Luke 10:25-37 | Parables in Practice

Listen to this week’s sermon, Parables In Practice preached by Rev. Benjamin Kandt from Luke 10:25-37.

Transcript

Scripture Reading And Opening Prayer

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 0:06

Hello everyone. This is Pastor Benjamin. You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City, Orlando. At New City, we long to see our Father answer the Lord's Prayer. For more resources, visit our website at Newcity Orlando.com.

Hannah Corlew 0:21

Good morning. Please pray aloud with me. God of peace, sanctify us in the gospel of grace through the preaching of your word, that by your spirit we might be kept blameless on the day of Christ Jesus. Amen. If you're able, please remain standing for today's scripture reading, which comes from Luke 10. And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? He 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 he said to him, You have answered correctly, do this and you will live. But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, And who is my neighbor? Jesus replied, A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him, he passed on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to that place and saw him, passed by 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 he bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back. Which of these three do you think proves to be the neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers? He said, The one who showed him mercy. And Jesus said to him, You go and do likewise. This is God's word. Thanks be to God. You can be seated.

What Must I Do To Inherit Life

Law’s Demand And The Limits Of Doing

Who Counts As A Neighbor

The Jericho Road And Passing By

A Samaritan Sees And Has Compassion

Love Without Prejudice Or Price

Identify With The Half‑Dead Man

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 2:34

All right, if you feel like you've already gotten two sermons from this me this morning, here comes one more. So some call our cultural moment post-Christian. Post-Christian. And what that means is that we live in our society we live with the benefits of Christianity while rejecting the truths of Christianity. Said differently, we want the kingdom without the king. We want the justice of Jesus without the Jesus of justice. We want Jesus' social vision without the beatific vision. What I mean by all this is in our cultural moment, there's no better way to justify yourself than to be about social justice. Now, we claim that we care about the quartet of the vulnerable, the widow, the orphan, the sojourner, and the poor, and yet we tell a story about a world that's been shaped by natural selection where the strong eat the weak. Do you see the contradictory nature of that? One uh one Russian satirically said it like this: man descended from apes, therefore let us love one another. Exactly. You see, even some secular thinkers, they can identify this problem. Uh, you've all know a Harari in an interview with NPR said it like this: most legal systems today are based on a belief in human rights, but what are human rights? Take a human being, cut him open, you will find the heart, kidneys, neurons, DNA, but you won't find any rights. The only place you find rights is in the stories that we have invented. Is that true? Well, one of the stories that has shaped the moral imagination of millions over millennia, maybe more than anyone else, is the story of the Good Samaritan. You see, we're in a series of uh through the Gospel of Luke, looking at the parables of Jesus, and and week after week, what Jesus has been doing, at least to me, has been detonating my assumptions. And in this story, Jesus wants to expose something deeper than injustice. He wants to point out and expose self-righteousness, the instinct in every human heart to justify ourselves. And we see that because the whole conversation turns on one little word. Do. Do. See, it shows up three times in our text. Verse 25, what shall I do? Verse 28, do this and live. Verse 37, go and do likewise. You see, the the lawyer in this story believes in earning by doing, and Jesus wants to disconnect doing and deserving. He wants to do that by exposing the limits of our doing. If you're like, what did you just say? Bear with me. Look at Luke chapter 10, get the text out in front of you, either a Bible or a device or the worship guide. We're gonna walk through this verse by verse. Look at verse 25. It says this, and behold a lawyer. Now, when you hear that in the Bible, think Bible scholar, not law and order. That's important. Behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? That's the question. What shall I do? What actions can I take to get eternal life? You see, inherit eternal life is framed as something that you can obtain by doing. The lawyer's view of life is that God helps those who help themselves. To him, life with God is a meritocracy. It's more about grit, what I can get, than grace, what only God can give. And so Jesus wants to full court press that worldview. And he's going to do that in verse 26. He says, This, what is written in the law, how do you read it? You see, good churches are about the man, the message, and the mission of Jesus. But we want to also, we want those things, we also want to be a church that pays attention to the model of Jesus. Look at how brilliant he is as a disciple maker as he talks to a not yet disciple in this text. The first thing he does is Jesus answers a question with a question. It's brilliant. The second thing he does is he draws his attention to the place, the only ultimate authority where questions like this one can be answered, and that's the Bible. Like I often think Jesus has a way higher view of the scriptures than any of us. High view of the Bible comes from being a disciple of Jesus. And he knows that two things matter in the way you read the Bible. First of all, the objective. What is actually written there? What does it say? But also the subjective, how do you read it? What's the hermeneutic in your own heart as you come to the text of Scripture? Jesus isn't looking for a literacy lesson from the lawyer right now. Jesus knows that how you read the Bible is the most important, one of the most important things about you. And so he goes on. The lawyer answers in verse 27. He's quoting Deuteronomy chapter 6 there. And he goes on, he says, and your neighbor as yourself. He's quoting Leviticus 19 there. And Jesus said to him, You've answered correctly. Like, good job. A plus. You did it. Do this and you will live. So you've got to ask, is Jesus giving a prescription right now or a diagnosis? What's he doing with the lawyer? He says, Do this and live, which, by the way, biblically is 100% true. Jesus' definition of the good life is to love God with all of yourself and your neighbor as yourself. And the law, it actually really does promise life through perfect, perpetual obedience. And so Paul actually quotes Moses, same thing Jesus is referring to here in Romans chapter 10. He says, The person who does the commandments shall live by them. That is true in the Bible. If you obey the double love command perfectly and perpetually, you will live by it. You will live, you'll have life. But here's the thing the implication of that is devastating. It's devastating because what Jesus does here is he doesn't lower the bar so that the lawyer can clear it, he actually raises the bar so that the lawyer can see that he never has. One commentator put it like this: if the lawyer thinks eternal life can be obtained by doing what the law demands, he will have to learn how extreme those demands are. And so Jesus is trying to undo the lawyer's best doing. That's why when you start with a question like, What shall I do? the follow-up question is always, Have I done enough? It's the very question at the heart of what the lawyer says next. In verse 29, but he, and if you have a Bible or device, if you can underline or highlight this, desiring to justify himself. This is one of the keys to understanding this whole passage, which I think is profoundly misunderstood. But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, and who is my neighbor? Now listen, you know that you are on a self-justification project when you are trying to get off on a technicality. It's like the guy who's dating a girl and asks, Well, how far is too far? It's like when you ask if you should give off of your gross or your net, but you don't do either. You see, dodging this claim of love, the lawyer asks, Who am I responsible for? Who am I actually supposed to look out for? Now, at this time, culturally, the word neighbor did not extend to anyone outside of Israel. In fact, there's a story that this bias runs so deep, this anti-Gentile, that's a non-Israelite bias. It's so deep that it was wrong to help a Gentile woman during childbirth because it would bring another Gentile into the world. That's the lawyer's worldview when he says, Who is my neighbor? And so, beneath this question lies this desire to exclude responsibility for some people by making them non-neighors. Religious people have been manipulating this book for a long time. They've been doing it in order to marginalize whomever they please. And so the question I want to, I just want to answer Jesus' question at the top here, the lawyer's question rather. What makes someone my neighbor? Is it their nationality, their religion, their political party, their sexuality, their ethnicity, or any other socially social identifier that we can come up with? According to Scripture, it's none of those things. My neighbor is simply anyone who is near with need. That's the definition of neighbor. Anyone near with need. So whenever neighbor is redefined to confine it to my people, my tribe, my group, injustice is gonna follow. That's why Jesus responds to this question by saying, this question of who is my neighbor by telling a story. Look at verse 30. Jesus replied, A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. Pause for a moment. When I was finishing up my last couple years at UCF, go nights, I was a substitute teacher for Orange County Public School System. Now, this is gonna date me and show you that I'm a little bit of a light edit at heart. I didn't have an iPhone, a smartphone, so I would memorize the directions from my house to whatever school I was substitute teaching at. I'd memorize it on MapQuest, you're welcome. And and and then I would ride my motorcycle there. Well, I had particular, I had one job at a high school, which is really early. It's like 6:30 a.m. You're getting there in a not so great part of town. I'll just say that. And I'm at a traffic light, it's red, nobody else is around except for there's a bunch of people walking around at like 6 a.m. I'm like, why aren't you in bed like I would be? And I'm I'm just sitting there idling at this traffic light, ready to pop the clutch to get out of Dodge any second if somebody comes up on me. I'm feeling the fear of the place that I'm in. That's the Jericho Road. You see, the Jericho Road is a place where St. Jerome tells us in the fifth century it was called the Bloody Way. Like, what if colonial was like, oh yeah, colonial, also known as the bloody way? How often would you ride your bike down colonial? Some of you are like, it is the bloody way for bike riders. Don't do that. Okay. Listen, this is a big deal. Why does this matter so much? Well, because it it means that this man ought to have known better. He was being foolish, maybe even reckless by walking on this road. And if doing and deserving are linked, then this man got what he had coming. That would have populated the imagination of the first hearers of this. They know the Jericho Road. And so Jesus goes on in verse 30. And he fell among robbers who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. See, if he had just been more responsible, then this wouldn't have happened to him. Do you hear that posturing that sometimes comes from the self-righteous towards those who are down and out? And the text says that he was half dead. This matters because every detail in Scripture matters. The Spirit of God does not waste his breath when he inspires Scripture. Look at verse 31. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, he passed by on the other side. Both the priest and the Levite are religious leaders, and so they knew that Numbers 19, verse 11 says, Whoever touches the dead body of any person shall be unclean for seven days. It's important that this guy was visibly half dead. And so if this man is dead, then if the priest touches him, he'd be unclean. And he's a priest, his job is to remain clean so he can do ministry in the temple. Either he gets, he stays away and remains ceremonial or clean, or he gets close to help this man in need. This is the predicament that he's in. And he chose the claims of ceremony over the claims of charity. The Levite was no better. He may have been in a hurry or afraid that the robbers could still be nearby. We don't really know, but but what we do know is that staying clean, being in a hurry, and fear have stopped many of us from loving people well, too. And so notice the they both says they saw and they moved away. We're gonna come back to this because now the lawyer is hearing the story, and I assume he's thinking, okay, Jesus, so it's not a priest, it's not a Levite, who's next? Who's gonna be the hero of the story? Maybe a lawyer, that'd be nice. Verse 33, but a Samaritan, not a Samaritan. That's not acceptable. Of all people, the trash of the world, the mudblood, the mixed race, the infidel, we have God given reasons to despise this kind of person. Jesus has gone too far. This is inappropriate, this is scandalous, this is devastating. If Jesus was alive today, he'd be canceled for this, and rightfully so. You should not have done this. Verse 33 But a Samaritan as he journeyed came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. You see, the priest saw and then stepped away. The Levite saw and then he stepped away. But the Samaritan came to where he was and then he saw. Do you notice the difference there? You see, postmodernism has taught us that what you see is largely dependent on where you stand. There's various names for this, but essentially your social location affects your perspective. Now, before you guys are like, uh-oh, Ben's going pomo on us, he's talking about postmodernism. What's next? Let me quote C.S. Lewis in the Magician's Nephew, a children's novel, for a moment here. This is what he says. What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are. So the Samaritan steps toward in order to see. And we see that in verse 33. And when he saw him, he had compassion. Psychologists call this attunement. Attunement is this experience, it goes beyond mere empathy. It's actually where your inner world resonates with their inner world. What that means is this man's pain brought the Samaritan pain. He felt for him. This is actually the foundation of healthy relationships. But here's the problem: if we're trying to justify ourselves, we short circuit attunement. You see, we won't feel compassion for other people's needs because we may feel a smug savior complex that we're better off than that person. That's why they need me or my, that's why I can show up and help them. Or we may feel contempt for the poor because their neediness reminds us of our own neediness. Both of which make it so that we cannot attune with the afflicted. Martin Luther King Jr. said it like this the priest and the Levite asked, if I stop to help this man, what will happen to me? The Samaritan reversed the question: if I don't stop to help this man, what will happen to him? You see, only the Samaritan will touch the man because he knows what it's like to be untouchable. He has mercy for those in need because he knows his need for mercy. Then he goes on and puts on a clinic in compassion. Verse 34, he went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil. He did that to ease the pain. And he poured on wine. He does that to clean the wounds. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. You see, biblically, all love is substitutionary. Self says, me before you. Love says me for you. What do I mean by that? Well, the wounded man was clearly too weak to walk, and so the Samaritan set him on his own animal, meaning he had to walk. He didn't just drop him off at the inn either. He actually stayed overnight and took care of him in the inn. Verse 35, and the next day, that's how we know he stayed overnight, he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay when I come back. There's an ancient historian who says that in Italy, around this time, it was about, you could stay in an inn for about a fraction of a denarius per day. So what that means is if rates were comparable in Jericho and in Italy at the same time, then the Samaritan was paying for about two months' worth of room and board. And if that wasn't enough, the Samaritan wrote a blank check to cover any other cost, saying, quote, whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back. You can summarize the Samaritan's love for with these words from the text. He saw, he had compassion, he gave. That's what neighbor love looks like. The Samaritan love without prejudice and without price. And so Jesus asks the lawyer in verse 36, which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers? And he said, The one who showed him mercy. And Jesus said to him, You go and do likewise. You can hear the disdain in the lawyer's heart. He can't even bring himself to say, the Samaritan. Oh, it's the one who showed mercy. And so there's something you gotta pay attention here. This is the other point, if you underline this question, this is where people I think go wrong in interpreting the parable of the good Samaritan. And I'm I want to show you from the text how I think you're supposed to read this. Notice Jesus' question. Which of these three proved to be a neighbor? Do you see what Jesus is doing here? This question is the clue to the whole story. Who does Jesus want the lawyer to identify with in the story? I think most of us would say the Good Samaritan, right? Go be like him. He even says, go and do likewise. That's the typical teaching on this story. But maybe that's true. Go and do likewise. That's definitely true, but not yet. You see, Jesus first asks the question: which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers? Whose perspective is he explicitly telling the lawyer to take? Who does he want him to imaginatively identify with? The half-dead man. You see, if the point of the story was, try to be like the good Samaritan, that doesn't deal with the lawyer's desire to justify himself, does it? You see, in the text, Jesus wants the lawyer to see himself as the utterly helpless man who fell among robbers, who needs mercy even from a Samaritan. That's where he wants the lawyer to start. Because only then is the desire to justify himself cut at the root. The problem is, is until the lawyer sees himself as the beaten, the broken, the helpless one, he will never be humbled. And so listen, this is my point about the Good Samaritan. It's not first about being loving like the Good Samaritan, but being loved by the Good Samaritan. So who is the Good Samaritan? Well, later in Luke 18, same author, same book, Jesus is on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem. And there's a man who everyone is passing by who cries out, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. And Jesus heals him. In the New Testament, the Greek verb for compassion in verse 33 is sponcnitzumai. I just have to say it. This is so fun to say. Splunknitzemai only shows up 12 times in the New Testament. And every single time, the subject, the one who's feeling compassion, is either God or Jesus, except one, the story of the Good Samaritan. As you read the Gospels, underline every time that it says that Jesus had compassion. Compassion is what comes over Jesus in waves. It's what drives him to heal the sick, to feed the hungry, to teach the crowds, to wipe away the tears of the bereaved. Jesus' motivation was compassion. B.B. Warfield wrote an article called The Emotional Life of Our Lord. It's free online. You can look it up. It's great. He says this the emotion which we should naturally expect to find most frequently attributed to Jesus, whose whole life was a mission of mercy, is no doubt compassion. More than any other emotion, Jesus feels compassion. Let that sink deep into your own heart. Let it correct your notions of Jesus as stern and cold. His heart broke and burned with compassion. His whole life was a mission of mercy. Jesus didn't just travel 17 miles from Jerusalem to Jericho. Jesus came from heaven down to earth, an impassable different distance. For what reason? To move into your neighborhood, to come close, to draw near to those with need. You see, Jesus stepped near so he could see our need. And he knows that we have battered bodies and shattered souls, and he doesn't just pass by on the other side. Instead, Jesus is not put off by your suffering or your sorrow, even if you should have known better. His heart wells up with compassion. Not even your sin can make him pass by on the other side. In fact, it's the very thing that moves him towards you. Why? Well, because unlike the Levite or the priest, every time Jesus encounters uncleanness, his purity prevails. Every time Jesus meets death, his life wins. His sacrificial mercy overcomes ritual purity. The only thing that motivates Jesus to pass us by is your desire to justify yourself. You see, nothing is more off-putting to Jesus than your sense of adequacy. Like if you're like, yeah, I got this, he's like, okay, you got this. I think that if you think you're fine on your own, he'll respect that. He's a gentleman, actually. He'll give you the distance that you demand, but if you feel your need for him, he always steps near. If you feel your need for Jesus even this morning, you can assume that that's his nearness in your life. And so to the skeptical and the cynical in the room, do you feel your need for Jesus this morning? To those of you who are self-justifying, do you feel your need for Jesus? To the weak or the wayward, do you feel your need for Jesus this morning? If so, then come let him bind up your wounds. Let him pour on the wine of his blood and the oil of his spirit. Let Jesus be the beast of burden who bears you on himself. Let Jesus take responsibility for all of your sin, all of your suffering, and all of your sorrow. Let him take care of the wounds from your own sin and the other sins against you. You see, the lawyer was right that eternal life is something to be inherited. And to receive an inheritance, you have to become an heir. And no amount of doing will make you into one. Keeping the law is a way of life, but it is not the way to life. Only Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. And he offers an inheritance to all who come to God through him to become heirs of eternal life. And so listen, what I'm saying is until you become the right sort of people, you will never do the right sort of things. And you can only love your neighbor like Jesus when you've been loved as a neighbor of Jesus. Brothers and sisters, only then can we go and do likewise. If Jesus is the good Samaritan, then each of us individually is the wounded man. So then why all this talk about the innkeeper? Jesus could have made his point, the story could have ended at verse 34. You see, the good Samaritan invites the innkeeper to share in his act of mercy. He entrusts him to steward his resources for the care of the man. The church, all of us together, we are the inn. The church does not merely do social justice, but rather the church is God's social justice. Jesus has given this gift and this task to the church to continue his acts of mercy in the world. New City gets to be a place of healing for those who need mercy. And here's the litmus test. Do the needy find a room full of people desiring to justify themselves? Or rather, do we have a culture where the weak and the wounded and the wayward can look around and see other people who need Jesus just as much as they do? Can the poor find a place alongside the rich because they also need Jesus? Because all of us need all of Jesus for all of life. Let us be a place where the healing that Jesus began at his own expense can continue at our expense. We want to be the kind of people who spend what we cannot keep to purchase what we cannot earn. Jesus has given us a blank check. Let us spend ourselves in love for the battered bodies and the shattered souls of the people of Orlando because Jesus will repay us when He returns. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we praise you. As the even better Samaritan, as the one who sees and has compassion and who gives. Holy Spirit, convince us of our need and our misery this morning apart from Jesus Christ. Persuade us of his not just ability, but willingness to have mercy on those of us who are weak and weary and sinful and suffering. Spirit of God, that's your work. Let us not desire to justify ourselves. Let us lay that deadly doing down, down at Jesus' feet, so we could stand in him and in him alone gloriously complete. We pray this in your name, Jesus. Amen.