2016-06-26 Luke 16:27-31 A Parable About "Me" (5): Razzle Dazzle Me

A PARABLE ABOUT “ME” (5): RAZZLE DAZZLE ME (Luke 16:27-31) June 26, 2016 Intro – Paul told his young protégé, Timothy, in II Tim 3:16-17, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” What equips us? The Word. Anything else? No. The Word is sufficient. But many no longer believe that. Sarah Young authored Jesus Calling, a best-selling book of devotions she claims came directly from Christ. She just wrote what He said. She says, “I knew God communicated with me through the Bible, but I yearned for more. Increasingly I wanted to hear what God had to say to me personally on a given day.” Sounds good, but it violates II Tim, makes an idol of me, putting my experience above God’s revelation, and opens the door to chaos. It leads to statements like Rob Bell in Velvet Elvis: “When people say that all we need is the Bible, it is simply not true.” Seriously? Paul says the Word equips “for every good work.” So who you gonna believe – Bell or the Apostle Paul? Jesus weighs in heavily on Paul’s side in this parable. It’s about hell, yes, but primarily about identity. He’s asking have we identified with Jesus, or are we still identified with self? The outline we’ve followed is I. The Eternal Me is Determined in This Life (Me Unformed) II. Death Reveals but does not Change Me (Me Unveiled). Today we move to vv. 27-31 III. The True Me is Found in God’s Word (New Me Unearthed). A lot of people don’t believe that. They insist it is the Bible plus – plus something. Jesus emphatically denies that. In vv. 27-31 Jesus hammers home the sufficiency of Scripture. A. The Fault-finding (27-28) 27 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.’” Sounds reasonable, but behind this benign request is an unspoken accusation. Lenski comments: “His plea for his brothers is a covert accusation of God who could have prevented his arriving in hell by a simple means but failed to use that means. If the rich man had been warned as he now proposed to have his brothers warned he would not be in this place of torment. Yes, he is more concerned about his brothers than God is, knows better than God how to save them, and blames God for his terrible 28 1 fate.” His plea is a subtle means of blaming God. “If I had been warned I would not be here.” It is a form of self-justification straight from hell. Sound familiar? Sure. We do it -- all the time! Where was God when my daughter got cancer? Or when my boy got on drugs? Or when we lost our house? Where was God? Why didn’t God answer my prayer for money or healing or a job or a good husband? We treat God like a glorified deliver boy when we need Him, accuse Him of negligence when He doesn’t answer as we want and ignore Him most of the time. Meantime, we persistently disobey any command we don’t like. And Jesus is showing us that such an attitude toward a sovereign God comes straight from hell and leads straight to hell. However it appears, God is never unloving, never indifferent and never negligent. And He is never at fault. Never! If we are not believers, the fault is not God’s; it is ours, and we would do well to look to our own lives. And if we are not growing as a believer, the fault is not God’s; it is ours and we would do well to look to our own lives. Finding fault with God is a denial of reality. By asking for a special messenger the rich man is saying, “You didn’t get it right the first time, God – but here is your chance to make it up.” That is the attitude that got him where he is in the first place. He thought he knew better than God – and so do we every time we disobey His commands or question His response in our life. In truth, He is without exception getting it right; it is we who get it wrong. Finding Him at fault only leads to unbelief. It’s easy to decide the ancient rules don’t apply anymore. God’s defined roles in marriage and church– no longer applicable. Warnings against coveting? Today, “greed is good”. God’s definition of sexual mores? Absurd in our day. Loving others above self? Giving up rights for the sake of unity? Never work in our world. God is out of touch. Never more so than when He doesn’t give me what I pray for. We’re like the little boy whose parents were teaching their son about God. “Who made the sun?” “God did.” “Who made the rain?” “God did.” When Mom finds toys scattered everywhere she asks, “Who made this mess?” The well-trained boy answers, “God did!” Just like we blame God for being out of date and failing to cater to our needs and wants. Just like the rich man in hell blamed God. And we are just as wrong as he was! Whatever bitterness we are living with, it ultimate reflects a resentment of God. But finding fault with God means only one thing: something needs to be repented. B. The First Response (29) 2 29 But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ Now, “Moses and the Prophets” is not a rock group! It is a Jewish way of saying the OT – the Bible. In Jesus’ parable, God is saying thru Abe, “No, no, Mr. Rich Man. Your bros don’t need another messenger. They need to listen to the ones I’ve already sent. Moses and the Prophets. They need to pay attention to what I’ve already said in black and white. That’s what they need to do.” Wow! Strong statement of the sufficiency of Scripture, isnt’ it? This parable was aimed right at the Pharisees who would have said they revered the Bible. But they were not all about the Bible. They were all about their modernized, updated interpretation of the Bible. Their lives revolved around their traditions. So Jesus is urging, “Get back to basics. You don’t need another messenger. You need to listen to the ones I’ve already sent.” But they would not. The straight truth of the Bible was too much for them. It was too exacting and condemning, so they made interpretations they could live with. Sound familiar again? It should. It’s exactly what our world does with the Bible, right? That angry God of the OT is unacceptable! Besides, the Bible is scientific and historical nonsense. Yet God says, “This is the bedrock of truth. Ignore this and I have nothing more to say.” It’s been my experience that most people who reject the Bible have never actually read it for themselves. Because while it contains some difficult things, it’s general credibility is overwhelming to an honest seeker of truth. For example the Bible was scientifically accurate for 100’s of years waiting for humans to get there. Two centuries BC Hyparticus counted 1022 stars in the sky – almost as many as in Hollywood! Four centuries later, Ptolomy claimed there were actually 1056 stars. 1400 years later Keppler lost one – claiming 1055. Then came 1610. Galileo invented the telescope, pointed it toward the sky and dropped to his knees. He saw stars without number. And today scientists tell us there are at least 10 24 stars – in the observable universe! Yet 2300 years before Galileo Jeremiah 33:22, “As the host of heaven cannot be numbered.” The Bible knew all along. Science is always catching up with the Bible. Men believed the earth was flat right up to the time of Columbus. Yet 2700 years earlier Isaiah spoke in God-breathed words of “the circle of the earth” (40:22). Job 26:7 described the earth hanging in space on nothing at a time when the rest of the world was insisting it rested on Atlas or an elephant. Job described the evaporation cycle hundreds of years before science caught up (36:7-9). No wonder God says, “You want to know about salvation, look in the Book.” 3 In 1929 at Mt. Wilson in CA Edwin Hubble used a new 100-inch telescope to discover we live in an ever-expanding universe. But that implied a beginning that many unbelievers did not want to accept, so the debate raged in the scientific world for the next 60 years – Big Bang beginning or eternal universe? The Hubble telescope confirmed the expansion. But now scientists have a beginning which they cannot explain by any known observable laws. Thus Nobel laureate physicist, Arno Penzias says, “The best data we have concerning the big bang are exactly what I would have predicted, had I nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, the Bible as a whole." He’s not a believer – just an honest critic. The point is if the Bible speaks with authority even on peripheral subjects, is it any wonder God insists it is the only place to look for salvation? God’s first response to any true seeker is always the same: “‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.” Scripture is sufficient. Go there. C. The Flawed Logic (30) 30 “And he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’” The rich man is now acknowledging need for repentance, but he insists it takes more than Scripture to provoke it. A really impressive miracle – that’s the ticket! That poor Lazarus going back from the dead – that would do it. Give them that and they will surely repent. Scripture is boring! Give them a little razzle dazzle! Convince them! And once again we’ve bought into hell’s philosophy! Today we have a world full of evangelical ministers suggesting we need something more. We are a society driven by the desire for some experience – some further proof – something more to convince us –like the Pharisees constantly asking Jesus for a “sign” despite the unbelievable miracles He was doing on a daily basis. We’re no different, Beloved. We have people writing best-sellers about their journey to heaven and back. We flock to those accounts for confirmation despite the fact that someone who really did have that experience, the Apostle Paul, was specifically prevented from describing his “experience.” And interestingly modern accounts contradict each other – and Scripture! We have modern prophets all of whom willing admit that they are often wrong – one of the more well-known saying, “I figure if I hit two-thirds I’m doing pretty good.” Another commented, “Prophets are really messy. Prophets make mistakes.” He tells of people losing millions of $$ based on bad 4 prophecies. Yet he insists on the validity of his ministry of prophecy. This despite the fact that God long ago advised thru Moses in Deut 18:22, “ 22 when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the LORD has not spoken.” God further says in Deut 18:20, “20 But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak . . . that same prophet shall die.” If we applied that today, we’d eliminate a few! That standard is 100%, Beloved. Not 50%, 2/3 or 90% but 100%. This current fascination with prophecy is just the old Pharisaic insistence on another sign in modern clothing. But God says in Rev 22:18: “18 I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book.” That’s a pretty strong endorsement of the sufficiency of Scripture for a pretty viable source, wouldn’t you say? And by the way – all the “prophets” I quoted above have since been discredited on moral grounds. Beware of anyone placing experience above Scripture. It sounds good, but it is flawed logic. Henry Frost in his book Miraculous Healing says this: “It may confidently be anticipated, as the present apostasy increases, the Christ will manifest His deity and Lordship in increasing measure through miracle-signs, including healings. We are NOT to say, therefore, that the word is sufficient.” Listen, God can heal anytime He chooses and on rare occasions He does. But to say we need that because the Word is not sufficient is rubbish. It is the same flawed logic the rich man in hell used. Experience must be judged in light of revealed truth, not the other way around. To suggest that we are not to say that the Word is sufficient is to make a liar out of God who says in II Tim 3:16-17, “16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” Scripture is sufficient. We just don’t want to study, absorb, meditate on, and consume it. We’re looking for shortcuts -- there aren’t any! D. The Final Answer (31) Here is God’s final word on the subject delivered through Abraham: “If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’” The rich man says, “One more good miracle, and my brothers would repent.” God who knows men’s hearts better than anyone, says, “People who reject my written Word would reject even if someone rose from the dead.” Rejection of Christ is not an intellectual issue; it is a moral issue. People don’t repent because they don’t want to repent. 5 After the feeding of the 5,000, the people came for more! Instead, Jesus gave them the Word: John 6:29: “29 Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” 30 So they said to him, “Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you?” “What sign? I just fed 5,000 of you out of 5 loaves and 2 fish and you ask for a sign?!” God knows faith based on miracles always needs another and then another and then another. Miracles were to authenticate the messenger, not to produce faith. “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of Christ” (Rom 10:17). Need further proof? A man did rise from the dead. Shortly after this Jesus raised Lazarus. In fairness some who had been on the fence did believe. But the reaction of the leading majority? Jn 11:“53 So from that day on they made plans to put him to death.” And just a few weeks after that, when Jesus Himself arose, the reaction was universal skepticism, not universal repentance. People don’t not repent for lack of evidence; they don’t repent because they don’t want to repent. They prefer to run their own life rather than submit to His Lordship; they prefer their own identity to His. God’s final answer is, “You have my Word; live by that. If you refuse that, I have nothing more to say until Judgment Day.” Then He’ll say plenty, but it will be too late. Conc – This parable, then, teaches us that if we want to spend eternity in heaven we must find our true identity in the Christ revealed in the Word. We must be able to say with Paul, “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.” A doctor came up to R. A. Torrey one time complaining that he was getting nothing out of his Bible study. “How can I study it so that it will mean something to me?” he asked. Torrey replied, “Read it.” “I do read it.” “Read it some more.” “How?” “Take some passage and read it 12 times a day for a month.” “What passage?” “Try II Peter,” replied Torrey. So he and his wife did, and he later reported, “Soon I was talking II Peter to everyone I met. I ruined my Bible by marking it up.” His wife replied, “Yes, but as the pages have been getting black, your life has been getting white.” The Word – that’s where you find your identity in Christ an learn to live like it. It is sufficient! Martin Luther: “I have covenanted with my Lord that he should not send me visions or dreams or even angels. I am content with this gift of the Scriptures, which teaches and supplies all that is necessary, both for this life and that which is to come.” To seek more is to question the wisdom and goodness of God. Meet Him where He promises to be – His Word. Let’s pray. 6