You Have to Hear This to Believe It...

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction.

Jealous and proud of it, a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak, a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser, a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

What's surprising is how many Christians teach an unbiblical view of hell to make it more palatable to the world.

There are these conceptions of heaven and hell sort of floating around culture and people have all these images of people in red tights listening to Pink Floyd records backwards and sort of burn, burn, you know.

Oprah, who says she's a Christian. I am a Christian. That is my faith.

I'm not asking you to be a Christian. If you want to be one, I can show you how. Treats hell as a place she would rather go than to give up her support for the

LGBTQIA lifestyle. Just before I came down here, I'm late today because I was in the makeup room arguing with somebody who was telling me how all gay people are going to hell and now

I'm going to hell with all the other gay people for doing the show. I take full responsibility for my going to hell or heaven.

I take full responsibility and I feel that everybody who's concerned about me now going to hell because I'm doing the

Ellen DeGeneres show, I think that you all should take that energy and try to create a little heaven here on earth for everybody and I take full responsibility for it.

However, if Oprah really knew what hell was, she would not be so willing to go there.

So the picture here of drinking the dregs of the wine of God's wrath, that's symbolism.

But what's its symbolism for? Hell, which is real. Amen? So this idea of fire and sulfur and torment, this is symbolic.

Symbolic of what? Hell, which is real and eternal. Hell is real. Hell is not symbolic.

We see it in other parts of the Bible. Throughout the Bible, we see pictures of hell in places that aren't symbolic.

So when we come here and we do see symbolism as it relates to hell, the symbolism is actually used to point to the intensity of God's judgment that is poured out in hell.

Not that hell is symbolic. What would hell be symbolic of if there's no hell? What would this be symbolic of if there's no hell?

God is going to judge you intensely. It's going to be like fire and sulfur.

Where? Nowhere, really. How does that work, folks? If hell is symbolic here, what's it symbolic of?

Well, it's symbolic of God's judgment against sin, right? Okay. Then how does God judge sin if there's no hell?

It doesn't work. Joel Osteen has such a low view of sin that he doesn't even think it's necessary to teach his church about hell.

Do you feel like you're cheating people by not telling them about the hell part, the repentance part?

No, I really don't because it's a different approach. It's not hellfire and brimstone, but I say most people are beaten down enough by life.

They already feel guilty enough. They're not doing what they should do, raising their kids. We can all find reasons. I want them to come to Lakewood or our meetings and be lifted up to say, you know what?

I may not be perfect, but I'm moving forward. I'm doing better, and I think that motivates you to do better.

But it's extremely important to teach about hell, and Jesus himself taught about hell more than anyone else in the

Bible. Isn't it amazing? All these popular TV preachers, many of them, there's some good ones, a few of them.

But most of these popular guys, when it comes to the doctrine of hell, they'll go, well, we just want to teach on the words of Jesus.

Now, when they say that, they're either immoral or stupid. Why? Because you want to know something? If it were not for the teachings of Jesus Christ, we'd know almost nothing about hell.

Almost no one else in the Bible talks about hell. You see glimpses of hell. Almost everything we know.

If you're going to write a book on the biblical doctrine of hell, you will spend almost all your time, 99 % of your time in the

Gospels, because Jesus is just about the only one who ever taught on hell. So when Robert Shuler gets up and says,

I don't teach on hell because I just want to teach the words of Jesus, he's a liar. Because Jesus spoke on hell more than absolutely everybody else put together.

I've often wondered why that is. Maybe he was the only one who could make known its terrors.

Maybe he's the only one brave enough. Maybe he's the only one who loves enough. Where are all the sermons on hell?

Where did they go? Is getting your best life now really what's important? Wouldn't it be better to rot in a prison for all the 80 years of your life and be saved from hell rather than to get your best life now and perish?

I will not lose sleep. Understand this, worrying about whether or not you have self -esteem.

I will not lose sleep worried about whether or not you feel like you have purpose in your life. I will not lose sleep.

I will not be interceding tonight because your checkbook doesn't balance. It'll be because you're going to hell.

That's why we preach. Rob Bell and Tim Mackey of The Bible Project both teach that hell is just something that humans do to themselves and to each other.

So the actual use of the word hell is in the context of being abusive, being exploitive, being violent.

And he uses this very visceral image of Gehenna as what happens when we are that kind of person in the world, which

I don't have a hard time believing. We've all seen that. Rape, greed, injustice, abuse, financial scandals, third world dictators killing whole villages of innocent women and children.

I mean, we've sort of seen that. Hell is a reality that is present now.

It's a reality that humans unleash on each other and on God's good world to ruin and destroy relationships and to destroy people.

Hell is something that we have created on earth. And God hates hell.

And the story of the Bible is a story about God wanting to heal his world and get the hell out of earth.

Hell is something that humans have created for themselves. What does it not say? It doesn't say in the beginning

God made heaven and earth and hell. God didn't make whatever hell is.

God didn't make it. It's nowhere to be found on page one of your Bible, right?

For Bell and Mackey, hell is certainly not a place where God actively punishes sinners because of their sin.

However, the Bible is clear that hell involves God actively punishing and pouring out his wrath upon sin.

So the angel swung his sickle across the earth and gathered the grape harvest and the earth of the earth and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God.

And the winepress was trodden outside the city and blood flowed from the winepress as high as a horse's bridle for 1600 stadia.

This is a picture from Joel 3 and 13. Put in the sickle for the harvest is ripe. Go in, tread for the winepress is full.

The vats overflow for their evil is great. There's also a picture here from Isaiah 63, 3.

I have trodden the winepress alone and from the people's no one was with me.

I trod them in my anger and trampled them in my wrath. Their lifeblood spattered on my garments and stained all my apparel.

This is a gruesome picture. It is a gruesome picture of the victorious Christ. This is God's victory over sin.

This is God's righteousness poured out. Remember, there are those two pictures of wine in judgment.

And one is the dregs and the sort of hyper fermentation of the wine that leads to this drunken stupor on the wrath of God.

And the other picture is the picture of the fresh grapes being crushed and the picture of the blood running 1600 stadia as high as a horse.

It's like as high as a horse for almost 200 miles. This is a gruesome picture of the victory over God.

I have trod them in my anger and trampled them in my wrath. Rick Warren teaches that it's almost impossible to go to hell. To go to hell, you have to do almost the impossible.

You have to reject the love of God. You have to reject the grace of God. You have to reject the forgiveness of God.

You have to reject God himself. Why in the world would anybody do that? Pride. Pride.

That's why. Because I want to be my own God. I don't want anybody telling me what I should be doing with my life.

However, the Bible teaches the exact opposite. It teaches that the way to salvation is narrow and few find it.

We honestly believe that most people are inherently good. Jesus says the exact opposite.

People are wicked and they're evil. And there's very few people who ever find the narrow gate.

It's difficult to find. Not easy to find. It's hard to become a

Christian and it's hard to be a Christian. It's not easy. Neither one of those things is easy.

And here's why. There's none who does good. Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive.

The venom of asbestos is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood and their paths are ruined in misery.

And the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.

That's their problem. There is no fear of God before their eyes. They believe that if I run into a building and drag a kid out,

I'm good. There is no fear of God that says regardless of what I do in my flesh,

I am not. I will not be. And I have never been good before Almighty God.

No, we believe if you find a stranger's wallet and you turn it into the lost and found, you're good enough for God.

If they give you too much change and you give the change back, you're good enough for God. It's not what the

Bible teaches. We are ruined from the word go. Every last one of us and there is no fear of God before our eyes.

And there are myriad motivations for doing those kind of things that have absolutely nothing to do with the converted life.

Nothing whatsoever. We want to be good people. We want to be good citizens. We want to be heroes.

Whatever the case, myriad reasons for doing those things that have nothing to do with the fear of God.

Some argue that it would be unfair to punish sins committed during a finite lifetime with eternal punishment.

People object to hell because man's sin is finite and hell is eternal.

Have you heard this? I mean, I get to sin for 60, 70, maybe 80 years. And then I go to hell for eternity.

How's that fair? This objection is based on a low view of sin. We don't understand the significance of sin.

If we did, then we would understand that when we sin, we sin against infinite holiness and righteousness.

And when you sin against infinite holiness, you deserve infinite justice. What other justice would be acceptable?

Another argument against hell is that if hell exists, then people who are in heaven won't be able to fully enjoy heaven since there will be people suffering in hell.

People object to the idea of hell because they say it contradicts the idea of eternal joy in heaven.

How can we have eternal joy in heaven if there are people who are being judged eternally in hell?

How can we know that people are being judged eternally in hell and actually enjoy heaven?

This objection is based on a carnal eschatology that sees heaven as merely endless supplies of whatever it is that makes us happy here and now.

We don't take into account that who we are in the here and now physically, emotionally, and spiritually is not fit for heaven.

We will be changed. Amen? We just read about that in 1 Corinthians chapter 15.

We will be changed. We have to be changed. You're not fit for heaven. You can't take heaven in your current state.

You're not ready for it. We talked on last week about the fact that you can't even take the singing in heaven. It would bust your eardrums.

Literally. Your physical body can't take it. So the problem is you are trying to use what it is that pleases you in the here and now and project that onto heaven.

Folks, listen to me. The justice and righteousness of God will be your all in all in heaven and the eternal punishment of sin and God pouring out his wrath on sin is a glorification and magnification of his righteousness.

What else could you celebrate? It is just. The doctrine of hell is not only one that we need to believe in, but it's also one that glorifies

God through the display of his justice and power against sin. If we can't accept this biblical teaching, then we might need to question whether we've truly submitted to all that God has revealed through the