Today’s sermon is a plea. There is nothing funny about what we’re going
to talk about. I have no entertaining
anecdotes because the subject we are occupied with today is too sobering. This message is a plea. It is an appeal. There will never be anything more important
for you to hear than what you will hear today.
We are talking about the subject of Hell. We are going to look at what the Bible says
about Hell.
Hell is for real. Hell is real.
Some people ignore it, talk lightly about it, deny it or making it seem
better than it is. But none of these
change the reality of what Hell is. Hell
is still real. It is what it is and it
will be what God made it to be. God has
prepared a place – a real location – for the wicked. It is a place where His divine retribution
will be executed on everyone who has rebelled against Him – angels and
humans.
Hell was originally created for Satan
and his demons (Matthew 25:41). But,
hell will also house all among mankind who have followed the way of Satan – the
way of rebellion.
Let me clear up 2 misconceptions that are quite
commonly held. First, Satan does not
occupy Hell right now. He is free to
roam the earth and enter into heaven (Job 1:6).
At the mid-point of the Tribulation he will be cast out of heaven down
to the earth (Revelation 12:9). At the
end of the Millennial Kingdom he will be cast into the Lake of Fire (Revelation
20:1-6).
Secondly, another misconception is that
Satan is somehow the ruler of Hell. But,
Satan does not govern hell. God governs
Hell. He created it. He is the only authority that sends anyone
there (Luke 12:4-5). He is the one
executing the punishment on those who occupy Hell. The Bible does not teach in the slightest way
that Hell is Satan’s domain and that He has any authority there. Satan will be too busy suffering to torment
anyone else in Hell.
This is an evangelistic sermon. This is meant to educate us on the realities
of Hell so that no one who comes under the hearing of this preaching would go
there. I do mean to scare you,
but not for sake of scaring. I mean to
terrify you simply by letting the realities of the terrors of Hell do their own
work of scaring you. It is a common
thing for men to speak flippantly and trite fully of this place of
horrors. But no man who understands the
truth of Hell would ever speak so profanely, or so lightly of this pit.
I am going to plead with you: Do Not Go To Hell. I’m going to give 5 reasons why you do not
want to go to hell. The passage we will
center around is found in Luke 16:19-31.
Context:
Let me just point out 2 things about the
context. First of all, while being rich
does not mean you will go to hell, rich people have a particular risk that
others don’t: loving their money more
than they love God. Before Jesus tells
this story He taught verse 13 [Read].
The point here is that Jesus is teaching the crowds not to love
money. And we should take that to heart
as well. I would point out here too that
we don’t have to be rich to love money.
In Luke 12 Jesus rebuked a poor man for his greed.
Secondly, I want us to see from the
context that all of us have “a time”. In
verse 22 Jesus says, “The time came” when both men died. All of us have a time when we will pass
through the curtain of death and slip into eternity. Hebrews 9:27 says, “It is appointed for man to die
once, then face judgment.” It is
unavoidable, inevitable. I remembered a
band named Pink Floyd and they had a song named “Time”. Apart from having one of the greatest guitar
solos in history the lyrics capture the desperation of a man knowing his time
in this life is getting shorter:
“You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And
then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No
one told you when to run you missed the starting gun
And
you run and you run to catch up with the sun but its sinking
Racing
around to come up behind you again
The
sun is the same in a relative way but you’re older
Shorter
of breath and one day closer to death
Every
year is getting shorter you never seem to find the time”
Now
we don’t go to Pink Floyd to get our theology, but, they are human beings along
with us, and they know all too well their own fate is the same as all ours.
With the same despairing tune of Ecclesiastes when it says, “For the living
know that they will die”, each one of us know our time will come. You’ve been to funerals, or hospitals where
you have thought the same thing as everyone else: “Someday this will be me.” Some do everything they can to not think
about it, others contemplate the matter.
But be sure of this: we all have
a time.
Why do I say this? Because once that time comes, and we slip
away from this life, we slip into another existence. And the Bible says that there are only 2
kinds of existence on the other side.
One is heaven. The other is
hell. And using this passage today I
want to share with you 5 reasons why you don’t want to go to hell.
#1: Don’t go to hell because it is a place of
Separation.
Don’t
go to hell because it is a place of separation.
Notice in verse 26 Abraham says “And besides all this, between us and you a
great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you
cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.” (Luke 16:26).
Separation is the theme throughout
Scripture when it describes the eternal destiny of all who have rejected
God. In 2 Thessalonians 1:9 it says that
people will be “Shut out from the presence
of the Lord Jesus Christ”. In Revelation
21:8 and 22:15 it says that people will be cast “Outside the city”. “Outer darkness”; “Their name will be blotted
out from the book of life” (Psalm 69:28; Revelation ); “Cut off” in the OT was the penalty for a Jew
who could be cut off from His people for certain sins or for failing to observe
certain statutes in the Law. In
Revelation 20:11-15 we see a graphic description of the GWT judgment and people
being literally “thrown” into the lake of fire.
They are being taken from the place where they were judged – in front of
the GWT – and they are being picked up – probably by angels – and hurled
headlong into the lake that is burning with fire, brimstone and sulfur. It is the beginning of their eternal
separation from God and all His holy ones, from His City, and from all the
blessings of heaven.
Inherent in this separation is the idea
of utter rejection. God has utterly
forsaken everyone in Hell. There are
terrible ways to be rejected in this life:
people abandoning their spouses, parents abandoning their children,
friendships ending painfully and so on.
These give a whiff of the pain that will come from God eternally
rejecting someone in Hell. In Hell there
is no companionship – not with others, and especially not with God. It is a place of terrible loneliness.
Hell
is a real place. It is not a state of
mind that you create in your thinking.
You don’t create hell. God is the
creator of Hell. It is the location that
God has appointed for the wicked to be sent to.
It is a place that is separated from heaven. It is a place of exclusion
#2: Don’t go to hell because it is a place where
you consciously exist.
Notice
the man “remembers” and he “sees” Abraham and Lazarus and he speaks with
Abraham. He tries to appeal to
Abraham. He is aware of his family still
on earth. The man is conscious. To say like the 7th Day Adventists
and the Jehovah’s Witnesses that there is no hell and there is no consciousness
in Hell is contrary to the Jesus’ teaching in the Bible.
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