- [Don Carson] I would like to address
your attention this morning to Luke Chapter 10
beginning at verse 25. Luke 10:25 to 37. Luke 10 beginning at verse 25. 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
was attacked by 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 too 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, brought him to an inn
and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii 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." This is the
word of the Lord. Although I have not
field-tested the thesis, I suspect that this is one of the
best-known parables of Jesus. Yet, I also suspect that when people know
it, what they know is not the whole section I've just read but just verses 30
to 35. That is, the little story itself without remembering the
context in which it was first given. What I propose to do this morning is to
run through the parable carefully and then place the parable in the context
it's found in Luke's Gospel. For when those
two steps are taken, to pay attention to the
actual flow of the whole thing, not just the little narrative,
but the flow all the way from 25 to 37, and then to place even that within
the context of Luke's Gospel, there are wonderful things in this passage
that we sometimes overlook. So, let me begin with the parable
in its immediate context. Verses 25 to 37 are structured
as two matching dialogues. It really is important
to see this. In both cases,
the lawyer asks a question, then Jesus responds by
asking his own question. And then the lawyer
answers Jesus' question and only then does Jesus
answer the lawyer's question. And then the whole
pattern is repeated. So, verse 25 the
lawyer asks his question, "Teacher, what must I
do to inherit eternal life?" And instead of answering him,
Jesus asks his own question. He says, "What is written in the law?
How do you read it?" And then the lawyer answers Jesus'
question, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul,
with all your strength, with all your mind, and love
your neighbor as yourself." And only then does Jesus answer the lawyer
and he says, "Do this and you will live." That's the first dialogue.
Then the whole pattern is repeated. The man is dissatisfied.
So he asks another question. He starts off again,
"And who is my neighbor?" And then Jesus answers his question, but
in answering his question with a question, he tells a story
to introduce his question. In other words, the lawyer in this second
dialogue asks, "Who is my neighbor?" Jesus tells his story, what we call
the Parable of the Good Samaritan, in order to set the stage for
his own question, verse 36, "So which of these three do you
think was a neighbor to the man who fell
into the hands of robbers?" That's his question. And he had to tell the story in order to
set the stage to ask the question. And then the lawyer answers his question
and only then does Jesus respond at the end of verse 37. So that's the
way the whole passage flows. So, now let's take it
step by step. The first dialogue, verses 25 to 28,
this expert in the law, we might say a lawyer, is
nevertheless more than a lawyer, because the law, in which this man
was an expert, was the law of God. So he was a lawyer,
but he was a theologian. After all, under the Roman rule,
there was a fair bit of liberty to run things your own way in each of the
territories that Rome governed. So, in ancient Israel, under the
Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, at the time, there was a council
of 72 people, the Sanhedrin, 70 or 72, made up of learned aristocrats
and priests and scholars and so on. And, these were
regularly, lawyers. That is, they were experts in the law,
but the law in which they were expert was in fact what we call the
books of Moses, the law of God. So he was a lawyer-theologian,
and we're told, he came to ask
Jesus a question. He stood up,
we're told. Now, in those days, most teaching
circumstances had both the teacher and the students
all sitting down. And then if a person
wanted to ask a question, he stood up to address the
teacher as a mark of respect. Now it's hard for us to imagine
that today in our culture, that's just not the way we treat teachers.
I know, I'm a teacher. But I've been in some parts of the world
where it's a bit different. In many parts of Korea, for example,
students are basically told not to look up at the teacher and look
them right in the face. That could be
seen as a challenge. You keep your head down,
you take down everything he says, you keep your note on your paper and so,
you learn to regurgitate a great deal of material but you don't
challenge the teacher directly. So when they come to the West
and have to start a doctoral program, where the first thing you
have to do is learn how to argue, they find it really difficult because
they find this just rude to begin with. They're not in a place where they feel
ready to challenge a teacher. Well, you need to understand then,
that when this man stands up culturally, he is standing up as
a mark of respect and yet the text says that's
not what he was really doing. He stands up, we're told, to test Jesus.
In other words, he was a hypocrite. It turns out that it's not all that
uncommon in the gospels for people to ask questions of Jesus where they're not
really trying to find answers. They're trying to score points
or even make trouble. In 20:20 for example,
keeping a close watch on him, they sent spies who
pretended to be sincere. They hoped to catch Jesus in something he
said so that they might hand him over to the power and
authority of the governor. So, the spies questioned him and asked him
certain questions that were traps. Now, it's not that bad in a classroom
today, in general, but nevertheless, those of us who are teachers at whatever
level, from junior high all the way to graduate students, there are
some students who ask questions, not because they're trying to learn
something, but because they're trying to score points or see
if they can outwit the teacher or put them down, or get
a laugh, or something like that. This probably has even
more malicious intent. In any case, that is the set-up and
now he asks his first question, "Teacher, what must I
do to inherit eternal life?" Well, it's a slightly
bizarre question. You might think that you
inherit something, first of all, by being born
into the right family. It's not something you do,
it happens to you. But the notion of inheriting eternal life
was a pretty common Jewish way of talking about receiving consummated life on the
last day, but now the presupposition that this man has is that, if you do the right
things or perhaps enough of them, then you will be qualified
to inherit eternal life. That's what you have
to do to inherit eternal life. But have you ever noticed
in reading the Gospel accounts, how often Jesus answers a
question with his own question? I have a friend,
a former student, a converted Jew who is
really good in the gift of the gab. And he wrote a book called
<i>Questioning Evangelism</i>. Now, he's not trying
to question evangelism. He's trying to evangelize
by using questions. It's a questioning
evangelism. And he begins by going through all the
places in the gospels in which Jesus answers a question
with his own question. And very often he does so because the
initial question that was put to him was a bit obscure or a bit tendentious, or a bit
smart alecky, or something was a bit off. And by asking his own question,
he's reorienting the entire discussion. And then what my friend does,
Randy Newman is his name, if you want to look up the book,
<i>Questioning Evangelism</i>, by Randy Newman, what my friend does then, is take the
lessons he learns from studying Jesus, and thinks through how they
might be applied to us today. For example, supposing someone says to
you, I'm sure most of us who do any witnessing have experienced this,
someone says to you, "Oh, come on, you don't really think
that those who don't believe in Jesus, they're all going
to hell, do you?" How do
you respond? Well, I would like to begin by a general
consideration of the nature of sin and holiness. Well, you just
lost them right there. But how do you answer
a question like that that is grounded in such massive
structures of Biblical thought? What my friend says is,
ask a question. So the question you
might ask back is, "You don't think that nobody
goes to hell, do you?" And every time he said this,
then usually people have replied, "Well, obviously some, some people
probably go, I mean, Hitler maybe." Then the next question is, so what are
the criteria for going and not going? And suddenly you've
got a discussion going. Do you see? It's not merely
an antagonistic bit of label calling? Sometimes, the best way
to advance a discussion is not immediately by giving an answer,
even though the answer is true. Jesus could have answered
this question directly, but sometimes it's good pedagogy.
It's good teaching. It brings clarity, new depth,
precisely by asking a question, answering a question
with another question. That's what
Jesus does. And his question is, "What's written
in the law? How do you read it?" You're the expert in Biblical materials.
I'd love to know what you really think. In other words, Jesus is
suggesting in fact, that the man is just testing
him and Jesus knows it. And so he wants this
man to commit himself just a wee bit before the
discussion goes farther. "What do you think Scripture says?
How do you understand it?" And the lawyer
gives his answer. Verse 27, "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." So the lawyer answers his own question by
quoting two Old Testament passages. The first is found in Deuteronomy 6 and
the second is found in Leviticus 19. Now, notice carefully
what the context is here. How do you
inherit eternal life? And the man's answer to his own question
is, you love God with heart and soul and mind and strength, and you love
your neighbor as yourself. That's how you
inherit eternal life. But I am sure that most people gathered in
this room this morning have been Christians long enough
to know that Jesus quotes these same two
passages in a different context. In that different context,
Jesus is having another conversation with another lawyer,
another lawyer-theologian. You can read the account in Mark
Chapter 12 verses 28 and following. And there you
discover that this lawyer approaches Jesus with
a quite different question. There, the lawyer asked the question,
"What is the most important commandment?" Not what must I
do to inherit eternal life, but what is the most
important commandment? And in that case Jesus does
not ask a question back. The man's asking a sincere question he
thinks that there's a clear answer. He says, "The most
important commandment is love God with heart and
soul and mind and strength." He says I'll even give you number two,
"Love your neighbor as yourself." Now it's worth thinking about Jesus'
answer to that lawyer's question, in order to see the difference
that the context makes here. That other lawyer was saying,
"What's the most important commandment?" I read all of these commandments in the
Bible all about what meat you're allowed to eat and what birds you're allowed to
cook and special days and high feasts, and the 10 commandments and
many, many commandments. What's the most important?
What holds it all together? And there were discussions like that going
on in theological circles in Jesus' day. Jesus says I'll tell you
the most important, "Love God with heart and soul
and mind and strength." And in fact, if you remember the
context where that is quoted, Deuteronomy Chapter 6, it's in the
context of putting down idolatry. The Chapter opens with what
is sometimes called a shema, the Jews still cite
the shema today. That's simply the
Hebrew word for hear. The text reads, "Hear O Israel,
the Lord your God. The Lord is one and you shall love the Lord your God with
heart and soul and mind and strength." The point is in Paganism,
there are many, many gods. So that in Paul's day, in Jesus' day,
in the Mediterranean world, in the Greco-Roman world,
they had thousands of gods. Just as today in India,
the Hindus have millions of gods. Nobody can even
know them all. But when you have thousands of gods,
then you can't give all of your allegiance to only one of them because the
gods have their various domains. So you want to make a sea voyage,
you're a businessperson and you're leaving Caesarea on the
Eastern shores of the Mediterranean. You're making a sea voyage to Rome where
you have to make a presentation to the government,
to the Roman Senate. So because you're crossing by sea,
you want to petition the God of the Sea, Neptune, to give you a safe passage
so you offer sacrifices to Neptune. And then when you get there,
then you're going to be actually making an important speech that could
affect your people back home. And so you want the god
of communication to help you, Mercury in the Roman world
and Hermes in the Greek world. So you offer a sacrifice
to Mercury Hermes. Do you see? And then meanwhile your baby's about to
have a fat child back at home or maybe you're falling in love and you want the
god of love to be on your side. Whatever, there are different domains of
life and all of these gods are tripping around and you can't possibly give your
total allegiance to any one of them because there are different domains of
life and you've got to cover your bases for all of those domains
But supposing there's only one God. "Hear O Israel, the Lord your God.
The Lord is one." What follows? "You shall love the Lord
your God with all your heart and soul and mind
and strength." Do you see? This commandment, which is so
God-centered, is predicated on monotheism. That is, the doctrine that there is but
one God who claims our total allegiance. And that makes sense on
so many different fronts. If he is our maker and our final judge,
then you quickly learn in scripture that if you really did hold to this
God at the center of your life, if you really did love him with heart and
soul and mind and strength, if you kept that commandment alone,
you would keep all other commandments. This is the only commandment that you
always break no matter what other commandments you break, because if you and
I loved God with heart and soul and mind and strength, we wouldn't
cheat on our income tax. We wouldn't be arrogant. We wouldn't be resentful or bitter. We wouldn't be lustful. We wouldn't be jealous. We wouldn't be self-absorbed. This is the only commandment that you
always break when you break any other. And moreover in the Bible that is really
tied up with what makes sin so ugly, with what makes
sin so sinful. Do you remember the account of David's
terrible sin when he seduces Bathsheba and then eventually manipulates
the military high command in order to have her
husband bumped off? Eventually he's confronted by Nathan the
Prophet and crushed with his guilt. Later he writes two Psalms, one of
them is Psalm 51, and amongst the things he says in Psalm 51
addressing his prayer to God is, "Against you only have I sinned
and done this evil in your sight." And there's part of you when you
read that that wants to say, "Come off it David, it's not just
against God that you sinned you sinned against
Bathsheba, you seduced her. You sinned against her husband,
you had him bumped off. You sinned against the military
high command, you corrupted them. You sinned against
the people in the land because you're supposed
to be the epitome of justice. You're the Supreme Court
as well as the King. You sinned against your own family,
you betrayed them." It's hard to think of anybody
that you didn't sin against and you have the cheek
to sit there and say, "Against you only have I sinned
and done this evil in your sight." But at the most profound level,
David is exactly right. That is, at one level, it's true
that he has sinned against all these people at another level what has
made his sins so desperately ugly? What has made it so evil?
What has made it so offensive? So incredibly rotten? So odious, is precisely that it's an
offense against God. If this April you cheat on your income
tax, the person most offended is God Almighty,
not Uncle Sam. Uncle Sam may
not even find out. If you cheat on your spouse,
the person most offended is not your spouse if he or she finds out,
it's God. And if you nurture bitterness, the person most offended is not the person
against whom you're bitter, but God. That's why this
command to love God with heart and soul and mind
and strength is the first commandment. It's the commandment which
defines the very nature of sin. And the second command,
that's found in Leviticus 19, "Love your neighbor
as yourself." That is, it is another commandment where
you are not at the center of the universe but you're looking
outward to others. In our best moments,
you and I know how it is possible to love others as we love
ourselves in our best moments, but we have an awful lot of moments
that are not our best moments. So that even when we wake up in the middle
of the night and our minds are not quite clicking, but yet we're flitting
around and thinking about things, Generally, we think about all
those things we think about with ourselves at the center,
how they affect us, what they are
like in relation to me, because that's the way our hearts,
this side of the fall, are wired. We think me first, we just tend not to
think in terms of other people, loving them as much
as we love ourselves. So, Jesus tells this lawyer
in Mark Chapter 12, that's the first and
the second commandment. And if you really do understand that you
have a massive picture of what's the problem with the
human race, what it is that God is addressing
in the Gospel. But this lawyer-theologian
is asking a different question and that changes the relevance
of these two quoted passages. He's asking the question,
"What must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus never said, "The way you inherit
eternal life is to love God with heart and soul and mind and strength and your
neighbor as yourself." He never said that. He said that they're the first two
commandments, the most important two, the center of everything,
but he did not say if you obey them, that's the way
you'll get eternal life. But that's the
answer this lawyer gives. The way you get eternal life,
the way you inherit eternal life, is to love God with heart
and soul and mind and strength and your neighbor as yourself.
That's how you do it. Boy, isn't that
good news? I would have thought that if that's
the way you get eternal life, we're all damned. How do you
live up to standards like that? So what does Jesus say
by way of response? Now, if you think that Jesus
is invariably a sour-faced literalist who never has a sense of humor,
you will misinterpret what he says. Jesus says, "You have answered correctly,
do this and you will live." So that's Jesus' solemn judgment.
He agrees with the chap. This is what you have
to do to gain eternal life. Oh, but that doesn't make any
sense of the passage at all. You can almost see the
twinkle in his eye as he says, "Well done, my chap,
indeed you are right." Anyone who meets such a
standard does not need grace. If you want to do something to inherit
eternal life, that's what you must do. Go right ahead.
Do this and you'll live. The sarcasm is dripping from his
answer and the man knows it. That's how you can be sure that this is
what Jesus is really saying. The man knows it because
he has to say, verse 29, "I've got to justify myself.
I've got to justify myself. I've just been put down.
I've just been had. I thought it was going to trip him
up and now he's trapped me." So, willing to justify himself he asks his
next round of question, do you see? It is astonishing that anyone of us should
read the Bible seriously and think that the way you are reconciled to God,
the way you have eternal life, what qualifies you to participate in the
new heaven and the new earth on the last day is our devoted love for God with heart
and soul and mind and strength and our unqualified loving our
neighbors as ourselves. It's embarrassing, how we fail.
Just embarrassing. So, the man then, we're told,
wants to justify himself. Now, that's worth pausing to think about
any book including Biblical books, have minor themes running through them as
well as their big themes. One of the minor themes in Luke's Gospel
is about self-justification. Let's back off
just a wee bit. Those of us who've been brought up in
Christian homes or have been Christians for a while in a church like this one,
we know what the doctrine of justification teaches. In the doctrine
of justification, we are told that God
justifies the ungodly. That is, he declares
them to be just, he looks at everything
and he declares them to be just, because what he includes in this
everything is the death of his own son. That is, because Christ has borne our sin
in his own body on the tree, because our sin has been reckoned to him and his
righteousness is reckoned to us. Therefore, God looks at us even though we
are sinners and he declares us not guilty. In fact, justified.
I declare you to be just. In other words, in justification in the
Bible, God justifies the ungodly. Fair enough.
What's the opposite of that? Well, I suppose you could say the
opposite of God justifying the ungodly is that God does
not justify the ungodly. You know, logically that's true,
but on a slightly different axis, the opposite of justification
is self-justification. In justification, God justifies us because
of what he has done in his son. In self-justification,
we justify ourselves because of what
we have done. And now that's the situation
in which this man finds himself and as I've said, it is a theme that
keeps showing up in Luke's Gospel at a passage we're going
to look at tonight. In Luke chapter 16, we discover this theme
of self-justification again. For example, in Luke Chapter 16,
when Jesus is talking about money, we're told verse 16,
"The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were
sneering at Jesus." He said to them, "You are the
ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others,
but God knows your hearts." Do you see? Self-justification,
or again in Chapter 18, the account, another parable of the Pharisee
and the tax collector, 18:9, to some who were confident
of their own righteousness. That is, they were self-justifying and
looked down on everyone else. Jesus told this parable.
Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and
the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed,
"God, I thank you that I am not like other people, robbers, evildoers,
adulterers, even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and
give a 10th of all I get. God, I thank you that I go to a
Bible-believing church where the truth is preached and we sing good hymns and there
are pastors who are godly. I thank you
for all of this." And it might actually be thanks and yet
there is an edge of self-justification in it as well,
don't you see? But the tax collector
stood at a distance. He could not even look up to heaven
but beat his breast and said, "God have mercy
on me, a sinner." Jesus says, "I tell you that this
man rather than the other, went home
justified before God." The other man was self-justified,
but only this man, the man who began with his
sin, was justified before God. That's a minor theme that
keeps surfacing in Luke's Gospel. So, in our passage,
in Luke Chapter 10, this man kicks off the second dialogue
because he wanted to justify himself. One of the things Jesus has said was,
"Love your neighbor." "Well, all right, who's my neighbor?
Huh?" Answer me that one. It's pretty pathetic,
but it's the best he can do. And in order to answer him with his own
question, Jesus then tells what we call the Parable of the Good Samaritan to set
the stage for his question. Now we look at the story itself,
a man, we're told, was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho,
this really is literally downhill. It's about 17 miles and it's pretty
rugged terrain and it's all downhill. And there in this rough,
rugged countryside, he's attacked, beaten up,
stripped, left for dead. Stripped, because in those
days, clothing cost a lot. That is, clothing was a
big percentage of your income. So it wasn't enough simply to take your
money or your credit card, which had not yet
been invented yet. It was important to take
your clothing too, that could be sold, that could
be worth quite a lot of money. So, he was beaten up,
stripped and left for dead. Then a priest happened to be
going down the same road and when he saw the man he
passed by on the other side. Now, you have
to remember that the first-century Jewish society
was pretty highly structured. Different groups could be identified by
language, dress, and accent. Thus priests, for example,
could speak Hebrew. The peasants around Jerusalem spoke
Aramaic, a similar language. Along the coast of the Mediterranean,
some people still spoke Phoenician. Up in Galilee they spoke
either Syriac or Greek. And then the government officials from
Rome, they spoke Latin. All of this maelstrom of languages, you
see, in this one small little country and at the same time, many of them wore
different dress according to what kind of work they did, or what part of the
country they were from, or whether they were
government officials or not. But now this man is left for dead,
so he can't speak. He's stripped, so we don't
know what he's wearing. He's just a piece
of human meat. I mean, why should I feel particularly
sympathetic toward him? And maybe under God's
sovereignty he deserved it. Maybe that's why it happened to him,
and besides that, if he got hit, maybe I'll get hit too, I should get out
of here before the thugs come back. Maybe this is their regular
attack point and I'm a priest. Probably what I'm doing is going
back from Jerusalem to my home. Many priests went up to Jerusalem for
their duties and would spend a couple of weeks in Jerusalem doing their duties
before they had to go back to their own farm and look
after things there. And if he's heading home after
two weeks in Jerusalem, after all, he's heading away from
Jerusalem as a priest, back somewhere else,
presumably home. If he then touches a dead body,
if this body turns out to be dead, then he is
ceremonially unclean. In which case, what he's got to do
conscious bound is go back to Jerusalem for another week of purificatory rights
and I'm going home now. Altogether, it was
just too much. Besides the body by the side of the road,
I mean, it could be a disgusting Samaritan for all we know, and so he
passes by on the other side. And then a Levite, similarly,
that is someone who helped out in priestly temple matters, but was not a priest.
And then finally a Samaritan. Now, it's hard for us
to sympathize with how the Samaritans
were viewed in Jesus' day. I'm sure most of us
know their background. Centuries earlier when the mighty
Assyrians that attacked the Northern 10 tribes, they took off the leadership
into captivity, maybe 10% of the population and then they bring in leaders
elsewhere from elsewhere that other territories that had been attacked and
placed them in the land to start over as dirt farmers because what they
thought was if you get rid of the leadership and transport
them somewhere else, then the local population
is much less likely to rebel. You decapitate the country by taking off
the artisans and the political leaders and the priests and the royalty,
you take them all away, and then maybe there'll be
a little less likelihood of rebellion. And then because the population
has been somewhat decimated, you bring in some people from
elsewhere and you put them in here. So what happened
as a result was that those in Sumeria had intermarried
with these other people. The religion had
become a bit confused. It was no longer loyal anymore to
scripture quite the same way. In fact, the Samaritans had
come to the conclusion that the whole Old Testament
was not God's word. It was only Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus,
Numbers, Deuteronomy, the first five books, because they
didn't want to have anything to do with the rest of the Old Testament
that goes on to talk about King David and Jerusalem, that's all in the South,
that belongs to those nasty Judeans, we don't want to have
anything to do with them. And eventually, when all the
Jews came back after the exile, as many returned and
a temple was rebuilt again. Meanwhile, the Samaritans in the
North had built their own temple, they didn't want to have anything to do
with Jerusalem or King David. So, they built their own temple on Mounts
Gerizim and Ebal, and then once the Jews finally got power back in the
second century before Christ, they disliked what the
Samaritans were doing so much, that they went in and destroyed
the Samaritans' temple. They razed it
to the ground. So, you can understand why there was a
certain amount of tense feeling between the Jews
and the Samaritans. From Jewish point of view,
the Samaritans were half-breeds, they didn't know their Bibles
very well, they were corrupt. They had intermarried with Pagans,
and they didn't have a true religion. And meanwhile, from the Samaritans' point
of view, the Jews were bullies. They were militarily
too strong and they were a threat to
their very survival up here. They were always pushing their own
political gains with this David stuff. And so it had got to the point
where they wouldn't eat together, they wouldn't talk together.
Samaritans were really not good news. It's hard to think of what
a parallel would be here. Three guys going by,
let's say one's an Anglican Bishop, one's a Baptist Pastor,
and the third chap coming through is the local Muslim Imam, but it's the local
Imam who's the hero of the story. Boy, that really grabs
your eyeballs, doesn't it? What's the point? Well, what does he do? He pours oil and wine into the wounds,
which was a standard medicinal treatment for cleansing things and
cleaning up the wounds. Maybe a little bit of anesthetic value for
all I know, puts him on his own donkey, which means he's now going on foot in this
rough terrain to the nearest hotel, which does not mean
Embassy Suites or Marriott or Hilton. Hotels in the ancient world were just
ordinary households where they had a slightly bigger room where the animals
were kept and guests could stay there for a minimal amount with the animals,
but at least it was shelter. It was secure from further
attacks from further thugs, the man could
regain his strength. Indeed, he took out two denarii,
two days' pay for a blue-collar worker, and paid the innkeeper, which
would've covered a week or two. "Look after him," he said,
"And when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense
you may have." I've got to be going,
but this chap may take more than two weeks to recover and whatever
the bill is, I'll pay it. Now, that is astonishingly
important because you see, in the ancient world, there
were no bankruptcy laws. There was no Chapter 11,
no Chapter 13. If you owed money,
therefore, you had no recourse but to sell yourself
and/or your family into slavery. So if this chap, who after all
had been stripped, so he had no clothes,
and no money and no health, if this chap now, stripped, with
no money of his own, now had to stay on for six weeks and nobody paid that
charge at the end of six weeks, the homeowner,
the innkeeper, would have every right to say,
"Okay, now you're my slave." And the man would have
no defense whatsoever. But instead, this Samaritan not only saves
his life and transports him to the inn, and does what he
can for his wounds and pays for the immediate expense,
he saves him from slavery as well. Now, Jesus has told a story.
Now, that's a set-up for his own question. "Which of these three
do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell
into the hands of robbers?" Oh, this question is clever.
It gets at the heart of the issue. What was the
lawyer's question? The lawyer's question was,
"And who is my neighbor?" Jesus tells a story and asks a different
question, "To who must I be a neighbor?" Now, who is my neighbor so that I can
decide whether or not he's classified as a neighbor so I have to do something nice,
but to who must I be a neighbor? How do I become
a neighbor? That is, the parable pictures
grace responding to need. The lawyer cannot even bring
himself to say the Samaritan. Samaritan was a bad word.
You don't use words like that. He has to use a
certain locution. He says, "Well, the man
who had mercy on him." And Jesus says,
"Go and do likewise." Now then, before we wrap this up,
let me remind you of something of the surrounding context very quickly,
this is Chapter 10. In Chapter 9 beginning
at verse 44, we read this. "Listen carefully to what
I'm about to tell you. The son of man is going to be
delivered into the hands of men." That is, he's talking about his
impending death in Jerusalem, but they did not understand what
this meant. It was hidden from them. Even the disciples of Jesus had initially,
no category for a crucified Messiah. They thought that with
the coming of the kingdom, there would be a big bang
and everything would be fine. They had no category
for a crucified Messiah. They did not understand the Old Testament
passages that put together the expectation of the coming kingdom with a David King
who would be a suffering servant and broken and bleeding and
wounded for our transgressions. They did not have their
Old Testament put together that way. So, Jesus starts to speak
of his impending death. They don't have
a category for it. Verse 51, "As the time approached
for him to be taken up to heaven," that is, by means of the cross,
Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. In Luke's topical
ordering of things, this is the beginning of what is
sometimes called Luke's travel narrative. From here on all the way to Chapter 19,
Jesus is heading to Jerusalem, where he's going to be crucified,
he's going to be betrayed, he's going to be crucified,
he will be tortured, eventually die on the cross, buried and
then on the third day, rise again. So, this is the beginning
of the road to the cross. This is why some
people have said the gospels are really passion
narratives with long introductions. You're only in Chapter 9, barely
a third of the way into the book, and already Jesus is
heading for Jerusalem. And what that means from the point
of view of reading Luke's Gospel, well, you have to realize that everything
that takes place now in the Gospel after Luke 9:51, is on the
way to Jerusalem and the cross. It's on the way to
Jerusalem and the cross. Everything that takes place now is
on the way to Jerusalem and the cross. And the kingdom is not going
to come right now with a big bang. It's going to come by means of Jesus'
death and resurrection. It's going to come slowly
and transformingly. It's coming, but not
quite the way you think. It's on the
way to the cross. So, in Chapter 10, Jesus sends out the 72.
As a kind of trainee exercise, he gives them power to perform some miracles
and he preaches the Kingdom of God. And then when they come back,
verse 17, delighted that they have so much power, "Lord, even the
demons submit to us in your name." He replied, "I saw Satan fall like
lightning from heaven. I have given you authority
to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all
the power of the enemy. Nothing will harm you, however, do not
rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names
are written in heaven." In other words, they are still thinking of
kingdom values in terms of power, and they want it and Jesus says, "That's
not what you should be happy about." Uh-uh. I don't know if the name
Martyn Lloyd-Jones means much to you. He was one of the greatest preachers in
the English language in the 20th century. A Welshman who preached for many years in
London, and in the course of his life, he saw thousands, probably tens of
thousands converted and brought to life a whole new era of careful
expository preaching again. He was well known
all around the world. There's something like 73 volumes
of his sermons in print, still today, and you can download his
sermons for free on the net. You can go to a Lloyd Jones website
and download them for free. He was a man of enormous unction, great,
great significance in his own time, and he had been bound up with other
organizations and so on. He started the Westminster
Conference for pastors. The Puritan Reformed Conference,
was instrumental in starting the Banner of Truth press
and so forth. When he was dying of cancer,
he died in January of 1981. I was in England at the time, when he was
dying of cancer, a friend of mine who became his biographer,
had ready access to him and asked him one day,
about six months before he died, he said,
"Dr. Lloyd-Jones," everyone called him the doctor,
he was a medical doctor. "Dr. Lloyd-Jones, may I ask
you a personal question? How are you coping now
that you're on the shelf? You have been used to serving a wide
world, speaking to thousands and thousands and your books and your
influence and your modeling have rejuvenated the
church in so many ways. And now it takes all
of your energy to get out of bed and put on your three-piece suit,"
which he always did, "And sit in a stuffed chair and
edit a manuscript for an hour," before he was too weak and had
to undress and go back to bed again. "How are you coping now
that you're on the shelf?" And Lloyd-Jones replied,
"Do not rejoice because the demons are subject to you in my name,
but rejoice that your name is written in heaven.
I am perfectly content." Do you see he understood Luke 10?
It's not about power. It's not about self, that even
misunderstands the nature of the kingdom. The really crucial thing is whether you're
in that kingdom, whether your name is written in heaven, those are
the things that you learn on the road to Jerusalem and the cross.
And so our parable comes next. Yes, it is expected that if you're a
Christian, your life will change. At the end of the day,
the parable still ends, "Go and do likewise." But what brings you into the kingdom is
not finally that you have obeyed the most important commandments
adequately somehow to slip in. All that results in
is self-justification. Those are the lessons you learn on the
road to Jerusalem and to the cross. And the very next section after that,
you're at the home of Martha and Mary and it's the Mary who was sitting at
Jesus' feet who is the one who was commended because Jesus is talking about
the need to go to Jerusalem and the cross. It's not just activity and more power,
there's more to it than that. So, let me conclude then with some
pastoral reflections for all of us. Number one, if we think
of eternal life as inherited, we must see that it turns
on Jesus and his cross. It cannot be earned, that's
where the whole book is going. The pretentiousness of this
lawyer-theologian is appalling. And yet it has to be said that
some of us, even as Christians, sometimes snooker
ourselves into thinking, "I've been pretty good this week,
God must be pretty pleased with me." As if somehow we...
We somehow earn brownie points. No, it's the one who
still looks heavenward, like the tax collector
in the temple and says, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner,"
who goes home justified. The rest so readily becomes
a species of self-justification. That's what you learn
on the road to Jerusalem. Second, this suggests,
I almost hesitate to say this, this suggests that Jesus himself
is the ultimate good Samaritan. Now, don't
misunderstand me, I am not suggesting that
that's why Jesus told this story. Jesus did not tell the
story in order to say, "Let me tell you a story about a
good Samaritan, and guess what? I'm the answer to the riddle.
I'm the real good Samaritan." That's not why Jesus tells the story.
You can see why he tells the story. He tells the story in order to set-up his
third question, do you see? And yet when Luke
records this in his book, Luke sees that Jesus is the Good Samaritan
and he wants us to see it too. What does the Good Samaritan do?
He saves the man from death. He heals him, he pays it all,
and he guarantees he's not a slave. It's not quite the point
that Jesus is making when Jesus tells the story
of the good Samaritan. But as Luke reflects on all of this on the
road to Jerusalem and the cross, he cannot help but see,
and he wants us to see, that the ultimate good
Samaritan is Jesus himself. When no one else could help us or save us
or give us life. When others pass by, when we are hurting or alone or crushed or
defeated, and we don't know where to go or to whom to turn, we're too weak or we're
too sad, angry, or we're too bitter, we're enslaved ourselves,
we have nothing, we're left for dead. It is Jesus who comes along and
picks us up, and binds our wounds, gives us shelter,
pays the whole thing himself. After all, he's on the way to
Jerusalem to pay the whole thing and frees us from any threat
of slavery, and gives us life. But in the last place,
although all this is true, and ought to bring us to Jesus
in repentance of faith, yet clearly Jesus does expect his
followers to behave as he himself does. For at the end of the day,
Jesus still says to this lawyer-theologian,
"Go and do likewise." For although it is true that we trust
Christ and his cross-work, yet the cross itself becomes not only the
basis upon which we are accepted by God, the cross itself also becomes
a model of how to live and die. That's why when the Apostle Peter writes
his first letter in 1 Peter Chapter 2. Peter speaks of the
cross as the place where Christ bears our sin
in his own body on the tree. But he also says, Jesus did this,
leaving us an example that we should
follow in his steps. We too take up our cross, and die
to self, and go and do likewise. That's part of Christian discipleship.
It's not what gains life for us. It is the inevitable result
of life gained for us by Jesus on the road to Jerusalem
and the cross. Let us pray.
