Sermon Tone Analysis

Bookmarks & Needs:

B: Luke 16:19-31

Housekeeping Stuff & Announcements:

Welcome guests, introduce yourself.

Thank the band.

Invite guests to parlor after service.

Our student ministry, COMPLETED grades 6-12, will be attending BCNM Student Camp at Inlow this week, June 24-28.

Please keep them in your prayers this week as they look at the theme of Koinonia.

We will pray for them collectively in a moment.

We are going to again have our Independence Day church-wide picnic on Thursday evening, July 4, beginning at 6pm out front in the courtyard.

You can bring your food to eat, and we will have hot dogs, chips, watermelon, and drinks.

Bring a summer dessert or some homemade ice cream to share, and your safe and legal fireworks to set off.

We’ll have some lawn games and we’ll have a great time together!

Feel free to invite your friends, and maybe even your one.

If you were unaware, we do have online giving for those who are interested in it.

You can find it through our website.

But what I wanted to let everyone know about today is that our online payment provider recently updated their look and feel for the online giving page, and so it will look different the next time you go there.

If you get there through the website, it is legit, even if it looks strange.

Give quick prayer update for Georgia Crabtree and Barbara Shiplet.

Opening

I have a confession to make.

I’m not super comfortable preaching today’s message.

It’s not that I’m not convicted by today’s passage or the truth that it contains, because I am.

It’s more that

Pray, including praying for our student ministry going to camp.

We are nearing the end of our series called “Who’s Your One?” We’ve been considering the importance of evangelism, with the hope that as we consider how important evangelism is in the life of the church, being evangelistic will become a part of who we are, a part of our DNA.

We’re asking the question, “Who’s Your One?”, meaning who is one person that you believe God would have you share the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ with this year.

We have maybe one or two more weeks to go in this series, and then we’ll be on to a study of the book of ’m looking forward to us going through that book together.

But for this morning, I want to give a short recap of what we’ve looked at thus far in our “Who’s Your One?” Series:

We started with the calling of Andrew, Peter, James, and John by the Sea of Galilee in .

We looked at the definition of a disciple: a committed, lifelong learner and follower of Jesus.

And we saw the fact that at salvation Jesus calls us and we respond in surrender to Him and His will.

Those who are disciples of Jesus are called to reproduce spiritually, and that includes evangelism.

Then we looked at the healing of the paralytic whose friends did all that they could to bring their friend to Jesus in .

We considered that disciples of Jesus should join in Jesus’s mission in : to seek and to save the lost.

After that, we saw the calling of Philip and Nathanael in , and gave some thought to the need for us to be intentional witnesses for Jesus, turning away from our excuses and fears.

Then after VBS, we looked at the call of Saul in , and we learned about how God calls each of us to have an amazing encounter with Him, and that we have privilege of sharing that invitation with those we share the Gospel with.

Last week was Father’s Day, and we considered the introduction to , and the idea that we must have a multigenerational perspective: that we tell each other and the next generation what God has done, so they will tell the next generation, and so on and so on, so that God’s name and fame will be magnified.

Again, the point is that we be challenged and encouraged to share the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ with those in our circle of influence, and it all begins with ONE.

Passage Study

Our passage this morning brings to light another reason that we must be willing to share with our One: because every one of us has an eternal destiny in store for us.

Let’s start with a discussion about the passage itself this morning, as it has a couple of interesting questions.

TEACH THE PASSAGE

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What kind of passage is this?

Most would say that it is a parable, which is a story with an eternal meaning or point.

Most commentaries call it a parable as well, However, if it is a parable, then it is unique among Jesus’ parables, because He does something in it that He doesn’t do in any other parable: He gives a character a name.

Look at every other parable, and none of the characters have names.

They only have titles: the younger son, the landowner, the persistent widow, the shrewd manager, the unmerciful servant.

But here, we have a character with a given name: Lazarus.

There are three ways to take this fact:

Jesus just felt like naming this character.

It is, after all, His parable and He can do what He wants to do with the characters;

Jesus named this particular character this, Lazarus, for a particular purpose; and

This isn’t a parable at all, but is instead a historical account that only Jesus could have known about.

I find the first reason unlikely.

Sure, Jesus can do what He wants with His parable characters, but I highly doubt that this choice had ZERO meaning.

So what about possibility number 2? Could Jesus have had some reason for naming this character Lazarus?

Certainly He could have.

The name Lazarus means, “One whom God helps.”

This would certainly be a fitting name for a character such as Lazarus, whom God does indeed help.

Not only that, but very likely later in the ministry of Jesus, he raised another Lazarus from the dead, and rather than believing because of that incredible miracle, the religious leaders decided that not only did Jesus need to die, but probably Lazarus as well.

We find that in .

So then, Jesus uses the name before raising Lazarus to essentially predict what the Pharisees were going to do when someone named Lazarus really did rise from the dead: They would simply not believe, which is exactly what Abraham in the story said would happen.

This is definitely a fair position to hold, and one that is especially good if you take as a parable.

NOT SURE IF I WANT TO KEEP STUFF BELOW THIS

I have to admit that I struggle taking this as a parable because of the uniqueness of the story.

However, while I think that this is an actual historical account that only Jesus could have known about, I can’t say that with total certainty.

NOT SURE IF I WANT TO KEEP STUFF BELOW THIS

There are just some things about it that lead me in that direction, especially when put together with passages like :

Hades gets destroyed in the lake of fire, which we commonly think of as hell.

So, while we often think about this passage in Luke as a passage about hell, I tend to think of this as something else… an intermediate state for the wicked between physical death and final judgment.

Not a place like the Catholic idea of purgatory, a place where baptized people go to work off their sin, still with a hope of salvation.

No, this would be a place where the beginnings of the eternal judgment of God are dispensed before God wraps everything up.

If you

NOT SURE IF I WANT TO KEEP STUFF ABOVE THIS.

NOT SURE IF I WANT TO KEEP STUFF ABOVE THIS.

NOT SURE IF I WANT TO KEEP STUFF ABOVE THIS.

Regardless of how you take this passage, as a story of hell itself or something different, the point is the same: this is a story of judgment.

This passage paints a great picture, whether it is a parable or not, of the fact that there is a fixed destiny for each person.

says that it is appointed to man to die once, and after that to face judgment.

One of the things that I noticed when I was studying this passage this week is the number of contrasts that are found in it.

These contrasts make up the basis of the story:

luke 16:

The first contrast that we see between the rich man and Lazarus is a contrast in life:

Contrast in Life

The rich man is, well… rich.

And Lazarus is poor.

The rich man has everything he could want, even down to his clothes: he was covered in purple and fine linen.

Purple cloth was HIGHLY expensive because of the process to create it, using shellfish.

The poor man is also covered, but in something a little less impressive than purple and fine linen.

He was covered alright, but covered in sores.

Ick.

The rich man lived in what essentially amounted to a compound.

He had a gate.

Lazarus, on the other hand, stayed lying down at that gate in the elements.

In this culture, where giving to needy people was seen in a very positive light, Lazarus landed at a place where he should have expected that he was going to be okay.

Either the rich man would care for him, or those coming to the gatherings the rich man held would take care of him, because they were probably rich too.

But it doesn’t appear that that’s what happened.

The rich many would feast lavishly every day.

He never had to give any thought to where his next meal was coming from.