How Should We Serve

Last Week we talked about what a church is and what a church should do. A church is a group of people who have gathered together to worship God and to encourage each other in the faith as well as encouraging others toward a saving faith in Jesus Christ. So what does that look like? How do you look at your church or even at your own life and know if you are worshiping and encouraging or not?

It is interesting that a lawyer, not secular law like we know today but a person who studied the Old Testament law and how it should be applied to the people asked a very similar question to Jesus.

Luke 10:25–37 NASB95

And a lawyer stood up and put Him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” And He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How does it read to you?” And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And He said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.” But wishing to justify himself, he said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied and said, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among robbers, and they stripped him and beat him, and went away leaving him half dead. “And by chance a priest was going down on that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. “Likewise a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. “But a Samaritan, who was on a journey, came upon him; and when he saw him, he felt compassion, and came to him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them; and he put him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn and took care of him. “On the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I return I will repay you.’ “Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers’ hands?” And he said, “The one who showed mercy toward him.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do the same.”

What shall I do to inherit eternal life? Now at that time no one was teaching about Jesus dying on the cross or about redemption due to Jesus paying the penalty for our sins because it hadn’t happened yet. So what was he really asking? He was asking how do I know if I am on the right track, am I doing the right things in the right ways. He asked what he should do, what action should he take, what attitude should he have, what is the right way to think and act. He wanted assurance that he had it covered. Don’t we all?

Jesus asked him what the law said, after all he was a lawyer, it was his specialty. The lawyer answered correctly, after all that was his job. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and love your neighbor as yourself. You see the lawyer already knew what the bible said about his question, he had studied it and memorized it, but like many of us he wanted clarification to make sure he really understood what he had studied so he asked who is my neighbor.

Jesus told a story. The story is about a man who, through no fault of his own had come on hard times. He had been attacked and beaten by robbers and left on the side of the road. Jesus picked a priest and a Levite, two well respected members of society to be the fall guys in his story. Each of these men passed by the man who had been beaten without helping or offering help to the man. If the story were told today we might have said a pastor and a deacon both passed by the man and did not stop to help.

Then along comes the hero, a Samaritan. Now the Samaritans were despised by the Jews because they had intermarried with gentiles and their religious practices had become corrupt, in other words they were considered to be complete jerks who had no redeeming qualities whatsoever. If we were to tell the story today we find someone who we all agreed was not a good person, someone who our beliefs and our culture had taught us it was perfectly acceptable not to like, someone who was wearing a rainbow shirt and had a gay rights bumper sticker on his car.

This man then stopped, helped the hurt man into his car not worrying about the blood on his seat, bandaged the man out of his own first aid kit and then took the man to the nearest hospital and got him treatment. By the way the man also offered to pay the medical bill for this man he did not know.

Then Jesus asked the lawyer, who must have been a devout Jew to hold such a position, who was the real neighbor in this scenario. It must have almost physically hurt the lawyer to admit that a Samaritan could have done anything good, especially after a priest and a Levite had not. It would be similar to us crediting a homosexual with doing the right thing when a pastor and a deacon would not. That was shocking, that was radical, but Jesus was making a point.

It is not your position or your background that determines if you are loving your neighbor or not it is your actions. Loving ones neighbor is not defined by what church you go to or what position you hold or by any other kind of status. Loving your neighbor is defined by what you do, by your actions.

If we want to love God and love our neighbor we have to do something, we have to take some action. The man who was beaten in the story could have been a Jew, a church member, then again he could have been a gentile or Samaritan or whatever, Jesus does not say and I think he does so on purpose. It does not matter what your neighbors background or pedigree is, it matters what you do in response to their need. It’s not about the status of the one helped but about the heart of the one doing the helping, or perhaps about the one doing the looking the other way, its about which one you are, and which one you should be.

In the story Jesus told it is interesting that the hurt man did not do anything wrong to get himself into this position, I am not sure if that part of the story is intentional or not or exactly what it means. I don’t really think it means that we are never to help someone who contributed to getting themselves in the fix they are in but it may mean that If someone is digging themselves deeper and deeper into a hole you cannot help them until they stop digging and try to get out. That would make sense based on what I see in scripture and what I see in the world.

People who are in the business of helping others will tell you that you cannot help someone out of a situation until they want to get out of it themselves. Scripture tells me that God is a gentleman and even he does not force someone to accept his help, he offers it and he waits until they choose to accept it. Maybe that is the point.

The person in Jesus’ story also was in such a state that he could not help himself. The Samaritan did for the man what the man could not do and then continued on. There may be a lesson in that. Solomon said that a man who will not work should not eat, not a man who cannot work but a man who will not work. There is wisdom in letting someone do what they can to help themselves.

While you are considering all of that let me tell you that this is not all of the story. Luke follows this story with another story about serving others.

Luke 10:38–42 NASB95

Now as they were traveling along, He entered a village; and a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her home. She had a sister called Mary, who was seated at the Lord’s feet, listening to His word. But Martha was distracted with all her preparations; and she came up to Him and said, “Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to do all the serving alone? Then tell her to help me.” But the Lord answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things; but only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”

Martha was working to prepare a meal and wanted Mary to help. Mary was listening to the teaching of Jesus. Martha was doing something, serving others and Mary seemed to be shirking her responsibilities as a hostess. But Jesu took Mary’s side not Martha’s side. Jesus said that Mary had chosen the good thing, the best thing. It appears that we can get so caught up in doing what we do that we miss what is important.

So how do we tie these things together, what is the message God wants us to hear? When someone has a need, when someone is hurting, when someone needs help God wants us to take the time and effort to lend a hand. We should be the first to stop and offer aid. We should be the first to help. It is easy to get caught up in your day to day life and say I don’t have the time, I can’t stop, it is easy to be too busy, too active.

Martha was preparing food. We all need to eat, if we do not eat we will waste away and die. Eating is important. Then again most of us could miss a meal or two without much harm, if you are like me it might even do you some good. What if we were so caught up in fixing the meal, doing the laundry, washing the car, cleaning the house, getting the kids where they need to go and paying the bills on time that we missed a chance to sit at Jesus’ feet and hear what he had to say.

Today we have the opportunity to hear from Jesus every time we pray, every time we open our bibles, every time two or more gather together in his name, he is there. Do you ever get so busy that you just can’t stop, so busy that if Jesus put an opportunity right in front of you to love your neighbor, to love Jesus himself, even with that opportunity right there in front of you so that you either have to go around it or step over it if you are not going to take advantage of it do you find yourself unwilling to stop?

To be honest it doesn’t happen very often. Most of the time we can put our heads down and plow forward in a straight line without God intervening in our lives very much. Most of the opportunities God gives us are a little off to the side. We know of someone who could use a little encouragement and we think of giving them a call, but we never pick up the phone. We see someone who looks like they could use a little help but we don’t know them and we don’t want to intrude so we pass on by.

Before the days of automobiles many people traveled in horse drawn buggies or carriages. In the country it was mostly fine but when you went to town, perhaps to go to church you would put a strap over the horses head that had a flat piece of leather sticking out to the sides of the horses eyes. you see horses are easily scared by new and different things and if they were not used to being around a lot of other traffic on the road they might get scared and take off running so it was common to use these blinders so that they could only see what is right in front of them. I think we still use blinders today, sometimes on our way through life, maybe even on our way to church we stare straight ahead refusing to be distracted by what is around us, its like we don’t even see it, like we are wearing blinders.

Are we blind? Is our church blind? do we recognize the needs around us and do something about them. A few days ago someone said that they were going to make a phone call to someone who needed encouragement but they never did, they had good intentions, but no actions. I have done that myself. I don’t want to be like that anymore.

I want to be like the good Samaritan, I want to help, I want to love my neighbor. How hard is it to make a phone call, change a tire, make a visit. Is my life really so filled with critically important things that I can’t take the time to show love to another human being, I hope not. If it is then I need to make some changes, will you make them with me?

This week I want to challenge everyone here to make four phone calls. Two of them to church members who you haven’t seen in a while or you know need some encouragement, some love, and two to non church members. I am not asking you to invite them to church although you can, I am asking you to love your neighbor. If we cannot do these simple things our church will not thrive, perhaps if we cannot do these simple things our church should not thrive. Will you love your neighbor this week, how about in the weeks to come. If Jesus said loving God is the most important commandment and loving your neighbor is like that as well can we afford to skimp on those things, the most important things. I don’t believe that we can, or should. This week, I want you to concentrate on loving your neighbor and see what God decides to do.