Here again are the rough outline sermon sotes for today.
Sacrificial Love of a Peculiar People
Luke 10:25-37
We know this story, The priest, the Levite the Samaritan. Today I read of a person helping a woman in a
fiery crash that had flipped her off in road rage a few moments before.
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The woman in the story used todays language for
you get what you deserve: Karma. I
wonder if this is what the Levite and the priest thought of the battered man?
Let’s look at what Luke is relating about whet Jesus
teaches. The student (Lawyer), keeps
talking in legal terms, that is his language.
It is how he perceives things in his worldview.
Now an inheritance is a gift. It is what is bequeathed. A gift is not earned, payment is earned.
·
But the lawyer asks how he can earn a gift.. This is not possible.He did not understand salvation, eternal life, as a gift. (Jesus worldview)
· He was compartmentalizing the things of life.
We read his response
to the law and earning as Heart, Soul, Strength, mind= all of your personhood.
See, the lawyer had
law talk; the Savior salvation talk.
Jesus was turning his mind to the right way of thinking. Talk of
the Kingdom is to be peculiar. Law will not save you. But the condition of a heart is to love. When Jesus uses the Samaritan illustration He
is showing how the most irrepressible outcast, the greatest of sinners, can be
a part of the kingdom of God.
Jesus once said, unless your righteousness exceeds that of
the scribes and the Pharisees, which is just what this Samaritan did. (Matt
5:20) We should not think of our lives as measuring up to the law as this
lawyer did, but how are we in the image of Christ?
As a peculiar people who love, we do so because of our
worldview is actually a Kingdom view.
We are more concerned with the Kingdom of God than of this world
here. This world is for making preparations
for the next.
This Samaritan embodies how we are to live, not by law,
though we do not throw out the law, we live by love. This is a Kingdom worldview. It is peculiar. Learn to love. Love
is not law, it is heart- it is all of the personhood. It is the ultimate of heart, soul, strength,
and mind.