Rich Man And Lazarus Series

Rich Man and Lazarus

Luke 16:19-31

Jesus teaches us that:

Everyone lives forever

Heaven and Hell are real, eternal places

How you respond to God’s word now determines your eternity.

This means that:

If we believe what Jesus teaches is true,

And we care about others,

We must engage them with the gospel.

Turn to Luke 16:19-31

Series: para ballo Jesus came out of obscurity at the age of 30 with one message: repent and be a part of the kingdom of God. He followed up this basic message with 31 distinctive and different parables primarily illustrating the nature and population of the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven, both referring to the same reality. Eeach parable is a picture of the kingdom of God.

Jesus deals with bad theology in this parable: a person thinks that he’s right with God because of his social and economic status.

In our day people think “good people” go to heaven, “religious people” go to heaven, “selfless people” go to heaven. See 2018 Pew Research on Religious and Public Life.

Prosperity preachers; health/wealth…explain their teaching; relate story about poor=lost.

However, it’s not about what you do or don’t do; it’s about responding rightly to God’s word.

Want us to read through the whole parable then come back, read again with some comments along the way, then draw out the main teaching and application. Luke 16:19-31 (on screen)

Now let’s work our way back through it and drill down in a couple of places

v.19 There was a rich man… What do you notice about this man? Well he’s got the fine life, right? He’s got the best this life has to offer. Says he bought his clothes at the finest stores: Express, Brooks Brothers, not Walmart or Ross. Looked like he stepped out of GQ magazine. To the prosperity preachers of our day, this guy must be right with God; must be blessed of God. What else do you notice? He is nameless. In the value system of Jesus, this man was inconsequential; nameless. Our world knowns the name of people like Putin and Trump and Taylor Swift and Beyonce and Oprah and Justin—do you think for a moment Jesus esteems them based on their celebrity?

v.20 But a poor man named Lazarus…now this guy is identified by Jesus. He’s got nothing that the rich man had; in fact, his life seems as miserable as it gets. Sores oozing pus; dogs licking the sores. Awful. Jesus continues to contrast these two. v.21

v.22 …carried away by the angels to Abraham’s side…. Euphemism for the presence of God.

The rich man also died and was buried… Quite a contrast here

v.26 …cup of water the rich guy still saw Lazarus as subservient to him.

v.29 …Moses and the prophets This was a signal to the Jewish leaders of the time that the their Scritpures, our Old Testament gave ample evidence about the path to heaven and that it was not by works, but by faith.

v.31 … they will not be persuaded if someone rises from the dead For some people it’s not about the evidence; there’s ample evidence about the claims of Christ. It’s not about the evidence, it’s about their refusal to consider the evidence; it’s about a hardness of heart.

Compare Rich man and Lazarus

Which one lived well? Honest: which would you rather be?

How do we decide? Comfort, stuff, lifestyle, lack of suffering

Funny how eternal things are usually not in our top 5 list of determiners…..we assume that the Rich man lived better? But the real question is: Did anything he did have lasting value?

Which one died well?

Rich man was buried; separated from God

Lazarus was carried away by angels; present w/ God

Which one would you rather be?

Our decisions today have great impact on our eternity tomorrow

Jesus teaches us that:

Everyone exists forever

I read an article a few weeks ago that caught my attention: “Do you want to live forever? You just have to make it to 2050” In this genetics article by a leading geneticist, Ian Person, he lists 3 methods a person might be able to live forever: 1. Renewing your body parts. “No one wants to live forever at 95 years old, but if you could rejuvenate the body to 29 or 30, you might want to do that." So maybe genetic engineering can slow down the aging process or just exchange old body parts with new body parts; 2. Living in Android bodies. “A long time before we get to fix our bodies and rejuvenate it every time we feel like, we'll be able to link our minds to the machine world so well, we'll effectively be living in the cloud.” 3. Living in a virtual world. "If our minds are online, do we even need robot bodies? We could all just live in a computer simulation quite happily”, according to Dr Pearson.