Who Is My Neighbor

JP Funk teaches from Luke 10:25–37 that being a good neighbor transcends culture, convenience, and comfort.

Show Notes

JP Funk teaches from Luke 10:25–37 about what it means to be a good neighbor. He explains how we can miss the point of instruction and be outwardly religious yet inwardly hollow, and shows that being a good neighbor transcends culture, convenience, and comfort.

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Have y'all ever heard a specific phrase that you just couldn't wrap your mind around? Maybe you could wrap your mind around it a little bit, but you heard it at first and you're like, I just don't know about that. How about the phrase unbiased opinion? Can any opinion really be unbiased? Or when someone says that's an exact estimate, like what does that mean? Organized chaos. People say that a lot in sports, but what is organized chaos? Can it really be organized? How about a Diet Coke? That one was a joke, so I'm sorry if you drink Diet Coke. Didn't land exactly, but you get the idea of what I'm talking about, right? These are oxymorons. So you probably learned about these in seventh grade English class. Jumbo shrimp, bittersweet. Tonight we'll be talking about a little bit of a different oxymoron. It's from the book of Luke. It's called the Parable of the Good Samaritan. You may be familiar with it. If you're a little bit newer to faith or need a little bit of a refresher, some of the background on the Parable of the Good Samaritan is this. Jews were the chosen people of God. God gave them specific instructions, specific directions, and one of those was not to intermarry with those of other faiths. So they needed to marry those within their Jewish faith. There's a sect of them over time that went out and did marry outside of the faith. That's who we're calling the Samaritans tonight. And over time, as they intermarried, they no longer followed wholeheartedly the God of the Bible. They strayed away, and they would follow some of the God of the Bible, but also pagan practices, some idols. And so over a long period of time, the Jews developed a deep disdain for the Samaritans. If y'all have ever had questions when it comes to faith or context or what does this Bible verse mean or anything like that, there's a website called gotquestions.org. That's normally a pretty strong resource, and they define it like this or describe the situation like this. There will be a slide that comes up, but it says, in Jesus's day, the Jewish people of Galilee and Judea shunned the Samaritans, viewing them as a mixed race who practiced an impure, half-pagan religion. And so I want you to think about tonight, as we look at the parable of the Good Samaritan, if you were a Jewish listener in this day, it would have been a little off-putting to you. It would have been an oxymoron to you. You would have thought, what is a Good Samaritan? What really is that? So just keep that in mind as we go through. If you have your Bibles tonight, please open to Luke chapter 10. We're going to start off in verse 25. And like I said, we'll be learning about the Good Samaritan, but our question for tonight is, who is my neighbor? We're going to experience that question in the story, and so we're going to talk about that at length for the next few weeks, talking about neighboring. If you know anything about the heart of our pastor, Ben Mandrell, he speaks frequently about neighboring. He's passionate about being a good neighbor, so I'm excited to dive in that and talk about that with you all tonight. Let me pray for us, and then we'll go ahead and read the Scripture. Lord, You're so good and so kind. I just thank You about what Andrew prayed earlier, Lord, that You're going to teach us tonight through Your Word. Your Word is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword. So I just pray that You would sanctify us in Your truth. Your Word is truth. Please bless this time tonight, and let us get something out of Your Word. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. We will start in verse 25. One day, an expert in religious law stood up to test Jesus by asking him this question, teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus replied, 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, all your strength, and all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. Right, Jesus told him, do this and you will live. The man wanted to justify his actions, so he asked Jesus, who is my neighbor? The first truth I want to talk about tonight is that it's possible to miss the point of our instruction. It's possible to miss the point of our instruction. So this man was an expert in religious law. Other translations call him a lawyer, so we're going to call him a lawyer often tonight. In these times, it would have been expected for a rabbi like Jesus to be able to debate, teach, elaborate on these kinds of topics. We see this other places in the scriptures. Someone else comes up to him, teacher, what is the greatest commandment? Teacher, should we pay taxes or not? Teacher, teach us to pray. These kinds of discussions were more expected. It would be very different than if we were to go to bin, you know, on a Sunday after service, shake his hand, say, hey, nice to meet you. How should I inherit eternal life? Like, this is a more normal thing. It might seem a little different to us, but this is a little more normal. When it comes to the intentions of the lawyer here, it's kind of hard for us to know exactly what he was going after. At worst, he was being malicious, right? Trying to capture Jesus, or trip him up, and some kind of misspeaking, or maybe not put him in the best light. At best, he was a little bit more inquisitive, kind of like someone who would go into a church and be like, I wonder if this pastor is good. I wonder what he's going to say. I wonder what he thinks. But he's definitely not submissive or submitting to the authority of Christ in this moment. So if we look at verse 26, Jesus gives us a very good example for how to answer a difficult question. If someone goes to us and says, how do you inherit eternal life? He kind of turns it back on to the person who asks the question, says, hey, what does Scripture say? What does the law of Moses say? And how do you interpret it? Meaning, he's inviting conversation about how they've come to their conclusion, and he's pointing them to Scripture, which we know is truth, but also encouraging us to interpret that. So look at Scripture, what it says about a topic, and what was the author saying to the original audience, the intended audience? What's the context of this Scripture? He's pointing it back to the lawyer and inviting conversation. The lawyer gets the ACT question right. I mean, he says, you know, hits the nail on the head, says, love the Lord your God with everything, love your neighbor as yourself. So in a way, he does a really good job, but I think when we analyze it a little bit more, we see that he's missing the point a little bit. So he gets the right answer, but then we look at verse 29, and the way he responds immediately, he starts to kind of define his terms. He starts to think about, well, who really is my neighbor? I may not, I don't know how I'm doing on that one, so who is my neighbor? Let's think about what a more humble and realistic response to this question may be. So he just said, how do I inherit eternal life? You have to love God with everything you have, and you have to love your neighbor just like yourself. That's a pretty high standard. I think a much more realistic response to Christ in this moment would have been, I love God, but I struggle sometimes. There have been times where I haven't loved him with all of my soul or all of my strength. I have failed, or I want to love my neighbor as myself, but there have been times that I just, I know that I haven't. How do you advise? How would you teach me? But he doesn't have that mindset. He is looking to just do what he, he wants to be in the clear, essentially. And so it reminds me of a time when I was growing up. We had some friends moving to the neighborhood. I'm in elementary school here, so I'm pretty young, but we'd go across the street and we'd play. And I don't know if you're like me, but you know, it was kind of just when the lights, when the streetlights came on, it was time to go home. It's kind of the deal we had in my family. So I'd go over this family's house, we'd play, but there's always this one rule. Don't go in this person's garage. This was because this family, the dad did a lot of work in the garage. He did a working area. He would weld in there. And so my father, what he wanted for me was to be respectful. He wanted me to be safe. He probably didn't want me to stare at that fire, you know, that when you're welding, you can hurt your eyes and all those things. And so what did I do as an elementary schooler? I went up the driveway and I walked and walked and I got about six inches from the garage and I would lean over and talk to this dad who was welding. One day my father saw me and he was not very happy. And so what was going on there? I missed the point of the rule. I missed, by the letter of the law, I was there, but I didn't really care about what my father wanted in that moment. I just wanted to be in the clear. I had missed the whole idea, the whole point. And so I think when we look at the lawyer here, he's doing the same thing. And so tonight, while he's asking a good question and we want to answer it, I just want to propose that a better response to that is, Lord, help me. Lord, help me to love my neighbor. And so with that, as we're defining the question, who is my neighbor tonight? I want to give you a pretty easy definition. It's anyone that you can serve. Your neighbor is anyone that you can love. Anyone that God puts on your path that you interact with is a neighbor to you. And so as we go throughout the rest of the passage, just keep that in mind. A neighbor can be anyone. We'll go ahead and move on to the next scripture here. So starting in verse 30, Jesus replied with a story. A Jewish man was traveling from Jerusalem down to Jericho, and he was attacked by bandits. They stripped off his clothes, beat him up, and left him half dead on the side of 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 at him lying there, but he also passed to the other side." The second truth tonight is that it's possible to be outwardly religious and inwardly hollow. If we're not careful, we can become outwardly religious and inwardly hollow. So here it says that a Jewish man is traveling. If you remember earlier our discussion about Jews and Samaritans, this is an important distinction based on what we talked about. This Jewish man is traveling about 17 miles on a journey from Jerusalem to Jericho. He's attacked, and he's not just roughed up a little bit. These guys didn't just kind of push him against the locker and take his lunch money, you know, there's nothing... this isn't like a low-key situation. This is pretty dire. This guy needs help, he needs a doctor, he needs a revive, like he needs someone to come along and help him. And that's not exactly what happens, as we see at first. You'd think he gets lucky because a priest comes. And so, rhetorical question here, I don't need anyone to blurt out anything necessarily, but what is a priest supposed to represent? They're the ones that are set apart for a special work, you know, they're supposed to be the best of the best. What about the temple assistant? Other translations, they clarify him as a Levite, so we know that he's from the tribe that all the priests come from. He helps out of the temple, he's around that culture. And they're supposed to be, like I said, the best of the best. The priest, his heart was so hard, it says, that he didn't even really stop and consider helping. His heart was so hard that he just passed by to the other side of the road and then walked down, or walked through. The temple assistant, he at least wrestled with it for a moment. His heart was at least a little soft enough to say, ah, you know, maybe I should do something here. And I can't tell you as someone who is now working at Bellevue how convicting that passage can be, as you think about that, as I know what's right, but so often my convenience might take priority. Reminds me a little bit of another story. All my analogies won't always be about myself, I promise. But I had an internship after the junior year of my college, so flex, yes, I had an internship. And I was in Arkansas, but they put me up in this extended-stay hotel. And so on one hand it was great, it was Embassy Suites, I got like unlimited Hilton points forever, like some of the stuff was pretty cool. But the worst part by far was that I didn't have a kitchen. So I had like one hot plate and a microwave, and so for a whole summer that's just pretty tough. Like using all your money to go eat out, I mean it was pros and cons, right? So my strategy was I had some friends that lived in the area, I would go over on the weekend and cook at their house, because I'd normally eat out for lunch, and that would bring back all the food, and I'd have that for dinner. And so it was like your classic bachelor meal, I'm talking white rice, chicken, broccoli, Roma tomatoes, and cheese. And like those are like the only five things you need, right? So I had that like five nights out of the week, and you know I don't like it that much anymore, because I had it so much. But anyway, I had this food, and it was about my second week of the internship, and I started having it. It normally tasted good, but I still remember it was my second week, and it was on a Tuesday, because I just made the whole batch of food. And I'll spare you all the details, but I wake up at about 5 the next morning, and I am vomiting more than I ever have. And so I'm first time living alone, so you know I don't have my family, I don't have my college friends, I'm just on this hotel bathroom floor, like I might die here, this might be the end for me, you know. I was being a little dramatic, but it was terrible. And so I had to ask, what happened? I mean really, what like, what went wrong here? I've cooked before, like I didn't not cook it, like I don't understand. I went to the fridge and found, you know, in the hotel rooms they have that dial, where you can see how cold it actually is. It was only like a two and a half out of ten. So what had happened the night before is I stretched my hand into the fridge, and it felt a little chilly, like it had the resemblance of being cold enough. I took the food out, it looked normal, it was fine in the microwave. When I ate it, it tasted normal, but the actual fruit, the result of the food that I ate, was terrible. It was outwardly appealing, but inwardly rotten. You may be able to see where I'm headed with this. These two men, the two men that we talked about earlier, the priest and the temple assistant, they should have been so selfless, yet their fruit was rotten on the outside. And so that is just something for us all to rest in and think about, those kind of times where that may be us. It's pretty easy if it's in your, you know, habits to come to, we'll say, church on a Sunday or maybe a Wednesday, and you've got your friends here, and it's a little bit habitual. You might serve in a ministry that you've preferred, but oftentimes being uncomfortable is part of growth, and we can slowly start to spoil on the inside of our hearts if we don't ask some questions. So I have three questions I'd like us to consider tonight. The first one being, when was the last time you served someone that could give you nothing in return? It will hopefully come up on a slide, but when was the last time you served someone that could give you nothing in return? I didn't actually know Paul Becker would be here tonight, so I feel a little bad calling him out from the stage, but I was intrigued earlier, and I texted him because I know he serves consistently at the Warriors Center in Memphis. And if you don't know anything about the Warriors Center in Memphis, they're a group that serves people, it's faith-based but it's Christian-based, people who struggle with homelessness and addiction. And Paul goes and serves there, and that's not because he gets anything in return, but it's an overflow of what Christ has done for him. And so I was just so encouraged as I was hearing him share a little bit about that, just in kind of casual conversation the other night, that I wanted to follow up a little more and understand what that looks like. So when was the last time you served something, someone, that could give you nothing in return? Next question. The next question is, when was the last time you noticed someone who was hurting? When was the last time you noticed someone who was hurting? This is a convicting one for me. Are you the kind of person that, when you're around people, you're engaged enough with them to know what they're like? If they're a very talkative person, are you noticing that they're really kind of off today? They're not really talking. Are they always on time, and then they've been a late the last few times to work, and you notice that? Like you notice what other people are about? Are you someone that is potentially so inwardly focused and maybe unintentionally consumed with self that you don't even notice when others are hurting? So just a healthy question, pondering question. When was the last time you noticed someone who was hurting? Third question for tonight. When was the last time you slowed down enough to hear God's voice? Say it one more time. When was the last time you slowed down enough to hear God's voice? And sometimes for me it's just taking your phone and turning it off for 20, 30, 45 minutes to hear from God. It can be very easy to build up our schedules, hanging out with people, or just entertain ourselves to death, and it is so healthy to slow down and hear from the Lord, hear His voice. And so those are the kind of questions I think it's healthy for us to wrestle through to make sure that we don't become someone who is outwardly attractive but inwardly rotten spiritually. And with that we'll go on to our last scripture point here. We'll start in verse 33. So this is Luke 10 33. The third truth that I would like you to write down tonight if you're taking notes is, being a good neighbor transcends culture, convenience, and comfortability. Being a good neighbor transcends culture, convenience, and comfortability. The biggest difference we see here in the passage with the Samaritan is that he feels compassion, and that compassion moves him to action. He uses his own property, wine as a disinfectant, and olive oil as a soothing lotion. He sacrificed his own time while traveling, no idea, no context what his plans were here, how much time he would have added to his journey. Gave up his own mode of transportation and that of his donkey, and his two silver coins were estimated at two days' worth of wages. So think of two days' worth of your wages. My random acts of kindness budget that's in my monthly budget is nowhere close to two days' worth of wages. That is a considerable amount. This is a phenomenal example of Christ-like service, Christ-like love, Christ-like compassion. And so the lawyer and Jesus go back and forth a little bit more, and the lawyer eventually admits that, yes indeed, a Samaritan is the one who could have been showing mercy, who was the one who handled the situation correctly. And he says, yes now,

go and do the same." Essentially saying, if a despised Samaritan would be willing to help a Jew, you, a Jew, should be willing to help a Samaritan. So I just want to continue to go home with the fact that when we think about a neighbor spiritually, it's not necessarily proximity, it's not ethnicity, it's not anything like that, but a neighbor is anyone that you can serve, anyone that you can love, anyone that God puts on your path, that is who we are called to be a neighbor to, that is the answer to, who is my neighbor? Did have a question for the room, I got to get to know everyone a little bit. So is anyone in here seen the show Masters of the Air? Oh man, we got like two, okay. Are we two? How about Band of Brothers? Is that like broadening it a little bit? Okay, a fifth of the room, okay. I might have to use some different, it's different analogy at some point, but I appreciate you, Andrew, knowing what I'm talking about here. So Masters of the Air, we can go ahead and go on to the next picture, please. Next slide, this will be helpful. So this is a, this is an actor, okay, but he was portraying someone who is a real-life historical account, a real life person. His name is Sergeant William Quinn. He's 20 years old, or the character's 20 years old, as this photo is taken. This show, Masters of the Air, it follows the 100th Bomb Group, nicknamed the Bloody 100th in World War II. I personally am a fan of the series. I think it's, I think it's riveting, but what's really interesting about the sergeant's story here, Sergeant Quinn, is, you know, I don't want to give too many spoilers, but I think we all know what happens in World War II. Anyway, his plane crashes, and this is a true story. He's 20 years old, and he lands in occupied Belgium, okay. So that basically means that Germany is in control of Belgium at this time, and basically, you know, a family in Belgium finds him. And I don't want to spoil it, like I said, but he ends up coming back to America, and he lives to be 90, and so he has different accounts of the story and things. You could look it up if you want. But what's so interesting about his story is, when he lands, this family, they take care of him. And what the culture says at the time is, no, you need to be safe. Really, the culture of the German government is saying, you need to tell us immediately, and there is going to be punishment by death, or punishment, very harsh punishment for anyone who harbors a fugitive against the law. Or obviously, when it comes to convenience or comfortability, when it comes to housing someone who is in danger, that they are being the epitome of the neighbor. They're not caring about the cultural rules, or their convenience, or their comfort. They're truly being a good neighbor. And so that is what I think of, that is what I thought of immediately, as I was thinking, man, what is an example of a good neighbor? Someone who's willing to risk themselves to serve someone else. You know, I've heard it said that you're most like Jesus when you serve someone that can give you nothing in return, and that stuck with me for a long time. So with that being said, and with that in mind, I'm gonna do something I won't always ask you to do, but I'd love for you to pull out your phone, okay? I'd love for you to pull out your phone, and if you're a little bit type A, or probably at least for most people in the room, pull out your phone and just go to your calendar app, okay? I don't know if you're Google Cal or your Outlook, or your iCal, or I don't know what we got in here. But once you go to your calendar app and go to September 30th, and put in their neighboring night. So on September 30th, we will not be having YA worship as we generally consider it. There'll be no YA worship at the church. Sidney told me that I was like that middle schooler who gets elected to be the principal, and his first thing that he does is cancel school, because we're canceling YA worship that night. But what we're doing, and we're gonna talk a lot more about this a little bit at the end of the night and through the coming weeks, but we want to have what we're calling a neighboring night, and what that is is a time for you to intentionally invest in a relationship with someone that you normally wouldn't cross paths with, okay? That's hosting someone at your house, hosting someone at your apartment, hosting... if you're not comfortable with that, or that's just not the stage of life you're in or anything like that, meeting someone out for a meal and ideally paying for their meal, going to serve someone or love on someone that you wouldn't normally run into. And so that is what we're going to do. It could be a high school friend that you've been meeting to catch up with that you know that their relationship matters to you, and you don't know where they stand spiritually. Could be the same case for a college friend, it could be a family member that you've been meeting to meet with, or in my case, I think what Sidney and I are going to do is our physical neighbor. And so those are just plenty of different options. I believe this room can wholeheartedly pray for someone to go intentionally serve, intentionally spend some time with on September 30th, so we'll have a lot more details about that, but I just wanted to go ahead and tease it to you and let you go ahead and put it in your calendar that we'll be doing. That'll be a big push for our ministry, and I'm really excited about it. So let's review our truths, and then I'll start closing us up here. One, it's possible to miss the point of our instruction. If we are like the lawyer, and we just go by the letter of the law, but we don't ever ask for the heart of God or ask God to soften our hearts, we are in danger of missing the point in some cases. So it's possible to miss the point of our instruction, it's possible to be outwardly religious and inwardly hollow. It's possible to be, you know, in this place but still wrestle through things in your heart and not obey, and we want to be far away from that. And then lastly, being a good neighbor transcends culture, convenience, and comfortability. Being a good neighbor will often make us uncomfortable, and that's part of our growth in our relationship with the Lord. And tonight we've talked a lot about the compassion of the Good Samaritan, and in closing I want to talk a lot about the compassion that Christ has for us. In Matthew 9 36 it says, and it's talking about Jesus here, when he saw the crowds he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like a sheep without a shepherd. Jesus Christ is the sole reason that we're able to be a good neighbor. Each one of us has sinned and deserve to be separated from God for eternity. Thankfully Jesus 2,000 years ago came down to earth, and he bore the punishment that we deserve on the cross because of our sin. He rose again three days later, appeared as disciples, and later ascended into heaven. And if you confess that with your mouth, and you believe that Jesus is Lord, and believe all of those things that I just said, you will be saved, and you will spend eternity with God, and you can say that with 100% confidence. And so tonight if you're in a place where you're not 100% confident about that fact, I just want to invite you to talk to me after, talk to Tanya after, talk to JD, talk to any leader in this room, really any member of this ministry, just talk. Because if the Lord is working on your heart, if he's softening your heart, it is so worth just having that conversation, rather than going to eat a little bit earlier, or going to get a little more sleep, or going to check your phone faster, you know, like if the Lord is softening your heart, please just respond in the appropriate way. Same goes if you've just been moved by some of the words of Scripture, as the band is going to come up and we'll close in a song, but if you just want to sit down and journal, that's fine. If you want to sit down and pray, that's terrific. Just respond in the way that you think is most obedient to the Lord. And so I'm going to pray for us, and we're going to close out with a song of worship.