This parable has been at the center of much recent debate and controversy regarding 'the doctrine' of hell and has made people 'uncomfortable'...as it surely did when Jesus' spoke it, albeit for entirely different reasons. I've got to leave for work in round 20 minutes and I would like to add something of clarity and value to the conversation so I'd like to prayerfully engage this over the weekend when I will add to this post...if you are one of the few who read this blog (my cousin says just put the word 'hell' in the title of your post and twice as many people will visit...we'll see), your thoughts are welcomed...I pray you'll forgive me this morning...
I will, however, leave you with this thought for today though...
Good insight is the Tree of Life (Proverbs 3v18) - good insight with no evil at all, since no evil abides there, it is good insight without evil. Since it's written 'He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in His mouth.' These are acts of love, actualized...the mercies shown to David in Messiah (Isaiah 55v3), declared to the world in Messiah Jesus, manifested and carried forward in the living Body of Christ inhabited by the Holy Ghost, God with us, Immanuel. As it's also written, 'I have put my words in your mouth and covered you in the shadow of my hand, to plant heavens and to establish the earth.' (Isaiah 51v16)
.......into the Word
Well, it's Sunday and so far the day has consisted of prayer and discussing this parable with my sons while sitting in the garage...home church @ the G-crib :-)...then we were off to go fishing at the inlet where we met some really cool guys. Ayden was still asking questions about the parable while Sebastian maneuvered between a couple of the guys to try and get a line in the water. The guys, one with a big crucifix round his neck, joked around about it being almost time to get their drink on while another showed the boys some neat fishing tips that ol' salties pick up over the years. They really took to us and even invited us to a lunch of Hebrew National hot dogs from a little portable grill they had brought with them. They seemed to all be friends, but one guy in particular appeared to garner the respect of all...managing the equipment, directing the others to either side of the pier when a school would gather so they could send the nets out. It was this guy who invited us to lunch and even gave the boys a little bell that clips on the line so that it rings when there is a fish on. It's been a day of blessing.
The parable of Lazarus and Dives emerges from the lips of Jesus after he has demonstrated a firm explanation of why it is He is partying and celebrating with outcasts, has turned the tables on the assumption that earthly riches somehow equate to right standing before God and now with this opportunity... He uses one of their own parables (Lazarus and Dives was not original to Jesus) fraught with Hellenistic imagery (ironically)to direct them to the eternal importance of doing, not charity for the sake of charity, or mitzvah for the sake of mitzvah...but to repent and to do righteous deeds in order to begin to exercise their humanity, to be what they were created to be, the Children of Light...
I have to ask, are we exercising the right of ours that Jesus payed for with tremendous suffering and even His own life? Or are we content to argue, in our comfortable homes over a latte, over the theology of hades while Lazarus stands at our doorstep, suffering, begging for scraps, blistered and bloodied, while the sandpaper tongue of wild dogs runs over and further infects the wounds? Wounds that we have the power, the means and the God given directive to heal?
Whether you, as an individual, one day find yourself in a place of eternal fiery torment alongside those rebellious spirits and demons, or if you are swept away like chaff into utter annihilation or even if you simply die and never wake up again. If you do not follow the Word of God, you will have suffered eternal loss...the loss of your humanity, you will forever be something less than human and beyond pity, having forsook your image bearingness...you will have lost what it is to walk with God in the cool of the day in absolute peace and paradise...Why? Because you were too busy and self centered to love the people God loves...the poor, the suffering and the destitute.
You may say to yourself, how is this possible? It is so hard for someone where I am, as a middle class American, to enter the Kingdom...I say, with God, all things are possible. In the parable, Abraham said there was no way across that chasm...Jesus said, "Before Abraham, I AM! YHVY! Jesus went on, despite the parable, to raise a poor man, His friend, named Lazarus from the dead, demonstrating not only His authority over death, and this parable, but His unrelenting love that will find a way to set the captives free...whether they be the captives of poverty and disease or the captives of wealth and prominence and then YHVY raised Jesus, whom you crucified! YHVY will stop at nothing, whether its overturning temple tables or even the very parables He speaks to save His good creation. Where were you when He laid its foundations? Or where were you when He set the stars in the heavens? The Word of God however, through Him and for Him all things have been created, the Son of God is superior to Moses and the Prophets and He is Lord above the Earth and on the Earth and below the Earth. Jesus is Lord, repent for the Kingdom of God has come near to you and He is coming...to judge the living and the dead...Hopefully all you hear in these words is encouragement to turn towards our loving and gracious Father and Jesus Christ our Lord; however, there is nothing wrong with a warning when there is certainly something to be warned of, our God is an all consuming fire, those who do not come into the Light...shrink back because they know what they do has not been done in God. I am confident of greater things for you though, because you are not of those who shrink back.
Go in the grace and favor of the Lord.
Sweet, and you will get more reads.
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