One of the old time managers of the New York Yankees was Joe McCarthy, who was also a Baseball Hall of Famer. He once said that he had a dream in which he was in heaven and had assembled before him a team of all of the old time greats – Ty Cobb, Lou Gehirg, Babe Ruth, and others. He was ecstatic! Then the phone rang and it was Satan calling – challenging them to a baseball game. McCarthy, surprised at that challenge, said "You haven’t got a chance – I’ve all of the good players." "Yes," said Satan, "But I’ve got all of the umpires!"
As we have entered he 21st century, there’s a certain uneasiness with the issue of hell, and it’s not surprising that there should be so many jokes on the subject. W.C. Fields, following the 1933 earthquake the struck Southern California said: "We’re crazy to live here, but there sure are a lot of us." You see the same attitude in people when they seem to think that hell will be more tolerable because there’ll be a crowd down there.
Even though the statistics bear it out that 71% of people don’t believe in a Hell – even the current Newsweek magazine issue reported the same thing, that most people don’t believe in a literal "Hell," still people haven’t buried the idea of Hell. The word is still on their lips all the time. They talk about someone being "madder than hell"; and a game turns out to be "a hell of a game." A new project demands "a hell of a lot of work." What’s expected of someone is labeled as "a hell of a tall order." What people have just seen was "a hell of a fire," and they had "a hell of a good time seeing it." And they went there just "for the hell it." Thereupon someone asks, "what the hell are you doing?" The reply is: "I’m raising hell." Later on he’ll have "hell to pay!" In the meantime someone gives someone else hell. In fact, they "scared the hell out him." To get there someone had to "drive like hell."
I suppose you could attribute that kind of talk to the fact that people run out of vocabulary – of adjectives, similes, or language in general. But in the process, the word "Hell" gets watered down to the point that it can mean just about anything. In fact, one of the definitions of "Hell" in Webster’s Dictionary is "unrestrained fun or sportiveness."
That’s not Hell! Hell isn’t unrestrained fun or sportiveness. Jesus Christ, speaking with a first-hand knowledge of hell said: "Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but
cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell." (Matt 10:28)
The last place you’ll find unrestrained fun and sportiveness is in hell. There’s nothing good or attractive about it. It’s not a happy mess, as some people try to make it out to be. Hell is not just a symbolic term – of an unknown bad outcome after death. And it’s not just the common grave as other want to portray it. People can make hell for themselves on earth, but they’ll have a rude awakening in store for them when they finally meet the real deal!
Still others philosophize that the whole idea of hell is unreasonable. After all, they say, how could a good and loving God send anyone to hell? That would be contrary to His love! Since God is love, they say, there can’t be any hell! Well, that argument sounds logical at first, but only if you don’t think about it because it presents a very lop-sided and weak understanding of who God really is!
And in raising the proposition that there is no such thing as hell, they ask, "What about all those who are pagans? Is God just going to throw them all in hell?" Actually, more often than not, they’re really just defending their own brand of practical paganism, which sometimes has this rich overlay of good intentions and a pretty superficial and often pious sounding picture of God that has no relationship to reality.
Jesus Christ had something to say about the reality of hell. He didn’t talk about hell in order to scare people to heaven. Some preachers may try to do that – to sell people "fire insurance!" But what Jesus said, He said out of a deep knowledge of His Father and out of His intense desire to save the world from it’s own foolishness and sin. The time is coming, Jesus said, when everything that has been hidden will be revealed. The secret will be known. Don’t be afraid! "Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows." (Matt 10:28-31).
That’s Jesus talking! If I’m going to be true to my Calling as a preacher of God’s Word, then I have to tell you what He said. I have to tell you what He did. I have to tell you Who He is and what He’s done for you. And what Jesus said and what He did is very comforting and inviting. He said: "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." (Matt 11:28-30). "Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?...."See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you" (Matt 6:26-30).
This same Jesus talked about hell more than anyone else in the Bible! The Greek word, "Gehenna" is the main word in the Bible that’s translated as "hell". It occurs 11 times in the New Testament. In 10 out of those 11 times, the word is used by Jesus. Literally, Gehenna is the Greek form of two Hebrew words ge hinnom meaning "Valley of Hinnom." The Valley of Hinnom is a place just outside the south walls of Jerusalem where pagan deities were worshiped. Later it became the garbage dump -- "a place of burning" -- where the garbage of the city was burned and the fires there burned continually, day and night. In Jeremiah it’s called "the valley of slaughter". And the valley is still there today -- right next to the holy places. It’s still bare of life – surrounded by the hustle and bustle of city traffic. It refers to and describes an unearthly fact of life – or rather a fact of death. Gehenna is death with a vengeance!
Let’s look at the reality of Hell:
1. Hell is Eternal! Describing the judgement of the Last Day, Jesus said that He, the Son of Man, would tell people on His left hand, "Then he will say to those on his left, ’Depart from me , you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matt 25:41-42). At the conclusion of this very chapter where He was comforting His followers, Jesus said it for everyone to hear that, these, the cursed ".....will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life." (Matt 25:46). The same word for eternal ( ai)w/nio$ ) is used in both cases. There’s eternal life – and then there’s the opposite: eternal death!
In Indiana there’s a cemetery that has a tombstone (more than a hundred years old) that bears the this epitaph:
Pause Stranger, when you pass me by,
As you are now, so once was I
As I am now, so you will be,
So prepare for death and follow me.
Some unknown passerby in years past read those words and underneath scratched this reply:
To follow you I’m not content,
Until I know which way you went.
You see, Jesus’ words are a solemn warning to both the religious and the irreligious alike. Jesus hasn’t left us in the dark! He did us a favor by letting us know about the alterative eternities. And He’s also left us without excuse! We can’t plead when our day comes that we were all such good people and that God couldn’t possibly hold us accountable. We can’t get the idea, as 61% of people say, that a little "nice religion" and a few good deeds is going to save us! Listen to what Jesus said: "Not everyone who says to me, ’Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ’Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ’I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ (Matt 7:21-23). Those are hard words! And they come from Jesus Himself! They jolt us! They make us sit up and take notice. They were intended to do that because they’re true! Hell? Yes, said Jesus.
2. Hell is a prison and a prison is not a good place to be. In 2 Peter 2:3 the Bible tells us how God dealt with the evil angels and the unrighteous. It says He "...sent them to hell, putting them into gloomy dungeons." All over the world people are being held in prisons – I just saw a special on the prisons in the Philippines – and I’ll tell you, it’s a place you don’t want to be. In fact, it’s probably the last place on earth you’d want be! No doubt, there are prisoners who were convicted wrongly on trumped up charges or on evidence that later turned out to be false. Then there are others who are walking the streets freely because they never got caught. That’s the weakness in human systems of justice.
But God’s system of justice is entirely different. In the Bible He’s called (2 Tim 4:8) "The Righteous Judge." He knows those who rebel against His authority and who reject His will. Nobody can call God unfair. The apostle Peter said, (Acts 10:34-36)
"I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right." His justice is pure and right altogether, even though His ways are past finding out.
Fortunately for us, His thoughts are not our thoughts. He’s not out to get even. His heart is bigger than our hearts could ever be. The thought’s of God’s heart, my friends, is laid bare for all to see in His Son, Jesus Christ. The determination of God in the face of human sin is matched – more than matched by His grace to sinners like you and me. That’s the Good News of God to you, to me, and to all of us in His Son, Jesus Christ.
There are all kinds of laws. There are laws of nature – put there by God Himself that guide the universe. There are laws of human society – put there by God Himself as He wrote His commands on our darkened hearts. If you violate those laws, the only thing you get is chaos and heartbreak. But it’s exactly to that chaos and heartbreak and Jesus Christ came!
The law of God stands firm: "Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows . The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life" (Gal 6:7-8). Nobody has ever amended that law and no one is ever going to overrule it! It’s justice even when human justice fails. "For we know him who said, "It is mine to avenge; I will repay ," (Heb 10:30). Hell? Yes! 3. Hell is eternal misery and regret. Jesus described this state of existence in Matthew 22:13 at the end of the of the Parable of the Wedding Banquet: "...throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." It also tells us that 4. Hell is to be separated forever, not from the power of God, but from the care and concern of God.
Against the power of hell stands the cross of Jesus Christ. You see, unless we come to grips with the terrible doctrine of hell, we’ll never even begin to understand the depths of what Jesus did for us on the cross. 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 in incomprehensible anguish: Matt 27:46 "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me ?" He was experiencing hell itself.
If a acquaintance denounces you and rejects you -- that hurts. If a good friend does the same -- the hurt’s far worse. However, if your spouse walks out on you, saying, "I never want to see you again," that’s far more devastating still. The longer, deeper, and more intimate the relationship, the more torturous is any separation.
But the Son’s relationship with the Father was beginningless and infinitely greater than the most intimate and passionate human relationship. When Jesus was cut off from the Father, He went into the deepest pit and most powerful furnace, beyond all imagining. And He did it voluntarily for us so that in His grace He could say: Luke 23:34 "Father, forgive them , for they do not know what they are doing." God does forgive us for the sake of His Son. He does love us. He does care. He does give life when all around is death. He tells us: "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom 6:23).
I’m not here to tell you this morning that there’s something you can do to save yourself from hell – something you can do to make good for what you’ve been and everything you’ve done wrong. I wish I could do that but I can’t. What I can and have to tell you is that Jesus Christ has done for you what you can never do for yourself. He lived for you. He died for you. He gave His life for you. He rose again from the dead for you and now He bars the doors of hell and opens the gates of heaven for you. He does that purely out of the great goodness and grace with which the Father sent Him into our world.
"This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sin" (1 John 4:9-10). He gave His greatest and His best – His only Son -- for you! He gave His life for you and it was for you that His Father honored Him by raising Him from the dead by the same great power by which He’ll raise you from the dead through faith in Jesus Christ.
Glen Keane was the supervising animator for many of the Disney movies. He drew Ariel for The Little Mermaid, as well as the Beast and Aladdin and Pocahontas. He’s listed as one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. Keane came to work for Disney in 1974 and during that time he became increasingly open to questions of faith. Raised a Catholic, he felt condemned by his sins and began looking for relief from his guilt. Seeing his colleague Ron Husband reading a Bible one day during the lunch hour, Keane asked him what the Bible said about getting to heaven. Ron, who was also searching for answers was studying John 3:16. He pointed it out to Keane and gave him a Gideon’s New Testament that he has taken from a hotel room. With the Bible in hand, Keane walked down the street for lunch. On the way back he read John 3:16 over and over. Slowly the truth and the implications of the verse sank in, and suddenly Keane found himself saying out loud, "I believe it! I believe it!" He says: "It was like suddenly I reached down and there was something there that wasn’t before. There was a faith I could actually apply and believe with. From that moment on, I knew I was secure. I didn’t need to fear judgment or hell or anything anymore."
That’s the key! Faith in Jesus Christ! Jesus Himself said: "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life. I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live" (John 5:24-25). That’s the way it works – by faith and confidence is the saving work of Jesus Christ alone!
And that’s what you and I are all about. That’s what this church is all about! That’s what Ablaze! Is all about! And that why we’re here! We understand and believe John 3:16. We understand and believe that we are saved by grace alone, through Christ’s work alone, and through faith alone. But it’s only when we understand that people without that faith in Christ are lost -- that they will die in the sins -- without Christ their eternal destiny is hell! And that gives us a heart and a burning desire to share the Good News! It’s our motivation and urgency to share the Gospel with others. And when we accept that reality -- it’s then we really understand the meaning of what Jesus meant when He said: Luke 15:10 "I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."
John Newton, the author of "Amazing Grace," had been a slave trader who became a Christian preacher and poet. On his deathbed, Newton was visited by a young clergyman who tried to minister to him and comfort him. But John Newton, instead, gave him comfort. Newton said: "True, I’m going on before you, but you will come after me. When you arrive, our friendship will no doubt cause you to inquire for me. But I can tell you already where you will find me — I will be sitting at the feet of the thief whom Jesus saved in His dying moments on His cross."
Now that’s a man of who understood the grace of God! Saved from hell and from eternal death by the blood of Jesus Christ. Hell? Yes – Jesus Christ says so. Salvation? Yes –Jesus Himself has redeemed you from sin and hell. Amazing grace? Yes! Life – real life? Yes! Jesus is the One who promised us life to the full. Heaven? Yes! Jesus promised it, and His promise and grace to you are sure – everlastingly and eternally sure. Amen.
Jude 24-25
To him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy— to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages,
now and forevermore! Amen.
