New Ground
Week four - Summerville Needs Us
Luke 10:25-37
Bottom line: Go and love your actual neighbor. Now is our time and here are our neighbors.
“Go where I send you.”
How did you get to Summerville, South Carolina?
God wants to use us where we actually are to love our actual neighbors, to reach and serve and love our actual community.
Love God. Love your neighbor.
“Who is my neighbor?”
Context - Jesus has just sent out the 72 (by two’s because we need each other) and told them to share the good news and live the good news (eating at tables, healing the sick, doing what Jesus had been doing). He also told them the harvest was plentiful, but the workers were few; in other words, there aren’t a lack of people waiting to be brought into this story, but a lack of people going to get them. And so the 72 workers went and they returned with all kinds of great updates and joy about what they experienced. And then Luke turns immediately to another encounter Jesus has with someone who’s trying to figure out if they want to be a worker…
25 On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
26 “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”
27 He answered, “ ‘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, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
28 “You have answered correctly,”Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
29 But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
30 In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. 31 A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32 So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’
36 “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”
37 The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”
Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.” —Luke 10:25-37
The Samaritan was at that place at that time.
He could have said, “Not now. Not here. Not him.”
Everyone on this road was on their way to somewhere else. No one lived next door to this guy. But Jesus said the neighbor was the one who stopped to help - because he was there.
God put us
We are For Summerville.
- it means we are for you and for families and for our schools and for our actual neighbors. It means we are people who believe in showing up.
- part of a great movement of churches being FOR their communities, giving the good news feet
Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can. —John Wesley
It’s why it matters that we exist as a church.
God is using us to love and serve and reach people no one else is reaching
Building Update:
Construction documents in hand
Permits for sitework in hand (dashboard is green)
Meeting with the GC tomorrow to discuss project launch
Scheduled to close on construction loan this week…
Pray for loan closing.
Start giving.