Jesus speaks about hell more than anyone else in Scripture, using the word “Gehenna” to describe a place of eternal, unquenchable fire. This teaching is difficult but crucial to understand. The Bible consistently portrays hell as a place of everlasting punishment for those who reject Christ. However, the same passages that warn of eternal damnation also proclaim the hope of eternal life for those who put their faith in Jesus. Salvation begins the moment we trust in Christ, receiving the Holy Spirit and becoming new creations. The gravity of hell should compel us to respond to God’s offer of forgiveness and life through His Son.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] Now, one other little comment to make before I start is that someone coming in through the door did let on the idea that they were of the opinion. So I’m told that the bulletin is just the same thing as E-Connected. Actually, it’s not. It takes a different set of time and thinking to bother writing it. So do accept one when you come in the door and think because you received the E-Connected, you’d already read it because you haven’t! Sometimes, though, they do line up in terms of the topic that we’re addressing. The one this morning, the bulletin, has to do with one thing that is about the second coming of Christ and the punishment of God on those who are lost.

[00:00:51] is important for us to know what the Bible actually teaches. And if we don’t know what the Bible teaches, we actually are very vulnerable to accepting lesser interpretations from the world in which we live, and it waters down what is actually the truth of the Scriptures. And so, I’m not going to answer every little question about the second coming today. only just one detail, which you’ll discover as we go along. But for us to tackle that, our Bible reading this morning is from the Gospel of Mark and Chapter 9. So if you turn to Chapter 9 and Verses 42, down to the end there, you’ll see that Jesus is talking about the fact of communities of Christians and how they need to learn how to care for those who are the little ones.

[00:01:50] Now we’ve had quite a number of occasions where we’ve had a child dedication. And that child dedication is where we concentrate on the little ones in age. But the actual story lines from the Scriptures where Jesus blesses the children, the word used is for babes. And so it’s about real little children. Here we have Jesus talking about the need for the Christian community to take care of the little ones But he’s referring not so much just to the babies because he talks of them as babies who believe in him so this is not a baby in arms who hasn’t yet even understood who Jesus is, but It says in verse 42 whoever calls as one of these little ones who believe in me to sin. And so they are little ones but they are little ones who

[00:02:45] believe in him. And a part explanation of that is that it is natural for children to believe in God and it’s very easy to teach them about God and they believe and the reason for that is that God has created us with a characteristic that accepts his existence. You don’t have to have a good argument, a whole lot of scientific evidence, a whole lot of academic studies in order for you to have an excuse to say, I believe in God because the scriptures teach that God has put within us a sense of who he is and belief in God is the most natural thing for a human being to do, and to squish that, to deny that, to fail to believe in God, is actually the unusual thing for a human heart to do. And yet that’s the very thing that our secular culture, that the sinful world, seeks to do.

[00:03:53] And there are all sorts of attacks that come upon people to cease believing in God. And sometimes they can come about because we in the Christian Church water down our claims in order to make it a little bit more acceptable to the unbelieving people around. And in so doing sometimes do a lot of damage to the little ones. Who are those little ones? actually people who have come to believe in God, perhaps because in their hearts it’s a natural thing to do, children growing up, or sometimes as people who are coming to the Christian faith and have just been introduced to it, and often the problem of that that is hitting the Christian church is that we who are involved in trying to put on a good apologetic front to why our beliefs

[00:04:48] or acceptable, have backed off, and we actually injure the little ones by getting them to not believe in some of the aspects of the Bible. And so it is that there are some people, if you were to talk to them about the scriptures teaching, that there are two adverts. One advent we are coming up towards the end of the year, it is the Christmas story, and that is the first coming of Christ. There is a second Advent which the scriptures teach and it is that this Jesus who came in the middle of history this Jesus is going to return but he’s not coming to achieve our salvation in the sense of dying on the cross for our sins which he did in the first Advent but he’s coming to cap off our

[00:05:36] salvation by taking us to glory and by introducing what is the judgment of the the world. And this is a part of the scripture’s just as much as the first Advent is, although if you ask me the question wherein lies the centre of the Gospel, I am very strong about the fact that you must understand the first Advent is the centrepiece of the Gospel, and you were just singing about it, for God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so whosoever Whoever believes in him should not perish, but should have everlasting life or eternal life.” And so the first advent is the center piece of the Gospel, though that’s not denying the truth of the background

[00:06:25] to the Gospel in the Book of Genesis and the fact of God’s creation, or the future of how Jesus is going to come back again and he’s going to put things right and there’ll be a heaven and the hell, there’ll be judgment even for Christians, Though, not a judgement that we could lose our salvation, but a judgement with regard to rewards as to how we’ve run along the way. But that second coming, that second advent

[00:06:51] is not the centerpiece of the Gospel. And one of the things you’ll find in churches that there is a tendency sometimes for people to pick up hobby horses, I remember about this general district of Salisbury and acacia ridge that there were some Christian people who were really hard workers to get people to believe in the fact of the second coming and also to believe in the whole host of things and they used to put out cassettes

[00:07:22] and tapes, I remember getting some to listen to them. Some of you, if you’re old enough would know who I’m talking about, but I won’t use a name. But it was an emphasis and a part of the gospel that was fairly true. But if you make that part the centerpiece, you sort of twist the gospel, and sometimes people don’t get to understand that the heart of the gospel is about the first advent in Jesus’ death in the cross

[00:07:49] and his resurrection from the dead. That’s the reason why we favor Easter and we favor Christmas because it actually is a rehearsal of that which is central to the gospel. If you ask me afterwards, Jim, why do you believe that’s the centre of the gospel? because 1 Corinthians Chapter 15 said so … as Paul reminds his readers of how he came the first time to them to get them converted and what terms he preached the gospel. It is that Christ died for our sins and Christ arose and it was seen of

[00:08:21] many the resurrection and the proofs thereof. All that Jesus did in the first advent is the center of the gospel, the fact of Genesis is not the center of Gospel, it is something that is a truthful area that leads up to us understanding the Gospel. And similarly, the Second Coming of Christ is a true part of the Gospel. You haven’t given the whole of the Gospel if you just say Jesus died for you, but you are to tell also that Jesus is coming back one day. That’s a part of it, but it’s not the centre. And there are people who major on the Genesis — and forget the rest — and there are people who major on the second coming and underplay the central bit about Jesus dying on the cross. And in both cases, it’s not giving the proper balance. Now why do I have a bit of a

[00:09:11] thing about this is because I have a sister and in this sister of mine. She married a man who’s a scientist and he’s a very high up in the scientific arena and, but he doesn’t believe in the Genesis story the same way I do. But I want to tell you he loves and she loves my sister to bring people to Christ and when they get operative in a church when Jini has been a pastor in a church, when she does so, and when he’s involved there they seek to advocate for how the gospel is true about Jesus came into the world and died on the cross for our sins. So it is possible for people to get, according to my opinion of it at least, not quite the correct idea of Genesis, and in the same way I think that about my sister. She and I, every time we get together, we often have a big discussion about

[00:10:07] something. She’s really big on women’s leadership in churches. There was a bit of history when my dad got a telephone call to go over to West Australia and help ordain Jenny, and he said, No, I won’t. Because although he loves his daughter, he loved his daughter, he’s passed away way now’ but, although he knew, she had a ministry and Jenny is an evangelistic person, who loves to bring people to Christ. Yet he didn’t agree in that point, but it’s not the major part of the story, so it’s possible to meet up with people who don’t get exactly the same viewpoint as you or I might have on Genesis and it’s possible to meet up with people who have different ways of understanding how it’s all gonna work out

[00:10:53] for the second coming, and yet be strong Christians. One of the things we have to do, is to learn to major on the majors but I don’t mean the second coming’s a minor in itself, but I mean that some of the interpretive schemes that Christians put together, like the people who lived in this area 50 years ago, and put out cassettes, had all sorts of ideas to get people to listen to, that they could be wrong, but doesn’t mean that they’re not Christians. Are you listening to me? We have to understand this in order to maintain our unity around the Right things. And what is that?

[00:11:33] The central pieces of the Gospel are what counts. Now, why am I saying this? It’s because in our passage today that we have from Mark’s Gospel in Chapter nine, verses 42 to 50, he’s talking about little ones, but not little bubbers, but little ones who believe in me. And the fact that the Christian community can be leading them into sin.

[00:11:57] Why does this really hit me? It’s actually because I have been running into people in the community who actually are just like this. Who came and started with a belief in God and came to want to believe in Christ, but ended up in a church who watered down the beliefs And did them a lot of damage. And Jesus is writing about the danger of we, the Christian community, not taking care about the little ones who come in amongst us.

[00:12:32] By little ones, it might be little ones in terms of the time that they’ve had to get to know the gospel story. And our church is pretty good about this, by the way. but there are some churches where the people get turned off their assurance of the gospel by the Christian Church doing an apologetic which is giving too much away to the world. That’s what’s been motivating me because I’ve been running into people of whom that’s true and they were little ones who didn’t know enough of the scriptures to dodge being turned away from a proper trust in the scriptures and in the gospel. Well, Jesus warns about it and so I put a title on this message, Little Ones, or There is Hell to be Paid for. And that might sound a shocking title to have,

[00:13:29] There’s Hell to be Paid for but we’d better read the rest of the passage. It says it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he was thrown into the sea, if you hurt a little one, and caused them not to believe properly or cause them to give up their belief or cause them to be compromised in their faith walk. And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off, or it’s better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go hell?” Jesus speaks about there being a terrible warning of what it is to work against a little one. I think the people who so work are probably not properly converted themselves, but they’re religious.

[00:14:22] One of the dangers of folk who decide to try out a Christian belief is that they might wander into a wrong church. In my days at college, Baptist college, studying there, we had too many students. This is in the era where our college used to teach that the Bible was true everywhere, believed in the inerrancy of scriptures. So we had so many students coming to it from all over Australia, that they had not room for them. This is where We had living quarters out at Brookfield. And so they made three of us to have to have a sleeping bag in the common room for the men because all the other proper rooms were taken up. And because I was the principal’s son, I had to be one of the ones who suffered that. And so the fellow who was in the bag, sleeping bag, next to me, he told me in the night

[00:15:22] times, he had talked to me. He told me his story of coming to Christ when he wondered, not knowing a thing about Christianity into a reading room that was put on by What turned out to be a bit of a sect. And they believed in somehow, having theories of creation and whatever, that believed in God, but the theories were wrong anyway. Nonetheless, it caused him to read the scriptures, and he came to Christ.

[00:15:50] But as he listened to their teaching across the weeks and the times when different magazines were given to read and people would talk to him, he suddenly got convicted that there was something wrong and he left it. He found he’s being converted to Christ, but in a place where they were teaching the wrong thing, he was a little one who woke up in time. And he eventually came to a church which took him in, a church down the Gold Coast, it’s a lovely story actually, because he was a surfing type person that used to turn up in church with his… what do you call it?ow’s your surfing? You know, yeah, wet suits. He’d turn up in that dripping, and they didn’t tell him off or anything.

[00:16:43] they didn’t hurt a little one they just knew he’d come and he learnt and eventually came to college. He ended up in the sleeping bag next to me in the common room and that fellows testimony is Christian communities can treat little ones well like that community down the gold coast did. A lot of other Baptist churches would have been on top of him to who dressed properly coming to church. And he was dripping coming into his wetsuit, but they had the common sense to know it was better that he was there to hear the Word of God and worry about the drips on the carpet.

[00:17:25] Well, it goes on if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It’s better for you to enter into life lame than the two feet be thrown into hell. There’s a terrible punishment. Now, it’s beginning to use this word hell. and the part of the gospel, particularly about the second coming, that I was wanting to get onto because it’s a part of an apologetic that people have to get folk to believe the gospel.

[00:17:49] But one way they say it’s easy to get folk to admit the truth of the scriptures if you don’t make it quite so severe. And there is floating around an interpretation of hell that it’s just a very quick moment where you’re punished and you are extinguished. It’s called annihilationism. The idea is to make it not so bad because sure enough, and if you did read the bulletin, you’ll see I’m talking about this.

[00:18:18] That’s some people think that that makes the gospel easier to swallow. If you’re just talking about they’re not being an angry God who’s angry forever, Or a place called hell where there’s no end to the suffering But the trouble is The the scriptures talk about hell being an unquenchable fire look at the inverse 44 If your foot causes you to sin cut it off It’s better for you to enter into life lame then with two feet be thrown into hell now the actual word for hell is a part of the difficulty here because

[00:18:58] If you go to the Old Testament, the Hebrew word for Hell is a word that comes across to us. You might have heard of Shi’ol is one word. And Shi’ol actually was their word for where the dead go, without necessarily commenting on what experience they will and have in the place for the dead. And as the Old Testament taught that, it’s not as though the Old Testament teaching is just drastically wrong. The Old Testament teaching was God giving his truth step by step. It’s a progressive revelation that happens through time, and he’s going to refine it but not contradict what was previously given. The Old Testament is not counted as not correct. It’s just not yet the full story the New Testament gives about the new covenant

[00:19:51] to replace the Old Covenant. Not that the Old Covenant was a mistake, but that it was what God was using them to teach certain truths. He was going to add to those truths in the New Covenant coming in the New Testament, and a part of that had to do with what happens after death, and the word Shiel as the place for the dead. Now, Jesus actually added a bit of a correction or, not correction, that was wrong teaching, added a bit of progress to the understanding of the place for the dead, by giving a story of the rich man

[00:20:25] and Lazarus, the pauper. And both of them die, and they both go down to a word that is a translation into the Greek of the Sheol Word, Hades. Put your hand up if you’ve heard the word Hades, right, Hades is the place of the dead. But Hades is not necessarily a place, according to Jesus’ storyline, of punishment, because there were two parts to it. And the rich man went where there was punishment for how he had misused his riches and been

[00:21:00] very proud and all the rest. And the poor man, who’d really been very poor, he was in the better part. In fact, it’s called Abraham’s bosom. I was as a kid had a big trouble getting the wrong idea out of my mind about what was the better part of Hades because it was where Abraham’s bosom was, is that because he was that fat you know I you’ve no idea how children sometimes think. What is Abraham’s bosom? Well the next part I learned about it was from the song Rock My Soul in the bosom of Abraham you know that song and then I got the picture of Abraham was big and strong and he had little Lazarus and he’s saying,

[00:21:41] they’re there, young man, you’re gonna be okay, and I had this picture of Rock My Soul and the bosom of Abraham, but actually the language was a metaphor to go where Abraham’s in charge, and when Abraham’s in charge, it was not a place of punishment. And Lazarus, that’s where he went. So Jesus’ story says that there’s a chasm between where the good part of Hades is

[00:22:08] the bad part of Hades with his punishment and the rich man went to the punishment but they could see a cross and the rich man saw Lazarus in comfort with Abraham and he calls out and he calls out Father Abraham please send Lazarus to speak to my relatives my brothers lest they come to this place of torment so there you see that there’s a good part Hades where there’s no torment, and as a bad part of Hades, in the Old Testament times when people died who did not know God, who didn’t serve God, they were suffering in the bad part of Hades, and this rich man was calling on Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his brothers. You know what Abraham said? He said they’ve got the prophets, let them believe them and the storyline of Jesus goes on to

[00:23:03] to say I’m quoting another passage now, but it goes on to say if they don’t believe the prophets, the scriptures, nor will they believe if somebody rises from the dead in the immediacy of his replies talking about Lazarus acquiescing to the request to go back and visit the brothers and turning up at the front door knocking, you could imagine what would happen when they knew about Lazarus having died and they opened the front door.

[00:23:28] Aaah! It’s Lazarus, he would be quite upright. And, that’s what the rich man had in mind, to frighten these relatives into realizing it was all sincere and real. But you know, that place of Hades is a place where there can be comfort. Question to you before I get past this important little detail. When Jesus died, to where did he go?

[00:23:58] When Jesus died, to where did he go? Shout out if you like. Hades is the truthful answer, the New Testament Sermons tell about this, Jesus study with Hades. Did that mean that he went down there to continue suffering for our sins? And you’re correct, people that are sitting in the front row usually are. Yeah Jesus finished suffering for our sins on the cross in the hours of darkness and when he came to the time of finishing what was happening on the cross he said it is finished and then he said father into your hands I commend my spirit so what Jesus did to save your soul he paid for your sins in his death on the cross and the suffering that he had was physical yes but it was also spiritual when he bore your sins and the

[00:24:57] wrath of God for your sins and had to cry out my God my God how you have forsaken me. Jesus finished paying for your sins on the cross and then commended himself into the hands of the Father who then let him go to Hades and there is a Apostles Creed we often recite that talks about Jesus going to Hades, who gives the implication that he went for another dose of punishment for our sins but that’s actually a misunderstanding. Well what we’re saying here is that we wanted to really hone in on about what hell actually is but the word for hell that’s being used here in now Mark 9 is not hades, it’s not shiol. Shiol will be a Hebrew word and Hades will be the Greek translation thereof.

[00:25:48] But the word is another word. Let me fish and see who knows. Who knows what is the word underlining, this Greek word in the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 9, verse 42. Come on, I’ll bet there’s many of you do know, but you just don’t want to say. Do you know? Hey? Yeah, he did see, I knew he did. Gehenna. And Gehenna is the word that the Jewish population in Jerusalem used for their rubbish dump.

[00:26:27] Now, why did they call this on, I think it’s a Southwestern side of Jerusalem, just outside the wall sort of business? There was a valley which was a local rubbish dump. They didn’t have trucks coming and picking it up. They had people taking their rubbish and tipping it over into this little valley, not little valley, this valley full of junk and rubbish, because it is not a very clean thing to leave it all building up with flies and all the rest. They used to burn it.

[00:26:58] For 100 years according to some sources, the fire outside Jerusalem across the years had been a place of constant burning, constant fire. The sources are not necessarily all saying the same thing about how long it was there burning a hundred years or not. And so you can find people who’ll cite some other spot that doesn’t quite agree with the hundred years bit. But Gehenna was outside the wall of Jerusalem where the rubbish was being burnt and the flies were there and the smoke came up. It was a picture of constant burning.

[00:27:36] And the word gehenna comes from that meaning, constant, and it gained that meaning. There were incidents in the Old Testament time when some very bad kings, two of them in particular, had prosecuted a certain worship of a foreign god, Molech, I think his name was the god, and they sacrificed some of their own children to be burnt alive in Gehenna. Now, the moment you go searching back in history for exactly what happened when, you’re going to get suggestions and they’re not all the same, but basically that’s where the name Gehenna in the Day of Jesus came to be understood. Now, when there’s someone in the scriptures quoted as talking about hell and uses the word gehenna, it means the unstopping flames. It means the unquenchable fire. It means the dreadful thing of a sacrifice where back in history little kitties were

[00:28:46] placed and thrown into fire. What a shocking way to worship your Researchers. that’s where the name Gehenna comes from now. How many people, writing things that have come to be in our New Testament, actually use the word Gehenna for hell?” Let’s see. I bet there are not many of you who know this. Is there even one? How many people are there who have written in the New Testament and use a word for hell – Gehenna? See if I can get any one person ?” I’m guessing I won’t get anyone who can come and you can prove me wrong. Put your hand up. If you can say how many times, how many people is my question? How many people would use the word Gehenna for hell? I didn’t think so because I didn’t know either until I looked it up. But the answer to that is there’s One’s the major source of use for the word in his Jesus, and the other one is his brother,

[00:29:52] James, James the Just, not James the Brother of John, but James, the brother of our Lord, and that’s a word where he uses it as ongoing suffering in the book of James, and Jesus uses the word to picture the fact that hell is a place not of annihilation, Balavana ceasing.” And so you’ll find in this particular place, he goes on to say about hell, see if my eye can catch it, it’s better for you to be lame than with two feet. Still, be lame because you’ve lost something and be thrown into hell. That word is kahina. He goes on to say in the next part, I don’t know whether you need to advance the slide or not.

[00:30:45] Verse 42, go down to verse, let me see. All right, it’s verse 47. It’s better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes and be thrown into hell. And that’s the word gehenna. But then he adds a description. What’s this place gehenna, where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched? That’s what hell is.

[00:31:29] It’s where the worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. Now, it is possible, if you were to have this as the only verse to go on, to have a question mark put against the fact that hell will be an unquenchable punishment without an end. If it were the only verse, I could understand people cringing from it and trying to have an apologetic that makes it a bit easier, a bit that’s what I’ve written in the bullet,

[00:32:03] and a bit easier to accept if God made the punishment for the last something it got over and done with quickly. It’d be more merciful.” In my opinion, it would sound more merciful, but it’s not what Jesus says. And so, I collected a number of words about what the Bible does say. And what I’m doing here is presenting the fact that we don’t have a choice to soften

[00:32:32] what is a very difficult doctrine to swallow. The fact that when you have a relative who turns away from God and they die and there’s a funeral and you’re sitting there, and in your mind has that person gone to an eternal hell of suffering. When Michelle’s dad passed away, he did have a moment where he may have come to Christ and we don’t know and but he had relatives who themselves didn’t really believe about the whole Christian story. But what was amazing to me was how

[00:33:21] they would say all sorts of things like well he’s up there with his wife who’d become a Christian they were having a great time and they talked about them as though it were true that it was in Heaven. It was almost impossible for them to have to think about the possibility that by not coming to Christ if he persisted into the end means that he was in a place of unquenchable fire when a worm doesn’t die and the fire is not quenched. I find that myself very hard to countenance. I was the person that took his funeral and saw these things. I want to tell you it’s a very difficult thing to go to funerals when you don’t know where the person has gone.

[00:34:19] And you don’t know, sometimes, when you’re leading the funeral whether how much of that you should say, I don’t rub it in at the funeral, it’s not the time. But let me tell, you let me read to you some verses of the scriptures. And I’ll just go through some of them. Matthew 13 will be the first. And in Matthew 13, verse 49 and following. So it will be at the end of the age.

[00:34:48] The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place, there will be a weeping and gnashing of teeth. Let’s go to Psalm 21, verse 3. And in this Psalm 21, verse 3, it’s a psalm that is about the facts of the future. For you meet him with rich blessings. You set a crown of fine gold upon his head. I’m not sure why I’ve got that verse. Let’s go to another one.

[00:35:31] It’s probably the next verse, but I won’t link it. Matthew 25 and 46. Matthew 25 and 46. And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. Now, the key word to understanding this verse is that word, eternal. It means unending. And a part of the gospel that is the most beautiful part of the gospel is where Jesus keeps talking about the people

[00:36:11] that come to him are going to live forever. The people who come to him will have life and have it more abundantly, and the people that come to Christ receive in receiving Christ as saviour, they receive eternal life, which is to say that when Jesus becomes your saviour and he gives you the Holy Spirit. You are made spiritually internally. You’re made someone who cannot die in the spiritual part of you.

[00:36:40] You have eternal life. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. In Christ Jesus our Lord. That’s Romans 6.23, one of my favorite verses. For the very reason I’m talking about, lot of people out there, they think that we’ve got a Gospel that says if you come and be a Christian you’ll go to heaven, that’s about as much as they understand. That’s not wrong that much but the actual eternal life that you receive is not only when you get to glory and you enter into heaven and

[00:37:17] whatever… Yeah, you do live forever, that’s true, but the eternal life you get is the moment that you bow in prayer, that moment that your heart is open to god I’m you respond to the gospel and you say Jesus I’m sorry for all my sin thank you that you went to the cross and died for me right now I ask you to be my Lord and Savior right now I ask you to send your spirit to live in me and in that moment of coming to Christ as savior what happens to you is that you get the Holy Spirit, making you alive eternally. From the moment of your Christian conversion on, you have life. And according to the prayer meeting

[00:38:05] that we had before church, one of the passages in Corinthians we’re looking at was, if any person be in Christ, he becomes a brand new person. He’s a person that receives eternal life forever. And it begins the moment you come to Christ, though you’ve got lots of troubles trying to live it out and to be sanctified, nonetheless you have life. He that has Christ has Gan, and he that does not have Christ does not have life. I ask you the question this morning, do you have Christ? Because in him you have eternal life. That word eternal, but it is the same word that describes the

[00:38:50] punishment for the unrighteous. There’s a big list of them and they go away. These unrighteous ones into eternal punishment. And I had a big long list, I’m not going to take you through them all, but the Scriptures teach the final judgment for those who are lost is that they will be lost eternally. Thrown into the lake of fire prepared for the Deuterheoth these angels,

[00:39:18] which is an unending lake of fire. It’s a metaphor, perhaps. That sometimes are used as a fire, oh, you got it there, Revelation 21.8. You’re very quick down in the back there. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the deaths detestable, as for murderers, for the sexually immoral, for sorcerers, for idolators, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake

[00:39:43] that burns with fire and sulfur, Which is the second death. It’s not just that your body dies, but that beyond the first death, the wages of sin is death, that death being talked about is death all over. It starts when the heart stops, starts when a motor action happens. It starts with when you pass away.

[00:40:12] Or, whatever nice way we might want to talk about, you kick the bucket or whatever people want to say to make it a bit more funny, but death is not a funny thing. And then beyond that is the second death, which is the fact that you command the punishment for being a sinner who neglected God, who turned away from God, and it is a dreadful punishment. the biggest dreadfulness of it all, is not just the worm that won’t quit, it’s annoying, nor the fire that continues to burn, but it is, that it is forever. And there is a consciousness in that time where if you are the person that goes to that fire, that lake of fire there’s a consciousness that you have. I was going to say every day

[00:41:08] I don’t even know if there are days or the time goes, but a constant consciousness that you’ve missed the salvation. That Jesus came to die on a cross that you might have. And that is why we need the Holy Spirit to awaken us to the terrible terrible shocking awful thing it would be to have an eternal punishment and where God Spirit comes what His Spirit does is to awaken people to the dire danger that they are in, in continuing, is a person that has not come to Christ. He that has the Son has life. And he that does not have the Son does not have the life that’s needed

[00:42:02] because of the second death. That big, long list, I think all of us might have some of that, though the description is when people are extremely bad. Nonetheless, we’re sinners. Christ would not have died on the cross for us and given his precious blood if it were not the case that we’re in a desperate position. I want to say here that the Bible teaches about the reality of the punishment of hell

[00:42:41] as being unending. And the thing I want you to notice about it is that the person who speaks most of hell as this terrible place that never ends is the one who loves you most. Because by his being the infinite God-man, by him being eternal God but yet inhuman form human, took on humanity. He was enabled to take on board your punishment. The infinite experience, all wrapped up

[00:43:18] in those three hours of darkness, of him bearing your punishment for your sins so that He cried to the Father, why have you forsaken me? The one who loves you the most is It’s the one who talks about hell as going on forever. The one who loves you the most is the one who most talks about in fact the only extra ones is Brother James. It’s too shocking a thought, not to be true when Jesus is the one that tells it. And Jesus is the one who, because of how shocking it is, came and bore your sin and bore your punishment in all that it was.

[00:44:10] He being the infinite God-Man was able to do that, in those hours of darkness on the cross. Run to Him. While you’re awakened, one of the things we should do, if we find that God’s Spirit is pressing on us, giving us that sense. John’s Gospel says when Jesus goes to Heaven he was going to send the Spirit and it was expedient to he said I got onto this last week, expedient for you, he told his disciples that I go away for if I do not go the Holy Spirit will not come, and it was an amazing thing in our home group when we realized that the person it was most expedient for Jesus to go away was, he went away from all the suffering he’s been doing. He went and a way to be crowned king of kings and lord of lords,

[00:44:55] it was expedient for him, but that’s not what he said. He said, expedient for you that I go away because if I do not go away, the Holy Spirit will not come but when he comes, he will convict, convince, persuade. He will convict for a world of sin. And when that Holy Spirit’s ministry of convicting a person of sin is, when that conviction comes which you’re not right with God, That conviction comes that you don’t have Christ. That realization that the Gospel says,

[00:45:28] He that has the Son has life. He that does not have the Son does not have life. And you’re sitting here without life! And if I could, if I could cause that awakening to come on you, to make you aware that you’re without life. And you face an eternal punishment in hell, I would shout and call. I do whatever’s necessary to somehow hope. Thank goodness it’s the Holy Spirit’s job

[00:45:55] who awakens us to the danger we’re in. And if you have any sense of that danger coming on you this morning, be sure that before this day is through you get down by your bed at home and you cry out to Jesus and you say, Jesus, I need you, I want you. Please me, my Lord unsaved, Come into my life, by your spirit, and give me that eternal life. The wages of sin is death in all of that word death means.

[00:46:27] The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. May there be someone this morning who by the end of this day finds that eternal life Amen Heavenly Father I thank you for The power in the words of Jesus I think you father for the power of the scriptures I Thank you for The way the Holy Spirit uses them and I pray this morning that your Holy Spirit We’ll awaken some soul here that they need the Saviour desperately, and we’ll find Him today. We pray that in Jesus’ Name, Amen.