Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
Luke 10:25-37 ·October 22, 2023· Joel Passmore
Part of: Luke
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I just have to say, praise God, there is hope now for the hopeless, there is victory, all can know. Jesus Christ, my hope forever, hope unlike the world can bring. That is good news.
We're in the book of Luke today, and we are in a part of Luke where Jesus is encountering people and their questions, and he's using it to teach them something. We have a lot of teachers in the room, people who have once done teaching, people who are currently teaching, people who teach part-time, people who teach full-time, and we have students, people who are currently students and who are learning. Teachers get a lot of questions during the day.
No matter what the classroom setting is, they get a lot of questions. Can you say that again? Why are we learning this? Can I go to the bathroom? But there are a few questions that are more discouraging than this one. Is this going to be on the test?
Right away, right away, the teacher knows that this student's biggest concern isn't really learning the material, it's passing the class. It's getting the grades.
And students, you may not know this, but what your teachers want is for you to want to learn, not to pass. I mean, they want you to pass, of course, but they want underneath that to be, I want to learn.
Now, I've definitely asked that question many, many times, definitely. But I saw the looks on my teacher's faces when I would ask it, but I would still ask it anyway, next time I wanted to know.
Both the teacher and me and everyone else, you know what is really being asked when someone asks that question. Basically, the question is, do I need to pay attention right now?
But I still ask, because honestly, even when I was not eager to learn, I was eager to get good grades. It's, so let me ask you a question, how far do you think that approach will take you in the kingdom of God? Is this going to be on the test, Jesus? Do I have to be paying attention right now, or can I kind of check out? In today's passage, Jesus encounters someone like that, someone who doesn't really want to learn how to live. They don't really want to become anything like Jesus.
They just want to know, what do I have to do to pass this class called life? Jesus uses that moment to teach the person who asks and everyone else who's listening about love and mercy in the kingdom of God.
So turn with me to Luke 10. Let's see what Jesus says, how he responds. Let's be pointed again to the grace and the mercy of our God through Jesus. This is the word of God for us today. It's completely true and reliable. Let's all build our lives on it and respond to it well today. Luke 10, starting in verse 25. And he said to him, you have answered correctly. Do this and you will live. But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, and who is my neighbor?
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. Now by chance, a priest was going down that road. And when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was. And when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine.
Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. 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. Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers? He said, the one who showed him mercy. And Jesus said to him, you go and do likewise. Pray with me.
Jesus, we need your spirit to be working in us so that we approach you with a truly humble heart, wanting to learn, wanting to grow, wanting to change, wanting to be spiritually changed by you. Lord, I do pray in confidence and in faith because of your promises that today you will use even an ordinary vessel like me. You will work among ordinary people in this room to do extraordinary, spiritually life-giving work.
Jesus, we pray this in your name. Won't you be my neighbor? A heart changed by God moves towards people in need. Now, a lot of people walked up to Jesus and got something completely different than what they expected. And that's what happens to this guy, to this lawyer. They're talking to the right person, but they're asking the wrong questions. I've been there too. It happens because they're approaching Jesus with bad motives. So let's start here.
The scene begins with a lawyer. Like a lot of people, I love a good lawyer joke. But this isn't an attorney the way that we think of an attorney. He's not representing Jewish people for Roman traffic violations. He is an expert in Jewish religious law. God gave commandments and laws primarily through Moses, and the prophets had referenced those laws and taught about those laws. We read a lot of those laws earlier in today's service from Leviticus, laws about loving your neighbor.
And at this point, by the time Jesus was walking the earth, there had been centuries of people like the Pharisees teaching about the law, teaching about how this is applied, how you do this. And this was important because the religious law, it didn't just guide their worship practices. It guided how they lived their life. It guided their society, how they treated each other. When disputes happened, religious law would be used to settle those disputes, to guide people towards reconciliation.
So you, in some sense, you needed some guys like this walking around who knew the law really well, and he knew it backwards and forwards. So this lawyer knows the answer to his own question. And that's why the passage says when he asks it, he's putting Jesus to the test. He puts him to the test. He's seeing, is Jesus going to give an answer that contradicts the Old Testament? Because then we got him. We know he's not to be trusted. He stood up and put him to the test, saying, Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?
But Jesus is too smart. He doesn't take the bait. He turns the question back on him. You know the law. You're the lawyer. What do you think it says? How do you read it? The lawyer is all too happy to answer. So he answers with what is called the great commandment. This is a way to summarize all of the Old Testament commandments. It all falls under these two commands. Love God with your whole self, and love your neighbor as yourself. In Matthew, Jesus calls this, he says that on these two commandments hang all of the law and prophets.
They all come under this heading of these two things. Vertical love, loving God, and horizontal love, loving your neighbor. Every other commandment and law can be traced back and connected in with those two. So Jesus affirms him, you have answered correctly. Do this and you will live. Now notice what Jesus says and what he doesn't say. He uses careful language. Do this and you will live. Not believe this and you will live. Do it.
Now this should have been the moment. Right here in this moment should have been the moment where Jesus, where the lawyer says to himself, wait a minute, what did I just say? Love the Lord with all my heart, all my soul, all my strength, all my mind, and love my neighbor as myself. God, I can't do this. Jesus, you've got to help me because I can't do that. If that's what it takes to inherit eternal life, Jesus, help me, sadly, predictably. The Pharisee doesn't do that.
He's pleased with Jesus' answer. It meets all the tests of orthodoxy. Very good, Jesus. He thinks that he meets the requirements. He, the lawyer, thinks that he meets them. And so he tries to justify himself. He wants to get affirmation in front of all these people who are listening that he's done everything needed to meet these two commandments. And so he just has one simple follow-up question. And who is my neighbor? Who is my neighbor? In other words, Jesus, who do I have to love and who can I disregard?
Is this going to be on the test? In a traditional Christian wedding, there is a portion that's called the declaration of intent. And each person participating in the wedding, each future spouse, has asked this to each other. Do you promise to love, honor, and cherish so long as you both shall live? Now imagine if one spouse says to another, sometime after the wedding, tell me exactly what you think that obligates me to.
I want to know. Give me a list. What do I need to do to fulfill that? It kind of sucks the sweetness right out of the room, doesn't it? Here's the thing. Asking for precision on what you have to do, it usually indicates a heart that doesn't really want to do it. That's why, if you are a spouse with any wisdom, you don't sit down with your spouse and ask that question.
Asking for precision on what you have to do usually indicates a heart that doesn't want to do it. And that is what we all do, to some extent, with the commands of God.
There is a lawyer in us all, just waiting to get out. We resist being shaped by God's commands. We don't want to run to Him for help. Instead, we just try to justify ourselves.
Just tell me what to do, and if it's reasonable, I'm sure that I've already done it. If I haven't, I can work a little bit harder and do it. Just tell me what to do. I had a conversation with a guy one time.
And he was saying, well, to me, the Bible is the thing where you read what you're supposed to do to make God happy. And it's like, oh man, what he meant was, here's the list of rules, the ways that you're supposed to live, and then you can get to heaven. And it just broke my heart. It's like, let's talk about that. Because the real truth about what the Bible's for is so much better than that. Let's talk about that.
Now Jesus, He perceives all of this in a moment. He sees what's happening with the lawyer. But He is so patient, He's so patient with sinners, even lawyers, that He tells a parable.
Perhaps His most famous parable. But before we learn from the parable, we need to skip ahead to the end. Because we need to see the big point that Jesus is making to Him. And then we'll come back to the parable. Here's the big point that Jesus makes. We need a new heart. We need a new heart. Remember, the lawyer's question was, who is my neighbor? Or in other words, who do I have to love as myself? Give me a list.
In the parable, the Samaritan is the hero because he loves the injured man. So you would expect Jesus at the end of the parable to say, who did the Samaritan think was his neighbor? Right?
If the lawyer's question was, who is my neighbor? Jesus tells this parable and says, who did the Samaritan think was his neighbor? Who did he love? But that's not what Jesus asks. He asks, which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man? It's a surprising question, but it's the right question because it addresses the lawyer's real need and our real need. Jesus is saying to him and he's saying to us, you're looking through the wrong end of the telescope.
Instead of trying to figure out who is and isn't your neighbor, ask yourself, how can I be a neighbor? Neighbor love, in other words, it isn't defined by the receiver, it's defined by the giver. Neighbor love is defined by the one giving it, not the one receiving it. Here's how author Jonathan Parnell puts it. Stop asking, who is my neighbor? Who are you? That's the question. What grounds the way we think about neighbors is actually our identity, not theirs.
What matters first is who we are. So if you're tracking with me, you probably are wondering right now, how do I become a different person? How do I get this new heart? How can I have a change of identity if it's about me? How can that happen? How can we become people who prove to be neighbors? Well, it's the same way that people become people who love God with all of their mind and their soul and their strength and their heart through the work of God in us.
Listen to the promise from the prophet Ezekiel. This is God speaking through the prophet. I will give them one heart and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people and I shall be their God. And this promise is fulfilled in Christ. A verse that I hope we all know pretty well by now.
If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Behold, the new has come. The old has passed away. All this is from God. God does it. He changes people. Even you, even me. From stingy legalists like this lawyer to generous givers. He changes people from those who do the bare minimum as a duty to those who serve willingly as an act of worship to God. He changes people from viewing love as an obligation to viewing love as an opportunity. This is the work of God in us.
When Jesus told the lawyer, you go and do likewise, it was not a commandment to try harder. It was an invitation to a new life. That new life is found by being in Christ. It's the only way it's found. In Christ, through faith. Not through earning like he believed it was.
For those who have begun that new life in Christ. For those who are walking with him. The parable of the Good Samaritan, it gives us plenty of ideas. Plenty of ideas for how to practice neighbor love. For how to prove to be neighbors. Now that God has done this new work in our heart. He's taken out the stony heart and put in it a beating heart of flesh. That wants to be changed by the commandments of God. Wants to follow him. Doesn't want to just do the bare minimum.
How do we walk in this neighbor love? Let's talk about that. The lesson of the parable. Now as we turn to application, I want to repeat something I said a couple weeks ago. And this is important. God calls us to sincere discipleship. True obedience. And it doesn't have to be perfect to be sincere and true.
If you are sincerely loving your neighbor right now, and I know that that's many of you, then let this section encourage you. Encourage you that your father sees it. That he is empowering you to continue walking in that direction. To continue worshiping him by loving your neighbor.
Don't hear this. If you're trying to love your neighbor, you're trying to put this into practice, don't hear this as just, oh, I'm not doing enough. Hear this as your father affirming the direction that you're going and telling you, keep at it, I'm with you.
Now here's the first thing that we learn from here. Pay attention to who God puts in your path. The Samaritan acted because God gave him an opportunity to act. He was journeying and he saw a person in need. Proving to be a neighbor starts right there. Friends are great. I hope that you all have friends. But friends are people that you have chosen to journey with. You can certainly prove to be a neighbor to your friends. But I want to draw your attention to the people that God chose to put in your path.
Okay? Let's talk about just a few areas that you can think of here. First, there's your family. Your biological family. With the exception of your spouse, you didn't choose the people in your family. Right? God put you together. He needed you together. He did it. He's the author of your family. Now, it can be a challenge to love your family as yourself. Because sometimes you know the choices that led up to the needs that exist in their life. Am I right?
I won't ask for an amen on that one. You know the choices that have led up to the needs they have in their life. Right? And so it can make you a little bit resistant. But take a look at this picture. Take a look at this picture. This is the actual road from Jerusalem to Jericho. It was punishing terrain. It was hot. There was no shelter. There was no shade. Except for some caves that were along the way. Where everybody knew robbers would hang out.
And attack people as they went by. This man was traveling alone. How foolish. Didn't you know it was going to happen? Maybe that's what the priest and the Levite thought. As they walked by. Should have known better.
I at least carried a bat. In fact, this guy carried nothing. He's responsible for his own choices. Let him suffer the consequences. But the Samaritan saw the same situation. Didn't judge the man. And he helped him anyway. Maybe it was a foolish choice for him to walk this road alone. Maybe he had no choice. And he did what he had to do. The Samaritan is not worried about what led him there. He just sees a person in need and he moves towards it. Sometimes that is the posture that we need to approach our family with the needs that they have.
Regardless of the choices that have led up to that moment. We see the need and we move towards it. The second category is people that live near you. Your literal neighbors. But also people that you work with. You don't choose who's on your block. You don't choose who's in your building. You don't choose who's in your office. Kids, I want you to think of your classmates. You didn't choose the other kids in your class. God put them there. He caused your paths to intersect.
We have to get close enough, often enough, to learn what those needs are. We have to have compassion and then boldness to act. Where Nikki and I used to live, we had a neighbor named John. And he was a great neighbor. Man, he was a good neighbor. One time he texted me and he said, Hey, I noticed that one of your cars had a flat tire. And so I brought out my pump and I pumped it up for you. You may want to get that checked out. I mean, I could go on and on about the ways that he was neighborly towards us.
That he saw a need and he moved towards it. It was wonderful. It, honestly, it rebuked me a little bit. A lot, if I'm being honest. Gosh, am I even seeing the needs around me? But he was seeing it. It was beautiful.
The people in your workplace, in your classroom, in your neighborhood, on your block, in your building. Those are people that God has put in your path. Do you have eyes to see the needs around you? Or are you already seeing them and moving towards them and trying to help? If so, keep at it. God is with you. The third place we have to look for people that God puts in your path is here at church. Now, you might think, well, wait, I chose to be here.
Well, that's true, but you didn't choose who else would be here. Right? I was reading an article, Desiring God, that pointed out how, over time, a church family begins to look a lot like a biological family. An assortment of people that you didn't choose to be with, but now you're with together. The author says this. We must live with leaders who disappoint us and fellow members who see the world differently. They have different interests, ministry priorities, educational philosophies, and musical preferences than we do.
Doing life with them doesn't end up looking or feeling like our idealized, abstract concept. Perhaps we need a change to find a different church where we can really thrive. Or, perhaps the change we need is not in the church community, but in our willingness to love our neighbors, the ones God has given us to love.
Now, those three categories are not exhaustive. I'm not trying to tell you those are your neighbors and that's no one else. That would be going the direction that the lawyer went. I'm just giving you some ideas to get your wheels turning or to encourage you in the work that you're already doing. Here's the second thing we learned from the parable. Be willing to love sacrificially. There is no real love without real sacrifice. The Samaritan saw the man and had compassion, but then he did something.
Look at all the things the Samaritan gives up to save the man. He gave his resources, his oil, his wine, his money. He paid enough for 24 days worth of lodging for the man. And, of course, he gave his time. This act of love, it was a huge interruption. It put all of his plans on hold. Whatever business he had would wait. And then he said he would come back later. As if that wasn't enough. He gives up safety and comfort. To linger on this road puts him at risk.
What if the robbers came back? What if the robbers were lurking around a corner waiting to see if somebody would be foolish enough to stop and help him? And then they would have two victims.
Caring for the man, putting him on the animal. He gets bloody and dirty. And then he walks who knows how far to get him to the end. He also puts his reputation on the line.
He's a Samaritan. He comes from a people group that is constantly under suspicion. He's a Jewish country. When he stops to help, he could be accused of being the one who attacked him.
And after all this, think about the state that the Samaritan is in. Walking away from that end. He's late. He's poor. He's filthy. He's endangered. He's inconvenienced. And he's coming back again.
He has willingly taken on the man's suffering. He got the raw end of the deal. This was not some kind of barter system where he did a little neighbor love. The man did a little neighbor love towards him. And they all kind of got something in the end. He just gave and he gave and he gave and he gave. Depleted himself. For the sake of someone who was dying. In other words, sacrifice. You can't go into neighbor love thinking that it's quid pro quo. It's sacrificial.
Speaking of sacrifice, here's the last thing we learn from the parable. Abide in the one who is greater. Friends, listen to this. Sometimes truth really is better than fiction. The Samaritan's love for the injured and the dying man is beautiful, but it is outdone by the one who is speaking the story. The Samaritan was good, but Jesus is greater. Jesus is greater. We were the ones beaten, stranded, poor, helpless, not just half dead, completely dead in our sins.
And Jesus didn't just happen by and say, oh, I think I'll help today. He went out of his way. Out of his way to come to us. To help us. And his love for us was far more costly. He was rich beyond measure and he became poor for our sake. He was pure. He was without sin. And he took on the shame and the filthiness of our sin on the cross. He stepped into need, into danger, into accusation, into harm's way. He poured out his life so that we could live.
And like the Samaritan, Jesus promised, I'm coming back. I will return. But it's not just to check in on us and pay our bills. He's coming to take us home.
To bring us to where he is. To live with him forever. However, the parable of the good Samaritan should lead us first and foremost to worship. Worship of the one who is greater than the Samaritan. The one who did the most amazing, historical, redemptive act of love that could ever be done.
He proved to be a neighbor to us. As we worship him, as we abide in him, he changes us. He leads us to love like he loved. Willingly and sacrificially. Church, as we are led by his spirit. As we are changed by him and given a new heart. Let's walk in the kind of neighbor love that we're taught here. Pray with me. Jesus, we thank you for being far greater than the Samaritan in this story. He showed amazing love, but you outdid it. And you did it for people like us who were dead.
Lord, I pray that we would step into this new life through repentance and faith. And that we would walk in this new life. That you would teach us to prove to be neighbors to the people that you've put in our path. That we would be willing to sacrifice as an act of worship for the one who sacrificed for us. Jesus, be glorified in us and in this church. And Lord, I know that many people who are hearing this, they are loving their neighbors. They're experiencing that sacrifice.
Lord, would you please remind them of your faithfulness, your closeness to them. Remind them that you receive their act of worship. That you're pleased with it. And that you're strengthening them. Jesus, we pray this in your name.