The Neighbor You Didn’t Expect

Welcome to the Islands Christian Church podcast.

Subscribe to hear a new episode every week.

Thanks for joining us. All right, so today we are

beginning a brand new series called Next door.

And so if you have your Bibles, you can head over to Luke

Luke 10 · chapter mention

chapter 10 and just hold that for a second.

And we're going to get that to that text in a moment.

We have a another text to look at before we get there.

But this is what we're doing in this series called next door is

we're, we were looking at this idea of loving our neighbors.

We live in a world that is we we live in a world that is

connected, more connected than it's ever never has ever has

been. Think about this on your phone.

I texted a buddy of mine the other day and I was thinking

about this in Alaska. I texted my friend in Alaska and

we're we had a conversation back and forth and I was like, what

time is it there? And he's like, oh, it's, you

know, 3:30. And it was like, you know, 730

here. And, you know, it was like, this

is crazy that I'm talking to a guy in Alaska.

You go back 50 years, you know, 75 years to talk to somebody in

Alaska. Like, yeah, you might could call

them, but it was going to be very expensive and it was going

to take a while to get him on the phone.

And you had to plan that you sent him a letter.

Hey, can we get on the call on Thursday, October the 12th, you

know, at 4:00 in the afternoon. And like you, it was a lot.

I'm just randomly, I got a question for him in Alaska.

Just text him. You know, we live in a world

that is more connected than it ever has been in the history.

But at the same time, at the same time, we feel more divided

than ever. I mean, if you watch the news,

if you watch social media, what you hear oftentimes is we are so

divided as a nation. We're so divided as a people.

And so yet we're all so connected and yet we're all so

divided at the same time. Now this next door series that

we're going to be doing is about discovering what Jesus called

one of the greatest commandments, the second of the

two greatest commandments to love our neighbor.

So next door you have a everybody say neighbor neighbor

and the Bible says cause us to love our neighbor, not

literally, not only literally our next door neighbor, but our

neighbor. The idea of neighbor is defined

more broadly as we're going to see today.

And in this series, through this series, we're going to explore

following Jesus and we're going to explore how following Jesus

transforms the way we see the people around us, the people

across the street, the people across the table, and the people

across every dividing line you can think of right now, every

dividing line you can think of. How do we see them?

How do we interact with them? Loving our neighbor isn't just

about being nice. And this is kind of what happens

to Christianity. Oh, you need to love people.

That just kind of means be nice and be kind.

And it's, it's, it's not just about being nice.

It's actually about reflecting the heart of Christ to everyone

you encounter. It's about reflecting the heart

of Christ to all people, no matter what, and how different

you may be from them. And that's different than just

being nice. And I, I know we kind of like

the idea of loving our neighbor as just being nice because

everybody, you know, you, everybody can just be nice.

But Love Actually sometimes is going to move beyond just being

nice. And the reflecting the heart of

Christ is going to look different than just being nice.

And we're going to talk about that today at the end of our

talk. So a common question in Jesus's

day was this question, what is the greatest commandment?

What is the greatest commandment?

In other words, what really matters most?

What is essential to being one of Jesus's followers?

Now we know that Jesus was asked this question often and we know

how he answered it. So we're going to start in Mark

Mark 12:28–31

chapter 12, verse 28 through 31. And I'm going to read this to

you very quickly to hear how Jesus answered the question.

What is most important? Mark chapter 12, verse 28, one

Mark 12:28

of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating,

noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, He asked him

of all the commandments, which is the most important?

So they're in a debate back and forth and this, this teacher of

the law, this lawyer says, hey Jesus, what's the most important

commandment? Verse 29, the most important one

answer, Jesus is this hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the

Lord is 1 Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all

your soul, and with all your mind with all your strength.

The second is this colon. Love your neighbor as yourself.

There is no commandment greater than these.

And so here we are. Jesus says, hey, this is

essential. Love God fully and completely

and love people faithfully. Love God fully and completely

and love people faithfully. Followers of Jesus are meant to

live in a loving relationship with their heavenly Father and

at the same time to faithfully express that that love they

receive from God toward others. This is a both and situation.

Let's be honest, most of us do pretty well at the loving God

part, Amen? Like we can, we can sing, we can

worship, we can read our Bible, we can sit and pray, we can talk

about God. But the loving people part, it

could be a little harder, right? It can be a little tougher.

Let's be frank. It's easier to love people who

look like us, think like us, talk like us, share our values.

It gets harder when a neighbor includes people who we disagree

with, people who frustrate us, or people who have hurt us.

Let's be straight with each other.

Sometimes our version of love for people that aren't like us

is not really love. It's just a polite tolerance.

It's just a polite tolerance, and it's not a genuine

compassion for them. But what we're going to see

today is that Jesus defines neighbor in a much broader way.

He defines neighbor in a way that stretches us past our

comfort zone from just tolerating people that aren't

like us and holding the door for them, to actually showing them

compassion and loving them. He broadens that idea in Luke

Luke 10 · chapter mention

chapter 10, a religious expert. Now you got to understand this.

A religious expert would have been someone who understood the

law backwards and forwards, who forwards, who had it memorized,

who knew everything there is to know about it.

So this is not just some random YouTube guy who watches a lot of

YouTube and has a lot of information.

This is somebody who's learned and studied and smart and

intelligent. This expert in the law.

He's coming to Jesus and he's trying to Make Love manageable.

That's important that you got to understand that this guy's

coming to Make Love. Hey, I know I got to love

people. I know loving neighbors is part

of it, but I want to make it manageable.

And he asks a question of Jesus, and here's the question that

he's going to ask. He's asking a question, who is

my neighbor? And what he's trying to do is

Make Love manageable. So if you take that, if you take

notes, that's what the expert in the law is trying to do.

He's trying to Make Love manageable where he can manage

it, where it's easier for him to do.

Who exactly is my neighbor is this question?

So let's look at verses 25 through 29 of Luke chapter 10

Luke 10 · chapter mention

and see what it says. On one occasion an expert in the

law stood up to test Jesus teacher.

He asked what must I do to inherit eternal life?

What is written in the law? Jesus replied, how do you read

it? So so stop here for a second.

An expert in the law comes to Jesus and he says, hey,

basically what do I need to do to inherit eternal life?

What do I need to do to live forever to be right with God for

all the eternity? And the Jesus responds with a

question. So he asks a question.

Jesus responds with a question and what was Jesus question?

He says, what is written in the law?

Now he's, he's asking a guy who's an expert in the law, what

is written in the law? How do you read it?

And So what he's saying is like, you already know this, you're

already an expert. You already have the

information. So I'm just, I'm going to put

this back on to you. What does the word say?

What does God's word say? You're an expert.

Tell us what it says. And then the expert in the law

answers verse 27. He answered, love the Lord your

God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your

strength and all the all your mind and to love your neighbor

as yourself. Now how did he know that?

Well, this is ancient. This goes back to the very

beginning of God's word. This is Old Testament.

This is this is the this is the the foundation of God's teaching

to his people. So for thousands of years, the

Jewish people have had this command to love God and to love

neighbor. So Jesus sit and come on the

scene and invent that he didn't create that.

This is something this guy would have known because he's an

expert in the law. This is thousands of years old.

So he says to Jesus, oh, I know what the law says.

It says to love God and to love your neighbor.

And then Jesus says in verse 28, well, you've you've answered

correctly. Jesus replied, do this and you

will live. Jesus is like you asked and you

answered your own question. You already knew the answer

should be the end of the conversation, right?

Should be over. But but Luke gives us a little

hint into what's about to happen.

Luke says in verse 29, But he wanted to justify himself.

Who's he the expert in the law? But he, the expert in the law,

wanted to justify himself. So he, the expert in the law,

asked Jesus a gotcha question. Y'all know what a gotcha

question is, right? Y'all know what a gotcha

question is? It's like I'm going to ask a

question that's put you on the spot.

It's a question that's just going to be hard for you to

answer. It's going to show your

weakness. It's going to put you in the

corner and the whole lights going to be on you for a moment.

And he says, I got I got a question.

And what is his motivation? His motivation is to justify

himself. So he asked Jesus, well, and who

is my neighbor? Define who my neighbor is Jesus.

Let's define our terms and here's the first idea.

If you're a note taker, I want you to write down this morning.

We like the expert in the law, want to limit our love or limit

who's our neighbor. We like the expert in the law

want to limit our love or we want to limit who's our

neighbor. See in verse 29, when this

expert in the law asked and who's my neighbor?

He wasn't asking. He wasn't.

That's fun. Are you telling me guys to stop?

Hey, look at some time, guys, man, that was strange.

So he isn't asking this. This expert in law isn't asking

because he wants to learn, right?

He isn't he isn't saying, hey, I, I really want to understand

this more. Help me Jesus with this.

That's not what's going. This is not in good faith, all

right? He's not in good faith at all.

He's asking because he wants to draw lines around who he's

supposed to love. He wants to draw boundaries.

And this is important. He wants to create walls for who

his neighbor is so he can limit who he has to love.

The this was a common question in Jesus's day, right?

This was, this was not new for Jesus.

In other words, this would this would be like, you know, this

was a common debate. This would be like how in our

culture we debate exactly how you should read the Second

Amendment or the 10th Amendment. And people argue about this kind

of stuff in legal terms. You know, legal minds get

together and they argue about these things all the time.

The 1st Amendment, this was a common legal debate.

This was not new. And so Jesus knew his tactic.

He knew what he was trying to do.

He knew that he was actually just trying to draw boundaries

around who he who he had to love.

And the Jewish people who had long been commanded to love

their neighbor, they had over the time narrowed that command

down. So that neighbor was simply

defined as people like themselves, people who shared

their faith, people who shared their race, people who shared

their values. In other words, they over the

centuries had said, well, I know God told us to love our

neighbors, but he didn't exactly say who our neighbors were.

And so we're going to, we're going to decide who our

neighbors are and they're going to be other Jews, people who

share our race, people who share our values.

And the group that that Jews most excluded from loving their

neighbor was literally some neighbors to the north of them,

literally some neighbors. And that group of people was

called the Samaritans. And the Jewish people decided

that the Samaritans were impure and they were less than human.

And the last thing they were with neighbors.

And so then they were not worthy of love.

They they couldn't be loved. And so when the man asked Jesus,

who is my neighbor, what he's really asking is this, who do I

have permission to not love? I need permission.

Give me some permission who I can, I don't, who I don't have

to love. And if we're honest, we ask the

same question today. Jesus said in another place in

Luke chapter 6 verse 32, he says, if you love those who love

Luke 6:32

you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love

them. In other words, if we make the

boundary, well, I'll love people who are good to me or people who

love me if I, if I, if I make that my boundary, Jesus says, So

what? Who cares?

Sinners, even sinners, love those who love them.

And now, if we're all honest, it's just human nature to want

to limit love, to decide who's in and who's out.

But Jesus doesn't let us do that.

And the gospel won't let us draw lines around our compassion in

God's Kingdom. Nobody's off the neighbor to

love list. Nobody's scratched off.

Nobody's moved off the list now. So the guy asked a question.

It's a gotcha question. Who is my neighbor?

Jesus? Who exactly is my neighbor?

Walk me through this, Jesus. Now I want you to look Jesus, I

always say this is funny. The guy asked a question, who is

my neighbor? And Jesus doesn't respond with

an answer. He responds with a, a story, a

long story, a drawn out story. You know, it's like the guy's

like, OK, I guess I'll sit down. I mean, guys gonna tell this

long story. I mean, what am I doing?

Asking questions? So this so Jesus answers the and

I want you to listen Now think about the question.

The question is, who is my neighbor?

OK, who is my neighbor? That's the question.

And I want you to listen to the story and, and think about that

question as you're listening to the story.

Here's Jesus story. Some of you are new to the

Bible, never been around the Bible before.

It's gonna be the first time you've ever heard this story.

It's a great story. Verse 30, Luke chapter 10 in

Luke 10 · chapter mention

reply Jesus said a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho

when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his

clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead.

A priest happened to be going down the same road and when he

saw the man, he passed by on the other side.

So to a Levite when he came to the place and saw him pass by on

the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled,

came where the man was, and when he saw, and when he saw him, he

took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his

wounds, pouring oil on him and wine.

Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn

and took care of him. The next day he took out two

dinero and gave them to the innkeeper.

Look after him, he said, and when I return I will reimburse

you for any extra expense you may have.

And here's the second idea I want you to write down.

Jesus expands the definition of neighbor.

Jesus expands the definition of neighbor.

So if the religious expert was trying to limit the definition

of neighbor, draw boundaries around who we could love and who

we should love, Jesus expands the definition.

So think about this, the expert in the law is trying to limit

the law. He's trying to constrain the

law, and Jesus is expanding the law.

And this is a mark of Jesus's ministry every time he opens his

mouth, right? Because the Jewish people are

always trying to limit what the law actually applies to and how

much the law actually applies to their life.

And Jesus is going, no, it's way deeper, way bigger than you

thought. It's a heart issue.

It's way larger. And that's what he's doing in

this situation. So he's expanding the definition

of neighbor. The religious leader wanted to

know who he could limit, who was worthy of his love.

But Jesus takes the story, and he broadens the definition of

neighbor. Now remember, the Jewish people

of Jesus's day saw the Samaritans as less than human,

lower than animals, And for centuries they had known that

their command was to love your neighbor.

But they never believed it applied to the Samaritans.

So when Jesus tells a story, he makes the Samaritan man the hero

on purpose. He makes the Samaritan man the

rescuer on purpose. In other words, Jesus is talking

to a collection of religious Jewish experts, and he who hates

Samaritans, who don't believe Samaritans are neighbors, who

don't believe Samaritans are people worthy of love.

And he tells the story and he makes the hero of the story

their enemy. Here's the hero.

The Samaritan is the hero. And he does that on purpose.

Now, here's a way. Here's the way I read the story.

You know, you've probably heard sermons on this story a million

times, and I don't know if you've ever heard this before,

but this is how I read the story.

Jesus is, there's two things going on.

I think Jesus is telling the story, number one, in a way for

us and the original hearers to assume that the traveler is

Jewish, OK, that he wants them to assume that the traveler is

Jewish, hence the Samaritans helping a Jewish person.

But I think it actually goes deeper than that.

I think Jesus is telling a story, the story in such a way

that he actually wants the expert in the law, that it's

asking the question to see himself as the broken traveler.

He wants the expert in the law to see himself as the broken

traveler. Now this is important for how I

what I think, how I think Jesus is answering the question.

Remember, the question is, who is my neighbor?

I think he wants the expert in the law to see that he's the one

who's been broke down, who's been beat up, who's been left

for dead. So it's kind of like Jesus is

saying this even though he didn't.

It's like he's saying this in the story.

Imagine you expert in the law. Imagine you were going down the

bloody path. That's what that road is called,

by the way. Imagine you were going down the

bloody paths and you were beaten and you were robbed and you were

left for dead. It's almost as if he wants the

religious expert to see himself as the one who is beat up and

left for dead, in need of mercy. And then the priest comes by and

the Levite comes by. These are your people, religious

expert. These are the people you

respect. These are the people you admire.

These are the people that you love.

These are people that are in your circle.

They're in your boundary. But they don't stop for you.

The ones that you thought would love you.

The ones who thought you thought would would help you.

They walk right by you. And then comes along someone you

least expected, religious expert, bleeding, left for dead

on the side of the road. A Samaritan comes by, the one

you least expected, a man who was outside of your circle,

outside of your boundary. He sees you.

Now listen to this religious expert.

He sees you and he feels compassion for you.

And he risk his own safety by stopping on the bloody path.

He himself could have been robbed and beat up, but he risk

his own safety. He uses his own resources and he

pays for your recovery. Imagine this.

You, the expert in the law, the the very person you consider an

enemy, is the one who comes and saves your life.

I think that's how Jesus is telling the story.

I think he wants the religious expert to see that he's the one

in need and that it's his enemy, the one he hates that comes to

help him. The one he's divided with.

You see, the Samaritan chose to love the one who hated him.

The Samaritan chose to love the one who hated him.

He crossed the line. He took the risk and showed

mercy in doing so. Jesus completely defines what

neighbor means. He completely redefines what

neighbor means. He blurs the line between enemy

and neighbors for everyone who follows him.

In other words, when Jesus tells the story the way he does, he's

taken the boundaries that the religious expert has set up and

he's demolishing them, and he's going to circle that you're

called to love, that you're called to treat as a neighbor as

much bigger than you thought it was, and you'd call him an

enemy, but he actually showed you mercy.

He blurs the line between enemy and neighbor for all of us.

Enemy. Think about the word enemy and

think about the idea that you being a Christian and you have

an enemy. People that you dislike or

despise or people you can't get along with.

Whatever however you think of your enemy.

And listen to what Jesus said in Matthew chapter 5 verse 43 and

Matthew 5:43

45. He says you have heard that it

was said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

But I tell you, love your enemies hard.

Stop. That should be enough to stop a

sermon right there, right? But I tell you, love your

enemies and pray for those who persecute you that you may be

children of your Father in heaven.

Now that's an important clause, and I wish I could preach a

whole sermon on that. Hey, love your enemies.

Pray for those who persecute you that you may be children of your

Father in heaven. In other words, loving those who

are not loving to you is an indication that you are actually

a child of God. How so?

How so? Well, listen to what the rest of

the text says. He causes God the Father, causes

his Son to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the

righteous and the unrighteous. Now here's a whole, oh, another

thing, but Jesus, Jesus is saying, hey, there is a such

thing as evil. Like Jesus doesn't tell us like

the Gospel doesn't tell us like go around and treat like there's

like, treat people like there's no such thing as evil and walk

in the world like there's no such thing as evil.

No, that's not what the Gospel says.

That's not what the Bible says. And I know that's kind of what

everybody, you know, wants Christianity to be.

Just be kind, just be nice. Don't call out evil.

But Jesus is saying, look, there is evil, but we're called to

love those who do evil. Now that, wow, that's tough.

It's like, man, can I just love people who maybe I don't agree

with on politics a little bit? Now I can do that part.

But you're telling me to love enemies and to love people who

do evil. Man, the weight of the gospel is

no joke, right? So Jesus broadens the definition

of neighbor beyond just the the circle that we want to have, the

people that share our values, look like us, think like us.

But there's something else he does with this story.

See, as he's broadening the definition of neighbor, hey, it

includes people that you would call an enemy.

It includes people that you don't see the world the same

way, people that that you view things differently.

But he also provides for us in the way he tells a story, how to

determine who our neighbor is, how to determine who our

neighbor is. And that's the third idea this

morning. Write notes.

You take notes. Write this down.

Answering the question, who is my neighbor?

Answering the question, who is my neighbor?

If you notice, Jesus tells a story.

The man's question was, who is my neighbor?

And then Jesus tells a story in such a way that the Samaritan is

a neighbor to him, you know, but Samaritan is a neighbor to the

beaten up Jewish man on the side of the road.

But he never actually tells the expert in the law, hey, this is

how you determine who your neighbor is.

He doesn't say it directly, but he says it indirectly.

Let's read the next two verses and then I'll tell you what I

mean. Jesus says, which of these three

do you think was a neighbor To the man who fell into the hands

of robbers? The expert in the law replied,

the one who had mercy on him, Jesus told him go and do

likewise. So here we are.

So which one was a neighbor? Who was a neighbor?

The Samaritan was a neighbor. OK, well, the question was who

is my neighbor? That's the question.

Who is my neighbor? How do I determine what who my

neighbor is? The the question wasn't how do I

act like a neighbor or how can I find out?

You know who is, you know who's treating me like a neighbor?

Like, like he? The question is who is my

neighbor? And he answers it, but he

doesn't answer it directly. He answers it in an indirect

kind of way that you got to you got to look for, you got to

think about. And this is what I think how I

read the story. Jesus flips the question.

He does not answer it directly. He flips the question, and this

is the clearest way I can say it.

If you write down stuff, your neighbor, who is my neighbor?

You ready? Your neighbor is anyone from

whom you'd be willing to receive mercy.

Your neighbor is anyone from whom you'd be willing to receive

mercy. So who was the neighbor to the

man beat down in this scenario? The Samaritan.

So here's what most people do when they read the story of the

Good Samaritan. They instinctively cast

themselves as the what? The Samaritan.

Nobody ever reads the story and casts themselves as the beat up

Jew man, Jewish man on the side of the road.

Nobody ever does that. We all cast ourselves as the

what the hero. And we'd say things like this.

Of course I help people. I'm there for people.

I'm a good neighbor to people. Right?

This come on. Like if you grew up in church,

you know, every time you heard this story, it was taught like

go out there and be a good neighbor and help people who are

in need and and do and, you know, and like we all walk out

going, yeah, I need to go and be a good neighbor.

And that's not particularly wrong.

But we always cast ourselves as the good person, as the

Samaritan. But Jesus story pushes you

deeper, friend. He wants us to imagine ourselves

not as the Samaritan, but as the wounded traveler, helpless,

desperate, bleeding out, dying on the side of the road.

And then as that desperate dying person ask this question, who

would I allow to help me? So imagine that right now you're

dead. You're near death, you're dying,

you're bleeding out, you've been beat up, you're left on some St.

some back alley. You're going to die.

If someone doesn't come along and rescue, who would you accept

help from? Anybody, anybody.

What if they vote differently than you?

Like, what if you're a hardcore on the left and some dude with a

MAGA hat shows up to help you in that moment?

What do you say? Let me die?

Or what if you're a hardcore, you know, MAGA Trumpster

conservative and some Kamala wearing pin, you know, person

walks up, you know dudes for comma lost T-shirt on.

Hey man, I'll help you. No man, I just assumed I then

received help from you. Who would you allow to give you

mercy? I mean what if what if their

lifestyle were different? What if their religion wasn't

like yours? And in that moment, who would

you say, you know what, I'd rather die than have help from

you. That that wouldn't happen.

Every one of us, if you were dying, you wouldn't care.

You simply want to live. And anybody that came along in

that moment said, hey, I will bandage you up and I will help

you and I will get you to care and I will make sure you live.

You will say to them, I accept, thank you for helping me.

And in that moment, that person is your neighbor.

And so how do I determine who my neighbor is?

Simple. Who would I accept mercy from if

I were near death? And that question, the answer to

that question is, as we all said, anyone.

That's that's the point of this story.

The point of this story is not moralism.

Go out there and hold doors for people and be loving.

Yes, that's true. But that's, I mean, this is an

amazing story. And the point of this story is

not just more moralism. The point of this story is to

know how to determine who your neighbor is.

And how you determine who your neighbor is, is who you would

receive mercy from if you were near death.

And so, yes, loving our neighbors about showing mercy to

those in need. But I'm telling you, the way to

determine who your neighbors are and who you're called to love is

if you were in need of rescue, who'd you receive it from?

Now, I want to be clear as I wrap up, I'm going to be super

clear today because when you talk about love, it's like,

yeah, we need to go out and love people.

Loving our neighbor does not does not mean that we ignore

truth as we read it in the Scriptures.

It does not mean that we ignore differences.

It does not mean that differences don't matter.

It's not like you know what Christians are called to love

and you know, differences just don't matter.

No, Jesus didn't live that way. He didn't teach that way.

He didn't didn't lead that way. This is this is difficult and

it's really hard for our culture right now.

We can love people deeply and still disagree with them

honestly. The cross shows us that.

The cross of Jesus Christ shows us that the greatest act of love

and the greatest confrontation with sin at the at the exact

same time. In other words, Jesus confronted

my sin on the cross and he gave me his love at the same time.

When Jesus died for me, he said, Stephen, you're a Sinner and you

need me to die for you, but I love you and I'm willing to do

that. You see, this is something

that's unique about Christianity.

We can disagree with our neighbors that we love, but as

believers, we must never be disagreeable or cruel or rude.

We are called by the Scriptures to engage with gentleness.

I mean, the Bible commands us to engage with gentleness, even

with people whom our world views clash with.

Class hard clash. Be gentle.

The Scriptures teach us. Here's what's happening in our

culture right now. Our current our current culture

is saying that any form of disagreement equals hate and

violence. Any form of disagreement equals

hate and violence. The followers of Jesus must not

fall into that trap. We can.

We can and should hold the conviction that we can tell the

truth the best we understand it. We can have conviction about the

truth the best we understand it, and we can be compassionate and

gentle at the same time that that is what love commands of

us. We can navigate the tension that

Jesus describes in Matthew chapter 10 verse 16.

Matthew 10:16

Jesus said this, Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the

midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.

We speak truth wisely and we love people greatly, deeply, and

most importantly, gently. We don't stop loving our

neighbors when it's difficult or when they reject us or disagree

with us. We love not because they accept

us or because they applaud us. The reality is, if you go and

read the rest of that Matthew 10 passage, you will see that they

will not oftentimes love us or applaud us, but we love our

neighbor. You ready?

Because we have been loved by God who rescued us through

Christ. We, you and I, were beaten, left

for dead on the side of the road, and Christ was the better

neighbor to us. Christ came and he rescued us.

He was a neighbor to you and he was a neighbor to me.

So we love our neighbors. We serve our neighbors, and we

tell our neighbors our best understanding of the truth from

God's Word. And I'm saying that very

carefully because I acknowledge that it is our best

understanding for most Christians and most history to

tell the truth about God's Word. We can do both of those things

at the same time. Is it harder?

Is it tricky? Yes.

Will it cost us? Most likely.

But even if it costs us, we will do it because that is who Jesus

is and that is who we are. So let's love without limits,

but never without truth. Let's love without limits, but

never without truth. Love without truth is

sentimentality. Anyway, it's not actually love.

And that's how Jesus did it. Now, as you leave today, I'm

going to, you're going to be receiving some things at the

door. You're going to receive little

invite cards that look like this for you to invite your friends,

leave somewhere, leave on a table, get to know a server

somewhere. It'd be better to have a

conversation with them. But invite your friends, invite

somebody to church, invite cards.

And then you're also a little baggie on your way out.

You're going to get a sticker. If I like stickers, right?

You're going to get a sticker and a key chain.

And I just want you to know, thank you for those of you who

came this morning at 9:15. We want to be a place that

serves this community and loves this community.

And we're giving you these gifts on your way out because we want

you to be excited about our church.

We want you to be excited about what God is doing.

And I want you to tell you how you can help.

All right, number one, pray for the people that God might be

leading you to invite. In other words, just look in

your circle and be like, who's God leading me to invite to

church and invite them to church.

Hand out these cards this week at work, school, your favorite

coffee shop, doesn't matter. And then here's a big one that

helps a lot. If you're on social media, share

our posts. I know you think that doesn't

really matter a lot of what you see our posts and ignore them,

right? And not, no, it's OK, Don't do

that. Just share.

Just click on share, send them out.

It helps to for people to see and go, hey, maybe I should go

try out that church. I have people all the time that

come to our church for the first time because we're in just an

amazing location. So just help, just help.

That's a simple way to help. So let's invite others to

experience community and connection because this is what

I believe. There's always room for more

here at islands. There's always room for more

people to discover who Jesus is. And I have one more surprise for

you because I want to celebrate going back to two services.

This is good. I kept this secret.

All right, on your way out. This is going to be pastries and

cookies and sweet stuff, guys. So on your way out, listen, you

have some sugar. Thank you for coming to the 915.

Have some sugar. Enjoy it.

And then maybe linger a little bit and some folks coming up

from for the 11:00, you can chat with them.

Will you stand with me as I pray for us and we are dismissed.

Father, thank you that we were broken and beat up and left for

dead on the side of the road. And your son Jesus was our

neighbor. He is our neighbor, and he came

and he bandaged us, and he poured oil on our wounds, and he

put us on his own donkey and he brought us home and he

sacrificed for us that our souls might be made well and we might

be united with him forever. And God, as we leave this place,

may we be people who love like Jesus, who love without limits,

but also love with truth. We love without limits, but we

love with truth. Lead us in that.

It's tricky. Help us to be as wise as

serpents and as innocent as doves.

It's a tough tension, Jesus, and we want to do it well.

Thank you for these pastries we're going to have and for the

volunteers who provided it. We just love being a part of a

church that celebrates everything we can.

In Christ's name we pray, Amen. Thank you friends.

Have a blessed week and a wonderful day.

We love you. If you enjoyed this episode,

please like and subscribe so you hear a new episode every week.

You can also worship with us in person in Savannah, GA or watch

our live stream on Facebook and YouTube every Sunday at 9:15.

Have a great week.