February 8 | Luke 10:25-37 | The Good Samaritan
Share a time when you talked yourself out of doing something, or when someone else talked you out of it. It can be something you’re glad you didn’t do or something you wish you’d done differently.
Read Luke 10:25-28. How might the lawyer’s first question be a test? What is the simple answer to this test?
Read Luke 10:29-35. The Samaritan’s role as the hero shatters the lawyer’s line between his neighbors and his enemies—his enemy is also his neighbor. It’s easy for a person or group of people to become the automatic villain of every story. How do these stories permeate our culture? What person or group of people are you tempted to reject as an enemy?
Read these 5 verses that mention “mercy.” You may need to look at some surrounding verses as well. Luke 1:50, 54, 58, 72, 78. How is mercy characterized? How does Jesus fulfill this hope of mercy at the end of Luke’s Gospel?
Read Luke 10:36-37. Why is it important to know that we have received God’s mercy in Christ before being sent out to love?
Respond to this quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Cost of Disicpleship about this very parable: “Every moment and every situation challenges us to action and to obedience. We have literally no time to sit down and ask ourselves whether so-and-so is our neighbour or not… You can only know and think about it by actually doing it. You can only learn what obedience is by obeying.”
Pray as a group, sharing opportunities that you have to love that are simple and immediate, though costly.