All right, it says we are both streaming and recording, so we will continue with our Bible study on Heaven and Hell. This is the third installment of this class, and we are in lesson two. So I emailed out the lesson two document again to you, because we didn't finish that. We still got a good bit to go on that. I also gave you the lesson three document, and hopefully we'll at least get started on that this evening. then of course also you have this little chart that I sent out you may refer to this at at times as well, and I've got Two live people here as well. So that's always a little helpful with the studies because I can get some Help looking up the Bible verses and in direct feedback here. So the the Connors are here with us tonight and If you remember, last time we started the session that was looking at basically how does one get to heaven or to hell? And so we looked up some scripture relating to this as we dug into this question. So just to review that real quickly, basically we talked a little bit about election, which is kind of, if you will, the macro issue of this. Of course, God in control of everything and gave some background on that. So we learned God is sovereign, everyone's going to physically die except if they're here if Jesus returns. And that the key thing we want to remember when we're looking at all this is that when someone is saved, when someone goes to heaven, it is 100% God's doing. Okay. And then on the flip side of that, though, when someone ends up in hell, it is 100% their fault, not God's fault. Okay. So we established that at the beginning. And then we looked up a number of scripture versus Bible passages here last week, where we basically determined that the Bible is very clear that God is holy, God is perfect, and therefore sin cannot be in his presence. Sin cannot be in his presence. Then we also looked at the scripture and it says that all people are sinners. None of us can keep his law perfectly. None of us can reach God's standard. So in effect, everyone deserves to go to hell. However, God is rich in his mercy. And we looked up scripture with that as well. And we see that despite us not deserving forgiveness, not deserving righteousness, not deserving heaven, God has made the way through Jesus Christ for our sins to be forgiven. And this is grace, undeserved merit that he shows to us. So we also talked a little bit about good works, and we made the distinction, as we have before, that remember, Christians are to do good works. And it talks about good works in relation to judgment. However, those works are not what saves us. What saves us is God, and then we do good works in response to that love. So simply put, we said there's nothing we can do under our own power to enter heaven. It's only through Jesus that we enter heaven. That is how we enter heaven, through Jesus, His work in what He has done in paying for our sins. So, before we get to the hell side of things, there is one other thing we want to look at here, and this is on your study guide. It says on soul sleep. Soul sleep. And I don't know if any of you have heard of soul sleep before. But you will now hear of it, and we're going to talk about what the Bible says about it. So when I say soul sleep, this is a teaching that some churches teach that when we die, basically, what they say is our souls are in a state of, I guess the best way to put it would be suspended animation. They're just asleep, so they're not conscious at all. So they're not dead because the soul lives forever, but it's like you go to sleep and then when you're asleep, you're not really aware of anything that's going on. So they will say that our souls just sleep until the judgment day. So that's what the idea of soul sleep is about. So we really don't experience heaven after we die, they would say. We basically, our souls sleep until judgment day. All right, so where do they get this idea? All right, well, let's look at a few Bible verses here, and maybe the Connors want to help me out here. Maybe if, let's see, Mary, could you look up Acts 13, 36? And David, if you would look up 1 Thessalonians 4, 13 and 14, and I'll look up the first one there from John chapter 11. read that you too can be finding those while I while I get the John passage and read that for us I gave see Mary acts 1336 and then David if you would do first Thessalonians 4 13 and 14 13 and 14 so So let's take a look at that. I'm gonna read John, this is John 11, verses 11 through 14. These things said he, that after he saith unto them, our friend Lazarus sleepeth, but I go that I may awaken him out of sleep. Then said his disciples, Lord, if he sleep, he shall do well. Howbeit Jesus spoke of his death, but they thought that he had spoken of taking a rest and sleep. Then Jesus said unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead. All right, did we get Acts 13, 36? Mary, read that. Now when David had served God's purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep. He was buried with his ancestors, and his body decayed. All right. David, you have 1 Thessalonians 4, 13 and 14. But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that you sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. for if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them, which is also asleep in Jesus, will God bring with him. All right, and then it also, we won't look it up, but in Matthew 9, there's one of these accounts where Jesus raises the daughter of Jairus from the dead, and he even says in that that she's sleepy. And there's other passages as well. Again, we're just getting kind of a sampling of some of these things. When you read verses like that, you can see maybe where they get this idea from because the Bible does repeatedly refer to death as sleep or as rest. But does that mean that the soul sleep idea is true? Well, let's look at a few other things and harmonize this, okay? So if we go to Luke chapter 24, I'm gonna read a verse. This is the thief on the cross. I think we looked at this a little bit in Sunday school on Sunday when we were talking about baptism, but we're also gonna talk about it in relation to what happens at the moment of death. This is Luke 24, 43, Jesus speaking to the to the thief on the cross and he says in uh 24 actually i think i gave i might have typed the wrong reference here i think it's chapter 23 let me let me jump back here it's not 24 i think it might be 23 23 43 yes that's it i was off by one chapter on the study guide if you want to make note of that And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, Today thou shalt be with me in paradise. Next thing, Acts chapter 7, verses 55 and 56. And this is the first recorded martyr for the church. St. Stephen was stoned to death by the authorities. He was stoned to death. and as he's being stoned, he basically preaches a powerful sermon, and he concludes it with this. Okay, all right, I got a follow-up here, so we're gonna get to that. The thief on the cross said, okay, all right, well, I'm gonna get to that in just a second, all right? So let's look at the rest of these verses here, chapter seven. verses 55 and 56 specifically. But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up steadfastly into heaven and saw the glory of Jesus, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God. And he said, Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God. Okay, so as Stephen is dying, this is what he sees, okay? He sees heaven, he sees God. And then, we're not going to look it up because it's a longer passage, but if you read in the Gospel of St. Luke, chapter 16, you have the rich man and Lazarus. And the reason we're not going to read the whole thing now is because we're going to look at this when we talk about what hell's like in one of the future lessons. But in this, you see that Lazarus and the rich man, in their respective eternal locations, they are conscious. They know what's going on to them. They're not just asleep and oblivious to anything. Then finally, 2 Corinthians 5.18, 5.8, excuse me. We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord, is what Paul says. So if we're absent from the body, then we're present with the Lord. All right, so back to this question that started out number seven, does this mean that there is credibility to the soul sleep idea? And I got a comment texted in here that I'm gonna read to you. I think this came from one of the herbs, but I'm not 100% sure. But the thief on the cross was told, just as we just heard, that today you will be with me in paradise, heaven. How can there be soul sleep? Good comment. Okay, so let's harmonize this. Well, first of all, to answer number seven, So the passages that I read for number seven, these would seem to speak against soul sleep, wouldn't they? Because Jesus said to the thief on the cross, not you're going to take a nap for a while, then you'll be with me. No, he said today you're going to be in paradise. St. Stephen obviously saw a physical location that he was going to, right? And then in Luke 16, we see heaven and hell there, and the two people there are very conscious of what's going on. And then finally, Paul says, if you're absent from the body, you're with the Lord. So those passages would not support soul sleep. And again, we could look up other ones. So number eight, and I think this goes to the comment that I got in here, What do we do with this then? How do we explain this? Well, first of all, soul sleep is not correct. So we may be figuring that out. That is not the biblical doctrine. Now, is it a heretical doctrine? No, it's not a heretical doctrine, but it is a heterodox doctrine. So I would not say someone who believes in the soul sleep is outside of Christianity with no hope of being saved, but it is certainly an erroneous doctrine. The reason it's erroneous is because you're taking certain passages and you're taking them out of their context and not understanding fully what they mean because, again, we also see these other passages where when we die that we are with the Lord and there is a conscious thing and there are things that we can see. So what do we do with that? Well, first of all, why would sleep or death be referred to as sleep or rest? Is sleep or rest a good or bad thing? David says, I think it's good, right? So she's working these late nights. It's like, oh yes, I finally get to go to sleep. And a lot of people like taking naps in the afternoon and things like that. So sleep is a good thing. So first of all, if we're talking about death as far as sleep in the Lord, rest, that is a good thing. So it's a way to say that this is not something to be feared, but it's something that's ultimately good. as far as being with the Lord. Also, we understand what we learned last week. Remember the little chart here. If you have it, you may want to refer to it. What happens at death? In fact, we define death in this way in the first part of the study. What is death? Death is the temporary separation of body and soul. So to explain this, it's actually pretty easy. Because the sleep and the rest part, in a literal sense, when you think of sleep, you're not doing anything, you're not conscious of what's going on. What's that? That's the death of the body. right? Because your body is going to be placed into the ground and it's going to sit there and it's not going to do anything until Jesus returns. Okay, again, this is problematic because some people think we get the bodies right away and everything. But again, that's not the right way to understand it. And when you understand it this way, this makes complete sense. But what about the soul? Well, the soul doesn't die. The soul goes to heaven to be with the Lord. That's it. So it's really kind of easy to harmonize all of these different passages by simply understanding what happens at death. There is this temporary separation of the body and soul so your body does sleep. It does rest waiting for the final judgment, but your soul is with the Lord. Now this is good news because that means we don't have to wait who knows how long to get into heaven. And again, on your chart here, you can see that there for the redeemed at the point of physical death. Then the soul continues here in heaven. The body is resting in the earth. Okay, you see that there on your chart. So and so when we talk about heaven, what's heaven going to be like? We'll get into that a little more as we go through the class. But There's heaven now, the heaven right now, so people that have died in the Lord, they are in heaven right now. Okay, their souls are. But then there's the heaven to come, the new heavens and new Jerusalem. So when we look at that, you have to kind of make sure we're understanding there's things that are true about heaven right now, but then there are things that are still to come. Actually, it's the heaven now that we don't have as much detail about. We have a lot more detail about the new creation based on the last couple chapters of Revelation. But there is certainly a heaven now that the souls are with Jesus, and it's not just some kind of state where nobody knows what's going on. Okay, so hopefully that helps answer that question, and you might run into somebody sometime who believes in this soul sleep idea. But that's the biblical explanation of, again, it's not heretical, but it's certainly not what the Bible is teaching, okay, as far as what happens when we die. Again, there's a separation, body rests, soul lives in heaven. And think about this, especially in the old days, what did people put on tombstones? I guess they still do, but it's probably not as popular. What does it say? RIP, which stands for what? Rest in Peace. Mary's exactly right. For the Christian, our bodies are resting in peaceful sleep. It's exactly what it says on the tombstone. What is under that tombstone is resting in peace. Now, the soul of the person is not under there. It's with the Lord, assuming they were in the faith. Okay? Alright? So hopefully that makes sense. Alright? If there's any questions, let me know. And whoever texted in the comment, if I didn't make it, answer your question, let me know. But you were definitely on the right track, because you were figuring this out, that the soul sleep is not the correct explanation. Right, exactly. That's, again, go to our chart here. Then at the last day, these are reunited. Okay, for those in hell too, but then they go to the lake of fire So it's the you know, they're their bodies are in a sense are resting too, but their souls are in hell Okay, so so hopefully that clears that up. Alright, so speaking of hell, let's talk about that next Alright, so going to hell getting to hell Let's so we talked about how we get to heaven and by understanding that it makes it a lot easier to understand how someone would end up in hell, okay, because we know we know what we've learned already and So the thing here is that Jesus has made provision by his blood. So if he's done that, and he has, and his blood is enough to forgive the sins of the whole world, then why don't people automatically just go to heaven? Why doesn't everybody just automatically go to heaven if Jesus' death paid for the sins of the world and his blood certainly was sufficient for the sins of the world? Why doesn't everybody just get in? How does anyone end up in hell? Well, again, we have to understand what we learned last week, and that makes the answer to this question clear. Because the payment for sin has been made. However, how does that payment get applied to us? Well, it's applied by the Holy Spirit. The working of the Holy Spirit comes and creates saving faith and repentance in faith, and we become a child of God. The point is that gift of God has to be delivered to you. I don't know if you guys were in the Sunday school that day. I thought of this analogy that maybe works for our modern world. Maybe some of you listening were here. We talked about this in Sunday school a while back. It's kind of like if you order a birthday gift for somebody off Amazon, if I can say Amazon for copyright on this or a certain company that delivers things to your house, let's say, I think we're okay. So you order something from amazon.com and you pay for it. You've made the payment for this gift, but does that gift do the person it's for any good unless they receive it? No, they still don't have the gift, do they? It has to be delivered to them somehow, whether you get it delivered to your house and you bring it to them or you have it sent directly to them. So there has to be a delivery mechanism. There's a warehouse somewhere that a guy gets in a truck and brings it to you. So the point is you could have the payment made for this thing in full, but unless it gets to the person, it does them no good. And so this is where all three members of the Trinity are essential. So Jesus has made full and complete payment for the sins of the world. However, how that gets applied to us is on an individual basis. It's not just a blanket thing where everybody's just automatically forgiven. We have to receive Jesus. We have to have Jesus. Okay, so for the benefits of what Jesus has done, we have to receive it. So therefore, if one does not receive the forgiveness and thus the righteousness of God, then they cannot enter heaven. Okay, so the payment has been made, but it must be individually received, and that is of course done by the means of grace. So the bottom line on this, and this is when you get into election and all, this is the scriptural understanding and how the Lutheran Church has always understood this, and a lot of people get it backwards or confuse it, but this is the way that it works. It says there, the last sentence of that paragraph, we cannot choose to receive God's grace. Point one. Point two, we can choose to reject it. So that begins to answer this question, doesn't it? So we can't choose to receive God's grace. It's all God's doing, but we can choose self-will or free will, whatever you want to call it. Someone can reject it. The gospel can be preached to them, someone could share the word with them, and they could say, no, I'm not interested in this, and they can turn it away. Now that's very sad, but that happens, doesn't it? You know, they're listening to their radio and there's a preacher preaching the gospel and they are, let's turn it back to rock and roll or country. I don't want to hear this religious stuff. So they have chosen to reject it. Okay. So that's, that's the biblical understanding of, of, of how this is, is delivered or not or not received. All right. So let's look at a few more verses here. Maybe it gets you guys help on this too. Uh, Mary, if you look up Romans 2. I've got that. Oh, you've already got it. Can she look up Revelation 21? They just flipped the order on me, but it's going to work here. Well, I was in John, so I'm going to go back to John. Let's look at a few verses here. This is John 5, verses 28 and 29. marvel not at this for the hour is coming in which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice and shall come forth they who have done good unto the resurrection of life and they who have done evil unto the resurrection of the damnation so again we see everybody's going to be resurrected but not everybody is going to enter the kingdom of god okay uh go go with uh the next verse there romans 2 8 and 9 but unto them that are contentious and do not obey the truth but obey unrighteousness, indignation, and wrath, jubilation, and anguish upon every soul of the man that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile. Okay, so there is wrath against all those that do evil. And what was the first part of that again, Reid? I think that really hit on a key point there. Do not obey the truth. So they could have obeyed the truth by the Holy Spirit, but they choose to remain in their sin, right? Okay, Mary, you have Revelation 21.8. But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, Those who practice magical arts. The idolaters and all liars, they will be consumed to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death. Right. And we just looked at this in Revelation, if you were with us for the Revelation study, and actually something very similar to that is repeated throughout Revelation. It's very clear there is this judgment for the wicked. Okay, there is this judgment for the wicked, these people who have remained in their sins, the liars, the idolaters, the fornicators, so on, so on. There is this place of judgment. okay as a judgment for sin all right let's go on to uh fill in there's a fill in the blank there and um maybe we're not lagging too far behind so maybe if someone um wants to try to text in the answer to number 10. One or both of those blanks for number 10. Just going a little bit ahead of this and see if anybody can find the answer to that. And this again considers what we learned last week based on what we understand last week. How could we complete those two sentences there? Okay, but let's finish up number nine, and we've got to fill in the blank here. So from the three verses we just read, and again, these are just samplings. We could go on and on and on with these, Old and New Testament. But it is very clear that there is a blank punishment for the wicked. It's an eternal punishment. It's not just temporary, we may talk about that later, this idea of annihilationism, but it's an eternal punishment for the wicked. There is a place of punishment for the wicked and it's eternal. The scripture is very clear about that. So hell, although many people deny its literal existence, it clearly exists. The Bible tells us very clearly, hell is real and hell exists. I mean, there's really no equivocation there, that this is a real place and it really exists. And this is eternal punishment for the wicked. Alright, I haven't gotten any responses yet, so if I'm not lagging too far behind, maybe we just haven't found the answer. But let's go to number 10. Considering what we looked at in questions 1 and 2, this would have been last week. In summary, to enter heaven or paradise, as it's sometimes referred to in the scripture, one must be perfect as God. Now, what's the word for that? Let me go ahead and, all right, good. That could work there. But what does that, when we say God is perfect, the word for that, it starts with an R. Righteous, yeah. We must be as righteous. God right is the root word there, right? Okay, you're gonna be right with God. So So to enter heaven or paradise we must be as righteous as God and then following up on that No one is righteous because all have Very good So all have sinned. This is why we need Jesus, right? This is why we need God to do it because I mean as holy as God, that's a high standard, isn't it? That's perfection. Nobody can do that. Mother Teresa couldn't do that. Think of the nicest person. Mr. Rogers, he still sinned, okay? All right? And he probably wouldn't be the first to tell you that. He was actually ordained a Presbyterian minister. So he's probably a Calvinist, I imagine. So he definitely believed in total depravity if he was a Presbyterian preacher. So the point is, everyone sinned. We gotta be as righteous as God. So if we don't obtain that righteousness of God, then we remain in our sin. Okay, so number 11. All right, we also learned that the answer to this is that God sent Jesus in our place, what I just said. He earned righteousness for us. He paid the debt for us in our place. So what this means is the righteousness of Jesus, think how righteous Jesus and how, I mean, he was perfect, right? Here's the good news. His righteousness becomes ours. He gives it. It's even kind of hard to say that sometimes I'm as righteous as Jesus, but it's true. Not because of what I've done, not because of what you guys have done or you at home because he has given it to you. Okay. If it's, if it's by righteousness that I've earned, but I'm way down here, Jesus is up here, but he imputes us. That's the theological term. We have been imputed with this righteousness, an alien righteousness. He has given it to us. So because we have Jesus, then we can be as holy as God and we can be in his presence because of what Jesus has done, okay? Again, I think I've talked about this before. We talk about the forgiveness of sins and entering heaven. Part of it is our sins are forgiven, but the other part of that is we actually get the righteousness of God because you can't just be on a balance. You actually have to be righteous. Even if you could get rid of your sins somehow, you'd still just be neutral. You need righteousness, okay? And that can only come from God. All right, so let's look at a few more verses here. As we go through again, these are just a sampling, but they give us a... I'll just stay in John. How about that? Since I've been reading the passages from John. Do one of you two want to have... Well, actually, there's only one other than Mark 16. You got Mark 16, 16? All right, let me go to John and read... a couple verses here. I think they're both from chapter 3. John 3.18, which is just a couple verses after John 3.16, right, which we're all familiar with, 3.18 says this. I have to flip the page here. He that believeth on him is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. Okay, 36. He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life, and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but what? The wrath of God abides on him. Okay, so with Jesus, you have fellowship with God. Without Jesus, the wrath of God abides on you, okay, is what Jesus is saying here, okay? Mary, Mark 16, 16. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved. but whoever does not believe will be condemned. Yes, okay, that's pretty clear, right? Whoever believes and is baptized, and then we might've looked at this again a little bit in the baptism class on Sunday. Whoever believes and is baptized shall be saved, but he who has unbelief, they will be condemned or they will be damned, depending on your translation there. Okay, so from this, we see that those under the condemnation or the wrath of God are in this condition because of what? They're in this condition because of, rejection would work there too, but unbelief. Yeah, they have rejected the message by not believing it. They remain in unbelief, okay? Specifically rejecting belief or faith in Jesus Christ because he is the one that saves. Okay, it's not just, oh, you can just believe in anything. It's Jesus. And remember, belief just kind of is overused in our culture sometimes. So what we're really talking about here with this belief in Jesus is a trust, you know, a complete trust. You trust God. But unbelief is what these scriptures teach of. Okay, so let's bring it home here with this section. To summarize how someone ends up in hell. Two things. A. They remain in their state of sin. Remember, we're all brought into this life as sinners with original sin. We learned that last week. But the key is you don't want to remain there, okay? But for those that end up in hell, they remain in that state of sin. They have rebelled against God, they've continued to sin, to continue an unrepentant sin, because that's the key, right? We ask forgiveness for our sins, and God forgives us. But if you don't ask forgiveness, you just continue on, just, I'm doing what I want to do and I don't care what God thinks, then you're unrepentant. They've rebelled against him and his law. So what abides on them according to Jesus? The wrath of God. The law hangs over their head and the wrath of God is going to be poured out on them. So that's the first part of how someone ends up in hell because they have sinned. They have sinned and they have unforgiven sin. Now, the second part of that is they do not have something. They have sin, but they don't have something else. They don't have faith. They don't have belief or trust in Jesus. So there's something that they have that we don't want, which is unrepentant sin, and there's something that they don't have that we do want, and that's Jesus. It's because they have rejected the only remedy for that sin. They have rejected it. And again, this is a sad thing. What does the scripture say? We'll see it. God is grieved by this. He's grieved by this. But again, we have the ability to reject the gospel. And unfortunately, most people in the world do. All right, so I did put a little note there as we kind of transition to the next topic. I found it more helpful when you're talking to someone who's confused about this or someone who's a non-Christian. I generally focus on A, when they say, well, why do people go to hell? Because as a non-Christian, they don't really understand at that point what Jesus means and what Jesus has done. Now we want to share that with them. But they will understand more about this idea if there's bad things, there has to be justice for them. So I generally would try to stick to A in explaining that because here's the problem when a Christian just says, if someone doesn't believe in Jesus, they go to hell. Well, that's true. However, put yourself in the shoes of an unbeliever. What do they think about Jesus? Well, he's not their Lord and Savior, so to them, Choosing Jesus is kind of like, well, it's like choosing your favorite flavor of ice cream. You know, to them it's as unreasonable as if God said you must like chocolate ice cream more than vanilla, or which football team you like. They're just thinking of Jesus as, you know, just one choice that people make. So I think it becomes clear to them when we begin with this idea of sin. Again, law before gospel, and we explain that, you know, there's God's wrath is being poured out on sin. The reason you can't enter heaven is because you have sin, and God is holy, and you can't be with him. Okay, but those are the two parts to that. All right, if there's any other questions or comments with that, let me know. And I think I've opened something on my phone that I didn't need open, so let me close. I think I opened the camera somehow. Let me close this up. Okay, just text in any other questions or comments, but let's go to the next section. The next section is in defense of hell, okay? In defense of hell. So now we've learned about why people go to hell, but just as our booklet says, if you've been reading in your booklet, I've been saying at the beginning of those study guides, read certain pages, and our booklet says hell is a hard doctrine. That's true, isn't it? It's a hard doctrine. It's not something we get excited about or we shouldn't get excited about it. You know, maybe in anger sometimes we think that, but really that's God's provision, you know, and that's why, you know, when, as far as like, when we say certain things, like if we say where it's blasphemous, if we say to damn something or someone, because that's only God's part, we can't do that. So when you say that, you're basically putting yourself in the shoes of God. That's why that's not a good thing to do. Because then you're trying to put yourself in God's position. So, hell is a hard doctrine. Now, heaven, why didn't we have a defense of heaven? Well, heaven doesn't need too much defense, does it? Now, the biblical view of heaven we're going to talk about is very different than how many people in the world view it. But the point is, people like heaven, right? Heaven's a good place. And in fact, the surveys show many, many more people believe in heaven than they do in hell. And again, their vision of it may not be what the Bible teaches, but they think, hey, heaven's good, and I deserve to go there. You know, hell, if there's a hell, that's only for really bad people like Hitler, Osama Bin Laden, or, you know, serial killers, people like that. So of course, that's an incorrect view. But I'm just saying, heaven, you usually don't have to argue someone into heaven. I mean, if you give them a choice, heaven or hell, 99% of people are gonna say heaven. Once in a while, you might get somebody to say hell, but, you know, Satanist or something, but most people are gonna say, if I got my choice, I wanna go to heaven, okay? So, but we do need to talk about hell a little bit, because it's a different story. Because even amongst those who confess to be Christians, it's a hard dodger. Okay, it's a hard doctrine, and there have been lots of ways that people have tried to soften or remove the doctrine of hell over history. And a few of those things are annihilationism, which is a teaching basically when someone is sent to judgment, they just kind of burn up and disappear. So it makes hell less severe because it's not eternal. They just get obliterated and that's it. Again, it's not scriptural, but that's how some people have twisted it. Job's witnesses, for example, believe that. Universalism. That's what I talked about earlier. This is the idea that everybody gets to heaven. All dogs go to heaven. All people go to heaven. Universalism is everybody gets in somehow. Spiritualizing hell. What I mean by that is some theologians have said, well, these are just really kind of metaphors. They're just talking about good and bad. They're not really like literal things that we have to understand. There's these literal destinations. Or sometimes people will talk about hell in the terms of they won't use words like judgment and torment and fire. They'll say, well, it's just an eternal separation from God. Well, is it? Yes, that is true. And as Christians, we understand, as a Christian, that's the worst possible thing, right? Think of you as a Christian. If you were gonna be completely cut off from God and any good of his goodness, man, that to us would be the worst thing ever. But again, put yourself in the shoes of Joe Sixpack just walking around, and you say, if you don't repent of your sins, you're gonna be separated from God forever. He's like, eh? Do I get to watch, you know, baseball or the race? So again, that's true, but that can be a way that people kind of soften the seriousness of it by saying, oh, it's a Christless eternity. They're like, well, I don't have Christ now. You know, what's different, right? So we want to be careful when we talk about it that we're not softening it and trying to make it more palatable because it's a horrific thing. It's judgment for sin, and we need to make that clear. Okay, so these are all ways that people have tried to kind of, I guess, for lack of a better word, rehabilitate hell. You know, make it a little kinder and gentler, but we have to be careful about that and avoid that. So here's the problem with hell for the sinful world. Maybe you've heard this before. People have a problem with it because they think it's what? It's unfair. That's not fair. That's not reasonable. Okay, that's what they're thinking. They say, well, You know, I just have done a few little bad things, so I'm gonna go to hell for it. That's not fair. That's not what God would do. All right, well, let's talk about that. All right, so why do people have such a misunderstanding of the nature of hell is for two reasons we're gonna look at this evening. Number one is they misunderstand the nature and character of God. They don't really know what the true God is like. Okay, the second thing is there has been an absence of a clear understanding of what the law of God is. Okay, and we're gonna see that this is where there's this denial or softening of the doctrine of hell. All right, number 13. Maybe you've heard this before. The evidence Bible, he has this as one of his questions. He hears it all the time, Ray Comfort does. Well, my God's a God of love. My God would never create hell. Maybe you've heard that before. You know, how do we respond to that? Well, a kind of a quick way to respond to it is you could actually agree with that statement because you say, well, yes, your God, small g God, couldn't create hell. because he doesn't exist, or she, or it, or however they've begun. So if we create a God in our mind that is not the God that we see here, then of course, that God's gonna act what? Like we want God to act. That God's gonna always agree with me. That God's gonna deal with things the way I would deal with them, right? So when people say that they've created an idol, essentially, in their mind, they've created an image of God that is not the God presented here, okay? So we want to point them to the revealed Word of God. All right. All right. There's an important note here that we need to look at. A big part of this is that people have a backwards understanding of sin and righteousness. I'm talking about a 180 backwards thing. And this is where a lot of this comes in. I like to use the term our default setting as people like if we're thinking of you know you get like a computer or something it has default settings right? Well, what's our default setting as human beings? Is it sin or righteousness? Sin, right? But do a lot of people believe that? No, a lot of people believe, especially today, that people are good. They believe the default setting of people is good. I don't know why, maybe they're not looking at the world, but they think the default setting is good. So if everyone is good and they only do some bad things, then what would your assumption obviously be? Pretty much everybody gets into heaven or pretty much everybody goes to hell. Pretty much everybody goes to heaven because if everybody's basically good and we just screw up once in a while, then yeah, hell doesn't seem reasonable, does it? However, as Christians, we know that's not true. because the scripture teaches us that we are all sinners. We are all bad sinners. Now, we are capable of doing good things from time to time, but we are at our core sinners, okay? So again, if we start with that understanding, then the doctrine of hell starts to make more sense. But you have to understand, if people are looking at it from people are good, and they just mess up occasionally, that's why they're going to see hell as unreasonable, because they aren't seeing the true nature of our sinful nature. So again, as we've already said, The truth is that all people deserve hell, but God is merciful in making the way we receive forgiveness and thus enter heaven. So again, this is probably, I think a lot of people view it as heaven's kind of like an entitlement. It's mine to lose. No, no, it's not. You know, we're sinners. It's a gift of God. It's kind of like, go back to that gift example. If you get a gift for someone, they're not expecting it. They're very grateful. They're very happy. But if they think they deserve that, it's about time that thing got here. You know, that's a different attitude, right? You know? So you say, all right, David's laughing. Maybe this has happened to you guys. But you see the point, this is the difference. People have it backwards. If they're viewing it as, I'm good, I'm entitled to God's blessings, of course they're gonna see hell as unreasonable. But if we correctly view it and say, no, I'm wretched, I'm wicked, I only deserve wrath, and thank you, God, for your mercy for this gift, that changes everything, okay? All right, so let's continue on here at number 14. God is indeed love. The Bible says that, right? In 1 John, God is love. Is God merciful? Yes. Does God desire to show grace? Yes. Does God want people to go to hell? No. Read 2 Peter 3, 9, a couple other passages, he says, I do not desire the death of the wicked. Even further, guess what? Was hell originally created for people? No, read Matthew 25, 41, as it says there, talking about the final judgment. It says that hell was created for the devil and his angels. Now, the wicked will go there, but that wasn't the intended purpose. Because remember, at the beginning, all creation was good before man fell. Okay, so hell was really created for the devil and his angels, okay? All right, that's all true. but we also don't want to forget that God is also, is he holy? Yes. Is he pure? Is he righteous? Yes, yes, yes, right? He will pour out his wrath on wickedness. We saw that. Okay, here's a fun one. People say, well, okay, I understand all that, but since God is God, can't God just do what he wants? Can't God do anything he wants? So since God can do anything, couldn't he just like overlook this? Hmm. No. Okay. You guys are on the right track here. You know, you know, couldn't this good God, he just kind of give us a pass, you know, he understood, Hey, nobody's perfect. No. Okay. So the question is here, uh, that is it? The answer is, can God do anything? The answer to that question is actually no. It's actually, no, even though God, we say, wait, wait, God's omnipotent, meaning he's all powerful. Yes, he is all powerful, absolutely. But there are actually some things that God cannot do. All right, David's getting there, because he's going against, all right, hold that thought. David said he's going against his own word, and that's going to lead into this. So there's a tract, I don't know if it's still in publication, but I've used it before, and it's called Four Things God Cannot Do. And that kind of got people's attention, because people are like, well, God can do anything. but then in the tract it explains what that means. So let's go to number 15 because I said the answer to number 14 is going to surprise many people. If you say God can't do everything, or he can't do anything at any time, and it may even surprise you listening to this, I don't know, but let me explain before you get the pitchforks out. So even though God is all-powerful, he's omnipotent, there are some things that he cannot do. This all ties back to the fact that what God is holy and perfect. Well, okay, here's what he can't do. As it says there in this thing, he cannot violate his own nature. God cannot violate his own nature. And we're going to see if he could, it would mean some pretty bad things about God. Okay. This is good news. Uh, people listening. Okay. It is good news that God, there are certain things that he does not do and that he can't violate his nature because what that means is we can trust God. When He promises us something, it will happen. You say, what about the Old Testament? There are some cases where it says God repented or literally changed His mind, but He knew He was going to do that before, and He wasn't violating any of His attributes by doing that. Sometimes that trips up some people, too. Let me get back to this. This is a very comforting truth. He doesn't change His mind. He doesn't bend the rules. Let's put this together. If we consider the doctrine of God's wrath against sin and the existence of hell, If, and I underline if there in bolded it, so it makes you understand I'm giving the big if here. If God would not follow through on hell and on judgment, what he's told us, that would mean several things about God. The first thing it would mean is that God is, and these are from the place, a liar. Yeah, I mean, it's hard to even say that, isn't it? But that's why this has to be true. Can God lie? No. His word is true, okay? So we saw the Bible clearly tells us there's a hell. The Bible clearly tells us the wicked will go there. So if that's not true, God was lying, right? And he can't lie. It says in the Bible God cannot lie. So that's the first thing. If God's going to overlook this or something, then he's not telling us the truth. And then what else do we not believe? Well, he said Jesus died for my sins. Can I believe that too? See, it goes down a dark road when you start saying God can say, you know, lie, then what do we believe? What can we believe? Second thing, it would mean God is not perfectly holy. Because what else does the Bible say? He says to Moses and he says throughout the scripture, he is holy. Sin cannot be in God's presence. Again, there's one of the things. He cannot bring sin into his presence or it will just be destroyed. So, then God wouldn't be holy. If there's no hell, God's not holy because that means he can have sin in his presence. He just lets people in the back door or whatever, I don't know. He can't do that, okay? The third thing it would mean is God is not just if there's no hell. Because remember that if sin is overlooked, there is no justice. There has to be a payment for that sin. Now thanks be to God, that payment fell on his own son. But there had to be payment, blood payment, for this sin. So if you say there's no hell, People get away with a lot of stuff, don't they? Do you realize that on average 50% of murders in this country are not solved? 50% is like the average. Or they bring someone to trial and they're not convicted. So like half the people who commit murder get away with it. Please don't go kill somebody because I said that, okay? Still not good odds, still not the right thing to do. But I'm just saying. So is there no justice then? No, vengeance is mine, says the Lord, right? So, If God overlooks sin, what this turns God into is a bad judge. God is either an inept judge who doesn't know what's going on, you can trick him, or he's a corrupt judge that lets people go even though they're guilty and their sin, and again, the missing piece of this is Jesus again. Because even though we have many crimes against God, so to speak, those have been paid for by Jesus. If the debt is paid, then you're gone. Even in our justice system, once your debt is paid, then you're free. Okay, so unless it's a life sentence or something if you have a fine is when they get their money it goes away Okay, it's paid for So this turns God into a corrupt judge or an inept judge and basically who could be bribed. And if you say, well, I'm going to, you know, my good works outweigh my bad. Well, then you're saying this would be like if God was a judge and the criminal said, okay, I know I'm guilty, but your honor, I'm going to wash your car every week for the rest of my life. And he said, okay, that sounds good. That would be, we'd want that judge removed from the bench, right? So if you want a God that has no justice, that's what you want. You want a judge like that. All right, next thing. If there's no hell, the mission of Jesus makes no sense. The mission of Jesus makes no sense. If sin, death, and judgment weren't this serious, Why would God, the Father, have his only son die for this? I mean, think of all this. I mean, even just come to earth as a human, that's humbling enough. But to go through everything he did, that would just be sadistic, unless there was a reason for it, okay? So, Jesus and what he did makes no sense. If there's nothing to save us from, then what was the point? The great Presbyterian preacher, R.C. Sproul, he died, I think, two years ago, said this, and I have it on your study guide. Nobody needs a gospel if there's no judgment, if there's no law. If God is not a God of judgment, if there's no such thing as hell, what good is the gospel? The gospel tells us we're saved from the wrath that is to come. That is the gospel. So again, if there's no wrath to come, then there's no need for gospel, is there? Okay? Do we want a God like this? This is rhetorical. Of course not. First of all, it wouldn't really be God, you know, because he has to be these things. So the point is when people say, oh, this is mean, or this is unreasonable, or my God would do this, they're not probably thinking of these things. But the only way you couldn't have a place of punishment for sin is if all those things true. You want a God that's a liar, that's holy, that's not just, that does things that don't make any sense? But of course, God is the opposite of all those things. He is holy, he is just, he is a truth teller, and he has a plan from the beginning. Okay, but all of those things, you see how this all plays into it. All right, again, some people have the image of God with a small g as kind of this kind grandfather up in the sky with a sweater on, maybe stroking his beard or something like that. So, that of course is not the God that is revealed here. So the second major stumbling block for people who dismiss the, so they don't understand God sometimes, the nature of God. The other thing people don't understand is God's law. They don't understand God's law. Here's how the thinking goes. Okay, I've done some bad things, but my good outweighs my bad. Or, why would God condemn me or others for some little sins? I mean, it's not like I'm a serial killer or Hitler. But first of all, when somebody says that, I'm like, you're setting a pretty low bar, dude. If all you gotta do is be better than a serial killer or Hitler, I mean, you know, but of course we want to set the bar where we think we can jump over it, and that's what most people do. Okay, so we have already considered the nature of sin and how serious it is. Undoubtedly, overall, this is again, we point inward, the modern church has done a very poor job in preaching the law of God. In fact, it is completely missing or so watered down, it's unrecognizable in many cases. We've talked about this before. So we must understand that the law has to be thundered in all its severity and the gospel has to be preached in all its beauty. Again, I can only speak for myself, but I know a lot of other preachers that told me the same thing. We like preaching the gospel a lot more than the law. That's the fun part. But we've got to preach the law, too. Because without the law, again, there's no need for gospel and people to understand it. Why do I need Jesus? Why do I need to be forgiven? Well, because you're a sinner. We have to preach that first. So if you consider that, that in many churches people don't really hear hear how serious the law is, or it's really kind of like candy-coated so much that it's like, oh, no, everybody sins, whatever. Is there any wonder why people don't have as serious of a view of hell as they should? Okay? So as the church, we need to make sure we're preaching consistently what the scripture says about this. Now, let's go to the other end of the perspective. You know, you've heard of fire and brimstone preaching, right? and fire and brimstone preaching where, you know, all this talk of hell and judgment and things like that. Well, if that's all you hear, is there any wonder why some people view God as a lightning bolt thrower? You know, he's just waiting up there in the clouds to zap you with the lightning bolt every time you do something bad. So both of those extremes are incorrect. So we do want to talk about sin and hell and fire and brimstone, but again, the law must be preached. Because if I just tell people, you're going to hell unless you have Jesus, that sounds completely unreasonable. But when we preach the word, the law, and we go through the commandments and say, this is what God expects, and we haven't met that standard, then we begin to understand. So again, you could go the, I guess, the cuddly teddy bear route and you never talk about hell, sin, death, or judgement, or you could go the other route and just, that's all you talk about. And then what happens if anybody believes in Jesus, it's only because they want fire insurance. I don't want to go to this hell place. Sign me up on the card." And then they're a fear-filled convert instead of a faith-filled convert. So we have to, again, as the great founder of our Missouri Synod, our principal founder and first president, C.F. W. Walder said, we have to properly divide law and gospel. If we don't do that, That's when all these errors come in. Okay. All right. I think what my goal is we're going to finish this lesson and then we'll be a lesson behind but we'll start on lesson three next week. But let's work on finishing this last little bit up here. There's a few other things I'll throw in here about in defense or we talk about apologetics of hell. Let me give you just a few more here and I'm sorry I haven't asked too many questions have I? Maybe there's a Is there one I can ask going down? Maybe if someone's a number 18, that one might be not too hard to figure out what would go in the blank for number 18 if anybody wants to text that in. But I apologize. I was like, well, I should've been asking some more questions, but I do appreciate the questions and comments that I got on a roll. Yeah. So, so maybe for better or worse, right? Okay. So number 16. Okay. Someone has this idea of the little sins. And of course we know, You know, James 2.10 says if you offend the law on one point, you're guilty of it all, but a lot of people think there's like, you know, there's these really bad sins, you know, but then there's, you know, just little, little sins, you know, God's just gonna sweep those under the rug. Here's a very helpful scenario, and I'm gonna give it to you, and then we'll fill it in, okay? This is one of the best ones I've heard, and then if I hear something that's really good, I just use it, okay? That's what I do, all right? So, while I reinvent the wheel. Okay, consider this circumstance. You tell a lie to your child. What is your child going to be able to do to you because you lied to them? About nothing, right? They might stomp off in the room, but they can't do anything, do you? Now, if you tell a lie to your spouse, what's going to happen if they find out it was a lie? Well, you might be sleeping on the couch. You might be in the doghouse. Now, if you tell a lie to your boss, what could happen? You might get fired, right? If you tell a lie to the government, under oath, what can happen to you? You could go to jail. What changed in that scenario? You're telling a lie in every scenario, but what's different about it? Who you told the lie to, who you offended, and who has the power to do something about it. Okay, we stopped that government, let's go to God. you lie and sin against God. That's serious. Okay? So that's the fill in the blank there is the same sin committed against a different person or entity. Okay? So that's maybe a good illustration to help you understand that people say, well, it's just a little sin. Yeah, but who is this sin committed against? Yeah, you might have committed against a person, but ultimately all sin is an offense to God. So, you know, take them through that skill, and you could use another sin if you want, but lying is probably the easiest way to do it. And they're like, hmm, okay, that makes more sense. Okay, 17. Consider what we know heaven truly is. It is a place where God's people dwell in the presence with his people eternally in an environment without sin. That's really the bottom line of heaven, right? We're with God, we're with his people, there's no sin there. All right, now put yourself again in the shoes of someone who rejects God. He rejects the holiness of God. He doesn't like being around these Christian people because they're buzzkills. Why in the world would that person want to be in heaven? That'd be the most miserable place in the world to them, right? Because they don't love God. They don't like his people. You know, why in the world would they want to be there? Well, because they have a false view of heaven we're going to have to get into next week about just, it's the big, you know, Mardi Gras in the sky or something, you know, but really that's what heaven's about. It's fellowship with God, his people, and there's no sin. So if you love all of those things, it makes no sense that you would be put in an environment where that's all there is. Okay. Um, all right. So that answer is kind of rhetorical, uh, as well. All right. Number 18. Nobody's texted an answer in. Maybe it's gone to sleep here. Nah, I'm just kidding. Hopefully you're still listening, but we're almost done here. Again, we're gonna finish up this lesson, and then we'll just start on the next lesson next time. Okay, so I know some of you are itching to hear about purgatory, but you have to come back next week, because we'll get to that next week. All right, number 18. Building on all of this. Of course we understand that God is sovereign over everything. We've learned about that. We also understand that he has given us humans the will to reject him, right? We've already established that this evening. So those who end up in hell have blank to blame, only themselves. They have only themselves, okay? Now, again, understanding God's sovereign, he's in control, but, you know, if we put this down on our level, our micro level as humans, they only have themselves to blame. God's made the provision, okay? The Christian philosopher and author C.S. Lewis, who many of you have heard of, he put it this way. Sin is man saying to God throughout his life, go away and leave me alone. Hell is God finally saying to man, you may have your wish. It is God leaving man to himself as man has chosen. Okay? So I thought that was a pretty insightful, he's a pretty smart guy, you know, wrote a lot of theology. Don't get all of his theological points, but he does make a lot of good ones. And he said, so that's basically when we're continuing sin, that's when we're telling God, go away, I'm doing this myself. And the doctrine of hell is really God saying, okay, there you go. And you know, you continue an underpinning sin. It's leaving man to himself as man has chosen. Okay? Last thing. And this is important as well. Number 19, God has clearly blank people about his wrath, judgment, and the reality of hell. He has clearly warned people. He has clearly warned people. We saw that in the Bible, didn't we? All these things we looked up. Jesus didn't sugarcoat it. I mean, he told people, hey, there's this day of judgment and it's not gonna be good if you've got sin. And it's not just Jesus, it's the apostles and the prophets of the Old Testament. So God has clearly warned us. So this isn't like a trap, like people die and, oh man, I didn't know this was gonna happen. No, God has warned us. clearly by his prophets, apostles, and faithful Christians all throughout history. So again, when you're looking at the reasonable, this is God is even to this day is proclaiming his message of salvation. Okay? And in fact, Jesus in his preaching made this a theme of his preaching. And he himself, of course, defeated sin, death, and hell. Okay? He defeated it. All right. 7.30, we're gonna stop. All right, and that's a good stopping point, so we finish that lesson. The good news is, for me, I've got next week's lesson ready to go already, so I don't have to make a new lesson this week. So we're a little behind, but that's okay. I think it's more important that we do justice to the topics rather than just try to race through it. So next week, to give you a little preview, we're gonna look at the false views. So we've looked at the correct views. heaven and hell, but as you know, there are tons of false ideas out there about, you know, go ask 10 people this week what happens after you die and see the responses you get. You might get several different things, even here in the Bible Belt, so-called Bible Belt. So we're going to look at that, what What that what some people think about what happens after we die as far as people who just deny it completely We'll look at people who have just kind of a total misconception of what heaven's like We'll look at what some of the other religions teach and then we're also going to spend a good bit of time talking about the doctrine of purgatory which is something taught by the Roman Catholic Church and and talk about that and the issues with what's wrong with this idea of purgatory. Because if you notice, we haven't heard anything about it yet in the Bible, have we? That gives you a little clue of the main problem with it. So join us next week, and we will close with the Lord's Prayer this evening. I will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. Go in peace. Serve the Lord. Thanks be to God.