Is There Really a Hell? | Marcus Mecum | 7 Hills Church

Amen, Luke chapter 16, verse 19. Last week, we began a thought, we're continuing it this morning, and then we'll wrap up next week. Today, I'm gonna be talking about, is there really a hell? So you showed up on a good Sunday. And then next week, we'll be talking about heaven. Let's look at verse 19. There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day. But there was a certain beggar named Lazarus full of sores who was laid at his gate, desiring to be fed with the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table. Moreover, dogs came and licked his sword. So it was that the beggar died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died and was buried. And being in torment in Hades or hell, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom. It's really just speaking of heaven, place the righteous go. And then he cried and said, Father Abraham have mercy on me, that's the father of our faith and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue for I am tormented in this flame. But Abraham said, son, remember that in your lifetime,

you received your good things and likewise Lazarus evil things, but now he is comforted and you are tormented. And besides all this between us and you, there is a great gulf fixed, a chasm that is fixed, no escape. So that those who want to pass from here to you cannot nor can those from there pass to us. Is there really a hell? We'll walk through that for a few minutes. You know, we as a church believe in the work of salvation. We believe in that you once were lost and now you're saved. We once were blind and now you see. We believe in a person being saved, but when we say that word, what are we talking about? What are you being saved from? Isn't that the real question? I mean, isn't that really the real, what are we talking about someone being saved from? Well, the scripture as far as that answer, the answer to that question would be, we're saved from eternal punishment. That is a conscious existence. I want you to catch that, a conscious life. You are very conscious, you are who you are. And hell is that conscious, everlasting punishment. In the Old Testament, this word is hell is Sheol. In the New Testament, it's Hades many times. Or in the Greek, we get the word Gehenna. In the book of Revelation, it speaks of the lake of fire

where people are punished and tormented forever. Now, when it comes to this subject, I think we all like to comfortably distance ourself from it. I don't like to preach on this subject. I get no enjoyment out of this in some way you thinking that this is fun for me. But I understand that it's an important subject for you to understand and know more about. I want you to understand that Jesus had no problem when it came to talking on this subject. And I want you and I to really ask ourselves, are we living with eternity really in our focus? Remember in the Bible, Jesus shows up and there's the man, the demoniac who's possessed and no one could bind him. And the Gadarenes come out and they see this man sitting there clothed and in his right mind. And they say something surprising. Instead of saying, thank you, Jesus, we're so glad that you showed up. We're so glad that you're here. We're so glad that you brought freedom to this man. They look at Jesus and say to him, leave us alone. You're inconveniencing my lifestyle. You're kind of messing up the things we're doing, the things we got going here. And that's how we are with subjects like this. It's kind of like an inconvenience a little bit. It's like, I have my plans, I have my desires, I have my ideas.

And when it comes to subjects like hell, it's kind of like, leave me alone. Well, the tragedy of this story is Jesus did leave them alone. He did leave them. So be careful what you ask for, because he might just leave you alone. The doctrine of hell, according to recent statistics, 55% of Americans believe in hell. In 2003, that number was 71%. And I listened to a Billy Graham sermon on hell this week, preached in the early 80s, and he mentioned the statistic that 83% of Americans believed in hell, almost a 30% drop since the early 80s. A more staggering number is 0.05% or 0.5% or less than 1% of the people that believe in hell will think they're going there. So there's people that believe it, but surely not them. And one of the reasons for that is in our culture today, we are more and more accepting of sin. We less and less talk about the consequence of sin. In our world, I mean, on every possible level, the types of things that were once just, there's no way that the furthest thing from, it was an obvious sin. Now, I even heard recently that, in my opinion, pedophilia is still something we're outraged against. And for the most part in America, we are,

but there are groups, they're adding on to that, the LGBTQ+, they're adding on a comfortability with pedophilia, that we should be accepting of it because it's just who they are. There's nothing they can do to change. Of course, they're born like that. And the further we go down this road, the more comfortable and accepting of sin goes, the less and less people are likely to, in any way, accept a message like this, that there is a payment that they will pay in full for their sin, and it will be forever. It's a foreign thought. It's so far removed from people's minds. Romans 2 says that you are storing up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath. Think about that. No one gets away with any of it. You're storing up, you're accumulating wrath. In other words, sin has a delayed effect. People say, well, I've sinned and I feel fine. I did this, I feel good. A matter of fact, sometimes we sin and we actually feel better. Like, oh yeah, I did it, now I feel good, now I'm finally set. But sin has a delayed effect. Imagine you've got a hammer, you're building a house, you're hitting the nail and you miss the nail and you hit your thumb.

But you have no nerves that signal to your brain that you've hit the thumb, no pain hits your body, and so you keep on hammering. And then before you know it, you miss again and you hit another finger. And because there's no pain, the more reckless you begin to be because you can't feel the damage that's being done. Now, fast forward five, 10, 15 years, you're sitting there drinking a cup of tea and all of a sudden the pain of that decision, when you hit your thumb with that hammer, all of a sudden hits you. And the full pain of that moment hits you. That's what sin is like. Sin has a delayed effect. And because people don't feel it immediately, they're like walking along the beach spiritually and they slice their foot open on a piece of glass on the beach and they don't feel it, so they bleed out. They don't feel it, so the infection sets in. They don't feel it, so they don't go to the hospital. They don't go get an antibiotic. They don't go to a doctor because they don't feel anything. They think nothing's wrong because it has a delayed effect. The Holy Spirit shows up in our life to bring conviction of sin.

Conviction is to your spirit what pain is to your body. The same way that you're kept alive by the avoidance of pain physically is the same way you're kept alive by the avoidance of sin. Conviction is what helps you avoid the sin or helps you avoid the continuance of the sin. It's not that we don't sin, it's that we feel the sin. You sense it because the Holy Spirit convicts you and you all of a sudden begin to say, oh my gosh, I'm bleeding there. I've got pain there. I need help there. I need someone to bandage it up. I need someone to turn to. I need someone, who do I call? Where do I go? And we turn to the great physician. That's what the Holy Spirit does. He testifies of Jesus, the great physician, and says, that's who you call on. That's who you turn to in that time of your life. And then the great physician begins to heal our hearts and our lives. So sin committed by a person who rejects Jesus Christ, according to the Bible, will be justly punished by God forever in a place called hell. And this is not new. Deuteronomy 32, 22, Moses begins to talk about how a fire is kindled, says God,

and in my anger, it burns in the lowest parts of hell. Jesus' very first sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew chapter five, he includes hell. Matthew 5, 22, he talks about a fiery hell. In the same sermon, verse 29, he talks about sin and how it's better to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. Verse 30, it refers another sin and the same thing. It's better for you to lose one part of your body than the whole body go into hell. Matthew 10, 28, do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul. Our Lord says, but fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. In chapter 11, he talks about hell. In Matthew 18, once again, he talks about hell. In chapter 23, he talks about hell on several occasions. And so when we talk about salvation, what are we saved from? We're talking about being rescued. That's what salvation is. It's you're being rescued, and the question is from what? Well, am I being saved from hopelessness? Well, am I being saved from regret? Am I being saved from disappointment? Am I being saved from anxiety? Am I being saved from some fear? Or I'm being saved from depression? Or I'm being saved from loneliness? No, you're missing it.

You are saved, you are rescued from hell, a lake of fire that is eternal, and a rescue that we talk about, salvation that we're talking about is from a real place called hell. And Jesus spoke about hell more than anybody else in the Bible. As a matter of fact, he spoke more about hell than everybody else in the Bible combined. He defined it as a conscious, eternal punishment. We read in Luke 16, this is a place of torment, a place of thirst, this is a place of agony, this is a place of fire. And besides all this, it says between us and you, there is a great chasm, a great gulf, and it is fixed. And you cannot come over that chasm, you cannot come over that, there is no escape, there is no crossing over, you are there forever and ever. And this is how Jesus describes hell. So the next question would be, was the Son of God wrong about it? Was Jesus wrong about it? And are the deniers of hell correct? Are the critics of hell correct? Well, the scripture says hell is an unquenchable fire in Matthew 3 and verse 12. It reiterates that in Matthew 10, 38. In Revelation 14 and verse nine, it says, if anyone worships the beast and his image or receives the mark on his forehead or hand,

he will drink the wine of wrath that God mixed in full strength in the cup of his anger. He will be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, in the presence of the Lamb, and the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they will have no rest day and night. Second Thessalonians 1, verses eight through nine talks about those who do not obey the gospel. In other words, those who reject the gospel, these will pay the penalty of eternal destruction. First Corinthians five and verse five refers to a place that they will be away from God, separated from God. In Matthew 26, 24, Jesus talking to his apostles at in the upper room at the last supper, as he's giving out the communion meal, what we now celebrate so often. And he's talking to them and he says specifically, talking to Judas, he said, the son of man is to go just as it is written of him, but woe to the man by whom the son of man is betrayed, it would have. been better for that man to have never been born. Why would he say that? He would say that only because the consequence that is about to come to Judas is that severe. So is Jesus wrong about this? Are all the deniers of hell right and Jesus is wrong? Is Jesus somehow ignorant of truth? Is he ignorant of what's real?

Is he living in a make believe place? Or maybe it's not that, maybe it's just that he didn't really know exactly what words to use to say things in a way that we could possibly get it. And so maybe he overreacted in his terminology. Maybe he just overdid it. I mean, he could have just been having a bad day. I mean, the disciples always frustrating him for their lack of faith. The Pharisees always attacking him. I'm guessing he was under some pressure. Maybe just in an emotional moment, he said some things that he wished he could take back, but it's too late, they already wrote them down. Or maybe he was just ignorant or inept. He wasn't wrong, he wasn't ignorant. He didn't speak emotionally. He did not speak out of anger. He did not speak out of frustration. He was not stressed out. He wasn't incapable of saying what he meant. There's something that he's trying to tell us. So first the Bible teaches, let us come and reason together. And God's given us a mind to reason about some of these things. Well, the Bible teaches that hell was created for Satan and the demons, that they will be cast into the lake of fire forever. And the reason it's given

is because they rebelled against God. One third of the holy angels rebelled against God, and that is their punishment. Well, the scripture teaches us in the same way, all unbelievers rebel against God. John chapter eight, unbelievers, speaking to unbelievers, he's talking to them about Satan being their father. And he says, you are of your father, the devil. So unbelievers are in the exact same family as fallen angels. And the same punishment of any angel that rebelled against God, that same punishment is given to all and any in mankind that rebelled against God. It's the same punishment. It's the same nature of punishment. It's the same duration of punishment because it is the same crime. Revelation 20 in verse 10, the devil deceived them, was thrown into the lake of fire, and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are also these two things that are mentioned there are human beings. This is speaking about the antichrist and his cohort, the false prophet, and it says they will also be thrown into the lake of fire to be tormented forever and ever. So the torment is meant for Satan and its demons. That same torment will be for those who committed themselves to follow Satan.

So sinners and fallen angels commit the same crime. They're guilty of the same crime and they receive the same punishment. So the question is, does the punishment fit the crime? I mean, we're thinking rationally, right? Well, first, the lawgiver determines that. The lawgiver is the one that determines the extent of the crime and what is a fitting punishment for that crime. So it has to be considered how can a temporal sin receive an eternal punishment? How can a sin I commit here, can I be punished forever? Isn't that excessive? Isn't that extreme? Well, hell, as it's described, is not corrective justice. In other words, you don't go there to get corrected. We have prison ministries and people that are in prison and they're called correctional facilities and there are correctional officers. And every so often, maybe someone that's in prison or in a correctional facility will go before a parole board. There, they're gonna ask people questions and they're gonna wanna know what? They're gonna wanna know, have you been rehabilitated? And so they have a way of trying to get through to the prisoner to find out whether or not that person is ready or fit to be released back into society.

Hell is not a correctional facility. There is no correction. And this is why. Eternity is time and space without measure. Imagine it like this so you can understand how eternity works. A bird goes and grabs a grain of sand, flies to the furthest planet in the furthest galaxy billions of light years away. Flies back billions of light years, grabs another grain of sand and takes the same trip. Over and over, the bird does this until every grain of sand is empty from every beach in every desert on the planet. Eternity's clock has only begun to tick. So how you enter eternity is how you remain. The temporal, that's where we're at, inside of time and space is given so you have an opportunity to change. When you enter eternity, there is no more change. How you enter it is how you stay. If you enter eternity lost and without God, that's how you remain because there's no God in hell. All that God is is absent from hell. God is love, there's no love in hell. God is life, there's no life in hell. God is light, there's no light in hell. It's everlasting darkness. I was coming to church today and saw the beautiful sunrise

and I'm looking at it and I'm thinking about this part of the message and I'm there looking at all the life everywhere and all the colors and none of that is in hell. The Holy Spirit isn't there. So conviction is not there. The pain that our spirit needs to feel to repent never shows up. So people in hell remain as they enter forever. In hell, they continue to curse God. In hell, they continue to mock God. In hell, they continue to blaspheme God and hate the Lord Jesus Christ. And so the punishment that they deserve never actually catches up to the sin. People don't go to hell and stop sinning. They go to hell a lover of sin and they remain that and they stay a lover of sin forever. You remain as you enter. You continue to blaspheme the Holy Spirit. They continue to reject the Lord Jesus Christ and that sin continues forever. Therefore, the punishment is continued forever. It's not punishment for a temporary sin. The Bible calls it in Mark 3, an eternal sin. You see on earth, sin can be mitigated because there's consequences. On earth, there's things that can keep you and I from sinning. On earth, we say things like, you know,

if I could, I would. If I had the opportunity, if I could get away with it, if nobody would know. But in hell, you can be as wicked as you choose to be because there's no consequences. There's no restraints. Here, there are restraints, but in hell, there are none. Everybody in hell is as evil as they wanna be. In fact, even more so because they're in an environment of no constraint. If there's any satisfaction in hell, it is that. You can be as wicked as you wanna be without restraint because there is no influence of God at all. So it is a rational, it is a reasonable thing to consider. Secondly, it's a theological thing we need to think about. The word theo is God, logical is where we get the word logic, so there's God logic. This is not our logic, this is God logic. God is holy according to the Bible. He is righteous, he is just, and as a result, he must punish sin. Matthew 25 teaches that hell is God's hell where he punishes all those who refuse to give him honor and glory. So God acts in the world. Everywhere you look, the Bible says, the whole earth is full of his glory. The Bible says in Romans, the first couple chapter, that the creation itself declares the glory of God. When you look at the sun, the moon, and the stars,

when you look at creation and the trees and the birds, they all declare his glory. It's glory. But if you reject that, you're like, ah, we're probably in just some simulation or we're probably some computer game out there. We're probably some little green alien came down in a spaceship thousands of years ago and set this whole thing up and now they're behind the scenes pulling the lever. You're denying, oh, it was just a big boom and that's how we got here. You're denying, you're rejecting the glory of God. So the theological one is hell is for all of those who reject God. They act against his mercy. They act against his grace. They act against his holiness. They act against his sovereignty and they act against his glory and they will continue to do it forever. Finally, what does the Bible say? Ecclesiastes nine and verse 10 says, whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might for there is no activity or planning or knowledge or wisdom and shield or hell. So there's no activity, there's no planning, there's no learning, there's no knowledge, no advancement, no improvement, no progress, no correction, no rehabilitation.

Job 10, 21 and 22 describes hell as everlasting darkness. Matthew 8, 12 and Matthew 22, 13 reaffirms everlasting darkness. They also talk about it as a place of everlasting pain. The Bible speaks of hell in very specific words, agony, banishment, brimstone, curse, darkness, deprivation, destruction, distress, fire, gnashing of teeth, guilt, hopelessness, loneliness, pain, suffering, pressure, prison, punishment, ruin, separation, shame, contempt, smoke, sulfur, torment, trouble, trash heap, weeping, all forever. And there are many roads that lead to hell. Every sinner by his own sinful choices determines his road. You can go to hell on the road of pride or you can go as a pedophile. You can go on a road as a self-righteous religious leader, puffed up, or you can go as an Adolf Hitler. There's many roads. Hell is reasonable, it is logical, and it is biblical. And there's only one way to escape hell. One way. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that all that should believe within him should not perish, should not perish, but through him. Through what? Through him, his work on the cross, through him, you have everlasting life.

There is no salvation through any other name than Jesus Christ. 1 Thessalonians 1 and verse 10, Jesus rescues us from the wrath to come. We'll pick back up in Luke chapter 16. We stopped reading at verse 26 when it talks about when you're there, you can't leave, it's fixed. There's a chasm, no one can come from heaven to you and you can't go from there. But in the story, the rich man who's being tormented begins to plead with Abraham. And he begins to say, I beg you, please let me go back to my father's house. I wanna tell my brothers, I've got five of them and I wanna tell them to not come to this place of torment. And Abraham said something that you almost miss. He said, they have Moses and the prophets. They have the scriptures. And he said, no, no, no, Father Abraham, if I could go back, surely they would believe someone who's risen from the dead. And Jesus said, if they will not believe Moses and the prophets, if they will not believe the scriptures, they would not even believe it if someone came back from the dead. And he proved this by his own resurrection. The scriptures is what Jesus is saying, is the only way to persuade people. The scriptures are the only way we can help people avoid hell and be rescued by the power of the Holy Spirit.

And the scriptures are the only way we can help people avoid hell and be rescued The scripture is the most important thing. Reading the scripture, loving the scripture, the preaching of the scripture, surrounding your life like a squirrel who is there on the oak tree. And not only does he make his home in the tree, but he plays on the branches of the tree. And he goes up and he eats the nuts of that tree. His whole world is there. That's what the scripture is. You live in it. It's your home. It sustains you. It feeds you. It protects you. The scripture, it's what motivated Jesus was he didn't want people to go to hell. It motivated him to leave heaven. It motivated him to leave perfection for brokenness, to leave joy for pain, to leave unending worship for our rejection. He did it because he didn't want anyone to go to hell. It motivated his conversations. It motivated his sermons. It motivated everything he did. And he didn't just share the message with the outcasts of society or the lowest of the low or the people that struggle with the really big sins.

He shared it with everyone he met, the rich and the poor, the haves and the have nots, the prostitute, the tax collector, individuals. We talk about it at a dinner table. He would talk about it from a hillside to a crowd. What we know is he didn't want anyone to go to hell so much so that it motivated more than his coming, more than his teaching. It motivated his death on the cross. And it was the cross where he took the hell I deserved. And it was the cross where he sealed up my salvation, where he sealed up the salvation plan to rescue you and I from hell. When I deny hell, I minimize Christ's work on the cross. I lower the stakes of what he redeemed me from. Not just loneliness, not just sadness, not just I'm having a stressed out life, not just that life hasn't gone the way that I think. No, his redemption, his rescue, I'm drowning in my sin and he didn't leave me there. I was on my way to hell as a 16 year old. Jesus went through hell so I never had to live there. 2 Peter 3, nine, he is not willing that any should perish. I love that. He's given you everything you need. He's given you choice, the ability to decide. He's given you and I a clear path. It is not unclear. He is the way, he is the truth and he is the life. He's given us ample warning.

He's given us plenty of time. And most importantly, he gave us his son. Jesus said, I'd rather go to hell for you than live in heaven without you. Hell magnifies the beauty of our salvation, what he saved me from. Not 10 years of correction, not a hundred years, not a thousand years, one billion years from now, all of us will be alive somewhere in heaven or hell. The Bible says he's put eternity in the hearts of every one of us. All of us have it in our heart, but the Bible is pretty clear that there's something competing for your heart. The stuff, this life, the temporary things, the things that moth and rust destroy, all these things, they crowd out eternity and they fill your life with the devil. And the devil is the devil. temporal and your life becomes completely obsessed and consumed pursuing things that don't last. But my job is to push the temporal back. To push the limited view that we have of just the here and now back for just a minute and remind you all of us that all of us will live beyond this life. And my job is to make sure eternity is the biggest part in your heart. That I've got to be living with eternity in mind. Every eye closed, every head bowed at all of our locations. I believe that the Holy Spirit can do what I talked about earlier. The Holy Spirit through the scriptures can convict you of sin. Maybe you felt nothing.

Maybe you've just been doing your thing and you really haven't felt the pain, the sting of your sin. It might be delayed, but there will be a moment you feel the full sting of sin. And the Holy Spirit is our gift. He's the promise of the Father. He's present in the earth and He works in our hearts and He speaks to our hearts in moments like this to say, don't go to hell. The truth rings true and something in the heart says, listen to Him. Something in your heart cries out. He's telling the truth. Prepare for eternity. Don't go into eternity without Jesus Christ. You'd say, pastor, today I felt that conviction of the Holy Spirit. I felt the Holy Spirit begin to work on my heart today and I want to get right with Jesus. I want to get right with God. If that's you on the count of three, I want you to lift your hand up as high as you can. One, two, three, lift your hand as high as you can. You want to get right with God. Thank you. God bless you. Amen. You want to get right with God today. You say, why am I lifting my hand? You're lifting your hand because you're drawing the line in the sand. You're saying, I'm not leaving here without making a statement. God, I want you and I need you and I'm coming to you. I'm turning to you. I feel the pain of my sin and I need you to come and heal and restore and rescue anybody else. I hate to rush this because I know we, it's important for many that are here that you'd say, I'm not really sure I'm ready. Well, the Bible gives us the instructions. You're never ready.

Today is a day. That's why it says that today. It's not when you're ready is when he's ready. It's when he draws you. And there's just an abandoning of all the things that you're hanging on to. And there's just a full embrace. God, whatever you have for me, I'm going to lean into you. Anybody else before we pray, anybody else? You say today, I need to get right with God. I need to get right with God. I want to make sure I'm right with him. Let's all put our hand on our hearts. We'll pray with those who lifted your hand. You say, does a prayer save me? The answer is that's the wrong question. It's the wrong question. The right question is. Do you believe that Jesus Christ is God's only son? He died on a cross for your sin. And he was raised from the dead. Do you believe that? Well, I'm going to ask you a question. Do you believe that? Well, you're saved by that grace that he gave to us on the cross through faith. Through faith, faith. I believe Jesus is God's son. I believe it in my heart. And now I speak it with my mouth. And then I walk it out for the rest of my life. Not perfectly.

But I walk it out with the help of the Holy Spirit. Teaching me how to walk in that grace. Convicting me of sin when I'm outside of it. And pulling me back in to God's best for my life. So I can always give God glory. Let's all say this. Say, Jesus, I believe you died on a cross. and you shed your blood for my sin I believe that Jesus is God's son and that he raised him from the dead I give you my life now I repent I turn from my old life and I surrender to you fill me with the Holy Spirit that I might serve God from this point on in Jesus name we all said amen amen let's give the Lord a real good hand clap