The Good Samaritan - Work and Witness

 

LIMAVADY INDEPENDENT METHODIST CHURCH

SERMON NOTES FROM SUNDAY 26 SEPTEMBER 2021

LUKE 10 VERSES 25 – 37

WORK AND WITNESS

This message was given to a well respected lawyer, a defender of the word of God.  He would have been called upon when any argument arose over the rules and regulations of the Jewish faith.  Here he asks Jesus a question.  Only Luke records this incident.  Jesus had been speaking to a crowd when this well respected man got up and asked his question.  I’m sure everyone must have gasped when he spoke.  He question was “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  Jesus turned the question back to him and asked “what is written in the law?”  He knew the law inside out.  The real reason behind his question was to tempt Jesus (verse 25).  He wanted to trick Jesus. 

The situation – Jesus decided to tell a story.  A Jewish man was on his way from Jerusalem to Jericho when he fell among thieves.  They took all he had, beat him and left him for dead.  2 religious men passed by this man and when they saw him they passed by on the other side of the road.  Then a Samaritan man comes down that dangerous road on his own.  He saw the man lying there and he stopped.  This whole story was based on a real life experience and Jesus used this to explain the outworking of salvation.  God’s gift of salvation is not of works.  Jesus was taking this lawyer back to the word of God – the greatest commandment was to love the Lord with all your soul, with all your heart and with all your mind and to love our neighbours as ourselves.  How many times have you been in a similar situation alone and with no-one thinking of you … but listen … God knows!  The Samaritan had to make a dangerous decision – to stop or not?

The sympathy revealed.  Thieves and robbers could pounce at any time on this road.  Jesus points to 2 men, the priest and the Levite.  Surely they would have sympathy and compassion for this man. The third man, the Samaritan had sympathy though “and when he saw him he had compassion on him.”  He was a stranger.  The Samaritans were a mixed race and the Jews would have nothing to do with them.  Maybe the Samaritan recognised what this man was, something was distinctive about him.  The bible says he got down to where he was.  He never thought for one moment.  Such a challenge could come his way.  Here was a man maybe in a hurry, he had business ahead of him but he stopped.  He set it aside time to deal with the man.  There was a sympathy here that was real.  Remember Paul in Athens.  He watched the people coming and going and realised the whole city was given over to idolatry.  His spirit was stirred within him when he thought of the love and grace of God.  Paul said “I am a debtor both to the Greeks and to the Barbarians; both to the wise and to the unwise.”  God had done something for him and he needed to pass it on to others.

The support he rendered.  Verse 34 He didn’t leave him there, he didn’t pass by thinking someone else would come along and help him.  He drew alongside him, he poured in oil and wrapped up his wounds then set him on his own beast and brought him to an inn.  He didn’t worry that there might be others waiting to pounce on him on that same road.  Psalm 142 verse 4 “I looked on my right hand and beheld but there was no man that would know me, refuge failed me, no man cared for my soul.”  Are the unsaved looking at us today asking for help?

The steps that are required.  The Samaritan came down that road and stopped with the man.  He stepped over to where he was and his heart broke for this man.  He had great patience.  He took him to the nearest place for help.  He could do nothing more.  Peter and John in Acts 3 were going up to the temple to pray when they met a lame man at the gates.  Peter knew that look from the man – helpless and hopeless.  Peter and John had nothing to give this man but compassion of his heart.  God expects us to do what we can with what we have.  The boy with the 5 loaves and 2 fishes was prepared to give all he had to the disciples. He was only asked to give what he had in his hands.  God asks us to reach people today with what we have.

There is a service rewarded.  He was commended by the Lord.  Every detail is taken note of.  This lawyer is still standing waiting to hear what Jesus had to say.  Jesus asked him “who was a real neighbour to the Samaritan?  The priest, the Levite or the Samaritan?”  He couldn’t even bring himself to say the word Samaritan – “he that showed mercy on him.”  Jesus told him to go and do the same.  “And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward.” (Matthew 10 verse 42)