It's Time
Funeral • Sermon • Submitted
0 ratings
· 17 viewsNotes
Transcript
19 “There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. 20 And at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, 21 who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores. 22 The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried, 23 and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. 24 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.’ 25 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. 26 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.’ 27 And he said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house— 28 for I have five brothers—so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.’ 29 But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ 30 And he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ 31 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.’ ”
Blessed Lord, You have caused all Holy Scriptures to be written for our learning. Grant that we may so hear them, read, mark, learn, and take them to heart that, by the patience and comfort of Your holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life. … through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever, Amen.
Was that a true story, that Jesus told on a day when he was ministering to “tax collectors and sinners” while the religious leaders, the Scribes and Pharisees, grumbled that “This man receives sinners and eats with them?” Maybe - it is interesting that, unlike Jesus’ recognized parables, this one names a specific individual, a poor man named Lazarus. If not, like Jesus’ other parables, this story tells us something about the way God works in the world, often unrecognized by us, to do His will.
If someone were to ask you who and what God is and what He wants of us, how would you answer? How committed would you be to giving an accurate, useful answer to that question?
If we were inclined towards honesty, we would admit that, for the most part, the will of God seems tantalizingly out of reach. Little children seem to be much more comfortable with the idea of communicating with and trusting in the Lord. As we get older, we try to confine God to the smaller and smaller bases of operation. There are a lot of reasons to keep Christ at arms length, but there is only one reason that people draw close to Him - they become awakened to the fact that they need to.
25 Now there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. 26 And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ.
The Bible tells us almost nothing about Simeon. We don’t know his genealogy; we don’t know his background. We also don’t know why God gave him this blessing, that he would be preserved alive until he had seen the Messiah.
A lot of people, maybe even most, upon being told that their future was connected to them seeing Jesus, might do everything possible to avoid Him. Why? Because we are born into a world that is under the sway of the Wicked One - Satan. We come into this world, and whether it is true or not, we quickly learn to believe one of two things about ourselves: either the universe, with its myriads of stars knit together into myriads of galaxies, all revolving around one point, which is - repeat after me - ME! Or - that there are so many people on this planet that, in the words of a classic rock song, “All in all we’re just another brick in the wall.” According to the Bible, each one of us is in this condition. Eventually, unless the Holy Spirit breaks through with the preaching of God’s Law and Gospel, we learn to hide this basic foundation to our lives, pretending that we are loving, caring people who are willing to lay down our lives for friends and, with the right incentives, for causes. Not only do we pretend this with others, we pretend this with ourselves, if we can.
It is only when the truth, as it is in Christ Jesus, enters our ears, hearts and minds as it is purely preached by rightly called servants of the Word, and as it is shared by those who have come to trust in those exceeding great and precious promises given to us by God our Father through Christ Jesus our Lord, that something clicks, something that transforms us by the renewing of our minds.
It’s called the Gospel - the Good News - which first impacted Roosevelt Carroll when he was baptized long ago in August of 1944, and then he was confirmed in the faith by the late Rev. Norman Brandt at St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church on December 8th, 1991. His Confirmation verse was
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation;
What does this mean? The Apostle Paul, who wrote it under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, explains:
19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.
The Word of God, the Bible, contains 66 books that Christians believe, teach and confess were written so that we might what the ancient Israelite prophet Isaiah declared:
10 “You are my witnesses,” declares the Lord, “and my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me. 11 I, I am the Lord, and besides me there is no savior.
The beginning of the Bible reveals that “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” and when He was finished, He called it “good.”
What happened? Why do things look anything but good today? Why do we have to mourn, weep, experience loss, injustice, and disappointment?
Sin. An angel sinned and took a third of his colleagues with him, and he deceived the first man and his wife to believe that their Creator was selfishly holding out on them, while they sat in the middle of a garden that could meet their every need. Through them, sin entered the world, and death through sin. The Bible is filled with the record of the impact of sin. Today is just another day that testifies to this. Roosevelt is another witness, with you, to the sinfulness of sin, and its ability to take each of us down with it. That’s the way of the world until Jesus came.
It was His death, the only one of its kind, because it was the death of one who knew no sin, one who was guilty of nothing, not even the sin of Adam, because he did not inherit, from an earthly father, the corruption of sin. Simeon testified to this when he saw Jesus as a baby in the temple that day:
27 And he came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him according to the custom of the Law, 28 he took him up in his arms and blessed God and said, 29 “Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word; 30 for my eyes have seen your salvation 31 that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, 32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.”
The Gospel is the News that, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we are reconciled to God. God is not angry with us; instead, He earnestly seeks us to offer us a new status as adopted children. He offers to work with us and through us to transform our lives and the lives of others as His gracious Kingdom expands and overthrows the kingdoms that are under the control of our adversary the devil.
Roosevelt Carroll and his family, his wife Marie and his daughters Angela and Sharon, all knew those exceeding great and precious promises. Roosevelt learned during his confirmation the blessed assurance that He had when his baptism united him to Christ:
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Righteousness - in Greek it’s δικαιοσύνη. the quality, state, or practice of judicial responsibility w. focus on fairness, justice, equitableness, fairness.
William Arndt et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 247.
Today, Roosevelt is with his wife Marie and his daughter Angela, and everyone else whose eyes God opened through the Gospel, from the day, in the Garden, that God told Adam and his wife about “the seed of the Woman” who would “crush the serpent’s head,” until today, as we look forward to the day when our Lord does what He revealed to the Apostle John in
4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
Jesus Christ offers reconciliation and righteousness to a world that is desperate for both. Those who die in the Lord like Roosevelt did, receive that promise and rest in the certainty of its further unfolding at the Resurrection when Christ, the Good Shepherd, returns to gather together His flock and execute the judgment declared against those who rejected Him in this creation, from Satan on down to those who obeyed him.
Today, if you hear the voice of the Lord, do not harden your heart against Him. Do not ignore the life and witness of Roosevelt Carroll and the message that I share with you today. Do not treat today as just another day that you managed to hold death at bay - you didn’t. It’s because of God’s mercy that you are not consumed. Instead, let the Gospel enter your heart and life, transforming you from the kingdom of darkness and into the Kingdom of God’s dear son,
and let the peace of God, that passes understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.