A New Perspective

0:00:00 – (Steve Gray): Hey, are you feeling guilty? Most religious people do. We’re not doing enough. We’re not serving enough, not being enough. We should be the Good Samaritan. Well, I’m going to teach you how to get there and how to be that on the next More Faith, More Life podcast.

0:00:13 – (Steve Gray): You were made for more than the status quo. I’m Pastor Steve Gray, and this is the More Faith, More Life podcast. This podcast is for Christians with an ambitious heart who want to be more for their family, do more with their career, and see more of God’s promises in their life. I’ve spent many years as a worship artist, minister, non-profit leader, bold truth speaker, and most importantly, father and spouse.

0:00:38 – (Steve Gray): When I was in my early 40s, I was craving more. More from God and more from life. I’d done everything I was supposed to do. My life was good, but it wasn’t good enough. So I spent the following years diving into the word of God and searching for the biblical principles that would bring me closer to God and help my purpose and life flourish. That’s what I want to share with you. In every episode, you’ll get practical tools based on real life experiences that you can put into action to redefine your faith and ultimately your life.

0:01:13 – (Steve Gray): So if you’re ready to do more, subscribe to More Faith, More Life and hear an unfiltered biblical truth every week. It’s time to be and experience more.

0:01:24 – (Steve Gray): Hello, everyone, and welcome to another More Faith, More Life podcast. I’m here with my wife, Kathy, and we are going to tell you some great, great things today that’ll be so, so helpful in your walk in your life and your understanding. And what we’re going to do is, I think, Kathy, you had the idea that why don’t we today start a series on the parables in the book of Luke?

0:01:46 – (Kathy Gray): That’s right. And you know, you are well known for taking the parables, especially in the Book of Luke, and developing them and then presenting the real depth of them to people where people are thinking, oh, yeah, I learned that in Sunday school. And then suddenly you hit them with the real revelation of what that parable is about. And like I said, you’re well known for this, so I thought maybe we could talk about some parables.

0:02:13 – (Steve Gray): Okay, well, let’s help us understand it then. You’re right about parables. And one of the reasons why it works for me is I do two things. First of all, I keep it into context with the original audience. And the problem that people do today is they take a scripture, they lift it out, and they start applying it to our lives immediately when that’s out of context with what was really being said. And so we miss the overall meaning of it. And then they.

0:02:47 – (Steve Gray): And then the next thing that I do is, as you’ve heard me say many times, when you read a parable only it only should have one or two main messages. Everything else is what they used to call, like rabbit trails, right? And it’ll have a line about this or a line about that. And next thing you know that somebody’s preaching that line that’s in. It’s all a setup. It’s all a cultural setup for those that like to study.

0:03:13 – (Steve Gray): You can take that and learn from that. It’s a cultural setup. He sets up parables within the framework of their culture. So they understand it. And we’re going to see one today, which is one of the most well -known parables that you picked out to talk about today. And we’re going to put it in the framework of things that they understood were really happening. A parable teaches us something, but it’s around. Most of them are framed around things that were really happening.

0:03:44 – (Steve Gray): So, like, when there’s. We talk later, we’ll talk about the parable. The unjust judge who doesn’t care about people, he doesn’t care about God. And a widow comes and says, give me justice. Well, the chances are that is something that people see. Widows had to go fight for themselves. And so Jesus takes that, molds it around what he wants it to say in a parable. And so we really need to not get off on too many different things. It’s like, grab the one thing or two things this is about, and that’s what we’ll do today.

0:04:16 – (Steve Gray): So you picked one from Luke, chapter 10.

0:04:20 – (Kathy Gray): And this is where a religious scholar came to Jesus and asked him a question. He said, teacher, what requirement must I fulfill if I want to live forever in heaven? What do you think of that one already?

0:04:35 – (Steve Gray): Yeah. All right, so you and I know where we’re going. If you don’t know, this is framing up the parable of what’s called the Good Samaritan, right? He wasn’t. I don’t think his name was Good, and his last name wasn’t Samaritan. He was a Samaritan, but that’s, you know, a good Samaritan. And in our culture, a Good Samaritan does good deeds. You know, you stop on the highway and help somebody out. Oh, a Good Samaritan stopped.

0:05:00 – (Steve Gray): Okay. So that’s kind of our level of theology. And we need to do better than that. Now, the reason this is important, what I said about reading parables, we’re getting set up for a parable, right? And it’s set up by this man. Asking this question is going to trigger the parable. But the parable is not about what he just asked, right? It is not. Yeah, it’s a good question. Now for you that do like theology and doctrine, we picked this from the.

0:05:30 – (Kathy Gray): The Passion translation.

0:05:32 – (Steve Gray): Yeah, the Passion translation. And it’s been very, very helpful to a lot of people. I like it. I like it. But I also realized that it is framed up in kind of an elementary way, which is good sometimes. And so this first statement is, as much as I like and know who these people are that wrote this, I don’t like that statement because it’s. It’s not culturally correct. Okay, here’s the way we see it. That a man came to Jesus and said, what must I do to have eternal life so when I die, I can go to heaven.

0:06:05 – (Steve Gray): That’s what we think he said. Now we’ve lost totally. We’re out of the parable. We’re out of the situation, and we’re totally out of their culture. Because in their day, the Jewish culture did not think about going to heaven. There’s nothing in there about them thinking, someday we’re going to go up. You know, now we know Jesus told the thief on the cross that today you’ll be with me in paradise. Meaning there is a setup that God has provided. When people leave this earth and they leave their bodies on this earth, did that, they have a place to go and stay and be and be ready for what’s next, which is really what this is so important to get. So it’s really more about.

0:06:51 – (Steve Gray): They were thinking. The idea is, we believe God is going to come down and heaven will come down and the kingdom is coming down. So their thinking was all. When he says, what do I have to do to inherit eternal life? The Jewish person of the first century never would think so that I can leave the earth. Because they were promised the earth. They were promised the promised land. They promised the land.

0:07:17 – (Steve Gray): And so they’re thinking, what must I do to be with you and inherit the earth? When you come down in your kingdom and restore everything life like a Garden of Eden, restoration, but restore Israel too. And that’s what he means. Now, if you don’t get that, then all of a sudden you’ll start doing a sermon on what, going to heaven. If you were to die today, like, oh, gosh, so this is complicated. It’s complicated because we are so dipped into us getting and going up rather than. He read about Jesus and his teachings were coming down.

0:07:59 – (Steve Gray): Even when he says, I go prepare a place for you, that’s not there. Again, that has nothing to do with us going up. It sounds like it because that’s what we’ve been indoctrinated. But that’s. It’s a Jewish teaching. It’s based on the Jewish wedding. Now, if you’re thinking I go to prepare. If I say I go to prepare a place for you because we’re going to get married, well, then you go, I get it. That means we’re going to be together.

0:08:25 – (Steve Gray): We’re going to be together, aren’t we? Forever and ever. Okay, so that’s. It’s a picture of the husband or the. Well, the betrothed would go and say, and he would have to build a add on to his father’s house. He’d build a room or, you know, extra rooms. And then when the father saw that it was suitable enough for the house and the bride and the family, then he. Then he would send him to go get his bride. And the husband or the betrothed man had no idea when he was going to go.

0:08:59 – (Steve Gray): So therefore Jesus said, no man knows the hour, only the father. Well, they don’t go. Like, they didn’t scratch their head and said, whoever heard of such a thing? Oh, it’s a big secret. They saw it every day in their culture. The father would tell the husband to be go get your bride now go and go doesn’t mean go get him and take them here. It means go get him and start living together, united. So that day is coming when Jesus. And then Jesus said that after he taught all that other stuff about the rooms and all that, he said, and so where. I’ll be with you then see where you are. We’re going to be together.

0:09:38 – (Steve Gray): Okay, so the whole thing has nothing to do with. You got a room in heaven. Oh, and this is. I’ll take the time just to say this. I can still get through some of this parable. Do you know one of the reasons why that the songs like A Mansion over the Hilltop and There’s a Room for Me in Heaven. A lot of those songs came out during the Depression when people lost their homes, lost their jobs and lost their homes.

0:10:05 – (Steve Gray): And so they wanted to sing about, but you know what? I’ve got a house in Heaven. So that only reinforced bad theology. But you can understand it because it was soothing to them and gave them hope. But you can still have it, even though I didn’t want to ruin that hope for you. But it’s even better because it’s not about going up. It’s about our bodies will come up out of the grave. But Jesus is coming down.

0:10:30 – (Steve Gray): And that’s why he told them when they were staring up to heaven, when he went up, the angel said, why are you standing there looking up? Come on, he’s coming back down. So it’s just the flip side, and we won’t get it if we don’t go back to history, theology and doctrine that the first century Jews and Christians had their understanding. So when they read their Bible, they knew Jesus was framing it up around real things.

0:10:55 – (Steve Gray): So he frames up that about, I go to prepare a place for you, that’s framed up about a real wedding now. So this is not about dying and going to heaven, even though that’s what this passion says. Yeah, it’s about eternal life. I want to be in the eternal kingdom when it takes over the world, this earth on earth. How do I get to be here? Okay, great theology, I hope. Please get it.

0:11:18 – (Kathy Gray): Okay, get that. All right. So then Jesus continued visiting with the guy and everything. And finally the guy said, you know, I know what I’m supposed to do. Love God and love my neighbor as myself. And then Jesus said, that’s correct, so go on and do what you want to do and live. And though then the Bible says, wanting to justify himself, he questioned Jesus further. What do you mean by my neighbor?

0:11:44 – (Kathy Gray): So then Jesus went on into this parable. Listen, I’ll tell you. There was once a Jewish man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. When bandits robbed him along the way, they beat him severely, stripped him naked and left him half dead. Soon a Jewish priest came walking down the road, and he saw him and walked on the other side of the road and not turning to help him one bit. Then a religious guy, a Levite came, another religious type guy, came walking down the street. He saw the guy, the wounded.

0:12:15 – (Kathy Gray): So he likewise crossed on over to the other side of the street to avoid helping or viewing or anything, the wounded man. Finally, another man, a Samaritan, came upon.

0:12:27 – (Steve Gray): Well, let’s back up and just talk about these religious.

0:12:29 – (Kathy Gray): You want to talk about these religious.

0:12:30 – (Steve Gray): Yeah, we’ve got time to do that, but there’s a little bit of theology that we went through. Again, that doesn’t fit because I had people really confused about this because he says, if you take it, what must I do to inherit eternal life and go to heaven? That’s what people hear, yeah, go to heaven. And Jesus said, what’s the law say? And he says, love God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. And Jesus says, that’s right. Do that and you will live.

0:12:59 – (Steve Gray): Isn’t that what he asked? How do I live eternally in heaven according to this? That’s what we hear. Then they say, well, wait a minute. Jesus gave the wrong answer because he should have said, believe in me. And then you can live and have eternal life. But if it’s not about. If it’s not about that, it makes sense that the Jewish people were told from the very beginning that if you want to inherit the earth, be an inheritor of the kingdom of God. You got to love God first. And then he tacked on love your neighbor as yourself.

0:13:27 – (Steve Gray): So it really makes good sense. It’s theologically thick with truth, and we just got to keep it where it is. All right? So anyway, so now Jesus frames up this around real instances. What’s the guy doing? A man is traveling and it’s dangerous. Everybody knows this. Dangerous. People were robbed on that road all the time, beat up, robbed, stolen from. So you had to be very careful, maybe travel with other people or whatever.

0:13:53 – (Steve Gray): And so when they said the man was traveling there and if somebody came and beat him up and left him half dead, they didn’t go, like what? I don’t understand. I don’t. They go, yeah, I know that’s true. I’ve heard about that. Even though it’s a parable. But I’ve heard that happens. So now it’s real to them, okay? And now they can get a real picture of a man in a ditch, bleeding. Maybe he’ll die, maybe he’ll live.

0:14:17 – (Steve Gray): Sounds like he’s going to live, but he’s in bad, bad shape, half dead. Now comes the part of the. Part of the real teaching. Because it’s not about getting beat up. It’s not about going to heaven, right? It’s not about that road’s dangerous. You shouldn’t have been so stupid and walking on it. We could all do that, okay? But it’s not about that. The first lesson, we don’t want to get too many lessons.

0:14:38 – (Steve Gray): The first one is two religious guys who are Jewish also. Now we’re going to learn in a minute that the man who got beat up, well, we already know he’s Jewish. I mean, obviously this is a Jewish story. But he’s going to get help from a non-Jew, which is part of the story. But what happens is Then here’s a Jewish man in the ditch, half dead, and a Jewish leader, priest, walks on the other side. Now there’s a reason, because if he goes over and gets blood on his hands, then he’s going to have to go get purified and he’s going to have to quit his routine and do all the ritual stuff.

0:15:17 – (Steve Gray): Well, he doesn’t want to do that. And then the Levite does the same thing. He walks on the other side of the road too. Notice it’s not just. He, not just walk on by, he distanced himself. He doesn’t want to get near it. He doesn’t want to get blood on him. He doesn’t want to be a part of any of it. Because then they would have to go through purification and that. And so it would really. And they could, they could help the guy and go through that. But, you know, I don’t want to disrupt my life. You know, I’m busy, I got things to do.

0:15:45 – (Steve Gray): So they just ignore it. Now the, the breakdown of it is they should have what Jesus wanted religious people of that day to do. Who, who did follow the laws. What he wanted to do is there are times when you don’t. You’re not going to break the law. But love overrides the law, a greater law. Love your neighbor as yourself, right? Love God and love your neighbor. That’s the key to this. So the lesson then is for people listening is you’re, if you’re in trouble and your heart’s broken, you’re. You feel like I am about half dead too.

0:16:21 – (Steve Gray): And you still go to church or you’re still religious, you still believe in God, but you’re stuck, no, not going anywhere. I don’t know. All the stuff, you know, it’s all symptoms, right? But here’s what, what the first part of the parable is. Religion is not going to help you. Religion will walk on the other side. Okay? But that is what you would expect. You’d expect the priest to help him. You expect the Levite to help him. They’re Jewish, they’re leaders, they’re, you know, you would expect them to say, I get it, I know God well enough that I don’t want to go through that ritual. It’s, you know, it’s so just, it’s, you know, it just gets me off my schedule, you know, and, but they would go, wait a minute, that’s not important. I need to go help the man. But they couldn’t override their religion and their own, what do you call it? Like just, it’s just Disrupts your life.

0:17:12 – (Steve Gray): It disrupted their life. You know, so that’s the first lesson is a lot of people are going to churches and around religion, but they’re not getting any help. Religion is walking on the other side. And it’s not today’s. Most. Today’s churches. Religions are not set up to help people get better. It’s set up to maintain a ministry. And those people are going to help maintain that, and then they’re just going to help you maintain. We’re going to maintain our church like it is. We’re not going to change anything, and we’re going to help you maintain your life.

0:17:43 – (Steve Gray): Okay, so religion walked on the other side. The man’s still in the ditch. Looks like he’s helpless. He’s probably going to die now. Okay, that’s what it looks like. Then Jesus said, but you need to love your neighbor as yourself. And the guy just, you know, he just shot himself in the foot, you know, leave well enough alone. When Jesus is trying to teach you something, don’t ask questions. So he says, well, who is my neighbor?

0:18:06 – (Steve Gray): Now comes a Samaritan. Now we have to set this up. Samaritans and Jews, well, some of them hate. They hated each other, right? There’s discord, hate. In fact, a normal Jew in traveling would not even walk through Samaria. They would walk around and just have nothing to do with them. Jesus did, though. Jesus walked through Samaria.

0:18:26 – (Kathy Gray): Yes, he did.

0:18:27 – (Steve Gray): Yeah. So all of a sudden, the most unlikely. Help comes. Yes, help comes.

0:18:33 – (Kathy Gray): Yes, help comes.

0:18:34 – (Steve Gray): Here’s your next lesson. But help came from an unexpected place or person. So that means it’s not going to fit the religious way you were brought up and say, well, I didn’t grow up in a church like that. Or I didn’t. My family wasn’t that religious. And we didn’t pray that you want help, you’re not going to get it from that. So you got to be wide open that God sends help from unexpected places and you got to be wide open for it. So here’s a Samaritan that normally he’s the one that would walk on the other side and he wouldn’t care.

0:19:09 – (Steve Gray): That’s what. And Jews would do the same thing with the Samaritan, but obviously the Jews did it to themselves too. Well, he comes and. And fixes the guy up and gets him, bandages him, gets him going, takes him back to the hotel, to a hotel in the inn and pays for it. And then a clue, another clue. And then he says, and if this isn’t enough, here’s where we were a little bit ago. I will come back. Who’s coming back?

0:19:37 – (Steve Gray): So there’s a clue there. I will come back and pay the rest and take care of anything. Any bill left over. All right, Then when it’s over with, there is shock and awe. There’s shock and awe because you would not. The Jewish man would not know what to do with this. A Samaritan, we hate them now. He’s the hero of the story. Our priests and our Levites are kind of the bad guys. It’s topsy turvy backwards. And Jesus did that a lot. He flipped a lot of things the other way. In your thinking, and he still does that in your mind. He flips it.

0:20:13 – (Steve Gray): But anyway, so now he’s stuck with that. And when Jesus asks him, well, which. What’s he asking me? I should let you say that. Now, which one?

0:20:22 – (Kathy Gray): Well, so now tell me, which one of the three men who saw the wounded man proved to be the true neighbor?

0:20:29 – (Steve Gray): Now, I don’t know how the Passion Bible says it, but in the. In the actual teaching of the parable, it caught the man and he goes, well, I guess the third man, he doesn’t even say. He doesn’t say Samaritan. Or does he? In this.

0:20:42 – (Kathy Gray): Well, in this one, this version, it says the one who demonstrated kindness and mercy.

0:20:48 – (Steve Gray): And that’s not correct. It’s. Yes, it’s correct for the, for the level of this. That we’re learning.

0:20:52 – (Kathy Gray): Yeah.

0:20:53 – (Steve Gray): But no, it actually, he had to say, I suppose he would not say that one in the original. He didn’t say, well, it was that guy. He said, well, I guess it was the Samaritan. I guess, you know, okay, that’s how he answered it. Well, then we get. Now we’re down to another lesson. Then Jesus says, go and do likewise. Now, that’s a powerful statement. But it can be. What it did to me, and it does a lot of people, is, well, that’s what Christianity is. Then go and be a good Samaritan. That’s what it means to believe in Jesus and go do good deeds.

0:21:33 – (Steve Gray): Well, that’s so far from the truth that doesn’t fit at all. Yet he did say it. And so what we find is that we do want to do that. We do want to be that Samaritan. We want to notice. We don’t want to walk on the other side of problems and situations, and we want to become the person that we need to be by the spirit of God, obviously, not in our own works or our own Power. Okay. But in reality, with my own life, as you know, I told this story before, that didn’t work for me because I wanted to be a Good Samaritan.

0:22:04 – (Steve Gray): My fourth grade Sunday school teacher had little stick figures. And, you know, they had the priest Levi, the beat up man, and then the Good Samaritan, he was a little bigger guy too. He had a bigger stick, the Good Samaritan. And so she’d say, and same thing. She asked the same question. She’d say, okay, fourth graders, who wants to be the priest? And I don’t want to be the priest. Raise your hand if you want to be the Levite. No, I don’t want to be the Levite. How many of you want to be the good are going to be the Good Samaritan?

0:22:31 – (Steve Gray): Yay. We all raise our hands so we get that inside of us that I’m not a good enough person. If I’m not a good enough Samaritan, see, I’m not good enough. I lack. I want to help people, sort of, but I don’t want to be inconvenienced either, you know? So all this goes off and we’re trying to be good on our level of convenience and our level of what fits us and our level of financially, like, we don’t want to give too much money because we want to stay comfortable and make sure we’re taken care of.

0:23:03 – (Steve Gray): It just. It goes on and on and on, but yet that hangs over. It’s like, but that’s what I should be doing. I know I should be serving more. I know I should do more. I know I probably should become a missionary. To where? I don’t know, Greenland.

0:23:17 – (Kathy Gray): I was going to say Taiwan.

0:23:20 – (Steve Gray): Greenland Green. Just in case.

0:23:23 – (Kathy Gray): Just in case.

0:23:24 – (Steve Gray): Okay, so all that goes off. All right, So I learned something from this. So first of all, the end result is we want to become that Samaritan spirit. With that spirit. That’s. That’s the end of this, right? There’s so many other lessons in this, though, that we learned that Jesus framed it around real life. All right, well, for me, then, I came to a point in my life where, you know, it was just awful.

0:23:50 – (Steve Gray): It was just terrible things. Did I. Could I say it’s not my fault? Probably not totally say, well, not my fault. But then a lot of it wasn’t my fault, you know? You know that. And it just, you know, all of a sudden I felt. I felt like that man in the ditch. And I go, like, this isn’t supposed to happen. And I’m in. I’m in the ministry now at this time of my life. And I’m the Good Samaritan, but I’m not.

0:24:21 – (Steve Gray): I know I should be. So now I even feel worse about myself, because I know I should be, but I’m not. But. And so I had to. I had to go back to fourth grade, and I hear the teacher saying, you know, okay, which one of you is the priest? Nope. Okay, which one of you is the Levite? Nope. And then now, you know, when it hit me, that’s when I heard, which one of you is the Good Samaritan? I thought, not me.

0:24:48 – (Steve Gray): I can’t raise my hand. You know why? Because I’m the one left for dead. I want to be the Good Samaritan, but I’m beat up. I’m beat up by life and situations and circumstances and wrong thinking, bad theology, you know, religion, that doesn’t work. And I don’t know what to do, why it doesn’t work for me, things like that. Beat up to where I’m not dead. I’m not spiritually dead. I still believe in God. I believe in Jesus.

0:25:15 – (Steve Gray): But the practical side of my life is half dead. The outward things, the circumstances, the way I feel, the way my emotions, the emotions, everything rolling along that part is half dead. Technically, I’m saved, as saved can be on the inside. But outside, I’m not saved. I’m not saved. I need to be rescued. And so then I had to realize I’m not the Good Samaritan. I’m going to have to let Jesus be my Good Samaritan and let him come bandage me up, put me back together, spend some time in recovery with Jesus, spend some time as we read the Bible, learn how to think about the Lord prayer, getting back into some kind of a spiritual life and a spiritual routine, as Jesus says, here, I’ll bandage you up, put you up in the hotel, and if you need more, I’ll come back and help you.

0:26:06 – (Steve Gray): Now, that’s the end of the parable. Except when he says, be like the Good Samaritan, that means that’s where we’re going. That’s what he’s going to make us. But we can’t do it in our own strength. And we can’t cause ourselves more anxiety, fear and anxiety, because we know we should be, but we know we’re not. We need some repair. We need to be the man or woman left half dead. And Jesus will come, and that’s what the term revival is to us, isn’t it?

0:26:38 – (Steve Gray): Life coming back to the half dead. And the church is full of half dead people. Millions every week. And God wants to come and really do something in our day. But we got to realize we got to quit having that. I’m better. I’m not that bad. I’m really a good Samaritan on the inside. Well, maybe. But if you wanted advance and we want to have a move of God that sweeps our country and cleans up our hearts, not just our politics or not just crime, cleans up our hearts and minds, then we’re going to have to have a move of God. And we’re going to have to let Jesus be the good Samaritan in our lives. Till next time. Bye.