Stories of Faith

Luke 10: 25-37

Connecting Questions

· When did you stop to help someone?

· When did you not stop to help someone? Why?

Prayer for Illumination

Let us pray, Loving God, we pause today grateful for this next breath. We are grateful for the chance to connect with others today for we all carry such hurts and hope. Open your Word to us. Open our hearts to let your word speak to us and change our lives. We pray in the name of the Jesus, Amen.

Context

This Sunday, we continue our worship series, Stories of Faith. These stories focus on Biblical characters who exemplify the Easter values of worship, care, learn, give, and connect and encourage us to share our own stories. The Church began with the gift of the Holy Spirit to a community of vastly different people, but all connected by faith in Jesus.

Don’t miss Amy Vigesaa’s sermon in the Stories of Faith series. Sermons can be found at Easter.org/worship.

From Pastor Matthew Skinner at EntertheBible.org:

Much of the material that is unique to Luke’s Gospel consists of parables from Jesus. A parable is usually a short story used to illustrate an aspect of the kingdom of God in a way that invites hearers or readers to probe the connections on their own. Parables function as metaphors, fleshing out spiritual ideas through the power of potent suggestions rather than precise descriptions. Many of Jesus’ parables emphasize how different God’s ways are from humanity’s standards of fairness, piety, status, and prudence.

Look at the Book

Open Luke 10: 25-37. How do you define a Good Samaritan?
V25, a lawyer is an expert in torah (the first five books of the Old Testament). Jesus’ opponents came from many different places. What have you learned from being tested?
What question does the lawyer ask Jesus? What is an inheritance?
How does Jesus respond? Where does Jesus ask the man to find his answer?
The man quotes scripture back to Jesus. Use the internet to help, what verse he is quoting to Jesus?
Verse 29 gets to the heart of the lawyer's problem. What does he want to do? How do we like to do this in our own lives? Why?
"Who is my neighbor?” is the “Mr. Roger’s Question.” Why do you think the lawyer wants Jesus to answer this question for him?
In the parable, there is doubt that the man has been injured badly and his ethnicity is not mentioned. What’s your reaction to the first two people walking by without helping?
V33 is the punchline, all are surprised at who the person was who stopped to help. The Samaritan was the least likely to stop given the cultural and political mistrust between the two people groups, namely about where they were supposed to worship God. But look closer, what happens in V33 after he saw the injured man?
Notice the sheer amount of detail in the following verses of how care happened. What strikes you?
V37 is where the lawyer couldn’t even say, “Samaritan.” Why?
How do you hear Jesus’s command in verse 37: go and do likewise?
This week in worship we are focusing on care being an essential practice of being a follower of Jesus. How do you see Easter living this out?
What does Christian “care” look like?
What do you want to talk about that has not been brought up yet?

Taking it Home

We all have cares in our heart. Martin Luther said, “Pray and let God worry.” What is something you’d like to have God carry more for you?

We will begin our second Vacation Bible School next week (July 31) where we will teach the children to ask, “Who is my neighbor?” Why does that matter?

Grow Guide | July 30, 2023