Karl Marx the philosopher, social scientist, historian and revolutionary is without a doubt the most influential socialist thinker to emerge in the 19th century.
He gained a reputation as a socialist and seemed to be concerned about the poor and the working class while he himself sought a middle class status
It was recently discovered that he really never knew a working class person but rather sought to associate himself with intellectuals like himself
When he and Friedrich Engels created the Communist League, and again when they formed the International, he made sure that working-class socialists were eliminated from any positions of influence.
It is also clear that for all his endeavors to be the social benefactor of humankind, he disliked people and continuously fought with members of his family.
Marx lived his life in an atmosphere of verbal violence, quarreling with everyone with whom he associated for any length of time. He worked hard at becoming middle-class
What is the point here?
All humans find it difficult to live up to what we espouse intellectually.
R. Kent Hughes says´” Love for people, or the lack of it, reveals the quality and effectiveness of the philosophy we hold.
And from a Biblical perspective our love for people is even more revealing, because it actually indicates the authenticity and health of our relationship with God.”
Before us today is a familiar story
It is a story about kindness, generosity, sacrifice
It is a response to a question raised by a lawyer
I. Real does not discriminate vs. 31-33
31 A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32 So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him.
The priest and the Levite came by and kept going
Hugh Rudd, CBS newsman, came home late one night after putting on the CBS late news and was let off by a taxi at his home on the East Side of New York. As he stepped away from the cab, four scruffy-looking youths surrounded him and said, “Give us your money.” He did. Then one of them took a pistol and beat him over the head. Rudd fell into the gutter, just a few steps from home. For seven hours on the fashionable East Side of New York, he lay on that street. He was semi-conscious. A whole parade of people went by: milkmen, people coming home from parties, people going out to work on an early shift. As they passed by him, he kept saying, “Help me, help me.” They would shrug and look the other way. His wife, worried sick, finally called the police. They came and found him at 7:00 the next morning. R. Kent Hughes preaching the word Luke volume 1
II. Real love is willing to take a risk
There was the risk of criticism and ridicule
There was a racial divide (400 years)
He could have seen him differently
He had be the brunt of jokes
He probably had experienced discrimination
So in Jesus’ day the hatred was ingrained and utterly implacable. The rabbis said, “Let no man eat the bread of the Cuthites (Samaritans), for he who eats their bread is as he who eats swine’s flesh.”
The ultimate insult came in the arsenic-laced Jewish prayer that concluded, “… and do not remember the Cuthites in the Resurrection.
****This was common knowledge
Add to this the fact that in Jesus’ day some Jewish travelers had been murdered in Samaria, and that some Samaritans had defiled the temple with human bones, and you can begin to imagine the shock of Jesus’ introducing a Samaritan not as a villain but as a hero! Indeed, if the Jew in the story were not half-dead, he would probably push away the loathsome Samaritan as Jews were forbidden to receive acts of kindness from Samaritans
III. Real love is not concerned about its own comfort
34 He went to him and bandaged 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.
He rendered aid and placed him on his beast, he walked so that the injured person could recover
IV. Real love does not consider the cost
35 The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’
Two silver coins was enough to feed this man for about 24 days
His love is demonstrated by his willingness to bear all the cost
V. Real love is committed to the well being of others
It always wants the best for others
Scripture’s call to love our neighbors as ourselves gives us a way of testing our relationship with God.
It delivers us from an infatuation with the idea that we are lovers of God when we are not.
Our relationship with fellow human beings validates or invalidates our claims to know and love God.
It is interesting that Jesus does not say in the parable that Jews ought to love all people, even Samaritans. Instead, he does a more shocking thing. He uses the “unclean” Samaritan as an example of what neighborly love is.
The Samaritan demonstrated his love in a practical way
This is not a call to perfection. Only Jesus totally loved God and his neighbor as himself.
Only Jesus was consistently merciful to everyone who came his way.
But it is a call to consider whether in our relationships there is evidence that we love God.
Are we merciful? Are we truly compassionate with others?
If we characteristically pass by those who are in distress—physical, economic, social—we are probably not Christians. Are we forgiving? If not, we are very likely outside grace of God
“Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy” (Matthew 5:7).
He was not saying that one can merit God’s mercy by performing acts of mercy, but rather that those who are truly God’s children, and as such are objects of his mercy, will themselves be merciful and so will receive mercy in the end. Showing mercy to one’s neighbor is evidence of having received mercy.
We claim to actually know Christ. We claim that Christ is in us and that we are in him.
We claim that, though residing in a spiritually dead world, we are regenerated, born again, alive.
We wear it on our foreheads, and some of us wear it on our sleeves.
We claim to have Christ (the only person who ever fully loved God with all his being, and his neighbor as himself) in our hearts.
But as we have seen in the parable, if we really do have Christ within us, we will be loving and merciful to our neighbors, those we meet along the road of life.
The text concludes with this challenge “Go and do likewise”
If you love God prove it
