church for the first time, and then as I was praying about this meeting, and the heart the pastor had for it, the Lord impressed it upon me. Very familiar story, and I'm so glad you're here. My good friend Dr. Jim McGehee is here, pastor of Charity Baptist Church, not too far from here, and if you've never heard him preach, you ought to. He's a great preacher and knows the Word of God and always a help and a blessing and a challenge and an encouragement. And I'm glad to meet some folks I've never met before, and I hope that you'll have an open heart as we ask the Lord to speak to us in this important conference about the Gospel. I love the Gospel. The longer I live, the more I'm impressed with the power of the Gospel. Luke chapter 10, verse 25. Preacher, do you typically stand at your church when you read the Scripture? No, I want to know what you normally do. I do whatever the preacher does as long as it's not illegal, immoral, unethical, or fattening. Is it your normal practice to do so? Okay, stand with me as we read the Word of God. Begin at verse 25. Behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? And he said unto him, What is written in the law? How readest thou? And the answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy strength and with all thy mind and thy neighbor as thyself. And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right. This do and thou shalt live. Now, if you know the gospel, that's a really strange statement. Is that what you do when you go out soul winning? Hey, you wanna be sure you're gonna go to heaven? Love God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, all your strength, and your neighbor is yourself. And you'll make it. Is that what you do? Is that how you do it here? Well, you need to get in line with Jesus. But he, willing to justify himself, said, who is my neighbor? Only a lawyer would ask a question like that. Everybody else knows who their neighbor is. Jesus answering said a certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and he 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 when he saw him he passed on by on the other side and likewise a Levite when he was at that 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, 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 neighbor unto him that fell among the thieves? And he said, he that showed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, go and do thou likewise. Father, guide me as I preach the message I believe you've directed me to preach. Empower me by your Spirit. May I say only the things that would please you. Would you use me to help this meeting with its important goal of getting the gospel around the world and yet beginning with our circle of influence in the area where we live? Lord, I pray that you'd help all of us to hear and to obey what you tell us. I pray that you bind the devil and his demons. They always, you said, try to snatch away the seed of your word. Keep them from that. And help us, Lord, to be a long time from now when we've forgotten where we heard it or who said it, still living the things you teach us tonight. Bless the preaching and the invitation we ask in Jesus' name. I promise to praise you for all that is done. Amen. The story is so famous that we have an expression in our language that comes from it. If somebody helps somebody in distress out, they're called a good Samaritan. This man's not called a good Samaritan, just called the Samaritan in the story. And the story begins with an interrogation. A lawyer comes to Jesus and he is tempting him and he asks him a question not for the purpose of getting help, not for the purpose of getting information. Lawyers typically ask questions to get somebody in trouble. And he said, what good thing must I do that I might inherit eternal life? Well, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Well, he's wrong right at the beginning because nobody got eternal life by doing anything. Two religions in the world, somebody said one says do and the other says done. Jesus paid it all. Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to thy cross I cling. The Lord Jesus says, well, You're a lawyer. What does the law say? Oh, he said you've got to love God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, all your strength, and you've got to love your neighbor as yourself. Two different quotations. The man knew something of the law. When he was a lawyer, he wasn't a lawyer like we have to go to court today. He was one who studied the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. His quotations came from Leviticus 19, verse 18, Deuteronomy chapter 6, and verse 5. and he answers well. The Lord Jesus says, thou hast answered right, good answer. Is that true? Can you get to heaven by loving God with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength and loving your neighbor as yourself? Well, the Bible says on these two hang the Law and the Prophets. The Bible says, if there's any other saying, it's briefly comprehended in this statement. The problem is, the lawyer hadn't done it. And I haven't done it. And nobody's ever done it and nobody ever will do it and nobody ever could love God with all their heart and all their mind and all their soul. And nobody has ever loved their neighbor as they love themselves. Prove it to you. You're driving home. Several blocks away, you see big billowing clouds of dark smoke. Unconsciously, your foot presses harder on the accelerator. You hurry as you get closer. You realize it's on your block. It's, it's, it's a, oh no! And your heart begins to beat faster, and you panic, and you drive and go, oh! Oh, thank God. It's my house on fire, not my neighbor's. You think? Nobody loves a neighbor as themselves. The law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. Confronted with the claims of a holy God and His perfect law, I recognize that there is nothing I and myself could ever do to inherit eternal life. Besides, you don't inherit it, you don't get it because of the family you were born into physically. You get it by being born into the family of God, by believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. But instead of saying, I can't help, I'm in trouble. Lord, I have not done that, and if I could do it the rest of my life, I've already failed, but I couldn't do it for the rest of my life. Instead of that, the Bible says, he willing to justify himself. Said, who then is my neighbor? Now, the Jews defined their neighbor as narrowly as possible, because they didn't want to have to be nice to anybody, they didn't have to. So they'd find ways to exclude people from being their neighbors. That's what the Pharisees did all the time. They'd find ways not to obey the law, and they'd make loopholes. So if you swore by the temple, you didn't have to keep your word. But if you swore by the gold that was in the temple, you had to keep your word. Who is my neighbor? And the Lord Jesus follows up the interrogation with an illustration. And he says, let me tell you a story. There's a man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and he fell among thieves. Now I'm not sure this is right, this just occurred to me yesterday while I was preaching this, but it doesn't say they took his money. It says they took his raiment and they left him half dead. I'm just guessing here, I haven't read any commentaries, but it looks to me like he didn't even have any money. There wasn't anything he had of any value except some clothing. And so they robbed him of that. Has anybody here ever been mugged? I'm so sorry. Come to Saginaw. We'll take care of you. We'll help you. Now, I know people have been mugged. Their watch has been taken. Their wallet's been taken. Their money's been taken. Maybe their car key's been taken. I don't know. Anybody ever get mugged and they took their clothes? You wouldn't take their clothes if you had anything else. So this is a man apparently of rather limited substance if I'm reading the story right. And they took his ring and they left him half dead and here comes by a priest. We see in this illustration there's an iniquity of sin. He's beaten and robbed. And then there's an indifference. A priest comes by and he walks on the other side and ignores him. And a Levite comes by and he ignores him and walks past him. And then a Samaritan comes by. Now we move from indifference in this illustration to involvement. Now you need to understand, the Samaritans were hated of the Jews. There is no racial animosity in America anywhere today that's anywhere near as bad as that between the Jews and the Samaritans. The Jews had no dealings, the Bible says, with the Samaritans. They wouldn't buy from them, sell to them, talk to them, work with them, eat with them. There's a reason for that. The Samaritans were a race of mixed religion after the Syrians came and took the ten tribes in the north into captivity. They tried to inhabit the land, and the people that came there were being attacked by lions, and they thought, well, maybe we need to pacify the gods of the land, and so they worshipped their pagan gods and, supposedly, the god of Israel. What the scholars call a syncretic religion. And the Jews said, you guys are wrong, man. You got this all backwards. You don't know who the true God is. And it came to be really, really terrible animosity between them. But the Samaritan walks over where he was. and he pours oil and wine in his wounds, and he picks him up, and he sets him on his own beast, and he takes him to an inn, and he gives two pence, that's two days wages for a working man, and he says, I want you to take care of this man, and here's the money to help him, and if he needs any more, you just give it to him, and I'll pay back whatever you spend when I return. And then the Lord Jesus looks for an interpretation after his illustration. He says, okay, who was his neighbor? And I don't know for sure, but I just imagine a lawyer shuffled his feet a little bit, hesitated before he spoke and hemmed and hawed a little bit and said, well, the one who had mercy on him. And then the Lord Jesus said, good, you go do that. You go find somebody who is in need and help them. You go to somebody that you have nothing in common with, somebody that may be the kind of person you'd never want to spend any time with, and you look out for them, and you help them. See, we look at how big the world is, 7 billion people or so. Look at how many lost people are around us, and how many needs they have, and how limited our resources are, and how unable we are to meet all those needs. And then we get the idea, well, we can't help everybody, so we use that as an excuse for not helping anybody. The Lord Jesus said, quit trying to justify yourself. and you go find somebody else who's in trouble and help them. Now, before I go on and make some applications in this trial, I would like to say that there is another Samaritan I'd like you to meet. He was despised and rejected of men. He came unto his own and his own received him not. He was without honor in his own country. But you know what he did? He came to people that were lost, and He came to those that were needy, and He came to those that were His enemies, and He willingly sacrificed Himself. He allowed His beard to be plucked and His face to be buffeted until Isaiah says, His visage was marred more than any man. He let that cat of nine tails rake across His back and rip the flesh from off His back. He let them take Him and nail Him not with a loincloth as the artists depict Him, without any clothing at all, bearing shame and scoffing rude. In my place condemned He stood, sealed my pardon with His blood." Hallelujah! What a Savior! And you know what He did? He did just like that Samaritan. We were lost in trespasses and in sin, and He didn't wait for us to come to Him. No, He came to seek and to save that which was lost. The gulf that separated me from Christ my Lord, it was so vast a crossing, I could never afford from His domain to where I was, it seems so far. I cried, Dear Lord, I cannot come to where You are. But praise God, He came to me. Yes, He came to me when I was lost and bound in sin. And I'm so glad somebody told me about Jesus Christ and my sins are forgiven, my soul is redeemed. Heaven is my home forever because I have heard the gospel of Jesus Christ. But a lot of people haven't. Some interesting things about this story. One of the things I find intriguing is that the answer you get depends on how you ask the question. This lawyer, he didn't get... Jesus often said, I'm the water of life, I'm the way, the truth, and the life. I'm the straight gate. If you enter in, you can have life. But he didn't tell the lawyer that. Because the lawyer wasn't looking for help, he was looking for an argument. Some people never get help because they're just looking for an argument. I was talking to a young man in the ministry, and he has a different view about music, and I used an old argument that I thought was reasonable, that I'd heard from somebody else, and I said, look, you can play a note on the piano, and that note by itself is really not a moral note. Okay, I'm going to play this note. Dr. Ainsworth, what note is that? It's close, it's B flat, right next to it. Very close, very good. Near perfect pitch. Better than the rest of us. Now, that's not a good note. It's not a bad note. It's just a note. And I says, like, letters, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, those aren't good letters or bad letters. They're just like a line or a curve on a piece of paper. There's nothing good or bad about them. They're just marks on the paper. But I put the letters together, and they make words. And they can be good words or bad words. And I put the lines and the marks together. They make pictures. They can be good pictures or bad pictures. And he said, but are words always good or bad? What about if I said, by Yah? He said, is that a good word or a bad word? The answer wasn't a word. He said, I could say bah-yah, or I could say bah-yah. I said, all right, you don't want to take the illustration, take the lines and the pictures. You can make a good picture. You could make a nude picture. And he said, but is a nude picture always wrong? And I did not say it out loud, but I said, shut up, Bozo. I'm not going to even try to help you anymore. Because you're arguing with the illustration, you're not looking for help. There's a lot of people, and they come to the preacher, and they want to argue. Why are we spending all this money on signs? I've been going to this church for 20 years. I know where everything is. Thank you. Well, the signs aren't for you. They will be in a few years when you get a little forgetful, but right now, they're not for you. They're for somebody coming in, visiting, so they might feel at home and know why they're going out. Why do you get some bald-headed bozo from Michigan to preach at our missions conference? Spend all that money on a plane ticket. We got people right here in Florida we could have got for less money. And you bring some guy from way up there. Now, you ask a question that way, you're probably not going to get a real good answer. And you ask God questions that way, and you won't get good answers. You come to the Lord in anger and in bitterness and complaint. You come to the Lord feeling that you've been unfairly treated and He's done something wrong. You come to the Lord other than with a spirit of submission and worship and recognition that He is God. Don't expect to get much of an answer. Another thought that occurs to me as I look at this story is that as long as we justify ourselves, we'll never be justified by Jesus. See, here's what happened in this meeting. Your pastor has gone through the entire membership of the church, and he's decided how much money you make, and he has a little deal he's going to give you on Wednesday of how much money each of you need to give for missions. Oh, that's the Catholic Church, this is. They really do. Not for missions, but for the church. You know what your preacher said? I bet you he said something like this. You pray and see what God wants you to give. to help get the Gospel around the world. And I bet he's even said something like this, you pray and see what God wants you to do to get the Gospel to people in Pensacola. I'll tell you what's going to happen. You're going to get mad at him. Because he didn't tell you what to do, but he told you to go to God and you don't like what God said, so get mad at him for making him bring it up. Oh, they want that church for more money. They're always looking for money for something. They're just trying to... He's just trying to build the church. So when he's just some technique to try to build the church, he just wants to have a big and powerful church. Now you go ahead and give all the reasons to God why you can't give more money to missions and give all the reasons you want to God why you can't take a Gospel tract to your neighbor or pass some out at work or go out on one of the ministries of the church and share the Gospel with people in this area who need to know about the Lord Jesus Christ. But as long as you're willing to justify yourself, you'll never be justified. One other, couple other thoughts. As you know, there's a lot of people not interested in what we have to say to them. A lot of people. So the Lord Jesus, he has a little deal he tells us to take care of that. He does it here, he does it other places in the scripture. You know what it is? He says, don't worry about the people who don't want it, look for somebody who does. Now, this Jew lying by the side of the road would not likely have asked a Samaritan for help. He would not likely, if he was thirsty, ask him for a drink of water. He would not likely, if he was hungry, ask him for a piece of bread. He would not likely, if he was broke, ask him for a loan of money. But you know what? He was in such bad shape now, he'd take help from anybody. Remember the parable of the Great Supper, and those that were invited didn't come. Now that was quite a class of people. One of them had enough money to buy land without ever looking at it. One of them had enough money to buy oxen without seeing if they could plow. One of them was so rich that he could afford a wife. None of them came, and Jesus said, well, then you go out into the streets and lanes of the city and bring the poor and the blind, and bring those people that are in terrible trouble. And they said, Lord, as soon as I was commanded, and yet there is room, and He said, go out into the highways and hedges, and compelled them to come in. And here's what Jesus said, if you can't get a healthy one, get a sick one. If you can't get a rich one, get a poor one. If you can't get somebody who can walk, then get somebody who's limping. If you can't get somebody who can see, get somebody who's blind. Because when you get in bad enough trouble, you take help from anybody. And the Gospel is good for the whole world. But if some people think they're so self-satisfied and smugly secure in their own situation, that they won't listen, Somebody's hurting. Somebody's got a wayward child. Somebody has a broken marriage. Somebody has an addiction problem. Somebody has a life that is miserable and messed up and they haven't found any help anywhere, but they'll find it if you'll tell them about Jesus. And I'll say again, just because you can't help everybody doesn't mean you shouldn't help somebody. I heard about a boy, you know the story, walking along the seashore, and the tide had gone out, was going further out, and left a bunch of starfish stranded on the sand. And the boy knew if they didn't get in the water pretty soon, they'd die. So he's going down the shore, picking up a starfish, and throwing it in the water, and picking up a starfish, and throwing it in the water, picking up a starfish, and throwing it in the water. And a guy came by, kind of cynical, and said, You're not making any difference. Do you know how many miles of beach there are around here? Do you know how many thousands of starfish are on those miles of beach? And it's not going to make any difference. This is just the way things are. You're wasting your time. You're not making any difference. What you're doing doesn't matter. The boy thought for a minute. He looked at the starfish in his hand. He threw it out in the ocean. He said, well, it matters to this one. Twenty-three years ago, he was a juvenile delinquent in the city of Minneapolis, but somebody invited him to ride on a bus, and somebody gave him the Gospel, and somebody helped him grow after that, and somebody encouraged him to go off to Bible school, and somebody took him into their own home, and raised him as their own son. And now he is the pastor of the Pine Forest Estates Baptist Church. I don't know what happened to all of those kids on that bus. I don't know what happened to everybody that that church tried to reach. I don't know where all those young people are, but I know this, it mattered to this one. He was 21. Never heard the gospel in his entire life. Dad was Catholic, Mom was Methodist. Went to church two, three times. Got out of the Army after World War II, decided to go to Columbia University and be a radio announcer. On the bus coming back from New York City, where Columbia was, to his home in Massachusetts, he met a couple of kids he'd known when they were young. They were the only kids on the street that went to church that didn't go to a Catholic church. They went to a gospel chapel. And they talked, and they said, what are you doing? He said, I'm going to go to Columbia, going to be a radio announcer. Well, they said, you ought to come to our college. We have a radio program. We have our own radio station. He said, where do you go to college? They said, we go to Bob Jones University that just moved to Greenville, South Carolina. He'd never heard of it. Been through South Carolina on his way to basic training, that was it. But they got his name, they got his address, and they sent him some information. And then they impressed. Their spirit was different. Their attitude was different. Their language was different than what he was used to. And so he filled out the information for Bob Jones, and he filled it out for Columbia, and he got accepted to Bob Jones before he got accepted to Columbia. And almost on a whim, he got on a bus. Went from Springfield, Massachusetts to Greenville, South Carolina, January of 1949. Old Bob Jones Sr. stood up and preached as he did at the beginning of every semester, a revival meeting. And he said, young man, what if your mother knew everything you'd ever done? Young man thought, oh, I wouldn't like that. He said, God knows. And he preached the gospel. And the young man said, that sounds like a good deal to me. They sang, only trust Him, only trust Him, only trust Him now for He will save you, He will save you, He will save you now. The young man is now 90 years old and he would tell you tonight if you asked him that he was saved sitting in his seat because that's when he decided to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. But he went down an aisle and a man named Monroe Parker met him and sent him over to some counselors and they went through the Gospel and he prayed and formalized his decision. Now, those young men went on to serve God and I know something about their story. believe that nothing they ever did was as significant and had as much visible consequence for the cause of Christ as being a testimony to that man on the bus. I'm glad they were alert. I'm glad they're on duty. I'm glad they had compassion. I'm glad they went to where he was because the young man they witnessed to is my dad. My dad had great ministry. Ran the Detroit Rescue Mission for 10 years. It's now the largest mission in the world. He got them out of debt, built the building they still use. Established a lot of the ministries, the medical clinic and the camp program and the radio broadcast that they still have. My dad led a lot of people to Christ. Wrote a little book, Soul Winning Simplified, or Fishing for Man, and trained a lot of people to know the gospel. He trained me to give the gospel to people. Before I could read, I could give people the gospel. Everybody my dad's ever ministered to and everybody I've had the opportunity to minister to goes back to a couple of good Samaritans. They weren't out soul hunting. They weren't on bus visitation. They were on duty. Go thou and do likewise. Lord, help us. Guide me as I extend the invitation.