The Great Commandment – Sermon 3: Love Your Neighbor Series

The Great Commandment – Sermon 3: Love Your Neighbor

Series: The Great Commandment

Chuck Sligh

August 5, 2018

NOTE: A PowerPoint presentation is available for this sermon by request at chucksligh@hotmail.com.

TEXT: Matthew 22:34-40 – “But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they gathered together. 35 Then one of them,…a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, saying, 36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law? 37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

INTRODUCTION

This is the last of a three-part series on The Great Commandment. Over the last two weeks we saw that in verses 37-39 Jesus cut through all the commands of the Old Testament and got right to the heart of the matter of what God wants us to do. In essence, he said that all God’s laws can be summed up this way: To love God with all your being, and to love your neighbor as yourself.

To understand what Jesus is teaching, we have to first ask, “Who is my neighbor?” If you’re asking that question, you’re not the first one. In fact, it was this lawyer who asked this question, but not here in Matthew. We’ll have to go over to Luke 10 to find the answer to that question. In Luke’s version of the story, in Luke 10:29, look at the lawyer’s response: “But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, AND WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR?”

Jesus never answered his question; instead He told him the parable of the Good Samaritan. The parable of the Good Samaritan is one of the most well-known stories from the Bible. In today’s biblically illiterate society it’s remarkable that one researcher found that 49 percent of the people they interviewed said they would be able to tell the story if they had to. But people can retell it or not, the idea of the “Good Samaritan” is familiar to most people. We name hospitals, churches, and institutions in his honor.

Most people know a “Good Samaritan” when they see one—police officers and firefighters who come to our aid, and more particularly, those anonymous people who stop to change people’s flat tire or help blind people cross the street.

To understand who our neighbor Jesus is referring to, I want you to see four characters in the parable of the Good Samaritan:

I. IN VERSE 30 WE SEE A WOUNDED WAYFARER. – “And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.”

Travel in some parts of Palestine in Jesus’ day was dangerous, and the road from Jerusalem to Jericho was a notoriously dangerous way to travel. It was a steep, mountainous road down 3,500 feet with narrow, rocky defiles and blind turns, which made it a place to be fraught with danger of robbers. In the 5th century, Jerome was still referring to this as “the Bloody Way.” [http://www.onesteadfast.com/Blog/ScriptureStudy/The-Road-Is-Not-Safe.]

While on the road to Jericho, he fell among thieves who stripped and wounded him and left him for dead. You don’t have to be physically wounded to see yourself in this man’s sandals. In this life full of bad people, persistent problems, and serious struggles, there are wounded people all around us, and perhaps even some who are here this morning. Some are wounded in BODY as health has turned to illness; other’s SELF-RESPECT has been wound and they feel defeated or humiliated; some are wounded in their EMOTIONS, feeling loneliness or grief or alienation; others are SPIRITUALLY wounded, having lost the joy of their salvation or they have backslidden; and some are FINANCIALLY, their finances are in freefall. All around us are people who need someone to love and care about their need.

II. IN VERSES 31-32, JESUS TELLS US OF TWO PITILESS PASSERSBY.

The sad thing is that these two people were religious people. If there’s anyone who ought to care for another human being; if there’s anyone who should be compassionate and merciful; if there’s anyone you’d think would help, it would to be a person serving God, right?—and especially if they’re spiritual leaders.

Yes, you WOULD think that; but you would be wrong. Look at what poor examples these supposed spiritual leaders were: First was a priest in verse 31 – “And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.”