15C22.     Deuteronomy 30:10-14.    Moses said to the people: “If you would only heed the voice of the Lord, your God, and keep his commandments and statutes,” then God’s blessings (vs. 9) will flow superabundantly on his people.  There is no mystery about what the Lord wants, “you have only to carry it out.”   The difficulty is often not knowing what God wants but doing it.

Luke 10:25-37.   A scholar or teacher of the Law or Torah addressed Jesus trying to put him down, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  The second part of the Torah is that you shall love, “your neighbor as yourself.”  It was generally understood that one’s neighbor was one’s countryman.  In the Old Testament there was the struggle against the common Jewish belief that one’s neighbor was one’s fellow Jew and all others were excluded.  In his parable, which we have always called ‘The Good Samaritan’, Jesus was telling his listeners that we are to love all others, and not just our neighbors, as the God who created them to be loved by him, and not just as we love ourselves.  God’s definition of the neighbor is, “the one who treated him with mercy,” or love.  “Jesus said to him (and to us), ‘Go and do likewise.’”

Colossians 1:15-20.   “Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God.”  Jesus said in John 14:7, “If you know me, then you will also know my Father.  From now on you do know him and have seen him.”  Then in John 14:9b Jesus said, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”  “All things were created through him and for him.  He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.  John 1:3ab: “All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be.”  “that in all things he himself might be preeminent.” “making peace by the blood of his cross.” In John 14:6, “Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”