FAP SUNDAY SCHOOL LESSON SUNDAY, MARCH 8, 2026: "The Good Samaritan:Who Is My Neighbor? Luke 10:25–37

FORMER ADVENTISTS SUNDAY SCHOOL LESSON

SUNDAY, MARCH 8, 2026

Lesson: "The Good Samaritan:Who Is My Neighbor? 
Kingdom Love That Crosses Every Boundary

Scripture: Luke 10:25–37

Memory Verse: Luke 10:37b "You go, and do likewise."

Opening Prayer

Lord, soften our hearts today not only to be comforted, but to be challenged. Disrupt what we think we already know about love. Expand our vision of who our neighbor is, and give us the courage to cross the boundaries we have quietly drawn. May Your Spirit do in us what we cannot do on our own. In Jesus Name! Amen.

OPENING HOOK:

A lawyer came to Jesus and asked a question to TEST Him. By the time Jesus was done answering, the question had flipped around and it was testing US. Today's parable is not an answer. It is a mirror.

INTRODUCTION: The Most Dangerous Question 

Setting the Scene: Luke 10:25

An expert in the Law (a Torah scholar, a man of religious achievement) stands up. He already knows the rules. He asks: "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Pay close attention to the framing. He thinks in terms of DOING to EARN. He believes eternal life is a prize that belongs to the performance-minded.

"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?'" Luke 10:25–26, ESV

Cultural Bridge: SDA Background

Many of us came from a tradition that specialized in doing: keep the right day, eat the right food, follow the right prophet, read the right commentary. The good news is: that training taught us discipline and love for Scripture. The danger is: it can subtly replace trust with performance, and reduce love to a checklist.

Today's parable is not gentle. It does not congratulate the rule-keepers. It elevates the outsider. It disrupts performance religion at its very root.

Cultural Bridge: Filipino Regionalism

Before we read the parable, consider this: the Philippines has its own invisible boundaries. Tagalog vs. Bisaya. Manila vs. probinsya. Wealthy barangay vs. poor barangay. The educated vs. the uneducated. We know who "our people" are and quietly, we know who falls outside that circle.

Ask yourself as we read: Who is your Samaritan?

KEY THESIS:

True Kingdom love is costly, indiscriminate, and initiative-taking not rule-following in disguise. The question is not 'Who qualifies as my neighbor?' The question is: 'What kind of person am I becoming?'

Four Responses to a Man in Need

"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..." Luke 10:30–37, ESV

CHARACTER 1:The Robbers | v. 30

The Robbers v. 30

They saw a person and asked: "What can we GET from him?" They exploited the man's vulnerability. They took everything his clothing, his dignity, his safety and left him for dead. This is self-interest at its most naked.

Application: The Commodification of People:

• We live in a world that measures human beings by their usefulness. Employees are resources. Migrants are labor. The poor are problems.

• Even in churches, people can become projects targets for conversion, sources of tithe, audience for our ministries.

• The robbers' question haunts every economy, every organization, and sometimes every heart: What can I get from this person?

REFLECTION QUESTION:

Have you ever treated someone as a means to your end a transaction rather than a person? This is the robber's spirit, even in respectable clothes.

CHARACTER 2: The Priest & Levite | vv. 31–32

The Priest v. 31

He saw the man. He was on the same road. He deliberately crossed to the other side. This is not ignorance it is calculated avoidance.

The Levite v. 32

Same road. Same sight. Same response. Two men from Israel's religious elite the most trained, most devoted, most doctrinally sophisticated people alive and both walked past.

Why Did They Pass By? (Exploring Possible Rationales):

• RITUAL PURITY: Contact with a dying or dead man made a priest ceremonially unclean (Lev. 21:1-3). To serve in the Temple, he needed to remain clean. His religious system gave him an excuse.

• FEAR: The Jericho road was notorious for bandits. The man's condition might be a trap. Better safe than holy.

• INCONVENIENCE: He had places to be, appointments to keep, sermons to preach, meetings to attend.

• COMPARTMENTALIZATION: "This is not my department. Social services handle this. Let someone else."

KEY INSIGHT: New Covenant Theology Application:

The ceremonial purity system is fulfilled in Christ (Heb. 10:1-14). We are no longer governed by codes that allow us to justify bypassing a suffering person. Under the New Covenant, there is NO religious system that gives you a pass on human need. If your theology is making you less compassionate not more something is wrong.

SDA-Specific Application:

Many of us were trained in elaborate doctrinal systems 28 Fundamental Beliefs, the investigative judgment, health reform, prophetic timelines. We learned to argue. We learned to research. Did we also learn to see?

It is possible to know the exact prophetic fulfillment of Daniel 8:14 and still cross to the other side of the road when someone is bleeding. Religious sophistication and human compassion are not automatically the same thing.

APPLICATION:

The Kingdom of God advances as the Church becomes present to suffering, not absent from it. Every time a Christian crosses to the other side past the homeless person, past the marginalized colleague, past the broken family member they slow the advance of the Kingdom. Presence is a Kingdom act.

CHARACTER 3: The Good Samaritan | vv. 33–35

The Samaritan vv. 33–35

He had every cultural, ethnic, and religious reason NOT to help. Jews despised Samaritans as half-breed heretics with wrong worship and wrong theology. And yet he stopped. He acted. He gave everything.

Who Were the Samaritans?

• Samaritans were descendants of Israelites who intermarried with Assyrian settlers after the exile (2 Kings 17:24-33).

• They worshipped God on Mount Gerizim instead of Jerusalem (John 4:20). Jews called this false worship.

• Strict Jews avoided all contact with Samaritans. Some spat on the ground when passing a Samaritan village.

• In this culture, for a Samaritan to be the HERO of a story told by a Jewish rabbi was deeply, deliberately shocking.

Anatomy of Samaritan Love: Every Detail is Sacrificial

HIS ACTION: WHAT IT COST HIM

• He saw him (v. 33): He did not look away. Seeing is itself an act of love.

• He had compassion (v. 33): Splanchnizomai - gut-level, visceral mercy. He felt the man's pain in his own body.
  
  
• He went to him (v. 34):  He crossed social, ethnic, and religious lines without hesitation.

• He bound his wounds (v. 34):  Physical service. Hands in blood. Undignified, intimate, necessary.
  
  
• He poured oil and wine (v. 34) His own supplies not a hospital's, not the government's. His personal resources.
  
  
• He put him on his own animal (v. 34) He walked. The wounded man rode. Status reversed by love.
  
  
• He brought him to an inn (v. 34) He took him somewhere safe not his own home, but he secured shelter.
  
  
• He paid for his care (v. 35) Two denarii roughly two days' wages. Out of his own pocket, no reimbursement expected.
  
  
• He promised to return (v. 35) He committed to ongoing relationship, not a one-time transaction.

Greek Word Study: Splanchnizomai

The word translated "had compassion" in verse 33 is splanchnizomai (σπλαγχνίζομαι). It derives from splanchna the bowels, the inward parts. In Hebrew thought, the gut was the seat of deep emotion. This word describes an involuntary, physical response to another person's suffering. It is not a feeling you decide to have. It is a feeling that overtakes you.

This same word is used for Jesus in Matthew 9:36 when He saw the crowds. It describes the Father in the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:20). The Samaritan felt what Jesus feels. His compassion was not policy it was person-to-person encounter.

FILIPINO CULTURAL ILLUSTRATION: Malasakit:

Filipino culture has a word for this: malasakit. Genuine concern and care for another person not out of duty, not for reward, but because their pain becomes your pain. The Samaritan embodies Kingdom malasakit elevated to its highest form. This is not foreign to Filipino instinct. Jesus is calling you to live what your culture already recognizes as beautiful.

The Samaritan as Type of Christ

It is not an accident that Jesus who was himself despised and rejected by the religious establishment (Isaiah 53:3; John 8:48, where Jews called Him a Samaritan as an insult!) chose a Samaritan as His hero. There is a deep, deliberate theology here:

• Jesus came from outside the religious elite to rescue those the elite had abandoned.

• He crossed every boundary divine to human, holy to broken in the Incarnation.

• He poured out His own life as a resource for our healing (Isaiah 53:5).

• He placed us on His own life and bore us to safety.

• He paid the full price of our redemption and promised to return (John 14:3).

The Cross is the ultimate Good Samaritan act. Jesus is not just telling a story about how to be a good person. He is revealing who He is and what love, rooted in Him, looks like in daily life.

CHARACTER 4: Jesus' Redirected Question | vv. 36–37

"Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers' hands?" He said, "The one who showed him mercy." And Jesus said to him, "You go, and do likewise." Luke 10:36–37, ESV

The Question That Changed the Question:

The lawyer asked: "Who is my neighbor?" He was looking for the boundary of his obligation. If Jesus defines neighbor narrowly, the lawyer is off the hook for most people.

Jesus refuses to answer that question. He reframes the entire inquiry. He asks instead: Which of these three PROVED TO BE a neighbor? The shift is profound:

• FROM: "Who qualifies for my love?" a sorting question

• TO: "Am I becoming the kind of person who loves?" a character question

• FROM: Looking for the limit of the law

• TO: Living from the depths of the Spirit

THE POINT:

Stop defining the boundary of your love. Start BEING a neighbor. Love is not a boundary question it is a character question. The Kingdom does not ask 'How little love can I give and still qualify?' It asks 'How much love can I give, shaped by the One who gave everything?'

The Lawyer's Answer (v. 37a):

Notice: the lawyer cannot even bring himself to say "the Samaritan." He says only "the one who showed him mercy." The prejudice runs so deep he avoids the name. But he got the answer right. And Jesus does not shame him. Jesus simply says: "You go, and do likewise."

This is grace and demand in one sentence. This is the voice of the New Covenant: not 'Do more to earn' but 'Go and embody what you have seen.'

IV. APPLICATION FOR DAILY LIVING 

Personal Application

• Who is the person on the side of the road in your life THIS WEEK?

• A struggling co-worker you have been carefully not seeing?

• A family member you have crossed to the other side to avoid?

• A former church member from your SDA days who you left behind without closure?

• An elderly neighbor whose name you do not know?

Community Application: For Former SDAs Specifically

Many of us in this congregation know what it is to be the wounded man on the road. We left a community, or were pushed out of one. We know the experience of religious people passing by of leaders prioritizing institutional reputation over our pain.

Let that experience be a teacher, not a poison. Use the memory of being wounded to cultivate compassion, not bitterness. The best former-SDA witness is not an argument. It is a life of radical, boundary-crossing love that proves the Gospel is alive.

Social & Structural Application

Note that the Samaritan addressed both immediate physical need AND long-term systemic provision (the inn, the promised return). Kingdom love does not choose between charity and justice it pursues both:

• Immediate: Feed the hungry, visit the sick, shelter the vulnerable.

• Long-term: Advocate for structures that reduce the number of people being beaten and left on roads.

• Both hands of the Kingdom: immediate mercy and long-term flourishing are in this story.

Cross-Cultural Application

Every culture has its Samaritan, the group deemed theologically suspect, ethnically inferior, or socially unworthy. In the Philippines, consider:

• Indigenous peoples (IPs): marginalized by both government and mainstream church culture

• Muslims in Mindanao: do we see them as neighbors or threats?

• LGBTQ+ individuals: can we embody compassion before we debate theology?

• The extremely poor in informal settler areas: does our church have a theology of the squatter?

Kingdom love crosses these lines. Not because it ignores conviction, but because it refuses to use conviction as a reason to avoid presence.

CHALLENGE FOR YOUTH:

True strength is using your resources time, money, social capital, skills for others. This week: identify ONE person in your world who is on the side of the road. Do ONE concrete act of costly kindness. Do not post it. Do not announce it. Just do it. And report back next week on how it felt.

The Spirit and Compassion

The Spirit does not only convict us of sin. He empowers us for acts of mercy. The Greek word parakletos (Comforter/Helper) describes someone who comes alongside the suffering. The Spirit is Himself the ultimate Good Samaritan in our inner lives and He calls us to be that presence for others.

Invitation: Share a story with the congregation a time when you felt the Spirit prompt you toward an act of compassion you would not naturally have chosen. This is the Spirit's kingdom work in real time.

CONCLUSION

Summary of the Journey

The Robbers

What can I GET from you? (Exploitation)

The Priest

I cannot help without losing something (Religious self-protection)

The Levite

This is not my responsibility (Systemic avoidance)

The Samaritan

What do you NEED from me? (Costly, indiscriminate love)

Jesus

He IS the Good Samaritan  (The Cross is the act)

The Gospel and Ethics Are Inseparable

We do not love our neighbors in order to earn God's favor. We love our neighbors because we have already received God's favor lavishly, at infinite cost, through the One who crossed every boundary to reach us.

"We love because he first loved us." 1 John 4:19

Invitation to Surrender Your Boundaries

• Today's invitation is not a call to try harder. It is an invitation to be honest about the invisible lines you have drawn. Where have you been the Priest? The Levite? Whose face have you avoided?

• Come and surrender those invisible lines to God. Ask the Spirit to give you splanchnizomai gut-level compassion for the specific person He is bringing to your mind right now.
  
  
• Pray: "Lord, show me who is on the side of my road. Make me the neighbor they need. Give me the courage and resources to cross to them. Not to earn but because You crossed to me."

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

Additional Biblical Parallels 'Who Is My Neighbor?' Across Scripture

• Leviticus 19:18 "Love your neighbor as yourself" the original commandment. But note: in context it was addressed to fellow Israelites.

• Leviticus 19:34 "Love the stranger as yourself, for you were strangers in Egypt." The boundary was already expanding before Jesus!

• Ruth 2 A Moabite (another despised outsider) embodies covenant faithfulness for Naomi. Boaz is a type of the Good Samaritan (and Christ) extending kinsman-redeemer love.

• 2 Kings 17:24-33 The historical background of the Samaritan people helps the audience understand the depth of the cultural barrier.

• John 4:1-42 Jesus crosses the Jewish-Samaritan boundary again, this time with the woman at the well. "Jews have no dealings with Samaritans" (v. 9). Jesus ignores this boundary entirely.

• Matthew 25:31-46 "Whatever you did for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me." The King identifies with the suffering neighbor. This is not works-salvation it is the fruit of Kingdom citizenship made visible.

• James 2:14-17 "If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, be warmed and filled,' without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?" Faith without works is dead.

Five Questions for Small Group Discussion

• 1. Who is the "Samaritan" in your cultural context the person your community has taught you to distrust or dismiss? What would it look like to receive help from that person?

• 2. The Priest and Levite had a religious reason to walk past. What religious or doctrinal reasons have you used (consciously or unconsciously) to avoid a person in need?

• 3. Jesus says "You go, and do likewise" not "You feel, and do likewise." Why does Kingdom love require action before feeling? Have you ever acted in love and felt it afterward?

• 4. The Samaritan gave two denarii and promised to return. How does sustained, long-term involvement in others' lives differ from one-time charity? What does that look like practically?

• 5. How has your journey out of Adventism shaped your capacity for compassion or your barriers to it? What wounds do you carry that God might want to redeem into a ministry of presence?

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