11-06-26 - ‘Let’s get serious: Hell’

Continuing the Let’s Get Serious series, Revd. Tim Gutmann explores the biblical reality of hell and the hope of salvation found in Jesus Christ. Addressing a subject often avoided in modern preaching, he examines key Scriptures and explains why Jesus spoke so frequently about eternal judgment and God’s desire that none should perish.

The message contrasts the kingdom of darkness with the kingdom of light, emphasising God’s love, humanity’s need for redemption, and the assurance believers have through Christ. With references from Genesis to Revelation, Tim highlights the seriousness of eternity while pointing viewers to the grace, forgiveness, and eternal hope available through faith in Jesus. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:20

And actually, you know, Holy Spirit, as we open our mouth, feel it as we're ministering, right? Listen to this. We are gonna cover hell tonight, and it's one of them topics a lot of preachers don't like to cover. It's lovely to talk about heaven, and we will preach about heaven in time. Again, it's glorious, and our eternity and our future is glorious. And that scripture I started with was deliberate because we want you to know that if you are in Christ, none can snatch you out of his hand. So you are in two camps. Either you don't know Jesus, and this preach tonight, it's a warning, it's a very real warning of what just what God saves us from. But if you are in Jesus, this should leave you rejoicing and celebrating in your salvation. So great our salvation from our God who saves us body, soul, and spirit forever. Right, going back, I mean, this is an important teaching in the church. You know, Jesus preached and taught about hell more than uh any other of the writers. He spoke about hell actually more than he spoke about heaven. Jesus taught a lot about hell. Do you know why? God so loved the world, he doesn't want anyone to go there. That's why the heart of the Father is, guys, this place is real, it was made for the devil and his angels. I don't want you going there, and that's why Jesus died on the cross. It's it's to save us, it's to redeem us. Going back to Genesis 3, verse 15, it says, I will put enmity between you and the woman, your offspring. This is him speaking, our God speaking to the serpent and her offspring. He will bruise your head, you will he will bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. Wow. You shall bruise his heel. Right, so that's an amazing that's called the Proto-Evangelion, or if you like the first uh gospel, that's back there in Genesis 3. Number one, just catch there, the serpent is gonna have seeds. You can't sometimes miss that. People miss these kind of things, and this isn't just talking about that incident if you know your Bibles in Genesis 6, where the sons of God were having children with women. No, this is talking about actually specifically, there's a whole class of mankind. In fact, to be blunt, there's two kingdoms, and you're in one of them whether you know it or not. Yeah, there's the kingdom of light or the kingdom of darkness, and if you don't know it, that you're not there's no in between, there's no grey area called the kingdom of Tim or the kingdom of my views and opinions, and and all of this stuff. You're either in the kingdom of light or the kingdom of darkness. In fact, Jesus would say to the Pharisees, he says, Woe to you. This is in Matthew 23, 15, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte convert, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. In another verse, Jesus says, You are of your father, the devil. So there is a a satanic seed, if you like, a satanic kingdom at work. But we as believers, we're in the kingdom of light, we're in the kingdom of our Jesus, our awesome, awesome mighty God. And so there is this idea of two kingdoms, and if you are in the kingdom of light, God has saved you and and he's redeemed you from the kingdom of darkness, and the kingdom of darkness it ends in that place called hell, which we'll look at in a moment. In fact, Romans 1, verses 18 to 19 talks about people that actually, even if you aren't, and we're talking people before the gospel was preached, there is no excuse in a way, because God has made himself known. It says the wrath of God is revealed that all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, by their unrighteousness, who suppress the truth, for what can be known about God is plain, God has shown. And the big idea is this God doesn't hide himself from humanity and hide, and then when you can't find him, he punishes you for it. The big idea is he makes himself plain, like from creation. In fact, Romans 2 talks about that Gentiles, even before the gospel, that some of the there is this moral compass we have, it says that the laws of God were written on their heart, so by that that conscience, by that heart, we know the things that are wrong, and we know the things that are right or light and dark. And so the big idea, the sense is this is that those who are who have righteousness in the heart, those who would choose to humbly come before God and say, you know what, I submit, I need a savior, I need a God, uh, I need you to save me. I want to follow you. Those who are humble themselves before God, they will choose the gospel, they will, they will obey, they will respond, but there are a whole bunch of mankind that says, you know what, I'll be my own God. I don't need you, God. It's that spirit of rebellion, and that goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden, it goes all the way back to Cain, it goes all the way back to the Tower of Babel, but we want to be a people that say, Oh God, we need you. In fact, you know, you could read all the uh uh religious books of all the other religions, and a lot of them would say things like, you know what, be a good person, do your best, and you'll be okay. But our uh the word of God is this we're not good people, and we need a savior, and our God is our savior, and that's good news because he saves us and rescues us and breaks the power of sin, of hell, and of judgment. And so, how do we get to that place where we're so hardened to the things of God, we're so hardened, we're actually we we choose, in a sense, to live in the kingdom of darkness. So I think about Solomon, you know how many wives and concubines Solomon had? He had like 700. This isn't like a moment of weakness or a mistake, this is hundreds of decisions and choices to go against what he knew because God appeared to him and he talked about foreign wives who would lead you astray. But this is hundreds of daily decisions saying, Do you know what? I choose my way. I know what God said, but I want to do it my way. And God didn't stop it at number three, number 30, or number 300, because we do have this free will, and he will not compete with a will that already has chosen to love another way, that always has already chosen idolatry, if you like. It's most you don't wake up and decide to abandon God, it's it's more like hundreds of choices that says, I I value my way above God, I want my things, I want my idol, whatever that is. Your job can be an idol, a loved one. It can be even people make their kids idols or their things, a car. Who wants to have a car as an idol? But grace is this grace is a fact that God has made a way out of that cancer that is sin, out of that wickedness and that trap, trap, and those chains that are the satanic uh uh uh trap uh temptations of sin, which draws us into the kingdom of darkness and that leads us to death. The wages of sin is death. God has made a way out of that, and it's interesting, actually. All ancient cultures, if you study them, they all have stories of dragons or serpents or flying serpents, and it's like this human longing. We know we lost something, we lost something at Eden, and this human longing, and we know about the enemy, the dragon, the serpent, and we know, uh, and there's so many uh themes in ancient civilizations and legacies and myths, and it's all of this longing. But Jesus is the dragon slayer, Jesus is the hero, he is the dragon slayer and the one who brings us back. We have this human recog recollection. I think it was uh C. S. Lewis, he calls earth the shadow lands full of signs that point to Jesus. That's what he said, and it and he's talking about these ancient myths and legends. But actually, our God is the only God. Right, let's look at hell. The words used for hell in the Bible, Shaol, which is the realm of the dead. This is just a a place where we go and sleep, if you like. Uh um, also Gehenna, and Gehenna is one of the terms most often used, and it comes from the word the Hebrew Gehenom or Valley of Hinnom. And the idea is this this was that valley where they sacrificed their children in the fire to Malek. Oh my god. And so it was a horrific place. And after that, when uh the Jewish people had a national revival, they would uh destroy these horrific altars and they would use this place to burn rubbish, constantly fires there. So Gehenna is a term for hell meaning constant fire, and actually, Jesus uses gehenna when he uh says, you know, this is a place where their worm doesn't die and their fire will not quench, quoting Hebrews. Another word for hell is Tartarus, that's only found in Peter, and that's just the place where angels are locked up. That goes from all the way back to Genesis 6, that's too deep to get into now. And one more word is Hades, which is the Greek equivalent of Sheol, the human Sheol, which means realm of the dead, a common grave, if you like, for mankind. So here's the thing with hell: Jesus taught it as a fact, it is a real place. Matthew 25, 41. Jesus said this: He will say to those on his left, Depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. Will you note there that hell was not made for humans? It was made for those rebellious angels and that devil that uh came into this world and led men astray and led men to demonic worship that was not meant for us. Luke 16, 19 to 20, Jesus was sharing a story about a rich man and Lazarus. Now, when he tells a parable, he never uses a name. And there is a lot of evidence that this, what Jesus was telling us about the rich man and Lazarus, there's a lot of evidence that this isn't a parable. Maybe his hearers knew Lazarus. You know, maybe he was a well-known beggar. And what Jesus was showing us, this place, it is real. This rich man, he was in agony, but it was too late because he'd already died. He'd already made that choice. I reject the kingdom of light, I reject God, I will do things my way. He rejects good, and he chose evil. That's a very real warning. And then, of course, in Revelation 20, verse 8, it warns us about the lake of fire, where all whose names are not written in the book of life, all who reject God, all who say no, I will do it my way. Do you know that's the most common song in funerals, by the way? Frank Sinatra's My Way.

SPEAKER_00 10:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

Which is such a rebellious kind of like it does capture that heart of mankind. As for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, the murderer, the sexually immoral sorcerer, idolaters and liars. Faithless is unbelievers as well, by the way. They'll be in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur. Jesus made a way where our eternity is assured. We will be with him forever in heaven. I believe hell is real. The Bible is clear, the scripture is very clear about that. And I believe Jesus died on the cross so that we never need to fear that place. He resurrected from the dead because that shows us death is not the end. Whereof death is your sting. And he saved us forevermore. And he promises eternity with him. This is good news because you can't, none can snatch you from his hand. Do you know that? And when it talks about believers, we will stand before the judgment seat, but we stand before the judgment seat of Christ, which is a judgment for rewards, which I will share another week. But for those who don't know Jesus, for those in the kingdom of darkness, they are assigned to that place called hell. And that's what we don't want for any of our loved ones. We want all of our loved ones to know and hear the gospel of Jesus. This is what brought so much passion to those revivalists of days gone by, like Jonathan Edwards, who preached this powerful sermon, sinners in the hands of the God of Wrath or the angry God. But the good news is this: if you repent, the Hebrew word is shuv. And it just means turn around. That's it. Turn back to God. There's no long list of Jews, things to pay, or disciplines to get there. It's just turn around and say, God, I don't want to do it my way. I want to follow you and obey you. Because his promises, his blessings are eternal. To be in his presence, the new Jerusalem, look at these colours. And somebody said it's like the colours in the breastplate or the colours of heaven. We will live with our Lord in the new heavens and the new earth. That's good news. And we pray for all of our friends and family. We don't want anyone to go to that place that was made for the devil and his angels. Let me just pray with you right now. If you are a prodigal Haley said this, now's the time to come home. Jesus saves your eternity. Jesus rescues you from that place. And it's an eternal rescue. If you've never asked Jesus into your life, you never put your faith in Jesus, you've never received him as your savior, and that redemption, that free gift of salvation, now is the time as well. And it's the time to make him Lord as well, by the way. That means obey and follow and humble yourself and say, God, I need you, I can't save myself. Just say this prayer with me right now. Father, I thank you that you love me so much. That you gave the gift of Jesus. Jesus, I believe you died on the cross for me. And I believe you rose from the dead. I repent of living life my way. I repent of all that sin, that wickedness. I lay it at the cross. I'm turning around now to follow you. Help me to obey you. Thank you, Holy Spirit. Now, if you prayed that prayer tonight, you're coming back to Jesus, or you're giving your heart to Jesus. Let us know in the comments so we can pray for you. But otherwise, I think we should uh worship the Lord and maybe just finish with a time of prayer. What do you think, my love?

SPEAKER_00 13:59

I think that's a great idea. And you know, I um I I heard this story, like it's like a modern parable, and it said that imagine we're all on a train, and the train destination is hell, and none of us can get off. And yet, Jesus comes along and he creates a stop and says, actually, you you can get off here because you're all we're already on that train, but Jesus makes a way. I thought that was really powerful, don't you think, my love?

SPEAKER_01 14:24

Absolutely. Yeah, he makes away with his way. Let's worship the Lord now. I will exhort. Let's worship the Lord with that gratefulness and that thankfulness because He's rescued us from the kingdom of darkness. And the kingdom of darkness, it's a place that will end in hell, it's a place that will end in such wickedness. But God rescues, he calls us out of that into the kingdom of light, and it's a place of glory, and it's a place of his presence and love and restoration. Let's exalt the Lord now.