Sermon

October 7, 2007
Pentecost 19
Luke 16:19-31
Pastor Joel Zank

Value God’s Word!

(Luke 16:19-31)  "There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. {20} At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores {21} and longing to eat what fell from the rich man's table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores. {22} "The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried. {23} In hell, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. {24} So he called to him, 'Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.' {25} "But Abraham replied, 'Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. {26} And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.' {27}"He answered, 'Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my father's house, {28} for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.' {29} "Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.' {30} "'No, father Abraham,' he said, 'but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.' {31}"He said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.'"

In Christ Jesus, whose saving truth is told to us by Moses and the Prophets, dear fellow redeemed,

Do you remember the definition of a parable? “An earthly story with a heavenly meaning.” Right? Well, today we have before us what might well be described as a heavenly story with an earthly meaning. In fact for this reason, some Bible teachers have gone so far as to suggest that the story of the Rich Man and Poor Lazarus isn’t a parable at all, but rather the account of two real people whose lives here and hereafter are well known to Jesus, for he is, after all, the all-knowing Son of God. I must admit, the thought that the Rich Man and Lazarus really lived and died intrigues me to no end, but whether that is the case or not doesn’t matter one little bit. What matters is that our Lord Jesus wants to use these men, whether real or fictional, to teach us a great truth about our lives and the way we will want to live them before we die. And how is it that we will want to live? Oh, more than anything we will want to be people who Value God’s Word, 1) for the saving faith it works; and 2) for the safe future it promises.

Let’s begin with a important truth that cannot be stressed enough – the rich man in our lesson ends up in hell, not because he was rich, but because he lived and died an unbeliever. Let’s also note this: His wealth did not make him an unbeliever, as evidenced by the fact that in our lesson he spends most of his time speaking to one of the richest men who ever lived on earth – Abraham, the man of faith who now lives eternally in the mansions of heaven. Wealth does not damn, only unbelief damns.

So how do we know that the rich man was an unbeliever? Because Jesus, who reads the human heart like an open book tells us so. But that’s not all. Jesus does something else for us, he shows us the man’s unbelief by pointing to the way this man managed or should I say, mismanaged the wealth God had entrusted to him. Is that a legitimate thing to do? Sure it is, for stewardship, as taught in the Bible, has more to do with our faith than with our finances; it is more about what we believe than what we do. The rich man is a perfect example of this. From the way he manages his wealth we learn right away that this man believed his body to be much more important than his soul. He does nothing to care for his spirit, but he spares no expense to clothe and feed his body each day in a manner befitting a king. What else do we learn about him from his management of God’s blessings? Well, he was a man who lived for the moment. He obviously thought much more about the “here and now” than he did the “here after.” Last week we heard Jesus say: “I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings” (Luke 16:9).  Those who believe in Jesus as Savior see wealth not as something to hoard, but as the means by which we show and share the Savior’s love in a dying world. You see none of that in this rich man’s life. On the contrary, his life is marked by the selfishness of unbelief. Though he has more than enough of everything for himself, the beggar at his gate is left to long for the man’s table scraps and to be cared for by dogs till his dying day.

From what we can gather, the rich man’s selfishness seemed to pay off, allowing his wealth to last and last. It apparently never ran out, but the man’s time of grace did. Jesus reports his death and its consequences simply and succinctly: Like Lazarus, “the rich man also died and was buried. {23} In hell, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side” (Luke 16:22b-23).  It says in the Book of Hebrews: “...man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment...” (Hebrews 9:27). Here we see that truth play out in the case of this rich man. His body was buried and will remain so till the resurrection of all flesh at the end of time. But the man’s soul is judged immediately. He is found guilty of unbelief and his eternal death sentence begins at once.

It is hard to imagine, nor do we want to spend much time trying to think about a place so horrible that even a cool drop of water on the tongue is relief both sought and denied. We know so little about the prison of hell that it might sound strange to hear a man there refer to Abraham as “father.”  But remember, this man died trusting in his own self-importance. As a physical descendant of Abraham, he was sure his life of luxury would continue in the world to come. He never bothered to learn from Scripture that Abraham was saved by trusting in God’s promises. He never once considered that it would be more important to share Abraham’s faith than his blood-type.  Nor does this fool “wise up” in hell; not that it would do him any good. No, in the fires of hell, he has the same contempt for God and his Word that he had his whole life long on earth. You see it, you hear it in his last words to Abraham. They come after this man expresses his supposed concern for his brothers. He wants Abraham to send Lazarus back from the dead to warn them so that they too will not come to that place of torment. But when Abraham points to “Moses and the Prophets,” that is to God’s Word as the sole power of salvation by God’s own design, then we find out what is really on this man’s mind:   “‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent’” (Luke 16:30). What is this man saying, but that he knows better than God? He has a better plan of salvation. In fact, if God would have only thought to deal with this man as he now proposes to deal with his brothers, then he too would have come to the wonders of heaven. What is this man doing but blaming God for his misery?

Have you ever heard such arrogance? Maybe you have; maybe you’ve  heard it poisoning your own thoughts or spewing from your own mouth!  Be honest, you’ve blamed God for your troubles a time or two in your life, haven’t you? You’ve even thought that God could make it a little easier for you to believe in him if only he’d think to do things your way one-in-a-while. It’s pretty frightening, isn’t it, to find yourself thinking and sounding like someone in hell? And it gets scarier yet, because your resemblance to the condemned doesn’t end there. His selfish, misplaced priorities strike a familiar chord with you as well. I’m afraid they do the same for me. So, tell me, if we think and sound and act so much like that rich man, what hope do we have to escape his eternal fate? That’s exactly the right question to be asking, not just today, but every day. And here’s exactly the right answer – our hope, our one and only hope is found in Moses and the Prophets – in the words and promises of Scripture, all of which point to Jesus.

Friend, value God’s Word as your most prized possession. Value God’s Word for the saving faith it is able to work in your heart, faith that clings to Jesus. You will escape hell not because you’re less of a sinner than that rich fool in our text. You’re not; neither am I. We are exactly like him – just as selfish, just as arrogant, just as foolish and just as deserving of eternal death. But by the grace of God, we will not perish. For God has given us his Word that his Son, Jesus took all our arrogance, all our stubbornness, all our selfishness, all our foolishness and made them his very own. More than that, God has given us his Word that this Jesus actually assumed your identity, he actually became you and me and every sinner. He actually traded places with us so that we could take the credit for his holiness and he could take the blame for our sin, and not just the blame, but the punishment too. You heard the agony of that rich man. You heard his voice calling out from the fires of hell. Imagine the agony our Savior endured as he suffered your eternal death and mine together with that of all sinners. That agony spells your salvation. Because Jesus already endured it, you won’t have to. You have God’s Word on it. Believe it! Value that word more than anything else in life. Invest in that Word by making time to read it, to learn it, to think and to speak it. As that Word fills your heart and mind, it will grow your faith in Jesus so that nothing and no one can take it away from you. So powerful is the Word and comforting too, which brings us to our second thought for today – Value God’s Word for the safe future it promises.

Up till now, we’ve spent all our time talking about the rich man whose name is not even told to us.  But the other man, the beggar, his name we know. It’s Lazarus, a name that means “Helped by God,” and so he was. Oh for a time it may not have seemed that way. As Abraham mentions, any number of bad things came the beggar’s way during his days on earth. And yet from the only perspective that really matters, we discover that it was Lazarus who was rich all along, rich in God’s promises and the faith they instill. It was God-given faith that kept Lazarus from despair, faith that believed that God could and would use even poverty and sickness to serve  his child’s greatest good. And that’s exactly what God did, ultimately using those things to bring Lazarus home to heaven on the wings of angels.

In a sense, your name is Lazarus too, so is mine for we all have been helped by God, saved by him from the punishment of sin, the torments of hell. Like the Lazarus in our text, we too suffer troubles here on earth, but like him, God gives us faith to believe that these troubles are not the result of God’s anger, but rather a part of his plan, the plan to bring us at last to the safety of heaven!

Oh and how we’d like to know more about that place, huh? But I’m afraid our imaginations just aren’t big enough to even begin pondering the glories of our heavenly home. So, like a parent talking to a tiny child, Jesus puts it all in word pictures that convey for us at least some sense of the peace and joy that await us in the bosom of Abraham - that’s how the older versions of our Bible put it and that is a beautiful picture. It’s the portrait of a child safe and content in a parent’s love. That’s what heaven is for the souls of our loved ones who are there right now, and that’s what it will be for us.  In heaven we will never again be bullied by Satan or his followers. Never again will they tempt us or hurt us or sadden us in any way. A great chasm will forever separate us both from their evil and their agony.

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