If They Do Not Listen To Moses And The Prophets, They Will Not Be Persuaded

This morning, we're heading back to the Gospel of Luke, the end of chapter 16. And I was talking to Vanessa about what I was going to preach on, and as soon as I told her, she went, oh, more of that. And so she was only articulating what I felt myself, and that I'm actually convinced is wrong, but was honest. And the feeling was that Luke is a very difficult book. that it's heavy. And I asked her, and I've asked some of you, tell me if you think I'm wrong in what I say. I always want to know if you think that I'm going beyond what the text says. But I said, honey, Luke, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, wrote all this stuff down that Jesus said in this order, and all we're doing is studying it. And it is heavy. And so our topic this morning is...

the realities of heaven and hell, but primarily hell. And so the sermon's going to be about what hell's like. And she's going, that'll be heavy. And as I was thinking about it, I thought, you hear Jesus talks more about hell than anybody. People are griping about this sort of stuff and how it tends not to be encouraging or strengthening, but sort of just depressing to them. And then you hear, well, but Jesus talks about hell more than anybody. And one of the things I'm convinced is that we don't study hell much. And we don't talk about it. It's not something we think about. It's not in our consciousness. And I was left asking, going, okay, if Jesus talks about hell quite often, and he spends most of his earthly ministry, in terms of his teaching, warning people. Why is it? Because that's the heaviness that I feel.

as I've been going through Luke, is the heaviness of constantly being warned and being cautioned and being told to watch out. And I think, why is it that way? Well, really simply, it's because heaven and hell are very real. And every one of us will be in one of those two places. There is no other option. And it's Jesus' love for his Father and for us that he spent his life warning us away from ultimately the consequence of our sin. That if we don't repent and if we don't love him and serve him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, what we have waiting up in store for us is misery that we can't wrap our minds around yet. And our text this morning is Jesus pulling the curtain back a little bit on heaven and hell and telling a parable of what it's actually like.

Many times when he teaches, he teaches in parables and he takes things that are familiar to us. Seeds, soils, harvests, and says, here's what heaven is like. Here's what it will be like. Here's what our lives ought to be like. But here he says, this is what a man in hell acts like and talks like. Here are what his concerns are. And here is God's answer to him. Conversely, here is a man who is in heaven. And so he pulls the curtain back and doesn't say, well, it's kind of like this other thing you're familiar with. He just says, no, look at it. This is what goes on there. This is what these places are like. I set before you today heaven and hell. And so we're going to be studying the parable or the account of the rich man and Lazarus. And I want to say to you before we read the text that it's one of the things that's most joyful to me in my work as a pastor.

or as a husband and a father, is getting to see people turn away from their sin. To see it. To see the lights come on. They come online. Before they didn't know and they didn't understand or they didn't think it was a big deal or whatever that was. And all of a sudden they're like, oh, oh, God said this. And that is the happiest thing as a pastor you get to see. And oftentimes when that stuff's coming up, it's in the midst of very difficult circumstance. And if you were in Sunday school, we talked briefly about the relief that comes from repentance. That when you don't repent, you carry around this burden, this awful weight. But when you come to repentance and you say, there's a God in heaven who sent his son to save me from this, in this life and in the life to come, you find freedom and you find help. And you find the path that leads to heaven.

And the joy of my work is seeing you and I and our children find that path and walk in that path. And so I don't want us to be depressed as we study hell. I would expect you to be depressed if we were going to study hell and we were going to say, and there's no way for you not to be there. Then I'd say, what hope do we have? Why not get all of the joy and all of the comfort and all of the ease and as much as we possibly can out of this life? Because after this life, there's nothing but misery. But that is not the case. And that's what I want us to see this morning. And I do actually want you to be afraid of going to hell. That's actually an appropriate thing. That you would see the place that God has prepared for those who have rebelled against him as a place you do not want anything to do with. You do not want to be there.

that you would not turn a blind eye to its reality and go, well, I don't know and I hope I make it to heaven. If you think, I hope I make it to heaven, I hope it works out, you do not understand what hell is like. And this morning we're going to see what hell is like and a rich man who went there and who is there to this day. Would you stand now for the reading of God's word from Luke chapter 16, verses 19 through 31. This is the word of the Lord and it is eternally true. Now there was a rich man. And he habitually dressed in purple and fine linen, joyously living in splendor every day. And a poor man named Lazarus was laid at his gate, covered with sores and longing to be fed with the crumbs which were falling from the rich man's table. Besides, even the dogs were coming and licking his sores. Now the poor man died and was carried away by the angels to Abraham's bosom. And the rich man also died and was buried.

In Hades, he lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and saw Abraham far away and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried out and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus so that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off my tongue, for I am in agony in this flame. But Abraham said, Child, remember that during your life you received your good things. And likewise, Lazarus, bad things. But now he is being comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you, there is a great chasm fixed so that those who wish to come over here to you, come over, I'm sorry, those who wish to come over from here to you will not be able and that none may cross over from there to us. And he said, then I beg you, father, that you send him to my father's house for I have five brothers.

in order that he may warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment. But Abraham said, They have Moses and the prophets. Let them hear them. But he said, No, Father Abraham. If someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent. But he said to him, If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be persuaded, even if someone rises from the dead. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. So our text is divided up into two sections, with death being the divider. What was the state of these two men before death, when they lived, and what was the state of these two men after they died? And we start off in our text with their lives being compared. The rich man, we're told, lived very comfortably. He habitually dressed in purple, which was a royal color, and fine linen. He lived joyously in splendor every day.

Which is to say he led the life that anyone who thought about it for five seconds would want to live. It's hard when you read the description of this man's life. You don't feel like you can say, yeah, that's what I want because you see how it ends for him. But if you didn't know how it ended for him and you just saw a man living as he lived, isn't that what you want? It's what we want. He was not in need of anything or anyone. And he thoroughly enjoyed everything in his life. He lived in splendor every day. Now, Lazarus was on the other end of the spectrum, lives in the same area as this rich man. And yet he was extremely poor and in constant pain and discomfort with sores covering his body from head to foot. He had to beg for everything he got. And all he wanted were the crumbs from this man's table.

The stuff off your plate that you throw down the dishwasher or put in your compost pile or in the trash can. That's what he wanted. The stuff that you decided isn't even worth eating. And I'm so full I don't want it anymore. That's all this man wanted. He would have been satisfied with that. That's as high as his ambitions were. The crumbs. Add to that that he was also quite ill. Covered in sores such that he was unable to walk himself. You saw that his friends... laid him at the gate. They carried him and laid him at the gate. He's the type of man that during Jesus' life and ministry, he healed. Lame, the kind that was being brought out of the house and set by the road for Jesus to heal. This is the condition of Lazarus. And yet he's got to eat, so he goes and he begs at the gate of this rich man who lives in splendor every day of his life and enjoys everything about it. And then we're told that there's these dogs, the rich man's dogs.

who come and who lick Lazarus's wounds. And it's God's mercy to Lazarus that the dogs came and cared for him and cleaned him. He is too weak to clean his own wounds. The rich man had no concern for cleaning him or helping him or feeding him or any of the like. And the dogs are the ministers of God's kindness to Lazarus, caring for and tending to his wounds. You kind of get a feel for how bad this man's condition was. You remember when Job had everything taken away from him, his family and all of his wealth, but his body was fine and he didn't curse God. And so then Satan and the Lord have another interaction. And what does the Lord allow? He says, you can afflict his body, just don't take his life. And so Satan afflicted Job with these boils all over his body. And he sat there and scraped them with a broken piece of pottery.

with no one to care for him and no one to love him and no one to clean his wounds for him. Job was in a better position and able to care for himself than Lazarus was. This is the spectrum between the rich man and Lazarus at his gate. Now Lazarus and Job have something else in common beyond their sores, their wounds. The other thing that they have in common is their godliness. When Job is sitting there with nothing except his wife, picking at his scabs. His wife says to him, do you still hold fast your integrity? This is the point at which she comes to him and says, do you still hold fast your integrity? Why don't you curse God and die? And Job responds and says, you speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we only accept good from the Lord and not adversity? And Job maintains his devotion and his commitment and his love for God, even in the midst of losing all that he had. Save his life.

How do you know that Lazarus shares this same disposition towards God? Well, as soon as he dies, what happens to him? He's carried away by the angels into Abraham's bosom. And you think, what's Abraham's bosom? And it's a Jewish way of describing heaven. He's the father of all of the faithful. He's gone before them at this time into his place. And all who are his children go to be with him. And they're received into his bosom. When you come home from work and your kids come up and run to you, what do you do as a dad? You bend down, you give them a hug, you receive them into your bosom. And so when we die, when they die, you're received into the place that Abraham has gone before. You're received into his bosom. And so Lazarus and Job are similar in their godliness, their love for God. And yet both of these men had very, very difficult burdens to bear.

They suffered in ways that I would say are inconceivable to us. You think of how quick in our society, whenever there's this principle with us in our society that anything that's uncomfortable or causes you grief or causes you physical pain or whatever, you just medicate it away. You get away from the problem. You take a pill to forget it. You do something to numb it. This is how we deal with headaches and colds and sore muscles. Open wounds from head to toe. And his medicine was the dogs. And so when I say suffering that we couldn't understand, I really do mean suffering that we could not understand. That we would not be able to submit ourselves to apart from the grace of God, which is the only way he was able to. But when you look at his life and you say, how, how, how did he do that? By the grace of God, he did that.

Because God was kind to him. But it didn't make it any less miserable. So Lazarus submitted himself, his life, and all of its difficulties and pains to the Lord. And he trusted God to deliver him. Now Job's deliverance from his suffering was friends coming and talking with him for a while, being less than helpful. And eventually Job giving in to some measure of his sin and starting to accuse God. Then God comes and rebukes him and Job repents and his life is restored to him better than it had been before. Now, some of us might say, well, if I was going to suffer and if I had to have the burdens of this sort of stuff, I want it to turn out like Job did. Because Job went from the Lazarus end of the spectrum past the rich man's end of the spectrum in terms of comforts in this life.

He had it all, he lost it all, he got it all back and more. But this is not the case always. What happens with Lazarus? He's sick, he's suffering, and he dies. And he understood that to be his deliverance from his present miseries and trials and hardships. And so when I say that Lazarus trusted God, he submitted his life to God's sovereignty and to his will his care, he understood that there was something better to be had than the comforts of this world. And he hoped for them and longed for them and waited for them and sought them and found them. So this is these men's life before they die. Then they both die. And all it says of Lazarus is he died and was carried away. And the rich man died and was buried. And we understand from this that they both died the way they lived.

No one missed Lazarus. No one cared any more about him in his death than they had in his life, except the Lord. And the rich man was buried in a rich man's death. And then right after that, they've transitioned from life, this life, to the life to come. And then it says, he, speaking of the rich man, lifted up his eyes, being in torment. And I want to note to you, that as soon as he died, as soon as he died, he was in torment. That all that he had in this world was gone from him, and it benefited him nothing after death. Nothing. As soon as he died, he lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and asked for relief. And you remember how Lazarus had his expectations at the crumbs.

He didn't want to sit at the table. He knew he couldn't sit at the table. What does this man now in hell want? Does he want to be delivered out of hell? Well, of course he does, but he knows he can't be. And so he says, just a drop of water, just a drop of water. Can you imagine how difficult something would have to be for a drop of water to represent comfort to you? A drop of water. You start to see what hell is like. then what as far as you can look up and as much as you can hope for is one drop of water to cool your tongue for that long. He sought relief. Father Abraham, send Lazarus here to dip his finger in the water and cool off my tongue, for I am in agony in this flame. Isaiah tells us in chapter 66, right at the end of the book of Isaiah, last two verses, he describes hell.

If you've heard the phrase, you know, hell is a place where the worm never dies and the fire is never quenched. That's from the very, very end of Isaiah. And fire is a strange thing. You know, some of you, if you have kids, you know, you can play games with like lighters and you can like, you know, touch the fire and, you know, snuff out the candle and your kids are like, oh, wow, that's amazing. But the one thing you won't do is just hold your finger in the fire. You know, you'll move it through the fire. You'll quick snuff it, you know, lick your fingers and snuff it out.

But you have in your mind that you don't want to get burned. And it doesn't take any time to get burned. It hurts immediately. And it's a miserable pain if you've ever been burned. And yet hell is a place where there is a flame that causes all of the pain of burning but never consumes what it's around. What I'm saying to you is God has the ability to take fire, which is consuming. It's in the nature of fire to consume whatever it gets around. And God has the power to create fire that does not consume but only causes agony. He can control the fire. And he can control the things that are in the fire. You remember the burning bush. Moses, he's walking along and he sees the burning bush. And what's he say? What is that?

There is a bush on fire, but it's not being consumed. Let me go over there and see what's going on. And again, in the book of Daniel, with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they're going to get killed, and they crank that furnace up seven times as hot as it's supposed to be to where the men who are carrying the fuel to the fire are being consumed. And what happens when they go into the fire? They are not consumed. They are protected. And I want you to see that... God has the ability and has revealed in his word that those who go to hell will exist in the pain and the agony of flame, but they will never be consumed by it. Never be consumed by it. And this man, this rich man, immediately is in that torment. And he cries out for a drop of water. And Abraham says, child. And by child, he means you who should have known better. The rich man calls Abraham father.

And Abraham calls the rich man child. But he's been an unfaithful child. Because he's not with his father, you understand. Child. Remember that during your life, you received your good things. Your purple, your fine linen, joyful living and splendor all of your days. Those were the good things that you wanted. Those were the good things that you valued. Those were the good things that you saw. And you had them. To the max. And likewise, Lazarus had bad things. And now it's been switched. Now he is here and he's being comforted. And you're in agony. You've gotten what's yours. You have what is yours. You have what you wanted. What you wanted was the life that you led. And the life that you led leads to this final state. You have what you've pursued. And besides all of this, between us and you, there is a great chasm fixed so that those who wish to come over...

from here to you will not be able. Now, isn't that a strange thing? That he describes the chasm between heaven and hell as being there so that those in heaven won't be able to go over to those in hell. I mean, clearly it makes sense that it wouldn't go the other way. There's a chasm fixed so that you guys can't break out of hell and get into heaven. That makes sense. But he says it's so that they can't come to you. Now, think for a moment. Why would it be that someone in heaven, in Abraham's bosom, enjoying all of the comforts and joys and peace of God, without any encumbrance from sin, would want to go to hell for mercy's sake. You remember Jesus speaking of Jerusalem? Oh, like a mother hen, I've longed to gather you under my wings, but you would not have it. There's a kindness and a mercy that's written into the nature of God, not wishing that any man should perish. And when you're glorified and your sinful nature is removed from you, you'll share fully in his character.

And you'll understand his compassion and his mercy and it won't be mixed with your sin anymore. And it'll be a glorious thing. You know, now when we have good things, we think, mine, mine. This is what little kids do. Vanessa and I were talking yesterday morning and we could hear the kids and we could hear the, I heard the fight coming. We heard it. I heard one of my sons saying to his younger brother, don't do that. I told you, no, don't do that. And you know what's coming next, right? The younger kid's going to start crying because the older kid's going to take away or hit or do something. And we're just listening to it. And I went out and talked to them, went and dealt with it. But I was just telling her, you know, kids are just like us. They just do what we do. My older son, it's mine. You can't have it. Aren't you jealous? It's mine. I have this good thing. And yet when Lazarus is in heaven, Abraham tells us there's a chasm fixed so that he's not able.

to come to you. He's not able to bring you relief because you refused relief when you had the season to get it. When repentance was available to you, when mercy was available to you, when heaven's door was opened to you, you would not enter in. This is what Abraham is communicating to the rich man in the way that he answers. When you had the opportunity, you forsook it. And now that you see it's important and it's valuable, you can no longer have it. And to us, that ought to be, even now, a sad thought. That there's going to come a day when those who have not willingly bowed their knee to the Lord Jesus Christ will be made to bow their knee to the Lord Jesus Christ. But it will not result in their salvation. It will be too late. And they will live for all of eternity.

with this man. So what should this knowledge do for us? Seeing how the rich man lived, knowing the temptations of our own hearts to want, to covet, to envy his life. What ought we to do with the knowledge of how he ended up? There's a couple of things you could learn. Some of them the right lessons, some of them the wrong lessons. I regularly tell you, don't learn the wrong lessons. I'm going to start with the wrong lessons. The wrong lesson is first, He has all that good stuff because God loves him and not you. That's the wrong lesson. Wealth and comfort and power and ease in this world are not an indication of God's disposition towards you. Which means that if you are without those things, as Lazarus was, it is no indication. That fact by itself is not an indication that God has left you and doesn't care about you.

Because if that were the case, then you'd have to say that he really, really didn't care about Lazarus. And we can read this text and we can see that's simply not the case. You have to have in your mind that God has in his wisdom a place for his people to suffer, and sometimes terribly, for the sake of his glory. And that all of that suffering leading up to and even producing their death does not indicate a removal of his hand. And so when you see the rich man or you see the rich men in your life, you cannot look at men's outward appearance and how their lives are now and what seems to be comfortable and what seems to be easy or what seems to be difficult and go, I want easy now. That's my priority. And that's the indication of God's blessing in my life. That's the wrong lesson to learn. Another wrong lesson to learn.

Is that having money or living as that rich man did is sinful. It's actually not sinful to have money or to be wealthy. What was his sin? Was his sin that he had money? That he enjoyed his life? Were those sinful things? No. Nowhere in scripture are we told that's sinful. What was sinful? What was sinful was that his dogs shamed him in mercy. He had an abundance given to him by God. And what did he do? He spent it on his pleasures. What would it have been for him? He had dogs, well-fed, and he preferred to feed them over Lazarus. That was his sin. The sin was not that he had resource or he had wealth. The sin was that he was selfish and greedy with what God had given him. I want you to think for a moment. If you could go and interview these guys. You know what an exit interview is? Someone leaves a company and you go, hey.

Good, bad, and the ugly. Give it to me straight. Okay, do an exit interview with the rich man and Lazarus. Exit of life interview, okay? What's the good, the bad, and the ugly? What would the rich man say? Woe is me. I would have changed everything about my life because this is how it's turned out. Full of regret, full of sorrow. What about Lazarus? What would Lazarus say? What would Lazarus change in his life? Do you think he would change his suffering? I don't think he would change his suffering. I think he might have been grieved at his giving. If there was something that he regretted, it may have been his weakness and his temptations to give in to despair and hopelessness. I think he may have said that. But Lazarus was sure in his suffering before he died that God was good and good to him. And he would have understood that those sufferings that he had were to prepare him to spend eternity with God. And he wouldn't have gotten rid of the preparation. Those who are godly understand that God brings trial into their lives for their edification and for his glory. They don't look at their trials and their difficulties and go, God must hate me because this is hard. They look at it and they say, if I was more holy, this wouldn't be so difficult. And God's using this to make me more holy. And he's using this to make...

to peel my hand open from the grip that it has on this world and the things of this world. And he's increasing my desire to be with him in the way that Paul speaks in Philippians. For me to live is Christ and for me to die is gain. As for my part, I don't know which to choose. For to be with the Lord is a lot better, but to stay here with you means fruitful service. So how do we come to a place where we say to live is Christ, And to die is gain. And as for me, I don't know which I prefer and mean it. We could say it, but to mean it. Suffering is often the vehicle that God uses to teach us that perspective. And if we despise the suffering, then we despise the one who's allowed it. So Abraham says to the rich man who wants water, no, you can't have water. You had your good things. And even if we wanted to, we can't get to you. And the rich man's...

His concern turns from himself to his family. His situation can't be improved. So his desire is to see that his loved one's situation would be improved, his five brothers. Now, it's an interesting thing that he has five brothers. Who would you expect him to care about? Mom and dad, his children, his wife. In terms of priority, would he care about your brothers? Yes. Who else would you care? In terms of sphere of people you want to see not end up there. You find that his brothers are the closest people to him. He's not married. He doesn't have kids. It's unimaginable to think that he would have concern for his brothers if he had a wife and children. So what can we learn about someone who's unwilling to get married and to have children? Is there anything to learn there? Is there any reason that, is there anything to observe or to be instructed by in the fact that he didn't have a wife or child? He lived in splendor all his days.

Well, just that they would be a hindrance to that. That they'd be work, they'd be responsibility, they would be an encumbrance to his desires, and so he never took one. You think, well, maybe he couldn't get married. You know, I have a hard time getting married. And I say, have you met a rich man who has a hard time getting married? No. J.C. says no. So he wants Abraham to send Lazarus back to his brothers. His brothers knew Lazarus. Send Lazarus back to them and let him tell them the truth. And then they'll repent. Abraham says, they have Moses and the prophets, let them listen to them. And then he gets angry. And the reason he's angry is because he's convinced that that's not enough. That he had spent his life dull to the word of God. And his brothers had spent their lives dull to the word of God. And now what he wants is instead of the normal way that God works, he wants a miracle. Send him a dead man and then they'll listen.

But when you neglect the normal, regular means of grace, God is not bound to send some miraculous, extraordinary sign to bring about repentance. This rich man had spent his life doing his own thing. And his brothers are doing the same thing. And I want us to learn that if we neglect the word of God and we don't hear what he has to say, we're in danger of becoming like them. An ending like them. And which of us wants that for ourselves? None of us. Which of us want that for our loved ones? Not even him. No, Father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent. If they don't listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be persuaded, even if someone rises from the dead. And here's the thing. When Jesus died, there's a certain level of foretelling.

in what Jesus is saying. Because he actually does die and then comes back, right? And did that bring widespread repentance? Not without preaching. He died. He was raised. Peter preached. And what did Peter say in his sermon? You crucified him. You killed him. These are the normal preaching and teaching sitting under the word of God. These are the normal ways that God brings about salvation. And repentance in our lives. And at that point, do you think those Jews, who when they wanted Jesus put to death, said, his blood be on our heads and the heads of our children. If Jesus said, well, was there a caveat in their thinking? Well, if he comes back from the dead, we'll believe in him. Nope. And then they went out after he died and after he was raised and Peter preaches. And he says to them, you did this.

Then they repented. Brethren, what must we do to be saved? They were cut to the quick. And so I want you to see that this rich man is wrong in his expectation, wrong in his request. He does not understand how God works. He does not know God. Even when Jesus, who would have been far more convincing than Lazarus, was raised from the dead, the unbelievers didn't become believers. They were not persuaded. They would not be persuaded. So each one of us has a soul, and each one of us is going to die. And we don't know when, and we don't know how, but we know that it will happen. What are we going to do to prepare? That's the question to you. What is your expectation or conception of God and how he works, how he saves people, and will you submit to it?

You're not strange when you look at Lazarus and you go, that is not the life I want to live. I suspect that Lazarus would have asked to have that burden removed from him. It would only make sense that someone who was in such grief and such pain and who trusted God would have asked him to remove the thorn, the pain, the difficulty. And so when we look at Lazarus, I'm not telling you, you have to want to live the life that Lazarus lived. You don't have to go look for difficulties and hardships and pains and sorrows and trials and sufferings. You don't have to go searching for them. You have to look at your own life and you have to see the burdens and the difficulties and the hardships and the sufferings. And you have to say, will I bear this cross by faith, with joy, for the glory that's to come? Satan would have me lay it down. Jesus would have me carry it. Will you carry it?

Each one of us could talk about what the burdens and what the difficulties and what the hardships are. And we have to believe that God is at work through those very things in our lives, whatever that is that they are, and that he's working out our salvation, that he's completing the good work that he's begun in us, and that it's our place and our part to submit to it, to give ourselves to it, to not spurn God. or to curse him the way Job's wife tempted him to, but to submit ourselves to his will in our lives with the fixed hope that there is joy inexpressible to come. But if we choose not to do that and we say, we'll have our good things now and expect good things later, we become as the rich man. And I don't want any one of us to do that. Not one of you. And so the call to you is to give yourself by faith to the ordinary means of grace that God uses to save his people. You see what hell is like just in a little bit. And even now, we don't understand. You can't conceive of the agony of hell or the glory of heaven. Not anywhere near what it will actually be like. We're too weak and too finite to understand it. And yet we have some small picture of it here. And it's enough to warn us away.

from hell and call us toward heaven. How do I get there? How do I avoid? How do I glorify God? By giving yourself to the ordinary means of grace, to studying his word, to knowing his word, to giving yourself to prayer and to the church. These are the means that God uses, and he's not ashamed to use them. And through those things, he's working out his glory and our salvation. Don't neglect them. Please don't neglect them. The rich man neglected them in pursuit of other things. And if he could tell you now, if you could be one of his brothers, what did he want? Do not do. Do not do what I did. You do not want to come where I am. As I was preparing, this is the last thing I'll say. I thought, who is the first person to go to hell? Like how long? And I think Cain was the first person to go to hell.

Killing his brother. I thought, I don't know actually if he's the first person who died. That was my question. I didn't go back and look because I was thinking about it this morning. But I thought, Cain's in hell. How long has Cain been in hell? Not long actually compared to how much longer he's going to be in hell. Would that we would not join him there. That we would see the earnest desire of one there who doesn't want his loved ones to follow him. And we would take warning so that we don't join him. Let's pray. Father, so often we are like evil beasts before you with no sense about what we're doing or the consequences that we're heaping up for ourselves. Father, we thank you for giving us your son and for him teaching us and instructing us, shedding light, shining light into the darkness, pulling back the curtain a bit into heaven and hell.

to reveal to us the places where we will spend our eternity. I pray, Father, that you would be merciful to each person here, that you would save them, that you would give them grace to bear up under the sufferings and trials of this world, grace to draw near to you in their times of weakness and trial, to give themselves to your word and to your people and to prayer. I pray, Father, that you would protect us, from lusting after the comforts of this world. I pray, Father, that you would make us faithful stewards of the good things you give us in this earth and help us not to covet them or to hoard them. Help us to use them to create more glory and not bury them. Father, we don't want to bury the talents that you've given to us. Help us to multiply them. We pray, Father, that you would make us fruitful.

in our own lives in heeding this message, and that you would make us fruitful in proclaiming this message to our neighbors and our friends, and that you would work salvation and repentance and faith and holiness in their lives. Father, make us a fruitful branch in your kingdom. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.