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[0:00] Well, good morning, everyone. It has been a privilege to get to know some of you so far.

[0:13] It is definitely, I could definitely tell right away that this is a warm and loving church that is certainly under good leadership.

[0:24] Thank you.

[0:54] Thank you. You know, normally, although it is, as you could imagine, difficult to be away from your local body in Christ, not communing and worshiping with the brothers and sisters that you love and cherish so dearly, I love taking opportunities like this because it gives me the honor and the privilege to connect with other cherished brothers and sisters that otherwise I would never get to connect with until we got to glory.

[1:30] So this is truly a blessing to me, my wife and mother-in-law. My little son could not be here this morning, as mentioned.

[1:41] And they send their sincerest apologies about that, but Lord willing, we'll see what the future holds for maybe another opportunity down the line.

[1:55] So with that being said, I'll read the text, I'll pray real quick, and then we'll get into the scripture.

[2:06] I'm going to be preaching from the parable of the good Samaritan. If you're not already there, it's going to be Luke 10, 25 through 37. And I'll be reading from the ESV version.

[2:20] If you have a different translation than I do, just please follow along as closely as possible. And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?

[2:35] 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.

[2:49] 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?

[3:05] 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.

[3:18] Now by chance a priest was going down that road and saw him and 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.

[3:36] But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was. And when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine.

[3:53] 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, gave them to the innkeeper, saying, Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.

[4:14] Which of these do you think proved to be a 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.

[4:30] Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for today. Thank you for the opportunity to dive in to what your word says. And as we seek to use your scripture, not just as a quest for knowledge, but to use it to transform our lives.

[4:50] Father, I thank you for today. I thank you that we can gather and worship you. And I pray that your spirit would be upon us and that we would seek to be steady in mind, steady in heart, as we seek to see what your spirit has to say to us regarding this parable that Jesus taught.

[5:17] Father, I pray that as we're sitting here worshiping you today, I pray that you would be with Pastor Jeff as he recovers. May we continue to pray for him and please heal him as we're thinking about him as we worship here today.

[5:36] I pray all these things for your honor and for your glory. And I pray this to you. Okay, so the first slide I have up here is kind of how I broke this little section of scripture down.

[5:54] If you want to read that. I have it broken up and as Luke records it, four different dialogues taking place here. And I just want to emphasize the main propositional statement that I got out of this.

[6:12] So by recording this dialogue between Jesus and the lawyer, Luke is proposing to his audience that there is no justification in the law, only condemnation.

[6:22] Okay, and this fits the broader narrative of Luke's gospel and I would also say the other gospels as well, that all of man is condemned before God.

[6:35] Man is in desperate need of a Savior and Jesus Christ is that Savior. So, starting just a little bit before we get into the text proper.

[6:49] So if you're like many Americans across the country, you likely heard of the assassination attempt yesterday before, likely right after its occurrence.

[7:05] You likely saw the replays on the news. Or you might be like many Americans across the country who, like myself, were watching it live as the chaos ensued.

[7:18] Now, my point of mentioning that is not to make any kind of political statement from the pulpit where it has no business. My purpose in saying that is more so to make a theological assertion.

[7:36] Although I will say, as a sidebar, you know, this we should strongly consider, just as Greg said a few moments ago, if we want to be a praying church, to renew our commitment to 1 Timothy 2, when Paul issues an imperative to Timothy to be praying for both the nation and the king.

[8:05] So, the atrocities like yesterday have played out across the world every minute of every day and go largely unheard of.

[8:21] These atrocities have been occurring for thousands of years, dating back to the very moment of creation, moments after creation, such as in Genesis 4, when we see Cain killing his brother Abel.

[8:39] All of this can be traced to a single hopeless condition, the totally depraved state inherent to all of mankind as a result of the fall in Genesis 3.

[8:53] And today, we are going to evaluate one such case of total depravity in this parable, which likely and unfortunately resulted in the eternal death of a lawyer who is also a Pharisee.

[9:10] So, with that being said, has anybody heard of the bad news, good news method of evangelism? It is essentially, for those who don't know, it's essentially a method where prior to communicating the good news of Jesus Christ, the person who is seeking to evangelize an unbeliever is giving the bad news of that person's current state of affairs, which includes ideas of sin, divine wrath, condemnation, the inability to please God, and the ultimate consequence of it all, eternal separation from God in hell for all of eternity.

[9:59] That is the bad news. So, the parable of the good Samaritan, I've been working through the parables recently, and although it's probably the most well-known parable that Jesus taught, it largely goes misunderstood in my experience.

[10:18] Over the years, the good Samaritan has been interpreted for many points. As early as the second century, Origen interpreted this parable as allegory for the gospel.

[10:34] Others have interpreted it as how you're supposed to treat people, anything that has to do with social justice, how to be a neighbor, how we as Christians should care and love for one another, strangers and our enemies.

[10:51] So much so that we have Franklin Graham's charity called the Samaritan's Purse, and we have laws in our country which are called Good Samaritan laws, where untrained civilians who act during an emergency situation are protected from any criminal or civil liability of their intervention.

[11:16] Although there's absolutely nothing wrong with any of those things I just mentioned, the reason why I asked you about that evangelism question is because what I hope to show you today from the text, what Jesus is doing in the parable of the Good Samaritan is taking a hard-hearted, arrogant, prideful, unbelieving lawyer and showing him the bad news.

[11:52] So just one quick administrative point about parables. The word parable, that's parable in the Greek, means to cast alongside.

[12:05] Jesus frequently used this as a teaching method. Parables illustrate spiritual truth. Jesus, when he taught in parables, now although parables are good at illustrating truth, the primary purpose of teaching in parables, we find in Matthew 13, 13-15, the primary purpose of a parable is to conceal spiritual truth in which Jesus did not want to reveal to certain people for certain reasons.

[12:47] Jesus did this as a form of judgment against Israel. He did this as a form of judgment against those who were indifferent or hardened against the kingdom message that Jesus was preaching in his gospel ministry.

[13:04] He taught clearly and plainly to those who did come and seek truth. But I would propose for two other reasons, Jesus taught in parables in order not to give Israel the kingdom.

[13:21] The first reason, as we also see in the Matthew 13 text, is because Jesus acknowledges that if he taught openly and plainly in his kingdom message, that eventually Israel would repent and accept the kingdom.

[13:39] Now although that sounds kind of like, whoa, Jesus, why are you doing that? Isn't that the whole reason why you're here? So although, yes, he was preaching a message of the kingdom, I would propose two things.

[13:53] One is that Israel was not ready at that particular point in history to accept the kingdom. The second reason goes back to God's sovereignty, which we talked about and prayed through just earlier, and that is it was not yet time on God's prophetic timeline to bring in the kingdom.

[14:14] And thankfully, us as Gentiles, God did that for our own good because now we are grafted in to God's plan of salvation.

[14:25] So setting the historical situation of this parable, Jesus had just cast his woe judgments on the unrepentant, unbelieving cities.

[14:35] The disciples came back from going out two by two, preaching the kingdom. In Matthew 21 and 22, the parallel accounts leading up to this, to the Good Samaritan, Jesus was firing off parable after parable, preaching about the kingdom.

[14:55] It is here where Matthew records that the Sadducees challenged Jesus on the resurrection. The Sadducees were the liberal theologians of Jesus' day, and they did not believe in a physical resurrection of the body that we do.

[15:14] And that is why they were sad, you see. I'll dig in. That's as good as it gets today, I promise. But it wasn't just the Sadducees that were in the crowd listening to Jesus speak.

[15:31] There were lawyers and Pharisees in the crowd as well. And after Jesus refutes the Sadducean theology about the resurrection from the Old Testament, what prompts this lawyer to ask, this whole encounter with the Sadducees is what prompts this lawyer in Luke 10 to ask Jesus about his personal eschatology.

[16:00] And that's prompted by the question, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Now this question is going to be critically important to contextualizing this parable.

[16:14] It means that everything that Jesus teaches in this parable must be viewed in the boundaries of inheriting eternal life.

[16:29] As you can see, I have outlined this sermon in four points, each containing a dialogue between Jesus and the Pharisee.

[16:40] Dialogue one, just to give you a quick outline on the screen, Jesus is challenged on his personal eschatology. On the second dialogue, the lawyer is going to quote from the Shema, and Jesus is going to give his answer to that.

[16:57] In dialogue three, the lawyer gives a technical, the lawyer seeks a technical definition of who is my neighbor, which prompts the parable proper.

[17:11] And on the fourth dialogue, Jesus asks if the lawyer understands who the neighbor was in the parable, and to his condemnation, the lawyer does.

[17:22] And this follows Jesus dismissing the lawyer with an impossible call to obedience. But now getting into the text proper, dialogue one, verses 25 and 26, And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

[17:48] He said to him, What is written in the law? How do you recite it? So in the text, Luke starts out with the phrase, Behold.

[17:59] Now whenever you see behold in Scripture, this is the author's way of saying, Take a pause. You're not going to believe what is about to transpire here.

[18:11] It's an emphatic way of getting your attention. This lawyer, who we also know as a Pharisee through Matthew's parallel account, stands up and questions Jesus.

[18:25] This lawyer is an expert in the law. Now we're not talking about civil law or criminal law. We're talking about Jewish religious law. Because they were experts in Jewish religious law, that's why the Pharisees usually were accompanied by them.

[18:46] When Pharisees sought to confront Jesus for the purpose of accusing them, they always had lawyers with them because they were always looking for a reason to crush Jesus' gospel ministry.

[19:01] As previously discussed, the lawyers and the Pharisees witnessing Jesus' interaction with the Sadducees is what prompted this lawyer to put Jesus to the test.

[19:13] Now this isn't like a knowledge check for the purpose of verifying information. This has negative connotations written all over it. First, he was accompanied, he was a Pharisee.

[19:28] It was, he was there to not only test him in the sense that it was a trap to accuse him. Now you can also see some negative connotations in the text just by the very fact that this lawyer addressed Jesus as teacher instead of master or lord.

[19:54] The very fact that he calls him teacher affirms that this lawyer did not in the least buy into the claims that Jesus made about himself being the Messiah.

[20:11] So, as I suggested in the text, in the introduction, there are many erroneous views by how this parable is taken and I just want to reemphasize that as we work through this parable down through verse 37, everything has to be viewed within the context of salvation according to the Old Testament law.

[20:40] So, according to the Old Testament law, what thing must I do to earn my way into heaven on my own merits? That is essentially what this Pharisee slash lawyer stood up and asked Jesus.

[20:56] But now, Jesus is essentially going to put the ball back in the Pharisee's court and give him pushback. So, Jesus hears the question about what thing must I do to inherit eternal life and replies to the lawyer's question with another question.

[21:14] These two questions, to be more specific, is what is written in the law and how do you recite it? Now, in the original Greek language with that second question, how do you recite it?

[21:26] There are only actually two words in the Greek. the word for how and the word for read. And that word for read is not so much read as we would do from a book.

[21:40] It is more so, comes with the idea of reciting orally. So, in a sense, the way you can understand Jesus' question is, how do you personally recite out loud what the law has to say about inheriting eternal life?

[22:02] And in the following verse, which leads us to dialogue two, the lawyer gives an answer straight out of the Old Testament.

[22:15] Verses 27 and 28. 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 with all and your neighbor as yourself.

[22:26] And he said to him, you have answered correctly, do this and you will live. Now, according to the lawyer's own mouth and his own condemnation, The things he must do to inherit eternal life by his own merit are found in the Old Testament law and both involve love.

[22:53] The lawyer cites two verses from Deuteronomy and one from Leviticus which, when you put them together, act as basically a summary statement for the entire Old Testament law.

[23:11] The lawyer first cites from the Shema which is the Jewish profession of faith which the Jewish people said once or twice per day.

[23:23] And that Shema is found in Deuteronomy 6, 4-5 and it states, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind.

[23:34] So the first thing you must do to inherit eternal life by the law has to do with your love for God. According to the law you need to love God and when Moses writes this he records four manners by which you must do this perfectly.

[23:56] So allow me to rephrase kind of what this Shema says. you must love God perfectly with your everything. Your total human constitution must always be perfectly in love with God.

[24:17] Now although I do not think this is possible supposedly this idea was going around that it was in their world at the time but suppose it was theoretically possible to have perfect love for God the one like Jesus had.

[24:38] A consequence of that would inevitably result in loving your neighbor as yourself. The second thing the lawyer needed to do to inherit eternal life based on the law and his own merit is to perfectly love his neighbor as himself and that comes from Leviticus 19.18 As we know from Matthew 22 these two together are the two greatest commandments by which all of the law and the prophets hang on.

[25:17] So according to the lawyer's knowledge of the Old Testament if you want to keep the law perfectly and inherit eternal life you need to love God perfectly and man perfectly seems simple enough right?

[25:34] Jesus tells the lawyer you hit the nail right on the head the law is correct and your interpretation of the law is correct but there's a problem Jesus says do this and you will live you will live is future tense which comes with the implication that the lawyer does not currently have eternal life based on his own merit and righteousness you see the lawyer did not see it that way though as a testimony to his blind and sinful state so let even though the lawyer thought that he at that very moment was justified and you will see that here in a moment we know that it is impossible to keep the law and earn meritorious salvation we know that we have the full canon of scripture 2000 years later from this moment but for a moment let's consider the revelation that the lawyer had at this point in history while he was speaking to Jesus so this lawyer as we discussed already he was an expert in the law okay this lawyer should have known the systematic theology from the

[27:15] Tanakh the Hebrew Bible which affirms the total depravity of mankind a state not compatible with God with man loving God with their total human constitution the lawyer knew of Genesis 3 which affirms that sin and corruption entered humanity the lawyer knew about Genesis 4 which affirms Adam and Eve's sin spreads to the rest of mankind the lawyer knew Proverbs 14 which affirms that all of man's ways lead to death the lawyer knew Isaiah 64 which affirms all of man is unclean the lawyer knew Psalm 51 which affirms that every single person at the moment of their conception is born is conceived into an iniquitous state so the lawyer had no grounds to presume that his love for God was perfect let alone a basis for meritorious salvation so again

[28:39] I say the law serves as a source of condemnation therefore it is impossible to love God according to the law with your everything that is why Jesus essentially tells this lawyer you are saying but not doing you can tell me the standard you can articulate the standard to me but you're not currently living to my standard of loving God and loving your neighbor as yourself as if that wasn't bad enough for the lawyer might I add the word do in the Greek is an imperative when Jesus says do this and you will live the word do is a verb an imperative form in the Greek it's in the present active tense which comes with the idea of this lawyer having to continuously meet this perfect standard moment by moment second by second for the rest of his life to inherit eternal life according to the law so in essence

[29:48] Jesus says do this and you will live really he is condemning the lawyer's idea that he is satisfying the law perfectly and you can be sure be sure that this is exactly the way that the lawyer took Jesus' response because as we transition to the third dialogue we read but he desiring to justify himself said to Jesus and who is my neighbor the lawyer's instinctual reactionary statement to Jesus after condemning him for not living up to the law's demands is to justify himself as Luke records now by justify let me unpack that for just a second this lawyer is seeking to do what only God can do he is making a legal declaration of his own supposed internal righteous state and according to the law by challenging this whole ordeal the purpose of him seeking to justify himself is by challenging the son of man on a technical definition of what qualifies neighbors what I suspect was the lawyer's way of saying well I'm loving God perfectly

[31:29] I'm loving my neighbor perfectly let's just make sure that me and this teacher both have the same definition of what a neighbor actually is and this question who is my neighbor cuts right to the very core of this lawyer's problem as Jesus mercifully trying to expose to him just how filthy of a rag this lawyer's self righteousness is the reason the lawyer asked this question is because Jewish legalism perverted the very definition of who was considered your neighbor to simplify it for the sake of time in the Old Testament your neighbor had the same definition as the New Testament your neighbor is anyone you encounter up to including your enemy but in asking this question the lawyer was looking to exempt himself from any wrongdoing because he already had a prideful and preconceived notion of who was to be considered his neighbor in the mind of the religious elite of that day if you weren't one of them you were not considered their neighbor and if you weren't their neighbor they could treat you like scum like scum and according to their perverted views of

[33:00] Old Testament theology they would still be justified in the law by treating other people in that manner who wasn't one of them so a proper response instead of looking to justify himself now just for a moment here let's consider what a proper response to do this and you shall live what would that have looked like the lawyer could have said how do I love God and my neighbor according to the law what can I do that I'm not doing right now according to the law the perfect answer would have been I cannot meet the demands of the law now what that would have been the perfect question that he could answer because the solution to that problem was standing right before him having that very dialogue with the lawyer but in his arrogance his legalistic love was already perfect he was confident that his love for

[34:15] Yahweh was perfect as well as his love for neighbor the only thing he wanted to make sure as I said that him and Jesus both had the same definition Jesus knew this lawyer was too high on his horse to acknowledge his need for a savior let alone in a state to receive the gospel message of a savior this lawyer needed to be brought down low and see his depravity and to see how infinitely short he fell of God's standard so in response to this the lawyer in response to the lawyer's claim of self-justification and to clear up the definition of neighbor Jesus tells the parable of the good Samaritan the parable is really broken up into three parts verse 30 sets the context verse 31 through 32 shows the standard or shows the lawyer who

[35:21] Jesus how Jesus wants the lawyer to see himself inside of the parable in verse 33 through 34 gives one brief illustration of what loving a neighbor looks like according to the law it's the standard which the lawyer falls desperately short but with that let's evaluate how Jesus sets up the context of the parable in verse 30 a man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among robbers who stripped him and beat him and departed leaving him half dead now on the screen I'm going to show you a couple illustrations so just for background knowledge the road from Jerusalem to Jericho was geographically dangerous as not only geographically dangerous but also people committed crimes on it as well as you could see as marked from the green line there on the screen the route was about 17 miles long and dropped from about 3,000 feet over those 17 miles as you go to

[36:58] Jericho the route had many twists and turns and 400 foot fissures along the way with many caves and rocks and many places for robbers to hide with no help for miles in either direction it was common knowledge that the main road from Jericho to Jerusalem had a long history of what we would call today as armed robbery so much so that this path that we're seeing here on the screen is actually known at that time as the bloody way or the bloody path more often than not people traveled on this road armed and in Jesus' story a man of an unknown ethnicity for an unknown reason was traveling on this dangerous route to Jericho he took a very dangerous route and as a consequence in the story had his stuff stolen and he had the snot beat out of him 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 the place saw him and passed by on the other side so just some background into the two people that Jesus mentions here

[38:29] Levites were priests but not from Aaron although the priests were in the 24 courses of the priests who were sons of Levi they were also sons of Aaron whereas the Levites have no claim to Aaron in either case both the priests and the Levite were well astute in the law they would have known God's expectation of treating sojourners like their enemies from the law so they would have known their obligation to the man who just got beat up they would have known it just as the people hearing the story would have known their obligation as well so they would have known their obligations just as just as Jesus very well knew their obligations I mean Jesus it could be argued that Jesus was the one giving the instructions to them in the book of

[39:32] Exodus and Levite so because of that I think here in verse 30 it is Jesus' intent for the lawyer and the rest of the Pharisees and religious elite of that day to see themselves in the priest and the Levite thus serving as an indictment against them I think it is most clearly seen by Luke's usage of the Greek phrase pass by in verse 30b the word in the original Greek has the prefix anti in front of it denoting it was a conscious and deliberate act of neglecting mercy to this beaten man for no other reason other than I consciously went to the other side of the road consciously aware of this man being in this state on the road and I think this is very appropriate because not only does this lawyer miss the standard of loving his neighbor as himself but as we see in the prior dialogue of him wishing to justify himself he is deliberately seeking to get out of his obligation of love based on a technical definition of neighbor now some commentators at this point get really weird with this section of scripture as why the

[41:10] Levite and the priest would not have helped the beaten man everything from touching blood and being defiled to touching a potential dead body and being defiled to not knowing if the robbers were still nearby now aside from that usage of the Greek of deliberately neglecting their obligation might I remind you that this is a parabolic lesson it is a story Jesus used to teach a lesson the reason why Jesus passed why they passed by the man in the story serves the point of Jesus lesson first they knew what the hearers of the parable would have known they were obligated to help given their positions and knowledge of the Shema and the rest of the Old Testament law and what it said about loving others up to and including your enemies and that is

[42:11] Exodus 23 4 second the priest and Levite did what we would call sin by omission they knew what God's law commanded them to do they knew the expectation but deliberately took no action to fulfill that obligation and next we're going to see what Jesus is going to give his illustration of what being neighborly looks like but a Samaritan as he journeyed came to where he was and when he saw him he had compassion 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 the next day he took out two denarii gave it to them and gave it to them to the innkeeper saying take care of him and whatever more you spend

[43:27] I will repay you when I come back so just to give a brief significance of why Jesus brings a Samaritan into his story so Jesus is contrasting the lawyer's sin of omission with what it looks like to be a neighbor so as far as the Samaritans having this interaction with the beaten man so the reason why all of this is significant is in 772 BC Assyria conquered Israel and took most of its people into captivity the invaders then brought Gentile colonists to resettle in the land and we see this from 2nd Kings 17 the worship alongside so not only were they bringing in their pagan idols who resettled in the land but the remaining

[44:31] Jews actually began to worship these pagans alongside the God of Israel and again this is seen in 2nd Kings 17 and as we know from Ezra and Nehemiah chapters 9 and 13 respectively intermarriages were also taking place between the Jewish people and the pagans around them so in fast forward to Jesus day the Samaritans were deeply despised and viewed as half breed dogs by the pure blooded Jews after 70 years of captivity of Judah by the Babylonians the Samaritans deeply opposed the repatriotization and tried to undermine any attempt to reestablish the nation so their part the full-blooded monotheistic

[45:35] Jews detested the mixed marriages and worship of their northern cousins so walls of bitterness were erected on both sides and all that existed was hatred and hard-heartedness between these enemies for the next 550 years so with that information the hearers of this parable at the time are essentially going to suspect that the Samaritan is likely going to follow the path of the Levite and the priest they are not going to expect such rich and selfless care to another person from the Samaritan and I would argue that in fact the opposite the opposite would be true that the evil half-blooded Samaritan would have neglected the man which is why when this is taught by Jesus not only would this be seen as taboo but most certainly culturally shocking and inconceivable now

[46:48] Jesus is going to go on and show what contrasted by the sin of omission Jesus is going to now demonstrate in verse 34 and 35 what an act of commission being neighborly looks like this man was half beaten and dead implying that he was in a very bad condition wounded all over his body furthering this idea of the man having open wounds all over his body the Samaritan ended up pouring out a generous amount of oil and wine over the wound it was their way of sanitizing and soothing the wounds in their day he then bound them up which was likely soliciting imagery of the Samaritan man tearing his own garments to be used as bandages he then set him on his own beast of burden and took him to an end when

[47:56] Jesus taught he obviously did so with culturally relevant things but here is no different as that one out of every six parabolic verses that Jesus speaks has to do in some form with money so the reason I say that is because the next day implying that the Samaritan spent the night with this man tending to his wounds and his need has to continue on with his journey this very generous Samaritan who already gave so much lavish care to this man and out of pocket expenses when considering the oil the wine and the bandages now takes out payment and gives it to the innkeeper he gives the equivalent of two days worth of wages the denarius was a daily wage but don't let that number fool you as far as the generosity goes so according to archaeological finds in that area during

[49:11] Jesus day what would have been known is that that two denarius depending on the quality of the inn could have been anywhere from a three day stay to a three month stay that was just paid for by the Samaritan man and on top of that on top of that essentially the Samaritan says to the innkeeper keep the meter running put it all on my tab I will take care of every single cost that this stranger accrues during my absence and you'll have it paid all by me by the time I get back brothers and sisters if this parable even if

[50:12] Jesus told this parable to one of us in our day as believers who are in the know who know the Bible who know the scriptures can you imagine such conviction of a standard of loving as God loves to love God so much that you would just love one enemy like this let alone your neighbor and everyone you encounter I know when I was preparing this sermon I just felt so overwhelmingly convicted of just what this lawyer should have been feeling I felt so overwhelmingly convicted of just how short I fall of what Christ's expectation of what loving God and what loving man looks like but moving to the moving to the fourth dialogue here so

[51:22] Jesus he demonstrates the lawyer and the priest and the Levite and contrast that with the very rich and generous love of the Samaritan and now Jesus is going to check in now he's going to check back in after teaching this lawyer and find out if he learned what Jesus meant to communicate verses 36 through 37 which of these three do you think proved 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 now in verse 36 we see Jesus putting the lawyer to the test ironically the lawyer now finds himself in the same exact shoes he desired to place Jesus in during the onset of all of this

[52:23] Jesus now asks the lawyer an accusative question putting him to the test after reaching the climax of what an impossible standard of loving your neighbor as yourself looks like Jesus asked who proved or literally in the Greek who became the neighbor and I like how one commentator James Edwards how he puts it paraphrasing him he says the lawyer started off with the idea of neighbor being a noun but by the time we reached the end of Jesus story we see that Jesus it's with Jesus it's not a noun with Jesus loving your neighbor is a verb it's an action of doing and then in verse 37 there's really no way around it the lawyer acknowledged that his people the priests the

[53:29] Levite the Bible experts the Bible teachers the religious men of God the two who knew better were sinners by omission there was no room by the end of that story for the priest or the Levite to have a favorable outlook with God it was the Samaritan the ethnic outcast of Jewish society which applied God's law appropriately in contrast to the religious elite who supposedly knew better and so Jesus woe judgments that he gives following this parable in Matthew following this parable in Matthew 23 proves to be true woe to them for being hypocrites portraying themselves outwardly as righteous yet inwardly they are full of dead man's bones Jesus parable taught what the law clearly taught anyone around you everyone you encounter even if it's your ethnic enemy is considered your neighbor and you need to love them perfectly brothers and sisters this is why this parable is a parable of bad news when was the last time you treated so sacrificially and richly anybody your own family yourself let alone a stranger or an enemy as I've been saying all throughout this message

[55:13] Jesus is the only one who can live a love like this only Jesus has this type of love and dare I say woe be the day where I as a follower and disciple of Jesus Christ ever claim I can what the lawyer claimed and that was I can love exactly and perfectly as Jesus does having heard this the lawyer should have viewed himself as being self righteous and prideful in a negative light he should have seen himself as an unbeliever falling short of God's expectation and what he should have done after hearing this lesson from

[56:18] Jesus is cast himself prostrate at the feet of Jesus begged him for mercy saying son of man have mercy on me a wretched sinner no parable is clear as to why Jesus taught in parables to conceal truth Jesus knew this lawyer's heart was hardened not only against him but the gospel and spiritual truth to which he was not interested in hearing from Jesus that is why in closing Jesus dismissed this lawyer by telling him you go and do likewise despite Jesus knowing full well that this lawyer could never do such a thing so as believers today what should be our response to the parable of the good

[57:19] Samaritan first I have three different applications for this first I believe as believers we should see clearly in the text what it truly means to have a godly standard of how to love your neighbor and who your neighbor is even though we all myself included as Paul would say I'm referring to myself as the chief sinner here even though we all fall short of this standard desperately short we should all try to emulate this type of love because in Jesus' parable we see exactly how Jesus illustrates what loving your neighbor as yourself looks like from his perspective secondly as believers when we evangelize in our personal life just as Jesus did in this parable we must avoid what I call

[58:22] Barney salvation we need to communicate the bad news to the unbeliever that we're communicating to because let's face it if the unbeliever doesn't know how wicked and desperately they need a savior what is going to prompt them to think that they need a savior in the first place it's like the age old added you see the graffiti on the side of the bridge or the train cart Jesus is the answer and then somebody comes along and writes another graffiti saying well what's the problem so we need to make sure that we are yes communicating Jesus as the answer but making sure the unbeliever knows that they are in a very grave and desperate problem they need to know like the lawyer should have that they need to see themselves how they truly are an unholy vessel of sin and unrighteousness under divine wrath and condemnation hopelessly destined to hell for all of eternity in a state of severe and conscious torment both physical and spiritual it is when you see yourself in this condition that you realize your desperate need for

[59:54] Christ and lastly I trust this is not the case but if you are here under the sound of my voice today relying on any other means of righteousness other than the righteousness of Jesus Christ credited to you at the moment of your salvation to get to heaven and to be right with God friend I warn you you are the person that Jesus spoke about in this parable you are that lawyer there is no ability of your own to be righteous you cannot do anything to earn your way into a status of favor with God any attempt to do so any attempt to getting to heaven or being right with God under your own righteousness will just end up in eternal sorrows just how this lawyer likely ended up so right now if that is you what I would call you to do is in your seat quietly to call out to

[61:05] God acknowledge your sinful state and communicate to God that you are solely trusting on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sin and you wish to invite him into your life as both your Lord and your Savior and if you do that I can tell you based on the authority of God's own words that not only will you be absolved of all your sin but you will be given Jesus' total righteousness I like to say if Jesus paid 100% if you get 100% in return why do you need additional one you can't earn the additional one or two percent based on your own merit because you're already capped off at 100% of Jesus' righteousness which is the only thing worthy of heaven let's pray heavenly father we thank you for today we thank you for the parable of the good

[62:21] Samaritan we thank you that you are so merciful and gracious to show us how desperately short we fall of your perfect standard we are even more emphatically grateful that you have given us a way out you have given us a way to escape and that escape route is what Jesus called the narrow path that escape route is Christ himself and his righteousness and his ability to keep the law perfectly satisfying himself as perfectly righteous being able to give us that righteousness when we trust in him alone as the source of our salvation father we thank you for Christ we thank you for his love for us we thank you that we came to earth to die the most painful and brutal death for a bunch of evil wretched depraved sinners who truthfully deserve and would have been just in spending all of eternity in hell but your grace and your mercy is so abundant father and we thank you that

[63:54]  Christ was willing to love you so much and to love us so much by coming and being our sacrificial lamb and by his blood we are washed clean father use this parable to embolden us to go out like sheeps among wolves and give this same news to an unbelieving world who's so desperately needs it and who's falling away and father I pray all this for the honor and the glory and the namesake of Jesus Christ amen