The Good Samaritan: A Bible Study from Luke 10

Behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?

He said unto him, What is written in the law?

How readest thou?

And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy strength, with all thy mind, and thy neighbor is thyself.

And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right, this do, and thou shalt live.

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

Verse thirty.

And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, and departed, leaving him half dead.

And by chance there came down a certain priest that way, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.

Likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked at him and passed by on the other side.

But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was.

And when he saw him, he had compassion on him, and went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn and took care of him.

And on the morrow, when he departed, he took out two pence and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him, and whatsoever thou spendest more when I come again I will repay thee.

Which now of these three thinkest thou was neighbor unto him that fell among the thieves?

And he said he that showed mercy on him.

Then said Jesus unto him, Go and do thou likewise.

On a cold night in 1964, 28-year-old Catherine Kitty Genovese was making her way home from work in Queens, New York.

Kitty worked as the manager of a bar.

In the early morning hours of March 13th, she drove home to Kew Gardens, parked her car, began walking toward the apartment where she lived.

As she walked, a man named Winston Mosley approached her.

Mosley had been driving around the neighborhood looking for a woman to attack.

He confronted her and stabbed her.

Kitty cried out, tried to get away.

A nearby resident reportedly shouted from a window, telling the attacker to leave her alone.

Mosley fled.

Kitty, seriously wounded, made her way toward the rear of her apartment building, but the attack was not over.

He circled back, attacking her again.

Kitty managed to reach the entrance of her apartment building where she collapsed.

A neighbor named Sophia Ferrar heard the commotion, went to her.

Ferrar held her and stayed with her while someone called the police and an ambulance arrived, but Kitty's wounds were fatal.

She died shortly afterward.

The crime, of course, was horrific, but what purportedly happened afterward became almost as famous as the crime itself.

Two weeks later, the New York Times published a front-page story claiming that 38 people had witnessed the attack but had failed to call the police.

The story captured the imagination of the country.

It seemed to reveal something frightening about modern society.

Dozens of people could witness a person in desperate need, yet no one took responsibility.

The story repeated for decades.

The subsequent investigation showed that the original account was greatly exaggerated.

The 38 people did not all witness the murder.

Some heard sounds without knowing what was happening.

Some saw only portions of the incident.

The attack took place in different locations and were partially obscured from many people's view.

At least some people did respond, including neighbors who had attempted to help contact the police.

So the real story is more complicated than the famous version.

Yet something important remains.

Kitty Genovese's death became part of the discussion surrounding what psychologists would call the bystander effect.

The tendency for people in a group to hesitate when they believed that someone else would respond.

Spurred by her story, two young psychologists teamed up to make sense of this unsettling collective inaction.

To do so, they enrolled New York University students into a study and gave them the innocuous prompt to talk about their college experience together.

During the ensuing conversation, something unexpected happened to research participants.

A research associate posing as a student appeared to have a seizure.

When students believed that they were the sole witness, they reported the emergency 85% of the time.

Yet they believed, yet, those who believed that others that also observed the observance, that number dropped to a shocking 31%.

So their conclusion was this: the more people present at the scene of an emergency, the less likely any one individual might be to intervene.

Sometimes the problem isn't that no one cares.

Sometimes the problem is that everyone assumes that someone else will do something about it.

Well, that brings us to Luke chapter 10.

Luke 10 · chapter mention

A man lies wounded beside the road, a priest comes by, he sees him, passes by, a Levite comes by, he sees him, he passes by, and then a Samaritan comes and he sees him.

But unlike the others, he stops.

He gets involved.

He treats his wounds.

He puts him on his own animal.

He takes him to an inn.

He pays for his care.

Three men saw the same need.

Two apparently decided that someone else would deal with it.

One decided that he would be the one to help.

When Jesus finishes this story, he didn't tell his hearers to spend their lives looking for someone else to fulfill the responsibility.

He says to them, Go and do thou likewise.

The lesson this morning is not merely be aware of the needs around you.

It is when God puts a need in front of you.

Don't assume that someone else will take care of it.

You be their neighbor.

I've entitled the lesson today, The Subversion of Expectations.

The Subversion of Expectations.

This story reveals improper expectations.

What you would assume would happen in this story does not happen.

I don't know what's happening with my microphone, but.

And what you don't expect to happen is the very thing that happens.

This story is in response to a question that a lawyer asked the Lord Jesus, seeking to justify himself.

I think he feels like a good person.

He has kept the Ten Commandments, he's loved the Lord with all his heart.

He's sought to love his neighbor as himself, and I'm just gonna have to turn this off.

I don't know what's going on.

Yeah.

And I came home one day and he was dumping all of his leaves and limbs across the fence onto my yard.

That's how I met him.

That's not a good neighbor.

I remember we lived in a neighborhood and um our dog jumped across his fence.

It's hard to believe.

An English pointer, six-foot fence.

He he cleared the fence.

And as soon as Champ jumped across the fence, he didn't realize there was a rottweiler over there.

He hopped back across across the fence.

I remember that man was working in his yard and my kids were playing, and he yelled, excuse me, shut up to my kids.

Shut up.

They're playing outside.

Shut up.

That's not a good neighbor.

We have the best neighbors right now.

Jill and Jason.

They are from Colorado.

They're Catholic.

Pray that God will give us an opportunity to really witness to them.

But Jill loves to bake.

So she's always bringing things by the house.

She comes on the kids' birthdays.

She brought a dessert to one of our kids before they were going back to college when Phoebe got a job.

I mean, they are great neighbors.

Is that my neighbor?

Who is my neighbor?

Well, the subversion of expectations is that my neighbor is the person that lives next door to me.

But Jesus says to us that our neighbor is the person that God brings across the path of our life that is in need.

So I want us to look at these different characters in the story as we look at this subversion of expectations.

Number one, let's first talk about the traveler.

The traveler.

A certain man, verse 30, went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves.

He's robbed, he's stripped, he's beaten on the dangerous Jerusalem to Jericho road.

He might have expected safe passage home, but he found danger and violence.

Think first of all about the prevalence of robbers.

As we look into this ancient road, it descended 3,600 feet and 20 miles, a steady decline from the city of Jerusalem, the mountains of Jerusalem down to the Dead Sea, which is where Jericho is located, lowest point on the planet.

Narrow passes and sudden turns would mark that trail.

Jerome in the 5th century called that road the Red or Bloody Way.

Even up to the 19th century, 19th century travelers paid bribe money to local sheikhs to use the road as to provide safe passage.

So the indication from the traveler is that he had presumed he would be safe and he was traveling alone.

This is a grave mistake.

People traveled in caravans to avoid such plight.

So we begin this story with the certain man in verse number 30 that really does make a nearly fatal mistake.

He goes alone on a dark and dangerous path.

He falls among thieves, on which he is stripped and wounded.

It's one of my favorite Greek words.

It's trauma, where we get the word trauma.

He was traumatized along the path, departed, leaving him half dead.

And so there's a triage that is necessary here on the side of a Judean road.

We think about the traveler.

He expected maybe he could beat the odds.

He expected that he would be the exception to the rule.

He expected that maybe he was tough enough to handle himself, and he discovered that indeed he was not.

Let's look at the priest and the Levite for a moment this morning.

The Bible says by chance there came down a certain priest that way.

And when he saw him, he passed by on the other side, and likewise the Levite, when he was at that place, came and looked on him and passed by on the other side.

I think we would all agree that religious leaders who could have articulated sophisticated arguments about who deserves love, would have encountered this victim and would not have passed by, but would have responded to his need.

I mean, we would assume a Baptist preacher going down McCall, seeing a person in need, would immediately respond.

We would expect that a Baptist, a Christian, who was in Walmart or in the neighborhood, this would see someone in need and think to themselves, this is my God-given responsibility.

Well, that's an expectation.

Now, what's the difference between a priest and a Levite?

Well, all priests are from the Levitical tribe, but not all Levites are priest.

Priest had to meet physical requirements and age requirements and served as mediators between Israel and God.

They performed animal sacrifices and entered into the holy place in the tabernacle and in the temple.

Levites, who were not descendants of Aaron, held subordinate sanctuary roles.

So the priest in the story, think about it, the priest in the story possessed exclusive access to God's presence and performed, it's really important, performed mediatorial duties on behalf of the people.

The duty of a priest is to stand between God and man and to bridge the love and grace and law of God with broken, sinful men.

He serves as a mediator between God and the people.

But his failure to show mercy to the suffering stranger stands in contrast to his privileged position as one entrusted with representing Israel's covenant relationship with God.

The Levite, though also trained religiously, occupied a subordinate role, yet both, according to Jesus, regardless of their specific rank, passed by on the other side.

First of all, notice that it's the indication of the passage that they were both going home.

Now, rather than describing an abstract possibility, which Jesus could have done, he could have said, suppose, just suppose, hypothetically, that there was a religious leader who was on a journey and he came across a person who'd fell among thieves.

But Jesus is not offering an abstract possibility here.

Jesus' use of the priest on the road to Jericho is making a poignant, concrete point that everyone understood.

Did a little bit of research on this and discovered that it was estimated by Josephus and other early historians that 10,000 priests who worked in Jerusalem lived in the Jericho region.

10,000.

Now it was a bit of a journey, 23 miles, but the high priest, the Hoity Toity, would live in Jerusalem, but not the average priest or Levite.

He's going home.

He's going from Jerusalem to Jericho.

I had a busy day yesterday.

I was here at 8 30.

I left at about nine fifteen.

Now this did not happen, but I'm just illustrating.

AM to P.M.

I was tired.

I was tired.

I was hungry.

I had a granola bar and a hot dog and a few baked beans all day long.

I was hungry.

I was tired.

I was peopled out.

Now, forgive me for being fleshly.

You know what I did not want to deal with on my way home last night?

I don't want to deal with this guy.

I'm going home.

Because someone gave Rick some brisket and pulled pork.

And it just had to be warmed up and sauced.

And I was going to put it in the microwave when I got home.

Little did I know when I got home, Marie had really nice dinner waiting for me in the microwave.

I just wanted to go home.

I wanted to relax, talk to the kids, eat my dinner, watch a little baseball or whatever was on TV, and go to sleep.

It's pretty poignant, isn't it?

You would expect, though, that their moral fiber would respond.

Yeah, you're tired.

Yeah, you're hungry.

You're peopled out.

But here's a man almost dead on the side of the road, and they passed by on the other side.

Someone noted that a priest passing that way wasn't exceptional.

Rather, their failure to help was extremely exceptional.

The Jewish religious leader who thought he had moral superiority over everyone noticed what was happening and did nothing.

Going home, number two, going rogue.

Notice verse 31.

And by chance, some words just stick out to you when you read them.

By chance, Brother David, I thought, I've got to know what that word means.

Soon curia, soon with, curia, to hit, to light upon, to come to pass.

It describes an unplanned accidental encounter, or we would say it this way: there are no ironies, there is no chance, there is no fate with God.

May we say, in God's good providence, he was at the right place at the right time with the right resources to respond to an exceptional circumstance.

Sometimes we have to go out of our way to find the exceptional.

Not today.

God's hand of direction has brought him to this place at this time for this purpose.

By chance there came down a certain priest that way.

And as you were watching this movie unfold, you would say, Now is this man's rescue?

A priest that serves in the temple.

In Zion, the city of our God.

Beautiful for situation.

Is Mount Zion on the sides of the north, the city of the great king?

That's where he works.

He went rogue.

That's a subversive assumption and expectation.

Well, let's look at the Samaritan.

Verse 33.

Now, this is where it gets really interesting.

If if the I'm going to use the word hoide-toide for the second time in this sermon today, if the sophisticated hoide-toity religious leader, the Jew, the Pharisaical looks down his nose at everybody because he's better than everyone, if he doesn't respond, who's qualified to?

You know, if I happen on this guy, I'm probably going to tell him, look, I didn't go to medical school.

I wasn't incredibly good in chemistry.

I was actually terrible in chemistry.

I barely passed.

I hated chemistry.

You guys like who likes chemistry?

Raise your hand if you raise your hand if you like chemistry.

We want to see where all the weird people are.

Okay.

Sig, you liked chemistry, didn't you?

I knew you did.

And I want to say to him, I'm not qualified to do this.

I don't have a degree in biology.

No, no, no.

That's that's a subversive expectation.

God is not looking for an ethnic blue blood.

God is looking For someone who cares, a certain Samaritan.

As he journeyed, came where he was when he saw him, had compassion on him.

And he went to him, bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an end and took care of him.

Now, a Samaritan, as we all know, is someone who is despised by the Jews and disqualified in rabbinic circles from being considered a neighbor worthy of love.

Jesus, John chapter 4, must needs go through Samaria.

John 4 · chapter mention

We don't go that way.

We go out of the way to avoid them.

You can take the highland route straight through Israel.

It's shorter to go from Jerusalem to Galilee on the highland route, but we're not going on the highland route.

Why?

That's where the Samaritans live.

We'll go out of our way to the King's Highway.

We don't go through that neighborhood.

That's where the Samaritans live.

But when the Samaritan came on this man in need, the Bible says he had compassion on him.

The word means that his inward parts were moved to action.

Not just a pity, but a moral and spiritual compulsion to fill the pain of others in his heart and to come alongside of him.

His eye affected his heart.

And is that not the problem?

The priest, it even makes specific.

The priest came down, he saw him, he looked intently at him.

The Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him and passed by.

They looked at him.

Oh, but when the Samaritan saw him, his eye affected his heart.

I know it was overused in the 90s, but every day they passed me by, I can see it in their eyes.

Empty people filled with care, headed who knows where.

On they go through private pain, living fear to fear.

They must hear the words of life.

Only we can share.

People need the Lord.

Do our eyes affect our heart?

He had compassion.

He exercised extreme charity towards him.

Someone described an arc of care.

First of all, he bound up his wounds.

He poured in wine, which sterilized, he poured in oil to soothe and comfort.

Wine, a picture of joy, oil, a picture of the Holy Spirit.

He poured in wine and oil to soothe and mollify and sterilize to begin his healing journey.

Think about that.

The healing journey began at the point of trauma.

He's put on the road to recovery immediately.

And then notice number two, he transports him to the inn.

Sets him on his own donkey, the Bible says.

Now the robbers said, What's yours is mine.

What the priest said is what's mine is mine.

What the Samaritan said is what's mine is yours.

I think that's called agape.

That's agape.

Oh, brotherly love, sure.

Agape, yes, self-sacrificing.

He transported him to an end.

I never noticed this before, but notice what the little phrase, verse 34.

He bound up his wounds, pouring in oil, set him on his own beast, brought him to an end, took care of him, and on the morrow when he departed.

You know what I'd never seen in that passage before?

He stayed the night with him.

His presence was his greatest present.

He stayed with him.

Through the night, through the darkest night of his life, someone was there with him.

Now the Bible doesn't say anything about an innkeeper.

Early historians suggest that these innkeepers are not the nicest people.

There was an innkeeper who told Mary and Joseph there was no room.

I think that does kind of qualify as an unkindness.

The innkeeper says, Well, I guess you can come.

Well, can I stay with him?

This is the darkest night of his life.

Glenn Beck, do you guys know Glenn Beck?

Glenn Beck.

I'm not speaking of his politics, I'm speaking of his person.

Very smart person.

Very smart, intelligent, highly intelligent person.

He's a Mormon.

He's a historian.

Glenn Beck is a historian.

He has one of the largest private historical collections of anyone in the United States.

He's a historian and is a Mormon.

I'm not trying to be unkind.

Mormonism is the most non-historical, non-provable religion in the world.

It's less than 250 years old, and there is scant archaeological proof for any of its claims.

I just read on an archaeological website this morning that the oldest Bible fragment in history was just discovered in Jerusalem.

It predates the Dead Sea Scrolls by 600 years.

Scant evidence for Mormonism.

How in the world is Glenn Beck a Mormon?

How is a historian a follower of a non-historical religion?

He was an alcoholic.

A raging alcoholic.

He had lost his family, he had lost his children.

And a Mormon came by and sat with him the darkest night of his life.

Guys, I've got to tell you, there are people in our circle of influence going through the darkest night of their life, and they will become the person who spends the night with them in their pain.

There are many people who won't be one until they hit the rock bottom of their life, and may we be there with the love of Christ.

He paid for his ongoing care.

Two denarii, the Bible says.

Two pence, verse 35.

A denary in the scripture is a day's wage.

He paid two days' wage for his initial care.

This attests to his serious, the man's serious condition.

I mean, think of a two-day, a two-day hospital stay.

It's quite expensive.

And he paid it.

And further said, I'm going to come back.

And when I come back, whatever's left on his tab, I will repay.

John Butler said, the Samaritan moves from compassion to action to accountability.

Binding wounds, providing shelter, paying cost, and guaranteeing follow-up care.

I love this line.

Hear this line.

Compassion initiates everything.

Without it, people justify irresponsible actions and a hard heart, preventing helping others.

This parable suggests that the true neighborliness demands immediate response and long-term responsibility.

I quote another author of commentary who said, the irony cuts sharply here.

One whom Jews deemed unworthy to be called neighbor becomes the true neighbor to the victim.

That, my friends, is a subversive expectation.

Number four, I want you to think about Jesus' interpretation of neighborhood.

Would you be mine?

Could you be mine?

Would you be my neighbor?

You're a winter park guy, aren't you?

Fred Rogers went to uh Rollins College.

Right?

Fred Rogers.

His mother taught him, In any crisis, what do you do?

In any crisis, look for the helpers.

Look for the helper.

Jesus defines the helper.

Who is my neighbor?

Jesus speaks of authentic love for the one who comes close by us in the circuit of our lives is our neighbor.

Authentic love for the one who comes close by in the circuit of our lives.

In other words, Jill and Jason are my neighbor, but I might meet my neighbor when I leave this office today.

Matter of fact, I think there's a man waiting for me to talk to me who texted me last night and asked if he could come by.

Guess what?

He is my neighbor.

And he was blowing up my phone as I started preaching today, so I don't know exactly what's going on, but it can wait.

Removal of distinction, definition, and framework to observe the needs of anyone in need.

No legalistic limitation, no cultural limitation here.

No ethnic, religious limitation, just help the person closest by.

Jesus is hearkening back to the Old Testament law.

I'll give this to you in two minutes.

Leviticus 18 or 19, 18, thou shalt not avenge nor judge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbor.

Verse 34, but the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself.

We could have a long conversation about illegal immigration and those types of things.

And the Bible does not prohibition borders and national sovereignty, and that is not the conversation.

But the stranger lives in Englewood.

We had Sig on the podcast.

Sig was a stranger.

His family came to America.

And Jesus is hearkening back not only to how you treat Jill and Jason, thoroughbred citizens, but the stranger who is righteously immigrating to a land not his own.

The command concerns neighbors and strangers, and it flows from God's holiness.

Israel was to treat people rightly because God Himself is righteous and merciful.

And Jesus is basically saying, how you treat others is what you think of me.

His expectation for his people was that they loved one another and the stranger.

And I'll close with this.

God's expectation for his people not only flowed from his love for all men, but also from the Hebrew's experience of sojourning.

What does he say?

Leviticus 19, 34.

But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, as thou shalt love him as thyself, for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.

I am the Lord your God.

Here it is.

If you know what it's like to be a stranger, you ought to take care of a stranger.

If you know how it feels to be broken, you are equipped to help the broken.

If you have ever been the person bloodied and bruised on the wayside, wouldn't you?

Wouldn't you be the person who comes alongside the person bloodied and bruised on the wayside?

We are all sinners saved by the wonderful grace of God.

And it equips us to help sinners who can also be saved by the wonderful grace of God.