The REAL Lesson of The Good Samaritan

This is the story or the parable of the Good Samaritan. Here's what it says. Verse 25, and behold, a lawyer stood up and put him, put

Jesus 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, 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 wanting 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 he encountered robbers and they stripped him and beat him and went away leaving him half dead.

And by coincidence, 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, passed 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 him on his own animal 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 compassion to him. And then Jesus said, go and do the same. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, your word is living and active. We ask you to open our eyes that we may understand your word, that we may do more than that, that we may see your heart.

That we may be moved to action and that we would learn what you would have us to learn today.

We love you, Lord. Amen. So a quick refresher, a few weeks ago, we started this particular parables series and I provided a couple of essential tools in order to better understand parables.

And the first tool I gave was a very simple definition. And so these things right now that I'm going through are in your notes. A parable is a story where the important characters illustrate a relevant lesson.

And the relevance comes into play because of some situation, because of something that was going on in the moment, because of some occasion that provided the opportunity to share the parable.

And I also said the function of a parable is to invite the listener to step inside the story and to find where they fit into it so that they can properly respond.

That's the first tool. The second tool I gave were some Bible study questions to ask of any parable that will help you better determine its meaning.

And I gave the caveat that perhaps not every single question here can be answered by every parable, but on balance, on the whole, these questions will help you better determine any parable's meaning.

Here are the questions. Number one, what is the occasion of the parable? Number two, who are the important characters?

Number three, what are these characters directly saying? Like out loud. And number four, what happens at the end?

And number four, there is typically, with Jesus and his style, there is typically a surprise.

The surprise is meant to reinforce what Jesus is communicating, all right? So we're gonna do the same thing as last time.

We're gonna walk through these questions together with the Good Samaritan. And let me gently encourage you.

Take these tools home with you. And in your studies, when you get to another parable, pull these tools out and use them so that they will help you to better understand what you're reading, all right?

Question number one, what is the occasion of the parable? Well, let's take a look at verse 25. It says, behold, a lawyer stood up and put him to the test, saying,

Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? So Jesus is with his disciples.

Just prior to this, he had given glory to the Father because his disciples had just returned having taken an evangelism trip.

They went out and they shared the good news. And they had a lot of success. And so they were pumped up.

And Jesus also encourages his disciples because of their obedience to the

Lord. But seemingly out of nowhere, this lawyer just pops up and asks

Jesus the question. Now, I don't know about you, but I hear the word lawyer and I think of Tom Cruise standing in front of a grizzled

Jack Nicholson and a few good men. You know what I mean? You want answers, right?

But that's not what a lawyer was in this particular context. A lawyer in first century Israel was simply an expert in the

Torah. Author Gary Burge goes on to suggest that this person was perhaps a Pharisee.

Or more likely, this person was a priest who also served as a legal expert since criminal, civil, and religious laws, they all kind of bled together in that time, all right?

And these kinds of questions that the lawyer posed to Jesus, questions like, how should

I live in light of the Torah? Or what is your interpretation of this particular law? It's not uncommon amongst rabbis and experts in the law.

And the question of eternal life, the lawyer's particular question, is probably a reference to Daniel chapter 12.

So Daniel in chapter 12 talks about the time of the end.

And he wrote this in verse two, in the end, many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, these to everlasting life, but others to disgrace and everlasting contempt.

And so the Jewish expectation was to do everything possible to be part of the group that awakens to everlasting life to receive that eternal inheritance.

And so that's what the lawyer is asking Jesus, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Verse 26, and Jesus said to him, well, what is written in the law?

How does it read to you? This is a very typical Jewish rabbi thing to do, which is to answer a question with a question, all right?

And as frustrating as it might be for us today, that's just the style. We're looking at a typical interchange right now in Luke.

And particularly this question that Jesus posed, it was intentionally posed to someone who should already know the answer, okay?

This is why I think Luke helps us, he provides us a window into the motives of the lawyer. The lawyer is not asking a question because he's ignorant of the answer.

He's an expert in this particular area. He's testing Jesus to see what

Jesus will say. What is written in the law? Well, the lawyer gives the right answer.

He quotes the Shema, which is Deuteronomy 6 .4, love the Lord with all your mind, your heart, mind, soul, and strength.

But then he tacks on Leviticus 19 .18 to that, love your neighbor as yourself.

So he combines these two particular areas in the scripture and Jesus is pleased with this.

Look at verse 28, you have answered correctly, do this and you will live. Now the conversation could have stopped right then and there and there would have been no parable, but the lawyer decided to push.

And so he asked Jesus the $6 million question. And that's where the parable comes out of this.

This is the moment of the relevant situation. This is the occasion. We're answering question number one right now, wherein

Jesus decides to tell the parable. And so therefore this question is the key to understanding the

Good Samaritan. Here's the question, verse 29, but wanting to justify himself, he said to Jesus, and who is my neighbor?

Now I've mentioned this before, but I think it is very important that we have an appreciation of the historical context of the scriptures, wherever we are in the scriptures.

Those of us in the West who are thousands of years and geographical miles removed from the

Bible and its setting, we should do as much as we can to read the Bible as if it was over the shoulder of a

Jew. That's what I've said before. Because without that context, the Bible, it becomes like a coloring book that has no color.

We benefit when the shapes and the images of the scripture are filled in with the vibrant colors of history because the truths come alive in a way that perhaps we just did not appreciate before, okay?

Don't hear what I'm not saying. I'm not saying we can have no understanding of the Bible, you know, without historical context.

I'm just saying we'll have a richer, more robust understanding. For example, here's something contextual to note that's important.

There was a very common Jewish attitude at the time that this lawyer was asking Jesus this particular question.

And the attitude can be articulated kind of like this. What is the least that I can do to stay out of trouble?

Husbands, you've asked this question before, am I right? Some of you are, where are you, husbands?

Some of you are giving me that silent nod. There you are. You've said to yourself at a moment in your marriage, what is the least that I can do in this particular situation so I stay out of trouble, okay?

Husbands know what's up. Fathers do too. Happy Father's Day, everybody. But this was the

Jewish attitude when it came to the laws of God. There were two very famous Jewish scholars in the time of Jesus.

Their names were Hillel and Shammai. Shammai was known for his very strict approach to interpreting the

Torah, very straight -laced, very buttoned -up approach. And Hillel was known for being very moderate, very much more easygoing with regard to interpretation.

And at the end result of these kinds of disagreements over interpreting the law, because Hillel and Shammai were very different,

Shammai had a lot of students, and they would go back and forth on this quite a bit, was that Jews would try and figure out what was the least amount that someone could do without getting into trouble.

As a matter of fact, listen to how Hillel summarized the entire Torah. Here's what he said.

Whatever is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. This is the whole of Torah, and the rest is commentary.

Whatever is hateful, just don't do that, okay? In other words, live by the minimum.

That's it, that's the whole law in a nutshell. We have to recognize that this is an ingredient that was baked into the lawyer's question to Jesus.

The lawyer isn't asking questions so much about who his neighbor is, as if he's bursting at the seams to try to help every single person that's around him.

No, the lawyer is asking a question about limits. Tell me, Jesus, which group is my neighbor?

Identify them for me, so when you define this type of person or this category, I can focus on them only, and then

I can avoid everybody else. I can do the least amount and live by the minimum.

You see that? We have to consider this contextual ingredient, ladies and gentlemen.

It's in the question itself. Here's one more piece of context, okay, for you to consider. The neighbor text that the lawyer quoted,

Leviticus 19 .18. Actually, let's read it for a split second. This is what it says, listen to this. You shall not take vengeance, nor hold any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

You see how the word neighbor appears to be synonymous with the phrase sons of your people, you see that?

The Jews saw that, which is why many Jews understood the word neighbor to mean fellow

Jew. Well, if that's true, then guess who's left out? Everyone who's not a

Jew. Thank you, dear one. Again, the lawyer's question.

Tell me, Jesus, who is my neighbor? And Luke tells us in verse 29, he asks the question seeking to justify himself.

And so I believe he expected Jesus to say to him, well, your neighbor is the sons of your people.

And then the lawyer would prop his feet up on the desk and say, well, been there, done that, bought the

T -shirt, Jesus. But that's not what Jesus said. That was not his response.

He responded by giving the story of the Good Samaritan. Question number two, who are the important characters?

Well, last time I said that there are typically three important characters in a parable, and this is no different here.

Here is the first important character, verse 30. A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and he encountered robbers and they stripped him and beat him and went away, leaving him half dead.

This first man is an important character. He's not any of the characters that the audience should focus on, but he is important simply by being in need because his need ultimately reveals the other characters in focus and their motives.

And the audience are supposed to appreciate the first character for the others.

The other characters are the ones the lawyer was supposed to pay attention to. And remember, the lawyer is supposed to find himself in the story and then respond to it.

Here's the second important character. In this case, there are two characters that represent the same type of person, okay?

They can be kind of smushed together in one sense. Verse 31, and by coincidence, 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, saw him and passed by on the other side.

Now, if Gary Burge is correct and the lawyer was really a priest, as I mentioned a moment ago, well, then obviously the lawyer is supposed to wrestle with the character type of the priest and the

Levite. These two really represent religious authority. Okay, those who are supposed to be the servants of God, they are well -versed in the law and they should know better and they do nothing.

They do nothing to help the man because they perhaps interpret the Torah the way that this particular lawyer does.

Now, we're not told what the motives are exactly for the priest and the Levite doing nothing to help the man, but I suspect the attitude of live by the minimum was expressed in their reactions.

And then finally, here comes the last important character and this is the turn. Okay, this is the big surprise at the end of the story.

Verse 33, but a Samaritan. Now, just like the time

Jesus told the story of the Prodigal Son and the Son tended to pigs and he worked for a

Gentile. When Jesus said, but a Samaritan, you likely would have heard gasps from the lawyer and maybe everyone else in the audience.

Jesus liked to shock people when it was useful. Imagine what everyone reacted, what their reaction was when he ransacked the temple.

Now, why is this a shock? Well, Samaritans were the product of Jews who intermarried with people who practiced false religions and then they combined the faiths, they tried to anyway, as if you could do that, do such a thing coherently, which by the way, you can't.

That's a different sermon for another day. You ever see those bumper stickers? I don't wanna get off on a rabbit trail. You ever see those bumper stickers?

Co -exist, nope. We'll talk about that another time.

Anyway, Jews were taught to avoid Samaritans at all costs.

To eat with a Samaritan was the same thing as eating pork for a Jew. Some Jews held

Gentiles in higher regard than Samaritans. Okay, that's how bad it was. Verse 33, but a

Samaritan who was on a journey came upon him and when he saw him, he felt compassion.

Now, I mentioned that not every question is helpful in determining meaning. Question number three, what are the characters saying like out loud?

This is a question that kind of gets us close to the meaning of this parable, but not all the way, okay?

The Samaritan does say a few things out loud, all right? He talks to the innkeeper and it helps us to understand his motives, but the best line that reveals the

Samaritan's heart is not in anything he says out loud, it's in what he does. The audience is supposed to note this particular part of the story and when the

Samaritan saw him, he felt compassion. And not only that, his compassion turned to action.

He bandages the man's wounds. He puts him on his own animal. He takes him to the inn. He spends the night with the man.

Would you notice that? Verse 35, on the next day, he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, take care of him, which means the

Samaritan stayed with the man that night and cared for him. And he secured more care for two weeks until he could return.

That's how much two denarii probably secured, was two weeks of room and board. And now we're also into question number four, what happens at the end?

And again, the ending is a total surprise for the first century audience so that the lawyer could identify himself within the story and respond.

And Jesus actually makes it abundantly easy for him. He says in verse 36, or he asks, which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robber's hands?

And the lawyer said, the one who showed compassion to him. And then Jesus said to him, go and do the same.

So here's what Jesus was accomplishing. Are you ready? Instead of answering the question by adopting its flawed presupposition, which was to limit, to restrict, to live by the minimum,

Jesus flips the entire question on its head. And he's a genius because he does this so masterfully.

See, a lot of us look at the lawyer's question, who is my neighbor? And we expect the answer to be, well, the neighbor is the beaten man.

The neighbor is the one who needs help. Therefore, love the neighbor, take care of the beaten man there.

That's not what Jesus did here. The neighbor is not the beaten man. The neighbor is the

Samaritan. The one who acts out of love and compassion and helps the person in need.

I mean, this answer is totally upside down. You see that, right? Friends, what

Jesus has done here is he's saying, the question is not, who is my neighbor? The question is, will you be a neighbor?

And that's the takeaway from the parable. Let me say it again. The big takeaway here is, will you be a neighbor?

The question is not, what are the limits of my neighborhood? What are the restrictions? Where are my boundaries to my neighborhood?

Because when you're the neighbor, everyone is in your neighborhood. There's an old saying, wherever you go, there you are.

Everybody, it's profound, I know. But if you're the neighbor, when you move, wherever you go, your neighborhood moves with you.

And when that happens, there are no restrictions. There are no limits on your love. This is what the lawyer needed to understand.

If you love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength and you wanna obey him by loving your neighbor, then everyone counts.

No one is off limits, all right? And I'm sure this was difficult for the lawyer to hear, but nevertheless, if you love

God with all your heart, this is the heart of Jesus, amen? And for us today, the application is expressed in various ways.

We're not mere observers of the scriptures, okay? If you've walked in here thinking that,

I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but that is not true. Christianity is not a spectator sport. We have to identify ourselves in this parable too.

We're not reading a story about somebody else identifying themselves. We need to identify ourselves as well. And when we do, we have to ask the question, is it possible we're making the same mistake that the lawyer did?

Are there people in our life that we are neglecting because whether we realize it or not, we are living by the minimum?

Have we set up our Christian life in a manner that loves only the folks who have been pre -approved and we ignore everyone else?

Jesus is challenging us today. It's challenging you, it's challenging me.

To do that, to limit yourself, it's not the way of Christ and we need to understand that. There are many people in need and who could absolutely use our help, all right?

Whether it's the homeless in our community, whether it's those who do have a roof over their heads, but they struggle to put food on the table or basic needs, they struggle to provide.

Look, here's a personal example. When I was my son Samuel's age, I was living with my family in a house in New Mexico that had half of a roof.

I'm not even exaggerating. The other half was missing. I went to bed at night in my bed and looked up at stars.

My dad had asked the owner to let us live there while he finished building this house that was unfinished because we had nowhere else to go.

There was no electricity. There was no plumbing. Follow that thought for a split second.

As a matter of fact, one day I wandered outside and I stepped on a gigantic nail that was in a board and went through my left foot.

These were not ideal conditions. And we struggled to put food on the table, but guess what?

Our brothers and sisters at a local church nearby continued to provide food for us. That's how we made it.

There are those who are victims of abuse. There are those who are forgotten nursing home patients and so on.

You know, there are those who are physically challenged, physically disabled in our community. Again, a personal example.

My father is a quadriplegic. A lot of you prayed for him last night. Last week, thank you very much. He's doing a lot better.

Thank you. My father broke his neck in an accident 12 years ago. He is literally someone who cannot help himself, but he is surrounded by brothers and sisters in Christ.

He lives in California who love him and help take care of his needs. Jesus is challenging us to stop putting limits on our love and be a neighbor to even the unlikeliest of folks, to even our enemies, religious, ethnic, political, hello, or otherwise.

And there's one more thing, okay? From the perspective of the victim in this story, and then we're gonna turn a corner. From the perspective of the man who was beaten and accepted help, there's another lesson for us, okay?

Listen, you need to be okay accepting help from even your enemies. You need to, well, first of all, you need to be okay admitting that you need help.

A lot of us struggle with that. We can't admit that something is seriously wrong. If this is you, you need to stop walking around pretending like everything is fine.

You need to confess and admit that you need help. I know in this room you are surrounded by people who want to help, but the help can come from the unlikeliest of places.

You need to be willing to allow God to let somebody that is your enemy help you. That is also a lesson in this story.

Think about that. Do you understand? All right.

Well, there's the parable and its meaning and its application, okay? Now, let's shift gears because I also wanna see if we can take the last few minutes here and kinda step back and make an observation in order to be like Christ and tell stories the way that he did, okay?

Disclaimer, Jesus was God in human flesh, so the bar is pretty high, okay? So don't get nervous, all right?

All I wanna do is I just wanna get a little bit closer to being like Jesus in this particular area of storytelling.

And if that's all we did, then I did my job this morning, okay? Some biblical scholars refer to the

Good Samaritan as what they call an example story, okay? And I think that's helpful in this sense.

If we understand what Jesus did, that is, he essentially identified an issue in the person that he was talking to and he told a story in order to provide a model or an example of this particular issue, then

I think we can do the same thing, okay? And we don't even have to try and like make up these stories on the spot.

We don't even have to try to make sure we're showcasing three characters and all of that the way that Jesus did. I suggest we just need to do three things and we need to get better at doing these things.

Number one, we need to read people well. That's the first thing. We need to read people well.

Number two, we need to be intentional. And number three, we need to collect stories.

We need to become a story collector. And we need to be ready, always ready, to tell the right stories to the people that God brings us.

All right, I'll run through these very quickly. Number one, we need to read people well. In other words, we need to be excellent observers of the people that God has placed around us.

And I believe that this is actually easier than you think it is, you know, because for some of us, first of all, it comes naturally. We can look at somebody and immediately see their strengths and their weaknesses.

But for those of us that this does not come naturally, there are a couple of things you can do to develop this skill.

The first thing is actively listen to people. Active listening, not passive, active.

I'm talking about the active listening that entails thinking through what you just heard. You're thinking to yourself, the person is talking, you're thinking, well, this person, okay, this person just said such and so, and they're saying these things in response to this particular circumstance in their life, and they are having a specific emotional response, and then you're trying to draw conclusions and connect the dots based on what you've heard, because you're actively listening.

You're not a passive listener, okay? The second thing is you need to ask clarification questions based on your observations.

What I'm doing right now is I'm actually giving you counseling tools. Any counselors in the audience? Okay, one person.

You know what I'm talking about, okay? Ask clarification. For example, you might say, well, it seems like what's bothering you is the uncertainty of the future.

Is that right? Okay, why should that bother you? Would you say that you like to remain in control?

Does that describe you, or am I way off? You see how this kind of interaction, it gets us closer and closer to reading people well, and it's okay, because if you kind of get it wrong, people don't mind correcting you because people like talking about themselves.

Did you know that? The number one thing, the number one American pastime is talking about yourself.

So it's okay if you say, well, look, it seems to me that this is the case. Do you think that that's close? And they go, well, no, it's this.

That's fine, you're still getting closer and closer to reading someone. When you read people like Jesus, who was the master at this, you'll identify the issues that they need to understand that they don't.

You with me? Jesus read this particular lawyer the moment he stood up and asked the question, and he knew exactly what the lawyer needed to understand.

Here's number two. We need to be intentional. Now, I've said this in the past, but Jesus is the master of intentionality.

He never accidentally found himself stumbling backwards into a situation and then wandered off going,

I guess that was a God moment, oops. No, he was always intentional and he was very well thought out in action and speech.

One of the biggest obstacles to intentionality is actually something that's very popular right now in today's culture. It's called hot takes.

Anybody know what I'm talking about? You have to, it is understood, especially on social media, which as we all know is very spiritual.

Social media, the number one spiritual platform in America. This is sarcasm. I don't know if you guys have met me yet.

Hot takes, it's where you just spit out whatever comes to mind immediately and then you think about it later.

That's not foolish. Oh wait, yeah, that's really dumb, okay? We cannot be like the culture.

We have to distinguish ourselves even in this area. We have to be, James says, slow to speech and slow to listen, amen?

We need to take our thought process and knowledge of people and then we need to bring it into our interactions and that requires intentionality.

For example, if you knew that tomorrow you were meeting with a friend who was going through a particular issue, then you should already be praying about them today.

You should already be thinking about and reflecting on what you already know about them, who they are as a person, the situation that they're dealing with and perhaps your previous reads of them in previous situations, all right?

And then you need to intentionally walk into these situations and actively listen. This is your game plan.

You're gonna actively listen and ask good questions to better understand them because at some point you're going to see the issue that they need to understand, okay?

Number three, we need to collect stories and be ready to tell them. We have a question we like to ask here at this church.

Where's John LaGrange? John, there you are. What is God currently teaching you?

John, four and a half years ago, posed that question to me for the first time and my jaw fell on the floor because I wasn't prepared.

But we like to ask this question. It's an excellent question to ask. And we understand that the way to answer this question is by identifying particular lessons that Jesus is teaching you.

Jesus is a teacher. That Jesus is teaching you that come out of your study of the scripture, of situations that are unfolding in your life at the time, out of your time in reflection, out of your time in prayer, out of your time in worship, and putting that all together, okay?

Because what you'll notice is that a lot of these scenarios and things that happen, they reveal a recurring pattern.

They reveal some kind of a recurring theme or a lesson. This is God's style. This is how he shows you something.

You'll notice these themes, themes like forgiving others, submitting to authority, giving grace in hard times, trusting

God, waiting on God, being patient with difficult people.

These are the lessons that God continues to teach us. If you ask me this question right now,

I'll tell you, God is teaching me that I am not in control of my life, okay? There are situations and circumstances and places in the scripture right now that God has me where he's just hammering this home.

And for me, I am a teacher, I'm a planner. This is something that I continually struggle with, but I'm identifying these particular moments, all right?

And I'm keeping track of them. If you pay attention to what God has been teaching you, then you should already have some stories in your past, true stories of things that happened to you that reveal a particular theme, a particular lesson that God taught you or he wanted you to learn.

And here's the thing about God lessons. If God teaches you a lesson, he wants you to pay it forward. If God teaches you a lesson, he's probably gonna bring somebody else in your future that needs to know the same thing.

So let's bring it all together. You wanna be like Jesus in the area of storytelling, in the area of identifying an issue that someone needs to understand and providing an example story that models and illustrates this issue, the simplest thing you can do is collect the true stories, those true moments where God has taught you a lesson.

And maybe it wasn't even you, maybe something happened to your friend, maybe something happened to your family member, and you just kept track of it because it was obvious to you that God was in that.

You keep these stories handy and you pull them out at the right person or you share them with the right person at the right time.

All right? Now, some of us already do this, we're storytellers by nature. I come from two ethnic communities that are storytellers, so I got the bug twice.

I'm a Polynesian and I'm Arabic. So we do this kind of a thing a lot, all right? For some of us, this is natural, for others it's not, that's okay.

If it's not natural, write down what God is doing in your life. That's the biggest thing you can do.

If you wanna keep track of these stories, keep a prayer journal, keep a God journal, write down,

Pastor Chuck does something, he has a journal, and literally every entry in the journal starts off with, God is teaching me, dot, dot, dot.

Keep track of these things and the lessons and the themes and keep them handy. And again,

God is going to bring somebody to you that needs to hear the story. And if the spirit is doing a work, they will put themselves in the story, they will find themselves in the story and respond.

You follow me? You kinda have to do some work on the front end though, okay?

You have to do a little bit, you gotta read people well, you gotta be intentional, you gotta keep those stories together. And always be ready for those providential moments.

But guess what's gonna happen? God is going to use you. God is going to use stories, because guess what, stories are powerful.

They are powerful. By the way, if you have the creative ability and the ambition, this culture also needs good novels.

This culture needs great art. It needs great music and movies that also communicate

God's truth. If you are hearing me right now, and you are this kind of an artist, develop your art.

We need you, we need you, because it can absolutely change our society.

This is what Jesus did. He told stories to communicate the truths of God, and if he did, then