Hell

Are you afraid to die? Many in our world today are saying death is not to be feared. Charles Frohman said, “Why fear death? It’s the most beautiful adventure in life.” Another man said, “Don’t be afraid of death so much as an inadequate life.” Albert Einstein called death the “most unjustified of all fears.”

Fear is powerful. Some of us are aware of the ways we can be manipulated by fear. If someone can cause you to fear, they have control. To be afraid can feel irresponsible, gullible, like we’re being manipulated - and so we can harden ourselves against all fears. Even the fear of death.

Despite our cynicism, despite our natural distaste for fear, despite our aversion to being manipulated by fearmongers who want something from us, we have to admit that fear is an important part of our lives. To be truly fearless is to be foolish. We teach our children to fear ruining their lives through bad decisions; we want them to have a healthy fear of driving on the freeway, of walking next to a cliff, of making bad friends who lead you down destructive paths.

Famous movie critic Roger Ebert has stated, “I do not fear death. I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear.”

But what if there is something we should fear? What if there is truly something terrifying that exists? What if our fearlessness is misguided, misinformed? What if the cliches like, “it all works out in the end” or “time heals all wounds” are not actually true for everyone? What if your choices matter, and your life can end in eternal ruin? What if there are wounds that time will not heal? What if there is such a thing as devastating, eternal loss?

Jesus taught that there is something to fear. And interestingly, it wasn’t death. Jesus taught that there was something worse than death; something more terrifying than death that happens after death. Luke 12:4 “I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed you, has authority to cast into hell.”

Hell. Jesus believed in hell. Do you? If you’re not a Christian, you might not be sure. Perhaps there is a hell for the Hitlers of the world, the murderers, the rapists, the abusers. If you’re a Christian, and you believe the Bible, you quickly affirm your belief in hell. Right?

And yet, this is one of those doctrines we can affirm mentally and reject emotionally. It’s there, somewhere in the dark corner of our mind, like an old relic, but we rarely have the courage to look at it. We affirm it in our doctrinal statement, but find it difficult to emotionally grasp.

Here’s why: right now, you know someone who, if they do not repent, will go to hell. It could be a parent. It could be a son or a daughter. It could be a brother or a sister. It could be your spouse, it could be your best friend. And to consider hell, to think deeply about it, to imagine it, to ponder its existence, to meditate on its reality - can make us sick to our stomachs.

But in our text this morning, Jesus brings the idea of hell front and center for his disciples to think about. Jesus thinks that understanding hell is critical to living the Christian life. So this morning we’re going to read our text, and then launch out from it to study hell a little bit.

Read text: Mark 9:42-50. Sometimes, when you’re teaching through the Bible sequentially, as we are through Mark, there are points where you need to stop and explain. If you’re teaching a bunch of students who have been well taught in history, well-taught in literature, but they were taught that 2+2=5. You won’t need to pause and explain as much when you’re teaching history and literature, but you will need to pause and take extra time on math.

We need to pause and consider hell. Hell is a doctrine under attack - from without and within. Those outside the church are repulsed by it, and many within the church are abandoning it.

Five truths about hell.

First, Hell is unpopular. And according to surveys, it’s getting less popular. In 2014 Ligonier ministries noted that 40% of people denied or were unsure about the existence of hell. The most recent same survey says that number has increased to 44%. In other words, more people are wondering whether hell is real.

Why is that? The doctrine of hell has been universally affirmed throughout church history as the obvious teaching of the Bible, with only a few outliers. The Bible is crystal clear about the existence of hell (we’ll see that in a moment). So why is it growing less popular?

First of all, let’s be honest: a denial of God’s judgment has always been the strategy of Satan. Hell is unpopular first of all because Satan is doing everything in his power to eliminate it from our thoughts and minds. Satan wants to cover the pit with gravel and leaves so we don’t see it.

What was the first temptation? It was a denial that God will judge sin. “You will not surely die!” Satan duped Adam and Eve into sin by convincing them that there would be no judgment for sin. The false prophets, no doubt instruments of the enemy, were the ones who were condemned by God - and what was their crime? Jeremiah 6:14 “They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.” In 2 Peter we are warned the scoffers will come and deny the future judgment of God. So biblical, we should expect there to be a constant attack on the judgment of God.

Secondly, hell is unpopular in our day because biblical literacy is at an all-time low. People who don’t read the Bible, who don’t know the Bible, sometimes act as if the Bible is unclear on the subject, or ambiguous. It’s not. It’s crystal clear.

Third, hell is unpopular in our day because God’s holiness is ignored. When God is weightless, hell seems like an irrelevant and unnecessary reality. But when you understand the majesty, beauty, value, glory, justice of God, hell begins to make sense, because there must be a just way to deal with sin.

Fourth, fewer people are believing in hell because churches do not teach it. If your whole strategy for reaching the community is eliminating anything which offends, then you won’t talk about hell. If a church’s goal is to entertain and amuse its congregants, it will not speak about hell. If a church’s goal is to make everyone feel good, it will not speak about hell.

What happens is that many churches assume the reality of hell? It’s there in their doctrinal statements, but never talked about? What is assumed in one generation will be lost by the next.

Fifth, it’s a difficult doctrine. I don’t know if I’ve been more emotionally beat up studying a doctrine than I have this week. I have felt tears ready to spill forth more this week than any I can remember. This doctrine punches you in the gut, and it hurts.

But God has spoken. Anselm once said we should give thanks for whatever of the Christian faith we can understand with our minds; but when we come to something we don’t understand, we should “bow our heads in reverent submission.” We do not only believe the truths we like. We are not God. We believe his whole, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word.

Despite it’s diminishing popularity, it is critical that we understand hell. A strong grasp of the doctrine of hell, not just mentally but emotionally, sharpens our focus on so much of the rest of the Christian faith. If we lose the doctrine of hell, the meaning of God’s holiness gets fuzzy, the meaning of the cross gets blurry, our own joy and thankfulness for salvation gets blurred, our zeal for evangelism dampens, the fervency of our prayers die out. In other words, lose a biblical understanding of hell, and lose a little bit of everything.

But when you grasp the reality of a coming judgment, the gravity of the wrath of God, the eternality of hell, of the torment, of the impossibility of rescue or relief - it will put everything into focus. You will worship differently. Your prayers will take on a new flavor of zeal. Your desire to tell others the gospel will burn within your bones.

Second, Hell is real. In our passage, Jesus says that whoever causes “one of these little ones to sin” that “it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.” In other words, Jesus is saying that if you lead a little one into sin, and I give you a choice: Suffer the consequences for leading this little one into sin, or grab a giant millstone, tie it to your neck, walk to the edge of the pier and be thrown into the waves, be dragged heaving and gasped to the bottom - which do you want?

Jesus says, “Choose the millstone. Because what will happen to you for doing that is far worse.”

You ask, “What is he talking about?” Verse 43, 45, 47, now addressing the disciples' own sin, make it clear: you are in danger of hell. Jesus believed that hell was real, and that it was an imminent danger to anyone - even his own disciples - who live at peace with sin.

The reality of a coming judgment beyond death is all throughout the Scriptures. Deut 32:40 “For I lift up my hand to heaven and swear, As I live forever, if I sharpen my flashing sword and my hand takes hold on judgment, I will take vengeance on my adversaries and will repay those who hate me. I will make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh…”

Dan 12:2, speaking of the final resurrection, says, “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.”

The very end of the glorious prophecy of Isaiah, after all is accomplished, we get this incredible and terrifying scene: Isaiah 66:22-24 “For as the new heavens and the new earth that I make shall remain before me, says the Lord, so shall your offspring and your name remain. From new moon to new moon, and from Sabbath to Sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship before me, declares the Lord. And they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me. For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.”

And then you get to the New Testament, and Jesus speaks about God’s judgment and hell more than any other person in the Bible. He talks about people without righteousness being excluded from heaven (5:20), those who get angry as liable to the fires of hell (5:22), those who commit lust and adultery in danger of being thrown in hell (5:30), he mentions people who don’t forgive will not be forgiven by God (6:15), he says that the way to destruction is wide and easy and many people are on it (7:13), he says that there are people who will say, on judgment day, Lord, Lord, but he will banish them from his presence (7:23), he compares people who don’t obey his words like those whose houses will come crashing down at the judgment (7:27) - and that’s just the Sermon on the Mount. We could go into many passages where Jesus teaches about hell.

Paul talks about God’s wrath being poured out in Romans 1, the unrighteous who will not inherit the kingdom of God in 1 Corinthians 6, Ephesians 5, and Colossians 3; he speaks of people whose final destination is “destruction” in Philippians 3:19. 2 Thessalonians 1:9 says of the wicked, “They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.” Not to mention Revelation, which tells of the wrath of God being poured out onto the world, and the final destination of the wicked in the Lake of Fire.

The Bible, the most revered, read, studied, influential, and cherished book of all time, unequivocally affirms the reality of hell. God says there is a coming judgment.

I think it’s important to note that God is not ashamed of the doctrine of hell. He is announcing it to the world through his word. We need to hear this truth.

Third, hell is horrible. One little booklet titled What is Hell? gives us what the Bible teaches us about hell in five points.

First, hell is punishment. God justly punishes people for their sins against him. Hell is not a party. Hell is not fun; you will not be able to hang out with Satan or your friends. It is an awful punishment for those who reject God.

Second, Hell is destruction. It is described as an eternal destruction. Eternally dying without dying. Eternally being destroyed without being annihilated.

Third, hell is banishment. “Depart from me,” God says to those who go to hell. Those in hell are cut off from God’s blessing and favor forever.

Fourth, hell is a place of suffering. It’s called an “unquenchable fire,” a “furnace of fire,” an “eternal fire,” it’s called “outer darkness,” it’s called “chains of darkness,” it’s called a “place of torment.” It is described as a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth. In other words, the suffering includes incredible loneliness, agonizing pain. Nothing hurts like hell.

If we could peer into hell right now I think we would put our hands over our mouths in silence, if we could hear the cries and groans, I think we would shudder. This is not imaginary, this place exists right now, and right now there are people there.

Fifth, hell is eternal. Matthew 25:41, “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.”

Rev 14:10-11 speaking of those who reject God, “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 Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night…” - it lasts forever and ever. No relief. No end.

This is horrible. How should we understand this? Some have said that hell is a myth, which all Bible believing Christians must reject. Some say that the darkness and fires are metaphorical, but we don’t see any reason to believe that.

Charles Spurgeon said, “Now, do not begin telling me that that is metaphorical fire: who cares for that? If a man were to threaten to give me a metaphorical blow on the head, I should care very little about it; he would be welcome to give me as many as he pleased. And what say the wicked? “We do not care about metaphorical fires.” But they are real, sir—yes, as real as yourself. There is a real fire in hell, as truly as you have now a real body—a fire exactly like that which we have on earth in everything except this—that it will not consume, though it will torture you. You have seen the asbestos lying in the fire red hot, but when you take it out it is unconsumed. So your body will be prepared by God in such a way that it will burn forever without being consumed; it will lie, not as you consider, in metaphorical fire, but in actual flame.”

This is horrifying. Can’t you see how this puts everything into focus? Christian, this is what you deserved! And this wrath is what Christ bore on the cross! And this is what you’re saved from!

This launches into worship - what a Savior!

Fourth, Hell is just

Now, one of the biggest modern complaints about hell is the accusation that it is not just. Is it just for God to condemn the wicked to hell?

We must ask: who is adequate to play the role of judge in the world? To properly judge a person, we must know his past, what happened to him, his responses, his setbacks, his hindrances, his opportunities and his failures. Not only that, we must know his internal motivations, his heart, his thoughts, his desires. In other words, no human court could ever truly and accurately judge another human being. Omniscience is required for that.

God, alone, is the only one qualified to judge the world. And sure enough, the Bible claims that God is the only judge of the whole world. Ecclesiastes 11:9 says, “God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing.” Psalm 96 declares that God is coming to judge the whole earth in righteousness. 1 Peter 4:5 says that God is “ready to judge the living and the dead.” He is the righteous judge. He alone has authority to judge, he alone has the perfect wisdom and knowledge to judge, and he alone will judge perfectly.

1 Peter 1:17 says that God is the one who “judges each one impartially according to his deeds.” When every person stands before God on the great day of judgment, God, the only morally qualified Being in the universe, will do what is right. Justice will be served. The wicked who have ravaged his creation, blasphemed his glory, and ignored his Word, will be given what they deserve - which is eternal condemnation.

Packer: “When the ‘day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed’ (Rom 2:5) arrives, retribution will be exact, and no problems of cosmic unfairness will remain to haunt us. God is the Judge, so justice will be done”

I was reading Revelation this week, where God’s final judgment is being poured out onto the world. I was struck by the scene where one of the bowls of God’s wrath is being poured out, and the angel, seeing it, cries out: “Just are you, O Holy One, who is and who was, for you brought these judgments. For they have shed the blood of the saints and prophets, and you have given them blood to drink. It is what they deserve” (Rev. 16:5-6).

Or Revelation 19:11, when the wickedness of the world is judged, the great multitude of heaven cries out: “Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, for his judgments are true and just.” In other words, hell glorifies God by demonstrating the perfections of his justice.

Listen, many people today are saying that God can’t be good if he condemns the wicked to hell. The Bible says the opposite. If God does not judge sin, he’s not good. It is because he is good that he will judge wickedness and eliminate it.

Imagine you’re a child, and your house is broken into. And right before your eyes the robbers barge in. Your mother gets knocked over and trampled on. Your little sister gets kicked to the ground. And just imagine your dad standing there limp and lifeless, seeing all and doing nothing. That’s not a good dad -- he’s not jealous enough for his family, he’s not angry enough at wickedness. There’s a certain righteous rage that swells up inside you. Listen: our Father sees the wickedness, he sees our world getting ravaged, he sees the church getting beat up and trampled over, and hear me: he is not standing idly by like some wimpy of a dad.

No, he will rise up and judge the wicked. And so is good news for those who are God’s children.

But what if you’re the intruder? It’s nice for us to think of ourselves as the innocent one God protects - and those who have fled to Jesus for salvation are. But if you have not repented, turned, confessed your need, admitted your depravity, and embraced Christ as Lord and Savior - you are guilty, you are God’s enemy - you are the intruder. You are the guilty, blaspheming God’s glory and deserving of punishment. You will die in your sins, and suffer in hell.

But here’s our last point about hell: Hell is avoidable.

Let’s get to the good news. The reason we deserve hell is because of our sin. But God desires that none should perish, but that all come to repentance. God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. And God sent his son, Jesus Christ, to take the sins of everyone who trusts him upon himself, to suffer and die, to pay sin’s penalty, rise from the dead, and live.

And the offer this morning is this: pay for your own sins or trust Jesus to pay for your sins. If you reject Jesus, and you opt to pay for your own sins, I warn you that judgment is coming. You are no longer ignorant. You know the truth. You were made for God, you have sinned against him, and you deserve condemnation, and God himself right now offers to forgive your sins if you trust his son.

Charles Spurgeon: Some of my hearers who listened to me last year, and in the years that are past, are now—now—in hell! Now, where no hope can come; now, where no gospel shall ever be preached; now, where they bitterly regret their wasted Sabbaths and despised opportunities; now, where memory holds a dreadful reign, reminding them of all their sins; now, “Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched;” where they gnaw their fire-tormented tongues in vain; now, where God's fury is manifested to the full in Tophet's hideous fire; now, where devils, once their tempters, become their tormentors; now, where sinners, who kept jovial company, help to increase the doleful miserere of sighs, and groans, and weeping, and gnashing of teeth; now, accursed of God, accursed forever and ever! And within a moment, that may be the lot of every sinner here.

Friend, if you’re here, not yet saved - cast yourself at the mercy of God. You don’t want to get this one wrong. You don’t know when your time is up. Hell is avoidable. Come to Christ!

Right now, God is your judge. But if turn and trust him, he will be your Savior.

Here’s what you must understand. Since God is just, every sin will be punished. But God has put forth this Son to be the sin-bearer. Jesus came, suffered on the cross, paying the penalty of sin that we deserved, so that we might be set free from sin, and no longer fear judgment.

God is love: 1 John 4:10 “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

So those who are dead in sin, those who know they deserve hell, those who feel deeply the weight of their sin, Today is the day of salvation! Wake up, rise, come to life, run to Christ, flee the wrath to come, and find refuge in the mercy of God! He will forgive your sins! Why would you wait? Why would you doubt? This sin-cursed world is marching in a parade off a cliff into the pit; do not be allured by it! Your life is short, death will come soon, and you’re here this morning because God wants to save you. Repent and believe that Jesus is alive, ready to save you!

Non-Christian - imagine with me for a moment that all of this is true. And it’s like an alarm has gone off in your soul. And in this moment you’re aware that you are, in fact, deserving of divine judgment. What must you do?

J.I. Packer, in Knowing God, has a chapter titled “God the Judge.” He writes, “We live under his eye, he knows our secrets, and on judgment day the whole of our past will be played back, as it were, before him, and brought under review. If we know ourselves at all, we know we are not fit to face him. What then are we to do? The New Testament answer is this: Call on the coming Judge to be your present Savior….Run from him now, and you will meet him as Judge then - and without hope. Seek him now, and you will find him.”

Hell can be avoided.