We Give Mercy

And behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tested Him, saying, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" ... "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself." ... "And who is my neighbor?" Then Jesus answered and said: "A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves... but a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was. And when he saw him, he had compassion..." "So which of these three do you think was neighbor to him who fell among the thieves?" And he said, "He who showed mercy on him." Then Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise." (Luke 10:25–37)

In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus moves past our self-justifications to the heart of the matter: love that gives mercy beyond every cultural and religious line.

The Season of Giving

The 2016 Christmas shopping season is more than underway. Maybe you braved the crowds on Friday or Saturday, or maybe the turkey went to your brain on Thursday and you headed out at 5 p.m. Some of the pictures of Walmart on Thanksgiving night look like standing in the middle of Fallujah in 2003—not a good place to be. But this time of year reminds us of giving and receiving, and Christmas is just 28 days away.

So we are taking time between now and Christmas to look at passages of Scripture about giving. Last week we talked about giving thanks; today we look at giving mercy. We began in Acts 20:35, the last of Paul's words to the Ephesian leaders: he labored to support the weak, "remembering the words of the Lord Jesus that He said, 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.'"

A Lawyer Comes to Test Jesus

Now we turn to Luke 10, beginning at verse 25. This passage is probably familiar even to people who have never been students of the Bible. There are Good Samaritan laws in virtually every state, and many people who use the phrase don't even realize it comes from a story Jesus told.

A certain lawyer stood up and tested Jesus. This was the norm everywhere Jesus went. Multitudes came for different reasons—some to be fed, some to hear Him, some to see a sign, some to touch Him for healing, some bringing sick or demon-possessed family members, and some, like the religious ruling class—Pharisees, scribes, Sadducees, lawyers, even the political Herodians—who came to challenge Him.

The lawyers of the day were the scribes, the copyists of the law—the first five books of Moses, the Pentateuch. They were experts who often had large sections memorized verbatim and debated endlessly over interpretations. Some have tried to read through the Bible in a year and gotten tripped up just by Leviticus; these men sometimes memorized the entire book and knew all its interpretations.

Aim for the Heart

The lawyer's question seems simple: "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" Two people in the Gospels ask that same question—this lawyer, and the rich young ruler who came running, knelt, and said, "Good teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" That topic of eternal life comes up repeatedly, especially in John.

Jesus' response is fascinating. To the rich young ruler He asked, "Why do you call Me good?" If a family member or coworker asked us point-blank what they must do to be saved, most of us would jump immediately to "confess your sins, believe in Jesus, pray this prayer." Maybe you've even dropped hints hoping someone would ask. Yet Jesus, who had that very question twice, did not give a direct gospel presentation.

In fact, in more than 180 places where people asked Jesus questions, He answered directly only three times—and He Himself asked questions more than 300 times. For every one direct answer, there were a hundred questions He posed back. That method can be frustrating. As a junior high pastor I'd hear, "Can I go to the bathroom?" and answer, "I don't know—can you?" But Jesus did this on purpose: He was aiming at the heart, not the head.

That gives us our first point: aim for the heart in your evangelism. This is difficult in our culture, which worships reason and loves airtight answers. The apologetics movement that grew out of the late 1970s and 1980s—with names like Francis Schaeffer—rightly stressed that we should "always be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within you." Yet for most Christians, when a question comes, there is more fear than readiness.

So follow the pattern of Jesus. When someone asks, "Do you really believe sincere followers of other religions go to hell?" you might ask, "Do you believe in hell?" When someone asks, "Do you really believe Jesus is the only way to heaven?"—wrestling with His exclusivity claim in John 14, "I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father but by Me"—you might ask, "Do you believe in heaven, and what way do you think it is to get there?" When someone says, "Can you prove there is a God?" instead of rushing home to email me about apologetics, you might simply ask, "Can you prove that there isn't?" It changes the entire dynamic, because the heart of man is what we need to deal with.

Love Is the Focus of God's Law

So Jesus asks, "What is written in the law? What is your reading of it?" The lawyer answers: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself." In Matthew 22, another lawyer asks for the greatest commandment, and Jesus gives the same answer, adding, "On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."

Every devout Jew knew this answer, because it is the first passage a Jewish child in the first century would learn—the Shema, "the hearing," from Deuteronomy 6:4–9: "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength... You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes; you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates."

This is why a follower of Judaism has a mezuzah on his doorpost—a little compartment with this very text inside. It is why, at the Western Wall, you see the little box and leather straps called phylacteries on hand and forehead. Every child and every legal scholar knew the answer. So this brings our second point: love is the focus of God's law. Paul says in Galatians that the whole law is summed up in one word—love.

Wanting to Justify Himself

The lawyer knew the right answer, so Jesus said, "You have answered rightly; do this and you will live." But it is one thing to know the right answer and an entirely different thing to do the right thing. So in verse 29, "wanting to justify himself," the lawyer asked, "And who is my neighbor?"

This was exactly where the scribes loved to debate the intricacies of the law. When Moses allowed a man to divorce his wife for "some uncleanness," the legal scholars argued endlessly over what "uncleanness" meant—some said it could mean she cooked his eggs wrong. They argued over the length of a Sabbath day's journey. When our group was in Israel weeks ago, I pointed out the 18-foot galvanized poles around a Jewish village, strung with a wire marking the boundary you cannot cross on a Sabbath.

This is what religious legalists do: they aim to justify themselves, usually at the expense of others. We look down on others' failures and highlight their inconsistencies so that we can justify ourselves. I find this same desire for self-justification in my own fallen nature—looking for loopholes, telling myself that maybe in the Greek the text isn't so cutting. But Jesus has an amazing way of cutting through our self-justifications, dissolving our loopholes like a razor through silk.

A Treacherous Road

So Jesus answers with a parable: "A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves." This man was no doubt Jewish, traveling a well-known path. Jewish men went up to Jerusalem three times a year. Jericho lay about 800 feet below sea level and Jerusalem about 2,500 feet above—so the roughly 20-mile road climbed some 3,300 feet. People traveled it in groups because the wilderness hid many robbers. Jerome, translator of the Latin Bible, tells us this path was called the Way of Blood because so many fell along it.

So this was not a rare occurrence. The man was stripped, wounded, and left half dead. This is our third point: this fallen world is full of trouble. Every day, on the radio, on TV, on the internet, we are confronted with the constant fallenness and trouble of this world.

Passed By on the Other Side

By divine providence—I don't believe in coincidence—a priest came down that road. You would assume this was exactly the kind of person who would stop: a representative of God, returning home after his month's rotation of service at the temple. Yet when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. Apparently he had fulfilled his service to God.

Then a Levite came. The Levites were the tribe given the priesthood, and this man was still about temple business. He arrived at the place, came and looked—the word means he examined, beheld, perhaps even watched the slow rising and falling of the man's chest—and he too passed by on the other side. Charles Spurgeon said, "If anywhere there should be compassion towards men, it should be in the heart of the priest who has chosen to speak for God to men, and for men to God."

No doubt they had reasonable excuses: I'm in a hurry; I've already done my service; I've been away from my family a month; it's getting late and dangerous; it's his own fault for traveling alone; he's nearly dead, what good could I do; I'm only one person; as a priest I'd become unclean and soil my garments; maybe it's a trap and the robbers are near. Spurgeon said of them, "They had been near to God, but they were not like Him."

That gives us our fourth point: piety without pity is of little value. Religious piety that does not move us to compassionate pity is of little value. Social scientists have even identified a condition called moral licensing: doing something that strengthens our positive self-image actually makes us less worried about immoral behavior afterward, more likely to make immoral choices. Sometimes our religious observance—coming to church, giving a tithe, serving in ministry—calluses us, so that the rest of the week we feel we've done our duty and don't need to get involved. It is a true danger.

The Compassion of the Samaritan

"But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was. And when he saw him, he had compassion." The Samaritans were an ethnic minority living in the region between Galilee in the north and Judea in the south. The Jews hated them so deeply that "Samaritan" was used as a racial slur—in John 8:48 they insult Jesus, "Is it not true that You are a Samaritan and have a demon?"

The one who had every reason to pass by, who might have thought "he got what he deserved," was instead moved with compassion. He bandaged the man's wounds, pouring on oil and wine, set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he gave the innkeeper two denarii—two days' wages, all the money he had left—and said, "Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I come again, I will repay you."

This is our fifth point: compassion cares beyond creed and cultural lines. Religion often creates boundaries and walls—us and them, the righteous and those wicked pagans we must keep out lest they ruin us. But love, the focus of God's law, breaks those things down.

Go and Do Likewise

So Jesus asks, "Which of these three do you think was neighbor to him who fell among the thieves?" The answer is obvious, and the lawyer said, "He who showed mercy on him." Jesus said, "Go and do likewise"—a command.

This is our sixth point: true religion compels us to show mercy to others, and therein is a blessing. We began in Acts 20:35—"It is more blessed to give than to receive." James says in the last verses of James 1 that true religion is to care for those who cannot care for themselves. And in Matthew 5:7, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy."

The religious men who should have helped passed by, and as James says, their religion is worthless before God. But the Samaritan saw beyond culture, beyond creed, beyond racial and ethnic divide, and ministered to the man left for dead. True religion reaches out to fulfill the focus of God's law, which is love.

This is a challenge to me, and probably to all of us. As we are reminded of giving in this season, let us remember that the Lord calls us to be merciful. When God introduced Himself to Moses and the children of Israel, the very first word He chose was mercy: "The LORD, the LORD God, merciful." And if we are children of our Father in heaven, it should be seen in us that we too are merciful.

Closing Prayer

Father, I thank You that we, like the man taken by thieves, were left for dead in our trespasses and sins—but You, who are rich in mercy, because of Your great love for us, even while we were in that pitiful, suffering condition, came and gave us grace. By grace are we saved. And Lord, though we are not saved by our good works of mercy and compassion, You have no doubt saved us for good works of mercy, grace, compassion, and love.

God, I pray for myself and for my brothers and sisters here, as we prepare to leave to go to work, to school, wherever we will be this week. Help us to see beyond racial lines, cultural lines, and creedal lines—to see those in need and, stirred by Your compassion, grace, and love, to be compelled to reach out with mercy. Help us to give mercy. It is not in our nature; our nature wants vindication, justice, justification. But Lord, help us to live after Your nature, that we would represent You well in the world, especially as we celebrate Your coming into the world in this season. Shine Your light in and through our lives. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.