9/19/21 Luke 16:19-31 “A Warning with Lots of Love”

17 Sep 9/19/21 Luke 16:19-31 “A Warning with Lots of Love”

9/19/21   Luke 16:19-31       “A Warning with Lots of Love”

There are times when I am rolling along and suddenly, I have to wonder about my sanity.  Here’s what I mean.  When our girls were younger, they used to love a good scary movie.  They probably still do.  They would have friends over and watch movies like this all the time.  Now I, on the other hand, do not like these types of movies. I guess that I have been around the block enough times in life so that I just don’t enjoy this.  I have been scared enough in real life so I really don’t want to be scared for entertainment.  I know that some of you agree with me and some of you don’t and that is ok.  I am not going to stand up here and tell you what to like and not to like.  Then I come upon the passage that we have for today and I love it.  I hate scary movies but this passage which seems scary is one of my favorite passages in the Bible.  This is why I question my sanity.  However, I think that I might be ok because I might view this a little different than a scary movie.  I look at this passage from Luke and I see hope and lots of hope.  For me this hope is the nuts and bolts of this passage; it’s meat and potatoes.  Let’s take a look at this scary passage and see if we can find the hope.

Mike Turner tells the story of a young man; actually, he was a rich young executive, who was driving his brand-new Jaguar automobile, the most expensive model made.  He was driving extra careful through a residential neighborhood keeping his eyes peeled for any children who might dash out in front of his beautiful new car.  He was driving along ok when he suddenly heard a loud crash.  He stopped the car and got out to look.  Someone had taken a brick and thrown it against the side of his car, doing a lot of damage.  The young man was furious and seeing red as he set out in a rage looking for the kid who threw it.  It didn’t take much to find him between parked cars and he grabbed him.  He started to yell at him, “What do you think you are doing?  Why would you throw a brick at a car like this?  This is going to cost me thousands of dollars to fix.  I’m going to teach you not to ever do this again.”  He pulled back his fist and was just ready to hit the boy.

By now the boy is screaming out his defense, “Please, mister, please.  I’m sorry but I didn’t know what to do.  I threw the brick because no one else would stop.”  There were tears streaming down his face.  The lad pointed to a place just around a parked car.  “It’s my brother,” he said.  “He rolled off the curb and fell out of his wheelchair and I can’t lift him up.”  The boy was in a full cry by now.  Sobbing, the boy asked, “Would you help me get him back in the wheelchair?”  The rich young man was at a total loss for words.  He helped lift the handicapped boy back into his wheelchair.  Then he took out his linen handkerchief and wiped off the boy’s scrapes and cuts.

The young boy said, “Thank you and may God bless you.”  The young man was pretty stunned as he slowly drove away.  The damage to the car was very noticeable but he never did get his door fixed.  He kept the big dent to remind him, “Don’t go through life so fast that someone has to throw a brick at you to get your attention.”  This is part of what our Scripture is all about today.  I think I’m like this sometimes and maybe you too.

But let us begin at the beginning.  There was a rich man.  We can tell right away that he was really rich because he wore purple.  This was a color that was very hard to make in those days and it was reserved for the very rich and royalty.  It also tells us that he lived in luxury every day.  He probably lived in the first gated community because it tells us that he had a gate for his house.  So, we are not talking about someone who is kind of rich or a rich want to be.  This guy has got some major bucks.

Then we have a poor man named Lazarus.  This is the only parable that Jesus tells, where he actually names one of the people.  The name Lazarus means ‘God is my helper.’  Names meant a lot in those days and this was a special name.  This man was a beggar who lay at the gate of the rich man.  If he was lying there, then it almost sounds like he had some sort of physical ailment.  We don’t know what this was but it does tell us that he had sores all over his body.  He couldn’t have been very mobile because the dogs came and licked his sores.  Now these aren’t the kind of dogs that we think about today.  These were not like our little Dachshund/poodle cross who tries to cuddle you to death.  These were wild dogs.  Remember that Jews would have nothing to do with dogs because they were unclean.  So, we see from just these few lines that we have a man who is poorer than poor and has something wrong with him as he is not mobile.  With these sores and things, well, this is just an ugly picture.  All this man wants is some scraps from the rich man’s table.

Then we have both of these men die and the poor man goes to heaven and the rich man goes to hell.  This would have been a real shocker to the early readers.  In ancient times, people with lots of money were considered to be blessed by God in this life and they were assured a place in heaven.  I would almost guess that rich people today would think the same thing that is if they even give a thought about it all in the first place.  Rich people have a hard time getting into heaven.  Anyway, now comes the interesting part.

Now we have a description of hell.  The rich man is in so much agony that he would be satisfied if Lazarus would just come and dip his finger in water and touch his tongue.  Notice how the rich man still considers Lazarus to be beneath him as if he was a servant.  I also want us to notice that the rich man is not here because he is rich.  That has nothing to do with it.  He is here because he didn’t do the will of God while he was on earth.  He walked by Lazarus every day and gave him nothing.  He had all the riches in the world and he did not share them with the poor.  The Bible describes hell in many places but this one really hits home for me.

We also have many misconceptions about hell.  One is that we won’t mind being there because all our friends are there.  Look at our reading.  Does the rich man have all his friends surrounding him?  No, he is all alone.  There is no one around.  He even longs for the company of Lazarus, a poor beggar.  Another place in the Bible describes this as a place where there is no light.  Therefore, you would never see all your friends even if they were standing right beside you.  In Mark we read that it would be better to have a millstone tied around your neck and thrown into the sea than to go to the place of eternal fire.  This is a terrible place.  There are no cell phones or TV or anything but the memories of all the wrong you did.  You should want to avoid this place.

Another misconception that we have is that all our choices dictate where we will spend eternity.  The only choice that makes any difference to your eternal life is whether you accept God or reject God.  Many feel that they can reject God and still end up in heaven.  Many people feel they have done a lot of great things to help out the needy so they are ok.  Many feel that there is more than one way to heaven. There are churches that teach this. None of this is true.  This is the absolute main reason why I will offer the Lord’s salvation to you just about every Sunday or any other day.  Your eternal life depends on you accepting Jesus as God.  Ask Him into your life so that you will have a good spot in eternity and not in the place where this rich man is.

Another misconception that we have, especially in our modern world, is that everyone will go to heaven.  This is another myth that even some churches proclaim.  There could be nothing farther from the truth.  Another facet of this is that we have a chance to get out of there after we have been there.  And again, this is not from the Scriptures.  This place we call hell is real.  It is as real as if I went outside and picked some grass.  The road is wide that leads to hell.

Notice also how the rich man didn’t help the poor man while he was on earth.  This was his crime.  He didn’t help others in the name of God.  If he knew God he would have helped.  He is talking to Abraham here who was the absolute patriarch of the Jewish faith.  He was considered next to God.  Abraham reminds the rich man of what he has done and he also tells him that there is no way that he will ever be able to go to the other side, heaven.  There is a great chasm between heaven and hell that cannot be breached.  This is a done deal.  It is real and it is forever.

This pretty much takes care of some misconceptions that we have.  Whether we like it or not, we are eternal beings.  You will be around forever.  Your time on earth is when you get to make the decision as to where you will spend forever.  You can be like the rich man and think that you are going to heaven by doing the right things or not.  You can give to all the right charities and be on all the right church committees.  But if you don’t have your heart in Jesus then this terrible place will be your final spot and there is no way out of it.  There is no purgatory.  There is no second chance after we die.  There is no waiting period.  This is our waiting period, so to speak.  This is your decision time.

Then the rich man wants to send Lazarus back to warn his brothers.  Notice again how he still doesn’t get it as he treats Lazarus as a servant, someone he can send back.  But he is starting to get it because he wants to warn his brothers of how terrible a place this is.

Now I know that you don’t like sermons on this subject because you don’t like to think about death and you don’t like to be told what to do in this life.  We often think that if we ignore a reading about hell, then we will never have to worry about it.  But it is real.  And in here lies the Good News.  Let me finish this and I will get back to this great news.

Now comes some of the most profound words of the Bible.  Jesus says through Abraham in this parable that he will not send Lazarus back to warn the brothers.  He tells him that they have Moses and the prophets to warn them.  But the rich man argues in vs. 30, “No, father Abraham,” he said.  “But if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.”  Now listen closely to what Jesus says next.  “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”  Jesus will die and be raised from the dead and still most people will not get it.  Now if I understand this right, we have been given all the evidence that we need to make our decision.  It is all right here in the Bible and there are many, many witnesses to these works of God.  Choose the way of Jesus.

But God isn’t done yet because He knows that we can be a little thick headed like our rich man.  So, God has continued to perform miracles in everyone’s lives.  I would say that there isn’t a day that goes by that we don’t see the hand of God somewhere.  We have the miracle of birth.  We have the miracle of how we were put together.  We have the miracle of how the world supports life.  And of course, we see healing miracles all the time.  I have told you of my friend who was healed of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.  God is still working and it is still not enough for many or most people.  They would rather live their lives in misery than to have to give themselves to Jesus Christ.  This is really sad.

But the Good News that I have talked about today in this very gloomy passage, is this.  There is not a person in the world who has to go to this place, not one.  This is just a warning.  Many feel that this is a threat and it is not.  If I tell you not to go and play catch with your baseball on the freeway in downtown Minneapolis at 5 PM on Wednesday, you would know that this is just a warning because if you did, you would probably get seriously hurt or killed.  This is the same thing.  Don’t live your life away from God because this is the consequence of your actions.  There is no changing it once it is done and it is your decision all the way.  It is called free will.

Jesus loves us so much that He devised a system of justice to go along with His love.  There is a rather humorous story of President Calvin Coolidge as told by John Hamby.  This actually happened when Coolidge was vice president and he was presiding over the Senate.  I don’t think that our Senate is much different today as they argue bills with much passion and a lot of nonsense.  Anyway, there was this heated argument during debate on the floor of the Senate.  One senator got so angry that he told another senator to go “straight to hell.”  Well, the offended senator was not to take this so he went directly to Coolidge and made a complaint.  I think that this is the funny part because we have all seen pictures of our congressmen playing games or reading books or otherwise not being attentive to what’s going on in the debate.  Coolidge was the same way as he heard the complaint and looked up from the book he was reading and said, “I have looked through the rule book and you don’t have to go.”

You don’t have to go.  No one has to go.  The rich man knew what he had to do to avoid this and his pride or whatever kept him from doing it.  We all know the consequence of not knowing and loving Jesus.  It is simple.  It is too simple for many.  Jesus loves you so much that He wants to take you to a place where its wonderfulness cannot be described in any terms.  It is that good!  In a couple of weeks, we are going to look at heaven and all of its wonderments that we know.  There is absolutely no way that Jesus wants you to spend any time with this rich man.  He wants you to spend all of your time with Him for eternity.  This warning is part of the love that He has for you.  Go to Him, follow Him and let His love permeated every part of your body and soul.  And thank you, Jesus, for first loving us.  Let’s pray.