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The Sermon for Sunday, September 28th, 2025, the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity
The Lessons: Psalm 146; Amos 6:1-7; Luke 16:19-31
The Text: Luke 16:19-31
INTRODUCTION
Sheikha was born about sixty years ago to a Bedouin family that roamed across vast areas of the Middle East. Today her tribe is forced to live in one place because their nomadic ways are unwelcomed by landowners and considered a security threat by governments.
Sheikha’s life fell short of the noble designs her parents had for her. Where she lives is not part of any country. Fierce fighting flares between Jews and Arabs only a few miles away. Also, the husband with whom she had six children abandoned her, leaving Sheikha to fend for herself and a disabled daughter.
Though uneducated, Sheikha is resourceful. She scraped together some cash, bought a couple of junkyard buses, and had them towed to her village of fifteen hundred people. Sheikha and her daughter live in one bus and planned to open a little convenience market in the shell of the other. With the help of HOPE, a Christian organization, she has done that.
HOPE loaned the money Sheika needed to fill her shop with small items like soap, school supplies, and basic medicines. The store is a great service to the village, a great way for Sheikha to make a living, and a big witness to Muslims. “I prefer to be with Christians because they feel for the poor who need help,” Sheikha says. “The others didn’t look after me, not even my husband.”
– Kevin Miller, “Christians Help Muslim Widow,” PreachingToday.com[1]
The responsibility Christians have to help the poor is emphasized in various places in the Old and New Testaments of our Bible. Jesus’ Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus stands as a contrast to the Parable of the Dishonest Steward earlier in the same chapter. In the earlier parable, a dishonest estate manager uses his position and authority dishonestly but wisely to make lasting friends for himself, and the lesson from this is that one must be generous with one’s resources to help others, and this will lead one to a certain welcome in the kingdom of heaven. In the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, however, we see that habitual neglect of the poor by those who have the resources to help them is a pathway to hell.
LUKE 16:19-31: THE PARABLE OF THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS
In this parable, there is no implicit condemnation of the wealthy because they are wealthy. After all, Abraham, in whose close company Lazarus is found after being taken there by the angels, was wealthy on earth. But we have no record in Scripture that Abraham neglected the poor. This parable, then, is not directed against wealthy people in general, but only against those who neglect the poor habitually.
In this parable, no causes of either the rich man’s wealth or Lazarus’s poverty are suggested. The parable itself may be divided into two scenes: the first is the lifestyle of the wealthy man and the extremely poor condition of Lazarus; the second is their situations in the afterlife, following the death of each. The second scene receives more detailed treatment than the first, and there is even the addition of the rich man’s plea for Lazarus to be sent to warn his brothers, so that they may not come to hell.
As we consider the introduction to the parable, we note that the rich man is not given a name, but the poor man is given the name of Lazarus. Why is this? Perhaps from the rich man’s perspective, it is the poor man who should be nameless because there are so many of them. Jesus, in naming the poor man, but leaving the rich man nameless, reverses this discriminatory perspective. By this he shows that there is no one so poor as not to be known and to have a name. Whenever this parable is read and remembered, Christians will remember that the poor man’s name is Lazarus, but there are many wealthy people who fit the role of the rich man in this parable.
We read about the rich man that he was clothed in purple and fine linen and that he feasted sumptuously every day (Luke 16:19). Purple clothes and linen tunics would have been extremely expensive in those days. Only the rich could afford them. Likewise, only the rich could afford to feast every day. Then, by contrast, a certain beggar called Lazarus was laid at the gate of the rich man, and he was full of sores. He wanted to be fed from the scraps which fell from the rich man’s table, and even the dogs came and licked his sores. We are not told whether Lazarus received scraps from the rich man’s table or not. These scraps would normally be fed to the household dogs. Perhaps Lazarus did receive some scraps from the rich man’s table but had to share them with the dogs that licked his sores. The fact that Lazarus had been laid at the rich man’s gate meant that he was disabled, and this could have been the reason for his poverty. But we are not told the reasons for his poverty, nor is it implied that Lazarus was poor because he was guilty of some sin. What we can conclude, however, is that the rich man, even if he gave the poor man a few scraps from his table, did not offer any generous amount of food that might have helped him regain his health.
After death, the situation changes completely. The angels carry Lazarus to the bosom of Abraham, which is really an indication that Lazarus was in the close company of Abraham enjoying the comforts of paradise with him. Literally, it is a picture of Abraham embracing Lazarus. By contrast, the rich man finds himself in torment in Hades, which is hell, and, thinking that Lazarus is a kind of servant, just as he would have thought of poor people in his earthly life, he pleads with Abraham to send Lazarus to cool with his tongue with a drop of water (Luke 16:24).
Abraham gives two reasons why he cannot send Lazarus. The first is that Lazarus in his earthly life received evil things when the rich man received good things, whereas now Lazarus is comforted but the rich man is tormented by the flames of hell. If we think about it, this statement turns on its head the argument people often use in this life for not helping the poor: “The poor just happen to be poor, and we happen to be rich. They must just put up with their poverty, while we enjoy our riches.” This argument ignores one’s responsibility to help the poor, especially if one is a Christian. The argument implied by Abraham’s reply to the rich man is that as you did not see it as your responsibility to help the poor while you lived on earth, heaven does not acknowledge any responsibility to help you now in the afterlife. The second reason is that there is a great chasm fixed between heaven and hell, so that no-one can cross from one to the other (Luke 16:25-26). The implications of this statement are clear for the Christian doctrine of the afterlife. By the time a person dies, their eternal destiny is fixed. It is either heaven or hell. After you have died, no-one can pray you out of hell into heaven.
THE POWER OF GOD’S WRITTEN WORD
The rich man finally added his last request: that Abraham would send Lazarus to warn his five brothers still living on earth not to come to hell. Abraham’s answer is very terse: the brothers must pay attention to the Law and the Prophets. These were the most well-known sections of the Old Testament known to the Jews in the first century A.D. For us, it is the whole of the written word of God, the Bible. The written word of God is enough to lead a person to repentance and salvation. The mistaken notion that the rich man presents to Abraham is that if someone should rise from the dead to warn his brothers, they will surely repent. To this the answer comes that if they refuse to hear, that is, to listen to and obey, Moses and the prophets, then they will not be persuaded, even if someone should rise from the dead and appear to them (Luke 16:31).
CONCLUSION
Today we have not only the Law and the Prophets, but all of the Bible to guide us to salvation as it is found by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and to living a holy, righteous life, helping the poor when we can, so that it may appear from the fruit of our faith that we are citizens of the kingdom of heaven.
[1] p.180, Craig Brian Larson & Phyllis Ten Elshof (General Editors): 1001 Illustrations that Connect. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, Christianity Today International, 2008.