Are you ready for Eternity?
27 And he said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him (Lazarus) 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.’” Luke 16: 27-31 ESV
This is a parable; parables
are often described as “an earthly story with a heavenly meaning” I have no
problem believing this story from our Lord is based on historical reality. Jesus uses a person’s name here. Lazarus- meaning
God is my help.
Two men from the opposite
end of the financial and social spectrum have died. One is in a place of safety
and rest and peace, the other is in an entirely different zip code.
*A certain beggar named
Lazarus, full of sores, who was laid at his gate, desiring to be fed with the
crumbs: Not far from the rich
man – at his gate was a desperately poor and sick man. The rich man
didn’t do anything against Lazarus, except neglect and ignore
him.
We should not think that
Lazarus was saved by his poverty, any more than we should think that the rich
man was damned by his wealth. Lazarus must have had a true relationship of
faith with the true God, and the rich man did not. Their life circumstances
made that faith easier or more difficult, but did not create it. *David Guzik
As the story progresses the
torment becomes clearer. The rich man asks that Lazarus serve him by dipping
his finger in water as he was tormented in this flame! Even in the afterlife
the rich man thought of himself as superior and as Lazarus as his servant. This
shows that death did not take away his sense of entitlement and station in
life.
He is Urgent! Are we? Unable to escape his situation, and moved by his own torment, the
rich man has an urgency that his five brothers not end up in the same place.
The distance between faith and skepticism is often quite short.
He now asks that somehow
Lazarus be given the opportunity to plead with his brothers …who by inference
have ignored the Old Testament, and remain in their lost condition. If they could just see a Living Lazarus, that would do it,
their memory of his earthly suffering as a beggar and observance of his new found
life after death, would be so compelling they would repent, and be saved from
the agony and sorrow of a life absent God!
Singer Michael Card wrote: “Our
Lord Jesus Christ then summarizes this narrative with these chilling words…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.’
This conclusion will set
the tone for the remainder of Jesus earthy ministry! He came to seek and to save that which is
lost. This parable stands in contrast to
a world that is falling apart, seeking solutions in places that offer none. The
sad majority of human beings Ignoring their own peril, the fulfilled prophecies,
the witness of those who know Jesus…. the Hope of Christ, is that He is God,
and He is Risen!
“All
the leaves of the New Testament rustle with an expectation of eternity” -C. S.
Lewis
Are you ready for Eternity?
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