Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Hello everyone.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is Pastor Benjamin.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City, Orlando.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: At New City, we long to see our Father answer the Lord's Prayer.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: For more resources, visit our website at Newcity Orlando.com.
Hannah Corlew: Good morning.
Hannah Corlew: Please pray aloud with me.
Hannah Corlew: God of peace, sanctify us in the gospel of grace through the preaching of your word, that by your spirit we might be kept blameless on the day of Christ Jesus.
Hannah Corlew: Amen.
Hannah Corlew: If you're able, please remain standing for today's scripture reading, which comes from Luke 10.
Hannah Corlew: And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?
Hannah Corlew: He said to him, What is written in the law?
Hannah Corlew: How do you read it?
Hannah Corlew: 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.
Hannah Corlew: And he said to him, You have answered correctly, do this and you will live.
Hannah Corlew: But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, And who is my neighbor?
Hannah Corlew: 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.
Hannah Corlew: Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him, he passed on the other side.
Hannah Corlew: So likewise a Levite, when he came to that place and saw him, passed by the other side.
Hannah Corlew: But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion.
Hannah Corlew: And he went to him, and he bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine.
Hannah Corlew: Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him.
Hannah Corlew: And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.
Hannah Corlew: Which of these three do you think proves to be the neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?
Hannah Corlew: He said, The one who showed him mercy.
Hannah Corlew: And Jesus said to him, You go and do likewise.
Hannah Corlew: This is God's word.
Hannah Corlew: Thanks be to God.
Hannah Corlew: You can be seated.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: All right, if you feel like you've already gotten two sermons from this me this morning, here comes one more.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So some call our cultural moment post-Christian.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Post-Christian.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And what that means is that we live in our society we live with the benefits of Christianity while rejecting the truths of Christianity.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Said differently, we want the kingdom without the king.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We want the justice of Jesus without the Jesus of justice.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We want Jesus' social vision without the beatific vision.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What I mean by all this is in our cultural moment, there's no better way to justify yourself than to be about social justice.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, we claim that we care about the quartet of the vulnerable, the widow, the orphan, the sojourner, and the poor, and yet we tell a story about a world that's been shaped by natural selection where the strong eat the weak.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Do you see the contradictory nature of that?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: One uh one Russian satirically said it like this: man descended from apes, therefore let us love one another.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Exactly.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, even some secular thinkers, they can identify this problem.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Uh, you've all know a Harari in an interview with NPR said it like this: most legal systems today are based on a belief in human rights, but what are human rights?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Take a human being, cut him open, you will find the heart, kidneys, neurons, DNA, but you won't find any rights.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The only place you find rights is in the stories that we have invented.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Is that true?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Well, one of the stories that has shaped the moral imagination of millions over millennia, maybe more than anyone else, is the story of the Good Samaritan.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, we're in a series of uh through the Gospel of Luke, looking at the parables of Jesus, and and week after week, what Jesus has been doing, at least to me, has been detonating my assumptions.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And in this story, Jesus wants to expose something deeper than injustice.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He wants to point out and expose self-righteousness, the instinct in every human heart to justify ourselves.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And we see that because the whole conversation turns on one little word.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Do.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: See, it shows up three times in our text.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Verse 25, what shall I do?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Verse 28, do this and live.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Verse 37, go and do likewise.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, the the lawyer in this story believes in earning by doing, and Jesus wants to disconnect doing and deserving.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He wants to do that by exposing the limits of our doing.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If you're like, what did you just say?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Bear with me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at Luke chapter 10, get the text out in front of you, either a Bible or a device or the worship guide.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We're gonna walk through this verse by verse.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 25.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It says this, and behold a lawyer.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, when you hear that in the Bible, think Bible scholar, not law and order.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's important.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the question.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What shall I do?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What actions can I take to get eternal life?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, inherit eternal life is framed as something that you can obtain by doing.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The lawyer's view of life is that God helps those who help themselves.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: To him, life with God is a meritocracy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's more about grit, what I can get, than grace, what only God can give.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so Jesus wants to full court press that worldview.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And he's going to do that in verse 26.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He says, This, what is written in the law, how do you read it?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, good churches are about the man, the message, and the mission of Jesus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But we want to also, we want those things, we also want to be a church that pays attention to the model of Jesus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at how brilliant he is as a disciple maker as he talks to a not yet disciple in this text.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The first thing he does is Jesus answers a question with a question.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's brilliant.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The second thing he does is he draws his attention to the place, the only ultimate authority where questions like this one can be answered, and that's the Bible.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Like I often think Jesus has a way higher view of the scriptures than any of us.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: High view of the Bible comes from being a disciple of Jesus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And he knows that two things matter in the way you read the Bible.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: First of all, the objective.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What is actually written there?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What does it say?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But also the subjective, how do you read it?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What's the hermeneutic in your own heart as you come to the text of Scripture?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus isn't looking for a literacy lesson from the lawyer right now.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus knows that how you read the Bible is the most important, one of the most important things about you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so he goes on.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The lawyer answers in verse 27.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He's quoting Deuteronomy chapter 6 there.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And he goes on, he says, and your neighbor as yourself.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He's quoting Leviticus 19 there.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And Jesus said to him, You've answered correctly.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Like, good job.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: A plus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You did it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Do this and you will live.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So you've got to ask, is Jesus giving a prescription right now or a diagnosis?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What's he doing with the lawyer?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He says, Do this and live, which, by the way, biblically is 100% true.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus' definition of the good life is to love God with all of yourself and your neighbor as yourself.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And the law, it actually really does promise life through perfect, perpetual obedience.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so Paul actually quotes Moses, same thing Jesus is referring to here in Romans chapter 10.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He says, The person who does the commandments shall live by them.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That is true in the Bible.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If you obey the double love command perfectly and perpetually, you will live by it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You will live, you'll have life.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But here's the thing the implication of that is devastating.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's devastating because what Jesus does here is he doesn't lower the bar so that the lawyer can clear it, he actually raises the bar so that the lawyer can see that he never has.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: One commentator put it like this: if the lawyer thinks eternal life can be obtained by doing what the law demands, he will have to learn how extreme those demands are.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so Jesus is trying to undo the lawyer's best doing.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's why when you start with a question like, What shall I do?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: the follow-up question is always, Have I done enough?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's the very question at the heart of what the lawyer says next.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In verse 29, but he, and if you have a Bible or device, if you can underline or highlight this, desiring to justify himself.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is one of the keys to understanding this whole passage, which I think is profoundly misunderstood.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, and who is my neighbor?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now listen, you know that you are on a self-justification project when you are trying to get off on a technicality.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's like the guy who's dating a girl and asks, Well, how far is too far?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's like when you ask if you should give off of your gross or your net, but you don't do either.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, dodging this claim of love, the lawyer asks, Who am I responsible for?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Who am I actually supposed to look out for?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, at this time, culturally, the word neighbor did not extend to anyone outside of Israel.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In fact, there's a story that this bias runs so deep, this anti-Gentile, that's a non-Israelite bias.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's so deep that it was wrong to help a Gentile woman during childbirth because it would bring another Gentile into the world.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the lawyer's worldview when he says, Who is my neighbor?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so, beneath this question lies this desire to exclude responsibility for some people by making them non-neighors.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Religious people have been manipulating this book for a long time.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: They've been doing it in order to marginalize whomever they please.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so the question I want to, I just want to answer Jesus' question at the top here, the lawyer's question rather.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What makes someone my neighbor?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Is it their nationality, their religion, their political party, their sexuality, their ethnicity, or any other socially social identifier that we can come up with?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: According to Scripture, it's none of those things.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: My neighbor is simply anyone who is near with need.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the definition of neighbor.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Anyone near with need.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So whenever neighbor is redefined to confine it to my people, my tribe, my group, injustice is gonna follow.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's why Jesus responds to this question by saying, this question of who is my neighbor by telling a story.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 30.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus replied, A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Pause for a moment.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: When I was finishing up my last couple years at UCF, go nights, I was a substitute teacher for Orange County Public School System.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, this is gonna date me and show you that I'm a little bit of a light edit at heart.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I didn't have an iPhone, a smartphone, so I would memorize the directions from my house to whatever school I was substitute teaching at.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I'd memorize it on MapQuest, you're welcome.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And and and then I would ride my motorcycle there.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Well, I had particular, I had one job at a high school, which is really early.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's like 6:30 a.m.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You're getting there in a not so great part of town.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I'll just say that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And I'm at a traffic light, it's red, nobody else is around except for there's a bunch of people walking around at like 6 a.m.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I'm like, why aren't you in bed like I would be?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And I'm I'm just sitting there idling at this traffic light, ready to pop the clutch to get out of Dodge any second if somebody comes up on me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I'm feeling the fear of the place that I'm in.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the Jericho Road.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, the Jericho Road is a place where St.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jerome tells us in the fifth century it was called the Bloody Way.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Like, what if colonial was like, oh yeah, colonial, also known as the bloody way?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: How often would you ride your bike down colonial?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Some of you are like, it is the bloody way for bike riders.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Don't do that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Okay.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Listen, this is a big deal.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Why does this matter so much?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Well, because it it means that this man ought to have known better.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He was being foolish, maybe even reckless by walking on this road.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And if doing and deserving are linked, then this man got what he had coming.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That would have populated the imagination of the first hearers of this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: They know the Jericho Road.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so Jesus goes on in verse 30.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And he fell among robbers who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: See, if he had just been more responsible, then this wouldn't have happened to him.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Do you hear that posturing that sometimes comes from the self-righteous towards those who are down and out?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And the text says that he was half dead.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This matters because every detail in Scripture matters.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The Spirit of God does not waste his breath when he inspires Scripture.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 31.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, he passed by on the other side.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Both the priest and the Levite are religious leaders, and so they knew that Numbers 19, verse 11 says, Whoever touches the dead body of any person shall be unclean for seven days.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's important that this guy was visibly half dead.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so if this man is dead, then if the priest touches him, he'd be unclean.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And he's a priest, his job is to remain clean so he can do ministry in the temple.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Either he gets, he stays away and remains ceremonial or clean, or he gets close to help this man in need.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is the predicament that he's in.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And he chose the claims of ceremony over the claims of charity.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The Levite was no better.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He may have been in a hurry or afraid that the robbers could still be nearby.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We don't really know, but but what we do know is that staying clean, being in a hurry, and fear have stopped many of us from loving people well, too.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so notice the they both says they saw and they moved away.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We're gonna come back to this because now the lawyer is hearing the story, and I assume he's thinking, okay, Jesus, so it's not a priest, it's not a Levite, who's next?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Who's gonna be the hero of the story?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Maybe a lawyer, that'd be nice.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Verse 33, but a Samaritan, not a Samaritan.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's not acceptable.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Of all people, the trash of the world, the mudblood, the mixed race, the infidel, we have God given reasons to despise this kind of person.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus has gone too far.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is inappropriate, this is scandalous, this is devastating.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If Jesus was alive today, he'd be canceled for this, and rightfully so.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You should not have done this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Verse 33 But a Samaritan as he journeyed came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, the priest saw and then stepped away.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The Levite saw and then he stepped away.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But the Samaritan came to where he was and then he saw.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Do you notice the difference there?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, postmodernism has taught us that what you see is largely dependent on where you stand.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: There's various names for this, but essentially your social location affects your perspective.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, before you guys are like, uh-oh, Ben's going pomo on us, he's talking about postmodernism.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What's next?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Let me quote C.S.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Lewis in the Magician's Nephew, a children's novel, for a moment here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is what he says.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It also depends on what sort of person you are.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So the Samaritan steps toward in order to see.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And we see that in verse 33.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And when he saw him, he had compassion.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Psychologists call this attunement.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Attunement is this experience, it goes beyond mere empathy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's actually where your inner world resonates with their inner world.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What that means is this man's pain brought the Samaritan pain.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He felt for him.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is actually the foundation of healthy relationships.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But here's the problem: if we're trying to justify ourselves, we short circuit attunement.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, we won't feel compassion for other people's needs because we may feel a smug savior complex that we're better off than that person.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's why they need me or my, that's why I can show up and help them.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Or we may feel contempt for the poor because their neediness reminds us of our own neediness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Both of which make it so that we cannot attune with the afflicted.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Martin Luther King Jr.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: said it like this the priest and the Levite asked, if I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The Samaritan reversed the question: if I don't stop to help this man, what will happen to him?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, only the Samaritan will touch the man because he knows what it's like to be untouchable.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He has mercy for those in need because he knows his need for mercy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Then he goes on and puts on a clinic in compassion.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Verse 34, he went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He did that to ease the pain.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And he poured on wine.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He does that to clean the wounds.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, biblically, all love is substitutionary.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Self says, me before you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Love says me for you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What do I mean by that?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Well, the wounded man was clearly too weak to walk, and so the Samaritan set him on his own animal, meaning he had to walk.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He didn't just drop him off at the inn either.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He actually stayed overnight and took care of him in the inn.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Verse 35, and the next day, that's how we know he stayed overnight, he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay when I come back.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: There's an ancient historian who says that in Italy, around this time, it was about, you could stay in an inn for about a fraction of a denarius per day.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So what that means is if rates were comparable in Jericho and in Italy at the same time, then the Samaritan was paying for about two months' worth of room and board.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And if that wasn't enough, the Samaritan wrote a blank check to cover any other cost, saying, quote, whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You can summarize the Samaritan's love for with these words from the text.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He saw, he had compassion, he gave.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what neighbor love looks like.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The Samaritan love without prejudice and without price.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so Jesus asks the lawyer in verse 36, which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And he said, The one who showed him mercy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And Jesus said to him, You go and do likewise.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You can hear the disdain in the lawyer's heart.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He can't even bring himself to say, the Samaritan.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Oh, it's the one who showed mercy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so there's something you gotta pay attention here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is the other point, if you underline this question, this is where people I think go wrong in interpreting the parable of the good Samaritan.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And I'm I want to show you from the text how I think you're supposed to read this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Notice Jesus' question.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Which of these three proved to be a neighbor?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Do you see what Jesus is doing here?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This question is the clue to the whole story.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Who does Jesus want the lawyer to identify with in the story?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I think most of us would say the Good Samaritan, right?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Go be like him.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He even says, go and do likewise.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the typical teaching on this story.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But maybe that's true.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Go and do likewise.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's definitely true, but not yet.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, Jesus first asks the question: which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Whose perspective is he explicitly telling the lawyer to take?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Who does he want him to imaginatively identify with?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The half-dead man.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, if the point of the story was, try to be like the good Samaritan, that doesn't deal with the lawyer's desire to justify himself, does it?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, in the text, Jesus wants the lawyer to see himself as the utterly helpless man who fell among robbers, who needs mercy even from a Samaritan.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's where he wants the lawyer to start.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because only then is the desire to justify himself cut at the root.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The problem is, is until the lawyer sees himself as the beaten, the broken, the helpless one, he will never be humbled.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so listen, this is my point about the Good Samaritan.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's not first about being loving like the Good Samaritan, but being loved by the Good Samaritan.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So who is the Good Samaritan?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Well, later in Luke 18, same author, same book, Jesus is on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And there's a man who everyone is passing by who cries out, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And Jesus heals him.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In the New Testament, the Greek verb for compassion in verse 33 is sponcnitzumai.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I just have to say it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is so fun to say.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Splunknitzemai only shows up 12 times in the New Testament.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And every single time, the subject, the one who's feeling compassion, is either God or Jesus, except one, the story of the Good Samaritan.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: As you read the Gospels, underline every time that it says that Jesus had compassion.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Compassion is what comes over Jesus in waves.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's what drives him to heal the sick, to feed the hungry, to teach the crowds, to wipe away the tears of the bereaved.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus' motivation was compassion.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: B.B.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Warfield wrote an article called The Emotional Life of Our Lord.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's free online.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You can look it up.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's great.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He says this the emotion which we should naturally expect to find most frequently attributed to Jesus, whose whole life was a mission of mercy, is no doubt compassion.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: More than any other emotion, Jesus feels compassion.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Let that sink deep into your own heart.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Let it correct your notions of Jesus as stern and cold.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: His heart broke and burned with compassion.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: His whole life was a mission of mercy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus didn't just travel 17 miles from Jerusalem to Jericho.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus came from heaven down to earth, an impassable different distance.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: For what reason?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: To move into your neighborhood, to come close, to draw near to those with need.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, Jesus stepped near so he could see our need.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And he knows that we have battered bodies and shattered souls, and he doesn't just pass by on the other side.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Instead, Jesus is not put off by your suffering or your sorrow, even if you should have known better.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: His heart wells up with compassion.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Not even your sin can make him pass by on the other side.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In fact, it's the very thing that moves him towards you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Why?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Well, because unlike the Levite or the priest, every time Jesus encounters uncleanness, his purity prevails.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Every time Jesus meets death, his life wins.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: His sacrificial mercy overcomes ritual purity.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The only thing that motivates Jesus to pass us by is your desire to justify yourself.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, nothing is more off-putting to Jesus than your sense of adequacy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Like if you're like, yeah, I got this, he's like, okay, you got this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I think that if you think you're fine on your own, he'll respect that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He's a gentleman, actually.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He'll give you the distance that you demand, but if you feel your need for him, he always steps near.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If you feel your need for Jesus even this morning, you can assume that that's his nearness in your life.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so to the skeptical and the cynical in the room, do you feel your need for Jesus this morning?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: To those of you who are self-justifying, do you feel your need for Jesus?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: To the weak or the wayward, do you feel your need for Jesus this morning?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If so, then come let him bind up your wounds.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Let him pour on the wine of his blood and the oil of his spirit.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Let Jesus be the beast of burden who bears you on himself.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Let Jesus take responsibility for all of your sin, all of your suffering, and all of your sorrow.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Let him take care of the wounds from your own sin and the other sins against you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, the lawyer was right that eternal life is something to be inherited.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And to receive an inheritance, you have to become an heir.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And no amount of doing will make you into one.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Keeping the law is a way of life, but it is not the way to life.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Only Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And he offers an inheritance to all who come to God through him to become heirs of eternal life.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so listen, what I'm saying is until you become the right sort of people, you will never do the right sort of things.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And you can only love your neighbor like Jesus when you've been loved as a neighbor of Jesus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Brothers and sisters, only then can we go and do likewise.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If Jesus is the good Samaritan, then each of us individually is the wounded man.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So then why all this talk about the innkeeper?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus could have made his point, the story could have ended at verse 34.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, the good Samaritan invites the innkeeper to share in his act of mercy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He entrusts him to steward his resources for the care of the man.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The church, all of us together, we are the inn.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The church does not merely do social justice, but rather the church is God's social justice.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus has given this gift and this task to the church to continue his acts of mercy in the world.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: New City gets to be a place of healing for those who need mercy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And here's the litmus test.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Do the needy find a room full of people desiring to justify themselves?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Or rather, do we have a culture where the weak and the wounded and the wayward can look around and see other people who need Jesus just as much as they do?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Can the poor find a place alongside the rich because they also need Jesus?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because all of us need all of Jesus for all of life.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Let us be a place where the healing that Jesus began at his own expense can continue at our expense.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We want to be the kind of people who spend what we cannot keep to purchase what we cannot earn.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus has given us a blank check.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Let us spend ourselves in love for the battered bodies and the shattered souls of the people of Orlando because Jesus will repay us when He returns.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Let's pray.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Lord Jesus, we praise you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: As the even better Samaritan, as the one who sees and has compassion and who gives.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Holy Spirit, convince us of our need and our misery this morning apart from Jesus Christ.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Persuade us of his not just ability, but willingness to have mercy on those of us who are weak and weary and sinful and suffering.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Spirit of God, that's your work.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Let us not desire to justify ourselves.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Let us lay that deadly doing down, down at Jesus' feet, so we could stand in him and in him alone gloriously complete.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We pray this in your name, Jesus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Amen.