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It was at a church service in Munich that I saw him, the former SS man who had stood guard at the shower room door in the processing center at the concentration camp
Ravensbrück. He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time and suddenly it was all there.
The room of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, my sister Betsy's pain blanched face.
He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing. How grateful
I am for your message, Fraulein, he said, to think as you say he's washed my sins away.
His hands were thrust out to shake mine and I who had preached so often to the people the need to forgive kept my hand at my side.
Even as the angry vengeful thoughts boiled through me I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man, was
I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and please help me to forgive him.
Corrie Ten Boom said, I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand, I could not.
I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity and so again
I breathed the silent prayer, Jesus, I cannot forgive him, give me your forgiveness. As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened, from my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.
The mercy of God in the heart of Corrie Ten Boom, we live in an unmerciful time and I'm wondering where the merciful are.
If you were in the Bible days, these were the four cardinal virtues of the Romans, any guesses?
Wisdom, justice, temperance and courage. Mercy did not be found on the list.
Matter of fact, if you were a real man, if you were a real Roman, you would never stoop so low to be merciful.
Matter of fact, a popular Roman philosopher called mercy, quote, the disease of the soul.
Mercy, self -righteous, judgmental people don't need mercy.
On the other hand, when the triune God gets a hold of you, you become merciful. John Chrysostom, a great preacher of almost 2 ,000 years ago, preached on mercy so much they called him the preacher of mercy, kind of like that.
Bishop Cramner of England was so merciful that if you wronged him, he then would do all in his power to do something nice for you and show you mercy, so much so that a proverb was told about Cramner and it goes like this, do
Cramner an injury and he will be your friend as long as he lives. So opposite of the way
I think and the way our culture is. I want to be like Chrysostom, I want to be like Cramner, I want to be like Corrie Tenboom and have
God's mercy be in me and then through me. And let's turn our Bibles to Matthew chapter 5 and see together what
Jesus Christ said about this attribute, a divine attribute that can be communicated to men and women, the attribute of mercy, being merciful to other people.
Other people found here in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter 5 through 7 and we're working our way through the
Beatitudes. I love preaching this. The last seven or eight weeks in the Beatitudes, I've had my world rocked by Jesus.
How much more did these Pharisees who came with legalistic, self -righteous, we're looking for a
Messiah to get rid of Rome, how their minds must have been turned upside down by the greatest preacher that's ever lived.
I like the book of Matthew for lots of reasons. One reason is Matthew calls himself the tax collector and the other men, they just call him a
Levite. He knows I was a tax collector saved by grace and here I now have the privilege of proclaiming to you.
The King is coming. The King is here. From his birth in Matthew 2, who has been born the
King of his Jews to his death in Matthew 27, this is King Jesus of the
Jews above his cross. This book is all about Jesus is the King. He's a creator.
He's the Redeemer. He's sovereign. And if you take a look at Matthew chapter 5 verse 1, Jesus saw these crowds.
He went up on the mountain, almost kind of the Mount Sinai of the New Testament. And after he sat down as a rabbi would, his disciples came to him.
He opened his mouth and began to teach them saying. And what Jesus is going to do, he's going to give an expanded version of one word and that word is repent, to change your mind.
We think one way and Jesus is going to say, let me tell you how to think properly and biblically in order to honor
God. I love
Matthew because it magnifies preaching. The world out there today says, no, you don't need preachers, you don't need preaching.
Who are you to stand up there and tell other people what to do? And what does Matthew do? Matthew says there's five times in the book of Matthew where Jesus preaches and it's the culmination of everything.
He healed so that he would get people to listen to him preach because there's something more important than physical healing and that's spiritual healing.
More preaching in Matthew than any other book seemingly. And what did Jesus start preaching? If you see the first word in verse 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11, that first word is what?
Blessed. And we sometimes think, oh that's happy, we're just happy, peppy, you know, we're just always on top of things.
And here it's more of a word that means approved by God. When God blesses someone, he approves them.
The opposite of this word is woe and here Jesus comes preaching a message of blessedness.
Always in the Bible an act of condescension where God in his love for people, for rebels, for those who are made in his likeness and image, but in Adam fell, he stoops down low and as John would peek down into the tomb and stoop down,
God stoops down, especially through his son, to show us his kindness and his love.
Call this the Beatitudes, these first 12 verses, because the Latin word Beatus means blessed, approved.
Just like the Old Testament, Psalm chapter 1 verse 1, how blessed is the man. These are blessings of God given.
And if you look at the first Beatitude in review, it's found in verse 3, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
When you hear preaching week after week go through the verses, you kind of know what's already coming, right? What is the poor in spirit?
We're reviewing today in the car with the kids. So far they've got the Beatitudes memorized, the first four, because we just go over them week in and week out, blessed are the poor in spirit, for they show what?
You get to receive the kingdom. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven and those who come to God as he works in your heart and you say,
I'm destitute, I'm spiritually lacking, I don't have anything to offer you,
God. God says, I bless that. We don't come to the table and say, God. These are all the reasons why you should save me.
Let me count the ways. Oh, I'm so good. I'm so lovely. I'm so... I can help myself.
True or false, God helps those who help themselves. Most evangelicals think that's the 11th commandment.
God helps the helpless. God here blesses those who say spiritually, I have nothing to offer, I'm empty.
He goes further to say Jesus does in this very sequential and very logical system. This isn't just a bunch of sayings jammed together by Matthew.
Verse four, he says in Beatitude number two, blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. He's saying
God approves those who don't just say, well, I know I'm lacking and that's good. Off to work I go. But I'm lacking and I realize how holy you are
God and how sinful I am and it caused me to mourn. It caused me to do what David did when he knew he sinned against God, against thee and thee only have
I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. Mourning over sin, I like Horatius Bonar, he said, in all unbelief there are two things, a good opinion of self and a bad opinion of God.
His good opinion of himself makes him think it's quite possible to win God's favor by his own religious performances.
Isn't that so true? God's not that holy, we're not that sinful, we can kind of meet in between and arm in arm we go like a bride and a groom down the middle of a church service for a wedding.
And I love it, have you ever thought about this? Do you love God for being so kind to tell you the truth so the scaffolds of your errors come tumbling down so we realize,
God, you're good to tell me that I'm needy of you. God doesn't do us any favor if he just says, you're fine, no problem,
I love you as you are. No, he says in love, Jesus the gentle shepherd, the one who loves more than anyone could love, says,
I'm going to tell you the truth, you need salvation. But as Jesus almost always does, he first shows sin before he shows salvation.
We evangelicals are too quick to just run right up to people and say, here's salvation, take it. Well, they don't even know why.
Jesus, just the greatest preacher ever, says thirdly in the third beatitude, blessed are the meek, blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth.
You realize that you're empty, you realize that you have sin and you realize I can't promote myself,
I can't forward myself, I'm powerless, I can't do anything,
I have a true assessment of who I really am and God says, that's the kind of behavior and attitude that I approve.
Well, here comes a solution at least in verse four. The others are just assessments, man's need, women have need of him and now here we have in the fourth beatitude found in verse six, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
God has so worked a work in their heart, now they know they're thirsty. I didn't know I was thirsty before because I was self -satisfied.
Now I'm thirsty and I'm hungry and I've got to have something else. I need to have God save me because I was born a sinner.
Here's the resolution, here's the answer. Finding the righteousness of God like Paul in Philippians 3 .9,
and may be found in him. Not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith.
Paul is just reflecting what Jesus taught. We're not righteous, Jesus is righteous, we can be righteous when we believe in the righteous one.
God counts us as righteous even though we're not because of the infinite value of the Godman's righteousness.
Can you imagine this too? God stirs the heart to be hungry and then God blesses that heart that he stirred to be hungry with blessings.
How good is God? And when it comes to people whose hearts are tuned to want righteousness of God, God just satiates them, he gluts them, he overfeeds them as it were.
Psalm 107 says, for he has satisfied the thirsty soul and the hungry soul he has filled with what is good.
And I read this week shocking words about this from Thomas Watson for those who don't hunger and thirst after righteousness because they think they're okay.
Because they think compared to the rest of society they're not too bad. Thomas Watson said, they who do not thirst for righteousness shall be in perpetual hunger and thirst.
They shall thirst for mercy but no mercy to be had. Heat in hell increases thirst.
When men shall burn in hell and be scorched with the flames of God's wrath, this heat will increase their thirst for mercy but there will be none to allay their thirst.
Oh, is it not better to thirst for righteousness while it is to be had than to thirst for mercy when there is none to be had?
And just with words that should shock you to the core, sinners, the time is shortly coming when the drawbridge of mercy will be quite pulled up.
Our new beatitude is found in verse 7, the fifth beatitude. Now Jesus emphasizing our relationship not before God, who we are before God, but now emphasizing what a person in God's kingdom does to others instead of vertical, now horizontal.
How we relate to people and how we are on the inside, almost a fruit of God working in our lives and saving us.
Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy. Isn't that amazing?
Almost one of the first fruits of a man or a woman who's been saved by God, has been born again by God, is they become merciful.
They give mercy to people. And emphatically here the text says, for they and they alone shall receive mercy.
And what's mercy? Mercy is compassionate, sympathetic, a pity to relieve somebody that needs it.
It's just not well, those people, I've kind of calculated, those people over there have a need and it's very interesting and here's probably what we should do.
No it's this kind of, as love is love in action, here mercy is, I see someone has a problem and instead of being averted by that problem, some kind of aversion, they run to help, they stoop down.
We had a group here years ago, the Hoffman's Singing, and one of their album titles was called Love with Shoes On. It's one thing to say
I love you and it's another thing to say, yeah but I'm going to put my money where my mouth is. It's not just lip service and these people that God saves, they have pity but it's pity that is so concerned about people they want to do something about it, even though it might cost them.
It's intentional kindness, one man said, active goodwill. How about this boy, convicting, 19th century preacher, he had a friend whose horse that was accidentally killed.
Your car breaks down, goes up in smoke. While a crowd of onlookers expressed empty words of sympathy, the preacher stepped forward and said to the loudest sympathizer,
I am sorry five pounds, how sorry are you? That's mercy.
It doesn't just mean to feel sorry, it means to feel sorry, identify with, and then do something about.
This is talked about a lot in Matthew, listen to Matthew 9, 13, but go and learn what this means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice.
Look at the promise, this is amazing, verse 7, bless her the merciful for they shall receive mercy. Here again,
God makes us merciful and then blesses us for being merciful, the generosity of God. Even William Shakespeare knew it.
The quality of mercy is not strained, it droppeth us gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath.
It is twice blessed, it blesses him that gives and him that takes. It helps you and it helps others.
He's not saying, if you're merciful, you'll get into heaven, this is not kind of works righteousness, this is not what
Thomas Watson called merit mongering, who would ever talk like that today? This is not, if I'm merciful, then
God makes me merciful. He's saying this, if you're a Christian, you're going to be merciful.
It's something that describes you, it shows that you are saved. Similar to Matthew 6, if you go farther ahead, if you just take a look in your
Bibles there, in verse 14 and 15 of Matthew chapter 6, if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly father will also forgive you.
But if you do not forgive others, then your heavenly father or your father will not forgive your trespasses. We are not forgiving others so God will forgive us in the ultimate sense, he's forgiven us our sins and so forgiven people, forgive.
People that have received mercy from God, extend mercy. Does this sound familiar?
Matthew 18, and summoning him, his Lord said to him, you wicked slave, I forgave you all the debt because you pleaded with me.
Should you not also have mercy on your fellow slave in the same way I had mercy on you? And his
Lord moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him. Jesus said, my heavenly father will also do the same to you if each one of you does not forgive his brother from your heart.
No desire to forgive, no desire to have mercy on others, then there should be no assurance in your heart that you're a
Christian. Well what about the situations? Who should I be merciful to and when should
I be merciful? That's the question I would ask. Jesus doesn't even say it. He doesn't talk about the who or the when, he talks about you, the subject.
He doesn't say now on all these people show mercy and on all these situations show mercy, he just says you are to be merciful and when you run into those people and you run into those situations, that will take care of itself.
No situation, no particular object of mercy here. And this reminds me of one of the most famous parables of all time.
Can you think of the most famous parable? They named hospitals after this parable that talks about mercy.
What one is that? It's the Good Samaritan. You all know that so well we don't even have to be bothered to go.
You know all the details and the ins and outs so let's just skip that one. Well on second thought, let's go to Luke chapter 10.
I have been blown away this week in my study by the greatness of Christ and his word and nobody could ever preach a sermon like this unless he was
God. This is the best. If you put me in a corner and say you've got one more sermon to preach before you die,
I want it to be Luke chapter 10 with the Good Samaritan because I love to teach things that people think they know but they don't really know.
Luke chapter 10 where you just say, oh yeah, you know, Good Samaritan, he was a Good Samaritan, he did such and such.
Why did he even give this? What was the situation or the occasion? This is great. If you fall asleep during this,
I don't know how to keep you awake. It's a sin to make the Bible boring when you preach but it's also a sin to just go here comes
God's word. No big deal. So let's just meet in the middle, how about it? You try to stay awake and I'll try not to be boring.
The parable of the Good Samaritan, Luke chapter 10 and the only way you can get an idea of how the parable is put together and what it means is if you give context to it.
So let's back up just a little bit. Luke chapter 10 verse 21, context is always the key and here's some verses just about Jesus that I love and about God that are good for us to give us a little precursor for this.
Luke 10, 21, at that very time, he rejoiced greatly in the Holy Spirit, this is
Jesus, and said, I praise you, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants.
Yes, Father, in this way was well -pleasing for this way was well -pleasing in your sight. Jesus praising
God for not revealing everything to everyone. Interesting.
Verse 22, all things have been handed over to me by my Father and no one knows who the
Son is except the Father and who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the
Son wills to reveal. You don't know God unless he has revealed himself to you.
I would have loved to have been there. Turning to the disciples, he said privately, well, there it is again, blessed, wow.
Blessed are the eyes which see the things you see. For I say to you that many prophets and kings wish to see the things which you see and did not see them because God didn't reveal it to them and to hear the things which you hear but God revealed it to you and did not hear them.
I feel blessed by the way, the passage isn't saying we should be blessed but that God would open our eyes to understand his revelation is just amazing to me.
And now, verse 25, Jesus is talking to his disciples, kind of a small little group and so now here comes the lawyer and this isn't a lawyer that you want if you go to court today.
This is an Old Testament lawyer. He's a master in the Old Testament Torah or the five books of the law.
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, he knows them in and out. He's a scribe in other words but Luke calls him a lawyer and here this lawyer stood up.
By the way, when you address a rabbi who's seated often, just like in the Sermon on the Mount, the rabbi is seated.
You want to address a rabbi, you stand up in the Middle East because you want to show great respect. And so he stands up, shows great respect and then he put him to the test.
It was all a sham, it was all mockery. He was just trying to say on the outside, yes
I want to respect you but on the inside it's going to be a test. Social courtesy, great, but it was all fake.
Teacher, he even called him rabbi, rabbi, sir, what shall
I do to inherit eternal life? It's a big deal back in the
Jewish days, inheriting eternal life. God would freely out of his good pleasure give the land to Israel as an inheritance only by divine ordination.
But what does Jesus do? You know, if you ask Jesus a question, you better be ready because Jesus is probably not going to answer your question, he's probably going to ask you several questions.
I had a professor, my only class that I took outside of master's and I went down to Talbot to a professor who was named Dr. Sosey, S -A -U -C -E -Y.
And I was told ahead of time, if you ask Dr. Sosey a question, you better be ready. Seminary students like to sit up in the front and ask all these questions and kind of show what they know and everything else.
And I figured I'd pay a seminary fee, 25 grand to have these people teach me and not to have some guy up in the front doing all this.
So I was having great relish thinking there was some guy going to get his clock cleaned by Dr. Sosey. Because there's more behind the story and Sosey to a small degree and Jesus in the divine degree has other things going on.
Remember in John chapter three even, there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, he came by night and he said,
Rabbi, we know you've come from God and you're a teacher for no one can do these signs unless God is with him.
What'd Jesus say? Yeah, I do these signs because God's with me. No, I've got a question for you,
Nicodemus. Same thing. So here's what Jesus does. The question is, what should
I do? And if you haven't circled it yet, I hope you do soon enough. The word do is the operative word in all the parable here, in all this.
It's do. It shows up everywhere. Do, do, do, do. Poema. Do. What shall
I do? And Jesus said to him, what is written in the law? Hey, you're a lawyer. Law.
Lawyer. Law. Lawyer. He's a lawyer because he knows about the Old Testament law.
Spelled L -A -W -R -Y -A for the New Englanders here.
That was one that really struck me when I first moved to England. I can get the ka and all that kind of stuff, but the lar and orda really was funny to me.
And we had somebody come and give a testimony once and they stood up and they said, quoting Jesus in Revelation, I'm the
Alpha and Omega. And that was just, the other ones I can get by.
But that was just my shock. And so whenever I go speak someplace out of New England, I give them a few of those. And it gets a crowd loosened up so they can actually hear the word of God before I preach it.
You don't know what I'm talking about unless you were there on Sunday night last week. By the way, come tonight to the church service.
We're going to have an elder Q and A. Worship at six o 'clock. The game's going to be boring anyway.
I almost do it just to face the game. Just to go, you know what? What the world loves, I loathe.
And I might get home afterwards and turn it on to see who got slaughtered or anything. But if you're staying at home tonight because there's a
Super Bowl, then you don't understand the concept of the Lord's Day because you've got the Lord's an hour and a half in the morning.
What about at night? And at the risk of being legalistic because I don't want to do that, I just think, especially if you're a man, say, honey, kids, we're going to go to church tonight and worship with the saints.
Well, it's a Super Bowl. We're having a party. And we're bringing the unbelieving friends over. We might preach the gospel to them.
Yeah, right. I'll throw the penalty flag on that one. The 22nd time out.
Be the man and lead. Oh, we don't want to go. I never asked you if you wanted to. It's the Lord's Day. So we'd love to have you come out tonight.
Can I tell the story, Lisa? Lisa said the other day, well, why don't we even have a
Sunday night service? You know, we have Sunday school. And you're sure I can tell the story? Well, why do we have
Sunday night? I said, well, we're not Israel. We're not underneath the
Mosaic law or anything like that. And certainly, the Bible doesn't say have Sunday morning, Sunday night. In the old days, they'd have four -hour services, five -hour services.
It was the day. Everything was set apart for the Lord. And you'd walk to church six hours and just want to stay there all day and walk back if you had people over.
It was because you wanted to serve them and be merciful. And it's just the Lord's Day. It's not the Lord's hour and a half. And for me and my family, it's good because it's like bookends.
Here's the beginning of the day. Here's the end of the day booked in there between fellowship, the word of God, and everything else.
And all of a sudden, I said that to Lisa last Saturday, two Saturdays ago, and then Sunday night,
Mike and Lisa were here. And Lisa looked at me after the service and she said, we miss all the good stuff if we don't come on Sunday night.
Lisa, it's half true. You miss half the good stuff. I usually let my hair down on Sunday nights and give you a little more inside scoop, but I just encouraged.
It made my day. Mike and Lisa were here for the good stuff. It's the word of God. Where am
I? Lawyer. Jesus asked him this question and you know what this guy did?
He answered exactly the way Jesus answered this question in Matthew and in Mark, which was the exact right answer.
Jesus gave this exact answer himself in the other two synoptic gospels.
Verse 27, and he, the lawyer said, you shall love the
Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.
Good answer. It's a very good answer. And Jesus said to him, basically the lawyer is using the first five books of the
Bible. He quotes from Deuteronomy chapter six, verse five and Leviticus 19, 18. And Jesus said to him, you have answered correctly.
You have answered orthos, orthodontist, orthopraxy, orthodoxy.
You have answered correctly. You go to an orthopedist. He puts your bone in the right order correctly.
You've answered correctly. That's orthodox answer. Here's our key word again.
Do this and you will live. It's one thing to believe the right things. It's another thing to do them. Everybody can know the
ABCs of Christianity, but do you do them? And here you can have demon faith and still not be a Christian. It's basically what he's saying, right?
Theology is good, but you don't really believe what you say you believe if you don't do it.
And do here's present imperative. Keep on doing it. Here comes the guy. I know the answer. Jesus asked me a question.
All these other people don't know the answers half the time. Nicodemus doesn't even know the answer. I know the answer. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Love your neighbors as yourself. And Jesus said, do it. And here's what he meant. Do it perfectly, obediently, with all your right motives from the day you were born.
You have to do this without sins of omission or commission or anything else. You do this since you were the day you were born continually, perfectly, and you will live forever.
Keep on doing this and you'll live. Galatians 3 .10 says, for as many are the works of the law are under a curse.
For it is written, cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law to perform them.
Strike one. You're out. Now, if you were the lawyer and you were godly, how would you respond to this question?
I can't do it. Those things are too high. I'm not able to obey. Help me.
I can't do it. How can I be saved? You tell me, Jesus. I can't do it. But what does he do instead?
Weasel, verse 29, but wishing to justify himself. I'm on the spot now.
I don't like to look this way. I first answered the question and I did it properly, and everybody's thinking that's pretty good.
And now I'm going to get put on the spot, so he tries to justify himself, and he says, wanting vindication, wanting to soften the demands of God and feel good, to assuage his conscience, he says, well, you know, who's my neighbor?
I don't want to hear this whole thing that minimum obedience doesn't cut it and you have to be perfectly obeying in Christ Jesus.
I don't want to hear any of that. Who's my neighbor? One man said the lawyer does not know that only by mercy he can live an eternal, inherit eternal life.
He does not want to live by mercy. He does not even know what it is. He actually lives by something quite different from mercy, by his own intention and ability to present himself as a righteous man before God.
The only way you're going to get saved and be in God's presence is mercy, and this guy doesn't know mercy because he's self -righteous.
Who's my neighbor? Instead of, well, I can't do it. And Jesus, like Nathan with that long, scraggy, stretched out finger that says you are the man,
Jesus is going to do that exact same thing to him, and Jesus will not let this guy off the hook until the guy says,
I'm sinful and I need a savior. But you know what? This lawyer wasn't too stupid. He was smart.
Let's turn back to Leviticus, and I want to show you that in Leviticus, if you're not careful and if you want to do the slice and dice version of the
Bible, here a verse, there a verse, and not take it in completion, you could come across as this lawyer and think the only people who are your neighbors would be those near to you, literally the
Hebrew word to be near to, would be the Jews. Hey, love your neighbors yourself, that means love the
Jews, and in one sense, he's right, but not in the complete sense. Leviticus found in the Old Testament, you ask a
Jew back then, who's your neighbor? They'd say a Jew, and this is why they would say that. If you look at Leviticus 19 .18,
that was quoted by that lawyer, do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your what?
People. Who's that? The Jews. But love your neighbors yourself, Leviticus 19 .18
says, you're to love those people who are Jewish like yourself, and you say, well see, but when you don't understand the
Bible, the best thing you can do is keep reading and jump down a few verses, into verse 34 of Leviticus 19.
The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him what?
As yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt, and if you didn't think it was serious, aye, you just can't go for 18, you gotta go for 34 as well.
Leviticus 24 says you're to have the same love for the alien and the native born, I'm the Lord your God. And so now we come to the parable.
Let's go back to Luke chapter 10 verse 30. This is so amazing to me, the parable in context, dealing with a man who thinks he needs no mercy to get into heaven, and therefore have no mercy on anyone else.
Jesus gives this parable about mercy. I think it's my favorite parable.
We were joking just a couple days ago, you know, you study the text, this is my favorite Bible verse. This is it, to me,
Luke 10 is my favorite, until next week. Isn't God's word just deep and so rich, and it's like digging in a deep mine, you just extract these things, and you think,
I could be 110 years old, I could be on my deathbed and say, oh God, your word is good.
Jesus replied and said, basically what Jesus is gonna do ahead of time, he's gonna force this guy to say the right answer, but the guy's not gonna want to.
Jesus replied and said, a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, fell among robbers, they stripped him and beat him and went away leaving him half dead.
Jerusalem to Jericho, 17 mile road, the Romans had a little name for it, it was called the
Red and Bloody Way. All kinds of limestone and you could just hide behind a little crag or a little rock and there would be thieves and bandits and marauders and murderers, and you would go on this path and it was very, very dangerous.
Commonly known as dangerous, Hosea 6, 9 gives you the same idea, as a raider waits for a man, so a band of priests murder on the way to Shechem.
Pompeii had to wipe out strongholds on this road. The Crusaders built a small fort halfway between Jerusalem and Jericho to protect pilgrims even later in the
Crusades. Uninhabited, no vegetation, all kinds of bandits everywhere, 3 ,000 feet descent.
And what happened? It says he fell among robbers. The word fell comes from this word that means around.
They went around him, they surrounded him. How about this for interesting study?
Josephus, the Jewish historian said at about this time that Herod the Great dismissed 40 ,000 men who had been employed in the building of the temple, a large part of whom became highwaymen.
So you build a temple with all these tough guys, sorry we don't have a job for you anymore, see you later, 40 ,000 people, and what do they do?
Robbing, swindling, and what did they do? They stripped him, clothes were of a high commodity back then, they were worth a lot of money.
They stripped him, and then they beat him, literally the Greek word is plague, plagas.
When you have a plague, you have big bruises all over you, and so they beat him to bruises, they plagued him, and they left him as half dead.
You know what the Greek word for half dead is? Half dead. Wow! Who said that?
I've got to lighten it up in here, I feel like it's about 92 degrees up here. This has got to go, sorry. They stripped him, this is next to death, it's just a figure of speech for his knees, next to death.
And if you were the Jewish audience listening to Jesus, you would have thought the man who got beaten up was what kind of nationality, what kind of background?
You would have thought he was a Jew. So here's this Jew, he's walking down there, the bandits just get everything he's got. As a matter of fact,
Professor Hackett, who was in Palestine in 1852, says of this region, quote, no part of the traveler's journey is so dangerous as the expedition to Jericho.
The Oriental pilgrims who repair to the Jordan have the protection of escort of Turkish soldiers, and others who would make the same journey must go either in the company or provide their safety by procuring a special guard.
Harley a season passes in which some luckless wayfarer is not killed or robbed in going down from Jerusalem to Jericho.
The ravines, almost inaccessible cliffs, the caverns furnish admirable lurking places for robbers.
They can rush forth unexpectedly upon their victims and escape as soon, almost beyond the possibility of pursuit.
And here's Jesus in Bethany, right on the border of this, giving this parable, and they all know about it.
By the way, if you wanted to know somebody's nationality back in that day, how would you figure out who they were, where they were from?
Passports? No, there'd be two things. What they said, what their dialect was, this guy's half dead, he can't talk.
And what they wore, and you don't know what he looks like, because he's laying there with just hardly anything on, if anything.
Is this guy a Jew? Is he a Gentile? You don't know who he is. What's going to happen? There's an image bearer of God laying there on the road.
Who is this fellow? Who's going to help? Oh, surely the Jewish clergy was going to help. Surely somebody like you, lawyer, scribe,
Pharisee, Levite, priest, somebody in your camp, on your team, they're going to help. And verse 31, and by chance, he didn't say luckily, he just says, as it happened, it's only used here by way of coincidence, seemingly story, you know, it's a story.
Jesus doesn't believe in chance, figure of speech, don't send the emails.
We don't believe in luck, circumstance, happenstance, even chance, but in terms of figure of speech and by chance, a priest, a priest who's a clergy, a priest that goes often to Jerusalem to sacrifice things in the temple and offer incense in the morning and in the night, they pray.
He goes down on that road and when he saw him, he passed by the other side. 12 ,000 priests and Levites lived in Jericho and they would constantly travel back and forth to offer sacrifice, conduct the morning service and evening service, the two bookends on the
Lord's day. They'd stay there for two weeks and you have to assume he's on his way back from fulfilling his religious duties and he's going to go back home.
Priests were upper class, he probably was riding a donkey because you don't walk. He saw him, notice, you see the word do anywhere there, our operative word do?
No, he saw him, did he see him groan, but he passed by on the other side.
By the way, this word other side means anti -side, it is a word anti, it's only used here in this parable and it means you didn't just go on the other side, you went on the far extreme side, you went as far away as you could.
Pharisees used to teach that if your shadow touched somebody who was dead that you'd be ceremonially unclean and defiled and wouldn't want that.
Chuck Swindoll says there's a story, I don't know if it's true or not, but it's great for preaching. There's a certain, because it's an illustration, truth, yes, of the word, but illustrations don't necessarily have to be true.
Story of a study of a certain seminary who conducted with their student body this test.
Prepare a message students, seminary students, on the Good Samaritan for a radio broadcast. The seminary then arranged for a man to feign a heart attack on the sidewalk in front of the students as they were on their way to preach the sermon.
As I remember the story, in every instance the seminary student stepped around the dying victim to hasten on to deliver his sermon on the
Good Samaritan. I don't know if it's true or not, but this particular priest probably didn't even establish eye contact.
After all, Leviticus 21 says, then the Lord said to Moses, speak to the priests. Say to them, no one shall defile himself for a dead person among his people.
I just got back from serving and leading worship at the temple, the temple, and now I've got to stand out by the gate for a week while I systematically take this red heifer and burn the entire red heifer?
Do you know how long it takes you to burn a red heifer? A week, standing there.
I've just been, you know, it's like saying, I've just been at the White House and I've spoken to the president.
And on the way back from speaking to the president, by the way, I have to just go around shouting to people, I'm unclean, I'm unclean, who wants to do that?
But a priest of all people should have compassion. He came, he saw, he did nothing.
Number two. Likewise, the Levite also. Levites were descendants of Levi, but not
Aaron like the priest. And so he's kind of a step under in function. The priest, you could say, is like an elder.
The Levite is like a deacon. He didn't have as many responsibilities. His job was to make sure everything was clean. He took vessels and other things back and forth between Jerusalem and Jericho.
He was kind of a hands -on kind of guy. He had to think about cleanliness, but he was just not as big a shot as it were.
Priest, did you see the progression? Goes down the road. Levite came to the place. It's like he's inching closer.
Maybe he could see ahead and saw the priest didn't do anything, so I better not do anything either. I don't want to show up my superior. And he saw him and he passed by.
If you saw somebody in the road, what should you do? By the way, he's going to remember the whole time this is
Jesus talking to that lawyer. What's in the law of the Old Testament? What's in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy?
I'll tell you what it is. How's this for shock treatment? Deuteronomy 22 .4. You shall not see your countryman's donkey or his ox falling down on the way and paying no attention to him.
You shall certainly help him to raise them. If you see somebody's donkey laying there, you better help.
It gets worse. Exodus 23 .4 and 5. If you meet your enemy's ox or donkey wandering away, you shall surely return it to him.
It's your enemies. If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying helpless under its load, you shall refrain from leaving it to him.
You shall surely release it with him. These people knew it. They were priests.
They were Levites. Jesus has got his finger on the lawyer. But he might ambush me if I stop to help him.
Maybe he deserved God's judgment, and if I help him, then God's not going to judge him like he wanted to.
Excuse after excuse. And to think that these two men have got up in the morning and said the Shema, and they have said that the
Lord our God is one, and they recite those at night, and then all of a sudden run into them. You see the cadence?
He came. He saw. He did nothing. Went to the opposite side, the anti -side. Second guy, he came.
He saw. He went to the opposite side. Two for two. Maybe the Jewish layman's going to come. Do something good.
Come on. I can taste it. Verse 33. But a Samaritan who was on the journey came upon him, and when he saw him, he felt compassion.
Everything now changes for the good. Here's the cadence. He came. He saw.
He did nothing. He came. He saw. He did nothing. He came. He saw. And he did. It's amazing.
He gave him mercy. Compassion. This is the kind of mercy in the Bible that's talking about your guts. Splankna.
You go, I'm just so moved in my splankna, in my bowels of mercy that I've got to do something.
That part keep you awake? And the Greek sentence puts the emphasis on the
Samaritan. The Samaritan thrown forward in the Greek sentence for emphasis. It's the Samaritan.
You don't do that with Samaritans. These are arch enemies. Jews hate Samaritans. Samaritans hate Jews. He ate with them.
It was like eating with pork, they said. Samaritans were in Israel. The Assyrians came in.
They interbred with them, and they were half breeds. They worshiped differently. Some of the Samaritans between 9 and 6
BC threw human bones into the temple so the Jews could not celebrate Passover.
They were dogs and scoundrels. The rabbis would pray this of the day, God, let no man eat the bread of the
Samaritans, for he who eats their bread is he who eats swine's flesh.
Here's another prayer. God, do not remember the Samaritans and the resurrection. Priest goes down the road,
Levite came to the place, Samaritan comes right over to him. Does the
Lord take delight in thousands of rams, in ten thousands of rivers of oil? He has told you,
O man, what is good. What does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love mercy?
Right from Micah 6. Jesus did this all the time. I call him good to Samaritans. He saved the
Samaritan woman in John chapter 4. He healed the Samaritan leper. How about this?
Back up to chapter 9 of Luke. It just gets more interesting as time goes on. Luke chapter 9. This is amazing. I'll tell you what people thought about the
Samaritans. It just wasn't lawyers who didn't like them. Luke 9 .51. When the days were approaching for his ascension,
Jesus was determined to go to Jerusalem. He sent messengers on ahead of him and they went and entered a village of the
Samaritans to make arrangements for him. But they did not receive him. Of course, they hate Jews.
Jews hate them because he was traveling toward Jerusalem. When his disciples James and John, those loving men, saw this, they said,
Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them? Do you know they hated
Jesus so much that in John chapter 4, the Jews answered and said to Jesus, did we not say rightly that you are a
Samaritan and have a demon? There was no love lost here at all. The priest comes, does nothing.
The Levite comes and does nothing. The Samaritan comes and does something. Back to Luke 10 .34.
Amazing. Verse 34. Remember, love with shoes on.
Mercy does something. It stoops down low. It condescends. It's just not all lip service. He bandages up his wounds.
He pours oil and wine on them. He puts him on his own beast, brought him to the inn and took care of him. He didn't say, oh, are you a
Jew? Are you a Gentile? Are you a Samaritan? Who are you? Are you a Roman? Are you Egyptian? He didn't care because mercy is not concerned about reciprocating itself.
Oil and wine. That was just basically first aid back in those days. Jeremiah says oil soothed the victim's wounds and wine disinfected them.
So he uses some of his own stuff. He binds up his wounds. Here's a
Greek word for you. Wounds is traumata. He binds up his trauma. He binds up his wounds.
Of course, this is Luke, the physician, talking now, right? So he's got just that physician's kind of talk, takes him to the inn.
Verse 35, on the next day, he took out two denarii, 24 days of wages at the inn that would pay for, gave them to the innkeeper and said, take care of him.
And whatever more you spend, when I return, I will repay. He didn't have any money, he's just been robbed, so I'll take care of him.
Typical rate at the inn was one twelfth of a denarius a day. And here's what he says in the Greek force,
I will repay. He's got ego enemy in there. I will repay. Not the man.
The robbers rob, the Samaritan pays. The robbers leave the man dying, the Samaritan takes care of him. The robbers abandon the guy, he promises a return.
And then Jesus says, verse 36, to the lawyer, which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robber's hand?
You asked me who is my neighbor. I'm asking you this question, who acted like a neighbor?
Something about Jesus and lawyers. I love Luke 11, he says, woe to you Pharisees, for you love the chief seats in the synagogues and the respectful greetings in the marketplaces.
Woe to you, for you are like concealed tombs and the people who walk over them are unaware of it. One of the lawyers said in reply to Jesus, teacher, when you say this, you insult us too.
Jesus said to him, woe to you lawyers as well, for you weigh down men with burdens hard to bear while yourselves will not even touch the burdens with your own fingers.
By the way, the Samaritan believed in what? Only five books of the Old Testament, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.
And this Samaritan had enough brains to know, it is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, love the neighbors yourself.
And he did it. I grew up in Omaha and we had a place there called Boys Town. And there's a slogan for Boys Town by Father Flanagan and that slogan is what?
He ain't heavy, he's my brother. That's exactly right. You see the six things this
Samaritan does? He comes to him, he binds his wounds, maybe even had to tear up his own clothes to do that.
He anoints the cuts with oil, he loads the man on the mule, he takes him to the inn, he stays the night.
And here, real mercy is translated into sacrificial action. Here, real mercy, as Jesus was teaching, is not limited by the object.
How about this one? Let's go to Israel today and tell the parable. There's a man there, he was beaten and stripped on that place, it's still dangerous today.
An Orthodox rabbi comes by and goes on the other side, goes away. A conservative or reformed
Jew comes by and goes the other way. And then a Hamas leader comes by and goes over and helps him.
It's exactly what Jesus is doing. It's amazing. Verse 37, he can't even say the word
Samaritan. And he said, the one who showed mercy to him, I can't even utter those words out of my mouth.
He can't even whisper the word Samaritan. And Jesus said, go and do the same.
Here's the lesson about mercy for you. The message about mercy is you think you know it, but if you don't do, you don't believe it.
Mercy shows the state of your real belief. Go do, emphatically, go do this.
I'm trying to tell you, you haven't done it. If you have the real grace of God in your life, you'll act like God and God has mercy.
1 John 3 .17, but whoever holds the world's goods and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?
James, if a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to him, go in peace, be warmed and be filled, yet you do not give what is necessary for the body, what use is it?
Mercy relieves the consequences of sin and pain and agony. Mercy is willing to get down on hands and knees.
And we, as a church, have received much mercy, yes? Has God been merciful to us?
Ephesians 2, even though we were dead in trespasses and sins, verse 4 says, but God being what?
Rich in mercy. Joseph Addison said, when all thy mercies, oh my
God, my rising soul surveys, transported with the view, I'm lost in wonder, love, and praise.
I've got to do something about it. And Jesus says,
Good Samaritan, in the Good Samaritan parable to the lawyer, I'm going to show you that you're sinful, that you don't realize you need mercy of God to be saved, and you don't realize that then you have to give mercy to others.
And that just reminds me, in Matthew chapter five, about blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
God is merciful, and He wants us to be merciful. Just listen to a few of these voices, a few of these verses.
Listen to the voice. We're almost done. Psalm 103, verse 8. The Lord is compassionate, our merciful, abounding in chesed, our mercy, and loving kindness.
How about Jonah? He prayed to the Lord and said, Please, Lord, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country?
Therefore, in order to forestall this, I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that thou were gracious and compassionate.
I knew that you were slow in anger and abundant in mercy. God delights in mercy.
God shows loving kindness to thousands. God has made us vessels of mercy, Romans chapter nine says.
So our job as kingdom citizens is to be merciful, because God has been merciful to us. And my prayer for our church is the prayer for the benedictions, many times are the openings of the epistles.
Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Jude, verse two.