93-61 Surprised by Suffering - A Hell to Be Shunned

In this very personal series preached shortly after the death of his sixteen-year-old son, Mark, Dr. Betters invites the congregation into his family grief journey. Dr. Betters acknowledges the “hell on earth” experienced by his family as he recounts the days before their son’s accident where God seemed to be preparing them for unexpected suffering. He shares specific scriptures God was using to help them get through each day of sorrow, where God promises the “hell on earth” would not last forever but after suffering “a little while” the Lord “himself will restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast”, as recorded in 1 Peter 5:10, Psalm 27. He draws attention to the questions of the Psalmist in Psalm 44 and the promise of Romans 8 that all things will come together for good for those who love Jesus. This series is a precious gift of hope in the midst of wrestling to walk by faith when suffering suddenly shatters our hearts.

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Welcome to In His Grip with Dr. Chuck F. Butters, produced by Mark Inc. Ministries. Each In His Grip message is designed to help you turn your hearts toward Jesus and equip you to walk by faith. Let's join Dr. Butters as he preaches the series Surprise by Suffering, a series Dr. Butters preached shortly after the death of his 16-year-old son Mark.

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Over these past three Sundays, I have been trying to share with you from my heart to your heart. For those of you who may be listening in by radio, or those of you who are new to our church, my family has experienced a tremendous tragedy in the loss of our 16-year-old son three weeks ago in a car accident. And I want to thank all of you publicly, not just here in this congregation, but literally all over the country. We have received so many letters, so many cards, so many telephone calls, meals, flowers, poems, scripture verses, personal stories of personal tragedies. I couldn't possibly begin to thank everyone individually for what you have done in pouring out your love to us over these past three weeks. We know that you grieve with us. We know that you suffer with us, but we also know that you rejoice with us in knowing where our son Mark is. I've got to also say that we have had our share of Job's comforters. We have had some people who have proceeded to tell us exactly why this happened, what sins in our lives needed to be corrected. I even received an unsigned letter this past week, which proceeded to remind me of what we needed to do as a church to make this church survive and what sins in my life needed to be removed. That letter went conveniently where all other letters unsigned go, and that is into the trash can. But we've also had our share of insensitive people. I only share this with you because I believe it's a lesson all of us can learn. That as Christians, the scripture means what it says when we are to mourn with those who mourn. We are to rejoice with those who rejoice. And I think that when we come to writing letters or making phone calls or sending messages, we need to consider the consequences of what we say. But not so carefully that we shy away from the people who are hurting. I only mentioned that just to tell you that there is a dimension of truth to the perspective of Job, where Job talks about the comforters who had the ounces and pounds of advice for him. All I can say to you is this thank you for your prayers. And we're not going to let the very small percentage of people who seem to feel it their calling of God to tell us what sins in our lives were corrected by the death of our son, dissuade us from appreciating what you, the people of God, have done in helping and supporting us. You say, why are you talking about this? Well, because of my topic this morning. I have not tried in any way, shape, or form to prepare over the past three weeks the kinds of messages that you're used to hearing me preach. Frankly, I've not had the energy and I've not had the time to put 40 or 50 hours a week into preparing a message. But what I have tried to do over the past three weeks is to allow you to walk with us as a family through some of these difficult times and to lift out certain principles that I believe we need to hear, that maybe someday will be helpful to you if perchance God would allow you to walk through the same kind of tragedy that we're now walking through. It's interesting that when people talk after somebody dies and they see the pain and the sorrow in the survivor's eyes, the conversation usually turns then to what? To heaven. And regardless of whether or not the person who died was a believer, we seem to want to say to the surviving family, it's all right. Your brother or your sister or your mother or your father or your son or your daughter is now in heaven. We like to somehow gloss over the fact that God created hell. You say, wait a minute, I thought Satan created hell. No, Satan did not create hell. God created hell. And when we talk about salvation, we are talking about being saved from something. Not all people who die go to heaven. There is no universal salvation of all men, regardless of whether or not they believe or trust the gospel of Jesus Christ. There is a heaven to be gained, and there is a hell to be shunned. We do not mourn for our son. Do we miss him more than anybody could possibly imagine? Are we hurting more than you can possibly imagine unless you've walked through this kind of experience? But we do not mourn for him. Not because we have some sort of phony baloney belief that everybody goes to heaven when they die, but because we can remember time after time after time, starting with his conversion to Christ, the days and the months and the years in which he affirmed and reaffirmed not his commitment to the church, although he did that, but his commitment to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. And it is on that basis that he and all like him are saved, not because of what they have done, not because of their good deeds, not because he was a good kid, not because he happened to go to church, in fact, not because of anything that he could have possibly done, but because of faith in what Christ has done on the cross, we now have a hope that one day we will see our son. But not everybody is going to heaven. If our son had rejected Jesus Christ, if our son had listened to the counsel of his mother and father up to a point and then said, no, I don't want to have anything to do with eternal life. No, I do not believe the gospel. No, I do not want to be a Christian. No, I believe there is more than one way to heaven. No, I do not believe that Jesus Christ is the only provision. No, I do not believe the Bible to be the inspired, inerrant, infallible word of God. No, I do not believe that I have to trust Christ as my Savior and Lord. Our Son, right this moment, would spend eternity in hell. And so will you without Christ. A woman said to me recently as she attempted to rationalize her sins. I know I'm going to hell. And I don't care. If only it were possible to open hell up, to dangle her over its horridness, to feel the flaring, blazing, intense heat of its flames, to smell the stench of its vermin, to see the torture of its inhabitants, to hear the roar of that hungry, roaring lion who roams about seeking whom he may devour. I believe she very well might change her mind. Hell is a horrible pit. When you come to Psalm 40, he says, I waited patiently for the Lord. He turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and the mire. He set my feet on a rock. He gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord. Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust, who does not look to the proud, to those who turn aside to many false gods. Or take a few pages back to Psalm 16 and look with me at a psalm that is a messianic psalm that is referencing Jesus Christ. In Psalm 16, verse 9, therefore my heart is glad, and my tongue rejoices, my body also will rest secure. Why? Because you will not abandon me to the grave or the pit, nor will you let your holy ones see decay. That's a messianic prophecy showing that when Jesus dies on the cross, he will not be left there in death. He will not be consigned to the pit of hell, but will be raised from the dead. You see, friends, death and the chamber of death is the enemy of man. And it can be only conquered one way, and that is through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Hell is a horrible pit. In fact, if you go back to that 40th Psalm and look with me carefully at verse 2, it says, He lifted me out of the slimy pit. Underline that word slimy. I believe the King James Version uses the word horrible, but the Greek word is the word noisy. He lifted me out of the noisy pit. The ancient fathers, I believe, caught the significance of what Jesus was doing on the cross. When they wrote in the creed that he descended into hell. You remember when you say that in the Apostles' Creed? He was crucified, dead, and buried. He descended into hell. That is, in Jesus Christ and his death on the cross, he takes on himself our hell. He enters into the chambers of hell itself and bears the penalty for our sins on that cross. In other words, Jesus goes to hell for me, so that I do not have to go to hell one day myself. That's what the fathers understood when they said he descended into hell. What hell? What does the Bible mean when Peter tells us that he went and preached to the imprisoned spirits? What is hell? What is this horrible, slimy, noisy pit into which Christ descended in order to set us free? Athens and Rome were famous for their torture chambers. In the day of Christ, you could walk through Athens and you could walk through parts of Rome, and you would be able to hear something. Because you see, one of the ways in which they punished criminals in those days were to dig long, narrow tubular holes similar to a well. And there would be just a slight opening at the top, kind of a funnel hole that went down maybe 15 or 20 feet. And a little bit of light would be allowed to shine through from the top of that hole. And people who were consigned to death in Athens and in Rome were tossed down into those holes. And for days and days and days, as they literally starved to death, they lived in those horrible, noisy pits. And if you were to walk by these execution fields, as they were called, you would hear the screams of people in torment. You would hear their voices blaspheming and cursing. You would hear their cries of psychological torment and relentless pain. And that word pit and that description of these pits is what the writer has in mind when he talks about the deliverance that we have from the pit. To torture a prisoner, he'd be thrown down into that pit. And as you would pass by these holes in the ground, you would hear the screams of pain of the prisoners in torture who had absolutely no way of escape. That is why Jesus calls hell the pit where there is the weeping and the gnashing of teeth. We don't understand that concept, but when he used that language, everybody recalled the Athens and Rome execution fields. There are many horrible sounds today. I can tell you right now that one of the most horrible sounds for us is the sound of a screaming ambulance late at night. Somebody somewhere is in trouble. There are many horrible and frightening sounds that all of us, even in our dreams, sometimes have. But there can be no more horrible sound than the scream of a tortured soul lost forever in hell. The screams of lost souls as they cry out in torment, a noise that the psalmist says will never cease. Why is it described as a pit of noise? Why do they weep and wail and gnash their teeth? Turn over to Matthew's gospel, chapter 10. I'd like you to look with me at verse 28. Matthew 10 and verse 28. We'll start here with verse 27. Jesus says, What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight. What is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the housetops. And then watch this. Do not be afraid of those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul. Notice you're made up of two parts: body and soul. Men have the ability to kill the body, but men do not have the ability to kill the soul. What does he say? Rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Notice that in hell there is a soul and a body. Say, wait a minute. I thought the bodies don't come out of the graves until the resurrection, the coming of Christ. True. But you see, at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, everyone will be brought before the judgment seat. The Christian will be glorified, his body will be brought out of the grave, and his spirit will be brought from heaven, and the spirit and the body will be brought together, glorified, and brought into the presence of Christ forever and ever. But the same thing is also going to happen to the lost. The exception being their bodies will not be glorified, but their bodies and their spirits will be cast forever into hell. Hell is a place of physical torture. I think the ancient fathers caught this. And that's why when they describe the death of Jesus on the cross, they say he descended into hell. The most horrible means of death ever designed by man was the crucifixion. I don't think it is without God's providence that crucifixion was ordained as the death of Jesus. When you read some of the medical accounts that doctors have written concerning what happens when a person is crucified, it becomes very clear that from 9 o'clock in the morning until 3 o'clock in the afternoon, Jesus literally descended into the physical dimensions of hell itself. But as he was promised in the Psalms, 16 verse 12. 10, God would not leave him there. He would take his hell, our hell, my hell, your hell unto himself. And he would suffer the ignoble death of crucifixion for me and for you who are his called and elect people. But God wouldn't leave him there. He would not leave his soul in that kind of corruption. He would push himself up and down on the nails just to get a breath of air before he was asphyxiated. Relentless pain in his muscles and in his nerves. Criminals were known to spend sometimes up to three and four days on the crosses, suffering and suffering and suffering. But because it was the Passover, Jesus had to be executed quickly. That's why they went and broke the knees of the others who were crucified with him, so that they could no longer push themselves up on the nails to get some air into their lungs, you see. That's how they kept alive by pushing themselves up on the nails. But when they broke the knees, they couldn't do that anymore and would suffocate. You see, they had to get them down from the crosses before the holy day of Passover. But in the case of Jesus, they came and saw that they would not take his life from him, he would freely give it. He was already dead, he had already released his spirit. So rather than breaking his knees, they put a spear into his side. Why? Because the prophets told us in the Old Testament, not a bone of his body will be broken. You see, in order to fulfill every iota of prophecy, Jesus dies on that cross physically and takes my hell and takes your hell so that you don't have to. Hell is a place of the weeping and the gnashing of teeth. It's a place of physical torment. You see, when we talk about pain in the past three weeks, in fact, Thursday night, one of the worst nights I think I can ever remember us having since Mark died. I said to my wife, I said, I feel so alone. I feel so empty. I've tried from this pulpit over the past three weeks to share with you some of my humanness. I hope that doesn't hurt you too badly. Save the cards and the letters, because I'm not going to try to pretend with you. I told you before our mark went home to be with the Lord, that all of us experience periods of questioning and doubt. But that last Thursday night, I felt something that I hope I never have to feel again in my lifetime. Complete and total alienation from God. I felt a darkness and a pull that was scary. And do you know later the next day it occurred to me that that is exactly what Jesus felt on the cross. That is what caused him on the cross to say, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Because there on that cross, while he was bearing the sins of his people, his father turned his back because he would not look on sin. And darkness covered the land from twelve until three. Even the sun refused to shine. And Jesus entered into the very chamber of hell itself, which, in addition to physical torture, is the torture of conscience and the torture of memory and the torture of alienation and separation from God. I thought to myself, if I feel this bad after losing our son, knowing I'm a believer, I can't imagine what hell must be like. When the people who are there know that not just for a few hours, days, weeks, or months, but for all eternity, they will experience that alienation, that helplessness, that pang of conscience, that separation from God, that darkness forever and forever and forever, and there will be no let up. As Christians, I think you all know what it is like to have Satan torment your mind for a short time. How Satan throws his evil at you for a short time. Even if there were no hell, it would be hell enough to have to live with a tormented mind, wouldn't it? Have you ever seen somebody with a tormented mind? Have you ever had a tormented mind? You say, wait a minute, I've battled depression. Well, that's a form of what I'm talking about. There is nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing, that anyone can say to you when you're in depression that's going to make you feel better. They can throw the promises of God out there at you, and you can read the Bible from cover to cover, but when you're in the pit of depression, there is a torment that nobody really understands unless they've walked through it. It's a horrible thing. I think it's sometimes as Christians we're way too judgmental of those who are going through depression. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about something beyond depression. I'm talking about the torment of conscience. I'm talking about living your life with your theme phrase being, what if? What if I had done this? Or what if I had done that? Or if only I had been this, or if only I had been that. That's a tormented mind. And yet, when you read the descriptions of hell, you see that the residents live not only in separation and alienation and darkness from God, but they live with tormented minds. Peter got a little taste of this. Remember when he turned to Jesus after Jesus prophesied his death and said, No, Lord, these things aren't going to happen to you. I'll see to it myself. And Jesus said, Peter, now you know before the cock crows, you will have denied me three times. And what an intriguing passage of Scripture that when the cock finally does crow, and Peter had indeed denied Christ three times, the scripture tells us that Jesus saw him there. I don't know how that happened. Maybe he was in the courtyard, maybe he was being led from one place to the other, but somehow or another, Jesus' eyes met Peter's eyes. And the torment and the pangs of conscience were so intense that Peter went out and wept, and the Bible says bitterly. Judas's torment was far greater. Greater but without remedy. And he went out and committed suicide. Or it's like the preacher whose wife had a lump in her breast. And they let it go at the advice of her doctor. And the preacher let it go too and said, Well, we'll just trust the Lord here, you see. The woman nearly died. If only I had. How many young women, how many young girls have tormented consciences, who say, if only I had those few minutes to live all over again. I remember once leading a man to Christ who days and months later didn't seem to have any joy in his life. And I remember counseling this man and probing a little deeper, and he said, You know, Pastor, I've come to know the Lord, I know my sins are forgiven, but I've got to tell you something. I've had an affair that my wife doesn't know about. I don't know what I'm gonna do with this. I feel like that barrier is between us, and I don't know if I can live this secret. It had happened years before. It was under the blood of Christ, it was forgiven, but the pangs of tormented conscience wouldn't let him go. And he had to risk it all and lay it all on the line and share with his wife the guilt of that affair. It was horrible. But multiply that, not just one affair, but multiply that by every single sin you've ever committed from the time you were born until the time you die, and then you are sent into a Christless hell, tormented in that agony, and able to see as you are there in the presence of all who are ungodly, what could have been had you trusted Christ. Every sin is replayed in its fullness, like a VCR tape that doesn't end, again and again and again and again and again and again. Every opportunity you had to trust Christ, every sermon that you listened to, every book that you read from the scriptures, every tract that was handed to you, every well-meaning Christian who tried to share his or her faith, again and again and again. But it's too late. How terrible to burn in hell in the body, but then to have to that the added torment of an accusing conscience and a disturbed mind that is stripped of any fellowship with God, stripped of any light, stripped of any hope. A disturbed mind is a frightening thing. When I was very, very young in the ministry, in fact, I think I was 22 years old, pastoring my first church. I've told some of you years ago this story, but so many of you are new, I'll tell it to you again. It was my first picture of a disturbed mind. I had never seen a disturbed mind before. I got a call late at night from a young mother of a six-year-old little girl who attended our church, very vibrant Christian woman. And prior to that, prior to that phone call, this woman had asked me to go and visit her husband. She said, You gotta understand, this man is crazy. He's disturbed. Well, you know, when you're 21, 22 years old, you think you can set the world on fire and that you can take the world by the throat and defeat it yourself. And I remember going to that house to visit that man, knocked at the door, saw this big six foot four, maybe 220-pound man, handsome gentleman, and he was a gentleman and treated me as a gentleman. I sat there in his living room that afternoon for two hours and talked with him about some of the deep things of Scripture. Found him to be cordial, found him to be caring, found him to be anything but what his wife had said. I asked him if he wanted to trust Christ as his savior, and he said no. He says, I don't think I want to do that. He says, I'm plenty content with my life the way it is. And I asked him if I could pray with him, and he was cordial and said, Yes, you may, and I prayed with him and I left. Late that night, the telephone rings, and it's this woman on the phone. And she's at a neighbor's house and she's hysterical. She said, He's got my daughter and he won't let her go. Please come, please come. Now, my reaction at that point was, Well, you overreacted the first time, lady. You're talking about this horrible, disturbed mind. I didn't see any horrible, disturbed mind. And so I went up to her house, to the neighbor next door. She met me on the street along with her two neighborhood male friends, big guys. And she said, He's got my daughter in there, he won't let her go. I said, Well, let's go get her. We walked into the house, and he was upstairs and did not know I was downstairs. I said, Well, you go on up there. You get your daughter, and I'll take you over to my house. And as she went up the steps, I heard him. I heard a disturbed mind. Some of the most horrible things, some of the most horrible language, the evil, the vindictiveness, the hatred that was spewing out of him, and yes, even the laughter. While he was spewing out his vermin and his venom, he was laughing with this sadistic, evil, satanic, demonic laugh. And I'm sitting downstairs on the sofa. And I heard her say, give me the baby. He said, You want the baby? You can have the baby. And then he came downstairs for a second. And as he came down the steps, he saw me standing there. And he absolutely snapped. You in on this too? You've got three seconds to get out of here. And he came right up into my face and he said, one, and I started to talk. He said, two, and I talked some more. And before we got the three, I stood up and said, I'm leaving. Give me the baby. You want the baby? I'll give you the baby. His eyes were glossy. He had foam coming down his mouth. He ran up the steps, took the baby out of the six-year-old child, out of her sleep, wrapped her in a blanket, came down the steps, got halfway down the steps where I was at the bottom, maybe ten steps down, and threw her at me. Meanwhile, the wife was out in the street getting the two men who were her neighbors. And when he came down those steps after me, he was throwing punch after punch after punch. I don't know how, but he never hit me. Never hit me, and I had the child in my arms. And as I walked out the door, I saw his wife yelling for the two neighbors to come and help. And they were about three blocks down, and their backs were to us, and they were running as fast as they could run. That is a disturbed mind. He ended up, by the way, in a mental institution. But I thought to myself, this is a tormented, demented man that would actually risk the life of his own child and throw her the way he did. And yet when you open up hell, what you saw in Bob, that was his name, was only a little taste of the tormented minds that are there. Weeping and wailing, horrible, endless torture, as poor lost souls wail because of the pangs of remorse and the sting of a disturbed mind racked with the pains of conscience. Hell is a waterless pit. They're tortured in the flame. I believe that's true because when Jesus was on the cross, one of the most horrible dimensions of crucifixion was the intense suffering caused by dehydration and a desire for water. Horrible, horrible pain. The 22nd Psalm and the 14th verse referencing that says, I am poured out like water, all of my bones are out of joint, my heart is like wax, it is melted in the midst of my bowels. Get the picture? Horrible, relentless, torturous, waterless suffering. Have you ever heard the pathetic cry of somebody begging for water? Many a dying man's last request has been for water. Anxious loved ones will hover over the bed of a sick patient, mopping the lips with a moist cloth or a piece of ice. What a poor lost soul in hell would give for just a cup of water. Go over to Luke's gospel. I want to show you something. Luke's gospel, chapter 16. Luke, chapter 16. We have this picture. Beginning with verse 19. 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. Got the picture? Two people, rich man, poor man. One you expected to die, one you didn't expect to die. 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, what's that next word? He. Notice the identity and personhood. In hell, he. Who's he? The rich man. In hell, he. 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. So much for the annihilationist theory that the Seventh-day Adventists have, and people like them who believe that hell is not eternal but temporal. Notice that in hell he is in torment. And he is conscious, and he is perceptive. In fact, when you really study the prayer of the rich man in hell, remember the movie, the Hollywood movie, The Damned Don't Cry? Yes, they do. Yes, they do. He said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me. He's crying for mercy. He wants to be put out of his misery. I am tormented in this flame. It's physical torture. It's mental torture. Because Abraham says back to him, in your lifetime, you had these opportunities. Read on in the story. In your lifetime, you had the opportunities. You see what I mean about playing back the tape. And they cry out. Notice who he cries out for. Well, then, if you can't come to me, send Lazarus to warn my brothers so that they don't come to this place. Now all of a sudden in hell, he has a burden and an urgency for the lost. They do cry because hell is a pit of consciousness. Turn back to Numbers chapter 16. Remember that story? Where Korah and Dathan and Abram took men of renown and gathered themselves against Moses to challenge his credentials as their appointed leader. Numbers chapter 16 and verse 28, what do we read? He warned the assembly, move back, verse 26, from the tents of these wicked men. Do not touch anything belonging to them, or you'll be swept away because of all their sins. So they moved away from the tents of Korah, Dathan, and Abram. Dathan and Abram had come out and were standing with their wives, children, and little ones at the entrance to their tents. Then Moses said, This is how you will know that the Lord has sent me to do all these things, and that it was not my idea. If these men die a natural death and experience only what usually happens to men, then the Lord has not sent me. But if the Lord brings about something totally new and the earth opens its mouth and swallows them with everything that belongs to them, and they go alive down into the grave, into the pit. Notice how they go into the pit alive, then you will know that these men have treated the Lord with contempt. As soon as he finished saying all this, the ground under them split apart, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them with their households and all Korah's men and all their possessions. They went down alive into the grave with everything they owned. The earth closed over them and they perished and were gone from the community. At their cries, all the Israelites around them fled, saying, The earth is going to swallow us too. Is that what you want? Is that your desire? Ten million years from now, you are going to be alive somewhere, either in heaven or in hell. And the difference is going to be whether or not you trust Christ as your Savior. I read of a child at Florida State University, somehow got swallowed up in a steam leak under a barricade. He was up to his shoulders in steam. Can you imagine the torment he must have had? It wasn't long before he died. And yet Revelation 14, 11 in speaking of hell, says, the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and forever. Hell is a pit of corruption. Well, if I go to hell some self, plenty of company. Yes, you will. Whoremongers and liars and drunkards and murderers, all herded together, but yet alienated and separated from God. There are so many lost sinners today and probably sitting here, who are outwardly moral, outwardly clean, detesting the debauchery around you. Yet you will inhabit the very same hell with the vermin-infested bodies of the rest of the unsaved, because you are trusting in your righteousness and your goodness to save you, and you're just as lost as the devil. Isaiah 38, 18 says, For the grave cannot praise you, death cannot celebrate you, for they that go down into the pit cannot hope for the truth. There's no hope. Anyone who goes to hell chooses to go to hell. Pilate chose it. Felix chose it. Judas chose it. Anyone who goes to hell goes over the whipped, nailed, disjointed, mutilated, blood-drained body of the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Early on in the ministry, in one of my very first funerals, a woman whose husband I had shared the gospel with and rejected it was killed in a car accident. He was drunk. I remember the scene as vividly as I'm looking at you right now of that woman draped over that casket, over that body. Pounding and pounding and pounding the corpse, screaming, and I'll never forget her words. Oh God, give him another chance. If you're a Christian here this morning, this is what you've been saved from. Please don't have this hunky-dory, mushy-gushy, lovey-dovey, touchy-feely view of your salvation. Get a glimpse of hell. Get a glimpse of the cross. Get a glimpse of the suffering and the pain and the mutilation. Catch a vision, not for what only you have been saved to, but what you have been saved from. And if you're here this morning and you don't know Christ, this family can testify to the fact that you're not guaranteed tomorrow. You're not guaranteed that you're going to even walk out of this church. You're not guaranteed that you're going to leave this parking lot. You're not guaranteed that you're going to have a meal this afternoon. God at any moment can take you. And I would not for the life of me, for the life of me, be able to understand how you could face him without Christ. Remember what we're told in the scriptures? We are told that he who spared not the angels, he who spared not the twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, he who spared not his only begotten son, somehow or another is going to spare you. If you're here this morning and you don't know Christ, you need to be on your face before him. You need to be crying out for mercy like you've never cried before. You need to thank God that he took your hell for you and receive and trust Christ as your Savior. Otherwise, you enter eternity without any hope. Bow with me in prayer, please. Would you do that right now? If you're not a Christian or if you're unsure, would you ask Jesus in your own words to come into your life right where you're sitting? Would you confess to him that you're a sinner? Would you say, Lord, I am a sinner and I don't want to go to hell? I believe that you died on the cross for me, and right here and right now, I want to invite Jesus to come into my life to forgive my sins and to give me the hope of eternal life. Would you say that in your own words? You don't have to repeat my words. Say it from your heart to his heart. Ask Jesus right now to come into your life. Thank you, Father, for this time together to look at not just the pleasant subjects of eternal life and heaven and glory, but the unpleasant subjects of eternal damnation, hell, and lostness. And if there's one here today, Lord, who does not know you, speak to them. Speak to them, Lord, may they not leave here until they trust Christ. Speak to every believer who has been bashful about sharing their faith, worried that they're going to turn somebody off. Lord, help us never to have any regrets that we did not share openly and honestly our faith with the people we love. And Lord, may your spirit bring revival to this church and renewal to each Christian. And then from these walls, may we spread out in ways we never dreamed possible, touching the hearts and lives of those around us. May the grace of God, the love of our Lord and our Savior, Jesus the Christ, the very presence, person, and power of his Holy Spirit abide with each of you now, until Christ comes again and forevermore. Amen.

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You have been listening to In His Group featuring the preaching and teaching ministry of Dr. Chuck F. Betters and produced by Mark H. Ministries. Mark H. Ministry exists to offer help and hope to hurt people by pointing them to the promises of God and the comfort of his word. Through In His Group, ask Dr. Bethers, filled with Judges, and help and hope we provide free, eight-fake resources for those walking through suffering, truth, confusion, and feelings of each need. So what's more about Dr. Brothers, export resources for concepts, which is all feeling for us.