If they don't believe Moses and the Prophets, the won't believe it even if someone rises from the dead! Wow! Abraham is telling the rich man, and Jesus is telling us by this story, that not even someone rising from the dead will convince them to believe in Christ if they don't believe it from the Word. And it's true! The Pharisees and religious leaders knew Jesus had risen from the dead but not even that convinced them to trust in Him. We do the same thing: “God, show me a sign! Do something I want. Make something change in my life. Make something happen. Let's see some miracle or sign from God. If I could just see such a thing, then I'd really believe!” Not so. You have the Word. Moses and the Prophets. AND the Gospels and the writings of the Apostles. You have the Bible, the Holy Scriptures, the Word of God. If you don't believe that, God Himself standing in front of you won't convince you either! Our problem is that the Lord gives us His Word and His promises but don't always seem to fit with what we see with our eyes. Nevertheless, He teaches us to trust in His Word. Without that Word, we have nothing.
Consider Abraham. The Lord called him from his homeland to go to the land of Canaan. It was by God's Word that Abraham left. Then the Lord said that He would make Abraham into a great nation, give him oodles of descendants, more than the stars of the sky! That was God's Word. But what did Abraham see? He could see that he didn't even have any kids and he was an old man! He could see that His wife Sarah was well past her child-bearing years! But the Scriptures say Abraham trusted God's promise and that the Lord counted that as righteousness. But when Abraham died, he only had a few children, certainly not as many as the stars of heaven! But look around now. Now how many children does Abraham have? St. Paul writes in Galatians that all those who believe in Christ are sons of Abraham by faith in Jesus. How many Christians are there? Have there been? Will there be? Like the stars of heaven! The Lord's promise has come true, though Abraham only saw it by faith. All Abraham had was the Word of God, but for Abraham, by faith, it was enough.
That's all we have. The Word of God. The Word of God teaches us how to live. It teaches a rich man to love his neighbor and help him, even if there is apparently no benefit in doing so. It teaches us to love others even when they don't seem to deserve it. The Word of God teaches husbands and wives to stay together and love one another even when it feels like love is gone. It teaches children to obey their parents even when their parents seem harsh or embarrassing. The Scriptures teach us to hold our tongues even when it seems we have a right to say something against someone. The Word teaches us to love God and love our neighbor even though the world around us just says to take care of yourself! And in teaching us these things, the Word teaches repentance for it is clear that none of us lives as God's Word commands. We don't love God above all things and we don't love our neighbors as ourselves.
But the Word doesn't stop there. It doesn't end at telling us what to do. The Word, above all else, tells us what the Lord has done. That He sent His Son. That Christ was born for you, baptized for you, lived for you and suffered and died for you. He rose for you. He has conquered death and hell and by the water that flowed from His side He has quenched the fires of judgment that were set to roast you! God's Word speaks to you this promise: that for Jesus' sake, your sins are forgiven you and you have eternal life. Now you can't always SEE those promises. Just as the rich man knew the Lord's condemnation of his hating his neighbor but he didn't see it so it didn't matter; just as Lazarus had the promise of eternal life and blessing but he couldn't see it; just so the promises God gives you are not always easy to see. It's hard to believe that you have a heavenly Father who cares for you when you are lying in a hospital bed suffering from some disease! It's hard to believe that your sins are forgiven when the things you have done keep bothering your mind and making you miserable. It's hard to believe the Lord's Word is faithful and true and worth listening too when the world is full of people who seem to be getting along just fine without it!
But now understand something. The rich man did not suffer because he was rich. He didn't even suffer because he didn't take care of Lazarus. He suffered because he wanted a life without God's Word. He suffered because he had Moses and the Prophets, the Bible, but he didn't want to learn it. He didn't want to believe it. He didn't want to do what it said. When He failed to do what it said, he didn't want to trust in the promise of forgiveness it gave, to believe in the Savior to whom it pointed. No, the rich man only cared about the rich man and all the things he could get in life. It wasn't until he died that he suddenly had concern for his brothers! There's our warning, brothers and sisters in Christ. Don't despise God's Word. Don't neglect the Scriptures. Don't turn away from what the Lord has given you in Christ! Learn the Word. Hear it! Believe it! Live in your Baptism! Hear the absolution for your sins! Hear the preaching! Come to Bible Study! Eat and drink Jesus' body and blood! Nothing else can save you. Nothing else can comfort you in a world in which you may suffer greatly. Nothing else will comfort you with the promise of a better and eternal life to come! For it is the Word that shows us Christ, and being in Christ is to be, like Lazarus, in the bosom of Abraham.
That is why you need to hear and receive the Word again and again and over and over. Because God's Word is the one thing that not only saves you but keeps you in the faith. When you are suffering as one who seems abandoned by God, you need to hear again the Good News of your Baptism that declares you are a child of God in Christ! When your sins trouble you and you know that you have not loved God and your neighbor, you need to hear again the Good News of Holy Absolution by which the death of Christ is laid against your sins and wipes them out. When you see how the world around you lives as if it doesn't have any cares, you need to hear again this preaching of Jesus that the world will have its good things in this life and that you who suffer now, will have your good things in the life to come, because of Jesus. When death itself stalks you, you need to hear the Good News that the body and blood of Jesus given you to eat and drink will raise you up on the Last Day and give you eternal life! Jesus' resurrection shows that He conquers death. But it is His Word by which the Holy Spirit makes us God's people. It is the Word by which we are saved, by which we learn to love and care for others, and by which we are counted as descendants of Abraham and heirs of the wonderful promises of God in Christ Jesus. In the Name of Jesus. Amen.
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