FOR the City

Week 4 | Serve the City

Dean Pollard

June 26, 2022

How can we be a people who are FOR the city when the city keeps changing:

CONNECT - If we are going to be FOR the city, we first need to be FOR the church.
SHARE - Share the story of Jesus with the people that God brings around us.
WORK - We need to be a people who bring redemptive power to our work.

If we are going to be a people who are FOR our city, we are going to have to be a people who consistently serve the most vulnerable people in our city.

“Christian faith has been specially advanced through the loving service rendered to strangers, and through their care for the burial of the dead. It is a scandal that there is not a single Jew who is a beggar, and that the godless Galileans care not only for their own poor but for ours as
well; while those who belong to us look in vain for the help that we should render them.” —Roman Emperor Julian

“Christian’s revitalized life in Greco-Roman cites by providing new norms and new kinds of social relationships able to cope with many urgent urban problems. To cities filled with he homeless, impoverished, and strangers, Christians offered an immediate basis for attachments. To cities filled with orphans and widows, Christians provided a new and expanded sense of family. To cities torn by violent ethnic strife, Christians offered a new basis for social solidarity, and to cities faced with epidemic, fires and earthquakes, Christians offered effective nursing services. Thus, the early Christians ministered as a transformative movement that arose in response to the misery, chaos, fear and brutality of life in the Roman Empire.” —Takanori Inoue

This story answers two questions:
1. Who is my neighbor?
2. What does it look like to love my neighbor?

Luke 10:30 Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead.

Luke 10:31-32 Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. 32 So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.

Priest - descendants of Aaron
Levite - tribe of Levi

Why did they see a need right in front of them and then do nothing about it?

1. Fear

2. Inconvenience

Numbers 19:11-13 “Whoever touches the dead body of any person shall be unclean seven days. 12 He shall cleanse himself with the water on the third day and on the seventh day, and so be clean. But if he does not cleanse himself on the third day and on the seventh day, he will not become clean. 13 Whoever touches a dead person, the body of anyone who has died, and does not cleanse himself, defiles the tabernacle of the Lord, and that person shall be cut off from Israel; because the water for impurity was not thrown on him, he shall be unclean. His uncleanness is still on him.

Luke 10:31-33 Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. 32 So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion.

Luke 10:33 But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion.

Jesus demonstrated that love was shown with compassion in 4 stories:
1. Feeding the 5000
2. Jesus saw the crowds and they were sick
3. Widow who lost her son
4. Prodigal son

Luke 15:20 So he got up and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion for him, and ran and embraced him and kissed him

The same phrase Jesus uses to describe how the Samaritan responded to his dying enemy.
Same Phrase Jesus uses to describe how you love your neighbor

Luke 10:34 He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him.

Compassion: It’s not just seeing the need, it’s doing something about the need.