Neither Will They Be Persuaded: The Rich Man's Dead Spirit in Luke 16

There is a prayer meeting in Luke 16, and it is being held in hell.

The rich man has been dead long enough to know exactly where he is. He has already begged for one drop of water and been refused. Then he does something you would never expect from a man in torment. He starts praying for the lost.

“Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father’s house: For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment. Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.” (Luke 16:27-31)

He is burdened for his brothers now. He was not burdened for anybody while he could still do something about it.

Even now he has it wrong. He thinks his brothers need a miracle. Abraham tells him they need to hear the Word they already have.

Hell touches every part of a man. It touches his body with the burning, his mind with the anguish, and his emotions with memory and loss. But there is a fourth dimension to him, and it is the one that sent him there in the first place.

His spirit was dead before his body ever went into the grave.

In Luke 16, the rich man is fully awake

“And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried; And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.” (Luke 16:22-23)

His body is in the grave. His soul is in hell. And every sense he ever had went with him. He sees. He hears. He feels. He remembers, because Abraham tells him to.

“But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.” (Luke 16:25)

The same thing holds true for the child of God.

“We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.” (2 Corinthians 5:8)

When you move out of this tabernacle you live in, you are fully aware. You don’t have your glorified body yet, but you know where you are and you know who you are looking at. How do I explain all that? I can’t. I just know what the Bible teaches, and I say amen and go on.

Here is something I had not thought about before. The rich man would have been there when the Lord came down after the cross. Paradise, Abraham’s bosom, was a picture of heaven, and upon the resurrection of Christ everyone held there was carried up into heaven itself.

“Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men.” (Ephesians 4:8)

He watched it happen, and there was nothing he could do about it.

So why does he keep asking for Lazarus? I really believe it is because he knew Lazarus. Laid at his gate day after day, that beggar had the testimony of Christ. The rich man knew that if it were possible, Lazarus would forgive him. He knew Lazarus would look past the faults of five hard-hearted brothers and go preach to them anyway. That is what a saved man becomes.

“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

They have Moses and the prophets

Abraham shuts the request down immediately.

The rich man is using natural wisdom, the wisdom of an unsaved man. Send somebody back from the dead, and they’ll repent. No, they won’t. If a person will not be converted God’s way, by God’s Word, a visitor from the grave will not change his mind.

“The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple.” (Psalms 19:7) “Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.” (Galatians 3:24)

When you and I witness, we may not quote the Ten Commandments word for word. But that is what we are declaring: by God’s law, every one of us is guilty. We have been accused. We have been tried. We have been convicted. We have been sentenced.

You do not need a miracle you can see with your eyes to believe the Word of God, when you have the complete Word of God in your hands. It tells you exactly what you need in order to go to heaven and how. If you reject this Book, nothing else anybody does will persuade you.

And you may not have as long as you think.

“Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.” (James 4:14)

My wife and I were talking about this the other day. I turned sixty-two in June, and she is not too far behind me. Notice I did not tell you her age. We recognize we are on the downhill side of this life. When my dad was lying in the hospital with just a couple of days to go, he said to me, “Well, son, I can’t live forever.” Children want their parents to live forever. But he was right.

When you are six, somebody who is eighteen is old. Past a certain age, eighteen is just a kid. Twenty-five is just a kid. Sixty-two? I’m just a kid.

But life is short, and then you are in eternity. Brother Kaminsky used to say, “You’re going to be dead a whole lot longer than you’re alive.”

He was absolutely right.

The rich man was dead before he died

“Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:” (Romans 5:12) “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” (1 Corinthians 15:22)

The whole reason there is disease in this world is sin. The whole reason there is death is sin. That is not God’s fault. It was the decision Adam and Eve consciously made in the garden, after God told them plainly:

“But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” (Genesis 2:17)

Adam did not know what death was, other than that God said die, and that meant being separated from Him. That separation is the death the rich man carried around every day he wore purple and fine linen.

Jesus said the same thing to the religious men of His day.

“Then said Jesus again unto them, I go my way, and ye shall seek me, and shall die in your sins: whither I go, ye cannot come.” (John 8:21) “I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.” (John 8:24)

When Moses asked what name to give the people, God answered:

“And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.” (Exodus 3:14)

And Jesus claimed that name for Himself.

“Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.” (John 8:58)

The Lord Jesus Christ is the great I AM. If you believe not that He is, you will die in your sins.

“He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” (John 3:18)

Notice the present tense. If you believe, you are not condemned. If you don’t, you are condemned already. You are not waiting on a verdict. You are hanging over the threshold of hell, only awaiting the execution of the sentence.

“He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.” (John 3:36)

That wrath is abiding. It is right there on him, ready to pounce.

“But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death.” (Proverbs 8:36) “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him;” (Hebrews 2:3)

This was the state of the rich man long before he ever lifted up his eyes in hell. We are all born spiritually dead. Then, by that sin nature, a man deifies himself. He makes himself the god of his own life, and in doing it, he cuts himself off from the true God and sets his course for damnation.

Blind to the beggar at his gate

“There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day: And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.” (Luke 16:19-21)

He stepped over Lazarus every day. He paid him no attention. Lazarus was a fellow human being made in the image of God, and the rich man didn’t care in the least, because he was too busy with his own self-image.

And you and I can fall into that same trap.

“And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell.” (James 3:6)

What was burning worst for the rich man in hell?

“And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.” (Luke 16:24)

His tongue.

Abraham’s answer shows that spiritual blindness is not a lack of evidence. It is a matter of the heart. When a man rejects the Word of God, he is blinded to the very nature and character of God.

“But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.” (2 Corinthians 4:3-4)

It reminds me of the man who went down from Jerusalem and fell among thieves.

“And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him,” (Luke 10:31-33)

The Jews hated Samaritans. But that Samaritan looked past the fact that this was a Jewish man and saw a human being in need. If some horrible fate had stripped the rich man of everything, I believe Lazarus would have been that Samaritan.

Lazarus was not a professional beggar working a corner. He had a real need. I would think that at some point he looked up from that gate and said, “Sir, you don’t have to give me your scraps. But you need to repent, or you are going to hell.” And I can hear the answer: Who are you? A crippled-up beggar lying at my gate?

The rich man didn’t know it, but he was trying to use his body, his mind, and his emotions to put a salve over a dead spirit. You see people like that in your own town. On the outside they look like they have it all together. There is always another party and always another plan. They live for the moment, and deep down they know none of it touches the emptiness. They know real peace comes only from God, and they refuse it because they don’t want to go God’s way.

“No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” (Luke 16:13)

The rich man valued his mammon over the value of a soul. Woe unto us, especially those of us who have been saved, when we value money or anything else more than we value a soul.

The god of the self was born in Eden

This goes all the way back to the garden.

“Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” (Genesis 3:1)

Right out of the gate, Satan is attacking the truthfulness of the Word of God. Then he tells an outright lie:

“And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:4-5)

Ye shall be as gods. There it is, the god of the self.

“And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.” (Genesis 3:6)

It is the same pattern John warned about thousands of years later.

“Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.” (1 John 2:15-16)

Adam should have been protecting her, and he failed spiritually in every dimension. She did not die physically that day, though she eventually would. She died spiritually. Once the spirit is dead and separated from God, it spends its life propping up and feeding the god of the self.

When the Word comes near, do you run?

“And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.” (Genesis 3:7)

It is still that way today. When a lost soul gets near the Word of God, the Holy Spirit brings intense conviction, and the usual reaction is to run away, not run to. Hand somebody something as simple as a gospel tract, and you’ll hear, “I don’t want to read that. I’m good.”

No, you’re not.

My son Josh and I were knocking doors one time. A young lady answered. I asked her, “Do you know for sure that if you died right now, you would go to heaven?” She looked at me and said, “Probably not.” And she got scared. In fairness, it may have been two big guys standing on her porch.

But I know what happened to me. The very first gospel tract I ever read was This Was Your Life. It scared the living tar out of me. I read about halfway through it and thought, I’ll think about that some other time. Praise the Lord, I didn’t throw it away. I couldn’t get what I read out of my head. I had never heard it put like that. It was not many weeks after that when God saved me.

Maybe you are reading this and you are not settled about eternity. Am I saying you’re lost? I’m not God. I don’t know who is saved and who isn’t. But you know your own heart. Sometimes this kind of preaching makes a saved person uncomfortable because there is sin in his life. Sometimes it makes a person uncomfortable because he needs a good old-fashioned new birth.

There is too much easy prayerism going on. All you have to do is believe. Believe what?

“Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.” (James 2:19)

There is no salvation apart from repentance.

“I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” (Luke 13:3)

A child can be saved, because God can do anything. But he has to understand that he is a sinner and why he needs saving. It is not enough that Mom and Dad and Aunt Susie and Uncle Joe are going to heaven and he doesn’t want to be left behind. You have to see your own need.

So rather than talking yourself out of it, go to the Lord and ask Him: Lord, am I saved or am I lost? He will show you.

Surfeiting: numbing a dead spirit

“And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares.” (Luke 21:34)

The first time I read that verse, I thought it said surfing. It doesn’t. Surfeiting means overindulgence, excess. Satisfying the body numbs the heart. Why do you think so many people turn to the bottle? To numb the anxiety and whatever else is going on inside.

In this digital and material age, it is easier than ever to use the body, the mind, and the emotions to numb the spirit completely. But the more the self is pampered, the more self-absorbed you become. You also become emptier, darker, lonelier, more insecure, and above all prouder. No amount of stimulation can make up for the dark night of the soul.

My own crisis of faith

Even when the body is healthy and the thoughts are clear, the spirit can be in deep distress. It happens when everything you believed is turned upside down.

That is how God saved me. I was raised Lutheran, in the Lutheran church and the Lutheran school, the whole nine yards. Then two things turned my world over. Nowhere in the Bible is a baby ever baptized. And nowhere in the Bible does a man have authority to forgive sins. I thought only the Catholics did that. But once a week my pastor stood up and said, as a called and ordained servant of the Word, “I forgive you all your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” It was the same thing, just a blanket confession.

When the Lord showed me that, everything I had been taught came apart. And I praise God to this day, because He used it to bring me to a saving knowledge of Christ.

The rich man may have died holding tightly to the tenets of a mainstream religion. How many people are dying today sincerely believing what they were taught, only to wake up in hellfire? You talk about a crisis of faith.

The time to reach them is now. In hell it is too late.

When a saved man starts to sink

A child of God can have a crisis of faith too.

When we stood at Capernaum, our guide told us that when the wind comes down off those mountains at just the right angle, you would not believe how high the waves get. From the shore the Sea of Galilee looks like a large lake. But I stood there and pictured that little boat out in the middle of it.

“And when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, It is a spirit; and they cried out for fear. But straightway Jesus spake unto them, saying, Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid. And Peter answered him and said, Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water. And he said, Come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus. But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me. And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?” (Matthew 14:26-31)

Say what you want about Peter. He is one of my favorite characters in the Bible, a headstrong man God used in incredible ways. He stepped out of that boat and walked on water. Then he took his eyes off the Lord and had a crisis of faith.

The Lord did not drag him through the water and say, “Come on, junior.” He lifted him back up on top of it, and together they came back into the ship.

There may be a time when you have a serious crisis of faith. Here is the good news. You can always go back to the Rock.

“From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the rock that is higher than I.” (Psalms 61:2)

No matter what happens, He’s got you.

Neither will they be persuaded, but you can be

But not the rich man.

He is still in hell, living out a crisis of faith that will never end. He knows he rejected the gospel, and rejected it, and rejected it again. He feels the terror, the emptiness, and the separation from God at a level nobody can imagine, and he will feel it for all eternity.

People around you are eating and drinking and marrying and partying, and inside they are crying out for help. They have a hollow ache that a good night’s sleep or talk therapy cannot cure. It is the pain of being spiritually adrift, apart from Christ, and they don’t know where to turn.

The rich man asked for someone to be sent to his five brothers. Abraham said they already had Moses and the prophets.

You have more than that. You have the whole Book, and in it a Man who really did rise from the dead.

“For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 6:23)

He that believeth on Him is not condemned. God is still in the soul-saving business.

You have heard it. How shall you escape if you neglect it?

Will you be persuaded?

Today?

Adapted from a message preached from Luke 16:19-31.