I assume that there will be better
songs than that in heaven, but I haven't any idea how. That song, and it's a long one,
I know, but I can understand why. There's a lot to talk about,
but that song as fully explains the gospel
of the Lord Jesus Christ as much as any other hymn I'm aware of. Not only the gospel of the Lord,
but our experience of it. And explains it in such powerful
and bold terms. You can tell I love it. And that's
why when I put it in there, I couldn't leave any of it out, you know.
We live in a generation where people go to church and then
they're in a hurry to get home. And so when they make hymnals,
they'll cut out portions of the hymn as it was originally written.
Doesn't take as long to get done with it. In our hymnal, that
hymn's in there, but they cut out some of the best parts. I wish that we lived in a culture
where when we came to church, we didn't have a clock to watch.
I'm not saying that that means I'd preach for any longer than
I already do, but wouldn't mean anything wrong with singing some
more hymns. But, uh, we kind of have some limits set to us. So I guess I ought to get started
with this part of it. Now I had been thinking of a
different message than the one I'm going to preach. Been thinking
over it for several days. But this morning as I was setting
up the bulletin, a thought came to my mind. And I thought, that'll
make a nice article. So I started writing it. And
I didn't get very far. I said, this is going to be more
than an article. And the message pressed itself on me. And I must
admit, as I go through it, it seems I preached this message
before. And maybe I did. But if I did, evidently God wants
you to hear it again. Because this is the message he
laid on my heart. And I pray that I'll be able
to get out of the way and let God speak. I want to speak on
the subject of heaven and hell. Heaven and hell. It's my opinion
that the scriptures do not give us any literal descriptions of
either place. I'm not saying that the scriptures
are lying or that they're deficient. Rather, I say this because it
would be impossible to describe in human words what either of
these places is like. The horrors of hell are beyond
imagination, and likewise the blessings of
heaven. Paul went to the third heaven.
And he said, I heard things impossible to tell. And if he heard things
that the laws of language restricted him from being able to describe
them, what does that say of the things he saw when he was there? When the scriptures describe
these places, it describes them in symbols, it compares them
to some things that we experience in this life, but for all the
perfection of the scriptures, they cannot perfectly describe
for us what lies ahead for every human being that has ever lived,
whether it be heaven or hell. If someone did describe these
places to us, we wouldn't be able to understand them. In particular, I cannot imagine
how we could understand the blessedness of heaven. We're not ready for
that yet. It'd be too much. It'd blow our
circuits. Nor do I think that if someone
could actually describe hell, that we would be able to understand
what they were talking about, or if we could, we wouldn't be
able to bear the knowledge. You know, we know of a lot of
tragedies, and we hear about war, how horrible it is, but you don't know what it's
like unless you've been there. So I've been told. I've never
been in war. And we may imagine what kind
of things men and women in combat are forced to confront, but we
really don't understand it unless we've been confronted with it.
But that doesn't mean that we can't gain some understanding
about these places. And when the scriptures describe
these places to us, it generally speaks in negative terms. That is, it tells us what's not
there rather than what actually is
there. And I keep saying places. Let me say this at the outset. I guess there are places, though
I don't know where they are. I know that heaven, as we commonly
speak of it, is not of this creation. It's of a new creation. When the ancients looked up,
they saw the heavens. By that word, they mean the sky,
the vault, is what the word strictly means. And they believed in the
three heavens, the heaven of the sky, the heaven of where
the stars and stuff are, and then the heaven of the heavens,
the third heaven. which is where God's throne is.
And that was kind of their cosmological view of the universe. But we
realize that God does not exist, absolutely speaking. He does
not exist in a place. Before he created the world,
there was no such thing as place. There was no such thing as time.
And we can't fathom that, but that's the way it was and still
is and where he exists. So where this place that the
Lord Jesus calls my father's house, where that is, I don't
know. Where this lake of fire is, I
don't know. And I tend to think of heaven
and hell less in terms of some geographical locality than a
condition. And that's worse. When people think of heaven and
hell as destinations rather than destiny, they miss the point. There are plenty who are willing
to take this fire insurance version of salvation so they can miss
hell and go to heaven, but they don't really have any interest
in Christ. They're willing to do, as I was taught in the form
of Christianity I was raised in, you know, pray this prayer
after me. And then you'd pray the prayer, a few words at a
time, kind of like the vows at a wedding, you know? And when
you're done, they'd say, you're saved. Oh? How do I know? Well, the Bible says so. And so people who didn't even
love the Lord Jesus Christ, They could still go through those
motions and think they'll go to a place that's more or less
like an eternal vacation. But the Bible is less occupied
with where we will be than what we will be, both as regards heaven and hell. Wherever these places are is
irrelevant once you come to understand what the people in those places
will be. We can get at least a little
idea in our minds of the heaven and hell dichotomy, that these
two places are destinies, We can get a little idea from what
the scriptures have to say. We do know this, there are only
two places. There's no middle ground. It
is altogether blessedness in the presence of God, or altogether cursedness in the
presence of God. It is altogether wonderful or
altogether horrible. There is no middle ground. There
are no levels of heaven nor levels of hell. If a man is in Christ, he has
with Christ all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places. None
are held in reserve. Nobody's given special medals
that others don't get. There's just one heaven, and
it's not a multi-story apartment building. It's all one level. And there are no degrees in hell. Because if a man is in Adam, his curse is called death. And
there are no levels of death. You're either dead or you're
alive. And we can also know this from
the scriptures. We want to make sure that we
don't approach this as just some abstract theological point or
sit there and think of how much you might wish that someone else
was here to listen to this. You and I need to take these
truths to heart and consider them Because in the not too distant
future, everyone sitting here this morning is going to be in
one of the other places. I was watching some videos, YouTube
videos, and got to looking at some videos of the jazz artists
and trumpet players that I liked back when I was in high school.
And I ended up at a website where this guy, he hand makes trumpets
and I was looking into that and he was describing different brands
and I remembered, oh yeah, mom and dad bought me a Selmer K
Modified. And I can remember Christmas
morning opening that thing up. It was $400 in 1970, 50 years
ago. I've still got it. And yet I remember the day I
opened it like it was just last Christmas. I will not have another 50 years
here, not likely even another 25, maybe 20. But if 50 years
was yesterday. How soon shall I stand in the
presence of God, either blessed or cursed, one or the other? We got some young people here
this morning. And I know from your viewpoint,
it looks like the end is far away. It looked that way when
I was your age. But just so you'll know, from
this end of it, when you look back, It doesn't look that far. But if it were 10,000 years,
what difference would it make? You still come to the end. And from the end of life here,
you will begin another life somewhere else. And if I knew I was going somewhere,
I'd want to know what it's like. The Bible teaches us that however
a person dies, that is the condition in which he remains for eternity. Whatever you are when you die,
that's it. You're that for eternity. In
the book of Ecclesiastes, I believe it is, it's either Proverbs or
Ecclesiastes, it says, as a tree falls, there it lies. One of these days, like a tree,
you'll fall. And there you will lie for all
eternity, because an uprooted tree can't move. In the book of Revelation, speaking of the end, it says,
let him that is righteous be righteous still. And he that
is filthy, let him be filthy still. So I think it would be safe to
say that heaven and hell or our condition after this life will
be nothing more than the perfection, the completeness, the utterness
of whatever it was we were when we died. Let's turn to Ephesians chapter
2. Now the Bible talks about hell
in terms of like the lake of fire and the Lord's parable about
the rich man and Lazarus, you know, and he said, I'm in torment
in this flame. I think those are symbols. If
afterwards I found out that there is literal flame, okay. By the righteousness of Christ,
it won't matter to me what it is because I won't be there.
But I think we misunderstand the point if we think all it
is is to just be roasted alive forever. I imagine those who
are in hell would be glad if that's all the torment they suffered. But here is a good description,
I believe. Paul is talking to the Gentiles
beginning in verse 11. This whole book distinguishes
between Jew and Gentile and then shows that the distinction is
gone. And he says, therefore remember
that formerly you were Gentiles by birth and called uncircumcised
by those who call themselves a circumcision, that done in
the body by the hands of men. Remember that at that time you
were separate from Christ. If you die without Christ, you
are without Christ forever. That title of Christ bundles
together all those capacities of a Savior, to show us the truth,
to represent us before God, to rule all things in our benefit.
That's all those things. are represented in that word
Christ. Now God's people, I understand this, by God's sovereign working,
God's people have always been in Christ, and yet those things
which are eternal from God's viewpoint, we go through the
process within our lives, and we were at one time without Christ. We were without anybody telling
us the truth. Even if the preacher was preaching
the truth, we didn't hear it. We were without someone to represent
our case before God, an advocate. We were without a king to rule
everything in our favor. Without Christ. And the greater
portion of the people alive today are without Christ. Some of you here today, you're
without Christ. And if you die like that, You stay that way
forever. Nobody to stand for you. John said, brethren, if any man
sin, we have an advocate with the Father, even Jesus Christ,
the righteous. There won't be an advocate then.
There won't be one to stand up and make a defense for us then. without Christ. I don't know
how a person goes out their front door without Christ. I don't
know how they get out of bed without Christ. I don't know
how they lay down in bed without Christ. If they have any conception of
the wrath that hangs above their heads. Excluded from citizenship
in Israel and foreigner to the covenants of promise. We came into this world, of course
Gentiles weren't even part of the natural Israel, but none
of us came into this world as part of that spiritual Israel. The seed of Abraham, Paul teaches
us in Galatians that they which believe are the seed of Abraham. And Israel, God's Israel, is
the one who gets all the blessings. excluded. Nobody likes being
excluded. Strangers, foreigners, aliens
to the covenants of promise. There's no promises in hell,
that is no good ones. And then this, last part of verse
12, without hope. without God in the world. And that describes the condition
of those in hell. And there are people right now
walking around the earth without hope and without God. Oh, they've
got hopes. Everybody thinks it's going to
end up all right with them eventually. He means they don't have a hope
that works. And without God, Doesn't mean
that God's not around him. But if a person dies in this
condition, then he is completely and utterly without hope that
his condition will ever change. And when it says without God,
it doesn't mean that God's not in hell. heard people say, you
know, hell is where there is no God. All the people in hell
wish God wasn't there. God's there. It's God that makes
hell to be hellish. It's the presence of God there
and they bathed in their own sins before him that makes hell
to be hell. It makes hell to be hopeless. How would you like to be that
way forever? It is written, he that does not
believe shall be damned. Spurgeon said that upon the gates
of hell are written the words, shall be damned. And it does
not matter how long a person may be there. The words remain,
shall be damned. Forever. I mean, every time you
look, it's not, was damned, shall be. And he says, if a million
years roll by, and they lift up their eyes thinking, well,
maybe now it's over, they shall see, shall be damned. You and I have never been without
hope, and without a sense of hope, even though at one time
our hope was a faulty one. We've always had this sense that
there was a way out of the trouble. There's no such thing in hell.
There's no way out. No way to improve it. No way
to endure it to the end and finally it be over. Of all the things
that those in hell can never say, they can never say it is
finished. They can't. In Romans chapter 1, and we'll
not turn there. But there Paul says, the wrath
of heaven is being revealed against all ungodliness, which all the
ungodly people do in their ungodly ways. And he begins to list things. They didn't think it was worth
keeping God in their minds, so God gave their minds over to
this. And he keeps talking about giving them over. giving them over to false gods,
giving them over to all kinds of wicked and perverse passions,
giving them over to violence. They have depraved minds. Now,
you want to know what hell is? It's to be given over to every
last bit of wretchedness within you, completely without restraint. Are you ever horrified when you
think about what you are? I mean, you know, if what's in
you ever got out? I tell you, if you all knew me,
and if you knew all the things I've done, I couldn't show my
face around you. And I imagine you feel the same way. So thankful. God not only hides
my sins from his eyes, he's hid a lot of them from everybody
else's eyes. And we have, Paul called them
emotions within us, all kinds of passions, all kinds of desires.
They come up and we try to put them down and we do our best
to keep them from breaking out in actual commission of those
things. And we may weep over them. We're
humiliated by them. But we thank God he restrains
us. In hell, the restraints are off. Every wicked, wretched thing
that man can be, everyone there is. Every awful, perverse passion,
desire a person can have, they have, but they cannot find any satisfaction
for any of it. The wicked in this world, they
may pursue sinful things, and they do so with gladness. The Lord described it once as
sinning with both hands mightily, and they do so and laugh about
it and think how wonderful it is because they can fulfill their
wickedness. to some measure while here, not
there. It's like being thirsty and not
a drop of water. Hell, I don't know altogether what
it is, but I know I never want to go there. I never want to experience anything
like that. I think of that demoniac that the Lord confronted that
had legion demons in him. Now this was a natural man, but
look what a wretched state he's in because he is indwelt by these
demons. Don't you have pity on a guy
like that? Can you imagine what that must be like? Well, imagine that, but to completeness. Utter insanity. Utter wretchedness. And not because
you're indwelt by demons, but because you're just like them
forever. Forever, forgive the pun, but
stewing in your own filth. your own moral wretched filth. Thank God that's not the whole
story. There is another place, there is another condition. And it's as good as the other
one is bad. What is it to be in heaven Now
I say this, and I realize only believers are going to understand
what I mean by that, but it's the perfection of every blessing
you now experience. You know what it is to be loved
by God. You'll know it to perfection
when you're in his presence. You know what it is to be without
sin in the sight of God. One reason I like Sunday so much
is I come up here and I preach this gospel, and I tell you,
more than any other time of the week, I can lay hold of this
with a strong faith and actually believe that my sins are gone. A little tougher during the rest
of the week. Oh, to be in His presence and
know He finds no fault in me. It is written in the Old Testament,
I see no sin in Jacob, no iniquity in Israel. I particularly like
when he says, I see no sin in Jacob, seeing that the name Jacob
implies sinfulness. He says, I don't see it. Well,
your conscience bears down on you sometimes, doesn't it? You
see it, he doesn't. I see no sin. Heaven is the ability to lay
hold of all those things for which God has laid hold of us
in Christ. Now, I don't know what all those
things are, but I know this, there's not a believer in the
Lord Jesus Christ that shall not have the fullness of the
blessings of God. Now, I can't imagine what God
could do in wrath to someone who came before him in their
sins. And in like measure, I can't
imagine what God could do to bless someone on whom he finds no sin. I know
what I can compare it to, whatever Christ got. What do
you think our Lord Jesus Christ was rewarded with when he ascended
on high, when he came to those gates and said, lift up your
heads, O ye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors,
and let the King of glory come in. And they did, and he went
in. What do you think the Father
bestowed on him? What glorious blessings do you
think God gave to the Lord Jesus Christ when he, in triumph, ascended
to his Father's throne and sat at his right hand? Well, that's above my pay grade,
but I know this, whatever he got, we get. So that's too high. No, it's too high for us to be
able to naturally believe it. But what does it say? Praise
be to the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ. who has blessed
us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ. Paul says, I died with Christ,
we're raised with Christ, we're seated with Christ. I realize that our Lord Jesus
is God as well as man. And I'm not talking about his
rights and privileges as God. I'm talking about him as a man,
seeing that he suffered What was rightfully ours, we are blessed
with what is rightfully His. I don't know, that just about
blows my fuse to try to think about it. Here's some other things that
might help us understand heaven a little bit. Do you like worshiping? I do. I don't do it very well. But I like doing it. We'll be able to do it perfectly. We'll not meet in a place like
this and look at our sad faces growing old. We will be, as Paul
described, among the angels and the saints in glory, beholding
His face, made like Him, able to know even as we are known
and to fall down and express our gratitude as we've always
wanted to. To express our love as we wish
we could here. To rejoice with thanksgiving
as we should have done here but never could quite get it done.
We'll be able to there. You know, there's a lot of folks
who want to go to heaven, but they really don't want to go
to church. And I can understand it with some of the churches
I've seen, I wouldn't want to go there either. But when the saints gather,
God's people gather for worship, what they gather for is what
they shall be enabled to do forever in perfection. And if you don't
like what goes on at a real church meeting, you're not going to
like heaven. Because heaven isn't about gold and big houses and
things like that. Heaven is about having a heart
free from all encumbrances. And to be able to join in a union
with God that knows no obstruction. You say, well, preacher, you
said, as a man dies, so shall he be forever. That's true. Well,
every one of us, we're going to die, and we'll be sinners
when we die. Back up the bus. I know that we're sinners in
the sense that we commit sin. I know that we're sinners in
the sense that we're still in this flesh, and this flesh is
utterly corrupted by sin. But Jesus Christ has died. And
His blood has covered up the sin of His people. It has washed their sin away. And there is no sin on them. And when they die, they die righteous. And that's the way they stay
forever. And it's a righteousness not
offended No longer offended by our failures in that. You see,
we're of two natures now. We got a spirit which has been
born again, and it desires all things good, and always desires
all things good. We got this old nasty flesh still
clinging to us. That's why we cry out, oh wretched
man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death? Says
I thank God through Jesus Christ my Lord. And so we hunger and
thirst for righteousness now. We shall no longer hunger and
thirst for it then because we'll have it to the full in every
aspect of our being. It is to be forever in the house
of our Father. It is to be forever in the bonds of brotherly love
with our elder brother, the Lord Jesus. It is to be forever in
the arms of our heavenly bride, excuse me, heavenly groom, the
Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I don't know about you,
I know which place I prefer. Say, how does a person get there? Well, in all reality, you don't
choose where you're going, you choose what route you take, and
your route takes you to where you're going. And every day people
choose the wrong route if they're left to themselves. But if you
truly desire to have those blessings, which I've done the best I can
to describe here, those blessings associated with heaven, let me
show you how. And it's going to be kind of
odd because in order to learn how to obtain the blessings of
heaven, we're going to have to go to hell. Well, how do we do
that? Well, there was one time when
hell and earth met, where there was a spot on earth that a man
endured whatever hell is. Only once. When our Lord Jesus Christ suffered
on Calvary, God gave us some kind of understanding of his
sufferings by having him die such a horrible death. And that
we can identify with, but that doesn't tell us one hundredth
what was going on. Because out of the sight of fleshly
eyes was a spiritual work going on. In Jesus Christ, the spotless
Lamb of God was made filthy with the filth of his people. And with a love that I can't
understand, he took their sins and called them his sins. He owned them as his. He didn't
say, Father, I'm dying for the sins of so and so and so and
so. He said, these are my sins. And he owned them. And whatever
God can do to a guilty man, as a just reaction to sins against
God. God did that to the Lord Jesus
Christ, and that's hell. What a person cannot ever finish
in an eternity of suffering, our Lord finished in His time
on the cross. We stand in a kind of wonder.
Through the prophet Jeremiah, the Lord says, look and see if
there be any suffering like unto my suffering, which the Lord
has inflicted on me in the day of his wrath. I used to sing a song in the
church I was raised in. Heaven came down and glory filled
my soul. On that day, hell came up and
engulfed the soul of our Lord Jesus Christ. And through that, wicked, wretched
sinners like you and me gain entry into the abode of the righteous. Now friends, it's that simple. You say, well, what do I have
to do? Well, so far as any works of
righteousness, nothing. So far as enduring any suffering,
nothing. There's only one thing. Trust Him. The dying thief rejoiced to see
that fountain in his day, and there In that same fountain,
as vile as he, may I wash all my sins away. For lack of a better way to put
it, and I don't want to make little of this,
but I want to get past all the theological language that we
normally couch these things in. Our Lord's suffering of hell
is our ticket to heaven. You understand what I mean by
that? Now everybody for whom he suffered shall in the end
be with him. There's no way he can pay for
sin, for somebody's sin, and then God make that person pay
for it again. But right now, that's a business with God. And
the Bible doesn't tell us to look at these workings of God
with his son and try to figure out if we're involved in it or
anything, he gives us promises and tells us to act upon the
promise. And here's his promise. Turn to me and be ye saved, all
the ends of the earth, for I am God and there is no other. He
that has the son has life. He that does not have the son
shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. Come unto
me, all you weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take
my yoke upon you, the yoke of the blessed gospel. Take my yoke
upon you and learn of me, for I'm meek and lowly of heart,
and you'll find rest for your souls. What must I do to be saved? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,
and thou shalt be saved. Let me close with this. What
does it mean to believe? It's three things. We're described
three ways by Paul as he neared the end of his life. He said, I'm suffering in change
for the gospel, but I'm not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed. Faith is not about a doctrine,
faith's about a person. You could translate that, I know
who I have trusted. I know who I believe. And I am
persuaded Faith involves being persuaded
of something. And what is it we're persuaded
of? That he is able to keep, to protect, to save. Faith is
not a belief that, well, from this point on, I'm gonna do all
right. No. Faith is an abandonment of
hope in yourself and to believe that Christ is able to save to
the uttermost them that come to God by him. And then thirdly, It's committal, and I don't mean,
you know, like you're making a commitment. I'm going to follow
Jesus the rest of my life. No, that's not the kind of, he
said, to keep that which I've committed, to commit as a trust. I've entrusted something to Christ.
What? My soul. I've made a mess of it. I tried
to carry it for a while. I tried to do what was necessary
for its eternal well-being. I just made a big mess of things. Faith takes the soul, so to speak,
and says, here, Lord, you take care of this. I can't do it.
I can't do it. Everything I did destroyed my
soul. So I ask you this, where are
you headed? Now, you can't see way down the
line, but you can tell what path you're on. There is a broad road
that leads to destruction, and many there be that find it. It's
a road of works. It's the road of religion. It's got a lot of lanes on it.
It's got a lane for every denomination there is. You got Catholic lanes, Baptist
lanes, Reformed lanes. It's all there. You can find
one and get on it. There's good works. There's lanes for all the false
religions that wouldn't even bother to call themselves Christian.
Lanes for all. There's a wide road. And there's
a lane well suited to you if you want to walk it. But that's
the broad road that leads to destruction. And if that's the
road you're on, than destructions where you're headed. But our
Lord said there is a narrow gate that leads to a narrow path.
Few there be that find it. They don't find it because they're
so busy on the broad road. And they're happy there. Everybody's
having a good time on the broad road. Over yonder here, there's
your southern expression, over yonder here. It's this little
old windy road, one lane going one direction. There's not a Baptist path to
glory. There's not a Catholic path to glory. There's only one
label on that road. It's Christ. To get on that road,
you pass through a gate so narrow you can't even pass through with
your own clothes on. All that'll fit is you. You'll
be clothed with righteousness once you get through the gate.
You'll be clothed with his righteousness. Believe me, it's much better
than what you're wearing now, unless you're a believer. And there's room on that road
for you and the Savior to walk side by side. You can't walk
down that road with me. You can't walk down that road
with your spouse. Not enough room. He said, take my yoke upon you,
and this is a yoke of two. Christ is the way. And if Christ is your way, then
glory is your destination. May God be pleased to bless you.