This sermon was preached on Sunday
evening, July 24th, 1983, at the Trinity Baptist Church in
Montville, New Jersey. Since our blessed Lord has told
us, without me ye can do nothing, I trust we never grow weary of
acknowledging our utter helplessness and dependantness by drawing
near to God again and again and again in seeking the help of
His Spirit. Let us once more bow in the presence
of God. Our Father, we have been reminded
in the singing of this paraphrased version of the parable of the
sower that though the seed is good seed, and though it is sown
freely, and though it is sown in the motive of communicating
grace to others, the problem lies with our own hearts. And
oh, how we pray that by the mighty, mysterious, and inward work of
the Spirit, every heart may be made into good soil to receive
the word of God and to bring forth fruit thirtyfold, sixtyfold,
a hundredfold. Lord, do for the preacher and
the hearer what they cannot do for themselves, and what must
be done for both, if we are to profit from this hour. Through
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Now those of you who attend regularly
upon this ministry will remember that several weeks ago we began
a series of Sunday evening studies under the broad heading of the
biblical doctrines of heaven and of hell. And in the first
two studies under that heading, I set before you what I entitled
some introductory perspectives on the biblical doctrines of
heaven and of hell. And in those two messages I sought
to accomplish basically three things. First of all, to highlight
the importance of the biblical doctrines of heaven and hell.
And we saw from the study of the scriptures together that
integrity in handling the word of God demands an adequate doctrine
of heaven and hell, that sympathy with major elements of biblical
religion also demands an understanding and commitment to the doctrines
of heaven and hell, and that honesty in dealing with the souls
of men also demanded a doctrine of heaven and hell that was true
to the Word of God. Then, having highlighted the
importance of the doctrines of heaven and hell, I spent just
a short time focusing on what would be the primary area of
our concern in this study, namely, the eternal state. There is a
biblical doctrine of the heaven and the hell that awaits every
soul upon the moment of its death. There is no soul sleep, there
is no annihilation. At the moment of death there
is an experience of a dimension of felt, conscious, spiritual
existence which come under the general teaching of heaven and
hell. However, the primary focus of Scripture is not upon the
intermediate state, that is, the state of the soul from death
till the coming of Christ and the resurrection of the body,
but the focus of Scripture, both with respect to heaven and to
hell, is upon the eternal state, that state in which the souls
and bodies of the righteous and of the damned enter into the
consummate bliss of heaven or the unspeakable agonies of hell. And then finally, I sought to
set before you the attitudes essential in seeking to approach
the doctrines of heaven and hell. We must come with an attitude
characterized by humility, by sobriety, and by faith. Men were never humored into trembling
at the wrath to come. Men were never tickled in the
third rib and made to weep and to wail and to cry out, What
must I do to escape the horrors of the damned? And if I personally
had the power to legislate and execute the legislation, I would
run from every pulpit, every so-called preacher who ever made
a jest in the midst of seeking to fix men's minds. upon the
realities of hell. And the glories of heaven are
so inherently wonderful, they do not need, as handmaiden, anything
of human jesting. And so we approach our subjects
with humility, with sobriety, and with the measure of our doctrine,
not what we think is either possible or just, but in a disposition
of faith that believes what God says is possible and just is
possible and is just. Now so much for that brief review
of the two previous studies. Tonight we begin to address ourselves
to a study of the awesome doctrine of hell. You ask, Pastor Martin,
why begin with the doctrine of hell and not the doctrine of
heaven? For there are many reasons, the
most fundamental of which is simply this, the Bible has far
more to say explicitly about hell than it does about heaven. And in particular, our Lord Jesus
Christ says much more about hell than he does about heaven. and seeking to reflect the sensitivity
to the proportion of the Word of God, we will probably have
three or four messages on the doctrine of hell and two messages
on the doctrine of heaven. And so we begin tonight then
a consideration of some of the major aspects of the biblical
doctrine of hell. And as we come to this awesome
subject, We will seek to follow a very simple outline couched
in the form of several questions. First of all, what is hell? We'll begin to answer that question
tonight. And then secondly, who will be
sent to hell? And thirdly, how may one be certain
to escape hell? Now the questions are not profound.
And yet they are the questions which press themselves upon every
person who takes the word of God seriously. First of all,
then, what is hell? And with our Bibles open before
us, we shall begin to answer that question in terms of several
simple, straightforward propositions which embody a distillation of
large blocks of scriptural teaching. In answer to the question, what
is hell? I assert, first of all, hell
is a place and a condition of unspeakable torment, misery,
and woe. Hell is a place and condition
of unspeakable torment, misery, and woe. that hell is an actual
place somewhere in the universe of God is clear from the language
of the Word of God. Turn with me to several passages
that make abundantly clear, or make it abundantly clear, that
hell is indeed a place as well as a condition. In Matthew's
Gospel, chapter 10, Our Lord Jesus Christ, speaking in verse
28, says to his disciples, or to his friends, as we have in
a parallel passage, Matthew 10, 28, and do not be afraid of them
that kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul, but rather
fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. And here our Lord tells us that
hell is a place where there will be the destruction, whatever
that means, of the body and of the soul. And when he uses the
term body, he uses it in such a way that there is an inseparable
correlation between the body which we now possess and the
body that will be sent or can potentially be sent into hell. Notice that conjunction. Don't
be afraid of them that kill the body. What body? He's talking
to living disciples who have bodies of various sizes and shapes,
height and weight. Bodies that occupy space. real
living bodies. Now he says don't be afraid of
those who can kill this body, who can by violence cause your
heart to stop beating or your lungs from breathing. Don't be
afraid of those who can kill the body. But I will tell you
whom you shall fear. Fear him who can destroy both
soul and body. What body? That very body concerning
which he has just been speaking destroys soul and body in hell. And the word our Lord uses here
for hell is found twelve times in the New Testament, eleven
times it is recorded as being spoken from the lips of incarnate
love. even our Lord Jesus Christ. Now as surely as this body needs
space in which to exist, to function, to operate, to move, so in hell
there will be a place in which there is space enough for the
bodies of all the damned. so that hell must not be conceived
of as merely a horrible notion, nor only as a state or condition
of the soul. What is hell? According to the
scriptures, hell is a place, a place somewhere in the universe
of God in which bodies will be found. As surely as this building
is a place tonight in which several hundred bodies are found, so
there is a place somewhere in the universe of God where the
bodies of the damned Joined to their souls will undergo the
destruction of eternal punishment. Turn to Matthew 25 and verse
41, where again the emphasis falls upon the fact that hell
is a place, even according to our Lord, a prepared place. Matthew's Gospel, chapter 25
and verse 41. The context is the judgment of
the last day. Jesus Christ, the judge of the
universe, is speaking. Then shall he say also unto them
on the left hand, Depart from me, and here is the judge upon
a throne somewhere in the universe, a visible, tangible, glorified,
embodied Christ. Depart from me, there is distance,
there is space, from proximity to banishment, depart from me,
you cursed into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil
and his angels, verse 46, and these shall go away into eternal
punishment. And eternal punishment in this
context is in terms of banishment from the presence of Christ the
Judge into the presence of the devil and his angels, but it
is a spatial banishment. Heaven is a place. Hell is a place. It is a place of unspeakable
misery, torment, and woe. And then another passage in which
If I had no other text on which to rest the case, this would
bear the full weight of it because of the peculiar words chosen
by the Spirit of God. Mark's Gospel, Chapter 13, verses
41-43. Mark's Gospel, I'm sorry, Matthew's
Gospel, Chapter 13, verses 41-43. The Lord Jesus again is speaking. He is explaining a parable which
He previously gave to the multitudes. Verse 41. The Son of Man shall
send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom
all things that cause stumbling and them that do iniquity, and
shall cast them into the furnace of fire, Now this next language,
there shall be, is not simply the use of a simple future of
the verb to be. We say, there shall be this,
that, or the other. But in the construction in the
original, in this passage and in the parallel passages, you
have an adverb, ete, which means there, in that place. Then you have a form of the verb
to be in the future tense. There in that place shall be. And then the description follows.
There in that place shall be. The weeping and the gnashing
of the teeth. And again in Revelation 20 and
verse 15, they shall be cast into the lake of fire. And those described as cast into
have previously been described as those whose bodies joined
to their souls have been summoned to judgment, and soul and body
have been cast into the lake of fire. Now it is both fruitless
and the height of carnal arrogance to speculate precisely where
hell is located in the vast universe of God's creation. But suffice
it to say, based upon the clear teaching of these and many other
passages that could be brought forward, that it is surely as
this building tonight houses human beings with a space-time
existence, your hips occupying so many inches on the chair,
your back occupying so many inches upward, your shoulders so many
outward, There is a place in the universe of God into which
your body that now occupies this space will occupy space in a
state of unspeakable torment, misery, and woe unless you are
brought into vital life-transforming, character-transforming experience
of the grace of God in Jesus Christ. What is hell? The answer of the Word of God
is, Hell is a place, a place of unspeakable misery, torment,
and woe. And therefore, if we are to be
subject to the Word of God, we must reject with every fiber
of our being the notion put forward by even some apparently godly
men that hell is simply the ultimate extension of the soul's miserable
state apart from God, the idea that there is an actual place
I say it without being irreverent, a divine tortured chamber for
the damned, they say, is beneath the dignity of our concept of
God. My friend, if your concept of
God does not allow for the hell of the Bible, your concept is
that of an idol and not the God of Holy Scripture. and rather
than rid the Bible of its clear doctrine of hell, repent of the
idol god whom you worship, and fall at the feet of him who is
awesome and majestic in his fiery indignation. so that he will
exercise the rights of his prerogative as creator and owner of the universe
to mark out a segment of his universe into which he'll cast
every impenitent, unjustified, unsanctified soul and body that
has ever lived. But furthermore, under this first
proposition, that hell is a place of unspeakable torment, misery,
and woe. Having established it is a place,
let us now establish from the Scripture that it is a place
of unspeakable misery, torment, and woe. And we learn this from
what I don't know what else to call the shocking, horrific language
of the Bible. Now the dominant, though not
the exclusive, imagery to describe the torment, the misery, and
the woe of hell focuses upon two figures of speech. One, the concept of outer darkness,
and the other, the concept of the furnace or the lake of fire. And if you will simply take your
Bible and a concordance and look up all the references to hell,
you will find that the dominant imagery is this. On the one hand,
that place called hell is a place characterized by outer darkness
on the one hand, and as a furnace or lake of fire on the other
hand. Let us consider the testimony
of the Word of God. Matthew's Gospel Chapter 8. First of all, the imagery of
outer darkness, which is set before us to understore, to highlight,
to bring into sharp pinpoint focus the unspeakable misery,
torment, and woe that is to be found in hell. Again, it is Jesus,
our gracious Redeemer, the Son of God, who spoke with such grace
that men marveled at the words of grace that proceeded from
his mouth. This language of the horror of
hell comes from his lips. Matthew 11, Matthew 8 and verse
11. And I say unto you, Jesus speaking,
many shall come from the east and the west and shall sit down
with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. There
is his teaching on heaven, but the sons of the kingdom shall
be cast forth into outer darkness. There, in that state and place
and condition described as outer darkness, there shall be the
weeping and the gnashing of teeth. There, in outer darkness, shall
be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth. Our Lord is giving
a parable, and in the midst of the parable he says, But when
the king came in to behold the guests, He saw there a man who had not
on a wedding garment, and he said unto him, Friend, how is
it that you came in here without a wedding garment? And he was
speechless. And the king said to the servants,
Bind him hand and foot, and cast him out into the outer darkness. There shall be the weeping and
the gnashing of teeth, for many are called, but few chosen. Matthew 25 and verse 30. Again,
our gracious Lord speaking. Matthew 25 and verse 30. At the conclusion of the parable
of the talents, cast you out the unprofitable servant into
the outer darkness. There shall be the weeping and
the gnashing of teeth. Add to this the testimony of
Peter in 2 Peter 2 and verse 17, in which the language of
our Lord is obviously reverberating in Peter's mind and heart, speaking
of the ultimate destiny of false teachers and those who follow
their teaching. Verse 17 of 2 Peter 2, these
are springs without water, mists driven by a storm. for whom the
blackness of darkness has been reserved. The blackness of darkness
has been reserved. And in similar language, Jude,
in verse 13, the last epistle before the book of the Revelation,
speaking again of these false teachers, Jude writes, wild waves
of the sea foaming out their own shame, wandering stars for
whom the blackness of darkness have been reserved forever. You see, anyone who comes to
his Bible with no mountain of carnal pride under which he will
bury its clear testimony. Anyone who comes to his Bible
with the question, what is hell, must come to the conviction that
it is indeed not only a place, but a place of unspeakable misery,
torment, and woe, because This horrific language is used, outer
darkness, which, whatever it is, produces such agony and woe
that it shall be, above all other places in all the universe, the
place marked by the wailing and by the frustration and agony
of the gnashing of teeth. This is not the language of seventeenth-century
revivalists. who preyed upon ignorant peasants
and tried to scare them with medieval theology and get them
to be Christians. This is the language of the incarnate
God and of those inspired by His Holy Spirit. Now, what is
the significance of this imagery of outer darkness? Well, I believe
it is calculated by God. to underscore what we would call
the privative aspects of the punishment of hell. You see,
punishment can take two forms. There are times when, as a child,
I did things that I should not have done, and most frequently
when I didn't do things I should have done. My parents generally
applied privative punishment when certain duties were not
fulfilled, sins of omission. And then there was punitive punishment
for sins of commission when I did things I shouldn't do. And I
frankly think there's some good sense in that. And if I did not
fulfill certain contractual arrangements, such as having a lawn cut on
such and such a day, or scrubbing so many floors at such and such
a day so many times a week, and I'm still alive to talk about
it, kids, it won't kill you, then certain privileges were
taken away from me. and all the pain of that privation. You see, there is a privative
kind of punishment. And in all of these pictures,
our Lord is using a graphic imagery that would have struck to the
very heart of every Palestinian. Remember, these were before the
days of ComEd and Jersey Power and Light. And though the banquet
house was the place of laughter and merriment and warmth and
light, to be cast outside the banquet house was to be placed
out in the murky, thick darkness and to be vulnerable to all that
is there in the unknown darkness. And so our Lord uses this imagery
again and again to underscore That outer darkness is pointing
us to the misery, to the torment and the woe of the privation
that will come when men are cast out away from Him who is light
and from His people who reflect His light. One of the great emphases
of the doctrine of heaven as set before us in the book of
the Revelation is that everywhere you turn, it is flooded with
light. No need of the sun, for the Lamb
is the light, and there is no day nor night. You get the picture
of eternal day, eternal noonday, and the antithesis is eternal
midnight. It is as though God says to all
those described in John 3, this is the condemnation. Light is
coming to the world, and men love darkness rather than light.
And in your love of darkness you refuse to bow before the
prickings of conscience about your sin that you know can only
be resolved by having dealings with God in Jesus Christ. When
men are so determined to run from the light of an accusing
conscience, to run from the light of a condemning law, to run from
the blazing light of an impaled deity upon a cross, That God
finally says, after stretching out His heart in His hands, Why
will you die? Why will you die? Turn! Turn! Believe! Believe! And man,
like spiritual moles, let every sound of his voice go deeper
into the caverns of the darkness that they love. That Almighty
God finally says, Is it darkness you love? It is darkness you
shall have! and that forever. May God have
mercy upon your darkness, loving soul, because unless that love
of darkness is transformed into love of light, beginning with
an earnest desire to come to the light of an accusing conscience
and a condemning law and an impaled deity and all the glories of
the gospel, my friend, unless you come to that light and have
a heart that is made to love that light, then outer darkness
will be your portion and that forever. That hell is enough hell for
any preacher to bear upon his spirit in seeking to be true
to the word of God. But that's not the full imagery.
For as often as the imagery of outer darkness is set before
us, almost with equal balance, but even with a little more emphasis,
is the imagery of the furnace of fire and the fire unquenchable. Let's look at just several passages.
This is not an exhaustive list, only a specimen one. Back to
Matthew 13. Matthew's Gospel, the 13th chapter. Verse 41 again, the Son of Man
shall send forth his angels And they shall gather out of his
kingdom all things that cause stumbling, and them that do iniquity,
and shall cast them into the furnace of fire. Now notice the
parallel. There shall be the weeping and
the gnashing of teeth. Well, I thought the weeping and
the gnashing of teeth was to be found there in outer darkness. Now we are told that it is there
in the furnace of fire that shall be found wailing and gnashing
of teeth. Well, there is no contradiction,
for it is one in the same place, the place the Bible calls hell. Verse 49 of this same chapter. So shall it be in the end of
the world. The angel 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. Matthew 25 and verse 41. Again our blessed Lord. Then
shall he say to them on the left hand, depart from me ye cursed
into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his
angels. And this is the testimony of
apostles as well, 2 Thessalonians chapter 1. The language of the
apostle is equally vigorous. 2 Thessalonians chapter 1 and
verse 7. And to you that are afflicted,
rest with us at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven
with the angels of his power in flaming fire. rendering vengeance to them that
know not God and to them that obey not the gospel of our Lord
Jesus Christ, who shall suffer punishment, even eternal destruction
from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his might. You see the two elements here?
Eternal destruction from, there's the privative, cast off from
the face of Him who is light and life and love and grace cast
off from Him. But He shall in the positive
application of divine judgment, He shall come and with consuming
fire destroy all His and His people's enemies. In Revelation
20 and verse 15, the second death is called the Lake of Fire. We read similar language in Hebrews
10.27. In Jude, verse 7, I will not
weary you with all of the references, but suffice it to say again,
we are drawn back to the teaching of our Lord, our Lord's most
frequently used word to describe hell. is a word which in its
derivation and in its historical connotation could mean only one
thing. There was a place outside the
city walls of Jerusalem where all of the refuse was burned
and where the bodies of unwanted executed criminals were cast
that they might be consumed and destroyed in a final act of public
disgrace. That place was originally the
Valley of Hinnom. That place had come to be called
Gehenna. And our Lord uses the imagery
of that place to describe in the most graphic way this dimension
of the biblical answer to the question, what is hell? It is
a place of unspeakable misery, torment and woe. A place which,
by the very linguistic association, conjures up the imagery of fire
that consumes what is filthy and unclean and unworthy of even
decent burial. It is God's junk heap! Now, as our God is described
as a consuming fire, and His wrath is often expressed As being
an outgoing of the fire of his judgment, so the imagery of eternal
fire, the lake of fire, focuses upon what we would call the positive,
punitive aspects of hell. Hell is not simply a matter of
what a soul misses, the privative. Hell is a matter of God's holy
and righteous heart. without one least stain of sinful
vindictiveness, taking holy vengeance upon every one of His creatures
that have dared to defy His law and His grace and die in that
state. No wonder the writer to the Hebrews
says, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living
God. My unconverted friend, do you
want to come into face-to-face dealings with a God like that,
and have no mediator to plead your cause, no Savior to say
in His presence, Holy Father, he or she is one of mine? He or she came to own his sin,
own his undone-ness. He or she came to acknowledge
that there was no good in themselves, and they turned away from all
trust in themselves, and they put into my pierced hands the
case of their sin-sick soul. And Holy Father, and don't miss
this, And Holy Father, I sent my Spirit into their hearts.
I broke the dominion of sin. I gave them a new heart, a heart
that loves your law, seeks out of a motive of obedience and
love to keep that law and walk in your ways. Holy Father, I
plead the case of this sinner who deserves your sentence. My
friend, you may think yourself clever. Young person, teenager,
cocky. Smart Alec, quick tongue, proud
of your so-called keen mind, proud of the fact that you've
got your act together. My dear young man or woman, what
a fool you are. You want to contend with a God
like that and have no Savior to plead your cause. You want
a God like that to take a worm like you and say, depart from
me, you cursed one. Do you? I ask you in the name
of all rationality, do you want a God like that to take a worm
like you and say, out of darkness lay to fire? God have mercy upon your soul
if you are fool enough even to run the slightest risk. of having
to deal with a God like that, with no mediator to stand in
between. You see, it is a place of unspeakable
misery, unspeakable torment, unspeakable woe. And I have time
only to lay out a second proposition about the biblical doctrine of
hell, and it is this. And I will not be as extensive
Hell is a place where both soul and body will undergo unspeakable
misery, torment and woe. Not only does the Bible teach
that hell is a place as well as a condition, of unspeakable
misery, torment and woe, but the Bible teaches us in the second
place that hell is a place where both soul and body will undergo
this unspeakable misery, torment and woe. You see, when God made
man, He made him a body-soul entity. God breathed into man
the breath of life and literally Man became living soul. Man as a body-soul entity, a
psychosomatic entity, that is what we are as creatures made
in the image of God. And as body-soul creatures, we
live out our lives and die and will go to judgment. And according
to the Bible, as body-soul entities, we shall spend eternity in heaven
or in hell. And here the testimony of the
Word of God is unequivocally and indisputably clear. John
Chapter 5, verses 28 and 29. John Chapter 5, verses 28 and
29. Again, our Lord Jesus Christ
speaking, and He says, Marvel not at this, for the hour is
coming in which all All, all that are in the tomb shall hear
His voice and shall come forth, they that have done good unto
the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto
the resurrection of judgment. All shall come forth, resurrection
of life, resurrection of judgment, but all shall come forth to a
resurrection that involves the body. Revelation 20 and verse
11 and following, John in vision sees this very
day dawning upon the human race. John's vision in Revelation 20
and verse 11, I saw a great white throne, and him that sat upon
it from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away, and
there was found no place for them, and I saw the dead. disembodied spirits, I saw the
dead, great and small, standing before the throne. And the books
were opened, and another book was opened, which is the book
of life. And the dead were judged out of the things that were written
in the book according to their works. The sea gave up the dead
that were in it. The souls of the dead are not
in the sea. It is their bodies. And death
and Hades, or the grave, which that the abode of the dead, death
and Hades. I'm sorry, the significance of
Hades in this context is disputable, but this much is clear. When
death and Hades give up the dead that are in them, it is with
a view to standing before God in judgment. And we find the
same emphasis even in the Old Testament, Daniel 12 and verse
3. This is why Jesus said, words
with which we began our study tonight, Don't fear them that
kill the body, but fear him who can destroy both soul and body
in hell. Now pause for a moment and think
with me. Young people, teenagers, children,
adults, visitors, members, hear me for these moments. The soul,
what is it? Who can describe what the soul
is? Can you? That noble faculty of thought
of affection, of will, imagination, desire, memory, and a host of
other faculties, who can contemplate this magnificent element of human
existence, the soul, think of it, the soul of man, with all
of its faculties and capacities. all of its intellectual and aesthetic
and moral activities and capacities, the soul of man. And it is that soul which, because
of the entrance of sin, has sold itself to the service of sin,
so that in the case of every sinner, that soul, that noble
faculty, which should have been the leading element in man's
response to his commitment to glorify God, has become the leading
faculty to bring in its train a host of sinful patterns and
actions and deeds. That soul in which the sinner
has carried on his rebellion against God That soul with its
intellectual faculties that has conceived all forms of iniquity,
the soul with its capacities to love and to attach itself
to objects that has been the very purveyor of idolatry and
the creator of a million idols, the soul, that noble faculty,
now twisted and deformed and misshapen by sin, Romans 2 and
verse 8 says, Tribulation, wrath, and anguish upon every soul of
him who works evil. My friend, I'm not letting my
imagination run. The doctrine of hell is horrible
enough without needing preacher's imagination to embellish it.
You stop and think for a moment what is the deepest agony you've
ever known. Think for a moment. Some of you,
some of us, in the providence of God have known intense physical
pain. Some of you live with intense
physical pain. But unless you're a little child,
I doubt there are many who would debate my statement, there is
no pain you've ever known in your body like the pain you've
known in your soul. Maybe some of you have known
the pain of unrequited love. Or your heart was broken by someone
you loved. And you'd say I'd sooner undergo
any physical pain than the pain of a broken heart. Is it true? The soul, its capacity for pain,
for agony. Oh, my friend, what will it be?
when an omnipotent God is determined that that soul, to the fullest
of its capacity, will receive the full weight of His unmixed
wrath. Destroy the soul in hell. That soul that now experiences
pleasure, for pleasure registers in the mind. Though it may come
from the senses, the sense of pleasure is a disposition of
the soul. Think of it, my friend, that
sinful pleasure that brings your soul some immediate delight. Will it be worth it to have that
soul be the blotter of omnipotent wrath and fury? It will destroy your soul. in hell. But then it says, fear him who
can destroy soul and body. These bodies, of which the psalmist
said, were fearfully and wonderfully made, its almost infinite faculties
and capacities with its members, all given that they might serve
the living God. But alas, Scripture says, with
the fall not only has the soul become the haunt of every demon
of uncleanness and selfishness, but the body in its members has
become the willing slave of sin. That's the imagery of Romans
six. As you presented your members instruments of unrighteousness
unto sin, When sin through the soul said, fingers, do my bidding
for this pleasure, the fingers said, yes, master. When sin with
its seed in the soul said, take the sexual members and use them
for self-gratification, no matter what the law of God said, you
presented your sexual faculties, yes, master. instruments unto
see, the ears to gossip and to filth, the eyes to uncleanness
and the inlet of covetousness, to see and to desire, to look
and to seek, to possess. That's why the Word of God says
the body shall suffer in hell, because it's in the body that
your rebellion to God has been carried out in this life, and
in that very body you will pay forever. soul and body in hell. And there is no indication from
scripture that the body with which the impenitent dead are
raised will lose any of its faculties of feeling and of sense. That's
why Jesus said there will be the wailing and the gnashing
of teeth. Some years ago, six or seven
to be exact, my body underwent the gracious careful but nonetheless
mutilating influence of the surgeon's knife, I had to have back surgery. And though there was pain before
and after, I was blissfully anesthetized while they did the real cutting.
And how we thank God for modern anesthesia. So that though raw
nerves were being cut through, I was totally I was anesthetized,
wholly out of it. My friend, there'll be no anesthesiologist
in hell. You won't bring one with you,
and you won't call one to you, and God won't send one to relieve
you. For the rich man in hell cried,
Father Abraham, only a drop of water? or my parched tongue. And no drop of water was given. And you dare to play with a God
like that? You dare to think that giving
that body to whatever sinful pleasure now is the hook, as
it were, that binds your soul to the service of the devil?
Be it an illicit sexual relationship, be it adorning that body with
finery, surrounding that body with sumptuous food, giving to
that body the so-called assurance of ease and pleasure by the accumulation
of things, whatever it be, my friend, is it worth it that that
body, your body, That body in which you sit in this building
and listen to me tonight, that body shall be the recipient in
all of its faculties of the wrath and judgment of Almighty God
until you weep and wail and mash your teeth in hell. I didn't create the hell of the
Bible. And it's high time some of you began to take what God
has revealed seriously. You see, you do me no harm, my
friend, to go out of here tonight, and like a man whistling in the
dark, say, ha, I thought the days of preachers like that were
over. Oh, and the world's that Reverend Martin think he is,
standing up there, swaggering. My friend, you do me no harm
talking like that. Honestly, you don't do me any
harm. But let me ask you something. Will all your talking remove
the reality of hell? Will all your swagger cause Almighty
God to go to that place in his moral universe that is hell and
somehow, with Star War-like ability, poof it into annihilation? I
ask you, if you have any rational faculties, my friend, answer
me in the bosom of your own heart! Answer me! Will all of your pooping
of this scrub away reality? Will it cancel judgment? Will
it cancel the resurrection of that body? You know it won't. Your own conscience is on my
side, and you can't escape it. Oh, my friend, why longer fight
the realities that you cannot even escape from the theater
of your own heart? What is hell? Hell is a place
of unspeakable torment, misery and woe. It is a place, we've
established it from the word, it is a place of torment and
woe, the imagery of outer darkness, the lake of fire, the furnace
of fire. It is a place of unspeakable
misery because the entirety of your humanity, soul and body
will undergo its torments. and one has sought to capture
in hymnody the biblical teaching when he wrote how dark and dreadful
is the place where men no longer see God's face where pain can
have no end there fiery waves shall ever roll and conscience
chides the sinking soul while memories' torments rend From
hope of heaven by sinning driven, the anguish of the unforgiven
no mortal tongue can tell. Remorse, despair, their lot shall
be. Eternal storms sweep over that
sea. No rest, no peace in hell. With thee, praised God, tis not
too late. Thy dooms not fixed nor sealed
by fate, salvation's offered thee. Repent at once, there's
mercy here. Today high heaven will hear thy
prayer and set thee fully free. Why has God revealed the doctrine
of hell? My friend, one of his major reasons
is that you might flee from the wrath to come. And I say in the
presence of that God, My major reason for preaching it, not
the only, but my major reason for preaching it is that I might
be used of God to warn you to flee from the wrath to come. You're not dealing with this
preacher. All he's done tonight is to collate, bring into focus
and expound simply in the natural sense of the words, the teaching
of the Bible. And when any preacher does that,
your dealings are not with him. They are with his God. Now, the
issue is clear. You can go out of here, spend
a few miserable hours trying to put down what you heard. Monday's
coming if the Lord carries and spares you. Get involved in job,
boyfriend, girlfriend, sports, TV, and you say, well, by Tuesday
it'll be business as usual. My friend, do you place so light
a price on your soul? as to sit in this meeting and
calculate how you can remove every arrow of conviction that
is meant for your good and your salvation. If you put so light
a price on your soul, I don't. I don't. And I stand to plead
with you in the name of the God of heaven, don't trifle with
your soul! Don't sell your soul so cheaply! What is the tingle of that sexual
embrace in that immoral relationship? Hell forever for fornicators,
adulterers, effeminate and whoremongers. What is the advantage of your
dishonesty materially, positionally, when liars go to hell? What is the advantage of your
double tongue when liars burn, and the tongue that lied for
money, for advantage, for position, will burn and wail and weep? Do you put so cheap a price on
your soul and your body? God have mercy on you. God have
mercy on you. Oh, that you would from any sin,
any relationship, any position, possession, anything that keeps
you from a wholehearted, whole-souled embrace of Jesus Christ, who
bore the hell of an innumerable multitude upon a cross, when
His body and His soul upon the cross In a few hours, experience
the eternity of the damnation of the sinner. And when it was
done, he cried to Telestai. It is finished. It has been accomplished. Oh, my friend, run to that Savior. Away from sin. Away from the
world. Away from self. Run to Him. And in the unreserved, wholehearted
embrace of faith, Take him as he is offered in the gospel. Though your sins have been as
numerous as the stars of the heaven, his work for sinners
will make you fit for heaven and will make you fit for heaven
in a moment. Flee to him. Flee to him. Give yourself no rest till you
know that he is yours and you are his. Let us pray. Holy Father, we bow in your presence,
having been made sober by the words of our Lord Jesus and his
apostles, We cry with the psalmist of old,
who knows the power of your wrath and your fear and your anger
according to the fear that is due to your name? As we cannot
fathom your love, but stand before it baffled and amazed and staggered
in spirit, so, Lord, we cannot understand nor fathom the infinity
and the fury of your wrath. O gracious God, don't let sinners
go carelessly to hell from this building tonight, but have mercy
upon them. O Father, have mercy upon every
boy, every girl, every teenager, every man, every woman who is
yet wedded to sin and to self and to the world and things and
break the bewitching power of the devil and draw them to your
dear Son. And for those of us who have
been drawn and transformed, what can we say, Lord, but thank you. Thank you that you didn't cut
us off in our sins when we knew we would go to hell. We think
of those of us who lived for years in constant dread of the
hell we knew was our portion if you took our lives. We thank
you. Oh, what can we say, Lord, but
blessed be your holy name for your patience with us. for your
long-suffering over us. Thank you that you've made us
vessels of mercy. Hear our cry, and may the blessings
of your grace rest upon this congregation. For Jesus' sake,
amen.