Today's scripture reading is from the book of Luke, chapter 10 verses 25 through 37 and may be found on page 1028 in the Bible underneath the seat in front of you. On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus Teacher he asked what must I do to inherit eternal life? What is written in the law? He replied? How do you read it? He answered love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself. You have answered correctly Jesus replied do this and you will live, but he wanted to justify himself. So he asked Jesus and who was my neighbor and replied Jesus said a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes beat him and went away leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road and when he saw the man he passed by on the other side. So to a Levite when he came to the place and saw him passed by on the other side, but a Samaritan as he traveled came where the man was and when he saw him he took pity on him. He went to him and bandage his wounds pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two civil silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. Look after him he said and when I return I will reimburse you for any money. Any extra expense you may have. Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell in the hands of the robber? The expert in the law replied the one who had mercy on him. Jesus told him go and do likewise. This is the word of the Lord. We've been looking at the book of Luke lately in a series of messages that I've called there to be a disciple. And what we have done is tried to come to a clearer understanding of what a disciple really looks like. Here at UPC over the years we have adopted a description of a disciple. It's called the nine marks of a transformed life and these nine things serve as landmarks if you will or measuring sticks or things for which we can strive. There are goals to be as disciples. We'll never get there in this life, but they still provide us with helpful ways of knowing where are we on our journey and where do we need to improve? Inside the sermon notes we again have the nine marks listed for you there and we've covered the first three in this series so far. We're now at mark number four. What we're going to talk about today is the fact that a transformed person and that's just another way of talking about a disciple is someone who applies the gospel of grace in his or her relationships with other people. See, being a Christian is not just knowing God, me and Jesus, it's also having healthy relationships with other people. And so a disciple is somebody who is applying the gospel of grace, the grace that we've received in our relationships with other human beings. Now what does that look like? Well, we've said three things that this looks like. We're talking about someone who loves and accepts people well. Someone who resolves conflict in a biblical way and we're talking about someone who reaches out beyond his or her comfort zone to care for people who are hurting. So that is a description. I would say one that we will never get to, you know, we'll always be working on this, but this is a description of someone who is applying the gospel of grace in his or her relationships with others. So in our text this morning that Sarah read, Jesus tells a very familiar story. I dare say almost everybody here has heard the story of the good Samaritan. And it's a story of, I would say an unlikely friendship. So what I want to show you this morning is three things about this unlikely relationship. First of all, I want to show you the prelude to the story. Second, the players in the story and third, the point of the story. So let's dive into the good Samaritan by starting with the prelude of the story in verses 25 through 29. The prelude is really summarized there in verse 25, the very first verse of the passage where it says that on one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. Now you've got to get this because if you don't get the prelude, you're going to miss the real meaning of the story that we're going to look at later. It says an expert in the law came to Jesus. Now this is a scribe. That's another word for these experts in the law. And the scribes back in the day of Jesus were Pharisees. Pharisees were people who were very rigid, very unflinching in their knowledge and their application of the Old Testament law. And these scribes were scholars who studied the Torah backwards and forwards. And they taught it to the people of Israel. But as a rule, you got to know that these scribes were legalistic. They were rigid and by large, unloving people. They added traditions and rules and regulations on top of the Old Testament law of God. And Jesus often reserved his sternest rebukes for these people that were scribes. For instance, if you were to look at Matthew, chapter 23, sometime in that chapter, Jesus calls the scribes blind guides, whitewash tombs and snakes. So that's what Jesus thought of the scribes as a group. And I suspect that that's really what he thought of this guy too standing before him here in verse 25. So this expert in the law, this scholar, this scribe, comes and asks Jesus this question. And it says that he's trying to test Jesus. So we can figure that he's trying to trap him some ways, trying to make Jesus trip up and maybe point out some flaw in Jesus' theology or behavior, something like that. Verse 25 to Jesus, teacher, meaning rabbi, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Now, I like the good evangelist he was. Jesus answers the man's question with a what? A question. That's right. In verse 26, Jesus says back to him, well, what is written in the law? How do you read it? In other words, Jesus says, you tell me, what do you think? And the scribe then gives a textbook reply. In verse 27, he quotes the two great commandments of the Old Testament. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. That's in Deuteronomy 6. And secondly, love your neighbor as yourself. Leviticus 19. Jesus says back to the scribe a plus. You pass with flying colors. He says in verse 28, you're right. Do this and you'll live right on the money. In other words, love indeed is the fulfillment of the law. Love for God. Love for other human beings. You got that right scribe. But then, Dr. Luke, the author of this book, gives us a glimpse, the glimpse that Jesus had into the heart of that scribe. He says in verse 29 that the scribe wanted to justify himself. So he asks Jesus another question. And who is my neighbor? He says. But don't miss the first part of that verse. This scribe wanted to justify himself. Have you ever tried to justify yourself? Officer, I didn't see that speed limit sign. Honey, I tell you, I love you all the time. Don't you remember that date we had back in the summer? Sorry, boss. I know my desk is a total wreck, but it's all this work I've got to do and so little time to do it. Mom, I can't be in by midnight. My friend doesn't have a car and I've got to take her home. You think of your statements even this past week. Did you shift blame? Did you make any excuses? Did you put yourself in a better light than you should have so that others would think well of you? All of those and more are acts of self justification. And that's what the scribe is doing with Jesus. The scribe wanted to make himself look good. He figured that he could do that one of two ways. Now follow me on this. The scribe, if he wanted to justify himself, he could a boast of all of the good things he had done. You know, he could tell Jesus all the times in his recent past in which he had loved God with all his heart or loved his neighbor as himself or, and this is what he chooses to do because the the boasting is kind of bold and blatant. I mean, when when somebody's boasting, you know they're proud. It's easy to see. But what he does is the second alternative. The scribe could reduce the demand of God's law. You know, water it down just a little bit. I remember the time when I caught my, I caught one of my kids in a bold face lie. I said, you just lied to me. And his reply was, I didn't lie. I just got my facts wrong. See, what was, what was my son trying to do? He was trying to redefine the terms of my expectation. It wasn't a lie. You understand? It's not a lie. It's not that bad. So if the scribe can reduce or limit or minimize the requirement of the law, then he can also come out looking pretty good. So what the scribe tries to do is lower it just a little bit, make the law more doable. What the scribe wants is he wants to limit the law. He wants a love with limitations or love with boundaries. He says, who should I consider my neighbor, Jesus? And these are my words. They weren't recorded here, but this is what he's, this is what the scribe is saying to Jesus. Who should I consider my neighbor? Give me a list, Rabbi. And what he really means is, tell me who I don't have to love. Give me a group of people that I can safely ignore and still feel that I'm religious. Can anybody here resonate with this attitude? I suppose we all can. Are there people that you really don't consider are worthy of your love and of your respect? And you'd kind of like God's stamp of approval on that too, wouldn't you? Well, we'll talk about this a little bit more later. But for now, just make sure you see the prelude to the story of the good Samaritan. This proud, self-righteous Pharisee comes to Jesus and he wants to narrowly define what it means to love. Got it? All right, let's move on from the prelude to the players. The players in the story are given to us in verses 30 through 35. First, who do you have? You have this man in verse 30, who is presumably a Jew. And he was traveling down this 17-mile road that goes from Jerusalem to Jericho, just walking along. And this is a rugged, rocky road dotted with caves and dotted with hiding places. In fact, today it's even called the path of blood. It has earned that nickname over the centuries because people are often attacked and killed there. It was a favorite hangout for bands of robbers like this group of thugs who jumped out and mugged this Jewish man and beat him up and left him for dead. They stole everything on him that he had and left him to bleed the death in the ditch. Next, you have a priest. The priest is in verse 31. This is a religious cleric. He is a Jewish religious leader who sees this poor man but you know what he does. He passes by on the other side. He probably averts his eyes. He pretends he doesn't see the guy probably so that nobody around can blame him for passing the guy by. And then in verse 32, there's a Levite. A Levite was also a religious full-time worker back in that day. And he does the same thing that the priest did. He passes this poor Jewish man who's beaten in the ditch by on the other side. And we read this and we think, my goodness, this is just a story. It surely wouldn't happen in real life. I mean, if it were I and I saw somebody lying on the roadside, I would definitely go by and at least check into it and see what's going wrong, right? Well, have you ever heard or do you remember the name Angel Torres? Angel Torres was a 78-year-old man who lived in Hartford, Connecticut. And in June of 2008, Angel Torres walked out of a deli on Park Street in Hartford. And this is what happened. And I'm going to show you a video. And I want to tell the moms and dads, you might want to just cover your kid's eyes for the first part of this. It's going to show what happens to Angel Torres. He's hit by a hit and run driver. So let's see. There he is walking out of the deli. Count the cars. Watch this guy. Finally, a few bystanders, mosey over, but no one crouches down, offers words of comfort, until finally a police officer who is responding to an unrelated call pulls up and offers the man aid. Now, that's real life. It's not a story. And by the way, the picture was taken from a surveillance camera. Someone at the early service thought that somebody was standing there with a video camera, not doing anything, but it was a surveillance camera. And Torres is alive today, but he's paralyzed from the neck down. That was a hit and run driver who didn't come back. 10 cars drove right on past. Several people on the sidewalk stopped and stared, but no one went over to give him eight. And when I look at that, I think, you know, that could have been me. I could have been one of those bystanders. I'm no better. And they're very similar, right, to the priest in the Levite in our story this morning. So we're looking at these players in this story. And finally we get to the Samaritan, the Samaritan in verse 33. Now let's make sure everybody understands what Samaritans were. Samaritans were a group of people who lived in the northern part of what we today call the Holy Land. Samaria was their religious capital and they were staunch enemies of the Jewish people. They lived in this northern part and had some centuries before, enter married with Gentiles so that now they had earned the name, the derogatory name of half breeds in the day of Jesus. They had their own temple. They had their own shortened version of the Old Testament and they had earned the hatred of Jews, especially by desecrating the temple in Jerusalem by scattering human bones in the temple in 86 during Passover. So what's going on here? This Samaritan is the least likely person to stop and help at dying Jew, isn't he? He would be more likely to walk over to where the guy is lying in the ditch and finish the job that the robbers had started. Or at least as he walked on past, he would yell over at the Samaritan and say, I mean, at the Jewish man and say, Ha, serves you right, Jew. You know, that's the way we would expect and I'm sure the scribe listening to this story would think that's the way that things would pan out. To use a modern parallel, it would be sort of like if you were walking down the street around here, maybe over at the waterfront center or something like that. And you saw Mark Mood, I'm a, I'm a dinner job. I cannot say that name, but you know who I'm talking about the president of Iran. It would be sort of like you see in that guy who has earned the enmity of most of the world seeing him bleeding and wounded. What would you do? How would you feel about him? Would you think even for a split second deserved it? Hope he's suffering. I think probably some of us would be very tempted in that way, but not this Samaritan and that's why he's earned the name good Samaritan. What he did was truly remarkable. What I would like to do is walk you through the next few verses of the text and show you five steps of love that the Samaritan practices toward this poor man in the ditch. Five things he does. Number one, in verse 33, it says that the Samaritan came to where the man was. He came to where he was. See, instead of passing in by, instead of just standing there and being a by-watcher, like some of the people in the video, he stopped and he walked over and got involved. Second thing he did is in verse 33. It says that when the Samaritan saw him, he took pity on him. In other words, he felt compassion as another version reads. His heart went out to the Jewish man in the ditch. The verb means that he didn't just feel sorry for the injured man. No, it's actually something that means he was moved with compassion. It's often a verb used to describe Jesus in various situations in which he was moved with compassion to jump in and get involved in somebody's pain. Thirdly, it says in verse 34 that the Samaritan went to him, that is the Jewish man, and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Now, I don't know about you, but I hate the sight of blood. I just about fainted when my wife had to have an epidural when she was having Michael. I can't get close. I can't watch some of those medical shows on the Discovery Channel. I just turn my head away. It's risky, isn't it, to go over and handle a bleeding, dying person? Sure it is. But that's love in action. The Samaritan uses strips of his own clothing as bandages, his own wine as a disinfectant, his own olive oil as a lotion. He touches the man's wounds, he gently handles his broken bones, and the Jewish man in the ditch is what? His enemy. And yet he does all that for him. Fourth, fourth step of love. In verse 34 B it says that he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. Now don't pass over that too quickly. Think about what all that involves. It involves a lot of different steps. The Samaritan has to put his own schedule on hold. He's going out of his way, right? His whole life is being affected for who knows how long. He stays overnight with the man. He has to call his wife and explain that he won't be home for dinner. He has to tell his kids that he's not going to be able to play with him that night. Maybe the next couple of nights. But see, love must inconvenience you. Or it's not love, it's patronization. It must be an inconvenience. It must be an interruption. Love must cost you something. Your time, your money, your sleep, your privacy, your quiet, your family time, maybe your health. It might even cost you your reputation because you might dare to be seen with somebody who is considered unpopular, uncool, poor of an alternative lifestyle perhaps. Love might even endanger your life. How did this Samaritan know that robbers weren't still hiding out in some cave nearby and they would jump out and hurt him too? And yet he was willing to step over there and do what he did. Fifth and finally, the Samaritan gives this Jewish man continual follow-up. Continual follow-up. It says in verse 35, that the next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. Look after him, he said, and when I return, see it's not just over and done. He says, when I return, I'm still obligated. I'm still indebted to this man. I will reimburse you. We talked last week about Daenerys, these two silver coins that the man took out and gave the innkeeper. It was enough for one to two months' worth of lodging. How would you like to put somebody up at the holiday inn over on Alfa trail for a couple of months? It's a long, long time. He's going to have to work a lot of overtime to make up for those two Daenerys. He and his family are going to have to eat a lot of mac and cheese to make up for those two Daenerys. But that's what love is. So it's indeed a story of an unlikely friendship. We've seen so far the prelude to the story, the players in the story. Now I want to move on to the point of the story. That's really where it gets down to the rubber hitting the road. What's the point here? Is this a B-like story? You know what a B-like story is? B-like David. B-like Moses. B-like Jesus. B-like the good Samaritan. That's often the way we teach this story. So is the point of the good Samaritan story to be a nice person like this Samaritan was? Is it to help people out when they're in the ditch? Is it to stop and get involved in the lives of people who are hurting? Well yes. And no. Yes and no. Follow me. Yes. Jesus is telling us that when we see somebody in need, we are to stop, we are to have compassion, we are to bandage their wounds, we are to be inconvenienced, and we are to follow up on her later. In fact, in verse 37, what does Jesus say? The last verse of the text, go and do likewise. So yes, B-like the good Samaritan. But atheists can be nice. Muslims can be good Samaritans. So what's distinctively Christian about this story? Where's the gospel in this story? Well, remember the prelude. See that's why I wanted to make sure you got the prelude first because this story is not just about being kind. No, remember back in the prelude, the first part of the text, we saw that this is a man, this scribe, who comes to Jesus with the question. This is a man who thought that you could get into heaven by doing good works. He asks Jesus in verse 25, Jesus, Rabbi, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And remember that I said also that the scribe wanted to justify himself. See, he wanted a list from Jesus. He wanted a love within boundaries, within limits. He wanted to shrink the demand, the requirement of God's law so that he could come out looking pretty good so that it would be manageable and doable. He wanted to know who was his neighbor and who wasn't? Who did he have to love? And what types of people are so bad or so ignorant or so liberal or so unsaved or so poor that he didn't have to love them? So what does Jesus do? He picks the most inveterate of enemies, Samaritans and Jews. He picks the most impossible of situations and he says, okay, Mr. Expert in the law, you think you know how to love your neighbor as yourself? You haven't loved until you love like this. It's that hard, scribe. Jesus may as well have said to you and me, you evangelical Christian, loving your neighbor means feeding the poor and taking care of people who don't come back to say thanks. Loving your neighbor means respecting the people on the other side of the aisle. Loving your neighbor means trying to get to the place where you forgive that person who hurt you the worst, who stole years and years of happiness away from you, who used you and made you feel like crap. Loving your neighbor means giving until the point of sacrifice. Loving your neighbor means taking the beam of lumber out of your own eye before you try to take the speck of sawdust after somebody else. Loving your neighbor means telling your neighbor the truth, not because you want to be right, but because you love him so much, you want him to grow. Loving your neighbor means blood, sweat and tears. It is not fun. It is not easy. It is not convenient. So here's where I'm going. In other words, Jesus instead of giving us a love with limits. Instead of narrowing the demands of the law to make it doable, to make it easy to fit into our schedule, Jesus is showing us what the law of God actually requires. It demands perfection. If you're going to love God with all your heart, it's going to be perfect love. If you're going to love your neighbor, your self, it must be perfect. Selfless love. It demands perfection and friends. We all fall very short. Jesus wants this man to see this. How far short he falls and how far, how far short we fall. Can't you think of all kinds of people and situations where you've been like the priest or the Levite? Sure. Jesus is showing you that you really don't love your neighbor very well at all, not when you see what love really is. So don't justify yourself. Jesus wrote this poem called, as the ruin falls. Listen to it. All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you. I never had a selfless thought since I was born. I'm mercenary and self-seeking through and through. I want God, you, all friends merely to serve my turn. Peace, reassurance, pleasure are the goals I seek. I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin. I talk of love. A scholar's parrot may talk Greek, but self imprisoned. I always end up where I begin. See, Jesus is saying, don't you see? Don't you see the truth of C.S. Lewis's poem? Don't you see it and feel it about yourself? You're the one who needs the good Samaritan. You're the paralyzed guy lying in the street. You're the one in the ditch and you need a neighbor who is not going to ignore you and walk on the other side and friend that neighbor, that Samaritan is Jesus Christ. Jesus, as he traveled through the universe on his kingly throne, saw you in your sin. He came where you were. And when he saw you, he took pity on you. He was moved with compassion. He went to you and bandaged your wounds. He poured onto your sins, not oil and wine, but his own blood from the cross. He forgave you. He justified you. Not by your work, but by his work. And then he placed you under the care of an innkeeper, the Holy Spirit, and put you in the inn called the church to take good care of you. He paid all your expenses. And when he returns, as he will one day, Jesus will reimburse not the innkeeper, but you, for all that has been taken away from you in this life. And because you have been loved that well, then you can love others. The more you allow that love to seek deeply into your bones and heart and bloodstream, the more you can love others. You can go out on a ditch patrol yourself because Jesus went on ditch patrol for you. Let me leave you with a few things. I know we're over time, but it's very important. I want you to talk about this in your life group this week, or with your friends, or in your Bible study, or your spouse, or kids, or parents. First thing of application I would ask you to think about seriously is, are you like the scribe? Are you someone who believes that you do things to get into heaven? If so, I want to maybe hopefully disabuse you of that because it's totally wrong. No, you can't get into heaven by your own good works. The Bible says that you're saved by grace, through faith, by resting, trusting in Jesus alone. So I ask you that if you believe that you're going to hopefully be good enough for God, lay that aside and come to him as a sinner and ask him to forgive you and make you his child. Secondly, think about this. Are you like the priest and the Levite? In other words, I want to ask you to identify some ways that you do not love well. This is vitally important. I identify some ways that you do not love well, for instance, maybe you're a bad listener, or maybe you like to gossip about other people, or perhaps you avoid people that you don't like. Maybe you're somebody who's always in a hurry. Nobody can stop you long enough to really have your ear, or you're not honest, or perhaps you know how to turn every conversation around to be about you, you're narcissistic. Identify those ways, and then thirdly, identify those people that you don't want to be a neighbor to. I'm sure everybody here can name some person or group of people whom you don't want to be a neighbor to. Maybe it's a particular ethnic group. Maybe it's Democrats. Maybe it's Republicans. Perhaps it's non-Christians. Maybe it's gays. Maybe it's somebody in the alternative crowd. Maybe it's old people. You don't want, you don't love them. Maybe it's that couple living together next door. Who is it for you? And then the fourth thing I ask you to do is repent. Repent of that. How do you repent? You go to Jesus and you tell him the truth. You admit that you're not a lover. You're the priest in the Levite, not the Samaritan. And then ask the Holy Spirit to awaken you throughout the day to opportunities to love. Maybe it's to love your spouse better, your children, your parents, a friend, your roommate, or whatnot. Pray for those people. Pray for them. And then watch God open doors of opportunity. In these ways, as the gospel permeates our soul, will be the ditch patrol of East Orlando. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, thank you that you were on the ditch patrol for us when we were in dire straits. And we pray, Lord Jesus, that you will break our hearts of the self-righteousness and pride that makes us like this scribe that wants to be right. Break us, Lord, of judgmental attitudes and self-centered ways and narcissistic patterns of living. And Lord, make us please, we pray, the ditch patrol. And we ask this in Christ's name. I'm in.