Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro: There is a word in the English language that is often used, is always negative, and few preachers like to preach about it.

Do you know what it is?

Hell.

Hell is charactered in many comic strips, rolled off the tongue as “light profanity,” screamed as a curse in people’s faces, feared by some, rejected by others, and yet it remains mostly misunderstood.

To some within the psychology movement, hell is defined as “a place of, and for, self endurance.”

Definitions do not get much better when you look at what some “churches” teach about hell.

One of the major denominations now teaches that hell is not real, but is only added into the Bible to scare people into being good.

A Gallup Poll showed most Europeans believe in heaven but not in hell.

While a survey in Australia shows that almost 80% doubt the existence of hell.

As WA Criswell said, “I have never been to heaven, and I have never been to hell.

So I must trust what God has told me about such places.”

Today we want to take at what the Bible teaches about hell, and how that effects us and those around us.

Theme: God told us of hell to help us and so we could help others.

I. Does hell really exist?

A. The Bible speaks of hell in both the old and the new testaments some 84 times.

* Because we believe the Bible from cover to cover as the literal Word of God, without error, and wholly accurate in all it addresses, we must believe in a literal hell.

ILL.

A man brought forward his argument against the Bible, declaring, “I am seventy years of age, and have never seen such a place as hell, after all that has been said about it.”

His little grandson, of about seven years of age, who was had been listening, asked him, “Pop, have you ever been dead yet?” —Foster

The Bible does not ever say we will see evidence of hell while here on earth.

It grieves me when people equate the worst of this world with hell.

From what I read in the Bible, hell will be much worse!

B. It is significant that the most descriptive and conclusive utterances about hell come from the lips of Jesus.

· Jesus started referring to Hell from the Sermon on the Mount.

To say He was wrong about that, calls into question all of His teaching there.

· We must accept that Jesus was telling the truth because if He lied about hell then His death could not have paid for our sins.

· He would know more than us.

He is the “pre-existent one.”

II.

What is it?

Nelson's Topical Bible Index, Tyndale Bible Dictionary and a review of the Bible describe hell as follows:

A. Hell is described as:

· It is outer darkness.

Matt.

8:12

· It is a place of weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Matt.

8.12; 13.42,50

· It has gates and locks.

Matt.

16:18; Rev. 1:18 “...the Living One.

I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hell.”

· It is the place of the lost.

Matt.

23:33

· It is everlasting fire.

· It is the place of torment.

Luke 16.23 “...being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side.

M. F. Rich, an atheist, cried, “I would rather lie on a stove and broil for a million years than go into eternity with the eternal horrors that hang over my soul!

I have given my immortality for gold, and its weight sinks me into an endless, hopeless, helpless Hell.”

· It is a prison. 1 Pet.

3:19

· It is gloomy darkness.

2 Peter 2.4

· It is the Lake of Fire.

Rev. 19:20

· It is everlasting punishment.

Matt.

25:46

· It is exclusion from the presence of the Lord. 2 Thes.

1:9

Although the biblical descriptions of hell are stated in very physical and literal terms, the essential character of hell shouldn’t be conceived in or limited to the descriptions listed above.

This truth does not detract from the horror or the gravity of the situation in hell, because nothing could possibly be worse than separation from every good from God and the torment of an evil conscience.

Hell is hell for those who are there essentially because they are completely alienated from every blessing and every good attribute of God, and wherever there is alienation from God, there is always separation from one’s friends.

This is a place of no relief!

This is the worst possible punishment to which anyone could be subject: to be totally and irrevocably cut off from God.

The Tyndale Bible Dictionary adds:

Another painful consequence of such a condition is to be at odds with oneself—torn apart from within by an accusing sense of guilt and shame.

This condition is one of total conflict: with God, one’s neighbours, and oneself.

This is hell!

The conditions hell represents are more intense and real than the figures of speech in which they are expressed.

Tyndale Bible dictionary, Tyndale House Publishers, Wheaton, Ill., 2001, Page 592

B. The punishment of hell is described as:

· Bodily Matt.

5:29, 30 “...that your whole body be thrown into hell.”

· In the soul Matt.

10:28 “...Him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

· Eternal Rev 20.10

"Hell is truth seen too late, duty neglected in its season."

III.

Who is hell for?

Hell is a place prepared for:

· Devil and his angels

· The Beast and the false prophet

· Worshippers of the beast

· People who do evil

· Rejecters of the Gospel Matt.

10:14-15 “And if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that house or town.

15 Truly, I say to you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town.”

IV.

What should we do with our God given knowledge of hell?

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

-Karl Marx

A. Rejoice in the God of our salvation.

As Mt 13.52 says, “Bring out the treasure”!

“Let the most gifted writer exhaust his skill in describing this roaring cavern of unending flame, and he would not have even brushed in fancy the nearest edge of hell.

Hell was originally “prepared for the Devil and his angels”— not for man!

Little wonder that there is joy in heaven over one sinner that repented.

He is saved, redeemed, rescued.

It makes the hearts in heaven glad.”

“Morality may keep you out of jail, but it takes the blood of Jesus Christ to keep you out of hell.”

-Spurgeon

B. Reach out to the unsaved with compassion.

As Comfortable As Possible Now

A drunkard husband, spending the evening with his mates at a pub, boasted that if he took a group of his friends home with him at midnight and ask his Christian wife to get up and cook supper for them, she would do it without complaint.

The crowd considered it a vain boast and dared him to try it with a considerable wager.