Sermon Tone Analysis

Strong Fences Make Good Neighbors

Have you ever heard this?

I have a friend who trains police dogs.

His wife was telling me the other day about how their neighbor has started free ranging chickens and ducks.

She said this is not going to be pretty, because the only thing their dog likes more than biting bad guys is biting small feathery creatures.

For her neighbor, having a big strong fence may the only way to stay friends.

Sometimes strong fences are necessary.

We build these fences to protect our neighbors…or to protect our family.

These are OK for us, cause we know how to operate a gate.

But more often we build barriers that keep us form loving our neighbor as ourselves.

Barriers that don’t have gates or if they do, we don’t understand how to unlock them.

Three of these barriers I want to talk about today are TIME, FEAR, and UNFORGIVENESS.

TIME:

we have other relationships besides our neighbors.

So when the Jesus says’ love your neighbor…we hear…uhoh, when am I going to find time for that?

we have all this technology, that is supposed to make life simpler, but it does anything but.

Just a few years ago if I told you all the things we would have available to us today, you would say…man what will I do with all the time?

make phone calls while riding in a car

send mail electronically…while you make phone calls in the car

see the people you are talking to, while you send mail electronically while you are in your car.

Maybe you have been tempted to tell yourself one of those famous lies:

TIME: Things will settle down one day.

Those of you who are retired, you know this doesn’t happen…life doesn’t slow down.

Until then, we may be tempted to believe lie #2

TIME: Just a bit more will be enough.

Haven’t we realized yet that one more will never be enough.

Enough never arrives when we are looking for it in shinier, newer, and more exciting.

or we fall for #3

TIME: Everybody lives like this.

Believe it or not, everybody doesn’t live like this.

There are actually people who live healthy lives out there.

Or perhaps the barrier you have established is the barrier of fear.

FEAR:

Fears are normal when we do things we don’t normally do.

Fears of reaching out to our neighbors is pretty normal.

Fear: What if

What if they slam the door in your face?

what if they they want to borrow your stuff?

What if they aren’t Christians?

AWESOME!

Fear: Distorts

the reality is, fears distort how we see reality.

Dangers are over blown.

We watch the news or we hear rumors and without even knowing if they are true, we let them run away in our minds and we get all worried about what might happen one day in the future and that fear prevents us from reaching out in the.

When we lived in FL, when we were trying to meet our neighbors, we had one who we could never meet.

The first time we went to their house, we noticed they had security cameras on their front porch.

You could watch them go inside, then go to their house and knock on the door, but they wouldn’t come.

I don’t know for sure, but it is reasonable to see that they had let their fears of who might be at the door prevent them from ever finding out.

Fears can separate us from our neighbors and they can keep us separate.

Or perhaps you find yourself separated from your neighbors by the third barrier,

Unforgiveness:

This third barrier can take on many different looks.

It can be as simple as your neighbor forgot to return the pruning sheers they borrowed years ago…or they never said thank you that time you took care of their animals while they were away.

Inconsiderate behaviour like that, simple things can damage relationships among neighbors for years.

Unforgiveness: For things done to you

Maybe though it was something more serious.

Maybe they damaged some of your property.

Or perhaps they mistreated a family member, a child or a spouse.

Real wrongs were done, and we just can’t forgive them.

It’s normal.

But the irony of it is that we let the wrong things other people do, control whether or not we do the right things.

It sounds crazy, but we do it all the time.

Then there is the other side of the unforgiveness barrier; when you are the one who isn’t forgiven.

Unforgiveness: For things done by you

Some times we do things that aren’t so neighborly.

Maybe you did something before you were a Christian.

Or something silly.

something that you know they didn’t appreciate but you didn’t feel like you should apologize and ever since, the relationship has been cold.

You would have never guessed that apologizing would have been this big of a deal, but now, you wouldn’t know where to start.

Unforgiveness is a tall barrier.

We see all of these, Time, fear, and unforgiveness being overcome in our text today.

I don’t know if you heard it, but all three of these common barriers were in the story.

TIME

We see good Samaritan had places to be.

He was on his way…just like you and I, we are always on our way.

It’s not a stretch to accept that he too had other relationships that made this beaten stranger an inconvenience for sure.

But notice what he did, he stopped and accepted the inconvenience as an opportunity to connect, to serve.

In this he chose to be present, rather than distracted by what was yet to come.

He was interrupt-able.

The time barrier is overcome by BEING INTERRUPT-ABLE.

The same thing happened to Jesus.

In Mark 5, Jairus came and pleaded with Jesus…Help my daughter is dying, come and heal her.

Jesus went with him immediately.

As they pushed through the crowd, a woman touched him in order to be healed.

Jesus stopped.

Can’t you imagine Jairus, come on Jesus let’s go, my baby is sick.

but what did Jesus do?

He was present in the moment and took time to pay attention to the one that was right there instead of rushing off to the one that was coming next.

Jesus was interrupt-able.

Because Jesus was interrupt-able, he was able to serve those right with him.

They weren’t less important than what he planned because relationships were his plan.

Being interrupt-able is how we overcome the time barrier.

When we see our neighbor, are we able to stop what we are doing in order to get to know them?

If we do, then we develop a relationship with them, we will naturally share our love for Jesus with them as we share our lives.

Not only did the good Samaritan overcome the time barrier by being interrupt-able, he overcame the fear barrier by being brave.

The fear barrier is overcome by FAITH.

You may not have heard much Faith in the story.

But it was there.

Remember the first man was robbed and beaten.

In fact this road was described by historians as plagued with robbers and thieves.