And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.
And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead. A principle of awful magnitude and importance. The greatest miracle will have no effect on those who are determined not to believe. A real Lazarus soon "rose from the dead;" but the sight of him by crowds of people, who were thereby drawn so far toward Christ only crowned the unbelief and hastened the murderous plots of the Pharisees against the Lord of glory; nor has His own resurrection, far more over-powering, yet won over that "crooked and perverse nation."
Remarks:
(1) The parable of the Unjust Steward has this in common with the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30), that both represent all we possess as a sacred Trust committed to us; for the right use of which we are responsible; and the actual use made of which shall go to determine our eternal state. But in the Parable of the Talents the trust intended comprehends all endowments whatsoever that may be turned to the service of Christ; here it is money alone, the love of which is the root of all evil (1 Timothy 6:10), and whose slaves and worshippers were among the audience to which it was addressed (Luke 16:13-14). There, the talents are to be used for the Master's interest; here, the immediate object is to enforce such a use of money as may promote our own interest in the highest sense of it. Thus, the same general subject has different aspects, which, though consistent, are not to be confounded.
(2) Let us ponder the Lord's weighty saying, that the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light. 'These religious people (methinks I hear some supercilious observer of Christians say-so very impartial as to be "neither cold nor hot") may be all very good, but they have small common sense; their principles are fine-most unexceptionable-but they are wonderfully airy: they somehow want the substance of things earthly; they cannot be grasped; and even those who make so much of them go about them in so unbusiness-like a fashion, and with so little of the shrewdness and energy we are used to in common matters, that one may be excused for not surrendering himself to such notions, and resting contented with those general views which commend themselves to everyone, and about which there is no dispute.' This witness is true: spiritual things are all too airy for such persons; they have substance only to faith here, and of that they have none: Theirs is a world of sense; the things which are seen are their sphere; and right easily are they grasped, and all congenial to the natural man: in hunting after them they go with the stream-to which the remonstrances of conscience and of Scripture oppose but a feeble barrier.
No wonder, then, that shrewdness is stamped upon all that is done in this sphere, and no thanks for it to them and theirs. But ours is a world of faith and hope; and hope that is seen is not hope; for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? but if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it. We know Whom we have Believed; we have made our choice, and mean to abide by it, nor will it ever be taken from us. Nevertheless, we stand rebuked. 'Thou hast said too much truth of us, thou cold, supercilious critic of our poor Christianity, but our gracious Master said it before thee. We thank thee not, but we thank Him, and mean, with His help, to wipe away this reproach.' And now, will not my Christian readers try to do it? We know very well it is because, the things of this present world are "seen" that they are more vividly apprehended, and so-all "temporal," though they be-more powerfully grasped, than the things which are "not seen," even though they be "eternal." We know full well how keenly we feel the one, and how languidly the other; what sacrifices of time and strength, yea, what risks of life itself men will readily incur, to promote their temporal interests, and how little of all this even the children of God will go through with for those which are eternal. But as our Lord holds this up as a reproach, and here sends us to the worldling for wisdom-even as the sluggard is sent to the ant for activity-let us not rest in explanations of the fact, but rather strive to reverse it. What we want from the men of the world is not so much their shrewd management of affairs, as that vivid apprehension of our own sphere which shall convert our world of faith into substance and sense to us; then shall we have grasp enough and energy enough; because "this is the victory that overcometh the world, oven our faith." Yet along with this-as in temporal things-habits of steady vigilance and activity have much to do with success in spiritual things; and this parable will not have produced its proper fruit until the children of light, ashamed of being excelled in anything for eternity by the worldly wisdom of the children of this world, shall bend their efforts to rise above them in all such things, commanding its respect and compelling its admiration for this superiority. "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him" (James 1:5).
(3) This and similar portions of Scripture have been so sadly abused to support the fatal doctrine of the merit of good works, and especially of charity to the poor and needy, that not a few Christians have been scared away from such scriptures, and are little aware what a test of character at the great day will be the use they make of the pecuniary means with which they are entrusted. Should any say, That can hardly apply to those who have so little of this world's goods as I have, let them consider whether they are not acting the unprofitable servant in the parable of the Talents, who, because his lord had given him but one talent, went and hid it in the earth; and let them remember the pregnant and comprehensive maxim, "He that is faithful in the least is faithful also in much, and he that is unfaithful in the least is unfaithful also in much."
(4) How entirely is the divinest teaching thrown away upon those who, like the Pharisaic portion of our Lord's audience, are resolved not to part with the sinful courses which it exposes and condemns! But the "derision" of those "covetous" Pharisees at such teaching as that of this section was the best evidence of its power.
(5) In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, were the poverty and disease of this dear saint of God so extreme as is here represented, and, to add to all, when laid down at the rich man's gate, in hope of at length moving his compassion, is he represented as dying just as he was? Then, let no one so interpret the promises of divine compassion and provision for the godly poor as to think that they may not be left to live and die as poor and as neglected of men as this Lazarus. But neither let God's providence be maligned on this account, until we know how He deals with the spirits such. Did we know what unseen ministrations of angels He sends them, and with what seasons of nearness to Himself He favours them, in the absence of human consolation, with what light He irradiates their darkness, how out of weakness He makes them strong, and how in patience and hope He makes them to possess their souls-giving them "songs in the night," unknown to the prosperous even of His own children (Revelation 14:3) - we should perhaps change our mind, and be almost tempted to envy "Lazarus" with all his miseries.
As he looked at the sycophantish visitors who went in and out of the rich man's gate, regardless of him, methinks I hear him saying with the sweet singer of Israel, "There be many that say, Who will show us any good? Lord, lift thou up the light of Thy countenance upon us: Thou hast put gladness in my heart more than in the time when their grain and their wine increased. Deliver my soul from the wicked, from men of the world, which have their portion in this life, and whose belly Thou fillest with Thy hid treasure: As for me I shall behold Thy face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied, when I wake, with Thy likeness" (Psalms 4:6-7; Psalms 17:13-15). And see him at last: Those angels are not ashamed of his poverty, nor repelled away by his sores. His wasted skeleton-to men a sightless carcass-is to them beautiful as the shrine of a redeemed spirit; and that spirit is more beautiful still, in its resemblance to God, its likeness to themselves, its meetness for glory. They hover over the beggarly habitation, and surround the mean pallet, and watch the last effort of the spirit to break away from its falling tenement, that at the appointed hour they may convey it in triumph to its celestial home. O that men-that even Christians-would judge less by the outward appearance, and try, like the Lord, to home. O that men-that even Christians-would judge less by the outward appearance, and try, like the Lord, to look upon the heart!
(6) And how beautiful is the view here given us of the ministrations of angels, especially at the death-bed of the saints. Often do they tell us, they see them waiting for them and smiling on them. They are ready to stretch out their arms to them, to signify their readiness at that moment to be taken up by them; and they ask us, sometimes, if we do not see them too. Of course we don't, because we live in a world of sense. But they are then leaving it; it has all but closed upon them, and they are getting within the precincts of heaven. Who, then, shall say that they see not what is hid from us; and since what they affirm they see is only what is here represented as a reality, who, with this parable before him, shall say that such sights are but the fruit of a distempered imagination, a picture of the fevered or languid brain?
(7) How frequently do the terrors of hell recur, and how terrific are the representations given of it, in the teaching of our Lord! Here, its unutterable and inconceivable horrors are depicted with a vividness altogether astonishing. And the unreasonableness and impossibility of the slightest and briefest abatement of them, which is here proclaimed as from the other world itself, only completes the representation. And mark how this unreasonableness is grounded wholly on the life and conduct of the lost in the present world-rendering any change in their condition in eternity as hopeless as their being able to undo their past life by living over again and acting otherwise. Need it be asked whether the perpetuity of hell-torments, and the character of them too-as but the natural development and fitting termination of a life of ungodliness-could be more emphatically taught?
(8) Though we are not to press the language of the parables unduly, does it not seem a legitimate inference from the whole strain of this Parable, that the lost will, as an aggravation of their torment, in some way or other, either see the bliss of the saved in heaven, or have such a vivid knowledge of what it is as will amount to a kind of sight? And are not those other words of Christ confirmatory of this? "Ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out"? (Luke 13:28).
(9) Nowhere is the sufficiency of revealed truth in general, and of the Old Testament Scriptures in particular, for all the purposes of salvation, so emphatically stated as by our Lord in the closing verses of this chapter, who puts it into the mouth of Abraham from the unseen world. Men are fain to believe that if they had this or that evidence which they have not, they would repent and be converted. And because they are not startled into faith-because their impenitence is not over-powered by resistless occurrences-they think there will be some excuse for them if at last they are found unchanged. But the Lord here shuts us absolutely up to THE REVEALED WORD, as God's ordained means of all saving effect upon the heart and life. (See 2 Peter 1:19; John 5:39; John 5:46-47; John 17:17.) And if this be true, need we add, that the right and the duty of all to "search the Scriptures," and the apostasy from a Scripture foundation of any Church that would prohibit the general searching of them-as the Church of Rome does-follow by necessary consequence?