This sermon was preached at St Peter’s Evangelical-Lutheran Church, Public Schools Club, Adelaide, 9am
Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Prayer: Let the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Today in our Gospel reading, we read where Jesus tells the story of Lazarus and the rich man.
We read about a man, Lazarus, who is exceedingly poor, and about another man who is exceedingly rich. But then we read about what happened to these men: one went to heaven and one went to hell. Which was which? The poor man went to heaven, and the rich man went to hell.
Now, let’s think for a moment about this. Is Jesus telling us in this story that rich people in general go to hell, and poor people in general go to heaven? Sometimes, there is an idea, which probably comes from Marxism, that if you are poor, you must be oppressed and, in the right, and if you are rich, you must be the oppressor and therefore in the wrong. However, we know from our everyday life, that there are many wonderful people who are rich, and many wonderful people who are poor. There are many fine Christians who are rich, and there are many fine Christian people who are poor. And there are many terrible people who are rich and many terrible people who are poor.
However, there are temptations that come with being rich, and there are temptations that come with being poor. For example, notice that in the reading it says the man was clothed in purple and fine linen, and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores. One temptation that comes with having a lot of money, is that people see themselves as being blessed by God because they have wealth, and therefore poor people as being cursed by God because they don’t have wealth. So, if there is a man like Lazarus there, they think that it’s their own fault, and they don’t deserve any help. So they don’t help them.
Also, sometimes wealthy people think that because they have money, they therefore have a right to rule people, even though they are not appointed to it and called to it. In our reading, we see that the man was clothed in purple, which was a colour reserved only for royalty. The man thought because he was rich, that he was a king. Now, the same thing happens today—we could easily think of many billionaires throughout the world that constantly interfere in the realm of politics and government, even training world leaders to be their stooges. If you do what we say, we’ll fund you. If you don’t do what we say, we’ll defund you. There is some unspeakable evil that has happened all throughout the world because of rich men who dress in purple.
Sometimes, we hear about Christian preachers too, who preach what we call, the “prosperity Gospel”. They say, if God loves you, he wants you to have an abundant life. They quote from John 10, where Jesus says: I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. They say, if you want something, you should name it and claim it in Jesus’ name. It’s already yours before you have it. If you want the Mercedes Benz convertible, just name it and claim it, and God already has one on its way to you. These preachers say, if you put more money on the plate, God will reward you with these material blessings. And so, these churches become very wealthy because people are wanting stuff. This kind of preaching simply isn’t the Gospel, and is a false kind of preaching, and gives people false hope and false comfort.
Jesus gives many warnings to those who are rich. He says: How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. Even the very fact that we live in Australia means that we live in a wealthy country, with many material blessings. And Jesus’ words are a warning to all of us. There is a reason why in a wealthy country such as ours, there is tremendous ungodliness that dominates our every day life. On the other hand, in poorer countries, in third-world countries, there is often a great hunger to hear the Gospel.
Now, it’s true, that wealth is a blessing from God. But if a person doesn’t have much wealth, that doesn’t mean that they are cursed. In our reading, who does Lazarus meet when he is carried by the angels to heaven? He is carried to Abraham’s side, or as it reads properly in the Greek, Abraham’s bosom.
Now, if all the rich people are in hell, what’s Abraham doing in heaven? After all, we read in Genesis 13, verse 2: Now Abram was very rich in livestock, in silver, and in gold. So obviously, Abraham had not found himself in hell because he was rich. Actually, although being rich has its temptations, and being poor has its temptations, salvation has nothing to do with being rich or being poor. Whether we go to heaven or hell has nothing to do with our wealth or lack of it.
It just so happened in our story that this particular rich man went to hell, and this particular poor man went to heaven. Nothing is said about how they got there, except for the fact in heaven, Lazarus was reunited with Abraham, and we know how Abraham got there. We read in Genesis 15, verse 6 that Abraham believes the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness. It was not his wealth that was counted to him as righteousness, but his faith.
So, when we talk about faith what do we mean? Well, we know that each and every one of us comes under the condemnation of God’s commandments and his law. We are sinners, and we know this because we have not kept the commandments of God. We have sinned against God, and therefore we should acknowledge this before him, and repent and lament of our sins. Because of our sins, we deserve God’s wrath, we deserve his displeasure with us. The fact that we are all going to die, is a testimony to God’s justice against our sin: The wages of sin is death, says St Paul. Because of our sin, we deserve the punishment of hell, like the rich man in our reading, the eternal torment, the anguish in the flames, as it says in our reading.
So, do we hope to be saved? And if so, what is our hope? Well, our hope is not our purple and fine linen, it is not our sumptuous feats. It is not our silky pillows, and comfortable beds, and it is not the delicious macaroni cheese, or duck liver pâtés or camemberts, that we have stocked up in our fridges! It is not the columns of money we have in our bank accounts, or the tinned food we have stored up for a rainy day in the shed. We worry about these things when we don’t have them, and we are comforted when we do. But just like us, it has an expiry date. Just like going through the fridge, we throw out the things that are expired. And one day, you too will expire, and you will need to be thrown out. You will die. What will you do? What is your hope?
Our hope is our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who has suffered and died for us, who has paid the full atonement for us with his blood and with his life. The debt which you have owed to God has been paid for, and it has been paid for in full. God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that whoever believes in him, will not die, but have eternal life. Jesus paid for the sin of Abraham, and he paid for the sin of Lazarus, and he paid for your sin too. And when you trust in this Saviour, the only God, Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, this salvation is yours, the forgiveness of sins is yours, eternal life is yours. Our great hope and our great salvation is our Lord Jesus Christ, and his sacrifice and his blood and his life, and in no-one and in nothing else. And when we trust in this Jesus, who is both God and man, and our only hope for salvation, then this faith is counted to us as righteousness. It’s as if we are in court, and not just “as if”, but in actual fact, God really is our judge, and we are on trial. In this life, if we were in court because we had a stack of fines that we couldn’t pay, the judge could let us go free if someone else came and paid for them. In God’s court, Jesus has really paid what we have owed to him with his own blood, and so there is a legal basis upon which God can cancel our debt. God doesn’t just forgive us, because he feels like it: he does it because it is right, and the justice has been satisfied. We trust in Jesus to be our Saviour, our Advocate, our Redeemer—who is the Way, the Truth and the Life, and this faith is counted to us as righteousness. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, and the bosom of Abraham, the door of heaven and the gates of Paradise, and is open to us to simply walk in and rejoice in it.
Now, in our Gospel reading today, there is a conversation that then takes place between the rich man in hell and Abraham. And this conversation is enlightening in many ways.
First, let’s talk about hell. I have heard it said by many Christians over the years that hell is just something made up by the church to scare and control people. They go through the bible and do all kinds of studies on various words that are used for hell: like in the Old Testament, “Sheol”, and in the New Testament, “Gehenna”, “Hades” and “Tartaros”. They show that sometimes some of these words are not used always in the sense of hell, and eternal punishment. In the end, they conclude, there is no hell, and all you people that do believe that hell exists are all worried about nothing.
Actually, this isn’t true. The person is the bible who speaks and teaches most sharply about hell is actually Jesus himself. And this passage in our Gospel reading is one of the sharpest descriptions. We read where it says: The rich man also died and was buried, and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he called out, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.” We read about the flame, about anguish, about torment. Now, does Jesus make this up, because he wants to scare us? No, he doesn’t make it up. But does he want to scare us and make us fearful? Well, yes. He wants you to know the truth about things, and he describes it. Now, fear isn’t always your enemy. If you’re in a plane that is about the crash, and you open the door, and see the ground thousands of feet below you, you will be scared. It is fear that is going to make you grab a parachute. As we face death, Jesus is the parachute we need to grab. Jesus wants us to be afraid of hell, but not to despair, but so that we run to him. There is hope and there is salvation, and he is it.
I saw a video in the last weeks, where a man in Africa somewhere was looking all depressed and was preparing to hang himself. Then, he hears gunshots nearby, and immediately, runs away and jumps over the fence. Turns out he does fear death and he did fear getting shot. His natural instincts when he heard the gunshots was to run away from death. He was afraid, fear kicked in, and it saved his life. So, take what Jesus talks about hell seriously here, but then run to him.
Second, Abraham wants Lazarus to something for him. He says: Send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue. He wants Lazarus to come from heaven over to hell to comfort him. Abraham replies: Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in a like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here and you are in anguish. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.
We learn something from this exchange, and that is, that there is no purgatory. Purgatory is an idea which some people believe in—it is an official doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church, and also Muslims believe in something called Al-‘Araf—which is a kind of half-way between heaven and hell. So, some people think that you might not be good enough to go to heaven, but you might not be bad enough to go to hell, so you need to go to a half-way place, so that you can be sufficiently cleaned up and purified or purged (hence the word, “purgatory”) before going to heaven.
What happens when people believe in purgatory, is that they end up with a false view of sin. Actually, Jesus says: No one is good except God alone. In Romans 3 it says: None is righteous, no, not one… All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. So, we shouldn’t think that we are not deserving of eternal punishment. Also, James says: Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. But then, also purgatory leads to a false teaching called “universalism”, that means, that basically at the end of the day, everyone is going to go to heaven.
It’s not true. Jesus says: Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.
Now, it cannot be said strongly enough that this doctrine of purgatory and universalism is a completely destructive and soul-destroying plague, and if it is allowed to have a foot in the church, it makes the whole place stink. The errors of purgatory and universalism is like a stewardess on a crashing plane, that comes out and says: “Ladies and gentlemen, please relax. Everything’s going to be all right.” And then – boom! These things also come about because people don’t read the bible, they don’t believe the bible, that it is God’s Word, his word of truth, which cannot be broken, which is inspired in its every word by the Holy Spirit, they start to cherry pick their favourite bible verses, they talk about the mean nasty “god” in the Old Testament and the lovey-dovey “god” in the New Testament. Then become “Bible scholars” at the world’s great universities, and they say: “Jesus obviously didn’t tell the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, because the real historical Jesus wouldn’t talk like that.” They say: “All the top scholars agree that this passage isn’t genuine.” Any books that speak about the law and judgment and condemnation and hell, like the second letter of Peter or the letter of Jude, obviously wasn’t written by the real Jude the Apostle and the real Peter the apostle… I say, get out of here, you false prophets, you stupid, useless plane-stewards, and give me the parachute! St Paul says in Colossians 2: I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments… See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy or empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.
This is what Jesus teaches here. He says: There is a heaven, there is a hell. There is no half-way. There is no second chance after death. This is the time of grace and salvation, in this life, now. As St Paul says in 2 Corinthians: We implore you on behalf of God, be reconciled to God… Now is the favourable time; behold, now is the day of salvation. As it says in Psalm 95: Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.
So the conversation continues between the rich man and Abraham. The rich man says: Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house—for I have five brothers—so that he may warn them, lest they also come to this place of torment.’ But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ And he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’
What do we have in this life that gives us the way of salvation? Abraham says: Moses and the Prophets. What does he mean? The Scripture. Even, we have Moses and the Prophets and the Apostles. But the rich man thinks that if someone goes back to his family from the dead, they will repent.
What does he want to happen? If Lazarus goes back, will they think they saw a ghost? Plenty of people believe in haunted houses, go on cemetery ghost tours—they don’t necessarily believe in Jesus or go to heaven. In fact, many people who don’t have Jesus, have a desire for spiritual things that are not good, so that go to the occult. They seek out ghosts and demons, and all kinds of things. They want spirituality, but they end up with evil. They seek to conjure up the dead, like King Saul, when he went to call up the prophet Samuel from the dead. Saul didn’t repent, but he died in his sins.
But even so, Jesus is not a ghost, he is not a spirit, he is not a figment of the disciples’ imagination. When he rose from the dead, he ate fish and honeycomb, he shows them the wounds on his hands and on his feet, and he says to them: See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.
Here is Jesus who is truly and really, physically and bodily, risen from the dead. And yet, many people don’t believe it. John writes: These things are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
We have the Word of God. We have the resurrected Lord Jesus. Hear the Word, receive it, keep it, and trust in him and his blood and his sacrifice for your salvation. We believe in one baptism for the forgiveness of sins, we receive the body and blood of Christ in the Lord’s Supper given for you and for the forgiveness of sins, and when the time comes for you to depart from this life and to die, the angels will carry you to heaven, to be with Lazarus, Abraham and all the company of heaven, to be with your Saviour Jesus, in whom you trusted as your only hope, who is Lord of heaven and earth. Amen.
The peace of God which surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
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