The Gospel of Luke 10:25-37 The Good Samaritan

Luke 10 25 to 37 that Randy read for us here. This is the well-known parable of the Good Samaritan and I've been kind of excited to take a look at this because I think it's one of those parables that is at least partially misunderstood. But I think there's some exciting things for us to examine today as we continue investigating Jesus. This lawyer, an expert in the law of Moses basically, will ask Jesus two questions. And Jesus' response to the second question, rather than speaking to it directly, he tells the parable of the Good Samaritan.

This is unique to the Gospel of Luke. One of the reasons why I was interested in and excited about embarking on a study of Luke is that Luke has so much original material, and this is one of them. It's only in the Gospel of Luke, it's not in the other Gospels. While this parable is widely known, it's also widely misunderstood. People, if they know about it, frequently draw the wrong conclusion. So we'll seek here to truly understand what Jesus is trying to say in this parable.

So, it starts off with, in Luke 10.25, and a lawyer stood up and put him to the test, saying, Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? So, we want to find out who is this guy who is asking this question. This man is an expert in the law, likely a scribe. Lawyer and scribe are generally synonyms. His question tells us that he is also likely aligned with the Pharisees. Why do we say that?

The Sadducees don't believe in a resurrection at all. They don't believe in a Messiah. They don't believe in a coming messianic kingdom. They don't believe in any of that, so inheriting an eternal life would be a non-issue for a Sadducee. So this guy is of the Pharisee persuasion, and it's also why you would see the term scribe and Pharisee frequently together, in the same sentence, in the same grouping.

So the Jews like to debate and discuss fine details of the law, but they also like to make summary statements about the law, and this is an example of that kind of thing. How can we summarize the law after going into fine detail of pulling apart all the little different pieces here? Now, Judaism, we have to say, loved conflicted teachings. They would embrace two different teachings. There were some who taught no Jew would go to hell. Of course, the Sadducees taught that there was no such thing as hell, right?

There were also some who liked to ask what they must do to be sure of eternal life. And that is among the Pharisees. Living eternally with the Messiah is what they would think of as eternal life. Entrance into the messianic kingdom. So this expert in the law asked Jesus the question that was often actually asked to many rabbis. This was not an uncommon question. What shall I do to inherit eternal life? It was actually a fairly common question asked only among Pharisee persuaded people.

This was not just an innocent and honest question, however, because this man asked it to test Jesus. It doesn't mean that he was extremely aggressive in his intent. But he did want to kind of pick apart, you know, all right, does Jesus agree with the main thinking here or not? He did call Jesus a teacher, and so far so good.

It meant that he was a teacher, a rabbi, that's what rabbi means, teacher, among the people of Israel. There was a set of traditions regarding rabbis and their disciples and also what others could do. One of the things we brought up, for example, is that if someone had a rabbi over as a house guest for dinner, it was permissible to come in into the house without asking, to come into the house and ask the rabbi questions during the meal. For us, we would say that's profoundly rude, and we'd probably want to push somebody out or even call 911. But that was a part of the traditions that they had. The rabbis had things that they had to do as rabbis. The disciples had rules for them. And then other people also had rules.

Those traditions allowed others to ask the rabbi questions and details about the law without necessarily being a disciple. This man apparently did not see Jesus, however, as the Messiah or deity. He addressed him as teacher, which was respectful, but it didn't recognize who Jesus really was. The rich young ruler, as we go farther on in the Gospel of Luke, will ask a similar question.

In Luke 18.18, the ruler questioned him saying, good teacher, and add the good onto it, right? What shall I do to inherit eternal life? So it was a fairly commonly asked question. And of course, for a Jew, there's always something to do, right? Always something to do.

In Luke 10.26, it says, And he said to him, What is written in the law? How does it read to you?

So Jesus, rather than answering his question, turns it around to him. After all, this man is an expert in the law, and he should have an answer himself. So he turns around and asks the man the question that was asked of him, basically. What does the law say? In doing this, Jesus puts himself in the position of evaluating the man's answer, rather than the man evaluating Jesus' answer. He was, after all, a lawyer. He ought to have an opinion on this. A lawyer in the first century Jewish sense.

In Luke 10.27 it says, and he answered, you shall 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 your neighbor as yourself. So he put that all together.

We find most of that brought out of Deuteronomy 6.5, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might, all your mind being added from elsewhere apparently.

Leviticus 19.17.18 says, you shall not hate your fellow countrymen in your heart, you may surely reprove your neighbor, but shall not incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord."

So these two commands this man had put together, as this really summarizes everything, everything in relationship to God, everything in relationship to my neighbor. Jesus himself actually had given this very same answer. In other contexts, Matthew 22 and Mark 12 record that Jesus gave this very same answer that this man here had. So, so far so good. The motivation for all of the Law of Moses is given in this summary.

Love for the Lord and loving the fellow man. That describes everything that's given in the Law in detail. Now, the Law, of course, is 613 Different individual statutes, 365 of them, things not to do, right? But this gives the summary motivation for all these things, that you love the Lord and that you love your fellow man.

The first part deals with a Jew's relationship to God, and the second part deals with a Jew's relationship with other Jews and aliens living among them. That was one that we'll take particular note of here. The sequence also gives a proper priority. It is most important, priority-wise, to love the Lord first, and then relationship with other people will be dealt with. The Lord first, second with other people. So, the question is, is this for us? Do we take these things out of Deuteronomy and Leviticus? Is this for us? Are we in the body of Christ to do this? Are we to abide by these points of the law of Moses? No. Not one law. Not one law.

We love because He first loved us. Our love is responsive to His. Our love is responsive to His. 1 John 4.19 He showed His love by dying for us while we were yet sinners. Christ died for us. He showed His love by dying for us. He took the initiative to love. That very same death, Christ's death on the cross by which we were also crucified with Him, separated us from the law of Moses and any principle of law and joined us to Christ. and joined us to Christ.

So here's Luke 10, 28, and he said to him, you have answered correctly. Do this and you will live. Wink, wink. Why do I say wink, wink? Because, yeah, do this and you'll live. Is he going to do it? Can he do it? Ah, that's a different question. This is impossible of fulfillment.

Jesus did not come to abolish the law of Moses for the ethnic Jews living in the land of Israel at that time. John 7.19, however, is Jesus' statement about how well are they doing with this.

John 7.19, did not Moses give you the law, and yet, how many of you?

None of you carries out the law. None of you. Not some small percentage, not just a handful. None. None of you carries out the law. Jesus' words, do this and you will live, were said in recognition that nobody is going to do this fully, wholeheartedly, completely, with all their heart, soul, and strength. Not going to happen. Good luck with that, right? Good luck with that. The law of Moses had to be lived out from the heart with total perfection.

As James 2.10 says, breaking even one law breaks the whole thing. Someone who decides, I'm going to live by the Ten Commandments, is deciding to break the other 603 laws. You cannot just pick one, or two, or ten, or twelve, or any other number. The whole thing.

Plus, the Jews had to come up with many more laws, both to add to, and take away from the law of Moses as given by God as if all the extras and loopholes would help and that's exactly what this fellow here is going to look for he's looking for a loophole and we're going to see what his loophole is remember Jesus said none of you carries out the law none of you by what you add and by what you take away trying Trying to live out the law makes it only worse.

Here's Luke 10 29, but wishing to justify himself, ah, now we get to see a little bit of what's going on here. Wishing to justify himself, he said to Jesus, and who is my neighbor? The man wanted to justify himself. Now justify means what? Justify means to declare righteous. So he wanted to declare himself righteous before God and before other people. He wanted to declare himself righteous before God and other people.

And that's why he asked the question, now, who is my neighbor? Because I got certain people that are on the list of neighbors, and I got others that are off the list of neighbors. And Jesus knows that. Jesus knows that. So he asked, who is my neighbor? With the word neighbor, that particular word for neighbor means a near neighbor. Who is my near neighbor that I have to love, and who is off the list?

That's the question he's asking. His question is intended to exclude those that were kept intentionally at a distance. The Gentiles, for example. I don't have to love Gentiles. The Samaritans, I don't have to love Samaritans, those blankety blank people, right? And women, and tax collectors, especially the Roman tax collectors, just awful. I don't have to love any of those. So Jesus, he doesn't directly answer his question, he begins telling a parable.

So Jesus replied, it was Luke 10.30, and said, a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among robbers. And they stripped him and beat him and went away leaving him half dead. Now, question. What ethnicity or social class is this man that fell among robbers?

We don't know. And that's intentional. That's intentional. We don't know. But we know that this kind of occurrence was very common. Very common. It happened a lot. What Jesus describes in verse 30 was real common in New Testament times. where people would be going back and forth on this road. Steep road, steep terrain, rough terrain.

Before and after the feast, people would travel in large numbers and the thieves didn't have much opportunity during those times because people were traveling in large groups and there was a constant flow of people before and after the feast. on this road between Jericho and Jerusalem. Many of the Jews, whether they lived in Jericho or whether they lived up in Galilee, would come down the Jordan River Valley and then come up this road. And so before and after the feast, there would be a large number of people traveling together. But between those times, you would have people traveling, sometimes one person at a time, small group, and then people were more vulnerable. The travelers going from Jericho to Jerusalem back were traveling often alone or in small groups. You can see a sampling of the terrain and little windy road and little places where you got corners and turns and overhanging rocks to hide under. Boy, it was a place for the thieves to take advantage of people who were vulnerable.

Here's another sample of the old Roman road between Jerusalem and Jericho. Desolate terrain, real rough, steep. Steep. Here's the map of the area showing Jerusalem and Jericho. Now, you can draw a direct line between Jerusalem and Jericho, but the terrain doesn't do that, right? The terrain there and the roadways, all curvy and twisty and steep. Everything is steep. The roadway went along a deep ravine and so it went uphill steep in many places and downhill steep in many places.

Going from Jerusalem to Jericho was a drop of about 3,300 feet in about 12 miles of twisting, winding roadway. So this is treacherous terrain. And not counting breaks, it might take a person in fairly good condition about six and a half hours to climb from Jericho up to Jerusalem. So that was quite a climb.

One thing to point out is Jesus' parables were often typical things, things that people saw, common things. They were not rare or miraculous, typically, or fanciful. Jesus does not, for example, tell things like Aesop's fables, which use fabricated events and individuals and entities. such as the tortoise and the hare. That's obviously a fabricated story to tell a point. Jesus didn't tell parables like that. He told things that were fairly typical and common.

Here's Luke 10.31, and by chance a priest was going down on that road and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. Okay.

The priests were all descended from Moses' brother Aaron. and serving in the temple and doing the sacrifices and performing other temple duties usually for about two weeks out of a year. The rest of the year they would typically have some other occupation that would bring in most of their income and support. During the rest of the time, the priests could live anywhere in Israel. Initially they had certain cities that were given to them, but by this time just about anywhere in Israel, and it was common for them to even live down in Jericho. But it says he was going downhill, which meant that he was going from Jerusalem down to Jericho, and that meant that he was very likely finished with his time of duty at the temple.

The law of Moses required the priest, Leviticus 19.18.

You know Leviticus has all those different rules about the sacrifices and all that, but it's Leviticus 19.18 that says love your neighbor. This priest very well should have known. It was his law-given duty to show love here.

But There were some issues and some uncertainties. If the man alongside the road was dead, it might well have appeared that in fact he was, then the priest could be defiled for seven days. Now, for touching this man, he would still have to go through the cleansing on the third day and the seventh day, and that would require him to go back up to where he just came from. Hmm, that would be rather inconvenient. This was, however, a lousy excuse, because it would, in fact, there was a provision for it in the law, and he could go ahead and express love by caring for this man, and then go back if necessary, if necessary, and be cleansed for the third and the seventh day.

He would only be inconvenienced, that's all. He might, however, have had some other concerns. Since this man on the roadside was obviously beaten and robbed, the very same thieves might be waiting to beat up anyone who would stop to help this man. It would be a good target for them, he might be thinking. So he'd be even more vulnerable, and he might end up in the same condition very quickly. So at best, the priest would be inconvenienced if he stopped, and the man was dead, but at worst the priest could end up being dead himself, as this man appeared to be.

And so you can imagine the thought process of this priest, this is getting complicated and risky. There was another reason why he might have walked along. The priest had another reason to walk on by. The priests were part of Israel's aristocratic elite.

They didn't usually associate with commoners. So this might be just a commoner. As a matter of fact, he didn't have any clothes on other than maybe a loincloth or something. So I don't know if this guy is somebody I would even mess with. Because he's kind of below me, probably.

Since the man on the roadside had been stripped of his garments, it would have been hard to tell if there was a man there who was a commoner or a part of the elite class. You couldn't really tell. with all that blood on him and everything. So the priest had several justifications under both the law of Moses and the Jewish culture to just walk on by, keep on going, as if he never saw this. The priest could set aside his obligation to love his neighbor, so he thought, on good grounds, so he himself thought, and the Levite confirmed it. As the priests were to teach the law of Moses to the people, the priest could claim various things, but not ignorance. He would justify in his head, but the law would not support it.

Likewise, a Levite also, this is Luke 10.32, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. It's amazing that they justified this so easily and quickly. Now, all the Levites' fears and thoughts and mental justifications may very well have been similar to that of the priest. He may have been, unlike the priest, headed up to Jerusalem in order to fulfill his temple duties.

And if that body was dead, he would be unable to carry out his temple duties because he was defiled for seven days. Oh, this would be beyond embarrassing. Oh, it would appear irresponsible. It's just the right thing to do, to just walk on by. That would mean touching a dead body, if he were discovered to be dead, would take him out of service for the week in which he was scheduled. It doesn't say that he was headed down like the priest. He was probably going towards Jerusalem to fulfill his duty, and he would be cut off from the first week of that.

This Levite also knew the law of Moses well. Deuteronomy 17, 18 says the Levites are to also know and teach the law. He couldn't claim ignorance of the need to love his neighbor. But just like the priest, this Levite justified in his mind that it was best for him to just move along, leave the loving of his neighbor to someone else whose life was not quite so complicated as that. It's also something else he was unsure about.

By this time in Israel's history had become well established that the law of Moses did not require, so they thought, a Jew to consider Gentiles or Samaritans as neighbors. And if this guy was a Gentile or Samaritan, and who can tell? He's just a bloody mess right now. But if he is a Gentile or worse yet, a Samaritan, then I don't have to love him, and I certainly wouldn't want to have myself get defiled by touching this Gentile or Samaritan.

That would be just a disgusting thought. And so since I'm unsure of that, I'm not sure what ethnic group he's from, this is getting worse all the time. I'll just walk by. So here is Luke 10, 33 through 35. Here is what the Samaritan did. But a Samaritan who was on a journey came upon him, and when he saw him, he felt compassion.

Still don't know what the ethnicity of this guy is, right? And he came to him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them, and he put him on his own beast and brought him to an inn and took care of him. On the next day, he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, Take care of him, and whatever more you spend when I return, I will repay you." Now Jesus really turned this parable into a shocking account.

You see, he didn't tell a parable where a priest or a Levite showed love to a Samaritan. He instead told a parable where the Samaritan was the one who showed love. Oh, appalling thought. Appalling thought. This lawyer, this expert in the Law of Moses was hoping that Jesus would come along and confirm, no, you don't have to love the Gentile. No, you don't have to show love to the Samaritan. Instead, Jesus comes around And has the Samaritan, this disgusting, vile Samaritan, be the one who shows love and compassion while the priest and the Levite excuse themselves from the obligation?

Shocking thought! For a priest and a Levite to walk on by, violating the law of Moses, but to have a loathed and despised Samaritan show compassion was both stunning and unthinkable to this man. It must have blown his circuits. I can't imagine what color the rainbow he looked like at this point in time.

What did the Samaritan do? Pouring oil on the wounds would be soothing. Pouring wine on the moons would be antiseptic because of the alcohol content. Stopping like this, the Samaritan was making himself vulnerable. After all, there could be attackers who would come here. Using up his oil and wine, his own personal supply that he happened to have with him, the Samaritan put this injured man on his own animal, possibly a donkey, to take him to an inn for his recovery.

The location of this particular inn may have been identified actually long ago. Here is overhead view. You can see a highway winding through the middle of that. Courtney and Ingrid and Nancy and I went on that highway. And as you go along this highway, you'll see here is a Crusader era church put on top of what is thought to be the very inn where the Samaritan would have taken this fellow. And here, a crusader fortress across the way. And the crusader fortress was built there to protect against, guess what? Thieves on the road between Jericho and Jerusalem. And a museum was built here in 2009.

So anyway, this appears to be likely the place that Jesus was talking about, the Inn of the Good Samaritan. The Samaritan at first stayed with the man to take care of him personally, continued his personal care of this man. He very likely had to go on maybe some business obligation. Then the Samaritan took out two denarii, which is about two days wages for a laborer or a lowest level Roman soldier, and paid the innkeeper. On asking the innkeeper to care for the man, the Samaritan promised to pay him whatever was owed on his return trip. Now in this sort of an account, it may well have been that the Samaritan and the innkeeper had some ongoing relationship, in which case he would be trusted for something like this.

So here's Luke 10.36. Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robber's hands? So of the priest and the Levite and the Samaritan, Jesus asked, which of these proved to be a loving neighbor to the man who was beaten and robbed? The lawyer, no doubt, and again, I have no idea what shade of the rainbow, what color of the rainbow this guy looked like at this point in time, just floored, no doubt, by the account Jesus gave in which the respected priest and Levite did not love, but the hated and despised Samaritan did love. Let's look at his answer.

Luke 10.37, and he said, the one who showed mercy toward him. And Jesus said, go and do the same.

The lawyer, this expert in the law, Moses, could not bring himself to say the word Samaritan, to credit it to a Samaritan. He was hoping that Jesus would say instead, of course, you don't have to love the Samaritans and you don't have to love the Gentiles. Instead, Jesus turns this whole thing on his head and the Samaritan is the one who shows the love. The Samaritan is the one who fulfills the law that the priest and the Levite break. So instead he said, the one who showed mercy. Because he couldn't say the word Samaritan. Jesus told him, go and do the same as the Samaritan man did. Right? Whose name you won't pronounce.

This is a similar kind of thing to what Jesus said in Matthew 5.41.

Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two. There was a set of laws where a Roman soldier could force someone to carry his pack. The pack weighed 66 pounds. 66 pounds on this pack and a Roman soldier could force someone to carry that 66 pound pack for a mile. It was under the same set of laws where the Roman soldier could compel Simon of Cyrene to carry Jesus cross piece. In that same set of rules the Roman soldier could bring people into labor for certain things, and this is one of them.

So here in Matthew 5.41, what does Jesus say? Whoever forces you to go one mile with a 66-pound pack, right? Go with him too. Go the second one, right? And the second one is going to give you the opportunity to give the gospel to this guy, right?

So this is a similar kind of thing, where it's not a matter of, I get to hate you, but no, instead, show love even for those that it's traditional to hate. That it's traditional to hate. Here we see Jesus gave no approval for the prejudices. that this man had.

The lawyer was hoping to have some limitations on the law of Moses. To cut the law down to something the lawyer could handle more easily. And you know, a lot of people in Christendom like to do that just as well. They like to have a... give me a mini law.

Shorten it down. 613 is a bit much. Right? So give me something short. You know, something I can count on my fingers. Oh, 10, that's good. Right? Give me a short set of laws, and then I'll only need a little bit of grace. Only need a little bit of grace. He was hoping to have it cut down. Give me a loophole here. It's really hard to love those Samaritans. I'd like a loophole, please.

Jesus gave no approval to limiting the expression of love by ethnicity. If that pig-eating Roman soldier forces you to carry his 66-pound pack for a mile, go for two. Make him wonder why is this guy carrying the pack more than required. Similarly, he gave no approval to the rabbi's refusal to teach women or to show regard for them as people. Jesus didn't give any approval to any of those prejudices.

So we come back to the question, is this for us to do? For us in the body of Christ who are not under the law of Moses, not even one of them, our love for the Lord and our love for those in the church body and outside the body of Christ is a response to His love.

Remember 1 John 4.19, we love because He first loved us. We love not in order to be loved, but because He loves us first.

So we're not to love God and love others by obligation of law. And that's what's different from this parable of the Good Samaritan. That was a question about the law of Moses. We're not under law. Our loving is to be a response to God's love that was shown to you and to me. It's grace-motivated love, not law-motivated love. Real different. Does it, at least by intent, look similar on the outside? Yes it does. But the motivation for it is radically different.

Love because we've been loved, not in order to be loved. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your word here. We thank you for the truth. We thank you for this demonstration that this love is not to be limited by things that human beings here on planet Earth want to limit it by. But instead, it's a love for every single person for whom you gave your son's life. And we just thank you for this clear communication here. In Jesus' name, amen.