Hell

Here now the reading of the New Testament lesson taken from the book of Revelation, reading chapter 14. Then I looked in behold a land standing on Mount Zion and with him 144,000 having his father's name written on their foreheads. And I heard a voice from heaven like the voice of many waters and like the voice of loud thunder. And I heard the sound of harpists playing their harps. They sang as it were a new song before the throne, before the four living creatures and the elders. And no one could learn that song except 144,000 who were redeemed from the earth. These are the ones who were not defiled with women, for they are virgins. These are the ones who follow the land wherever he goes. These were redeemed from among men, being first fruits to God and to the land. And in their mouth was found no deceit, for they are without fault before the throne of God. Then I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth, to every nation tribe, tongue and people, saying with a loud voice, fear God and give glory to him for the hour of his judgment has come and worship him who made heaven and earth the sea and springs of water. And another angel followed saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city because she has made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication. Then a third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, if anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on his forehead or on his hand, he himself shall also drink of the wine of the wrath of God which is poured out full strength into the cup of his indignation. He shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the land, and the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever, and they have no rest day or night who worship the beast and his image and whoever receives the mark of his name. Here is the patience of the saints. Here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. Then I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, right, blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on. Yes, says the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors and their works follow them. Then I looked and behold a white cloud and on the cloud sat one like the Son of Man having on his head a golden crown and in his hand a sharp sickle. And another angel came out of the temple crying with a loud voice to him who sat on the cloud thrust in your sickle and reap, for the time has come for you to reap, for the harvest of the earth is ripe. So he who sat on the cloud thrust in his sickle on the earth and the earth was reaped. Then another angel came out of the temple which is in heaven. He also having a sharp sickle and another angel came out from the altar who had power over fire and he cried with a loud cry to him who had the sharp sickle saying, thrust in your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth for her grapes are fully ripe. So the angel thrust his sickle into the earth and gathered the vine of the earth and threw it into the great wine press of the wrath of God. And the wine press was trampled outside the city and blood came out of the wine press up to the horse's bridles for 1,600 furlongs. The word of our Lord. Thank you, God. Let us pray together, Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. We are overwhelmed by the thought that you have taken away our sins and you have had mercy upon us and you have granted us your peace. And I beg of you, Lord, that you would have mercy upon us once again and come to us by your spirit's power and press home to us the truth of your word. And for those who do not know you this morning, I want to ask you that you would cause them great discomfort and great alarm and a right fear. And for those who are gathered to you this morning, I pray that you would give them a sense of the freedom and liberty and grace which you have bestowed upon them and filled their hearts with gratitude. Come to us, O Lord, hear our prayer and answer for the sake of your own name and for the good of all who are gathered here this morning. We ask in Jesus' name, Amen. Every once in a while in the course of sermon preparation and thinking about the needs of the church and thinking about the whole council of God and everything that God has given to us in his word, something just kind of leaps off the page, something just jumps out and kind of grabs you by the throat and wrestles you to the ground. And that experience is an experience which I had this last week and I came away from that experience on Monday or Tuesday, early this week, wanting to ask you a question, wanting to wrestle with this question myself and that is the question, what are we doing here? What are we doing here? Why are we here? Why are we doing the things that we're doing? I was recently made the chairman of the committee in our Presbyteria Respondonsible for new churches, for church planting. Why would we be concerned about planting new churches? You seminary students, full or part time, taking for credit or auditing. Why are you taking those classes? You professors, why are you teaching these students? You people who are involved with Canvas Crusade for Christ, why are you involved in ministry? Those of you who have a burden for your neighbors who want to build relationships to your neighbors, why do you have that burden for these people? There are some things which we tend to lose sight of but which really do serve as a backdrop against which everything we do is to be seen. And that backdrop, that curtain, that screen against which we see our lives and the activity of our lives, brings all of that activity into sharp relief and focus. And honestly, when you wrestle with what the Bible teaches about the judgment of God and the visitation of His wrath upon the unrepentant, when you come face to face with the scriptural teaching regarding hell, I tell you there is a sense in which nothing else matters and all of the good things in which were engaged, become things of secondary importance because this specter looms large before us and it is the specter that my neighbors and your neighbors and your work associates are this moment if they are not Christians exposed. To the pains and miseries and torments of eternal judgment and all of our questioning about beasts and flying beasts and sevens and thousands as we work through the book of the revelation, all of that stuff fades and pales and becomes inconsequential when you come to the 14th chapter. And you read this language, the 3rd angel followed them saying with a loud voice, if anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark upon his forehead or in his hand, he himself shall also drink of the wine of the wrath of God which is poured out full strength into the cup of his indignation. And he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the lamb and the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever and they have no rest day or night who worship the beast and his image. Hell is real. The judgment of God is a terrifying prospect. I asked a friend this last week how he was doing. And I asked him how he was doing because when I had seen him earlier in the week, I just sensed a burden of this. And I wanted to know how he was doing and he said it's been a very difficult week because I've been confronted once again with the reality that no other member of my family is a Christian and hell is very real to me. I tell you, it almost makes everything else fade into insignificance. If the Bible is telling us the truth, there is something in this awful reality which should grip us and grip us at the core and not let us go. Hell is real. It is punishment for sin. There are a few things to say about it. First of all, it's nature. What is the nature of hell or what is the nature of the wrath of God? There are two words which are used in the New Testament and which are translated wrath. The first of them describes a settled disposition, a settled disposition. My children know something about wrath. They have had the misfortune over the course of their years to live in the same household with me. You know something about parental anger. You know that it can be arbitrary and it can be capricious. That is to say, it can be unpredictable. In fact, sometimes it is illegitimate and it is wrong. It is not a settled disposition but it is a disposition produced by circumstances, by the corruption of my own heart, by the pressures and stresses of my life. It can be caused by a relationship with another person and I think we've all seen this. How many husbands have been angry with their wives and have turned upon their children and invented that anger upon their children? Could I see a show of hands? That is not what this word describes. It is not talking about something which is the result of being tense and irritable. Remember the old anison commercial, sure your tense and irritable but don't take it out on the children. Some of you are too young to remember that. I remember this average American household wife with this hand upon her forehead. There is no caprice, there is nothing arbitrary about the wrath of God. It is a settled disposition. It is a disposition of the soul of God. It is an aspect of his character. It has to do with his justice and his holiness. It has to do with his determination to uphold what is right and to ensure that what is wrong is addressed. And that is a settled disposition in the soul of God. There is a second word. It is his translated wrath in the New Testament. It appears one time outside the book of the revelation. It appears ten times in the book and it is the word which appears twice in this chapter. And it has to do with this settled disposition in God being also for God a passion. Someone just a couple of weeks ago asked me a question about the Westminster Confession of Faith where in its discussion of the nature and character of God the confession says that God is not like us in that he is without body parts or passions. I have referred you to this before. But when the confession says that God is without body parts or passions it is seeking to communicate to us that God is different from us. He is not a composite. He is not made up of joints and sinew. He is not made up or divided into various emotions or psychological states. Which are subject to these external influences and which can become imbalanced. That happens to us. Sure your tense and irritable. Don't take it out on the children. That happens to us. It doesn't happen to God. To say that God is without body parts or passions is not to say that God is not passionate about particular things. He is passionate about his son. He is passionate about his name. He is passionate about his kingdom. He is passionate about the gospel. And he is passionate about the business of punishing unrepentant sinners. Brothers and sisters, when it comes to this very, very, very difficult subject, understand that there is no displeasure in God at all. When it comes to visiting his wrath and judgment upon the unrepentant, he is passionate about that. And that is reflected in this phrase in verse 10. Referring to the wrath of God, it is poured out full strength into the cup of his indignation, literally translated the language reads, mixed without mixture. Same word appears twice. It is mixed without mixture, full strength. What is being said there is that the wrath of God is mixed together with the wrath of God. And there isn't anything which is added to it which in any way diminishes the full measure of the wrath of God. It is poured into his cup of indignation which is then poured out upon the unrepentant. There is no sense in which God is displeased with the visitation of his just judgments upon the unrepentant. There is another thing about God's wrath. It is discriminating. His wrath is a discriminating wrath. His judgments are discriminating judgments. They come upon those particular individuals who worship the beast and his image and who receive the mark of the beast upon their foreheads or upon their hands.

My children, when they are exposed to my anger, know what indiscriminating anger and wrath are like. They all are exposed to it. All too often, I'm sorry to say. But the wrath of God is discriminating. It sets people apart. It makes distinctions. The wrath of God is like a smart bomb, if you will. You remember from the Gulf War, the smart bombs which locked in on a target. Smart bombs which had a technical capability of going down through a ventilating shaft into the basement of that building and exploding that building from its foundations so that the whole thing collapsed down upon itself. The wrath of God is discriminating. It sets its sights upon particular unrepentant people, people who have continued to live in defiance and in opposition to God. People who have worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever. What is behind this is the care of the God and the attributes of God. God is omniscient. He knows everything and he knows every person and he knows those who love him and he knows those who don't. And his wrath separates, discriminates and is poured out upon those who do not know and do not love him. There's a passage in the Psalms which is deeply troubling and perplexing, I suppose, in a certain sense it is Psalm 11. Beginning at verse 4, the Lord is in his holy temple. The Lord's throne is in heaven. His eyes behold his eyelids test the sons of men. The Lord tests the righteous but the wicked. And the one who loves violence, his soul hates. Upon that wicked one, he will reign coals fire and brimstone and a burning wind shall be the portion of their cup. It is discriminating. It identifies the one who loves what is wicked and practices it. And the text says that God hates that one and upon that one he or she continues. In his or her unrepentant state, he will visit upon that one the full measure of his wrath. So it was as a discriminating wrath. And another thing to be said about it, it is not anonymous. It is not anonymous. I am perhaps you have sometimes heard hell described as the absence of God that I want to suggest to you that hell is not the absence of God. Hell is the presence of God in all of his unspeakable fury and hatred of sin and unrepentant sinners. Unbelievers in hell would wish that God were absent. But he will not be absent, verse 11, and the smoke, verse 10, I am sorry. And he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. The Lord Jesus Christ will not be absent but will be present. And then there is one last thing to say about this judgment of God and about this visitation of his wrath. It goes on forever and ever and there is no rest day or night for those who perish. They experience throughout eternity the unmitigated wrath of God. Folks, there are many things in the scriptures with which we wrestle and it is good and it is right to wrestle with them. There are many things that are troubling and hard to swallow. And this is one of them. But this is what the scriptures teach. The scriptures teach that there are men and women and children with whom you brush shoulders, with whom you have conversations, with whom you associate every day, who are exposed at this very moment. To unceasing torment and God's punishment and wrath and judgment visited upon them for their sin. If you are not a Christian today, if you have not come to the place where you have vowed before Christ and acknowledged your own sinful corruption and accepted the work of Jesus Christ upon the cross for yourself, do you understand that you are in very, very grave danger? You don't know when your life will come to an end. You don't know. People have died in the course of this last week. A teenager was shot into various. He didn't plan for that last Sunday morning. He didn't expect that to happen in the course of this week. But that child is dead today and cast into eternity. And eternity is eternal. And if that person is cast into that eternity without having embraced Christ without having come to Christ for the forgiveness of his sins, that particular individual, that particular person is exposed right now in this moment to the wrath of God. And if you are not a Christian this morning, you do not have a guarantee that you will not likewise be cast into the experience, the full measure of God's wrath in your soul. You see this table which you spread before you. And you see this table in connection with Isaiah 52, which tells us that God was pleased to crush the Lord Jesus, visiting his wrath and judgment upon him for sinners. If you are a Christian this morning, you understand that that wrath has passed over you. You are no longer exposed to it. You are free from its threats and you have nothing to fear. Nothing. And if you are not a Christian this morning, look at this table and understand that this bread and this wine represent the broken body, the shed blood of Jesus, a body broken and blood shed in order that sinners might be forgiven. It pleased to crush him for sinners. I don't know where you stand only you know where you stand, but it seems to me that there is only one appropriate response for the non-Christian and that is to the best of your ability run to Christ and lay hold of the forgiveness which he extends. And if you are a Christian this morning and there is not great gratitude in your heart and see me afterwards and let's talk for you have been spared these unspeakable miseries and pains and you have been ushered into the presence forever of the Lord Jesus Christ to enjoy his blessedness. This is one of those sermons which it seems to me calls for a response. Let us pray together. Lord Jesus, you know in this room those who do not know you, those who are removed and those who are exposed even now to your wrath and judgment. I beg of you that you would have mercy upon them, that you would humble them and break them and bring them to their senses in order that they might run to you as best they can and embrace you and the forgiveness which you so freely offer. O Lord, be tender, be compassionate with them but be merciless in pursuing them that they might be spared and I pray for those in this room who struggle and who doubt your goodness, who have laid hold of you but who wonder whether there is reason to fear. May they see the Lord Jesus bearing the burden of your wrath poured out upon him for them and may they taste the freedom which comes in knowing that he has satisfied the full measure of your justice forever and they need not be afraid. Lord Jesus Christ minister to this congregation by your spirit to each one as is necessary for each one. We ask in your name and we ask you that you would hear us now as together we confess our sins and prepare to gather about your table. We confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed by what we have done and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent for the sake of your Son Jesus Christ. Have mercy upon us and forgive us that we may delight in your will and walk in your ways to the glory of your name. Amen.