Summary
Pastor Jon Noyes preaches from Luke 16:19–31, calling us to examine our comfort, urgency, and response to God’s Word in light of eternity. He warns against spiritual apathy and self-reliance, emphasizing the sufficiency of Scripture, the urgency of repentance, and the hope found in Christ, who has already risen and invites us to respond.
Transcript
We're going to pick up in Luke 16, statin' in verse 19, going all the way through 31. Let me read it and then I'll see where we go. "And now there was a rich man, and he habitually dressed in purple and fine linen, joyously living in Splenda every day. And a poor man named Lazarus was laid at his gate, covered with sores, and longing to be fed with the crumbs which were falling from the rich man's table. Besides even the dogs were coming and licking his sores. Now the poor man died, and was carried away by the angels into Abraham's bosom. And the rich man also died and was buried. In Hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and saw Abraham far away, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried out and said, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me,' and said Lazarus, so that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off my tongue from an agony in this flame. But Abraham said, 'Child, remember that during your life you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus' bad things. But now he's being comforted here, and you're in agony. And besides all this, between us and you there's a great chasm fixed, so that those who wish to come over from here to you will not be able, and that none may cross over from there to us.' And he said, 'Then I beg you, Father, that you send him to my Father's house, for I have five brothers in order that they may be warned, so that they'll not also come to this place of torment.' But Abraham said, 'They have Moses and the prophets. Let them hear them.' But he said, 'No, Father Abraham, but someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' But he said to him, 'If they don't listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone raises from the dead.' Holy Father in heaven, I'm grateful for the opportunity to come before you today under your banner. Lord, we have a modest goal, a modest request, that as we leave here we'll just change a little bit, just a little bit more into the image of your son, so that tonight as the sun sets and then darkness falls as we lay our heads on our pillows tonight, we would just look a little bit more like Jesus. We just want to love our neighbor's better, we want to love you more. In Christ's name, Amen. So I'm just going to do a little introduction here by way of kind of clarification, I'm hoping, some clarification on the passage. You know, oftentimes there are moments, I don't know if you guys ever feel like this, there are moments when the Word of God feels like it reads us more than we read it. And this I think, this passage here is one of those moments for a number of reasons. The parable I think invites us to not so much speculate about the afterlife. Oftentimes when we're talking about the rich man and Lazarus, it's an introduction to the existence of hell. And I think there's something else going on here. I don't think it's as much a focus on the afterlife in hell as much as it confronts us with the reality of this life that we're in now, the decisions that we make, the people that we ignore, the Word of God that we neglect. It holds up, and for me and my prep at least for this last week and a half or so, it's held up a mirror of my assumptions about comfort, urgency, and truth, and what it's revealed has been sobering. And I hope it's sobering for all of us this morning. So like in my prayer I said, I just pray that we leave here unchanged. You know, I just want to look a little bit more like Jesus. That's not a bad thing. If you think about it, that's not a bad thing for anybody, for the believer or the unbeliever. If we all looked more like Jesus in the way that we lived, the world would be a better place. Luke in our parable here, he structures it with two kind of distinct paths. The first path is verse 19 to 26, and that's going to form kind of the main story. We're introduced to the characters, and it's a tale of reversal and judgment. Verses 27 to 31 act as kind of a piercing epilogue, a dialogue about conversion, about Scripture, and what it takes to truly believe in Christ. And both paths drive home two of Luke's central themes, the great reversal between the rich and the poor, and the tragic resistance to repentance, even in the face of resurrection and resurrected life. So diving right in, Jesus, he begins with a striking contrast. It comes out to all of us. You know, we have this nameless rich man dressed in purple and in fine linen, feasting daily in luxury, and then we have a poor man Lazarus covered in sores, laid at the rich man's gate, and the rich man's name is forever forgotten to eternity, while Lazarus is, well, he's remembered even to today, 2,000 years later, we know the story of Lazarus. And in all of Jesus' parables, I think this is significant, this is the only time a character is given a proper name. And this isn't by accident, friends. Jesus doesn't waste His words. Jesus wants us to kind of slow down here, and He wants us to consider every detail of the story that He's sharing. The name Lazarus, it has meaning. Just as many of us, when we name our children, we name them something of significance. We like those names to have meaning behind them. Lazarus means God is my help, and it signals something incredibly profound. God knows the lowly. He sees suffering and he remembers the forgotten. But the rich man, he's wealthy, influential, and likely known in his time, he has no name in the kingdom of God. Today we see just how upside down God's economy really is. In our world, oftentimes, I mean, I live in monksess and I fight back at it oftentimes in my vocation, right, as I travel around and I see all these people who are, you know, the TikTok influences, and, you know, they have all these subs and smash that like button, you know? And because it's the rich and the powerful who are remembered, right? It's the rich and the powerful who have a name and they're celebrated and they're followed while it's the destitute in our world. On our economy, it's the destitute who are nameless and ignored and discarded. But in the kingdom of God, the roles are completely reversed. The beggar here has a name. The mogul is the one who becomes anonymous. And here's the deep irony. Only the sick know that they need a physician. And what separates Lazarus and the rich man isn't just economics, it's awareness. Lazarus understood his need while the rich man never saw his. And we're going to see that in a minute. Lazarus, his physical condition was the rich man's spiritual condition. And then the tragedy is that the rich man was blind to it. He didn't see it. He mistook his external comfort for his internal health. And like the Pharisees who were rich in spirituality, always quoting Scripture, flaunting their righteousness, but they couldn't see their own self-righteousness and destitution. So Jesus, He's told us this before. This isn't a new lesson for us. I mean, just reverse back to chapter 5 in Luke. Those who are well have no need for his physician, right? But those who are sick do. But oftentimes we don't get it. And notice here at the onset of our story, there's no interaction between the two. The rich man is his inside. Lazarus is outside. The rich man dines extravagantly. Lazarus longs for crumbs. Dogs give Lazarus more attention than the man with a full pantry. But then everything changes. Jesus, He flips the script here just as He's often done and He's done in some of our lives. You know, and this is actually the central pivot. The death of both men in verse 22 is where everything changes. Suddenly, the rich man is in torment and Lazarus is in comfort at Abraham's bosom, held closely by Abraham. But just as before, there's still no exchange. They're not talking. Why? It's the chasm that separates them. Once existed just in luxury. It was temporal. And at a certain point in time, that chasm that separated Lazarus and the rich man could have been crossed. But not anymore. It's been eternalized here. And the details, they're deliberately inverted. Lazarus, who once longed for scraps, is now filled with comfort. The rich man who once ignored the beggar now pleads for a drop of water. Lazarus once licked by dogs. Now the rich man is tormented by flames. Lazarus was on the outside. Now the rich man is on the outside. And perhaps what's most haunting is not necessarily the reversal itself, but the permanency of the situation. Abraham tells the rich man that a chasm has been fixed. What's done is done. Just as he ignored Lazarus in life, he's now eternally cut off in death. He'd excluded Lazarus from his table in life, and now he's excluded from Abraham's table in death. And then this is, I think, a very important note for us to leave here thinking about. This parable, it doesn't suggest that Lazarus was saved because of his poverty, by the way, or that the rich man was condemned for being wealthy. You see, Lazarus in our story, he's not described as particularly virtuous, or his condition, not his character, is the object of divine compassion. It's his poverty and neglect that draw the mercy of God here. And the rich man, likewise but flipped, isn't portrayed as a violent oppressor or blasphemer. He's simply oblivious. That's the point. It's not his wealth that condemned him. This isn't like some Marxist critique of the inequalities of class-ridden culture. It's not some victory of working class over the evil of capitalists. The key to this, friends, isn't rich versus poor, in some kind of like Robin Hood story. We only have to consider the story of Abraham to see that, right? Abraham was incredibly wealthy. That dispels all of these types of ideas. And then all we have to do is focus our minds back on Jesus' teaching. But I mean, just in this book alone, just in this gospel in Luke 6, right? What would you were rich for? You have already received your comfort. Fast forward to chapter 14. If you're going to throw a banquet, I mean, do you guys remember this? Like, who do you invite to the banquet? To invite the rich and the famous in your neighbors or somebody else? You guys aren't going to tell me, are you? You're going to be so quiet. Oh, gosh, it drives me crazy. Yeah, beggars! Beggars, right? The poor. He says, "Invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind." Why? And you'll be blessed since they don't have the means to repay you. And you'll be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous, is what Jesus says. And just two weeks ago, right? Just two weeks ago, Jeremy preached on this. Pastor Jeremy did a wonderful job. In verse 13, "No servant can serve two masters, for either will hate the one and love the other, or else he'll be devoted to the one and despise the other." You cannot serve God and what? Money or wealth. But it's not the wealth in and of itself that separates the rich man or anybody else. It's that the wealth absorbed him. His tragedy is that he was just his wealth. And that's all he was. He saw no need to act. He saw no need to notice. He saw no urgency to change. That spiritual apathy hadn't into eternal judgment. And I think it does oftentimes in our culture. Have you guys noticed the culture today is so apathetic? Well, maybe the reason why it's so apathetic is because we're trying to serve two masters. We've been walled to sleep by our comfort. I mean, not you guys. I'm not saying that's to you guys because you guys are our perfect Christians. But when you go out there and you start talking to those normal pagans, those people, you know, they don't feel the need. And I think that's what our rich man's story is. He didn't feel the need. He was walled to sleep in his wealth. You see, the rich man's ruin lies in a life so steeped in comfort that he never truly saw the one who suffered right at his doorstep as he stepped over him. And in the end, it was that failure to see that sailed his ultimate fate. You see, he isn't in hell for something he did, but something he didn't do. Remember our confession that we do every week. Remember what we say. Yet most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, indeed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone. You know, ultimately this parable, it finds its meaning. What it's about is failure and conversion, which explains the need for the second half. It could have ended right there. A story could have ended there. It would have been sad, but true. But then it adds this epilogue, which I don't know if it's any more uplifting. See the story, it doesn't end just with introducing the two characters and then their eternal fate. You see, the rich man is now resigned to his eternal destiny. He turns out with. And then notice this with me guys, for the first time, for the first time, perhaps in his life, the rich man shows an interest in others, though still not the poor. Right? He's still not concerned with the least of these, but he asks that his brothers would be warned for what awaits them. You know, then he says, then I beg you, Father, send Lazarus to my father's house. Why? For I have brothers. I've got five of them. Just send Lazarus there and warn them because I don't want them to suffer like I'm suffering. And this is a desperate appeal. Let someone go back from the dead to warn them. And notice, even in his desperation, this is telling of his posture, even now in torment. He's desperate. And he still in this desperation, he assumes on Lazarus a position of inferiority. The rich man implies, even in torment, that he was somehow treated unfairly, that if only he'd been given a clearer warning, he would have chosen another path. But his protest stands in stark contrast with the quiet dignity of Lazarus, who remains silent throughout the entire story. You see, Lazarus, Lazarus, he doesn't cry out against the suffering he endured in this life and he doesn't gloat in vindication in the comfort that he receives in the next. And he also doesn't resist being called on to be a servant yet again. In this Lazarus, he's reflecting something far greater for us. He's reflecting the truer and the greater servant, the suffering servant who in Isaiah we're told is like a sheep before the shears is silent. So he did not open his mouth. He's pointing us to Jesus and he receives what God gives without complaining of pride and embodying the humility of Jesus, who didn't consider equality with God, something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant. But Abraham responds with a sobering line. They have Moses and the prophets. Let them hear them. And the scriptures, they're enough is what he's saying. Abraham is insisting this. They have enough already. The rich man is still bagging from the afterlife, pleading for something more, something dramatic. No, Father Abraham, he insists. But if someone goes, if someone just goes and rises from the dead, if you bring them back, the resurrected Lazarus, then they'll repent. And the assumption is the assumption is that somehow a miracle will do what Scripture can't. And how does Abraham reply? Well, Abraham replies with a thunderclap of finality. If they don't listen to Moses and the prophets, they're not going to be persuaded even if someone raises from the dead, cutting to the very hat of the human resistance. You see, this is the final exchange. And this is kind of the summation of the parable's epilogue. And it's got a sharp edge. It cuts if you let it. It exposes the deep resistance to true conversion, not merely due to a lack of evidence, but due to a settled unwillingness to hear what's already been spoken. You see, the rich man's appeal assumes that his brothers are in ignorance. But Abraham's words, they declare otherwise. They are not still in ignorance. They already have the word. They already know what God said. They already bear the weight of divine testimony. Words that have always called God's people to care for the orphan, the widow, and the stranger at the gate. Learn to do good is what Isaiah tells us. Learn to do good. Seek justice. Reprove the ruthless. Defend the orphan. Lead for the widow. Their failure, like his, isn't due to a lack of revelation, but a lack of a response. You see, I get this all the time, guys. This is the last weekend I was in Turlock. And I did a Q&A on Sunday night with maybe, I don't know, 300 people. And this is one of those questions. But Q&As always seem daunting at first, but you always get the same questions. It's crazy. Because people have like very similar questions about who God is and what He's doing and their life and how it interacts and they relate. And this is a question that we always get. You know, as if God's hidden, this is the hiddenness of God. Well, but God has revealed Himself, right? I mean, when we look up at Mount Boney and we stand in awe of a sunset and we look, John, at that perfect wave, right? The perfect wave to catch. I have no idea what that looks like because I don't surf. But when we look at the beauty of babies and we smell the baby smell and we look at moms and are in awe of our wives and what they're doing, these are all evidences that God has already given us. And these are just His general revelation. Never mind the revelation that's been given to us through His Word. You see, you want to hear from God. We spend so much time. God, will you speak to me? He already has. He's written the book for you. And everything you need to know about God is right in here. We just don't read it. And here this is Abraham's point. You see, it's not a lack of evidence. If it were only so easy as evidence, guys, I could stand here and give it 20 arguments for the existence of God. I could tell you the column cosmological argument for the existence of God. We could talk about why everything exists as opposed to nothing. I could talk about the existence of a moral depth to reality. I could talk about the teleological argument for the existence of God and the design behind the universe and why the universe seems perfectly situated and designed just to support our life. We could talk about all of these things, but at the end of the day, it's not about evidence. It's not. It's about conversion. It's about conversion. Even a resurrection won't soften a conscience that's already been seared is the point. And of course, Jesus is pointing to his own resurrection here, right? Even then, the religious leaders will hat in their hats and even then many will explain it away, right? The gods, the guards, sorry, the guards, the guards, they stole the body, right? Remember that? They're trying to explain it away. The resurrection. We can't have resurrection is what the Sanhedrin said. The gods, they took the body and then Jesus, he highlights this very fact. He highlights this very fact in the sign of Jonah. Do you guys remember the sign of Jonah from Luke 11? Right the sign of Jonah and in the sign of Jonah, right in this case, Jesus declares that his resurrection, the sign of Jonah, belly of a big fish for three days, Jonah, the bigger and better Jonah, the truer and better Jonah, Jesus, he's going to be in the tomb for three days and then he's going to, and he says, he's like that he's going to come up and he's going to be raised again. So this, the sign of Jonah, Jesus will be the only sign given to a generation obsessed with proof yet hadn't in unbelief. And he highlights the tragic irony that pagan, the pagan Ninevites and the Queen of the South respond to, they respond to far lesser evidence than a resurrection of the Son of God. And in the meantime, even Jesus' own contemporaries reject someone five greater than Jonah or Solomon or Moses or any of them. And in so doing, he's exposing a willful refusal to believe even in the face of the ultimate sign. Likewise, this epilogue lays bare the deepest truth. That problem isn't a lack of evidence. It's a lack of willingness. I remember as an atheist, wrestling with the evidence. I prided myself on being an intellectual person. I love knowledge, and I've always wanted to believe what's true. And I remember when I was first confronted with the evidence for the historical Jesus and even his resurrection. I still lived in rebellion. And it wasn't because I didn't have the evidence. It was because I loved my sin. I loved my sin. Guys, sin feels good for a time. You know, and it wasn't until you know, you bend your knee and you confess Jesus is Lord that things start to change. It's not until the Holy Spirit He softens your head, how to stone. It gives you a how to flesh that that evidence starts to speak. And this is coming from a professional Christian apologist. Don't tell my boss I'm saying this stuff. It's supposed to be about the evidence, right? It's posture. And this passage I think is a theological body blow to the modern era and to modern years. It declares the sufficiency of Scripture even over signs and wonders. It indicts a demand for more proof when God has already spoken clearly through His Scriptures. The rich man's issue, it's not information, it's transformation. And then this entire chapter, all of Luke 16, it's a beautiful unit. I highly recommend guys, because sometimes I don't know about you, but I can't track week to week. Like, I listen to the sermons when I'm not here and I try, but context gets lost on me. I'm just not that smart. I'm not good at it. So it helps just go home and read all of 16 today and see the beautiful unity that's there from beginning to end. You know, the parable of the dishonest manager, 1 through 13, those verses, right? It highlights a man who, who, who, who facing crisis, he acts decisively, even trudely it says to prepare for his future. And the rich man here by contrast, he's passive. He does nothing. He doesn't plan. He doesn't notice. He doesn't repent. And when crisis comes, it's too late. It's too late. And together, these two parables, they serve as a bookend. They serve as a bookend to a, to a wake up call. You see, Jesus, He's not merely offering us wisdom. He's issuing a warning. Don't wait. Don't ignore the, these things. Don't ignore that those are in need all around us. They're outside of our very door. They're in our, they're in our congregation, small as it might be. You know, don't presume tomorrow because you're not guaranteed tomorrow. The kingdom of God is, is breaking in and the word of God is enough to call you into it. And in a culture like ours, saturated with, with comfort and distraction, desensitized to suffering, this parable I think is more relevant than, than ever. You see the chasm between the rich and the poor, the, the, the secure and the suffering. It's just, it's not just a metaphor today. It's real. It exists all around us. And like the rich man, we risk becoming so comfortable that we miss the cries outside of our doors and, and miss the voice of, of God and our ears. The parable and I'm, I'm wrapping up. One of my shortest messages ever. I can still ruin it. You see the parable of, of the rich man and Lazarus, it's not just a story about the afterlife. It's a story about the here and now. It's about seeing, it's about acting, about hearing the word of God and responding before the chasm is fixed. You see friends, the door is still open. The door to glory, the door to heaven is still open, but it won't always be. We're afforded this one life, says the author of Hebrews, then comes judgment. That same author, he says, how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? There's no escape apart from Jesus. And then you and I, me and you, we don't need another miracle. We don't need someone to rise from the dead to prove that God is speaking. Someone has risen already. The words clear. The question, the question is, will we listen? Will we listen to His words as read and heard through His scriptures? And then now as we, as we come to Christ's table, the highlight of our service in my opinion, we're reminded that the, the word's not only sufficient to convict, but it's also sufficient to comfort. It's sufficient to forgive and it's sufficient to restore. And in the parable that we just looked at, Jesus confronts us with the urgency of God's call, a call not just to hear, but to respond. And now in communion, we get to do just that. We get to respond. And we don't come because we've, we've noticed the poor man better than, than more than the rich man did. We don't come because we've perfectly obeyed the law and the prophets, not at all. None of us do. We come to this table because Christ has done what we can't. We come because, because the one who did rise from the dead invites us still to this very day. He invites us to this table of grace, mercy, and peace. So as we pass the peace of Christ today to one another, we do so not as a formality, but as a declaration that in Him, there's forgiveness for the guilty. In Him there's sight for the blind. In Him there's belonging for those who are on the outside. In Him there's satisfaction and rest for all who turn and trust in Jesus. Let's pray. Father, I thank You for the opportunity to share from Your amazing Word Your truth given to us so that we can know You and look more like Christ. You're a good, good God. We love You in Christ's name. Amen.