The "What" About Hell

The “WHAT” about Hell

Luke 16:19-31

The title of my sermon is “The WHAT about Hell”. You often hear a term that sounds like this without the “the” in front and the words "in the" replacing the word about, when someone is confused about something. So this morning I want to help with some of the confusion concerning this topic of hell.

Now with all of these positive and encouraging preachers you hear now days, sermons on hell seem to be falling by the wayside. Three sermons pastors don’t like to preach on are hell, tithing, and gluttony. I Don’t think I’ve ever heard a sermon on gluttony. And the way that I use humor in my sermons; hell is not a subject that I can use any jokes on, because hell is no joking matter.

But Hell is real. It appears 57 times in the Bible. And while 80% of the people believe they are going to a place called Heaven, only 50% of people believe in a literal place called hell.

A few nights ago I was watching the TV show 20/20. The nights episode was on the subject of Hell and of course with this show they gave many views. Few that was close to the truth.

They had one opinion that Hell was some trash dump just outside of Jerusalem well they would burn trash and dead carcasses of animals. Smoke, fire, sounds like Hell, just not sure where the darkness comes in.

They had a Minister who was labeled a Heretic because he began preaching ’Nobody Goes to Hell’ and his church of 6,000 diminished to 300. He claims he heard from Gad and He told him that a loving God would not send anyone to hell; that hell is something we experience here on earth. But in order to sell this theory he had to denounce the Bible. So he teaches that the Bible was just a story written by men. This is a minister who at one time had rubbed shoulders with the best of them; Oral Roberts, Jerry Falwell.

They had a convicted killer, who was serving three life terms and showed no remorse; who states that. “If he goes to hell, so be it”.

They had others who say they survived hell on earth. They had one who survived the Holocaust, another a nun who survived a kidnapping and was repeatedly raped and tortured.

The only one who came close to my view of hell was one man named Matthew Dovel who says he has had two near-death experiences, and seen visions of both heaven and hell. He almost drowns at the age of 12 and saw the light and was met by Jesus who told him he had to return. Then after a life of booze and drugs, he decided that he couldn’t take it anymore and wanted to go back to the place he had been as a boy, so he tried to commit suicide only to find his self in a very different world; A place called hell.

So do you believe in Hell? My intent this morning is to take the “what: or the question of whether hell is real or not. The first what I want to talk about is…

What is Hell?

Revelation 20:14-15 Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.

Some say that hell is the grave. You live, you die, you go to the grave. Some, as I had stated earlier, say that hell is a state of life that you go though here on earth. You ask someone how their trip was. They reply, “It was pure hell”. But what is hell? You read about the description of heaven in the bible; Streets of gold, robes of white. Is there a description of hell? There is.

Mark 9:47-48 And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, rather than having two eyes, to be cast into hell fire—where ’Their worm does not die And the fire is not quenched.’

There are three things that I want to point out from this scripture that gives us a description of hell.

1.It is a place somewhere below.

All through the bible we read about being cast into hell. Now being a fisherman, I know that when I cast, my bait or lure will go down into the water.

I did hear a story about a farmer who was on his deathbed and he revealed to his wife as a deathbed request, that he had some of his most valued treasures hiden behind a brick in the fireplace. He wanted her to place them on the window ledge in the attic above their bedroom. He wanted to take them with him as he departed this earth.