Sermon Tone Analysis

Luke 16:19-31 Hell: Isn't the God of Christianity an angry judge?

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Introduction

* God is a judge.

He is a judge who consigns people to hell.

* *How can you possibly reconcile the concepts of judgement and hell with the idea of a loving God?*

* Jesus taught about it more than all other Biblical authors put together.

* Matthew 25:41 Matthew 25:46 Matthew 5:22 Matthew 18:8-9 Mark 9:3 Mark 9:43 Matthew 10:28 Matthew 25:30 Jude 6-7

* For Jesus hell was a real place, since he said that after judgment day people would experience it in their bodies.

Hell is a place not only of physical but also of spiritual misery.

* Virtually all commentators and theologians believe that the Biblical images of fire and outer darkness are metaphorical.

(Since souls are in hell right now, without bodies, how could the fire be literal, physical fire?)

Even Jonathan Edwards pointed out that the Biblical language for hell was symbolic, but, he added, 'when metaphors are used in Scripture about spiritual things . . .

they fall short of the literal truth."

(from "The Torments of Hell are Exceeding Great" in volume 14 of the Yale edition of Edwards works.)

* It is metaphorical probably for something infinite worse than fire.

The reality will be far worse than the image.

* Christian understanding what the Bible says about hell is crucial for:

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Understanding your own heart

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For living at peace in the world

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For knowing the love of God

!! 1. Understanding what the Bible says about hell is crucial for understanding your heart

* Only parable where a character, the poor man has a proper name, Lazarus

* Other character is nameless, the rich man

* This is done deliberately

* Rich man could not have been an atheist nor a pagan.

* He would have believed in the God of the Bible.

* He would have prayed to the God of the Bible.

* He would have obeyed the lawas of the God of the Bible, but he's in hell without a name.

Why?

Luke 16:25 - "He had his good things, ultimate things that gave him value"

* *Summum bonum* (Latin for *the highest good*) is an expression used in philosophy, particularly in medieval philosophy and in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, to describe the ultimate importance, the singular and most ultimate end which human beings ought to pursue.

The /summum bonum/ is generally thought of as being an end in itself, and at the same time containing all other goods.

In Christian philosophy, the highest good is usually defined as the life of the righteous, the life led in Communion with God and according to God's precepts.

In Hinduism and other Eastern Religions, /Summum bonum/ is cognate with such concepts as Dharma, Tao, Shreyas, Moksha, Liberation, Jeevan Mukti, Self Realization.

* What is your highest good?

What is the thing you live for?

What is the think that is your ultimate value?

What is that, that gives meaning to your life?

What is it that gives you a sense of who you are?  Whatever this is, is the thing that give you an identity?

* Rich man had (past tense) his good things

* Status and wealth was the basis for his identity

* Status and wealth is now gone and now there is no "him" left

* He was a rich man nor nothing

* He now has no identity, he's gone, he's nameless

* When you take away everything, like wealth and status, he has not identity

* The alternative?

Kierkegaard defines sin as "Building your identity on anything but God."

* Traditional definition of sin is breaking God's law

* Kierkegaard agrees with this but wonders if this is a sufficient definition, and the reason he questions it is because of the Pharisees

* Pharisees follow ALL the law yet they are lost because they are their own saviors and lord because they are seeking their own salvation.

They are trying to put God in the position that because they are so good, God has to bless them, and He has to answer their prayers, and He has to give them a good life, and He has to take them to heaven

* Pharisees by obeying the law build their identity not on God but on their moral performance

* They are getting their pride and self-worth out of their morality and the religiousity and it's destroying their character on the inside.

They are filled with pride and self-righteousness and ravening and rigidity and on the outside they are wreaking havoc because the best definition of sin is building your identity on anything besides God.

* Romans 6

* If you take a good thing and make it an ultimate thing; if you look at anything in this life and say, "If I have that then I have importance and value, but if I don't have that then I am nothing."

* Money, career, talents, looks, relationships, parents, children, power, approval, comforts, control, and make any of these fundamental to your significance and security rather than the love and knowledge of God

* You may believe in the God of the Bible, you may obey the laws of God of the Bible, you may pray to the God of the Bible, but your faith, the justification of your life, the roots of your identity, what you really worship is something else.

* This starts in your heart, a spiritual, cosmic fire

* "Fire and Darkness" are vivid ways to describe what happens when we lose the presence of God.

Darkness refers to the isolation, and fire to the disintegration of being separated from God. Away from the favor and face of God, we literally, horrifically, and endlessly fall apart.

* Addiction Steps:

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Disintegration

* As addictions grow, you need more and more of the addictive substance to get less and less of the kick and the high and the satisfaction

* You need more and more of the substance and you will do anything and everything to get it

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Isolation

* You have to lie about things

* You have to always defend yourself

* You are always blaming everyone and everything else for your problems

* Nobody understands you, and everyone is against you

#. Denial

* Inability to increasingly see what really is happening

* Gettting more and more out of touch with reality

* Iron Giant says, "Souls don't die, souls can't die."

* If he's right, and this is what the Bible says then your soul after death goes on forever, and your personal conscienceness goes on forever

* Every single person is addicted, grounding your very identity, taking your very self from something besides God than can never give you the satisfaction that you hope it will give you.

* If we are all addicted in the ultimate sense and our soul is gone forever, what does this mean?

* C.S. Lewis put the two together and said, "Christianity asserts that we are going to go on forever and that must either be true or false.

Now there are a great many things that wouldn't be worth bothering about if I was only going to live eighty years or so, but I had better bother about if I am going to go on living forever.

Perhaps my bad temper or my jealousy are getting worse so gradually that the increase in my lifetime will not be very noticeable but it might be absolute hell in a million years.

In fact, if Christianity is true, hell is precisely the correct technical term for it.

Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others, but you are still distinct from it.

You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it.

But there may come a day when you can no longer.

Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood or to even enjoy it, but just the grumble itself going on and on forever like a machine.

It is not a question of God 'sending us' to hell.

In each of us there is something growing, which will BE Hell unless it is nipped in the bud."  (This is the fire and darkness)

* You watch a log burning in the fire, it is falling apart

* Things in your life (career, relationships, etc.) enslave you, may *disintegrate* you, *isolate* you so that when something gets in the way of them:

* Insted of just being afraid you become paralyzed

* Instead of just being angry you become actively bitter

* Instead of just being wounded and hurt, you become devastated.

You want to throw yourself off a bridge.

You feel worthless.

* Instead of being despondent, you hate yourself forever and ever

* This is the fire!!!!

* Do you see it in yourself?

* Do you see where it is going to take you?

* Denial then happens

* C.S. Lewis says, "The doors of hell are locked from the inside."