If you would, out of honor for God's word, if you would stand as you turn with me to the book of Luke, chapter 10, a passage that for most of you will be fairly familiar. One that we'll be looking at maybe a little different aspect of this parable of the Good Samaritan. We're going to be focusing maybe on something that normally is not the focus of this text in terms of what you would hear in a sermon.
But we're going to be looking at the cost, the cost of showing mercy, the price that needs to be paid. And so we're going to be reading in Luke chapter 10, starting in verse 25 and reading through verse 37. This is now the Holy and inspired Word of God. He said to Jesus, But a certain 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. And 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 the robbers hands? And he said, The one who showed mercy toward him. And Jesus said to him.
And Jesus says to us, Go and do the same. Let us pray. Oh, God, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of all of our hearts be acceptable and eyesight. Oh, Lord, our rock and our Redeemer. May your Holy Spirit empower us to be the ones who show mercy. To be the ones who love you with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. And to love our neighbors well. Lord, I pray that you will open our eyes and our hearts to the truths that you have for us in these moments. In Jesus name. Amen.
You may be seated. Now, our ministry has a warehouse. We have one in Georgia and we have one in Dallas, Texas. And the one in Dallas, Texas is named the John Brown Family Disaster Response Center. Now, John Brown was one of our faithful partners in ministry. And he helped develop our Sheds of Hope ministry.
And I can share more about that with you afterwards if you have interest in that. But he developed this whole ministry where we take sheds and we put them up for folks after their house has been destroyed. Unfortunately for us, John Brown passed away several years ago. But he is in glory now and rejoicing.
So we rejoice for that fact. But they named this warehouse in Dallas after John Brown. It's a 10,000 square foot warehouse and is provided by some local businessmen who provided to our ministry free of charge. So for us, the warehouse costs nothing. But there is a cost.
These businessmen are giving up potential revenue for a 10,000 square foot warehouse in Dallas, Texas. They're sacrificing that revenue. There's a cost for them to help us show mercy to others. In God's Word today, Jesus illustrates this principle that mercy, one, should be given. So that's normally what we talk about, that, hey, we need to show mercy to those who are in need. But what I want to focus on today is that when we show mercy, there's a cost to it. There's sacrifice that is involved. And sometimes we don't think about that, that to show mercy is going to cost something from us. So Jesus challenges us to consider us, to consider, are we willing to pay the price to show mercy to the world in which we live?
Is it worth the cost? So the first cost that we encounter in our passage is the big cost. It's the cost of following Jesus. In verse 25, a lawyer stands up. He's standing up to test Jesus, and he tests him with this opening question.
What must I do to be saved? And so Jesus responds with a question himself. What is written in the law? Verse 26. He often does this in the scriptures.
He answers a question with a question. And the lawyer answers by quoting what the Jews call the Shema, which means to hear, from Deuteronomy 6.4. This was a very well-known saying, a very well-known verse that they would quote. It was kind of a theme verse for the Jews. To love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.
So Jesus is saying this is what the cost is. Now, when I was a youth pastor, we had every summer a summer day camp. And for whatever reason, the youth pastor was in charge of the day camp.
And so I inherited that responsibility. And out of this day camp, which we called Summer's Best Two Weeks, we had prizes that we would give at the end of the two weeks to campers. And we had different prizes. We had the most artistic, the most athletic, the most enthusiastic. But the grand prize of all prizes, the most coveted prize, was what we called the I Am Third Award.
The I Am Third Award. And this was given to the camper that best exemplified what we're talking about here. A child that loved God first, that put others second, and put themselves third. And so this is the cost of following Jesus. That we first and foremost love him and give all of ourselves to him. Second, we love others and put their needs even above our own. And then finally, we love ourselves because we are creating God's image and he loves us.
And so this is the cost of following Jesus. Paul writes in Philippians 2, In humility, count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. As humans, we are by nature selfish.
We're looking out for number one. So for us to look out for others first requires sacrifice. There's a cost to that.
We have to give up our own selfishness, our own selfish desires, and put others first. In the previous chapter, in chapter 9, Jesus outlines the cost of following him. It costs a lot to follow Jesus.
It costs everything. It's talking about even, you know, even allowing the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go up, proclaim everywhere the kingdom of God. And in verse 61 of chapter 9, I will follow you, Lord, but first let me go say goodbye to those at home. But Jesus said to him, no one after putting his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the kingdom of God. There's a cost. When we follow Jesus, there's a cost to it. If you ever are talking with someone, don't tell them that being a Christian is easy.
It's not. There's a cost and there's sacrifice that is involved. But we will find that it's worth it. So we have the cost of following Jesus. So the big question is are you willing to pay that price to give up yourself, to follow Jesus, and to love people with the love that he gives you? So the lawyer is trying at this point to understand exactly, so what is this cost that Jesus is talking about?
How much will this cost me? And so he wants to justify himself, it says. In other words, he's trying to show off, he's trying to catch Jesus again, and he says, well, who is my neighbor? You know, how far does this have to go?
Give me some definition of what the cost is going to be. Who is my neighbor? And Jesus answers by telling a parable. In verse 30, we find that the setting of this parable that Jesus tells is the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. This was known as the Bloody Way. It was a 17-mile journey.
It descended 3,000 feet down through rock formations, and it was a place that was known for gangs and thieves to hide out, because there was caves and rock formations where they could hide and then attack people as they traveled. So this was a dangerous road. So those that were listening to Jesus could envision in their mind, because they had probably then been down that road, going down and the danger of that and being attacked and robbed.
And the man in our passage is left, as it says, half dead on the side of the road after being attacked. So the question is, would anyone stop? Would anyone show mercy, pay the price to stop and show mercy? So let's first consider the cost of mercy for the two religious figures. We have a priest and a Levite. Now, in contemporary terms, that would be a pastor and an elder, so to speak, are going down.
These are the people well respected in the religious community. And it says in verses 31 and 32 that not only did they pass by the man, but Jesus in his parable says that they actually went to the other side. So they really steered clear of this man, because they didn't want to get involved.
They didn't want to stop and possibly have something happen to them. So the problem is that we're a lot more, like we want to be the good Samaritan in this story, but we're a lot more like these religious guys. It's hard for us sometimes to get involved.
We're prone to making excuses when God calls us to do something or to help someone. We are prone to passing by on the other side. One time, not too long ago, I was driving home from a meeting. It was late at night, it was raining, and I was anxious to get home. I hadn't seen my wife all day, and so just trying to get home as fast as I could. And as I was going down this country road, there was a lady who had her hazards on, and she was pulled over to the side, and there was no one else around, and she was stuck, some car trouble or whatever. And so I slowed down, and I looked, and I saw that she was on her cell phone. So I thought, well, she's got a cell phone, she's talking to someone, I'm sure it's going to be okay. So I went on, and I got down the road, and I was thinking, boy, I should really turn around and check on her.
There was no one else around. I should at least make sure that she's okay and has help coming. But I didn't. I'm like, well, I'm late.
I'm sure she has help coming. And so I didn't. And so every time I look at this passage now, I think about that story and about that lady, and why didn't I stop? I felt the urge and the prompting to stop. The Holy Spirit gives us those promptings to stop and help someone or to get involved in a situation, but a lot of times we are good at making excuses and putting the responsibility on someone else. So sometimes it's hard to show mercy. We don't want to pay the cost. And even religious people like us sometimes are hesitant to stop and to help and to make those sacrifices.
Well, let's look for a few minutes at the cost. So that was the cost for the religious leaders. They weren't willing to pay the price, so they become, in this story, the ones that you don't want to be. But what sets the Samaritan apart was he was willing to pay the price to stop. In contrast to the religious leaders, he was willing to pay the cost. It says in verse 33 that he felt compassion. This is what the Holy Spirit gives us if we are sensitive to the Holy Spirit. He gives us feelings of compassion for people that otherwise we might not feel compassion for.
And when he does that, he's calling us to stop and to act and to get involved. So what were the costs for the Samaritan? First is the cost of safety. He was putting his own life in jeopardy, because if he stops and helps the man, the robbers, the gang could be just on the other side of the rock and could jump out and rob him and beat him up as well. Mercy is not always safe.
It comes at the cost of our security. Sometimes getting involved and showing mercy, we have to put our own lives on the line. Second, he had to walk out of his comfort zone, so that was the cost, go outside of his comfort zone. In contrast to the religious leaders who stayed in their comfort zone on the other side of the road, he moved out of his comfort zone to help what would require some unpleasantness. Open wounds, bleeding, agonizing cries, the smell of dirt and blood and sweat caked on the bloody skin of the man who had been beaten.
This was not a pleasant sight to help out with. In verse 34, the Samaritan binds up his wounds. It says that he uses his own oil, which would help relieve some of the pain, and the wine, which would be in antiseptic to prevent infection.
He even sets him on his own animal, his own beast, so he has to walk the rest of the way, because he puts the man on his own donkey or whatever animal he was using. He looked past the unpleasantness to the need. Let me say that again. The Samaritan looked past the unpleasantness of the situation to the need of the person laying there.
So sometimes the cost for us is getting out of our comfort zone. I was talking to a pastor who was in New Bern. After the flooding there, they had lots of folks from different churches coming to help them clean out flooded houses.
He had a group from RUF, which is our college ministry. It was a group of girls that came down, college-age girls. The work at hand was to go under the house, in the crawl space, and pull out wet insulation, about the worst possible job you could ask anyone to do. If you've ever been there, even dry insulation is terrible.
But here, this wet, nasty insulation. So the pastor was saying, maybe we could find something else if you ladies don't want to do this. We could probably find something else for you to do. And they said, no.
We came down, that is the need that these folks have, and we're doing it. And so they went under that house of these college-age girls who were way out of their comfort zone to show mercy. That's the cost of mercy. Well, the third thing that he had to give up is his time. The Good Samaritan had to interrupt his plans. Maybe he had a party he was going to. His friends, his family, they would have to wait for him.
He would put everything on hold in order to help someone in need. Mercy costs us precious hours out of our schedules. And for us in our culture, maybe time is even, you know, we can give some money, but to give of time for us in some ways, that's even harder to do that. Well, fourth, there was a financial cost that talks about that. In verse 35, he takes the man to the inn. He pays some coins, some denarii, so that he can take care of the man.
And then he says, when I come back, if there's any debt, if there's any balance, I'll pay the cost. You know, mercy costs money. Everything that we do in our ministry, which is a mercy ministry, is done through the donation of individuals in churches like yours, who out of their generosity are giving of their own money. They're sacrificing so that we can go and show mercy to others. So this is a financial, there's a financial cost sometimes to showing mercy. And finally, this act of mercy for the Samaritan came at a cost to his pride. As you may know, the Samaritans and Jews hated each other, and Jesus intentionally used a Samaritan as the hero of this parable. He does this to show that mercy sometimes means crossing racial barriers, crossing social barriers, so that we can show love and mercy to people who are not like us, who are different from us. The priests and the Levite, they were too holy to help.
Their pride got in the way. It was a roadblock for showing mercy. So Jesus is showing us in this parable two lessons. First, that we should be showing mercy, that we should be the ones stopping.
But he's also showing us that when we do, that there is going to be costs for us, and are we willing to pay that? Now who would know better the cost of showing mercy than Jesus himself? As I mentioned this morning, this is a picture of the Gospel. We were half dead, we were the half dead man on the side of the road, and Jesus stopped to help us, to pick us up, to bind up our wounds, to pay for our care.
This is a picture of the Gospel. Jesus is the good Samaritan for us. And so he was willing to pay the cost for us.
And so let's look at those same things quickly. Jesus gave up safety, the safety of his heavenly home. He subjected himself to abuse, torture, and even death. Being born in the likeness of man and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.
He gave up safety. Jesus gave up, he left his comfort zone, comfort zone of heaven. The word became flesh and dwelt among us. In so doing, he left the purity, the beauty of heaven, and he came to this unsanitary, smelly world. Jesus gave up the comfort zone that he lived in to be in this world with all of its offensiveness, and all of its sin, and all of its suffering. Jesus gave us his time. He stepped out of eternity.
He entered time and space for us. It says, but when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law. Jesus subjected himself to mortality, to a human life where he would be born and where he would die. Next, there would be a financial cost for Jesus. This is part of the wonder of the Christmas story, that Jesus gave up the riches of heaven and was born into an impoverished situation, laid in a manger to a couple that had no money and no resources. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich. Jesus, to show mercy to us, became poor.
There was a financial cost. And finally, even though sinful pride did not exist in the heart of Jesus, the Bible says that though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant. So Jesus had no pride and gave up everything for us. Showing sinners like us mercy came at a great cost to Jesus.
There's an old Steve Green song broken and spilled out. It captures the cost that Jesus paid for us. The words go like this, and though you were perfect and holy, you gave up yourself willingly. You spared no expense for my pardon.
You were used up and wasted for me. Jesus was used up and wasted for our salvation to show us mercy, to stop when we were half dead on the side of the road, and to lift us up. This is the gospel message. And if you have never understood or accepted that Jesus has willingly stopped to help you, I hope and pray that if you've never realized that, if you've never come to the understanding that Jesus is willing to help you out of your sin, out of our condition of being half dead on the side of the road. And so I pray that you'll talk to someone, that you'll come to a place where you realize that Jesus is reaching out and is there willing to lift you up, to bring you up out of your death, out of your misery, and to bring you into his eternal kingdom, and to give you all the riches of heaven. And so I pray that you will understand that this evening.
And if you want to learn more about that, I know any of the elders or any Eugene or any Christian that you know would be happy to talk more about what Jesus has done for us and the wealth that he paid for our salvation. Well, Jesus ends by asking a concluding question. Verse 36, which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers? This is where the question becomes personal. It's not about some abstract neighbor out there. It's about our hearts. Regardless of who our neighbor is, am I a merciful neighbor?
Which brings us to our final consideration as we wrap up. And that's the cost of mercy for us. The answer to who proved to be a neighbor is rightly admitted by the lawyer in verse 37. The answer is the one who showed him mercy. In 1 John 3, it says, 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. Our Christian faith is validated through acts of mercy, by what we do, by the way that we interact with others. Now, we know that we are saved by God's grace through his mercy. Jesus willingly stops.
We have no ability even to cry out to him. He willingly stops and brings us salvation. So we know that our good works count for nothing in terms of our salvation. But evidence that we are saved is when we show mercy in the name of Jesus. So what does a lifestyle of mercy look like for you?
It's going to be different for every one of us. Maybe you're a student, and maybe showing mercy means there's someone in school who is an outcast or who has special needs. And to befriend this person means that you might lose other friends. There might be a cost to you, to the way people look at you. But as you show mercy, this is what Jesus would have you do, regardless of the cost. It may mean helping a co-worker. You have a co-worker who's struggling.
You have to stay a little extra long at work or help them out with something. And it costs you some time, but you're showing mercy to people. Maybe you see a neighbor outside, and you've got a busy day, but he's struggling and helping.
He's trying to move something or do something. And instead of getting in your car and taking off before he sees you, you're compelled by love and by mercy to go and to help. Maybe you will come with us someday on a trip. That will cost you something.
It'll cost you time, maybe way out of your comfort zone, under a house pulling out insulation. It might cost some money to get down into transportation and food and those kinds of things. It might cost to serving and to being involved and to be showing mercy. You know, we're not all called to do the same thing. Each of us will have our own calling. Your mission at Grace I noticed on your bulletin, and this is a good reminder.
Sometimes I'm sure you see this every single week, and when you see something every week, sometimes you don't look at it. But right under Grace Church here, there's a statement. It says, passionately proclaiming the gospel of grace. And part of that proclamation of the gospel of grace is by reaching out to others in their time of need, by showing mercy to others. That's a powerful proclamation of the gospel.
When you help someone who is in need, when you go out of your way, when you pay a price to show mercy to someone. So be sensitive this week. It is Pentecost. When the Holy Spirit came upon the apostles, part of that, the reason for the Holy Spirit coming upon them was that they would go out and bring the gospel to the world. And so we need the Holy Spirit to show us who he wants us to reach, to give us opportunities throughout our week to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit leading us to people who have needs.
There are needs all around us. Now Leon Morris in his commentary says, the Samaritan is a most attractive picture of a man who did more than the minimum. He did more than a minimum. He saw a man in need and did all he could. So don't do the bare minimum when it comes to mercy ministry. The good Samaritan teaches us to be generous, to go out on a limb, to take a risk, to live a life that freely shows mercy to others regardless of the cost for us. The Samaritan showed mercy.
It cost him a lot. Jesus showed mercy and it cost him everything. If we call ourselves Christians, we must listen to the words of Jesus and to go and do likewise show mercy no matter what the cost. And when you show mercy like Jesus, you will find that it is always worth the cost. First, you're going to bless the people that you are reaching out to. They're going to be blessed just as the man was on the side of the road. But if you've ever been involved in missions or helping someone, you find that you are blessed as well as you go and as you serve that there is something that happens in you.
You are changed, that your faith is increased, that your relationship with Christ is deeper and sweeter because you are being obedient and following him. And most importantly, when we show mercy regardless of the cost to us, we bring the love of Jesus into places of great need. Let us pray. Father, we thank you for the parable of the Good Samaritan that shows us that to follow you comes at a cost.
But you show us through your example that you paid that cost for us. Lord, I pray that if there is someone here who has never received the gift of help from you, that tonight they would surrender, that they would reach out and know that you will reach down and pick them up out of their sin, out of their death, and that you will raise them up to eternal life. And I pray that we would bring that hope of salvation to those around us in need. Lord, I pray specifically that for each person in this room, from the youngest to the oldest, that this week that you would give us an opportunity to show the love of Christ to someone that you bring into our lives. Lord, make us sensitive by your Holy Spirit to the needs around us. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.
