Once again, what a joy it is
to be with you. And we bring good tidings. We
sang about the birth of the Lord Jesus and I looked at the calendar
and our next time here will be Christmas Eve. So we'll probably
be bring. an incarnation message about
the Lord coming. But today, I'd like to look at
a passage. I love to read in the scriptures
about the messages that Christ brought. about the incidences
that he shared with people. And they're recorded in our Bible,
so we get to read them again and again and again and rejoice
in them. And there is an incident in the
scriptures that I really, really enjoy. And we often know it as
the Good Samaritan, the account of the Good Samaritan. And that
is found in the book of Luke chapter 10. In the book of Luke
chapter 10, and I'm going to start reading with verse 25 of
the book of Luke chapter 10, and the scriptures tell us that
there was a certain lawyer. Now the Lord knew the lawyer's
name, but we don't have the record of it. It says a certain lawyer.
stood up and tempted him. Now, that's always the wrong
thing to do with the Lord. It's never a good idea to just
bring up a question for the purpose of trying to tempt him. And this
lawyer did that. He's trying to make a name for
himself. And it says, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit
eternal life? Now, this lawyer, because he
was tempting him, didn't know him as master. He was just using
that as a title to try to get in close to him. And he said
unto him, the Lord said unto him, what is written in the law? How readest thou? And he answering
and said, thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,
with all thy soul, with all thy strength, and with all thy mind,
and thy neighbor as thyself. Now, I don't know about you,
but I've tried to do that. And I found out it is an impossibility
in our natural state to love the Lord God 24 hours a day,
seven days a week, 365 days a year. Now we may say we do, but you
know, really we have trouble with that. We have that natural
heart. And so the Lord said, if you can do that, now there's
only one possible way that anybody that's ever born on the face
of this earth that can love the Lord 24 seven and the rest of
it is that we have been granted the righteousness of Christ because
God loves God that way. And he gives us his righteousness
so we can do that spiritually. Now we're going to carry this
flesh the rest of our life. But he allows people that he
saves to love him in that capacity. So he says this, and you know
the man had to say in his own heart, I don't think I can do
that. But he says, he goes on here, and he said unto him, thou
sayest right. You said it right. You've answered
it correctly. But just having a good answer
doesn't mean we have a change of heart. And then it says, thou
answer's right, this do thou shall live. But he willing, now
he, the Bible tells us here in the next verse, really what he
was trying to do. And this is a natural thing for
us to do. It says, but he willing to justify
himself. Self-justification. Now that
never meets anything with God. Self-justification, I'm okay
by myself and I'll meet God okay. That's not what we're made. We
cannot meet God on our self-justification. We must meet God on his justification. And he said, he willing to justify
himself, he said unto Jesus, and who's my neighbor? The Lord
spent three quarters of that sentence informing him there's
something about loving God. And he comes up and he says,
let's set that part aside and let's deal with who is my neighbor. Well, he just cut off three quarters
of what the law had to say, because he didn't want to deal with that.
He couldn't do it. So he brings up the subject of
who is my neighbor. Now, the Lord shares with us
a very, very interesting passage of scripture here with regard
to a neighbor. And he's really illustrating
to us that we are in a position in our natural state that we
can't get out of by ourselves, and we really need help. And
he illustrates it this way. A certain man went down from
Jerusalem to Jericho. Now, this is more than a parable. I believe the Lord really knew
this certain man. We don't have his name, but this
man was going on a trip. And in that day and time, you
either walked or you rode a mule or something like that. I think
he was walking. And I don't know the distance
from Jerusalem to Jericho, but it's some distance that he's
traveling. And he's on a known highway. It's a regular trail
that he's traveling. And it tells us on his way down,
he fell among thieves. He's robbed. He's robbed of his
wealth. And more than that, they took
all his clothes. They left him broke and naked. And besides that, the Lord said,
they stripped him of his raiment and wounded him and departed
him, leaving him half dead. Now, from all observation, there
was nothing about this man that was still alive. He looked like
he was a dead man. He had been beaten, he had been
thrashed on, he had been robbed, he'd been stripped of his raiment,
and probably it was valuable raiment, that's why they would
take it, and left him in that condition. What a sad condition
he was left in. You know, in many respects, we
find that that's the way we were left in Adam. We were left half
dead. We have the physical frame, but
our spirit is dead. We have this ability to walk
around and do some thinking, but when it comes to spiritual
activity, we have no spiritual life. That must be given to us
by God. So the illustration that the
Lord shared with this man who wanted to know who his neighbor
was, is he illustrates it by a man traveling along, along
a trail, alone, and fell among thieves. Now I can just see them
sitting off by the sidelines in some trees or some brush,
waiting for this man, somebody to come along so that they could
rob and take all of his possessions. And when it was over with, they
left him half dead. Now the scripture tells us that
there are two people come along before the good neighbor comes
along. One of them, it says, as he's
traveling along, and by chance, there came down a certain priest
that way. Now this priest was a Levitical
priest. This priest was of the Levitical tribe, and according
to the Levitical law, a priest could not touch a dead man. And this man looked like he was
dead. So we cannot find so much fault with him because He didn't
go over there and help. He was prevented from doing that
by the law. And he illustrates to us in this
passage of scripture that the law is not going to help us.
By keeping the Ten Commandments, we're not made any better. We
can't do it, and it will not satisfy God. So the law is not
our helper. The law only condemns. The law
only judges. The law only brings us under
worse conditions than we were. So we have a man left in the
middle of the road, half dead, stripped of his raiment, all
of his riches taken away from him, and a man comes along there
that we think would be able to help him and he couldn't. He's
prevented by the law. And so he sidesteps the guy. He goes around him. I'm not going
to get involved. Well, the Lord Jesus Christ said,
and likewise a Levite. Now this is a higher elevated
person. We think maybe we'll get some
help out of him. Well, we find out the same thing,
that he could not, by the law, help this man that was left for
half dead. The law cannot help us. Us saying I can keep the
Ten Commandments is not gonna help us because we can't. We
cannot keep the Ten Commandments. We just find out that we can't
do it. And we can't have our own righteousness. We just can't
do it. It's an impossibility. And the Lord never accepts anything
but perfection. That's one thing that we must
have is perfect righteousness. It's required. God requires perfect
righteousness. And since we don't have it, we're
going to have to depend on someone else for it. And that's where
the Lord is. He gives us that. Well, a certain
Levite, a likewise a Levite, when he was at that place, came
down. Oh, he got a little closer. Says
he came down and looked upon him. Well, the other guy passed
by. Didn't even look. This Levite
came down and he says he passed by the other side. He came and
looked on him. Couldn't help him. The man is
left there again. Nobody can help him. There's
no help, evidence by these people. You know, I was in religion for
35 years and I thought I could get help from people, but nobody
could help me. I had a too serious a problem.
I had a heart that was desperately wicked. And I found out only
God can help me out of that situation. Only God can save me. Well, the
next person comes along. It's a certain Samaritan. Now,
if we know anything about Samaritans, we find out that they were a
second class people. They were not true Jews. They
were half Jew and half Gentile, or some kind of mixture like
that. And the Jews looked down their noses at them. They were
not respected for anything. They were the outcast. They were not pure. They were that other religion
over there that nobody wanted to have a thing to do with, you
know? A Samaritan. It says here, a Samaritan, as
he journeyed He came to where he was. And when he saw him,
he didn't turn away. He didn't get to the other side
of the road. The Bible tells us that he had compassion on
him. Now that's what we want. We want
somebody that will have compassion on us. We want somebody that
will care about our situation. We find out that the law can't
help us. We can't keep it. And when it's brought up, it
just condemns us more and more. We need someone that has compassion,
have feelings towards us. Well, we find out in the scriptures
that the Lord Jesus Christ, that one that came down, born of a
virgin, laid in a manger, grew up confounded the doctors of
the law at 12 years of age. At 30 years of age, he began
his ministry. He confounded people, but he
had compassion on his people. It says here that this man had
compassion on him, and he went to him. He had an intent at this
point to do something for this man that has been left half dead.
He had compassion on the situation. He had compassion on the man.
He had compassion on some stranger. I don't think you'd ever met
him before, but he had compassion on him. And it tells us here,
he went and bound up his wounds. You know, he went to his kit
and he pulled out bandages and salve and all of the things you
just carry along for such a situation as this. because he has compassion. And we find out the Lord has
compassion on his people, and he has the balm of Gilead, and
he has the bandages of his righteousness. And so he goes on and says, pouring
in oil and wine. In that day and time, that was
the medicine that you have. Didn't have all the miracle drugs
that we have today. They had oil and wine. And you
know, under those circumstances, that is all that man needed.
Well, it's pictorial of the gospel for us. We have the wine of the
gospel in the Holy Spirit represented by the oil and coming in. God
worked a miracle here. He came and had compassion on
a man that had been beaten, left half dead, stripped of all of
his riches and clothing no more. Well, this man came along, bound
up his wounds, poured in oil and wine and set him on his own
beast and brought him to an inn to take care of him. Now, it
wasn't enough that he just wrapped him up and poured in some oil
and wine and said, well, that'll do, he'll probably survive. We
find out he carried him to his beast. And he set this man on
his beast, wrapped up. And that wasn't enough. It was
not enough that he just put him on his beast. It says he brought
him to an inn or a hotel or a motel. He brought him to a place that
was accustomed to taking care of people. How gracious this
Samaritan was that not only would he have compassion on him, not
only would he wrap him up with bandages and pour in oil and
wine and set him on his own beast and take him to an inn, but he
also says, On the morrow when he departed, he took out two
pence. Now two pence to us may not mean
much, but it meant a great deal. That's two days wages. And he
said, and gave them to the host and said, now this good Samaritan,
he said, you know, I think probably he'll wash dishes and he'll make
some rooms up and he can pay his own bill. He didn't say that. He said, here. I'll pay everything
that he owes. What kind of person would do
that? Pay every debt. This good Samaritan
pays every debt of those he has compassion on. He pays their
sin debt. The Lord pays the sin debt of
his people. He took care of it all. He said, it's finished.
I've paid it all in full. So the next day when he left,
he told the man in charge of the inn, you take care of him
and whatever you spend more. Now, if there's more of a bill,
that's one thing about the Lord. He saves his people. He saved
his people, he saves his people, and he will continue to save
his people. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin. So the debt continues to be paid.
Whatever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay. How much did he ask of the man
that was broken? Nothing. How much did he charge for the
bandages? Nothing. How much did he charge for the
oil and wine? Nothing. How much did he charge for carrying
him on his beast? Nothing. How much did he charge
him for putting him up in the inn? Nothing. And if there was
any more debt to be paid, who paid it? The Samaritan. You know, the Samaritan is such
a picture of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He's such a picture
of him because the Lord was the God-man. God come in the flesh,
the incarnate one. He is God and man. God in his glory come to had
a body prepared to lay down his life, a ransom for his people,
a payment for them. And whatever is owed, he will
pay it completely. Which now of these, of these
three, thinkest thou was the neighbor of him that fell among
thieves? Okay, choice number one. Priest. Choice number two, Levite. Choice
number three, the bad Samaritans. Choose which one would be the
neighbor. And he said, he that showed mercy
on him. Only one. Only one can show mercy. That was the Samaritan. Now there's
only one that can show mercy. There was two men, it tells us
in the Bible, went down to the temple to pray. Oh, they're going
to go to Jerusalem and pray at the most holy place in all the
world, the temple. And one of them said, Lord, I
thank Thee that I'm not like other men. I do all my good deeds and I'm
really thankful I'm not like this man over here. Now over
here is a publican, and he was a hated man, a tax collector,
and the Lord said his prayer was this. Be merciful, God be merciful
to me, a sinner. You know what? He was. God was
merciful. He went down to his house justified.
And so this man who was called a Samaritan, a man that was an
outcast, nobody liked the Lord Jesus unless God gave them a
new heart. The book of Isaiah says that
we esteemed him not. There was no form or coming to
us that we should desire him. He was not attractive to us because
he just kept pointing out, you're having a problem, you're having
a problem. Well, this man showed mercy and Now it came to pass
that they went, he entered into a certain village and a certain
woman named Martha received him into her house. Again, he's just
going to show mercy. So the lawyer who tried to justify
himself did have to come to this conclusion. Which one of those
three men was his neighbor? The one who showed mercy. No, we cannot demand mercy, we
can only ask for it. We demand mercy, the judge doesn't
have to give us any mercy. We plead for mercy. God be merciful
to me, a sinner. Well, that's the reason the Lord
Jesus Christ came as a baby anyway, born of a virgin. That's the
reason he came. He came to make himself a ransom, to give his
life a ransom for many. He shows mercy even today. He shows mercy upon his people.
When we get to hear the gospel, he speaks peace to us. He has
shown mercy.