Good morning, welcome to our
continuing Bible study, and we're continuing on in Luke chapter
16 today. So if you turn your Bibles there
to Luke chapter 16, this all stems from a meal that the Lord
shared with the Pharisees. And He gave a series of parables
to them. And then in chapter 16, after that, He said to His
disciples, and He brought this lesson that we looked at last
week about covetousness and unrighteous mammon and those kind of things. We come to this portion that
we're in today, starting in verse 19. We remember back in
Luke chapter 12, there was a similar lesson on covetousness. The Lord said, fear not those
that can kill the body, Fear Him who has the power to cast
your soul into hell." And that particular translation of hell
is Gehenna in this block of Scripture today talks about hell too. So
in Luke chapter 16 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 and
desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's
table. Moreover, the dogs came and licked his sores and it came
to pass that the beggar died and was carried by the angels
unto Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died and was
buried. And in hell he lifted up his
eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus
in his bosom. Then he cried and 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 received good things, and likewise Lazarus
evil things. But now he is comforted, and
thou art tormented. And beside all this between us
and you there is a great goal fixed so that they which would
pass from hence to you cannot. And neither can they pass to
us that would come from thence. Then he said, I pray thee therefore,
Father, that thou would send them to my father's house. For I have five brethren, that
he may testify to them, lest they also come into this place
of torment. And Abraham said 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. So we have this ending to chapter
16. I think it actually kind of carries
on into chapter 17 because the Lord goes on to say, you know,
offenses are going to come, but woe be to those that offend one
of these little ones, and I think maybe that may be a reference
to Lazarus here. And we were talking about this
this morning, and if we back up a few verses, we remember that the Lord was
talking to His disciples. He was telling them these things. And I said last week, I didn't
really think it fell into the parable category because it just
didn't follow the usual rules of parables. And here we find
Lazarus, the name mentioned, And we looked at John 10 where
the Lord knows the sheep, calls them by name, and generally in
a parable He doesn't name anyone there, He just uses them as a
metaphor. But we saw back in verse 14 that
the Pharisees were kind of listening in to this, what He was telling
the disciples. They were kind of eavesdropping,
as it were. And in verse 14, it says, the
Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all these things, and they
derided him. They turned up the nose at him.
So they were kind of listening in. And he tells them that, you know, the
law is still valid. And then he starts talking about
this rich man and Lazarus. And I think that it seems to
me and it seems valid that he's recounting something that they
were familiar with. Kind of reminded me of the woman that was caught
in the adultery, and they all gathered around to accuse Him.
And Jesus stooped and wrote on the ground, and then one by one,
all the accusers left. I think it falls into a kind
of a deal like that, where He wrote things on the ground, and
they probably said, ooh, that was me. Ooh, that was me. Ooh,
that was me. And they all left. And then he
says, woman, where are thy accusers? And she says, there aren't any. And so I think this kind of falls
into one of those kind of categories like that, where he starts talking
to them about a certain rich man that had died. that had five brothers. And I
think the Pharisee probably said, I know that guy. I know that
guy. And Lazarus, yeah, I know him
too. He was that scroungy looking
old crippled up beggar that they dumped on his gate every day
to beg. And so I think it kind of falls
into that kind of category. These Pharisees are listening
in. They hear about someone that they probably might well have
known. And he starts telling them about
these things. And there's some terms here that
are kind of interesting in this narrative. In verse 20, it says, there was
a certain beggar named Lazarus which was laid at his gate full
of sores. And that laid at his gate, you
know, you think, oh, they just gently carried him over there
and just kind of set him down and propped him up. It was kind
of more of a dumping. They just took him over there
and just dumped him by the gate so he could kind of make some
kind of a living there, begging. And Lazarus was desiring, in
verse 21, 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 Being in a in Western from a Western society in Western
culture and customs we we kind of look at these things and we
kind of apply our Western kind of thinking to them, but Really
in that day Table was kind of a different
thing than what we might consider a table today, like we have dining
tables in the fellowship hall here. tall enough that you can
put a chair under them and sit comfortably and eat your meal.
But through time, in the Old Testament days, it might have
just amounted to a leather mat that they threw on the ground
under their tent and that they ate from. In the Greek, this
term table here is trapeze, which means four-legged. But they were
really a low table, more like what we might consider like a
coffee table, kind of that low kind of a table. And they would
sit on cushions or what they might have called a divan around
that. And they would be in a reclining
position. And that's what that, back in
Luke 5, where Levi had a feast and invited all his publican
friends and sinners. And it says, they sat down to
meet. Well, that word sat down to means
they lied to lie back or to recline. And the custom was kind of you
would lean on your left elbow and you would use your right
hand to pick the food up and eat it. And they kind of ate
with their fingers. So we had this low table. that they kind
of reclined around. And then this word crumb, I was
telling Norma this morning that when we think of crumb, we think
of like the bottom of a potato chip bag or a cracker tube or
something. You have all these little almost
granular particles that you can't do much with. But in this sense,
in the New Testament sense, a crumb, what they call a crumb, I don't
remember the Greek term for it, but it was actually like a, they
would have a loaf of bread, a big loaf at the table and they would
reach over there and they would grab a, tear off a hunk of that.
And then they would dip that in like some olive oil or something
and then they would eat that. And that was what they called
a crumb. And in John chapter 13 it's called sop. He with whom
I, he who dips the sop. The sop is not the liquid that
they would, but the actual, it's the same Greek, it's the same
form of the Greek word that's called a crumb here. It's just
a morsel of bread that they would dip into a liquid. And then I read that when they
were done, they would take these crumbs, these fragments, and
then they would wipe the oil off of their fingers and dispose
of it kind of under the table. And it kind of leads you to think
of that, the woman that was begging the crumbs. And he says, give
that not which is holy to the dogs. And she says, The dogs
eat of the crumbs. So spiritually, I think it kind
of brings to mind here of these Pharisees, and this guy is typical
of them, this rich man. They had all these things that
they were charged with, that they'd been blessed with. They were doctors of the law. They were charged with the Scriptures.
And they should have been declaring the bread of life. They should
have been declaring the Gospel from the Old Testament. that they had, and yet it was
just a physical thing to them. It was like that bread. You know,
you think of oil and the Holy Spirit, and they just took that
bread and wiped their fingers off and threw it away. It was
like of no further use to them other than the physical part
of it. And yet, this beggar, he begged, he was desiring of
those very, those two things, those very, the crumbs that had
been wiped. And that word, crumb, it also,
when you look up the Greek of it, it almost describes emotion. more than the physical aspect
of the bread. It kind of defines it as a wiping,
a rubbing motion. And some places it's like when
you rub the ear, like you would take what they called corn, but
it's probably more like a shock of wheat. All over the valley
here you can see wheat. We got tons of wheat up by our
place growing right along the fences and in the backyards and
everything, wheat's coming up all over the place and it's ripe.
You can grow up there and grab a hunk of that wheat and if you
took it and rubbed it between your hands like this, the chaff
would kind of fall off and you would be left with these little
kernels of grain. Well that's kind of that that
motion that talks about with the crumb, a rubbing. Hence, you rub the debris off
your fingers. And so we have that kind of a
visual picture here with this desiring to be fed with the crumbs
which fell from the rich man's table. And then it came to pass
that the beggar died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's
bosom. And the rich man also died and
was buried. And a minute ago we referenced
back in Luke chapter 12, or Luke 5, I think it was, where,
don't fear them that can kill the body, but fear them that
can cast your soul into hell. The Greek word for hell in this
is Hades, but in the other chapter it was Gehenna. And it's interesting
that Gehenna, it's a Hebrew Hebrew, a term meaning the Valley
of Hinnon is what it is. And that comes from the Old Testament.
You can go back to 2 Chronicles and Kings and look up all the
atrocious things that happened there where they sacrificed Molech,
and they made their children to pass through the fire, and
all these horrible things. And it's interesting spiritually
that that valley is outside the wall of Jerusalem, kind of on
the southwestern part of Jerusalem. And the Valley of Hinnon was
on the outside of the wall. And it's a picture of the...
It kind of turned into the city dump. of Jerusalem. And it was always on fire. They
were always throwing stuff down there to dispose of it. And that
would be where they threw the bodies of criminals and dead
animals and things they wanted to be rid of. And it was always
on fire. You can just imagine the stench
that rose from that place. And the fire was always burning. And it probably was alive with
worms. And so we have a lot of visualizations
of hell from that, where the worm dieth not and the flames
and all that. Those kind of visual pictures
that we get of hell was kind of typified in this valley of
Hinnon. And you know, that would have
been likely what they did with old Lazarus when he died. It
doesn't say anything about his burial. It just says he died
and was carried into Abraham's bosom. The rich man died, and
he had a nice funeral. They probably put him in a box
and carried him to a tomb, a nice expensive tomb, and put him in
a nice grave, and they probably had a nice service and told what
a wonderful person he was. You know how funerals go. They
eulogize the dead person. And old Lazarus, though he didn't
have many redeeming qualities on the surface, and it kind of
It kind of makes us think about how we judge people, how we judge
things. We look at things and we make
judgments based on visual perceptions and not really so much spiritually. And the Pharisees, they were
that way too. They said, well, I'm wealthy,
therefore I'm blessed of God. Wealth equals blessing of God.
Wretchedness equals cursed of God. So that's how they kind
of viewed themselves and Lazarus. He was just something that wretchedness
that was probably cursed of God and we don't want anything to
do with. And yet he turns out to be a son of Abraham. And the
Pharisee who said, we'd be Abraham's children, we'd be Abraham's sons,
turned out to not be. And Wednesday night, Craig brought
a lesson on the Israel of God. And he kind of went into that
in depth. So I'm not going to discuss that too much today.
The Scripture says they're not all Israel, which are of Israel.
He talks about who really are the spiritual sons of Abraham
versus the physical sons. The Lord says, I know you're
Abraham's sons, but not really, not in the spiritual sense. And
so that's, isn't that interesting how this turns out. It's kind
of a reversal of things. What man considers, what man
thinks about. Here's all the things that we
count on. And these Pharisees, they counted
on being wealthy, and they counted on being in the heritage of Abraham,
and they counted on keeping the law. And, you know, the Lord
just had told them in the previous verses that the law is still
valid. You say you keep it, but you
don't really. He makes that abundantly clear
to them. They counted on wealth, they
counted on heritage, they counted on keeping the law, self-righteousness
to be in Abraham's bosom. to be, and that's kind of a term
of comfort where you're leaning, you're leaning
up against Abraham, who's kind of the In Scripture, he's kind of the
figurehead of the faithful. So he would have been fellowshipping
with Abraham. And the other Scriptures say
that you're fellowshipping with Abraham,
with Isaac, with Jacob in the kingdom to come. And they're
just figures of the ones that are recorded as being faithful
because of Christ and what He did for them. So we have this
representation then of this rich man counting on being there with
Abraham in heaven. And yet he had all the things
available to him that would have been helpful in doing that. They had the gospel, they had
the bread of life, they had the oil of the Spirit, they had all
the things, but they were just crumbs that they threw under
the table when they were done with them and didn't want anything
more to do with them. circumstances to dictate where
they would end up. And that's just humanity. That's just our nature. We want
to have some form of control over where we end up and how
we end up. And that young rich ruler that
went to Christ says, what can I do to inherit eternal life? And you know what I think his
expectation was? The Lord was going to say, you're
doing everything perfect. Don't change a thing. You're
fine. You don't need to do anything
else. Just keep doing what you're doing. And the Lord says, well,
what about the law? And he says, well, I've kept
all these from my youth up. And then he says, well, OK, since
you think that you keep the law, how about selling all your stuff
and giving it to the poor? Uh-oh. Not doing that. So he exposed that person's weakness
there and the fallacy that he was OK, that he did everything
right. He had no problems. So now we find Abraham in hell
and tormented, and it says he sees Abraham afar off. He's like out of reach. not where he thought he would
be. He thought he would be snuggled up right against him, and for
Abraham to say, oh, here's one of my seed, and here's one of
my children, and yet he's not. He's a long ways off. And he sees Lazarus there where
he thought he should be. This is not right. Lazarus should
be out there on Gehenna on the burn pile. Maybe that's where
his body did end up, but his spirit ended up with the Lord in heaven. This rich man begins this dialogue
with Abraham. He calls him Father Abraham. He misses all the important things. He's in hell, but he still doesn't
relate to anything spiritually. He still relates to everything
on a physical aspect. He calls him Father Abraham. He probably could trace his lineage
back. So-and-so begat so-and-so begat
so-and-so, who begat so-and-so, who begat so-and-so. I bet he
could trace it all back to Abraham and say, see, I'm a son of Abraham. And he says, have mercy on me. And he's kind of like, thinks
he's still in a position to command like he was in life. He was a
rich guy. He probably had all kinds of
servants. And he said, servant, go get me some fresh water. Servant, go get me my slippers.
Servant, go get me this. Servant, go get me that. Servants,
get my bath ready. Servant, do this. He says, send Lazarus. Send that old icky Lazarus that he might dip the tip of
his finger in water and cool my tongue for I'm tormented in
this flame. And what a picture. You know, Lazarus was full of
sores and wretched and crippled. Yet this guy says, well, even
a dip of water from him would be better than this torment that
I'm facing now. But there's not a word here of any
repentance where he says, I'm sorry I didn't treat you better
when you were in the world, Lazarus. Or I'm sorry, Lord, that I didn't
give him the bread of life I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
What can we do to mitigate my circumstances? It's all physical
still. And so I guess the lesson for
us there is that in hell, people don't really change much from
what they were in life. They're still at enmity with
God. They still cannot understand
They still don't want anything to do with spiritual things. It's still foolishness to them.
They still relate to everything in a physical way. Send old 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 received good things. And likewise, Lazarus,
evil things. And you know, both those things
were according to the purpose of God. And that's another, that
judgment thing that we look at. We can't always tell the spiritual
condition of someone based on their physical appearance or
circumstance. And we have to avoid doing that. But we have to understand that
everything is working according to God's purpose, according to
His will. And He's working all things for good. And you know,
Lazarus, he lived a pretty miserable life for a short time in this
world. And I don't know what his life
expectancy was back then. But it's not very much compared
to eternity. Paul wrote about that in his
letters. He said, you know, I reckon the
sufferings of this present time are not worthy to even be counted
compared to the glory that we'll be in heaven with the Lord. We're just here for this brief
span of time. We're like a blade of grass that comes up and withers
and then turns brown. And like we see around here in
the hills, we have green, then brown, then black. It's a short season, you know,
12 or 14 weeks. It just goes from green to dead
to on fire. And we kind of look at our lives
in this world that way, that it's a short time. And we kind of need to keep that
in perspective when we're thinking about our existence in this world. And this rich man, he had all
the good things. And Paul said, I had all those
too. I profited much in the Jewish religion. I was a good student
of the law. I had all these things. When Christ was revealed to me,
when the Lord revealed His Son in me, well, now I just count
those as dung. It's just they were worthless. I didn't put them to very good
use when I had them. And so we have that same thing
here with this rich man and Lazarus. And he said, besides this, besides
all that, you had all the benefits in this life and you didn't do
anything with them. You had all the benefits of the Scripture.
You had all the benefits of the Gospel and rejected all that
in favor of your own self-righteousness and your own view of things. Besides all this, between us
and you, there's a great gulf fixed. That word great gulf is
chasm in the Greek. My brother and I used to play
golf down at Hood River, and there was a big canyon that you
teed off on one side of this canyon, and the green was on
the other side. And we called it the chasm of
doom, because we never could seem to get our ball all the
way across. And if it went down in that chasm,
it was just gone. You just had to take a penalty
stroke and hit another ball. So there's this great chasm.
that it's uncrossable, it's It's as expansive as the difference
between life and death. It's uncrossable. So that they which would pass
from hence to you cannot, neither can they pass to us that would
come from thence. So there's no crossing over. There's no going back. And yet,
in spite of this, he says, Well, if I can't go there and he can't
come here, we'll send him back to the world. He tries kind of
a worker, what we call in politics today. Well, here's a workaround. If he can't come here and I can't
go there, we'll send him back to the, resurrect him and send
him back to the world. You know, the other Lazarus,
when he was resurrected, what they tried to do to him, they
tried to kill him again. They didn't say, oh, he's raised
from the dead. We should be believers now because
of this mighty sign and wonder. No. Well, let's kill him again.
And that always struck me as so odd because, like, he was
already dead. He'd been raised from the dead.
Let's kill him again. Well, what might be the outcome
of that? Maybe he'd be raised from the
dead again. And where would we be? Send old Lazarus on another mission. If he can't dip his finger in
the water and comfort my tongue that's on fire, because I'm in
the eternal trash heap of fire that never quenched and worm
dieth not, send him back to the world. And have him go to my
father's house, because I've got five brothers. And you know,
we all kind of have that issue. We have family members or friends
or stuff that, you know, we would wish the gospel would get to
them and be effectual, and yet we have so little control over.
We can tell them the gospel, but we can't make it effectual
in them. But he says, send Lazarus there
and have him tell not the gospel, Again, he's got this worldly
viewpoint that he's coming from. He says, send Lazarus back and
just tell him how awful this place is. Don't tell him Christ
died for our sins according to the scripture. Don't tell him
that our sins have been paid for double. Don't tell him anything
about a substitution. Don't tell him anything about
the law being a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. The law
showing us that we can't keep the law. sending back and have
him tell about this nasty place I'm in and that you don't really
want to go there. But that's really a byproduct
of your unbelief. It's really, it's not the, You're
not in hell because you don't want to go there. You're in hell
because you believe not, because you're not one of my sheep. And
conversely, you're in heaven not because of any works that
you did. You're there because Christ died
for you according to the Scriptures and was buried and rose again
the third day. from any works that we have done
or any righteousness that we have exhibited or any works that
we've done. So he says, send them back and
tell them about this awful place. Well, nobody ever gets saved
because they've been scared of hell. And you know, back in the
earlier history and even today, I'm sure there's plenty of sermons
that are being brought today that hell is an awful place and
you don't want to go there, so you better get in line and become
a believer or do all these things that align you with Christ and hardly speak a word about the
gospel of the substitutionary nature of His death in the place
of His sheep. I've got five brethren that he
may testify to them, lest they also come into this place of
torment." And Abraham said unto him, Who got Moses and the prophets? Let them hear them. They had
the very things that the gospel was comprised of, the law and
the prophets. Jesus said, Search the Scriptures.
They are they that testify of Me." Or in Luke 24, He expounded
to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.
And all the Scriptures that they had was the Old Testament. So they had those things. And
he said, you know, if they can't see Christ in the Old Testament,
they're not going to see it because the one rose from the dead and
came back and said, don't go to hell because it's really nasty
there. It smells bad. It's on fire,
full of worms. It's full of torments. It's full
of eternal torments. Don't go there. in the Old Testament, go to Christ. Go to Christ. Go to Him. So he
said, no, Father Abraham, but if one went to them from the
dead, they'll repent. They'll turn from their being
just like me. They'll change, you know. A threat
of hell does not cause repentance. A threat of hell does not make
anyone repent. He said, if they don't hear Moses
and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one
rose from the dead. And we find that true today. We have Christ that rose from
the dead, and yet not many people are persuaded by that. It takes
something extra. It takes the new birth. Unless
a man be born again, he can't see the kingdom of God. He can't
enter. He can't cross that great gulf,
that great chasm by his own righteousness. He can only get there if he's
carried. So we'll stop there. We're about
out of time. Until next time, we'll take off in Chapter 17. And I think that maybe this is
kind of an indirect reference back to Lazarus where he said,
better that a millstone were wrapped around somebody's neck
and they were cast into the sea than that they should offend
one of these little ones. And so I think that If you take
away the chapter headings and all that other stuff, this just
continues on. So there you have that. So until next time, friends,
be free as always.