Old Llantrisant Hill
Introduction
- Looking at the Good Samaritan
- A well known story
- We can sometimes know things 'too well'
- What is it all about?
- About helping people - love and care for everybody
- But it is a gospel story about eternal life
- The story starts with a religious lawyer asking how to gain eternal life?
- Is this of concern to us?
- Example of Arthur States
- This world is not the only world
- The religious lawyer is testing Jesus
- A good question from a bad motive
- This is a sad thing
- Some people want to catch Christians out
- You cannot catch out Jesus
- Example of Richard Bulely
- Jesus answers in a way the religious lawyer does not expect
- v26-37 in three parts
* What the law demands (v26)
- "What is written in the law"
- The religious lawyer answers from Deut 6:5
- We start from the Old Testament / with the law of God
- The Old Testament command given to the Israelites
- What has this to do with eternal life?
- The law commands obedience
- 'God first and then others'
- Jesus commands him to do continually and eternal life will be his
- Our relationship to God comes first
- Love Him with all our soul, mind, strength
- There is a problem - we cannot do this
- The law is a like a mirror and reveals what we cannot do
- We cannot live a perfect life
What humans do (v29)
- The religious lawyer wanted to justify himself
- He wanted to prove to Jesus that he was good enough to have eternal life on his own merits
- He wanted to show he was right before God by his own merits
- Example of Under the Milkwood by Dylan Thomas
- Many people think they have 'done enough' - that their 'good' outweighs their 'bad'
- The religious lawyer wants him to rubber stamps his beliefs
- He asks 'who is my neighbour'
- Many at the time believed it was their fellow Jews
- They were derogatory towards Samaritans - examples
- He has passed over all the words about God (in v27) and zones in on 'who is my neighbour'
- He sets aside the command of God
- Humans wants to justify themselves and have their beliefs rubber-stamped
- We concentrate on the horizontal and not the vertical
- Example of Christmas sermon from the Archbishop of Canterbury
- This is a problem of the Church today
- Consider history
- 'The great awakening', changing society
- Example of the 1904 revival in Wales
What Jesus teaches us (v30-37)
- The Samaritan shows mercy to a Jewish person
- Not the levite or the priest
- The religious lawyer cannot say the word samaritan - 'he who showed mercy' (v37)
- This sticks in his throat
- He hates this thought
- A gospel story
- The samaritan had compassion (v33)
- Maybe one of the Samaritan's saved in John 4
- This man is reflecting the love of God in his life
- Example of Billy Graham's daughter
- God is compassionate
- The samaritan 'takes care' (v34-35)
- God and Jesus Christ do not just have compassion and leave us - they have helped us
- Wonderful stories of Jesus showing love for people
- The samaritan goes beyond (v35)
- He will settle any bill on his return
- The gospel breaks down barriers
- The Lord Jesus has done this - He bore our wrath at the cross
- If we are left with the commandment - we are lost
- We are saved by the work of Jesus
- He has obeyed the law of God
- He obeyed
- We are advised to 'go and to do the same' (v37)
- We don't know his response - but it should have been that he could not do this
- Then we would ready to saved - because he would have to come to the Lord Jesus Christ
Closing Remarks
- The parable is about eternal life
- We cannot earn this
- Jesus has done this for us
- We are pointed towards Jesus Christ
- We can only do 'likewise' if we are saved by Jesus (v37)
- Our first response is we can't
- When we are saved our response is that we can
- Example from John Bunyan
- Come to the Lord Jesus Christ - be saved simply by faith
- Receive what He offers
- Cry out to the Lord for salvation
- As Christians - speak of Christ