Have you ever read one of those books that have multiple endings? You come to a place where you make a choice, if you turn left then you continue to read and get one ending or if you turn right then you skip to page 232 and get a completely different ending. It’s like the author couldn’t decide which way to go. Some movies that come out on DVD now come with different endings, you can see the good guys win or you can see the bad guys win. Sometimes you read a book and it has one ending and then you see the movie and it has a completely different ending. The ending of this book is kind of like that, you get to choose how the story ends. You come to a place where basically if you have committed your life to Jesus Christ your ending is found in Revelation chapter 21 verse 7 and if you’ve never committed your life to Jesus Christ then your ending is found in Revelation chapter 21 verse 8. And the great thing is you get to choose the ending. Nobody else can choose for you, it’s your decision and yours alone. And really we don’t get many decisions in our life where the choice is ours. When we are young our parents make our decisions for us and once we are married and have children decisions are made based not only on what’s in our best interest but also what’s in the best interest of our spouse and children. But here is a decision that you get to make all by your lonesome. And in order to help you make that decision we are going to take a look at the two different endings to the story, so you can decide which direction you want to go. In the book Alice in Wonderland we read this encounter “One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. Which road do I take? she asked. Where do you want to go? was his response. I don’t know, Alice answered. Then, said the cat, it doesn’t matter.” So as we come to the end of the story it would be wise to know where we are going because as Yogi Berra said “If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else!”
So here we are, after four weeks at the end of the story. I began by looking at the surety of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Then we looked at the Rapture of the Church, that event that will come when the church will be called to be with Jesus Christ. Last week we looked at the 7 year period which I believe the Bible teaches will immediately follow the rapture of the church. Now I know that we skipped the Millennium, but I didn’t know how to fit a thousand years into twenty minutes. Here’s a summation; at the end of the Great Tribulation God’s army defeats the anti-Christ and the false prophet and they are thrown into the lake of fire. The Devil is bound for a thousand years during which Christ rules over the earth and peace reigns, at the end of the thousand years Satan is released and because some people never learn a great army joins him and tries one last time to overthrow God, some people just never learn. God defeats them one last time, because He’s God, and we end up at the final judgement. That was a thousand years in less then sixty seconds. And so that brings us to the end of the book, the part where you get to make a decision. Actually the decision is one that needs to be made now, the result of that decision will echo in eternity. So you ready? Here we go.
At the end of the story there are two destination, not one, not three but two. And every person who has ever lived, every person how is living now and every person who will live until the end of the story will wind up in one place or the other. Now when I was at Bible College studying homiletics, which is how to preach, they taught us that if you were going to deal with a negative topic and a positive topic in the same sermon you ought to deal with the negative topic first. Which makes sense.
So we are going to start with: 1) Where You Don’t Want to Go! This is described in verse 8 when it says their doom is in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur
Today when we talk about the alternative to heaven we call it hell. Which is one of several different names used in the Bible to describe the final destination of the unrighteous. The term Sheol in the Old Testament or Hades in the New Testament are used interchangeably and literally mean the place of Departed Souls. In some instances the term is used to simply mean the grave or death, and in other instances it refers to an actual place, what we call hell.
In the New Testament there is a word that is used by Jesus almost exclusively for hell and that is the Greek word Gehenna which is a form of the Hebrew phrase that means “The vale of Hinnom” which was a valley Southwest of Jerusalem. Now I know that’s not very nice to refer to a specific area as Hell. In 1981 I joined the Crew of a salvage tug in Miami and it had just come from Brownsville Texas and I asked one of the crew what Brownsville had been like, and they described it as being like Hell without your friends. But you have to understand the history of Gehenna. It was in this valley that the Canaanites worshiped Baal and the god Molech, they did this by sacrificing their children in a fire that burned continuously. In the book of 2 Kings 23:10 we discover that King Josiah put an end to this worship and “defiled” the valley so it would be unfit for even pagan worship.
By the time of Jesus this area was used as the garbage dump for Jerusalem, into it was thrown all of the filth and garbage of the city, including the dead bodies of animals and executed criminals. To consume all of this fires burned constantly. Everybody knew what it was like and when the wind blew from that direction, every body in the city understood it’s awfulness. To the people Jesus spoke to there could be no worse fate then spending eternity in Gehenna. And so Jesus said “do you want to know what hell is like? All you have to do is look at Gehenna. The garbage, dead bodies the fire and the smell, now multiply that by eternity and that’s what the unrighteous have to look forward to” And so hell could be described as God’s “Cosmic garbage dump.” Everything that is unfit for heaven is thrown there.
Sometimes because of the symbolic nature of the description of hell people question whether it will consist of actual fire. Don’t deceive yourself, the reality will be worse then any description that a person could conjure up, and it will last forever, and ever and ever. It’s worse then can be described and longer then can be imagined.
But who is this particular verse talking about? It has to be speaking of somebody because it says their doom is in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, whose doom. Well eight specific groups are listed, this is not meant to be an exhaustive group but an illustrative group.
1) Cowards who turn away from me The idea being conveyed here is not someone who expresses fear but someone who at one time or another professed to be a Christian but turned away from their faith because of some type of persecution. It might have been physical as in the case of the early church where believers were afforded the opportunity to deny Christ in order to save their lives. And while some took that opportunity a great many others were willing to surrender their lives instead of denying Christ. Jim Elliot was a missionary to Ecuador who was killed by members of the tribe he had gone to minister to, it was Elliot who said “A man is no fool who loses that which he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.” The Martyrs understood that they would die anyway eventually. Or it may have been on a more subtle level, people who have denied their relationship with Christ in order to gain friends, a spouse or an economic advantage in life. Those are the people that Jesus is referring to here. There are those who would say “then those people didn’t have a real relationship with Christ to start with.” Ok, that’s fine but the end result is the same.
2) Unbelievers This is the group who rejected the claims of Christ. They didn’t have the confidence in the salvation that Christ had to offer. And so they refused to accept that which he offered. Perhaps they sought the road to heaven in some other means, followed another god or another creed or trusted in their own goodness. For some it was simply that they refused to believe anything, that there was a heaven or a hell or a God they were unbelievers.
3) The corrupt This is an all inclusive term which take into account all types of immorality. It’s translated by some as the vile, or the abominable. And it means those who are religiously and morally filthy.
4) Murderers Pretty simple here, the takers of life. I take a very strong pro-life stand, although I probably don’t talk about it as much as I should these days. But I would suspect that those who kill the most defenceless members of our society, the unborn would fit into this category as well. One commentator says “These are not only those who have actually taken the life of another in an intentional, evil way, but also those who have hatred in their hearts which motivates murder.” And he references that back to 1 John 3:15 Anyone who hates another Christian is really a murderer at heart. And you know that murderers don’t have eternal life within them.
5) The immoral. The reference here is to sexual immorality. And I know that when I speak of the sexually immoral everyone has a mental picture of someone. But this statement encompasses the full range of sexuality practiced outside of heterosexual marriage. Sorry, I know there are some out there who are saying “Yeah But?” no “yeah buts”. The bible is very clear that God created sex, it’s a gift and for our own protection it is a gift that is only to be enjoyed inside the institution of marriage. And there are those who are saying “What do mean for my own protection?” Unwanted pregnancies, aids, sexually transmitted diseases, emotional hurts, need I go on?
6) Those who practice witchcraft Again let’s not narrow this down to one activity. And in our minds we see the witches in their black capes and pointy hats gathered round a caldron chanting Double, double toil and trouble, fire burn, and cauldron bubble. But this encompasses the whole range of the occult and the supernatural, including by not limited to witchcraft, divination (that’s talking to the dead), astrology and the psychics hotline.
7) Idol worshipers If you worship something other then God, you are an idol worshipper. Doesn’t have to be a little stone shrine that you bow down to, it could be your career, your hobby, your children, money etc. Anything that takes God out of first place in your life is an idol.
8) All liars If you’ve hung around me enough then at one time or another you’ve heard me ask the question “You know where liars go?” and then answer it with “Ottawa”. Here is the reality folks. Liars go to hell. A liar is any person who does anything to deceive. They might pervert the truth or simply manipulate it, they might convey a wrong idea by speaking or by remaining silent but they are not honest people. They may lie by word or by deed. And never forget that half a truth is a whole lie.
A transition is in order at this part of the message and so I will tell one of my favourite stories which I have told numerous times. The story is told that when Calvin Coolidge was Vice-President of the United States he was chairing a congressional meeting that was becoming very heated. During the meeting one Congressman stood up and told another, “Sir you can go straight to hell”. Well the victim was understandably upset and looked to the Vice President for support and saw that he was reading a book. “Mr. Coolidge” cried the victim “Did you hear what he told me to do?” “Yes” replied the Vice-President, “But I checked the rule book and you don’t have to go.” Well friends I have checked the rule book and you don’t have to go.
2) Where You want to Go! If we go back to verse 7 we read All who are victorious will inherit all these blessings, and I will be their God, and they will be my children. The who is defined in John 3:3 Jesus replied, “I assure you, unless you are born again, you can never see the Kingdom of God.” And then in John 14:6 Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.
And the blessings are defined in verses 1, 3 & 4. The first one is a little abstract because it says And the sea was also gone. Now for someone like me who loves the ocean, this doesn’t necessarily sound good. However if we allow ourselves to see the ocean from the perspective of the original readers of this book we begin to understand. 2000 years ago the sea was an uninviting and hostile environment. Without a compass the only safe way to go to sea was to stay within sight of land, and so when the Revelation was written this was a poetic way to say that confusion, turmoil and danger would be no more.
The blessings get clearer as we go along. In Verse three we discover the home of God is now among his people! If hell is the absence of all that is good and all that is pure, then heaven is the presence of all that is good and all that is pure. For it is in heaven that we come into the presence of the almighty God, the creator of the universe. We will be restored to what we were created for and that is to have fellowship with God. We will be in his presence and in the presence of all that is good. In the next chapter we are told the result of this will be that there will be no more night or darkness because of the presence of God. And listen to what will be missing in heaven.
There will be no more death. Never again will the old enemy death crouch next our bed or the bedside of a loved one. I am a firm believer in heaven, I think it’s a wonderful place, and I truly believe with all my heart that heaven is better then earth. But I still weep at the funerals of believers, not because they are in heaven but because they had to die to get there, and I’m truly believe that while most Christians don’t fear death that we do fear dying.
It’s the fear of the unknown, of not knowing how we will die, will it be painful. It’s not wanting to be separated from our loved ones, even for a little while. The Bible calls death the enemy, and he is the enemy but he is a defeated enemy because well we may die physically we will never die spiritually.
There will be no more sorrow. When I think about not having any sorrows I think about not having any regrets. No regrets, think about it, no what ifs, or if only. I am the world’s worst second guesser. Take me to a restaurant and after I order the nachos I say darn I should have had the fajitas. Let me buy anything and after I get it I think I wonder if I should have shopped around a little more? And the worst part is that I’m not smart enough to stop looking. If I buy a car, the next week I’ll be looking at car ads, shoot if I had of waited a week I could have got a better deal. I wonder what would have happened if I had of. . . When I get to heaven there will be no more regrets and with no more regrets there will be no more sorrows.
We won’t think about missed opportunities because there won’t be any missed opportunities, we won’t dwell on dumb mistakes because there will be no dumb mistakes.. There will be no more sorrows.
There will be no more pain. Think about the pain that we go through in our life, from birth to death. Physical pain, emotional pain, pain caused by sickness, old age and accidents. What’s hurting right now? Your knees, your back, maybe you have a headache or a toothache. Maybe you can’t pinpoint it exactly you just know you hurt and you’ve hurt for a long time. There’s great news folks, if you are a Christian, when you get to heaven there will be no more pain. None, zip, zero, nata, no pain. Sometimes I marvel that we are so eager to hang onto a existence of pain.
And we can talk about what heaven will have, the streets of gold, the gates of pearls, the walls of precious stone, but I’m looking forward to what it doesn’t have. No death, no pain, no sorrow. Some are saying Denn you spent more time on Hell then you did on Heaven, yeah, well so did Jesus.
You understand that the Bible exhausts human language in describing heaven and hell but here is the reality, heaven is more glorious, and hell is more terrible, than language can ever express. And this we discover at the end of the story, everybody here will end up in either heaven or hell and it will be decided by only one person and that person is you.
So let me leave you with the words of my favorite philosopher, because it was Yogi Berra who said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” You are at that fork right now, which path will you follow, which destination do you want to arrive at? We’ve told you before the promise of the Bible is this, confess your sin, ask for forgiveness and you will live forever with your Creator and Saviour.
PowerPoint may be available for this message contact me at denn@bccnet.ca
If you could build a church for a dollar . . .
Would you?
If you found this sermon helpful please check out our website.
www.helpbuildachurch.com
