It's a blessing to be gathered together in the name, in the house of the Lord, and in his name this morning, and enjoyed the song service, devotional Sunday school, and recognizing that there's, that the truths that we find in the Bible, as we apply them to our lives and the transformation that brings to our lives, thinking of the aspect of forgiveness that Mark was talking about there in the Sunday school. And as we continue to look at that and realize that the Bible does hold the answers to the needs in our life. And today we'd like to talk just a bit about some of those needs. And you can be turning in your Bibles to Luke 16 and towards the end of the chapter there. And maybe I'll take this time to just express our appreciation as a family for your hospitality. And we felt very welcome here and in the church and in the community. appreciated being able to spend time with some of you all around the lunch table or supper table and we really appreciate that. And just a little bit of a heads up, our family sings a song together and so maybe we'll take the time at the end of the service to Maybe you use that as a way of giving back to you as a congregation as well. I did, I'll have to admit, I did fail to inform my family of that possibility. So we'll see how flexible we are. My father had a saying, he said, in this life you have two choices. You can either be flexible or be miserable. And although that has its limitations as well. Also for this evening's service, I'd like to share a story for the children as well. So children, you can be maybe looking forward to that. And now the thing is that some of this, a good children's story, the author actually recognizes that the older children might actually get a little bit more from it than the younger children do. But we'll see how that works out for this evening. Let's read some verses here in Luke chapter 16 as we recognize some teachings of Jesus here in the gospel of Luke. And so we are in the middle of a lot of parables, a lot of teachings. that Jesus was giving to, not only to his disciples, but to the people that had learned to love Jesus, love what he taught, and were constantly following him and asking questions, asking good questions, asking hard questions. And sometimes people ask them in an attempt to trap him. And other times there were honest questions of Jesus, how should we look at this situation? But starting in verse 19, we have something that happened. Now in the, we could say this is a story. And every time I use that, I have a little bit of a mental block because in the Romanian language, whenever you say something is a story, that means it's made up. And so sometimes I choose the word, this is a happening. This is something that happened instead of just a story. Verse 19, in Luke chapter 16, there was a certain rich man which was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day. And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate full of sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table. Moreover, the dogs came and licked his sores. And it came to pass that the beggar died and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died and was buried. And in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame. And Abraham said, son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivest thy good things and likewise Lazarus evil things, but now he is comforted and thou are tormented. And besides all this, between us and you, there is a great gulf fixed, so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot, neither can they pass to us that would come from thence. Then he said, I pray thee therefore, Father, that thou wouldest send him to my father's house, for I have five brethren, that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment. Abraham said unto him, They have Moses and the prophets. Let them hear them. And he said, Nay, Father Abraham, but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. And he said unto them, if they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead. Amen. A sobering passage. A man who fared sumptuously every day. Life was good. No cares, no worries, obviously. Or maybe there were, but... weren't necessarily on the surface. And he also lacked in having a giving spirit and a caring spirit. And the beggar Lazarus that was at his gate, he did not care for him. And then after they both died, the tables are turned. We find Lazarus in Abraham's bosom being comforted. in paradise. And we find the rich man in hell, tormented. And verse 26 is going to be one of our key verses for today. Between us and you there is a great gulf fixed. And this rich man would love for Lazarus to be able to bridge that gap. So bring him, isn't it so ironic, he said just water on the tip of his finger to cool my tongue. And in the torment that he's in, we kind of grasp the situation of how long that coolness would actually last. Not very long, but just a bit of relief from that torment. And then in the discussion about his brethren and Abraham saying, well, they have Moses and the prophets. He said, no, no, they won't listen to them. I know them. They're not gonna listen to them. And probably because he's thinking, well, I didn't listen to Moses and the prophets. So I doubt if my brothers are going to listen. But if someone would go back from the dead, then maybe they would listen. That would be a better chance. Abraham says, no, they have Moses and the prophets. They need to listen to them. Finally, we see this man thinking about someone other than himself. If he would have learned that a little bit sooner, it would have served him well. Back to verse 26. Beside all this, between us and you, there is a great gulf fixed. We'd like to speak a bit about bridges this morning. Bridges are fascinating things. Mankind has discovered that through architecture and ways that they can use building materials, whether it's stone and mortar, whether it's wooden beams or metal beams, they can design structures that can span great distances. And some of the modern marvels of architecture of our day include bridges. And some of the locations are known by their bridges. Think of the Brooklyn Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge, and most recently in the news, a bridge in Baltimore that most of us probably had never heard of, the Francis Scott Key Bridge that was It was built in the 60s and the 70s. And a cantilever bridge where you had your main beams that were supporting the platform of the bridge. But the way it was designed was that each section was kind of dependent on the other sections to counterbalance them. And so when the ship hit the one support beam and knocked it and removed that support. It caused the other sections to lose that counterbalance action and a big portion of that bridge quickly fell into the bay and caused a lot of damage and several lives were lost because of that. Bridges are amazing things, and even in times long ago, as mankind spread across the world and did their explorations, and they were constantly coming up on obstacles, whether it was the, maybe the Ohio River or the Mississippi River here in North America or or other rivers or maybe even even mountain systems that were that had big chasms or canyons and made it very difficult for for mankind to to move about and so oftentimes a good bridge was the answer to that and even down in in South America and you have the rivers that had a tendency of springtime, they would flood. And the water was such that it made it very difficult, even with a boat, to try and cross. And so a good bridge, whether it was a suspension bridge, the ones that sway just a bit as you're walking across, it's still better than facing the raging waters below trying to get across with a boat. And so a bridge obviously is something that is designed to help you get from one side to the other. And it represents the fact that there's a gulf there. There's an obstacle there. And so the bridge is your means of crossing. And so as we think about our lives, we realize that we have some obstacles. And maybe one of the first obstacles that we come against is the fact that one of my biggest obstacles might be myself. Jeremiah 17 puts it this way. Thus saith the Lord, Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord. For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh. But shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land, and not inhabited. Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, that spreadeth out. "'her roots by the river, "'and shall not see when he cometh, "'but her leaf shall be green, "'and shall not be careful in the year of drought, "'neither shall cease from yielding fruit. "'The heart is deceitful above all things, "'and desperately wicked, who can know it?'' Jeremiah here is in this prophecy as he's commending the people of Israel there, he's saying, The heart of man is like that chasm. It's like that obstacle that gets in the way. And the only way to bridge over that is to trust in the Lord. dealt with this idea so many times in the Psalms. As he was looking at his circumstances and realizing that he in his own strength, in his own might, there was no way out. As he's sitting in the cave there and realizing that Saul is chasing him, And this happened numerous times and over a period of years where Saul was chasing him and wanting to end his life. And Saul had the resources. He had his soldiers. He had people that were intent on capturing David. And David was sitting there saying, God, I need you. I can't do this on my own. And the sooner we get to the point where we realize that I can't do this on my own. I need God's help. I need God's grace in my life. And then God provides that bridge by allowing us to trust in him, by giving him our dedication. And realizing that we must trust in him. God will come through because then we have verses like David penned, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. That's a bridge verse. As David recognized where the source of his strength comes from. We also have chasms in the Bible that we examples of chasms between people. Thinking of Joseph and the story of Joseph. And as he and his brothers were growing up, obviously there was some tension there. And that tension escalated to the point where there's open animosity there. And the brothers were openly discussing about how to ultimately get rid of him. and had to the point that they were intent on killing Joseph. And one of the brothers stepped in and said, let's not go that far. And they ended up selling him. They sold their brother. We read this story and sometimes I don't know if we, If I do a good enough job of projecting myself into that story, how would that be if I were Joseph or one of the other brothers that was involved in that? And selling their brother and watching their brother get chained behind a caravan and walk away across the desert into an unknown land. and realizing that there's a very, very good chance that that brother would never be seen again. The story of Joseph is a story of bridges because God obviously had his hand in that. God was orchestrating things behind the scenes. And as Joseph then continued recognizing that God is so important in his life. And he made God his ultimate purpose in life. And then God used him mightily to save not only the nation of Egypt from the extreme effects of the famine that was coming, but also his own family then. And And seeing how God orchestrated all of that and created those bridges for the life of Joseph and for Joseph's family is truly amazing. And the last quite a few chapters in Genesis, we read that story and there's so many lessons that we can pull from the life of Joseph as we recognize God working in his life. But then that brings us to the greatest chasm, which is between us and God. See, the ultimate chasm, as we find here in Luke 16, this rich man discovered that following a life of sin will lead you to a place where there is no longer any bridge. and that's eternity without God. Before that time, the bridge is available. And the bridge that we're talking about there is the person of Jesus Christ and what his sacrifice did in building that bridge for mankind. The blood sacrifice, and I don't know if we have time to do justice to go back into the Abrahamic covenant and the covenant that God made with Abraham. And I carefully make that statement because we must make that statement in the right order that God made that covenant with Abraham. It was not a covenant. Abraham did not make that covenant with God. That was God's choice. God said, I will be your God. You will be my people. And it's important that we get that because, and as we get into the symbolism of that sacrifice where, where the animals were sacrificed and killed, and the animals were split in half, and each half laid on one side of a slight gully, if you will, and then the blood ran down in between there, and God walked through there. A blood covenant, and in our culture, we don't have that, so we have to, We have to try to understand and comprehend, although for a Western mind, I don't think we quite get there, of what all that meant. In that the greater party, in this case, God, walking through there, said, upon my word of honor, for lack of deeper terms, I am going to keep this covenant, that you will be my people, I will be your God. And since God doesn't change, so we know that that covenant was there, it was in place, it was there for the children of Israel. And Abraham, it says that there was a great darkness, there was a horror that came over him as he realized that there is no way that I can keep my part of the covenant. And Abraham was literally, I'm horrified at the fact that God is making his covenant with me and I realize I have no way of keeping my part of the bargain. And a blood covenant like that, if it was broken, it meant death. And so Abraham, can you feel how Abraham felt trapped? He's part of this covenant that God is making with him. It's a blood covenant, but he knows that there's no way he can fulfill his part of it and his posterity. But God was building a bridge. He had the system of sacrifices, which were small pieces of the structure of that bridge. And the sacrifice was, an atonement sacrifice, was recognizing that I have broken the covenant, but this animal that has died, the animal that I have shed this animal's blood is recognition that I cannot fulfill that covenant. But that blood, And the sacrificial system temporarily covers that. It had to be renewed. They had a system of sacrifices. Some of them were done once a year. Some of them were done at different feasts. And there was a whole system of sacrifices that were very important. And it was all pieces of the bridge that God was building with his people. See, there's another type of bridge in the Bible, and one that I enjoy studying about, learning about, and that is the ark that Noah built. One of the key stories in the Bible, and we find it in Genesis 6, and we have the, Genesis 5, we have the genealogies there, and those amazing verses that say, this person begat this person, and he lived so many years. And we think, why do we have to learn all that? And then we realize that, well, we're actually giving it. Using that, we can find a basic chronology of how things happened back then. We get to Genesis 6, and it says, Noah found grace in the eyes of God. It's good that someone found grace in the eyes of God because we have phrases like, how is that? Everything in their heart was continually wicked. The heart of man, everyone did what was right in their own eyes. That sounds like freedom, doesn't it? Wouldn't you like to live in a place like that, total freedom? Everybody does whatever they want to do. Isn't that a definition of freedom? I pray that you and I are wise enough to realize that that is not freedom. We would not want to live in a place of absolute freedom. It would actually equal absolute chaos. Because God is a God of order, and we are, as humans, we are designed to function best in times of order. We better leave a few of those rabbit trails for some other times. The Ark. As God saw the wickedness, and we get a picture of how wicked things were when it says God repented in his heart. He was, I guess one interpretation of that would be that he was sorry that he had actually made man. Don't forget Genesis 1, 2, and 3, 1 and 2, he is saying that man was very good. And now, after Genesis 3, after the fall, after Adam and Eve had chosen to go against God's plan, and we have the sin nature entering, And Satan, in a sense, getting a foothold of authority and creating as much chaos as possible in God's world of order. Remember, that's his goal, is to create chaos out of what God intended for order. Noah finds grace in God's eyes, and so God gives him the plans for the ark, and so it takes him, what, 120 years to build the ark? And through all that time, he's, You can imagine a man like Noah, he's trying to share this with people, and obviously a lot of questions about what in the world are you building here? And I don't know that he ever used the word bridge. I'm not building a bridge, I'm building an ark. But he was definitely, this ark was definitely going from, you could say, one dispensation into the next, if you're talking about ecological terms and things like that. And because of the worldwide flood that is coming. But God used the ark to preserve those eight people, preserve the animals, and God gave them a new earth, if you will, a changed earth, radically changed earth. And if we study some of the archeological digs and And even locally, I was driving around and saw a few places where they were excavating or leveling out some of the hillsides. Since there are plenty of those around here, they needed a few flat places to build on. And just the different rock layers, the different layers of dirt. and we're in central Illinois we have you know things are a lot flatter there and so a lot of places we have you know three to six eight feet of topsoil and then you get to clay under that and you could just dig for a long way before you hit any any rock at all and so You could say that I guess y'all are built on more solid ground than we are. But it's amazing studying those different geological variations across not only North America but around the world and realizing that there were some significant changes that happened during this time of the flood. And all of that was in preparation for God to give mankind a new start. And we realize that even with a new start, starting with eight people, obviously that had seen God working in their lives and seen them, they saw God bringing the flood. They saw God working in the life of Noah so that he could build the ark, which was no small feat, and be that bridge into the new world. The Old Testament was laying the foundation for Jesus. When Jesus came as the bridge between the Old and the New Testament, he spent a lot of time in his teachings in helping people understand the structure of that bridge. And it was not an easy task because they had their idea of what this bridge should look like. And they weren't quite prepared for the type of building materials that Jesus used. They weren't prepared for the type of construction that Jesus was bringing. As he said that actually this bridge is about your soul, it's not about your body, it's not about your land, but it's a spiritual bridge. They were looking for someone to free them from the Romans. And Jesus said, that's not my primary concern. My primary concern is about your soul and about your relationship with God in heaven and with me. And as we see even some of Jesus' teachings in Matthew five, it says, think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets, I'm not come to destroy, but to fulfill. He said, I'm not doing away with the Old Testament, with the old law, I'm building on that. And he was trying to help them see how he was building on that. He says, I am the way, the truth, and the light. Those are pillars in this bridge. As he was trying to help people believe on him as the son of God. And as he's on the cross, he uses, and he says, it is finished. It is complete. It is done. And where we see that his death on the cross, as Jesus died, Now God offering a final blood sacrifice to satisfy the blood covenant that he had made with Abraham 1,500 years before. But now that blood sacrifice covered that, not temporarily, but for eternity. As a result of that, 1 Peter says, ye also as lively stones are built up a spiritual house and holy priesthood. Anytime we see priesthood, think of that bridge. Now we are that holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. So now we enter as part of that bridge, part and parcel with Jesus Christ. We see the rapture as being the fulfillment of this when the church of Jesus Christ goes to be with Jesus Christ. 1 Thessalonians 4 15 to 17 says, for this we say unto you by the word of the Lord that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. This is King James. The word prevent there actually means we will not go before, that will not come before. It doesn't mean to stop. "'but we will not come before them which are asleep. "'For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven "'with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, "'and with the trump of God, "'and the dead in Christ shall rise first. "'Then we which are alive and remain "'shall be caught up together with them in the clouds "'to meet the Lord in the air, "'and so shall we ever be with the Lord.'" And at that point, there will be no more need for a bridge. That's a fulfillment of it, it's a completion of it. and praise the Lord for that. I'd like to conclude with another poem by Martha Snell Nicholson. I shared one with the youth last evening. Martha was a lady who dealt with a lot of pain in her life. And it seems like out of that pain, God gave her the gift of being able to put her thoughts and the thoughts that God gave her into poem form. This is more of an open verse style poem. The title is My Advocate. I sinned. And straightway post haste, Satan flew before the presence of the Most High God and made a railing accusation there. He said, this soul, this thing of clay and sod has sinned. It is true that he has named thy name, but I demand his death. For thou has said, the soul that sinneth, it shall die. Shall not thy sentence be fulfilled? Is justice dead? Send now this wretched sinner to his doom. What other thing could righteous ruler do? And thus he did accuse me day and night, and every word he spoke, O God, was true. Then quickly one rose up from God's right hand, before whose glory angels veiled their eyes. He spoke, each jot and tittle of the law must be fulfilled. The guilty sinner dies. But wait, suppose, suppose his guilt were transferred to me and that I paid his penalty. Behold my hands, my side, my feet, One day I was made sin for him and died that he might be presented faultless at thy throne. And Satan fled away. Full well he knew that he could not prevail against such love, for every word my dear Lord spoke was true. Let's kneel for prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your love. Thank you for Jesus, who came and died for us, becoming that bridge. And Lord, I pray that for each one here, that we would accept that bridge, and accept your love, accept the sacrifice that you gave for us, that our sins could be washed white as snow. Lord, thank you for being our advocate. Thank you for being the one who has died for us. And Lord, I pray that our lives would bring you honor and glory, for you alone are worthy. We wanna thank you and praise your name. We pray this in your name, amen. As a result of Jesus' love in our lives, as was mentioned numerous times, even in our Sunday school, that's what gives us the love that we can share with other people. First Corinthians 13 talks, known as the love chapter, and has so many different aspects of love. And sometimes we see different pieces of love working together as in a congregation, as in a community. And so I'd like to ask my family to come forward if they'd be so gracious to come and join me. And the song we'd like to sing is entitled Love One Another. And it has, ends up being four different melodies, all with aspects of love that work together. And so may we, as God's people, be known to be ones that love each other. Love one another, for love is of God. He who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. God is love. God is love, one another's hope, for love is love's guide. He who loves is born a child of God and loves God. God is love. God is love. God is love. Love one another, love is a guide. He who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God. For God is love, God is love.