Bible Text: Luke 16:19-31 | Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus | Series: Trinity 2023 | The parable of the rich man and Lazarus is Jesus’ final stress that He means what He says about trusting in money, in the stuff of this world. If you do it, you go to hell. He comes to this final stress because the Pharisees are scoffing at His warnings. He’s said already, “Blessed are you poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God.” He’s said, “You cannot serve two masters; you cannot serve God and money.” He’s told them to use their money not to build up wealth for themselves but to support fellow Christians and the preaching of the Gospel. And the Pharisees, who heard these things, ridiculed Him, and he said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.” And then Jesus tells this parable.
It is easy to wriggle out of the condemnation of the rich man, as if it doesn’t apply to you. If you were that rich man, you would use your money to help poor Lazarus. If you had twenty million dollars you would give ten million to the church, to the school, to the college. The rich man in the parable is just too evil, you wouldn’t be like that. And yet you do dream about having the money. You do think how nice it would be if you had the twenty million and what you would do with it. You do imagine that you’d be able to handle it, that you’d obviously be better than the rich man.
And yet Jesus says, “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God.” Shouldn’t this make you scared to be rich? If you believe Jesus, wouldn’t you pray with the Proverb, “Lord, do not make me rich, lest I be full and deny you and say, Who is the Lord?” And if you had riches, wouldn’t you be quick to get rid of them? Why then do you imagine it is worth it, why would you dream of riches and risk eternity on your being able to handle it. This is exactly what Jesus is exposing in your heart – the love of money, the longing for it, the dreaming and obsession over what you would do with it.
Believe Jesus. It is all self-deception, all this altruism we dream about doing if only we had enough money. As if God hasn’t given us enough now to do everything we should dream of doing for His kingdom. Think that the greatest gift ever given in the Temple was from a widow who gave a couple mites, a couple pennies, which is everything she had. Jesus pointed to her and said she gave more than anyone. And this isn’t some merely spiritual calculus, only a truth about her heart but not a truth of reality. If that woman’s heart were in you and me and all Christians, we would not be bemoaning the fact that the Mormons have money to build a gaudily expensive Temple to their false gods while we worry about having enough money to fund our church and school and college.
God has given you enough. If you can’t give a bunch of money to remodel the church, you can give your time to volunteer and clean it. If you can’t give a million dollars, you can give from the heart and that will do more for Christ’s Kingdom than all the money in the world. If you can’t lift a finger to help because you are weak and frail, you can lift your prayers to your Father in heaven to bless the teaching of His Word.
Do not dream about money. Take Jesus’ words as seriously as He means them. You have things worth dreaming of, worth your mind’s obsession. You have the treasure of Christ’s righteousness, the forgiveness of sins, inheritance as children of God. You have the wealth of Christ’s blood shed for you and given you to drink. You bear the name of your Creator. You look forward to seeing God, looking on your Redeemer face to face. What is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God. You are God’s child, born again to think like your Father by the merit of His Son and by the power of His Spirit. So dream of better things than money.
The rich man was a church goer. He is a picture of the Pharisees, and they were in church every Sabbath. And we see this. He knows who Abraham is. He knows who Moses and the prophets are. He’s heard it all in the synagogue. The rich man was a church goer, but he didn’t believe the words he heard, because his mind and heart were obsessed with earthly stuff. This is the great warning to us who are church goers. This Word that sounds here is objectively more valuable than everything on earth. Everything else will go up in smoke. Nothing we dream about will go with us when we die. It will all fail us. But the Word of the Lord endures forever. And it gives a righteousness and wealth as God’s children that lasts forever, joins us with Christ Himself who lives forever. This is what Lazarus dreamed of, this is the content of Christian hopes and daydreams.
The rich man remains unconverted in hell. He blames God that he’s there. This is always the way of the self-obsessed. Everything is someone else’s fault. So the rich man thinks he didn’t get a fair shot. God didn’t do enough to show him how to avoid hell. If Lazarus goes and speaks to his brothers, they’ll repent. But that benefit was never given to the poor rich man. No one came from the dead and showed him the sign he really needed to believe the truth. The rich man did what was natural to him in ignoring poor Lazarus, did what was natural in pleasing himself with feasts every day, it’s God’s fault for not telling him that he should have helped Lazarus and given his money for the Kingdom of God.
But it’s not true. God’s not to blame. The rich man had Moses and the prophets. He had the church of God where the words of God sound, and those words warn about trusting in money, urge us to generosity, and base this all on the generosity of the Son of God, who though He was rich became poor for us, so that through His poverty we might become rich.
An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, Jesus says. The rich man saw the sign of his blessing from God in his experience of the good things in life. He had money, influence, pleasures. God gave him so much, so God must be happy with him. But no, God was angry with him. The only sure and unfailing sign God gives of His love is His Word. You may think you need something else, some sign from God, some break, to be convicted and convinced, but what you need God has already given in all fullness here in Christ’s Church.
It’s the Word of God that needs to direct your heart. Not money. And not your experience of the good things in life. What experience did Lazarus have that would convince him that God loved him and cared for him? The fact that he was crippled and reduced to the state of begging? Or the festering sores all over his body? Or that he’s starving, would be content with crumbs but doesn’t get even that. Or that the dogs are harassing him, constant reminders that beasts have it better than he? Or that he’s alone, there’s not even the comfort of another person to share his misery? Or that he can hear the laughter and feasting of the rich man and his friends but he never gets to join in. What in his experience tells him God loves him? God cares for him? Nothing. Only the Word of God. Only the word that Jesus suffered for him. Only the word that far worse than his bodily misery is sin and death and hell, and His Lord has born that sin, faced that death, and conquered that hell. Only the Word that reveals to Him God’s heaven where he will spend eternity as God’s beloved. It’s not his experience that teaches him a thing about God’s love – it’s Moses and the prophets, it’s the preaching of the Bible.
So don’t base your confidence of God’s love on what is going on in your life. If you are struggling with money, if you are sick, if you have cancer, if death seems near, if God has taken away the one you love, if you long for some good thing and God has not given it, don’t doubt God’s love and care for you; listen to the Word of God, hear the words that Christ’s body was pierced for you and His blood poured out and then see your riches on that altar and in the words of forgiveness spoken here, look at patient Lazarus who suffered long and did not complain, but knew that his help came from God, and see that it does come.
You don’t need more proof of God’s favor. Lazarus didn’t need it, didn’t need a single comfort in this life, to know God’s love. He needed only the Word that preached Jesus’ death and resurrection for him. Only then can you see rightly that whether pain or joy comes from God it is His tender and caring hand that gives it.
He gives it, and we receive it. Lazarus is passive in heaven as he was passive on earth. Look at Lazarus. He does nothing. He can do nothing. He doesn’t even stand up. On earth, he’s lying down by the rich man’s gate. In heaven, he’s lying down on Abraham’s bosom. (Abraham’s bosom, by the way, is simply a picture of Jesus, who is the promised seed of Abraham.) Lazarus is passive the entire time. And this is what Christian faith is. It receives from God. God has all riches to give in Christ Jesus. Faith gets filled with the fullness of God, with the love of Christ that surpasses understanding. God preaches His righteousness into our hearts by His Word. He pours it on us in the waters of Baptism. He puts it in our mouth in the body and in the blood. He gives and we receive full forgiveness and everlasting life.
Listen to His voice and you will learn to seek better things than this world can give. Jesus shows us what He, our God, our Creator, who created all this stuff, thinks of wealth and status on this sinful earth. He becomes a poor little baby and yet remains almighty God. The birds have nests and the foxes have dens, but the Son of Man has no place to lay His head. He spurns all earthly wealth and yet gives the wealth of Himself, of God, of His righteousness and His life, for us. This is the wealth that satisfies now and forever, our goal and the joy of our life. Amen.