Riches of Heaven and Poverty of the World / Luke 16:19–31 / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sunday September 28th 2025 / Season of Pentecost / Mount Olive Lutheran Church

Mount Olive Lutheran Church / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sunday September 28th 2025: Season of Pentecost / Luke 16:19–31 “Riches of Heaven and Poverty of the World”

“There was a rich man who 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. The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side. 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.’ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in 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.’ And he said, ‘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 into 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.’”

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in Your sight O Lord. Amen.

Grace peace and mercy to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Good Christian Friends on the one hand maybe you’ve said it or heard someone say it, “well it could be worse,” to mean there seems always to be someone worse off than you, sometimes this is meant as a comfort, like, ‘see it’s not so bad, look at that poor soul, they have it worse off than you, be thankful ... it could always be worse,’ or on the other hand when you look around there always seems to be someone more successful, more well off than you. This concern can cause consternation, and distress. So on the one hand there is the danger of being tempted into pride concerning others in relation to yourself and your situation whatever that might be, and on the other hand there is the danger of being tempted into coveting what others have. You may think, ‘well if you’re rich then you won’t be tempted into coveting anything that belongs to your neighbour’ and yet there will always be someone with a bigger boat or more property or a larger bank account, or better investments; even millionaires covet what billionaires have, and so it goes. The desire to reach the unattainable can quickly fall into sin and lead to suffering, self inflicted suffering and even the suffering of others.

Now in our Gospel Reading Jesus tells the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus and when you hear it poor Lazarus is not depicted as one who covets what the Rich Man has, he simply, “desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table,” and the Rich Man is not depicted as one who, full of pride in his wealth and achievements, looked down his nose at Lazarus: no, the Rich Man was simply content and unworried for the future, apparently this was especially the case regarding his eternal future. Not so much arrogance or callous snootiness but in the Rich Man’s affluence he’d become spiritually unprepared, obliviously unconcerned about his woeful lack of readiness regarding his soul’s desperate need for redemption. The Rich Man, in Jesus’ parable, lines up nicely with the sort oblivious person the LORD was warning by His prophet Amos in our Old Testament Reading when Amos says:

       “Woe to those who lie on beds of ivory

               and stretch themselves out on their couches,

        and eat lambs from the flock

               and calves from the midst of the stall,

        who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp

               and like David invent for themselves instruments of music,

        who drink wine in bowls [not cups]

               and anoint themselves with the finest oils,

               but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!

        Therefore they shall now be the first of those who go into exile,

               and the revelry of those who stretch

         themselves out shall pass away.”[1]      

The Rich Man of Jesus’ parable could have easily been aware of such a warning, these Words would have been available to him, had he taken them to heart his eternal destination may have been different, but alas he seemed not to care about such warnings and ends up on the other side of the great chasm. It’s good to remember that had you, in the middle of the night before their deaths, woke up both the Rich Man and Lazarus from their sleep— the Rich Man laying in his soft bed made of ivory and the poor man laying in the cold stone streets with his sores licked by the dogs — each of man might well have claimed to be Children of Abraham by birth.[2] Yet, dear ones, remember what John the Baptiser warned near the beginning of the Gospel of Saint Luke when he said,

Bear fruits in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”[3]

Last Sunday the sermon focused in on how regardless of way the World sees you, the Lord is the one who truly sees the contents of your heart, what you believe, what you hold to be true. So whether you are counted by the World as rich or poor, or somewhere in between, the danger is rooted in being one “who lays up treasure for himself [in this life] and is not rich toward God,”[4] “For” as Jesus says, “where your treasure is, there will your heart be also,”[5] and God knows your heart; and so you have these two the Rich Man and Lazarus. The proof they say is in the pudding, so when poor man died Jesus tells us that he was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side while Jesus tells us how the Rich Man when he also died and was buried, found himself in Hades, being in torment. So whatever the Rich Man’s public persona and reputation was in the eyes of the World his heart clearly didn’t belong to the Lord and was empty, not rich towards God; and regardless of how the World looked at poor Lazarus, regardless of his reputation before men, the Lord knew the faithfulness of the beggar’s heart and knew that it was indeed full, and truly rich towards God.      

Now in our life we know that worldly riches come from being frugal and saving and from investments and annuities and estate inheritances, they come from building or growing or making things for sale to other and all of this can certainly be the result of honest hard work, generational wisdom regarding money, good stewardship of what the Lord has provided us; or in some cases worldly riches come from theft or other dishonest forms of criminal activity or manipulation, maybe even done in ways that only appear right in the eyes of the World. But how does someone becomes rich towards God as this poor beggar Lazarus in Jesus’ Parable proves to be? Consider what the Rich Man in his torment says to father Abraham in the parable and what father Abraham says in return, “‘I beg you, father, to send [Lazarus back from the dead] to my father’s house—for I have five brothers—so that [this Lazarus] may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.’ But Abraham said [to the Rich Man], ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ And [the Rich Man] said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ [Abraham] said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’”[6] The only way the Rich Man or his five brothers could “hear” Moses and the Prophets would be to have the Word of God read to them, taught to them, preached to them, for them to truly hear it and for this to all be stored up in their hearts as the true riches, the sort of riches the World cannot give. For that to happen they would also have to see the value in what is being read, taught and preached to them. Sadly not everyone sees the true value of what is right in front of them. 

For example in 2024 “a [seasoned] shopper in the Hamptons purchased a painting for $50 at a barn sale, only to later learn it was [painted] by renowned Canadian artist Emily Carr. Titled Masset, Q.C.I. and painted in 1912, the artwork was authenticated by experts, and sold for $290,000 at auction in Toronto.” The one who valued it for sale at $50 didn’t know the true value of what they had in their possession. Had they understood what it was worth they would have cherished and kept it or sold it at auction. God’s Word can be like that. For some the Words of John 3:16 are the most precious and priceless treasure they have ever had the opportunity to hold onto in their hearts, “For God loved the world in this way, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life,”[7] for others when they hear these words they see those words as worth less than $50 bucks or sadly worth less than the paper they’re printed on. 

Consider the Rich Man and Lazarus from Jesus’ parable and think of them, think of yourself, think of the people you know in your life and in your family as I read to you these words from Saint Paul’s letter the Romans:

How then will they call on [the Lord Jesus] in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

Saint Paul then says the Children of Abraham have indeed heard, and they were most certainly taught, and it was absolutely preached to them by God through His prophets like Moses and Isaiah. Paul caps this off by quoting what the Lord said through His prophet Isaiah about these very hard hearted people, “All day long I have held out My hands to a disobedient and contrary people.”[8] Jesus’ Parable suggests that the Rich Man had in fact heard but had not believed where Lazarus had likewise heard and did believe.

In the Old Testament times the faithful were called to believe what they had read to them, preached, and taught to them concerning the coming of the Redeemer, their Saviour, the Christ, without seeing any of it with their eyes. They had to treasure these promises in their hearts. The people who had the incarnate Christ, this Jesus of Nazareth who first taught this parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, right before their eyes, who saw Him crucified, dead and buried did not all see the value of what was right in front of them. And in Jesus’ resurrection they had one who had come back to them from the dead, one risen from the dead but upon hearing of this they were not all convinced because they had not all believed the promises that were first read, preached and taught to them from God’s Word. In our day we are no different we are provided this precious treasure through hearing God’s Word read, preached, taught to us. The question is whether this is believed and stored up in our hearts for the treasure it is or whether our hearts are empty. 

Unlike the riches of the World, the riches valued by the World, the true treasure of Christ Jesus comes to our heart not by our hard work but as a gift. This same risen Christ Jesus doesn’t send men back from the dead to be pastors to share this treasure with the World but sends men devoted to the public reading of God’s Word, men to preach as Saint Paul says, men to teach this Word of God. Our Epistle from 1st Timothy chapter 3 provides us a picture of what such men are to be like among us as they deliver the goods of this treasure into our hearts.[9] And ‘thanks be to God’ that Christ Jesus sends us such men when and where they are needed and we have a real solid object lesson of that right in our midst today as we heard it announced to us that Pastor Basil Christi (Vasilios Christoforidis) has accepted the call to come to us to serve us here as Associate Pastor at Mount Olive Lutheran Church.

I’m going to leave you with two thoughts; first: At dear Rev. Dr. Martin Luther’s death in February of 1546, those attending to his dead body found a scrap of paper in his pocket with his brief last thoughts written upon it. The words read, “We are beggars. This is true.” Dear one we are like Lazarus from Jesus’ Parable today our true riches are stored up not in our bank accounts or investments, not in our possessions and properties but rather in our hearts as a guarantee of what is to come when we shall be at rest permanently in Christ Jesus.[10] The dogs may lick our sores on the hard streets of life today but we are promises to walk the streets of gold in paradise when we come into of eternal rest in Christ Jesus.[11] 

Lastly, don’t let whatever you have or don’t have in this life when it comes to what the World values get between you and what is yours in Christ Jesus, your eternal inheritance as a baptised child of God. Believe in the crucified, dead and risen Lord Jesus Christ the one who came back from the dead. The one Moses and the prophets foretold. The one promised to you by God, the one who saves you. Don’t let anyone or anything or any novel idea get between you and this precious and priceless treasure. Amen.    

Let us pray:

Lord have mercy on us, Christ have mercy on us, Lord have mercy on us, “take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire; for the sake of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Amen.

[1] Amos 6:4–7
[2] It’s possible that High Priest Caiaphas and his family could be the ones that Jesus’ parable about the Rich Man is pointed towards, the original hearers would have know how Caiaphas lived in a “gated” home (John 18:15–16) and how in his work as High Priest Caiaphas would have worn purple and fine linens. Interestingly Caiaphas and the other Sadducees didn’t believe in the resurrection of the dead which can be found taught in the Old Testament Scriptures and yet this is what the Rich Man in the parable is asking for, something that would ultimately come in the person of Jesus Christ on the first Easter Sunday with a sneak preview just before Holy Week when Jesus raises Lazarus of Bethany from the dead (John 11). Is the poor man in the Parable being named Lazarus simply a coincidence?
[3] Luke 3:8–9
[4] Luke 12:21
[5] Luke 12:34
[6] Luke 16:27–31
[7] John 3:16
[8] Romans 10:14–17, 21
[9] 1 Timothy 3:1–13
[10] Luke 16:25
[11] Revelation 21:21

Photo Credit: detail of The Rich Man in Hell, Seeing Lazarus Embraced by Abraham, from The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, print, by Heinrich Aldegrever from wikimedia commons, Emily Carr, Masset, Q.C.I.. Image courtesy Heffel Fine Art Auction House found on news.artnet.com.