I want to talk with you today about a man named Moses. I don’t know, but you may have heard of him before, I’m not sure. Moses is a man who follows the Lord. Moses is a man who works hard, and who tries to help others follow God. I had the chance to met Moses about a year and a half ago. I don’t mean the Moses from the bible; this is Moses from Ubid cleaning company, the company that cleans our church building. Moses is our sales rep and he stops by the church every month or two to talk and make sure that we are happy with the service we are receiving. We normally do a walk through of the building and discuss any issues that exist, which normally takes about 15 minutes, and then we end up chatting about anything and everything else. Through these conversations I have gotten to know Moses. I know that Moses loves the Lord and follows Him closely. I know that Moses is very proud of his kids and the love they are showing for the Lord at a very young age. In fact, he was telling me about a conversation he had with his son, who is only 5 years old. I tried this week as I wrote the sermon to remember exactly what his son had said, but I couldn’t remember the exact quote. But as Moses told me the story, it made me think of a question which I will share with you later this morning.
Now don’t forget about Moses, but I’m going to change directions. When I was 14 years old I began to really follow the Lord. I had accepted Jesus as my savior as a child, but I didn’t understand what it meant to follow Christ with my life, so I hadn’t. As a freshman in high school the youth group went to something called Hell-Stop. I think it was early October, the time when all the haunted houses and haunted forests open. And Hell-Stop was a haunted forest alternative that was organized by a church. So the youth group went as our Thursday night activity. We got there and waited in line. Then they divided us into smaller groups. Each group had a guide, a person in all black with their face painted like a skeleton.
The church that ran the place was trying their best to give people a glimpse of what Hell might be like. This was combined with an effort from the police to combat the syndrome all young people have, the “it will never happen to me” syndrome. So the police brought cars that had been involved in fatal accidents with posters recounting the stories of those who died, either from their own mistakes or the mistakes of another. Reflecting back on the experience, I wish I had a videotape of my facial expression because I would like to see exactly when during the night my attitude changed. I went into the evening being a typical 14 year old, goofing around, acting like an idiot. But by the time we came to the end, I was taking things pretty seriously.
As was the case for everyone who went through, our last stop was a white tent, nothing scary, just a guy from the church who talked to the group for a couple minutes about the experience and about Christ. Then one at a time, each student passed through a curtain to choose from three possible exits. The door to the left had the word Hell painted on it. It was the door for those who realized they were not right with God and had no interest in changing the path of their life. The door to the right said Heaven, and was for those who knew they were following the Lord and would be in heaven if they were to die. And the door straight ahead had a question mark on it. This was the door for those who were unsure of what would happen if they died, or were sure they would go to hell and wanted to change the course of their life so that they would go to heaven.
As I stepped through the curtain I found myself alone with God and I knew it was time to be honest. Honestly I was scared by everything I had just seen. But I knew I wasn’t living a life that would land me in heaven, and I wanted to change that. So I passed through the center door with the question mark and prayed with someone in a tent on the other side to rededicate my life to Christ.
I don’t doubt that some of you here this morning have had negative experiences with such tactics. By tactics I mean the use of hell as a way to scare someone into accepting Jesus Christ as their Savior. Regardless of our opinions on the appropriateness of such methods, I can tell you it got me started on the right path. And at the very least that night, young people were reminded that death doesn’t care what age you are. But I think it is fair to say that my belief in Christ at age 14 was motivated by a fear of going to hell.
The reality that I had accepted Christ only as a way to avoid hell was the reason why I was so struck by the story Moses told me. You remember Moses don’t you? He was telling me about a conversation that he had with his son. As he spoke, I got out my notebook and wrote down this question…If hell didn’t exist, would you follow Jesus? If hell didn’t exist, would I follow Jesus?
NOW, for the record so that I am not misquoted, I am not saying that hell doesn’t exist. The bible tells us that hell is a reality and unfortunately, far too many people die without receiving the salvation that Christ offers. But for our purposes this morning, I want us to ponder our motivations in following Christ.
Let’s look together today at our passage today, which comes from the book of 1st John. You may turn to it if you have your bible, and we will have it on the screen as well. 1st John chapter 4, starting in the second half of verse 16.
1 John 4:16b-18
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. 17In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. 18There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
1 Juan 4:16b-18
Dios es amor. El que permanece en amor, permanece en Dios, y Dios en él. Ese amor se manifiesta plenamente[a] entre nosotros para que en el día del juicio comparezcamos con toda confianza, porque en este mundo hemos vivido como vivió Jesús. En el amor no hay temor, sino que el amor *perfecto echa fuera el temor. El que teme espera el castigo, así que no ha sido perfeccionado en el amor.
We are asking ourselves the question this morning, if hell didn’t exist, would I follow Jesus? Essentially it could be reworded this way, what is my motivation for following Christ? Is it only to avoid hell or do I have other reasons?
I believe that the majority of us will identify with one of two categories this morning, maybe even both of these two motivations for following Christ. Motivation #1, very simply stated, we don’t want to go to hell. We believe what the bible says about sin. We have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And the result of our sin is that we are separated from God, and the ultimate consequence of that separation is hell. The solution is to believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that he died to reconnect us with God so that we don’t go to hell when we die. Does any of that sound familiar to you today? Are you afraid of hell? I certainly am, and many times it is a motivating factor in my life.
So what are the results of living this way, motivated to follow Christ because of the fear? I want to share some of the results that I saw in my own life as long as avoiding hell was my motivation for following Christ. I think we can best compare this type of living to the way that we drive on our roads. We know there is a speed limit, and we sure don’t want to get a ticket. So for the most part we try to follow the speed limit. But what that really means is that we go by the 5 over rule. If it is a 25 area, we can go 30. Or if it is the highway, we go by the 5 to 10 over rule. Or if we are on a long trip, and we want to save time, we go by the 10-15 over rule. You see we still want to drive as fast as possible, yet we take some steps to avoid getting a ticket.
As humans who don’t want to go to hell, we become Christians who follow Jesus enough. Just like we follow the speed limit enough not to get a ticket. We end up doing just the minimum that is required to avoid hell because that is our only motivation.
So what is wrong with that? The first thing that makes me nervous is that I don’t see a list anywhere in the bible that is titled “The Minimum Requirements.” I see the Ten Commandments, but not a list of the minimum requirements that we try to get away with. Secondly, allow me to illustrate the concept this way. Does Jesus enjoy being followed only because we don’t like the other option? What if your spouse told you they married you because they didn’t have any better options? You came along and weren’t exactly what they wanted, but their clock was ticking, and so they said, ok, I never know if anything better will come along. Jen if that is why you married me, I don’t want to know the truth.
So Motivation #1 for following Christ is simply a fear of hell. What is the second motivation? The 2nd motivation is the love that Christ has shown us. Because of this amazing love that God has lavished upon us, we respond out of gratitude towards God the father and the Son. The book of Romans says…
Romans 5:8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Romanos 5:8 Pero Dios demuestra su amor por nosotros en esto: en que cuando todavía éramos pecadores, Cristo murió por nosotros.
The love that God has shown towards us so fills us that our actions, our thoughts, our intentions begin to glorify Christ. Everything we do is a response to the love that God gives. Going back to our passage from I John. We no longer live in fear because as verse 18 says perfect love drives out fear and we change from living in fear to living in God. V. 16 says whoever lives in love lives in God and God in him.
We can sum these two motivations up into two words: fear and love. We can obey God out of fear, or we can obey God because of love. So which one is right and how do we get from one to the other?
I’m not ready to say this morning that one is right and one is wrong. As we noted earlier, my spiritual walk started with fear, and that fear got me headed in the right direction. And I believe that this is a very natural progression that Christians go through. When we begin to understand that we are separated from God by sin, and that the result of sin is death; that can be very scary. No one likes the thought of hell or punishment. At least I have never met anyone who did. And so we accept the salvation that Christ has provided for us through his death on the cross. We begin to follow Christ because we don’t want to go to hell if we die; we want to go to heaven. But there is still a desire within us for what we want to do. We still react to situations the same way as before we accepted Christ. There hasn’t been much transformation.
At some point in our spiritual journey, and hopefully for some of you that point is right now. At some point the love of God begins to change us. We begin to follow Christ not in order to avoid punishment and not only to reach heaven. But we begin to do things out of gratitude to Christ. We obey his commands not only to avoid punishment, but because we love God and want to please Him. Worship begins to make more sense because we sing songs that say thank you to God. Areas of our life that were off limits to the influence of God now come under His guidance. Why? Because he is God, because he is trustworthy, because he won’t trick us, because He loves us and his plans are better than our own.
Our lives are filled with gratitude that God cares for us. Our lives are filled with compassion and love for others. And we are humbled when we recognize that we don’t deserve this great love that the Creator of the universe has shown to us. Our motivation to follow Christ is love.
Let’s return to the question we are pondering this morning. If hell didn’t exist, would I still follow Jesus? When our motivation for following Christ is to avoid hell, perhaps the answer would be no, no we wouldn’t continue to follow Christ. That is not an absolute, but it is a possibility. When our motivation is love, I don’t believe it would matter whether hell was a reality or not. We follow Christ because of the love he has poured upon us.
My desire for you this morning is that you begin to make the transition from a fear motivated walk, to a love motivated walk. Because when you do, you can honestly say that you would follow Christ whether hell existed or not. Why? Because you desire to show your appreciation to God for all he has done for you. Because you believe that the life God asks you to live is a better life than the one you would live on your own. Because God is still God and he is still worthy of our praise. Because the immense love of God requires a response from mankind.
If you would like to make that transition today, we are going to close with a time of prayer. You might want to come to the altar and ask God for help in your spiritual walk. You might want to admit that your main motivation for following Him is to avoid hell. Ask him this morning to show you his love, to show you his love in such a way that you might begin to follow him not because of fear but because of love. God help us to learn this morning how to follow you simply because you are God.
