When I was a little boy, a house
caught fire on the street where we lived,
and that house burned to the ground.
I used to walk by that house on
the way to school each day and look
at the twisted, charred walls and heaps of
black ash that were frightening to look at,
and the smell of burned things stayed in
the air of that neighborhood for months on
end, until that house was finally bulldozed and
taken to the trash heap.
I can't remember the last time I heard
a sermon preached on hell.
I've been to dozens of churches over the
last 30 years or so and have listened
to hundreds of messages by pastors eager to
please their congregations, but I have never heard
in person a sermon on hell.
Have you?
Why is that?
Why don't preachers use one of the most
effective tools to awaken lost sinners, which is
the doctrine of eternal punishment and hell?
I'll tell you why, friends, because most pastors
don't want to awaken anybody, because if they
did, they wouldn't know what to do.
It'd be too disturbing to the congregation of
nice church folk to have somebody sitting next
to them suddenly cry out as they see
hell and its torments open before them, and
the sanctuary become an abacum where people were
shrieking and crying out like the hearers under
Jonathan Edwards who preached on hell's punishment.
In his sermon, sinners in the hands of
an angry God that he preached in Enfield,
Connecticut in 1741, and as an eyewitness recorded,
ye minister had to desist from preaching because
of all the shrieks and cries throughout the
house.
You start preaching on hell, brother pastor, and
you'll have a fight on your hands because
you have to preach against sin.
You had to preach up man's duty of
repentance.
You had to preach about a God who
must punish sin, and if you do that,
why, some of the good deacons will come
at you.
I'll tell you what, friends, nobody wants to
preach a disturbing message.
Why trouble your church?
Why upset the apple cart if you don't
have to when you can get by with
just preaching on more pleasant subjects?
I remember Vance Havner saying, when I pastored
a country church, a farmer didn't like the
sermons I preached on hell.
He said, preach about the meek and lowly
Jesus.
I said, that's where I got my information
about hell, and that's what we're going to
look at tonight, friends, what Jesus has to
say about hell.
The title of my message this evening, friends,
is Hellfire, and my text can be found
in Mark's gospel in chapter 9.
You can turn in your Bibles.
There now, friends, we will be in verses
43 to 47.
Listen to what Jesus has to say about
hellfire, and if thy hand offend thee, cut
it off.
It is better for thee to enter into
life maimed than having two hands to go
into hell, into the fire that never shall
be quenched, where the worm doth not, and
the fire is not quenched.
And if thy foot offend thee, cut it
off.
It is better for thee to enter halt
into life than having two feet to be
cast into hell, into the fire that never
shall be quenched, where the worm doth not,
and the fire is not quenched.
And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it
out.
It is better for thee to enter into
the kingdom of God with one eye than
having two eyes to be cast into hell
fire.
Jesus states several things here about hell.
He says it's a fire that is never
put out.
It's a burning region all the time, engulfed
in flames that never ever shall be quenched.
They will burn for all eternity, unlike that
house fire that did all the damage, but
finally was put out by several fire trucks
and a score of firefighters who worked like
trojans to put that fire out.
But Jesus says you'd be better off chopping
off your offending hand or foot and being
maimed here in life than tortured in hell
forever.
That's how radical his sermon on hell is,
friend.
It's disturbing to think of taking an axe
and mutilating yourself rather than going on to
hell to suffer there indefinitely.
It's disturbing to think about plucking your eyeballs
right out of their sockets.
But Jesus says you'd be better off if
you did and could stay out of that
place that's far worse than that, which is
hell fire.
Then Jesus talks about a worm where the
worm doth not.
When you die and your body is laid
in the grave, the worms come after you
and eat away on your corpse.
But they stop when all that's left is
bones, but not in hell.
You'll be eaten by worms in hell that
will crawl all over you.
They will feed on your charred, twisted flesh
and gnaw away on you forever.
Jesus has described hell as a place of
outer darkness.
It's so dark you can't see your hand
in front of your face.
He calls it a bottomless pit, a place
of torment where there's wailing and gnashing of
teeth, the shrieks and incessant wailing that's going
on in hell right now.
If you could listen to it, it's so
loud and disturbing it would give you nightmares
tonight to hear the collective suffering of the
damned who line chains in a burgeoning, burning
region of hell fire.
You don't want to go to hell, friend.
Once you shut up in that prison, there's
no escape.
It's dark.
It's crowded with the worst elements of every
society from each generation since Adam.
They're locked up and they're screaming and hollering
and cursing God and spewing out all kinds
of blasphemy.
There's a raining spirit of rage and hate
in hell.
You better be sure you don't end up
in hell, friend.
You may not like me now because of
this message, but you'd surely hate me if
I failed to warn you and you were
cast into that smoking pit of darkness and
flames and chained up in there to suffer
forever and ever.
Repent before it's too late.
Let us pray.