Love Others-Reach Out

Today we conclude our sermon series on the greatest commandment: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength, this is the first and greatest commandment, and the second is like it, you shall love your neighbour as yourself. In this series we see God’s heart. He created us to love Him, be with Him, and to enjoy life, because He is with us, and we are with Him. He also created us to be in fellowship with each other. He created all human beings in His image, and He created us to love each other and enjoy life together. One of my most favourite days of the week is Sunday, because I get to come here to be with God and His people! I love God and I love you!

The problem that has been in the world ever since Adam and Eve sinned is sin. Sin destroys God’s good creation. Sin is full of hate: hatred toward God and neighbour. Sin is the greatest destructive force in the world, and its effects are everywhere—people do not know their creator, people do not know themselves, and people do not know their neighbours, even their own family members.

Having looked at loving God, having considered how we are to rightly love ourselves and one another within the Church, we turn now to look at how we are to love others in the world outside the church. A couple of notes as we begin. First, I’ve taken some liberty with my understanding of the parable of the good Samaritan and allegorised it to apply to our context today, therefore, my sermon outline doesn’t line up. Second, there are many people in the world, and even in Christianity, who do not like the Old Testament, who consider God’s revelation of Himself in the Old Testament as somehow abhorrent, they see Him as capricious, mean-spirited, vengeful and hard. Because they do not rightly understand God’s holiness, they don’t rightly understand and cannot see God’s incredible love for man, throughout history, particularly in the Old Testament. That God’s greatest commandment, and the second one like unto it—to love others as we love ourselves—are found in the OT is proof. Indeed, God loves us so much that He tells us the truth of our sinful condition and then is Himself the solution, the antidote, the cure for our sinful state. Jesus Christ died on the cross in order to save us from all our sins. Because God first loved us, we can love Him and others.

Luke 10: 25-37 teaches us how to fulfil this second commandment, in our relationship with others. Now, the parable of the Good Samaritan begins in verse 29, but I included the previous verses for context and for an important lesson. The lawyer, a certain lawyer, and therefore known to the community, to the readers of Luke’s gospel, (if not the man himself, or possibly this kind of lawyer) stood up to test Jesus. Luke, along with Matthew, is recounting the same story, though the circumstances are slightly different. He asks Jesus what must be done to inherit eternal life.

Jesus answers his question with a question and commends the lawyer for his answer, for he has rightly summarised the law and prophets. The lawyer got to the heart of God, and the heart of loving God and neighbour. But the Lawyer wanted to justify himself, he wanted proof that he was on the right track. We could almost as easily compare him to the Apostle Paul, when, known as Saul, he was persecuting the church, zealously serving God, but wrongly. This lawyer wanted Jesus to approve of his religiousity, his religious system, which, actually, didn’t truly love God or neighbour.

Now let’s get to the parable and how I think we should understand it and apply it to our context today.

Jesus said in John 10:7-10 “Most assuredly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who ever came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” The Apostle Paul takes up Jesus teaching when he writes in Ephesians 6:12 “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”

Satan is a thief who steals by deceit. He steals the truth. He masquerades lies and half-truths as the truth. Satan prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. But Jesus comes to bring life and life more abundantly.

So the parable is like this: A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. One could say, a certain man left the presence of God, to go into the world. And as was expected to happen, he fell among thieves—those who also had once been with God, but who had either left God, or been rejected by God, for their hearts and minds were consumed with evil. We know this because their deeds are evil, thieves and people who wound others and leave them for dead, are not those who love God and others.

We don’t know the man’s intentions for going to Jericho, but by doing so, he put himself in harm’s way.

Jesus tells us that two certain people came by, a certain priest—again known to the crowd—passed the wounded man by. Also a certain Levite—a prominent citizen, of the priestly clan of Israel, someone whose livelihood was earned by the generous giving of others, someone who was familiar with charity. Both men had the means to help the wounded man, who was one of their own people. Neither one chose to do so, neither showed love or compassion. From our perspective, they should have. But they justified their actions by ignoring the man, by thinking to themselves, that the man brought it upon himself, he didn’t deserve mercy, he had to live with his consequences, and the Lord wouldn’t want me to become unclean in order to help him; the Lord wants me to maintain purity.

But then a Samaritan, the hated false worshippers that the Jews did everything they could do to avoid, purposely choosing to go around Samaria rather than through it when travelling, at a great extra cost in time and fuel, had mercy on the man and cared for him and picked him up, and ensured he would be restored to health. This unlikely hero did what the first two should have done, without thinking. All their lives they had been taught God’s Word, they knew what it was to love God and neighbour. But they did not! They did not.

Here’s my interpretation. All human beings are the travelling man. We’ve left God’s sanctuary—the garden of Eden, Jerusalem, with Adam. We’ve put ourselves into the hands of the thief, Satan and all his workers of evil. He relentlessly abuses, threatens, deceives, and makes life as horrible as possible for humans. He paints glorious pictures of life, but never, ever delivers on them. He promises to put man in charge of his life, whilst handcuffing him to the ground. Just look around at our culture! People are bragging about their freedom of expression, who they think they are—human beings believing they are animals even! And they cannot see that they are deep, deep in darkness, they cannot see the chains that are keeping them bound.

And whenever someone reaches up to fight back, to try to get out of the darkness, Satan and sin increases the pressure to just go along, convincing him that true freedom lies just around the corner.

Along come a certain priest—by this Jesus means one of the false priests of Israel, who is opposed to Jesus. As a priest, he claims to be a servant of God, but he is really only a servant of Satan and sin. Jesus called out the Pharisees, saying to them in John 8:44 “You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.”

Likewise the Levite, of the priestly clan of Israel. This certain, known man, a prominent person in their society, should have known what it was to serve God. But this man didn’t truly serve God, he served himself and the desires of the world.

Jesus is the Good Samaritan. No, I’m not suggesting that Jesus represented the Samaritans. But they way the Pharisees, the Levites, the Scribes, the Saducees, the Sanhedrin, those who were in power, the religious leaders, the so-called God followers, were not actually following God. They were following the devil. They were leading others to follow him as well. The people were like sheep without a shepherd. That’s why Jesus is the Great Shepherd of the sheep, the Good Samaritan.

Notice how the Samaritan acts. Immediately he had compassion on him. He didn’t look down on him for his sinful behaviour—as one could accuse him for leaving the safety of Jerusalem. He didn’t chastise him for getting involved with the theives, such that they took advantage of him, beat him and left him for dead. He had compassion on him, and he helped him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, poured on oil and wine; and he set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. He paid the innkeeper to care for him, and promised to pay whatever else was needed to make this man well.

Jesus came and had compassion on all humanity—including the priest and Levite. Yes, He called them the sons of the devil, but He had to let them know, in no uncertain terms, just how bad the situation was. They had deluded themselves into thinking they were okay.

Brothers and sisters, let us first examine ourselves to ensure that we haven’t deluded ourselves into thinking we are at all okay apart from what Christ has done for us. Let us then look around at our neighbours, our family, our friends, anyone who does not know the Lord Jesus, and let us have compassion on them. It doesn’t matter if they are prominent members of society, regular members of society, or the homeless.

Let us have compassion because we know they don’t know Jesus. Let us have compassion on them because they are lost in this terrible world of darkness. Let our hearts break for them. Let us call upon God to open our hearts and our minds to have the same compassion for them, as God has for them, and us.

Let us kindly, gently, in as Christlike a manner as He enables us through His Spirit, speak the truth in love. Let us tell people of Jesus, who is the light of the world! Let us continue to give to the Soup Kitchen, with our donations, with the monthly collections of food. But let’s not just stop there, just doing things. We have to tell people about Jesus. We have to share him, it is show and tell. As members of Christ, we are to be Good Samaritans— sharing the love of Christ, the Truth of Christ with the world we are in.

Have compassion on those around you. Please see, know and understand that they are living in darkness. They think they are free, but they are bound—as bound and as helpless to save themselves as Israel was in Egypt. They are in darkness, and they need to see the light. Pray to the Lord, pray for the Spirit of Christ to come upon you, as the Spirit was upon Jesus who proclaimed, Luke 4:18-19 ““The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, Because He has anointed Me To preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives And recovery of sight to the blind, To set at liberty those who are oppressed; To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.””

Next week, Lord willing, we will centre our focus on Christ, seeing who He is, and how we can know Him in the breaking of the bread of communion. Then, after that, we will spend two Sundays looking at the Great Commission—how to be Christ, the Good Samaritan, to our neighbours. Amen.