Dr Greg Bahnsen - Sober News about Hell: Vain Attempts to Make Hell Manageable (Psalm 5) (Part 4)

And we've already had three lessons on hell. And this morning we come to our fourth lesson, which I am calling Vain Attempts to make hell Manageable. And we'll have others as well, because we can't touch on all of them. But we'll deal with a few of them, five in particular, this morning. And to prepare our hearts for that. Hear now God's word. At the fifth Psalm, David writes, give ear to my words, O Jehovah. Consider my meditation. Hearken unto the voice of my cry. My King and my God. For unto thee do I pray, O Jehovah, in the morning shalt thou hear my voice in the morning will I order my prayer unto thee and will keep watch. For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness. Evil shall not sojourn with thee. The arrogant shall not stand in thy sight. Thou hatest all workers of iniquity. Thou wilt destroy them that speak lies Jehovah abhorreth the bloodthirsty and deceitful men. But as for me, in the abundance of thy loving kindness will I come into thy house. In thy fear will I worship toward thy holy temple. Lead me, O Jehovah, in thy righteousness. Because of mine enemies, make thy way straight before my face. For there is no faithfulness in their mouth. Their inward part is very wickedness. Their throat is an open sepulchre. They flatter with their tongue. Hold them guilty, O God. Let them fall by their own counsels. Thrust them out in the multitude of their transgressions, for they have rebelled against thee. But let all those that take refuge in Thee rejoice. Let them ever shout for joy because thou defendest them. Let them also that love Thy name be joyful in thee. For thou wilt bless the righteous, O Jehovah. Thou wilt compass him about with favor as with a shield. And thus far. The Reading of God's Word. As we began the series, we first saw that hell is defined in the Bible as the destiny of the damned. We saw that God is keeping books that account for everything that we have ever done. Books that account for everything we have ever said, for everything that we have ever thought, for every attitude, every priority, every choice we've ever made. God knows everything about us. Before God, all creatures are laid bare. He sees everything. We might call it a kind of moral X ray vision. God sees through us. He knows everything about us, and that is being recorded. And one day he will open those books and judge all mankind. And the Bible says, speaking metaphorically, using a figure of speech, that we can understand to know something about the terror of it. The Bible says those who are not acceptable to God are going to be cast into a lake of fire that will burn forever. Now, a lot of people like to ridicule the biblical teaching, you know, and have lots of jokes about the lake of fire. And I've even debated men who taunted God and defied the barbecue pit that people will go to and so forth. But the Bible is very serious about this. We don't have to think of this as a literal lake and literal fire. But if you can imagine what it would be to live in that environment and the pain and agony and torment and fear that it would engender, you know, a little bit of what hell will be. Hell is the destiny of the damned. And in our next installment in that series, I told you that hell is a place of ultimate pain and shame. The Bible uses, again, figures of speech, but to drive home to our hearts this truth that the pain of hell is the sort of thing which is ultimate. There is nothing worse. You cannot imagine the pain that hell will represent as well as the shame. It will be both external and internal torment of the worst possible sort. And then in our third message, I tried to show you that the Bible tells us that hell will be unending punishment. It's already bad enough that it's the ultimate pain and the ultimate shame, but it's never going to end. Never going to end. Never, ever going to end. We don't know what that's like. You know, we're so accustomed to thinking of pain finally ending. You know, you either get the morphine and the pain is deadened, or the pain goes away of its own, or you're healed, or maybe you just pass out because of it, or maybe you die. I mean, some people are in such agony that they actually die. But then the pain ends, right? The Bible says the pain of hell will never end. So now you get the point. The destiny of the damned, a place of ultimate pain and shame where unending punishment will take place. And that is a dreadful thought. That's such a dreadful thought that if you do not shudder before it, if you have not shuddered, as I've been preaching this to you as you've reflected on it, if you don't shudder and at this very point about the doctrine of hell, then you're either not listening or you don't believe this. Because there's no way a rational human being could contemplate that kind of torment, unending, ultimate torment, and not just stand in utter Fear and trembling, or of course, repent. You know, what matches the severity of the biblical teaching about hell is the simplicity of the way of salvation. It's just incredible. The Bible does not mitigate the terror about hell, but it offers a very easy way for people to be right with God. And that, by the way, I think all the more magnifies the justice of God when people end up going to hell, in that they would not take such a simple remedy as to trust that another has died in their place and that they can now be right with God through his intercession. When people will not give their lives over to the Lord Jesus Christ and they say no, defiantly, I'm going to go before God on my own, then of course, we may feel that it's a tragic choice, a big mistake they've made, but we certainly cannot think there's something unfair or ungodly about what's going to become of them. Nevertheless, the very thought of hell has been too grim and too horrible for many people to accept. We just don't want to have to have that in our mental furniture. I think, you know, we want to kind of clear out our thinking and get rid of some of that stuff that's distressing to us. And the doctrine of hell has got to go. At least some people think the doctrine of hell has got to be made more manageable. We've got to soften the biblical teaching in some way. Let me give you an example. David Edwards, who is a university official in England, wrote recently, I would rather be an atheist than believe in a God who accepts it as inevitable that hell, however conceived, is the inescapable destiny of many or any of his children, even when they are prepared to accept all the blame. There's a man who says, an educated man who knows something of Christian theology, and he says he would rather be an atheist than to believe in that kind of God. I'd rather be an atheist than to believe that God will accept it as inevitable that any of his children, even when they accept all the blame, will be spending eternity in hell. Well, let's reflect on that just a minute. In the first place, I want to ask, does Mr. Edwards choosing to be an atheist have anything to do with what we'll call the objective state of affairs? I always wonder when educated people say things like that, I would rather be an atheist. So is that supposed to carry any kind of philosophical significance that you would rather choose, choose to believe that God doesn't exist? I had a debate with a person up at University of California, Davis. And the whole thrust of his atheistic argument was he couldn't stand the idea of a God who sends people to hell. And so, I mean, this is supposed to be an academic debate. It's in a university environment, after all, right? 1100 people out here listening, professors, students, grad students, you know, and this is the best he can do. He refuses to believe in God because he can't stand this biblical idea that God will send people to hell. He ridicules it as the barbecue pit and so forth. And so I think some of you have heard this debate, so you may know this already, but in essence what I replied to him is, I'm not sure what you're not liking God has to do with him not existing. You know, if I said I don't like broccoli, would that lead in anybody's mind to the notion that broccoli doesn't exist? That's just childish reasoning. It's like pulling the covers up over your head and saying, my parents aren't there. I don't want to go to bed. But here you have an academic person saying, I would rather be an atheist than to believe in that kind of God. So you would rather be an atheist. Your choosing to believe God doesn't exist has nothing to do with the objective state of affairs. I've used this example too, but I think it gets the point across. Most of you who have known me very long know that I am not taking real well. Being diabetic, I don't like bothers me. I couldn't have any cake last at the party. I don't like being a diabetic. Now what if I say, well, I would just rather not believe that. Do you think the condition that I have, the objective state of affairs, is going to change because I don't like it? Course not. That is just ridiculous reasoning. But that's what we get here. And what difference does it make to God that somebody doesn't agree with his character? And give you a minimal parallel to this. Imagine you were teaching first grade and you gave your students an assignment that they were to sit quietly in their chairs and do something, draw some picture, whatever, and one of the students doesn't want to sit quietly. And so you go over and you say, now when you're in our class, you're going to have to obey the rules. The teacher said to sit quietly. And if the student were to say, I don't want to believe in a teacher, that makes me sit quietly. I don't know, maybe in our modern progressive educational system. Some teachers would say, oh, well, then I guess I can't require you to sit quietly. But I don't think we've gotten that bad. I think most teachers will say, you know what? It makes no difference what you want to believe about me. Now, that's true on such a minimal level. Can you imagine? I mean, it's really terrible in terms of the consequences. So it's not humorous like the teacher illustration, but can you imagine God in heaven? Do you think that God wrings his hand saying, oh, no, they don't want to believe that. I'm going to judge them. I guess I can't do it. God is not affected by our thoughts. God is not going to become the Mr. Potato Head, you know, who's just going to have people rearrange his features to look like what they want him to look like. Let's get serious about this. I would much rather somebody say, there is no good reason to believe in hell, and here's my argument, than to say, I'd rather, rather not believe in God. You're not. Wishing to believe things is irrelevant. It's irrelevant everywhere in life. It's irrelevant in theology too, and it's irrelevant on this point. You may not want to wish, you may not believe that there's such a God, but if he exists, and I believe with all my heart he does, and this is his word, then you cannot just do away with it this way. Many cults and many false religions, religions simply cannot abide the notion that God will damn the unrepentant to ultimate and unending torment as a punishment for their sins. Now, I crafted that sentence carefully and I want to go back and look at it and make sure that you pick up on this, that what they can't abide is the notion that God will damn the unrepentant. I said, I bet you dollars to donuts that when you talk to people about the doctrine of hell and they have trouble with it, they will never tell you, God damns the unrepentant. You will not hear that word, not unrepentant. It's always God damns people. I can't believe God would damn people to hell. Well, you know, if you want to be real strict and philosophical about that, I couldn't believe that either. God doesn't damn people, person, per se, to hell. God doesn't just make people and say, okay, go to hell because you're a people, because you're a person, you deserve to go to hell. God damns people who are Unrepentant to hell. This is very similar. You may have heard complaints in the anti abortion debate and the rhetoric that takes place there. Very similar. You'll notice that people who believe in abortion never talk about aborting babies. They always abort fetuses. They always abort something that doesn't connote in the English language, something personal, tender, made in the image of God. It's a biological part of the woman's body. She has the right to expel it. We say no. See, if that's all you were talking about, like a woman having a wart taken off, we wouldn't have any problem. But you call it a base. Maybe when you think of it as a human being made in the image of God, then the discussion takes on a whole different character and that is resisted. And likewise, people who will not believe in the doctrine of hell resist talking about God sending them to hell for not repenting. It's never our fault. We're just being sent to hell because God's a meanie. That isn't true. God will not damn even those that he chose from all eternity as vessels fit for destruction. He will not send them to hell simply because he chose to send them to hell. They will always be sent to hell because of what? Their guilt before God and their willingness to be a vessel fit for destruction. I know that's a great mystery, but we need to make sure we understand that many people have trouble with the doctrine of predestination because they don't understand that God knows, never arbitrarily sends anybody to hell. He sends them to hell for their sins. Well, many cults can't abide this idea. Christian Science says that those who don't reach perfection after death will annihilate themselves. Right? Jehovah's Witnesses teach that the grave is the only hell that the lost will ever, ever see. Death is simply the end of it, if you're an unbeliever. Seventh Day Adventists teach the doctrine of annihilation. Mormons teach aversion of hell. But it's temporary damnation for those who aren't right with God. Theosophy and other more Eastern cults teach that hell is merely a figment of our imaginations. Now in all of these cases, what you have are attempts to make hell more manageable. That is to say, to take this horrible, terrible, dreadful idea that I said you should all shudder before and get rid of the shuddering, and here's how we get rid of it. You know, it's either temporary or it's not there at all. It's only a figment of the imagination, whatever it may be. There are a variety of attempts made, not just by cults and false religionists, but by people who claim to be Christians, people who claim to be following the Bible. A variety of attempts are made to soften the biblical teaching about hell, as I said, to make it somewhat more manageable. But in the end, all such attempts to make the doctrine of Hell more manageable are really attempts by men to manage God and to manage God's word according to their preconceived ideas, according to men's desires, or basically their attempts to show that man has the ultimate authority over the way things will be in his universe. Every attempt to soften this doctrine that I've been preaching to you, every attempt is, in the end, an attempt to manage God. It's an attempt to be your own God, to determine what the universe will be like, what your destination holds. And thus the doctrine of hell can be a test case, I think, for your approach to theology. How do you do theology? It can also be a test case of your doctrine of Scripture. What do you make of this book in which the doctrine of hell is found? What is the highest authority in your thinking? And is it permissible for man to create God in his own image? The doctrine of hell, you see, test our approach to theology and our view of Scripture as well. And I'd like to look at five attempts this morning to make Hell more manageable. And then as we continue the series, I'm going to be looking at two major attempts that we won't be looking at today. Two major attempts among former evangelicals, two major attempts that have been made to tone down the doctrine of hell and to make it more manageable. But before we get to those major ones, five that are very popular, in fact more popular than the other ones we'll be spending more time on. You run into this all the time. The first one is this. The Bible teaches that God is love. And so there are philosophers of religion and theologians who tell us that the notion of God inflicting unending torment on anybody is inconsistent with the Bible, because the Bible teaches us that God is love. And a God of infinite love, as John Hicks says, a God of infinite love. Well, it's just incompatible with such a notion that God is infinite love, that he would torment anybody for any reason forever. So God is love. And that's why the biblical doctrine of hell cannot be accepted in the way that I've been presenting it to you. Well, I Certainly don't want to counteract this by saying, well, God isn't love, do I? I think he is love. And I'm really, really, really, to the depth of my soul, grateful that he is. Because if God hadn't loved me, I would never love him. But you see, that's the problem, isn't it? I don't naturally love God. Neither do you. No one does. We are not loving people. Jesus could easily summarize the whole duty of man by saying, love God and love your neighbor. Because he knew we don't love God and we don't love our neighbors. You know who we love? We love ourselves. We love ourselves more than our neighbors, and we certainly love ourselves more than God. That's why we're all guilty before God. So now let's go back to this. God is love, that's fine, praise God. He is love. But you aren't. And I'm not either. Not in myself. And so if God is love and I'm not loving, how could anybody who begins with that premise think I could spend eternity with God? Don't you see? It only takes a moment's reflection to see the idea that God is love doesn't give any comfort. Unless, of course, you're as good as God, unless you're as perfect and as moral as God, then maybe there'd be room for you in God's presence. But you're not a loving person. And so you violated the first and great commandment and the second, which is like unto it. And so though God may be love, there's no place for you with God as an unloving person. The Bible teaches us that God is love. But you have to understand, the Bible does does not teach that love is God. Secularists love to get it wrong. You know, they love to take something the Bible teaches and really turn it inside out and make an abstract principle that man can then fill with his own content. The Bible does not say love is God, meaning whatever you take love to be, that's what God will be. We have plenty of people who believe in that kind of God. They'll say, oh, I believe in, you know, caring for one another, and that's God. Well, the Bible doesn't say that love is God. The Bible says God is love. And there is a difference, especially when you remember that love is not to be something that you imagine it to be, just an abstract notion that then is validated by the character of God. I can illustrate this on a human plane very easily. I've told you about this sort of thing before remind you that as a pastor, every once in a while I'll run into people who are doing something that the Bible condemns. Let's say that they're living together out of wedlock. And then when you try to talk to them and reason with them from the scriptures and the character of God, they'll say, oh, but we love each other. They'll say, well, but the Bible doesn't call that love. The Bible calls that fornication. The Bible calls that selfishness. The Bible calls that cheating. The Bible calls it any number of things, but it never calls that love. And the difficulty for the pastor, you see, is to show people that you can't define Christian virtues according to your own desires. You can't go and read your feelings back into the book and say, well, then, see, the Bible says we should love one another, so it's all right to live together. No, the Bible says we should love one another and, and therefore respect one another and get married before we live together. We don't define love according to our preconceptions. We don't define love according to our desires. We define love according to God's own character. So, yes, God is love. He's the perfect embodiment of everything that he tells us love is to be. But God, you can't work backwards. You can't say, now this is what I think love is. And then shove that back up into heaven and say, that's what God is. Doesn't work that way. God is love. Yes, definitely. Praise the Lord, he is love. But you know, the Bible says a whole lot more about God. Here's what the Bible says in Habakkuk 1:3. God is also too pure to look upon evil, and he cannot tolerate wrongdoing. That too is God. God is also, it said of God In Hebrews chapter 10, there remains a certain fearful expectation of judgment and a fierceness of fire which will devour the adversaries. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. And then chapter 12 summarizes by saying, for our God is a consuming fire. Now, if we're going to let the Bible speak about who God is, and if you don't let the Bible speak, then basically you're just fraudulent in your theology. So why bother to talk at all? You have no authority to tell anybody who God is. You're not God. You don't exercise authority over God. You're not smart enough, you don't know enough. You're not good enough to define God. These are Hard truths, get used to it. They aren't going to go away. God, God doesn't leave it to you to define him. So if you're not going to go to the Scripture, you can't speak for God. Only God can speak for himself. And when God speaks, he says God is love. He also says God is a consuming fire. Now what do you, do you have two descriptions? Of course we have other ones too. God is jealous, God is holy, on and on. But now do we take both of these descriptions and say they're both true? Do we choose between them? Well, if you don't have the authority to define God, you don't have the authority to choose between the descriptions of God in the Bible either, do you? Because if you had that authority, basically all you would be doing is rubber stamping your own preconceived ideas. You go to the Bible and say, oh yeah, I like this, I don't like that, that's good, that's bad, and so forth. Well, I mean, you just throw the Bible out. Why don't you just tell us what you think is good in the first place? So if you don't have that authority, you don't have the authority to choose between consuming fire and love. You know what the Bible teaches? God is a loving, consuming fire and is a consuming fiery love. You got to hold them both or you don't understand either one of them properly. The attributes of God may not be abstracted from everything the Bible says about God and then turned into empty labels which man can fill with his own content. If we allowed people to do that, if we allow ourselves to do that, we are in fact violating the second commandment. Know what the second commandment says? You're not to make a graven image. Put it very simply, you're not to make an image of God. God doesn't allow you to do that. In fact, God is so jealous that he threatens grave, severe punishment for anybody who dares think they can tell him who he is. God says, I'll tell you who I am. And don't you make an image. By the way, imagination. The word imagination in English comes from imaging. When you imagine what God is like, you are making an image of God and God forbids you to make an image of him. The Bible is not a smorgasbord meal that allows you to nibble on just the things you like. So yes, God is love. And praise God for that. Because again, I would say I wouldn't be preaching this sermon and I wouldn't have any hope of heaven if he weren't loving to me. And I love him only because he first loved me. But my notions of love have nothing to do with what God is. And my imagination has nothing to do with defining his character. I think that our permissive society. Have we gotten so jaded that that expression doesn't mean anything to you anymore? Have you ever thought about that? How permissive our society is? You realize that our society is so loathe to condemn anything that people across the street from the White House openly urinate and the police will not arrest them because class action suits will be brought against them for violating free speech privileges of people who are vagrants, who are antisocial and civilized bums. Basically, I'd be there if it weren't for the grace of God. So I'm not trying to be self righteous, but I mean, I just can't get over this. Our society can't condemn anything. We simply can't hold the line on any kind of even standard of courtesy to one another, much less moral standards having to do with sex and property and other things like that. We live in a permissive society, a society where the courts bend to accommodate criminals which are open to manipulation, which we're all getting treated to day after day after day. And in a society that's that permissive, in a society where the courts are that lax, that bend to accommodate so much, I don't think it's easy for people today to imagine a kind of justice which is utterly intolerant, utterly intolerant that doesn't brook any exception to the rules. We're accustomed to justice which is partial justice, which is sadly often distorted. We're accustomed to ignorant dispensations of human justice in society. We see justice not perfectly carried out in the courts, I've mentioned that. But we see justice that's not perfectly carried out in our schools. We see justice not perfectly carried out at work. We see it in our families. We all know what it is. We say that's unfair. And many times it is unfair. We're so accustomed to not seeing justice be perfect. We're so accustomed to the permissiveness of our society. We're so accustomed to the bending character of our courts that the thought of a penal justice that knows everything, that is completely honest and fully intent on rectifying every wrong and in just the right proportion rectifying it. I think we just ignore that. We don't even think about it. But that's what hell is all about. God is love, God is holy, and God is All knowing. And God is a consuming fire. The holiness of God does not allow us to trivialize his righteousness. Here's what Exodus 34:17 says. He will by no means clear the guilty. That's the kind of justice you can expect from God when the day of judgment comes, he will. And that by no means is not just literary flair. There is no possibility. It's not going to happen. He will not clear the guilty. He cannot be bribed. He does not forget. He will not be lax when it comes to those who are guilty before him. God is love, praise God. He's also justice, consuming fire, holiness, righteousness, goodness. And everything is going to be done exactly right. And that means unloving people who haven't been saved are not going to be with this God of love forever. So so much for the first vain attempt to manage hell by saying, well, a loving God could never do that. Well, there's a second one that's like unto it. And I have to be real careful because from a philosophical standpoint, this is so perpetual preposterous that it's hard when people say it to show the due respect so you can win your opponent over. But I hear this over and over and over again. And the thing that really galls me is that I hear it from the pulpit. I hear preachers say God hates the sin but loves the sinner over and over and over again. That's become a panacea in our culture. Well, of course God hates sin. God is holy, just like you said, Dr. Bonsai. God is just. He doesn't want any of that. He hates it. He detests it. It's contrary to everything that's in him. God is pure, God is loving. God hates sin, but he loves the sinner. Well, the Bible says that God hates sin, no doubt about it. So let's hold that over here. But you know, the Bible also says God hates sinners. And now I'm going to come back to you. We've been down this road already, but let's do it again. So now what are you going to do if you don't have the right to define God? Can you choose between these? Is it all right to say, well, I'll hold up one part of the biblical teaching and suppress the other. I'll say God hates sin, but I won't say he hates the sinner. But the problem is the Bible says he hates the sinner too. What are you going to do about that? Are you going to reduce the biblical teaching to your own proportions, to your own preconceived ideas. God hates sin. But in the biblical way of presenting that God's hatred of sin is inseparable from hating those who engage in sin, let's look at our scripture reading this morning. Psalm 55, the arrogant shall not stand in thy sight. Thou hatest all workers of iniquity. Now notice it doesn't say, thou hatest all iniquity. You can't find that in the Bible. It does say that God hates all sin too, but here it is explicit. This is not periphrastic. This is not the translators adding words to help it, you know, to smooth it out. This literally is what the Hebrew says. The workers, the doers of iniquity, not just what they have done, but the people who are doing it, are hated of God. They will not stand in his sight. Look at Psalm 11:5. Just a page or two over. Jehovah trieth the righteous, but the wicked. And him that loves violence, his soul hates. The next time somebody tells you God is love so that God doesn't hate anything, take them back to the Bible. That's just not true, Jacob. I loved Esau. I hated the Bible, says the Greek and the Hebrew. Do not mean he was less fond of them. It means he had a holy, Sovereign, almighty detesting of them. God. God hates certain things and he hates certain people. Now, you don't like that. You don't like to hear that. People in our culture don't like to hear it. My response is, get used to it. You're not liking it, it's not going to change it. Adjust your attitude. You better realize God hates certain people. There was a time that God hated me. And if it weren't for the Lord Jesus Christ, he would still hate, and rightly so. I wouldn't have any opportunity to plead my cause and say, oh, God, please feel sorry for me. Don't you know this and that and so forth? It wouldn't make any difference. I chose to sin against God. I chose to be rebellious, to live for myself, to place myself above God. And he hated me for it. And he would still hate me if he hadn't changed my heart. Now it doesn't change perfectly. You all know that you live with me, but the day is coming when I know it will be. And I do see progress every once in a while. But I still know that the love that God has for me today, it is not based on any of the good that I do or any of my moral reformation or becoming a better person. Every day that God loves me, it's because he first looks at Jesus, then he looks at me. If he ever turns it around, I'm dead. If he ever looks at me first to determine what his attitude is, it'll be hatred, it'll be judgment, and it will be desert. So don't take me wrong when I say God hates people. I understand he deserves to hate everybody. Me too. But that hatred can only be turned away by the judgment the is due to the hated object falling on a substitute. God does hate people, by the way, I think it makes no sense to say that you hate well, let's talk about the torture of innocent children. If I were to ask you, say, at Sunday school today, do you hate the torture of innocent children? Now you could say, well, sometimes I don't know the name name and I don't know the identity. I can't identify the face of the people who are doing the torturing. But even though I don't know who the specific people are, I hate what's being done. Now that makes sense. There's no problem with that. You can make sense out of saying that you hate the activity per se. But here's what would make no ethical sense whatsoever if we were to bring in before you somebody who is guilty of torturing a little child. And then I say, do you hate the torturing of the little child and not hate this person? If you said, oh, I hate what they did, but I don't hate them, that would be preposterous. There is no such thing as torturing without a torturer. If you were not righteously indignant with the person who tortured a little child, I would question what it means for you to say that you hate the torturing of children. There must be personal animosity toward those who engage in such a despicable act. By the way, the same can be said. I choose an extreme example to make my point. But the same is true about every kind of sin. What does it mean to hate marital infidelity and not hate hate those who engage in it? Do you think marital fidelity is just out there in the atmosphere somewhere, floating around? No. To hate marital infidelity is just an abstraction for hating the violation of the marriage contract and breaking people's hearts. What does it mean to hate gossips if it doesn't mean. I mean gossiping if it doesn't mean that you hate people engaging in gossip. This whole idea that God hates the sin and not the sinner is just nonsense. Nahum13 he will not leave the guilty unpunished. A third vain attempt to make hell more manageable. You may run into this in our day. It's becoming a bit more popular, and that's the notion that God will give men a second chance after death. It's like you go through this life, the gospel's been preached, you've rejected it, you lived for yourself, and then you die. And all of a sudden you say, oh, no, I was wrong. And people will say, at that point, God will say, well, you've learned your lesson. Now I'm going to give you a second chance. Or, and this is the way in which many people can accommodate the notion that those who haven't heard the gospel will go to hell. They say, well, those who haven't heard, then God will give give them a chance after they die. This whole notion of the second chance, the opportunity past the grave, well, it sounds very attractive. It only has one thing against it, and that's that the Bible does not teach this. Proverbs 11:7. When a wicked man dies, his expectations shall perish, and the hope of iniquity perishes with him. When the wicked die, there isn't any hope. That's it. Or to put it as Hebrews 9:27, is appointed unto all men once to die, and then comes judgment. We are so accustomed in our day, probably because of indulgent parents or grandparents or teachers and so on. We're always accustomed that when we finally come up against it, we'll get one more opportunity, opportunity to get things right. God says, I'm giving you every opportunity until you die. And when you die, judgment follows. Immediately in Luke 16:26, we see that the rich man in Hades would like to have one drop of water put on his tongue to take away his torment. And the answer given is amazing. Abraham, speaking for Jesus, says, between you and us there is a great gulf fixed, and no man passes over it. There is no second chance after death. When the wicked dies, his hope perishes with him, because when he dies, then he is judged. And there is no passing from one place, the place of blessing, to the place of torment, or vice versa. There is no passing between. Now, some people have thought 1 Peter 3:19 20 offers some hope of that. Let's look at that briefly in our Bibles. 1 Peter 3, 19, 20. And if you'd like more detail on this, I do have a tape in my series on first Peter that you can pursue further. But notice here that we're told that Christ in the Spirit, or by means of the Spirit, I believe, went and preached unto the spirits in prison. That aforetime were disobedient when the long suffering of God waited in the days of Noah while the ark was being prepared. Okay, now that little snippet has been used over and over again, in fact, by the Roman Catholic Church through the ages, has been used to justify the notion either of purgatory or a chance after death, whatever it may be. Because here we're told in some sense Jesus went to the spirits in prison and there he preached to them. So obviously they had another opportunity, they didn't listen on earth, and now he preaches to them and they have another opportunity to walk the aisle and become good Christians. Well, that isn't what the Bible says. That isn't what this verse says at in the first place. The preaching that is mentioned here is not a preaching of the gospel at all. The word for spreading the good news, euangelidzo in Greek, is not what Peter uses. It's the word for making a proclamation. Now it might be a proclamation of the gospel, but there's nothing in the verb to preach that tells you what the nature of the proclamation is. And I maintain that the proclamation is not a word of gospel, but rather it was a proclamation about victory over the demons. Indeed, it was a proclamation made to demons, not to human beings, the spirits of those that were disobedient in the days of Noah. If you go back and look at Genesis, proves to have been demonic spirits. Now, of course, not everybody wants to believe that either. This is a whole conundrum in biblical interpretation. But I believe believe that that is what Genesis tells us. And that fits in with verse 22 in our text. First Peter 3, where Peter says, who is on the right hand of God having gone into heaven. Now notice angels, authorities and powers being made subject unto him. When Jesus went to Hades or to hell, he did not proclaim the gospel to the human dead there that might finally be saved. He proclaimed his victory over the demons. Notice also that Peter doesn't say that this is an ongoing event. It's something that Jesus did once and for all. It was a single historical event where the demons were told, you've lost. So there is no biblical support for the idea of a second chance after death. Well then fourthly, people will say, well, maybe hell is remedial chastening. It was very helpful to me many years ago when I was a young Christian, having it explained to me the difference between chastening and judgment. You know, the difference between chastening and judgment. Chastening is for your good, right? That you might come around and it does not break fellowship. Judgment separates. And so some people have said, yeah, there's a need for hell, but what it is is basically remedial chastening. Well, the problem of course is that I don't think we would call it chastening of our children if we sent them to their rooms forever. A chastening that is unquenchable, a chastening that is unending is not chastening. That's just playing with words, isn't it? And so do remember, my friends, the road to hell is a one way street. You go into hell and you do not come back. That's not chastening, that's judgment. And then the last attempt to manage this doctrine that is popular, not well thought out, is the notion that everyone will be saved from hell. Yeah, there are some people who say, we know the Bible. Bible talks about all men being saved, right in Christ. All in Christ, all are redeemed, right? Even as in Adam all died, so in Christ all shall be made alive. Paul says not only that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. And so there are people who go to verses like that. They say all are going to be made alive, the whole world has been reconciled to God, and therefore no one's going to hell. Well, all of those verses in particular that people look at are being read out of context, terribly out of context. The Bible does not mean that all men will be made alive, but all who are in Christ will be made alive. But not all are in Christ. And when God reconciles the world world to himself, what that means is Jew and Gentile alike, male and female alike. No matter what your ethnic background, no matter what your height, weight or whatever it may be, the entire world is the object of God's love. Universalism. I could give you many more than this, but for the sake of time, please take down in your notes the following four passages that call for explanations. First of all, Luke 13:24, Luke 13, and the 24th verse. Jesus says, strive to enter in by the narrow door. For many, I say unto you, shall seek to enter in and shall not be able. What could that possibly mean? If everyone is going to be saved, what could it mean that some will strive to enter and not be able to enter? Well, everyone's going to enter. On the doctrine of the universalist, consider three quick passages from Matthew's gospel. First, Matthew 12:31,32, Matthew 12:31,32. Therefore I say unto you, every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men. But the blasphemy against the Spirit shall. Shall not be forgiven. And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him. But whosoever shall speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world nor in that which is to come. Now, how can the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit not be forgiven even in the world which is to come? And then we say everybody's going to be saved. Well, of course, the answer is, no one ever blasphemes the Holy Spirit. But if that were the case, it wouldn't call for any discussion, would it? And Jesus would not say that's what his opponents have done when they said he cast out demons by Beelzebub. Well, so here we know there's an unforgivable sin. We know that some will strive to enter by the narrow gate and not be able to. Matthew 22:14. For many are called, but few are chosen. Many are invited, but only a few are actually chosen to enter. It should say, many are called and all of them are chosen. But it doesn't. You cannot reconcile the Bible to the universalist doctrine. One more illustration. Matthew, Matthew 25:46. And these shall go away into eternal punishment, and the righteous into eternal life. Jesus felt that some were going to go into eternal punishment. Jesus was not a universalist. Some theologians would like to improve on Jesus teaching, apparently, but they don't have the authority or insight to do so. They don't have the competence to disagree with the Lord of Heaven, Heaven and earth, the one who has been appointed by God by his resurrection, the Judge of all mankind. And Jesus says, some are going to be sent into eternal punishment. Not all men will be saved. In the Book of Revelation, chapter 20, we read of some whose names are not written in the Lamb's Book of Life. Not written. And all those whose names are not written in the Lamb's Book of Life will be consigned to the lake of fire. Fire. That expression, all those whose names are not written in the Lamb's Book of life is not what we sometimes in logic call the fallacy of existential assumption. The fallacy of existential assumption pertains to universal statements. All something are as follows. All this when the all is something that doesn't exist, or as a condition that doesn't exist. If I were to tell you all unicorns have blue eyes, that statement, for purposes of first order predicate logic, is true. You know why? Because there are no unicorns, you say, well then, that shouldn't be true. That goes contrary to your common sense. And in Sunday school. You're probably going to want to talk about this some more. But in first order predicate law logic, as long as you can say if something is an X, then X is a Y, that something is a Y. If there are no X's, it can never be something that is true and false at the same time. So it's always legitimate to say in terms of logic. And so that's what we call the fallacy of existential assumption when a universal statement is made, but there's nothing that it really applies to. If I say all the Rolls Royce is out in the parking lot right now are gray in color, I don't have to worry. Well, maybe I have to. Maybe some of you are driving nicer cars than I think. But since there are no Rolls Royces out in the parking lot, then I can say that, and for logical purposes, it's true. Because we don't have to assume a universal statement has any members. Well, the Bible is not committing the fallacy of existential assumption when it says all whose names are not written in the Lamb's book of life were cast into the lake of fire. There are people who will populate hell forever. In which case universalism is not a way to manage the doctrine of hell if you're going to be true to the teaching of the Bible. In short, it turns out, as we've learned this morning, you just cannot manipulate God's word. You cannot manage God. The only hope we have to make the doctrine of hell manageable to ourselves is to submit to God's management of our lives and to accept the mercy that he extends. Hell is still dreadful, but that's the only way I can manage it is to flee from it into the arms of my Savior. Let's pray. God, forgive us for trying to make us to make you over into our own image. Forgive us for trusting our own desires and our own preconceived ideas more than we trust your Word. Forgive us for trying to manage you and to manage what you teach us. Forgive us for all of the compromises that we're guilty of when it comes to reading your Word and believing it and following it. And thank you, God, for being love. Thank you for loving us. We confess that we don't deserve your love. There's no reason for you to have set it upon us and no reason for you to have demonstrated it in the highest degree in laying down your life for your friends. We thank you that you have this is the only thing. The only thing. The one and only way that we can be at peace. When we think about your eternal judgment, we thank you that it has passed over us because it fell on our Savior. We ask that you would fill our hearts with rejoicing as we take refuge in him today to know that we are eternally secure. What you have done for us. And that you will not have begun a work in our lives only to let it go. But you will perfect us to the end. And no man will ever pluck us out of your hand. And we will be yours forever. For we pray in Jesus name, Amen.