If Not Heaven...
Heaven • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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· 6 viewsWestern Heights Baptist Church, August 5, 2023
Notes
Transcript
Background to passage: Jesus continues to lay out the warnings of coming judgment at the end of the age related to the Kingdom of God. He speaks in this parable about God’s Judgment moving through the waters of life like a net with men seemingly moving about in freedom oblivious to the wrath that is to come upon them. And since we already spoke of the separation of God in the parable of the wheat and the tares, I want to further investigate the horrors of verse 50, as this parable centers its focus on the end of the wicked. Jesus spoke more about hell than about heaven; more about hell than about love; more about hell than all of the other prophets and apostles did.
47 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind.
48 When it was full, men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into containers but threw away the bad.
49 So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous
50 and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Opening illustration: Central Baptist Church in Waycross, GA put their pastor on notice that they didn’t want him preaching on hell without a two week notice to the entire church body, so that those who didn’t want to hear it, or their children to hear it could be absent.
Main thought: To close the series on Heaven, we must preach about Hell and what it’s like
1) The Physical Torture (Matt 13:50)
1) The Physical Torture (Matt 13:50)
50 and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
1) The Physical Torture (v. )
1) The Physical Torture (v. )
Explanation: The first thing that usually comes to our minds is pain. The biblical language at this point is very explicit on this point. Just as resurrected saints will be fitted with glorified bodies in which to take in and enjoy all the glories of God throughout eternity, so will resurrected sinners be fitted with supernaturally empowered bodies that will be able to endure physical sensations that would normally kill a person. Death reigns there, but not physical death. After the degeneration of the body, worms no longer can harm, but not in hell. Hellish worms will always be eating at the dying flesh of imprisoned sinners. The stench will be unbearable—brimstone smells of sulfur, rotten eggs. There will be continuous fighting, biting, desiring, and yet no one wins or is quenched of any need.
17 His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
24 And he called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.’
42 “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.
43 And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire.
Illustration: Apocalyptic literature describes much torture in detail—Dante’, Apoc of Peter
Application: Any physical pain that you experience here on earth is a picnic to hell. Think of the worst pain you have ever felt physically. Now think about that going on continually throughout eternity. The physical torture is enough for one not to want to go there. And interestingly enough it has also been the reason that many have ceased to believe in biblical doctrines such as this one. But this is nothing compared to the spiritual tortures that await the fearful and unbelieving.
2) The Spiritual Torture (2 Thess 1:6-9)
2) The Spiritual Torture (2 Thess 1:6-9)
6 since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you,
7 and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels
8 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.
9 They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might,
2) The Spiritual Torture (2 Thess 1:6-9 )
2) The Spiritual Torture (2 Thess 1:6-9 )
Explanation: The torture of the soul is more intense than that of the body. Mental, emotional, and spiritual pains will be enormous there. One phrase from the biblical repertoire speaks of outer darkness. There will be an absence of light, joy, pleasure, and love in hell. Sinners will not party with friends, or continue to sin in any way. One will have no friends there. There will be no satisfaction there for any desire. The continuous weeping, screaming and wailing will not be mind-numbing, but will intensify every other aspect. The conscious presence of God will not be there. Therefore, anything good will be absent. Yet the memories of these things will remain. There will be varying degrees of punishment in this place, but all will be everlasting. Annihilation would be a welcome thought, but not a biblical one. And there is no chance of ever escaping.
2 And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
11 And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name.”
26 And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.’
Illustration: The horror of hell is not physical pain. After all, the Bible tells us hell was “prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt. 25:41), and they’re not physical beings. Rather the fire and outer darkness and the thirst depict spiritual separation from God, moral remorse, the consciousness that one deserves what he’s getting.
Application: Think of the worst heartbreak, the worst anger, the worst mental anguish, and think about how this will go on in hell for eternity. There is a longing in the human heart for God, and we all experience common grace, and natural revelation on earth, but there will be a longing for something that will never be quenched. There will be no human relationships that will satisfy. There will be no hope there. There will be no mercy, no love, no peace. Just as one cannot conceive of heaven and its joys, the finite mind cannot conceive of the depths of agony that hell with bring. These thoughts we have had this morning are the best God can do with a language and minds that can’t fathom the horrors of hell.
3) The Justification of God (Rom 2:5)
3) The Justification of God (Rom 2:5)
5 But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.
3) The Justification of God (Rom 2:5)
3) The Justification of God (Rom 2:5)
Explanation: One commentator called the doctrine of hell “the most emotionally hard to accept” doctrine in Christianity. And that it is. Let’s think about it for a minute. Why hell? The true character of God is complete, unadulterated, absolute purity and holiness. He cannot look upon, be in the presence of, or carry out any form of sin. His holiness burns with the flame of fire anything that is offensive to His nature. It is a minor wonder that all sin is not consumed and punished immediately. And for God to maintain His holiness and justice, sin must be punished. But eternally? Think about the real offense of sin. It has taken the most worthy, priceless, beautiful, costly, and valuable thing in the universe and assessed it as worthless, useless, irrelevant, and ugly; trampling the glory of God.
41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
28 Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses.
29 How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace?
18 And “If the righteous is scarcely saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?”
11 Say to them, As I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?
9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
Illustration: I see the doctrine of hell as being probably the major stumbling block to the return of a de-Christianized world to Christ. The doctrine of eternal damnation, more than any other teaching of the church, produces atheism. If you examine closely all the big-name atheists—like Feuerback and Nietzsche—it is this teaching more than any other that offended them and turned them away. Out of these famous atheists came all the movements that have caused so much hell here and now. If God is to practice what He preaches, then it makes it hard to believe in eternal damnation. “What can be too severe a penalty for those who reject the incarnate God, and refuse to obey the commands of His mercy? They deserve to be flooded with wrath, and they shall be; for upon all who rebel against the Savior, ‘wrath has come upon them to the uttermost’ (I Thessalonians 2:16). God’s indignation is no trifle. The anger of a holy, just, omnipotent, and infinite Being is above all things to be dreaded; even a drop of it consumes, but to have it poured upon us is inconceivably dreadful.” -Spurgeon
Application: 1. We should never speak of hell with any joy that others will go, but brokenheartedly. We know that Jesus affirmed the reality of Hell. And we know that He is God, and therefore anything that He believes and establishes is right and good in its design and purpose. If we could understand all about God, and understand the nature of His character and His reasons for Hell, we would agree that it is just and right. Therefore, we must affirm its reality, and seek to warn others, all the while maintaining the justice of God.
Closing illustration:
31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
11 Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others. But what we are is known to God, and I hope it is known also to your conscience.
28 Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.
15 And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
· We should be most grateful for our deliverance
· We should be mindful of the seriousness of sin
· We should be emboldened to go and warn and persuade others
· We should be further in awe of the revelation of who God really is
· We should always speak of hell with a tear in our eye
· The purpose of hell, like everything else is the glory of God