25/09/04 St. John’s 10:30 Chase Terrace Praise Harvest Luke 16:19-31
1. (Slide 1 – Harvest) Harvest .. a time to say thank you for all that we have. All that God has given to us.
When is the last time you said “thank you” to God. Think about it for a moment.
When was it that you just couldn’t help saying “thank you God” - after a good day with the family, or maybe after a nice meal with friends, or perhaps just when you saw something beautiful on holiday… or caught a glimpse of a blue sky after a couple of dreary rainy days last week. It is important to say thank you God.. now.. while we are able to.
You know… I love the colours of autumn. I enjoy the gold and reds and browns of the leaves. I love to see the fruit on our crab apple tree, the berries on the hawthorns and mountain ash trees, look great at this time of year. But mixed in with all the enjoyment of that beauty there is just a tinge of sadness. The leaves must fall, the annual flowers and plants must die.
(Slide 2 – Leaves) And maybe autumn is a reminder for us that for everything that lives on this planet… there comes a time when this physical life has to end.
That’s a cheerful thought isn’t it!
2. Let’s think of something else… (Slide 3 – Google)
How many people here use the internet either at home or at work at least once a week? Do you use Google. Useful to find out info. I asked this question…
(Slide 4 – search 1) How long does laminate flooring last? (Slide 5 – result 1) It took 2 secs to come up with 23,000 answers. Trouble is… by the time I had read them all… I could have moved house!
Here is another question I asked yesterday.
(Slide 6 – search 2) What happens when we die? Google took 1.5 seconds to come up with …
(Slide 7 – result 2) 1,530,000 answers.
So - Laminate flooring… 23,000 answers…
what happens when I die… over one and a half million answers.
I did a quick calculation. Assuming I spend just four minutes thinking about each answer. And say I work continuously for eight hours a day, every day working my way through those answers... it would take me 35 years to work my way through all of them. I’m fifty five now… so I’d probably be dead before I finished.
It would be a bit tough wouldn’t it if the answer I needed to know was answer number one million five hundred and twenty nine thousand and ninety nine… and I never got to it!
3. Some questions are important enough to make it right for us to spend time finding the answer.
We do spend time thinking about things as important as laminate flooring… we ought to spend some time thinking about something as important as what happens when we die?
Maybe Jesus knew that our life here just isn’t long enough to work through one and half million answers to that question… so instead, he said look.. there are just TWO things you need to know… there are just two alternatives… (Slide 8 – 2 alternatives)
When you die you can go somewhere you will like... or you can go somewhere you won’t !
And Jesus told the story that we heard read to us this morning. Let's look again at it. (Luke 16:19)
4. (Slide 9 – rich man & lazarus) Jesus talked about a rich man who enjoyed the best that life had to offer...designer clothes, good food, nice house, he lived a luxurious lifestyle.
And there was a poor man, Lazarus. His life was the exact opposite. His body was covered in sores, he could not walk and he had to be carried to a place from which he would beg, every day. That palce was just outside the house of the rich man.
And as Jesus told the story he said, The poor man died and went to heaven to be with God... and the rich man died and went to a place where he was forever separated from God, and it was not a good place to be and he didn't like it. (Slide 10 – parable)
5. I am certain that Jesus does not intend us to learn that the rich man went to somewhere unpleasant after death just because he was rich...or that the poor man went to somewhere nice just because he was poor.
So why did Jesus tell this story?
Certainly it was to give an answer to the question what happens when we die.
We can say if we want to… "Oh don't worry, everybody goes to heaven... everyone goes somewhere nice."
We can say that... but that is definitely not what Jesus taught. He made it very plain in this story and in many other places... that our life here will eventually bring each of us to one of two doorways, beyond each doorway lies a different kind of future
I think Jesus did tell this story to give us a warning.
And maybe he told it to make us think about how we live our life here, now.
To make us think about how WE make use of the good things that God gives to us.
(Slide 11 – supermarket & baby)
I reckon that compared to the majority of human being living on this planet… each one us here today is RICH. WE will eat. WE will have somewhere to sleep. We may even have some money to spend on something other than just the bare essentials that we need to stay alive. So.. compared to hundreds of millions of other people… we are rich. So perhaps we had better take notice of what Jesus was saying.
6. You see, Jesus never said that the rich man was a criminal, or a terrorist, or obtained his riches by dishonest means. He could have been a local businessman. For all we know he could have been the sort of man who when he died people would have said of him... " well he kept himself to himself ... but he would never do anybody any harm."
But this rich man did do a lot of harm… and the greatest harm he did.. was to himself.
(Slide 12 – rich man)
The rich man, said Jesus just didn’t notice the needs of Lazarus, a poor man outside his own front door.
Maybe the rich man was thinking
what shall I eat today,
what shall I wear today,
what colour paint should I get for the living room, what sort of laminate flooring should I buy?
Maybe he was really busy, extending his house, making a career, redesigning the garden, taking another course of study… whatever.
The trouble is he was so wrapped up in his own life on earth, that he never gave much thought to the next one. Which was a pity really .
If he had thought about the next life he would have known that one day God would want to know how he had used the good gifts, the riches that were given to him. And God would want to know how he had shown love towards the people who he had sent in his direction to care for.
But instead of thinking about the things that are important to God, this man dug a ditch, a great “chasm” (says the bible) between himself and God.
(Slide 13 – to do it…)
To do it all he had to do was to keep thinking about himself… and not think about God.
And the rich man discovered, too late, that just as he had cut himself off from God here...
so he was to be cut off from God in the next life.
Of course now that Jesus has told us something we need to know.. we couldn’t make the same mistake… could we?
Laminate flooring can take up a lot of our time… or the house, or the job, or a thousand and one other important things. And we can sometimes be so busy that we don’t ever stop and say “thank you” to God for all that he has given to us… And sometimes we completely forget to ask him the question “God - how do you want me to make use of all that you have given me.”
(Slide 14 – Lazarus)
If only the rich man had thought about God for long enough just to ask him that question then he would have noticed Lazarus, right there by his door.
7. Who is by your door?
What do you think God wants you to do with all that he has given you?
What do you think God wants you to do with the life that he has given you, the time that he gives you, the riches that he gives you?
You know.. Jesus came on a mission to save us … from OURSELVES.
We don't need any help to be selfish.
We don’t need any help to think about ourselves first instead of other people.
We don’t need any help at all to cut ourselves off from God like the rich man in the story.
But we do need help to live life "God's Way"
And we do need help to go through that door marked “Heaven.”
8. It's because we can't get to heaven on our own that Jesus came. He is the one who makes it possible for us to escape the awful prospect of living in this life not knowing God and then facing an eternity alone, cut off from him and cut off from all goodness and love.
(Slide 15 – Thank You)
May we learn to say thank you to God.
May we remember to ask him…
how do YOU want me to use what you have given me?
And then if we do those things we can learn to see around us, those who God is calling us to love,
and those with whom we must share the riches he has given us.