MELVIN NEWLAND, MINISTER
RIDGE CHAPEL, KANSAS, OK
(PowerPoints use with this message are available at no charge. Just email me at mnewland@sstelco.com & request #290.)
TEXT: Revelation 21:1-28; John 14:1-3; Matthew 25:46
ILL. In 1386 there was born in an obscure village in Italy a little boy whose name was Donatello. By the time he was 3 years old, he would go into the back yard, take sand & water, & with his chubby little hands pat that sand into likenesses of his father & mother.
The neighbors said that the gods had kissed his fingers & they prophesied that some day Donatello would become famous. They were right. He became one of the best sculptors in the world.
He could take a chunk of marble, & with the artistry of his mallet & chisel, that marble would become a thing of beauty. It was said that since the days of Ancient Greece there had never lived a man so gifted as he.
The story has been told that one day the great painter, Leonardo Da Vinci, came by & looked at one of Donatello's statues & said, "This is wonderful. Why, all it lacks to keep it from being perfect is . . ." & he never finished his sentence because the friends of Donatello stopped him.
They said, "You can't talk against the master. You can't criticize him."
The week that Donatello died he sent for Da Vinci. Da Vinci came to his bedside. The master of the chisel looked up into the face of the master of the brush & said,
"Da Vinci, you're the only man in all Italy who ever criticized my statues. You said they lacked just one thing of being perfect. I wish I could have found you when I was younger. I wish I could have known the one thing that would have made my statues perfect."
Da Vinci then paid him the greatest compliment ever paid to a sculptor.
He said, "Donatello, they didn't let me finish. I wasn't criticizing you. I looked at that marvelous statue, & it seemed as if it almost breathed. What I started to say was, 'All it lacks is the power of speech.' It was a compliment," he said, "not a criticism."
SUM. I feel that I lack the power of speech to do justice to this morning's subject. Destiny! Eternity! No wonder the poet wrote, "Eternity, thou pleasing dreadful thought."
ILL. Now please don't take what I tell you now the wrong way. You see, for several years I have been contributing some of my sermons to a preacher's website called "Sermon Central." They inform me that all-together other preachers & teachers have clicked on & read one or more of my sermons nearly 9 & 1/2 million times.
And about 4 years ago we got these big TV screens & I began preparing PowerPoint slides to display the scriptures & main points of my sermons. So whenever I contributed a sermon to Sermon Central I began mentioning that the PowerPoints used with that sermon were also available.
Since then I have received nearly 18,000 emails from preachers & teachers about my sermons, often requesting copies of the PowerPoint presentations, which I have gladly sent.
As a result, I have also received many notes of appreciation, along with some questions & invitations.
However, I want to mention a couple of emails I received in the past few weeks. One writer said, "It sure is good to read some old-timey sermons again!" Another one wrote, "I love reading your sermons and the sermons of a lost and forgotten era."
Wait a minute! "Old-timey sermons," "Sermons of a lost & forgotten era." I know I'm old, but just what did they mean by that?
Well, maybe they mean the same thing that a woman in Brownsville, TX, meant who came down every year from Nebraska to spend the winter there. She is a member of a certain "main-line" denomination, but when she was in Brownsville she always attended the church where I was preaching.
One Sunday morning, while I was at the door after the service was over, she told me, "It is really good to hear the Bible being preached again!" I knew what she meant, but I replied, "Well, what else?"
She answered, "Back home my preacher always preaches from the Reader's Digest." She went on to tell me that he very seldom even mentions the Bible.
That reminds me also of a preacher I knew some years ago in St. Louis County who was the minister of a prominent church in his suburban community. He was in my office & I was showing him how I indexed & filed my sermons.
Suddenly he remarked, "According to this, you preach most of all about Jesus." Then he told me, "I have never preached a sermon about Jesus." And when I asked him why, he replied, "I don't know anything about Jesus."
He told me that he believed most of the Bible was folklore, filled with myths & mistakes. And the books that make up our New Testament: the 4 Gospel accounts written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, & John, along with the letters of Paul were not written by them at all. They are basically forgeries, written years later & are completely unreliable!
I asked him, "What do you preach about then?" He replied, "I preach about the church." "What do you preach about the church?" "I preach what Paul taught about the church." "But you just told me that you don't think Paul wrote any of his letters."
"Yes, that's right. But whoever wrote them did mix in some of what Paul was teaching." "So how do you know then what he taught? " "Oh, I just read those letters, & whatever I agree with, Paul taught."
For a few moments I thought he was joking. But he wasn't! In fact, surveys taken around that time revealed that in several of the so-called "main-line" denominations more than 50% of their preachers did not believe that Jesus was divine, & over 70% of them did not believe in the reality of heaven & hell.
Well, if believing the Bible to be true, & that Jesus Christ is the Son of God & our Savior, & being determined to preach that message makes me "old-timey" & my sermons relics of a "lost & forgotten era" then I am happy to plead "guilty."
And with that in mind, I am going to preach an "old-timey" message this morning. So listen to these words of Jesus found in Matthew 25:46. "Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."
ILL. About 100 years ago there was a preacher who ended almost every message with these words, "Destiny is riding through this town tonight."
What will our destiny be? It will be what God designed it to be - an eternity of joy for those who love & follow Him; & an eternity of separation for those who reject His love & turn their back to Him.
I. THE DESTINY OF THE LOST
We are not here today to argue about Hell. If there is no Hell there is no devil, for the Bible tells us Hell was prepared as a place for the devil & his angels. If there is no devil there is no sin, for we read that Satan is the father of sin. If there is no sin there is no Savior for He came to seek & save the lost.
One hundred & ten times God's Word speaks of future punishment, & all the rationalizing men may do cannot change one word of it. Hell IS, & Hell is BAD.
A. The awfulness of Hell is seen in the pictures the Bible uses to describe the destiny of the lost. The first picture is that of fire the furnace of fire & the lake of eternal fire as terrible a symbol of pain as the world can conceive.
ILL. One of my college teachers told us about a man he knew who worked on a highway repair crew. His job was to tend the tar pot in which asphalt was heated to over 400 degrees Farenheit. One day something broke when he was lowering a heavy chunk of tar into the kettle.
He leaped back to avoid the splash, but one sizzling blob struck him in the chest. The foreman who was standing nearby with his jackknife in his hand, tore off his shirt & dug out the chunk of tar before it burned through his chest cavity.
For years after that the man had dreams at night about that blazing tar & how he felt when it was burning through his chest.
Have you every experienced the searing pain of fire? Remember, this is not Hell it is just its picture. Hell is not just fire it is worse.
B. Were you ever frightened of the dark? Another picture of Hell is "outer darkness: where there shall be weeping & gnashing of teeth." (Matthew 8:12)
ILL. One man said that his uncle delighted in telling ghost stories about spirits, goblins & ghouls lurking in the darkness. To a small boy the eerie shadows & dark nooks harbored unseen forms of unbelievable horror.
He said, "That was a long time ago, & while I am not a coward, even now I do not feel the greatest peace of mind when passing through a cemetery at midnight in the dark of the moon!"
Were you ever frightened by something in the dark? Remember, "outer darkness" is just a picture. Hell is worse!
C. Jesus also used a vivid picture for Hell when He called it "Gehenna." Gehenna, "the valley of Hinnom," was the garbage dump of Jerusalem.
Gehenna had been an ancient site of worship of the pagan god Moloch. Moloch was represented by a giant iron bull with a built-in furnace where Canaanite women sacrificed their babies in heathen rituals.
The Israelites, in righteous horror, destroyed that idol & for over 1,000 years Gehenna was used as a dump in which to burn garbage. It was a place where smoke & fires were never quenched.
When Jesus used the name Gehenna to describe Hell, His disciples got the picture. Hell is the garbage dump of the universe - the refuse heap of the ages.
There the thieves & liars, rapists & murderers, betrayers & prostitutes of all time rub shoulders in one giant cauldron of hatred, in mutual recriminations, in weeping & wailing & gnashing of teeth, in the bedlam of the ages.
D. God used terrible pictures to describe Hell, but the worst thing of all is that to reach Hell we must reject the love of God, wade through the blood of Jesus, & ignore the tears & prayers of Christian people who love us.
God so loved the world that He gave His Son to save us from the consequences of our sins. God did not design Hell for man, & it is only against God's wish that man thwarts God's love, & makes his way into eternal Hell.
II. THE DESTINY OF THE RIGHTEOUS.
Now in contrast to all that, words almost fail the sacred writers when it comes to describing the destiny of the righteous.
Revelation 21:1-4 tells us: "I saw a new heaven & a new earth, for the first heaven & the first earth had passed away, & there was no longer any sea.
"I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.
“And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Now the dwelling of God is with men, & He will live with them. They will be His people, & God Himself will be with them & be their God.
“He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.'"
A. The beauty of Heaven, the new Jerusalem, is seen in some things which will not be found there.
1. Nothing impure shall enter that beautiful city. "Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful…" (Rev. 21:27)
There will be no crime & no drugs there with its hideous aftermath of drug-addicted people. That city will be clean forever & ever!
2. There will be "no temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty & the Lamb are its temple." (Rev. 21:22) We shall be in His presence, & we shall be united in His will.
3. And Revelation 21:23 tells us, "The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, & the Lamb is its lamp." These time measuring elements shall be done away forever. We will have no need to worry about clocks or calendars when we have eternity to be with Him.
4. Vs. 25 says, "On no day will its gates ever be shut…" The gates of ancient cities had to be guarded against the sneak attacks of its enemies. But in heaven no enemy will ever appear.
5. And vs. 25 goes on to say, "for there will be no night there." Night is the time when predatory animals prowl in search of blood. Night is often the time when human vermin go forth intent on vicious deeds. But thank God, "there will be no night there."
6. Rev. 22:3 says, "No longer will there be any curse." The ground is no longer cursed because of man's sin. And the last enemy of man, death, has been abolished. All that can hurt has been erased. All that can bless & beautify has been added.
SUM. You see, we have a beautiful picture of what Heaven will be like from just mentioning some of the things which we know will not be there.
CONCL. Folks, near the beginning of this sermon I said that I was going to preach an "old-timey" sermon, & if that were absolutely correct I would go on preaching for another hour or so because there is so much more the Bible tells us about Heaven & Hell.
But I'll save that for another time. So let me remind you of what Jesus said to His apostles in the upper room.
He told them, "Let not your heart be troubled. You trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father's house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you.
"I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also." (John 14:1-3)
I believe that with all my heart. And I also believe what a songwriter wrote:
When all my labors & trials are o'er,
And I am safe on that beautiful shore,
Just to be near the dear Lord I adore
Will through the ages be glory for me.
Friends will be there I have loved long ago;
Joy, like a river, around me will flow;
Yet, just a smile from my Savior, I know
Will through the ages be glory for me.
O that will be glory for me, glory for me, glory for me;
When by His grace I shall look on His face,
That will be glory, be glory for me.
INVITATION
