One Shot Is All You’ve Got!

Luke 16:19-31

I’m a sports fan. And one of the things that’s true about sports is that oftentimes things come down to the last second. Is it too soon to say a last second field goal can win or lose the game? The one that particularly sticks out for me– I’ve seen it a number of times– is when in basketball, a team is behind by one point. Guy puts up a shot as time expires, and he gets fouled. He misses the shot. So he’s going to the free throw line. He’s got two shots. If he makes them both, his team wins. If he makes one, we at least keep playing. If we make neither, we lose. Clank, clank. We lose. And those are moments that we can never get back. One shot is all you got. And isn’t that what Jesus is teaching us here in this parable of the rich man and poor Lazarus? That one shot, it’s all we got? Let’s walk our way through it a little bit. Jesus doesn’t name the rich man. Why? Maybe because he lost the dignity of being named because he had rejected God in his word and his work. Maybe. Maybe it’s so that it can be generic, so that every one of us can put ourselves into the shoes of the rich man. Am I that rich man? And Jesus paints the picture with incredible contrast. We’ve got this really, really rich dude. He eats sumptuously. The Greek is really strong about how rich his food was. And he can dress in purple every day. That’d be like us dressing in, I don’t know, formal wear every single day, even when we’re mowing our yard that we’ve got a tuxedo on. Wow, who could afford to do that? I can’t afford to do that. Well, purple in those days was incredibly expensive. And so to be able to be dressed in purple every day meant this guy was loaded with cash. He was rich. By contrast, what do we got at his gate? We’ve got this beggar named Lazarus. Ironically, the name Lazarus means the Lord is my help. Kind of seems like an ironic name, doesn’t it? Because it doesn’t seem like the Lord or anyone else is helping Lazarus. He lays there at the rich man’s door longing to get just some of the crumbs that are falling from the rich man’s table, but no one gives him anything. By the way, as a sidelight, the Bible never says that the rich man was a particularly bad man. He might’ve been a good guy overall. Nor does it say that Lazarus was particularly heroic. He may not have been. What the text lets us know is that the rich man was an unbeliever and that Lazarus was a believer. Who’s the real rich man? Hmm. Because it looks like the rich man has got everything, doesn’t it? And it looks like Lazarus has nothing and then Jesus fast forwards us to the end of their life and what do we find out? We find out that the rich man was an unbeliever and the rich man went to hell. And we found out that Lazarus was a believer and he went to heaven. Who is the real rich man? It was the one who seemed to have nothing, wasn’t it? Because he actually had everything. And the one who seemed to have everything actually had nothing. And he lifts up his eyes and he looks across and he says, “Father Abraham, have pity on me. “Send Lazarus over here to dip his tongue in water “and just put a drip on my tongue. “I’m in agony in this fire.” The Greek is actually plural, agonies. Why? Probably to emphasize how horrible hell will be. And Abraham says, “Son, term of endearment. “Remember in your lifetime you received your good things.” In other words, you had your priorities. Riches, wealth, pleasure. And you even got to enjoy them. And Lazarus didn’t have so much of that, but he really had everything. What are our priorities? If people had watched our time priorities this past week, would they have come to the obvious conclusion that we are word of God people? As they looked at the way we lived our life, as they looked at the time we spent in the word of God, would people have come to the inescapable conclusion that we are word of God people? That we were Lazarus’s? Or might the world have wondered if we were rich men, that we had our own priorities and that the word of God wasn’t that priority? Oh, one shot my brothers and sisters. That’s all we got. And Father Abraham sends that message across the chasm. Sorry, man. Between me and you, there’s this great chasm. Nobody can go from here to you to give aid or whatever. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to leave heaven to go to hell. But I can very much imagine why people will want to leave hell to go to heaven, but that’s not possible. Because if you die as an unbeliever, you will go to hell. But if you die as a believer, you will go to heaven. Thank God. One shot. That’s all we got. So no, we can’t send Lazarus across. Well, all right, if you can’t send Lazarus across, then tell you what, send him back from the dead because raise him from the dead. Send him back. Let him thoroughly witness to my five brothers. I don’t want them to come to this place of torment. What’s the implication? The implication is that the rich man is saying, nobody thoroughly witnessed to me. This isn’t my fault that I’m here. This is your fault, God. This is your fault, God. Or other people’s fault. How often don’t we blame our lack of word of God focus on all kinds of other stuff, on all kinds of other people, even on God himself? And Abraham’s answer is telling. Abraham’s answer is they have Moses and the prophets in other words, they have the word of God. The New Testament hadn’t yet been written. If Moses said, if this had happened 100 years later, you’d have said, they have the old and new testaments. They have the Bible. They have the Bible, let them listen to them. No way, Father Abraham. And again, the Greek is really strong. Even in hell, the unbeliever is arrogant enough to think that he or she has a better idea than God. If someone would rise from the dead, then they will repent. And the Greek again is really strong. And Abraham’s answer is even stronger. If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, if they will not listen to the word of God, they will not listen, even if someone rises from the dead. And we’ve seen it. Because ironically, remember when Jesus raised his friend Lazarus, I say ironically because the same name, different person. When Jesus raises his friend Lazarus from the dead, yes, it confirmed the faith of some people. But others, others said, we gotta put this Jesus guy to death. We can’t have him go around raising people from the dead. That’s awful. What? Even from a logical perspective, that’s irrational, right? How about when Jesus himself raised from the dead? A whole lot of people refused to believe it. The religious leaders even paid off the guards to say that the guards had fallen asleep while on guard duty, which was a capital offense in those days. So it must have paid him some serious coin. People who knew Jesus had risen from the dead said, I refuse to see it, I refuse to see it. Why? Because they had rejected Moses and the prophets. They had rejected the Bible. They had refused to listen to God and his word. And because they had refused to listen to God and his word, they refused to see even the most clear of miracles that happened right in front of their eyes. God has chosen to work faith in people’s hearts through the word and through the word connected to the glorious water of baptism. Why God chose to do that, you can take that up with God when you get to heaven. That God has chosen to do it is clear. And so what does that mean for you and me here in eternity, or on this side of eternity? It means we need to be word of God people, amen? And if we aren’t word of God people, we are fools. I’ll say that again. If we aren’t word of God people, we are fools. Because that puts us in the camp with the rich man, not in the camp with Lazarus. If we’re okay with an eternity of sufferings, sure, don’t come to church, don’t come to Bible study, don’t open up your Bible at home. Neglect the word of God, pay no attention to it. That’s okay. Your eternity will be at risk and you may end up going to hell. If you’re okay with that, I kind of think you might want the other, that you might want to go to heaven. And if so, come to worship, come to Bible study, open your Bible up at home, read it, study it, learn it, live it, because that’s how God builds and strengthens faith in the heart. That’s why we asked Phil and Alison, do you plan to raise up little Ezra so his faith can keep being fed? That’s why we asked the congregation, will you aid and encourage in that? Because faith that has worked in baptism needs to continue to be fed with the word of God and my faith and your faith needs to be continually strengthened until we get to heaven. And you know what’s really cool about all this? It means you’ve got everything. When you read Moses, what do you hear about? Oh, you hear about things like the creation of the world that God could make the entire world, the entire universe by just saying, let there be, and boom, there it is. How strong your God is. Oh, and then you watch how God created human beings, not just saying, let there be humans, but forming Adam from the dust to the ground, building Eve like a fine craftsman builds a masterpiece. And you say, oh, God loves us people. We are the crown of his creation. We are oh so super important in the eyes of God. When you read the prophets, you hear things like how Jesus was going to come and how Jesus was gonna be born and how Jesus was gonna suffer and he was gonna die, which says to you, I have a God who loves me incredibly dearly that he was willing to suffer these sorts of things for my salvation. When you hear the prophets prophesy how Jesus would rise from the grave, and then you see how Jesus did that, how he really did rise from the dead, you get to be assured that your sins are forgiven a hundred percent completely in full in a world in which all kinds of people are walking around sullenly full of guilt and fear and loathing. You get to have peace and joy and hope because you have a savior who died for you and a savior who rose for you. And because of that, you have everything, everything. But we could lose it. How would you lose it? You would lose it by becoming a rich man that is focusing on the things merely of this earth, whatever that might be. Riches, pleasure, good name, whatever. How do you keep it? It’s by being a Lazarus. In other words, staying in the word of God, keeping that Bible open, hearing the word of God regularly so that your faith can be built and strengthened. And when that happens, my brothers and sisters, the day will come when God will send the angels to carry you and me to Abraham’s side, where we will enjoy eternal life with our glorious God forever and ever. My brothers and sisters, that is what makes Christian education so critically important. Teachers in our Christian Elementary School or Lutheran Elementary School, what you are doing is you are bringing them the one thing that is absolutely necessary. Parents who are sending your kids here, you are giving them an incredible gift as they are learning the one thing that is absolutely necessary. Students who are here, you are getting the honor of learning the one thing that is absolutely necessary. Christian education is oh so important. I thank God for the partnership that we have in it, particularly as I’m reminded. One shot. It’s all we got. Amen? – Amen. – And amen.