WWUTT 2443 Hades and Abraham's Bosom (Luke 16:22-23)

Hades, Abraham’s Bosom, and the Rich Man and Lazarus

In Luke chapter 16, we read the account of the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man goes to a place of torment, Lazarus to a place of paradise that's also called Abraham's bosom. What do these things mean?

What truths about the afterlife can we learn from this when we understand the text?

Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text is an online ministry dedicated to teaching the Word of God in context, promoting sound doctrine while exposing the faulty.

Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. In our study of the Gospel of Luke, we come back to chapter 16 and the account we've been reading this week of the rich man and Lazarus. I'm going to read it once again in verses 19 to 21, Jesus addressing the Pharisees with these words, hear the word of the Lord.

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 you in your lifetime 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 cross 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.

And as I said yesterday, it's that last answer right there. That's really the point of this account, as Jesus is telling it in the hearing of the Pharisees. And we'll get to that in a moment and make some applications.

First of all, an outline of this passage as we're looking at it. This is really split into two parts, and we looked at part one yesterday, which was mostly the setup to this exchange between the rich man and Abraham.

So the setup introduces the characters. You have the rich man, though he's not named, traditionally he's referred to as dives. As I said yesterday, this is often called the story of dives and Lazarus, but that's according to tradition.

We don't get that from the text. So as far as scripture is concerned, this man remains nameless. He is blotted out of God's book, so therefore his name is not recalled, even in this account as Jesus shares it.

So at the beginning, you have the introduction of the characters, the rich man and Lazarus, and then you also have their respective destinations to which they go. The rich man goes to a place of torment.

Lazarus goes to a place called Abraham's bosom, said here to be Abraham's side. It's also synonymous with paradise. Now Abraham's bosom is likely an idiom, and I'll explain that here in a moment. But then in the second part of this account, you have the verbal exchange between the rich man and Abraham.

You have three addresses from the rich man and three responses from Abraham. And what do we glean then from that as we look together at the text? There are a lot of things that are drawn out of this text, especially concerning the afterlife.

That seems to be the most captivating thing about this account. And like I said yesterday, I don't regard this as a parable. I think the majority of scholarship does call this a parable, but I don't think it shares the qualities of a parable.

A parable doesn't use people's names, and here we have two people named, one of whom we know really existed, and that is Lazarus, who's the poor man, the one who really existed, being Abraham, father Abraham from the book of Genesis.

So that's not a quality that's shared in any other story, except you may have a parable that mentions God or the voice of God. We've seen that in the gospel of Luke, but still we have here these real people's names that are said and the rich man whose name is deliberately omitted.

So if it was made up, why would the rich man not have a name, but the poor man does have a name? So this does seem to be an account of something that would be recognizable, at least as far as the names are concerned, that maybe the Pharisees would pick up on exactly what Jesus was talking about.

And who would know what would happen on the other side but Jesus? He would know of this exchange because he is the one who came from heaven to be able to tell us of these things that happen in the life hereafter.

In addition to that, the text does not call this a parable. So Luke doesn't set this up as Jesus also told them this parable. So again, there's nothing in the text that delineates this as a parable, though we can treat it as a parable.

And I'm going to take for granted that many of the teachers that call this a parable, that's what they mean, because a parable is supposed to have one meaning. The reason why Jesus is saying this to the Pharisees, it's got a point to it.

And we have to be careful not to overanalyze parables, as I've said before about parables. The same is true of this. The reason why Jesus is telling them this is not to give them some great picture of the afterlife, because some of the things that he talks about here, they would have already believed about the afterlife.

So it's not really a shocking revelation in that sense. But Jesus has a point that he means to drive home, which, as I said, is the last line. The last thing that Abraham says to the rich man is the point of this account.

There are some things we can learn about the afterlife from this, and I'm going to make those points, but ultimately we want to see exactly what Jesus was getting to and how that therefore applies to us.

How do we receive this same warning that Jesus is giving to the Pharisees? So let's come back to the beginning. I'll do this first part again quickly. There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen.

Again, that's something very common of a person of great importance, that they would wear purple, or I should say that's exclusive to people of great importance. Other people didn't walk around with purple fabric, so they were very expensive.

It was the most expensive kind of fabric. So if somebody was wearing purple, he was either very rich or somebody of great importance, maybe even a general of some kind. So this man feasts sumptuously every day at his table, always has good things every single day, does not live in misery in any way.

And verse 20, 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 just wants the scraps. He's not expecting to be invited in to dine at table with the rich man.

He just wants what didn't make it into the rich man's mouth. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores. So Lazarus is in a filthy place and he's being regarded with the rest of these filthy animals.

The animals get from him more than Lazarus even gets from the rich man. Well, then we have in the next part, it's kind of like we skip anything else about these person stories, but we just hear that the poor man died and he was carried by the angels to Abraham's side and the rich man also died and was buried.

And he goes to a place of torment that's regarded here as Hades. So before explaining Hades, let's look at Abraham's side. As I said, that's probably an idiom and an idiom meaning it's not literally Abraham's side, but it's the place of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

This is where the patriarchs went to. And so as anyone who is descended from the patriarchs, the Jews believed we'll get to go to there as well. So they regarded that as the place of Abraham, Abraham's side, his bosom.

Whenever a Jew died, that was where they went. So Jesus refers to this place of paradise by the idiom that most Jews referred to it as Abraham's side. If you remember the, uh, the exchange that Jesus had with the centurion in Matthew chapter eight, Jesus said that many will come from the East and from the West and dine at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, while the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into the outer darkness.

So what Jesus was referring to there was how there are many Gentiles who will be saved and go to Abraham's side, the place of the patriarchs who is, uh, they have ascended on high and a paradise. And so many who believe in Jesus will receive that place where those who think they'll automatically deserve it because they're Jews, because they are ethnically descended from Abraham.

They won't receive it because they were really not like their father, Abraham, as Jesus says in John eight, they were like their father, the devil. And so they get cast into that place that was prepared for the devil and his angels.

So this is paradise once again, referred to as Abraham's side, where every Jew believed that he or she was going to go. So the rich man also died and he was buried and in Hades being in torment, he lifted up his eyes.

Now this word Hades is translated a couple of ways throughout the new Testament. It's either translated grave or it's translated as hell. Now this appears to be a place that is much lower than the grave.

So it said that he was buried and in Hades. So he's gone now to this place of torment. And the rich man even says that it's a place of flame. So as we would regard hell to be, it may not be the final destination, but it is nonetheless a place where the wicked go.

Now let me say here that it's never said in this account why the rich man goes to Hades or hell and why Lazarus goes to Abraham's side. That's never given in the story. There are a lot of people that try to read that into the story as though to say, well, Lazarus was poor and so therefore he gets paradise.

The rich man was wealthy and because he wouldn't feed Lazarus, therefore he goes to hell. But there's nothing like that in this account. We know that a person who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ is forgiven of their sins and will be in paradise with him.

And a person who rejects God will perish under the wrath of God forever, which is this place. That's what's being poured out on the rich man is God's judgment upon him. So we have to be careful not to read into this more than is actually said.

Like I said, with any parable, we don't read more into this. But what is clear though, by the fact that this rich man goes to a place of torment, it is to understand that just because you were blessed in life with good things, that does not automatically mean, that does not automatically translate into you are blessed with good things in the next life.

And just because a person is in poverty in this life, that's not some indication that they don't have the blessing of God and therefore won't receive paradise in the next. That truth we can definitely understand from what is said here, but we need to be careful not to consign to the rich man and to Lazarus.

This is why he's there. That's not even the point of this account. Now regarding Hades, once again, let me read you Matthew Poole's note on this. This is, this is from Matthew Poole's commentary. The world has been filled with disputes about the true signification of the word that is here translated hell or Hades.

The most probable true notion of it is that it signifies the state of the dead, both of the dead body. And so it often signifies the grave and of the departed soul. A very learned man said that if he mistakes not, this is the only text in scripture in which by it is to be understood the place of torments, the Hebrew word, which is translated by this far more often signifying the place of the blessed, where the saints and the patriarchs went when they died rather than the place that sinners went.

So once again, Hades is often translated grave. And sometimes in that context, it can be talking about a saint who died and not necessarily a person who was cursed and therefore goes to this place of torment.

So anyway, continuing on in Luke 16, 24, it appears that it signifies hell properly or so-called as it imports the place of the damned. We must understand our savior to speak to us figuratively, that by things which we understand, we might comprehend spiritual things.

Heaven and hell are at too great a distance for souls in each to discourse one with another. Neither have souls any eyes to lift up. Where are by this we are taught number one, that as the souls of good men, when they leave their bodies, go into a state of eternal bliss, where are Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and enjoy a felicity, which we are not able to express, but is set out to us under the notion of Abraham's bosom to let us know that it is a place of rest and communion with the saints and the same felicity, which Abraham, the friend of God doth enjoy.

So the souls of wicked men, when they leave their bodies, shall go into a place of torments. The greatness of which being such as we are not able to conceive, they are expressed to us under the notion of being tormented with fire.

Number two, that it will be a great part of the misery of damned souls to understand those to be in a state of happiness, whom they in this life have scorned, despised and abused. And it may be have been instruments to hasten them to those blessed mansions.

Number three, that there will come a time when the proudest sinners will be glad of the help of the meanest saints, if they could obtain it. Father Abraham says of the rich man, send Lazarus, that Lazarus whom when alive, I suffered to lie at my gate full of sores and would not relieve.

Number four, that the state of the damned will be void of the least degrees of comfort and satisfaction. The rich man desires but a cooling of his tongue with so much water as could be brought upon the tip of Lazarus's finger.

And number five, that the tongue is a member, the abuse of which will in another life lie very heavy upon lost souls. So what does Matthew Poole mean here by saying that we should read this figuratively?

Well, I believe that there are things that we can take literally from this passage and also things that we understand figuratively. In this sense, let me explain it to you this way. So Poole had said, there's a difference between heaven and hell that's so great.

We should not regard these as places that we can actually converse across, like we can speak across a chasm to somebody that's in hell or something like that. We shouldn't think of the place that we are going as being a place where we can converse with the damned.

Only Abraham is speaking to the rich man. Notice that Lazarus never responds to the rich man. And Lazarus, the poor man, he's not gloating here. Ha ha, look at me. I'm up here and you're down there.

Okay.

So yeah, there is an exchange here that happens, but in what capacity that happens, we don't.

Know.

That's actually pretty mysterious to us. Like it's not an actual face-to-face conversation with Abraham and the rich man, but somehow it is being communicated to him. Why. He can't have somebody from the dead go and warn his brothers.

And the point being that if they don't listen to Moses and the prophets, as the rich man did not listen to Moses and the prophets, and remember, this is being spoken to the Pharisees who are not listening to Moses and the prophets.

So just as the rich man was not willing to listen to them, your brothers, if they're not listening to them, they're not even going to believe if someone should rise from the.

Dead.

So somehow that's being communicated to the rich man that he would understand this, even in this place of torment. Also notice that the rich man is not addressing God. God's not here in the sense of being a person that one of the damned could contact and communicate.

With.

He's not looking into paradise and seeing God, but God is very much present where the rich man is. In what sense? It's God's wrath that's being poured out on the rich man, but he has no communion with God, even though it's God's wrath that's being poured out on him.

He cannot communicate with God. So the only person here in this account that the rich man has any communication with at all is Abraham, and Abraham somehow able to tell him why he's in the place he's in and why he can't have any of the requests that he makes.

However that's communicated, let's consider that as something that's spiritually beyond our ability to grasp and comprehend now. But those things will make sense to us, of course, when we get to the other side.

We also should not have this idea that there's like this continuous communication that would be going on for all eternity between the rich man and Abraham. That certainly wouldn't be the case either. The chasm plays a big role here in understanding that in that place of torment that you go, you won't ever get out of there and there is never, ever any relief from it.

As Matthew Poole said, it is suffering and torment forever. It is utter misery. And so may this scare us really in a sense that we would shudder in ourselves to think of ever being there for all eternity, that we would turn from evil and turn to Christ.

No one in the Bible talked about hell more than Jesus did.

Why?

Why did Jesus talk about hell so often? So we would not go there. So we would understand that there are consequences for sin, serious, eternal consequences for.

Sin.

And we would not continue in our sin, but draw near to Christ and he will draw near to us as promised in John chapter four. Now I'm really going to have to stop there for the sake of time. I really thought I was going to finish all this today, but we haven't even gotten to the exchange between the rich man and Abraham.

So let's take our time through this. We'll stop here for now. We'll come back to this section, to this passage next week. If you have any questions about it, something you're curious about that you would like me to address regarding, I mean, it could be the afterlife or anything.

So send an email to when we understand the text at gmail .com and I'll do a little bit of a Q &A even as we read through this passage in Luke chapter 16. As always, I appreciate you listening and we will resume our Bible study in Jeremiah tomorrow since Thursday is the day that we study in the old Testament.

We'll come back to Luke chapter 16 on Monday. Heavenly father, we thank you for what we have read and I pray that it is convicting to our hearts. There is a place of torment that the wicked are going to be cast into, that God's wrath will be poured out on forever so that we may turn to Jesus Christ and be saved.

Jesus dying on the cross for our sins, rising again from the grave. We know that we too will rise from the grave. We have the promise of everlasting life in Christ Jesus who conquers death. And so in Christ, may we not continue in our sin, but walking in the righteousness of Christ that we've been clothed in every one of us who believes in him.

May we not go after those things for which people deserve hell. Let us go after those things that are pleasing to the Lord, that you have called us to holiness in Christ Jesus, being holy because you are holy and because we as sons and daughters of God want to be reflections of the holy God who loves us.

Thank you for the forgiveness that you have shown us through Christ, your patience with us, and lead us in paths of righteousness. May it be for your name's sake, in Jesus' name we pray, amen.

The Purpose of the Parable Is the Warning to the Pharisees

You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study. Then on Thursday, we look at an Old Testament book.

On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers. Tomorrow we'll pick up on an Old Testament study, When We Understand the Text.