Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction:

I think one of the most stressful experiences is taking your car in for repairs.

You go in looking for an oil change and it feels like every time you do that, they basically tell you car is on the verge of exploding and falling apart and killing you.

They use fear as a means of control.

And there is a real feeling of having to sift through what you wanted to get done, what you now know you need to get done and then what the mechanic is probably trying to up-sell you.

We’re skeptical.

And because of all of this there is the very real reality that we’ve missed something which could come back to haunt us later.

This is the doctrine of hell in the church.

We come to church looking for joy and encouragement.

We want to feel good and feel like we’re doing something good.

Yet these pastors always want to talk about hell.

And that’s scary.

We want the love of God and we want the forgiveness of God, but all of that is meaningless if we don’t understand

That we need saving in the first place.

What we need saving from.

Now if you are new today, we don’t talk about the issue of hell like this very often.

You just happen to have joined us on a Sunday where we are finishing out this sermon series.

But it is so important that we actually understand what hell is and that we understand that for those who are in Jesus, it is not scary and we do not need to be afraid.

Some might say, let’s not talk about this.

Let’s only highlight the encouraging parts of the Bible and isn’t Jesus the loving side of God, whereas the God of the Old Testament is all about wrath and judgement.

Nope.

Jesus talked about hell more than any other topic except money and even warned that loving money would get you to end up in hell.

Jesus was loving and the loving thing to do is to warn people of what’s coming if you don’t know Him.

Now Jesus uses a lot of figurative language to describe hell.

Fire is the most common.

But we don’t know if it will be all fire or not.

Gehenna is metaphorical reference to the actual place of punishment by using a term from the world of the living, the Hinnom Valley, where Israelites sacrificed their children in the detestable worship of Molech (just outside the city of Jerusalem).

The reference of Gehenna is to shame, contempt, and pain in the netherworld, not merely to the Jerusalem garbage dump.

Gehenna is used 13 times in the New Testament, usually translated as “hell.”

Whenever Jesus speaks about hell, many times it’s more about regret than it is about torture and punishment.

Phil 2:

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3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.

4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.

5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.

8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Additionally, Hell was created for satan and his demons.

Satan is not hell’s ruler, he will be a prisoner there just as much as those who don’t know Jesus.

And just like heaven as it is now, hell is a spiritual place.

It’s a real place and not just an idea.

And since jesus talked a lot about hell, it follows that His disciples and apostles would all warn people of God’s coming judgement.

Transition and Context:

2 Thessalonians was written to correct some misunderstanding regarding the 2nd coming of Jesus.

This church apparently believed that they had missed it and been left behind.

Like so many Christians in the first 3 centuries of the Church, they faced unbelievable persecution.

And as a way to encourage them, Paul writes this letter to let them know that God has their back and that these people are going to burn for what they have done.

In fact that they are persecuted for the name of Jesus is actually evidence that they are in Jesus and need not worry about being left behind.

And this gives encouragement in 2 ways:

Those who persecute you will pay for what they have done.

It provides the motivation to patiently endure knowing that your pain is not in vain.

Read:

Big Idea: Rejoice in your salvation

You were saved from the wrath of God.

As a follower of Jesus, do not be afraid that God will send you there or that you can somehow lose your salvation.

If you remember last week

Those in Christ can’t lost it.

But it would be good to realize what we have been saved from.

1.

Let God fight for you.

(5-6)

Explanation: The world says that if people are mean to you, you should get even.

Because no one wants to experience pain.

But the Bible flips that script and says “Rejoice in your suffering.”

There are variety of reasons to rejoice in suffering.

It produces character.

It helps you lean more into Jesus.

It creates in you a knowledge and longing for heaven.

But Paul repeatedly connects our earthly suffering to Jesus.

He goes so far as to say suffering is evidence that we are in Jesus.

Now, not just any suffering.

He’s really talking about persecution.

When people persecute you, we need to remember that it’s not us that they are persecuting or rejecting.

They have rejected Jesus.

Now when we face these people, we have a choice to make.

We can resent them and pay them back and fight or we can let God fight for us.

Now like we’ve talked about many times, the Christian life is hard.

And it’s sometimes easy for us feel like a doormat.

We might even think that God is just going to let people off the hook.

You might remember this in the story of Jonah.

God told Jonah to go to Nineveh.

Jonah didn’t want to go to Nineveh.

But do you know why?

He wasn’t afraid of those people.

He wasn’t scared to share his faith.

He actually tells us in:

Jonah 3:10-4:

Believe if or not, Jonah was mad that God didn’t hold the Ninevites accountable for the evil things that they did to the Israelite people.

Jonah wanted them to burn.

Maybe you can relate to this.

And here is the truth that is encouraging.

Every sin will be accounted for.

Every evil thing that anyone has ever done will be accounted.

There is not a single sin that will go unpunished.

No one gets away with anything.

From Hitler and Stalin to that person who cut you off on the highway.

The truth is no one escapes the things that they do.

Because God is just, he does not overlook offenses.

And there are 2 ways that sin is taken care of: