Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How Exclusive is Christianity? | Learning to Follow Jesus | Luke 10.25-37

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to 10 minute Bible talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. Right now, we're learning how to follow Jesus by working our way through the Gospel of Luke. Before we hop into the episode, I wanted to let you know that Keith and I are starting a new six-week-long Bible study through the Book of Revelation online via Zoom. So it doesn't matter where you're listening from. You can join us. We're really excited to go through this book.

Starting point is 00:00:33 We think it was designed to be a book that helps Christians grow incredible resilience and courage in the face of challenges. And also to resist the temptation to collude with the empire and a different way of doing things in the world than God's kingdom. So if you want Revelation to make sense to you as an everyday person, click the link at the top of our show notes and sign up for a Bible study. It starts this Friday at noon and it'll be, I think, really good for you. Years ago, I remember being in a small group when someone confessed that earlier that week he'd seen someone on the side of the road with their car hood up. Obviously, the car had broken down. And he said that he didn't stop, not because he was too busy, not for any reason that we might guess or expect.

Starting point is 00:01:19 He said he didn't stop because of the person's nationality. I remember when he said it, it was really surprising. It was shockingly honest. Because in today's world, hardly anyone ever admits to ethnic prejudice. prejudice. Why not? Well, I think it's because as a culture, we've rightly made prejudice into a taboo. But unfortunately, this often means that we choose to deny our prejudice rather than confess it. We try to ignore it. We try to hide it rather than admit it. And what most of us probably mean is for someone to draw it out so that we can actually see it, so that we can confess it,

Starting point is 00:01:54 and so that we can be changed. Now, this is kind of interesting because in the world of Jesus, ethnic prejudice was totally normalized. People wouldn't have blinked an eye at it. For example, most Jews thought of their relationship with God as an ethnic privilege. They thought, look, God had given us the law, and our observance of it has privileged us. It's privileged us and us alone to be the special people that God loves, that God cherishes, and that God will ultimately resurrect in a new creation. Now, the irony here is that the purpose of God's relationship with Israel was precisely to bring outsiders to him. It was precisely to bring the nations to himself, not to exclude them. The purpose of giving Israel the law was to make them into a light for the

Starting point is 00:02:37 nations, not to exclude the nations. So how in the world could Jesus address their ethnic prejudice in a world where prejudice was acceptable? How could he do it among people who actually saw their ethnicity as a religious privilege for themselves to the exclusion of others. Well, he did it by telling a story. Let me read it to you. Luke 10, verse 25. 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's written in the law? Jesus replied. How do you read it? He answered, love the Lord your God, with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your strength, with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. You have answered correctly, Jesus replied. Do this and you will live. But he wanted to justify himself,

Starting point is 00:03:28 so he asked Jesus, and who is my neighbor? 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, they beat him, went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed on the other side. So too, a little. Levite, when he came to the place and saw him pass by on the other side. Now let's pause. Why are they passing by? Well, these were priests and Levites, and they were expected to remain ritually clean. And touching someone who quite possibly appeared to be dead would have made them ritually unclean. So they said, hey, you're too impure. I can't get too close to you.

Starting point is 00:04:09 Verse 33. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came to where the man was. And when he saw him, he took pity on him. Again, let's pause here. Samaritans weren't Jews. In fact, they were the ethnic group most hated by Jews, most excluded by Jews. Verse 34, he went to him, and he bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey and brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day, he took out two dinari and gave them to the innkeeper. Look after him, he said. And when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense that you may have. which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers? The expert in the law replied, the one who had mercy on him. I mean, catch it, the expert in the law can't even bring himself to say the Samaritan. Jesus told him, go and do likewise. Jesus was a master storyteller, and he uses the story of the good Samaritan to show the law expert that he didn't understand the purpose of God's law or God's special relationship with Israel. He didn't understand

Starting point is 00:05:18 those things at all. God made a covenant with Israel and he gave them the law for the sake of their neighbors to God, to draw their neighbors to God, to draw the nations to God. But instead, they'd kept it for themselves and they'd excluded outsiders. So the greatest surprise of the story is that in the end, it will actually end up being the so-called outsider, the Samaritan, who actually ends up fulfilling the purpose of God's law. He fulfilled. He fulfills the story. He fulfills it by walking in it and by himself becoming a light to the watching world. The Samaritan becomes what Israel was supposed to be. Now, I think this story is meant to turn a mirror on us. It's meant for us to ask the question, who would we be tempted to exclude from God's promises? If Jesus were to

Starting point is 00:06:00 tell a provocative parable today, who would be in the place of the Samaritan for you? The point of the parable is to put the one kind of person who you would easily write off. Put that person into the parable. The one kind of person that you might drive past if you saw them on the side of the road. The one kind of person that you might think, well, they're beyond God's grace. Who would it be for you? Would it be someone of a different race? Or maybe of a different nationality? Maybe it would be someone of a different social class, a poor person, a rich person, a homeless person. Or maybe it would be someone with a mental health need. Or maybe we can even be more provocative than that. Maybe it's someone that we find morally offensive or whose ideas we disagree with. What if Jesus makes a white

Starting point is 00:06:44 supremacist the Good Samaritan, or a radical socialist, the Good Samaritan, or an LGBTQ person, the Good Samaritan? If thinking through this is starting to make you feel uncomfortable, then you are exactly in the right place because Jesus is trying to make us uncomfortable. He is trying to tear down our prejudices. The good news of the kingdom is literally for everyone. The good news of the kingdom will challenge literally everyone. Our call is to love all people, to share this news with all people, and not to set up walls based on whether they look right, think right, or seem good enough for God. Again, if you haven't signed up for our Revelation Bible study, I think you're going to want to check it out. This is going to help take a book that's confused a lot of people and make

Starting point is 00:07:29 it make sense for everyday people. We hope you'll sign up and join. The link is in our show notes. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps others find this podcast more easily. Also ask yourself who you could share this podcast with. Texting an episode to a friend or family member is a great way to help them grow spiritually. If you want to go deeper, check out our show notes for book recommendations.

Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How Exclusive is Christianity? | Learning to Follow Jesus | Luke 10.25-37

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