You know the story. The haunting ghosts of Christmas past eventually persuaded tight-fisted Ebenezer Scrooge to embrace Christmas and its spirit of generosity to the needy and poor. It was the ghosts. They were the key to the radical change in Scrooge’s attitude and practice. Cute ghost story with a happy ending. Very sentimental and Christmas like. But quite misleading and a very unhappy ending.

Dicken’s story of how past ghosts changed Scrooge’s callous attitude reminded me of Luke’s story of ghosts. Dickens suggests ghosts could change a selfish, uncaring man’s heart. But Luke’s a ghost buster, a Christmas spoiler. He sets the record straight about what ghosts cannot do.

 Luke believes wealthy, ungenerous people of God can change and become generous and liberal in their attitude toward the marginalized and poor (Luke 19:1-10). But Luke also shows Dicken’s method of effectuating that heart-change is only a hopeless mirage.

 Jesus’ teaching on the inherent dangers of loving money included two stories of rich men (Luke 16:1-13; 19-33). The second story is of a rich man who loved money, illustrating the character of the Pharisees (Lk 16:14). Luke shows how the love of money is a handicap, paralyzing faith in God’s Word, choking out compassion and care for the poor beggar at his gate. The presence of a beggar at the gate of a Jewish person was an indictment against him/her.

 If there is a poor man among your brothers in any gate in the land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward your poor brother. Rather, you shall freely open your hand to him, and shall generously lend him sufficient for his need in whatever he lacks… Give generously to him to him and do so without a grudging heart…” Deut. 15:7-10[1]

 The rich man was no atheist, undoubtedly claiming to believe Scripture and that it was the Word of God and that heaven and hell were real. But, due to the love of money, he never really believed what he professed to believe. He never got around to taking the Scriptures seriously enough to actually put it into practice. His was an empty profession of faith. His lifestyle, his behavior, driven by the love of money, showed irrefutably that he possessed a dead faith, a corpse trust, one that lacked a viable heartbeat and failed to show love in action (James 2:14ff).

 The rich man who ignored the beggar Lazarus at his gate eventually died and ended up in Hades. Since he had missed heaven and his own case was now beyond hope and no second chance for him to repent or obtain relief (Luke 16:24-26), he thought of his five brothers back home. He didn’t want them to also miss heaven. So, once again he pleaded with father Abraham:[2]

 Then I beg you, father, --send Lazarus to my father’s house since I have five brothers and to warn them lest they also come into this place of torment. But Abraham said: They have Moses and the prophets; they must listen and respond to them. Then the rich man said, No, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.[3] He replied to him: If they do not respond to Moses and the prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead. Lk 16:27-31

 Observe: The rich knew Lazarus’ name and that his own family did not take the Scriptures (the Law and the prophets) seriously enough to repent and change their selfish, materialistic ways. Well, neither had he. It was a family trait, a fatal flaw. Love money, live comfortably, ignore the poor at your gate, and maintain a ho-hum attitude toward Scripture.

 The rich man’s family, he argued, needed something dramatic, something more than unimpressive Bible reading or teaching. “The Bible needs some assistance to get through to my family. God’s Word needs our help. The Bible is insufficient for my brothers.” His brothers needed a spectacular light show, something sensational, glitzy staging, celebrity focused, some entertainment, something radical and titillating to persuade them to listen to God and repent. “Give them a “Six Flags Over Jesus” experience and they’ll be convinced and change. Give them a liver shiver and they’ll listen to God and become generous folk; you’ll see.”  

 So, while suffering agony in Hades, the rich man, desperate to keep his family from joining him, begged Abraham to send Lazarus to become a ghost—return to earth via resurrection and warn his five brothers of their impending doom—a ghost from the past! Surely his brothers, like Ebenezer Scrooge, with such an advantage, would repent and take Scripture seriously if they encountered a ghost from the past, something as dramatic as a man risen from the dead! After all, it was a series of ghost-encounters that transformed Scrooge from a miser to a generous man.

Surely my five brothers will be persuaded by Lazarus’ ghost! Well, surely not, says Luke. Abraham shreds the rich man’s Dickens ghost theory:

 “If they do not respond to Moses[4] and the prophets,[5] neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.” Luke 16:31[6]

Father Abraham refuses to comply with the rich man’s request. The five brothers didn’t need an apparition. They did not need to be convinced that there was an afterlife or that after death came the judgment, or that there was a Hades. They believed all that. No need for a resurrection or an apparition. The five brothers had all they needed. They had the highest possible witness of the Scriptures. But the rich man’s family didn’t take the Bible seriously enough to actually trust it and put it into practice.

Luke is a ghost-buster. Ghosts, spectacular shows, displays of human talent and giftedness, engaging entertainment, regardless of how scintillating they might be to one’s emotions, cannot plow up the stony, thorn infested hearts of people and bring them to genuine repentance. We look in vain for a Christmas Carol ending to this story. Unlike Dicken’s tale, it’s an unhappy ending.

Chills and thrills might impress. But God’s living Word is that which creates new life and bears fruits.

 You have been born anew, not from perishable but from imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God. For {explaining the word “enduring”} all flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flowers of the grass; the grass withers and the flowers fall off, but the word of the Lord endures forever. And this is the word that was proclaimed to you. 1 Peter 1: 23-25

 Thank you for reading.

 www.redeemerbible.org.

 [1] God required the people of Israel to store up the full tithe of their produce every 3rd year to create resources for the Levites and also for the resident aliens, the orphans and the widows in their towns in order that they could come and eat their fill. Thus, God would bless them in all of the work they undertook. See Deut. 14:28-29.

[2] Luke states that the poor beggar was carried to the bosom of Abraham, the father of Israel, the model of hospitality (Genesis 18). It is striking that a poor beggar who had to rummage through the rich man’s trash for something to eat, is embraced and welcomed by father of the entire family of Israel. The words of John the Baptist come to mind: Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our father…every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire (Luke 3:8-9). The unrepentant rich man was a tree that did not bear good fruit, and thus, he was thrown into the fire.

 [3] The habit of defining Greek words based only upon their various parts is a common but reckless one. Etymology is the study of the original pieces that make up a word. But the meaning of words includes more than just the pieces. For example, a catfish is not a cat that is covered with scales and swims or a fish that meows, laps up milk with its tongue, and walks on four legs with sharp claws. The two pieces of the word “catfish” alone do not accurately define what it is. The worst example of this reckless method of defining NT terms involves the word “repent.” As Dr. William Mounce, noted evangelical Greek scholar, professor, and author writes: “The worst example I know of is the Greek word for repent…which some people define as, ‘to change your mind,’ but not necessarily to change your behavior.” He continues: “This type of misuse of Greek etymology runs throughout Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Biblical Words, and it is why it should not be recommended.” See William D. Mounce, Greek for the Rest of Us (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), p. 213.  The concept of repentance is sourced in the Hebrew Bible and shows us that all spheres of one’s life will change when a man or woman genuinely repents. Luke’s story of the prodigal son is consciously designed by him, among other purposes, to show the entire process of repentance at work in a sinner’s life. Observe Paul’s words: “I preached that they should turn to God and prove their repentance by their deeds.” Acts 26:20.  

[4] “Moses” refers to the Law of Moses, i.e., the Pentateuch, the Book of the Law, or the Torah.

[5] “The prophets” refer to the second section of Israel’s Scripture, the former prophets (beginning with Joshua) and the latter prophets (the ten so-called minor prophets).

[6] King Herod heard rumors that John the Baptist had risen from the dead; but such rumors did nothing to bring him to repentance (Luke 9:7-9; 13:31). When Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead in John 11:45-53, the result was not repentance, revival, or conversion. The leadership in Jerusalem heard the news and immediately conspired together to kill Jesus—a note of irony in John’s Gospel. Kill someone who raises people from the dead. And when Jesus himself was raised from the dead, the Jewish leaders failed to repent; instead, they invented a lie and bribed the tomb guards to suppress the truth of what had really happened (Matthew 28:11-15). The apostle Paul raised young Eutychus from the dead (Acts 20:7-12). But did Eutychus then get up and preach to the congregation? No. The thought never entered their mind. Paul went back up to the third floor and picked up where he left off in his message. The people sat down and listened to him until morning! No one cared a lick about what Eutychus had seen or would say. Besides, Eutychus had nothing more to say that what Paul was already saying. So, if the testimony of one person raised from the dead were of any value for the confirming of the gospel, would God not have used it throughout history?