- [Don Carson] This evening,
I want to direct your attention to another parable,
The Rich Man and Lazarus. The account is found in Luke Chapter 16. I'm going to begin reading at verse 19. Luke 16:19, to the end of the chapter. Luke 16, beginning at verse 19. This then is what Scripture says,
"There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen,
and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named
Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from
the rich man's table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores. The time came when the beggar died,
and the angels carried him to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was in torment,
he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, 'Father Abraham,
have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my
tongue because I am in agony in this fire.' But Abraham replied, 'Son,
remember that in your lifetime you received your good things,
while Lazarus received bad things. But now he is comforted here,
and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you,
a great chasm has been set in place so that those who want to go from here to you
cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.' He answered, 'Then I beg you, Father,
send Lazarus to my family, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them so that they will not
also come to this place of torment.' Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the
prophets, let them listen to them.' 'No, father Abraham,' he said, 'but if
someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.' He said to him, 'If they do not listen
to Moses and the prophets, they will not be convinced even if
someone rises from the dead.'" This is the word of the Lord. So, how should we understand this parable? Unambiguously, there is some kind of
reversal going on, but are we to infer that this is the kind of reversal that
always works out this way? Live life well, end in hell. Suffer pain, enjoy a great gain. It's as simple as that. Black and white reversal. But so much of Scripture stands against
such simplistic reversal theology. There is a reversal going on here,
but that sort of a simplistic analysis doesn't square very well
with much of the Bible. It doesn't even square very well
with the book of Luke. After all, in Scripture,
there are some God-blessed and godly rich people. Think of Job, for example,
described as the richest man in the east, however big a territory the east is. And a man so practiced in disciplined
holiness, that he's even praying preemptively for his children. He makes a covenant with his eyes so that
if he looks at a young woman, he won't lust after her. Deeply committed to looking
after the poor. And then there's Solomon,
at least in his early years, asking for the right things,
concerned to be faithful in his task of reigning over the people of God. Esther. In the New Testament, Philemon,
probably Theophilus. There are some godly people
who were well-to-do. In other words, there's not an automatic
one-to-one tie with wealth. It is not quite the case that everyone who
is rich is necessarily wicked. Moreover, there are some poor
in the Bible who are wicked. Oh, it's true that the Bible has an
enormous amount to say about caring for the wicked who are oppressed, or
disadvantaged, or dispossessed, or alienated, or marginalized. I mentioned this morning,
passages from Isaiah or from Amos, there is a tremendous amount of stress on
the importance of caring for other people. Yet at the same time,
a book like Proverbs recognizes that poverty can come from
different kinds of sources. Sometimes, to be brutally frank,
it's tied to laziness. A little slumber, a little sleep,
a little closing of the eyes to sleep. Sometimes, it can come from drunkenness
and debauchery, from a wild hedonism that knows no bounds, that does not know
how to save or to plan for tomorrow. All of those sorts of stupidities are
described in great detail and penetrating aphorism in the book of Proverbs. In other words, there's no automatic
one-to-one connection between poverty and godliness. You may be poor in spirit and poor,
but there's no automatic connection. So, how do we integrate what this parable
says with broader streams of biblical theology that clearly have some kind of
reversal open in some cases but have some limits here in there too? Now, this morning, if you were here,
you will remember that I began with a parable and then we looked around at the
immediate context to Luke and fit the parable into that larger context. This evening, I want
to reverse the procedure. We're going to look at the surrounding
contents of Luke just quickly, and then we'll focus in on the parable
itself, for there are some contextual clues that help us to read the Bible
at this juncture a little more probingly. First, back up just a wee bit
before Luke 16:19. Start with verse 13. "No one can serve two masters,
either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the
one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money." Now, you can have different masters,
different load stars, different lords in your life in different
domains, that's quite possible. It's so, for example, as we saw
this morning in polytheism, when you have different gods operating
in different domains of your life. And if you have a fractured life,
you can do that to some extent today too without naming particular false gods. You could have, nevertheless,
a huge pull in your life toward this good or toward that desire, toward that wealth,
towards some other goal. But when push comes to shove,
something always wins. When they're in competition,
the question is, what wins? For that one is, for you, god. That's why Paul can describe covetousness
as idolatry, because if you want something badly enough, that becomes, for you, god. And in this particular case,
as pretty often in Luke, Luke has a great deal to say about money. In this particular case,
the particular god that may trip us up and demand our wildest
allegiance is money. You cannot serve both God and money. When push comes to shove,
you'll love one more than the other. The problem with money is that it so
easily becomes a master, what we pursue, we serve, the measure by which we judge
others, the measure of our own success. Money, in other words,
has the great potential of de-goding God. You cannot have two ultimate
masters in your life. So, one of the things that Jesus is
interested in this context, that Luke is interested in preserving in
this context, is Jesus' strong insistence on the exclusiveness of God. We saw that earlier this morning,
in Chapter 10, did we not? God does demand that He alone be God. You shall love the Lord your God with
heart, and soul, and mind, and strength. Anything less than that has already sunk
into the slime of a kind of idolatry. But then back off a
little further, verse 11. This is at the end of the parable
of the shrewd manager. "So, if you have not been trustworthy
in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And if you have not been trustworthy
with someone else's property, who will give you property of your own?" Now, the whole context is challenging,
but the least that is being said is something like this. If God, who is the author of every good
gift, gives you some material blessings and you think of them not in terms of
stewardship, but in terms of what you own and master, what you must improve for your
own assets and that sort of thing. If you can't treat these things entrusted
to you with responsibility and integrity, with a God-centeredness,
then why on earth should God give you anything else such as real riches,
such as eternal riches? In some sense, what we do with the
material blessings of this life already reflects where our heart is. It reflects already what we
cherish the most. But it gets more probing yet. Verse 14, "The Pharisees, who loved money,
heard all this and were sneering at Jesus. He said to them, 'You are the ones who
justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts. What people value highly is
detestable in God's sight.' Now, we looked at this theme
briefly this morning. One of the sub-themes in Luke's Gospel,
we saw, is self-justification. Thus in the parable of the Good Samaritan
that we looked at this morning, the lawyer theologian with whom Jesus was
conversing wanted to justify himself so so as to his next round of questions. And 2 chapters on from here,
in Chapter 18, we're told the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. And the Pharisee goes home justifying
himself, but it's only the tax collector who cries to God, "Be merciful to me,
a sinner," who actually goes home justified before God. In other words, divine justification,
where God justifies us on the basis of what God has done in Christ Jesus
to pay for our sin and reckon his righteousness to us,
divine justification is set over against self-justification. And that, of course,
is what's going on here. But look more closely. This self-justification is tied to money. Money becomes a way
by which you keep score. Now, there are lots of ways
of keeping score, of course. For some people, it's good looks. I don't have any problems
in that regard myself. For some, it's how fit you are. Being a hunk becomes more
important than anything else. And for others, it's how far up you are
in the pecking order in your institution. Or for still others, it's what kind
of personality you have and how much you're respected because of your
bubbly, effervescent enthusiasm. But one of the means by which we keep
score pretty commonly in the West is money. We're not so crass as to put it that way,
but nevertheless, deep down...that's why, of course, people keep talking
about the American dream. The American dream, as far as I can see,
is becoming less and less to do with stability and building a family and
this sort of thing and much more to do with having more money than your
parents had at the same age. I think that is what is regularly meant
today by the American dream. And so, in today's economy,
people get all nervous because we're losing the American dream,
which does not mean that there's no hope, or that there's no work, or any
of those sorts of things. It means you may come out owning
a little less than your parents, and that's a betrayal
of the American dream. You're losing in the keeping score game. In the keeping score game,
you're going downhill. Now, that's what's going on here. It's exactly what's going on here. "The Pharisees, who love money,
heard what Jesus had been saying," about money, and idolatry, and things like
that, the things that I've just mentioned in the preceding verses,
"and they were sneering at him." They were sneering at him precisely
because they were saying, in effect, "Don't you understand? There is a sense in which we keep score. I mean, we don't put it quite that bluntly
but we can say God has blessed us. Look at how well my businesses going. God has blessed us. Isn't that nice?" But yet there is always an edge
of the self-promotion in it. Now, let me hasten to add. This does not mean that there's no place
for a godly Abraham who keeps adding to his sheep and cattle. And yet, once the sheep and the cattle
become a way of keeping score, then there's something
really hopeless about it. It is no longer God-centered at all. It is not even something that is received
with gratitude still as something offered up to God. It is a way of keeping score. That's idolatry. That's why Jesus says to them,
"You are the ones who justify yourselves." That is, you justify yourselves in the
eyes of others, you keep score, that's what you're doing when
you're justifying yourself. And you justify yourselves
by your income. Oh, there are lots of ways
we do this, of course. Even those of us who are at the bottom end
of the pile in the Western world, we're driving an old rust bucket. The termites hold hands
to keep it together. We might actually have a certain kind
of inverted pride that our car is older than your car. But somewhere along the line,
you might actually manage to get... oh, you're now 28, 29. You know, your getting your first car with
a decent-sized engine in it may not be ecologically cool, but it's got
a decent engine. When my son, who is a marine,
bought himself a Silverado with a big engine in it, I said to him, "Nicholas,
do you really need a truck that big?" And he said, "Dad, you don't understand." He said, "This one has got
computer controls on it. You don't need all eight cylinders,
you're running on four most of the time. It's pretty ecologically smooth. But when there's power, it's there. So, I can be ecologically
responsible and still be a man." Now, did I hear a little overtone
of something there? Do you see? And so, when you come up in this
new vehicle to the light, and you see there's some young character
next to you with a hot rod, you are tempted to drop that into neutral
and gas it a couple of times just to make sure somebody is listening
to the throaty roar of your engine. Then you drop it into gear and take off. And if you can win without breaking too
many laws, then there's a certain kind of glow, isn't there? Oh, you don't want to put it
in such crass terms. And you might not actually hotdog it
off red lights, and yet, we keep score so often by how we dress, or
by our possessions, or our house, or our cars. Though we suppress it reasonably well. But if we get to the point where we're
sneering at others and sneering at those who point these things out
then we belong under the condemnation that Jesus has for the Pharisees. You are the ones who justify yourselves
in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts. And then this stinging word,
"What people value highly is detestable in God's sight." That's what the text says. It's not that all human values without
exception are necessarily disgusting. Obviously, that's not the case. But what people value highly,
that is so that it becomes what you want the most, what you are coveting,
what becomes god for you, becomes wicked. It's not that the thing is itself
necessarily wicked. The text does not say what people value
that is wicked is detestable in God's sight. There are some things that are detestable
in God's sight, whether you value them highly or not. But even things that you do,
that you value, that are not wicked, that may be good things,
may become wicked if you value them highly enough. You may value, for example,
a good education. That's surely a good thing. The Bible nowhere commends stupidity or
ignorance when you have the opportunity to learn more. And yet somehow, advancing in education
could become god for you. It's more important that people think you
to be highly educated than that you hear God's, "Well done" on the last day. And then it has to be said what people
value highly is detestable in God's sight. Two more contextual details. If you were here this morning,
I reminded you that from Luke 9:51 on, we begin what is sometimes
called Luke's travel narrative. That is, from Luke 9:51,
on all the way to Chapter 19, Jesus is described as on his way
to Jerusalem and to the cross, to his suffering, to his torment,
and then to his resurrection. Which has the effect, from a
literary point of view, from the point of view of how
this book is put together, it has the effect of saying,
"All of this takes place on the way to the cross." You must read all of this
on the way to the cross. That includes the parable
of the rich man and Lazarus. One final contextual observation and then
we'll plunge into our parable. There is actually a sequence of three
parables here, all dealing with wealth in one fashion or another. In Chapter 15:11-32,
the Parable of the Lost Son, it's really two lost sons, isn't it? Here a prodigal wastes
his father's possessions. Then at the beginning of Chapter 16,
the shrewd manager, the dishonest servant, a dishonest servant wastes
his master's possessions. And then in our parable,
a rich man wastes his own possessions. Now, in each case, there's a slightly
different emphasis that's made. It's not that Jesus is simply
repeating himself. Each parable is making a different point,
and yet all have to do, in one fashion or another, with how possessions
are handled responsibly. So, now we come to our parable. It's divided into two parts. First is the narrative, the contrast
between two different men. And then comes the dialog,
verses 24 to 31, between the rich man and Abraham, and what you have is the
blindness of a damned man. First of all, then, the narrative itself,
a contrast between two different men, verses 19 to 23. The narrative is quite simple. You're exposed to the rich man who,
in life, is absorbed in sumptuous living, then Lazarus, in life, poor,
and weak, and indigent. Then in the next life, Lazarus,
who is now enjoying incalculable blessing, and the rich man who is now in pain. So it's the rich man, Lazarus,
Lazarus, the rich man. That's the way the narrative runs. And that's repeated,
as we'll see in a moment. Begin, then, with verse 19. Here is a picture of a self-indulgent,
spectacularly wealthy man. In the ancient world,
purple cloth was expensive. There were only two ways of dyeing it
in the ancient world to make it purple, and both of them were very expensive,
which meant that if you wanted to flaunt your wealth, what you did
was buy a lot of purple cloth. You wore a lot of purple clothes because
that told the whole world how wealthy you were, you could afford it. The text says, "There was a rich man who
was dressed in purple and fine linen." The word rendered "fine linen" is usually
used for undergarments, under clothes. It's almost as if Jesus is saying,
tongue firmly placed in his cheek, "In case anyone is interested,
even his underwear is posh." In other words, this man is self-indulgent
all the way through, as it were. He lived in luxury every day. He ate sumptuously every day. Every meal, a multi-course meal,
with servants, and fine wines, and excellent food, and no thought of fasting
or anything of that order. No, he is simply, simply a very wealthy
man who indulges all of his tastes. Then we're introduced to Lazarus. Only Lazarus is named. Now, from our point of view,
that doesn't matter all that much, but in the biblical world,
that's significant. It means that in their story,
the only person who is really important is Lazarus. The rich man is not even
important enough to name. He might think of himself as very
important because he has all that money. That's his ladder for measuring himself. But it's only Lazarus, the poor man,
who was actually named, and his name means
"the one whom God helps." And you hear that and you think,
"Good grief, if this is the one whom God helps, I hate to be the man
whom God doesn't help." Until you read the end of the story. And then you think about it a bit more and
you think, "I guess the only way you can assess who the man is whom God helps,
is to wait into eternity." The very name, when it is introduced,
gives you a disjarring note. How can this be the man whom God helps
when he's ill, indigent, broken, and about to die? But then, you have to read
the rest of the story. He was laid at the rich man's gate. That is, he was not even strong enough
to go and beg on the village green, in the village square. He is so ill, he has to be
carried by others. You have to remember, of course,
that in village life in Palestine in the first century, there were no
social services. There was no clinic nearby,
no medical authorities. So what the accepted custom was,
when somebody just became too ill to look after themselves, the accepted custom was
to bring them to the home or the homes of the richest person
or people in the village. It was accepted that it was part
of their social-cultural responsibility to use some of their excess
wealth to look after the most indigent. Do you see? They would take them in, give them a room,
make sure they were washed up. They had the servants to do it
and that they had enough to pay for a little extra food. In a small village, the poor people
didn't have much. In any case, they had
to be out in the fields. How could they do very much? So the villagers did what
they were expected to do. They brought the man to
the rich man's gate. They expected the rich man
to do something about it. That was his social duty,
let alone a responsibility for almsgiving that was laid on all Jews. The very fact that they lay this man
at the gate shows that this man lives in a walled compound. In other words, he was not
simply comfortably off. He was really well-to-do
by first-century standards. He lived in a walled compound,
complete with gate. And then, we're about to be
introduced to dogs. Now, you must understand that in the first
century, dogs were not kept as pets. People didn't keep a little Labradoodle
and stroke its ears, and tickle its tummy, and buy one of 57 different
varieties of dog food. Dogs were either wild dogs,
think Australian Dingo, or they were working dogs,
usually guard dogs. And it appears that that's the case here. They are guard dogs, that is,
in this walled compound. How do you feed them if you can't go to
the shop and buy bags of dry dog food or cans of canned food complete
with chicken nuggets in it? Well, what you do is you feed them
the scraps from the table. That has shown up elsewhere
in the New Testament. If you recall Jesus' conversation
with a Syrophoenician woman, "Even the dogs eat the scraps
from the table, don't they?" So this is part of the social
structure of the day. But what do we read about Lazarus? "At his gate," the rich man's gate,
"was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores." So he's ill, he's weak, he's poor,
longing to eat what fell from the rich man's table. He longed to eat the dog food,
at least that. But the dogs came and licked his sores. Most of our English translations have,
"Even the dogs came and licked his sores." The text doesn't say, "Even." It says, "But." It's very clearly an adversative. He will long to eat the dog food. But at least the dogs came
and licked his sores. They were the only ones that
showed compassion here. The guard dogs came and licked his sores. And then the time came
when they both died. The beggar died. There's no mention of his funeral,
no mention of his burial. He most likely would have been put in a
common grave reserved for the really poor and the indigent. But that's not the end of him. The angels carried him to Abraham's side. They carried him to Abraham's bosom. Now, that needs a bit of explanation too
because it's important in the rest of the narrative. Different cultures have different rules
about how close you can get to somebody. I was brought up in French Canada. So, in French Canada,
people are pretty jovial. We greet each other
by kissing on both cheeks. Yeah, I can manage that. And if you go to the Arab world,
then it's often three kisses. I sometimes find it difficult to remember
which side to begin on, which has its own challenges,
but nevertheless, I can do that too. But nevertheless, my genes are British. Both my parents were born in the
United Kingdom. And so, there's a part of me that thinks
that the appropriate distance between two consenting adults is 36 inches. And then I go to Latin America,
where they labor under the delusion that the appropriate distance between
2 adults is 18 inches. So, they keep crowding me,
getting closer, and closer, and closer, and I keep backing up. And they keep crowding me, and getting
closer and closer, and I keep backing up. And then I think, I'm going
to try and experiment. I'll stick up my foot once
they get closer. They step on it. They think I'm reserved
and a bit standoffish. And I think they're pushy and in my face. They're getting into my turf. It's all just culture. If I go to the Middle East,
and I'm with some of my Arab Muslim friends, well,
the men want to walk down the street with me hand in hand. That does not signal exactly what it might
signal in San Francisco. It's the way it's done. But if I'm there with my wife in some
of those cities, she's expected to walk behind me and certainly not hand
in hand, that's lasciviousness. So, you realize that some of these human
contact rules are culturally constrained in one fashion or another. And so, also this one,
Abraham now being the place where Lazarus is. Lazarus at Abraham side,
on Abraham's bosom. If you want to understand what's going on,
remind yourself of the biblical narratives of the Passover, and in particular,
the last Passover when Jesus is eating it before he goes to the cross. It looks as if it's one of those posh
meals that the Jews sometimes had, where instead of standing up or sitting,
they actually lay down on low mats. That was the way they did it. With a low table, and around the low
table, these narrow little mats where each person leaned on an arm
and then reached onto the table. And there would be some bread at each
place, and each person would take some bread, breaks them off,
and dip it into one of the bowls of either fruit puree or meat puree. Do you see? And they would eat it themselves or
sometimes pass it to a friend and give it to a friend as part of a sharing
device that indicates friendship and affection. But that meant that the person next
to Jesus had his back to him. And it turns out when you put the biblical
narratives together that the person next to Jesus was John. John. Peter was farther away. And at some point, Jesus says
some things that startle everyone. You're in the midst of this prescribed
feast of the Jews, the Passover feast. And Jesus says in a momentary low,
"One of you is going to betray me." Can you imagine the electric shock? I'll bet some of them were just about to
put something in their mouth and never quite made it. And others were chewing. And then, a little murmur
starts around the table. "Surely not I, Lord." "What is he talking about?" And from somewhere across the table,
Peter signals to John, because John is next to Jesus,
"Psss, ask what he means. Ask what he means." But, of course, although John is next
to Jesus, he's got his back to Jesus. So, what you do in those circumstances is
you push on your arm and you put your head back on the bosom
of the friend next to you. That's why John is described as the one
who rests his head on Jesus' breast at the Last Supper. So, he pushes on his arm,
puts his head on Jesus's breast, and he says, "Who is it, Lord?" And Jesus gives his response,
"It's the one who puts his hand in the bowl with me." Now, from our point of view,
that just seems unseemly a bit too close, a bit too cloying. Listen, if after this meal,
I were to go with you to the nearest McDonalds for a bite to eat,
I have to tell you, you can jolly well keep your head off my breast. Yet, nevertheless, in the context of the
first century, what this means is that John the Baptist is in the place
of privilege, of honor. He's at Jesus' right hand. And there's a kind of intimacy and
friendship that has John's head on Jesus' breast talking him, to "my own familiar
friends," to use a biblical expression. And that's where Lazarus is,
next to Abraham. Oh, in this life, the rich man ate
sumptuously, many course meals every day. And now, of course,
they're in the hereafter. And Abraham, the grandest patriarch of
them all, the head of the entire covenant people of God, the head of the entire Old
Testament Abrahamic Covenant, the one who had received spectacular
promises that through him and his seed, all the nations of the earth
would be blessed. The man who was called,
one of only two men so-called in the Old Testament, a friend of God. The man of faith. The one who serves in Paul's writings as
the very exemplar of someone who is justified by faith. He is there, and Lazarus is next to him
with his head on his breast at a banquet. Within the biblical framework,
doubtless, the Messianic banquet, although that isn't brought up here. And the rich man, where is he? The rich man also died and was buried. It doesn't mention Lazarus' burial. It mentions the rich man's burial. You don't want to read in too much,
but almost certainly, there was a village procession and decent
speeches were offered about how much this man had contributed to our community and
had employed so many people and so forth. He was buried, but in Hades, in hell. He was in torment. "He looked up and saw Abraham
far away, with Lazarus by his side." We're not told how he recognized Abraham. There were no photographs,
after all, in those days. The filling in of details like that isn't
part of the parable, but somehow rather, he recognizes who Abraham is and he
certainly recognizes Lazarus. He's from his village, after all. And he sees Lazarus by Abraham's side. That ends the immediate narrative,
the contrast between two men. And so, we start the dialog,
verses 24 to 31. There are three cycles. In each case, the rich man in hell says
something and then Abraham responds. Verse 24 is the first one. What would you expect the rich man
to say at this juncture? You followed the narrative with me. The man wakes up in hell,
sees Abraham and Lazarus a long way away. What would you expect him to say? You see, one of the problems we have
sometimes in reading the Bible is that we've become so sort of superficially
familiar with it that the shock of parables we sometimes lose because we
know the words, we've read them an often, and we've heard them an often, and so,
we don't hear the shock that they managed to evoke when they were first given. The only way I can get at the shock now is
to ask you, what do you think the man would be expected to say? Wouldn't you expect him to say something
like, "Oh, my, did I get that wrong? Oh, Lazarus, I am so sorry. Could you ever forgive me? Oh my, I was so selfish. Oh, I beg of you, please forgive me. Oh, I wish I could take that all back. I beg you." Wouldn't you expect him
to say something like that? But what you get is, in fact, astonishing. The rich man does not even
speak to Lazarus. He still treats him as a
menial person and untouchable. He says, "Father Abraham,
have pity on me." So he's playing the race card,
the race and covenant card. "Father Abraham, have pity on me and send
Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue." He doesn't even ask Lazarus himself. "Get the bossman to send Lazarus. Lazarus is just part of the menial bunch. Somewhere beneath the
blue-collar worker, thank you. Send Lazarus. Look at me, I'm suffering here. It's not right. Send this piece of unwashed humanity. Send him to me." In other words, he demands services
from the one to whom he would not even give dog food. The rich man, even in hell, cannot imagine
giving up his self-importance. He ignored Lazarus when he was in pain,
and now he wants something to alleviate his own pain. There's not a sign
of contrition here anywhere. And Abraham's response? "Son..." that's meant to be ironic. The man had started off, "Father Abraham." "All right, son." He may be a son by genetics but he's no
son of Abraham by faith. "Son, remember that in your lifetime,
you received your good things while Lazarus received bad things,
but now he is comforted here and you are in agony." In other words, this, "remember"
clause is followed by a brief repetition of what's happened
in the previous verses. The rich man, Lazarus, Lazarus,
the rich man. It's exactly the same order. It's nicely pulled together just to remind
this man of the narrative that has preceded, that has brought him
to this point in hell itself. And then he says, "And besides all this,
between us and you, a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want
to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over
from there to us." A great gulf fixed. This does not sound as if anyone in hell
is eventually going to get out. There have been some Christians who have
argued, surely God's love is so powerful, so winsome, so pursuing that eventually
everybody in hell will see the error of their ways, and turn, and repent,
and God, because He's rich in mercy, will eventually forgive their sin. They will escape from hell. They will go to heaven themselves. It's hard to justify that conclusion
from this passage. "There is a great gulf fixed,
a great chasm, and no one can go from there to here," Abraham says. But the striking thing is that Abraham
says something else, "No one can go from here to there." You might well ask yourself,
"Who would want to?" But in the narrative,
there's only one other person at issue, namely Lazarus. And the only reason given why anybody
would want to go from here to there in the entire narrative is that somebody might
want to go to bring a little bit of water for the rich man. The text doesn't quite say so but yet to
make sense of what Abraham means when he says, "So that those who want to go
from here to you cannot," I think you are supposed to imagine that Lazarus is as it
were tugging on Abraham's coat and saying, "It's okay, I'll go. I'll bring him some water. Okay, okay, I'll go." But just as no one can go from there to
here, no one can go from here to there. The line has been crossed. There's no crossing over. There's no turning back. And then the second exchange,
verses 27 to 29. The rich man answered, "Then I beg you,
Father, send Lazarus to my family, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them so that they will not
also come to this place of torment." Now, in the first verses,
we were introduced to a beggar named Lazarus. But now, it is the rich man who is
begging, "I beg you." But don't be deceived
by what the man says. This does not yet indicate repentance. He has natural concern for his own family. He would like his own brothers
to escape a similar destiny. He doesn't want the gospel to be preached
to the whole world or something of that order. He still doesn't address Lazarus. He still hasn't got a clue. He still hasn't asked for forgiveness. He still hasn't apologized,
nothing of that. Rather, if Lazarus still not addressed,
cannot be used as a table waiter to bring him some water, then perhaps he might be
used as an errand boy to bring a message to the folks back home. And Abraham's response? "They have Moses and the prophets. Let them listen to them." In our terms, they have the Bible. Let them listen to the Bible. In fact, we could say much more,
couldn't we? Not only do they have Moses and the
prophets, but they have the Gospels, and the epistles, and the apocalypse. They have the clarity of Revelation now,
this side of the coming of Jesus. Yes, the Old Testament looks forward
to the coming of Jesus under the typology of a Lamb who is wounded
for our transgressions. Yes, the Old Testament looks forward
to the coming of Jesus as the Great Davidic King. And yes, the Old Testament looks forward
to the coming of Jesus as the great covenant maker. And yet, so many of these things are in
types and in structures and in patterns. And people weren't putting
all of them together. They knew that a Messiah was coming. They knew that a King
in David's line was coming. They knew we needed a Great Priest,
but they didn't get it all together. The New Testament writers
have it all together. They've seen Jesus. They've seen how all of these diverse
strands from the Old Testament get woven together into one who is simultaneously
the king and the suffering servant. Simultaneously, the priest offering a
sacrifice and the Lamb who was sacrificed. One who presides over this new covenant,
and the one who is himself the embodiment of the New Covenant. The one who offers himself up as it were
in the heavenly sanctuary, whose flesh is nevertheless described as
the veil that is torn to get into the very presence of God in this
new heavenly sanctuary. All of these pieces coming together so
that you see more clearly who Jesus is. Listen. Listen. If you think that somehow,
you'd be more likely to believe if only someone like Lazarus would come
back from the dead and tell you, what God says to you through Abraham is
this, "You have Moses and the prophets, and you have the Gospels and the epistles,
and you have the book of Revelation." What more do you need? And that brings us to the third cycle. Now, this rich man is emboldened
to correct Abraham's theology. "No, Father Abraham,
you've got that wrong. You've misjudged the situation entirely. If someone from the dead goes to them,
then they will repent. You've put much too much emphasis
on the word written. Don't you see? If you just have someone rising from the
dead, that will answer it. That will be proved positive. All arguments will be resolved." And Abraham says, "If they do not listen
to Moses and the prophets, they will not be convinced even
if someone rises from the dead." And as Luke is writing these words,
he knows where his book is going. Someone did rise from the dead,
and people still do not believe. That was true even before Jesus'
resurrection from the dead. There is another Lazarus mentioned
in Scripture, a different Lazarus, whom Jesus brought back from the dead. His account is found in John Chapter 11. And after Jesus brings the man back from
the dead, well, it turned out to have been a pretty spectacular resurrection because
the man had been in the grave four days at a time when there was no embalming. Already, we're told, he was
smelling pretty badly. His decomposition had set in. Middle Eastern heat in four days
guaranteed that it was a pretty ugly situation. But you know what? Even though he was resurrected,
some believed, and others went and ratted Jesus out. Some still did not believe. So, let me conclude with some
reflections for all of us. Number one, there is a sphere of rejoicing
to pursue, and there is a place of torment to flee. The Bible has many different pictures
of both heaven and hell, most of them highly symbol laden. On the heaven side, we've all seen these
silly little line drawings. You know, people sitting on white puffy
clouds wearing a white nightgown and playing a harp. After the first billion years or so,
I'm quite sure that would get boring. Those of us with lower attention
spans might find it takes a little less than a billion years
to find that boring. But it's such a ridiculous reductionism. The pictures in the Bible of what the new
heaven and the new earth are like our staggeringly diverse. "Come and share your master's happiness,"
we read in another parable. Or, "You've been faithful over a few
things, I will make you ruler over many things." You know there's going to be work there,
work, and expanding horizons, and renewed responsibilities, and the strength to do
it, and no night there, and no perversity, no death, no loss, no sorrow, no tears,
and that's just the negative side. And meanwhile, people around the throne,
and great choirs, and praise, and matchless joy, and resurrection existence,
and learning forever. We've come to the place now, I think,
where we recognize that the Bible depicts the crowd around the throne on the last
day as being made up of people from every tongue, and tribe, and people, and nation. So, there will be cultural
diversity there. As far as I can see, there'll
also be linguistic diversity there of every tongue, language,
and tribe, and people, and nation. I'm not sure that the new heaven and the
new earth is going to mean that we all speak the same language anymore,
that we all speak the same language again to sort of go back pre-Babel. No, no, no, no. The very diversities of the
languages will be there. And if it takes me a million years to
learn Mandarin, who cares? There are lots of millions left. Don't you see? The very diversity will be
celebrated in it all. And hell itself, also described
in many, many ways. A place of fire, or of darkness,
or of chains, the absence of God, a place of torment. In Luke 12, we're told that some will be
beaten there with more stripes and some with fewer stripes because God
will take into account different degrees of responsibility. It'll all be fair and be seen
to be fair, but it's hell. The striking thing to observe in this
passage and in many, many others, is that as far as I can see,
there is not a single passage in all of Scripture that suggests there is
repentance in hell. Hell is not made up of people who are
thoroughly sorry for their sins and wish to repent, only
God won't let them. It's made up of people like this rich man,
who still thinks he's at the center of the universe. Hell is made up of people who are in an
endless, and eternal, and wretched cycle of sinning and condemnation
world without end. People make stupid jokes about how
they'd like to go to hell because all their friends will be there, hahahaha. But there are no friends in hell. As long as you think you're the center of
the universe, it's not long before all the friendships die. It's more one-upmanship
games, more wickedness. And so, the very passages of Scripture
that teach us great comfort when we ourselves lose loved ones,
"To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord,
which is far better," also warn us that there is
a hell to be feared. It is appointed unto us once to die
and after that the judgment. There is a sphere of rejoicing to pursue,
there is a place of torment to flee. Second. The things in which in this life we take
so much pride, in this parable, wealth, but it can be ethnicity,
or religious privilege, or power, or health, accomplishment,
quick-wittedness, good looks, youth, the very things in which our culture
teaches us to take so much pride may actually blind us to our need of grace. The things themselves
may be good, bad, or indifferent. But if they are the things in which we
locate our pride, they may simply blind us to our need of grace. The question eventually arises,
who is Lazarus, that is, who is the one whom God helps? And the one whom God helps the most is not
the one who has all of the advantages in this life but who has no place for God,
but the one who was on Abraham's bosom in the next life. Any other value scale is simply
incoherent in biblical terms. And finally. God has not left Himself without witness. We must listen to the witness
of Scripture or we are damned. I know that in the mercy of God,
sometimes a spectacular miracle actually does help people to come to faith. I could introduce you to people from an
Iranian Muslim background, who were introduced to the gospel
and started reading the Bible, and then somehow, as part of their
conversion, they had some kind of spectacular vision of Jesus somehow,
and that sort of tipped the scale and they were converted. I know God can convert people
out of all sorts of backgrounds. But at the end of the day,
the witness to which Abraham here primarily appeals is the truth
of what God has disclosed. Disclosed in events in history, like
the Exodus, like the giving of the law, like the rise of the prophets,
like the coming of Jesus, like the resurrection from the dead. And all of these events,
we have primary access to through witnesses, whose witness
has been inscripturated. That simply means it's been written down
and has become God-breathed canonical text by which we know the mind,
and thoughts, and activities of God. He has not left Himself without witness,
and we must listen to that witness or we are damned. But if we do listen to that witness,
then we discover something of the enormous grace of God in coming to us,
not only to redeem us, but to disclose His very thoughts,
to disclose His heart, His character, His purposes, and the blessings that will
follow because of what His son has done on our behalf. This same Scripture that comes to us as
an aroma unto death comes to us also as an aroma unto life. It discloses God in His mercy and grace as
well as in His severity and holiness. Above all, it discloses to us Jesus,
who is the hinge on which way we will take these Scriptures, such that we
sneer at them with condescension, and self-sufficiency, and arrogance,
or we bend the knee, and with gratitude, hear the voice of God
and cry, "God be merciful to me, a sinner. Lord, I believe, help my unbelief." Let us pray.
