The Church/The Body in the Heart of the Father

Recently, well over the past year or two, The Lord has been taking me on quite the journey with the focus being squarely on the church.
What is the church? What does it look like? Who makes up the church? How does it/should it operate? etc...
These are questions that have been on my mind for ages and I believe The Lord has shown me some great insights into the church from His word - the Bible.
I think the next few blogs I write will be about this theme since it is on my mind a fair bit recently.
I believe the church has been on the heart of the Father since before the foundation of the earth and we can see that in so many places in Scripture.

To kick off this mini series of blogs I want to repost what The Lord showed me through the story of the Good Samaritan. Although I posted it a while ago, it was the first blog I wrote in this theme.

The Good Samaritan Luke 10

Luke 10:30-35

Then Jesus answered and said: “A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, who stripped him of his clothing, wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a certain priest came down that road. And when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. Likewise a Levite, when he arrived at the place, came and looked, and passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was. And when he saw him, he had compassion. So he went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; and he set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. On the next day, when he departed, he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said to him, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I come again, I will repay you.’

I have been pondering this story for a while now.

In my meditations I believe God has shown me a picture of the church of Jesus Christ through this parable.

It doesn’t take much imagination to suppose that the poor, beaten traveller is a picture of any one of us before we knew the Lord. The world beat us down, stripped us bare and left us for dead on the roadside. I know it was that way for me. Before I knew Jesus, I was a disaster- a mixed-up, broken-down, pitiful creature.

It is of great importance in this story that the man went down a road he knew to be dangerous and he went of his own accord. Nobody forced him to go but danger wasn’t long in catching up with him. How many times have we deliberately entered a pathway we know to be dangerous despite every attempt at warning us to the contrary? But there are those of us who seem always to want to learn the hard way.

As I said, danger found him on this road and left him bloodied and bruised. It was in this state that we meet the other characters in this parable; the priest, the Levite and the Samaritan.

Anyway, I know there is much more that can be said about the characters in this part of the story but I will not dwell on it since this is not really what God was speaking to me in this instance.

What I want to look at is the Samaritan. Here is a man, despised by the religious, shunned by the righteous and rejected by the ruling classes.

Is this not a picture of our Saviour?  He was despised, shunned and rejected and yet He humbled Himself to stop and pick me up from the side of the road, where I lay dying in my own sin, and went about the business of making me clean. He had compassion, even though I had chosen this path for myself! My Saviour poured in the oil and the wine as the old song says-‘the kind that restoreth my soul’. He picked me up, bandaged my wounds and carried me when I was too weak to walk by myself.

What a Saviour!!

But here is the most exciting part that God has been showing me. Where did the Samaritan take the man to? He took him to the Inn right? He took care of the man at the inn.

He charged the innkeeper at the inn to take care of the poor man while he was away and gave him the money that he would need to carry out this request. He even promised to repay him for any extra he might spend when he returned.

So, is not the inn a great picture of the church? An inn in the New Testament times was not just a lodging place but a place of refuge, a place where one could stay and be cared for and nourished. Isn’t that the church? Far more than a lodging place-isn’t it a place where Jesus places the broken-those who have been beaten by the world and the religious- to be cared for and nourished to full health?

Hasn’t Jesus provided all the resources we need to take care of the down-trodden who enter the inn in the same state we once came? Hasn’t he given us His Spirit to equip and strengthen us for the task?

What more do we need?

If that’s not enough, we have his promise to return. The Samaritan only left 2 denarii for the care of this man. That was equivalent to about 2 day’s wages in those days. That tells me that he wasn’t planning to stay away for too long. He was going to return soon.

Jesus is coming back soon to gather all those he has left at the inn. He will not delay much longer and no matter what we have spent to take care of his people, he will repay in full!!!

I want to encourage you, as God has been encouraging me, not be stingy with your resources. Jesus has given us everything we have in order that there is no lack at the Inn. Remember the state we were in when we first entered. Look around and see those who are broken, weary and in need of nourishment. Don’t worry about what it might cost, we cannot out-give Jesus. He will repay us for all we give to His people, in His name!

This whole story is positioned between two commands:

1. ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,’ and ‘your neighbor as yourself.’ … do this and you will live.

2. “Go and do likewise.”

Couldn’t be any clearer than that! Could it?