Article 10: Response and Eternal Destiny
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13 “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.
14 For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.
15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.
16 You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?
17 So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit.
18 A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.
19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
20 Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.
21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’
23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
24 “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.
25 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.
26 And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.
27 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”
Introduction:
In the beginning of the twenty five year old movie, Gladiator, Russell Crowe’s character, Maximus is leading his praetorians into battle with a speech containing the line, “Brothers, what we do in life, echoes in eternity.”
Judgement is foundational to the character of God.
The statement of faith is an exsposition of God’s gospel.
the gospel of Jesus Christ
The evangel
The good news
Our statement sets to unpack the gospel by organizing the essential doctrines of our faith around this central theme.
It brings the whole statement to a fitting conclusion.
Summary of statement and gospel here::::::::
God’s gospel originates in and expresses the wondrous perfections of the eternal, triune God.
2. God’s gospel is authoritatively revealed in the Scriptures.
3. God’s gospel alone addresses our deepest need.
4. God’s gospel is made known supremely in the Person of Jesus Christ.
5. God’s gospel is accomplished through the work of Christ.
6. God’s gospel is applied by the power of the Holy Spirit.
7. God’s gospel is now embodied in the new community called the church.
8. God’s gospel compels us to Christ-like living and witness to the world.
9. God’s gospel will be brought to fulfillment by the Lord Himself at the end of this age.
10. God’s gospel requires a response that has eternal consequences.
Confess aloud Article 10
We believe that God commands everyone everywhere to believe the gospel by turning to Him in repentance and receiving the Lord Jesus Christ. We believe that God will raise the dead bodily and judge the world, assigning the unbeliever to condemnation and eternal conscious punishment and the believer to eternal blessedness and joy with the Lord in the new heaven and the new earth, to the praise of His glorious grace. Amen.
God, man, sin, Jesus, redemption
I. God’s gospel requires a response.
I. God’s gospel requires a response.
Let’s get into our passage in Matthew 7:24-29.
Jesus uses the word everyone. He applies these to everyone who hears them. So it applies to you who hear these words of Jesus and are held accountable to them.
Simply hearing and understanding the teaching of Jesus is not enough. We must respond in belief and repentance. Our lives should reflect this new faith in action.
Respond - to respond, the gospel compels us to respond
Believe
Repent
Two roads of response:
Two gates/ways
David Platt wrote of these verses, “We must hear Jesus. When he says that there is a storm coming, he is not talking about what we so often identify as the “storms of life.” Those storms are real and they are painful—storms like cancer, divorce and losing a loved one—and the Bible certainly addresses them. However, Jesus is referring to a cataclysmic reality, a final and utterly devastating storm of the future judgment of God.”
A storm is a familiar image in scripture for end times judgement.
Jeremiah
Isaiah
Ezekiel
37 For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.
38 For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark,
39 and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.
Danny Akin writes of this:
“Jesus warns his listeners by saying, you deceived yourself into thinking you will be ready, and you are not. You thought listening was enough. You thought superficial allegiance, casual and comfortable Christianity, would suffice. But on that day you will discover you were wrong.”
What kind of ground is your foundation built on?
Revelation brings with it responsibility. The wise man digs down into the bedrock to build his house so that it will stand against the storm but the foolish man builds on the sand.
A house is where you dwell. It’s where you live. The wise man’s life is built on something solid - hearing and doing the words of Jesus. The foolish man does not. So if you are one who has heard the words of Jesus, you are now held responsible for what you have done with them. Have you believed? Have you responded in faith and repentance of sin?
Our confession of Jesus is the foundation we build our lives upon.
When judgement comes:
One stands.
One falls.
This indicates complete destruction.
Let’s dive back into verses 13 and 14 and see how it shows eternal destiny as included in our confession.
13 “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.
14 For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.
II. Eternal destiny.
II. Eternal destiny.
The gospel is not simply a self-help strategy for finding a peaceful and happy existence. It is instead, a matter of eternal significance. Eternity is at stake.
The language Jesus uses is stark in it’s definite terms of narrow and wide. You’re either on the road to life or the road to death. There is no other option.
Two common questions that come up:
those incapable or infants
Those who never hear the gospel
Since the coming of Christ we have no clear biblical gourding to believe that anyone is saved by God apart form conscious faith in Jesus Christ.
This is driven by a benevolent impulse to not want people to go to hell….
The mandate of Christians is to preach the gospel to all nations.
Bodily Resurrection
Physical death is not the end of our existence. Each human being will assume an eternal form which will have our unique personhood and bodily existence. This is the resurrection from the dead.
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.
28 Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice
29 and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.
Physical death is the end of our ability to respond to God in faith. Our eternal destiny is set when we physically die.
27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment,
God will judge the world
God does act in judgment at some moments in human history but the scriptures tell us that there will be a final judgment when God will act to judge the world.
30 The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent,
31 because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
Jesus spoke of this day of judgement frequently. He did not shy away from it.
27 For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done.
Divine judgment - terrifying to some - ultimate accountability to God.
Gives dignity to our lives. God treats us different than the animals. He treats us as responsible, moral agents. We are held accountable for our actions and our choices have eternal consequences.
Necessary for having a real moral order in the universe. We live in an age of moral relativism. The judgment of God gives us an absolute objective standard of morality. All other moral judgments have to conform to it. There is absolute truth.
Necessary if divine goodness will be victorious over evil.
God’s judgment of the world gives meaning to everything we do in this life. No good will be unrewarded. No evil will go unpunished. Gives hope that righteousness will rule in God’s kingdom.
From EC:
“The Bible affirms that each person will be judged “according to what they had done” (Rev. 20:13; Matt. 16:27; Rom. 2:6; 2 Cor. 5:10). In light of what we have already declared concerning the universality of sin,462 such a standard might lead us to despair. But the Bible makes it clear that “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1), for Jesus has taken our judgment upon himself (cf. Rom. 3:21–26).463 This judgment “according to works” will really be a judgment about faith—faith as attested through the fruit of our lives. That is, our works will not be the basis of our salvation but the evidence of our faith in our Savior, Jesus Christ, who alone can save.” - Evangelical Convictions
People are judged according to their deeds but we are saved according to God’s grace. Our faith in Christ alone is the basis for our names being recorded in the Lamb’s Book of Life.
III. There are only two destinations for eternity.
III. There are only two destinations for eternity.
There will come a great separation of believers and unbelievers. There are only two roads the narrow and the wide. And they lead to only two destinations. On the last day the Lord will separate the sheep from the goats.
The sheep get to go into the holy city but the goats will be thrown into the lake of fire. For true Christians there is eternal life. But for those who are not followers of Christ, who are not saved by the grace of God, their destination is eternal conscious punishment.
Sin is serious. We can’t play around with it.
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.
We can not be faithful to Jesus if we are unwilling to talk about this reality.
48 ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’
The apostles echo Jesus’ teachings on eternal punishment.
8 but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury.
9 They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might,
7 just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.
9 And another angel, a third, followed them, saying with a loud voice, “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand,
10 he also will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.
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.”
Pictures of Hell in Scripture
Pictured as a place of burning fire - emphasizes physical torment
In hell - the wrath of God is poured out as punishment for the sin of man
Pictured as a place of darkness - outer darkness or blackest darkenss - banishment from God’s presence.
Like the foolish virgins that didn’t have oil and got shut out of the marriage feast…
Hell is characterized by death and destruction. John refers to the lake of fire as “the second death.” It is the place of eternal punishment for the enemies of Christ.
Objections — annihilationism
In recent years there is a group of people who have taken the idea of death and destruction to make an argument for a position called annihilationism. They believe that those who do not trust Jesus, after they are judged and paid the penalty temporarily for their sin that they will then be completely destroyed or cease to exist altogether. They would be annihilated. They try to explain it to say that the punishment is eternal because it can not be undone, but it is not eternal for the person being judged. Our confession denies this view.
EC states it like this, “the Scripture teaches the continuing existence of persons—both believers and unbelievers—after the judgment, and that the experience of hell is eternal. Hence, we include the expression “eternal conscious punishment.”
9 They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might,
eternal destruction - it wouldn’t make much sense to refer to annihilated people as being away from the presence of God…
Paul implies an ongoing conscious state.
Hell is the cumulative effect of sin. It’s the pinnacle of the effects of sin and confirmation of how much God truly opposes it.
Hell is the result of human choice and the active and deliberate judgment of God.
The biblical truth is vastly different from what we hear everywhere else in culture.
Wrath
Alienation
Corruption
We see these descriptions of hell even in the first sin.
- wrath of God through the curse resulting in physical suffering
-alienated from God - cast out of the garden
-their nature was corrupted
The destiny of the believer - eternal blessedness and joy in the Lord
From talking about it being as bad as it can get to so much better than we can ever imagine!
Once we were separated from God as His enemies. But now, in Christ, we get to live with Him forever.
Where God dwells
Where His presence is manifest.
Complete contrast with hell.
43 Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.
Heaven will be a place of everlasting life.
Most of us refer to heaven as the destiny of the Christian. That’s not a wrong way of speaking but our salvation will not be complete until our bodies are raised and we share the glory when He returns.
5 And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
God’s victory over sin and death will be so complete that Jesus’ return will result in transforming the creation itself. He will make all things new. He will bring a new heaven and new earth. Revelation 21:3-4
3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.
4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
Ways this truth has been questioned, undermined, or denied today:
It is countercultural, absolute, and widely rejected.
People question whether eternal judgement exists.
People believe God judges on a curve.
Questions around the concept of hell.
Conclusion:
Does Jesus know you?
Do you need to be more urgent in your attempts to share this truth with the world around you?
Are you just playing church? Have you gotten sucked into comfortable American evangelical Christianity? Have you unwittingly followed false teachers?
