SPEAKER_00: This podcast is the Ministry of Grand Parkway Baptist Church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information on our church, please visit Grandparkway.org.
SPEAKER_00: My name is Lance Williams.
SPEAKER_00: I am the Spiritual Formation Pastor here at Grand Parkway.
SPEAKER_00: It is truly my honor to be with you today and to be preaching today.
SPEAKER_00: We're in our second week of our summer sermon series on the parables of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And today we are going to be looking at Luke 10, verse 25, otherwise known as the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
SPEAKER_00: And I can already see it now.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you have already checked out.
SPEAKER_00: Because I have just referenced one of the most popular and well-known stories in the entire Bible, much less the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: If I was to ask you what the most popular or the most well-known story of the Old Testament is, you would say.
SPEAKER_00: Alright, fine, I'll go.
SPEAKER_00: I got the mic.
SPEAKER_00: I'll go with Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: I think Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Jonah's one of those that uh, man, you learn when you were like a kid, right?
SPEAKER_00: Um but here's the thing: just like with Jonah is in the Old Testament, so the good some parable of the Good Samaritan is in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: It's familiar.
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's something that if we're not careful, we could read through and kind of glaze over and go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Give me the good stuff.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I used to think of Jonah that way until I taught through it over this past year.
SPEAKER_00: And I probably didn't have a more life-shaping time in my own class than when I started, and we uh we we read and listened about what God had to say in the book of Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: Very familiar.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and in fact, we started in that class by drawing what the story of the book of Jonah was in crayons.
SPEAKER_00: Uh so just in case you think you're intimidated by going up to a Bible community, every once in a while we'll just we'll just bust out the crayons on you.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you just never know what you're gonna get up there.
SPEAKER_00: But the same thing for Luke 10, 25 to 37.
SPEAKER_00: If we're not careful, we can pick up God's word and all of a sudden treat it like it's not God's word.
SPEAKER_00: Like men and women didn't die to preserve this for you and I.
SPEAKER_00: Like it's not uh living and active, like it's not sharper than any two-edged sword.
SPEAKER_00: And we can just kind of read this like it's another book on the bookshelf when we come across stories like the parable of the good Samaritan.
SPEAKER_00: Before I was married, after I got out of AM, uh I fought the Lord, uh, much like Jonah did.
SPEAKER_00: I was saying, don't send me back to Houston, send me anywhere but back to Houston, but he sent me back to Houston.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and so uh this is again before I was married, went to First Baptist, it was great, went there for about three years, they didn't have a pastor.
SPEAKER_00: It was a long time between uh uh Brother John and Greg Mott, and I was there during that time, and it seemed like almost every week they brought in a guest preacher, and almost every week they preached on the Good Samaritan.
SPEAKER_00: And I couldn't stand it, uh, and here I am today preaching on the Good Samaritan.
SPEAKER_00: So you're not the only one that's been tempted this week to just check out, and I created the schedule.
SPEAKER_00: So, how do you like that?
SPEAKER_00: Uh but nonetheless, we have this danger that familiarity can cause us to glaze over the text.
SPEAKER_00: So let's see if we can shed some fresh light on what can be very, very familiar.
SPEAKER_00: And before we get to Luke 10, let me just pick up, before we pick up there, let me just uh share a little context.
SPEAKER_00: It's always dangerous to kind of just jump into one part of the story.
SPEAKER_00: Uh here's what we have in Luke 10.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus has just sent out his 72 disciples.
SPEAKER_00: Who knew he had that many?
SPEAKER_00: You just think he had 12.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, he had at least 72.
SPEAKER_00: So he sent out 72, and they go two by two to all these different villages, some of them in Samaria, some of them where uh the Samaritans rejected these 72, but nonetheless, they go out, he sends them out on mission, and he brings them all back, and they all come back and they're going, oh man, the devil is like fleeing from us, demons are leaving people, sicknesses are being healed.
SPEAKER_00: This is awesome.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, Hey, don't rejoice that all those things are happening.
SPEAKER_00: Rejoice that your name is written in the book of life.
SPEAKER_00: And so he's telling them what to do, how to do it, what to believe in, the highest priority in life, not that you get to do cool things, but that you get to know a great, unbelievable God.
SPEAKER_00: Huge difference.
SPEAKER_00: So there's this huddle that's going on, and all of a sudden, a lawyer breaks in, kind of comes in from the back, breaks in through the center where Jesus is, teaching all his disciples, and he stands up to test Jesus by asking him a question.
SPEAKER_00: Did you know that's how the Good Samaritan started?
SPEAKER_00: Me either.
SPEAKER_00: See there?
SPEAKER_00: It's already fresh and new.
SPEAKER_00: Luke 10, 25 through 37.
SPEAKER_00: Says this.
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 said to him, What is written in the law, and 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 said to him, You have answered correctly, do this, and you will live.
SPEAKER_00: But he, the lawyer, desiring to justify himself, 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 him, passed by on the other side.
SPEAKER_00: But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, and he had compassion.
SPEAKER_00: He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine.
SPEAKER_00: And when he set him on his own animal, 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.
SPEAKER_00: Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.
SPEAKER_00: And which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?
SPEAKER_00: And he said, The one who showed him mercy, and Jesus said to him, You go and do likewise.
SPEAKER_00: Now, when we look at this text, uh there's really three main questions that kind of frame it, so that we can get our three main points for today.
SPEAKER_00: The first question comes right there in verse 25, when the lawyer, uh and I love how how Luke, and you'll find this, we'll we'll talk about this all throughout uh today's sermon.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Luke just starts adding in all these great details.
SPEAKER_00: Uh that where that's where the fresh light comes from today, really.
SPEAKER_00: But he adds this detail up in the front.
SPEAKER_00: And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test.
SPEAKER_00: Never a good start to the day when you're trying to put Jesus to the test.
SPEAKER_00: And uh and of course we know that.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and Luke tells us that, and he says this, Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?
SPEAKER_00: And that brings us our first point, and that is this eternal life is inherited, not earned.
SPEAKER_00: See, the issue here that the lawyer has is not just that he's testing him, but that he's got a flawed question.
SPEAKER_00: His question is completely flawed right there in the middle of it.
SPEAKER_00: Teacher, what shall I do?
SPEAKER_00: What are some things that I can do?
SPEAKER_00: What are some good works that I can do to inherit eternal life?
SPEAKER_00: It's perhaps the most fundamental question that you and I will ever ask in life.
SPEAKER_00: How do I get there?
SPEAKER_00: How do I get to know this Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: And how do I get to heaven?
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps those are our words, but the words that he uses are completely flawed because he's asking, what can he do to get something that can't be earned?
SPEAKER_00: The lawyer tests Jesus with this flawed questions because the reality is this inheritances are not earned.
SPEAKER_00: Inheritances are not earned, they are given based on a relationship.
SPEAKER_00: And so some of us, most of us, don't know really what an inheritance is.
SPEAKER_00: We've never gotten an inheritance.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and so there's others of us in this room that they only hear of an inheritance that might be out there one day if no one spends it all.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and but the reality is this, it's it's true no matter what, especially in the Word, that inheritance is based on relationship and not on earning.
SPEAKER_00: Excuse me.
SPEAKER_00: My wife and I had the opportunity to go up to Boulder recently, Colorado.
SPEAKER_00: Uh if you didn't know where Boulder was, beautiful little town.
SPEAKER_00: Weird, weird little town.
SPEAKER_00: Uh very weird.
SPEAKER_00: Like if you think Austin is weird, go to Boulder.
SPEAKER_00: Uh uh, they don't have shirts in Boulder that says keep Boulder weird, okay?
SPEAKER_00: That just that there's no point for it.
SPEAKER_00: It's you walk in and it's weird.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to have a t-shirt to let everybody know.
SPEAKER_00: It's just you have dreadlocks, apparently, and everybody, it's like the in-vogue thing to do is to act like you're homeless.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't get that, but like most people that are homeless are gonna try and work their tail off to get out of that state.
SPEAKER_00: But people in Boulder are saying, hey, it's cool, we're gonna be acting like we're homeless.
SPEAKER_00: We got dreadlocks, they don't have shirts on half of them.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of weird.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I've coined the phrase that people in Boulder, it is for the city, for people that never want to grow up.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they went there, they went to school there, they went to Colorado or University of Colorado, and they never left.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they were like 65, 70-year-old men that were riding around on bicycles without a shirt on, long hair, bandana, and a backpack.
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, this doesn't happen in Sugarland.
SPEAKER_00: I this I'm liking this.
SPEAKER_00: This is good stuff right here.
SPEAKER_00: Uh but it's a weird, weird town, but it's beautiful little town, uh, especially in the summertime when we got to go just a few weeks ago.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and we were there, and we were there on a Saturday, and they had opened up the mall.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't know anything about Boulder, they have this great mall, outdoor mall.
SPEAKER_00: It's called Pearl Street Mall.
SPEAKER_00: You can walk and it goes for miles, and we're kind of taking in all the sights and listening to all the musicians and just doing all the things that you normally do when you're in a different setting, like a tourist.
SPEAKER_00: And uh we come upon this sign, and we read this sign from far away, and it's different.
SPEAKER_00: And we read this sign, and it had a bunch of other things on it.
SPEAKER_00: But the two that I can remember are these free dream interpretations, free healing.
SPEAKER_00: And this intrigued me.
SPEAKER_00: I was like, ooh, I like this already.
SPEAKER_00: But it looked a little different to me.
SPEAKER_00: And this is how it was different.
SPEAKER_00: The people that were behind the sign didn't look homeless.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, they were actually kind of like normal people, like sugarlanders or whatever.
SPEAKER_00: And they were just, they looked normal and they were playing guitar and singing.
SPEAKER_00: I was like, this is different.
SPEAKER_00: Something tells me these people are believers.
SPEAKER_00: And so, what better way to find out if they're believers than to spy on them?
SPEAKER_00: Uh and so why have an intentional conversation when I can just get close enough to listen to what they're singing, to what they're playing, and what they're saying to people.
SPEAKER_00: And so I, me being Mr.
SPEAKER_00: Inconspicuous, uh, we get real close and I start looking at this tree like it's the greatest tree ever known to man.
SPEAKER_00: And I just, oh, look at this tree.
SPEAKER_00: And I apparently am not intentional enough to have a conversation.
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm staring at this tree, and finally somebody comes up to me and goes, Hey man, what's your name?
SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh, beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: I think they are Christians, they're engaging me.
SPEAKER_00: So we start talking.
SPEAKER_00: They are believers, they are with a church.
SPEAKER_00: Um, tell me about your son.
SPEAKER_00: He goes, hey man, we're in boulder.
SPEAKER_00: I said, Yeah, I figured that was what was going on.
SPEAKER_00: It's like you don't hand out bottled water, okay?
SPEAKER_00: That's what you see in sugar land.
SPEAKER_00: In boulder, it's free dreams and free healings.
SPEAKER_00: That's just, you're gonna have to get their attention somehow.
SPEAKER_00: So we start talking, and I start basically just kind of just saying, hey, where do you guys stand on some things?
SPEAKER_00: Now it just so happened that Neil had just got done preaching out of Romans 8.
SPEAKER_00: I know that was some weeks ago, but recall with me if you can, uh, that one of the things that Neil said in one of those uh passages was that not everybody is a child of God.
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember this?
SPEAKER_00: And that only believers in Christ are children of God because passages like Romans 8, where it says that the Spirit of God enables us to cry out, Abba, Father.
SPEAKER_00: That's a relational term.
SPEAKER_00: It's the Spirit of God within only believers that empower you to cry out to God as your father, making you his kid.
SPEAKER_00: Same thing happens in John 1.
SPEAKER_00: John 1 says that those who would believe in Jesus have been given the right to become children of God.
SPEAKER_00: Meaning you don't have the right if you don't believe in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And so I just asked the guy, it was fresh on my mind.
SPEAKER_00: I just said, hey, now is everybody here?
SPEAKER_00: Are we all children of God?
SPEAKER_00: Is everybody in?
SPEAKER_00: Amen, I guess.
SPEAKER_00: And I he just said to me, Yeah, we're all in.
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Really?
SPEAKER_00: Help me understand that.
SPEAKER_00: He goes, Well, this is how this is how it works.
SPEAKER_00: I said, Oh, this is gonna be good.
SPEAKER_00: He said, basically, what we believe at our church is that God has given his inheritance to everyone on the face of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: All you have to do is wake up to it.
SPEAKER_00: That sounds new agey to me.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I got the heebie-jeebies a little bit, but then I got excited because I just started asking him questions.
SPEAKER_00: Tell me about that.
SPEAKER_00: How does that work?
SPEAKER_00: What do you mean that everybody has an inheritance already?
SPEAKER_00: He goes, Yeah, well, just think about it.
SPEAKER_00: If God didn't already give you his inheritance to people, everyone, then that's like a stingy God, a stingy father that has an inheritance, but it's all locked up and you can't get to it.
SPEAKER_00: Well, that would be true if that was true about God, but it's not true about God.
SPEAKER_00: You see, God is very selective in who he gives his inheritance to.
SPEAKER_00: And it's only to his kids.
SPEAKER_00: I said, because here's the thing, you're gonna put God in a pretty bad situation that I don't think you want your God to be in, in that let's just say they have an inheritance that's already been given to them and they haven't awoken up to it.
SPEAKER_00: Let's just say they die, and then what happens?
SPEAKER_00: Then you have God having to reject his own children because they haven't woken up to their own inheritance.
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't make any sense.
SPEAKER_00: That's not in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: If you would just keep reading in Romans 8 that he quoted, you would see the Spirit of God enables us to be children of God.
SPEAKER_00: I said, Let me tell you this, and let me just illustrate it like this.
SPEAKER_00: Me and my buddy were there with our kids, or excuse me, with uh with our spouses, no, no kids.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, thank you.
SPEAKER_00: Uh which was beautiful, right?
SPEAKER_00: So we're hanging out, and I said, Look, I said, let me just illustrate it like this.
SPEAKER_00: I said, I've got two kids of my own.
SPEAKER_00: My buddy Brett over here has three kids of his own.
SPEAKER_00: I said, I don't have an inheritance for Brett's kids.
SPEAKER_00: I love Brett's kids, I enjoy Brett's kids.
SPEAKER_00: I've been on vacation with Brett's kids.
SPEAKER_00: I got nothing for Brett's kids when I die.
SPEAKER_00: On the other hand, Brett doesn't have anything for my kids.
SPEAKER_00: But guess what?
SPEAKER_00: Brett is gonna work his whole life to build up an inheritance so that he can give that to his own children.
SPEAKER_00: It's the same thing for me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna build and work my whole life and build up an inheritance to hopefully I can give them something, if nothing else, a legacy of a life well lived, that they can look back and tell great stories, not of an honest, good, hardworking man, although that will be great, but that of a man that was a sinner that was changed by grace, completely changed by grace, and enabled to love God and love others.
SPEAKER_00: I tell you all that because that was pretty much the end of our conversation.
SPEAKER_00: He's like, Well, have a good day.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: I tell you all that because inheritance is not earned.
SPEAKER_00: It is not earned.
SPEAKER_00: Uh uh excuse me, eternal life is inherited.
SPEAKER_00: It is not earned.
SPEAKER_00: It is only based on our relationship with the Father, and not everybody gets it.
SPEAKER_00: Only believers get it.
SPEAKER_00: Now I tell you all that to set up this.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is about to tell this guy all you got to do is be a good person.
SPEAKER_00: And you're in.
SPEAKER_00: And that will freak all of us out if we don't know the reason why Jesus is doing it.
SPEAKER_00: And let me just give it away.
SPEAKER_00: Because there's no such thing as a good person.
SPEAKER_00: None.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible will tell us over and over and over again, there is no one good, not even one.
SPEAKER_00: You are all like sheep who have gone astray and gone your own way.
SPEAKER_00: And so when this guy, this lawyer, stands up to test Jesus, he thinks he knows the answer he's going to get.
SPEAKER_00: Because that's what lawyers do.
SPEAKER_00: They ask questions and they know the answers.
SPEAKER_00: And so he starts to ask this question.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Teacher, what must I do?
SPEAKER_00: How do I earn it?
SPEAKER_00: How do I get it?
SPEAKER_00: This thing called eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says to him in verse 26, What is written in the law?
SPEAKER_00: How do you read it?
SPEAKER_00: I don't have time to go into this, but any good teacher will point you back to God's word.
SPEAKER_00: Just that that's for free.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 27.
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 said to him, You've answered correctly.
SPEAKER_00: Do this, and you will live.
SPEAKER_00: So what we hear in all that is you just gotta do a bunch of stuff and you'll get eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: But the problem is Jesus knows something that the lawyer apparently doesn't.
SPEAKER_00: And it's what's written right there in the law, this holistic faith.
SPEAKER_00: Four times right there, does Jesus say, and does the law say, you gotta love the Lord with all your heart.
SPEAKER_00: With your whole heart, all your mind, all your strength, all your soul, all of it, your whole affection, every bit of emotion that you have, all of your soul, all of your drive, your whole uh strength, all of your drive, all of your intellect, all of the reason that you have, every little bit of it.
SPEAKER_00: And oh, by the way, you have to do it perfectly because that's what the law requires.
SPEAKER_00: Anybody done this?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: No one.
SPEAKER_00: That's the whole point that Jesus is making to this lawyer.
SPEAKER_00: You might be an expert in the law, but let me tell you something.
SPEAKER_00: You can't do this.
SPEAKER_00: That's why he says, if you can do this, you'll live.
SPEAKER_00: AKA, you can't do this.
SPEAKER_00: You need me.
SPEAKER_00: This holistic faith that Jesus introduces to him.
SPEAKER_00: He's not saying, oh, just be a good person.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, just obey the Ten Commandments and you'll live.
SPEAKER_00: I can't tell you how many family functions that I've gone to, either on my side or Melissa's side, that have eroded into talks about faith, about being good, about being honest, about being an obeyer of the Ten Commandments.
SPEAKER_00: If you just do the Ten Commandments, everything will work out.
SPEAKER_00: That's not Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely not Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: Christianity is not based on what we can do or what we will do or what we have done.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, it's what Jesus has done on our behalf.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what throws the lawyer for a loop.
SPEAKER_00: Because no one can obey the law perfectly, completely Jesus' point.
SPEAKER_00: It's echoed in James chapter 2, verse 10.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus, his brother, literally, says this for whoever keeps the law, keeps the whole law, but fails in one point, has become accountable for all of it.
SPEAKER_00: So let me get this straight.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not a murderer, I'm not an adulterer, I'm not this, I'm not that, I'm not a liar, I'm not a cheater, I'm not all these different things, great, good.
SPEAKER_00: All these all the different Ten Commandments of honor, my mother and my father, blah, blah, blah, blah.
SPEAKER_00: You keep the whole law, great.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing.
SPEAKER_00: When you Jesus comes on the scene, he says, Okay, you're not a murderer, but hey, guess what?
SPEAKER_00: When you're angry with your brother, you've murdered him in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, sorry.
SPEAKER_00: You're not an adulterer?
SPEAKER_00: Cool.
SPEAKER_00: Well, hey, guess what?
SPEAKER_00: When you lust after a man or a woman, uh, you've committed adulterer, adultery with her in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, thanks.
SPEAKER_00: So what was a big command?
SPEAKER_00: All of a sudden Jesus comes on the scene and changes it.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Oh, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a matter of action, it's a matter of the heart.
SPEAKER_00: It's a matter of your soul, it's a matter of what's going on on the inside.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's why James says, if you have, even if you think you're a good person, hey, by the way, if you've done a little bit of wrong, you're accountable, and you you might as well be just as guilty of all of it.
SPEAKER_00: And so all of a sudden we have this lawyer who is starting to think on his feet a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: And he asks another question, which brings us to our second point.
SPEAKER_00: The second question is found in verse 29.
SPEAKER_00: He says, But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, And who is my neighbor?
SPEAKER_00: Now, again, the details in this text are so poignant and so good, so juicy.
SPEAKER_00: It leads us to our second point, really, and that is this.
SPEAKER_00: Self-justification is sneaky.
SPEAKER_00: You might say to yourself, Why is that even part of what you're talking about today?
SPEAKER_00: We're talking about the Good Samaritan, which by the way, you haven't gotten to yet.
SPEAKER_00: Can you get to it?
SPEAKER_00: I'll get to it.
SPEAKER_00: There's too many other stuff going on here in this text that we just can't ignore.
SPEAKER_00: Self-justification is sneaky.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I say that, but let me before I even say that, get to that, let me just say this.
SPEAKER_00: The lawyer's motivation here, he's basically saying, how do I get out of this?
SPEAKER_00: What's a loophole here?
SPEAKER_00: I can I love the Lord my God, I'm an expert in the law, I can get all that down.
SPEAKER_00: This whole loving my neighbor thing, if my definition of a neighbor doesn't agree with your definition of a neighbor, I might be in trouble.
SPEAKER_00: So how do I, what's a loophole here?
SPEAKER_00: How do I get out of loving my neighbor?
SPEAKER_00: Is it just my friends?
SPEAKER_00: Is it just my family?
SPEAKER_00: Is it just those that agree with me?
SPEAKER_00: Is it just those that look like me and talk like me?
SPEAKER_00: Whatever it is, all of it has to do with me.
SPEAKER_00: And no wonder it's self-justification that's motivating this man.
SPEAKER_00: Because it's sneaky, he doesn't even know it's happening, but it's clear to Luke, who's writing, and to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Self-justification can be defined like this it's relying upon your own measure of goodness for acceptance with God and with others.
SPEAKER_00: It's relying on your own measure of goodness for acceptance, whereas justification, biblical justification, is relying and trusting in someone else's goodness for acceptance, especially with God.
SPEAKER_00: Self justification, my good works, equals acceptance.
SPEAKER_00: Justification, which Romans will say, we've talked about this from this stage.
SPEAKER_00: Romans would say that if we are justified by faith, it's something that we place our faith in someone else's goodness, someone else's perfection.
SPEAKER_00: So that we may be made right.
SPEAKER_00: And the lawyer says, I got this whole thing down, and he's looking for a loophole so he can stand justified.
SPEAKER_00: At the center of what he's trying to do is me, me, me, me, me.
SPEAKER_00: When we get into all this, is he's just become a Lubies theologian, right?
SPEAKER_00: This is before Lubi's.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay, so that's my reference as a Lubies theologian.
SPEAKER_00: Uh they've all closed down, apparently.
SPEAKER_00: Have you found a Lubies?
SPEAKER_00: Anyone anywhere?
SPEAKER_00: Uh for those of you who don't know what Lubi's is, it's it's a cafeteria where they serve mediocre food, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Uh except for the fish, the mystery fish that's in a square.
SPEAKER_00: I've never seen a square fish, but I love that square fish.
SPEAKER_00: Give me some Luan platter with some extra lemons and tartar sauce.
SPEAKER_00: I don't like tartar sauce, but it would have been good.
SPEAKER_00: But he becomes a Lubi's theologian, right?
SPEAKER_00: He just goes down the line and says, I'll take a little love for God with all my heart and with all my soul and with all my mind, with all my strength.
SPEAKER_00: Keep the love of your neighbor.
SPEAKER_00: No broccoli today.
SPEAKER_00: Appreciate you.
SPEAKER_00: A little jello over here.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, and a nice tea.
SPEAKER_00: Now we're all guilty of this.
SPEAKER_00: We all read God's word and we go, ah, that can't mean what it says.
SPEAKER_00: That can't, and I've got to find a loophole here.
SPEAKER_00: Let's see.
SPEAKER_00: All right, let's let's start looking.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because we want to justify ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: We want to justify the life that we have already lived.
SPEAKER_00: If it means life change, no thanks.
SPEAKER_00: Because that means hard work.
SPEAKER_00: That means inconvenience.
SPEAKER_00: And so this justification of himself sneaks up on him.
SPEAKER_00: And he's really just saying, Have I done enough?
SPEAKER_00: How can I excuse myself from the responsibility?
SPEAKER_00: And here's the reality: if we get to define who we love, when we love them, how we love them, then we're no better than the world.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus said it like this in Matthew 5.
SPEAKER_00: He said this, for if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?
SPEAKER_00: Do not even the tax collectors do the same?
SPEAKER_00: Isn't just the refuse of that society?
SPEAKER_00: Don't they just do this?
SPEAKER_00: This is you, you're living in no other manner than the world.
SPEAKER_00: If you just love those who love you.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, what God is going to bring out in this beautiful parable, as the as the attorney, the lawyer asks, Who is my neighbor?
SPEAKER_00: He starts to bring out this great, great truth that we'll get to in just a second.
SPEAKER_00: His motivation is self-justification instead of loving God.
SPEAKER_00: It is sneaky.
SPEAKER_00: Smart people, which are sometimes lawyers, sometimes, just never know.
SPEAKER_00: Smart people struggle with this one because they can always find an out.
SPEAKER_00: They can, it's it, it's it's almost always, if not always, done with their mouths.
SPEAKER_00: They win arguments with their spouses, their coworkers, their friends.
SPEAKER_00: Self-justifiers are those that don't easily admit when they are wrong when they can get confronted.
SPEAKER_00: They usually find ways to rationalize their behavior, their motives, their actions, their reputation.
SPEAKER_00: And you know that it's happening because they're talking.
SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't it be great to live a life where you didn't have to explain all of your actions?
SPEAKER_00: Hey, where were you?
SPEAKER_00: Well, you know where I was.
SPEAKER_00: It's good.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, what happened to all of a sudden, all of these self-justifying words have to start coming out because you weren't living rightly to begin with.
SPEAKER_00: I love what Richard Foster had to say in his book called Celebration of Discipline.
SPEAKER_00: When he talks about all these different disciplines that we are called to really do as believers, he talks on silence and solitude, really in the same chapter, and he says this about self-justification.
SPEAKER_00: He said, Silence is one of the deepest disciplines of the Spirit, simply because it puts the stopper on all self-justification.
SPEAKER_00: One of the fruits of silence is the freedom to let God be our justifier.
SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't it be great to live in such a way where you didn't have to explain yourself all the time?
SPEAKER_00: That your actions just explained who you are, what you believe in, and the great God that has adopted you.
SPEAKER_00: This self-justifier was trying to get out of his responsibility.
SPEAKER_00: And so it leads us really to our last and final question that Jesus asked.
SPEAKER_00: The first two were asked by the lawyer.
SPEAKER_00: The last one is asked by Jesus all the way down in verse 36.
SPEAKER_00: It says, This Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?
SPEAKER_00: Who is the neighbor?
SPEAKER_00: He tells the story after a question is asked, Who is my neighbor?
SPEAKER_00: And then he asks the lawyer, Who do you think proved to be the neighbor?
SPEAKER_00: Unbelievable question.
SPEAKER_00: And let me just give you the answer.
SPEAKER_00: Neighbors are verbs.
SPEAKER_00: Now, some of you are teachers in this room, and you just got out of school on Thursday and you were looking at me and saying, Hey, you can't bend the rules of grammar like that.
SPEAKER_00: A neighbor is a noun.
SPEAKER_00: Well, let me tell you something.
SPEAKER_00: School got out on Thursday, and you're not the boss of me, okay?
SPEAKER_00: All right?
SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_00: So, neighbors are verbs.
SPEAKER_00: Let me show you what I what I mean because even the lawyer said in verse 37, Who's the neighbor?
SPEAKER_00: The one who showed him mercy.
SPEAKER_00: That's an action word, it's a verb.
SPEAKER_00: We go back through and reread this parable of the Good Samaritan, and we'll show exactly what we mean when we say neighbors are verbs.
SPEAKER_00: Who is the neighbor?
SPEAKER_00: We'll find out.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 30.
SPEAKER_00: 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 him, 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: He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine.
SPEAKER_00: And then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him.
SPEAKER_00: And the next day he took out two dinari and gave him, gave them to the innkeeper, saying, Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay, I will repay you when I come back.
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely fascinating little story here.
SPEAKER_00: Let's see if we can again shed a little bit of fresh light on it.
SPEAKER_00: This road to Jericho, these details that are really just given to all of us by Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: This road to Jericho was 17 miles long.
SPEAKER_00: It was 3,300 feet in descent.
SPEAKER_00: And so if you know anything about being in the mountains and going down to a lower elevation, you can't just go straight down.
SPEAKER_00: You gotta go like switchbacks, right?
SPEAKER_00: You've got to keep going back and forth until finally you get to the elevation that you're going to, your destination from in this case is from Jerusalem up here to Jericho down here.
SPEAKER_00: Now that's important to kind of give us, number one, this is a real story that Jesus is telling.
SPEAKER_00: And this really happens, right?
SPEAKER_00: But it's a completely uh uh logical situation to find himself in.
SPEAKER_00: So you got Jerusalem, Jericho, all these windy switchbacks.
SPEAKER_00: Great place for a thief to hide.
SPEAKER_00: Great place for a robber to set an ambush for anybody that's traveling alone.
SPEAKER_00: To make it easy for them to be able to just jump on them and do exactly what they did in verse 30.
SPEAKER_00: He was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, fell among the robbers, they stripped him, they beat him, they departed, and they left him half dead.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this man in need who's in the ditch, now we're not ever going to find really the answer to the question who is who is the neighbor?
SPEAKER_00: Who is my neighbor?
SPEAKER_00: Until we lay down in the ditch next to this guy.
SPEAKER_00: And realize that if we're that person, we'll take help from anybody.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the other part the world, your neighbors, your family, the people that you work with, they're laying in the ditch.
SPEAKER_00: And they're half dead.
SPEAKER_00: They're physically alive, but spiritually dead.
SPEAKER_00: And they need you to step in.
SPEAKER_00: This man in need is stripped of his clothes, his identity.
SPEAKER_00: He's anonymous.
SPEAKER_00: They strip him of his clothes.
SPEAKER_00: That would have been the thing that they identify him by.
SPEAKER_00: Is he rich?
SPEAKER_00: Is he a priest?
SPEAKER_00: Is he a Levite?
SPEAKER_00: Is he poor?
SPEAKER_00: Is he a robber?
SPEAKER_00: They don't know anything about the man because he's been stripped of his clothes.
SPEAKER_00: And so he is in need at his most basic level, and that is as a human.
SPEAKER_00: As a person made in the image of God.
SPEAKER_00: And the priest and the Levites see him, and they relate to him based on what they, what he can offer to them.
SPEAKER_00: Are you seeing this in the text?
SPEAKER_00: They they see him and they relate to him based on what he can offer them, what he might do to them, because these guys were priests and Levites.
SPEAKER_00: They did uh all the ceremonies in the temple.
SPEAKER_00: They had to remain clean.
SPEAKER_00: If they didn't remain clean, there was all kinds of things they had to do to get back to being clean.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that they would become unclean is if they touched a dead body or a half-dead body.
SPEAKER_00: And so they relate to him and they think, all right, he's gonna hurt me, this is gonna cause me inconvenience, there's gonna be problems here.
SPEAKER_00: And what the text literally says is they were on the same side of the road as him, and they crossed over to the other side.
SPEAKER_00: The message says that they angled to the other side of the road.
SPEAKER_00: They got as far away from him as possible.
SPEAKER_00: The level of danger if they had helped, what would have happened if they helped, and it was just an ambush.
SPEAKER_00: They thought through all that and they thought, you know what, this isn't worth it.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna go on by.
SPEAKER_00: And let me just say this, because I think this is on me.
SPEAKER_00: There's a huge danger if we as believers, or just plain simple human beings, if you're not a believer in this room, this is still true for you.
SPEAKER_00: There's a danger here that if we go on evaluating relationships based on woundedness or self-preservation or what that person can do to me or what they can offer me, if we go and continue to evaluate our relationships in this life, there's great danger for us.
SPEAKER_00: We are not going to be the people that God says, the neighbor, the one who showed him mercy, the one who had compassion, the one with whom I am well pleased.
SPEAKER_00: If we see others through that lens, we are in danger of sending the wrong message, not just about us, but about the God that we believe in.
SPEAKER_00: The priest and the Levite pass on and pass by this person in need.
SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden, Jesus throws this curveball.
SPEAKER_00: You see, the priest would have been like the lead pastor.
SPEAKER_00: Let's just bring it to where we are.
SPEAKER_00: The priest would have been like the lead pastor, and the Levite would have been like the associate pastor.
SPEAKER_00: So the priest goes by, surely he's gonna be the guy that helps rescue this guy.
SPEAKER_00: The lead pastor, he knows what to do.
SPEAKER_00: He's an expert.
SPEAKER_00: He's been in the temple all day long.
SPEAKER_00: Surely the pastor is going to do it.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't do it.
SPEAKER_00: The associate pastor watches his boss, his mentor, his disciple pass by.
SPEAKER_00: What does that mean for him?
SPEAKER_00: He's not gonna do it.
SPEAKER_00: So he passes by, and all of a sudden what the lawyer would have been thinking is okay, the pastor didn't do it, the associate pastor didn't do it.
SPEAKER_00: Uh maybe just a layperson, just someone in the Jewish community, anybody will do.
SPEAKER_00: Please be the hero, and that's not what Jesus says.
SPEAKER_00: No one from Jewish descent to this expert in the law steps in, not one iota, instead a Samaritan.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 33.
SPEAKER_00: But a Samaritan.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is this is a dirty word to an expert in the law, and let me just kind of bring it out for all of us.
SPEAKER_00: This has deep, deep roots back in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: There was an evil king named Omri.
SPEAKER_00: Uh in 1 Kings 16, he bought a region of Israel named Samaria.
SPEAKER_00: And it was in Samaria that he began to set up idol worship.
SPEAKER_00: And so when we get to the New Testament times, it's not just that a Jewish person married a Gentile person and then had a Samaritan.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what it's representing, although that's a major part of it.
SPEAKER_00: That there's just this half Jew, and so it just was very offensive to the Jewish nation.
SPEAKER_00: What it really represents is idol worship.
SPEAKER_00: Because that's what the history really tells us.
SPEAKER_00: And so all of a sudden, this Samaritan would have not represented a true worshiper of God, but would have represented an idol worshiper.
SPEAKER_00: And so all of a sudden, a Samaritan steps in and saves the day.
SPEAKER_00: Dirty words to this expert in the law.
SPEAKER_00: And here is the dirty word to us.
SPEAKER_00: Not that he was a Samaritan.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't make sense to us.
SPEAKER_00: We're not in that context.
SPEAKER_00: They're just a Samaritan.
SPEAKER_00: All right, cool.
SPEAKER_00: Another guy went and did it.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the dirty word to us, the next phrase.
SPEAKER_00: As he journeyed.
SPEAKER_00: Those are the words that are going to offend all of us who are taskmasters, who are who set this, the king over our lives, is our schedule, who write out all these different checklists and tasks.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm so bad at this.
SPEAKER_00: My wife is not this way.
SPEAKER_00: My wife can be there, all there, all present, all the time.
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't matter what's going on.
SPEAKER_00: I'm the guy that comes in, has a task list a mile long.
SPEAKER_00: I will write, made a checklist on my checklist and then check it off.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know why that is.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know why that helps me, but somehow that that improves my self-esteem for the day.
SPEAKER_00: I'll write things on there that I've already done.
SPEAKER_00: I'll write my checklist at noon and go, ooh, what did I do at eight?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, nine, yes.
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, write all that out.
SPEAKER_00: Check, check.
SPEAKER_00: Look at all the things I accomplished today.
SPEAKER_00: As he journeyed.
SPEAKER_00: See, for the Samaritan, the thing that's offensive for us is that his schedule, all the things that he had going on that day, his long journey ahead of him, his 17-mile journey ahead of him, didn't matter where he was headed.
SPEAKER_00: He was probably a merchant, probably had a lot of donkeys behind him, probably was selling things.
SPEAKER_00: He was headed home.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know.
SPEAKER_00: But all I know is he was headed somewhere.
SPEAKER_00: He had a destination that he was on, but as he journeyed, he stopped and he put it all aside and he didn't care about inconvenience and he didn't care about cost to himself, and he entered in and he helped the man.
SPEAKER_00: Now it's one thing for all of us in this church to applaud the people that are going to go to Costa Rica, which we'll do at the end of the service.
SPEAKER_00: To applaud the people that are going to Romania and India and all the things like that.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe it's even a better thing to go to these places and be a missionary and take vacation.
SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
SPEAKER_00: Do it.
SPEAKER_00: Please do it.
SPEAKER_00: My life's been forever changed because I've had the opportunity to go do those things.
SPEAKER_00: You need to do it.
SPEAKER_00: But that's one part of this whole thing called Christianity and being a missionary.
SPEAKER_00: But how much greater is the mission on your God, on your life, as you journey?
SPEAKER_00: The people that you're going to run in today in the parking lot as you leave today, when you shake hands before you even get out of this room, when you go home and you have lunch with your family, whatever you're doing this week, go to work tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00: Enjoy summer.
SPEAKER_00: When you go to the park, you're on mission as you journey.
SPEAKER_00: There are people in this world that are half dead and they're waiting for you, and God's put them in your place.
SPEAKER_00: Remember when I prayed at the beginning that we need life change?
SPEAKER_00: This is it.
SPEAKER_00: We can't just come here every week, every week, every week, and go, man, that was super and leave.
SPEAKER_00: We've got to get to the point where intellectual exercises are boring.
SPEAKER_00: And we're so motivated by the glory of God that we get out there and we make fools of ourselves and we fail and we get hurt.
SPEAKER_00: And all that doesn't matter because we're just going to be obedient to a good and gracious God who stepped into our lives and changed it.
SPEAKER_00: And we share that message with those that we're meeting as we journey.
SPEAKER_00: Now, as we journey, we can take great, great comfort in the fact that we have a model.
SPEAKER_00: It's this good Samaritan.
SPEAKER_00: He does six things to help this man in the ditch.
SPEAKER_00: I just called it the Samaritan Six because it reminds me of like the Furious Five or something.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: Furious Five?
SPEAKER_00: Kung Fu Panda?
SPEAKER_00: No?
SPEAKER_00: Alright.
SPEAKER_00: I'm the only one that's the father of a five and a two-year-old or a three-year-old.
SPEAKER_00: The Samaritan six, he did six things to prove that he was the neighbor, as Jesus asked.
SPEAKER_00: Number one, he took responsibility.
SPEAKER_00: He saw him.
SPEAKER_00: In the Greek language, the senses, not just that he saw him in verse 33, that he took responsibility for the man's well-being.
SPEAKER_00: That from then on he couldn't care for himself.
SPEAKER_00: I'm taking over.
SPEAKER_00: I'll take care of it.
SPEAKER_00: He took compassionate action.
SPEAKER_00: He had compassion on the person.
SPEAKER_00: Compassion literally means to suffer with someone else.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus modeled this consistently through his life.
SPEAKER_00: I love reading the passages where Jesus goes, and he just wanted to be alone.
SPEAKER_00: And he went up to the mountain to be alone.
SPEAKER_00: And all these different things where he just wanted to be alone.
SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
SPEAKER_00: He never got to be alone.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because people tracked him down, the crowds came after him, and he looked on them, and he didn't say, you know what, guys, I got to need a little quiet time here with my father.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't say that.
SPEAKER_00: He said the text says, He looked at them, had compassion on them, fed them, healed them, whatever.
SPEAKER_00: Compassion.
SPEAKER_00: It's this sympathy that's backed up with this action verb and this action word.
SPEAKER_00: He entered into the unknown, this Samaritan.
SPEAKER_00: He went on to the other side of the road.
SPEAKER_00: See, the language for the priests is that they were on the same side of the road and they crossed over.
SPEAKER_00: The language for the Samaritan is he was on the other side of the road and he came to him.
SPEAKER_00: He entered into what he didn't know.
SPEAKER_00: It could have been a trap.
SPEAKER_00: He brought relief.
SPEAKER_00: He bound up the man's wounds with oil which would have soothed the wound, with wine which would have disinfected it.
SPEAKER_00: He delivered him from his circumstances, picked him up out of the ditch, put him on his own animal, which means that he was on an animal when he was walking by, and he got off and walked the rest of the way.
SPEAKER_00: See, the life of a neighbor is inconvenient all the way through.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know if he walked 17 miles, 16 miles, 50 yards.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: But I do know that he got off and put the man on it.
SPEAKER_00: He provided for him, he took him to an inn and he cared for him way beyond his needs.
SPEAKER_00: The money that he gave to the innkeeper would have been enough for 24 days of lodging and food and whatever medical needs he needed.
SPEAKER_00: He said, Hey, if you run out of this, I'm coming back through.
SPEAKER_00: Neighbors are verbs.
SPEAKER_00: So here's the point of the story.
SPEAKER_00: There's no limit to your neighbor.
SPEAKER_00: That's one point.
SPEAKER_00: That there's just humans, and then we all, they are all in need.
SPEAKER_00: And if we look out at the world with the eyes that Jesus saw us, because here's the the greater point in all of this: if you really loved God, you'd love neighbors.
SPEAKER_00: And you'd love the people that are in the ditch, and you'd love the people that are in the world.
SPEAKER_00: And this world is getting crazier and crazier as we get old, as I get older and older, and I'm not very old.
SPEAKER_00: But if you aren't the kind of person where love and compassion just flow out to those in desperate need, then the point here, and made all throughout the Bible, is that at some point this has got to be the people that we are because God has said this is what a neighbor looks like.
SPEAKER_00: See, for all of us, we think the neighbor is just the guy in the ditch.
SPEAKER_00: That's one part of it.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus says it's which of the three?
SPEAKER_00: The priest, the Levite, or the Samaritan?
SPEAKER_00: And it's the one who is full of action, who put his faith in practice, and who lived like his God was alive.
SPEAKER_00: 1 John 4 says this, 7 to 12.
SPEAKER_00: Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God.
SPEAKER_00: And whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.
SPEAKER_00: Anyone who does not love does not know God.
SPEAKER_00: You see it?
SPEAKER_00: If you do not love, you do not know God.
SPEAKER_00: Because God is love.
SPEAKER_00: In this, the love of God was made manifest among us that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him.
SPEAKER_00: In this, this is love.
SPEAKER_00: He's defining it for us.
SPEAKER_00: Not that we've loved God, because as Jesus said in the Good Samaritan, we can't love him.
SPEAKER_00: No one's good.
SPEAKER_00: Not that we've loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.
SPEAKER_00: Look it up later.
SPEAKER_00: Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
SPEAKER_00: Now get this little beautiful, weird, random little phrase.
SPEAKER_00: No one has ever seen God.
SPEAKER_00: If we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us.
SPEAKER_00: What is that little phrase doing there?
SPEAKER_00: No one has ever seen God.
SPEAKER_00: Why did John just decide, hey, no one's ever seen God?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, did you hiccup?
SPEAKER_00: What was that?
SPEAKER_00: If I was writing that down, what just happened?
SPEAKER_00: Why is that there?
SPEAKER_00: No one has ever seen God.
SPEAKER_00: In the middle of a passage where he's all talk all he's talking about is, hey, if you don't love other people, then you don't love God.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, by the way, no one's ever seen God.
SPEAKER_00: AKA, in other words, the way that this world is going to see God is by all of us acting and believing like he's alive.
SPEAKER_00: That's how they're going to see God, is when they look at us and we actually care about them enough to inconvenience ourselves and step in and do the things that God has done for us.
SPEAKER_00: Because that's the greater point of this whole thing.
SPEAKER_00: And I've said that three times now, but I really mean it this time.
SPEAKER_00: See, Jesus was this good Samaritan for us.
SPEAKER_00: Remember the Samaritan six?
SPEAKER_00: Put those back up on the screen.
SPEAKER_00: This is what he did for us.
SPEAKER_00: He took responsibility.
SPEAKER_00: When he saw our need, he didn't just say, Well, it stinks for you.
SPEAKER_00: You're a sinner.
SPEAKER_00: He took responsibility for us.
SPEAKER_00: And matter of fact, it worked its way out in compassion for us.
SPEAKER_00: He was an active man.
SPEAKER_00: He left heaven, came to earth, subjected himself to humans for however many years.
SPEAKER_00: He entered into the unknown, under the chaos of the world, in the incarnation when he became a human.
SPEAKER_00: He brought relief.
SPEAKER_00: He bound up our wounds.
SPEAKER_00: He healed us.
SPEAKER_00: He delivered us from our circumstances.
SPEAKER_00: He set us on himself and brought us up out of there.
SPEAKER_00: He provided for us.
SPEAKER_00: In ways that we could never even fathom.
SPEAKER_00: And so he says this to the man at the end.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Which of these three do you think proved to be the neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?
SPEAKER_00: And the guy can't even say it was the Samaritan.
SPEAKER_00: He just describes him.
SPEAKER_00: The one who showed him mercy.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus says to him, the only command in this whole piece of scripture, go and do likewise.
SPEAKER_00: In order for us to go and do likewise, the question has to be: who are we in the story?
SPEAKER_00: Are we the lawyer that kind of has this posture towards Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: Prove yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Show up.
SPEAKER_00: Do anything.
SPEAKER_00: Not a bad posture to have.
SPEAKER_00: God can handle it.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is secure.
SPEAKER_00: He's good.
SPEAKER_00: But just know what's going to happen.
SPEAKER_00: You're going to be at the end of the story and like the lawyer, speechless, shrinking back into anonymity, going, Alright, I'm good.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever put me up to this, I'm going to kill them.
SPEAKER_00: Are you the lawyer?
SPEAKER_00: Are you the priest or the Levite that's maybe too driven by your religion and your rules?
SPEAKER_00: Your schedule?
SPEAKER_00: Are you the Samaritan?
SPEAKER_00: One who put all that, puts all that aside and enters in and actually does something with their faith for the betterment of this world.
SPEAKER_00: I'll end with this quote from a Catholic nun, actually.
SPEAKER_00: Her name was Teresa of Villa.
SPEAKER_00: She lived in the 1500s, and she led a quiet revolution in the Catholic Church to make sure that the Catholic priests and nuns actually had relationships with God.
SPEAKER_00: And so she led this quiet revolution and she started to say unbelievable things like this about putting our faith into action.
SPEAKER_00: I'm forever grateful for this woman for putting this on paper somewhere.
SPEAKER_00: Christ has no body on earth but yours.
SPEAKER_00: No hands but yours.
SPEAKER_00: No feet but yours.
SPEAKER_00: Yours are the eyes through which Christ's compassion for the world is to look out.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, he saw him, he took responsibility for him.
SPEAKER_00: Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good.
SPEAKER_00: And yours are the hands with which he is to bless us now.
SPEAKER_00: So the question is this how will this prove true in your life this week?
SPEAKER_00: How are you going to put this word into action?
SPEAKER_00: How are you going to follow the example of Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: How are you going to follow the example of the good Samaritan and be the neighbor?
SPEAKER_00: Because coming to church and doing this is unbelievable.
SPEAKER_00: It's great.
SPEAKER_00: Keep coming.
SPEAKER_00: Keep doing this.
SPEAKER_00: You need to find community and you need to find people that will tell you the truth about who God is and about who you are and about what the church is all about.
SPEAKER_00: You need to do that.
SPEAKER_00: And then you need to take that and do something with it.
SPEAKER_00: How does this work its way out this week in your life at lunch, at work, at home, whatever?
SPEAKER_00: How does it work its way out?
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray together and ask God.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, let us uh be doers of the word, seekers of doing what is good.
SPEAKER_00: And I just pray, God, that forever, whoever's in this room that just hears you're not good enough, when we preach sermons like this, that uh they realize that that's not from you.
SPEAKER_00: But the reality is that you are good enough, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: You've made us good enough in your eyes, and it's because of that that we can stand before you, approaching the throne room with confidence.
SPEAKER_00: That whatever we ask, you'll give to us because you're our dad.
SPEAKER_00: And we're your kids.
SPEAKER_00: We have an inheritance.
SPEAKER_00: It's only reserved for us.
SPEAKER_00: That's special.
SPEAKER_00: That should motivate us.
SPEAKER_00: And so let it be this week that we are motivated by these things to listen, to obey, to love.
SPEAKER_00: It's in Christ's name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Hold your hands out like this.
SPEAKER_00: Fear is easy, and love is hard, almost impossible.
SPEAKER_00: And it's going to demand your heart, your soul, your all.
SPEAKER_00: But the Spirit of God is in you and on you.
SPEAKER_00: And you can do all things through Christ, who strengthens you.
SPEAKER_00: Whether it be contentment, whether it be stepping in, whatever God leads you to do this week, do it for the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.