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Well, good morning. If you have your bibles,
and I hope you do, I want to invite you to join us in Luke,
chapter 16 this morning. Reminder.
it is our last day to register for kids camp.
So I think as of last Sunday, we had already hit
the number of kids that we had registered, all of last year. So
we're excited about that. But it was still today. So please
make sure moms and dads, grandmas and
grandpas, you go and you get them
registered today so that we can
finalize all of our plans for that week. We're
definitely looking forward to it, and it's going to be an exciting and
wonderful time, at our church. also, I want
to wish a happy father's day to all of
the dads who are out there. So happy Father's
day. I, am, as I think
about Father's day, extremely, grateful
for the men in my life, grateful for
the grandfathers that God blessed me with,
grateful for the father in law that God blessed me
with, and definitely grateful, for
my dad, and that God has used
him in powerful ways in my life. And then also
just the wonderful honor and privilege that it
is, to be a dad to Emma and
Grayson and to see them grow and to see how God
has used me in a small way in
their life. And so, just so grateful for that. So for all
the dads who are out here, we see some visitors who were here
with dad this morning. Just, ah, happy father's
day. I hope your day is filled with maybe
a nap at some point in time in there with
food that you like to eat and time with
your family.
Well, a few years ago, and a lot of you,
may know this, some of you may not, a few years
ago, my dad, was diagnosed with some
health, issues, that he continues to
struggle with. And that caused me,
maybe it was the diagnosis, maybe it was the maturity of
what I'm walking through in life. Maybe it was what God
was doing. Maybe it was a combination of all of those
factors together, which is what I would consider
to look at my dad, and to think back
on all the different life lessons, that my
dad taught me. And very
specifically, whether he was trying to
teach me a life lesson or not.
Y'all know those moments. I mean, it's great when you can
have that. That end of. I was, a
podcast earlier today, and they're talking about all of
the best dads from tv
shows. And it all
ended with, like, the dad who
at the end of the episode, hey, son
or daughter? Let's learn this life lesson.
By the way, Carl Winslow from family
matters won the best dad
of all time on there, right? I think it's a little
biased. Andy Griffith didn't make the list, right?
Or Andy Taylor. And that's where I would have landed on mine.
But I look back at the lessons my dad taught me,
and we definitely had those sit down moments,
those sit down, teachable moments where he taught me what it. What it
meant to be a man, what it meant to be a child of God, what it meant to
be a husband, what it meant to be a father. Of all of those
things, my dad, ingrained and poured those
into me. But so many of my dad's
lessons that he taught me were not necessarily
those moments, but it was through my
observations of watching him.
I remember my mom was a schoolteacher.
And if you're a kid of a school teacher in this room,
you know what that means. You've got to get up earlier
than all of your friends in elementary school
because your mom's got to get you, your dad's got to get you
to school. So I woke up earlier
than all of my friends because my mom had to
take me to school before she could go to her
school. And I never forget that my dad would always
be gone. I don't have one
memory of my dad being at
home when I woke up to go to
school because my dad had to wake up so
early to go to his job at the
plant that he worked at. I remember
baseball practices very
distinctly because my dad was always my baseball coach.
And I don't necessarily remember my dad teaching
me how to hit a baseball or how to
catch a, baseball or how to throw a baseball.
But I do remember distinctly
my dad showing up to practice fresh off
of work, with his jeans on
and his work boots on, covered in
dirt, from where he had been working hard all
day at his job and was
now going to come and coach our little league
team. I remember the sacrifices that he put
in in the context of my dad being my
coach. I remember my dad
always tried to identify. We lived in a
small town, so we just kind of knew. And I would
always notice my dad spending more time
with some of the other players on the team than
he even spent with me. And very
specifically, as I look back on that now, it
was guys on the team who maybe
didn't have a dad in the home or who didn't have
a healthy relationship with
their dad. I remember
my dad loving me
enough. And this seems weird, but I think at
45 years old now, God has given me this
perspective. I remember my
dad loving me enough to
discipline me and my dad loving
me enough to correct me.
I remember. And if you know my dad, you know, he would laugh
at this statement and would greatly
appreciate me cracking a joke at him.
I remember my dad saying this almost every
single time that he had to address a
behavior issue with me.
He would say this phrase before he
implemented or told me what my punishment would
be. He would say these words,
son, this is going to hurt me
more than it's going to hurt you. And
I remember thinking, well, let's
switch places. Right? Let me
put you on restriction. You know what I mean?
Maybe a strange memory, but I
remember my dad loving
me enough to.
When I had strayed from the
path that my dad had for
me, when I had strayed from the
expectation, sometimes it was a
conversation, sometimes it was a
consequence. But my dad
loving me enough, my dad being
so concerned about my heart
that my dad would sit down with me,
not ignore, not
excuse, but to address the
condition of my heart. And I'll forever
be grateful for my dad.
Some of you, when you look at
God, the concept of
God the Father is
difficult for you. I love
my dad. My dad loves me.
Me and my dad have a wonderful relationship.
My childhood is filled with wonderful memories.
My relationship with my dad now is filled
with wonderful moments. Some of you,
though, don't have that
perspective when it comes to hearing the word dad. When it comes to
hearing the word Father, your dad wasn't
there. Your dad was
absent. Your dad was
abusive. Your dad was
difficult. Your dad wasn't loving.
And so the
concept of God
being the father is difficult.
But then this phrase that I'm about to say
becomes even more difficult,
that God being a
father. But
specifically because God
is a loving father. God
corrects us, and that's
hard. But when we
see the heart of where it
comes from, we begin to understand
so much as we study through these parables
of what we see in the teaching of
Jesus. Is
Jesus correcting the
hearts, Jesus working
in the lives of the individuals
that are around him, not so that
he can have a hey, I got you moment
or not so that he can have a you've angered me
moment, but
because Jesus
lovingly wants to
correct and rebuke them
for a desire to see
a genuine heart change,
to see what would come
from them would look more
like him and
less like them.
And I think this is what we see
and what we'll see this morning
in this parable of the rich man in
Lazarus, found in Luke
16, starting in verse 19. So
let's read the entire parable.
Jesus begins and says,
there was a rich man who was clothed in
purple and fine linen,
who had feasted
sumptuously every day.
And at his gate laid a poor
man named Lazarus,
covered with sores, who
desired to be fed with what
fell from the rich man's table.
Moreover, even the dogs came and licked
his sores. The poor
man died and was carried by the angels to
Abraham's side. The rich
man also died and was buried.
And in hades. Being in torment,
he lifted up his eyes and saw
Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side.
And he called out, Father Abraham, have
mercy on me. And send Lazarus to
dip the end of his finger in
water and cool my tongue, for
I am in anguish in this flame.
But Abraham said, child,
remember that you in your lifetime
receive your good things and
Lazarus in like manner bad things.
But now he is comforted here,
and you are in anguish. And
besides, all this between us and you,
a, great chasm has been fixed
in order that those who would pass from here
to you may not be able and
none may cross there to us.
And he said, then I beg you, father, to
send him to my father's house,
for I have five brothers so
that he may warn them lest they
also come into this place of
torment. But Abraham said,
they have Moses and the prophets.
Let them hear them.
And he said, no, father
Abraham. But if someone goes to
them from the dead, they will repent.
And he said to him, if they do not hear
Moses and the prophets,
neither will they be convinced if
someone should rise from the
dead.
So in this parable, as we've seen
in so many others as we've studied, there's a
comparison that happens. There's two
individuals that we're called to look at
and compare one from the other.
In this parable, it is the rich man
and it is Lazarus. And there's things
that we see as Jesus tells this story to
his largely jewish audience. Remember, there's things that
we have to be explained in this culturally, but they
would have taken to instantly. Jesus says that
this rich man, he's clothed in
purple and linen to
define his level of wealth.
This man is clothed in the same clothing that you
would find in garments for a king.
This is not just a man who shopped at the higher
end of the department store. This is a
man who lives in the finest
clothing that can be made for him.
And the clothing is good enough for
royalty. It
says that he feasted
every day
in my notes. Here's my description. And
I think you'll understand this.
Every day was like thanksgiving,
right? Like stretchy
pants. Break them out. Let's keep it
rolling. Nobody's judging.
Crumb's falling everywhere. We don't care.
There's fried turkey. That's happening, all right? That's what
we see. Feasted every day
and lived in a gated
home, a gated compound,
a gated palace. He is
separated from the world
that he doesn't want to engage in. He
set himself apart. He's established who
he is. And others,
especially others like
Lazarus, cannot
cross the man
made barrier that's there.
But then there's Lazarus.
There's this poor man
known as Lazarus.
And when I, want you to think of poor
Lazarus is beyond a level of
poverty that you and I
could begin to fathom or understand
every day. The Bible tells us that he was
laid at the gate of
the rich man. He was in
such bad health that he had
to be carried. Whether that meant that he was
paralyzed and had other health conditions that
were there, or it meant that his health condition
was so unbearable that he could no longer
walk. So he had to be laid
at the gate and he had to
beg for anything that people would give
him. But there was a conflict with this
because the Bible says that Jesus says
that he was covered with sores.
So his isolation from people
had also what his physical
condition, his financial
condition had established. But
also because of the bleeding sores that would have covered his
body, he would be considered unclean.
She's not to touch him, not to interact with
him. He's a man who's cast
off. And it
says that he
desired what he longed
for, what he dreamt about
at night was
the crumbs that fell off
the table. A
level of hunger that you and
I couldn't begin to imagine.
And I think there's an interesting comparison
that happens that as he desires
to be fed by the crumbs, but instead
he was fed upon as
the dogs would come up to him
and Lycosaurus. And
then in this earthly
life, these are the comparisons that we see between these
two men, and they both die.
Lazarus is
carried to Abraham's side,
the presence of God, where
the pain and the suffering of this world is removed,
and the rich man is buried and
sent to Hades, away from the presence of God. Where
there's torment and
there's punishment, that's there, removed from the
presence of God. Heard it said
years ago, death is defined as the great
equalizer. Does not care about
gender, does not care about
socioeconomic status, does not care about
age. Death is the great equalizer that every
person, rich and poor, and in
death, what death
brings in the afterlife,
the positions are reversed.
On this earth, Lazarus must have looked at the
extravagance of the man
and longed for a minute
fraction of what he had.
But now the rich man
looks at what Lazarus has
and longs for a
fraction of what Lazarus has been given,
just a drop off of his
finger. He makes two appeals.
His first appeal is for the
mercy in that context, that Lazarus
could come to him in just a drop of
water to relieve the anguish in
which he is faced. But it
cannot happen as Lazarus
is in his. Lazarus is in his reward,
and the rich man is removed from God.
The second appeal that he says is he's got five
brothers, and
he knows that his brothers have
chosen the life, the path of where he has
come from. And he says, if someone from the
dead, surely that will convince
them. If someone can come back from
being dead and share with them, then
they would listen. But,
Abraham says no, that, they
have God's word and it
is sufficient.
And this is the parable that Jesus tells.
Why would Jesus tell this parable? I
think Jesus is asking a question.
I think this question that Jesus
asks is the question that my dad,
growing up, when I strayed from
what my dad desired for me, would
want to address and would want to look at. And Jesus,
in this moment, as he's teaching this, is
addressing this very same question. You
see, my dad wasn't necessarily overly concerned
with the actions that I did. That was
secondary. What my dad was
concerned with was the heart of his son.
And as Jesus teaches this parable, I think
the big idea of what he's pressing toward in this is,
how is your heart? Because can rich people
go to heaven? Yes. Can poor people go to heaven? Yes.
Our earthly standing in this is not
what we need to be concerned with, but the condition of
our hearts should greatly concern
us. The condition of who
we are and what is being done and what
makes us up
should concern us greatly. And this is what
Jesus addresses.
Back in Luke 1614, we see the
context in which Jesus tells this parable,
this group that we've talked about before, this group of Pharisees
are there. And in chapter, 16, verse 14, it says,
the Pharisees, who were lovers of money,
heard all these things, and they ridiculed
him. Jesus, as he
preaches, the hope of the gospel and the
way of the kingdom, they hear these
things. And what comes from there as they do
this, is they ridiculed him. Why? Because they
were lovers of money. But not only
lovers of money. What we see when we look at the gospels is they
were lovers of power. They were lovers of fame. They were lovers of
what I would call perceived righteousness, which
meant what they wanted others to do is to look at them
and to feel that they were better,
that they were holier. And that it was in their own
power and their own depth that they've done
this
in all of their life.
They had devoted their love and their
heart. To the pursuits of
what they had determined,
and they had no love for God.
So I want to ask you this this morning.
How is your heart? How is your
heart? I went to the doctor, a few months
ago. First time going to the doctor in a long
time. I shared that with some of you. They basically had to
start me over as a new patient, and they corrected me and saying, bo, you can't do this
again. Right? This is where we're at.
And largely what we talked about was, we talked
about, physically, my heart.
And my doctor met with me, and she's like, all right, here's the
deal. You're going to do these couple things. One,
two, three. You're going to make sure you're doing this. And then I'm
like, okay, okay, okay, okay, cool. And then she said, and at
your age, what I'm going to require? Which hurt, right? When
she said that, what do you mean at
my age? She said, at your age, what I'm going to require
is a follow up appointment,
and I'm going to take labs again.
And so we're going to see if you've been doing these things that I've laid out there
for you, which now, like, I haven't felt this way since
I was, like, in, I don't know, middle,
school. But it's like, we're going to check on
you, and we're going to see if there's
evidence of you doing the things that
we're asking you to do in order so that you're
physical, heart can be healthy.
So this appointment is coming up in
about two weeks. So I'm gonna, like, do wind sprints every
day now, right? And it's celery and
carrots and water, right till you get there, right?
Here's the deal. The doctor, though,
isn't just gonna evaluate my heart. She's gonna evaluate me.
She's gonna see how I'm eating, how am I sleeping, how am I
exercising, what's my stress level
like? In order to check
my heart, she's going to check me.
And when I ask you, how is your heart this morning?
From this parable, what I think we can draw
from is several things that God, in the power of his spirit,
with working in our life, can help us check our heart.
So heart check number one, is this
the danger, the danger of
self justification? If we look back
again with the parable of the rich man
and Lazarus, when we jump back to Jesus interaction with the
Pharisees, here's what he says after he talks about them
being lovers of money. And here's where they are. He said, verse 15,
and he said to them, you
are those who justify yourselves
before men. Ooh, that's got to be scary
when Jesus says that. But
God knows your heart,
for what is exalted among
men is an abomination
in the sight of God. Jesus
says, you justify yourself
before men. You set your standard.
You decide who you're going to compare yourself to. You decide
what that standard's going to be like. As you look in the mirror,
you go, you say, look at my rules. Look at who I'm going to compare myself
to. Look, as I fulfill my own expectations.
You look at yourself and you say
that you're the standard. And within that you
justify yourself. And the danger with that is
you walk away from this moment and you're going,
I'm good. But
God sees you in that moment
and you're not. And you're
not. You see, when we
compare ourselves to anyone other than
Jesus,
we find a way
to say that we're good, but the
spiritual condition says we're not.
When we compare ourselves to him, what
we find is that we fall short. But
it's okay. But it's okay,
because what we find in Christ
is we can't justify ourselves.
But what we find in Christ is that we
can be justified in him because
he is the standard. He is perfection.
He is the essence, the
person, the living God
in front of us,
fulfilling all that we cannot fulfill.
And he died on the cross so that
in relationship with him,
we can be justified. Heart check
number two of what we see with the
Pharisees is
profession without
sanctification is not
salvation. A profession of faith
without salvation without
sanctification. Is not salvation.
To simply say something is what I mean.
To simply declare who Jesus is
without the power of the work of the Holy Spirit, of
what we see happen in scripture is not
salvation at all. I can't just
say something. So it's true. There's a spiritual
work of what's happened and take place. Paul writes in Galatians
five, six, for in Christ Jesus, neither
circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything,
but only faith working through
love, faith that is activated by the
power of the Holy Spirit producing
the fruit of the Spirit. So it's
working in us. In James 214
through 17. What good is it, my brothers, if someone says
he has faith but does not have works,
can that faith save him? If a
brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily
food and one of them says, go in peace, be
warmed and filled without giving them the things
needed for the body, what good is that?
So also, faith by itself, if
it does not have works, is
dead. And what happens in true faith
in Christ? We're moved from death to life.
There's change that happens. There's
regeneration that takes place. There's
the move from the old to the new, and it's what
we find in life. True faith in
Christ always,
always produces
evidence. True faith in
Christ always. It's a beautiful,
difficult, wonderful journey of what
God is doing as he takes out the old, as he
puts in the new, as he brings that that was dead, and
puts in the life so that we see we're growing and becoming
more and more like him. And our works
do not save us, but our
works do point to our salvation.
What was lacking in the rich
man? And then heart
check number three. To
know of God or to
know God.
It's evident from the words that
are used in this parable
that the rich man knew
the things of God,
the things that he asks for, the
names that he uses, the words that are
there. This was not a man
who was caught off guard. This
was a man who knew of God,
but Lazarus was a man
who knew God and who
was known by God.
John 15 five. Jesus
says, I am the vine
and you are the branches. And I love this
picture. Whoever abides
in me and I in
him, he it is
that bears much m fruit, for
apart from me, you can
do nothing. And what
we see in John 15
is this definition of
the intimacy of
relationship, the very
closeness of what
a relationship with God looks like,
that we abide in him
and he abides in us.
The intimacy of the
closeness that's there
in the parable of the rich man
in Lazarus, something
a commentator pointed out this week and
wrote a lot about and I found really
interesting. He asked this
question. He said, who
is the rich man?
Who is the rich man in the story? He
says, what is his name?
Well, he's the rich man, but what is his
name? And it's very
evident in here. Jesus
doesn't tell us, his name. And
here's what Jesus, I believe, is
saying in this parable. When
it comes to intimacy of relationship,
I don't know him. I
don't know him. That when it comes
to defining who he is, he may
know a lot of things of God,
but the abiding, and the intimacy of what a
relationship looks like, jesus says, I
don't know him, but
there's Lazarus,
the man who people walk by and ignore.
The man who people walk by and toss
crumbs at the guy who people
walk by. And they probably would walk
around him as far as they can because they did
not want to get near the person who
looked like that, who smelled like that,
who had to earn his living in the manner that
he did. And Jesus says, well, let me tell you this. That
rich guy, man, I don't know him, but that's my boy.
That's Lazarus. I know him.
And his name, as
Jesus tells this story that would have hit
everyone in that moment.
Lazarus, you know what it
means? It means God helps.
God helps. God
helps. While
he had nothing, he
had all that he needed,
while the rich man would have known of
God. But only Lazarus
knew God. My
dad loved me.
My dad corrected me. And my
dad challenged my heart because
he longed for things
that I didn't even know, that I longed for
for myself. And God
loves you so
much that he doesn't simply set a
standard in a book and say, figure
it out. That God loves you so much
that he gives you his holy spirit to
correct, to confront, so he can bring
you to the point of
brokenness and
conviction in a relationship with
him.
I want to close with this story.
Yesterday, I, went to a funeral.
I didn't speak at this funeral.
It's not often that I go to
funerals now, but kind of hitting that point,
we're seeing more and more where I don't preach at
them or teach at them. But it, was from my uncle
Ansel Comus.
Ansel Bradbury.
If you know another comus, I would love to hear
about it. If you know another Ansel,
I'd love to hear about it. His son
Joel Bradbury, is a pastor in Abbeville. That's where
my family's from. He's a pastor in Abbeville. And he shared
this. He said, years ago, we found my dad's birth
certificate and it
said Thomas Addison
Bradbury.
We didn't know that. We threw it
away because he's comus. Ansel Bradbury.
So I went to my uncle Ansel's funeral.
I'm going to tell you about my uncle Ansel.
I love my uncle Ansel. He was the
last of, my granddad's siblings that was
still alive. He was the baby of about
15, passed away at
89 years old. On June 1, he was diagnosed
with liver cancer, and he
went home to be with the Lord. This past Wednesday,
quit. He's gone.
And his son Joel got up
and shared and preached his
funeral, and I thought did a
splendid job. He told stories
about my uncle Ansel that I wasn't aware of.
He told stories about things that he did in the
community. He told stories
about how he went and cared for his
friends. He told a story that I wasn't aware
of, that in 1970, my cousin
Joel had qualified to
compete in the region track meet and the 100
meters dash. It was his senior year, 17 years
old. And he showed up and there was,
another boy, an african american boy, who was going
to run also in the race. He said, that
boy was eleven years old,
had no shoes on, his family couldn't afford
it. And he thought, oh, I'm
going to win this race. He said,
they got in the starting blocks and
the gun went off. And he said, the only
thing that I saw for that hundred meters was that
boy's back. As he ran away from me.
He said, my dad went up to the boy and to his
family afterwards. He said they had no way
to make it, from only one qualified from the region
to go to the district, from the district to go to the state
championship. He said they had no way to get their son
there. The school wasn't providing. So my uncle Ansel, for the next
two weeks, would go and pick the boy up and take
him. And he also went and bought him his first pair of track
shoes. Just the man who my, uncle Ansel
was. And at the time,
in the early seventies, in places like Abbeville, South
Carolina, you didn't see an
older white man walking around with an
african american boy. That's who he was,
his very character's nature. He told
story after story. I have a story about his
dad.
Then he said this. He said, then he
died. He
said, I kind of picture it like this,
that in that death he went
before. And he stood before
God. And God
looked at him. In all of
the good things that Ansel had
done. He looked at him,
and he didn't see the money that he
gave the poor. He didn't see
the relationships that he invested
in. He didn't see all of
the Sundays that he faithfully made at the church, all of the
mission trips that he went on, all the discipleship classes that
were there. He said, God looked at him, and he didn't see that.
What Joel said is this.
What he looked at and saw was the
robe of white made
possible through the sacrifice of
Jesus. And then he said, and we
can stand here today and celebrate our
savior, because it's in the power of his
resurrection that my dad was saved.
And it was in the fruit of the spirit that
he walked on this earth living
for Jesus and sharing the hope of the
gospel. Please don't hear this
message as this. Do enough
good things and you'll earn your salvation.
It's not. It's not it.
Hear this. Trust
Jesus Christ, the author
and perfecter of our faith,
and every deed you've done
will be covered with the blood of the lamb.
And in that, you'll may be made new.
It doesn't matter how many bad things you've done,
how many good things. let me tell you, the doctor's office
has scales.
Heaven doesn't. And it's not
about the weight of good
versus bad. What
we have for eternity is
the blood of the lamb has covered us
and made us new and justified
us. And then the beauty.
I had somebody ask me one time, why
don't we get saved? And then the
moment we get saved, we're taken
from this earth and moved to eternity
with God, because then we
would miss out on the beauty of
what God has for us here so that we can
walk in faithfulness and obedience
to him, not because we have
to, and not just because
we get to, because we're
empowered by his spirit to do
so. Would you pray with me,
God? I come to you this morning,
Lord, thanking you.
Thanking you, Lord, for who you are,
Lord, what you've done.
Where we can look at this parable of Lazarus
and the rich man,
Lord. And if we're honest,
if we're honest, we can find ourselves in the narrative.
M Lord,
we're all,
we're all sinners
who can't justify themselves.
We can't justify ourselves
because of any found success
that we've claimed we
can't justify ourselves
through a suffering that we've embraced,
but we're made whole. We're made right,
we're made complete
when we're covered
by the blood of the lamb,
made new in life, in
Christ. Lord, when we repent
of who we are,
when we repent what we've
done. And Jesus,
we trust you.
We trust you to save us.
We trust you to guide us.
We trust you to correct us.
We trust you to change us.
And God, the beauty of what that
looks like, whether
we're seven years old or
107 years old,
to walk in the
faithfulness of Christ,
empowered by your holy
spirit,
God, I pray for all of us today.
Lord, I ask the power
of your spirit.
Lord, we examine our hearts
and, Lord, in your leaning into us and
leading us, we would find the
kindness of God that brings us to
brokenness, the kindness of God that brings
us to repentance.
Jesus, thank you. Thank
you for saving us. I thank you,
Lord, that not a one, not a
one is going to stand
before you and say,
but I was good enough,
but that we all can stand in front
of you and say, Jesus was,
and I trusted him. In
Himalayan and it's in your
name we pray. Amen.
Thanks again for listening, and be sure to check back
next week for another episode. In the meantime,
you can visit us@willowridgechurch.org or
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