The lawyer wanted a shorter list of people he had to love. Jesus told a story that put everyone on it.
Who is your neighbor — and why did Jesus answer that question with a story about a Samaritan? In this exposition of Luke 10:25–37, Dr. Toby Holt shows that the most familiar parable in the Bible is anything but tame. A lawyer stands up — in that culture a posture of claimed authority, not humble inquiry — to test Jesus: "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus sends him back to the law, and the lawyer answers well: love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and your neighbor as yourself. "Do this and you will live," Jesus replies — and the trap the lawyer set springs shut on the lawyer himself. Dr. Holt presses the point: that answer is the summary of the whole moral law, and none of us has kept it for a single hour of a single day. Salvation cannot be found in law-keeping, "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." But the lawyer, "wanting to justify himself," reaches for the scoundrel's oldest trick — semantics — and asks, "And who is my neighbor?"
Jesus answers with the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, a stretch so violent it had been nicknamed the way of blood. A priest passes the dying man. A Levite passes him too. Then a despised Samaritan — the last man anyone expected — binds his wounds, carries him on his own animal, and pays for his care with an open account. Dr. Holt recasts the scene in modern dress: the ambulance that drives past, the church bus that keeps singing, the tattooed stranger in a Chevy Nova who stops. The question is no longer academic. It asks how selectively we portion out grace — extending it only to those we judge worthy, a threshold Scripture never supports and Jesus never modeled.
The listener will come away with two things: a fresh grasp of grace — Christ living the life we should have lived and dying the death we should have died — and a summons that has lost none of its edge: "Go and do likewise."
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In Luke 10:25–37, a lawyer tests Jesus by asking what he must do to inherit eternal life, and then — "wanting to justify himself" — asks, "And who is my neighbor?" Jesus answers with a story: a man is beaten and left half dead on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho; a priest and a Levite pass by on the other side, but a despised Samaritan shows him costly mercy. The parable is about far more than kindness. It exposes the impossibility of earning eternal life by law-keeping, unmasks our instinct for self-justification, and redefines neighbor-love to reach anyone in need whom God places in our path. Jesus ends not with a definition but with a command: "Go and do likewise."
Luke tells us directly: the lawyer asked it "wanting to justify himself" (Luke 10:29, NKJV). He had just answered, correctly, that the law requires loving God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and your neighbor as yourself — and he almost certainly knew he had not done it. Rather than confess that failure, he played with semantics, trying to narrow "neighbor" down to a circle small enough that his record might pass. Dr. Holt calls this the trick of the scoundrel: redefine the terms instead of repenting of the transgression. Jesus answered by widening the category until no one could shrink it again.
No — and that is the sermon's central move. The lawyer's summary of the law is the sum of the Ten Commandments; the Westminster Shorter Catechism (Q. 42) gives the very same summary of the moral law. Perfect obedience would indeed inherit life, but "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23, NKJV) — none of us has loved God with all our heart for a single hour. Dr. Holt argues that Jesus' answer is a diagnosis, not a prescription: it corners the lawyer inside his own standard. Eternal life comes not by fulfilling the law but by faith in the One who did — Christ living the life we should have lived and dying the death we should have died.
The text never explains their motives, and Dr. Holt declines to invent excuses for them. What the parable stresses is who they were: the priest was the man whose whole vocation dealt in intercession, Scripture, and mercy; the Levite served in the worship of God — the era's pastor and worship leader, as Holt puts it. Both saw the dying man; both crossed to the other side. The sting is that the most religious men in the story were not the most merciful. Religious office, biblical knowledge, and public devotion are no guarantee of a heart that stops on the road.
Because the phrase "Good Samaritan" was a contradiction in terms for Jesus' hearers. Samaritans were regarded as turncoats — a people of mixed ancestry and corrupted worship, with a rival temple on their own mountain. Dr. Holt notes that the Pharisees' lowest insult for Jesus Himself was to say that He was a Samaritan and had a demon. By making the Samaritan the one who showed mercy — after the priest and the Levite failed — Jesus exposed the lawyer's prejudice, severed neighbor-love from ethnicity and religious standing, and forced him to confess that the true neighbor was "he who showed mercy on him" (Luke 10:37, NKJV).
In his commentary on the Gospels, John Calvin rejected the old allegorical reading of this parable — the interpretation that made the Samaritan a figure of Christ and turned each detail of the story into a hidden symbol — arguing that such ingenuity strays from the parable’s plain intent. Calvin taught that the word "neighbor" extends to every human being without exception, because the whole human race shares a common bond and bears God's image; even a stranger, even an enemy, therefore has a claim on our mercy. Dr. Holt's exposition lands in the same place: the parable is not a code to crack but a command to obey, addressed to everyone who has received mercy.
Everyone. Jesus never answers the lawyer's question as asked; He reverses it, asking which of the three men "was neighbor to him who fell among the thieves" (Luke 10:36, NKJV) — turning the question of whom he must love into the question of what kind of man he is. Dr. Holt draws one careful distinction: not everyone is your brother in Christ — Scripture reserves that family language for fellow believers — but everyone is your neighbor. "He who despises his neighbor sins" (Proverbs 14:21, NKJV). There is no ethnic, social, moral, or political filter that removes a person from the reach of the second great commandment.
It means showing concrete, costly mercy to whoever God providentially places in your path — especially across the lines you would rather not cross. The Samaritan's mercy was not sentiment: bandages, oil and wine, his own animal, his own money, and an open-ended promise to the innkeeper. Dr. Holt's modern recasting makes the point sharper: when you are bleeding on the pavement, you do not care how many nose rings your rescuer has — you care that he stopped. The command does not earn salvation; it flows from salvation. Those gathered up by grace become the kind of people who stop.
It is one of Scripture's most persistent themes. Dr. Holt observes that there are few issues as near to the heart of God as the care and provision of the broken — the widow, the orphan, the hurting, the man lying on the street. He strings the witnesses together: "He who has pity on the poor lends to the LORD" (Proverbs 19:17, NKJV); whoever shuts his ear to the cry of the poor will himself cry out unanswered (Proverbs 21:13); and the apostle's piercing question — if anyone has this world's goods, sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart, how does the love of God abide in him (1 John 3:17)? Open the Bible almost anywhere, Holt says, and the premise repeats.
Not by allegory but by the law. The parable sits inside a conversation about inheriting eternal life, and Jesus' first answer — keep the law perfectly — exposes the fact that no one can. Grace, Dr. Holt observes, was simply not in the lawyer's vocabulary. The gospel enters at exactly that point: we were once not merely wounded on the roadside but dead — rebels holding a debt we could not repay — and God came into our brokenness in Christ, who lived the life we should have lived and died the death we should have died. Everyone the parable indicts, the gospel invites. And those who have received such mercy are sent out to show it.
1. The Law Demands Everything — and That Is the Point
When the lawyer summarizes the law — love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and your neighbor as yourself — Jesus tells him, "You have answered rightly; do this and you will live" (Luke 10:28, NKJV). Dr. Holt presses what that answer actually means. This is the summary of the Ten Commandments, the whole moral law of God — the same summary the Westminster Shorter Catechism gives in Q. 42. And the offer is real: perfect, unbroken obedience would inherit eternal life. But that is precisely the problem. None of us has loved God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind for a single hour, a single day, a single breath of our lives; none of us loved our neighbor last week the way we loved ourselves. Reformed theology has long taught that the law, holy and good in itself, functions here as diagnosis: it promises life on terms no fallen sinner can meet, and so it shuts every mouth and drives us not to self-improvement but to a Substitute. Jesus' answer is not mockery. It is mercy in the form of a mirror.
2. Self-Justification Always Plays with Semantics
The hinge of the passage is Luke's editorial phrase: the lawyer, "wanting to justify himself," asked, "And who is my neighbor?" (Luke 10:29, NKJV). Dr. Holt observes that the man almost certainly knew he had not loved everyone as himself — but instead of confessing that failure as condemning sin, he did what we all do when the law corners us: he messed with the semantics, trying to shrink "neighbor" down to a manageable circle of people like himself. Holt calls this the trick of the scoundrel — redefining the terms rather than repenting of the transgression. It is the anatomy of every works-based religion: lower the standard until your record clears it. The gospel moves in exactly the opposite direction. Justification is not a verdict we massage out of the evidence but one God freely declares over sinners who trust in Christ — pardoned and accepted as righteous for His sake alone. That is why grace, a word Dr. Holt notes was missing from this lawyer's vocabulary, is the only door out of the parable.
3. Grace Arrives from the Least Likely Direction
Dr. Holt reconstructs the shock this story delivered to its first hearers. The road from Jerusalem to Jericho was so dangerous it had been nicknamed the way of blood. The two men best positioned to help — a priest and a Levite, the era's pastor and worship leader — both saw the dying man and passed by on the other side. Then came a Samaritan: a member of the one people group a first-century Jew despised most, so despised that the Pharisees' lowest insult for Jesus Himself was to call Him a Samaritan. Yet this outsider had compassion — he bandaged the man's wounds, poured on oil and wine, gave up his own animal, paid the innkeeper two denarii, and left an open account for whatever more was needed. Mercy in this parable is concrete, costly, and utterly unconcerned with the boundary lines the religious culture had drawn. Providence had placed a dying man in his path, and he crossed every line his upbringing had taught him in order to show the grace the moment required.
4. Mercy Has No Worthiness Test — Because Grace Never Did
The sermon's sharpest application is aimed at Christian selectivity. Believers, Dr. Holt notes, are often among the most generous people in any room — the danger is that we portion out that generosity by whether the recipient reaches our standard of worthiness. So he asks the leveling questions: Was anyone in the parable worthy of the grace shown? Was anyone worthy of the grace Christ Himself dispensed? Are you worthy of the grace by which you sit and breathe right now? If God doled out grace only to those who warranted it, none would receive it. We were not merely poor; we were dead — rebels holding a debt we could not repay — and into that darkness came great light. This is sovereign, undeserved mercy, and it defines the mercy we owe. Not everyone is your brother in Christ, Holt carefully distinguishes, but everyone is your neighbor; and those who live by mercy received are the ones sent out with the words, "Go and do likewise" (Luke 10:37, NKJV).
About The Speaker: Dr. Toby Holt serves as the third President of New Geneva Theological Seminary (Colorado Springs, CO), founded 1993. An expository preacher with over 1.9 million sermon downloads on SermonAudio.com, Dr. Holt brings over 17 years of pastoral experience to his verse-by-verse Bible teaching. New Geneva offers fully online, Westminster Confessional theological education — M.Div., Th.M., D.Min., and other degrees.
Summary. Dr. Toby Holt expounds Luke 10:25–37, where a lawyer tests Jesus with the question of how to inherit eternal life and, wanting to justify himself, asks who his neighbor is. Holt shows that the lawyer's own summary of the law — total love for God and neighbor — condemns every one of us, since salvation cannot be earned by law-keeping but comes by grace through faith in Christ. Walking through the parable, he contrasts the priest and the Levite who pass by with the despised Samaritan who shows costly mercy, and warns against portioning out grace only to those we judge worthy. The sermon closes with Scripture's persistent call to care for the broken: everyone is your neighbor, so go and do likewise.
In Luke 10, Jesus told a parable about the Good Samaritan. Specifically, he told the story of one man's willingness to come to another man's aid, even after several more likely sources of help had passed him by. What is this parable all about, and how does it apply to us? This will be the focus of today's study. In today's text, we're going to read about a man who's in dire need. A man whose very life hangs in the balance and in his hour of greatest need, two men are going to draw near to him. And both of these men, they have the ability, they have the office, they have the responsibility to assist. And yet, both these individuals will pass him by. Fortunately, as we're going to see, that's not the end of the story because a third man, a third man is going to come by. And this guy, he would be the least likely candidate of all of them to assist. And yet, He's going to be the one.
And we'll show the hurting man the grace that he needs and the hour that he needs it. All right, let's pick up the story now as we return to verses 25 and 26. And behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tested him, saying, teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? It's an interesting way to phrase it. What shall I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus said to him, well, what is written in the law?
Verse 26. What's written in the law? What is your reading of it? All right. Today's text is part of a lengthier address that Jesus is making in Luke 10. In this address, which is given in a region called Bethany, Jesus has been teaching just this master class of theology. He's been teaching with the wisdom of God, not of man. With that said, look what happened. Look what happened when he stops to catch his breath for a minute. We see this phrase in verse 25, and behold, behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tested him. Have you never had a conversation or debate or maybe an argument with someone? And as you're discussing and debating, you begin to realize something. I'm talking and you're talking and we're all talking together, but you're not really paying attention to what I'm saying. You're sitting there going back and forth, maybe done it for two minutes, maybe for two hours, but at a certain point you say, I don't think you're listening to me. The individual you're talking to is just readying their next rhetorical IED to drop into the conversation. They're just readying the next thing that they're going to say. That's what we see here. He's been waiting.
He sees his moment and he takes it and he stands up. And when you stood up in this context,
you stand up not to ask a question that you really want to learn from. You do that, you sit at the feet of the individual. You stand up, you're proclaiming that you have some authority. Him standing up is not incidental to the text. So he stands up. Verse 25. And what we see here is a question that at first glance, it seems kind of innocuous. Teacher, now tell me, what shall we do to inherit eternal life? Now at face value, that's the most important question asked of the most authoritative source that you could ever ask it of on the one hand that question is reasonable how do I receive eternal life he noticed he doesn't ask how do I be saved because he didn't see anything you really need to be saved from so the question is not phrased quite right but at the end of the day it's a reasonable questions what I have to do to inherit eternal life it seems like a reasonable question however don't forget this guy was a lawyer so his question was loaded this is an admiral akbar special this is a trap however some of you get that. However, Jesus had been parrying traps his entire ministry. The Pharisees, the scribes, the elders, Dear heavens, whenever he encountered any of these people, they had questions like this.
They were trying to trap him and engage him. And so Jesus, you know what? He had his own rhetorical device too. It was called answering a question with a question. And so he asked this man, he says, tell me, tell me, what does the Bible say? What's written in the law? He answers the question with a question. Let's see what the lawyer comes back with. Verse 27, and so he answered, and he said, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. So this is his answer.
And Jesus, in verse 28, said to him, you've answered rightly. Good job. You've been catechized well. You've been answered rightly. You do that, everything you just said there, you'll live. But, verse 29, but this man, wanting to justify himself, wanting to justify himself, said to Jesus, so who's my neighbor? Who's my neighbor? All right so in verse 26 Jesus asked the man to tell him what does the law say you are a lawyer you stood up here in the teaching you took on the position of authority you're the lawyer you want to know how do you inherit eternal life what does the law say mr lawyer what does the law say and again this man had been categorized he knew the joshima and so he comes up with the response it's the right response in a sense. It's incomplete, but it's right. His answer is a combination of texts that you actually find in Deuteronomy and Leviticus. And he says, basically, you shall love your God with heart, mind, soul, strength, all of it, all of it, all of it. And you shall also love your neighbor as yourself. Now, what did Jesus throw back? Well, in verse 28, Jesus says, bingo.
He says, you got it. You have got it. You do everything you just said, you'll live. What did you just say? Love God with all your heart, mind, soul, strength, all of it, all of it, all of it. Do that and love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus says, if you do that, because that's a summary of the Ten Commandments. You understand that? That's a summary of the Ten Commandments. That's a summary of the moral law. And Jesus says, if you keep the moral law the way you just said, yeah, amen,
you're in. If you keep all the commandments perfectly by loving God with all your being, all of it, all of it, all of it, all of it. And if you love your neighbor with just this perfect, unbroken string of grace and affection you love him as much as you love yourself. You do that, yeah, then you'll get eternal life now most of us most of us would have understood the problem here most of us would understand the problem here because here's the thing at best our track record of loving God and loving our neighbor it's kind of spotty at best at absolute best calling it spotty is the nicest word I can come up with. If the standard to hit is to love God with all your heart, mind, soul, body, and strength, did you do that last week? No, no, you didn't do that. You didn't do that. None of us have done that in a single hour, day, or breath of our lives. Have we loved God with all of our soul and body and strength and the like? How about your neighbor last week? Your neighbor, your coworker, guy down the street, guy you saw on the TV, guy at Walmart, what happened?
You love him as you loved yourself? Well, again, no. Being introspective here this morning, we can kind of get that and go, well, hold the phone here. If that's the ticket, if that's the means, if that's the button I've got to push to rock it into God's golden shores, then I can't because I'm not that guy. I haven't done this. If eternal life is a function of loving God and loving my neighbor without any sin, without any selfishness whatsoever, if eternal life is attained by keeping God's law with all my heart, soul, strength, and like, then I guess I will not inherit eternal life.
That's the reasonable conclusion. you and I haven't fulfilled the law's demands, and neither have the lawyer, and yet this guy, this guy doesn't get it. you and I might understand, oh, wait a second, I think I'm kind of boxed in by my own answer about how to inherit eternal life. I don't think I've done all that perfectly. you and I might see that, but not this guy, not this lawyer, this individual.
This guy doesn't see a problem. This guy doesn't see the contradiction. This guy didn't grasp the most basic and essential part of the Gospel message, which is this, that salvation cannot be found in keeping the law because all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. This guy didn't understand that because the word grace, which is the basis for how you and I understand our being saved, we know we've fallen short.
We know we don't measure up. And so what's our means of salvation? How do we inherit eternal life? Well, not by fulfilling the law completely, but rather by trusting in He who did, by having faith in Jesus Christ, that Christ's intercession, that His living the life that we should have lived, that His dying the death that we should have died, that He, through our faith in Him, that's the means by which we have hope.
That's the means by which we inherit eternal salvation. It's not a function of works. It's not a function of deeds. It's not a function of merit. It's a function of grace. Grace was not in this guy's lexicon. Grace wasn't in this guy's vocabulary. And to prove he didn't get it, they didn't have an understanding of grace, just look what verse 29 said. He hears all that Jesus just said, and he probably hears the tone of voice with which Jesus said it.
He gets all that firsthand from God himself, looking God in the eyeball, and look what happens in verse 29. Then, wanting to justify himself, wanting to justify himself, He says, who is my neighbor? Who is my neighbor? This guy, I think he knew that he hadn't loved everyone as he loved himself. I think he knew that. But instead of recognizing that that jerkiness was a condemning sin, he did what we all do when we're trying to justify ourselves. He messed with the semantics.
Boy, that's the trick of the scoundrel, isn't it? You remember a certain politician 25 years ago trying to redefine what the word is means? Is doesn't mean is. You remember this? It's the trick of the scoundrel when we do this. We start playing with semantics, and that's what he does. Jesus corners him. Love your neighbor as yourself, and the guy stops. He goes, all right, all right, all right. Who's my neighbor? Who's my neighbor? Well, Jesus is ready with the answer. Let's look at verses 30 through 35. Verse 30. Then Jesus answered and said, a certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among thieves who stripped him of his clothing, who wounded him
and departed, left him half dead. Now by chance, a certain priest came down that road, and when he saw him, he passed by onto the other side. Likewise, a Levite, when he arrived at the place, he came and He looked, and then he passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. And so he went to him, and he bandaged his wounds, and he poured on oil and wine and he set him on His own animal. Then he brought him to an inn and he took care of him. And then on the next day when he departed, he took out two denarii. He gave them to the innkeeper and he said to him, take care of this man.
Whatever more you spend when I come again, I will repay you. You know, back in Christ's day there was a highway that had been named the way of blood. The way of blood. Now why do you think it was called that? Well, it's called the Way of Blood because of all those folks who'd pour out their lifeblood upon it. It was the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, which is really not that big a distance.
I don't know, maybe 17 miles or so, but it's pretty rugged. Pretty rugged. What would happen is you can come around corners and bends and rocks and the like, and you could be ambushed. You could be walking along with your wares and your donkey and your great plans for the future, and then, you know, 10 seconds later, you're half dead. Now, what do we know about this guy? Do we know anything?
Is this a good man? I don't know. Is he a bad guy? I really don't know. Is he a graduate of BLC University, Bad Life Choice University? Did he make some bad decisions to put himself in this bind? I don't know. I don't know if he was good, bad, stupid, smart. I have no idea. What I do know is he's going from A to B, and before he gets to B, he's beaten, and He's left for dead.
Now, what if, what if you went up and you told this? Dying man, this encouraging news. And he said, all right, you look like you're in rough shape, but here's the good news. Any moment, any moment, the priest is coming. Any moment, the priest is going to come around the bend. Any moment, the man who is as close to God as we have in our jewish culture, any moment, the man who intercedes with God, any moment, the man who spends all his time reading the Holy Writ, any moment, the individual whose very job description is supposed to reek with charity and mercy and grace and forbearance.
Any moment, that guy, he's coming. Good news. If you're sitting there just sprawled out, you say, all right, yay, the priest. Well, then what happens? What happens here? Well, the priest shows up, and he goes right on by. Now, surely, tell me, the most religious people are the most merciful. Tell me that's the case. Surely, the people like this priest whose vocation or office or Scripture or training should have inclined them to mercy would be the most merciful were those who were down on their luck, so to speak.
Well, at least not in the case of the priest. Now, maybe he's just a bad egg. I mean, there's bad priests, bad pastors, there's bad individuals in these roles, so maybe that's the case. Well, the second man came along. And the second man was a Levite. Now, all priests are Levites. Okay, that's the priestly tribe. All priests are Levites, but not all Levites are priests. The Levites often were the choir, so to speak.
They're the praise singers, the worship leader. We can consider this guy the worship leader. You had the Old Testament equivalent of the pastor, and now you have the worship leader, so to speak, roll on in to encounter this man. And he encounters this man. The Levite encounters this man. On the one hand, this guy's in terrible shape, but the pastor and the worship leader, the priest and the Levite, both showed up.
But, but, then they both did the exact same thing. They crossed the other side, and they passed on by. Fortunately, fortunately, though, that's not the end of this guy's story. In verse 33, there's a third man, a man that we refer to as the Good Samaritan.
Why is that an ironic phrase? Well, if you had tried to use that phrase in Old Testament Israel, you would have been corrected before the syllables were out of your mouth. Because in Old Testament Israel, there were no Good Samaritans. In Old Testament Israel, the idea, just the thought of putting those words together, the Good Samaritan, that was a non-starter. You would rather hang out with a Midianite, with a Babylonian, with an Assyrian than a Samaritan.
Why? Because Samaritans were turncoats. Because Samaritans didn't share your ancestry completely. Because Samaritans were mixed in terms of their ethnic background, were very mixed with regards to their faith. They had their own mountain, their own temple where they worshipped God. They had just enough of Israel's history to dwell and walk amongst you, and yet they were the other. They were the other. You know when the Pharisees wanted to accuse Jesus? You know when they wanted a name call him?
You know what they would say? The lowest insult that they had when they hurled it at Jesus was to call him a Samaritan. In fact, one time they used two words together. They say he's a Samaritan and he has a demon because they couldn't go any worse than that. So that's the context by which this man is laying here. The priest and the Levite, the pastor, the worship leader, walked by and then, just as his five ounces of lifeblood are about to ooze from his veins onto the way of blood, a third man comes along and it's the least likely man in the entire culture, in the entire society in a hundred mile radius.
It's a Samaritan. And yet, what we see in verse 33 is that this least likely candidate does the one thing that the most likely candidates didn't do. And that was to demonstrate grace in the moment that this man needed. And then, not only to demonstrate the grace of, hey, how you doing? Could I call somebody? Not just to do that, but to bind him up, to put him on his own horse, which only exacerbated the risk that he himself was going to get mugged or beaten. Puts this guy on his own horse, takes him to an inn, spends his own money, his own money to house him, and then tells innkeeper if it takes longer, if he's going to be here for a while and he's in pretty bad shape, I'll pay whatever the bill is. It's not just a function of who it was that showed up to do what he did. It's a function of what he did.
He gave everything. He gave the equivalent of his life savings, so to speak, to look out after this individual. This man had every reason to treat this Jew poorly, based on the interactions that their two cultures had. And yet, he overcame whatever history or prejudices he probably had, inculcated by growing up in this culture, he overcame whatever history or prejudices he had to do the right thing, to assist the dying man who God had put providentially in his path that day. And that is the picture. That's the picture that Christ has in mind when he looks at the lawyer, when he looks at the religious elite. He says, all right, you, tell me who, of these three individuals in this parable, who is this man's neighbor? You ask me who's your neighbor? Who is this man's neighbor? Let's look at verses 36 and 37, our final verses.
So verse 36, Jesus, again, he talks this lower, and he says, which of these three do you think was neighbor to him who fell among the thieves? And the man said, He who showed mercy upon him. And Jesus said, Absolutely. You go and do likewise. You go and do likewise. Before we go any further, let me recast today's parable a little bit. For the sake of argument, let's say that you're in a car crash in, I don't know, in New Orleans.
I know that's impossible because everyone drives so safe there. Far-fetched, I know, but let's roll with this. Let's say you're in a car crash in New Orleans, you're in a crash, and you're bleeding out there in the street. Now, if you're in a car crash and you're bleeding out in the street anywhere, let alone in New Orleans, what sound do you want to hear? What sound do you want to hear? Well, I know we have an EMT here somewhere.
I know we've got folks who are in medical training. You probably want to hear an ambulance. You're in a car crash. You're losing your lifeblood there on the street. You probably want to hear an ambulance. Now, let's say you're sitting there in New Orleans on the street and you hear the ambulance, but the ambulance, it just goes flying on by, driving on by. Well, you're thinking to yourself, oh my, good golly.
This is the worst. I can't believe it. Here I am. I'm dying and the ambulance just went on by. Now, let's say while you're contemplating this just terrible turn of events that you hear another sound. It's the sound of singing. It's the sound not only of singing, but of a choir. It's a church choir and a church bus, and they're singing out the windows, and you hear that, and you say, oh, praise be.
Surely, surely these devout, God-loving individuals will come to my aid, surely. Well, if the narrative follows what we saw in today's parable, the bus keeps on driving. Now your wit's in. Now you're really frustrated. You think this is it. I'm out of hope, but I'm out of time. Now, just as you're thinking that last thought, let's say again, let's say a Chevy Nova. I hope no one owns a Chevy Nova here.
A Chevy Nova drives up, slows down, and the guy hops out of that Chevy Nova. And let's say this guy, he's got eight nose rings and 80 tattoos, and he begins to help you. And he takes off his shirt and fashion is in a tourniquet. He doesn't have much, but he gives what he has and his time and supplies to help you and then to take you and escort you to a place where you can be treated.
If someone were to ask you in that moment, who is your neighbor? You'd probably say the guy who stopped to help. The guy who showed mercy. You know, if you're dying on the street, you don't care how many nose rings your EMT has. What you care about is his heart, his willingness to come to your aid. That's your neighbor in that moment. That's the neighbor you want for yourself, and that's the neighbor you want to be to others.
Well, that's the same answer the lawyer ultimately came to in verse 37. He wasn't there at the start, but he ultimately came there. So which of these three do you think was neighbor to him who fell among the thieves? And this man answered. He said, he who showed mercy on him. Mercy was probably not a word that came out of this guy's lips very often. But he recognized it was true. He who showed mercy to him.
And then Jesus said, go and do likewise. What you have heard and what your heart has received, go repeat. Because there's going to be circumstances that will require you and test you. You think you tested me? There's going to be circumstances in your life, maybe right down the street from you, well, your faith in these principles, dear lawyer, dear sir, are going to be tested, just as you've attempted to test me.
And when that happens, when you're put to the test, go and do likewise. Do what you are called to do by the whole ethos of Scripture, by the demonstration of Christ himself, go and do likewise. You know, as Christians, we like to think of ourselves as good neighbors, and generally speaking, it's true. Generally speaking, my experience is that it's true. Many of the Christians that I've met and encountered throughout my ministerial life, throughout my life in general, are some of the most generous, gracious individuals I've ever encountered in any walk of life or situation.
Many Christians, including those in our body, are just exceptionally generous and gracious and kind and forbearing and merciful to those who are in need. What we need to watch out for is when we're selective in how we portion out that generosity. By whether the recipient of grace reaches up to our standard of what makes him worthy of that grace. Was there anyone worthy of the grace that we see in today's parable?
Was there anyone worthy of the grace that Christ himself regularly dispensed, regularly gave out in his walk? Was anyone worthy of it? No. Are you worthy of the grace by which you sit there and breathe right now? No. Are we worthy of the grace by which God looked down on us as rebels
and determined to save us and pardon us by giving that which is the most precious to himself for our souls. Are we worthy of that? No. If God was to dole out grace on the basis of who is worthy of it, who warrants it, who stacks up, who didn't attend bad life choice university, who's living their life the way I think they should live it, if God doled out his grace only to those who hit that threshold, there'd be none who would receive it.
So we have to be careful, because I know we look at individuals at Walmart, on the beach, in any different encounters, sometimes even in church circles, and we say, ah, that person, these other people I can get, not that person. We apply a selectivity and a threshold to the pouring out of our grace that Scripture cannot and does not support, and which you never once see Jesus model. With our closing remaining time, let me return to a verse I read in our call to worship this morning. In 1 John 3, Apostle John asked this familiar question. He said, whoever has this world's goods and sees his brother in need, whoever has this world's goods and sees his brother in need and shuts up his heart from him, how then, how, how does the love of God abide in him? There are few issues as near and dear to the heart of God as the care and the provision of the broken.
Few issues as near and dear to the heart of God as the care and provision of the broken, the widows, the orphans, the hurting, the desperate, the man lying on the street. There are few issues as near and dear to God's heart as our call to reflect the grace of Christ into the environments where hurting people are, and sometimes they come into our midst. And throughout its pages, I could pick any book of Scripture.
If it's longer than three pages, I'll find multiple verses that apply to this. I'll pick one. The book of Proverbs has verse after verse that speaks to this very same issue. Proverbs 14 and 21. Whoever despises his neighbor is a sinner. Now, who's your neighbor? What did we just see in the text? Everybody. Not everyone is your brother in Christ. There is a distinction. Not everyone is your brother in Christ, but everyone is your neighbor.
And so what we see in Proverbs 14 and 21, whoever despises his neighbor despises him as a sinner. But blessed is he who is generous to the poor. Ten verses later, Proverbs 14, 31. Whoever oppresses a poor man insults his maker. He who is generous to the needy honors him. Proverbs 19, 17. He who has pity on the poor lends to the Lord. Can you imagine doing such a thing? When you have pity to the poor, you lend to the Lord and he will pay back.
God will pay back what he has given. Proverbs 21.13, whoever closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself call out and not be answered. Proverbs 22.9, whoever has a bountiful eye will be blessed, for he shares his bread with the poor. Proverbs 28.27, whoever gives to the poor will not want, but he who hides his eye will get many a curse. I could go on. That's six, seven verses just out of Proverbs.
How many books are there in the Bible? 66. Read a few pages. Flip around. You'll see the same premise again and again and again. Throughout Scripture, throughout the whole of Scripture, Old Testament, New Testament, God emphasizes His love and His care and His provision and His charity
and His grace to those who are broken, to those who are hurting and in need. And you know what? I am glad God loves those sort of folks because I am one of them, and so are you. I'm glad that God loves these sort of folks because I've been poor and hurting and broken, and I don't want the God of the scribes and the Pharisees to show up when I'm in that estate. I don't want a God who tells me I got to get with the program before I'm a candidate for grace. I don't want a God who only loves the greater, the mighty, or the perfect, because I'll never be any of those things, and neither will you.
I want a God who gathers me up when I'm broken and weak, when I'm lying in a pool of my own blood, so to speak. Once upon a time, you and I were not just poor, we were dead. Once upon a time, you and I were not righteous, we were rebellious. Once upon a time there was a debt we could not repay, there was a hole we could not fill. And yet into our circumstances, into that hurt, into the crucible of our pain came great light.
This morning God is asking us the same question He asked this individual here in Luke 10. Who is my neighbor? When you answer that question what will you then do? We show mercy. Let's pray.
Continue the verse-by-verse series.
