The Parable Of The Rich Man & Lazarus: What Amount Of Evidence For God Is Enough? Series

G.K. Chesterton tells the story of a magician who is visiting a town, and performing tricks for the people. But there was a young scholar there who persistently watched the magician desperately trying to explain away each of the tricks. The magician became exasperated with the man, and he finally came upon a trick that the intellectual would not be able to explain.

The magician called the intellectual over to him and said, “What color was the light outside your home when you left?” The scholar did have a light on his driveway and it had a special red lamp.

The magician said, “alright run along home now, and as you are running home I will turn it into a green light.”

“You can’t possibly do that!” Demanded the scholar.

The magician replied, “Oh yes I can.”

As he drove home he spotted his house and the red light glowing in the night, and as he approached to within a block, it suddenly turned green.

He immediately turned his car around and came back to the magician and said, “alright How did you do it?”

The magician looked at him and said, “I just sent a couple angels to the change the bulb.”

“That is nonsense,” said the scholar. “Tell me how you did it.”

But no matter how diligently the scholar protested he always got the same answer: “I sent a couple angels to change the bulb.”

The young scholar retreated to his science lab, setting to work for endless hours to discover how a red light could be changed into a green light. He worked day and night for week, months, and years. He became more and more neurotic and upset, until he finally went insane.

His wife seeing what a mess her husband had become in desperately trying to prove the answer to this problem, she went to the magician and said please, just this once give away your trick, so that my husband regains his sanity.

But the magician said, “I’ve already told him the truth.”

She replied, “But what I’m saying is just tell him something, anything that sounds reasonable and scientific so that he regains his sanity.”

The magician reluctantly reluctantly agreed to help, and went to the man in the mental hospital, and told him a concocted story, that swamp gas had reflected off a weather balloon, and various amino acids had combined together at an explosion in outer space, which over billions and billions of eons brought forth complex yet harmonious systems which developed into more complex gammas rays and electrons which did this and that and made it possible for the red light to become green at the appropriate time.

And the man was so extremely relieved, and immediately regained his sanity.

Do you understand the theme of this parable crafted by GK Chesterton? For some, the supernatural is something they’ve outright rejected ahead of time, and no amount of explanation will convince them that something happened that could break the laws of space and time and matter and energy.

There is no amount of evidence that will convince them that God is really real. There is no amount of evidence that will convince them that miracles do happen. They would rather believe a lie that sounds reasonable and well crafted, than concede that the universe was made by an intelligent personal designer who can break the rules of the system he created.

And Chesterton remarks that the man was more sane while he had gone insane, than how he was after believing the lie.

That today I think we will see is one of the key themes in the parable we are studying today, which is the parable of the Rich man and Lazarus.

Last week we talked about the parable of the master and the servant, and the value of staying humble and serving Jesus, that was in Luke 17, today we take a step back to Luke chapter 16, where we find our parable today. And I think we’ll see the parable from last week and this one are linked together at least somewhat in theme.

This is probably one of the most fascinating and disturbing parables that Jesus taught. We learn a lot about the after life in this parable, but that is not necessarily the theme of the parable.

But before we discuss the theme, let’s take a look at our context. At the beginning of Luke 16, we see the parable of the dishonest manager. A rather strange parable we haven’t looked at, where Jesus praises a dishonest manager who cuts deals with some of his masters clients, to lessen their bills, so that he has opportunities for himself after his master fires him. As fascinating as it would be to get into that today we don’t have the time. So we’ll skip ahead to the context immediately prior to this parable, it says this starting in verse 16, “The Law and the Prophets were until John; since then, the good news of the kingdom of God has been proclaimed, and everyone is urgently invited to enter it. 17 But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one stroke of a letter in the law to drop out.