What Jesus REALLY Said About Hell | Investigating Jesus | Pastor Josh Howerton

Hey guys, thanks for checking out this Bible teaching every week really some podcasts that corresponds to the sermon. It's like a little bit of a deeper dive where we hit some things that didn't make it into the sermon, some theological concepts. We talk about things that are going on in our culture and how to think about them from a biblical perspective. We call that podcast Live Free. An episode releases every Monday that corresponds to the sermon. If you would like to check out Live Free, just go to the Lake Point YouTube channel and look for the podcast tab there. We'll see you at Live Free. Now enjoy this Bible teaching. All right, ma'am. Okay. At all of our campuses, can we begin like this? Would you guys repeat after me in a loud enough way for the people around you to hear it? Would you please say after me, I would rather? My pastor, tell me what the Bible says. Then what I wish it said. You guys promise? Okay, here we go. God's Bible is head over to Luke chapter 16. Luke 16 is going to be today and man, we're going to get right at it. This is very frankly, this is one of the heaviest messages I've ever preached. We're in a series. If you're new with us, called Investigating Jesus. If you go back for you, Bible nerds, to the beginning of the book of Luke, the book of Luke and Luke one one, it's written by a doctor named Luke. He was a medically trained physician that followed both, he followed primarily the apostle Paul around and was radically converted. After Luke's radical conversion, he had a dude that was his, we call him one more is at Lake Point. It was his one more. It was a guy that was close to Luke, but far from God, a guy named Theophilus. If you go check out for you Bible nerds, Luke one one, you're going to see its address, both Luke and acts. It's like a two part compendium. It's like a infinity war and end game is what you got right there. And Luke addresses both of them to a lost friend of his named Theophilus. And what he does is Luke says that he carefully investigated all these things about Jesus. Now again, for you Bible nerds, what's really interesting is that word that name Theophilus was a common Roman name. Theo means God, philus comes from the Roman or the Greek word that means friend. So what Theophilus meant, he was a lost dude, but his name literally meant friend of God. And what Luke does in the Gospel of Luke is he goes, Hey man, you want to be a friend of God? I'd love to tell you who he is. And so what he does, let me say that to you. You want to be a friend of God? I would like to tell you who he is. Okay. Now what Luke does in this, the book is he carefully investigates many of the most controversial, many of the most difficult things to receive about Jesus of any of the gospels. And in this series, because we this year at Lake Point, everything is hanging off this one sentence that we're preaching this year. I am a disciple of Jesus Christ. We are not in the crowd business. We are in the disciple business. So what we're doing is we are carefully investigating Jesus so that we can follow him as a disciple. And today we're asking the question in this series, what did Jesus say about hell and the afterlife? Now heads up, you need to know this and then I'm going to get right at it. Now I'm going to do some yelling today. There's an unwritten rule among pastors and churches that if you want your church to grow and you want people to like being there and you know, you want to be all the Instagram likes and you want to go viral, here's what you got to do man. There's three things you never talk about. You never talk about politics. You never talk about money and you never talk about hell. Okay. I have great news. I am going to avoid two out of the three today. Okay. And then we are going to, I don't know which thing you're cheering for. Okay. And then we're going to get right at it. Now, anytime I talk about this, I just need you to know it makes people say weird things. The last time I talked about hell at Lake Point, this is actually a true story, true quote, right in that lobby. God walked right up to me after my first sermon and said, thanks pastor. I didn't know what hell was like until I heard you preach today, which reminds me of this actual real church sign somebody sent me years ago. What's hell like? Come here, I'll preach you. There it is. Okay. Now I'm going to try not to do that. Many of you who are like in my generation and up, you may remember an era in American church history when people talked about hell a lot. I mean a lot and they would turn it into at least a two syllable word. Hail. Hail. They really didn't want you to go to a hail. Right. And I think my mom's actually in this service. Okay. If you are, hey, mom, I wasn't allowed to say hell growing up. We weren't allowed to say the word. So we said, we said, H E double. Okay. You had the same mom's idea. I get it. And then we would do this thing in my elementary school class. I'm about to date myself, 80s, baby, but the 90s made me, we would take a calculator and turn it upside down. Yeah, you know. All the Gen Z like Google calculator when you get home. Okay. And we would type 7734 and turn it upside down. You remember that? Now there were other things you could type and turn it upside down. But that's a different sermon. And we would do all that. And then, man, I remember growing up, I was in second grade, very distinct memory. Second grade. I had a very, a mean Sunday school teacher in the 80s. She was one of those hail, you know, two, two syllables, hail, hail. And whenever you started acting up, we were just being second grade boys who started acting up. She'd start to, you don't want to go, you guys going to go, you're going to go to hail. You want to go, you want to go to, you want to go to, she talked about hell like she was born and raised there. She was like, I mean, you want to go to heaven, don't you? Like, not if you're going to be there, you know, that kind of thing. No. In all seriousness, there was an era probably maybe in my grandfather's generation, when the church may have talked maybe, maybe too much about hell, maybe, I don't know. But just to be really honest, right now, the church in America, in America, we don't talk about it enough. And this is simply something that Jesus Christ taught in that book says is true. And so it's my job to tell you the truth. And it's your job to make a decision. And you're going to have both of those chances today. Okay. Now let me do this. Okay. All right. I say, awesome, man. I'm doing this for you right over there. Now let me get right at it. What you need to know, especially if you're not a Christian yet, you're going to have a chance at the end of this message. More than maybe anything else that the Bible teaches, this is what Satan works in overtime to keep people from believing true things about hell. I'll have you notice this. If you go back to the book of Genesis, the very first lie Satan never tells people is that judgment isn't real. Remember what he said? You will not surely die. And what he has done ever since is to try to get people not to believe that eternal death is facing them and is an actual possibility. He does this for three reasons. And you need to know he's doing this in your life, in your family, in this culture for all three of these reasons. The reason he lies about hell more than anything else is so that non-Christian people can reject Jesus without any fear whatsoever. He does it number two, so that believers will avoid sharing Christ with no urgency whatsoever. And he does it number three, so that God will get less glory in your life, because as you will see in this sermon, it is only those who are aware of God's wrath that end up amazed by God's mercy. If you want worship to get pulled out of your heart, you got to deeply understand what you were saved from. And until you understand what you're saved from, you'll never understand the penalty that Jesus paid for you and the eternity that is secured for you, so that worship will come out of you. Okay, so what I'm going to do really quick is just I want to, I'm going to rapid fire these, pull the mask off the primary lies in our culture, particularly in my generation down around hell. Here are very briefly six views that people in our culture have about hell. Number one is the view that people typically call naturalism. Naturalism. This is what naturalism is, is that there is nothing except nature. You do not have a soul, nobody has a soul, there is no heaven, there is no hell. You are simply atoms colliding with each other. And typically where you hear this is when you go to, it's like junior college, you walk in there and it's people educated way past their level of intelligence with more degrees than Fahrenheit. And what they're trying to convince you is that think about how absurd this is, that everything and everyone came from no one and nothing. Okay, so what they believe is you do not have a soul. When you die, you simply cease to exist. Yes, everybody has moral impulses, but those are actually just an illusion. You may have moral impulses, but there will be no moral judgment. And in the end, it will not matter if you lived your life like Jeffrey Epstein or like Jesus Christ, because there is no judgment coming. That's naturalism. It is a lie. Number two, the other one is universalism. Another view is universalism. This is the view that in the end, everyone or almost everyone, there are gradations in the views of universalism goes to heaven. Essentially, hell will be empty. All religions are true. All religions are equal past that end up before God. And you need to know that universalism is a lie and it is not true. In fact, Jesus Christ died because he said differently. Jesus said, I'm coming back to this, I'm going to yell a whole lot when I say this is going to be awesome. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. Okay. So as you will see in a minute, Jesus, now what Christians do, sometimes I'll say this, is we act like Christians, but we talk like universalists. So we will sometimes say, well-meaning, but lying and untrue things about somebody that dies and we'll say something like, oh, it's okay, they're in a better place. Again, my job is to tell you the truth. Your job is to make a decision because very frankly, not everyone who dies does go to a better place. They may be in a far worse place. And for Christians, this life is the closest you will ever get to hell, but for non-Christians, this life is the closest you will ever get to heaven. So number two, universalism, view number three is reincarnationism. I won't spend much here. There's not a ton of this in Texas. This is the idea that there is multiple successive lives that you die and it's kind of a big deal in my generation and down right now gaining popularity. You die and return, die and return, die and return in order to pay off your karmic debt. So essentially, this is the view that this life is hell. Not only is this not true and it is a lie, as Jesus says in a second, it's not logical because what reincarnationism teaches is that basically there's a fixed number of souls and that as people kind of purify themselves in their little cycles, then they go to whatever their version of heaven is or nirvana or oneness with the universe. Well, that doesn't make sense because the number of people on earth is increasing, not decreasing. Reincarnationism is a lie and it is not true. Number four, this is gaining popularity among Christians in my generation and down. If that's you, I need you to pay attention. It's a theological view called annihilationism. It comes from obviously the word annihilation. And this is the view that when people don't know Jesus and they die, they either cease to exist or they suffer, but just for a little while in hell and then they eventually cease to exist, eventually they're destroyed. Now, where this comes from in my generation and down is, it's usually people who like out of well-meaning by naive ways, they're trying to take the edges off the Bible, take the edges off of the things Jesus taught in order to make him more palatable to the world around them. But listen to me, God does not need a PR firm to clean up his image. He's God. He's God. He doesn't need a PR firm. Okay. Let God be true and every man a liar. In fact, what this is, is it's the satanic reverse doctrine of justification. Guys, listen to me, God does not need to be justified before man. Man needs to be justified before God who will judge the living and the dead. So this is not, this is a lie. Annihilationism is a lie. It is not true. Now again, just stick with me. This next one is going to be hard for some of you. Just stick with me. We want to ask what does the word say? The fifth wrong view is what I'm just going to call Catholicism. I'm going to call it that is that Catholicism. And this is the view. It's a modified form. It's not necessarily about hell. It's just, it's the doctrine of purgatory. And this is the concept that people can die that are believers and then they'll suffer for a while. And the reason they suffer for a little while, according to the Catholic doctrine of purgatory that was, I think, instantiated around the year 1055, that the reason they're suffering for a little while is to purify the parts of them that were not purified while they were on earth so that they can finish the work of their salvation. And ultimately, after suffering for a little while in sort of like hell, light, in purgatory, they will ultimately end up in heaven. This doctrine is not true. It is nowhere to be found, even alluded to in a single verse in the Bible. This is exactly the type of thing that Jesus warned against when he said, you worship me in vain, teaching us doctrines, the commands of men. This is what he was talking about. And the greatest news that we celebrate, and we're going to blow the roof off this in two weeks, the greatest news that we celebrate is that when Jesus hung on a cross, his last word was a Greek word, tetelestide. That means it is finished. Jesus did not hang on a cross and cry out, it is almost finished. He cried out, it is finished. And when he did that, that meant that the penalty for your sin was fully paid, the debt was fully paid, your sentence had been fully served. He completed all the work for you so that now there's no wrath for you, only love, in the arms of the Father. That's the greatest news ever. So we do not believe that it is almost finished. Now the sixth view that we will be talking about for the next few minutes, I'm just going to call Jesus-ism. Because the question is not, what did the church you grew up in say about this? The question is not, what did your mom and dad say? The question is not, what did your junior college gender studies professor say about? The question is, what did Jesus Christ say about hell? What does this book say? Because this is the only thing that matters. Okay? So the question is, what did Jesus say? Now, I'm going to read you in a second straight from Luke 16 about this. I just want to get this out of the way. What some people will do is they'll say, oh, Josh, I want to believe, or I believe in a, I don't believe in a God of wrath that talks about hell. I believe in a God like Jesus who talks about love. My friend, you are deceived and that's really stupid. The reason that's a dumb thing to say is just when we open our Bibles, what you're going to find is that, number one, Jesus talks about hell punishment or judgment two times more than any other teacher in the entire Bible. Jesus speaks about this more than them. Roughly half of Jesus' parables are about hell punishment or judgment of some sort or kind. And roughly 13% of Jesus' teaching is about hell. So I just want to, none of this sermon is going to make sense until you under, you need to de-program the wrong thoughts you have about God and you need to reprogram God's thoughts about God. Jesus, very frankly, Jesus is not Mr. Rogers who ended up getting crucified for being really nice. Jesus is not your homeboy. The Bible says that Jesus is both a lion and a lamb. The first time he came, humble as a lamb riding on the cold to the donkey to pay the penalty for your sins so that no one would have to go to hell. And then the second time he comes, he will not come as a lamb, he will come as a lion. He will come in the Book of Revelation, the Bible says. He will come on a war horse with his robe dipped in blood, big tattoo on his thigh that says, King of kings, Lord of lords, fire in his eyes, sword coming out of his mouth. And I will quote the Book of Revelation where it says, he will tread the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God against everyone who has persisted in rebellion against him. That's the Bible. That's the Bible. So we got to go, man, what did Jesus say about this stuff? Okay, so let me read it and then let's just, here we go, man. This is Luke 16. Jesus tells this parable. There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. And his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus. This is verse 20. You've got your Bible in your lab covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man's table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores. Now the time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham's side. Some of your Bibles may say Abraham's bosom. I don't have time to talk about this. Please listen to the podcast later when we deep dive what it is. Jesus, this is actually theologically significant the language Jesus uses here. I don't have time. We'll go to it later. The angels carried him to Abraham's side. Some of your Bibles say Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died and was buried. Verse 23, in Hades where he was, and you tell me what that word says, where he was in... Poor man. It's what Jesus Christ said. He looked up and he saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. So he called him, Father Abraham, have pity on me. Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and come cool my tongue because I am in what I am in in this fire. But Abraham replied, Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things. But now he is comforted here and you are in, what's that word, you are in verse 26. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been said in place. So that those who want to go from here to you can't, nor can anyone cross over from there to us. And he answered, Then I beg you, Father, send Lazarus to my family for I have five brothers. Let him warn them so that they will not also come to this place of torment. And Abraham replied, they have Moses and the prophets. Let them listen to them. No, Father Abraham, he said, but if someone goes from the dead to them, they will repent. And he said to him, if they don't listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be convinced, even if someone rises from the dead. And that's exactly what Jesus was going to do in a few weeks. And they did not believe and they died in their unbelief and they went to hell after hearing this parable. Now let me explain this and then let me just make a few applications. Now I answer two questions and then we're going to be done. My job to tell the truth, your job to make a decision. When it talks about this rich man here, it talks about this guy wearing two things, purple and fine linen. That's a big deal because back then people couldn't just print this. It was like, it's called Tyrion purple. If wherever over there, you're going to see this whole thing together. It's back then, you could only get this purple dye from this little place in Tyre, where they would crunch these little snails for a specific type of dye. And then you had to import it hundreds of miles for this guy to wear it. So essentially what it's going on is going, hey man, this dude was like, this guy was a baller. So it's like Gucci, Balenciaga select. When he was hunting, it was all Sitka, like 4% of you get that, but you get what I'm talking about. And so he was, he was just, and what everyone thought in this culture, by the way, if you notice, later in the parable, he talks, he calls Abraham father, Abraham. He was a religious Jewish man. And what everybody thought is that man, because life has gone well for him and he is rich, that's obviously a sign of the blessing of God. And so when he died, there was a big religious, I'm sure, funeral with a big headstone, very expensive. And everyone thought, man, what a blessed man. I'm sure he went to heaven and he didn't. He was not blessed of God. He was cursed of God. God and he went to hell. Then on the other hand, there was Lazarus. The name Lazarus, it literally means God has helped or God comforts. And everyone thought while Lazarus was alive, because he suffered and he was a beggar. When it talks about, man, I hope I can at least get the crumbs from the rich man's table. What rich people would sometimes do is they would take, like, spongy pieces of bread, wash their dirty hands and feet with it, and those crumbs would fall off. And he was going, man, could I at least get your hand wash towel crumbs for me to eat? And everyone saw Lazarus's life and they thought, man, life has gone poorly for him. He is surely cursed of God, but Lazarus died and then he was not cursed of God. He was blessed of God. So rich man in hell, Lazarus in heaven. Now, when Jesus in this parable, he uses the word Hades. That is not the word that Jesus most frequently uses about hell in the Bible. 12 times in the Bible, 11 of them are Jesus, 11 out of the 12. The Greek word Jesus uses is the word Gehenna. Gehenna. When Jesus uses this word, he's referring to like an actual physical literal place. I want you to see it right here. If we ever go to Jerusalem together. It's on the southwest corner of the city of Jerusalem. So Jerusalem's over here. And you'll see up here at the top where it says Hinnom Valley. And then you see it again right here. Hinnom Valley. There's the Mount of Olives Jerusalem over here. Temple used to be over there. Hinnom Valley. This is what eventually came to be known as Gehenna. That's a little conjugation of Hinnom Valley. Now, here's what this is. In the Old Testament, there was a wicked king named Ahaz. During Ahaz this time, he allowed the worship of demonic false gods to promulgate within Israel. And they began doing something unthinkable to most people until you realize what we are doing in our culture. They were taking newborn infants and burning them alive in worship to Moloch and Mass. And we go, oh my gosh, how terrible. We do that in our culture. We just call it abortion. This is what they were doing is they were literally sacrificing innocent infants on the altar of this demonic false God. And 75 years later, there was a righteous king named Josiah who came. And when Josiah came and made reforms in Israel, he cast down all of the altars to Moloch. And then he, we don't know what he did actually. The Bible's vague. It says he defiled this valley. All this was happening in the Valley of Hinnom. He defiled this valley. We don't know what he did. Some people think that he put the bones of carcasses there, something to make it ceremonially unclean. But he defiled it. And he married it ceremonially unclean. So that, show this next picture. What he did was to this day, the Valley of Hinnom back then from Josiah became known as a place that was cursed of God. Nothing holy and nothing good could ever be there. To this day, thousands of years later, everywhere in Jerusalem is heavily populated. No one will build a house in the Valley of Hinnom to this day. Because to this day, that's right here, that is viewed as a place that is cursed of God, separated from anything good that God has. It eventually became, according to some historians, a garbage dump where they would dump the unclean carcasses of dead animals, the bodies of executed criminals. They would take, think about this, they would take the sewage from the city of Jerusalem, dump it in the Valley of Hinnom. And in order to keep all of these diseases from spreading, there were these fires that were cultivated in this valley outside of the city that burned day and night as this unclean refuse was being consumed. And 11 times Jesus says, do you know what hell is like? It's like that. This is Jesus Christ. This is what he said. He says, hell is like that. Now, let me, let me, I'm going to yell for a second. So this is what this passage is saying. Okay, let's zoom all this out. Number one, Jesus is saying is that he's saying, hell exists. The atheists are wrong. It's a lie promulgated by the devil himself to get you to believe that there is no urgency to trust Christ. There will be no judgment. There is no one you'll stand before. The atheists are wrong and it's a lie. Number two, notice in this passage, this man is conscious in his torment. He has experienced, could somebody just dip their finger in water and give me one drop. He's conscious in his torment. The annihilationists are wrong. You are not destroyed. He is eternally conscious in the judgment he experiences. Annihilation, annihilationism is a lie and he's there. Notice also, Jesus says that a chasm is fixed between heaven and hell. And Jesus says, no one can cross from here to there. Some annihilationists or some universalists, they believe in something called postmortem salvation, that after you die, you'll have a second chance to trust Christ. Okay, the postmortem salvationists are wrong and it's a lie. The Bible says it is appointed unto man once to die and then comes judgment. This life that you are living right now is the only chance you will ever have. And when you breathe your last breath, your fate is sealed for eternity. They're wrong and it's a lie. You're being lied to. The Bible says right here, he says that it's awful. He uses words like agony, torment, fire. The Bible says it's like the gloom of outer darkness, perpetual separation from anything good that he mits from the character of God. The universalists are wrong. Hell is real. Real people go there. Eternity is really long and fire is really hot. And you may stand a chance of really going there if you don't really give your life to Jesus, who really wants to save you. All of these things are wrong and they are lies. Jesus Christ actually said this. He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. There is no path to escape hell other than Jesus Christ and his life, death, and resurrection, and faith therein. No one comes to the Father except through him. Listen, no one, no through Buddha, no one, through Muhammad, no one, through Hinduism, no one, through Mormonism, no one. I'm spiritual but not religious, no one. I'm a religious legalist, no one, through Jesus, anyone. Anyone can come to God through Jesus Christ. And listen, I'm not yelling at you because I'm mad at you. I'm yelling at you because I'm warning you. I'm warning you. If you were in the top story of a building and the bottom of it was on fire, I would not politely and quietly tell you that a fire was going on. I would be screaming at you. Wake up. Don't go. This is why I'm passionate about this. Now some people, anytime I talk about this, what some people would say is, Josh, just stop preaching about this. No, no, no. Notice in this passage, the one thing that this man wants while he's in hell, the one thing he wants is like, man, would you please send somebody back to the people that I love so that they will preach to them about hell? Will you please tell them? In eternity, there will not be a single person in eternity when they stand before God who says, man, I wish you had talked less about the reality of judgment, not one person. No one will say, I wish you had warned me less. I wish you hadn't hurt my feelings with your sermons about judgment or your messages about hell. No, no, there will only be, listen, millions and millions of souls crying out things like, you knew, you knew and you didn't tell me. You knew, you believed all this, but the only thing you cared about was your church being full and you being popular and everyone applauding you, but you didn't care about my soul. My friends, I refuse to be that man. This is what Jesus Christ said and I'm warning you. Now, some of you hear that and you may go, yeah, ma'am, if that's what he does, well, man, I wouldn't have done it that way. Well, listen, you're not God. You're not God. What's so, as I was meditating on this this week, it was like a righteous anger. There's this weird thing in our culture where people are so comfortable judging God. I wouldn't have done it that way. The Bible shouldn't say that. The Bible's wrong. God is repressive. People are so comfortable judging God, but the second you start talking about the reality that God will judge us, that's not fair. I just want to point out, bro, just think about this for a second. You don't want fair. You don't want fair, man. That's right. You don't want fair. Every now and then, my kids at home don't like, I'll tell them to do something like, oh, dad, that's not fair. And I'll just snap out, oh, you want fair. It's fair. You want, okay, we're going to do fair. How about we start splitting the mortgages five ways? Oh, look, you're homeless. Oh, look at that. That's amazing. Fair, you want fair. How about this? Let's do fair. Whoever pays for the Nintendo Switch, plays the Nintendo Switch. Oh, look, I got an Nintendo Switch. You don't want fair. In fact, I will just point this out to you. I don't have time to... The only place where everything is fair is hell. Hell is where everybody gets exactly what they deserve. And the only place where everything is unfair is heaven, where we live the life of sin and God pours out unmerited grace and favor on us for eternity. That's it. So what's really interesting to me, listen, what's really interesting to me is people all the time like, man, I just don't understand how a loving God could send anybody to hell. Do you know what nobody's ever said to me 25 years of ministry? Nobody's ever said, nobody's ever said, man, Josh, you know what? I can't get over. How could it just God let me into heaven? Nobody's ever said that to me. Why? Because we presume on the riches of God's grace, and we take for granted His mercy, and we act like it's unfair for a holy God to meet out holy justice for sin. This is what Jesus is saying in this passage, okay? Now listen, I want to keep going on this. I want to finish this sermon answering two questions very briefly. Question number one, here's a question some of you are asking, I alluded to it. How could a God of love ever send anyone to hell? Okay. Now this question, if you're asking it, just listen, my job to tell you the truth, your job to make a decision. This question is based on a misunderstanding in part of what hell is. Check out this verse, I got them on the LED because I want you to actually see them. This is 2 Thessalonians 1-9. It says, they will be punished, talking about unbelievers, people don't know Jesus. They're going to be punished with eternal destruction forever. Watch this, separated from the Lord and from His glorious power. So what you need to get is if you boil hell down to its lowest common denominator, here's what it is. Hell is eternal separation from God. Now, if you start to get your head around this, a whole bunch of stuff that didn't make sense starts to make sense for you. Let me give you one example of this. There's a really heavy sermon, so let me tell a story to make it unheavy, and then we'll get back to heavy again. It's going to be great. Here's my example of this. So me and Janna, we got two things. We use, here's our little thing. There's a difference between a trip and a vacation. If the kids go, it's a trip. If the kids don't go, it's a vacation. Okay. We just got back from a trip. We just got back from a trip. We just got back from a trip where we took the kids down to Orlando to Universal Studios in Orlando. Now, we've done Disney before and what people say about Disney, if you've been around Lake Point, I have a well-documented hatred of Disney. I'm going to riff on that for a second, so it'll be great. If you've been around, if you've ever been around there, well, here's what people say. They say, oh man, Disney, happiest place on earth. Okay. A Disney PR rep is the one who said that. Ain't nobody else said that. Okay. So, I'm going to give you an example of this. So, we're running, we had a great time with our kids, great time with our kids at Universal, but we're walking around. It didn't always seem like a happiest place on earth. So, like, here's the kids hanging out. Now, if you look real, real, real close, just zoom in. You're going to see how Mr. Hudson was. That's Mr. Hudson. That's it. So, that's just, you know, that's kind of how, that's how it goes. Now, if you've ever done Disney, people say it's the happiest place on earth. That's insane. Here's what I, if you've never been, here's what it's like. It's like paying tens of thousands of dollars to stand in line at the DMV. You, now you know exactly, you know exactly what Disney's like. Okay. So, and the last time we went to Disney, we went in August. If you didn't know this, Orlando in August, it's roughly the same temperature as the surface temperature of the sun. And while we were there, we were there at the tail end of COVID when the world was insane. So, we had to wear these masks when it was 110 degrees in sweaty Orlando. And they were literally, bro, they were walking around like, get your mask up. Get your mask up. I was about to lose my mind. Okay. Like, we're outside. I'm on seven doors mind train, bro. I think we're okay. So, it's like, it felt like I was being smothered to death, but like a sweaty washcloth, trapping all your death breath inside of there. So, so then it's like, it's just, let me, this is therapeutic for me. So, so then it, so Disney is the only place on earth where it can be 115 degrees outside. You're walking around for 12 hours a day, carrying kids on your back, eating almost nothing, and you can still gain weight. It's amazing. It's insane how that works. I have no idea how it works. So, what, what I'll say is there are, there are actually adults who go to Disney without even bringing kids. They're called weirdos. This is what they're called. That's a joke. That's a joke. No, don't applaud for that. That's a joke. In all seriousness, I know, listen, I just, I know there are families who you have made incredibly memorable, meaningful sweet times at Disney. I just want to say this, you're wrong. That's it. That's it. You're wrong. Okay. That's it. Now, here's my point. I just want to point this out to you. There are legitimately people who, think about this. What is heaven on earth for some people because of who they are and what they like is legitimately like hell on earth for me because of who I am and what I don't like. Now, think about this. The Bible says that hell is eternal separation from God. Let me ask you this question. If someone lives this life and their entire life, they are hating God. They're trying to avoid the things of God. They hate all the commands of God. They never want to be in the presence of God. How in the world would going to heaven even be pleasurable for them? Heaven would actually be a kind of hell for them. Heaven is for people who want to be in the presence of God because their nature has been changed and they want to be around him. So let me go back to the beginning of the question we're asking is, we're asking how could a God of love ever send anyone to hell? Let me say this. In one sense, he doesn't. Now, some of you are like, whoa, great. Nobody goes to hell. No. Real people go to a real hell. Here's the big idea. Check this out. Is people go to hell based on their own choice, based on their own choice. Now, you need to see this in the word. Check out what the word says. All that matters is what the word says. The Bible says this. It says, no, Jesus is being patient. It's answering the question. Now, why isn't Jesus returned yet? If you ever, we're going to talk about the return of Christ in a few weeks. You go, man, why hasn't he done it yet? Well, this actually answers that question. He's being patient for your sake because he doesn't want anyone to be destroyed. He wants everyone to repent. This is what he didn't want anybody to go to hell. In fact, God's not a sadist. He was like sitting around just taking pleasure in pain and destruction. Look at what the book of Ezekiel says. Do you think that I like to see wicked people die? Says the sovereign Lord. Of course not. I want them to turn from their wicked ways and I want them to live. Okay. So God doesn't want anybody to go to hell. Now, some of you say, well, then why doesn't he do anything about it? Listen, what are you even talking about? He has. For God so loved the world that he sent his one and only son that whoever believes in him will never perish. They'll never experience the second death is what the Bible says hell is. Will never perish, but will have eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. What you must understand. Listen, if you don't know Jesus, what you must understand is God loves you so much that a bleeding Jesus hangs on a cross at the entrance of hell. And for anybody who tries to go in, what he says to them is, if you're going to get in there, you got to go over my dead body. No one, Jesus doesn't want anyone to go to hell. Now that leads me to question number two. Question number two. The question is, what does the reality of hell mean for me? What's the reality of hell mean for me? Now, I want to talk to two groups of people. First, I want to talk to Christians. And second, I want to talk to you if you're not a Christian yet. For Christians, this has been a super, you probably felt it even as I walked out. It's been a really heavy week. You spent a whole week studying the doctrine of hell. I'll just tell you, man, it's gonna mess with you. It'll mess with you. I was super convicted this week because all week what I was praying is everywhere I went, I was just like, Lord, give me eyes to see the reality that every single one of these people will be separated from his right and his left. And every one of you will spend an eternity either with God in heaven or away from God in hell. And it's just like, man, am I living with the urgency that that reality requires to make sure that everybody hears about Jesus? Okay. So years ago, I came across this story. This guy's name was Charles Peace. Charles Peace. In the 1800s, this guy named Charles Peace, he was sentenced to death by hanging in England. And there was a guy that records this story. His name is Leonard Renneville. And apparently, this chaplain, little dude came in with his little book of thingy. And he came in to read, to read this guy, his what are called last rights. That's what Catholics will sometimes call his last rights. And he'd done it so many times as a prison chaplain that he came in, he opened this little book, and he just was like going through the motions, like punching his little to-do list. And he was like, Hey, do you understand that, you know, you're getting ready to meet your maker? And he's just like reciting lines, you know, heaven or hell, and you get up to you, and I don't know, let me walk you through. And according to this story, Charles Peace stopped him and he said, Hey, man, do you believe what you're saying to me? And he was angry. Do you believe this? And the priest said, Well, of course I believe it. And then Charles Peace said this, and I got it on the screen, because I want you to see it. He said, Sir, if I believed what you and the church of God say that you believe, even if England were covered with broken glass from coast to coast, I would walk over it. If needs be on hand to knees and think it worthwhile just to save one soul from an eternal hell like that. Listen, man, I love you. I pray for you daily. I don't want any of you, none of you. I don't want any of you to go to hell. And what I want to say is, if you're a Christian, God has put you in the lives of people who right now are careening towards an eternity apart from God. And good news, you don't have to walk across England on broken glass. You just got to like walk across your office, like walk across a yard, or put on a stupid t-shirt, just so you have a chance to tell somebody somewhere about somebody you can save anybody. That's like all you got to do, man. In fact, I'll just say this, and I just want to get this on the table, like God's doing something really unique at our church, new services, new campuses, and every now and then like somebody grabbing my job, oh, why is the church guy getting so big? Because hell is real. Hell is real, and heaven is real. And so listen, man, we have two choices. Either we can keep new services, new campuses, whatever it takes, or we can tell everybody else they can go to hell. I like the first one better. So we need to have an urgency that this is actually real. So I'm going to give you an action step, and then I want to talk to people who aren't Christians. I'm especially talking to you if you are not on a weekly serve team at Lake Point. Here's what I'm doing. I'm not asking you to serve every week till Jesus returns. In two weeks, I'm already praying for it. I'm going to stand on this stage. We'll have 40, 50, I don't know how many people, 50,000 people at services for Easter, and we're going to blow the roof off, telling everybody about somebody who can save anybody. And that week, it's going to be insane. It'll be insane the number of people we got here. Here's what I'm asking. If you do not currently serve on a volunteer team weekly at Lake Point, can you give me one week? Just give me one week to serve in either kids or guest services for the purpose of helping us facilitate 50,000 people or however many people hearing the eternity saving message of Jesus Christ. Okay. You got this at all your campuses on the way in. Fill this new doubt, drop in the offering bucket when it comes by later. Give me one week. Help us reach a whole bunch of people for Jesus in one week. Okay. Now, if you're not a Christian, what you need to know is the Bible says to call upon the Lord while he may be found. So right now, what may have happened in the next last few minutes is the spirit may be pressing into your soul the reality of eternity. And I want to give you a chance today to receive Jesus Christ and his payment for your sins. Okay. So at all of our campuses, would you bow your heads and close your eyes? Would you do this? And some of you, man, you've been on Lake Point for five, six, seven weeks and you're starting to realize that you need to cross a line of faith. And man, if ask you, I just want you with your head bowed and your eyes closed to pray this prayer with me from a sincere heart to trust in Jesus finished work that he took the payment for your sins. So silent your seat. Just pray this prayer after me. Just pray God I know I'm a sinner. And I know I've lived for other things besides you first. Pray this from a sincere heart, but I believe that you died for my sin. I believe that somehow in some way the cross counted for me. And I believe that you rose from the dead and that you live to give life to everyone who would call in your name from this day forward. As best as I know how I will live for you first. Today, I received the free gift of forgiveness of my sin. Apart from anything I've ever done, just as a gift. Thank you God for adopting me as a son or a daughter and for saving me from sin, death, hell and Satan for eternity with you. Now keep your heads bowed and your eyes closed. And all of our campuses, man, if you prayed that from a sincere heart and you're crossing a line of faith, maybe for the first time today, here in a second on the count of three, what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask you to raise your hand on the count of three. When I count to three, the reason I'm doing this is because I believe something solidifies in you spiritually when you respond physically. And what you do in the next 60 seconds may be the most important thing you ever do in eternity. So if you pray that prayer from a sincere heart to cross the line of faith and come to Jesus, count of three. I want your hand in the air on three. One, God loves you. Two, you came here for a reason today. Three, right now, if that's you, slip your hand in the air. Right now, you're receiving the gift of grace. Keep, wow, keep them up. Keep them up. Lock that elbow, man. Like, hi, I want to know who I'm praying for. Like, man, Jesus, I receive your grace coming home. Man, all over the room. Man, amen. Amen. And amen.