We are looking at the Westminster Confession of Faith tonight, chapter 8, number 7. We have been looking at the work of Christ, as Pastor Kyle has been leading us through the study of the Confession. We have a relatively brief statement tonight, and it is this: Christ, in the work of mediation, acts according to both natures, by each nature doing that which is proper to itself. Yet, by reason of the unity of the person, that which is proper to one nature is sometimes in Scripture attributed to the person denominated by the other nature. We have been looking at the two natures of Christ, one person, two natures, divine and human. And the catechism kind of gets to this place and says, "Okay, Jesus is the mediator. He is the only one true mediator because he is truly God and truly man." And it does not word it this way, but my interpretation is answering the question, "Well, just like how does that really work? I mean, how do you have a true God and true man and put all that together?" And I think they could have been safe if they had answered the question and just said, "Well, we really do not know." Because none of us really fully understands how Jesus can be truly God and truly man at the same time. We understand it is true; we know what God has revealed to us is true, but to understand it completely, we do not know. But there are things we do understand, and the catechism gives us an answer to that. So how does it work, these two natures? And it is this, that each nature acts according to its nature. So the human nature of Jesus does not become divine. The divine nature of Jesus does not become human. And an example, Jesus in his human nature, we see in Scripture, became hungry, he slept, he grew weary, and the divine nature does none of those things. We see in Jesus' human nature that he perfectly fulfilled the law, and he had to do that in his human nature in order to be our representative, our atoning sacrifice on the cross for our sin. He had to do that in his human nature. In Jesus' human nature, His human knowledge was limited, just as everyone else's is limited. For example, in Mark 13, verse 32, Jesus says, "...only the Father knows the time when the Son will return." So Jesus, in His human nature, did not know the answer to that question or when He would come. And yet, in Jesus' divine nature, He is omniscient. So God knew what that plan was, but Jesus did not know it in His human nature. Here is an example of that. He is omniscient. Jesus is also, in His divine nature, omnipresent. He does not lose that quality in His human nature. So near the end of Jesus' ministry, He tells His disciples that He is soon going to be departing from them. He is no longer going to be with them physically, and yet at the same time, He makes the promise, "Lo, I will be with you always, even to the ends of the earth." Is Jesus contradicting Himself? No, in His human nature, He is going to be physically absent from them. In His divine nature, He is always present with them. So the confession is teaching us that we can distinguish between Christ's natures, but we should never separate them from one another. And in fact, that unity that we would not want to separate in Christ's two natures is such that sometimes the Scripture uses the language of one nature to describe the other nature. The confession says, for example, in Acts 20, verse 28, it speaks of the church, it says this, "the church of God which He purchased with His own blood." Did God's divine nature die on the cross and shed blood? No. That was His human nature. And yet Scripture, because of the unity of the two natures, says it was God who shed His blood and died on the cross. So the sum of what the confession is saying to us is this: How do these two natures work together? The two natures, divine and human, are perfectly united so that each nature acts according to its nature. That was a whole seminary course right there. I hope you got that one. All right. Our scripture text for tonight is from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 16. I invite you to open your Bibles to Luke 16. Let us pray. Lord, we sang about the wonderful words of life. They are indeed life-giving words, Your self-revelation. What an amazing thing that You would desire us to know You. You have given this word through the prophets and apostles in such a way that we have Your very word. We trust this word, and we want to hear and learn from this word and grow from it. We ask that You would bless the reading of the scripture, our reflection on the scripture, and that we might come to cherish the scripture more and more. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Please stand as we read the word. Today, we will look at another parable. There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. At 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. The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. 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 received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner received bad things. But now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. 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." 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." He said to them, "If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead." Friends, the grass withers, and the flowers fade. All right, we are looking at a parable again today. And there are a couple of things I want to say by way of introduction to a parable. One of the things that defines what a parable is, is that it is a story that has one main point or lesson. And if you look at all the parables, you will see that that is true. There are a number of parables that have many different aspects to them that we can learn from. For example, the one this morning, from which you could learn about a variety of different aspects. The parable of the sower would be another one. Different soils, different people respond to the Word of God in different ways. But in the parable of the sower, there is just one main lesson, and it is actually a missionary parable. So what is the main lesson of it? Well, you will plant the seed, you will spread the Word, and it will be received. It will be rejected by some totally. It will be received and then get rejected. But it will bear fruit 30-fold, 60-fold, and 100-fold. The Word of God will not fail. There will be a great harvest of the Word of God. And that is an encouragement to the disciples and to us to be able to be faithful in distributing, proclaiming the word, and God will prosper it. That is the one message of the parable. And there is one message of the parable that we are looking at tonight. So I will say that by way of introduction. The second point by way of introduction, particularly to this parable, is that when Jesus gives a parable, he speaks with authority. When we make up stories, we are speculating. We are using illustrations. When Jesus speaks about heaven and hell in a parable, he speaks from familiarity. He is the Lord of all and he knows everything in the divine realm. Therefore, we should take what he is teaching in this parable with a measure of authority. The parable is divided into two parts, so let us go through the parable. The first part is verses 19 through 21. In verse 19, there was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. Do you not love that word? Sumptuously. Does it not sound just lavish? There are three things in here. However, I want to say that, again, as I was saying, the parable has one message up front: this is not a parable about being rich or money, as if that were the problem. There are plenty of biblical characters and biblical heroes who had a lot of money, and God blessed them with those resources for his purposes, and they used them for his purpose. So the problem is not that this man was rich. Though being rich makes it more challenging spiritually, that is true. But we learn three things about this man from that brief description. First, he is self-indulgent and displays this behavior before others. He wears fancy purple linen; purple is the color of royalty, so it is very expensive. Why does he have these things? Because he wants other people to see how wonderful and how rich he is. Thus, he wants to project himself in a prideful way before others. Second, we see that he is self-indulgent for his own sake, feasting sumptuously every day. One does not need to do that; one only needs a certain amount of food. But he lavished food on himself all the time and set no boundaries for himself. He did whatever he could with his wealth for his own sake. And third, we see that he has many possessions because he has a house large enough to have a gate. We will see this at the beginning of verse 20. So he indulged himself in these ways. The clearest example of his selfishness is that he completely ignored Lazarus, who was outside his gate. So, then there is Lazarus. "At his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, who was full of sores and desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores." So there are some things we learn about Lazarus. First, we learn that this poor man has a name. The rich man does not have a name. Lazarus has a name, and it means "God helps" or "the one whom God helps," which is true in this story. He has a name, but he is financially destitute. Here is the contrast between a man who has everything and a man who has absolutely nothing. All Lazarus has is a name. He is physically destitute. He is so helpless that he must be laid at the gate. He cannot even get there himself. His friends, his family, or someone must bring him there. They lay him down in the dirt or the ground, whatever is outside the gate. That is how helpless he is physically. And another thing we learn about him is that his earthly desires were minimal. Many people in his condition would have been praying, "I want to be like the rich man. Give me all that stuff. I need that stuff." But this was not his prayer. All he asked for was just what would help him to stay alive: the scraps and the crumbs from the rich man's table. So he asked only for what was necessary. Furthermore, Jesus adds emphasis in the parable. If things were not hard enough for him already in that condition, even the dogs came and licked his sores. He was so defenseless that he could not even fight off or scare away the dogs. He just had to lie there while the dogs licked his sores, as if he were lesser than the dogs. In Jewish culture, dogs were considered among the lowest creatures. They were despised. Here is the contrast: the man who had everything and the man who was in the lowest of human conditions. That is the first part of the parable. That is what we can see in this world with human eyes. That is all we know. Let me ask you this question: If you were given a choice to be the rich man or Lazarus, which would you choose? If you said Lazarus, more power to you. Because not many of us would do that. Be honest. We are all thinking ahead because we have read the whole parable. But if all you knew were these three verses, we would want to be the rich man. No one would want to be Lazarus. But that is not the whole story, and we would make a mistake if we only had this information and made that decision. So the second half now is not the earthly perspective or condition; it is the spiritual perspective where Jesus opens up the gates of heaven so that we can look in and see what is happening in the afterlife, which we would not normally get to see. So in verse 22, the poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's side. Lazarus goes to heaven. He is part of this covenant community, Abraham's side; he is part of Abraham's covenant community. The people of faith, the spiritual children of Abraham, were probably ethnic children of Abraham as well. So he goes to heaven. 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. It is a little interesting that he mentioned that the rich man was buried. What happened to Lazarus? We do not know. But when the rich man was buried, it was probably a pretty lavish event. With all the money and wealth he had, it was a big to-do kind of thing. And so that mention is added in here. However, after he is buried, where does he go? He is in Hades, which I will save for a deep theological discussion. We will just interpret that as being in hell. Hell and Hades, for our sake tonight, are equivalent. And in Hades, he is in torment. Hell is a place of torment. We will not try to define it more than that. We will just accept it at that much here. I mentioned a little bit of flames, but it is a place of torment. So he lifts up his eyes. He sees Abraham way off. There is an emphasis on he is far away. There is a separation between them, and there is Lazarus. And he calls out, "Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in the water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in the flame." I think it is interesting that he calls him Father Abraham because it is not the same as what Lazarus experienced as part of the spiritual covenant community. Because he is in hell. He is not part of the spiritual covenant community. So when he says Father Abraham, it is just because of his ethnicity. He was born a Jew, and he probably expected that, because he was Jewish, that would cover him. I have fire insurance because I am Jewish. And I am part of that supposed covenant. But he was not, because he was not by faith a part of the covenant. And he pleads for mercy. Why does he plead for mercy? Because what he got was justice. He got what he deserved. He got what every person outside of the covenant community of faith gets. We all deserve hell unless our lives are redeemed and changed by the blood of Jesus Christ and our faith and trust in Him. So he got what he deserved. He is asking for mercy, and mercy is, he is asking, do not give me what I deserve. And we have the good news; the gospel is we get more than we deserve. So here is the difference. Justice is getting what you deserve. Mercy is not getting what you deserve. And grace is getting what you do not deserve. A simple way to find that is we have that good news of the gospel. So he pleads for mercy, and that mercy is to have Abraham send Lazarus to dip his finger in the water and to cool him because he is in anguish, which he really has not changed his attitude about Lazarus at all. He still sees Lazarus as kind of just a servant, somebody on the side, have him come and serve me kind of thing. So he has not really changed his heart or mind yet, and he is in anguish. And then there is the response. Abraham gives a response. And there are two reasons that Abraham gives why he is not going to send Lazarus. And the first one is that it is improper. Child, remember that in your lifetime, you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner received bad things, but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. It is improper because the rich man received what he asked for. He received what he was praying for. He wanted all these blessings. He wanted all the material possessions and the lavish things of life, and he wanted to be in a position of honor and wealth. That is what he valued. That was his hope and goal in life. It was everything that he was looking for, and he obtained it. Therefore, there is a reminder here that our worldly circumstances are not a good indicator of our spiritual status. Lazarus, on the other hand, experienced hardships. We should not interpret this to mean that Lazarus was bad, so he received hardships. He simply experienced difficult circumstances. For example, in the book of Job, Job suffered not because he did anything wrong. We suffer in this fallen world. He experienced very, very difficult circumstances. But now Lazarus is comforted here, and you are in anguish. This is a simple summary, a description of the difference between heaven and hell. Heaven is being in the presence of God, and in hell, all of God's common grace is taken away, and you experience none of those blessings of God. They have been stripped away from you. Then there is a second reason why Abraham is not going to send Lazarus to the rich man. It is because it is impossible. Verse 26 states, "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 over from there to us." That is what hell is. Hell is separation from God. It is also a good definition of what sin is. We experience hell on earth, sin here on earth, and separation from God, but that is a good summary of what hell is: separation from God. And a little note here: this conversation is taking place between Abraham and Lazarus in this picture of the chasm. It tells us that in the real spiritual reality, they would not be having this conversation. The conversation takes place for the sake of the parable and the story to teach us, but there is this chasm, and such conversations do not actually take place. There is no second chance for people after death to make their pleas for mercy to God. What our eternity will be is established and determined before we die in this world. The rich man has a response. He says, "Then I beg you, Father, 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." I think it is interesting to note that the rich man makes absolutely no attempt to debate Abraham at this point. He is not trying to negotiate anything. He has to completely accept the reality. In this life, in this world, people will debate God and the truth. Well, that is not true. I think this or I think that. But when it gets to that point, after you are gone in this world, you will know the truth. And there will be no arguing or debating about it. It will be clear. It is just like in Philippians 2, where Paul says that when Jesus comes back, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Not everybody will trust him or believe in him, but even the people in hell will understand that Jesus Christ is Lord. So he wants his brothers to be warned. It seems as though perhaps he has finally gained a sense of compassion. But it is very limited. It is just for his brothers, so that they would not end up in the same place. He still shows no mercy or compassion toward Lazarus. You can just picture him day after day walking in and out of his place, going through the gate, walking right past Lazarus and paying absolutely no attention to him. There is no compassion whatsoever. Abraham said, "They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them." What does that mean? In other words, they have the Scripture. They have the Scripture that has been given to them. That is what they need to know and hear. Faith in, trust in, submission to, and obedience to the Scripture is the key factor. That is the most important thing. That is what his brothers need. Every one of his brothers, every sinner needs to hear, to believe, and to obey the word of God. And the rich man says, "No, Father. But if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent." So there is a little bit of challenging here. I hope there is an opportunity. He is saying, in essence, the Word is not enough. They need something more than the Word. They need a miracle. If they had a miracle, then they would believe. But we all know that is not true. Think of all the miracles that took place during the Exodus. And did the people believe? No, they just grumbled and complained, and they turned their backs on God, and they worshipped idols. So miracles were not going to be sufficient. The final response from Abraham is that if they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead. Isn't it perhaps interesting that the name of the person in this parable is Lazarus? And it was Lazarus whom Jesus raised from the dead just before He went into Jerusalem to die and then to be raised from the dead Himself. Here is a foreshadowing of the work of Christ, His death and His resurrection. And we know that when He raised Lazarus from the dead, not everybody believed. When He was raised from the dead, not everyone believed. It is not about miracles. The message here is that the Scripture is sufficient. So let us take away some lessons from this parable. There are three of them. There is life after death. We are immortal beings. Once we are born, we will exist for eternity. Life is not just for this moment. Francis Chan has a great illustration. He has a great big rope that he puts on a stage or in front of a sanctuary, and it goes all the way across. On one end of the rope, he wraps some tape around, about that much of tape around the end of the rope, and then he spreads it out all over here. He says, "This little spot here with the tape, that is your life here on earth. All the rest of this rope, that is eternity." Of course, the rope is not long enough to represent eternity. But to give the comparison, what we are living here is but a brief moment compared to what our eternal existence will be. It extends beyond the grave, and it never ends. A second lesson is that heaven is real, and that is to be in the presence of God. A third lesson is that hell is real. It is a never-ending separation from God, an existence that never ends and is an existence of torment and anguish. But that is not the main part of the parable or the main point of the parable. The question is, what determines your eternal state, whether you will be in heaven or hell. That is the main point of the parable. And we should note that no one deserves heaven. No one is righteous. We are all sinners. We have all fallen short of the glory of God. None of us worship God perfectly, holy all the time. There is no one who is righteous. The best that we can do, Isaiah says, is our righteousness is like filthy rags in the eyes of the Lord. We are completely unqualified or undeserving of heaven, as we pointed out this morning as well. So perhaps I can rephrase the question: What determines your eternal destiny? We would ask the same thing: How do we escape hell? For that is what we are all destined to, unless something changes that. So what is it that makes the difference? And here is the main point of the parable: The difference between spending eternity in heaven and hell is determined by faith, by trusting in the truth of Scripture. So let me see, where is that verse here? Verse 29 to 31: "Abraham said, 'They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.' And he said, 'No, father Abraham, but if someone were to go to them from the dead, they will repent.' And he said, 'If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.'" What do they need? They need the Word. The rich man rejected the Scriptures, and therefore he rejected God. Lazarus apparently trusted in Scripture, and therefore he was with God in heaven. How you respond to Scripture, either with faith or disbelief, will reflect your eternal state. So now some applications. One: Like I did this morning, I gave you a little guardrail about a way to abuse this passage, something that people say it teaches that it does not. And this passage does not teach, again, any kind of Marxist theology about the poor being favored over the rich. It is not the message of the parable. Marxism has crept its way into the life of the church. It has a description of liberation theology and it divides the world into the oppressed and the oppressors. And they would look at this and say, well this just proves that God favors the poor more. And that kind of theology, you see, worked out in practice in our culture today. For example, why are criminals released from jail or just not given bail or not held accountable for things? Because the Marxist view is, well, they did that because they're victims. They're the poor and oppressed, and they have no accountability for that. And we need to show favor to them and to let them go. It creeps even into our politics, but it's in our theology as well. And that's not what this passage is teaching. It does teach that there are lovers. The Pharisees are lovers of money, but the problem isn't their love of money, it's their lack of the love of God. That's the problem. So in verses 14 and 15, it said earlier, the Pharisees who were lovers of money heard all these things and they ridiculed him and they said to him, "You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God." The problem wasn't the love of money, it was the rejection of God. So that's the little guardrail. So, application. First of all, pretty obvious, we don't want to put our hope in physical worldly wealth or riches. They are temporal, they don't last, and they're not very good indicators of our spiritual reality. We don't want to put our hope in them, they're false idols, and we don't want to be envious of other people who have more abundance and riches than we have. We want to be careful about how we judge other people. We do not want to judge people by their appearances or circumstances. It happens. Someone can come into a church service on a Sunday morning, well-dressed, and obviously looking like a person of influence. Church people are all excited about them, and we welcome them, saying, "We are so glad to have you here." Then, someone else comes in who is a bit shabby in their clothing and a little disheveled in appearance. We may not be quite as welcoming to them. There are many examples of how we judge people by their appearances or circumstances, and this parable certainly should warn us that we are mistaken to do that because we do not know what a person's heart is necessarily just by observation. We need to be careful about how we judge ourselves. It is tempting for us, when we are going through hard times and experiencing difficult things, to look at ourselves and feel like this: "God must not love me, or God must not care, or He is not good enough, or I have fallen short." We may fall into that works righteousness that we were talking about this morning. Do not do that. Lazarus had every complaint he could have had about his condition and how hard life was for him, and yet he was right with God. Do not measure how you judge yourself and your relationship with God based on your circumstances, whether they are good or hard or difficult. Do not judge God by your circumstances either. God has not abandoned you. He will never leave you nor forsake you. He has not left you. Lazarus is the example of someone going through the worst of things that a person could go through, and God had not turned His back on him. So, when you go through a difficult time and you are suffering, do not judge God as having abandoned you. That would be a mistake. So here is the main point. What is your response to the scripture? Since scripture is the word of God, and how we respond to scripture is also how we respond to God himself. And you can apply that to other people. You can say, well, okay, I know this person in my family, or my coworker, or my neighbor, or all these people, or people you see on television, or in the news, who do, you know, you look at them and say, well, they reject the word of God. This sermon is about all those kinds of people, and it applies to them, but that will not really do us much good. The question is, how does it apply to us, as believers? It does apply to us. We are saved by faith. We are also to live by faith. My little definition of faith is that it is truth trusted. Faith is truth trusted. And there is not a single one of us who has been fully faithful to the word of God and obeyed it in every aspect of our lives. There are areas in our lives where we are unbelieving and disobedient. What Abraham did to the rich man was he took the scriptures and said, what do you do with this? What did you do with this? And Jesus does the same thing to us. He said, what are you doing with this now? What are you doing with the word? How are you responding to it? Well, praise God that most of us, most of the time, are trusting, faithful, and obedient to the word. However, there are areas in our lives where we are not. Some of those are outright sinful disobedience, and we are very aware of it. Marge and I frequently tell a story about a woman in our first congregation. We were having a conversation with her on the street. We were out for a walk and talking about a relationship she had with another person, and she refused to be forgiving. She simply said, "I know it's not right, but I don't care." Sometimes we are that open about things. But many times, it shows up in other ways in our lives where we are not believing. This can manifest in things like anger, a lack of forgiveness, envy, jealousy, doubt, worry, or fear. These things are evidence that we are not fully trusting in the character and the promises of God as they are revealed in the Word. Jesus wants to lay that out before us, that all of those things reflect a lack of trust in God's character and promises. So Jesus' prescription in the parable is that how you respond to scripture is reflective of how you will spend eternity. As a believer, how you respond to scripture will reflect your intimacy with God and your peace and joy in him. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank You again for this precious word that You have given to us. We know it is by the power of Your Holy Spirit alone that You remove the veil from our faces and the scales from our eyes, enabling us to see truth and to know it. You, as believers in Christ, have blessed us with that gift. But we humble ourselves before You and acknowledge that there are still many areas in our lives that we have not yet trusted, we have not submitted, and we are missing out on the fellowship with You that You offer to us. We know we are not perfect here. We know we will never be perfect until You come again or we get to see You face to face in heaven. But we ask for Your grace to help us to grow, to trust, to believe, and to be obedient, to know and to obey Your word here for Your glory and for our joy. In Your name we pray. Amen.