Hell: The Ultimate Woe 

Hell, Woe, and the Fear of Meeting God

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry, Mike Avendroff, Duplex Ratio Radio. I tried to just open up my iPad and it was blank. I don't know if you teach or preach from iPads, but I always reboot it the night before I preach or like Friday or something like that.

And just a couple of weeks ago, I was getting ready to preach, singing the final stanza of the last hymn, opened up my iPad to the notes, good note six, and it was blank. So I thought, I'm just going to walk up, I'll try to fix it while I'm up there preaching and see what happens.

Now I have a backup on my phone. The fonts are bad, but there is a backup. And if you teach the Bible regularly, you'll probably understand these words. I thought to myself, welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry, I speak for a living, public school educated.

I just drove past my elementary school, junior high, and saw from afar my high school back in Omaha, Nebraska, Masters Elementary, Morton Junior High, Northwest High School, Masters Elementary, having nothing to do with other names of that sort.

Let's see, what was I saying? Oh, you'll understand what I'm saying. Some sermons you could preach without notes easier than other sermons. And when I did the Pactum Conference, a topical message, a little bit harder without notes, I think I probably would have failed that without notes.

But anyway, my iPad is up and running. Yes, I did get it fixed that morning, a couple weeks ago, and off we go. Today, I want to talk about the word woe, W-O-E. And it is not the word woe that you would say to a horse to get it to stop.

It is a word of malediction, of judgment, of condemnation, and it's got a little sense of pity in it as well, pity for those who are condemned. And I like to joke around, have fun when I do the radio show.

The Woes Pronounced by Jesus in Luke 6

This is not really the jokey show, the joking show, the funny show, because the words woe uttered by our Lord Jesus in Luke chapter 6, again, while there's some pity involved in that, I think, what's not involved is hilarity, joy, funny business, jokes.

Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. Woe to you when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.

Four woes, W-O-E. And these are on the heels of the four blessings that Jesus gives his disciples, and now there are other people listening to what Jesus is saying, so he gives the woes to them, and I think he also wants his disciples slash apostles to understand as they go out and minister to people and preach the gospel to people, to unbelievers, unless they repent and believe, they will stand under this woe, not just in this life, but the next.

So, my name is Wyke Avendroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry. And essentially what we're talking about with this rich now, full now, laugh now, speak well of you now, even though there's not four nows, there's just two, but the point is still the same.

You get everything you can now, but later it's going to be bad. There's an after, there's a later. The fool says there's no later in the Proverbs, and we realize, oh, there's a later, so we better be careful.

That's why you want to be trusting in the Lord Jesus for your salvation. And as you know, I've said it on the show before, many people can't even say the word dead or death. And is it any wonder that they have a hard time believing in hell?

I don't think so. I mean, think about how many times you hear somebody say he died, he's dead, there's a death in the family. Now, sometimes, especially that last one is a little more commonplace, but we have all these words for death, I think, to try to take the sting out of it and try to take the fear out of it because death means you're going to meet God.

And I think the fear of death in one sense is good for unbelievers because it's really the fear of meeting God. And they can try to say, kick the bucket, pushing up the daisies, checked out, cashed in his chips, and there are many, many more.

You can find a hundred of them I saw online. But it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God. And for me to be quite honest and transparent, at 64 and coming close to death a few times, and probably a lot of times I just didn't know in terms of the car or something like that, but having brushes with death or cancer, you know, aortic aneurysm, it makes me think about that.

And it's hard for me to really believe. I thought about this yesterday. I'm getting toward the end. Now, that end might be in 20 years, could trick everybody and fool everybody and might outlive you listeners.

It could be 85, 90. I mean, who knows? I mean, it could be today. Excuse me, but you don't really think about it the same way when you're younger. When you're younger, you think, yes, people die. I will die.

It's not theoretical because you'll lose a grandparent or you'll lose a parent or something like that, friend. But pretty soon you go, yeah, this is really... I've got less in my life moving forward than I have in the past, unless I'm going to live to be 128, which I really doubt.

Would I want to live to be 128? And so there's something in me that wants to live. I don't want to die. I want to see my grandkids. And of course, when I'm in heaven, I won't be thinking, I missed out on the grandkids' birth or something like that.

My desire to be with the grandkids, I guess, will be more for their benefit, right? But I desire to be there watching them grow up and thinking, how do I get back to California when I retire? If I do retire, what do I do there?

Maybe all the kids need to move to Massachusetts. Who knows? Will there be a California after the election? We'll see. All that to say it's real. Meeting God is real. And I wish I could say I have no trepidation.

I have no problem. I have no fear of dying and meeting God. I wish that was true. And some days, you know, it's more true than others. Theoretically, I know to live as Christ and die again. Theoretically and biblically, I understand justification, union with Christ and redemption and all those truths that remind me of who the Lord is and what He's done in my life.

But once in a while, those little things just creep into your mind. So that happens to me. It probably happens to you once in a while. And certainly the unbeliever is going to say, you know what? I don't even want to think about it.

I'm going to distract myself with hedonism, with sports, with alcohol and drugs, with being busy. A lot of people are just busy. And today on the show, I want to talk about woes because if you're not a believer and you don't repent and believe in Jesus, this woe is for you.

And if you are a believer, two things should happen. One, you should say, I'm so thankful I'm not underneath that woe anymore. I'm under a blessing. I've been approved by God. That's really what blessing means.

It's not happiness based on circumstances. It's you're approved by God, blessed. It's a pronunciation. It's a pronouncement. That's what I wanted to say. And that you would realize the people around you that aren't believers, the woe that they stand under.

They might be having a good life now, but the later life isn't the best. And again, people don't even want to talk about hell half the time. I have some old work here done on hell. Newsweek referred to hell as theology's H word.

And it is too trite for serious scholarship. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, you might recognize that author said hell was an odious conception, blasphemous in its view of the creator. One man said anonymously, hell is the carrot and the stick in the chain letter that is the Christian religion.

Christopher Hitchens in his book, God is not great. Nothing proves a man-made character of religion as obviously as the sick mind that designed hell, unless it is the sorely limited mind that has failed to describe heaven.

A radical French man said, hell is the greatest scandal of our theology for philosophical minds. And I think the commentator, Marty, Martin Marty is right. He said, hell disappeared and no one noticed.

Kind of true. I mean, when do you hear about it? When's the last sermon you heard about it? When I preached a whole sermon on hell, I don't know what it was a year ago or something, maybe. Maybe it's two years ago.

Who knows? It's like, when is the last sermon? It's time you heard a sermon on it. I mean, maybe you'll hear something in passing. Maybe there'll be a verse read here or there, but the woes from Jesus are true.

And they're just as true today as they were back 2000 years ago. And for people that are rich, full, laughing and wanting applause here today, that's all they're going to get. It's paid in full. There's going to be nothing better.

You get it all here on earth and there's going to be mourning and weeping and hunger and more when there's judgment and you stand before God. So I want to talk a little bit about Luke 6, some about hell.

And I want to echo what J .C. Ryle said, let others hold their peace about hell if they will. I dare not do so. I see it plainly in scripture and I must speak of it. If I never spoke of hell, I should think that I had kept back something that was profitable and should look on myself as an accomplice of the devil.

And I'm sure he's alluding to 2 Timothy 3 .16. All scripture, including the scripture about hell, is inspired by God or breathed out by God and what? Profitable. You do no good in telling people that there's no hell.

Even the word savior should tell you you're saved from something. Yes, saved from sin, saved from the worldly system, saved from the bondage of the will of Satan, saved from hell, but ultimately saved from God, right?

Saved from God. And so if I had to entitle this message, I'd probably say it's woe, but it's kind of like how to go to hell, right? If you want to go to hell, just be full of yourself. Just be rich in your own righteousness.

Laugh about sin and Jesus and hell and all that and try to get man's applause versus be approved by God through faith in Christ Jesus. That's really the message. And it is jolting, that's true. And certainly for you, a Christian, I want to remind you that this is not for you in the sense that you're not going there.

Jesus has paid in full the sin debt, your sin debt, my sin debt, all who would ever believe sin debt. But we ought to be A, thankful and B, evangelistic. And we ought to have the same heart that Jesus had when he goes to Zacchaeus' house.

He seeks and saves the lost. He's with sinners and fellowships with them, calls them to repentance and more. Luke is one of those books that shows who Jesus is. And it's got an account of the Lord Jesus that is completely trustworthy and verifiable and true based on eyewitness accounts.

And that's why I love to study it. The word woe, just to remind you again, it's a word that some describe, these are all descriptions that I found online, an exclamation of pain and pity for the misfortune that awaits someone in a certain condition, expresses a warning of danger and nearness of judgment, could be translated, alas, or how terrible, emphasizes a reversal of circumstance that will occur in God's future.

That's what's going on here, blessed and woes. So, that's not really a technical definition. Let me get back to definitions. Not denoting a mere misfortune, but a deep and inconsolable misery, a cry of intense distress, displeasure, or horror, oo-ah-ee is what the pronunciation is.

It's like a cry, oo-ah-ee, it's onomatopoeic. Easy for me to say. I've never had problems saying that word. It's a warning about inevitable impending judgment. And for the unbeliever, disaster, judgment, inevitable calamity, and more.

Woes Against Unrepentant Cities and Religious Leaders

Luke uses this word elsewhere. Woe to you, Chorus, and woe to you, Bethsaida, for if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes.

Woe. He also uses it with the Pharisees and the lawyers in Luke 11. I won't read every one, but here's a sampling. Woe to you, Pharisees, for you tithe mint and rue and herb, and neglect justice and the love of God.

These you ought to have done without neglecting the others. Woe to you, for you are like unmarked graves, and people walk over them without knowing it. Woe to you, lawyers, also, for you load people with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers.

And so, Jesus gives these woes to the Pharisees and the scribes and the leaders who, of course, are legalistic, but probably even worse than that is they don't recognize the Messiah in front of their very faces.

But the one that seems to strike me with the most, just, ouch, yikes, more yikes than ouch is Luke 22. Luke uses it here. Jesus said, for the Son of Man goes as it has been determined, but woe to that man by whom he is betrayed.

And of course, you would say the end of Judas, Judas's end was one of woe, destruction, calamity, wailing, weeping, woe. And basically, the woes are found for people that reject the Son of Man, that do not believe in the Lord Jesus, that do not think they need the Lord Jesus because they're good enough to get to heaven on their own, that think, you know what, I'm seeing the Messiah right before my very eyes as I hear in an Easter sermon or a Christmas Eve sermon, or I hear a song played on the radio during Christmas that talks about God and sinners reconciled, or I'm there standing listening to Jesus's words.

These people who reject Jesus who do nothing about Jesus, who are spiritually content and complacent and self-righteous and are living only for now, their end is woe. They are not approved by God. They are not right with God.

They're still an enemy of God. They're still in their sins. They're still a slave to sin. They're still bondage to Satan, bondage to Satan. And even though they look kind and nice, and they have God's law written on their heart and often do things that are good for society and are kind and nice grandmas, and maybe you've got a nice grandma and she's a Mormon, or she's a Roman Catholic, or she just doesn't believe in anything, but she just wants to be good, the end is woe to them.

And so, we have to pity them. And we have to think, you know, but for the grace of God, there go I, because that used to be us until God and His wonderful, sovereign grace intervened, right? So, if you don't believe and if you don't trust, these woes are for you.

And I find it fascinating. I find it incredible that the woes are not woe to you who murder, woe to you who steal, woe to you who commit adultery, woe to you who rape, woe to you who commit incest, woe to you who, um, whatever it might be, rob the old lady.

This is woe to your rich, full now, laugh now, and have everybody speak well of you. They're basically ignoring Jesus. We don't need Jesus. We're fine without Jesus. I think if you would say to the Pharisees, are you fine without the Messiah?

My guess is, and I'm probably wrong on this, but I'm just guessing, they'd probably say, well, we keep the law well enough, but we sure would like to have the Messiah come back to get rid of Rome. That's probably what they would say.

These woes are the exact opposite of the blessing, approved by God, disapproved by God. It's almost Romans 1 language, disapproved by God. Their minds are supposed to be believing in Jesus and they don't do it.

So, the light's just dimmed and dimmed and dimmed. When you think of hell, when you think of woes as an unbeliever, it ought to scare you and make you think of your latter end and make you think, do I fear God and keep his commandments?

No, but I've heard God is merciful and I've heard Jesus is a loving Savior who loves sinners and who justifies the ungodly. Lord, would you help me? Would you grant me faith? Would you please forgive me?

There are all kinds of prayers that you could pray, but you need to believe on the Lord Jesus. And if you're a believer, when you think about hell, you think about the woes, I'm repeating myself, but it's important.

You ought to evangelize and evangelize with pity for them. And you ought to be very thankful. I've said many times that some of the greatest motivation you could ever have for evangelism and thankfulness as a Christian is the doctrine of hell because everyone you know is going there unless they believe, everyone.

And everyone who's died and you thought was a wonderful grandma or uncle or whatever, if they weren't trusting in the Lord Jesus, they're there. It's shuddering to think about. So, Jesus says to start, woe to you who are rich for you have received your consolation.

And here is a woe to people who are self-righteous. They think in their own minds, they've tricked themselves to believe that they don't need anything. And when people do that, they think they do enough right things that they don't need Jesus's right things to be credited to their account.

They don't think that they've done enough wrong things, i .e. sin, that Jesus has to pay for them because they think their good outweighs their bad. They think, well, I've done something wrong. I mean, you think of the judge and somebody is going to be there for murder and they've got it on video.

And yes, judge, I know I murdered, but I've done a lot of other really good things before the murder and I promise I'll do some after. But he's still murdered. So, you have to pay for the murder. We're not weighing things out, good citizens or not.

God's justice is real. It's not like California justice where if you're a certain skin color, you can get out for free or you're a certain demographic, you don't have as much money or whatever it might be.

You just get out because there's a kink in the system. Well, there's no kink in the system of God's justice. God's justice is severe. God's justice is inexorable. I think that's a word that we could use for God's justice.

So, people that are rich, he's not necessarily talking about finances because Luke, who wrote this, was probably rich. Matthew, a tax collector, before he gave everything up, he had money. Joseph of Arimathea, we're going to see in the future.

You've got Abraham, you've got Job. There are rich people in the Bible. But here, when you think of rich, rich people who have a lot of money typically depend on their own resources, their own doing, their own actions, their own wallet can get them whatever they want.

The best of everything on earth, the best lawyer, the best doctors, whatever they need problem fixed, they can figure out how to get that thing fixed. And so, typically, rich, if you think about it, even in Old Testament terms, people that actually were rich didn't have to depend on anything.

If you go back to the earlier beatitude, blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Have I been saying the opposite the whole time? It's the rich people that don't have to depend on anything.

It's the poor people that had to depend on God. And so, these people, the rich people, they didn't have to depend on anything. And so, they're self-sufficient, they're self-righteous, and they don't think they need anything.

And they're trusting in their own righteousness. They're trusting in their own riches, which is exact opposite of poor. And so, blessed are the poor in spirit. These people, according to Matthew 5, these people are rich in their spirit.

And so, if they were temporally rich, it's hard to depend on God. And of course, if you think you're spiritually rich now, and you've got everything going on, there's no need for the Lord. To describe kind of what the word rich here means, Luke says in chapter 12, recording Jesus' words, Take care and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.

And he told them a parable, saying, The land of a rich man produced plentifully. And he thought to himself, What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops? And he said, I will do this, I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.

And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have many ample goods, or you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, be merry. But God said to him, Fool, this night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?

So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. There it is. Do you see it? Woe to you who are rich, but not rich toward God. That's what Jesus is after. These woes are not to people who are just rich.

If you have money, there's a woe. Actually, there are a lot of people who are rich and contribute to God's kingdom work as fruit and evidence of their faith in the Lord Jesus. It's wonderful. Here Jesus is pronouncing woes to people who aren't going to be trusting in the Savior because they think they're rich in and of themselves.

That's the point. Well, my name is Mike Abendroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry. And in summary, today, we just did the first woe, of course. Aren't you glad you're a Christian? And you realize you're trusting in the Lord Jesus' righteousness.

I believe it was John Bunyan who said, my righteousness has been in heaven for 1700 years. And for us, our righteousness has been in heaven for 2100 years. The God-man, the word became flesh. And now he has, of course, overcome the grave and he has raised himself.

He has ascended in the heavens and he is at the right hand of the Father and he's praying for us. That's some pretty good news. No woes for us, only blessings.