Let us ask what was the cause which brought on the rich man so terrible a fate? It was not simply his wealth, and it was something from which an observance of the precepts of the Jewish religion would have saved him. What, then, is the character of the rich man as drawn in the parable? It is drawn in two strokes his ordinary life, and his treatment of Lazarus. (1) His daily life was luxurious. But most certainly we have no right to condemn him for that. With the Jewish nobility in practice, as with the Jewish law in theory, luxurious living does not seem to have been thought to involve any sin whatever. (2) Lazarus is, then, the type of the poor generally. The treatment which Lazarus received is to be regarded as a fair specimen of the rich man's behaviour to the poor generally. The portrait of the rich man, as drawn by Christ, is that of a man luxurious and selfish habitually careful of the gratification of his own appetite, and habitually careless of the suffering which was around him, even at his doors. And from this selfish disregard of human misery, "Moses and the prophets," had he listened to them, would certainly have saved him. There was no point on which they spoke more plainly. Love to his kindred the rich man certainly had, and his anxiety, in the midst of his own suffering, to save from the same fate the brethren whom he had left behind is almost sublime. The charity which is so often said to begin at home the love which, strong but narrow, expends itself wholly upon the small circle of relatives and friends that he had. The love that looks more widely, not refusing pity and aid, because the applicant is a stranger that he had not.
J. H. Jellett, The Elder Son and Other Sermons,p. 15.
I. What the chief sins of the rich man were, although not expressly stated in the parable, may yet be understood from attending to two or three of its circumstances. First, his heart seems to have been too much set upon the good things of this life, instead of seeking the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Secondly, as Lazarus desired to be fed with the crumbs that fell from his table, and as we do not read that he was fed, we may guess that the rich man took no notice of him, but let him lie and languish without relief. Here are two grievous sins, worldly-mindedness and hard-heartedness, justly punished with God's wrath and damnation. Let us look to ourselves, that we be not guilty of the same sins, and liable to the same punishment.
II. Let no man complain as if he had not enough made known to him by Almighty God concerning his duty. For if even in the time of Moses and the Prophets, and before one rose from the dead, they were inexcusable, whoever they were that sinned, much more we, if we do despite unto the Spirit of grace, and count the blood of the covenant an unholy thing as we plainly do if we sin wilfully after we have come to a knowledge of the truth. For unto us that hath happened which alone this man thought needful to make any sinner repent, to us One hath come from the dead, even Jesus Christ our Lord, who was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification. Let us therefore hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering, knowing that if we break or reject this covenant, there remaineth no other.
III. Finally, if ye know these things, ye are but the more unhappy except ye do them. It is not your calling yourselves Christians, nor even your believing the Gospel when you happen to think of it, that will make you worthy to be carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom, if your heart be not with God if your thoughts, words, and actions be not governed by His Commandments.
J. Keble, Sermons Occasional and Parochial,p. 29.
I. The radical defect in this rich man, that which was the root of all his sin and the cause of all his woe, was, that he did not use his advantages, he despised Moses and the Prophets, he had a talent given him and he buried it in a napkin. And this being the case, we shall not be so much surprised at the words of the text, if we think well upon them; for the Books of Moses and the Prophets told the rich man of his duty quite as clearly as Lazarus could have done if he had returned from the dead. They told him that he was to love God above all things and his neighbour as himself; and they told him also that God was a jealous God, and One who would in no wise spare the guilty. And if he shut his ears to this, what reason have we to think that a man returned from the dead would have greater powers of persuasion? For it is not as though there were something of which a man had to be convinced, and of which a resurrection from the dead would be a proof: there is a voice within every man, which tells him what is right and condemns what is wrong, and when this is stifled by selfishness and sin, no voice from the grave can supply its place.
II. Some advantages we all have in common: we have all the public prayers of the Church; we have all the Holy Spirit striving within us, and convincing us of sin and of righteousness; we have all our Bibles, which we can read; we may all partake, if we will, of the Holy Sacrament of Christ's Body and Blood. These, and such as these, are our "Moses and the Prophets;" they are the voice of God speaking to us, and telling us of the beauty of holiness, the ugliness of sin, of the glories of heaven and the horrors of hell. Do we want any other voice? Nay, if we shut our ears to these, a voice from the grave would be in vain. The same message of repentance and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ has come to us all, and it is for us to attend to it; and if we shut our ears and harden our hearts to such messages as this, we have put ourselves into an attitude of resistance to God, and have so injured our own perceptions of right and wrong, have so blinded our eyes to that Light which lighteth every man who comes into the world, that no miracle, not even a resurrection from the dead, will have any power to convince.
Bishop Harvey Goodwin, Parish Sermons,1st series, p. 209.
I. Consider how we are to understand this declaration of Abraham. There is at first sight something very startling in the principle here enunciated, more especially if we remember from whom it came. Are these, it may be asked, indeed the words of the Founder of Christianity? Is it thus He speaks of the value of miracles, who Himself repeatedly appealed to His own marvellous works as a convincing evidence of His Divine mission? To understand what the thought really is, we must inquire what additional proof of the truth of His religion or incentive to its practice, would have been given to one who had in his hands the writings of "Moses and the Prophets," by the re-appearance of man after death. We must note here that scepticism with regard to the marvellous events of their own history does not seem to have been prevalent among the Jews of that time, and was certainly not the fault of that class, the Pharisees, to whom this parable was more immediately addressed. The Divine mission of Moses a mission attested and enforced by miracles was quite generally accepted as a truth. So far, then, the thought seems to be, "On you, who have already in your hands the recorded miracles of the Mosaic Dispensation, no seenmiracle could produce, in enforcing the same truths, any appreciable results."
If this were all, the passage which I have taken for my text would not present any great difficulty. But there is something still behind. Does the Author of this parable mean to say that the doctrine of a future life would be destitute of moral effect on those who were deaf to the teaching of Moses? I answer that whatever of obedience to positive law could be obtained by a system of temporal rewards and punishments by the promise or bestowal of earthly prosperity by the threat or infliction of earthly suffering all that had been done by the Mosaic Dispensation. And I cannot read the words of Christ to mean less than this: that if you alter the Mosaic system merely by super-adding to the hopes and terrors of this life the hopes and terrors of the life to come, you will effect nothing. If that system has failed, yours will not succeed. If such promises and threats fail to obtain the result, you will not obtain it merely by changing the scene of their fulfilment from this world to the next.
J. H. Jellett, The Elder Son and Other Sermons,p. 30.
References: Luke 16:31. H. P. Liddon, Church of England Pulpit,vol. ii., p. 1; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. iii., No. 143; Preacher's Monthly,vol. iv., p. 225; G. Moberly, Parochial Sermons,p. 47; R. L. Browne,' Sussex Sermons,p. 141; R. D. B. Rawnsley, Village Sermons,2nd series, p. 186; T. T. Lynch, Three Months' Ministry,p. 169; R. Scott, University Sermons,p. 210. Luke 16 F. D. Maurice, The Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven,p. 246.