Open your bibles to the book of LUKE, chapter 10. Let us read verses 30-37.
One day, as Jesus was teaching, a religious leader stood and, wanting to test Jesus, asked him, “Teacher, what should I do if I want to inherit eternal life?” Jesus responded by asking the religious leader what the Law of Moses said.
The man responded by saying, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.’ And, it also says to, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ”
Jesus then told the man that if he did as he was commanded in that scripture, he would live. But the man wanted to press it even further, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
Jesus responded by telling him the parable about the Good Samaritan. Let us turn to verse 30 and begin reading there. I am using the New Living Translation.
30 Jesus replied with a story: “A Jewish man was traveling from Jerusalem down to Jericho, and he was attacked by bandits. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him up, and left him half dead beside the road.
31 “By chance a priest came along. But when he saw the man lying there, he crossed to the other side of the road and passed him by.
32 A Temple assistant walked over and looked at him lying there, but he also passed by on the other side.
33 “Then a despised Samaritan came along, and when he saw the man, he felt compassion for him.
34 Going over to him, the Samaritan soothed his wounds with olive oil and wine and bandaged them. Then he put the man on his own donkey and took him to an inn, where he took care of him.
35 The next day he handed the innkeeper two silver coins, telling him, ‘Take care of this man. If his bill runs higher than this, I’ll pay you the next time I’m here.’
36 “Now which of these three would you say was a neighbor to the man who was attacked by bandits?” Jesus asked.
37 The man replied, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus then told the scholar to “go and do likewise”.
Let me tell you a love story. Actually, let me tell you a story of love.
Raymond Dunn, Jr. was born in New York State in 1975. It was reported at the time of his birth, the baby had a skull fracture and severe oxygen depreivation, causing extreme retardation. The boy would never be normal in any sense of the word.
As he grew, other problems became known. He suffered up to 20 seizures a day; he was blind; he was mute; and he was unable to move any part of his body. In addition, the young child had allergies to everything except on kind of food. And that food is all he could eat. It was a meat based product that was only made by the Gerber baby food company.
In 1985, Gerber Foods stopped making that food. In a panic that only a mother could know, his mother travelled throughout the country, buying up all the formula she could find in stores. But in 1990, her supply simply ran out.
Knowing her ill son would die without it, she appealed to the Gerber Food Company on compassionate grounds to start remaking it so her son could live. The employees of the company listened; and, in an unprecedented action, they volunteered hundreds of hours, above their normal work shifts, and brought out the old equipment used to make the food she needed.
With permission from the Food and Drug Administration, they were able to set up a production line and get all the necessary ingredients to start making that food again . . . for just one boy . . . for no profit . . . and no personal rewards.
In January 1995, Raymond Dunn, Jr., known as the "Gerber Boy," died from his physical problems. However, through his very rough life, and unbeknownst to him, he was responsible for seeing a revival in this nation for something called “compassion”. The story of his death was put in most of the newspapers in America, and the nation mourned along with his mother.
Jesus, the Christ, in the passage I read a moment ago, was talking to a religious leader who asked Him the question, "Who is my neighbor?" What he really meant was, "Who should I love?" or "Who should I have compassion for?" Jesus responded with the "Parable of the Good Samaritan."
As we read this parable, we need to understand that this story is simply used as an example of the need for compassion. The situations that we find ourselves in - the ones that require our compassion - will be very different than the one described by Jesus, but the issue remains exactly the same: “How will we respond when compassion is called for?”
There are only three ways to respond, and all three deal with our attitudes.
1. The first way is, “I don’t care; I don’t want to get involved.”
2. The second way is, “I don’t care; I am too busy to stop and help.”
3. And the third way is, “I care enough to stop and do what I can to help.”
What attitude do you think most people in this day and age have when they see someone else in need? I am not talking about seeing someone who is need of immediate medical need, for we would all call 9-1-1 in that situation, but I am talking about seeing someone who is homeless and maybe doesn’t have a coat to wear when it is cold outside. How many people would dare take their coats off and give it to that person?
I remember a situation years ago when I used to frequent a local coffee shop. As I was going in one day, there was a middle-aged man sitting on the ground leaning up against the side of the building. The first glance told me he was homeless.
As I passed, he asked for a dollar so he could get some coffee. I gave him a dollar, and then I invited him to come in with me. When we entered, there was only one place left at the counter. I told him to go ahead and take it, I would sit with a friend in a booth.
When the waitress came for my order, I told her to give the man coffee and a full breakfast plate and give the ticket to me. My friend told me I was crazy. I sat there and looked at the man who was pouring water in his coffee. I realized what he was doing …. he was making it last as long as possible! I told the waitress to tell him he could have as much as he wanted. And when his breakfast came, I saw how he quickly he ate it and I could tell he was starving.
But I also noticed something else; something terrible. Right after he sat down, other customers got up and either moved, or left the restaurant altogether. No compassion. No love for a neighbor. Only selfish concern for themselves. And then it hit me! Every one of us have acted like that at one time or another in our lives. And that brought forth a hurt in my heart that made me ashamed of myself and at how I had acted in the past.
As far as the parable of the Good Samaritan, the priest mentioned in verse 31 didn’t even stop for a moment before he crossed the road and kept going. He didn’t even get close enough to see what was wrong with the man. This priest, a supposed man of God, was acting out of pure selfishness. This same attitude is prevalent in many people today when they see someone else who is in need. They think if they pretend they didn’t see the person, they will not be expected to help them.
The next person to pass the man on the road was a Levite, a temple assistant in verse 32. He was a work of art as well. But unlike the priest before him, he at least stopped and checked the man out before turning away and continuing on his journey – without offering any help whatsoever. Another man who claimed to be Godly acting in a most ungodly way.
And then in verse 33, we see a hated Samaritan happened to be coming by. Now, why was this Samaritan hated? He was from Samaria, and Samaritans were known as “half-breeds”. They were part Jewish and part Gentile. Jews avoided them and hated them.
Do you remember in JOHN 4, when Jesus went through Samaria and met the woman at the well? We do not see the significance in that situation today, but His act was unheard of in that day and age. Good Jews would have never gone through Samaria, and especially if he were a Rabbi! But Jesus did. Jesus knew they were humans and were just as good as anyone else. And He knew they also needed to know God and His merciful salvation.
We feel sorry for individuals who are in real need, but do we really feel compassion for them? Merriam-Websters dictionary defines compassion as:
“an intense feeling of wanting to help someone who is sick, hungry, or in trouble.”
It also means, “to sympathize with and put oneself in the shoes of the downtrodden.”
In this story, we find Jesus using the "race card" to make His point about love and compassion. He gives an example of a Jewish man who had been robbed, beaten, and left for dead. He says a Jewish priest shows no compassion and passes by. Then, He uses a Levite, who also passes by, but is willing to at least go over and look at the man before he does.
But then, He uses a Samaritan, an enemy of the Jews who actually stops and does what he can to help the injured man. Folks, we are called by God to show love and compassion to all other humans, no matter what they look like or who they might be. We are to show our faith in the things we do.
JAMES 2:15-18 explains this very well.
14 What good is it, dear brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but don’t show it by your actions? Can that kind of faith save anyone?
15 Suppose you see a brother or sister who has no food or clothing,
16 and you say, “Good-bye and have a good day; stay warm and eat well”—but then you don’t give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do?
17 So you see, faith by itself isn’t enough. Unless it produces good deeds, it is dead and useless.
18 Now someone may argue, “Some people have faith; others have good deeds.” But I say, “How can you show me your faith if you don’t have good deeds? I will show you my faith by my good deeds.”
If your faith is deep enough to not only feel compassion for others, but to put that into action and do something to help them, then it is the kind of faith Christ would have, but if we just feel compassion without doing anything to help, we are not doing anything more than walking by the road and looking at them before quickly passing them by. That is what James is relating to being a dead faith; a faith not worth anything.
In the parable about the Good Samaritan, we can see the Christian community of today in action, too. More often than not, I think we would see the unbeliever stopping to help even before we see a believer stopping to help.
We do not show compassion because we are the most religious, and we should not show compassion just to those who are like us, but we need to show compassion simply because we have a heart for Christ.
In MATTHEW 14, we read where John the Baptist had been beheaded and his followers were in mourning.
They had buried John’s body and some went to tell Jesus what had happened. The passage said that after Jesus heard the news, He got in the boat and went to a remote area to be alone. John was His cousin and there is no doubt Jesus was mourning, too. But the crowds found out where Jesus was going and came from many towns to follow Him.
In JOHN 14:14, it says,
“Jesus saw the huge crowd as he stepped from the boat, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick.”
Jesus felt compassion for those who were there. Enough compassion to get out of the boat and do something to help them.
Later that afternoon, the disciples came to Jesus and told him it was late and the crowd had not eaten and said Jesus should send them home. But Jesus again showed great compassion for them and wanted to help them. He told the disciples to feed them, but they said there was not enough food to do so.
So Jesus instructed them to sit and then he took the five loaves of bread and the two fish, asked God’s blessings on them, and then divided them amongst the people and all 5,000 were fed! Actually, it was more than 5,000 people. When the Bible talks of numbers of people, it uses the men. So if there were 5,000 men, there must have been at least 3,000 to 4,000 women there also, plus many children.
The point is that Jesus felt compassion on them and actually did something to help them. When we today pass others who are in need, do we stop and do what we can, or do we simply feel sorry for them and then quickly keep going?
The Apostle Paul was addressing the church at Philippi and talked about compassion.
PHILIPPEANS 1:8 reads;
“God knows how much I love you and long for you with the tender compassion of Christ Jesus.”
To have the compassion of Christ, we need to first feel a heartfelt expression of true sympathy towards another in a less fortunate situation than we are in. In verse 33 of our text in LUKE, it says the man felt compassion for the injured man. There was no hesitation before he started doing what he could to care for the person.
He didn’t stop and wonder what others would think, he just acted from his heart to help someone in need. He even took money out of his own pocket to pay an innkeeper! How many of us today are too “shrewd” to spend our money on others?
So, how do we get a heart of compassion? It does not just happen instantly, and it is not something we can learn from a book. It takes time to develop such a heart and then it takes getting close to God. We do that by getting to know His heart, and we can do that by reading what He wrote and by talking to Him as much as we can. The closer we to God, the more we will know His heart, and the more our hearts will be formed to become like His.
And then we need the desire to walk the walk and not just talk the talk. We need to get up and become a “doer” of the Word. We are called to become men and women of action.
We are called to love our neighbors. Who is our neighbor? It is the man or woman whom we meet on a daily basis. And we cannot love that neighbor unless we are willing to feel compassion for him and help him.
We have a ministry that offers such help to others. It is called the Compassionate Ministries, and when we offer our money to it, they use it to build hospitals where there are none; schools where no schools exist; and in many other ways to help those who are less fortunate than we are.
Collectively, by our donating to Compassionate Ministries, we are helping them to show Godly love and compassion to our neighbors worldwide. It is my prayer and my personal plea to you to give what you can during the month of December.
My plea is for each of us to become the Good Samaritan who was willing to walk the walk and was not willing to just talk the talk.
Closing Prayer.
