LIVE A LIFE WORTH REMEMBERING
Luke 16:19-31
Pastor Jeremy Mattek – September 25, 2016
Robert Morin worked at the library at the University of New Hampshire for 50 years. He was a pretty frugal guy. He never went out to eat. He snacked on Fritos and ate microwave dinners. He drove a 1992 Plymouth. And he loved reading. At one point in his life he decided to read all the books in the library in chronological order. He started with books written in the 1930s and didn’t stop reading until 1938 books later. Robert died in 2015. And a few months later, the University of New Hampshire received a check from his estate for $4 million. Nobody would have guessed that Robert was worth $4 million. And the University certainly wasn’t expecting it. Robert left only one instruction for the money. He requested that $100,000 of it go toward the library he loved so much. The University could do whatever they wanted with the rest of the money. And so, knowing Robert’s love for the library, knowing his passion for books and learning, knowing his dislike for anything extravagant, they decided to spend the next million dollars of his gift … to buy a new scoreboard for the football stadium – a stadium on which they had just spent $25 million renovating.
Now, the University didn’t do anything wrong. Other than the $100,000, Robert said they could use the money in any way they wanted. But many have been unhappy about how they used Robert’s money because they feel it was really obvious what Robert loved. And it looks like what he loved didn’t really matter all that much to anyone. Now, maybe you don’t care much about libraries or football stadiums. But do you care about what people would remember about you when you’re gone?
I want you to imagine that you are filling out your will and that you have $4 million to leave to someone. I want you to imagine that you don’t leave any instructions to that person on how to spend the money. I want you to imagine that you pass away and they receive the money unexpectedly. Two questions. 1) What would they identify in your life as the one thing you love more than anything? 2) Would they care? Would they come to the conclusion that what you loved was really important?
I recently read about a teacher who gave her students the assignment of drawing a picture. “If you could be anything in the world,” she said, “what would you be?” As she was going through the pictures, she came across one that surprised her. One little boy had drawn a picture of a cell phone. She thought that was strange, so she called him to her desk and asked why he wanted to be a cell phone. “Because if I were a cell phone,” he said, “then my mommy and daddy would pay attention to me. They would hold me and talk to me, and they would even be excited if I accidentally interrupted them.”
Even little kids are able to identify what adults consider to be most important thing in their lives. And if little kids can, then God certainly can too. In today’s sermon text, Jesus shows us the very strong connection between what we love, how we live, and what we should expect to happen as a result. He tells a story about two men. And he shares with us not only details about how these two men lived, but also the very real impact of how they would be remembered because of the way they did.
19 “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 sores21 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.’ ”
You might know that the iPhone 7 was just released and has already sold out. But there is someone who doesn’t need to worry about whether or not they will get one. Coco is an Alaskan Malamute dog. His owner is a Chinese billionaire, and he bought Coco eight iPhone 7s. A new iPhone 7 is worth about $800, which means Coco’s owner spent about $6400 to buy his dog cell phones it will never be able to use. But that’s really nothing compared to what he bought Coco last year. Last year Coco’s owner bought him two gold Apple Watches, each worth $12,000. Coco is the kind of dog the Rich Man in our sermon text may have had. When our text says that the rich man was “dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day,” it means he wasn’t really missing a whole lot of anything. He spared no expense. He could get anything. He shared with no one; not even the poor soul at his gate named Lazarus, who had a constantly-empty stomach, was dirt poor, too weak to move, and whose best friends were the dogs who came to lick his sores.
Whose life would you rather have? Even though we know that the Rich Man ended up in hell and Lazarus ended up in heaven, I don’t know that I would believe you if you told me that you would want the life of Lazarus. Because keep in mind that Lazarus wasn’t just covered in sores. He wasn’t just poor. Like the little boy who wanted to be a cell phone, it was pretty clear that no one cared about him anymore. His “friends” left him at the gate of a stranger and apparently never came back to check on him. Based on what we know about palaces and beggars in those days, it’s likely that the Rich Man literally walked over him to get to his purpley, luxurious fine living. No one else looked in his direction. No one asked him how he was feeling. No one wanted anything to do with him. No one loved him.
Do you ever feel that way? And if you do, does anyone know how often? For Lazarus, people could see his pain. He was alone and hurting out in public in front of everyone. But we typically do a pretty good job hiding ours. When someone asks how you’re doing, you say “Fine;” even when you’re not, and hope that’s enough to compel them to move on to their next conversation, so that they never even get the chance to hear how lonely you sometimes feel in the middle of everyone, how down you sometimes get about yourself when you do something wrong, how you intentionally keep yourself real busy so you don’t have time to think about the parts of your life that are broken, or howstrongly you believe that, if your life was as fully exposed in front of everyone as the life of Lazarus was, you wouldn’t blame anyone for running away in the other direction.
Do you ever feel empty, like there’s a big hole in your heart because something really important is missing? There are a couple of different ways people try to fill that void. Like the Rich Man, many will try to fill that valuable space by accumulating valuable things. Did you notice that we only know the name of one person in this story? The name of the beggar is Lazarus. But Jesus doesn’t tell us the Rich Man’s name. He just calls him “the Rich Man.” Jesus defined the Rich Man by how the Rich Man defined himself. In his own eyes, life was good if he was rich. But it wasn’t being rich that put him in hell. It’s not wrong to have wealth – even a lot of it. The bible doesn’t say “Money is the root of all kinds of evil.” It’s the love of money that is. And you can love money whether you have a lot of it or you have none at all. And our lesson from Ecclesiastes gave us a good indicator that do. “Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income.”
But it’s not just money people can love too much. It’s anything in this world that has any impact on our joy, mood, attitude, and emotions. Ecclesiastes also talked about the person who doesn’t sleep well at night. They can’t sleep because they’re worried about what they might lose, what they may never gain, or that something important in this world won’t go the way they’re hoping. As children of God who aren’t supposed to worry about anything, a good question to ask ourselves to see if our hearts are moving in an unhealthy direction might be, ‘What’s keeping me up at night?’ ‘What’s causing me to worry?’ ‘What has the biggest impact on mymood, joy, attitude, and emotions? Is it God, or is it something different?
Sometimes it can be pretty silly stuff. This past Sunday night, I had trouble sleeping. It may have had something to do with the soda, chips, and chicken nuggets I had before I went to bed. But every time I closed my eyes, my head started spinning with thoughts of the Packers losing to the Vikings. I couldn’t sleep. This went on and on until about 3:30 in the morning, when I prayed that God would take away those thoughts so I could get some sleep. Almost immediately, I fell into a deep sleep and had an incredibly vivid dream in which Karen my wife was shot. And then it wasn’t difficult at all for me to not think about a football game.
Just like there was a day when it wasn’t difficult at all for the Rich Man to stop thinking about his worldly wealth and for Lazarus to stop thinking about his worldly pain. As different as their lives were, there is one thing Jesus said they had in common. They both died. One day, they both left all the wealth and all the pain of this world behind. But that’s when their lives got different again. Lazarus was taken to heaven, where it says he was “comforted.” But the Rich Man was buried and sent to hell, where it says he was in “torment.” And that word “torment” should really scare anyone who thinks hell won’t be all that bad. That word “torment” has the picture of metal grinding against stone; like you’re in a little car getting crunched by two semis. And since hell is eternal, it’s an action that keeps happening over and over, again and again.
And it was only in that torment that the man who thought he had everything finally identified the one thing that had been missing from his life. Did you catch what it was? It wasn’t the bible. “They have Moses and the prophets,” Abraham told him when he wanted a way to save his brothers. God’s Word wasn’t hidden from them, just like it’s not hidden from us. You can buy it at any store or download it onto your phone. The Rich Man’s brothers probably had one collecting dust somewhere in their home. The one thing the Rich Man realized he was missing we find in verse 30. He knew his brothers needed to repent – because he didn’t. And do you know what it means to repent?
There is a place in Mexico called the Crystal Cave. It was found 16 years ago. It’s an underground cave that has crystals that are up to 36 feet long and as round as some silos on Wisconsin farms. Crystal can be worth up to $21,000 per pound, which means that this cave is worth more than most countries in the world today. It’s a pretty valuable place. But there’s something you should know about the crystal cave before you go walking in. It’s 136-degrees inside, which means you can only spend 30 minutes inside before the heat will burn you alive. Once you see the cave, you can’t get too attached to it. You need to turn around and walk away before it’s too late.
That’s what it means to repent. It means to turn around and walk away from our excessive love of money, wealth, and the shiny, worldly things we’re one day going to lose anyway; and turn toward the same Word of God the Rich Man had access to every day, because that is where Moses and the prophetstell us about a man of poverty who did not walk away from the burning pain of a whip, thorns, and nails that were pounded into his skin; a man whose naked body was laid not at the gate of a Rich Man, but at the foot of a cross, and then raised up high so that everyone could see him forgive all the times our hearts have found greater value in something other than him - the one who already noticedall the ways you are weak and broken, and chose to love you and stay by your side through anything.
Even Jesus knows that this world simply cannot give you every good thing for which you’re hoping. But he can. And Lazarus knew that he would. That’s why, there is one thing you never hear Lazarus do. You never hear him complain. And the reason why is because he believed he didn’t need to. This man whose life on earth was almost completely void of friends, health, and wealth believed that his Lord had already given him the only thing he needed and the one thing this world could never take away – comfort, in the only place where “there is no more death or mourning or crying or pain” and where every last tear is wiped away. He just had to wait through a little bit of loneliness and pain before he got to see it. And maybe you do too. But just ask the Rich Man now whose life he would rather have if he could go back and start over again.
You don’t need to start over to live a life that’s worth remembering. You only need to see the cross of Jesus and be reminded that God will never forget you for any reason; and also see each day until we also find ourselves in the comfort of Abraham’s bosom as an opportunity to show the world the very strong connection between what we love, how we live, and what we should expect to happen, so that your life is the story that helps this world remember Jesus, the only one, the only thing, we can put our hope inand never be disappointed.
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