The Parable of the Good Samaritan

The parable of the Good Samaritan is another popular parable of Jesus that often gets overlooked. In this story, Jesus describes a Jewish man in need on the side of the road. Religious experts and the “spiritually mature” pass him by, but a Samaritan, one of the most despised people to the Jews, stops to help him.

In our lives today, we can be tempted to simply pass by those whom God is calling us to love and serve. We’re either too busy, we see them as too bad, or their situations are too broken for us to reach out in love. Like the man Jesus tells this story to, we can be caught asking “who exactly is my neighbor?” rather than “who will I be a neighbor to?” But by asking this question, we can begin to allow Jesus to transform us into people who are truly spiritually mature, people fully capable of loving and serving those around us.

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 As you’re turning there in your Bibles to Luke chapter 10, we want you to know that God the Father loves you. Jesus Christ is sufficient and supreme, and the Holy Spirit can transform your life from the inside out if you let him.

So let’s let Him Holy Spirit come and be our teacher and guide. We’re gonna start. Luke chapter 10. I’ll read verse 29, but wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, and who is my neighbor? 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. A priest happened to be going down that road when he saw in. He passed by on the other side, and the same way a Levite when he arrived on the place and saw him and passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan on his journey came up to him, and when he saw the man, he had compassion, he went over to him and bandage 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. The next day, he took out two Ari and gave them to the innkeeper and said, take care of him. When I come back, I’ll re reimburse you for whatever extra you spend. Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?

The one who showed mercy to him? He said. Then Jesus told him, go and do the same. Let’s pray. Father, son, and Holy Spirit, we’re asking you to use this passage the same way you’ve used it the last 2000 years. It’s to bring glory to your name. It’s to bring healing and joy to your servants. God, would you allow us to see this really common story afresh?

Would you help us see God, that this is an invitation to something deeper and truly something lighter? In Jesus’ name, everyone says Amen. You can have a seat. Beware of having the right answers to the wrong questions. It’s hard to imagine now, but in the late 1990s, Chick-fil-A was in trouble. They weren’t the powerhouse that we all know them to be today, but so the executive team was getting anxious, mainly because they were being outpaced by the Boston market.

Locations in the nineties and Boston Market were popping up everywhere. The franchise model seemed to really work. They were perfecting the chicken, and so pressure was mounting. The executive leadership team began ho holding meetings for Chick-fil-A, asking the question, how do we get bigger? How do we keep up with the pace?

But finally, in the middle of one of those meetings, the founder, Truett Kathy, he decided at the beginning not to say anything, just to see where the direction would go. But finally he had enough, we don’t have this verbatim, but essentially what he did was he stood up and he changed the direction of the entire company by simply stating, all we’ve been asking is how do we get bigger?

But the better question is, how do we get better? Because if we get better, our customers will demand we get bigger. Historians note that that moment was a turning point in Chick-fil-A’s history. They stopped obsessing over size just to grow for growing sake, and they started focusing on substance. Shout out to Chick-fil-A sauce, anybody else?

Amen. And, uh, growth followed. Sadly, you can’t apply today’s message by going to Chick-fil-A right after church ’cause they’re Christians. So, I’m so sorry. Here we are. I crave Chick-fil-A every Sunday. But true Kathy, he understood a principle that really does transcend business. Beware of having the right answers.

To the wrong questions. And I think as a church, that’s a really good question and warning for us to take seriously. As I think back five years ago, which is crazy about COVID, I think one of the first questions and the main question everybody was asking in the beginning for pastors was, how do we do livestream?

It was all these questions about how do we get online, how do we get really cool and hip and use these videos, uh, for the glory of God? And I think it was an important question. I’m glad we were there. We were able to do that. But I think looking back now, we should be asking, was that the best question?

Was that the primary question we should have been asking today? The question is often just to be in America. As a Christian, it’s very tempting for church leadership for our question to be how are we making more tenders? How are we bringing more people in the room? How are we gonna hit the budget? But I think kind of the North star for Passion Creek is we’d say a better question.

How are we making disciples? How are we raising people up and sending them out for the glory of God? And so if you find the right answers to the wrong questions, it leads you to the wrong destination. We’re struggling, not struggling, but thinking about this as well, and the life of our church. It’s so exciting.

We now have five acres, just four minutes from here. And so having land, we’re praying and prepping about a building. But as a leadership team, we’ve been asking this question. We’ve been spending hours saying, are we asking the right questions for this season? Because the primary question cannot be, what are we building?

Although we will get to that. A more important question still is who are we building? And then how will this building help or hurt as we form our people? Those are the better questions. See, I think we spend so much energy looking for the right answers, but we never take a step back and question. Are we starting with the right question?

And I think here in Luke 10, Jesus here encounters a brilliant religious expert who makes that very same mistake. He has all the right answers to a lot of the wrong questions. So you may have heard this parable called the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Fun fact. I think it’s a good summary of it. Jesus technically doesn’t call it the Good Samaritan.

He’s just a Samaritan, but he does do good deeds. But here’s the temptation we’ve had the last nine weeks have we’ve, as we’ve gone through the parables, you likely have heard this story before. Can you raise your hand if you’ve heard the Parable of the Good Samaritan before? Awesome. So my goal is to give you a new insight.

So just assume maybe there’s something else for us to learn. ’cause I do think, as I’ve studied this week, we have tended to twist this parable and certainly tame it from its meaning. But I think if we dig into the context, it really comes to life. So I want us to start that way at the end of Luke chapter nine.

So this is in Luke 10. At the end of Luke nine, we see Jesus begins to travel to Jerusalem. Scholars call this the travel narrative for the next 10 chapters. Jesus, as he’s walking to Jerusalem to dive for the sins of the world, he’s going from Galilee to Jerusalem and he’s teaching about the kingdom.

He’s telling stories and parables, and also he is foreshadowing telling them, I am going to be crucified and raise up again on the third day. Now, if he’s gonna make this route, the, the most direct route from Galilee to Jerusalem is actually through Samaria. Samaria is, we were about to find out is not a place that Jewish people want to be at.

In fact, most Jews would just take the hit by going all the way around Samaria because they so despise the Samaritans. Again, we’ll get into those reasons in a few, but Jesus actually, you see in Luke 9 53, he tries to take the shortcut. He sends his two disciples ahead, goes to a Samaritan village and says, Hey, will you host us?

Are we allowed to stay in your village? They actually reject Jesus. They said, no, we don’t want to have, we want to, we don’t wanna have anything to do with you. And this comes from that famous scene. It’s really fun. James and John who like become the pillars of the early church. They get really mad and so they go back to Jesus, say what happened and say, can we just bring down fire from heaven and blow up this village?

So if God can use like a hot head like them, he can use you. Amen. Praise God. Okay, so Jesus rebukes that spirit and this just tells us even his own disciples who have spent three years with Jesus, they still have this disdain for all things Samaria. Now let’s talk about Luke 10. The beginning of Luke 10.

Jesus sends out 72 of his disciples to go and do the work of the ministry, to heal and to proclaim the kingdom of God and to cast out demons. And so we see tremors of revival here. The disciples come back and they’re excited. They report back to Jesus. Quote, even the demons obey us like we have so much power through the spirit.

This is incredible. So that I think. Helps. That’s the, the backdrop that sets the stage for what happens next. Because look at verse 25 now, then an expert in the law stood up to test him. Expert in the law, think modern day like a Bible professor or a religious scholar. So someone you would look up to, they know a lot of their Bible stood up to test him.

Some people think we kind of like already think this negatively, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that this religious expert had ill intent. Uh, because if you think about it, the religious experts, their, their role in society was to help maintain orthodoxy. Orthodoxy simply means believing in the truth of God’s word and not straying from it.

So it was common then, as it’s common today, there would be these revivals where people would claim, we found the way, the truth of life. This is the now. God is here. And so the religious experts, their job was to really kind of see, okay. What’s the birthplace of this revival? What are they teaching? Is, is this in accordance with the holy scriptures or are they straying?

So in some ways, at least so far, this religious expert’s kind of doing his job. It’s his duty to, to ensure that this rabbi is following orthodoxy. That is, that is following the Old Testament. And so then he asked a good question, though, teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life so far? That’s not a bad question.

It’s a good one. In fact, my prayer, as I’ve prepared for this this week, I think some of you in this room maybe need to ask that question for the first time today. But now in classic Jesus style, he answers his question with a question. Um, this religious expert likely has never encountered this. He’s usually the one who asks the questions, but now Jesus turns the tables on him.

Let’s look at verse 26, what is written in the law? He asked him, how do you read it? And so he answered. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself. Was this a good answer? Jesus says yes. In verse 28, you’ve answered correctly.

He told him, do this and you will live. Now the expert answers correctly because he quotes the Bible what he first says. This first part about loving the Lord with all your heart. You probably have heard this before. This is actually in the Hebrew, is originally found in Deuteronomy six, five is called thema.

Can you say that with me? Shma. Now, growing up, I used to think it was called Shama, but really a more faithful interpretation is shma. And so the Jewish people, certainly this religious expert was trained growing up, you repeated the shma. Twice a day you would say this phrase. Twice a day. And what’s huge too, in Deuteronomy six, five, just before that, he says, don’t just listen.

This is what you need to obey. It’s not just mental ascent. Yes, we should love the Lord. No, like you must with all that you have, love the Lord your God. And then he quotes another piece of scripture, he quotes, he quotes Leviticus 1918, which is simply love your neighbor as yourself. Now I think this is helpful context.

So Jesus and Matthew says, these are the two greatest commands. So he’s answering correctly. It’s helpful too to remember this isn’t a new thing to love your neighbor as yourself. You see this all the way in the Old Testament in Leviticus 19. If you read all of Leviticus 19, which I think is worth your time this week, if you’ve never done that before, you’ll quickly realize in the context of of Leviticus 19, Moses is not saying just like have a helpful affinity, have like warm fuzzies for your neighbor.

No. It’s like literally not just sentiment, it’s action. Like find ways to truly bless everyone around you or to quote DC talk. I don’t care what you say. I don’t care what you heard the word love. Ha love is a verb. Any nineties Christians. Amen. Right? Love’s a verb. All right, so, so far everything’s sounding good.

It’s orthodoxy textbook doing great, but then everything shifts. ’cause now we really see his heart and he starts to ask the wrong follow-up question. Verse 29. But wanting to justify himself, Eugene Peterson paraphrases it as looking for a loophole. He asked Jesus, and who is my neighbor? What’s happening here is he wants to be reassured that he already is loving enough and he is trying to find out, I’m not supposed to love everybody, right?

Like, who do you mean by neighbor? He’s hoping Jesus says, oh, you’re fine. Trust me, you’ve done enough. But Jesus doesn’t give him what he wants. I love this. So he responds, uh, with a question. With a question. It could be frustrating. Now he asks another question, and Jesus doesn’t give him the definition.

He’s just asking, can you define neighbor for me? And instead he gives him a story. What I love about this story is the story doesn’t just answer his question, it changes the question. It makes it where it’s the question he should have been asking. Look at verse 30. Jesus took up the question and said a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of Roberts notice from Jerusalem to Jericho.

So it’s actually, it says going down on purpose. It’s a descent, so it’s 17 miles from Jerusalem to Jericho. I’ve taken this route before when I got to go to Israel, and it’s a big dip. So like, um, Jerusalem to Jericho, it’s 3,300 feet descent, so it’s 200 feet per mile. I mean, you were going down into Jericho.

So as he’s walking down, he fell into the hands of Roberts. They stripped him, beat him up. And fled leaving him half dead. Now, I know we’re, a lot of us are Christians in this room, but have you seen the Book of Eli? Anybody seen the Book of Eli with Denzel Washington? Praise God, you’re saved. Trust me. You know?

Okay. Anyways, so I, yeah, I’ve watched that movie. ’cause we are major Denzel fans and I think that’s like, as I read this passage and the context, it’s kind of like the book of Eli. So if you haven’t seen it before, it’s deserted and it’s this long walk and Denzel’s actually quoting scripture. So be a Christian and watch the movie this week.

But anyways, so as he’s going along though, there’s always some people on the side who act hurt and it turns out to be a trick. And that was actually a lot what would happen here from Jerusalem to Jericho. This 17 miles wasn’t a straight shot. It was fun, full of twists and turns and there was all these caves.

So it was a pretty terrifying walk. It was actually known as the Way of Blood that was the name of the road because there would be thiefs always taking your stuff, but pretty frequent as well was murder. And one of the biggest tricks they would do is they would injure someone. Or fake injure someone and then pounce on the person who tries to help.

So you kinda learn to take care of yourself. Just look straightforward and get home as fast as possible. The hearers would’ve understood that context. Now, so do we. Verse 31, A priest happened to be going down that road, which implies he’s going from Jerusalem, where he works back to Jericho, where his home is.

When he saw him, he passed by on the other side. In the same way a Levite, when he arrived at the place, saw him, he passed by on the other side. So let me help you with a little bit more Old Testament knowledge that will be helpful here. Priests and Levites, they typically lived in Jericho. It was a cheaper place to live, but they had to work in Jerusalem, so it was very common for them to just walk back and forth.

The obvious question though is what’s the difference between a priest and a Levite? Well, a priest is from the tribe of Levi, so in some senses he’s a Levi, but he’s also a descendant of Aaron. If you know the story of Moses and Aaron, Aaron’s line specifically is where the priests were. Uh, you had to be from.

Aaron to be a priest. This meant you can go into the Holy of Holies, you can burn incense, you can make sacrifices to God. The Levites are also from the tribe of Levis, so they’re cousins with the priests, but they’re not direct descendants from Aaron. And so they still work at the temple, but they cannot go into the Holy of Holies.

They’re like the worship leaders as you get into the service. They’re the gatekeepers. There’s a lot of ways they serve the temple, but they don’t go to the Holy of Holies. So those are some of the differences, but mainly don’t miss what they have in common. Here’s three things should be on the screen of what they have in common.

First of all, both men knew the command. Love your neighbor is yourself. These are good, faithful Jewish believers in God, in the Torah. They know Leviticus 19 by heart. Number two. Both of them saw the wounded man and passed by on the other side. So it’s not like they were walking and just so filled with prayer and scripture.

I miss that. No, they saw the guy and went on the other side of the road. That’s important to note. But the most important thing to note I think is both likely went home thinking they had done nothing wrong, and I don’t think we should move past that quickly. I think that’s what makes this parable so terrifying.

’cause they have missed the heart of God and they’re not even guilty about it. Then they didn’t even notice that they’re not following the very Bible. They proclaim to love and obey. They could have come up with a lot of excuses why they went to the other side. Priests are not doctors. So that’s one. How can I be helpful to you?

I will say, shout out to us having a safety team and nurses and stuff around here, because if someone draws blood, certainly if someone throws up, I’ll just throw up with them. Like, that’s how helpful I am. I’m just, if someone has blood, I pass out with them, so I’m really not that helpful. But, so maybe that’s like, Hey, I’m just doing the Lord’s work.

Hopefully a doctor will come. Uh, this could be a trap, you know? So the robbers could be trying to take advantage of someone else. So they’re thinking, man, I, I just went from the temple. I need to go home and see my kids. I’m just gonna keep moving forward. And also though, if he was a dead man, the Leviticus says that if you were to touch a priest were to touch a dead man, you would become ceremonially unclean.

And that would mean you have to quarantine from your family and from your job for the next week, and you’d miss out on your duties of serving as a holy man of God. So there are some, quote unquote legitimate excuses, but not really. See, this is kind of the, the whole point of today, if we’re not asking the right questions, we could be the priest and the Levite who are loving on paper, but not loving in practice.

That’s what’s scary about the cultural moment we’re in. We all know just enough Bible where we can define it on paper, but are we demonstrating it in practice? It really depends on us asking better questions, and that’s what we are trying to do at Passion Creek. One way we’re taking that step. This past month was introducing to you guys the spiritual health survey.

We don’t really have a hard deadline. It would be such a gift to us if you took it this week. We’re just trying to get it in prep for what we have planned for you in January of 2026. But we’re doing this intentionally. We just finished our three year roadmap. We went through all the nine practices of Jesus that we feel like as a community we need to intentionally be formed into things like scripture and simplicity and hospitality and fasting.

But I think it’s really important. If you’ve taken the survey, you’ll notice the questions are not so simple. They’re not, did you fast? That’s an easy yes if you did it once, right? Or did you ever Sabbath? If you’ll notice, the questions are a lot harder. It’s questions like, am I becoming more honest in my relationship with others?

Am I more compassionate for those in need? Am I becoming more like Christ? A few of you, uh, I was talking to this week, we were talking about the survey and one of ’em I was cracking up ’cause they were like, I thought I was doing really good. Like I thought I was just killing it as a follower of the way.

And then you had to gimme that survey and it’s like, I still have so much more to grow now. We hope that actually encourages you. I know for me it’s like, it’s so good to know there’s always more to grow into. But here’s why we did that survey. We want the survey to be so designed. We want our church to be so designed that a priest or a Levite that we see in this passage might stop and think, wait a minute, am I actually missing the point?

Is God not pleased that I know my Bible, but I also have disdain for my neighbor? Wait a minute, I go to every bible study every night of the week, but my wife can’t stand me. Because I’m angry with her and impatient. It’s really easy to create these check boxes to think, man, we’re doing great and yet everything around us is crumbling.

We’re not actually loving. And so we just need to start asking ourselves better questions, not for the purpose of condemnation. Let me assure you, the grace of Jesus covers your sin. You are forgiven if you have received that over your life. But I think these questions invite us into something more. I think it’s great.

By the way, lemme be clear. I think we need to learn how to define love on paper, right? Like love, according to Thomas Aquinas and his understanding of agape in the New Testament, he he defines love as love is to will the good of another, ahead of your own. Beautiful, sacrificial. But notice even that word good.

Theology and teaching is so important because the world will define good in dramatically different ways that the scriptures define good. Have you noticed? So it’s important for us to be like the expert in the law to know these answers, but woe to us, if we stop there, what we truly need to become, and it’s a journey, but it’s a joy, is to become the type of people who demonstrate that kind of love in practice on a daily basis.

Me and Caleb always kind of talk to each other as we’re crafting just what the next calendar year looks like and this roadmap of the practices. And we like to remind ourselves we have failed. If the Pharisees of the New Testament can come to our church and feel like they’re passing it with flying colors, like they’re doing the best.

Yes, I did all of the Sabbath and all of the tithing and all of, but yet their heart is so far from God and they have disdain for others. Do you guys get what I’m saying? We wanna make sure we are actually changing the goalpost of what maturity is according to Jesus’ goalposts, which is what he does in verse 33.

But a Samaritan on his journey came up to him and when he saw the man he had compassion, he went over to him and bandage his wounds, pouring on all of oil and wine. Two very expensive, precious items to have. Then he put ’em on his own animal. So he puts him on a donkey. That means he now has to walk while this person gets carried, brought him to an end and took care of him.

The next day, he took out two Ari. So notice he was with them. It changed his whole plan. He was with them that whole day, spent the night making sure he was fine. When he woke up the next day, he gave two denari, which people would argue is two weeks worth of a hotel stay, and gave them to the innkeeper and said, take care of ’em.

And when I come back, I’ll reimburse you for whatever extra you spend. Now, let me give you some more context on Samaritans. Samaritans. In this day, in the Jewish, for the Jewish people, Samaritans would’ve never been the hero of any story. We say it all the time. Oh, he is a good Samaritan. That is not Samaritans were considered half breeds.

Uh, they were, and that’s, that is inappropriate to say, but that’s how they felt. Uh, they were assimilated with the Assyrians. The Assyrians in 7 22 bc the 10 northern tribes of Israel were not taking the prophet’s warnings. And so they kept following other gods. And so God allowed the Assyria to come and invade Israel.

Now the Samaritans are the ones who just took in the Assyrians, worshiped their gods, along with their own, and they began to have, uh, marriage and they just mixed paganism with Judaism together. And so this was the worst of the worst sins for the Jewish people. And so this is who helps bless this other Jewish man.

It’s crazy. I want you to notice this. I think we, we tend to do this. We tend to look at the story and think, oh, great, okay, I need to go serve a Samaritan, which we should. That’s hard enough. But this story is no, actually, it’s about a Samaritan serving you, which is the most humbling of all stories. But look how this despised outsider loves.

He bandages the wounds by using his own supplies. He lifts the man onto his own donkey, and he walks beside him to the end. He pays for two weeks of lodging and promises to return and check on him even more. What Jesus is now doing after sharing this story, he now gets this religious expert to the right question.

Verse 36, which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers? In other words, the question isn’t, who is my neighbor? The right question is, will I be a neighbor? So who is my neighbor focuses on bare minimum faith. Who do I have to love? Will I be a neighbor?

Focuses on bearing maximum fruit? Who will I encounter today and how can I love them? Who is my neighbor? Trains my mind and my body to start asking who deserves my help? Will I be a neighbor? Trains our mind and bodies to start asking who needs my help. See, in reality, neighbor in the English simply means the person who dwells next to you.

The Greek has the same implications. It’s just whoever you’re around, you don’t get to pick your neighbor. And that was the beauty of Jesus’s day. You couldn’t, you move easily. So when Jesus says, love your neighbor, it’s like, oh, even that neighbor. Yes, even that neighbor, the one who lives right next to you.

See, in that day there wasn’t as much economic success where you can just move and now create your own little haven. Sadly, and I, you know, part of it’s a blessing. We wanna move for other reasons, but I get it. Not move outta state, we love you, we’re, we wanna move closer to our new building. But today we curate our communities, do we not?

We go to the neighborhoods to maximize our comfort and minimize offense. We like to be around people who are just like us, and some of that, that’s fine, whatever. But I think a good question to ask is, who are we becoming when we never surround ourselves around people who are so different than us? So then therefore we never even have to love them.

See, that’s the question Jesus is getting us to press into. Why aren’t we the neighbor God called us to be? I think there’s at least three excuses. Number one is that we’re too busy. If you have been to Passion Creek for any length of time, you’ve heard ad nauseum. We like to say this all the time. We live in the most ed, distracted and anxious generation in human history.

Welcome to Passion Creek Church. What a time to be alive. But in our last three years of developing this roadmap of the practices, you know, the number one reason people don’t actually do the practice. They’ll say, oh, fasting sounded great. Hospitality, I’m all in. What’s the number one reason they don’t actually do it?

It’s ’cause they’re calendar. They’re just way too busy. We have found, and it’s, we’ve been trying to figure out solutions. A lot of our people don’t ever lack motivation. We wanna be Jesus type people. We just lack the margin. We don’t have the time. We don’t have the ability to do it. I actually don’t think it’s a coincidence.

What, what is, what happens right after this parable of the Good Samaritan, the famous story of Martha and Mary. Right Martha, she’s busy and frantic and annoyed because Mary is just sitting at the feet of Jesus. She had made margin and is just in his presence. And Martha says, yell at her. And Jesus says, actually, she’s the right one.

You have not made enough margin in your life. I think we’re too busy, we’re too busy to help others. We don’t even notice when they’re in need. Other times, I think we don’t help others ’cause it looks like they’re too busy. But we have to remember and humanize them. Often people are so busy ’cause they don’t, they don’t have the capacity to actually stop and look at how destructive their life is.

So they’re keep, they keep on doing another thing. And maybe it’s our job to slow life down for them. Don’t like literally get in front of their car, like slow down. Don’t do that. But what can we do to introduce margin into their life and begin to love them? Either way, busyness is keeping us from agape love.

Number two. Another reason is that too bad. I mean this both towards them and towards us. A lot of us, we don’t serve others ’cause we think we’re too bad to help others. I, I’m constantly blown away at how often our people hear the lies of the enemy. Like, I can’t, I’m not worthy of serving. I’m not worthy of lending a hand like you feel like your past disqualifies you if you’re not gifted or talented enough.

But it’s so ironic because man, if you always think you’re too bad, you’ll never do good Samaritan. In all circumstances, everyone would say, Samaritan’s, the worst of the worst. This Samaritan, when he served the Jewish man, the Jewish man likely was like, Ugh, a Samaritan’s helping me. And he didn’t let that stop him.

We’ve been saying this all year. God doesn’t wait until you have it all together. God uses you when you realize you don’t have it all together and you serve anyways. You’re not too bad. But I think what’s more tempting, especially in our politically charged moment, it’s tempting to believe that some are too bad.

To deserve our help. That’s my biggest fear right now. I think our culture is great at creating labels. The problem is those labels create limitations. We begin to sort people into categories. They deserve this, but they don’t deserve this. That group over there is safe, but this group over here is dangerous.

That ideology, they’re good. So let’s just think they’re the best ever. Those ideologies are so bad. We need to stay away from them before long. Here’s the problem. We stop seeing people as people. We just start seeing them as profiles and categories. We forget that Jesus died on the cross for them too.

Following Jesus means we see people with the lens of grace and truth. Frederick, uh, excuse me, Freda Carney, she names this tension that I think we all feel, quote is on the screen. Our challenge is not only to recognize injustice, oppression, and propaganda, so we do have to call that out, right? Et cetera, with enough outrage to prompt deep concern and action, but to do so without a measure of hatred, disdain, or contempt.

Have you noticed how hard that is? This is wicked. It’s terrible. We’re gonna love and serve you though, and not feel any contempt. Man, that’s hard. I love her. Next line. Jesus said, love your enemies. He didn’t say, don’t have enemies. First service laughed. I don’t know what your problem is, but anyways, a little bit weird, right?

How do we do this? How do we have compassion without contempt? I think the only way is through the cross. What does the cross say? The cross says two things at once. One, you are more sinful than you can imagine. Yes, your your own actions and depravity equal so much wrath from God. But at the same time, the cross also says, you are more loved than you can ever hope for.

God himself came down in the flesh, lived a life you couldn’t live, died, the death you deserve to die. So that when you believe in him, you have life and life and abundance. The cross says those two things at the very same time. That is how we’re able to have compassion, but name sin for what it is, but also without contempt.

May the Holy Spirit give us that kind of wisdom in these trying days. So I think some of us were too busy. Others of us, we don’t. We’re not good neighbors ’cause we’re too bad. I think the third reason is we’re too broken. The man on the road here was deeply wounded and broken. The scripture literally says he was left half dead.

Here’s what’s hard about that. If you feel like God’s calling you to serve someone on the side of the road, it’s pretty hard When the person’s left half dead, it’s not like a quick fix or a pick me up, or all they need is some lemonade or some bandaids. No, this changes your whole schedule. It’s gonna give your emotional.

Uh, resources. It’s gonna take your spiritual resources, your relational resources, your financial resources to help this person get better. And I think, I know I’m tempted to see all the needs around me and think it’s just too big. I can’t fix any of it. And the reality is, is the Holy Spirit sometimes does say you cannot serve this person because you’re called to serve someone else.

So I, I understand that. But let’s also be honest, many of us don’t serve because we feel too broken. And let me be clear, without Christ, we are, I think it’s really important before we insert ourselves as the Good Samaritan, we must first see ourselves as the wounded traveler, the church fathers, when they would preach the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

They mainly saw this as an allegory of the gospel. And I think there’s, it’s more than that. But also think it’s a beautiful way to look at this par. The traveler in this story is you. It’s humanity. Jerusalem is our original home. It’s Eden that God created for us to live and to dwell and to be in his presence forever.

And Jericho is the fallen world that looks so enticing for us, and we are the traveler who left our home for a place far lesser and worse, and along the way came the robbers. The robbers are the enemies of the soul, the robbers that have taken your life as sin, satan, and death itself. And as you’re laying on the side of the road, because of these enemies of the soul, your wounds that you feel within you are your shame.

The wounds that are consuming you are things like guilt and fear. Things that happen when we have life outside of God and the priest. And the Levite in the story is religion without grace. It’s the Pharisees who know how to diagnose, who know how to say that’s wrong, that’s evil, but they have no healing power.

They have no grace and restoration. The inn is the church where the wounded are actually called to come and be restored, but most importantly, the Samaritan is Jesus Christ. Jesus is the despised outsider who gave everything to draw near to you and to me to bring about healing. And I just want to ask a really straightforward question.

Have you received his love

or are you still left for dead on the side of the road? Have you surrendered yourself into his arms? Have you allowed him to come pick you up and make you whole? Have you opened up yourself to Jesus, your wounds so that he can heal you? Have you opened up to him your sin, your shame, your guilt, your fears?

And have you allowed Jesus to do the great physician work of making you clean? And if Jesus is the good Samaritan, does that mean we don’t have to be? That’s the problem some people have with this allegory. Well, if he’s the Samaritan, phew. Now I don’t have to go help people half dead on the side of the road, but not at all.

’cause look at verse 37, the one who showed mercy to him, he said, then Jesus told him, go and do the same. See, Jesus is the true and better Samaritan who calls us to go and do the same. When we realized we too, were once left half dead on the side of the road and the good Samaritan came and brought us life and life in abundance.

Of course, we’re going back on that road and we are finding anybody else who’s left in the ditches we’re to tell ’em about the good Samaritan, Jesus Christ, who will save you and heal you and make you whole. This is what we’re called to do. Why don’t we also go and do the same? May we be the type of church that does go and does the same.

Let’s stand to respond.