The Jesus Stories • The Story of the Rich Man & Lazarus

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Well, good morning. If you have your bibles,

and I hope you do, I want to invite you to join us in Luke,

Luke 16 · chapter mention

chapter 16 this morning. Reminder.

it is our last day to register for kids camp.

So I think as of last Sunday, we had already hit

the number of kids that we had registered, all of last year. So

we're excited about that. But it was still today. So please

make sure moms and dads, grandmas and

grandpas, you go and you get them

registered today so that we can

finalize all of our plans for that week. We're

definitely looking forward to it, and it's going to be an exciting and

wonderful time, at our church. also, I want

to wish a happy father's day to all of

the dads who are out there. So happy Father's

day. I, am, as I think

about Father's day, extremely, grateful

for the men in my life, grateful for

the grandfathers that God blessed me with,

grateful for the father in law that God blessed me

with, and definitely grateful, for

my dad, and that God has used

him in powerful ways in my life. And then also

just the wonderful honor and privilege that it

is, to be a dad to Emma and

Grayson and to see them grow and to see how God

has used me in a small way in

their life. And so, just so grateful for that. So for all

the dads who are out here, we see some visitors who were here

with dad this morning. Just, ah, happy father's

day. I hope your day is filled with maybe

a nap at some point in time in there with

food that you like to eat and time with

your family.

Well, a few years ago, and a lot of you,

may know this, some of you may not, a few years

ago, my dad, was diagnosed with some

health, issues, that he continues to

struggle with. And that caused me,

maybe it was the diagnosis, maybe it was the maturity of

what I'm walking through in life. Maybe it was what God

was doing. Maybe it was a combination of all of those

factors together, which is what I would consider

to look at my dad, and to think back

on all the different life lessons, that my

dad taught me. And very

specifically, whether he was trying to

teach me a life lesson or not.

Y'all know those moments. I mean, it's great when you can

have that. That end of. I was, a

podcast earlier today, and they're talking about all of

the best dads from tv

shows. And it all

ended with, like, the dad who

at the end of the episode, hey, son

or daughter? Let's learn this life lesson.

By the way, Carl Winslow from family

matters won the best dad

of all time on there, right? I think it's a little

biased. Andy Griffith didn't make the list, right?

Or Andy Taylor. And that's where I would have landed on mine.

But I look back at the lessons my dad taught me,

and we definitely had those sit down moments,

those sit down, teachable moments where he taught me what it. What it

meant to be a man, what it meant to be a child of God, what it meant to

be a husband, what it meant to be a father. Of all of those

things, my dad, ingrained and poured those

into me. But so many of my dad's

lessons that he taught me were not necessarily

those moments, but it was through my

observations of watching him.

I remember my mom was a schoolteacher.

And if you're a kid of a school teacher in this room,

you know what that means. You've got to get up earlier

than all of your friends in elementary school

because your mom's got to get you, your dad's got to get you

to school. So I woke up earlier

than all of my friends because my mom had to

take me to school before she could go to her

school. And I never forget that my dad would always

be gone. I don't have one

memory of my dad being at

home when I woke up to go to

school because my dad had to wake up so

early to go to his job at the

plant that he worked at. I remember

baseball practices very

distinctly because my dad was always my baseball coach.

And I don't necessarily remember my dad teaching

me how to hit a baseball or how to

catch a, baseball or how to throw a baseball.

But I do remember distinctly

my dad showing up to practice fresh off

of work, with his jeans on

and his work boots on, covered in

dirt, from where he had been working hard all

day at his job and was

now going to come and coach our little league

team. I remember the sacrifices that he put

in in the context of my dad being my

coach. I remember my dad

always tried to identify. We lived in a

small town, so we just kind of knew. And I would

always notice my dad spending more time

with some of the other players on the team than

he even spent with me. And very

specifically, as I look back on that now, it

was guys on the team who maybe

didn't have a dad in the home or who didn't have

a healthy relationship with

their dad. I remember

my dad loving me

enough. And this seems weird, but I think at

45 years old now, God has given me this

perspective. I remember my

dad loving me enough to

discipline me and my dad loving

me enough to correct me.

I remember. And if you know my dad, you know, he would laugh

at this statement and would greatly

appreciate me cracking a joke at him.

I remember my dad saying this almost every

single time that he had to address a

behavior issue with me.

He would say this phrase before he

implemented or told me what my punishment would

be. He would say these words,

son, this is going to hurt me

more than it's going to hurt you. And

I remember thinking, well, let's

switch places. Right? Let me

put you on restriction. You know what I mean?

Maybe a strange memory, but I

remember my dad loving

me enough to.

When I had strayed from the

path that my dad had for

me, when I had strayed from the

expectation, sometimes it was a

conversation, sometimes it was a

consequence. But my dad

loving me enough, my dad being

so concerned about my heart

that my dad would sit down with me,

not ignore, not

excuse, but to address the

condition of my heart. And I'll forever

be grateful for my dad.

Some of you, when you look at

God, the concept of

God the Father is

difficult for you. I love

my dad. My dad loves me.

Me and my dad have a wonderful relationship.

My childhood is filled with wonderful memories.

My relationship with my dad now is filled

with wonderful moments. Some of you,

though, don't have that

perspective when it comes to hearing the word dad. When it comes to

hearing the word Father, your dad wasn't

there. Your dad was

absent. Your dad was

abusive. Your dad was

difficult. Your dad wasn't loving.

And so the

concept of God

being the father is difficult.

But then this phrase that I'm about to say

becomes even more difficult,

that God being a

father. But

specifically because God

is a loving father. God

corrects us, and that's

hard. But when we

see the heart of where it

comes from, we begin to understand

so much as we study through these parables

of what we see in the teaching of

Jesus. Is

Jesus correcting the

hearts, Jesus working

in the lives of the individuals

that are around him, not so that

he can have a hey, I got you moment

or not so that he can have a you've angered me

moment, but

because Jesus

lovingly wants to

correct and rebuke them

for a desire to see

a genuine heart change,

to see what would come

from them would look more

like him and

less like them.

And I think this is what we see

and what we'll see this morning

in this parable of the rich man in

Lazarus, found in Luke

16, starting in verse 19. So

let's read the entire parable.

Jesus begins and says,

there was a rich man who was clothed in

purple and fine linen,

who had feasted

sumptuously every day.

And at his gate 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. 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.

But Abraham said, child,

remember that you in your lifetime

receive 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 there to us.

And he 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.

And he said, no, father

Abraham. But if someone goes to

them from the dead, they will 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.

So in this parable, as we've seen

in so many others as we've studied, there's a

comparison that happens. There's two

individuals that we're called to look at

and compare one from the other.

In this parable, it is the rich man

and it is Lazarus. And there's things

that we see as Jesus tells this story to

his largely jewish audience. Remember, there's things that

we have to be explained in this culturally, but they

would have taken to instantly. Jesus says that

this rich man, he's clothed in

purple and linen to

define his level of wealth.

This man is clothed in the same clothing that you

would find in garments for a king.

This is not just a man who shopped at the higher

end of the department store. This is a

man who lives in the finest

clothing that can be made for him.

And the clothing is good enough for

royalty. It

says that he feasted

every day

in my notes. Here's my description. And

I think you'll understand this.

Every day was like thanksgiving,

right? Like stretchy

pants. Break them out. Let's keep it

rolling. Nobody's judging.

Crumb's falling everywhere. We don't care.

There's fried turkey. That's happening, all right? That's what

we see. Feasted every day

and lived in a gated

home, a gated compound,

a gated palace. He is

separated from the world

that he doesn't want to engage in. He

set himself apart. He's established who

he is. And others,

especially others like

Lazarus, cannot

cross the man

made barrier that's there.

But then there's Lazarus.

There's this poor man

known as Lazarus.

And when I, want you to think of poor

Lazarus is beyond a level of

poverty that you and I

could begin to fathom or understand

every day. The Bible tells us that he was

laid at the gate of

the rich man. He was in

such bad health that he had

to be carried. Whether that meant that he was

paralyzed and had other health conditions that

were there, or it meant that his health condition

was so unbearable that he could no longer

walk. So he had to be laid

at the gate and he had to

beg for anything that people would give

him. But there was a conflict with this

because the Bible says that Jesus says

that he was covered with sores.

So his isolation from people

had also what his physical

condition, his financial

condition had established. But

also because of the bleeding sores that would have covered his

body, he would be considered unclean.

She's not to touch him, not to interact with

him. He's a man who's cast

off. And it

says that he

desired what he longed

for, what he dreamt about

at night was

the crumbs that fell off

the table. A

level of hunger that you and

I couldn't begin to imagine.

And I think there's an interesting comparison

that happens that as he desires

to be fed by the crumbs, but instead

he was fed upon as

the dogs would come up to him

and Lycosaurus. And

then in this earthly

life, these are the comparisons that we see between these

two men, and they both die.

Lazarus is

carried to Abraham's side,

the presence of God, where

the pain and the suffering of this world is removed,

and the rich man is buried and

sent to Hades, away from the presence of God. Where

there's torment and

there's punishment, that's there, removed from the

presence of God. Heard it said

years ago, death is defined as the great

equalizer. Does not care about

gender, does not care about

socioeconomic status, does not care about

age. Death is the great equalizer that every

person, rich and poor, and in

death, what death

brings in the afterlife,

the positions are reversed.

On this earth, Lazarus must have looked at the

extravagance of the man

and longed for a minute

fraction of what he had.

But now the rich man

looks at what Lazarus has

and longs for a

fraction of what Lazarus has been given,

just a drop off of his

finger. He makes two appeals.

His first appeal is for the

mercy in that context, that Lazarus

could come to him in just a drop of

water to relieve the anguish in

which he is faced. But it

cannot happen as Lazarus

is in his. Lazarus is in his reward,

and the rich man is removed from God.

The second appeal that he says is he's got five

brothers, and

he knows that his brothers have

chosen the life, the path of where he has

come from. And he says, if someone from the

dead, surely that will convince

them. If someone can come back from

being dead and share with them, then

they would listen. But,

Abraham says no, that, they

have God's word and it

is sufficient.

And this is the parable that Jesus tells.

Why would Jesus tell this parable? I

think Jesus is asking a question.

I think this question that Jesus

asks is the question that my dad,

growing up, when I strayed from

what my dad desired for me, would

want to address and would want to look at. And Jesus,

in this moment, as he's teaching this, is

addressing this very same question. You

see, my dad wasn't necessarily overly concerned

with the actions that I did. That was

secondary. What my dad was

concerned with was the heart of his son.

And as Jesus teaches this parable, I think

the big idea of what he's pressing toward in this is,

how is your heart? Because can rich people

go to heaven? Yes. Can poor people go to heaven? Yes.

Our earthly standing in this is not

what we need to be concerned with, but the condition of

our hearts should greatly concern

us. The condition of who

we are and what is being done and what

makes us up

should concern us greatly. And this is what

Jesus addresses.

Back in Luke 1614, we see the

context in which Jesus tells this parable,

this group that we've talked about before, this group of Pharisees

are there. And in chapter, 16, verse 14, it says,

the Pharisees, who were lovers of money,

heard all these things, and they ridiculed

him. Jesus, as he

preaches, the hope of the gospel and the

way of the kingdom, they hear these

things. And what comes from there as they do

this, is they ridiculed him. Why? Because they

were lovers of money. But not only

lovers of money. What we see when we look at the gospels is they

were lovers of power. They were lovers of fame. They were lovers of

what I would call perceived righteousness, which

meant what they wanted others to do is to look at them

and to feel that they were better,

that they were holier. And that it was in their own

power and their own depth that they've done

this

in all of their life.

They had devoted their love and their

heart. To the pursuits of

what they had determined,

and they had no love for God.

So I want to ask you this this morning.

How is your heart? How is your

heart? I went to the doctor, a few months

ago. First time going to the doctor in a long

time. I shared that with some of you. They basically had to

start me over as a new patient, and they corrected me and saying, bo, you can't do this

again. Right? This is where we're at.

And largely what we talked about was, we talked

about, physically, my heart.

And my doctor met with me, and she's like, all right, here's the

deal. You're going to do these couple things. One,

two, three. You're going to make sure you're doing this. And then I'm

like, okay, okay, okay, okay, cool. And then she said, and at

your age, what I'm going to require? Which hurt, right? When

she said that, what do you mean at

my age? She said, at your age, what I'm going to require

is a follow up appointment,

and I'm going to take labs again.

And so we're going to see if you've been doing these things that I've laid out there

for you, which now, like, I haven't felt this way since

I was, like, in, I don't know, middle,

school. But it's like, we're going to check on

you, and we're going to see if there's

evidence of you doing the things that

we're asking you to do in order so that you're

physical, heart can be healthy.

So this appointment is coming up in

about two weeks. So I'm gonna, like, do wind sprints every

day now, right? And it's celery and

carrots and water, right till you get there, right?

Here's the deal. The doctor, though,

isn't just gonna evaluate my heart. She's gonna evaluate me.

She's gonna see how I'm eating, how am I sleeping, how am I

exercising, what's my stress level

like? In order to check

my heart, she's going to check me.

And when I ask you, how is your heart this morning?

From this parable, what I think we can draw

from is several things that God, in the power of his spirit,

with working in our life, can help us check our heart.

So heart check number one, is this

the danger, the danger of

self justification? If we look back

again with the parable of the rich man

and Lazarus, when we jump back to Jesus interaction with the

Pharisees, here's what he says after he talks about them

being lovers of money. And here's where they are. He said, verse 15,

and he said to them, you

are those who justify yourselves

before men. Ooh, that's got to be scary

when Jesus says that. But

God knows your heart,

for what is exalted among

men is an abomination

in the sight of God. Jesus

says, you justify yourself

before men. You set your standard.

You decide who you're going to compare yourself to. You decide

what that standard's going to be like. As you look in the mirror,

you go, you say, look at my rules. Look at who I'm going to compare myself

to. Look, as I fulfill my own expectations.

You look at yourself and you say

that you're the standard. And within that you

justify yourself. And the danger with that is

you walk away from this moment and you're going,

I'm good. But

God sees you in that moment

and you're not. And you're

not. You see, when we

compare ourselves to anyone other than

Jesus,

we find a way

to say that we're good, but the

spiritual condition says we're not.

When we compare ourselves to him, what

we find is that we fall short. But

it's okay. But it's okay,

because what we find in Christ

is we can't justify ourselves.

But what we find in Christ is that we

can be justified in him because

he is the standard. He is perfection.

He is the essence, the

person, the living God

in front of us,

fulfilling all that we cannot fulfill.

And he died on the cross so that

in relationship with him,

we can be justified. Heart check

number two of what we see with the

Pharisees is

profession without

sanctification is not

salvation. A profession of faith

without salvation without

sanctification. Is not salvation.

To simply say something is what I mean.

To simply declare who Jesus is

without the power of the work of the Holy Spirit, of

what we see happen in scripture is not

salvation at all. I can't just

say something. So it's true. There's a spiritual

work of what's happened and take place. Paul writes in Galatians

five, six, for in Christ Jesus, neither

circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything,

but only faith working through

love, faith that is activated by the

power of the Holy Spirit producing

the fruit of the Spirit. So it's

working in us. In James 214

through 17. What good is it, my brothers, if someone says

he has faith but does not have works,

can that faith save him? If a

brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily

food and one of them says, go in peace, be

warmed and filled without giving them the things

needed for the body, what good is that?

So also, faith by itself, if

it does not have works, is

dead. And what happens in true faith

in Christ? We're moved from death to life.

There's change that happens. There's

regeneration that takes place. There's

the move from the old to the new, and it's what

we find in life. True faith in

Christ always,

always produces

evidence. True faith in

Christ always. It's a beautiful,

difficult, wonderful journey of what

God is doing as he takes out the old, as he

puts in the new, as he brings that that was dead, and

puts in the life so that we see we're growing and becoming

more and more like him. And our works

do not save us, but our

works do point to our salvation.

What was lacking in the rich

man? And then heart

check number three. To

know of God or to

know God.

It's evident from the words that

are used in this parable

that the rich man knew

the things of God,

the things that he asks for, the

names that he uses, the words that are

there. This was not a man

who was caught off guard. This

was a man who knew of God,

but Lazarus was a man

who knew God and who

was known by God.

John 15 five. Jesus

says, I am the vine

and you are the branches. And I love this

picture. Whoever abides

in me and I in

him, he it is

that bears much m fruit, for

apart from me, you can

do nothing. And what

we see in John 15

is this definition of

the intimacy of

relationship, the very

closeness of what

a relationship with God looks like,

that we abide in him

and he abides in us.

The intimacy of the

closeness that's there

in the parable of the rich man

in Lazarus, something

a commentator pointed out this week and

wrote a lot about and I found really

interesting. He asked this

question. He said, who

is the rich man?

Who is the rich man in the story? He

says, what is his name?

Well, he's the rich man, but what is his

name? And it's very

evident in here. Jesus

doesn't tell us, his name. And

here's what Jesus, I believe, is

saying in this parable. When

it comes to intimacy of relationship,

I don't know him. I

don't know him. That when it comes

to defining who he is, he may

know a lot of things of God,

but the abiding, and the intimacy of what a

relationship looks like, jesus says, I

don't know him, but

there's Lazarus,

the man who people walk by and ignore.

The man who people walk by and toss

crumbs at the guy who people

walk by. And they probably would walk

around him as far as they can because they did

not want to get near the person who

looked like that, who smelled like that,

who had to earn his living in the manner that

he did. And Jesus says, well, let me tell you this. That

rich guy, man, I don't know him, but that's my boy.

That's Lazarus. I know him.

And his name, as

Jesus tells this story that would have hit

everyone in that moment.

Lazarus, you know what it

means? It means God helps.

God helps. God

helps. While

he had nothing, he

had all that he needed,

while the rich man would have known of

God. But only Lazarus

knew God. My

dad loved me.

My dad corrected me. And my

dad challenged my heart because

he longed for things

that I didn't even know, that I longed for

for myself. And God

loves you so

much that he doesn't simply set a

standard in a book and say, figure

it out. That God loves you so much

that he gives you his holy spirit to

correct, to confront, so he can bring

you to the point of

brokenness and

conviction in a relationship with

him.

I want to close with this story.

Yesterday, I, went to a funeral.

I didn't speak at this funeral.

It's not often that I go to

funerals now, but kind of hitting that point,

we're seeing more and more where I don't preach at

them or teach at them. But it, was from my uncle

Ansel Comus.

Ansel Bradbury.

If you know another comus, I would love to hear

about it. If you know another Ansel,

I'd love to hear about it. His son

Joel Bradbury, is a pastor in Abbeville. That's where

my family's from. He's a pastor in Abbeville. And he shared

this. He said, years ago, we found my dad's birth

certificate and it

said Thomas Addison

Bradbury.

We didn't know that. We threw it

away because he's comus. Ansel Bradbury.

So I went to my uncle Ansel's funeral.

I'm going to tell you about my uncle Ansel.

I love my uncle Ansel. He was the

last of, my granddad's siblings that was

still alive. He was the baby of about

15, passed away at

89 years old. On June 1, he was diagnosed

with liver cancer, and he

went home to be with the Lord. This past Wednesday,

quit. He's gone.

And his son Joel got up

and shared and preached his

funeral, and I thought did a

splendid job. He told stories

about my uncle Ansel that I wasn't aware of.

He told stories about things that he did in the

community. He told stories

about how he went and cared for his

friends. He told a story that I wasn't aware

of, that in 1970, my cousin

Joel had qualified to

compete in the region track meet and the 100

meters dash. It was his senior year, 17 years

old. And he showed up and there was,

another boy, an african american boy, who was going

to run also in the race. He said, that

boy was eleven years old,

had no shoes on, his family couldn't afford

it. And he thought, oh, I'm

going to win this race. He said,

they got in the starting blocks and

the gun went off. And he said, the only

thing that I saw for that hundred meters was that

boy's back. As he ran away from me.

He said, my dad went up to the boy and to his

family afterwards. He said they had no way

to make it, from only one qualified from the region

to go to the district, from the district to go to the state

championship. He said they had no way to get their son

there. The school wasn't providing. So my uncle Ansel, for the next

two weeks, would go and pick the boy up and take

him. And he also went and bought him his first pair of track

shoes. Just the man who my, uncle Ansel

was. And at the time,

in the early seventies, in places like Abbeville, South

Carolina, you didn't see an

older white man walking around with an

african american boy. That's who he was,

his very character's nature. He told

story after story. I have a story about his

dad.

Then he said this. He said, then he

died. He

said, I kind of picture it like this,

that in that death he went

before. And he stood before

God. And God

looked at him. In all of

the good things that Ansel had

done. He looked at him,

and he didn't see the money that he

gave the poor. He didn't see

the relationships that he invested

in. He didn't see all of

the Sundays that he faithfully made at the church, all of the

mission trips that he went on, all the discipleship classes that

were there. He said, God looked at him, and he didn't see that.

What Joel said is this.

What he looked at and saw was the

robe of white made

possible through the sacrifice of

Jesus. And then he said, and we

can stand here today and celebrate our

savior, because it's in the power of his

resurrection that my dad was saved.

And it was in the fruit of the spirit that

he walked on this earth living

for Jesus and sharing the hope of the

gospel. Please don't hear this

message as this. Do enough

good things and you'll earn your salvation.

It's not. It's not it.

Hear this. Trust

Jesus Christ, the author

and perfecter of our faith,

and every deed you've done

will be covered with the blood of the lamb.

And in that, you'll may be made new.

It doesn't matter how many bad things you've done,

how many good things. let me tell you, the doctor's office

has scales.

Heaven doesn't. And it's not

about the weight of good

versus bad. What

we have for eternity is

the blood of the lamb has covered us

and made us new and justified

us. And then the beauty.

I had somebody ask me one time, why

don't we get saved? And then the

moment we get saved, we're taken

from this earth and moved to eternity

with God, because then we

would miss out on the beauty of

what God has for us here so that we can

walk in faithfulness and obedience

to him, not because we have

to, and not just because

we get to, because we're

empowered by his spirit to do

so. Would you pray with me,

God? I come to you this morning,

Lord, thanking you.

Thanking you, Lord, for who you are,

Lord, what you've done.

Where we can look at this parable of Lazarus

and the rich man,

Lord. And if we're honest,

if we're honest, we can find ourselves in the narrative.

M Lord,

we're all,

we're all sinners

who can't justify themselves.

We can't justify ourselves

because of any found success

that we've claimed we

can't justify ourselves

through a suffering that we've embraced,

but we're made whole. We're made right,

we're made complete

when we're covered

by the blood of the lamb,

made new in life, in

Christ. Lord, when we repent

of who we are,

when we repent what we've

done. And Jesus,

we trust you.

We trust you to save us.

We trust you to guide us.

We trust you to correct us.

We trust you to change us.

And God, the beauty of what that

looks like, whether

we're seven years old or

107 years old,

to walk in the

faithfulness of Christ,

empowered by your holy

spirit,

God, I pray for all of us today.

Lord, I ask the power

of your spirit.

Lord, we examine our hearts

and, Lord, in your leaning into us and

leading us, we would find the

kindness of God that brings us to

brokenness, the kindness of God that brings

us to repentance.

Jesus, thank you. Thank

you for saving us. I thank you,

Lord, that not a one, not a

one is going to stand

before you and say,

but I was good enough,

but that we all can stand in front

of you and say, Jesus was,

and I trusted him. In

Himalayan and it's in your

name we pray. Amen.

Thanks again for listening, and be sure to check back

next week for another episode. In the meantime,

you can visit [email protected] or

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