This is such a glorious story,
I hope we just find ourselves rejoicing in it. It is a picture
of just a few people, isn't it? The Lord paints this remarkable
picture, and it's a picture of all of creation, it's a picture
of all of time, it's a picture of the Lord's salvation. And
it just has a Levite and a priest, a wounded man, and a Samaritan. There's no doubt whatsoever about
who the Samaritan is. The Samaritan is the Lord Jesus
Christ. That's what they accused him
of in John chapter 8. And an innkeeper who doesn't
get to say much at all. But in this particular Beautiful
picture. We have remarkable pictures of
the glory of our great God and Saviour and the wonder of how
He saves sinners. So let's begin back in verse
25 and see the context again. The lawyer stood up to tempt
him. The lawyers are not a solicitor or a barrister as we have. The
lawyer is someone who is an expert in the law of Moses. And he, and he stood up, and
it's remarkable, isn't it, when the Lord Jesus Christ came and
did all the things that Christ alone could do. These men stood
up to tempt him. They found him offensive, didn't
they? And this man wasn't there to
learn from the Lord Jesus Christ, he was there to test him. And
in the hope that he might slip up in some way, You see, the
focus of all the opposition to the Lord Jesus Christ is on the
person of Him. It's on who He claims to be.
There were no issues with Him feeding thousands of people.
There were no issues with Him performing miracles. But all
the issues with all these experts in the law was when He claimed
to be who He was. If you just turn back a few verses
there to chapter 10, verse 20, He says to those disciples who
came back rejoicing in what they had seen and what they had done,
he says, notwithstanding in this rejoice not that the spirits
are subject to you, but rather rejoice that your names are written
in heaven. Your names are written in heaven.
God has a people who are named as His and joined to the Lord
Jesus Christ from all eternity. They are the gift of the Father
to His Son and they are the sons purchased by His blood. Their
names are written there. In verse 22 it says, All things
are delivered to me of my Father, and no man knoweth who the Son
is but the Father, and who the Father is but the Son, and He
to whom the Son will reveal Him. God has a people, an elect people. God reveals Himself to a particular
people in a sovereign way, in a personal way. But also, he
goes on in verse 24, he says, For I tell you that many prophets
and kings have desired to see those things which ye see, and
have not seen them, and hear those things which ye hear, and
have not heard them. This is a privileged generation
that the Lord Jesus Christ was talking to. They had God, they
had God incarnate living amongst them. So when it comes to his
claims to be divine, when it comes to his claims to be the
one that fulfilled all the scriptures, there is this opposition. And
this lawyer, like all people who want to justify themselves,
does exactly what all self-justifying people do. Self-justifying religious
people. Look what he says. He says, Master, verse 25, what
shall I do to inherit eternal life? What shall I do? That's the law, isn't it? That's
works. What shall I do to inherit? What do you inherit? My children
might inherit a few pennies one day, maybe less, maybe none. They might inherit a debt. But
their inheritance isn't based on what they're doing. I'll be
gone. Their inheritance is based on
who they are. That's my children. God gives his children all the
blessings, the blood-bought blessings, and they're not earned. They're
not earned, brothers and sisters. But that's what religion does,
doesn't it? It's always mixing law and grace. and it does it
in extravagant ways in some religions and it does it in subtle ways
in so much of Christianity. And the Lord Jesus Christ says
to him, what do the scriptures say? What's written in the scriptures?
You know the Bible well, you can recite it, tell me what the
scriptures say. And this man says verses that
they had tied in their phylacteries, that they tied onto parts of
their bodies at various times and they recited them over and
over again. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,
with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy
mind, and thy neighbour as thyself. And the Lord Jesus Christ said
to him, you've answered well. You've answered well. Do this. This do, and you shall live. Just do, and you shall live.
You can do it, you'll live. There is a principle here, isn't
it? Our God will meet you and meet everyone else on the ground,
upon the ground on which they come to Him. You come to Him
on the basis of doing, and the Lord God, like He does with this
lawyer, He'll meet you there. He'll meet you there. You come
as a mercy beggar. He'll meet you on that basis.
This do and live. Verse 29 But he, willing to justify himself. The remarkable thing about this
self-justification, all self-justification is a blind justification, and
all self-righteousness is a blind righteousness. It's almost as
if he said, I've done the first bit. He says, I've loved God. I've loved God with all my heart,
and I've loved God with all my soul. I'm doing pretty well.
I've loved God with all my strength, and you can see it, and I've
loved Him with all my mind. But these neighbours, I have
a problem with these neighbours. If you could just sort of narrow
the neighbour thing down because they in their teaching saw the
Jews and particular Jews as particularly neighbourly and they saw the
Gentiles as being, well, dogs in other words. And so if you
can define it. When it comes to my works I need it defined. Justifying himself, justifying
yourself. Every time, every time you meet
a consequence of your sin, you will do exactly what this lawyer
did. Don't think the lawyer's talking
about someone else. We all justify ourselves all the time, and we
get better and better at it, don't we? And the further we
are away from the event, the more able we are to sort of put
it in a little cocoon and wrap it up in a nice little bundle,
where, well, I didn't do quite what I should have done, but
I did pretty well, thank you very much. And you replay the
conversations. It's what we are by nature, brothers
and sisters. What did Adam do? Adam, he sinned
openly and willfully. He wasn't deceived like Eve.
He sinned openly and willfully. And then he turns to God and
says, it's your fault. If you hadn't given me the woman,
I wouldn't have done it. It's your fault, it's not mine.
Brothers and sisters, you are Adam's children every time you
seek to justify yourselves. But here we are with another
great picture, isn't it? Out of self-justifying wickedness
and pride. and this man coming to tempt
the Lord Jesus Christ, to test him. We have this beautiful picture
of the Gospel, and the beautiful picture of the Gospel is the
beautiful picture of the revelation of the person of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Let's not make the Gospel a doctrine. The Gospel is a person, and he's
remarkably beautifully pictured here. It's a remarkable picture
of the person of the Lord Jesus Christ and a remarkable picture
of how he saves sinners, and then it's a remarkable picture
of how he works in sinners beyond that. So here we have this story,
this parable that's so well known. Verse 30, and Jesus answered
and said, a certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho
and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment and
wounded him and departed, leaving him half dead. What a wonderful,
clear, evocative, and instructive picture of the fall of man this
is. Jerusalem, of course, is the
city In the original Hebrew, it means either vision of peace
or to see peace. It was that place of peace. It's
Melchizedek City. It's the city of the Lord Jesus
Christ in the Old Testament. It's the place where God chose
to make his name available, make his name known to his people,
make his character known to his people. As he did to our parents
in the garden, He walked with them in the cool of the day.
He revealed the wonder of His sovereignty to them. He revealed
the wonder of His kindness to them in giving them companionship
and fellowship and a remarkable creation to live in. Jericho
in the Scriptures is a cursed city. You can read about it in
Joshua chapter 6. It was cursed by Joshua. It was cursed by Joshua who represents
the Lord Jesus Christ. So here we have this picture
of the fall of man. Everyone, every human being,
every one of Adam's children is on this way, on this road
from Jerusalem to Jericho. From Jerusalem to Jericho. By one man sin entered the world,
and death by sins, says Romans 12. So the death that passed
upon all men, for that all have sinned. We inherit Adam's sin, but the
scriptures make it even extraordinarily plain that we were there and
we did that sin as well. Now, people might find it offensive
that we were condemned in a representative. Well, the question is, how are
you going? How are you going personally? I trust you're not like this
lawyer, the wonder of sin. Our sin in our father Adam is
that if we sinned in a representative, we might be saved in a representative,
another representative man. Fell among thieves. That's the fall, isn't it? Is
to fall among thieves. And the great robbery that has
gone on since the fall is a robbery in two parts, as I see it. One is a robbery of the glory
of God. We're robbed of a true understanding
of the character of God, aren't we? That's what Satan's attack
on God was, isn't it? Is he faithful to his word? Did
he really say? Has God really said? And then he attacked his goodness.
You could have something by taking it because God is actually withholding
some good from you. And you won't die. You'll have the knowledge of
good and evil. There you'll be, having this knowledge of good
and evil and then being able to choose what's good and what's
man done ever since the fall. He's robbed God of his glory,
but he's also been robbed of something else. These thieves
and robbers, these thieves rob you of who you really are. And every false notion of who
you are is a robbery of you. It's a robbery, isn't it? It's
stealing from you what is good for you. Religion tells you You can do
better. You can do it, just like this
man. You can make a decision. You
can improve yourself. You can pick yourself up by your
bootstraps, and you can make yourself better. And we know
that the natural man in this world can do all sorts of remarkable
things. And in some sense, we have to rejoice over alcoholics
and others who have been rescued out of horrible, horrible things.
But the reality is that that heart still beats just the same.
And it's only by the revelation of the glory of God in the hearts
of people that they will know those two things again. They'll
know Him as God in all of His glory and they'll know themselves
both as fallen and in the Lord Jesus Christ. We fell among thieves. We fell among thieves and were
stripped of our arraignment. We had a righteousness before
God. We had fellowship with God. We
had fellowship with man. They were naked before each other
and felt no shame. We had fellowship with creation.
Stripped of our arraignment. Wounded. This man was wounded
and wounded. See how sins wound us. your sin, as Hosea further ignites
it, thou hast destroyed thyself. Sin destroys. Sin is a destroyer,
sin is a wounder. You, like me, have to deal on
a daily basis with the problems in your life which are directly
related to the sin that's in your life. We are wounded by
the fall. Religion tells us we can get
better and do better. It's a remarkable verse in Romans
7 that I'd like you to look at just briefly. It is remarkable
how honest the gospel is and the scriptures are about the
nature of man. Romans 7, Paul is describing
his life as a child of Adam, as a saved man, a saved man. He says in verse 19, for the
good that I would, the good that I'd like to do, I do not, but
the evil which I would not, that I do. Paul declares that his
activities in this world The Lord Jesus Christ said to
the apostles, didn't he? He said, you being evil, if you
being evil, how do you find that, brothers and sisters? The natural man would say, that's
not me, but I can see these others over there that are like that,
which is exactly what the lawyer, the priest, the lawyer, and the
Levite did. So we're wounded, we're wounded
of the character of God and we're wounded by not knowing who we
are and we're wounded by the sin that destroys ourselves. So these thieves, they came,
they stripped him of his raiment, they left him, they wounded him
and they left him half dead. And they departed. They left him half dead. The question is, what can a dead
man do to save himself? The picture's really clear, isn't
it? There is this man. He's now naked, bleeding, dying. And when you pass by, he could
very much look like a dead man. See, dead men are completely
and utterly dependent on help from outside of themselves. That's
what it is to be dead. You're dead in transgressions
and sins, brothers and sisters. But God, but God comes. Here he is, stripped, wounded,
and dying. And look who comes by. And by
chance, verse 31, there came down a certain priest. You see, on that road, on that
road from Jerusalem to Jericho, on that road, from where we were
in our Father Adam in the garden to where we will be at the end
of time, to that place of cursing. There are priests that go down
that road. There are priests. And by chance
there came down a certain priest that way, and when he saw him, He passed by on the other side.
And likewise, verse 32, a Levite, when he was at the place, came
and looked on him and passed by on the other side. And there's no question, there's
no question seeing that this self-justifying man that brought
this was a lawyer. And here the Lord Jesus Christ
takes a picture of these two who represent the law, don't
they? The Levites and the priests not just represent the law, but
they have in the purposes of God two special roles, don't
they? They are to represent God before
men and they are to represent man before God. And so These
lawyers, these Levites, these priests, show that on that broad
road, they've fallen among thieves as well. They just don't know
it at all. They've been robbed, and they rob people of the glory
of God, these religious people. You see, the lawyer thought that
he could do something and live. What must I do? I must do something. What does the law of God do to
you? What can the law of God do? What can the Ten Commandments
do? Can they help you? Can the law of God teach you
to live a better life? Is it a guide, as people say?
It's a guide to how to live. God's children love God's law. They love it. Paul delights in
the law of God after the inner man. I delight in the fact that
it's so comprehensive. I delight in the fact that it
reveals the character of God in so many remarkable ways. But what can the Lord do for
you? Exactly what these two did. The Lord comes and looks at you
and sees you and it condemns you. That's all the law can ever
do. You've never kept one, brothers
and sisters. And any time you meet someone
who says they've kept one, they're lying to you. And they're lying
to themselves and they've fallen among thieves and robbers. They've
been robbed of the glory of God and they've been robbed of the
nature of who they are. There's no mercy in the law. It just looks at you and passes
by. To a dead man the law can do
nothing. The law has no mercy. It passes by on the other side. It issues its condemnation and
it passes by. But Don't you like the bucks
of scripture? The bucks of scripture are delightful.
So there you have this extraordinary contrast. On this road, on this
same road comes another man. Verse 33, but a certain Samaritan. I like the use of that word certain
in this because this may well be a description of a real event
that they knew of. Some of the Lord's parables are
very evidently not. A certain Samaritan, as I said
earlier, the Jews who hated the Lord Jesus Christ declared in
John 8, 48, you're a Samaritan. You're a Samaritan, you have
a devil. And the Lord Jesus Christ obviously had been in the company
of the Samaritans. In John chapter 4 we have that
remarkable story of him, not just with the woman at the well,
the Samaritan woman at the well, but in that village and staying
with those people for a couple of days. And He takes upon Himself
what men condemn Him of and uses it here. As He always does, He
brings great goodness out of darkness around Him. And listen
to what our Saviour does. He's on this road. He's on the
road as well. He walks on that road. He came
to where He was. He came to where He was. And when he saw him, he had compassion
on him. And he went to him, and he bound
up his wounds, pouring in oil and water, and set him on his
own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The gospel of man's doing, the
gospel of man's beginning, remaining in and being rewarded for his
faith activities, is a cruel, heartless gospel. It's cruel,
isn't it? It says to someone who's dead
in transgression and sin, if you do something, it's like the
Lord is saying to this man, if you get up on the beast, I'll
get you to the inn. See, sinners begin dead. The wonder of the Gospel of the
Lord Jesus Christ is that it comes to you where you are right
now. And it keeps coming to you where
you are right now. It doesn't say, if you will do,
God will save you. The modern gospel, which robs
God of his glory and robs man of the reality of who he is as
a fallen son of Adam, is a cruel, heartless gospel. It mocks a
dead sinner and says to him that he can have life by his doing. But our great saviour, he comes
to the sinner He comes to him where he is. He comes to this
man wounded, stripped, dying in a gutter. He comes to him
where there are no conditions he can meet. What can he do? He can't move, he can't save
himself, he can't do anything. That's the glory of the gospel,
brothers and sisters, isn't it? The Lord Jesus Christ comes to
us. He comes to us and he saves him. So that's what I need. If you're
a sinner, if you're a sinner on that road, if you've fallen
from the place of peace, and you're on your way to a place
of cursing, and you're stripped and wounded, and you're left
for dead, I need him to come to where I am. So much. that I ought to be, and
there's so much that I am that I shouldn't be. But where we
are now is where he comes. Where he comes. See, I have no
hope unless he comes to me. And no one else in this world
has any hope unless he comes to me. He comes, and he comes
to dwell with him. I love what I saw at 57. declares
of our great God. I can read it to you. For thus
saith the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth eternity. What a great description of our
God, the High and Lofty One, whose name is Holy. I dwell in
a high and holy place with him also, that is of a contrite and
humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive
the heart of the contrite ones. wounded, broken, stripped, destroyed
by my sin. I need him to come to me. I need
him to come to me where I am. I need him to come without putting
any conditions on me, because I'm dead. I can't even ask. I can't even ask for mercy. And
a dead man on that road, on that road to that place of cursing,
doesn't even know he needs mercy because he's dead. He's dead
to who God is, he's dead to who he is. And he's not even aware
of the fight that's before him. He's dead. And he can't be helped
unless someone comes to him. He comes. One of the loveliest
pictures of salvation in the Bible is in Ezekiel chapter 16. Describes the fall and describes
the salvation, describes the time of love. describes the covenant love of
our God, if you go on and read the way she behaved after these
events. He says, Son of Man, verse 2
or 6, chapter 16 of Ezekiel, caused Jerusalem to know of her
abominations. Isn't it wonderful? If God saves
you, He's going to cause you to know your abominations. It's
a blessing of grace and mercy from God for you to know what
you really are. And say, Thus saith the Lord
God unto Jerusalem, Thy birth and thy nativity is in the land
of Canaan. Thy father was an Amorite, thy
mother a Hittite. And as for thy nativity, in the
day thou wast born, thy navel was not cut, neither wast thou
washed in water to supple thee, thou wast not salted at all,
nor swaddled at all. None eyed pity thee to do thee,
to do any of these unto thee, to have compassion on thee, but
thou wast cast out into the open field to the loathing of thy
person in the day that thou wast born. It was common in those
days. We have a more dignified way
of doing it, don't we? Hide it in a hospital and call it abortion.
And we call the baby a foetus, so we don't have to feel any
compunction about it. But that's what they used to
do for babies they didn't want. They'd just cast them out into
the open field and just let them die. And, verse six, and when
I passed by thee, I saw thee polluted in thine own blood,
and I said unto thee, when thou wast in thy blood, live, yea,
I said unto thee, when thou wast in thy blood, live. That's how God calms to sinners. But in this parable, the Lord
gives beautiful pictures of who he is. He reveals in the Gospel the
character of our God in the most delightful ways. And he unveils
that which is hidden by our sin, unveils that which is hidden
by religion. Here we have these remarkably
God-like actions of our God. They're creative actions, they're
actions of reconciliation and mercy and grace. See, the Gospel
of Christ forbids that God requires anything from you, or in you,
or of you, that He save you. That's what grace is about. God
saves by grace. He doesn't save as a result of
something in you. For sinners, that's good news. For
sinners who are aware of what they are, that's good news. Salvation
by works gives a sinner something to do to save them. That's not
how this man operated in this glorious story. The gospel, the gospel is for
sinners because God saves every sinner in the world. He saves
every sinner. He only ever saves sinners. This
man's a picture of a sinner. Verse 33, let's read what our
great God does. And when he saw him, He had compassion
on him. The religious man that walks
down the road and tells you to do, do, do has no compassion
on you and he can't meet you where you're at. And he, in his
self-righteous pride, so that he won't be defiled, walks by
the other side. It's interesting that that other
side is spoken of twice in this parable. There are two sides
on this road. There is the side of the religious
righteous. There is the side of the righteous,
whether they're religious or profane. You find the worst sinner
in the world and you find a self-justifying person. who believes something
about himself that causes him to think that he's a bit better
than someone else. It doesn't matter whether they're in religion
or out of religion, they're all on that broad road that the Lord
spoke about. And he saw him and had compassion
on him. Alright, we just turn back to
Mark and we see another example of this in Mark chapter 1. There's a leper that came to
him. Leprosy is a sign from Mark chapter 1. Leprosy is a picture
of sin. Luke says that this man was full
of leprosy. His whole body from top to tail
was absolutely completely leprous. But I love what he says. He came
to him, beseeching him, kneeling down. He worshipped him. He came
worshipping him. And he said, if thou wilt, thou
canst make me clean. He had no problem about the Lord's
ability, but he had a concern about his willingness to do it.
But first and foremost, he worshipped him. This sinner came and worshipped
him. You see, is your God worthy of
worship? The God of the scriptures is
worthy to be worshipped. The Lord Jesus Christ is worthy
to be worshipped. Lord, if you will, you can make
me clean. And it says, Jesus moved with compassion. When the Lord Jesus Christ meets
a fallen sinner, a leprous man, the one who does evil, he's moved. I love that picture, isn't it?
He's moved with compassion. See, he doesn't have to find
a reason in you or me to be compassionate. The reason's in himself. It's
in his nature. That's what we lost in the fall,
the nature of God. See, he delights in mercy. He delights in saving sinners.
What thieves and robbers we fell among. In our father Adam, we
went down that road, and look what he does. He put forth his
hand and he touched him. How long since this man had ever
had a touch of compassion. Everywhere he went, people would
scurry away from him. He touched him. touched him and he said, I will
be thou clean. Be thou saved, be thou whole. He saves by a word and he saves
by a touch and he saves by coming to where you are. He comes, he
comes to where we are and he sees us as we are. So don't try and pretend that
you're something that you're not. But he comes with compassion
and he comes personally in the saving of each and every sin
and he comes personally to them. And what does he do? He went
to him, verse 34, and he bound up his wounds. He bound up his
wounds pouring in oil and wine. The man couldn't apply the oil
to himself, and the man couldn't apply the wine to himself. He poured it in. It's the glorious
work of our God, the glorious work of the Holy Spirit. And
that's what the oil represents, doesn't it? The wine represents
the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the oil represents the pouring
in of it. blood to cleanse, but it's the
grace of the Holy Spirit that applies it to the hearts of people."
He bound up his words. Don't you love the description
of the Lord Jesus Christ in Isaiah 53? He was despised, verse 3, and
rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And
we hid, as it were, our faces from him. He was despised and
we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows. Do you really believe that? That
he's carried your sorrows, brothers and sisters? carried our sorrows. Yet we did
esteem him stricken and smitten of God and afflicted, but he
was wounded for our transgressions. He bore those wounds, those same
wounds, he bore them. He was bruised for our iniquity,
the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes
we are healed. Not possibility of being healed,
we are healed. If you're a saved sinner, you
were just like this man, weren't you? You were just on that road. And there were so many people
on that road, you can have a lot of companionship on that road
and you can feel very comfortable that other people are going on
that road. And you can choose. The road is so wide and there
are so many people on it. You can find a place of companionship
on that road, can't you? You can travel down that road
in absolute open wickedness. You can travel down that road
in religious morality, can't you? And you can always find
someone on the road who will pat you on the back and say,
peace, peace, we're going down the road together. And it will
all be right. God's people travel on the other
side of that road. They're wounded, and they're
cast off from that road by the wounding, and the stripping,
and the destroying. As I said earlier, as Isaiah
says, we destroyed ourselves. We are our worst problem, brothers
and sisters. We are our worst problem. And
the Good Samaritan, our Lord Jesus Christ, comes with that
precious blood that puts away sin, and the blessed Holy Spirit. See, he comes and he gives life.
and He gives light, and we see who God is, and we see who we
are, and we see who the Saviour is and how He saves people. Healed. Now, now the sinner. is set on his
own beast. What a glorious picture of our
Lord Jesus Christ. He comes to that sinner and he
binds him up and heals his wounds and he puts him on his own horse
and there we have this picture of this wounded man, this wounded
dying man and the Lord Jesus Christ walking along beside him. He sets him on his own beast
and walks alongside him and he brought him to an inn, and I have no doubt that the inn
means the church. And the wonderful thing about
that inn, if you think of that picture, there is Jerusalem,
there is the place of cursing, eternal cursing, and the inn
is off the road. He takes his people to the church,
and he says, take care of him, take care of him. He took care
of him first. And the remarkable thing in the
story is that the Lord Jesus Christ spent the whole night
with him. He took care of him. It says on the morrow, verse
35, he took care of him all night. He made sure through all of that
darkness of his recovery, he was there to feed him, to nurture
him, to care for him. This is how God, we're talking
about brothers and sisters, rejoice in how extraordinary he is. He stayed with him, and on the
morrow he departed, he took out two pence. Two pence. I think the commentators are
right when they say that two pence, that two denarii, is a
representation of the atonement money. that was paid for the
redemption of all the Israelites. And one of the remarkable things
about the redemption of all the Israelites by that redemption
money, it didn't matter whether you were rich and righteous or
poor and helpless. What was the price of redemption?
It was exactly the same for every Israelite. It's a representation
of the Lord Jesus Christ and his blood, isn't it? Same for
every Israelite. See, that's what makes the child
of God, doesn't it? The atonement of our Lord Jesus
Christ. And look what he says when he
has him in this inn. He says, take care of him. Take
care of him, and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again,
I will repay thee. When I come again, I'll come
back to check on him. I'll come back and I'll pay all
of my debts. You see, the Lord Jesus Christ,
I love what Romans 8, 32 says. Verse 31 says, if God before
us, who can be against us? And then he says, he that spared,
verse 32, he that spared not his own son, but delivered him
up for us all. Us all, of course, is the people
that Paul's speaking to around us, it's the believers. How shall
He not with Him also freely give us all things? Freely give us
all things. You get the Lord Jesus Christ
and you get everything. You get everything. You get everything
that this creation can bring and you get everything in the
next creation. You've got Him, you've got everything. You've
got Him, you've got everything. He provides all. He says, I will repay thee. For every blessing that we ever
get is a blood bought blessing. Every blessing that we get is
from our God hanging on Calvary's tree, bearing our sins in his
own body on the tree. The Lord finishes his parable. but not only giving a glorious
picture of himself, but a glorious picture of the salvation of sinners. So we love mercy. Mercy beggars
love mercy. Salvation's by the mercy of God. Do you need mercy? If you like
this man, you need mercy. The guilty need mercy. Sinners
need mercy. are all your sins, all your own
fault. If they are, you need mercy.
And God gives mercy. But mercy not only is what we
teach in the doctrine that's a declaration of the glory of
our God, he delights in mercy, but mercy is what he does in
the lives of his people. Blessed are the merciful for
they shall receive mercy. See, mercy is given to someone
who can't repay in any way at all. This man had absolutely
nothing. He had nothing. He was stripped and he was naked.
He had absolutely nothing. Mercy comes to those who can't
repay in any way. Mercy flows from the merciful
heart of our God and he's not looking for reward. His delight
is in his people and he rejoices over them with singing. So here
a Jew receives mercy from a Samaritan, from one he would have thought
was an enemy if he was in his right mind walking down that
road. And he finds grace and he finds mercy in his heart. Merciful people who have received
mercy are made to be mercy bringers. to this fallen world, the one
who is merciful, that good Samaritan. And we tell others about the
merciful one. And we pray that God might make
us merciful. When we find other sinners, like
this man, fallen among thieves and robbers, may God make us
merciful. And may he do it by showing us
yet again the merciful one himself. Let's pray. Heavenly Father,
we pray that you would bless these words to our hearts and
cause us yet again to see our Lord Jesus Christ. and find Him
the rejoicing of our hearts, Heavenly Father. Cause us to
be delighted in the fact that He comes to us and comes as a
giver and a healer and a restorer and a nurturer. Bless your words
to our hearts, our Father, and use them for your glory. We pray
in Jesus' name. Amen. I'm gonna have a cup of
tea.