Sermon - Trinity XIII, 2026 - 2 Chronicles 28:8-15

The Good Samaritan, Joseph Highmore, 1744

 God’s People are Those Who Have Faith in Him

1. We typically think my people are those who are like me externally

2. History of the two kingdoms

3. The Faithful Remnant of Samaria was more faithful than Judah

4. We are God’s people through faith

The lawyer asked Jesus: “Who is my neighbor?” That’s another way of asking: “Who are my people?” We ask this question because like prefers like and we want to love those people who are like us more than we love those who are not like us. This is a generally true principle in many facets of life. We do this in mostly playful ways with sports, where we greatly prefer our team which we identify with and we do not like the rival teams. This happens more seriously between countries, sometimes even to the point of war. This happens with some seriousness between political parties, sometimes leading to political assassinations. This happens in families when one family member defends another even through criminal behavior. 

Of course this isn’t necessarily a bad thing all the time whatsoever! We should each prefer our own household more than other households. I should love my wife and my children, more than I love other wives and other children. It’s a horrible sin when we neglect our own household because we are preferring other households. St. Paul writes to Timothy, saying, “If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” Or if you’re familiar with the Dickens novel Bleak House, Mrs. Jellyby is obsessed with caring for a mission in Africa, and her own family is neglected and is suffering because of her absence. 

Thus, the question the lawyer asks about who his neighbor is is a valid question, and one worth answering today. In answering this question, Jesus uses an example familiar to the Israelites then, but somewhat unfamiliar to us today, namely that of Samaritans. I’d like to spend a chunk of time now understanding this history of the Samaritans, so that we can answer the question of who is our neighbor, and who are God’s people. Because as we will come to see, God’s people are those who have a living and active faith in God, and it’s not merely a matter of our external similarities.

To help us see how we come to that conclusion, we have to understand the Biblical history and we need to remember who the Samaritans are. Remember back to Genesis and the Patriarch Jacob, later named Israel, who had twelve sons. His son Joseph helped bring Israel and his sons and their families into Egypt. After a few generations, the Israelites multiplied, were subjected to slavery by the Egyptians, and God brought them out of Egypt and eventually into the promised land. The descendents of the twelve sons of Israel were organized into twelve tribes, and God allotted to each tribe a piece of land.

God was the King of the twelve united tribes, known as Israel, and He ruled over the Israelites through human judges. But in time the Israelites rejected God as their King and they wanted human kings like the other nations around them. So God set over the Israelites King Saul. But Saul rejected God, so God replaced Saul with King David. After David’s death his son Solomon reigned as king over the twelve united tribes of Israel.

After Solomon dies his son Rehoboam becomes king of Israel. But as punishment for Solomon marrying pagan women and worshiping their false gods, God took away most of the kingdom from Solomon’s son, Rehoboam. He did this through a man called Jeroboam. Jeroboam approached Rehoboam on behalf of the northern tribes of Israel, asking that Rehoboam would treat them better. But Rehoboam refused to show them mercy, so Jeroboam led the northern tribes to revolt against the southern tribe of Judah. They said: “What portion have we in David? We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse.” So they abandoned Rehoboam as their king.

Rehoboam wanted to go to battle against them in order to return them under his authority, but God forbade it, saying: “You shall not go up or fight against your relatives. Return every man to his home, for this thing is from me.” Rehoboam and Judah had as their capital Jerusalem, meaning they retained the temple of the Lord. Jeroboam and the northern kingdom made their capital the city of Samaria. Thus, the northern kingdom is Samaria, they are the Samaritans. All of the northern kings did evil and led the Samaritans to worship false gods. The southern kings were not perfect, but about ⅓ of them behaved righteously.

150 years after that fiasco we come to 2 Chronicles 28 and these two kingdoms now have a long history of enmity. At this point in time both kingdoms have evil kings. Pekah is king of Israel or Samaria, the northern kingdom. Ahaz is king of Judah, the southern kingdom. We read starting at v.1: “Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. And he did not do what was right in the eyes of the LORD, as his father David had done, but he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel. He even made metal images for the Baals, and he made offerings in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom and burned his sons as an offering, according to the abominations of the nations whom the LORD drove out before the people of Israel. And he sacrificed and made offerings on the high places and on the hills and under every green tree.”

As a result of Judah’s atrocious sins, God punished Judah through Samaria: “Therefore the LORD his God gave him into the hand of the king of Syria, who defeated him and took captive a great number of his people and brought them to Damascus. He was also given into the hand of the king of Israel, who struck him with great force. For Pekah the son of Remaliah killed 120,000 from Judah in one day, all of them men of valor, because they had forsaken the LORD, the God of their fathers.”

God used the northern kingdom of Israel to punish the southern kingdom of Judah. However, Israel went too far. This is significant, we see that not all of the people in the northern kingdom were evil. Not every Samaritan was bad. A prophet of the Lord from Samaria, Oded, confronted the Samaritan army, his own people, saying, “Behold, because the LORD, the God of your fathers, was angry with Judah, he gave them into your hand, but you have killed them in a rage that has reached up to heaven. And now you intend to subjugate the people of Judah and Jerusalem, male and female, as your slaves. Have you not sins of your own against the LORD your God? Now hear me, and send back the captives from your relatives whom you have taken, for the fierce wrath of the LORD is upon you.” 

Surprisingly, the Samaritans listen! It’s not just Oded with faith, but Azariah, Berechiah, Jehizkiah, and Amasa stand up and say: “You shall not bring the captives in here, for you propose to bring upon us guilt against the LORD in addition to our present sins and guilt. For our guilt is already great, and there is fierce wrath against Israel.” Then these Samaritans take the captives of Judah, clothed them, fed them, anointed them, and carried them on donkeys back home to Jericho. The faithful remnant in Samaria was more faithful than Judah! If all of that sounds familiar to the parable of the good Samaritan, it should, because it’s essentially the same story!

God’s people are those who have faith in the Lord, and thus live active lives of faith towards others. So when Jesus tells this parable about the Good Samaritan, he’s explaining to the lawyer that his neighbors aren’t just those who are like the lawyer, but his neighbors, God’s people, are those who have faith in the Lord. The lawyer would’ve expected the priest or the Levite to be the good guy and the Samaritan to be the bad guy in the parable, but it’s the other way around, because it’s not about their external qualities but about living and active faith in the Lord.

We are likewise God’s people through faith, and we are given this faith and made children of God through God’s actions, not according to our external qualities. This morning you witnessed Brynlee’s baptism, by which she has been clothed in the robe of Christ’s righteousness and declared to be God’s own child when He placed His name upon her. What you witnessed this morning externally, God has performed an even greater miracle internally by giving her the gift of the Holy Spirit. 

She is God’s child and she will be saved because she believes and is baptized. Same for you! You will be saved because you believe and are baptized. But apart from faith our baptism does not help us even one iota. Therefore, Brynlee, along with all of us, are gathered here together in the holy ark of the Christian church so that our faith may be strengthened against the unbelief of the world. So that by the ministrations of the Holy Spirit He will keep us as His people and we will mature in the faith to lead godly lives to the praise and honor of our Lord most high. May God grant this.