Sermon Tone Analysis

! Introduction:

Those questions are reasonable, and they need to be faced honestly.

It won’t do to pretend such difficulties are easy to answer, or simply ignore them and hope they go away.

Anyone who thinks deeply about God will eventually come face-to-face with those very questions and others like them.

They are unsettling, vexing, even bewildering questions.

Genuinely satisfying answers to them are elusive.

There’s no point in pretending such questions should pose no problems for the Christian.

In fact, history reveals that those who settle for easy answers to these questions often make shipwreck of the faith.

Usually they will cite Scripture selectively and ignore half of some important biblical truth while grossly overemphasizing the other half.

And so they tend to go to extremes.

The casualty list of those who have run on the rocks over these questions is enough to make the discerning Christian realize that these are hazardous waters to navigate.

/Universalism,/ for example, teaches that in the end everyone will be saved.

Universalists believe that because God is love, He cannot eternally condemn anyone.

In the end, they believe, hell will not even exist.

Some teach that the devil and his fallen angels will be redeemed.

As we shall shortly see, Scripture contradicts such a view (Rev.

20:10).

Another attempt to solve the dilemma posed by God’s love is a theory known as /annihilationism/.

Under this scheme, God takes believers to heaven and puts the rest out of existence.

They experience no conscious punishment or suffering; they are judged by having their existence terminated.

According to this view, therefore, there is no such place as eternal hell.

Many cults and apostate denominations have embraced this doctrine.

A doctrine closely related to annihilationism is a theory known as /conditional immortality./

This view suggests that the human soul is transient until immortality is bestowed upon it.

Since eternal life is given only to believers, all others simply pass into oblivion after the final judgment.

This view is gaining popularity these days, but it too contradicts Scripture (Matt.

25:46; Rev. 14:11).

Those views may serve to salve human emotion to some degree, but they don’t do justice to what Scripture teaches.

Therefore, they are errors—and extremely dangerous ones at that, because they give people a false sense of safety.

Jesus Himself described hell in graphic terms.

In fact, He had more to say about hell than anyone else in Scripture.

He described it as a place “where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched” (Mk.

9:48).

He called hell “outer darkness; [where] there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt.

8:12; 25:30).

He warned unbelievers about the judgment to come: “There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth there when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but yourselves being cast out” (Lk.

13:28).

He described hell as “unquenchable fire” (Matt.

3:12) and a “furnace of fire” (Matt.

13:42).

And He warned those who heard Him preach, “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life crippled, than having your two hands, to go into hell, into the unquenchable fire” (Mk.

9:43).

Furthermore, Revelation 14:11 describes hell’s torments as unremitting and eternal: “The smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever; and they have no rest day and night.”

Revelation 20:10 states, “They will be tormented day and night forever and ever.”

Matthew 25:46 says, “These [unbelievers] will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

That verse employs the same Greek word for “eternal” (aionios—meaning “perpetual, everlasting, forever”) to describe both the bliss of heaven and the punishments of hell.

Embracing any of these theories also usually has the effect of making people indifferent to evangelism.

They begin to feel comfortable that everyone will either be saved or put out of misery, so evangelism loses its urgency.

The gospel seems less compelling.

It becomes easy to kick back and think less about eternal matters.

And that is precisely the effect these theories have had in churches and denominational groups where they have been espoused.

As the churches become liberal, the “Christians” influenced by them become cold to spiritual things.

Many times they deny the faith altogether.

The history of universalism provides abundant evidence of this.

Because the doctrine is at its heart a denial of Scripture, it is a sure road to serious apostasy.

But one can easily err in the other direction as well.

As I noted earlier, there are some Christians who ponder the hard questions about divine love and conclude that God simply does not love people who aren’t His own; He hates them.

Under this scheme, there’s no tension between the love of God and His wrath.

There’s no reason to wonder how God can love people whom He ultimately condemns, because you simply conclude that whoever He condemns He hates.

The non-elect are people whom God never loved in any sense.

People who hold this view are quick to remind that God is angry with the wicked (Ps.

7:11); that He loved Jacob but hated Esau (Rom 9:13); and that He hates those who practice wickedness (Prov.

6:16–19).

They conclude that such hatred and genuine love are mutually exclusive.

Therefore according to this view, the love of God is limited to the elect alone.

That view doesn’t do justice to Scripture, either.

It restricts God’s love to a remnant, and pictures Him hating the vast majority of humanity.

In terms of sheer numbers, it suggests that God’s hatred for humanity overwhelms His love.

That is not consistent with the God of Scripture, who is “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth” (Exod.

34:6).

It doesn’t seem befitting for the One whom Scripture describes as “a God of forgiveness, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness” (Neh.

9:17).

And it doesn’t seem consistent with the truth of Psalm 145:8–9: “The Lord is gracious and merciful; slow to anger and great in lovingkindness.

/The Lord is good to all, and His mercies are over all His works”/ (emphasis added).

And what about “God so loved the world” (Jn.

3:16)?

I realize that there are some good commentators who have tried to limit the meaning of the word “world” in this verse to the elect alone.

As noted in chapter 1, however, that view seems to run contrary to the whole thrust of the passage.

John Calvin correctly saw this verse as a statement that “the Father loves the human race.”

1 In fact, the whole point of verse 17 is to assert that Christ’s advent was a search-and-rescue mission, not a crusade for judgment: “For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through Him” (v.

17).

The point is that God’s primary purpose in sen

design to condemn.

Christ’s purpose in coming was to save, not to destroy.

Inevitably, those who want to limit the meaning of “world” in verse 16 will suggest that “world” in verse 17 cannot include every individual in the world, unless this passage is teaching a form of universalism.

The verse says Christ came so that the /world/ might be saved through Him.

Obviously not every individual in the world is saved.

Therefore, they suggest, “world” in both verses must be limited to the elect alone, and the verse can only mean, “God so loved /the elect./”

But “world” in this context seems clearly to speak of humanity in general.

If we try to make the term mean either “every individual” or “the elect alone,” the passage simply makes no sense.

The word “world” here is a synonym for the human race.

Humanity in general is the object of divine love.

And verse 17 simply means that Christ came to redeem this fallen race—not every individual, but humanity as a race.

Titus 3:4 also speaks of God’s love in these very terms: “The kindness of God our Savior and His /love for mankind/ appeared” (emphasis added).

The whole sweep of these texts seems to be saying that in a broad sense God’s love is set on the whole human race, not just the remnant of elect individuals.

Indeed, to make good sense of this passage, we must interpret the expression “world” in verses 16 and 17 as broadly as we understand the same word in verse 19: “And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their deeds were evil.”

Clearly the word “world” has a universal and corporate aspect that envelops more than just the elect alone.

God’s love is for the world in general, the human race, all humanity.

So how are we to understand Romans 9:13: “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated”?

Did God really hate Esau?

Yes.

He hated the evil Esau represented.

He hated Esau’s unbelief and sin and worldliness.

And in a very real sense, God hated Esau himself.

It was not a petty, spiteful, childish kind of hatred, but something far more dreadful.

It was divine antipathy—a holy loathing directed at Esau personally.

God abominated him as well as what he stood for.

Esau, for his part, hated the things of God.

He despised His birthright and sold it for one bowl of lentil stew (Gen.

25:34).

He brought nothing but grief to his parents (26:35).

He plotted to kill his own brother (27:41).