Luke 10:25-37 Part 2
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Summarize last week.
the question
the answer
the summary of the law is...
love God (last week)
love neighbor (this week)
==
God is perfectly lovely.
He deserves perfect love.
(we still don’t love God perfectly bc we are sinful and selfish)
Neighbor is much harder to love.
PRAY
read passage
25 And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”
26 He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?”
27 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.”
28 And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”
29 But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
30 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.
31 Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side.
32 So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.
33 But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion.
34 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.
35 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.’
36 Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?”
37 He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”
Let’s first answer the question of...
Who am I to love?
Who am I to love?
God - last week so won’t dwell there.
Your neighbor.
Who does this story show us is our neighbor?
Everyone.
((That may be implied, but how do you know for sure?))
25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,
4 and so train the young women to love their husbands and children,
So, we are to love our spouses and children.
We are commanded to love other Christians.
34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.
Okay, that’s a little more difficult.
Some folks who claim to be saved are downright mean.
Of course, that may indicate that they aren’t really saved...
but if we take their word for it then some who claim to be Christians are hard to love.
Just wait...
it gets a lot harder.
27 “But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,
28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.
29 To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either.
30 Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back.
That’s just crazy talk isn’t it?
No.
It is our Lord’s command.
Here is where we need to take a sober look at the Word...
examine it in light of our experience of reality...
and realize that...
I can’t do it.
So, if we are going to obey the Lord...
it has to be the Holy Spirit of God loving people through me...
because God can do through us what we cannot do.
Do you remember that Jesus told us that to follow Him, we have to deny ourselves, take up our crosses daily, and follow Him?
Here is what happens when you do that...
11 For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.
When the life of Jesus is manifested in our mortal flesh...
then, and only then...
can we love God and others like we are supposed to.
==
Who are we to love?
We are to love everyone.
A homeless addict is way easier for me to love than...
a maniacally obsessed pro-abortion politician.
We can be righteously indignant regarding their cause...
but...
for us to hate them is not righteous at all.
Look, hating people is above our pay grade.
We lack the righteousness to judge perfectly.
Psalm 5.4-5 says...
4 For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you.
5 The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers.
God is able to judge righteously and he will do so.
(( Group of skunks trying to figure out which among them is the worst smelling… ))
It is our job to love people and tell them how to be reconciled to God.
==
(( story not about passing three guys and which was worthy of love… is about the three guys passing this one guy and who was loving…))
I struggled to teach my kids as they were growing up to answer the question that was asked.
Jesus doesn’t really do that.
He doesn’t focus on what kind of person is deserving of love...
instead...
Jesus answers the question...
What sort of person is loving and merciful?
What sort of person is loving and merciful?
So, when we come across someone we don’t need to determine...
whether they are worthy of our love...
instead...
We need to commit to love all those we encounter.
This religious guy knew what to do, but he did not do it because he lacked love and compassion.
Knowledge without love leads to a cold and dead religion without God.
1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
It is way easier to learn stuff than to love people.
It is easier to learn about witnessing than it is to witness.
It is easier to study discipleship than it is to disciple someone.
We cannot take the easy road, though, when it leads us to disobedience.
Dealing with people is messy and costly.
If you want to complain about it, tell Jesus.
Personally, I get around to feeling lots of conviction when I am trying to explain to Jesus...
how disappointing and aggravating people can be.
He was perfect, and yet He was rejected and crucified.
I am nowhere near perfect, and sometimes people are kind of mean or ungrateful.
It hardly compares does it?
Let’s look at some of the details of the parable.
30 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.
This was a well-known and infamous road.
It was not safe to travel this road alone.
This road went down about 3300 ft. in elevation in 17 miles.
There were places you could fall and kill yourself even if there weren’t robbers.
The robbers in the story didn’t just take what he carried, they even took his clothes...
and...
they beat him severely - nearly to death.
Jesus is telling a parable - a story - made up to illustrate a point.
The story begins with conflict, as all stories do.
(( if you watch a cop show, there is a crime ))
So, the story begins with a terrible thing happening to someone.
v. 31 gives us hope though because a priest came along.
Surely a priest will stop and help this guy.
After all, priests knew the Scriptures.
He knew that what the bible commanded...
33 “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong.
34 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.
This priest knew that he was to love his neighbor as himself...
He even knew that he was supposed to love a stranger as himself.
==
To put this story in our context...
here comes the preacher
surely he will stop and help the guy...
I mean, if he won’t do it, who will?
==
but what does this priest do?
31 Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side.
Theological degrees without love are useless.
Coming in here on Sunday morning to learn what the Bible says and not living it out is useless.
(( Story about lady at previous church who would not do small group because she did not want to deal with people’s messy lives. ))
That attitude is the one that causes people to pass by on the other side of the street.
==
What is going to happen to this poor man who has been beaten?
Here is another potentially good situation.
32 So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.
In a modern context, we might say that the next passerby is a deacon in the church.
He, too, certainly should know that is he is supposed to care for this man.
(( Story of guy who was burned when took radiator cap off - wore cap to church and was scolded by deacon. ))
That attitude is the one that causes people to pass by on the other side of the street.
==
Here is the last hope for the man who was robbed and beaten.
33 But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion.
34 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.
35 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.’
Samaritans and Jews hated one another - and had done so for a long time.
((Summarize))
John MacArthur Sermon Archive The Good Samaritan
Samaritans were the offspring of Jews who after the Northern Kingdom was taken captive, some remained in the land. The land was then taken over by Gentiles. These Jews who remained after the Northern captivity from which the Jews were taken captive never returned, the ones who remained in the land intermarried with the Gentiles for which they were despised and hated cause they sold their birthright, they polluted the pure strain of God’s chosen people. They were hated by the Jews. In fact, when Israel came back from Babylonian captivity, the Southern Kingdom later went into captivity, and after 70 years of captivity, they came back, Nehemiah came back, they wanted to rebuild the wall, remember that? The Samaritans showed up. You can read this in Ezra 4 through 6; Nehemiah 2 through 4. The Samaritans showed up and said, “We’ll help you. We’ll help you. We’ll reconnect with our Jewish roots. Now you’re back, Jerusalem will be rebuilt, we’ll have a temple again.” And they said, “Absolutely not. We want nothing to do with you.” The bitterness was so deep. And so, the Samaritans then turned to be their enemies, and you remember the story? All the time they’re trying to build the wall, who is trying to prevent them from doing it? The Samaritans, led by a man named Sanballat. So they were constantly in conflict. And, in fact, eventually the Samaritans built their own temple. They said, “Well, if we can’t be welcomed back, we’ll just build our own temple in a place called Mount Gerizim.” They built their own temple. And the Jews who hated them and hated their temple, in 128 B.C., a hundred and twenty-eight years before Jesus’ birth, went and destroyed the temple and killed some of the Samaritans.
John MacArthur Sermon Archive The Good Samaritan
And so here comes a Samaritan. What is going to be the Samaritan’s attitude toward this guy? If you’re going to worry about who qualifies to be your neighbor, he doesn’t qualify. Not only is he a stranger, but he’s an enemy and there’s a tremendous amount of racism between the two.
1 Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the returned exiles were building a temple to the Lord, the God of Israel,
2 they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of fathers’ houses and said to them, “Let us build with you, for we worship your God as you do, and we have been sacrificing to him ever since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assyria who brought us here.”
3 But Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and the rest of the heads of fathers’ houses in Israel said to them, “You have nothing to do with us in building a house to our God; but we alone will build to the Lord, the God of Israel, as King Cyrus the king of Persia has commanded us.”
4 Then the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah and made them afraid to build
5 and bribed counselors against them to frustrate their purpose, all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius king of Persia.
6 And in the reign of Ahasuerus, in the beginning of his reign, they wrote an accusation against the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem.
The Jews and the Samaritans had hated one another for centuries.
Passionate and deeply embedded racism.
Not Jesus though - Woman at the well.
So, why in the world would this Samaritan stop to help?
(( read the end of the verse ))
33 But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion.
We must have compassion on the lost.
They are blind, enslaved captives of the enemy...
and...
you would be too if it weren’t for grace.
If you really, really believe that you can and will have compassion on the lost.
==
Let’s see together the love this Samaritan demonstrated.
(( It wasn’t some abstract feeling - it was concrete action ))
(( What good would it have done if he felt compassion and did not actually help the man? ))
The Samaritan sacrificed his pride.
The Samaritan sacrificed his pride.
(( He sacrificially loved a man he was supposed to hate. ))
The Samaritan sacrificed his resources.
The Samaritan sacrificed his resources.
34 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.
The Samaritan sacrificed his comfort.
The Samaritan sacrificed his comfort.
34 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.
The Samaritan sacrificed his money.
The Samaritan sacrificed his money.
35 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.’
What do we do?
What do we do?
I hope last week you realized that you can’t love God perfectly with all your faculties all the time.
Likewise, this week, realize you can’t love your neighbor as yourself.
Realizing these two things should drive us to the mercy of God.
So, if you are trying to justify yourself...
Realize you cannot keep the law. Give up and come to Jesus for mercy, forgiveness, and salvation.
Realize you cannot keep the law. Give up and come to Jesus for mercy, forgiveness, and salvation.
Help your neighbor with his or her greatest need which is to be reconciled to God.
Help your neighbor with his or her greatest need which is to be reconciled to God.
Deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow Jesus so that His life may be manifested in our mortal flesh.
Deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow Jesus so that His life may be manifested in our mortal flesh.
23 And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
11 For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.