SPEAKER_00: Well, grace to you this morning.
SPEAKER_00: We do study through Books of the Bible here at the Village Chapel.
SPEAKER_00: It'd be good for you to have a copy in front of you.
SPEAKER_00: Just lift up your hand if you'd like a paper copy.
SPEAKER_00: You can also, of course, use your device.
SPEAKER_00: We have a QR code up there and the Wi-Fi on the screen.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, if you don't have a Bible, if you've come here, you actually don't own one, feel free to take one as our gift.
SPEAKER_00: Any of these that we're passing out here, that is our gift to you.
SPEAKER_00: In the last week, we've had folks worshiping with us online and want to welcome them from Windsor, Ontario, Canada, San Pedro, Philippines, and Jasper, Georgia.
SPEAKER_00: My wife and I have actually been to Jasper a few times.
SPEAKER_00: Beautiful mountains down there.
SPEAKER_00: May the Spirit of Christ be with you, wherever you might be today.
SPEAKER_00: Well, for a moment this morning, I want us to, or I want you rather, to place yourself in the time of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna have to use your imagination.
SPEAKER_00: Place yourself in the time of Jesus, a first-century Palestinian.
SPEAKER_00: You are a part of the religious group called the Pharisees.
SPEAKER_00: Vigorous keepers of God's law, meticulous and exacting, following the demands of the Torah.
SPEAKER_00: And beyond that, you also strictly adhere to all the additional 613 demands that the religious leaders have built on top of God's law.
SPEAKER_00: This is a way of showing honor to God as you wait for the day he might rescue Israel from the occupying force of the Roman Empire.
SPEAKER_00: So you, a Pharisee in the first century, you wake up on Monday morning and you drink your coffee or your tea first thing in the morning.
SPEAKER_00: And what do you do in the morning?
SPEAKER_00: But you recite the Shema.
SPEAKER_00: That's what you do in the morning.
SPEAKER_00: You did it the night before, before you went to bed, and you're going to do it again this morning.
SPEAKER_00: A regular pattern of your spiritual practice.
SPEAKER_00: I actually want us to read this aloud together from Deuteronomy 6, 4 and 5.
SPEAKER_00: This is a prayer of Moses.
SPEAKER_00: They would recite it every morning.
SPEAKER_00: Let's say it together.
SPEAKER_00: In just a moment.
SPEAKER_00: There we are.
SPEAKER_00: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
SPEAKER_00: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
SPEAKER_00: That's your morning practice with your coffee.
SPEAKER_00: A beautiful summary of the first four of the Ten Commandments.
SPEAKER_00: You also might recite a passage from Leviticus, and I'll just put this up on the screen.
SPEAKER_00: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
SPEAKER_00: I am the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: A summary of the last six of the Ten Commandments.
SPEAKER_00: Two tables in the Ten Commandments, which itself is a summary of God's moral law.
SPEAKER_00: Love of God in the first one, and in the second table, love of neighbor.
SPEAKER_00: Love of God and love of neighbor.
SPEAKER_00: Love of God comes first and is the basis for love of neighbor.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to paint with a broad brush here, but the presumption was then that to inherit eternal life, to be a part of the people of God, there are certain things that you must do.
SPEAKER_00: God's law.
SPEAKER_00: And for Pharisees and for most Jewish people of that time, that kind of framework for living a faithful life would have been common religiously, culturally, and intellectually.
SPEAKER_00: God's law, life should revolve around God's law.
SPEAKER_00: The two tables love of God, love of neighbor.
SPEAKER_00: But on this particular Monday morning when you're sipping your coffee or your tea, you remember that you heard this weekend about this carpenter recently turned rabbi Jesus, who had been preaching repentance because the kingdom of God had arrived in him.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus, this rabbi, seems to affirm and uphold and honor God's law, but Jesus is unexpectedly reframing the faithful life, not as one that revolves around the law, but one that revolves around him.
SPEAKER_00: So you, this first century Pharisee, are thinking, maybe, maybe this man who has an authority in his words that I have never heard before, this man who seems to have power over disease and nature, power over death, maybe he has something to say about what it means to love God and love neighbor as you begin to recite your morning prayers.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I invite you to turn, if you would, to Luke 10 25 this morning, Luke 10, 25, as we learn together from our Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Let me pray for us, if you let me, and then we'll get started.
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we bow before your presence this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Open your word to us and open us to your word.
SPEAKER_00: May your spirit be our teacher and may your glory be our supreme concern.
SPEAKER_00: Through your Son, Jesus Christ, we all said.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Luke chapter 10, verse 25.
SPEAKER_00: And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?
SPEAKER_00: And he, Jesus, said to the lawyer, What is written in the law?
SPEAKER_00: How do you read it?
SPEAKER_00: And he answered, You shall 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 your neighbor as yourself.
SPEAKER_00: And he, Jesus, said to the lawyer, You've answered correctly.
SPEAKER_00: Do this, and you will live.
SPEAKER_00: Pause here for just a moment.
SPEAKER_00: Go back up to the top, and behold, there's a surprising element to this story.
SPEAKER_00: If you remember in our study last week with Pastor Matt, Jesus had been teaching his disciples.
SPEAKER_00: And he'd been talking about those who had ears to hear and eyes to see.
SPEAKER_00: And as Jesus is teaching, it appears, this lawyer surprisingly stands up and puts Jesus to the test, it says in my translation, or trial, if you will, or trap.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes that word is actually translated a temptation.
SPEAKER_00: So it appears on a surface level reading that it looks like this lawyer is maybe has some malice behind.
SPEAKER_00: He's trying to catch Jesus in his words, and that's probably true.
SPEAKER_00: That's what I tend to believe.
SPEAKER_00: But we don't know for sure.
SPEAKER_00: It could also be that this man is curious.
SPEAKER_00: He's been hearing Jesus teach, and he's literally testing him as a good lawyer does.
SPEAKER_00: Do his words have integrity?
SPEAKER_00: Do his words actually uphold the law of God?
SPEAKER_00: See, this is a lawyer, not a secular attorney.
SPEAKER_00: This is a theological lawyer, an expert in theological things, more like a seminary professor.
SPEAKER_00: So it's possible that he has some malice, but it's also possible that he's trying to test this guy, Jesus, to see if he's true.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus' response to him is, I think, really interesting.
SPEAKER_00: So he says, Well, what is written in the law?
SPEAKER_00: How do you read it?
SPEAKER_00: Or you could translate that, how do you recite it?
SPEAKER_00: Law, you recited it this morning in your morning prayers.
SPEAKER_00: You're going to recite it later tonight in your evening prayers.
SPEAKER_00: How do you read the law?
SPEAKER_00: And then he goes on to say the Shema and then the passage from Leviticus, which the passage from Leviticus, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, is just another way of saying you shall love your neighbor with all that you are.
SPEAKER_00: All your heart, soul, strength, mind.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, You have answered correctly, do this and you will live.
SPEAKER_00: Curious.
SPEAKER_00: We'll come back to that.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 29.
SPEAKER_00: But he, the lawyer, desiring or wanting to justify himself, never a good idea, said to Jesus, And who is my neighbor?
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus replied, A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead.
SPEAKER_00: Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.
SPEAKER_00: So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw it, passed by on the other side.
SPEAKER_00: But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion.
SPEAKER_00: Underline that.
SPEAKER_00: We actually get a window into the heart of this man, the Samaritan.
SPEAKER_00: We'll come back to it in a minute.
SPEAKER_00: But when he saw him, when the Samaritan saw this man on the side of the road, he had compassion.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 34, he went to him and he bound up his wounds, literally gave him first aid, pouring on olive oil and wine on the wounds not to drink.
SPEAKER_00: Then he set him on his own animal.
SPEAKER_00: He brought him to an inn and took care of him.
SPEAKER_00: And the next day he took out two dinari and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.
SPEAKER_00: 36.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?
SPEAKER_00: And he, the lawyer, said, The one who showed him mercy.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus said to him, You go and do likewise.
SPEAKER_00: Interesting in this story, the priest and the Levite, the two primary leaders in this religious system.
SPEAKER_00: The priest was in charge of the holiness of the temple, the place where they worshipped.
SPEAKER_00: He was in charge of the sacrifices.
SPEAKER_00: The Levites were in a support role.
SPEAKER_00: Both of them were leaders, yet their heart did not show compassion towards this man.
SPEAKER_00: We can see the contrast here, which we'll survey a little bit later.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know much more about, actually, we don't know any more about this lawyer.
SPEAKER_00: Like the story of the rich young ruler, we're not told what happens later.
SPEAKER_00: Well, this is the reading of God's word from Luke chapter 10.
SPEAKER_00: I imagine that most of us in this room and online are familiar with this parable, the parable of the Good Samaritan, perhaps the most well-known of all of Jesus' parables.
SPEAKER_00: Set in the context of the book of Luke in this particular section, I actually think we're given two stories to give our attention to.
SPEAKER_00: One story is the parable itself, a radical and subversive story of unexpected mercy.
SPEAKER_00: Another story is this real life encounter between Jesus and this expert in the religious law, this lawyer.
SPEAKER_00: I tried to find some lawyer jokes, but they just fell flat for me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm so sorry.
SPEAKER_00: And we have a lot of wonderful lawyers here, including our drummer, by the way, who did an excellent job today.
SPEAKER_00: Two different stories, but both are bound together.
SPEAKER_00: As Jesus with grace reveals the character, the nature, the way of being in the kingdom, but he also reveals the great spiritual need that this lawyer had, that you and I have.
SPEAKER_00: Whenever we come to the parables when we read the Gospels, they are not simply fables with a moral to teach us at the end.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they include that, including today, but they're far more than that.
SPEAKER_00: They're like, for those who have ears to hear and eyes to see, they are like windows into the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: They let us peer into what the kingdom is supposed to be like, the kingdom that Jesus has been heralding.
SPEAKER_00: That's what parables do.
SPEAKER_00: His parables make us think and imagine so that we might recognize our spiritual poverty, the things we need from him, so that we might turn to him for grace.
SPEAKER_00: For those who are not hungry and thirsty for righteousness, though, who think they have it figured out, who are attempting to justify themselves, and we can look with me at verse 29.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the lawyer's doing here in some respect, desiring or wanting to justify himself.
SPEAKER_00: For those who aren't hungry and thirsty for righteousness, the parables often expose ulterior motives.
SPEAKER_00: They elicit anger, mockery, or confusion.
SPEAKER_00: Back to our study from last week.
SPEAKER_00: If you remember, Jesus sent out 72 of his disciples on mission.
SPEAKER_00: And when they came back, Jesus rejoiced that there were those who had responded to the message of Jesus and his kingdom like children with humility.
SPEAKER_00: But there was another group of folks who were what he called wise and understanding, at least in their own estimation, and the message of Jesus was not received by those who are wise and understanding.
SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting that here in this story, directly following that, this man, this lawyer, who would have been seen as wise and understanding in the broader community, doesn't seem to see the need that he has.
SPEAKER_00: It is possible, we don't know this, I couldn't tell you from the text here, but it's possible that the lawyer actually was listening in as Jesus taught his disciples.
SPEAKER_00: He could have been hearing about this kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: He could have been hearing about those who had ears to hear and eyes to see.
SPEAKER_00: But this religious legal expert comes to Jesus and there's a little bit of a theological chess match going on.
SPEAKER_00: You know, to anybody who does that, I say, good luck with that.
SPEAKER_00: But what we witness in the response of Jesus is a gentle but serious grace in exposing the flimsy foundation of this man's attempt at self-justification, or you could call it self-salvation, he knew the law, but his heart was far from the lawgiver.
SPEAKER_00: Consider this from James Finlay, 18th century minister.
SPEAKER_00: He said, In our zeal to become landlords of our own being, we cling to each achievement as a kind of verification of our self-proclaimed reality.
SPEAKER_00: We become the center, and God somehow recedes to an invisible fringe.
SPEAKER_00: The parables of Jesus often expose how far we've pushed God from the center, but then they point us right back to Him.
SPEAKER_00: And I pray the Spirit might do this work.
SPEAKER_00: The work only He can do in us this morning, revealing in our hearts, pointing us back to the Lord, who is our salvation that we just sang about.
SPEAKER_00: His mercy is new every morning.
SPEAKER_00: I hope you know that.
SPEAKER_00: In our study today, I think we witness at least three things in this encounter with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: One, the demands of God's law.
SPEAKER_00: Two, the depth of our need, and three, the scope of God's mercy.
SPEAKER_00: The demands of God's law, the depth of our need, and the scope of God's mercy.
SPEAKER_00: For the first one, this theological expert, the lawyer, he took God's law seriously.
SPEAKER_00: I think we can all agree on that.
SPEAKER_00: His entire life revolved around it.
SPEAKER_00: As did every faithful believer under the old covenant.
SPEAKER_00: And his question, if you look with me there at verse 25 again, his question is insightful.
SPEAKER_00: Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?
SPEAKER_00: On the surface, the lawyer is asking, what is required for salvation?
SPEAKER_00: But I think there are other questions, maybe a bigger question underneath that one.
SPEAKER_00: Something is broken inside of me, something is wrong in the world.
SPEAKER_00: What is the solution, Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: What say you?
SPEAKER_00: And the lawyer, I think he thought that he knew the answer.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what I do to inherit eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, those two words are a contradiction with one another, aren't they?
SPEAKER_00: To inherit something, you don't do anything, you receive an inheritance as a gift.
SPEAKER_00: But let's not look our noses down at this man.
SPEAKER_00: He took God's law seriously.
SPEAKER_00: His life revolved on it.
SPEAKER_00: It was his life's work.
SPEAKER_00: But I'm going to suggest this morning that Jesus took the law far more seriously.
SPEAKER_00: Look with me again at verse 26.
SPEAKER_00: I think it's worth reading again.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus said to him, What is written in the law?
SPEAKER_00: How do you recite it?
SPEAKER_00: And the lawyer answered, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind.
SPEAKER_00: And your neighbor is yourself.
SPEAKER_00: And he said to him, You have answered correctly.
SPEAKER_00: Do this and you will live.
SPEAKER_00: All those alls, circle those.
SPEAKER_00: Highlight those.
SPEAKER_00: They're there for emphasis on purpose.
SPEAKER_00: To put it another way, I think Jesus responds to this answer here unexpectedly by saying, Yes, you really do know the law's demands.
SPEAKER_00: Go and do them.
SPEAKER_00: Do all that the law requires, and you will live.
SPEAKER_00: Love God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind perfectly, perpetually.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, and your neighbor too.
SPEAKER_00: The man was probably expecting Jesus to say something like this: Ah, hey, don't worry about the Ten Commandments.
SPEAKER_00: They're nice and all.
SPEAKER_00: The Shema is great.
SPEAKER_00: Just be a nicer person, listen to my sermons, and come follow us.
SPEAKER_00: It's not what Jesus said.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus turns the test around on him and points him to an even higher standard than the lawyer could conceive.
SPEAKER_00: Not to shame him, but to expose his heart and reveal his need for a savior.
SPEAKER_00: You see what he's doing?
SPEAKER_00: It's an invitation for this lawyer to turn to Jesus and drop the unbearable weight of self-salvation and to walk in the freedom of grace.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is revealing the depth of his need, and he's revealing the depth of our need of mine.
SPEAKER_00: That's the second thing we encounter here, this depth of our need.
SPEAKER_00: The lawyer seems to instinctually know the impossibility of this demand.
SPEAKER_00: He realizes he cannot do all that Jesus has called him to do.
SPEAKER_00: How do we know that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, look with me at verse 29 again.
SPEAKER_00: His very first response, the lawyers, is, is to try to narrow the scope of the law.
SPEAKER_00: Wanting to justify himself, he asks Jesus, Well, who is my neighbor?
SPEAKER_00: Let's whittle the demands down a little bit, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: What you are suggesting is not possible.
SPEAKER_00: Surely you aren't saying that I must love tyrants and enemies and pagans and those people over there, the repugnant other, the Samaritan.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus answers the man with a parable that further reveals the magnitude of his need for grace.
SPEAKER_00: And he gives this lawyer a window, another peek into the nature of the kingdom beyond the law, into the heart of the lawgiver.
SPEAKER_00: A kingdom marked by love of God demonstrated an extraordinary love of neighbor, a kind of mercy this man had likely never conceived of.
SPEAKER_00: When it's on offer freely.
SPEAKER_00: It can sometimes come in unexpected, and I'm going to say unpleasant ways when he exposes the depth of our need.
SPEAKER_00: Brian Hedges helps us here in this wonderful book, Watchfulness.
SPEAKER_00: The deeper I understand myself and my Savior, the more I realize how weak I am, how patient he is, and how utterly dependent upon him I am for everything.
SPEAKER_00: The Apostle Paul, later on in the New Testament, described himself at one time as a Hebrew among Hebrews.
SPEAKER_00: Pharisee of Pharisees, a meticulous observer of the law.
SPEAKER_00: His life revolved around his religious credentials until he encountered the lavish mercy of God, who broke open his heart and exposed the depth of his need.
SPEAKER_00: He needed spiritual surgery.
SPEAKER_00: A life that once revolved around doing in order.
SPEAKER_00: To inherit was met head-on by the unexpected mercy of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: His need was exposed.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord became his salvation, no longer himself.
SPEAKER_00: Paul gives a summarized autobiography in Philippians.
SPEAKER_00: We're all familiar with this, I think.
SPEAKER_00: But whatever gain I had, I count it as loss for the sake of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Paul tells us elsewhere in Romans 3, for by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight.
SPEAKER_00: Since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
SPEAKER_00: Well, what does he mean there?
SPEAKER_00: In other words, the moral law of God is good.
SPEAKER_00: It shows us how we were designed to live as human beings, right relationship with God and with one another.
SPEAKER_00: Shalom.
SPEAKER_00: But in our flesh, the law cannot save us, it can only show us our need for a savior.
SPEAKER_00: The reformers would call the law like a mirror.
SPEAKER_00: It shows us the pervasiveness of our sinful nature.
SPEAKER_00: The law reveals our depth of need, but the gospel of Jesus reveals that my need has already been dealt with at the cross.
SPEAKER_00: The Spirit seals our salvation, and we inherit the righteousness of Christ by the free grace of God to those who would come to him in repentance and faith.
SPEAKER_00: Only Jesus perfectly fulfilled the two tables of the law, love of God and love of neighbor.
SPEAKER_00: And his record belongs to all who turn to him.
SPEAKER_00: It's the great exchange.
SPEAKER_00: All we bring to the table, everything that we bring to the table is nothing.
SPEAKER_00: It's need.
SPEAKER_00: Charles Spurgeon said, No eye is quicker to see the mercy of God than the eye washed with the tears of repentance.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, we don't know if the lawyer turned to Jesus, like I said earlier.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know the rest of the man's story.
SPEAKER_00: I hope we see him in eternity.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to hear him tell the story about this theological chess match with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: At what point did he realize he was in checkmate?
SPEAKER_00: And when did he learn about the lavish mercy extended to him?
SPEAKER_00: But his story isn't unique.
SPEAKER_00: It is in some ways, but there are brothers and sisters in this room who have had encounters with Jesus, and I'm one of them.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes those encounters were an unpleasant mercy, exposing our need, but now forever changed and transformed by the gospel of grace.
SPEAKER_00: I hope you know that mercy this morning.
SPEAKER_00: It's on offer to all.
SPEAKER_00: That brings us to our final reflection this morning: the scope of God's mercy.
SPEAKER_00: In our text today, we have two stories.
SPEAKER_00: I think mercy is demonstrated for us in two directions.
SPEAKER_00: One is the lawyer and revealing his need for a savior.
SPEAKER_00: The other is reflected in this parable, revealing the fruit of belonging to the kingdom of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: This parable is unexpected, subversive even.
SPEAKER_00: It would have cut to the heart.
SPEAKER_00: It would have been startling to those who were listening in that day.
SPEAKER_00: It would have, think about this for a second, it would have been startling on its own if Jesus had actually said there was a Samaritan who had been beaten and stripped and left on the side of the road, and a priest and a Levite crossed over to help him.
SPEAKER_00: That would have been startling on its own.
SPEAKER_00: The enmity between the Jews and the Samaritans is hard to overstate.
SPEAKER_00: Hundreds of years of animosity had settled their hatred for one another.
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember a few weeks ago in chapter 9, James and John asked Jesus if they could call fire down from heaven on a city who didn't respond well to their message?
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus rebuked James and John.
SPEAKER_00: That's the kind of enmity we have.
SPEAKER_00: For them, the Samaritans were racially impure.
SPEAKER_00: They had married foreigners during the exile hundreds of years prior.
SPEAKER_00: Samaritans were other culturally, religiously, racially.
SPEAKER_00: The Samaritans worshipped at Mount Gerizim, and the Jews worshiped at the temple in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: They were enemies.
SPEAKER_00: So it would have been a startling story on its own.
SPEAKER_00: If Jesus had simply said that the priests and Levites went to help a Samaritan, that would have been a great story.
SPEAKER_00: But that's not the way the parable goes.
SPEAKER_00: The settled enemy, the Samaritan, demonstrated more love of God and neighbor than the leaders of the temple.
SPEAKER_00: The priest and the Levite.
SPEAKER_00: The priest would have recited the Shema earlier in the day along with the Levite, yet it was the supposed enemy of God's people who actually proved to be a neighbor, thereby revealing the fruit of his love of God.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, Jesus was shining a bright light on the religious establishment, showing that they knew the law, but their hearts were far from God.
SPEAKER_00: In the kingdom of Jesus, all who come to him are given his righteousness, are also given a new identity.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we call it the new creation, the new birth, a new heart.
SPEAKER_00: As one who belongs to Jesus, and that's a key part of this, who belongs to the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: Behavior always flows downstream of being.
SPEAKER_00: Our Lord doesn't simply call for behavior change.
SPEAKER_00: That's what a life revolved around the law looks like.
SPEAKER_00: Behavior change.
SPEAKER_00: He wants to give us a new heart, a life revolved around him.
SPEAKER_00: New heart.
SPEAKER_00: New creation that loves the things of God.
SPEAKER_00: John Stott says it's a wonderfully liberating experience when the desire to please God overtakes the desire to please ourselves, and when love for others displaces love for self.
SPEAKER_00: True freedom is not freedom from responsibility to God and others in order to live for ourselves, but freedom from ourselves in order to live for God and others.
SPEAKER_00: You can see that radical kind of a reorbiting around Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Look with me again, if you would, at verse 36.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus doesn't give in to the lawyer's request to narrow the scope of who our neighbor is.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, Jesus asks this question after he tells the story: which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?
SPEAKER_00: In this parable, Jesus shows that God's kingdom is open to anyone who would turn to him, even our settled enemies.
SPEAKER_00: And it is the Samaritan in this story who proved to be a neighbor, showing the nature of the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, the Samaritan is showing what a heart touched by the lavish mercy of God should look like.
SPEAKER_00: The mercy of God to us should melt our hearts into mercy towards the other.
SPEAKER_00: Now, just a word of encouragement here.
SPEAKER_00: I can't prescribe for you this morning ten principles for how you and I are to respond to every need that comes our way.
SPEAKER_00: How do I serve a pandhandler who asks for money?
SPEAKER_00: How do I love a friend or a family member who keeps making poor decisions and comes back again and again and again?
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm going to give you a really simple answer here.
SPEAKER_00: It requires prayer and biblical wisdom, which means we're reading the Bible, discernment by the Spirit, and a community.
SPEAKER_00: But let me just give some practical things to two sets of people.
SPEAKER_00: For those who find it difficult to say no, every time a need comes into your periphery, a word of challenge to you.
SPEAKER_00: You are human, you're finite, and you cannot help everyone all the time.
SPEAKER_00: You are not the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: But never lose your impulse towards compassion, my friends.
SPEAKER_00: Keep that alive.
SPEAKER_00: So that's one group.
SPEAKER_00: There's another group whose hearts have been calloused and find it difficult to muster any kind of compassion to the need in front of you.
SPEAKER_00: To you, I say, go back to the cross, let compassion, patience, the compassion and the patience and the grace and the mercy that Jesus extended to you.
SPEAKER_00: Let that melt your heart again and again and again.
SPEAKER_00: The kingdom of God does look like something, and here in this parable, we see that it looks at least like unexpected mercy.
SPEAKER_00: Ask the Spirit to reveal parts of your hearts that need to be exposed and tended to, and ask him for a fresh measure of gospel sanity that leads you to kingdom living this week.
SPEAKER_00: You put up that Charles Spurgeon quote up one more time.
SPEAKER_00: No eye is quicker to see the mercy of God than the eye washed with tears of repentance.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna actually add to that.
SPEAKER_00: No heart is quicker to extend mercy than a heart that has been touched by the mercy of God.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, let's pray together.
SPEAKER_00: This from our brother Cornelius Flantinga.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we start this week confessing that we did not make ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: We cannot keep ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: We could never save ourselves, and so we turn to you, our Maker, our keeper, and our Savior.
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, I do pray that your spirit might move among us and do the kind of work that happened in that encounter between the lawyer and Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Expose our hearts where they need to be exposed, tend our hearts where they need to be tended.
SPEAKER_00: Remind us to whom we belong, and then send us out with compassion.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name, we all said.
unknown: Amen.