[0:00] Well, friends, do you ever feel guilt? And what do you do when you feel guilt? It's an important question.
[0:12] Have you ever worshipped an idol or wronged God or your neighbour? Ever used someone? I think part of being a Christian is actually learning from God's Word, letting God tell you the difference between real guilt for sin and sort of pseudo-guilt for things that actually aren't sin or actually not the kind of guilt that Jesus dealt with.
[0:36] And so once you can distinguish, you can actually then focus, discard the pseudo-guilt and focus on the objective stuff and deal with it. And God has a means of dealing with it.
[0:48] His means is the death of his Son. His means is the atonement of Christ. Just as we saw last week, Jesus drank the cup of the wrath of God down to the dregs of the objective sins you've done, where you've sought your own autonomy against God, where you've shaken the fist or where you've turned your back or used other people, where you've selfishly turned aside from God's ways for your own ways.
[1:15] All those kind of objective sins are things that Jesus died for and took the punishment for. And in the Gospel, we want to free people from that guilt as well.
[1:26] So as we think about hell, I don't want you to think there's a game going on here where we want to preach hell so that you are manipulated and giving more money to the church or coming more or, you know what I mean?
[1:38] That's what people think. They think Christians preach hell in order to manipulate and to hold people bondage. But actually, Gospel Christianity, Biblical Christianity is actually the opposite of that.
[1:50] It's freeing people from the fear of hell, the fear of judgment. So friends, hell is real. We believe hell is real.
[2:00] But what we want is for people to get out of that destiny through our Lord Jesus. And that's the most important thing in the world. And you could die any time.
[2:11] So it's important that you are sure and that you make sure you're friends here of Jesus. Now what I'd like to do is share with us a video clip from, I don't watch this TV show normally.
[2:23] It's called ER, Emergency Room. It's about a hospital. And the clip is basically a guy on his deathbed. He's got lung cancer. He's got blood on his hands. He's done some really bad things in his life.
[2:34] And he's called for a chaplain to come and help him get forgiveness. And the twist is or the tension is that this chaplain doesn't believe in hell or sin. And that's quite common today for Christian chaplains.
[2:47] So why don't we watch this and just see how this plays out. Thanks, Brenton. Seven months later, a police officer came forward.
[3:04] The boy was framed for the murder. He didn't do it. You couldn't have known that.
[3:16] God tried to stop me from killing an innocent man and I ignored the sign. How can I even hope for forgiveness? I think sometimes it's easier to feel guilty than forgiven.
[3:37] Which means what? That maybe your guilt over these deaths has become your reason for living. Maybe you need a new reason to go on.
[3:49] I don't want to go on. Can't you see I'm old? I have cancer. I've had enough. The only thing that is holding me back is that I am afraid.
[4:01] I'm afraid of what comes next. And what do you think that is? You tell me. Is atonement even possible? What does God want from me? I think it's up to each one of us to interpret what God wants.
[4:15] So people can do anything? They can rape. They can murder. They can steal. Only name God. It's okay. No, that's not what I'm saying. What are you saying? Because all I'm hearing is some new age.
[4:28] God is love. One size fits all crap. Hey, Dr. Truman. No. I don't have time for this now. Greg, it's okay. I understand.
[4:38] No, you don't understand. You don't understand. How could you possibly say that? No, you listen to me. I want a real chaplain who believes in a real God and a real hell.
[4:50] I hear that you're frustrated, but you need to ask yourself. No, I don't need to ask myself. I need answers. And all your questions and your uncertainty are only making things worse.
[5:05] I know you're upset. God, I need someone who will look me in the eye and tell me how to find forgiveness because I am running out of time.
[5:18] I'm trying to help. Well, don't. Just get out. Get out. Get out. Thank you.
[5:32] It's pretty powerful, isn't it? We in the gospel have the message where people can find that certainty that he's looking for, don't we? We know the message of atonement through our Lord Jesus who drank the cup of the wrath of the Father.
[5:49] We know where forgiveness is found. It's really quite sad and the rest of the show, they kind of win him over to sort of self-righteousness and to kind of making it up just by doing good works.
[6:01] But as Matt shared, that does not work. Hell is real. God's wrath is real. And the guilt we feel for sin is so real.
[6:11] And so, friends, the gift we have to love people, to share with them, to warn them of hell is a precious thing. I hope that you are serious about your relationship with God, that you want not just to receive the benefits yourself, but to have other people find that peace with God, to find that assurance.
[6:33] I hope you can look people in the eye and tell them the way of salvation for our Lord Jesus Christ. People like to think, don't they, that you can just make it up, but we know you can't do that.
[6:48] Now, one of the big questions that came up from last week, and I want to spend pretty much this sermon addressing it, is I taught last week that Jesus was in hell on the cross, that he was absorbing the wrath of the Father as well as the Father forsaking him.
[7:04] He said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And so he was experiencing hell on the cross. And several people asked me about, well, what happened when Jesus died? Where did he go when he died?
[7:16] And we know that the Apostles' Creed teaches he descended into hell. So what does that mean to say he descended into hell? When I taught, he was sort of in relational hell on the cross.
[7:29] Well, I want to explore that with you tonight and test with you whether the Apostles' Creed matches what the Bible says, and for us to work out what was Jesus doing between his death and his resurrection.
[7:43] Now, this is pretty hard work, friends. Friends, I'm going to have to take you on a tour of the underworld, of the places God describes as being where you go when you die.
[7:57] There are three main terms that have been translated hell in our Bibles. And, yeah, I'll talk more about translations in a minute. But the three main terms are the Hebrew word sheol, which is the main Hebrew word for where dead people go, the Greek word hades, and the Greek word Gehenna.
[8:19] So we've got sheol, hades, Gehenna. So what is a very kind of simple word in English? Hell is actually quite a complicated number of different places in the Bible.
[8:30] It's not unlike our English word worship. It's a very kind of we know what that word means, but actually in the Bible there's no one word for worship. It's a number of different biblical words that make our English translation worship.
[8:43] And it's the same for hell. So let's work through them and see how we go. And then we'll work out where Jesus went. If you ask someone in the Old Covenant, if a child asks their Jewish dad or their Israelite dad, where do we go when we die, what happens when we die, inevitably they would say, we go to Sheol.
[9:05] Sheol is the abode of the dead. It's a negative place. It's not a good place to be, not least because if you're there, you're dead. There's not much else on offer in the Old Covenant except Sheol.
[9:20] You definitely don't in the Old Covenant just disappear when you die. There's no annihilation. There's no kind of just non-existence. Sheol is consciousness.
[9:32] It's the abode of the dead. Everyone goes there. And it is spoken that the wicked especially are punished there, or at least that they are punished in this life and go there quicker.
[9:44] But there is some punishment there, I think. In the Old Covenant, death is the great enemy. Death entered the world through sin. Adam and Eve, they will surely die if they rebel against God.
[9:57] And death enters the world and the pattern of death continues. And so Sheol is described as being... An Israelite would say something is as insatiable as Sheol.
[10:08] Sheol is hungry for people. Or they would say, if you're close to death, you're caught in the snares of Sheol. Sheol is more than just the grave.
[10:20] So that's why it's unhelpful when some of our Bibles translate Sheol grave. They don't quite want to call it hell, but grave, it means more than tomb. It means the abode of the dead.
[10:32] It's contrasted in Job with the highest heavens. So you've got the highest heavens and the lowest depths is Sheol. So it is a place that's low.
[10:43] Although even that language is figurative, but it's useful. So here are some Psalms. And you can read these in your NRSV because every time there's a Sheol, it's just translated as Sheol, which is really helpful.
[10:55] Psalm 6, verse 4 and 5. I'll read it. You don't have to look it up. Turn, O Lord, save my life. Deliver me for the sake of your steadfast love. For in death there is no remembrance of you.
[11:06] In Sheol, who can give you praise? Or Psalm 31. Do not let me be put to shame, O Lord, for I call on you. Let the wicked be put to shame.
[11:17] Let them go dumbfounded to Sheol. Or Psalm 86. For great is your steadfast love toward me. You have delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol.
[11:28] And this language is kind of a bit ambiguous because it's talking about God is protecting someone from a disease or from death in a war. And so it's like rescuing them from Sheol in this life with maybe a hint of a resurrection from Sheol one day.
[11:44] Now God is still sovereign over Sheol. It's not run by the wicked. God is even described as being present in Sheol in this sense.
[11:55] In that famous Psalm 139. Do you know it? Where can you hide from God? He says, So God is everywhere.
[12:10] God is sovereign and the boss over the heavens, the earth, and Sheol under the earth. And there are little glints of hope of resurrection. Psalm 19.
[12:21] God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol for he will receive me. And also there's a text in Hosea which Paul quotes in 1 Corinthians 15. Where death is your sting?
[12:34] Where is your victory? In Hosea it's saying, Sheol, where is your victory? And we'll come back to that. So that's Sheol. Now when we get to the New Testament, the first century, God's people are living under Roman rule and they effectively speak three languages, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.
[12:53] And Greek is the street language of the marketplace. And so there's a very important translation of the Old Testament into Greek called the Septuagint. And that was pretty much or very often the Bible used by Jesus, this Greek translation of the Old Testament or the Bible used by the apostles.
[13:09] It has a few extra books but it's got the key canonical ones we want. And in this translation, Sheol is always translated as Hades.
[13:21] And so that's where we get Sheol and Hades. They are very similar, overlapping but not identical concepts. Hades seems to be a bit more increased in intensity in terms of punishment or prison.
[13:35] Hades is not as benign as Sheol. And Hades also has some connotations from Greek philosophy. You know, the pagan Greeks had a lot of stories about Hades and things that happened there.
[13:50] But we can leave those aside because we know from Jesus himself, he spoke about Hades as a place of torment. And that's most significant in that parable of Luke 16.
[14:03] You know, the rich man and Lazarus. And the rich man is being tormented by fire, it says, in Hades in Luke 16. So it's a place of imprisonment of souls.
[14:13] It's a place of punishment, it seems. And we've got this great text in Matthew 16, the gates of hell. Well, that's Hades. So when Jesus says to Peter, I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.
[14:32] Now, just trying to link that to Sheol, Jesus may actually not, he may not be talking about Satan at that point. He may not, we tend to think he's saying Satan's headquarters will not prevail against the church.
[14:45] But he might actually just be saying the reign of death will not prevail against the church because the church are those who follow the risen Lord Jesus, the one who has defeated death.
[14:58] And so the reign of Sheol, the reign of Hades, will not stop the church. So when we think of hell, we've got to work out whether we're talking Sheol and maybe Hades.
[15:11] Well, there's this, before I go to Gehenna, I'll give you a text. The one Paul read raises the issue of was Jesus ever in Hades or Sheol?
[15:24] And in the day of Pentecost, Peter quotes Psalm 16, applying it to Jesus as a prophecy of Jesus about the resurrection.
[15:36] And I'll read it again. And listen for the Hades. Now that itself is Sheol talk, talking about the snares of Sheol, where impossible to hold Jesus in his power.
[15:53] For David says concerning him, I saw the Lord always before me. He is at my right hand so that I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart was glad and my tongue rejoiced. We're quoting Psalm 16 now.
[16:04] And he's quoting the Greek translation of Psalm 16. Moreover, my flesh will live in hope, for you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One experience corruption.
[16:18] And so in preaching the resurrection, Peter says, Jesus did not remain in Hades, but did not experience corruption, but God raised him from the dead. And you could argue that it's just talking about a tomb.
[16:29] But I think quoting Psalm 16, which actually has Sheol, it's actually saying more than just a tomb. That's what I'm going to argue tonight. The King James Version, by the way, has kind of old school.
[16:42] It's got, Because thou would not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. It actually just translates Sheol Hades as hell, which has been the dominant kind of translation in at least recent history, the last 300 years.
[16:58] And so I think that's a clue that Jesus was more than in a tomb. He actually descended to Sheol or Hades. And I'll give you three more texts to argue that a bit later.
[17:12] Now let's talk about Gehenna, the third term. This is where hell gets scary. This is where we get our most fierce images of hell from, this idea of Gehenna.
[17:23] Now the funny thing is, you can go to Gehenna today with Paul Barker. He takes tours there. It's a place in Israel called the Valley of Hinnom, and it exists today.
[17:36] And I asked Paul, he's been there, and he said there's still some graves there. Now the Valley of Hinnom is part of Jerusalem. It's about a mile from the Temple Mount.
[17:47] It's a stone's throw from God's holy place. It's part of God's gift of the land. It's described in the book of Joshua. You know when they list, you know, this tribe has this landmark to this landmark.
[17:58] Well, one of the landmarks is the Valley of Hinnom. It's a great place in the land flowing with milk and honey. So why does it become hell? That's the question. Why does this beautiful place near God's, the locus of God's presence, why does it become hell?
[18:14] Well, the answer is, if you've read your Old Covenant, is it becomes a place of pagan idolatry, pagan worship, and in particular, a place where they sacrifice infants and babies to pagan gods.
[18:28] You know, in clear disobedience and horror to the Old Covenant worldview, which cherishes life, cherishes people made in God's image, and cherishes children of believers as being in the Covenant.
[18:43] So they're God's children in many texts, and they are sacrificed to Baal and to Molech. So the key thing though, friends, is for Gehenna or Hinnom, is that it's idolatry.
[18:58] And that flows into killing babies. It's not just that babies are killed there. The most furiating thing from God's perspective is the idolatry.
[19:09] So you must remember that when we sin, it's not just the evil we do, it's the idolatry that lies behind our sin. Now King Manasseh was a particularly bad king, and it's spoken of him in the list of the things he did wrong.
[19:22] He made his son. So his firstborn son, should have been the next king of Israel, passed through the fire in the valley of the sons of Hinnom. And then King Josiah comes after Manasseh, and one of King Josiah's, he was a great king.
[19:38] I've named my son after him. He became king when he was eight. My son turns eight next year, so we're excited about that. We're going to have a coronation birthday party. We're needing some actors to be some pagan people that we destroy.
[19:54] So that's what King Josiah did. He cleaned up the valley of Hinnom as best as he could, and he destroyed the altars to Molech. Sometimes it's called Topeth.
[20:07] Just destroyed these really bad places where bad things have gone down. Just imagine killing a baby on an altar. But it turns out after Josiah dies, Hinnom again becomes the kind of hill song of Molech and the capital of child sacrifice.
[20:27] And so Jeremiah really, with the word of God, prophetic word of God, really arcs up against what's happening in the valley of Hinnom. This is what he says in Jeremiah 7.
[20:37] I'll read it to you. The people of Judah have done evil in my eyes, declares the Lord. They have set up their detestable idols in the house that bears my name and have defiled it.
[20:49] They have built the high places of Topeth in the valley of Ben-Hinnom to burn their sons and daughters in the fire, something I did not command, nor did it enter my mind, says the Lord.
[21:04] So beware the days are coming, declares the Lord, when people will no longer call it Topeth, or the valley of Ben-Hinnom, but the valley of slaughter, for they will bury the dead in Topeth until there is no more room.
[21:17] Then the carcasses of this people will become food for the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and there will be no one to frighten them away. And so God says, you do these detestable things in this valley, I will make it the valley of slaughter.
[21:33] I will not only give you over to that, I will judge you with such fury that people will be knee-deep in the dead. It will be the valley of slaughter. And that's God's anger against human idolatry and sin.
[21:46] Now what seems to happen then, while Israel are in exile, or when they come back, this valley just has a bad vibe, and it becomes a rubbish tip.
[21:59] And what they did with rubbish tips in those days to sort of kind of cleanse it was to just keep it on fire. And people would throw in the valley of Hinnom, not just their rubbish, but corpses, maybe corpses of lepers or outcasts, or people who can't afford their own kind of burial places.
[22:17] And so it just becomes the most, it's had the most disgusting things happen. It's had the worst judgment happen, and it becomes a perpetual fire of kind of unclean corpses and rubbish.
[22:29] You can imagine it's a pretty horrible place in a stone's throw from God's temple. And then Jesus comes along, and pretty much picking up some metaphors that were used by the kind of the pseudo-prophets, the apocryphal prophets that were around, that aren't in our Bible.
[22:52] He makes Gehenna his metaphor for judgment. So not only has it been a literal, horrible place of evil and judgment, it becomes Jesus' favorite metaphor, even more than Hades, for what judgment is.
[23:06] So when Jesus says, if anyone in anger says, you fool, you'll be liable to the hell of fire, literally he's saying, you'll be liable to the Gehenna of fire.
[23:17] That is, I will throw you in the Gehenna of fire. I will throw you in that rubbish dump in judgment, in that unclean, awful place. Or when he says, you know, it's better for you to cut off your hand than to be thrown into the fire of hell.
[23:31] He's saying, better to cut off your hand, lose one of your members, than to be thrown into the Gehenna of fire. It's Jesus' favorite metaphor for God's judgment.
[23:43] It's a powerful visual reminder of what happens with human evil and godless practices when God's fury is poured out on them. It was a good part of God's land.
[23:55] It was part of the land of milk and honey. And Hinnom, or Gehenom, the valley of Hinnom becomes Gehenna, actually becomes twisted and kind of paganized by evil.
[24:11] And it becomes a warning of God's response to the depths of human idolatry, his anger against sin. So friends, when we talk about hell, we're talking about a few different images used in scripture.
[24:25] And there are a few more that I haven't spoken about, about Abaddon and Tartarus and the lake of fire and outer darkness or blackest darkness. There's actually a lot going on here. When we say Jesus descended into hell, what do we mean?
[24:39] Are we saying he descended to Sheol? Or are we saying that he went to Gehenna? It's an important question. I believe that Jesus didn't have to suffer any more than on the cross.
[24:58] I don't believe there are some theories about the harrowing of hell where Jesus had to suffer in Gehenna to kind of continue the atonement for a couple of days bearing the fire and the wrath of God.
[25:11] I don't think we have any scriptural evidence for that. Jesus, when he said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? That was the atonement. And then he said, it is finished. And so, the atonement was finished at that point on the cross.
[25:26] So, why would we say then Jesus descended into hell? Well, I think my argument tonight is, friends, that it's saying Jesus descended into Sheol.
[25:39] He didn't just stay in a tomb, but in spirit he descended into Sheol. Like Jonah in the whale, in Matthew 12, Jesus said he would be in the heart of the earth for three days.
[25:53] Now, a tomb in Jerusalem is not the heart of the earth. Sheol is the heart of the earth, the abode of the dead, the underworld. And actually, this has been hard for me because I don't know Latin, but looking at the Apostles' Creed, which has a kind of a convoluted history, the Latin of it literally says he descended to the lower places.
[26:16] And in fact, the Greek of the Apostles' Creed has the same thing. He descended to the lower places using the exact term used by Paul in Ephesians 4, which I think gives it its biblical grounding.
[26:28] Ephesians 4, as Paul read, speaks of the ascender Christ giving gifts to the church. But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ's gift.
[26:40] Therefore, it is said, when he ascended on high, he made captivity itself a captive. He gave gifts to his people. That's quoting Psalm 68. And then Paul explains it.
[26:51] When it says he ascended, what does it mean but that he had also descended to the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens so that he might fill all things.
[27:08] So when Jesus was ascended and made Lord of all in his resurrection, he gave gifts to the church. Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastor, teachers.
[27:21] And the victory of Jesus, Paul teaches, is that he didn't just ascend but he descended to the lower parts. And that word for lower parts is what the Apostles' Creed uses.
[27:35] Now here's the counter-argument and here I'm really putting myself against some really big names in the church. John Stott and Wayne Grudem. They say that to say Jesus descended to the lower parts just refers to the incarnation.
[27:51] That he left heaven and descended to earth, the lower parts. But friends, I'm arguing today that it's actually talking about Sheol or Hades. they're the lower parts he went to and I've got two reasons.
[28:05] Firstly, Paul is talking about the gifts that come from the ascension and I can't imagine the Apostle Paul who preaches Christ crucified talking about incarnation and ascension without mentioning the Easter event.
[28:21] That just seems very unlike the Apostle Paul to bypass the Easter event. and Paul also says when he ascended on high he made captivity itself captive.
[28:33] So for Jesus to be Lord of all I think he's arguing he went down to the place of captivity and went through it and defeated it and so that even now that place is captive to him.
[28:47] So he made the place of captivity captive so that he could fill all things heaven, earth and under the earth. Sheol. So to see Paul's reasoning he's talking about the ascension of Jesus overall he made captivity captive not just because he became incarnate but because he died and went through Sheol.
[29:07] So friends I think the creed is biblical if you read it in that way. If you read it as sort of Roman Catholic and as Dante's Inferno and those kind of things that's not biblical.
[29:20] Jesus didn't go through Gehenna he didn't go through a lake of fire but I think it is right to say he descended into hell in the sense of he descended into Sheol which I think is exactly why our version in the Anglican church has translated it he descended to the dead.
[29:37] So he was crucified, died and was buried in a tomb he descended to the dead. That's Sheol. So I encourage you to say it meaning it. And this actually coincides with another and final very difficult text in the New Testament that's 1 Peter 3 which talks about Jesus preaching to spirits in prison.
[29:56] Do you know that text? It's a very hard text so I'll read it to you. 1 Peter 3 verse 19 Now that's a hard text.
[30:27] I'm not saying 100% on this but I think it's arguing that after Jesus said it is finished in his spirit in glory he began kind of his victory run over Sheol and he went and proclaimed the gospel that is I am Lord when he proclaims he says I am Lord we say he is Lord he proclaimed that to the spirits in prison especially to that sinful global generation of Noah's generation that he is now Lord it's not an evangelistic run it's a gospel announcement of his lordship what I want you to see friends is that in the atonement Jesus went through hell on the cross and then he began his exaltation stage and that was going through on a victory run over the underworld which I think would have included at some point taking the thief on the cross to be with him in the place of paradise and as well as that he descends to the dead to the place of captivity to make captivity itself captive so that he might fill all things and then two days later in the resurrection he hammers the final nail in death's coffin and the victory is his and he ascends to the right hand of God so from the time of the cross it's all win it's all victory he went through hell through sheol on a victory run rose from the dead victor over sin victor over death victor over satan victor over sheol victor over hades jesus is now friends the gatekeeper of heaven and hell he is the gatekeeper of heaven and hell now friends let me now just give you some challenges on what it means to be a christian who serves or worships the gatekeeper of heaven and hell we have a short time span and in our world at the moment there is god's mercy and god's judgment going on at the same time now it's no mistake that our society as it's turned its back on christ has become more violent we have a hundred thousand abortions a year the vast majority of those abortions friends are not for the safety of a mother or for a child that will die they are sacrificed for no good reason other than for the worship of the idols of the parents for the convenience of the parents very similar to the practices of the valley of hinom have you ever thought
[33:12] I wonder this where do you put 100,000 fetuses or worldwide there are 50 million abortions a year at least according to the world health organization where do you put that many killed fetuses where are our Gehennas friends we hide them very very well but the Lord Jesus knows there are terrible things going on in this world that citizens of heaven have to kind of go through to get to heaven and there are also some wonderful mercies happening in our world that citizens of who are going to hell are going to enjoy I heard this great quote if you are for those who are Christians this life is as close as you are going to get to hell but for those who aren't Christians this life is as close as you are going to get to heaven these anomalies though will not last long and the gatekeeper of heaven and hell the one who has been through it all he will separate the goats and the sheeps friends death awaits you all then the abode of the dead then the judgment seat of Christ then either a new heavens and a new earth or
[34:29] Gehenna and I think the image of Gehenna evolves we'll see next week into the eternal lake of fire and the difference between those two destinies is Jesus Christ he's the only one who's made atonement he's the only one who knows those realities first hand only he has achieved the global rescue through his cross do you see how important this is friends to know that we are going to die and we have a sense of accountability I think people are very good at forgetting that they're going to have to give an account to their maker we all know this innately I believe but people are good at suppressing us your job God is sending you to warn people about this about their accountability to their maker and to tell them the way of Christ your purpose for existing right now the reason that God has not zapped you into heaven is so that you can warn people about it about the judgment to come friends we are not the kind of selfish people who write off those who are going to hell it's very telling to compare this with the attitude of
[35:43] Islam to unbelievers to the attitude of Christians to unbelievers we do not write people off and say they're just going to hell let's kill them anyway we will expend every effort to share Christ as the gatekeeper of heaven and hell and as the only one who can rescue we will lay our lives down for the perishing as martyrs even for those who would kill us so that they might be saved that is the example of Christ that we follow and lastly I just want to say something to those maybe younger people here who have grown up in the church someone who was about 18 once said to me many years ago they said they've grown up in the church and they said I wish that I hadn't grown up in the church because then I could have a better testimony I could have been a drug dealer I could have killed someone and then become a Christian and I would have had a listen to all shall perish the true beast annihilation of the wicked that's not biblical by the way hell witch slaughter of souls these are real bands cannibal corpse unsanctified decapitated
[37:30] God dethroned and I'm not saying that kind of music is spiritually worse or more dangerous than Celine Dion my point is it's not it's actually not there's nothing unusually bad about that music it's garden variety rebellion from God it's so predictable if you have been brought up in the church friends you are already part of the most subversive and dangerous movement there is you've been baptised into the name of the gatekeeper of heaven and hell the Lord Jesus Christ you are already serving the one who makes Satan cower and demons tremble you are a brother of the one who has been to hell and back and who lives to claim your worship today and will crush people who don't tomorrow sometimes I think Christians are accused of being a bit holier than now well I think non Christians play the same game but they reverse it they play a game called badder than now they'll say
[38:34] I'm so bad don't even bring up Jesus with me I'm so bad look at my tattoos or something friends don't fear anyone don't fear anyone no one is too hardcore for the one who's been through Sheol invite your death metal friend to church you actually you got one week left on hell in summary whether your idolatry is satanic seances or shopping the Lord Jesus will crush the idolater and send them to hell whether you worship an idol with a leather jacket and tattoo or whether you wear a suit and a stethoscope you will face the judgment seat of Christ you will face the gatekeeper of hell and he has a fierce anger against all idolatry whether you're a serial killer with a twisted mind a hit man who kills for money an aborter of inconvenient babies or maybe you're just a nice person who wastes their money worshipping idols and that money could have gone to save millions from dying the just judge the
[39:48] Lord Jesus knows what he will do with you so seek his mercy friends come to him run to him before it is too late the Lord Jesus has made atonement you can tell people that you can spread the warning and spread the way out of hell you can bend your knee to him in submission and trust before it is too late let's pray
[41:15] Amen Amen Amen