[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 05:00 p.m. or Wednesdays at 07:00 p.m. if you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison church, you can find us
[email protected] dot. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our Sermons podcast Madison Church of Christ sermons. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: Alright, so if you got your bible, turn to Luke. Luke, chapter ten. We're going to be studying the good Samaritan tonight. You know, what does the parable of a good Samaritan normally teach us? What does it generally teach us?
Does anybody know? What is it? When I say the good Samaritan, what do you normally think of as far as what the parable teaches? They're good in anybody. There's good in anybody. All right. Okay. You know, if you think about the fact that, you know, a lot of times I think it's a general teaching of Jesus that challenges us to love our neighbor. Right? Challenges to love our neighbor in the sense of, hey, I'm gonna love my neighbor. Okay? And what does that look like? But I want us tonight to think a little bit more in a different way of how we look at the good Samaritan, what Jesus is trying to impress us here, because if the parable simply intended to, you know, to press upon us the responsibility to love better, okay, which is really good, but I think there's something much deeper than that. Okay. And I want us to look at the context specifically.
Really is. This really is a response from an individual, and the response obviously is from the lawyer who misunderstood, if you want to call it. And at that particular time, he understood the law very well. Right, he understood the law, but then he took the law and he didn't use it in a way that, and Jesus helped us to help us to understand what he was talking about. So in the parable, Jesus makes it clear that what God is looking for in each, every one of us is something from our heart and not just a religious behavior. Okay. Or this ability to look perfect. So Jesus, what he did is he contrasts what the religious leaders of the day okay. Who may have looked good on the outside, right? And they did look good on the outside in what they were doing, but they had this bad heart.
And he contrasted with the good Samaritan.
And I think this is interesting, y'all, because I don't know if you've ever known this or not, but if you want to write this down, we're not going to go to this verse, but in two kings, second kings, chapter 17, in verse 34, the Bible says that the Samaritans did not follow the law.
Okay, y'all follow me. So, God here is Jesus, here in this parable, is giving us an example of somebody who follows the law.
And he says, that's not the way you need to act, because this guy over here that doesn't follow the law is the good Samaritan. Here's how I want you to act. Here's the heart I want you to have.
Okay? So I don't know if I've got everybody's attention now, because all the time, it's. Most of the time, it's okay, we need to follow this. We got to do this. But where's our heart? And Jesus is trying to help us understand that through this parable of what he's teaching us. You know, this is a statement. Jesus wants us to not only experience God's love for ourselves, y'all, but also help others experience it as well. It's not just about our lives. It's about the commission to go out and to reach out and see the people around us.
We're going to learn in this story how to have a heart for God and to others instead of just creating religious habits and how to become compassionate by putting ourselves in other people's shoes.
And then how to refine what it really means to be good. What does it mean to be good?
So, I'm gonna ask you the question to start off with, and I don't want you to answer it out loud. I want you to answer it to yourself and your mind. And the question is this, what do you. And I think that God cares about the most.
What do you. And I think that God cares about the most, and then what do you think he wants most from each of us in our lives?
I want you to think about that tonight as we study this parable together.
So, how do we have a heart for God? First off, our hearts have got to be greater than our habits.
All right, let's start with the story. Luke, chapter 1025. The Bible says, and behold, a lawyer stood up to 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 and how do you read it? And he answered, what? You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and 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.
And look here in verse 29, he says, but he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, who is my neighbor? You know, in this case, y'all, the law. He asked the very same question that the rich young ruler asked, right? When the rich young ruler asks Jesus, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And that lawyer is asking Jesus, he's saying, basically through my own efforts, okay, how could I achieve eternal life? The Bible says that, but he desiring to justify himself.
How many of y'all have ever wanted to know what you needed to do? Okay, right, in order to inherit eternal life?
Anybody?
One.
I want to know. All right, got one back there. Okay, so, you know, the idea of us asking that question, you know, when's the last time you thought about, hey, I want to inherit eternal life. I want to inherit eternal life. Okay? So this guy was asking this, and it's so interesting, but as he stands there, and this is, he asked the question before the one who can justify him. He asked the question before the one who can make him righteous. He asked that question to him who supplies that, you know, and it comes from God. So, you know, but it was his attempt to justify itself. And what's interesting was, is that it's immediately met.
It's immediately met with the full weight of the law.
Okay? Is the way Jesus approached this, all right? Is it not similar to how we respond, you know, so many times in our lives?
I don't know about you, but for me at least, you know, have you ever tried to find a loophole to get around something? Okay, y'all, I've got a few nods up here. You find a loophole to get around something. Now, this is exactly what the religious expert was trying to do. You know, justifying our actions, y'all, is a way of convincing ourselves that we don't have to do something or maybe that, you know, we do have to do something. That's the way we justify so many things in our life.
I mean, you know, that we're right, that this is what's gonna be. This is why I've gotta do this. And that's the way we just. We go to the word of God, obviously, look for those things, which is good. But the religious expert thought that he could get away and listen to this. He thought he could get away with, you know, not loving certain people.
It was like, I'm gonna love, but I only wanna love these people. Okay. And that would be. That he would be okay. Okay. And justify himself from that. But, you know, ultimately, I don't know if it sounds familiar to you, but that's a lot of the times that we do that in our life. And where does it come from? Okay. I say it comes from habits. What are habits?
Things you do over and over. Things you do over and over. I like that. Add something to that.
Something that you do over and over again, subconsciously, that you don't even think about. Right?
And Kara is here. What's that condition? Oh, wow. Okay. We condition ourselves. And my wife Kara's here tonight, so I. She knows a lot of my habits, so. All right, so we all have those habits, right? And it's like that. It happens. And you're like, I didn't do that.
But it's just natural. It's just something that happens over time.
So we got to think about that, y'all, because whereas. And this is so true about our hearts, our hearts are focused on and should be focused on passion and desire, okay, in our life.
And I'm gonna tell you right now that God wants us to have a heart, okay? That wants to be close to him and to love the people around, okay, in our life. And he doesn't want our relationship. He doesn't want our relationship with him to be a habit, okay? And that can be difficult because we get conditioned, all right? It becomes a subconsciously that we're doing this, that we take the little bread and we drink a little bit of fruit of the vine every Sunday.
When you really think about what Jesus did for us on that cross, it becomes a habit for us to understand that. So what do we end up doing? Finding loopholes is often easier than actually doing the right thing, and that's why we look for them so many times. The religious expert here wanted to figure out how little he could do to get away with instead of figuring out how to change his heart, okay? To match God's commands. So, making a rule for himself, he did this about this rule about who he had to love, okay? And it probably seemed easy to this man because truly loving people as much as he loved himself in the long run, okay, it's gonna be all. For all of us. Changing our hearts is gonna be so much better than habits. And that I want you to wanna focus on that for the next few minutes. Because when you change your heart, and it's not just subconsciously, it's not something that I just do out of a habit, then it becomes something other that you actually get energy from. It's something other that God actually, you know, helps you with. I remember when I was in high school, I know that it's been a few years ago, but when I was in high school and I was played on the basketball team and I thought I was huge, but at the time, the, you know, think about. We used to actually condition before we started practice, right? And so at Marsh Hill, we would leave the school, and I'd run down Marsh Hill road, and we would run through this subdivision called Creekwood. Okay? We'd run through Creekwood. We come back out on Cotts Creek parkway, run up Crotch Creek parkway, and it made this big loop, right? Is about a three and a half mile loop.
About halfway through that, there's a cut through that you could cut through. You had to cross the creek, okay? And you'd cross the creek. And when you cross the creek, it would cut off about a mile, a mile and a half out of that, that three and a half mile loop. All right? So our coach would actually take his vehicle, his jeep, and he'd go sit at that cut through a lot of times, all right? And he'd be waving at us as we go by. But on those days that he didn't go and sit right there, what do you think we were doing?
Oh, baby. We were cutting through that creek. We didn't care whether we got our feet wet or not. Taking a mile and a half off that trip, and we'd get back and he'd know it because we got back so much sooner.
If you think about that, though, okay? And it's so true, because loopholes like that, people do, you know, it made the running easier in the moment. It made it to where I wasn't as tired right then. But then when I got into the basketball game in the fourth quarter, at the end of the game and my stamina gave out, he would look and say, glad you cut through now, aren't you?
Y'all follow me. It's the same thing in our spiritual life.
It's the same way that we do loopholes about the way that we love people and what we do as shortcuts. And what happens is, is that when there's real issues that happen in your life and people, you get tired, stamina, kicks in. Right. Okay. You don't realize that what you're doing is, you understand because you had a habit of making this loophole instead of a heart that says, hey, I care, okay. And knowing about that. So for us to understand that it may be easy in a moment, but, but truly loving God and other people, okay, is going to put this spiritual stamina in your life. Okay. And it's not going to run out. Okay. Because if you do have those habits and all the our religious habits, then you're not going to stick with somebody for very long.
You're not. It's just going to be something that you're going to say, I don't want to take the time to do that. That's going to take, you know, it's too much burden on me in my life at this particular time. But relationship inevitably involved imperfect people for. So us to understand that we've got to love unselfishly and we have to have relationships that are going to last if we, and this is the thing, maybe let me go to it, make sure I get, oh, there it goes. If we're just trying to act, okay, instead of genuinely loving God and others, we also will get weary before we can live out the destiny God has called us to. So for us to understand that we're going to get tired of doing good as soon as the going gets tough or this obstacle occurs in our life when it's based on the wrong principles, it's based on the wrong foundation, okay? It's based on a religious habit as opposed to a heart thing for us to understand and know.
And on the other hand, it's true, if we learn how to have a genuine heart, okay, for God and other people, our love will drive us forward no matter what we're up against, okay. That genuine love that we have for each other doesn't give up or quit. So we want to become, obviously, the people that God wants us to be. And we need to develop a loving heart for each other instead of a loving image. So let me ask this question. What is something you or I have continually tried to change by fixing a habit in our life?
And you can think of a lot of them. I can think of a lot of it. You're in the habit of fill in the blank. Right. And we try to change that habit. And let me challenge you tonight, if you want to change whatever that is, don't try to change the habit. Change your.
Your heart. Y'all follow me and it'll. You'll change the habit. I will tell you that God has made us that way, okay, for each of us to know and to know that. So how do we learn how to have compassion for people? Well, one way is to understand that people does not equal problems.
Now, everybody out here has a different personality. And some people are like, well, they're just. The people have got problems, you know? Right. Does everybody have problems or challenges? Okay, one. All right, everybody's got problems. Everybody's got problems. Everybody's got challenges. Some people are okay with loving that and wanting to receive that and hear that. My dad was that way. My dad, he seemed like he knew everybody. I remember my aunt and uncle lived in Southern California and my mom and dad used to go out there and visit them. And they told me a story one time of my dad did not meet a stranger. And he always talked to everybody, whether they're standing in line at store, he would always go up and ask them how they're doing, y'all. Everybody's got somebody like that, right? Well, they were in a Denny's restaurant in southern California and they were talking about my dad knowing. Everybody came up and she goes, Sonny Hargan.
I mean, he lived in north Alabama all his life.
And the thing about it is, it's like, do you want to know somebody's name? Do you care?
Or are people problems?
I'm hitting me too, guys.
While I'm standing in Walmart line and people are screaming and yelling or doing whatever. And I'm like going, wow, I gotta get out of here.
Or do I look at that person and I know that they're a soul.
And I'm going to smile and I'm going to show them a little peace of God and I'm going to show them the love of Christ.
We're a different people, y'all. Okay? And it starts with this. It starts with our heart to be able to understand and know that. Here's what Jesus said in verse 30. He said, jesus replied, a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now, by chance, okay, a priest was going down that road and when he saw him, he passed by the other side. And so likewise a levite, when he came to the place and saw him pass by on the other side, you know, it's interesting, y'all. It's going to be natural to expect, and it would be really natural to expect that the priest and the levite, what should they have done?
Stopped and helped. Why?
They were good people.
They were churchgoers.
Right?
And Jesus is sitting here telling this story in this parable, and he's saying, these guys didn't stop. They went on by, but they were good people. They're the leaders in the church.
Right?
Wow.
In our daily lives, y'all, we may not see this, we may not see a lot of beaten and robbed people, but I will tell you, there's a lot of people who are beaten down mentally. They're beaten down spiritually. They're struggling wherever. Wherever they are. Okay? For us to understand that and to know that, that people are robbed of hope and they're beaten by life's difficulties and hardships. In the book, and many of y'all have read this, but there's a story that Stephen Covey tells in his book on the seven habits of highly effective people. Some of y'all know this, but I'm going to tell it because it's got such a great illustration of this point. He talks about that I was riding on a subway on a Sunday morning in New York, and the people that were sitting there on the subway were sitting quietly, and they stopped at this one station and the door opened up. And this man and his three children got on the subway. And the man sat down and closed his eyes.
And those kids were going crazy.
They were bothering everybody. They were screaming at each other. They were fighting over who's got this and what's that and everything else. Well, this man that was sitting there, he finally said, well, I've got to say something to this man that's just got his eyes closed. He's not even taking care of his kids at all. What do you think he's doing?
So he came up to the man and he said, sir, can you get control of your children? And this man sort of, he opened his eyes and he was like, I'm sorry. He said, you're right. I apologize. We just came from the hospital and their mother died an hour ago. And I'm just sitting here thinking, what am I going to do?
This guy was like, wow, how many of us? That's us on the subway. That's us in the line at Walmart. That's us in the restaurant getting on to our waiter, our waitress.
That's us at work when our boss is getting fill in the blank of when that is. And for us to understand what somebody has gone through and where they are, for us to be humble and for us to have peace in our life, to be able to take that so they can reach out and say, hey, I need Jesus. For us to do that is so huge. And for us to understand that we won't know that someone is going through something unless we do one thing. And it's really a key thing. It says, it's ask. It's ask to help and find out from them, you know, what they're doing. Many times we encounter these people just like Jesus, y'all, by chance. It's the people that we're sitting by at our schools. It's sitting that we're sitting with by a church. We got a congregation now that's like, I hear it so many times. We got so many people. I don't know, every.
Somebody comes and sits down beside struggling.
Just sit there.
I'm telling y'all. I mean, I'm being hard on all of us tonight, and I'm being hard on myself because I know the joyous that. And I love this family so much because of what you do and the love that you provide. And I'm going to give an example of that here even in a second. But the priest and leave out had this religious heart. They looked good on the outside and did the right things. But when it came to what really mattered to God, which was loving people, they weren't able to do it. They saw the man beside the road as this problem that I'm going to avoid, okay? And I'll tell y'all, it's very easy to be religious. It's easy to go to church. It's easy to sit down here every week and to tithe, okay, and be in the leadership roles and do whatever, to do all that and then not have people and their needs on our minds and hearts.
Jesus is telling us something different, okay, for us to understand those people around us. So how.
How do we learn to care for people, y'all? How do we do that? I'm going to tell you tonight that we do it through prayer. Plus putting yourself in other shoes is what equals perspective. Okay? What does jesus say? He said, but a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was. And when he saw him, he had compassion. And if you think about this, when he saw him, he had compassion. I want you to think about that statement. And he went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day, he took out two daenerys and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, take care of him. And whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.
You know, just like that the religious leaders of the day, y'all, the Samaritan also saw the man who was beaten and robbed. So that priest and Levite who saw them, the Samaritan saw the exact same thing. The difference was the Samaritan actually felt something for that individual. He had that compassion for him, okay? To be able to. And he was moved with compassion. So the Samaritan had all the reasons, and this is so true. The Samaritan had all the reasons not to stop, right?
The Jews and the Samaritans hated each other. When he came upon this jew, he had the reason not to stop and help this guy, but he did that anyway, okay? Instead of seeing the man as a problem, he saw the man as a person that needed love, okay? And he put himself in the man's shoes, okay? Choosing not to feel what the man, you know, must have felt, but, you know, which was the pain that he had. But it's not that. He didn't have to do anything else to do. He was definitely busy. But the only difference was his heart, because he definitely wasn't following the law.
So I'll tell y'all tonight, the first step in loving someone is allowing yourself to feel what other people are feeling.
And that's going to be different for you in different places of where you are in your life, you know, too.
But to develop that in your life, develop that type of attribute that you need, and we all need that. Jesus is talking about for us to learn that and for us to move forward with that, it happens to us in our life. When things happen in our life that we don't know why, but then we turn around and we understand that, hey, we know how somebody felt, because we felt that same way, okay? To be there if we want to be loving and compassionate, but don't know how, one thing that we can do is this, is that we can pray for our friends, our friends, and put ourselves in their shoes, okay?
And God can give us a new heart, y'all, if we'll only ask him.
We had a gentleman, and I don't know. Did he? I don't know if he ended up being able to be here tonight. Is David here?
I didn't see him.
Well, no. I've called and asked David if he cared if I used his story tonight, and he told me absolutely. But he told me one thing. He sent me a text two days later, and he said, if you use my story tonight, you gotta give God the glory. Okay?
But a few years ago, David Creasy came to Pr. Okay? He was at project rescue, and after a year, half company, doing great, okay. Came to Madison every week, placed membership, actually, with us here in our family, wanted to be a part of our family, and then developed relationships with folks. And then David relapsed hard. I mean, he hit hard.
He was. We couldn't even find him at one point, all right? Couldn't find him. He wouldn't answer anything. He wouldn't do anything, literally, to the point he lost his job, everything. This just happened in the last couple of years.
We had a lot of our family here, from Jay Walton and John Walton, Jeff Holmes, Mike and Kim and Robbie Kester. Just texting him. Just texting him all the time on a regular basis, saying, hey, love you, brother. What can we do to help you? What can we do to help you? Two weeks ago, two weeks ago, I went over to Florence and I spoke in Florence, and David showed up where I was speaking.
This is what he looks like today.
And it was because people loved him.
They didn't care about the rules. What they cared about is his heart.
And for each of us to be able to say, hey, and people do that, and you've got people in your lives that are doing that right now, whether it be your family, whether it be people here and for each of us, the challenge is to have that heart, to say, what can I do? And there's not amount of time that I'm going to do this. I'm going to do it forever.
I mean, I'd come to church every week and Jay would say, hey, I talked to David this week by text, or Robbie would send me a message and say, hey, I talked to David.
Who in your life right now needs you to dig deeper into their life and pray for them and to understand and to feel their pain. Who in your life has that? Maybe a son. It may be a daughter. It may be a friend. It may be whoever. I challenge you to get on your knees and pray for them and then put yourself in their perspective so you can reach out to them and you can say, I love you.
I'm not condoning what you're doing or anything else, but I love you and I care about you. So how do we understand this? Okay, what time? We're just about done. How do we understand what good is? Good is equal to compassionate and grateful, y'all? Luke 1036, the last verse, it says, which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers? Okay.
And Jesus said this. He said, the one who showed him mercy okay? And Jesus said to him, you go and you do likewise. You know, we said that, you know how they, the Jews and Samaritans, hated each other, and yet it was the Samaritan who literally welled up with compassion, okay? For that. For the jew that was hurt showing him true love and kindness.
So a lot of times we say, well, who is the neighbor in the story? And Jesus proved to us that the neighbor is not the man that was beaten by the side of the road. Right? Okay. Because Jesus said, and he answered this question, who proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers, okay. And the neighbor, okay. Was the good Samaritan who showed him mercy. And he said that for us to understand that the Samaritan loved and bandaged and promised to return the Mandev. It's important for us to understand and know and realize that you might think that because you struggle, okay, a lot of times to be a good christian. We all struggle with that. And we want to be. We want to be good Christians, right? We do. Okay?
And that's what christians are supposed to do. You may think, well, I can't be one. But actually what Jesus is telling us in this period, he's telling us this, is that our heart matters more than our religious behavior. And he is telling us that. And you say, well, habit, how can you say that? There is a man who was the lawyer of the Old Testament law, and all he does was, that was what he was doing. And Jesus said, hey, all of what you're doing is not as important as taking that. And if you add gratitude for what Jesus did for us, it's what should motivate you and me to no longer live for ourselves, okay? For us to understand that. So how do you go from trying to be good to really loving people?
Understand that your heart matters more than you know and that your gratitude for Jesus love is for what you know should motivate us. And I will tell you all this, people that are concerned about the fact that you say, well, it's just. It's just about your heart. It's just about Jesus or whatever else. I will tell you that a true christian understands and knows and wants to follow God's will. Amen.
Okay, that's not what this. Wow. But I want us to take a step back and say, hey, have I got these in my life? Okay. You know, for certain?
Because I will tell you, it's impossible for us to justify ourselves.
We can't do it. We can't justify ourselves. And Jesus is telling us that you know right here. So the parable points to a deeper reality, y'all, for each of us, the samaritan was despised and rejected by man. People didn't like the Samaritans, right? Do y'all know who else was called a samaritan in the New Testament?
Does anybody know?
What's that?
Jesus was called a samaritan in the New Testament in John, chapter eight and verse 48. Are we not right in saying that you are a samaritan and have a demon?
They were calling Jesus a samaritan, y'all. So I will tell you, just like Jesus, the good samaritan pursued us, okay? He's gone to the cross for you, and he's gone to the cross for me. And I will tell you, if you're searching for eternal life tonight, if you're searching for an inheritance, for justification, if you're searching for all those things, this parable is not. It's a warning for us of what not to do, okay? To be lifted, y'all, from the kingdom of darkness into a kingdom of light isn't about what we do or can do. Instead, it's about what he's done in and through each and every one of us. If you grab a hold of that and understand that that's a place of surrender, that's a place that will lead each and every one of us. It's about having the right heart, not having the perfect behavior. So the last point that I'll make tonight is, how do we demonstrate this love? How do we demonstrate this heart and understanding that it is greater than habits? I'm going to close with a short video that we showed last week in our class, but it fit this so well because it just proves to each of us how that we can use our heart and how we can, through that, of how we can share Jesus. Many of y'all know this gentleman. His name was Botham Jean. He actually went to Harding university. And remember the story back in 2018 when on the night of September 6, he was actually killed in his apartment where he lived in Dallas by this off duty police officer. Her name was Amber Gogger, and she entered Botham Jean's apartment that night thinking that it was her own, okay? But she did, at first, did not get charged with murder, but later on through the process, she actually, you know, got charged and was, you know, sentenced to ten years in prison. And that's where she is today. But during the sentencing, okay, Botham Jean's mother actually got on the stand and provided you, you know, obviously some emotional testimony that and shared. And even the prosecution actually shared some of Geiger's text messages that had this racist and offensive language in it. And it was very interesting. But later on in that testimony, Botham's younger brother, Brandt got up and testified.
Many of y'all have seen this video, but during that video, obviously he forgave her. This was a gentleman who. She killed his brother, and he forgave her. And he shared his heart with her, and he shared Jesus with her.
And I want to close with that tonight to show us how that we can demonstrate wherever we are, even to the people that hurt us the most.
[00:34:11] Speaker C: If you truly are sorry, I know I could speak for myself.
I forgive you, and I know if you go to God and ask him, he will forgive you.
And I don't think anyone could say it again. I'm speaking for myself, not even bad for my family.
But I love you just like anyone else.
And I'm not gonna say I hope you run and die just like my brother did, but I see, hey, I personally want the best for you, and I wasn't gonna say this in front of my family or anyone, but I don't even want you to go to jail.
I want the best for you because I know that's what. That's exactly what both of them want you to do.
And the best would be give your life to Christ.
I'm not gonna say anything else.
I think giving your life to Christ would be the best thing that. Bother again. I love you as a person.
I don't wish anything bad about you.
I don't know if this is possible, but can I give her a piece, please?
[00:36:09] Speaker B: Yes.
That's a guy that killed his brother.
How can we be a good samaritan to the people that even hurt us?
All we got to do is speak Jesus.
Amen.
And for us to understand that, let's pray together as we close tonight.
Father, you're good to us in so many ways, and we love you so much. We thank you for this parable that you've given us to the good Samaritan. And it's. There's a hard parts of it, Father, for us to understand and know what you. The purpose that you've put us here on this earth. Four. And that's to be able to share the love of your son, Jesus Christ, of how he was the good samaritan, how he came down, Father, when we were beaten, when we were sinners. And he came, Father, and died on that cross so that we could be healed. And he paid that price for us to give us eternal life someday.
Help that to motivate us, Father. Help us to do that and to share that with everybody that we come in contact with. Not just here at this place, which is awesome, but the every day that we live, and so many here do that. And we love you, and we thank you for that. Help us to grow in that. Help us to do that more and more and become your children even closer to you. And to help people to understand and know that we love them. And it's our heart that matters the most, and that's what you want from each and every one of us. We love you so much. And we thank you for loving us. And thank you for giving us your word. It's in Jesus name that we pray. Amen.
