POEM:
An old man sat by an open fire and dreamed the years away,
While, outside in the battle of life, many perished in the toils of day.
He never did any good, nor did he ever do any wrong.
He just sat by the open fire and dreamed the whole day long.
Now he’s left a vacant chair and they say he’s gone up higher,
but, if he still does what he used to do, he’s probably still sitting by the fire.
(author unknown)
APPLY: Today we’re looking at the Biblical story of a man who ended up sitting by the fire. We don’t know his name. He’s just referred to as … “the rich man” But Jesus tells us that - because of his lifestyle - he ended up in Hell.
Tony Campolo once described this man with these words:
“The rich man, at least, was worried about his brothers. Really, he may not have been all that bad, in the way we view "badness." His sin was not that he broke any of the Ten Commandments. He wasn't an adulterer or a thief. He hadn't killed anyone and in all probability, he came by his money through hard work.
The sin of the rich man was that he enjoyed a yuppie-like "Good life" while being unconcerned about those around him who desperately needed help.
Like the man in the poem I just read:
“He never did any good, nor did he ever do any wrong”
He just sat by the fire and dreamed the whole day long.”
Now, there are a few questions that came into my mind as I was preparing today’s sermon:
1st – What had he done that was so wrong?
Like Tony Campolo observed: This man may not have been all that bad… as we view “badness”. I mean - it was HIS money!
And those beggars could be so annoying.
I mean why didn’t that guy go out and get a job or something.
He was always out there EVERY DAY asking for alms.
If I gave money to him, it was just encourage all the other beggars to come annoy me.
You name the excuse, and that rich man probably had used it.
But there are a few things about the beggar that we need to notice:
· He wasn’t a professional beggar. It wasn’t like he could go out and get a job. He had sores on his body… and the dogs came along and licked his wounds. Who’d hire this man? Not McDonalds.
· He wasn’t begging for alms… he was just asking for the scraps from the table. He was asking for food that the rich man would have thrown away!!! It wasn’t going to cost him a dime to help out this Lazarus.
· And Lazarus was a Godly man. God KNEW his name. We’re not told rich man’s name, but God knew who Lazarus was. And when Lazarus died… the angels came looking for him.
It’s almost humorous.
Luke 16:22 tells us “And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom: the rich man also died… and he was buried”
Lazarus dies and the angels come and get him
But when the rich man dies… he just gets buried.
Lazarus was a man that God loved and when he died, God sent him a personal escort to the other world.
But the Rich man didn’t get that
So just WHAT had he done wrong?
Well, it helps to understand how God views poverty.
* In the Law God commanded His people: If there is a poor man among your brothers… do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward your poor brother… There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land.” Deuteronomy 15:7 & 11
And so God says - this is so important to Him - that He makes us some promises:
* “… blessed is he who is kind to the needy.” Proverbs 14:21
* “A generous man will himself be blessed, for he shares his food with the poor.” Proverbs 22:9
In fact, God promises: “He who is kind to the poor LENDS to the LORD, and he will reward him for what he has done.” Proverbs 19:17 (He’ll repay with interest)l
BUT on the other hand:
* “He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God.” Proverbs 14:31
* And “If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry out and not be answered.”
Proverbs 21:13
Essentially, the rich man had shut his ears to the cry of the poor.
And had shown contempt for His Maker.
His wealth had turned him against both his fellow Jew and His God.
Why would he do that???
Why would he ignore both the needy and his God??
Well, if you have enough money… you tend to think you don’t need God.
And if you have enough money… you don’t need other people either.
ILLUS: The journal Science reported on a survey that indicated that the influence of money can result in selfish and often anti-social behavior. Co-author Nicole Mead said "Money changes people's motivations.
They are less focused on other people. In this sense, money can be a barrier to social intimacy."
(Karen Kaplan, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer November 18, 2006)
ILLUS: Charlie Sheen was in Chicago last week, and someone asked him why he spent so much money on prostitutes. He replied: He had made so much that eventually he ran out of things to buy.
Now, let’s put aside the obviously bizarre focus on money Sheen has for a minute.
He’s hiring prostitutes to gain intimacy!!!!
His riches have warped his mind to the point where there is no one who is really close enough to him to be important to him (let alone God). His wealth has a created a barrier to social intimacy.
That was the problem for the Rich Man in Luke 16.
The Rich Man’s love of money had robbed him of his ability to care about others (note that he still views Lazarus as a servant to be sent on errands) and ultimately it robbed him of his care about his God.
That’s why Paul wrote: ”People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” 1 Timothy 6:9-10
That explains what happened to the rich man.
His wealth had separated him from others as well as his God.
And as a result, he ended up in hell.
(PAUSE)
Now there are people who have difficulty with the idea of hell.
ILLUS: A mega-church preacher by the name of Rob Bell came out with a book on hell recently. It’s called “Love Wins” And in this book he describes why Rob Bell doesn’t believe in hell.
Essentially: He doesn’t believe a loving, merciful God would send anyone to Hell.
Now someone might ask: what about this Jesus parable about the Rich Man and Lazarus. And Bell (and other skeptics) might answer… well that’s JUST a parable. It’s an “imaginary story” that Jesus just made up to prove a point.
Well there are a couple of problems with that:
1st – this is the only parable that mentions one of the people in it by name.
You can look through all the other parables Jesus told and not one mentions anyone by name. But this parable did. In no other parable did Jesus think it was worthwhile to mention a name, but in this one Jesus did – because Jesus knew this man and Lazarus fate mattered to Jesus.
2nd - whenever Jesus told a parable it always dealt with something had or could have happened. In His parables Jesus spoke of Kings and Servants, Farmers and Shepherds etc.
He told about people you could identify with and circumstances His audience would recognize and understand.
· This man bought a field. Well, they’d known of men who’d bought fields.
· That man found a treasure. You can still find buried treasure in Israel. People often buried their valuables when the threat of war or bandits threatened their homes.
· That Shepherd lost a sheep. Well, shepherds often lost sheep.
Jesus’ parables were never outlandish fables.
They were always stories that had the ring of truth to them.
Now what’s unique about THIS parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus is that it was the only parable Jesus ever told that revealed something his listeners had never experienced.
Jesus was telling them something about the afterlife.
And Jesus didn’t hold back when it came to talking about hell.
In this parable Jesus tells us about Hell
* It was a place of torment: “In hell, where (the Rich Man) was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away…” Luke 16:23
* It’s a place of thirst and agony: Luke 16:24 tell us “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.’
Now if Jesus never used that type of language for Hell before, I could see Rob Bell’s argument. But Jesus often spoke of Hell with exactly the same kind of terminology.
· “…anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.” Matthew 5:22
· He also described Hell as “a place where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched” Mark 9:48.
And in Several places in Matthew and Luke Jesus described Hell as being a place of “…darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ Matthew 8:12; 13:42; 22:13; 24:51; 25:30.
Hell is a very bad place and you and I don’t want to go there.
And we don’t want anybody else going there.
But make no mistake… it is a very REAL place.
And Jesus warned us about it!!!
The problem with men like Rob Bell (and others) is that they start at the wrong end of the story. They start with the true statement that:
· God is a loving God
· He is a merciful God
How many of you believe that? How many of you believe God is a loving and merciful God?
Of course you do.
But for Bell and others like him would NEVER send anyone to hell.
Bell and others find Hell… troubling.
Therefore they reject idea of Hell because THEIR God would never send anyone to such a place.
ILLUS: Now, I have brought a very special illustration to church this morning.
This is one of my smoke alarms. (HIT BUZZER)
Annoying, isn’t it?
Now a smoke alarm is supposed to go off if the house is on fire. But mine goes off more often than that. Generally my smoke alarm goes off when I’m cooking (yes I’ve burnt my food). And when the smoke from burnt offering reaches this alarm it does this (BUZZER).
Now there’s this button here to shut off the alarm but when you burn your food, the button doesn’t really help. The smoke is still in the room and sets the alarm off all over again.
There’s only two ways to stop this alarm from going off in a smoky room
1. Remove the ALARM from the room
2. Remove the BATTERY from the alarm.
Now I’ve known of people who simply take the battery out… and just don’t replace it. They don’t want to be annoyed by that silly alarm. They don’t want to be troubled by it’s shrieking in their ears.
But if the house actually caught on fire the alarm wouldn’t go off…and the fire would destroy their home.
But at least they wouldn’t be annoyed by the alarm.
At least they wouldn’t be troubled by the warning.
But just because they’d removed the alarm doesn’t stop the house from burning down. They may have removed the offending noise of the alarm… but their home is in ashes.
In the same way - just because someone rejects the idea of hell doesn’t make Hell any less real. They might succeed in convincing people that Hell isn’t there… but it’s STILL there!
ILLUS: The story that is told of a chaplain who reported to a new duty station. Upon arrival some of the men came to see him and asked him this question: Do you believe in a literal hell?
When he replied that he did not. The men asked him to resign and he asked them why. Their response to him was; ‘ If there is no Hell then we don’t need you and if there is a Hell we don’t want you to lead us astray.”
Rob Bell is right about one thing here
· God is a loving God - He is a merciful God.
· And He doesn’t want anybody to perish.
2 Peter 3:9 says “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”
But just because God doesn’t want anybody to perish… does that mean that no one will? Of course not.
The only reason we’re not going to face that terrible fate is because of God’s mercy and Love
Ephesians 2:3-7
“All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.
But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions— it is by grace you have been saved.
And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”
Our God is a loving God. He is a Merciful God. He wants to save us. He wants to bless us. He wants us to come and live with Him.
But that doesn’t mean everyone is going to escape His wrath.
CLOSE: The rich man went to hell. He went there because – in ignoring the cries of Lazarus he revealed deeper problems in his life. His love money of his had robbed him of his love of others and it also robbed him of his love for God.
And he went to hell.
And once he understood what Hell was all about, he wanted to tell his brothers about it. He believed that believing in Hell would change their behavior.
ILLUS: One man told of conducting a rap session with high school teenagers. He told them that they could ask him any question on any subject, and he would try and answer it. Their questions were typical of ones I had received in similar sessions scores of times before.
As the session drew to a close, one girl toward the back, who had not said anything, raised her hand. She said, “The Bible says God loves everybody. Then it says that God sends people to hell. How can a loving God do that?”
He gave her an answer, and she came back to me with arguments.
He answered her arguments, and she answered his answers.
The conversation quickly degenerated into an argument. He did not convince her.
After a few more questions he dismissed the session.
Then he approached her and said, “I owe you an apology. I really should not have allowed our discussion to become so argumentative.” Then he asked, “May I share something with you?”
She said, “Yes.”
So he took her through a basic presentation of the gospel.
When he got to Romans 3:23 and explained that all of us were sinners she began to cry. It was then that this HS senior admitted she had been having an affair with a married man. The one thing she needed was forgiveness. When he finished the presentation of the gospel, she decided to become a Christian.
The reason she did not believe in hell was because she was going there.
In her heart she knew she had sinned.
Her conscience condemned her, but rather than face the fact of her guilt she simply denied any future judgment or future hell. (“Evangelism, A Biblical Approach”, M. Cocoris, Moody, 1984, p. 163)
Hell is a very real destination and because we believe it exists and that your decision this morning could determine whether you spend your eternity there or with God… we offer a time of invitation every Sunday in the hopes that you will reach out and accept the forgiveness that can only come through Jesus.
