Episode Transcript
[00:00:29] Church.
[00:00:30] Happy Father's day. Happy Father's day. Can we make some noise for the dads today? Come on.
[00:00:42] I am so grateful for my dad. It is such an incredible blessing and advantage in life to have a really good man as your dad. And I am so thankful that God gave me that blessing.
[00:00:55] And I'm thankful for all the great men in this church. This church is filled with awesome men and awesome dads. So we are thankful for you. And because we're so thankful for you, we have a hot dog for you after service, because there is no greater way to show appreciation than to give you a hot dog at 10:00 a.m. so after service.
[00:01:19] And you know what? Everyone can have one, not just dads. All right? So after service, make sure to grab one. But we truly are thankful for you. And let's pray.
[00:01:29] Father, we love you. And, Lord, I do thank you for my dad. I thank you for the blessing of good men and what they bring. And, Father, help all of us men to be better men, Lord, that reflect you, that, Father, like you do, that love like you do, that serve like you do, Lord, today, as we think about what it means to love our neighbor, help us to think about that from your perspective and not our own.
[00:02:00] Help us to see how liberating and how serious this call is and help us to live it out well. And we ask all this in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:02:14] Well, last week, we started a new sermon series called the Art of neighboring. And we've been looking at the great commands by Jesus where he says, love God with everything and then love your neighbor as yourself. And we've been talking about, what does it look like to practice that and to live that out. And so we've been digging into that. Today, we're going to continue talking about it. But recently, I've been reading a really good book, and it's by Nancy Pearcey, and it's called the toxic war on masculinity. Very intense title. But what the book is about is about how we understand what it means to be a healthy man. And in the book, she talks about how in our culture at large, there's a lot of scripts of what it means to be a man, but a lot of those ways of understanding what it means to be a man are not healthy. And she talks about the different ways that the Bible shows us what that looks like and how that's actually far healthier and better. And one of the parts that I really liked about this book was she cited several different studies that show that men who have a growing relationship with God about how that just radically impacts how they are as husbands and how they are as fathers. And she had this really interesting data behind it. Let me share some of it with you. She said that men who are committed to their relationship with Christ out of, they have the highest levels of marital happiness, both the men and the women. And this is based on people who don't have a relationship or don't cite that as a priority in their lives. So men who are committed to Christ, their marriages generally are far happier, both men and women in their marriage, she said. They're also more emotionally attuned to their wives.
[00:04:29] Now, you may think that's not saying much because when you start at rock bottom, you can only, you know, but for whatever that's worth, they're better than most. They're more emotionally attuned to their wives. They're more committed to quality time with their wives, to prioritizing that in life, to making sure they have time to be together and to be present and to build that relationship. They are the least likely to yell at their children.
[00:04:57] They must not have surveyed my house about this one, but they're the least likely to yell at their children. They're the most likely to spend time in activities with their children. So, like coaching different sports, school activities, just kind of, again, making time to be with them. They're more inclined than other groups that are surveyed, and they are better at setting healthy boundaries for their kids. So, like how much screen time they have, all these different boundaries that are healthy for kids, they're typically better. So here's what it means, is that Christ makes you a better man.
[00:05:46] That when Christ is in your life man, it makes you a better husband and a better father.
[00:05:53] And she said, interestingly, people were surprised to find that out, that many of these surveys thought that they would find the opposite, that a commitment to Christianity would make you worse. But what they found is it makes you far better. And if you're a follower of Christ, that's not really a surprise to you, is it?
[00:06:13] That we know this is true? And I just love, though, seeing it spelled out. Isn't that encouraging?
[00:06:21] What a cool thing. And what we're talking about today is that not only does Christ make us better husbands and fathers, I believe anytime we hang around Christ, it makes us better at loving people in our lives, period.
[00:06:35] The more time we are connected to him and in pursuit of him and in relationship with him, the more it impacts how we treat people. And today we're going to dive into that, because what we're going to see in this passage is that Jesus teaches us, Jesus shows us, and Jesus guides us into how to be a better neighbor to people in our lives. And last week we started looking at Luke, chapter ten, and we're going to pick up where we left off last week. But let me give you the context of this. There was a religious scholar, the New Testament calls him a lawyer, but he's not a modern day lawyer. He would be someone who is an expert in biblical law, Old Testament law, that kind of thing. And he asks a question to Jesus. He says, what should I do to inherit eternal life? In other words, the question is, really, how should we live? What is the most important thing? And Jesus says, well, what do you think? And the man said, well, love God with your whole being and love your neighbor as yourself. That kind of summarizes everything. And Jesus says, you have answered correctly. And then this is where the story picks up verse 29. But he, desiring to justify himself, so he still, he didn't like how the conversation was going, and so he wanted to make sure he came out looking good looking, right? Making a point. I know you've never had a conversation where you felt that urge before husbands. I know you've never talked to your wife and wanted to justify yourself, but if you can just try to get inside this man's head in motivation, this is what he wants to do. And so he says to Jesus, well, who is my neighbor?
[00:08:33] Because right before this, he had said that the focus is to love our neighbor as ourselves. And he says, all right, well, let's get technical about this. Who is my neighbor? Because have you ever noticed in questions like this, there's this tendency to say, what is the lowest bar possible?
[00:08:54] Because whatever the lowest bar possible is, that's what I'm aiming at.
[00:08:59] And so Jesus replied, and he tells them one of the greatest stories that was ever told. If you've never read the Bible in your life, I bet you still know the basics of this story. This is how influential this story is in human history. But let's read it. Jesus replied, and he said a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. Now this was a well known ancient road, and on this road it was through mountain passes. So there was a lot of, of nooks and crannies where thieves and robbers and things like that could hide. So it was a notoriously dangerous road. And it was 17 miles. So I don't know the last time you walked 17 miles, but that's a good little hike. There.
[00:09:47] And so walking 17 miles through this road. Yeah, you had to have your head on a swivel. There was a lot of danger that could happen. And so this man, unfortunately, he fell among robbers.
[00:10:01] They stripped him and they beat him and they departed, leaving him half dead. So on this road, this man, he got attacked, he got mugged, things were stolen from him. He was left in a bad place.
[00:10:16] But verse 31. But by chance, a priest was going down that road.
[00:10:25] And don't you just feel relief at that? Oh, thank God.
[00:10:28] Someone is there to help him.
[00:10:31] Surely if there's someone bloody and bleeding on the side of the road, a priest or. We're not Catholics, so let's use the word pastor. A pastor would stop and help the man. But look at this. When he saw him, he passed by on the other side. I just want to state very clearly today, if I saw you, I would not pass by, all right? This is clearly not a Christchurch pastor here.
[00:11:03] I would drive by, but I would call 911 for you. Okay? So just so you know, so you pass by on the other side. But then, look at this. So likewise, a Levite. Now, this is another similar type of religious leader here.
[00:11:19] He's a Levite, and he was passing by. So you're like, okay, well, man, pastor swinging, a mess, Levite's here. Even though this man has had a terrible experience, it seems like there's good fortune coming. Two religious professionals just happened to pass by.
[00:11:36] Surely one will help him. Nope. He came to the place and he saw him. And he passed by too, to the other side. But then a Samaritan, now, in Jesus context, this would have been the most unlikely person.
[00:11:57] Whereas the priests and the Levite, you would expect them to stop, to minister to this man, to be helpful. That's what you would expect. This Samaritan, you would not expect anything good from him. Let me say it another way in our modern context, but a Michigan fan, does that help?
[00:12:22] Or a Steelers fan was coming, and, you know, you're like, oh, he's probably part of the group that robbed him. Surely nothing good can come from Michigan or Pittsburgh.
[00:12:39] Jesus loves you, too. All you have to do is repent. Steeler Michigan fans, that's it. And we'll have an altar call today for you.
[00:12:48] So the Samaritan. So now, to the jewish mind, this person is inferior in every way. He is racially inferior. There's racial prejudice behind this. He is religiously inferior. He is socially inferior. So this is. You have to just imagine that just the person that you have the most prejudice against is the one that Jesus is talking about here absolutely unlikely in their mind. But the Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was and saw him. Look at this line. He had compassion.
[00:13:28] The priests and the Levites, they pass by. The Samaritan looks and he has compassion. He feels bad for this guy. His heart is moved. And look at this. He went to him and he bound up his wounds.
[00:13:46] He poured oil and wine. These are disinfectant and healing agents in the ancient world. He set them on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. Church, this guy is going above and beyond. Don't you think?
[00:14:05] It gets even more. 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'll repay you when I come back. Now, most people think that was about two months worth of rent right there, paid up front. Two months. This dude is generous. And he said, and whatever else he needs, let me go. If it's longer, I'll pay more.
[00:14:30] This guy's incredible.
[00:14:32] And then Jesus says, which of the three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?
[00:14:43] Now, notice how Jesus switches this question a little bit. The man says, who is my neighbor?
[00:14:50] Who do I need to serve? Now Jesus turns it around and he says, who are you neighboring? Do you see the difference? In other words, he said, it's not about them. It's about you.
[00:15:04] See, the lawyer was looking to say, who's in and who's out, who's worth my love and being served and who's not. He was trying to find an answer along those lines, but Jesus says, no, you're thinking about this wrong. And he says, who are you neighboring? The focus is not on them and their worth and who's okay and who's not. The focus is on you and who you are pouring out this type of generous love to. And then verse 37, the man, I can imagine that this was a really painful moment for him. The one who showed him mercy. He couldn't say samaritan. It hurt too much. The one who showed him mercy. And Jesus said to him, you go and do likewise.
[00:15:55] This is such a challenging story on so many levels. And ultimately, it shows us two very basic things I want to look at today. It shows us the wrong example and the right one, the wrong one and the right one. So let's talk about the wrong one. First, we see this lawyer, and he doesn't like what Jesus is saying he wants to justify himself. He wants to, you know, find the lowest bar possible.
[00:16:24] And so he asks the question, who is my neighbor? Now, it's easy to be critical of this lawyer, but here's what I want to do today. I want to look at this text and not think about other people, but think about ourselves.
[00:16:40] And I want this text to challenge our own framework and our own way of seeing the world around us, because I think what this lawyer shows is something that's true in all of us. And here's what it is. I think we have a brokenness that creates a stubbornness to love people. Well, do you think that's true? We have a brokenness that, like the lawyer, we're all, we all want to look for a way out.
[00:17:15] Instead of see the opportunity that God might be placing before us, see the lawyer. Ultimately, he's looking for a way out. Who's my neighbor? Like, he wants this to be. He wants to whittle this down.
[00:17:30] He wants to be free from the responsibility of having people that he needs to love that maybe aren't easy to love. He's looking for a way out. And what Jesus is showing them is, no, there are opportunities before you that God has for you. And what we've been saying in this series is that what's true for them is true for us, that today God has people around us that he wants us to love. Well, but we might be trying to find a way out, too. In that book, the art of neighboring, I told you about it a little bit last week. But the book takes this idea, and it says, if you want to love people, well, it's good to start right where you're at. And the book takes this idea of neighbor and says, what if we just took this very literally and we said, all right, God wants to love our neighbor as ourselves. What if we tried to love the people that live by us?
[00:18:37] What might happen?
[00:18:39] And now some of you, you're like, oh, that's easy because I love my neighbors. And some of you are like, chet, stop talking right now. Don't you dare put that on me.
[00:18:48] But the book starts there, and it starts really, really small. I want to show you this graphic that it has. And imagine your. And just be open to this idea for a second. Imagine your house in the middle, if that kind of works on your street. Or if not, it doesn't quite work on mine because there's no houses behind me. But if these are the houses all around you, he says that the beginning point is looking and number one, do you know the people that live around? Do you know their first names? That's level one.
[00:19:19] Now, when I think about the people around me, I know probably, like, three out of five of them, I know their first and last names. And so he says, if you want to begin to love the people around you, it begins with first making the effort to know them. And then the b in there is, do you know something about them that is deeper than the superficial? Hey, how's it going? It's hot out here, isn't it? Yeah.
[00:19:51] Talk to you later.
[00:19:53] Do you know something deeper than that? Like, where you've actually had, you know, a little more conversation, like maybe you know, where they work, you know, what the name of their goldfish is, you know, something along those lines. And then c is, do you actually know something that would come from, like, a beginning of a friendship? Like, you know, you know, maybe what they're something they're hoping to do, something that they're hoping to be. But what I love about this is, what if. And just think about this for a second. What if our lives are not nearly as random as we think?
[00:20:29] What if there is a purpose to where you live that's bigger than you like the house and you like the school district? That's all great, but maybe God also has a purpose.
[00:20:41] Maybe God is also in his genius and his plan.
[00:20:45] Put us in proximity. Or again, if it's not your home, you can make this. Imagine these are cubicles right here. Or whatever your. Whatever your. Or it's a factory floor, whatever your work might look like. But the idea is this is if we're going to love our neighbor, we have to start somewhere. And you cannot love people in general, because if you just think about this as one big concept, it's too big. It's the principle of aim small, miss Small.
[00:21:18] I have to start somewhere, and I have to begin to try to be a neighbor somewhere. And I think it's a cool and a helpful idea. I bought a pickleball net, and I'm going to try and lure my neighbors in with it.
[00:21:36] It could just as easily backfire, though, because I can get a little too mouthy and competitive out there. But, you know. But that's what. Thank you for the sympathy there.
[00:21:48] But just think about that. Where does God want us to begin? Maybe there's a beginning point right in front of us. Now, the second big thing that this shows us is that one of the great dangers to neighboring is religious. Here's what I'm gonna call it. Religious smugness.
[00:22:09] Have you ever met someone that was religiously smug or religiously annoying or religiously mean or religiously. And this is, now, think about this whole passage in the context. This is one of the driving points of all this. Why does Jesus choose a priest and a Levite in the story? Because he is making a point to the lawyer. The lawyer is a religious professional today. He would be like a seminary professor, something along those lines. So he is very much in the religious community. And so Jesus uses these examples because he's trying to help the lawyer to see himself clearly, to see himself in his misunderstanding of what it means to follow God and to change. Now, the priests and the Levite ministering to the needs of people, this was the very thing they were called to do.
[00:23:17] This was like 101 in their work. But here on the Jericho road, they don't do it.
[00:23:25] They pass by. And I just want to ask a question for us to think about. We don't know the answer exactly, but I just want us to speculate for a second. Sometimes it's not good to speculate about these things, but I think in this case it is good because I think that Jesus wants us to think about this in our own life. What would make the priest and the Levite see this man as someone to move away from?
[00:23:52] Because notice, that's exactly what they do. They see him and they move on the other side of the street. It's like when you're at the grocery store and you see someone, but you don't want to talk to them, you go to a different aisle. I know you've done that, and if you've done that to me, I will find you out. I'm just kidding.
[00:24:10] But you know, they purposely avoid. So what would. But what they were literally called to do was to engage in this type of work. This was a core part of their religious competency, and they didn't do it. So what caused them to move away instead of to move towards like the Samaritan did? Well, here's just a couple things maybe to think about.
[00:24:35] Let's start easy. Number one, the man didn't look good.
[00:24:41] He was dirty.
[00:24:43] He was naked or half naked.
[00:24:46] He was bloody.
[00:24:48] And so they didn't want to move towards him.
[00:24:55] And can I just make a really simple point here? We cannot judge a book by its cover as people, when you look at people, are you making assessments about their worth by how they look?
[00:25:13] Now I know it's very normal to do as human beings, but God repeatedly tells us that he judges by the heart, not outward appearance, how we look, what we wear, is not a clear connection to our spiritual vitality.
[00:25:33] And we cannot be people who just look and judge and react by appearances. Amen.
[00:25:41] And maybe that was part of it, or maybe it was this. Maybe they saw that if they helped him, they would be in danger, too.
[00:25:49] Maybe they thought, well, if we, whoever got these guys, if I go and help them, maybe they'll get me, too. So I said, well, I'm out of here. I'm not risking it. And here's what I know. To love people always requires risk.
[00:26:06] It does.
[00:26:07] You cannot love people well and stay in a safe, riskless zone.
[00:26:14] And sometimes church. What happens is, is we go through life and we get hurt trying to love people. And so because we get hurt, we're saying, I'm not doing that again.
[00:26:26] And we build up walls and barriers because we're thinking, oh, I'm gonna keep myself safe. But what we don't realize happens is we cut ourselves off from the purpose that God has for us. Yes, you will get hurt sometimes, loving people. Yes, you will get disappointed. Yes, at times, people might take advantage of you. But guess what? It's all still worth it.
[00:26:52] Now, I'm not saying don't be wise. I'm not saying don't learn. I'm not saying don't have healthy boundaries. Yes, have all those things. But we cannot keep our hearts locked up safe.
[00:27:03] We are the people of God.
[00:27:06] We're meant to be out on the front line because that's exactly where Jesus was for us, and that's exactly what he calls us to do. Now, here. Maybe they made assumptions about this man. Maybe they assume this man didn't deserve their help because he made bad choices. So we don't know why. Maybe this was an ancient drug deal gone bad. I don't know.
[00:27:34] Who knows what all. We don't get any of this backstory, any motivation, any intent. I think Jesus purposely leaves it ambiguous. But maybe this man, maybe he was really foolish and he went down the Jericho road alone. And everybody knows, like, no, you got to go down with a wingman. You shouldn't do that. It's too dangerous. Maybe it was bad choices. And so they're like, you know what? This guy, he got himself into this. He made bad choices, and we're not helping him.
[00:28:02] And, you know, one of the powerful things about God is church. God doesn't love us because we make great choices.
[00:28:12] Anybody. Has anyone made some really bad choices in their life?
[00:28:16] You don't have to raise your hand today, but just give me an amen or raise it. Yeah, we all have, haven't we? And if God only treated us according to the quality of our choices, I'm going to tell you right now, you would not get a lot of help from him if God only treated us in the quality of our motives and our intents, because God can see everything he could see behind the smokescreen. You might be doing the right thing, but the wrong reason, still no good.
[00:28:49] And yet he treats us far different than that. I knew a friend in Columbus. He told me one time that his pastor at his church had gotten. Something had happened, and he had basically gotten fired. And when he got fired, my friend was doing work on his house. He was, like, helping him fix up his kitchen or something like that. So he had all these tools at his house. And when the pastor got fired, something happened. He texted me and said, hey, you know, come get your stuff, because he was expecting to just be rejected and by this man, by my friend. And my friend said, yeah, I'll pick him up once the job is done.
[00:29:35] And it was. And to me, the story was so beautiful because what he was saying to him, saying, like, I'm not gonna stop loving you through this mistake.
[00:29:44] I'm gonna love you in it. I'm gonna be there. I'm not cutting you off. And sometimes, as followers of Christ, if you're a follower of Christ, have an open heart to this. Sometimes we shoot our wounded.
[00:29:56] You with me on this?
[00:30:00] We leave people behind because, yeah, they made bad choices. They did something wrong. But you know what? Sometimes we actually need to go and minister to them, because that's what God does for us, that we need to learn to love people when they're easy to love. And we need to learn to love them when they're not so easy to love. Church, this is what Jesus is showing us. Yeah, this man, it wasn't easy to take care of him. The Samaritan did a lot. Now, one of the main reasons that people theorize that they pass by him is because in ancient Israel, as religious leaders and as people in general, if you were to touch a dead body, you were ceremonially unclean for seven days. So you had a seven day quarantine. And so then that would keep you from doing your religious duties. So maybe they saw this man and they thought, he's dead. We're not even going to mess with that, because if we do, then we have this quarantine we have to go to. In other words, they were saying, we can't help this man because we're so committed to serving God, and Jesus is like, you're idiots, because you're actually forfeiting service to God and telling yourself that you're actually loving him.
[00:31:29] Sometimes we can miss opportunities to love people. Loving people. Well, church is messy.
[00:31:38] It's messy.
[00:31:42] They don't always do what we think they should.
[00:31:47] It gets messy. If we're gonna love people. Well, you have to be willing to enter into a mess.
[00:31:54] But again, it's worth it. And entering into that mess does not keep us from God. It puts us in the very heart of what he wants for us.
[00:32:05] And lastly, maybe they didn't have the time or the energy, and they said, this isn't my problem.
[00:32:13] I don't know this guy. I don't know what's going on. This isn't my problem. And, you know, loving people, well, it requires time and energy. There was a little sociological experiment done, and it was with seminary students, and they were going to a place to teach on this very chapter, Luke, chapter ten, the story of the good Samaritan. They were going to teach on that to a chapel, and they had to walk down the street to do that. And the study set up an actor who was wounded in, like, a little alley that they would pass and, like, kind of rolling and moaning like he had been beat up and hurt. And so they wanted to see what would the seminary students do.
[00:33:04] They're literally going to preach on Luke, chapter ten, and they literally cross someone, robbed and beaten in the street. And so they're like, what's going to happen? And here's what they found out.
[00:33:17] If they were running really close to the time that they had to go and teach, or they're running a little bit late, guess what? They would pass right by. I ain't got time for this. The priest and Levi, they would pass right by. If they had a good margin of time, they would stop and help, and they were literally going. I just find it hilarious. And I'm so glad that I was not one of those subjects, you know, because then my name would forever be inked with that.
[00:33:50] But time is a big part of loving people. And you know what I honestly think? I think sometimes we miss a lot of opportunities, not because we don't have the heart for it, but because we don't have the time for it.
[00:34:03] And thinking about what Jesus says should make us think about how we organize our lives.
[00:34:10] Do we have time to get to know someone at all?
[00:34:15] Or are we running so hard, so fast that there's no margin? I think it's something for us to consider. Now, let's quickly look at the right example. And the right example is the Samaritan. And he teaches us how to love our neighbor.
[00:34:33] And just quickly, number one, here's what he shows us. He shows us that we need to see those that God wants us to serve. We have to see them.
[00:34:44] Maybe there are people in our life right now. God wants you to love them, but we've got blinders onto them a little bit, and we need God's help. We need to see them, number one. And then, number two, we need to feel something different. The Samaritan, here's what he felt that the priests and Levite didn't. He felt compassion.
[00:35:09] Church. We need to be the type of church that when we see people, our first instinct is compassion, not judgment.
[00:35:19] You hear that? Our first impulse is compassion, not skepticism.
[00:35:27] This is the heart that Christ is calling out of us, that when we look at the people around us, we're like Jesus himself. We're moved to compassion. We feel something different, and we need God's help to do that. We need to feel compassion. And then he went. He bound up his wounds. In other words, he was a healing agent in this man's life.
[00:35:51] Now, realistically, most of us probably will not come across people who are in an alley beaten up like that, but we do come across a lot of people who are spiritually beaten up.
[00:36:08] I bet they're all around us. There are a lot of people who are bleeding out hope and joy in life. It's just bleeding out of them because of life without God, because of pain, because of all these things. There's probably a lot of people that are stripped of hope that life can be something different.
[00:36:34] And you might be God's plan to bind up those wounds, to disinfect them.
[00:36:43] Say, I know you see the world this way, but let me tell you about a God who is in control of all things. About a God who loves you, about a God who sent his son to die for you and rose again on the third day. Let me tell you about him.
[00:37:01] There are things God has for us. He carried the Samaritan, carried the man's burden. He put him on the animal. And we need to carry other people's burdens.
[00:37:14] You might think, well, look, Chad, I'm carrying enough today, and I get it. I believe you are carrying. But you will find a new gear that God will give you if we take this serious.
[00:37:29] I know our lives are busy and full, but remember what Jesus is showing us. We can't miss the big picture.
[00:37:36] At the end of the day, the Lord's not going to say, hey, let's talk about your golf game, son.
[00:37:42] And let's be honest, that wouldn't be a good conversation anyway.
[00:37:46] He's not going to say what, okay, let's talk about all those shows you caught up on in your lifetime.
[00:37:54] Our lives are about loving God and loving people, and we cannot miss that.
[00:38:02] We need to carry others burdens, and he provides for him so generously. This is such a powerful picture of love.
[00:38:10] This is, to use Jesus words, this man went the second mile to love this. And this is what if you're a follower of Christ today, if you're a follower of Christ, if you're not a follower of Christ, you're off the hook.
[00:38:26] But if you are one, this is what your Lord is commanding you.
[00:38:31] Remember how this ends. Go and do likewise.
[00:38:36] This is what it looks like. I'm showing it to you now. Go and live it out.
[00:38:45] And he provided for him. Now, to do this, well, I believe it requires what Jesus, what the man said to Jesus at the end, who was the neighbor to the man, he said, the one who showed him mercy, mercy.
[00:39:03] To do this requires a new heart, a heart of mercy. Here's what mercy is. It's the desire to relieve misery.
[00:39:14] It's a desire to relieve misery. When the scriptures say, God is a merciful God, here's what it means. He looks at you, he wants to relieve misery in your life, even though sometimes we're signing up and inviting it right in. God said, like, I want to relieve it. That is the disposition of my character and of my heart.
[00:39:39] And I wonder, I was thinking about this, and I was like, you know, I've never said to myself, I want to be a more merciful person.
[00:39:48] I've said to myself, I want to be a more disciplined person.
[00:39:52] I said, I want to be a more gracious person. I could think of some other virtues, but I've never thought, I want to be a more merciful person. But yet, this is what's required. This is what we need, and we absolutely need God to help us. So here's what I'm asking you to do today, very simple. Just say this prayer this week.
[00:40:15] Say this prayer. Lord, give me a heart of mercy.
[00:40:20] Maybe there's people around you, and they're miserable. They're suffering. Sometimes miserable and suffering people aren't fun to be around.
[00:40:31] Sometimes they will push your buttons, hurt people, hurt people, it's true. But nonetheless, Jesus calls us to this radical standard of love. And so, Lord, give me a heart of mercy. Let me look at those people that live next to me.
[00:40:55] I don't really like them, Lord, but help me to love them.
[00:41:00] I don't have to like them, but I can still love them. I can still have a heart of mercy. Lord, those people that I work with, they drive me crazy.
[00:41:09] They're lazy bums.
[00:41:12] But help me to have a heart of mercy towards them. Give me a heart of mercy so I can see, I can serve, and I can help my neighbor. See, here's what you need to know today. There is such a powerful gravity in our lives to make everything about us.
[00:41:34] There is such a pull to make our relationship with God about us. That was the priest and the levite.
[00:41:42] I'm not doing that.
[00:41:44] I'm not loving that person.
[00:41:47] I've got my own thing with God going on. I got to go to the temple. People are counting on me. And it was a very safe and easy Christianity and church. That's what we want to do today, too. We want to make it about us. We want God to fulfill us and to give us all our dreams and hopes. And I believe he will. But do you know the way he will do it is by you first emptying yourself?
[00:42:19] Jesus said, whoever wants to save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake will find it that in fact, the more that you and I, the more that we empty our lives for the purpose of Christ, the more we actually open them up for God to fill them.
[00:42:37] You say in this life, it's not about us.
[00:42:42] It's about emptying ourselves for others in the same way that Christ did for us. And we need God's help to do it. So let's pray and ask for it. Father, thank you, Lord, for the wisdom and the power of what you taught us.
[00:43:01] Father, I am humbled and exposed by your ways and by your teaching.
[00:43:07] And so I ask for help for myself and for my brothers and sisters that, Lord, something about your love could interrupt and infect our heart where it wants to be selfish.
[00:43:25] And I pray, Lord, that today we could, we could have just a new perspective God, put on our hearts, someone around us, someone that is near us, a neighbor that you want us to show this radical type of love to. And, Lord, let it become a building block in an approach, in a way of life. God, give us a heart of mercy. Lord, thank you for your mercy on my life. Thank you for your mercy on every life here. Whether we know it or not, it has been abundant. And now, Lord, just put into our heart that same holy quality, and I pray it would shape how we treat people. Bless us in this, in Jesus name, amen.
