Loving Outside The Lines

One of the first important lessons we learn as children is coloring.

Seriously. A lot of important skills are developed while we sit for hours in with that magic box of crayons and those wonderful coloring books.

Can anyone here remember the thrill of being handed a brand new coloring book filled with fresh pages just waiting to be filled? And we carried all the power to do with those pictures as we will.

Then the day came when we were awaken from our freedom and told that the point of the venture to which we had been lead was to stay inside the lines. We were rewarded for coloring inside the lines.

I’m not here this morning to say that coloring inside the lines is bad, but I think we took something from those early days and transferred it to the rest of our lives.

We’ve learned to stay inside the lines; to live where it is comfortable, not necessarily where it is best. We settle for routine when right outside those lines are opportunities that would make our lives so much richer.

That’s never more true than learning to love outside the lines.

That’s the issue this lawyer faced as he questioned Jesus Christ, “And just who is my neighbor anyway?”  

Jesus had been fielding questions of various religious leaders who were trying to trip Him up in his teaching. Finally one “deep thinker” stepped forward and asked the question, “What must I do to receive eternal life?” (They wanted to know if Jesus was going to teach some other way to heaven than what they had taught.)

Jesus simply turned the tables and asked a question of His questioner: “What does the Bible say?” “What does the law of Moses say? How do you read it?” (Luke 10:26 NLT)

The man’s first response was the right answer:

“The man answered, ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.’ And ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27) That was a direct quote from the Old Testament and the man got it right.

You want eternal life? Give God all of yourself and demonstrate that by loving your neighbor as yourself. (By the way, that command is so important that it is repeated no less than twelve times in the New Testament!)

The man had all the right answers. He knew exactly what colors went where on the picture. He had all the right answers, but he was still missing the point. And he knew it.

That’s why the passage says that the man wanted to justify his actions.

He wanted to justify his life before all of his friends and in front of Jesus.

Since no one can prove whether or not I’m loving God with all my heart, soul, strength and mind (only God and I know that one for sure), then the only outward sign is whether or not I’m loving my neighbor.

So… “Who is my neighbor?”

This guy wanted to make sure exactly who his neighbors were because he really didn’t want to waste his time loving anyone else. Just God…just the people he had to…nothing more.

That’s when Jesus turned it all around with the story of the Good Samaritan that Melinda shared a few minutes ago.

Who is my neighbor? Those who need our mercy the most.

Jesus was challenging this man to love outside the lines.

He was challenging this man to go beyond his personal comfort zone.

That’s where the story of the Good Samaritan fits. It’s a challenge to love outside our lines.

You see all of us have an idea of who our neighbors are. We all have a mental and emotional list of the people we want to love and care for.

Sure, within those lines are a few people that we are really proud of ourselves for loving. There are always a few that are unloving and unlovely that we go out of our way to care for. But that’s not what Jesus is talking about here.

He wants us to love outside the lines we’ve placed in our lives.

Let me ask it this way.

Who are the people, what kinds of people, what “rank” of people do you avoid at all costs?

That beat up Jewish guy sitting alongside the road that afternoon was not someone the Samaritan would typically have been friends with. On the contrary, under normal circumstances the Jewish man would have ran from the Samaritan and the Samaritan might have done the same.

Who do you normally avoid? Now picture Jesus’ description of the beaten and battered man laying by that road.

Inside this brief description of a true neighbor Jesus lays out the three step process to loving outside the lines.

Three Steps To Loving Outside The Lines

(1) To Love Outside The Lines You’ve Gotta CARE

“and when he saw the man, he felt…”

That seems so simple but so many refuse to see and most refuse to feel. Just look back at our passage.

“By chance a Jewish priest came along; but when he saw the man lying there, he crossed to the other side of the road and passed him by. A Temple assistant  walked over and looked at him lying there, but he also passed by on the other side” Luke 10:31-32

The passage reminds me of a bad car wreck on Highway 91. It’s a mess, traffic is backed up and you find two kinds of drivers. First there are those who just ignore the carnage and try to get by it as quickly as possible. Then there are the “looky-loos” who slow down and get the best look they possibly can. However, their only reason for looking is to see how bad the accident really is. They really don’t care.

That’s what happened alongside the road that day.

The priest just passed by ignoring the dying man and the Levite walked over to get a better view. But both never really saw the man or his hurt. They never saw. They never felt. They didn’t care.

By the way, there were pretty good chances that this man was one of their own! Historians tell us that 12,000 priests lived in and around the city of Jericho.

Jerusalem set up on top of a mountain. Jericho was down in a valley. Jericho was a nice place to live. So many of the priests and Levites (temple assistants) lived in Jericho and commuted to Israel when it was their rotation in the Temple.

After they had fulfilled their yearly duties in at the Temple in Jerusalem, they would make the eighteen mile trip back to Jericho on what was known as the “Bloody Way”. It was the most traveled road in Israel. It wound back and forth down the mountain through deep ravines. It was also pretty steep, a 3,500 feet decent from Jerusalem to Jericho.

And the “Bloody Way” was lined with bandits who would prey on the unsuspecting – especially those traveling alone. So it was not unusual to see someone beaten or possibly dead lying along side the road. It happened all the time.

So the priest and the Levite just didn’t care. In many ways they were jaded, calloused by it all. And there were good chances that the guy lying in the ditch that day was someone they may have known from the Temple. But they just didn’t care!

But look at the Samaritan. He was different. He saw the man. He saw past his nakedness, past his bruises, past his race and saw his hurt.

And he felt. The Bible tells us that he “felt deep pity”.  He didn’t just feel sorry for the man, it got him right in the  gut. That’s what the phrase means. It’s often translated compassion. It means to feel it in the gut.

Have you ever felt that way? Ever met someone, or seem someone hurting and you started to hurt to? You hurt to the point that you really felt it in the gut?

There’s an interesting phrase found in older translations of the Bible. It’s found in First John 3:17 in the King James Translation. It speaks of “bowels of compassion”. Now, from an American mindset, that doesn’t seem to fit very well, “My bowels feel for you…”, but to the Middle Eastern mind it made great sense, because when they really felt, they felt it in their gut!

This Samaritan felt it in his gut. He began to love outside the lines when he actually began to care.

I don’t know why he cared. He could have cared because he had experienced a beating and robbery himself. He could have cared because he had had a friend who had suffered the same. But quite possibly he cared simply because he cared.

One of the most powerful things we can do as followers of Jesus Christ is to simply care because Jesus cared.

We can love others because Jesus loved us. We’ve experienced His love.

This man loved outside the lines because he cared!

But simply “feeling someone’s pain” is not enough. We have to go beyond just caring inside and let it affect how we act on the outside.

(2) To Love Outside The Lines You’ve Gotta STEP INTO THEIR WORLD

I was intrigued by the words in the story…”kneeling…soothed…his own donkey…took to an inn…took care”

The Samaritan stepped into the beaten man’s world.

He knelt beside the man. Think of that powerful scene.

Here is a Samaritan business man rich enough to have a donkey to travel the road to and from Jerusalem. (It would sort of be like driving a Lexus today and seeing someone stranded with a Hugo on the shoulder of the road.)

The Samaritan stops his donkey, gets down, and then kneels down so that he can comfort this beaten man.

He stepped out of his world into the man’s world.

He then took out his first-aid kit and treated his injuries.

But he went even farther.

Then the Samaritan picks up the man, places him in his Lexus, I mean on his donkey, and walks down the mountainside toward an inn.

Another interesting note: there is nothing between Jerusalem and Jericho. It’s sort of like the trip from Idyllwild to Banning, just a lot of hairpin turns and steep declines. But about half-way from Jerusalem to Jericho archeologists have uncovered this inn. The only place along the road to Jericho.

At the inn the Samaritan continued to care for the wounded man.

I want you to get this. He didn’t just call 911 and then head out on his way – he stepped into the wounded man’s world. He stooped down, got involved in the mess of his life and nursed him. He ministered to the wounded man.

If we are ever going to love outside the lines we’re going to have to step outside those lines.

We’re going to have to get off our donkeys. We’ve got to get off our “high horse” as the old English used to say and enter their lives.

That doesn’t mean we live their lifestyle, this Samaritan would never had wanted to be a Jew. Jews and Samaritans were typically culturally opposites.

What it does mean is we don’t shun or push other people away because they are different then we are. We accept the people (even though we may not accept their lifestyle and sin).

But what is even more amazing to be is that this Samaritan brought this wounded man into his world. He took this man into his way of life.

He placed the man on his donkey. He took the wounded man to his inn and put him in his room. Then he took care of him.

You can’t love outside the lines if you don’t care and if you are not willing to step outside your world and bring people into yours!

Who needs you to step into their world? It doesn’t take much to realize that just about everyone we meet is hurting in one way or another. We do a great job covering up our hurts, but they are still there.

The key is caring. If you are willing to see and feel, you will have no lack of people who you can minister to every day.

So what’s the problem? Why don’t more of us show that we care? Why don’t more of us get involved in people’s lives outside our own comfort zone? Why aren’t we willing to really act out Christ’s love to people who don’t seem very lovely?

It’s this final point that gets all of us…

To love outside the lines, it will cost and it will cost a lot!

(3) To Love Outside The Lines You’ve Gotta BE WILLING TO PAY THE PRICE

Hey, inns are not cheap. And I’m not sure that the oil and wine he used to make the first-aid cream was that inexpensive either. It was probably what he was going to use to make his lunch and dinner.

But the Samaritan didn’t have a second thought about using what he had to help this guy.

He was willing to pay the price.

When he arrived at the inn he paid again. As I said, rooms don’t come cheap.

He probably paid an even greater price.

Imagine the looks he must have gotten as he carried in that beaten, wounded, neglected Jew. Imagine what others must have thought and said when they saw him, a Samaritan, touching a Jew (possibly a Jewish priest).

As I shared before, my take is that the Samaritan was probably a rich Samaritan. Imagine what his own friends might have thought. There he was stooping to such a low level.

Sometimes people will never understand. Most often they will misunderstand.

If we’re going to color outside the lines we have to be willing to pay the price.

Getting involved with people outside our comfort zone costs us a lot.

But there is no greater way to show our love, to show God’s love than by stepping past our lines.

Isn’t that what Jesus did? The Apostle Paul describes it in Philippians chapter two:

“Though he was God, he did not demand and cling to his rights as God. He made himself nothing; he took the humble position of a slave and appeared in human form. And in human form he obediently humbled himself even further by dying a criminal’s death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:6-8 NLT)

Jesus stepped down from heaven, outside His world into ours. He stooped down to our level so that our hurts, our sins might be forgiven. It cost Him a lot!

Jesus was willing to pay the price so that we could have relationship with Him.

It costs to love outside the lines.

It costs now – but it keeps on costing.

Verse 35 of Luke chapter ten says “The next day he handed the innkeep two pieces of silver (about two days wages) and told him to take care of the man. ‘If his bill runs higher than that,’ he said, ‘I’ll pay the difference the next time I am here.”

So many times in this story the Samaritan could have simply walked away. He could have helped a little than left. But he stayed, he helped, he invested in this wounded Jew’s life.

Then he was willing to pay more.

The cost of loving outside the lines is not just the cost of getting involved it’s the cost of staying involved.

Here is why this is so important. Someone said it this way.

“People will not care what we know until they know that we care.”

We have the greatest message in the entire world to share. God loves people and wants to have an intimate relationship with them. He wants to heal their hurts and forgive their sins.

But people will not listen to that message until we show that we really care, that we care enough to step outside our lines and into their world. They need to see that we are willing to invest ourselves in them.

And that’s going to cost.

If we’re willing to pay the difference – it will make the difference.

Loving outside the lines…

It takes caring – seeing and feeling.

It takes stepping outside our world into the world of those who hurt.

And it’s going to cost – we have to be willing to pay the price.

Now look at that heart on your outline this morning. Think for a minute about people inside your heart that need God’s love through you.

Write down a name or two before we go any father. Who do you know needs you. Those should be the easiest to love.

Now look at that space outside the lines. Who’s there? Just name one or two people outside your lines that you already know God is edging you toward.

Yeah I know that’s not too comfortable, but who are they.

Now that you’ve written those names down; how about praying this prayer with me?

“Dear Lord,

            I want to love outside the lines. I’ll be honest with You, there have been times when I just didn’t want to see and certainly did not want to feel for the people who make be uncomfortable. But I really do want to show Your love outside my lines.

            This morning I recommit my life to loving people for You.

            I really do want to care.

            I’m willing to get off my high horse and step into a world that needs your love. Please show me who You want me to love.

            I’m willing to pay the price.

            Would you give me the strength and spiritual courage to love outside the lines because I already know I can’t do it without your help?

            Thank you, Lord Jesus, for being willing to step outside of Your world and come to mine so that I could have an intimate relationship with You.

AMEN”

(c) Paul Newell 2004

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