16 Luke - Don’t Miss Jesus

By Richard

During Advent last December I was reading though the Gospels for the second time, I read the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, in Luke 16. The rich man ignores Lazarus, the beggar at his gate. They both die and the rich man ends up in hell and the poor man ends up next to Abraham in heaven (on his lap actually, but for some of us the idea of ending up on another man’s lap is not our idea of heaven). The rich man wants a drink and asks Abraham to send Lazarus over to hell with some water. Abraham tells him, “No can do!” So the rich man asks Abraham to at least warn his family back on earth. To which Abraham replies, “They have the law and the prophets to warn them!” The rich man ends up pleading, “Please can you send someone back from the dead – and then they’ll really believe”.

We read, Abraham replied, “If they won’t listen to Moses and the Prophets, they’re not going to be convinced by someone who rises from the dead!” (Luke 16: 31)

As I read the parable I had a couple of thoughts about how it related to Advent.

Firstly, Jesus told this story to the religious leader’s just after he told the religious leaders that they were faking it by making themselves look good on the outside. Not a popular thing to do! I don’t know what you think, but I think that the parable is more than just a story about looking after the poor. I think that Jesus is setting up things to shortly prove that religious leaders did not take Moses and the prophets as seriously as they publicly claimed. Not long after in Jesus ministry (we find the story in John 11), another Lazarus does come back from the dead after 4 days in the tomb. While we’re told that this becomes a turning point of belief for many Jews, many of the religious leaders got together and said to each other, “This guy Jesus is getting too good and if we don’t want to loose our job we’re going to have to kill him.” They were masters of religion, but their own ego had blinded them to the truths of Scripture. They missed the most important thing ever to happen on earth – the coming of Jesus.

Now I don’t want you to miss the coming of Jesus and maybe a good question to ask at this point is this. Do we believe the story of God in the bible? If we don’t, we need to be honest about what is getting in the way? Is it sincere doubts? Is it ignorance? Is it pride? Is it some untruths that we’ve brought into? Is it lack of interest? And, what can we do as a church to help you believe?

Secondly, I think the story of the rich man and Lazarus reminds us of how foundational our belief in the bible really is. The story suggests that the trustworthiness of scripture is a greater basis for faith than witnessing a man rise from the dead. It’s like building a building. Build a small building and we only need a small foundation. Build a huge office block and you need much bigger foundations. If our belief in the bible is minimal we’re not going to be able to build much of a Christian faith. If our belief in the bible is bigger we can build a bigger faith.

My prayer is that that through this blog we are going to end up more confident in the truth of Christ’s reality and by so doing closer to Jesus himself