Luke 16:15-26

¹⁵Then Jesus told them, “You mob want everyone to think you are good, but God knows what you are really like, and he knows what you think inside your heads. You see, there are things that people reckon are important, but God thinks those things are rubbish.

¹⁶You know, God gave Moses the law for people to follow, and he sent other men to tell people God’s messages. And God’s people followed those words, from the time of Moses until the time that John the Baptiser came. Then John told people about the new way. And I’m telling people about that new way too. I’m telling them how to join God’s family, too, and now lots of people are trying hard to get into God’s family.

¹⁷But the laws from Moses will not go away. You know, the sky and the earth will stay here for a long time, and while they stay here, God’s words will stay here too. God won’t change any little bit of them. They will stay here till everything in them happens.”

¹⁸Then Jesus said, “Some of those words from God are about people that want to break up their marriage. It is wrong. If a man divorces his wife and marries another woman, he is sleeping with the wrong woman. She is not his proper wife. And if another man marries the divorced woman, that man is sleeping with the wrong woman, too.”

¹⁹Jesus told them another picture story. He said, “There was a rich man that always wore real good clothes, and he always had plenty of good food to eat.

²⁰And there was a very poor man, called Lazarus, that had a lot of sores on his body. He was hungry, but he had nothing to eat, so he lay down at the gate of the rich man’s house.

²¹He hoped he might get some of the rubbish food that the rich man chucked away. That rich man didn’t give him any good food. The dogs there used to lick that poor man’s sores.

²²Then one day the poor man died, and God sent his angel messengers to get him and take him to heaven to be with Abraham, our grand-father of a long time ago. Then later the rich man died, and his family buried his body.

²³But he went to the bad place called hell. He was in a big fire in that place, and it hurt him a lot. Then he looked up and he saw Abraham, a long way off, and he saw Lazarus there with Abraham.

²⁴So he yelled out loud, he said, ‘Hey, Grandpa Abraham, this fire is hurting me a lot. Be sorry for me and send Lazarus to bring some water to me, and dip his finger in it and put it on my tongue, to cool it a little bit.’

²⁵But Abraham said, ‘Just a minute, son. Remember that when you were alive on the earth, you had everything you wanted, and Lazarus had nothing. So now he is here, and we are making him feel good, but you are there in that fire.

²⁶And anyway, he can’t go to you. There is a really big gully in between this place and that place where you are. Nobody can cross over from here to that place, and nobody can come from that place to here.