GOING TO HELL IS DIFFICULT
Warsaw Christian Church, Richard Bowman, Pastor
In this sermon, I plan to give you clear directions on how to end up in hell. It is not an easy matter to go to hell, but it can be done. God has made it difficult to go to hell, but I will show you the way.
One of the most fundamental questions we ever ask is, “What is God like?” There are many facets to the answer, for God has many attributes. Today, I would like to focus on one of God’s attributes: his disposition toward the human race. The Bible tells us God is angry, and that’s because of the way we violate his holy will. But He also loves us with an everlasting love. Both sides of this paradox are true. It may confuse us in trying to answer the personal question, “What is God’s disposition toward us?” We may wonder if God wants to condemn us because of our sins or if he wants to save us because of his love for us.
John 3:17 helps us to answer the question with these words of reassurance. God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. God might have sent His son into the world to condemn the world, but he did not. The Father might have said to the Son, “I am sending you into the world so I can prove once and for all how wicked human beings are. They will hate, reject, and crucify you, allowing me to condemn them all with perfect justice.” We could hardly object if that were God’s purpose in sending the Son. We deserve judgment and did reject and crucify the Son of God, proving that God is perfectly justified in barring us forever from the Kingdom of Heaven.
The good news is that God’s single reason for sending his son into the world was to secure our salvation. His coming was a mission of mercy from start to finish. The crucifixion that God foresaw became the means of salvation for the entire world. When man was at his worst, God was at his best. He demonstrated the magnitude of his love and mercy toward us. His disposition toward you and me is one of compassion. Since I spend so much time feeling unworthy and undeserving of God’s love, I find it comforting to know that God, who knows better than me, still desires not to condemn me. His only desire toward me and you is to pour his love and mercy on us, securing us a place in the indescribably beautiful Kingdom of Heaven. Whatever we feel discouraged and unworthy of even the lowest place in the Kingdom of God, we should read John 3:17. “God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world but that the world through him might be saved.” These words were drummed into my mind at an early age because they were the words to a solo that I often heard my mother rehearse at home and sing at church. I need to remember this verse often when I am feeling unworthy. How can we ever condemn ourselves or anyone else when God’s disposition toward us is one of pardon, mercy, and love?
To me, this means but one thing. It means we have to work very hard at being lost. It is not easy to go to hell. It is not impossible, but neither is it easy. If God desired to condemn us, going to hell would be easy, and hell would be our fate. But since God’s expressed desire is that we not be condemned but saved, you must figure out how to get around God’s loving disposition toward you. How can I avoid God’s loving mercy for me? It is his desire not to condemn you. He does not want to pour out his final wrath upon you. How can you turn away from this great love? Perhaps God will demand things I want to avoid. I can be a friend of God or His enemy. Which shall I choose? It is much easier to be a friend of God than to be his enemy.
The reason for this is not difficult to understand. God, infinite in wisdom, power, and love, uses his resources to work for our salvation. To end up a lost and condemned soul, you must be stupid enough to think you are wiser than God. You must be foolish enough to resist his omnipotent power. You must be what the Bible calls a first-class fool to turn away from God and find yourself at odds with him on Judgment Day. You have to say, in effect, God may not want to condemn me, but I do not wish to submit to him. He wants to love and forgive me if I will trust in His Son. I am suspicious of His motives. I prefer to call the shots myself rather than trust in His Son.
On the surface, our relationship with God might seem to be a complex matter. God is undoubtedly a complex being. There is more to him than we can ever comprehend. However, what God has done for us in the Gospel of Jesus is to turn a difficult situation into one exceedingly simple. We know the keywords in verse 17: God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through Him. Underscore the words through Hm. God tells us plainly, “I do not want to condemn you. I want to redeem you through my Son.” OK, God, I get the drift of what you are saying. If I end up condemned, it will not be because that was your choice. You want me to be saved through your Son. So how does that happen? Let’s read John 3:18. “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only son.”
First, notice the phrase “God’s one and only Son.” If you are seeking God’s salvation, there is only one place to look, and that is to the Son of God. God has radically simplified salvation by confining it to one person, Jesus Christ, the son of the living God. God might have said, there are 15 or 1500 paths that all lead to my kingdom. Surely you can find one of them. If there were many paths to God, we would always wonder if our path was right or if some other way was better. God does not want us to waste time looking for many paths and wondering which is best. He does not want us to search for him in religion, denominations, or meditation. His saving will toward us is confined to a single person, His Son, Jesus of Nazareth. It is his will that the name of Jesus be proclaimed to every creature everywhere in the world. God wants to save you. He wants to save me. He wants to save every person alive on the face of the Earth, with a straightforward condition presented to all alike. Whoever believes in him is not condemned. Adolf Hitler and I have something in common. We are both sinners who deserve the condemnation of God. There is a critical difference between us. I believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. As far as I know, Adolf Hitler did not believe in Jesus. He hated the Jewish people, and Jesus was a Jew. The gates of Heaven were open to him, but it would appear that he refused to enter. God is no respecter of persons and is rich toward all who call upon him through Jesus.
What is our situation as we stand before God on judgment day? We all live by some high motive, some great principle that governs all our behavior. God will want to know what you believed in and what motivated you. What or who did you live for? If our sincere answer is, “The life I lived, I lived by faith in the son of God,” then God will say to us, “Welcome home and inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” However, if our answer is anything other than our faith in Jesus, we are lost, cut off from heaven. Suppose we live by some different guiding principle. If God cannot somehow link our lives to faith in Jesus Christ, the only Savior, we shall be without hope on that day. God’s word is crystal clear. The one who does not believe is condemned already. Our last task today is to look closely at the text to discover the single reason behind the condemnation that will fall upon many of the human race. It’s not easy to go to hell, but it can be done.
A fundamental question to ask Is this. Why are some saved and not others? The text gives us a transparently clear answer. Those who are lost are unbelievers. Notice carefully what it is that they do not believe. They may indeed believe in God, goodness, Justice, and honesty - - -in fair play, in integrity, in the church, in the power of positive thinking, in diversity, in Islam, in Buddhism, in Christianity, in doing one’s best - - -or a host of other values for which persons live and die. However, there is only one belief system that will allow God to open the gates of Heaven for you or me, and that is when it is revealed that our underlying faith was faith in a single person, Jesus the Christ. The lost in our text are those who do not believe in Jesus, plain and simple.
When I was proclaiming the Biblical Gospel in the wider denomination, I was sometimes asked, are you saying that a sincere Muslim who believes in God but refuses to believe in Jesus will be lost? No, I would never say that. However, that is precisely what God says, and I can’t knowingly contradict God. The lost are lost because they do not believe in God’s only Son.
We sometimes say people are lost because of their sins, but that is not technically accurate. Jesus Christ has atoned for the sins of the world. Paul writes God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. (2nd Corinthians 5:19.) John says of Jesus, he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world. (First John 2 2). If Christ has atoned for the world's sins so that God does not count our sins against us, the fact that we sin is not the problem. Jesus has atoned for your sins, and God remembers them no more. The worst sinner you can imagine will not be condemned because of sins but because of his lack of faith in Jesus Christ. If Adolf Hitler is in hell today, it is because he refused to believe in Jesus Christ, the Savior. That is the unmistakable meaning of our text. The one who does not believe is condemned already because he fails to believe in God’s one and only son. The only way to be condemned is to refuse to believe in Jesus. It is to hear that God loves you and has acted to redeem you and then turn away. It’s not easy to go to hell, but it can be done.
It is in this manner that God has simplified a very complex issue. Who shall be saved, and who shall be lost? Some know more than others, some sin more than others, some have more significant advantages, and some have higher motives than others. How can God sort through all these intricate differences between us to determine who shall be saved and who shall be lost? He has made it so simple that even we can understand. We do or do not believe in Jesus. That determines our final destiny.
While going to hell is difficult, salvation is simple. Surrender all desire to save yourself and cast yourself on the mercy of Jesus. We’ve all seen the anti-drug commercial that uses an egg and a hot frying pan to illustrate what drugs can do to the brain. Part of the purpose of such a commercial is to dramatically simplify an issue that many young people might wish to make more complex. Think of that commercial in conjunction with our text. It is as though God holds an egg before us and says, “This is your soul,” then drops the egg into a hot skillet, saying, “This is your soul without Jesus. Any questions?”
