Yeah, the reading is, as Dave said, Luke ten, twenty-five to thirty-seven. Uh and that's page one oh four one in the church bibles. That's Luke ten, twenty-five to thirty-seven, and it's uh page one thousand and forty-one in the church Bibles. The parable of the Good Samaritan. On one occasion, an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. Teacher, he asked, what must I do to inherit eternal life? What is written in the law? he replied. How do you read it? 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 neighbour as yourself. You have answered correctly, Jesus replied. But he wanted to justify himself. So he asked Jesus, And who is my neighbour? In reply, Jesus said, A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him pass by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he travelled, 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, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two dinari 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. Which of these three do you think was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers? The expert in the law replied, The one who had mercy on him. Jesus told him, Go and do likewise.
SPEAKER_01There it is. Luke chapter 10. It's on page uh 1041, and it's absolute dynamite. It is a dynamite story that Jesus tells, which set a bomb under the ancient world. The reverberations of the explosion of this story are still being felt today. An interesting thing happened to me on the way here this morning. I had prepared a talk on Luke chapter 10, the parable of the Good Samaritan. We've had it read. It's the story about the man left for dead by the roadside, and the story of the religious officials who pass on by on the other side. They don't care for the man. They go on their way because they've got very important things to do. They're busy people, they're religious people, and they're off to do their religious duty. And yet it's only the Good Samaritan who stops, who cares, who lifts up the man and sends him on his way. That's the story that I'm going to speak to you on this morning. Interesting thing happened on the way to church. As we're driving, there are two police and a police car, and they've got their blues and twos on. And the police are looking up to the bridge in the overpass. And there's a man clearly very distressed, in not a very good mental headspace, straddling the railing at the top of that bridge and threatening to jump. And what did I do? A religious official on his way to do very important work among Highfield's church, right? Here I am, this religious minister. You know what I did? I passed on by on the other side of the road. And just me saying that, you go, ooh, we know we're not meant to pass on by, do we? We know we're meant to be the Good Samaritan. We're meant to stop, we're meant to care, we're meant to stoop, we're meant to ask, how are you doing? Are you okay? Well, maybe you won't feel too bad about me because there were police on the scene, and they were probably a lot more helpful than me. I mean, if the guy was struggling with a couple of verses from Deuteronomy, I could have helped him. Um beyond that, my skill set is pretty limited. So I hope you feel like it was okay that we moved on. We said a prayer for the man, and I still pray that that situation unfolded okay for him. But in a sense, the reason why I was able to pass on by is because there were some good Samaritans there already. What are the police? They are good Samaritans. What's the ambulance service? They are good Samaritans. What's the fire department? They are good Samaritans. What's what are social services? They're good Samaritans. What is the NHS? The largest employer of people in Europe. The NHS. What is the NHS? We have outsourced the work of the Good Samaritan to lots of people, and we happily pay taxes because we know that the Good Samaritan has the right response to need. We know that compassion is what we're meant to show to people in need, right? We know that. It's in our bones, it's in our bloodstream. But as Jesus tells this story, it was not obvious to people in the ancient world that compassion is the thing that you ought to do. You might choose to do it. Yay, you. But there's nothing wrong, surely, for an ancient person, there's nothing wrong to pass on by. If you're a busy person on your way to do your religious duty, you should do your religious duty. And you shouldn't feel guilty about passing on by. This guy, we we don't know why he's sick. We don't know why he's crumpled on the road. Maybe he brought it all on himself. Maybe his village turned on him for a good reason and we should leave him there. Maybe the gods have turned on him. And who are we to intervene? That's genuinely how an ancient purple person would view this story. But you and I don't view this story that way. You and I know we must not pass on by. We must show compassion. Compassion is a superordinate virtue that exists over above all the other virtues, doesn't it? Be kind, right? That is a value that is so deep in us, it's a gut instinct now. That doesn't mean we are compassionate. It doesn't mean we always stop and stoop and help. It does mean we know we should, right? And that is the bomb that Jesus sets off in this story. He is utterly revolutionizing our moral sensibilities. To a world that says strength and honor, Jesus comes to the weak and the marginalized, to protect, to love, to care. And the victory of the Jesus Revolution, aka Christianity, is that now I'm in a room full of people, and I don't assume you're Christians, and I don't assume that you've ever been in church before. And yet I do assume that all of us believe compassion is ultimate. It's like a transcendent value. And in that sense, everyone in this room is a believer. And all your friends are believers, and all your neighbors are believers, and all of Cardiff believes. And you think, no, there's lots of lots of secular people in Cardiff. And I would say, but they still believe in the Good Samaritan. We might have outsourced it to social services and the NHS and the police, but we still believe that you must not walk on by, you must care, you must stoop, you must take pity. Why? Why? Nature does not teach you to be compassionate, does it? Nature is red in tooth and claw. Nature says, well, it's the survival of the fittest and therefore the sacrifice of the weakest, isn't it? And therefore, nature would teach you not to look after the weakest. Let the weakest perish, so that we can ascend in our strength. Isn't that what nature would teach you? It's also what nature would teach you. That great German philosopher of the 19th century. He he spoke of this virtue of compassion, and he said, pity on the whole thwarts the law of evolution, which is the law of selection. We know what selection is. Nature selects the strong and discards the weak. Pity gets in the way of that. Compassion is meddling, it's meddling with nature. Nietzsche went on to say, the weak and ill-constituted shall perish, and we shall help them to do so. Ooh. You don't like that, do you? You had a twinge when Nietzsche said that. Ooh. Did you feel that twinge? That's your Christianity convulsing within your stomach right there. It is. Whether you call yourself a Christian or not. See, my claim today, and we've got a QA session over lunch. If you're a student, we'd love to love to engage in QA and you can push back on this. But my claim from this morning is Nietzsche is right if you take away Jesus. If you take away Jesus and the Jesus revolution, he's absolutely right. Pity on the whole thwarts the law of evolution, which is the law of selection. Nature says survival of the fittest and the sacrifice of the weakest. But you don't live your lives by nature. You live your lives by a supernatural value called compassion, don't you? You seek to. You fail at it, I fail at it, we all fail at it. But you you know nature's wrong. Why? Why? I want to say to you the answer is Jesus. And in particular, if we wanted to boil down the Jesus revolution when it comes to compassion, we we couldn't do it better than by studying this story. Because Jesus is telling this story in a first century context in which, of course, you simply keep your life bounded. You look after your own, and you do not show compassion to those who are outside you. So the the Romans had a saying, they they said uh every day you should do something to help your friend. That's nice, isn't it? And to harm your enemy. Oh, really? Lovely little maxim. Every day, look for look for a way of being kind to your friends and harming your enemies. Why don't you like that second bit? You should like that, right? Why why don't why don't you why don't you like that bit? Jesus. The reason you don't like harming your enemies is is Jesus. As Jesus comes, it's not it's not just the Greco-Roman world. In the Jewish world of his day, there are people who had been twisting the Old Testament scriptures, the Old Testament scriptures had been proclaiming compassion, compassion, compassion from Genesis onwards, as we'll see. But there are people who are twisting the Bible. When it said, love your neighbor, the religious authorities said, and hate your enemy. Oh, but we don't like that. Love your neighbor, hate your enemy. No, no, no, we don't like that. Why don't we like that? Because Jesus comes and pretty much the first thing he says in the Sermon on the Mount is, you've heard that it was said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy. I tell you, love your enemy. Pray for those who persecute you, bless those who curse you, right? Turn the other cheek when you're when you're struck. Go the extra mile when you're commended to march with a Roman pack on your back. Go the extra mile with a smile on your face. If someone sues you for your coat, give them the shirt off your back. Love your enemies. Right? That's that's what Jesus says. And all of us go, wow. I mean, it sounds so exalted, it sounds so transcendent. To nature, it just sounds stupid. And it's getting in the way of nature. Nature is trying to winnow out all the weak, right? Don't go protecting them. But we want to protect them. All of us want to protect them. Which is why the name for this series that we're doing this weekend is Everyone Believes. You believe. You might think of yourself as the most secular person in Cardiff. Doesn't matter, you believe. You live by beliefs that you cannot prove scientifically, that you cannot demonstrate under laboratory conditions. You live every day as though compassion is better than survival of the fittest. You believe that. You believe it deep in your bones. You order your life by it. What do you call that? I call that a faith commitment. I call it a faith commitment in the supernatural. And you think to yourself, no, the supernatural, that's just about God and angels and fairies and pixie dust. I don't believe in the supernatural. No, no, no. Compassion is supernatural. It is something way above the ways of nature, in which someone is weak and ill-constituted. And you know the right thing to do is to stop and to stoop and to engage and to care. You know the right thing to do is compassion. Why do you know that? Because of the Jesus Revolution, aka Christianity. Let's have a look at this story. And as we look at Jesus engaging with a teacher of the Old Testament law, I think we'll see what an absolutely explosive story this is, and why we are still feeling the reverberations around it today. It'll be up on the screen. It's also in your Bibles on page 1041. The parable of the Good Samaritan. In verse 25, on one occasion, an expert in the law, in the Old Testament law, those books from Genesis through to Malachi, he stood up to test Jesus. Teacher, he asked, What must I do to inherit eternal life? So this guy is a confused teacher, isn't he? He he might be a religious authority, but he's he's quite confused because inheriting and doing don't really belong together, do they? When you think about it. Like if you go to your mum and you say, Mother, what must I do to inherit grandpa's stamp collection? She's like, What? You don't do anything. And you haven't done anything. You're just his grandson, you're just his granddaughter, you're gonna inherit it. Your family. You don't earn family, do you? And of course, the the message of Christianity is not that you earn eternal life at all. Message of Christianity is you belong in the family, right? You get born again into the family, and there's nothing you do to earn a family, and there's nothing you do to earn the inheritance that is belongs to the family, right? You know, there are only two ways into a family, aren't they? You either get born into a family or you get adopted into the family. But that family member hasn't earned it. You don't audition to become a member of a family. Quite ridiculous. So this guy's a little bit confused. He thinks there are things he needs to do to inherit eternal life, but if he just pressed into the word inherit, he would realize, no, no, what he needs to do is belong. He needs to belong to the true family. What's the true family? Well, we'll see in a minute. Jesus does a brilliant thing in verse 26. He answers the question with a question. What is written in the law? He replied. How do you read it? Don't you love Jesus? Christians here, when you're asked a question about your faith, what are you tempted to do? I'm tempted to either try and answer it and feel smug, or fail to answer it and feel defeated. What does Jesus do? He's like, Oh, where are you coming from on this? I'd be interested to know. What do you think is the answer to your question? Isn't that great? Just, he loves the questioner. He's interested, he's engaged. In verse 27, the teacher of the law, he's got an answer. I bet he learnt it from a young age. He answered, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind. That's a quotation from Deuteronomy in the Old Testament. And he puts it together with a quotation from Leviticus Love your neighbor as yourself. It's beautiful, isn't it? What a vision for life. Compassion, right at the heart of it. What is the good life? The good life is to love God with everything you've got and love your neighbor, those who are around you, as much as you love yourself. Isn't that a beautiful vision for life? It's a totally compassionate vision for life. What is the good life? The good life is to extend yourself upwards towards your Creator in love and a full-hearted, strong, sacrificial love, and to extend yourself outwards to your neighbor, to anyone who comes across your path in need. This is the good life, right? It's being outwardly curved to the other. Of course, it doesn't come naturally, does it? Is this the way that you live your life? Do you live your life every minute of every day? Loving God with everything, and loving everyone who comes across your path as much as you love yourself. It's quite a standard, isn't it? Love everyone as much as you love yourself. Wow. I remember I was once um preaching on the foot washing of Jesus. Do you know the night before Jesus dies? And it's just an extraordinary, compassionate move by Jesus. You might think that, you know, on the eve of your crucifixion, you would have other things on your mind. But he actually takes off the robe, he puts on a towel, the clothing of a servant, and he kneels down at the feet of his friends, and he washes their feet, which was part of first century hospitality. But it was usually the lowest slave's job. And Jesus stoops down, takes off the clothing of a king, puts on the clothing of a slave, and does the lowest slave's job. And I started preaching about this, about the kind of gods, and I was just thinking, I've never washed anyone's feet. And I just sort of said that out loud in a sermon. I was like, I was under conviction, I've I've never washed anyone's feet. And here is the the Lord of the universe doing that. And a Chinese guy came up to me afterwards. He'd been a Christian for about three months at that stage. And he said, You're wrong. I thought, get a load of you. Three months in, you think you think you're right and I'm wrong. Okay, let me hear it. He says, There's someone's feet who you wash every day. Yourself. Whoa, you're not allowed to do that. Three months in as a Christian, he totally got it. Yeah, I wash my feet every day, but I would never wash anyone else's feet. And the law of God says, love your neighbor just like you love yourself. You take you take care of your needs at a very granular level, don't you? Minute by minute. Do you do you love the people who cross your path like that? Ha! You don't. I don't. But this teacher of the law, he kind of thinks, he's got a handle on what the good life is. He understands from the word of God, yeah, it is to be outwardly curved. Instead, we're we're constantly this inwardly curved person, right? Trying to grab and scratch and take and get all for myself. This is the life that we live. The word of God says, be totally outwardly curved like that. We kind of know that's the good life, but it's not my life. So whose life is it? The teacher of the law, he's tempted to think, I am this person. I am the person who can do what God's word says. I am the person who can love God with everything and love my neighbor as myself. He's wrong, though, isn't he? He's wrong. But it's an interesting question. Who is the person who loves God with everything and loves his neighbors as himself? Exactly. Verse 21. If you've if you've got Bibles, I love I love verse 21. Just uh a few verses above where we are on the slides. At that time, Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, prayed, I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth. Oh, I love that. At that time, Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, I praise you, Father. Who is the one who loves God with everything and loves his neighbor as himself? Who who does that? That verse. 21. That's a picture of ultimate reality. The Bible says, if you could see into the cockpit of reality, if you could see into heaven, you know what you would see? You would see a father loving his son in the joy of the Holy Spirit, and the son loving his father back in the joy of the Holy Spirit. That's what you would see. You would see compassion, right? Eternal compassion. You would see a Niagara falls of compassion, an inexhaustible and eternal Niagara falls of love, of other-centered love. You know, the Bible's vision of ultimate reality is the best. It's unimprovable. I don't know what you do with Jesus. You might want to look at Jesus. You might come along to these life-explored courses and think about Jesus, and after a few weeks, you might decide that Jesus is not for you. If you do that, you are walking away from love. You are walking away from the most loving vision of ultimate reality that is possible. Because Christians say compassion is it's not just something that we drum up ourselves. It's not even something that God decides to do one day. God is love. He is a father loving his son in the joy of the Holy Spirit. And Jesus has come to earth that love into our humanity and to live it out before us. This is what totally struck me as I was reading through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as a 21-year-old, I was just thinking, He is love on legs, he is compassion covered over in skin. That's that's who Jesus is. You know why? Because for all eternity he had been loving God his Father and loving his neighbor as himself, the Holy Spirit. He has always lived out that life of love. And what is he doing in the Gospels? He's he's living it among us, he's earthing it into our humanity. Love himself has walked among us. That's what Titus says. There's a verse in Titus chapter 3. It says, When the kindness and love of God appeared, he saved us. Do you get that? When the kindness, capital K and love, capital L of God appeared, He saved us. That's who Jesus is. He is compassion, and he has injected this compassion into the world. Verse 28, he listens to the assessment of this teacher of the law and he says, look, you've answered correctly, Jesus said. Do this and you'll live, okay? If you want to audition for the family, have a go. If you want to be the ultimate lover, loving God with everything, loving your neighbor, fill your boots, have a go. See if you can. And at that challenge, the guy starts to get a little bit edgy. Wouldn't you get edgy? And so he does what all of us do when we're challenged about compassion. When we're challenged, are you a loving person? What do you tend to do at that point? You tend to justify yourself, don't you? You tend to, well, I'm not as bad as some. There are other, there are others who are much worse than me at this whole compassion thing. That's what this guy does. As soon as he's challenged to be Jesus, to be the ultimate compassionate one, he starts to justify himself, verse 29. So he asks Jesus, yeah, but who is my neighbor? Which is a classic move when it comes to love, isn't it? I'm very loving to my tight-knit circle of lovely people who don't tick me off too much, right? I'm incredibly loving to them, right? So who is my neighbor, Jesus? Because when my neighbor is lovely, then sometimes I'll actually manage to be loving towards them. So who is my neighbor? Who gets to be loved as much as I love myself? And what he's doing is what we all want to do. We all want to shrink the circle of love. So it's just me and my family on a good day. Just me and my clan on a good day. Just me and my tribe, maybe, on a good day. But for the enemy over there, no, no, no. Today I'll do something kind for my friend, and I'll do something to harm my enemy. That's that's the way everybody ticks naturally. And that's the way this guy ticks. He's like, who's my neighbor? You're not gonna expand the circle to that person, are you, Jesus? Or that person? Oh, please, not that person. And Jesus is constantly expanding the circle to the point where he says, no, love the weak, love the ill-formed, love the marginalized, love your enemy. What? Enemy? Yes. The circle is to extend to the farthest fringes of the human family. And this is unique. Other worldviews, of course, other worldviews have love. The Romans love their children too, right? Everyone has love. But who loves right to the very fringes of the human family in this all-sacrificing kind of a way? Who does that? Well, the Good Samaritan does that. And that's the challenge from this story. Who is my neighbor? asks the guy. And again, verse 30, this is great for Christians. When somebody asks you a question, don't just give them the answer. Ask them a question back, ask them where they're coming from it, and then verse 30, tell them a story. Stories are great. Stories take someone from out of their own ego and sit them down in the audience. When you tell a story, you're basically saying, shut up and listen. There's a bunch of stuff that's happening and you're nothing to do with it. Just watch. And it takes you away from your ego because you're always trying to justify yourself. I'm always trying to justify myself. I can tell you a story about my world from my perspective, and guess what? I'm the hero. I'm always the hero. No matter what scrapes I get into, it's always somebody else's fault. But when I'm told a story, when someone describes my behavior from 30,000 feet, I look at it and I've got the chance of saying, Yikes! I don't like what I see. So Jesus tells a story. In reply, Jesus said, verse 30 A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now at this point, the the story is not uh it's not transformational, it's not revolutionary at this point. This is not a disruptive story yet. This is this could be like an Aesop's fable, couldn't it? Once there was a guy, he was out late at night, wondering where he shouldn't have been. He got beaten up, idiot, and he's paid the price. The moral of the story: don't be like this guy. That's a that's a very common shape to an ancient story. All of Aesop's fables are basically like that. There are fools who end up getting their just desserts and their comeuppance. Don't be like them. Learn to live wisely within your limits. Okay? That's what all ancient stories were like. That's not what this story is like. This this is a story that is transformational. This is ground zero of the earthquake, the reverberations of which we're feeling today. There's this man who was going down to from Jerusalem to Jericho. Oh, think about that, a man. Do you know the word Adam is a Hebrew word, just means man. That's interesting. Adam, man. Okay, so there's this there's this man, and he's going down from Jerusalem. So in the Bible, Jerusalem is the city of God, it's Mount Zion, it's the heavenly sanctuary. Okay. And Jericho is east of there, due east. And geographically, you have to go down a very steep road. It it is quite the fall. So this is a fallen man who is now east of the garden sanctuary. And he's fallen into the hands of these robbers, and he's left half dead. It's the story of a man. Maybe it's the story of man more generally, humanity. Verse 31. A priest, a religious official, happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. Boo his. We've learnt to say boo-hiss. The original hearers might not have said boo-hiss. They might have said, well, it's very understandable. He's got Old Testament ceremonial laws to abide by. This would really mess up his life. It's perfectly understandable why he would pass on by. Right? And then, verse 32, so to a Levite, so again involved in the temple activity, but a Levite was more of a teacher. Um, if you're described in this way as a Levite, you're you're more of a teacher, and a priest is more the person doing the sacrifices and those sorts of things. But so too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. So we've got a man fallen, perishing. And we've got the law, don't we? This priest coming. Does the law help? The law is good, the law is holy, righteous, and good. It describes the good life. But does it save the man? No. And then a teacher of that law, you might say, the prophets come past. Do they help the man? No. They they again, the Levites might describe the goodness of the law. He might describe the life of love, but he doesn't save the man. If this man's gonna get saved, he's gonna need someone to come in from outside the system, isn't he? Someone who doesn't belong to this self-preservation society. But verse 33, but a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was. Now a Samaritan, they were the hated tribe to the north. Okay? The Jews and the Samaritans did not get on, to put it mildly, absolutely hated one another. So here is this stranger, total stranger, but he turns out to be a beautiful stranger. And he came where the man was, and when he saw him, he took pity on him. That's our word compassion for today. It's a word that throughout the New Testament is applied only to Jesus. Only Jesus has this strength of emotion. It's a word that's related to the word for intestines, okay? We tend to romanticize feelings of love, don't we? It's like I'm heart sick. Are you heart sick or are you crooking the guts, as they'd say in Australia, right? Don't you feel love a little bit more down there, right? Don't you get butterflies in your tummy? Isn't it gut wrenching? Isn't it stomach churning? Ancient people had this right, I think. They spoke about the guts as the seat of this kind of emotion. And this guy, this beautiful stranger, took pity on him. It's a word that's not used of anyone else. No one else in the Bible has this word applied to them, gut-wrenching pity. But Jesus, again and again, a leper says, Have mercy on me, are you willing? Jesus says, I am willing and filled with compassion, with gut-wrenching pity, he reaches out and heals. Or there's a woman who's lost her only son, and they're on a funeral procession, on the way to the funeral, and Jesus, filled with compassion, raises the lad. Or Jesus sees the the 5,000 totally hungry, and he has compassion on them, he takes pity on them. It's this gut-wrenching, stomach-churning love. It's beautiful. And it's why we think compassion is the greatest thing. Because of Jesus. Because he is compassion on legs, he is that kind of person. And if you ask me, he is in disguise in this story as the beautiful stranger, the one from outside the story who shows up, who comes where humanity is. Because that's what love does. That's what compassion does. If you really have compassion, you join someone, even if it's a pit of their own making, even if they are a moron, you join them shoulder to shoulder. And if they're in debt, you say, Your debts will be my debts. They're in pain, you say, I wish I could take your pain. If they're being bullied, you want to stand shoulder to shoulder, stand up for them, right? You want to bear their burdens. You want to be with them, you want to be for them. What has Jesus done? Dived into the pit of our own making to be with us, to be for us, to take pity on us. And then verse 34. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. It's a strange first aid kit, I know. If you went to the first aid kit and you just had olive oil and a bottle of Merlot, you'd be like, really? It's a first century thing. It's a first century thing. But it's also a biblical thing. If you did a word study in the Bible, what is oil most associated with in the Bible? The spirit. What is wine most associated with in the Bible? Blood. And somehow this beautiful stranger from outside the system joins us, cleanses us by his blood, fills us with his spirit. And you put the man on his own beast, more literally. In ancient thinking, the body was like a beast. Interesting. Brought him to an inn and took care of him. This is before hospitals. You know why it's before hospitals? Because Christians invented hospitals. Christians hadn't gotten around to inventing an actual hospital, so this makeshift hospital would have to be the thing. Brought him to an inn and took care of him on the next slide. The next day he took out two denarii, two little coins, and gave them to the innkeeper. If you look up denarius in the Bible, the one thing we're told about a denarius is it's a day's wages. So there's two days worth, right? Gonna put you in the safe place for two days. Look after him, he said. And when I return? When do you think he's gonna return? Look after him for two days. And when I return, on the third day. I will reimburse you, I will bring to completion this work of salvation. What a story. The ancient stories would have been some idiot gets mugged, don't be like him. With Jesus, it's some guy who could be you, because this is the human condition, is perishing. East of Eden, far from God. And the law, as good as it is, doesn't save you. And the prophets, as wonderful as they are, don't save you. But there's this one guy. He is pity himself. He's compassion on legs. He comes from outside the system. He comes to where you are. He joins you in your pit. By the end of Luke's gospel, we'll see him join us even on that cross. Taking our hell on himself for us. What does compassion do? Compassion says, your pain will be my pain. Your debts will be my debts. Your sins will be my sins. What does Jesus do? He goes to the cross to be with us and for us, to pour out his blood, to pay for our sins, to cleanse us from all wrongdoing. He rises up again to offer us his spirit, sets us on our feet, and says, Hey. I've got a little movement going on. It's called Christianity. You might want to come in. It's a compassion revolution. It doesn't look like much now, but it's going to take the world by storm. They win. That's the story of the Good Samaritan. And it's utterly transformed the world. To hear this story, to inhabit this story, to truly understand this story, and then to live out this story changes the world. How does it affect this guy who's listening in? Verse 36. Jesus says to the guy who'd asked the question, which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers? Such a good question. Which of the three was a neighbor? Remember what the lawyer had done? He was like, Who can I count as my neighbor? Who actually is my neighbor? Who do I have to love? Can you please delimit this kind of sphere as narrowly as possible, Jesus? Jesus like, nope, it's like enemies. But he's asked the question, right? Who is my neighbor? Who is a neighbor to me? That's his question. And then Jesus says, good question. Who is a neighbor to the fallen guy? Ah, whose sandals are you meant to be in as you read this story? Think about it. Whose sandals are you meant to be in? The man asks, Who is a neighbor to me? And Jesus says, Yeah. Who is a neighbor to the fallen guy? Whose sandals are you meant to be in? I'll do it again. The guy says, Who is a neighbor to me? Jesus says, right you are. Who is a neighbor to the fallen guy? Who are you meant to be in this story, first and foremost? You're the fallen guy, right? You're not the priest, you're not the Levite, and you're not the Good Samaritan yet. You're fallen by the wayside, far from the love of God, perishing. And a beautiful Savior rescues you. That's your story, right? And that's the story that actually births a movement of compassion. Because if I just tell you, go out and love, how do you respond to that? You're like, oh try. How long's it gonna last? I don't know how long coffee is, but probably if it lasts beyond coffee, you're doing amazingly, right? If I just tell you to love, you can't just scrunch up your stomach muscles and try to do this compassion thing. You can't do that. You need to be loved in order to love. It works in the negative and it works in the positive. Have you ever heard the saying, you know, hurt people, hurt people? So true, isn't it? Hurt people, hurt people, right? If you are hurt, you tend to lash out and spread it around. That's the negative. The positive also works. Loved people love people. That's the way the Bible works. That's the way the Jesus revolution works. Loved people love people. Don't think of yourself as high and mighty like the priest or the Levite or even the Good Samaritan. Think of yourself as the one who could not save yourself, who would not save yourself. Think of yourself as the one who has curved yourself in on yourself, and you've been left to perish. And then the beautiful Savior comes to you, and he loves you, and he pours out his blood for you, and he pours out his spirit into you. You have been loved. Now, verse 37. The expert in the law replied, Well, I guess the one who had mercy on him, the good Samaritan. Now Jesus told him, Go and do likewise, right? Now, having been loved in this way, having been rescued, having been shown compassion, now go out and start showing compassion. And this is the revolution that has absolutely transformed the world. Hospitals burst out from this movement. There were no such things as hospitals before Christians came along. Orphanages burst out. No such thing as that kind of orphan care before the Jesus Revolution. Suddenly, instead of infanticide and people killing their offspring, suddenly they were being cared for. And all those kinds of cruel practices were outlawed, like the gladiatorial games and blood sports. We have had an absolute transformation of our values. And it's all begun with the Good Samaritan who first loves you, who first shows his compassion, and then he says, go and do likewise. So I've got an invitation this morning, okay? Do you want to join the movement? Don't think that you can summon this up within yourself. You cannot. I mean, try. Try loving God with everything and loving your neighbor as much as you love yourself. Try it. Try it for a whole week. See how far you get. You'll recognize depths of sin in yourself that you never realized were there. But be loved. Be the fallen man. Be the one left for dead. Cry out to the good Samaritan. He pours out his blood, he pours out his spirit, he sets you on your feet, and you can join the movement. I'm gonna pray a prayer in a second. It's a prayer that you can pray if you want to do that. If you want to come to Jesus, say sorry for the selfishness and being curved in on yourself and say, Jesus, I'm in. Heal me, save me, and send me out in love. Let's bow our heads. Let me let me pray for us. If you want to join in with this prayer, you you can. Lord Jesus, I recognize the goodness and the glory of love. And I'm starting to see in you that you are love. I'm also saying in myself that I am not. I have sin and selfishness, and I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Please, Lord Jesus, come into my life. Forgive me through your cross. Fill me by your Spirit and walk with me through this life and into your loving eternity. Amen.