39. Who is Jesus?
June 05th, 2011
Eternal Consequence
As we continue through the life of Jesus we are going to see the second of two parables Jesus tells in Luke 16. The first showed us how we can use our money to go to heaven, the second shows us how to use our money to go to hell. So in one week we get to deal with two of the most unpleasant issues in Scripture: money and hell. So this should be fun.
What Jesus tells us about money is that it doesn’t matter how much of it you have, it matters what you do with it. What we do with our resources is an investment either in worldly pleasures and comfort or in eternity. The focus here is not about money, it is about life and death.
Death is never an easy subject to discuss. We have lost people we love, all experienced the pain of death in some form. Now our city has been decimated by a tornado that killed 134 people and destroyed over 8,000 homes and business. We have seen a lot of death and destruction. As unpleasant as it is death is a natural part of life. The one thing we all have in common is that we die. What happens then? What happens when you die? How we answer that question will determine how we live our lives. What this storm has reminded us is that death comes even if we are not ready for it.
I want to be clear: It is not my job to tell you what you want to hear. Sometimes I wish it was. If you want to hear someone say it’s ok, everyone goes to heaven, or everyone you know and like goes to heaven you may not like this. My job is to tell you the truth of what the Bible says. Some people think of heaven like a bunch of people in togas sitting on puffy white clouds with harps and halos smiling all the time. I’ve heard people talk about hell as a party where all their friends are like it’s an eternal rave. There are lots of different views about what happens when we die, but the only person who is qualified to tell us is the one who came from life, died, and conquered death. Jesus is the only person with the authority to speak on such matters. What we believe about heaven and hell should come not from the teachings of man but from Him.
Please understand as we talk about what can be a very painful and touchy subject my goal is not to offend you, upset you, or create fear in your life. My goal is deal with an important issue and to teach what the Bible says about it. The reason I say this is because I love you and I care about what happens to you.
Jesus is going to talk about hell. He is the most loving, gracious, humble, Godly man to ever walk the earth and He speaks more about hell than anyone else in the entire Bible. Jesus not only believes in hell, He teaches about it a lot. Around 13% of Jesus teaching deals with the subject of hell and punishment; which tells us that hell is something we should take seriously.
If the most loving man alive tells us of the horror and pain that comes from being separated from God because of our sin, we need to realize how deadly and destructive our sin is. Sin is not just making bad choices, it is choosing death over life and the consequences for our sinful choices if we do not reconcile ourselves with God are terrible. If Simon from American Idol criticized you and said you were terrible you might not think anything of it, that’s just what the guy does. If Joel Osteen, the ‘be the best version of you’ guy tells you that you are horrible it might strike a harder blow. Loving people don’t like to talk about punishment. For Jesus to spend so much time talking about the eternal torment of hell must mean that hell is terrible that the only way that Jesus can love us is to warn us about it constantly. The essence of infinite love describes hell in terrible terms so that we can understand the severity of ignoring Him.
Lk 16:19 “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. Lk 16:20 At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores Lk 16:21 and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores. Lk 16:22 “The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. Lk 16:23 In hell, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. Lk 16:24 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.’
This parable has two primary characters: the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man lives in a mansion, wears designer clothing, eats caviar and gourmet meals, drives fancy Italian sports cars, has maids and servants, and lives a life of absolute luxury. This guy has everything he could possibly want and more. He dresses in purple which at this time was the most expensive dye you could find, wearing purple would be like buying an Armani suit. So he is stupid rich. His house is on MTV cribs, he has pimp’d his ride, this guys lives in style.
Lazarus is poor. He is unable to work and has to beg for a living. He doesn’t wear name brand clothing he wears rags and is covered in sores. He is dirty, sickly, and smells funny. He is the kind of guy you feel like you need to decontaminate yourself just from looking at him. Dogs lick at his sores which is very demeaning. Lazarus has a miserable life. He sits outside the gate of the rich man’s house hoping that maybe he could just eat the scraps that fall from the rich man’s table. The dogs eat better than Lazarus does. These two men couldn’t have been more different. Eventually death comes to both of them.
When richy-rich died there was a great funeral service as he was placed in a nice tomb in a beautiful coffin and the most expensive headstone. When Lazarus died his body was thrown out into the fires of the city dump, in death he was treated like he was in life: as if he was garbage. Through this story Jesus shows us what happens when we die.
You are two parts: body and soul. Death is the point in which our physical body is separated from our soul because of sin. Our body dies, our soul lives on. When you die, as a believer, your soul goes to be with God. Your body sleeps until the resurrection of believers when your body is resurrected, glorified, and reunited with your soul. When Lazarus dies his soul goes to heaven. Heaven is God’s house. It is His kingdom. Heaven is referred to as a real place where we can enter. It is often described like a city, with walls, houses, gates, and streets.
We actually know very little about heaven. We talk about it as having streets of old but that don’t take that literally. Gold streets are a way of describing the glory of heaven that we can understand. In Jesus’ day gold was the most valuable commodity imaginable. If the lowest parts of heaven are the best things we can imagine what Jesus is telling us is that is we cannot imagine how great heaven will be. Heaven is a paradise where all the problems of this life are gone. It is a banquet feast where you can eat as much as you want and not have to worry about calories. It is pure joy. There will be nothing to complain about, nothing to regret, and nothing to long for.
When Lazarus goes to heaven sores are gone, his pain is over, he is comforted, and he is welcomed in to the presence of God. He sits at the banquet table that God has prepared and Lazarus gets to enjoy the feast he dreamed of all his life. His hunger is gone, his suffering is over, and Lazarus is able to enter a life of joy and happiness. All the pain and hardships he suffered in life are forgotten because they don’t compare to the joy of the life he now knows. Lazarus had lived with nothing, all he had was his relationship with Jesus so when he died Lazarus received the gift of a new and greater life where he gets to live in the grace of God.
The rich man who had been so blessed in life and had everything he needed but neglected his relationship with God. The guy who everyone looks at and would naturally expect to be in heaven, dies and goes to Hades, the place of the dead. Originally Hades was viewed like a temporary holding area for both the righteous and the unrighteous. Over time it became change to a place reserved only for the wicked. So the rich guy dies and he goes to hell. The way that Jesus describes hell is by connecting it to Gehenna. Gehenna is an actual place: it is deep narrow gorge southeast of Jerusalem known originally as the valley of Hinnom. This valley was where idolatrous Israelites murdered their own as sacrifices to the pagan gods Molech and Baal. In Jesus day this valley was a trash dump where bodies of the poor and sick were thrown to be burned and maggots ate away at them.
Hell or Hades as Jesus uses here is a place where those who were unfaithful and unrepentant are cut off from God completely. It is awful. The worm does not die, the fire is not quenched. Mutilated corpses, maggots, flies, animals and birds eating away the flesh of the dead as well as the smell of rotting burning flesh paint a pretty horrid picture. A documentary of Hell would be the scariest horror movie ever made. Imagine having to watch the grossest most vial massacre and carnage ever and all the while feeling the constant burning flames on your skin.
Like with heaven Jesus describes hell as something worse than the worst thing we can imagine. The torment is continuous and eternal. Jesus describes the horrors of hell as so great it would be better to gouge out your own eye or cut off your own arm than to go there. Hell is place where the wicked are tormented night and day forever. Heaven for blessing or hell for suffering, everyone will end up in one of those two places. How you live in life affects what happens to you when you die. You have to decide where you are going.
Death is not punishment from God. The fate of every person who ever lived is to die, it is the natural consequence for sin. For those who do not know Jesus, death is the end of their chance to accept God’s grace and salvation. For the believer death ushers us into the presence of God. Throughout Scripture a believer’s death is referred to as ‘sleep’ as it lacks the same permanence as the death of a non-believer. The rich man had his opportunity in this life and he ignored it. He chose to enjoy the wealth and luxury of his possessions and so because he didn’t invest in what really mattered he lost everything. What we should learn from this: is how you live your life matters. What you do with Jesus has eternal consequences.
Lk 16:25 “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. Lk 16:26 And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’ Lk 16:27 “He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my father’s house, Lk 16:28 for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’ Lk 16:29 “Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’ Lk 16:30 “ ‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ Lk 16:31 “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.’ ”
So the rich man begs Lazarus just to dip his finger in water, to give him just a moment of refreshment from his pain but Lazarus cannot. Upon your death your eternity is sealed. Heaven or hell, blessing or suffering and there is nothing you can do at that point to change it. This life is the only chance you have to accept Jesus. After your life is over you have made your choice and nothing can change it.
Those who go to heaven get to spend eternity experiencing the love and life of God. Those who rejected or ignored Jesus in this life spend eternity experiencing the wrath of God. Hell is the place where God pours out His wrath against sin. God hates sin. We sin, which means we are living at ground zero for the outpouring of God’s wrath. Now God has, is, and will do whatever He can to save as many people as He can. He sent us prophets, preachers, His Word, His Spirit, and even His Son to move us away from our sin and out of the path of His wrath. He sent us His Son so that we would not have to feel His wrath poured out on us. When we reject His Son in this life there is nothing left between us and the eternal fires of hell.
Think of God’s wrath like a volcano ready to erupt. We live at the base of the volcano because of our sin. So God sends cars, trucks, helicopters, police officers, military personal to evacuate us from the area so that we can be saved. Some people are too stubborn to move. Some people blindly believe that they will be miraculously spared from this disaster. So even when God’s sends us every possible change to get to safety, some people ignore it. They refuse to move, to leave, to change and so they get to experience the outpouring of the wrath of God against sin in hell.
The rich man had both means and opportunity to help those less fortunate than himself and he chose not to. He could feed the hungry, take care of the poor, and help the hurting because God had blessed him with so much. He chose to horde it for himself. Sometimes the comfort and luxury of our lives blinds us to the needs of others. The point is not rich go to hell and poor go to heaven. The rich man is not suffering because he was rich but because he was negligent and unrighteous with his riches. He didn’t believe in or belong to Jesus so when he died he didn’t get to be with Jesus. This parable is a warning about the dangerous reality of hell.
Some people don’t like to talk about hell, think about hell, or accept that hell is real. They say God is love, hell is not loving, so a loving God can’t let people go to hell. Jesus is the most loving man who ever lived. He shows us what the love of God really looks like, and He is the one who teaches us about hell. Love tells the truth. God is love and because God is love God hates sin. Hell is not meant for us it is meant for the devil If we squander our time and resources now, if we neglect the poor, refuse to carry out the mission of Jesus, to invest in the kingdom of God, to love Jesus, and to share His love with the world, the consequences can be severe.
It’s not about heaven. It’s not about hell. It’s all about Jesus. Heaven and hell are merely the eternal consequences to the choice that we make about Jesus. Jn 3:36 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.”
What you do with Jesus determines where you will spend eternity. Life is all about Jesus. Those who come to Him can receive His life and you will know the greatest joy imaginable as you will live forever in the paradise of God. Those who reject Jesus will experience the wrath of God for eternity. What you do with Jesus matters. Believe in Him, follow Him, live for Him, and share His love with the world. The rich man’s problem was that he didn’t live the love of Jesus. He wasted opportunities to help people in need when he had the tools to do so. What you need to know is this: if you reject Jesus this life is as close to heaven as you will ever be. All the pain and suffering you may experience here will be nothing compared to living in the wrath of God. If you believe in Jesus and have a relationship with Him this life is a close to hell as you will ever get.
While you are alive you have time, you have an opportunity. You can accept Jesus, give your life to Jesus, follow Jesus, and devote yourself to Him. When you die that change is gone, so don’t waste your time. Don’t wait until the end. The most loving thing I can tell you as a pastor is if you haven’t given your life to Jesus, if you are not living for Him right now, if you are not following Jesus; change. Repent. Turn from your sin to God and live your life for Him. Heaven or hell is a choice that we make for ourselves based on what we do with Jesus. That’s the truth; now you have to decide what to do with it.
