The Good Samaritan

David Delk | Jul 28, 2019

Study Guide

Jesus doesn’t ask us to just be nice to our neighbors but to go on the hook for them—to sacrifice, to love others who are nothing like us, to enter into others’ brokenness, and to inconvenience ourselves for the sake of the gospel. Instead of staying in our insulated, comfortable bubble of people, Jesus calls us to have no limit on our love.
Application

Luke 10:25-37

  1. A few weeks ago, we identified what our own righteousness resume would say, or in what things we find a false sense of security and significance. How has this same sense of righteousness come up since you were able to identify it? What patterns have you noticed? How are you moving away from your resume and into God’s grace?

  2. Jesus tells the story of two characters who are deeply religious in order to expose the powerlessness of the knowledgeable man’s “righteousness resume”. What would the story be like that Jesus would tell you?

  3. Jesus calls us to a love that is inconvenient, personal, sacrificial, purposeful, and responsible. What does it look like for you to love in this way? Who are you on the hook for? (e.g. Senior Honor, JumpStart/Prison Ministry, Foster & Adopt, Mosaic, Care & Recovery)

  4. For many of us the structures of our culture insulate us from people with long-term, difficult problems. Part of the reason it’s hard for us to love like Jesus is that we are surrounded by people just like us. What are you going to do to move towards people who are different than you?

Key Points

  • We equip and motivate our members to get involved in someone else's life, meet their needs, and help them grow in their relationship with Christ.

  • Jesus often uses parables to remind us that his standard for us is unattainable in our own strength, and only by his grace and through dependence on him can we love as he does.

  • Our righteousness resume can never empower radical obedience.

  • We have had a dramatic increase in economic segregation as we have insulated ourselves with comfortable neighborhoods and comfortable lives. How did we get here? What do we do about it? Watch the video on our Parables series page as David Delk dives deeper into this topic specifically.

  • If we live and love others by self-reliance, we might be nice, appropriate, respected, and maybe even successful but we will never be spiritually powerful.

  • Jesus calls us to a love that is inconvenient, personal, sacrificial, purposeful, and responsible.

  • If Jesus rebuked religious people who walked by on the other side of the road from the needy man, then what would he say to people who built entirely different roads so they would never have to see them in the first place?

  • If we do short-term nice things for relatively well-off people and ignore the people who are hurting in our culture, can we really say that we love like Jesus?

  • If we don't love with great love, maybe it's because we don't realize how much we've been forgiven.

  • "Many of those most in need of our care are facing chronic issues and demands, troubles that won’t go away, or wounds which take a long time to heal. Insufficient kindness in those circumstances is mere salt to the wound, and ultimately brings grief to the recipient.

    Costly, covenantal kindness makes the return visit, it engages in follow-up—it withstands rebuffs, it can listen to frustration, it knocks the door when the blinds are drawn, it carries the broken until they are whole, it nurses the dying until they are gone, it feeds the hungry until they can provide for themselves, it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, it never fails."

    —Andrew Roycroft

Other Scripture References

Philippians 1:6

Scripture: Luke 10:25-37, Luke 7:47

Topics: Compassion, God's Standard, Love, Power, Righteousness, Self Reliance