Note: A lot comes from Max Lucado's book John 3:16 A message of hope. I wanted to post this for the resource.
Title: Perish or Everlasting life
Theme: The Contrast of Heaven and Hell
Text: John 3:12-16
Opening Text
Joh 3:12-16 "If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? (13) "No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven. (14) "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, (15) "that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. (16) "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
Introduction
Joh 3:16 "For God (the creator of all the universe) so loved (was not absent from this world, but had compassion for this world, common trait of Christ) the world (more than a physical place but a sinful people Rom 5:8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.) that He gave (He “God” took action) His only begotten Son (the greatest sacrifice that God could have given, His true love), that whoever (this is any person, not limited to) believes (this is bigger than a saying but it is our action) in Him (“no other name written in heaven whereby man can be saved”
Act 4:10-12 "let it be known to you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by Him this man stands here before you whole. (11) "This is the 'stone which was rejected by you builders, which has become the chief cornerstone.' (12) "Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved."
Two Contrasts
should not perish but have everlasting life.
Perish
10 HELL’S SUPREME SURPRISE
“. . . whoever believes in him shall not perish . . .”
The hero of heaven is God. Angels don’t worship mansions or glittering avenues. Neither gates nor jewels prompt the hosts to sing . . . God does. His majesty stirs the pen of heaven’s poets and the awe of her citizens.
They enjoy an eternity-long answer to David’s prayer: “One thing I ask of the LORD . . . to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD” (Ps. 27:4). What else warrants a look? Inhabitants of heaven for-ever marvel at the sins God forgives, the promises he keeps, the plan he executes. He’s not the grand marshal of the parade; he is the parade. He’s not the main event; he’s the only event. His Broadway features a single stage and star: himself. He hosts the only production and invites every living soul to attend.
He, at this very moment, issues invitations by the millions. He whispers through the kindness of a grandparent, shouts through the tempest of a tsunami. Through the funeral he cautions, “Life is fragile.” Through a sickness he reminds, “Days are numbered.” God may speak through nature or nurture, majesty or mishap. But through all and to all he invites: “Come, enjoy me forever.”
Yet many people have no desire to do so. They don’t want anything to do with God. He speaks; they cover their ears. He commands; they scoff. They don’t want him telling them how to live. They mock what he says about marriage, money, sex, or the value of human life. They regard his son as a joke and the cross as utter folly.1 They spend their lives telling God to leave them alone. And at the moment of their final breath, he honors their request: “Get away from me, you who do evil. I never knew you” (Matt. 7:23 NCV). This verse escorts us to the most somber of Christian realities: hell.
No topic stirs greater resistance. Who wants to think about eternal punishment? We prefer to casualize the issue, making jokes about its residents or turning the noun into a flippant adjective.
Some prefer to sanitize the subject, dismissing it as a moral impossibility.
“I do not myself feel that any person,” defied atheist Bertrand Russell, “who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.”2 Or, as is more commonly believed, “A loving God would not send people to hell.” Religious leaders increasingly agree. Martin Marty, a church historian at the University of Chicago Divinity School, canvassed one hundred years of some scholarly journals for entries on hell. He didn’t find one. “Hell,” he observed, “disappeared and no one noticed.”3
Easy to understand why. Hell is a hideous topic. Any person who discusses it glibly or proclaims it gleefully has failed to ponder it deeply. Scripture writers dip pens in gloomy ink to describe its nature. They speak of the “blackest darkness” (Jude 13), “ever-lasting destruction” (2 Thess. 1:9), “weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 8:12).
A glimpse into the pit won’t brighten your day, but it will enlighten your understanding of Jesus. He didn’t avoid the discussion. Quite the contrary. He planted a one-word caution sign between you and hell’s path: perish. “Whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
Jesus spoke of hell often. Thirteen percent of his teachings refer to eternal judgment and hell.4 Two-thirds of his parables relate to resurrection and judgment.5Jesus wasn’t cruel or capricious, but he was blunt. His candor stuns.
He speaks in tangible terms. “Fear Him,” he warns, “who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt. 10:28 NKJV). He quotes Hades’s rich man pleading for Lazarus to “dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue” (Luke 16:24 NKJV). Words such as body, finger, and tongue presuppose a physical state in which a throat longs for water and a person begs for relief—physical relief.
The apostles said that Judas Iscariot had gone “to his own place” (Acts 1:25 NASB). The Greek word for place is topos, which means geographical location.6 Jesus describes heaven with the same noun: “In My Father’s house are many mansions. . . . I go to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2 NKJV). Hell, like heaven, is a location, not a state of mind, not a metaphysical dimension of floating spirits, but an actual place populated by physical beings.
Woeful, this thought. God has quarantined a precinct in his vast universe as the depository of the hard-hearted.
Hell’s Location - Outside
Exactly where is hell? Jesus gives one chilling clue: “outside.”
“Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness” (Matt. 22:13). Outside of what? Outside of the boundaries of heaven, for one thing. Abraham, in paradise, told the rich man, in torment, “Between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us” (Luke 16:26 NKJV). No heaven-to-hell field trips. No hell-to-heaven holiday breaks. Hell is to heaven what the edge of our universe is to earth: outside the range of a commute.
Hell - Everlasting
Hell is also outside the realm of conclusion. Oh, that hell’s punishment would end, that God would schedule an execution date. New Testament language leads some godly scholars to believe he will:
Fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. (Matt. 10:28 NKJV)
Whoever believes in him shall not perish. (John 3:16)
Destroy. Perish. Don’t such words imply an end to suffering? I wish I could say they do. There is no point on which I’d more gladly be wrong than the eternal duration of hell. If God, on the last day, extinguishes the wicked, I’ll celebrate my misreading of his words. Yet annihilation seems inconsistent with Scripture. God sobers his warnings with eternal language. Consider John’s description of the wicked in Revelation 14:11: “the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night” (ESV). How could the euthanized soul “have no rest, day or night”?
Jesus parallels hell with Gehenna, a rubbish dump outside the southwestern walls of Jerusalem, infamous for its unending smoldering and decay. He employs Gehenna as a word picture of hell, the place where the “worm does not die and the fire is not quenched” (Mark 9:48 ESV). A deathless worm and quenchless fire—however symbolic these phrases may be—smack of ongoing consumption of something. Jesus speaks of sinners being “thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 8:12). How can a nonexistent person weep or gnash teeth?
Jesus describes the length of heaven and hell with the same adjective: eternal. “They will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (Matt. 25:46 RSV). Hell lasts as long as heaven. It may have a back door or graduation day, but I haven’t found it.
Much perishes in hell. Hope perishes. Happiness perishes. But the body and soul of the God-deniers continue outside. Outside of heaven, outside of hope, and outside of God’s goodness.
But these privileges are confiscated at the gateway to hell. Scofflaws will be “shut out from the presence of the Lord” (2 Thess. 1:9). Hell knows none of heaven’s kindnesses, no overflow of divine perks. The only laughter the unrepentant hear is evil; the only desires they know are selfish. As the Scottish professor James Denney describes it, Godrejecters “pass into a night on which no morning dawns.”7 Hell is society at its worst.
Hell is Individuals at their worst
More tragically, hell is individuals at their worst. It surfaces and amplifies the ugliest traits in people. Cravings will go unchecked. Worriers will fret and never find peace. Thieves will steal and never have enough. Drunks always craving, gluttons always demanding. None will be satisfied. Remember: “their worm does not die” (Mark 9:48 ESV). As one writer put it, “Not only will the unbeliever be in hell, but hell will be in him too.”8 Death freezes the moral compass. People will remain in the fashion they enter. Revelation 22:11 seems to emphasize hell’s unrepentant evil: “Let the evildoer still do evil, and the filthy still be filthy” (RSV). The God-less remain ungodly.
Hell is not a correctional facility or reform school. Its members hear no admonishing parents, candid sermons, or Spirit of God, no voice of God, no voice of God’s people. Spend a life-time telling God to be quiet, and he’ll do just that. God honors our request for silence.
Hell is the chosen home of insurrectionists, the Alcatraz of malcontents. Hell is reserved, not for those souls who seek God yet struggle, but for those who defy God and rebel. For those who say about Jesus, “We don’t want this man to be our king” (Luke 19:14). So in history’s highest expression of fairness, God honors their preference. “I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live” (Ezek. 33:11). It is not his will that any should perish, but the fact that some do highlights God’s justice. God must punish sin. “Nothing impure will ever enter [heaven], nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life” (Rev. 21:27). God, inherently holy, must exclude evil from his new universe. God, eternally gracious, never forces his will. He urges mutineers to stay on board but never ties them to the mast. C. S. Lewis wrote, “I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside.”9 How could a loving God send sinners to hell? He doesn’t. They volunteer.
Once there, they don’t want to leave. The hearts of damned fools never soften; their minds never change. “Men were scorched with great heat, and they blasphemed the name of God who has power over these plagues; and they did not repent and give Him glory” (Rev. 16:9 NKJV). Contrary to the idea that hell prompts remorse, it doesn’t. It intensifies blasphemy.
Remember the rich man in torment? He could see heaven but didn’t request a transfer. He wanted Lazarus to descend to him. Why not ask if he could join Lazarus? The rich man complained of thirst, not of injustice. He wanted water for the body, not water for the soul. Even the longing for God is a gift from God, and where there is no more of God’s goodness, there is no longing for him. Though every knee shall bow before God and every tongue confess his preeminence (Rom. 14:11), the hard-hearted will do so stubbornly and without worship. There will be no atheists in hell (Phil. 2:10–11), but there will be no God-seekers either.
But still we wonder, is the punishment fair? Such a penalty seems inconsistent with a God of love—overkill. A sinner’s rebel-lion doesn’t warrant an eternity of suffering, does it? Isn’t God overreacting?
Life
Heaven
No Sin
“The wolf will live with the lamb” (Isa. 11:6). “God will wipe away every tear . . . there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying . . . for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:4 NKJV).
No sin means no thieves, divorce, heartbreak, and no boredom. You won’t be bored in heaven, because you won’t be the same you in heaven. Boredom emerges from soils that heaven disallows. The soil of weariness: our eyes tire. Mental limitations: information overload dulls us. Self-centeredness: we grow dis-interested when the spotlight shifts to others. Tedium: meaning-less activity siphons vigor.
But Satan will take these weedy soils to hell with him, leaving you with a keen mind, endless focus, and God-honoring assignments.
Assignments in Heaven
Yes, you will have assignments in heaven. God gave Adam and Eve garden responsibilities. “Let them have dominion” (Gen.1:26 NKJV). He mantled the couple with leadership over “the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth” (v. 26 NKJV). Adam was placed in the garden “to tend and keep it” (2:15 NKJV).
Adam and his descendants will do it again. “[God’s] servants shall serve Him” (Rev. 22:3 NKJV). What is service if not responsible activity? Those who are faithful over a few things will rule over many (Matt. 25:21).
You might oversee the orbit of a distant planetary system . . .design a mural in the new city . . . monitor the expansion of a new species of plants or animals. “Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end” (Isa. 9:7 NKJV). God’s new world will be marked by increase. Increased planets? Colors? Music? Seems likely. What does a creator do but create?
Heaven, A place of Service
What do his happy children do but serve him? We might serve in the capacity we serve now. Couldn’t earthly assignments hint at heavenly ones? Architects of Moscow might draw blueprints in the new Liverpool. We will feast in heaven; you may be a cook on Saturn. God filled his first garden with plants and animals.
He’ll surely do the same in heaven. If so, he may entrust you with the care and feeding of an Africa or two.
One thing is for sure: you’ll love it. Never weary, selfish, or defeated. Clear mind, tireless muscles, unhindered joy. Heaven is a perfect place of perfected people with our perfect Lord. “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!” (Rom. 11:33 NKJV).
Don’t assume we will exhaust our study of God. Endless attributes await us. His grace will increasingly stun, wisdom progressively astound, and perfection ever more sharpen into focus.
We serve a God so rapt with wonders that their viewing requires an eternity. A God whose beauty enhances with proximity. And this is the invitation he gives: “When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am” (John 14:3 NLT).
We’re pulling into the final station. Having worked our way through the 3:16 itinerary, we need to ponder one more word: life.
Beer companies offer you life in their hops. Perfume makers promise new life for your romance. But don’t confuse costume jewelry with God’s sapphire.
Jesus offers zoe, the Greek word for “life as God has it.”1 Whereas bios, its sibling term, is life extensive, zoe is life intensive. Jesus talks less about life’s duration and more about its quality, vitality, energy, and fulfillment. What the new mate, sports car, or unexpected check could never do, Christ says, “I can.” You’ll love how he achieves it. He reconnects your soul with God.
What God gave Adam and Eve, he entrusted to you and me. A soul. “The LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being” (Gen. 2:7 NKJV).
You, a bipedal ape? Chemical fluke? Atomic surprise? By no means. You bear the very breath of God. He exhaled himself into you, making you a “living being” (v. 7).
The Hebrew word translated here as “being” is nephesh, which appears over 750 times in the Bible. It sometimes refers to the life force present in all creatures. In the context of a person, however, nephesh refers to our souls.2
Your soul distinguishes you from zoo dwellers. God gifted the camel with a hump and the giraffe with a flagpole neck, but he reserved his breath, or a soul, for you. You bear his stamp. You do things God does. Think. Question. Reflect. You blueprint buildings, chart sea crossings, and swallow throat lumps when your kids say their alphabet. You, like Adam, have a soul.
And, like Adam, you’ve used your soul to disobey God. God’s command to the charter couple includes the Bible’s first reference to death. “You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die” (v. 17).
Our dissatisfaction mates with disappointment and gives birth to some unruly children: drunkenness, power plays, eighty-hour workweeks, nosedives into sexual perversions—all nothing more than poorly disguised longings for Eden. We long to restore what Adam lost. As someone once said, “The man who knocks on the door of a brothel is seeking God.”
Where and when the brothel fails, Jesus steps forth with a reconnection invitation. Though we be “dead in [our] transgressionsand sins3 and separated from the life of God,4 whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.5 Reborn! This is not a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan—this rebirth comes from God.”6
Don’t miss the invisible, inward miracle triggered by belief. God reinstates us to Garden-of-Eden status. What Adam and Eve did, we now do! The flagship family walked with God; we can too. They heard his voice; so can we. They were naked and unashamed; we can be transparent and unafraid. No more running or hiding.
He breathes life into flatlined lives. He does for our hearts what we do for dead car batteries. I had one recently. I turned my ignition—no noise. So I did what anyone would do: I doused my car with a fifth of whiskey, confident that a bottle of eighty proof would stir some life. Nothing happened. I rolled a television in front of the grill and flipped on the game. A good con-test perks up the deadest cell, right? Not this time. So I purchased the latest issue of Pent-Garage and let my automobile feast her headlights on some European beauties. No response. The bat-tery had the punch of a shoe box.
And you think I have the IQ of a screwdriver. Who turns to booze, screens, or bodies for renewal? Too many. Far too many.
But Jesus’s offer still stands. “Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we’ve been given a brand-new life and have everything to live for, including a future in heaven—and the future starts now!” (1 Pet. 1:3–4 MSG).
Others offer life, but no one offers to do what Jesus does—to reconnect us to his power. But how can we know? How do we know that Jesus knows what he’s talking about? The ultimate answer, according to his flagship followers, is the vacated tomb. Did you note the words you just read? “Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we’ve been given a brand-new life.” In the final sum, it was the disrupted grave that convinced the maiden Christians to cast their lots with Christ. “He was seen by Peter and then by the twelve apostles. After that, Jesus was seen by more than five hundred of the believers at the same time” (1 Cor. 15:5–6 NCV).
Can Jesus actually replace death with life? He did a convincing job with his own. We can trust him because he has been there.
He’s been to Bethlehem, wearing barn rags and hearing sheep crunch. Suckling milk and shivering against the cold. All of divinity content to cocoon itself in an eight-pound body and to sleep on a cow’s supper. Millions who face the chill of empty pockets or the fears of sudden change turn to Christ. Why?
Because he’s been there.
He’s been to Nazareth, where he made deadlines and paid bills; to Galilee, where he recruited direct reports and separated fighters; to Jerusalem, where he stared down critics and stood up against cynics.
We have our Nazareths as well—demands and due dates.
Jesus wasn’t the last to build a team; accusers didn’t disappear with Jerusalem’s temple. Why seek Jesus’s help with your challenges? Because he’s been there. To Nazareth, to Galilee, to Jerusalem.
But most of all, he’s been to the grave. Not as a visitor, but as a corpse. Buried amidst the cadavers. Numbered among the dead.
Heart silent and lungs vacant. Body wrapped and grave sealed.
The cemetery. He’s been buried there.
You haven’t yet. But you will be. And since you will, don’t you need someone who knows the way out?
God . . . has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. . . . He destroyed death, and through the Good News he showed us the way to have life that cannot be destroyed. (1 Pet. 1:3 NIV; 2 Tim. 1:10 NCV)
Similarities
An actual Physical Place
Everlasting – eternal
Heaven
Perfection – wholeness, completeness
Satisfication
No more tears, no more worries
No Sin
Conclusion
Accuse God of unfairness? He has wrapped caution tape on hell’s porch and posted a million and one red flags outside the entrance. To descend its stairs, you’d have to cover your ears, blindfold your eyes, and, most of all, ignore the epic sacrifice of history: Christ, in God’s hell on humanity’s cross, crying out to the blackened sky, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46). You’ll more easily capture the Pacific in a jar than describe that sacrifice in words. But a description might read like this: God, who hates sin, unleashed his wrath on his sin-filled son. Christ, who never sinned, endured the awful forsakenness of hell. The supreme surprise of hell is this: Christ went there so you won’t have to. Yet hell could not contain him. He arose, not just from the dead, but from the depths. “Through death He [destroyed] him who had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Heb. 2:14 NKJV).
Christ emerged from Satan’s domain with this declaration: “I have the keys of Hades and of Death” (Rev. 1:18 NKJV). He is the warden of eternity. The door he shuts, no one opens. The door he opens, no one shuts (Rev. 3:7).
Thanks to Christ, this earth can be the nearest you come to hell.
But apart from Christ, this earth is the nearest you’ll come to heaven.
