Key points
- 1
1All of us have a divine 'audit' coming, not just for money but for time, giftedness, energy, and the people God placed in our sphere of influence.
“Your sphere of influence is not an accident. The people who are in your orbit or that you orbit around are not an accident”
A story from life
Story about the preacher's son Peyton navigating junior high priorities and shoe shopping
A story from life
Story about keeping his homecoming crown into college and realizing it didn't matter
- 2
2The expert in the law tried to shrink the definition of 'neighbor' to only people like himself, but the law demands perfect love of God and neighbor, which no one can achieve on their own.
- 3
3Jesus deliberately makes a hated Samaritan the hero of the story to shatter the religious elite's boundaries around who deserves compassion.
- 4
4The Samaritan shows 'splagchnizomai'-style, gut-level compassion, the same womb-like compassion God reveals as His own character to Moses.
- 5
5Five self-examining questions for evangelism: margin (am I interruptible?), meekness (can my ego take the discomfort?), means (does it cost me anything?), mercy (does my heart break for the lost?), and mission (will I say 'send me').
“If it's effortless, it's not love”
“I dare not lay before the Lord a sacrifice which costs me nothing”
“I'm not sure if a man is saved if he's not afraid of the fact that someone else is not”
A story from life
Story about his late wife and the Old Testament account of David refusing a free altar, 'I dare not lay before the Lord a sacrifice which costs me nothing'
A story from life
Story about taking his son bowling, being delayed, and engaging Jehovah's Witnesses at San Diego State
- 6
6On a deeper level, the parable is really about Jesus Himself, the rejected One who crossed the street for spiritually dead humanity, bound our wounds, and paid the ultimate price.
“Jesus is not asking me to do one thing that he hasn't done for me infinitely greater on a cosmic scale”
Illustration
Video testimonies from high school students about their experience at summer camp
Application
Chris frames the takeaway as deeply personal: he's preaching this sermon to himself first. The call is to stop settling for a compartmentalized faith that avoids discomfort, and instead ask five honest questions—do I have margin to be interrupted, meekness to look weird, willingness to let love cost me something, mercy that grieves for the lost, and readiness to say "send me"? The people already in your daily orbit—coworkers, neighbors, family—are not there by accident. Since Jesus crossed every boundary to rescue us while we were spiritually dead, His people are asked to do nothing harder than what He already did for us. The invitation is to let that truth move from head to gut, and actually cross the street for someone this week.
