Love your Neighbour

The Good Samaritan

Series Intro

How many people here live somewhere?

Most of us have someplace that we live. Whether that’s a home, an apartment, a seniors home, or even maybe there’s someone here who’s having a tough time and you don’t have a specific place that you call “home”, we all live somewhere.

Now the second part of this question that ties into the key of our series is, who loves where they live? Maybe some of you are like yes, this is the place that I wanna stay for the rest of my life. I was born in this home, I’ll die in this home type mentality. But for others, maybe you’re here and you think, I’m thankful that I have a place to live, but I’m ready to move. I’m ready to get out of that place.

You see, when I heard this series title, “Love Where You Live” the first thing that came to mind was that it sounds like a new realtor show on tv. You know the ones, Love it or List it, House Hunters International or any of the other 14 thousand different ones on HGTV. But that’s actually a different direction than where we’re hoping to go with this series. You see I believe that Jesus is often less concerned with the physical location of where you live, and more concerned with the relationships you have with people where you live.

So, I want us to open with an exercise this morning, or maybe to make it a little more fun, lets call it a challenge. I’m going to ask a series of questions about your neighbours. And I want you to turn to someone around you and try to answer each question as many times as you can for diffrent neighbours can? Make sense? IF not it should make more once we get into it. So lets go

Neighbourhood Questionnaire

First Question: What’s your neighbours name? (simply list as many as you can)

Second Question: What does your neighbours do for work?

Third Question: What’s their Favourite Hobby or Pastime

Fourth Question: How many of your neighbours have you spoken to in the last week?

The Fifth Question is one just to think about: When was the last time you talked about or invited your neighbour to church?

Whenever I’ve gone through a series of questions like this, it often leads me to realize that maybe I don’t know or love my neighbours as well as I should.

It calls my mind to think of John 13:34–35 – where Jesus says, “As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples.” And this is actually the heart of this entire series. Love where you live. Where you live is more than just a physical location. It’s the people who live around you. Who are your neighbours? Who are the people that God has put in your sphere of influence? And how are you loving them?

Good Samaritan

And so this week, with that in mind, we’ll be diving into the story of the Good Samaritan. This well known parable by Jesus that tells the story of a man who was beaten up and left for dead on the side of the road, desperately in need of help.

You see, the Samaritan people were closely connected to the Israelite people. In fact, originally they were once one united nation with Israel. However, about 1,000 years before Jesus, the nation of Israel split in two, dividing into the northern and the southern kingdom. This northern kingdom became kingdom of Samaria and the people of Israel, southerners hated the Samaritans.

The relationship between Israelites and Samaritans was a complex relationship that had historically been marked by deep tensions. This led to the two people groups being strongly opposed to each other. Avoiding each other by whatever means necessary. Samaritans were disliked so much by the Jewish people that when traveling from Galilee to Jerusalem, they would frequently add hours or days of travel onto their journey simply to avoid going through Samaria.

So this is the political climate of Jesus’ world. However, something else that we need to look at is why Jesus tells the story. He’s teaching likely to a large crowd and then an expert of the law, a man who studied the scripture, comes and asks Jesus “what must I do to receive eternal life?”. and after Jesus response of “Love God and Love your neighbour, he asks again who is my neighbour?

This seems like a genuine question. But this question is really asking something else? What he’s realy asking here is how far does my love have to go? Who am I required to love. He’s saying, if that’s what I have to do for eternal life, how much do I really have to love people?

Limitless Love

This reminds me of myself as a little kid sitting at the dinner table half an hour after everyone else has finished, asking my mom, how many more bites. I wanted to know the bare minimum amount of work I had to do in order to leave the dinner table. What’s the least amount I have to give and still be okay?

How often do we do this with our love? We Limit our Love. I don’t have to care for them do I? Do I have to go that far? We try to limit the amount of love we have to give.

But when we go back to John 13:34 what does it say?

“just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. ”

We are to follow the example set by Jesus. So that should raise the question, How did Jesus love me? Did he limit his love towards humanity or did he show limitless love. Jesus was the perfect example of sacrificial, love. There’s no limit to the love of God. He comes back time and time again, never ceasing to show love.

So as Christians, our love is to be limitless. We are not to try and aim for the bear minimum of love that needs to be given, but we should actually be pushing to the limit on our love. Pushing beyond what’s reasonable. People should be shocked at how we love our community. Often when we think about this in the collective setting. People should see our church as a blessing to the community (which is true). But Jesus in this story, Jesus is not speaking to the church. Heis speaking to the individuals. People should be able to look at my life, and the way I love my neighbours and see that I’m a Christian. AS Believers we are called to show Limitless LOVE

For us to properly understand the Jewish official’s question “who is my neighbour” its important to understand some of the culture. The Jewish legal traditions had clearly defined societal roles for almost every relationship. Jews to Gentiles, Jews to Romans, men to women, free people to slaves, priests to laity, clean unclean everything. All of these relationships were covered in the writings. They had taken the law and gone further and further to make a prescription for how to treat others based on their class, ethnicity, and even on their level of supposed purity.

So when the question “who is your neighbour” is posed, Jesus’ response is likely not only addressing the question, but perhaps an entire way of thinking. And Jesus responds by sharing a parable. A parable is type of story thats purpose is to teach a larger principle. This parable opens with a man travelling from Jerusalem to Jericho. We’re not told anything about the man. Is he a jew or a gentile, don’t know. We are simply told that the man is jumped, beaten, robbed, and left, as the Bible says, Half dead on the side of the road.

Then three different travellers happen upon the situation. First is a priest. The highest of Jewish religious officials comes along. Surely he will stop and offer help. At the very least, if the man was dead, the rabbinic laws required him to bury any corpse he came across. And yet what does he do? It says that he moved over to the other side of the road and continues on. This is today’s equivalent of a pastor. It would be like saying, here’s this man lying there and Colin Cook happens to walk down the road. The best of the best, and yet, he walks on by.

Then a little while later, a levite comes along the way. This would be someone who was not a priest, but would work in the carry out tasks in the temple. Kinda like one of our members here at the church, Nathaniel Miller walks in, of course he would help. And yet, the Levite same as the priest, moves to the other side and walks on.

It’s easy to look at them and think, how on earth could they be so terrible. Imagine being that sick to move over to the other side of the road. And yet, how often do we do this? You can picture them moving over to the other side of the road. Avoiding eye contact, and speeding up their steps. We do this all the time. In obvious ways, and in more subtle ways. An obvious example might be the homeless, we often look the other way and keep walking. But what about your neighbours?

A question I have to ask myself sometimes is, if I was the only Christian my neighbours ever talked to, would they have a chance at going to heaven? Am I giving them the chance or am I stepping to the other side of the road and walking on by.

Am I a Witness?

We make excuses that seem to make sense. I don’t want to scare them off. I want to develop a good relationship before I share my faith. What if they see me as some religious freak and avoid me? These all are concerns and fears that we can allow to paralyze us. There is nothing more important in my relationship with my neighbours than the opportunity to save their souls.

Love of ours neighbours must prioritize their salvation over self image.

There’s nothing more important. And yet we make excuses. We smile and walk on by. I may be the worlds greatest neighbour but am I a great witness?

Will my neighbours know the love of Christ because I live beside them?

The final traveller approaches, the people listening now are probably expecting a regular jewish person. The story opened with the elite, then a slightly lower tier of Jew, and now they the common person. Yet Jesus throws a curveball into the story (for all you Jays fans, maybe that’s a sore spot). Not a commoner, not even a jew. A stranger. A samaritan in Jewish territory. Far from home/ The one the people never expected. He walks by, he stops, he notices the man and came to his aid. He took him in. He bound his wounds, put him on his donkey and took him to a near by in and paid for his care.

Who is Your Neighbour?

This is the heart of the whole story. Who is your neighbour? And what we see here in this story is that anyone can be your neighbour. A neighbour is not simply the person who lives in your physical vicinity, but anyone who comes into your path. The samaritan was far from home. This man didn't live beside him, he was from another country. And yet, he was a neighbour.

Jesus uses the word compassion to describe the man. This idea of feeling concern for the needs or problems of another person. He chose to let those feelings in. He chose to let the thoughts to infiltrate his heart. Rather than pushing them down, looking away from the problem, he ran into the mess. He stepped into the struggles of a stranger and he showed the love of Christ.

We need to be people led by a heart of flesh, not a heart of stone. The desire and very cry of our hearts should be that God would break our hearts for what breaks his. Friends, we live in a world of people dying and going to hell. Every single day. In the hour that we’ve been sitting here in church 7,000 people have died, 5,000 of them their destination sealed to spend eternity separated from God. That should break our hearts. The weight of that, should be felt but it should not push us into a pit of despair. It should empower us, it should light a fire under us that the lost would know Him. God I pray that my neighbours would never be able to say, why didn't you tell us? Why didn’t you show us?

Church, I’m going to pray, and I’m praying this over myself. And I invite you, that if this is truly the desire of your heart, stand with me and join in prayer that God would set his spirit ablaze in us. That we would become bold with the news of his gospel and that we would see people come to Him.