Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: — | Date: September 8, 2019 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Good evening. We have several who are down at the conference this weekend. I’m glad you’re with us. I want to just register my appreciation for the brass that we had this morning and the song service accompanying some of the songs. That was nice. We had a trombone and a trumpet. We can get Gwen to pick up the tuba or the French horn and then we’ll be complete.

All right, we are back to our series of studies looking at the subject of death and after, and we have looked at the makeup of man, that we are two parts. We are body and soul. There’s a material and immaterial part. At death, we have the separation of the two, and it’s what is called the intermediate state. We looked at the intermediate state for the lost, the intermediate state for the redeemed. We looked at then the subject of the resurrection at some length. Then we looked at the subject of the coming judgment.

And now we come to the eternal state or the final state, and that is the state of resurrection. So those who have died, we saw, at the coming of Christ will be raised. And we also saw that those who are in Christ, who are alive at the time of Jesus’ return, will be transformed. That is a kind of, as the scriptures describe it, a kind of resurrection without passing through death. And in that state then, in that final state, we have described for us again the contrasting condition of both the lost and the redeemed.

This evening we’re going to start studying, looking at the subject of the eternal state of the lost, and that is the doctrine of hell. It is not the cheeriest subject in the Bible. It is a very important subject in the Bible, and it is worth our time to look at it in some detail. Now, for the most part in this series, we’ve been handling it topically. That is, we’ll look at the various passages of Scripture that touch on the subject and then try to draw them together. We’ll do that again this evening. We’ll look at just the—we’ll try to get acquainted with a number of passages in the New Testament that speak of hell and what it is like.

And then next time, Lord willing, we’ll look at the subject of the eternality of hell, that is everlasting punishment. And then after that we’ll—well, actually we’ll pick up that subject one more time after that. I’m eager for you to be here for that as we look at the biblical teaching affirming eternal punishment or everlasting, unending punishment. But then after that, what we’ll do is take up the subject of the biblical rationale for eternal punishment. That is, it’s one thing to say the Bible teaches it. It’s another thing to go probe a little deeper and think, “All right, why is everlasting punishment necessary?” And hopefully we will get to that in a couple of weeks. I have a number of passages I want to look through this evening. I’m hoping we can get through them all. Otherwise, what I’ve just described for three weeks will end up being four weeks.

Let’s begin with Matthew chapter 8. We’re looking then at the eternal state of the lost and that is the doctrine of hell. And what I want to do this evening is just survey some of the biblical teaching.

The Teaching Of Jesus On The Subject Of Hell

First of all this evening what we’re going to do is look at the teaching of Jesus on the subject of hell. And again we’re just surveying this and drawing out some of the major emphases that he has regarding hell.

Look at Matthew chapter 8. And in verses 5 and following, we have the healing of the centurion’s son. And, well, I don’t have time to get into it. Look down to—maybe you remember Jesus’ remarks on his faith, that he believes that Jesus can just say the word and the healing will come. I’m debating to get into something. I’m not going to do that. But Jesus remarks on this man’s faith. He says, “This is the greatest kind of faith that I’ve seen. In fact, I’ve not seen this in Israel.” And then in verses—let’s pick it up with the middle of verse 10: “Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel have I seen such faith. I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Now, notice here we have two aspects of the coming punishment that are highlighted for us. First of all, there’s this outer darkness, and then the weeping and gnashing of teeth. The outer darkness evidently is the idea of banishment from the presence of God, excluded from the joys of the kingdom, and then the weeping and gnashing of teeth. Now the weeping, obviously, is the idea of pain and the torment and the suffering of hell. The gnashing of teeth may be that, but I suspect the idea of the gnashing of teeth is something else, and that is the idea of resentment and anger as the lost are in hell. Every time you find this gnashing of teeth metaphor in the scripture, it does indicate this kind of resentment, and I think that’s what’s involved here in this passage as well. But we’ll have to get into that again. We may look at that later when we look at eternal punishment. But here’s the idea then of banishment, aloneness, exclusion from the blessings of the kingdom, and then the other side, punishment with torment such that brings weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Turn over a page to chapter 10. In chapter 10 we have Jesus sending his disciples out on their, as I call it, their maiden voyage. They go out on their own to preach the kingdom. He sends them to the people of Israel, and he sends them to preach the kingdom and call them to repent, and so on. And he says in chapter 10, let’s begin with verse 26: “So have no fear of them, for nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops. And do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul. Rather, fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

Now here, hell is spoken of as a place of destruction: “destroy both body and soul in hell.” And notice here the implication of resurrection as well. We’re talking about the eternal state. It is both body and soul. So it’s speaking of the resurrection state here in a place of punishment, a place of ruin. That’s the word “destroy” there. Ruin, wrecking, wrecking something. Hell is a place of inflicting punishment. And we’ll see that in several of the passages as well.

Chapter 13, moving forward just a little bit. Here we have the parables of the kingdom. And we have the parable of the weeds explained in verses 36 and following. I’m going to assume that you’re familiar with that so we can scoot along quickly. But notice here, let’s pick it up with verse 40: “Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so it will be at the close of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels.” By the way, notice that. It’s a fascinating expression: “His angels.” Who does he think he is? That he has authority to send angels. Remember, I’ve told you many times as you read through the Gospels to ask that question, “Who does Jesus think he is?” Well, here he thinks he is one who has the authority to command angels. He is, after all, the Son of Man and the Son of God.

So anyway, he says here, “The Son of Man will send his angels and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all lawbreakers and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” On the other hand, verse 43, “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” This is obviously an allusion to Daniel chapter 12 verses 2 and 3 that we’ve seen in earlier studies.

Now, if you want to jump down a little bit, you have in verses 47 to 50 the parable of the fishnet that’s thrown out. And notice he uses the same expression in verse 50 that we just read: “throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” That is to say then at the end of time, the time of the harvest, the Son of Man will send his angels. The sinners will be gathered together, and he said, they’ll be forced to endure agony and torment. And then he says, in the flames.

Matthew 18, verses eight and nine. A familiar saying of Jesus, Matthew 18, verses eight and nine: “If your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It’s better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire.”

A few things here in this passage that we see then: it’s described as the “hell of fire” again. Gehenna is the word there. Gehenna was a valley on the outside of Jerusalem. It’s just a Hebrew expression, the Valley of Hinnom. It was a place that was used for sacrifice to false gods. You find some references to that in Kings and Chronicles, offering child sacrifice and so on. It ended up becoming a place not only of burning sacrifice, but eventually a dump where—sort of like the city dump—where there was continuous burning. And by the time of Jesus, then, it becomes something of a euphemism of hell. And that’s the way it is used here.

In verse 8, he contrasts this. He speaks, first of all, of life. “Enter life.” It is better to enter life crippled. Obviously, that’s shorthand for eternal life. It is better to enter eternal life—remember that’s an eschatological concept, it’s something that’s in the end—than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into eternal fire. So there’s the contrast: eternal life on the one hand or eternal fire. The expression “eternal fire” is literally “the fire of the age.” This is how you’d translate it in a wooden kind of way. Remember the biblical outlook, we’ve seen this before, is two ages. There’s this present age, and then there’s the age to come. This present age is marked by evil and suffering and fallenness and all that there is wrapped up in that. And then in the age to come, all that will be fixed. God will come. It’ll be the day of the Lord, and he’ll bring about his saving purposes and so on. There’s this age and the age to come. That’s all there is. Two ages. And so this expression, “life of the age,” is life of forever, or it’s translated very rightly, eternal life. Or in this case now, the fire of the age, eternal fire, fire of that age to come. And the eternality of it is something that is emphasized in other places as well. We have then in here a contrasting expression: eternal life and eternal fire. I think that’s all we better do there.

Let’s move along quickly. Chapter 22. In chapter 22, we have the parable of the wedding feast. Again, you’re familiar with that. Let’s pick it up with verse 11: “But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw that there was a man who had no wedding garment. And he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?’ He was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot and cast him into outer darkness. In that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'” All right. Here again, we have the punishment described as deprivation, banishment, outer darkness, and exclusion from the the joys of the kingdom and it’s also on the other hand described as the inflicting of punishment. Banishment on the one hand and the infliction of punishment on the other.

If you want to just look over the page, chapter 23 and verse 33. In chapter 23 Jesus has been excoriating the Pharisees for their hypocrisy and he winds it up, verse 33: “You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?” Now the interesting thing there is that he doesn’t describe it in terms of pain or punishment—that’s assumed—but he speaks of it as being “sentenced to hell,” the hell of judgment. This is a judicial pronouncement. And so, hell is spoken of here in terms of judicial punishment. Just desserts for what has been done. In other words, the purpose of hell, according to Jesus, is not rehabilitation. And the purpose of hell is not just deterrent. Although the revelation of the doctrine of hell may serve the purpose of deterrent, the purpose of hell itself is not deterrent. The purpose of hell is punishment. The idea is that of justice being satisfied in the punishing of one who deserves to be punished. We’ll see that over and again in some other passages as well. It is a sentence to hell, a judicial sentence that has come upon him.

And then chapter 24. We saw this last week in the parables that Jesus spoke at the end of the Olivet Discourse. And we have, in verses 45 and following, the parable of the two servants: the faithful, wise servant, and then the unfaithful servant, who does not serve the master’s interests. And that then is—the outcome of that is described in verse—let’s pick it up with verse 50: “The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour when he does not know and will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” I think the cutting in pieces is metaphoric. The idea though is that of the infliction of pain and again the idea of punishment, painful torment in punishment is what’s highlighted.

Again, chapter 25, we saw this last time as well, last week, in the parable at the end of here, end of chapter 25, the parable of the sheep and the goats. Well, we have it in the parable of the talents as well, if you’d like to notice at the end of that in verse 30: “Cast that worthless servant into outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” And then verse 41, here dealing with the judgment of the sheep and goats, the goats on the left that we saw last time: “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.'” That’s an important connection we’ll need to keep in mind when we get to the book of Revelation and we see the end of Satan. He says to them, “Depart, you cursed.” The departing idea there is banishment again, away from the presence of the Lord, away from the joys of the kingdom. And it says they are cursed, that is, they’ll bear the wrath, the curse of judgment. And that will be an eternal fire, precisely the eternal fire that was prepared for the devil and his angels.

So notice the characteristics, the characterizations of hell. It’s outer darkness, it’s weeping, it’s eternal fire, it’s eternal punishment, not just eternal fire, but it’s specified further, an eternal punishing that is given in hell, and that goes on, is the contrast again with eternal life. So unending punishment and torment away from the presence of the Lord.

All right, let’s look over a few pages at Mark chapter nine. Mark chapter nine. Again, it’s a metaphor that we’ve seen. Let’s just highlight, well, let’s begin with verse 42: “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin.” Now remember, that’s a metaphor for Jesus’ disciples. He’s not speaking of small children. He’s using small children as an illustration of who his disciples are. “Whoever causes one of these little ones, that is my disciples, who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea. And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go into hell, to the unquenchable fire.”

I can see already I’m not going to be able to finish the apostolic teaching on it, so let’s take a moment here. And I want you to keep your hand here but look back at Isaiah chapter 66. I want you to see the passage that Jesus is leaning on here and alluding to, Isaiah chapter 66. Oh wait, all right, there we are. Not 65. No wonder it didn’t make sense. Okay, we’re dealing here in 65 and 66 of Isaiah’s prophecy with the end of time. The God has come. He has brought his purposes to fruition. There’s the new heaven and new earth is being spoken of here. And in contrast here, he’s speaking of the final judgment of what God does with his enemies and those who have sinned against him. And just notice the expression, verse 24 of chapter 66: “And they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me. For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.”

So it pictures those in the new heaven and new earth looking out at those who have been destroyed by God in eternal punishment, and they’ll be abhorred by it, but they will see the vindication of God’s justice in their punishment. Jesus now, in Mark chapter 9, alludes to that, obviously, with his speaking of the worm that does not die and the unquenchable fire, the fire that is not quenched. “Unquenched,” by the way, is the Greek word asbestos. So now you know one. But the unquenchable fire he’s speaking of is hell, Gehenna again. And this is a fire that does not go out. It’s unquenchable. It is never satisfied. The worm does not die. The fire is not quenched. So the endless duration of punishment is what Jesus is emphasizing here. We won’t take time to turn to it, but you might remember then we’ve already looked at Luke chapter 16 where Jesus speaks of the rich man and Lazarus and the rich man being in torment in the flames and so on.

Summary Of Jesus’ Emphases On Hell

All right. I can’t finish up the section on the apostles without going over time. Let’s draw together what Jesus has been emphasizing about hell in these passages.

One, it’s a place of judgment. It is a place where God inflicts punishment for the satisfaction of justice. Again, the purpose is not rehabilitation, obviously. The purpose is not improvement of life and the purpose is not deterrent. The purpose is simply the satisfaction of justice and the punishment of the sinner.

Number two, hell is always a place at the end of the world after the resurrection, that is Gehenna, is always a place at the end of the world at the resurrection. It is body and soul cast into hell. We have that picked up in other places, most famously in Revelation chapter 20 verses 11 and following. By the way, that was the common interpretation of it among the Jewish rabbis as well. So we have hell described in all of this as a place of judgment. It’s a place to which sinners are sent after the resurrection.

Number three, it is where the body as well as the soul is being punished. So there’ll not only be spiritual, emotional torment and agony, but physical pain, physical torment as well.

Number four, it is a place of conscious torment. It goes on forever, the worm never dies.

And number five, the wicked are cast into Gehenna and will remain there for all eternity. It is endless punishment. That is emphasized in several of these passages and we’ll come back to them later as well.

So according to Jesus, hell is a place of agonizing punishment, a place of dreadful abandonment and exclusion from the joys of the kingdom, and that is unending. Now one observation I think we have to draw from this is one of the criticisms that has been brought up in a contemporary world with regard to the doctrine of hell. You’ll even hear it said this way: “It’s just not Christian. It’s not a Christian idea to speak of people being punished for sin.” And I just want you to note in all of these verses that we’ve looked at, it is our Lord himself that is emphasizing this. This is a sobering, sobering teaching that we must take very seriously. This, of course, tells us the value of Jesus Christ who endured the infinite wrath of God himself and his punishment on the cross in our place.

But I think we should ask the question as well, why did Jesus speak so much about hell? More than anyone in the Bible, Jesus is the one who talked about hell the most. It’s almost as if—we find it in the apostles, and we find it frequently enough to know that they affirmed it very clearly—but it’s almost as if Jesus said up front, “I’ll handle this one myself so there’s no question on it. Let’s be clear.” And then that raises the question, why? Why did Jesus speak so much about hell? And I think we can come up with several kinds of answers with regard to emphasizing the justice of God, the need of punishment, the demand of punishment of sin and all of that.

But I think he had more of an evangelistic intent. To put it in plain language, he preached on hell to scare you, to sober you up and to recognize that he is all-important, and that apart from safety in him, this is the destiny of any who don’t believe. We need to keep that in mind with regard to our loved ones, our work associates, our friends, that our evangelism, our spreading the gospel is all-important to them because this is what they are looking at apart from Christ.

We’ll have to pick that up next time and expand on it further. If you’d like, for your homework assignment, look up the passages that speak of hell in the New Testament. We’ll be looking at those next time. Let’s stand and be dismissed in prayer. Pastor Boyd, would you pray for us, please?

Our Heavenly Father, as we think of this sobering subject, the human heart balks and wonders how such a terrible and awful judgment could ever come. That because we have not really fully measured how great is our offense against the holy and righteous God. And, Father, when we ponder that, we’re reminded how glorious is the redemption that we have in Jesus. Help us, Father, to see the world as perishing without Christ, a man or a woman or a boy or a girl should care about God.