I have to admit to you that the
topic matter that I am going to bring
this morning, it is with some trepidation that
I bring it to you.
Even as near as last night, I was
asking, Lord, is that really what I should
bring?
I know that it may not be a
popular message, but it's biblical.
And I think just in talking with the
leaders of your church in the few minutes
before the service started today, one thing I
believe that I've seen in these men already
is that you are a church that does
desire to be biblical.
And therefore, I have come from San Antonio
this morning.
I believe God has sent me here to
bring you a message on the doctrine of
hell.
And I have been studying this topic for
the last three weeks.
And it is fearful.
I thought at first to maybe bring you
a message on prayer.
Because I know some of you will go
away today with a bad feeling.
That bad feeling will be connected with this
guy from San Antonio.
I understand that.
And I may not be the most popular
preacher for it.
But one thing that is true about the
doctrine of hell, it will test you.
It will test you as to whether you
are truly a God-centered church.
The doctrine of hell does test our God
-centeredness.
It is a biblical doctrine.
And it is a good doctrine for us
to look at this morning.
Before we dive into it, let's pray.
Oh, Father, even as I consider myself preaching
on this, Lord, how I've been reminded how
much I deserve this place.
How much I deserve the torments that I'll
describe today.
Lord, You've not only saved me, You've made
me a preacher.
I don't understand it.
Lord, oh, You are a God of wrath,
but You are a God of such great
goodness as well.
Such a God of grace.
A God of glory.
Lord, I pray for Your help right now.
May You give me the thoughts.
May You give me the words.
Father, I pray that Your Spirit would attend
to this.
Lord, do in this place this morning what
I can't do.
Do in the hearts of these people what
I can't do.
Please, Lord, for Your glory's sake, for Christ's
sake, Amen.
Well, if you have your Bibles, please open
to Revelation 14.
Revelation 14.
Would you like to stand?
We will read God's Word.
Revelation 14, I'm going to begin reading in
verse 9.
And another angel, a third, followed them, saying
with a loud voice, If anyone worships the
beast and its image and receives a mark
on his forehead or on his hand, he
also will drink the wine of God's wrath,
poured full strength into the cup of his
anger, and he will be tormented with fire
and sulfur in the presence of the holy
angels and in the presence of the Lamb.
And the smoke of their torment goes up
forever and ever, and they have no rest
day or night.
You may be seated.
I've got four points this morning.
Security, severity, suitability, and sanctity.
And what I mean by that is the
security of the world.
They don't think they're going there.
The severity of this place that's described.
The suitability of it, and the sanctity.
Sanctity, that's a word that has to do
with the holiness.
Hell is a fearful place, but it's a
good place when we understand it right, when
we understand the glory of God aright.
First, the security.
Yesterday, myself and some others from my church,
we were out.
We went to a place where the homeless
gather.
We take the gospel to them.
I stood up on the back of a
pickup truck, and I preached to the people
that were gathered there.
Most of these are homeless.
They're drunks.
They're drug addicts.
They're prostitutes.
And I said, how many of you think
that you'll go to hell?
How many hands do you think went up?
Not one.
The world has themselves convinced that this is
a place that they are not going to.
Every man devises, when men hear about the
doctrine of hell, when they hear that there
is a hell, even when they hear that
few go to heaven, few there be that
find it.
They suppose.
They contrive.
They reason.
They scheme.
Not me.
I'm not going to go there.
Somehow, every one of us, for 25 years
of my life, I was lost.
I served sin.
I served self.
I served Satan.
I did not think I was going to
hell.
Now, praise God, I'm not!
But it wasn't because of any of my
plans back then.
No man wants to believe he's going there.
And you know, some of you, you've read
this text.
I know that there are those of you.
I know.
I know based on what God's Word tells
me.
Some of you in this place that hear
my voice will go to the place I
described today.
Some of you are headed there.
You don't think you are, but even now
you provoke God by your very attendance of
His worship today.
Because you have not Christ.
You have no hope.
You're without God.
But you don't think you'll go there.
You think that somehow you're going to reason.
You're going to figure out, because of something
that you have done or are doing or
hope to do in the future, somehow you
plan to miss that place.
I can pretty much describe accurately those of
you who are right now on the broad
way of destruction.
What fills your thoughts?
I'm not asking if you're a member of
this church or whether you own a Bible
and even maybe read it.
What consumes your thoughts?
That will tell me and that will tell
you who your God is.
Your God is who you think about.
I didn't think about God very much when
I was a lost man.
But God fills my mind now.
Sighs it up.
What does Christ say?
Who is it that's going to eternal punishment?
I was in prison.
I was sick.
I was hungry.
I was thirsty.
I was naked.
You didn't help me.
You didn't...
Lord, when didn't we help You?
As much as You did not do it
to one of the least of these, You
have not done it unto me.
And they will be told to depart and
they will go away into eternal torments.
Men reason.
And men scheme.
But the fact is God's Word says that
many, many, many are on that way of
destruction.
Many there are.
That is fearful.
In a Gallup poll taken in the United
States, less than 4% of Americans believe
that they might go to hell.
Not 4%.
Less than 4%.
And don't believe that they are going.
They believe that there's a possibility they may
go.
Do you know what that tells me?
There are many that are deceived.
And I don't want there to be those
in here that are deceived.
Approximately, approximately, 100 million people will die
between now and the 20th of February next
year.
100 million people.
That's staggering.
If you do the mathematics, that comes out
to about 3 people every second are passing
into eternity.
That fast, souls are going out of this
world into an eternal hell or an eternal
joy.
And God's Word says most of those are
on the broad way to destruction.
Christ is the only way to the Father.
Those who are Buddhists in this world are
passing into damnation.
Those who died practicing Muslims are going practicing
Catholics.
If they are worshiping Mary, they are not
worshipers of Christ.
One of those cliques has your name on
it.
Think about it.
Another and another and another and another and
another.
They are passing off into eternity right now.
And another and another.
When you take your next breath, in the
time it took, more souls are passing off
into eternity.
Men walk around.
They say, peace and safety.
Peace and safety.
And the Word of God says, then sudden
destruction.
It takes hold on them.
Then they have these plans.
If we could bring up the dam from
hell right now, what would they say to
us?
I never thought to go here.
I never thought hell would take me.
I thought I had it figured out.
It took me a moment.
It took me when I didn't expect it.
Another and another.
They're passing off into eternity.
They did not expect hell to take them
when it did.
Jonathan Edwards, so long ago, he described men
as walking over the pit of hell on
a rotten covering, and there are weak places
in that covering, and they know not where
they are or when they're going to step
on them.
And in a moment when they think not,
their feet slip and they're gone.
Your sins, if you are without Christ, your
sins are mounting up.
They're increasing.
In 1 Thessalonians 2, Paul speaks about the
Jews and the measure of their sin filling
up.
Do you know there's a place in the
Old Testament in Genesis where God told Abraham,
your people will go into Egypt and they
will come back into this land, but not
yet.
It will be after 400 years because the
iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.
There's a place in Daniel 12, verse 2.
It speaks about the transgressions reaching their limit.
If you are without Christ, your sins are
mounted up.
And the moment is coming when God will
no longer endure you to stay here.
God created man in His image to be
bearers of good fruit in this life.
Christ told His disciples that.
You're going to glorify My Father by bringing
forth much fruit.
Christ died to make us fruitful people.
But if you will not bear good fruit...
Remember what John the Baptist told the people
the axe is laid at the root.
If you don't bring forth fruits, meat for
repentance or indicative of repentance, that axe is
laid there.
Now, God has a purpose.
To be glorified.
God will be glorified by every soul in
this room.
He will be.
But if you will not glorify Him actively
by good works, you will glorify Him passively
by a demonstration of His power.
In Romans 9, it says very clearly that
the vessels of wrath are being fitted for
destruction and God will glorify His power and
His wrath through you.
You will glorify God actively or passively.
And speaking of statistics that we talked about
just a second ago, statistically, 100% of
all people who do not bring forth good
works, 100% of all people who die
without Christ, they are in hell now.
Second thing, the severity.
I have literally trembled as I have studied
this topic.
What causes my soul to shake within me
is the eternality, the foreverness of hell.
Before I did a series on hell at
my own church, I did a series on
heaven.
It's a glorious doctrine.
It is glorious.
But you know, there is something glorious about
the doctrine of hell too.
It is glorious in its dreadfulness, in its
fearfulness, because it reveals to us a part
of God that oftentimes we don't like to
admit is real and exists.
But it is necessary.
We love to talk about God's love.
God's goodness.
God's mercy.
God's compassion.
God's forbearance.
God's tender mercies.
Oh, and it is good.
It is good.
Good to give thanks to the Lord for
those things.
And you think about the severity of hell.
You begin to realize it is no slap
on the wrist.
Hell is fearsome.
It is dreadful.
We read our Bibles and we can pass
over those texts so freely, so easily, weeping,
gnashing of teeth.
In the ESV, in Matthew 18, it speaks
about the hell of fire.
Hell is a place of fire.
I thought about my grandmother's house.
I grew up in Michigan.
My grandmother lived in a past age in
the home she lived in.
She actually had a fire-burning furnace in
the basement.
And I can remember times going down and
throwing fire in the furnace to keep Grandma's
house warm in the winter.
And you open that door and there is
a raging infernal fire inside that furnace.
And Christ described hell as a fiery furnace.
And imagine being pushed through that little hole
and then the door is shut.
And it will never open.
It will never open.
You've burned yourself on the finger.
If anything can be attached to the idea
of fire, it is the idea of pain.
It should strike within our minds that hell
is a place of pain.
Unimaginable.
The man in Luke 16, he cried out
in his torments if only he could have
a drop of water for his tongue.
But not even that would be given to
him.
The thing that is so fearful about hell
is not just that it is a fiery
furnace.
Not just that Isaiah would say not who
can dwell with those fires, but who can
dwell with the everlasting burnings.
Everlasting.
That is the horror of horrors about hell
is it never ends.
It is pain that is excruciating.
It is anguish.
Our generation knows very little about pain.
We have so many medications, so much to
dull the pain.
But here, there will be nothing to dull
it.
God will not relieve your pain no matter
how you cry, no matter how you weep.
Think of weeping.
Have you ever just wept uncontrollably?
You've lost a beloved one?
Something traumatic has happened in your life where
you have just wept uncontrollably.
That is how Christ describes hell.
It is a place of weeping.
You will weep.
Think of this.
To weep forever.
You will weep if you land in hell.
You will weep more than all the weeping
that has ever been done in all the
ages of all the earth.
You will fill up the measure of the
weeping of every individual who has passed through
life.
Because you will weep, and you will weep,
and you will weep.
And there's the idea of the gnashing of
teeth.
Whether it's in the unbearable, excruciating pain, there
are places in the Scripture that attach the
gnashing of teeth to anger as well.
The anger at others.
The anger at yourself.
The anger at God still.
Hell is not what some make it out
to be like purgatory.
Hell does not make better.
The doctrine of hell is about eternal destruction.
It doesn't make better.
It destroys everything that has any semblance of
good.
The image of God that is upon you,
man, will be eternally defaced and defiled.
You will become more and more and more
contemptible as the eternal ages pass by.
And think about that.
Daniel describes it as a place of eternal
contempt.
Do you know what the word contempt means?
It means that in the sight of God,
He will find you absolutely vile, absolutely loathsome
to behold.
I know 2 Thessalonians talks about destruction,
eternal destruction, away from or apart from His
presence.
Christ would say in the Gospels, depart from
Me.
And there is a departing from all of
God's goodness.
Some of you may say right now, I
don't mind that.
I don't mind living apart from God.
In fact, God makes me uncomfortable.
I don't like the demands on my life.
I don't like this thing about repentance.
I don't mind being without God.
But nobody is without God.
Not even in hell.
Everything that you have right now, everything we're
able to enjoy.
You sink your teeth into an apple or
you enjoy a piece of pie.
You have a nice warm blanket to cover
up with.
I talked with a young man yesterday.
A scar from a bullet hole in his
head.
Been shot in the leg.
He's here in Texas now because he's running
from California because he's already got two strikes
against him.
One more and he goes to prison forever.
Forever in his life.
He said, what has God done for me?
My mom's dead.
My grandma's dead.
My dad's in jail for life.
I don't know where my brothers and sisters
are.
I have nothing.
I said, that's not true.
You have a coat on now.
You've enjoyed the day.
You just had a meal.
You're wrapped with a blanket.
You see, in that sense, we are departed
from God.
But in a real sense as well, we
do not leave God's presence because it is
God Himself who with a perfect hatred forever
will pour out His contempt upon us.
Ezekiel.
Some of the Old Testament prophets had very
fearful things to say.
God says in Ezekiel 8, Therefore, I will
act in wrath.
My eye will not spare, nor will I
have pity.
And though they cry in My ears with
a loud voice, I will not hear them.
He will hate you with a perfect hatred.
He will hate you and He will have
you.
That is the fearsomeness of hell.
The text we read says that those in
hell, they are going to be tormented.
Where?
In the presence of the holy angels and
of the Lamb.
One of the most fearful things about hell
is not the total absence of God.
The absence of all of His blessings, yes.
Can you imagine forevermore with not any joy,
no more comfort?
But God is going to be there.
One of the fearful things about God, it
is a fearful thing to fall into the
hands of the living God.
He is a consuming fire.
And when He sets His face against you,
He will trample you out in the winepress
of His wrath.
It is forever.
Jonathan Edwards, he said, Almighty God will inflict
wrath without any pity when God beholds the
unspeakable, he said the ineffable, extremity of your
case and sees your torment to be so
vastly disproportionate to your strength, and sees how
your poor soul is crushed and sinks down
as it were into an infinite gloom, He
will have no compassion upon you.
He will not forbear the executions of His
wrath or in the least, lighten His hand.
There will be no moderation, no mercy.
He will have no regard to your welfare.
Nor be at all careful, lest you should
suffer too much in any other sense than
only that you shall not suffer beyond what
strict justice requires.
Nothing shall be withheld because it is so
hard for you to bear.
Now, I said, hell is going to test
our God-centeredness.
Sometimes when we go out on the streets
in San Antonio, take the gospel to some
of the homeless, we'll run into people from
other churches.
They want to tell these people all the
time, God loves you.
God loves you.
Jesus loves you.
I know that God shows great compassion upon
His enemies.
I know He does.
He causes the sun to rise on the
just and the unjust.
Someone has done a study of God's hatred
in the Word of God.
They examined 33 texts, and you can do
this yourself, concerning the hatred of God.
Do you know that only 12 of those
texts describe God as hating the sin?
Twelve.
Twenty-one describe God as hating the sinner.
The psalmist said, His soul hates the wicked.
He hates all evildoers.
One of the things that we have to
grasp, if you come to a text like
John 3.36, the wrath of God abides
upon you already if you are not a
believer in Jesus Christ.
Already!
That doesn't mean that God goes around with
a perpetual smile upon you.
It means what it says.
His wrath is upon you.
If you can get this idea into your
minds, into your souls, into your thought process,
that there are those of us in this
place right now who sit here at relative
ease, God hates you.
God's wrath, God's indignation, God's anger is directed
to you more than some who are in
hell right at this moment.
You say, can that be?
Yes!
Because some of you have sinned in the
face of greater light.
God's Word says, to whom much is given,
much is required.
That servant who knew his Master's will and
didn't do it will be beaten with greater
stripes.
There are some of you, you have heard
the Gospel.
You have heard the truth.
You have mothers or fathers or wives or
husbands who have prayed for you.
You have a Bible in your hand.
And you know what?
You have provoked God more than some who
have lived in past generations in inland China
or central Africa.
Because you have far more light.
And God's hatred towards you is stirred.
His indignation is stirred far more than for
those who are there.
And the only thing that keeps you out
of hell right now, the only thing, is
God's will to keep you there.
God's forbearance.
There is nothing else.
There is no promise.
Because the covenants of promise, the promises that
are found within the covenant in this book,
they are yea and amen in Jesus Christ
alone.
But you don't believe the promises of the
covenant.
And you have no part of the mediator
of the covenant.
You walk over a rotten covering.
The measure of your sins is filling up.
And that moment is going to come when
God is not going to abide you to
stay upon this earth one moment longer.
Not one moment longer.
And it is a fearful thing.
And as I study this, I sit at
my desk and I'm constantly thinking of my
children.
It's a fearful, fearful thing.
But it is a reality.
And preachers who will not preach on this,
they're not faithful to you.
Because God's Word says this.
Oh, the series on heaven was glorious.
It took me to levels.
It was fearful.
And we lack, by and large, a sense
of fear of God in our assemblies.
The weeping and the mourning have long since
departed many of the churches in the United
States of America.
The fear of God, the trembling.
Because by and large, we've lost the doctrine
of hell in our country.
God is love, and He is.
But we have a lopsided theology today.
The third thing I would say about hell
is its suitability.
Do we think it's too severe?
We will think it's too severe if we
are too man-centered in our thinking.
I was thinking, I love missions.
My desire, my heart and soul is to
eventually be on the foreign mission field permanently.
I love to read the missionary biographies.
But I look around today, and I see
very few in our generation that are willing
to do what they did in the days
of Adam and Iram Judson or William Carey
or Hudson Taylor.
Who are willing to go off to the
foreign lands.
You know why?
Because they could not stand that among the
heathen, God's glory was not being exalted.
They couldn't sleep at night.
Carey would stand for hours working on shoes
and stare at maps.
Thinking about the heathen that were passing off
into eternity with no knowledge of Christ.
No knowledge of the Gospel.
They wanted God to be glorified among the
nations.
What happens in the U.S. today?
Young men and young women run off to
the mission field.
You know it.
If you've studied the numbers in the Southern
Baptist Convention, you know it.
The average stay on the foreign mission field
is one term.
They come home.
It's all over.
You know why?
Because God's glory is not the main thing.
Their comfort is.
And we live in a generation that you
know it.
God's glory is not the main thing.
We drive down our highways.
God is the greatest reality in all the
universe.
Drive down the highways.
Where's God?
Where is He on the billboards?
Where is He on the talk radio?
Where is He on the television?
Where is He?
God's glory doesn't matter anymore.
But hell wakes us up to it.
Hell stares this humanistic mindset straight in the
face.
As one has said, it is like a
brutal claw that just tears through the fabric
of our humanistic thinking.
It is exactly that.
We need to hear about this.
And furthermore, the doctrine of hell, it shows
us one of the ladies of our church
had her purse stolen.
We have people come in off the street
eat at our church.
Prostitutes.
Crack addicts.
One of them stole my wife's purse.
We look at that, and our mindset today
is, oh, look what they did to Ruby.
We get to the point in our generation
where self-esteem, man's importance, man's happiness, there's
such a self-centered view, such a humanistic,
the horizontal plane is where we view sin.
We tend to forget that when we sin,
when God's law says, thou shalt not steal,
it is not ultimately you I violate when
I sin against you.
It is God who gave that law.
It is His law that is broken.
You remember how Joseph said, oh, not how
can I do this sin against Potiphar.
How can I sin when Potiphar's wife was
trying to seduce him?
How can I do this sin before God?
In Psalm 51, David is not pre-eminently
sorrowing over the fact that he had killed
Uriah or committed adultery with Bathsheba.
He looked up to God.
He said, oh God, before You I have
sinned.
The doctrine of hell is a wake-up
call to us that our sin is not
ultimately against one another.
It is ultimately against God.
And the doctrine of hell wakes us up
to the fact that we have made God
into some little man-centered image as well.
We see God primarily, oftentimes, for what He
can do for us.
God is mainly there to answer my prayers.
God is mainly there to take care of
my problems.
God is mainly there to help me with
my financial difficulties.
Mainly there to help heal my marriage.
Mainly there to take care of me.
We may come into this celestial Santa Claus
who's at our beck and call to do
what we call upon Him.
Just recently, I had a woman email me.
Would you please pray for me?
I don't feel that I have gotten all
the riches that I think I should have
in becoming a Christian.
That's the mindset today.
That's where we come up with a God
who's all about our health, our wealth, our
prosperity.
But again, the doctrine of hell, it jumps
in our face.
It comes to the edges of our conscience.
There are disturbing whispers in it that there
is a God here that we cannot manipulate.
There is a God here that we cannot
minimize.
There is a God who is holy.
There is a God who is mighty.
There is a God who is going to
exact perfect judgment on sin.
There is a God who is fearsome.
There is a God who is not to
be toyed with, not to be played with.
And He is the preeminent being in this
universe.
It is not all about me.
Yes, I can look to God to provide
my daily food.
But whether I eat or whether I drink,
it is to be done to His glory.
His glory.
The thing God values most of all is
His glory, not mine.
His.
Oh, it is a doctrine that can help
us to realize that we are small.
That He is big.
You begin to realize that sin is satisfactory.
Satisfactory dealt with in hell.
You see, when I look at sin and
I see it as a relatively small thing,
and I look at the eternality of hell,
it seems like there's a vast difference between
them.
Spurgeon said that when those who fall into
the pit of hell, they are going to
see everywhere forever, forever, forever, above everything, above
every door, if there were such things there,
on everything, on every chain there, it's going
to be written forever.
There is utter hopelessness.
I mean, look at that.
Oh, but sin.
Sin is such a small thing.
I mean, if I committed sin for 70
years of my life here, how is it
God can torment me forever in hell?
Doesn't there seem like there's some disproportionate dealing
with the sin there?
But not at all once we realize who
our sin is against ultimately.
And who the God is that we sin
against.
What He is.
You know, it's one thing if we squash
a fire ant or we swat a mosquito,
but you know, it's another thing altogether if
you find your child out in the yard
rather than stepping on ants.
He's out there taking living cats and mutilating
them in your yard.
You would probably respond differently.
You know why?
Why?
Because you attach greater significance to a cat.
There's greater worth in your estimation.
And it would be even different if you
saw somebody brutally killing a child.
In your estimation, the sin would be much
greater.
Because the one the sin is against has
greater worth.
But how do you measure sin that is
committed against an infinitely holy God?
Even the smallest sin committed against an infinitely
holy God.
It is infinite.
It is infinitely wicked.
When we hear forever, forever, forever, hell
is reasonable.
So, when we see in the One who
is sentenced to that place, wickedness, that is
infinite.
Some of you that hear my voice, you
are quickly moving in that direction.
And the fearful thing is, and I realize
this about my children as well, my children
are the children of a pastor and of
a godly mother who have the Word of
God brought to them not daily, multiple times
per day.
They have been born under such light.
And to resist that light, I know that
those cannibals in Papua New Guinea, as wretched
as that sin seems to us, the hottest
parts of hell, the most incredible torments are
reserved for those that have sat under the
greatest light, who have filled our churches on
Sunday mornings.
Sin, as the Apostle says in Romans, is
exceedingly sinful.
If we saw something in wicked men that
should appear as hateful to us as eternal
misery appears dreadful, something that should as much
stir up indignation and detestation in us as
eternal misery does terror, all objections against this
doctrine would vanish at once.
You see, the doctrine of hell, it confronts
us with two infinities.
An infinite God and an eternal hell.
And just to finish up, the last thing,
the sanctity of hell.
I know to some degree we are man
-centered.
The best of us in here.
And to some degree in this lifetime, our
compassion directed to the lost is
something that we should give our heart to.
And we should mourn over.
But those of us that are here, we're
in Christ.
When you stand in glory, and there's a
number of texts that would give us every
indication that we will see the damned in
hell.
We will.
The last verse of Isaiah.
The fact, even the one we read, we
are going to be in the presence of
the holy angels and of the Lamb.
And if those who are going to be
suffering eternal torment will be there as well,
I think it is very likely that we
will see them.
In Luke 16, Lazarus saw the rich man.
The rich man could see.
There was a great chasm between them.
But the visibility was there.
In this life, there are parents here.
I know you're here.
As I feel it myself.
You would gladly do what Matthew 18 says.
You would gladly lose an eye, lose a
foot, lose a hand that your children might
be spared from hell.
Wouldn't you?
In a moment.
But even if it's your child, your mother,
your brother, who ends up in that eternal
place of torment and you're in glory.
Believe it!
The glory of Christ will so consume you.
The suffering of the damned at that time
will not cause you sorrow.
It will not cause you grief.
It will not cause you pain.
Those who are in hell will be so
stripped of every good.
They will be seen for what they are.
Everything good about them will be taken from
them.
What they seem to have, they will no
longer have.
Every bit of common grace that was bestowed
upon them will be withdrawn.
They will be seen to be the horrible,
detestable creatures they are.
And you will be so in love with
Christ and so enamored by His glory.
What hell will do in that day, it
will open your eyes to the glories of
Christ all the more.
Because there, what hell is going to do
is vindicate the majesty of God that was
despised by those who are in hell.
You see, our sin can be measured by
the one who is insulted by it.
God is ultimately the one insulted by our
sin.
His majesty is insulted.
How many times in the first chapter of
Romans does it say they exchanged?
They exchanged the glory of the immortal God.
He exchanged it.
In Jeremiah, He says, My people, they committed
two evils.
What did they do?
They exchanged.
It is that deadly exchange.
Drinking from the broken cisterns, they had given
up Him.
See how it tramples upon the majesty of
God.
And when God shows His redeemed in hell
that it is so utterly, infinitely dreadful, you
know what it's going to do?
It is going to magnify the majesty that
was despised by the sin of those who
were there.
Because you understand, if their punishment was less,
if their suffering was less, it would speak
of lesser glory that was insulted by the
sin they committed.
And so His majesty is going to glow
all the more brighter in our estimation because
of it.
And His perfect justice is as well going
to be glorified.
The glory of God is the greatest good.
The glory of God in His justice is
going to shine.
He will appear as the just governor of
all the universe.
As Edward says, the vindictive or retributive or
penal justice of God will appear strict, exact,
awful, and terrible, and therefore, glorious.
But also, God is going to glorify His
grace and His mercy to those of you
who have come to Christ.
You know, I read one time about Adoniram
Judson.
He had been in prison.
They'd hung him upside down.
The bottom of his feet were raw.
The mosquitoes would chain him upside down so
his head was on the floor.
And after he got out of prison, he
was on a raft on a river with
his wife and with his child, sailing down
the river.
And he was talking about how glorious freedom
was.
Freedom?
We take it for granted.
Our forefathers didn't.
Our forefathers who fought for their independence in
this country did not take it for granted
because it cost them.
Adoniram Judson floating down the river that day
did not take freedom for granted.
You know why?
Because it was set off by the stark
contrast of what he had been suffering before
that.
And in hell, that is what's going to
happen.
You know those co-workers, those schoolmates, those
family members, you were more wicked than them.
There they suffer.
Lord, why?
Why did You spare me?
Oh, Lord, such glorious grace.
I deserve what they have.
I see it, Lord.
I deserved it worse.
Lord, I despise greater light.
In hell, it will be that stark contrast
to the love and to the glory and
the honor and the immortality that God will
reign upon His people.
And you know, I finish with this.
Hell shows us.
It puts a proper estimate upon the cross
of Jesus Christ.
Because when you throw the doctrine of hell
out the door, you've just began to undermine
the whole truth behind the cross of Jesus
Christ.
Because what hell does is it shows us
what Christ had to pay on our behalf.
It's a wake-up call to the fact
that sin is not a small matter.
If hell was not so severe, then what
was the need of an atonement that was
so severe?
But when we begin to realize how dreadful
it is, oh, it begins to clarify in
the mind just how much Christ suffered in
those three hours.
What was behind those words?
We cannot know.
My God, my God, why have You forsaken
Me?
But it helps us to understand.
It helps us.
This is no game.
If you're not certain, if something rings true
to this in your conscience that I'm in
great danger of this, Christ stands ready to
pardon.
This is a day of mercy.
This is a day of grace.
Today, the voice of Christ beckons you.
Come.
Come unto Me, you that labor and are
heavy laden.
I'll give you rest for your souls.
Come.
Today it's come.
It's come.
Come.
Then it will be depart.
Depart.
And the door will shut.
And then it's all over.
No hope.
Eternity will multiply your sufferings.
No matter how great the pain, the thing
that will constantly fill your mind is it's
forever.
You'll wish to be annihilated.
You'll wish to not exist anymore.
But today, Christ says, look and live.
Just as the serpent was lifted up in
the wilderness, so those who look upon what
Christ did on the cross, look.
Look to Christ.
Whatever sin you have to leave behind, He
says it is better to go blind than
to go with two eyes into that eternal
fire.
You may have some friends.
You may have somebody that put pressure on
you children.
You hang around with friends.
They'd laugh at you if you did this.
Don't let anybody be responsible for damning your
soul.
There's too much at stake.
And don't believe as some say that there's
a great party in hell.
It is not that way.
You will look and you will gnash your
teeth on them if you should both wind
up in hell.
You'll say, damn you!
Damn you!
I'm here because of you!
You led me in that sin!
It is not a game.
Your soul is at stake.
Father, I know that this is a
fearful thing.
But You've said just that.
It is a fearful thing to fall into
the hands of the living God.
Lord, I can't awaken hearts.
I certainly can't scare people into glory.
But Lord, You can use this as a
wake-up call to the conscience of some
who are blindly going on dead in trespasses
and sins.
Lord, do in their hearts what I can't
do.
Bring life.
Draw them to Christ.
May the sweet savor of He who poured
out His life's blood for sinners, may He
become sweet in their eyes.
May they treasure Him above all other things.
May they find Him glorious.
May they find Him beautiful.
May they find Him worth sacrificing all for.
Lord, grant repentance in this place.
Father, I pray, may the fear of God
be before our eyes.
Oh, God.
Father, I thank You for my salvation.
I thank You for those that You have
saved in here.
Lord, that we have so great a salvation.
That we can praise You.
We have been delivered from the wrath of
God.
You woke us up and called us to
flee.
Lord, we love because You first loved us.
Thank You, Lord.
I thank You, Father, for the privilege of
being able to be here today.
And I pray that You would bless Your
people and draw into Your kingdom those lost
sheep.
For Your glory I pray this.
Amen.