Sermon: How Can a Loving God Send People to Hell?

Julius: The Holy Gospel according to Luke chapter sixteen, beginning at verse nineteen, and this will serve as the sermon text this morning. There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen, living in luxury every day. A beggar named Lazarus had been laid at his gate. Lazarus was covered with sores, and longed to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table. Besides this the dogs also came and licked his sores. Eventually the beggar died, and the angels carried him to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried. In hell where he was in torment. He lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far away and Lazarus at his side. He called out, Father Abraham, have mercy on me. Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in misery in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here, and you are in misery. Besides all this, A great chasm has been set in place between us and you, so that those who want to cross over from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us. He said, Then I beg you, father, send them to my father's home, because I have five brothers to warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment. Abraham said, 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. Abraham replied to him, If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead. The Gospel of the Lord. Praise be to you, O Christ. We've heard two things today that might contradict each other. In the epistle reading we heard God is love. In the gospel reading we saw that loving God sends someone to hell. How do those go together? How can a loving God send someone to hell? I preached for Pastor Dowk down in Plymouth last week and he actually sent me a headline from a Lutheran pastor, supposedly Lutheran pastor, who explained it this way He said, If there is a hell, then it's probably empty. Is that how you solve it? I know someone who stopped being a Christian because he was so sad at the thought of so many people going to hell. Is that the solution? Let's just quit, let's just not believe it anymore. Jesus teaches us about heaven and hell. In our reading from Luke chapter 16, let's see what he has to say about a loving God and a God who sends people to hell. We read, There was a rich man who is dressed in purple and fine linen, living in luxury every day. A beggar named Lazarus had been laid at his gate. Lazarus was covered with sores and longed to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table. Besides this, the dogs also came and licked his sores. Eventually, The beggar died. The story Jesus tells here could be a true story, could also be a parable, we're not sure, but either way, it's telling us truths about heaven and hell, and also about how we spend our days on earth. And so before we get to heaven and hell, we have to see these two characters and how they lived while they were on earth the rich man and the beggar. We read there was a rich man. That by itself isn't a problem. It's not a sin to be rich. But it is a sin to be like this man, because you can tell that he loved his riches and he loved himself. He did not love the Lord his God, who gave him all these riches. Instead, he dressed himself in purple like he was a king, living in his own world, a god of his own world, living in luxury every day, and ignoring anybody in need. So there's the rich man. And there's also a beggar named Lazarus. A beggar. Now, this was before social safety nets and soup kitchens. This was in the time of Israel, when the social safety net was your brother Israelite, who should care for you. And so the best thing that could happen to Lazarus is that he would be laid at the gate of his brother, of his fellow Israelite, his fellow human being, at the rich man. And as long as the rich man had those parties, so much did Lazarus long for just a scrap of food. A scrap from the dogs under the rich man's table. A scrap of pity, a little bit of love. But he was ignored. His fellow humans showed him no pity. The dogs showed him a little more. They came and licked his wounds. And we read, eventually. The beggar died. Eventually, a lot of bad, a lot of suffering can be contained in that word, can't it? Eventually. You know that if you've ever gone through chemo and they say eventually the treatment will be over. Eventually you won't feel nauseous. It feels like forever when you're in the middle of it. Or grief. Eventually, the grief you feel after losing a loved one won't be so painful. Thinks, eventually I won't feel like this, that eventually seems forever. There's a lot of suffering here with this beggar, and eventually he dies. So you are a loving God, you're looking down from heaven on this happening on earth, the rich man and the beggar. What would you do? To think about this story, maybe we'll use a parable of our own. Imagine you have a beloved daughter, a little girl. I can imagine I got a couple. And imagine she gets sick. And so you carry her in your arms to the doctor's office, and you see the doctor, and the doctor says, yeah, that's an easy cure. And you say, Can I have it? And he says, Tomorrow. And so you come back the next day. And you come to the doctor and you say, Can you help her? She's getting weaker. And he says, eventually. And so you come back the next day, and the store sign says closed, but the lights are on. And you see the doctor in there hanging with the bigwigs from Big Pharma, having a great time, but you he ignores. You come back the next day and you decide to camp out by the door until the doctor helps and he steps over you and your daughter growing weaker every day. The next day the doctor shows up to work and he sees a dog who's limping. And he takes the dog into the doctor's office and he cares for the dog and nurses it back to health, but your daughter he ignores. Day after day, the doctor refuses even to acknowledge you and your dying daughter until eventually she dies. And when you confront the doctor about it, he says, Who? How would you feel about that doctor? You'd be angry and you would be right to be angry. The Lord placed his beloved child Lazarus at the gate of the best place for him to be helped, at the gate of a rich man who could have helped that beggar with just a scrap of food, a scrap of love. The Lord loved Lazarus more than any of us can ever love anyone. How should the Lord treat the rich man who treated his fellow child of God, his fellow human being with such hate and disregard, and so also showed his lack of love for God? Well, before we think about how the Lord treats the rich man, let's think about how the rich man treats other people, not just in life, but also in death. Notice the rich man's behavior doesn't change when he gets to hell. We read Eventually the beggar died. And the angels carried him to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried. In hell where he was in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far away and Lazarus at his side. He called out and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me. Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in misery in this flame. As he endures the very rich, the very real torment of hell, the poor the rich man does cry out for mercy, but notice what he doesn't say. As he suffers for what he did in life, he doesn't say, I'm sorry. He doesn't say, this is what suffering feels like. I'm sorry I did this to Lazarus. He doesn't look up and when he sees Abraham and Lazarus, look at Lazarus and say, good, I'm so happy for you. You had such a rough life. I'm glad you're in heaven now. Notice he doesn't even acknowledge Lazarus. He won't even speak to him. Lazarus, just like in life, now in death, is beneath the rich man. And so The formerly rich man talks to Abraham, somebody worthy of him, and he says, Abraham, send Lazarus. Send that beggar, send that slave to come help me, because I am in misery in this flame. He treats Lazarus like a nobody, like dirt, just like he did in life. And not just Lazarus. He treats Abraham that way too. If the rich man has a scrap of pity in his body, it's only for his own family. And so he tells Abraham, send Lazarus, send that guy back from the dead to go warn my brothers. Not to warn my brothers to treat people right, to show people love, to love God, but warn them so that they don't wind up in suffering like me, because I don't like this. He says, Go warn them. And Abraham says, They have Moses and the prophets. Let them listen to them. They have God's word. And what does the wicked man, the formerly rich man, say? To Abraham. No. Get this. The wicked, sinful man in hell thinks that the righteous man in heaven is wrong, and he is right. He argues with him. No, he says. If they no, he says, send someone from the dead, and they will listen to him. What does Abraham respond? If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead. That's where the story ends. There's no admission of guilt from the wicked man. There's no I'm wrong, you're right. And that's hell. The eternal conviction that I am right and God is wrong. What's his complaint? It's God's fault. I didn't listen to Moses and the prophets. God should have convinced me. God is wrong. God is the reason I didn't show any love to Lazarus. That's hell. Eternally holding on to the fact that I am right and God is wrong, living in your own selfish, miserable, loveless world apart from God, and you wouldn't. Leave it even if God gave you a second chance. Can we find a God of love even now? I think so. Might seem strange to think so. We're talking about hell, we're talking about the rich man suffered. Can we find a loving God even here? Yes, and you can find it in exactly what Abraham said to him. They have Moses and the prophets, let them listen to them. When Abraham said that, he wasn't saying, sure, God could convince your brothers. With someone back from the dead, but he wants to make it difficult. He doesn't want to convince them, so he's throwing the Bible at them. No, when Abraham said that, he's telling the rich man: the best possible way to avoid hell, the only possible way to turn humans, people like us who are naturally loveless and unrepentant, the only way to turn us to say sorry and to trust in God's forgiveness, the only way is the word of God. People won't listen even if someone rises from the dead. There's proof even in Jesus' life. Soon after this, Jesus brings a man named Lazarus back from the dead. And what's the result? People plan to kill him. Jesus himself rises from the dead, and his disciples have a hard time believing it. What's the only way that God can bring people like us to faith in him? Moses and the prophets. Prophets, which say in Ezekiel chapter thirty three, eleven, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from their way and live. Turn back from your evil ways. How can we find a loving God when we talk about hell? Because we find a God who does not want anyone in hell. A God who warns us to turn with his powerful words. A God who says, God wants all people to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. If the thought of hell makes you uncomfortable, and it should, then listen to God's words. You know, one of the tragedies of this story is that the rich man says, Send Lazarus back to my father's house to warn them. And it's tragic because his father's house is where the rich man should have learned about God, should have heard God's words every day. If the thought of hell makes you uncomfortable like it does for me, then make your house a father's house. Where you hear the words of the Heavenly Father every day, where you open up that Bible and listen and give thanks to God if you grew up in a home like that. And the second way we can see God's love, even when we talk about hell, is that God suffered hell in our place. God is not just a loving God who says that he doesn't want us in hell but then leaves us to it. No, God suffered hell, so we don't have to. It's one of the big reasons we have to keep talking about it. If Jesus just suffered for us as an example, it's not that big a deal. A lot of people have done that. If Jesus just died on the cross, even that, a lot of people have died on a cross. But if Jesus suffered hell, If in a few short hours on the cross he concentrated an eternity's worth of pain and suffering in hell on himself. If he took on every grief and every loveless act and all that shame and all that suffering on himself on the cross, then God is love. Because he loved you enough to suffer that for you. So that you could have heaven. If the thought of hell makes you uncomfortable, think of the God who did not just become uncomfortable because of hell, but the God who suffered it for you. That's how much he loves you. Make your house a father's house where you remember that love every day, where you remember how he showed his love, which we also read in that epistle reading. This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, if we if God loved us so much, we should also love one another. I've spent the whole sermon talking about hell, but we can't finish without talking about heaven. Because there's a little bit of that in this reading too. What happens to Lazarus when he dies? The angels carry him to Abraham's side. We sing about that in a hymn, Lord, let at last thine angels come to Abram's bosom bear me home. Let at last, you know what at last comes after? Eventually. Abraham said, Lazarus received bad things in this life, but he goes on to say, but now he is comforted here. Does that seem like an understatement? Lazarus received bad things in life. Bad things, horrible things, how he suffered in that eventually, that eventually where he suffered so much in this life, but at last that eventually turned into a finally. And what happened? He was comforted. Sorry for God to describe an infinite heaven for a finite mind, so he just says this, trust me, all of the bad things, all the eventually in this life, eventually that will become a finally when every last bad thing is replaced with the comfort of God. Heaven is that big hug you need after a long day where you embrace and the tears flow as long as they need, and finally at the end you shudder and say. Okay. Sorry. A week ago, Saturday, I visited someone from another Wells congregation. They're in town in the hospital. And she said, ten years ago today, my husband went to heaven. And she said, we were singing hymns when he did, and we were singing on eagle's wings, and we sang, he will raise you up on eagle's wings. He died. Thought, how fitting is that? Because he was not brought to heaven on eagle's wings, but on angels' wings, as they say, the angels came and took him to Abraham's side. That's what will happen to us. To all of us who suffer in this life, and yes, suffer as we repent of our own lovelessness and sin and look to God in hope we will be taken to the place where we will be comforted forever. The God of love wants you and everyone there. So what you think? Can you reconcile it? A God of love and a God who sends people to hell? I think you can, but I also don't think you have to. Abraham didn't say, Here's God's word, reconcile it. No, he said they have Moses and the prophets. Listen. So today listen to what God has to say to you. God is love. God sends the eternally unrepentant and loveless to hell. And God sends all those who repent and trust in him to be with him in heaven forever. That's where God wants you. Listen to him. Amen.

Luke 16 · chapter mention