Luke 16:19-31--The Rich Man and Lazarus

Luke 16:19-31
English Standard Version
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The Rich Man and Lazarus
19 “There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. 20 And at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, 21 who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores. 22 The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried, 23 and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. 24 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.’ 25 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. 26 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.’ 27 And he said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father's house-- 28 for I have five brothers—so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.’ 29 But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ 30 And he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ 31 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.’”

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This is a very different kind of teaching from Jesus than we are used to because Jesus uses a real name, leading us to believe that this is not just a parable, but something that actually happened.  I don't think this is the Lazarus that we'll read about shortly, whom Jesus would bring back from the dead, but the response to that miracle as well as to Jesus' own resurrection is exactly what was prophesied here.

Jesus is still talking to a group of people in the southern kingdom of Judea that are mostly rich and politically connected.  They assumed that their riches were a sign of blessing from God that meant that they would continue to be blessed with eternal life and good things in heaven.  However, Jesus flips the script on them and tells them that they received all the good things they were going to receive in this life as that's all they were living for, but the poor man, Lazarus, that lived outside of the rich man's gate lived a life of deferred gratification.  He suffered in this life having faith that God would save Him and in doing so he received eternal life and stored up for himself treasures in heaven.

The rich man ended up going to a place of torment and judgment that many of us would call Hades or Hell (a "jail" that the unsaved wait in to await their Judgment Day and their sentencing of being cast into the Lake of Fire with the devil and his angels).  God knows that innocence or guilt of each man so even while they are awaiting final judgment, they are in a place of agony and torture apart from the blessings that God has in store for the righteous.  They are close enough they can see the other side where what was called Paradise or Abraham's Bosoms was.  This too was a place of temporary residency for the righteous awaiting their final home of living in the New Heavens and the New Earth in the very presence of God Himself.  After Jesus' death, burial and resurrection we no longer see Paradise mentioned in the Bible and we see that "to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord," so it seems the last people that we know of to go to Paradise as a waiting place for their eternal home in heaven were Jesus and the thief on the cross that cried out to Jesus in faith that was told, "Today, you will be with Me in Paradise."

Does this story teach us that riches are bad and that all of us need to live as homeless people and paupers?  Not exactly.  We do not read this story to say that every rich person is going to hell and every poor person is going to heaven.  Jesus is making a point to these rich people that were listening to Him that their actions towards the poor who couldn't give anything back to them indicated the true condition of their hearts and whether they belonged to God or not.  That's an Old Testament principle that they had forgotten.  Also, Jesus is warning them that they cannot trust in their riches.  He's told them multiple times now that their riches cannot protect them from death and the coming judgment, and most importantly, this story tells us that "It is appointed to man once to die and after that, the judgment."  There were no second chances for the rich man to make the right decision once he was already judged guilty and sent to hell, nor was there another chance for him to go back to earth and tell his family the truth that they should have believed.  Jesus says that if they have not believed Moses and the Prophets (the Old Testament that was the Word of God that they had at this point) then they would not even believe the word of someone who came back from the dead.

Checkmate!  That's what we need to see.  Jesus being God in the flesh knows the hearts of these men and that no matter what signs they see, they will not believe, even if they see Lazarus come back from the dead, they will conspire to kill him again, and when Jesus comes back from the dead they will make up lies that people still believe to this day about the disciples stealing the body and the Roman guard being in on it, and so on.  The story was so ridiculous at that time that no one should have believed it but when given the choice to believe that Jesus was the Son of God and the Judge of both the living and the dead or to make up and believe a lie themselves and to tell others to keep them from believing, they chose the lie because that was their nature--they were like their father the devil, who was a liar from the beginning.  When they lie, they speak their natural language, and they do not know the Truth, for Jesus said, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  No man comes to the Father except through Me," (John 14:6).  Jesus will also tell them in short order that He is "The Resurrection and the Life" and that eternal life is only found in Him and that whoever has the Son has life everlasting, but whoever does not have the son stands condemned already.

So then, this is the indictment being read against most of the people that would conspire to kill Jesus and commit to being enemies of any of Jesus' followers and His gospel message.  They have failed to do what is right in this life because they have failed to be made righteous by God and they will face the wrath that they have stored up for themselves by thinking that they will be able to pay for their own sin because they don't have a proper view of God, Man, and Sin.

Those who know they are spiritually bankrupt cry out to God for grace and mercy and He gives both in abundance through the blood of Jesus, and this also opens up the doors of heaven to us as we put our faith into Christ and are "in Him" in the same way that He is "in God."  We are a part of Him that is inseparable.  Our eternal life is eternally secure because of who He is and what He has done, not because of any merit that we have earned on our own.  This then is the gospel, the good news that God is full of grace and mercy to all those who call out to Him in faith (because He has put the desire within them to know Him and cry out to Him) and all the wicked who reject God will not go unpunished.  Each man is responsible for the own choices that he makes here and now and that decision is final and irrevocable upon death.  They have chosen which covenant they want to be judged by at that point, the Law, or the New Covenant of the blood and body of Christ instituted at the Last Supper.  You must choose now because you never know when your last day might be.  Hebrews tells us that "Today is the day of salvation" and to put off making the choice is to make a choice to reject God's calling for you to be saved.

So then we who are saved should be faithful to be Jesus' witnesses in all places to all people at all times so that we might show and tell the gospel to all.  We will see this very teaching play out in the final days of Jesus' earthly ministry as I mentioned before, both with the resurrection of Lazarus and the resurrection of Jesus, neither of which will be accepted by those who wanted to reject Jesus, even though there were hundreds, if not thousands of witnesses to both events.