If Only I Had The Chance Again
July 8, 2018 Psalms 14:1-7 Revelations 20:11-15 Luke 16:19-31
If you knew exactly what was going to happen tomorrow, how many of you think it might change what you do today. For some of you, you would become a hero, for some of you would become rich, for some of you might get to work on time and work hard all day and for some of you, you would give your life to Christ.
But since we don’t know the future, we sometimes have to put our trust in things and in people, and we accept things as true which are not. We live in a world in which we are told everybody can have their own truth so long as they believe what they say they believe. It is not our belief that makes a statement true. It is truth that makes things true.
I’m from New York State. One of the hallmarks of the state is the New York State Thruway, which touches almost every major city in the state from New York City to Buffalo NY and down to the Ohio Border. We believed it to be one of the safest built highways in the country. However there was one bridge in which a contractor saved some money by building the support six feet into the river bed instead of on pylons driven into the bedrock. I think Jesus warned us against building our lives on the foundation of dirt and sand as opposed to upon a rock.
On April 5th 1987 at 10:40 am on a Sunday morning four cars and a semi truck were driving down the thruway. Three men were returning from a bowling tournament. A mother and daughter were heading to a baby shower. Two Shriners who had gone to a black-tie dinner and were heading home to Toronto. A married couple was driving to Texas . A truck driver heading from Green Bay, Wis., to Goshen in Orange County.
The one belief they all held was that it was safe to cross the section of the bridge that was coming up. Traveling at 55 to 65 mph, they had no idea that in 10 seconds the bridge would collapse. All five vehicles plunged into the raging river, and 10 people lost their lives. If only they had had the chance again to take a different route, how many of you know they probably would have taken it.
Suppose you knew that bridge was going to collapse and all five of those vehicles had stopped at the same rest stop where you were. Would you feel an obligation to warn them? What would you even say to them? What do you think their reaction might be to you? You have the truth, but they think your truth is wrong and theirs is right. Trying to save their lives might be a lot more difficult than you think.
Jesus had one of the most difficult missions in coming to this earth to try to save us. Problem number one is that it is very difficult to save someone who does not believe they are in any danger. They immediately assume, you are trying to do something to them, rather than for them. Our society paints the church as a group of people trying to do something to people, rather than for people. If I don’t think I have a need, I am less inclined to listen to what you have to say. How many of you had people warn you not to take a course of action, but you did what you wanted to, but now you think, “If only I had the chance again, I would.”
Jesus tells us in Luke 16:19-31 about a man who was living the American Dream. The man was rich. He lived in luxury. He was dressed in the finest of clothes. He could mention what he wanted and somebody was there ready to give it to him. His house was magnificent. His parties were the talk of the town. This guy seemed to have it all. He did have it all, except for a relationship with God. He believed that God was just a big fairy tale. He had heard the stories about Abraham and Moses, but they were nothing more than bed time stories for kids.
He was like the one spoken of in our Old Testament reading which said “Fools say in their hearts, there is no God.” Atheism did not just start, it’s been around a very long time. Trying to tell this guy he needed to be saved, was like trying to tell a billionaire he needed to work at a job paying minimum wage. If there was a God, his wealth was proof that He had God’s blessings on his life. His life was all about him, and what he had.
By contrast, there was poor beggar named Lazarus who was covered with sores and was laid at the entrance gate leading to the wealthy man’s mansion. Lazarus would have been glad to eat the food that fell on the rich man’s floor or even out of his garbage can. Lazarus’s had open sores that the dogs came and licked. The rich man could have easily sent a servant out with a plate of scraps for Lazarus, but why encourage other beggars to show up at his house.
Now if you had of seen this rich man and Lazarus side by side, it would have been interesting to see which of the two you thought might be in a relationship with God. On Tuesday nights when we serve our meals, it’s not always easy to tell who is walking with God and who is not or who is living for Jesus and who is not. Some of the servers are some are not, some of those being served are, some or not.
It just so happened that Lazarus and the rich man died on the same day. I can only imagine that Lazarus’s body was disposed of in some nameless grave. There probably wasn’t much of a service or even an announcement. But can you imagine the size of the funeral the rich man had. No doubt, anybody and everybody that was important was there. The speeches of how great and generous he was as a man probably poured in.
The Plain Dealer would have given us his life story in a special section not only on the obituary page, but in the metro section as well. He probably had a magnificent tombstone, all that you would expect of a celebrity. They took great care of his body. People were saying, didn’t he look good. He looked just like himself.
But Jesus tells us what it was like on the other side of the grave that we can’t see. He tells us about a truth that our society does not want to acknowledge. A s a matter of fact, our society wants us to be free to believe in whatever kind of after life we want to believe in.
Jesus tells us that the angels came and took Lazarus to heaven to Abraham’s side. Abraham was the original father of all God’s people the Jews. He was the one God made the promise to, “I will make you into a great nation through which all the nations on earth will be blessed.”This beggar that couldn’t make the news was known in heaven as a child of God.
The rich man woke up in an entirely different place. He was in Hades where he was in great torment and pain. Hades is translated as hell in some translations. The source of the rich man’s pain was the flames which surrounded him.
Why do you think Jesus takes the time to tell us about heaven and hell? Why is it that Jesus wants us to know the truth about our tomorrow today? It is because God loves us and wants us to know what our true condition is.
The rich man doesn’t end up in hell because of his riches. He ends up there because of his refusal to yield his life to God.
When he was alive, he not only knew Lazarus was at his gate, he knew what his name was but did nothing. He also knew who Abraham was, but it did not affect him spiritually, nor did it cause him to change his life. But now he recognizes he has a need, and not only does he have a need, he needs Lazarus to bring his some relief.
We should never write people off in a negative way, because we never know when we will run into them again and what the circumstances are going to be. If we do, we will find ourselves saying, “If I only had the chance again—I would.”
The rich man calls out to Abraham, 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.’
Can you imagine what would have happened on the other side of the grave if Lazarus would have even touched this rich man’s clothes? Yet now he is willing to suck a drop of water off of his finger.
I believe every person that is in our lives, is there for a reason. It may take years for it to reveal itself, but God has something that God is doing in us to prepare us for the life that is to come. Not only that, God seeks to use us to impact those people around us. The most important things we do in the kingdom are not always the most readily known or recognizable. We’re thinking, If I only had the chance, and God is saying, you have the chance right now.
Abraham replies with some very disappointing words. Truth does not always make us feel good. It’s even worse when we find out the truth and its too late to do anything about it. Abraham replied, Luke 16:25-26 (NIV2011) 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 set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’
Then an interesting thing happens. This man goes from atheism to seeing a real need for evangelism. He now wants his family to hear the truth about what happens when we die and how important the choices we make while we are alive truly are.
Our motivation for evangelism should come from two sources. It should come out of a motivation of our Love for God and the desire to be pleasing in his sight. Jesus clearly tells us to go into the world and tell others the good news about the gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus says, if we love him we will do what he tells us to do. Our second motivation should come out of a love for people. We should love people enough to do what we can to keep them out of hell, because the pain and suffering there is real.
I know we all hate to think of the possibility but some of our family members and friends died without giving their lives to Christ. We want to assume that at the last minute, they made a switch over. But for many, they followed in the steps of this rich man.
The rich man did not want to accept responsibility for being where he was. He told Abraham, Luke 16:27-28 (NIV2011) 27 “He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, 28 for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’
He’s saying if he only had had the chance of sufficient warning, he would not be there in hell. He also knew that his five brothers were living the exact same kind of lifestyle without God as he was . The reality of hell ought to motivate us to want to be evangelists in whatever we can to reach people. It may be a word here, an invite there, an act of compassion over there, a few minutes holding a sign, a few minutes to talk, or a few minutes to serve.
Abraham comes back with some more bitter truth. They have Moses and the Prophets: let them listen to them. Abraham is saying, look if they read the Old Testament, they will see their need for God and they will understand how God will hold us accountable for our sin.
This answer is not acceptable to the rich man because he knew that he had had Moses and Prophets yet ended up in hell. His view was that if God expected people to get saved, God should use much more dramatic means of evangelism. If Lazarus showed up at his five brothers houses and told each one of them that hell was real and that he was there, then they would repent. How many of you know they would write Lazarus off as a bad dream, or a hallucination, or even still an imposter trying to get some of their wealth? For every truth that God has, Satan has a lie to try to keep you from believing it.
Our society preaches the same message as the rich man. You can’t really expect people to believe the bible in today’s modern times. You can’t expect people to take Jesus seriously when there are other religions available. God is not obligated to do anything spectacular to get us to repent from our sin. What could be more spectacular than for Jesus to have come down from heaven, lived as a human being choosing never to sin, willingly dying on a Christ to pay for each of our sins, and then being raised from the dead in power to show us that life extends far beyond the grave.
Abraham tells him again, if they don’t believe Moses and the Prophets, they will not believe, even if someone rises from the dead. Jesus is saying this knowing that in a very short period of time, he’s going to be crucified and he’s going to rise from the dead, but still people are not going to believe. People were even paid to keep the truth silent about his resurrection. Others were beaten and jailed to keep them silent about the truth, but it did not stop them.
I think, one of the greatest, “If only I had the change again, after we die its going to be around the number of people we might have been able to reach for Christ, that we chose to spend our time and money on something else. In Schindler’s List, there is a movie about a very wealthy man during WWII that starts to work for the Nazi’s and heads a slave labor camp to make ammunition for the German war machine.
But he begins using his wealth, to bribe some Nazi’s to keep some of the Jews from going to the gas chambers. He saved hundreds of lives. When he realizes that over six million people perished, he looks at the possessions that he still has, and instead seeing them as items, he sees them as people whom he might have saved. He also thinks of all the money he wasted that he could have used to save lives. He was experiencing, “If only I had the chance again.”
I think when we really allow the reality of hell to sink into our minds in the way it was in the mind of Jesus, our desire to see people saved will be stronger than ever. Love and compassion will compel us to try to reach as many people as we can, because we know that tomorrow is going to bring. We don’t walk around with guilt if we don’t but rather seeking ways in which we can bring God’s mercy to the lives of others.
