Good morning, everyone. Let's go ahead and we'll open in a word of prayer, and then we'll get started. Most gracious and awesome heavenly Father, God, we thank you for this day. Lord, we thank you for this opportunity to gather together and worship you. Lord, we pray now as we go into this Sunday School lesson, Lord, that our hearts will be open. Lord, that you'll bring back to my remembrance that which I have prepared for these people, and that their hearts may be quickened and hear what the Spirit has to say. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, so this morning we're going to be concluding our study of Facing the Last Enemy. This really turned out to be quite an amazing study. We looked at a lot of practical stuff, like how to prepare your will and that kind of stuff, define death, what is death. But a few weeks ago, Elder Sam, he went over what happens after death. where he covered what's called the intermediate stage, and then a couple weeks ago, I did the resurrection, where we just concluded that our hope was the resurrection, that if Christ was raised from the dead, then therefore, we would be raised from the dead. Last week, Joe took us through what the Bible teaches about the final judgment, and it would be a final judgment. So this morning, in our final week, we're gonna cover a couple more questions, What does the Bible teach about heaven and hell? And why does the Bible teach about heaven and hell? So many church leaders today, they won't even allude to matters of eschatology. They're here getting caught up in all the different controversies, numerology, who's the latest candidate for the Antichrist. They wanna set dates for when Christ is returning. And always a fun one for me is they're gonna rebuild the third temple. My question is where they're gonna put it. because there's a big mosque on the Temple Mount at this point. So anyway, so nevertheless, with all these struggles and all that, Christianity is eschatological. It does look at future things. And so because this is, faith cannot exist without hope. Hebrews 11 says, faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. And so hope is always, at least in most circumstances, it's looking into the future. And that's what eschatology is, it is basically looking into the future. So the New Testament has three basic elements in eschatology. Number one, the Old Testament promises of a coming redeemer. was realized in Jesus Christ, and this is a very prominent scene all throughout the New Testament, and that when we see this with the Pharisees, what they understood was this one glorious messianic age, and it was predicted by the Old Testament, but we're seeing it unfold in two ages, this age and the age to come. And Christ's first advent guaranteed his second coming, One good thing of how do we know Christ is coming again? Well, he came the first time, right? So, but the second coming, that's gonna include the bodily resurrection, the final judgment, and renewal of the heavens and the earth. So Christ first added and the final consummation at the second coming. This is gonna mark a comprehensive final expectation that's been set forth in all the Old Testament prophets. So Thomas Boston, he preached a sermon on the doctrine of hell. He says, were there no other place of eternal lodging but heaven, I should here have closed my discourse of man's eternal state. But as in the other world, there is a prison for the wicked, as well as a palace for saints. So Thomas Boston, he was one of the puritans. So the first question we're going to try to look at this morning is, what does the Bible teach us today? Well, in our culture, hell is like death. Death itself has been trivialized. So has the idea of hell. It's trivialized by using it as a common curse word. Because we as people, we don't want to look at these bad things. We don't want to see the terrors of the world. And that's the way the Puritans referred to hell. is the terror of hell. And so we want to joke about it, play it down a little bit, because we want to soften it up a little bit. Most of our theology about hell comes from Gary Larson and his comic strip, Our Side. If you ask somebody to draw you a picture of the devil, it's going to come right out of Gary Larson's illustrations. So we make statements like, war is hell, or going through hell, or went through hell. Again, to trivialize the word of hell, and we want to try to make it the most ghastly human experience. But I would argue that no human experience in this world is actually going to be comparable to hell. If you can try to imagine the worst thing possible, right, then take that imagination and multiply it 100 fold, because that's Then maybe, maybe then, you may have a grasp of the terror of hell. There's no biblical concept more grim or tear-invoking than the idea of hell. Some of you in here are cringing already, right? I'm just getting started. But it's so unpopular today that we don't want to give it any thought at all. It's just like death. We don't want to talk about it. But oddly enough, the idea of hell comes directly from the lips of Jesus. The idea of hell that involves some kind of eternal punishment at the hands of a judgmental holy God is so profoundly difficult for us to handle emotionally that the only person who would have enough authority to convince us of the reality of such a place would be Jesus himself. And Jesus does just that. Because almost all biblical teachings about hell literally come from Jesus himself. And this doctrine of hell, again, More than any other, it strains even our Christian loyalty towards the teachings of Christ. I've had a couple of experiences here, and I may mention some of these, but I have people that profess the Bible, they wanna do the Bible, and they believe the Bible. And so, the men's Bible study, we've been going through Nehemiah, so I actually brought up a discussion of Nehemiah. This woman I was talking to, her face sprinkled up, like she'd been sucking on a sour lemon. I mean, it just, she, oh, no, no, no, not Nehemiah. And then there was another person I was talking to, and she was showing me about, oh, yeah, I'm reading the Bible, and apparently I'm reading the Psalms. Here's what I'm reading. And she even mentioned I'm reading the Psalms of ascent. I thought, oh, OK, that's good, right? And then I said, well, you know, Paul says, and she goes, ah, no, not Paul. I go, well, you know, you wrote 13 books of the New Testament. If you take him out, you've really stripped the New Testament. But I love these conversations, because the favorite verse used today, particularly if you have any type of conversation with somebody, is Matthew 7.1. Judge not. Judge not. Of course, my answer is, only God can judge. My answer is, you'd rather have God judge you than me. Hold on till you see. The Bible describes hell as a place of outer darkness, a lake of fire, a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth, a place of eternal separation from the blessings of God, a prison, a place of torment where the worm doesn't turn or die. These are all graphic images that Jesus used. And then, of course, the question comes up, are these images that are being put forth, Literal? Are these just symbols? Well, I would just, so kind, I guess, would be that most likely a sinner in hell would prefer a literal lake of fire to the reality of hell represented in the lake of fire image. The idea of a symbol, a symbol is to portray something, check something. But what the symbol is projecting is going to be far what the symbol suggests. So Jesus used these most awful symbols imaginable to describe hell, and that should be no comfort to those who see them as symbols. Well, they're symbols. Yes, they are, but they're projecting, they're trying to show you something that's much greater. We previously looked at the intermediate state. Elder Sam took us through that several weeks ago, and we know that from the intermediate state that the believer is going to immediately be taken into the presence of I said, his body's going to be glorified, or his spirit's going to be glorified, and he's going to be made perfect in holiness and going to enter immediately into glory. But during this time, the body is still in the grave that we talked about a couple weeks ago. Paul says in Philippians 1.23, I am hard-pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. So we also remember that Jesus promised to stay on the cross. Today, he will be with me in paradise. Well, there's an intermediate state as well for the wicked, but they don't go to paradise. They go literally to a prison, to like a prison-like environment. Their eternal punishment starts at that point. Now, these wicked people are going to be resurrected just like all people. Daniel says in chapter 12, verse 2, Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt. So the souls of the wicked are going to be resurrected and forever united with their sinful bodies. Now, when they get their body, this is the body that they committed sin in. This is the body they will spend eternity in as well. This is the body that they're going to stand before the judgment seat of God with. So they're going to be in an embodied state for the final judgment. So imagine hell is experienced in eternity with worse than the hell experience. So as bad as things are going to be in this intermediate state, when they're past the final judgment, go through the final judgment, things are going to get worse. The whole person then, you've got the spirit and the body are together. The whole purpose, this entire object, is going to be facing the just judgment of the most holy and righteous God. So Jesus speaks both of the resurrection of life and the resurrection of judgment. In Acts 24, the apostle Paul, when he's standing before Felix, he told Felix that there would be a resurrection of both the just and the unjust. All people will be raised from the dead when Jesus Christ returns in glory. and there'll be no rest for the wicked. Hell will be marked by a complete absence of peace and rest, Revelations 14, 11, and the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name. This is going to be a day and night punishment. Again, Thomas Boston, he says, these shall go away into everlasting punishment. They will be forever separated from God and Christ and from the society of the holy angels and saints. Between them, an impassable gulf will be fixed. And besides all this, between us and you, a great chasm has been fixed so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from here to us. So what is interesting is to think of these as societies. There's a society in heaven, That's gonna be with the angels and the believers, and there's gonna be a different society in hell. This torment is going to be, for the wicked, it's gonna be everlasting and eternal. Matthew 25 says, then he will answer them saying, truly I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me. And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. Jesus is gonna bring the sheep into eternal life, and the goats into eternal punishment. So, in hell, the restraining influences of God's common grace are gonna be completely removed. Hell's not only gonna be populated with sinners, but also the wicked angels. And again, this society of hell, this is just gonna make matters worse, because now what's happened is God's gonna completely pull his grace, he's gonna completely pull any mercy that he might show, any restraint that he shows here on earth. When you look around at all the evil in the world today, and we know that God's in charge, God is still restraining. That will be happening in hell. And there's no holiness in hell. There cannot be any happiness, and therefore there is no joy. Romans says, but 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. Then in verse nine, there will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek. So the worst thing about hell, and I guess there's two rules of law I'm running. There's some that say because of the verdict where Jesus said, depart from me, you workers of iniquity, I never knew you, that God's not gonna be in hell. Well, the God that's gonna be in heaven is gonna be in hell. but not God is omniscient, and he's omnipresent. He's all there, he's all-knowing. But what's gonna happen is, is while we're in heaven, we're gonna be experiencing the love and the grace of being in the presence of God, but in hell, they're gonna experience God only in his wrath and his judgment. So they're gonna spend eternity with God, either in heaven with his love and joy, or in hell with his righteous judgment and wrath. So hell's not a place where God is completely absent, though he is there. And God's presence in hell is not a comforting or loving presence. It's rather a manifestation of his justice. Then we come to Christopher Love. Christopher Love is an interesting, I just learned about him. He's a very interesting Puritan. Christopher Love, if you're not aware of him, he was beheaded by the Puritans. which I find very interesting. He was a Presbyterian, and he kind of led this uprising, I guess, during the Civil War to bring Charles II back into power, and the Prometheus people didn't like that, so he was arrested, and he wound up being beheaded. So, by a period, he was beheaded by a period. But he was probably the most prolific of writing. He wrote Heaven's Glory, Hell's Terror, and he says, Hell is a place of torment, ordained by God for devils and reprobate sinners, wherein by his justice he confines them to everlasting punishment, torment them both in body and soul, being deprived of God's favor, objects of his wrath, under which they must lie to all eternity. In Romans 9, we can ask the question, Is God just and damning and eternal? Well, God is love, right? That's the problem of our culture today, is we're in love with the love of God, and nobody wants to hear about the justice of God or the wrath of God, because that's not love. We talked about it when we were talking about death, that when you go to funerals, that they, first of all, they don't call them funerals, they call them celebration of life, and they celebrate how this person, I saw two friends, I had a friend this week lost his wife, And there's no indication to me that she had any relationship with Christ. And he's talking about her being in heaven and the angels coming and getting her and stuff like that. And it breaks my heart because there's, first of all, I put a lot of that maybe on us as the church, is because we don't understand the terrors of hell. If we certainly deeply understood the terrors of hell, Charles Spurgeon said that we would literally wrap our hands, arms around their ankles, and hold them up to the point that they entered the gate of hell. I mean, he understood that hell is a terror. And Paul puts it this way. He says, is there injustice with God? And he answers by saying, by no means. He goes on to explain that God's sovereignty and election are not based on human merit or worthiness, but on God's own mercy and grace. The late R.C. Sproul, he had a great quote, he says, God does not always act with justice. Sometimes he acts with mercy. Mercy is not justice, but it's also not injustice. Injustice violates righteousness. Mercy manifests kindness and grace and does no violence to righteousness. We may see no, we may see non-justice in God, which is mercy, but we never see injustice in God. So mercy is not getting what we deserve. We all deserve help. I don't know how you saved him. I'm trying to figure out how you saved me. Grace is getting what you don't deserve. So we seek God's grace when a man lifts on us some blessing from God. And grace is often described as unmerited favor or the gift of God. It is something you don't earn or deserve, but rather receive as a blessing from God. Mercy is not getting what you do deserve. We all deserve help, folks. That's the only way I know of it. While justice is getting what you deserve. However, grace is getting something you did not deserve. So that means that grace is a more profound and generous concept than mercy or justice. Again, back to Christopher Love. He had some arguments that the divine action of God is justice. See, punishment is not based on the amount of time that we spend sinning, but the fact that we do sin. One example that I read is a burglar, his sentence for burglary is usually a lot longer than the time that he spent in the actual burglary. But punishment, again, is the cause that we did in fact sin. Sin is, this is something that people just don't realize, but sin is committed against men. God, so it deserves an infinite punishment. Just as the crime was, well, maybe a bad analogy here, just like a crime of striking the president, or shooting the president, is a lot greater crime than it would be if you shot me, right? I think there's even laws on the books for striking a police officer, for striking an emergency note, or something like that, so those are greater. You just committed sin against the infinite and almighty God. So if we live forever, we would continue to sin forever. Just because we're only here temporarily don't mean that our sin is temporary. There's going to continue to be sin in heaven. I mean, not heaven, excuse me, there'd be no sin in heaven. Don't quote me on that. But there's going to continue to be sin in hell. It's only going to get worse, folks. I mean, that's the only thing I say, is because you've got wicked angels tempting wicked men, and it's mercenary calls them murderers of God. I love that statement. But it's just going to get worse. So even if there is just, you don't sin for a little bit. Maybe you take a day off. I'm just not going to sin today. Well, actually that goes, that's evidence against you, because you're actually, that infinite love and kindness of God, you're rejected because you go back to sin. So what does the Bible teach about heaven? There's hope. The Bible says that a new heaven and a new earth await us, Revelations 21. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. So is God going to completely annihilate the heavens and the earth? If we read in Peter, Peter tells us, but the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and heavenly bodies will melt as they burn. But let's keep in mind, though, that fire does not always mean total and complete destruction. Sometimes it means refining and purifying. Malachi says he will sit as a refiner purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi, refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the Lord. The words of the Lord are pure, like silver refined in a furnace on the ground, and purified seven times. Zechariah also says in 13.9, and I will put this third unto the fire, and refine them as one who refines silver and tests them. as gold is tested. So the idea of this refining, this takes us back to what Paul talks about in Romans chapter eight, where he says, for the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God, for the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, and hope that the creation itself, excuse me, will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been growing together in the pains of childbirth until now. So creation's destiny is not an annihilation, but rather it's a freedom from its present bondage and entrance into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. And heaven, we're not going to be floating around on these and laying a little heart in our underwear. We're going to be dwelling in the new heaven and the new earth. God is not going to destroy creation, and he's not going to destroy our bodies, but renew and transform them. A few weeks ago, we did, again, we discussed that we're going to be in a new body, and we'll experience heaven in an imperishable forest unlike the folks that are going to be in hell. So is it with the resurrection of the dead? What is sown is perishable. What is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, and it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, and it is raised in power. Even in the intermediate state that we've talked about, when we're resurrected with our body, our souls and our bodies are reunited, it's going to get more better. The Bible describes heaven as a state of rest, a rest from the present works. Blessed indeed, says the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them. And there also remains a Sabbath rest in heaven. So then there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works, as God did from him. This is not a call for non-action. Every biblical scene in the Bible of what's going on in heaven, Isaiah 6, all of them, it's just a center of activity. It's just a lot going on. And the centerpiece of all of this, when you read about what's going on in heaven, it's all centered on the worship of the triune God. Revelations 4.1 all the way through 5.14 describes it from where and the pure worship that is found there. And this worship goes on night and day. Again, I'm assuming that if you're not happy here on earth with God's people, if you're not happy on earth with loving God and spending time in his word, I'm betting you're probably gonna be miserable in heaven. Because that's what you're gonna be. You're gonna meet with the other people of God, you're going to recognize each other, and you're gonna love each other more. You're gonna love me more now than you already Just think about it. But anyway, because heaven is marked with complete and total absence of sin and nature. And the people, we're gonna appear before Christ as a whole. It says in Ephesians, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without splod or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. So that's the goal, is to present the church to Christ without spot or blemish. And you'll notice also, I keep going back I guess to this subject, but there's a contrast. And we can see it in Revelations 22, 14 when he's describing the new heaven and the new earth. He said, blessed are those who wash their robes so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates. Outside are the dogs murderers and adulterers and everyone who loves and practices falses. You see the contrast there? The saints were going to be in the city and the wicked are going to be outside the city. So there's a complete absence of sin in heaven. There is equally a complete absence of misery in hell as well. So no sin, no misery. But it's not what's absent. It's also what is going to be present. and it's gonna be the presence of complete joy. Paul reminds us the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. So the main reason, so we're gonna ask why does the Bible wanna teach us about heaven? The main reason is just to help us on our pilgrimage here, help us on our journey. The hope of heaven is supposed to encourage us who live the lives of holiness. First John, John says, beloved, we are God's children now. And what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. So we have our hope in Christ. So we should live a pure, whole life the way Christ did. But this hope should be a transforming effect on how we're living right now. The hope of heaven, again, is a purifying hope. Remember back in, we were talking earlier about Peter when he said, but the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on them will be exposed. But then Peter goes on to describe, after this fiery transformation, He talks about how we ought to be. When we get down to verse 11, he says, since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness? And then down in verse 13, he urges us to be diligent, to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace. So, why does the Bible teach us about hell? The Bible's teaching on hell show us pure evil of sin and what sin really deserves. Again, our current culture, we deny sin. Sometimes our culture will even present it. We just went through the pride month, which you should be proud of your sin. But it's not a virtue. Sin's not a virtue. But what happens is a lot of times when we go to define sin, we don't look at sin particularly our own sin. We don't really look at as this is really an offense toward a holy and righteous God. So I mentioned earlier, the Puritans held a very common view of the glories of heaven and the terrors of hell. Christopher Love, he wrote the most about it, and he was the most representative. And even Christopher Love's writings, I guess at one point, Jonathan Edwards had a very small library, and Christopher Love's writings were in Jonathan Edwards' library. So in conclusion, Jesus is the mediator of peace and the foundation of holiness. He it is who delivers us from the wrath to come. There is no condemnation of those who are in Christ Jesus who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit. The terrors of hell as well as the joys of heaven are set before you to stir you up to a cordial receiving of him with all his salvation and to incline you to the way of faith and holiness. Hell's there to drive you to heaven, which alone you can escape the everlasting fire. And I hope that the Lord will make this teaching this morning effectual in your life. Really concern yourselves for the lost, because hell's a terrible place, and we don't want anyone to go there, particularly our loved ones and our friends. So we need to pray for those that are lost. Are there any questions Did I stir up anybody? Randy. Jeff, you talked about the wicked going to prison. It's described as a prison. Malston described it as a prison. Is that different from hell? Well, that's in the intermediate state, what he's talking about there. That's where the spirit goes while they're waiting for the final judgment. So it's like a believer spirit, we go and we're in the presence of Christ. There is no presence of Christ for the wicked. So in their intermediate state, and they're already suffering. The torment has already started. But it's not until they're reunited with their body is when things really go south. And that's when the full wrath of God comes upon them. And today, A preacher can't even preach on hell. Because if he does, he's known as the hellfire. Could you imagine today if someone preached Jonathan Edwards' sermon? Have you ever read Jonathan Edwards' Sitters in the Hands of an Angry God? Could you imagine someone trying to preach that today? I mean, they'd be running out of town on a parade. Because God is love. God is love. But that sermon is just as valid today as it was when Edwards preached it. If God creates, it is like a potter who creates vessels, some for salvation, some for damnation. So when you say to a Christian, all the errors of the world are to encourage and preserve us, not to be tempted by the pleasure of sin. Well, I go back to the fact that we all deserve that. If we get what we deserve, we all deserve it. Through God's election, he has chosen those that he can show mercy on. Thank God I was one of them. But we also, we have to use the terrors of hell to reach the others. Charles Spurgeon talked about that if the elect had a white stripe on the back, I would just run down the street pulling up everybody's shirt to make sure that I found all the elect. We don't have that, so we don't know who the elect are. But we have to preach to everyone, every living creature, in the event that the Holy Spirit convicts them that they are the array and brings them to the saving grace of Christ. And that's our job. Sometimes we lose sight of that, but we're to preach the gospel throughout the whole world. And sometimes preaching the gospel throughout the world, we'll go to Uganda, but we won't go to White City. You see what I'm saying? Sometimes we need this worldview in mind, and we forget our neighbors. So we want to use it. And by preaching on hell, And by the way, on John Edward's sermon, Sitters in the Hand of an Angry God, he had a very good reaction, a very good response to that sermon. Now, it was not the sermon, or the subject of the sermon, but it was the Holy Spirit. But what that does is it gets to, it gets a non-believer to thinking about the things of eternity, when you realize Edwards talked about that you're just hanging by a thread on the pit of hell, right? So when you realize, or when a sinner realizes that, that they're just about to step off into eternity, then they begin to think about the things of eternity. And they start this, and I don't know the can of words here, but they begin into seeking after God, right? They're seeking out the things of Christ. And this is not anything to do with, you're still God's elect, but people come into church and hear the gospel, even though they're not saved, we want them in here, we want to bring them here, so they can hear the word of God spoken, so that the Holy Spirit then can begin to deal and work with them. And really I think if we Fully grasp the terrors of hell Then we would be grabbing people off the street And just basically tell them you don't want to go there used to be this thing called the 18 second gospel presentation we get on the elevator and You know, and you ask the guy next to you, last trip, you got burned out. I've done that. So yeah, but we really need, if you grasp the character of hell, we really need to grasp that people can, well, actually, we're going to. I hope I really brought that home. Anything else? All right, great. Oh, for those of you that are wondering if I believe in the rapture, yes, I do. Now, real quickly, I don't believe in the secret rapture. I believe that when Christ comes back, it's explained in the verse of Thessalonians chapter 4. I used that verse last time I taught, thinking I would get this question, and nobody did. So that's good, I guess. But I think what you're going to see, you can find over in Revelations 19. And that's my Jesus there. All right, with nothing else, let's go to the Lord and pray. Gracious God in heaven, we thank you, Lord, for this day. We thank you for the teachings, Lord, that you've given us this morning. We pray, Lord, that they will quicken our hearts from the loss, and, Lord, that we will come to a firmer understanding of not just the blessedness of heaven, but the terrors of heaven. Lord, help us all to have a hungry heart for the loss. And, Lord, bless our corporate worship now as we enter into worship. Lord, bring in the loss that they may hear of our priest. And we ask it all in Jesus' name.