Enemy Love (part 3) - Who Is My Neighbor? - [Matthew 5:43-47]

These bring back memories, these words, lay on ground, light fuse, get away. Some time ago, I got some old inch and a half firecrackers out that I've had for about 20 years. Black cats, they were called.

There's a whole string of them. And so I thought I'd be cool in front of the kids and we had some friends over, won't mention by name, the Johansons, and they'll watch this, kids, and I went out with a little match, try to follow the rules, lay on ground.

I lit the fuse, except 20-year-old fuses on black cats don't go slowly, if you know what I mean. They are rapid fire, and before I know it, they're blowing up in my face and my hand, and so I began running back to the house, fall flat down on my leg, had to brush it off like I was fine.

The Explosive Nature of Loving Enemies

The passage today is so explosive. Before we get into it, I want to say, lay on ground, light fuse, and get away. It's an absolutely wild passage. As you know, we've been in Matthew chapter five, Sermon on the Mount, and a few weeks ago, we asked ourselves the question, how do we love our enemies?

What does love look like? And we found that love is a very simple thing. We found through Paul and through Jesus, and a little bit of Peter, that love prays for enemies. Love pursues peace with enemies.

Love triumphs over enemies with good, replacing the enemy's evil. And then two weeks ago, we looked at not just how to love people who are enemies, but why. And you remember what the answer was? Let me read you Matthew chapter five, and I will give you the answer of why we are to love our enemies from Jesus Christ's own words.

Jesus said in Matthew 5 .43, you have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Why? For the result, verse 45, so that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven.

For he causes his son, I repeat that, his son, he causes his son to rise on the evil and on the good. And sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward do you have?

Do not even the tax collectors do the same? If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same. How do we love our neighbors? How do we love our enemies?

We pray for them. Why should we do that? Why should we seek their best and seek their good? Because Jesus, God the Father, God the Holy Spirit, our triune God blesses and does good for the unrighteous.

But you might ask yourself the question today, why is one thing to love? How is another thing to love? But I wonder who might I love? Who is my neighbor? And if I ever say to you, who is my neighbor? What passage comes to your mind right off the top of your head?

I bump you and I say, who's your neighbor? You say, the parable that they even name hospitals after, the parable of the Good Samaritan. And let's go to that very famous passage for today. This nitroglycerin like passage, Luke chapter 10.

Luke chapter 10. You might think you know this passage, but I'm going to just push it a little bit homiletically. I don't think you understand this passage. I'm quite confident that some do, but I'm even more confident that many people in this congregation today don't understand the authorial intent, God's meaning for Luke chapter 10.

We become so familiar with it that it's just part of our natural lives. Even unbelievers know it so well, but we don't know why it was written. We don't know the real purpose and we just use it as, well, who's my neighbor and just leave it as that.

But I think this passage today will help us understand Matthew 5 better when Jesus says, I want you to love your enemies. And we will see in this passage that God expects us to love everyone He providentially places before us, at home, at school, in our own neighborhoods, wherever we go, we are to providentially, we are to love those that God has providentially placed before us.

And we are to love in action, just not with theology. In other words, we are to love with deed and love with fruit and love with sweat and love with toil. Now you can't really give a three point outline to a parable, why?

Because parables weren't meant to have three points in a poem. And so Jesus is going to use this story to make a point and it is one of those lay on ground, light fuse and get away because before you can end up running, it just explodes.

And we will learn from this parable many things, but we are going to learn especially that intellectual knowledge is not good enough, but God requires obedience. That is to say that lip service isn't good enough when it comes to loving neighbors, but God wants us to actually do it.

Now, when you go to Luke chapter 10 for the Good Samaritan, it doesn't occur until verse 30. And this is called a parable for a reason because that's the type of figure of speech it is. It's a sparable, it's a story, a sparable.

When you cross a sparrow in a parable. We were meeting with the Mozambique people today during Sunday school and there will be about nine going Lord willing. And so they have to work on their testimonies and I'll make them stand up in front of everyone and give their testimony to the other group.

And I said, you just, when you're going to speak for the Lord and you want to honor him, you just have to say to yourself, you know what, I'm going to say stupid things and I'm going to say dumb things, but I'm here to proclaim the truth.

And my hope is that you say, this is an awesome savior. Jesus is an awesome God. This is an awesome lesson. God, you are great and you're a great God. Not well, that's a pretty good preacher or he was a pretty bad preacher.

And so here in this parable, Jesus is going to teach a story and he's going to teach a lesson. He's going to use very common things in life to drive home a point in a way that I would argue can't be driven home a better way.

This is the best way to drive this home. Now, what do you do with parables and interpretation? Well, we need to have some kind of framework for interpreting parables because true or false, Jesus preached parables a lot.

He preached them often. It was often for Jesus to give a parable, yes. And we need to understand how to interpret parables because parables are given for two reasons. One reason is to enlighten and educate believers and followers.

But there's another thing that a parable does and that is harden or make more callous unbelief. Parables, in other words, conceal truth or they reveal truth. We want to make sure we understand this truth as Jesus gives parables many, many times.

Some say up to 50 parables. And when you study parables, the best thing to do is think of context and the natural story and the meaning. But the most important thing with parables is you want to make sure you understand the situation.

Why did Jesus give the parable? For what purpose did He say these things? Was He just kind of a jukebox and kind of randomly somebody would push some buttons and out would spit some 45 or some CD or whatever it is?

No, He said it for a reason. And anytime you ever look at any parable in the Bible, you say, why was that given? What was the occasion? What was the situation? What was the purpose? And there you'll have the meaning.

What's the context and why was it given? And you can say to yourself, lastly, when I look at parables, I want to see context. I want to see natural meaning and I want to see the situation. And then I want to make sure I take home the one or two key points.

I don't want to make them walk on all fours. I don't want to have everything being an allegory. So using my own template, when we go into Luke chapter 10, verse 30, what should we do? Just dive into the parable or is there something we should do before that or ahead of time?

Well, we want to do something ahead of time and that is why did Jesus say it? If the number one way to unlock the key of the parable's meaning is to find out why it was said by Jesus, we probably should do what?

Go backwards. Why did Jesus say this? What was the prelude to it? What was he trying to teach? And this is where people lose the meaning of the Good Samaritan by not reading the section before because the section before is the jumping off place for the parable.

I think about those gymnasts and what are those big kind of horses that they have to jump over? They're not real horses, but they're like, yeah, those. When they run full blast, there's a little thing they jump off of or else what happens?

I've seen some of those things where they forget to jump or they slip and their head goes straight into the front of that horse or the back of it, depending on your point of view. It is a disaster. The springboard to figure out the meaning of Luke chapter 10, verse 30 is before it.

And this is where all the firecracker stuff is. This is where the gunpowder is. Maybe that's why some people skip over it. So now let's go into verse 25 and find out why this was said so we can understand the meaning.

It doesn't matter if we don't understand the meaning of something that doesn't do us any good. Luke 10, 25. And a lawyer stood up and put Jesus to the test. Stupid idea, by the way. Saying, teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?

The English text doesn't say it, but the Greek says, and behold. And behold, seemingly out of nowhere, here comes this very self-pious, self-righteous, pompous guy, and he's going to feign respect. He's going to say, well, you know what?

When rabbis would be around, it was good manners. It was proper etiquette to stand up. I'm going to stand in your presence to show you some kind of respect. But the text has already told us he's going to be testing them and Jesus is going to be tested by this guy, so it's just fake.

It's fake etiquette. Now, lawyer doesn't mean lawyer here. A lawyer is, in this context, in the New Testament context, a expert, an expert in the Mosaic law. Someone that doesn't, you know, it's not some kind of lawyer that we would think of in our common thinking down the street who helps us close a real estate deal.

This was a lawyer who was an expert in Mosaic law. He knew that law, Moses, and he knew everything about it. That was his M .O., that was his life. And this man who knew Moses, don't miss that, he was a lawyer for the Bible.

He stood up, kind of social courtesy, but still fake because he's got this insidious plot, and he stands up in the middle, like they would in the Middle East and address the teacher, but he's testing, it's faking, it's feigning.

He's gonna try to catch Jesus in a trap, and the bait is this question. Class is eternal life. The pupil is testing the teacher. What do I do to inherit eternal life? He's going to test Jesus. Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?

And at least he's got the idea that life eternal is inherited. It's not something that can be purchased. You can't buy it. You can't earn it. You can't work for it. It's something that's given to the children.

When you die, your children get your inheritance, and they can't do anything to receive it except have your name. And he asks the question. But what does Jesus do? Gives an answer. Oh, great question.

No, there's a counter here. Here's a counter question. He comes tempting. Jesus sees through him, of course, because he's the triune God, a member of the triune God. And he says, you know, what is written in the law?

You say you're an expert in the law. Well, what's written in the law? How does it read to you? Now, if somebody asked me the question, what shall I do to inherit eternal life, what might I say? I'll tell you what.

I don't talk like Jesus does unless I force myself, because I would say repent and believe. Others might say, ask Jesus in your heart. Others might say God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.

Others might say, well, it's the ABCs of Christianity. Admit you're a sinner, believe Jesus in your heart, confess Jesus as Lord, and you're in. Jesus says, what's written in the law? What a question.

What a counter question. Then he says, how does it read to you? You're the scribe. Jesus doesn't say, well, you know, God wants your best life now, and let's just go for it. He says, what is in the text?

Luke 10, verse 27. Jesus says, scribe, scribe me. So the scribe says in verse 27, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.

And you know how I think he read that? You ever done memory work? You just want to kind of go really fast through the memory work and it doesn't really have much meaning. And it's kind of like, I was telling Luke the other day, when I was a kid, I prayed this every night.

Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to take. If I should die before I wake up, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen. Where's my GI Joe? He's an expert. He knows the law. And what does he say?

He doesn't say this. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength. And you should love your neighbor as yourself. I don't think he said it that way at all.

No emphasis on with all. By the way, is that a good answer? Theologically? Is it orthodox? You know what, that's almost the exact same answer that Jesus gives to someone else in Matthew 22. When asked the question, what's the greatest law?

And he says, these are the two greatest laws. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and your strength and love your neighbor as yourself. That's the right answer because Jesus gave the exact same answer in another occasion.

But as you know, words have meanings. And the meaning to this Jew, this lawyer, was neighbors are other Israelites. Neighbors weren't these scallywag other people. Neighbors were homo. Neighbors weren't hetero.

Neighbors were people who were like us, who were similar, in this particular case, Jewish. Everybody else wasn't my neighbor. And that's what he was thinking because that's what they thought back then.

A restricted narrowness to this idea of neighbor. I think I said last week when I worked in the hospitals, I saw many things. And I remember one time seeing a carotid endarterectomy. And it's your carotid artery and it's filling up with plaque and it fills up with plaque for two reasons.

Number one, heredity. Number two, potato chips. And so it fills up, it's true. And it becomes a narrowing. There's a stenosis there and it's a narrowing of that. And so the blood doesn't flow up to the brain well.

So they have to go in and they have to clear it out. And so too, this lawyer has a narrowing, he has a stenosis-like view of who's the neighbor and the neighbors are people like me, Jews. One dictionary said, definition of a neighbor, quote, any other man irrespective of race or religion with whom we live or whom we chance to meet.

It doesn't matter what the social status is, what the people look like, everyone's the neighbor. That's not what this guy thinks. So now what does Jesus say, verse 28? This is just mind boggling to me.

Jesus said to him, how do we know it was the right answer? Well, A, Jesus already has answered that elsewhere. But B, Jesus says, you have answered orthos. You have answered correctly. You have answered straightly, rightly.

You are orthodox. And I don't see in any parentheses, Jesus clapping and applauding. Good job, way to go, atta boy, go get them. You have answered correctly. And then here's one of these things that everybody misses and you might wanna underline this part.

Do this and you will live, present imperative. You continue to manufacture this, accomplish this, produce this, obtain this. You do this and when he says do this, he's got all those alls there, all four alls with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, all your might, your neighbor as yourself.

You do this, you're gonna live. The guy said, I did it, he probably should have said, well, how well should I do it? He should have said, not, you know, I do this all the time, but you know what, I know I don't measure up to your standards.

Jesus says, you have answered correctly. And now Jesus is trying to push him to the edge of the cliff so he jumps off of his own self-righteous corner. Friends, as a side note, you can have theology that is straight, correct, orthodox, biblical.

You can sign off on the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed. You can sign off on all the Bible and still have faith that doesn't save, yes? Demonic faith, you can sign Westminster Confession Statement of Faith, Savoy Declaration, London Baptist Confession of Faith in 1689, the New Hampshire Baptist Declaration of Faith, et al, you just name them all and it doesn't do any good because what you believe doesn't matter because there should be orthodoxy married to orthopraxy.

There should be belief and it is connected, the engine of belief is connected to the caboose of behavior. Conduct follows creed. And so Jesus knew he didn't do that. Jesus could have said all kinds of things, but to help us and to actually help him, he's trying to get to the bottom of this.

It's not just thoughts, it's not just intellect, it's not just head knowledge and theological IQ and doctrinal SAT, it's more than that. You understand how to love people, Jesus said you're going to really love them then.

It's more than an ideal, it's not naked belief. And what Jesus is doing here is what we all should do when we evangelize. We must make the gospel so biblical that unbelievers can't do it unless the Spirit of God makes them.

Ever think of that? You should preach the gospel so high, if you preach it biblically, it will be so high, that nobody can hurdle it without the Spirit of God's help. Just this whole, hi, are you a sinner?

Yeah, I see people on TV, have you ever told a lie? Yeah, and all these other things. And before you know it, off we go. And here it's so high, we can't get over it. God requires full obedience. But we like to see people get saved, and it's probably a good thing that we want them to get saved.

But don't let your desire to see people get saved dilute the requirements of the gospel, because the gospel requirement is perfection. The gospel requirement comes from God, the perfect one. That's why even the faith that we have is from God, because if you were saved because of your faith, your faith isn't perfect.

My faith's not perfect, you can't be saved by an imperfect faith. That's why the perfect God saves you, and you respond with a faith by God's grace and gift. We aren't saved because of faith, we're saved through faith.

Faith says, I can't save myself. And here's this lawyer, you ever think about it? He's seeking to condemn Jesus. Trying to rearrange everything so he's perfect, and he fits in, and what's the minimum I can do?

What's the least common denominator? I just get along with lip service. And maybe other people where we live, wanna just get along with just the minimum amount of sacraments, and I'm in. And Jesus is going to say, we'll smug Bible recital, we'll not do it.

I'm going to push you to the end. I'm going to push you to see your own sin. It's the most loving thing Jesus could do, is make people see their own sin. When you see your own sin, you realize standards of God are too high, and as Whitefield has said, trying to get to heaven on your own works is like trying to climb a ladder.

Made of sand. Turn to Leviticus 18 .5, please. Leviticus 18 .5, as you notice in Luke 10 there, there's capital letters in the last quote, and that comes from the Old Testament. So when Jesus is talking to a lawyer, who's good at Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, where do you think he quotes from?

Ruth? Well, he could, but he quotes from Leviticus. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus. In German, this would be known as Moses 3. Moses 3, chapter 18. He's just saying, all right, you're the expert. Here you go.

I'm going to try to help you to get you to see your sin. Leviticus 18 .5, so you shall keep my statutes and my judgments, by which a man may live if he does them. I am the Lord. Do them all. Do them all perfectly.

Do them all with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and you can have eternal life. What's our response? What's the right response? God, have mercy on me, the sinner. I can't do it. My back is up against the wall.

And I never have seen a verse like this. I remember the first time I read it. Listen, don't turn there. Just listen to Galatians 3 .10. For as many as are of 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. If you want works to get to heaven, you've got to do them all, and you've got to do them all perfectly, and you've got to do them all perfectly since you are in the womb.

The right response is, I can't. I don't. I never will. I need help. If you don't save me, God, I am done, undone. I'm doomed. So how does he respond? He bowed his knee, genuflected, and said, verse 29, back to Luke 10, please.

What did he do? He just couldn't do it. People love their sin too much. Luke 10 .29, here's the response. So sad. It's heartbreaking. You've got friends probably like this. Preach the gospel to them. You want them to understand their sin and run to the only Savior.

But here's what they do. This is what all belief, unbelief does. This is what we did before God saved us. And if you're not a Christian, this is what you're doing right now. But wishing to justify himself, he said to Jesus, and who's my neighbor?

He doesn't get it. I have some theological terms for this. Duck and jive, bob and weave. That's what this is. I try to be nice to the Jews, but the Gentiles, no, I'm not gonna do that. One man said, we know that the Jewish answer was, my neighbor is my fellow Israelite.

There's a way in which this looks like the right answer. But the narrator helps us. He's trying to justify himself. He's trying to rationalize it. He's trying to move the focus off of him. Where did Cain get his wife?

You know, you're thinking about eternity and you're getting back into this corner, and then you're trying to change the subject. We hear that all the time with unbelievers. They do that all the time. Bible's written by man.

I mean, on and on and on it goes. The only way the lawyer thinks that he could do what Jesus is saying is to limit what Jesus was saying. In other words, here's the law. I've gotta do something with the law and limit the law.

Because I can't do that. I'm not going to love my enemies, is what he's saying. He wants vindication. He wants his conscience to feel good. I mean, it's kind of tough after a while to assuage your conscience, and then you have to go use alcohol and other things and feel good.

Is it minimum obedience or is it total? Is it by the mercy of God we're saved or is it by something else? He doesn't want to live by mercy so we can tell God hasn't given him mercy. But Jesus' words are like Nathan's long, craggy finger, probably full of arthritis.

He is not going to let the pressure cooker be released. I'll never forget, my mom had the pressure cooker. She would cook things in the pressure cooker, and she used to say to me, now, if you play with that, this is like a hand grenade, and it could explode, and the outside of this pressure cooker could be like shrapnel.

Don't play with that, son. Something's cooking in there. All of a sudden, steam coming out. I'm going to die. Jesus here is saying, you know what? There's no relief from you because these self-righteous answers just get more of the law.

That's the way we should preach to our friends. Don't give the Savior and relieve them when they don't think they need relief. People need to be desperate for salvation before they'll say, you know what?

My righteousness is like a filthy rag. I mean, it takes an act of God working to say to yourself, the best I can do, Isaiah 64 says, is like a used menstrual cloth in the Hebrew. And Jesus says, you know what?

You're not going to give me the right answer. I'm going to take a magnifying glass out, and here's the sun, and through the sun, I'm just going to burn you like I would an ant someplace like we did when we were kids.

Jesus said, you've got to love perfectly, and you've got to love unlovable neighbors like Samaritans, like enemies. He wanted to justify himself. Luke 16 talks about the same thing, people who try to justify themselves in the sight of men, but Jesus said, God knows the heart.

So Jesus is going to now come to the parable, and he's going to do this. The who is my neighbor passive question is going to be moved to the who is my neighbor active response. Jesus is going to teach this man what doing the law is.

You say you want to love the Lord God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and your neighbors yourself. Okay, let me put the nail in the coffin with this parable. I'm not going to debate with you, Jesus says, I'm going to teach you.

These people should have already known it. Leviticus said, do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbors yourself. You say, well, they just thought that was Jewish.

How about later? The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as a native among you, and you shall love him as yourself as you were aliens in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. Jesus isn't going to debate.

He's going to say, I demand obedience. And here comes the parable of the Good Samaritan. You want to know who the neighbor is? Now, at least we know why it was said this way and what Jesus was after. Verse 30, Jesus replied and said, 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. Now, remember, whenever you want to understand the Bible, you're thinking, here's Jesus 2 ,000 years ago in Israel talking to this Mosaic law expert.

That's how this man is hearing it. A man is going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, 17 miles. They have great Bible programs now on the internet. You just put the clicker on Jerusalem, drag it down to Jericho, and it goes 17 miles.

They've even got altitudes now, too. And you can see, if you saw a side view, it would be down to Jericho, 3 ,000 or 3 ,300 feet down. There's lots of people who worked for Herod building things. They're already built now, and up to 40 ,000 workers have been laid off, if you will, and now they're just around.

And they're robbers and they're lurking and they steal and they strip and they beat. And that's a good place to hide because there's all kinds of nooks and crannies and just little robbers' lairs there.

Pompeii had to wipe out strongholds of robbers during the times of the Crusade there because you could build little forts and sneak up on people. The topography lends itself to hide. So here's the haunt of not just purse snatchers, but real felons.

In 1852, Professor Hackett visited this area that Jesus spoke of, and he said this. No part of the traveler's journey is so dangerous as the expedition to Jerusalem. The Oriental pilgrims who repair to the Jordan have the protection of an escort of Turkish soldiers, and others who would make the same journey must either go in company with them or provide for their safety by procuring a special guard.

Robbers can rush forth unexpectedly upon their victims and escape as soon almost beyond the possibility of pursuit. It's like Hosea says as the robbers are waiting for people. Raiders are waiting for the man.

Scary, no vegetation, cliffs and gullies and limestone rocks. This is real spooky world. And what happened? He fell among robbers. The text says he was surrounded by them. He was encompassed by them. They gobbled him up as it were.

Like some amoeba attacking a parasite, just engulfed them, circled them, went around him. Literally fell into the hands of robbers. And if you were in those days, you'd want their money and you'd want the people's clothes because clothes were valuable.

You had some clothes and they were valuable. And so what do you think they took? Probably took the clothes and the money. They stripped both. Clothing and money stripped. The word there is the word for a snake snake stripping himself of his skin.

So to these robbers stripped this man of his skin, his clothes, zoological term. And what else did they do? They beat him. They gave him blows. They gave him bruises and wounds. You know what the Greek word is for bruises and wounds and beatings?

Plagues. Because when you have a plague, it looks like you've been beaten up. And so this man has received the plague, but not a viral plague or an antimicrobial plague or something like that. It is a real plague of fists.

And they left him what? Half dead. Only time the word's used in the Bible there is half dead. It's hemided. What's half dead mean? Half dead. He's at death. He's been beaten to a pulp. By the way, if you're the Jewish lawyer thinking about it, what kind of guy do you think probably got beat up?

You think the Jewish lawyer thinks this guy's a Jew or a Gentile? You know he's thinking it's a Jew. What's gonna happen? Who's gonna help him? There's tension. We know the end, but these people didn't.

All's we need to know is there is an image bearer of God. He's providentially placed in this person's path. And there should be love for this person. Enemy, friend, neighbor, loved one. It's time to love.

It's not just orthodoxy, but it's orthopraxy. Let's see what happens. Almost wish these next few words weren't in the Bible because they make me explain a lot of things, but verse 31. And by chance. Say, pastor, do you believe in chance?

Well, what Jesus means in the story is as it happened, kind of this guy shows up. It doesn't mean like there's real chance in the world because there's no such thing as chance. God providentially controls every molecule.

There's no such thing as luck or fate. This is just storytelling is all this is. It's coincidence. From a man's perspective, it's by chance. As it happened, a priest was going down on that road. What do you think the priest is gonna do?

This is an ironic descendant. This is a person who does things in the temple and they would go back and forth. They'd serve two weeks in the temple doing the priestly things. And they'd walk back to Jericho where they would live.

Back and forth they would go. And by the way, if you were an ironic descendant and you were a priest, you certainly wouldn't be walking because only the poor walked. You would be riding on a donkey. This person has status.

This person has power. This person's a big shot. This person's a minister. The pastor goes by and what does he see? He sees some guy laying there. He's half dead. And when he saw him, he dropped everything and rushed over, gave him mouth to mouth.

If you're the lawyer, you're thinking, you know what? Our little unholy trinity, Pharisees, scribes, and Sadducees, and an extra member of the trinity, the scribes were all together and the priests. He's gonna help him, of course.

And when he saw him, by the way, the text is he observed, he noticed, he perceived. It wasn't some kind of mirage. It kind of, the sun was there and he didn't quite see that it was a form of a body. He saw him and like a magnet with another magnet flipped the other way, repels each other, so too he went over as far as he could to the other side of the road.

The text says he went on the anti-side of the road, the opposite, as far as he could move over without hitting his donkey into the side of the limestone. Wide berth. And he's not doing, he's not loving.

I'm sure he doesn't even wanna look with eye contact to see him. Maybe, you know, he's busy, gotta get home. Wife wants him to pick up some cream on the way. I mean, he's gotta get there. And you know what he's doing?