Luke 10: Wounded Along the Way, the Wounds No One Sees

Introduction

"There are times when we wear a smile, but in reality it hides a great deal of suffering." At an evangelistic gathering at the Assemblée de Dieu de Nice Ariane, Vincent Toderoiu brings a message with a telling title: "Wounded Along the Way: The Wounds No One Sees."

Everyone came to church along their own road, by car, by scooter or on foot. In life too, there are roads of joy, of sadness, of worry, and roads of fog where you can no longer see anything. Even as a Christian, you can be wounded along the way, and those wounds do not always show.

The preacher draws on a story everyone knows, the parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). In it he finds "the whole program for our lives," the whole plan of salvation: Jesus who stops, heals, carries, brings to the inn and promises to return. And a word addressed to you: "Go and do likewise."

Outline of the Message

1. Wounded Along the Way, Even With a Smile

In fog, airline pilots speak of a "white wall": they can see nothing ahead and rely on their instruments. We too are called to walk by faith and not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7): "for we walk by faith, not by sight." Faith is "assurance of things hoped for, proof of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1).
We often think wounds are physical and must be visible. But you can smile, joke around in front of others and still be in pain inside. Sometimes that is a way of hiding your suffering.
The preacher tells of a scene he lived through with his wife at a gas station: an elderly woman, her face bloody, had just been hit by a stone thrown by young people who thought it was fun. His wife called the firefighters; the young people had already run away. Helping like that is being a good Samaritan, and "sometimes even non-Christians do it better than we do."
God does not look at appearances, he looks at the heart. "Even in laughter the heart may be in pain" (Proverbs 14:13). "A glad heart makes a cheerful face, but an aching heart breaks the spirit" (Proverbs 15:13). God wants to do a work on the inside.

2. The Wounds No One Sees, and What God Wants to Do With Them

To help remember them, the preacher offers a memory aid built on the French word TRAHI ("betrayed"). The wounds of betrayal, rejection, abandonment, humiliation and injustice.
Rejection is the feeling of being loved by no one, of not being accepted as you are. Abandonment is the fear of being forgotten, the fear that those you love will leave you, the difficulty of bearing loneliness. Betrayal is having been let down by someone. Humiliation is having been put down or ridiculed with words.
The list could go on: lack of love, grief, loss, words, failure, guilt. Even faith can be wounded: "Lord, where are you in all this? Lord, why do you allow it?"
Suffering is not a means of destroying us. Sometimes it is the moment we begin to listen to God (Job 36:15): "He delivers the afflicted by their affliction, and opens their ear in oppression." For the preacher, it was suffering that turned him toward God: he had reached the end, in a "dead-end alley." A road may go on for another kilometer, but where does your road lead?
The hardest part is being alone in your suffering. But "Yahweh is near to those who have a broken heart" (Psalm 34:18). He is near you in your doubts and your difficulties.
"Think about changing, or change the bandage." We would like to just put a bandage on our wounds, or an anesthetic: alcohol, drugs, sometimes a relationship where we only look for someone so we won't be alone. You no longer feel the pain, but the wound stays open. God, for his part, wants to stop, take the time and heal.
Healing can be gradual or instantaneous, as with the woman who had a flow of blood (Luke 8:43-48). At the dentist, a damaged tooth is treated by removing the cause, then restored with a crown or an implant. God wants to do both: a treatment and a complete restoration.

3. What Would You Do if You Saw Your Worst Enemy Suffering?

The question is put to the congregation. Then it turns around: what if you were God's enemy? Do you remember the time when you were? No one can serve two masters (Matthew 6:24), and friendship with the world is enmity with God (James 4:4).
"I was an enemy of God. I lived in sin when I was young." But Jesus, like a good Samaritan, was there, looking at him and understanding him in his suffering. "When you reach the end of yourself, that is where God begins."
"Don't love the world, neither the things that are in the world" (1 John 2:15). Forgiving without God's love is complicated, sometimes impossible. But God's love has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5).
We would like to set aside failure, betrayal, humiliation, abandonment. The Spirit of God insists on bringing God's love into the heart. It is a whole journey: I begin to love God, then I learn to love my neighbor as myself. That love brings down barriers, and the compassion it gives pushes us to act.

4. A Man on the Road to Jericho

The context: the seventy disciples return saying that even the demons submit to them. Jesus tells them to rejoice instead that their names are written in heaven (Luke 10:17-20). What matters is salvation.
A lawyer, who had spent years studying the Torah, wants to test Jesus: "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus answers with a question: "What is written in the law? How do you read it?" What is written does not change, but the way you read it and what you do with it in your life can change.
This man was not sincere, unlike perhaps the rich young ruler. He wanted to know what must be done for the afterlife. But Jesus came to bring grace: it is no longer we who do things to reach God, it is he who comes to reach us, as the Samaritan reaches the wounded man.
What is your road? Perhaps a difficult road with your family, or with a person who hurt you, a father or a mother you have not forgiven. You thought you had forgiven, but "it comes back, it keeps coming back." Sin puts a separation between us and God (Isaiah 59:2).
Jerusalem, with its temple, symbolizes the presence of God. Jericho recalls a city that experienced judgment. Between the two, a descent of about a thousand meters in elevation over 27 to 30 kilometers, with caves and corners where robbers hid.
The text says nothing about this man, neither his age nor his origin. He represents each of us, or our neighbor. The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy (John 10:10): your peace, your joy, your relationship with God. Left half dead, the man is unable to save himself.

5. What Religion Could Not Do

Two religious men pass by: the priest, who held a certain rank in the temple, "like a pastor," and the Levite, who assisted, like those who serve in worship or at the welcome desk today. Neither stops.
Yet they knew the Torah: love God and your neighbor. The first probably did not want to touch a man who seemed dead: according to the law, he would have become unclean and would have had to go through a whole ritual. The other does not stop either. They only looked.
"Imagine my wife: she would have just looked from a distance, from her car, and thought: she'll manage." There is an urgency all around us. One day, walking down Avenue Jean-Médecin in Nice, the preacher was seized with compassion to the point of wanting to weep for those people who walk by and live their lives far from salvation. "And what are we doing for our neighbor?"
"The Lord Yahweh has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with words him who is weary" (Isaiah 50:4). Sometimes your support is simply a word inspired by God to soothe someone who is hurting.
Some have been let down by religious people who could do nothing for them. Religion can do nothing. "But we have a solution, and it is simply Jesus."

6. Jesus, the Good Samaritan Who Stops and Carries

The Samaritan is "moved with compassion": stirred to the depths of his being. Jesus was like that toward the crowds, "distressed and scattered, like sheep without a shepherd" (Matthew 9:36). His compassion moved him to act. Having compassion is one thing, putting it into action is another.
For a Jew, a Samaritan was a foreigner, someone you did not want contact with. This Samaritan is Jesus, "despised and rejected by men, a man of suffering and acquainted with disease" (Isaiah 53:3). He crossed his heaven of glory to meet us and to stop at the state of our heart. He does not just see our suffering, he acts. The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life (Romans 6:23).
Oil and wine were used to disinfect and soothe, "a bit like a healing ointment for us today." Normally you would put the wine on first to disinfect. Yet verse 34 says: "oil and wine." The oil, an image of the Holy Spirit, convicts of sin, of righteousness and of judgment (John 16:8) and leads to the cross. The wine recalls the blood of Christ shed for us.
"The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin" (1 John 1:7). "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us the sins" (1 John 1:9). One of the wounds is when the devil puts "his foot on your throat" to tell you that you can never come back to God. This is not condoning sin: it is asking God to step in deeply and give victory.
The Samaritan puts the wounded man on his own animal and perhaps walks beside it. This recalls that Christ bore our sufferings and carried our sorrows, and that the punishment that brings us peace fell on him (Isaiah 53:4-5).

7. The Inn: The Church, Until Christ's Return

There are two stages in the care. The first is conversion. The preacher bears witness to it: convicted of sin, he turned to the cross, asked forgiveness and was restored. Jesus turned his wounds into scars. "Scars only bear witness to what you have been through." Do you have wounds or scars?
The second stage is the inn, an image of the Church. The care continues after conversion. Childhood wounds and traumas have sometimes shaped our character: "Why do I function like this?" Jesus can heal those aspects too, little by little.
Caring for your neighbor has a cost, in money or in time. The Samaritan gives two denarii, about two days' wages, and promises: "whatever you spend beyond that, I will repay you when I return." That speaks of the return of Christ, who is coming back for those who belong to him (John 14:3). This message is not meant to frighten, but to announce the Gospel.
In the Church, "you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God" (Ephesians 2:19). There we bear one another's burdens (Galatians 6:2).
The Samaritan is also you. Like him, you have received the oil and the wine: the power of the Holy Spirit to be a witness (Acts 1:8) and the message of the cross. The inn can also be your home: when you welcome someone and God puts it on your heart to speak to them about Jesus, will you take the time?
The lawyer cannot even bring himself to say "the Samaritan": he answers "the one who showed mercy." Jesus concludes: "Go and do likewise." Did he obey? We do not know. What you will do, you can know.

Key Takeaways

A smile can hide real wounds: betrayal, rejection, abandonment, humiliation, injustice. God looks at the heart and he is near to those who have a broken heart.
God is not satisfied with a bandage or an anesthetic: he wants to treat the cause and restore completely.
Religion could do nothing for the wounded man. Jesus, the good Samaritan, stopped, healed him with oil and wine and carried him.
The care continues at the inn, in the Church, until Christ's return. Jesus turns our wounds into scars that bear witness to him.
"Go and do likewise": with the Spirit and the message of the cross, you have what it takes to stop beside someone who is suffering.

Personal Application

What wound are you hiding behind your smile, and have you already laid it before the Lord?
What are you putting a bandage or an anesthetic on, instead of letting God treat the cause?
Is there a person, perhaps a father or a mother, whom you thought you had forgiven and whose memory "keeps coming back"?
Do you have wounds or scars? Who could you tell about what Jesus is doing in your life?
On your path this week, with family, with friends or at work, who needs you to take the time to stop?

Verses Cited

Frequently Asked Questions

Who does the good Samaritan represent in Luke 10?

For Vincent Toderoiu, the Samaritan can be read in two ways. First, he is Jesus, who crossed his heaven of glory to come all the way to us, to stop at our suffering and to heal us. He is also the Christian, called to be a good Samaritan to his neighbor: "Go and do likewise."

Why does the Samaritan pour oil and wine on the wounds?

At the time, oil and wine were used to disinfect and soothe a wound. The preacher notes that the text names the oil before the wine. He sees in it an image of the Holy Spirit, who convicts of sin, of righteousness and of judgment, and then of the blood of Christ shed on the cross, which cleanses from all sin.

What does the inn represent in the parable of the good Samaritan?

The wounded man is not only treated on the road, he is brought to the inn. For Vincent Toderoiu, it is an image of the Church: a place where the care continues after conversion, where we bear one another's burdens (Galatians 6:2). The two denarii and the promise to pay on his return point to the return of Christ.