Heaven Without Hell

William Booth “The chief danger that confronts the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, heaven without hell.”

― William Booth

Luke 16

Let’s talk about Hell a little bit!

Key Bible Verses and Concepts

Matthew 25:46: States that the wicked will go “away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life”.

Mark 9:43: Jesus describes hell as a place with “eternal fire,” where a hand or foot that causes sin is cut off.

2 Thessalonians 1:9: Describes those who “know not God” being punished with “everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord”.

Revelation 14:11: Mentions the “smoke of their torment will rise forever and ever” from the fiery lake of burning sulfur.

Matthew 10:28: Advises not to fear those who can kill the body but not the soul, but to fear God who can destroy both in hell.

Matthew 13:50: Refers to a fiery furnace for those who cause sin and are thrown into it, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Matthew 25:41: Mentions that the “eternal fire” of hell was originally prepared for the devil and his angels.

Mark 9:43,

Jerusalem’s ancient garbage dump—a place called Gehenna—was illustrative of the ceaseless agonies of hell.

• This dump was on the south side of Jerusalem. In Old Testament times, children had been sacrificed to idols there (2 Kings 23:10);
• in Jesus’ day, it was a place burning with constant fires to consume the waste that was thrown there.
  • The material burned there included everything from household trash to animal carcasses to convicted criminals (Jeremiah 7:31–33). Needless to say, the Jews considered Gehenna a cursed place of impurity and uncleanness.

• Jesus uses this place to paint a vivid image of what hell is like. The Jewish people often associated the Valley of Hinnom with spiritual death.

In Mark 9:48, when Jesus says, “Where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched” (ESV), He is quoting from Isaiah 66:24: “They will go out and look on the dead bodies of those who rebelled against me; the worms that eat them will not die, the fire that burns them will not be quenched, and they will be loathsome to all mankind.

• In both texts the word translated as “worm” literally means “grub” or “maggot.” A maggot would have an obvious association with a dump like Gehenna where dead bodies are thrown; however, the maggot Christ speaks of “will not die.”

• Taken at face value, this text is one of the most horrific descriptions of what hell is like. The thought of eternal torment, likened to maggots eating away at a rotting corpse, is undoubtedly ghastly.

• Hell is so awful that Christ said, figuratively speaking, it’s better to cut off the hand that causes you to sin than to end up in hell (Matthew 5:30).

Mark 9:48 does not mean that there are literal worms in hell or that there are worms that live forever; rather, Jesus is teaching the fact of unending suffering in hell—the “worm” never stops causing torment.

Notice that the worm is personal. Both Isaiah 66:24 and Mark 9:48 use the word their to identify the worm’s owner. The sources of torment are attached each to its own host.

• Some Bible scholars believe the “worm” refers to a man’s conscience. Those in hell, being completely cut off from God, exist with a nagging, guilty conscience that, like a persistent worm, gnaws away at its victim with a remorse that can never be mitigated.

• No matter what the word worm refers to, the most important thing to be gained from these words of Christ is that we should do everything in our power to escape the horrors of hell, and there is only one thing to that end—receiving Jesus as the Lord of our lives (John 3:16).

Characteristics of Hell

A place of torment: Described as a place of “torment” where “fire is not quenched”.

Eternal punishment: The punishment in hell is described as everlasting, comparable to the eternal life of the righteous.

Separation from God: It is a place of “everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord”.

Conscious suffering: Some descriptions emphasize a place of conscious misery and agonizing thirst.

Introduction/Question: What is hell? Is there really a hell? What does the Bible say about it?

1. Refers to a place of eternal conscious torment for the wicked.  

• It should come as no surprise that sinners are really not fond of that doctrine.

• What is surprising is the number of professing Christians who are squeamish about the doctrine of hell, who make all kinds of apologies for it if it ever comes up in conversation, who say, you know, I personally can’t see my way to understanding why this is even here, but I want to tell you about God’s love.

• They’re unwilling to preach it, unwilling to use it in their evangelism, unwilling to think about it deeply, unwilling to answer any objections about it.

• They’d rather tuck it into a closet and close the door. Ever since the Enlightenment in the late 17th century, early 18th centuries, there’s, there has been an assault, as I’m sure you’re under, aware of, and we’re seeing all that, the fruit of that coming out today in our country, but there’s been an assault on Christianity in the West. It’s been going, going on for centuries.

Application: You’ve got to inform yourself on what’s happened in our culture, and it’s been going on for centuries. You need to see how what’s going on in our culture has informed the way you think. Some of the assumptions that you make, some of the presuppositions that you hold, are actually not from the Bible, but from the world. Get informed.

II. Modern Radical Reversal of Thought/Belief

Messages about hell were historically most effective in contexts where they were the primary motivator for conversion and moral behavior, particularly during the First and Second Great Awakenings in America.

Their effectiveness has waned over time as theology and cultural attitudes have evolved, but these messages still find resonance within certain faith communities.

For hundreds of years, Enlightenment thinkers have been pursuing humanism. And it’s a secular form of humanism.

The Age of Enlightenment (also the Age of Reason) was a period in the history of Europe and Western civilization[1] during which the Enlightenment,[b] an intellectual[6] and cultural[6] movement, flourished, emerging in the late 17th century[6] in Western Europe[7] and reaching its peak in the 18th century, as its ideas spread more widely across Europe[7] and into the European colonies, particularly in the Americas.[8][9][10]

• Characterized by an emphasis on reason, empirical evidence, and scientific method, the Enlightenment promoted ideals of individual liberty, religious tolerance, progress, and natural rights.

• Its thinkers advocated for constitutional government, the separation of church and state, and the application of rational principles to social and political reform.[11][12][13]

1. They emphasize humanity over the divine. They believe, rejecting the doctrine of sin, they believe in the inherent goodness of humanity, and they reject the doctrine of sin. They reject the doctrine of original sin and even sin in us now.
   
   
   1. They elevate human reason. Enlightenment thinkers elevate human reason.

Application: I’ll just give you an example of that. Every time some mass shooting takes place, every time some horrendous crime is perpetrated, especially on a child, and comes up on the news, the conversation in the public square, it’s never about sin, is it? They recoil from using the word, wicked and evil and unrighteous, abhorrent before God. You don’t talk about any of that.

It’s all about psychology, isn’t it? Some psychologist will come on CNN, explain the shooter’s mental health, wag a chastising finger at society for not seeing the signs earlier, advocating for more treatment, more drugs. We could have handled this. This could have been prevented. This is a preventable outbreak of mental illness. All that stuff. You know it, I know it, we see it all the time.

It’s Herman Bavinck who describes this radical reversal.

He says, “Whereas before the mentally ill were treated as criminals, now criminals are regarded as mentally ill. Before that time, every abnormality was viewed in terms of sin and guilt. Now all ideas of guilt, crime, responsibility, culpability and the like are robbed of their reality. The sense of right and justice, of the violation of law and guilt are seriously weakened to the extent that the norm of all these things is not found in God but shifted to the opinions of human beings.

Application: The doctrine of hell, that is, believing God will punish the guilty with an eternal, conscious torment, is barbaric and abhorrent. We left all that stuff behind in the Middle Ages. This makes God a tyrannical monster, more a devil than a God, delighting in tormenting those who don’t measure up to his supposed standards.

Will God really glorify himself in the screams and the moans and the groans of tormented sinners for all of eternity?

Even backing up, how could a good and loving God create millions and billions of souls, knowing they will not trust in Jesus Christ and knowing they will always have their sins and knowing they’ll spend eternity in hell if he was powerful enough to avoid that?

Open Theism = And some of that right there is one of the difficulties that informs the false doctrine of open theism, says, God is loving, and he’s kind and he creates all these souls, but he really doesn’t know the outcome.

God is in process like you and I are. He’s learning along with all of us. He’s waiting to see what happens, too. But he’s got a, he’s got standards to uphold, got justice to

Application: Jesus couldn’t be more serious about the doctrine of hell.

1. And we need to pick up on that sobriety and bring this to people that we love.
   
   
2. We need to absorb it for ourselves so we live in a totally different way than we’ve lived.

• And then we need to bring this truth to people that we love and care for and we’re concerned about because they’re going to die if they don’t repent, and they’re going to go here.

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Transition: But let’s go back to Luke 16 and see what is happening in the context of the parable.

1. The Pharisaic Problem

The Pharisees were an influential Jewish religious-political party or movement during the Second Temple period, roughly spanning from the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century CE. Their name is believed to come from the Aramaic Pərīšā, meaning “separated,” possibly referring to their separation from Gentiles, ritual impurity, and irreligious Jews.

The Pharisees’ emphasis on strict adherence to the law and religious practices laid the foundation for modern Rabbinic Judaism.

The problem with the pharisees partly was that Romans 3:20.

The statement “no flesh will be justified by the works of the law” is a direct quote from the Bible, specifically from Galatians 2:16 and Romans 3:20, asserting that performing religious duties and following God’s commands cannot make a person righteous in God’s sight. Instead, a person is declared righteous through faith in Jesus Christ, as the law’s purpose is to reveal human sin, not to provide salvation.

These Pharisees were cutting themselves off from Jesus who was the only hope of salvation.

Application: Jesus is the only way to escape the horrors of hell that are described in this parable, and yet they were scoffing at him.

• So to punctuate his teaching to those who justified their love of money before man, according to verse 15, to those who cared more about being approved and admired among men but who disregarded God, and who softened the demands of his Word and his law, who distorted his Word and interpreted in such a way as to justify themselves before men, Jesus delivers a parable to illustrate what he’s been teaching, verse 15, that what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.

Sobering, isn’t it?

• The rich man suffers in torment.
• There’s no hope for relief.
• Every avenue of his escape is cut off.
• There are no visitation hours in hell for him.
• There’s no hope to bridge the chasm between separating him from paradise, between him and the land of the living, or paradise and the land of the living. There is no hope of bridging that gap.

Too Late! His mind had to go back to what Jesus taught in verse 9, with everlasting regret.

“‘And I tell you,’ Jesus said, ‘make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth so that when it fails, they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.’

”That’s what’s being pictured here.

• Too late for that, for him. Too late.
• No opportunity now to make eternal friends with his wealth. He’s blown it.
• He has squandered it. He has spent it all, and it’s profited him nothing.
• His wealth is gone, along with all his friends, along with all his party companions, gone along with all comfort and pleasure and ease.
• And that’s gone along with all the accolades and the affirmations of men. That’s gone.
  
  
  • The only voice he hears now is his conscience. His only companion now is torment.
  • His eternal regret, his only companion, is an accurate and active conscience that reminds him continually of what Jesus said and then accuses his unregenerate heart, which will never let him repent. Not ever. He is hopelessly lost.

III. We are without Excuse – Warning Established

1. Understand, Jesus, he has seen in his preincarnate glory, he has seen the lake of fire prepared for the devil and his angels. He’s seen this.

• He knows the truth about heaven and hell, and he’s come from God to us, to man, to preach the truth, to tell us this is what’s next.

• But, beloved, if you’ve grown up in the evangelicalism I have, you haven’t heard this very much

Conclusion: Hebrews 9:27