The Good Samaritan

Automatically transcribed — lightly cleaned for readability. Wording is the preacher’s own.

Good morning. My name is Cameron. I'm one of the pastors here at Conduit. Morning, Larry. And this is a special day. They're all special, but today we're going to have a shorter, abbreviated service. I'm getting some of these right here. If you want to let you know, if you're new to Conduit, I usually preach for anywhere between I don't know, 20 and 30 minutes. Never go long, anything like that. So it's going to be, it will be much shorter this morning than normal. But no, I intentionally have half the number of pages that I usually have, okay? And honestly, that doesn't mean anything because here I am rambling anyway. So all right.

But what our hope is today is that we, or what our plan is today, I should say. And one of the reasons that we're all together in one service is because similar to the story that we're going to look at from the gospel of Luke this morning, Luke chapter 10, we've mentioned it a few times in the last couple of weeks. It's the, the parable of the good Samaritan that we're going to look at this morning, similar to the lesson that Jesus taught the, the scribe or the lawmaker, in the parable, is that part of the expression of a faith that is alive and a faith that is kingdom and eternity minded is that faith does not just sit in a theoretical place of knowledge in our mind, but that our, that, that what we know about God, what we believe about God and how God transforms our heart should take, should be demonstrated by the things that we do in life. And conversely, the things that we don't do. Now this is not to say, I don't want to be clear

To say, this is not to say that the way in which we'll see this really clearly in the parable, but this is not to say that the way in which we do inherit eternal life as the guy in the parable questions teacher, how do I, how must I inherit eternal life is the question that gets asked to Jesus. That, that the way, the way that we inherit eternal life is not, not by just doing a bunch of good things with the right heart. We cannot work or earn or do our way into the kingdom of God. We can receive it only as a gift from God, his grace through his son, Jesus. And so, we're gonna, the whole service today, our whole time together this morning is to demonstrate both of those, right? That as, as a community of people here, that a part of our faith, an expression of our faith that we know intellectually and know in our heart is an act as actual physical action. So what we're, you know, after we're, done up here this morning, we're

Gonna, those of you who are able to or want to, we'll move downstairs and we'll, we're gonna pack the bags for the Thanksgiving event that's coming up, this coming Saturday. All right. So our Thanksgiving event is this Saturday. We've been talking about this for months. We started talking about it in August. Okay. And so here we are, please join me this week in praying for really good weather on Saturday. Okay. Even for like, just, we prayed this at the leadership team meeting the other night, Lord, just give us like an hour and a half. That's all we need. Just an hour and a half where in the, let the clouds part, let us see the sun. Doesn't matter if it's cold, just let us see the sun and have it not be ringing. That would be great. Okay. And that, so that's this Saturday, November 23rd, 1500 meals throughout Chautauqua County. That's 10 different sites. The Lord has been so good to us in, in providing for everything above and beyond what we need. So we're going to welcome you to join us downstairs afterwards

To help pack some of those bags that we'll be, sending out. Okay. So, let's take a few moments and read from the scripture this morning are, the parable of the good Samaritan. This isn't the gospel of Luke chapter 10, starting at verse 25. The parable of the good Samaritan is kind of so ubiquitous in both in, in culture itself, that even if even people who don't know the Lord and don't know the scripture know what a good Samaritan is, right? If you say, well, we, we have whole laws in our penal code based off of the title of this parable, right? We have, we have good Samaritan laws. And so there, the, the message of the parable has infiltrated its way even into culture. But sometimes we forget even what Jesus, was seeking to communicate here. So let's ask him to reveal it to us. Verse 25, Luke chapter 10 on one occasion, an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus teacher. He asked, what must I do to inherit eternal life? It's a pretty important question, right? It, we should pay attention to whatever

Jesus says here. What must I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus. What is written in the law? Jesus replied, how do you read it? And he answered, 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 love your neighbor as yourself. You have answered correctly. Jesus replied, do this and you will live.

But he wanted to justify himself. It's common behavior, right? So he wanted to justify himself. So he asked Jesus, well, okay, well, who is my neighbor then? It's obviously this person sitting next to me, right? That I, that I like. That is very similar to me. That is easy to love, right? In reply, Jesus tells a story. He says, there was a man who was going from Jerusalem to Jericho. When he fell into the hands of robbers, they stripped him of all of his clothes. They beat him and went away, leaving him half dead, stripped and naked, beat him up, threw him in a ditch, half dead, right? The story that Jesus is telling. A priest happens to be going down that same road.

When he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So this is a picture of a priest, religious man, walking down the side of the road, sees the man naked, beat up, half dead, it says, in the ditch and makes a decision to do what? To pass by on the other side of the road, right? It's like an indication that there was an intentional decision to what? Not see him.

Not see him. So, verse 32, so too a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, same thing, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was. And when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day, he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. "Look after him, " he said, "and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have." End of the story. Then Jesus asks the expert in the law this question, "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?" So, okay, you asked the question, "Sir, who is my neighbor? I've told you a story, " so you have three options. You have the priest, you have the Levite, and you have the Samaritan. Which one of these was the neighbor in the story? What does he say? The expert in the law, verse 37, replied, "Well, the one who had

Mercy on him." Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise. Go and do likewise." Now, like I said, we often read this parable or maybe not even necessarily read it as intentionally as we just read it, but we think about this parable and maybe we don't even really think about the parable as much as we think about the title. We just think about the way that the parable has been titled, "The Parable of the Good Samaritan." We all know the story. Yeah, the parable of the good. I'm to be a good Samaritan. I'm to be a good Samaritan, but we fail maybe to recognize how scandalous of a parable this would have been for Jesus to tell or to talk about. Because Jesus was speaking to a Jewish man, an expert in the Jewish law, someone who was a religious, essentially elite of the Jewish faith, and he used as the hero of the story a Samaritan man or a Samaritan person. Now, for us on the outside, this does not seem significant at all, but the reality is that for a Jewish person, the idea or the name good Samaritan would have been an oxymoron.

The two did not go together. It was like oil and water, right? There was no such thing as a good Samaritan as far as a Jew was concerned. Now, you might be asking, "Well, why? What was the big deal?" There's hundreds of years of history to go behind what the issue between Jews and Samaritans were, but Jewish people considered, essentially, Samaritans to be both ethnically and religiously unclean, and the Samaritans likewise both resented and despised their Jewish, would have been their cut like their Jewish cousins. So the Samaritans were descendants of Israelites. They existed within the bloodline of the people of Israel who had, during the time period of both the Assyrian and Babylonian takeover of Jerusalem and then exile, Samaritans ended up, these people ended up intermarrying with the both Assyrian and Babylonian occupying forces.

In the course of that, these Samaritan people who were Israelites by birth at that point, they kept some things that were rooted in Old Testament life and Old Testament doctrine. So some of the practices of ancient Israel and the Jewish people they continued to maintain, but then they also, for a number of reasons, mainly that they had been intermarrying with pagan kingdoms, is they began pulling from both Assyrian and Babylonian cultures and religious practices and integrating them into their life and in their culture as religious people. They would blend enough pagan beliefs into the mix that Samaritan worship ultimately became something fundamentally different from either Judaism in its most strict form or just flat-out paganism. It was like a weird mix of like half right, half wrong, all the way wrong.

And so Jewish people looked at the Samaritans as worshiping idols, as not following the law, and as both ethnically and religiously unclean.

Now, around about 130 years before the time of Jesus, the king of the Jewish nation at that time,

This was during like the Maccabean period, ended up defeating the Samaritan nation, and the Jews demolished the temple that the Samaritans had constructed on Mount Herosim.

And so there was this consistent and constant battle between the ethnically and religiously unclean Samaritans and the pure worshipers of the one true God or the Jewish nation.

And so when you see parables like this, if you were to go to the back of your Bible and it has those maps in them, and you would see like the Sea of Galilee is at the top of the map and then the Jordan River comes down into the Dead Sea, right? And you see Galilee and Nazareth and Jerusalem, and you'll see that Samaria sits right in between, right in the middle of both the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Israel. And so there were two ways to get from the northern kingdom of Israel to the southern kingdom of Israel. You could go right down through Samaria, straight shot, which means you would have to travel through the unclean, or you could take the long way around, which was across the Jordan, come down the road to Jericho, right? And then up and around into the southern kingdom or vice versa, right?

And so when you talk about the good Samaritan to a Jewish person, they would have no concept whatsoever of a Samaritan being good in any way, shape, or form. They were unclean. They were not fit to be around. They worshiped pagan deities. They were not true Jews in any way whatsoever. This should be the kind of the foundation by which we kind of view the whole parable, because it's important to understand how Jesus answers the question, "Who is my neighbor?"

Because it's not just like an out there, like spiritual question that we don't have to ask whether or not, we don't have to ask its application to our life. It has application to our life. The same question exists for us. Who is our neighbor?

If we were to ask the Lord, "Lord, what must we do to inherit eternal life?" "Love the Lord your God with all that you are, all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself, you have answered correctly, " Jesus says. And then we were to ask, "Well, Lord, here at Conduit, or in Jamestown, New York, or in Chautauqua County, or in our region, or in Warren County, or wherever I live, like, "Lord, who is my neighbor? Who's my neighbor?"

We have to be honest with ourselves about the answer that Jesus is likely to give.

If Jesus offers a consistent testimony throughout all time, then who would Jesus list as our neighbor?

Who would Jesus list as your neighbor? What is the story? What is the parable that Jesus would give?

In the question that the teacher of the law asks, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?"

Jesus connects in an integral, non-separated way that our love for God, our expression of love for God with all that we are, a surrender of all that we have, mind, body, soul, spirit, strength, that our love from God cannot be separated from our expression of love of others. And not only can it not be separated from our expression of love for others, it cannot and should not be separated from our heart position towards others.

And so Jesus used this story to illustrate and communicate who our neighbor is, who this guy's neighbor was, and important, like I said, for us to ask the question, "Who is our neighbor?"

What's interesting about this parable, like I said, we're gonna move through it a little bit quickly this morning. What's interesting in this whole parable is not that the two religious men, as they passed by this other man who was in need of help or assistance, did not see the person who was in need. It's very clear that they saw him and made a decision to go to the other side of the road as if they, or acting in a manner of which they never did see them. What happened was is that they saw him and they showed a casual indifference to the state of his suffering.

They were able to see what he was experiencing. They were able to see the situation that he was in stripped naked, so just full of shame out in front of everyone, beaten, unable to help himself, laying in a ditch, and the only two people to come down the road were those whose outward religious life was something to be admired, and so would the outward religious life match up with their, with the action that was taken in the, in the midst of the need.

This parable over the last few weeks, as we've kind of used it somewhat casually in the sermon series on like evangelism and mission, has, as I've been thinking through it, has, the Lord has been pressing like some questions into my heart and life, and I'm going to just, I want to, I want to pose that question to us as a community here because, you know, if the Lord is speaking it to me, maybe he's not just speaking it to me, but speaking it to all of us. That question essentially is who, who is it that I, who is it that I see that is suffering, that is carrying a heavy weight of shame, who needs the healing touch of someone who loves the Lord, but who I am choosing not to see.

I'm showing an indifference to their, to what they're experiencing. I'm showing an indifference to what I could do to help. I'm, it's not that I don't know the need and that, so I can't meet a need that I don't see, but I know exactly what it is. I know exactly who it is. I know exactly where it is. I see the suffering. I see the shame that's being carried. I may, I may have the things that it takes to offer healing or to help promote healing knowing that it would require, and it will require, a surrender and sacrifice of what I have, because as we'll see, this guy who helped the man in the ditch, the Samaritan that helped the man in the ditch, just used all his own stuff

In order to offer healing. So I see them, but for whatever reason, I choose

To pretend like I don't. To pretend that they're not there. Maybe because of who they are.

Maybe because of who we, I am. Maybe I don't want to help them because of who they are. Maybe I don't want to help them because of who I am. Maybe I don't want to help because of what they're doing or the situation that they're in or the circumstances surrounding it. I don't know the answer for you, but the, that, that's the question that the Spirit of God is pressing into my heart is who, who do you see but showing indifference to? Who are you simply just passing by?

One of the questions we might ask ourselves is like, okay, how exactly did the Samaritan love

The man who needed help? If it's love your neighbor as yourself, and it's the Samaritan and this guy, how did they actually, how did he actually love him? Well, the first thing, one of the first things that we can see in verse 33, but a Samaritan, as he traveled, came to where the man was and he saw him, right, when he saw, so the first thing is like to not pretend that you don't see someone. How do you love, how do you love a person that's suffering?

Don't pretend like you don't see them. I understand that when someone is suffering, it can be really uncomfortable to be, to like, actually see them, to see them in the state that they're in, to grapple with and grasp the experience of their life. To sit with them in the midst of their suffering can be a difficult thing. Why? Because we always just want to have answers to why it's happening and how we can, how we can make it better, but that doesn't always, that doesn't, it's not always necessary. Sometimes we just need to be willing to see the person who is suffering, see them, but that's not it. When he saw him, this is verse 33, it says he took, the NIV says pity, it's really a bad translation of that word. The root word there is love, right, it's compassion.

When he saw him, he had compassion on him. The first instinct of the Samaritan to the man that was suffering was to both feel and express a heart of compassion for the person. When we see people in our lives who are suffering, what is our heart posture towards them? It is very, very, very difficult to help, intentionally help someone if we do not have or expressing a heart of compassion to them. And I will say it, well, like how do I get, how do I get a heart of compassion to someone who is suffering? How do I experience, how do I get a heart of compassion when I want to help someone but I see what's going on and I'm just like, ah, I kind of feel indifferent about this whole thing. Don't really want to. Well, the first thing that I would say is like, is this, is that the only thing that takes a heart of stone and turns it to a heart of flesh is a miracle of the Lord to transform what you were once indifferent about to now be compassionate

Towards. And this is not, this is not like a, oh, just like the pastoral super spiritual answer. This is the answer that, this is where I set my own feet. This is my, this is my own hope, this is my own prayer, this is my own experience with the faithfulness of God, that when I have seen a need and the reason that I don't, I'm too busy, I don't have the resources, I don't have the time, I don't want to, I don't really like the person, like whatever the case may be, right? Even when I experience those things and I do, the only thing that changes the heart posture towards someone is the only one who has the power to change the heart. It's the Lord.

And so we, we must, we must make, we must take intentional steps in our walking with Jesus in life to say, Lord, change my heart, change my heart towards the people around me

All the time, not in just Samaritan type experiences or circumstances, Lord, change my heart towards my spouse, change my heart towards my boss, change my heart towards my kids, change my heart towards my friends, change my heart, Lord, change my heart, change my heart, transform me, Lord, take out from me a heart of stone, take out of me a heart of darkness, take out of me a heart of indifference, and Lord, give me a heart of the spirit.

Put in me, Lord, put in me the heart of compassion, put in me the heart of gentleness, put in me the heart of mercy, put in me the heart of kindness, and put in me, Lord, the heart that you desire for me to have, the heart that loves the neighbor.

So our hearts can only be transformed through the miracle working power of the Holy Spirit within us.

That's how transformation happens. Transformation doesn't happen by like, I was gonna name off a bunch of stupid things, transformation happens through the presence of the Holy Spirit by faith in Jesus Christ, taking our hearts and changing them from what they were to what they are now. That's what Paul said in 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 17, right? You are a new creation in Christ. The old has gone, the new has come. One of my favorite, one of my favorite scriptures in the Old Testament is from the book of Ezekiel, the prophet Ezekiel.

When prophesying to the nation of Israel and they're praying a prayer, and it's this prayer, in Ezekiel chapter 36 verse 26, right? The Lord says, Lord, saying to the Israelite people, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. It is the work of God through the Holy Spirit of God that transforms our hearts. So the Samaritan or the guy, the man did not just see him. He did not just have compassion on him because listen, you can feel compassion towards someone and not do anything about it. But he, the parable goes further. It says that he went to him in verse 34 and he bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. So this would have been his own personal provision for the journey between Jerusalem and Jericho. Water was not safe to drink. That's why they mostly drank wine. And so it was his own provision of wine, his own bit of wine that he used, his own bit of oil that he likely used for cooking along the way.

So he went to him, bandaged his wounds, likely, likely bandaged his wounds with his own strips of linen or his own clothing, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, which means what? He walked, right, and took him to an inn and took care of him. So how did he love him? Well, he saw him. He had compassion on him. He went to him. He took care of his acute needs, the needs that were most obvious and most acute right there in that moment. Holy cow, this guy's naked. He's beat up. Wrap up the wounds, offer healing, get him to a place where he can receive more healing, more recovery. He addressed his acute needs, the things that were right in front of him, but he also helped to make long-term arrangements for his healing. The next day he took out two silver coins. This would have been like the, this is likely two denarii. Remember the parable of the unmercival servant that we talked about a couple months ago in forgiveness? Two denarii. One denarii was one day's wage. So he gave them

Two denarii, two day's wages, which likely would have covered the cost of a room at an inn like this for probably about two months. So he paid the innkeeper for a two month stay for this man to recover. The next day he took out two silver coins, gave them to the innkeeper. Look after him, he said, and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense that you may have. So he helped to make longer term arrangements for a man as he was suffering. This is something that I feel particularly strong about in my leadership here at Conduit and as a just a pastor in the Christian church in general is that the church, the body of Christ should be in the middle of the conversation about how we address systemic issues that cause people to suffer rather than just dealing with what are classically described as just the spiritual things. The church does the spiritual things and will let the world do all of the physical things. Where it keeps us somehow invisibly separated from the actual suffering that the people in the world are going through, people in our own community is going through, where the example that Jesus told was that you

Have a man that shouldn't be helping this man, but in compassion and in mercy has not just dealt with a person's acute physical needs, but also made sure that he was involved in addressing what would become necessary for his longer term healing, health and wholeness.

And so I believe not just because of the parable of the Good Samaritan, because of all throughout both Old and New Testaments that as followers of Jesus Christ, we should be asking the question, how do we become part of the solution of systemic problems where people or systemic areas where people are consistently suffering so that we can show up with the heart of compassion and a heart of mercy in the midst of someone's need to heal and have wholeness.

And that's a question that we should all be having. We should all be considering. We should all be thinking through and praying about and get involved in. How do we address larger, more systemic problems that are connected to people, that are connected to human suffering and approach them with a transformed heart of compassion so that we may be merciful?

What was the point here? The point here Jesus was trying to make is that he was describing the all-encompassing nature of the person's generosity, care, presence and compassion, even in the midst of it being like completely out of bounds in terms of the nature of their relationship. Like there was the boundary between who you help and who you don't help is now somehow whittled away with the call of Jesus to act and move in compassion and mercy using the Good Samaritan as an example. So like we said Jesus followed up at the end

Up at the end. Who was the neighbor? He said well the one who showed mercy.

The neighbor was the one who showed mercy and then Jesus was like correct, you're right.

Don't just keep that right answer up in your head as some sort of like spiritual information that you can now win a Bible trivia game.

Who is my neighbor? It's not just about knowing it, right? Jesus said you're right. It's the one who showed mercy and then what did he say? Go and do likewise.

Go and do likewise. I would say about as clear as he could be. Hey, wasn't that a good story guys? Great story. Tell it to your kids, right? Make the ideal of a Good Samaritan the kind of this cultural phenomenon of doing good deeds.

No, this is this is deeper than doing a good deed. This is a willingness to take what the Lord has entrusted to us, our donkeys, our wine,

Our oil, our money, our clothing, and put them to service with a heart of compassion to people that are suffering, even if they are as opposite as us as they could possibly be,

Because it displays the mercy of God and Jesus has told us to go and do likewise.

We could go back to the priest and the Levite, right? But we won't because I promised you that we were going to be done, right?

What I will tell you that what I will say is this one sentence about the priest and the Levite.

It's going to be a run-on sentence, but it's going to be one. It's this.

Let the Lord speak this prophetically over us all, me more than anyone, okay? Any type of elite status as a religious leader does nothing to make a person fit for the kingdom of God.

What makes us fit for the kingdom of God is the display of mercy, the display of compassion, the love of God, the love of our neighbor as ourself. No title, no degree, no amount of Bible studies led or taught, no amount of theology known, but never expressed. Really, really clearly here, Jesus was like, "Hey, the most religious people that you could imagine showed such an indifference that everything that they knew about the Lord did not move them in compassion to help someone that was suffering. What good does it do?"

Nothing, right? Mercy always triumphs over judgment. Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, for your word. Thank you for the parable of the Good Samaritan, which certainly does, Lord, challenge us to ask the question and consider who exactly is our neighbor. Lord, through your spirit now, would you give us a name? Would you show us the person's face?

Would you give us a vision, Lord, of who is our neighbor, my neighbor? Who is the person that would be so easy to show a casual indifference to because they are so different than me? Believe different, look different, act different, live different.

Lord, show me, Lord, show us, show each one of us who it is, Father, that you are asking us to show extraordinary compassion and mercy to.

Father, we pray, Lord, I testify I lift my hand to receive the transformation of your spirit necessary, Lord, to take my heart and transform it.

Lord, transform my heart as a person who wants to show compassion and mercy. Transform my heart, Lord, in Jesus' name, amen.