Thank you. Well, good morning, Trinity. It's a joy to be with you. My name is Austin Duncan. If we haven't met, I'm a regular visitor here, and it's always a privilege to be here. Your pastor is in Ireland, and he asked me, along with the elders, to fill in today, and I'm privileged to do so. It's always good to visit Texas. I've been assigned a text in Luke to get you back into the gospel of Luke. I offered Andrew to do something else, some sermon I've done a hundred times, and no, he wanted me to work for a living today. So, he gave me what is normally classified by New Testament scholars the most difficult parable in the Bible. So, I think his absence here is maybe intentional. But I love Andrew, and I'm really privileged to serve in any way I can.
So, open your Bible to Luke 16. It's a well-known parable to get you back into the gospel of Luke after four weeks of Christmas messages. We'll dive right back in. And honestly, it's an ideal text to get back into the flow of Luke's gospel, into his most prominent themes and into the ultimate direction he's sending us as you explore this incredible testimony of exactness and truthfulness about the coming and work and atoning death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. It's a parable that is unique to Luke and to Luke alone. In other words, it doesn't appear in the other Gospels, not in Matthew, not in Mark, not in John, but Luke alone records this most remarkable parallel, which is a story of reversals, of radical contrasts. It reminds me of the weather that I'm experiencing in this trip to Texas. It rained five days straight in L.A. It was like Noah out there. It was flood-like conditions. And I come here, you know, for a little relief from Los Angeles' normal heat, but instead it's 85 yesterday. And I guess tomorrow it's going to be 39 or something. So, God bless Texas is what we call that. Radical contrast and this passage has in it radical contrast.
So let me read you this parable Luke 16 verse 19 to 31 and then we'll ask for God's help and we'll explore it together. I think there's a lot for us in a text like this Luke 16 verse 19 and following it says this:
(Scripture Reading) “There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores.
The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried. And in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he called out, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue. For I am in anguish in this flame.”
But Abraham said, "Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things. And Lazarus, in like manner, bad things. But now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. And besides all this, between us and you, a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.”
And he said, “then I beg you, father, to send him to my father's house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them lest they also come into this place of torment.” But Abraham said, “they have Moses and the prophets. Let them hear them.” And he said, “no, Father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.” And he said to him, “if they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.””
This is the very word of the living God. Let's go to Him and ask for His help.
(Prayer) Father, thank You for Your Word. This text tells us that it's a privilege and a stewardship to be confronted and to possess Your Word. So, we humbly ask God, would You make us freshly aware of that privilege today? Show us Yourself. Show us Christ, His glorious gospel, our great need, and the only hope we have in Him. May Your Spirit and Your Word teach us. In Jesus' name we ask, amen, amen, amen. (End)
I like to read and listen to Malcolm Gladwell occasionally. He's a lib, but I excuse it for entertainment value. He tells interesting stories, and I always find helpful insight in his writings and his podcasts. I'm a fan of his crazy hair, a little jealous of it. But his book, Talking to Strangers, is significant in the way I think about this passage because it's a book about making decisions based on the wrong information, especially about people, but he takes it to levels of corporations, and really it comes down to one issue that plagues all of us. And it's popularly called confirmation bias. You've heard of it, confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is just because you believe something doesn't make it true. It's receiving information, and instead of considering that information, you push it aside because it conflicts with what you already believe. And it's taking every bit of information and jamming it into your preconceived ideas to reinforce and harden your approach to things. That's the danger of confirmation bias.
One of the examples he uses in his book is how we misread people. We assume the best of people when people may not actually have our best interests in mind. They also operating with a confirmation bias could be working for your harm. He uses examples in industry. The famous one is of Blockbuster Video. Some of you remember the existence and the ubiquity of Blockbuster Video and how Blockbuster Video, when they had the opportunity to buy this dumb little company called Netflix said, no way, people will always rent movies from our brick and mortar stores. Confirmation bias, deadly to Blockbuster Video. I'm told they still have one location left somewhere in Oregon if you really need to return a tape that you forgot to rewind. It's still there if you need it.
Well, confirmation bias can make us misjudge people and make a company crash on the financial rocks, but there is a kind of spiritual confirmation bias where we instinctively seek information that confirms what we already believe. There's a kind of spiritual confirmation bias that causes us to dismiss and minimize and reinterpret anything that settles our traditional settled convictions and conclusions, especially about ourselves. Confirmation bias isn't just an intellectual or economic problem; it can be a significant moral and spiritual problem that could affect us for all of eternity.
This parable in Luke 16 is one where we meet a man who is confident and composed and self-assured. So sure, that he is a child of Abraham and that he has received, because of his vast wealth, the blessing of God on his life. And his bias falls to pieces the day he dies. And eternity reveals his true status, as well as the true status of a man who laid at his gate, languishing and in poverty. The reversals in this story are epic. A man who is outrageously and indescribably wealthy becomes destitute of everything in Hades. And a man who is suffering indescribably in this life becomes the one who will occupy a place of feasting and paradise and pleasure, the one who had everything has nothing, the one who had nothing has everything.
And it's in this great reversal that Luke 16 describes in Jesus' masterful parable of the rich man and Lazarus where we learn lessons not only about the afterlife, which is important to this text, and not only about the existence and reality of hell and the sufficiency of Scripture, which seems to be the main note of this parable, the main emphasis of this text, but it confronts us on an individual level, every one of us, and asks us to be sure that the preconceived notions we have about our status in this life need to be informed by the Word of God, by the testimony of all sufficient Scripture, so that we don't find on judgment day that we have been deceived by our own confirmation bias. We've been deceived by our own sinful attitudes and not corrected by the Word of God.
So, as we enter into this passage, we're entering back into a study of Luke, and I told you earlier. This passage I think is ideal to jump back into Luke from your Christmas series because it picks up on Luke's most significant themes and concerns. And before we get into my three-part analysis and kind of breakdown of this parable, I'd like you to see why Luke includes it, why he's the only one that includes it, why the Spirit of God arranged it this way, this may sound like a nerdy Bible talk, but I think it'll help you kind of understand where we were in your study of Luke and why Luke has put this parable right here.
And to get that, we just look back at chapter 16, verse one. Let me just place it into context, and then we'll dive into our parable.
Look at Luke 16, verse one. “It says, “Jesus also said to his disciples, there's the audience, there was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him, that this man was wasting his possessions.”
You remember this parable as the very difficult parable of the unrighteous steward, right? He's commended by the Lord, not for his dishonesty, but for his ability to get stuff done to ensure his future. He pays off all his master's debtors by reducing their bills. And so, the amount the master brings in is far less, the creditors are in a better position, and he has favor with all these outsiders to ensure his future since he was a mismanager and was being fired.
In the end of the story, he's commended, not for his dishonesty, but for his shrewdness. Jesus' point was, if worldly people can be that shrewd in ensuring their future, how much more so should children of God and those who long for heaven and long to be pleasing to God be concerned about ensuring their future? By every means necessary to make sure that they have been, verse 10, “faithful in a very little, so that they'll be faithful in much.”
Verse 13 says, “no servant can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one and love the other, or he'll be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”
And so in this passage, Luke is placing his teaching, Jesus's memorable parallel about the rich man and Lazarus, so different from all his other parallels because of the dramatic setting, because of, there's other parallels about judgment, but there's no parables that show us the fires of hell themselves, no parables have named figures in them. Here we have Abraham and Moses, real people. We have an individual by the name of Lazarus and an unnamed rich man.
But the dominant concern of Luke is already in place. Luke has been very concerned about our attitude towards money. Not because Luke is obsessed with money, but because the prosperity gospel is not new. It's not something that comes from Oklahoma or Texas or Pentecostal television. The prosperity is something as old as the fall. Job's friends were convinced that if Job could just figure out what he had done wrong to appease God and what he did to offend God, then he would get his possessions back. Because wealth in this culture, according to these religious leaders, was a sure sign of God's favor and blessing.
And so, when they hear a rich man in verse 16 verse 1, or a rich man in chapter 16 verse 19, they automatically go, a blessed man. A rich man is a blessed man. A poor, diseased, outcast man is a cursed man of God. And what's gonna make this so clarifying is that these realities are reversed before their eyes in this masterful story. But it plays into Luke's emphasis that he's already made on the danger of putting your confidence in money. the danger of reading your situation externally and assuming that your prosperity automatically means that you have God's favor instead of recognizing that you need to be a recipient of God's mercy.
We could tie this even further into Luke if we go back to the sermon, the Beatitudes of Jesus. “Blessed are the poor, for they will inherit the kingdom of heaven.” It is that recognition of poverty, of spiritual bankruptcy, of knowing that nothing you have is sufficient, is the starting point of recognizing your need for God's favor and mercy. And so, Jesus has already been teaching this all along in his teaching on wealth, on poverty, on how the rich should treat the poor. It picks up on all the themes of the Old Testament, speaking of rich and poor. And it clarifies the commonly held misconception then and now that because a person is wealthy, they're blessed of God. It's equally true that because a person is poor, it doesn't mean that they're blessed of God. Nor does it mean that they're cursed of God. But the blessing of God is a result of the mercy of God. And that's what's on display in this story.
As Luke builds this out from the very earliest chapters, themes like when John the Baptist calls the people of Israel to repentance. When he tells them in chapter three, verse eight, that they need to bear the fruits of repentance and not just trust that Abraham is their father. It's that same theme we see in this parable, where the rich man from the fires of Hades looks and says, “Father Abraham.” He doesn't understand how he's gotten to such a place when he is a child of the covenant. When he was part of the covenant and blessed people of God. When he had every evidence of his life of God's favor and blessing because he was so fabulously wealthy. And he didn't realize that every time he walked out of his courtyard and passed that gate and ignored his poor fellow brother Israelite in his suffering, he was proving the nature of his true religion. He was showing what was really going on in his heart. That's what's on display in this chapter. It's not a parable jammed in out of nowhere. Instead, it's Jesus' careful attention and Luke, the masterful historian, putting together a display of the necessary need for the gospel of Jesus Christ as the only way of salvation, the only way of redemption, and deliverance. It's a warning against putting your confidence in anything else besides the accomplished work of Christ in riches or religion or tradition. Any of it is a danger to your soul and will be exposed on Judgment Day. That's the point of this parable.
It's teaching on wealth and how the poor to be treated is important, but secondary to its primary purpose, which is to warn us about the danger of a self-reinforcing blindness, a confirmation bias, a hardening that can happen to your heart that will impact you for all eternity, because what the rich man lacked was not information. But what he had was resistance to truth. And just because you believe something doesn't make it true. And so here you have the testimony of Jesus himself reinforcing the testimony of the Scriptures and reminding us that we need to be careful to observe that what we think about this life needs to be informed by truth and by Scripture, not by what we think about this life. Or we find ourselves in the portico of the rich man, enjoying the pleasures of this life, and all the while being dulled in our senses to our real spiritual state.
Leon Morris says it this way, “he assumes, the rich man assumes, that Lazarus can be dispatched on his errand, his deep-seated sense of superiority remaining. This rich man is confident, composed, self-assured, and he ends up in hell. The deadliest situation we can find ourselves in is to have a spiritual confirmation bias because there comes a point when repentance is no longer possible, where evidence is no longer persuasive, and the great gulf between heaven and hell remains fixed forever. This chapter challenges all that we have thought about the nature of true religion if we're man-centered, if we're traditionalist, if we're moral but no longer seeking God's mercy. It plays on Jesus' parable from chapter 15 about the elder son and all the respectability that acts in his attitude towards the younger brother, the rebel receiving God's mercy. And here we have yet another example, a warning to the religious, to the respectable, to the self-assured, those who in verse 14 are called the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, who were, verse 15, justifiers of themselves before men, but God knows their hearts, for what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.”
And that brings us to our parable. I think the best way to consider this is to look at it the way you could consider your own life. It's divided into sections. I want to follow it in its natural divisions. Verses 19 to 21, let's call it one life to live, one life to live. In other words, this is the glimpse at life here on earth. The life you and I are experiencing right now is depicted in the life that the rich man and Lazarus lived in their various states. One in inestimable pleasure, one in defilement and pain, but it was their earthly life that's on display in verses 19 to 21. And then the second portion, verses 22 to 23, we'll see a future to come, all of us have a future to come, an eternity before God where we will see the true fruit of God's work in our lives, of our response to the gospel. Verses 22 to 23 is a future to come. And then verses 24 to 31 is a great gulf fixed. A great gulf fixed. I'll give you those again as we go.
But let's look first at this opening section, verses 19 to 21. One life to live. And here's the emphasis. Earthly circumstances reveal the heart. They do not necessarily reveal our destiny. They reveal the heart. They do not necessarily reveal our destiny.
And so, we meet our first character in verse 19. There was a rich man. How rich? Who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. The rich man is unnamed. And though in church history, the writers gave him a name. They called him dives. It was the Latin word for rich. Derived from the Greek word for rich in this text. But he has no personal name intentionally. He's supposed to be nameless because those in hell are nameless.
He was so important on earth that in this parable, he becomes this anonymous character, a caricature of himself, no longer having a name of significance and importance, but simply being called a rich man. His wealth is described with the word purple and fine linen. In my town, that means you're a Lakers fan, and I grew up a Boston Celtics fan, a heritage I embraced from my father as a young child, and so I'm an outcast in my own land, but purple is, in their world, a portrait of luxury. Purple was worn by royalty.
You see, to dye clothes back then was to find various pigments in nature. Their chemistry labs weren't quite like ours. But it was in the ancient times that they found a particular snail. That's right, a sea snail called a murrex snail. The things you can learn on Wikipedia, I'm so grateful. This murrex snail had a way to extract dye from it that was the most vibrant, purple, and expensive dye there was. Maybe 10,000 snails would have to be harvested with the dye extracted to get one tiny kilogram of dye. that would dye the color of blue or a color of purple. And thousands of hours of work would go into this, which made the process and the outcome priceless and unfading.
These royal robes of extravagance. This is extravagance on display. For anyone to be wearing a robe that is purple in hue was to show their vast wealth. But it doesn't stop there. Not only was he wearing purple, he wore fine linen. That speaks of his, shouldn't talk about this on a Sunday, but his undergarments. I mean, this is Egyptian cotton. We're talking about the guy's chonies, or the fastest, the fanciest you can get. I mean, he's designer through and through, on top and underneath. This portrait is to show the opulence that this man lived in.
And not only that, in a world where there was no HEB, he feasted sumptuously every day. Sabbath, Monday, Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, all of it. Every day was a feast for this man. His servants would prepare his food. He would dress in the finest garments. He was the epitome of luxury on display.
And then we meet in verse 20, a man who was laid at his gate. Just the fact that the rich man had a gate. That's the word for a city gate in the Bible. An estate would have a massive gate, or a city would have a massive gate. That means his property was walled. It was some kind of opulent and extravagant estate that he occupied perhaps along with his five brothers at times to feast together on this daily basis. This is the epitome of wealth.
But right outside his gate was, verse 20, “a poor man laid there,” or just plopped down is the word. Unable to move himself around, he's so impoverished, he's so sickly, he's covered in ulcerated sores, covered with sores is the word in verse 20. His name, he's given a name, is important. It comes from the Hebrew and Aramaic word or name Eleazar. The shortened form is Lazarus. El Asar, God has helped. This is a man who's named after the assistance of God. And indeed, he will be helped by God in all eternity.
But in his life, he didn't look like he was a man being helped by God at all. So, his name to the outsiders, to the Pharisees, to the rich man, would have been the ultimate irony. Because in their theology, simplistic and reductionist as it was, rich are blessed of God, poor are cursed of God. Healthy is blessed of God, sick are cursed of God. Bad theology. It always has been. It always will be. And it's exposed in this little story.
Well, this man is so poor that he's not only poor, he's also sick. He's not only sick; he's also religiously defiled because of his infirmity. He's covered with sores. And what would have satisfied him; verse 21, is he desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table. Even if he could get the crumbs, the thrown off parts, the cores, the scraps, the trash, it would have satisfied him. But he didn't receive those things. And to add insult to injury, dogs came and licked his sores.
This is always the hardest part for a modern reader in the western world to understand because we like dogs. I mean, only a few among us, a few among us would ever be interested in cats, which everybody knows come from the fall. But most people, most people are friendly, at least towards dogs. But in our world, we're too friendly to dogs to understand the Bible. We have a dog that lives at my house named Blue. He's a Labrador. And I don't love him. My family loves him. He's fine. We have a mutual relationship. I do everything to serve him. And where I live, people put their little dog in their purse and go to the Gucci store, and they put it in a stroller and walk it like they call it a fur baby. It's getting to abomination level.
But our appreciation and familiar integration of dogs is not what we're talking about here. These weren't friendly pups licking his sores. In the Bible, dogs are ravenous, wild. They're something like coyotes, but less protected. I mean, just nasty, ravenous, wild dogs. And they would come and lick his sores and cause him even further defilement and suffering. And in verse 22, the inevitable happens. Both of these men will die.
But before we go to the future to come, what is it that we see in their earthly life? Well, please note that it's covered in just the briefest language. That dash between the dates on your tombstone is the span of your life. And you get one life to live. And if it gets covered by a sentence, maybe there was something to that dash. But it's only a dash.
Rich or poor, our life, the Bible says, is a vapor. It goes by and dissipates faster than smoke from a candle blown out. The entire story of the lives of these men is told in the merest verses and then disappears forevermore. Your kids will remember you, and your grandkids may remember you, and your great, great grandkids probably won't remember you and beyond that, maybe you get a picture in the hall, maybe. Our life is short. And to summarize the condition of your heart in this life before God is to remember in this story the words of Brownlow North. The first maybe reformed book I ever read was a little banner of truth paperback called “The Great Gulf Fixed.” It was a Scottish evangelist, the Billy Graham of Scotland from the 19th century who one of his famous evangelistic messages was on this passage, and I remember reading it when I was a young man, and he said these words, “the rich man had everything but God. The beggar had nothing but God, and each was contented with his portion.”
You see, the sin of the rich man was his contentment without God. And that will be proven on the day that he dies. Remember, the sin here is not wealth. The wealthiest guy in this passage is Abraham, actually. And so, wealth isn't, in and of itself, sinful. It's just not a sure sign of God's blessing and favor and mercy. It's a warning on display in these two men's brief lives that the danger that you face is satisfaction apart from God. Contentment apart from God. Wealth, possession, or anything else in your life, in your heart, that crowds God out.
What the rich man thought he had, the favor of God, the blessing of God, would be dissipated in an instant on judgment day. And that's what we see as eternity is opened before us in verse 22 and 23, part two, a future to come, a future to come. What's emphasized in these verses in the death and judgment of these two men, one in heaven and one in hell, is that death reveals what life had concealed. Death shows us how things really are.
Verse 22, “the poor man died.” The Pharisees not surprised at this part of the story. He was sick, he was poor, he was cursed of God. Well obviously, but the clincher, the hook in this story, the surprise is the next words. “The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's side.” Wow. Your Bible might say Abraham's bosom. It means Abraham's chest, Abraham's side, to be upon the bosom of Abraham.
It's important to clarify here because some people get weird eschatology out of this, and they're not understanding how to interpret a parable. Parables are stories with intention, and you need to follow the intention of the parable to interpret them. You don't get to take every element and apply it however you want. In other words, we don't necessarily know that there is a viewing point between heaven and hell. There is one in this story, but this is just a story. So, this teaches us certain things about the afterlife, but it doesn't provide, I think Leon Morris said, “a map of the geography of hell.” That's not the intention of the story.
Nor is it the intention of the story to tell us that there's some kind of holding tank in our conception of, you know, you pull out your end times chart and you go, you know, here's the rapture, here's the millennial reign of Christ, and here's, you know, the holding tank of Abraham's bosom. That gets weird. Abraham's bosom simply means this. Abraham's side, it means the place where Abraham is. Abraham's bosom is not some kind of temporary positive purgatory. Abraham's side is a picture of fellowship, of rest, of feasting, of belonging. To lay along with Abraham, to feast with Abraham as Lazarus is doing, is to be welcomed with the forefathers of Israel, with the patriarch himself, the one who God called by his mercy from Ur of the Chaldees into his service, who promised to bestow on Abraham and his progeny land, a people greater than they could count, and a blessing to the ends of the earth. The earth, that trifold promise that God made to Abraham in the Abrahamic covenant is the foundation of the people of God. And Lazarus is now the recipient of that promised blessing as he lays and feasts with Abraham by his side.
Fellowship, rest, feasting and belonging. Jesus tells this story, but the voice of God is never heard in the story from heaven. Instead, Abraham speaks on behalf of God, and Abraham stands as those who are God's chosen people, and now Lazarus is associated as closely as possible with the great patriarch himself. That's where this story becomes shocking. That's where this story becomes a horrifying story to the Pharisees who love money, who have interpreted everything according to their own spiritual confirmation bias and say rich man good, Lazarus bad. And now Lazarus is at Abraham's side, and they would be offended to say the least.
Carried by angels to Abraham's side. And then the real clincher, the rich man also died and was buried. And in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. Well now the wheels have fallen off. In the Old Testament, sheol is the word they would use for the grave, the afterlife. It was where the departed had gone. Could be used positively and negatively, always associated with the promised and inevitable judgment of God on the righteous and the unrighteous.
In the New Testament, the word Hades is similarly used but always used as a term for the place of punishment. The other word they use in the New Testament is Gehenna, a place of burning, a place of torment; a city dump brought into eschatological focus with continual fire, a place of eternal torment. Jesus, remember, talks about hell more than any other biblical writer or speaker. And it's these words that are used now in association with the rich man. He is in Hades, in torment, and he lifts up his eyes and sees that Lazarus has been welcomed at Abraham's side far and inaccessible from where he is.
It was Robert Yarbrough, New Testament scholar; that said “this story is parabolic and not intended to furnish a detailed geography of hell.” But please don't misunderstand. Just because this is a parable does not mean this is imaginary. It's a story with intention. And Jesus intentionally uses a picture of real judgment and vivid imagery that correlates with all his other teaching on the doctrine of endless punishment, which is a doctrine that is difficult for us to believe as sinners. It's a doctrine that so many have tried to crawl out from under or justify or erase or push aside with concepts like annihilationism or purgatory or some way to get out of this very uncomfortable reality of heaven and hell.
But the problem is is any conception that's different than the one here doesn't line up with the teaching of our Lord. You might say, well, you're saying it's a parable, and he talks about flames and anguish, but isn't that just a metaphor? And I would say a fire that cannot be quenched and a worm that never ceases eating, that's the words Jesus uses when he describes hell, are indeed metaphorical. But a metaphor doesn't lower something. A metaphor serves to heighten something. So, what is a fire that can't burn out? We don't have that, right? Well, it's worse than the fire we know, not less. And so, the doctrine of eternal punishment is a fundamental Christian doctrine taught and reinforced by Jesus himself, demonstrated in this parable. And it reminds us that what life revealed partially about your standing with God, death will reveal completely and finally. Death is this great examiner. Revealer. It shows us where we really stand.
The surprising juxtaposition of the rich man and Lazarus would have left the Pharisees mouths open and in shock. But what happens next should shock us. Verses 24 to 31, a great gulf fixed. Verse 24, the rich man calls out, Father Abraham, that same language that John the Baptist warned in chapter three, verse 18, don't assume because you have spiritual lineage that you have true spirituality, and here he is saying, Father Abraham, have mercy on me. His plea for mercy is too late. And he says, send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame. Death has revealed his true status in the spiritual reality here. And mark this down, it's permanent. The emphasis of these verses is the permanence, the irreversibility, the fixed status, the unbridgeable nature, the permanence of heaven and hell. No cry for mercy will be heard after you have gone to your grave.
But God's ears, friends, are wide open to cries for mercy now. I mean, that's, even the rich man understands that. That the time of repentance for his brothers is still at hand. And so, with compassion, not one that extends to the poor; he's still bossing Lazarus around. But compassion that at least extends to his earthly family, he sees the inevitability of the coming judgment, he sees the irreversible nature of his punishment, but what has survived these flames, ironically, has been the pride of the rich man. Again, Leon Morris says it this way; “his deep-seated sense of superiority remains.” He's still giving orders. Father Abraham, send Lazarus to do my bidding, to get me a drop of water, to warn my brothers.
It's a reminder that the brothers would have recognized Lazarus as well, that the rich man knew Lazarus's name. But never reached out to help him, never afforded him care, brotherly attention, love, almsgivings, all things required of God's people in the Scriptures, all things that were evidence of being people that belong to Yahweh was to have an open heart towards the poor and an open hand towards their suffering countrymen. It was enshrined in the law of the Old Testament that they were to care for the poor; New Testament religion is tested in the same way by our regard for those who are less fortunate than us, the orphan, the widow, the impoverished. They have equal status in the church according to the book of James. This is not just an ancient Near Eastern reality. It's something that still exposes how our hearts are aligned or misaligned with God, our attitudes towards those who ought to be considered less than us or who have less than we do.
And here we see pride surviving even the judgment of the flames of hell as he bosses Lazarus around and tries to negotiate with Abraham for terms according to his liking. But Abraham's words here are so instructive. Child, remember that in your lifetime, verse 25, “you in your lifetime received your good things.” He was rewarded. And he got what he deserved. It was his good things. That's emphasized. Your good things. And Lazarus and like men are bad things. It doesn't say his bad things. In other words, some people in life receive what they owe. I mean, Lazarus got all his rewards. He earned them. He deserved them. He inherited them. Whatever. I mean the rich man. But Lazarus, he received bad things, and he didn't necessarily deserve them. They weren't his bad things.
But Abraham points out this incredible reversal. Now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. But the main emphasis of this passage starts to unfold here. Besides all this, between us and you, a great chasm has been fixed in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us. And the rich man pleads with Abraham, send him to my father's house that he may warn them lest they also come into this place of torment.
I mean, to read this passage is an exercise in Christian compassion. I mean, none of us should be delighting in this man's agony. Any Christian who's received God's mercy should be abundantly aware, abundantly aware, that we deserve what this man is receiving. That because we are sinners, because we have ample evidence of our sinfulness, because there is a creator who is good and holy who's revealed himself in the Lord Jesus Christ and in the words of scripture that there is a holy God and we are sinful, rebellious creation. And I can't read these words without an awareness of my own status as a recipient of God's mercy in the gospel. Can you? And I hear him speaking of his agony and I think, that's the agony that Christ endured for me. That's the agony that I deserve as a sinner.
And friend, if you're not a Christian here today, understand that our attitude when we read a passage like this is one where we can only look to God and say, look, if it wasn't for God's undeserved favor, if God wouldn't have reached out to us and been merciful to us, we deserve the very flames of hell we're reading about. If you're not a Christian, maybe that's difficult for you to understand because you've thought, well, Christians are judgy people that cross their arms and think highly of themselves and look down on other people and think other people should go to hell. You've been misinformed. That's not what we believe. Christians believe that we should be in hell. Because we are rebels, because of our pride, because of arrogance, because of gnawing lust, because of all the greed and avarice that marks our lives.
I mean, you have a conscience too; we all do. And from an early age, you were aware that people do bad stuff, right? And not just that people do bad stuff, that you do bad stuff. You lie. You stretch the truth. You stole something. You thought of others less. You didn't worship God as you ought to have. You weren't grateful as you ought to have been. The list of sins, we can go way beyond Ten Commandments when we think about how guilty we are. I mean, that's how Christians understand who we are. We are sinners by nature and by choice. All mankind is. Creation testifies to it. The Scriptures tell us that it's appointed for a man once to die and then the judgment that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We are sinful creatures deserving of the very punishment being described in this passage. And if it weren't for the mercy of God, if it weren't for the cross of Christ, where He died in our place, the just for the unjust, the righteous for the unrighteous, if He wouldn't have performed that great exchange, and we wouldn't have received it by faith in the gospel, Christians aren't saved because they earned it, or because they did something good, or because they go to church, or talk about baby Jesus at Christmas. Christians are Christians because they have believed the message that Jesus is the only way of salvation.
If you desire to follow Jesus today, that is the beginning of your journey as a believer, as a Christian, as a disciple of Jesus. And it starts with a recognition of our profound sinfulness and an embrace of His indescribable mercy.
That's what's on display when we read this Christianly. Not, yep, everybody gets what they deserve. Not, well, isn't karma a thing? That's not the message. The message is one that Luke is using to draw his readers closer and closer to the culmination of his gospel revelation, which is the atoning death, the death of Jesus in our place, and His glorious resurrection.
How do we know this? How is this not just more confirmation bias? Well, Abraham understands and tries to instruct us here. When he makes a request, the rich man says, send an emissary, send a missionary from hell to warn my five brothers. And Abraham says it in verse 29. Look at this testimony. They have Moses. Moses was a way of saying the first five books of the Old Testament, the Torah, and the prophets. That's a way of saying the rest of the Scriptures. We would say, they have the Bible, the scriptures, God's revelation. They have Moses and the prophets.
Let them hear them. And the rich man, he had the Scriptures. He had his Jewish heritage. He had the feasts, the traditions, the sacrifices, all the things. And it didn't work for him, and he said, “no, Father Abraham, if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.” And he said to him, “If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.” If they have Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone rises from the dead.
This is the sufficiency of Scripture. This is Romans one, every single member of creation is without excuse before God because of his revelation, both in natural theology, the world that he made, and in direct, specific revelation in the word that he's given. It is enough. It's enough for condemnation, and it's enough for salvation. It should give us every assurance that when we share the gospel with our friends and family and neighbors, that the Word of God is sufficient to save.
It should also help us like it helped the earliest Christians when they read this passage. How could it be that the gospel that so transformed my life bounces off the stony hearts of so many others? Why won't they repent? Why won't they believe in the resurrection, two central aspects of Christian preaching? Well, because if they reject Moses, they won't believe if someone rises from the dead.
Luke's testimony will bear that out as Jesus is killed, is resurrected, and then the lies begin, the slander begins, someone stole His body, He wasn't really dead, the disciples made this whole thing up, the message of the cross is foolishness, and on and on it goes. The death blow to confirmation bias is to admit that you don't know everything. That you're not the authority that the Scripture is. If you ignore the witness of Moses and the prophets, if you ignore the witness of the Scripture, you will be irreversibly damned. Not because God has concealed the truth, the opposite. It's right here before you. Listen to the Word of God and be warned of coming judgment.
Three applications I'd like you to take with you today. Number one is to live in light of coming judgment. Our earthly life is so brief. Eternity is the span that goes on and on before us. This life is fleeting and vaporous. The life to come is what matters. It's one of Luke's central themes. This parable shows that to us in vivid color.
Second, responding to the scriptures is the priority. And the way you respond to the Scriptures is by showing mercy. What is your attitude towards those who lay outside your gate? Whatever that looks like in your life and context, what is your attitude towards those who are socially considered less than you? Are you compassionate? Do you have an open hand and an open heart towards them? What role does your religion have in the practical matters of widows and orphans and the poor?
And then third and most significantly, this parable calls us to receive salvation. It looks us straight in the eye and says, have you repented and believed the gospel? What will eternity reveal about yourself? Have you listened to the truth of the Scripture, or do you just twist it to reinforce what you already believe? Friend, are you a Christian? If you are, that day in eternity will reveal it all because we only have one life to live, one future to come, and a gulf that once fixed can never be crossed.
C.S. Lewis in his imaginative and excellent and interesting book, I'm a C.S. Lewis fan, wrote one short story called The Great Divorce. It's the story of a bus that lines up in hell every morning and people queue up to get on the bus because the bus takes a daily trip to heaven. Not a true story. He didn't pretend it was a true story. He wasn't trying to do the reverse of this parable. It's a bit of a parable. What happens in the story mainly is this bus goes to heaven and takes all these hell bound, hell-suffering people who are all gray and lifeless to a world of eternal bliss and joy, a God-centered place that is full of the realities of creation made new. And they get off the bus, and they step into heaven, and they do not like it there, and they get back on the bus after a horrible day in a place they are not suited for.
It's not a true story. It's not in the Bible. I get that C.S. Lewis isn't making it clear in this way, but it's a reminder that in order to go to heaven, you need to be adequately prepared for such a place. You need a new heart and new eyes and new affections to be made to behold the wonder of redemption, the glory of the gospel, and the beauty of the Lord Jesus Christ. Call out to God. Make him your treasure, turn your back on earthly substitutes, and find life everlasting.
(Prayer) Father, thank you for your Word. Your scripture is so clear, it's so revealing. It's so powerful. Help us to live in light of eternity. Help us to trust the Scriptures and not our own feelings and devices and even traditions. And may we receive the gift that only You can give, salvation that is free and full in Jesus' name. Amen. (End)
