Last week we discussed the fate of Lazarus. Though his suffering
in this life was pronounced, it was offset both by the presence
of God in his heart throughout his earthly misery and by the
eternal inheritance awaiting him the moment he breathed his
last.
This
morning we will see, conversely, that while the rich man lived
a life surrounded by comfort and pleasure and luxury, all of
this was offset by the eternity of torment awaiting him
at his end.
Read
with me the last part of verse 22 and the first part of verse
23 we read, “The rich man also died and was buried. In hell,
where he was in torment…” stop there. The word translated here
as “hell” is the Greek word “Hades”. Hades doesn't refer to
hell as we understand hell. Hades is the place of the dead or
the state of death. Lazarus is also in Hades, he also is in
the state of death or place of dead, but he's not in torment,
he's at the side of Abraham and with Christ. Hades refers to
the location of the spirit between the death of the body and
the resurrection of the body.
Jesus
says that death will not take you to a hazy, ghostlike, dreamlike,
sleep state. It's not a sinking into nothingness. There is in
Hades, both a place of torment and a place of comfort. You will
go to one or the other. Lazarus, as a believer, is at the side
of Abraham in the presence of Christ, he is, we are told in
verse 25, “comforted”. The Rich man is not with Abraham, not
in the presence of Christ. He is, he says in verse 24, in agony.
He is in the place of torment.
The
Greek word translated as torment (23) is “Basanos.” Basanos,
when not used in the context of life after death, refers to
two things. The first is a black stone that was used to test
the purity of gold. You'd rub gold against the Basanos and the
value of the gold, whether it was true or false, would be laid
bare. The second use of the word Basanos, and I'm quoting here,
is in reference to “an instrument of torture by which one is
forced to divulge the truth.” Maybe you can see why the Holy
Spirit chose to use that word in reference to the place where
the rich man found himself. He was in torment because his wealth
and status and pretension and pride and hypocrisy had been ripped
away and the smallness of his heart, the rebellion and hardness
and coldness and emptiness of his heart, the truth about the
rich man had been laid bare and he was made to see himself in
the searing truth revealing light and glory and majesty of God.
That caused him agony.
Most
people wander along the broad road of life never seriously considering
what happens after death. Many take their cues about the afterlife
from hallmark cards, or sitcoms or movies about people dying,
going to heaven, and then maybe coming back in another body.
I asked a couple what they think happens after death. The woman
said. “Well I believe in reincarnation”. Why do you believe
in that? “I saw a movie where this guy died and came back as
a woman because he was so mean to women during his life.” That
was it. She was banking her eternal destiny on something she
got from a movie. Go to the average funeral of a non-believer
and you see a kind of assumption that the deceased is doing
in death what he was doing here. He just goes on doing it forever.
So if he loved beer, his friends will talk about all the beer
he must be drinking and maybe they'll pour beer out on his grave.
If he loved to party they'll try to make the funeral like a
party and tell stories about the crazy things he did and try
to make themselves believe that he's in a big party in the sky
and I understand that. How else do you deal with death when
you're trying to avoid the fact of death and the truth of God?
Paul
tells us that all of this is a façade; that, in fact,
everyone knows of God's existence and knows that they owe him
worship and obedience, but everyone naturally and willfully
suppresses this knowledge:
“
18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all
the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth
by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is
plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For
since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his
eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being
understood from what has been made, so that men are without
excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified
him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became
futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.” (Romans 1:18-21)
People
know God exists and they know they are accountable to him but
the Holy Spirit tells us that they willingly suppress this knowledge.
Why? The promise of God is that whoever seeks will find. No
matter where someone lives if they honestly seek God, God will
reveal the gospel and if they repent, they'll be saved. Why
suppress the knowledge of God? It seems to make no sense.
But
it does. Honestly seeking God ultimately means acknowledging
the existence and nature of God, as Paul says, and that means
relinquishing your personal autonomy; it means recognizing that
there's a power above and beyond you to whom you must give account.
It means acknowledging that your life is subject to a law that
you do not make and cannot change and, ultimately, that you
cannot live up to and facing all of this is a sort of torment.
If you've come to Christ you've had to face all of that and
fall down before Christ at the foot of his cross seeking his
grace and mercy and trusting in him alone and you've been embraced
by God and raised up and forgiven and made right with the Father.
But apart from God's grace, human beings are unwilling to accept
that and so they purposefully and willingly suppress the truth,
trying vainly and desperately to shut God out of their vision.
They'll use wealth and pleasure and family and business and
scholarly skepticism and constant television and golf and entertainment
to keep themselves from facing what they know to be true in
order to live out their lives as they see fit and in accordance
with the law of their own desires and decisions.
The
torment of hell is that the truth is fully revealed and there's
no hiding. Those who've spent their lives suppressing the truth
about God and surrounding themselves with props and entertainments
and luxuries so as not to face the fact of God's nature and
existence, those who have been empty but rather than seek God
to find satisfaction and safety in him have rejected him and
filled themselves with anything and everything else, in order
to be their own master, their own God, will be exposed finally
to the truth and there will be nowhere to hide and it will be
torment. It will be Basanos. It will be an eternity without
comfort, with out relief, hating God and yet eternally confronted
with the truth of his power and existence.
Look
at verse 24: “Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus
to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue because
I am in agony in this fire.” Since his body is buried, we know
that Jesus is employing metaphor. The agony of the rich man
is spiritual not physical but that doesn't make it less intense.
There are two things we should notice that will give us insight
into his agony.
First,
his attitude is unchanged. During his lifetime the rich man
had no regard for Lazarus. He thought himself worthy of luxury
and Lazarus worthy of contempt. He still does. He doesn't even
address Lazarus, “Have Lazarus come and bring me water.” He
refers to Lazarus in the same way he might have once referred
to a slave. Despite his agony, he's still proud, still self-centered.
He has no sense of sorrow or repentance for the way he treated
Lazarus or they way he lived his life.
Don't
think that people experiencing the torment of hell, wish they
could repent. They don't. Like rich man, the attitudes of the
heart become more pronounced; they're set after death. If you're
hard hearted toward God now and hardened toward others, when
you die, you will for eternity become more so. Repentance must
come now in this life or it will not come.
Notice,
second, what the rich man longs for. He doesn't want to be with
Abraham. He doesn't long for the Lord. He's not in agony because
he longs for God but can't get there. He doesn't want any of
that. He wants the comfort of heaven without God. He does not
say, “Father Abraham, please let me be with you.” He says please
let me enjoy what you have without having to go where you are.
That, if you remember, was the attitude of the crowds who followed
Jesus. Lord, they said, “heal us, give us bread, drive out our
demons, we love it when you do these things but you can keep
your cross, you can keep your suffering, you can have the rest
of all that stuff. We want the pleasures you bring without commitment
to you.” In hell, the cry is the same, “We want the blessings
of the kingdom but, literally, we'll be damned before bow to
the king.”
That
attitude begins right here. People want the blessings of God
without God. They want satisfaction without the commitment.
That's the earthly torment that foreshadows the eternal one,
a desperate desire for heavenly relief and comfort and pleasure
without the God of Heaven. And they can't find it. That's why
they are in torment and that torment will, unless they repent,
continue forever. That is the warning of this text. Once you
die, your eternal destiny is fixed. There's no going from heaven
to hell or hell to heaven. There is, as Abraham says in verse
26, a great chasm fixed between the two. But don't misunderstand.
People are not kept out of heaven against their will. The chasm
is the stone cold heart. Hell is the perfect expression of human
autonomy. God allows all have rejected him in life the freedom
to continue to reject him in death. The difference is that in
hell the comforts and blessings of God's creation are removed.
God lets people have their own way and know the full consequences
that way brings.
Okay,
this has been a tough section of scripture so let's end by looking
at the cross of Christ. Every single one of us whether rich
or poor, ought to go where the rich man went. But not all of
us will because Jesus Christ went there in our place. That's
precisely what God the Son did. He willingly experienced the
eternal spiritual and physical torment and agony of hell in
one day. There's no suffering like the suffering of Christ because
he suffered the consequences of every single believer's hell.
Take the rich man's experience and multiply it by everyone who
has ever or will ever believe.
God
loves the rich men and women, the sinners of this world, us,
so much that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes
in him should not perish but have eternal life. He does not
desire that any perish, but that all come to repentance. That's
the heart of God, that's the heart of the gospel.
