Luke 16:14-31

a Look into the Future

Luke 16:14-31

Here was a flagrant case of heartless indifference, amid luxuries of every kind, to the daily spectacle of abject need. Most of us have at least one Lazarus at the gates of our life. The charge against the rich man was, not that he had injured Lazarus, but that he had not helped him. Man condemns us for doing wrong, God for failing to do right.

Lazarus was translated to the realm of blessedness-the bosom of Abraham bespeaking nearness to him at the great feast-not because he had been so poor and miserable, but because, beggar though he was, he possessed the faith of heart and the purity of motive that characterized his great ancestor.

Notice that memory plays a conspicuous part in the sorrow of Gehenna; that Christ gives no hope of changing the soul's habitation; and that we have in the Scripture a more certain agent of spiritual renewal than would be provided by even the apparition of the dead.