Great Shot, Wrong Target: What the Rich Man and Lazarus Teaches Us About Missing What Matters Most

from the sermon "The Surprise of a Spoiled Man" by Jimmy Johnson

There was a certain rich man, splendidly clothed in purple and fine linen, who lived in luxury every single day. At his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered in sores, longing for the scraps that fell from the rich man's table. Dogs came and licked his wounds. That's the story Jesus tells in Luke 16:19-31, and it's not a light passage. It's a hard one. But it's a good one, and it's worth deeply thinking about.

Eventually both men die. Lazarus is carried by angels to be with Abraham. The rich man is buried, and his soul goes to a place of torment. From there, he looks up and sees Abraham far off, with Lazarus at his side. He calls out, "Father Abraham, have pity on me. Send Lazarus to dip his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in these flames." Abraham reminds him that during his lifetime he received good things while Lazarus received bad things. Now the roles are reversed, and besides, there's a great chasm fixed between them. No one can cross from one side to the other.

The rich man makes one more request. He has five brothers still living. Could Lazarus be sent to warn them, so they don't end up in this place of torment? Abraham's answer is sobering: "They have Moses and the prophets. Let them listen to them." The rich man protests, no, but if someone came back from the dead, they would repent. Abraham's final word: "If they won't listen to Moses and the prophets, they won't be convinced even if someone rises from the dead."

A World That Doesn't Want to Talk About Hell

We live in a time when many churches have quietly dropped the subject of hell altogether. Nobody wants to be labeled a "hellfire and damnation" church. But leaving it out doesn't make it disappear, it just means we've stopped preaching the whole counsel of Scripture, and we've stopped honestly warning people about something real.

Hell is mentioned 53 times in the Bible, 27 of those in the New Testament. Jesus himself used the word Gehenna 21 times to describe it. Gehenna was a real valley outside Jerusalem, a place where trash burned constantly, where dead animals were discarded, where the stench and the heat never let up. Everyone in that culture knew exactly what Gehenna smelled like and looked like. When Jesus used that image, he wasn't being poetic. He was being direct.

Great Shot, Wrong Target

In 2004, an Olympic shooter named Matthew Emmons stepped up for his final shot needing only a decent score to win gold. He fired, hit an 8.1, more than enough. But the scoreboard read zero. He'd hit the target correctly, just the wrong one. The headline the next day said it plainly: "Great shot. Wrong target."

That's the rich man's whole life in four words. He wasn't lazy. He wasn't incompetent. He built an impressive house, wore the finest clothes, ate the best food, and by every visible measure, he succeeded. But he aimed at everything except the one thing that actually mattered: a relationship with God. We can climb hard, work hard, and build an impressive life, and still be standing against the wrong building entirely.

Two Funerals

The contrast between these two deaths is striking. When the rich man died, the mourning was elaborate. Professional mourners walked ahead of the casket, wailing loudly enough that everyone in town would know someone important had passed. Parents pointed him out to their children as an example of success.

When Lazarus died, no one came. The only creatures that had ever paid him any attention were the dogs, and they weren't mourning, they were just hoping for more scraps. He'd likely been run off from the rich man's gate more than once, treated as an eyesore rather than a person. But when he died, the angels themselves came for him, because in God's eyes, he was a son coming home, someone who would never again have to beg for a piece of bread.

The world's applause and heaven's welcome are not always given to the same people.

Great Sinners, Great Savior

The good news buried inside this hard passage is this: we are all great sinners, but we have an even greater Savior. That truth, that people are headed somewhere real and eternal, is the thing that should drive the church – not politics, not personal grievances, not theological hairsplitting, but a genuine concern for where people spend eternity.

Reaching someone for Christ isn't complicated. It's one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread. You don't need every answer. You don't need to have Revelation figured out. You just need to be willing to say something, even when it's awkward, even when it takes twenty years of patient friendship before the moment finally comes.

Charlie Peace, a convicted criminal in 19th-century England, was being led to his execution when the chaplain reading him his last rites seemed to be going through the motions. Charlie finally stopped him and said that if he truly believed what the church claimed about heaven and hell, he would crawl across broken glass on his hands and knees if it meant saving even one soul from that place. He said it better than most preachers do, and he wasn't even the one preaching.

Where This Leaves Us

Here's a simple, personal test: is there anyone in your life right now, family, a friend, someone you've known for years, whose eternity you're unsure about? Someone who knows of God but doesn't actually know him?

The invitation here isn't complicated either. Start with prayer. Ask God to open their heart, and ask him to open a door for you to have the conversation. Then be ready to walk through it when it opens.

The rich man had everything the world measures as success, and he missed the only thing that actually counted. Don't aim your whole life at the wrong target.

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