Nothing to say, yet
Transcription
The speaker begins with a prayer, thanking God for the gathering and asking for guidance during the sermon. They then discuss the topic of hell, acknowledging that it is incomprehensible to humans. The speaker emphasizes the importance of understanding the reality of hell and the need for redemption. They discuss different views on the nature of hell and whether it is literal or symbolic. The speaker argues that symbols can never fully capture the reality of hell, whether it is literal or symbolic. They stress the seriousness of hell and its implications for salvation. The speaker concludes by stating that understanding the reality of hell is necessary in order to appreciate the glory of the gospel. Father in heaven, thank you so much for this gathering of your people here in your house on the Lord's Day. Thank you, Lord, that we are gathered to study your word and pray that Pastor Mark will be well-equipped to preach to you as we are today. Thank you, Lord, for your grace and your mercy and your kindness to us. You are a God who is far off, high above us, and holy, being anything that we can even imagine. But yet you are near to us. I pray that you would draw your people closer to you by your word. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, so we have done two weeks talking about our doctrine of heaven and understanding better what our ultimate state as believers are. And now we come to the contrast. So this week we're going to be talking about the doctrine of hell. And there is at least two ways for me to do this wrong. One would be to overemphasize the reality of hell, as though we could do that. Because again, today we're talking about things that we simply don't understand. If I were to tell you that the Great Wall of China is a really very great wall, you can't understand that until you see it. I can't tell you that the Grand Canyon is very grand. It's a big canyon. You don't grasp that until you actually stand in front of it, and you don't understand as a child what the ocean is until you have been taken out in a boat five miles offshore, lose sight of land and understand that you can keep on going for a long, long time. And so hell is incomprehensible to us. In the same way, heaven truly is incomprehensible to us, too. How can it be something that's that good? But God seems to delight in showing His goodness through contrast. And so today we have the slow march through hell. This little graphic here is the idea of nine layers of hell through Dante's Inferno, and we are not talking about that because we don't want the Greeks to influence us in our thoughts about hell. And I'm hoping that Paul next week is really going to have some good ways that we can contrast popular conceptions of hell. But today I want to start with more just what does the Bible tell us? And in the same way that we can grasp with some clarity what heaven is like, we have some idea of what hell is like, but it gets a lot more vague. We know that hell is bad, but in the same way they said the Great Wall is great, hell being bad doesn't quite capture exactly what we're talking about. So first I want to talk about the reality of hell. We're going to look at really the purpose of man and why hell is necessary as a result of that. No one speaks more about hell than Christ, although you do see hell discussed throughout the Old Testament. And even if we consider just the garden scene in Eden, the separation and being ejected from the garden is absolutely a foreshadowing of ultimate separation from God. If you look at the Edenic picture of Adam and Eve dwelling in paradise with the Lord, walking with Him in the garden, having pure fellowship with God, being removed from that is a type of death, but it's not ultimate because there's still a promise of deliverer. In hell there is no such opportunity for redemption. We're going to look at why eternal punishment is necessary, the purpose and preparation of hell. This is an interesting question and not one I have a lot of great answers to. Hell as a final destination, and three different views of ways that we see hell described. So a lot of people in the outside of the church, unbelievers, will say, well, hell is not really real. I assure you that the Bible speaks very clearly that hell is real. Hebrews tells us that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God. And even Proverbs tells us that fear is the beginning of understanding, that wisdom begins with fear, the fear of the Lord. And so if God is the ultimate truth and the ultimate ground on which we can move and think and know things, then the ultimate reality being removed from us is a terrible thought. And so I think the importance of talking about hell is in the same way that we've seen a glimpse of heaven in the last two weeks. We can't really apprehend that glory, how good heaven is. We can't properly grasp the idea of hell unless we understand the terror that this should represent. So one of the ditches we can have, like I said, is an overemphasis of hell and its terror, but in some ways I don't feel like we can really do that. This would be a very sober and stark reality. So rather than being a lighthearted day, like typically try to do a couple of jokes and these things, it'll be mostly without that today. Our salvation is not only to glory, but from torment. So the gratitude that we feel for what Christ has done on our behalf should be that much deeper. And the reality of hell, knowing that this is a real destiny for some of our fellow men, should make us one humble that there's nothing that we could do to have earned escape from it. It should give us infinite gratitude, and we need to have compassion and have a real desire to see the lost saved. So all of this that we're going to talk about today, my hope is that it gives us more of a heart for the lost. Somebody asked R.C. Sproul, what is the one thing that gives you the hardest intellectually about Christianity? What is the one thing that you have a difficulty with? And his answer to that was the doctrine of hell. But yet, he says, if we don't accept the reality of hell, then we won't rightly understand the glory of the gospel. I think that's absolutely correct. If we don't understand the seriousness that hell should have us captured by, if we don't understand the risk to the eternal state of the human soul, then we won't understand the goodness of the deliverance that we've been given. So we'll get it out there right in the beginning. Hell is real. It really does exist. Now we can talk about, is it a physical place? Is it literally torment? Is it literally a lake of fire? So a lot of people say, well, no, no, this is just symbolic. So thoughts, literally a lake of fire, literally weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth, literally the eternal smell of burning sulfur, or is this a metaphor for something? Some people comfort themselves saying that now this is a metaphor, this is just a symbol of what hell is like. That's not really that bad. But if it's literal, it's the stuff of nightmares. If it's only figurative, it's actually worse. It was after 9-11 that Tim Keller was being asked to speak after an event talking about trying to give people comfort after the Twin Towers fell. And he actually pivoted talking about the doctrine of hell. And he was asked, well, all of these images, is hell literally, is that what it is? And he said, no, I don't believe that it's literally all of those things. I believe that it's too big of a topic for us to wrap our minds around, for these pictures for us to understand it, but that shouldn't give you any comfort. It's actually far worse than that. So just to expand upon that idea, if it's symbolic, and I'm saying that it is both literal and symbolic, there's aspects of this I think we can say yes, but in the same way that I say that while China is great, or the Grand Canyon is grand, the words fail you. So symbols, anybody got a guess what this symbol represents? You've seen it, driving on the interstate? A lookout. So what does this bring to mind? You know that this is on the side of the road, okay, there's a point where we can see something, right? This is probably set up so you have a good view, maybe a spot to have refreshment, maybe a stop for respite, break on your travels, but it doesn't really tell you what you're going to be looking out at. It doesn't really convey to you what the experience of that will be like. Feel free. Restaurant. Are we eating tacos? Is this burger joint? Maybe there's a lot of options. Sustenance. Some way for us to be fed. Some things should come to mind. Welcome to Texas. Well, you've got an idea of what Texas is like, and this tells you, you see the flag? The flag represents something. But no picture can tell you what the experience of that is like. Not even in a moment, but particularly over time. You have intense feelings about what America and the American flag represents, the whole country is that. These symbols are always less than the reality. Think about a wedding ring. It's a symbol of marriage. It's a symbol of bond, commitment, covenant, but no ring can ever truly convey what it is to be married. So these pictures give us an idea. They're symbols. They're representations, but they're never the fullness of the reality. How about some negative symbols? So this tells us there's a warning. There's potentially electricity. And if you've ever changed a light bulb, or for me, I know that I've not done any house repair dealing with electricity until I've been shocked. This does not convey to you the experience of standing on a ladder changing a light bulb and finding out that I did not turn off that breaker. It's a swift reminder of power, but it's not even a lot of power. Not all of it, not ultimate power. Not as many. Danger of fall hazard. Even if you're like, oh, okay, so this is a place where I could slip and fall. But even that momentary slip and fall does not deal with the full consequence of the fall. Maybe the injury. Maybe recovering from that injury. Maybe the consequences of the pain and suffering that you would feel afterwards. This is not just a warning that you could be falling, but it's the stop at the bottom that we're worried about. I have a deathly fear of alligators. This is something that makes me stand up straight, but the idea of an alligator is not the experience of an alligator. The symbol is always less than the reality that it represents. So again, if hell is not literal, or if hell is literally symbolic, it is literally portrayed to us in symbolic nature, we do not appreciate the fullness of what hell would really be like. All right, to pivot a little bit. This is a biblical anthropology. What is man and what is his purpose? So shout it out. I know you all are well catechized. Shorter catechism says, what is the chief end of man? And chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Yes. Question 12 says, what act of special act of providence did God exercise toward man in the estate wherein he was created? I'll give you this one. When God had created man, he entered into a covenant of life with him upon condition of perfect obedience, forbidding him to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And the consequence of breaking that covenant is upon pain of death. Was this death literal or was it symbolic? The answer to that is yes, of course. Sin and death entered into the human race and Adam, of course, did die. But more than that, again, in the garden, Adam was separated from the presence of God. If Adam simply died and turned to dust and that was the end of it for him without hope of salvation, ultimately, that would be bad, but not nearly as bad as eternal separation from God. So the symbolic death that Adam dies and that all of his posterity earned is significantly worse than just the physical death. Questions 13 and 16 tell us that all mankind falls in Adam. Question 17, this fall in our present state brings us sin and misery. Question 19 asks us, what is the misery of that state wherein two men fell? All mankind, by their lost communion with God, are under his wrath, curse, and so to me made liable to all miseries in this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell forever. This is a logical chain. Because we have lost communion with God, now the result of that is that we are under his wrath and curse. What is that wrath and curse? That we are now liable to misery in this life and death, but it does not stop there, and the pains of hell forever. So again, coming back to this idea, what is the chief end of man? So our design, the thing that man was made to do was to enjoy God and glorify him forever. So because man is that special part of creation that reflects God's image, we are like God, not in substance, not in time, but in shadow. We are made to do something. We are made to worship, and we are made for worship. The only way that we are truly going to have joy and be fulfilling in our existence is to do what we were made to do. So man is made like God. What does that mean? We are made to commune with God. We are made for fellowship with one another, and God put Adam and Eve in the garden with a mandate to go and exercise dominion over it. We are creative beings. We are social beings. We are worshiping beings, and we cannot stop doing that. So my thesis to a lot of this is that hell is the necessary result of the object of creation being removed from its purpose. And so we are an object of high dignity made for a very special purpose, unlike anything else in creation. And when we remove our purpose, we are no longer fulfilled, and we are no longer able to do what we were made to do. That is really the beginning of the seeds of hell. If we remove from us what we were made for, then misery will follow. So just a simple thought. I was ruminating on this just last week, and considering even God's law and the Ten Commandments, what is unique about the first commandment? He shall have no other gods before me. Monotheism, absolutely, that's in there. The God himself says, I am the one and only true God, and no other gods, not plurality of gods, no other lesser deity to worship. One of the things I think is true about this is that this is the beginning of everything else. If you get this wrong, you can pretty much be assured that you're going to get the rest of the other nine commandments wrong. And really, hell is the embodiment of the rejection of having another God before the Lord. Hell is us choosing some other good thing maybe that God has created, whether that be power or love, relationship, comfort. But yet, we've made that more important than the Lord himself. We follow the Lord, we get all of those things, but when we seek those things, we lose the Lord, which is to lose everything. So if you get this wrong, everything else follows. This is where I'm going so far. Now let's consider who is our major authority on the doctrine of hell. Christ speaks more about hell than anyone else. D.A. Carson tells us that he speaks twice as much about hell as he does heaven. Eve MacArthur says that Jesus talked more about hell than he did about heaven in order to warn men of the reality. So again, I said earlier that yes, hell is real, and I know that because Jesus said so. So just a few quotes that Christ tells us. Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul. Rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. It is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. For it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body than your whole body to go into hell. Yeah, twice he repeats that in this passage in Matthew. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court and whoever says to his brother, you were good for nothing, shall be guilty before the supreme court. And whoever says you fools shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell. When the son of man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him and he will separate them from one another as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats who put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. These will go into the way of eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. All right, so what are we getting at here? Of all the commands that Jesus gives positively, he tells us this thing that we're supposed to not do. He says, fear not. It is the most often quoted thing that Jesus tells us. Fear not for this. Fear not for that. There is one thing that Jesus tells you that you should absolutely be afraid of. And that is hell. For as often as he positively tells us, hey, it's going to be OK, he says, but there is one thing that you should really pay attention to. He tells us not to worry about our safety. He tells us not to worry about what we will eat, how we'll be closed. He tells us essentially that we can not care about our physical body, because ultimately there is something far more important for us that will be redeemed, that we will have heaven, that we will get Christ. But if you are not in Christ, he tells us that you should do anything, anything to avoid hell. He tells us that the path to hell is extremely easy. It is a broad road, a wide gate, an easy path. And even contempt and unrighteous anger are damnable. And it also tells us that Jesus himself is the one who will judge the sheep from the goats. He does not give us a third way. He does not say some of these goats will be goats for a while, and then we'll move them out after they've done a little bit of hard time, we'll be sheep ultimately. There's only two estates, and there's only two destinations. So again, he says that we should strive to enter the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and not be able. Once the head of the house gets up and shuts the door, he will begin to stand outside and knock at the door, saying, Lord, open to us. And he will answer you and say to you, I do not know where you are from. And you will begin to say, we ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets. So Christ is the master of the house here. And eating and drinking, having fellowship, being part of the body is not necessarily enough. It's knowing him. Being present for the teaching of Christ is not enough. It is that Christ knows you. It's not enough to know of Christ. It's that Christ knows us. So this is the parable of the wheat and the tares. It says the kingdom may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, the enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and he went away. So Christ here is patient to bring the harvest in due time. And rather than exacting his judgment immediately, rather than slaying Adam and bringing him to literal death at the moment of his sin and transgression, God is patient to bring into reality the plan that he has had from the beginning. So he is patient to let both grow together until the harvest. At the time of harvest, I will tell the reapers, gather the weeds first, bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn. The Lord will bring in his harvest, but he is patient to have the fullness of that. So again, the appearance of authentic faith is not the substance of authentic faith. Elsewhere, it says, Lord, do we not perform miracles in your name? It says, depart from me, you workers of iniquity, I never knew you. Even doing things for Christ is not necessarily knowing Christ or having been known by Christ. He is patient to bring in the harvest when the time is right. He says, the son of men will send his angels and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and throw them into the fiery furnace. So this is where we get the idea of working out your own salvation with fear and trembling. Again, fear is the place that we begin understanding and we need to understand that the hell is a reality and that we should be very sober minded about this. But also that Christ is infinitely, the patience I think is very key for us to understand here, that he is just in his wrath, but he is not malicious in his wrath. He is calling a people to himself for his own glory and he is satisfied to not tolerate sin, but wait for the fullness of the harvest. So Christ tells us that avoiding hell is a valid reason to come to Christ. So you could say, well, you guys are only Christians because you don't want to burn in hell forever. Jesus would tell you that that's a pretty good reason. That's a pretty good reason for you not to want to go to hell. We get heaven, that's true, but avoiding hell, Christ actually tells us, yeah, that's a valid reason to seek the avoiding of the punishment. Gaining Christ is of course a far better reason and the last two weeks that's really what we've talked about. The fullness of heaven and understanding the glory that we will see, that is of its own a valid aspiration to seek after that. But we should not put aside the idea that avoiding hell is a valid reason to come to Christ. Another pause for any questions thus far. Paul. Yeah, so if you guys couldn't hear Paul saying, you know, like Christ is being very sober reminded as he's reminding us that this is a serious thing. But at the same time, personally, he is going to drink the fullness of a cup of wrath for all of his elect. He is personally going to take hell on and defeat sin and death. In a way it's like, you know, if you're suffering for your sins, that's one thing, but Christ is taking on the sins for all of his people. How much more? Yeah, that's a great point. Will you say something else to that? So why hell so long? Why is why eternal punishment? Well, I think if we understand who God is and what man was made for, started a little bit with what man is made for, if we understand a little bit about God himself and we understand the reason that eternal punishment is required. So question four tells us that God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. And it's a misunderstanding of his holiness that leads us to think we can trivialize sin. That God is eternally holy means that violation of his law requires eternal punishment. This is not divine retribution. This is that God cannot exist and dwell with sin and not tolerate it. And so apart from the application of Christ's work as our Redeemer, we cannot be washed with, we cannot be, that sin cannot be dealt with. It abides with us. And if it is not removed, it is not removed forever. And so Christ accomplishing that makes it possible for his people to return to him. So to have a low view of God's holiness is the beginning of people saying, well, you know, hell lasting forever, that doesn't make sense to me. And so a lot of people will say, well, this idea of eternal punishment, like that doesn't seem just. I mean, in our penal system, you say, well, you've committed a crime, maybe you do a couple of years. You make restitution, but you can't make it up to an infinitely good God because all sin is ultimately a sin against the Lord. So we often think of the doctrine of hell as a challenge to God's justice. However, that's actually not right. It is nothing but God's justice. And we want a just God. We live in a world where sin touches every aspect of our lives. And there's something within every man that cries out to say that injustice must be stopped, that there is a natural and a right and a good order to the world. And because of the sin and destruction that we see every day, somebody has to do something about it. And so we often join in the idea of mercy for me and my friends, justice for my enemies. But we don't understand fundamentally that we are the enemies of God unless our hearts are changed. Heaven is actually the real challenge to God's justice. Because he is eternal and perfect in his wisdom, being, power, holiness, goodness, and truth, how can he overlook the sin? How could he move beyond it? How could he redeem these people and forgive them? Well, it's only because Christ took on sin himself, the perfect sacrifice for our disobedience. So when was hell created? What's the purpose? Well, Matthew 25 tells us that he will say to those on his left apart from me, the cursed ones into the eternal fire, which has been prepared for the devil and his angels. And 2 Peter tells us, for if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, cast them into hell and committed them into pits of darkness reserved for judgment. So this has been both prepared and reserved. And so one of my questions when I'm sitting here thinking about this is, this is before the fall or after the fall? And I don't have an answer to this. So here's some possibilities. So we have to ask ourselves, did Satan and the angels fall before Satan tempted Eve in the garden? Yes. Certainly, it was sin for Satan to have tempted Eve and to disobey God and to lie. And so his fall was before that. And perhaps the angels with him, I don't have a verse to say this is exactly when that happens. Or perhaps we're saying that the preparation is after in lieu of, you know, there's the final judgment. Christ tells us he goes to prepare a place for us. And maybe we're looking at the first death and the second death. So we're going to get out a little bit where your thoughts, thoughts on the origin and the beginning of when hell happened. Inside at the fall, at the fall of the fourth fall. I think what's important about this is that the ultimate reality of hell has yet to come as the ultimate reality of heaven has yet to come. There's a prepared place for Satan and his angels, and there is reserved judgment. The fullness of that has not come in the same way as the fullness of God's glory has not come in heaven. But that does not mean that Satan and his minions move unchecked. The devil, as Luther said, is God's devil and that he is unable to move apart from God's will. Brian, that question is, you know, it talks about Lucifer being cast down like a lightning bolt. I think, you know, like if you consider the height and the power of the imagery of that, I think it really conveys a whole lot more of the greatness of the fall and the power of the destruction. And so the destination that he goes to, but beyond the preparation and when hell was made, the purpose here is that there is judgment. And so reserved for judgment, so not reserved for torment, but judgment is to be made right. And so this rebellion does not go unchecked. Its purpose is exacting judgment upon sin. So we're going to do a little art class here. Jan van Eyck. This is a large section that he has this judgment. On one side we see the crucifixion of Christ and on the other we see a resurrected Christ and standing above that is the archangel and below it is the part that I really want to focus on. Now, I generally don't put up images of Christ, but it's pretty darn hard to see that. And so this is what I want you to focus on. So we have this demonic skeleton spreading his bat-like wings over people who are thrown headlong into hell. So this is symbolic. This is a person's artistic interpretation of what hell is like. But I think some things that are true are, one, everybody's naked. Our sin is as though we were naked before the Lord, meaning that there's a symbolism that there is no hiding it. And you see that in Echoes of the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve try to cover themselves. There is certainly torment here. What I think is wrong about this is on this upper left-hand corner you have these people seeking to cry out and desire, like, escape and respite from it. They are, in fact, crying up to the Lord. I don't think that that's right. And I'll get to that in a little bit. Some other pictures. This is a painting from Dante and Virgil taking a tour of the underworld. Here's Dante and Virgil in the background where we have a dark and shadowy figure with bat wings. Again, two men. These are both nude and they're striving with one another. The first man is biting the other on the neck. So again, I said that man is made for fellowship. Man is made for communion with other saints. Man is made to be together with other men, to be with God. But there's something about the fallenness and the totality of that, receiving the fullness of judgment, that our capacity for fellowship is now gone. Our capacity for love and fealty even to God or our fellow man is now removed. This is by John Martin. This is actually inspired by Paradise Lost by Milton. It's hard to see here, but maybe there's this iron-clad, armored devil standing over a lake of fire in celebration over the destruction. So these really dark images, this is setting, and it should stir something within us, but it doesn't even begin to capture the reality, or perhaps simply just the isolation that we see. So if you remember the painting The Scream, probably the most famous work by Edward Munch, this is a self-portrait of him in hell. And in this painting, he's entirely alone, but again, naked, and certainly there's a haunting anguish upon the face. So hell is the ultimate destination for those who are not redeemed in Christ. Hebrews tells us it is appointed once for man to die, and after that, the judgment. Or in Revelation, the sea gave up her dead and all which were in it, and death and Hades gave up their dead, which were in them, and they were judged in every one of them according to their deeds. And then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire, that is the second death, the lake of fire. If anyone's name was not written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. So there's a distinction to be made between death and Hades, and last week we heard a little bit about this intermediate state that believers, we all go into the ground and return to dust, but the spirit is with the Lord, awaiting the final resurrection. So it appears that Hades in the Bible is this intermediate place of torment, not ultimate hell, that is the hell that the lost will receive upon the final judgment, but just the way that we are waiting for the consummation and the resurrection and his new life into perfect bodies, the lost will be resurrected into physical bodies, physical bodies which are not raised in newness of life, physical bodies which will be eternal, but not the kind of eternal that you want. So even Hades, this intermediate place, this place is thrown into hell. So it almost feels like, well, hell is thrown into hell. I think what we're conveying here is the ultimate reality of hell even is destroyed, and hell is this place of destruction. So I hope that we've conveyed in some ways that if the symbolism that we're talking about here is not real, but conveys something deeper, that that deeper symbolism should be a little breathtaking to us. If it is figurative, it is far worse. The reality, the physical reality, the literal reality will be worse than any symbol that we can imagine. So what are we talking about when we're talking about this torment? At least three different ways you could categorize. If you look at all of the words of Christ and all of the echoes of hell and judgment in the Old and New Testament, I think we can categorize them in at least three ways. So torment. So if you look at the story of the rich man in Lazarus, it said the rich man also died and he was buried. And in Hades, again, not ultimate destruction, but Hades, this place of intermediate state, being tormented. So even in the intermediate state, he is tormented. He lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham from far off and Lazarus at his side and he called out, Father Abraham, have mercy upon me and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue for I'm in anguish in this flame. But Abraham said, child, remember that you are in your lifetime, you receive good things and Lazarus in like manner, bad things, but now he's comforted here and you are in anguish. So even a drop of water, if you've ever been very thirsty, this is a thirst deeper than the thirst that you can imagine. This is a burn from flames worse than any burn. And there does not seem to be any comfort for him. And even the idea that he's reaching out to Abraham saying that I would want to be out of this place. But I've also seen commentators that, you know, one, the rich man's not given a name and Lazarus has a name. So his identity, his personality is wrapped up in his idol, in his idolatry. And his later goes on to say, well, then send the prophets to my brothers so they don't end up in this place. He says that they've had the prophets, they've had the law, and if they rejected those, then they will not reject even someone coming from the dead. So beyond anguish, we also see this idea of slavery and slavery, sin is constantly symbolized by slavery. So hell and destruction are never full. So the eyes of man are never satisfied, Proverbs tells us. Jeremiah tells us that no one repents, each pursues his own course like a horse charging into battle. That when you are ultimately delivered from sin, I mean, not from sin, but ultimately delivered over to your sin, the reality of it is that you continue to run away from God vigorously, enthusiastically, seeking to run away from God. And if you do not, and if you do well, sin is crouching at the door and its desire is contrary to you and it must rule over you. So Cain is an early type of us understanding that Cain had every opportunity to do what he was supposed to do, but rejected God and went his own way. And so the desire of sin is for us, is to rule over us, and again, John, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. This is not a slavery that we can be delivered from when we're in hell, this is a slavery of our own design, because when we violate this first commandment that we have another God before the Lord, it's because we're letting that God become our ultimate source of happiness, ultimate source of comfort, ultimate source of worship. And those finite things do not ever fill the place of an infinite God. And so just the same way that if you're thirsty, but you're drinking salt water, you only become thirstier. And if your desire is for wealth, there's never enough wealth. If your desire is for power or fame, or the appraise of men, it will never be enough. And so because you're constantly seeking to slate that thirst, and you are never going to have the true source of water, you will always be further thirsty. And so what does that do to us? Again, we are social beings made to worship God. And so those in hell are spiraling downward toward final lostness, people who lose the ability for relationship. We move further away from each other, because in our lostness we become even intolerable to other sinners. And so the nearness and the fellowship that we have, that is the bond of love that we have in Christ, is completely removed, that common grace is even removed. J.I. Packer says that scripture sees hell as self-chosen, hell appears as God's gesture of respect for human choice. I've seen it said that there's those who will say to Christ, thy will be done, and those who say, no, my will be done. And God, in his kindness to them, coalesces. All receive what they actually choose, either to be with God forever and worship him, or to be without God forever, worshiping themselves. So you can imagine, if you've seen the Lord of the Rings, Gollum, whose one desire is for the ring, and he turns from what was a hobbit into this malformed creature whose only love is this ring of power. And so he isolates himself, he lives in a cave and becomes something entirely different than what he was supposed to be initially. His personality further drops down into his avarice. This process, being in hell, might be called the ultimate Gollum-ization of a once noble creature. How far away from God can an imitative and reflective creature like man still reflect his image? When we move into outer darkness, essentially, the distance between us and God becomes so great that we are no longer reflecting God's image as what is there left to reflect besides our own sin. So Mark talked about, a couple of weeks ago, the contrast of heaven and hell, and I think that God loves to show his goodness through contrast. So if we say, well, heaven is the place that we are eternally in God's presence, then hell, naturally, is the place that we are banished eternally from God's presence. If man was made to reflect the character of God, even with the loss of all common grace, we no longer reflect God's character, but we reflect almost the antithesis of that. And heaven will be glorifying God forever, hell is a place of unchecked rebellion. Our charge is to build the kingdom of God, but those down to hell will be eternally hating the kingdom of God. Our joy is to submit to God's will, but in hell we are swallowed by the will of the self. And in heaven, those of us who will be in heaven will be raised to an incorruptible life, whereas hell is being raised to eternal judgment. Mark also said something that really captured my attention, he was referencing Ephesians, saying that we've been blessed with all spiritual blessings in Christ. In a way, heaven is now. You already are in receipt of that. But to put a more practical end of this, hell is also now. So what do I mean by hell is also now? Again, I started with this thesis that man's purpose is to reflect God, and so hell is a necessary consequence of the object, of the worshipping object being removed from its purpose. And Jude even says that as he considers Sodom and Gomorrah. Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, the cities about them, in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, going after strange flesh, Jude tells us this sets forth an example of suffering and vengeance of eternal fire. The destruction that we see in Sodom and Gomorrah is an example of what hell is like. We consider Moses and the plagues in Egypt. These plagues correspond to the sins of the people of Egypt, and this is interesting and we can talk about that many, so I'm going to run out of time if I keep talking about that. But there is a correlation between the gods of Egypt that were worshipped falsely and the destruction that is measured out upon them. So there's a sense of reciprocity or proportion, and in the same way that we talked last week about eternal reward in heaven, I think that we can also say that there's evidence for appropriate eternal punishment. So I don't agree with Dante that there's levels of hell in the same way that he would cast things with Judas being down with Satan at the very end, the deepest level of hell, but I think that we can say that there is increased punishment and increased severity for those who know the truth and who reject it. Historically, we can see not only just from the Bible, but consider the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Jesus says that he warns the Pharisees that even now the ax is laid at the root of the tree. So these are the people who had the oracles of God, as Romans tells us, that there's much in every way to be an advantage to being a Jew, but they rejected the Messiah. And so the destruction of Jerusalem, the destruction of the temple, the second temple, we're reading through Ezra right now, is in some ways showing, like, you reject even this Messiah, and here is the kingdom that you have built, the things that you put ultimate trust in. Did you not teach in our streets? Did we not dine in our house? Matthew 10 tells us, if anyone will not receive you or listen to you, and this is Christ talking to disciples as they're going out and preaching the good news of the kingdom being in hand, you should shake the dust off of your feet and leave that house or town. Truly I say to you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town. So in the New Testament age, often again, we have people thinking that God of the Old Testament got a brass, God of the New Testament, no, it's not so bad. Again, Hebrews tells us that it's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God. Our God is in consuming fire, and that in the light of New Testament reality, it is far worse, even then, for Sodom and Gomorrah than those who have received the truth of the gospel and who still reject it. This does not stop. If you consider the French Revolution in the time of, say, the Enlightenment, when man chooses a civilization to reject all biblical authority and build a kingdom in its own image, this echoes the Tower of Babel, consider what happened during the French Revolution. During the Enlightenment, man says, we can do better than all of this religious superstition. We can create our own society, and we don't need a biblical authority. Well, by what standard are you going to do that? And Rousseau's social contract has this idea that it's the role of the government to act for the general will of all people, that all people have rights, and we can all do that, but so how do you decide whose rights? Who is the one who is the arbiter of truth? And in those writings, it says that terror is no more than speedy, severe, and inflexible justice. This is the Emanuation of virtue, so that terror is in and of itself because this is the greater good. This is what all men want. We have the right to do mass decapitations, to overthrow the government, to seek out even the justice that we desire, as speedy and destructive as it might be, for the greater good of all men. So you see men not having a standard by which he can operate. Societies fall into this. Finally, as we're getting into this, this is very contemporary, the idea of hell being right now. So Romans 1 tells us, they did not see it fit to acknowledge God, so therefore God gives them over to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They're filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, and malice. They're full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They're gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil. Man is a creative being, and goodness, if you look around today, are people not inventing new ways to create evil every single day, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, and ruthless. Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them. Think of the transgender movement. Think of the LGBTQ movement. So again, hell is, I argued, the removal, leaving them in common graces. There is natural law and natural revelation, natural order of things that God shows his goodness to people. Man chooses to be his own God and decide how I will live on my terms. And you even see this fracturous backbiting to say, like, how dare you tell me how I ought to live? And if you do so, then it's now the natural response, like the French Revolution, to exact violence or terror upon other people when they disagree. So we don't need to be put into a cage and tormented. Man will do it to himself. Man will self-mutilate, man will tear down, man will isolate without even external force at all. You could also even broadly talk about the internet this way, inventors of evil, using even the good things that we build to tear the world apart. So the last few minutes, what do we do about this? Well, Jude extensively, and I recommend you go home and read to you this afternoon, but just a few passages from that says, Beloved, I was eager, I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation. I found it necessary to write appealing to you, contending for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only master and Lord Jesus Christ. But you must remember, Beloved, the predictions of the apostles and our Lord Christ. They said to you, in the last time there will be scoffers following their ungodly passions. This should feel familiar. But you, Beloved, building yourselves up in our most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, awaiting for the Lord, waiting for the Lord, waiting for the Lord, sorry, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life and have mercy on those who doubt, save others by snatching them out of the fire to others, show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh. So we need to separate ourselves. We need to clearly communicate the truth of the gospel. We need to contend for the faith. We need to seek the lost so that we might snatch them from the fire. So Spurgeon encourages us that if sinners be damned, at least let them leap to hell over our dead bodies. And if they perish, let them perish with our arms wrapped about their knees, imploring them to stay. If hell must be filled, let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions. And let not one go unwarned and unprayed for. And by way of comfort for all of us, this is something for us to consider as believers. The world is the closest to heaven that unbelievers will ever know and the closest to hell that God's children will ever know. So though we be in trying times and though we are living in this fallen world, this is as bad for you as it will ever be as a Christian. That yes, we should fear hell, but at the same time, even with the common blessings of his life and the goodness of knowing the gospel, this is as bad as it gets. You can be comforted in the trials in life that you have. But at the same time, for those who are lost, this is as good as it gets. It only goes downhill from here. And so that should give us a deep compassion for the lost that we desire to see them delivered. Questions about hell? Paul? There's a passage in Luke where it writes down the demons and the pigs that are going into the 80s. What's your thought on that? So Paul asked, you know, there's a passage in Luke where Christ sends these demons into the pigs instead of in the hell. So it's interesting that the devil and his angels are restrained and we see this in Job that we can see that they only go so far. And so perhaps there's a misapprehension on their part that maybe they believe that Christ's return was the ultimate reality and this was the final judgment. So they, you know, the pigs are an image of unclean things. And so maybe they didn't realize this wasn't the final judgment. Maybe Satan is still so deceived that he thinks that he can win. Hard to say, but I think, you know, the fear even that the demons have of Jesus is something that's really the take home on that is that they recognize that he has the authority to cast them off entirely. Brian? More of a comment than a question, but to your point about, thank you, to your point about, you know, why we deem hell unfair, it's just I think we think we're more compassionate than God. And, you know, that comes back to, you know, the transgender issue and so many other things that, you know, people get confused about that we think we're more compassionate than God and what his word says. And I know I can always say, you know, from my own experience, my own testimony, it wasn't real to me until I actually looked at, you know, the warnings of, you know, God's judgment in the Old Testament and looked at, you know, I don't want to be on the wrong side of God and just having that fear of God that I was finally converted as a pagan to Christianity ultimately. That's interesting. So you would say that the fear of God was more compelling to you than maybe the sweet reward of heaven at the beginning? I would say that it wasn't really, it wasn't really explained to me that way. It wasn't really, it was never real to me until I understood that until it was that there was that absolute fear of a holy God, a righteous God that, you know, that I could be on his bad side and that I could face his judgment and that he could do anything he wanted to me. And there's nothing, you know, I was powerless. Yeah. Yeah. And I think even in the temptation of Eve in the garden, you know, did God really say the perennial proclivity of sin is for us to constantly question God's real goodness. Is he really that holy? Is he, is sin really that big a deal? But yes, yes, it is. All right. I didn't expect a lot of questions. This is a sober subject. Eric, do you have one? I got a real quick question. Okay. The Old Testament concept or place called Sheol. What is it? I'm glad Mark's here. Yeah. Sheol is generally regarded as the abode of God. It's the abode of God. It's the abode of God. It's the abode of God. It's the abode of God. It's the abode of God. It's the abode of God. It's the abode of God. It's the abode of God. It's the abode of God. It's the abode of God. It's the abode of God. It's the abode of God. It's the abode of God. It's the abode of God. It's the abode of God. It's the abode of God. It's the abode of God. It's the abode of God. It's the abode of God. It's the abode of God. 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Give us hearts that burn for them, that we might contend appropriately to your glory. We pray that we build your kingdom. We pray that many more souls would be saved. We ask this in Christ's name. Amen.
