Faithbase

Hello and welcome to Thinking About the Bible and the series that we're currently engaged in is Thinking About Love and I'm going to jump right in here because we have some ground to cover. We talked yesterday about the primary commands that Jesus, I guess we could say endorsed but this is what he taught, was to love God with all your being and to love your neighbor as yourself. And so one day, I'm reading from Luke 10, one day an expert in religious law stood up to test Jesus by asking him, I better put on the specter so I can see what I'm reading, by asking him this question, teacher what should I do to inherit internal life? And Jesus said, what does the law of Moses say? How do you read it? The man answered, you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, your strength and all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself. This is what Jesus said obviously before, right? Jesus told him, do this and you will live. But the man wanted to justify his actions so he asked Jesus, and who is my neighbor? Now this is where we have the very famous parable, Jesus replied with a story, a Jewish man was traveling from Jerusalem down to Jericho and he was attacked by bandits. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him up and left him half dead beside the road. By chance a priest came along but when he saw the man lying there, he crossed to the other side of the road and passed him by. A temple assistant walked over and looked, he saw him lying there but he also passed by on the other side. Then a despised Samaritan came along and when he saw the man, he felt compassion for him. Going over to him, the Samaritan soothed his wounds with olive oil and wine and bandaged them. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn where he took care of him. The next day he handed the innkeeper two silver coins and he told him, take care of this man, if this bill runs higher than this, I'll pay for it next time I'm here. Now which of these three would you say was a neighbor to the man who was attacked by bandits, Jesus asked. The man replied, the one who showed him mercy. Then Jesus said, yes, now go and do the same. Now we think, well, okay, so my neighbor is somebody I find in the ditch. Actually what Jesus is saying here is that your neighbor is any other human being. Remember, and we don't have time to get into the detail on this, but the Samaritans and the Jewish people despised each other. That's how it's translated here, this despised Samaritan. They did in fact hate each other. They wouldn't have any intercourse whatsoever, any interaction whatsoever. And so what Jesus is doing here is choosing the least likely person that his audience, that this questioner and then the rest of the folks listening, the least likely person for them to consider a neighbor. Now for us, our neighbors are all of other humanity, other people, but we have neighbors that are close. I'm married, my closest neighbor happens to be my spouse. Now when we think a neighbor, let's not get hung up on this idea that it's the guy that lives next door or something, but it is in fact all of humanity and there is a kind of a continuum. So my spouse is my closest neighbor, the one to whom I should show love the most. And then moving out from there, we go to our children, our extended family, coworkers, whatever. But the point is, and here's what I want you to think about today, who is your neighbor? Who is your neighbor, but also who is your neighbor that you've neglected to show love to? Sadly, sometimes that's the closest people to us. We don't show the kind of love we should to the folks that we see on a daily basis. Now I'm running out of time here, so I want to end with this. Think today about who is your neighbor, but specifically who is your neighbor that you aren't showing Christ-like love to as you ought? I know I have folks in my life that I need to show love to in a much more Christ-like fashion. We'll be back on this again tomorrow. Thanks for joining me. God bless you and we'll see you tomorrow morning.