Tyndale Chapel Podcast

Thank you, so much, to the worship team. My name is Sarah Han. And I teach here in pastoral ministry. And I'm just so delighted to share the Word of the Lord today. And the worship team actually didn't know what it was I was preaching on. But I believe it's the moving of the Holy Spirit that, their songs just so perfectly prepared us for the Word of God, that I believe God desires to speak to us today. As we get started, I'm going to invite you to turn to Luke chapter 10 with me, either in your Bibles, on your Digital Bible, to get turned to Luke chapter 10. I'll be reading from verses 25 to 37.

So that's Luke, the gospel of Luke chapter 10, verses 25 to 37. And this is the parable of the Good Samaritan. "And behold, a lawyer stood up, to put him, to put Jesus to the test, saying, Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? He said to him, what is written in the law? How do you read it? And he answered, You shall love the Lord your God, with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself. And He said to him, you have answered correctly, do this, and you will live. But he, desiring to justify himself said to Jesus, and who is my neighbor? 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, a priest was going down that road, and he saw him, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side, but a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he sat him on his own animal, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And the next day, he took out two denarii, and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, Take care of him, and what ever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back. Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbour to the man who fell among the robbers? He said, The one who showed him mercy. And Jesus said to him, you go, and do likewise." Amen. For this is the word of the Lord.

Invite us to bow our heads. And let's just take a moment to pray together over this word. God, we thank You for this word of yours that is coming alive, that is active and desires to do a work inside of our hearts. Holy Spirit, would you open our hearts, so they are hearts made of soft flesh that we can receive the Word of life that you have for us today? Would you open our ears that we may see you and open our I hear you and our eyes that we may see you? And God would you meet with every brothers sister that is here today, I know that you have called them specifically to this place to receive from your hand. So God, would you pour out your Holy Spirit, and meet with each person. In your word today, we thank you and pray these things in Jesus's name, Amen.

Today is the last day of January. Can you believe it? A first month of 2023 is already over. And I know at the beginning of the year, that's when we like to make fresh resolutions or fresh commitments, on how we want to live our days, to be more pleasing to God. And for myself on a personal level, I decided to go through the one, the Bible in one year again, and this time I'm doing you with friends on the Bible app. And we can see when someone has read the Bible that day and hasn't read the Bible that day. It's a great way of accountability, by the way. And I actually invited my nine year old daughter to join me to read through the whole Bible in a year for the first time in her life. And let me tell you, if you want to be held accountable, and you have a stickler nine year old who is by the schedule, love to do things on time, that is the best way to be held accountable because my, she is just relentless. You know, she'll tell me at the end of the day, Oh Mommy, you didn't leave enough time for a Bible reading. Or in the morning she'll wake me up like "You said, we were gonna wake up 10 minutes early to read the Bible". She is hounding me. And I must say I've never been this on top of my spiritual discipline of reading the word as I have been this year and reading it with my nine year old daughter . As a church community, we have also asked this question at the beginning of the year saying, How can we, as a community, God, live in such a way that is pleasing to you? And in following in obedience to this, we read this verse from Luke 10, together as a church, to ask of God, "God, how can we live this year for you day in and day out". And I've heard this story many times before, which I'm sure many of you have as well. And growing, up each time I've heard it, and I've heard some kind of iteration of this parable, it always ends with this challenge of "Go and do likewise". And as I've read this parable, in the past, I've only seen myself in the shoes of this lawyer. You know, this lawyer is asking God, how can I inherit eternal life. And it says here that the lawyer is trying to test Jesus. And so while I don't have that desire to test Jesus, by any means, I do have to admit that I am the kind of type A "do gooder", like to do things, you know, well, and get that A plus. And I'm that Pastor theologian, and I definitely come to God often asking, God, what can I do? What can I do to inherit eternal life? And in this passage, we see that Jesus asks the lawyer back. Jesus is so good at doing this, he answers a question with a question. He says, What do you think, is the way to eternal life? And so the lawyer answers is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself. And so Jesus says, Okay, go do this, and you will live.

Now, this lawyer, he must have been living a pretty good life, and he must have been feeling pretty good about himself. It's kind of like that moment, when you prepare a really good dinner for your family. You know, it's delicious. And you just ask, like, isn't it, how's the meal? You just want to hear them say, "Oh, it's so good". And so the lawyer asks, well, "Who is my neighbour?" And he was probably expecting that Jesus would answer, saying, you know, love your family, love those in your community, serve God in the temple, and he was just poised and ready to say, check, check, check, check. I've done all those things. And yet the answer that Jesus gives him is very unexpected.

Jesus begins to tell the story. And he says, "One day, there was a man that was walking down on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho." Now it says, "walking down" because literally, the path from Jerusalem to Jericho was a downhill walk, down a valley, it was about 33 kilometers. So imagine walking that through desert cavernous paths that had a lot of mountainous rocky caverns, and places where thieves and robbers can hide. And so this journey from Jerusalem to Jericho, when Jesus mentioned it, it was a very common journey that a lot of priests, Levites, and people would have taken in those days. And so immediately, Jesus is talking about an everyday kind of setting, that people in those times would have recognized. Now, this journey, from Jerusalem to Jericho, was just such a perilous journey, in that in the caverns of the rocks on this rocky pathway down to Jericho, thieves would hide and jump out and attack people so regularly, that this pathway actually became known as the "red or the bloody way, the red or the bloody way". So you can imagine that when Jesus is telling the story, it wasn't a really "out there" kind of once in a year kind of story. But this was a story, and an occurrence, that happened very often, that when someone was walking down the red or bloody way, very often, thieves would come and steal, and even beat, and even leave people for the dead. So you can imagine that the Levites and the priests, listening to this parable, this might have been them, just a month ago. They might have actually walked past somebody who had been beaten on the bloody way. So Jesus shows this picture, a very everyday setting, but each of them would have been familiar with. And he says, firstly, a priest walks by, accidentally, you know, happens upon the man and then goes to the other side, and avoids being close to the man. Next, a Levite comes also a religious person, also sees the person and if we look closely, scripture, it says the Levite actually went and observed, he looked a little bit more carefully. He's probably calculating, what can I do? Can I do anything and decides "Nope, this is not for me", crosses over to the other side, and then also leaves. And now the third character that Jesus introduces to this story must have been a shocker for everyone that is listening at that time. Because Jesus says, "now a Samaritan comes along the way" and immediately the lawyer, the teachers of the law, the Jewish people listening to Jesus would have been you know, their feathers would have been ruffled because Samaritans were half Jewish, half Assyrian people, so Assyrian meaning their past enemies, so half Jewish half enemy people that the Jewish people absolutely loathed. They were the exiles of society. And now Jesus is bringing this enemy, the Samaritan into the story. And guess what the Samaritan is the key figure, in Jesus's parable.

The Samaritan comes and it says that it is the Samaritan that has compassion. He stops, he binds the wounds of the beaten man, he pours on oil and wine, he sets him on his own animal, which basically means he had to get off of his own means of transportation, and put the man on, so he had to walk the rest of the way, who knows how far he was from the Inn, he takes them to the Inn, and this is a next day. So this man overnight took care of this beaten person. And after nursing him all night, the next day, said to the innkeeper, whatever it is that you need to spend, spend it and take care of this person, because I will be back to pay the debt. Now the people listening to Jesus' story, you can imagine that there must be a hushed silence coming over them, as they think. How could it be that a Samaritan is the one that is the good neighbour? And at this point, Jesus like he loves to do, asks a pointed question. He breaks the silence. And he says, "Who do you think among these people prove to be a neighbour to the person who fell to robbers?" And the lawyer? Oh, he's a lawyer. He doesn't want to say "the Samaritan" even saying the word himself, itself is offensive to him. So he says, "The one who showed mercy", and Jesus tells him go and do likewise.

Now when reading the story in the past, I always saw myself in the shoes of the lawyer, and I always asked myself, you know, how can I love those that are unlovable to me? How can I have compassion for those who don't naturally bring compassion to my heart? Now, either that, or I would see myself in the shoes of the Samaritan man, right? How can I overcome my prejudice? Or maybe my fears, or my insecurity? And how can I be overly generous, like this Samaritan person? You know, in Korean we have this phrase, we say someone is being Oba. Basically it's over. We can't say V and Korean very well and so over becomes Oba. Oba means when you overdo, something very unnecessarily, and this Samaritan person, he overdid it, he took care of this person, like, like that person was his own child, or his own parents, I would read this passage from the perspective of the Samaritan person saying, How can I live with this radical generosity. Yet this year, as I was reading the story again, I felt God, through the loving guidance of His Holy Spirit, lead me to see myself not as the lawyer, not as the Good Samaritan. But as I read this story again, I saw myself as that half dead, beaten person lying on the side of the road. Now maybe it was because I was reading this in a particularly tired time of my life, when my whole family caught the flu. We're passing it around, so I was literally half beaten in bed. But it dawned on me, that as I read this passage, Jesus doesn't specify exactly what kind of person the man on the road was. You know, we assume he was Jewish because he was talking to a lawyer. But Jesus doesn't say, He simply says "a man".

And as I read this passage, again, it hit me like a ton of bricks. That person, half dead on the road, was me. So many times, I'm beaten down by the various ways the enemy tries to rob, and steal, and beat the life and joy out of me, just through various instances and circumstances in my life. And when I look back, there were so many moments when I myself was walking down my own red or bloody path, and I was vulnerable to the attacks of the enemy. I was vulnerable to the cruelty of other people. And I was tormented by my own internal thoughts. And in these seasons, when I was half dead on the road, naked and vulnerable, the only person that could truly save me was Jesus. Jesus stopped, saw me lying there, half dead, and Jesus had compassion. He got down on his knees, He cleaned my wounds, and then he poured the oil , the oil of His Holy Spirit, the the, the healing oil that came to mend, and rejuvenate and re-strengthen me in ways that nothing else could. And that as he poured his oil, He also poured out his wine, His blood, to cover my sins to cover the shame that I so wanted to hide that made me feel unworthy or inadequate. And he cleansed me and gave me freedom in his love. Jesus bound my wounds, covered my vulnerable body and cared for me, carried me when I couldn't walk myself. He paid the cost for my healing, took me in, and nursed me, brought me back to life. And then Jesus even looked into my future and said, whatever cost there may be, to pay the price for the sins and burdens and ailments of Sarah's life, I will pay it, charge it to me. In so many seasons of my life, brothers and sisters, Jesus was my good Samaritan. Jesus is my good Samaritan. Brothers and sisters, are you feeling beaten by life and by the enemy today? Are you struggling with the responsibilities and burdens you have? Are you struggling to find joy in the ministries, the studies that God has placed you in? Are you actually physically ill, and in need of the healing oil of our God. Or maybe it's emotionally or mentally, that you're struggling, that anxiety is gripping you, and you need someone to come and say, "I will take this burden for you. I'll take it now. I'll take it tomorrow, I'll take it every day of your future, I will cover the cost". Or maybe it's a cyclical sin that you have been hiding, that you are struggling with, that is making you doubt your ability to even serve God. And you are in need of Jesus's wine, just to pour over you and bring those dead parts of your life back to God, to restore you in your relationship with him.

We have a good Lord, who is saying to us, come ride on my donkey. Come, let me pour out my healing over you, come and have deep rest and recovery that you need, I will pay the cost, I will do the hard work, even in the future of your life, any payment that may come, I have already paid for it. Brothers and sisters, that's the invitation of our Good Lord, who is the perfect labour, neighbour that laid his life down for us. That is the invitation that He has, so that we may leave this place, renewed in joy, renewed in strength, and made well again in the name of Jesus Christ.

Now Jesus, do you notice he leaves the story unfinished? If this was a movie, Jesus kind of left the movie without the really happy ending. And I would love to see, what did this beaten and half dead man do when he woke up, found himself healed in an Inn and having all of his debts paid for? And I imagine that if he walked out of that Inn, you know, having his life being given back to him by a stranger. And let's just say that he walked, and he went back to the bloody road, trying to get to where he was originally going. And imagine he went and he saw another dead, half dead beaten person on the road. Do you think he would walk by like the priest and the Levite did? No, he would look at him and he would see himself, and he would say, "I need to do something" and you know, he just was robbed. So he obviously doesn't have money, but he would at least carry this person to the Inn and say, "Let me introduce you to somebody who paid for my debts. There is this good Samaritan who will take care of you. Come with me".

And brothers and sisters, that is how it is when we come to the Lord. When we are healed in a way that we know we cannot repay that debt. It leads us. It compels us to go and bring others to our great healer as well. It is our joy to do that. And so when the lawyer asks, Who is my neighbour? I would like to ask that question to you today as we close. Who is your neighbour? Who is the half dead person on the road, that you know you cannot heal or save? But that you know, Jesus can pour His oil and wine over and provide unlimited credit for care. You know, so many of us, when we come to Seminary, we have big questions, you know, God, what is my calling? What is the grandiose plan for my life? And yet when we look into Scripture, the very simple command that Jesus so clearly gives to each and every one of us, is this. In John 15, he says, "This is my commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you. That you will love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone would lay their life down for a friend." Now, when we look at this command, Jesus is actually talking about that famous verse of He's the branch, vine, and we are the branches. And we can only love people, when we are abiding in the love of God. And when we're abiding in the love of God ourselves, when we are first cared for by our good Lord, when we first receive the healing oil, and the cleansing wine of our good Samaritan who is Jesus Christ. Then the promises in John 15. It says, "Ask what ever you need, and it will be given to you" That if you ask in the name of the Father, when you are loving other people, that I will give you anything and everything that you need. Brothers, sisters, as followers of Jesus Christ, God is not asking us to come up with big plans for Him. But he's asking us, who is your one neighbour on the road?

Can you imagine if every Christian in Toronto, and Ontario, and Canada just reached one other person with this zeal and love that the Good Samaritan had done, what could happen in our neighbourhoods, what would happen in our city, and what would happen in our country. Every day, you are walking through a red and bloody path. When we think about it with our spiritual minds. Every day you walk into the grocery store, every day you walk into a mall, you walk into a library, everywhere you go, there are people who are dead, that do not know who Jesus Christ is. And when we walk right past them, we are not going and doing likewise, as Jesus has called us to do. And I wanted to share a story as I close, that I realized the reason why I was unable to firstly receive healing by Jesus and then go out and do the same and reflect. There were two things firstly, I'm so busy. You know, I have three kids, I need to prepare sermons for Tyndale chapel. You know, I have lectures on Monday evening, I'm the director of this new center, I'm doing all these things. God, I'm too busy. And I'm pretty sure that the priest had a lot he had to get to as well. That's probably why he walked by. And to be honest, I'm afraid. What can I say to people who are half dead in their sin and have no understanding of Jesus, what can I do? And so I began to ask myself, God, firstly, I want to make room for you in my life. I want to make sure that I am creating space in my everyday, so that you can use me to see the dead people on the road, and I can bring them to you for healing. And this past summer, I felt a real conviction to apply that tangibly. And in the summertime usually, we put our kids into various camps, like soccer camp, Vacation Bible School. Reason being, it's easier for us when they're in camp, and we can focus on work. And it's also good, you know, for them to grow and to try all these different things. But I really felt convicted, my husband and I felt convicted, we said, let's not put them in anything this summer. And let's just be available to our neighbours. So that when they come over, that we will be home to entertain, to host, and to exercise hospitality. Now what transpired, very unexpectedly, was just at the beginning of summer, our neighbour who is a single mom, suddenly contacted me and said, "My plans for childcare fell through. Do you have any idea of last minute camps that I can send my son?" Her son, who is an only child, and I felt that this was my moment of seeing someone on the road. And so I told her, "You know what, we just cancelled all of our plans. Why don't you just send your son over to our house, for those three weeks, to just spend time with us as a family?" And a 30 minute conversation of "Are you sure I don't know if I can do this? Can I pay you?" You know this ensued and then finally I convinced her to send her son. And so this non-Christian neighbour, and her non Christian son, her son came and spent a good 40 hours a week for three weeks at our home, we went bowling, we went swimming, we read the Bible, we prayed, we were able to model to this child, what it looked like to be in a Christ centered home. He became so close to our children, that now he practically lives at our house, our house maybe, you know, three nights a week just having dinner. He's our adopted pseudo Korean person. He's not Korean. But he very, he eats spicy food. He does all those things. But what transpired just a few months later, this this past fall, was a very big tragedy occurred in this family's life. And this child experienced a very big loss of someone very close to him in his life. And what surprised us, was the first people that these neighbours contacted, was us. Because of the time we had spent with their son, because of how close we had become with them. They called us. And these people have never, never walked into a church door before and their exact words were, "We need your minister kind of God advice. What do we do in this situation?"

We got to pray with them. We wept with them. We lead them in what, how Christ would want to cover them in his oil and in his wine. And we experienced a moment of being with God, as he healed and brought the good news into their life, in their moment on that red and bloody road.

Brothers and Sisters, it was such a deep, joy giving experience to do this. And it made me realize that every moment of each day, as God is calling us to come to him and receive the healing that we need. He is now telling us go and do likewise. That as we leave the Inn healed, and given a second chance at life, we havee been called to look out and ask, who is my one neighbour that I can reach? Who is that one half dead beat a person on the road that was just like us? And how can I go and do likewise? Brothers and sisters, let us go and meet our neighbours, one person at a time, and lead them to the only one that is Saviour of all, to our good Samaritan, Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. Let us pray. As we pray at this time, I'm just going to invite us, if you are that half dead, beaten person on the road, and I'm going to venture to guess that in some area of your life you are, today God is calling you to himself. You know, we sang the song today, I have never been on this journey alone, that you have always been with me, and it is freedom that Jesus desires for us. So let us come to our Lord, who desires to pour out his oil, and his wine, and to mend our wounds, and to give us another breath of life. Or maybe God is calling you. Now go, do likewise, go to that one neighbour, that one friend. Open your eyes to the red and bloody roads all around you and bring them to me. Go and do likewise. Just take a moment to just surrender, and pray, and invite God to be at work in our lives at this time. Let's pray together.