Jesus = Life / An Eternal Choice

So, we talked about death last week. A wonderful topic to discuss. I mean I’m sure you all have parties and get-togethers, like at Christmas, and you have a meal and discuss dying. Wonderful thoughts.

So today, I thought since we had some an incredible and joyous time talking about our impending physical demise, that, we’d do it all again, in a way, with an equally heavy and dark topic.

The Second Death

Another way of going at this is discussing Heaven and Hell. Equally heavy right?

I mean we’re all ok with talking talking about Heaven. Sure…eternal happiness, peace, rest, nothing bad, sunshine and no shadows, no pain or suffering, no tears, no sadness. Yeah we can talk about that all day long! We could do sermons and classes on that…we love happy thoughts don’t we?

But hell. Like death…the topic of Hell will quiet a room as quickly as the topic of death. However, in our current culture, there’s a different feeling surrounding the idea of hell.

With death we do sometimes see it, experience it. Even though, currently, our culture doesn’t like to talk about it. With Hell…its that possibility that’s far off in the distance. We’ve heard talk about it…messages about it…philosophy about it, but we’ve never witnessed someone go there, interviewed while there…no “live at 5pm” we’ll be touring hell.

We’ve seen pictures of fire and the devil with a pitch fork living there…its hot. We don’t like those images....

We hear people joke about it. But when we hear people joke, they joke about being there with all of the friends…and its just a place away from Heaven…a different place.

We also hear, nowadays, objections to the idea of hell being a place in reality. A place of, what scripture calls, a second death.

So the idea might be....so if God is real, how can an loving God send people there?

So we have a little work to do today in simply reading scripture, and getting maybe more firm grasp on the idea…and the implications.

You may have seen the news articles in the last few weeks talking about the story behind the “Hell is Real” sign that is on the side of I71 heading south of Columbus. The guy who put the sign up, as well as many others around the country, said it was just something he felt God put on his heart. All he wanted to do was help people think. Maybe ask…what if? What if it’s real.

We don’t like to think about it.

But our scriptures, God’s Word, talks about it a lot…similar to our physical death, God’s Word talks about a final judgement.

A couple of years ago the Pew Research Center conducted a poll here in the United States and asked a number of questions around the subjects of Heaven and Hell.

Of all the people they asked, 73% believe that Heaven is real…that it is a part of reality. Of all the people asked, 62% believe that hell is real…that it is a part of reality.

Now, those who took the survey who call themselves Christians, 92% believe heaven is real. But only 79% believe hell is part of reality.

The younger the people were, the more likely they were to answer that there isn’t hell.

Even among those who aren’t Christians, people believe that there very well might be some type of life after death…and some of those believe it is where you might be tested even more…to grow…in some way…to get better again.

A majority of those who believe in an afterlife…nearly 60+%, believe you might meet God. Of those who believe in hell, about 44% think you get to meet the devil.

Here’s the basis …for those who believe and don’t believe in Jesus…both. It is easier to believe in a “good place” after death. And again…a majority of people do.

However, when thinking of a place away from goodness and love and joy and happiness…a place away from God…people are less likely to think this could be true.

And I think this is because 1) we have trouble thinking about something like eternal punishment and 2) we have trouble thinking that a loving God could send someone to hell.

C.S. Lewis wrote this: “There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity.”

This is not easy for us.

Here are the major ideas we see in scripture, and we’ll use a few verses to help us see these

Last week we talked about death of our physical bodies. It is something that will come to us all…but the resurrection of Jesus shows that if we believe and follow Him, we will be resurrected as he was, even if we die…and into His glory.

And its in this part of the discussion where we begin to hear about this second death, as John writes about in Revelation. Those who will be resurrected…but not to his glory. Jesus talks about this as well, as recorded in the gospels.

Let’s think about this....Jesus came to save us. Jesus came to save us…but from what? Why is he really called the savior?

Here’s what Jesus says...

Matthew 10:28 NIV

28 Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

The words of Jesus.

In Matthew chapters 24-25 Jesus talks about the “end of the age.” And its inside of this discourse from Jesus that we hear him talk about the choices people make…to follow him and the father or …not to follow…and the rewards or punishments for both.

You have the trustworthy and foolish servants. The 10 young girls and the bridegroom, the parable of the servants and talents.

He then moves on to say…at some point in the future… he will come with the angels to separate the sheep from the goats.

To those on his right…the sheep:

Matthew 25:34 NIV

34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.

To those on his left…the goats:

Matthew 25:41 CSB

41 “Then he will also say to those on the left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels!

Jesus finishes this discourse by saying this:

Matthew 25:46 CSB

46 “And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

Hard things to hear. Eternity is a long time. This is a heavy subject. And then the looming question…how can God do something like this?

Well, that is a major objection to God…among a few others.

So lets look at these to help us think through this. And we’ll add some more scripture as well.

And to be sure, there are many more scriptures in our bulletin for today…and everyone who has an email listed in our directory received these weekly in their email. Which makes it easy…because you can open up the sermon info, and click on one of the passages and look it up right there on your phone or your tablet or your computer. So I encourage you to do that.

So we often hear this objection…if God, who is infinitely good, send people to infinite punishment?

I heard one person talking about this recently…they were talking about a comedian, George Carlin, who seems to have been a believer formerly, and on bit in one of his shows he would use this paradox as a laugh line...

There’s this God who will send you to hell forever because you did this one sin...

and then he would say…but of course this is a loving God…and everyone would laugh...

…and that does seem to be a paradox doesn’t it.

So I think it’s good to look at it this way...

Two things about God.

God is love. He doesn’t just love some and hate others. He doesn’t have bad loving days…like He only loves when he feels like it...

He is love. God is love...

....and example the sun shines on the good and the bad equally…God loves everyone equally.

The other thing is this, God gives us free will. And we’re different than all the other parts and pieces of creation. They give glory back to God just be being what they were intended to be. We have something else added…we give glory back to God by freely loving Him in return, obeying and following Him. Doing His will....all of those things are how we love Him in return, but we’re not forced to do this nor are we determined…like we operate out of a computer code. No, we have free will.

So we have a freedom. To respond to God freely…or to not. We can abuse our gift of freedom too. That’s the nature of freedom. I’m free to love other people…but in that same sense I’m also free to use or abuse other people as well.

It’s no different with God. We can abuse His freedom…given to us.

We can say “no” to God but what does that bring? Suffering…When we say yes to God, to Jesus, we receive life…joy peace happiness…when we say no…we walk away from joy peace happiness...

In a sense we steal glory from God for our own purpose..

and in that we have acted toward God with injustice…and we’ve received suffering.

Hell…is the answer of the call for justice…short of Christ’s forgiveness. Suffering is the answer to God’s call of us to be righteous…short of Jesus’ gift of the Holy spirit to recreate us from the inside out.

Hell is the final and definitive answer of NO to God. God must, because of His goodness, allow, even plan for justice…based off of our free choice to walk away from Him…and His goodness.

Jesus, in the gospels, isn’t trying to be mean when he talks about eternal punishment, even banishment from God’s presence…it’s a warning. This is what will happen because a loving God wants and even demands justice. Not because he needs it…but simply because that’s what sin does. Sin creates suffering.

Party example....

The other objection we commonly see is this one. Eternal? An eternal hell? How does this really come into play.

Well, the Bible speaks of it. So we have that. There are some theologians who have, recently, had trouble with this just because it seems so bad.

Someone being in hell forever…non-stop…never again to taste anything good in life.

That is a hard thought. It’s hard to … evey contemplate that thought.

But think of it this way. If someone went to hell....and then at some point in time, God said, Ok…all done…that would be a form of mercy in a sense wouldn’t it be. Now, if that is true, then that would mean that there’s yet another chance out of the results of not believing in Christ.

Jesus said this in the book of revelation.

Forever…we’re thinking about this concept of forever...

Revelation 20:10 CSB

10 The devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet are, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.

Just beyond this the Lord says,

Revelation 20:14–15 CSB

14 Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. 15 And anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.

Justice....perfect justice forever. Eternity.

Here’s what we read. All will die, except those that will be here when Jesus begins this process. And then the dead in Christ will rise…and will be judged according to the forgiveness given to them through Jesus’ death. The rest will rise to be judged as well…and without the grace of Jesus, they will be given the second death.

Now…we can either believe this or not believe it.

It is a hard thing to think about though.

But think of this through the eyes of God. He

Matthew 25:46 CSB

46 “And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”