WWUTT 2442 The Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-21)

You know the account of the rich man and Lazarus, right? There was a rich man who died and he went to a place of fiery torment. Lazarus was a poor man who died and went to Abraham's side, the place of paradise.

What are we supposed to glean from this.

When we understand the text? This is when we understand the text, studying God's Word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ. Find all our videos online at www .wutt .com, as well as links to follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you, Becky, and greetings everyone. We come back to our study of the Gospel of Luke, chapter 16, and picking up where we left off yesterday, that puts us at the account of the rich man and Lazarus.

Starting here in verse 19, I'm reading to the end of the chapter, There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen, and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table.

Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores. The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried. And in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side.

And he called out, Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame. But Abraham said, Child, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things.

But now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. And besides all this, between us and you, a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may come from there to us.

And he said, Then I beg you, Father, to send him to my father's house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment. But Abraham said, They have Moses and the prophets.

Let them hear them. And he said, No, Father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent. And he said to him, If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.

The Rich Man and Lazarus as Jesus' Warning to the Pharisees

And that is the key to understanding this account that Jesus is sharing in the hearing of the Pharisees. Remember that that Jesus is speaking, and it's the Pharisees who are his intended audience. And it's that point that he's driving home.

If you don't listen to Moses and the prophets, you won't even be convinced if someone should rise from the dead. Who is it that would rise from the dead? That's Jesus. And if they weren't listening to Moses and the prophets, concerning what had already been written about the Son of Man, what had been written about the coming Messiah, then they weren't even going to be convinced when that Messiah dies and rises from the dead.

That wasn't even going to convince them either. And we're going to consider this account as we read it between today and tomorrow. The story of the rich man and Lazarus. Now, I'm trying here not to call it a parable.

It's tempting to say the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, but I don't believe that this is a parable. And I'll explain that as well as we go. But first, let's set the scene. Let's remember what it is that's going on here.

And it goes all the way back to chapter 15. Jesus was meeting with tax collectors and sinners, even dining with them. And the Pharisees were repulsed by this. They grumbled amongst themselves, saying, this man receives sinners and eats with them.

And Jesus responds to their grumbling with three parables. You have the parable of the lost sheep, the parable of the lost coin, and the parable of the prodigal son, which I said is better titled the parable of the older brother, because again, the Pharisees are the intended audience here.

There's a shepherd who loses one of his sheep. He leaves the 99 safe in the fold to go and find the one. When he finds the one, he throws a party with his friends and neighbors. My sheep was gone, but it's been found.

And Jesus said there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who need no repentance. Then in the parable of the lost coin, you have a woman who had 10 coins and she lost one.

She combs the house. She finds it, throws a party with her friends and neighbors. And again, Jesus says there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents. And then in the parable of the prodigal son, you have the prodigal child who demanded an inheritance from his father, took it, ran off into a foreign country, squandered it, and then was broke and had to eat with pigs.

But he comes to himself and says, you know, I can go back to my father's house and I can ask him to make me a servant. He's not even going to ask for his old room back or to be his son again. Just to confess his wrong before his father, I sinned, I sinned against heaven and before.

You.

I'm not even worthy to be called your son. Just treat me like one of your hired servants. And he goes back to his father who sees him coming up the road, runs to him, throws his arms around him, kisses him.

The young man tries to apologize to his father. His father cuts him off, said, bring me a robe, put it on him. Let's kill the fattened calf. We're going to celebrate because my son was dead and he is alive again.

The older brother refuses to go to the celebration. Instead, he thinks that the father should be throwing a party for him. You don't even give me a young goat that I can go party with my friends and you've killed the fattened calf for this son of yours who demanded an inheritance and went off and squandered it with prostitutes and you're celebrating over him.

And the father said, son, you are always with me and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad for this. Since your brother was dead and is alive, he was lost and is found. So you have these celebrations here that the Pharisees are refusing to be part of.

Instead, they would just rather stand outside and grumble. And so Jesus tells these parables leading up to the parable of the prodigal child to point out to them that they are the older brother. Everything that belongs to Jesus would belong to them, but they won't even come in for the.

Feast.

They would rather stand outside and think of themselves as holier than thou. And so they're going to wind up perishing instead of instead of being welcomed into the kingdom and celebrating on that day.

Now Jesus next tells a parable of the dishonest manager. Now he says this to his disciples, but the Pharisees are still there and they hear this. And we read in verse 14, the Pharisees were lovers of money and they heard all these things and they ridiculed Jesus.

And Jesus said to them, you are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts for what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God. Now the, the scribes and the Pharisees, they made up their own laws.

Remember, as much as they had a reputation for loving the law of Moses and teaching it to the people, that wasn't really the law they kept. The law they kept were their own laws. So like the laws that they built as a hedge around the law.

Like if I keep these laws, then I won't be breaking the law. And they would make up their laws as Jesus rebuked them for holding to the traditions of man rather than obeying the commands of God. And so they would impose this upon the people as well.

See, if you want to gain eternal life, you have to do these things. Look at us doing these things. Look how holy we are because we keep the commands. So you must also keep these commands. And the people were actually okay with that.

You know, often we have this picture of the Pharisees as being the bad guys and they're so oppressive to the people because they keep imposing these rules upon people and tying heavy burdens upon them as Jesus rebuked them for in Matthew chapter 23.

So we think that that they're these evil legalists, even in the eyes of the people. Oh, these Pharisees, they oppress us with so much. I can't possibly keep up with this. Someone relieve me of this burden.

That really wasn't the reaction of the people. Just like you see in Roman Catholicism today. I mean, Roman Catholics impose some crazy laws, things that the Bible doesn't command and and says to people that you have to do this even in order to be saved.

You have to believe that Mary was sinless, that she ascended bodily into heaven, that that she is the queen of heaven. You know, these are doctrines you actually have to accept. And if you don't believe them, you're declared anathema according to Catholic doctrine.

So these are things that they impose upon the people. Many other rules. In addition to that, it's just a few examples. You have to do this.

You have to do this.

And you can only do it in the Roman Catholic Church if you do it anywhere else. It doesn't count. And you're not saved. It's just rules upon rules upon rules and things that are not in the Bible. And they just heap it upon people.

But the people love it. It's why the Roman Catholic Church is so big. It's not that Roman Catholicism is full of people that are going, oh, I'm so burdened. I'm so worn out. Can somebody please relieve me of this?

No, because they want a priest to be able to tell them your sins are forgiven, my son or my daughter. They don't trust the word of Christ in the Bible. So as long as this person can guarantee me that I'm going to go to eternal life or they can tell me how many sins I'm going to have burned off and how many years of purgatory or I can pay some money by myself, some indulgences to knock years off of purgatory.

As long as there is a priest to give them those kinds of answers and there's works that they can do that by these works, then I can be saved. Then people are going to keep coming back to Roman Catholicism, believing that if I do this, if I have this, then I will be saved.

And it's, it's rules upon rules and heaps upon heaps. But the reason that people keep going back to it is because they, they like it. As the apostle Paul talked about in second Timothy chapter four, a time is coming in which people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions.

A person wants to believe that they can check a box and I've done this. And so that now gets me to eternal life and Roman Catholicism is more than happy to oblige. But that's not the only one. Eastern Orthodoxy does the same thing.

Mormonism does the same thing, a checklist of stuff you got to do. And if you do these things, then you can inherit your own planet and he'll be able to populate it one day and you'll live as gods, just as God lived before you.

And he had a God himself and all these other, I mean, it's just, it's just incredible heresy. But this is nonetheless what the Mormons teach. And it also is a system of salvation by works. That's what the Pharisees taught.

That's what the people wanted to hear. And so they actually liked the Pharisees, even though the Pharisees would pray upon the people and would take money from them, would take advantage of them, especially widows, right?

Whose husbands had died. And so the Pharisees swoop in and they take all the property and everything that belonged to the husband and the widow is just left destitute. Something else that Jesus rebukes regarding the Pharisees, the Pharisees grumbled against Jesus and Jesus said to them, you justify yourselves before men.

You are trying to present yourselves before people saying, look at how holy I am. But God knows your hearts. Now get this in verse 16, because this is coming into the account of the rich man and Lazarus verse 16.

Again, as we looked at yesterday, the law and the prophets were until John. Since then, the good news of the kingdom of God is preached and everyone forces his way into it. But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of the law to become.

Void.

So you have a reference to the law and the prophets. Jesus has already said to the Pharisees as much as the Pharisees want to present themselves as being keepers of the law and the prophets. They really keep their own laws, not the law of God, not the law of Moses and not the words of the prophets or else they would know who Jesus is because the prophets foretold of the Christ who was to come.

So they're not really listening to the law and the prophets. Hence why Jesus in this account speaks of the law and the prophets. If they're not willing to listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.

If they were truly understanding of the law and the prophets and teaching them to the people, then they would know who Jesus is and they would already be worshipping him now, but they don't worship him.

Instead, they go after worldly things and they themselves are lawbreakers and they associate with lawbreakers. Jesus being with the tax collectors and the sinners. These are people who have repented and have come to him to receive forgiveness and truly find it because the Pharisees weren't giving it to them.

The Pharisees were ostracizing them and keeping them out. They come to Jesus and find they can be forgiven of their sins. The Pharisees associate with those who are lawless. Now, we looked at verse 18 yesterday.

Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery. And whoever marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery. You know, there's another there's another insinuation going on there that I didn't mention yesterday.

Remember that Herod had married his brother's wife. And so therefore had committed had committed adultery. And it was because John the Baptist called this out from Herod that resulted in John the Baptist being executed, right?

Well, even Jesus is calling it out right here. The Pharisees were fine to associate with the Herods and with the Romans because this is how we get our positions of power. This is how we gain our authority and our control over the people.

If we keep in good with the Herods, well, the Herods were lawbreakers. And this is who you're choosing to associate with. So you are calling me out for being with tax collectors and sinners, whereas you are friends and associates with the Herods.

And that's that's kind of implied in verse 18, with Jesus saying everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery. And he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.

That's who you're hanging out with. That's your company. Jesus is forgiving tax collectors and sinners. The Pharisees aren't forgiving anyone and instead are yoked with unbelievers and lawbreakers. So they're not willing to listen to Moses and the prophets.

And if they won't listen to Moses and the prophets, they won't even listen to Jesus when the day comes that he rises from the dead. And again, all of this pointing out to them, unless you repent, you will not be with the celebration on that day when it happens in the kingdom of God.

The Rich Man's Purple and Fine Linen and Lazarus at the Gate

And so Jesus tells them this account. Now, like I said, this is not a parable. Now, why do I say that the account of the rich man and Lazarus is not a parable? None of the parables mention anyone's name.

This account mentions two names. You have the name of Lazarus, the poor man, and the name of who else? Abraham, who's also mentioned. The rich man's name is not given. But do you know traditionally what the rich man's name is?

There is a name that is connected with him. It's dives. I learned this from R .C. Sproul. Actually, I went years hearing this account and did not know that there was a name attached to this rich man. Dives is his name.

So it's dives and Lazarus, though I'm not going to keep saying that I'm going to continue to say the rich man and Lazarus. Why is the man's name not included here? Well, because his name is blotted out of God's book.

And so for that reason, his name doesn't come up here. He has died and has gone to a place of torment, and he's not remembered anymore. But Lazarus continues to live, and he lives at Abraham's side, at least according to this account.

Now, Jesus, I believe here truly. And there's other scholars that believe right along with me. There are teachers that I respect that do not agree with what I'm about to say. But nonetheless, this is what I believe to be the case.

Jesus is speaking of something that actually happened. And if there's anybody who knows what's going on in life after death, it's the one who came from heaven, Jesus. So he witnessed this, and he's able to speak of it.

And furthermore, I have to wonder if the people that Jesus is addressing would know of this like they know what Jesus is talking about when he refers to the rich man and Lazarus. I just have to wonder if the story is familiar to the Pharisees.

And they're even thinking to themselves, how would this guy know that? How does he know what is going on in the kingdom with Lazarus at Abraham's side and talking to this rich man who apparently doesn't get to go to paradise, doesn't get to go to Abraham's bosom?

He's down there in Hades, burning in a fiery torment. And so Jesus is sharing something here that would truly be astonishing to the people and especially to the Pharisees. He speaks of a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen.

Now, that's a very important person. So this has to be somebody that people would recognize. They would know if anybody's wearing purple and fine linen, then they are like a governor or they are in some position of leadership, a general of some kind, very, very wealthy.

These are the only people that could afford purple fabrics because it was the most expensive.

Fabric.

It was the most difficult to make, and it was only worn by those people that had positions of importance. So likely this rich man is somebody that people knew. They knew who this guy was. He's clothed in purple and fine linen.

He feasted sumptuously every day. So you're getting a picture of this guy just feeding himself. And at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table.

He's not asking to even come to the table and eat with the rich man. But just give me what falls off. Once it hits the floor, you're not going to eat it. Hand it off to Lazarus that he may eat it. Now, you'll notice that it says at his gate, so he's not able to come into the property, but right there at the gate at the entrance to the property and to the house, it's there that it says Lazarus was laid.

So this could be that some people brought Lazarus there and set him there and thought, hey, if Lazarus is going to get some food, maybe this rich man will have pity on him and feed the poor guy that's out at his gate.

Or it could just simply mean this was where Lazarus camped out. And so he was laid there at the gate of the rich man. We don't know for sure, but this was where Lazarus begged and even hoped and anticipated he could have the crumbs from the rich man's table.

It says he was covered with sores and the dogs would come and lick those sores. Kind of gross, but it also shows Lazarus wanted to eat. He was given nothing. The dogs ate from him, adding insult to injury that where he laid, the dogs just licked his sores and just shows how filthy he was, how horrible his situation was, how much suffering he was in.

But then he died and he gets carried by the angels to Abraham's side. We'll talk more about what that means when we come back to this tomorrow. The rich man also died and was buried, and he goes to Hades, another word for the grave.

But this is described as a place of torment, and he's able to see Abraham and he's able to see Lazarus far off, and somehow they're even able to communicate with one another, but he can't get there. And as Abraham points out, they can't even come from paradise into the place where the rich man is in torment.

Now, I'm going to leave it there for now. For the sake of time, I'm going to cut it off here. We'll come back to this again tomorrow. But remember, the point that we are getting to is recognizing that Moses and the prophets had spoken the words that would lead people to understand who Jesus is.

And if they come to Jesus, they will be saved. These tax collectors and sinners come to Christ and they are forgiven their sins. The Pharisees won't come. And the reason why the Pharisees won't come is because they don't really know, don't really listen to Moses and the prophets, don't really obey what God has said through the prophets that had been sent to them.

So, in fact, the Pharisees are like Israel who rebelled rather than the people who were.

Obedient.

And if they did not repent, then they were going to perish. They were going to end up in this same place with this rich man in this place of fiery torment. Because remember, it was said back in verse 14, the Pharisees are lovers of money.

So Jesus is not necessarily trying to make the Pharisees a parallel with this rich guy, but at least showing them that your love for money is not going to save you ultimately. The only thing that saves is faith in Jesus Christ.

And we'll come back to that again tomorrow. Heavenly Father, we thank you for what we've read here in Luke chapter 16. And I pray that as we continue to reflect upon this account of the rich man and Lazarus, that you will continue to show us your truth, that we look to the one who has risen from.

The dead.

And through Jesus Christ, our sins are forgiven and we have the promise of resurrection after death. Lead us in your paths of righteousness for your name's sake. It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.