Sermons on Hell

Some who seek to be faithful to Scripture unconsciously avoid preaching hell because of an underlying framework; others consciously avoid it.
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If no punishment were given for violation of His law, then God would not be just. Being a just God, He will reward the righteous and punish the wicked. Hell is to punish the wicked.

Why Would a Loving God Send People to Hell?

It is described that way in Matthew The Holy Spirit, in Hebrews 9: The same word in the Greek language in which the New Testament was originally written was used in all three of these passages. The word means eternal, everlasting, without end, never to cease. Hell and the punishment meted out there will last as long as God forever.

Hell is a place of darkness. Jude 13 speaks of "the blackness of darkness" to which false teachers will be confined forever. God is light 1 John 1: Hell is described as darkness because it is the place farthest removed from God. There will be no God to listen to pleas for mercy or give hope of release. Hell is a place of fire. There will be no relief from its fires because Revelation There is no rest there. As there is no rest, there will be no relief. The rich man in Luke 16, even while awaiting the final judgment in Tartarus, wanted a drop of water to cool his tormented tongue but he did not get it.

As already noted, Satan and his angels will be there Matt. Those who do not know God and those who will not obey the gospel of Christ will be punished with everlasting destruction 2 Thes. In short, all sinners who choose to remain in their sin will be found in hell. God desires that all be saved 1 Tim. God is all-powerful and the gospel, His power to save Rom. People will not be in hell because God will not save them. God sent His Son into the world so that all might have salvation John 3: If a person ends up in hell, he is lost by his own free choice.

He goes in the kitchen and there is a plate of chocolate chip cookies hot and just out of the oven. He shoves one into his mouth and decides to get a glass of cold milk to wash it down. When he opens the refrigerator door he sees that it is full of cartons of milk.

5 Reasons Preachers Avoid Sermons on Hell

But as he tries to pour himself a glass he finds that all the cartons are empty and we all laugh because we know how horrible it is to have cookies but no milk to go with them. But all these jokes are not really funny at all because the real Hell contains nothing that is worth laughing about. The Bible describes Hell as a place of unquenchable and everlasting fire. Jude 13 says that Hell is the blackness of darkness forever.

Now, most conservative theologians believe as I do that this is all figurative language.


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The Bible is not saying that Hell is literally a place of fire and brimstone. And, I believe this for three reasons:. Moreland, a conservative scholar, says, In Hebrews Yet nobody thinks God is a cosmic Bunsen burner. On the night of His arrest Jesus ate the Passover meal with His disciples. He held up the bread and said, This is My body. Then He took the cup and referring to its contents said, This is My blood.

Now, Jesus did not mean that the bread and the wine were His literal blood but rather that they were symbolic of the fact that His body was about to be nailed to a cross where He would shed His precious blood for the sins of the world. The book of Revelation says that when Christ returns He is going to have a big sword coming out of His mouth. No, the figure of the sword stands for the word of God in judgment.

And in a similar fashion, the descriptions of hell as a place of fire are also symbolic of a horror that would be infinitely worse than a place filled with brimstone and constant flames. One word in the New Testament that is used for Hell is, Gehenna and it alluded to to the Valley of Gehenna outside the southeast walls of Jerusalem.

This had been a place of worship for the heathen god Molech, which included burning babies alive.

5 Reasons Preachers Avoid Sermons on Hell

Because of their cries it was known as the Valley of Lamentation,…which is what Gehenna literally means. A fire was kept going there continually for sanitary purposes. So, the Valley of Gehenna came to be used as a symbol of the awful reality of Hell. In this horrible place worms were constantly ingesting all that rotting flesh.

And in using this metaphor Jesus was saying hell is worse than that disgusting place outside the city walls. When the Bible talks about Hell being a place of darkness it is saying that it is a place of hopelessness. Try to imagine what that would be like. I mean if you have ever experienced an attack of anxiety or depression you can always tell yourself that this feeling of dark despair will pass. You can tell yourself to hang on because it will end and things will look better.

But in Hell, that tactic would not work because the anxiety, the hopeless despair, will not end. It is a place of constant darkness in this sense. All these symbolic words and phrases used in Scripture to describe Hell are metaphors to help us see that Hell is a place so awful that no one in his right mind would want to go there. In this fashion the Bible teaches that Hell is the worst place we could possibly imagine. This week I came across the descriptions of hell by several conservative theologians.

I think their comments go a long way to helping us to begin to understand how bad a place Hell really is. Perpetually burning lusts never subside there and the tortured conscience burns but is never sated or appeased.

THE MOST POWERFUL SERMON ABOUT HELL EVERYBODY NEED TO WATCH BY DAVID WILKERSON

Hell, then is the raw soul joined to an indestructible body, exposed to its own sin for eternity. Hell is the place of unquenchable, raging, unmet emotional needs, without painkillers or sedation. Hell is a place of eternal regret. They want to be cross and miserable. She says, They enjoy chewing things to pieces. It must be part of the frustration of Hell that there is nothing good there to chew up. The good is beyond their reach so they can only chew one another. But you know, she left one thing out because the thing that really makes Hell…Hell…. Now, imagine how horrible that will be. It does this to help us to understand that Hell is a place of unimaginable suffering and despair and knowing all this should be a real motivator for both non-Christians and Christians.

General William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, said, If I had my way I would not give any of my workers a three-years training in a college, but I would put each of them in Hell for twenty-four hours, the best training for earnest preaching you could have. Knowing how horrible a place Hell is should move us to compassion for the lost. We should run to them, sharing our faith, as a fireman races to rescue someone from a burning building.

The thought that someone would spend eternity in this place should break our hearts. Robert Dale once said, The only man I can listen to preaching on hell is D. Moody, because I have never heard him talk of it without breaking down and weeping. A Biblically based perception of Hell should motivate us to compassion for the lost; it should force us to renew our efforts to bring more and more people to accept Jesus as Lord and Savior. It should compel them to embrace a personal faith in Christ. Vance Havner said his father was converted by the preaching of a hair-raising sermon that scared him into the kingdom of God.

Then he said, Such preaching is discouraged these days but it is better to scare men into heaven than to lull them into hell. Better shocked than stupefied.

2. The Bible also tells us that Hell is an ETERNAL place.

Does God send people to this horrible eternal place known as Hell? Well, when someone asks that question they are starting out with the wrong assumption.

You see, Hell is not a place that God created out of anger or frustration with man. It is not a place where a sadistic tyrant takes out his frustration on helpless creatures. Hell is a place where persons are allowed to live with the consequences of their own choices, dire as they may be. You see the most important thing for people to understand in dealing with this question….

He hates that place and the only thing He hates more is for people to choose to go there. God has done all that He can do to save us, so any person who goes to Hell goes there against the will of God. Lewis has said that in the end there are just two kinds of people: The decision to enter Heaven or Hell is ours to make. That is how seriously God takes our freedom. Ours is a world in which sin is allowed and salvation is not coerced.

You see, precisely because God is love…. God does not send man to hell. And man sends himself in choosing sin. As Lewis also said, If the doors of hell are locked, they are locked from the inside. You see, Hell is more than a punishment.. It is the end of a path that we choose to take when we reject the salvation and forgiveness that Jesus offers us and in that choice continue to live our lives apart from God. This means that non-Christian people are headed for hell even while living. They are already experiencing separation from God. This reminds me of the story I read once about a man who fell down the elevator shaft of a very tall building.

And as he fell past the man replied, So far so good! We are all born in sin…born damned…. God is not cruel.

What Hell Is Like

He is merciful and we know this because He offers us a most amazing merciful deal while we are still alive and falling. Those who face hell do so because they reject this deal. They say No thanks to the salvation offered through Jesus Christ. So, the answer is NO. God does not send people to Hell. Men and women send themselves there.