- Hell is a subject that most Christians (and preachers) would just as soon avoid.
- Hell is one of the most difficult subjects in the Bible. What do you do with the mocking “God is love and if you don’t love Him He’ll send you to hell!”?
- We’re going to address this subject this morning as we see Jesus close out His parable with some disconcerting words.
Would Jesus Really Condemn Someone To Hell? The person who talks the most about hell in the New Testament is Jesus.
- Luke 19:27.
- Of the 12 times the word “gehenna” (a Greek term for hell) is used in the New Testament, 11 of those came from the mouth of Jesus.
- References to hell or judgment in Luke: Luke 3:9, 17; Luke 10:12-16; Luke 12:5; Luke 13:3, 5, 8-9, 28; Luke 14:24; Luke 16:19-31 (esp. v. 27); Luke 17:1-2; Luke 19:27; Luke 20:16, 47. [Go through these.]
- Just referring to these is an example (especially v. 27) of how frequently this was a subject that Jesus taught.
- We tend to ignore these passages, reading past them because they make us uncomfortable. But that doesn’t make them any less prevalent.
- Many of us want to recreate Jesus into someone who was completely non-judgmental, non-confrontational, and focused only on preaching love. The simple fact is, though, that is not the true picture of Jesus.
- We have to be willing to understand Jesus for who He said He was, not who we wish He was.
Why Is Hell Even Necessary? Three reasons: 1. Genuine human freedom; 2. Need to judge evil; 3. Our unwillingness to give up our sin.
- No doubt there is a part of us that wishes that we could just cast aside the idea of hell. That would be pleasing in so many ways. Yet there are reasons that the existence of hell cannot be avoided.
- Knowing Jesus is a person of love, we can presume that He wouldn’t allow hell if it wasn’t necessary. Why, then, is it necessary?
1. Genuine human freedom.
- God has given us genuine freedom to do what we desire.
- Why would He do that? Because our love and our actions only count if we have the freedom to choose against God.
- If we didn’t have that freedom, then we would essentially be robots. Our love is meaningful only to the extent that we can choose not to love.
- Because God has given us that genuine freedom, there must be an outlet for those who in the end choose to reject God’s love and God’s offer of reconciliation. Hell, in its deepest sense, is a place away from God’s presence.
- The Bible uses images like fire and darkness to describe what hell is like, but ultimately the core of hell is the absence of God.
- In the end, God allows us to be ruled by what we choose.
- C.S. Lewis: People can either say to God “Thy will be done” or God will say to people “thy will be done.”
- It’s odd that so many people want to spend their entire lives on earth rejecting God’s will and God’s ideas, yet believe that spending an eternity with Him is something to look forward to.
- If you hated even thinking about God here on earth, what makes you think you’d enjoy being in a place inundated with His thinking?
- Comparison of doing something you hate (say, shopping) vs. doing something you love (say, golfing).
- If you dread being in the presence of God here on earth, what makes you think you’d enjoy being in a place inundated with His presence?
- Comparison of me being in my wife’s presence vs. being in the presence of a used car salesman.
2. Need to judge evil.
- A second reason that there has to be a hell is that God has promised to judge evil.
- This is something that we’re in favor of in the abstract. We hear of atrocities around the world and we want evil judged. We hear of horrific acts of personal violence and we want evil judged. We hear of children’s innocence lost and we want evil judged.
- We are not merely sympathetic to the idea - we’re enthusiastic for it.
- We are less enthusiastic, however, when it comes to our own evil. We have a laundry list of excuses to explain and justify our actions. Sure, we gossiped about that person, but who did it hurt? Sure, I looked at porn online, but what’s the big deal? Sure, I chose what was selfishly best for me, but doesn’t everyone do that?
- God has promised to judge evil. Both the world’s and our’s.
- God is perfect and completely without sin. All that He is and does is light and goodness.
- God cannot look upon evil and excuse it with a wink. In His mercy and grace, He puts off the judging as long as He can. He is patient, wanting everyone to come to repentance. But, eventually, there must be judgment.
3. Our unwillingness to give up our sin.
- We do not merely sin, but we sin with enthusiasm. We do not merely sin, but we claim those sins as essential parts of who we are.
- It’s a nice hypothetical idea to think that in the face of God’s love and beauty that everyone would all lay down their sin. But it’s simply not true.
- Consider the Pharisees’ witnessing Christ’s love, miracles, and profound teaching. They were unwilling to acknowledge Him as Messiah even in the face of overwhelming proof.
- Every day we are confronted with God’s goodness in His daily mercies of life, breath, food, and the beauty of creation. And yet, the vast majority do not reject any of their sin in the light of God’s common grace.
- We are not “good people” who occasionally and inadvertently do things that are wrong. We are deeply and passionately sinful. That is the Bible’s testimony about us and it is the clear testimony of everyday life.
- Certainly some are better than others at hiding their sin. But that doesn’t make them less sinful – just better at hiding it.
- In this life, God again and again extends His hand to us, offering grace and mercy. The vast majority reject those offers. We instead hold tight to our sin.
- The issue here in Luke 19 was not one of political philosophies, but one of sin.
- It’s not as though the citizens were having a gentlemen’s disagreement with the new king on the theories of governance. They rejected Him and His rule.
Who Is Condemned? There is condemnation for two groups: disobedient servants and those in open opposition.
- Matthew 25:30; Luke 19:27.
a. Disobedient servants.
- The parable in Luke 19 leaves the third servant’s fate unspoken beyond his loss of the mina.
- The parallel passage in Matthew 25 does not leave the conclusion uncertain. (The Matthew 25 passage is not an exact parallel, but the two stories share a multitude of details, including the third servant’s lack of productivity and his loss of what he was entrusted with.)
- In Matthew 25:30, we read that the third servant being sent to a place of darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. This is clearly and unmistakably hell imagery.
- We have spoken in recent weeks about the third servant’s negative view of the master. He believes Him to be a harsh man, an unfair man.
- I would therefore classify him as someone who shows some outward indications of being a person of faith, but is not a real believer.
- Immediately, the scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’ day come to mind. They had the outward appearance of religion, but Jesus trashes them as false believers and impediments to what God is trying to do.
- Today, there are similar people – those who have some outward indications of faith, but it’s not real. (Indeed, a clear case could be made that if the majority of churches in America were actually filled with real believers, this country would be a different nation than it is.)
- This is a tough truth: there are many sitting in churches, who have some outward appearance of religion, who are going to hell. This is tragic, but it is undeniable.
b. Those in open opposition.
- The second group receiving condemnation takes us back to Luke 19. In v. 27, those who have been in open opposition to the king are destroyed.
- Let’s be honest: this is a tough verse to deal with. It’s difficult to wrap our heart around the idea of Jesus calling for His enemies to be executed in front of Him. And yet there it is.
- I think one thing that’s helpful to keep in mind concerns their character. Since these were people violently opposed to the king and since we know that Jesus stands for all that’s good, we have to presume that these citizens have done evil. They are not innocents who happen to be on the wrong side of a political feud. Their designs for the kingdom involved the exaltation of themselves and pain and suffering for many others. In recent days, we’ve been reminded by the events in Tunisia and Egypt of the power for evil that despots have.
- These were not the “loyal opposition.” They were the “violent opposition.”
Can’t We All Just Get Along? It’s essential to understand that the emotion these subjects have toward their master is hatred.
- Luke 19:14, 21.
- The citizens who were in open opposition are said to have “hated him” (v. 14) and to have sent a delegation to oppose his kingship. We’ll talk in a moment about what the reasons for that hatred might have been.
- Similarly, the third servant echoes the condemnation of the character and integrity of the master. The third servant calls him a “hard man” (v. 21). His words toward his master don’t explicitly say, “I hate you” but they certainly sound a lot like what someone who did hate him would say to his face.
- This is essential to understand. When faced with the master becoming king, they didn’t say, “Sure, why not?” They absolutely refused to submit to Him and even openly opposed Him.
- Why would they hate him?
- This is a key question because many of us have been Christians for a sufficiently long time that it’s difficult for us to think anything but highly of Christ.
a. His values and priorities are not their’s.
- The battle between us and God is that God wants to guide us toward all that is good and just and loving even if that requires painful changes within us.
- What God considers good is not generic and easily-accepted, but a radical beauty and love that requires hard changes within us and in our values and priorities.
- If you’ve ever had God begin to work in your heart, burning away sinful tendencies and pruning things that aren’t fully His, you know it’s a painful process.
- And God’s goal is not simply to excuse our sin via the cross, but to make us into creatures who are like Him.
- That requires a set of values and priorities that are different than we now possess. This requires that we make changes from the things we’ve held onto and move toward what He says is good and right. This hurts. And because of that, many do not want to go through it.
- Their opposition does not mean there was a moral defect in what the king wanted to do. The problem was on their end.
- This flies in the face of our frequent assertion that “no one has the right to judge me.”
- This reminds us that what we have here are not two equally-valid, equally-good political viewpoints and the new king is just arbitrarily crushing the opposition. What the king wants to do is intrinsically good and what the opposition wants to do is self-centered and sinful.
b. His ascension to power costs them some of their power.
- It is necessary to recognize and submit to His authority, not self-rule.
- They want to be in charge.
- Most of us like calling the shots.
- We see this in the Pharisees’ violent opposition to Christ. Much of it came from their fear that His ascendency would decrease their political and social power.
c. He has expectations of them that they are unwilling to fulfill.
- We have to understand that Christ has significant demands on His servants, as opposed to the “just-acknowledge-me-and-you-can-go-do-whatever-you-want” idea.
- In our lives, we want to be able to do whatever we want and not have anyone tell us that we can’t.
- Granting God His legitimate power in my life costs me power. I am not in charge anymore. I do not get to pick and choose which of Christ’s commands suit me. I am obligated to follow all that He’s said.
- This is a big reason that many don’t want to acknowledge Christ.
- This is hard for us because we think, “Who wouldn’t want Jesus?”
- And yet our surprise and need for explanation that someone would hate Christ speaks to our lack of understanding.
- When Jesus was on earth, He encountered violent opposition. They literally killed Him for what He said and stood for.
- “Who wouldn’t want Jesus?” Almost everyone who saw Him during His earthly life.
- Even among those who were intrigued by Christ and listened attentively to His teaching, the vast majority walked away. By the time of His crucifixion, He had a only small band of followers left. Hardly an impressive result by our standards, as given as we are to big results and good publicity.
- And when you consider the “narrow gate” passage, we have to say that the response from His earthly life was not the exception, but pretty typical.
- We often want to make Jesus into a Mr. Rogers-type figure who just preached love and everybody getting along. How could someone hate Mr. Rogers? And how could Mr. Rogers condemn someone to hell? Well, Jesus’ message was bold and provocative and challenging, not bland pabulum. Jesus is not Mr. Rogers.
- The very question “Who wouldn’t want Jesus?” betrays the extent to which we have made “belief in Christ” into a “nothing” decision.
- We liken the decision more to joining Netflix than joining the Marines.
- If you cannot conceive of Jesus saying these things or doing these things, then you need to squarely face the fact that you’re picturing and believing in a non-Biblical Jesus.
- A final question that needs to be addressed: why doesn’t God do something about hell?
- The answer: He already has.
- He has done everything He can, at an incredibly high price, to allow us to avoid hell.
- Still, though, we have genuine human freedom. God will not force us. God allows us to be ruled by what we choose.
- The reality of hell should light a fire under us as Christians.
- We don’t want to see those away from God stay that way.
