Family Growth Term 1 2019

Week 2- Love Your Neighbour

Big idea

Jesus helps us see we need his mercy because following rules can’t save us.

Bible passage

Luke 10:25-37

You will need

People to act out the reading (a narrator, the traveller, the priest, the Levite and the Samaritan)

All Ages Activity

Read the bible reading above then act it out as follows:

• Narrator: An expert in the law was trying to trick Jesus and asked him how to get eternal life. He knew the law and answered Jesus correctly that the law says, “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, “Love your neighbour as yourself.” Jesus said “Do this and you will live”. The expert of the law tried again asking, ‘Who is my neighbour?”- Jesus then told this parable.
• Get the actors to act out the parable (the Narrator can read verses Luke 30-35 if required). Have the traveller on the road lying unconscious and the Priest and Levite pass him by. Then have the despised Samaritan stop and bandage him up and take him to an Inn paying a large sum of money to care for him, with offers of more if needed.
• Narrator: After telling the parable, Jesus then asked the expert who the man’s neighbour was and he answered, ‘The one who had mercy on him.’

Discussion:

Think about the traveller:  Was the traveller able to save himself? Was the traveller saved by those who knew the scriptures and the law? Was the traveller saved by a despised person who showed incredible mercy?

The story of the Good Samaritan is not just about a man who does a good deed. The story was also explaining the Kingdom of God and salvation to the expert of the law. The expert thinks he will inherit eternal life if he can just ‘DO’ something and keep the law.  But Jesus tells a story of a man who needs saving and the law doesn’t help. Help actually comes from someone most people hated. This hated person showed incredible mercy. The expert needed to realise, just as we do that, there is nothing he could do to deserve the incredible mercy available to him. It is when we realise that we have received God’s mercy and follow Jesus that we can show his mercy to others too.

Prayer idea

Dear Lord. Thank you for being a neighbour to us. Thank you that you showed us incredible love and mercy by dying on the cross for us so that we can have eternal life. Help us to accept that mercy and to show it to others.

In Jesus name, and by the Holy Spirit.