects of a worldly mind. 2. It may also be called the one thing needful, to intimate that this is needful above all other things. 3. This is so necessary, that nothing else deserves to be called necessary in comparison of it.This shows you also, not only why this is called one thing, but why or in what sense it is said to be necessary. It is of absolute and incomparable necessity. 1. However well you have improved your time for other purposes, you have lost it all, unless you have improved it in securing the one thing needful. The proper notion of time is, that it is a space for repentance. Time is given us to prepare for eternity. 2. Whatever else you have been doing, you have lost your labour with your time, if you have not laboured above all things for this one thing needful. A child or an idiot riding upon a staff, building their mimic houses, or playing with a feather, are not so foolish as you in your conduct, while you are so seriously pursuing the affairs of time, and neglecting those of eternity. 3. This is not all: all your labour and pains have not only been lost while you have neglected one thing, but you have taken pains to ruin yourselves, and laboured hard all your lives for your own destruction. We were far from having any such design. But the question is not, what was your design? but, what is the unavoidable consequence of your conduct, according to the nature of things, and the unchangeable constitution of heaven? Whatever you design in going on in sin, the wages of sin is death, eternal death. 4. If you have hitherto neglected the one thing needful, you have unmanned yourselves, acted beneath and contrary to your own reason, and in plain terms behaved as if you had been out of your senses. If you have the use of your reason, it must certainly tell you for what it was given to you. And I beseech you tell me what it was given to you for but to serve the God that made you, to secure His favour, to prepare for your eternal state, and to enjoy the supreme good as your portion? (President Davies.) Parallel Verses KJV: Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village: and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house. |
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