Excuse me. Open your Bibles to Matthew 25.
Okay, maybe. There we go. Got to get the tablet
to flip the words around. Matthew 25. And I'm just going to read one verse. to start off with, and that's
verse 46. I accidentally put verse 41 in
the bulletin, but this time go by what you hear, not what you
read. Verse 46, Matthew 25, verse 46. Then they, and that's unbelievers,
then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous
to eternal life. In regard to eternity, the scriptures
are clear about three things. The death of our bodies is not
the end of our existence. We do not die as animals die. We are animals, but we're not
merely animals. There's more to us than what
the scriptures often refer to as the flesh or the body. Taking,
take away the body, something yet remains. Ecclesiastes chapter
12, verse seven says, the spirit returns to God who gave it. And I do not know, it's not something
that the scriptures reveal, but all men are flesh and spirit. And whether the spirit is a product
of natural generation, that is we get our spirit from our parents
as well as our bodies, I don't know. It could be that we as parents,
all we can generate is flesh. Flesh gives birth to flesh. And
yet God individually places spirit in each of those bodies. It could be. I don't know. However,
we know this, that when the body dies, The spirit, that which
I consider to be what the Bible means when it says, the image
of God. He said, let's create man in
our image. And I believe that he meant by
that, let's create man with spirit because God is spirit. And so when we die, that part
of us that is spirit returns to God who gave it. So that's the first thing we
know. Death is not the end of our existence. That is physical
death. Secondly, after death, all people
will appear before God to face judgment. Now, the Bible is really
clear about that. We have often quoted the scripture,
Hebrews 9 verse 27, and I'm sure there are many more scriptures
that would make the point, but I don't think any of them make
this particular point more clearly. It's appointed unto man once
to die, and after that, face judgment. That's just the way
things are set up. And whether or not we believe
that judgment is appropriate, I know there are some, one of
the reasons they claim to be atheists is they think that God
shouldn't judge, and therefore they reject the God who does
judge. But the Bible says our God is a consuming fire. Our
God is called righteous and just, and a righteous and just person
must judge. He must make judgments, and he
must render to those he judges the appropriate response to what
he discovers about them and the verdict that he renders upon
them. So God must judge. And I don't mean he must judge
because there's an obligation on him. I mean he must judge
because that's part of his nature, to judge, to look at things and
assess their value. to determine whether a deed is
right or wrong, to determine whether a person's heart is right
or is not. It's in his nature to do that.
Thirdly, the scriptures teach us that after death and judgment,
all people end up in one of two places or conditions, popularly
referred to as heaven and hell. There's only two. The Roman Catholics
have an idea that there's kind of a middle ground called purgatory. And that in purgatory, people
go and pay off the sins that they didn't get confessed or
didn't do enough extra good works or something to pay off in this
life. And they call it purgatory. That
first part you can see is the word, comes from the word purge.
And our word purge actually comes from the Greek word for fire.
And that's you purge, you use fire to purge dross from precious
metals. So purgatory, to them purgatory
is a place of pain and suffering and fire where finally you are
purified. There is no such place. If there is any such condition
as that, the only one who's ever been in that condition is our
Lord Jesus Christ, who, when He bore our sins in His body
on the tree, He was actually in the place of what for everybody
else would have been everlasting punishment. And the only reason
that He, if I can use this word, escaped the everlasting nature
of that punishment was because of the greatness of his being
and the severity of his torment was such that it actually did
purge away the sins that he bore. So you might say he was in purgatory
in that sense, that he was able to suffer in a way that actually
purged the sins that were upon him. And he died and he rose
again without sin. He died unto sin once. He rose
without sin because the suffering that he bore purged our sins
away. Now there are several Hebrew
and Greek words used to describe these two places. And in order
to understand about either of these two places, we must take
into account a couple of things about these words. We want to look at what we might
call the literal meaning of them, but then understand that all
of them are being used figuratively. Figuratively. And second, we
must strip them of all the superstitious significance that surrounds those
words. You say, well, what do you mean
superstitions? Well, when God inspired the prophets to speak,
prophets and apostles, and then to write down the things that
they were teaching. He didn't give them brand new words. They
had to use the words that came from the language that they were
writing in. And of course, languages are
affected by culture. So they would use the words from
the language, Hebrew in the Old Testament, Greek in the New Testament,
But they were not bringing all the superstitions surrounding
those words into the inspired scriptures. They were just using
these words because there are no others. And our English word heaven, for
instance, actually means the heaved up places. That's where
it comes from. You know what a heaver is, you
know, or to be heaved means to be thrown up. So heaven, I guess
we could call it heaven, it's the places up there. And the
Jews spoke of three heavens. Remember, Paul says, I was caught
up to the third heaven. Well, what you and I refer to
simply as heaven is what the Jews called the third heaven.
As I understand it, the Jews said the first heaven is the
sky that you see above you. The second heaven is outer space,
though I don't know that they had a good understanding of even
what that meant. But then the third heaven was the place of
God's residence. Heaven is thy throne. And so,
when we say heaven, we're talking about what the Jews would have
called the third heaven. And then hell, the word hell,
is covered by, in the Hebrew language, the word Sheol, and
in the Greek language, we find the words Gehenna, Tartarus,
and Hades. I'm going through this language
lesson because it will help us to understand what the scripture
writers meant by this. The thing is the word Sheol in
Hebrew and the word Hades in Greek didn't always refer to
a place of punishment. Sometimes it simply meant the
region of the dead, wherever they were. Sometimes the Bible
translated as the grave. You know, I can't remember which
one of the creeds it was, but one of them says something to
the effect that Jesus Christ died, descended into hell, and
rose from the dead on the third day. That's probably a bad translation. I imagine as it was written,
if it was written, originally in Greek, probably the word Hades
was used, and what it meant was he was put in a grave, he was
buried. Because Hades sometimes just referred to the grave, the
region of the dead. But these words tell us something
about what the eternal state is like. They are figures, they
are illustrations. Peter used the word Tartarus
in 2 Peter 2.4. Describe that as the abode of
the angels that sinned against God. Now that was a Greek word and
it came with some Greek superstitions attached to it. But our Lord
referred to hell under the phrase the lake of fire. saying it was
prepared for the devil and his angels. So evidently speaking
of the same place that Peter was speaking of when he used
the word Tartarus. He said, if God did not spare
the angels when they sinned, but sent them to Tartarus, now
our English version doesn't say that, it says hell, but I send
them to Tartarus, putting them in chains of darkness to be held
for judgment. And you know, when Satan sinned
in heaven, he evidently took about a third of the angels with
him. And they were cast down and some
were put in chains of darkness. Some, if I understand things
correctly, still roam free upon the earth as demons. And it seems
as though the devil himself is free to roam here and there.
But there are at the present time. some of those who followed
Satan in the rebellion, and they are now held in chains of darkness. And then our Lord used the word
Gehenna. In fact, I think that's the most often used word to describe
the place of eternal punishment. Gehenna was Jerusalem's dump. It means the Valley of Hinnom.
And I know the Lord used that word, and I know that James used
that word. When he says that the tongue
is set on fire by the fire of hell, he's saying the tongue
is set on fire by the fire of Gehenna. So we know that the
ungodly, the unbelieving, are not gonna be thrown in some valley
just to the southwest of Jerusalem. He's using the word figuratively.
He uses it because he describes it as the place where the fire
is not quenched and the worm does not die. And then we have
phrases like eternal fire and the lake of fire also used to
describe hell. There are a lot more words describing
hell. than heaven, that is, words that are used to describe it. Now let us note here that the
scriptures do not give us a literal description of either place,
and it does not give us a literal description because it cannot
give us a literal description. You say, why is that? Well, they cannot give us a literal
description And I base this on what Paul said, he went to the
third heaven. And he says, I experienced things
that words cannot express. I heard things, I saw things,
words can't express it. And if that's true of heaven,
I'm pretty certain it's also true of hell. And therefore,
the various things that God uses to describe heaven or hell to
us are simply words that we can relate to and then try the best we can
to apply them in a spiritual sense of the word. Another reason
he doesn't describe it literally, if God had inspired a literal
explanation to the apostles and prophets, we would not have been
able to understand it. In other words, these things
will not fit in our minds as they are. You know, we have that
phrase, I can't wrap my mind around that. That's exactly what
would happen if God literally told us what heaven or hell was,
we wouldn't be able to wrap our minds around it anyway. It would
be like trying to understand God himself. You ever notice that? You know,
we use the word God. We talk about God. We talk about
our Lord Jesus. But you ever just try to sit
around and think about that? And try to wrap your mind around
what it is to be God? You know, and you think that
you've got some kind of idea, and then suddenly you realize,
no, I'm not thinking nearly big enough to describe God. Well, it'd be the same thing
about other eternal matters. These shadowy descriptions do
give us a basic understanding or all the understanding we need
of what judgment and blessing from God are like. So it might
be best if we understand heaven and hell not to be so much a
place as a condition. I'm not saying they are not places.
I don't know where they are, if they are places. You know,
it says that Jesus Christ ascended to heaven, and he did. It says a cloud received him
out of their sight. And then the Bible speaks of
him ascending to heaven. Now, if the third heaven is the
heaven beyond outer space, just how fast did he go? When you consider that our universe,
or so they say, is 14 billion light years, I can't remember
if it's radius or diameter, but it pretty much doesn't matter.
It's bigger than we'll ever get across. It's my personal opinion, and
I just gotta say opinion, because the scriptures don't speak in
these terms, but heaven is a different reality than the reality we're
in right now. It spoke of him creating new
heavens and new earth. And so heaven is not of this
creation, and hell probably isn't either. Now let's learn of these two
conditions by the contrasts that the scriptures give us between
heaven and hell. First of all, hell was prepared
the devil and his angels. That's what our Lord said. The
lake of fire. We read here in Matthew 25 and Excuse me, I didn't write down
the verse. Here we go, verse 41. Then he
will say to those on his left, apart from me, you who are cursed
into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. Now, whatever this eternal fire
is and wherever it is, it was not initially prepared for man. Why? Because it was prepared
before man sinned. It was prepared for the devil
and his angels in response to their sin. And so it was prepared
and prepared by Christ and prepared for the devil and his angels
and that population will be added to by all those who choose to
follow the devil's way among the sons of men. Because they are every bit as
much rebels against God as the devil and his angels were. But
what is heaven? Look over at John chapter 14. John chapter 14, hell is a place
prepared by God And since everything done by God in this world was
actually done by the Lord Jesus Christ, he's the creator of all
things, we can say he was prepared by Christ for the devil and his
angels, yet all the unbelieving world is going to go there too.
But he says to his disciples in John chapter 14 verse 1, do
not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God. Trust also in me. In my father's house are many
rooms, many dwelling places. If it were not so, I would have
told you I'm going there to prepare a place for you. There was a
place prepared for the devil and his angels, and there is
a place prepared for the people of God, prepared by the same
person. But whereas, when Christ prepared
the lake of eternal fire, it took nothing other than his creative
word to bring that into existence, but to create a place for his
elect. he must go to the cross. Notice
he says, our translation says, I'm going
there to prepare a place for you. I don't think the word there
is there. He just says, I go to prepare
a place for you. And I remember when Brother Mahan
came to preach for us in 1988, his first message. He preached
from this text of Scripture. And as he was reading, he says,
I go to prepare a place for you. You know, he's reading and he
looked up and he said, reckon where that was that he was going.
And where did he go? Well, this is on the night before
the crucifixion. I'm going to prepare a place
for you. How did he prepare it? by burying
our sins in his body on the tree. There's a phrase that people
use. It was even turned into a song
back in the early 80s. And they say, wow, God created
heaven and the earth in six days, but he's been working on heaven
for 2,000 years. It must be wonderful. No, he
hadn't been working on heaven for 2,000 years. He prepared that place on the
cross. And my belief is, if you look
over here at 2 Corinthians 5, I think I can find the verse
quickly, the places, the dwelling places that he speaks of are
not rooms. It's not like it's a huge apartment
complex up there. And we each get a room or even
individual houses. But in 2 Corinthians 5, it says,
now we know that if this earthly tent we live in is destroyed,
now what's he talking about there? This body. And this body is a tent. As a tent compares to a building
with foundations, so does this body compare to what shall be
our existence when we are there with him. What is a tent? Well, a tent is a temporary place,
at least in our day and age. Somebody say, I like to go tent
camping. Most of those who like to go
tent camping also like to go home when they're done camping
in their nice house on a good concrete foundation and all that.
Why? Because a tent is not nearly as good. Not only this, I don't
care what your tent is made out of, it's going to fall apart
someday. I had a canvas tent when I was
a kid. I think by the time I was grown, I would have taken it
with me because nobody else in the family used it, but by then
it was already, you know, it had been stored away for a while
and it got moldy and all that. It was no good anymore. These
tents are going to fall apart, but notice what he says. We have
a building from God, an eternal house in heaven not built by
human hands. Now I believe that's the dwelling
place he's talking about. He's not talking about buildings
where we live. He's talking about a new body
given to every child of God. Now things get confusing and
I have my own way of resolving some of these confusing things
in the scriptures because And people say, well, what's the
intermediate state between when a believer dies, and we know
that when he dies, well, to be absent from the body is to be
present with the Lord. And yet these new buildings don't
come about till the day of resurrection. What's their existence like?
Well, it's not an important thing to know. Some people believe
in what's called soul sleep. They believe that when you die,
you remain simply in an unconscious state until the resurrection.
But that's not what Paul said. If you're absent with the body,
you're present with the Lord. And that's illustrated in my
brother Don Fortner's hymn, where he said, soon as a ransomed soul
is freed from this poor mortal frame, before we know it's gone,
it is with Christ praising his name. Now, what sort of existence do
they have there? I don't know. Some people believe,
and I mean it's plausible, that when a believer dies, at least
from our perspective, he is immediately transported to the day of resurrection.
Remember, one of the things about our heavenly existence is this,
time shall be no more. Time is an irrelevant factor
there. Maybe that's what happens. I don't know. I know this, that
when we bury one of our beloved brothers or sisters in Christ,
we don't have to fear that they're in some unconscious state or
that they're in any kind of limbo or any kind of purgatory, suffering
for the sins that they never managed to get confessed or paid
off in another way. They are with Christ, beholding
His face, rejoicing in His presence without sin. That we know. There will be no break our consciousness unless we lost consciousness
on earth but you know what I mean our being just goes on so it's a place prepared by Christ
for his people and I liked it he said do not let your hearts
be troubled you know what troubles us people say I'm scared of death
no you're not I'm not saying none of the fear, there's the
fear, always the fear of the unknown, what's that like? But
what people are afraid of is what comes after, which means
they're basically afraid of hell. And I don't blame them. Whatever
it is, I don't want anything to do with it. And so he says, don't let your
heart be troubled. You trust God, trust me. In my father's
house are many dwellings. I'm going to prepare one for
you. So don't be troubled about that hell stuff. If you're trusting
me, you've got nothing to worry about. No matter what hell is,
you'll never experience it. Secondly, hell is everlasting
destruction from the presence of God. I don't mean, I don't think that
that means that it is a destruction that is everlasting that comes
from God. That's true, but that's not the
way it's worded. They are destroyed from the presence
of God. Now by the presence of God, they
don't just mean where he is. Usually when the scriptures talk
about coming into the presence of God, We're coming there as
his people to worship him and we are received by him. To be
in his presence means basically to be in his presence with favor.
But what happens to the unbeliever? He's not removed from the presence
of God. He would like that. People say,
hell, that's a place where there is no God. No, God's there. God
rules there. God punishes sinners there. And his presence there is the
most hellish thing about hell. But it's an everlasting destruction
from his favorable presence. But we look now, if we can go
back to Revelation chapter one, Revelation 1, excuse me 21, and it says, I saw in verse 2, excuse
me verse 3, I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, this
is a throne of heaven, now the dwelling of God is with men and
he will live with them, they will be his people. And God himself
will be with them and be their God. Later on he gives a description,
actually it's a description of the church because it comes down
from heaven, but heaven is actually the perfection of the church.
All those things that are symbolized in that new Jerusalem coming
down out of heaven, It is a picture, an illustration
of the church in its perfect condition. But the eternal condition,
the eternal condition of God's people is this. They're with
God. He is with them. They are his
people. He is their God. Now, what else do you want, really? What more could a person ask
for than that God should call them His people and dwell among
them and allow them to dwell with Him and to call on Him as
their God? Do you realize that we have that
right now? We don't experience it to the
degree that our brothers and sisters who have gone before
now experience it. But is not our God with us? And
does not he call us his people? And do we not call him our God? And does not he dwell with us?
Yes, he does. We're done with this life. There
will be no veil between us and him. We shall see his face, the
face of our Lord Jesus Christ. I know what it is to miss parents. But when people say, I can't
wait to get to heaven and see mama again, I'm thinking, You
don't know what heaven's about, do you? Now, I know what they're feeling, but they're missing the point. Our Lord Jesus Christ did not
say, Father, I would that those that you have given me would
be able to be with their mom and dad in heaven again and the
circle no longer be broken. He said, I would that those that
you have given me would be with me where I am and behold my glory."
That's the heaven of heavens folks right there. If that's
not what you want then you don't want heaven. If seeing Christ
does not top your list of the things you want to do
when you're gone from here then you don't understand what
there is about. Hell is a place of weeping and
gnashing of teeth. The weeping is from pain, sorrow,
regret. And the gnashing of teeth Now
I suppose a person can gnash his teeth in pain, but every
other place that this word is used in the New Testament is
talking about the response of anger. When the religious leaders
got upset with Christ, it said they gnashed their teeth at him. And they're going to go on gnashing
their teeth for eternity. Forever angry. full of hatred
and bitterness against the God of their creation. And they will not be repenting.
They will not be saying, oh, if I had only trusted Christ. They will be cursing Him. You see, there'll be no spiritual
change in them. But if we go on in Revelation
chapter 21, We read verse 4, I believe it
was. No, we read verse 3 and said,
God will be with them, he will be their God. Verse 4, he will
wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or
mourning or crying or pain. I imagine that in this little
group of people here this morning, there's been a lot of tears over
the years. And brethren, there's more tears to come. This life is called the veil
of tears, and it has been ever since Adam sinned. We have our
times of laughter, and we may have learned to put on a stoic
face and keep our emotions in, But even when our eyes are not
filled with tears, our hearts are crying. Do you remember when you were
a child and you'd get hurt, you'd be crying? And usually it was
mom. Dads are not quite so sympathetic
as moms are usually. But you'd go running to mom,
wouldn't you? And she'd look at you and say, oh, I skinned
your knee. And she'd reach up. wipe the tears from your eyes,
speak words of love and comfort until the pain went away, until
the sorrow was gone. And so shall it be for everyone
who by grace has trusted the Lord Jesus Christ and called
upon his name. The day will come when God shall
take them up in his arms as a mother does a hurt child and shall wipe
away all those tears cried out for all those reasons. Have you wept over death? You'll
wipe those tears away because there will be no death. Do you weep for sake of mourning
over losses? The losses are gone. Do you weep for pain, whether
physical or, if you're a child of God, probably more those spiritual
pains you experience, wiped away by the loving hand of our Father?
And why will all this be so? For the old order of things,
has passed away. Notice this? It's not that they
will pass away, they have passed away. Remember, if any man be
in Christ, he's a new creation. Old things are passed away. It didn't say old things are
going to pass away, says they are. It doesn't say old things
are passing away, says they are. Now, we go on experiencing sorrowful,
painful, crying things in this existence But from heaven's point
of view, we are no longer a part of the
world of death, mourning, crying, and pain. And someday we'll experience
the fullness of that. We won't quit crying because
we learned to put on a stoic face. We'll quit crying because
there'll no longer be a reason to. So remember this, everything
that has ever brought a tear to your eye or to your heart,
the Lord will remove it. Every sorrow, every pain, gone. Exactly the opposite for those
who are not there. I have much more, but I'm not
even going to try. They all, in one way or another,
say much the same thing. Let me put it this way. The Bible
says, to illustrate it, wherever a tree falls, there it lies. Someday you, like a tree, will
fall. Wherever you fall, that's where you are forever. There's
no changing one's destiny. But one thing that will happen
is whatever a believer is in all his wretchedness and miserableness
and God-hating rebellion, He will become that in perfection. Filled with hate. Doesn't it
bother you? Maybe some of you don't ever
experience hate of others. Sometimes I do. Not anybody I
know, but mostly politicians. I mean, I just get so mad at
some of the things they say and do, don't you, you know? And
you think to yourself, ah! But you think of the worst state
of hatred you've ever experienced. Isn't that miserable to be consumed
with hate? But they will be forever. Full
of fear forever. overwhelmed in sorrow forever,
in darkness forever. But the believer, when he dies,
shall go into the perfection of what God has made him. We love, the Bible says, because
he first loved us. And he that doesn't love, doesn't
love God. Boy, our love is pretty pitiful,
isn't it? But then we'll be able to love
even as we have been loved. I tell you, I prefer love to
hatred. And you think somehow or another,
you know, preferring it so much, that's what I do all the time,
but I don't. That's the struggle between flesh and spirit. But
it will be a life, an existence of endless perfect love for God
and for everyone you meet. Love. We feel wretched now because
of our sinful condition. And yet, we will be filled with
a glory. We will be made like unto the
Lord Jesus Christ. and rejoice in it. We have our
moments of happiness in this life. We will have unending joy. But most of all, we have our
moments of sweet communion with our Lord Jesus here. When we
are there, the Bible says, and so Shall we ever be with the
Lord? And that makes us think in terms
of the time of it, that it lasts forever. And the word does carry
some of that sense, but the better sense is we'll always be with
the Lord. Do you enjoy sweet fellowship
with the Lord Jesus, those times when it just seems like the veil
between you and heaven has opened up? Imagine that always. And wherever that is, I'm fine
with it. I don't care if it's beyond the
stars. I don't care if it's right here. As long as I'm with Christ and
behold His face, accepted by Him, I'm good. And that's heaven for the believer.
Heavenly Father, thank you for these wonderful and precious thoughts
about what things shall be like for us to be present with you.
We know you're present with us, but we can't see you. We don't
hear your voice, but then we will. We think about your glory,
then we'll see it. and the sight of your glory will
transform us into your glory. Until then, Lord, let us be content, content with the level of grace
you give us at this time. And may our hearts be set, our
affections be set on things above and not things below. We pray
this in Christ's name.