Loving and Listening

Luke 10:25-42 - Riley Boggs

Recently our Kentucky governor Andy Beshear was on The View. I know, not a great start to a sermon. But he was on there and they were asking him different questions, and about halfway through the interview he said this. And I quote, “People want to know what drives us. For me, that’s my faith. Most of the decisions I make are based on that Golden Rule that says we love our neighbor as ourself, and that parable of the Good Samaritan that says everyone is our neighbor. And so, when I’ve taken actions like vetoing the nastiest piece of anti-LGBTQ legislation that ever came through my state, I described it in those terms. I said my faith teaches me that all children are children of God, and I didn’t want people picking on those kids.”

Is Beshear right? Is that what the story of the good Samaritan is all about? Is it about keeping people from picking on those kids? Well, for a bit of context, the legislation that Beshear is referencing, and apparently how he loved his neighbor, is senate bill 150 from 2023. That bill did a few different things, including banned gender-affirming care for minors, banned transgender students from using the bathroom of their preference at school, and required schools to notify parents of many different things related to this. This is what our governor calls nasty anti-LGBTQ legislation, and he vetoed it for the love of his neighbor, and so that people wouldn’t “pick on those kids”. Thankfully the Kentucky General Assembly voted to overrule his veto.

This morning, we are going to be looking at the very text that our governor used to justify his actions. And as we work through it, I think it will become abundantly clear why what Beshear is doing is utterly despicable. He could not theologize himself out of a wet paper bag. He doesn’t understand the Bible, He doesn’t know how to apply the Bible, and most importantly, He doesn’t know the Lord. He’s a very lost man trying to borrow from the Christian faith to justify very evil actions. But he’s not the only one who does this. In fact the passage we are in this morning is used all the time in our culture to justify different things. And because this Biblical command to love your neighbor as yourself has been coopted by so many different groups and people, I think it is of the upmost importance that we come to the right understanding of what it means. We need to be sure footed on what it means to love our neighbor. We need to be ready to explain what it does and doesn’t look like so that we can be faithful witnesses to Christ and His Word, not peddlers of a sweet sentiment about love.

So, with all of that being said, let’s get into the text. It begins in verse 25 where we see that a lawyer stands up before Jesus and asks Him a question. Now we know that this question isn’t in good faith, because Luke adds that the lawyer asks this question in order to put Jesus to the test. The question that he asks Jesus is, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” In typical Jesus fashion, He answers the question with a question and asks, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” Jesus knows that this man, being a lawyer, would know the answer to this. Being a lawyer in this time meant that he would have a good knowledge of the Old Testament law. And so he responds to Jesus and says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus responds to him and says, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”

Now before going on, I think there is an important point being made here. In fact, I think it’s the very point that our governor has missed entirely in his application of this text, and that is.

1.) Loving God is the starting point for obedience

This is a good reminder not just for our governor, but for anyone and everyone who desires to obey any part of the Bible. Obedience begins with loving God. There are all sorts of good principals throughout the pages of the Bible that are good on their own. Culture appeals to them whenever it’s convenient all the time. Things such as loving your neighbor for example. But what is often missed is that before this, and any other act of obedience, a love for the God who commanded it must come first. That is the first and highest act of obedience, loving God with all our being.

I think that is what we need to glean from this part of our passage. When you read through the Old Testament Law this idea might not jump out from the pages to you. When you’re reading through the law it seems like it is just an endless list of rules and regulations. And yet, when Jesus asks the lawyer what the is written in the law concerning inheriting eternal life, he answer correctly by saying that he has to love God with his heart, soul, strength, and mind. Now of course the lawyer isn’t pulling this idea of thin air, he is quoting 2 different verses, from the Old Testament, which you can probably see in your footnotes. The lawyer has rightly answered the question by getting straight to the heart of the issue. If someone wants to have eternal life, then they must obey God’s law. And if they are to obey God’s law, they must begin by loving God.

In Matthew’s Gospel Jesus is asked a similar question in chapter 22. Again, a lawyer tries to trip Jesus up and asks, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” This time Jesus answer Himself and says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” That last sentence is the one that I want you to pay attention to. Jesus says that all of the Law and Prophets depend on these 2 commandments. In other words, if you do both of these things, you will have done everything else. Every rule and regulation, when boiled down to its simplest form, is a matter of loving God and loving neighbor. The first being the one by which we are enabled to do the second.

See, there is a lot of danger in bypassing loving God and instead just trying to obey Him. Theres obviously the danger of legalism. Instead of obeying God from a place of love and devotion, we obey God with cold and rigid hearts, thinking that we will be made right by our actions. Not only is this a hard and miserable way to live, but it is also very dangerous in that you can deceive yourself into thinking that you know God from your actions, meanwhile your heart has no love for Him, and you don’t know Him at all. And the worse you feel, the more you do, and the further down the hole of deception you go.

Another danger of by bypassing loving God and instead just trying to obey Him is that we are more tempted to manipulate God’s commands to suit us. Let me give you an example of what I mean. Let’s say you’re married, and your spouse asks if you want to go get dinner. So you go and the whole time you just stay on your phone making really short conversation, and try to get home as soon as possible. And then you get home, and your spouse asks, “That isn’t what I wanted at all.” And you respond, “What? Why? You just said that you wanted to go out for dinner, and we did.” What’s wrong in this situation? The issue is that the request for dinner wasn’t really about dinner, it was about love. It was the means by which the spouse wanted to receive love. The same is true when it comes to obeying God. If we just try to obey out of cold and legalist obedience, we have missed the heart of the matter. And in turn, our so-called acts of obedience will be misconstrued and often very poor attempts at obedience. On the other hand, if we begin with a love and devotion to God, then not only will we be more inclined towards obedience in general, but our acts of obedience will be richer and fuller, and will do what they are supposed to do.

Now, that isn’t the only command here given. Yes we are to love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, but we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. After Jesus tells the lawyer that he is right about this, the lawyer, who was trying to trap Jesus, ends up feeling a bit trapped himself. See this lawyer knows that he has not always loved his neighbor as himself, so he wants a way out. He wants a way to justify his lack of love towards certain people. And so, he thinks that in asking Jesus who his neighbor is, in verse 29, he might get excused a bit. Maybe Jesus will only mention a certain people as his neighbor and he’ll be off the hook.

But, Jesus knows better than to take the bait here. Instead of telling him who his neighbor isn’t and isn’t, he tells him a parable. Starting in verse 30 Jesus says that a man was going down to Jerusalem to Jericho, and that he was robbed, stripped, beat, and left for dead on the side of the road. And as he lay there, eventually a priest came down the road that he was on, but when he saw the man laying there, he passed by on the other side. Later a Levite come down the same road, and he did the same as the priest, he passed by on the other side. Then, after a while, a Samaritan came down the road, but he did something different than the other 2. Instead of passing by him, he had compassion on him. He went over, bound up his wounds. He put him on his own animal and took him to an inn, and continued to care for him. The next day, he took some money and gave it to the innkeeper so that the man might stay a bit longer, and also told the innkeeper that it would be okay to go beyond the money that he is giving him now, that he would return to pay any extra. After telling this parable, Jesus asked the lawyer which of these men proved to be the neighbor the man? The lawyer responded, “The one who showed him mercy”, to which Jesus replied, “You go, and do likewise.”

Now, I want you to think about this with me. Did Jesus answer the original question of who is our neighbor that we ought to love? Well not exactly. And I think the reason that He doesn’t answer it directly is because He is trying to make a different point. The point that I think He is trying to make is this.

2.) Loving our neighbor is less about obligation and more about opportunity

I think this is what we are supposed to see here, and I think it is what Jesus was trying to teach this lawyer here with this parable. As I mentioned, I think the lawyer wanted a way out on this command when it came to certain people. And, if we are being honest, I think we can ask the question for the same reason. Jesus has called us to obey Him by loving our neighbor as ourselves. And this is not a command that finds physical or socio-economic boundaries. It’s a command that has to do with our heart, the way in which we respond to the opportunities the Lord places before us. The command is less about a binding obligation to love anyone and everyone, everywhere, in the same way. It is much more about obeying when the opportunity to love your neighbor arises, which means you will be loving people anywhere and everywhere you go.

The difficult matter, which we don’t have time for this morning, is the question of what kind of love does each situation warrant? Sometimes it isn’t a compassionate love that binds wounds, but it might be a stern love that calls people from their sin. Sometimes it might be out of a love for your neighbor that you would have to protect them from evildoers. These are the difficult questions that we can spend time discussing and asking God wisdom for. The question of who is our neighbor is one that is best answered not by setting limits on who we are obligated to love, but rather asking that God would give us a heart that is ready and willing to love anyone who we have opportunity to love.

One of the ways that I think Jesus is showing this point is by giving the identity of the 3 people who saw the beaten man, but not giving the identity of the man himself. He tells us that the first person to pass was a priest, a man of high status, who may have been leaving the temple in Jerusalem, and he passes by. The second person was a Levite, a man who came from a group of non-Israelite sojourners, orphans, and widows, and who depended on others for help, and he too passes by. The third person was a Samaritan. This would have been the most unlikely hero Jesus could have picked for the story. Jewish people wouldn’t even share utensils with Samaritans because of their history. For a Jewish person to even say “Samaritan” insulting slur. And yet, that is exactly who Jesus chooses to make the hero in the parable. Why? Well because He is breaking down this whole idea here about what it means to love God and love neighbor, showing that the kingdom of God is crossing lines that people thought impossible. Even to the point where a Samaritan is the one who is obeying God’s commandment to love his neighbor as himself.

And like I mentioned, while we get the identities of the 3 men, we do not get the identity of the man left for dead on the side of the road. Jesus just calls him “man”, making it impossible to write off certain groups that Jesus doesn’t mention. You can imagine that if Jesus would have said that this man was a Levite, then people might have been tempted to love Levites in this way, but still hold an arm out against any Samaritans. But Jesus doesn’t even give the opportunity. The call to love your neighbor is call of the heart.

This is why it is important that we love God first and foremost, and allow it to be the driving force behind our love for our neighbor. Because if you love God, then you will find yourself more able to love those who have been created in His image. And who has been created in His image? Everyone. And not only that, but when we love God first, then we will begin to love our neighbors in meaningful and right ways. Unlike our governor who misunderstands what it means to love because He does not love God, we can come to know and understand what true love is first by loving God, and then begin to love our neighbors in right and good ways.

My encouragement for us this morning is this. Consider who the neighbor is that you have the opportunity to love, and do that. You haven’t been called to love everyone who is hurting in the same way, that would be impossible. Not every problem is your problem. You can’t be the hero. Instead of obsessing over the impossible task of loving a people who you have no way to love, begin loving those who you have opportunity to love right now. And  from there, begin to find inroads of opportunity whereby you can love others as well.

Sometimes I think what happens is we forget that God is sovereign over our current situation, and think that the situation we are in is just a bridge to where He really wants us. And when we think that, instead of looking for opportunities to love and serve, we impatiently wait for something really good for us to come along to do. If we were to place ourselves in this parable, we would be walking along the path wringing our hands asking God to give us an opportunity to serve. Our eyes would be fixed on our own feet, as we drug them along in self-pity because we don’t have any way to serve God. Meanwhile, right on the other side of the road is the man who God has placed before you to care for. A real and meaningful and important way to serve God is only 15 feet away, but we have missed it or dismissed it as not “enough”. Brothers and sisters, let’s be a people who lift our eyes up, look around, and take advantage of the opportunities to love our neighbor. For each of us it will look different, but for all of us it is command.

Now, some of us here might need to hear that more than others. Some of us need to be stirred to do more serving in this way, because we have drifted into a bit of stagnant season in this area. However, some of us here might be stretched entirely too thin already. Some of us have become busy bodies for Jesus and might be missing something that we ourselves need to hear. That is our final point this morning.

3.) Sometimes we need to stop doing and start listening

The final story in our passage begins in verses 38 and we read that as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And as he entered a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house, so Jesus comes in and begins to teach. Martha was so busy with trying to serve Jesus that she wasn’t able to atop and listen to what he was saying. Luke tells us that she was distracted with much serving. Meanwhile, Martha’s sister Mary just sat at Jesus’ feet and listened to him. It seems that this frustrated Martha to the point where she goes up to Jesus and says, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” Jesus responds to her and says, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, 42 but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”

This story reminded me of what often happens with our son Thomas. On occasion, he’s been known to get overtired and fussy. He wants to sleep, but he just doesn’t know how to relax. He will just flail his arms and wiggle and cry, because he doesn’t know how to just stop and rest. So what will happen is Shelby will hold him close and soothe him until he either gives up or realizes that everything is okay and he can rest. Sometimes, I think we are kind of like that. Our hearts and minds are very anxious and worried, and so we just busy ourselves with all kinds of things, even good things. We go and go and go thinking that we are doing what is best for us, best for the Lord. Meanwhile the truth is that we are fighting against the very thing that is best for us, which is simply stopping and listening.

I think that is what Jesus is trying to teach us here in this text. It isn’t as if Martha is doing a bad thing by serving. What she is doing is a good thing, an honorable thing, she is serving the Lord. But see this issue isn’t in her service, it’s that she has chosen service over listening the Lord Himself. And we can see, very clearly, that this has caused a problem with her own heart and relationship with Jesus can’t we? Because who does Martha accuse of not caring about her? She accuses Jesus. Yes she is frustrated with her sister who isn’t helping, but she accuses the Lord of not seeing her and caring for her. But this is no fault of Jesus, of course, He is right there, in her home, sharing Words that would her feel loved and cared for.

Aren’t we so prone to the same thing? Aren’t we often prone to being like Martha, anxious and troubled about many things? I know that I am. And the remedy for that, for a troubled and anxious heart, is what Jesus calls the good portion. He says that this is what Mary has chosen, and it cannot be taken from her. What is that? What is the good portion? It is sitting at Jesus’ feet and listening to His Word. It is not letting your service to the Lord take priority over your listening to Lord.

It is not only good for us, but it is a commandment, that we serve the Lord faithfully by doing things. Whether it’s working a 9-5 unto the Lord, raising children 24/7, or being a missionary in the most remote places in the world. Those are good things that all of us have been called to do, in service of our King. But, we must never let the things we do take precedent over listening to God in His Word and prayer. If we do that, we will burn out incredibly fast, our work won’t be done well, and our hearts will constantly be troubled. We have to, at times, stop doing and start listening. And by the way listening does not mean letting the soundwaves hit your ears. Listening means we intentionally take in, consider, and apply what is being said. It means that we sit down, put aside all the things that might be distracting our minds, and we listen. And then, we can stand back up, and begin to serve out of the abundance that we have just received.  The Lord knows we need this, and it’s why He established a weekly routine whereby you would do this. We gather here in this room so that we might listen to God’s Word and be refreshed and enabled to serve well.

I want to close this morning by having us look back at the question the lawyer asked Jesus in verse 25. He asks, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus responds and asks, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” He answers, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” Then Jesus says, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”

The question I have for us this morning is, who of us has done this correctly? None of us. And if that’s the case, how can we still have eternal life? The Law demands perfection and none of us are able to meet that demand. It seems like the call to do this is impossible, and that none of us should have eternal life. Well, that is true. We can’t keep the law, and we can’t love God or our neighbor perfectly, and so we are all condemned. But at the same time, we are not without hope. That is because Jesus came and fulfilled the law on our behalf. He was perfect in obedience and love in every way. And not only that, but He went to the cross and was crucified on our behalf, was buried, and resurrected again. This means 2 things for those who trust in Christ for salvation. First, it means that our sinful debt has been paid, it was placed upon Jesus. But secondly, it means that we imputed the very righteousness of Jesus. In other words, Jesus’ perfect obedience is accredited to us.

We will fail time and time again in loving God and loving our neighbor. And yet, time and time again, God is ready and willing to forgive us and encourage us on. Let’s be a people who seek to do these things well and who are quick to repent and continue when we fail. Let’s be a people who listen to the words of our Lord, trusting what He says and allowing it to shape every part of our lives. Amen.

https://nypost.com/2026/02/11/media/ky-gov-andy-beshear-blasted-for-citing-the-bible-to-defend-transgender-treatments-for-kids/