Hell Is a Good Place - It Vindicates Gods Glory — Tim Conway

I have to admit to you that the topic matter that I am going to bring this morning, it is with some trepidation that I bring it to you. Even as near as last night, I was asking, Lord, is that really what I should bring?

I know that it may not be a popular message, but it's biblical. And I think just in talking with the leaders of your church, in the few minutes before the service started today, one thing I believe that I've seen in these men already is that you are a church that does desire to be biblical.

The Doctrine of Hell and God-Centeredness

And therefore, I have come from San Antonio this morning. I believe God has sent me here to bring you a message on the doctrine of hell. And I have been studying this topic for the last three weeks. And it is fearful.

I thought at first to maybe bring you a message on prayer. Because I know some of you will go away today with a bad feeling. That bad feeling will be connected with this guy from San Antonio. I understand that.

And I may not be the most popular preacher for it. But one thing that is true about the doctrine of hell, it will test you. It will test you as to whether you are truly a God-centered church. The doctrine of hell does test our God-centeredness.

It is a biblical doctrine. And it is a good doctrine for us to look at this morning. Before we dive into it, let's pray. Oh Father, even as I consider myself preaching on this, Lord, how I've been reminded how much I deserve this place.

How much I deserve the torments that I'll describe today. Lord, You've not only saved me, You've made me a preacher. I don't understand it. Lord, oh You are a God of wrath, but You are a God of such great goodness as well.

Such a God of grace. A God of glory. Lord, I pray for Your help right now. May You give me the thoughts, may You give me the words. Father, I pray that Your Spirit would attend to this. Lord, do in this place this morning what I can't do.

Do in the hearts of these people what I can't do. Please Lord, for Your glory's sake, for Christ's sake, Amen. Well, if you have your Bibles, please open to Revelation 14. Revelation 14. Would you like to stand?

Revelation 14 and the Fourfold Outline of Hell

We will read God's Word. Revelation 14, I'm going to begin reading in verse 9. And another angel, a third, followed them, saying with a loud voice, If anyone worships the beast and its image, and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink the wine of God's wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.

And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest day or night. You may be seated. I've got four points this morning. Security, severity, suitability, and sanctity. And what I mean by that is the security of the world.

They don't think they're going there. The severity of this place that's described. The suitability of it, and the sanctity. Sanctity, that's a word that has to do with the holiness. Hell is a fearful place, but it's a good place when we understand it right.

When we understand the glory of God aright. First, the security. Yesterday, myself and some others from my church, we were out. We went to a place where the homeless gather. We take the gospel to them.

I stood up on the back of a pickup truck and I preached to the people that were gathered there. Most of these are homeless. They're drunks, they're drug addicts, they're prostitutes. And I said, how many of you think that you'll go to hell?

How many hands do you think went up? Not one. The world has themselves convinced that this is a place that they are not going to. Every man devises. When men hear about the doctrine of hell, when they hear that there is a hell.

Even when they hear that few go to heaven. Few there be that find it. They suppose. They contrive. They reason. They scheme. Not me. Not me. I'm not going to go there. Somehow, every one of us. For 25 years of my life, I was lost.

I served sin. I served self. I served Satan. I did not think I was going to hell. Now, praise God, I'm not. But it wasn't because of any of my plans back then. No man wants to believe he's going there.

And you know, some of you, you've read this text. I know that there are those of you, I know. I know based on what God's Word tells me. Some of you in this place that hear my voice will go to the place I described today.

Some of you are headed there. You don't think you are, but even now you provoke God by your very attendance of His worship today. Because you have not Christ. You have no hope. You're without God. But you don't think you'll go there.

You think that somehow you're going to reason. You're going to figure out because of something that you have done or are doing or hope to do in the future. Somehow, you plan to miss that place. And I know some of us, we can look at this text.

You know, when I was lost, I would have said what maybe many would say. Out in the world and in this place too. I don't worship the beast. I mean, we can go into the bathroom after the service and look in the mirror.

I don't have... And one of the problems with that is we've watched too much of the left behind series. Because if you go looking for a 666 on your hand, you're not going to find it. What does it mean when it speaks about the mind?

Or the forehead? And the hand? We have it described in other places. If we want to rightly interpret the book of Revelation, we ought to look at what the rest of the Scriptures say to us. We go to the 8th chapter of the book of Romans.

It speaks about the mind. The mind that is set on the things of the flesh is death. It is eternal damnation. It is at enmity against God. It is hostile towards Him. You want to know what a mark on the head is?

The head has to do with the thoughts. I can pretty much describe accurately those of you who are right now on the broad way of destruction. What fills your thoughts? I'm not asking if you're a member of this church.

Or whether you own a Bible and even maybe read it. What consumes your thoughts? That will tell me and that will tell you who your God is. Your God is who you think about. Now, I didn't think about God very much when I was a lost man.

But God fills my mind now. And the hands! The hands, they're a symbol of what we do. You want to see this described for us? Matthew 25. No better description in all of God's Word. The hands. You want to know whether you've got the mark of the beast on your hands?

Size it up. What does Christ say? Who is it that's going to eternal punishment? I was in prison. I was sick. I was hungry. I was thirsty. I was naked. You didn't help me. You didn't... Lord, when didn't we help you?

As much as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you have not done it unto me. And they will be told to depart and they will go away into eternal torments. Men reason. And men scheme. But the fact is God's Word says that many, many, many are on that way of destruction.

Many there are. That is fearful. In a Gallup poll taken in the United States, less than 4 of Americans believe that they might go to hell. Not 4%, less than 4%. And don't believe that they are going, they believe that there is a possibility they may go.

Do you know what that tells me? There are many that are deceived. And I don't want there to be those in here that are deceived. Approximately, approximately, 100 million people will die between now and the 20th of February next year.

100 million people. That's staggering. If you do the mathematics, that comes out to about 3 people every second are passing into eternity. That fast souls are going out of this world. Into an eternal hell or an eternal joy.

And God's Word says most of those are on the broad way to destruction. Christ is the only way to the Father. Those who are Buddhists in this world are passing into damnation. Those who died practicing Muslims are going practicing Catholics.

If they are worshiping Mary, they are not worshipers of Christ. One of those clicks has your name on it. Think about it. Another, and another, and another, and another, and another. They are passing off into eternity right now.

And another, and another. When you take your next breath, in the time it took, more souls are passing off into eternity. Men walk around, they say peace and safety, peace and safety. And the Word of God says then sudden destruction.

It takes hold on them. Then they have these plans. If we could bring up the dam from hell right now, what would they say to us? I never thought to go here. I never thought hell would take me. I thought I had it figured out.

It took me in a moment. It took me when I didn't expect it. I'm into eternity. They did not expect hell to take them when it did. Jonathan Edwards, so long ago, he described men as walking over the pit of hell on a rotten covering.

And there are weak places in that covering. And they know not where they are or when they're going to step on them. And in a moment when they think not, their feet slip. And they're gone. Your sins, if you are without Christ, your sins are mounting up.

They're increasing. In 1 Thessalonians 2, Paul speaks about the Jews and the measure of their sin filling up. Do you know there's a place in the Old Testament, in Genesis, where God told Abraham, your people will go into Egypt and they will come back into this land, but not yet.

It'll be after 400 years, because the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full. There's a place in Daniel, chapter 12, verse 2. It speaks about the transgressions reaching their limit. If you are without Christ, your sins are mounting up.

And the moment is coming when God will no longer endure you to stay here. God created man in His image to be bearers of good fruit in this life. Christ told His disciples that. You're going to glorify My Father by bringing forth much fruit.

Christ died to make us fruitful people. But if you will not bear good fruit... Remember what John the Baptist told the people, the axe is laid at the root. If you don't bring forth fruits, meat for repentance or indicative of repentance, that axe is laid there.

Now God has a purpose. To be glorified. God will be glorified by every soul in this room. He will be. But if you will not glorify Him actively by good works, you will glorify Him passively by a demonstration of His power.

In Romans chapter 9, it says very clearly that the vessels of wrath are being fitted for destruction. And God will glorify His power and His wrath through you. You will glorify God actively or passively.

And speaking of statistics that we talked about just a second ago. Statistically, 100 of all people who do not bring forth good works, 100 of all people who die without Christ, they are in hell now.

The Severity and Eternity of Hell

Second thing, the severity. I have literally trembled as I have studied this topic. What causes my soul to shake within me is the eternality, the foreverness of hell. Before I did a series on hell at my own church, I did a series on heaven.

It's a glorious doctrine. It is glorious. But you know there is something glorious about the doctrine of hell too. It is glorious in its dreadfulness, in its fearfulness, because it reveals to us a part of God that oftentimes we don't like to admit is real and exists.

But it is necessary. We love to talk about God's love, God's goodness, God's mercy, God's compassion, God's forbearance, God's tender mercies. Oh, and it is good, it is good, good to give thanks to the Lord for those things.

But when you think about the severity of hell, you begin to realize it is no slap on the wrist. Hell is fearsome. It is dreadful. We read our Bibles and we can pass over those texts so freely, so easily.

Weeping, gnashing of teeth. In the ESV, in Matthew 18, it speaks about the hell of fire. Hell is a place of fire. I thought about my grandmother's house. I grew up in Michigan. My grandmother, she lived in a past age in the home she lived in.

She actually had a fire burning furnace in the basement. And I can remember times going down and throwing fire in the furnace to keep grandma's house warm in the winter. And you open that door and there is a raging infernal fire inside that furnace.

And Christ described hell as a fiery furnace. You can imagine being pushed through that little hole and then the door is shut. And it will never open. It will never open. Man, you've burned yourself on the finger.

If anything can be attached to the idea of fire, it is the idea of pain. It should strike within our minds that hell is a place of pain. Unimaginable. The man in Luke 16, he cried out in his torments if only he could have a drop of water for his tongue.

But not even that would be given to him. The thing that is so fearful about hell is not just that it is a fiery furnace. Not just that Isaiah would say, not who can dwell with those fires, but who can dwell with the everlasting burnings.

Everlasting. That is the horror of horrors about hell is it never ends. It is pain that is excruciating. It is anguish. Our generation knows very little about pain. We have so many medications, so much to dull the pain.

But here, there will be nothing to dull it. God will not relieve your pain no matter how you cry, no matter how you weep. Think of weeping. Have you ever just wept uncontrollably? You've lost a beloved one.

Something traumatic has happened in your life where you have just wept uncontrollably. That is how Christ describes hell. It is a place of weeping. You will weep. Think of this. To weep forever. You will weep if you land in hell.

You will weep more than all the weeping that has ever been done in all the ages of all the earth. You will fill up the measure of the weeping of every individual who has passed through life. Because you will weep, and you will weep, and you will weep.

And there is the idea of the gnashing of teeth. Whether it's in the unbearable, excruciating pain, there are places in the Scripture that attach the gnashing of teeth to anger as well. The anger at others.

The anger at yourself. The anger at God still. Hell is not what some make it out to be like purgatory. Hell does not make better. The doctrine of hell is about eternal destruction. It doesn't make better.

It destroys everything that has any semblance of good. The image of God that is upon you, man, will be eternally defaced and defiled. You will become more and more and more contemptible as the eternal ages pass by.

And think about that. Daniel describes it as a place of eternal contempt. Do you know what the word contempt means? It means that in the sight of God, He will find you absolutely vile, absolutely loathsome to behold.

I know, 2 Thessalonians talks about destruction, eternal destruction, away from or apart from His presence. Christ would say in the Gospels, depart from Me. And there is a departing from all of God's goodness.

Some of you may say right now, I don't mind that. I don't mind living apart from God. In fact, God makes me uncomfortable. I don't like the demands on my life. I don't like this thing about repentance.

I don't mind being without God. But nobody is without God. Not even in hell. Everything that you have right now. Everything we're able to enjoy. You sink your teeth into an apple. Or you enjoy a piece of pie.

You have a nice warm blanket to cover up with. I talked with a young man yesterday. A scar from a bullet hole in his head. Been shot in the leg. He's here in Texas now because he's running from California because he's already got two strikes against him.

One more and he goes to prison forever. Forever in his life. He said, what has God done for me? My mom's dead. My grandma's dead. My dad's in jail for life. I don't know where my brothers and sisters are.

I have nothing. I said, that's not true. You have a coat on now. You've enjoyed the day. You just had a meal. You've rewrapped with a blanket. You see, in that sense, we are departed from God. But in a real sense as well, we do not leave God's presence because it is God Himself who with a perfect hatred forever will pour out His contempt upon us.

Ezekiel. Some of the Old Testament prophets had very fearful things to say. God says in Ezekiel 8, Therefore, I will act in wrath. My eye will not spare, nor will I have pity. And though they cry in My ears with a loud voice, I will not hear them.

He will hate you with a perfect hatred. He will hate you and He will have you. That is the fearsomeness of hell. The text we read says that those in hell, they are going to be tormented. Where? In the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb.

Divine Wrath, Holiness, and the Fear of God

One of the most fearful things about hell is not the total absence of God, the absence of all of His blessings. Yes. Can you imagine forevermore with not any joy, no more comfort? But God is going to be there.

One of the fearful things about God, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. He is a consuming fire. And when He sets His face against you, He will trample you out in the winepress of His wrath.

And it is forever. Jonathan Edwards, he said, that Almighty God will inflict wrath without any pity when God beholds the unspeakable, he said the ineffable, extremity of your case and sees your torment to be so vastly disproportioned to your strength and sees how your poor soul is crushed and sinks down, as it were, into an infinite gloom.

He will have no compassion upon you. He will not forbear the executions of His wrath or in the least, lighten His hand. There will be no moderation, no mercy. He will have no regard to your welfare. Nor be at all careful, lest you should suffer too much in any other sense than only that you shall not suffer beyond what strict justice requires.

Nothing shall be withheld because it is so hard for you to bear. Now, I said, hell is going to test our God-centeredness. Sometimes when we go out on the streets in San Antonio, take the Gospel to some of the homeless, we'll run into people from other churches.

They want to tell these people all the time, God loves you. God loves you. Jesus loves you. I know that God shows great compassion upon His enemies. I know He does. He causes the sun to rise on the just and the unjust.

Someone has done a study of God's hatred in the Word of God. They examined 33 texts and you can do this yourself concerning the hatred of God. Do you know that only 12 of those texts describe God as hating the sin?

Twelve. Twenty-one describe God as hating the sinner. The psalmist said, his soul hates the wicked. He hates all evildoers. One of the things that we have to grasp, you come to a text like John 3 .36, the wrath of God abides upon you already if you are not a believer in Jesus Christ.

Already! That doesn't mean that God goes around with a perpetual smile upon you. It means what it says. His wrath is upon you. If you can get this idea into your minds, into your souls, into your thought process, that there are those of us in this place right now who sit here at relative ease, God hates you.

God's wrath, God's indignation, God's anger is directed to you more than some who are in hell right at this moment. You say, can that be? Yes! Because some of you have sinned in the face of greater light.

God's Word says, to whom much is given, much is required. That servant who knew his Master's will and didn't do it will be beaten with greater stripes. There are some of you, you have heard the Gospel.

You have heard the truth. You have mothers or fathers or wives or husbands who have prayed for you. You have a Bible in your hand. And you know what? You have provoked God more than some who have lived in past generations in inland China or central Africa.

Because you have far more light. And God's hatred towards you is stirred. His indignation is stirred far more than for those who are there. And the only thing that keeps you out of hell right now, the only thing is God's will to keep you there.

God's forbearance. There is nothing else. There is no promise. Because the covenants of promise, the promises that are found within the covenant in this book, they are yea and amen in Jesus Christ alone.

But you don't believe the promises of the covenant. And you have no part of the mediator of the covenant. You walk over a rotten covering. The measure of your sins is filling up. And that moment is going to come when God is not going to abide you to stay upon this earth one moment longer.

Not one moment longer. And it is a fearful thing. And as I study this, I sit at my desk constantly thinking of my children. It's a fearful, fearful thing. But it is a reality. And preachers who will not preach on this, they're not faithful to you.

Because God's Word says this. Oh, the series on heaven was glorious. It took me to levels. It's fearful. We lack, by and large, a sense of fear of God in our assemblies. The weeping and the mourning have long since departed many of the churches in the United States of America.

Hell as a Just and Suitable Punishment

The fear of God. The trembling. Because by and large, we've lost the doctrine of hell in our country. God is love and He is. But we have a lopsided theology today. The third thing I would say about hell is its suitability.

Do we think it's too severe? We will think it's too severe if we are too man-centered in our thinking. I was thinking, I love missions. My desire, my heart and soul, is to eventually be on the foreign mission field permanently.

I love to read the missionary biographies. But I look around today and I see very few in our generation that are willing to do what they did in the days of Adoniram Judson or William Carey or Hudson Taylor.

Who are willing to go off to the foreign lands. You know why? Because they could not stand that among the heathen God's glory was not being exalted. They couldn't sleep at night. Carey would stand for hours working on shoes and stare at maps thinking about the heathen that were passing off into eternity with no knowledge of Christ, no knowledge of the Gospel.

They wanted God to be glorified among the nations. What happens in the U .S. today? Young men and young women run off to the mission field. You know it. If you've studied the numbers in the Southern Baptist Convention, you know it.

The average stay on the foreign mission field is one term. They come home, it's all over. You know why? Because God's glory is not the main thing. Their comfort is. And we live in a generation that you know it.

God's glory is not the main thing. We drive down our highways. God is the greatest reality in all the universe. Drive down the highways. Where's God? Where is He on the billboards? Where is He on the talk radio?

Where is He on the television? Where is He? God's glory doesn't matter anymore. But hell wakes us up to it. Hell stares this humanistic mindset straight in the face. As one has said, it is like a brutal claw that just tears through the fabric of our humanistic thinking.

It is exactly that. We need to hear about this. And furthermore, the doctrine of hell, it shows us that our view of sin, our views of sin, we don't know exactly what is happening, but we can think, one of the ladies of our church had her purse stolen.

We have people come in off the street, eat at our church. Prostitutes, crack addicts. One of them stole my wife's purse. We look at that, and our mindset today is, oh look what they did to Ruby. We get to the point in our generation where self-esteem, man's importance, man's happiness, there's such a self-centered view, such a humanistic, the horizontal plane is where we view sin.

We tend to forget that when we sin, when God's law says, thou shalt not steal, it is not ultimately you I violate when I sin against you. It is God who gave that law. It is His law that is broken. You remember how Joseph said, oh not how can I do this sin against Potiphar, how can I sin, when Potiphar's wife was trying to seduce him, how can I do this sin before God?

In Psalm 51, David is not pre-eminently sorrowing over the fact that he had killed Uriah, or committed adultery with Bathsheba. He looked up to God. He said, oh God, before You, before You I have sinned.

The doctrine of hell is a wake-up call to us that our sin is not ultimately against one another. It is ultimately against God. And the doctrine of hell wakes us up to the fact that we have made God into some little man-centered image as well.

We see God primarily oftentimes for what He can do for us. God is mainly there to answer my prayers. God is mainly there to take care of my problems. God is mainly there to help me with my financial difficulties.

Mainly there to help heal my marriage. Mainly there to take care of me. We may come into the celestial Santa Claus who's at our beck and call to do what we call upon Him. Just recently, I had a woman email me.

Would you please pray for me? I don't feel that I have gotten all the riches that I think I should have in becoming a Christian. That's the mindset today. That's where we come up with a God who's all about our health, our wealth, our prosperity.

But again, the doctrine of hell, it jumps in our face. It comes to the edges of our conscience. There are disturbing whispers in it that there is a God here that we cannot manipulate. There is a God here that we cannot minimize.

There is a God who is holy. There is a God who is mighty. There is a God who is going to exact perfect judgment on sin. There is a God who is fearsome. There is a God who is not to be toyed with, not to be played with.

And He is the preeminent Being in this universe. It is not all about me. Yes, I can look to God to provide my daily food. But whether I eat or whether I drink, it is to be done to His glory. His glory.

The thing God values most of all is His glory. Not mine. His. Oh, it is a doctrine that can help us to realize that we are small. That He is big. You begin to realize that sin is satisfactory. Satisfactorily dealt with in hell.

You see, when I look at sin, and I see it as a relatively small thing, and I look at the eternality of hell, it seems like there's a vast difference between them. Spurgeon said that when those who fall into the pit of hell, they are going to see everywhere forever, forever, forever, above everything, above every door, if there were such things there, on everything, on every chain there, is going to be written forever.

There is utter hopelessness. We look at that. Oh, but sin is such a small thing. I mean, if I committed sin for 70 years of my life here, how is it God can torment me forever in hell? Doesn't there seem like there's some disproportionate dealing with the sin there?

But not at all once we realize who our sin is against ultimately. Who the God is that we sin against? What He is? You know, it's one thing it's one thing if we squash a fire ant or we swat a mosquito.

But you know, it's another thing altogether. If you find your child out in the yard rather than stepping on ants, he's out there taking living cats and mutilating them in your yard. You would probably respond differently.

You know why? Because you attach greater significance to a cat. There's greater worth in your estimation. And it would be even different if you saw somebody brutally killing a child. In your estimation, the sin would be much greater.

Because the one the sin is against has greater worth. But how do you measure sin that is committed against an infinitely holy God? Even the smallest sin committed against an infinitely holy God, it is infinite.

It is infinitely wicked. When we hear, forever is reasonable when we see in the one who is sentenced to that place wickedness that is infinite. Some of you that hear my voice quickly moving in that direction.

And the fearful thing is, and I realize this about my children as well, my children are the children of a pastor and of a godly mother who have the Word of God brought to them just about daily, multiple times per day.

They have been born under such light. And to resist that light, I know that those cannibals in Papua New Guinea, as wretched as that sin seems to us, the hottest parts of hell, the most incredible torments are reserved for those that have sat under the greatest light.

Who have filled our churches on Sunday mornings. Sin, as the Apostle says in Romans, is exceedingly sinful. If we saw something in wicked men that should appear as hateful to us as eternal misery appears dreadful, something that should as much stir up indignation and detestation in us as eternal misery does terror, all objections against this doctrine would vanish at once.

The Sanctity of Hell and the Vindication of God's Glory

You see, the doctrine of hell, it confronts us with two infinities. An infinite God and an eternal hell. And just to finish up, the last thing, the sanctity of hell. I know, to some degree, we are man-centered.

The best of us in here. And to some degree in this lifetime, our compassion directed to the lost is something that we should give our heart to. And we should mourn over. But those of us that are here, we're in Christ.

When you stand in glory, and there's a number of texts that would give us every indication that we will see the damned in hell. We will. The last verse of Isaiah. The fact, even the one we read, we are going to be in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb.

And if those who are going to be suffering eternal torment will be there as well, I think it is very likely that we will see them. In Luke 16, Lazarus saw the rich man. The rich man could see. There was a great chasm between them.

But the visibility was there. In this life, there are parents here. I know you're here. As I feel it myself. You would gladly do what Matthew 18 says. You would gladly lose an eye, lose a foot, lose a hand, that your children might be spared from hell.

Wouldn't you? In a moment. But even if it's your child, your mother, your brother, who ends up in that eternal place of torment, and you're in glory, believe it, the glory of Christ will so consume you.

The suffering of the damned at that time will not cause you sorrow. It will not cause you grief. It will not cause you pain. Those who are in hell will be so stripped of every good. They will be seen for what they are.

Everything good about them will be taken from them. What they seem to have, they will no longer have. Every bit of common grace that was bestowed upon them will be withdrawn. They will be seen to be the horrible, detestable creatures they are.

And you will be so in love with Christ and so enamored by His glory. What hell will do in that day, it will open your eyes to the glories of Christ all the more. Because there, what hell is going to do is vindicate the majesty of God that was despised by those who are in hell.

You see, our sin can be measured by the one who is insulted by it. God is ultimately the one insulted by our sin. His majesty is insulted. How many times in the first chapter of Romans does it say, they exchanged?

They exchanged the glory of the immortal God. They exchanged it. In Jeremiah, he says, my people, they committed two evils. What did they do? They exchanged. It is that deadly exchange. Drinking from the broken cisterns, they've given up Him.

See how it tramples upon the majesty of God. And when God shows His redeemed in hell, that it is so utterly, infinitely dreadful, you know what it's going to do? It is going to magnify the majesty that was despised by the sin of those who were there.

Because you understand, if their punishment was less, if their suffering was less, it would speak of lesser glory that was insulted by the sin they committed. And so, His majesty is going to glow all the more brighter in our estimation because of it.

And His perfect justice is as well going to be glorified. The glory of God is the greatest good. The glory of God in His justice is going to shine. He will appear as the just governor of all the universe.