Wholehearted Discipleship: Love God, Love Neighbor

And we talked about how God's grace, his grace is available to rich and poor, insider and outsider, strong and weak. Jesus's grace is available to everyone. High five your neighbor and say God's grace is available for everyone. Now, but here's one of the sobering realities because if god's grace is available for everyone, here's what this passage reveals. It it reveals that at the same time, all of us all of us are capable of rejecting Jesus too. And all of us are just as much as we're able to receive God's grace. [00:42:31] (48 seconds)  #GraceForEveryone

There are areas of our lives that we haven't fully surrendered to God. We haven't fully said, God, I can't. You can. And the question for you and for me and for all of us today is, today, when you surrender, will you say, God, I wanna stop rejecting you in these areas of my life, and I wanna follow you wholeheartedly. And I wanna give you my career. I wanna give you my ambitions. I wanna give you my relationships. I wanna give you my private life. I wanna give you my hands, my my heart, my head, my eyes. I wanna give you everything. I can. He can. I think I'll let him. [01:07:28] (44 seconds)  #GiveItToGod

I mean, isn't this beautiful? Again, when Jesus he's he's talking to this expert in the law. Now there's other passages that echo Jesus teaching us. It's generally called the great commandment. In other words, what sums up life with God? What sums up the Christian faith? If there's anything that sums it up now most people today, secular society, what sums up the Christian faith? It's hypocrisy, judgmentalism, being right all the time, and perpetrated by no. No. No. Listen. I just want you to know. From the words of Jesus, what sums up the Christian faith? It's loving God. It's love. It's loving God and loving your neighbor as yourself. That's what sums up the Christian faith. [00:54:18] (42 seconds)  #LoveGodLoveNeighbor

Now do you see the cycle that happened here? The Samaritans reject Jesus and then his disciples are, what? You reject me? Let's call down fire from heaven on you. Now a couple weeks ago, I preached this message about how, again, the gospel of Luke is this amazing portrayal about how Jesus' heart, he has a disproportionate heart for the marginalized, for those on the edges, for the poor, for the outsider. Constantly, we see how Jesus' love and his grace is available to everyone. [00:42:00] (31 seconds)  #HeartForTheMarginalized

It doesn't matter if you're a Samaritan or if you're a Jewish person, if you're an insider or an outsider, rich or poor, weak and powerful, outsider and insider. Just as God's grace is available to everyone, the same is true that every single one of us can also reject Jesus and the way of Jesus. I mean, his own disciples are like, Jesus, can we cast down fire from heaven? And Jesus, like, do you like, what happened to love and forgive? Like, have you guys not been around? [00:43:19] (36 seconds)  #GraceAndRejection

Have you have you not been listening to what I've tried to embody about forgiveness and kindness and love? And they're like, yeah. Yeah. But these guys rejected you. And it just shows you the patterns of this world, these cycles of violence can are continually perpetrated. Whether you're a Christian or you're not, every human being has the capacity to reject Jesus and the way of Jesus. [00:43:55] (28 seconds)  #BreakTheCycle

Now here's what's happening. Right? So Jesus is telling this story. He's like, a priest then a Levite. Now here's what's happening. The listener's probably like, I see what Jesus is doing here. He's saying, see, these religious professionals, they might know the law, but they're gonna miss it. They're missing out on how to love someone. So the next person naturally in the story, go from priest to Levi, now we're gonna go to an Israelite. Just a common person who goes to the synagogue. Nope. But a Samaritan. [00:58:47] (33 seconds)  #ActionsOverTitles

And as he does, as he gives his teaching about the good Samaritan now notice this about the good Samaritan though. The good Samaritan, even in this story, it's not like the good Samaritan's like, let me give my life savings over to this person. Why don't you move into my home and live here as long as you want? There's still limits and boundaries to what the good Samaritan will do and not do for this person who's been beaten up and bleeding. In other words, Jesus isn't saying all of us are called to in this incredibly unwise way to lay down everything. He's just talking about being loving to someone in need. [01:00:45] (34 seconds)  #LoveWithBoundaries