Hell, Apostasy And Eternal Judgment - [Hebrews 10:26-31]

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One day I'll retire, or I will die, and you'll have to hire another pastor. And I hope the elders ask them, the candidates to be the new pastor, ask him this question to start.
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Do you believe in a literal hell? That's the question that all pastors need to be asked.
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It tells a lot about what you think of sin, righteousness, the holiness of God, judgment, the death of Christ, what happened on the cross.
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I read of a group of soldiers on a navy ship, and they asked the chaplain, do you believe in hell? No. Well then, will you please resign?
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For if there is no hell, then we do not need you, and if there is, we do not wish to be led astray. This morning we come to a very sobering section, a very grave section of Scripture.
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Please turn your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 10. As you know, we've been going through the book of Hebrews, and Hebrews extols
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Jesus. We think of Jesus often as a king, and He is. We think of Him often as a prophet, and He certainly is.
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But this book extols Him in 10 chapters as a high priest. And remember, priests, they essentially had two functions back in the
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Old Testament. They were to sacrifice, and they were to pray. And so this Jesus, the great high priest, the
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God -man, He was the sacrifice for sins Himself, and He lives to make intercession.
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And everything about this book is driving you to think rightly about who Jesus is. You have to have the right knowledge of the object of your faith.
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And certainly, there is more to faith than just knowing. There is more to faith than intellectual assent.
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But you have to have that in order to trust this God -man, in order to rely on and rest on.
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And so this book has been systematically marching through just who Jesus is. And we would call this
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Christology. And it's wonderful because here's the good news about this Jesus. If you'll simply trust in Him, rest in Him, believe on Him, you have forgiveness.
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Period. There'll be no sin that you'll ever have to pay for. Simply trusting in Jesus.
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We sang several songs this morning that talked about how we get His righteousness and how He gets our sin.
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About Jesus proved that that transaction worked because He's been raised from the dead. And everything in this book, this pastor, this preacher, wants you to realize, yes,
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I should believe. Yes, I should trust. Yes, I should hope in this risen Savior. But there's a flip side to this, and that's the sobering side.
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That's the solemn side. That's the grave side. And that is, what happens to the person that spits in the face of this
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Son? What happens to the person that says, hiding behind their morals, hiding behind their self -righteousness, hiding behind their unrighteous life,
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I don't care about you, Jesus. You're intruding in my life. I want my own autonomy. I want to run my own life.
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And I don't care about you. What happens to those kind of people? Hebrews 10 verses 26 through 31 has our passage today.
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Let me read it, and then we'll work through this sobering idea of an eternal hell for those who reject
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Jesus Christ. Hebrews 10, 26, For if we go on sinning deliberately, after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.
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Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses.
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How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the
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Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the
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Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, Vengeance is mine,
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I will repay. And again, the Lord will judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living
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God. Bow with me, please. Father in heaven, would you help us this morning to think rightly, to not let our emotions run ahead of us, or our thoughts about what the world might think, or what it says about inclusiveness of Jesus?
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Help us to think biblically, help us to think rightly. And Father, for those that are Christians today, pray that you might help them to be more thankful that this judgment isn't theirs, and to be more evangelistic, because they don't want this judgment to fall on anyone else.
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To be thankful for the great high priest. And Father, there are certainly those that are here today that are rejecting your
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Son, not trusting, not believing. Father, would you grant them repentance? Would you grant them saving faith?
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I pray that they would be frightened. I pray that they would be afraid. I pray that their conscience would be attacked, so that they might drop down their weapons of self -righteousness, and religion, and trust in the risen
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Savior, Jesus. Father, please, in your name we pray. Amen. Now, the positive side of all this is,
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He, the writer, has been kind of almost egging you on to say, Believe in this great
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Jesus. You can trust in Him. You can bank on Him. You can entrust your eternal soul to this
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Jesus. But there's the flip side of people who say, No, I don't need an advocate.
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I don't need a high priest. I'll be my own advocate, my own mediator, my own high priest. Thank you.
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The bad news is, everybody here, including myself, is going to die one day, and stand before God, and then what will happen?
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Are we going to hide behind our own self -righteousness? Are we going to get baptized? My parents are Christians. I do good.
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I have a nice job. All those things are irrelevant, because the Bible says, All have sinned and fall short of what?
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It doesn't even say the law of God. You'd think it would say, fall short of the law of God. But here, fall short of the glory of God, because as we disobey the law, the glory of God is eclipsed in the mind of that lawbreaker.
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He has just said, has he not, in verse 19 and following, If you come to Christ, you have assurance and confidence.
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Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that He opened for us, through the curtain, that is through His flesh, and since we have, present tense, a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance, not only confidence, but now assurance of faith.
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Why? With our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water, let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.
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He has said, if you trust in this Jesus, your sins have been taken care of, assuaged wrath is taken care of, and so please, everyone come, trust in Jesus.
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But now he answers the question, for those that say, I don't, I won't, I will not, what happens to them?
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It's odd these days to even hear a sermon on hell, is it not? What does that say for evangelicalism?
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What he's talking about here today is not a sin that a Christian commits.
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He doesn't even tell us what those sins are, because the context is, verse 26, do you notice?
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Verse 4? The context is, if you won't trust in Jesus, if you won't rest in Jesus, the opposite is, you defy
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Him, you deny Him, you're an apostate. This is not a Christian who sins, because when a
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Christian sins, we confess our sins, and He's faithful and just and forgives our sins, right? This is for the person that says,
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I defy you, I will not do it, I don't care if I have to burn in hell, I'm not going to trust you, this man will not reign over me.
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What happens to that person? What happens to the apostate? Hebrews 10, verses 26 -31 answers the question.
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For the Christian, you're guarded to the day of salvation. For the Christian, nothing will separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus our
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Lord. For the Christian, delivered of this present evil age, Galatians 1, Romans 8, 1
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Peter chapter 1. But if you aren't resting, you aren't trusting, you aren't believing, can
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I say it? There's hell to pay. There's hell to pay. An eternal hell. Let me give you three truths, whether you like them to be true or not, they are facts.
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No matter what society says, no matter what you want in your heart of hearts, three truths about the apostate that everybody needs to deal with, to reckon with.
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Truth one. Every sin that you've ever committed must be punished.
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Every sin that you've ever committed must be punished. God is just, God is holy, God is righteous, and He will either punish them on His Son in your place as a substitute, or He's going to punish you.
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Verse 26. If we go on sinning deliberately, and by the way, one of the ways you can emphasize a word in the
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Greek is put it up front at the beginning of a sentence, and that word deliberately or willfully is up front here.
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This is that treason. This is that revolt. This is that ultimate AWOL that you just say, you know what,
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I don't really care who Jesus is. I know you've taught me chapter one, He's created the world.
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I know you've taught me chapter one, He's purged sins. I know chapter two, He's better than angels because He adds human flesh, and then suffers but still reigns over death.
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I know He's better than Moses. I know He's better than Aaron. I know He's better than the Old Testament system, but I don't care because I like my sin, and I don't like people reigning over me.
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That's what this is here. If you go on sinning deliberately, this is not a person who complained or didn't love their spouse or something like that.
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Those are deliberate sins, but those are deliberate sins of a son or a daughter. This is of the apostate.
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This is the person that says, you know what, I, like Judas, have seen what goes on with people.
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I've seen transformed lives. I've seen my parents are different than they used to be. Not perfect, but I've seen changes.
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I've seen Scripture. I've seen the facts, and I don't care. This is Judas type of thing.
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I want sex more. I want money more. I want power more. I want my own autonomy more.
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Emphatically in the Greek, the word willfully is set there. This is defection.
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Calvin said, The Apostle describes as sinners, not those who fall in any kind of way, but those who forsake the church and separate themselves from Christ.
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There is a great difference between individual lapses and a universal desertion of this kind.
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He is saying that there is no offering left for those who reject the death of Christ because such rejection does not come from some particular offense, but from a total rejection of the faith.
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This is high -handed sinning against Jesus. You say, Well, I don't really hate him that much.
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I'm not a true believer. I'm not born again, but I pray, and I go to church sometimes. You see what the writer is trying to do?
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Well, the Old Testament, if you disobeyed God, and you created an idol, you would be killed, but it would be a temporal death.
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He's ratcheted things up. Signs and signals and types and shadows in the
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Old Testament, death, physical death. Do you think you're going to have a worse -off death now because the real thing, the
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Lord Jesus, has come? The answer is yes. Physical death with types and shadows. Now the reality has come, and you turn your back on him.
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It's eternal death. Say, I don't want Jesus anymore. If there were two saviors, at least you'd have another chance.
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But since Jesus said, and you know the verse well, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the
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Father except through me. This is not talking about a Christian who struggles with sin.
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1 John says, if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
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He is the propitiation for our sins. But for the person who says, I don't want this
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Jesus as a propitiation. I don't want to trust him. I'm turning my back on him. This is for you.
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Apostasy. There have been different people in the news these days, and while some evangelicals have fallen and done horrible things, you've seen
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Josh Harris online, saying, I used to teach that. I don't teach it anymore. I used to write the book about purity and dating and all that stuff.
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I reject all that. Well friends, if he said that, and that's a true statement of what he said, there's no hope for him, because there's no other
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Savior. And do you see the text? Verse 26, after receiving the knowledge of the truth.
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They know God's general revelation found in Scripture. We call that special revelation.
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They know it generally speaking. And they know it specifically. I'm sinful. I have no righteousness.
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God requires perfection. He requires a perfect righteousness. That can only be done by the great transaction, by the risen
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Savior who can conquer death. And they say, No, I'm not going to do it. I'm going to ignore the knowledge that I know that is the truth.
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This is what Romans 1 says. Suppressing the truth in what? Unrighteousness.
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I'll do what I want. I know the content of Christianity.
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By the way, please don't ever think, you know, when you evangelize someone, and you say, Well, now you know the truth about Jesus.
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Now you're accountable. That's not true. There already are accountable,
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Romans 1. Now you're more accountable. And these people who are receiving this letter, remember the context is, there's a lot of Jews.
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Some are trusting in Jesus. Many are getting persecuted. If I just go back to Judaism, things will be better.
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No, no, they aren't going to be better. And for today, it's the same thing. If I just go back to the day when, before I was a
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Christian, that was a better life. I don't want to become a Christian. Things get troubled when you're a Christian. You're more accountable now.
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You've always been accountable, but now you know. And what's the effect? What's the outcome of this kind of thinking?
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You see, at the end of verse 26, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins. There's no plan
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B for you. There's not like, well, maybe this will work out somehow. As I said a couple of weeks ago, you're the sacrifice for sins.
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You'll be sacrificed. Spurgeon, do you think that when you're in hell, that Christ will come to you a second time to die for you?
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Will He pour out His blood again to bring you from the place of torment? Have you so vain an imagination as to dream that there will be a second ransom offered for those who have not escaped the wrath to come?
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And that God the Holy Ghost will come again and strive with sinners who willfully rejected Him? See, friends, we don't really like to admit it, but sin isn't some kind of sickness.
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It isn't some kind of disease. It's an atrocity to God. It's an attack on His holiness.
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It's heinous. It's lawless. It's repulsive to God.
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It's an abomination, the Bible says. When you look at sin in the Bible, it's not some kind of little peccadillo.
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What is it? It's likened in Scripture to mire, to dung, to sewers, to pigs in the wallow, to the smell of graves, poison, the vomit of dogs, trying to get an idea how bad this is to reject this
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Creator who made us and who wants us to love Him and love neighbor. All you should do is think about what
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Jesus went through on the cross for you to realize, was Jesus the perfect One on that cross suffering because God didn't take sin seriously?
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The thrice holy God cannot even look upon Jesus, as it were, turns His back and Jesus says, My God, My God, why have
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You forsaken Me? Some people I know say, You know what? Hell is a place where there's cruel, unusual punishment.
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We don't even have cruel, unusual punishment in our society. As R .C. Sproul says, Cruelty involves inflicting a punishment that is more severe or harsh than the crime.
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Cruelty is unjust. No, no. If you reject this rejecter, you deserve to go to hell.
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You've earned hell. That's the idea. Well, I deserve to be in heaven. No, you deserve to be in hell.
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Sinners go to hell to pay for their own sins. The punishment fits the crime.
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And that punishment is used in the Bible, the descriptions of hell, in ways that just confound your mind.
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Punishment, torment, fire, destruction, second death, outer darkness, weeping and gnashing of teeth.
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J .C. Ryle said, These are awful expressions. They call for reflection rather than exposition. But if you won't trust in Jesus personally, verse 27, what's left?
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A fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire, a zealous fire, literally, that will consume the adversaries.
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You know, on earth, you're getting this great call of a merciful God. Be reconciled to God.
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Lay down your arms. But in hell, you'll be a confirmed enemy.
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And how does God treat His enemies? This word terrifying is used in chapter 12, verse 21 as well.
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Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, I tremble with fear. But now this is the eternal trembling.
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See, what's happening is, can you imagine? At the baptism of Jesus, the
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Father says, This is My beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased. At the transfiguration of Jesus, This is
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My beloved Son, My chosen One. Listen to Him. But you apostate, you unbeliever will say,
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No, no, God's assessment, the Father's assessment of the Son is not my assessment. My assessment is,
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He's another man. He can't save Himself. He's a lunatic. He's a liar. He's somebody else.
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But He's not Lord. My assessment, I stand by. And your assessment will cost you eternity in hell.
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That's the gravity of this. John 3, The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand.
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John 5, The Father loves the Son and shows Him all that He Himself is doing. So why would your response not be,
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Trust to show your love by believing in the Son? You say, well, this is making me very uncomfortable.
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Well, you know what? It should. And if you're a Christian, you should be thinking, I deserve to go.
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I know I'm probably worse than an apostate, but God gave me the mind. He opened my heart. He opened my mind.
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And I simply rested in Jesus and trusted in Him. And I get to go to heaven. I deserve to go to hell. I'm going to heaven.
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Those who reject Jesus as High Priest have no mediator. And really,
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I think that's the difference between heaven and hell. Hell will be where Jesus isn't your mediator. Heaven where Jesus is your mediator.
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Because you cannot stand in the presence of an ineffable, thrice holy God on your own.
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What does the Bible say? Nahum 1 The Lord is a jealous and avenging
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God. The Lord is avenging and wrathful. The Lord takes vengeance on His adversaries and keeps wrath for His enemies.
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The Lord is slow to anger and great in power and the Lord will by no means clear the guilty.
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His way is in a whirlwind and a storm and the clouds are the dust of His feet. Who can stand before His indignation?
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Who can endure the heat of His anger? His wrath is poured out like fire and the rocks are broken into pieces by Him.
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That language is supposed to be horrific. That language is supposed to be exactly what it says it is.
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Terrifying and fearful. He's alluding to Isaiah 26 .11
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Indeed, fire will devour your enemies. And you can just hear that roaring fire of the wrath of God.
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You say, well, that's an Old Testament God. Really? Paul said in the New Testament, 2
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Thessalonians The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire dealing out retribution to those who do not know
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God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. And these will pay the penalty of eternal destruction away from the presence of the
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Lord and from the glory of His power. You should be afraid. Any sane person would be.
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It's not just temporal where the fire comes and consumes 250 rebels who are against Korah's leadership.
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This is a vivid expression that tells us about God's eternal judgment. Raging fire.
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This is for those who have received the truth and say, you know what, I don't care. You either need a sin bearer by faith or you'll pay for your own sins.
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Truth number two, whether you like it or not, it's true. You can't hide behind post -modernism here.
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This is a fact. Every sin has to be punished on you or on the
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Savior because God is righteous. Number two, if you thought Moses' law was brutal, how much more than rejecting
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Christ? How much more is rejecting Christ? People always talk about mosaic law is so bad.
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It's just talking about temporal things. Look at the eternal consequences in verses 28 and 29. Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses.
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How much more? It's worse. It's ratcheting up from temporal to eternal. How much worse punishment do you think?
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Put your thinking caps on. You know if you think through this, you're going to come to the exact same conclusion. Please follow along the flow chart of logic.
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How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the one who was and look at this language here, trampled under the foot of God.
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I don't care about his person. Has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified. I don't care about his work.
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And has outraged the spirit of grace and I don't care about the Holy Spirit who comes along to apply that work to me.
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How does God deal with his enemies? This is the answer. You reject the law of Moses, you die without mercy.
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Deuteronomy 13. Listen. If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son or your daughter are the wife you embrace, or your friend who is as your own soul entices you secretly, let us go and serve other gods which neither you nor your fathers have known.
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Some of the gods of the peoples who are around you whether near you or far off from you.
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You shall not yield to him or listen to him nor shall your eye pity him.
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No mercy. Nor shall you spare him, but you shall kill him. Your hand shall be first against him to put him to death.
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And afterward, the hand of all the people. You shall stone him to death with stones because he sought to draw you away from the
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Lord your God. All of Israel shall hear verse 11 of Deuteronomy 13 and fear and never do again any such wickedness that is among you.
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That's Moses and that's temporal and it's frightening. How much more eternal consequences. Everybody hears this message online.
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You have an eternal soul. You will live forever. To complicate matters, you've been tainted by Adam's sin as a federal head and consequently you sin.
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So how do you get rid of sin? Someone's going to have to save you. You're going to have to trust in that Savior.
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You don't want to die without mercy eternally. I think it's true. You think of your worst enemy and if you saw them in hell for one second, you would not say, you know what, get them.
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You'd say, could you please give some relief. It's so awful. And even in this allusion here to Moses, he, the writer, the preacher, any good preacher would talk about hell if he's good for anyone.
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This preacher of hell right here in verses 26 -31 alludes to Moses and he's already said back in chapter 3,
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Moses builds, but Jesus is the son. Or Moses is the house and Jesus is the builder.
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Either way, Moses is not as great as Jesus. If you were the judge, how would you judge?
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Do you not think? How much more? That's the idea. You be the judge. Hebrews 2, how should we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?
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Answer, you won't. Hebrews 12, how much less shall we escape who turn away from Him who warns from heaven?
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People say, are there degrees of punishment in hell? Absolutely. And then what he does here is he describes the apostate with kind of three phrases all put together with the same definite article.
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And you see what it says here? If this is you, today's a good day to repent. Even though you don't think you really do this, maybe you're a homeschool kid here, your parents are both
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Christians and you say, I'm really pretty good and I don't do bad things. If you're an unbeliever, this is you.
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This is the description of the believer, especially growing up in a household where you know about the Father, the
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Son, and the Spirit. You see how this apostate, this person who will not accept the first 10 chapters of Hebrews, how he or she, boy or girl, old or young, how are they described?
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Who trampled underfoot the Son of God. I don't care how glorious Jesus is.
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I've got my own life and when I think of Jesus and His demands on me of lordship, that is contemptible to me.
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Some guy who lives 2 ,000 years ago and I have to kind of trust in Him for my eternal soul, 10 ,000 other
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Jews got crucified at Palestine. Why do I need to believe in this one?
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When you treat someone scornfully, the
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Bible describes that in the Old Testament anew as trampling underfoot. Remember Jezebel when she was slain?
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So they threw her down and some of her blood was sprinkled on the wall and on the horses and He trampled her underfoot.
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You just get the bottom of my foot. I'm going to lift my foot up against you. That is contemptible.
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That's like spitting. That's like slapping with the back hand. You don't even deserve my fist. This is contemptuous language.
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This is language of Jesus is supreme, great, magnificent, high priest and you go,
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I don't care. Would you ever want this set of you trampling underfoot the person of Jesus?
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It would be better if you never were born. Not only that, look at the language.
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Could it get more intense? Profane the blood of the covenant by which you were sanctified. Hebrews 13 talks about the blood of the eternal covenant.
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This is actually what Jesus came to do. This is the new covenant in my blood. Right? You don't have to have sacrifices of lambs and bulls and goats and everything else as a representative.
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I, the Son, am representative because I'm the eternal Son and I added humanity. I'm born of the
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Virgin and I grow and I grow increasing in wisdom and stature and knowledge of God and wisdom.
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And I'm going to be your substitute. I didn't sin. I'm undefiled. The Lord Jesus and He takes our place and you just say, you know what?
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I don't care. Utter contempt I have for that. My mental evaluation, the way I consider it, the way
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I go through my chart is He's worthless to me. What a shame. He didn't even die a martyr's death.
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That's not God's assessment. The word profane in our language tends to be swear words, bad words.
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The word profane back in the day meant outside the temple. Unholy.
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Secular. Desecrated. I don't care about Him.
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God exalts Him by the resurrection and I'm going to trash Him. Maybe not with my words. Maybe not in front of my parents.
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But the Lord knows. And it's either here as you study this sanctified.
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These people are either set apart as Israelites or it's the Lord Jesus who set apart. But either way, the point is clear.
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This rejecting of Jesus is like rejecting forgiveness.
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Spurgeon said, For if the man on the scaffold rejects a pardon, does he not murder himself?
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There is pride in this. For you reject Christ because of your proud hearts you've turned aside. There's rebellion in this.
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For we rebel against God when we reject Christ. There's high treason in this. For if you reject a king, you put far from him who is crowned king of the earth.
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And then I thought it could get no worse. But you see at the end of the verse, outraged the
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Spirit of grace. The Holy Spirit. Insulted. By the way, what a name for the Holy Spirit.
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Comforter. To come alongside. The Spirit who's holy. There's all kinds of names. Here and only here.
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What a wonderful name for the Spirit. Because that's just His ministry. He takes what Jesus did.
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The Father sends Him. The Son goes. And Jesus' own life is empowered by the
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Spirit of grace. When He makes you alive, when He causes you to be born again, when He gives you spiritual gifts, it's all out of grace.
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He does all this. But this person, for whatever reason, insults.
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The word insult has a root. Hubris in the Greek. I don't care.
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Reproach. Disdain. Insult. People often swear at work and you think they're insulting the
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Lord. Well, that is not to be recommended and it is obviously sinful and foolish. This is the swear.
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This is the word. This is the profaning. I don't care who this God is. This God who gives grace.
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Who even as you hear this, you could be one of these people and then God could grant you eternal life through hearing the word.
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Persistent sin. Judas sin. Apostate sin. This is not for the
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Christian, although the Christian should be frightened, should examine themselves, should say, I'm so thankful that I'm covered by the blood of God.
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The son, Clark Pinnock used to say, it's an outrage for apostates to be damned.
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Even after John 3 .16, For God so loved the world that He gave
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His only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. Two verses later, verse 18,
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Whoever believes in Him is not condemned. But whoever does not believe is what?
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Condemned already. Hell is eternal.
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Do you notice the words? How much more? The Bible teaches eternal punishment,
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Matthew 25. Eternal destruction, 2 Thessalonians 1. Unquenchable fire, Mark 9.
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The worm does not die, Mark 9. Day and night forever and ever, Revelation chapter 20.
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Thomas Brooks the Puritan said, Oh, but this word eternity, eternity, eternity, this word everlasting, everlasting, everlasting, this word forever, forever, forever, will even break the hearts of the damned in 10 ,000 pieces.
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Impenitent sinners in hell shall have end without end, death without death, night without day, morning without mirth, sorrow without solace, and bondage without liberty.
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The damned shall live as long in hell as God himself shall live in heaven. The same word is used for eternal life from our
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Lord Jesus, and these will go into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal. Thomas Watson said,
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After millions of years, there's not one minute in eternity wasted, and the damned must ever be burning, but never consuming, always dead, but never dead.
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The fire of hell is such as multitudes of tears will not quench it, length of time will not finish it, the vial of God's wrath will always be dropping upon a sinner.
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As long as God is eternal, He lives to be avenged upon the wicked. Oh, eternity! Eternity!
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Who can fathom it? I mean, no matter what trial you go through on earth, at least you say,
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You know what? This will be over one day. One writer said,
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Picture a man lying in the gutter in rags, covered with sores, hungry and homeless. He is there because of his own sinful choices.
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A kind, generous man offers to take this man to the hospital, pay all his bills, and then to bequeath on him all that he would ever need in life.
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He would have a comfortable home, all the food he could eat, and every comfort he could dream of. But the ungrateful wretch in the gutter spits in the man's face, curses at him, and then tells others that the man's offer was worthless.
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That's assaulting the Holy Spirit. This pastor, the pastor of Hebrews, would not let people think,
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You know what? Hell is no big deal. Hell, like Jean -Paul Sartre said, is other people. Like the parable, the allegory of the spoons.
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Here's hell. Because in spoons, you have a really, in hell rather, you have a long spoon and you can't feed yourself because the spoon's too long.
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So you have to feed other people. And in hell, nobody wants to help anybody else. That's what makes hell, hell.
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No, what makes hell, hell is the thrice holy God is there. That's what Revelation 14 says. And now the last truth, whether we like it or not.
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Every sin must be punished, truth one. Truth two, rejecting
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Jesus is more brutal than rejecting Moses. And number three, God takes your sin against Him very personally.
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God takes His Son so personally. No, God takes your sin against Him personally.
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Verses 30 and 31. Ominous verses. Here's the language of we know again.
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You know deep down this is true. And for we know
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Him who said, Vengeance is mine. I will repay. And again, the Lord will judge His people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living
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God. He knows the readers know this. I know you know this.
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Now sometimes when we think of the word vengeance, we're thinking about some kind of, He's just some kind of ogre that blows up.
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The language of vengeance here has a root word for justice. It's deserved. It's measured. It's meted out properly.
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The strange thing is, this comes from a quote in Deuteronomy 32.
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And this song would be sung at worship services in the synagogues.
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Deuteronomy 32 Vengeance is mine and recompense for the time when their foot shall slip and the day of their calamity is at hand and their doom comes swiftly.
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Justice is God's. Vengeance is God's. Psalm 494 Oh Lord, God of vengeance.
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God of vengeance, shine forth. And when you look at the text there, and the Lord shall judge
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His people, the context isn't He's going to vindicate His people. He does vindicate His people, but the context is, here, you call yourself a
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Jew, He's still going to judge you as a Jew if you won't trust in Christ. There's no hope.
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And then what does verse 31 say? It's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God. You know what?
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God won't do much damage to me. I can withstand it in hell. We'll see how I fare.
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God doesn't exist anyway. I think I'll be okay. In the Bible, when you fall into the hands of someone, what kind of language is that?
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Judges 15 And shall I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?
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How about the good Samaritan? And the man fell among the robbers? One writer said,
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When a person falls in the hands of his enemies, there's no law or love between him and them, and he can expect nothing but death.
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Falling into the hands of a living God. It means, in Scripture, falling into the hands of...
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They've got power over you, and it's not good. It's not happy. And this is not a dead
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God to be trifled with. What's the text say? A living God. This is like a summary. This is like a conclusion.
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There's no excuse. This living and active word, chapter 4, has exposed you. Everyone's accountable.
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Now they're more accountable. And this preacher says, Death is coming.
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Hell is for you if you will not entrust yourself to the Lord by simple faith. Childlike faith.
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Spurgeon said what I said earlier about the chaplain. There's a church back in Spurgeon's day.
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Shall we hire the guy who doesn't believe in hell? He's pretty nice. He's a good organizer.
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And the church said to the man, You have come to tell us that there's no hell. If your doctrine is true, we certainly do not need you.
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And if it's not true, we don't want you. So either way, we can do without you. Exactly what those men on that ship said.
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Dear Christian, this is what you've been rescued from. If it wasn't for the grace of God, we sing about amazing grace.
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We sing about, by grace you've been saved through faith. This was our end to fall into the hands of a living
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God. But Jesus intercepts that wrath, does He not? Did He not?
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Jesus assuaged the wrath. Jesus took our place. This is the language of substitution. It's not a lamb that was slain.
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It was not a goat. It's the Lord Jesus. And He stands and He drinks the Father's cup of wrath down to the dregs.
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In our place. When you hear people like Rob Bell or anybody else minimize hell, they're minimizing sin, the holiness of God, and the justice of God at Calvary, the
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Lord's death on the cross. Listen to Clark Pinnock. I consider the concept of hell as eternal, as endless torment in body and mind, an outrageous doctrine.
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He's right so far. A theological and moral enormity. A bad doctrine of the tradition which needs to be changed.
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Everlasting torment is intolerable from a moral point of view because it makes God into a bloodthirsty monster who maintains an everlasting
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Auschwitz for victims whom He does not even allow to die. When you hear that, you ought to be thinking, no matter what
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I feel, no matter what goes through my mind, no matter what kind of rearrangement I have of the doctrine of hell, you ought to be thinking, what does the
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Bible teach? What does the Bible teach about this offer of the Lord Jesus and that people spurn that offer?
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What do they deserve? People always say, well, sinners in the hands of an angry
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God preached twice, once in Northampton and once July 1841 in Enfield, Mass.
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I think that's a typo. It would have to be 1741. They think that was the sermon.
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I think Hebrews is the sermon. Your options are simple.
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Trust in Christ or pay for your own sins. Trust in Christ or be your own mediator.
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Trust in Christ or go to hell. Pope John Paul II redefined hell in 1999.
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The general audience of the Vatican quote, hell is not a punishment imposed externally by God but the condition resulting from attitudes and actions which people adopt in this life.
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Hell is other people. I don't care who said that. They're lying to you.
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And when I got my diagnosis, as many of you have gotten diagnosis, you just want people to come and please tell me the truth.
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Well, this is the truth. If you won't believe in Jesus, you're going to bust hell wide open. That's the truth.
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J .C. Riles said, let others hold their peace about hell if they will. I dare not do so. I see it plainly in Scripture.
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I must speak of it. I fear that thousands are on the broad road that leads to it. I would feign arouse them to a sense of peril before them.
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What would you say of the man who saw his neighbor's house in danger of being burned down and never raised the cry,
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Fire! Call it bad taste if you like to speak of hell. Call it charity to make things pleasant and smooth and soothe men with a constant lullaby of peace.
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From such notions of taste and charity may I ever be delivered. My notion of charity is to warn men plainly of their danger.
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My notion of taste is to declare all the counsel of God. If I never spoke of hell, I should think
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I had kept something back that was profitable and should look at myself as an accomplice of the devil.
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Today's the day of salvation. Today's the day. Let's pray.
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Father in heaven, sober, solemn, grave words, but true.
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And we would recognize this morning that out of all the teachers in all of your Scripture, the one that taught more about hell was the loving
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Lord Jesus Christ himself, love incarnate. Father, help me to be a better evangelist knowing that every person
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I know, if they're not believing in Jesus, are going to go to hell forever. The lady that delivers the mail, the butcher, kids, parents, brothers, sisters.
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Father, increase in our church the same attitude. We've tasted how good you are and how forgiving you are.
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We understand what it's like to deserve hell and then get rescued. We understand the demonstration of love at Calvary, that while we were yet sinners,
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Christ died for us. We understand that. And now just to remember for a moment when we first got saved, the joy of our salvation, inexpressible, full of glory, that we, the rebels, get to go to heaven forever based on the work of another, freely.
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And Father, I pray, there has to be people here today that don't trust in you, and I pray that they would not sleep nor rest until they rest in your