Understanding

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Good morning. Welcome. It's good to have you here. We're in the middle of a series. It's only three weeks long. It's called After This Life... and there, I think, are a lot of questions that people have of what happens after this life. We talked about the basics last week of how you can be sure. You can be certain what God has in store for you after this life. I asked at that time, and we placed it on Facebook as well, any questions people might have, because I think there's a lot of questions people do have about what this all is after this life and what's going on with it. I'd love to be able to address some of those questions. One of them that came up was a great question, but I'm punting it towards this fall. It was about suffering in this world and how in the world does this make any sense, that people can go through such long, prolonged suffering in their lives, etc. We're going to do a series this fall called Why God? because we have those kind of why questions. Now, I'm not just going to leave you hanging. There's a great book I just read by a man named Timothy Keller called Walking With God Through Pain and Suffering. It's a great text to read through if you want to on that. It's a subject that is much broader than what we're focusing on in this series. That's one question we're going to deal with in the end, but I'd love to have other questions you might have. Today, we're probably going to talk about something that you've probably questioned about and wondered a little about, but you might not want to really talk about. And that's hell. Now, just at that moment, everybody's like, oh gosh. Yeah. All of a sudden, it reminds me of a friend of mine who has passed away a few years ago. Dick. He was from southern Mississippi, and he was used to a church in Macomb, Mississippi, that had a sawdust trail and, you know, just the old-time revival thing. And he talked about this joke about a church where a film crew came to do documentaries, and it was a snake handle in church. Have you ever heard of a snake handle in church? Okay. And all of a sudden, this film crew's towards the back in the church, and the guy behind the camera is watching, and the guy with the snakes is coming right towards them. You know, the rattlesnake. And the guy says to his partner, who's helping him, he says, where is the exit in this church? And the guy said, it's over there, right, you know, the opposite direction where you want. And then he goes like, so where do you think they want an exit in this church? He's trying to figure out how to. You might be going like, I don't know if I want to be here right now if we're going to talk about hell. I understand. I understand. We're going to talk a lot more than hell. It's not really about hell. We're going to talk about how that fits into everything, though. So let's pray first. Okay. Lord God, this is a tough topic. It's up there with a lot of others that maybe, you know, are uncomfortable for us. But I think, Lord, your word and your goodness and your grace, I just want those to shine through. And that this text today, as we read this parable that Jesus tells, that deals with these issues of what's after this life that you would really give to us. Certainty and joy in knowing you and knowing we can trust in you and you are our help in all of these matters. And I pray, Lord, for anyone with questions or wondering about all of this stuff, Lord, today, that you would just provide for them, people around them, that they can bounce their ideas and thoughts and questions off of as well. And work through these matters now, Lord, in this life for the next. All this we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. So we're going to be in Luke chapter 16. And you can kind of follow along. There's a Bible app called the You Version. And in it, under events, yes, it is there, right? Okay. I didn't mess up this week. Okay. And it is there. You can search and you can even get the notes to this message there. Okay. And it's kind of great. You can take your own notes with it. So we're going to read Luke 16, 19 through 31. And this is a parable of Jesus. This is a teaching he had, kind of a story that also brings home some real great points. Okay. So this is how it goes. Jesus said, there was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus covered with sores who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores. The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried. And in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he called out, Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in the water and...