CPC Sunday School | Heaven & Hell (PM)

The speaker discusses various topics, including a brief review of previous weeks, heretical positions on the doctrine of hell, the Apostles' Creed, objections to hell, and the importance of staying true to what the Bible teaches. They also discuss the belief that Christ descended into hell and the different interpretations of this belief throughout history. The speaker ultimately encourages further discussion and consideration of these topics. This morning, we're going to be looking at three really areas if we look at our overview. We're going to do a very brief review of where we've been. So we're going to jog our memories for those of us that have been here the last three weeks. And so the times that we see there, those are aspirational. So we'll see how we do, but very brief in our review. And then we're going to be moving into heretical positions in the doctrine of hell. We're going to take an interesting tangent, which I trust that you're going to find interesting and rewarding as well in looking at the Apostles' Creed, something that we have all recited throughout church, something that we've all said, something that we will continue to say. And there's a line in there that we're going to be looking at. And I think hopefully towards the goal of greater unity of what we mean in that line. And so that'll be a good chunk of our discussion. And then we're going to end with what time we have left of what are the objections to hell? What are the alternatives that we have heard people come up with for hell? And then we hope to save some time at the end for questions. So in way of review of our outline, we started week one in heaven and we looked at the idea of when did heaven start? Does anybody remember that part and what the instinct is that heaven's eternal, right? And so that's our first maybe impulse of how we answer that. And Pastor took us through that heaven had a beginning. In fact, in Genesis 1, 1 says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and talked to us, walked us through what that means. But basically, for the starting position that God is eternal, that he's always been and he always will be, heaven has a starting place. And we'll see the same is true for hell. He talked that we walked through heaven as God's throne, heaven as God's temple, earthly temples as replica of heaven. We talked about those failures and then the hope that is to come. We talked about beauty and I want us to remember that as we're having this discussion of hell, the contrast of beauty of heaven with hell and what that really looks like as we spend some time considering really what is the opposite of what we consider to be beautiful. And then the uses for this in Christian life that we are already a citizen of heaven. I talked about that we are already a living temple and that our confidence, our hope of better things to come. This was the takeaway there. Week two, Dr. Dunson took us through this intermediate state. So there's all sorts of and I think he had a quote by, was it Bovink, where, you know, the encouragement was obviously to study this, but sometimes we need to rein ourselves in as we extrapolate what the Bible says versus, you know, what we may think or want to create on these subjects. So there's a good caution there at the very beginning, but there's a lot of these extrapolations that happen for what happens after we die. Do we go to sleep? What happens there? And he walked us through, you know, scripturally there's this consciousness that we have after death and so that cuts against an approach that we'd be sleeping and that was a helpful conversation that we had. He talked about the final judgment, what we have to look forward to, how we prepare, the idea of rewards in the final judgment. Guy this morning talked about, you know, do you get a, what did he call it, a metal cup, he meant a trophy, you know, for doing Sunday school this morning. And so, you know, talking about in heaven there are metal cups, that there is a God who is, you know, everywhere and watching what is the suffering that you go through, what is the sacrifices that you give and that as we are doing this day in, day out, persevering to the end with God's grace, you know, there is the hope of God's accounting of it and watchfulness of it and rewards of it. And then we ended with a new creation that is ahead, the final, final state. You know, this idea that your body and your soul are separated and that is not a good thing that at death. If you are at a funeral, the body decaying is not a good thing, it is a part of the fall. But we have Christ as the example to look forward to in his resurrection. We will talk more about that, Ben talked about that. We had in week three last week a lot of discussion on hell, we had a lot of content there. And we had, Dan did a good job of laying essentially the concrete of the theology of hell. And taking us through what was, you know, the good idea theory, if you will, and people's idea about hell, that it is not real or, you know, this instinct to say, well, it is not that bad. And you guys remember the discussion on symbols. Do symbols tend to give us something that is greater or worse than the actual thing? And you remember we talked through that often times that the sign that says warning electrocution, well anybody that has been electrocuted would rather stare at that sign and look at that sign than go through what it is to be electrocuted. And so I won't go through the content of it, but there was a lot of content that would take you back to that week three on the theology of hell. Our purpose today is to now that we have laid the contrast of heaven and we have talked about the theology of hell, what we are going to do today is talk about the heresies of hell. And I am going to submit to you a quote by John Frame which I think is going to be helpful as we discuss heretical positions of hell that Frame says, if I were free to invent my own religion, I can assure you that eternal punishment would not be a part of it. But I must talk now about it because I am not free to invent my own religion. I must teach only what the Bible teaches and the Bible certainly has a lot to say about eternal punishment. And so, you know, our instinct is to soften bad news. You know, if we wanted to package something to make it diverse and inclusive and to make it compelling and to have a sales force behind it, we would not include the doctrine of hell in it. It would probably be the first thing that we would ax from the budget. It's not, you know, something that is compelling. But when we say that, you know, we submit ourselves to scripture, when we say, I identify myself as reformed, what do we mean by that? We do mean that we are confessional and that we confess things that the church has confessed for many years. But fundamentally what it means is that we want to rightly understand what scripture says and then we want to submit ourselves to that. And so the question is not how do we soften this or what is a better idea or how can we improve what scripture says. It is first and foremost, what does scripture say about it? And then what, you know, do we do as a result of that? And those are the questions that we continually ask ourselves. Why do we believe in hell? Well, the Bible preaches, the Bible talks about it and Jesus, we talked about last week, preaches it. So there's two reasons. The Bible teaches it, Jesus preaches it. You look in Matthew, Jesus nine times talking about hell. Not just talking about it but giving it to us in great detail. And so let's look really quickly at passages of scripture and Matthew talks about if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. For it's better for you to enter life with one eye than to enter hell, be thrown into the fire with two eyes. It's better for you to see this world and this by no means is advocating for maiming your body by any means. What it's saying is what is most valuable in this world? What's more valuable than seeing what's beautiful? It's better for you to chop away what's valuable in your life than to enter hell with what you're clinging to as being valuable. In the book of Mark, you see Christ carrying this through and bringing in at the very end, not just if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out, if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off, but then he brings in this phrase where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched. It's a sobering phrase. That phrase is pulled from the end of Isaiah. So you've got Isaiah. Here is essentially Isaiah, the covenant prosecutor, bringing charges against God's people. And you get in Isaiah as well, not just God's people leaving God, but you get this hope of a Messiah. You get these rich phrases that we sing about at Christmas of a Messiah that is coming. And you have Christ coming, fulfilling the job description of this Messiah. How does the book of Isaiah end? What is the very end of book 66? It is this phrase. This is the very last verse in Isaiah, and they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of men who have rebelled against me for their worm shall not die. Their fire shall not be quenched and they shall be in abhorrence to all flesh. It doesn't end with, and they lived happily ever after. So you have this sobering message of the way forward in Isaiah of saying there's a Messiah that is to come. So is it surprising that Christ, when he is in his earthly ministry, God and man about to give himself, suffer on the cross for us? Is it any surprise that here he is as well talking about hell? If it wasn't a big deal, then would you end what is, here's the Messiah that is to come and when the Messiah comes that he spends a great amount of time on hell? So you see what kind of proportion that we should give it and take it very seriously. I'm going to stop there really quick. Is there any thoughts or questions on that? Okay, we're going to keep going. So again, back to John Frame, the root of heretical positions on hell. No one should try by some exegetical or theological trick to mitigate the harshness of this doctrine. What do we mean by mitigating something? Soften it, right. In criminal court, at sentencing, you have two different kinds of evidence. There's mitigating evidence. Defense counsel gives what a nice guy this is, all the good things he's done. And then there's aggravating evidence. Here's his criminal history. Here's what he actually did. To get the judge to give a longer, lighter sentence. And so it is not our role to take the doctrine of hell, the Bible is sharper than any two-edged sword. It's not our role to try and dull the blade of the Bible and say, well, let's actually just make this easier or softer. And when we read these words, they do pierce. When we read about the worm and the fire, you know, those are sobering words. And so it's not our place to try and soften that. So that is, as we have this conversation, I want to just submit to you guys that the instinct in us all is to make something better than it actually is, to soften bad news. But that this really comes, what's going to reign us in for that instinct is this fundamental position that we're going to follow what the Bible says on this doctrine. And so, and when you don't, then guess what grows out of that? And we have various heresies. We're going to take an interesting transition now to the Apostles' Creed. This is something that we've said and that we know. And so I want to ask you guys, what is the Apostles' Creed? When was it written? Be interested to hear your guys' feedback on this. What do you guys think? The Apostles' Creed, when was it written? And I'm going to warn you, this is a trick question, but does anybody want to take a stab at it? I heard John, that's a strong move walking into Sunday School answering a question. I heard fifth. Anybody else? Any takers for third, fourth, fifth, seventh? Maybe the, anybody? Is it in the timeline song, or classical? Are you, anybody singing a, no? All right, that's one way to do it. I don't know if it's in there. So, like I said, a trick question. So, here we have something early on. Do a lot of people have access to the Bible early on in the church? Do they have access to written documents? Right, and so what you're doing is you're carrying on through an oral tradition, and you are trying to concisely have, what does it mean to be a Christian? And so you have an early Apostles' Creed, and as it is written, the first time that we have a recorded statement of this creed, I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth, is around 371. But in that creed, as we're going to see, that creed developed. And it was originally for baptism, so that as you were going to, as an adult, be baptized, you know, as we do here today, that if you're an adult that comes in for either membership or baptism, you're going to affirm certain truths. So that everybody that would consider themselves, or that would actually be a member of Cornerstone Presbyterian Church, has affirmed certain creedal beliefs from Scripture. That you believe in one God, that you believe in the Trinity, that you believe in the deity of Christ, that you believe in. So you're saying this is what it means to, before you're baptized, that you are acknowledging these things and confessing these things. What do we have in this picture? You guys see, count the heads, and you got to 12, good counting. And so this is a depiction of the Apostles themselves, and they are, you see the dove up there, so the suggestion that this is an inspired text. Well, it's not an inspired text, like we would hold on the same level as the Bible, but the truths themselves are extracted from the Bible. And so you have how many lines in the Apostles' Creed? Good counting again, I think I heard 12, good. And so, you know, in history there's a tradition that every line was attributed to one of the Apostles, and so that this is their contribution. And so you have what is historically, without any, you have a tradition that's carried through without really any proof that the Apostles gave each line, but this is how the Creed is packaged. And what we're going to do, as we look at this Creed, is we're going to be looking at one line in this Creed. We're talking about Christ, His only Son, our Lord, He suffered under Pontius Pilate, He was crucified, died, was buried, and descended into hell. What do we mean by that? Who here has said those words before today, and confessed those words in a church setting? If you're not raising your hand, welcome to church for the first time today, because for your whole life, you know, we've, I think, confessed that here, I know at Redeemer, and in our tradition, this is something that we have confessed. What do we mean when we say that He descended into hell? Go ahead guys. What does this mean? Does anybody want to take a stab at it? So there's this ontological relationship between God, the Father, and Christ, that, you know, you are rightly providing some sort of caution about going too far, but that there's something that happened between God, the Father, and Christ, that's good. Anything else? Well, you'd be surprised maybe, and not be surprised maybe, to find there's a whole host of interpretations for this, and there are people that confess this, and it's a part of what we mean to be Christians, and we're very familiar with this phrase. So how easy it is to take the phrase, and He descended into hell, and make a whole city of theology, of bad theology, of heresy around this phrase, and we're going to see that. It is much easier to build heresy on something we're familiar with, and that we've got buy-in for already, like the Apostles' Creed, than it is to create something out of scratch. And so we see this with this particular area. Any questions before we get started? Any thoughts? So here is the Apostles' Creed, again, a drawing of the Twelve Apostles with each section that is attributed to them, and what we've done is we've underlined the sections of the Creed that are not in the original 371 text. This is called the Old Roman Form. You'll hear scholars refer to that. And so we have a lot of sections that were added in, in the 400s, 500s, 700s, and by the 700s, you have what is the form of it as we recite it today. You do not have maker of heaven and earth, but you also, with everything else underlying, you do not have descended into hell, ad inferos, right? And this is a word that we get in its original Latin from the inferior, right? So there's some thought about, and when people confess it, they may not say, so this is just a side note, he descended into hell. You may see he descended into Hades. He descended into the dead. There are people that leave that line out altogether. This is Keith and Christine Getty's song, I Believe. It's the Apostles' Creed. They leave that line out altogether. So there's various approaches to this, and how do we actually say the Apostles' Creed, but that may not be the best interpretation when we're talking about this word of hell. We may say he descended into the inferior, which would be maybe more the dead or burial. And we ask ourselves the question of why are we saying that he was buried and then he was buried? Why do we say that twice? If we're trying to concisely, in 12 lines, summarize all of the doctrine, every word is precious. So why the impulse to say something twice, or does it mean something else? So these are what people have been wrestling with. So what I'd like to do is look at a historical background of some of the approaches to the Apostles' Creed. I want to look at briefly two scriptures that we have that are given for the authority, as people would say, that Christ actually descended into hell. And what I want to say is just at the beginning that there are people that are Orthodox that are within Orthodox teaching that hold a belief that Christ, after his death and before his resurrection, actually descended into Hades for a purpose. Where did he go? What did he do? There's variations of that, but I just want to say that. I'm going to submit the Reformed position that is not, as we will see, a position that I think is a position that is one that is without... I think there's more ambiguity and complexity in taking that position, these two passages of scripture, than to take what we will see as the Westminster's position, the Heidelberg's position, John Calvin's position, and I would submit the Reformed position. We're going to look at... At the very end, we're all going to decide together, what should we do with this? Should we continue to say this? Should we get rid of this line? Should we state it? How should we be meaning what we are saying? We'll come up with that together. Any questions before I get started? History of it. We can talk about the paintings, if anyone has any questions. This is Bosch from the Netherlands, about the 1500s, a portrait of hell and this descent into hell. They're pulling this picture from the Apocrypha, the Gospel, I believe, of Nicodemus. I may be mistaken on that, but you have essentially this attempt at a depiction of this descent into hell. This is something that church fathers have been wrestling with for many years. You have Augustine that says, basically, that if you don't believe that Christ descended into hell, you are an infidel. That's as strong as he... In looking at the passages in Luke, in looking at the passages in 1 Peter, but then later in a letter says, actually, I don't know if this is what it is. He himself expresses reservation about it. He is confused, and we'll see this as we pull up these passages, that it's talking about Christ preaching to the spirits. That is the passage in 1 Peter. What does that mean? He's wrestling with this. What does it mean that Christ preached to the spirits in captive? What does that mean? Who are the spirits? Where are they in prison? He's confused as to why Christ would preach to certain people in hell. Thomas Aquinas comes along years later, and he says, well, there are two places. There's actually hell, and there's purgatory. So Christ goes and has different purposes, right? And so you have this evolution of hell. You have that because you have a parable in Luke about the rich man and the beggar. Who can give me a quick summary of that before we get to the passage? What is that about? Right, and they're having a conversation with each other. So what do we do with that? There are some people that take that and say, well, it's not really a parable in the sense that Christ's parable, because he names people in it, and Christ doesn't name specific people when he's talking about parables. So this must be or may be something real, and then they start to create some real estate, but there's actually a section of hell that part of it is a section where we go as we await for the resurrection, and then part of it is a section where people that haven't trusted in Christ go, and everybody's waiting for the final judgment. And so there's this visual, and then in the Catholic doctrine, you've got the purgatory section, and so there's this visual, and there's this world that's created, incredible world that's extrapolated from what would be essentially one or two verses. And so I'm going to continue to submit to you that that would not be the right approach. Any questions on that before we go? Roman Catholic Church, that Christ goes down, this is the same painting. He leads only those that are in this section, that there's another mission that he's going on between this, his death on the cross and his resurrection, that he's going to go on essentially a rescue mission for people that may have been virtuous enough before Christ and people that did good things, but he's going to give them, preach the gospel to them, to give them an opportunity to know Christ. And so you have all of these essentially second chances that are built in and extrapolated through these various verses. Here are the two scriptures, and in Luke we have, as you already summarized, we've got the rich man and you've got a poor man named Lazarus, and here they are having this conversation. And this, for context, is often what's referred to as Abraham's bosom, right? And so you have this interpretation that when Christ said to the thief on the cross, today you will be with me in paradise, he's actually referring to Abraham's bosom, this waiting period. It's not heaven, but it's better than the other place, which is in this section of Hades, which is where we have this rich man at, begging for a drop of water. And so from that passage, and then from 1 Peter 3, 18-20, and specifically this section right here where it says, "...but made alive in the spirit in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they firmly did not obey." What does he mean by that? What do we mean by that in 1 Peter? And this has been one of the most, in preparing for this, difficult parts of this, R.C. Sproul and his sermon, I would just recommend to you, there's a 2008 sermon when he preached at St. Andrews on this passage of Scripture, and he says that he grabbed eight different commentaries on it, and he got eight different explanations for what this verse means. It's not an easy passage. You know, we could call it an ambiguous passage, but what is the best commentary on the Bible? The Bible itself. And so, you can stay or you can leave, but well done. We look to the Bible to understand, and so we look through the Gospel. Is there anything in the Gospels about Christ, after His death, going to another place to accomplish something else that wasn't accomplished on the cross? We don't see that. And so, when we look to the Bible, and so, when we look at this passage, I'm going to just touch on it briefly, but I would recommend that sermon to you. But we have, essentially, who are the people that Peter is talking to here? We've got God's people, the Jewish people that have, and he refers to those people as the spirits in prison. What kind of prison are they in? A prison of captivity. Captivity as they've been in for many years, and here he is, you know, telling John, John asks in Matthew, what does he say, are you the Messiah? Are you the one that we've been waiting for? And what does he say? He says, tell John that the blind see, that the poor have good news. What is he telling John? He's giving them Isaiah 51, I believe it is, where he's saying, that was the job description of the Messiah, and I'm fulfilling those things. So, John has no doubt in his mind of what Jesus is telling him, that I am the fulfillment of the Messiah, and here I am preaching good news to the captive, just like that spirit of captivity has been there all the way back to the days of Noah, when through the Holy Spirit you have a preaching of repent, you have wickedness that just was extrapolated and you know end, and Noah, and how many people, but eight people were brought safely through the water, and so that would be a really quick and concise summary of R.C. Sproul's really helpful explanation of it. Any questions before we get going, or other thoughts on that? I think it's, what R.C. Sproul is talking about, the temporal part of it, is that it doesn't need to be linear in its time, but that that same spirit of captivity is present in the time of Noah, as it is in 1 Peter talking to the Jewish people. And so you have Christ, who is Christ's main audience as he was preaching? You have the Jewish people, and wrestling with the Jewish people, and basically proclaiming to them, to their spirits, the good news to release them from captivity. Does that get at your question? Come back. Okay. Are you saying whether this is specifically focused on Noah? Yeah, and so the explanation would be Noah would be an example of, in the same way that it is here today, it would be true back then, but we can come back to that later. Okay, so let's focus briefly on what would be heretical positions, clearly heretical positions of this doctrine of he descended into hell. And so we have, the Bible indicates that for three days Jesus went into the very depths of hell, right into the enemy's own territory, and he did battle with Satan face to face. Can you imagine what a showdown that was? That's all I'm going to read from that. But we have this Hollywood setup, right? It's Apollo Creed versus Drago. It's this battle. Who's going to win? I don't know. Who's going to be victorious? We don't know. Let's just watch and find out. This is apostasy in heresy at its greatest height. It's rewriting what Scripture clearly says on this issue. It is Joyce Myers has this position, Copeland has this position, and it's what millions of people are exposed to in trying to understand the doctrine of he descended into hell, and you have these wrong explanations of it. Why is it heretical? Because the Bible clearly states that this is not the case. This is not what happened. Tetelestai is the Greek word for it is finished. He doesn't say not almost tetelestai. He says that the curtain was torn. Not halfway and then to be continued. It was completely torn, and he says to the thief on the cross, today you will be with me in paradise. Not tomorrow. Not if I was to stand up here and say, thanks for being here this morning. It is, Sunday school is finished, and then I came back and I started talking again as you guys were shuffling out. That isn't what I mean or we mean when we say it is finished, but that is what Christ said on the cross. There was not more battling to do. There was not more to do than what he accomplished on the cross. Any questions or thoughts on that? Yeah, that's a good point, and so you may be able to say that the less that you understand the God-man facing the wrath of God on the cross, the less you understand of that, the more your instinct is to need more for Christ to do. He needs to suffer some more in hell or he needs to go down to hell and actually battle with Satan. It may, as you're saying, just show a lack of understanding of the significance of what occurs at the cross. So we have now this descendant position that I would submit is not a reformed position, but is an orthodox position. Martin Luther, he believes in the phrase descendant, and he believes, though, a little bit differently that Christ, after he is resurrected, so he's in the tomb, but before he actually exits the tomb that he does some things. It's a little bit of a creative approach to this, but he also is left a little bit unsure about what specifically this means. So the Lutheran position on this is what I would refer to as the victory lap. So Satan goes down to Hades and basically says, I win, and you see that you thought that you conquered me and that I was dead, but look at me. I win. And so that would be a Lutheran position. A lot of fellow blood-bought brothers would believe that position. So we want to just say that. That's right. That's right. So it's a very narrow period of time, and trying to not make it be between the period of where his spirit is engaged in this, but it's actually his body. And so that's an attempt at that. So there are other people that believe that Christ actually went down, and went down to retrieve the Old Testament saints. And so what do we do with all the people in the Old Testament that believed in God? Where were they at their death? And so this belief that Christ needed to go down there to go and retrieve them. What are you guys' thoughts on that? So we have some outliers of that, if you're going to flesh that out. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. 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So, you know, ultimately, this instinct in us, when we look at, if we look at what is the idea of an appeal in a criminal case, it is an acknowledgment that things are imperfect, that somebody might have messed something up. And so they allow for a way to perfect or fix a mistake. In God's world, with God's rules, it's God who's perfect. He doesn't need an appeal process. And so the finality of his judgment is something that only comes because we have a perfect God. These are difficult issues. We have to acknowledge that. And these are not ones that, as Dan talked about last week, that we should say in any way other than being sober-minded. There's a lot of sobriety in this, what this means, what the implications of it. And so we could talk a lot more about that, some of the objections to hell. We may not have time to get into these, but we are running out of time. So rather than cover the rest of the content, here's what I want to do. We have a couple minutes. What are some of the objections or some of the thoughts I want to hear from you guys on hell? What are some of the things that you've heard? Any discussion at all from anything that we've covered? Anybody? That's absolutely right. So if we look at, I think, in the New Testament, heaven is mentioned over 250 times. Hell is mentioned maybe 12 times. So if we exegetically preach, as we are privileged to do here, that we should talk about God's grace. But you can't talk about God's grace unless you know what it's gracious for. Nobody is graceful unless there's a problem. You wouldn't say that somebody is gracious unless there was something that you needed them to be gracious for. So that's absolutely right. What else? They're telling me one sin merits an eternity of torment and of punishment. That seems to be just the general consensus. They kind of have that sentimental tug that I think we should be aware of. They're just the average person on the street. That's right. I had a patient who died a couple years ago. But before she died, I had a conversation with her. She was in the USA, and we were having a conversation. And she said that her pastor was asked this question about people who are unbelievers and die. And he said that he believed that they get one more chance after they die to receive Jesus. And I just basically said, well, that's very interesting. Where do you find that in the Bible? And like I said, she died not long after that. I was very close to her. She was such a sweet lady. I actually went to her funeral, which I don't often do with patients. But that conversation still kind of haunts me to this day. So this is Dan. Dan. In the back. In the back. Right. Good point. And before you know it, right, and what you actually hear them saying is that this is I'm going to be a God unto myself, and I'm going to describe how I would rule. Let's close with that. Our Father in heaven, we thank you that this is your world and that you rule and that you have graciously provided for us your word and your spirit. We thank you for today. We ask your blessing on this service. In Jesus' name, amen.