Hell is for Real
TCF sermon text
February 7, 2016
There’s the story of a man who went on a vacation to Florida from their home in Alaska. He arrives a day earlier than his wife, and waits for his wife to come the next day to stay with him.
Well, this guy is technologically challenged, but he tries to send his wife a text the evening before she comes. Unfortunately, he sends his text to the wrong number – he picked the number of a friend of his, who had died the day before, and this dead man’s wife gets the message instead.
The message says: "Having fun, but it sure is hot down here. I can’t wait for your arrival here soon."
Then, we have the story of a grandfather who took his 4 year old grandson to buy donuts. On the way, Grandpa turned to the boy and asked, “which way is heaven?” The boy pointed to the sky. The grandfather then asked, “which way is hell?” The boy pointed to the floor of the car. Grandpa continued, “and where are you going?” The boy replied, “To Dunkin Donuts.”
There was a man who, when something bad would happen, would always use the phrase, “well, it might be worse.” One day a friend said to him, "I have something to tell you, and you won't be able to use your favorite phrase, because it couldn’t possibly be worse. I dreamed last night that I died and went to hell."
"It might be worse," said the man. His friend was astonished: "come on, now - how could it be worse?" To which the man replied: "it might be true."
We call the gospel good news, and it is. Gospel literally means good news. Really good news. But it’s only good news, because of the bad news reality, that precedes it.
We human beings are in a bad situation, because we are sinful, and sin is a power that controls us, and shapes our destiny apart from Christ.
We underestimate sin. We trivialize what it means to be a sinner. People take sin way too lightly. We are absolutely powerless to free ourselves from the grip of sin in our lives. What’s more, this sin in our lives absolutely earns us eternal punishment.
The bad news is that there is sin. The bad news is that we are, by any measure, but especially when measured against God’s holiness, sinners. And because we are sinners, and because we are unable to free ourselves from its grip, the worst part of the bad news is that there is justice. Because there is justice, we are destined for eternal punishment. A few years ago, there was a book, which became a movie, called Heaven is For Real. Now, without going into a lengthy commentary on the value of a book like that, let me appropriate the title and change it slightly.
Hell is for real.
There is a real place that the Bible calls hell. And this real place is the place where every one of us here deserves to spend eternity.
If you believe the Bible at all, you cannot ignore the reality of hell. If you accept the words of Jesus that sound nice and sweet, words like God so loved the world, or love one another; or words like we read in His sermon on the mount:
Matthew 5:3-5 (ESV) 3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. 5 “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Or
Matthew 5:7-9 (ESV) 7 “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
8 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. 9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
If we accept and believe these words, then let’s not just be cafeteria Christians. Let’s not pick this to believe, and not this, picking and choosing what we like best – the comfort food we most enjoy. If we believe any of the words of Jesus, then we cannot ignore the more difficult things that Jesus said – the harder truths:
Matthew 25:41 (ESV) 41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
Matthew 25:46 (ESV) 46 And these will go away into eternal punishment
John 3:36 (NIV) Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him."
Luke 12:4-5 (ESV) 4 “I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. 5 But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!
Mark 9:43 (ESV) 43 And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire.
Jesus was the One who told us:
- that hell is a place of weeping, and gnashing of teeth
- that hell is the place where the worm doesn’t die and the fire isn’t quenched.
- that a failure to repent meant that one would perish forever in the damnation of hell.
- that it would be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment
than for those who heard His Word and didn’t obey it.
Sobering stuff. Not just sweetness and light, but truth. The truth is, Jesus Himself is hell’s best defender.
If we gladly embrace the teaching of Incarnate Love, when He speaks words of comfort, and of life, must we not also pay attention to the words of Incarnate Justice, when He speaks of judgment, and punishment, and hell?
That’s what we like to do, isn’t it? We like to pick and choose the happier truths, and ignore or minimize the sad or hard truths. But how can we do that and remain faithful to scripture, which we do call, after all, the Word of God.
Scripture describes hell as
-fire
-unquenchable fire
-the lake of fire
-the place of weeping and gnashing of teeth
-eternal punishment
-the wrath to come
-torments
-condemnation
-woe
-a fiery furnace
-the lake of burning sulfur
-everlasting contempt
-darkness
-exclusion
-damnation
-retribution
-the second death
The doctrine of eternal punishment has fallen on hard times. Hell is a truth that has been at least minimized, and in many ways, lost, not just in our culture, but in the church at large.
Several years ago, someone suggested that a good many modern Christians wanted to "air condition hell." The effort continues. Today, some in movements such as the emerging church commend the same agenda, and for the same reason. Are we embarrassed by the biblical doctrine of hell? Albert Mohler
Some Christians are embarrassed by this doctrine - calling the idea of hell sadistic. One study showed that 64% of people in America think they’re going to some sort of heaven they believe in, but only 1% think they might go to hell.
If Jesus, the Lord of Love, and Author of Grace, spoke about hell more often, and in a more vivid, blood-curdling manner than anyone else, it must be a crucial truth. We must come to grips with the fact that Jesus said more about hell than Daniel, Isaiah, Paul, John, and Peter put together. Before we dismiss this, we have to realize we are saying to Jesus, the pre-eminent teacher of love and grace in history, "I am less barbaric than you, Jesus--I am more compassionate and wiser than you." Timothy Keller
So, my brothers and sisters, hell is for real. It’s an important doctrine that we ignore at our peril.
A few weeks ago, in our Knights of the Square Table meeting, I mentioned to the guys that this was the message I was working on. I noted in that conversation that this is not a message we hear often, and Jim Garrett remarked that in a different kind of church, you might actually hear hell mentioned more often.
He was thinking of the kind of church where there might be many unbelievers. So, since Jim’s always right, and I take seriously anything he has to say, I began to think of why would we need to hear such a message at TCF?
Why is this important today – to recognize, to remember, this doctrine, that hell is for real, and there are lost souls we all know, who will spend eternity there?
And I actually considered several reasons. The first is that I never want to assume that everyone here is in Christ. My assumption is that most of us here really are in Christ – that is, we trust completely and only in Jesus, in His work on the cross, in His blood shed for our sins, for our eternal destiny. And that trust has led to changed hearts and changed lives. In our classic understanding of what it means to be in Christ, we’re saved. We’re saved from sin. We’re saved from eternal death. We’re saved from hell.
But at least one reason to preach about hell is that I never want to assume that everyone here any given morning is saved. And if you’re not, I want you to hear what the Word of God says about your eternal destiny if you’re not in Christ.
So a reason for preaching about hell at TCF is that perhaps there’s someone here who’s in danger of spending eternity there.
Another reason for preaching about hell is the potential danger of falling away. Now, if you have a more Calvinistic approach to this issue, you believe in the “P” of TULIP, perseverance of the saints, or once saved always saved, you don’t think there’s any such thing as falling away. You’re paid up on your fire insurance and you cannot fall away.
But, let’s consider this. Even though a more reformed perspective would tell us that, if you “fall away,” you were never really saved in the first place, and if you come from a more Arminian perspective, you might think you can possibly sin away your day of grace, both camps still have to wrestle with scriptures like this:
Hebrews 10:26-31 (ESV) 26 For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, 27 but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. 28 Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. 29 How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? 30 For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” 31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
So, either camp still must receive this as a warning:
The reformed perspective must say – don’t ignore the truth and really, genuinely, turn to Christ for your salvation.
The Arminian perspective must say – stay close to Christ, and obey His Word, and take seriously your faith, don’t grow complacent, because that’s a recipe for falling away from the faith.
And the foundational truth in both ways of thinking is that hell is for real, and it’s a place no one wants to spend eternity.
The doctrine of hell is important because it is the only way to begin to grasp how much Jesus loved us, and how much He did for us on the cross. Think of what happened to Jesus on the cross.
We often focus on the physical torture and pain that Jesus endured. It’s something that we can at least partly understand, because all of us have experienced physical pain, and it was an awful part of the price He paid. So we rightly ponder this, when we consider the cost of our salvation.
But think about this. When Jesus was on the cross, He was forsaken by the Father.
Matthew 27:46 (ESV) 46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Jesus, God the Son, had known complete, unbroken fellowship with God the Father for all eternity past. Until that moment on the cross.
In some sense Jesus had to be cut off from the favor of and fellowship with the Father that had been his eternally, because he was bearing the sins of his people and therefore enduring God’s wrath ESV Study Bible
It’s a remarkable expression – being forsaken by God. And it relates to hell. Again, we focus on the physical suffering of Jesus – but the spiritual and emotional suffering had to be greater still. The separation from God. And whatever else hell is, that’s part of what hell is.
Isaiah 53:4-5 (ESV) 4 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.
Galatians 3:13 (ESV) 13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”—
2 Corinthians 5:21 (ESV) 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.
So His suffering on the cross included all this: He died in our place, because of us, because of our sinfulness, and suffered the pain that must somehow be a part of hell. Experienced the separation from God. This caused His intense suffering. For you, and for me.
It was the manifestation of God's hatred of sin to his soul, in some way which he has not explained, that he experienced in that dread hour. It was suffering, endured by him, that was due to us; and suffering by which, and by which alone, we can be saved from eternal death. Barnes' Notes on the New Testament.
We read of the parable of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16. The rich man in hell is desperately thirsty. On the cross, Jesus said, “I thirst.” Of course, it was physical thirst, but is there also a spiritual element here? The water of life, the very presence of God the Father, was taken from Jesus.
The bottom line is this:
Unless we come to grips with this doctrine of the reality of hell, we will never even begin to understand the depths of what Jesus did for us.
His body was being destroyed in the worst possible way, but that was a flea bite compared to what was happening to his soul. When he cried out that his God had forsaken him he was experiencing hell itself. But consider--if our debt for sin is so great that it is never paid off there, but our hell stretches on for eternity, then what are we to conclude from the fact that Jesus said the payment was "finished" (John 19:30) after only three hours? We learn that what he felt on the cross was far worse and deeper than all of our deserved hells put together. When Jesus was cut off from God he went into the deepest pit and most powerful furnace, beyond all imagining. He experienced the full wrath of the Father. And he did it voluntarily, for us. Timothy Keller
Has anyone ever had a conversation like this? Someone says to you, “well, I believe in a loving God, but I don’t believe in Jesus.” You ask why, and they say something like, “My God is too loving to punish anyone forever for sin.”
This sentiment, held by many in our culture, reveals a tremendous misunderstanding of both God, and the cross of Christ. Why?
Because God Himself, God the Son, the incarnate Christ, took the punishment. He didn’t impose this punishment on someone else. He took it on Himself.
So, when someone says they believe in some sort of a vague, loving God, our question, those of us who have put our faith in Christ, is this:
What did it cost your kind of god to love us and receive us? When and where did this god pay any kind of price for that love?
Of course, that leads to some sort of response like – “I don’t think it was necessary to pay any kind of price.”
Yet, consider the irony of that. Not only does this negate the sinfulness of sin, but, in this person’s effort to make God more loving, God has actually been made less loving.
That person’s god’s love included no action. It’s the sentimental kind of squishy love our culture thinks is real, that doesn’t require anything of us – no sacrifice, no deeds.
It’s not love at all. We couldn’t sing Amazing Grace to a god like that. We couldn’t sing, “love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.”
But because of the cross of Jesus, we know what real love is.
1 John 4:10 (NIV) This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
So, if hell is not real, and people are not really in danger of going there, we cannot even begin to understand our complete dependence on God. We cannot even begin to understand how sinful sin really is - even the smallest sins.
We cannot even begin to understand the height and the breadth and the depth of the love of Christ, demonstrated for us on the cross.
To understand the good news of the gospel, we must understand the bad.
And think of this, too.
Hell glorifies God.
People might ask, what kind of loving God is filled with wrath? But as Jim Grinnell pointed out so clearly a few weeks ago, hating sin is a part of loving God, and it’s God’s hatred of sin that forms the foundation for our hatred of sin, and our love of God.
Think about this, too.
In Hope Has Its Reasons, Becky Pippert writes, “Think how we feel when we see someone we love ravaged by unwise actions or relationships. Do we respond with benign tolerance as we might toward strangers? Far from it.” Pippert then quotes E. H. Gifford, “Human love here offers a true analogy: the more a father loves his son, the more he hates in him the drunkard, the liar, the traitor.” She concludes, “If I, a flawed, narcissistic, sinful woman, can feel this much pain and anger over someone’s condition, how much more a morally perfect God who made them? God’s wrath is not a cranky explosion, but his settled opposition to the cancer of sin which is eating out the insides of the human race he loves with his whole being.”
We may be uncomfortable with the idea of hell, but it helps me to think about it as a measure of what God was willing to endure, in order to love me.
The hard parts of the Bible are just that. Hard. But the Psalmist wrote:
Psalm 119:174 (ESV) I long for your salvation, O LORD, and your law is my delight.
So, the reality of hell is a hard doctrine to embrace, but hell vindicates God’s honor:
2 Thessalonians 1:5-12 (ESV) 5 This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering— 6 since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, 7 and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels 8 in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. 9 They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, 10 when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed. 11 To this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, 12 so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.
So, let’s not throw God under the bus when it comes to the doctrine of hell, as hard a truth as hell’s reality is.
God is good and his ways are always right. It is a measure of our maturity that we not only affirm the truth of God’s word, but rest in the goodness and rightness of it. Christians should have anguish in heart at the thought of eternal suffering, but we should also see the glory of God in the Bible’s teaching on eternal punishment. Kevin DeYoung
When hell is removed from the gospel, the gospel becomes meaningless. Remember what we said earlier – you have to have the bad news before the good news is really good news.
All this trouble, even sometimes believers have, with God’s eternal wrath is often an indicator of two things:
1. a low view of the Word of God
2. a low view of sin
But, as the Puritan Thomas Brooks wrote in his book Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices
“There is no little sin, because (there is) no little God to sin against”
Here’s something you’re not going to hear every day:
God doesn’t love you just the way you are. Even if you’re a really good Christian. God the Father loves God the Son, Jesus Christ. And when you are in Christ, that is, when you believe the gospel, and are trusting completely in His sacrifice for your sin, then and only then, are you absolutely secure in God’s love, and not in danger of eternal fire, because it’s then that God sees us through the lens of Jesus’ act of love, sacrificially taking my sin upon Himself.
My sin has been punished by a just God – but I didn’t pay the price.
We say, “God is love,” and somehow believe this pretty much sums it up, leaving us with a God about the size, shape, and jocularity of Santa Claus. But as I’ve often said, God’s attributes should always be seen together as a whole, not separately. God is love, but he is also just. Therefore his justice is loving. God is holy, but he is also love, so his love is holy, etc. Eternal punishment highlights the good news of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and makes it more meaningful. Thus, hell glorifies God. Thor Ramsey – The Most Encouraging Book About Hell Ever
Finally, one of the best reasons for preaching about hell at a church like TCF:
The horrors to come for many should spur us on to fulfill the great commission, and do our small part to help keep others from going there.
It’s about the harvest of souls. The harvest of souls is a harvest of dead people, dead in their sin, introduced to the gospel and brought to new life in Christ - through our world missions, which we’ll highlight in a few weeks in our annual missions conference.
The harvest of souls is in our church outreaches, like the Good News Club, like the VBS.
And the harvest of souls is there in our daily circles of influence, in our workplaces, in our schools, in our sports activities, in our families, in our friendships, where we have the privilege to bring the light of Christ in us.
At TCF, we’re about training laborers for the harvest, and releasing all of us, as His laborers, into His harvest.
And so, we’re trained to understand the totality of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And that gospel includes the fact that Hell is for real.
Let’s not water down the gospel by forgetting that God’s not only a loving God, but He’s a just God.
And sin is way worse than we make it. And Jesus, on the cross, paid the penalty for our sin, that we so richly deserved, taking God’s wrath on Himself so we could spend eternity with Him, and not receiving the due penalty for our sin in a Devil’s hell.
So, this morning, I want us to respond in whatever way is most appropriate for you:
1. if you are not in Christ, and you need to receive God’s grace in Christ to wipe away your sins, and save you from eternal death, you need to respond – find an elder or a trusted believer here and talk to us, and we’ll guide you to the cross of Christ and pray with you.
2. if you’re not sure you’re saved, or if you fear you’ve fallen away, you need to seek out a trusted believer or an elder, too, because, as it says in Hebrews,
“The Lord will judge his people.” 31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
3. if you’re not in either of these categories, I want you to pray about how you view the fact that Hell is for real.
Can you rest in the goodness and rightness of it, rest in God’s justice, but also grieve the reality of hell for those around you, and ask God to use you as His instrument in bringing these to the cross, by prayer, by words, by actions?
How will you respond this morning?
Pray
