Who Is Your God?
St. Luke 16:19-31
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
St. Luke 16:30-31 [30] And he said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ [31] But he said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.’”
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… What is really important to you? What do you trust in and rely upon to see you through all your problems and troubles? Far too many people answer those questions the same way as the rich man in our Gospel text: Money. Money is what I rely upon to see me through problems. Money is what buys the things I need and want to make me happy. In short, money is my god.
For other people, money is not so much the focus of their lives as it is the things money can buy instead of the God who created them and gives them everything they need. Still others have as their god a special person in their life – boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, kids. For others their god is their leisure activities.
In all of these cases people rely upon something other than the true God and His holy Word to give them strength and help in time of need. People put their time and energy into way too many other things before they put time and energy into their relationship with God. And this, sadly, can often lead to the practice of skipping the Divine Service.
When folks choose to stay home from church on a regular basis – and I am not speaking of those who must work on Sundays or who cannot physically attend – they are choosing to starve their soul and keeping it from being fed by God’s Word and Sacraments. Not only are they making a huge mistake, but they are also making a confession of faith – they are telling the world who their god is. And their god is not the true God who made us, redeemed us, and who comes to us in His Word and Sacraments each and every time we gather together in this place.
Martin Luther makes this point in his Large Catechism in the explanation of the First Commandment. He says, “To whatever we look for any good thing and for refuge in every need, that is what is meant by ‘god.’ To have a god is nothing else than to trust and believe in Him from the heart. As I have often said, it is the trust and faith of the heart, nothing else, that makes both God and an idol. If your faith and confidence are of the right kind, then your god is the true God. If, on the other hand, your trust is false, if it is misdirected, then you do not have the true God. For these two, faith and God, belong together. To whatever you give your heart and entrust you being, that, I say, is really your god.”
Later on, Luther explained this idea further by paraphrasing the First Commandment like this: “Look to Me [that is, the Triune God] for any good thing that you lack; come to Me for it. And whenever you suffer misfortune and distress, reach out to Me and hold on to Me. I alone will satisfy your need and help you in every trouble. Only do not ever let your heart cling to or depend on anything or anybody else.”
Folks, the biggest reason why we should rely on God alone is because He really is the one – the only one – who provides us with everything we need to support this body and life. Money, jobs, families, and all the other things that people turn into false gods are some of the very things the true God uses to support us, but He is the one who gives us these things and through them upholds us in this life and strengthens us to face all our trials and sorrows. To rely on anything else – to trust in God’s creation instead of Him as Creator – is, at best, being ungrateful toward Him, and at worst is gross idolatry. And God has something to say about that in the words, “You shall have no other gods.”
There is another problem with putting our trust in something other than the true God. This is the problem that the rich man had in today’s Gospel. A false god cannot save a man. Money cannot buy forgiveness or salvation. A good job, a fun leisure activity, a loving husband or wife – none of these things has an answer for the problem that all of us eventually must face.
All people are sinners, and Holy Scripture declares that “the wages of sin is death.” Nothing in this world can take away the guilt of your sins and sinfulness and the very real threat of eternal torment for not trusting in God through Christ alone. And while it is true that eating healthy, exercising, having a happy marriage, and having enough money to get you through may indeed help to prolong your physical life, none of that amounts to a hill of beans when it comes to forgiveness and salvation.
The rich man in our text discovered that the hard way. His god was his riches. He thought he had everything he would ever need. But he was wrong – dead wrong, eternally dead wrong. For the one thing he needed more than all the money and things in the world was the very thing he lacked – a true relationship with the true God. He did not have the only relationship he needed – a relationship with God the Father Almighty on the basis of the life, death, and resurrection of His Son Jesus Christ. This man wasn’t punished for being rich; after all, Abraham was pretty wealthy too, and he was there in heaven to receive Lazarus. No, this rich man’s problem wasn’t his money; his problem was that he was an enemy of the one true God.
Lazarus, on the other hand, was a man who had nothing by the world’s standards. He had no money, he had no property; he didn’t even have a house to live in. He was a homeless beggar, full of disease and sores, living in the streets and getting what little nourishment he could from the rich man’s garbage.
But Lazarus had one thing the rich man did not have: his God was the true God. It may not have seemed to those walking by that God had done much to help Lazarus, but Lazarus trusted in God to help him. Sure, he could have been angry with God for how his life was going – like so many people are today, mad at God for the hand they have been dealt. But Lazarus trusted in God to save him, and nothing else mattered. He trusted that God would forgive his sins on the basis of the promises found in Holy Scripture written by Moses and the prophets. He wasn’t saved as some kind of reward for being poor or for gutting it out in extreme adversity. He was saved solely by God’s free grace toward him in giving him the forgiveness of his sins and creating faith in his heart.
It is important to note that the way God chooses to create faith in your heart and to restore you to a right relationship with Himself is solely by the Holy Spirit’s power working through Word and Sacrament; there is no other way that God works. Now, it is true that because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ God is favorably disposed toward you and that your sins are already paid for. But it is also true that whoever holds to a false god is, in fact, rejecting the true God and His forgiveness. And so, that person is not able to take advantage of the free forgiveness that God wishes to give to him.
Think of it this way: A man is condemned to die, but the governor of the state has granted him a pardon. If the man rejects the pardon – for whatever reason – nothing else is going to keep him away from the executioner. It is the same with you. If you reject the forgiveness God offers to you by trusting in the false gods of money, self, possessions, other people and things, you should not blame God when those false gods don’t give you what only the true God can give – salvation, forgiveness for your sins, and eternal life.
It is also worth noting that God has given His Word and Sacraments the full power of His Holy Spirit to give you this eternal life. It may seem to you at times that the Word and the Sacraments are not enough, for if you rely on your feelings and emotions about these things instead of what God declares in His Word that they accomplish, then you will find yourself looking for God in all the wrong places; you will find yourself looking for gimmicks, signs, and wonders.
To assert that the revealed Word of God is not enough to bring people to salvation – which is really what the rich man was suggesting when he said that Lazarus should return from the dead and go to his five brothers – is to assert that God’s Holy Spirit does not and cannot do what He has promised to do, namely, work through Holy Baptism, Holy Absolution, Preaching, and Holy Supper.
But thanks be to God He does what He promises, His Word always does what it says, and His gifts always deliver exactly what you need. And you are here to receive the benefit of those promises today in this Divine Service. You have already received Absolution at the outset of this service. You have heard again that Jesus Christ died for your sins and rose again to give you the sure and certain hope of everlasting life with Him in heaven. You have heard His Word read and preached.
And now you are about to receive His real, true, physical body and blood – the same body and blood given and shed on the cross for the forgiveness of your sins – to deliver to you forgiveness, life, and salvation. God works through these things, and these things are provided here in this place.
Therefore, this is the place to be, regularly, faithfully, and with joy for what comes to you here. God is giving you eternal life today. He is giving you the gift of being able to live forever with Him. Who needs other gods? There is only one, and He is here, with you, to love you, comfort you, and give you all that you could ever ask or need.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
