The Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) | Adult Sunday School

The Lawyer’s Question and the Greatest Commandments

Glad to see you. It's always good to be in the house of the Lord, being among the saints and looking into his word hearing the word preached. Doesn't get any better than that, except for one thing, heaven.

Maybe soon. All right, we're gonna be in looking at the Good Samaritan this morning. And so if you wanna open your Bibles to Luke chapter 10, we're gonna be there and we'll cover that. We'll wanna start with the word of prayer, so let's do that now.

Father, we just come before you looking for you for guidance and wisdom, for understanding, for every breath that we have, we give you praise and glory. You are the only sovereign king in this universe.

It's amazing to look around at the beauty of your creation, just to see how amazing that you are and what things that you've made. And I just pray that we can look into your word today, gain wisdom from what you teach us and help us to glorify you with our lives every day through our words and through our deeds, and that many people would come to know you.

And we just give you all the praise and glory in Jesus name, amen. Okay, so the Good Samaritan starts essentially, I mean, the passage starts a little bit later for the Good Samaritan, but for context, we're gonna start reading in verse 25, Luke 10, verse 25.

And a lawyer stood up and put him to the test saying, teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? And he said to him, what is written in the law? How does it read to you? And he answered, you shall 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 your neighbor as yourself.

And he said to him, you have answered correctly, do this and you will live. But wishing to justify himself, he said to Jesus, and who is my neighbor? Jesus replied and said, a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among robbers and they stripped him and beat him and went away leaving him half dead.

And by chance a priest was going down on that road. And when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. Likewise, a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him pass by on the other side. But a Samaritan who was on a journey came upon him.

And when he saw him, he felt compassion and came to him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them. And he put on him, excuse me, and he put him on his beast, his own beast and brought him to an inn and took care of him.

On the next day, he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, take care of him. And whatever more you spend, when I return, I will repay you. Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robber's hands?

And he said, the one who showed mercy toward him. Then Jesus said to him, go and do the same. Today, we wanna look at the story of the Good Samaritan. And as you know, it's pretty popular story. You might've heard of it, the Good Samaritan.

It's popular in a lot of ways. The secular world certainly knows about this. You see it all over the place because it's a familiar teaching to anyone who does a good deed. They say it's a Good Samaritan.

You hear this all the time. I mean, businesses name their organizations after the name, Good Samaritan. There is the Good Samaritan Society, a Good Samaritan Hospital, see that. A Good Samaritan College.

And of course, we know of Samaritan's Purse, a ministry. That is out there. People who do good, of course, are called Good Samaritans. There's even a website out there dedicated to stories involving people who have exhibited kind of the spirit of the Good Samaritan to kind of get the point across by helping out others in kind of various situations.

Believers and unbelievers alike have heard the name, the Good Samaritan. My question is though, is this all that the story really teaches? We'll get back to that. You also find some very interesting interpretations out there.

I've just marveled at some of it. Some of it's very allegorical. This particular Catholic priest says this about the Good Samaritan parable. He said, it's a metaphor of our story. It's a metaphor of our story.

Jerusalem is always symbolic of heaven. Jerusalem stands for the way we ought to be, he says. What's Jericho? It's a city of distinction and sin. A man went down to Jericho, and that's everyone in the world.

That's you and me. We are the ones who have fallen from Jerusalem, from the way we ought to be to the way we are, Jericho. You can see with this kind of an interpretation, an allegorical interpretation, you can get all kinds of meanings out of this particular passage, but I promise you we're gonna take a little different approach than the allegorical approach this morning.

So the main story is in Luke 30 to 37 in this passage, but in order to understand it, we wanna look at verses 25 through 29, and we'll read that again just to make sure it's cemented into our minds. Starting in verse 25, and a lawyer stood up and put him to the test saying, teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?

And he said to him, what is written in the law? How does it read to you? And he answered, you shall 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 your neighbor as yourself.

And he said to him, you have answered correctly, do this and you will live. But wishing to justify himself, he said to Jesus, and who is my neighbor? Right from the beginning here, we see that there is a lawyer that comes on the scene.

And keep in mind, it's not kind of like our typical lawyer today, right? You know, where they get their billboards up on the side of the road or anything like that. No, an attorney or a lawyer back then was one who was very versed in the Mosaic law.

He's the expert in knowing all the legal aspects of the law. So he asked Jesus a question, doesn't he? And it says, it was to test him. It was to test him. And you kind of think about this, if you're reading the New Testament, the scribes and the Pharisees were always trying to kind of monitor Jesus' behavior, to check and make sure that he was being faithful to the law.

You kind of get the idea though, that in this particular situation, that he doesn't have the best motives in mind. Doesn't have the best motives because it says he stood up in an attempt to put him to the test.

He was trying to essentially stood up, he called Jesus out in a way, and he was looking to see if he would answer wrongly. And so he's putting him to the test. The question he asked though, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?

That was a good question. That was a good question. But by asking what the wrong intentions, it seems like he wasn't really looking for the answer. He was more concerned whether Jesus would answer correctly.

And if he didn't, it would be kind of more of a gotcha moment. Don't you wish more people though would ask that question? What does it take to inherit eternal life? That's a good question. I think it is.

If you were to ask that question today, what kinds of answers would you get? I'm a good person. You hear that a lot. I try to do what's right. There's always that comparison of people against others. I mean, I've never murdered anyone, so I'm pretty decent.

I could go to heaven. But isn't it the most important question anyone could ever ask? When I die and leave this planet, where will I go? How will I spend eternity? I hope everyone here who doesn't know the answer to that will find out, look into it and find out because it is the most important question out there.

What does Jesus do to answer the question? He turns it back to scripture. I love this.

What does the law say?

You are the lawyer.

How does it read?

How does it read to you?

That should be a lesson for us all to consider when we encounter unbelievers who ask us questions. I feel like we don't always have to be the Bible answer man. And a lot of times when some questions are asked, it's just smoke screens that are used to take us away or our minds, I should say, off of the real issue, which of course is Christ.

He is always the answer. Christ answered a question by asking a question. You're the lawyer. What is written in the law? He knew the right answer. Love God and love people. It's that simple. The warrior was quoting here Deuteronomy 6 .5 and Leviticus 19 .18.

I want to just, for context, I want to read Deuteronomy 6 and I'll include verse four. You don't have to turn there, but I'll read it. Verse four in Deuteronomy 6. Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God.

The Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. The reason I read verse four is because that word here is the Hebrew word shamah. The shamah is a Jewish prayer that was recited morning and evening and once considered to be one of the Jews' most sacred duties.

It was cited by Jesus as the greatest commandment in the law in Matthew 22 .37. So the point is that this verse was very familiar to the lawyer. He would know it. Jesus tells him, you've answered correctly.

Do this and you'll live. I was thinking about this. You would have hoped at this point that the lawyer would have realized he was kind of cooked. You would hope that, but he didn't. Christ was using the law as a mirror.

Isn't that what scripture does to us? It's a mirror for our souls. He was holding up the perfection of the law that the law demanded and against his self-righteous works. It's a mirror. Here's the works that the law demands.

Here's your works. Righteousness is a requirement necessary to enter into the kingdom of heaven. The Sermon on the Mount illustrates this very well in Matthew 5 .20 because it says this. For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

What's the lawyer really asking Jesus here about eternal life? I submit to you that it is about what kind of righteous works he must do to enter the kingdom of heaven. Christ told him the kinds of works needed in order to enter the kingdom.

Just keep the law perfectly. Just keep the law perfectly. Love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind perfectly every day without fail. Do that, and there's just this one other thing that you need to do.

You just need to love your neighbor as you love yourself. I mean, I don't know about you, but loving self seems to be pretty easy. It's something we're very, very good at, but when it comes to loving our neighbor the same way, it's very challenging to do, very challenging.

He had to know he was never going to be able to keep the commands perfectly. It's not possible, but he doubles down, doesn't he? He doubles down on the whole thing. He doesn't really admit it, his need.

He knew what Jesus was asking him to do, but he was trying to find kind of a loophole. I mean, attorneys are good at loopholes, I find. They really look for that. So in verse 29, here's kind of what he's asking.

But wishing to justify himself, he said to Jesus, and who is my neighbor? Instead of surrendering to Christ, he tries to justify himself. Here's a definition from a Bible dictionary that I find helpful.

In common Greek, justification and justify are frequently forensic terms. That is, they relate to the law court and the act of acquitting or vindicating someone. It has to do with the innocence or virtue of a person.

And the lawyer was trying to prove that he was innocent of any wrongdoing. He wanted to justify his actions. He wanted to defend his actions. He wanted to be right. He wanted to be right. And I find it interesting that he just skipped right over this little itsy bitsy part at the very beginning.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind. He just kind of glossed right over that.

Got that?

Got that? Let's just focus on these secondary issues of who is my neighbor. And to a Jew, their neighbors were someone that were close to them. Someone in the same house or a fellow Jew is kind of who they viewed their neighbor as.

So he was kind of focusing on a minor point here about who is my neighbor. Jesus could have answered succinctly, but he didn't do that. Instead, he uses the story of the Good Samaritan to answer that question, who really is my neighbor?

The Priest, the Levite, and the Samaritan

So look at verse 30. Jesus replied and said, a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among robbers, and they stripped him and beat him and went away leaving him in the desert. And they found him half dead.

So if you're standing in Jerusalem and you're looking north towards the Sea of Galilee, Jericho would be down and to the right towards the Dead Sea. It's basically 17 miles from Jerusalem with about a, I don't know, I guess it's a 3 ,000 foot drop in elevation, so it's going down.

And if you've been to Israel at all and taken that road, you kind of know that it's a pretty rugged road. It's very, you know, rocky. It's got a lot of cracks and crevices and there's caves all along the way.

There's a lot of places to hide. It's very remote as you're kind of winding your way down to Jericho. And robbers, you know, of course were there and a lot of places to hide, a lot of places to attack people because there really wasn't that many escape routes if you go on that road.

I mean, there's really nowhere to go. Jerome says it was called the bloody way because it was treacherous, it was very treacherous. The man, presumably a Jew, was stripped of his clothes. He was beaten and left half dead.

The lawyer was probably thinking, where is Christ going with this story? I just asked a simple question here about who is my neighbor, what is happening? And what we see here is three types of people being introduced into the story.

And it seems like they are entering in the picture in descending order of kind of importance, if you will, because the first one that enters is the priest. So if you look at verse 31, it says, and by chance a priest was going down on that road.

And when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So when he says, when the pastor says he was going down the road, it means he was leaving Jerusalem, probably to go home. The priests were responsible for ministering in the temple, to burn the sacrifices and to teach the law, but they weren't there 24, seven, 365 in Jesus's time.

We know from Luke that Zechariah was part of one of 24 divisions of priests that were on duty twice a year for a week at a time. They were visible reminders to the people of the holiness and purity of God's righteous requirements.

Of the law.

History tells us that when these priests were not ministering in the temple, that they lived in the surrounding areas like Jericho. They moved out from the city to get away from their work environment.

Let's see, I lost my place. Oh, priests were wealthy people. And so he was probably on some sort of animal, probably a donkey. He clearly saw the severely beaten man, but made no attempt to help. In fact, he moved to the other side of the road.

And you gotta be thinking now, why would a godly man do that? Why would he not make any attempt to help? Because these are the ones who make their living serving God. You would certainly expect them to help, but that's not what happened.

We have no indication of why he didn't. You would expect the priest to help, but that's not what happened. He saw the wounded man beaten, and it says he passed by on the other side. And then here comes a Levite along the same path.

The Levites serve the priests. They serve the priests according to Numbers 3. They were to perform the duties for Aaron and keep all the furnishings of the tabernacle. All priests were Levites, but not all Levites were priests.

This Levite did the same thing. He saw the man, and what did he do? He went to the other side of the road, and he left him for dead. Both men, who you should be able to count on to help, completely ignored the man.

They were definitely not being the good neighbor, as the story's implying. All kinds of excuses are made for why they didn't stop, but we really don't know why they didn't. Could have been that they wanted to get back home to their families after ministering in the temple all week.

The priest didn't know if the person was dead, and so if he touched him, he would have been unclean. And then because of that, he would have had to go through a long, costly ceremonial cleansing process.

But you know what? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because this is a story to drive home a point about who is my neighbor. One thing we do know, though, is that they were bad examples of what it meant to love a neighbor.

Their response to seeing a need demonstrated their failure to love God, because if they did, they would have kept his commandments. They would have kept his commandments. They both let down the beaten man.

And now, who comes on the scene but a Samaritan? Keep reading in verse 33. But a Samaritan who was on a journey came upon him, and when he saw him, he felt compassion, and came to him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them, and he put him on his beast and brought him to an inn and took care of him.

On the next day, he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, take care of him, and whatever more you spend, when I return, I will repay you. So now the lowest of the low enters the story.

The Jews and the Samaritans, as you may know, were like oil and water. They didn't get along. The wounded man was probably a Jew, which made the story that much more relevant to the lawyer. Can you love those who you despise?

He's probably thinking, why is this hated Samaritan even in this story? It would have been so much easier if Christ introduced an Israelite, but that's not what happened. The Samaritan was on a journey of some kind.

He had an agenda. I love how he put aside his own personal travels to go out of his way to help this badly beaten man. He had things to do, but he took the time to stop and to help, and that says something important to us, doesn't it?

Loving others isn't always convenient. This is what I find. It's not always convenient, and it doesn't always fit into my cookie cutter life and my time schedules and the things that I do. The Samaritans were a hated bunch, but why were they hated?

Why were they hated? We learn in 2 Kings 17 that the King of Samaria did evil in the sight of the Lord, did evil in the sight of the Lord. They burned incense in the high places to other gods. They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to other gods and practiced divination.

Because of that sin, the Lord sent in the King of Assyria, and he conquered the land and took Israel away into exile. When the land was resettled, the Assyrians and the Jews intermarried, and so they were considered half breeds and not full Jews.

And for a Jew, of course, purity and lineage is very, very important. To take it one step further, they created their own place of worship on Mount Gerizim instead of in Jerusalem. Remember the woman at the well who was a Samaritan, and she said to Jesus, "'Our fathers worshiped on this mountain.'".

She was referring to Mount Gerizim, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. That's John 4 .20. For these reasons, the Samaritans were to be rejected at all costs.

They were not spoken of highly at all in the New Testament. In fact, in John 8 .48, listen to this, "'The Jews answered and said to him,' Jesus, "'Do we not rightly say,''. Excuse me, let me back up. I got my tongue tied up.

"'Do we not say rightly that you are a Samaritan "'and have a demon?''. I mean, isn't that like the worst of the worst? Yeah, you are the hated class, the Samaritans, and oh yeah, by the way, you also have a demon.

That's probably not the best. That wasn't the very nicest thing to say at that time. But the most hated person in our story literally becomes the hero. The most unlikely character stops and helps and is said to have compassion.

What is compassion? What is compassion? It means to love or to pity, to spare. And one dictionary that I read is to have bowels of concern. And essentially what it means, it's from your innermost being, from your deep down in the depths of your soul, you have care and concern for others.

When you see others in need, it actually causes some kind of a distressed component in you because you just wanna help them and love them as much as you can. It's a quality within us that literally demonstrates kindness and grace towards other people.

The Samaritan demonstrates for us really what this compassion is as he's living out his daily life. He's moving out into the public sphere and the kind of faith that he has demonstrates what he's doing.

He saw the need, he didn't move to the other side of the road. He didn't care if the person was a Jew, didn't care if he was black or white, far right or far left in his political views, didn't care about any of that.

He just saw the need and he took care of it. It says he bandaged the wounds of the man. Where did he get the bandages? Could have been either his own clothes or possibly the clothes of the beaten man were still there, we don't really know.

But he poured oil and wine on them, on his wounds, took care of him, did the right thing. He loaded him up on his own animal and took him to the inn where he paid two denarii and offered to cover all the expenses even after that.

And one denarii is a day's wages, a day's wages. So, I mean, it was very costly for him to take this person and do the right thing and offer to pay even after his stay. Now, the lawyer had a decision to make, didn't he?

What is happening? We got priest, Levite, and now the Samaritans doing all the good things. Jesus asked them another question in verse 36. Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robber's hands?

And he said, the one who showed mercy towards him. Then Jesus said to him, go and do the same. Notice that the lawyer was even reluctant to say the name Samaritan in this story. You can kind of go, okay.

He says, now go and do the same. Just go and do the same. So the lawyer is to love God with all his heart, mind, and strength, which of course nobody can do. And he said also to love his neighbor perfectly, like the Samaritan, which of course nobody can.

Think of this story and kind of what it teaches and what you're learning. I truly hope that you can see one point and one main theme. One point is that our neighbors reach across every man-made boundary, every man-made boundary.

Our neighbor is everyone we come in contact with and it's important that we look for the needs of other people, very important. The main theme is the story of the lawyer who wants to know what kind of righteous works he must do to inherit eternal life.

And the answer is contained in the parable itself. Love God and love people perfectly all the time. The story I think is greatly exaggerated to prove to the lawyer that he will never be able to do enough good works to save himself.

Nobody loves God perfectly all the time and who can love other people like they love themselves? A couple things I was thinking about, just takeaways from this particular story, lessons that we can learn.

We can look around and realize the first thing that we can draw from this parable is love is costly.

Love Is Costly and Neighbor-Love Is Inconvenient

Love is costly.

The Samaritan gave of his own time, his own money, his own resources to help somebody. Love is costly. It's not enough to just see a need. We must at times do something when it's within our means to help.

That's important. And you just never know when these requests are gonna come at us because life just happens on a normal flow. Sometimes you just see needs as you're just walking down the road. You just don't know that you might take some of your time, some of your resources to help somebody along the way.

The priests and Levites certainly saw the need, but instead of interrupting their lives, they went to the other side of the road. They didn't really want to give up their own freedom to do these things for whatever reason.

They made excuses in their minds why they didn't want to help this badly beaten man. And I was thinking about this and I think, there's a priest and a Levite in all of us. We all kind of want to make excuses at times.

I'm too busy. I've got other things to do. If you only knew what was on my plate. But love's costly. And sometimes it's gonna require us to go the extra mile. But what we can do is when God allows situations that put us in positions where we can help others, we can view them as opportunities instead of inconveniences.

There are many ministry chances, I think, that allow us time to help meet a need and possibly share our faith with somebody. That's important. We're looking at starting a counseling ministry here at our church.

And part of the reason for that is that there are many hurting people all around. They could use some physical and spiritual guidance in their lives. I don't know about you, but it seems like we have become callous by the trauma that we see almost every day.

Hiding from all the chaos seems like it's the best option to do sometimes because getting involved, sometimes there's a cost to it. We see whistleblowers and innocent people helping others and what happens to them, they end up being prosecuted.

Being a good neighbor may cost us something. It may cost us something. No truer story that exemplifies this is the story of Daniel Penny. In May of 2023, you might've heard of this gentleman who subdued a homeless man when he was scaring people on the subway, when he was saying words like, I don't care if I go to jail.

I don't care if I, or he said, I'm ready to die. But fear of prosecution didn't matter to Daniel Penny. He saw the need and he did something about it. He was a neighbor to everyone on that subway that day.

But sometimes it's gonna cost us something because he was prosecuted. He was eventually acquitted, thankfully, but he went through that ordeal just to help somebody. The second thing we can take away from this lesson is prepare to be involved.

Prepare to be involved. Look for needs. And when you find them, pray about which ones you think God wants you to connect with. You just never know what can come along. If the need is building a shed and the only tool in your toolbox is a hammer like mine, you might wanna pass that one by.

Maybe that's not the one for you, okay? We all have different skill sets. So pray about the ones that fit, the ones that you can do. Look into your own skill set and see what you could do. Going out of the house to help someone may require you to present the gospel.

Do you have a gospel starter question in your back pocket? Anything that can kind of get you going? I think of Idaho as a perfect example. You drive up here in the sunshine now, look around at the beauty of creation.

It's nothing to ask somebody, we live in such a beautiful place. Who do you think created all of this? Do you know that there's a God? And instead of waiting for them to ask you about Jesus, you can create an opportunity to share your faith with them.

Preparing to be involved may mean that you look at your resources. What is the amount of time you can devote to helping others? That's an important component. Do you have the physical resources? Do you have whatever, lumbers, nails, whatever it might take?

I find that in life, understanding people's deepest needs helps me to minister to them. They may have physical needs, but the deepest need is spiritual. Spiritual. How well they spend eternity. They need to know the love of the Savior.

I think when people are at the end of their lives, they're not shopping for that Maserati that does 185. That's a misspent youth reference for all you young people that don't know what that means. What I'm trying to say is that the most important reality in life is that people have a relationship with Christ.

And they have people all around them that love them. The third thing I would say is that the world is our neighbor. The lawyer believed his neighbor was those closest to him and other fellow Jews. The story teaches that your neighbor is anyone who has need.

It's much broader than that though, isn't it? It's much broader. Skin color doesn't matter. How much melanin you have in your skin just doesn't factor in. It's irrelevant. Our neighbors are all around us.

They're at home, they're at work. As we travel, each person we come in contact with needs the love of Christ shown to them. What's interesting to me as I reflect on life is that it's far easier to love a stranger sometimes than it is to love our own family.

Those at work can sometimes get on my nerves. I spend more time with them than my own family and quite honestly, I know way too much about them. Way too much. But it's important that wherever we are, we can meet the needs of those people.

And the last thing I would say that I take away from this lesson is God's mercy leads to eternal life. The lawyer asked the question at the beginning, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? Have you been processing that question in your mind?

What shall I do to inherit eternal life? Inheriting eternal life isn't something you gain on your own. Your own righteous works and deeds are never going to get you into the kingdom of heaven. That's a fact.

Inheriting eternal life is kind of like you think about an inheritance. You're an heir, an heir of God's estate, which is his estate is the kingdom of heaven. And it's given to us from everyone that he chooses.

It's not something that we can work towards and do on our own. He gives you and me an amazing inheritance through adoption into his family. And think about an inheritance. Can you give yourself an inheritance?

No, you can't. You can't give yourself an inheritance. Listen to these words in 1 Peter 1, three through four. Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy has caused us to be born again, to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance, which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you.

You read that? According to his great mercy. What does it say? He has caused us to be born again. It's not something that the lawyer could do with his righteous acts, his righteous deeds, because there is filthy rags before the Lord.

There's nothing that a person can do to guarantee eternal life. It says we were born again into a living hope. That's important, a living hope. It's not dead. It's something that's going to become reality.

There's nothing that can stop that. And how does that happen? Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. And it says here to obtain an inheritance, which is imperishable. Once you become a believer, you're guaranteed an inheritance.