What does First B Jackson teach about good samaritan?
Drawn from the messages where it was actually addressed: the words said from the front, the passages taught, and where to hear the whole thing.
At First B Jackson, the teaching on the Good Samaritan starts with an uncomfortable question: who actually counts as a neighbor? The parable in Luke 10 is the center of gravity. Pastor Brian made clear that when the lawyer asked Jesus "who is my neighbor?", he was really asking how small he could draw the circle. Jesus refused to give him a minimum. The hero of the story is not the priest or the Levite, the trusted religious insiders, but a Samaritan, a figure the original audience would have despised. Brian connected this to a live exercise in which the congregation named the group they found most hostile to the gospel, and then named that category as roughly equivalent to the Samaritan. That is the point: the circle has no edge.
Brad picked up the same parable and pressed it toward daily life. Your neighbor, he said, is whoever you are in context with: the people at your job, in your neighborhood, at your kids' sports. The Samaritan did not pause to calculate whether the injured man deserved help or whether the timing was convenient. He felt compassion and acted on it at personal cost, with no expectation of being repaid. Brad defined the love the parable demonstrates as sacrificial and active. If it does not cost you something, it is not agape love. That applies to money, to service, and especially to time. He quoted C.S. Lewis on there being no ordinary people and pressed the question of whether we are using people to get things or using things to get people.
Pastor Ray, working through Romans 13:8-10, showed that this is not a New Testament invention. The command to love your neighbor as yourself comes from Leviticus, Jesus carries it forward, and Paul sums up the commandments under it. The Good Samaritan, Ray noted, demonstrated nearly every quality from the Romans 12 list without being told to. The debt to love, unlike any financial debt, is one that never gets paid off. It keeps moving outward past the congregation, past the comfortable, past the people who look like us.
Taught from Luke 10:25-37 · Ephesians 2:8-10 · Romans 13:8-10 · 1 Corinthians 13 · Luke 6:35-36
The passage taught · 1 John 4 (implied)
1 Beloved, don’t believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
2 By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit who confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God,
3 and every spirit who doesn’t confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God, and this is the spirit of the Antichrist, of whom you have heard that it comes. Now it is in the world already.
4 You are of God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world.
World English Bible
The messages that teach on it
- March 9, 2025 There Are No Ordinary People Brad explores what it means to love your neighbor, from sacrificial agape love for strangers to the honest, burden-sharing relationships God calls us to inside the church.
- March 9, 2025 There Are No Ordinary People Brad walks through the parable of the Good Samaritan to explore what it truly means to love your neighbor, from strangers on the street to brothers and sisters in Christ.
- January 22, 2023 Sunday Jan 22nd. Join us in the book of Luke Chapter 10 A Wyoming pastor uses audience poll cards and Luke's Good Samaritan story to ask: can you love the people you find most offensive to the gospel?
- January 22, 2023 Do This and You Will Live A Wyoming pastor walks through the Good Samaritan story and asks his congregation to name the people they trust least, then challenges them to see those people as neighbors.
- October 23, 2016 Don't Be Owing Nothing to Nobody Romans 13 shows love fulfills the law. Pastor Ray McDaniel walks through scripture, the Good Samaritan, and what it means to love everyone, not just our own.
- October 23, 2016 Owe Nothing to Nobody But Love Romans 13:8 shows love is a debt that never gets paid off. Pastor Ray McDaniel explains why loving others fulfills the whole law.
Mentioned along the way
- August 12, 2018 Paying Attention to People Paul closes Titus with a list of names, some famous, some unknown, and a call for believers to notice people around them and meet needs as God provides.