In speaking to the Ephesian elders
in vindication of his own ministry of some three years among them,
the Apostle Paul could declare, I take you to record this day
that I am pure from the blood of all men. And then he gives
the reason why he had this testimony borne to his conscience. For
I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God. Perhaps there is no greater ambition
in the heart of a true minister of Jesus Christ than to be able
to say with the Apostle, I take you to record that I am pure
from the blood of all men. Whether or not he's loved, praised,
revered, or cursed by men is of little worth as long as he
knows he's discharged his debt. before the God who has called
him, and that in that day when he stands in his presence, he
will not be guilty of the blood of men. But to have this testimony
means that a price is to be paid. The Apostle Paul learned this.
With him the price was very vividly and indelibly stamped upon his
very flesh, for he could say, I bear in my body the marks of
the Lord Jesus. He could show you the scars he
received from his beatings for preaching such offensive truth.
Truth that was to the Jew a stumbling block, to the Greek foolishness. But truth he proclaimed because
it was God's truth and he could do no other. Some truths, though
offensive to the world, are a great delight to preach because they
bring great blessing to the servant of Christ as he preaches them.
Declaring Christ's saving love in the message of the cross,
which is to the world foolishness, nonetheless is great delight
to the servant of Christ. To proclaim the glories of the
delights of the child of God, the world may say foolishness. but nonetheless the servant of
Christ who feeds upon those glorious truths as he preaches them at
times could care less whether or not they are offensive to
men for the sheer joy that comes in proclaiming them. However,
there are other truths not only abhorrent to natural men but
truths distasteful even to the sanctified heart of a true servant
of Christ Truths which he must preach not only with the external
opposition of those to whom he ministers, but truths that he
must deliver with the internal tension of his own reluctance
to proclaim such unsavory truth. But nonetheless, those truths
must be proclaimed if he is to say, I am free from the blood
of all men. As we've concluded our series
of studies in the Book of First Thessalonians, and we'll be taking
up another book shortly, I feel constrained to deal with you
for the next few Sunday mornings with one of these subjects that,
left to myself, I would skirt and never preach upon. But one
of those subjects which must be preached upon If I am to say
with the Apostle Paul, I am free from the blood of all men. And
that subject is the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ concerning
the future of impenitent sinners. The teaching of our Lord Jesus
Christ concerning the future of impenitent sinners. First
of all, consider with me how we shall approach the subject.
Let me say at the very outset that we must not assume that
we have the ability to determine what is right and wrong, just
or unjust, with regard to the punishment of the wicked. Many
books have been written Books that were written not because
men had their minds so impregnated with biblical concepts that the
pressure of divine truth caused them to pick up their pens and
write, no. Books that were written because
men dared to assume that human beings have in themselves some
innate ability to determine what is right or wrong, just or unjust,
with regard to the future punishment of the wicked. I would remind
you as we embark upon this study that first of all we are creatures
and God alone is God. And as God, he says in Isaiah
55, for my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways
your ways, for as the heavens are high above the earth, so
are my thoughts above your thoughts and my ways above your ways. Not only is this true with regard
to his person, to all of his attributes of love and of mercy,
but with regard to his holy wrath and his judgment upon the impenitent. My ways are not your ways, as
the heavens are high above the earth, so are my ways above your
ways. God says in Isaiah 40, verses
13 and 14, words that we need to keep before us as we embark
upon this study, Who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord, or being
his counsellor hath taught him? With whom took he counsel, and
who instructed him, and taught him in the path of justice, and
taught him knowledge, and showed to him the way of understanding?
You see the question? Who sat God down and said, now
God, I'd like to instruct you as to what is just? What is unjust? What is right? What is not right? What is good? Who sat down and
talked to God and gave him lessons on justice? Did you? Did I? Why, the very question is almost
blasphemous. And so, as we approach the subject,
we do well to remind ourselves we are creatures. who have no
right whatever to assume certain canons or standards of justice
and rightness and then impose them upon God. But not only are
we creatures, we do well to remind ourselves that we are sinful
creatures. And one of the effects of sin
has been the blinding of our understanding, the darkening
of our minds as we read in Ephesians 4 and verse 18. So that even
in the child of God, where the work of sanctification has begun,
it is still true, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, we see through
a glass darkly. Bless God, we see, but we see
darkly, we see dimly, we see in broad outlines, and only then
shall we know, even as we are known. And so as we approach
the subject, we do well to keep this before us, or in the words
of one of Christ's eminent servants of a bygone day, it is obvious
that this is not a question, the question of the future of
impenitent men, this is not a question which can be decided by any so-called
a priori preconceived notions of right and wrong. No one can
reasonably presume to decide how long the wicked are to suffer
for their sins upon any general principles of right and wrong. The conditions of the problem
are not within our grasp. What the infinitely wise and
good God may see fit to do with His creatures or what the factors
of a government embracing the whole universe and continuing
throughout eternal ages may demand, it is not for such worms of the
dust as we are to determine. If we believe the Bible to be
the word of God, all we have to do is to ascertain what it
teaches on the subject and humbly to submit. No, we must not come
With any preconceived notion of what is right and wrong, but
positively we must come as true disciples, those whose minds
are subject to Jesus Christ as our prophet. Our Lord said in
Matthew 11, come unto me and learn of me. He describes his own as those,
John 17, 8, they have received my word. The mark of a true Christian
is that he receives the words of Jesus Christ. His mind is
subject to Christ as his prophet, as well as his will subject to
Christ as his King, as well as his faith firmly planted in Jesus
Christ as his great High Priest. The Father says of his dear Son,
this is my beloved Son, hear Him, Hear Him when He says, I
am the way, the truth, and the life. Hear Him when He says,
Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden. Hear Him
when He says, I go to prepare a place for you. But hear Him
when He says, He shall bind them and cast them into outer darkness.
Then shall He say unto them in the left hand, Depart from me,
ye cursed, into eternal fire prepared for the devil and his
angels. Hear Him when he speaks words
of pardon and when he speaks these sobering words of the future
of the impenitent. It is interesting to note that
though many of the truths fully developed in the New Testament
epistles are only found in germ form in the Gospels, Jesus said,
you remember, I have many things to say unto you, but you're not
yet able to bear them, how be it when the Spirit is come, he'll
guide you into all the truth, clearly indicating that many
truths were going to come to their fullest expression and
their clearest delineation in the apostolic teaching. That's
why the epistles are the seedbed of Christian doctrine as opposed
to the gospel, or I should say the full-blooming flowerbed,
whereas the seeds are there in the gospels. But it's interesting
that this is not true with the subject of the future of the
impenitent. It's an area which our Lord more
clearly than all the other writers put together, delineates and
expands and explains in great detail. And we shall approach
the subject then primarily seeking to discern what our Lord Jesus
Christ taught concerning the subject of the future of impenitent
sinners. letting His words come to us
in their plain and natural sense of meaning, seeking to put ourselves
in the situation of those who sat at His feet when He spoke
them. What did those words convey to them? What did our Lord assume
they would convey unto them? And so much for the approach
to our subject. Now we come to begin to consider
the subject proper. Our Lord's teaching on the subject
of the future of the impenitent. And we should be working our
way through, and I've tried to categorize our Lord's teaching
under four general headings. Let me give them to you this
morning, and then we shall only have time to begin to consider
the first. Our Lord teaches that hell is
a place and a condition of unspeakable and unalleviated torment, misery,
and woe. Secondly, our Lord teaches that
hell is a place and a condition where soul and body will suffer
the punishment of sin. Thirdly, hell is a place and
a condition of degrees of punishment for sin. It shall be more tolerable. He uses these words often. Hell
is a place and condition of endless, eternal, unceasing punishment
for sin. The first principle that emerges
from the teaching of our Lord, and you will forgive me if I
stick more closely to my notes than I generally do, because
I want to be restrained by the words of Scripture alone, so
that there be no imposition of imagination or flights of rhetoric,
The simple words of our Lord are enough to strike terror to
the most careless heart, and I want to be true to those words.
Hell is a place and a condition of unspeakable and unalleviated
torment, misery, and woe. This teaching comes to light
in the two figures which our Lord constantly uses to describe
hell, the place of future torment. The one figure is that of outer
darkness. The second figure is that of
fire, the furnace of fire, the Gehenna of fire. Will you turn please to the Gospel
of Matthew, and most of the references we shall be considering are in
this Gospel. This past week, I read through
the entire Gospel of Matthew, writing down every reference
from the lips of our Lord, touching the matter of the future state
of the impenitent, and I discovered there were close to thirty distinct
references in this one Gospel alone. A theme which was shot
through the entire ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ. I read
now Matthew 8 verses 11 and 12. And I say unto you that many
shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down
with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But
the sons of the kingdom shall be cast forth into the outer
darkness. There shall be the weeping and
the gnashing of teeth. chapter 22 and verse 13. The setting here is the parable
of the wedding feast. The king comes to behold the
guest, verse 11 of Matthew 22. But when the king comes in to
behold the guest, he saw there a man who had not on a wedding
garment, and he said unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither,
not having a wedding garment? and he was speechless. Then the
king said to the servants, bind him hand and foot and cast him
into the outer darkness. There shall be the weeping and
the gnashing of teeth." And then chapter 25 and verse 30, here
the account of our Lord's parable of the talents And when the king
comes back to deal with those to whom he has entrusted the
talents, he calls before him the wicked, unprofitable servant,
and we read in verse 30, And cast ye out the unprofitable
servant into the outer darkness, there shall be the weeping and
the gnashing of teeth. Three times then in the Gospel
of Matthew, the figure of outer darkness is used. What did that
convey to our Lord's hearers? We must not ask, what does it
convey to us? What did it convey to them? And
to the Oriental, this conveyed a very, very vivid picture. Remember the setting of these
three references. One is the feast. Many shall
come from the East and the West and the North and the South and
shall sit down to feast in the Kingdom of God, but others shall
be cast out. The other is the setting of the
wedding feast. And this man who's come in without a garment is
cast outside the feasting room, outside the banquet room, into
outer darkness. This was a very vivid figure.
It communicated very clearly to our Lord's hearers. I read
from an excellent book that I've made reference to a number of
times, Strange Manners and Customs of Bible Lands. The writers who
spent years in the Orient, in the Near East, speaking of some
of the customs concerning banquets and feasts says, Ancient banquets
were usually held at night in rooms that were brilliantly lighted,
and anybody who was excluded from the feast was said to be
cast out of the lighted room into outer darkness of the night.
In the teaching of Jesus, such exclusion is likened unto the
day of judgment. The children of the kingdom shall
be cast into outer darkness. This expression, outer darkness,
takes on new meaning when it's realized what a dread the Oriental
has for the darkness of the night. In the East, a lamp is usually
kept burning all night in the home. To sleep in the dark as
the Westerner usually does would be a terrible experience to the
Oriental. Because of the fear of the darkness,
the Savior could have chosen no more appropriate words than
outer darkness to represent the future punishment of the unrighteous. What did the place of light speak
of? Why, that was the banqueting
house. The place of warmth, of light, of joy, of fellowship,
of mirth, of delight, and outer darkness was all the opposite
of that. Cold, foreboding, loneliness,
exposed to the elements. And so when these words are used
by our Lord, they are used to convey the privative aspects
of the punishment upon the wicked. That is, that which will be taken
from them. When I was a boy, there were
two ways I was punished. Sometimes punitive. That was
when Pappy took me up into the bathroom. Why the bathroom, I
don't know. Shut the door. And I always had to have the
humiliation of pulling the shade down. I don't know why that was,
but that was part of the ritual. And then I was spanked. That
was punitive. But there was another kind of
punishment that was privative. Son, you go upstairs to your
room without your supper. You see, I was taken away from
the warmth of the table and from the provision of that table.
And our Lord, in using this figure of outer darkness, is signifying
that the future of the impenitent will involve these privative
judgments of God cast into outer darkness. For when we read the
description of heaven, it's rich with oriental imagery. It's spoken
of as the marriage supper of the Lamb. And when all the redeemed
are gathered together, it's in the concept of a great feast. Jesus said, I shall no longer
drink of this fruit of the vine until I drink it new with you
in the kingdom of God. It speaks of that place as a
place where there is no need of the sun nor of the moon, for
the Lamb is the light of that temple. and the warmth, the joy,
the fellowship, all the glories of the redeemed. What is it to
be cast into outer darkness, to be cut off from all of this,
and all the opposite of the glories of the redeemed? This concept
that comes out in the teaching of our Lord is confirmed in the
apostolic writers In 2 Peter 2 and verse 17, we read words
that were probably taken from these very words of our Lord,
for Peter heard them. These are springs without water
and mitts driven by a storm, for whom the blackness of darkness
hath been reserved. And then Jude, in Jude 13, says,
for whom the blackness of darkness have been reserved forever. What will be the results of this
privative judgment of God? You remember in each case, following
the pronouncement, cast them into outer darkness, are these
words, there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth. Now
it's interesting. The American Standard rightly
translates it. It puts the article, there shall
be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth. And in every instance
where the phrase is used, it doesn't say, there shall be weeping
and wailing, or wailing and gnashing of teeth, but there shall be
thee weeping and thee gnashing of teeth. Why is the article
used? We say we believe in verbal inspiration, that the very words
are inspired of God. I'll tell you why they're there.
Our Lord is saying that everything that has ever been commoted by
weeping, All the grief and the sorrow and the hopelessness that
has ever caused any weeping in this veil of tears is but a preview
of the true weeping of that awful hour when the impenitent are
cast into outer darkness. There shall be the weeping of
which every other weeping has been but a faint preview. The
word weeping is used in Matthew 2. of the great sorrow that came
when all the children two years and under were cut off by that
decree of Herod. Think of what it was like to
come into that very botchum, a very veil of tears, when mothers
by the scores were pouring out the agony of their hearts at
the grief of having their little ones snatched from their breasts
and brutally and cruelly smitten and killed. Ah, the weeping of
that hour! was not true weeping. The weeping
awaits that hour when the impenitent shall be cast into outer darkness. And then all the gnashing of
the teeth, we read of some of it this morning. When filled
with rage against that holy man of God, they gnashed upon him
with their teeth, and they took him out and stoned him all the
gnashing of all the anger of all the corrupt and wicked hearts
of all corrupt and wicked men through the ages, our Lord says,
are but previews of the gnashing of the anger of that awful day,
when the wicked shall receive their full and just dessert of
the wrath of God. You have a picture of it in Revelation
16, verses 9, 10, and 11, where you read of God pouring out judgments,
temporal judgments, in the last hour of human history, and it
said, though men are swallowed up with the agonies of this,
that they blaspheme the name of God and curse the God of heaven.
And so shall it be in that awful day, weeping, speaking of the
agony and remorse, the gnashing of teeth of the rage and anger
against God. And dear ones, I remind you,
the Father says of His Son, hear Him, hear Him. Hear Him when He said to Jews,
to whom the whole concept of their culture involving the feasting
room, the banqueting room, with its light, with its mirth, with
its joy, with its delights, and who knew what it was to be cast
out of the banquet room into the darkness, away from the place
of light and provision. Either our Lord was deliberately
deceiving the ears of His day, or there is such a place of privative
judgment to be cut off from all that is light and love. And to
experience Thee weeping, and the gnashing of teeth. Either
we must keep Christ and His hell, or relinquish Christ and His
hell. Then the second figure that our
Lord uses to show that hell is a place and a condition of unspeakable,
unremitting torment, misery, and woe is the concept of the
furnace of fire. Turn again to the Gospel of Matthew,
chapter 13. Our Lord gives the parable of
the tares in Matthew 13, 24 to 29, I'm sorry, 24 to 30. And
then he interprets that parable for us in verse 36. Then he left the multitudes and
went into the house, and his disciples came unto him, saying,
Explain unto us the parable of the tares of the field. And then
he does, and he says, He who sows the good seed is the son
of man, the field is the world, and the good seed, these are
the sons of the kingdom, and the tares are the sons of the
evil one, the enemy that sowed them is the devil. The harvest
is the end of the world, and the reapers are angels. As therefore
the tares are gathered up and burned with fire, so shall it
be in the end of the world. The Son of Man shall send forth
his angels, gather out of his kingdom all things that cause
stumbling, and them that do iniquity, and shall cast them into the
furnace of fire. and that they shall not be dealt
with as wheat and tares that are consumed and then gone into
other elements. Our Lord again follows up with
these words, there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth. The furnace of fire. Notice verses
47 to 50. Again, the kingdom of heaven
is like unto a net that was cast into the sea, and gathered of
every kind, which, when it was filled, they drew to the beach,
and sat down, and gathered the good into the vessels, but the
bad they cast away. So shall it be in the end of
the world. The angels shall come forth and sever the wicked from
among the righteous, and shall cast them into the furnace of
fire. There shall be the weeping and
the gnashing of teeth. In chapter 25 and verse 41, our
Lord uses these words, depart from me into everlasting fire
prepared for the devil and his angels. Matthew 18 and verse
8, If thy hand or foot causes thee to stumble, cut it off,
cast it from thee. It is good for thee to enter
into life, maimed or halt, rather than having two hands or two
feet to be cast into the eternal fire. And then not only does
our Lord use such terms as we have read, furnace of fire, eternal
fire, fire prepared for the devil and his angels, but he uses again
and again the word Gehenna. It's a word used twelve times
in the New Testament, eleven times used by our Lord. And again,
I ask the question, what did that word convey to the Jewish
heroes of our Lord's day? For our Lord uses it in His Sermon
on the Mount when He stands there on that Mount and delivers, as
it were, the Magna Carta of the Kingdom that He has come to establish.
He uses this term, Gehenna, several times in the Sermon on the Mount. He uses it with his disciples.
Fear not those which kill the body, and after this have no
more that they can do, but fear him who can destroy both soul
and body in Gehenna. He uses it with the Pharisees.
He says, How can ye escape the judgment of Gehenna, of hell? Matthew 23, 33. Well, the word itself is a compound
word from two Hebrew words, which mean the valley of Hinnom. It
was a valley southeast of Jerusalem, a valley where an image of Moloch,
the god that we read about in Stephen's sermon this morning,
or Baal, or perhaps a sun god was erected. And here the idolatrous
Jews, in the worship of this false god, would offer their
children as human sacrifices. During the revival under Josiah,
and you can read about it in 2 Kings 23 verse 10, Josiah abolished
the worship of Moloch, and to render that valley odious, he
turned all the filth of Jerusalem into it. The dead bodies of animals
and criminals were thrown into that valley. The sewers of Jerusalem
emptied their filth into it. To consume this filth and awful,
A fire there continually burned, and so that valley, by a natural
law of all ideas, became a symbol of cruelty, of misery, of pollution,
and of perpetual burning. Thus, by a law of language, its
name was transferred to the place of the punishment of the wicked.
You have a similar thing with paradise. When our Lord said
to the thief on the cross today, thou shalt be with me in paradise,
he used the word, the original meaning of which was a Persian
hunting ground, walled in and well stocked with animals, the
delight of a hunter. But it became more and more in
the evolving of the word to speak of a place of bliss, a place
of delight, until the very word paradise, used by our Lord, used
by the apostle when he said he was caught up into paradise,
is the word which has as its etymology a Persian hunting ground. It would be just as foolish to
say that when our Lord speaks of Gehenna, He simply means the
dumping grounds of Jerusalem, Just as foolish to say when he
said to the thief, today thou shalt be with me in a Persian
hunting ground. Ridiculous. No, this word had one connotation
to the Jews of our Lord's day, and this is interesting. Our
Lord never was reluctant to correct the unscriptural thinking of
the Jews wherever it came to light. You have heard that it
was said, but I say unto you. You have heard that it was said,
but I say unto you. You have heard that it was said,
but I say unto you. It's interesting that he corrected
doctrine after doctrine. He said, beware of the doctrine
of the scribes and the Pharisees. But the Jews of our day believed
in the future punishment of the impenitent, and our Lord not
only did not correct that notion, He affirmed it. In the very midst
of correcting other notions, He says, ye have heard that it
was said, Thou shalt not kill, but I say unto you, whoever says,
Recha, whoever has anger in his heart shall be in danger of the
Gehenna of fire. And so the word Gehenna, the
phrase Furnace of Fire, Everlasting Fire, is the second great symbol
used by our Lord. Now, what is the significance
of it? Just as the concept of outer darkness signifies the
privative punishments of hell, that from which the wicked shall
be taken away, so fire bespeaks the awfulness of the punitive
punishment of hell. Fire has ever been, among other
things, the symbol of the active movement of the wrath of God.
When God's wrath would be poured out upon Sodom and Gomorrah,
it is done by fire. When God would pour out His wrath
upon the murmurers against Moses in Numbers 11, He does so by
sending fire into the camp. When His judgment will be shown
upon Achan and his family, it is by burning them with fire,
so that fire in Scripture is again and again spoken of as
the symbol of the active movements of the wrath of Almighty God. And it is precisely in this context
that we read in Revelation 14 verses 9 to 11 the following
word, If any man worshipeth the beast in his image, and receiveth
a mark in his forehead, or upon his hand, he also shall drink
of the wine of the wrath of God, which is prepared unmixed in
the cup of his anger." And how does that wrath, that wine of
wrath, come to expression? He shall be tormented with fire
and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the
presence of the Lamb, and the smoke of their torment goeth
up forever and ever, and they have no rest day and night. They that worship the beast and
his image, and who so receiveth the mark of his name." Notice,
it's his wrath, the wine of his wrath, unmixed, comes to expression
in the fire. of his judgment. Someone asked, will it be literal
fire? I think such a question is almost irreverent. I don't
know what it shall be, but the symbol is never greater than
the thing symbolized. Just as it's a terrible thought
to think of outer darkness cut off from all that is light and
love and purity and holiness and warmth, so to become the
object of the active movements of the wrath of an infinite God
is to think of thoughts that stagger the mind and cause us
to cry out with Moses in Psalm 90, Who knoweth the power of
thine anger. What will the result of this
be? Precisely the same thing as the result of outer darkness,
for you remember in each of the passages that I read in Matthew
13, it says of the furnace of fire that there shall be the
weeping and the gnashing of teeth, Matthew 13.42 and 13.50. As with the outer darkness, thee
wailing and thee gnashing because of the privative punishment,
so here the positive infliction of God's wrath upon men shall
cause thee weeping and thee wailing. If outer darkness and the furnace
of fire are both the place of the weeping and the wailing,
they are one in the same place. the place and the condition of
unspeakable, unalleviated torment, misery, and woe? Our Lord said of himself, I speak
not my own words, but the words of Him that sent me. Every boy, girl, man or woman
in this place this morning, you must reckon with these words
of Christ. He spoke of outer darkness. He spoke of the furnace
of fire, Gehenna, eternal fire. And I trust that the issues as
clear as daylight that either you must utterly reject the authority
of Jesus Christ in any area, or you must submit your mind
to these frightening descriptions of the future of the impenitent,
which our Lord gives to us again and again. If there is such a
place of unspeakable misery, torment, and woe then I trust
every one of you realizes that nothing is worth anything unless
I'm certain that I'll not come to that place at all. If I were
to say this morning that while we met, someone planted a time
bomb in the pocket of one person in this place, you look around
and say, well, there are about 80, 90 of us here. One chance
in 90 that it might be in mine. Oh, that's not a very high percentage.
I won't be bothered to look in my pocket. not on your life. If I said on the basis of valid
authority, there's a time bomb in one coat out there, only one,
every single one of you has a coat on that rack. Would not put that
coat on until you turned over every single fold to make sure
that it wasn't yours. If the Bible said only one person
in a billion would go to a place of outer darkness, a furnace
of fire. We should spend a lifetime, if
necessary, discovering, am I that one? But the frightening thing,
dear ones, and this is what's made this such an oppressive
study, to live in these areas of truth for these past days,
is that the Bible says that many go into destruction. Why does
our Lord teach us of hell? To warn us that we enter not
into that place. Ah, but you say, if there was
some kind of miracle to show that it was true, if someone
could come back from that place, speaking of the brimstone and
speaking of his experience, ah, then I'd believe it. Ah, that's
exactly, exactly what somebody thought who's there. Remember
what the rich man said? Father Abraham, send some of
my brothers from the dead. Then they'll listen. Abraham
says they have Moses and the prophets. If they'll not hear
the word, they will not hear. They'll run, come back from the
dead. And I tell you, dear ones, this is what makes my task as
a minister of the gospel so sobering. For I realize that my only weapons
are the words of Christ. And if you'll not be persuaded
by the law and the prophets, It'll take hell itself to convince
you of the awful reality. May God grant that every one
of you, boys and girls, men and women, will soberly reflect and
ask yourself, do I have Biblical grounds to believe that I'm safe
from that awful judgment? Notice my answer? Do I have biblical
grounds to believe I am united to Christ, and that there is
no condemnation to those that are in Christ Jesus? Not do I
have some vague notions about salvation, some vague hopes that
I may be a child of God. Do I have biblical grounds to
believe that I pass from death unto life, and that in that awful
day I shall hear Him say to me, into the joy of thy Lord. I close with one of the great
hymns of Wesley. It's not in our hymn book. I
want to read it to you. Low on a narrow neck of land,
twixt two unbounded seas, I stand. Secure, insensible, a point of
time, a moment's space removes me to that heavenly place or
shuts me up to hell. O God, mine inmost soul, convert,
And deeply on my thoughtful heart Eternal things impress. Give
me to feel their solemn weight, And tremble on the brink of fate,
And wake to righteousness. Before me place in dread array
The scenes of that tremendous day, When Thou with clouds shalt
come To judge the nations at Thy bar. And tell me, Lord, Shall
I be there to hear thee say, Well done? Be this my one great
business here, With holy joy and holy fear, To make my calling
sure, Thine utmost counsel to fulfill, To suffer all thy righteous
will, And to the end endure. Ah, dear child of God, this is
what makes the cross precious. Because all that's involved in
the privative punishment of outer darkness, the punitive punishment
of fire, broke upon our blessed Lord and caused Him to cry, my
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? He bore my hell that I might
not taste it. Blessed be God for a Savior.
who would sink himself beneath such awful wrath, and knowing
the reality of it in his own experience, knowing the reality
of that place prepared, that's why our Lord spoke of hell more
than any other. May God grant that we'll hear
His voice and flee the Rafticon. May God grant that knowing the
terror of the Lord, We'll seek as never before to persuade men,
to persuade our children, persuade our neighbors, persuade those
that we touch from day to day, lest they come to this awful
place of outer darkness and eternal fire. Let us pray.