The Great Samaritan

By: Dr. Robert Petterson

May 03, 2009

Francis Schaeffer said, “Looking makes all the difference in the world.” Mercy does not come to eyes that look away from the pain of others. But unless what we see with eyes moves our hearts to pity, our feet will never move to take action with our hands. If we are not driven to acts of mercy, it is because our hearts have not been transformed. The Scottish preacher, Robert Murray M’Cheyne, wrote, “To give largely and liberally, not grudging at all, requires a new heart.”

Sermon Text:

[Text: Luke 10:25-37]

His pious mother had him christened as Giovanni (Italian for John) in honor of John the Baptist, with the hopes that he would someday become a great religious leader.

But Giovanni grew up anything but religious. As a son of the richest cloth merchant in Mideaval Europe, the boy was pampered to the point of utter rottenness. Though his father hoped he would take over the family business, Giovanni frittered away his days listening to troubadours in the marketplace and writing French poetry. At night he played the fop, opulently decked out in the latest fashion while he pranced from one drunken orgy to another. He wasted his father's money on prostitutes and his energy on street bawls and sword fights. Yet he felt nothing but disillusionment and despair.

One day a beggar in the marketplace asked young Giovanni for a handout. His rich young friends pushed the beggar aside with curses and catcalls. As Giovanni was walking away he remembered an old priest's sermon about how, when we feed the hungry and clothe the naked, we are ministering to Christ. He ran back to the beggar, gave him everything he had in his pockets, embraced his diseased body and kissed him full on his scabbed lips. His noblemen sidekicks were appalled by his actions, and rebuked him for embarrassing them in front of the marketplace rabble.

When he got home, he told his family that he wanted to leave his life of privilege and give himself to helping the poor. His enraged father forced Giovanni into the army, and he was sent off to war. He was captured and spent a year in prison. He later said that Christ visited him in that dungeon.

When he returned home, he no longer found pleasure in the carousing of his friends. They asked him jokingly if he was planning to settle down and get married. He replied, "Yes, I plan to marry a fairer bride than any of you have ever seen. I shall soon be wed to Lady Poverty." Within months he gave away everything he possessed, and moved into a charity hospital, feeding and bathing the most repulsive of the sick. During the cold winter nights, he climbed into bed with the worst of the lepers, wrapping them in his arms to keep them warm.

Then this son of the richest cloth merchant in Mideaval Europe sat on the steps of the great cathedral begging for money for the poor. When his father's friend, the cardinal bishop of Sabina, and confessor to Pope Innocent 3rd, came up the steps, he begged him to allow him to start a new order of monks to minister to the poor and distressed. With the pope's blessings, he gathered together a group of disciples who gave away all their possessions to follow Jesus. Together they crisscrossed Europe, ministering to the poor, comforting the sick, and evangelizing those who had been ignored by the church. He then crossed the Mediteranean. He was the only missionary that the Muslim Caliph ever allowed to preach the gospel in North Africa because, according to this supreme ruler of Islam, he was "that rarest of all Christians who truly lived out his faith."

On October 3, 1226, while still in his forties, Giovanni caught a disease from a sick wretch that he had held in his arms. Later, as he lay on the cold ground covered with his ragged old habit, he cried out, "Welcome Sister Death!" He then looked at his brothers, and whispered his last words, "I have done my part. May Jesus teach you to do yours."

You remember Giovanni di Bernardoni from the name his father later gave him: Francesco, or Francis. History memorializes him with this name: Saint Francis of Assisi. He called his band of brothers "the little Friars." Not long before he died, someone, who remembered him when he was a self-centered "rich" kid, asked him how had managed to change his heart. Francis responded with a smile, "I found it impossible to change my wicked heart. Instead, it was supernaturally transformed by the power of Christ."

St. Francis of Assisi lived the life of the Good Samaritan. How does one achieve such a radical lifestyle? The Scottish Presbyterian preacher Robert Murray M'Cheyne gives the 3rd principle of the Parable of the Good Samaritan:

"To give largely and liberally, without doing so grudgingly, requires a new heart."

The heart is the key to everything. The Bible speaks of our heart 833 times. History's wisest man wrote in Proverbs 4:23, "Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life." In Matthew 15:18 Jesus tells us that "…all that defiles comes from the heart." Jeremiah 17:9 adds, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and beyond cure. Who can know it?" In one of their biggest hits, the Bee Gees asked a question that has plagued human-kind: "How do you Mend a Broken Heart?" Jeremiah replies that our hearts are beyond mending. Robert Murray M'Cheyne says that we need more than radical surgery on our old hearts; we need a complete transplant.

The heart is the key to this parable. Three men came upon the victim after he was left to die on the side of the Jericho Road. They all had one thing in common: the priest saw the man; the Levite saw him; and the Samaritan also saw him. But verse 33 says of the Samaritan, "…when he saw him, he took pity on him." The difference wasn't in what they saw with their eyes, but what they felt in their hearts. Mercy starts with eyes that see. But unless what is seen with our eyes brings pity to our hearts, our feet will never move to take action. The priest and Levite had the same eyes, feet and hands that the Samaritan had. But they didn't have his compassionate heart.

I repeat the words of Robert Murray M'Cheyne: "To give largely and liberally, without doing so grudgingly, requires a new heart." St. Francis of Assisi testified that he could not have lived the life he did unless his heart had been transformed by Christ." Neither can any of us. At the heart of the Parable of the Good Samaritan is the heart. May you be informed, inspired, and transformed by these three truths:

1. When the way is straight and narrow, avoid the ditch on either side.

This is not an easy parable. In verse 25 an "expert in the law" asks Jesus, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" Those of us who are children of the Reformation expect Jesus to answer, "Just believe in me by faith, rest in my grace, and accept me as your Lord and Savior." That's the gospel we preach.

Instead Jesus responds in verse 26, "What is written in the Law?" We immediately wonder, "Why does Jesus point to the Law rather than grace?" Worse than that, after this man quotes the two great commandments about loving God and our neighbor, Jesus replies in verse 28, "Do this and you will live." In other words, "Keep the commandments and you will have eternal life." This "expert in the law" suddenly feels the weight of keeping the commandments come crushing down on top of him. So he tries to find some wiggle room: "Who is my neighbor?" Jesus answers with a parable ending in an inescapable conclusion: the issue isn't who my neighbor is; but am I a good neighbor? Verse 37 defines the good neighbor as "the one who had mercy" on the one who is in desperate straits.

But it is the postscript to the parable that is most troubling. In verse 37 Jesus says to the lawyer, "Go and do likewise." Is this the answer to the question, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" Do we earn eternal life by what we do? Does our eternal security hang on how well we keep the commandments? If so, then 500 years of Protestant Reformation theology that we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, is turned on its head.

This is where we have to avoid the ditch on either side. This story is about four men who travel the Jericho Road. In Matthew 7:13&14, Jesus speaks of two other roads that call out to each of us:

"Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it."

The road to hell is so tolerantly-wide that it allows us to stray as far as we want into any kind of moral thinking, religion, philosophy, or lifestyle. But the road to eternal life is distressingly-narrow. It doesn't allow us to stray too far lest we fall off into a deep and destructive ditch on either side.

On the one side is the ditch of "salvation by works." If I go that way I will fall off the narrow "gospel" road and into a pit of despair. The more I work at clawing my way out of the ditch, the more the dirt will cave in on me. In the end, I can't do enough good things for God, or help my neighbors enough, to cancel out my sins and earn eternal life. I will be buried under a pile of my own shortcomings, suffocate from my own perfectionist sense of "never quite doing enough" and fail to make it to eternal life.

But I can also fall off the other side of the narrow road into a ditch of "grace without works that follow." I can think that, because I am saved by Christ's perfect work alone, my good works don't matter. Because of God's grace, I can live any way that I want. At the bottom of that ditch is the softest pile of mattresses ever designed in hell, beckoning me to slumber in a false security that I have been saved when my life bears no evidence of spiritual transformation.

Those travelling the narrow road to eternal life must avoid the ditch on either side. St. Paul gives us the straight way in Ephesians 2:8-10:

"For it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."

St. Paul avoids both ditches. Focus again on the Apostle's logic: We are saved by grace alone. We don't even conjure up the faith we exercise to receive that grace. Even that is a gift from God. Paul is emphatic at the beginning of verse nine: "not by works…" We have no reason to boast about anything we have done when it comes to our salvation. He drives the point home again in verse ten: "For we are God's workmanship…" We are not self-made Christians. God alone does the work that transforms us. Paul adds that we were "…created in Christ Jesus…" Our eternal life is the work of the Triune God, from beginning to end. The ditch of "salvation earned by our own works" is deadly enough to keep us out of heaven.

But there is that opposite ditch that says "grace doesn't demand that good works follow." Paul goes on in verse ten to drive home the very reason that God saved us: "…to do good works." Combining Ephesians 2:10 with St. Paul's words in Romans 8:29, we would read, "We are created in Christ Jesus…to be conformed to the likeness of Christ Jesus." As we mature in Christ, we will increasingly do the good works that he did. Paul ends verse ten by saying that these are good works "which God prepared in advance for us to do." In other words, from the very moment in eternity past when he chose to save us, he designed our lives so that, as we walked down the Jericho Road, there would be plenty of suffering people in our path so that we would have an opportunity to demonstrate mercy that would bring glory to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The narrow road requires great balance, lest we fall into either ditch. Good works do not produce our salvation, or keep it. Good works always fall short, because eternal life requires perfect works. Only perfect Divinity incarnate in a perfect man, Jesus Christ could perfectly love God and neighbor. That's why this lawyer, nor any of us, can never "justify" ourselves in an attempt to keep the two great commandments. God will only justify us if we are in the Jesus. But, though salvation is never earned by good works, it always produces them. The same Jesus who accomplished the work of our salvation will also accomplish the work of our sanctification.

Jesus plots out a narrow road. Staying out of ditches on either side requires great care. A friend complained that this Parable of the Good Samaritan is so difficult. It would be so much easier if Christ would define our neighbor; if he would give us an easy formula, so that we would know when we have done enough. That's why religious folks find rules to be comforting. Rules make our decisions for us. My friend said, "If we could just tithe, that would be easy enough. We could give ten percent to God's work, and then do what we want with the other ninety percent of our material things. But I think Jesus owns the other 90% too, and that's the part that gets dicey. When have we given enough? Aren't there times when helping our neighbors really hurt them? Don't we sometimes enable people to continue their reckless ways by bailing them out?" My friend was saying that there are a lot of other ditches alongside the narrow road. In some ways, it would be a lot easier to give everything to the poor, and live a life of total poverty, like St. Francis of Assisi or Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

There are still more ditches. On the one hand, we can worry ourselves to death about whether or not we are loving God and our neighbor enough to earn salvation. On the other, we can worry ourselves into paranoia about whether or not we are doing enough to prove to ourselves that we are really saved. In the end, we can lose our hope of eternal security. No one ever loved God or her neighbors more than Mother Teresa. And yet, you go away from reading her diary with a profound sense of sorrow. She was plagued with suicidal despair. She constantly berated herself that she didn't do enough for the poor. She even felt guilty that the little cell she called home, and the small bit of food she allowed herself to eat, was sinfully luxurious. Until she died, Mother Teresa was plagued with doubts that she was even saved." Mother Teresa was a Good Samaritan par excellence. Yet even she fell into the ditch of finding eternal security in her good works.

May I speak of two more ditches. This series on the Good Samaritan has been disturbing for all of us. Sermons can also fall into ditches. There can be the ditch on the one side full of "feel good" comfort for its hearers, lulling them into a false security. There can be the ditch on the other side, where graceless sermons beat up folks and bring them to the despair of doubting their salvation. There should always be the comfort of grace in the preaching of God's word. But there should always be a challenge that spurs us on to good works, even though it causes us to examine ourselves with disturbing questions. God does not call preachers of the gospel to make people happy, but to prepare them for a happy ending. In the end, the gospel road is narrow so that we might grab hold of Jesus in desperation, and let him answer each situation; and show us when to stop and when to move on, and how to love our neighbor; and to lead us all the way home by way of his perfect heart. He alone keeps us out of the ditches.

2. By a Good Samaritan life we declare the Great Samaritan's Gospel.

The gospel is woven through this parable. Jesus wants us to see beyond the Good Samaritan and see the Great Samaritan. If you look closely, you will see yourself in this story. More importantly, you will find Jesus. In this parable is the drama of redemption.

The story opens with a nameless, faceless man who goes down from the holy city of Jerusalem in the mountains to Jericho below sea level in the deepest bowels of planet earth. Jericho beckons because it sits at the intersection of the trade routes of the ancient world. Men become rich in Jericho. But it is also the way downward; the way from the spiritual heights to hell itself. It is a place where the pleasures of forbidden fruit can be purchased if you will sell your soul. It is the way taken by the first man Adam. He left the heights of paradise to take the downward road, lured by the forbidden fruit; the riches of Jericho on the way to the bottomless pit of hell. All of his children since have travelled that downward road.

In the shadows waits the thief. Jesus describes him in John 10:10: "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life and have it to the full." Jesus is letting us know that the devil is the thief. Once flew in the heights of heaven, but he rebelled and has been cast down to the depths of the Jericho road, on his way to the pits of hell. He hides in the shadows of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and calls out to our first parents to take the broad road of sin. He stole everything from that first man and his wife, then turned them into a wanders on the road downward. He stripped them of innocence, robbed their dignity, stole their birthright, beat them up and left them dead in a paradise turned into a wilderness. He tried to do the same thing with Jesus in his wilderness temptation. The road to Jericho is littered with billions of his victims.

A priest and a Levite come by. These purveyors of religion represent the law and the prophets. There is little compassion in organized religion. The law can tell you how you got into trouble. It can condemn you for your sin and stupidity. It can even try to clean up the Jericho road with rules and regulations. But it can't change the hearts of those who make the Jericho Road a killing field. In the end, religion can only shake its head in powerless piety, and pass on by with fixing anything.

But now the Samaritan comes. It's fascinating that Jesus would reveal himself in the person who was hated most by the religious Jews of his day. But then, so was he. Samaritans came from another place. They were aliens to God's people. And so Jesus came to his own people, but they rejected as an alien who didn't fit their stereotype of what a Messiah should be. He came down from the greatest heights, heaven itself. And before he was through with his suffering on the cross, he descended into the deepest parts of hell. He travelled the Jericho Road from top to bottom because he loved his Father and he loves his fallen neighbors. You see the gospel of the Great Samaritan in ever act of this Good Samaritan. As he looks with pity at the mangled victim, you remember the words of Matthew 9:36, "And when Jesus saw the crowds as sheep without a shepherd, he had compassion on them." As he tears apart his clothes to make bandages to cover the man's wounds in verse 34, we see the work of Jesus who takes off his robe of righteousness and covers our sins. As he pours out his wine to disinfect the open sores, we see a picture of the blood of Jesus that washes away the stain of our sin. The oil that he pours takes the sting out of the wine, and brings soothing comfort to the pain of the wounds. In the same way, Jesus pours out his Holy Spirit on us to bring comfort and assurance of our salvation.

As he puts the man on his donkey, I think of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on his way to take our sin, sickness, and pain upon himself at the Cross. He carries him to the inn, a place of rest and healing. In the same way, Jesus carries us into the presence of his Father where we can find rest and healing in his presence. He lays out the coins to pay the price for his healing, in the same way Jesus paid the rice for our entrance into the Father's presence. But he not only paid those silver coins, he says in verse 36, "Look after him, and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have." Jesus pays the full price for our salvation and sanctification, even until he returns. And he will return for a spotless and radiant bride, his holy Church.

Why must we walk the Jericho road and do works of mercy? It is because our actions declare the gospel more surely than our words. Today we celebrate the Lord's Supper. It is living out of the gospel in broken bread and poured out wine. In the same way, we live out the Lord's Supper in our broken and poured out lives as we leave this worship center.

3. The only way to live the life of Christ is to let Christ live your life.

Jesus says to the lawyer, "Go and do likewise." But it is impossible. He cannot to likewise. Therefore he can't go. If he goes, he has to leave Jesus behind. The impossibility of keeping the two great commandments is in trying to do it on our own. We don't know what the lawyer did. But we know what we must do. We have to grab hold of Jesus and say, "I can't go unless you go with me. If can't live your life unless you live it through me. I am undone unless you come with me. I will surely fall off the narrow way into some ditch of destruction." This is why, when Jesus calls his disciples to go into all the world and preach his gospel, he must say in Matthew 28:20, "And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." Our hearts won't do. We need Jesus' heart beating inside us. And so we come to the Lord's Table to eat his body and drink his blood in a profoundly spiritual and mysterious way, so that his life would energize our life. And in doing so, we have already found eternal life before we ever get to heaven.

Copyright 2008-2012, All rights reserved. No part of this may be reproduced without permission from Dr. Robert Petterson, Pastor Trent Casto or Covenant Presbyterian Church of Naples.