Luke 16:19-31 - God requires us to care for the poor

What is the most important thing we do around here, in our church? What’s at the top of the list? We do a lot of things here. We teach Sunday School and lead Cadets and Gems and Young People’s. We meet for committee meetings and plan fellowship dinners and worship services and prayer meetings. We fix the building. We take offerings for the school. We do a lot.

What’s the most important thing we do? What should we make sure we’re doing before we do anything else? The Bible doesn’t really tell us, does it? If it did, we would make sure we were doing it, because we want to obey God. We want to do what He tells us to do. But if there WERE a list of the most important things God wants us to do, one of those things would be to take care of the poor. Yes, God wants His people to learn, to study, to hear His word spoken. But if there were a list of things to do in the church, right up there near the top would be to take care of the poor.

Is that near the top of our list? Is this one of the most important things we do around here? In some ways, it is. Our deacons do incredible benevolent work, and they do that because you give very generously to the benevolent fund. God has used this church to help in many, many ways. So, as we hear God speak in Luke 16, we are being faithful, in many ways.

But have we arrived? Are we doing all we can? And is helping the poor near the top of our list? When we think of our church, who we are, why we exist, is one of the first things we think about helping the poor? And if it’s not, is there a danger, just like with the nation of Israel, that we would cease to exist?

This is an interesting story, isn’t it, here in Luke 16? There’s a lot of intriguing details to this story, about angels and heaven and hell and a great chasm between heaven and hell. And for many, that’s the main point of this story, to give us a glimpse beyond this life. We are curious, and so we pay attention to these details.

But that’s not the point that Jesus wants to make as He tells this story. In fact, if we focus on the details about heaven and hell, we’ll be doing exactly what the rich man in the story was doing...ignoring the poor.

The gospel of Luke repeats again and again God’s compassion on the poor. In Matthew’s beatitudes, we hear

In Luke’s version we hear:

And the story that Jesus tells us here illustrates that. Verse 19:

I think we’ve heard this story so many times that we know we should "boo" at this point. Rich man bad. Lazarus good. But if this wasn’t a Bible story, and we came across an article about a man who had done well, he’d invested in Apple before ipods were invented, he’s living very comfortably. He still works, but he’s able to get away when he wants, he has the financial freedom to make his own choices. Hey, that’s sound pretty good, don’t you think? Honestly, wouldn’t we be a little jealous of his comfort. Honestly, isn’t the American dream all about investing well and reaching that level of wealth?

And as we see the rich man, who has it all, verse 20:

And again, we know how the story goes, we know where Lazarus ends up, so we like Lazarus. But let’s pretend we didn’t know this story. We see a man, covered with sores, with a sign saying, "Will work for food" standing next to a road. Our minds are going to naturally think, "Well, what did he do to get himself into this predicament. Probably blew all his money on drugs or alcohol. Probably doesn’t really know how to work. And what are those sores on his body? What kind of disease is he carrying? Is it, could it be AIDS? How did he get that disease? What did he do?

This far in the story, it seems pretty clear. To be rich is to be comfortable. To be poor raises all kinds of uncomfortable issues, questions that we would just rather not deal with. But then we come to verse 22, and everything flips around:

Abraham’s side is a curious way of describing where Lazarus the beggar goes. Some of us will remember versions of this text say that Lazarus is carried to Abraham’s bosom. The imagery here is of a feast, sitting together at a table. Lazarus is seated next to Abraham at this great feast prepared for us. It brings to mind Psalm 23:5:

Which is exactly the picture in verse 23:

Again, let’s not get distracted here. We don’t want to focus on whether we can see people in hell from heaven, whether we can talk to them. That’s not what this is about.

This is about the flip of an economy. On earth, the rich man was on the right side of the economy. He had. Lazarus didn’t. It was only natural for the rich man to keep what he had and not help Lazarus. But in God’s economy, things are exactly backwards. In God’s economy, the way to success is not in accumulating. It’s in helping. In God’s economy, the rich are those who care, the poor are those who hoard.

And the rich man is starting to understand. In verse 24, he asks for Lazarus to do what he himself refused to do on earth. Verse 24:

But things are not what they were. Lazarus isn’t there to serve the rich man anymore. This is life after death, and the situation has flipped. Verse 25:

It’s this simple. The rich man didn’t help the poor man, and he went to hell. Now, of course, when we read the whole Bible, we understand that the only way to be saved is to give our lives over to Jesus, to trust that His death was enough to save us from our sins. But don’t let that take away from the simplicity of this truth: Those who don’t help the poor are in danger of hell.

Are we getting the message? Do we understand that helping those in need is not extra-credit work, that we get the basics down, and then, if we have time, we’ll get to the hurting? Helping the poor is as important as anything else we do around here. Jesus said, in Matthew 25:45:

Are we understanding? Because now is the time. We don’t get a second chance. Verse 27:

The rich man is starting to understand, but for him it’s too late. And Jesus uses this horrible fact to bring the point home. A message can’t be sent back from hell, so be sure to get the message now. God wants us to help. He’s told us this already. Verse 29:

Throughout the Old Testament, God has made this clear. Isaiah 58:7:

Or Deuteronomy 15:4:

In fact, this is why Israel is sent into exile, and actually ceases to be a nation. Amos 2:6-7

But that doesn’t seem as exciting, does it? I mean, those are just normal, plain old Old Testament texts. Come on! If it’s that important, draw some attention to it! Verse 30:

And here’s the harshest statement of the story. Verse 31:

So, then, are we listening? Do we get it? Is this near the top of our list? Are we helping the poor? Like we said before, yes, we are helping through benevolence, through the work of the deacons, the service committee, through individuals in the church. But is there more? Did you hear that word from Moses and the prophets, in Deuteronomy, that there should be no poor among us?

Well, there are poor among us. They’re right at our gates, right here in Hollandale. And they struggle to get enough to eat, and they barely have homes, and yes, some of them have diseases, maybe even AIDS. But we don’t always know who they are, do we? Very often, we help the poor when the poor come asking for help. But the rich man’s failure in this parable was that he didn’t go out to the gate. He didn’t go looking for how to help.

Who lives next door to you, and what do they need? Everybody needs something, and while many don’t need physical, financial help, still a lot do. Who is in your radius, within your eyesight, and what do they need? The first step is to notice. And then, the second step is to help. Sometimes, those needs are so big, so impossible, that we don’t even want to start, because we know we’ll fail. But if we don’t try, then we’ve failed already. If we don’t know the answer, the we go looking for someone who does. We come to our deacons, who have several resources available to them, and not just money resources. They know how to help in bigger ways than just handouts. There are organizations around us, in the county and the state, who can help. But the first step is to notice. The first step is to care.

You know, a man coming back from the dead may not convince us, but Jesus coming back from the dead can change us. We’re 26 weeks out from Easter, and this is the effect that the resurrection has on us. Listen, if a man who was dead three days can walk out of that grave alive, then there’s no problem too big for us to face. And if we share that life, the resurrected life of Jesus, if that’s our life, then we will tackle them. And we’ll conquer.

We got the message, right? We know what we need to do. We have Moses and the prophets, and the resurrected life of Jesus. Now, we’ll care. We’ll help. We’ll encourage. We’ll pick up people who have fallen. We’ll comfort, and someday, we ourselves will be comforted.