Grace and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The text on which this morning's message is based comes from our Gospel (Luke 16: 19-31 – Parable of Lazarus and the rich man) lesson read earlier plus these verses that come just prior to our text:

14 The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this (about not being able to serve both God and money) and (they) were sneering at Jesus. 15 (Jesus) said to them…. 17 It is easier for heaven and earth to disappear than for the least stroke of a pen to drop out of the Torah (God's Word).

Have you ever known someone who is really rich, what we might call filthy rich? A person who has so much money that price never makes a difference. They can afford to dress in the finest clothes, eat the finest foods, live in the finest multi-million dollar mansions. Have you ever known someone first hand who was on that TV show "The lives of the Rich and Famous?"

Have you ever known someone who was so poor, so sick that they lived like Lazarus in Jesus' story? Absolutely no food to eat. Covered with sores. Someone longing for food to fall to the floor just so they could eat. You see, in Bible times people rarely ate with eating utensils. They used their fingers and bread to scoop up the other foods. They would then wipe their fingers on excess pieces of bread and drop the excess to the floor for the dogs to eat. But Lazarus in this story, whose name means "God has helped", is so poor and so sick, that the dogs eat the dumpster food first, then they come out and lick his sores. Jesus could sure tell a story and provide startling details.

Chances are, in our middle class community, you may never have known someone that rich or that poor. You have known a lot of people in between. But then again, in our middle class culture, we have many luxuries that the rich in Jesus' time could only have dreamed about. The entertainment of TV, cable TV and movies. Air conditioning and thermostatically controlled heating. Automobiles. Air and Train travel. Telephones and cell phones. Computers. Internet. Radios. A variety of tasty affordable foodstuffs that come literally from around the world. Indoor plumbing. Refrigerators and freezers. Comfortable houses and buildings that keep out most bugs and rodents. Social Security and other forms of government support and aid that we can all share in. Medicines and medical professionals that help keep us alive decades longer than people living just a century ago. Bicycles. CD players. VCR's. Electronic games. While most of us don't live by standards that we consider rich, we too easily forget how much God has blessed us. We can take these things for granted, as part of our rights as American citizens, when in fact they are all gifts from God, loaned to us for only a time period in this life. While none of these blessings are inherently bad, they all are potential temptations that trap us into foolish and harmful desires (1 Timothy 6:9).

At the time Jesus told this story, it was thought and taught among people the Pharisees that rich people had been blessed by God because of their goodness. They also thought and taught that poor people were being disciplined by God for their sins, and could therefore be shunned. Where the Pharisees got these ideas is a bit mysterious, because God's Word in the Old Testament, like in our text from Amos, repeatedly warns the rich against trusting in their riches, at lounging and dining in extravagant, decadent ways. Amos and the other prophets were continuously warning God's chosen people about turning and repenting, at not being complacent in loving God and their fellow man.

So Jesus tells this story and leaves no doubt in his teaching where prideful complacency and humble faith lead. Lazarus' humble faith in the God who helps, not his poverty, results in his high position in heaven, reclining together with Father Abraham at his heavenly table. The complacent, unfaithful rich man, unnamed, is in agony in Hades, Hell.

Jesus told this story to tell of the great reversals that happen in God's kingdom. Jesus was often telling of great reversals: "Blessed are (Congratulations to) the poor." "He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty" (Luke 1: 58). He ate with sinners and was anointed by women of the street. These poor sinners turned to him in droves, much to the chagrin of the rich unrepentant Pharisees.

The unrepentant rich man in the story is not even very repentant when suffering in hell. His first thought is again of himself, his needs: "Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue." Only after he is told that relief is not possible now does he begin to think about others, his own family anyway. "Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my father's house, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment…. if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent." There is so much irony in this story. The man telling the story, Jesus, is in reality the richest man of all time. He, the Son of God, left the greatest of mansions when He left His throne in heaven to come to earth. He, Son of Man, became the poorest of humans, for us. He was a poor man, one "who had no place to lay His head" (Luke 9: 58). He went without food for 40 days when being tempted for our sakes (Luke 4). "He took up our infirmities and carried our diseases" (Matthew 8: 17) with Him on the cross. There is so much irony in this story. Jesus fulfilled "Moses and the Prophets", the Word of God that the rich man had not listened to.

The rich man thinks that if someone had risen from the dead to tell him of his need for repentance and forgiveness, then he, the rich man, would have listened.

But Jesus knows better. Again with the irony, Jesus says "If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead." Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, knowing what the future holds for Him. He, the richest and the poorest man ever to live, was to die for the complacency and unfaithfulness of all mankind, for me, for you. He would rise again from the dead. He did rise again from the dead, but appeared only to his followers because He knew the sinful power of the human mind, the denial of reality that the human mind can resort to. He knew that the rich and proud would not be convinced of his poor, loving sacrifice and his rich, glorious resurrection. He knew that listening to God's Word, empowered by the Holy Spirit, was the only power that could change people's lives. He knew that only God's Word, Moses and the Prophets, Gospels and Epistles, could bring sinful humans to repentance.

He knew that only God's Word can turn prideful human hearts, regardless of their economic standing, toward Humility made into human flesh, that is our Lord Jesus Christ.

I had Becky put the meaning of the 3rd Commandment on the back of the bulletin below the Gospel lesson. "We should fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it." I placed that phrase there to remind us all that this story of Lazarus and the rich man is secondarily a story about riches and poverty, or heaven and hell. Primarily this is a story about God's Word, and its effect on our lives. Paul told the Thessalonians (2:13) "when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you who believe." Now you're first response to seeing the 3rd C. meaning might have been "Oh, yeah we know, we're suppose to listen to your sermon pastor." But did you ever consider that I am the one among us who is most at risk in breaking the 3rd C? Whenever I might fall into the temptation that preaching is ineffective, that I need to do more than just use God's Word to motivate daily repentance in your hearts, then I fall prey to "despising preaching and His Word." If ever I begin to believe that I must personally harangue you into being more spiritual, or giving more of your riches or time, rather than presenting the stories of Jesus, the story about Jesus for you, then I fail "to hold his word sacred."

At the end of the story the rich man finally begins to see that repentance is necessary. But he doesn't think that God's Word is sufficient to bring about repentance. He wants a miracle also. Have you ever said that? Have you ever wanted God to show His love for you by producing a miracle just for you? He has. God's word, Moses and prophets, Gospels and epistles, tell us, the convinced, that someone did rise from the dead. Jesus Christ, your Savior who died for you, rose from the dead. His resurrection assures us that we, the faithful, those who trust in His Word, will be with Him, at the side of Abraham and Lazarus. His resurrection and his word and his love for us allow us to have the great gain of godly contentment, to want to use our possessions and time and gifts to show our love for our Savior God and fellow humans. The grace and contentment of our Lord Jesus Christ be with us always, through His Word. Amen.