“Lessons from the Parable of the Good Samaritan”
“Have you ever avoided someone intentionally? I think we avoid people a lot of times. Sometimes we’re in a hurry. Sometimes it may be the way they look. Sometimes it may be the way that they don’t agree with us. Their beliefs aren’t the same. But what if that person was in need? Would you avoid them? If they were truly in need, would you avoid them? And that could be in a store. It could be in the street. It could be in church. What about if your neighbor needed help? Would you avoid them? Would you say no? Would you just kind of go the other way?”
Luke 10:25-35 – Parable of the Good Samaritan
Three Questions:
- Who is our neighbor?
- According to Dr. Martin Luther King, “A neighbor is anyone, anywhere who needs help. It may be the person next door, it may be someone who lives miles away.”
- “There’s no fine print anywhere who isn’t our neighbor. If they’re in need, they’re our neighbor.”
- What is the cost of loving your neighbor?
- True love requires action. So what is true love?
- “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.” 1 John 3:16-18 ESV
- “Words are easy, action is kind of hard. So it’s going to cost you. The story of loving your neighbor is going to cost you something.”
- “We want to meet their physical needs, but we also want to meet their mental or spiritual needs, too. We want to get to know them. We want them to get to know us.”
- “The important thing is to love our neighbor, to reach out to them, to see what they need physically, to see what they need mentally, see what they need spiritually. Just be a neighbor to them. Make disciples.”
- “The one thing about this is when we do this, when we reach out and love our neighbor, it glorifies God.”
- So how do we relate in this story?
- “Are you one of the religious people who simply want to avoid someone based on who you believe them to be, who you think they are in your own mind, and you just avoid them and walk on by?”
- “Are you the Samaritan who is willing to risk it all, to risk his time, his possessions, his transportation, because someone was in need that he didn’t know?”
- “Or, are you the half-dead man?”
- “The reality is, every single one of us was or is a person who is in need. Because at one time or another, we were in need of a Savior.”
- “But think about this. Aren’t you glad God didn’t avoid us? Aren’t you glad God didn’t just kind of go around us and say, I’ll leave him in their sin? I don’t care anymore. I don’t love him. I don’t want anything to do with him.”
- “But he didn’t. He risked being a good neighbor by sending His son Jesus to die for our sins. To die because we are in need of a Savior.”
- “It cost Jesus a lot more than just His money and His possessions and His time. It cost Him His very life. It cost Jesus His very life to help each one of us here, so we can have eternal life with God.”
“As a church, as a local body, we’re called to love our neighbors all around us.”
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:34-35 ESV
Living Hope Ministries 