Our Gospel reading and the passage from which our teaching is primarily taken this morning is found in Luke chapter 10 beginning in verse 25. This is the story of the Good Samaritan. Listen now to God's Word. And a lawyer stood up and put him to the test, saying, Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? And he said to him, what is written in the law? How does it read to you? And he answered, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself. And he said to him, you have answered correctly. Do this and you will live. But wishing to justify himself, he said to Jesus, and who is my neighbor? Jesus replied and said, a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among robbers. And they stripped him and beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. And by chance, a priest was going down the road. And when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. Likewise, a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan who was on a journey came upon him. And when he saw him, he felt compassion and came to him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them. And he put him on his own beast and brought him to an inn and took care of him. On the next day, he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, take care of him and whatever more you spend, when I return, I will repay you. Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into robbers' hands? And he said, the one who showed mercy toward him. And then Jesus said to him, go and do the same. Let's pray. Father, as we consider your word, we ask that you would open our hearts and minds to hear and be changed. In Jesus' name, amen. My sister's husband, Jim, used to work for a company called Midas. Does anybody remember Midas? Used to be Midas mufflers. And he worked with different stores regarding their leases and property acquisition and if they had to sell the property or they wanted to get out of their lease or things like that. And he traveled all over North America as part of his responsibilities. And occasionally, he would have to travel to Winnipeg. Not that traveling to Winnipeg is bad, but for work, he had to travel to Winnipeg. And from there, he would have to drive to Saskatoon and then to Red Deer and places further north. Sometimes he had to do this in the wintertime. And one time, he told me a story about how he was between Saskatoon and Red Deer. It was night and it was snowing. So he could only go about 60 kilometers per hour instead of the posted 100. And he said as he was driving about 100 meters in front of him, he saw a very large deer run across the road. Then he kept going and very shortly after that, maybe 40 meters in front of him, a pack of wolves came across the road chasing the deer. Now, he has no idea what happened, whether the wolves won or the deer won. But when he got where he was going that night, he related the story to someone and they said that's why if you were stranded in this part of the world, you do not leave your vehicle. This person also told Jim that there is a law in that area that if you happen upon someone stranded, you have to offer to help because you may be the only person that sees them for hours or even for an entire day. And not helping may result in their demise. Now, when I heard this, and I'm sure if others heard this, there are all kinds of reasons that come to your mind why you might not want to stop. I mean, this person who's stranded, you don't know them, they might be dangerous. Maybe it's a ruse. They're pretending to be stranded. So you will stop and they can do you harm or rob you and then you'll be the one on the side of the road, much like the man in our story. Or maybe you have someplace that's very important and you need to be there. And stopping could delay for hours because there is a good Samaritan law which says that if you stop and help somebody, you're not allowed to part of the law, you're not allowed to partway through helping abandon them. You can't say, well, I helped as much as I could. You're still in dire straits, but I've got an appointment. So I'm out of here. Part of the good Samaritan law is that if you help somebody, they can't then sue you because they think that you harmed them. Other reasons you might not want to stop. You might think, well, especially in the last couple of years, you might think, what if they have COVID? I'd be putting myself in harm's way. I could be getting this disease and I don't want that. Or you might just think, I don't want to be responsible. There's all kinds of reasons. There's probably we can name five or six or ten more reasons why somebody wouldn't want to stop and help. And they weren't all the same thoughts that were going through the minds of the travelers as they passed the unfortunate man in the story Jesus tells. But they had to have reasons to not help. Even though help was obviously and desperately needed. Jesus doesn't give any reasons why the priest and the Levite pass by. So we can surmise. Maybe they thought he was dead. And if he was dead and they touched him, they would be ceremonially unclean. They would not be permitted to go into the temple for a certain period of time until they were deemed clean again. Maybe they were afraid it was a ploy. Whatever their reasons, they didn't help. And whatever their reasons were, the Samaritan didn't share them. Now why do you suppose Jesus tells the story this way? Or the Samaritan is the hero? Remember the lawyer was seeking to justify himself and asked, who is my neighbor? Before that he said, what must I do to inherit eternal life? In other words, he viewed it almost as a birthright. That you inherit something because of your genetics. But he says, who's my neighbor? He's seeking to justify himself. And Samaritans were looked down upon by the Jews. They didn't get along with them. The Samaritans were looked down on as half-breeds of polluters of the true religion. From the scriptures, it seems to have all sort of started when Nehemiah wants to rebuild. And the Samaritans, they were the ones who stayed in Jerusalem. And they were the ones who had really taken the brunt of a lot of the occupation. And they were overjoyed when the Jews came back and they wanted to help rebuild. But the Jews said, no, you are polluted. So you can't help. And therefore, there was this division between them. These sort of things are true throughout history. That one group considers another inferior because of race or appearance or customs or all three or any number of other reasons. So why does the Samaritan stop and help? What is the reason that the Samaritan would help where the others didn't? And again, there's no reason given by Jesus in the story. Perhaps he sees himself in the man on the side of the road. Certainly Jews should have been able to see themselves as the man on the side of the road, especially a priest and a Levite who know the scripture. Because that is the story of Israel after all. I'll call your attention to the first few verses, the first eight verses of Ezekiel chapter 16. Bear with me as I read it. It says again, the word of the Lord came to me. And he's describing here, Ezekiel is, through the inspiration of the Lord, sort of a metaphor of God saving Israel. Israel certainly could have been considered like the man on the side of the road or even worse. So again, the word of the Lord came to me, son of man, make known to Jerusalem her abominations and say, thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem, your origin and your birth are of the land of the Canaanites. Your father was an Amorite. Your mother a Hittite. None of these things are good according to Israel. As for your birth on the day you were born, your cord was not cut. Nor were you washed with water to cleanse you. Nor were you rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling clothes. These are all things that would have been done for a normal baby who was just born. No I pitted you to do any of these things to you out of compassion for you. But you were cast out in the open field for you were aboard on the day that you were born. And when I passed by you and I saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you in your blood, live. I said to you in your blood, live. I made you flourish like a plant of the field. And you grew up and became tall and arrived at full adornment. Your breasts were formed, your hair had grown. You were naked and bare. And when I passed by you again and saw, behold, you were at the age for love. And I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness. I made my vow to you and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Lord your God. And you became mine. What's he describing here? He's describing that Israel was like an abortion and he saved them. He rescued them. He had pity on them. He was merciful to them. He had compassion. And when Israel grew and became like a young woman, says at the time for love, in other words a marriageable age, God entered into a covenant very similar to marriage with Israel. That phrase, I spread the corner of my garment over you and I covered your nakedness is a euphemism for marital sex. That doesn't mean that God had sex with Israel. That's not what it means. What it means is that God is using the most intimate possible covenant language to tell you of his love for his people Israel and what kind of covenant he had entered into them, entered in with them. So do you see it? In the creation of Israel, God's own people were even worse off than the man on the side of the road. They were the unwashed newborn left in the field to die and no one looked on her with pity or compassion until Lord came and said, live. So it was the Lord is the one who showed mercy. Remember at the end of the story of the Good Samaritan, Jesus says, who is the one who proved to be the neighbor? And the man said, the one who showed mercy, he says, go and do likewise. It's the Lord who showed mercy to Israel. And you might think, well, okay, but we're not Israelites. We're not Jewish. We're not Hebrew. But Paul explains in Ephesians 2 that much the same is true of us. Verse 1, you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air of the spirit that's now at work and the sons of disobedience. Among them we too, Paul includes himself, among them we too all formerly lived in the lust of our flesh, indulging in the desires of the flesh and the mind, who were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. What Paul is describing here is someone who is spiritually speaking the man on the side of the road, someone who's completely unable to help himself or herself in any way. And he says, we too. And again, who is the rescuer? Verse 4, but God being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ by grace you have been saved. And he raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus so that in the ages to come we might show the surpassing riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. Who proved to be the neighbor to the man on the side of the road? The one who showed mercy. Because to show mercy is to imitate Christ and to be Christian is to preserve life. Last week we talked about do not kill, do not murder, and all the things that we have to not do. Here are things that we should do. I know there's a couple of things culturally that are very important to us. One of them is abortion. It seems to have become such a sort of seeped into the culture that this is just a given. That women are allowed to have control over their own bodies, including killing their own babies. Another one is medical assistance in dying, which is becoming more pervasive. We talked about that last week. Now a lot of you may or may not know that at the Presbyterian Church in America and a lot of Reformed churches we adhere to a confession and some catechisms that lay out the doctrine of the church. And in the larger catechism the question, what are the duties required in the sixth commandment? Now the language is dense, but I'm going to read it. The duties required in the sixth commandment are all careful studies and lawful endeavors to preserve the life of ourselves and others by resisting all thoughts and purposes, subduing all passions, and avoiding all occasions, temptations, and practices which tend to the unjust taking away of the life of any, of any, from an unborn baby to an elderly and firm person. By just defense thereof against violence, patient bearing of the hand of God, quietness of mind, cheerfulness of spirit. It says sober use of meat, but that just means don't be a glutton. Drink, physic, sleep, labor, and recreation. By charitable thoughts, love, compassion, meekness, gentleness, kindness, peaceable, mild, and courteous speeches and behavior, forbearance, readiness to be reconciled, patient bearing, and forgiving of injuries, and requiting good for evil, comforting and suturing the distressed, and protecting and defending the innocent. That's what is required to preserve life. I've told you this story before. I related it to the Bible study on Thursday, but when Tracy and I were at Kent State University, we were on staff with a campus organization that was then called Campus Crusade for Christ. It was power to change in Canada. It's called CRU now, inexplicably called CRU in the United States. I have no idea why it's called CRU. Graham liked that for some reason. We were on staff with this group at Kent State University in Ohio. What Tracy and her good friend Dana noticed was that there were a lot of international students, very much like Dalhousie and other universities around here. They decided, what they really noticed was that almost all of the international students were men. The men would spend 12, 13 hours a day on campus because this was their chance. They were coming from some rough places. They were at a university. They could get a degree and they may be able to stay in the United States and they could escape the life that they had left. They were all in. Unfortunately, what that did is they left their wives to fend for themselves along with their children all day long. These were women who didn't know the language that well and didn't really know a lot of each other that well. Tracy and Dana started this ministry called International Wives. They had meetings every week and after a while it turned out that certain groups got along with each other and certain groups did not. They divided it. Tracy had the Chinese and the Koreans. Dana had people from the Middle East and India. I don't know why they didn't get along with each other but they didn't at the time. Maybe they do now. I don't know. It was after one of these meetings that Fei Gao, who was from China, married to Zhou Gao, was leaving the meeting. She mentioned that, I'm not going to be at the next meeting. I'm having an abortion tomorrow. Well, that sent Tracy into a, I won't say a panic, but she was very concerned. She got ahold of Dana. They called a pro-life clinic in town, asked what they should do. They were able to go to Fei's house and talk to her and Zhou. They were from China at the time. Abortion in China was very, very common. It was the one child policy at the time. It was just common. She had been in a car accident. There was x-rays. The doctors told her the baby might be damaged. So they just said, well, we're going to have an abortion then. So Tracy and Dana were talking to her, I think it was a Friday evening. The procedure was supposed to take place on Saturday morning. I had to be at a conference, so I wasn't home. And I called Tracy on Friday night to find out what had happened. And she said, well, she's going to go ahead and go through with it. And I was angry. I was angry. Lord, why did you even bring this person into our knowledge if you were just going to go ahead and let her have an abortion? So I came home from the retreat on Sunday. And Tracy said, well, she didn't have the abortion. I said, why? She said, well, we kept her up so late on Friday night that she overslept her appointment on Saturday. And she never made another one. And the little girl was born. Her name is Andrea. She's probably 35 years old by now. But you see, that's preserving life. That's intervening. That's doing something rather than nothing. And that's what we're called to do. Something rather than nothing. The passage that Reed read said, oh, no one, anything except to love each other. For the one who loves you, you shall not murder you. Has fulfilled the law for the commandments. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not murder. You shall not steal. You shall not covet. And any other commandment are summed up in this word. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore, love is fulfilling the law. So when the priest and the Levite passed by, and they saw the man that had fell among robbers, they did not see him as a neighbor. They did not see him as one of them. And I'm afraid for many of us who don't help, that is exactly our problem. 1 John 3, 16 says, we know loved by this, that he laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and in truth. Excuse me. We did hear from Faye a couple years later that she had become a Christian. I don't know if Joe ever did, but I know that Faye did. We've talked about being the one on the side of the road spiritually. Because, let's face it, here in Halifax, in this church, we have most of the world's goods. And people around us have most of the world's goods, but can still be in great need. 2 Corinthians 5 says, the love of Christ controls us. Is it our love for Christ, his love for us, or his love for the lost sheep? I think it can be all three. Because we have concluded this, that one has died for all, therefore all died, and he died for all, that those who might no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was raised. From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. And in this story of the Good Samaritan, that's exactly what was happening. The priest and the Levite regarded the man who was beaten by robbers according to the flesh. And when you and I do that, what we do is we either put people below us, they're not worth our time, they'll never change, their problems are their fault, or above us, they have no need, they have everything the world has to offer. And you talk yourself out of helping them, especially witnessing to them. Paul goes on to say, even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation. The old is past, behold the new is come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us, you and me, the ministry of reconciliation. What is that? The ministry of reconciliation is you and I talking to people about Christ, sharing the gospel with them, anyone that'll listen. And with Campus Crusade we had this phrase that witnessing is sharing the gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit with anyone who will listen and leaving the results to God. We are therefore ambassadors for Christ. God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him who knew no sin to be sin, that in him we might become the righteousness of God. See if we see ourselves as the man on the side of the road who has been rescued or even worse, the Ephesians 2 dead in our sins and we've been rescued, we will want to rescue others. Dr. Bill Guy is the person who humanly speaking led me to Christ. He would go around and witness to everybody. He was the resident advisor at the dormitory that I was in my first year at university and he came by, he made sure he talked to everybody on his floor before the end of the year. It took a while to get to our room and I had become a Christian through his witness. Well then this was the last day of school at the university. For him and for me, finals were over, we were all done, all were just waiting for the graduation ceremony and I saw him, I was walking back to the house where I lived and I saw him going toward campus, I said, Bill, where are you going? He said, I have to go talk to this professor. I said, aren't you done with school? He said, yeah. I said, why are you talking to him? He says, I got a witness to him. I said, you have to? He said, yeah, I do. I said, why do you have to? He says, because he's the only professor I've ever had that I didn't witness to. I said, why do you have to do it? He said, if not me, then who? If not me, then who? You see, that's what it means to have compassion for people. There are all kinds of people in your circle, all kinds of people you know and if not you, then who? Paul in his last speech to the Ephesians in Acts 20 said, I am innocent of the blood of all men because I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. My prayer for you, for us, for me, is that would be who we are, that we would not shrink. We don't want to be shrinkers. We want to be witnesses of the glory of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let's pray.