Lake of Fire

Introduction

Please turn to Luke chapter 13, where the scripture reading was read from earlier. I want to talk to you this morning about a topic that is not pleasant. In fact, we touched on it some in my last sermon. I want to talk to you this morning about hell. And this is a very sobering topic. And one which is motivating in a negative way, but nonetheless motivating. And it’s a very serious topic. Some of the things that I want to talk about today are scary. The scriptural descriptions of hell are not given to make us feel good. And they are certainly terrifying. I just want to make this note before we begin that if you are a young child, some of the things that I’m mentioning right now will just really, really terrify you.

But don’t be terrified. If you are a young child, that’s not where you’re going. Your soul is destined for heaven. I believe that firmly.

1. Strive to Enter the Narrow Door

And I would love to believe that. But what does Jesus say to this question? He said in verse 24, strive to enter through the narrow door. For many I tell you will seek to enter and will not be able. So he calls it a narrow door. Doors of the first century and to homes were not as wide as we might be comfortable with. Sometimes they were quite narrow. And so the inference there is that no, not everybody’s going to enter. Only those who strive. He says, strive to enter the narrow door. The Greek word here is agonismi, from which we get the English word agonize. So in essence, he’s saying, agonize to enter the narrow door. It is the idea of straining every nerve. He says, For many will seek to enter, but will not be able.

Verse 25. Once the head of the house gets up and shuts the door. And you begin to stand outside and knock on the door saying, Lord, open to us, then he will answer and say to you, I do not know where you are from. That’s a really a shocking thought. That the loving Jesus, the compassionate Lord, would one day say to somebody, I don’t know you at all, when they thought that they knew him. And he will refuse to open that door when they are begging to enter. Then you will begin to say, We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets. And he will say, I tell you, I do not know where you are from. Depart from me, all you evil doers.

We mentioned in the lesson on rich man and Lazarus that the time of mercy will come to an end. And the rich man begged for mercy. Just a drop of water, just a little water from the tip of Lazarus’ finger. But that request was not granted. The time of mercy was over, and now it was merciless in these torments. And so there comes the day where the time of mercy is over, and the Lord has to shut off his grace and has to close that door. And the Lord says, Depart. Sobering thought. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. When you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but yourselves being thrown out, and they will come from east and west and north and south, and will recline at the table in the kingdom of God.

And behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last. This idea, this picture of heaven, which is the idea of this great feast, this uh Oriental feast with people reclining and joining in in this great festivity, and there’s there’s plenty for everybody, and you just imagine what this table must look like for the nations together. It’s just a picture that we need to get in our head of what heaven will be like, and there’s Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and people from all over the place, north, south, and east and west that have gathered together. What a glorious picture of heaven! And we could preach about that and talk about heaven, which I plan to do in my next lesson.

We’re going to talk about heaven. But the point that Jesus is making here is that there are those who are cast out. And there will be weeping. And there will be gnashing of teeth. Actually, in the Greek, there is the definite article ha before the word weeping and before the word gnashing. And so it is the weeping and the gnashing. In other words, this is a specific weeping and gnashing that belongs only to those who are cast into the outer darkness. This is a weeping and gnashing that we don’t find in cannot experience in any other time of life.

You might be reminded of such things that I’m reminded of. Think of this summer when that Malaysian flight went down, the second of the Malaysian flights that went down. And on the news, of course, they want to show the stuff that’ll shock you, and you know, if it bleeds, it leads. And so they are showing these parents who have found out that their children or grandchildren have died on that airplane. And I think, why would they want to show that on national television? How horrific. But they they had this woman that was just, I mean, she was just hysterical. And it wasn’t just crying, it was this, it was just I don’t have any other word for it than wailing. Uh uncontrollably, like she was losing her mind.

And it just makes your heart race to even hear somebody crying. Have you ever heard somebody cry like that? Or maybe you have cried like that at some point in your life over just tremendous unspeakable grief. That’s the kind of wailing that’s being spoken of here. What about this gnashing of teeth? Some say that’s a gnashing of teeth in anger. Remember when I was a boy, we used to play Nintendo. I mean the 8-bit Nintendo that you had to blow in the game if it didn’t work. That one. And when I would lose, I had a bad habit, and I hate for my kids to even hear me say this, that I would sometimes bite my controller. And there were teeth marks. I was gnashing my teeth in anger.

Is that the idea here? Some say that it is the gnashing of teeth in anger. Maybe. But as we’re going to look, because Jesus, this is common. A common formula when Jesus talks about eternal suffering. I think that it’s talking about gnashing one’s teeth in pain. But here that’s not really highlighted so much. We just have the phrase.

2. Cast Into the Outer Darkness

You see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but yourselves being thrown out. You know what? One of the worst things about hell is that you won’t get to be in heaven. I mean, you will know that there’s heaven. You will know that there are people there who are enjoying all the warmth and the festivity and the company. And here you are cast out. And here it does not mention the outer darkness. But I want to turn to a passage that does, that is very nearly related, closely related to this one. Let’s turn to Matthew 8. Matthew chapter 8. Beginning of verse 5, the centurion comes to Jesus and asks him to heal his servant who is sick. And Jesus says, Okay, I will go.

And the centurion says, No, you don’t have to trouble yourself with that. I mean, I’m a man of authority. I can tell people go and do this or that, and they’ll go and do it. I know that you could just say for my servant to be healed, and he’ll be healed. And Jesus was startled. In verse 10, when Jesus heard this, he marveled and said to those who are following, Truly, I say to you, I have not found such great faith with anyone in Israel. And so this centurion was a Gentile. Verse 11, I say to you that many will come from east and west, from the rising of the sun to the setting of the sun. And recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.

So you’re going to have Gentiles there. You see the emphasis here? There are going to be Gentiles there. Verse 12, but the sons of the kingdom will be cast into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Sons of the kingdom here being the Jews. Sons being used here to refer to those who are legally descendants of Abraham. And the Jews were.

So we have this outer darkness. When I was a boy, old enough to go to a play on my own for my parents to drop me off there or whatever. So I don’t know how old I was, but I went to this play with my. How come every time I moved from this, Stu was telling me, get back over here? I don’t know. Every time I do that, I must be not working here, but that’s fine. Okay, Stu, I’ll come back. I remember going to this play, and I went with my cousin, and uh it was in this building with uh this play was in uh various rooms, so it was an interactive play, kind of. And so you would go into different rooms and experience the different uh times of this man’s life.

And this man ends up going to hell in this play. I can remember one of the scenes of the man, he’s just drunk and he’s in a just a wild fury and he losing his temper and that sort of thing. And then I can clearly remember when you go in and you have to experience hell. And the way it was played out was you went down into this room, and it was dark, totally dark. They they must have just had all of the light that could possibly come in, and any of the cracks closed off. Because I mean, it was the kind of darkness that just terrifies you. Pitch dark. Pitch black. And if I remember correctly, the room was crowded, and I remember feeling claustrophobic, and it was hot in there.

And then you began to hear this moaning and crying. And either it was a cassette that was playing, or there were people who were making this noise, and it was this weeping and screaming. And I was, as a child, I was terrified. That was worse than any Halloween experience or anything I’d ever had. And I was only in that room for maybe a minute. But I mean, it marked me. And I will never forget that minute that I spent in the complete darkness hearing the hearing the weeping and gnashing of teeth. Terrifying. I made the point in my sermon on the rich man and Lazarus that if we could just visit hell for one second, our whole lives would probably be changed. You know. And so that has stuck with me all this time.

The outer darkness. Yeah, maybe we’re scared of the dark. But is the outer darkness simply talking about being in a place where there is no light? Is that all it is? There’s a whole lot more to it. This is being cast out of the feast. You’re alone. Timothy McVeigh, uh. Timothy McVeigh, who killed, I think, 168 Americans in the Oklahoma City bombings in like 1995 or something. He was interviewed shortly before his execution. And he said something like, uh, well, if I go to hell, that’s fine, because I know that’s where, you know, I’ll have plenty of company there. Well, no, he’s wrong. It’ll be the outer darkness. It’ll be lonely. Yeah, you might have people around you, but you’re not going to be in company where you’re where you feel part of the group.

Outer darkness. When people are separated from God in this life, that is indeed a separation. What is Isaiah 66, 1 and 2 tell us, or 59, 1 and 2 tell us, behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened that he cannot save, nor his ear heavy that it cannot hear, but your iniquities have separated you from your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear. That’s a separation. Ephesians 2 and verse 1 says, and you were dead in your trespasses and sin. So that separation is called spiritual death. So while people are alive here on earth, they can be separated from God, and if they die in that state, they will be separated for all eternity. But think about that separation.

Do they not still experience some blessings of God? Even if they’re separated from God. Do they not experience the physical blessings of God? Does God not still have his hand outstretched to them? And the offer of salvation and the hand of grace is still ready to be taken if they want to take it. Yes, until the day you die. You will still have that. And so though you are separated, you are not totally separated so that you could never be with the Lord again. But in the day of judgment, or in the day of our eternal passing from this life to the next. That separation from God, if we are separated from Him, will be utter and complete. There will be no hand of grace, no hand of mercy.

3. The Furnace of Fire

There will be no inkling of the tiniest of blessings from God, as we all experience, wicked and good here on the earth. It will be utter and total darkness. You see, that’s a symbolic thing. Totally without God and without Jesus. That’s a scary thought as well. The weeping and the gnashing of teeth in this outer darkness. Well, let’s turn now to Matthew chapter 13 and see another passage here that mentions this weeping and gnashing of teeth. Jesus tells a parable of the tares beginning in verse 40. Or beginning in verse 24. The parable of the tares. There was a man who went out to sow good seed in his field. And at night when his servants were asleep, an enemy came and sowed tares in the field.

And later, when this began to grow and became evident, the servant said to the man, do you know there are tares out here in your field? I thought you planted good seed. And he says, an enemy has done this. Well, what should we do? Should we pull up the tares? No, because you might also pull up the wheat. Wait until the harvest. And at that time we can gather up, or I will say to the reapers, gather up the tares, and bind them into a bundle and burn them, and the wheat will be gathered into my barn. And later, Jesus explains this parable. Beginning in verse 40 is where I want to read. Just as the tares are gathered up and burn with fire, so shall it be at the end of the age.

The Son of Man will send forth his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all stumbling blocks, and those who commit lawlessness, and will throw them into the furnace of fire. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. And there I think it’s clear the gnashing of teeth is connected with pain. Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their father. He who has ears, let him hear.

Isn’t that a beautiful passage? Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun. Think of just what contrast that is in contrast to the outer darkness. You have this shining forth of the righteous, and you have the outer darkness of those who are who are being tormented. But I want to focus on this furnace of fire.

This large furnace that you could walk inside of.

Somehow the door closed behind him. And he couldn’t get out. And he was terrified. In some way, somehow the door was opened and he was fine, but he never forgot that feeling. And he told me, he said, I just had to think about, you know, what if I was still stuck in there today and somehow able to live but still being cooked. It makes me think of, you know, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. I can’t be sure if that’s a parable or a true story. That rich man went to the place of torment about 2,000 years ago. Today he’s still there. Scary idea. Scary idea. When I was a kid. You know, I want to make this point. We should meditate. We should meditate on heaven.

But you know what, brethren? From time to time, it doesn’t hurt to meditate on hell. Because that is a motivating thing. And when I was younger, I used to do a lot of that. And I remember I would frequently have this thought. That I would imagine I was thrown into an oven. And at first in my mind, it’s like a joke that my friends were playing on me. Ha ha, funny joke, let me out. And then I noticed this was no joke because the doors are the door is completely shut. It’s locked. It’s not budging at all. And I’m kicking, pushing with all my might, but there’s no getting out of this oven. But that’s okay because it’s not on. But I know that I’m in an oven and I don’t like that.

But then I begin to notice that somebody has turned it on. And I begin to panic as I begin to warm up. And it gets worse. And the bottom and the sides become red hot. And I’m burning. And then I begin to cook and catch on fire. But I won’t die. I just keep on burning. I know that sounds morbid, but I’m not trying to be morbid. The descriptions of hell that are given are there to sober us up. Hell is called by the compassionate, loving, gentle Jesus a furnace of fire. Is that supposed to get our attention? Yes. If that scares you, good. Because those descriptions are there to make us serious about this matter of serving God. And it is a motivator not to go to that place of torment.

4. Hell Is Called the Lake of Fire

In Revelation 20 and verses 14 and 15. Hell is called the lake of fire. And in chapter 19, it’s called the lake of fire and brimstone. Nobody likes to get burnt with boiling water. Have you ever been burnt with boiling water? Imagine if you were thrown into a tub full of boiling water. Unimaginable how painful that would be. Or a swimming pool if it could be filled with boiling water or a lake full of boiling water. We would just cringe at the very idea. Well, that doesn’t even begin to come close to the description that’s given in Revelation 20. Because it’s not a lake of boiling water. What’s it a lake of? It’s a lake of fire. And that’s a scary picture. It’s a scary idea.

5. Gehenna, the Unquenchable Fire

This is the image that the Bible gives us of hell. And I don’t like it. But I didn’t come up with it. And it’s a motivating thing, as I’ve mentioned already. The fire of hell is an unquenchable fire. The last passage I want us to look at is in Mark chapter 9. Mark chapter 9, beginning in verse 42. The disciples came to Jesus complaining that somebody was casting out demons in his name, but they weren’t following with the disciples. And so the disciples were trying to stop this person from doing this thing. And Jesus is basically saying, why would you try to stop somebody from doing that? You could cause that person to stumble. This person is doing it in my name what they’re doing. And so he says in verse 42, whoever causes one of these little ones, and that’s not talking about children in this context.

We’re all little ones. Or really literally, this would read humble ones. Whoever causes one of these humble ones who believe in me to stumble, or really that would be to be entrapped. When we think of the idea of stumbling, we think of somebody, you know, tripping, and then maybe they can get up. But when you when you read the word stumble in the Bible, it means to be ensnared. Like when you catch your prey, and then you are going to kill that prey. It is the idea of losing one’s salvation. Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe to lose their salvation, it would be better for him if with a heavy millstone hung around his neck he had been cast into the sea. Heavy millstone here would be the kind like an ox would use as it goes round and round and this thing turns.

Not one that a human could turn, but a heavy millstone, hundreds of pounds. Imagine that being tied around your neck and you being thrown into the sea, and that this thing sinks to the very bottom of the sea, and that’s your death. Terrible way to die. Jesus said it’d be better for you to die like that than if you cause somebody to lose their salvation who believes in me. And so we need to always be careful about our influence. Verse 43 If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. For it is better for you to enter life crippled than having two hands to go into gehenna or hell, into the unquenchable fire. Where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.

If your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than having your two feet to be cast into hell where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched. If your eye causes you to stumble, throw it out, for it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than having two eyes to be cast into hell where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. Greg preached a good lesson recently on this idea of having your eye plucked out and cutting off your hand. I think one of the reasons Jesus gives this description and instructions, really, is uh to answer kind of the excuse that I can’t help but sin.

I’m in the body. I have my bodily members. I’m in the flesh. Jesus is saying, that is no excuse for sin. You can do something about that flesh. You can pluck out your eye. You can cut off your hand. You can cut off your foot. Not literally, but the idea that you can overcome whatever it is that your flesh is causing you to do that is sinful. You can do that. We can do that. Now, as you think about that logically, if I cut off my right hand, don’t I still have my left hand I could sin with? I can steal with that one just as well as I can steal with this one. If I plug out my right eye, I’ve still got my left eye lust with, and so on.

So that wouldn’t really actually solve the problem, would it? What Jesus is getting at is the heart of a person. That if you will devote yourself fully to the Lord with your heart and say in your heart, I am going to go to extremes to overcome this sin, then guess what? You can do it. We can do it. That’s the point that he’s making. But I want to focus in on this gehenna. You have the word hell there at the end of verse 43 and 45 and 47. Every time that Jesus uses the word hell, it is the word gehenna, which means valley of henem. This is a picture of that valley about 1900. And in this valley, in the Old Testament, there were human sacrifices that were made.

In fact, you can read in Jeremiah chapter 7 and verse 31 and 32. They have built the high places of Topheth, that is there in that valley, which is in the valley of the Son of Hinnum. So there it’s called the Valley of the Son of Hinnem or Ben Hinnem. Same valley that Jesus talks about when he says Gehenna, Valley of Hinnem. To burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, and it did not come into my mind. So this is a place that represented the very depths of immorality. In fact, in Jeremiah 19, God tells Jeremiah to take the elders and some of the leading men of the city and to take them to Topheth, to take them there to the valley of Ben Hinnem, and to preach them this message that you will be taken captive, and these people will be destroyed, and to take this flask and to shatter it in the sight of the people, and to say that you will be shattered just as this flask is shattered and will not be gathered up again.

So that place had very high significance for representing the very depths of immorality. We also continue to read in verse 32 of Jeremiah 7. Therefore, behold days are coming, declares the Lord, when it will no longer be called Topheth or the valley of the Son of Hinnem, but the valley of the slaughter.

Whether it was still happening in the days of Jesus, I don’t know. There is this common belief that in the days of Jesus, Gehenna was a cesspool, a place for the continual burning of corpses and dead bodies and trash and rubbish.

But we don’t really know that. The evidence is really obscure for that, and the sources on that are from the you know the years of silence, and so they’re very late. But either way, Gehenna is Jesus’ word for hell. It represented a place of immorality and a place where bodies were buried. This is what Gehenna looks like today. Into the unquenchable fire, he says at the end of verse 43. Unquenchable fire. Then we have the phrase where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. I’ve often wondered about this worm. In fact, I wondered about it until I studied it in preparation for this sermon. What is the idea of their worm not dying? It is the maggot, the consuming maggot that eats the flesh of the dead carcass.

6. It Is an Eternal Fire

And it is a quote from the very last verse of Isaiah. Read that sometime. Where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. Of course, this is not some literal thing of a fleshly body being continually consumed, but it is a figure of a continual dying, a continual rotting, in stark contrast to the joyous living of those who are in heaven. The worm does not die. The fire is not quenched. Some teach that hell is an annihilation. That is not in Scripture. It is a continual burning, a continual dying. Revelation calls it a second death. And in Matthew 25, 41, when Jesus is talking about the shepherd who separated the sheep from the goats, and said to those who are on his left, depart from me, accursed ones, and to the what?

Everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. Notice it is not prepared for you and me and for sinners. It is prepared for the devil and his angels. But those who are wicked will also have to share in that place that has been prepared for the devil and his angels. It is an eternal fire. Eternity is really something that’s hard to grasp. We can’t fathom it. So I want to help you briefly to try to grasp it. Imagine a steel ball, the size of planet Earth. 25,000 miles in circumference. And the only thing on this giant steel ball is one lone ant who walks in a perfectly straight line. And this ant walks all the way around this steel ball one time. Let’s say it takes him a hundred years.

I don’t know the rate of an ant. So that’s just a guess. A hundred years. One lap around. And then the ant continues that same exact straight line a second time. And a third time, and a fourth, and then thousands of times, each time taking a hundred years. And then millions and billions and trillions of times, and then unnumbered times, until eventually that ant begins to wear down a path in that steel ball. And after eons and eons, eventually that path wears down and down and down until the steel ball falls into two halves. That would be the first morning of eternity. And imagine spending an eternity in hell. You see, we miss the picture. We get stuck in the here and now, but we need to keep our eyes on the eternity.

Conclusion

And we need to make sure that we’re going to be in heaven for all eternity and not to be in hell. I remember a cousin of mine wanting to be baptized years ago. He was 12 or so. And took him in the back of the little church building, a little country church building, and asked Corby, why do you want to get baptized? He said, I don’t want to go to hell. And that was it. That was his one answer. You know what? That’s a good motivation. It’s an okay motivation. Now it shouldn’t be the only motivation we ever have. But if that motivation drives you to the waters of baptism, that is not a bad thing. But it is not the only motivation, is it? Just as a young child who is motivated mainly by fear of punishment that later grows to eventually obey mom and dad, hopefully, because of the great respect that he has for mom and dad.

That’s what we do as Christians. We grow so that our motivation becomes not just for fear of hell and not just for reward of heaven, but because God deserves it. But let us never forget that hell is the place where the wicked will go for all eternity. And keep that as a sober reminder and think on it from time to time to be sure that we are not going there. We’re going to bow our head in prayer, and followed by that, we will have our class and we will reconvene here at 11. Let us bow our heads. Our Father, we thank you so much for your Son. Thank you for what the Bible teaches us about eternity and even about hell. Father, we pray that you will strengthen us and help us to agonize that we may enter that narrow door.

It is through your Son that we pray. Amen. Sorry, I went kind of over, so.