We’re looking together at the 16th chapter of the Gospel.
According to Luke Luke 16 verses 19 through 31 there was a certain rich man which was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day.
And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate full of sores and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table.
And moreover, the dogs came and licked his sores 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 and in hell, he lifted up his eyes being in torments and seeth Abraham a far off.
And Lazarus in his bosom and he cried and he said, Father Abraham have mercy on me and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue for I am tormented in this flame.
But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receives thy good things and likewise Lazarus evil things.
But now he is comforted and thou tormented.
And beside all of this between us and you, there is a great gulf fixed so that they, which would pass from hence to you cannot, neither can they pass to us that would come from hence.
Then he said, I pray thee therefore father that thou would have sent him to my father’s house for I have five brethren that he may testify unto them.
Lest. They also come into this place of torment, Abraham saith unto him.
They have Moses and the prophets let them hear them. And he said, nay, Father Abraham.
But if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.
And he said unto him, if they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead.
It is very surprising when you read the New Testament to discover how many times great messages are communicated by the use of contrast.
In fact, I believe one of the, one of the unwritten rules of Bible interpretation is wrapped up right here.
It seems to me that the Bible is written with truth held in tension.
It keeps us from the extremism that often ends up in the cults.
Truth is presented to us in contrast and in tension, one truth over here holding this truth over here in the tension of the reality that belongs in the middle.
Now, if you read through the New Testament, you will discover that often the Lord used individual contrast, especially between people to teach some of the great lessons that he gave to us as our legacy in the faith.
There were two men who went up to the temple to pray.
One was a pharisee and the other was a public.
There were two men who hung on the cross next to Jesus.
One received him and the other rejected him. There were two brothers who grew up in the same family.
One took his inheritance and ran away from home, later repented and returned.
The other kept his inheritance, stayed at home and never did repent.
There were two men who were forgiven a debt.
One was forgiven a great debt and had much for which to be thankful.
One was forgiven a lesser debt, but he was thankful too.
There were two men who owed money, they could not pay.
One man was forgiven a great sum and he turned around and would not forgive a lesser sum from the man who owed him.
There were two women who lived in the same house.
One was devoted to Jesus in her personal life and the other was concerned about many things, Mary and Martha.
What a contrast. There was a woman who took all that she had and gave it to the Lord.
And in the same context is the man Judas who took everything that the lord had in the bag and bore it away for his own use over and over again in the New Testament.
One person over here and another person over here, this one like this and this one like that.
And somehow as we study them together and see them in the same picture, God’s truth breaks forth into our own hearts and we cannot recover such as the story before us today.
Perhaps there is no greater contrast in all of the Bible than the contrast that is presented to us.
As we see the picture of the rich man and the beggar portrayed for us on the pages of God’s word in three distinct vignettes.
We see these two men as they are together in life.
We see them as they are together in death.
And then for the only time in all of the word of God, the veil is pulled aside and we are allowed to look at them in eternity and what we learn ought to so motivate and change our lives that we could never be the same having read this story.
Let’s walk through the three stages of contrast and comparison note.
First of all, the two men contrasted in life upon this earth.
Here is the record in verse 19, there was a certain rich man which was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day.
And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus which was laid at his gate full of sores, two men together in life.
First of all, the rich man, some have said was there such a rich man?
Oh, a great battle has been waged over the years as to whether or not this is a parable or a true story, whether it is a story that Jesus told to illustrate a lesson or whether it is something that really Jesus knew about in actuality.
And I have heard the arguments on both sides of the issue.
It is rather interesting to me that here is the only story Jesus ever told where he gave a name to one of the people.
In the story. Here, he calls the beggar by his name Lazarus.
That would lead me to believe that Jesus is talking about somebody that he knew some individuals that he was well acquainted with.
And though it is a story, a parable, it is a real true to life story that actually took place.
Jesus was the only one who could have looked beyond the veil and have followed them through their death into eternity and then told us everything that happened as the result of the way they lived their lives.
Now, some folks have told us that the rich man had a name too.
And probably you have heard a sermon on the on the man dives and Lazarus.
Sometimes we call the rich man by the name dives, but that’s not a name.
That is the Latin vulgate term for being rich dives is simply a word that means the rich man, but he’s been given that name.
And so we might refer to him as dives along the way today. Was he rich?
My my was he rich? The scripture says that he was a very rich man. His clothing was so expensive.
It more than likely was all imported.
Alfred Edelstein says that the purple robes that he wore were made of wool, treated with a rare tyan dye that sold in those days for about $15 a pound.
And his fine linen was also of imported cloth.
It was like the kind of clothing that the Jewish high priests wore on the day of atonement.
One historian has estimated that the value of the outfits worn by some of the high priests on the day of atonement were in the neighborhood of $1500 per priest.
In other words, they wore $1500 clothing.
When Abraham spoke to this rich man in 16 25 in our text, he said that in his lifetime, he had received good things and he really had here was a man who knew the good life at the very best.
He was very rich. And the text says that he fared sumptuously every day.
Now, that’s not a term you and I would use and the word sumptuously comes from a New Testament Greek word, which is the word lampros.
And and by by just saying it, you probably get a picture what it means. The word lampros means brilliantly.
He fared brilliantly. Now we probably still aren’t at the core of what this means maybe I can use another word that will help you understand, the scripture says this man lived flamboyantly.
He not only was rich, everybody knew he was rich because he wore his riches everywhere he went.
I mean, he probably had a ring on every finger.
And when he talked, he flashed them like this so you could see them all.
But this man dives being surrounded by all these luxuries and comforts, enjoyed them to the full and had absolutely no concern about the man who was at his gate every day.
He was brought there by his friends and relatives and dives had to pass by him on his way home from work every night.
In fact, it’s evident that the dogs showed more concern for Lazarus ended dives, they licked his sores, but Davies would not even look at him.
Lazarus would have been glad to get some of the crumbs left over from the banquet table of the rich man, but the rich man would not take pity on Lazarus.
Perhaps some of the servants of the rich man from time to time threw some crumbs in the direction of Lazarus, but the man of the house cared nothing for this beggar who was at his gate.
So that’s the rich man in life. Let’s take a look at the poor man in life.
The beggar by contrast is very impressive.
Isn’t it interesting that only a gate divided the rich man from the poor man. Lazarus.
In my understanding is the only person in our Lord’s parables, whose name is mentioned, the name Lazarus means God is my help.
Lazarus was said to be both sick and hungry.
His source could have been bound and dressed with the rich man’s ointment, but instead they were licked by the dogs.
The authorized version says that Lazarus was laid at dive’s gate, but the term is far more intense than that.
Literally, it means he was thrown down at the gate.
His friends brought him there every morning and just sort of threw him down at the gate and went on their way and day after day, that was the plight of this beggar.
And yet in spite of these terrible circumstances in his life, this poor man was a man of faith and we are given his name according to some because the good shepherd knoweth his sheep and he call them by name.
ST Augustine said this about this man.
He said, seems not Christ to you to have been reading from that book where he found the name of the poor man written but found not the name of the Rich.
For that book is the Book of Life in the Parable itself.
There seems to be no place for the name of the rich man.
Proverbs 10 7 says the name of the wicked shall rot.
Perhaps this one detail as no other is the main point of the story, Jesus is telling Jesus takes the economy which you and I are so accustomed to and he flips it up on its head and turns it all upside down.
Let me illustrate if you read the society pages, which once in a while I read just for kicks.
But if you read the society pages, you know that when a rich man, an important man gives a banquet, they tell us all about it in the papers, we get the names of the host and the names of all of his guests.
And we hear how the ladies were dressed and what the decor of the building is all about.
But you would never ever dream of reading in the society pages.
The names of all of the beggars who were out at the front gate trying to get some crumbs that’s not going to be in the paper.
But when Jesus tells the story, he forgets the name of the rich man and he tells us the name of the beggar.
Isn’t that something? Because it has nothing to do with whether they’re rich or poor.
And let me point out that never in the story is the rich man ever faulted for being rich.
Sometimes we get the impression that to be rich is wrong. There is nothing here said about this man.
In fact, let me show you an interesting thing when Lazarus died and went to paradise, he was comforted in the bosom of Abraham who was one of the richest men who ever walked on the face of this earth.
Isn’t that interesting? Abraham had flocks and herds.
He had so much cattle that one day he and lot had to separate because they couldn’t take care of them altogether.
So this is not categorically a a denunciation of richness or rich people has nothing to do with how much a person has.
It’s all about his heart and the rich man’s name was not forgotten because he was rich.
The rich man’s name was forgotten because he was lost.
And the beggar’s name was not remembered because he was poor.
But the beggar’s name was remembered because he was a man of faith who trusted in God.
So we have two men day after day.
In contrast, one with another, there is not the space of 20 yards between them on the earth, one man at the gate and another in the mansion inside.
And yet at the same time, there is just as great a gulf between them in life as there is in eternity.
Someone has described it this way we have.
In fact, in the two descriptions, Stroke for stroke, dives is covered with purple and fine linen.
Lazarus is covered only with sores, dives fare sumptuously.
Lazarus desires to be fed with the crumbs dives as we may imagine has numerous attendants to honor his every wish.
Lazarus has only the dogs to lick his.
So as you can see her Lord has masterfully painted these two people in the different corners of the polarization of the whole world.
A rich man without God and a poor man with God.
Now the curtain closes on scene one, there is a brief announcement and the curtains open on scene two.
And we see these two men not in life upon this earth, but we see them in their death.
For we read in verse 22 that it came to pass that the beggar died.
Isn’t it interesting that after these two men lived on this earth now they are together in death.
Notice, first of all, the death of the poor man, it appears from reading the story that Lazarus died before the rich man died.
Someone has suggested that he died first so that the rich man could have some more time to repent of his sin, of inconsistent living, but he did not respond more than likely.
Somebody came into the rich man one day and said, oh, by the way, did you notice that the beggar wasn’t at the gate when you came home from work tonight?
Oh, yes, we hear that he has died.
Well, probably best poor man didn’t have much of a life anyway.
He’s probably better off and won’t have that mess out there in front any longer.
That’s probably what happened.
Isn’t it interesting that there is no reference to the burial of Lazarus?
It just simply says that he died. See, as a poor Jew.
He would not have been buried in a tomb or he would not have had a special place of burial.
He may have been buried in what they call the Potter’s Field.
Have you ever heard that term in The New Testament? You know what the Potter’s field was.
Potter’s Field was a piece of ground that someone who worked in the pottery industry purchased, it was usually purchased because of the consistency of the ground.
Usually a great deal of clay in the ground.
And the potter would go out into the field and he would scoop large sections of the clay out of the field to use in his industry.
And after he had worked the field and removed all of the clay from the surface, the priests would buy the field and they would use it to bury the strangers and the poor people in the indentations in the ground that had been made by the potter as he scooped the clay out of the earth.
That’s what a potter’s field is.
It was a very shallow, very poor burying place for people who had no money.
Perhaps Lazarus was taken to the potters field and dumped in a shallow grave and covered there in his death.
But in all probability, he was not buried at all.
In all probability, he was taken to the edge of the city and thrown on the dump heap of Gahanna.
Geena was the dump at the edge of the city where they burned the garbage and the refuse of that city, they would take all of the garbage and the refuse out to that dump and they would burn it with fire.
And it was quite often the case that when a poor person or a transit or a beggar died and he had no one to care for him, they would take his emaciated body out there and just throw him on the fire.
And that would be his burial. More than likely Lazarus was taken to the fire.
And there he was quote unquote buried.
But the death of the rich man, oh, it must have been something to behold, notice carefully that there is a difference at the end of verse 22.
It says the rich man also died and he was buried. He yes, he was buried.
All right, with all of his wealth. He could not, he could not miss having a wonderful funeral.
It’s also interesting though, however, that with all of his wealth, he could not bribe the grim writer on the pale horse while the priest was eulogizing the rich man at his funeral, the rich man himself was lifting up his eyes in hell in torment.
We are told that the rich man was buried and no doubt, a great sum of money was expended to see that his funeral was fitting for a man of such wealth and prestige.
Probably they hired Mourners, which was a common custom in that day.
And every possible honor was paid to this lifeless clay that had housed the selfish spirit of this rich man.
But while the funeral service was being held on earth, the real man was in hell, enduring the torments of the damned two men in life.
Two men in death so un alike in life.
One is poor and one is rich in death.
One is cast away as the garbage of the earth and the other is lifted up and honored in a magnificent ceremony.
And the curtain closes on act two. But we are about to see something.
We will never see any place else in the Bible.
We are about to get a glimpse into eternity that you could never see apart from the omniscience of the Almighty God curtains open for scene three.
And we see the two men contrasted in eternity.
Notice first of all, the poor man, verse 22 tells us that he was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom.
Now this is the way the Jewish people describe the place where the souls who are in bliss go when they die.
It is somewhat like a term we studied in the book of Revelation.
When we talked about the souls of the martyred under underneath the altar, it is a place of protection and bliss and blessedness for those who are of God.
Now notice that Jesus said the angels carried him to the bosom of Abraham.
I have heard people say when they’ve lost a loved one, you know, I was with mom when she died and pastor the angels came and took her.
And some folks have said, well, that’s just sentimentalism born out of the grief of a moment.
No, it isn’t. It’s based upon the scripture.
The Bible says that the angels came and took Lazarus and took him to the bosom of Abraham in paradise.
I found a verse of scripture in Psalm 68 17.
And this is what it says, it says that the angels are the chariots of God.
And when it’s time for one of God’s blessed ones to go be with the Lord, he sends his angel chariots down to pick him up and takes them.
There isn’t that wonderful? Isn’t God good to care for us?
And if you’ve ever gone through the loss of a loved one, if you’ve ever been with some dear person that you loved and have known as a Godly one and watch them die.
There is something magnificent about that that cannot be described in terms you and I understand it can only be described in the language of the New Testament.
So that’s what happened to the poor beggar. He went to paradise to be comforted by Abraham.
But the rich man, he did not do so well.
Verse 23 says that the rich man died and was buried and in hell or Hades, he lifted up his eyes being in torments and he seeth Abraham a far off and Lazarus in his bosom.
So here now are these two, as we would understand them.
Old Testament, Christians, Old Testament personalities, one, a Christian and one not Lazarus in paradise in the bosom of Abraham.
And the is the rich man in in the flame of eternal hell.
And the scripture says that the rich man lifted up his eyes and there were several things that immediately he understood.
Number one characteristics of this man who died is he experienced misery? He was miserable. He was in pain.
Isn’t it interesting that the rich man is praying in hell?
I couldn’t help but think as I studied this story, I saw two things for the first time going back through this.
Number one, that there is prayer in hell. This rich man is praying to Abraham.
He’s still not praying to God. He hasn’t gotten that far, but he’s praying to Abraham.
And he’s asking Abraham not for a change in his own heart, but he is seeking momentary relief in his suffering.
And he calls upon Abraham for help in many respects.
If you study the parable carefully, you will see that the rich man and the beggar have changed places.
Watch the proud man of time has become the beggar in eternity.
The one who in life denied the poor man a crumb from his table is now begging the poor man to give him a drop of water on his finger.
And the one who in life fared sumptuously every day now would be happy with just one drop of water to cool his tongue trench has mentioned that the man’s purple robe has turned into a garment of fire.
Now, I need to stop here just a moment and answer a question that’s in your heart.
There are many who reject the doctrine of eternal torment of the wicked.
And they often appeal to this passage.
They say that this passage does not teach the torment for eternity.
Maybe the best way for me to answer that is to read a statement written by a man whose scholarship and godliness.
I greatly admire Dr Harry Ironside. He said, I know that many will object to this passage.
Some will cry out. Stop a moment. The word translated hell.
There does not refer to the final abode of the lost, which is really Geena and we grant that they insist that Hades does not convey any thought of judgment to come.
But let us read the passage again and use the Greek word and see how it sounds.
He says, now, look at your Bibles, the rich man also died and the and the Greek word is and was buried.
And in Hades, there’s the word he lifted up his eyes being in torments.
Now Ironside says, observe that torments was not done away with by changing the word from English to Greek.
Others insist that the word Hades after all does not mean the world of the lost, but that it means the grave.
So though that is not a possible interpretation, let’s read it that way and see what happens.
And so we read the text, the rich man also died and was buried and in the grave, he lifted up his eyes being in torments.
Notice that the torment is still there even though we have changed the word so drastically was the man buried alive so that he suffered torment in the grave.
No, we are told he died and after he died in another world than this world, he suffered torment.
Now you can do anything you want to with that passage and you can decide, you don’t want to believe that a loving God would allow torment for those who have denied and rejected him, but you cannot deny the scripture.
You can decide as some have.
Well, I don’t believe that I know you fundamentalists believe that stuff, but I don’t believe it.
And when they say it, there’s sort of a cockiness about them that would make you think that because they don’t believe it, they can make it untrue.
My friend. You can choose not to believe it, but you can’t make it untrue.
It’s true whether you believe it or not and hell will be just as hot for the people who didn’t believe in hell as it will be for the people who did God said that I didn’t say it.
We don’t ever hear it preached. Nobody ever wants to talk about it.
We all want these positive sugar coated messages that make us walk out of church feeling great.
But there is a hell coming for those who do not know Jesus Christ.
And if we don’t preach it, some of them are going to go there. Who shouldn’t go there.
Now, the Bible says the rich man went to hell and he was in flame.
Now, that’s not the only thing he was not only in misery, he still had his memory.
One of the worst things about Abraham’s reply to this man is the mention of the rich man’s memory.
Some folks say, well, when you die, your memory dies, oh no, memory is not part of the body.
Show me where in the body is the memory.
The memory is a part of your soul and your spirit. It’s the apparatus of who you are.
When your person lives on. After the death of your body, your memory lives on.
And this man who was in hell remembered because Abraham said to him, son, remember when thou wast living, you had all the good things and Lazarus had all the bad things.
You know what I think is one of the worst things about hell is the fact that your memory doesn’t die.
You know what it will be like to be in hell forever and ever, it’ll be remembering all the opportunities you had not to go there.
It will be the remembrance of church services like the one you’re in today when you heard a warning against such a place and you decided to push it away because it wasn’t convenient or you didn’t want to be embarrassed, or there would be another opportunity.
You will remember David Jeremiah telling you about hell and you didn’t listen and you remember your parents who prayed for you and your Sunday school teacher who tried to witness to you and all of the friends around you who tried to tell you about Jesus Christ and give you an opportunity to respond.
And you will remember all of that throughout eternity. It will never ever go away memory.
But here’s the second surprise in hell.
Isn’t it strange to find people praying in hell? Let me tell you one better.
This guy who lived his whole life without a concern for another person in the world.
Apparently now he’s in hell and he’s become missionary minded. Isn’t that interesting?
All of a sudden in the midst of these flames, he’s really concerned about his brothers.
So he calls to Abraham and he says, listen, see if you can get Lazarus to leave your bosom for a moment and go to my brother’s house and tell him don’t come here.
See, this man realizes he himself is beyond hope and he suddenly becomes concerned about his five brothers.
He wants Lazarus to be sent to them from the dead as a ghost to warn them that they should not come to this place of torment.
One writer has this interesting insight into this chapter.
He says that the rich man’s concern for his brothers is simply knowing that he himself has been responsible by the influence of his life for his brothers, rejecting the alternative to hell.
And the worst thing that could happen to him now is if throughout eternity, he has to look at his five brothers knowing that he’s responsible for their torment as well as his own.
Have you ever had people say to you when you talk to them about the Lord ever ask somebody?
Do you know what’s going to happen to you when you die?
I’ve had this happen to me over and I used to, I used to work in a freight company when I was a student in seminary.
I worked for the Illinois California Express on the freight docks.
I, I met some of the hardest men I ever met in my life and I tried to witness to him.
They call me preacher. I was a, I was a seminary and they all knew it and uh they call me preacher and I’d talk to these guys, I’d ask them what’s going to happen to you, Joe when you die?
Well, I’m going to hell. Where else? What do you mean? Come on Jeremiah.
You know, I’m not going to heaven and I don’t want to go to heaven.
My friends are all going to be in hell and that’s where I’m going to be.
We’re going to have a great time. It’s sort of like they think it’s some sort of eternal card party.
Let me tell you something. Friend.
Don’t you ever let your mind trick you like that?
Here is a man who is in hell and he doesn’t even want his closest relatives with him.
He doesn’t even want his brothers there. Hell is not a place where there’s fellowship.
There is no interpersonal response to one another in hell in hell. You don’t even have a name.
Hell is loneliness personified.
It is experiencing the torment of life without God as if you were the only person in the universe.
Hell is no place where you fool around with your buddies that you drank with on this earth.
Hell is a place where you suffer by yourself forever and ever.
How foolish of a man to think so flippantly about his eternal destiny as to make the comment that he’s going to hell so he can be with his friends.
The rich man didn’t even want his brothers with him.
Well, let’s see.
Number three, it’s an awesome story, isn’t it?
Can you imagine the impact this had when Jesus told it, I’m not near the storyteller.
Jesus was when he told the story, you can imagine that it just left an impact on the people who heard it.
Now, let me just ask all of us as we think about this parable, what it means to us.
I think the first thing that we need to point out is that this parable teaches us the permanence of eternal decisions.
Verse 26 says, and beside all of this between you and me, there is a great Gulf and I focus on this word, a great gulf fixed.
It’s best my friend.
What you do in this life fixes forever where you will spend eternity, you reject Jesus Christ.
Today, you are fixed forever. You can’t ever undo it.
There’s no transferring back and forth from where the evil go and the people who trust in Christ.
There’s no interfacing. There’s no second chance, there’s no time to come back and start over. Reincarnation is not true.
When you decide in this life, you don’t want anything to do with God friend, you have fixed eternity for yourself.
And of course, the joy is if you decide for Jesus Christ in this life, you have fixed eternity in Abraham’s bosom in the fellowship of God Almighty.
I’ll tell you when I read this story, I realize how important it is to impress upon men and women that today is the day of salvation.
Today is the day you must make up your mind because you will not have a chance.
You walk out of this building and you have a heart attack out here in the front lawn or like what happened to some of our college students this week, a drunk driver with no lights on his car comes across the center and plows into the front of your car.
You gonna be snuffed out in a minute. Thank God, our students are ok.
But one extra moment, one extra inch and they could have all been killed.
And if you’re not right at that moment, it’s fixed forever permanent.
Secondly, when you read this parable, you can’t help but notice that Jesus is teaching us the priority of caring for those around us.
Let us be careful that we understand that the primary objective that Jesus had in giving this parable, which he said in front of the Pharisees was not to teach the details of future life.
But to make those Pharisees aware of the danger of making the wrong use of the life, they already had the parable in the context of Luke 16 is about an ostentatious outward religion that had no reality inwardly, a very famous painter by the name of Gustave Dore has portrayed this parable of the rich man and the bear in a, in a painting.
And in the painting, the rich man is in the midst of oriental luxury.
And at the foot of the marble steps of his home lies the diseased Lazarus.
And uh so far so good, the picture is true to the text, but he added a feature to his painting over the beggar, an Eastern slave is bending with a scourge of twigs and he’s trying to beat the beggar so that he will leave because he’s an embarrassment to the rich man.
And Dora is wrong in introducing this. He was not consciously deliberately cruel, this rich man.
He was only totally and hopelessly indifferent.
He is not here castigated because he mistreated the beggar.
He is castigated because he ignored the beggar. The sin of dives was this.
He accepted Lazarus as part of the landscape.
He accepted the fact without question that it was all right for him to move around in purple and fine linen and feast sumptuously every day.
But it was all right for Lazarus to lie starving and full of sores at his gate.
He could look at Lazarus and feel no pity in his heart at all.
It never even dawned on him that Lazarus had anything to do with him at all and day by day, he walked by oblivious to it all.
I’m going to say something right now that I don’t like to say because I don’t have an answer to it.
But I want to tell you if you go to Second Street and you walk around in the shopping area down there or any of those other places, any morning of the week, you will see Lazarus multiplied.
Only many of those Lazarus don’t know, God, they’re hungry, they’re destitute, they’re transits and they’re everywhere and it’s a growing major concern and nobody knows what to do with it.
And, you know, it’s easy to walk by.
They self righteous and say, well, you know, let me get in here and get my coffee and get out.
What should we do about that?
What is our responsibility to them, or you’re saying, come on now, pastor, you’re not sleeping on the pews.
No, I’m not talking about starting a halfway.
I’m just saying what this parable tells us is you can’t go through life acting like it’s not there.
You can’t just in your Christian faith and sanctimonious lifestyle.
Keep walking by and saying, I won’t look at it. Something has to touch your heart.
And while we say I can’t help all of them, maybe we can help one of them.
We started the Food For the Hungry program in this church based upon the fact that for months after I came here, we had people call on our switchboard hungry and we were giving them social service numbers, call this social agency that social agency.
And we started finding by saying, hey, this isn’t right. We’re God’s people.
We should be helping these folks and we started bringing food and we feed hundreds of people every month out of this church.
This parable teaches the priority of caring for those around us.
I read this week that Albert Schweitzer in his autobiography told how God laid claim to him through this very parable as he brooded over this parable.
There came to him with unmistakable clarity and overwhelming power.
The realization that Africa was the sick beggar at the door of Europe, seeing this, he took his life and established the mission and the hospital at Larini.
And he centered the attention of the Christian world on what can be done in a Christian way.
And by Christian means in the heart of Africa.
And we have that all around us today.
And Jesus told his story to remind us that we can never be indifferent to it.
You cannot walk by it and act like it’s not there.
Finally, Jesus told his story to teach us the power of God’s word in our world.
I wish I had time to give a whole message right on this one point.
But let me just tell it to you.
The rich man said, listen, send Lazarus over to my brothers and tell him and Abraham said, no, they got Abraham in there.
They got Moses and the prophets. They don’t need, they don’t need Lazarus.
And the rich man said, no, no, no, you don’t understand.
He said, I know they got the Old Testament, but you send Lazarus over there. They’ll hear Lazarus.
And Abraham said, listen, if they receive not Moses and the prophets neither will they believe.
If somebody comes back from the dead, if you have time to go through, you can compare the language.
The rich man said, repent.
Abraham said, they won’t even be persuaded, let alone repent.
The rich man said, send Lazarus as a ghostly messenger, Abraham said, I’ll do you one better.
You can bring somebody back from the dead and they still won’t believe you can resurrect somebody and they still won’t believe.
Isn’t it interesting that this man’s name was Lazarus?
And it wasn’t, but a few months separated from this incident that Jesus stood in the front of a tomb where another man by the name of Lazarus was dead.
And he said, Lazarus come forth. Lazarus walked out of the tomb and the whole world was converted.
Are you kidding me? The scribes in the Pharisees tried to kill Lazarus and then they tried to kill Jesus, did the resurrection prove who Jesus was and bring about mass conversion.
No, it hardened them in their unbelief.
And it was months later that the Lord Jesus himself went to the cross and into the tomb and came out of the grave victorious and he never showed himself alive to any unbelievers only to his own because the unbelievers would not have accepted his resurrection.
We have around us today.
A lot of people who are saying that if we’re going to be effective in evangelism, we have to get back to signs and wonders, we’ve got to raise the dead, heal the sick, clear up the blind eyes.
And when we do that, then people believe in Jesus, my friend, the most powerful tool God ever gave to this world is his written word.
And men and women, we have got Moses and the prophets, we don’t need anything else.
And if they won’t believe Moses and the prophets, you can bring all the dead out of the graves.
And they’re not going to believe that either.
There is no higher source to which we may appeal than the power of God’s holy word.
And in that power, we go forth to minister to a dying world filled with dives and Lazarus.