ECCLESIOLOGY Part 1 - SOME SAY CHURCH, BUT I SAY ECCLESIOLOGY

WE NEED TO TALK MORE ABOUT ECCLESIOLOGY 

Ecclesiology is the study of the Church. The reason we need to talk more about ecclesiology is that many people are involved in a church - or even leading a church - and yet they don’t know what GOD intends for a church to be. In the next few posts I will discuss the purpose of a church, the structure of a church, the importance of the assembling of a church, the mission of the church, the ministries of the church, and the propagation of the church. 

I am a student of the Church. Some of my earliest memories involve being in church. In fact, I have no recollection of never going to church on a Sunday. But, before I was a teenager, I knew that I was increasingly bored during the church services. On one occasion, I came up with an ingenious idea on how to get out of going to church. The idea came to me when I realised that if a car's battery went flat, the car could not start. I then reasoned, that if, on a Saturday, if I went to our family car and opened the car’s glove box - so that the little glovebox light would stay on, then, by Sunday morning, the car’s battery would probably become flat by then! The result would be that I wouldn’t have to go to church that Sunday. The next day, my younger brother and sister and I got into the family car to go off to church as usual. Only I knew that the car would not be able to start. But alas. It did start! And off to church we went. My plan had been foiled. Never again would I attempt such a less than genius plan. In fact, it wouldn’t be too long before going to church became one of my greatest delights.  

THE DAY CHAPPO TURNED UP

Before I was fifteen years of age, my church experience involved going into an old, dark building with a huge timber cathedral ceiling held together by hundreds of massive metal bolts. In the duller moments of the church service I would attempt to count the number of these bolts, but never successfully. Then one day, my world changed. The minister, Rev. Peter Payne, invited Canon John Chapman, from Sydney, to be the guest speaker. He spoke in a way that I had never heard anyone speak. He had my attention. Even though I had been going to church all of my life, I had never heard anyone speak like John Chapman. He obviously also had an impact on my parents too because, from that moment, my parents, and that means “we”, all went to church Sunday morning and evening services! 

When I turned 15 after the visit of Canon John Chapman, I went through the preparation for Confirmation. I met with Rev. Payne one-on-one as he unpacked the implications of the gospel. He asked me read Paul's Epistle to the Romans. I did so using the Living Bible, a recent paraphrase by Kenneth Taylor. By the time I finished reading Romans, my heart was transformed and my eyes were opened. Perhaps it was the seeds sown by John Chapman's recent visit, or the pastoral care and discipleship by the prayerful Peter Payne, or the careful reading of Paul's Epistle to the Romans, but the process of preparing for Confirmation was turning point in my life. In the ensuing years I was to have several more turning points, and with each turning point, I was to grow in my understanding of what a ‘Church’ was. The next turning point for me, and for my parents, was how the church seemed to force Peter Payne to leave our church.

WHO IS THAT PREACHER?

I was  probably too young to understand what had happened to Rev. Peter Payne after I was Confirmed. As far as I can recall, he was apparently “too evangelical”. At the time, I didn’t know what evangelical meant, but whatever it meant, it had apparently upset some of the members of the vestry to the extent that they wanted Rev. Payne to leave.

I cannot recall any message that Peter Payne preached. As I said earlier, I do recall Rev. Payne speaking to me during the Confirmation preparation. I also recall him coming around to our home to see my parents who were facing some challenges. Interestingly, it was a few years later, after I had begun the voracious habit of listening to audio cassettes from Bible teachers from the Christian Cassette Lending Library (New South Wales), that I found another cassette in our lounge room that I couldn't identify. I listened to it and was very impressed with the calibre of preacher. In fact, he was amazing. I wanted to hear more from this incredible preacher. I took the cassette out to have a closer look at it for any identification of who this preacher might be. To my astonishment, it was the Reverend Peter Payne! All those years of Sundays that I sat in the church when he was preaching there, and I couldn’t hear him! But after listening to him on that cassette, I realised what I must have actually been missing out on while I sat there during his sermons. Instead of listening, I had been trying to count wooden truss bolts! As a preacher this discovery has taught me the importance of ‘demanding’ that people listen to what I have prepared for the good of their soul in what I am preaching. This is one of the reasons why I have never read my notes during the sermon.

Murray Harkness

CONFIRMATION TO PENTECOST

The first time I visited a Pentecostal church was a Sunday night down the Bellarine Peninsular. My dad had been introduced to a Christian businessman, Murray Harkness, who was also a lay pastor of a small Pentecostal church. I was only 16-years old. My earliest memories of church was the church that I was confirmed in. Therefore, for most of my 16-years, I had only experienced a liturgical church. But this  little Ocean Grove Pentecostal church had no organ, no prayer book, no priest, no choir, and no order of service! I was well and truly out of my comfort zone. I suspect that Murray must have suggested to my parents that if they wanted to go to a Pentecostal church, there was one in downtown Geelong (instead driving all the way out to Ocean Grove). And this is how we came to become a part of the oddly named, Apostolic Church. The contrast between the church I grew up compared with the church that I fell into for nearly 5 years, contributed to my later fascination with what the bible prescribed for what constituted a church. This eventually led to a quest - a quest to understand as much as I could about Christ's plan for His Church. This is how I became a student of the Church and therefore the study of ecclesiology. If you're interested, I have things to share about what constitutes ‘a church’ in the next few posts. 

And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

MATTHEW 16:17-19

MALACHI Part 4 - What Were The Priests Doing That Upset Malachi So Much?

 Over the past twenty-nine years of pastoring Legana, I have generally preached through biblical books verse-by-verse. These biblical books series have been interspersed with various shorter topical series (which is why it took me eight years to preach all the way through the Book of Jeremiah). As I now commence my last biblical book teaching series, through Malachi, I hope to leave a deposit in your souls about the value and authority of God’s Word and how we need to worshipfully approach it. While we all want to “cut to the chase” and “get to the point” when we approach God’s Word we must do so carefully. This takes time. “Time” is what most people complain they do not have. This is why I am doing so much background work on this often-neglected book so that you can take advantage of my time investment on your behalf. In this series so far, I have introduced the context of this book, discussed who Malachi was, explored where Malachi was, and examined who was Malachi’s immediate audience. I am now considering why Malachi was so profoundly upset and what we can learn from his passionate love for God and His Table.

¶ “And now, O priests, this command is for you. If you will not listen, if you will not take it to heart to give honour to My Name, says the LORD of hosts, then I will send the curse upon you and I will curse your blessings. Indeed, I have already cursed them, because you do not lay it to heart. Behold, I will rebuke your offspring, and spread dung on your faces, the dung of your offerings, and you shall be taken away with it.
Malachi 2:1-3

Malachi was the last of the Old Covenant era prophets. Although we can read the first three verses Malachi chapter two and see that Malachi was really upset – after all, how descriptive is the expression: if you will not listen I will spread dung all over your faces! To answer the question, why was Malachi so upset? we have to realise that he was upset because God was upset.

Consider this. Malachi was the last of the Old Testament prophets. His message would be the last message that God would deliver to His people Israel through a prophet before He began to initiate the New Covenant four-hundred or so years later! God had something important, urgent, and profound to say to His people. The people, and especially the priests, did not realise this. What they were doing, and were neglecting to do, was putting in jeopardy the entire plan of redemption – not just for Israel, but for the entire human race!  

The Lord intended for Israel to be the people who would make His Name known and revered among the nations. But Israel had not only neglected this, they had actively undermined this divine mission! The prophet Jeremiah had warned them repeatedly that the curses within the conditions of the covenant they had agreed to with God would be enforced unless they humbly repented and were reconciled with God (Jer. 26:13). But Israel did not repent. The warnings of covenant violation were enacted and God came to judge the covenant-breakers by sending the Babylonians to invade, conquer, exile the inhabitants of Judah, then destroy its capital city Jerusalem along with its sacred yet defiled Temple (Jer. 25:9). But Jeremiah also prophesied hope for these exiles that their captivity in Babylon would only last seventy-years, then the Lord would restore the survivors back into His land (Jer. 24:6-7). After the seventy years of exile was completed, the prophet Daniel read the prophecies of Jeremiah and prayed accordingly:

¶ In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, by descent a Mede, who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans—in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, perceived in the books the number of years that, according to the word of the LORD to Jeremiah the prophet, must pass before the end of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years. ¶ Then I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking Him by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes. I prayed to the LORD my God and made confession
Daniel 9:1-4

Malachi arrived on the scene close to a century after the first few returning exiles and their descendants had entered the ruined city of Jerusalem. The lessons that should have been learned about why they had been exiled and lost their homeland in the first place were soon forgotten. The priests who had been expected to live as role-models for the Jewish settlers were living as hypocrites. They mocked the Temple, they mocked the required sacrifices, they mocked the observances, they mocked the ceremonies, and worst of all – they mocked God!

But you profane it when you say that the Lord’s table [the sacrificial altar] is polluted, and its fruit, that is, its food may be despised.
Malachi 1:12

No wonder Malachi speaks of God smearing the faces of the priests with faeces – because this was essentially how they were treating God! But these priests responded to Malachi with, and I paraphrase, “Oh Malachi! Stop being such a bore! Take a chill-pill. You’re wearing us out!” The way the English Standard Version translators render it is:

But you say, ‘What a weariness this is,’ and you snort at it, says the LORD of hosts.
Malachi 1:13a

Malachi does not respond to these apostate priests (‘apostate’ means ‘a person who was dedicated to God but has now turned his or her back on God). But God does through Malachi:

You bring what has been taken by violence or is lame or sick, and this you bring as your offering! Shall I accept that from your hand? says the LORD.
Malachi 1:13b

When the nation of Israel was being formed, God had used Moses to rescue them from slavery in Egypt. After fleeing through the Red Sea they were led into the Sinai wilderness where Moses was asked by God to come up the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments. It was while he was away for nearly six weeks that his older brother Aaron was coerced by the people to offer them a different god to the One Moses claimed he was hearing from. The result was that Aaron built a golden calf as an idol for them to have as their god. When Moses returned down the mountain with the Ten Commandments, he was devastated to find this apostasy led by his own brother! Of all of the twelve tribes, it was the Tribe of Levi which had not joined in with this apostasy. This resulted in God declaring that the tribe of the Levites would be the tribe from which God’s priests would come. After another incident sometime later, the clan of the Aaronites were selected in particular to be the priests with the rest of the Levites appointed to assist them in serving in the tabernacle, then later, in the temple.

God expected the Levitical priests to model obedience, adoration, and respect for God by listening to God’s Word and teaching it.

¶ “And now, O priests, this command is for you. If you will not listen, if you will not take it to heart to give honour to my name, says the LORD of hosts, then I will send the curse upon you and I will curse your blessings. Indeed, I have already cursed them, because you do not lay it to heart.
Malachi 2:1-2

Instead of the priests of Malachi’s day fulfilling their covenanted responsibilities, they had become corrupt – extorting financially from worshipers, and telling people what they wanted hear rather than the truth that they needed to hear! As it turned out, around the time of Malachi, the Persian Empire had ceased to financially support the Temple and its priests in Jerusalem. Rather than trusting and obeying God, the priests neglected their faithful serving of God and became more concerned about their own survival. This led to them distorting God’s Word, defiling God’s altar, and denouncing God’s Name (His character and authority). We can read what the heartbroken Malachi declared to these corrupt and careless priests. I suspect I know what the apostle Paul would have said to these priests as well if he had been alive at the same time as Malachi:

If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain. But godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content.
First Timothy 6:3-8

One of the things that Pastor Phil Hills said to Kim and I as young pastors echoed what Malachi was rebuking these priests for, and what the apostle Paul was warning ministers of the gospel against: “If you keep money out of your heart, God will keep money in your pocket!” Kim and I took these words from Pastor Phil very seriously and have tried our best to live by them.

What do we learn from this section of the Book of Malachi? Firstly, God still calls His servants to gladly, delightfully, make Him known to the world. Secondly, God still calls His servants to model heartfelt love of God to the world. Thirdly, God still calls His servants to be shepherds of His people who love with God’s love. And, fourthly, God still calls His servants to sacrificially and cheerfully serve Him as their act of worship. This is worshiping with God’s people in and as the church should never be a wearisome drudge for the servant of God. Church should never be neglected by the servants of the Most High Lord of Hosts!

May you never grow weary of loving God’s people or neglecting to fellowship in worship with them each Sunday. And may we each do this together as a witness to the world that God’s Name is indeed very great!

Your Pastor,

Andrew

Let me know what you think below in the comment section and feel free to share this someone who might benefit from this Pastor’s Desk.

THE LORDSHIP OF JESUS CHRIST, Chapter 5 - He is Lord of Heaven and Earth

 Throughout the times that backdrop most of the Old Testament, the nations that surrounded Israel conceived of a world in which there were gods that ruled over a nation or territory. Several of these territorial deities are named in the Old Testament – Ba’al, Dagon, Molech, Rimmon, Nebo, Bel, Marduk, and Azazel, for example. But the God of the Bible, Yahweh (“Yar-way”) refused to be thought of as a mere territorial god! Yet, despite His constant revelation to His covenant people, the Hebrews, even they could not conceive of their God as being any greater than the conception of gods by the surrounding nations. Ultimately this wrong theology would lead to Israel’s demise time and time again. Then, what the Middle-Eastern Lutheran theologian, Dr. Munther Isaac, calls “the Jesus Event” happened! And once-and-for-all from that time on, no-one could ever be excused for conceiving of the God of the Bible as anything less than the GOD of all Heaven and all Earth!

Know therefore today, and lay it to your heart,
that the LORD is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath;
there is no other.
Deuteronomy 4:39

In my previous chapter, I discussed how Jesus the Christ was the ultimate fulfilment of all of the hopes of, and promises to, Israel (2Cor. 1:20). Without a doubt, Israel greatest Old Testament longing was for the fulfilment of the LORD’s promise to them to fully possess their Promised Land –

Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants, to whom You swore by Your own self,
and said to them, ‘I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven,
and all this land that I have promised I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever.’”
Exodus 32:13

This promise given to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, was then transmitted to the descendants via the covenant that Moses administered at Sinai (Ex. 19:20; 24:8). A covenant is an agreement with agreed terms. Israel agreed to the terms of the Yahweh’s covenant with them. His promise to bring them out of bondage in Egypt as slaves and into the Promised Land “flowing with milk and honey” (Deut. 6:3) as free settlers was a part their covenant with GOD.

But you shall keep My statutes and My rules and do none of these abominations,
either the native or the stranger who sojourns among you
(for the people of the land, who were before you, did all of these abominations, so that the land became unclean),
lest the land vomit you out when you make it unclean, as it vomited out the nation that was before you.
Leviticus 18:26-28

But Israel broke their covenant with Yahweh and failed to keep the terms of the covenant that they had vowed to keep (Josh. 24:16-21). Time and time again GOD sent prophets to them to warn them that they risked incurring the penalty of breaking their covenant with GOD (2Chron. 24:19; Jer. 25:4). But Israel had been deceived into thinking that their GOD was merely like the territorial gods of the surrounding nations – gods who were relatively impotent. First, the ten northern tribes of Israel paid the penalty for breaking their covenant with Yahweh. Just as the terms of their covenant had conditioned, they were invaded by a northern nation, dispossessed from their land, and then permanently exiled (they became known as the tribes of Israel). About a hundred years later, the remain tribes in the south, collectively known as Judah had also broken their covenant with GOD and the prophet Jeremiah was raised up to plead with them to return to the LORD in repentance or risk the same penalty as their “sister” in the north had experienced:

And I thought, ‘After she has done all this she will return to Me,’ but she did not return, and her treacherous sister Judah saw it. She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce. Yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but she too went and played the whore….Yet for all this her treacherous sister Judah did not return to Me with her whole heart, but in pretense, declares the LORD.”
Jeremiah 3:7-8, 10 

Jeremiah’s prophetic reminders to the people of Judah fell largely on deaf ears. Judah likewise abandoned Yahweh and also broke their covenant with GOD, and, as Jeremiah had warned (Jer. 6:22) they too were invaded, and they too were exiled, and they too were never again to lay possession to the land that had once been promised to them in their covenant with the LORD. Among the exiles were Daniel, Mordecai, Esther, Ezra, and Nehemiah. When Cyrus (also known as Darius) decreed that all exiled Jews (for so the Babylonians nicknamed the people of Judah) could now return to their ancestral home, only some did. And by the time of Christ, the territory of Israel was under Roman occupation, as it had been since the time of Pompey which began decades earlier. The Jews had by this time somewhat rebuilt their temple and had been aided by the assistance of the Romans’ appointed ‘king’ of Judah, Herod the Great. Their temple precinct was granted by the Romans to be under their rule. Thus, by the time of Christ, the temple and its three outer court yards had become emblematic of what GOD’s Promised Land was meant to be: a holy place where God and man could meet; a sacred space where sacrifices could be offered to atone for sins; and, a place of judgment where GOD’s will could be enforced.  

 

THE “JESUS-EVENT”

IF you and I had been party to the appearing of the long-awaited Messiah, Jesus the Christ, (by earthly reckoning, the descendant of King David) I strongly doubt that we could have picked Him out from a small crowd! The prophet Isaiah foretold – 

My Servant [would] grew up in the LORD’s presence like a tender green shoot,
like a root in dry ground. There was nothing beautiful or majestic about His appearance,
nothing to attract us to Him.
Isaiah 53:2 NLT (originally written 8th century B.C.)

Using A.I., researchers recently used the images of the Shroud of Turin to determine what Jesus might have looked like.

But when Jesus, the Promised Messiah, appeared, He said some shocking things to many Jewish ears – especially the Jewish religious leaders. He declared that it was He who was the place where God and man could meet (Jn. 14:6). He declared that He was greater than the Temple (Matt. 12:6). He declared that He would be the atoning sacrifice for sins (Matt. 26:28; Mark 10:45). And He declared all judgment on behalf of GOD had been given to Him (Jn. 5:22). Dr. Munther Isaac describes the effects of Christ’s statements in terms that resembled an earthquake that happened and producing “a series of aftershocks”! Christ was saying that it was not the Temple that made be holy – it was Him! It was not the sacrificing of animals that could atone for their sins – it was Him, the Lamb of God! It was not the High Priest who ruled on behalf of Yahweh – it was exclusively Him! Even at the ‘trial’ of Christ before Caiaphas, He made an outstanding to the declaration after the High Priest had put Him under oath to tell the truth:

Now the chief priests and the whole council were seeking false testimony against Jesus that they might put him to death, but they found none, though many false witnesses came forward. At last two came forward and said,
“This man said, ‘I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to rebuild it in three days.’”
And the high priest stood up and said, “Have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you?”
But Jesus remained silent. And the high priest said to him,
“I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.”
Jesus said to him, “You have said so. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.”
Matthew 26:59-64

HE IS LORD OF HEAVEN AND EARTH!

The aftershocks of what Jesus the Christ said and did were felt for decades after His initial mission was accomplished (His display of the Father, His death on the cross, His resurrection, and His ascension) and it was then committed to His disciples to complete when He commissioned them just prior to His ascension. Like a sonic bomb when a visible jet speeds past the observer then seconds later they hear the loud ‘KA-BOOOOOM!’ the words of Christ’s Great Commission – “All authority in heaven in and earth has been given to Me….Go into all the world….Make disciples of nations….” (Matt. 28:18-20; Mark 16:15).

I know that what I am trying to convey to you, my reader, may not be fully appreciated. But I pray that as the Spirit takes the truth of what GOD’s Word has revealed about Christ, you might experience the sound of a sonic boom in your soul as you realise this truth: Jesus Christ is Lord of all Heaven and all earth! May the aftershocks of this revelation cause your soul to be rocked with the revelation that there is nothing in this universe or your heart the He does not know! May more after-shocks of this revelation hit your soul like nuclear explosive waves as you come to realise that He is LORD over event that we will call ‘history’ and over care that you now call ‘a problem’. Little wonder then the apostle Paul was knocked of his spiritual feet with the wave of this revelation when he announced to the Colossians this fridge magnet text:

It doesn’t matter if you a waitress, a doctor, a Prime Minister, a king, a President, or a teenager —there is not one cause of anxiety, care, trouble, concern, or worry, that Jesus the Christ, the Lord of Heaven of Heaven and Earth who is seated, as the creed declares, at the right hand of the Father, that He can’t carry – if you would only give it to Him! 

What a Friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer!
O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.

Your Pastor,

Andrew

Let me know what you think below in the comment section and feel free to share this someone who might benefit from this Pastor’s Desk.

The GOOD SAMARITAN AND THE INN KEEPER

 

Based on an address given to the members of the Tasmanian House of Representatives and the members of the Tasmanian Legislative Council at the official opening of the Third Session of the Fiftieth Tasmanian Parliament, delivered on Tuesday August 16th in St. David’s Cathedral, Hobart.

TWELVE GROWS TO SEVENTY-TWO

¶ After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of Him,
two by two, into every town and place where He Himself was about to go.
Luke 10:1

Jesus’ followers had grown from His original twelve disciples to another sixty followers. As Christ prepared for His impending death which would occur in a matter of weeks, He addressed these seventy-two disciples giving them clear instructions on their first preaching expedition. But among this loyal band there was someone who had snuck in as a spy sent from the leaders of the Temple on a mission to find evidence to justify their bitter determination to murder Jesus! (Jerusalem’s religious leaders had been unsuccessful in their previous attempts to “catch” Jesus say or do something sinful. Note also Matt. 22:15; Mark 3:2; 12:13; Luke 11:53-54; 20:20; John 8:6.) This spy was described by Luke as a lawyer — not the “Yes your Honour” sort of lawyer, but someone who was probably an off-duty priest who would been called upon by enquirers coming to the Temple seeking clarification on how to truly obey GOD. And as the recently commissioned seventy-two disciples had returned from their preaching expeditions in the nearby towns and villages they reported the astounding results of their ministries there (Lk. 10:17). Jesus the Christ responded, “turning to the disciples he said privately, ‘Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.’” This is when the intruding priest-lawyer made his move:

¶ And behold, a lawyer stood up to put Him 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?”
Luke 10:25-26

 

WHAT JESUS SAID TO THE SEVENTY-TWO

The lawyer-priest thought he was being clever setting what he thought was a trap for Jesus. But as he discovered, a person’s true intelligence is measured not just by what they know, but by the kind of questions they ask. His question to Jesus met with an immediate question from the Christ. The lawyer’s question was actually the best question anyone could have asked the Lord. Yet it soon became apparent that he himself did not even understand the question he was asking.

The concept of everlasting life was introduced into Jewish thinking in the writings of the Prophet Daniel

And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake,
some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
Daniel 12:2

This is the question embedded into every human soul. It is asked in different forms (such as, ‘What is the meaning of life?’ ‘Is there a point to my life?’ ‘How can I be truly happy?’ ‘What happens to me after I die?’) and it is clumsily answered in even more forms (such as, ‘Life is all about the now…When you die you just go six-feet under and that’s it…God, if there is a god, just wants you to be good…). The lawyer-priest’s question was far more profound than he realised. As he asked it there were seventy-two people listening in on this exchange between this spy whose question was an attempted means to entrap Christ. Perhaps to his surprise Jesus immediately asked him a question which would soon lead to this priest-lawyer’s heart being exposed for all to see.

And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart
and with all your soul and with all 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.”
Luke 10:27-28

If Jesus had given the first half of His response to the religious-lawyer that may have been the end of their conversation. But the conjunction to the first half of His response — do this, and you will live — put the legalist on the back foot. Jesus had just exposed the very obstacle that was deep in his spiritually dead soul that was hindering him from obtaining the eternal life that he had originally enquired about. The lawyer had a head-knowledge of what God required of those who sought to live righteously when he cited Deuteronomy 6:4 and Leviticus 19:18 in his answer to Jesus — but he did not have this as a heart-knowledge resulting in genuine compassion for others. Sensing the gaze of the seventy-two onlookers he now sought to justify himself.

¶ But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus,
“And who is my neighbour?”
Luke 10:29

WHO IS MY NEIGHBOUR?

The Jewish leaders had a very strict understanding of who God accepted and who God rejected. Obviously, they taught, God had accepted the Jews as His favourite – particularly Jewish men. Jewish women were sort of accepted, but only as second-class members of God’s people. This obviously also meant that unless a gentile (a non-Jew) converted to Judaism they could not be accepted by God. Therefore, God rejected all gentiles — and He especially rejected Roman gentiles — but He reserved His ultimate rejection for Samaritans!

When the lawyer-priest asked a question back at Christ, “Who is my neighbour?” he may have naively thought that he had asked Jesus a “Gotchya!” question. But Christ exposed the lawyer’s bigotry with a great deal of tenderness by telling one of His greatest parables not just to the priest-lawyer but also the seventy-two disciples who were listening intently to this dramatic exchange.

 

WHEN HE SAW HIM, HE HAD COMPASSION

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.
Luke 10:30 ESV

In the original Greek of Luke 10:30 it describes the man (anthropos) with a little Greek work tis which means a certain man. He is not identified as a Jew, or a Greek, or a Gentile. We are not told what his skin colour was. We are not told his age. We are not told his social-class. We are not told what his Muttersprache (mother-tongue) was. He is identified by Christ with the identity that is common to all people because the Greek word anthropos is also the Greek word for human being – male or female. People do not need another identifying label to be immeasurably valuable other than the one we all share — human being.

This person was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho even though he was heading north. In one sense he was going down because Jerusalem is 2,500 feet above sea-level and Jericho, in the Jordan Valley, is 800 feet below sea-level. But in another sense, Jews regarded Jerusalem as the holy City that was the dwelling place of God on earth. Yet just outside the precincts of this supposedly holy territory was a stretch of road leading to Jericho that had become notoriously dangerous due to the thieves and robbers who preyed on its travellers. The lawyer was expecting Jesus to answer his question of “who” was his neighbour but instead Christ answers the question that the lawyer should have asked.

 

WHEN THEY SAW HIM, THEY DID NOT HAVE COMPASSION

Christ’s story begins a with a priest travelling down that same road. This was probably more pointed that us modern readers might immediately appreciate. The lawyer, who was probably a priest, could have injected at this point in the story by pointing out that since the man was “half dead” this gave justification for the priest to avoid such a man since a priest was not permitted to have contact with a dead person while on temple duty. But the priest in this story is not travelling to Jerusalem. He was clearly off-duty because he was travelling down the road to Jericho. And even the next character in this story had no excuse, because he too was travelling down this road.

WHEN THE SAMARITAN SAW HIM, HE HAD COMPASSION ON THE JEWISH MAN

The scandalous twist in Christ’s story comes when He describes a Samaritan — a Samaritan — as the righteous hero! This Samaritan was a businessman. He had places to be and people to see. Yet, despite his pressing commitments he stopped to tend to this severely beaten and wounded man – who was probably a Jew! He disinfected the man’s wounds by pouring wine over them. He cleaned away the blood from the many gashes the man had suffered and then applied oil to man’s wounds to stop the bleeding and reduce the swelling to enable the healing process to begin to mend. And while he could have thought that he had now done enough, he then placed the man on his donkey and carried him to an inn (which were themselves often dangerous places and would not have batted an eye-lid to extort a visiting Samaritan) where he remained the night taking care of the beaten man and then took from his purse two denarii to pay the inn-keeper the equivalent of two days wages for him to care for the beaten traveller – and promised to pay whatever else was needed when he returned.

HE ENTRUSTED THE INN-KEEPER TO CARE FOR THE HURTING AND BROKEN MAN

Jesus asked the lawyer-priest which of the three showed compassion for the abused man (Luke 10:36). The story that Jesus told not only answered the lawyer’s question- Who is my neighbour? It answered the greater question embedded in the lawyer’s original answer which he had cited from Leviticus 19:18, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” The question the priest-lawyer should have asked was not the Who is in? and Who is out? question, but, How can I obey Leviticus 19:18 by truly obeying this command to love my neighbour?

And while Jesus highlighted three characters in this story, there is a fourth character who is worth considering especially considering the audience to this exchange was the seventy-two disciples who would go on to become the founding members of the redeemed community—theChurch—that Christ was about to establish.

Each of the characters in this story reveal something about God’s heart for people. The Priest character represented heartless religion that was all about outward show and the approval of people. The Levite, who served within the Temple as assistants to the Priests represented the religiously devout who take care of the day-to-day things pertaining to a worship service and its ceremonies, yet are so caught up in their religious duties that they no longer truly see hurting people who need their care. The Samaritan was a member of what the Jews considered to be justifiably the most despised people on the planet. There are striking similarities between the Samaritan and Jesus. But it is the inn-keeper who should catch our attention. He is the one to whom the Samaritan entrusted the care of the hurting man. It is to him that the Samaritan promises the necessary financial and material provision necessary to care the hurting and broken man. The inn-keeper represents the Church.

It seems that the seventy-two gathered disciples certainly did get the point of Christ had just taught. The Who is my neighbour? question was answered and acted up when the Church embraced Gentile converts into Christianity and in a very literal application of what Jesus taught, they literally set up hospitals to care for the literally wounded people they came across. 

Today, we can recognise that Jesus is the Antitype (Ultimate Expression) of the Good Samaritan. He still finds the hurting, lost, confused, abused, beaten, and broken of this world along life’s highways and brings them to His various “inns” (local churches) for us to care for them. He still ensures all the necessary resources will be made available to His Church for this to happen. I rather like to hope that in this story the Jewish inn-keeper was moved by the compassion of the Samaritan and became his co-compassionate representative in much the same that our church should similarly be representatives of Christ’s great compassion for all people too.

 

CHRIST’S CHALLENGE TO THE LAWYER WAS ALSO HIS CHALLENGE TO THE SEVENTY-TWO AND STILL HIS CHALLENGE TO US!

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.”
Luke 10:36-37

May God give us the grace to be such a local church for the hurting and wounded of this world to find the healing for their aching souls that only Christ can provide!

Your Pastor,

Andrew

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