Being a friend in low places.

What did He say?   •  Sermon  •  Submitted
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What faith and friendship look like.

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We will not be talking about Garth Brooks today.
We will be looking at how you and I can deceive ourselves by thinking that just because we looked good at church and had all the CORRECT answers to the questions, that we are on the path God desires.
Luke 10:25–37 (HCSB)
25 Just then an expert in the law (Jewish culture revered wisdom that applies understanding, not merely educational knowledge. So is this man an expert in God’s eyes, or in the eyes of those who look to mere educational certification?) stood up to test Him, saying, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 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 (see where Jesus challenges his “expertise” with application.) and you will live.” 29 But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” 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. 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. 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.’ 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.”
1. First, for people, Holiness is NOT sinless Perfection.
Notice in Christ’s story, He never says go and be sinless to inherit eternal life. He says act with compassion and care for those in need despite the petty prejudices and excuses you carry. In the opportunities where you can help those in need, YOU act in a loving and compassionate way. You demonstrate godliness through care and kindness. Christianity starts with the humble realization that not only are people in general sinful, selfish, and hurtful at times, some more than others, but that I am still one who sins and falls short. That I don’t merely rely on Christ’s mercy and grace to feel warm and fuzzy on the inside, but that I desire that others experience real grace and compassion.
Be careful of being discouraged from doing good because skeptics like to attack well intentioned believers for not being PERFECT. I’ve noticed that the prideful and the unrepentant sinner as well as the hypocritical professing Christian like to utilize sinless perfection as your standard so they can avoid their dealing with their own sin before God.
So they use your desire to be love God and live for Him like a club. They point to your imperfections and use them like a club to silence the Conviction of the Holy Spirit that they feel when they see a humble Christian serving and loving others faithfully.
I know it’s difficult when attacked for doing good. You want to explain yourself. But what’s really going on is that these people want to JUSTIFY themselves and play the comparison game rather than coming to Christ as a beggar in need of His forgiveness and love.
Don’t forget we don’t proclaim our self-righteousness or try to justify ourselves. When did King David finally find relief from the nagging sense of separation between God and himself? When he stopped pretending He had it all together. When he openly admitted he needed forgiveness and to walk WITH God, and not his own way:
Psalm 51:1–4 (HCSB)
1 Be gracious to me, God, according to Your faithful love; according to Your abundant compassion, blot out my rebellion. 2 Wash away my guilt and cleanse me from my sin. 3 For I am conscious of my rebellion, and my sin is always before me. 4 Against You—You alone—I have sinned and done this evil in Your sight. So You are right when You pass sentence; You are blameless when You judge.
Holiness can be viewed as PREPARATION to enter the Lord’s Presence in worship.
In this passage we have two religious leaders that would have served in the Temple for worship. In order to be prepared for RITUAL Holiness the Jews not only had to go through washings, cleansing, wearing prescribed garments, they also had to avoid touching unclean things such as dead bodies, open sores to name a few. Now if these rules were violated these people did not commit moral sin, but they would be RITUALLY unclean. They would not be considered eligible to enter the Holy Space of the Temple. They would not be ritually pure or holy. So they would have to sit out. Think quarantining from God’s Temple.
So as they would be GOING up to Jerusalem to serve, you could understand they would feel dilemma about touching a wound or doing anything that might make them unclean. That is why I believe Jesus sets up this parable where the man was going DOWN from Jerusalem to Jericho and being left on the side of the road people traveling to Jericho would travel.
I discovered Craig Keener in his commentary makes a similar observation:
New Testament (10:25–37—Loving One’s Neighbor)
Priests were supposed to avoid especially impurity from a corpse; Pharisees thought one would contract it if even one’s shadow touched the corpse. Like the man who had been robbed, the priest was “going down” (v. 31), hence he was heading from Jerusalem and did not have to worry about being unable to perform duties in the temple. But rules were rules; although the rule of mercy would take precedence if the man were clearly alive, the man looked as if he might be dead (v. 30), and the priest did not wish to take the chance. The task was better left to a Levite or ordinary Israelite. Jesus’ criticism of the priesthood here is milder than that of the Essenes and often that of the prophets (Hos 6:9).10:32. Rules for Levites were not as strict as for priests, but the Levite also wished to avoid defilement.
Basically Jesus took away the excuses the listener could have made for the religious.
What Jesus wants the Lawyer and the Listener to understand is that real HOLINESS is
Participating in living out God’s purpose in Practical life situations.
Micah 6:8 NASB95
8 He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God?
This is where the Rubber meets the road in Christianity. Certainly the Lord wants us to pursue knowing Him and have good character. BUT, if you claim to pursue personal holiness but you do no earthly good, there is something greatly deficient in your religion.
Committed, heavenly minded Christians have always tackled the social, environmental, and political problems of the day. Some of the most impactful people in history have been Christians whose faith moved them to action. As C. S. Lewis states in Mere Christianity, “If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next” (HarperCollins, 2001, p. 134).
2. The Challenge Presses us to examine our lives.
a. As religion has waned in America, more people seek to justify themselves in their own minds.
i. Religious hypocrisy loves the appearance of practical holiness.
Isaiah 29:13 NASB95
13 Then the Lord said, “Because this people draw near with their words And honor Me with their lip service, But they remove their hearts far from Me, And their reverence for Me consists of tradition learned by rote,
ii. The irreligious try to substitute Virtue by signaling. They like telling others what to do, but rarely do what they state passionately.
The irreligious like to complain about people of faith and the problems with religion. But, I would like you to hear a conversation between Richard Dawkins and Scott Simon on NPR May 27, 2017 7:59 AM ET:
Richard Dawkins On Terrorism And Religion Heard on Weekend Edition Saturday In response to Dawkins opining the danger of religion and extolling the wonders of his intellectual atheism. In other words, Dawkins loves to point out the flaws that will be found in genuine Christians and also blame Christianity for those who use it for a pretense.
But, Dawkins loves to ignore the massive genocide of all the atheistic and agnostic movements that have lead to so much more war, death, poverty and evil over the past century. Even think currently of the Regimes of China and North Korea. Do you think Dawkins would rather live there where atheism woven into the politics or do you think he prefers living in the Western world where our freedoms and governments come from the foundation of the Christian worldview?
So Scott Simon pushes back on Dawkins with this:
Scott Simon of National Public Radio (NPR): "I've covered a lot of wars, famines and tragedies. And it seems to me, truly, every theater of suffering I've ever been to, there is a dauntless nun, priest, clergy or religious person who was working very selflessly and bravely there for the good of human beings. And I don't run into organized groups of atheists who do this."
New atheist Richard Dawkins: "Perhaps there is not enough of them."...[20]
Scott Simon, NPR: "But I do wonder, am I just not seeing the world correctly to see large numbers of well-motivated atheists lending their lives to trying to better the world? Or they're - if I might put it this way, are they more concerned about just being right intellectually?"[20]
SIMON: I wouldn't want to suggest that. But I do wonder, am I just not seeing the world correctly to see large numbers of well-motivated atheist lending their lives to trying to better the world? Or they're - if I might put it this way, are they more concerned about just being right intellectually?
DAWKINS: Oh, I don't think so at all. Now, I think maybe, if I may say so, you haven't looked hard enough.
SIMON: Yeah. It's just - as I say, I'm struck by how many religious people I've seen around the world who are trying to do something to relieve suffering.
Yes, Richard Dawkins, you must be “RIGHT” and Scott Simon should believe you and not his lying eyes:)
Jesus does not advocate for a lack of religion or relationship with God. Jesus is challenging us to go beyond mere religious confession to living it out in practical ways. (He also indicated that there are people outside the faith who know to do good.) But His point is that we who know God should be motivated to do good.
Now to explore this issue a bit more, let’s ask the question Jesus raised, when one really digs into loving God, does it make a practical difference for the most part?
So is it just a minor difference? Do those who reject God, belonging to a church group have similar behaviors? In other words does faith really motivate people to be more holy in practical ways?
A comprehensive study by Harvard University professor Robert Putnam found that religious people are more charitable than their irreligious counterparts.[3][4] The study revealed that forty percent of worship service attending Americans volunteer regularly to help the poor and elderly as opposed to 15% of Americans who never attend services (that’s nearly a 300% difference).[3][4] Moreover, religious individuals are more likely than non-religious individuals to volunteer for school and youth programs (36% vs. 15%), a neighborhood or civic group (26% vs. 13%), and for health care (21% vs. 13%).[3][4]
Arthur C. Brooks wrote in Policy Review regarding data collected in the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey (SCCBS) (data collected by in 2000 by researchers at universities throughout the United States and the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research):
The differences in charity between secular and religious people are dramatic. Religious people are 25 percentage points more likely than secularists to donate money (91 percent to 66 percent- Nearly all religious and heavenly minded people give) and 23 points more likely to volunteer time (67 percent to 44 percent). And, consistent with the findings of other writers, these data show that practicing a religion is more important than the actual religion itself in predicting charitable behavior. For example, among those who attend worship services regularly, 92 percent of Protestants give charitably, compared with 91 percent of Catholics, 91 percent of Jews, and 89 percent from other religions.[5]
ABC News reported:
...the single biggest predictor of whether someone will be charitable is their religious participation.
Religious people are more likely to give to charity, and when they give, they give more money: four times as much. And Arthur Brooks told me that giving goes beyond their own religious organization:
"Actually, the truth is that they're giving to more than their churches," he says. "The religious Americans are more likely to give to every kind of cause and charity, including explicitly non-religious charities."[6]
The reality is that
2. In a Fallen world, there will be opportunities to PICK another person up.
Abbey met Penelope when she served as the administrative director of the Y2Y Homeless Shelter in Boston. Penelope just turned 18 and aged out of our foster care system and benefits. Her foster family immediately kicked her out. With no life skills, no resources, and no direction, she hopped on the next train to Boston, Massachusetts hoping to find help in the city.
Somehow this girl found the shelter. Abbey remembers looking at this insecure freckled girl and thinking but for life chances, their positions could be reversed.
Penelope had been shuffled between families so she only knew instability and uncertainty growing up. Yet, her eyes would twinkle when she spoke of her dream job, being a preschool teacher. She wanted to give little ones what she never had: unconditional love and security.
They developed a plan and Abbey walked her through the application process to receive aid and education. Sadly, the journey seemed too long, her past insecurities choked her confidence, and there were forces bent on destroying her. Abbey discovered that two older men would follow Penelope when she walked to her schooling. They tried to coax her into an unhealthy lifestyle. When Penelope resisted, they beat her. They threatened her. Taking advantage of her vulnerabilities, they slipped her drugs and made her prostitute for them.
Abbey knows the work at the shelter made a difference, but in many cases it was too little and too late. Often times these kids had been beat-up, passed around, and then abandoned by the very system and people who promised to care for them.
Sounds like the modern day story of the Good Samaritan.
Abbey sought that opportunity because of the faith and the nurture she has had as part of Hope’s family. She is also motivated to pursue education and work to begin to address the deeper issues facing foster care kids. She wants to see them safe, healthy and strong as they launch out into adulthood, much like the parable.
But, it isn’t just Abbey who makes a difference at Hope and there are more churches like Hope all over.
If you sense a calling on your heart to make a difference but don’t know where to start, let me share with you some ways you can join. Some have a very easy entry point, others will take a bit more commitment, so
a. Take heart in the things you do as a church family, beyond what we see in our Sunday Services:
Isaiah 117 house for foster kids.
The amount of children we sponsor in compassion. 50 You can make it 51
The number of Operation Christmas boxes we bless children and families with over 10,000 boxes processed through our ministry. that’s 10,000 homes that have been blessed with supplies and gifts in the name of Jesus.
The Women’s and Men’s shelter in Danville.
Partnering with our Burmese churches where the majority of adults are refugees. I listened to the stories of 3 faithful servants of God last Sunday, Pastor Isaac, Genevieve and Ruby. They all lived in refugee camps for years before coming to America. They volunteer countless hours a week to serve children and teach them.
Our opportunity to assist Haitian missions and ministry this Spring. As we give generously to the missions offering we will pack meals to feed thousands of people in their time of need.
Along with our ongoing support of 8,000 missionaries through the Cooperative program. We give 11% of our offering a week straight to missions and missionaries as well as taking up two offerings a year to add to that.
b. Remember, it starts by Planting yourself in other people’s lives and not Passing them by in their time of need.
i. You can’t meet every need in the world, but you can make a difference for someone.
LOREN EISLEY Wrote The Story of the Starfish
One day a man was walking along the beach when he noticed a boy picking something up and gently throwing it into the ocean. Approaching the boy, he asked, “What are you doing?” The youth replied, “Throwing starfish back into the ocean. The surf is up and the tide is going out. If I don’t throw them back, they’ll die.” “Son,” the man said, “don’t you realize there are miles and miles of beach and hundreds of starfish? You can’t make a difference!”After listening politely, the boy bent down, picked up another starfish, and threw it back into the surf. Then, smiling at the man, he said…” I made a difference for that one.”
ii. Who will be your one?
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