The Lawyer’s Question

Luke 10:20-37

INTRODUCTION

You have heard many sermons on Jesus’s Parable of the Good Samaritan. That’s because it is such an important story.

But in this message I want to especially focus on the lawyer who asked the question to Jesus: “Who is my neighbor?”

Behold, a lawyer stood up to put Jesus to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”

Jesus said to him, “What is written in the law? What do your read there?”

And the lawyer 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.”

And Jesus said to him, “You have answered right; do this and you will live.”

But the lawyer, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

This lawyer was sharp. His answer to Jesus was the same answer that Jesus gave some Pharisees when they asked him which of the commandments was the greatest.

The lawyer wasn’t asking because he wanted to know the answer, but because he wanted “to put Jesus to the test.”

He wanted to see how good Jesus was at theology.

So he asked the big, number one question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

But Jesus’s answer to the lawyer’s question has always made me wonder.

Jesus pointed him to the Law.

Isn’t that odd? When the jailer at Philippi asked, Paul, “What must I do to be saved?” Paul answered, “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31).

When some people asked Jesus: “What must we do to perform the works of God?’ Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent” (John 6:29).

So why didn’t Jesus tell him just to believe? He could have said, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.”

Why did Jesus point the lawyer to the Law, which we know from the rest of the New Testament can never save anyone?

I. When Jesus says, “What is written in the law?” he is answering the lawyer’s question with another question. This is a common technique of Jesus and all good teachers. People get understanding by building on what they already know.

A. The first part of the answer—“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart…soul….strength…and…mind”—was a scripture from Deuteronomy 6 that the lawyer, like all good Jews, would have recited twice each day. It is called the “Shema.”

The second part of the lawyer’s answer comes from Leviticus (19:18)—from the middle of a chapter that contains 39 rules for living—some insignificant, some very important.

B. Jesus’s response to the lawyer’s answer was to challenge him to live out the truth that he had recited from the Old Testament Bible.

God is never concerned to give us information just to satisfy our curiosity. That is why we have so many unanswered questions about the Bible and faith. It isn’t important that we know all the answers; it is important that we live up to what we know.

The scribe was enjoying himself now, so he asked the next question: “And who is my neighbor?”

This could get to be a big discussion—a discussion the lawyer was looking forward to.

Maybe the lawyer expected Jesus to say, “Your neighbor is your neighbor Jew.” Or maybe his neighbor was his fellow church member.

Could we extend “neighbor” to good Gentiles? Or maybe—just possibly—to everyone who crosses my path or whose path I cross?

Jesus answered with a story—a story that will make the lawyer think.

And this story will make us think too, and even change our thinking—and we hope it will change our behavior.

II. This is the story:

A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead.

Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.

So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.

But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where the injured man was: and when he saw him, he had compassion, pouring on oil and wine: then he set him on his own beast and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.

And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, “Take care of him; and whatever more you spend I will repay you when I come back.”

Which of these three, do you think, proved neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?”

The Lawyer said, “The one who showed mercy on him.” And Jesus said to him, ”Go and do likewise.”

A. The road from Jerusalem to Jericho was only 17 miles. It could be walked in a day. It was a commonly-traveled road. Jesus walked this road many times.

But going from Jerusalem to Jericho one descended 3,300 feet. It would have been much easier going to Jericho—downhill all the way—than going from Jericho to Jerusalem—uphill all the way.

It is a winding, meandering road. It was dangerous. There were lots of places for robbers to hide.

This poor man had been attacked, robbed, and left half-dead.

The priest and the Levite, saw him but passed by on the other side.

They certainly knew the law about loving their neighbor, but they didn’t want to get involved.

To have stopped would have been to take a big risk. Suppose the robbers were lurking nearby?

I read once of an account of a young man and woman who were driving on a country road and came upon a car pulled off the road.

They stopped to see whether they could help.

It was a ruse. Thugs attacked the young man and the girl, robbed them, and killed them.

Those young people followed the example of the Good Samaritan and it cost them their lives.

It may have been a hard decision for the priest or Levite, or anyone, to get involved in this situation. How could they tell what it might involve?

This is the same thing that keeps us sometimes from doing what is right. We don’t want to get involved. We might not want to see it through.

B. The striking thing about the story is that its hero is a Samaritan.

Samaritans were despised by the Jews. They called Samaritans “dogs.” They believed that even to touch them was to become polluted.

The reason goes back a long time before Jesus.

When the Assyrians conquered the northern Kingdom of Israel more than 700 years before Christ, they deported many of the Israelites and settled them in other lands. Then the Assyrians brought in pagans and settled them among the remaining Israelites.

These pagans adopted the religion of Israel and the two groups intermarried.

The Jews from Judea considered the Samaritans heretics, half-breeds, and had nothing to do with them. Sometimes there was even bloodshed.

If Jesus were to tell the parable to us today, he would perhaps make the hero of his story a Muslim. Can you imagine how that would go over in your church?

“The Parable of the Good Muslim.” Of “The Parable of the Good Hindu.”

For all I know the story is a true one. Things like this happen.

The Samaritan is a hero because he took a big risk.

He got involved. He doctored the man, put him on his donkey, and took him to an inn along the road.

But he went even farther. He took care of him in the inn.

And when the time came to depart, he left two denarii with the innkeeper for the man’s keep. Two denarii was two day’s wages for a working man—think, $150-$200 dollars.

And, as he left the inn, he promised the innkeeper that he would be back to pay whatever else it cost to get the man on his feet again.

C. When Jesus asked, “Which of these, do you think, proved neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” there was only one answer possible for the lawyer: “The one who showed mercy.”

APPLICATION

When we read, “Love your neighbor,” we think of having a feeling of fondness toward our neighbor.

Jesus is thinking of costly love, the kind of love that steps in and helps, in whatever way is in our power.

So sometimes we take credit for loving our friends—as if that is a virtue.

Jesus said (Luke 6:32-33): “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.”

Sometimes we limit the people we are willing to love.

I was on a church missions committee. During one of our meetings one of our members said, “I don’t think we should be sending money overseas. There are plenty of people in our country we can be helping.”

Some people are willing to help the poor—but they limit their willingness to the “deserving poor.”

Some people are willing to help but they expect an expression of thanks.

People should be grateful and express their appreciation, but that won’t always happen, and we don’t need to expect it.

We don’t know whether the man the Samaritan saved ever thanked his benefactor. Perhaps he hated being indebted to a despised Samaritan.

Jesus said, “Love your enemies, do good and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:35-36).

If we don’t get thanked here in this life, God has promised to thank us someday—isn’t that enough?

Proverbs 19:17: “Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and will be repaid in full.”

CONCLUSION

When I was a child, I used to collect stamps. I would save up my nickels from my weekly allowance of 5 cents a week and go to the dime store and buy stamps for my collection.

I loved to mount the stamps in my book and study their designs.

I noticed that many of the stamps from Belgium had a picture of a Roman soldier sitting on a horse with a beggar facing him.

The soldier was cutting his cloak in two with his sword.

I learned that this was St. Martin, the patron saint of Belgium.

The story is that Martin was a Christian soldier in the Roman army.

One cold winter day Martin was riding his horse when a beggar stopped him. Martin had no money, but the beggar was shivering.

Martin was moved with compassion, so he took off his cloak, cut it in two, and gave half of it to the beggar. The beggar blessed him and they parted.

That night Martin had a dream. He saw all the angels of heaven and Jesus sitting among them wearing the torn half of Martin’s cloak.

One of the angels asked the Lord, “Master, who clothed you thus?”

And Jesus answered softly “It was my servant Martin.”

Jesus said that when we serve his poor, we are serving him.

I heard of a person who works in a mission feeding the homeless who prays, when the homeless people line up to receive their meals: “Lord, help me to be kind to you when you come through this line today.”

Jesus comes to us in our neighbor, the one who is poor, the one who is lonely, the one who is discouraged, the one who needs a listening ear, a friend, a compliment, a loan, a smile.

Maybe a fellow resident of this facility…

Sometimes it costs little to love our neighbor; sometimes it costs a lot.

Are we willing to pay the price of love?

“You Are the Salt of the Earth”

Matthew 5:13

INTRODUCTION

One day Jesus said to his disciples, “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste how shall its saltness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden under foot.”

What an odd saying! We know that salt is necessary, but it is also cheap. Doctors keep telling us to eat less salt. Salt causes high blood pressure. We need to avoid it.

But in ancient times people looked at salt in a different way. For one thing salt was expensive.

We get our salt out of salt mines. In our home state of Kansas we have salt mines, and it’s easy and cheap to just dig it out of the ground. Salt is one of the cheapest things at the store—35 cents for a box that will last months.

When we say someone’s not worth his salt, we mean he’s not worth much.

 But in ancient times people made salt from seawater. The Dead Sea, in Palestine, is a good place to get salt. They run salt into shallow pools around the Dead Sea, then let it dry out in the sun, and what was left was salt, which they could scoop up and sell.

Salt is still scarce in some parts of the world. I remember seeing pictures in The National Geographic of camel caravans carrying salt over the desert. Great slabs of salt were strapped to the sides of the camels and transported to places where it was needed.

In some parts of the world, salt has been used for money.

Roman soldiers received part of their salary in salt—in fact the word “salary” comes from the word salarium, which is the Latin word for salt.

So when Jesus compared his disciples to salt he was comparing them to something very important, and valuable, and necessary.

There’s one other thing that might puzzle us about this verse. How could salt lose its savor? Actually, salt will always be salty. But the salt made out of the salty water of the Dead Sea had many minerals in it besides sodium chloride. There are calcium compounds and potassium compounds and manganese compounds and other minerals. And if the “salt” got damp maybe the real salt would disappear and only the other minerals would remain. And they wouldn’t taste salty at all. So it seemed that the “salt” had lost its savor.

I. Here are some reasons why salt was so important in the ancient world.

A. First of all, salt was necessary for preservation of food.

Before canning and freezing humans had no way to preserve perishable food.

Fish or other meat will spoil quickly and become dangerous and uneatable. But if the meat is soaked in brine, it will keep a long time.

So ancient people—and even until recent times—people ate lots of salted meat.

B. Salt is also necessary for bringing out the taste of food.

It’s even in the Bible. In the Book of Job (6:6), Job says, “Can that which is tasteless be eaten without salt.”

You might know that the tongue can only detect four flavors: sweet, sour, bitter, and salty. All the rest of what we call “flavor” comes to us from our sense of smell.

If you cook oatmeal and leave out that pinch of salt, you can hardly believe how bad it tastes. It tastes like the pan.

At our house we eat lots of bread. We have a breadmaker, and we make about four loaves of bread each week. It only takes a teaspoon of salt for a loaf of bread—not enough to make the bread taste salty. But a few times I have left out the salt out of the bread, and it tastes bad.

Do you remember those advertisements for Morton’s salt: “Every watermelon worth its salt is worth Mortons”? I don’t put salt on my watermelon, but it’s true that a few grains of salt do make the watermelon taste sweeter.

C. In ancient times salt also had a sort of mystical meaning.

I suppose that because salt kills germs and pathogens, salt became a symbol for purity. The Old Testament rules specified that all sacrifices offered at the Tabernacle of Temple were to be seasoned with salt.

In Bible times salt was used to seal covenants. Still in the Arab countries, I understand that to eat salt with someone is to commit oneself to faithful friendship.

II. So when Jesus told his followers that they were “the salt of the earth,” it was a metaphor that would have had deep meaning for them. It also has deep meaning for us.

A. Christian believers, if they are living for Jesus, are a good influence in an evil world.

There are a lot of evil things going on in the world, but we who are followers of Jesus are a good influence—at least we should be. Godly people create goodness in the world.

Salt isn’t noisy. It doesn’t bubble up in our food, or change its color. In fact—unless we use too much—we can’t usually even taste it.

We Christians aren’t supposed to be noisy or obnoxious. We do our best work when we do it quietly.

It doesn’t take a multitude of Christians to change a conversation—

…just one person not laughing at an off-color joke.

…just one person sticking up for a person being criticized.

…just one person with a word of faith.

Many books have been published recently about evils of religion.

People have done terrible things in the name of Christianity—persecutions, wars, bigotry, hypocrisy, self-righteous judging—and it a shame such things happen.

But at the same time, much good has been done in the name of Jesus.

In our city both hospitals were founded by Christian people—Catholics founded Mercy, and Methodists founded St. Luke’s

Our two colleges were also founded by Christians.

Food pantries and homeless shelters are mostly run by Christians.

I read an article by an atheist praising the good work of various Christian missions in Africa—healing the sick, caring for orphans, educating children, combating evil customs…

We should be constantly looking for ways that we can express the love of Jesus to needy people—and, as you know, there are plenty of needy people in this building.

Some people say they have quit going to church because they don’t get anything out of it.

Those people don’t understand the real reason why people go to church. We don’t go to church for ourselves but for others. I am sure that in days gone by in your churches you found many ways to serve your fellow believers—teaching, cooking, cleaning, singing, encouraging—sometimes “rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep.”

We Christians should be the nicest people in the world. We should be constantly thinking about how we can cheer other people—by courtesy and consideration, honest compliments, a listening ear, kind words…

But it’s not enough to be only “nice.” Someone observed that Jesus didn’t say, “You are the honey of the earth” but “You are the salt of the earth.”

Sometimes telling the truth hurts. Sometimes faithfulness means correction—but if we ever think we need to correct someone let us be sure that we do it with gentleness, with consideration for the other person’s feelings.

In Ephesians (4:15) we read that we are to speak the truth in love. If we can’t speak the truth in love, we’d better keep quiet until we can.

In Colossians 4:6 St. Paul writes, “Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer every one.”

Speech that is “seasoned with salt” is speech that is gracious, considerate, compassionate, helpful.

We can’t all be clever, but we can all be gracious.

Some of us talk too much. And when we do our speech becomes insipid, dull, tasteless.

B. But if salt loses its savor it is useless. And there’s nothing so useless as a useless religious person. (I won’t say “useless Christian” because “useless Christian” is a contradiction of terms.)

Useless religious people actually do more harm in the world than unbelievers because people look at them and say, “If that’s what Christians are, I don’t want to be one.”

A so-called “Christian” who has no savor of Christ about him or her is doing the devil’s work of turning people away from God.

To be no influence for good is to be an influence for evil.

When Jesus tells us that savorless salt is no good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden under foot he is warning us about the dreadful consequences of uselessness.

In another passage Jesus compared his followers to branches of a grape vine. He said, “Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned” (John 15:6).

CONCLUSION

You and I have no idea how many people have influenced us for good. Sometimes it was simply a word of encouragement or a kind action. The kind actions have been long forgotten, but they have changed us.

Children copy the people they admire unconsciously. Did you ever notice how children adopt the mannerisms and attitudes of their parents? If you have lived for God you have influenced many people for good whether you know it or not. I believe that when you get to heaven you may be surprised at how much good you have done in the world without knowing it.

That is why salt is such a good metaphor for what Jesus is talking about. Salt is subtle. It is usually not noticed. But when it is absent—in the oatmeal or in the bread—it is noticed. A schoolboy said, “Salt is the stuff that when you don’t put it in the oatmeal, it makes it taste nasty.”

Did you ever receive a compliment or a kind word that just made your day?

I’ve heard people say, when they received a compliment or a kind word: “Thanks, I needed that.” That’s what we all need from one another—some indication that we are important to them.

We want other people to know that we care about them—because that’s what we all want, for people to care about us.

Too many people go through life looking for what they can get out of it. But useful people go through life looking for what they can give to others.

And that’s what we’re here for, to serve God by serving others.

Some of us may become discouraged because we look back and see no great things that we’ve done for God. I remember the saying of Mother Teresa: “We can do no great things for God; we can only do little things with great love.”

I’ve been told of short film entitled Packy. In it God talks with Packy Rowe, a gruff, good-hearted man who has died thinking he didn’t amount to much spiritually. God tells him otherwise. “You spread me around like butter,” God says. “You might have been happier with yourself if you had known how happy I was with you.”