Welcome to the Islands Christian Church podcast.
Subscribe to hear a new episode every week.
Thanks for joining us. All right, so today we are
beginning a brand new series called Next door.
And so if you have your Bibles, you can head over to Luke
chapter 10 and just hold that for a second.
And we're going to get that to that text in a moment.
We have a another text to look at before we get there.
But this is what we're doing in this series called next door is
we're, we were looking at this idea of loving our neighbors.
We live in a world that is we we live in a world that is
connected, more connected than it's ever never has ever has
been. Think about this on your phone.
I texted a buddy of mine the other day and I was thinking
about this in Alaska. I texted my friend in Alaska and
we're we had a conversation back and forth and I was like, what
time is it there? And he's like, oh, it's, you
know, 3:30. And it was like, you know, 730
here. And, you know, it was like, this
is crazy that I'm talking to a guy in Alaska.
You go back 50 years, you know, 75 years to talk to somebody in
Alaska. Like, yeah, you might could call
them, but it was going to be very expensive and it was going
to take a while to get him on the phone.
And you had to plan that you sent him a letter.
Hey, can we get on the call on Thursday, October the 12th, you
know, at 4:00 in the afternoon. And like you, it was a lot.
I'm just randomly, I got a question for him in Alaska.
Just text him. You know, we live in a world
that is more connected than it ever has been in the history.
But at the same time, at the same time, we feel more divided
than ever. I mean, if you watch the news,
if you watch social media, what you hear oftentimes is we are so
divided as a nation. We're so divided as a people.
And so yet we're all so connected and yet we're all so
divided at the same time. Now this next door series that
we're going to be doing is about discovering what Jesus called
one of the greatest commandments, the second of the
two greatest commandments to love our neighbor.
So next door you have a everybody say neighbor neighbor
and the Bible says cause us to love our neighbor, not
literally, not only literally our next door neighbor, but our
neighbor. The idea of neighbor is defined
more broadly as we're going to see today.
And in this series, through this series, we're going to explore
following Jesus and we're going to explore how following Jesus
transforms the way we see the people around us, the people
across the street, the people across the table, and the people
across every dividing line you can think of right now, every
dividing line you can think of. How do we see them?
How do we interact with them? Loving our neighbor isn't just
about being nice. And this is kind of what happens
to Christianity. Oh, you need to love people.
That just kind of means be nice and be kind.
And it's, it's, it's not just about being nice.
It's actually about reflecting the heart of Christ to everyone
you encounter. It's about reflecting the heart
of Christ to all people, no matter what, and how different
you may be from them. And that's different than just
being nice. And I, I know we kind of like
the idea of loving our neighbor as just being nice because
everybody, you know, you, everybody can just be nice.
But Love Actually sometimes is going to move beyond just being
nice. And the reflecting the heart of
Christ is going to look different than just being nice.
And we're going to talk about that today at the end of our
talk. So a common question in Jesus's
day was this question, what is the greatest commandment?
What is the greatest commandment?
In other words, what really matters most?
What is essential to being one of Jesus's followers?
Now we know that Jesus was asked this question often and we know
how he answered it. So we're going to start in Mark
chapter 12, verse 28 through 31. And I'm going to read this to
you very quickly to hear how Jesus answered the question.
What is most important? Mark chapter 12, verse 28, one
of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating,
noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, He asked him
of all the commandments, which is the most important?
So they're in a debate back and forth and this, this teacher of
the law, this lawyer says, hey Jesus, what's the most important
commandment? Verse 29, the most important one
answer, Jesus is this hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the
Lord is 1 Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all
your soul, and with all your mind with all your strength.
The second is this colon. Love your neighbor as yourself.
There is no commandment greater than these.
And so here we are. Jesus says, hey, this is
essential. Love God fully and completely
and love people faithfully. Love God fully and completely
and love people faithfully. Followers of Jesus are meant to
live in a loving relationship with their heavenly Father and
at the same time to faithfully express that that love they
receive from God toward others. This is a both and situation.
Let's be honest, most of us do pretty well at the loving God
part, Amen? Like we can, we can sing, we can
worship, we can read our Bible, we can sit and pray, we can talk
about God. But the loving people part, it
could be a little harder, right? It can be a little tougher.
Let's be frank. It's easier to love people who
look like us, think like us, talk like us, share our values.
It gets harder when a neighbor includes people who we disagree
with, people who frustrate us, or people who have hurt us.
Let's be straight with each other.
Sometimes our version of love for people that aren't like us
is not really love. It's just a polite tolerance.
It's just a polite tolerance, and it's not a genuine
compassion for them. But what we're going to see
today is that Jesus defines neighbor in a much broader way.
He defines neighbor in a way that stretches us past our
comfort zone from just tolerating people that aren't
like us and holding the door for them, to actually showing them
compassion and loving them. He broadens that idea in Luke
chapter 10, a religious expert. Now you got to understand this.
A religious expert would have been someone who understood the
law backwards and forwards, who forwards, who had it memorized,
who knew everything there is to know about it.
So this is not just some random YouTube guy who watches a lot of
YouTube and has a lot of information.
This is somebody who's learned and studied and smart and
intelligent. This expert in the law.
He's coming to Jesus and he's trying to Make Love manageable.
That's important that you got to understand that this guy's
coming to Make Love. Hey, I know I got to love
people. I know loving neighbors is part
of it, but I want to make it manageable.
And he asks a question of Jesus, and here's the question that
he's going to ask. He's asking a question, who is
my neighbor? And what he's trying to do is
Make Love manageable. So if you take that, if you take
notes, that's what the expert in the law is trying to do.
He's trying to Make Love manageable where he can manage
it, where it's easier for him to do.
Who exactly is my neighbor is this question?
So let's look at verses 25 through 29 of Luke chapter 10
and see what it says. On one occasion an expert in the
law stood up to test Jesus teacher.
He asked what must I do to inherit eternal life?
What is written in the law? Jesus replied, how do you read
it? So so stop here for a second.
An expert in the law comes to Jesus and he says, hey,
basically what do I need to do to inherit eternal life?
What do I need to do to live forever to be right with God for
all the eternity? And the Jesus responds with a
question. So he asks a question.
Jesus responds with a question and what was Jesus question?
He says, what is written in the law?
Now he's, he's asking a guy who's an expert in the law, what
is written in the law? How do you read it?
And So what he's saying is like, you already know this, you're
already an expert. You already have the
information. So I'm just, I'm going to put
this back on to you. What does the word say?
What does God's word say? You're an expert.
Tell us what it says. And then the expert in the law
answers verse 27. He answered, love the Lord your
God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your
strength and all the all your mind and to love your neighbor
as yourself. Now how did he know that?
Well, this is ancient. This goes back to the very
beginning of God's word. This is Old Testament.
This is this is the this is the the foundation of God's teaching
to his people. So for thousands of years, the
Jewish people have had this command to love God and to love
neighbor. So Jesus sit and come on the
scene and invent that he didn't create that.
This is something this guy would have known because he's an
expert in the law. This is thousands of years old.
So he says to Jesus, oh, I know what the law says.
It says to love God and to love your neighbor.
And then Jesus says in verse 28, well, you've you've answered
correctly. Jesus replied, do this and you
will live. Jesus is like you asked and you
answered your own question. You already knew the answer
should be the end of the conversation, right?
Should be over. But but Luke gives us a little
hint into what's about to happen.
Luke says in verse 29, But he wanted to justify himself.
Who's he the expert in the law? But he, the expert in the law,
wanted to justify himself. So he, the expert in the law,
asked Jesus a gotcha question. Y'all know what a gotcha
question is, right? Y'all know what a gotcha
question is? It's like I'm going to ask a
question that's put you on the spot.
It's a question that's just going to be hard for you to
answer. It's going to show your
weakness. It's going to put you in the
corner and the whole lights going to be on you for a moment.
And he says, I got I got a question.
And what is his motivation? His motivation is to justify
himself. So he asked Jesus, well, and who
is my neighbor? Define who my neighbor is Jesus.
Let's define our terms and here's the first idea.
If you're a note taker, I want you to write down this morning.
We like the expert in the law, want to limit our love or limit
who's our neighbor. We like the expert in the law
want to limit our love or we want to limit who's our
neighbor. See in verse 29, when this
expert in the law asked and who's my neighbor?
He wasn't asking. He wasn't.
That's fun. Are you telling me guys to stop?
Hey, look at some time, guys, man, that was strange.
So he isn't asking this. This expert in law isn't asking
because he wants to learn, right?
He isn't he isn't saying, hey, I, I really want to understand
this more. Help me Jesus with this.
That's not what's going. This is not in good faith, all
right? He's not in good faith at all.
He's asking because he wants to draw lines around who he's
supposed to love. He wants to draw boundaries.
And this is important. He wants to create walls for who
his neighbor is so he can limit who he has to love.
The this was a common question in Jesus's day, right?
This was, this was not new for Jesus.
In other words, this would this would be like, you know, this
was a common debate. This would be like how in our
culture we debate exactly how you should read the Second
Amendment or the 10th Amendment. And people argue about this kind
of stuff in legal terms. You know, legal minds get
together and they argue about these things all the time.
The 1st Amendment, this was a common legal debate.
This was not new. And so Jesus knew his tactic.
He knew what he was trying to do.
He knew that he was actually just trying to draw boundaries
around who he who he had to love.
And the Jewish people who had long been commanded to love
their neighbor, they had over the time narrowed that command
down. So that neighbor was simply
defined as people like themselves, people who shared
their faith, people who shared their race, people who shared
their values. In other words, they over the
centuries had said, well, I know God told us to love our
neighbors, but he didn't exactly say who our neighbors were.
And so we're going to, we're going to decide who our
neighbors are and they're going to be other Jews, people who
share our race, people who share our values.
And the group that that Jews most excluded from loving their
neighbor was literally some neighbors to the north of them,
literally some neighbors. And that group of people was
called the Samaritans. And the Jewish people decided
that the Samaritans were impure and they were less than human.
And the last thing they were with neighbors.
And so then they were not worthy of love.
They they couldn't be loved. And so when the man asked Jesus,
who is my neighbor, what he's really asking is this, who do I
have permission to not love? I need permission.
Give me some permission who I can, I don't, who I don't have
to love. And if we're honest, we ask the
same question today. Jesus said in another place in
Luke chapter 6 verse 32, he says, if you love those who love
you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love
them. In other words, if we make the
boundary, well, I'll love people who are good to me or people who
love me if I, if I, if I make that my boundary, Jesus says, So
what? Who cares?
Sinners, even sinners, love those who love them.
And now, if we're all honest, it's just human nature to want
to limit love, to decide who's in and who's out.
But Jesus doesn't let us do that.
And the gospel won't let us draw lines around our compassion in
God's Kingdom. Nobody's off the neighbor to
love list. Nobody's scratched off.
Nobody's moved off the list now. So the guy asked a question.
It's a gotcha question. Who is my neighbor?
Jesus? Who exactly is my neighbor?
Walk me through this, Jesus. Now I want you to look Jesus, I
always say this is funny. The guy asked a question, who is
my neighbor? And Jesus doesn't respond with
an answer. He responds with a, a story, a
long story, a drawn out story. You know, it's like the guy's
like, OK, I guess I'll sit down. I mean, guys gonna tell this
long story. I mean, what am I doing?
Asking questions? So this so Jesus answers the and
I want you to listen Now think about the question.
The question is, who is my neighbor?
OK, who is my neighbor? That's the question.
And I want you to listen to the story and, and think about that
question as you're listening to the story.
Here's Jesus story. Some of you are new to the
Bible, never been around the Bible before.
It's gonna be the first time you've ever heard this story.
It's a great story. Verse 30, Luke chapter 10 in
reply Jesus said a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho
when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his
clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead.
A priest happened to be going down the same road and when he
saw the man, he passed by on the other side.
So to a Levite when he came to the place and saw him pass by on
the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled,
came where the man was, and when he saw, and when he saw him, he
took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his
wounds, pouring oil on him and wine.
Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn
and took care of him. The next day he took out two
dinero and gave them to the innkeeper.
Look after him, he said, and when I return I will reimburse
you for any extra expense you may have.
And here's the second idea I want you to write down.
Jesus expands the definition of neighbor.
So if the religious expert was trying to limit the definition
of neighbor, draw boundaries around who we could love and who
we should love, Jesus expands the definition.
So think about this, the expert in the law is trying to limit
the law. He's trying to constrain the
law, and Jesus is expanding the law.
And this is a mark of Jesus's ministry every time he opens his
mouth, right? Because the Jewish people are
always trying to limit what the law actually applies to and how
much the law actually applies to their life.
And Jesus is going, no, it's way deeper, way bigger than you
thought. It's a heart issue.
It's way larger. And that's what he's doing in
this situation. So he's expanding the definition
of neighbor. The religious leader wanted to
know who he could limit, who was worthy of his love.
But Jesus takes the story, and he broadens the definition of
neighbor. Now remember, the Jewish people
of Jesus's day saw the Samaritans as less than human,
lower than animals, And for centuries they had known that
their command was to love your neighbor.
But they never believed it applied to the Samaritans.
So when Jesus tells a story, he makes the Samaritan man the hero
on purpose. He makes the Samaritan man the
rescuer on purpose. In other words, Jesus is talking
to a collection of religious Jewish experts, and he who hates
Samaritans, who don't believe Samaritans are neighbors, who
don't believe Samaritans are people worthy of love.
And he tells the story and he makes the hero of the story
their enemy. Here's the hero.
The Samaritan is the hero. And he does that on purpose.
Now, here's a way. Here's the way I read the story.
You know, you've probably heard sermons on this story a million
times, and I don't know if you've ever heard this before,
but this is how I read the story.
Jesus is, there's two things going on.
I think Jesus is telling the story, number one, in a way for
us and the original hearers to assume that the traveler is
Jewish, OK, that he wants them to assume that the traveler is
Jewish, hence the Samaritans helping a Jewish person.
But I think it actually goes deeper than that.
I think Jesus is telling a story, the story in such a way
that he actually wants the expert in the law, that it's
asking the question to see himself as the broken traveler.
He wants the expert in the law to see himself as the broken
traveler. Now this is important for how I
what I think, how I think Jesus is answering the question.
Remember, the question is, who is my neighbor?
I think he wants the expert in the law to see that he's the one
who's been broke down, who's been beat up, who's been left
for dead. So it's kind of like Jesus is
saying this even though he didn't.
It's like he's saying this in the story.
Imagine you expert in the law. Imagine you were going down the
bloody path. That's what that road is called,
by the way. Imagine you were going down the
bloody paths and you were beaten and you were robbed and you were
left for dead. It's almost as if he wants the
religious expert to see himself as the one who is beat up and
left for dead, in need of mercy. And then the priest comes by and
the Levite comes by. These are your people, religious
expert. These are the people you
respect. These are the people you admire.
These are the people that you love.
These are people that are in your circle.
They're in your boundary. But they don't stop for you.
The ones that you thought would love you.
The ones who thought you thought would would help you.
They walk right by you. And then comes along someone you
least expected, religious expert, bleeding, left for dead
on the side of the road. A Samaritan comes by, the one
you least expected, a man who was outside of your circle,
outside of your boundary. He sees you.
Now listen to this religious expert.
He sees you and he feels compassion for you.
And he risk his own safety by stopping on the bloody path.
He himself could have been robbed and beat up, but he risk
his own safety. He uses his own resources and he
pays for your recovery. Imagine this.
You, the expert in the law, the the very person you consider an
enemy, is the one who comes and saves your life.
I think that's how Jesus is telling the story.
I think he wants the religious expert to see that he's the one
in need and that it's his enemy, the one he hates that comes to
help him. The one he's divided with.
You see, the Samaritan chose to love the one who hated him.
The Samaritan chose to love the one who hated him.
He crossed the line. He took the risk and showed
mercy in doing so. Jesus completely defines what
neighbor means. He completely redefines what
neighbor means. He blurs the line between enemy
and neighbors for everyone who follows him.
In other words, when Jesus tells the story the way he does, he's
taken the boundaries that the religious expert has set up and
he's demolishing them, and he's going to circle that you're
called to love, that you're called to treat as a neighbor as
much bigger than you thought it was, and you'd call him an
enemy, but he actually showed you mercy.
He blurs the line between enemy and neighbor for all of us.
Enemy. Think about the word enemy and
think about the idea that you being a Christian and you have
an enemy. People that you dislike or
despise or people you can't get along with.
Whatever however you think of your enemy.
And listen to what Jesus said in Matthew chapter 5 verse 43 and
45. He says you have heard that it
was said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
But I tell you, love your enemies hard.
Stop. That should be enough to stop a
sermon right there, right? But I tell you, love your
enemies and pray for those who persecute you that you may be
children of your Father in heaven.
Now that's an important clause, and I wish I could preach a
whole sermon on that. Hey, love your enemies.
Pray for those who persecute you that you may be children of your
Father in heaven. In other words, loving those who
are not loving to you is an indication that you are actually
a child of God. How so?
Well, listen to what the rest of
the text says. He causes God the Father, causes
his Son to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the
righteous and the unrighteous. Now here's a whole, oh, another
thing, but Jesus, Jesus is saying, hey, there is a such
thing as evil. Like Jesus doesn't tell us like
the Gospel doesn't tell us like go around and treat like there's
like, treat people like there's no such thing as evil and walk
in the world like there's no such thing as evil.
No, that's not what the Gospel says.
That's not what the Bible says. And I know that's kind of what
everybody, you know, wants Christianity to be.
Just be kind, just be nice. Don't call out evil.
But Jesus is saying, look, there is evil, but we're called to
love those who do evil. Now that, wow, that's tough.
It's like, man, can I just love people who maybe I don't agree
with on politics a little bit? Now I can do that part.
But you're telling me to love enemies and to love people who
do evil. Man, the weight of the gospel is
no joke, right? So Jesus broadens the definition
of neighbor beyond just the the circle that we want to have, the
people that share our values, look like us, think like us.
But there's something else he does with this story.
See, as he's broadening the definition of neighbor, hey, it
includes people that you would call an enemy.
It includes people that you don't see the world the same
way, people that that you view things differently.
But he also provides for us in the way he tells a story, how to
determine who our neighbor is, how to determine who our
neighbor is. And that's the third idea this
morning. Write notes.
You take notes. Write this down.
Answering the question, who is my neighbor?
If you notice, Jesus tells a story.
The man's question was, who is my neighbor?
And then Jesus tells a story in such a way that the Samaritan is
a neighbor to him, you know, but Samaritan is a neighbor to the
beaten up Jewish man on the side of the road.
But he never actually tells the expert in the law, hey, this is
how you determine who your neighbor is.
He doesn't say it directly, but he says it indirectly.
Let's read the next two verses and then I'll tell you what I
mean. Jesus says, which of these three
do you think was a neighbor To the man who fell into the hands
of robbers? The expert in the law replied,
the one who had mercy on him, Jesus told him go and do
likewise. So here we are.
So which one was a neighbor? Who was a neighbor?
The Samaritan was a neighbor. OK, well, the question was who
is my neighbor? That's the question.
Who is my neighbor? How do I determine what who my
neighbor is? The the question wasn't how do I
act like a neighbor or how can I find out?
You know who is, you know who's treating me like a neighbor?
Like, like he? The question is who is my
neighbor? And he answers it, but he
doesn't answer it directly. He answers it in an indirect
kind of way that you got to you got to look for, you got to
think about. And this is what I think how I
read the story. Jesus flips the question.
He does not answer it directly. He flips the question, and this
is the clearest way I can say it.
If you write down stuff, your neighbor, who is my neighbor?
You ready? Your neighbor is anyone from
whom you'd be willing to receive mercy.
Your neighbor is anyone from whom you'd be willing to receive
mercy. So who was the neighbor to the
man beat down in this scenario? The Samaritan.
So here's what most people do when they read the story of the
Good Samaritan. They instinctively cast
themselves as the what? The Samaritan.
Nobody ever reads the story and casts themselves as the beat up
Jew man, Jewish man on the side of the road.
Nobody ever does that. We all cast ourselves as the
what the hero. And we'd say things like this.
Of course I help people. I'm there for people.
I'm a good neighbor to people. Right?
This come on. Like if you grew up in church,
you know, every time you heard this story, it was taught like
go out there and be a good neighbor and help people who are
in need and and do and, you know, and like we all walk out
going, yeah, I need to go and be a good neighbor.
And that's not particularly wrong.
But we always cast ourselves as the good person, as the
Samaritan. But Jesus story pushes you
deeper, friend. He wants us to imagine ourselves
not as the Samaritan, but as the wounded traveler, helpless,
desperate, bleeding out, dying on the side of the road.
And then as that desperate dying person ask this question, who
would I allow to help me? So imagine that right now you're
dead. You're near death, you're dying,
you're bleeding out, you've been beat up, you're left on some St.
some back alley. You're going to die.
If someone doesn't come along and rescue, who would you accept
help from? Anybody, anybody.
What if they vote differently than you?
Like, what if you're a hardcore on the left and some dude with a
MAGA hat shows up to help you in that moment?
What do you say? Let me die?
Or what if you're a hardcore, you know, MAGA Trumpster
conservative and some Kamala wearing pin, you know, person
walks up, you know dudes for comma lost T-shirt on.
Hey man, I'll help you. No man, I just assumed I then
received help from you. Who would you allow to give you
mercy? I mean what if what if their
lifestyle were different? What if their religion wasn't
like yours? And in that moment, who would
you say, you know what, I'd rather die than have help from
you. That that wouldn't happen.
Every one of us, if you were dying, you wouldn't care.
You simply want to live. And anybody that came along in
that moment said, hey, I will bandage you up and I will help
you and I will get you to care and I will make sure you live.
You will say to them, I accept, thank you for helping me.
And in that moment, that person is your neighbor.
And so how do I determine who my neighbor is?
Simple. Who would I accept mercy from if
I were near death? And that question, the answer to
that question is, as we all said, anyone.
That's that's the point of this story.
The point of this story is not moralism.
Go out there and hold doors for people and be loving.
Yes, that's true. But that's, I mean, this is an
amazing story. And the point of this story is
not just more moralism. The point of this story is to
know how to determine who your neighbor is.
And how you determine who your neighbor is, is who you would
receive mercy from if you were near death.
And so, yes, loving our neighbors about showing mercy to
those in need. But I'm telling you, the way to
determine who your neighbors are and who you're called to love is
if you were in need of rescue, who'd you receive it from?
Now, I want to be clear as I wrap up, I'm going to be super
clear today because when you talk about love, it's like,
yeah, we need to go out and love people.
Loving our neighbor does not does not mean that we ignore
truth as we read it in the Scriptures.
It does not mean that we ignore differences.
It does not mean that differences don't matter.
It's not like you know what Christians are called to love
and you know, differences just don't matter.
No, Jesus didn't live that way. He didn't teach that way.
He didn't didn't lead that way. This is this is difficult and
it's really hard for our culture right now.
We can love people deeply and still disagree with them
honestly. The cross shows us that.
The cross of Jesus Christ shows us that the greatest act of love
and the greatest confrontation with sin at the at the exact
same time. In other words, Jesus confronted
my sin on the cross and he gave me his love at the same time.
When Jesus died for me, he said, Stephen, you're a Sinner and you
need me to die for you, but I love you and I'm willing to do
that. You see, this is something
that's unique about Christianity.
We can disagree with our neighbors that we love, but as
believers, we must never be disagreeable or cruel or rude.
We are called by the Scriptures to engage with gentleness.
I mean, the Bible commands us to engage with gentleness, even
with people whom our world views clash with.
Class hard clash. Be gentle.
The Scriptures teach us. Here's what's happening in our
culture right now. Our current our current culture
is saying that any form of disagreement equals hate and
violence. Any form of disagreement equals
hate and violence. The followers of Jesus must not
fall into that trap. We can.
We can and should hold the conviction that we can tell the
truth the best we understand it. We can have conviction about the
truth the best we understand it, and we can be compassionate and
gentle at the same time that that is what love commands of
us. We can navigate the tension that
Jesus describes in Matthew chapter 10 verse 16.
Jesus said this, Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the
midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.
We speak truth wisely and we love people greatly, deeply, and
most importantly, gently. We don't stop loving our
neighbors when it's difficult or when they reject us or disagree
with us. We love not because they accept
us or because they applaud us. The reality is, if you go and
read the rest of that Matthew 10 passage, you will see that they
will not oftentimes love us or applaud us, but we love our
neighbor. You ready?
Because we have been loved by God who rescued us through
Christ. We, you and I, were beaten, left
for dead on the side of the road, and Christ was the better
neighbor to us. Christ came and he rescued us.
He was a neighbor to you and he was a neighbor to me.
So we love our neighbors. We serve our neighbors, and we
tell our neighbors our best understanding of the truth from
God's Word. And I'm saying that very
carefully because I acknowledge that it is our best
understanding for most Christians and most history to
tell the truth about God's Word. We can do both of those things
at the same time. Is it harder?
Is it tricky? Yes.
Will it cost us? Most likely.
But even if it costs us, we will do it because that is who Jesus
is and that is who we are. So let's love without limits,
but never without truth. Let's love without limits, but
never without truth. Love without truth is
sentimentality. Anyway, it's not actually love.
And that's how Jesus did it. Now, as you leave today, I'm
going to, you're going to be receiving some things at the
door. You're going to receive little
invite cards that look like this for you to invite your friends,
leave somewhere, leave on a table, get to know a server
somewhere. It'd be better to have a
conversation with them. But invite your friends, invite
somebody to church, invite cards.
And then you're also a little baggie on your way out.
You're going to get a sticker. If I like stickers, right?
You're going to get a sticker and a key chain.
And I just want you to know, thank you for those of you who
came this morning at 9:15. We want to be a place that
serves this community and loves this community.
And we're giving you these gifts on your way out because we want
you to be excited about our church.
We want you to be excited about what God is doing.
And I want you to tell you how you can help.
All right, number one, pray for the people that God might be
leading you to invite. In other words, just look in
your circle and be like, who's God leading me to invite to
church and invite them to church.
Hand out these cards this week at work, school, your favorite
coffee shop, doesn't matter. And then here's a big one that
helps a lot. If you're on social media, share
our posts. I know you think that doesn't
really matter a lot of what you see our posts and ignore them,
right? And not, no, it's OK, Don't do
that. Just share.
Just click on share, send them out.
It helps to for people to see and go, hey, maybe I should go
try out that church. I have people all the time that
come to our church for the first time because we're in just an
amazing location. So just help, just help.
That's a simple way to help. So let's invite others to
experience community and connection because this is what
I believe. There's always room for more
here at islands. There's always room for more
people to discover who Jesus is. And I have one more surprise for
you because I want to celebrate going back to two services.
This is good. I kept this secret.
All right, on your way out. This is going to be pastries and
cookies and sweet stuff, guys. So on your way out, listen, you
have some sugar. Thank you for coming to the 915.
Have some sugar. Enjoy it.
And then maybe linger a little bit and some folks coming up
from for the 11:00, you can chat with them.
Will you stand with me as I pray for us and we are dismissed.
Father, thank you that we were broken and beat up and left for
dead on the side of the road. And your son Jesus was our
neighbor. He is our neighbor, and he came
and he bandaged us, and he poured oil on our wounds, and he
put us on his own donkey and he brought us home and he
sacrificed for us that our souls might be made well and we might
be united with him forever. And God, as we leave this place,
may we be people who love like Jesus, who love without limits,
but also love with truth. We love without limits, but we
love with truth. Lead us in that.
It's tricky. Help us to be as wise as
serpents and as innocent as doves.
It's a tough tension, Jesus, and we want to do it well.
Thank you for these pastries we're going to have and for the
volunteers who provided it. We just love being a part of a
church that celebrates everything we can.
In Christ's name we pray, Amen. Thank you friends.
Have a blessed week and a wonderful day.
We love you. If you enjoyed this episode,
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You can also worship with us in person in Savannah, GA or watch
our live stream on Facebook and YouTube every Sunday at 9:15.
Have a great week.