Proverbs 3:27-29 (KJV)
Withhold not good from
them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of thine hand to do it.
Say not unto thy
neighbour, Go, and come again, and to morrow I will give; when thou hast it by
thee.
Devise not evil against
thy neighbour, seeing he dwelleth securely by thee.
My current Sunday night
preaching series is an attempt to take us through the book of the Proverbs
looking at the different character types that are found within it.
The character that comes
to us now is the neighbor.
The passage has to do
with generosity and charity.
First – it is to be given “to whom it is due.”
Not everyone who asks
for help ought to be helped.
Second – we are responsible to help only when it is in our
power to do so.
Don’t feel guilty if you
can’t give. Having said that,
Thirdly – we are to give freely when we are able to do so.
Generosity ought to be
the trademark of the Bible believer.
The Bible also teaches
us here that, if we have a good neighbor, we need to treat them well.
Not everyone has good
neighbors!
I think you can see that
there is some pretty serious preaching that can be done from this passage.
But I seemed led to take
you a bit of a different direction tonight. When I read this passage the
thought that came to my mind was that of the lawyer in Luke 10 who asked Jesus,
“And
who is my neighbor?”
Let’s learn about the
New Testament neighbor tonight…
I. HE’S SECOND
ONLY TO GOD
Matthew 22:35-39 (KJV)
Then one of them, which
was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying,
Master, which is the
great commandment in the law?
Jesus said unto him,
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and
with all thy mind.
This is the first and
great commandment.
And the second is like
unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
By this time in Jesus’
ministry the leaders in Jerusalem had about all of Him they were going to put
up with and they were looking for ways to put Him out of commission.
The Pharisees and Sadducees
were spiritual enemies but they were united in their hatred for Jesus.
So when Jesus had put
the Sadducees to silence the Pharisees sent one of their lawyers – an expert in
the law of God, to try to trip Jesus in His Words.
He asked Jesus the
question
…which is the great
commandment in the law?[1]
This is His field of expertise.
He must have thought
that he could surely catch Jesus up on one of the points of the Law.
If you think about it,
there are some 600-700 separate laws in the Old Testament.
The Jews, over the years
had added to them their own laws, supposedly to make the Bible laws easier to
understand and obey.
But even if we reduced
ourselves down to the Ten Commandments, the question, which one of those is the
most important, could be tricky one to answer.
· Thou shalt
have no other gods before me.
· Thou shalt
not make unto thee any graven image
·
Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God
in vain
·
Remember the sabbath day
---
·
Honour thy father and thy mother
· Thou shalt
not kill
· Thou shalt
not commit adultery
· Thou shalt
not steal
·
Thou shalt not bear false witness
· Thou shalt
not covet
I can hear the Pharisees
debating right now:
“The great commandment
is to not bow before other gods, even if you have them.”
“No, the great
commandment is not to take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.”
Someone else would argue
“The great commandment
is to honor your father and mother because this one has the promise of long
life.”
With that sort of
thinking, it would not have mattered what Jesus would say, the lawyer could
argue that he was wrong; there was one that was greater.
Jesus answered his
question by elevating the subject.
He changed the whole
platform of the debate by introducing a different law.
Deuteronomy 6:5 (KJV)
And thou shalt love the
LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy
might.
And then He did this –
He spoke as God and added, “And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as
thyself.”[2]
Jesus summed all of the
law – the Ten Commandments and everything else into these two
· Love the Lord thy God
· Love thy neighbor as thyself
They kept making living
for God more difficult.
Jesus made it simple and
easy to understand.
· Love God with every fiber of your being
· Love your neighbor as yourself
Your neighbor?
He is the one you love
second only to God.
Secondly we can say of
our neighbor
II. HE’S NOT
THE POINT OF THE COMMANDMENT
Luke 10:29-37 (KJV)
But he, willing to
justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour?
And Jesus answering
said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among
thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed,
leaving him half dead.
And by chance there came
down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other
side.
And likewise a Levite,
when he was at the place, came and looked on him, 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 on
him,
And went to him, and
bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and
brought him to an inn, and took care of him.
And on the morrow when
he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto
him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I
will repay thee.
Which now of these
three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?
And he said, He that
shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.
In the same
conversation, with the very same lawyer, Luke tells us that the lawyer, got a
bit under conviction and, in an attempt to make himself feel better, he asks, “And
who is my neighbor?”
Jesus answered with the
account of the good Samaritan.
A certain man was
attacked by thieves.
We don’t know who he is:[3]
· We don’t know if he is a Jew
· We don’t know if he is a Gentile
· We don’t know if he is rich
· We don’t know if he is poor
· We don’t know if he is local
· We don’t know if he was a traveler
He is just this certain
man.
From there Jesus’
narrative takes us to the people who saw the wounded man.
First, there was a priest.
He passed by on the
other side, attempting to avoid contact with him.
Second, there was a Levite.
He looked at the wounded
man, but also took the other side of the road.
· The one acted as if he had not seen
· The other saw and looked with disgust upon him
Thirdly, there was the Samaritan.
He wasn’t even a Jew. He
was for sure a stranger in the area. He reached out to be a help to the man in
need.
Now here is the most
important part of the account in my opinion.
Jesus asked, “Which one
was the neighbor to the wounded man?”
Did you pick up the
difference?
Jesus taught that it doesn’t matter who your neighbor is. What matters is how neighborly you are.
Your task is not to qualify
your neighbor but to qualify yourself. The reason is because:
· You will never be able to change the heart or the actions of
those around me.
· You will always only be able to change yourself.
Who is my neighbor?
· He is the second most
important object of my love
· He is whomever I am
neighborly to
And finally
III. HE’S
SITTING NEXT TO YOU RIGHT NOW
As I was preparing this
message it occurred to me that there is another New Testament title that
identifies him most clearly.
It’s the word, brother.
Every reference to the
word neighbor in the book four gospels is related to the telling of the account
I just gave.
The word neighbor is
found eight times after the gospels.
Four of those are quotes of Leviticus 19:18
One is a reference to Moses’ defending the Jews from the
Egyptian guard
Two are references to fellow members of your church.
Romans 15:2 (KJV)
Let every one of us
please his neighbour for his good to edification.
Ephesians 4:25 (KJV)
Wherefore putting away
lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of
another.
The final one connects
the terms neighbor and brother
Hebrews 8:11 (KJV)
And they shall not teach
every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for
all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.
1 John has five very
short chapters.
In them there are five
verses telling us to love the brethren.
This is so true that 1
John 3:14 (KJV) says
We know that we have
passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not
his brother abideth in death.
It is actually a test of
true salvation.
If you love the brethren
– you know you are really saved.
On the other hand 1 John
3:15 (KJV) says
Whosoever hateth his
brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding
in him.
You know you are saved if you love your brothers and sisters in
Christ (and in your church) and
You know you are not saved if you do not.
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