Right here in Matthew chapter
five, I've titled the lesson this morning, the true meaning
of love thy neighbor. Now you remember as our Lord
is preaching what we call the sermon on the mount, he is telling
us what true righteousness is. He's telling us how a sinner
can be made righteous. He's told us that we cannot earn
a righteousness by obeying the law because we can't keep it
by nature. We don't even desire to And he's
also told us something that the Pharisees never realized. They
ever talked to people because they never realized it, that
not only does God require that we keep the law outwardly, but
we've got to keep it inwardly perfectly in our desires and
in our heart to just want to tell a lie. You know, you get,
you get caught and so you want to protect yourself, you know,
and protect yourself from punishment to just want to tell a lie, makes
you guilty of telling a lie. So the only way that you and
I can be righteous is not by us trying to keep the law. It's
through faith in Christ. Well, then why did God bother
to give the law? God gave the law to force us to go to Christ. God gave us the law to show us
that we don't have any hope in ourselves. We've got to go to
Christ. And that's the true meaning of
every commandment of the law. It's look to Christ. It's trust
Christ. It's go to Christ for forgiveness
of your sins. And we've seen that in several
examples the Lord's given us. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt
not commit adultery. Thou shalt not swear an eye for
an eye. And the last example the Lord
uses is this commandment, love thy neighbor. That must be an
important commandment because our Lord said the whole law of
God and the prophets hangs on two commandments. Number one,
thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with
all thy soul, with all thy mind, with all thy strength. And the
second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
And Lord's going to show us that the true meaning of that commandment
is run to Christ. I look here at verse 43 of Matthew
chapter five. You've heard that it's been said,
thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say
unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do
good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully
use you and persecute you." Now, it doesn't take much comment
from me at all for all of us to see we're guilty of breaking
this commandment. Now, we love folks. Now, we naturally
love our family. We love people who love us, don't
we? We love people that love us.
But how about your enemy? How are you doing with loving
your enemy? How do you feel about somebody that hurts you on purpose? I mean, it hurts you. And when
you go talk to them about it, they tell you, I don't care.
That's not my problem. Can you find it anywhere in you
to love that person? Huh? No, it's impossible, isn't
it? It's impossible to our nature.
But if you're a child of God, you're gonna experience some
conviction over that. You know you ought to love your
enemy. You know you ought not feel that
way about them. So what you do, you know you
ought to pray for them. It's plain in God's word you ought
to pray for them. You know that. So what you do is you say, oh,
I'm gonna pray for them. And you pray for them. And you
say amen. And then you sit and think about it for a second.
And then you gotta start praying again and ask the Lord to forgive
you for being insincere in your prayer for this person. We cannot
keep this commandment, can we? It's impossible. We're guilty.
Well, is there hope of salvation for such a selfish, self-centered,
hateful person as I am? Yes, there is. It's found in
the true meaning of this commandment. Look to Christ, who's the friend
of sinners. The Lord Jesus Christ did love
his enemies, didn't he? And he proved it in dying for
them while they were yet sinners. He did pray for his enemies. He did pray for them that despitefully
he used to father forgive them. They know not what they do. Now,
if you look over at Luke chapter 10, the best example that I can
think of in this love your neighbor is the parable of the good Samaritan.
Luke chapter 10 verse 25. And behold, a certain lawyer
stood up and tempted him saying, master, what shall I do to inherit
eternal life? Now this lawyer is a scribe.
He is an expert in the mosaic law. He would interpret the law
for the people. And this is not an honest question
he's asking. He's really not interested in eternal life. He's
trying to trap the Lord. And we'll see this in just a
moment. He's really interested in justifying himself. And boy,
aren't we experts at that? I mean, we can all find a way,
no matter what it is we've done, to justify ourselves. So the
Lord takes this question. This man's trying to tempt him.
He's trying to justify himself. And the Lord lets him choose
the ground on which he will stand before God. I want you to think
about that for a minute. That frightened me to death. I pray the Lord never does that
to me. He never leaves that up to my
choice, because if he does, I'm gonna make the same mistake that
this Pharisee made. Look what he says in verse 26.
The Lord said unto him, what's written in the law? How readest
thou? And he answering said, thou shalt
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. And the Lord said unto him, thou
shalt answer right. This do and live. Now here the
Lord tells us the law is had by keeping the law perfectly.
And if you can keep it, do it. And you'll live. That's a fact.
But our problem is we can't keep the law. No, we can't keep the
law. We came into the world breaking
the law. It's already too late for us.
What we need is somebody to keep the law for us. And that someone
is the Lord Jesus Christ. Here's the Savior standing right
before this man. And he doesn't want to beg for
mercy. He wants to justify himself by finding a loophole in the
law. Look what he says in verse 29.
But he willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, and who is my
neighbor? Now I'll tell you what this scribe
means when he says, who is my neighbor? He doesn't mean Who
is it that lives on either side of me? He's not saying that.
This is what he's saying. He's saying, surely you think
the law means that I only have to love Jews. You can't think
my neighbor is a Gentile. You cannot think that the law
says I've got to love Gentiles. Surely you think the law allows
me to hate Gentiles. That's what he's saying. He's
looking for a loophole in the law. And you notice the monumental
commandment he left out. Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God. He just took that for granted. Since he was a Jew, a natural
Jew, a natural descendant of Abraham, he just assumed God
loved him and he loved God. This fella had a bumper sticker
on his chariot. Smile, God loves you and so do
I, if you're a Jew. And we kind of laugh about that,
but you know what? We've got the exact same nature. We are
no different by nature. I love the wisdom that our Lord
uses in answering this question. He answers with a parable to
show the true meaning of the commandment. Love thy neighbor
is to look to Christ and trust Christ and seek forgiveness of
your sins. Seek salvation in him. Verse
30, Jesus answering 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. In this
parable, who is the certain man? It was Adam. Adam was created
upright. He was created in that city,
Jerusalem, upright. And he went down, down, down,
down. This man was traveling down from
Jerusalem to Jericho. Jericho was the city Joshua cursed
and God destroyed. That's where this man went. Well,
that's Adam. When Adam fell, he fell all the
way from innocence to being under the curse of God because of his
sin. And everything in creation was cursed because of Adam. The ground was cursed for his
sake. I mean, everything, nature is cursed for his sake. Well,
who are these thieves Adam fell among? Well, I can think of two. Satan and sin. Now we know Satan
deceived Eve, didn't we? And when Eve ate the fruit, nothing
happened, did it? Nothing happened. Nothing changed. Because Eve
wasn't the federal head. Eve was in Adam. But Adam, he
went into this thing with his eyes wide open. He knew exactly
what he was doing. He went to that tree and took
that fruit and he ate it in open rebellion against God. Because
Adam wanted to be God. Adam wanted to be the one to
decide good and evil. And Satan said, you'll know good
and evil. What he meant is you'll be the one to decide what's good
and what's evil. And Adam wanted to make the rules. Well, that's
what he thought was going to happen, but that's not what happened,
was it? Because sin deceived him. And sin slew him. After
Adam ate that fruit, what happened? He didn't see good and evil,
did he? All he knew was evil. He knew no good. All he saw was
evil because sin took everything that Adam had away from him.
The moment Adam ate that fruit, he died spiritually. That's what
God promised would happen. That's exactly what happened.
And this is not just some story about some man in a faraway land.
This is your story and my story because we were in Adam. We were
doing what Adam did. When Adam sinned, so did you,
so did I. When Adam died, so did we. And
sin came and stripped Adam of his innocence, took it away from
him, and left him wounded and bruised by the fall. Now a parable
is just a parable. Brother Henry told us so many
times, I wish I could think of things to say like he said them.
He'd say, don't try to make these stories stand on four legs. It's
just a parable. It's just a picture. When Adam
fell, he wasn't half dead. Adam died, didn't he? He died spiritually. But our
story says the man was only half dead. But you know, in a way
that's true. God told Adam, in the day you
eat that fruit, dying thou shalt die. Adam, the moment you eat
that fruit, you'll immediately die spiritually. And you will
begin to die physically because of your sin. So that we're just
like Adam, aren't we? We're alive physically, but we're
100% dead spiritually. And the point of all this about
this man being left in the ditch, he's half dead, is this. He's
a picture of us in Adam. We're helpless. We're completely
helpless to get ourselves out of that ditch. We're completely
helpless to heal ourselves, to heal up our wounds and our bruises
and our putrefying sores. We are completely helpless on
somebody else to come where we are and do for us what we can't
do for ourselves. Somebody's got to come help us.
So here we lay. We need help. We're dead in trespasses
and sins. In verse 31, by chance, there
came down a certain priest that way. And when he saw him, he
passed by on the other side. And likewise, a Levite, when
he was at the place, came and looked on him and passed by on
the other side. Now this priest represents the
law. That's what the priest was in charge of, the law. And the
law came by and saw that man down the ditch. He got over on
the other side of the street and went right on by. Get as
far away from that man as he could. Well, that's a picture
of the law and you and me by nature. The law cannot come where
we are and help us because we can't keep it. The only way the
law can be of any use to us is if we can keep it, if we can
make ourselves righteous by doing it, but we can't. Here we are
down in the ditch. The law can't come down where
we are. See that? God cannot lower the
standard of the law no matter what. He can't lower the standard
of the law down where we are to try to help us. God's righteous,
God's holy, and his law cannot change. The only thing the law
can do is condemn us. It's got to go by us on the other
side of the street. And the same thing is true about
the ceremonies. That's who the Levite represents. the ceremonies
of religion. The Levite was in charge of all
the ceremonies. The Passover we'll talk about
this morning, but all the ceremonies and sacrifices of religion and
all those ceremonies. I mean, boy, we've got a lot
of ceremonies of religion. You think the Israelites had
a lot of ceremonies. We got a lot too. We just make,
keep, keep making them up and none of them would help us. None
of them. The ceremonies of religion with
all its chanting and its smoke and its incense and a costume
for a preacher to wear. Buddy, that makes the flesh feel
good, doesn't it? But you know what God says? Away with them. They're a stench in my nostril.
They're offensive to me and I won't have them. The ceremonies of
the Old Testament, the only use, the only good that those ceremonies
could ever do us is one way. pointing us to Christ. These
things are a picture of Christ. Now look to Him. See, the ceremonies
can't help save us, but Christ can. And the ceremonies were
given so we'd see this is who He is. This is what He's coming
to do, and I trust Him. And if you want to use those
ceremonies to try to help you, try to improve your standing
before God, the ceremony is going to take one look at us, and they're
going to go to the other side of the street, and they're going
to go away with their head turned. Not even look at us. They can't
look at us. If those ceremonies come down
the ditch with us trying to help us, you know what's going to
happen? We're going to defile them with our sin. This Levite,
if he would come down and touch the dead body of that man, he's
going to be defiled for seven days. He can't go into the temple. He can't observe the Sabbath.
He can't observe all these ceremonies anymore because he's been defiled
because he touched a dead guy. He's got to pass by a nurse identity.
He can't help us. So the law and the ceremonies
can't help us. They don't want anything to do
with us. But thank God there's hope. There is hope. Somebody cares about dead sinners. And here he is, verse 33. But
a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, he came where he was. And when
he saw him, he had compassion on him. And he went to him and
bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine and set him on
his own beast and brought him to an end and took care of him."
Now, who is this Samaritan? Who is this a picture of? It's
a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ. He chose a Samaritan on purpose
to tell this story, this parable, to make this point, to describe
a Samaritan. All the Jews hated the Samaritans. When they tried to insult our
Savior, what did they call him? They said, you're a Samaritan.
Well, that's a picture of Christ. What did he do? Well, he came
where this man was. I'm telling you, if you and I
would be saved, we must be saved by this hated man, Jesus of Nazareth. And I'm not talking about this
Jesus that everybody loves. I'm not talking about the Jesus
man's made up. If we make up an idol, of course
we love him. I'm talking about the Lord Jesus
Christ of this book. The one who's sovereign in salvation. The one that saves who he will,
when he will. The one who does all the work
of salvation and he'll accept no help from you and me. The flesh hates that. Oh, the
flesh hates that savior. But if you and I are going to
be saved, he's going to have to be the one who saves us now. He's
going to have to come where we are and save us. Thank God He loves His enemies
because that's what He did. This Samaritan got right down
in the ditch with this wounded man. Isn't that what our Savior
did? He left the splendor of heaven. He left all His glory as the
Son of God and took on Him human flesh. He got down right in the
ditch, right in the muck and the mire where we live. And when he got here, you think of the difference between
him and us. If we got around a bunch of people that we thought
were so sinful, everything they do is sin, everything they do
is offensive to us. We'd be unbearable, just unbearable. We'd be so self-righteous looking
down our nose at them. And the Savior came with compassion. He had compassion on sinners. Can you think of anything more
precious than the Lord's compassion for dead sinners? And in His
compassion, He came and tenderly bound up the wounds of this half-dead
man. That's what Christ our Savior's
done. He's bound up our wounds and healed them. He was wounded
for our transgressions. by his stripes were healed. And
then the Samaritan poured in oil and wine. That's the medicine
that they used in that day. But what's that a picture of?
Well, oil is a picture of the Holy Spirit. Wine, just like
what we're going to observe when we observe the Lord's table this
morning, is a picture of the blood of Christ. Here's how the
Lord heals his people. It's by pouring in the blood
of Christ that cleanses us from all sin. He pours the Holy Spirit
into the hearts of his people through the preaching of the
gospel. And you notice the Lord, he came to this man. When he
comes to his people, you'll notice he didn't invite that man to
come with him, did he? He didn't say, well, I'll come
down and help you if you want me to. You know, if you want, you know,
if you start coming up here out of this ditch, show me you've
got some intention of straightening up. No, he didn't do that. He
came down where he was and he healed him. And then he picked
him up and he took him to the inn. That's what God does for his
people. And there's no denying that the Lord tenderly calls
his people by name. Tenderly. But don't be mistaken
into thinking that that means he's leaving salvation up to
your decision. Because he's not. The Lord never leaves it up to
a dead sinner to take the first step out of the ditch. Never.
He always comes where his people are and he picks them up and
he carries them where they need to go. Verse 35, and on the morrow,
when he departed, he took two pens and gave them to the host
and said unto him, take care of him. And whatsoever thou spendest
more, when I come again, I'll repay thee. Now, what is this
end? I'm confident it's the church.
And a lot of people say the innkeeper is the pastor, but you know,
really the innkeeper is every member of the church. And what's
our job? What is the job of the church?
It's to preach the gospel of Christ. Our job is to take care
of weak, wounded, dirty, helpless sinners by preaching Christ to
them and preaching it to them with compassion. Our responsibility
is to take care of God's children. I hope we take that seriously,
don't you? I hope we do. Well, what are these two pens?
We have a lot of speculation about that. It could be the Old
Testament and the New Testament. You've got to have the whole
word of God to take care of God's people. It could be faith and
love. But either way, it's of two things
that are of equal value. One pens is equal to the other
pens, two pens. You can't have one without the
other. Well, that applies to the Old Testament and the New
Testament, doesn't it? You can't have one without the other. You
can't preach the Old Testament without the New Testament. You
can't preach the Old Testament without preaching the New Testament.
You can't preach Christ in picture in the Old Testament without
preaching the fulfillment of it in the New Testament. And
it applies to faith and love. We can't believe, we can't preach,
we can't pray, we can't help anybody without faith and love. That's the only way we can preach
God's word. And that's all we need to take
care of God's children. We don't need psychology. We
don't need mood lighting and all these special things, you
know, we need God's word and we need faith and love. And let's
just not worry about, and this is not really referring to money,
but since we're talking about two pens, not money, but let's
not also worry about the amount of effort and the amount of emotion
that we put in to preaching the gospel and helping God's people.
You know, we think I just put so much into this. I put so much
in emotion and trying to help this person and all they've done
is kick dirt in my face. Well, just don't worry about
that. You do what God's put your hand
to do today. I promise you, you won't come
up short. I promise you, you won't. You're not going to out
give God. You're not going to go hungry because you gave money
to help God's people. And you're not going to just
physically and emotionally exhaust yourself so you just can't do
anything because you emotionally spend all this effort trying
to help God's people. I promise you, the Lord will
repay. Isn't that what he said here?
If you've got to spend more, I'll repay it. The Lord will
bless. Now you just do what God's put
your hand to do today and trust Him to bless it. Isn't that comforting? You don't have to produce the
results. Just do what God's given you to do. He'll bless it. But either way, whatever these
two pens mean, the meaning of the commandment is this. Look
to Christ, the friend of sinners, and depend on Him to heal you.
The parable makes that so clear. Even this lawyer couldn't deny
that. Verse 36. The Lord says, Which now of these
three thinkest thou was neighbor unto him that fell among the
thieves? And he said, he that showed mercy on him, then said
Jesus unto him, go and do thou likewise. See, the only way anybody
can go and do likewise is if they're motivated by grace, not
law. It's the only way. The only way
you can be motivated to go and do likewise is if you're a child
of the living God who serves him as a loving, faithful child
to a loving, faithful father, You can't do this as a hireling
trying to earn a paycheck. It's impossible. Now if you look
back in our text, Matthew chapter five, this is exactly what the
Lord says in verse 45. He says, you do this that ye
may be the children of your father which is in heaven. For he maketh
his son to rise on the evil and on the good and sendeth rain
on the just and on the unjust. For if you love them which love
you, what reward have you? Do not even the publicans the
same? And if you salute your brethren only, what do you more
than others? Do not even the publicans so?
Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father, which is in heaven,
is perfect. Now this is the believer's motivation
to love your neighbor. And clearly from the parable,
our neighbor is everybody, any man, a certain man. What's the
believer's motivation to love our neighbor? It's God's love
and God's compassion he showed us while we were yet his enemies. Isn't that it? If that doesn't
break your heart and motivate you, nothing will. Even if you
got to pray for your enemies and then pray, Lord, forgive
you for being insincere, nothing will motivate you to do that.
Like God's love and compassion for you while you were yet his
enemy. The believer's motivation to make an effort to love our
enemies is not so that we can earn a righteousness before God.
It's to be God's loving child. To show, to attempt to show some
kind of love, some kind of compassion that in the most minute way matches
the Savior's love and compassion for me when he came rescue me
out of the ditch. That's the only way we can be
motivated to do this. And we won't do it perfectly.
Nobody's saying you're gonna do this perfectly. But the believer
at least has a desire to do it. At least a desire. And if you
look at it in the light of all the scripture, those two pens,
Old Testament and New Testament, you know we have done it perfectly.
Christ our Savior. We have. We've kept all the law
in him. That's the only way we can. The
only reason we have a desire to act different than our flesh,
and I'm not even comparing ourselves to the Pharisees and the publicans,
I'm talking about my flesh. The only reason I have any desire
to act differently to my flesh is God's grace in the heart that
he gave me when he poured in the oil and wine. So you see
that, the true meaning of the commandment, love thy neighbor
is this, you trust the Lord Jesus Christ, who's the friend of sinners. Aren't you glad Solomon said
there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother? This friend,
he did bless them that cursed him. He did do good to them that
hated him. Those that hated him, what did
he come and do? He came and worked miracles for
them. He came and explained the scriptures to them. He sat down
and taught them constantly. He fed them. He healed them. And then he suffered and died
for them. And while he suffered and died
for them, he prayed for those which despitefully used him and
persecuted him. Father, forgive them. They know not what they did.
Now, I don't know exactly who it is he was praying for there,
but this I know, they're forgiven. Those at the foot of the cross
crucifying the Lord of glory were forgiven for it because
the friend of sinners prayed for them. Aren't you glad for
such a friend and such a savior? That's the meaning of the commandment.
All right. Lord bless you.