The Bible Provocateur
The Bible Provocateur
LIVE DISCUSSION: Rich Man, Beggar, And Forever (Part 2 of 2)
A wealthy man dies, opens his eyes in torment, and still tries to give orders. That single detail from the rich man and Lazarus sets the tone for a searching conversation about the afterlife, the permanence of our choices, and the terrifying power of an unchanged heart. We trace Abraham’s answer—remember, reversal, and reality—and sit with the finality of the great chasm that no good intentions can cross.
We explore what Jesus teaches about knowing and being known beyond death, why entitlement sounds so grotesque on the other side, and how the request for “just one miracle” exposes a deeper resistance to truth. When the rich man begs for a resurrection to warn his brothers, Abraham points to Moses and the prophets. That’s the hard line we press into: if we refuse Scripture, spectacle won’t save us. We connect this to modern cravings for viral signs, celebrity sermons, and prosperity facades that promise jets while neglecting justice and holiness.
From there, we turn the lens inward. Are we, as believers, bored with Christ? Do our calendars and conversations say that games outrank Scripture and fellowship? We talk candidly about courage: telling family and friends the truth with tenderness, refusing funeral fictions that soothe but never save, and embracing a daily life shaped by repentance, service, and joy in God. The hope is not in our resolve but in a risen Savior who still calls, still forgives, and still comforts. If you’ve been waiting for a sign, the word is already in your hands—and the door of mercy is open.
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Send Lazarus to me with water on his finger. He doesn't even speak to Lazarus to see if he would do it. No, he speaks to Abraham and says, send Lazarus to me. Like Lazarus is still his bellhop, his boy, his dog. And he's like, the picture you get is like he's talking to Abraham, he says, send Lazarus over to me to give me comfort. And Abraham, you give me some mercy. The man hasn't changed. All the shackles of common grace have been extracted. All he is left with is his own, is his own sinful nature. Here he is in hell making commands to Abraham. Telling him what to tell somebody else to do for him. But then Abraham gives you his reply. But I'm gonna give you Abraham's reply, but think about this for a second. Abraham is not in hell, he's not in Hades, neither is Lazarus. But the rich man is. And yet he and Abraham are having dialogue. Jesus is teaching us something about the afterlife. We're going to know and be known. Apparently, even with those who did not believe like us. Now, in this passage, Lazarus never says a thing. So we don't know what Lazarus sees or hears. We can only assume that he sees and hears what Abraham hears. But maybe he doesn't. I don't know. But we do know Abraham does. And he's having dialogue with a rich man who's in hell. This is some powerful stuff because Jesus is giving us a glimpse into the afterlife. We can't really see it as clearly as it is, but he's giving us something to understand and look at. We're going to know each other. We're going to be able to communicate with each other. We're going to know and be able to identify who we are and who we were. So after he asked for mercy and demands Abraham to send Lazarus to cool his tongue, Abraham says to him, Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus his evil things. But now he is comforted, and you are tormented. Now Lazarus is being comforted, and the rich man is being tormented. And what did Abraham tell him? Abraham says, Remember, in your lifetime, you were comforted. You received your good things. You had your good things. And likewise Lazarus his evil things. But now he is comforted, and you are tormented. Christians, what you need to understand is that these two men, the minute they die, the state that they would live in after death would be permanent forever. If you fare sumptuously for the short period on life, in life, giving God no glory, not exalting and extolling the virtues of Christ in righteousness and holiness, not seeking the comfort of others when you had opportunity to do so. When you have not made use of the means of grace that God has provided for us to be able to show his love to others through us, and you refuse to do that. The day is coming where your life will be demanded of you. God will snatch your breath right from your nostrils, and you will die. And when you die, you too, like this rich man, will lift up your eyes being in torment. And no doubt, you will be wondering how you got there. Wondering how it happened. Wondering why you didn't respond when you had the opportunity to respond in the right way. God is going to get his glory either through the grace that you accept and embrace, or he's going to get his glory through his condemnation by extoling by giving you the justice that all men deserve. All men deserve what the rich man got. I deserve it, you deserve it. We all deserve to be in Hades in torment. That's what we all deserve. But Christ, by his grace, gives us what we do not deserve when we put our faith in him. It's one thing to not believe. It's another thing to throw salt on it. It's another thing to aggravate our Lord when you rejected him by the ridicule, by the mockery, by the scorn. Short-sighted individuals. Short-sighted individuals. You're going to perish in your miserable little souls simply because for the 70 years that God gave you on this life, which is a vapor, you chose to fare sumptuously like the rich man. You chose to have everything your way. You chose not to submit to Christ and let him have his way with you. This is the state and the condition of this world right now. I show on my screen right now, maybe 20 people listening to this. More or less, it hovers between, you know, 10 and 20. For me, that's fine. But I gotta tell you, if I were some woman, you know, dancing on the screen wearing next to nothing, I'd probably have two or three thousand. Maybe if I was a better speaker, I'd have more. I don't know. But if I were one of these other sites doing something stupid, acting a fool, or if I was some famous person, you know, or if I were talking about something vile, I might have a few thousand people listening. In fact, if I were some preacher out here pretending to cast out a devil, or on here speaking in tongues and babbling in gibberish, if I were talking about how much, you know, how much God will give you if you um can do this and that. But you know, if you're gonna come down with a straight gospel, uncut, undefiled, just laying it out, I try my best to do this every day. I try to make every day a Sabbath day for me. I try to bring something that I can bring to you so that you can be inspired and motivated not to be come like this rich man who let the mercy and the grace of God get by him and then seek it after he's dead when it's too late. I'm telling you, people will follow after these celebrities, they will follow after these wealthy people, and they will run them down and they will hunt them down and they will desire and aspire. But let me ask you something, believer. Who is richer than Christ? Who is richer than him? Who is richer than our Creator? I want to be just like him, the way wicked men want to be like Elon Musk or Bill Gates or Donald Trump or some of these other people, or Kanye West, or Kardashians, all these nutcases that want nothing to do with Christ. Nothing to do with Christ. Christians are bored with Christ. If Christians are bored with Christ, how do you expect the world to be excited by him? But the Lord is going to have his way with you too. All of us. Everything starts with us. If you and I are bored with Christ, if we don't have time for him, how do you expect anybody else to want to make time for him? They see what you're doing. They see you rather be with them watching a game on Sunday night instead of breaking bread and having a glass of juice or wine or whatever you have, talking about the word of God. I could do it all day. And it's only because of God's mercy and his grace. I'm telling you, I love it. I could literally be here all day, reading, writing, talking to people on TikTok, sharing the word of God. This is what I want to do until the day I die. And any Christian who doesn't desire that has got something wrong. And I'm saying you can, I'm not saying you can do it because so many of us have responsibilities. And I realize that everybody can't live the way I do, and I can't live the way others do. But if God has given me a way and a means and opportunity to be able to share with you the gospel and the word of God and and help you come to a better understanding of certain things, or to just to have that exchange, this is what I want to do. I want you to want the same thing. The word of God is exciting. But I'm not gonna. I ain't gonna. I ain't gonna. I love the word of God. I love God's people. Y'all, I love y'all. You are my people. We belong to Christ, and we have a service to do unto him to make sure that people, to the best of our abilities, do not end up where this rich man ended up. If you are afraid to talk to your brother, your blood brother, or your sister, or your mother, or your aunt, or your uncle, or your best friend, because you are afraid they're gonna, you know, be uh mean to you. So you don't want to say anything to them because you're afraid of the ridicule and the mockery. Just know this. If somebody doesn't tell them, they're gonna end up like this rich man, lifting up their eyes in torments. And you will be at their funerals saying to people that they went to be with the Lord when you know they didn't. You know they didn't. I wish some unbelieving God-slandering person would ask me to do a eulogy. I'd be like, Are you sure you want me to do that? Because I'm gonna tell the truth. That man hated God. He cursed God every day. She laughed every time we mentioned Jesus Christ. She told us that the Bible was just a bunch of fairy tales. This is what people do. But you go to a funeral, they're suddenly they're all Christians. They all love God, they're all in heaven. If you went to a funeral, you would know if you went to every funeral that's ever taking place in America for sure, you'd be hard-pressed to believe that anybody went to hell. They all went to heaven. They all went to glory. You all talk about how I'm gonna see them in glory. No, you're not. Now, that's not to say that there are some people that are iffy where you might not know. But the idea of thinking that everybody was like the thief on the cross and who had a bed, a bedside, or a death, uh, what is it, what do they call it? A uh uh deathbed confession, that's rare. So Abraham tells this rich man, in your lifetime you had all the good things. You had everything you wanted. You fared sumptuously, you wore the nice clothes, you had the yacht, you had the jet. Some of these pastors need multiple jets. Can't stand those people. Men pretending to be ministers of the gospel, needing private jets so they can fly from one service to another. Instead of raising up men in their churches to set up other churches with those men. No, they want wealth for themselves. They're greedy, pathetic scoundrels, and God will deal with them all. God help them all. And Christians, this should make us all be cautious about our own ministries, whatever it is, and however small it may be. We have to keep ourselves in check and make sure that our hearts are always right with our Lord. And you know if it is or not. You know if it is. Be careful if you start becoming popular. Be careful if you start becoming popular. You know, all these people, they want to be rappers. They want to be actors and actresses. They want to be now you can be nothing and become wealthy and famous. Doing nothing. No talent. That's the way of the world. Lazarus tells him, or Abraham tells the rich man, now Lazarus is being comforted, and you are in your torment. And then Abraham says, But besides all of this, between you and us, there's a great gulf, a great chasm between us, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those who want to pass from there pass over to us. Now this is amazing. Abraham's bosom, Abraham, is in a different place than the rich man. The rich man is in hell being tormented in some kind of a supernatural, preternatural flame. He's burning. But he's alive and he's talking. But he's there's some kind of a burning that this soul, his soul is enduring. It's supernatural. How it feels, I don't know. Neither do you. No one knows. But that's the description that Christ gave us. He's in torment in a flame. Yet he's talking, he's not screaming. That doesn't seem to be the imagery here. They're talking, but he's in this tormenting flame. Nothing here comes off by Christ as symbolic, as symbolism. But then he says there's this, he tells the rich man, he goes, even if I wanted to send Lazarus to you, I couldn't do it. Even if Lazarus himself wanted to come to you, he can't do it. If you wanted to come over here, can't do it. There's this great gulf fixed between them. There's this great chasm. This space between them is far. Yet, on some level, it's close. But notice here, Abraham says that there's a great gulf fixed between us, so that those who want to come from here can go over there. Why do you think somebody who is where Abraham is in paradise, why would they want to go over to where the rich man is? I know why the rich man would want to go over, but why would a righteous man want to go over to where the rich man is? I'm gonna tell you why I think. Now, this is one of those places where I have to tell you the Bible doesn't say, but it's my opinion. My opinion only. And you tell me what you think. I think that the reason that people who are in Abraham's bosom, which is paradise, the reason why I think they would want to go over to the other side is because they're going to be able to see and speak to loved ones who didn't make it. If you've ever had someone you love end up in jail, imprisoned, or somewhere else where they where it is not a good place to be, you long for them. You have you love them, you have pain for them. You wish they could have a better life. But I think that if since what Christ is teaching us here is that there can be communication and there can be acknowledgement of others, it seems to me that believers are going to be, they they wouldn't be, they would be anxious some kind of way to get over there and greet somebody who they loved who's over there in torment. They might want to go and give them something to drink, to calm the flame, to give them a moment of relief. I think this is what's gonna happen. And so I see you, Sue, what you're saying. I disagree. I mean, uh, but I can't verify it one way or the other. I don't know. But I know in this passage, it seems to be, Abraham seems to indicate that those who would go over can't. So I don't know. But it seems like they could. They could want to, they can't go over, but they might want to. So I don't know. But then the rich man says, I beg you therefore, father, that you would send him to my father's house. So here he is again, trying to give directives and orders to Abraham. He says, Well, if you won't send Lazarus to me to cool my tongue, see, he still thinks of Lazarus as like his little slave, his little, his little boy, his gopher. Gopher this, gopher that. Now he's talking to Abraham like that. Send Lazarus over here. Abraham says, I can't. I can't, dude. Sorry. You know, it can't, it's not possible. So then he says, Well, the rich man says to Abraham, Well, I beg you then, can you send Lazarus to my father's house? Because I have five brothers, so that he can testify to them, so that they don't come to this place of torment. So the rich man is asking Abraham, since you won't send Lazarus to give me some water, would you mind sending Lazarus back to my house and have him preach to my brothers so that they don't come here? He's still barking orders. Now keep in mind, for Abraham to send Lazarus back up to earth, Lazarus would have to be resurrected from the dead. So the rich man is asking Lazarus, can you please can you please resurrect Lazarus, send him back to earth to go preach to my brothers so that they don't come here? It's crazy. And then here's the answer from Abraham. They have Moses and the prophets. In other words, your brothers are getting the same message you were getting, and you rejected. And then he says, They have Moses and the prophets. Let your brothers listen to them. And then Abraham said, I mean, then the rich man says, No, father. Now look, he's telling Moses, I mean, he's telling Abraham, no. He goes, No, Father Abraham. But if one goes from the dead, then they will repent. He's trying to tell Abraham what to do. This rich man, this powerful man on earth, he's still he is still the same person that he was before he died. That's how sinful sinfulness is. Wicked men in hell still will not change, can't change. He's still barking orders. Send Lazarus to give me water. No. Send Lazarus to preach to my brothers. No. And then Abraham says, Your brothers have Moses and the prophets, just like you, and just like all the rest of us have had. Let them hear them. And then he tells Abraham, No, Father Abraham, no. If you send someone from the dead and tell my brothers, they will surely believe. And then Abraham said, If they do not hear Moses or the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead. And you know what else? So you know what, believers? This is a story, a truth, that we need to make the world understand. We have the greatest prophet the world has ever known, our Messiah, the Son of God, who came here. He preached the gospel in perfect purity. No one did it better. No one said it better. Because he is the embodiment, the literal embodiment of God's word. He is the word. He came, and people didn't listen to him. They sent him to the cross and he died, and then he rose from the dead. And they still, to this day, don't believe him. And they still don't believe. This rich man is telling Abraham, my brothers will surely believe that somebody rose from the dead. God himself put on human flesh, died, and rose from the dead. And men still to this very day don't believe. But I'm telling you something right now, Christian believer. And if you are listening and you're not a Christian believer, I can tell you this much. You will become a believer when you lift up your eyes, being in torment, begging for mercy that is too late for you to obtain. Everyone, turn to Christ. While you can. He has preached, he has died, he has rose again, and he is giving gifts to men. Hold your hand out, receive that salvation, submit to Christ, and believe the gospel, and you too will be saved. Why will you die? That's all I have for today. May God bless all of you. Until the next time.