I used to, for those of you who know me, you know that I used to be a guitar instructor at Guitar Center. And for those of you who've been there, it's very obvious that it's an atheistic environment. When I was there, there was probably just me and one other Christian at the time. And I remember one day, I was talking with a coworker, and we eventually got to the gospel, and I asked him the question of, where do you think you're gonna go when you die? And for those of you who evangelize, you know that the answer you almost always can get is heaven. And it shook me when he looked me in the eye and no sarcasm, no fear, no longing, he looks me straight in the eye and says, hell. And there was just this numbness to that response that I didn't even know what to say. And so a week went by and another coworker came up to me the Christian coworker, and she told me that she overheard the way he responded, and she couldn't stop thinking about him all week. And so she hands me this 10-page essay that she had handwritten in pink ink, and it's a gospel presentation. And I'm reading this, and it's like I'm reading Wayne Grudem's Sister Mattheology. She's going all the way back to Adam and Eve, the fall of man, to redemption, the crucifixion. She talks about justification, sanctification, everything. And it's in a way that a five-year-old could understand it. And so, as she was leaving, I saw her give that letter to the coworker, and she told him just wait till he gets home to read it. And it really is a scary thing when you see how the Word of God truly is living and active. Because he came in the next day and he couldn't stop shaking. There was a fear that I've never seen him have before. And he was shaking so bad that the manager had to clock in for him. And for the next eight months, I just watched as his mind was being consumed by conviction and fear. And the shaking just increased to the point where he ended up losing his job because he couldn't function. And so one day I text him and I told him that he knows too much now. He will not have an excuse on the last day when he faces God. And the text I sent him was the text we're in today. And I told him that not only does he have the solution to his problem right before him, But because he has that solution, if he rejects it, he's gonna suffer more than he ever would if we never gave it to him in the first place. So turn with me to Matthew 11. We're gonna be looking at verses 20 through 24. Then he began to denounce the cities where most of his mighty works had been done. because they did not repent. Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it would be more bearable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You'd be brought down to Hades, for if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained till this day. But I tell you, it would be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you. We're gonna be looking at two dangers of rejecting the gospel. And you may be here today, who you may have grown up in church, you may have heard the gospel, you may have grown up in a Christian family, and maybe your response isn't this hostile, atheistic response, but maybe it's just a state of apathy. And I want to say that if that's you today, where maybe the only reason you're here is to please your parents, maybe it's to please a spouse, or maybe it's just because you're like Herod, you're an unbeliever who yet still likes the sound of John the Baptist preaching. I want to say that you're in the same boat that my coworker was in. And like Rob said last time, if you're a Christian here, we shouldn't gloss over these kind of warnings or these statements as if it doesn't apply to us. I think one reason the church is often so weak in evangelism is we don't really realize what we're trying to save people from. And so before we get into the text, I want to talk about the context and how it all fits in. So when we look at chapter 10, we see that this is the beginning of Jesus' second discourse. This is where he's sending out his disciples to proclaim the gospel in their cities. This is where he gives them authority to cast out demons and to do healings and all these things. And then in the midst of that, he's telling them what this ministry's gonna look like. It's gonna look like persecution. It's gonna look like a lot of cities where you leave just shaking the sand off your sandals. And he tells them that they're to be anxious and nothing, even though they're probably gonna suffer. And then we get to the chapter we're in today, chapter 11. And what we see is this growing theme of opposition. Which the ironic thing is it doesn't, this opposition doesn't start with the Pharisees. It doesn't start with the Sadducees or the Scribes. It starts with John the Baptist, actually. And it's not in this malicious way, it's in the subtle way of just a momentary doubt that he had. Which would make sense, you know, John the Baptist comes onto the scene, he's preaching judgment, judgment, judgment, judgment, Jesus is the Messiah, he's gonna come to judge. And then he gets thrown in prison and he knows that he's gonna be killed. And as he looks at Jesus, he doesn't see judgment, he sees healings, he sees miracles, he sees a man who's befriending tax collectors. So you can imagine in the midst of that discouragement of just being in prison, how he would be tempted to second guess himself. And so he sends his people, his disciples to go confirm on if he's the Messiah or if they need to find another one. And Jesus' response is by him quoting Isaiah. And he tells him to go back to John, tell him what you hear, tell him what you see. And essentially, Jesus' response is, I'm still at work, but it may not be the way you expect me to do it. And then he goes on to speak highly of John about how there's never been a prophet like him before. And we get to verse 16, and the view shifts from John the Baptist out to the just stubborn neglect and rejection of this generation. Verse 16 says, but to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to their playmates. We played the flute for you, and you did not dance. You sang a dirge, and you did not moan. But John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, he has a demon. The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, look at him, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. Yet wisdom will be justified by her deeds. And so here we have a picture of just a group of little kids who they're playing the flute, they're singing dirges, they're expecting people to respond the way they want them to. And then they get upset that they don't get what they want. And then Jesus talks about how you have John the Baptist here who comes and he's not eating, he's not drinking, he's doing exactly how a prophet was. And here you are saying he has a demon. And then the son of man himself comes and he's eating and drinking and your response is he has just as much of a demon as John the Baptist. I heard a preacher once describe this as it's a generation that is dedicated to the rejection of truth. It doesn't matter what evidence you throw out there, it doesn't matter what you give them, nothing is ever gonna appeal the fact that they hate God. And before we get to the first point, the first danger of rejecting the gospel, I wanna look at verse 20 as a pretext. Verse 20 of chapter 11. Then he began to denounce the cities where most of his mighty works had been done because they did not repent. The word here for denounce is onedizo. And you see it several times in the New Testament. It could be translated as rebuked, to speak badly of. But the interesting thing is this is the only time in the entire New Testament where this word is used in the context of divine judgment. So this word has weight to it. This isn't just simply Jesus smacking the hand of a little kid. This isn't him just spraying the dog with water saying that he's misbehaving. This is a severe judgment that Jesus is speaking on. And these three cities that Jesus is denouncing, these are the cities where most of his works have been done. You know, we often read the Gospels and we see these accounts, and we assume that these miracles that are listed are the only ones that Jesus did. But when we look at John, chapter 21, what does he say? He says, now there are also many other things that Jesus did, were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. And so here, when we, these cities that had been witnesses to most of these works, this isn't the sense of, you know, nine out of 10 of the miracles Jesus did were in these cities. 50 out of 60 of them were done. This could have been thousands. This could have been hundreds of thousands, millions. There's no telling what these cities witnessed. And yet, despite that, they are so callous that they still reject the gospel. And the other very interesting thing is you see here that the reason for this denouncement isn't because of the murder they commit in their heart. It isn't because they're stealing. It isn't because the lies they told. It's specifically because they did not repent. Meaning, there was a specific purpose Jesus did these miracles in the first place. It was so that they would repent. It was because of the unbelief that Jesus did this in the first place. And the very interesting thing, which I've been wrestling with for the past few months, is you see a completely different approach when Jesus is in his hometown of Nazareth. Because what does it say in Matthew 13? It says, and he did not do many miracles there, which Mark escalates and says he could not do any miracles because of their lack of faith. So in this city, these three cities, the whole reason he did these miracles was because of their unbelief. But in Nazareth, his own hometown, their unbelief is what kept him from doing these good works. So essentially, we have to ask ourselves the question, why does Jesus, why does God give some people who he knows will never repent more opportunity than others? Why does God allow the unbeliever to come in week after week into churches just like this to hear the gospel, Yet the unbeliever in Zambodia may never hear it. Turn with me to Romans 9 real quick. We're gonna look at Romans 9, 21 through 23. Actually, we'll start at verse 20. But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, why have ye made me like this? Has the potter no right over the clay to make out the same lump, one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory? And so right off the bat, we see that God is sovereign over not only the acceptance of the gospel, but the rejection of it. We see that there are some people who God has predestined before the foundations to accept the gospel and to be vessels of glory who God glorifies himself by granting redemption to. But often we neglect that that must mean that God predestined some people to hell. Which the term here, which you may hear at some point, is double predestination. Look at Romans 2 verses four through five with me real quick. Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance, but because of your hand, sorry, because of your hard and impotent heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath. when God's righteous judgment will be revealed. So right off the bat, we see two things about this. We see that when God does good things for unbelievers, when God did these miracles for Chorazin, Bethsaida, all these cities that he's now denouncing, that was a genuine means to lead them to repentance. This wasn't Jesus maniacally laughing at how this was a trap. He did these things because he sincerely wanted them to repent. But the second thing we see is that whenever someone takes these good gifts, whether it's just another opportunity to repent, another day at church to hear the gospel, even just another day to live, whenever we presume upon that and use that as justification, putting off repenting, putting off accepting the gospel, all these things, that stores up wrath for us. Meaning that sometimes the reason God does these good things is not only to provide a genuine means of repentance, but sometimes it's what he intends to be the means of storing up wrath for the person. See, every unbeliever who dies in their unbelief has a wrath tank, right? And this tank has a cap on it. God is gonna make sure that that person who is a vessel of wrath will never die until that tank is full. Some people are going to have a higher limit, some people are going to have lower, but everyone, the second that that wrath tank is full, that's going to be when God takes them out. Turn with me to Genesis 15 real quick. We're going to look at verses 13 through 16, and I want everyone to pay close attention to verse 16. Verse 13, then the Lord said to Abram, no for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there. And they will be afflicted for 400 years, but I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve. And afterward, they shall come out with great possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace. You shall be buried in a good old age. and they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. So we see here that the only reason God prolonged judgment on the Amorites was because their iniquity had not yet reached completion. And here's my warning for everyone here. who is not professing Christ, who has not truly accepted the gospel, and even if they are verbally professing Christ and their hearts reject it, if you come here and your response today after hearing this text is to leave and just say you're gonna put it off and not accept it, that is exactly how a vessel of wrath would think. That is exactly how someone who is showing wrath for themself on a day of judgment would respond. And the first point, the first danger that we're gonna see of rejecting the gospel is that it leads to a hardened heart. We see this in verse 21 and 23. And here what we have is Jesus beginning this passage with judging Coazon and Bethsaida. And he opens this up with saying, woe to you, which whenever we see that, that should be a red flag of judgments about to be spoken on. You're never gonna see woe to you, and it'd be a good thing. As far as Chorazin, we don't know much about the city. There's not much mentioned about it in scripture. As for Bethsaida, it just means house of fishing in Hebrew. This is where Peter, Philip, and Andrew lived. This is where we see miracles, like the feeding of the 5,000 or the healing of the blind man. And even though these are just a few of the miracles we see there, that doesn't change the fact that there were many, many more miracles performed here. These people had no excuse. And as we look at this, we see the depravity of these cities. and the second half of verse 21. And one thing I want to point out about this verse is this is actually one of the most misused verses in Christian circles. There are many people, specifically apologists, people who attempt to defend the faith, that reject God's sovereignty over people who accept the gospel. They will often say that every man has a degree of goodness in him. And the only reason he doesn't accept Christ, only reason he doesn't accept the gospel is because he just hasn't seen enough evidence, which there's several passages we can go to that refute that. But there's two things wrong with that that we could just look at this text and see. The first reason that is wrong is because Jesus' point here when he says that if Tyre and Sidon had seen these miracles, even they would have repented. He's not speaking on how much knowledge does it take for someone to repent. That's not the point he's making here. The point he's making is that you are such a wicked city that compared to you, even a city like Tyre and Sidon would repent at this point. The emphasis is not on knowledge. The emphasis is on the level of depravity. And the second reason we know that idea is wrong is verse 25. What does Jesus thank God for? At that time, Jesus declared, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children. The reason people don't come to faith is not because they lack enough knowledge or evidence. It's because God hasn't revealed it to them. So who were Tyre and Sidon? Well, these were Gentile cities When you look at Tyre, we know that this was essentially like the economic force of the area. This was an insanely wealthy area. They were successful. We can look at passages like 1 Kings or 1 Chronicles, and we see that this city, they helped rebuild the Israelites' temple, they helped furnish Solomon's temple, and they rebuilt the temple in Ezra's time. And as for Sidon, we often see judgment occur between Tyre and Sidon together, because of how closely related they were. Sidon, they were wealthy as well. This was the most ancient Canaanite city. And you look at passages like Isaiah 23 and Ezekiel 26, and you see these cities being judged, which these cities, they would have known about this, the ones that are being judged. In Ezekiel 26, it describes the judgment on Tyre as this once wealthy and successful city is now gonna be just brought down to a bare rock, where people are gonna be lamenting over it, saying like, you were once a great city and now you're this. And then for Sidon, it's gonna be described as a city that by the time God is through with them, their streets are gonna be painted with blood. And we see this play on history. Nebuchadnezzar invaded Tyre. And 585, and then the second that Tyre gets back on the feet, recovering from it, here comes Alexander the Great. And then the Persians invaded Sidon. When we look at this verse in 21, we see just how calloused these cities were in their rejection of the gospel. That even Tyre and Sidon, these places that were so judged in the Old Testament, even they would have repented. The word used here for repentance is metanoeo. Meta as in metamorphosis, which just means to change, and then noeo, which means thinking or knowledge. Repentance is not changing your behavior, it's changing your thinking. See, that's the issue with this nation, is that we got to a point where all of your repentance is asking Jesus in your heart and asking him to get rid of all the consequences, and that's repentance. Which by the way, you're never gonna see anywhere in scripture asking Jesus in your heart is what saves you. When you repent, you change the way you view God, you change the way you view sin, you change the way you view yourself. Because right now, any unbeliever, the way they view themselves is a self-sufficient, okay person that doesn't need a savior. And if they do need a savior, they don't need one that bad. They view God as a God who they just use as a means to stamp the name Jesus onto whatever false God they have placed upon themselves. They have this false idol that never disagrees with them, that always agrees with them, and that never judges. When someone truly repents, they realize just how utterly guilty they are. They realize how desperately they need God. They realize just how vile their sin actually is. And that's what genuine repentance is. You know, we look at Exodus 10, and it says, So we see that he confessed that he sinned against God and Moses. And he's also asking for forgiveness, yet he's not repenting. And that's blamely obvious by the fact that he goes right after Moses, right after he does this. 2 Corinthians 7 talks about a worldly and a godly sorrow, a false repentance and a true repentance. When someone falsely repents, they're gonna grieve over the consequences of the sin. They're gonna weep. The person who was caught in adultery, they're gonna weep at that. But the second you ask them to give up that key to their lover's apartment or whatever, you're gonna find out very quick they're not repentant. A godly sorrow, as Paul describes it, it produces an eagerness, an ignorance, fear, a longing, a zeal. You are willing to do whatever it takes to be free from this sin. You're not only willing to accept the consequences, because you realize it's chastisement, but you're willing to do whatever it takes to get this cancer away from you. And we look at verses 23 and 24, and we see that now Jesus shifts from Bethsaida and Chorazin to his own home base in Capernaum. In verse 23, and you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You will be brought down to Hades, for the mighty works done in you have been done in Sodom, even they will remain to this day. But I tell you, it will be more tolerable on the day of judgment than for the land of Sodom than for you. Capernaum, this is where Jesus always went back to after he got done with his ministry in these other cities. See, whenever Jesus did ministry, these cities were close enough where he could just walk to them and then do his ministry, preach, preach in the synagogues, do all these things, and he'll come back to this place. And meaning, this is the place he resided. This is probably the place where out of all three cities, most of these works were done. You know, we see passages where he heals the man with the withered hand, the two blind people, the hemorrhaging woman, and the paralytic. All that took place in Capernaum. And one very interesting thing is this is also where Jesus healed the centurion's servant. Which, it's interesting because there are not that many accounts where Jesus basically overemphasizes the greatness of someone's faith. One of the very few times he does that is in this city. When he tells the centurion, I have never seen faith in all of Israel like this before. Which one thing that tells us is as he's judging the city, not every individual in the city is gonna undergo judgment. The remnant in the city is gonna be preserved. And when we look at verse 23, Many of us should recognize this, because this is a quote from Isaiah 14. You know, this is what God tells the Babylonian king as he's judging him. So as he's looking at Capernaum, he's comparing them with this wicked Gentile Babylonian king. Imagine being a Jew and being told all this. Proverbs 8, 13 says that the fear of the Lord is hatred of evil, pride and arrogance, and the way of evil, and perverted speech I hate. Proverbs 16, five, everyone who is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord. Assuredly, he will not go unpunished. Proverbs 16, 18, 19 says, pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. It is better to be of a lowly spirit with the poor than to divide the spoil with the proud. We look at this and Jesus is comparing Capernaum with the pride of the Babylonian king. And so often when we think of pride, we think of the cartoon character that just can't stop talking to himself. When pride doesn't always look like that. Sometimes pride is just this subtle sense of self-sufficiency. Sometimes pride is just this sense of I could be better, but I'm still okay, which is many people in America. And the big thing is unbelievers are blinded by this pride. Proverbs 12, 15 says, the way of the fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man is he who listens to counsel. See, whenever we look at the Proverbs and we see a description of the fool, the fool is a description of the unbeliever. And when we look at this text, we see that the fool, the unbeliever, is someone who's, they're gonna be right in their own eyes, they're never gonna be wrong. You can confront them with as much scripture as you want, and it's just gonna ricochet off of them. And Ephesians 2 talks about that. You are dead in your sins and trespasses, a slave to the prince of the power of the air, and a child of wrath. So not only are you spiritually dead where all truth is just ricocheting off of you, but you're a slave to Satan. Which, being a slave to Satan doesn't look like you bowing before a false idol or before Satan. That would imply that Satan's telling you to be selfless for a second. Because he'll be telling you to get your eyes off yourself and on me. See, it's more subtle than that. Being a slave to Satan is being commanded over and over again to love yourself. Being a slave, obeying Satan, is obeying the command to worship yourself. And that's exactly how it plays out when you live, as Ephesians 2 talks about, according to your flesh. And one thing I want to say is Christians can fall in this trap of pride too. The thing that tears a church apart the quickest is pride. You know, oftentimes you see churches that they try to avoid talking about certain doctrines like eschatology or revelation, and you know, all these things, because it quote unquote divides the church. But doctrine doesn't divide the church. If anything, it strengthens the church. Pride is what divides the church. Jonathan Edwards, he has this fantastic article where he talks about seven symptoms of pride for the believer. And one thing I would encourage everyone to do is write this down and just once a month go through it. Just evaluate yourself. See if you're falling in these traps. The first sign that Jonathan Edwards gives to pride is fault finding. You know, if you have an overly critical spirit where you find that you just are criticizing one second after the other, that's a sign of pride. A harsh spirit. The third sign is superficiality. Maybe you come in and you find that all your relationships you have with your brothers and sisters are just shallow. That's often gonna be because you're only thinking about yourself and you're never bearing someone else's burdens. The fourth sign is defensiveness. Do you get offended when someone pushes into your theology? When someone tries to correct you? Number five is presumption before God. Number six is desperation for attention. And number seven is neglecting others. And so we look at Capernaum and we see just how prideful it is. And Jesus doesn't look at this city and compare it with Tyre and Scythe. He ups the ante. He now is comparing it with Sodom. When we think of cities in the Old Testament, this is one of the most wicked ones we think of. I want everyone to turn with me to Genesis chapter 19 real quick. And I want to say one thing to the parents. You know, obviously we need to be, We need to be careful about what our kids are exposed to. And there's a temptation that when we come across stories like this, especially in the Old Testament, that we try to postpone teaching our kids this. But we wait until they're older. But we need to remember that God didn't give a separate Bible for kids under 10. Meaning that even stories like this that we read in scripture, we need to be teaching the kids this. We're gonna be looking at verses one through 11, chapter 19. The two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed himself with his face to the earth and said, my loads, please turn aside to your servant's house and spend the night and wash your feet. Then you may rise up early and go your way. They said, no, you will spend the night in the town square. But he pressed them strongly, so they turned aside to him and entered his house. And he made them a feast and baked unleavened bread, and they ate. But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man surrounded the house. And they called to Lot, where are the men who come to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we may know them. Lot went out to the men of the entrance and shut the door after him, and he said, I beg you, my brothers, don't act so wickedly. Behold, I have two daughters who have not known any man. Let me bring them out to you, and you do to them as you please. Only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof. But they said, stand back. And they said, this fellow came to sojourn, and he has become the judge. Now we will deal worse with you than with them. Then they pressed hard against the man lot and drew near to break the dough down. But the men reached out their hands and brought the lot into the house with them and shut the dough. And they struck with blindness the men who were at the entrance of the house, both small and great, so that they wore themselves out, groping for the dough. You look at this text, and for one, this isn't just a city who just has the street youth who are wicked. This is every generation. the young, the middle-aged, the old people, everyone. And in fact, Lot was concerned for these two people from the very get-go when he was waiting at the gate. There was a reason he didn't want these people out at night. There was a reason he wanted them in his house and they're just not running around. And the big thing, you look at verse 11, after these men are struck with blindness, A normal sane person, if they are suddenly losing their vision, is gonna be worried. They're gonna be trying to get help, they're gonna be trying to get to safety, and what do these men do? They wear themselves out still groping for the dough. This is a people who were dedicated to fulfilling the wicked lusts of the flesh. And the very interesting thing is that you look at Capernaum, And you don't see any accounts of them trying to stone Jesus. You don't see any accounts of them necessarily being hostile. In fact, you see some pastors where it says they were astounded by the teaching of the synagogue that he did. And yet he's looking at them and saying, you're more wicked than this city. The passivity of Capernaum is more wickedness than what we just read here. Meaning that if you're here today and you're not seriously examining yourself, if you're not repentant, if you're not believing the gospel, you're just being passive, you're worse than Sodom. And the second danger we see to rejecting the gospel is that it leads to greater degrees of judgment. When we think about hell, we realize that it's this infinite, eternal torment of suffering of evil. And it's hard to fathom just how you take that and you add degrees of it in it. The fact that that's an infinite suffering and punishment can even get worse. And here's the reality is, in our limited, infinite, finite minds, We're never gonna fully understand things relating to God's goodness. We're never gonna realize things relating to just how wicked sin is. And we're never gonna realize just how painful and serious hell is. And I'm convinced that even in heaven, when we have perfect minds and bodies, we're still not gonna be able to understand it. But that doesn't change the fact here that Jesus is saying, these cities are gonna suffer more than even Sodom and Gomorrah. Hell is a severe thing. This is something that lasts forever. 1 Thessalonians 1-9 says, And Jesus describes this a couple chapters later as a place where there's a blazing furnace, where there's going to be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Isaiah 66, 24 says, and they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me, for their womb shall die, sorry, shall not die. Their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh. Hell is a place where you are gonna be conscience for all eternity suffering. See, on the last day, when all believers are resurrected and given new bodies, we're not the only ones that are gonna be given new bodies. Unbelievers are gonna be given new bodies too. The difference is, ours is gonna be bodies that are perfectly fit to relishing the goodness of God for all eternity. The unbeliever's body is gonna be one that is specifically designed to undergo the worst amount of suffering for all eternity. Thomas Watson says this about hell. Many in the old world knew there was an ark, but were drowned because they did not get into it. Knowledge which is not applied will only light a man to hell. It would be better to live a savage than to die an infidel under the gospel. Christ not believed in is terrible. Moses' rod, when it was in his hand, did a great deal of good. It brought miracles, but when it was out of his hand, it became a serpent. So Christ, when laid hold on by the hand of faith, is full of comfort, but not laid hold on, will prove a serpent to bite. So knowing the gospel is a double-edged sword. It can either save you, or if you reject it, you're gonna suffer even more because of it. I remember about five years ago, I was put in the hospital for about a week, because I had a case of what the doctors called super pneumonia on my bottom lung. And it was the most agonizing and painful week of my life. And when I was in the hospital, because of all the fluid there, I remember about every 20 minutes, I'll get this episode of pain that would last several minutes, where it just felt like someone was stabbing my lung with a rusty knife and twisting it over and over again. And even in the midst of that pain, there was a sense of comfort and hope. Because I realized if I could just get through a few minutes of this, I'm gonna have a chance to catch my breath. I wanna be clear, if you are not in Christ and you're here today, that is not what hell is gonna be like. God is never for a second gonna be pressing down on you, tormenting you and punishing you and feel sorry for you. God is never, ever going to take a step back to let you catch your breath. All that goodness that you have in this life is going to be stripped away. When you are in hell, that wickedness is on full display. And God is going to be glorified by punishing it for all eternity. And there's a heresy going around what you see growing. and it's actually infiltrating more and more churches called annihilationism. And I wanna say, I wanna be sympathetic towards this, because we think about hell, we think about what I just said, and there's a part of us that we wish there was an alternative. You know, annihilation teaches that hell is a place where you go and you suffer for a little bit, but then your soul is destroyed and you cease to exist, right? which a part of me kind of wishes that was true. And I want to caution everyone in this room about laying that game to your theology, because the second you start saying that an eternal punishment is not required for sin, that is a step closer to saying that an eternal sacrifice was not required either. Turn with me to Luke chapter 12. Verses 45 through 48. But if that servant says to himself, my master's delayed in coming, and begins to beat the male and female servants and to eat and drink and get drunk. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him, and at an hour he does not know. And he will cut him into pieces and put him with the unfaithful. And that servant who knew his master's will but did not get ready or act according to his will will receive a severe beating. But the servant who did not know and did what deserved a being will receive a light beating. Everyone to whom much was given of him, much will be required. And from him to whom they entrusted much, they will receive much, or they will demand much. We look at that and we see that there is an accountability we have to give. See, Believer and unbeliever, we can look at all creation, like Romans 1 talks about, and it screams God's existence. It screams his beauty, his goodness, all these things, just by looking at it. You don't even need special revelation to know there's a God. You can just look at creation. And not just that, but everyone has a guilty conscience. Everyone knows they're guilty deep down. They suppress that, which is the whole reason they try to distract themselves constantly, so they don't have to think about it. And I just wanna say that when someone has been given special revelation, not only do they know there's a God, but they know it's the Trinitarian God. Not only do they know there's a God, but that there's a God who offers a chance of redemption, a gospel. They're gonna have to steward that. They're gonna have to give account of what they respond with. And if their response is anything other than accepting that, they're gonna be held accountable. When I was in college, those five years, that's when I was an atheist. And I remember, because I was at this church enough to know the gospel growing up. And the whole time I was an atheist, every single morning, I had this consuming fear that today was going to be the day that I was exposed. Because the only comfort I could have as an atheist was that lie, that maybe if I keep myself from seeing enough truth, I could tell God I didn't have enough evidence. Maybe I could just tell God, there's so many religions out there. How was I supposed to know Christianity was the religion? I didn't know that this was a sin. How was I supposed to know that? These other religions don't say that. And deep down, I knew what the truth was. And because scripture is the anus, whenever someone says this, there's a fire alarm going on in our head saying this is true. If just one person had come into me in those entire five years and just told me what deep down I was suppressing all along, that you are going to hell unless you repent, I would have been crushed. And I say that as an encouragement to everyone here is that you don't need to be eloquent in your speech. You don't need to rely on philosophy or evidence or manuscripts for people to recognize truth. And for the believers here, we don't give an account for our sins, but we do have to give an account for our stewardship. See, the believer, they can do nothing but sin, but we can fight sin. We can help other people fight sin. And on that last day, even though Christians don't go to hell, we're gonna have to face God and tell him how well we stewarded the amount of knowledge he gave us, the amount of revelation. I just want you guys to think about how rare is it to find a church like this? This church is honestly a miracle. Every sermon we hear, every Sunday school class we sit on, we're gonna have to give an account. And I don't wanna close on just judgment. There are some people here who are Christians, and you're hearing this, and you're saying, I'm worse than Capernaum. You're saying that I'm worse than Bethsaida. I've been a Christian for 40 years and I'm still struggling with the same lust, the same wicked desires, the same wicked thoughts. I've made no progress in killing these things. I wanna turn you to Matthew 11, 28. Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I'll give you rest. If you're a believer here today who is a bruised reed, you're discouraged, you feel that weight of sin on you, it feels like every morning is just a losing battle against the sin, Jesus says you have a place to go. You have a place where you can not only find rest, but you find a place where you have a good teacher A person whose yoke is easy, whose burden is light? The second you start trying to bear this burden yourself and just rely on Christ, that's when things start getting better. And I want to close on this note. I want to be abundantly clear with what the gospel is for every person sitting in this room. for the Christian who needs reminding of what it is, and for the unbeliever who desperately needs to believe it. Everyone in this room is a sinner and is guilty. We are guilty before a holy God who commands perfection, and we utterly fail at it. God took on flesh, Jesus incarnate lived the perfect life that we were all supposed to live, that we did not live, He died the death that we deserved. He drank every single last drop of God's wrath so that we wouldn't have to. And then he rose again. And on that last day, when he comes back, everyone who is trusted in his works and is no longer trusting their works, they're gonna be saved. And that's the gospel that everyone here needs to latch onto, believer and unbeliever. There's no alternative. So on that note, let's go to God in prayer. Father, we thank you that despite how wicked we are, despite how much we've fallen short of your glory, that you're God who gives us a gospel. You don't just leave us here suffering, awaiting for the judgment. but you did everything that we should've. And you did everything that we were unable to do. Father, I desperately pray that every person here who's an unbeliever, that you convict them and you open the eyes so that they can see their need for you. And Father, I pray that for all of us believers here, that you help us remember not just your love, but just remember the wrath that we're trying to save our coworkers, our family, our friends from. And we come to you acknowledging that we are unable to save anyone, that's only you. We thank you for all you do, Father. In your son's name we pray, amen.