Who Is My Neighbor?

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Transcript:

We’re going to be in Luke chapter 10 this morning. Luke chapter 10. By a show of hands, does anybody else in here besides me like nature documentaries?

Okay, a few of you. Most of you would rather watch football, I’m sure. I’d rather cheer for the teams where the stakes are a little higher.

Somebody’s getting eaten. It’s a little more exciting. I love nature documentaries.

And I noticed a few years ago that I would find myself cheering on one animal or the other. And it really depended on what the situation was. And it wasn’t that I always sided with the one who was being chased.

Sometimes I felt like the one being chased deserved it. It depended on which animals were interacting with each other. If it was a wild dog against a cheetah, I’m cheering for the wild dog.

If it was the cheetah against an alligator or a crocodile, because in my mind they’re interchangeable. I know there’s a difference. But if it’s a cheetah between an alligator or a crocodile, I’m cheering for the cheetah.

But if you put the alligator with a big snake, and they’re fighting, suddenly I am the head cheerleader for Team Alligator. And I thought, why is it that I can cheer for one animal in one situation and not in another? I know you’re all thinking, where am I going with this?

I am going somewhere, I promise. Why do I cheer for one animal in a certain situation and not in another? And I realized that, at least for myself, which animal I found myself cheering for as they were in this life and death struggle depended on which one had more similarities to us, which one was more like us in terms of qualities, and which one was more familiar.

We’re all familiar with dogs. Most of us like dogs. I’m a dog person.

I’m not a cat person. Sorry if that offends. So if it’s the wild dog versus the cheetah, the dog is more familiar.

I don’t understand cats. And yet I have dogs that sleep in my bedroom. So I’m cheering for the wild dog.

Cheetah versus alligator? Well, the cheetah has hair and lives on land. It’s a mammal. And scientists, even though I don’t believe in the whole evolutionary part of it, scientists classify us as a mammal as well, so mammal pride.

But when it comes to alligator, they have legs, and so do we. And the snakes do not, and that’s what freaks me out about snakes. They don’t have legs, and they can just move wherever they want to go.

So whatever the similarity is, whatever is most similar, whatever is most familiar, is what I gravitate toward. And I think that’s human nature for all of us. Maybe not with nature documentaries.

You all may think I’m overthinking all of this, but we do it in life, don’t we? That’s why, as I’m hearing things on the news about crime statistics and race, they talk about how most people live in neighborhoods where most people look like them. At least that’s what the statistics hold up.

Most people live around people who look like them. Most people live, I can’t remember, something like 80% of the counties in our country, as opposed to 50 years ago. Now, in 80% of the counties, in a presidential election, they vote more than 60% one way or the other.

We’re gravitating more toward people who think like us. I see it in my own life. When I get cut off in traffic, you all know I have traffic issues.

And when I get cut off in traffic, I’m just a little more patient and a little less likely to get irritated when the person who cut me off has that purple and yellow Choctaw tag like mine. It’s one of my people. I cut him a little more slack.

We side with the familiar. We gravitate toward what’s comfortable for us. We gravitate toward the things that are similar.

There’s a reason why most of the books on my shelf in there come from a particular perspective that usually agrees with mine. Occasionally I’ll read books that challenge from a different perspective, but most of the time I just want to hear somebody who agrees with me. And we gravitate toward the familiar.

We sympathize with those who are the most like us. And it’s okay for us to have sympathy and compassion for those who are similar to us. There’s nothing wrong with that.

The Bible even tells us in the book of Galatians chapter 6 verse 10 that therefore as we have the opportunity, do good unto all men, especially those that are the household of faith. We’re encouraged to take care of one another in the church. But that passage doesn’t teach us only people that are in the church.

It says, especially those that are of the household of faith, meaning if we don’t even take care of each other, if we don’t even demonstrate love for each other, how is the world going to see that we have love for anybody else? If I can’t even love my own family and take care of my own family, how am I supposed to take care of the world? And so the Bible says, especially those that are of the household of faith, but it doesn’t say only those that are of the household of faith.

It says, do good to all men, especially those that are of the household of faith. The story that we’re going to look at this morning is a story where Jesus took this natural tendency we have to sort of gravitate toward things that are familiar and have more compassion toward those that are similar to us, and he turns it on his ear. See, we are more likely to be touched emotionally and moved to do something by news of hurricanes and flooding on the Gulf Coast than we are about a typhoon that hit the Philippines.

Part of that’s just because of the close proximity, but part of that is also, well, these are Americans. Those are just foreigners. That’s normal. That’s natural. But Jesus says, we’ve got to go beyond the natural, and he takes that, and he turns that on its side.

He turns it on his ear. Because a man came to him and asked him questions about who is my neighbor, because he wanted basically to give himself a pass to not have to help people he didn’t like. And so if you haven’t already turned there to Luke chapter 10, we start in verse 25, and it says, Behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?

See, the Pharisees and the scribes and the lawyers, they were very good about asking questions and making it sound like, oh, I’m just asking a simple question. It was a trap. Every time, it was a trap.

And that’s why Luke here records that he was tempting him. He was trying to reel Jesus in and say, what do I have to do to inherit eternal life? Thinking that Jesus was going to answer as he did, and then the Pharisee was going to walk away and say, see, even Jesus says we’re fine.

Because Jesus answers him in verse 26. It says, he said unto him, what is written in the law? How readest thou?

So he answers him with a question. He says, okay, Mr. Lawyer, Mr.

Expert in the law, think you know everything. What do you see in there? What does it say to you about eternal life?

And so he answers in verse 27, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself. Goodness gracious, he got one right. The Pharisees had a lot of wrong ideas, but on this one he got the right answer.

What’s the most important thing? His question was, what do I need to do to inherit eternal life. I’d say that means it’s a pretty important thing.

What’s the most important thing? He says love the Lord your God with all your heart. With everything in you, love God and then love your neighbor like yourself.

He got one right. And Jesus said to him in verse 28, thou hast answered right. You got the right answer.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, gold star for you. You got it. He says this do and thou shalt live.

And then what we, that sounds to us like he’s saying, okay, just love God, love people, do your best, and you’ll be saved. That’s what it sort of sounds like on the surface of it. But we see in verse 29 that he starts scrambling, trying to come up with the next question.

And what we can read in here, what we need to understand out of this, is first of all, the Bible as a whole does not teach, just do good and follow God and do the right things, love him enough, and you’ll be saved. That’s not what the Bible teaches in any way, shape, or form. The Bible says that we’ve all sinned and come short of the glory of God.

It says that we are all light sheep have gone astray. It says there’s none righteous, not even one. It says that we are all sinners.

It says that none of us can meet up to God’s standards. It says that we are all destined for the judgment of God because of our sins. So he’s not telling him here, yeah, that’s good, go do that, and you’ll be saved.

What he’s saying is that is the standard, and if you could do that, you would be saved. It’s a hypothetical. Yep, that’s right. If you could do that, you would be saved.

But the implication there is, but you can’t. But you can’t. If we somehow were not tainted by Adam’s sin, and we could go through every day of our life from the time we’re young until the time that we die, and we could go through every day of our life, every moment, and love God with everything within us.

Not just love God, and not even just love God first, but love God with everything, and love our neighbor as much as we love ourselves. If we could somehow, we did not have original sin, we could go through life and do that perfectly, then yes, theoretically, yeah, you’d meet up to God’s standard and you’d go to heaven. But the whole point is we can’t do that.

If you can think of even one time in your life, if you can think of even one time in your life where you haven’t loved God a hundred percent, then we’ve fallen short of God’s standards. If you can think of one time in your life when you’ve been selfish in your treatment of those around you, then we fail to meet up to God’s standards. And I think in a moment of honesty and clarity, we’d all have to say, yeah, I’ve been there.

And not just one moment in my life, I can probably name half a dozen just today, and the day’s barely even gotten started. We’re sinners. And so his point is, hey, if you can live up to this standard of perfection, then yeah, you’d be in there, but you can’t.

And he, verse 29, willing to justify himself, trying to make it, okay, trying to make himself sound good, giving himself a loophole here, building it in. He says, okay, who is my neighbor? Because I think in the Pharisee’s mind he was nailed right in his conscience and knew he had not loved his neighbor as himself.

to say nothing of loving God with everything or living. But he tries to build in this loophole and say, okay, who is my neighbor? Because at that time the rabbis understood it and the rabbis taught it as though it was their fellow Jews.

It was the good people in society, not even just the Jews, it was the worthy Jews. But people like the Gentiles, they were dirty, they didn’t follow God’s law, they were uncivilized, they were barbaric. Surely, Jesus is not telling us we have to love the filthy, stinking Gentiles.

And by the way, I hope that’s not offensive to anybody because I am a Gentile. I can say that about us. Surely Jesus is not telling us we have to love those lousy Gentiles.

So, who is my neighbor? I guess he’s expecting Jesus to say, well, your brothers and sisters in Israel, of course. And Jesus, again, never meets their expectations.

Every time they expect Jesus to zig, he zags. and then he flies over the zigzag course. He defies their expectations at every turn.

In verse 30, Jesus again answers his question without a straightforward yes or no or one word answer. He says, let me tell you a story. He says, a certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho.

Brother Tim mentioned this on Wednesday night and I thought, stop talking. You’re giving away all the stuff I’m going to talk about on Sunday. It’s fine now.

He went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. It was a few miles of a journey. I mean, maybe like going from here to Shawnee, but there was a major change in elevation.

And it was rocky. Have you ever been on the Talamina Drive, any of you? And you know when you get into southeast Oklahoma, they’ve got roads with these hairpin turns, and you have to go like three miles an hour going around the corner.

We’re talking hairpin curves and going around places blindly where somebody could be hiding on the other side. it was a dangerous journey from Jerusalem down to Jericho, down this mountain. And so as this man went from Jerusalem to Jericho, he fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment and wounded him and departed, leaving him half dead.

So this man going from Jerusalem to Jericho, presumably on business of some sort, on this dangerous road, he’s caught by a gang of robbers. And they take him and they rob him, but it’s not enough that they rob him. They steal his clothes.

And they beat him. And it’s not beat like we say, you know, I needed to beat my child because they were, and we give them a couple of whacks with a paddle or with our hand and they’re fine. I’m saying they beat him.

They bludgeoned him. They put this man in serious physical danger. The Bible says that they left him half dead.

He is bruised and cut and bleeding and lying there in a heap on the side of the road. And by chance, somebody happened along. It’s his lucky day.

By chance, there came down a certain priest that way. Oh, good. The religious people showed up.

They’ll help him. But it says when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. Now, I don’t want to excuse, and we’ll see this again in a minute with the Levite, too.

I don’t want to excuse the behavior too much. I just want to be fair. They’re wrong in what they did, and Jesus points out what they did as being wrong.

And yet at the same time, we treat them, every time I’ve heard this story taught, it’s like the priest and the Levite are like Hitler and Stalin walking down the road together, and they’re just evil. Okay, they had no compassion in their hearts for this man, but there’s also the possibility here that they thought, wait a minute, this could be a trap for me. Either he’s been beaten by robbers and they’re still hanging around waiting for me to stop and help him and they’re going to get me too, or he’s part of this and they’ve just made it look like he’s been beaten and his gang is going to get me when I go and stop and help.

I mean, I don’t remember names or anything, but I remember my parents talking when I was young about something happened here in Oklahoma. if somebody pretended they needed help on the side of I-35 and then family stopped to help them and ended up murdered. And that kind of stuff happens still in our world today.

And this was even more of an outlaw time. So I’m not defending the priest and the Levite. I’m just saying they’re more in this story.

I see them as more selfish than just evil. And still it’s their selfishness, their thoughtlessness that Jesus calls out. the priest, you would think the priest is somebody I could turn to for help, and yet he walks to the other side of the road.

I’m steering as clear away from this man as I can, and he goes on about his way. So verse 32, and likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him. So he at least stops to take a glance.

This is one of the temple assistants. It says he looked on him. He did at least stand there and have a moment, I think, of should I or shouldn’t I?

He weighed this. He argued this point within himself. But then he goes on and passed by on the other side.

But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was. Now, what you need to understand about the Samaritans was they were the other side. They were hated.

It’s not only, you know, we look out in the Gentiles, the non-Jews, the lesser beings out there. The Samaritans weren’t just a group of Gentiles. The Samaritans were the descendants of Israelites who had intermarried with the Gentiles.

So not only did they have Gentile blood, but they were the descendants of a group of people who had, it wasn’t a racial problem that they had intermarried, it was a religious problem. God had said don’t intermarry with the Gentiles because they were going to lead them to worship other gods. And these were the descendants of people who had disobeyed that commandment.

And so they were actually seemingly lower than the Gentiles in the view of the Jews. And not to make the Jews just out to be the bad guys, here the Samaritans hated them right back. There had been bad blood between the Jews and the Samaritans for hundreds of years.

The Jews had barred the Samaritans from their temple. The Samaritans had, as far as I understand, history had cheered when the Jews’ temple was desecrated in Jerusalem. The Jews had responded by destroying the Samaritan’s temple on Mount Gerizim.

These people hated each other. I’m trying to think of an example from modern day of people who live next to each other and hate each other this much. But unless it’s the Jews and the Arabs today in the Middle East, I can’t think of one.

These people hated each other. And you’re not even human. They both viewed each other, you’re like a dog.

You’re not even worthy of my time. So there was this hatred, this animosity on both sides between the Jews and the Samaritans. No similarities, no middle ground, no compassion, no sympathy, just hatred.

And so the Samaritan comes along. You would think in this story it would be the priest or the temple assistant who were fellow Jews from Jerusalem who would stop and help the man. But this Samaritan comes along and they were supposed to hate each other.

The world told them they were supposed to hate each other. And yet it says here in verse 33, when he saw him, he had compassion on it. Not because, oh, he’s a friend.

Not because he’s from the same community. Not because we have anything in common. Not because we like each other, but because he’s a human being.

See, he didn’t let the hate get in the way of his humanity. He didn’t want selfishness getting in the way of his humanity. He stopped.

He wasn’t even thinking really about his safety to be stopping. The other men probably did the wise thing, but they did the selfish thing. But he stopped.

He had compassion on him. And he went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine. The wine being something that would kill the germs and help clean the wounds.

And the oil would be something to help heal it. And so he went and poured oil and wine on his wounds and set him on his own beast. Instead of, okay, I’m on my horse or my donkey or whatever, and I’m riding the whole way this long journey to Jericho, he gets off and he puts the wounded Jewish man on it and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And in the morning, on the morrow, when he departed, he took out two pence, some translations say denarii, which a denarii or a pence, whichever word you want to use, was one day’s wages.

So he took two days’ salary and gave it to the innkeeper and said, you take care of him. Use this money and you take care of him. And whatever else you spend taking care of him, I will reimburse you when I come back.

Whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee. Then Jesus turns to the lawyer in verse 36 and says, Which now of these three thinkest thou was the neighbor unto him that fell among the thieves? Who was his neighbor?

And again, the whole question was, who is my neighbor? Because he talked about loving your neighbor as yourself. Okay, so who is my neighbor?

Surely Jesus is going to say, I only have to love my fellow Jews. But he answers and says, now, which of these was his neighbor? And the man said in verse 37, he said, he that showed mercy on him.

He’s absolutely right. He that showed mercy on him. And by the way, just to reinforce how unusual this story would have been, and how shocking this story would have been, he couldn’t even bring himself to say the Samaritan.

It was like a dirty word, and certainly you didn’t want to admit that the Samaritan had been right. You’ll see on TV somebody who doesn’t like to admit they were wrong, or that they’re sorry. They’ll say, I’m sorry.

They just can’t get the words out. The thought that the Samaritan had been the one who was right, he can’t even get it out. So he doesn’t say the Samaritan.

He says the one who showed mercy. And he was absolutely right. And Jesus said to him, go and do thou likewise.

I started talking to you last week about the whole idea of compassion. The whole idea of having compassion and serving. And we talked about 1 John chapter 3.

And it focuses really on taking care of one another. If you say you love the brethren, but you, if you say you love God, but you don’t even love the brethren, you’re a liar, basically, is what John says. Don’t get mad at me.

That’s what John says. If you hate your brethren and say you love God, those two things don’t work together. And even though we talked about the community as a whole, that passage really focuses on the brethren.

This takes it a step further and says that anybody in need of mercy is our neighbor. Anybody in need of mercy is our neighbor. And it doesn’t matter whether they look like us, whether they talk like us, whether they think like us.

They’re in need of mercy. They’re our neighbor. And our day is not that much different from Jesus’ day.

We are taught and we are trained, and I have complained about this for at least two years now since I sort of woke up to what was going on. We are taught and we are trained by our society and by our media and everything else. But there are certain groups that we are supposed to hate and despise based on what group we’re in.

First of all, I’m an individualist. I try to see people as individuals, not as groups. I don’t always succeed, but that’s what I try to do. But the world wants to keep us divided.

And that’s why all these stories happen and all this rhetoric to reinforce, if you’re a Christian, you should hate the homosexuals. No, I don’t agree with the lifestyle, but I don’t hate them. And we’re taught that if you’re a homosexual, you’re supposed to hate the Christians.

We’re taught that if you’re black, you’re supposed to hate white, and if you’re white, you’re supposed to hate black. And if you’re native-born, you’re supposed to hate immigrants. Isn’t it exhausting?

I mean, there were Christians being called out by other Christians for going and taking food to children on the border. And regardless of how you feel about border security, there were children who needed food and water. and yet Christians were saying, no, we don’t help them.

They’re here illegally. Yeah, they are. I agree with that.

I believe in the rule of law, but they’re human beings and whoever is in need of mercy is my neighbor. It doesn’t mean that actions don’t have consequences, but there’s an immediate need. And why does the world tell us we have to hate each other and be divided?

I can’t talk to you and I can’t help you and I can’t be concerned about your well-being and I can’t be concerned about your family and that we have to stay just in our little groups. Jesus looks at that and says, that is not. That is not the way this works, friends.

And so he took. And personally, I believe this was a real story that happened. But he takes this story of the most unlikely helping.

The most unlikely person to bring assistance. And says, here’s what happened. And holds this up to them as the example.

And it doesn’t matter whether they’re like us. It doesn’t matter whether we think they’re worthy of our time. It doesn’t matter.

Anyone in need of mercy is our neighbor. Now, I understand there’s only so much we can do individually. I cannot, personally, take care of every need in the world.

And neither can you. We can’t even, as a church, take care of every need in our community. But we, as God’s people, have got to realize that there’s an open door, not only to share the gospel, but to present a picture of the gospel by loving and caring for and showing mercy to those who in our minds don’t seem to deserve it.

That was the whole point of the gospel, wasn’t it? The Bible says, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. You want to talk about different, you can’t get any further apart than holy God and sin for me.

We were created in God’s image, and yet we were created different from him. He was not created, and we were created. We live a short time, and he’s eternal. There has never been a time and never will be a time where there was not God.

He is perfect and holy and just and never sins. He never lies. He can never do anything wrong.

And yet we as mankind have broken every single law he’s ever handed down. And when we realize what the penalty of that was, when we realize what we earned from that, when we realize what we deserved from that, that we deserve separation from God. We deserved to be punished.

We deserved destruction. And for God to see us depart from this life into eternal separation from Him in hell and for Him to walk around on the other side of the road and stay as clear away from us as possible, as far away from us as possible. And yet, while we were sinners, and in our rebellion, Christ died for us.

He made the ultimate sacrifice. I like the Samaritan not worrying about his own safety. Jesus came knowing he was going to be crucified, that he was going to be put to death in the most brutal way possible.

And I’m not saying that this story is even Jesus talking about the crucifixion. And the Samaritan here is not a picture of Jesus dying on the cross or anything like that. I’m just saying the principle is the same, that he’s talking about sacrificing for those who you wouldn’t ordinarily think twice about.

And that’s exactly what Jesus did for us. and if we’ve been Christians for a long time and we’ve been involved in church for a long time we can get to a point where we think oh we’re just good people and we always have been and I’m just going to sit here with my halo and we forget that not only are we still sinners but we forget what God saved us out of we forget the dirt and the filth that was all over us of this world and that verse that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us the literal meaning as I understand that is while we were still in the act of sinning while it was going on right then Christ died for us. He gave everything for those who don’t deserve it.

And the world understands it. When we love those who are with us or those who are like us, the world expects me to take care of my family. The world probably even expects me to take care of the people in my church, although if we do it right, it should be surprising.

People talking about they couldn’t believe how many people were there just to love on Louise at the nursing home. But the world expects us to take care of our group. Folks, when we look outside of our group, when we look outside of our four walls and just the people who are part of our group and the people who look like us and talk like us and act like us and deserve it because they’re one of us, when we look outside that group and we see others who are in need of mercy and we treat them like our neighbor, not only are we doing what Jesus said here to do, but we’re given a picture of what Jesus did.

And there will come a time. There will come a time when we’re asked, how can you do this? Helping people before, I’ve had people ask, why are you all doing this?

Why is your church doing this? Because of the mercy that Jesus showed us. The world is hungry for mercy.

The world is hungry for compassion. And we need to be reminded that it’s not just our neighbor in the sense of the people who are right there with us, but as Jesus taught here, everybody who’s in need of mercy is our neighbor. We can’t solve everybody’s problems. I told you this last week.

I try to come in here and give you concrete guidance on what you can do to put into practice what we’ve studied from God’s Word that day. But sometimes like today and like last week, I can’t tell you because I can’t tell you anything concrete, anything specific, because the need is so great. And there’s no way that any of us or all of us together could meet all the needs that we run across.

But God has put you where you are, not only to meet the needs of those around you, but to meet the needs of the people that you see and come across who aren’t part of your circle. And only God can show you what needs he intends you to meet. We just need to be like the Samaritan and keep our eyes open as we go.

And not walk around to the other side of the street when we see a need, but recognize that anybody who needs mercy is our neighbor.