The Priest Passed By: Redefine Your Neighbour and Stay Thankful

Sermon outline

Use wisdom to redefine who your neighbour, family and friends really are, bring God your best, and stay thankful for the mercy of Jesus, the true Good Samaritan, who is coming back to pay you the rest.

1. By wisdom a house is built: use your head, not only your heart

   The church has lost the vital use of wisdom by handing everything over to the heart and neglecting the reasoning faculties of the mind. Scripture warns of a wicked, twisted heart, and God accepted or rejected people by their hearts, but He also wants you to have a good head, which is why He gives the helmet of salvation to guard the mind. Get wisdom and understanding, be wise as serpents and gentle as doves, stop making excuses such as being hurt, and redeem the time, because every day should count.

   Illustration: No operation is pleasant: you are put to sleep, something is cut away, and you wake up in pain. Strong talk is the same, unpleasant and painful but very necessary, because it trims your sails and sets your course.

   “You've got to have a good heart, but you've got to have a wise head.”

   • Proverbs 24:3
   • Ephesians 6:17
   • Proverbs 4:5-7
   • Matthew 10:16
   • Ephesians 5:16

2. Authority is very important to God

   God's order is God, Christ, the man, the woman and the children, and breaking the chain of authority pains God, because Lucifer, the original sinner, broke rank and led others into rebellion. He warns wives who will not stay under their husbands' authority that this is a Jezebel spirit, and tells men who have lost their headship to take it back, remembering that Eli died because he could not bring his house in order. He adds that he answers to God, who employed him, and that believing God's prophets brings prosperity.

   Illustration: Married 37 years, he still sits his wife down and says, 'Listen to what the Word says. It's not what I say.' When his own ship drifts, he brings it back on course by the Word of God. He recommends Watchman Nee's book on authority.

   “Authority is very important to God.”

   • 1 Samuel 4:18
   • 2 Chronicles 20:20

3. Bring your best, not your worst

   It is a day for priestly offerings, and just as the priest examined every offering to make sure it was not blind, lame or the worst of the flock, God only accepts the best. We think we deserve God's best but want to give Him our worst, so we must get our thinking right. If you do not build God's house, He will not build yours, and an offering to a man of God is not for him but for your own promotion.

   Illustration: People ask whether they can bring old clothes to church; he recalls a man of God who hated receiving missionary clothes because donors never even washed them before sending them. His own practice was to put a large bundle of notes into the hands of every man of God he heard preach, and he received their words over his life.

   “Don't bring crumbs to the house of God. You bring your best to the house of the Lord.”

   • Proverbs 23:7

4. Who is my neighbour? Help may not come from where you expect

   An expert in the law tested Jesus and, when answered, tried to justify himself, as people still do today; loving God means all your heart, soul, strength and mind, not ten percent. The wounded man on the 'bloody way' to Jericho hoped for help from a priest and a Levite, but the most likely helpers passed by and the despised Samaritan stopped, so he had to redefine his neighbour, friends and family. Thieves still strip, hurt and leave people, even in church, and man's promises are cheap, so do not lean on the arm of flesh. It was the woman's costly doing, not talk, that caught Jesus' attention, and spouses must not speak each other out of God's blessing by calling a gift to God a waste.

   Illustration: When he was buying the church building, a man walked through it with him and promised to give him the money within 12 months. He went home and celebrated with his wife, and three weeks later the man left the church.

   “You may not get the help from the people you think that you'll get the help from.”

   • Luke 10:25-35
   • Matthew 7:16
   • Jeremiah 17:5
   • John 12:3-5
   • 2 Chronicles 16:9

5. No one must own you: define your family and leave swiftly

   He tells the church he is not for sale, because whoever buys you owns you, and he would rather keep his audience with God than with people. Some are stuck with family who still see them as the naughty child they once were and have no respect for the person God has made them. The Samaritan moved the man from the beast to a bed, and God is trying to do the same for you, but you cannot keep bleeding in the presence of people who do not receive you. Jesus said your family are those who do the will of God.

   Illustration: Relatives who can only remember the child who was so naughty he 'was burning the whole village' and stole the family chicken.

   “God is trying to take you out of the beast. To lay you on a bed.”

   • Psalm 23:1-2
   • Matthew 10:14
   • Matthew 12:50

6. 'When I return, I will repay you': you haven't got the best yet

   The Samaritan paid two denarii, two days' wages, and promised to repay the innkeeper for anything more, and nothing in Scripture is recorded by mistake. What you have experienced of God is only a taste, and Jesus promised lands and houses in this life. The rest often comes from the unlikely source, as a raven fed the prophet. But when you make a covenant with an unthankful person your blessings stop, so discern the ground you sow into: give downwards to the poor, but sow upwards into the anointing where you want to go.

   Illustration: He has given away about 12 cars, one of them brand new, and challenges those who have not yet learned to give even ten percent.

   “Because, brothers and sisters, you haven't got the best yet.”

   • Mark 10:30
   • 1 Kings 17:4-6
   • 2 Corinthians 5:17
   • Matthew 13:3-8

7. Stay thankful for the mercy that found you

   On Communion Sunday he presents Jesus as the Good Samaritan: when the priest and the Levite passed us by as we lay bleeding and dying, He knelt down, poured in oil and wine, carried us and brought us to the inn, the church. Because God showed us mercy, we must show mercy and stop criticising. Make God the centrepiece of your life, do not forget Him once you have money, houses and cars, and do not bring lame offerings or pocket change to His house. We will see miracles again when our hearts open up, instead of turning church into entertainment and bargaining with God.

   Illustration: He was a Hindu steeped in idolatry, whose aunt told him to stop asking questions, and he grew up without shoes or toys, running the neighbourhood with a bicycle rim and a stick. At a crusade in Zimbabwe with over 50,000 people, he saw a mother bring her offering in faith for her baby, who had been born with a missing part of the body, and find the child made whole.

   “If God showed us mercy, let us again show mercy.”

   • Romans 5:5
   • Hebrews 12:2