Naylor Community Christian Church
I. Introduction
-- turn in Bibles to Matthew
25:31-46
31
“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will
sit on his glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and
he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep
from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his
left.
34
“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my
Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation
of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was
thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me
in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me,
I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
37
“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed
you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a
stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we
see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
40
“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least
of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
41
“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed,
into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was
hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to
drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and
you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
44
“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a
stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
45
“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least
of these, you did not do for me.’
46
“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal
life.”
-- this morning, we are continuing
our Afterlife sermon series on heaven, hell, and everything in-between
-- so far, we have covered a lot of ground
in this study -- we have looked at the creation of humans as tripartite beings with
three parts -- body, soul, and spirit -- and how that affects our eternal state
after life -- when we die
-- we talked about how the Bible teaches
that believers who die are immediately in the presence of God -- as Paul wrote,
“to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord” -- and that when we
die, we are immediately carried up to heaven to be with Him
-- we talked about Sheol/Hades and how
this was a temporary holding place for all the people who died before the
Advent of Jesus -- before Jesus became incarnate and was born and lived and
died on the cross for our sins -- and the Harrowing of Hades, when Jesus went
to Hades following His death and released the believing captives who were in
that place -- leaving behind the unbelievers and those who had rejected Him to
their place of torment
-- and we discussed how this same fate
exists for those in our day who die in their sins -- who have not put their
faith and trust in Jesus and received forgiveness of their sins through
Christ’s atoning death on the cross
-- so, at this point, we can stand in
confidence and say that everyone who has put their faith and trust in Jesus
Christ and died -- from the time of Adam and Eve up until this very moment --
all of them are in heaven with Him now
-- and we can stand in confidence and say that
all believers will immediately go to be with Him in heaven when they die, too
-- that is the good news of the gospel --
that is our hope and our joy as believers in Christ
-- but for all those who have not believed
in Jesus -- for those who have rejected Him and turned away from His offer of
life and have died in that state of unforgiveness -- all of them are still in
the place of torment in Sheol/Hades
-- and that is the fate for all those who
die in their sins apart from Jesus from now until the return of Christ
-- but what happens on that day? -- what
happens to the unbelievers and those who have rejected Him on the Day of the
Lord when Christ returns? -- and what happens to the believers who are
currently in heaven with Jesus? -- do we stay in the clouds or do we go
somewhere else?
-- those are the final questions that we
have to answer in this study
-- in order to answer these final
questions in our study of what happens after our lives, we need to look at the idea
of heaven and hell and what happens to us in those places
-- I want to finish this series up by
looking at heaven and our future life with Christ -- that’s what I want to end
this series with rather than a picture of hell or anything else -- that’s the
way I have it laid out, so the last messages in this Afterlife Series will
focus on our eternal life with Christ
-- but that means that for the next two
weeks, our focus has to be on hell -- and we’re going to spend our time
together over the next two weeks talking about hell and Hades and what happens
to unbelievers when Christ returns
-- I’m going to be mentioning a lot of
scripture today -- and I’ve got a handout for you that has all the passages I
mentioned today listed on there so that you can look them up in context and see
what I was referring to -- so, don’t worry about trying to turn to every
passage as I read them or write everything down -- I’ll have this for you on
the table on the way out
-- one more thing before we get into
today’s message -- before we start, I want to offer a word of caution -- too
often our beliefs are based on tradition, and not on Biblical truth -- in other
words, in a lot of cases, what we believe is not based on truth -- on what the
Bible teaches -- but is based on what we have learned in our churches or from
other sources
-- for instance, think about the Christmas
story and Mary and Joseph making their way to Bethlehem for the Roman census --
I’d bet that every time you heard that story growing up -- every time you pictured
that event in your mind -- you envisioned Mary riding on a donkey on her way to
Jerusalem -- if I close my eyes, I can see that right now -- because that’s
what we all believed -- but as I have pointed out to you before, the Bible
doesn’t tell us that
-- it’s something that we’ve come up with
because it’s what we’ve always heard -- it’s an assumption that we are making
based on tradition and because that is what we have seen in plays and TV shows
and movies -- but it is not necessarily true -- the Bible doesn’t tell us how
Mary got to Bethlehem -- in all actuality, she probably walked because she and
Joseph were not wealthy people -- they may not have even owned a donkey
-- but that demonstrates the point I am
trying to make -- we have to be careful concerning our beliefs -- and we have
to be especially careful in assuming what we have been taught and what we know
through tradition is actually true -- just because we have been taught
something in the church or believed something our whole lives doesn’t
necessarily make it true
-- as Pilate responded to Jesus, “What is
truth?” -- what is the basis for truth and what should be the basis for our
beliefs as Christians? -- where do we find the truth?
-- we find it through Jesus -- Jesus is
the truth -- He is the Life and the Truth and the Way -- and the Bible is His
written word to us -- we have to be careful to not let tradition or church
teachings that do not line up with Scripture form the basis of our beliefs
-- the questions we should always ask
ourselves is “Is this true? -- What does the Bible actually say about this?”
-- we need to be like the Bereans from the
Book of Acts -- in Acts 17:10-12, we read that the Bereans listened to the
teachings of Paul and Silas every day, and then they went home and examined the
scriptures to see if the things they preached were true -- that’s what we
should be doing, too
-- and when you do that, you’ll find that
not everything you’ve been taught -- not everything that you believe -- is true
-- just because we’ve been told our whole lives that Mary rode on the back of a
donkey into Bethlehem at Christmas doesn’t make it true
-- our truth must be based on scripture
and not on tradition or any teaching of man -- and just because that’s the way
it’s always been taught and that’s the way we’ve always believed, doesn’t make
a teaching true if it doesn’t line up with the word of God
-- and this also means we also have to be
careful to not twist Scripture to fit what we believe -- a lot of people go to
the Bible and try to find verses or passages that support what they believe,
rather than let the Bible tell them something different -- that’s what the
slave-owners did prior to the Civil War -- they believed owning slaves was
okay, and they sought out passages that seemed to support that -- but that’s
not the way we should approach the Bible
-- don’t read the Bible trying to make it
support your beliefs or traditions -- but read the Bible to learn the truth of
what God says -- in other words, let your beliefs be formed by the Bible and by
what God ays
-- and that’s going to be important for
the rest of this Afterlife Series because what the Bible teaches about Heaven
and Hell may not line up with what we have been taught in the church our whole
lives -- with what we take to be the truth about Heaven and Hell
-- I’m going to go ahead and let you know
that this study has caused me to change my beliefs in several areas in regards
to heaven, hell, and everything in-between -- studying God’s word and seeing
what it actually said about these subjects has led me to let go of things I
firmly believed in because they did not line up with the word of God
-- this morning, I really want you to put
aside your preconceived notions of Heaven and Hell and to hear what God is
saying through the Scriptures -- don’t read this through your lens of tradition
-- but read it and receive it as God reveals His truth to you through the Bible
II. Heaven or Hell?
-- let’s begin by talking about hell
-- growing up, this was a major topic in the church -- it was something that
was routinely discussed from the pulpit -- and it was the heart of every
evangelistic message I ever heard
-- where are you going to spend
eternity? -- is it going to be heaven or hell? -- are you going to the smoking
section or the non-smoking section?
-- often, the messages were
punctuated with descriptions of each destination -- heaven was a place of peace
and pleasure -- eternity in the sky with God -- sitting on clouds and playing
harps and getting your angel wings
-- hell, on the other hand, was
horrible -- a place of fire and smoke with the devil holding his pitchfork and
punishing unbelievers for all eternity -- a place of darkness and weeping and
torment -- we’ve all heard that description -- we’ve all seen pictures of that --
we all have that image in our mind
-- those are your choices, we were
told -- heaven or hell -- if you choose to put your faith in Jesus, you will go
to heaven -- otherwise, your fate is eternal punishment in hell
-- you’ve all heard that, right? --
but is it true?
-- would it surprise you to know
that this choice between heaven and hell -- this dichotomy between eternal
pleasure or eternal punishment -- is never taught in the Bible?
-- the focus in the Bible is not on
our destination -- on whether we go to heaven or hell -- the focus in the Bible
is whether we embrace life or death -- whether we choose to live with God
forever or to suffer death as the punishment for our sins
-- life, the Bible teaches, only
comes through Christ -- as it says in John 1:4, “In Him [In Christ] was life,
and that life was the light of men.”
-- and, of course, John 3:16 -- “For
God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes
in Him shall not perish but have eternal life”
-- no where in the New Testament do
we find the words, “heaven or hell,” together -- no where in the New Testament
do we see anyone giving the plan of salvation in the way that we are so
familiar with in our churches today -- telling people that they have to choose
whether they are going to heaven or hell -- that concept is not in the Bible --
the focus is not on our eternal destination, but on whether we are in a
relationship with God or not
-- in fact, the word “Hell” is only
used 14 times in the entire New Testament -- it is not found in the Book of
Acts or any of Paul’s epistles -- and it is never used by any of the Apostles
when they present the gospel in the Scriptures
-- the only two mentions of Hell in any of
the epistles are in 2 Peter 2:4, where Peter references Tartarus, the place of
punishment for the fallen angels -- the translators changed this from the Greek
Tartarus to Hell in our English Bibles -- the second place we see hell
mentioned is in the Book of James, where James is teaching about the danger of
the tongue and he says the tongue corrupts the whole person and is set on fire
by hell, referring to hell as the source of evil that comes through our unwholesome
speech
-- so, neither one of these two references
is about hell as the destination of unbelievers, but about something else
-- the choice that we see laid out in
the evangelistic passages in scripture is not a choice between heaven or hell
but between life and death -- and the emphasis is always on receiving eternal
life through God, not on going to heaven -- it’s always about God and not about
our destination
-- for instance, today is the Day of
Pentecost -- and in Acts 2, when we read of the coming of the Holy Spirit to
the church -- Peter stands up and addresses the crowd there in the streets of
Jerusalem who had gathered for the Feast of Pentecost -- he gives them the
first evangelistic message in the New Testament after the sending of the Holy
Spirit -- and in that message, he never mentions hell or being saved from hell
-- instead, he pleads with the people to save themselves from “this corrupt
generation” by repenting and being baptized in the name of Jesus for the
forgiveness of their sins
-- so, the choice presented to us isn’t
about heaven or hell -- it’s about Jesus and receiving Him as Lord and Savior
and living with Him in His kingdom forever
-- the sad fact is that we have put
more of an emphasis and focus on hell in our preaching and teaching than Jesus
and the apostles ever did
-- we should be careful to not go
too far in what we say to unbelievers or to each other -- we need to follow the
example of Jesus and the apostles and imitate their method of sharing the
gospel instead -- this means emphasizing life instead of what we currently do,
which is to present the gospel as a choice between heaven and hell
III. The Punishment for Sin
-- now, with that said, I think we can
all agree that the Bible still teaches that there is a consequence for sin --
that if we do not believe in Jesus and receive Him as our Lord and Savior and
have our sins forgiven, that we will have to pay the price for our sins
ourselves
-- in other words, someone has to
account for and pay the penalty for our sins -- and that someone is either
Jesus or us
-- so, what is the penalty for sin?
-- what does the Bible actually tell us?
-- listen as I read Genesis 2:15-17
15
The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take
care of it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from
any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
--
what did God say was the penalty for disobeying Him and eating of the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil? -- death
-- and here’s where my caution comes
in -- look at what the Bible says and don’t read into it what you have been
taught
-- God tells Adam the penalty for
disobedience is death -- He doesn’t mention Hell or any other type of eternal
punishment -- the penalty for sin is death -- it’s right there in black and
white
-- and this is a good example of where we
let tradition and teachings in the church read way more out of a word than the
text actually says -- we want this to line up with our beliefs concerning hell
and eternal punishment -- we want this to mean something else -- so we say,
“God really meant spiritual death here” and that He was referring to separation
from God in Hell forever
-- but where are you getting that from? --
what does the Bible say? -- what did God actually tell Adam the penalty for
disobedience was? -- death -- period -- that’s all He says
-- and we see that same truth taught
throughout the Scriptures, all the way up through the New Testament
-- Ezekiel 18:20 -- “The soul who
sins is the one who will die”
-- James 1:15 -- “Then, after
desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown,
gives birth to death.”
-- James 5:20 -- “Whoever turns a sinner
from the error of their way will save them from death and cover over a
multitude of sins.”
-- think about what James says there -- he
missed a good chance to mention the horrors of hell to his readers in that
verse, didn’t he?
-- why didn’t James say that whoever turns
a sinner from the error of his way will save him from hell -- from eternal
punishment -- from separation from God forever?
-- because that is not what Scripture
teaches
-- last example -- in the famous
evangelistic technique called “The Roman’s Road,” where you use scriptures from
Romans to show the plan of salvation, you see the same thing
-- the Roman’s Road starts with
Romans 3:23 -- “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” -- from
there, you go to Romans 6:23 -- “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of
God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord”
-- Scripture is consistent with this
from Genesis to Revelation -- what does the Bible tell us is the penalty for
sin? -- it is death -- not eternal punishment in hell
-- and right now, a lot of you are
disagreeing with me in your head because this is not what you have been taught
your whole life and this is not what you know and believe with all your heart
-- every one of us in here have been taught that if you disobey God and don’t
receive Jesus as your Savior, the penalty is hell, right? -- that’s your choice
-- heaven or hell -- that’s what we have heard
-- but forget what tradition has taught
you -- forget what you have heard your whole life -- what is truth? -- what
does the Bible actually say?
-- it says the penalty for sin -- the
penalty for disobedience -- the penalty for not believing in Jesus -- is death
-- not hell -- not eternal punishment -- death
-- let’s shift gears a little bit
-- one of the foundational doctrines in
the church is substitutionary atonement -- the belief that Christ paid the
penalty for our sin on the cross of Calvary -- that He substituted Himself for
us -- that He took our place on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins
-- a related doctrine is the concept of
imputation -- that not only did Christ pay the penalty for our sins, but He
imputed His righteousness to us -- that He transferred His righteousness and
holiness to us so that we can stand innocent of our sins before God -- this is
what we call positional holiness in the church
-- those two things go together -- Jesus
took our place on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins and then gave us
His righteousness and holiness to reconcile us with the Father
-- this is foundational -- it is what we
believe and proclaim in the church -- it’s what we sing about when we sing,
“Jesus paid it all -- all to Him I owe -- sin had left a crimson stain -- He
washed it white as snow”
-- if Jesus paid it all, what was the
payment? -- what was the price for our redemption? -- what price did Jesus pay?
-- let me read 1 Corinthians 15:1-4 for
you
1 Now, brothers and sisters, I want to
remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you
have taken your stand. 2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to
the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.
3 For what I received I passed on to you
as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the
Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according
to the Scriptures,
-- what price did Jesus pay? -- His death
-- He died for us because the penalty for sin is death
-- nowhere in the entire Bible do we read
that the penalty for disobedience is hell -- nowhere do we read that the
penalty for sin is eternal punishment -- it’s not in there
-- and for the doctrines of
substitutionary atonement and imputation to be true, then Christ had to pay the
penalty that we owed for our sins -- He had to pay the same debt that we owe --
and the price He paid was His death, not eternal punishment in hell -- Christ
is not in Hell right now suffering in our place
-- take a moment and think about this --
think about what the Bible is telling us here -- what this means
-- since the wages of sin is death, then
we can confidently say that Jesus paid it all on the cross through
substitutionary atonement and that we have received His righteousness through
imputation
-- but if the wages of sin is not death --
if the wages of sin is eternal torment in Hell like all of us have been taught
-- then has the price been paid?
-- if Jesus is not in Hell right now
suffering for us, how can we say that He took our place?
-- the only way substitutionary atonement
and imputation work -- the only way in which Christ paid it all on the cross of
Calvary -- is if the penalty for sin was death and if Jesus died on the cross
for our sins
-- and that’s why the Bible tells us that
if we receive Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we will receive life -- because
life is the opposite of death, which is the penalty that we owed
-- salvation is the gift of life
through Christ to a people condemned to eternal death -- eternal destruction --
because of their sins
-- like it or not -- agree with it
or not -- this is what the Bible actually teaches -- which is not what most of
us were taught or grew up believing
-- most of us were taught that if we
do not receive Jesus as our Lord and Savior, then when we die, we will go to
hell and experience everlasting punishment for our sins, right?
-- the theological term for this is
ECT -- Eternal Conscious Torment -- the process of being punished for all
eternity for our sins in hell
-- that’s what we were taught, even
though I just pointed out that the Bible doesn’t say this -- the Bible tells us
that the wages of sin is death, not ECT -- eternal conscious torment
-- so, where did this come from? --
why is this such a widespread belief?
-- we can trace this back to two
things -- first, the introduction of Greek philosophy into the church in the
second century -- the Greek philosopher Plato taught the immortality of the
soul -- that our souls are all immortal and will never cease to exist
-- but this is not what the ancient
Jews believed -- and this is not what the Bible teaches -- this idea came from
outside the Bible -- from a western philosopher who was not a Christian
-- but this teaching from Plato
influenced Tertullian, an early church father -- and we see its influence begin
to spread in the church after the second century
-- if you follow Plato and
Tertullian’s teaching on the immortality of the soul, then you have to account
for both the believer and the unbeliever -- and that’s where the idea that
salvation is a choice between heaven and hell came from
-- as we’ve talked about, the Bible
teaches that those who believe in Jesus receive eternal life -- as Jesus said
in John 10:10, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full”
-- and John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son
that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life” --
believers are immortal -- not because they were made that way -- but because
they have received life through Jesus -- that is the promise we have been given
-- life in Christ
-- but Tertullian applied Plato’s
assertion about the immortality of the soul to unbelievers, as well -- so, if you
assume unbelievers never die, what happens to them? -- Tertullian reasoned that
if believers go to heaven to be with God forever, then the only other option
was for unbelievers to go to an opposite place -- a place of torment forever --
in other words, hell
-- so, even though this is not
biblical -- even though this is not what is taught in scripture -- it became
accepted and part of tradition and is still taught in the church today, as we
all know, because this is what we have heard our whole lives
-- so, that’s the first thing that
laid the groundwork for this wide-spread teaching of ECT -- eternal conscious
torment -- for unbelievers
-- the second thing is the
definition of the word “eternal” -- what does that word really mean? -- eternal
can mean lasting or existing forever -- unchanging -- permanent -- or final
-- there are two passages that
people refer to when the question of ECT comes up -- the first is Matthew
25:31-46, Jesus’ teaching about the sheep and the goats
-- this is the passage where Jesus commends
the sheep because they were righteous in their interactions -- look back at
Matthew 25:31-40
31
“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will
sit on his glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and
he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep
from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his
left.
34
“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my
Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation
of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was
thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me
in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me,
I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
37
“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed
you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a
stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we
see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
40
“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least
of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
-- and then Jesus rebukes the goats
because they didn’t do what the sheep did -- verse 41
41
“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed,
into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was
hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to
drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and
you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
44
“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a
stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
45
“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least
of these, you did not do for me.’
-- Jesus sums up His teaching in verse 46
46
“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal
life.”
-- keep that verse in your mind while I
turn over to the other passage -- 2 Thessalonians 1:9
-- where Paul writes about those who do not know God or obey the gospel of the
Lord Jesus, “They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out
from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of His power...”
-- these two verses seem to stand in
opposition to everything I have been sharing with you this morning -- but do
they? -- it all hinges on the definition of the words, “eternal” and
“everlasting”
-- what does “eternal punishment”
mean in Matthew 25:26? -- what does “everlasting destruction” mean in 2
Thessalonians 1:9?
-- adherents of the more common view
that unbelievers suffer in hell for all eternity would say that eternal
punishment and everlasting destruction mean that the punishment of unbelievers
never ends -- that they are always being punished and always in the act of
being destroyed -- the process of punishment never ends -- your sentence
is never over -- you will never suffer enough to pay the price for your sins
-- so, when Tertullian took the
immortality of the soul from Plato’s teachings and read that concept into
Matthew 25:46 and 2 Thessalonians 1:9, he began teaching that unbelievers are
condemned to a state of perpetual conscious torment in hell forever -- and this
teaching was carried on in the church to this very day -- I think it’s fair to
say this is the predominant teaching in the church today
-- however, when you take a hard
look at scripture and what the Bible actually says about the punishment for
sin, you find yourself in disagreement with Tertullian’s teaching -- and you
run into big problems with reconciling substitutionary atonement and the
imputation of righteousness with this teaching from Tertullian by way of Plato
-- going back to the two verses we just
discussed -- Matthew 25:46 and 2 Thessalonians 1:9, a better reading of this
would be that eternal punishment and everlasting destruction refer to the
permanence of the unbeliever’s final condition -- in other words, by defining
eternal and everlasting as final or permanent, then what Jesus and Paul are
saying here is that the punishment of unbelievers for their sin is final and
permanent -- their destruction is final and permanent
-- so, since we know that the Bible
teaches that the wages of sin is death and the penalty for disobedience is
death, then the eternal and everlasting state of unbelievers is permanent death
-- which lines up better with Scripture than the teaching of Tertullian as
influenced by Plato
-- so, the two options before us are
either eternal life with Christ or eternal death -- not heaven or hell -- but
life with God or eternal death as the penalty for our sins
IV. Closing
-- I know this is a lot to take in,
so I’m going to close right here -- next week, we’re going to dive deeper into
hell and punishment and the second death, which is described in the Book of
Revelation
-- I’m not saying there won’t be
punishment for sin -- there will -- but I’m going to suggest that the Bible
teaches this punishment is not experienced the way we’ve always been taught --
we’ll talk about that more next week
-- but understand this as you
continue to think about and pray about the message we received today -- all
that we talked about today can be considered of secondary importance -- your
beliefs about hell and death and eternal punishment for sin are things that are
not foundational to our salvation -- in other words, these are doctrinal issues
that we can agree to disagree about -- and there are good Christians and
theologians who differ on their opinions about this subject -- and that’s okay
-- because these issues do not affect your salvation or relationship with
Christ
-- the big question is whether you
have chosen life in Christ or not -- that is what defines your eternal state --
not what you believe about heaven or hell
-- but this discussion about hell is
important because it concerns the fate of unbelievers -- and whether we believe
people who don’t know Jesus face eternal death or eternal punishment doesn’t
really matter -- I think we can all agree that neither option is what we would
want someone to face -- whether that is eternal death or eternal punishment
-- what is of greater importance is
pointing unbelievers to Jesus and to the promise of eternal life we have in Him
-- that is the take-home message from today
-- the focus of Christ and the Church should
always revolve around the promise of eternal life with the Father -- that needs
to be our emphasis because that is the gospel of Christ -- that is the good
news -- that is why Jesus came -- to bring life into a world condemned to die
-- we need to stop offering Jesus as a
get-out-of-hell card or as a fire escape and start focusing on the real benefit
of receiving Him as our Lord and Savior -- and that is eternal life with Him
-- our focus should not be on the
negative -- on hell or eternal punishment or even the second death -- our focus
should be on telling others about the life we have in Christ -- Jesus said that
He came to bring us life -- abundant life -- life to the full -- and that is
the life we should be proclaiming
-- for too long, the emphasis in the
church has been on the destination and not the author of this life -- we need
to proclaim Christ and tell the world that because of His death and
resurrection we can have eternal life with Him
-- the choice is not between heaven
or hell -- the choice is whether to experience eternal life with Christ or not
-- that is His message -- that is
the reason He came -- and that is the reason we are here -- let us proclaim His
life and the life He promises to those around us every day and not focus on
hell or eternal punishment any longer -- Christ is enough -- we don’t need to
scare people into a relationship with Him
-- I promise I’m about to close -- I
let you out early the last couple of weeks, so I’ve got more time today -- last
thing -- spend some time in the Scriptures this week -- be a Berean and study
this topic for yourself
-- put aside your current beliefs
and traditions -- and go to the Bible with fresh eyes and see what God is
actually saying there -- make sure you’re believing what God is saying and not
what man is telling you
-- and, it’s okay to disagree with
me -- like I said, this is of secondary importance -- and I’ll be happy to sit
down with any of you and discuss this more if you want, but first, do the work
-- study the scriptures -- and let God speak to your heart on this matter --
with that, we’re finally going to close
-- let us pray
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