"They have Moses and the prophets let them hear ... if they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead" (Luke 16:29,31).
The more I watch the events of the world and the inability of the Church to proclaim the whole counsel of God to a dying world, the more concerned I become and the heavier my burden. The quotation from our Lord is a very profound statement. It is the story of a rich man and a poor man, their place and condition after having passed from this life. How much speculative teaching has come out of this story! And yet, in truth, the Lord was not establishing a doctrine of life after death. Anything in that connection was incidental.
What He was really trying to get across, as the context shows, is a matter of responsibility. Whenever He came in touch with the existing traditional religious system He deliberately raised and pressed this issue. What this story really is trying to emphasize is the factor of responsibility, which dominates the situation.
The rich man represents those who:
1. Have had every facility and opportunity of obtaining a wealth of the things of God;
2. Have accumulated a great deal of information;
3. Have, by reason of the above, come to a place of spiritual complacency, contentment, or even pride and superiority;
4. Have not grown spiritually although well provided for;
5. Have failed to realize that every bit of spiritual provision is a trust; it must not stay with them, but must enrich the needy, always at the gate, as represented by the beggar - the sufferer, the hungry.
There is no need to spend a lot of time and use big words to clarify the Lord's meaning. All it amounts to is:
1. Are the divine resources, the riches of Christ, the ministries - personal or printed - which are intended by God to make us spiritually wealthy, available to us?
2. If so, are they just things to us, teachings, topics, interesting and informative material? How much are we growing by having access to them?
3. Is the Lord's work benefiting from them? Does 'the buck stop here', or is our profit the gain of others?
The Lord's warning is very strong, almost severe in that a very heavy responsibility lies on the shoulders of everyone who is in touch with His divine resources. Whether or not these resources have been used to benefit us and others will find us out in eternity.
In view of this truth, let me ask you a question: What is our responsibility with all that the Lord has entrusted to us? What are we doing with them? Do we really share our divine resources with the very hungry world of Christianity, or do we just gloat in the fact that we know more than others? How will we fare at the judgment seat of Christ?
This is my burden and concern for these days, the very last hours of this dispensation before the Lord's return. I will leave the answer up to the conscience of each and every one of us. May the Lord find us faithful to Him and to the ministry that He has entrusted to us.
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Thankful
Written by Guest on 2007-12-18 18:30:06
I am grateful to you for your honesty with the word of God. I also think this idea relates to the talents we have been givin not to waste them but to multipy them- not to put a lamp under a table.... Many times though our enemy will attack us to keep us quiet. To hold us back from telling the good news. And many christians fall into deep pits of sin and do not proclaim the gospel anymore... this is why we must encourage one another
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