Kingdom Ethics: The Reality of Hell

We are continuing our look at the kingdom. We have been progressing from Easter through the idea of Jesus being the king of a kingdom. We've looked at the nature of the kingdom, and we've been, the last few weeks, looking at what it means for Christians to live in this kingdom. What it looks like for Christians to live in the kingdom. And so we've been looking at the ethics of the kingdom, the laws of this kingdom.

And this morning, we're going to be touching on another significant portion of Jesus' teaching of the kingdom. And that is one again that makes us uncomfortable, just like wealth was last week. Today, we look at the teaching on hell. And that for Jesus, as much as he spoke about how we need to weigh up where our treasure lies here on earth, Jesus also spoke about the significance of our life now, and that our life matters, and what we choose to do here today has eternal weight, carries eternal weight. So I'd like to open together from Luke chapter 16 and to read that together.

It's the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, and some of us will be familiar with that story. So we're reading from Luke 16 verse 19. Jesus tells the story: there was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores.

The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried. And in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he called out, "Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame." But Abraham said, "Child, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things.

But now he is comforted here and you are in anguish. And besides all this, between us and you, a great chasm has been fixed in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us." And he said, "Then I beg you, father, to send him, Lazarus, to my father's house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment." But Abraham said, "They have Moses and the prophets. Let them hear them.

And he said, 'No, father Abraham. But if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.'" Abraham said to him, "If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone should rise from the dead." So far the reading. Well, I hope you've noticed, but I had a haircut yesterday.

Thank you very much for telling me I look handsome. And at my local barber, where I usually go, I had a conversation a number of years ago with a lady who was cutting my hair then. I told her, while I was having this haircut, that I was a pastor, and we started talking about faith and aspects of faith. But then she mentioned that she had been having, in that period, roughly an experience with a Christian aunt. And she told me that her grandfather, in other words, her aunt's dad, had been diagnosed with cancer.

And she was saying to me that she felt so appalled and angry, because when the aunt came to explain with urgency her dad's need for accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, that she felt it was a betrayal to him. The lady cutting my hair said she was outraged that her aunt would talk about hell, telling her dad that he would end up there if he had not accepted Christ into his life. For her, the idea of hell was deeply offensive. And the idea that even a family member would talk to someone who lay on their deathbed about that as a reality, well, that appalled her. Well, that obviously made me think about this h word, the word hell, that we all too often don't like talking about.

We know that especially in our day and age, where absolute truth, a truth that applies no matter who believes it or not, is a very unpopular thing. And then the concept of people who we assume are just average nice people would experience something like that. Well, that is a very unpopular teaching at the moment. I'm sure you've heard the irony of people who will say that they are not Christians, that they are not believers. They believe that a god does not exist.

That there is no truth to the words of scripture, and yet they are very, very, very angry when confronted by the Christian belief that people will end up in hell if they don't repent and believe in Jesus Christ. There's an irony in that as well, isn't there? If you are so sure of that position, of your position, and hell doesn't exist, well, then it's not a threat to you. So why are we angry? Why are we trying for others to keep you out of there? This morning, as we think about another large part of Jesus' ministry of teaching about the ethics of the kingdom, I want to tell you that hell is not a fad that has gone out of fashion for us to talk about.

In fact, the teaching is true for our generation as it was for the previous generations before us, as it will be for the ones that are to come. It is not an optional theological premise. It is a spiritual reality that every one of us will have to believe, and that once we understand and believe it, will deeply motivate us in how we live and how we see our mission as Christians. So the biblical teaching on hell is a very important doctrine. And so we're going to not simply look at the story of the rich man and Lazarus.

We will be painting a bit of a survey of all of Jesus' teachings about this topic. And so the first point that I want to highlight for us is why hell is important, or the teaching of the doctrine of hell. It is because Jesus taught about it more than all other biblical authors put together. I've given you some Bible passages there that are instances of Jesus talking about it, but there are more than that. We read this morning of a parable in Luke 16, where Jesus talks about the hard-heartedness of a man, a rich man, and says that even if someone was raised from the dead to go and speak to siblings who were portrayed as being very similar to this man, even if someone was to be raised from the dead to warn them, they would not listen because of their hard hearts.

The allusion here, of course, is of Jesus' own resurrection. That there would be people in Jesus' time who would hear that he was raised from death, that he spoke about these things, warned about these things, and that there may still be some who decide not to believe, not to hear. Matthew 25, Jesus speaks of an eternal fire and punishment. That is one of the characteristics of this place, this reality called hell. It is said to be the final destination of not only humans, but angels as well.

All those who reject Christ. In Matthew five, Jesus says that those who fall into sin are in danger of the fires of hell. In Mark nine verse 43, Jesus speaks of a person who is found guilty of sin and who winds up in a place called Gehenna. Jesus says, "Where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched." And Jesus sometimes referred to hell as this place, Gehenna. Now this is interestingly a real place.

You could go to the old city of Jerusalem today and they will tell you this is the Valley of Gehenna. It was a real place outside of Jerusalem in Jesus' time. But it was a place that was pretty much the local tip. It was a place where people dumped their sewage, their household waste, even unidentified bodies, bodies of people who lived on the streets and so on, who died without family to bury them. They would be placed in this valley, this Gehenna. Jesus says that hell is a place of this nature where maggots, the maggots you would find in the tip, the fires that people would start to burn away the rotten smell, it never ends.

So instead of the worms disappearing in the real Valley of Gehenna, when all flesh is consumed, all the meat is gone, Jesus says that the spiritual decomposition of hell never ends. Where fires can burn down everything, burn it up, the ferocity of hell never subsides. This is why our rich man in the story here, in the parable here, asked for a single drop of water from Lazarus, that Lazarus would just dip his finger in some water and place it on his tongue. He says, "The fires are unrelenting. He's experiencing unending thirst.

Now, if all of these images, if all of these teachings make us recoil, make us uncomfortable, make us say how horrible, that's good. That's exactly what we should feel about it, and that's exactly why Jesus taught about it. You see, the very first and most important point of why Jesus would speak so often about this place is Jesus, the Lord of love, Jesus who would be known as the prince of peace, speaks about hell so often and in such a vivid way because it is a real place that He doesn't want us to go to. For Jesus, hell is not a side issue which is ignored and put away and sort of just, you know, put on that shelf that we don't go to very often.

For Jesus, hell is not a story that is made up to scare naughty boys and girls. For Jesus, hell is a real place. And He said that it comes after a moment called judgement day, where every man, woman and child stands before a holy and righteous God and gives an account of the decisions of their life. And that after this time, there will come a moment where some people would experience this hell for eternity. So it is important for us because Jesus teaches about it more often than anyone else does in the Bible.

And Jesus, the Lord of love, wants to let us know it is real, but He also wants us to stay out of that place. So the next question we ask is, why? Why should we desire that? Why should we not want to go there? Why is it important that Jesus warns us about this in His preaching?

Well, the second point is then, it's important because hell is the worst thing you could ever experience. Virtually all commentators and theologians believe that the biblical images of hell, the image of fire or of darkness, are metaphorical. The great Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards pointed out that the biblical language of hell was probably symbolic. But he added, when metaphors are used in scripture about spiritual things, they fall short of the literal truth. They fall short of the literal truth.

In other words, the metaphor of fire and darkness aren't exaggerations that we roll our eyes at. They are inadequate words trying to grasp the ruin of that place. So when these descriptions are used like worms that never die and fires that never extinguish, what are they used for? These words, these metaphors. They are vivid descriptors of what will happen when we lose the most important things in life, in existence.

And the most important thing is the presence of God. The presence of God. Hell is described as a darkness because of the isolation and the loneliness from the God we have always known. The God we have always experienced, whether we believe in Him or not. That's irrelevant.

When something like fire is mentioned, like in the story of the rich man, it's probably referring to something like the disintegration. When people are separated from God. The disintegration that happens with fire as they are removed from the God who is the sustainer of life, the provider of life. When Jesus talks about hell as a place where there is gnashing of teeth, the grinding of teeth, it is referring to the reality of constant pain of being away from the favour and the face of the living God. The ultimate horror of hell is not just an eternal hot place with little red devils with pitchforks.

The horror of hell is found in three little words uttered by God: depart from me. Why is this such a horrifying existence? Well, it's because you and I were created to exist with God. It's because we were always meant to know Him, to love Him. In Genesis one and two, men and women are created to walk with God, it says.

And in one sense, of course, God is everywhere. God is omnipresent. That is one of His characteristics. In that sense, it is impossible to depart from God. But the Bible says sin excludes us or removes us from God's face.

Isaiah 59 verse two says that. All the life, all the joy, all the love, all the strength, all the meaning that we have in this life exists because there exists an ultimate good, an ultimate love, an ultimate joy, and that is God. God is the ultimate good. Life at its best is connected inseparably to Him. And so the human soul is built to enjoy God, and all truly human life flows from that.

So today, whether you are Christian or not, God keeps giving you from His wisdom, from His love, from His joy and His goodness, so that you may experience Him. But Jesus teaches that when we lose God's supportive presence completely, where we are removed from that, the result is hell. So again, why does Jesus keep coming back to teaching about this? Well, because it's a real place. Because He doesn't want us to go there.

Why? Because He knows it is the worst thing you and I will ever, could ever experience. Then we have to ask the question, how do people wind up there? What happens for people to end up there? And then, perhaps more importantly, how do we avoid it?

And so we have to deal with the next question, the next point, which is it is important because it unveils the seriousness and the danger of living life for yourself. Why is the understanding of hell important? Because it unveils the seriousness and danger of living life for yourself. In the book of Romans, the apostle Paul explains that humanity's progress towards that judgment day, well, that is already happening even in this existence. That even as we speak, God's punishment is being measured out.

Paul writes in Romans one eighteen: the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all godlessness and wickedness of people who are suppressing the truth. The wrath of God is being revealed against all godlessness and wickedness of people who are suppressing the truth. Then we jump to verse 21. "For although these people know God, they neither glorify Him as God nor gave thanks to Him. But their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened."

What is hell? Darker darkness. What is happening now? Their hearts are becoming darkened. Even now.

And then in verse 24: therefore, God gave them over. God is giving them over in the sinful desires of their hearts. This is the end result, really, of the judgement day. C.S. Lewis once wrote, and he also wrestled with this idea, how can God, a loving God, cause people to go to hell? And he writes this:

The worst and arguably the fairest punishment that God gives a person is to allow them their heart's desires. The worst and the fairest punishment that God gives a person is to allow them their heart's desires. And what is that desire according to Romans one? It's the craving of an existence without God. And so this is very important for us to understand when we think about this.

Humanity is not simply wandering off the path. We just haven't overstepped to the right or to the left of the path of life. It is a complete ninety-degree separation from where we should be going. The craving is, the desire is to get out from under the rule of God. But then this very decision is the decision that destroys us.

This is the great tragedy of hell, that we have chosen it all along. Many people today are appalled at the idea of hell. My hairdresser, my barber was on that particular day, appalled that God would allow such a thing. But hell is simply this: that God is actively giving us the fate that we have freely chosen.

It is God unlocking the door that we've been trying to bash open our whole lives to get out of His home. Theologian J.I. Packer wrote this: scripture sees hell as self chosen. Hell appears as God's gesture of respect for human choice. All receive what they actually chose, either to be with God forever, worshipping Him, or without God forever, worshipping themselves. Very few people will say that they know someone, including themselves, that seems bad enough to merit hell.

But the Bible says, firstly, that people get in the afterlife only what they have most wanted in theirs, either to have God as master or to be their own masters. But then secondly, the Bible also tells us that hell is simply a natural consequence. And deep down, I think we also understand the reality of that. We understand that this place can be real because we have tasted that reality to some degree in our lives, even today. While God's presence may be in this world, we've come to learn that self-centredness makes us miserable and blind.

The more self-centred, the more self-absorbed, the more self-justifying people are, the more breakdown occurs relationally, psychologically, and even physically. If we look at what's happening in America, how does that start? It's by the breaking of a relationship. It is by the killing of an image bearer of God. It is in the desire for vengeance beyond natural justice that's causing entire cities to be burnt down.

It is a breakdown that we are already experiencing now. And so this is a reality. This hell is a prison in which the doors are first locked by us from the inside. We've come through the door away from God, closed the door and we lock it. But one day, we are told that God will lock it from the inside as well, from where He is.

Abraham says to the rich man in Luke 16 verse 26: Abraham says, "Between us, between you and I, is a great chasm which has been fixed. The NIV says, set in place. It cannot be undone." And we need to have the proper understanding of hell because it unveils the seriousness and the danger of living life for ourselves apart from God. But even while Jesus is teaching about these realities in those three years of ministry, even as he's teaching about this and making people as uncomfortable as we may be feeling right now, he's also busy preparing a plan to rescue people from that fate.

And this is where we thankfully finish our story. The last point. The doctrine of hell is important because it is the only way to know how much Jesus has really loved us. You might ask a very fair question right now and say, K.J., why are we talking about a theological doctrine when we are looking at ethics within the kingdom of God? Well, because the teaching surrounding hell teaches this important ethic: that what we do in this life now matters.

What we choose, what our lifestyles reflect, those things carry eternal weight. Earlier in the series, we looked at another parable where Jesus talked about the kingdom of God being like a wedding feast. And the king in his joy, celebrating his son's wedding, invites people of all backgrounds to come in freely, to celebrate and to be reconciled, rekindled, re-joined by the king, with the king. And in that understanding, we see that the kingdom of God is a place of joy and peace. It is like a great feast.

And our preaching, my preaching, my evangelism, your preaching and evangelism should definitely talk about that as a reality. That the positive side of Jesus' work is that we have a home, that we have a joy that we can enter into, that we are freely invited to come and to be reconciled to God who is our king and who is our deepest joy. But we can never forget exactly why this joy is so joyful, and why this deep gratitude is really so deep. It's because of what lies on the other side of that same coin. The other reality of not experiencing eternal joy with God.

You see, if hell doesn't exist, then the sacrifice of Jesus wasn't necessary. If hell wasn't a real place that Jesus wanted us to escape from, then He would never have gone to Calvary. Matthew 10:28, Jesus would say to His disciples, "Don't ever fear those who kill the body but cannot destroy the soul. Rather, fear Him who can destroy both soul and body in hell." And friends, this morning, we must remember that this is exactly what Jesus experienced on the cross, where He suffered in our place.

At the cross, Jesus would experience the forsakenness, the darkness, the torment of hell. He experienced the Father turning His face away. The presence of God that He has known for eternity was removed from Him and the sky itself, earth itself, physical reality itself reflected that spiritual moment as the light left and the sky turned dark. Unless we come to grips with the doctrine of hell, we will never understand the depths of what Jesus has done for us at the cross. We may come to Easter and we think, oh, the terrible pain that His body experienced in the worst possible way.

But that was a flea bite compared to what was happening in His soul. What He experienced spiritually in that time, when He cried out to God, "My God, why have You forsaken me?" It was because God had forsaken Him. God had turned His face away from Him and He experienced the reality of hell. You see, if we only preach and only believe in an afterlife that ignores this reality, then it says that our life now and the choices we make now, well, that doesn't amount to much.

We minimise those decisions. We minimise what sin really is. If you and I shirk away from truly believing in the reality of hell, and we believe that sin is what puts us there, then the question is, what has it cost your kind of God to have forgiven you? If your answer is, I don't think that God had any cost, that there was no cost that God had to forgive us. God is just about love and so He simply forgives.

Then ironically, we have made God less loving. His love needed then to take no action. His love was easy. If He simply needed to close His eyes and ignore it or wish it away, His righteousness, the God of justice that we've been praying for even this morning, that is obsolete. We don't need to pray.

We wouldn't pray to this God of justice. And if His justice and His righteousness doesn't exist, then His love is also mere sentimentality. You see, the worship of a God who didn't have to suffer hell on the cross, well, that God will be merely virtuous. I will not experience in Him and in that faith a deep sense of wonder at His grace. Jesus had to teach about this reality so regularly in His three-year ministry to convince us because hell really exists.

It is really a place that you and I will never want to go to. And Jesus was preparing for us to be saved from that place. If we know and we believe in the reality of this place, and that our actions and our decisions today and in our life determine our future, and if we know and believe that Jesus was the Saviour who came to rescue us from that place, then friends, we have come to know the epitome of love. Our actions will never outdo our brokenness and our sin. Our righteous attempts will never outshine those things.

But this is the decision that we are given and empowered with. It's on our wall up here at church and you know it. John 3:16, God so loved the world that He gave His one and only son, that whoever simply believes, trusts, clings to Him will never perish but have eternal life. The great preacher Charles Spurgeon once said, "When you speak of heaven, let your face shine. But when you speak of hell, then your everyday face will do."

So let me use my everyday face. And if you have not received Jesus Christ as your Saviour today or before, if you have never made that decision for yourself, if you are unsure of your eternal destination, come and receive the finished work of Jesus Christ on your behalf. What we do, the decisions we make today, in our life has eternal weight. There is a choice of life today, there's a choice of death. And Jesus Christ so loves the world that He has come to give us that choice, to give us that option.

And so friends, will you consider this? Will you weigh this up? Will you pray about this? Will you speak to the one who offers it to you today? It is a real place.

It is a real destination. It is a place that none of us would ever want to go to. And it is a place that Jesus Christ is able to save us from. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you for this truth.

It is significant and important for us to just come back to the basics every now and then. And this is where the rubber hits the road. Oh Lord, we who have known You for a long time, so look forward to and so are excited by an eternity with our God, an eternal joy, an eternal celebration, experiencing for eternity the ultimate good. Cast off from our brokenness and our frailty. Cast off from the things we do to hurt ourselves and to hurt others around us. We look forward to a day where You will make us blameless and perfect.

You will restore us to the image You had for us all along. But Lord, then sometimes we forget the other side of that coin, which is a reality and an existence that we experienced even at some point and at some time, a reality without God. An existence away from His rule. And so, Lord, we pray that You will be working in giving us an understanding of just the enormity of what You have saved us from. That we will be so grateful, that we will be so thankful, that that option, that possibility has been removed from us forever.

It cannot be a reality for the Christian who has placed their trust in Jesus. It is not a fear that we even need to consider. Thank you. And then for those who are listening, those who may be reached by these words, who have not received this, who have not been able to believe it. Oh God, will you give them the faith and the eyes to see?

Will you give them a sense of the weight of an eternity compared to seventy or eighty years in this life. Lord, will you help us to acknowledge that we cannot save ourselves. That even the best attempts at hiding or undoing the things that we have done that has caused brokenness, that has caused pain, that has greatly offended a righteous and holy God. Lord, help us to see our great need of You. Humble us to want to be saved.

And then today, help us to be recipients of that grace. We commit all of this to You, Lord Jesus, people of all backgrounds and persuasions, Lord. And we ask that in this moment, through this teaching, that You will bind us together in love, restore us to a joy, and Father, give us a vision of a life marked by this wonder and this grace. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.