Luke 10:25-37 - The Good Samaritan
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Introduction:
We live in a world where virtue signaling has become a common thing. Virtue signaling means to attempt to show other people that you are a good person by expressing opinions that are acceptable to them usually accompanied by inaction. We see this on social media oftentimes. We see people who claim to be avid environmentalists and yet have their own private jets that emit more carbon than the common person could imagine emitting. We see people speak out against racism while having contempt for a different race or group of people.
Sadly, most people are not who they say they are.
R. Kent Hughes stated:
“All humans find it difficult to live up to what we espouse intellectually.”
R. Kent Hughes
It is common for people to have their issues they like to talk about. Yet, it is also common that these same people are not practicing what they are preaching.
Today we are about to meet a teacher of the Law who knows the Law well but doesn’t practice what he preaches. And we will see Jesus call this out.
As we see this interchange, we need to ask ourselves if we are guilty of virtue signaling.
Do we practice what we preach?
Prayer
Today we will see two important aspects of following and obeying Christ. The first is…
I. You Should Follow the Greatest Commandments (25-28)
I. You Should Follow the Greatest Commandments (25-28)
And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”
We are introduced to a lawyer who has an agenda. This is not a lawyer as we consider today. This isn’t someone who knows the secular law. This is a man who is a scholar of the Old Testament Mosaic Law. He is an expert in that Law.
We are told that this man sought to put Jesus to the test. At face value, this guy should be a good pick to send out from the scribes and Pharisees. He is an expert in the field of the Law. If anyone could trip up Jesus, this guy should be it.
However, this poor chap doesn’t know what he is doing. He is literally putting God-incarnate to the test.
Can this man adept and proficient in the Law have any effectiveness in arguing with the Author of the Law?
I’m sure that we can already see that this is going to end up turning out to be a challenge for him!
And the lawyer asks a difficult question. What shall I do to inherit eternal life? By eternal life he is asking about how he can avoid the judgment to come - in essence how can he be saved. This is a common question that comes up in the New Testament such as Acts 2:37 and Acts 16:30. People wanted to know how they could be saved and enter God’s kingdom.
Note that he calls Jesus teacher. He obviously doesn’t recognize Jesus as Lord. He actually sees Him as a false teacher and is seeking to defame Him and prove Him to be false.
He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” 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.”
Jesus, like usual, challenges the man by asking a question to his question. He asks the man about the overarching summary of the Law. We are told that He asks the man how he reads the Law. In essence, Jesus is asking how do you recite it? He was referring the twice daily profession of the Shema (which means to hear) which is found in Deuteronomy 6:4-5.
The expert of the law answers Jesus back with quoting this beautiful Shema to him.
And in this summary of the Law we see first that we should love the Lord with our whole being.
We Should Love God With All of Our…
Heart (Emotions and Motivation)
Soul (Eternal Self)
Strength (Energy and Physical Ability)
Mind (Consciousness)
God requires that we give Him all of ourselves. Our motivation, energy, consciousness, and entire eternal being should be dedicated to Him.
And in the second greatest commandment that Jesus spells out in Matthew 22:39, this man correctly states that one must love one’s neighbor as one’s self. We will exposit this section more in our following point, but I want to make a quick note that this is not a verse to promote self-love like many have used it to do so. Instead, it promotes the replacement of self-love with love for one’s neighbor. People do not struggle with not loving themselves - excuse the double negative there. Even those who seem to have self-depreciating tendencies are still overly self-focused. It is the natural state of man to be lovers of self. Those with even depressive thoughts and self-depreciating behaviors are still all focused on themselves! We need to replace our love for self with God and then with others. Our focus needs to be on God first and other’s second. Only then can we truly see ourselves in the correct light. We are primarily servants of God and secondarily servants to others.
Jesus upon hearing the man rightly quote Deuteronomy 6:4-5 states:
And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”
Jesus’ answer is a lot heavier than we might read in passing. It sounds like He has just given this guy a peaceful answer. The guy has answered correctly. The interchange should be over. This expert of the Law should feel pretty good right about now. He correctly answered a question from Jesus!
Yet, we will see in a moment that this expert of the Law was virtue signaling, and Jesus wanted the man to feel the weight of the Law.
Jesus tells the man that if he keeps the Law - meaning perfectly keeps the law - he will live. The verb tense of this sentence means that the lawyer must keep following the Law perfectly in order to live.
But who can keep the Law of God perfectly anyway? Even if someone is amazingly rigorous, they still will fall at times. No one perfect, right?
James, the half brother of Jesus, would go on to write a hopeless statement for those who think they can follow the entire Law:
For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.
Obviously we know that we all fail multiple times per day - not just once ever. But James asserts that if one fails one point of the Law then he is guilty of the whole thing!
What a weight that there is here! Who can stand under such a terrible weight?
Well, let’s see how the man responds to this heavy weight that has been laid upon his shoulders… Which brings us to our second point today…
Scripture References: Acts 2:37, Acts 16:30, Deuteronomy 6:4-5, Matthew 22:39, James 2:10
II. You Should Follow the Greatest Commander (29-37)
II. You Should Follow the Greatest Commander (29-37)
The man answers back to Jesus the following:
But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
This man, under the weight of the Law, refuses to be humbled and bow down in repentance and faith. He is dead set on justifying himself.
Instead, he turns toward his old friend - legalism.
He tries to weasel his way out of this difficult command by questioning the definition of one of the words. This guy is definitely a lawyer!
And who is my neighbor? In essence he is asking, “Just how far does this love thing go. I mean, we can’t love everyone. What about blasphemers? What about our enemies? You can’t possibly mean they are my neighbors as defined here.”
He wants to justify himself for not loving certain people.
Oh how man desires to justify himself! As we mentioned last week - our flesh wants to let God and others know what we bring to the table. We desire to justify ourselves. Yet we have no power to justify ourselves.
We are guilty criminals in front of the judge. We have no hope of representing ourselves before a holy and just God. God stands ready to pronounce the sentence. And if we try to justify ourselves, we will be sadly disappointed in the outcome.
Brothers and sisters, we are only justified by the payment of Christ on the cross.
We can be justified - or declared righteous - not because of our own intrinsic worth, righteousness, abilities, or hearts - but we can be declared righteous because of the finished work of Christ on the cross and through His resurrection. When we quit trying to justify ourselves and instead we humbly admit we are sinners, repent of our sins, and turn to Christ in faith, the Bible teaches that Christ’s righteousness is imputed unto us - meaning that when God sees us, He sees His Son Jesus Christ. How beautiful is that!
Look at this clearly taught in 2 Corinthians 5:21:
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Christ became the curse for us. He took our punishment and the wrath of God upon Himself so that we might be declared righteous!
I pray that everyone here has experienced being born again as Jesus mentions in John 3. There is no more important thing in your life than being declared righteous through Christ’s work on the cross.
Since this lawyer has refused to humble himself, Jesus begins a parable that will do some humbling for him…
Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead.
Our first character in this parable is just called a man.
It is most often assumed that this is likely a Jew since he is going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. We are given the idea of going down because Jerusalem is on hill. Everywhere you go from Jerusalem is down.
In this map we see that Jericho is around 18 miles east-northeast of Jerusalem. What you do not see on this map is that there is quite a steep decline in elevation between the two areas. There is around a 3,300 foot descent during this 18 mile journey which makes for quite a rough place for travel.
Because of the difficult and unpopulated terrain including both desert and rocky country, robbers commonly were known to attack travelers.
And in this parable that Jesus is teaching we are told that this man is seemingly helpless and hopeless. He has been robbed, beaten, and left for dead. And he is in the middle of nowhere. It is like being on the side of the road out in the county where only a few cars pass per day. He is not in the best of situations.
Just when the story seems hopeless, we are introduced to our next character.
The second character and first man with the ability to intervene is the priest.
Luke 10:31 (ESV)
Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he…
I’m going to hold off finishing that sentence at this point. What do you think the priest did?
I love how Jesus says by chance in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way as we know nothing is by chance. God is sovereign.
But we have now been introduced to our first possible hero here. He is a priest. He is of the lineage of Aaron - Moses’s brother. He is a man of the cloth. Of course this man will stop and help the dying gentleman, right? He is a holy man. He should be the first to have pity.
He knows the Law intimately. His job is know it verbatim! He knew the verse in Leviticus 19:34 that applied directly to this situation regarding strangers:
You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.
The priest may not know this man who is on the side of road, but he knew that he should love him as his own self. He should be a good neighbor to this man and help him.
Yet, this man does not obey the Law of God. See what he does…
Luke 10:31 (ESV)
Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side.
He passes by on the other side of the road.
Isn’t that legalism and hypocrisy at its finest? The one who knows the Law and teaches the Law doesn't practice the Law. Talk about virtue signaling.
This is a difficult section of scripture. We see this priest who should be the first one to render aid pass by on the other side of the road. We understand that this is sinful and unmerciful. Our hearts burn within us because of the injustice happening here.
We don’t know why he does this. We aren’t told by Jesus his reasons for passing. Frankly, they don’t matter. Whether he was concerned about cleanliness when considering touching a possible dead body, worried about getting robbed himself, or that he was just too selfish to get his hands dirty remains to be seen. But what is clear is that this priest was not a good neighbor to the man who lay dying.
The priest has miserably failed this test of love and left a man for dead. But maybe our next character will do better.
The third character and the second man with the ability to intervene is the Levite.
Luke 10:32 (ESV)
So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him…
Surely this Levite will not let the man down! Levites were one step below the priests. All of the priests were Levites but not all of the Levites were priests. Priests were descendents of the Levite lineage of Aaron while all the other Levites were non-Aaronic descendents of Levi.
These men were responsible for liturgical readings and for caring for the temple. They had a good grasp and understanding of the Law as well.
We are even told that this Levite came to the place and saw him. This seems to infer that he got a bit closer than the priest did. Maybe this Levite will step in and intervene.
Yet we see in this verse the following end result is the same…
Luke 10:32 (ESV)
So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.
This has been rather depressing thus far. We are 0-2 and we have had the cream of the crop as far as Israelite piety goes. This man who lay dying has had two chances to be saved and neither one came to his aid.
Now we come to our final character in this parable. The listening audience likely was ready for the Israelite commoner. They were ready for someone that would relate to the common man. It would kind of be like someone trying to relate to the middle class in America. It would be like saying the politician passed by and then the billionaire passed by, but the coal-miner stopped and helped. The people would have applauded that story like people would today!
The Israelites weren’t necessarily pleased with the religious leaders. Many of the common men understood the corruption that came with some of the religious leaders and their dealings with Rome. So some of those listening might have been on the edge of their seat ready to hear about the next man that passed by this unfortunate man left for dead. But far beyond what their imaginations were likely considering…
We are now introduced to our fourth and final character and the third man with ability to intervene. And he is a Samaritan.
But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion.
A what!? A Samaritan. I’m sure some present gasped at the thought of a Samaritan being the hero of this story.
We discussed the Samaritans a couple of weeks ago. They were hated by the Jews, and they, in turn, also hated the Jews as well. The Samaritans refused to recognize Jerusalem as the place that they should worship. This should be well understood as this man was going from Jerusalem to Jericho and it could likely be inferred that he had just worshipped and or sacrificed at the temple or attended a feast in Jerusalem - which is especially more likely hearing that the priest and Levite who also had just gone by.
Also, if you recall, Jesus when attempting to go to Jerusalem through the Samaritans’ land was rejected and refused passage because He had set His face set toward Jerusalem. They hated Jerusalem and everything that it represented. So this Samaritan would have been thought to be the least likely person to stop by and help a likely Jewish man who was half dead on the side of the road coming home from Jerusalem.
Yet we were told that it is this man, the Samaritan, one of compromised Jewish linage, who has compassion on the man who lay dying.
We see what this compassion looks like in the following two verses…
He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’
We are told in verse 34 that he went to him and took care of his wounds. The wine likely was used as an anti-septic and then the oil was used to help with pain control. The wounds were then carefully bandaged and bound up. After all of this work and use of resources, he sets the man on his own animal and brings him to an inn to take care of him. When arriving at the inn, the Samaritan gives the innkeeper two denarii which was equivalent to around two days wages for the average man. This was a significant sum of money for the care of a stranger.
We should also consider that this man must have walked beside his animal carrying the beaten man for quite some distance. Consider the sacrifice that this foreigner has done for his enemy. The man's own people, including a priest and Levite, refused to help the dying man. They were not willing to get their hands dirty. They were not willing to show compassion.
Some might think it is too harsh to say that the first two men did not have compassion.
But my friends...
True compassion leads to action.
This isn’t just a baseless quote from me. It is clearly taught in the Bible. See James 2:15-16:
If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?
If we truly have compassion for another then actions will follow. We might feel sorry for someone or feel sad because of someone’s situation. But true compassion leads to action.
Just like true faith produces deeds as James asserts, true compassion produces actions and works as well. If we are true followers of Christ, we obey the commandments of Christ. We love God and we love others.
After completing this parable, we see Jesus’s final question and final charge:
Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”
Jesus concludes this parable by asking which of these three proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers.
It seems clear that the lawyer is still struggling with accepting what Jesus has just taught. Although he rightly answers the one who showed him mercy, his answer refuses to even name the Samaritan. His answer is somewhat odd and awkward in the Greek as he seems to desperately avoid the term Samaritan.
But Jesus presses in even further and tells the lawyer to go and do likewise. Jesus is literally telling the lawyer to be like a Samaritan in a parable. He is to serve like this Samaritan just did.
Jesus wants the man to know that he cannot fulfill the Law in and of himself. He falls short even of this Samaritan!
But this is the beauty of the Gospel. It is only through the power of the Holy Spirit that we can truly love God and love others the way we are called to love.
Scripture References: 2 Corinthians 5:21, John 3, Leviticus 19:34, James 2:15-16
Conclusion:
As we come to a close, I pray that this account has struck you to the core. I pray that you see your own struggle to love God and others. We, ourselves, can be guilty of virtue signaling. We might say we love God, but do we live like it? Do we attend church regularly, read the Bible regularly, pray regularly?
We may say we love people, but do we really have compassion on people followed by action? Do we sacrifice things that we would like for others?
My friends, we cannot do this well in and of ourselves. But with the power of the Holy Spirit in us we can love the way God has called us to love.
Church, as Jesus has just charged us:
You go, and do likewise.
Jesus (Luke 10:37b)
Closing