Audio recording Sermon manuscript:One reading sticks out more than the others today. What sticks out in that reading is punishment. The rich man is in torment in hell. He just wants one drop of water from the tip of Lazarus’s finger. This is what you might call the ultimate punishment. Punishments have a way of capturing our attention.I remember as a kid that Mom and Dad didn’t really care too much about seatbelts. That is, they didn’t care too much until the law added punishment. They didn’t want to get a ticket, and so we all had to start wearing our seatbelt.Punishments have an effect on people’s behavior. We don’t want to be punished, so we will change our behavior accordingly. But normally and naturally there is some resentment that goes along with this. Criminals resent the state for having caught them and punishing them. Children resent being punished by their fathers. Sinners resent being punished by God.So, what might we do about this? How about we just get rid of punishment? That, in fact, would be wonderful. It is truly desirable. There’s just one problem: People do things that they shouldn’t do. They do bad things rather than good things. If everyone just did what they were supposed to do, there would be no need of punishment. Since people do bad things, there will always be a need for punishment so that people’s lives and livelihoods may be kept safe. The evildoer has to think twice about whether he should carry out what he wants to do, because the consequences might not make it worth it.Now let’s think about the punishment that we heard Jesus speak about. The rich man is being punished, but one might wonder whether the punishment fits the crime. We are not told much about the man except that he lived well, and there happened to be a beggar who lived outside of his estate. When he died he went to hell and now lives in torment.Although we might not be so sure that the punishment fits the crime, the rich man does not seem to doubt the justice of it. His thoughts turn to his brothers. He knows that they are living just like he did, and so he asks Abraham to send Lazarus to warn them. If they were to find out about the punishment that is in store for them, then they would change their behavior.Maybe; maybe not. Threatening punishment will not always work. The best that it can ever do is to make someone conform outwardly. Even then, the whole thing has to make good sense. It is arguably more comfortable to ride in a car without a seatbelt, but seatbelts make it much more likely that you will survive in a car crash. That is why the law was passed, punishing those who weren’t wearing their seatbelt. Pretty much the whole population was brought around to wearing seatbelts—and it wasn’t just punishment that did it. People came to see the good sense of it.It’s not always like that. There was once another law in this country (in fact, it was an amendment to the constitution) that prohibited the sale and consumption of alcohol. The law carried with it punishments, but it never took hold of people the way that the seatbelt law did. This is because the sale and consumption of alcohol can be a harmless pleasure. Regardless of the punishments, people broke the law. They wanted to do what they wanted to do. Punishment just made them get sneaky about it.When it comes to the way that the rich man was living, we are dealing with things that are perhaps even less harmful than alcohol. The man liked nice things. He accordingly took good care of himself, while the beggar sat outside his gate. I doubt that threats of the severe punishments of hell are going to be able to reform most people into mere outward compliance in such a things. Perhaps if a person could see the punishments, that might work. But even if the threats somehow did work, there would be a great deal of resentment. People don’t want to give their money away. Perhaps you can make them do so by holding a gun to their head so to speak, but they will remain awfully bi