Hey everybody, this is Pastor John Ewart from Inglewood
Baptist Church in Rocky Mountain, North Carolina.
Thank you so much for tuning into our podcast.
You're going to hear from God today as we share from his word
about important issues facing your life that can guide you
according to the Bible. Well, thanks for joining me here
physically. And for those again listening
online, thank you so much for joining in.
We are continuing our series called Is Hell or Heaven, Hell
and the Hereafter. And tonight we're talking about,
unfortunately, the subject matter of hell itself and, and
who chooses to go there. And I want you to notice the
very specific choice of verbs there 'cause that is the way
this works. Whether people agree with that
or not, not everybody will like everything that's going to be
shared probably in this study tonight.
But I promise you that these are very biblical thoughts as I've
tried to work really hard. We talked a few sessions ago
about heaven and what and how wonderful it is.
We do need to talk about the alternative as well.
So so let's dive into this a little bit.
The reality of hell is something that gets debated.
Frankly, it's always been interesting in the United States
of America that a much larger percentage of believes in heaven
than hell. That doesn't surprise me.
We'll talk more about maybe why later, but some of that's
wishful thinking. I think the reality is, is that
everybody is going to experience life after death.
And the question is just whether you're going to spend it in
heaven or hell. Where are you going to spend it
is the issue. And part of our part of our
reasoning for still existing on this planet after we trust in
Jesus Christ is to try to help influence that decision in the
lives of others. So obviously, those who trust in
Christ will spend eternity with him in heaven.
Those who reject him will spend eternity apart from God.
We're going to talk a whole lot more about what it means to be
apart from God because I'm not sure people always understand
the seriousness of that, but they're going to do that in this
place of great suffering. And it's called hell.
There are other names for it. Again, some deny it.
You know, Gallup that does these poles, it's only about 50 or so
percent of the United States population.
Sometimes it's varies, It's gone less than that, rarely goes much
higher than that of the US population that actually
believes in hell. So it's a, it's a very, it's a
very convenient selective thought process, isn't it?
To where I don't have to think about the bad stuff.
I can just think about the good stuff.
And that often ties into their view of God, which we've talked
about in previous sessions, that they have room for God as love.
They don't have room for God as holy.
They don't have room for God as judge.
And so, and unfortunately in our our culture today, many use the
word and concept rather flippantly.
And the concept of hell is anything but flippant.
There's a very serious, very serious matter.
Jesus spoke of hell often. Frankly, the Bible talks about
hell quite often, and so if you don't believe it exists, you're
cutting out a significant portion of the Word of God.
It's just hard to ignore it and we're going to breakdown some of
the words being used for it. But Jesus spoke of it one of the
most, one of those direct places, Matthew 812.
While the sons of the Kingdom will be thrown into the outer
darkness, in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of
teeth. Jesus will use in more than one
occasion, and we'll see these occasions in this session.
He uses some of the strongest possible Greek language you
could muster up to describe the horrors of what this eternal
judgement and death looks like. In fact, he warns them in
Matthew at 10:28. And do not fear those who kill
the body but cannot kill the soul.
Rather for him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
And we're going to talk about what that word means, that word
destroy means because some people use that to teach a
heresy called annihilationism that we've talked talked about
before. We're going to talk about again
later. But if there is no hell, Jesus
lied, because these certainly aren't the only two verses where
he mentions it. So you're calling Jesus if you
don't believe there's a hell, you're calling Jesus a liar.
And so you've got to work through your theology on that
level at some point if that's where you are.
And then obviously many would say that a loving God would
never send anyone to hell, or that's not my God.
My God would never send anybody to hell.
And that's a misunderstanding of a lot of things that we'll talk
about. The Scripture is very clear.
Luke wrote Luke 12-5. But I I warn you whom to fear?
Fear him. Who after he has killed, has
authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.
Now, what's interesting about that verse is many people would
think he's talking about the devil.
We, we've created this false thought process that somehow
Hell's like a really bad hotel and, and the devil's running it
down there with his demons. You see TV commercials, you see
cartoons like that. You got a, a pointy deer guy
with a pitchfork and he's, he's, you know, and else it comes from
Dante's concept of the, of, of hell and, and the fact that the
demons are down there running the, the really bad Motel 6 down
there. But but that's not the way it
works at all. In fact, this verse is not
talking about Satan. This verse is talking about God.
And so the one we should fear is God himself.
He is the one who can, who has the authority.
So Satan, Satan has no power to determine the destiny of a human
soul. There's a sentence.
Satan can't do that. Now, we might think he can.
He certainly influences, but we often give Satan more power than
he deserves. In fact, down the road, before
we're done with this series, I want to do a whole session on
angels and demons so that we have a real complete
understanding of what they are and what they're not.
Because unfortunately, again, with Hollywood and with much of
the media and different things around us, we've elevated Satan
to almost a minor God. And that's not what he is.
He can't destroy a human soul. He tempts us and seeks to trick
us and we fall prey to his ambush.
But many, many just don't get it.
And, and the the bigger issue here is again, the holiness of
God and, and just how the fact that we really don't understand
sin. We don't understand how evil sin
is. We don't understand how how
atrocious our sin is to a supremely holy perfect God.
And so often people will argue the punishment doesn't fit the
crime. But that's because they don't
understand the crime. They don't understand what the
degree of sin is and what the price of sin is, even though the
Bible is ultra clear about warning you what the wages of
sin is. So sin is much worse than anyone
can imagine. Danny Akin had a line that he
would say more than once, he said when you know, sin is
slapping the slapping the God of the universe in the face and we
just don't, we don't often think of it that way.
We, we, we rate sin, we grade sin, some sins really not that
big a deal, Some sins a lot worse.
You know, we don't like certain sins a whole lot more than we
don't like other sin and things like that sometimes in our human
nature. But that's not what sin is.
And so sin is this eternal separation from God and it can
only be pardoned by the supreme sacrifice.
And that that wage of sin is death.
And so somebody had to die. And so the death of of God the
Son on the cross is the only thing that could pay for that.
You can't pay for your own sin and you can't get out of it.
We're going to see that a whole lot more clearly as we walk
through this. So Jesus specifically states
that non believers can't escape this condemnation.
Matthew 23, again, he's talking to religious people when he says
this. He says you serpents, you brood
of Vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?
This, these are Jewish religious leaders because the only way out
of this is by trusting in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.
So scripture assures us that hell is a real place, but we
also often really mess this up. And this goes back to whether
Satan's run in hell or not. We we don't understand what hell
was created for in the 1st place.
Hell has a very specific created purpose.
The Bible tells us what it is. He says in Matthew 2541.
Then he will say to those on his left, depart from me, you curse,
you cursed. Got to throw that curse said in
there into the eternal fire. Prepared for who it's prepared
for the devil's the devil, excuse me and his angels.
So it was prepared for Satan and his demons.
And so the the idea of hell wasn't necessarily originally
designed for humanity, even though God knew humanity would
end up there because God knows everything.
But it was actually designed as the eternal place for to
accommodate the banishment of Satan and his fallen angels who
rebelled and and seek to take over against God.
And so those who reject or rebelled against Christ are the
same, and they're going to end up in the same place.
We follow whoever our Lord is into eternity.
And so whoever your boss is, whoever your Lord is, that's who
you'll spend eternity with. And so the wicked will be raised
at the end of time and judged at the great White Throne judgment.
Then they're going to be cast into the Lake of Fire, which is
their permanent place of suffering throughout all
eternity. And I'll talk more about that
permanence in a moment too. Whereas Christians who have
died, now we've talked about this before, are spiritually
fully conscious and fully aware in the presence of God, having a
great time. And one day they're going to
receive their final new resurrected bodies and enjoy
their this eternal paradise that we described when we talked
about heaven. So loss, sinners who have died
or now, as we've talked before, in the presence of suffering
already in this temporary holding place, this temporary
place called Hades or Sheol. And they're waiting their final
state with their bodies for eternal punishment.
And so there's an in between time again, we talked a few
sessions ago about because of the way time doesn't work in
eternity, does it actually seem like time when that happens?
Or is it immediate as far as they're concerned?
Whereas it's a time lag for us, You know what I'm saying?
Don't blow your brains out over that.
But anyway, what we see is is that these are described.
Psalm 30 verse 9 talks about the pit.
What profit is there in my death if I go down to the pit?
Will the dust praise you? Will the tell of your
faithfulness and that pit is this idea of Hades Archie old
the abode of the dead, so to speak.
We talked in a previous session, so we won't take time to do it
again about Luke 16, the story of the rich man and Lazarus.
The fact that there was a glimpse of what this torture
looks like, there's agony and fire even in Hades.
And the rich man had a choice on earth and that story and
suffered the consequences of his decision to live for himself
instead of living for God. And in his rebellion, he earns
his wage, and that wage is death.
So the reality of hell is is there, and we're going to
continue to see that reinforced. I want to spend a little more
time, I think, on the description of hell because it
really is interesting to get into some original language with
you a little bit because there's some keywords that are used in
the New Testament to refer to hell.
And a lot of them have kind of interesting backstories to them.
And so one of the Greek words, perhaps the most common one that
Jesus would use is Gehenna. And so this word Gehenna was
actually something that the readers would have related to
because they're actually related to a physical place they knew
about as well. And so in Matthew chapter 10,
verse 28, again, it says, and do not fear those who kill the body
but cannot kill the soul, rather fear him who can destroy both
soul and body and Gehenna. And so this idea of Gehenna,
this was a valley originally. Historically there was a valley
just outside the city where atrocities were carried out in
previous days of Israel and the days of Pagan and horrible
kings, even some in the day of of Solomon in the valley of Ben
Ben Hinnam and Ben Hinnam. It was a place where human child
sacrifice was made. You can read in the Old
Testament, in Second Chronicles and in Jeremiah.
They sacrificed children to the false Moabite God of Moloch
there. And so there were incredible
atrocities there. Worship, Baal worship centers
and Ashtaroths were set up to Pagan gods along the way as
well. Jeremiah called this the Valley
of Slaughter in Jeremiah Chapter 7.
It was so horrible, such an atrocious place.
So by the time the New Testament rose around, this place is
considered extremely unclean because of its history.
So this became the trash dump of Jerusalem.
So this is where all the garbage was put.
And so they they would dump all the garbage, all the filth of
Jerusalem poured into this valley.
But it wouldn't just be what we would normally think of body of
garbage. It wasn't your neatly wrapped
trash bag and either your recycling bin or your normal
bin. It was loose refuse, but it
would also be dead animals as well as the bodies of criminals
would just be thrown into Gehenna.
And so there was a constant fire taking place in Gehenna.
They were constantly burning everything in Gehenna to offset
the smell and the spread of disease and things like that.
So there were these quote UN quote, eternal fires that never
went out. There were people whose job, if
you can imagine this job, one of the worst jobs I ever knew about
was in eastern Oklahoma. And some of you may have done
this job because they have them around here too.
Was it what was called a chicken chaser?
I don't know if you know what a chicken chaser in a chicken
house is and what a huge long chicken houses that you'll see.
A chicken chaser is a person who goes in that and goes in there
to clean out all the dead chickens.
Because if you don't clean out the dead chickens, the other
chickens are actually chickens are cannibals.
I don't know if you know that or not.
If a chicken starts to bleed, they'll pick it to death.
They'll attack. They're like little piranhas,
and so you got to get all the dead ones out or they'll make
everybody sick. So a chicken chaser's job was to
go in, in the midst of that ammonia smell in the middle of
120 degree heat and clean out the dead chickens and throw them
in the composter. I thought, well, there's a job.
Have I ever said thank you for letting me be your pastor?
Might not be quick enough to be a chicken, chicken chaser, but
think about it. They burned them.
They threw them in a heap in this valley and they were just
burning all the time because it never stopped.
You know, there's always more garbage, always another body,
always more death coming in there.
And so these fires were burning all the time.
And Jesus actually used the word gehenna at least 11 times to
describe eternal suffering, to describe hell because it was the
closest thing they would know it.
It's kind of like this. You could almost point to it.
He says it's kind of like that they would all know a valley had
been hidden. And so that would be a something
that could visualize and know. But another word that's used for
hell is a word Tartarus. Peter uses this in second Peter
24 and this is a fascinating verse.
I've alluded to this some before and I'll talk about this again
in the future session when we do angels and demons.
Second, Peter 24 says, For if God did not spare angels when
they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to
chains of gloomy darkness, to be kept until the judgement and the
word there for hell is Tartarus. And this is a place where
certain fallen angels or demons are confined and, and as far as
I know, they're still there right now.
And, and so most of the fallen angels were free to roam the
earth and do their destructive damage along with their leader,
Lucifer or Satan. But these imprisoned fallen
angels are not free to roam. And apparently these are the
worst of the worst. These are especially heinous
little demons who their sin against God in the past was so
bad he locked them up and keeps them locked up.
And this is this again, this image of what hell is going to
be like. It's going to be a place of
horror and a place of of great suffering.
A lot of different adjectives and descriptions concerning hell
and scripture. Fire, fire, fiery furnace,
furnace and quenchable fire. The lake of burning sulfur, the
lake of fire, everlasting contempt, perdition, place of
weeping and gnashing of teeth, eternal punishment, darkness,
the wrath to come, exclusion, torments, damnation,
condemnation, retribution, the second death.
But let's look at a couple of these descriptions a little more
closely. I'm in the Book of Revelation in
my personal study right now still, and there are passages.
In fact, I was not far off this passage coming up, but some of
the passages are are are difficult to process, to be
honest with you. I mean, I know the various
opinions about what they are, I think, but but it's just
interesting to read. So Revelation 1920 talking about
the beast and the beast was captured and with it the false
prophet who in its presence had done the signs by which he
deceived those who'd received the mark of the beast and those
who worshipped its image. So we're talking about the end
of time Antichrist type stories. These two are thrown alive into
the lake of fire that burns with sulfur.
Or again Revelation 20. This is the great white throne
judgement scene. Then I saw a great white throne
and him who was seated on it, and from his presence earth and
sky fled away, and no place was found for them.
And I saw the dead great and small standing before the throne
and the books were opened. Then another book was opened,
which is the Book of Life, and the dead were judged by what was
written in the books. Notice the plural according to
what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead who
were in it. Death and Hades gave up the dead
who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them,
according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown
into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the
lake of fire. If you keep hearing the Lake of
Fire, you just wait. And if anyone's name was not
found in the Book of Life he was thrown into, guess what?
The lake of fire trying to make a point.
This is the great white throne judgement.
The reason it's white is this idea of holiness and purity.
God is pure, God is holy. And we we keep missing.
I don't, we you all don't. You're here wonderful people who
follow Jesus, I hope, but humanity misses this point.
God is perfect, and in His perfection He cannot allow
imperfection to be in His presence.
If he does that, he is no longer God.
It is his nature. It is who he is.
It is what he is. And so he has to remove the
blemish. Which is why when you think of
Old Testament sacrifices, they had to be lambs without blemish.
They had to be spotless. He needed a perfect lamb to die,
which the only one who could qualify was Jesus.
And so in this great white throne judgement, this is the
the image of holiness, this image of purity.
And what you're going to see is the created at the end of time.
And one day, those of us who trust in Jesus will be very
aware of this. Those who don't trust in Jesus
will be too, but they'll see it from a very different
perspective. The created universe as we know
it is going to be uncreated. It's going to disappear.
The Bible says that parts of it are going to burn up with fire,
and then what's going to happen is this earth that we know is
going to end, and unbelievers will be judged by their own
righteousness. And that's huge according to
what they had done. Did you see that over and over
again there? So if you don't trust in Jesus,
you're going to be judged by your own personal righteousness,
your own perfection or imperfection and, and not the
imputed righteousness of Christ, not the the righteousness that
Christ put to our account and we get covered by because we've
trusted in him. Either I get judged by God the
Father looking through the filter of Christ's blood
atonement covering me, or I get judged on my own standing and my
own imperfection. And because I am imperfect and
so is, so are you, by the way, you stand no chance.
You have to be perfect. So you have to have perfect
covering or you're going to be judged by your own.
But according to what they had done, so, so there's nobody
escapes. These resurrected bodies are
designed for eternity. God's keeping the books.
You're not getting away with anything, ever, ever.
Not anything you say, not anything you think, not anything
that you do. Any one of those things that is
contrary to God's word and will is sin.
You don't get away with it. And there'll be different levels
of judgement and punishment according to what they had done,
but the each degree of torment will be horrible because God is
God is not there in eternal punishment in any way that you
can perceive. And I don't know that we
understand what that just what that means.
In other words, the absence of God.
And you might be here and you claim to be an atheist tonight
and you said there's no God. You have no idea what you have
experienced in a blessing already indirectly.
God blesses you every day of your life whether you believe
that or not. You can't exist without him.
You can't have breath without him.
Your heart would not beat without him.
The little electrons circling around in your body wouldn't,
wouldn't work the way they do. Nothing works the way they do
without Him holding it together. Read Colossians one sometime.
Jesus is what holds life together.
He's the creator and holds life together.
And so you, you have no idea what it means to completely live
without the presence of God. You have no concept of that.
And so you might think that your life's bad.
Well, buddy, wait. Because because there's no grace
there in hell, there's no grace. There's no presence of God in
that same way. And, and you only get to live
here on earth because of that grace.
You only get to exist because of that grace.
You have grace just because you're allowed to be.
You're allowed to exist. I don't think we understand what
the gift of existence is and how much we ought to appreciate it.
We're here for a reason and we're here by his grace.
And when he takes his hand off, I've seen him see him do the
same thing in a in a similar, but not the same way with
churches. That my fear is not that God's
going to punish us. My fear is that God will take
his hand off of us. And for us to have the absence
of God's presence is detrum. It's it's horrible.
And so God blesses us every day. But in hell they experience what
it's like to not have the presence of God around them in
that way. It's that separation from Him
that's the torment as much as anything else.
And so this lake of fire creates a permanent separation from God.
No way out, ever, forever and ever.
Just listen to what Matthew 18 says.
Woe to the world for temptation to sin.
For it is necessary that temptations come.
But woe to the one by whom the temptations come.
And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off
and throw it away. It's better for you to enter
life crippled or lame than with two hands or two feet to be
thrown into the eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to
send, tear it out and throw it away.
It's better for you to enter life with one eye than with two
eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire.
See that you do not despise one of these little ones.
For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face
of my Father who is in heaven. So we see this idea of eternal
fire, and we're going to talk more about that word in a
minute. Matthew 2541 talks about
falling. Man's going to join the devil
and his angels there. You're going to spend eternity
with your Lord. Then he will say to those on his
left apart from me. There's not a not a not a
scarier phrase you can imagine than that right there.
Depart from me. You cursed into the eternal
fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.
Matthew 7 talks about destruction.
Enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is
easy that leads to destruction. And those who enter by it are
many. I'm going to talk about that
word destruction again in a minute.
And then Matthew 13, it talks about this furnace of fire with
weeping and gnashing of teeth and throw them into the fiery
furnace. In that place there will be
weeping and gnashing of teeth. You know, it's interesting
because Doctor Aiken will also say about this.
He'll say that people in hell do not love Jesus.
Suddenly they recognize him, but they don't love him, which is
part of the problem. John Blanchard wrote a wrote a
piece called What Happened to Hell?
Just listen for a minute. The wicked will be angry at the
things which gave them pleasure on earth but now give them pain
in hell, angry at the sins that wrecked their lives, angry at
themselves for being who they are, angry at Satan and his
helpers for producing the temptations which led them into
the into sin, and even while compelled to acknowledge his
glory, angry at God. Now a quick question before we
get to a major topic, a quick question.
Are people predestined to go to hell?
There's actually a heavy theological term for this.
More than one, Frankly, depending upon which angle
you're looking at and to what degree you're trying to describe
it, the most common one would be double predestination.
Or here's your word for the week, super lapsarianism.
So use that in a conversation tomorrow when you're ordering
your Dunkin coffee. Say that was super Lapsaria
stick. Now many people blame John
Calvin for this. John Calvin gets blamed for a
lot of things. It's really funny though when
you actually study Calvin versus the followers of Calvin.
Sometimes advocacy does not always represent the source
well. Now, I'm not saying that there
wouldn't be things that John Calvin said you might disagree
with. That's fair, but John Calvin
isn't really the one who came up with this idea.
It was championed by a guy and I, I can't tell you that how
many times in life I've said the the name Theodore Beza or why I
would ever say it out loud, but there you are.
But super lapsarianism came from him.
And the idea is this is our people doomed before birth?
Are people doomed to go to hell? Some people are.
Some people are the elect and they're going to be saved.
Some people are doomed and they're going to go to hell and
they don't have a choice. They're born that way.
They're it's already predetermined before they exist
on this planet. That's part of the idea and
God's sovereignty. So Millard Erickson, who's a
theological systematic theologian, a conservative,
wonderful evangelical conservative guy, listen to what
he says. He says further.
He believed that. And this is talking about Bezza.
Further, he believed that despite the absence of any
specific biblical statements, don't miss that line.
There's nothing in the Bible that supports this view.
In other words, the logical order of God's decree can be
determined. He believed that the decree to
save some and damn others is logically prior to the decision
to create. And so the idea is that God
creates some to save and some to curse.
And if you'll notice, even the way Ericsson comments on this
theological position there, there isn't biblical evidence
for this. This is a logical theological
conclusion because if God's completely sovereign, he already
is in charge of everything. So he's already done all this.
So we blame God for it in the first place, before God even
created humanity. See, it's, it's, it's more
almost mathematics. There's it's I refer to as
theological algebra. So instead, in the Bible, Paul
talks about mysteries and we've talked before, and I'll
reiterate it just for a second. Again, there's a huge difference
between gods for knowledge and and free will.
And that difference is very, very important.
We operate within this, this the system of time.
God does not, and that changes everything.
So does God already know who will be saved and who will not
be saved? Sure, he knows that, but does
that mean that those people have no option or no choice in the
process of their life? Absolutely not.
They have free will. They're making this decision.
And so it's hard for us to always wrap our heads around
that. And Theodore didn't do a good
job of it. Sometimes I wonder, well, I'll
be careful. And double, double
predestination is a really easy excuse not to have to share the
gospel with anybody or not to do missions.
But let's talk about a really significant issue here.
And this is something that gets debated often.
In fact, I've had folks within churches I pastored that I had
to have this conversation with people who taught small groups
that I've had to have this conversation with.
And that's what we call the eternality of punishment.
I wrote a significant paper about this.
The the Bible clearly teaches that punishment is eternal.
Sin has this massive, great price.
God gave his life on a cross to pay for it.
You got to recognize how precious that is.
That's a big deal. And so he paid a huge price for
this. And so we need to respect that
and we need to recognize what a significant price that was.
So what do those who reject him deserve?
He's offered this incredible free gift he's given his whole
life. What else could he give?
He sacrificed himself, so to speak.
And So what do those people who reject that in a sense slap him
in the face over it or disbelieving?
What do they actually deserve? So they've rejected him, giving
them life and then his life for them.
No greater price could be paid, thus no higher price could be
rejected. So the free gift is turned down.
Therefore they have to pay themselves.
The wage will be paid, the collector will come, and the
debt will be satisfied. And that's just the fact of it
all. We misunderstand sin and it's
and it's horrible price that we must pay.
So people don't want hell to exist or they they might think
it's too harsh. Now listen.
And since they've lifted themselves up often as the
definer and distributor of truth, they want to make it the
way they want. It reminds me of my
grandchildren. But we missed the mark.
And we don't understand that truth is absolutely objective
and not up to our own definition, no matter what
postmodernism wants to try to shove down your throat.
And so the truth is that hell is real, and hell lasts forever.
Annihilationism is not biblical. Now, we've talked about
annihilationism before when I talked about false paths to
eternity in a previous session. Let me just review here three
different views of annihilationism.
And there are people who will come knocking on your door who
are annihilationist. By the way, one version is, is
that man was created immortal, that people who continue to sin
and reject Christ are deprived of the gift of immortality and
are ultimately destroyed. So you had it and you lost it.
It's really actually the the reverse of of what the Bible
teaches, where we start off with a sin nature and we actually are
able to receive the gift of eternal life.
The second view is that immortality is a gift only to
those who believe, and those who do not are annihilated and lose
consciousness. That's a very common view of
annihilationism. And add that usually combined
with #3 there's a limited time of suffering for the wicked
after death. Again, there's just this
emotional aspect of it to where there's no way that my sin
deserves eternal punishment. There's no way that my sins that
bad. And again, we don't understand
sin. So Matthew 2546, this, this is
what the Bible teaches. I can't make it not teach this.
Matthew 2546 says, and these will go away into eternal
punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.
And so this clearly teaches that punishment will be eternal, not
just in your English translation, but in the original
language. So the word ionois, hard to say,
is translated as eternal, and what it means is everlasting
without end. And what you've got to
understand is the eternality of God's punishment or hell of the
wicked equals the eternality of eternal life given to the
righteous. You can't have one without the
other. It's the same word, it's the
same description. 1 is just as long as the other.
So if hell is not eternal, neither is heaven.
You can't have it. Any of that's linguistically, it
doesn't work any other way. It's very clear you can't.
You can't claim one and ignore the other.
It just doesn't. It doesn't stand up
linguistically, it doesn't stand up theologically, it doesn't
stand up biblically. So.
So again, let's listen to Revelation for a minute.
And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of
fire. And so for where the beast and
false prophet were. And they will be tormented day
and night forever and ever. And that Greek forever and ever
is just the same as Revelation 1/6 And it says and made us
Kingdom, made us a Kingdom priest to his God and father, to
him be glory and dominion, forever and ever.
Amen. Exact same wording used or in
Revelation 4. And whenever the living
creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who is seated
on the throne, who lives forever and ever, the 24 elders fell
down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who
lives forever and ever. And they cast their crowns
before the throne, saying worthy of you, O Lord our God, to
receive glory and honor and power.
And you created all things, and by your will they existed and
were created. And in chapters 5 and in
chapters 10 and chapters 11, the exact same wording is used over
and over and over again in the worship of God, the endless life
of God, the Kingdom of Christ. You can't make this mean
something else. Annihilationism has 0 biblical
legs to stand on, so we can't claim one from scripture and
deny the other. The fires of hell will last
forever. And it's interesting because in
Mark 9, for example, it says this is a different version of a
verse we were looking at in a different gospel.
And if your hand causes you to send, cut it off, better for you
to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell to the
unquenchable fire. Or verse 48 where the worm does
not die and the fire is not quenched.
There's never a moment that the fire is out or Revelation 14.
And I'm telling you earlier today, and I don't want to go
down this road too much. It may be too dramatic, but I I
broke down earlier this morning when I was finishing this.
And this bothers. I have relatives here.
I have friends here who weren't saved, major influences in my
life not saved before they died. Revelation 14 where it talks
about being tormented forever. And another Angel 1/3 followed
them, saying with a loud voice, If anyone worships the beast in
its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he
will also drink. Let me turn the page, I'm stuck,
sorry. He will also drink the wine of
God's wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his
anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur In the
presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb and
the smoke, the look of their torment goes up forever and
ever, and they have no rest, day or night.
These worshippers of the beast in its image and whoever
receives the mark of its name, terrific.
It ought to have impact on us. We're told about this, so it'll
have impact on us. This is a warning.
This is a challenge to us. Paul writes to the church at
Thessalonica. He says 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.
They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from
the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His might.
The penalty is eternal destruction away from the
presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power.
I need to camp here for a few minutes because this idea of
eternal destruction, sometimes whenever you see that word
destroy or destruction, annihilation, also say, see,
look, you're being destroyed. You don't exist anymore.
You're done away with because they read English, but you got
to understand the literal original language in the Greek
language for that word. Destruction means a sudden ruin
or a loss of all that gives worth to existence.
It's a destruction of what is considered worthy to you.
It's not a district. It's not a destruction of you.
It's a destruction of all that you would consider precious.
In other words, everything that you thought was important here,
everything that you clung to instead of Christ, everything
that you turn to instead of God, it's all stripped away.
Everything this earth can offer you is gone.
Nothing is left other than what you do for eternity for Christ.
So it's not annihilation, but it is.
And you read that passage in Thessalonians.
This is that complete separation from God where we don't have his
presence anymore. In the same way, we don't
understand we, we are away from the presence and the Lord and
from the glory of his power. And again, you might know
people. Maybe you are people, some of
your people, who don't believe in God.
And you don't think God's ever done a thing for you?
You really need to go back and read Romans one and recognize
that He dispenses grace upon all of us.
It's part of being created in the image of God.
We get the benefit of part of His grace by being alive, by
being able to exist, by giving, by being given the chance to
choose Him. So in his nature of love, he
creates us and gives us this opportunity to know him and his
nature of holiness. It demands a price and both of
those natures must be satisfied. And So what we see is, is that
it's it's endless destruction and worthlessness.
Idea of worthlessness would probably be better.
Billy Graham once said the Bible teaches whether we are saved or
lost, there is an everlasting existence of the soul.
So we never die, we're never gone, we're never not part of
it. And again Erickson writes this.
However we regard the doctrine of everlasting punishment, it is
clearly taught in Scripture. Whatever one is at the end of
life will continue for all eternity.
There is no basis for expecting change for the better.
Not only is the future judgement of unbelievers irreversible, but
their punishment is eternal. We do not reject merely the idea
that all will be saved. We also reject the contention
that none will be eternally punished.
So both universalism and annihilationism are false
doctrines. And so we recognize what this
means for us now here, while we're still able to choose.
First of all, you ought to thank God for the ability to choose.
That's a gift, that's grace, and this can be avoided.
So the greatest pain, again suffered by people who are
eternally punished is that they are forever excluded from the
presence of God. Sometimes it bothers me how
lightly we take the presence of God.
If if ecstatic joy can be found in the presence of God and utter
dismay would be found in His absence, and to be shut out from
Him is a much greater price than most of us know.
When Jesus in Matthew 25 says depart from me, these are
horrible words. Think about the horrible words
to hear from the King of kings and the Lord of Lords.
To think about being completely shut out, not knowing or ever
being able to know, but then knowing.
That's part of the catch, right? Because remember what Paul said
And the time will come when every knee will bow and every
tongue will confess that you so you'll know, but it'll be too
late to believe. So it's not only the fact that
I'm not going to be in his presence anymore.
It's not only the fact that I'm suffering this punishment.
It's also the fact that I know. I know what I should have done.
I know what I could have done. Go back to the rich man Lazarus
story. Remember, he was aware.
Oh, if you'll just go back and warn my family.
Go back and warn my family, you know, send him back, send him
back. Let him go warn my family.
It's too late. And so part of hell is also
knowing that Jesus died on the cross for you, that he paid the
price for you. All you had to do is believe in
him. All you had to do is trust in
Him. All you had to do is receive
this gift. But you didn't.
And people say, well, that's mean.
No, actually, out of his nature of love, He gave you free will
and you chose. You chose.
He didn't choose, you chose, and you chose to reject Him, and
you're going to pay the price. And so this conscious eternal
punishment, the horrifying, as bad as this is, this is an
extremely biblical, orthodox, evangelical view.
Hell is real. So what it ought to do then is
it ought to motivate us. See, we sit in pastors meetings
week after week and we've gotten concerned about some things,
which is why on our prayer list, we're now re reminding you of
the UPUUPG. On many Wednesday nights, we're
going to show the video of the UUPG again, because my, our
concern was, is that every Sunday morning at Englewood, if
you don't come to Englewood on Sundays, we take time in our
Sunday morning worship service and we show a video our most
Sundays of an unreached, unengaged people group and we
pray for them. And then the thought is, is that
we're supposed to pray for them during the week.
Well, the pastors honestly got together and we said, how many
of you can remember the name of the people group by about
Tuesday? And I don't blame anybody for
that. It's a fleeting moment.
There's a lot of them. Some of them have really hard
names that Gene and Charles have to try to produce sometimes.
You know, he got off easy this week.
Swahili, if you notice. I don't ever do it.
But do you actually remember who these people are?
So we were hoping midweek would remind you a little bit.
One of the things that's happening also is our shut
insurance. Many of our shut insurance are
getting these lists and they're praying throughout the week.
So I then they really do. I talk to them when I go out
every week to visit shut insurance and we talk about it
and they're actually seeing and admit some of our other members
are doing it too. But do you actually remember to
pray for some folks? Now, this week's a little
unfair. It was senior Sunday, so we were
a little different on Sunday. Here's why I bring that up.
Those people are lost and going to hell.
When you when you say UUPG, it means that they not only are
lost, they don't even have a way to be saved.
They're unengaged. They don't have a church, they
don't have a Bible. They don't have, they don't have
the opportunity unless somebody shares the gospel with them.
And So what we see is, is we see this opportunity to not only
pray for those people over there, but then every now and
then this will this will be interesting to you.
And if you're in the room, I wish you'd come up and meet me
instead of sending me an anonymous notes.
And if you're listening to this online, I really mean that
because that's a sin, by the way, anonymous notes are a sin.
There's nothing biblical about an anonymous note.
I used to have a whole sermon on the sin of the anonymous note.
I tell anybody who gets anonymous note who works at this
church is supposed to just throw it away.
That's a sin. You.
There's nothing in Matthew 18 or Matthew 5 that's anonymous.
So it's interesting because I get these these notes and one of
them at least puts his name on there.
It's pretty cute. And he's gotten mad at us.
I think he's a visitor. If you're actually here and
you're a member, I really would like to meet you.
But he chews us out for where we go on mission trips.
And so why are you going over there when we have lost people
right here? And I try to help them
understand. Well, we do that too, you know,
I mean, lost is lost. But at some point, how seriously
are we taking that? If your family member or your
neighbor or your friend at work or whoever else is lost, this is
what they face. And at some point, we got to
decide whether we're more afraid to talk to them about Jesus
right now, or are we more afraid of what they're going to face in
eternity. I know some of you do,
especially those who are here tonight.
But these people really are going to die and go to hell.
And there's a massive percentage of them.
I'm talking thousands of people around us right now
statistically who are lost. We have thousands more of them
moving in who are lost. Millions and millions and
millions and millions and millions and millions.
I could use the B word, but I like saying millions around the
world. the United States of America is the is now some would
say 4th. It's it's actually third.
I think we've beaten Indonesia outside of China and India.
We are the third largest unsaved nation on the planet.
And it's getting worse. But it's, it's it that's kind of
that's kind of big, isn't it? To kind of wrap your head around
billions or millions or third largest.
But what that means is is that's your friend.
That's the guy across the street, that's the guy you work
with. You're too scared to talk to.
You're afraid you might offend him, afraid you might bother
him, afraid you might push him further away.
Well, you can't get further away in hell.
And so at some point we got to make a decision where's where's
the balance of significance and priority, right, to share with
somebody. And as I've shared with you
before, and I swear my testimony got criticized more than
anything I've done at Inglewood. It's been a fascinating
experience, My story of my own life.
I was told by multiple people how I should have told my story,
which I really find fascinating. It's just funny what people
think they ought to do and come up and say to me when I'm just
being descriptive about my real story.
But Teresa and I will both so the day we die, scream to the
fact that if individual people did not care enough about us to
come and share the gospel with us, we would be dying.
We would die and go to hell. We wouldn't.
We weren't. We weren't that.
We wouldn't be in a room like this.
We would have never come to a church.
She even tried going to a church as a vacation Bible school as a
kid, but they never once shared the gospel.
Now, I'm saying all this to try to drive home a point.
And if it seems pointed, good, because one of the things that
we're not doing a good job of at Inglewood is personal
evangelism. Now we're seeing people save.
So shouldn't I be happy we're going to baptize again, Coming
up with it seems that lots of people save.
Not enough, not nearly enough. So I hope this motivates us to
reach out with the gospel with a tremendous passion sense of
urgency because we need to really understand that people
are going to face eternity. So do you know if you're
listening to me either here or online, do you know which Lord
you serve and who you're going to follow into eternity?
This is biblical fact because you can know you can know for
sure. And I pray you will.
A humorous tombstone marking 100 year old tombstone reads like
this. Pause, stranger, when you pass
by. As you are now, so once was.
I am. I am now, so you will be.
So prepare for death and follow me.
And if somebody came along and scratched underneath that,
saying the words to follow you, I'm not content until I know
which way you went. I'm so thankful for the free
gift of salvation. I'm thankful for the promise of
eternal life with Him. Sometimes I fear that we grow
too attached to this very temporary place.
We're here for a reason. We're here for a season, we're
here to perform a function, we're here to fulfill a mission,
and then we get to go home. So let's work hard together to
bring Him great glory and to help Him redeem the nation's
Father. We thank you so much for your
love and your grace. Father, I was a little
overwhelmed today, frankly, with this.
It's very heavy and it it can be very personalized.
Father, because I, I saw faces, I saw people as I was finishing
this today, people, Father, I know who did not ever believe in
you People I know who there's no way biblically they would be
saved. And father, I'm not the judge of
many and I don't judge many. I know these people intimately.
So, Father, I pray, Lord, that you'll help us to not let one
more pass that door. Father, forgive us when we take
this too lightly. Forgive us, Father, when we take
sin too lightly. Forgive us when we take you too
lightly. And motivate us, Father, with a
sense of urgency to share with others about who you are and
what you've done and how they can avoid all of this.
Father, I pray, Lord, that you'll put people on our
pathway, That, Father, you'll give us names and faces and our
hearts and our minds. Lord and Father, as I pray for
students in evangelism classes at the seminary, I pray, Father,
that you won't let us sleep at night.
You'll haunt us with those people's faces and names.
You'll burden us, Father, with them.
And Lord, we will pray, but we'll do more than pray.
We will actually talk to them about you.
We got to back it up with a life, Father.
We got to show them, too. We can't say one thing and live
another. And so, Father, help us
consistently. There are so many people right
around us right here in Rocky Mount and Nashville and Red Oak
and the surrounding area. So many people who don't know
you, so many people have nothing to do with your body, the
church. And I pray, Father, that you'll
help us, Lord, to recognize what we need to do for him.
So, Father, help us as we begin to go out together and share
with others about you. We thank you in Christ's name,
Amen. Thank you so much for listening
today. And I also hope that you'll go
to ourwebsite@englewoodbaptist.com
as well as our app and find many other resources that will bless
you and your families. Thank you once again.