The Kind Of Caring That Jesus Loves
Luke 10:29-37
Introduction:
1. How many of you find it relatively easy to love those that love you? How many of you would be really nice to me if I gave you a $10,000 check each Sunday for the next four weeks? How many of you would be kind and friendly to a certain church member if they bought your lunch every Sunday this year? See my point?
2. Isn’t it easy to care for and love people who love us, care for us, and do good to us?
3. When we love people and do good things for people like this, it really doesn’t do much to touch the heart of God. Why? Because lost people who don’t know Christ do this. Let’s read Luke 6:32-35.
4. What touches the heart of God? What makes God sit up and take note? Let’s read Luke 14:12-14. Notice, you are blessed, and God keeps a record of it!
5. Do you see the principle? God is calling us to a deeper level of love, compassion, and caring. Deeper than we could ever fathom.
6. The apostle Paul reinforced this principle to the church in Romans 12:20-21, “If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink… Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.” This is the higher ground.
7. I have a phrase to summarize this divine thought – inconvenient caring. Anybody can love when it’s convenient, anybody can care when it is convenient, and anybody can serve when it is convenient. But God is calling us to leave our comfort zone to care for people when it is not convenient, to love…, to serve…
8. Let’s turn to a familiar parable of Jesus Christ in Luke 10:30-37. This is the parable referred to as “The Good Samaritan.” (Read passage.) What a story! It has violence, crime, racial prejudice, hatred, bad guys, good guys, and all the things they make movies about today, right? And people say the Bible is outdated and irrelevant.
9. This story has a context. A pompous and self-righteous lawyer (an expert and teacher of the Mosaic Law) is trying to ensnare Jesus, backing Him in a corner to make Him look silly, simply to justify himself and his own wrong attitudes. So he asks Jesus a question (vs. 25), and Jesus responds with a question (vs. 26).
• Hearing his response, Jesus knew the man had the right answer (vs. 27), but not the right actions (vs. 28).
10. The lawyer, (maybe convicted) trying to be real sly, asks Jesus another question (vs. 29): “Who is my neighbor?” From this question comes this story of the Good Samaritan (vs. 33).
11. What is the message of this story? There are many things to learn, but what I want us to see today is that God is calling every believer to a life of compassionate caring.
Compassionate caring sees wounded lives.
1. When it comes to impacting lives for Christ, leading others to Christ and compassionate caring, vision is very important (vs. 33). See also John 4:35.
2. This certainly isn’t the only component (the priest and Levite saw him), but it is the first step in compassionate caring. You have to be willing to see wounded lives.
3. It is clear from this story that your “neighbor” is not necessarily your neighbor in the sense of the person living next door to you, your friend, your family member across town, or a fellow church member in your LIFE Group.
4. Your neighbor, as defined by Jesus’ parable, is the person that enters your life who is wounded and in need (maybe a complete stranger). We usually think of “neighbor” as a person we already know and have a relationship with. No, it’s a person in need that crosses your path.
5. I believe that wounded people cross our lives often, but so many times, we don’t see them. We have our “to do” list for the day. We have our schedule and our priorities set. And we get tunnel vision. We can become oblivious to hurting hearts around us. There are wounded people all around us.
• We don’t notice that our co-worker is depressed. We fail to recognize that the waitress has tears in her eyes. We don’t notice that our kid’s friend has holes in his shoes. We don’t see the single mom who is exasperated with the hood of her car up and three kids in the car.
6. It can even happen at church. We don’t see the confused face, not knowing where to go, the person sitting all alone at the Wednesday night dinner, the person who looks all alone sitting in church, the first-time guest trying to get three kids to their classrooms, the person looking for a seat, etc.
• We have to get to our LIFE Group, get to worship service, get to our place of service. (By the way, it is okay to miss these if you are helping somebody.)
7. Did you know that some of the greatest opportunities you have in life to impact people come disguised as interruptions? We have to realize this and pray about it, lest we miss those opportunities.
Compassionate caring helps when nobody else does.
1. Everybody else kept their distance (vs. 31-32), but the Samaritan came where the wounded man was (vs. 33). He went to him and bound his wounds (vs. 34) – he got personally involved. It is not enough to simply see wounded people. We have to do something. 1 John 3:17-18
• Isn’t this what Christ did (1 John 3:16)? Christ saw that we were all wounded by sin. Without help, we would all die eternally in our sinful condition. Christ did something about it. Romans 5:8
2. Did you notice in this story who helped and rescued this wounded man? It wasn’t the priest or the Levite. These were the religious leaders at that time who were supposed to know God’s Word and know the mind and heart of God.
3. No, it was a despised and lowly Samaritan who cared and who helped. The hero of this story was a Samaritan! I am sure that this lawyer and any other Jews that were listening recoiled when Jesus said this. Samaritans were despised by the Jews. They were enemies.
• We know this story as the “Good Samaritan,” but those are not two words that would have been used together in Christ’s day (oxymoron). Samaritans were known as being heathens. Did you notice that the lawyer still wouldn’t even say the word “Samaritan” in vs. 36-37?
4. When you read the Bible, you know what you find? God has a habit of using unlikely people. Every person that God uses has two characteristics – they care, and they are willing.
• Illustrations: David rescued Israel by defeating Goliath, Abraham rescued Lot from the Canaanite kings, and Christ died for you to rescue you from sin.
5. This Samaritan cared; he was willing. It would have been easy for him to have rationalized the situation. He could have said, “This isn’t my problem. His own people walked right by him. They are religious leaders and didn’t help. Why should I help? Why should I get involved? This Jew probably hates me anyway and won’t appreciate it.”
6. One of the easiest things to do is to find excuses why not to help, why not to care, and why not to get involved. The priest and Levite had a chance to put their faith into action, but failed. I’m sure they had noble excuses.
• They weren’t monsters; they were religious professionals caught up in a lifeless religion. Like the religious, we can often play church. Religion doesn’t change or affect the way we live, only a relationship with Christ can.
7. But when God works in our hearts, and we make a decision to compassionately care for people, we begin to realize that the answer for a wounded heart is us.
• Many people are wounded and have nobody to care for them because everybody thinks that somebody else will care or should care.
Conclusion:
1. Our compassion for others demonstrates our relationship to God. 1 John 4:20 says, “…for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?”
2. The lawyer asked the question, “Who is my neighbor?” In other words, who do I have to love, and who do I not have to love?
3. When God’s compassion begins to work in your heart, you no longer ask the question, “Who is my neighbor?” You ask, “To whom can I be a neighbor?” You ask, “What kind of a neighbor am I?”
4. May God raise up a great host of Good Samaritans here at CrossRoads that will compassionately care for people.
5. Pray that you would see wounded lives and be willing to help when nobody else will help.
