Tough Questions: Part 2 - A Voice From Hell
Luke 16:19-31; 2 Thessalonians 1:8-9; Romans 5:8-9; 2 Peter 3:9
SERMON TRANSCRIPT
Well, there's an unwritten rule in churches that if you want your church to be happy, to enjoy Sunday, to come back, and to be with us next week, you don't talk about hell, you don't talk about politics, and you don't talk about money. Well, some good news for you this morning. We're going to save politics and money for another Sunday, but we're going to be talking about hell today. Whoo. Sorry, I got some bad news. There is, I would say, kind of a cultural awkwardness around hell, especially this word. Growing up, I wasn't allowed to say that word. I would get in trouble, the old soap in the mouth kind of a thing. I was raised a little old school, but I wasn't allowed to say the word hell, so we replaced it with H-E, double hockey sticks. Anybody else? Yeah? H-E, double hockey sticks. And maybe to date me a little bit, we had physical calculators in school. And if you wanted to, you could type out 7734, flip the calculator upside down, and it would say, hell. We thought we were so cool as kids. Look at that. There were also other words you could type out with numbers and flip it upside down, but we'll save that for another sermon. The word hell gets thrown around a lot today, right? There's some common casual uses of this word. One might be something you could probably say to something. It'd be one of the meanest things to say to them, but you could tell them, you, you could go to hell. Maybe you would hear our society and world to say, ah, this world's just going to hell in a hand-basket, right? Or maybe you're out here driving on 65 or 80. You're trying to go through the past the malls, the worst traffic in Northern California right there. And you get cut off and then you do the WTH finger hands. You're like, what's going on, man? Why are you doing that? Or maybe if you've ever spent any time in the South, you might've heard from time to time, “Ah hell no!”
It's easy to laugh about hell because the topic is weighty it's complicated it's scary and as a child growing up i grew up in the church and uh i had a little bit of a fear of hell i don't remember the church really talking about hell on the regular but i knew it was a bad place It was for bad people. It was hot and I did not want to go there. Absolutely not. And this would come up from time to time when I might have an anxious prayer of God, please don't send me to hell. Please. And it would come up quite often as I would get in trouble. Shocker, I'd get in trouble as a kid, okay? I would pray, God, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to do that. Please don't send me to hell. And we're in a series today called Tough Questions. Pastor Lauren kicked us off last week. And we're going to wrestle with some of these questions today, and one specifically around hell. And I want to give you some scripture and kind of some understanding to help us kind of unpack this topic a little bit. But the big question comes up, and I get asked this a lot as a pastor, and maybe you do as a believer or a Christ follower, that why would a loving God send people to hell? Why would a loving God send people to hell? Because there's some tension here, right? We talk about how God is great, how he's loving. We sing about that this morning. Won't forget all your mercies and your love. Your love is unfailing. Lord, I'm grateful. You're amazing. So we see that, and yet hell involves an eternal fire, this weeping and gnashing of teeth, and it gets stuck because it's like, I hear that, but then we talk about loving. There's just one of these things is not like the other, right? These aren't lining up.
And so I want to talk and kind of address hell today, if that's okay with you guys. Hell is indeed a real place. But if I wasn't sure if hell was a real place, and maybe if I was the devil himself, wow, that sounded really strange there. But if I was the devil and hell is a place, I would try to convince people of this. This would be my strategy. I would try to convince people that hell is not real and doesn't need to be taken seriously. Because if I ended up being successful in that, we could live and you have the mindset that I can live however I want. I can justify all my sin. I can reject Christ with no fear of God. I can live a self-centered life. I can crave comfort. I can reject sacrifice. I can avoid persecution. And I can love this temporary world. sadly this kind of describes culture to a bit right so we're going to talk about hell today and hell is actually a subject that is as very profound and found all throughout scripture and in fact it's interesting that Jesus was the one who who talked the most about hell than anybody else and it's surprising because when we see the life of Jesus we see how loving and caring and compassionate of a person he was. And so a thought for you, I want a key insight, is that when Jesus talked about hell, he never used it as a scare tactic to frighten unbelievers into heaven. If you look at the scripture, what he actually does is he uses hell to motivate believers or the spiritual people of that day to live more holy and obedient lives. I want you to hear anything about hell this morning. This is what I want you to hear, okay? Listen to me right here. Jesus doesn't want anybody to go to hell. He doesn't. Jesus deeply, deeply, deeply does not want anybody to go to hell. And Jesus even has a radical teaching on hell. We read in Matthew chapter five, it says, Jesus says this, if your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. Oh, you say, what? It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. This is an extreme metaphor, guys, okay? Like, could you imagine us following this? Like next week we show up and everybody's wearing an eye patch. Like, oh, you too? Yeah, me too? Okay, cool. Stop the page. Like, this is crazy. But that's how much he doesn't want people to go to hell. Jesus said, get rid of part of your body. Jesus here, he's actually talking about lust of the eyes. He's like, if your eyes are stumbling, Just get rid of it so that you can't even see, so you don't even struggle with that. He wants to remove anything in your life that keeps you from serving God. That's his heart. He wants people to avoid hell at all costs.
Jesus uses a very particular word here for hell in the Greek, or Aramaic when he was speaking to the people, here in this chapter in Matthew chapter 5. he reversed to the word meaning Gehenna. And this is actually an actual place. It's actually the valley of, let me get this right, Ben Hinnom. And it's in the southwest region of Jerusalem. We got a picture I want to show us. And this place has an incredibly dark history. This place was actually a place that began to have its origination centuries before Jesus. So this is a new thing Jesus is talking. He's talking centuries earlier. And what happened in this place is that the evil king Ahaz, sacrificed children to a false god, Molech, by burning them in this place. Can you imagine? We read this in Jeremiah 7:31. They said, “They have built the high places of Topheth in the valley of Ben Hinnom to burn their sons and daughters in fire.” You can't believe this. Today, this is actually still a real place and you won't find any homes or businesses or anything in this valley because it is believed to be solely cursed. a place to be completely avoided at all costs, a place cut off from God. Later in life, they had to find a place to put their garbage, and so they chose this location. And they began to fill this valley with their garbage, their human waste, dead animals, sewage, even bodies of executed criminals. And it had a horrendous smell, as you could probably imagine. And there was a smoldering fire in this place that never ceased to burn. A place that gained the nickname, "The land of no more.” No more beauty, no more laughter, peace, friendship, joy, hope, chances. And Jesus' picture of hell here, not just as a basement dungeon in heaven where the bad people go, but a place completely cut off from everything good, cut off from God's presence. And this is our core definition today. So what is heaven? Heaven is defined as the presence of God. And so in turn, hell is defined as the absence of the presence of God. It's a horrible place. the land of no more. So why hell? Why would God even begin to create a place like this? Why does hell exist? Something we have to wrestle with.
And I think there's two reasons, the first of which I think you guys will be on board with, and that is that hell exists for God to righteously punish Satan. Hell exists for God to righteously punish Satan. Satan is the embodiment of all that is evil. Not just a harmless cartoon we might think about, right? Red suit, pitchfork, something that would be very, very not so harsh, right? Maybe we see cartoons or something funny with it. But that's not the reality. The reality is that behind every addiction is Satan. Behind every abuse is Satan. Behind every fear is Satan. Behind pain and shame is the evil one himself. He has titles he used in scripture all throughout the Bible of destroyer, deceiver, dark angel, accuser, tempter, wicked one, thief, father of lies. And his mission is simply this. To steal, to kill, and to destroy. That's all he's about. To steal, to kill, and to destroy. to steal your faith, to kill your joy, to destroy your health or your finances, to steal your marriage, to kill your friendships. This is the father of lies. And hell is a place to punish the embodiment of that evil. It says this in Revelation 20:10, “And the devil who deceived them was thrown in the lake of burning sulfur where the beast and the false prophets had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night forever and ever.” In the end, Revelation tells us the end, that Satan is defeated and thrown into this place forever and is tormented day and night. And this punishment sounds just and fair, right? As you would probably agree that this is where the devil should go. For everything that he has done since the beginning of time, this is fair.
The other one is a little bit harder to walk through and this next verse i want to share with you is is really hard because it's really not what we like we don't want to hear this and especially in our culture today we don't like about it when someone talks about something called sin i don't want to talk about it but this word sin is actually a greek word “hamartia” which means missing the mark. It's actually an archery term. That means that you do not get a bullseye. Anything outside of a bullseye is not God's will. It's not God's best. And doing something that is not God's will, his best plan, wrong in the eyes of him, is sin. And our culture doesn't like that word. Culture prefers to have maybe a view of God that would kind of turn a blind eye to something, right? Be like, okay, I know you're doing that, but I just don't, just don't let me see it. As long as you're not hurting anybody, like, that's fine. Or a view of God that was just like, hey, I saw that. Wink, wink. Hey, don't do that again. Don't do it. But as long as we're not hurting anybody, right? Sin's not that big of a deal, right? It's okay. You do you. You do you. I'm going to do me. We'll not talk about it. Just let it be. But the truth of the matter is that Scripture says that there is a standard to life. And that's holiness. And when we don't hit the mark, it's called sin. The truth is God is a holy, perfect God. Therefore, he must be just. and wickedness and evil must be punished. And you feel and understand this when someone does something wrong to you. You think and say, that needs to be punished. There should be a consequence for their action. And you agree with this.
And so for reason one, hell exists for God to righteously punish Satan, but hell also exists for God to righteously punish evil. And for those who have sinned without Christ, this is the destiny. Paul tells us this very clear, but there is hope in the gospel, okay? Don't go downer on me, just stay with me here. It says this, 2 Thessalonians chapter one, says, “He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut up from the presence of the Lord and from the glories of his might.” So what is hell? Hell is being shut out from the presence of God and his glory. Man, Chris, that sounds harsh. Yeah. It is. It's painful. It's not fun. I don't like to talk about this. You know me. I've never preached a sermon on hell. This is the first time in my ministry career I've ever preached a sermon directly on hell. I don't like to talk about it. There's no joy in it. But if we don't accept the reality of hell, we will never appreciate the depth of God's goodness and grace. Because he is good. God is good.
I want to tell you guys a story. Jesus told this story first. and it's about two guys. And this is the title of today. If you're taking notes, I think it's on your program. But the title is of the story is A Voice from Hell. And Jesus says this in Luke chapter 16. He says, “There is a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every single day.” So here's character number one in the story. This rich man. This rich man, based upon this description we just had in this short verse, was most likely royalty. He was the rich of the rich. And how do we know that? We know that when he says he was dressed in purple. Purple was the most expensive dye in the first century. And only the richest of the richest of the richest could even afford to purchase the dye to have their clothes stained that color. And when they would walk around, you would immediately recognize, that guy's loaded. But you would also know and see that it talks about he was dressed in fine linen. Linen was the creme de la creme of fabric in that time. And that it was said that a single outfit of linen would equal the wages to feed a person for an entire year. So not only is this guy rich, he's wearing the linen, He's also loaded because he stained it purple and he's living in luxury every single day. This is how rich this dude was. We're probably talking equivalent billions dollars equivalent, okay? Jesus continues on, verse 20. “At his gate, the rich man's gate, there was a beggar named Lazarus.” Now this isn't the same Lazarus that Jesus raised from the dead. He's a different bro, but Lazarus. "He was covered in sores, longing to eat from what fell from the rich man's table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.”
Here's character number two, Lazarus. Poor dude's had a rough life. He's had it handed to him. We don't know the history or the story, the background, or anything more than behind this. But he's just outside just trying to survive. He's just trying to make it, not even day to day, he's just trying to make it hour by hour. The guy's got some sort of disease that's got sores on his body. He's sleeping on the streets. He's outside this beggar's house, just hoping that something would get thrown out to him. And in that culture and time, people would eat with their hands. And so after a meal, their hands would be great, messy and nasty. And so they would take bread and actually clean their hands with the bread. And then they would gather up the bread that had fallen on the table and on the floor. The servants of the house would then just go outside and throw it outside the gate. And the dogs, the ravaging dogs of the city would run around cleaning up that food. And so Lazarus is out front of this rich man's gate trying to compete with dogs for scraps of bread that had been wiped on the rich man's hands. Let's just say Lazarus probably had some better days in life than when he is right here now. He's starving. He's living among the dogs. And the dog's even to a point licking his source.
Jesus continues on, verse 22. “The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried.” So both of the bros die. Don't know the context, but they're both dead. Lazarus, the beggar, he's carried by angels to Abraham's side, which we understand as heaven or a place of comfort finally for him. But the rich man, he dies and he goes to Hades. Scripture says this in verse 23. “In Hades, where he was, the rich man was in torment. He looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side.” He recognizes the beggar. So he called to him, The rich man goes to Hades. Hades was known as this place of the dead, a place of punishment. And he's in torment. You can read here. He's in agony. And he cries out, hurting, asking for just a little tiny bit of relief. I don't know about you, if you've ever been just thirsty as all get out, a little drip, you might as well have not given me anything. But that's how desperate this rich man is, just for something. And he's begging for a drop of water. He continues on. Jesus, He says, the rich man says this, “Then I beg you, father, the rich man, send Lazarus to my family for I have five brothers. Let him warn them so that they do not also come to this place of torment.” The rich man is begging Abraham to send Lazarus back to his family, to his brothers, to warn them so they don't end up in the same place as he did. And this is the story. This is what Jesus teaches us.
I see four different kind of thoughts or images I want to pull out from that scripture for us this morning. The first of which is that the rich man was fully conscious and aware. This is scary. He had memory. he remembered the rich man. He remembered his family. He felt pain. He was in agony. He was hurting. And he was full of regrets for his life. Number two, his eternity was irrevocably fixed. It was too late for him. He knew it. There was no more chances, no more do-overs, no more, oh, wow, this is scary, God. Let me try life again. The land of no more. forevermore. Three, he knew his suffering was just. How do we know that, Chris? Well, we knew his suffering was just because he complained about the pain, but never about the injustice. You catch that? He said, this place is horrible. Please help me. But he never said, this is unfair. Send me back. I deserve to be in heaven. He never says that. and finally he begged and pleaded for someone to help his brothers come to know Jesus he begged he pleaded for someone to go tell his brothers about Jesus so that would be saved so that they wouldn't all end up in the same place someone go tell them he's crying out tell them about god's grace his goodness his forgiveness his mercy Jesus doesn't want anybody to suffer like this he doesn't so if i were the deceiver the destroyer the prince of darkness the evil one i would try everything that i could to convince every single person that hell is not that big of a deal don't take it seriously these are fairy tales it's not a real place so that you could then live your life any way that you wanted justify your sinfulness reject christ live a life of no fear live a life ridiculously self-centered reject sacrifice avoid persecution love this world all there is it it's like so many people today but when Jesus talked about hell. It wasn't to scare people to heaven. It was used to motivate people to act like the believers that they are.
And a lot of people will still say, hey, it's not fair that good people go to hell. Pastor Lauren talked about this last week. We need to talk about it again right now, Okay? It's not fair. It's not fair to send good people to hell. Here's the reality. In your purest essence as a person, none of us, including me, are perfectly good. It says in Romans 3:23, “All have sinned.” How many is all? All. “And fall short of the glory of God.” Nah, pastor. Mm-mm, mm-mm. Not falling for your tricks. I know my heart. My heart's good. All right? I'll ask you some questions. A little back and forth interaction, okay?
I want you to raise your hand. I'll be the first person to raise my hand. Have you ever lied? Raise your hand if you've ever lied. I've lied. Okay? I've lied. If you're sitting next to somebody right now who doesn't have their hand up. Uh-huh. Yeah. Hey. Liar, liar. Pants on fire. hang on a telephone wire 7734, upside down okay, okay, okay, okay raise your hand I will raise my hand again first if you have ever stolen anything pastor's stolen before? yes, he has story for another day, it's actually really funny I'll tell you someday, okay I was a kid, I didn't know about it no, no, just kidding, but I still stole, okay okay, so I got one more for you do not raise your hand, okay keep your hand down on this one but uh raise your eyebrows at me okay okay all right have you ever lusted have you ever yeah don't look at the person next to you i'm not starting anything in church right now okay save it for the ride home i'm just kidding okay so we think about that but here's You think, oh, I've never done it. Jesus and his teaching equates, if you have lusted, it's as if you've committed adultery in your heart. Whoa. So, we all are lying, thieving adulterers in the eyes of God. Yikes! Welcome to Spring Valley Church. We're so glad that you're here with us. We want to be a loving, welcoming church with no judgment. We want you to be here encouraged today.
You are not good. So you can't say, why would God send good people to hell? We're not good. It's the reality. We're not. But God is. God is good. God is holy. God is just. And so because of that, he must punish sin. I'll say it again. God is holy and just. He must punish sin. But here's the good news. Good news. You guys held on to good news. I love this. God is not only just, but he is also love. God is love. It's not just what he does. God just doesn't have an action of love. It's actually a character of who he is at his core. It says this in Romans 5:8, “But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.” Still sinners. Continue John verse nine, and since we have been made right in God's sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God's condemnation. For all of us, we are not saved by our own works, our own righteousness. We don't have any. We are saved by the grace of Jesus and the blood of Christ. And that, therefore, there is no condemnation. Guys, this is something to be excited about. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And because of the death of Jesus, he paid the full price for our sins. He satisfied the requirement of God's justice. He displayed his grace. He shows his unquenchable love. That is who Jesus is. That's who Jesus is. He doesn't want anybody to perish or go to hell. Who did Jesus come for? Jesus came for sinners, not the righteous. He came for the sick, not the healthy. He came for to give us and present to us a brokenness to be redeemed from, to be freed from our lies and our lust and our cheating and our envy to bring death to our sins and to give life to our now.
2 Peter talks about this. I love this. This is such a great scripture. 2 Peter 3:9, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead, he is patient. I love that Patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” He's patient Maybe you're here and you're like, I don't know why I'm here I don't know why this God thing, this Jesus He's waiting on you He's drawing you to him You being here this Sunday, this moment right now In that seat, ain't no accident or coincidence He wants you to know this He's drawing you to him He's sending people your way. God is patient, not wanting anybody to perish, but everyone to come to repentance in him.
A loving God doesn't want to send us to hell. In fact, he sent Jesus to save us from hell. This is the mission of Jesus. The enemy mission, kill, steal, destroy, end you, put you down, pull out anything good from your life. Jesus, the Prince of Peace, the King of Kings, the Lamb, the Lion, the Judah, the Alpha, Omega, the Beginning and the King of Kings, everything he is, he came to give us life, to give us joy, to give us peace, to give us hope, to give us mercy. This is who Jesus is. This is why he came. And I want you to know everything within me wants you to know him. That's what I want. I want you to know him. He's amazing. And believe it or not, there was a time when I didn't know Jesus. I thought all pastors were born perfect. No. No. there was time in life where I had to choose Jesus. And I would put him on like a mask and I'd wear him around church and I'd go to school and I'd be around friends and I would take the mask off. Depending on where I was, there was a different mask that I was putting on and it was getting exhausting. It was so hard. And the harder I tried to be like God wanted me to be, the worse I got. And it was exhausting. He smacked me across the face one day in his loving grace that he is. He said, Chris, what are you gonna do? bro, you in or you out? And I said, well, I said, I like when I'm in church. I'm around good people. I like that. I don't like this other Chris. I'm hiding it and I'm playing this game and it just, it's exhausting. Jesus came to me in that moment. in my lies and in my hiding and in my sin and my gunk and my in life.
And he loved me. And he loves you just the way you are. There's no prerequisite. We just read a scripture that said, while we were still sinners, he died for us. He's already paid it. He has life for you. so so Jesus coming and dying on the cross is way more than just for us to avoid hell Jesus dying on the cross isn't fire insurance it isn't a get out of jail free card he wants to give us an eternal life he wants to give us abundant life now here in this moment to bring the presence of God into your life. He wants you to experience that, to give you a peace that scripture says passes all understanding, that people around you aren't gonna know. Like, what? That doesn't make any sense. You're like, yeah, I know. Doesn't either for me. A grace that covers our repeated failing and screw-ups time and time again in our sin. Because those are who in Christ Jesus, there is no condemnation, friends. There's none. There's no levels to heaven. While you lived a Christian for these many years, you get this mansion. But, oh, you're a latecomer? you got the apartment down around the corner on the bottom floor oh you accepted him on your deathbed yeah you're a four-story walk-up no love what it says that Jesus tells the story of of of a farmer who hires people throughout the day to work and some show up at sunrise and work all day some show up at noon some show up in the afternoon and some show up just at the and help the guys put the bushels into the cart. You know what? Every single one of them was paid a full days wage. You know, the ones who had the most stink about it were the ones that were there at dawn. And Jesus is like, that's just how my love works.
So when you start taking heaven, the presence of God, and hell, the absence of God seriously, it changes how we live our lives today. You no longer live for the temporary world. You live for God in heaven forever. You live for his glory because the devil wants to take everything from you, to kill, to destroy, to steal, everything in your life. But Jesus wants to give you not just your life back, but an abundant life. That is greater than anything we could dream or imagine. But it takes a full surrender. It takes full trust for Jesus to come in and bring the freedom and to remove the worry about eternity. And he strengthens us up for this life. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Father, we thank you for your word. God, as we come before you right now in prayer, God, I thank you for this sermon. That is a hard thing to pray. God, but I thank you for the opportunity today for us to be reminded, or maybe here for the first time, about a God who loves us. Not a God that we think we know that would send good people to hell, God, but a good God who sent Jesus to save us from hell.
And so God, right now, I don't wanna be scaring people. I mean, this is the reality of where we're at, but I think I would be remiss, God, if I didn't give an opportunity for people to choose you and say yes to you for the very first time today, Jesus. And so God, as you stir hearts, as you pull people to you, as you draw people to you right now in this moment, maybe you would say, yeah, Chris, you know, I want this Jesus. I want this life. I want this hope. I want this grace, this joy. I need this. You said something about a peace. That doesn't make any sense. God, I need some peace in my life right now. And so maybe for the first time, you would say, yeah, Chris, I want Jesus for the very first time. I want him in my life. If that's you, just look up at me. Thank you. Yes. Thank you, Jesus. And so I would encourage you, I'm going to put a prayer on screen. It's really simple. There's nothing magic about this prayer. It's just a prayer that reminds us of who Jesus is and you calling out to him for forgiveness and safety and life. And so if you would, if you're one, they want to pray that prayer, I'm going to read it out loud. You just pray it in your heart and accept Jesus and accept this grace and this mercy today. It says, it says, Father in heaven, I know that I've lived for myself instead of you. I've sinned against you. But I believe that Jesus died for my sin. So I confess my sin and I ask you to forgive me. I bow to you as Lord and leader of my life. Help me to live from this day forward. In Jesus' name.
As we continue to pray, God, I want to also think of those who have maybe made this decision sometime in their life ago. Maybe it was recent, maybe it was a long time ago, but you've been wrestling with some stuff. Maybe God's been calling you out throughout the sermon or recently of some things in your life that just aren't the way that God wants them to be. You're missing the mark in life. You're sinning. And so I just want to give the opportunity, I'd love this week to intentionally pray for you. And so if that's you, if you would say, hey, pastor, I just need some prayer. I'm fighting some stuff right now. I know I'm not going to hell. I have Jesus, but this life right now, it's just a fight. If that's you, just look up at me. I want to be praying for you this week. Thank you. I need your prayers. I'm fighting. I'm going through it. So Jesus, I thank you for this day. God, I thank you for hard sermons to preach through. But God, I see these as necessary. And so do you. You didn't shy away from this topic of hell when you were here on earth teaching and healing and drawing people to you without ultimately the reason you came, Jesus. And so God, we thank you for this day. We thank you for another Sunday to worship you, to give you praise and glory. And everybody said, Amen.