Introduction

If someone asked you what God requires of people and their relationship to him, what would you answer? Some of you would probably answer in the words of Deuteronomy 6:4: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." You'd be absolutely right.

And if I could ask you a second kind of academic question—What does God require of people in relationship to their neighbor?—you'd answer even more rapidly that your responsibility is to love him or her, too. The New Testament would be in hearty agreement. Paul says that love is the fulfilling of a law and that the fruit of the Spirit is love. When he wrote to the congregation in Rome, he told them to owe no man anything except to love one another.

If I could make the questions a little more personal, I might ask if you love God. That could be a bit more difficult. You'd think about it and say, "Deep down inside, I do love God." On the surface, there's little to prove you wrong. Your love for God is an intensely personal thing known only to him and to you.

What if I were to ask you a fourth question: Do you love your neighbor? That could be the most difficult of all. You'd say, "That depends. Who is my neighbor? Do you mean the folks who live with me here on the campus or some of the folks over in South Hamilton? Why draw a line at the town limits? Why not take in the people in New England. In fact, you can take in 260,000,000 people in the United States." You might say you're not sure how to answer the question. You don't know who your neighbor is.

How Jesus responded to the question

That same conversation comes to us out of the pages of Scripture. In the tenth chapter of Luke, a young lawyer, a theologian, comes to question Jesus. He isn't really in earnest. What he wants to do is to increase his reputation as a scholar at the expense of a supposedly dull Galilean peasant. He wants to sharpen his intellect on the razor strap of argument. He has the whole conversation mapped out in his notebook at home. He knows how he will begin, how Jesus will answer, and how he will reply. In his mind it won't be long before he has Jesus in a kind of intellectual checkmate. The young lawyer begins the conversation with one of the greatest questions that men and women have ever faced; ten thousand philosophies lay strewn along its path: "Teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?"

I admire Jesus' restraint. Jesus doesn't say to him, "That's a stupid question. The nature of an inheritance is that you do nothing for it. Someone gives it to you. They die, and all you have to do is receive it." But Jesus didn't say that. Jesus said, "You're a lawyer. You know the Old Testament law. What do you think it teaches?" I think this man was deeply discouraged with Jesus' response. He had come hoping for theological dialogue, and Jesus was treating him like Ned in the first reader. Just about anyone who grew up in the midst of the people of God knew the answer to that question, and he blurted out the reply, "You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and your neighbor as yourself." Jesus said, "That's a good answer. You keep doing that, and you'll live."

This lawyer recognized that he had sprung his own trap. He was like a school boy who, having been allowed to make up his own examination, flunked it. He didn't have any problem with the first part of the exam. Everybody in town knew how religious he was. It's that second part that got under his skin. About that he was not quite sure.

Seeking to justify himself, the lawyer said, "Who is my neighbor?" He wanted a definition of terms. We can empathize with that. How many times do we come face to face with a clear requirement of Scripture, but instead of obeying it, we get a discussion group started. If we can talk about it long enough, maybe we can bend the Scripture to fit our lives, rather than fit our lives to the Scripture. In that spirit, the lawyer asked the question, "Who is my neighbor?"

When Jesus answers the question, he doesn't give a long, theological discourse. He doesn't even say there are several Greek words for love. He just tells a story.

It's a story lying like a booby trap on the pages of the New Testament. It seems almost like a child's toy. You've seen it many times before, but then it explodes, burying its shrapnel inside your soul. Jesus told him the story of the Good Samaritan: the story of a man going from Jerusalem to Jericho who is set upon by muggers. They stripped him, robbed him, beat him up, and left him half dead by the side of the road. In the story a priest and a Levite come along, see the man, and pass by. A Samaritan stops to lend a hand. At the end of the story, Jesus says, "Of these three (the priest, the Levite, the Samaritan), who is a neighbor?" The lawyer says, "The one who showed mercy on him." Jesus says, "Go, and keep on doing likewise."

From that familiar story, Jesus gets the answer to the question: Who is my neighbor? But it's important to realize that in answering the question Jesus took this man out of his world of theory and theology and took him into another world: a world known to ambulance drivers and police sergeants and people who work in the emergency rooms of hospitals. In that world, he found the answer to the question, "Who is my neighbor?" If we are going to get the answer, one thing is important: we must have the right point of view.

We must have the right point of view

It was Helmet Thielicke, the German theologian, who said that in studying these stories of Jesus the viewpoint is everything. To illustrate what he meant, he told of a time when his son was just a babe in arms. He held the youngster up in front of a mirror. The baby moved; the reflection moved. Baby waved; the reflection waved. Suddenly the youngster's face lit up. He realized, That's me! Every so often that happens when you're reading the Bible. You pick it up, and it's black print on a white page, telling stories about the long ago and far away. But as you read the text, the print seems to disappear. On the page of Scripture, you see a reflection of yourself.

The question is "Who is my neighbor?" The interpretive question is "Whose viewpoint will we take?" One point of view we might take is the viewpoint of the man who had been beaten up by muggers and left to die by the side of the road. I can imagine us going to that man lying there in a pool of blood and saying, "Pardon me, sir, we're doing a kind of theological survey, and I wonder from your perspective down there by the side of the road, who you would you say is your neighbor?" If the man could mumble a reply, his answer would be as wide as the world: "Just about anybody coming down the road who's willing to stop and lend a hand would qualify completely."

That's the way it is, isn't it? You and I are driving down the road, and our car makes strange noises and comes rolling to a stop. We don't have the tools or the skill to fix the thing. Just about anybody coming down the road, who's willing to stop and lend a hand, qualifies completely as a neighbor. When the other fellow's car has come to a stop, and we're doing pretty well, we can sit behind the wheel and define neighbor with all of the preciseness of a shyster lawyer.

When our son, Tory, was just a small boy, we were coming home from Sunday school and church, and I asked him what he had learned that morning. He told me they had heard the story of the Good Samaritan. He proceeded to give me a blow-by-blow description of what had taken place. Back in his unregenerate days, Tory was on the side of the robbers. When he was all through, I said, "Son, what was the spiritual lesson of the story?" It was obvious I had taken him by surprise, and he thought for a minute and said, "That story teaches that whenever I'm in trouble, you've got to help me."

It's not the complete answer, but from the view of that man by the side of the road, it is one way of looking at a neighbor. The people who occupy center stage are a priest and a Levite. If that poor wretch by the side of the road were making a list of candidates for neighbors, a priest and Levite would have been at the top of the list. Tradition says that before they left their home in the morning, they quoted those two great verses of Scripture. "You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart and soul and strength and mind, and your neighbor as yourself." Who would best qualify as neighbor? The folks who knew these verses. But Jesus said that the priest came down the road, saw the man, and passed by on the other side. It's hard to understand how that could happen. Could one human being see another human being in such desperate need and do absolutely nothing to help him?

It certainly doesn't sound like our kind of folks—not the people in our community. Sounds a lot like the folks who live down in New York City. Some folks in Queens looked out of their window, saw a woman being beaten to death, and didn't even bother to pick up the phone and call the police. But they're not our kind of folks. If you're thinking that, you're still outside the story.

The priest, the Levite, and the Samaritan all viewed the situation differently

Since the priest was a religious type, I'm sure his reasons were religious reasons. Back in the Old Testament the law said that if a priest touched a dead body, he would become ceremonially defiled. I can imagine that priest thinking to himself, I'd really like to help, but it would be just my luck to have him die in my arms, and I'd have to go through all of the rites of cleansing. It's an expensive sacrifice I'd have to offer. People might ask questions about what I'm being cleansed from. The whole thing could hurt my testimony. I don't know that he thought that way. I do know that whether he thought that way or not, we sometimes do.

There has been in the church of Jesus Christ a doctrine of separation. We are called by God to live a holy life. There are things we cannot do, places we ought not go, activities in which we ought not engage. There are people out there in the society who do those things and say those things and go to those places. In the name of holiness, we withdraw from people on the Jericho road who need our help.

The second man down the road was a Levite. If the priest was like the pastor at the temple, then the Levite was like the assistant pastor. He took care of the scrolls, kept the operation going, and sometimes did ministry. Jesus says that he came, saw the man, and passed by on the other side. You have to wonder what went through his head. Maybe he thought, I'm on my way up to Jerusalem, to give my lecture on neighborly love. There are several hundred people waiting to hear what I say. I'll jot this man down on a three-by-five card, and use him as an illustration. I'll challenge the young people to start a Jericho Road Missions Society. They'll come back here, get organized, and be able to have a whole mission to folks beaten up on the Jericho road. I don't know what the Levite thought that day. I do know that whether he thought that way or not, we sometimes do.

A kind of arithmetic has been spawned in the counting rooms of hell. This kind of arithmetic is always interested in reaching the masses but somehow never gets down to a man or a woman. This kind of arithmetic always talks about winning the world for God but doesn't think much about winning a neighborhood for God. That arithmetic makes it valiant to cross oceans and never really crosses streets.

The third man down the road was a Samaritan. If the priest and the Levite were at the top of the list of candidates for a neighbor, then the Samaritan was at the bottom of the list. The Jews and the Samaritans hated each other with a deep, long-standing hatred. Whenever a Jew talked about a Samaritan, he called him a dog. When this Samaritan came down the road, he saw the wounded man, was filled with pity, and got down on the side of the dirt road to cleanse and bandage the wounds. He put the man on his donkey, brought him to the hotel, sat up with him through the night, paid the room rent, and promised to pay for anything else that was needed.

When Jesus was through with the story, he asked, "Which of these three do you think was neighbor to this man who was beaten up by thugs: the two who knew the theology or the one who stopped to help?" The lawyer, not willing to take the name Samaritan on his lips, said, "I guess the one who showed mercy." Jesus said, "Go. Keep on doing likewise."

The answer is as simple as it is sublime

In that story is the answer to the question, "Who is my neighbor?" The answer is as simple as it is sublime: Your neighbor is anyone whose need you see and whose need you're in a position to meet. It's as simple and as sublime as that. Your neighbor may be someone who is unknown. There's no evidence that this Jew and Samaritan ever met each other before. One of the marks of the love of Jesus Christ and his people is that they have gone to other cultures and other countries to reach people they did not know but whose needs they knew. Your neighbor may be unfriendly. The Jews and the Samaritans were deep and long-standing enemies. You may find your neighbor as somebody who rubs you raw, doesn't appreciate you, and slams the door when you try to visit. Your neighbor may be unlovely. There's nothing attractive about a man lying in a pool of blood by the side of a dirt road. You may have a neighbor whose lifestyle you don't approve, whose hairstyle you don't like, and whose whole way of operating turns your thermostat down. Your neighbor may be unrewarding. There's no evidence that that Jew was ever able to pay the Samaritan back for what he'd done. Sometimes in our churches we reach out to people not to help them but because of how they can help us. Statistics are a bit low, or the budget's a bit heavy so we need to get some more folks to make the operation look good.

Jesus is saying your neighbor is anyone whose need God has put you in a position to meet. Buried in the story there is some indication of what it might take to be a neighbor: willingness to be involved, to lend a hand, and to give time. Like most of you, I live a hectic, hurried, and somewhat harassed life. The hardest thing to give to people is time. You have to stop and get involved. It costs money. This Samaritan laid out two silver coins, two denarii. One denarius was equal to one day's wage for a manual laborer. He put two of them on the counter and then became surety for anything else that was left. He gave his money. He gave his time. He got involved.

There's a hook in that little phrase your neighbor is anyone whose need you see. All three of these men saw a stranger who had been mugged. But in a sense they really didn't see the same thing. One man may have seen a ceremonial defilement. Another may have seen a sermon illustration. Only the Samaritan saw his neighbor. Buried beneath this story is a deeper truth: What I am determines what I see. That's a principle of life.

You and I go to an art museum. You know and appreciate art. I'm something of a clod. We're walking down the corridors, and you say to me, "Robinson, see that picture? That's art." I look at the picture and say, "That's art?" The difference isn't what's hanging up on the wall. The difference is what's here inside. What you are determines what you see.

When I was a kid in Sunday school, I had to memorize some of those nasty little verses in 1 John. Those verses say, "If a man says he loves God and loves not his brother, he's a liar, because if you haven't loved your brother whom you have seen, how can you love God whom you've not seen?" I thought the whole thing was a bunch of pious nonsense. I could see absolutely no relationship between loving God and loving my brother or my neighbor. As time passed, I discovered that John was on to something. In the Scriptures, Christian love is not objective. Christian love is subjective. Christian love does not reside in the personality being loved. It resides in the person doing the loving.

Conclusion

My basic premise was wrong; it is not such a simple thing to love God. By nature the heart is a rebel and men and women no more search for a God than a thief searches for a policeman. The only way I'm able to love God is that the love of God himself is shed abroad in my heart through the Holy Spirit. The New Testament is saying that the same love that enables me to love the Father in heaven enables me to love my brother and my neighbor on earth. What you are determines what you see, and what you see will determine what you do. That's just a fact of life.

Remember that poem we learned when we were children?

Pussycat, Pussycat, where have you been?
I've been to London to see the queen.
Pussycat, Pussycat, what saw you there?
I saw a wee mouse under her chair.

London is a great city. There's the Tower of London with the blood of history soaking its bricks. There's Westminster Abbey cradling its historic dead. There's Buckingham Palace, the residence of the queen. Here's a cat whose been to London. Now she's back home, and she's showing her slides. Everybody's gathered to hear about the trip. Somebody says, "Pussycat, did you get to the palace?" "Oh yes, I was in the palace." "Well, Pussycat, was the queen there?" "Oh yes, the queen was there." "Did you see her?" "Oh yes, she was there." "Pussycat, what does she look like?" "Well, I really didn't notice." "Well, Pussycat, what did you see there?" "Underneath her chair was one of the nicest little mice you'd want to see." Why did she see only mice? Because she had a pussycat heart. When you've got the heart of a pussycat, mice are infinitely more important than queens.

Do you love God? Do you love your neighbor? It is a kind of pious nonsense to prattle on about how much we love God whom we've not seen when we're blind to our neighbor whose needs we can see. My neighbor is anyone whose need I see and whose need God has put me in a position to meet. It's as simple and as difficult as that.

For Your Reflection

Personal growth: How has this sermon fed your own soul? ___________________________________________

Skill growth: What did this sermon teach you about how to preach? ____________________________________________________________________________

Exegesis and exposition: Highlight the paragraphs in this sermon that helped you better understand Scripture. How does the sermon model ways you could provide helpful biblical exposition for your hearers? ____________________________________________________________________________

Theological Ideas: What biblical principles in this sermon would you like to develop in a sermon? How would you adapt these ideas to reflect your own understanding of Scripture, the Christian life, and the unique message that God is putting on your heart? ____________________________________________________________________________

Outline: How would you improve on this outline by changing the wording, or by adding or subtracting points? _____________________________________________________________________

Application: What is the main application of this sermon? What is the main application of the message you sense God wants you to bring to your hearers? ____________________________________________________________________________

Illustrations: Which illustrations in this sermon would relate well with your hearers? Which cannot be used with your hearers, but they suggest illustrations that could work with your hearers? ____________________________________________________________________________

Credit: Do you plan to use the content of this sermon to a degree that obligates you to give credit? If so, when and how will you do it?

Haddon Robinson was a preacher and teacher of preachers all over the world. His last teaching position was as the Harold John Ockenga Distinguished Professor of Preaching at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.