Whom or How?
Notes
Transcript
A big congratulations to Ariana Thomas who is down in southern California this Sunday celebrating her graduation from high school. A proud Lincoln High Graduate we are so thankful for you! We also want to honor C. J. Wade who graduated from St. Mary’s High School. What an amazing accomplishment.
Lori and I just got back from celebrating my friend Scott’s graduation from graduate school with his masters. There might be some more graduates that I don’t know about out there. Please share about your accomplishments.
Because I was gone I want to give a big thank you to Dr. Bill Campbell for sharing with us last week. His call for all of us to exercise spiritual gifts, that each one of you is uniquely equipped by God to serve in this church is a vital message for us to take to heart at all times but especially at this time as we begin to come out of this pandemic.
You need to be pursuing generously allowing God to use your life, to show Christ to other people. This is the call of each person who follows Jesus as God to obey Him by loving God and loving others.
Each and every one of us who follows Jesus no matter our age, gender or ability is given power by God to do what He is calling us to do. Just like teachers called on our graduates to learn and respond to the learning in the way the teachers wanted. The graduates did the work, they showed up, they studied, they went to classes in the weirdest ways online, with masks on, all that other stuff, they passed the tests and they graduated.
Jesus was given a test too and the answers to His tests are clarity for us about how we can recognize when to use these spiritual gifts.
25 Then an expert in the law stood up to test him, saying, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Here is a teacher, taking on another what he thinks is just a teacher, taking on Jesus who is way more than a teacher but this guy doesn’t realize that, anyway he gives Jesus a test to answer the most important question.
What must I do to inherit eternal life?
How would you answer it?
The question is what I can do not to have eternal death, how can I receive the gift of resurrection from God?
This is a hugely complicated question and Jesus answers with a question right back at the guy.
26 “What is written in the law?” he asked him. “How do you read it?”
27 He answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,” and “your neighbor as yourself.”
28 “You’ve answered correctly,” he told him. “Do this and you will live.”
Jesus allowed the scholar to answer. Love God and Love your neighbor.
Awesome to think and maybe many people would say I love God. The universe blesses me all the time and I am cool with all my neighbors. but when this test began we know that the person who originally put Jesus to the test was someone who was incredibly wise, incredibly smart. They were said to be an expert in the law. That is all the rules God gave to the Jewish people and all the rules they created so as to not break God’s rules. That’s why he could answer his own question when Jesus gave it right back to him. It was Jesus’ answer to but the law expert would also realize that loving God meant loving God at all times.Not like a person who just says the universe blesses me. Even when life is frustrating beyond belief. In order to be good enough, A’s were required on this test and not just A’s but 100% A’s. And loving God is hard enough but in the statement the expert in the law already saw the problem. Who is a neighbor?
29 But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
Who is your neighbor?
My next door neighbors are nice. One of them mows my lawn just because he likes too. I don’t even know the people who live 6 houses down.
How far would a person live from you to consider them to be your neighbor?
Today I do not want to share with you guilt or anxiety but action.
TI have sat in sermons, read books, even celebrated people who were so outgoing, extroverted, and filled with so much time that they felt we should know everyone around us. I like people like that but that is not me.
Honestly I really don’t like it when people say things like “this is who I am” because for somethings they are describing not ways there were made by God but behaviors that do and justify, just like this expert was trying to do. They say things like I don’t like other people, “that’s just me.” According to God that’s not who you were created to be so that’s not you.
In fact, outgoing or quiet you were made to love God and love Others.
Dr. Campbell shared with you last Sunday different people have different spiritual gifts that empower them to do special things, add to that our own personalities, talents, and abilities and you get a very unique gift of God that is you.
I came to terms In High School with the fact that I am not the most popular guy, nor the most athletic, but while I am not the champion charismatic person my personality does not change what God said about how to inherit eternal life or what he called elsewhere, the two greatest commandments - love God and love others.
I can love God and love others. You can love God and love others.
You can serve God by loving others.
You can serve God by loving others.
In fact Jesus goes into answer the man’s question which he asks to be able to get out of loving everybody, to justify himself, Jesus doesn’t answer the question directly but tells a story that continues to shape our culture today.
30 Jesus took up the question and said, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him, beat him up, and fled, leaving him half dead.
This is a tough stretch of rode but most importantly a real fear then just like getting robbed can be today. It happens to our fictional character. A Jewish man going to Jericho from Jerusalem. He is bad off left where he is, he is not going to make it. He is going to die. He needs help.
31 A priest happened to be going down that road. When he saw him, he passed by on the other side. 32 In the same way, a Levite, when he arrived at the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.
Two people full of religious wisdom, saw him and kept on going. I could go through a variety of justifications of why but do I really need to? Do people today, still see someone in need, have every ableness to help but instead keep going?
Charles Spurgeon when preaching on this very piece of scripture in the 1877 before cars or even indoor plumbing said,
The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, Vol. XXIII The Good Samaritan (No. 1,360)
I never knew a man refuse to help the poor who failed to give at least one admirable excuse. I believe that there is no man on earth who wickedly rejects the plea of need who is not furnished with arguments that he is right: arguments eminently satisfactory to himself, and such as he thinks should silence those who press the case
People who instead of taking this amazing opportunity handed to them by God to show love, to act with kindness ignore and keep on going.
There are those who will hand the dollar to those who are panhandling, give to the causes with the best commercials, or wait for the best speech on guilt but that isn’t what this is about is it. You’ve been given guilt before only to go and be exactly the same person. This is about seizing the opportunity to show the love of God to others.
Instead let us look at things in this way, Jesus said He could only do what God the Father told him to do. No more and no less. He didn’t run trying to cure people so he wouldn’t feel guilty. He didn’t do a miracle when people told him to do a miracle. He didn’t do nice things so that one day maybe somebody would Him. In fact he would show us the most amazing love by lying down His life for us. He would die for us even though we are sinners.
Jesus highlights that we can fall into this trap of not caring to seek out opportunities to love, his story of people who were important in the worship of God coming upon a hurting person in obvious injury with no one to help him and then walking by.
The next guy did something. He shouldn’t have been the guy to do it but he did.
33 But a Samaritan on his journey came up to him, and when he saw the man, he had compassion. 34 He went over to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on olive oil and wine. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him. When I come back I’ll reimburse you for whatever extra you spend.’
The Samaritan, the only name this guy was given was the name of his race. The others had names by job and family title but he had name by his race to bring up the racial hatred of those who heard it and the surprise that this kind man could be of that race. Jesus created us all and racism should not determine who is our neighbor.
This Samaritan instead of hatred showed generous kindenss with all that he could. This is a story but it’s important to show what Jesus said he did. He bandaged the wounds as well as could be done in this ancient time. He then handed the job off of care to someone else but because he still had means he provided for the man’s continuous care.
Jesus then made sure that the justifying man understood what Jesus wanted him to hear and wants us to hear
36 “Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”
37 “The one who showed mercy to him,” he said.
Then Jesus told him, “Go and do the same.”
Go and do the same.
Go and have mercy on those God brings into your path.
Go and have mercy on those God brings into your path.
Who has God brought into your path this past week?
My own mind gets rocked with so much guilt, pain or bad choices from this story that I felt I should confess somethings to you and perhaps in this lead you and myself to some greater truth.
I was called the most patient person, and someone up for sainthood this week all because I was doing my job as a special education teacher. It feels nice when people recognize kindness but I want to tell you that I am still learning what it means to love our neighbors.
In the same week that I did some acts of kindness I forgot on multiple days to take brother Dave Babcock something I told him I would get him a week ago.
If we are to be a people who love our neighbor though the first lesson we must learn is
Don’t determine how to love someone based on how they or others will respond to your care
Don’t determine how to love someone based on how they or others will respond to your care
When Jesus called the helping man a Samaritan he was signaling to everyone who heard the story that this was an enemy. Samaritans and Jews were not usually kind to one another. But this man went against stereotypes and cared for the wounded Jew.
Jesus told us not just to love people who like us but to love our enemies.
43 “You have heard that it was said, Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be children of your Father in heaven. For he causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
Just try to care, first by praying and then by caring.
Don’t justify not caring just care. Make loving others a lifestyle
Don’t justify not caring just care. Make loving others a lifestyle
If you feel led to help someone just do it. I hope you are constantly praying that you will be guided by God. As you are brought into chances with opportunity to care for others as the Priest, the Levite and the Samaritan were just do it.
If you’re an introvert, find that one person in the crowd sitting by themselves and care for them.
If you’re an extrovert care for that huge group you come into contact with.
Did you notice how the Samaritan did what the Samaritan could do. The Samaritan didn’t heal the man. He couldn’t do that. The Samaritan didn’t take him home with him. The Samaritan took him to an inn.
Remember your not Jesus you don’t have to fix people you have to love people.
Remember your not Jesus you don’t have to fix people you have to love people.
The Samaritan also didn’t stop on the road look at the guy bleeding and ask, “hey you need anything?” How many times do you, I know I am guilty, ask people who need help to tell us how to help them as a way to get out of helping a person by hoping they will say, “no, I’m ok.”
Admittedly sometimes we don’t know how to help someone and talking or listening to someone is the wisest thing we can do but I want to tell you a story about my friend Greg
Came over everyday
Loving others can take on many different ways.
It’s okay not to know what to do either, as we concentrate though on seeing the need and actively caring.
As I was in Austin we got to go to church with Scoot and listen to a guy looking to pray for every person in Austin by name.
He shared many things but the main thing he shared with us was about how prayer our conversation with God leads to God changing lives.
It goes along with what Dr. Campbell said last week about finding your spiritual gift.
Both men talked about loving God by doing what Jesus did. The pastor in Austin said lets be praying. Then when you don’t know what to do, as Dr. Campbell said do what Jesus tells all of us to do and care. In caring our spiritual gifts will come to the surface, in caring we might be sharing a powerful truth with someone who needs to hear it because we have the gift of discernment or we might be organizing a month of people supplying food through the gift of administration. But as we begin to love we will see more to pray about, more to lay at God’s feet.
It is a pattern of exactly what Jesus called us to do, love others. Solve others? Nope. Love others. Save others? Jesus saves others, we love and share about Jesus.
The story of the good Samaritan is not a story of anything weird or unique for a Christian. It is a diagram of how we are to be, ones who love our neighbor.
Remember your limited but God is limitless, Pray - Care - Pray
Remember your limited but God is limitless, Pray - Care - Pray