This sermon was preached on Sunday
evening, July 31st, 1983, at the Trinity Baptist Church in
Montville, New Jersey. Ask the help of God as we turn
to the great and solemn theme of Holy Scripture that has been
announced as our subject for tonight as we further contemplate
the biblical doctrine of health. Let us pray. Our Father, we have sought to
enter into the imagery and to the thought patterns of the hymn
writers, standing, as it were, with tiptoes, looking ahead to
that great and awesome day, when the world as we now know it will
be consumed by fire, and when our Lord Jesus, whom, not having
seen, we love, will sit upon the throne of His glory and gather
the nations before Him. O Lord, left to ourselves, these
solemn truths will be but as a fool's tale. And we cry to
You that we may not be left to ourselves, for we know that Your
Word concerning these realities is true, and though heaven and
earth do and shall pass away, Your Word shall never pass away,
and it is surely as we occupy these seats in this building,
each of us will occupy a place before that awesome throne. To
hear those blessed words, Come, ye blessed of my Father, or to
hear those horrible words, Depart from me, ye cursed. Lord God,
come by your Spirit. that these great realities of
the world to come may break in upon our minds and our spirits
with such power that we may be unable to escape their molding
influence upon each life. Hear the cry that we offer and
come to us in grace and in power for Jesus' sake. Amen. Our meditation in the scriptures
this evening is the fourth message in this present series of studies
under the general title of the Biblical Doctrines of Heaven
and of Hell. In our first two studies, we
considered together the importance of these doctrines of heaven
and hell. We said a word about the primary
focus of our study of these doctrines of heaven and hell, and then
we sought to underscore the proper attitude and disposition which
we must bring to the study of these doctrines. And then, last
Lord's Day, we began to address ourselves to the question, what
is hell? And time allowed us only to develop
two categories of biblical truth under these propositions demonstrated
from the scripture in answer to the question, what is hell? Proposition number one was this,
that hell is a place and a condition of unspeakable torment, misery,
and woe. And then secondly, hell is a
place where soul and body will undergo unspeakable misery, torment,
and woe. Now tonight, God helping us and
time permitting, we move on to consider three additional and
the final propositions relative to the biblical doctrine of hell. The scriptures not only teach
us that hell is a place and a condition of unspeakable misery, torment,
and woe, that hell is a place where soul and body will experience
this unspeakable misery, torment, and woe. But the Word of God
teaches with great clarity, though not with equal clarity, this
third proposition, namely, that hell is a place where there will
be degrees of unspeakable torment, misery, and woe. Hell is a place where there will
be degrees of unspeakable torment, misery, and woe. This truth is
taught in such passages as those I will now read in your hearing,
which I urge you to turn to in your own Bibles. In the tenth
chapter of Matthew's Gospel, our Lord Jesus Christ, the one
who gives us the most full teaching on the subject of hell and future
judgment, declares to people of his own generation, Matthew
10 and verse 15, Verily I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable
for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for
that city." And in the context he is referring to cities to
whom he sends his messengers with the gospel of the kingdom.
And he says, if upon arriving in such a city that city shows
itself so utterly insensitive to spiritual realities as to
reject the messengers of Christ who come with the gospel of peace
that in the day of judgment the wicked, lecherous, immoral perverts
of Sodom and Gomorrah would find it easier in the eternal state
than many of these religious formalists who reject the message
of the gospel of the kingdom of God. And if these words say
anything to us, they tell us that the day of judgment will
be the revelation of degrees of punishment upon impenitent
sinners. It will be more tolerable for
the impenitent, doomed, and damned of Sodom than for the Christ-rejecting,
Gospel-rejecting inhabitants of these cities of Palestine
to whom the Lord Jesus sent his messengers. But the words clearly
teach that there will indeed be degrees of torment, misery,
and woe following the Day of Judgment. Similar words are found
in the 11th chapter of Matthew, verses 22, and twenty-four. The Lord Jesus Christ himself
has now visited many cities. Verse twenty, Then began he to
upbraid the cities wherein most of his mighty works were done,
because they repented not. Hear that the incarnate God,
the one whom we contemplated in Mark's gospel this morning,
Jesus Christ Son of God Himself has been present, attesting the
validity of His claims by His own miracles. But they would
not repent. They went on in their pride and
impenitence. And now our Lord says in verse
22, I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and
Sidon in the day of judgment than for you. Verse 24, I say
unto you that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom
in the day of judgment than for thee." And so we have parallel
language of the state of one group of impenitence being more
tolerable than another group of impenitence in the day of
judgment. And then in the Gospel of Luke,
here perhaps is the key passage indicating that hell is a place
where there shall be degrees of unspeakable torment, misery,
and woe. Luke's Gospel, Chapter 12, verses
45 to 48. Luke's Gospel, Chapter 12, and
verse 45. But if that servant shall say
in his heart, My Lord delays his coming, shall begin to beat
the men's servants and the maid's servants, and to eat and drink
and to be drunken. The Lord of that servant shall
come in a day when he does not expect, and in an hour when he
does not know, and shall cut him asunder and appoint his portion
with the unfaithful. And that servant who knew his
Lord's will and made not ready, nor did according to his will,
shall be beaten with many strikes. But he that knew not, and did
things worthy of strike, shall be beaten with few strikes. And to whomsoever much is given,
of him shall much be required, and to whom they commit much,
of him they will ask the more. Here are two classes of people.
Both are worthy of punishment. Some beaten with many stripes,
some beaten with few stripes, both beaten with stripes. The
imagery of punitive justice, the imagery of punishment, but
clearly degrees of punishment in terms of light and of privilege. One knew the will of God by special
revelation and did it not. He shall therefore be beaten
with many stripes. One is ignorant of the will of
God by special revelation, and yet he disobeys God, he is still
beaten. Ignorance in the light of special
revelation is no exemption from punishment, but his punishment
will be less than the one who knew his Lord's will and who
did it not. And the great principle that
comes forth from each of the passages I have read in your
hearing is obviously this, that the degrees of punishment in
hell will be in direct proportion to the privileges spurned. The degrees of punishment in
hell will be in direct proportion to the privileges spurned. How can it be that hell will
be more tolerable for the perverts of Sodom, those wicked perverts
who lusted after the bodies of those angels? What can it be
that will bring fiercer, fiery judgment from Almighty God upon
men than that perversity? It will be to have the light
of the gospel. and to turn away from it. It is to have the more intense
light of the presence of Christ and His messengers and to reject
them. It is to know the will of God
by special revelation and to reject it and therefore make
oneself a candidate for the more intense degree of torment, misery
and war. The Bible clearly teaches that
every soul and body in hell will be perfectly miserable, will
be tormented to its fullest capacity so that it will be unmixed torment
and woe. And yet the Bible also teaches
that there will be degrees of capacity to bear an intensified
degree of judgment. And if you sit there listening
to these words, and you have the turn of a skeptical mind
that says, how in the world can that be? If outer darkness is
outer darkness, and eternal fire is eternal fire, how can there
be degrees of punishment? My friend, listen to me as I
solemnly say to you, if you even think that way, You better come
to repentance and bow before Almighty God, or your own experience
will answer your question. Hell, in the intensity of its
fury, will be God's answer to your wicked impudence, even to
think the question. There is a frightening imagery
in one other passage that I want to open up before leaving this
point. And to my understanding, it is
the most frightening imagery with respect to degrees of punishment
in hell that I have ever encountered in the Word of God. And interestingly
enough, it's found in the most wonderful epistle with respect
to a systematic exposition of the Gospel. It's found in the
Book of Romans. And in the second chapter of
the book of Romans, in which Paul is demonstrating the sinfulness
of all segments of humanity, he says these words, Romans 2
and verse 4, Or do you despise the riches of his goodness and
forbearance and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness
of God leads you to repentance? Here are people violating the
law of God, verse 3 makes that very clear. And yet God continues
to shower His blessings upon them. He sends His rain upon
just and unjust, fills their hands with the good things of
His creation, gives them measures of love in their homes and peace
in their countries. And he says, do you despise the
riches of His goodness in forbearing, not knowing that the intention
of God showering good upon you while you live indifferent to
His law and to His gospel is that seeing His goodness you
might be led to repent, you might feel yourself to be the evil
man that you are. But by not doing this, notice
what he says is happening in verse 5. but after thy hardness
and impenitent heart treasurest up for thyself wrath in the day
of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God who
will render to every man according to his deeds." Now this word,
treasure up, is the standard word in the Greek language in
the New Testament for laying up treasure. You remember when
Pastor Nichols preached on the righteous church from Matthew
6, 19 and following? Do not lay up for yourselves
treasures upon earth. That's the word that's used.
It's the word that would be used when you would describe a man
who is accumulating a treasure. And here the apostle uses this
graphic imagery that when God continues to shower His goodness,
even in the area of His common gifts, and how much more, the
special gift of His special grace and special mercy in the gospel
of Christ, when He continues to shower it upon us, and we
return Him nothing but an increasingly impenitent and hard heart and
indifference to His goodness and to His gospel, Every day
we do it, we're putting capital in the bank. We're laying up
a treasure. We are treasuring up something,
and the day of cashing in will come. And what are we treasuring
up? Look at the text. We are treasuring
up wrath against, or in the light of the day of wrath, and the
revelation of the righteous judgment of God. In other words, The degrees
of punishment will be the fruit of our own investment. And I tremble to think of the
measure to which some of you are investing in the bank of
divine retribution and wrath. Some of you have sat in this
building and in previous buildings and in other buildings where
the gospel has been preached clearly earnestly, tenderly,
compassionately, where the truth of God has been brought home
to the theater of your conscience closely and earnestly. You have
had parents who have wept for you and prayed for you and instructed
you, and Sunday school teachers who have taught you and pleaded
with you, and yet this night, You are as lost and impenitent
as someone who had never once for thirty seconds heard the
gospel. If God would show you your bank
account from the vault of wrath, it would send a shudder down
your spine. Every day you're treasuring up
more in the bank vault of divine wealth, treasuring it, treasuring
it up, treasuring it up, treasuring it up, and in the day of judgment,
God will take the passbook and He'll say, this is precisely
how much you've treasured here. Take the payment in full. And that's not preacher's rhetoric.
That's the word of God. This book, it teaches such blessed
and wonderful and sublime truths, such as we considered this morning,
what we might call the sweet notes of the gospel. It's the
same book that holds forth this horrible, this frightening, this
awesome truth that hell is a place where there will be degrees of
unspeakable misery, torment, and woe. And that degree of torment,
misery, and woe will be determined by what you do with the light
and the privilege that God is giving. That's the teaching of the Word
of God. But then further, the Word of
God teaches us that hell is a place of unending conscious torment,
misery, and war. Hell is a place of unending conscious
torment, misery, and woe. The crowning horror of hell is
its unendingness. The crowning horror of hell is
its unendingness. There is a sense in which all
of the horrors of hell would have at least a dimension of
that which was tolerable for the human mind to conceive of
and perhaps even from a human perspective to embrace. When we come to this matter of
its unendingness, it is the crowning horror of the biblical evidence
is clear and it is undeniable by those who would be honest
with the Word of God. Yet, yet perhaps no doctrine
is more attacked, hated, caricatured, except perhaps the doctrine of
the sovereignty of God in election and reprobation. I have been
a Christian and in the work of the ministry for over thirty
years. I don't think I know of any doctrine that is more hated,
more caricatured, a doctrine which men do more to avoid in
its plain setting in the Word of God, with perhaps the exception
of the sovereignty of God in election and reprobation, than
this. Hell is a place of unending,
conscious torment, misery, and woe. And how do we know this? We know it, first of all, from
the clear, plain statements of text, after text, after text. Let's look at just a few of them.
Matthew's Gospel, Chapter 18. Matthew's Gospel, Chapter 18. And verse 8. Again, it is our
Lord speaking. Verse 7. Woe to the world because
of occasions of stumbling. It must needs be that the occasions
come, but woe to that man through whom the occasion comes. And
if your hand or your foot cause you to stumble, cast it off,
cut it off and cast it from you forth. It is good for you to
enter into life maimed or halt, rather than having two hands
or feet to be cast into the eternal fire. And the word used here
for eternal, though it can be demonstrated in certain contexts
that it does not mean literally unendingness, but speaks of a
lengthy period of time, the context clearly indicates that it is
used in that figurative sense. But if this word does not mean
unendingness, the Bible contains no such word. It is the word
used to describe the unendingness of the bliss of heaven, the unendingness
of the glory of the redeemed. And God uses precisely the same
word to speak of the unendingness of the terrors of hell when the
terrors are set before us under the imagery of fire. It is not temporal fire or merely
age-long fire. It is eternal, unending fire. Again, our Lord, in Matthew 25
and verse 41, Matthew 25 and verse 41, 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 verse 46, And these shall
go away into eternal punishment. Now notice the strict parallel. But the righteous into eternal
life. You have Colossin Ionian, punishment
eternal. You have Zoane, life Ionian. In other words, there is a strict
parallel between the life that is unending, which is the bliss
of the redeemed, and the fire and punishment which are unending,
which is the curse of the infinite. And by no reasonable rules of
exegesis and honest handling of the Word of God can we maintain
the unendingness of heaven without maintaining the unendingness
of hell. This is not only the testimony
of our Lord, but also of several parts in the epistles. Notice
the language of Jude. Jude and verse 13, speaking of the ultimate destiny
of false teachers and those who follow their teaching, Jude describes
their destiny in this language, verse 13, wild waves of the sea
foaming out their own shame. wandering stars for whom the
blackness of darkness have been reserved forever. The blackness of darkness forever! And then the language of Matthew
3.12, when John the Baptist is speaking of our Lord, he speaks
of Him who will take up the and he will burn it, notice, with
the quality of the fire described as unquenchable fire. Some of you have heard of a fire
that broke out in a certain place, and the tragedy was that though
the firemen came and trained all of the apparatus upon it
and poured thousands upon thousands of gallons upon it, Alas, they
finally gave up because the fire was unquenchable. They could
not extinguish it. John the Baptist says that Jesus
Christ, under the imagery of one who separates chaff from
wheat, will burn up the chaff with fire that is unquenchable,
fire that is inextinguishable, fire that is eternal. And so the plain statements of
the Word of God teach us that hell is a place of unending,
conscious, torment, misery, and woe. But then it not only teaches
us that doctrine by plain statement, but it also teaches it by graphic
figure, by graphic figure. Mark's Gospel, Chapter 9. By
plain statement our Lord teaches us, yes, but by graphic figures
of speech he teaches the same truth. Mark's Gospel chapter
9 and verse 43, And if thy hand cause thee to stumble, cut it
off. It is good for thee to enter
into life maimed, rather than having thy two hands to go into
hell, into the unquenchable fire, and now what is the characteristic
of that unquenchable fire? Notice verse 48, where their
worm dies not, and the reference is back to the last word of verse
47, to be cast into hell, where? In which place their worm does
not die and the fire is not quenched. Do you see the picture? Not a
very pleasant one or aesthetically pleasing one, but our Lord used
it and I must expound it. When the worms that breed and
feed upon a dead carcass have no more carcass on which to feed,
what happens to the worms? What happens to them? They die. They must feed upon
the dead flesh in order to live. And when there's no more flesh
on which to feed, they die. Jesus uses that un-aesthetic,
coarse imagery. The incarnate God speaks of hell
as the place where the worm does not die. And why does not the
worm die? Because that upon which it feeds
will have eternal existence. And where the fire is never quenched. Now what happens? You children
know. If you have a wood stove at home, if Pop doesn't put more
wood in the wood stove, after a few hours, what happens to
the fire in the wood stove? It goes what? Everyone under
seven, tell me, it goes what? Out. It goes out, doesn't it? Pop's got to put more wood in
the fire? If he doesn't put more wood in the fire, fire can't
just go on being fire unless it has something to burn on.
You see what Jesus is saying? As he's pressing home, and notice
how practical it is, my dear friend, notice the context. He's
talking about the necessity of mortifying sin, of dealing with
sins as precious and dear and as clinging as right hand and
right eye. And he says you must deal with
those sins at any cost. If you do not, you'll go to the
place where there is eternal torment under the graphic figure
of the worm that never dies because that upon which it feeds has
eternal existence. And the fire is never quenched
because it will have eternal fuel. That's why it is eternal
fire. What is that upon which the worm
feeds? The fire consumes forever. It
is the soul and body of every impenitent man or woman within
the sound of my voice who goes to judgment in the condition
in which you came into this building. Every unrepentant, unbelieving,
unholy, unsanctified, unjustified man or woman, boy or girl, will
the words of Christ awake you. The worm will not die, my friend. The fire will not be quenched. And your body and your soul are
that upon which the worm of divine judgment will feed forever. And your body and your soul will
be the fuel for the fire that cannot be quenched. And Jesus
Christ used this powerful, coarse, graphic imagery. Don't try to write this off as
the rantings and the ravings of a preacher who has lived too
long in the writings of another day. These are the words of him
of whom it is said, they wondered at the words of grace that proceeded
from his mouth. The Jesus who was so much at
home with little children that they came and ran and popped
up upon his knee. trend of publicans and sinners. But all this dimension of our
Savior must never be overlooked. He uses language Paul never used. He uses language that none of
the other apostles use in their writings. He, he and he alone
speaks of the worm that never dies, the fire that's never quenched. And I say again, Will you dare
God to make your experience the final exegesis of that imagery? Then go on loving your sin. Go
on excusing your sin. Go on clinging to the world,
clinging to your lust, clinging to your secret attachment to
pornography, your secret attachment to lecherous thoughts, your secret
attachment to covetousness and pride and every other form of
sin. And my friend, as sure as you
hear my voice, you will know what Jesus meant. unless you
repent, become a holy man, a holy woman, unless you forsake all
hope in your own righteousness and rest only in the righteousness
of Jesus Christ the Lord. I say the crowning horror of
hell is its unendingness. Taught by explicit statement,
taught by graphic figure, but thirdly taught by the language
of unmistakable description. In other words, there is a passage
in which, by prophetic vision, one was given to see the unendingness
of hell, and he describes it. Turn to the book of the Revelation,
chapter 14. Revelation, chapter 14. Verse 9, And another angel, a
third, followed them, saying with a great voice, If any man
worships the beast and his image, and receives 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. That's
the God of the Bible. He has unmixed wine of holy anger
and it's prepared. Now notice, when it's poured
out, what expression will it find? 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
goes up forever and ever and they have no rest day and night
that worship the beast and his image and who so receive the
mark of his name. Until almighty God comes and
extracts this verse from his word, I defy anyone who claims
submission to scripture to teach any other doctrine other than
the doctrine I'm expounding tonight, only because the Word of God
compels me to expound it. I would never have created it,
I would not dare even to think it, let alone to preach it, if
the words of God did not compel me. that I defy anyone as long
as this text stands in Scripture to look into the face of Almighty
God and say, O God, I have been true to your word and teach. that there is no hell, or that
hell is only temporal, and there's a growing number of men who are
claiming to be evangelicals, whom others are prepared to call
evangelicals, who are denying the eternity and the consciousness
of that eternity of punishment that awaits the impenitent. And I could name names in books
if I thought it would be unto edification. The language of
unmistakable description is, the smoke of their torment ascends
forever and ever. Why? Not as the lingering reminder
of a torment that was, but as the perpetual indication of the
torment that is. The smoke of their torment ascends
forever and ever. Why? Because the torment goes
on forever and ever. No rest. day nor night, forever! In another generation there was
a godly and powerful Methodist preacher. There was a farmer
and a preacher, and while he followed his mule behind his
plow, He meditated long and hard upon these awesome things like
few preachers have ever done. And at the conclusion of a sermon
that he preached and then wrote on the awfulness of eternal punishment,
he said these words, Love incarnate can curse a sinner,
speaking of Christ. Love incarnate can damn a sinner. And if love incarnate can curse
and damn a sinner, it can do it for all eternity. Oh, eternity,
let your ages tramp and your cycles roll, but you cannot crumble
or scar the walls of hell, or rust and break its locks, or
silver the hair of God, who has sworn by His eternal self that
the sinner shall die. The pendulum of my clock over
the gates of hell vibrates through all ages and says forever and
ever. Forever and ever. Forever and ever. Its sounding bells striking off
the centuries, the ages, the cycles. The appalling monotony
of its pendulum going going, going, repeating still, forever
and ever, forever and ever, forever and ever, O eternity! God has wound up thy clock, and
it will never run down, and its tickings and its beatings are
heard by all the lost, forever and ever, forever and ever, forever,
and ever, God being my judge, I would die to save you this
day. And every preacher who half believes
what I've tried to preach would say those words. What is hell? Hell is a place and a condition
of torment, misery, and woe. Hell is a place where soul and
body will suffer torment, misery, and woe. Hell is a place where
there will be degrees of unspeakable torment, misery, and woe. Hell
is a place of unending misery, torment, and woe. And finally,
and I'll touch upon this just briefly, hell is a place and
a condition of unspeakable misery, torment and woe as the just punishment
for sin. It is a place and condition of
unspeakable misery, torment and woe as the just punishment for
sin. Hell is not instructive. Hell
is not corrective. Hell is not therapeutic or sanctifying. Hell is in the language of Romans
4-5 the revelation of the righteous judgment of God. Hell is punitive. This is why the Scripture says
in 2 Thessalonians 1, Jesus Christ will come in flaming fire to
take vengeance, not to bring instruction, not to bring purification,
not to bring sanctification through the fires of hell, but in flaming
fire He will come to wreak holy vengeance. And all teaching that
hell will ultimately be instructed and sinners will come to repentance
and be released. Hell will be sanctifying and
therapeutic and ultimately the souls will go back to nothingness
or ultimately end up in heaven is a contradiction of every clear
teaching of the Word of God. For God says, For which things
say the sins committed, the wrath of God comes upon the sons of
disobedience. Romans 2, tribulation and anger
and wrath upon every soul of man that doeth evil, my friend
here. The sins so dear to you tonight,
sins of deception, sins of pride, sins of lust, sins of dishonesty
and self-seeking, sins of getting even, sins of nursing grudges,
sins of stubbornness, whatever they be, hell is God's place
for God to meet vengeance upon sin in the person of the sinner. It is not a place of correction. It is not a place of instruction. It is not a place of sanctification. It is the place of retribution. Why do we preachers labor to
get you to take your sins seriously? Hear me now. God takes it seriously
enough to make a hell and to send the likes of you there if
you don't repent. I know there are some of you
that really think we're a bit imbalanced in our emphasis upon
holiness. I know that. You're a bit disturbed
with this preaching that always goes after your conscience, cries
out to you to live in the fear of God in every relationship
of life, to have stamped upon every dimension and facet of
your life from the most secret chambers of your thoughts. to
the most visible deeds before the world, holiness unto the
Lord. I know you're irritated, someone,
by the constant pressure upon your conscience to be holy. But,
my friend, unless you're irritated that someone's trying to keep
you from hell, don't ever be irritated with preaching that
says, without holiness, no man shall see the Lord. We don't
tell you to be holy in your own strength. We point you to Christ. We point you to Him as the Lamb
of God who takes away the sin of the world. We point you to
Him as the One who gives His Spirit to give you power to be
holy. We point you to motives that
flow out of His cross. I reject all accusations that
we preach illegal holiness. We do not! We preach holiness
that has its roots in the cross, that is only nurtured at the
cross. But hear me now, we preach no
cross that leaves you forgiven but still in love with your sin.
We preach no cross that will take you to heaven while you
dabble with your sin. And the day we preach a cross
like that, may God strike this preacher dead. Because that preaching
will send you to hell with a lie in your hand. You can go to hell
clinging to a cross that doesn't put you on the cross and kill
your self-centeredness. The cross on which Jesus died
to forgive us is the cross that will kill you as a self-centered,
self-serving man, woman, boy or girl. And if you've never
embraced the cross on which He died so that it's become the
cross on which you've died, you know nothing of the power of
the cross. God giving us sanity and breath,
we're committed to try to save you from hell in the only way
you can be. Coming to Christ for forgiveness
and pardon, coming to Him for the gift of His Spirit to be
a holy man or woman, coming to Him again and again when you
fall and stumble and find the fresh kiss of His forgiving grace,
and then looking to Him for fresh grace to do what? To whack off
right hands, gouge out right eyes, to buckle on the armor
of God, and to fight against the sin that is all about, and
the sin within, and the world, and the devil, and to be an overcomer,
that at last we shall hear His words, Come ye blessed. Come ye blessed. I've said it
on several occasions in the past, and I want to say it in closing.
There aren't many of the songs I learned in the early days of
my Christian experience that often give me much comfort. There
are some that do. But this one does. It will be
worth it all when we see Jesus. One look at His dear face, all
sorrow will erase. So bravely run the race till
we see Christ. My friend, listen to me. What
are you bartering your soul for? What are you trifling? What is the thing It puts your
soul in balance. Is it a relationship? To a young
man? A young woman? Is it a possession? Is it a dream? Is it some sensual delight? What
is it, my friend? Weigh it! Weigh it! Weigh it! Against the hell that is God's
just retribution for the willful continuance in sin. Is it your
pride? What is it? Whatever it is, is
it worth going to hell forever? Is it? If not, then forsake it
tonight. Run from it. Flee it. And run
only one place. Run to the one who knows by experience
what hell is. but the only one who was ever
there and came back again. Hell came to him upon the cross
and he's come back from the agonies of hell that you and I might
not have to go there. When he cried, my God, my God,
why have you abandoned me? That was hell come to the cross
into the very bosom of the Son of God. My friend. If you go there. Our father. We confess that there are times
when we wonder that you should reveal
such truths to poor, weak, frail, time-bound creatures of the dust. Our minds and our spirits cannot
contain such awesome, such holy but horrifying things. But Lord God, we're under constraint
of your words. We cannot, we dare not trifle
with your word. And, O Lord, as your servant
is sought to be true to that word tonight, will you not by
the Spirit make it effectual? Oh, may it not result merely
in hell being all the more a hellish place, because some heard such
plain preaching on hell and went to hell in their pride and O
God, for the sake of your beloved son who died, that men and women
and boys and girls might be rescued from the pit, draw, draw to yourself
with gracious and powerful hand sinners for whom the Savior died. And O God, those of us who've
been delivered from the pit, give us a renewed sense of joy
and gratitude that you would have rescued the likes of us.
We marveled that you didn't cut us off in our sins. Oh, how our
sins cried to heaven that you would send us to hell. But you
bore with some of us so long. We thank you for that mercy.
May we show our gratitude. For you have said to whom much
is forgiven, the same loveth much. Oh, Lord, what lovers of
Christ each of us should be. who has been rescued and delivered
from so much sin. Oh, give us, give us renewed
love for your Son. Give us a renewed concern for
those that are on their way to this terrible, terrible place. Give us a renewed burden for
our own flesh and blood who are not yet in Christ. Oh God, may
this company of parents not only be known as a company of those
who instruct their children and discipline their children and
train them, but oh, that we may be a company of those who weep
over our children, who will give you no rest or peace until you
are pleased to break their hearts and bring them to yourself. O
Lord, we acknowledge that all of our longings for them and
all of our prayers for them are ineffectual. You must give them
new hearts, and we cry to You to do so. Have mercy upon any
hypocrites sitting here tonight who think that because they've
got their act together before the eyes of their fellow men
all is well. Lord, You know them. You know
if there be such. And if there are, you take your
own word, Lord, and track them down. Follow them to their homes.
Follow them to the secret place where they sin. And there, Lord,
may your word arrest them and draw them to yourself. Oh, God,
we plead with you that the final day will show that this night
your word was not preached in vain. Have mercy. Have mercy. Hear our cry. Don't
let us quickly shake off the sobering impression of your word.
Help us know you to guard our speech and our thoughts, lest
we should be a stumbling block to some unconverted person upon
whom you have fastened a serious impression tonight. O God, we cry to you. We know not what to ask, but
that you would have mercy and rescue sinners. for Jesus' sake.