Pentecost 8 Sermon: Unearned Inheritance

Preached on Luke 10:25-37
The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost — Proper 10C
10 July AD 2016

Title: Unearned Inheritance (MP3 Audio)

Summary: The teacher of the Law tested Jesus with a question that made sense to him but is nonsense to God. He confused Law and Gospel, asking how to earn a gift, specifically, the inheritance of eternal life. Jesus’s story of the Samaritan continued to point the man down the path of works, evidently because He judged the man unready to grasp salvation by grace through faith.

The lawyer couldn’t earn what was already God’s gift through the same Jesus whom he came to challenge. We inherit eternal life because Christ died and left everything to us in His “will” — His testament of body given and blood shed on the cross. We can do nothing to inherit because “it is finished (John 19:30)” and we possess our inheritance through God-given faith.

Text: And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”

He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?”

And he answered, “You shall 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 your neighbor as yourself.”

And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”

But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

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. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. 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. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’ Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?”

He said, “The one who showed him mercy.”

And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.” Luke 10:25-37

Scripture quoted from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Audio: Click to hear the MP3 of Unearned Inheritance.

Illustration: Vincent van Gogh, 1853-1890. Good Samaritan (1890), from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. [retrieved July 12, 2016]. Click for original source.

NB: A few people have had problems trying to play the inline audio with Windows Media Player. If this occurs, you can either change to QuickTime or another default browser player, copy and paste the link directly into a selected player, or download it to your computer, where it seems to work regardless of which player. Several folks have suggested VLC Player from VideoLAN.

Other Readings: Psalm 41; Leviticus 18:1-5, 19:9-18; Colossians 1:1-14