Sermon Tone Analysis

/“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day.

At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table.

Even the dogs came and licked his sores.

/

/“The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side.

The rich man also died and was buried.

In hell, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side.

So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’/

/“But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony.

And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’/

/“He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my father’s house, for I have five brothers.

Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’/

/“Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’

/

/“‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’/

/“He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”/

The Bible’s teaching of eternal judgement and hell is the most hated doctrine in all of Christendom.

A generation of wimps in the pulpit is to blame for the church’s lack of evangelistic zeal for taking the gospel to those who have never heard.

We Christians have never said that the doctrine of eternal punishment isn’t in the Bible.

Because our preachers have chosen to remain silent concerning the fate of the lost, those occupying the pews of our churches are equally silent with the complicit cowardice of the pulpit.

We have just been so frightened of the doctrine of eternal judgement and afraid of what society would say to us about such a politically incorrect doctrine in an “I’m OK, you’re OK” generation that we just don’t talk about hell anymore.

The doctrine of eternal punishment is not attacked half so much from the outside of the church as it is from the inside of the church.

The Bible says more about judgement and eternal damnation than it says about heaven.

You cannot come to the Scripture selectively as though it were a cafeteria line and say, “believe I’ll have a little of that, but I don’t care for this over here, and so I’ll leave it out.”

If you’re going to accept the afterlife at all, if you’re going to embrace heaven at all, if you’re going to embrace salvation at all, it all has its meaning against the backdrop of possible judgement, possible hell and possible eternity separated from God.

In August Pope John Paul “clarified” Catholic teaching on hell.

The pope has asserted that hell “is not punishment imposed externally by God, but the condition resulting from attitudes and actions which people adopt in this life.”

The pope did not do away with the doctrine of eternal punishment, but in embarrassment endeavoured to sweep it under the rug and make it as little effective as possible.

He has declared that hell is not a physical place.

Further he taught that rather than being externally imposed on people by God, hell is a state of being that results from free choice.

I respect this Pope as the leader of a great denomination within Christendom.

There are many good things with which any conscientious Christian can credit John Paul as having said, and there are statements which he has made with which I personally concur most heartily.

However, he has erred grievously in his pronouncements on eternal punishment as we shall see by appeal to the Words of Jesus.

Among statements attributed to the Pope during three vivid talks delivered during the last week of July and the first week of August are some which describe hell as a “tragic situation.”

Again, John Paul is quoted as saying, “More than a physical place, hell is the state of those who freely and definitely separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy.”

John Paul also denied that heaven is a place, teaching instead that heaven is “a living and personal relationship of union with the Holy Trinity.”

Honesty compels me to note that he did say in conjunction with his pronouncements on the eternal state, “It is important to always maintain a certain moderation in describing this ‘ultimate realities,’ as any description of them is inadequate.”

So the Pope denies that hell is a physical place.

He teaches that hell is a state.

Can these teachings be supported by appeal to Holy Scripture?

Or are we compelled to await the speculations of the doddering man seated on what Roman Catholics speak of as Peter’s Throne and who is known to our world as John Paul?

I stand in a long and honourable lineage when I contest the pronouncements of the Pope by appeal to the Word of God.

As Christians, and especially as Baptists, our final appeal is ever to the Word of God and to that Word we now resort.

Join me in study of the words of Jesus who spoke with authority on the place we speak of as hell.

As for the Pope’s pronouncements on that eternal place of the dead … well, he has been wrong before.

Hades, Tartarus, Gehenna — Pope John Paul’s notion of hell as “more than a physical place” and “the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God,” as quoted in news reports, misses the mark, as does his belief that hell “is not a punishment imposed externally by God, but the condition resulting from attitudes and actions which people adopt in this life.”

According to the pope, “eternal damnation is not God’s work” but is the work of human beings.

We cannot know what source the Pope has consulted for his information, but we know from his recent statement that he rejects the teaching that hell is a place.

He embraces the popular concept that hell is a condition.

You will have no doubt heard this heresy stated in various ways, the most popular being that you create your own destiny, including hell, by how you live.

Furthermore, the Pope has decided that God does not judge, but man imposes sentence on himself.

The pope’s denial of the traditional Christian understanding of hell is one more step in a progressive rejection of the very real and very horrible picture of hell revealed in the Bible.

The rejection of the doctrine of eternal punishment cannot be founded on a paucity of evidence from the Bible.

Rather the rejection of the teaching concerning eternal judgement is the result of rebellion of the human heart.

Jesus had far more to say concerning hell than He ever said of heaven.

Most of what we know of hell is because of Jesus’ teaching.

It is impossible for an open mind to sit down with an open Bible and read with objectivity, of any kind whatsoever at all, and come to any other conclusion, but what God has revealed in the Bible is a moment of impending doom for those who are non-repentant.

Otherwise, what does it make of the cross of Jesus, the eternal Son of God leaving his glory nailed to a cross in your place and mine?

Throughout the Word of God are found several words which are translated into English by the word *hell*.

Perhaps the word most commonly translated as *hell* into our English tongue is a{~/dh"~/~/.

The word simply refers to the unseen world beyond the realm of human sight.

It is the equivalent of the Hebrew lwaoV].

That word a{~/dh"~/ is the word which Jesus used in our text.

Listen again to the words Jesus spoke.

/The rich man also died and was buried.

In hell, where he was in torment, he looked up/ [*Luke** 16:22b, 23a*].

*Hades*, the unseen realm, clearly presented for the rich man about whom Jesus spoke, a place of torment.

If we accept the teaching of Jesus instead of the speculations of the Pope, we will discover that torment for the lost begins immediately with the transition from this existence to the eternal realm.

If it holds true that for the Apostle Paul /to be away from the body/ is to be /at home with the Lord/ [*2 Corinthians 5:7*], then it must be equally true that for the lost to be away from the body is to enter into their eternal damnation.

Likewise, if for the Christian /to die is gain/ [cf.

*Philippians 1:21*], it must also hold that for the lost to die is loss.

Jesus also employed the term gevenna in reference to the final abode of the lost.

In the Gospel bearing his name, Mark reports a warning Jesus issued.

/If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around his neck.

If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off.

It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out.

And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off.

It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell.

And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out.

It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, where/

/“their worm does not die, /

/and the fire is not quenched.”/

/Everyone will be salted with fire/ [*Mark 9:42-49*].

Gevenna was a valley situated west and south of Jerusalem.

Once a place of idol worship and sacrifice of children to the gods of the pagans surrounding the Jewish peoples, there the refuse of the city was burned.

Wild dogs roamed the area seeking a rotting corpse of a dead animal which they might devour.

The smoke and the stench of burning, rotted garbage must have made a powerful impression on those who first heard Jesus’ words.

The symbol of lostness must surely have weighed powerfully upon His listeners when they heard this awful comparison.

John witnessed an awesome vision related to this frightful spectre of the eternal abode of the damned.

In the Apocalypse he wrote: /I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it.

Earth and sky fled from his presence, and there was no place for them.

And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened.

Another book was opened, which is the book of life.

The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.

The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done.

Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.

The lake of fire is the second death.

If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire/ [*Revelation 20:11-15*].

The lake of fire is that awful place where the Beast and the False Prophet of Revelation are eternally incarcerated.

There the damned are eternally tormented, the /smoke of their torment/ rising /forever and ever/ [cf.

*Revelation 14:9-11*; *19:20*].

This lake of fire – gevenna – allows no rest but instead speaks of eternal torment.