A Bad Expert and A Good Samaritan

Luke 10, beginning at verse 25. This is God's Word. On one occasion, an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus.

! Teacher, he asked, what must I do to inherit eternal life? What is written in the law? He replied, how do you read it? He answered, love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.

You have answered correctly, Jesus replied. Do this, and you will live. But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, and who is my neighbor? In reply, Jesus said, a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when he fell into the hands of robbers.

They stripped him of his clothes, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side.

So to a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was, and when he saw him, he took pity on him.

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. 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. Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?

The expert in the law replied, the one who had mercy on him. Jesus told him, go and do likewise. What must I do to inherit eternal life?

Do you have an answer to that question? You'll never consider a more important question. This question was put to the Son of God one day by an expert in the law.

Now, an expert in the law was a scribe. His job was to study God's law, especially the first five books of the law, the Pentateuch, and to interpret it and to teach it to Israel.

And so he is one of these religious experts in the law. And though the question that he asks is of deepest importance, his concern with it is simply pretend.

This is not a man who's concerned with his sin before a holy God, wondering, how in the world can I, a sinner, before this holy God, inherit eternal life?

What must I do? No, he's a man who already thinks highly of himself and of his own abilities and goodness and his obedience to God's law, and therefore he thinks that he will inherit eternal life.

You see, his understanding of salvation is the same as we find in the whole body of religious leaders at the time of Jesus. They were one of a piece.

They really thought that by keeping the law, they could be saved. That they themselves had obeyed the law well enough that God would give them as their reward eternal life.

There is absolutely no understanding of salvation by free grace. Salvation as a free gift. It was an understanding that salvation comes by my works that earn eternal life.

And we see that in Jesus' run-in with the scribes, the Pharisees, the Sadducees. These are the religious leaders of the day. And over and over, they've got this idea that we get eternal life by just working hard to obey the law.

So here's this self-righteous expert in the law. And verse 25 says that he asks this question to test Jesus. Again, it's not a personal concern.

He's testing. He's tempting Jesus. He's putting him to the test, trying to trick him. Here's a crowd. Here's an opportunity for me to shine and for me to show up this Jesus of Nazareth.

If I can just catch him in something that he says that will embarrass him in front of these people and discredit him. So don't be fooled.

The good question he asks is just good cheese on the mousetrap. He's asking to test Jesus. Now, unbeknownst to the man, Jesus knows exactly what's in his heart.

He knows exactly why he's asking this question. He knows how proud the man is, how he thinks that he's going to heaven because of his obedience, and that he's out to trick Jesus.

And so Jesus answers his question with a question. What is written in the law, Jesus asked. How do you read it? And so this expert who was putting Jesus to the test has the tables turned, and now he's being tested on his knowledge of the Bible.

And Mr. Expert answers by quoting two verses, Deuteronomy 6.5 and Leviticus 19.18. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.

Now, Jesus himself had quoted those same two verses in summarizing all that God's law requires of men.

Indeed, when Jesus quoted these two verses, he said, All the law and the prophets hang on these two commands. These two commands of loving God and loving neighbor are two hooks, and you can hang every single command in the Bible on those two hooks.

It sums up all that God has required of men to love God, to love neighbor. So Jesus commends him, You have answered correctly.

Do this and live. You wanted to know what you must do to have eternal life. Do this, and you will have eternal life. You will live.

And it's an active tense, which could be translated more literally, Keep on doing this. Continue to do this.

Those two commands sum up all that God requires of men, and if you can do them, then eternal life is yours. If you can do them, that means you break no laws of God.

You have no sin. No guilt. So eternal life is yours. If you're considering earning eternal life by your performance, then you must know that if you can't do it perfectly, you can't have eternal life.

If you're going to try to get in by the way of works, you must know that the grading scale is pass-fail, and only the perfect pass. So do this and live.

But if you break even one command only once, you're cursed. Galatians 3.10, Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the book of the law.

James says so that if you really keep the royal law, love your neighbor as yourself, but you show favoritism, you're convinced of the law as the lawbreaker. And if you've broken the law in one point, you're guilty of all.

And so this expert, along with all the other scribes and Pharisees of the day, seemed to think that keeping God's law was no big deal. Done that.

Can handle that. Loving God. Loving neighbor. It's all well within my ability. I can do that. Sure, I love God. Sure, I love my neighbor.

And that's where our expert was wrong. Well, that's exactly where he was wrong. Now, the commandments themselves should have showed him that. The commandments themselves hold the standard high.

Who of us loves God all the time? With all our heart, all of our soul, all of our strength, all of our mind. You know what that's saying?

That's everything that you are. You must love God with all that you are. He must be supreme. Totally devoted to him.

And loving neighbor? You must love your neighbor as yourself. Your love for neighbor must be no less than your love for yourself. So just reciting the two commandments should have been sufficient to convince this expert of his sin, of his law-breaking.

Who of us loves God that way? Who of us loves neighbor? Who of us loves neighbor that way? For one hour? For one day? Even now, he wasn't loving Jesus, was he?

He was out to tempt him, to trick him, when Jesus had done him no wrong. Well, the expert should have confessed himself a sinner on the spot and begged God for mercy.

I don't have this love for God, and I don't have this love for man. But instead, verse 29, he wanted to justify himself. So he asked Jesus, who is my neighbor?

And again, we find that his question is less than honest. He's just wanting to justify himself. He's wanting to come off spotless, guiltless, without any sin, any stain on him.

He's wanting to hold on to his high of opinion of himself. I love God. I love man. Make himself right with God and polish his appearance before men. So this expert is a self-righteous man.

He's a self-righteous. He thinks he loves his neighbor well enough, as long as he can define who his neighbor is. So he asked Jesus, and who is my neighbor? Still trying to lure Jesus into something he can catch him with.

Now, the prevailing view of the day, the prevailing answer of the day to that question, who is my neighbor, was your fellow Israelites. Jew?

Who is your neighbor? Your fellow Jew. Yes, that's what the scribes and Pharisees, the teachers of the law, had determined. Not the Gentiles, for sure not those half-breed Samaritans.

And so by defining neighbor, they excused themselves for not having loved all people, especially those that they didn't like. You see what they did?

They lowered the law and set the standard down low enough so that they could step over it. I can love people that love me. I can handle that.

I can love people who are like me, my fellow countrymen. In fact, they taught, according to Jesus, love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

That's how they twisted this command. That's how they exposited it. So who is neighbor? Oh, he's your countryman. But you can hate your enemy. Matthew 5, 43.

That's what they taught. So Jesus tells them a story, a parable. And he's out to shatter the expert's view of his neighbor and who his neighbor is.

He's out to shatter his view of himself as having loved his neighbor and to shatter his self-righteousness, showing him that he's really dressed in filthy rags in God's sight.

To bring him face to face with himself in the mirror of God's law. His sin, his law-breaking, his need for mercy and grace, even as we sing.

And so Jesus does that. How? By telling a story that illustrates what the law of love your neighbor as yourself really means. Now, the Good Samaritan, it's one of the most well-known parables of Jesus.

And yet, sadly, its meaning is little known today. Let's be sure we don't walk out the doors missing the lesson that Jesus has in it. So once upon a time, a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, minding his own business, when suddenly a band of robbers came upon him and took everything he had, clothes included, so he's stark naked, and then they proceeded to beat him so badly that when they left him, they left him half dead.

Have you thought about that for a while? To be half dead means you're just half alive, right? This guy's dying.

He's in critical condition. If he's left to himself, he will die. Now three men will come upon this bloody scene in Jesus' story, and the first two were both the sort of men that you would expect help from.

The first was a priest. Jericho was a city of priests. Many priests lived there, so this road between Jericho and Jerusalem would be filled with priests going back and forth.

And so here's a holy man of the cloth. He's a religious man. He's either been to worship God or he's going to worship God. And if anyone knew that all true religion includes concern for the poor and needy, he would have known that.

But when he saw the beaten man, he passed by on the other side. He doesn't get too close to needy people.

He avoids them. He keeps as much distance between him and needy people as he can because he has no intention of getting involved. To get too close would risk being sucked in to have to help him or something.

So he finds him in great need and he leaves him just as he found him in great need. Then along came a Levite. Now a Levite was a helper to the priests.

Perhaps a man whose occupation is helping others will be the man who will help this poor man in need. But no, when he came to the place and saw him, he too passed on the other side.

Now I am sure that both the Levite and the priest had good reasons for not stopping and helping that day. I just simply don't have time for this. I'm a busy man.

I've got the work of the Lord to tend to. Even religious reasons, you see. Doing something important, going somewhere important, can't be delayed by this. Besides, it's a dangerous place out here.

Man, it's spooky. It looks like maybe they're hanging around and they'll get me. And besides, if I went near to see if the man's alive or dead and touched him, then I would become ceremonially unclean and unfit to enter into the temple to do my work.

So, I will decide that ceremonial cleanness is more important than loving people. Jesus said on another occasion, go and read what this means.

I will have pity and mercy rather than sacrifice. But no, he will have sacrifice rather than love and mercy. And so he passes by. And if I found him alive, I'd be obliged to help.

Boy, it looks like he's in need of a lot of help. Maybe somebody else is more qualified than I am for this job. And so they both saw and they both did nothing. Do you know that people will go to hell for what they didn't do?

He didn't do anything. He just passed by and did nothing. Precisely. It's a sin of omission. It's a neglect of duty. He didn't love his neighbor as himself.

He loves himself a lot more than that. That's what Jesus is teaching. Well, no amount of excuses can absolve them from breaking God's law.

And I believe that Jesus in his own storytelling way was exposing the degenerate spiritual condition of the spiritual leaders in Israel. Who are the first two guys going by?

It's not just any old Joe and Jack. No, it's a priest and a Levite. Jesus is saying the whole head is rotten in Israel. The leadership doesn't have a clue on what the law of God requires.

Well, by now, this poor man is probably three-fourths dead, you see. He's had to wait for two guys to go by and do nothing. The next guy to come along is a Samaritan. Now, as Jesus is telling the story, this would have caught a reaction from his crowd of Jews.

It's a shocking twist to his story. The people listening would have had the least reason to expect any help from this quarter because the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans.

The Jews hated the Samaritans and the feelings were mutual. The Samaritans hated the Jews. And if anyone had an excuse, this Samaritan did.

He had all the excuses perhaps that they had and then some of his own. This is Jewish territory I'm walking for crying out loud. It's Jerusalem here. These Jews ought to take care of their own roadkill or whatever it is on the road.

They ought to be out here taking care of the poor and the needy. This is their territory. But when he came to where the beaten man was and saw him, the Bible says he had pity on him.

And he went to him and bandaged his wounds and he poured on oil and wine. This is the first of the three to have his heart moved with pity for the man in need.

the first man to feel something with that man. Love is outgoing. Love is outflowing. He saw and he felt pity.

And not only did his heart go out to him, his feet went over to him. That's what we read next. He went to him and bandaged his wounds and so on.

Love both feels in the heart and acts with the feet and the hands. He went to him. Love moves toward people in need.

The priest and Levite kept their distance away from people in need. I want to ask you what's the directional arrow in your life and people in need?

Which way are you going? Are you going toward people in need or are you going away from people in need? You know, we can live our lives so isolated from people in need that we never see them.

We don't go places where people are in need. We don't feel comfortable where people are in need. So we don't visit the hospitals.

We don't go to nursing homes and to prisons and to shut-ins and to the homeless and to the poor and to the sad and to the lonely and the downtrodden, the foreigners, the immoral, the lost, the untouchables.

Oh sure, India has their untouchables. So do Christians. And Jesus is putting his finger upon our hearts. But here's a man who when he sees a man in need goes to him and he administers first aid.

He pulls out his first aid kit and uses the wine with its alcohol as an antiseptic to cleanse the wound and then the oil to give soothing and to soothe the pain to things that were readily available and used as medicine often found on travelers.

But I wondered as I thought about this where did he get the material to bandage up his wound? I don't think he had a first aid kit. He was carrying wine to drink and oil to refresh himself from the sun.

I don't think he had a pack of bandage. Did he tear his own robe to make a bandage or two or three to bandage this man's wounds?

Perhaps he did. Now we might think having done this that well we have we have really done well but you know love to neighbor is not done yet.

No the Samaritan puts the man on his own donkey takes him to an inn and took care of him there. So now he's walking when he could be riding.

Yeah love does that doesn't it? And he's probably going somewhere he wasn't planning to go and when he got to the end he didn't just drop him off saying well that's the end of the line for me he's now your responsibility.

No Jesus says he took care of him. He ended up he ended staying all night there perhaps even in the night caring for him and in the morning he didn't just leave him to himself but he arranged for the innkeeper to take care of him and not at the innkeeper's expense.

No here here's two two coins silver coins two days wages for the average laborer two days wages gave it to the innkeeper neighbor love is costing him not only time but money and yet even now love is not done look after him and when I return I'll reimburse you for any extra expense you may have above the two silver coins he doesn't want the innkeeper to suffer loss and he doesn't want the poor beaten man who's just been robbed of everything he has to have to have it put on his bill charge it to me he says and I'll pay you back now before we leave the story I want us to notice the characteristic of love for neighbor what are what are three characteristics of love of neighbor according to Jesus the author of this parable neighbor love first of all is inconvenient helping this badly beaten man was not on the Samaritan's day timer for that day other things were though other things were he's on a road he's going somewhere he had plans but he didn't plan on spending the night helping this poor man wherever he was going this was an inconvenience to him it slowed him down it drew him aside

I haven't got time for this would have been found on most lips have you noticed that we often meet needy people at inconvenient times I wonder could that be because we're always so busy we're always going somewhere doing something we're often in a hurry fewer the times when we're just out cruising with nothing to do but help needy people how many hours of the week do you have like that we don't so helping neighbor love is inconvenient inconvenient so Jesus and his men are just getting away for some needed rest and relaxation the ministry has been so busy that they haven't even had time to stop and eat and Jesus says come away men and rest a while they're off to their vacation resort when they get there there's already a large crowd waiting for them and Jesus says oh it's just not a convenient time folks come back some other time we're here on R&R you know

Luke says he saw the large crowd and had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd and so he began teaching them many things and then he fed them it wasn't convenient for Jesus to leave the glories of heaven to come over and help us bruised and broken sinners but you see love of neighbor does not study its own convenience it sees the one in need and it moves toward him to relieve the need the reality is that we'll never love our neighbor as Jesus commands unless we are willing to be inconvenienced by them rarely is it on our things to do list for the day but let me ask you do you love yourself when it's inconvenient so you've cut your finger and it's bleeding like a stuck pig you say

I'm sorry finger I can't help you now I'm busy you see and we're just you're just going to have to keep bleeding for a while you're going to have to tend to yourself I'm going somewhere important no we stop what we're doing we apply pressure and bandage it and go to the doctor for stitches if we need it or tape it but we love ourselves so much that it's no inconvenience to bother us we overcome the inconvenience don't we it's that way with our other needs that self has when self is hungry I feed him don't you when self is thirsty I give him a drink when he's cold I give him a blanket when he's tired I put him to bed and the reason I do this is because I love self that's the given in the command love your neighbor as you love yourself you all love yourselves now love your neighbor as you love yourself let his needs weigh in as heavily as your own needs let your concern for him be like your concern for self let your love for self even dictate what your love for neighbor should look like we need to learn to see that these needy people are that come into our lives at inconvenient times are really

God's appointments for us for the day you see they may not be on our schedule of things to do but they are on God's and that's why they're there on the path of life divine appointments that that person might taste God's love through me that that person might receive help when they did nothing to deserve it brothers and sisters God places many people in need across our path for that very reason naphtali is a Kenyan who is we support and he's planting a church in Eldoret Kenya and back in March naphtali had to go into the hospital serious throat problems and he was there for four days having his tonsils removed he was in much pain and in the same ward was a man named John who had cancer TB and other complications had been in and out of the hospital several times naphtali helped

John during the night when the only nurse on duty was overwhelmed with caring for the other patients and John said he was moved and John said Pastor Ogallo you have done for me what is not African you have done for me what is not African to which naphtali replied I have helped you not as an African but as a Christian a follower of Jesus Christ and it became an opportunity for naphtali to talk to him about his need to seek the Lord and his salvation while there was yet time John died three days later brotherly love does not ask is it convenient my throat sore I'm in the hospital I need to be cared for no he saw his brother in need he saw his neighbor in need and he went to him and he ministered to him loving neighbor is inconvenient second and more briefly it's costly will cost you time we see that the time spent helping the needy is not time wasted reprogram your heart and mind time helping the needy is the best time that you can invest we spend lots of time on ourselves spend it on your neighbor money this

Samaritan spending his hard earned money on a wounded stranger two days worth of labor and more as it's needed he doesn't do the bare minimum does he in his spending and whatever else it costs that too I'll pay you know we spend lots of money on ourselves go love your neighbor as you love yourself love him with your time love him with your money love him with your effort how many opportunities for neighbor love are aborted when we meet up with the cost and we bulk and we come away neighbor love is willing to deny self to give to others you see self denial is required to love your neighbor like this because money spent on neighbor is money not spent on me and what I want and time spent on neighbor is time spent not on what I wanted to do and to let a man ride my donkey when

I could be riding well that's putting me out neighbor love is self denying you know it was costly business for Jesus Christ to love us to come to us in our need and to save us when our sins left us spiritually bankrupt and owing a debt that we would have paid to the wrath of God for all eternity Jesus said charge it to me and I will pay and he paid it all that we might be forgiven now go and do likewise yes neighbor love is inconvenient secondly it's costly and lastly it crosses all lines it crosses all lines Jesus intentionally made the hero of the story to be a Samaritan this is the crucial element in defining love of neighbor the expert thought his neighbor was his fellow Israelite Jesus shows that loving neighbor applies not just to your fellow countrymen not just to those who are like you your friends and likable people but also those very different people yes those very difficult people the unlovely even your enemies and so this command to love your neighbor as yourself was far more demanding than this expert ever dreamed late neighbor love crosses all lines the line between

Samaritan and Jew Gentile and Jew black and white rich and poor moral and immoral isn't it a beautiful thing to see Jesus and John three talking to the moral Pharisee Nicodemus who was as needy as could be he would never get into the kingdom unless he had a new birth and you turn the page and in chapter four Jesus is sitting one on one with an immoral woman at the well telling her that unless she drinks of the water that he gives her she'll never have eternal life not drink immoral moral neighbor love crosses!

that line too respectable! unrespectable neighbor love knows no boundaries that men put up and say yes I can love this guy I can love her but not him and no neighbor love hops right over those boundaries that's what Jesus is teaching us here there's no limit to love's field of action neighbor is the one who needs me it's the man the woman the boy the girl who is in need along my way whether the needy person is deserving it just goes to him and in need seeks to relieve his need it loves no matter who they are or what they have done it loves perfect strangers it loves enemies it loves people who can't ever pay us back think of the lines that

Jesus crossed to bring us help he's the holy God and we're sinful men he's the creator we're the creature he just crossed those lines in his incarnation right down he comes we're the defiled he's the pure one he's the holy we're the sinful he's the lovely one we're the unlovely he's the self sufficient one we're the needy ones and he came and he crossed those lines and he saw me plunged in deep despair and he flew to my relief for me he bore the shameful cross and carried all my grief well the story's over end of story hour and now Jesus drives the parable home with another question to the expert in the law which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers now

I'm sure the youngest child that can follow this story this morning knows the answer to that it's the Samaritan of course isn't it but watch this expert in the law is so full of prejudice against Samaritans that he can't even bring himself to say the hated word and so he says instead well the one who had mercy on him that's a lot of words when one would have done well we see this man's heart he's wanting to justify himself he's full of prejudice he doesn't love his neighbor as himself but he answered correctly and so Jesus said go and do likewise that is what the law of love requires active mercy practical deeds of compassion to anyone in need whatever opportunity presents to be a friend to all in need all right now the expert had two questions remember let's consider his last question first who is my neighbor did the parable answer that question yes it did it's the man or woman in need that's your neighbor what about the first question that started this whole conversation what must

I do to inherit eternal life has Jesus addressed that question at all some people think no he just went on and left it unspoken to no he did answer that question he answered it in a very interesting way what must I do to inherit eternal life well love God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength and love your neighbor as yourself love your neighbor like the Samaritan love the beaten Jew go and do likewise and you will live now again remember this expert thought he had eternal life in his back pocket he thought he satisfactorily did love his neighbor and Jesus now shows him that he is condemned by the law of love this parable teaches what loving your neighbor as yourself really requires and that's why

Jesus sends the self righteous expert to the law of God do this and you will live not for once implying that he would be able to do this and keep it perfectly but knowing that the law of God rightly understood would show this man his sin for the first time as Paul would say in Romans 3 20 because no one will ever be justified by keeping the law rather through the law we become conscious of sin and as this man has the law love your neighbor as yourself put in front of him now go do it it won't be long before he'll find out that he loves self a whole lot more than he loves neighbor he's a law breaker he's a sinner he can't have eternal life he forfeits eternal life by his sin he must look somewhere else for perfect obedience he doesn't have it you see the law teaches us just how futile all attempts at eternal life are by our own works they are futile you can't take a step but that you fail to love

God with all your heart and fail to love your neighbor as yourself and so all who rely on observing the law are under a curse Paul says because it's written cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the book of the law and that's why Christ sends this man to the law the law that he thinks he has obeyed that seeing what it means to love neighbor as self he will see how bankrupt he is of any love for neighbor how bankrupt he is of any obedience to the law of God that will stand up in the day of judgment how how void he is of any self righteousness all that self righteousness is nothing but filthy rags he has no righteousness in himself that he might look outside of himself for obedience that's Jesus intention because Jesus has that perfect obedience to give to sinners he loved God with all of his heart he loved his neighbor as himself think how he loved

God with all of his heart what's the proof of love it's obedience and the very hardest command of all was given to God's own son Jesus when he said now you go to the cross and you take my wrath for your people and you experience separation between you and me that has never happened for all the eons of eternity and Jesus as the obedient son who loved his father went to the cross he said on the night of his betrayal come let's go the world must know that I love my father and that I always do what he commands you see the cross proved Jesus love for his father to the nth degree he was obedient unto death even the death of the cross and what about his love to man did he love neighbor as himself well to study the gospels is to study neighbor love isn't it it's

Jesus going around doing good that's the summary of his life going around doing good healing teaching helping offering eternal life the bread of life next time you read through the gospels the four gospels you are reading Jesus loving neighbor as himself you reading Jesus loving his father with all of his heart read it with that in mind and so Jesus has a righteousness he has straight A's he has a perfect obedience and he gives that obedience to every repentant sinner who says I don't have obedience I don't have righteousness who condemns themselves and say have mercy on me the sinner this man wouldn't do that he wanted to justify himself what did he do how did he ultimately respond we don't know the story just ends

Luke's account just ends did he continue to try to justify himself or did he finally own up and say you know Jesus you're right the law of God shows that I am not right with God may God have mercy on me but you know it's left unknown as many of the stories in the gospels you know why they're left unknown many times to leave the question with you what are you going to do with this parable not just well let's finish up and see what the expert did with it and then we walk out thinking about that no it's left hanging because what will you do with this parable Jesus is talking to you this morning as really as he was talking to the expert that morning and the ultimate issue is what will you do with this parable how sad that so many people who know this parable go away from the parable of the good Samaritan thinking you know if I want that's the very reason

Jesus told the parable in the first place was to show that you don't love your neighbor now confess it and ask for mercy and God will show you mercy and forgive your sins freely and give you as a free gift eternal life that you couldn't earn by all your obedience isn't it something how the devil takes the word of God and twists it to people's destruction so there saying well I'm good and I'm kind and so because I'm good and kind God will accept me and give me eternal life you haven't learned the lesson of the good Samaritan it's that we we none of us folks get in line and confess your sins you've got to stand behind the preacher this morning I can't read this parable I can't preach this parable without saying God and I don't even come close to loving you with all my heart soul mind and strength all the time and if salvation has to do with our performance

I'll never be a Christian I'll never be saved I'll never have eternal life but God your word says that you sent your son to die for ungodly wretches like me have mercy on me I have no other hope than that Jesus Christ has died for my sin and that he has obeyed the law for me and he has loved you perfectly and he's loved his neighbor and it's his obedience that I trust in for through the obedience of the one the many will become righteous oh make me righteous by your righteous son and give me your Holy Spirit to overcome this love affair I have with self and to teach me like Jesus to love my neighbor as I love myself and Christian once you've come to

Christ and ask for free grace free salvation what do you do then will you go and do likewise because this is still the law of God for what he expects from us love your neighbor like this you've been freely forgiven now go and help others take to them whatever they need take to them the life giving message of the gospel meet their physical needs you know this man in Jesus story this guy that got beat up he was a fortunate man to have been beat up on the road that the good Samaritan traveled wasn't he I mean if I had to be beat up I'd like to have been beat up on that road and not one where priests and Levites were the only ones traveling you know people are beat up today you know sin has got them beat up you know they're feeling guilty they're heavy laden and burdened with a load of sin and life is crushing in on them and they don't have a savior and they're on your road brother they're on your road sister are they better off for being on your road are they better off for being in the same class as you are for working at the same place of occupation as you are for doing business with you for being the guy who's on the other side of the fence of your neighborhood are they better off because they're your!

go and do likewise resolved by God's grace dear Christian that you will never leave the needy as you found him but will do something toward the relief of that need keep your eyes open to see them that was the first thing they saw them keep your heart full of pity and keep your hands and feet ready to jump into action say how do I do that well you do it best thinking upon the gospel of God's love for us in Christ let's pray together our God we can't read two of your commandments without coming and saying have mercy on us none of us have kept this these two commandments and it shows that we are lawbreakers everyone that there is none righteous no not one oh but you sent your righteous son and he lived the righteous life that we could never live that if we would just acknowledge our sin and own it and not try to justify ourselves but humbly come and ask for mercy that we might be made righteous through his obedience and that we might have all of our sins washed away by his death on the cross receive us for

Jesus sake teach us then what it is to love our neighbor even as we've been loved overcome our self love that would keep us to ourselves and that would cause us not to reach out because of the cost or the inconvenience or the different party lines that have been drawn make us more like your son holy father and we will give you thanks in Jesus name and give him all the praise amen amen