"Everyone Goes To Heaven in the End"

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

You guys will have to pardon me this morning a little bit. I am not feeling totally great this morning, as you could probably hear. And so I will press on. I would encourage you to press on too through my gravelly voice, okay? The gospel that we believe creates a culture. It creates something in us in our lives. Bill Hall had a great summary of this, and he talked about a couple of different kinds of gospels that we would believe false gospels. And I thought that would be a good thing to do, to kind of overlay his work on what we've been doing the past five weeks. And so I wanted to just kind of run through it. You know, when we believe a no-word gospel, right? When we believe a no-word gospel that says, hey, stay just like you are. Don't change, there's no need to change. Then you become undiscerning and spiritually immature. And so this kind of works both ways.

If you believe a false gospel, then it's gonna play out a certain way. But also, if you're life, if you are particularly undiscerning, or if you're not particularly spiritually mature, you kind of see all these other people that know a lot more than you, it may be that you believe that you don't need the word of God that much, or that you don't read scripture at the time.

The SBNR gospel, the spiritual but not religious gospel, where you need to feel God personally, right? That's kind of the gospel that you believe, like, I feel God, that's all I really need to do, right? Then what that's going to lead to is that that's an isolated existence, where really, you're just gonna go from experience to experience to experience. Wherever that experience is, you're gonna kind of chase that, right? If that's the gospel that you believe. We moved on, and I'm just kind of moving through these weeks that we talked about. We have a consumer gospel, right? Consumer gospel where it's, excuse me, where the church or God's gonna meet your needs, and you become self-indulgent, you become impatient, and you become addicted to your own desire, right? You're not really paying attention to what God's calling you to do, you're just worried about staying comfortable, right?

Prosperity gospel, this is two weeks ago, where it's name it and claim it, and that builds as an entitlement or a God management, right? You believe that you can make God do things by praying a certain way, acting a certain way, giving a certain amount of money. And if you can just do that, then God has to do this, right? So there's this God management going on. And then lastly, we talked about last week a little bit of the social gospel, where really, you boil the gospel down to helping the needy, helping other people. And in fact, you become the savior to these people, right? Like the people that you're helping, and then you become really blind to your own sin. We talked about it last week a lot, but just if you're dividing the world up into oppressor and oppressed, and you're on the side of the oppressed, and you're fighting against the oppressors, that's not a whole lot of time for self-reflection, right?

Like you're not really gonna think like, man, maybe I'm not doing this right. Like because there's all these oppressed people, and we need to help them out, right? And so what that does is it tends to distort not just what you believe, but it distorts your life. There is a downline effect to the gospel that we believe. And that's why we're spending a whole summer on heresy, is because so that we can begin to make those connections and say, okay, what do I believe, and how does that affect the person and for us as a church, how does this produce the church that we become? How does this affect the generations that we raise or the societies that we build? And it does, if you think it doesn't, you're crazy. The gospel that you believe will form you into a person. It will make you into someone. Today, the heresy that we're discussing is the one that most of us want to believe.

This is the one that we secretly hope is true, and it's that everyone gets to heaven in the end. That's the lie we're talking about today. Everyone goes to heaven in the end. People gravitate toward this. It sidesteps a very inconvenient and uncomfortable truth that eternal torment waits for those who do not follow Jesus. It's not hard to see why. Jesus himself makes it perfectly clear. I thought I would just start with this, just get it out of the way. Matthew 25, verses 31 and following. In Matthew 25, Jesus is very clear about the fact that there is a heaven and a hell.

He says, when the Son of Man comes in glory and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. So Jesus is selling his disciples. These are the things to come. And he likens it to dividing sheep and goats. 33 and 34, and he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. Then the king shall say to those on the right, come, you are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. So he congratulates the sheep. He congratulates people that have been following him, and he says that there is an eternal kingdom awaiting for you. It's his eternal life. Here's your reward.

35 and 36. Why? Why does he give him this? For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and gave me drink. Stranger, you welcomed us. You welcomed me. I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me. The sheep are confused, and Jesus helps clarify. He says, when you did it for the least of these, you did it for me. But then he turns to the goats. Verse 41, so I'm gonna skip down a few verses. Then he will say to those on the left, depart from me, you cursed into the eternal fire

prepared for the devil and his angels. So the goats also receive their reward, which is eternal fire, just so we're clear. Right? The parallels are on purpose. There's eternal life for the sheep. There's eternal hell, fire, damnation, condemnation, whatever you wanna, whatever word you wanna put in there. It is eternal though. For the goats. And just to put a fine point on it, all the way down to 46, Jesus says, and these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. Jesus, whenever he is describing this to his disciples, is being overly, I mean, like way clear. We can't read Matthew 25 and go, ah, I don't know, Jesus might be talking about something different. It's just plain as day. And it's really hard to shake. And it's also, like I said, it's very uncomfortable. So where do we get the idea of hell? Well, we get it from Jesus in the New Testament.

Right? We get it from the words of our savior. Okay? And although many, many people agree with that, many problems come in with not the facts of hell, but how the hell, how, huh, how, that may happen like twice today. How the facts of hell are, how the facts of hell are preached. Churches present hell, they can, present hell as a threat. You may have heard this described as hellfire and brimstone, right? Preacher, you know, just like beating the pulpit, you know, spit flying, you know, and the, you know, it's so hot, you know, like your shoes are melting, it's so much happening, right? There's so many kind of things that play into this.

And what you see is there's this tendency in these churches, among these people, a tendency among these Christians to oversimplify the gospel of Jesus Christ. And what they will say is, they will say the gospel of Jesus Christ is, avoid hell, choose Jesus, okay? Avoid hell, choose Jesus. They don't talk about abundant life, they don't talk about following Him and joy and obedience, they don't talk about those things. It's, hey, get out of hell by praying this prayer. Did you pray the prayer, did you pray it? Okay, let's hurry up, let's get you baptized. And now you are spiritually set for life. And if you think I'm exaggerating, I would just encourage you to look around, right? Look at the people that you know that claim Christ that live like hell, okay? Look at the people that you know. You know many of these people, right? That will claim Christ but do not follow Him.

Do you know where they got that idea? From their church. They got that idea from this happening over and over and over again. We have generations of people who heard that. And we are living in the midst of that. And I would just say, although I don't like to throw stones at churches, at best, at best, that is unintended manipulation and at worst it's fraud. Because this is what happens and we're seeing this all over. And it's been happening a while, it's just maybe it's more public now because of social media. Is that when people realize they have been manipulated, that they've been lied to by the people that they trusted, their church, their pastor, when they realize that they've been manipulated that way, the deconstruction begins. And the first thing to go in a deconstruction is a literal hell with eternal torment. First thing to go. It's every time, every time.

They wanna hold onto the belief of Jesus, they wanna hold onto scripture, they wanna hold onto all that. But as soon as they realize kind of, oh, okay, I can kind of make this, I can throw this out. Okay, good, I'll throw it out. This belief is properly known as universalism. Universalism. This is eternal torment for people, sorry, there is no eternal torment for people who do not follow Jesus. It goes by another couple of names, annihilationism, inclusivism. There's a lot kind of the, so if you see like a universalist church or a Unitarian Universalist church, there's one in Fort Worth near my house. And that is exactly what they believe. It's a particularly ancient heresy. Origen believes Origen is a church father. So we're talking like 184 to 253 AD, so pretty early on in the church. That heresy has, there's been a lot that's kind of been built onto that and taken away and changed

and kind of transformed a little bit. So what I'm gonna describe it as major, the major poisons, I'm being pretty deliberate today. The major poisons, these aren't like parts or you know, aspects or no, these are poisons. I'm gonna give you four poisons and I'm gonna give you four anecdotes. The four poisons. The first poison is that God got it wrong. No, excuse me. The first poison is that we got God wrong. Ha. That we've gotten God wrong, okay. That God could, a loving God could never send people to hell.

He's too loving, he's too merciful to ever actually torment people eternally. Jesus told us to love our enemies and there's no way he could be a part of this kingdom, right, and when you hear this, there's a couple of kind of key words. What about wrath? Okay, well wrath is passive, meaning wrath, when the Bible talks about wrath, the 27 times the Bible talks about wrath, it's all God letting natural consequences happen. So it's passive wrath, they say, okay. Again, I need to do this almost every week. You need to put a sign above my head right now, like I'm lying to you, okay. I am telling you the heresy as the heresy is presenting itself. So if you go and you're like, pastor said wrath is only passive, no I didn't, I'm describing a heresy that says that, okay.

Wrath is passive, we've misread the Bible, either because of mistranslation or because of Western civilization mindset or how we miss what God is truly about, okay. Because we've contorted things, you know, this particularly comes out in like difficult texts, like war stories or violence in the Old Testament. And on this point, sadly, on this point, Tim Mackie from the Bible Project, have you guys ever seen the Bible Project, like this videos that kind of explain the Bible in one kind of fell swoop? The founder, the co-founder of that, his name's Tim Mackie, he's the guy whose voice is on there.

Tim Mackie is a universalist. And so that's, I was sad to find that out actually. I got some quotes from him. Instead of, so in talking about like what these Bible passages are talking about with these war stories or violence, instead of this is God bringing judgment on other people through his people, which is what's happening in the Old Testament, here's what Tim Mackie says. Says God will allow himself to engage in things that are not becoming of his ideal purpose or character because he is committed to this person. Let that first part sink in just a little bit. He's saying that God is going to allow himself to do something that's not his character because of his commitment to a person. Okay, all right. He goes on and says God is allowing himself to be depicted as a kind of God that he isn't by the Old Testament authors because of their limited horizon and point of view.

This is Tim Mackie with the Bible Project, okay. Tim Mackie can only know this if he's smarter than the Bible. He can only have a perspective that is superior to the Old Testament authors if he somehow is claiming special knowledge. Was he there? Did he write it? He can only know this if he's smarter than the Bible. Often people will appeal to, you know, it's ancient near Eastern culture, it's language, it's the genre of the Bible. There's this, you know, this is this ancient way that we've never gotten right until now, which really bites on social media because it's like have we gotten God wrong this whole time? You know, click here, okay. I mean, look, I'm clicking on that, okay. If you don't, if you're not, if you say you're not gonna click on that, you're a liar. Come on.

What I would just say is the poison is that we've gotten God wrong, we've misread the Bible, okay, and his character is different, nicer than what we read in Scripture even, than how the Old Testament prophets describe him because they had a limited horizon. They don't really know what they're talking about. In other words, trust me, not the Bible. That's the first poison. Second poison, we've gotten hell wrong, so we got God wrong, but we got specifically, we got hell wrong. You know, hell is actually, again, liar up here, okay. Hell is not actually in the Bible, and it's Gehenna in the Old Testament, or sheol, and in the New Testament it's Hades, so the word hell is not actually. Hell, hell is just a state that people can be in today. Hell is something that we unleash upon each other. Hell is what Jesus allowed to overtake him, to overwhelm him on the cross, okay.

So that's what hell, hell is a present reality, but it's not an eternal place of damnation, and typically on this point people will parody this overly simplistic gospel reward system that I talked about. They'll parody that, and they'll say, wait, so if I just believe, you know, if I just accept something either behaviorally or mentally, if I just accept that, I can escape the coming judgment, okay, so they'll kind of make fun of this tendency to oversimplify the gospel that other churches are doing. They'll make fun of that, and they'll say, like, oh, that's it, I just need to, you know, Jesus is my get out of hell free card, okay. You know, and they'll say, no, no, no, that's completely made up, and we've gotten hell wrong. That was poison number two. Poison number three, we got the cross wrong, okay. Got the cross wrong. By sending Jesus, excuse me, let me read three verses for you.

Colossians 1:20. I'm gonna paraphrase just a little bit. By sending Jesus, God's plan is to, quote, reconcile to himself all things in heaven and on earth. So Jesus is gonna reconcile everything to himself. First Timothy 2:4, that God desires all people to be saved and to come to him, and to come to the knowledge of the truth. First John 2:2, Jesus is the propitiation for our sins, sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. So we got the cross wrong. It can be universally applied, okay. So we got, the first three poisons, we got God wrong, we got hell wrong, we got the cross wrong. The next step, after you've kind of imbibed those poisons, to believe the last one, the last poison, hell is a scam.

Hell is a scam. It is a scam to keep you in line. It is, you know, the church invented hell as a scare tactic to keep its auditoriums and its bank accounts full. And they use it, and we prop it up by insisting that hell is this other thing that clearly goes against God's character. It's clearly, it's not in Scripture the way we talk about it, and the cross even doesn't deal with it in the way that we thought, right. And these poisons ultimately will tell you you've been lied to, big religion needs to stay in power.

And these poisons in particular can be difficult to combat if you don't know a lot about God, or if you are not confident in what you know, okay. And so if you became a Christian three weeks ago, and somebody's telling you, hey, we got God's character wrong, we got the cross wrong, we got hell wrong, we got all these things wrong, here's the right way to read it. Well, I mean, and if it's Tim Mackie with the Bible Project, you're like, that voice, like, I believe everything you're telling me right now. So what I wanna do this morning, I just wanna give you antidotes to universalism. And this is not something for you to, it's not just considering it, these are things that you kind of must steep in. Like these kind of big truths, you gotta kind of plant yourself in them, and they're difficult, and that's why people don't. It's why people don't preach on them, and it's why people will fall for universalism,

because we don't talk about this stuff a whole lot, and we should. And a note number one, everybody deserves judgment. Everybody deserves judgment. So Ephesians two, one and two, so Ephesians two, one and two says, and you, being us, were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, which is Satan, the spirit that is now working and the sons of disobedience. So this includes you and Hitler and kidnappers and worse.

It includes everybody. We're all terrible. This is an old movie where the bad guys were the black hats and the good guys were the white hats. We'd all have black hats, okay? And they'd all be the same shade of black. Some of you wouldn't have like a gray black hat, it would just be black, okay? Because sin isn't something that you can kind of just manage or something that sort of like, you know, like sits in your pocket. Sin eats you alive. Sin enslaves you, swallows you whole. Like it's not a small thing, okay? And because we all deserve judgment, look at the next verse, Ephesians two, three. It says, these sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind and we're by nature children of wrath.

Like the rest of mankind. Just so we're clear, everybody deserves judgment. Everybody deserves the wrath of God. The gospel calls us to rest our faith upon Jesus. He is the only path to eternal life. It's his work, it's his suffering, it's his victory and outside of Jesus, we are all condemned already. Like Jesus says in John three, right after John three 16, everybody's favorite verse, keep reading down to like verse 21. You're gonna see like the people that do not believe in the name, in the son are condemned already. Judgment is just, it's fair, it's right. And it's not just for religious hypocrites. So people would, sometimes people, whenever they're talking about this will say, well you know Jesus just, he was just condemning the religious hypocrites, the Pharisees of the day. That's not true, he wasn't just condemning them. The wrath of God is revealed like it says in Romans 1 18.

Against all ungodliness, all kinds in every person. And the way you get to this antidote, the way you need to kind of steepen this antidote is to repent, and not just once. Repenting daily, so repenting just means, excuse me, repenting just means that you are turning around, that you are saying I don't wanna do this God, I want to follow you. It doesn't mean perfection, but it means a turnaround. Metanoia is the Greek word, it means just a change of mind. Just turn around. Do it often, I recommend on this, and we do this in our life groups, but I recommend on this, it's a document called All of Life is Repentance, and it's by Tim Keller. I would challenge you to repent using that as a guide, it's really really helpful. I've had a lot of people kind of go through life group and use that as kind of a form for repentance, like just, because it asks a bunch of diagnostic questions,

that's what's helpful, it doesn't mean you have to read it word for worded, but it asks you to kind of think through some things, and my challenge for you is, I wanna challenge you this week, like repent every day this week, just as a discipline, and if you're like, I don't know what to repent of, that's where that article is a really good help, it's two pages, man, I mean it's not a long read or anything like that, and the questions are kind of set up at the end. That's my challenge, I wanted you to do it every day this week, repent, daily.

When you repent, it's like agreeing with God that you deserve judgment, right? When you repent, it's like, you're saying like, God, we're on the same team, because I don't wanna sin either, right? I don't wanna do that, but I'm doing it, and I need to repent of it. The second antidote, and this is probably a little harder to swallow, is that God's wrath is very good. God's wrath is very good. Now, you and I tend to tame God, tame, specifically in the area of judgment and wrath. Wrath is actually part of his love. Wrath is not simple anger, we think about wrath with somebody just mad, right? They're just mad at something, and they're just yelling, and they're just doing things, right? That they're wrathful, or it's vindictive, right? That they're being wrathful, it's vindictive. Wrath is not either one of those,

and we sing about it, we actually sang about it today, I was glad that we did that, where we talk about God's not mad and God's not scary, and this is true to a point, and I wanna illustrate what I mean, and it'll help you kind of see wrath. I want you to imagine an everyday mother, okay? This is average mom, all of you moms in here are above average, so you're gonna have to kind of think, okay, average mom, all right. Average mom, gentle, sweet, nurturing,

toward her children, mild, right? Everything's cool, okay? But do you think that she will act that way if someone tries to kidnap her children? Oh no, not a little, right? She's not gonna say please. What will happen is she will seem to change in that moment. She will become fierce, she will become very tough, she will become argumentative. She might not say please and thank you. You might find out that she's carrying a weapon, okay? Like there's some things that can happen. What are you trying to kidnap a woman's child, right? That woman, that mother will seem to change, and even though that is true, that she seems to change, she actually doesn't change. What you are seeing is the other side of the same love that that mother has for her children. You are seeing love in action, okay? The same fierce love that drives her to patiently nurture her children and listen,

and saying mom, mom, mom for the 50th time, all those things that just kind of make her kind of be long suffering, and that same fierce love drives her to take a baseball bat to a kidnapper. It's the same thing, right? So if you are, if you see a mom, and the mom's chasing some hooligan down the street with the baseball bat, you're like, that guy probably deserves it, right? Like totally you're thinking that, right? Like there's, it's the same thing.

God's wrath is part of his love. Also God's wrath is active. I want you to look at Romans two, five, and eight, and they're gonna be up here. Romans two, five, and eight, it says, but because of your hard and impenitent heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed, okay? Let's stop there for just a second. There will be a day, so this is what Christians believe. This is normal baseline orthodoxy. What Christians believe, what the Bible teaches, is that there will come a day when God judges people, just like Jesus was talking about with the sheep and the goats, God will judge people, and the wrath that has stored up will be unleashed upon people. The only reason I'm gonna make it out alive in that moment is because Jesus died for me. That's it, okay? I'm protected under the blood of Jesus because of his grace toward me.

That's it. If anybody is saying, but like, but I made straight A's, or if anybody's trying to tout whatever their value is as a person, like, no, no, no, I achieved this, it won't stand, it won't, they won't make it. They're not righteous like God is righteous. Romans 3, 23 tells us, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. If the glory of God is the standard, we all fall short, all of us. And then just to put a fine point up, but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, that will be wrath and fury. Okay, God's wrath is active and it fuels his judgment.

God is our Father, God is gentle with us, God seeks us out, God hears our cry, God listens to us in our pain, God exalts us whenever we are low. Yes, but God also hates sin and stores up wrath for the people who turn from him, for the people who walk away from him. If God's wrath is not good, sorry, excuse me, if God's wrath is good, I had to look at that like four times, if God's wrath is good, okay, then hell is real and it's just.

If God's wrath is good, then hell is real and it's just because what else should happen to an unrepentant child murderer? What's justice for that? Castration? Is that, I mean, that's the best we can do or to put him to death. That's the best we can do, but that ain't justice. That doesn't give parents their child back, that doesn't pay for, there's no way. There's no way we could do that. What about human traffickers who resist the spirit? They're ruining people's lives, like for good. Like if you've ever been human trafficked for any extended period of time, like you're never the same. There's things taken from you that can never be brought back. So what's fair? What's fair? I'll tell you this, I don't know what's fair, but I don't have to. God knows what's fair. And God will render judgment on that last day. And I can trust that whenever I am done wrong against,

I can place and remind myself that in the hope, there will one day be a just judgment. In fact, Romans 12, 19 says, beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the Lord. I mean, listen, Romans 12, 19 is helping us apply this wrath to everyday life. When you get wronged and you want to avenge yourself or you want to avenge another person. In other words, you want to dole out punishment. You want to be judge and jury. Our encouragement in scripture says, no, no, no, no, no, no, leave it for the wrath of God. I would argue that wrath, although uncomfortable, is ultimately comforting. It's uncomfortable to think about, but ultimately it's comforting. Not because I think I'm good enough to pass, but because I have been put under the blood of Jesus Christ.

Because I have been saved. And I'm confident in that. Not because of anything I've done, but because of what's been done for me. Let me put it a different way. If there is no hell, if there is no judgment, if there is no real penalty for sin, if there's no vengeance, if there's no lake of fire, like in Revelations 20, if there's no torment, eternal torment that Jesus describes in a parable in Luke 16, then God is not just. If none of those things exist, God's not just. It's not fair. They go together. God's love includes his wrath. And that wrath is just. And the consequences of disobeying the Lord God in heaven are real.

How do we take this antidote in? I want you to determine maybe how you try to tame God. Like when we read Romans 2, 5 and 8, we talk about the wrath of God, Romans 12, 19, we talk about leave it to the wrath of God. Everybody, when they read those, nobody's throwing a parade for that. We're all a little uncomfortable as we read that. And I would say uncomfortable level, like everybody's at a three or a four. Are you at like a nine? Like can you barely read that and not like be real upset and that's not really who God is? Or you know, like if you're at like a nine or an eight, I would just softly say, perhaps you have tamed God. Perhaps you have made the Bible PG 13.

Perhaps you have chosen to not look at parts of God or traits of God's character that you don't like. Am I encouragement? If you don't like it, that probably says something about you, not about God, right? God's not worried about who he is. In fact, his whole enterprise is revealing himself to people. Okay, you and I, we don't do that. We tend to hold ourselves back a little bit and just kind of do it slowly. God's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, find out who I am, like see me. And he's not worried, he's not worried about us going, oh wrath, I didn't know, gosh, wrath. You know, oh, you know, and God's like, oh, maybe I should hide my wrath. I don't know, you know. No, he's fine with it. Read the Old Testament, it's there. Read the New Testament, it's there. It's all over.

Wrestle with the question, who is God's judgment for? I mean, that'll get you down to brass tacks pretty quick. Who is God's judgment for? Is it just for Hitler? Or is it for everyone? It's not just for bad people, or people you don't like. It's for everybody, it's for you too. You are not a good person who got your life right. You are a person who has received the grace of God in varying amounts. I was talking to somebody the other day, or it's like probably two days ago, talking about this sermon.

They were like, how's it going? How's the sermon going? So we kind of talked about that. And in response, like they were talking about, they were like, yeah, you know, I've always known I was a good person, I just had to kind of get my life on track, you know, and God like really blessed that. It was not a point in the conversation where I could kind of correct, or engage, or anything like that. I didn't, they claim Christ and they believe that. And that is not true. That's a lie. And a note number three, God is faithful. God is actually more faithful than we really understand.

That really, God is more faithful than we can dream. And the only way I know to really express this is through an old hymn, and it's called The Love of God. And it paints a picture, I just want you to kind of listen to the picture. We're not gonna put the words up there, just listen. It says, could we with ink the ocean fill, so if we could fill the ocean with ink. And we're the skies of paper made, so all the skies are paper. And every stalk on earth, a quill, every tree, on earth, a quill, so a pen, and every man ascribe by trade. Okay, so if we had all the ink, all the paper, all the pens, and everybody's ascribe, to write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry. Nor could the scroll contain the hole, though stretched from sky to sky. Oh, love of God, how rich and pure, how measureless and strong, it shall forevermore endure the saints and angels song.

Man, that just says it so well. There's just, God's faithfulness to you is just overwhelming. If you think about it, for 30 seconds, you'll be broken over it. All the things that you do that don't deserve loving faithfulness, all the ways that you betray God consistently. Maybe you apologize for him, maybe you don't, but you go against God, but still, he's so faithful. God's covenant of love and faithfulness to us is overwhelming, and you know what? It started with him, and it's going to end with him. It started with him, and it's going to end with him. He who started a good work in you will be faithful to complete it, until the day of Jesus Christ. The day of Jesus Christ is the day of judgment, the day of wrath, right? He's gonna see us through to those things. That's Philippians 1, 6. And this is kinda what gets me. When people talk about hell being a scam,

I want you to imagine somebody, Daniel Oster has this really great story about him trying to save somebody from the ocean, like almost drowning, and there was an angel, and all that. Okay. And it made me think of this. I want you to imagine you're drowning in the ocean, and somebody is coming to rescue you, okay? As they're rescuing you from death, from a certain death, it would be perfectly absurd for you to say, well, look, the only reason that you're saving me is because you want my undying devotion and admiration. This is such a scam, right? If you think that God somehow tricked you with this whole ruse of you're a sinner and now you need my help, like if you think that that's a trick, then you must believe, you must believe that you are doing just fine on your own.

You must believe that you are not in need of saving. If you think that God is just trying to trick you to make you indebted to him, and that that's kind of the scam going on, then yeah, yeah, you will believe that hell is not real, and you will believe that salvation is a scam. And if you somehow claim Christ and believe that, you will not claim Christ for long. Those things don't mix. If you say, yeah, I walk with the Lord, I walk with the risen Lord, I call him Savior, he's mine and I'm his.

But you know what, like hell's not real, it's kind of a scam. Really, God's just here to kind of prop me up and help me feel good about myself. It's just therapy, right? God's just my therapy. Well, look, you have a tough time explaining the cross. You have a tough time explaining a lot of what Jesus talked about, which was hell. He talked about hell more than he talked about heaven. You have a tough time with the entire Old Testament, which is why you see some teachers like Andy Stanley, don't listen to him, when they say things like, you need to be unhinged from the Old Testament. Do you know why they want to be unhinged from the Old Testament? It's because there's a lot of stories in there that talk about God in a way that they don't like, because they've tried to tame God in their mind and in their church, so that really, what they're worshiping is just some figment

of their imagination. I'm not saying I don't know if Andy Stanley is a Christian or not. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what I think. What matters is that the judgment seat, God can sort that out. I don't need to. But what I can do is say, what Andy Stanley's preaching, when he's talking about unhitching from the Old Testament, he's trying to get around a big problem that he doesn't want to face, and that is that God's character is a lot more difficult to deal with when you read the whole Bible, because you have to deal with vengeance. You have to deal with hell. You have to deal with all these things that just don't make for pretty Sunday morning talk. But God doesn't run from that. He's not worried about that. And neither am I. Here's my encouragement. How are you gonna put this antidote in? God's faithful love to you. My encouragement is to sing. Look, I'm not gonna name names,

but sometimes I see people not singing. Okay, I'm not even gonna look at anybody right now, because it's gonna feel like I'm looking at you. My encouragement is to sing of God's faithfulness often. Let me tell you why singing and not something else. Singing requires you to look a little silly. It requires you to kind of just put your voice out there, and maybe you can't sing that well. Okay, maybe you can't harmonize, maybe you can't whatever. Look, God's not worried about your harmony, okay? God wants your heart to sing of his faithfulness to him, and he has, in that moment when you do that, when you sing of God's faithfulness to him, God is faithful to build you up through that process. God matures you in that process.

Excuse me. Anno note number four. I gotta move. Jesus' call goes well beyond a get out of hell free card. Jesus' call is eternal life now. Jesus' call is eternal life now. Jesus does, in fact, save from hell, but it's much more than that. It's eternal life now. Following Jesus is a call to lose everything and to find true life in him today, now. When you're feeding your dog, when you're taking out the trash, when you're in a fight with your husband, when your kids are unruly, when all of these things, right, like it's finding eternal life in the midst of all of that continually. Jesus calls us into intimate fellowship with him where he renews us. He changes into his likeness. He grows obedience in us. He grows joy inside of us, and he does all that as we follow him, not because we deserve it, not because we've achieved it. But because Jesus is good, if the reason that you claim Jesus Christ

is to skip hell, I would just say, maybe you've been manipulated. I would question whether you know Jesus or not, honestly. Again, I don't get to make the call, but I would at least question it. And this is the current situation in Burleson, Texas. The situation we have now, we have generations of people that have been scared into heaven without knowing who they said yes to. They don't understand, they're just like, oh yeah, I mean, I'm at cryonatic camp, yeah, I feel all this emotion, and we're singing my favorite song, cool, okay, yeah, yeah, yes, I'll walk in aisle, I'll be a Christian, and I'll pray a prayer, and then they got baptized. But what they experienced from that point on was a bankrupt spiritual life, no discipling, no being discipled, and they believe that is Christianity. They believe that boring life is Christianity. This is you, there's good news and bad news.

The bad news is you might not know Jesus or his gospel. The good news is you can. You can know him today. Like, that it's not something that, it's not about knowledge, it's not about doing the right thing in the right order. It's about a relationship with Jesus. So here's what I would say to you, and here's the same thing Jesus said, and here's what I think we should say as a church whenever we are talking about hell, to people, okay. Mark 1:15, Jesus is preaching, and he says, the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand, repent, and believe in the gospel. Jesus leads with an invitation into the kingdom, and so should we.

Let me say that again. Jesus leads with an invitation into the kingdom, and so should we. By leading with that invitation, Jesus sets the tone for his ministry. If our ministry usually begins with get out of hell, or escape hell, or the judgment is near, then we should probably go back to scripture. We should probably look at what Jesus is saying, okay. We are not the prophet Hosea in the nation of Israel. We are following Jesus Christ today, okay. If all you're gonna do is be a prophetic mudslinger, then look, stay home, stay home, because Jesus leads differently than that. He leads with an invitation into the kingdom, and yes, we should confront modern ideals. Yes, we should speak prophetically into our culture. Yes, yes, yes, but if you're leading with, you're a sinner who's going to hell unless you do something about it right now. I don't know if that's following Jesus's ministry.

You're not wrong, technically, but you might be wrong spiritually. So Jesus leads with an invitation, the kingdom of God is at hand. Next, Jesus unapologetically calls people to repent, and so should we. Jesus isn't saying, like, well, maybe you have the, you know, like, no, man, like, living in rebellion against Jesus will result in destruction, both in your life now and in eternity. Repentance is the only way. When we talk about three circles, part of three circles is repent and believe. Lastly, Jesus calls people to believe the gospel by following him as his disciples. This is access to the kingdom. Jesus is saying the kingdom of God is at hand, it's near.

So repent and believe in the gospel. Follow me, Jesus says. When he does this, when he says, like, believe in the gospel and follow him, this is access to the kingdom. This is walking in eternal life now. And I wanna just kinda end by saying this, if there is no judgment, if there's no judgment, if there's no hell, then, man, I've been doing it wrong. I imagine most of you have too. Because if there's no judgment, man, I can just live a peaceful life. I can live, laugh, love, okay?

Look, and I cannot bother people about their eternal souls. There's no need to reach people with the truth. Because whatever they believe doesn't have impact on their lives. There's no need to disciple anybody. There's no need to just leave everybody alone. If there's no judgment, then we can just concentrate on the good things. Now worry about the bad things and leave people alone. But that's not the reality. Disciples people in the here and now is the way that you declare that you believe in a real heaven and a real hell. Disciples people in the here and now is a way to put your flag in the ground and say, look, I know it's uncomfortable to talk about. I know that we only talk about eternal destinations at funerals. And to be honest, I'm not gonna lean heavy into hell all the time either, personally or in my preaching. What I will do though, and so it fits your first Sunday,

welcome, glad you're here. This is kinda rare. But it is something that Jesus is very unapologetic about. And what a lot of people don't wanna do is they don't wanna risk scaring people into heaven. But what I would say, just as a soft kind of comeback on that would be, when I was seven, I heard the gospel and I heard about hell and I definitely didn't wanna go there. And I was at kids camp, maybe. And so I'm like, I don't wanna go to hell. And it kinda woke me up, right? Like, I don't wanna go to hell. I don't wanna do that. And so I went and I talked to camp counselor Steve or whoever and I was like, hey, I don't wanna go to hell. And then I went back to my church and I was baptized. Now, you can debate whether that was real or not.

I did have a real fear of going to hell. I didn't wanna go to hell. That's not necessarily a bad fear to have. However, scripturally, what we see is that there's this motivation of following Jesus into eternity. There's this motivation of giving our lives to him. Sometimes talking about hell scares people and wakes them up. But if it's all you ever live on, it can't sustain you, right? It can't.

What I wanna encourage you to do just this week, man, if that scared you, if we were talking about it right now, talking about hell right now and that scared you, hey, great, come and talk to somebody about it. Talk to me, talk to Pastor Daniel, talk to one of our deacons, talk to somebody about it to let them know like, oh man, like I've gotta do something about this. I've gotta kinda figure this out a little bit. But just also know this, the fear is real. It's not wrong, but it's not the only thing there is. There's more, there's actually much more. And so let the fear drive you into something more. Let me pray. Lord, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the way that you,

the way that you talk about repentance, hell, judgment, wrath, all these things that just make us uncomfortable. That things that really are upsetting to think about. Things that really we have to be super careful with, otherwise we mishandle. Thank you for saving us. Thank you for your word. Thank you for hell. Thank you for your wrath. Thank you for your judgment. Help us to find comfort in who you are. And it's your name that we pray, amen.