Good morning from another hot day in London.
Last Saturday 4th July, we were at Sean and Hannah’s wedding at Westminster Chapel and what an amazing surreal day it was. The chapel is very near to Westminster Abbey used for Royal weddings. The wedding had a strong Christian message of building their marriage on Jesus, that was a great memory of the day and especially to see those from Papatoetoe and PCC Youth who had come halfway around the World. For me personally, it was like life going full circle, joining the dots.
The reception was at Westminster school right next to Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament in fact. The dinner and speeches were held in the school hall and all around the walls were the names of very famous past students going back hundreds of years like Charles Wesley and Christopher Wren. But amongst all the famous names on the wall, what caught my attention were 2 murals of Ancient Greece and I looked at them and saw how sophisticated that civilization was with its colosseums and temples, baths and impressive buildings. At the British Museum not too far away you can see amazing artefacts from all the ancient civilisations of Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome and what is striking is that they are all gone, not quite to dust but far from what they were. I reflected on Jesus’s words of the 2 houses, one built on sand, the other on rock and on the scripture which says; unless the Lord builds the house, the builders work is in vain, and I wondered the fate of today’s society with its brilliant ideas and inventions but all done without any reference to God and the Eternal. Man is searching for the eternal but it remains elusive.
But the Bible says that it is God who has put eternity in our hearts, we are made for something much greater.
Ecclesiastes 3:11
He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.
Elon Musk and others are seeking to become transhumanist, so that mankind will be part flesh and blood, part machine and ultimately live forever. The goal is to get rid of aging, disease, and natural human limits. Supporters believe people can evolve into a "posthuman" species with near-godlike abilities. This will prove to be a great deception and will crumble to dust just like all the other civilisations. That path is completely hostile to God, it is simply man trying to save himself again through science instead of religion.
With eternity in mind, let’s turn to today’s passage from Luke 10:25-42.
And behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tested Him, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What is your reading of it? ” So he answered and said, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,’ and ‘your neighbor as yourself.’ ” And He said to him, “You have answered rightly; do this and you will live.” But he, wanting to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
This lawyer had a sense of something more. He knew the law and he was trying to live it. He was what people call a good person. But it wasn’t satisfying him, there was something missing that he hadn’t found yet, he knew he didn’t possess eternal life. You can see that in man made religions such as Islam and Freemasonry. The people do good works, they pray, they follow their code carefully yet they cannot have assurance of eternal life because it is based on what they do and you can never do enough.
What Jesus said to the lawyer exposed something else, a dark truth that we don’t want to admit. How we see ourselves may not be the truth about who we really are. What the Lord thinks about us is what ultimately matters. Even though the lawyer did good things, what was truly in his heart? What was he like when no one was watching? Did he truly love God and have mercy and compassion for his neighbours or was his religion really just about what he would get out of it?
Luke 10:30-35
Then Jesus answered and said: “A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, who stripped him of his clothing, wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a certain priest came down that road. And when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. Likewise a Levite, when he arrived at the place, came and looked, and passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was. And when he saw him, he had compassion. So he went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; and he set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. On the next day, when he departed, he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said to him, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I come again, I will repay you.’
Is there anyone here today who would have done what the Samaritan did for his enemy? Walking around the streets of the big cities like London or even Auckland, you might not ever come upon someone who has been beaten up and robbed but you will see plenty of homeless. It is very confronting, and it is easy to do what the priest and the Levite did and walk on by. Now and then I might do something to help but it’s not much, certainly not in comparison to the Samaritan who at great expense and inconvenience genuinely and in an extraordinary way helped the man. Last year, a man in Sydney helped my nephew in a very similar way and I’m very thankful for his act of extraordinary kindness but such acts are extremely rare in my experience. This story convicts me when I hold my life up to the Samaritan’s standard and that is what Jesus is really saying reading between the lines. Is there anyone who loves their neighbour like that, let alone an enemy, let alone God who isn’t even mentioned in this story about human compassion.
Jesus asked the lawyer one of those questions to which there’s only one reply;
So which of these three do you think was neighbor to him who fell among the thieves?” And he said, “He who showed mercy on him.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”
God’s law is written on our hearts. Even if we strictly follow the law, it’s what’s in the heart that counts. That is the point of the Sermon on the Mount. External appearances don’t matter to God. Jesus will say to many in that day he never knew them. He will say it to people who were doing the works of God but in reality this was not done from a heart of mercy and compassion for others. It had nothing to do with relationship, it was to gain something for themselves.
The lawyer was right to say the whole of the law is to love God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind and to love our neighbour as ourself, to treat others as we would want to be treated but he wasn’t able to live up to it.
The story of the Good Samaritan ends left the lawyer with something to think about but not only him, each one of us. The next part of the passage speaks a bit more about this and really is directed at believers if we still think we’re off the hook.
Luke 10:38-42
Now it happened as they went that He entered a certain village; and a certain woman named Martha welcomed Him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who also sat at Jesus’ feet and heard His word. But Martha was distracted with much serving, and she approached Him and said, “Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore tell her to help me.” And Jesus answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.”
Mary and Martha are important characters in the New Testament and John gives us a bit more information in the story of the resurrection of Lazarus.
John 11:1-2 says
Now a certain man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha. It was that Mary who anointed the Lord with fragrant oil and wiped His feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.
Mary and Martha were from Bethany which is not far from Jerusalem. Mary is not likely to be Mary Magdalene because Mary Magdalene, the one who had seven evil spirits cast out of her by Jesus was from Magdala on Galilee.
That’s just by the way. The importance of this passage is about getting our priorities right, making sure we maintain relationship with Jesus and with others above else.
It is so easy as Christians to get caught up in doing things for the Lord and forget the most important thing which is to find the time to listen to Jesus. It is because we often fail to recognise the most important thing in any moment. We make our plans, they are good plans and we work hard towards them but if anything else comes up, it may feel like a distraction and we can easily carry on without considering whether to reprioritise. That is what the priest and the Levite did. They had their priorities for the day and an injured Samaritan was not one of them so they walked on by. I can relate to this, maybe you can too. But when Jesus turned up at Mary and Martha’s house, Mary recognised that the housework was not the most important thing. She was able to change priorities because she was able to recognise that the guest in the house was the new focus for the day.
That doesn’t mean dropping everything the moment something else turns up. But it does mean being able to judge the most important thing and being prepared to sacrifice your own plans for the day.
What was more important in the story of the Good Samaritan; the religious duties for the day or a badly injured man.
What was more important in the story of Mary and Martha; The housework or the esteemed guest who they loved who had arrived.
Psalm 127:1
Unless the Lord builds the house, They labor in vain who build it; Unless the Lord guards the city, The watchman stays awake in vain.
Lord it is so easy to have fixed plans and hard to change but we want you to be our priority and to correctly judge the most important thing and do whatever that thing is. Our plans, even the civilisation we live in today will sink in the sand but we want to build our lives on you, the Rock. Amen.
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