Listen! Think! • Luke 16:14-31

1:09:24 Teaching begins

Notes

The hardest thing in the world is to get people to think.

Jesus is trying, but part of his audience is listening and making fun of Him. They think He’s stupid.

Funny how people immediately write Jesus off, refuse to think or consider Him, refuse to listen to Him.

He could say, well, “You’re stupid, too,” But name-calling doesn’t help anybody think. Jesus is going to take his listeners to the place of the dead to make it clear: refusing to listen to God is stupid.

I’m reading in Luke 16 from verse 14.

1. The Pharisees clearly don’t think much of Jesus.

A. Jesus has told His disciples that the end is coming, and to steward their possessions to please their Master, who is God. Relieve suffering as God would have you do, because then you will receive what you can keep forever—eternal life, the true riches. Mammon makes a terrible god, a stupid god, because it demands all your obedience and it can’t save you. You end up dooming yourself and insulting God. You can’t serve God and mammon.

B. The Pharisees are also there, listening to Jesus, and they make fun of Him. They scoff at Him and deride Him.

1. That means to them, Jesus is worthy of contempt and disdain. He is a nobody, He’s a dope!

2. They love money. They think about it, they gather it, they hide it away for themselves. Money is the answer to everything. The more money, the more power. You want the god you worship to be all-powerful. That’s why they increase their riches, and more is never enough. All-powerful is our god Mammon.

3. They think something like, “In this life you have to take care of number One. You’re not going to get there giving Your money away to incompetent people who are failures in life? Impractical! We’re not buying what you say. Nice try, though.”

C. They believe, He’s not smart, He’s stupid.

2. The reason they think this is because they’re not thinking of God’s approval, they’re thinking of men’s approval.

A. Jesus says, “You justify yourselves in the sight of men. When you’re successful in earning money people will approve you. They’ll say, “He’s done pretty well for himself.”

B. That’s not God’s approval. To Him, putting your trust in riches is not smart. Psalm 49:16-20 Do not be afraid when a man becomes rich, when the glory of his house is increased; for when he dies he will carry nothing away; his glory will not descend after him. Though while he lives he congratulates himself—and though men praise you when you do well for yourself—he shall go to the generation of his fathers; they will never see the light. Man in his pomp, yet without understanding, is like the beasts that perish.

C. God knows your hearts. What you would call prudence and taking care of business He calls idolatry and covetousness. It’s a justification for selfishness and self-indulgence.

D. What men approve and praise, God detests and condemns.

E. Notice that both sides do not think highly of each other. Men say God is stupid, and God does not think men are smart.

3. Men approve of ignoring God’s eternal words to suit themselves.

A. Jesus mentions the Law and the Prophets being preached until John. This refers to what we now call the Old Testament. It’s Old, but it’s not Obsolete. It is the unchanging word of God.

1. That is, the Law of Moses reveals God as the Creator of all things. He is the only God, the One to whom all beings are accountable.

2. The Law shows that men rebelled against God and brought death into the world because the punishment for sin is death.

3. The Prophets call God’s people back into relationship with Him. They confirm God’s word in history, that refusing to listen to God is destructive and worthy of judgment and punishment.

4. Both the Law and the Prophets reveal that God is bringing the Saviour to redeem and restore man to Himself, no more subject to sin and death, but living with God forever.

B. With John the kingdom of heaven is being proclaimed. The time is at hand. Repent and believe the good news of salvation.

C. It’s right here that many people are pressing into it, forcing their way into it with violence, because they imagine that they can ignore the word of God.

D. There’s only one way to heaven, to be saved, and that is through believing what God has said, and trusting in what God has done.

E. If you ignore what God has said and done, then you do violence to God, violence to His salvation, violence to His word.

1. When I’m at my front door, I take out my house key, put it in the lock, open the door. I get in my house via the right way. I don’t have to use violence to get into my house. I use the right way.

2. The only way to get into the kingdom of heaven is by receiving what God says and what God does. He says I have broken His laws and I’m dead. He proves it by His Law. You shall have no other gods before Me. Well, that’s true. I trust in money and my own goodness. I can’t save myself. He saves me as I trust in His sacrifice, what God does for me. That’s the key to the door: depending on God, not myself. That’s called faith.

3. There’s a guy at my house breaking a window to get in. He doesn’t have a key for the front door, but he doesn’t care. I’m the bothered one. You’re doing me violence. Thieves and robbers break in to houses with violence because they’re trying to get in the wrong way.

F. Jesus illustrates the unchangeableness of scripture by divorce.

1. God says marriage is sacred and holy. If you divorce you make your wife commit adultery. You sin against her, yourself and God. He hates divorce. That is never going to change.

2. People have all kinds of ways of working around it. Marry and divorce, it’s okay with men. But it will never be okay with God. Divorce does violence in your soul. Men can’t change that with reasoning. It’s easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one letter or part of a letter of the Law to pass away.

G. Jesus’ point is that you can’t ignore the eternal word of God without doing yourself violence. God speaks His eternal word, but you’re not listening, that’s not wise. That’s stupid.

4. Jesus proves God’s word is real and inescapable. He tells the story of two men.

A. There’s a rich man who trusts in his money and lives an exalted, luxurious life. He never has to worry or be depressed. Life is a joy and will be as good or better tomorrow.

B. There’s a poor, sick, hungry, weak, unclean, and ragged man laid at the rich man’s door each day.

1. He’s trying to eke out a living. Maybe some rich person visiting the rich man might have mercy on him and give him some coins. He can see the food falling off the man’s table and wishes he could eat off that guy’s floor, but he can’t. Dogs come and lick his sores and he is too weak to stop it. The word for this is squalid, marked by filthiness and degradation from neglect or poverty. There is no relief.

2. There is an interesting clue in the name of the man: Lazarus. That’s a variation on the name Eliezer, which means helped by God, or God is my helper. When you have no resources and no one to help, you turn to God and seek Him.

3. This is trusting in the word of God: Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. By His word God gives suffering people strength and satisfaction in their hearts so they can keep going without getting all they need physically.

4. You might think, what good did God’s word or prayer do for him? What did that accomplish?

C. Lazarus dies and he angels of God carry Lazarus to be comforted by Abraham himself.

1. Abraham did not receive the promise of God during his lifetime. He’s waiting for the resurrection from the dead so that he can possess what God gave him to keep forever. He has hope.

2. He can tell Lazarus, you wait. All your prayers will be answered with the resurrection. Let’s wait together.

D. The rich man dies and is buried. It’s probably impressive, and everyone imagines that he is in heaven with the saints and the prophets.

E. But he’s in Hades, the place of the unrighteous dead, in torment in flame.

1. He doesn’t really grasp why he’s there until he tries to warn his brothers, and Moses says, They have Moses and the Prophets. Let them listen.

2. You can almost hear his attitude: Aw, that won’t work, nobody listens to Moses and the Prophets. Shake them up. Send them Lazarus from the dead, that’ll get their attention.

3. Abraham says God Himself has spoken His eternal word that can’t be changed and they’re not listening. And the rich man gets it: “That’s why I’m here. They ignore the word just like I did. And if they won’t hear Moses and the Prophets, they won’t believe even if someone rises from the dead. They are sinning against God by refusing to listen to Him. They believe nothing will happen to them.”

F. Now the rich man knows: that is only stupid.

5. So what?

A. God has spoken. You are responsible for listening to His eternal word. A wise person will listen to Jesus and be persuaded. That’s reasonable.

B. These Pharisees don’t listen to the word of God and are not persuadable. They are unresponsive, insensitive, nonthinking, irrational, unintelligent. Those are all definitions of the word “stupid”.

C. It’s scary that they teach and interpret what God has said, they work with it everyday, yet they don’t listen to it for themselves; they don’t receive it. They aren’t aware of God. They’re so close yet so far from God.

D. If you listen to what God has said you will believe Him. That’s Romans 10:17. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. That word gives you the ability to trust God. When Jesus said to His disciples, “You do not want to go away also, do you?” Peter said, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life. And we have believed and come to know that You are the Holy One of God.” (John 6:67-69)

E. If you don’t listen, you can’t believe Him, and you are already living badly. You are responsible to listen to God.

F. Signs and wonders do not create faith in God because seeing them doesn’t affect the will. Miracles aren’t going to make you a believer. Not seeing miracles isn’t going to stop your faith.

G. Listening to God in His eternal word. Let it into your mind and think. It will make you a believer in Jesus and that’s how you grow in your faith. Listen to Him.

Let’s pray.