Who Is My Neighbour?

This week, we welcome Paul Tuck from Dismas Fellowship Network as he shares on the topic of loving our neighbour. In Luke 10, Christ is asked "Who is my neighbour?" and he replies with the parable of the Good Samaritan. How can this inform how we treat those around us?

Please find the slide deck for this week's teaching here.

Home Church Questions:

1. What stood out to you from this week's teaching?

2. When you hear the word “neighbour”, what comes to mind?

3. Read Luke 10:25-37 (preferably in multiple translations). What stands out to you from this passage?

4. Who in the story stands out to you most: the wounded man, the religious leaders, or the Samaritan? Why?

5. The expert in the law asks, “Who is my neighbour?” Why does he ask this? How does Jesus reshape that question?

6. When have you experienced someone being a “Good Samaritan” to you?

7. Is there a situation right now where you feel like the priest or Levite—aware of a need but hesitant to engage?

8. What practical barriers keep us from loving our neighbour well (eg, time, fear, assumptions, busyness)?

9. A question asked to Paul after the service… “When is enough enough? Is there a limit to compassionate care when you might feel taken advantage of?"

10. Pray with and for one another, our church community, and our world.

Instagram: @theharbournewmarket
Website: theharbournewmarket.ca
Email: david@theharbournewmarket.ca

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:19

Well, it's my pleasure to welcome a a friend of mine, uh Paul and uh his wife Pam to the harbor this morning. I've known Paul for well, a long time. Um probably too long to count. Certainly 15 years or so. Um Paul is a a pastor and also um has a unique ministry called Gismas Fellowship Network that he'll share a little more about. And I have some brochures I'll uh give you at the end for any who who want one. Um Dismas was a place for me and and for Sherry where we found unconditional acceptance after being reintegrated back into the community. And uh to those who have no space when they're attempting to reintegrate, uh, it's an important uh ministry and certainly uh has the heart of Jesus for sure. So, Paul, welcome to the harbor this morning and uh look forward to whatever God has laid on your heart this morning.

SPEAKER_00 1:30

Thank you. It's my pleasure to be here. I've known Pastor Dave and Sherry for some time, as he said. I worked for 12, about 12 years for Mennonite Central Committee with the COSA Circles of Support and Accountability. I was a part-timer, and that's I think that's when I first met Dave as he was uh working in Kitchener. And uh for the last six years I've been involved directly. Before that, I was a volunteer with uh Dismas Fellowship, which is a Christian-based, faith-based network that uh operates under the sponsorship of an organization called Friends of Dismas, a nonprofit charitable organization. And we provide a safe, supportive environment for people, as Pastor Dave said, who are reintegrating into society after incarceration. So we focus on building friendships through monthly gatherings that include meals, fellowship, and sharing circles. And uh right now we're mainly in Ontario. We're in Brockville, Kingston, Toronto. We have two in Toronto now: Hamilton, Guelph, Cambridge, Kitchener, Niagara, Woodstock, and Sarnia. And we also do have another affiliate group in Australia. But uh, if you're wondering what Dismas stands for, Dismas is the traditional name given to the thief on the cross who said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. Why would we choose that name of Dismas? Isn't his name isn't in the Bible, but tradition calls him that. Um, to us, he symbolizes the fact that when while there is life, there is hope. As long as you've got life. And he had just a little bit of life left in him, but he reached out and found the grace that had eluded him all of his life. And so we took on that name of the penitent thief Dismas. And uh, we have some brochures. I won't say much more about that. Um, you can find our website at this is a long one, www.dismasfellowshipnetwork.com, but you can see that on the brochure. I've been involved in prison ministry for some time. I've done a lot of hands-on work, actually meeting guys coming out of the gate, coming out of prison, giving them backpacks and hygiene things. And and uh recently someone said to me, Your ministry sounds rather dangerous. Why would you do that? Why would you put yourself uh at risk? And I just smiled and and said, Well, I'm just trying to be a good neighbor. That answer confused them, and honestly, it confuses a lot of people today because it brings up the question: well, who is my neighbor? I think it was a confusing question even in Jesus' time, because we read the story in Luke chapter 10 about an expert in the law who approaches Jesus with this question about eternal life. How can I attain or have eternal life? And Jesus wisely asks him to refer to the scriptures, and instantly he coughs up a couple of scriptures that speak about loving God completely. He got that from the Shema in Deuteronomy 6, and loving your neighbor as yourself, quoting Leviticus 19, verse 18. So he knew what the law said. But then suddenly, realizing that his own words were judging him, this lawyer, typical lawyer, looks for a loophole and he asks Jesus the question, Well, who is my neighbor? Jesus does not answer the lawyer with a definition of a neighbor, but answers his question with a story. Because you know, folks, stories break past our defenses and they expose our hearts. So let's read the story that Jesus told that's found in Luke's Gospel chapter 10, verses 25 through 37. Notice what it says. 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? And so he answered and said, Oh, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your might, 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? 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 the other side. Likewise a Levite, when he arrived at that place, came and looked and passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, oh, I could just see the burning in their ears when he used that word, 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, and brought him to an inn and took care of him. On the next day when he departed, he took out two dineri, 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. 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. Let's pray. Father, we invite you into this conversation. We invite you into this look at the story that you told to demonstrate what a real neighbor is. And Father, that superficial religion just doesn't cut it. We got to get to the heart of the matter, and that's people. To love people like you love people. Thank you, Lord, for loving us so much that you gave yourself for us on the cross. And you paid for our beaten-up, bloodied, left-for-dead condition. Lord, I ask that you'll just be with me as I share these words briefly today, Lord, that you will strengthen in our minds the commitment, the values that we have as your people to be good neighbors. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. So this portion of scripture, the parable of the Good Samaritan, it's probably the most well read and preached about passages in the Bible. And yet, strangely enough, I've heard many sermons on the Good Samaritan, and a lot of times the point I think has been totally missed. And what is the point of this story? Well, I think the point of this story is the answer to the question. I mean, the question was really what Jesus was answering with the story, and the question was, who is my neighbor? And the answer to that question is quite simple. Your neighbor is anyone that God puts in your pathway. Your neighbor is somebody that God allows you to interact with. Now, this story, like so many of the stories that Jesus told, I love it, it's a complete turnaround. Because in Jesus' day, the priest and the Levite, they were the spiritual celebrities. They were the ones that people in hearing this story would expect, oh, they're going to be the heroes of this story. And the Samaritan, well, he would be the last person anyone would suspect showing mercy. At least a Jewish person would not suspect that. And I love the way that Jesus flips this story upside down. And he does that a lot because mercy always exposes the truth about our hearts. And so Jesus, I think he loved shocking people, not for shock's sake, but to get to the truth. And what is the truth? The truth is, my friends, that loving others is a greater evidence of godliness than religion or ritual. The men in the story who practiced religion and excelled in ritual, they were not really men of God because they forsook the second greatest commandment to love others as we love ourselves. So then it behooves us to ask the question today: well, what does loving your neighbor entail? What do I need to do if I want to love my neighbor, who is anybody that God puts in my pathway? Well, that's what I want to talk about today. As we look at this commandment of loving our neighbors, I think that involves three things compassion, caring, and commitment. So let's just navigate these three ideas of what it will take for us to be good neighbors to other people that we meet. First of all, loving your neighbor involves compassion. In verse 33, it says, and when he saw him, he had compassion on him. Notice that it says that the Samaritan saw him. I have to admit, I thought I was going to be really clever with the Greek here today, because I thought, well, surely the words for Saw, it says that the priest saw him and the Levites saw him, but I think it's going to be a different word because the Greek does that sometimes, right? So I looked it up, and guess what? It's the same word. The priest saw him, the Levites saw him, and the Samaritan saw him. But here's the difference. The Samaritan didn't look away. He saw him and he kept seeing him. They all saw him, but he looked at him more intently and more intensely, and he didn't look away. And that bred within him compassion. It says that he noticed the man and he had compassion on him. I love the Greek word here for compassion. It's the word splengthidhome. Sorry about that. You might want to wipe that off there. Splengthnithomai. Splenhthymai is a powerful word in the New Testament. It's used only 12 times in the scripture. Every single time this word is used, it refers to Jesus, including here. And I think this is a picture of Jesus when we look at this parable. I'll talk about that later. But it means to be moved in your inward parts. You see, folks in the Middle East back then believed that the heart of your emotions, we talk about our heart being the center of our emotions, but they believed it was the bowels. They believed it was the kidneys. And you know, if you've ever been struck emotionally, have you ever felt uh such an emotional impact from something it felt like you had a kick in the groin or a punch in the gut? That's the idea of this word, splenchthnizomai. It means to be struck by something so um so emotionally that you feel physical pain. Here's an example of that in Matthew chapter 9, verse 36. Talking about Jesus, it says, but when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion. That's that same word, splentidomite. He was moved with compassion for them because they were weak and weary and scattered like sheep having no shepherd. So the man here in the story does he doesn't just see the man, he has compassion and he feels deep empathy for him. You know, the word compassion, even in the English coming from the Latin, is a very powerful word because uh the word calm, C-O-M, in Latin means together, and pati in uh Latin means to suffer. In fact, we get the word patient, patient, patient. The word patient uh is someone who's suffering. And so it literally means to suffer with. So once again, that's empathy. Empathy is the ability to enter into somebody's condition and feel what they feel and be struck by what they're going through. Now, admittedly, it's easy to put up a wall, though, isn't it? It's easy for us to pass people by, not give them a second thought, um, not to want to get involved. You know, if we were to sort of look at a modern day example of this man, perhaps if you could picture somebody who had been beaten up, or maybe just somebody that's drugged out or drunk and they're sleeping on the sidewalk. You know, that's an actual picture. Pam and I were downtown, I think we were going to one of the shows, uh uh, and uh we saw this, and it was just amazing to me how many people were didn't even recognize this guy lying there on the sidewalk. They just walked on by and didn't give it a second thought. He could have been dead, and they wouldn't have known. And it's easy for us to be a little bit like that. Some of the places I go, especially in Hamilton, I see so many homeless people, drug addicts, and and people that are in um in great decay. And it's easy for us to put up our defenses and and come up with some good rationale as to why we should never get involved. Like we somebody might say, well, he brought it on himself. He brought it on himself. It's it's his own fault. He shouldn't have been in the wrong place at the wrong time or whatever. Um, well, that may be true. A lot of people bring it on themselves. Why doesn't he get a job like the rest of us? I hear that a lot. Well, maybe he's not mentally sound enough to have a job. But it's it's a valid question still. It's a valid excuse, I guess. If I help him, he'll he'll just use his money to buy more drugs. Well, then don't give him money, give him a sandwich. Easy solve. Or if I get too close to this person, they might hurt me. That's a legitimate concern. I have a friend in Texas who was trying to help a homeless man uh once, and he approached him to try to give him some food, and the guy belted him right into in the face and broke his nose. So, yeah, um I can understand to a degree some of these responses to people in today's age that are suffering, who are cast away on the roadside of life. I can understand it, might not be fair all the time, but I think what's worse than coming up with excuses for dealing with these, I think it's even worse just to not even see it at all. Just to completely ignore it, to not even notice. But this good Samaritan, he saw and he had compassion. So compassion is vital. If we're gonna be a good neighbor, we have to see and want to do something about it. I saw this saying uh somewhere on social media, and I like this. Never look down on someone unless you're helping them up. Amen. But you gotta look at them first. You gotta look, you gotta see. So this Samaritan had compassion on this man. Along with compassion, loving our neighbors also involves caring, not just compassion, but caring. In verse 34 it says, so he went to him and he bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine, and he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. Because he felt compassion for this beaten-up man who was half dead, because he felt compassion, he cared for this victim of violence. And what did he do? We're told he went to him. So he got off his donkey and he went to him. He put himself in danger's way because this place was a place where often people were mugged and attacked and robbed. He got off his beast, his donkey, and he went to him. And then he bandaged his wounds. That means that think about this. If he bandaged his wounds, he got blood on his hands. Maybe this Samaritan was on his way to some kind of a business meeting or something and he got blood on his clothes. He got involved. He poured oil and wine on his wounds. In other words, he used his own personal supplies, his own cloth to make bandages. He did this, it was a personal investment. He placed him on his own donkey. That means he had to walk. What an inconvenience. And then he found a place for him to stay. An inn, which of course would cost money. And he personally tended to the man. He didn't just drop him off, you know, like in the movies when somebody's really almost dead and they they rush him to the hospital and they just dump them off the door and they take off. He didn't do that. He actually stayed for a little bit at the inn, and it says he tended to him. And then when he left, he said, I will pay whatever needs to be paid for his continual care. So, in other words, it was inconvenient for him to be the good Samaritan. It cost him something. And folks, if we are good Samaritans, it'll cost us something. It'll cost us some valuable time. It'll cost us money. It will cost us our own security, sometimes our own safety. The ironic thing in the story is that the dying man was not a Samaritan. The dying man was a Jew. So he was the enemies, the Samaritans and the Jews, they didn't like each other. He was the enemy, and yet he's the one who helped. I loved how Jesus liked to flip things upside down. So the question begs to be asked then: why didn't the two religious leaders who were Jewish, why didn't they help the dying man? And he was one of them. He was a brother. Why didn't they help him? Well, I guess they were busy. They had places to go and things to do in the name of God. They were afraid, probably. And who could blame them? This was a black bad place to be. And maybe they just thought, okay, the the those uh criminals could be hiding behind the rocks. I could be next. I gotta get out of here. They were afraid, but most of all, their priorities were wrong. Because what they thought was most important really wasn't. The priest, if he went and helped this guy, and the guy turned out to be dead, he couldn't even go into the temple. Because if you touched a dead person, you had to isolate yourself. So he probably had that running through his mind. The Levite probably had some classes to teach, and he was always already behind time. He was running late. But the things they thought were important, their own agendas, were not the the Important thing. And the bottom line is they just decided not to care. That was a decision that they made. One thing that stops a lot of people today from getting involved with those who are marginalized is, and Pastor David has heard this, the fear of liability. You know, we don't know what's going to happen, especially when you work in a prison ministry. Um, there's all kinds of unpredictable things that could happen. I actually encountered the fear of liability in one of the ministries that I worked for some time ago, where I was going out to Maplehurst, which is uh a correctional facility in Milton, and I was meeting prisoners coming right out of the gate. And I was giving them a backpack with hygiene stuff, and you know, there'd be a little Bible in there, of course. And I gave them a Tim card, uh,$5, so they wouldn't try to sell it. But if you were getting out and you didn't have a place to stay, you could go to a Timmy's and buy an extra large coffee and just drink it really slow. But uh this organization decided that they weren't comfortable with that, they wanted to just uh do stuff on the inside where there's a little bit more safety. And they offered me another job in another department, and I said, no, and I told them, I said, I can't do this kind of work and be afraid to get my hands dirty. Folks, you're gonna get your hands dirty if you're a good Samaritan. I guarantee it. You're gonna be inconvenienced. You're you're going to uh figuratively speaking, hopefully not literally, get blood on your hands. And that's caring. So this good Samaritan had compassion. That's vital, caring, and then let's look at the third ingredient: commitment. Verse 35, it says, On the next day when he departed, he took out two denarii. A denarius was the equivalent of one day's wage. An average man would work all day long for one denarius. Two denarii was two days' wages. So he took out the equivalent of two days' wages, 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. Honestly, you would think that the fact that he just bandaged the guy up and got him to a safer place, that that would be enough. But the Samaritan, that wasn't enough for him. It wasn't enough just to bandage the guy up and maybe take him down the road a couple uh kilometers so he could be safe. He took him to an inn and he made this guy his ongoing responsibility. And I'm sure as Jesus told the story, I think the religious lawyer was probably thinking to himself, who in the world would go to that much trouble for someone? Who would do that? The irony is he was talking to the one who would do that. Because Jesus went to a lot of trouble for us, did he not? He went to the cross for us. You see, this isn't just a story about how we should love. I think it's a story about how much Jesus loves us. And that's why I think that word splankthidemi is used there, uh, because it is talking about Jesus in this story. Jesus was, yes, he was calling himself a Samaritan. But notice the similarities. We were, spiritually speaking, we were the ones who were beaten down by sin. We were the ones who were left for dead. And Jesus, the one that we least deserved, saw us, had compassion on us, and crossed the road for us. And he carried us. And he paid for the price. He paid the price for our healing. And praise God, he didn't just pay the price for our healing, he still checks in on us. Amen. He is committed to us. Jesus treated humanity as his neighbor. He is the perfect example of the good neighbor. I would love to be able to see the expression. I wish we could see the expression in that lawyer's face when his loophole got closed and he didn't have any excuses. Jesus says, if you want to be a good neighbor, you've got to have compassion, you've got to care, and you've got to be committed. In conclusion, you know, when we read the story of the Good Samaritan, I think we do need to ask the question, well, what does God want from me? How can I be a good neighbor to others? And we could talk about a lot of different scriptures, but I want to just quickly refer to Micah chapter 6, verse 8. I love this verse where it says, and what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. To do justly, that means just do the right thing. That's what it means. Just do the right thing, to love mercy, always side with mercy, choose mercy over judgment and walk humbly with your God. You know, when you walk with somebody, when I walk with somebody who is in need, we shouldn't be proud. Oh, look what I'm doing. I can't stand some of these social media videos where people are followed around and they're they show themselves giving to homeless people and making themselves look so good. Be humble. That could be you if the circumstances were different. Love your neighbor. One final note. I can't end this message without us uh mentioning the fact that that second great commandment says we are to love our neighbors as what? As what? Ourselves. So if we love our neighbors as ourselves, that means we have to put ourselves in their shoes, in their position. So what if, just imagine you were coming out of jail, you were coming out of prison, wouldn't you long for somebody to believe in you? Wouldn't you hope that somebody would give you a second chance? If you were coming out of jail, wouldn't you pray that someone, anyone, would treat you like a neighbor instead of a problem? If we will do these things, if we'll do justly, love mercy and walk humbly, we will see lives transformed. I've seen so many lives transformed. Uh, it's why I'm so passionate about what I do. And I know Pastor Dave here, I want to say something. Uh, I hope he doesn't mind me saying this, but uh there's a guy that I know uh in Kitchener that Dave worked with, and he was in our Dismas meeting last Friday, and he asked me, Hey, uh, have you seen uh Dave Blow? And I said, I'm gonna actually see him, I'm going to his church on Sunday. And he said this: he said, Tell Dave Blow hello for me. Hello. If it weren't for him, I think I'd still be in jail or back in jail. And Pastor Dave here has really helped a lot of people just by being a good Samaritan. My friends, when you see someone who is abandoned and beaten up on the roadside of life, don't look away. Don't walk away. Dare, dare to walk towards them. Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for speaking to our hearts, Lord. Lord, I know this is a very well-known passage of scripture, and we've heard so many sermons, but Lord, the heart of it is who is my neighbor? Whoever you put across my path. And what kind of neighbor should I be? The kind of neighbor Jesus was, who didn't worry about being inconvenienced because he loved and he felt and he acted. Praise God he did that. Thank you, Lord. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.

SPEAKER_01 31:06

I thank Paul for the good word, and just a reminder that we do have an opportunity to help folks at the food pantry on Wednesdays. Really easy way to take one step in the direction of what uh Paul's been uh suggesting here this morning. Uh and if you'd like to sign up the spreadsheet, the link is available in the weekly mailer.