The Beggar and the Rich Man – Luke Ch16v19to31

Sermons Archive - Greenview Church

(0:00 – 2:30)

We continue in your presence, we thank you for this opportunity once again to share your word together. We thank you for the truth of your word. Your word is truth.

Your word is light. Your word is life. Your word is love.

Your word is eternal. And we just pray this we spend this time spending a time considering and thinking and studying your word this morning. We just pray for the help and the presence of your Holy Spirit.

Please anoint this time in your presence in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. Amen.

Now we’re going to continue in the series of parables you’ve been looking at under the title Provocative Parables. And this is a story about two men, about two lives and about two destinies. And Luke is the only gospel writer who actually records this particular parable.

Some people call it a parable, others call it a story, you can make up your own mind what conclusion you come to on that. But when you read it, at first reading it could be easily misunderstood. And we have to be careful about the context in which this parable is given.

So I want to think a little bit to begin with this morning about the context of this particular parable. So we understand the setting and what it was that Jesus was getting at. Now in order to do that, I want to suggest we first of all consider what the parable is not about.

What the parable is not about. Because if we’re not careful, it’ll be very very easy to conclude that if you’re rich on earth, when you die you’ll go to hell. And if you’re poor here on earth, when you die you go to heaven.

That life is unfair but God sorts things out in eternity. There’s kind of a role reversal that takes place. And that is just not true.

That is not the point that Jesus is making. We have to be careful we don’t read that sort of interpretation into the parable. So that’s what it’s not about.

(2:31 – 5:03)

What is it about? And to understand what it’s about, we need to think about two issues. First of all, we need to think about the audience that Jesus is speaking to. And when you read through chapters 15 and 16, we have to look at the wider picture.

When you look at chapters 15 verse 1 and chapter 16 verse 1, it’s clear here that Jesus is talking to the common people. He’s also talking to his disciples. But when you come to chapter 15 verse 2 and chapter 16 verses 14 to 15, you’ll find Jesus here is speaking to the Pharisees.

He’s speaking particularly to the Pharisees and there’s an emphasis in what Jesus is saying. So let’s keep in mind the audience that Jesus is speaking to, but let’s also keep in mind the specific context, the wider context in which this parable occurs. If you go back to chapter 15, many of us are familiar with chapter 15.

You remember there’s the lost sheep, there’s the lost coin, and the lost son. And if you take the last of those parables that Jesus told, what you find is we have the parable of what we call the prodigal son. And in chapter 15 verses 11 to 32, in the parable of the prodigal son, what we discover is this, that the prodigal son wastes his father’s possessions.

When you come into chapter 16 verses 1 to 13, what you will discover is you have a dishonest servant who wastes his master’s possessions. And when we come to the parable we’re looking at this morning, we find we have a rich man who wastes his own possessions. And so you’ve got three parables here that are talking about our attitude towards possessions, and all three deal with our attitude towards riches.

You see possessions, riches, they can blind us. And the Pharisees were particularly guilty of that. The Pharisees separated the secular from the spiritual.

(5:04 – 10:39)

One of the points I like for us to remember is that when we are Christians, there are two sides to our life. Now, it just so happens I’ve only got a 10 pence coin here this morning, I’m obviously a poor man. And so every coin that you’ve ever had in your purse or your pocket has had two sides to it.

On the one side, we have what we say we believe, and on the other side, how we behave. Now if you’re a Christian this morning, what you believe and how you behave should be like two sides of the same coin. That your life and mine should reflect what we say we believe in terms of the Bible and our understanding of it.

So belief and behavior go hand in hand. And that’s the thing the Pharisees made a huge mistake over. On the one hand, they had their religious life, they carried out various observances.

But on the other hand, there was the way in which way they lived their lives. And they had a great interest in possessions, in riches, and so on. And Jesus warned them.

If you look at chapter 16 and verses 13 and 15, notice these words. Jesus said, no servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other.

You cannot serve God and money. And he’s making a point to these people to whom he was speaking. You cannot serve God and money.

And of course, elsewhere in the Scriptures, we get in the Sermon on the Mount and various other places the same teaching of Jesus. But notice the response of the Pharisees. It says there, the Pharisees, notice this, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus.

They treated what Jesus said with contempt. They derided him, they sneered at him. And then Jesus said to them, you’re the ones who justifies yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts.

What is highly valued among men is detestable in God’s sight. And so he’s saying, the way in which you live your lives, what might be seen by others, God sees a different kind of story. And he’s focusing here on possessions.

And what Jesus is really, he’s not condemning wealth, he’s not condemning having possessions, but what he is condemning is having a wrong attitude towards them. Now, to illustrate that point, Jesus moves on and he tells the story about two people. Two people, one who revered God and one who revered money.

And the main aim of this parable is not to tell us a great deal about eternity, although it does do that. I love the way in which the Spirit of God just draws the curtain aside and gives us a glimpse into what lies beyond life here on earth. But he’s confronting us with our duty, our duty towards this life, our priorities.

Jesus said, seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these will be added to you as well. So Jesus told this parable against that particular background. And what you’ll discover is in the parable, the parable is in two scenes.

Scene one is played out on earth and scene two is played out in eternity. And in verses 16 to, chapter 16, verses 19 to 21 in these verses, very kindly read to us earlier on, we have these two men. We have, first of all, the rich man.

He was selfish. He didn’t care about others. We’re told that his clothing, he was dressed in purple.

That’s referring to his outer garment. It was purple, a very rich, expensive cloth. When you go to the Acts of the Apostles, you’ll find there that a woman called Lydia was the dealer in these kind of commodities, and only the wealthy people could afford that kind of clothing.

And they’re also told he wore fine linen. That refers to his undergarments. So he’s a man who obviously took a great deal of time and money on the way in which he looked and dressed.

And then we’re told he lived in luxury every day, or feasted richly every day, as another translation says. And then we’re told that he lived in a house with a gate. He probably had a large house, maybe a garden.

What was the gate for? Maybe to keep undesirables out. But we get the sense that this man didn’t share what he had. There was a kind of arrogance about his lifestyle.

He lived for himself. So we have the rich man on the one hand. We have the poor man on the other hand.

He was opposite to the rich man. He was a beggar. This man was poor.

He was sick. He was hungry. He was neglected.

(10:41 – 11:45)

It’s interesting, he’s the only person Jesus ever named in a parable. You read all the parables of Jesus. Only once did Jesus ever give a name to anybody in the parables.

And the man’s name is Lazarus. The name Lazarus means the one whom God helps. Here’s this man who was laid daily at the rich man’s gate, hungry.

If he got a few scraps of food from the rich man’s table, he was still hungry. He was so sick he couldn’t stand, so poor he had to beg. It seems as though he’s a person who God didn’t help, despite the meaning of his name.

And because he’s sick, members of his family or friends carried him each day to the gate of the rich man’s house. The community round about seemed to respect and sought to care for him. The rich man of course had the resources to meet his needs.

(11:45 – 12:03)

He had the food, the medicine maybe that could help, but he just ignored Lazarus. And there he sat daily at the gate of the rich man, even the dogs, the local dogs in the community made friends with him. They came and we’re told they licked his sores, they licked his wounds.

(12:03 – 12:27)

In the same way they would lick their wounds using the antiseptic or the antibiotic in their saliva. And so they sought to show their response to this man. And then we find that Jesus indicates that Lazarus is at peace with himself despite his circumstances.

(12:27 – 14:49)

At peace with the community, and yes, he’s even at peace with the wild dogs. And what the rich man refused to do, others in the community and the wild dogs did what they could to help Lazarus. And so we have this scene on earth.

But then we have the scene in heaven, the remainder of the parable verses 22 through to 31. And the story continues and we’re not on earth now, we’re in eternity, we are. And we discover a number of things about what has happened.

Now whether you read it literally or symbolically, we’ll not go into that debate this morning. But what we learn is this. First of all, each man dies.

Lazarus, maybe there wasn’t enough money to pay for his funeral, but we’re told that the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. And the rich man also died. It says the rich man also died and was buried.

There was a funeral for him, I’m sure the great and good, the local people in the community turned up to his funeral. So both men died. And we discover that not only did both men die, both men were alive.

Notice it says there that he was at Abraham’s side. Now one of the questions people often have in their mind is what happens, maybe they don’t vocalize it, but they often have in their minds what happens when somebody dies. Oh yes, I know we have a funeral service and so on, but what happens to them when they die? And the answer is the body and the soul separate.

And the body decays and we either bury it or we cremate it, we deal with the earthly body, the physical body. But as far as the soul and the spirit is concerned, they live on. And what happens is this.

They go into something called the intermediate state. Let me explain to you what I mean by the intermediate state. What happens is they go into a period between their death and their resurrection.

(14:51 – 15:18)

Now speaking both about believers and unbelievers here. So there’s a period of time before they rise and between their death and their resurrection is what theologians call the intermediate state. Now I’m a frequent visitor to Africa and the way which I get to Africa is I turn up at Glasgow airport at the unearthly hour about four o’clock in the morning and I check in.

(15:19 – 17:32)

And the person at the check-in desk says to me, where are you going? I say Entebbe, Uganda. Now she and I both know there’s no aircraft that goes from Glasgow to Entebbe. What happens is although I say that’s my final destination, she and I know there’s an intermediate destination.

Then I’m going to fly from Glasgow to Amsterdam and then Amsterdam to Entebbe. So Amsterdam is a temporary place where I stay for a few hours whilst I leave one flight and I wait and then I join another flight. There’s this intermediate stage.

Now what happens when someone goes, they’re going eventually to their eternal destiny. Their eternal destiny is either heaven or hell. But before somebody is consigned to hell or before somebody goes to the new heaven which is going to materialize at some stage in the future, they’re in this intermediate stage and between their death and their resurrection, which will then trigger off a whole series of other events, they’re in this stage now and we find that both men are alive.

We’re told that Lazarus is at Abraham’s side. You and I might say he’s with the Lord. He’s with Jesus.

He’s in the Lord’s presence or she’s in the Lord’s presence. You’ll find words in scripture like paradise. Remember Jesus said to the dying thief, today you will be with me in paradise.

You’ll find in the book of Revelation, you read about those who are under the altar. In Thessalonians, we read about those who are asleep in Jesus. And what we’re saying here is all of these situations with the Lord, they’re in his presence, yes.

And for a Christian, they are between this state of having died and the moment when they’re going to be raised again. And once they’re raised again, then it triggers a whole series of future events. But then we find there is the rich man and of him it says he’s in Hades.

(17:32 – 18:03)

He’s in a different place to the rich man. He’s in the intermediate state for the ungodly, the period between their death and their resurrection before their resurrection leads to end time events. So each man is dead physically.

Each man is alive spiritually. And we discover that each man’s experience is completely different. Lazarus is at peace.

(18:04 – 18:18)

He’s at peace with himself. We get the glimpse of the life of a believer in heaven. He rests at Abraham’s side.

It’s a place of safety. It’s a place of closeness. It’s a place of comfort.

(18:19 – 18:31)

It’s a place of security. How different to that of the state of the rich man. We discover, we read through the passage, that the rich man is in turmoil.

(18:32 – 19:06)

We’re given a glimpse of an unbeliever’s existence in Hades. Just a terrifying description when you read through it. The man is in torment.

He’s aware that there’s a heaven because he can see Abraham and Lazarus a way off. He recognizes them. But now he’s the beggar.

He’s able to speak and across the divide he gives the beggar’s cry. Have pity on me. He’s now the beggar.

(19:07 – 19:16)

He treats Lazarus with contempt as a slave. He’s able to feel. He’s desperate for relief.

(19:16 – 19:47)

And he cries out to Abraham to get Lazarus to come and give him a drink of water. He’s thirsty. He’s in agony.

He’s in a fire. And he’s able to recall his life on earth. And his state contrasts dramatically with that of Lazarus.

Unable to cross the divide that exists between them. His arrogance towards Lazarus continues. He had Abraham’s blood in his veins.

(19:48 – 23:14)

But that meant nothing now. He had a concern for his five brothers. He recognizes the need to tell them the gospel.

He’s reminded his brothers that Jesus reminds him that he had what his brothers had. Moses and the prophets. He’d failed to apply it to his own life.

And they were going to fail to apply it to their own life. He’s also told that there’s no second chance. You cannot cross the divide that has opened up between you.

He’s condemned to a life of irreversible punishment. He recognizes the need for people to repent even though he failed to do so himself. He shows no signs of remorse in the narrative that we read.

He’s still arrogant. He’s still pride. He’s learned little.

He’s in absolute misery. There’s a real challenge there to you and I as to where are we going to spend eternity? Are we going to go into the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ and rest with him, protected by him? And after our resurrection, are we going to be with him in his reign? Are we going to be with him in the coming days? Are we going to be there when the new heaven and the new earth appears? Are we going to be able to inhabit the new Jerusalem? Oh, there’s a whole host of wonderful things awaiting those who are Christians. And if you know the Lord Jesus Christ is your savior, if you’ve taken him as your Lord, if Jesus Christ is your personal friend, if you walk with him and fellowship with him on a daily basis, then it will be as you follow him and you’re a disciple of his, as you seek to to obey his teaching and put it into practice in your daily lives, then you’ll be with him in and for eternity.

But if you don’t know the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior, the moment you die you’ll go to a lost eternity. You go to Hades, a place where you will stay until the time of your resurrection. And that resurrection will be for final judgment and condemnation to what the Bible calls hell.

Terrifying prospects. And it’s a great issue, a great issue that you and I should think carefully about in our own lives. So what do we learn? First of all, about the parable itself, it’s the importance of having a right attitude to our possessions.

The things we have, who do they belong to? The things you and I have, do they belong to us or do they belong to God? Do we recognize the fact that God has entrusted us with the things that we have, that we’re stewards of all that God has given to us? We need to get our priorities right and make sure we focus on the things of God rather than the things of earth. That God and not possessions is the main objective in our lives. We need to get our priorities right, that’s a challenge for us to live by.

(23:15 – 26:12)

About the rich man, he responded to his wealth with arrogance, with indulgence, with selfishness, with ignoring the needs of others. There’s a warning to heed there about the way in which we treat the things that God has so graciously given to each and every one of us. There’s something to learn about Lazarus.

We’re not told why he suffered, why he was in pain, but he responded to his circumstances with dignity, with grace, with patience, with gentleness, with long-suffering. It’s almost as though he’s kind of like a New Testament Job. He made friends with wild dogs, was grateful to those who carried to him daily to the rich man’s gate.

He lived a life of perseverance despite his diversity here on earth. About Hades, we learn it’s a place of loneliness, of consciousness, of torment, of separation, regret, remorse, no opportunity to repent. It’s a place to avoid and to encourage others to avoid at all costs.

And about heaven, it’s a place of companionship, it’s a place of consciousness, it’s a place of fellowship, it’s a place of being with the Lord Jesus Christ, it’s a place of rest, it’s a place of relief, it’s a place if we love the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior, it’s a place for us to look forward to. Are you looking forward to heaven? Are you looking forward to a future with the Lord Jesus Christ in his immediate presence, serving him, worshiping him, praising him, and doing all the things that we are so limited in doing here on earth? It’s quite a provocative parable, isn’t it? The parable of the beggar and the rich man. May God bless his word to each of our hearts.

Let’s pray. Father, please seal your word into our hearts. Help us to understand and appreciate our responsibilities towards you.

Help us have to have a right attitude towards the things with which you have so greatly blessed us. And help us to remember our responsibility to share these things with other people, to share the gospel in order that not only we, but others might come to know the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior, and to walk in obedience to you, and to know the certainty of the fact that when we die, we shall go to be with the Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.

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