Love Our Neighbors More

We're continuing our sermon series, learning to love the things of God that's really focusing on the heart.

And so, no different in our text this morning, we'll be looking at the parable of the Good Samaritan as we think about this theme of loving our neighbors more.

The phrase love your neighbor has really fallen on hard times.

Just back in COVID, a couple years ago, when during the peak of COVID, you probably remember in the blogosphere and often on people's um in people's comments in different intercultural dialogues, you would have this phrase being thrown out there, love your neighbor, as grounds and justification for calling on other groups of people to do things that you want them to do.

So you had one group over here who were saying, if you really love your neighbor, you're gonna stop meeting as a church because when you get together 100, 200, 300, 400 people, you're super spreaders.

So stop meeting as a church if you really loved your neighbor.

Other people would say, Well, you can meet, but don't sing.

Just drop the singing because when you sing, you're projecting the virus into the atmosphere.

Others would say, if you really love your neighbor, you'll get vaccinated once, and then twice, and then three times, and then every booster thereafter.

Well, on the other end of the argument, there are those who are saying, if you really loved your neighbor, you wouldn't shame them for not getting the vaccine.

You wouldn't fire them.

You wouldn't force them to do something to their body against their will.

And so back and forth you have this argument that justifies seemingly everything.

If you really love your neighbor, you'll do X, Y, or Z.

Most disturbingly, this past September, the state of California Governor Gavin Newsom, um, after the overturn of Roe v.

Wade, he published personally sponsored uh in seven different red states billboards advocating and advertising for young women who may not feel like they have access to abortion, that they can come to California and have access to abortion.

What was most alarming on this pro-abortion advertisement from California was that there there was on the bottom of it, Mark chapter 12, verse 31, love your neighbor as yourself.

Mark 12:31

This is the greatest commandment.

So literally, this passage has been used to justify virtually anything anyone ever wants to advocate.

If you truly love someone, you'll even provide them an abortion.

As we begin in our text here in Luke chapter 10, we must ask the question: where does this leave us?

Luke 10 · chapter mention

With such an overused, misdirected, bruised, broken, maybe even irreparably misused phrase such as love your neighbors yourself.

Where does it leave us with regards to its meaning?

And the answer is it leaves us exactly where we always are, needing to open God's word, hear Jesus say what he says in context, and have Scripture interpret Scripture.

And so this morning I invite us to look at Jesus' timeless words in Luke chapter 10.

Luke 10 · chapter mention

And we'll begin reading in verses 25 through 28.

And behold, a lawyer stood up to put Jesus to the test, saying, Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?

And Jesus said to him, What is written in the law?

How do you read it?

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.

And Jesus said to him, You've answered correctly.

Do this, and you will live.

This is an interesting scenario because you have the motive in Luke's narrative given to this lawyer.

He wasn't coming to Jesus asking for true insight from someone he respected.

He was a lawyer, which wasn't a civil attorney, wasn't someone you go to when you have legal trouble these days.

This was someone in the Jewish context who had trained with the best minds to be an expert in adjudicating the Jewish law and how that related to society.

This guy knew every verse in the Jewish scriptures.

He had debated these things.

He was constantly in dialogue.

He likely taught in synagogues.

This guy was a master of the Old Testament scriptures, which the Jews called the Tanakh.

And so when he comes to Jesus, he's not looking for information.

Don't you love when someone asks a question, they don't want information?

They're just trying to either show how smart they are or trying to put you in a trap.

That's exactly what happens here.

Teacher, he says, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?

Because Jesus was entering into this, realizing this was a trap to try to get Jesus to ostracize either the religious elite or the people Jesus spent most of his ministry teaching and healing, because he was putting Jesus in an impossible situation in arguing this part of the law, Jesus doesn't answer him with a straight answer.

Often in Jesus' teachings, when people came to him with questions, he would respond with another question.

And often he would, in so doing, not only answer their question in the long run, but he would expose their plot.

And it's just a beautiful thing.

Here we have Jesus answering with a question.

Well, what does the law say?

You're a doctor.

You study the law constantly.

What does it say?

Almost like something you would tell a 12-year-old, you know, Mom, what are we doing tomorrow?

What does the calendar say?

Right?

You're 12 years old, you can look at the calendar, you can see exactly what it is.

Or maybe homework.

Mom, how do you do this problem?

Well, what do the instructions say?

Jesus is sort of responding in this in this way to this educated man, and he's saying, Well, what does the law say?

Right?

Which probably doesn't sit well with this doctor of the law, this lawyer.

And so after Jesus sort of hears his answer and says, You're exactly right.

That's what every child, every Jewish child that's been taught well knows.

Loving God with all your heart, soul mind, and strength, loving your neighbor yourself, on these two commands saying all along the prophets.

So thank you for lawyer for showing us this tenth, this uh this fifth grade education answer.

Didn't sit well with him at all.

And so you find in verse 29, the lawyer's not gonna let this lie.

But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, And who is my neighbor?

We're gonna go from this big idea of what do I need to do to inherit eternal life, to something that was disputed among the Jews, something that they argued about, something that would force Jesus to take sides.

Because this lawyer, of course, knew that Jesus was eating and was um was friends with.

They accused him of prostitutes and tax collectors and the sort of the low life of society that were coming to Jesus for salvation.

And so, in asking Jesus, who am I required to love?

the standard Pat Jewish answer would be, you're required to love others in the household of faith, you're required to love other Jews, as long as they're living in covenant with God.

Basically, other moral, upstanding, religiously practicing Jews, you should love them.

If Jesus extended that to include the people most Jesus' ministry was mostly to, he would be ostracizing all the Jews who hated the rest of society.

But if he limited it to just the Jews, well, your neighbor's just your Jewish people, which is what the standard answer was, then Jesus basically then says, you don't even have to love these people, and he justifies all the religious leaders.

So this guy put very shrewdly Jesus in a very tight situation.

How do you define neighbor Jesus?

Now in Luke's, this is Luke's editorial remark.

He noticed he says, he desires to justify himself.

This is the second time Luke has told us a motive.

The first motive was to trick Jesus, was to trap Christ in his words.

The second motive was to justify himself.

Because Jesus had just almost treated him like a fifth grader and said, Well, what does it say?

Good job, you get a gold star.

He didn't like that.

So now he's gonna up the uh up the um the bet, so to speak.

Maybe he's even gonna go all in and try to get Jesus to commit to defining neighbor.

There's a major theme that runs through the Gospel of Luke and it extends into the book of Acts, and that is how is someone saved?

If you remember from the book of Acts, numerous times people come into the apostles and say, What must I do to be saved?

Here in the Gospel of Luke, you have this theme of the religious establishment living in self-righteous disdain for the rest of society.

And over and over again in Luke's narrative, you find Jesus pits these two together, and so does Luke.

Pits these two in tension: the proud religious types that are gonna go to hell, and the humble, contrite, trusting in Jesus types that are gonna go to heaven.

And so Luke, I think, here is clearly placing this guy on the side of those who disdain Jesus, disdain those who aren't like them.

We see this a few other times in Luke.

For example, Luke chapter 16, Jesus says of the Pharisees, You are those who justify yourselves before men.

Luke 16 · chapter mention

There's that same Greek word.

But God knows your hearts, for what is exalted among men, namely the religious establishment of Jesus' day, is an abomination in the sight of God.

Or Luke chapter 18, verse 14, when Jesus and his apostles are there at the temple, maybe near the wailing wall, and people are praying, and they overhear a Pharisee over here, and they overhear a tax collector, and they're both praying.

Luke 18:14

And the Pharisee prays like this.

Luke says he prays with himself.

He's not even talking to God.

He says, God, I thank you that I'm not like other men are.

I'm not an adulterer, I'm not an extortioner.

I'm honest.

I tithe of everything I have.

I fast twice a week.

Amen.

What a prayer.

And then he goes home.

But on the other side over here is a publican, a tax collector, someone who was who, you know, no one liked.

Even the even the honest, any honest Jew didn't like him because they were not only taxing the people on behalf of Rome, but they were skimming money off the top.

They were the lowlifes of Jewish society.

And when he prayed, he said, he was so contrite that he wouldn't even lift up his eyes to heaven, but he smote upon his chest and he said, God, be merciful to me, a sinner.

You know what Jesus said after that?

He said, Hey guys, did you see this?

Did you hear his prayer?

Yeah, we heard it.

Hear this guy?

Yeah.

This guy went to his house justified.

Same Greek word.

This guy's going to hell because he's self-righteous, trusting in his righteousness, which is never adequate.

This guy's going to heaven because he's trusting in God's forgiveness.

You see that?

Luke records that story in Luke chapter 18.

Luke 18 · chapter mention

And again in Acts, the the message of justification by faith is all throughout the book.

So Luke here is placing this contextually, this idea, this man comes asking Jesus, What must I do to inherit eternal life?

Clearly, someone who's trusting in his own righteousness, seeking to justify himself.

The standard answer in Jesus' day was, you should love your fellow Jews.

And so he presses Jesus to give a definition.

But instead, masterfully, instead of giving a definition that you could crucify him, the half of the population is going to crucify him one way or the other, he gives a story.

He tells the parable of the Good Samaritan to answer this question, who is my neighbor?

And so this is the main idea of our entire passage.

The answer of this question, who is my neighbor?

The lawyer wanted Jesus to get specific.

After all, if we're going to be judged on the basis of our works, and we need to at least know what we're being re what's being required of us, and Jesus tells a story.

We pick up in verse 30, we read through verse 35.

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

So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place, he saw him, he 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.

And 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 deneri and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, Take care of him, and whatever you more you spend, I will repay when I come back.

What a story.

It's amazing how Jesus is just piling on aspects of this story to show the contrast between the religious priest and Levite and the Samaritan.

What's amazing about the Samaritan, as you've probably heard numerous times, is that in Jewish culture there was a great uh ethnic animosity between Jews and Samaritans.

Samaritans were those people that goes that dates back all the way to the Assyrian uh uh exile, whenever the Jews in northern Israel were taken by Assyria from the north, were taken into captivity, and then some Jews were allowed to stay, probably because they helped the enemy out.

And then they intermarried with um with Assyrians that came to live in these free lands, and the product of that was Samaritans.

Well, when Jews came back from exile, they hated the Samaritans.

They were turncoats, they were half-breeds, they weren't living in covenant with God, they worshiped different ways than the Jews.

And so when Jesus makes the hero of the story, the Samaritan, this really irks this lawyer.

Because the question is, what must the lawyer do to inherit eternal life?

Notice how the story goes.

So a man is going from Jerusalem to Jericho.

This is about an 18-mile winding uh journey through treacherous territory.

It was fairly common for people to be robbed.

And this man is robbed, he's beaten, even his clothes are taken.

There's no water along this road.

If you look it up on Google, you can see pictures and even videos of people walking this road from Jerusalem to Jerem to Jericho.

It's along and it's about a 3,000 feet drop in elevation.

It's treacherous.

Walking on a precipice, as it were, and there's no water anywhere.

This man is left to die, and a priest comes by.

Now, a priest was someone who was who was very honored in Jewish society.

They were someone who'd been set apart at the age of 30 to um and distinguished for the religious service into being a priest in the temple.

They would receive sacrifices from the people and they would offer them to God on their behalf.

They would make prayers for the people.

They were the go-to religious guys in Jesus' day.

And so Jesus took the priest.

And he didn't really go out on a limb whenever he said this priest walked a wide circle around the guy and walked on.

Because after all, priests would become ceremonially unclean if they touched a dead body.

And so you can imagine this guy may have had a legitimate reason to, when he sees the man who's injured, who's probably going to die without him, to say, you know what, my my work at the temple is too important for me to sully myself with this guy.

And you can understand he would very likely walk by on the other side.

A second man comes along who's a Levite.

Now, all Levites are not priests, but all priests are Levites.

So we're talking again about a certain tribe in Israel set apart for holy things.

But both of them are too good to help this injured man.

In contrast to the priest and the Levite, comes a dirty old Samaritan.

In fact, nowhere in the text is he called the good Samaritan.

That's something we we say about it.

Um this uh lawyer certainly wouldn't think the Samaritan was good at all.

What's interesting is presumably this man who was injured was actually a Jew.

We can kind of assume this because Jesus doesn't specify his ethnicity, but he does specify the Samaritan's ethnicity.

So theoretically, this lawyer comes to Jesus with a question, who is my neighbor, assuming my neighbors are my fellow Jews.

And so Jesus tells a story in which even fellow Jews don't love fellow Jews, but the dirty Samaritan does.

So you see how Jesus is building this case.

He journeys, he comes to where the man is, and when he sees him, instead of thinking about his own personal comfort, convenience, priorities, he's on a journey, he's going somewhere, he stops the car, puts the emergency brake on the donkey, and he walks to the man with a heart filled with compassion.

Notice the difference between these three people.

Two individuals are worried about themselves.

The third guy is filled with compassion, and his compassion burdens him to go to the man.

And then he binds up his wounds.

He pours on oil and wine, which were price, pricey commodities in that day, olive oil and wine.

He just pours it, he gives the guy some drink, he pours the oil on the wounds, he sets him on his own animal, which means now he's got to walk the rest of the way to Jericho.

He takes him to an inn.

He then takes care of him.

And not only does he take care of him and then leave, he leaves money and then says, I'm gonna come back and pay whatever's lacking when I return from your care.

So Jesus really shows how how leveraged this Samaritan was in loving his Jewish neighbor.

We read Jesus' punchline in verses 36 and 37.

What is Jesus really after with this story?

Here it is.

Which of these three, Jesus asks, do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?

The liar responded, Well, the one who showed him mercy.

And Jesus said to him, You go and do likewise.

This burns.

Here Jesus answers the question, Who is my neighbor?

By showing that the Jews really didn't love their neighbors that well, anyways.

And that the moral of the story is that this lawyer needs to be more like the Samaritan.

And so Jesus really sticks it to him here.

But most importantly, I want you to notice how Jesus answered the question by changing the question.

The original question was, Who is my neighbor?

Namely, who am I obligated to love?

Who am I obligated not to love?

Just show me the line, Jesus.

Draw the line, whatever it is, ethnic bounds, is it is it how wealthy someone is?

Is it how often they attend temple?

Is it their track record?

What is the line, Jesus?

I'll love the people I'm required to love and I'll disdain whomever I want to disdain.

Jesus changes the question from who is my neighbor to who was the neighbor?

Who proved to be the neighbor to the man who was injured?

Now, why does Jesus change the question from who is my neighbor to who am I being a neighbor to?

I think this is why.

Jesus is taking that first question which focuses on who I'm obligated to love, and frankly, who I'm not obligated to love, and he changes the question to focus on the posture of my heart to everybody.

Because if I'm the one that's being a loving neighbor or not, then the difference is me, not them.

The first question gives me wiggle room and to love some and care less about others.

The second question means I have a responsibility to relate to everyone I come in contact with with the love of Christ.

The first focuses on doing.

What must I do?

Who is my neighbor?

Show me what I need to do.

Give me the list, I'll keep it.

The second question focuses on being.

Who was the neighbor?

Jesus wants us to see that he requires, and the law of God requires us to be the kinds of people who are transformed by God's grace so that we love out of our character, not love because it's required of us.

This is evidence from how Jesus emphasized not only the physical care shown the injured man, but the heart of compassion.

He didn't just say the good Samaritan sees him in need and then he helps him.

It says his heart was moved with compassion, which was what was lacking in the other two individuals.

Jesus' question is better because it focuses on the heart.

I think I've learned about myself that we can always find a thousand excuses to not do something that's required of us.

We are all masters of culpable deniability.

By the time we're five years old, we know how to blame shift, how to craft narratives that have a little bit of truth in them so that if your mom actually does search out what you're saying.

Yeah, it's kind of true, but we know how to frame the narrative so that we look better, so that we're exonerated, so that we're off the hook.

And as we become adults, we only get better at it.

But what a contrast it is when we see the heart actually delight in truth.

The heart actually delight in honesty, delight in humility, love, compassion, generosity, service.

It makes all the difference in the world.

You don't have to be that priest who's thinking, now, is this someone I have to have to love?

I don't think so.

I'm a priest.

God calls me to the temple.

I don't want to become unclean, so no.

How different it is when we relate to our surroundings, to our to our family, to our coworkers, to society at large from a position of being loving people versus trying to check a box about who I should love.

How do we become the kinds of people that Jesus is talking about here?

Here, Jesus exposes the unloving heart of the lawyer, and he exposes the unloving hearts that are often in our lives.

This is our story.

Our story is that we fail to show compassion to others.

That's one of the morals of this story of the Good Samaritan.

We fail to show compassion to others.

If we're honest, we often too walk on the other side of the road when we see our neighbors in need.

Whether that neighbor may be a coworker or a spouse or a child, and I don't necessarily mean we don't help them.

But I just want you to be honest.

When's the last time you felt compassion for them?

I think my default mode when it comes to like relating to coworkers is to think, well, if I don't help them, they're not going to help me next time.

Or maybe this is a good opportunity for me to help them because other people are watching and then they're going to think Tim's a good guy.

Maybe then I'll have a better reputation, and then maybe I'll get that promotion or whatever.

This is how the mind works, right?

Defensively, self justifyingly, selfishly.

And Jesus is saying that's not how Christians, that's not how people transformed by God's grace are to relate to the world.

How often do we feel compassion for people and then move towards them in acts, redemptive acts of compassion?

Now you may be tempted to say, yeah, I'm just not that kind of person.

Well, that's kind of the point of the story, right?

But what you mean by that is you know you don't have that personality naturally.

I mean, some people are just really uh they're really drawn to people in need.

You know, they're the ones that become therapists, right?

They want to hear the story.

Uh, you know, if someone's in the back of the room crying, most people are gonna be like, I don't think I saw that.

That's kind of awkward.

Those people I'm talking about are gonna go to the back and be like, what's wrong?

How do you feel, right?

I'm not talking about personality here.

I'm talking about someone who's maybe nosy and likes to dig into people's business.

I'm talking about a heart that relates to others with compassion.

That's what Jesus was after.

Redeemed hearts that take redemptive action in compassion towards others in need.

A story is told of a man who uh didn't get along with his wife very well, and things kind of came to a crescendo, and the pastor was called, and he comes to the house, and and they're kind of separated, you know, they're in there each in their corner in the living room, and the pastor kind of hears them out what's going on here, and they they they tell him what's going on.

And the pastor looked at the husband and said, Sir, you understand scripture.

Ephesians chapter 5, it says, Husbands love and cherish your wives like Jesus loves the church.

Ephesians 5 · chapter mention

And the man says, I phe I can't love my wife.

After this many years being married, all the things she's done, the way she doesn't measure out of my I I can't love my wife.

And so the pastor said, Well, if you can't love her as your wife, can you love her as your nearest neighbor?

Because Jesus said, Love your neighbor as yourself.

And the man objected, said, I said, I can't do that.

And he said, Well, if you can't love her as your wife, and you can't love her as your neighbor, can you obey Jesus by loving her as your enemy?

Because Jesus said, Love your enemies.

Bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you.

You see, while we are so often looking for loopholes in our responsibilities so we can justify ourselves and get by with the least, the the the minimum, Jesus is showing us that our hearts are naturally bent towards loving ourselves supremely and others only at our convenience.

But there's another side to this coin.

Not only do we, if we're really honest, fail often to feel and to act on compassion towards others, but this is compounded with the fact that we live under the delusion that we're actually doing really well.

We falsely think we're compassionate enough.

If you were to survey the lawyer, the priest, and the Levite in this in this interaction, I guarantee you all three of them would assume they're better than average.

All humanity, everyone in Israel, how you doing?

How are your prospects of inheriting eternal life?

Most of them, I think, all of them would be like, pretty good.

I think I'm a pretty good person.

And that's why Jesus lays the axe to the root of this self-righteous tree and shows that the the dirty, no good Samaritan is actually going into heaven before you because he has compassion from a transformed heart.

We fancy ourselves pretty good folks, not realizing that God's standard of goodness is perfect righteousness in the heart.

There's a reason why the message of God's free grace rolls off the back of people like water off a duck's back, because most people, despite their insecurities and sins and grievous regrets, and current struggles, and even self-loathing sometimes, they still manage to think they're better than average.

We humans are complex creatures bent on self-justification.

At one level, we may we go from swinging over here to thinking we're failures, we are fools, we're lost causes, and the gospel seems too good to be true.

Yeah, God accepts me.

I don't think he can't accept me.

I'm too bad.

And then we swing over here the next moment and we think we're better than everyone else, and we see someone who's not doing as good as we are, and we disdain them.

By nature, apart from God's intervening grace, we are a mess.

I venture to say it'd be rare to meet a person on the street who doesn't in their heart think they're better than average.

Well, not all of us can be above average, right?

But we all fancy ourselves that way, don't we?

You can even go into prisons.

It's been it's been said you can go into prisons and it's really hard to find a guilty person in prison because everyone's there because they were framed, because people didn't understand their circumstances, maybe because they were really actually innocent.

Despite all the evidence, it's hard to convince the world of sin.

This is why it takes the Holy Spirit to do that.

To convince our hearts that we actually are sinners.

That we are not just victims of circumstance, that we made moral choices, that we have fundamental, fundamentally hearts by nature bent away from God and towards self-justification.

There is only one who is good, Jesus taught, and that is God.

And there's only one good man that's ever lived, and that is God, the God man, Christ Jesus.

And so this is our gospel conviction this morning that Jesus is the ultimate good Samaritan.

Now we're not going to go so far as to say that this parable should be interpreted allegorically, which some of the early church fathers did that.

They thought, well, Jesus is obviously teaching that sinners are the guy who was on the side of the street, and the priest represents the law, and the Levite represents the prophets or whatever, and then Jesus, of course, is the Good Samaritan.

They read into this parable, and ever since the Reformation on, the best scholars say, no.

Jesus is clearly what he's doing here is he's showing this man wasn't even loving his real neighbor, certainly wasn't uh loving those outside of what he considered his neighbor in the parable the Good Samaritan.

At the same time, even though we're not going to read too much in this parable about Jesus being the Good Samaritan, it's undoubtedly the case that when you look at the whole of Scripture, Jesus is the only one who fits the bill.

You and I aren't the Good Samaritan.

You and I aren't the heroes of the text.

In fact, we have more in common with the man who is laying half dead besides the road.

We are the ones who've been stripped of all our self-righteousness under the side of God's holy law.

We're the ones who have every pretense of moral righteousness before God stripped away when God looks at our hearts and sees corruption there, if he weighs us in the balance of perfect justice and righteousness.

We are the ones who've been beaten and broken by sin.

We're the ones who've been doomed to death.

And Jesus comes along and he moves towards us in compassion and he binds up our wounds, he anoints us with the salve of his Holy Spirit, he pays our debts with his very own blood.

He shoulders our burdens and he takes us to live with him in glory.

This theme of Christ's compassion is a major theme in the gospel, in the in all the gospels.

We find in Matthew chapter 8 that Jesus encounters some lepers who people had not touched in years because they had skin diseases that made them unclean.

Matthew 8 · chapter mention

Their faces were disfigured from literally flesh rotting off of their bodies.

And Jesus reached out his hand, Matthew is careful to say, and touched them because he was moved to compassion.

Jesus sees blind men in Matthew chapter 20, and he's moved with compassion, Matthew says.

Matthew 20 · chapter mention

He touches their eyes and immediately they regain their sight and follow him.

In Mark chapter 6 and verse 34, after Jesus had just gone across the lake of Galilee and he gets off the boat, there's a huge crowd there waiting for him that had come around the sea on the other side to get healed.

Mark 6 · chapter mention

And Jesus has said his heart, when he saw them, was moved with compassion.

Because they were like sheep without a shepherd.

In Luke chapter 7 and verse 13, we find Jesus walking through a little village called the village of Nain.

Luke 7 · chapter mention

And he sees there a widow who had didn't have much in this world at all, and then her son had just died.

She was destitute, and she wept at his coffin.

And Jesus goes to her, and Luke says he felt compassion for her.

You know, Jesus broke up every um every funeral every attended.

Luke chapter 19, Jesus, when he's going to the cross, he approaches Jerusalem and he sees the city going about its business as usual, and he sees them in the future.

Luke 19 · chapter mention

In 70 AD, when Rome, with uh the Roman general Titus coming and bringing the armies, besieging them, destroying them, not one stone being left upon another.

Jesus foresees this and he weeps over the city.

In John 11, Jesus goes to the tomb of Lazarus, one of his good friends, and it says he wept.

We can't even imagine the compassion of the heart of the Godman Jesus, that moved him towards redemptive actions for the good of others and moves him towards you every single day.

Jesus didn't just show us compassion 2,000 years ago.

In relating to us as our shepherd, as our friend, as our savior, as our providential Lord, every day we live in the reality of his compassion for us.

In fact, the psalmist said, if it were not for his compassions, we would be consumed.

This realization, I truly believe, is actually what God uses to steadily grow us into the kinds of people whose hearts are progressively softened towards others.

So that we can actually expect that over time, if you're a believer in Jesus Christ, over time, because of God's redemptive work through all kinds of means of grace, including suffering and other people and scripture and sermons and life experience, that He is softening us and turning us more and more into the image of Jesus.

Having found us, having delivered us, having rescued us from death, we find our own wounds bound up, our own sores anointed, our own debts paid.

And a person who comes to face to face with that reality of who Jesus has been to them are then empowered and by God's Spirit transformed to show that same compassion towards others, even perhaps others who may crucify you.

And so our gospel vision is this morning as Jesus wraps up this narrative, he tells the lawyer, you go and do likewise.

This wasn't Jesus telling him, Now you have your list, now go and do it, and you go to heaven.

This is Jesus saying, You, sir, need a new heart.

You, sir, can't do anything and you haven't done anything to inherit eternal life, but I'll give you eternal life.

And as a changed person with eternal life coursing through their veins, with a new heart that's now being sanctified by God's active work in our lives, we can actually go and do likewise.

And so it's my vision, and it's been my vision this week as I've prayed for how you would receive this message in this text, that you would respond to this word by thinking about particular people that you have not been loving well.

People in your life that you wish you could just kind of like yank out like a thorn and throw away.

Maybe estranged friends or family members.

Maybe some of you have been praying through whether you should get certified to become foster parents or to adopt.

Here's your sign.

It's time to put action to the compassion to go and do likewise.

Maybe you've been thinking about others in your life with whom you relate out of a sense of sort of selfish self-defensiveness, constantly trying to paint yourself in the best light, and you're ready to stop that.

You're ready to be authentic and actually care about people when you ask them how their day is doing, right?

This is heart transformation, awesome stuff.

And how we relate to our spouse, our boss, our employees, our parents, our children, our roommates, our friends, and our former friends, and maybe even our enemies.

Let's pray.