As we conclude our series, “Who is My Neighbor,” Pastor Tim takes us back to the Parable of the Good Samaritan one more time to consider what Jesus calls us to when it comes to how “much” we need to love.
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
The sermon contrasts the priest and Levite’s inaction with the Samaritan’s sacrificial response. What modern equivalents exist today where we offer awareness or sympathy instead of actual help—and what would it look like to move beyond those to genuine sacrifice?
Tim challenges the idea of doing good deeds for reward or recognition. When are you most tempted to calculate what you might gain before helping someone, and what shifts in your heart when you realize the help isn’t being noticed or appreciated?
The Samaritan gave up not just money but his own time, comfort, and resources—his animal, his journey, two days. Of those three, which do you find hardest to sacrifice for someone in need, and why?
The theological lawyer couldn’t even say the word “Samaritan” when describing who showed mercy. Who has God placed in your path whom you find difficult to love because of closeness, conflict, or differences—and what would repentance look like in that relationship?
What is one practical, sacrificial way you can enter someone’s life and meet a real need this week without expectation of reward or recognition?
How does remembering what Jesus has sacrificially done for you personally change the way you approach loving difficult neighbors, and how does it keep you from burning out?
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
Well, good evening and welcome to Steadfast Tonight. I am so glad to be joining you in our adventure through scripture tonight. We’re going to be wrapping up our series, Who is My Neighbor? And we’ve been thinking over the last few weeks about the parable of the Good Samaritan, and we’ve found so much that we can learn from that parable about which neighbors we should love, and that’s everybody. God calls us to love each person he brings into our life, and we thought about that with people who are close to us and we interact with all the time, and we struggle to love because we know how difficult they are to love, because we know them well. And then we also thought about people who, last week, that are very different from us, and we find reasons to be aggravated at their differences and to use that as an excuse not to love.
But the parable doesn’t stop there. It challenges us beyond simply thinking about whom we should love. Jesus also wants us to wrestle with how we love them, and that, perhaps, is the hardest part of all. So as we dig in tonight, let’s go ahead and pray and ask for God’s guidance as we wrestle with these things. Let’s pray now before our God. Father, thank you for your goodness and for your love. Thank you for being with us as we study your Word. Thank you for how your Word reminds us of your love for us, that you care enough about us to teach us that we might be more like Jesus. And Lord, that we can do all this with the security of doing it with our Heavenly Father who loves us and picks us up when we mess up. Lord, would you help us to see the areas that you would have us to see tonight? We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
Well, let’s go ahead and dig right in, starting with verse 33 of Luke chapter 10, and see what it is about the Good Samaritan and how he cares for the man on the side of the road who’s been injured, that teaches us about the call, or what it looks like, that call of how to love others. It says, he went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. When we think about this, we see something really interesting here. That’s a very simple little phrase in verse 34, but when we think about it, it’s really significant. He not only felt something in verse 33, he did something in verse 34. He was concerned about this man. He felt his pain and he wanted to relieve it.
In the ancient world, oftentimes people would pour oil on a wound to soothe it, and so he’s trying to relieve this man’s pain. And then it says that he also bandaged the man’s wounds. And that perhaps is all the more remarkable, because when we think of first aid today, at most if we don’t have bandages, we run to the store, we go to the pharmacy, or we go to the convenience store, or we go to the grocery store, and we pick up a giant package of Band-Aids. And so when we read here that the man not only soothed the wounds of the injured man, but the Samaritan also bandaged him, I don’t think we really get the impact of what he’s doing.
You see, more than likely, when he needed to help this man and needed to stop the bleeding and allow this man to start to heal, he didn’t have anything to bandage the wounds with. So he would have taken the clothes off of his back and started ripping them up into pieces that could be tied around the man who was injured, his wounds, and protect him from bleeding more and allow him to start recovering. And he does more than that. Not only does he tend to his initial first aid in a way that requires real sacrifice on his part, but he also then takes him to an inn and says he’s willing to pay whatever is necessary. We’ll look at that verse, verse 35 in a second, but he says, I’ll pay whatever is necessary to ensure that this man is able to heal. So he’s really willing to give of himself and of his own well-being.
He’s giving sacrificially. And that’s the first thing we learn about how Jesus calls us to love, that the love that he calls us to is a sacrificial love, one that isn’t about what’s in it for us, but rather is simply showing love to others as Jesus has shown it to us.
As I was thinking about the sort of love that Jesus calls us to and the way he calls us to act, it made me think of commercials I often hear on the radio. I like to listen to Camel X during the day and there are, of course, all kinds of famous St. Louis jingles that will play. But then there’s also lots of ads about different charities, one, for example, that has a really sticky jingle that will stick in your head about cars and kids. And you hear that and all these different ads promise you that if you give a car that you don’t want anymore, maybe it doesn’t even start or you give some old clothes you don’t want or you do whatever, that you’ll get something in return. Maybe it’s a tax deduction that’s worth more than that old car could be worth if you just dumped it in a junkyard. Or maybe it’s sometimes baseball tickets that may not do us a lot of good this year, but we can hope and dream of the day that it will again. And so we hear, oh, if I just give some old clothes, I’ll get some Cardinals baseball tickets.
And it starts to be a question of, well, what do I want to get out of loving people? What is it that can benefit me if I do this act of kindness? And I think that’s what we saw with the priest and the Levite. They look at this man on the side of the road, and yeah, he might be dead, but even if he isn’t dead, there’s no one else there to witness what they’re doing. No one’s going to pat them on the back or praise them if they’re late to do whatever their next obligation was to take care of this man. They may have been thinking about their temple service, and when they were serving in the temple, people would be constantly appreciative of them. They would feel important. They could feel good about what they were doing to serve God. But helping this man on the side of the road, what was the benefit of that?
And so often, I think that’s exactly where we fall, where we start to do these calculations in our heads. What am I going to get out of it if I do something kind? And the Samaritan is journeying. It says he was journeying just like they were. When he came to where that man was, he felt compassion. He simply wanted to show love to someone who had been hurt. And that’s what we’re actually called to do. It’s not about how it makes us feel, or how important it makes us, or if it allows us to advance in society. It’s about showing God’s love. Just as when he looks at us, he has compassion on us.
Let’s go ahead and jump to James chapter 2 for a moment, where we read about our calling as Christians. James says, if a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, go in peace, be warmed and filled, without giving them the things they need for the body, what good is that? James asks a really important good question. So often it can become really easy to say something and to, again, try to show love, try to help without it really costing us much. And while the answer that he quotes, go and feel warm, go in peace, it sounds very good, it sounds very spiritual, he says it isn’t any good because it hasn’t actually taken care of the person that we see in need.
And what Jesus is calling us to hear is a love that actually does something when people are in need. And that requires that sacrificial giving we see in the Samaritan. Also, we see what he does, he gives his own presence in verses 34 and 35, and let’s go ahead and see how he does that. Jesus goes on and says, Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.
We see the ways that the Samaritan is giving not just of his time, not just trying to do more than saying a few nice words, not just taking a moment to show compassion, but is really genuinely giving of himself and coming into this man’s life to help him. First we see, it says that he places the injured man on his animal. Now if you think about the whole setting of this, it’s a setting of journeying from one city to another. Imagine running into someone who is injured and saying, Yes, I’m traveling from St. Louis to Jefferson City, but I’ll go ahead and walk, I’m going to put you in my car because only one of us can fit in there. That would seem almost crazy to have to do something like that. But the Samaritan realizes this man is too weak to walk, he’s going to die here, I can’t just call up on my cell phone and ask for emergency assistance, so I’m going to actually suffer, I’m going to be the one who’s going to have to walk, so this man will someday walk again, that he’ll be healed, he won’t just die.
So not only is he taking the time, unlike the Levite and the priest, he’s willing to actually let this man have his animal while he walks alongside, and he doesn’t just stop there. We already talked about how he gave the money for the innkeeper to keep this man, he gives enough money that the man could have probably stayed there for a month, two months, maybe even three months, and been cared for. And that in itself might seem really wonderful, but again, he’s giving of himself, and that’s what’s so remarkable, because as we read, he came back the next day, verse 35, and that’s when he takes out the money and pays the innkeeper. So you see, he didn’t just go and drop the man off and throw some money at an innkeeper and say, Well, I hope that guy makes it. He actually was willing to give up not one, but two days to care for this injured man he didn’t know on the side of the road.
He was willing to give of himself, and to give sacrificially. I think in our society so often, not only do we struggle with that thing where we want something out of what we do to help, we also tend to boil it down into just doing something really that isn’t really meaningful. That’s what James was talking about.
It reminded me today, as I was thinking about this, of the plight that we have in our society where we end up focusing on, instead of helping individual people that we are around, being concerned with quote-unquote awareness. And as I was thinking about that, it reminded me of a fascinating little story last year about Wendy’s Chicken Nuggets. Now, if you know me, you know I love spicy food, and Wendy’s has probably the best fast-food spicy chicken you can get anywhere. And they had it in this nugget form that was perfect for a luncheon, they have a great barbecue sauce, it was wonderful, until it went away.
And it just so happened last year, a celebrity tweeted that he was dreaming of the day that the spicy chicken nuggets would return, and Wendy’s Twitter account wrote back and said, if you can get 2 million likes on this post that we’re posting, we will bring back spicy chicken nuggets. Well, remarkably, within a day, it happened. People had gone through the hard work of hitting that like button and bringing back spicy nuggets, and here they were again, and everyone could feel good about doing something. Of course, I’m speaking tongue-in-cheek. It really doesn’t take any work at all to hit a like button on a screen. It was a brilliant promotion for Wendy’s, but it’s a silly little example of how we fall into this mindset, I think, in our society, that if I just tweet a hashtag, or I can just bring awareness to something, whatever that might mean, and we do this on both sides of the political aisle, right and left, it’s not one particular side, but whatever side we’re on, we feel like, well, if I just bring awareness to this thing, or maybe it’s a disease, if I just bring awareness, I can feel good about myself, and I can say I’m helping people.
And I’m not saying that’s always bad, I’m not saying it’s bad at all, but it’s dangerous when we allow ourselves to think that means that we are completing what it is to love our neighbor. God calls us to something more, to actually be in people’s lives, to make those sacrifices, to be what we might call incarnational, where we’re willing to actually insert ourselves into someone’s life who needs help, and be there for them, not merely be aware of their problem.
That word incarnational, that sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Because that’s exactly what Jesus has done for us. What do we read in the Gospel of John as it begins? That the creator of the entire universe came into the world. He was incarnate in the world, that he might come into it to save us, even when we didn’t recognize him, John says. That’s what we’re called to do. That’s that real love, to actually come into the world.
Jesus comes alongside us as we are that man laying on the side of the road, broken and bruised and dying, dead, actually, and he restores us to life. That’s what he calls us to follow him in doing. We can’t bring dead men back to life, but what can we do? We can reflect the love that Jesus shows to us.
That’s the challenge that Jesus is providing to this theological lawyer who initially asked him the question, who is my neighbor? Because you see, the problem is, for us, and I think this is probably every single human being, I know I struggle with this. When we contemplate who is my neighbor, what we’re really thinking is, what people must I love to complete what God requires? And then, what is basically the minimum I need to do to do that? We may not put it in those words, those sound awful, but that’s how often we think.
What God calls us to do is to see every person that he puts on our path as someone who needs a helping hand, just like we do as we lay broken and bruised on the path of life. And as we look to Jesus and we reflect on what he has done for us, it reminds us that we’re not doing this on our own, that one of the challenges for the lawyer is that he’s going to be thinking here, whoa, Jesus, I was willing to go a little bit further with you, but there’s no way I can do this. I can’t love absolutely everyone the way you’ve just described. That is exactly what Jesus is calling him to.
Let’s look at verses 36 and 37. Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers? That’s Jesus’ question for the lawyer, he’s told his story. The man answers, the one who showed him mercy, and Jesus said to him, you go and do likewise.
At this point, I think this man is thinking, oh, this is exactly what I didn’t want Jesus to say. If you look at the theological lawyer’s answer, he can’t even spit out the word Samaritan. He just says, the one, the one that showed him mercy, the man broken alongside the road, he was a neighbor. I get it, Jesus, but I’m not going to say that word Samaritan. You see, we call this the parable of the good Samaritan, but this theological lawyer was still back on what we were talking about last week. He looked at that Samaritan, and he saw him as someone different. He saw him, rightly even, as someone who had some very wrong views, and he said, I’m done with this man. I shouldn’t even have to love him.
Now you’re saying that he’s the sort of person who’s my neighbor, and that I don’t even have to just show him love. I have to show him sacrificial love. I can’t just tweet, hashtag, love my Samaritan neighbor. I actually, when I run into a Samaritan, need to love him. Jesus says, yes, go and do that. And on our own, we can’t. That’s what we need to know, friends.
If you’re thinking at this point, Tim, I was hoping to be encouraged tonight, and as we’re talking about the depth of what God’s calling us to do, I’m not feeling encouraged. I’m feeling really discouraged, because I’m just struggling to love the people around me right now. The good news is, again, we’re not called to do this on our own. We’re called to look to the one who has done this for us, to know that he loves us enough that he gave his life for us, to triumph over death for us. And he is simply calling us to then show his love to others.
Doesn’t make it easy, but if we remember that, it’ll keep us from burning out. If we do like the lawyer tries to do here, and he’s just trying to justify himself, and we’re trying, but we still want to feel good about what we’re doing, we might not be getting those financial rewards or baseball tickets or whatever else, but at least I want to feel good about what I do, and then we start loving the really hard-to-love neighbors around us, and we realize, a lot of times I don’t even feel good about this. We’re just going to burn out because we’re focused on trying to justify ourselves.
But when we recognize that instead what we’re doing is reflecting who Jesus is, and glorifying him, and we’re doing it through the strength of his spirit, we can start to be encouraged, and start to recognize it doesn’t rest on us, he’s simply giving us the joy of being part of his plan.
Showing Jesus’ love doesn’t trend on social media, it doesn’t get us popularity. Showing Jesus’ love doesn’t trend, but it does transform. When we reflect Jesus’ love, when he uses us as those who show his love to others, we see lives transformed, and not just necessarily the others. Jesus uses that to also transform our lives, and to make us more like himself, so that we can be the people he’s actually called us to be.
That was the problem for that lawyer, he was so busy justifying himself, he couldn’t be the man that God had made him to be, a man who would show God’s love through all of his learning of scripture. That’s what God calls us to do, and that should be our prayer, as we are going to face this challenge over and over again, it’s not going to ever be easy in life, but as we wrestle together with how we love our neighbors, Jesus transforms us, and he transforms them, and we can celebrate as his kingdom expands.
Let’s pray. Father, thank you for your word, even when it’s challenging, and thank you for the people you put around us, even when they are challenging. Lord, we know that we are far more challenging, we are utterly dead and broken and bruised alongside the road, and yet you have sent your son, he has triumphed over death and come back to life, that we might be brought back to life. As we hold on to that truth, Lord, would you help us that we might show that love to others, not because we’re getting something, not because people are going to admire us for it, not that it’s going to seem important to anyone else, we know it’s important to you because you have made each and every person, and then called us to love them. Thank you for your love, Lord, we pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
As we conclude this series, I wanted to take a moment just to have us walk through a few questions to think back over these last few weeks, and things that we could wrestle with. I want to wrestle with these questions this week, and I hope you’ll wrestle with me on them so that we can think about how to actually apply this in our lives, and I’m going to put those up on screen.
First one is, who are the people nearest me I avoid loving? We talked about that that first week, those people that we know, and it’s a struggle to love them because we know. Let’s think about those people and then pray to God how we can love them better.
Two, who are the people whose differences I use as an excuse not to love? And that’s what we talked about last week, those people that sometimes they’re just different. Sometimes we know they’re wrong because they’re like the Samaritan where they’re not worshipping God properly. We can come up with all kinds of reasons, but the basic thing is God calls us to love them. So who are those people that we need to pray about and seek to love this week?
And finally, three, how can I love people around me this week without need for reward? All of us are going to seek it. All of us are going to want that sort of reward, that thing that makes us important or happy. But what God calls us to do is simply to glorify him and to love others.
And so my prayer is that each of us can wrestle with these things this week and through that show Jesus’ love more clearly to those around us. Thank you again for joining me on this adventure through the story of the Good Samaritan. I hope it’s been a blessing to you and encouraging to you, even as we’ve been challenged.
And if it has, I hope you’ll join me again next week at 7 p.m. We’re going to start a brand new series, Growing, and we’re going to turn to the second letter from Peter. It’s written right before his death, and he’s writing this letter to encourage those he’s taught on the things that are really important about growing in Christ. And I think as we’ve been wrestling with that, even in this last series, it’s going to be really encouraging.
Here we are in summer. We’re watching plants grow. If you drive by farms, you see all the crops growing. But let’s stop and think about what it means to grow in Christ. What does it mean as the Spirit works in us and grows us? I hope you’ll join me for that next week at 7 p.m.
Also at 7 p.m. this Thursday, we have men’s Bible study once again. We’ll be continuing through Isaiah 57 and 58. Last week we had men from three different states there. It was a wonderful time, and you know what would make it better and more encouraging? It would be to have you there with us as well. I’d love to have you join us this week for that. We have just a wonderful time digging into Scripture and praying for each other, and I hope you can join us.
Well finally, as we close tonight, if this message has been an encouraging one to you, if it’s been helpful to wrestle with these things, would you consider just liking it, sharing it on your page, helping us get the word out about this ongoing Monday night study of God’s Word? Through your help, we can reach more people with the good news that God’s the one who loves us and has rescued us, and I would be so appreciative if you’d do that even tonight.
Also you can like us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and stay up to date on other things we post encouraging throughout the week, and if anything we post, anything we’ve talked about tonight, if you’ve been wrestling with it and you’d like to just talk, you have questions, you can always shoot me an email at the email that’s on screen or leave a comment. I would be happy to talk it through with you, or if you have a prayer request, you can send me an email, let me know if I can share it with the whole team, or you want it just private. I love getting to pray for you, and it would be a blessing to me to be able to do that for you this week. You can also just leave a prayer request in the comments, and we can pray for each other together that way.
Well, once again, thank you for joining me tonight, it has been a joy, I hope you have a wonderful and blessed week, and I hope to see you again next week at 7 p.m. as we begin our brand new series here on Steadfast. Have a wonderful night.