GOOD SAMARITAN [long]

INTRO

Good morning!

It’s so good to be here to open up God’s Word with you today to continue our study of the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 10. If you’ve been with us you know we’ve been studying this parable of the Good Samaritan in this series about intentional neighboring—choosing to love people well.

And as we get going I want to share with you something that happened to me just a few weeks back. It was a Friday, and I had spent most of the day up to that point studying to preach a sermon on this parable we’re going to look at today. But I had taken a break, and I went to Cascade Park to do some hiking. And since I’m preparing for some backpacking trips later this summer, lately I’ve been wearing my full 25-pound pack with all my camping gear so that I can get a little training in.

So on this Friday, I was all geared up, and I had been going up and down this hill at Cascade with my pack for over an hour, thinking about this parable. And it was getting hot, and I was getting tired, and I was sort of at the point where I was thinking, “alright, that’s enough for the day, I need to head back and keep going on this sermon.” And right around that time around the corner on the trail came these three guys, a little rough around the edges, who were coming toward me on the path and as they got close they asked me if I had a lighter. 

Now, in this moment I had two problems. The first problem was that I did have a lighter—but it was packed away in all my camping stuff. And the second problem was that I was so tired and caught off guard. And they saw that I was tired and sort of stumbling over my words, and so they said, “Oh, we don’t want you to have to stop and unpack—no worries man!” And they kept on walking. And I kept on walking.

And about five seconds later—hasn’t this ever happened to you?—I felt the conviction of the Holy Spirit. And I realized what just happened. I was getting ready to preach a sermon about really seeing the people in our lives! A sermon about noticing people and responding to them in love! A sermon about welcoming interruptions into our life to impact people for Christ! And I had just let a perfect opportunity pass me by on the trail!

Sure, I was tired. I was preoccupied. It caught me off guard. But isn’t that just life?

Now, I don’t know what would have happened if I had turned around and started digging for my lighter, but I know that it was an opportunity I had to shine the light of the Gospel of Jesus. And I let it pass on by. 

See, even for people like you and me, who have been studying the words of Jesus, who have been learning from this parable, we can recognize that we still have a problem. That we haven’t totally arrived yet. 

And I want to talk about that problem in just one minute, but before I do I want to, just one last time, invite you to open up your Bibles with me to Luke 10, and to this parable of the Good Samaritan so we can read it together.

We’re going to finish up this parable today, and as we do, you’ll notice that the passage doesn’t end when the parable ends—actually, Jesus immediately re-engages the conversation He’s been having with this Lawyer. And so I want to read this whole conversation so that it’s fresh in our minds as we get ready to unpack the last two verses here. 

And if you’ve got your Bibles open to Luke 10, find verse 25, and stand with me to honor the reading of God’s Word.

PASSAGE SET UP

Read  Luke 10:25–37 “On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?” He answered, “ ‘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 have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.” But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” In reply Jesus said... “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”” 

You may be seated. 

BODY

So again, having come to the end of the parable, we see that this is not just some isolated story. Rather, this is one part of a larger conversation. And as the conversation wraps up, Jesus says, “Which of these three—that is, the Priest, the Levite, and the Samaritan from the story—do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”” 

And this last phrase “Go and do likewise” should remind us of the beginning of the passage. If you recall, back in the first week of the series, we saw that this whole conversation was prompted when the Lawyer asks in Luke 10:25 “Teacher… what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And then we remember that later on Jesus says, “You have answered correctly! Do this and you will live.” So from the beginning, while the Lawyer wanted to make the conversation about what He knew, and about understanding the rules, and about a legal discussion, Jesus wanted to remind Him that God is concerned also with how we actually live. 

In other words, it is not enough just to know the right answers! It’s not enough just to answer correctly. Or, to put it differently, [[answering correctly doesn’t mean that we’re living abundantly]]. 

And thinking back to my time in the Park with those guys, that was the problem. I had studied this parable! I knew all about it! [[he problem is, we can study the parable all we want.]] We can become an “expert in the NT Law,” as it were… and yet miss Jesus’ point completely. See, it’s just the kind of well-studied people like us, like those of us who have been doing this deep-dive into the parable, that Jesus had originally directed the parable to!

And this week I came across something that really drove home this point for me. It’s called The Princeton Good Samaritan Experiment. 

This is an experiment that was conducted back in the early 1970’s at Princeton Theological Seminary. 

And what they did was take seminary students—students studying to become pastors and church leaders—and they gave them an assignment. Some of the students were told to write a sermon on the Good Samaritan, while others were told to write a sermon on a different subject. 

But then, when they showed up to give their sermon for class, they were told that they had actually showed up to the wrong spot, and now they needed to go across campus to a different building in order to pass the assignment. And before they left, some were told that they were late, some were told they had just enough time, and some were told they have a few minutes to spare.

And so they’re stressed out, they’re heading to try and give this sermon, and what none of them knew was that, along the path to the new classroom, the researches had placed an actor slumped in a doorway—coughing, groaning, doubled-over in pain, and clearly in need of help.

So you can imagine the scenario! You have these highly motivated students who had been studying the Bible, and who thought they really understood this parable, and they were trying to see if the students would actually stop and help someone in need. 

So, what do you think happened? What do you think was a better predictor of whether the students stopped—was it whether they had been studying the Good Samaritan, or was it how much of a rush they were in? Actually, turn to your neighbor and give them your best guess. Was it their study, or their pace that made the bigger impact?

Here’s what happened: whether or not the students stopped to help had little to do with their personal beliefs, their compassion, or even the subject of their talk. The key factor was how much of a hurry they were in.

In fact, those who thought they were late were far less likely to stop. Some literally stepped over the suffering man on their way to give a sermon about the Good Samaritan.

Less than 10% of the students who were in a hurry stopped to help the man in distress. And what’s so amazing to me is that they thought they had it! They were fully prepared to teach others about the love that God wants us to show. They had studied, they had probably parsed every Greek verb... But they failed the real test. 

It feels almost oxymoronic, but as we become familiar with the Scripture, there can be a temptation that grows within us to think to ourselves that, I’m excused, or I’m good, because I know all about these things. This, I think, is one reason that the Scriptures say that “knowledge puffs up!” We can have this over-inflated view of ourselves! We can think in our hearts, “Well, of course I would stop to show mercy!” And it’s for this very reason that we need to ask ourselves, not would we stop to love the man, but have we stopped to see and love the people in our lives? Not would we in some hypothetical situation, but have we truly done this? 

We’ve been in this passage for four weeks! We’ve been studying it! We’ve learned so much! But has it begun to change us? Have we gained knowledge, but failed to gain love?

So this is the question I want us to consider as we spend some time wrapping up the parable: Have I followed the example of the Good Samaritan?

And to answer that question, there are two things I want us to notice about the example of the Good Samaritan in our Text today that will guide our reflection as we go. 

So let’s hop back into the Text… 

POINT ONE

Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers? The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”

So here we have Jesus wrapping up the parable, and the first thing He does is to pose a question to get the Lawyer to reflect on it. Jesus wanted him to wrestle with and think about not the identity, or the race, or the culture, or the status of the people… but about who demonstrated the kind of love that God desires?

And the answer is clear. Jesus has set up the story to perfectly confront the Lawyer, and the Lawyer sees this and says, “The one who had mercy on him.” 

Now, notice with me that he doesn’t say, “the Samaritan,” even though that’s obviously what he means. Some have picked up on this and argued that it’s a sign of the man’s prejudice, as though he can’t even bring himself to formally admit that the hero of the story was a Samaritan. We saw a few weeks ago how much the Jewish people hated the Samaritans. And while that is possible, I actually don’t think that’s the case—and that’s because of this word that he uses here, the word “mercy.” If it is the case that this Lawyer is so flustered that he won’t even say the word Samaritan, then it would be even less likely that he would call the man merciful using this particular word. 

And the reason I say this is because this word “mercy” in the Greek is the word eleos, one of just a few different words for mercy. But of the different Greek words for mercy, it is this one in particular that shows up the most in the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament Scriptures.

And of the almost 250 times that this word shows up, which our friend the Lawyer had studied and probably had memorized, the vast, vast, vast, vast majority of cases, in something like 90% of the time, this word refers not to the mercy of human beings, but to the mercy of God—and specifically to God’s long-suffering love, His lovingkindness, His covenant faithfulness. 

So for example when God meets Moses on Mount Sinai in one of these mountaintop moments in the Old Testament book of Exodus, it says “[God] passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin...” (Ex 34:6-7). This is how God wants to be known! He wants to be known as a God who maintains love to thousands, which again, in the Greek is our word eleos, “mercy.”

Now, the reason I bring all this up is because I believe that when the Lawyer considered the love of the Good Samaritan, and when he saw all the ways that the Samaritan loved the man that we saw last week—he came to the man, he bandaged his wounds, he poured on oil and wine, he put him on his donkey, he brought him to an inn, and he took care of him. And then the next day, he gave funds to the innkeeper—it was like he was saying, “I’ve seen that kind of love before. Because I have seen how God works, I know what this kind of love is called. It’s called eleos. It’s called mercy.” 

In other words, as the Lawyer listened to the parable, I believe he was reminded of exactly the kind of loving-mercy that God had shown to his people throughout the Old Testament for generations and generations. So you can write down, in the example of the Good Samaritan, we see God’s kind of merciful lovingkindness.

And while I don’t expect many of you to be familiar with this Greek word eleos, I wonder if some of you will recognize the Hebrew word that it translates. Because if you go back and check the Hebrew in Exodus 34, and in just about every case where you find eleos “mercy” in the Old Testament, the word for God’s compassionate, loving, mercy is none other than the Hebrew word hesed—a word that is so rich that it is almost impossible to translate into English, but refers to the steadfast, rock-solid care that God shows to His people. 

And so the Psalmist says in Psalm 136:1 “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love (eleos, hesed) endures forever.”  And then the Psalmist goes on in this one song to repeat this phrase over and over and over again, 26 times in total, celebrating that God’s kind of love is a love that never ends! And so you can write down that this kind of a love is a committed, enduring kind of love. It’s the kind of love that is not bound by circumstances! It’s the kind of love that the Jesus Storybook Bible talks about when it says that God loves us with a never-failing, never giving up, unending, always and forever love.

And not only that, but if you investigate this Psalm, between all the times that we read “His love endures forever,” we find that God’s mercy, that His lovingkindness is not just a sentimental feeling toward people, but that it is grounded, it’s evidenced in His actions! In other words, we know God’s love not simply because He tells us that He loves us, but because He shows us His love as He acts… in love… on our behalf! So as the Psalmist says,

vs 4, He alone “does great wonders” vv 5-9, He created the world vv 10-12, He saved Israel from Egypt vv 13-15, He delivered Israel at the Red Sea vs 16, He led people through the wilderness vv 17-22, He gave his people victory over their enemies vv 23-25, He remembers, frees, and provides for His people

Just like the actions of the Samaritan demonstrate his love and concern for the man, to an infinitely greater degree, it is the great works of God that demonstrate His lovingkindness to us. So not only is it an enduring love, write down that this kind of love is a tangible love.

But as for this Psalm, two of my favorite verses are verses 23 and 24, which say, “He remembered us in our low estate, His love endures forever, and freed us from our enemies, His love endures forever!” And the reason that this verse is my favorite is because it reminds me of the “mercy” side of the love of God. 

Because we know the truth, which is that this enduring, tangible love is a totally undeserved love. That we were lost, and gone astray! That we were helpless! And so, for those of us who have been saved, we can agree with the Psalmist who writes “If you, Lord, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand?” And then just a few verses later, we can celebrate that even though we have not earned His love, we can “...put [our] hope in the Lord, for with the Lord is (eleos, hesed) unfailing love...” (Ps 130:3, 7). 

So as we get this bigger picture, we realize that God’s kind of love is not fragile or fickle, it’s enduring, even when things are difficult or inconvenient. His kind of love is not based on a feeling—it’s tangible. It’s a choice. It’s a decision. His kind of love is not something we could earn, it’s undeserved. 

And that’s good news! That’s reason to worship! But on the other hand, it also helps us to see what’s true about our love by contrast. See, so often our kind of love is this fair-weather, feeling-based, score-keeping kind of love. But that’s the kind of love that is no love at all!

But what the Lawyer recognizes in the Good Samaritan is something of a completely different character. What he sees, and what we need to see, is that the actions of an other-centered neighbor reflect the love and mercy of a faithful God.

And all this means that, when we are called to love our neighbor, God invites us to love others with His kind of love! 

I wonder, have we accepted that invitation?

POINT TWO

Like we said at the beginning, answering correctly is not the same thing as living abundantly, and Jesus has come that we might have life, and life to the full! And so back in our Text, Jesus wraps up His conversation with the Lawyer, and ends our passage by saying, “Go and do likewise.”

And if we look back over this whole passage, this whole conversation, this is the only instruction that Jesus gives! “Do this (IMPV!) and you will live.” And then, here, “Go and do (IMPV!) likewise.”

So in this parable, and in the example of the Good Samaritan, not only do we see God’s kind of mercy and love, but also, in the example of the Good Samaritan, Jesus wants to give us a blueprint SO THAT we can live it out in our everyday living. To put it differently, studying the parable, and knowing the love of God does us no good if it doesn’t change how we live and love others.

So as we get ready to wrap up with this parable, I want to leave us with a couple of questions to help us actually apply what we’ve seen.

And the first question I want you to consider is, “Where has God already placed me?”

See, I think sometimes when we talk about the story of the Good Samaritan, all we think about is stories like the one I mentioned earlier about walking around Cascade Park—just random acts of kindness. Interruptions. And yet, the broader point here is not just to be ready for chance encounters. The point is not that we should consider everyone we meet on the street as a neighbor. That’s closer, but not quite it. Notice, all said, that Jesus doesn’t ask, “Which one was the man’s neighbor,” But “Which one proved to be the man’s neighbor?” Which one became his neighbor by loving him. See, the point is that we are to become a neighbor to everyone God brings across our path! And while there are people we pass by all the time who need the light of Christ and the love of God, how often are those needy people the people that we live with, work with, walk with, and worship with? 

I mean, think about all the people, all the spheres of influence that God has entrusted to you. In every area, you have been placed there purposefully, so that you can show God’s love and mercy to others. In every area! Your job. Your neighborhood. Your hobbies. Your LifeGroup. Your sports team. Your graduating class. Your school. Your co-op group. Your city council.

And friends, let’s be reminded this morning that this includes the local church. Actually, when you think about the biblical commands to love, the majority of them are specifically directed at loving one another in the body of Christ! Take, for instance, Jesus’ famous saying to His disciples, to followers of Jesus in John 13:34–35 ““A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”” And even though we like to use it this way, this is not a general command to love all people. This is specifically a command to love our brothers and sisters in Christ! In other words, the witness of the Christian church is not ONLY the way that we scatter and serve and share outside of these walls, and outside of this community! Rather, and in addition to outreach and evangelism, it is the very love and community within the family of God that people are supposed to see and say, “That’s what I want! That’s what I’ve been looking for! I didn’t even know this kind of community and love and mercy was possible! This is radical love!” 

And yet, how many of us are experiencing that kind of love and mercy? How often are we quick to judge, and slow to forgive other believers? How often are we hesitant to open our homes to one another, because of what it will cost? Friends, this kind of love has to start somewhere! And in this family, love and mercy are supposed to be the norm! This is our birthright and children of the King. Yet we know that so, so many experience just the opposite of God’s kind of love from others in the church. We even have a word for this, we call it “Church Hurt.” We’re so used to seeing it happen that we have a technical term to describe it. See, so often it is those who are near to us, those who we rub shoulders with, who get our fair-weather, feeling-based, score-keeping kind of love the most.

See, it’s so easy to overlook those who are closest to us. It’s easy to go out once a week and hand out food at a shelter; it’s much harder to give our lives to sacrificially loving those closest to us. Because once a week I have all the control. But if it’s where I sleep, and unwind, and live my life, then it’s not something I can turn off or on whenever I want. 

It’s true in the church, but it’s also true in our households. Friends, we don’t choose our family; God does. He has given you these children. These brothers. These sisters. These parents. These roommates. These tenants. These in-laws—for such a time as this! Far be it from us to step over our children, and our spouses, and our brothers and sisters, so that we can love strangers. Or as Paul says in 1 Timothy 5:8, “Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”

Again, our love should not end in our own circles, but this week, I want to invite you to start there. Don’t reinvent the wheel. The Samaritan wasn’t going out of his way! He didn’t go hunting for needs! He was just living his life, and choosing to love. And so should we! Even when it’s difficult. Even when we don’t feel like it. Even when they don’t deserve it. Even when they’re getting on our nerves. Even when they’re bringing out the worst in us. These are the times when we need to learn to love with God’s kind of love! So, we ask where has God already placed me? Because that’s where we need to start.

And the next question has to do with actually being able to attend to the people, whether they’re a regular part of our lives or someone we meet by chance. And the question is, “Am I walking at the pace of love?” We’ve noticed before how the Good Samaritan was able to really see the man, and was willing to be inconvenienced, and was moved with compassion. But I think sometimes we get going so fast, and we get so busy that schedule ourselves into self-centeredness. One of my favorite books is titled You’re Only Human, and it’s a theological look at human limits. In this book, the author Kelly Kapic writes:

Probably one of the most inefficient things you can ever do is love. Anything that you love requires your time, your attention, and your energy, and it makes demands on you. 

If you think back to the Princeton Good Samaritan Experiment, it should strike us that the best indicator of whether a person was going to stop and help was not whether they had recently studied the Good Samaritan, but rather it was how much of a rush they were in. It was their time constraint. And while that’s hard hitting, it’s also something that we need to learn from. See, if we’re going to get serious about applying what we’ve learned, we need to be willing to create margin in our lives, so that we can slow down and walk at the pace of love. 

And the last thing I want you to see is that walking at the pace of love is not just about slowing down to see other people. Because the reality is that we can slow down to see other people, but still have nothing to offer to them. Slowing down to walk at the pace of love means creating margin to see and love others, but it also means creating margin to be filled up again with the love and mercy of God! 

See, sometimes we can be in the right place at the right time. But we still feel like we’re running on empty. We feel totally worn out. We feel like we have nothing to offer.

And the truth of the matter is that, whether we feel like it or not, when it comes to loving others well, we don’t have in ourselves what we need to give. When we love with our own kind of love, we slip into that fair-weather, feeling-based, score-keeping kind of love. What we need to give to others we can only get straight from the source. So the last question I want you to consider this week, before you go out and try to live it out, is, “Have I opened my heart again to the Gospel?” Have I been changed again by the radical love of God? Have I drank deeply from the fountain of the living water? Have I received again today the mercies that are new every single morning? Have I been amazed again at the love that led Jesus to take the cross in my place? 

CONCLUSION

Because in the end, only when we have received the love and mercy of God can we give that love and mercy to others.

We only give out of what we have. And friends, in the Gospel, we have been given everything that heaven has to offer!

As I was studying this idea of mercy, I ran once again into this parable in Matthew 18 of the unmerciful servant. As the story goes, a servant owed a debt to his master that was far greater than he could ever repay. And that is a picture of us. This is our helpless estate. This is us: undeserving of God’s forgiveness. 

But it says that the master showed mercy to the man, and wiped his debt clean. And then the parable ends with this scene where the servant who was forgiven went and threw his fellow servant in jail because he couldn’t pay a small fine. 

And in the end, the Master asks the servant that he had forgiven, Matthew 18:33 “Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’” And this is the question that confronts every single one of us who have been forgiven by Jesus this morning. 

And the answer, of course is yes! But you can also state this positively. That, if the servant had just paused to consider the mercy that had been showered on him, maybe he would have responded differently. And the same is true for us. 

When we keep Christ in the center of our lives, when we remind ourselves regularly that we were dead in our trespasses and sins, but God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, made us alive together with Christ. When we remember that it is by grace that we’re saved. And when God pours that great love into our hearts… when we live a life amazed at the love of God, then we will find ourselves naturally pouring that love out onto others. And that’s my prayer for us as we close this sermon.

>Pray

Closing Song: Amazing Love