Escaping the Horrors of Hell
Luke 16:19-31
I. Beware, lest you walk the path to hell (19-22).
Explanation: The first section of this parable establishes a dynamic contrast between an unnamed rich man and the very poor Lazarus. The two men contrast each other’s in every conceivable way. The rich is clothed in “purple and fine linen” the finest of royal clothing; Lazarus is clothed in festering “sores”. The rich man “feasted sumptuously every day”; Lazarus longed to eat simply the crumbs that “fell” from his table. The rich man lived in a palace replete with “a gate”; Lazarus could only lay outside that gate homeless.
Even in death this contrast could be seen. The rich man “died and was buried” no doubt with great pomp and circumstance; Lazarus “died” and there is no indication he was even given a proper burial.
But the greatest contrast between the two men is found in what happens after their deaths. Lazarus “was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom” a picture of intimate fellowship with the father of Israel, a place of comfort and feasting, heaven. The rich man, on the other hand “lifted up his eyes, in Hades, being in torment.”
We must deal with the torments of hell a little bit later; but at this point it’s this contrast that stands out in the parable. Do you think this man realized that he was headed for a place of torment? Do you think he was prepared to die and go to hell? I tell you one of the awful realities today is that most people who are on the path to hell don’t even know it. Life is good; nice home, nice clothes, plenty of food on the table. What could possibly go wrong?
Illustration: This past week three college girls, softball players decided to go out stargazing in North Dakota. Inexplicably they drove their Jeep head long into a pond. Their frantic cell phone calls to friends only adds to the sense of horror attached to their deaths. How sad for their family and friends. Their life was so full and rich, their futures so bright; they never saw their deaths coming so tragically.
Application: But even more heart wrenching, even more tragic is the fact that countless millions are on the path hell itself for eternity and they don’t even know it. And please notice that this man is not condemned simply because he is rich anymore than Lazarus saved simply because he is poor.
But the story reminds that Jesus did warn us about how difficult it is for the rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. It is easier, in fact, for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter heaven.” (Mark 10:25). You see the poverty of Lazarus did not save him, but his poverty proved to be a good providence pointing him to his need God and causing him to hope in God during his life on earth.
The rich man’s riches did not condemn him to hell but they proved a hindrance to his own attention to his soul. He came to build his life on riches rather than God and that was the problem. If he had built his life on God rather than riches he would have been concerned enough to give of his riches in compassion for the destitute man lying at his gate.
Be careful, my friend, on what you build your life on. Be warned. You need not be a corrupt CEO, or a sex offender, or a terrorist, to wind up in hell. You need only build your life on something, anything, other than God himself. That will do it. And, many, many Americans will be shocked to discover that building their life on the ease and pleasure of a middle class lifestyle was their path to the gates of hell.
Nothing is more important than forsaking anything that you might be building your life on instead of God himself. Whether its possessions, or pleasures, or a particular cause, or friends, or a career; stop now and build your life on God. Do this now, is infinitely important. The path to hell becomes increasingly more difficult to get off of as you get older.
Beware lest you walk the path to hell.
II. Beware, lest you know the horrors of hell (23-26).
Explanation: But now we turn to the description of hell Jesus provides in this parable. This parable indicates that as soon as you die you will have a conscious awareness of your eternal state, whether it’s heaven or hell. In heaven their will be a reuniting with the saints of old; Lazarus is “at the side” of Abraham (verse 23) and there will be “comfort” from the pains of life on earth (verse 25). But the contrast between heaven and hell could not be greater.
Verse 23 says that in hell the rich man was in “torment.” Verse 24 says that he was in “anguish in this flame.” Again, verse 25 says that hell is a place of “anguish.” And further, verse 26 speaks of a “great chasm.” The great chasm is not some literally gulf but a way of expressing the eternality of hell. The soul in hell will not be annihilated, and cease to exist, as some have thought, but will be place of eternal torment. Once you are there, you are there for the rest of eternity.
Hell is thus a place of eternal conscious torment and it is one of the most difficult doctrines for us. Would a loving God actually punish people in a place of torment for eternity because of their sin? It is difficult. But notice one important reality of hell. Notice what the rich man does not ask for. Nowhere in this parable does the rich man ask to get out.
Oh he asks for some “mercy” from Abraham, but he doesn’t ask to get out, rather he asks for some water, just a little more of that feasting he had done while on earth. And he fully expects Lazarus to be his water boy, just as he might have commanded someone to do in his former life.
I think Tim Keller’s explanation of this parable and the reality of hell in The Reason for God is helpful. Keller notes that the rich man is never given a name, like Lazarus indicated that his identity was wrapped up in being rich. Thus hell, Keller says, is “one’s freely chosen identity apart from God one a trajectory into infinity.”
He suggest that addictions to drugs, alcohol, gambling, and pornography gives us glimpse of the soul’s experience in hell. First, there is disintegration, because as time goes on you need more and more of the addictive substance to get an equal kick which leads to less and less satisfaction. Second, there is isolation as increasingly you blame others and circumstances to justify your behavior.
Building your life on anything other God becomes an enslaving passion or addiction, something that you have to have in order to be happy and ultimately it will cost you your soul. Hell will be an experience of eternally increasing disintegration, isolation, denial, delusion, and self-absorption. That’s why souls in hell don’t want out.
Illustration: In C.S. Lewis’ fantasy The Great Divorce, Lewis describes a busload of people from hell who come to the outskirts of heaven. There they are urged to leave behind the sins that have trapped them in hell – but they refuse. They don’t want to give up their sins. And he describes the grip of sin on the soul in hell “going on forever like a machine. It is not a question of God “sending” us to hell. Lewis says, “In each of us there is something growing, which will BE HELL unless it is nipped in the bud.”[1]
Brothers and sisters, I do not mean to diminish the descriptions of hell found in the Bible. Hell is called a place of “unquenchable fire”, “torment”, and “anguish.” Those fires may be absolutely literal. But as I observe the souls of those around me who have no interest in anything other than their own sin, I have no doubt that to continue in such enslavement to sins and lusts forever will nothing short of the most awful torments.
Application: I say to you today, whatever your age or season in life. Do not walk the path to hell. Do not follow the sinful pleasures of your own flesh. Avoid it for it will end in horrors you can’t imagine. Your soul will be miserable forever if you build your life on anything but God.
III. Beware, lest you miss the remedy for hell (27-31).
Explanation: But how can you escape this place called hell? Read verse 27-30. Notice again, the delusion of the rich man as he requests that Lazarus be sent back from the dead to warn his brothers not to come to hell. Notwithstanding this sinful audacity, Abraham simply says they have their Bible’s let them read and follow them. But the rich man exclaims that if only someone could “go to them from the dead, they will repent.”
Notice verse 31. Like their dead brother, these men will not go to hell for being rich, but they will go to hell for their neglect of Holy Scripture. The Bible has the answer for how to deliver your soul from sin, and death, and hell. In the Bible you will find the only remedy for your soul both now and for eternity.
You do not need horoscopes, or visions, or self-realization techniques, or to see someone rise from the dead. All you need, for your eternal soul, is the word of God. One writer describes these brothers by saying, “If a man cannot be humane with the Old Testament in his hand and Lazarus on his doorstep, nothing – neither a visitor from the other world nor a revelation of the horrors of hell – will teach him otherwise.”[2]
Illustration: Like many of you we had to make a decision about giving our children the H1N1 flu vaccination. There were questions about even the availability of the vaccine. And even when it came would it actually work? But most of all would there negative side affects later in life for the children? The remedy for the H1N1 virus came with uncertainties and unknowns.
Application: Friend I want to tell you today, that there are no uncertainties about the remedy for hell found in the Bible. In the pages of the Bible we learn about a Savior; the very Son of God who came in flesh like our own. Jesus Christ whose righteous life and sacrificial death on the cross became the remedy for souls bound in sin, bound for death, bound for hell.
Friends, it is only through the cross of the Redeemer that we can avoid the horrors of hell. And God has made provision through the cross precisely for our deliverance from hell, from his wrath. God himself is patient “not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” 2 Peter 3:9. The death of Christ is the means of escape from the torments of hell and you may certainly draw upon it today.
But if you wait too long, if you wake up to find yourself in hell, it will be too late. So I simply plead with you not to wait. I plead with you not go to this awful place, this place of torment, this eternal place, this place called hell.
Do not wait for a visitor from the realm of the dead to come and warn you. Do not wait for a miraculous sign. Do not wait for an overwhelming feeling. Do not wait for a better season life, when things settle down. Do not wait until you’re older; death might sneak up on you sooner than you think. Do not wait on anything for any reason whatsoever, but listen and take heed today to the remedy for hell that the Bible holds out to you; the cross of Jesus Christ.
Conclusion: It’s almost ironic that the rich man requested that someone rise from the dead to warn his brothers not to come to hell. For if they would simply have read the Bible, Old Testament and New, they would have discovered that their salvation lay in the one who would rise from the dead.
Friends, the truth is today that someone has already risen from the dead to deliver you from this awful place called hell. There has already been a resurrection; even the resurrection of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. He has returned from the dead. Hundreds of people saw him with their own eyes, touched him with their hands, and heard him with their own ears. And they passionately gave their testimony to thousands of others, many of them willing to lay down their lives to testify to the truth that Jesus Christ the Son of God died for sin and rose for eternal life.
And so for 2,000 years, from generation to generation, the gospel message has come to you and me today. And this gospel, this good news, rests on the foundational truth that after the Son of God had given his life as a sacrifice for sin, he rose up again from the dead in order to save all who will believer in him.
You know the name of the poor man in our parable is Lazarus and
the name Lazarus literally means “One whom God has helped.” Jesus presumable could have given this man any name, but he gave him this name; Lazarus, “one whom God has helped.” Friends, we can not escape our sin, our death, our hell, on our own. We all need the help of God and God has given us that help in the person of his own Son, through his death and resurrection.
Will you receive this help from God today? Will you believe on Jesus Christ as your own Savior, your own Redeemer, your own Lord?
[1] Tim Keller, The Reason for God, page 81.
[2] Leon Morris, Tyndale NT Commentary, page 278.
