The Stories Jesus Told #11 - The Rich Man
Message Description
Senior Pastor Dr. Kurt Bjorklund continues the "Stories Jesus Told" message series teaching out of the gospel of Luke sharing the parable of the rich man and his eternal destiny.
Message Transcript
Good morning, Orchard Hill! It's great to be together. We are in the second to last week of a series that we've called The Stories Jesus Told. We actually did it in two parts, one several years ago and then this spring and early summer. We've had some of the other parables that we didn't cover then and basically have covered almost all of the stories Jesus told in the New Testament.
We have left some of the less pleasant stories till the end, and this is one of them. Now, the very last one, next week, Dan Irvin's going to talk about. I left him a nice easy one. So, you can let him know that that's easy. But this one is not easy in the sense of there are some parts of this story that are troubling no matter how you come at the Scripture.
And so, I want to help us think about it, but in order to think about it a little bit, I want to say there's a difference between sometimes the big stories, the headlines, and then the details. Sometimes the headlines are the things that make us say, whoa. But the details are actually more concerning. As an example, and this is participatory, I want you to turn to somebody your next to, if you came with somebody, if you came alone, you can just kind of think this. But if you were to say what animal kills the most humans in the United States every year, what would be your answer? So, tell somebody next to you what you think that is.
Some of you are changing your answer already. Did anybody have brown bear out there? Maybe a few. Not that many. Black bears kill some people too, but the brown bears are responsible 4.3 human deaths in the United States each year. So, less than a person. About once every three years, a brown bear attack results in a death. But if you ever watch a movie or a TV show, you would think that is always what happens.
Okay. How about snakes? Does anybody have snakes? Snakes are responsible for approximately five human deaths a year. Now there are more attacks, obviously, but only five people on average die in a year in the United States from snake bites. So antivenom goes a long way in that.
How about bees? Anybody have bees as your answer? 78 human deaths a year from bees. Now the global top spot belongs to mosquitoes. Supposedly around a million people a year die from mosquitoes, 90% of them in Africa. But that is not the story in the United States as the top spot, because, again, our country in health care makes that maybe not as common.
And so, the number one spot in the United States of animal cause deaths belongs to deer. Yeah. So, you're saying I knew it, I got it. And you know how deer kill so many people? They run in front of cars. Cars hit them and people die. That's how that happens.
Now, the reason that I say headlines in reality are different. What are the headlines when it comes to animals? It's bear attacks. It's shark attacks. You don't think about Bambi and you don't think about really mosquitoes a ton or bees. You think about these ferocious things. And when we come to the story that Jesus tells about the rich man and Lazarus, sometimes there's the headline or the big story where you say, whoa, there's this place, Hades, and there's fire and torment and all of this. And so, you get pictures about the afterlife that seem to give us kind of this either-or equation. And the one aspect of it seems to be characterized by these ideas like devils and pitchforks and things like that.
But I'd like to suggest today that the reality that Jesus points to in this picture is in some ways even more troubling than the headline. I realize that's not a light topic, but this is where this text takes us. And so, in Luke Chapter 16, verses 19 through 31, Jesus tells the story about a rich man. The word rich is a word that means somebody who had more than enough, who dressed in purple and fine linen and made merry some text say, every day. So, the story, this is somebody who dresses for status, somebody who has wealth, dresses well, and they live in luxury. They party. This guy has a good life.
Then Jesus says there's a poor man. And the word for poor that's used here is a word that literally means somebody who needed the assistance of others in order to make it, couldn't make it on his own labor. We're told that he sat outside the gate of the house. This is by the way the only time in a story that Jesus names somebody. He names him Lazarus. He says that this man would sit outside the gate, and he would hope for scraps from the table. Basically, when the people from the rich man's house would throw this trash out, Lazarus would be there, he'd go through it, and he would eat it and kind of make his way.
Then it says even the dogs would come and lick his sores. Now, when you and I picture dogs, we generally picture pets in that culture. Dogs, by and large, were not household pets. They roamed freely in the streets and were like a slightly better version of a rat. Okay, I know for dog lovers, that's hard, but I have a couple of dogs. It’s hard to imagine that way, but that is what it was like. So, this man's life was somewhat miserable.
Jesus says that they each died. The rich man dies. Lazarus dies, and he says Lazarus is taken to Abraham's bosom, taken to his side, you could say, into his arms. It was a symbol of comfort, status. And so, this man, no matter how hard his life had been, now is experiencing comfort we're told, status. His life has now turned from the misery that he had to this joy. Then the rich man is said to now be experiencing torment. And when I say that, there are some of the details that are harder maybe than some of the headlines. What I'd like to do is show you three things from this story that are not options if you die without Jesus Christ.
Now, it says that the rich man was in Hades, and Hades was thought to be this place where all the dead gathered. And so, it was the afterlife. And here's what was not available to the rich man. The first thing that wasn't available was to leverage his money or status to change his situation. Here's where we see this. Verse 19, “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day.” So, a man who had a lot. And then we're told this. Verse 23 says, “In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side.” Or in his bosom, some translations say. “So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’”
And so, what he wants to do is he wants to say, remember that guy who was outside my gate, who ate my scraps? He could still serve like a servant, couldn’t he? Send him to relieve some of my suffering. See what happens if you have money or status in this world, as you start to think that because you have money and status and it allows you to negotiate things, to navigate things, that you will always be able to use your money or status to negotiate things, to navigate things.
But what Jesus is teaching here is that there's coming a day when all of your money, all of your status will not help you. And that is so counterintuitive, because what we learn in this world is that money and status always help us. It's always easier to negotiate, to navigate if you have one of those two things. Sometimes our money and our status, we can get so used to leveraging it to get the results we want that we just assume that if there is an afterlife that we will be able to use our money and our status to negotiate our way with God.
The other thing that's going on here is in that culture, people thought that if they had money that it was because God was favorably pleased with them. But do you notice the reversals here? He says it this way in verse 25. He says, “But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony.” And what that's doing is it's just simply saying you may think that your good things show God's pleasure with you, but it's important to understand that your status with God is not conferred to you by the good things of your life, and it's not conferred to you a displeasure from God because of the bad things in your life. And so, what that means is don't confuse those things.
I don't know if you've ever had the experience of not having resources or capacity to use your money or your status to negotiate anything. I had this experience not long ago. I was driving. I just went on a short trip, and I forgot my wallet. And all of a sudden, I realized I forgot my wallet, and I needed gas. It was one of those things where I came to understand that they don't take IOUs at gas stations. They don't say, well, I'm sure you're good for it. You seem like a nice person. I'm sure you have money somewhere. Suddenly, you are completely without your status, money, or resources.
And what Jesus is doing is saying, I want you to understand that there's coming a day when your money, your status, your standing will not help you. And that goes so against how we think about things. So, that's one option we won't have after we die, especially if we die without Christ.
Here's the second one, and that is getting relief from suffering. I know that this is where this gets a little uncomfortable, but I'm not faithful to teaching you the Bible if I don't speak about what the Bible speaks about. There are parts of the Bible that are unpleasant, and there are churches that will simply talk about a crisis eternity, or they'll talk about heaven only and never about the alternative. But here Jesus teaches about it, and he says something. And again, this is where maybe we get caught up in the headlines a little much because we'll talk about fire and things like that. There's been a lot of writing over the last 50 years talking about maybe it's a metaphorical fire, not a physical fire.
But what I want you to focus on here is what Jesus actually says because whatever he's pointing to, this is not something you or I want to experience. Okay? Here's what he says. He says this in verse 24. “So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’” Now, whether again that's literal fire, it's Jesus telling a story, meaning it represents something.
What he's saying is this is so unpleasant that you will long to have somebody who's being licked by creatures slightly above rats to go dip their finger in water and just put it on your tongue. I mean, it's been hot here in Pittsburgh last week. If you worked outside at all on anything, what did you want when you were done? You wanted to have one of those big Stanley mugs with water in it and straws coming out so you could drink your water. Sorry, I digress. I tried to add a little humor in here on an intense topic. But imagine if you said just give me the tip of your finger and a little bit of water, that would be enough relief. Jesus is saying that there is a reality for those who don't know him that will be unpleasant. And when this life is over, you will not be able to get relief from suffering if you don't know Jesus Christ and aren't part of the heavenly vision. That is the story that Jesus tells.
One author put it this way. He said, “To thrust these severe sayings on one side and to concentrate attention solely upon passages of the Gospels where the divine fatherhood is proclaimed, is to preach a debilitated Christianity, which does not and cannot do what Christ came into the world to do. To save people from the wrath to come.”
And, you know what has happened in our culture around this idea of hell? Is we've so pushed it out of our consciousness that we've made it something completely other. Let me give you a couple of examples. I often will do this where I'll try to take a kind of what is the cultural narrative and draw it from music because music is like the poets of our day. And so, I'll give you one that's kind of longer standing. So those of you who are a little more mature in the audience will get this first one and then one that's very current. So, one's iconic, one's current.
The iconic one is the old ACDC song. Some of you know it now if you don't know the song. This was iconic in the seventies, and it was ACDC singing “Highway to Hell.” I'm on the Highway to Hell. And the idea of the song was basically, I'm going there because I deserve it, but I wouldn't have it any other way because all my friends, and I'm paraphrasing bringing in some ideas, but all my friends, all the good times, that's where it's at. So, I'm on this highway. Do you see the minimization now?
The more current one is from the renowned poet, Taylor Swift, and she had written a breakup song. Surprising. And in the song “My Tears Ricochet,” she says this. “Even on my worst day, did I deserve, babe, all the hell you gave me?” So, what is hell for Taylor Swift? It's a boy breaking up with her.
Now, I'm not suggesting that there's never a time to use the word hell to speak about something unpleasant in our life. But what it should do every time you are tempted to use it, or somebody says it, or they say, "I have the boss from hell or something like that," is remind you to say, that isn't hell. You may have a horrible boss. That breakup may have been a disaster. You may be in a season that is just unbearable, but it is nothing like what Jesus describes. And the reason that's important is because without that understanding and appreciation, you will take the cultural minimization of this idea and simply say, hey, this is where all the party's at, or this is this is no big deal. Instead of saying this is Jesus saying you want to be somebody who knows where your eternity is.
So, the first option that's not available to us when we die, if we die outside of Christ, is to leverage our status and our money to change our situation. The second option that's not available to us is relief. In fact, what he says is there's a chasm between here and there, and those wishing to go back and forth, He says that they can't. He says it's fixed, so it's done. But there's a third thing here, and that is you won't be able to warn those that you love. Here's where we see this. Verse 27 says, “He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family...” So, here he is again, saying, let me command that guy, “...for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’ Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’ ‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”
Jesus is probably making an allusion to his own resurrection here. But do you see what happens? He says that this rich man, the man who had great comfort in this life, now when he's experiencing torment, says can you send somebody to warn the people that I love about what this says? You see, his comfort had made him so comfortable that he didn't deal with eternity. He said, I've got my good things, and I'm sure I'll have good things in the future. And what Jesus is doing is he's saying there will come a day when you won't be able to warn someone anymore in the future. In fact, he says they already had Moses and the prophets. In other words, it's already been taught. He says, but if they didn't listen to him, they won't listen even if somebody comes back from the dead.
I was at our staff worship time the other day, and Russ Brasher was just talking to our staff about KidsFest. You know we do this KidsFest thing here at Wexford, at our other campuses, and Russ was just pointing out something about the KidsFest numbers. This year we will have about 2,000 kids here. And in the three different weeks, about 1,500 of them don't attend Orchard Hill, and about half of all of them don't have any church home, which means about 1200 of the kids who will be here don't have any church home at all. It's an amazing opportunity as a church.
And it's not just that we say, oh, we want to have a fun week, which we want it to be, so the parents can drop their kids off to a camp just like soccer camp and lacrosse camp and band camp. But it's because we believe that coming into a relationship with Jesus Christ is what changes everything and what assures eternity and the heavenly vision. And so, we want that to be something obvious to thousands of kids, families, and people in this whole community.
Sometimes people will get suspicious of big churches. Their suspicion is if you're a big church, you must be a shallow church. You must not teach anything true because the true believers are only attracted to small. But I'd just like to say that big churches can be shallow, so can small churches, but here's something that you can't do if you become part of a small church and still be faithful, and that is, choose not to warn anybody about what's happening because you are called, if you are a follower of Jesus, to say, part of what I'm doing is warning people, inviting people to Jesus, warning them about what happens if they don't come.
And here's my question, is it warning, is it loving if you know something negative is going to happen and you just choose to say nothing? I mean, let's just take it out of this whole spiritual realm. If you knew that a friend of yours was driving a car and their whole muffler system were about to fall off, you could hear it rattle, see that they needed some new ratchets to be put up underneath to shore it up, and you just said, oh, well, you know, they'll figure it out. Is that loving? The answer is no. What's loving is to say, I hear your car rattle. You may want to go say, in fact, I know somebody. I have a garage. I'd love to tell you to take your car, too, because if you don't, you're muffler is going to fall off, and it's going to cost you twice as much.
It's loving to warn somebody. But what we often do instead is we say, I don't want to be that person. I don't want to talk about it. You see, Jesus in the story gets to the point where he drives his point home. Here's where it is, and it's in this dialog, verse 30, he said, but if someone from the dead goes to them, what does he say, they will what? Repent. How do we go to the place and the experience of Lazarus, the poor man, rather than the experience of the rich man? We repent. That is, we acknowledge that our goodness, our good things don't impress God, but we need Jesus’ good things on our behalf. Repentance means we acknowledge that our goodness isn't enough, and we turn to God.
Some of us may be here today and this is uncomfortable, and you haven't thought about this in a long time. But maybe today is your day to repent, to say, God, I have minimized this idea of an eternal destiny, or I've thought that my goodness or my status would one day be enough. Maybe today is just your day to say God no more. I know I need Jesus as my Savior. Maybe you're here and you say, you know what, I've believed. I'm pretty confident about my eternity.
Can I just point something out to you about this? I frame this message in three options you don't have if you don't know Christ when you die. But do you notice the two of them you also don't have even if you're a follower of Jesus. The suffering isn't an issue because you won't suffer, because you'll be comforted. But do you know what you won't be able to do? Leverage your resources in your status any more for anything. Do you know what else you won't be able to do? Warn somebody that you love because there's a great chasm.
And so the question, if you're somebody who says, you know what, I've trusted Jesus, is are you willing to use your status, your reputation, your resources to warn people in your life to say, I'm going to leverage what God has given me for something greater than just my own comfort because this story shows us that one day our lives will all end. And when they do, how we've lived our lives, what we've chosen to do, what we've believed will matter immensely.
And so, the question today for all of us is really, what are we doing with what God has given us in terms of eternity? You know, I don't know most of you by name or personally, just because of the size of Orchard Hill. But what I do know is that thinking about death is uncomfortable, but it's also necessary to get clarity about what is in front of us. And so, I don't know if death to you feels like it's 60-70 years away or if you are staring it down in a somewhat short-term time frame. But what I do know is that Jesus gives this vision of two different futures, and there's an invitation to repent and share in the comfort.
No matter how rough your life has been here and now, because again, he paints the picture of Lazarus having and experiencing a rough life, that you can with confidence, say, if I've repented, if I've trusted Jesus, then there will be a day where there will be a reversal of the hard things. And if you've had a lot of good things now and you believe in Jesus, you can still have hope of that comfort in the future, but you can leverage more and more of your good stuff for something even greater.
Father, I asked today that you would help us not to simply minimize the idea of eternity and the future because it's a little uncomfortable, but instead that we would hear what this story teaches, and we would arrange our lives in a way that makes sense, given what is true. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen. Thanks for being here. Have a great week.