Broadening Your Circle - Bishop T.D. Jakes [May 13, 2020]

[Music] we excited to share this word of God with you you might need a pen or some paper and your phone to take some notes in because we're going to dig down into the Word of God and we're not coming out till we get a real good understanding I want to talk to you and the title alone is challenging about broadening your circle now to all of you who don't want to have a circle or you're introverted you'd think you don't need a circle let me tell you something for what God wants to do in your life you're gonna have to let some people in and when I get to a teaching you go understand it has to be more than the hand-picked specialized group that you set aside that are permissible God is going to broaden your circle and broaden your capacity and your ability to let a diverse group of people in and we're gonna have a good time studying this word of God tonight now I want you to go to the Gospel of st. Luke chapter 10 verse 25 through 37 I'm gonna do quite a bit of reading just so that I don't assume that you understand the story most of you that have been in the church a long time have heard this story before but I'm going to challenge this story and I'm going to share some things in this story that I believe will make you rethink the relevance and the power of the story itself in fact to me it is not so much the story that is profound as it is the peripheral circumstances that the environment that produce the necessity of Jesus sharing this parabolic message with you again it's in the Gospel of st. Luke chapter 10 verse 25 237 I'm gonna be reading it out of the NIV but you follow along and whatever our Bible that you have and I think we'll still get to the same place the NIV says 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 now this petite you'll apart when it says he's an expert in the law and the King James Version says he's a lawyer so he's adept and the question is questionable 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 that's everything and now this is really gets harder because it's easier to love God than it is to love people 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 and who is my neighbor that's the trick question who is my neighbor who do you perceive to be your neighbor it replied jesus said a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when he was attacked by robbers they stripped him of his clothes beat him and went away leaving him a half dead a priest happened to be going down the same road and when he saw the man that you would have thought the priest would have handled is different he passed by on the other side of the road so too a Levite when he came to the place and saw him he passed by on the other side watch closely 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 brought him to an inn and took care of him the next day he took out two denarii and gave it them and gave them to the innkeeper saying look after him and when I return I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have which of these three do you who was a neighbor to the man who fell in the hands of robbers the expert in the law replied the one who had mercy on him Jesus told him go and do likewise now we're gonna have some fun we're gonna talk about this a little bit we're talking about broadening your circle and in order to get the real impact there's much that has been said about the story but I think some of the impact is lost in the story because we don't have the back story that preceded it it's important that you understand when you deal with this that this expert in the law is not really a Christ seeker he has come to interrogate Christ - the intent that he might trip him up in his theology and embarrass him publicly for his ineptitude to be able to articulate and rightly divide the word of God and you must understand every question you get doesn't come from a good place every person that comes along to challenge you doesn't come because they're seeking information and truth the Bible said to avoid foolish and unlearned questions because they do gender strife and sometimes you'll find yourself wrestling with somebody and it's not even worth the fight because they really are not seekers of truth this is what discernment is very very important but what happened in the process of the conversation is Jesus began to trip him up with his own knowledge what did the word say well that you should love the Lord thy God with all your heart your mind and your soul and and that you should love your neighbor as yourself now it doesn't seem to me that he Minds loving God and people don't mind loving God because God is so loveable God loved us he first loved us he's good to us he's merciful he's kind it's easy to love God but when he said love your neighbor like you love yourself oh my that's when it's got thinking there because he turns around he does not give a rebuttal to loving God he a rebuttal to loving his neighbor and that's where the devil is when it comes to loving people because people are not good like God they're not merciful like God they're not kind like God and loving people is where our faith is tested and where our flesh is crucified and where we have to hold our tongue sometimes and to where we have to not defend ourselves and be defenseless even when we know we're right and that's not easy to do so this man wants to to hold down this vulnerability to people that he has selected who is my neighbor and then Jesus begins to give the story the story we call it the Good Samaritan but the truth of the matter is to call this text the Good Samaritan is an oxymoron because of the day that Jesus Christ amongst traditional Orthodox Jews Samaritans were not good and to call him a Good Samaritan is like talking about hot ice the two terms don't go together good and Samaritan in the way that they viewed the Samaritans so this is getting down jesus' are cutting down into how they do people how you view people is how you have been conditioned to view people and that conditioning comes from television it comes from social media it comes from the news it comes from your parents it comes from the school you came up in a lot of contributing factors come into play when it comes into how do you view the world and how do you view people in the world and how do you interact with those people and do you truly love them like you love yourself do you forgive them like you forgive yourself do you help them like you would help yourself do you have compassion on them like you would yourself well how you respond to that has a lot to do with how you were raised and who you were raised around and who beat you up when you were a little kid in and what you were talking about different sociological constructs now that's the term I want to dig - when you start talking about sociological constructs a sociological construct is an idea that has been created and accepted by people in a society a sociological construct is an idea that has been created and accepted by the people in a society it's not a god idea it's not a foregone conclusion people are the creators and the acceptor of that truth for example class distinctions are associate logical construct for example race ideas are a sociological construct for example how you value money is a sociological construct if you take two babies three babies are Asian baby a black baby and a white baby and you put them in a crib and let them start playing together they don't have any problems playing together because they have not yet been conditioned and they have not constructed a sociological idea about that you take a rich baby and a poor baby and put them in a sandbox the rich baby won't turn up his nose at the poor baby the rich baby doesn't even know he's rich I'm saying that most of how we react to people mates co-workers Labor's are conditioning to us they're top human behaviors and when human behavior is taught by other humans we create these sociological constructs Society build something that it holds to be truth and they created it and they accept it and nobody challenges it and that's what we call normal and everybody's idea of normal is based on what kind of construct you build and what happens that's really frightening to people is when somebody shakes the cage of your construct our God is the cage shaker he will do it through his word he will do it through your circumstances he will do it through your environment but God will not let you enter and leave this world without shaking your occasion some people will hear it and some people won't and some people will respond appropriately and some people don't and I don't know which kind you are because just because you're a church person doesn't mean that you're not in a cage I have met millions literally millions of church people who have cages doctrinal cages theological cages you believe a certain way and you don't interact with anybody who doesn't believe what you believe and you broke up with your friend and now you're not friends anymore because they joined the church then you don't agree with this is sociological construct you have an idea of philosophy of who are good who's good and who's not good and so when certain people walk past your car you like the car door that's a sociological construct you have an attitude of superiority because of how you look or how you dress or what you have on and you would never stop by or say hello or speak to that other girl because look at how she's dressed and she hasn't had her hair done and you make fun of her nails and you make fun of her clothes and you say I wish she had a friend I wish she had a mirror and you talk down at her because you think that you're better than her when that's a sociological construct there is no difference between the homeless person and the person who walks passive there could have been a time in the life of the homeless person that he would have been driving the car and if you're not careful you could have been the person on the side of the road all these ideas of sociological barriers create walls between us we don't have to build them they're already constructed by our history at our background so these are not walls made with brick and mortar they're not erected to control the border we already have borders we have all kinds of borders borders around our mind borders around our heart borders around our personal life borders around our finances we're filled with borders and I'm using that term metaphorically to tell you that society builds walls for the weak spend tax dollars about you can feel it at the grocery store you can feel it in the mall you can feel it either way certain types of people look and handle you and it can be over anything the color of your skin the color of your hair the color of your eyes many many tests have been done that even when race is taken out of the Factor people find other things to to hate about other people blue-eyed people stopped liking brown-eyed people we find some basis to be arrogant and to be superior that's what Jesus is messing with so he tells him this story a certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell amongst thieves and the thieves in terms stripped him and wounded him and left him half dead at this point Jesus has a man laying on the side of the road is faced down into the sandy dirt of the dark of the Palestinian heat and a tumultuous situation and it is him about to get dark and thereby cold and freezing and there he is in the darkness of the night alienated in pain bleeding left alone perhaps delusionary out of his head wondering if he's going to die half day at pulse getting weak heart slowing down temperatures falling he thinks he is about to die in this peril in this turmoil in this crisis there is a certain feeling that comes when you hear footsteps coming maybe I might get to live maybe I might survive this maybe somebody will pass by and have compassion on me I want you to understand how important the footsteps are because when you're dying in you and you're gonna die alone and you don't hear any footsteps you lose something more important than blood you lose hope and when you lose hope you have lost everything Hope deferred the Bible said it makes the heart sick so when you lose hope you have lost just about everything this man was dying physically dying emotionally losing hope and then he heard footsteps Oh bless God it's a man of God coming it's somebody from my circle if somebody I believe it is somebody I respect its a priest coming the priest came by and looked over at him and turned and walked away now I'm not judging the priest maybe he was afraid the thieves were still close by maybe he didn't feel that he was competent or strong enough to lift a man but for whatever reason the priest passed by shortly thereafter a Levite comes along and surely this is a Levite surely he's going to come and he's going to do something he is instructed in the way of the Lord he's part of the Aaronic priesthood he's raised up in an environment that is conducive and supporters of the ordinances and the Oracles of God I know he's going to do the God thing that you know what would Jesus do he's gonna come over there and he's gonna rescue he did not do that he looked at him take moon she looks bad turned around and walked away left a man worse off than he was before I'm still losing blood still losing hope still losing strength and finally a Samaritan passes by why this Jesus tell us that the third guy was a Samaritan that's what I want to talk about today Jesus goes out of his way he could have said another stranger passed by he could have said a Jewish peasant passed by he could have said a tax collector passed by but when he said a Samaritan passed by he is loud challenging this man's sociological construct because if there were anything that the Jews of Jesus time did not like it was the Samaritans when Jesus commissioned the seventy to go out and to start ministering the gospel he told him to go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel he said but do not go to the Samaritans and do not go to the details even Jesus told them not to go because salvation had to first be offered to his own brethren his covenant his circle later that will be broken later that will be enlarged later that will grow you remember what the Bible said in the Gospel of st. John that Jesus told his disciples I think it's chapter 4 that he must need go through Samaria Jesus decided to go through Samaria God had a plan for so buried the Jews hated the Samaritans how do you know that a lot of ways I know that but let's start with one when the woman at the well came down to the world she said what are you doing down here at the well you being a Jew you know that we are people have no dealings with each other saying that I'm a Samaritan and you're a Jew we don't even deal with each other we don't communicate with each other we don't talk with each other what are you doing hanging out in my neighborhood Jesus went into other zip codes we tend to stay in the zip codes of our comfort and whenever you stay in the zip code of your comfort you're staying in the sociological construct that makes you comfortable and a lot of times that has a lot to do with affecting your life your blessings your prosperity your healing your restoration because God did not promise to send the blessing through people you like God did not promise to send the blessing through people you were used to God did not promise to send the blessing to people you approve of in fact many times God will send your blessing into the hands of somebody that you would prefer not to interact with you remember when Hagar was out in the wilderness and about to die and the Lord sent her back to Sarai to go back home because I have chosen suraíh the blessing she had survived didn't get along but God chose somebody that she did not even like to bless her and then humble her and made her go back and submit herself in a place where Hagar did not want to be but God controls who he decides to use to bless you let me show you again in Scripture the Bible said I will make your enemies your footstool that me the very people that you don't like I'll make them the footstool that carries you to the next letter that sounds good with your preaching a servant but when you work that thing out in real life do you have the courage to step on the step if the step is somebody you don't like or would you choose to stay in your circle and wither and die rather than to receive the help from somebody that challenges your construct what you have built in your mind there is not a person listening at me right now who doesn't have some kind of construct that you've built in your mind and preconceived ideologies about certain types of people or certain types of clothing or certain types of income or certain kinds of politics or certain kinds of theology there are certain kind of gender everybody that I am talking to right now has some sort of circle that you feel safe in and God is about to broaden your circle he's about to shatter it he's about to break it into pieces because God is going to use some other Orthodox ways to bless you some unorthodox ways to get you out of the situation that you're in and it's gonna challenge the way you think I feel the presence of the Lord talking to you right now it's gonna challenge the way you think it's going to challenge the truth is you know it is going to challenge your construct it's going to challenge your philosophies it's going to challenge your ideas it's going to challenge how you proceed in the future now let's go deeper can we go deeper into this I want to go deeper because I want to understand why do the Jews hate the Samaritans if you just read the New Testament all you know is the results but you don't know the cause you don't know where it came from you don't know where it started so we got to go back away and dig down into this to really see what's going on and I will take the time to read the scripture because there's a lot of scripture to read but you need to read first Kings chapter 12 verse 1 through 7 when you read first Kings chapter 12 one through seven you will understand that Jesus is now dealing with the after-effects of something that happened before he was even born this this this construct that has become cemented into the mind of this lawyer did not start with him let's not blame him it started ancestrally from generation to generation certain things passed down and biases passed down to us without us ever even being aware that they passed out and they do not just pass down the white people they pass down the black people they pass down the brown people they passed down the rich people they passed down the poor people they passed down the Baptist people they passed down the Jehovah Witness they passed down at seventh day in Venice there are certain things that passed down generationally that you step into a construct that you didn't construct but your society and your ancestry participated in you got to read you got to read first Kings chapter 12 verse 1 through 17 because it'll really blow your mind in it it talks about rare Boehm who was the King of the United Monarchy of Israel and he continued until about about 932 BC now when you start looking in the Royal robe poem he was a grandchild of David and the son of Solomon so you get some kind of sense of who he is if you understand who David is and you understand that Solomon is the love child of David's adulterous affair with Bathsheba and yet he is also the successor to the king he becomes the king of Israel by through their missin sins of his father it's how he was born and now he becomes the king of Israel now he is not the love child born through their affair because that child died but subsequently he marries Bathsheba and the first child that is produced out of that marriage is called Solomon but the marriage would not have occurred if the adultery hadn't occurred so you can see what I'm saying it's kind of it's kind of shaky waters with this Solomon's son Rehoboam and Solomon is also known for building the temple the opulent beautiful amazing temple that we often talk about is Church people today we the teacher of the temple or we teach around the temple you know if my people who are called by my name all of that beautiful text shall humble themselves and pray is God's response to Solomon after he built the temple and Solomon says what happens if he shut up the heavens what happens if there be no more rain what happens at this wonderful moment of dedication where we just dedicated this amazing temple if something challenges that God says if my people who are called by my name shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways then will I hear from heaven I will forgive their sins and I will heal their land all of that is in result to Solomon building the temple and we shout about it we sing about it and we talk about how the the Spirit fell on the temple and the priests laid prostrate in the floor and nobody could minister because there was such a great anointing or what Solomon had built we talked about all of that what we don't talk about he said everybody wasn't so happy that Solomon built the temple because when Solomon built the temple and became King and lin an opulent lifestyle the taxes of regular people went higher and higher and higher and they resented it not only that all the other synagogues begin to go down and attendance because Solomon is going up and everybody's not happy about it and there is a disgruntled attitude that's breaking out in Israel Israel let's go into Israel was broken down into twelve tribes okay we have just seen King David you unite the the the brokenness that lift that lived in his era by connecting them back together he first becomes the king of Judah then he becomes the king of Israel he unites him but it's almost like so on a piece on a dress when you repair something it's never as strong as it was a ridge and so their union isn't quite as tight as it was under David's leadership but their Salomon leadership it becomes more strained as Salomon puts more stress on them with taxes they begin to break apart when they break apart they break apart in this fashion they break apart where the ten kingdoms the ten tribes all gathered together in the northern part of Israel two tribes Judah and Benjamin gathered in the southern part of Israel and they begin to break apart they were all initially a part of the United Monarchy of Israel but around 9:30 to be seen things started getting shaky and all of a sudden you begin to see problems break out the northern kingdoms were frustrated they were frustrated with the taxation they were frustrated with Solomon's Temple they were frustrated and not being able to do their own thing and little by little they begin to introduce little bits of idolatry that begin to shape how they saw God and they also begin to resent the leadership of Rehoboam and when they resented it to such a degree that that they wanted to break away from him and find their own leader which which really caused Jeroboam to come into power now let's go deeper into this because this is this is about to get good after the split grab on continued to reign over the southern kingdoms that's a big fall because there's only two kingdoms in the south so he went from 12 to 2 what happened to the 10 I'm glad you asked this dude named Jeroboam who had been exiled in the Egypt when he heard that rare balm was going to tax the people severely he comes out of hiding and starts to lead a revolution now let's do I want to go deeper into this bear with me I know this is kind of heavy but bear with me because I think this is going to speak to your soul in a mighty way when rat Boehm becomes king over the Mount United monarch of Israel and they begin to complain to him about taxes he asks his elders what should he do they said maybe you should lower the taxation of the people who will become this thing now and hold us together he went then to his peers his younger peers and asked for their advice and young people are always more volatile then old people because you're young and you're biologically you got testosterone and you you you view the world the way you wanted to be and and they're more radical and sometimes that works out good because every great revolution that changed the world came from young people sometimes it works out bad because they don't have the calmness of older people to think things through in this case it worked out badly Jeroboam listen at the voices of his younger comrades and when the ten tribes came to ask him he said give me three days he talked to both sides he decided to go with what the young people said he said my father beat you with whip lashes I will beat you with scorpions in other words I'm gonna drive the taxes up even higher than they were when he did that rare bomb comes up out of Egypt takes advantage of disgruntled people well you have to be careful leaders about disgruntled people you have to be careful of disgruntled employees you have to be careful of people who feel alienated because generally if there's gonna be an attack it's gonna come with those who are against you you like their forces to try to overthrow you and that's exactly what happened here when it's all said and done rare bomb ends up with only two tribes started out with twelve okay and out of that Jeroboam comes along and he takes the ten tribes of Israel and continues to lead them why did you take us through all of that because all of that has something to do with all of this the ten tribes in the north that rare born began to lead wax worse and worse they were in the high everybody else is worshipping and Solomon's Temple they started building out of idolatrous gods up in the mountaintops and they started to build those idolatrous gods and it separated from the other tribes and went on their own they also started married the Assyrians had started intermarrying outside of the culture and oddly enough the very thing that they didn't like about Solomon is the very thing that they went back and did they started marrying other women and so they became a mixed breed of people that later in the New Testament would be called dogs and Eden's and in addition to that they became idolatrous they dropped most of the Bible keeping the Pentateuch the Pentateuch is the first five books of the Bible Genesis Exodus Leviticus Deuteronomy and numbers they did not accept the major prophets of Minor Prophets the books of poetry and the other 39 books of the Bible they resisted that and only took five so they threw away thirty-four books kept five books and developed this hybrid religion and started worshipping in the mountains fast-forward to something you're familiar with Jesus must need go through Samaria this is hundreds of years later he comes down to the well the woman says the Jews and the Samaritans have no dealings later she says my people worship in the mountain jesus said your people worship in the mountain ye know not what you finally get to understand why he's saying that the reason he's saying that is because she is a descendant of the ten tribes that went in their own way developed their own religion that was similar into Orthodox Judaism but not quite the same and Jesus calls her out on it and says y'all don't even know what you're doing what you've been up in the mountain you've got this mixed religion a little bit of this and a little bit of that watch out for people then take a little bit of this and a little bit of that mix it all together and come up with their own theology jesus said we know who we worship because salvation is of the Jews but the our coveted now is that they that worship God must worship Him in spirit and in truth I want you to see the climate here how Jesus has the strength to disagree but the compassion to continue the conversation do you have the compassion to continue to conversate with people that you have a stereotypical attitude about and with people that you disagree if you don't you're gonna be lost in this season of famine because many times God is going to use somebody in the famine to bless you that is not of you Oh God help me right now if you stay in that circle EURion and never deviate outside of that circle you're gonna miss the blessing that God has for you because God often uses people that are unlike you to open up the windows of heaven to bless you he fed Elijah through the mouths of the Ravens he fed the prophet Elijah at the at the widow of Sarah fats house who says as thy God liveth it wasn't even her God but God used that woman to sustain him who is God going to use to sustain you whoever I'm talking to today this is a preparatory Bible class getting you ready for God to use somebody that you didn't expect it's not coming from your uncle it's not coming from your relatives it's not coming from your rich friend it's not coming from your cousin it's got a good job God will raise up somebody that you that is least likely and do the Almighty through them to bless you if you're not afraid to allow the Samaritan to become good Oh are you hearing what I'm saying to you because I want to get down into something many times in my own life God has used people that were way out of my theological sphere to bless me they opened up doors they gave me opportunity they let me use her platform I can't remember I can't forget the first time that I sat down with Larry King and started having a discussion and Larry King wasn't admitted agnostic I think now he considers himself an atheist and there we were having a conversation and agnostic and a Pentecostal preacher having a conversation on primetime television did I get up and walk away from the conversation because we disagreed about the existence of God absolutely not because Larry King let me use his platform to share my message the opportunities that are coming in your life don't be afraid of them because you don't agree with who gave you the opportunity as my mother would say eat the fish and throw away the bones but receive the opportunity that God has for you I'm talking to your mind right now because some of you are so conditioned to live within your construct that you alienate yourself from the answer that God is sending in your life to bless you God is sending something to bless Oh blesses day God is sending someone to bless you God is sending someone to bless you and they may not dress right and they may not look right and they may not look like you and they may not have your background and they may not share your values but God is sending someone to but can you imagine the man on the Jericho Road bleeding to death half dead and looks up and sees that as a Samaritan and said don't touch me you're a Samaritan he would have died because of his biases he went to utterly been destroyed because of his biases it's important that we teach this message now because our world our country our churches and even our families are more divided than they've ever been before your family has turned in the gangs oh yeah I'm talking to you your family's got gangs I'm not talking about the Crips and the Bloods but you got trips in the Bloods in your family you got gangs in your family that take sides and fight down the side and everybody is fighting mothers against daughters last days fathers against us people who normally would be together you're finding it difficult to come together some of you dread Thanksgiving dinner you dread the holidays because your mother-in-law is coming over and then other tribe is coming over and your son and his girl friendly coming over and she doesn't like you and all the way you got tribes to continue all these tribes going on in your life so many tribe Democrats and Republicans used to be able disagree and still have lunch together now if you disagree with me you're not an American you're an animal you're a dog you're terrible you're awful those days are gone on being able to step being mature enough to step over your differences and understanding that there's more to unite us then there is to divide us that doesn't mean that we can't have speak truth to power that doesn't mean that we can't have honest conversations that doesn't mean that we can't describe our perspective but you can't change people you won't talk to you can't help people that you won't talk to and more importantly they can't help you God will use somebody that you don't like to bless you and the power of this text that we're studying in Luke 10 is that Jesus is trying to shatter the construct that exist around the minds of these people to think that the only people that can bless you are the people who are like you the truth of the matter is the people who were most like the man who went down from Jerusalem Jerusalem now Jerusalem which incidentally is the place that the southern tribes inherited they inherited Jerusalem they inherited Solomon's Temple this man went down from Jerusalem and fell amongst thieves stripped him wounded and left him half dead every body that he thought would help him did not I want to talk to some people out there who are living with the disappointment that the people you thought were gonna be by your side were not the people you thought would come to rescue you did not the people you thought will call you on the phone and ask you are you alright did not you sitting up right now in an isolated situation in a quarantine situation and some of the very people you thought would call you and check on you didn't call and some of the most unlikely people came to your rescue and came to your aid because God is trying to shatter how you see the world and carry down your construct and open your understanding to the fact that Samaritan might be the one that brings you the oil and the wine that pours in the healing balm in your wound that wraps up the bleeding and stops the hemorrhaging in your life that gives you a word of wisdom our word of knowledge or introduces you to your next job or your next opportunity you have to understand that or they may even be so compassionate that they get down off their beats and walk so that you can ride on their beats all the way to the end that's love and you don't get to pick who God chooses to love you through I'm gonna say that again you don't get to pick who God chooses to love you through the reality is God is loving the man who's bleeding and half-dead God is healing the man who's bleeding in half-dead God has made provisions for the man who's bleeding and half-dead and God has made provisions for you I want to talk to somebody who's losing money losing strength losing love losing relationships and you're sitting up there wondering what in the world is gonna happen God is gonna do it God it's gonna heal you God is going to bless you God is gonna raise your finances God is gonna pull you through God is going to open up your eyes God is gonna create an opportunity God is gonna give your position God's gonna give you a promotion God's gonna give you a place to stay but you may not recognize him because he may come dressed as your Samaritan who are the Samaritans in your life who are the people in your life that you you won't ask a question when you're in the mall and you need directions because they're not kid enough to you who are the people in your life that you drive past to find somebody else to talk to I'm not talking about open bigotry where you're running around in sheets and stuff like that I'm not talking about open bigotry where you hating white people or rich people or poor people but we have biases in and out of every race and culture and even within the race and culture poor people don't like rich people some rich people don't like poor people and we bit who we're gonna come up to because if they're wearing sagging pants I'm not going up to them or if they just got out of a Rolls Royce I feel uncomfortable talking them I want to take you outside of your comfort zone because God is getting ready to bless you have it's not going to come through anybody that you have in your cell phone the promises of God that are in your Bible did not promise to line up with the folks in your rolodex that are in your phone it may not be anybody that you talk to frequently but I swear God is gonna bless the substratum of this text the power of this conversation the importance of this story centers around the question that the lawyer asked the law giver who is my neighbor did you hear that the lawyer asked the law giver who is my neighbor and Jesus shatters his understand see the problems with words or we can see the same words but they don't mean the same thing we all have our interpretation of a word when one person says I love you and another person says I love you too they use the same word but it doesn't always mean the same thing some people throw the word love around like their french fries at McDonald's other people are very careful with how they use the word love some people throw the word friend around I'm kind of funny about that word friend I don't like to use that too quick because to me friend means something that I have come to learn that a lot of other people do not define friendship the way that I do and all of a sudden what they're fighting over in the whole story is what does it mean to be my neighbor and Jesus utterly blows her mind not just of a lawyer but he shatters through generations of constructs and preconceived ideologies that has brought this lawyer to the point that in his mind he's trying to make sure that he doesn't have to love who he doesn't like whew that's good right there how do I get to unloved who I don't like and Jesus sits down and tells him a story and that's what I want to do is sit down and tell you a story that if you're on the side of the road and maybe covet 19 has stripped you and wounded you and left you half dead and you're imaging and your emotions or your finances or your time or your job or your mortgage and you're wondering am I gonna make it or not or maybe you've gone through some other kind of crisis that has left you less than you were before you started your journey because anytime you start a journey you're not promised to arrive the way you left and if you stuck someplace and you've seen the deduction even in your ability to love or your ability to live or your ability to give or your ability to think and your your land they're bleeding and you can be going to work and still be bleeding you can be driving the car and still be bleeding you can be going on a date and still be bleeding because a lot of people don't see the hemorrhaging but you yourself know that you're bleeding up under that dress bleeding up under that coat bleeding up under that suit and you've gone through some things from which you have not recovered that stripped you that wounded you that left you half-dead and you've been praying in your secret life God send me some help but if they help ring the doorbell and it didn't look like what you expected it to look like would you open the door if the help called you on the phone and it didn't sound like somebody that was familiar would you open the door that's what this text is all about this text really centers around the great challenge to broaden your circle if you went through Mother's Day and nobody and your own kids didn't call you and somebody else did can you open up your circle quit crying about who didn't call you and thank God for who God said because sometimes it is not promised to come from your daughter it's not promised to come from your son it's not promised to always come from your mother everybody who got mother didn't get mothered by their mother everybody who got father didn't get fathered by their father God we'll use somebody that has no DNA like yours and yet they have fathered you and you're so busy crying over who turned and walked away that you don't praise God for who came over and poured in all at once I want to shatter the way you think about your life right now what does it matter if it didn't come from the Levite and the priest as long as it came what does it matter if it didn't come from your child as long as the case what does it matter if it didn't come from your father as long as it came God wants to restore to you the years that the cankerworm than the proper one and the local Seder but some people refuse to be restored because they're so wounded by who left that they can't rejoice about who came I want to talk to you today are you listening at me this Bible class is not just designed to teach you the historicity of the Samaritans it is not just designed to lay a foundation up under a very familiar text and it's not just designed to titillate your intellectualism with years and concepts of ideas about cultures and and the procession of the ups and downs of the people of Israel know what good is it to understand the historicity if you can't contemporize the text and make it applicable to Who I am right now wherever you are in the world listening at me right now there's not a person in this world that hadn't been stripped wounded and left half-dead by something a lover who left a marriage that failed a child that doesn't like you a parent that doesn't regard you we all live with our wounds we don't get to pick who wounds us and we don't get to pick who heals us because sometimes God will send the greatest healing through the person you at least accept it from that's what this text is all about this text is a challenge to love your neighbor as you love yourself only when you allow your neighbor to be bigger than the people that you have in your phone this text is about living with expectation even when you've had disappointment this text is about surviving who walked away so that you will be alive for who is about to come because if you are not careful you will be so grief-stricken over the turn of events look at the turn of events I was just walking I wasn't bothering anybody I was trying to get from point A to point B I ran into these I didn't ask for these things I don't want these thieves they stripped me now I'm naked I'm naked outside alone I've been on a Jericho Road it is a winding road with sand blowing all in your nose and in your mouth and everywhere it's the worst place in the world to be naked it is cold at night it is hot during the day this meant they stripped him and they wounded him I could have walked or nekkid I'd have been embarrassed but I could have walked or naked but they wounded him and they left him I want to talk to everybody who's been abandoned by anybody I want you to see this text in a brand new light they left him they stripped him they wounded him they left him you dated somebody they abuse you sexually they will did you financially and they left you half-dead and you've never been the same again and you're stuck on the Jericho Road right now for you this is bigger than just understanding the historicity of the Samaritans it is a challenge for you to look at your pain in a different perspective and God is saying I want to send some help but because of your sociological constructs if I would send help you were turning away because the help didn't look like what you had in mind the reason I'm teaching this is that I felt impressed of the Holy Spirit to tell you in the terminus of this time that we're in right now you gotta broaden your circle I can't tell you how many people I watch get in trouble african-american people in particular who go down to the barbershop and get something longer at the barbershop to litigate a case never knowing that the lawyers are real estate lawyer and there you are wondering why you lost the case it's because you stick with the familiar we get who everybody else got we do whatever they did we get somebody we don't even check them out but because they're familiar we take familiarity over competence maybe and other people do that too but I know we do that and I said I'm doing my god you got a corporate lawyer litigating a criminal case that guy's not qualified yeah but he was a lawyer and I knew him and we get our haircut that same place we work out at the same gym I want him those are all dumb reasons to make decisions the lawyer as ceases a question who is my neighbor because he is only comfortable with who he's comfortable with and I'm telling you it is not that God's not going to bless you and it's not that help is not on the way but it may not look like what you had in mind if you can broaden your circle at least broadly maybe our shatter it all together almost every blessing that ever came in my life came through somebody I didn't even know and some of them came through people I didn't even like and some of them came through people with which I deeply disagreed with their theology but God used them to bless me in this season where we need God's blessing more than we've ever needed it before we cannot be picky who the mailman is when you desperately need the mail I want to talk to people who are standing at the mailbox waiting on God to answer and yet running away from the box because you don't like the mailman God census has a 9-1-1 message to you right now stop your Levites will pass by and your priests will look the other way but I am sending you a Samaritan and before the experience is over it will challenge everything your mama and your grandmama ever told you about who to look to for help because it is not so much about the Samaritan it's about the God who sent them and God will use any body to bless you as we come to the close of this message this class this opportunity to dig into these scriptures this man poured in the oil in the wine bandaged up his wounds traded places with him set him on his beasts carried him to the end spit his money on a stranger who is conditioned not to like him and then told the innkeeper if it costs more than I paid when I returned I will repay you and when Jesus finished the story he turned to the lawyer and said which one of them is a neighbor and the law you had to Humble down the case was closed the closing arguments had come in in Jesus and wanna calls an argument and the lawyer said the one who is merciful is my neighbor stop taking people by how they look and start loving people by how they treated you how they loved you how they touched you how they helped you how they ministered to you and broaden your circle I don't know who this is for I don't know why God wanted me to teach his class tonight but for somebody listening at me right now your survival necessitates that you come out of your little circle you've exhausted all the ideas in your circle everybody in your circle things like you you need somebody who can bring new perspective into your life somebody who can ventilate and irrigate your thinking with cross pollenization our differences are not the the opiate of our discord our differences are designed to enhance our ability to be fruitful we were meant to cross pollinate we were meant to integrate and to have relationships and to have ideas and yes disagreements and discussions and uprisings but not disconnections not this connection if I disconnect my finger from my hand my finger will die if I disconnect my leg from my body my leg will immediately die the spirit of disconnections is its rapid it's killing our marriages it's killing our children it's killing our churches it's killing our country it's killing our world my god have we not severed every limb we had and wondered why we can't walk we're looking at a paraplegic country that needs to run like never before but we are so disconnected they were not ready to run with patience the race that is set before us I plead with you today for black folks and white folks and brown folks to come together without one having to be subordinate to the other one I plead with you for Democrats to sit down with Republicans before another 100,000 people die as you fight for power I plead with you for rich folks and blessed folks and CEOs in high places to go into rough neighborhoods with compassion and love it could be that you have the blessing that you have as an opportunity to make a difference in the life of somebody who's been stripped of all opportunities that you add wounded in places you were not left half-dead in the dark and you say this is America they ought to be able to get up if you were stripped and wounded and half-dead you couldn't get up either the reason you got your beast is to give them a ride the reason you're carrying the oil and the wine is to pour it into somebody else the reasons you thought to put the bandages in the bag was to be there and you were called for such a time it says and will be unto you if you don't give your all and wine and throw your bandages around somebody other than you and other than yours and other than your kids and other than people who look like you what good is knowing the word or even hearing the word if we're not going to do the word out of the gospel of Saint Luke chapter 10 verse 25 237 I submit for your consideration run in your circle can I pray with you right now I want to pray with all of you that just cannot seem to get over who left I am so exhausted of year after year after year of you crying about who didn't come through and missing who did father in the name of Jesus said bow my head to pray I know what it is to bleed I know what it is to be stripped I know what it is to be wounded and hurt I know what it needs to be existing I'm not living and and half dead and nobody know what I pray for those people under the sound of my voice whose thoughts are consumed with the disappointment of all those people that they thought would come and they didn't but I pray God you would give them the listening here of faith to hear who you did sin to open up to what they do have to experience the power of God in a fresh and powerful way break preachers out of their traditions break us away from our isolation dear God we were isolated before covet 19 we were quarantined before the coronavirus ever hid speak to the invisible walls and we built around our hearts around our heads around our romantic labs our personal lives our church lives I don't go to that church because of this I don't go to that sure that they believe it God tear down those barriers so that we can get what you need even if it comes from a Samaritan in Jesus name Amen not that word bless you in any way if it touched you in any way if it spoke to you in any way if it healed you in any way if it helped you in any way let me hear from you if you know somebody who should have heard this Bible quest send them to the our YouTube station as fast as you can repost it mail it sit it on a pigeon I don't care how you get it tool but get this word out because I am completely convinced that as long as we isolate our circle and introvert our perspectives and counsel ourselves and medicate ourselves with whatever you're self-medicating with you will never get away from your Jericho Road I want you to open your heart to the Samaritans god bless you men and women single and married black white brown you've got that sense of having your hands full stress increases when you got your hands full all of a sudden you find yourself in a situation when you start to wonder am i enough that's my big disruption but it is not distraction success survivalist success don't you see what happened to the Joneses next door what do you do when the demand seems greater than the supply what do you do with your extra wits here and you said lord if Bob to be bitter because God doesn't need what I love God will always use what you got left [Music]

Channel: T.D. Jakes

Views: 385,958

Keywords: td jakes, faith, potters house, bishop jakes, The Potter's House of Dallas, TPH Dallas, td jakes sermons, bishop td jakes, inspiration, td jakes motivation, motivation, sermons, td jakes ministries, motivational speaker, motivational speech, gospel, motivational, td jakes sunday, td jakes 2020, td jakes sermons 2020, Broadening Your Circle

Id: aSW7bv-tYFU

Length: 63min 19sec (3799 seconds)

Published: Thu May 14 2020