A TRUCE WITH HELL
TEXT: Isaiah 28:13-15
Isaiah 28:13-15 But the word of the LORD was unto them precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little; that they might go, and fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken. [14] Wherefore hear the word of the LORD, ye scornful men, that rule this people which is in Jerusalem. [15] Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us: for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves:
American Standard Version Isaiah 28:15 Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with Sheol are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us; for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves:
Moffatt’s Isaiah 28:15 -- “You think you have struck terms with death, and made your compact with the powers of doom, so that the surging scourge of a flood can never reach you, since you are safe behind a lie and sheltered by a falsehood!”
Taylor’s Isaiah 28:15 -- “You have struck a bargain with Death, you say, and sold yourselves to the devil in exchange for his protection against the Assyrians. They can never touch us, you say, for we are under the care of one who will deceive and fool them.”
l. INTRODUCTION -- WHERE HAS HELL GONE TO?
-Where has Hell gone to? The vast majority of people that you met last week and those you will meet tomorrow and throughout the week do not believe in Hell.
Albert Mohler Jr. -- “At some point in the nineteen-sixties, Hell disappeared. No one could say for certain when this happened. First it was there, then it wasn’t. Different people became aware of the disappearance of Hell at different times. Some realized that they had been living for years as though Hell did not exist, without having consciously registered its disappearance. Others realized that they had been behaving, out of habit, as though Hell were still there, though in fact they had ceased to believe in its existence long ago. . . . On the whole, the disappearance of Hell was a great relief, though it brought new problems”.
-Hell may be under fire but popular opinion cannot quench it’s eternal flames.
-One man gave an account of sitting in a “Bible believing” church for thirty-years and never once did he recollect of hearing his pastor preach a message on Hell. He remembered a 16 mm film being shown on Hell, but never a message on Hell. The last time that I specifically preached about Hell was on November 3, 2002. I have to admit that it is a neglected thought even among my own preaching.
-You have heard the word, hell, used in banter and amusement among co-workers. You have heard the word used in anger at someone else. The phrase, “Just go to Hell.” It rarely strikes us anymore because the word has gotten so common that very few, and a very small few, really believe that beyond the grave, you will spend your life in one of two places: Heaven or Hell.
-The reason: A truce has been reached with Hell. But this is not a new occurrence. In fact, the people among Isaiah’s day fell into the same trap. That was around 750 B.C. which was 2700 years ago.
ll. THE TEXT
A. The History Behind the Text
-The reformation that had started with Hezekiah was only half-hearted in its measures. Hezekiah willingly destroyed the idols, he cleansed the groves and the high places of idol worship. All of this brought a partial revival back to the land but was not enough.
-The problem appeared when Hezekiah did not deal with the host of moral issues of the day. Idolatry was put away but the pet sins were left hidden beneath the surface and it was not long before the nation had taken another downward turn.
-The great lesson in this is one that the Lord would bring to greater light when He urged that the house that is swept clean must be filled with something righteous and holy because left vacant, the old things will creep back in and this time will be seven times stronger (Matthew 12:43-45; Luke 11:24-26).
-Their drunkenness and their great disregard for the prophets rose up against them. Ultimately, it would lead them into captivity.
-Isaiah was probably just a small child when the prophet Amos appeared at Bethel (755 or 750 B.C.). He was probably a young man when Hosea begin to live out his living object lesson with Gomer in northern Israel and from time references, Micah was probably a contemporary of Isaiah.
-This text picks up when the royal prophet, who graced the courts of Israel and Judah, begin to speak the word of the Lord to the nation of Israel. There is an edge to his message and it starts with Isaiah 28 and extends into Isaiah 31 before the tenor of his voice changes.
-He has looked at the situation of the world, over the scope of time, and then he draws the focus and sights in on Israel and Judah. Their self-indulgence and lack of self-control has begin to pull the life from them.
B. The Word Pictures of Isaiah 28
-Look at the word pictures that Isaiah uses in the opening stanza of just this chapter:
Woe to the crown of pride -- v. 1
Drunkards of Ephraim -- v. 1, 3
A glorious beauty that is a fading flower -- v. 1, 4
A tempest of hail -- v. 2
A flood of mighty waters overflowing -- v. 2
Trodden under foot -- v. 3
The hasty fruit before the summer -- v. 4
They are swallowed up with wine (instead of the priest and people swallowing it) -- v. 7
Their error is in their vision and they stumble in judgment -- v. 7
The tables are full of vomit and filthiness, there is no clean place -- v. 8
A stammering lip and another tongue -- v. 11
A covenant with death -- v. 15
In agreement with hell -- v. 15
Our refuge is made of lies -- v. 15
We have hidden ourselves in falsehood -- v. 15
Judgment will be measured by the ruler -- v. 17
Righteousness will be measure by the plumb-line -- v. 17
The hail will destroy the lying refuges -- v. 17
Floodwaters will overcome the hiding place -- v. 18
The bed is too short and the bed linens no longer can cover the man -- v. 20
-So it is that Isaiah paints for us a picture of the man who is filled with sin and he paints the picture of what will happen to them.
lll. THE REASON FOR THE TRUCE WITH HELL
-What was it that made the men of Isaiah’s day form a truce with Hell? What was it that made them want to forget that there was a day coming that they were going to have to settle up the debt of life?
-What is it that makes men today want to make a truce with Hell? What would incline a man to sign a treaty with Hell?
-We need look no further than one of the characters of the Lord’s parables. In Matthew 25, we find a man who was given a talent (Matthew 25:14-30). We also find there are two other men there who were given talents also. The talents or money was given to them and they were expected to invest it and gain a return on it.
-However, this servant who gained on one talent formed a truce with hell in his heart. How would such a thing happen?
A. It Requires Rationalization
Matthew 25:24-25 Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art a hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strewed: [25] And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine.
-The servant who had been given just one talent began to think about his master. He had a curious grudge in his heart and began to consider how terrible his master really was.
-He became upset with the conditions of the investment. He had been given only one talent and his associates had been given two and five talents. This grated on him. He thought how unfair this really was and how that he had been slighted in the transaction.
-He started mulling over his argument:
Life is not fair.
I have been shortchanged in this whole affair.
My contributions will be so small that it will not really matter what I do with the money.
I am just as good as the next man and should have been held in higher esteem.
I am above this place in life and should not have to lower myself to such common means.
I am too important to be passed over for a promotion like this.
-His rationalizations led him further and further away from accomplishing what the Master had in mind until finally he found a spot on the back of his land, dug a hole, and put his talent in the ground.
-He started all of the deadly rationalizations until they finally got the best of them. He determined that he was far too good to invest himself in such a small operation.
One of the great problems of the Church is that some are too big to do something small and too small to do something big.
-To sign a truce with Hell, you must decide that a great big God is too unconcerned with how you live your life and that the world is a more attractive place to find sinful pleasures.
-All the while you hear a preacher pleading with you and begging you.
Don’t waste your talent.
Don’t waste your life.
Don’t bury your desire for God.
Don’t make a truce with Hell.
Don’t hide your sin.
B. It Requires Compromise
-The next man that we find who formed a truce with Hell was not a character of the Lord’s parables but he was a man who really lived and breathed. We find him in Luke 16.
-The Bible declares him to be rich man and that there was a beggar who sat at his gate day in and day out. He did not go to Hell because he starved Lazarus. He probably fed Lazarus very well over the course of time.
-Those men who brought Lazarus to the gate day-in and day-out understood that this was one of the best places in town for the beggar to be. While it is true that he probably could have tried to do more for Lazarus, the fact is that Lazarus was sustained for a length of time at this man’s door.
-This man did not go to Hell for that reason. The fact is that he went to Hell because;
This life had him by the collar.
It had him by the lapel of his jacket.
It had him gripped by his throat.
It, ultimately, had squeezed his soul.
-To sign a truce with Hell will always require compromise. He had to be willing to give up some things down here to gain hold of the things above. Too often, the request of the Lord is made upon us. . . Take what you have and let it go. . . . Too often we turn away and are sorrowful of heart.
-Compromise with our thoughts, with our actions, and with our life takes us further and further away from what God really intends. But never forget that Hell will always be happy with this sort of thing.
-No matter how far you may get from God and how much you push the fact of Hell to the other side of the universe in your thinking, it does not diminish the fact that Hell is a very real place.
-Within this riveting story that the Lord would give of the Rich Man and Lazarus, one finds lodged within the story the greatest gain of all, which is Heaven. But one also finds the greatest loss of all, the soul of a man.
-This rich man lost his soul gradually. The accumulation of the things of his life came over the course of time. The Bible never mentions that he was dishonest about how he had gained a temporal kingdom. But his greatest mistake appears to be the fact the he invested himself in things confined to time while negligence nibbled away his time when it came to the crucial matters of the soul.
-But there came a day that the rich man died. The man who gained the whole world ended up losing his soul. When he died he left it all behind him.
He is torn from the body that he had pampered.
He is torn from the treasures that he had amassed and now they amount to nothing.
He is torn from the forms that he once worshipped for they are lost.
He is to enter into a world of spiritual and eternal realities with which he has nothing in common and he has not prepared himself to face.
-Hell will be a place of:
Pain. Luke 16:23 And in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torments. . .
Memory. Luke 16:25 Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things. . .
Separation. Luke 16:26 Between us and you there is a great gulf fixed. . . .
Unanswered Prayer. Luke 16:27 I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father’s house. . . .
lV. CONCLUSION -- FIRE. . . .FIRE. . . I SEE THE FIRE. . . .
-Elie Wiesel was a fourteen year old boy when the Germans started loading the Jews on trains and sending them to the death camps authorized by Adolph Hitler. This excerpt picks up as he is traveling by in a cattle car on a train from Transylvania (which at the time was under the control of Hungary) to Auschwitz with his father, mother, and ten year old sister, whose name is Tzipporah. He and his father will be separated from their mother and sister. Elie’s mother and sister will ultimately die in the furnaces at Auschwitz. Elie’s father will die apparently of dysentery and Elie will be the only survivor in his family.
Excerpt from Night by Elie Wiesel (pp. 33-37):
The door of the car slid open. A German officer accompanied by a Hungarian lieutenant-interpreter, came up and introduced himself.
“From this moment on, you come under the authority of the German army. Those of you who still have gold, silver, or watches in your possession must give them up now. Anyone who is later found to have kept anything will be shot on the spot. Secondly, anyone who feels ill may go to the hospital car. That’s all.”
The Hungarian lieutenant went among us with a basket and collected the last possessions from those who no longer wished to taste the bitterness of terror.
“There are eighty of you in the wagon,” added the German officer. “If anyone is missing, you’ll be shot, like dogs. . .”
They disappeared. The doors were closed. We were caught in a trap, right up to our necks. The doors were nailed up; the way back was finally cut off. The world was a cattle wagon, hermetically sealed.
We had a woman with us named Madame Schachter. She was about fifty; her ten year old son was with her, crouched in a corner. Her husband and two eldest sons had been deported with the first transport by mistake. The separation had completely broken her.
I knew her well. A quiet woman with tense, burning eyes, she had often been to our house. Her husband, who was a pious man, spent his days and nights in study, and it was she who worked to support the family.
Madame Schachter had gone out of her mind. On the first day of the journey she had already begun to moan and to keep asking why she had been separated from her family. As time went on, her cries grew hysterical.
On the third night, while we slept, some of us sitting one against the other and some standing, a piercing cry split the silence:
“Fire! I can see a fire! I can see a fire!”
There was a moment’s panic. Who was it who had cried out? It was Madame Schachter. Standing in the middle of the wagon, in the pale light from the windows, she looked like a withered tree in a cornfield. She pointed her arm toward the window, screaming:
“Look! Look at it! Fire! A terrible fire! Mercy! Oh, that fire!”
Some of the men pressed up against the bars. There was nothing there; only the darkness.
The shock of this terrible awakening stayed with us for a long time. We still trembled from it. With every groan of the wheels on the rail, we felt that an abyss was about to open beneath our bodies. Powerless to still our own anguish, we tried to console ourselves:
“She’s mad, poor soul. . .”
Someone had put a damp cloth on her brow, to calm her, but still her screams went on:
“Fire! Fire!”
Her little boy was crying, hanging on to her skirt, trying to take hold of her hands. “It’s all right, Mummy! There’s nothing there. . . . Sit down. . .” This shook me even more than his mother’s screams had done.
Some women tried to calm her. “You’ll find your husband and your sons again. . . in a few days. . .”
She continued to scream, breathless, her voice broken by sobs. “Jews, listen to me! I can see a fire! There are huge flames! It is a furnace!”
It was as though she were possessed by an evil spirit which spoke from the depths of her being.
We tried to explain it away, more to calm ourselves and to recover our own breath than to comfort her. “She must be very thirsty, poor thing! That’s why she keeps talking about a fire devouring her.”
But it was in vain. Our terror was about to burst the sides of the train. Our nerves were at breaking point. Our flesh was creeping. It was as though madness were taking possession of us all. We could stand it no longer. Some of the young men forced her to sit down, tied her up, and put a gag in her mouth.
Silence again. The little boy sat down by his mother, crying. I had begun to breathe normally again. We could hear the wheels churning out the monotonous rhythm of a train traveling slowly through the night. We begin to doze, to rest, to dream. . .
An hour or two went by like this. Then another scream took our breath away. The woman had broken loose from her bonds and was crying out more loudly than ever:
“Look at the fire! Flames, flames everywhere. . .”
Once more the young men tied her up and gagged her. They even struck her. People encouraged them:
“Make her be quiet! She’s mad! Shut her up! She’s not the only one. She can keep her mouth shut. . .”
They struck her several times on the head—blows that might have killed her. Her little boy clung to her; he did not cry out; he did not say a word. He was not even weeping now.
An endless night. Toward dawn, Madame Schachter calmed down. Crouched in her corner, her bewildered gaze scouring the emptiness, she could no longer see us.
She stayed like that all through the day, dumb, absent, isolated among us. As soon as night fell, she began to scream: “There’s a fire over there!” She would point at a spot in space, always the same one. They were tired of hitting her. The heat, the thirst, the pestilential stench, the suffocating lack of air—these were as nothing compared with these screams which tore us to shreds. A few days more and we should all have started to scream too.
But we had reached a station. Those who were next to the windows to us its name:
“Auschwitz.”
No one had ever heard that name.
The train did not start up again. The afternoon passed slowly. Then the wagon doors slid open. Two men were allowed to get down to fetch water.
When they came back, they told us that, in exchange for a gold watch, they had discovered that this was the last stop. We would be getting out here. There was a labor camp. Conditions were good. Families would not be split up. Only young people would go to work in the factories. The old men and invalids would be kept occupied in the fields.
The barometer of confidence soared. Here was a sudden release from the terrors of the previous nights. We gave thanks to God.
Madame Schachter stayed in her corner, wilted, dumb, indifferent to the general confidence. Her little boy stroked her hand.
As dusk fell, darkness gathered inside the wagon. We started to eat our last provisions. At ten in the evening, everyone was looking for a convenient position in which to sleep for a while, and soon we were all asleep. Suddenly:
“The fire! The furnace! Look over there! . . . .”
Waking with a start, we rushed to the window. Yet again we had believed her, even if only for a moment. But there was nothing outside save the darkness of night. With shame in our souls, we went back to our places, gnawed by fear, in spite of ourselves. As she continued to scream, they began to hit her again, and it was with greatest difficulty that they silenced her.
The man in charge of our wagon called a German officer who was walking about on the platform, and asked him if Madame Schachter could be taken to the hospital car.
“You must be patient,” the German replied. “She’ll be taken there soon.”
Toward eleven o’clock, the train began to move. We pressed against the windows. The convoy was moving slowly. A quarter of an hour later, it slowed down again. Through the windows we could see barbed wire; we realized this must be the camp.
We had forgotten the existence of Madame Schachter. Suddenly, we heard terrible screams:
“Jews, look! Look through the window! Flames! Look!”
And as the train stopped, we saw this time that flames were gushing out of a tall chimney into the black sky.
Madame Schachter was silent herself. Once more she had become dumb, indifferent, absent, and had gone back to her corner.
We looked at the flames in the darkness. There was an abominable odor floating in the air. Suddenly, our doors opened. Some odd-looking characters, dressed in striped shirts and black trousers leapt into the wagon. They held electric torches and truncheons. They began to strike out to right and left, shouting:
“Everybody get out! Everyone out of the wagon! Quickly!”
We jumped out. I threw a last glance toward Madame Schachter. Her little boy was holding her hand.
In front of us flames. In the air that smell of burning flesh. It must have been about midnight. We had arrived—at Birkenau, reception center for Auschwitz.
-They accused Madame Schachter of being mad and that she could not see the fire. . . but the fact of the matter is that she could indeed see the fire.
-Some would like to say that a preacher cannot see the fire. . . but the fact of the matter is that I do see the fire. . . . . .
Revelation 19:20 And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshiped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.
Revelation 20:10 And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night forever and ever
Revelation 20:14 And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.
Revelation 20:15 And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.
Philip Harrelson
January 29, 2006
barnabas14@yahoo.com
