Now if you'd open your Bibles
to Luke chapter 10. We'll begin reading at verse
25. This is a story that I imagine everyone here is familiar with.
On one occasion, an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. Teacher, he asked, what must
I do to inherit eternal life? What is written in the law? He
replied, how do you read it? He answered, 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 love your neighbor as yourself. You have answered correctly,
Jesus replied. Do this and you will live. But he wanted to justify himself,
so he asked Jesus, and who is my neighbor? In reply, Jesus
said, a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when he
fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes,
beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened
to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed
by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came
to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan,
as he traveled, came where the man was, and when he saw him,
he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his
wounds and pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on
his own donkey, took him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day, he took out two
silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. Look after him,
he said, and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense
you may have. Which of these three do you think
was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of Roberts?"
The expert in the law replied, the one who had mercy on him. Jesus told him, go and do likewise. Now when our Lord was confronted
with questions, it was His pattern to do one of two things. If it was a bad question, and
you know we come with a lot of bad questions. Maybe it's not
even bad questions, it's just not the important stuff. But when someone came to Him
with a question that really wasn't important, He would ignore it
and answer them what they needed to know. You look sometimes as
you read through the Gospels, the accounts of our Lord's interactions
with people, and sometimes His answers seem to have nothing
to do with the question they asked. And I can only conclude
that that's because the question they asked wasn't worth answering. So He answered them with something
that would be useful to him, that is useful to the questioner.
And then there were cases like this, where someone asked him
a question, and he could have given a fuller answer, or he
could have said, you asked the wrong question, or you asked
your question wrong. He could have done that, but
instead he just answered the question as it was asked to him. Now, whether he corrected your
question or answered your question as you gave it depended in large
part upon his attitude toward you. I say you, whoever asked
the questions. Our Lord said, I will be gracious
to whom I will be gracious, I will be merciful to whom I will be
merciful. And there were some to whom our
Lord was gracious and corrected them, gave them the answer He
knew that they needed. Others, they asked their questions
and what He told them was true. But it was not really what their
soul needed to hear. At least it was not what their
soul needed to hear in a way that they could hear it. So often people think that our
Lord spoke in parables so that people could easily understand
what He was saying. But the Scriptures tell us exactly
the opposite. I will speak to them in parables,
so that seeing they will see not, and hearing they will hear
not." He would teach, sometimes quite
plainly, sometimes by the use of parables. Most people, it
went right over their heads. Some would be like that soil
where there was, you know, rock underneath. And it just wasn't
like rocks that you could pick out of a field or anything. Now,
what they were talking about when the Lord said there was
rocky ground or stony ground, it was just a little bit of soil
and then just like a huge rock underneath. But there were people
who were like that and they would receive his word with joy. But later, they just wither and
die. Now there were some who received
His Word, and they received it and bore fruit. And here's the
reason. Because God, being gracious to them, gave them eyes that
truly see and ears that truly hear, and they understood. But that was not God's intention
with everyone. Do you know the truth? Thank God. Literally. Thank God,
because the only reason you know it, even as the vast majority
of people in the world don't know it, is because God was pleased
to give you a heart to receive what he said. This man came to the Lord Jesus.
He did not come to learn something. because he thought he already
knew everything. It said he stood up to test Jesus. Now think of that. The Lord of glory expressed as
a human being is standing there. He's been working miracles all
over the place. And yet this man comes to Him
to put Him to the test. Now, John the Apostle told us,
test the spirits to see if they be of God. And it would not have
been wrong for this man to test Jesus had he been using the right
standard. When someone speaks to us, no
matter who it is, I mean, after all, our Lord Jesus, He's God
in human flesh, but all they could see was the flesh. To them,
He was just another man preaching. And we always put a person's
preaching to the test. I wouldn't want anyone to come
listen to me and just take what I say as true without checking
it out. Even the Apostle Paul considered
the Thessalonians, excuse me, the Bereans to be of more noble
nature than had been the Thessalonians. It says, because after they heard
Paul, they went home and searched the scriptures to see if these
things be so. But when this man came to test
the Lord Jesus, he did not use the scriptures as a standard. He used his own understanding
as the standard by which he would judge the Lord. He came before
the very one who is the standard and by whom all will be judged.
He came to him and said, I'm going to judge you and the standard
I'm going to use is me. How do I know that? Verse 29,
he wanted to justify himself. He thought he was right. Now, I think I'm right. But you wouldn't believe how
many times I pray to the Lord. Lord, if I'm not right, correct
me. I would rather be corrected than
be wrong. Not just for my sake, but for
the sake of everybody that listens to me. to point anyone to the broad
road that leads to destruction. I don't want me going there. But people get so tied up in
what they already believe. And the older people get, the
more they get this way. But you can't change their mind. They are convinced they are right. Such was this man. This man did not come to the
Lord Jesus hungering and thirsting for righteousness. Why? He'd been feeding on his own
filthy rag righteousness. He'd been feeding on the putrefying
meat of his own goodness in the swamp water of his own morality,
and he was satisfied with it. So when he came to the Lord Jesus,
he wasn't hungering and thirsting. He was upset. He'd heard what
Jesus was saying, the report had come to him, as it came to
the other leaders among the Jews, the Pharisees, the Sadducees.
And our translation says expert in the law. If you're accustomed
to the King James, that's the word normally translated scribe. This fellow certainly knew what
the law said, didn't know what the Old Testament Scriptures
meant, but he did know what they said. But he came there not in hope
of receiving a righteousness. He brought his own with him. And he did not come looking for
a Savior. I think that's one reason a lot
of people never do find Christ. They're not looking for a Savior.
They're looking for a helper. They're looking for a friend,
and I don't deny he's a helper and a friend, but he is none
of those things until he's a Savior. What is a Savior? Well, when
you understand that the word translated in our New Testament,
most often translated as save, savior, saved, all those things,
it might well be translated a rescuer. Now, if you need rescued, you
don't just need help. If you need rescued, that means
you are in a situation you cannot fix. People normally don't call for
a rescue until they have exhausted every avenue of their own self-help
and found it to be unsatisfactory and not equal to the task. Most people don't think they
need a Savior. They think they've done somewhat. My glass is partly full. I just
need someone to top it off for me. I've done the best I can. And while I'm not perfect, you
know, people say, I'm not perfect. I want to say, but I bet you
think you are. I'm not perfect. Well, if you're
not perfect, you're just the same as those
who have nothing. For to be guilty in any point
of the law is to be guilty of all of it. The judgment of God
is pass or fail. There's no grading on a curve.
There's no do-overs. This man did not come looking
for Christ for what he was, therefore he did not recognize Christ for
what he was. And so he asked, What must I
do to inherit eternal life? Now, on the one hand, there is
nothing wrong with that question. And less like the Lord Jesus
Christ, you can see into the heart of a man. The scriptures
say of the Lord Jesus Christ that he didn't have to have anyone
tell him what was in a man. He already knew. And when this man stood up, the
Lord already knew him through and through. He knew what he
was. He knew the state of his heart
and mind. He knew what the man meant by his question. Now, some
years later, a jailer in the city of Philippi would come to
Paul and say, what must I do to be saved? And Paul answered
him the same way I would answer anyone who asked me that question. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and you will be saved. But this man, being an expert
in the law, that is, one devoted to the law, one who sought to
have life in the law, and the Lord knowing his heart, he answered
this man according to what he was truly asking. What must I
do? What work must I perform? in order to obtain eternal life. Now, it's not as though this
fellow didn't think he'd already done this. Again, he wasn't coming
to have himself tested. He was coming to test the Lord.
And he wanted to see if the Lord would look at him and recognize
him as an obviously righteous man and say, well, you need do
nothing more. You've already done what's necessary
to obtain eternal life. His desire was to trip up the
Lord. His desire was to embarrass the Lord by trying to show the
people that the Lord was in opposition to Moses. And so the Lord turned the question
back on him. What's written in the law? How
do you see it? Because that's the foundation
on which the man approached him, the law. Anytime you talk about
doing, anytime you talk about gaining a blessing by your activity,
you are entering into the land of the law, not the land of promise,
not the land entered by faith, not the land of grace. I would
call it Graceland, but you would think I was talking about Elvis's
home. This man approached the Lord
on the basis of the law, so that's exactly how the Lord answered
him. You want to know what you need to do in order to obtain
eternal life? And rather than simply give the
man an answer, he more or less said, well, what do you think? And so the man said, Love the
Lord with all your heart and with all your soul and with all
your strength and with all your mind. And love your neighbor
as yourself. I'll appreciate this one thing
from this man. He didn't just recite 10 Commandments. He understood there was more
to the law than 10 Commandments. Even our Lord said that the law
hangs on these two commandments. Love the Lord, your God, with
all your being. And love your neighbor as yourself.
And the Lord recognized and acknowledged that he was right. He says, you
have answered correctly. Do this and live. Now that is the voice of the
law right there. Do this and live. That's the
only voice the law has. Nothing wrong with that voice. But that's a voice that won't
do us any good. You know, this man acknowledged
that he was responsible to obey the law. He knew the law. He acknowledged God's right to
lay that law upon him. There was one thing he could
not do. He could not do the law. That's why our Lord answered
him the way he did. Do this and live. You might say, well, I thought
the Bible taught that we couldn't gain eternal life by our works.
It's true. We can't. And our Lord wasn't telling this
man that he can do these things. He was just acknowledging to
the man, you want to know what you must do to obtain eternal
life? Here it is. You yourself have
said it. Love God with your entire being and your neighbor as yourself.
You do that and you'll live. And you say, well, I don't know. Well, friends, if you love the
Lord God with all your being, there isn't anybody here that
does that. Not yet. A day is coming when all of God's
elect will love him exactly like that. And believers, even as
they go through this life, from their hearts they do love Him
like that, but they've got this flesh hanging on. And the flesh,
the Lord said, whatever is born of the flesh is flesh. And friends,
it never turns into anything else. God comes to us and He
gives us the new birth. He gives life to our spirits. And from the Spirit we call upon
God. From the Spirit we believe God.
But in this flesh, we're the same thing we have been from
the moment we were conceived. And that part of us is still
completely in love with itself. But you find me someone who loves
the Lord God with all of his being. That's a perfect man. And the second law, love your
neighbor as yourself, that won't be a problem to him. Because
if you love God with all your being, the God of whom it is
said God is love, then you will indeed love your neighbor as
yourself. The second part there would simply
be the result of the first part. And I imagine every one of you
could acknowledge the goodness of those two laws. But is there anyone here who
would claim the ability to do either one of them? And you see, that's the problem. We say that God's law is holy,
just, and good. I don't have an argument with
the law, but boy, the law has an argument with me, doesn't
it? And that's the rub. Well, this
man, I'm sure when he gave the Lord his answer and then the
Lord answered him back, well, do that and live. I'm sure that
the fellow thought of some times when he really didn't love the
Lord with all of his being. Or if he thought he actually
did that, maybe he remembered a few times he treated people
in an unkind way. So he does what all legalists
do. He does what everyone who tries to justify themselves will
do. He says, who is my neighbor?
If I've got to love my neighbor as myself, who out there in humanity is
my neighbor? Now, one way you can always detect
a spirit of legalism is this. They are trying to find out the
least that they can do and get into heaven. Legalists, they love the tithe. You know why? Not because it
requires them to give 10%, But because they can say, once I've
given 10%, I've done everything I'm responsible to do. The other
90 is for me. The legalist loves the concept
of a one out of seven days being set aside and devoted to worship. Because he loves worship? No. that because that leaves him
six days to live for himself. I think I mentioned to you all
a few weeks ago, a fellow has written to me a few emails and
claimed I'm an antinomian because of the way I preach concerning
the law, that the believer is not under its jurisdiction. And
he thinks I don't scold you all enough about the way you live,
apparently, because I don't berate you. One reason I don't preach the
law given at Sinai as your ruling guide is because we've been called
to a much higher law than that. Not only this, the law by which
the believer is directed is not one chiseled in stone or written
on something that's supposed to look like two stone tablets
and put on a church wall or the wall of their house. That's not
how they're ruled. They're ruled on the inside by
Jesus Christ. And yes, they need some exhortations
because they're still in the flesh and the flesh can blind
us to the sinfulness of what we do, but you don't beat God's
people with a whip to get them to do what's right. You see sheep, you don't drive
sheep, you lead them. Our Lord said, my sheep hear
my voice and they follow me. I was told there's some goats
down in Mexico that looked just like sheep. And a fellow that
I know who was a missionary down there for 50 years, he was asked,
how can you tell the difference when you're looking at a flock
of some animals going down, how can you tell which one of the
sheep and which one of the goats? He said, well, if you see a flock
going down the road, and in front of them is a shepherd, and they're
following him, he said, that's the sheep. He said, but if you
see a flock going down the road and a shepherd or whatever is
behind them and he's using rocks and going like that, he said,
those are goats. And friend, what is true in the
natural world is true in the spiritual world. Sheep are led,
they are not driven. If a church has to spend a great
deal of time trying to keep its members in line, That sounds more like a goat
herd to me than a sheep herd. He wanted to find out just which
ones he had to love because he didn't want to waste his time
loving anybody else. And the Lord answered him with
a parable. Most people look at this parable,
and I've even heard some that, and I have no reason to believe
that they're not honest believers, but they think that this story
that our Lord told was given to us to show us how to live
our day-to-day lives. You know something? It won't
hurt us if we learn that from here, that we learn to show mercy. That we learn to show mercy not
only to those who are in dire straits naturally, like impoverished
or sick or whatever. If love rules our hearts, how
can we not show mercy to those who are in need? If we regularly
go to the throne of grace to find mercy to help us in our
time of need, how can we withhold mercy from others we see who
are in need? And we do the same thing spiritually. You know, one of the things that identifies a spirit of religion
distinct from the workings of the spirit of God is this whole
separation business. As Isaiah described these people,
stand not near me, I am holier than you. And see, two of the
people in this story, that's exactly what they did. This man,
he's on his way from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he gets set upon
by some robbers, and they take everything they have, beat him
half to death. He's unconscious, he's just laying
there in the ditch. And I get the impression that
he's beaten so badly, if somebody doesn't do something for him,
he is going to die, irretrievably. And here comes a priest, and
after him a Levite. Now the distinction between a
Levite and a priest, they both are of the tribe of Levi. But
the priesthood also could trace their ancestry back to Aaron.
The Levites, the other Levites, they would help in the work around
the temple, but the priests themselves came from just one branch of
Levi, and that was the branch under Aaron. And so first our
Lord, and you know, this man has come to him based upon the
law. And so what does our Lord do? Select two of the most visible
representatives of the law in that day. And he says, a priest
comes down the road, and when he sees this man, does he feel
sorry for this guy? Does he think, what happened? This man needs help. You know
what he's thinking? That guy might be dead. If I
touch him, I can't go in the temple. If I touch him, I'll be ceremonial
unclean. I won't be able, you know, to
to do the service that I must do for the other people. I'm
sure he found a way to justify ignoring that man, but he did
like self-righteous people do. He walked on the other side.
You know, and I know there have been times, I don't know how
often it happens, but people will see someone notably sinful
walking down the street, and rather than cross them on the
same side of the road, they feel they need to cross the road,
go to the other side, you know, for, stand not near me, I'm holier
than you. That's what the priest did. Here
comes a Levite, same thing. And both of those men did it
thinking I'm certain I cannot allow myself to become unclean
by touching this man. And in religion, we have to be careful we don't
have the same idea. As though we cloister ourselves
away from the rest of the world, saying to them, come not near
us. We're holier than you. Because we're not. We aren't. Imagine in your mind the most
despicable person you can think of. Whatever you believe is the
most disgusting sin possible. Think of that. And that's you. That's me. Apart from the grace of God,
that's exactly what we are. Apart from His restraining hand,
that's exactly what we would be doing. Paul wasn't kidding when he said,
there is no difference for all sin and fall short of the glory
of God. So we could learn that lesson.
But there's something here in this story that makes us take
it a different way. It says, a Samaritan. Now, the
Lord goes from the most prominent leaders under the law to outcasts. Samaritans. The Jews wouldn't
have anything to do with the Samaritans. They wouldn't have
touched one of them, thinking that that would make them unclean. The Samaritans were half-breeds.
when the Israelites were, when the Lord visited them with judgment
and sent them up to the north. Well, there were some of them
that stayed behind, but then some other from the Gentile nations
were brought in to replace those who'd been taken out. And sure
enough, before long, the Jews that remained intermixed with
the Gentiles that had been sent there. And you come up with this
half-breed bunch of people, part Jew, part Gentile. And to a Jewish mind, that meant
you were all Gentile. Not only that, maybe even worse.
Because it meant your ancestors betrayed their Jewish heritage
and intermingled with Gentiles. But our Lord says a Samaritan,
as he traveled. Now in all likelihood, he's traveling
the opposite direction. Because you got Jerusalem, and
then you got Jericho, and Jericho is right on the border between
Judah and the northern part, which is where Samaria was. He's coming the other way. He
came to where the man was. And he saw him. And he took pity
on him. He didn't think about whether
he'd be clean or unclean. He just saw there's someone in
need. And it says he went to him and
bandaged his wound, pouring on oil and wine and so forth and
so on. And this Samaritan did what neither
of those two Jews would do. He loved this man. He showed
mercy to him. He did whatever it took to see
to it the man was cared for until he was nurtured back to health
and bore the cost of all of it himself. Now, notice how our Lord phrased
his question after he tells this story. He looks at this man who
wants to know who his neighbor is. Which of these three do you
think was a neighbor? to the man who fell into the
hands of robbers. The expert in the law replied,
the one who had mercy on him. The Lord said, go and do likewise.
But here's the interesting thing to note in our Lord's question. This man said, who is my neighbor?
Wanted to know who his neighbor was so that he would know who he had to show love to. And
he tells him a story and he doesn't point to the man in the ditch
and say, now that's your neighbor. You have to take care of him. He said, who was a neighbor to
that man? Now, whenever we read parables,
whenever we read the stories of the Lord, here's what we need
to do. We always need to find who in that story is the Lord
Jesus Christ. And we need to find in that story
who is us, because we're in there. Who are we? We might be like the priest, the Levite, self-satisfied, doing everything we can to make
sure that we do not make ourselves unclean and that we don't allow
anybody else to make us unclean. You know, the word Pharisee means
separate, and that's what they did. They held themselves separate
from everyone, lest someone else's sin somehow or another get attached
to them. But I'll tell you where we are
in this story. We're in the ditch. That's where we really are. We're half dead. And if somebody
doesn't do something for us, we will be irretrievably dead. We're dead in this sense, just
like this man. You could have come up to him
and you could have said, boy, I sure feel sorry for you. You
know, there's an inn just down the road from here. If you'll
go there, they can take care of you. What was he going to
do? He was unconscious. He couldn't
hear you. And if He could hear you, He
couldn't get up. And friends, that's us. We come
into this world. We don't come in this world born
of God. We come in this world born of two sinful people. And
the only thing that sinful people can give birth to is another
sinful person. And there's nothing that they
can do for Him to change that. We love our children, and we'll
do all we can to get them to be decent human beings, but we
cannot change what they are. They come into this world dead
in trespasses and sins, just like we came into this world.
And they're lying there in the ditch, just like we were lying
in the ditch. Unconscious, without strength. What do we need? This guy that
came to the Lord Jesus, he's saying, well, who's my neighbor
so I'll know who I gotta help. And the Lord says, you should
be less concerned about who you need to help than who you need
to help you. I don't need to go around looking
for who is my neighbor. I need a neighbor who's looking
for me. You see how our Lord turned this story around? We
aren't the Samaritan. The Lord is. He's a half-breed. He's God and man joined together.
And for that reason, they hated him. Just like they hated the
Samaritans. But look what he did. He came
to where the man was. John said in the beginning was
the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He
created everything and nothing that's being created was created
except it was created by Him. He goes through all that and
then he gets down there to verse 14 and he said, And the Word
became flesh and dwelt among us. Think of that. The One who said,
Let there be light became flesh. Came where we are. Came to where the man was. Excuse me. He didn't pass by on the other
side. When he saw him, he took pity
on him. He didn't wrinkle his brow and
say, well, what kind of trouble did this guy get himself into? He just saw that he was in trouble.
And our Lord, oh, he saw us. He saw those that the Father
had chosen and given to him. He came down here, he saw them,
and his heart broke for them. And He had mercy on them. And
remember, the word mercy goes beyond its legal connotation. To have mercy means to pity someone. The blind man said, Jesus, Son
of David, have mercy on me. The Lord said, what do you want?
He said, I want to see. So he wasn't talking about the forgiveness
of sin at that point, but the Lord did look on him with mercy,
with pity. There's a man that's blind. He
can't take care of himself. He's got to beg. He's at the
mercy of man. And I'll tell you this, being
at the mercy of man is not a good place to be. Oh, but being at
the mercy of God, that's a great place to be. And God in human
flesh had mercy on that blind man, gave him sight. And he comes
to us, deaf and blind, because we're unconscious. We don't even
know that we're laying there deaf and blind. We don't know
anything. And he came to us and he didn't
tell us what to do to obtain eternal life. Because we couldn't
do it. He bent down and he took oil
and wine. I don't know what those are supposed
to represent. I suppose they were the kind
of things that people would apply to wounds and apply for comfort. But he tended to the man's needs.
And they said he put him on his own donkey. And that meant that
that guy was going to do the walking. The Samaritan had to
walk. And he took him to what we call
a motel. And he put him in there. And
he said, you're going to need some recuperating time. Here's some money, and if it
costs any more, when I come back, I'll pay you that. Our Lord took pity on us, and came to us in our blood,
came to us in our unconsciousness, and awakened us, and cared for
us, and paid the whole price of it. Is the Good Samaritan a good
example of how we ought to live? Yeah, but there's something more
important. The lesson is not so much that
I should be a Good Samaritan, but that I need one. I need one whose heart breaks
for me, who loves me with an everlasting love. and who's willing to lay down
his own life for me, because nothing less will save me. Are you looking for a good Samaritan,
or are you trying to be one? Do you see yourself as helping
others, or do you see yourself as someone in desperate need
of help? Even rescue. Oh, thank God. I do thank God. I know I'm in the ditch by nature. And though he's put me on the
right path many times, I have this tendency to fall over in
the ditch. And every time I do, here he comes. Here he comes. The religious world calls me
an antinomian, calls me a sinner. Heaven's good Samaritan calls
me his, laid down his life for me, and will never let me die
in the ditch. And that's the good Samaritan
we need. And while we may do our best to act like our Lord,
we must first recognize our need of a good Samaritan before we
can even dimly reflect our Lord's work of being a good Samaritan
towards us. Heavenly Father, bless your word
as only you can. In the name of Christ, amen.