Luke 6:24-26: How to go to Hell

The Fear of Death, Hell, and the Need for a Savior

Well, it is very bad preacher form to get up and say you're sick, because that just means if the sermon bombs, there's a reason for it. But I want you to know the opposite is true today, because I went to bed last night at 830 feeling great.

Even though the leukemia drugs kind of wear me out these days, I'm feeling really good and refreshed in the Lord. And I was reading this morning a quote from John Stott, a preacher, and he said, when I enter the pulpit with my Bible in my hands and in my heart, my blood begins to flow and my eyes begin to sparkle for the sheer glory of having God's word to expound.

That's exactly how I feel this morning.

Start off with a question.

Here's the question. When you go to visit someone who's dying, what do you say to them? Somebody who's on their deathbed, do you pray for them, of course? Do you read scripture to them? But what do you say to them initially?

And if you're like me, the first question I ask is I say, are you afraid to die? Are you afraid to die? And I say it both to believers and unbelievers. People are afraid to die, but what's behind that?

Because most people, if their consciences are not seared, would think that after death comes what?

Judgment.

That there's something after death. It's one thing to agonize in death and be having pain and death, but then what happens after? People are afraid to die because they realize there's something after.

As a matter of fact, our society, we can't even really say the word dead and death. We have all kinds of things, from pushing up the daisies to kick the bucket, to giving up the ghost, to death is not a spectator sport, all these things we talk about because we're afraid.

Because it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God. That's why I think people are afraid of death. And in generation before us, it was an all out assault to smear the name of hell, to somehow say hell couldn't be true.

Hell was called by Newsweek magazine the H word. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle said, hell is an odious conception, blasphemous in its view of the creator. I mean, after all, talk of hell is rude. It's crude.

It shouldn't be for today, say some. Christopher Hitchens said, nothing proves the man-made character of religion as obviously as the sick mind that designed hell. But in these days, I would say to you that instead of trying to smear hell, it's as one man said, hell has just disappeared.

Talk of it is just gone. We might use it as a curse word, but people just don't talk about it hardly at all. One man said hell disappeared and no one noticed. But since the Lord Jesus taught that hell was true, Paul taught that it was true, John taught it was true, the triune God taught it was true, it's important for us to know.

What is hell and how do I escape it? So if you take your Bibles and turn to Luke chapter 6, we're going to talk about that today. And I, with J .C. Ryle, say to you, call it bad taste if you like to speak of hell.

My notion of taste is to declare all the counsel of God. If I never spoke of hell, I should think I had kept back something that was profitable and should look on myself as an accomplice of the devil.

And of course, dear congregation, you know that all scripture is God-breathed and is what?

Profitable.

And that means, true or false, the doctrine of hell is profitable for you to know about. And of course, the answer has to be yes. We're in Luke 6, verses 24 through 26. And I wanted the sermon title, and I usually don't announce sermon titles.

I mean, they're just basically the secretary wants a title, so I give her one. But I want it to be stark, startling, and jolting. And of course, it's in your bulletin. How to go to hell. How to go to hell.

Now, the answer might be do nothing, and that would get you there. But how to go to hell as we're going verse by verse to the scriptures. And we come to these four woes from Jesus, four stark statements that are jolting by the Lord, in fact, and startling by the Lord.

If you're an unbeliever today, I'm glad you're here because this message is for you. Because unless you believe in the Lord Jesus, you're going to go to hell when you die, sadly. And if you're a Christian, I want you to think this way.

I want you to think, praise God, I'm not going. No matter what else is going on in your life, whether you've got bills that are unpaid, or health issues, or relationship issues, at the top of the list, your biggest need has been taken care of.

Your sin has been paid, and you get to go to heaven on the back of another by grace and grace.

Alone.

Today's a pretty good day. But I also want you to have, and I found this interesting that Steve said it, because it's in my notes, and it's the spirit of God's orchestration. I want you to have a real sense of pity today for those that are going to go to hell.

Those that are rejecting the Lord Jesus, maybe they'll believe one day, but right now, could there be a more pitiful situation or circumstance to find yourself in as going to go to hell when you die? So I want you as a Christian to be super thankful and praising God, but I also want you to have pity for.

I don't want you to think you're better. We're not better. We're just as sinful as they are, maybe more, but we've been saved. And along with that pity, I want something to be done regarding that, and that is for you to tell them about the good news.

To tell them the good news that Jesus Christ saves sinners. That they don't have to clean up their lives in order to come to Christ. If you're not a Christian here today, it's not that you have to stop sinning in order to come to Christ.

You can't do that.

Jesus came to save sinners as sinners. And so when I think about the doctrine of hell, I think to myself, I'm very thankful I'm not going there. I also feel sorry for those that are, and then I want to evangelize.

And so today, the four woes from the Lord Jesus Himself, and if you think about His name, Jesus, you ought to think about Savior. If you think about the name Savior, that means He's saving us from someone, and that is the Father's wrath.

The Four Blessings That Set Up the Woes

Now last week, we saw the four blessings. And I want to go over those blessings one more time in review, because it helps us to understand the woes. Four blessings, four woes, and the woes are opposite of the blessings.

So if you understand how great the blessings are, you can realize how bad the woes are. In other words, if you want to be technical about it, this is antithetical parallelism. Parallel thoughts that are the opposite.

So when you know how great the blessings are in Christ Jesus, the riches of His glory in the saints, then you realize how awful the woes of the damned will be. So let's go over first the four blessings, and we'll then get in to the four woes.

As you know, Jesus is giving, as it were, an ordination sermon to His disciples. There were lots of disciples. He calls 12 from those disciples, and then we know when we put Matthew 10 and Mark 3 together with here Luke 6, here's the message to the disciples before they go out and get their nose bloodied for Jesus.

That they're approved by God, and that's what blessing means. It doesn't mean happy. It doesn't mean circumstantial. It doesn't mean feeling. It means you know what God thinks of you in a condescending, gracious way, in a proclamation, you're blessed.

So no matter what happens to you when you're out there ministering, I want you to know up front that you are blessed by God. You want to know what God thinks of you men? Here's what He thinks of you. You're blessed.

And as He's working through these blessings, remember, He's talking about the ultimate consummation, the ultimate end. While there's trials on this earth, don't forget about the end. Remember, we talked about the paradigm last week, creation, fall, what's the third one?

Redemption, and then consummation. There's an end, and so have an eye toward your citizenship in heaven, Paul would say. Of course, that's exactly what the Lord Jesus did. As He's on the way to the cross, what is He thinking about?

It says in Hebrews 12, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of God.

Jesus gives the first woe, and it's really be dependent on God. Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Of course, Matthew said, blessed are the poor in spirit, and that's really the idea.

If you want to take stark terms of poor on earthly terms, temporal terms, poor people in the Old Testament, poor people today, have nowhere to look. They don't have credit cards or resources or lawyers, and they say to themselves, the only way I'm going to get temporal resources is from God.

A poor person in the Bible depended on God, and of course, whether it's temporal blessings of food and money, or it's the ultimate blessings found in the righteousness of Christ Jesus, the blessed person realizes it's all been received, it's all gracious, and they're dependent upon the Lord.

They rely on Him, trusting in Jesus, our great prophet, priest, and king. He goes on to say, what's real blessing look like? Here's what it yields itself in, trusting God for all provisions. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied.

Related to the first one, but tied in, there's an ultimate satisfaction. God will, of course, supply all your needs on earth, but how much more in heaven? All your temporal needs, all your spiritual needs right now on heaven, I mean, right now on earth, and then ultimately in heaven.

The consummation just reverses everything. I like the Belgic Confession, thinking about heaven and satisfaction. The faithful and elect shall be crowned with glory and honor, and the Son of God will confess their names before God, His Father, and His elect angels.

All tears will be wiped away from their eyes, and their cause, which is now condemned by many judges as heretical, will then be made known to be the cause of the Son of God, and for a gracious reward, the Lord will cause them, you included, Christian, to possess such a glory as never entered in the heart of man to conceive.

Therefore, we look to that day with great anticipation. Blessing one, blessing two, now blessing number three, godly sorrow for sin. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh. He's sending the men out, gospel ministry, and he knows that they need to have a view of sin like he does, the Savior does.

Sin ravages, sin destroys, people, nations, communities, marriages, and when you go out there, you think about other people's sins, certainly you think of your own sin, but there's gonna be joy one day.

And then the last blessing, if you remember, is found in verses 22 and 23, and that's a real blessing is when you're persecuted.

For Jesus' sake.

Blessed are you, 622, when people hate you, boy, this sure seems upside down, doesn't it, when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil on account of the Son of Man. Really, those words, Son of Man, drive this whole passage.

It's all about who Jesus is, the divine Son of Man, Daniel 7, coming in the clouds. What do we do in response to such persecution? And again, it's counterintuitive. Rejoice in that day, leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heavens, and for so their fathers did to the prophets.

Remember that man, I think it's Acts chapter three, is it not, and he got up after God had healed him, and he got up, and the only thing I know is the song. He went walking and leaping and what? Praising God.

All the Sunday school teachers and VBS teachers and Juana teachers just smiled at me.

So happy.

Yes, I know they're spurning my name, but now we come to the woes, four woes. It is important for me to tell you to whom these woes are directed. So take a look at chapter six, verse 13, and let's just make sure we understand who the woes are for.

They're not for Christians. They're not for believers. They weren't for those 11. And when day came, chapter six, verse 13, he called his disciples and chose from them 12.

Whom he named apostles.

Verse 17, and he came down with them and stood on a level place with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people. So his disciples are there, broadly speaking. His disciples are there, capital D, are apostles and a great multitude.

When Jesus starts giving the blessings, verse 20, he lifts up his eyes on his disciples and said, so there are many, many people there. He's directing these four blessings to the disciples, proper the 12.

And even if you look at verse 27, it helps because after he gives these woes, he says, but I say to you who hear, love your enemies. And so Jesus is talking and preaching and healing to a great multitude.

He then looks at his disciples and he tells them, these are the four blessings. There are other people now listening. He directs his attention to those who aren't trusting in him, the Messiah. And then he's gonna turn his eyes back in verse 27 to people that believe.

Maybe you're asking yourself the question, what does woe mean? Sometimes people are tricked because they think blessing is happiness and even Bible translators are happy, are those.

But what about woe?

Do we have the same misunderstanding of the word blessing as we do woe? And I'm not trying to be funny here in any way, shape or form, but I just want you to know, this isn't when you try to stop a horse.

Woe, stop. This is a word that's opposite of blessing and a blessing is you're approved by God. What must woe be, you're not approved by God. This is a word that scholars have said means pain. Judgment is coming for you.

Danger is imminent. Some have translated it, how terrible. Some have said, alas, for a definition. Others have said, this is an inconsolable misery. And others talk about the word pity and compassion tied in there.

And I think that is the best. There is a pity and compassion from Jesus, the one who's saying it, knowing that at the end there will be a misery, the ultimate misery. Displeasure, horror. Judgment is coming.

And if you're an unbeliever here today, I want to warn you that there is an inevitable judgment coming when you die one day. It's a warning. Luke uses the word woe other places and I think it'd be helpful if you saw a couple of those.

Keep your finger in Luke six, switch over to Luke 10. Before we're getting into these four woes in particular, I want you just to know what woe means. And you can get the sense of it when it comes from Jesus's mouth here in Luke 10, 13.

Woe to you, Chorazin. Woe to you, Bethsaida. For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago sitting in sackcloth and ashes. There's inevitable judgment and lament and warning.

The next chapter, you see all the woes to the Pharisees and to the lawyers and the leaders of Israel who are, yes, legalistic, but in addition to that, have not recognized the Messiah who sits right in front of them.

And what does Jesus say? Certainly not bless you, Luke 11, 42, for example, but woe to you, Pharisees. Verse 43, woe to you, Pharisees. Verse 44, woe to you. Verse 46, 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. Verse 47, woe. Verse 52, woe. But maybe the most insightful use of Luke's word woe is found in chapter 22.

And if you turn there,.

I think it'd be important for you to see what does the word woe mean? Certainly you don't want Jesus ever to say that to you. Certainly you want him to say you're approved. And by the way, all Christians trusting in the risen Savior, Spirit of God implanted into their hearts, sealed to the day of redemption, having God as Father, adopted into the family of God because of Christ's law-keeping and bearing sins on the cross, rising in great triumph.

We'll never hear the word woe. But here, Luke 22, chapter 22, verse 22, we get some insight into what really woe means and how awful it is. "'For the Son of Man goes as it has been determined, "'sovereignty of God, "'but woe to that man by whom he is betrayed.'".

Not just human responsibility and sovereignty side by side, although that's important. But it would have been better for Judas if he had not been what? Born. Why is that? Because there's something worse than dying.

And that's standing before God without a mediator, Jesus, in hell. If I could, let's go back to Luke six. If I could summarize woe, it essentially means this. When you reject the Son of Man, you don't believe in him, you don't think Jesus is true as preacher, as prophet, and you don't heed his words that say, come unto me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.

When you say, you know what, I'll just believe later, I don't wanna believe now, it's all a myth, then the Bible says, woe to you. For many of these people, all these people here in the text, Jesus is right before them, standing right there.

And if you trust in me, you're blessed. If you don't, there's a woe. You're not approved by God, you're not right with God, you're still an enemy of God, you're still in your sins, you're still a slave to sin, and there's gonna be punishment for sins if you don't believe, if you don't repent.

So Jesus warns them out of love,.

Out of compassion, out of pity.

This is not one of those hellfire and brimstone preachers who actually thinks it's funny for people to go to hell or they deserve to go somehow and he's better than they are. Of course they deserve it, but we all do.

And when we get into it, you're gonna find out that the woes aren't what we might think they were for. Like you'd expect, woe to you murderers, woe to you rapists, woe to you who commit incest, woe to you that make people slaves.

He's not really talking too much about the righteous, excuse me, the unrighteous. He's talking about self-righteous. Woe, number one, that should drive us to thankfulness as Christians, a heart of pity as Christians, evangelistic as Christians, and for unbelievers here, should drive you to the cross of Christ by faith alone.

Self-Righteousness and Receiving One's Consolation

How to go to hell, number one, be self-righteous. It's found in verse 24, be self-righteous. Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. If poor meant I have no resources and I need God's help, then these people that are rich don't think they need any help.

Of course, on earth, that's true, but ultimately, in a spiritual sense, I'm fine as I am. I have plenty of self-righteousness. I have plenty of my own righteousness, and I'm confident I can withstand judgment day.

And maybe it's just because in their minds, they're thinking, well, you know, I've done more good than bad. That's even self-righteous. I have more self-righteousness than I've done self-wrongly, if you would.

My own goodness, the self-righteous person says, will shield me from God's wrath, will protect me from the wrath of God. I have a substitute, and it's not Jesus, it's me. You're telling me, God, I need perfect law-keeping,.

Perfect righteousness.

You mean to tell me, Jesus, in Matthew 5, 48, I have to be as perfect as God is to get into heaven? Well, you know what? I'll just water down God's perfection a little bit, and I'll tune up my goodness a little bit, and so I don't really need the cross to bridge the gap.

God's not that holy, I'm not that sinful, and the gap now that I need to break and to cross can be my own goodness, my own righteousness. Now, Joseph of Arimathea, he was rich. Job was rich. Abraham was rich.

Luke was rich, a physician. Matthew was rich, a tax collector. Nicodemus was rich. He's not talking about if you're only rich, you don't make it, but he's saying, as on earth, rich people are self-dependent upon their own riches, they don't feel the need.

It carries over into people who think they're rich in spirit. You say, oh, I don't know about that, Pastor Mike. What is Luke really talking about when it says rich? Go to chapter 12, and I think we find the answer.

Would you like to know what kind of rich person the writer Luke is talking about? The answer's found here in chapter 12, verse 15 and following. And Jesus said to them, take care, 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 of himself and to himself,.

What shall I do?

I have nowhere to store my crops. And he said, I'll do this. I'll tear down my barns and build large ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. I'll say to my soul, soul, you have ample goods.

Laid up for many years. Soul, relax. Soul, eat.

Soul, drink.

Soul, 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. That's the kind of rich person that Jesus is giving a woe to. Rich is found in Christ Jesus by faith alone. People say, I don't need Jesus.

I'm good to go on my own. James said in chapter five, come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. In other words, don't trust in your own goodness. Don't trust in your own righteousness.

Why would Jesus come and live if you didn't need his righteousness? Why would he die if your righteousness could withstand the fury of God? Jeremiah 50, woe to them, for their day has come, the time of their punishment.

How scary. Back to Luke six, what does Jesus say?

Woe to you who are rich,.

For you have received your consolation. In other words, you've been paid in full now. This is as good as it gets now. This is your best life now because it's hell coming later. This is all you're going to get when it comes to riches.

For you have received your consolation. Ecclesiastes, naked a man comes from his mother's womb and as he departs, as he comes, so he departs. He takes nothing from his labor that he can carry in his hand.

This is all you're gonna get. If you're not a Christian, this is it. This is the best. John Rockefeller died and they ask his accountant, how much did John D. Rockefeller leave? And the accountant said, all of it.

Exactly right. Now when I was growing up, my grandparents read the newspaper and I especially remember them reading obituaries. Now we don't have newspapers and I don't know how many people have read obituaries lately.

We don't read them unless we want to learn about Chuck Strong and what he did in his life and what the Lord had him do. But I remember grandma and grandpa just reading obituaries, thinking about death.

And I thought, you know what? There's something to be said, reminding ourselves about death. And now at 64, you know, to me, death was always, I knew it was true, I knew it was theoretical. It happened to other people, but I've got a long way to go.

And now I'm thinking, train's getting faster. Here we come, I might live another 30 years. But I've got less time on that side than I do on this side, and I'm thinking, death is real. I don't do this often.

I'm not trying to say I'm such a godly guy, but I woke up this morning and I said, thank you, Lord, I'm alive. I guess the mere fact of me waking up proves that point, but I still said it to him anyway.

The other thing, I don't think we do much anymore, and if I was a younger dad, I'd do this. I take my kids to the junkyard. Sometimes we are kids who go into the junkyard because there we can shoot our 410 shotguns at cans and nobody got after us.

Everything we have, if you're gonna put your trust in your own self-righteousness or the things that you have, it's over when you die. And by the way, I read that 95 million people die every year. One every three seconds.

And the Lord Jesus, because he's kind and he's compassionate and he's a faithful prophet to the Father, warns people, don't go to hell. Run, flee. Jesus said, it's better for you to lose one of your members than let your whole body go into hell.

Jesus said, do not fear those who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. And since Psalm 16 is correct,.

In your right hand there are what?

Pleasures forevermore. The exact opposite, the antithetical thing is true when it comes to hell. Of course, people think God isn't in hell but God is everywhere. And a good way to think about heaven and hell is heaven is being in the presence of a thrice holy God with a mediator and an advocate and a friend, Jesus.

You can withstand God's holiness. And God is everywhere, including the sun. And to be in hell is to be in God's presence without a mediator or a lawyer or an advocate. It is God in hell who torments, who judges, and who is the eternal executioner.

Christian, now can you kind of get a little taste of what was going on in Paul's heart in jail when he knew he was prosecuting Jesus by prosecuting Christians? And then on that Damascus road, God changes his heart and he humbles Paul, he grants him faith.

And then he said, for Jesus' sake, I have suffered the loss of all things. I count them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ and to be found in him. I can imagine Paul standing on his tiptoes in prison, not having a righteousness of my own that comes through the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, may share in his suffering, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible, I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

No wonder Paul was so happy. He knew what he deserved. We know what we deserved. And he knew what he got based on grace and we know the same thing. How do you go to hell? Just be unrighteous.

That's true.

Spiritual Contentment Without Hunger for God

But be self-righteous is just as bad, maybe worse. Second, found in Luke 6, not just self-righteousness, but spiritual contentment, spiritual contentment.

Ah, who cares?

No big deal.

I'm fine.

Related to the first, but a little bit different. Verse 25, woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry. Matthew 5, Jesus gives us insight. Hunger for what? Righteousness. These are people, and if you're an unbeliever, this is you.

You don't hunger after God. You don't hunger after Jesus. You're not desiring to learn more and earnestly seeking him. You're not hungry after understanding grace and how wonderful it is. Your appetite for God is nothing except maybe you come today because your parents made you, your spouse wanted you to.

No appetite for God. This is language of Isaiah 65. God's saying, you shall be hungry, you shall be thirsty, you shall be put to shame, you shall cry out for pain of heart, and you shall wail for breaking of spirit.

These people are so full of self, they don't think they need God. It's me, myself, and I. It's not theology, it's me-ology, as some people say. Just everything revolves around me. I'm the center of the universe.

Look at those, so tragically, they're full now. See, you get everything now, not later. There's a later. Remember, the fool says, there's no big deals, no tomorrow. I'm not gonna think about heaven and hell.

I'm just gonna drown myself with hedonism and pleasure and everything else because if I think about hell, then it's hard to fornicate with pleasure. It's hard to be an idolater with great joy. I'm gonna push that all to the side.

And Jesus said, you ought to be hungering for righteousness' sake and for righteousness. And I look at these people that think this way.

I was that way.

And I think to myself, certainly not I'm better. I think to myself, could there be a more pitiful position to be in? You don't know what's coming. You don't know the Damocles of judgment. It's sure. God's justice grinds slowly at times and it grinds always finally.

The unbeliever's so caught up in everything else, they're just content with themselves. And I think probably what the bottom line with all this is, they don't understand God's view of sin. Because what we do is we say, well, this is something people say all the time.

My life's messy. No, your room's messy. Your life is sin splattered. Adam's in your own. Did you know you could probably describe sin in many ways? Cosmic treason, an atrocity to God.

Lawlessness,.

Unjust, I mean, think of the angels in heaven in Luke chapter six. They're completely pure and holy and they cover their faces in the presence of a transcendent God. Habakkuk said, your eyes God are too pure to approve evil and you cannot look on wickedness with favor.

And so dear unbeliever who's listening today, while you might have syndromes and diseases and illnesses and boo-boos and your life is a mess,.

You're a sinner. You're a sinner.

The good news is Jesus came to save sinners. We agree, we're sinners. We confess Jesus as the sin bearer.

There's hope.

Jesus didn't die for diseases and illnesses and all that stuff, excuses. I mean, I don't know if you ever thought about this dear unbeliever. But there's no cruel and unusual punishment in hell. It's deserved.