Love ALL Your Neighbors
This week we continue through 1 Kings as we take a look at the Samaritans and at how Jesus taught to love all of our neighbors.
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good morning welcome you made it despite the rain imagine that what we do for god if you're new here among us my name is gene i serve here at c3 church as your lead pastor and i wonder is there anyone else here who's been blocked on social media take face definitely take facebook for example right so most of us understand facebook i know the kids have been chased away from there they're on the insta talk or something you old people can't find them anymore that's a good thing so the facebook so i'll tell you some ways that you can find out if you've been blocked or not first of all there you have the search bar there if you type the person's name that you suspect blocked you they don't show up you know you've been blocked but be very careful about using this method because the search bar is dangerously close to the what's on your mind bar yeah they'll know you're looking for them or maybe not because they blocked you they don't care here's another way you may accidentally find out that you've been blocked maybe let's say i don't know a mutual friend posts a picture of their birthday or something like that some food you want to say something nice so you go to the comments section but then you notice it looks like that mutual friend is talking to themselves then you know you've been blocked and you may want to check with a friend or a spouse hey does it look like so and so is talking to themselves no you've been blocked so i heard a story about two now elderly women sisters they didn't really get along very well throughout their lives it all started when they got married the older sister married a reformed christian believer so this is very very strict in fact in their worship they didn't even have an organ they had no instruments in the worship at all a cappella is singing to psalms or hymns the younger sister well she married a pentecostal believer and aside from the snakes it was pretty exciting they had a full band they really got into the worship there it was kind of loud and so they were always arguing this is where the legit worship is over here at my church no no no if you want true worship it's over here at my church so they'd argue on and on this problem got worse with social media because then they started passive aggressively posting things about the worship you know being really good christians well then it got even worse with the politics horrible one was on one side of the aisle the others on the other side of the aisle so just more and more and more stuff their christianity is eroding for all to see so finally the older sister being of course the more mature one decided to block her sister so she does then one day the younger sister is scrolling through the facebook and she comes upon a picture posted by her niece that is the older sister's daughter her birthday she's out with her friends takes a selfie she goes oh that's nice let me say happy birthday and put some more clothes on so she looks down at the other comments see who else is posting and it looks like her niece is talking to herself she goes to her husband what does it look like he's like no that's kind of interesting so she messages her niece hey looks like your mom blocked me that's not very nice tell her to undo that okay well one do that it goes to the mother hey mom that's not very nice you blocked your younger sister undo that no i'm not going to do it no way okay this goes on for a few days finally her daughter the niece decides i got it i'll appeal to her christianity hey mom what would jesus do thanks for a minute and she says he'd unblock her thinks for another minute and says but he'd be wrong yes today we find ourselves in the rest of the story this is where we're looking at the entire bible all of it every word we're not skipping any accounts even the unpopular uncomfortable ones we looked at basia and asa so to fill you in if you're arriving here new most of you even if you've never read the bible know about king david you know about him you may know about solomon well you may know solomon was said to have been the wisest and wealthiest man ever but we see he broke a lot of rules so his son rehoboam during his time the kingdom is going to split now you have israel in the north judah and the south jeroboam becomes the king and now we're looking at all these successive kings and trying to learn lessons from the many mistakes that they make last week we've read about king basha and asa we've got parallel accounts if you don't know anything about the bible it's not just one book it is many different books and some of them account for the same exact thing except they give us differences not contradictions just different little things details in there so today we are going to focus on first kings we're going to see that first kings concerns itself more with israel in the north for a while then we'll get back to second chronicles where they'll come back together again so we learned about basha last week asa used another king from another country ben hayden to run him off this was a sign of his lack of faith in the lord first kings 15 we're just going to jump back a little bit recap 32 there was constant war between king asa judah and king baeisha of israel basha's son of ehijah began to rule over all israel in the third year of king ace's reign in judah basia reigned in terza 24 years but he did what was evil in the lord's sight and followed the example of jeroboam continuing the sins that jeroboam had led israel to commit now if we turn the page remember han and i what he said to asa regarding how he handled king baesha of israel trusting in ben haddad instead of god now his son jehu has a message for king basha of israel first kings 16 1 this message from the lord was delivered to king baesha by the prophet jehu son of hananiah i lifted you out of the dust to make you ruler of my people israel but you have followed the evil example of jeroboam you have provoked my anger by causing my people israel to sin now i will destroy you and your family just as i destroyed the descendants of jeroboam the son of nibet the members of baish's family who die in the city will be eaten by dogs and those who die in the field will be eaten by vultures the rest of the events in baiisha's reign and the extent of his power are recorded in the book of the history of the kings of israel when baisha died he was buried in turza then his son ilah became the next king so we see in this split or what we're going to see in this split is that the kings of the north of israel are going to be succeeded by murder not through a family line any longer basia dies his son elah first kings 16 eight ila the son of baasha began to rule over israel in the 26th year of king ace's reign in judah he reigned in the city of tursa for two years then zimri who commanded half of the royal chariots made plans to kill him one day in tursa elo was getting drunk at the home of arza the supervisor of the palace zimri walked in and struck him down and killed him this happened in the 27th year of king ace's reign in judah then zimri became the next king what's the lesson there don't get drunk you could die so again we hear a series of successions through murder zimmery he kills the entire family of baisha all his heirs the whole family and this is a fulfillment of that prophecy jehu gave him but here's the thing he only makes it seven days that's it israel hears what zimri does so they send omri the commander of the army to straighten everything out when zimmer is defeated at terza he enters the citadel of the palace he burns it down on himself and kills himself ends his reign first kings 16 21 but now the people of israel were split into two factions there's already a civil war now you've got another one here in the north half the people tried to make tibney son of guiness their king while the other half supported omri this is the military commander but omri supporters defeated the supporters of timmy so tibney was killed and omri became the next king amri began to rule over israel in the 31st year of king aces reign in judah he reigned 12 years in all six of them in tursa then amri bought the hill now known as samaria from its owner shimer for 150 pounds of silver he built a city on it and called the city samaria in honor of shemer so he has an immediate civil war here he snuffs it out he begins to reign we discuss capital cities throughout this series first we have shechem then terza and now we see samaria it keeps changing so it gets a little confusing but we're going to stop here on samaria this is an extremely extremely significant site it is the capital in the place of worship for those in the north israel like jerusalem is in judah important to them in the south by understanding how these stories work we're going to understand what jesus is saying a lot better so we're kind of going to pump the brakes a little here and just try to understand a little bit more about samaria first background on omri omri is interesting this is very very short blurb written about him but he's one of the few israelite kings that other people outside the bible write about during that time like the moabites and the assyrians he's a really powerful military commander with a really big army now as we read on we see that he commits sins like the other kings before him but he's the father of ahab now if you've read your bible you know who ahab is real wicked guy he's going to be the father-in-law of jezebel probably even heard that name if you've never read the bible don't name your daughter jezebel i'm so sorry if anyone here is named jezebel read your bible before you name your kids right so like judas bad name so jezebel she introduces the worship of baal bael or baal i just said bell for short it's no bueno it's not a good thing so he's associated with some really bad stuff here now the samaritans they come from this region what's going to happen if we fast forward they're going to get conquered by the assyrians so they're going to fall first some of them get held captive by the assyrians some stay and it's really bad they mix in with the people there so the thing about jews is that they're both a race and a religion think of it like that so so are the samaritans they end up mixing in with the people there they adopt their worship practices and they even get attacked by lions it's going to get very interesting in this series so these are the samaritans samaritans today there's only a few hundred of them and they claim that they are israelite descendants from the northern israelite tribes of ephraim and manasseh joseph's sons who survived this destruction of israel so they're in line with that their worship's different they worship on mount gerizim so if you know anything about the bible you remember where we were in deuteronomy the blessings and the curses deuteronomy 27 28. so gerizim is where they pronounced all these blessings eval the curses so that's where they worship also the bible they only accept the first five books the torah genesis exodus leviticus numbers and deuteronomy that's all they believe the jews of jesus day they dislike the samaritans because of their religious beliefs and their mixed racial heritage in fact the temple in samaria on mount gerizim was destroyed 129 bc so before jesus so there's a lot of hostility between these two groups the jews again they're an ethno-religious group is what it's called the samaritans then mix in with the other nations and it becomes both a religious and a racial issue the samaritans are seen by the jews as half breeds in fact jesus in john 8 is called a samaritan dog by the jewish people of course we know he's not they're trying to insult him so a very bad thing to be a samaritan at this time in the jewish mind now understanding this will help to understand a lot of what's going on in the new testament like the story that many of you probably know the woman at the well that is in john 4. a lot of you know this story you know the bulk of it what it's really all about worshiping in spirit and in truth living water right so you think of those things but it's end capped by a couple of things and at the end it actually doubles the statements about it a lot of people don't notice it or they just don't keep reading so here we have jesus he's traveling along and he passes by this through or through these samaritan towns one of them psychar and he sees jacob's well there he's tired it says from all the traveling so he's going to rest there enter a samaritan woman he says give me a drink now she's puzzled because she knows jews don't have anything to do with samaritans so she says you're a jew and i'm a samaritan woman what's going on here if you knew the gift god had for you and who you were speaking to you would ask me for water and i'd give you living water she's confused she's like dude you don't have a bucket or a rope how are you going to get water plus you think your water is better than jacob's well here she doesn't understand he said no the kind of water that i have this living water leads to eternal life she says oh give me some of that water now she wants it she's starting to get it maybe he says go get your husband i don't have a husband she says ah you are correct for you've had in greek it's just one word for husband and man you've had five men and you're not even married to the one you're living with now basically you're sleeping around she's promiscuous so she says you must be a prophet so then tell me why is it that the jews say that the true worship is in jerusalem but we samaritans say it's here on mount gerizim he says the time is coming it's even here that true worshipers will worship in spirit and in truth she says i know the messiah is coming and when he comes he'll explain everything that is the christ he says i am the messiah well she takes off just then the disciples arrive they have a little dialogue there planting and reaping the harvest but if you pay attention it says she goes to the samaritan town and tells everybody can this guy be the messiah basically he knows what i did he knows about my life and so they flock out to see him dialogue with his disciples but then it says that a whole bunch of samaritans became christians they became followers of jesus so we understand how this teaching is bookended by the samaritans and it's meant to flip the whole thing you're not doing that anymore there's none of this in christ any longer true worship is worship and truth and in spirit no more of these religious divides any longer it also helps us understand some things in luke luke 9. they're traveling along again they're going to pass by the samaritan town so they send messengers ahead to basically welcome jesus but they don't welcome him they know he's going to jerusalem to the temple it's not going to help him go travel to worship or anything like that so james and john hear about it and he asked jesus lord can we send fire down from heaven to burn them up jesus rebukes them now if you know the word well you know in just a little while we're gonna have an account with elijah and so it sounds a lot like that in fact some versions add that like elijah did if we turn the page the parable of the good samaritan a lot of you know this we know this phrase in our culture right but a lot of people don't know that it begins with a question it's the response to a question he's asked by a scribe or like basically like a religious lawyer think of it that way he's going to try to trap jesus or something or test him what do i do to inherit eternal life jesus says you know the law of moses how do you read it it says love god with all your heart mind soul strength and love your neighbor as yourself you have said it you got it right that's good but now now remember he's a jewish religious scribe he knows he doesn't really want to do it he doesn't want to love his neighbor not going to do that so he tries to ask him another question do we do this who is my neighbor though really there's some humor here who is my neighbor so jesus says okay i'm going to give you the long answer so he tells him this parable there was a jewish man he's beaten up mugged robbed left for dead on the side of the road well along comes a priest he sees him there fellow jew he's a jewish priest jewish man on the side of the road instead of helping him he goes to the other side of the road and just pretends he doesn't see it in comes a levite walking down the road basically like a temple assistant temple worker also jewish supposed to be a very religious person sees him doesn't do anything to help him well enter in the despised samaritans jesus telling the story he sees him well he he helps him he bandages up his wounds he puts oil on him he's healing him up he puts him on his own donkey he brings him to the inn not only does he put him up and help him there but the next day he tells the innkeeper here's two days pay to deny it's basically two days pay here you go if he needs anything else i'll come back and i'll pay you more jesus asked them who was the neighbor they said the one who showed mercy you go and do the same do you understand he places the samaritan there to give it a lot of force if we keep reading it goes on luke 17 10 lepers are healed all right so from a distance and now they're supposed to according to the law of moses leviticus 13 14 kind of gross stuff about treating leprosy and boils and all kinds of disgusting things so they think they're going to do that go you know pay the priest that kind of thing do your ritual on the way there whoa we're healed jesus did it but only one of them comes back to thank him the samaritan that's the only one that comes back to thank him he's like i thought there were ten of you where are the other nine it's meant to teach a lesson placing these samaritans in the parable or the accounts it gives it more force you who say it's woven throughout so many of jesus's teaching hypocrites you who say you're getting this religion right calling yourself something are you or are the people not calling themselves this doing what you're supposed to be doing better than you are that's the force of jesus's teaching and so if we stop here and understand samaria samaritans we get it jesus is rebuking social divisions racial divisions and religious divisions of all kinds but unfortunately many christians still have this problem today this is very pertinent you can put the parable of the good samaritan in a modern light christian left for dead on the side of the road people are just passing by a pastor walks along notices him and says that's not convenient i'm going to walk along worship leader season that's not i got to practice my guitar i'll do something else but then a muslim comes along he sees the man bandages him up puts him in the back of his car takes him to a hotel gives the guy the credit card the manager of the hotel says anything he needs you just charge it to my card who is the good neighbor same thing you can apply to politics right republican left for dead on the side of the road don't laugh democrats left her dead on the side republican comes along sees him doesn't do anything to help him a right-leaning independent comes along doesn't do anything but then the democrat comes along and bandages him up who had it right it doesn't matter if your argument is right or not if you're not doing the will of the father if you're not getting it right it doesn't matter what we call ourselves if we're not doing it that is what jesus says over and over and over again matthew 7 12 is a remarkable if you don't know it's toward the end of the sermon on the mount treating others the way you want to be treated is is the law and the prophets think about what a powerful statement that is treating others the way you want to be treated is that's what it says angry is the law and the prophets remarkable statement do it loving your neighbor that summarizes the whole thing paul repeats that in romans 12 love your neighbor as yourself love your republican neighbor love your democrat neighbor love your muslim neighbor love each other but here's the thing loving people with different opinions that's how you win them over we're supposed to be christians above everything else no other affiliation should be above that if i should all be way down here christians and our mission all of us not just pastors is to spread the gospel how do you do that through love that's what jesus says show them love regardless of their opinion somewhere else then they'll listen to you people listen to other people when they know they care oh you care about me okay i'll give you some time that's the key here's the thing we should be really asking ourselves a question why would we want to hate anyone anyway think about it it doesn't feel very good i don't like being angry all the time why would we want to why would we want to be prejudiced against anyone else the holy spirit should clean us of that that should be gone there should be zero desire to hate anyone if we have god in us how is that possible interesting now here's the thing in jesus ministry in the flesh he says something but you need to keep reading if you're new here that's a big thing don't make some kind of theological statement if you haven't read the whole thing careful because it clears it up it's kind of like not watching the end of a movie imagine doing that you watch like half of it and then you think you know the whole thing we've got to come to the conclusion and sometimes things are cleared up and this is what happens let's say in the gospel of matthew but throughout the whole bible matthew 10 he's going to send his 12 disciples out and he's going to give them instructions only go to the lost sheep of israel he says right so the jewish people don't go to the gentiles or even in a samaritan town don't do that now you might think ah see jesus only wants the jews to be saved he doesn't care about anyone else but if you keep reading he clarifies matthew 28 verse 19. now go therefore to all the nations and this is pretty interesting because in the greek something will come to your mind especially if you're an english-speaking person first read it in the english versions then you read it in greek and when you learn greek you know that sometimes one word can mean several different things and so you have to translate it based on context so go therefore i've been given all authority in heaven and earth go therefore and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the father the son and the holy spirit nations ethnic or a form of it in greek when i see that word it makes me think people gentiles are nations and nations is a good translation they're about to go somewhere that's fine even in acts 1 judea samaria and all the ends of the earth but in my mind it also makes me think go to peoples and here's the thing the nlt for as an easy reading translation as it is it catches this gives you a little asterisk and if you go to the bottom of the page it says nations or peoples they get it you're supposed to be going down all these ethnic walls think of it as ethnicity ethnic they're gone there's no one that this living water isn't for it's for everyone all ethnicities but even before that we see something kind of interesting we see that philip is an early advocate for other races john 12 20 some greeks who had come to jerusalem for the passover celebration paid a visit to philip who was from beseda and galilee they said sir we want to meet jesus philip told andrew about it and they went together to ask jesus we see philip again in acts 8 for example so the believers they're kind of huddled up in jerusalem like a waterfall of the holy spirit they're huddled up in jerusalem and they're kind of becoming it says they're adding thousands to their numbers but they're kind of becoming like the mega churches today they're just stacking up not doing very much in one place so it says that a great wave of persecution comes over them and scatters them everywhere interesting now a side note for you guys do you know that people in other countries are praying for us do you know what they're praying for they're praying that we get persecuted there are actions blew my mind i'm going to try to work on it and have one of these individuals come here they say people from other countries they have people who are sent here to tell us how to do it right they send people here and they complain they say ministry missions in america is really expensive they send people here because the church has turned to commercialism we've become extremely complacent in commercialism okay sunday check done that's it wrong that's crazy the things people ask me for to do in this church i'm like i really just want to shut it all down sometimes so just to know they pray that we get persecuted so that we take it seriously so that we start praying actually we start relying on god good note acts 8 4 but the believers who are scattered preached the good news about jesus wherever they went philip for example went to the city of samaria and told the people about the messiah crowds listened intently to philip because they were eager to hear his message and see the miraculous signs he did many evil spirits were cast out screaming as they left their victims and many who had been paralyzed or lame were healed so there was great joy in that city i talked to some of my friends who are from other places other countries where they don't have so much you know what they say they're seeing that stuff happen like crazy miracles i guess maybe they're not so distracted so here's the thing peter and john pillars of the church they go to samaria to verify this ministry to validate it they pray for them there they baptize them in the holy spirit they start seeing amazing things on the way back to jerusalem they go through samaritan's towns and convert people it's incredible this is really significant next to the jews they're the first converts to christianity check this out acts 8 26 as for philip an angel of the lord said to him go down south the desert road that runs from jerusalem to gaza so he started out and he met the treasurer of ethiopia a eunuch of great authority under the candace the queen of ethiopia the eunuch had gone to jerusalem to worship and he was now returning seated in his carriage he was reading aloud from the book of the prophet isaiah so the holy spirit tells philip go to the carriage what are you reading do you understand it how can i understand without a teacher he says so philip proceeds to teach the eunuch from the book of isaiah jesus he shows him jesus they pass by a body of water and he says i want to get baptized awesome let's do it he baptizes him so think about this for a second the first fully gentile christian is black very significant talk about cultural breakdowns later in acts 13 we see a black man simeon but he's nicknamed niger he's called the black man in the church at antioch of syria there's five prominent leaders there paul and silas are among them they're sent out by the power and the direction of the holy spirit they're actually told not to go certain places two goes through they're listening and totally in line and obedient with god none of their own ideas they're traveling around now they get to antiochusia and they decide this is interesting to leave the jews so paul has this custom of going to the synagogue first in every single town that's what he does they're receiving it pretty well at first he gives a big long sermon but then the next week something happens they turn against him and so this is what paul says acts 13 46 then paul and barnabas spoke out boldly and declared it was necessary that we first preached the word of god to you jews but since you have rejected it and judged yourselves unworthy of eternal life we are offered to the ethni the gentiles for the lord gave us this command when he said i have made you a light to the same word there gentiles ethnic to bring salvation to the farthest corners of the earth later on paul makes a very interesting comment he's now in athens on mars hill he's about to talk to some philosophers who are going to debate with him says they like to just debate about every little thing there so what's paul going to do does he put his argument cap on is he gonna fight with him no he's really smart so he notices a little inscription that says to an unknown god on one of their altars ah i'm gonna bring this with me to the argument and instead of fighting with them he says you know i noticed that you guys are some pretty religious people complements them you know i saw an inscription unknown god let me tell you about that god acts 17 24 he is the god who made the world and everything in it since he is lord of heaven and earth he doesn't live in man-made temples and human hands can't serve his needs for he has no needs he himself gives life and breath to everything and he satisfies every need from one man some versions say blood he created all the nations ethnos there same word throughout the whole earth he decided beforehand when they should rise and fall and he determined their boundaries from one man he created all ethnicities the word of god says we are all brothers and sisters all of us and especially especially if we are in christ first john 2 9. if anyone claims i am living in the light but hates his brother that person is still living in darkness anyone who loves his brother is living in the light and does not cause others to stumble but anyone who hates a fellow believer is still living and walking in darkness such a person does not know the way to go having been blinded by the darkness how can someone say they love god but hate their brother galatians 3 26 for you are all children of god through faith in christ jesus and all who have been united with christ in baptism have put on christ like putting on new clothes there is no longer jew or gentile slave or free male or female for you are all one in christ jesus and now that you belong to christ you are the true children of abraham you are his heirs and god's promise to abraham belongs to you there are no longer ethnicities in christ we are all one in christ jesus if we are truly in him let me pray for you lord i thank you for everyone despite the weather who came to church today to be an active part of the body of christ and the unity of the holy spirit we thank you i thank you for each one of these individuals may you soften their hearts if they're hard so that they can really receive the holy spirit and by his direction his power they can become vehicles of love to deliver the good news about our lord jesus christ i ask these things in jesus name amen