Across the Great Divide: Luke 16:14-31

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This morning we're going to continue our study of the Gospel of Luke, and we're going to pick up in chapter 16, right where we left off with Pastor Tom last Sunday.

And if you remember, there's been this multi-chapter conversation and discussion going on that Jesus has been having with this growing multitudes that we read about at the end of chapter 14.

And if you remember, last week he had this, he's been addressing these big crowds within last week.

He had this kind of sidebar discussion just with the disciples about stewardship of all that God has given us.

And he concluded that sidebar with the reminder that we can't serve two masters.

We can't serve both God and money and have them in equal spots in our hearts and our spirits.

Somebody's going to take first place.

And today, Jesus shifts his attention from that sidebar with the disciples back to the Pharisees because they've been listening in to his little sidebar with the disciples, and they're publicly mocking and ridiculing him for his remarks.

So he's going to turn his attention back to them.

And the passage today that concludes chapter 16, it's kind of, there's a little bit of a bookend to the two stories in this chapter.

And with any challenging passage, which today certainly is, it's important to remember that, gosh, God is sovereign over everything and everyone in this life and the next.

And it's good to approach the text with that posture.

Abraham Kuyper says it like this: this is a familiar quote to many of us.

So good, there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry mine.

Amen to that.

Let's pray together before we dive into this text.

Lord, you are sovereign over all things and all people in heaven and in earth.

And we come to you this morning from a variety of places.

But you have been walking with each of us through all of those places.

So God, we humbly ask, show us your ways, O Lord.

Teach us your paths, guide us in your truth, and teach us.

For you are God our Savior, and our hope is in you all the day long.

For Jesus' sake, amen.

Alrighty, so we're gonna pick up our study again, Luke chapter 16, and we're gonna start with verse 14, but I'm gonna back up and read verse 13 just to just to remind us of where we ended up.

Luke 16 · chapter mention

So remember that Jesus has been speaking with the disciples, and he ends up his little sidebar by saying, No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

You cannot serve God and money.

And then verse 14, which is where our study starts.

The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things, and they ridiculed him.

And he said to them, You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts.

That should give them pause.

For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.

So we're told that the Pharisees were lovers of money, and they led what they believed were compartmentalized lives.

You know, on the one hand, they're leading these religious lives, adhering to their man-made ceremonial laws, feeling very holy, loving to have attention in public, and they're looked up to by many in the public.

So there's all this assumed piety in their lives, but their lives are compartmentalized because we're also reading here that they are lovers of money.

They have money, but they're lovers of money, they're greedy.

They heard what Jesus was saying to the disciples, and they are openly mocking him.

And so Jesus says to them, He says, You may be trying to justify yourselves, but God knows your hearts.

And what is really going on in there, your exalting of money is amounting to abomination in God's eyes.

And that word for abomination means detestable, and it kind of means making an idol out of something.

And so Jesus is saying, frankly, you guys are trying to serve two masters.

God on this side, money on this side.

Let's continue.

Verse 16.

The law and the prophets were until John.

Since then, the good news of the kingdom of God is preached, and everyone forces his way into it, but it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of the law to become void.

Well, so remember the law consisted of all of the books of Moses, the historical books, and then we're referring to the prophets.

So what Jesus is saying here is this is the sum total of the Hebrew Bible.

And Jesus is informing them that the age of the binding law and prophets has come to an end.

John the baptizer was the last prophet.

And when he baptized Jesus, and Jesus started his public ministry, it ushered in a new age where the kingdom of heaven is now being preached.

Forgiveness of sin.

There is access to the kingdom of heaven.

There's no more separation between God and man.

And the phrase everyone forces their way in.

Think of waiting outside the door to get into a movie theater or a restaurant or a sports event or a concert.

Everybody, when the door is open, everybody is eager to rush in.

And that's what Jesus is talking about here.

How not the Pharisees, but how the public that is following him, they are so eager to hear about this new idea about the kingdom of God, that God is our Father, and that they have access to the kingdom of God.

People are eager to rush into that.

And then when Jesus says it's easier for the earth to pass away rather than one of the laws of God to become void, he's expressing all of this love and reverence that he has for the law.

The law is good, the law is holy, and he's trying so hard to remind the Pharisees of the true law of God, how good it is, the beauty and the seriousness of God's law.

Okay, so let's pick it back up in verse 18.

Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery.

And he who marries a woman, divorced from her husband, commits adultery.

Okay, so here we are.

So what in the world is going on?

Why did Jesus put this verse here?

It seems out of context.

And here's what I believe.

I think that Jesus is comparing the difference between the Pharisees' respect, following, upholding the law of God, what they consider to be the law of God, and how God sees his actual law.

And Jesus is using the application of marriage here, how God sees marriage, and how man sees marriage, because from the beginning of creation, we're told, God intended for marriage to be a lifelong union.

We're created in the image of God, we're created male and female, we're created to have a lifelong marriage.

We know that we live in a broken world, and that doesn't always happen.

But that's what Jesus is pointing here: the difference between how God looks at marriage and the difference at how man looks at marriage.

And it's essential for us to know that in these few short sentences, Jesus is elevating the status of women.

Because in that culture, a husband could divorce his wife just because she burned his dinner, just because he sees another woman who is more attractive to him on a Tuesday than his wife.

In that culture at that time, men had all the rights, women had none.

And for a woman at that time to get divorced was a sentence of sure poverty in her life.

And Jesus is saying, no, no, no, no, no.

We are on equal footing here.

He's elevating the status of women.

It's so important and so encouraging.

So let's continue on.

Verse 19, here we get to this parable, this allegory, this story that Jesus is going to teach.

And it's kind of for the same reason that he just talked about marriage.

We're going to hear about God's law and how mankind applies it.

We're going to see the chasm, the difference between the two.

So let's get into this story.

Verse 19.

There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen, and who feasted sumptuously every day.

And had his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table.

Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores.

So we know very little about the rich man.

We know he's wealthy, and that's about all we know about him, as that's all he was about was his wealth.

We know he wore very extravagant clothes, very expensive clothes.

We know that he feasted sumptuously every day.

So this man threw extravagant parties, and the word describing the gate at his residence was palatial, meaning just this huge gate.

So he lived in a large estate with this huge gate, and he's coming out in and out every day.

He's gonna see this man at the gate.

There's this poor man named Lazarus.

What do we know about Lazarus?

Well, he's got a name.

This is the only time in any parable anybody has ever been named.

This is not the same Lazarus that's the brother of Mary and Martha.

All we know about Lazarus beside his name is that he had nothing.

Rich man had everything, he had nothing.

He was ill, his body was covered in sores, and he was invisible to everybody.

Continue on in verse 22.

So the poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's side.

The rich man also died and was buried, and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side.

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.

Well, what do we know here?

Well, the rich man, his self-awareness, his personhood, his personality carries over past the grave.

He knows who he is.

And in this story, he recognizes Abraham and he recognizes Lazarus on the other side of this great chasm.

So we know that their identities continue on past the grave.

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.

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.

You have to remember that this is a parable, this is an allegory.

Jesus is not meaning to give us a strict lesson on the geography of the afterlife.

This is all for Jesus to make a point, a point to the Pharisees about everything that he's been talking about, not being able to serve two masters, and to emphasize the reverence, the holiness, the goodness of God's law.

And so what we see here, which Jesus is wanting to communicate to the Pharisees, the rich man, his whole life was spent only thinking of himself, self-gratification.

He was so self-absorbed that even in the afterlife, he's still thinking only of himself.

He still assumes that he's calling the shot because he reaches out to Abraham and says, Abraham, send Lazarus over here.

Man, I need a drink of water.

Can you send him with a bottle of water for me?

He's assuming that he can still call the shots, and he's only thinking of himself.

Let's continue on, verse 27.

And he, the rich man, said, Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father's house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them lest they also come into this place of torment.

But Abraham said, They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them.

He's still expecting to be able to get what he wants and to order Lazarus to be resurrected to warn his brothers to change their ways.

He's still thinking he's in charge.

And then Abraham replies and says, Well, they have Moses and the prophets, so let them hear them.

You see, we're we're starting this thread about the law and the prophets, about the beauty of God's law.

And Abraham is saying, look, they have the law and the prophets.

They know everything they need to know to make a decision to follow God.

Verse 30, and he said, No, Father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they'll repent.

And 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.

And I think the rich man is kind of implying here, hey, all I got to say is if in my life somebody had come back from the dead and warned me about all this stuff, I sure wouldn't be here now.

And Abraham is saying, you know, they have Moses and the prophets.

They have the law and the prophets.

And if they're not paying attention to the word and the law of God, even someone coming back from the dead is not gonna change their minds.

And I think the point that Jesus is making with that statement is to the Pharisees, knowing that he's gonna die and he's gonna be resurrected, and he's saying, you know, if you don't believe me, you don't believe on me and what I'm saying, you're still not gonna believe, even when I come back from the dead.

So one uh one other question about the text what's the difference between the rich man and the Lazarus?

Because look at this quote from J.C.

Ryle.

He says, wealth is no mark of God's favor, poverty is no mark of God's displeasure.

We can't argue that the reason the rich man was not in heaven was in Hades was strictly because of his wealth, and the reason that Lazarus was in heaven was strictly because of his poverty.

Um the wealth, the man's wealth did not keep him from heaven.

It wasn't his wealth, it wasn't how he earned his wealth, because we know that Father Abraham was an extremely wealthy man, and he's in heaven.

So it wasn't the man's wealth, it's what he did with his wealth.

His entire life, one, was spent in self-gratification, and two, there's an implicit disregard for God and God's law in this man's life.

Jesus is pressing the point with the Pharisees about the beauty of God's law and reverence for it, and he's also trying to make the point to them.

You cannot serve two masters.

What a story.

Well, it's it's always our prayer as we talk through these stories to have some application points for us to take with us as we leave, and and prayerfully hope that the Holy Spirit will be bringing to mind those points during the week and just giving us things to think about and draw us closer into Christ.

So here's here's my thoughts from this passage, and I do hope you carry these with you today as you leave.

So the first thought is this who we are will continue into eternity.

I believe that this is something that we can take with us from this parable.

Who we are will continue into eternity.

That means your personhood, your personality, your humanness.

When we die, we're not just, for you Star Trek fans, when we die, we're not just assimilated into the Borg.

You know, we don't just like fly up and become assimilated into a great universal like light.

Who you are, who I am, that is going to continue into eternity.

Death does not erase who we are.

Not only that, the trajectory, the path of our lives, the course of our lives, is also going to continue.

So that choices we make in the here and now are going to affect that overall trajectory.

And I believe that that is something Jesus is really trying to get the Pharisees to pay attention to.

You know, all of a sudden, why we realize why our choices are important because they affect our lives beyond the grave.

We saw that especially in this story about the rich man.

Charles Spurgeon addresses this issue.

He says, Hold everything earthly with a loose hand, but grasp eternal things with a death like grip.

We need to take hold of eternal things and hold on to them for all we're.

Worth and everything else hold loosely and allow God to curate our steps, to curate and lead our path.

And I think a challenge for all of us, in terms of the way our life is going, the choices we make, is that our sin doesn't necessarily seem like sin most of the time for us.

You know, we don't just like wake up in the morning, ah, I'm a sinner.

We just don't think like that.

The Holy Spirit, however, convicts us, leads us to realize our spiritual need.

The Holy Spirit is the one that makes us aware of our spiritual poverty and our need for Jesus.

And the Holy Spirit is the one that is changing us into the likeness of Christ.

And Rosaria Butterfield puts it like this: one very difficult aspect of sin is that my sin never feels like sin to me.

My sin feels like life to me, plain and simple.

My heart is an idol factory, and my mind is an excuse-making factory.

Friends, that's true for all of us.

Our hearts, we're so prone to trying to make good things into ultimate things.

You know, we're made with a desire for goodness, for joy, for happiness, for fulfillment.

But even as believers, we can drift into making good things, into ultimate things, into idols, and then we make excuses to justify clinging to the idols instead of clinging to Jesus.

So what changes that?

What changes that path and that trajectory is the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ.

The grace that has been offered us and the faith that is a gift from God.

Enrico Tice says it this way.

He says, By grace, I have been saved from the penalty of sin.

By grace, I'm being saved from the power of sin.

By grace, I will one day be saved from the presence of sin.

It's grace compounded upon grace all the way.

It is all grace.

You know, salvation, the moment we realize our spiritual poverty, our need to turn to Christ, that faith required to choose Christ is a gift from God.

And then the arc of our life, when we become believers, that grace to grow in Christ's likeness, to be released from the power of sin, that is a gift of grace from God.

And then finally, one day as believers, after we've died and we're experiencing eternity with Jesus, by grace, we're even saved from the very presence of sin in our lives.

Again, grace and what a trajectory and path for the believer as opposed to the unbeliever.

Well, the second takeaway I really hope we can think about this week.

The law can't save us.

The law can't save us, but it should shape us.

And remember, there's this thread that runs through this passage of love and reverence for God's law, and it was so important to Jesus.

And we've got to remember Jesus was the only perfect human being to ever walk the earth.

He lived a sinless life.

He had no need for the law.

He was the full, he came to fulfill the law, he was the fulfillment of the law.

He had no need for the law, and yet he had the most respect and love for the law of any human ever to walk the earth.

So, thinking for a moment about the rich man and Lazarus, the rich man's total disregard for the physical needs of Lazarus, and how Lazarus was invisible to the rich man.

And I've got to ask the question for all of us, do we drift into that?

Are there people in our lives who are inconvenient at the most, or perhaps even invisible?

Look with me on this next slide at Micah chapter 6 and see what God has to say about this part of our lives.

Micah 6 · chapter mention

He has told you, O man, what is good and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.

And on the surface, that's so simple, isn't it?

God has given us the two tablets, the two tables of the Ten Commandments, one that have to do with our vertical relationship with God, the other that has to do with our horizontal relationship with other human beings.

And God's Jesus says, these are the two greatest commands.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.

Man, the rich man in our story, he was doing none of this.

He was neither attending to his vertical relationship with God or the horizontal relationship with his fellow man.

He was instead living totally for himself.

So the question remains: what does God want us to do?

How does he want us to live our lives?

It glorifies him when we do justice, when we care for our neighbor, especially the most marginalized, the sick, the poor, the widow, the orphans.

God cares so strongly about justice, especially for the marginalized.

Walking humbly looks like walking with a listening ear and a seeing eye, being aware of our finiteness and also being aware of our need for God in His our lives, His love, His grace, and mercy.

And Johnny Erickson Tata talks about that being shaped by God.

She says, God is more concerned with conforming me to the likeness of his son rather than leaving me in my comfort zones.

God is more interested in inward qualities than outward circumstances, things like refining my faith, humbling my heart, cleaning up my thought life, and strengthening my character.

Church, can we hear this?

Can we hear that that's what God is more interested in in our lives?

It's not that he doesn't care about the external circumstances because he is a God of detail, a God over circumstances, but he's more interested in this inner growth, becoming more Christ-like.

So the question is: can we allow ourselves to be shaped by a reverence for God's law and allow ourselves to be shaped into an image of Christ by the Holy Spirit?

I prayed these verses in our introductory prayer.

Would you read them with me?

They come from Psalm 25, verses 4 and 5.

Psalms 25:4

Let's read these together.

Show me your ways, O Lord.

Teach me your paths, guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all the day long.

Wow, what a humble approach that is.

And I've got to tell you, God will respond to that prayer right there.

Some years ago, I was driving to a recording session and I was on a side street waiting to turn on to Music Row, and I saw a couple of bicycle police officers ride by.

And I don't even know if we have those anymore, but I remember thinking to myself, man, it's summer, it's hot outside.

Kudos to them for doing that job.

And so I turn on Music Row and I'm heading down, and all of a sudden I realize the two police officers are behind me, and man, they must be, they're obviously responding to a call because they are moving.

I'm doing like 30 or 35, and I'm just thinking, like, wow, that is really impressive how fast they can move in an emergency.

You know, they're on bicycles, they don't have sirens, they don't have flashy lights, they're just pedaling for all they're worth.

Well, I turn onto a side street as I'm headed to the studio, and they also turn on this side street, and I'm thinking, wow, there must be like a bank robbery going on on the other side of Music Row, or there's a shootout, or something.

This is so cool.

What's going on?

Well, then I turn down this little alley to park, and they tuck right in behind me.

And about then I realize, oh, they're after me.

So I pull over, one of the police officers comes up, and man, she's sweating and she's huffing and puffing.

Turns out my license tags were expired.

And so she writes me a ticket and she's kind of laughing and said, you know, I wouldn't have given you a ticket except you made us chase you so far.

Oh man, we we had a good laugh, and I apologize profusely.

Still got the ticket.

Uh needless to say, I am very aware now of when my tags are expired.

Uh the law is important.

The law, the law shapes us.

Well, so what's the result of allowing the law to shape us?

Psalm 1, verses 1 through 3 tell us this very thing.

Psalms 1:1–3

It says, Blessed is the person who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.

He will be like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season, and its leaf does not wither.

Gosh, Holy Spirit, turn our hearts to you and give us this desire to have delight in your law.

Well, as we go about our week, here's my last thought that I hope we can dwell on.

And that is only Jesus can carry us across the great divide.

You know, in our story we saw the chasm that divided the haves and the have-nots, the rich man and Lazarus, the rich man who had everything materially speaking, and the poor man Lazarus, who had nothing materially speaking.

What a chasm divided them in this life.

And then in the next life, in this allegory, we saw the chasm that divided the two there.

And you know, after after we die and enter in the next life, there will be a distance and division as people's lives continue on in whatever trajectory and path their life has set here.

So another question: are we continuing on a path of giving our life to Jesus daily?

Or are we on a path of living only for ourselves a trajectory that's going to take us away from Jesus, like the rich men in our story?

And you know, um every culture, every society, whether atheist or whether they have some belief in some kind of supreme transcendent being, every culture realizes that there's a gap between life as it ought to be and life as it is.

And especially cultures that embrace some kind of religion or faith, you know, they realize how life ought to be.

Realizing that that's where we want to go, but there is no way across.

The distance is just too great.

Jesus comes and he lays down his life and he becomes that bridge that enables us to cross to the other side.

And when we get there, we find him waiting for us.

Jesus took the infinite distance between us and God and bridged it with his life and death.

And because Jesus is himself God, he's not only the bridge that spans the gap, he is also the God that we find on the other side.

What beautiful news that is for us.

I'd love for us to close by reading this next slide together.

It's four different verses from Psalm 119 that describe the beauty of the law of God, which Jesus cared for so very much.

So, friends, would you read this with me?

I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.

In the way of your testimonies, I delight as much as in all riches.

Oh, how I love your law.

It is my meditation all the day.

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

Amen.

Amen.

So, friends, um, as uh the worship team's coming forward, uh, would like to encourage you.

We do have a prayer team that meets in the back, and they would love to pray with and for you.

So if there's anything that we've talked about that's just got you thinking, or if there's anything going on in your life as you come in today that you'd like to pray with somebody about, they would love to pray with you.

So let's let's pray, church.

Uh Heavenly Father, thank you for your word that is so beautiful.

Thank you for your law that shows us both your glory and our need for you.

Thank you for your law that shows us how you desire us to live.

Thank you for your son that has made up the distance in our lives, that has spanned the gap and enabled us to cross over to you.

And thank you for your Holy Spirit who creates in us Christ-likeness.

You are so good to us.

Create a love and a longing for you and your law in our hearts.

And we lift this up in Jesus' name, amen.