25One day an expert in religious law stood up to test Jesus by asking him this question: “Teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?”
26Jesus replied, “What does the law of Moses say? How do you read it?”
27The man answered, “‘You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.’ And, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”c
28“Right!” Jesus told him. “Do this and you will live!”
29The man wanted to justify his actions, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
30Jesus replied with a story: “A Jewish man was traveling from Jerusalem down to Jericho, and he was attacked by bandits. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him up, and left him half dead beside the road.
31“By chance a priest came along. But when he saw the man lying there, he crossed to the other side of the road and passed him by. 32A Temple assistantd walked over and looked at him lying there, but he also passed by on the other side.
33“Then a despised Samaritan came along, and when he saw the man, he felt compassion for him. 34Going over to him, the Samaritan soothed his wounds with olive oil and wine and bandaged them. Then he put the man on his own donkey and took him to an inn, where he took care of him. 35The next day he handed the innkeeper two silver coins,e telling him, ‘Take care of this man. If his bill runs higher than this, I’ll pay you the next time I’m here.’
36“Now which of these three would you say was a neighbor to the man who was attacked by bandits?” Jesus asked.
37The man replied, “The one who showed him mercy.”
Then Jesus said, “Yes, now go and do the same.”
(Luke 10:25-37)
Jesus was the best storyteller that had ever lived. He told more stories than lots of others in the Bible.
So why tell stories? Aren’t stories just for children? Well, adults still love stories; take Lord of the Rings, for example. It’s a book enjoyed by many adults and children alike!
Looking at today’s passage, in verse 25, an expert in the religious law stood up. Jesus was telling the story to someone who knew the Scriptures as much as He did.
“Teacher what should I do to inherit eternal life?”, said the expert. The expert was clever enough to know that this is a wise question to ask. He was trying to test Jesus.
Instead of giving a straight answer, Jesus fires a question back at the man: “What does the law of Moses say?”
Jesus knew that the expert would know this. The issue for the religious expert was not that he didn’t know the Scripture, but that he didn’t know how to apply it. Sometimes that’s our problem as Christians: we know the Bible but we don’t know how to apply it to our lives.
“You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.”
We must love God, for He first loved us. He calls us His treasure. We don’t just say “I love you” to Him; we also have to show it in our actions. The letter from James shows that while only faith saves us, good works essential for displaying our faith, living a life of thankfulness to God for saving us.
Love God with your heart - our heart is our feeler, the source of our emotions. God wants us to honour Him in the way we control all our emotions, both the happiness and excitement but also the anger and the sadness. Let us honour Jesus in how we do this.
Love God with your soul - this is the immaterial part of you that makes you unique. God wants us to love Him with all that we are.
Love God with your strength - we should love God with everything that we have got, everything that is in our possession. If we have the power to bring a sacrifice of praise, to love God in places where it hurts, then let's do that.
Love God with your mind - in church these days we can fall into the trap of focusing on our emotions, on warm fuzzy feelings and experiences of the Holy Spirit. But we need to fix our minds on what is good, true and noble. We need to be a people who dig into the Scriptures, who wrestle with God to understand the Truth of what He has written. A lot of our wrestling with God is in our minds. Our life moves in the direction of our strongest thoughts, so we need to focus our minds on Jesus let God-honouring thoughts drive us.
Love your neighbour as yourself - the religious expert will have known all the previous items in the list, for they were a direct quote from the Old Testament, so Jesus focused on showing love for neighbour by telling a parable.
The Jewish man ignored the beat-up man. Sometimes we as Christians don’t see the needs around us and help non-Christians in society.
The Levite also ignored the beat up man.
But the Samaritan didn’t! Samaritans were culturally separated from the Jews and were looked down upon by them. According to Jews, the Samaritans were the lowest of the low. The social outcast decided to help the beat-up man, despite the beat-up man looking down upon him due to difference in social status.
Jesus asked who the religious expert's neighbour is. Clearly, it was the Samaritan.
The religious expert described the Samaritan as the “one who showed mercy” - that is also how God’s love for us is. For our sin, we deserve God’s wrath, but for those of us who are in Christ, we receive mercy instead, the withholding of God’s punishment.
So we need to look at who’s neighbour we can be, who we can show mercy to, even if they have hurt us. Ultimately none of us deserve God’s mercy and so we shouldn’t withhold mercy from those around us.
Let’s never be too spiritual that we forget the practical. We live in a material world with material needs. Let’s help those around us in need.