In this sermon, the speaker discusses the importance of understanding the concept of hell in order to understand one's own heart. He uses the parable of the rich man and Lazarus from the book of Luke to illustrate his point. The speaker emphasizes that the doctrine of God's judgment is a powerful resource that can pacify the human heart's desire for justice and prevent people from being sucked into cycles of violence. He argues that believing in a God who will make everything right is crucial, as without this belief, people may resort to violence and vengeance.

The reading for today is taken from the book of Luke, chapter 16, verses 19 through 31. There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man's table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores. The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried. In hell, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue because I am in agony in this fire. But Abraham replied, Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things while Lazarus received bad things. But now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you, a great chasm has been fixed so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us. He answered, Then I beg you, Father, send Lazarus to my father's house, where I have five brothers. Let him warn them so that they will not also come to this place of torment. Abraham replied, They have Moses and the prophets. Let them listen to them. No, Father Abraham, he said, but if if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent. He said to him, if they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead. This is the word of the Lord. Every week we're taking one of the things that in our culture and especially in New York City troubles people the most about Christianity. Each week we're choosing one of the things that troubles people the most about Christianity and looking at it. And this week we're looking at the Christian teaching that God is a judge and a judge who consigns people to hell. And there are a number of forms, we'll look at a couple of them, different forms and concerns about that teaching. But basically, I think the understandable objection goes like this. How, the person says, can you possibly reconcile the concept of judgment and hell with the idea of a loving God? Judgment, hell, loving God, they just don't go together. What do we say about that? I'll tell you one of the things that I have said over the years, because I'm a minister, some people ask me, what do you believe about hell? And one of the things I say is, well, one thing I believe is that probably the biblical imagery of hell fire, probably that's metaphorical. And the people go, phew. But then I always say, it's metaphorical for something probably infinitely worse than fire. And they go, huh? I'd like to argue that the Christian understanding of hell is crucial. That's something that is infinitely worse than fire. That's something is crucial for understanding your own heart, for living at peace in the world, and for knowing the love of God. Understanding what the Bible says about hell is crucial for understanding your own heart, for living in peace in the world, and for knowing the love of God. I know those three things are very counterintuitive. Each one gets more counterintuitive than the others. So let's go. And by the way, the first point or first topic is the longest, and the other two will build on it. First of all, understanding hell is crucial to understand your own heart. This parable has two characters, a rich man and a poor man. And one of the things that the commentators have told us for years is that one remarkable feature is that this is the only parable in which a character, the poor man, has a proper name. If you look at all of the rest of Jesus' parables, no one has a proper name assigned to them except this poor man who's named Lazarus. But if the one character would have a name, surely if Jesus is going to use that approach, the other character should have a name, but he doesn't. There's a name character and a nameless character, and the contrast is deliberate. Well, what does it mean? In Israel at that time, the rich man almost could not have possibly been an atheist or a pagan. The rich man would have believed in the God of the Bible. He would have prayed to the God of the Bible. He would have obeyed the laws of the God of the Bible, but he's in hell without a name. Why? Verse 25, Abraham said, remember that in your lifetime, you had your good things. You already had them. Your highest, your best things, the things that you built your life on, you had them. Philosophers for many years have talked about what they call the summum bonum, the highest good of your life. What is your highest good? What is the thing you really live for? What is the thing that is your ultimate value? What is that which gives meaning to your life? What is it that gives you a sense of who you are? Whatever your best thing, the highest thing, the ultimate value is, that's what gives you an identity. This man now had his good things. It's past tense. Status and wealth was the basis for identity. And now that the status and wealth is gone, there's no him left. He was a rich man or nothing. He has no identity. He's gone. It's nameless. Because when you take away everything, like wealth and status, he has no identity. And you say, well, what's the alternative? If somebody takes away everything, I mean, hell is the place where everything's taken away, right? If somebody takes away everything, what is the alternative? Søren Kierkegaard, the great Danish philosopher, wrote a book called Sickness unto Death. Pretty much the only book I've read of his that I can understand, actually. But I really have understood it. In that book, he wrestles with the definition of sin, and he defines sin as building your identity on anything but God. See, in the book, he wrestles with a good definition, and he knows the traditional definition of sin is breaking God's law. And, of course, he agrees that breaking God's law is wrong, is a sin. But he wonders whether that's a sufficient definition. And the reason is Pharisees. He says, here's Pharisees. They're following all the law fastidiously, and yet they're lost. Why? We talked about this last week a little. When the Pharisees serve as their own Savior and Lord, because they're seeking to earn their own salvation, they're trying to put God in the position where, because they're so good, God has to bless them, and he has to answer their prayers, and he has to give them a good life, and he has to take them to heaven. When Pharisees, by obeying the law, do that, earning their own salvation, they're actually building their identity, not on God, but on their moral performance. They're getting their pride, they're getting their self-worth out of their morality and their religiosity, and it's destroying their character. On the inside, they're filled with pride and self-righteousness and ravening and rigidity. Outside, they're wreaking havoc. Why? Because the best definition of sin, and I think he's absolutely right here, is building your identity on anything besides God. Good things, turning them into ultimate things. Now, Kierkegaard, I think, is being radically biblical, especially he's following Romans 6, which we're going to look at later in the fall. And what Kierkegaard is saying is this, if you take a good thing and make it an ultimate thing, if you look at anything in this life and say, if I have that, then I have importance and value. If I have that, but if I don't have that, then I'm nothing. If you look at money, career, your talents, your looks, if you look at a relationship, if you look at your parents, if you look at your children, if you look at power, approval, comfort, control, if you look at any of these things and make them more fundamental to your significance and security than the love and knowledge of God, then though you may believe in God of the Bible, you may pray to the God of the Bible, you may obey the laws of the God of the Bible, but your faith, the justification of your life, the roots of your identity, what you really worship, in other words, is something else. And that starts in your heart a spiritual cosmic fire. That's what the metaphor for fire is about. You say, what are you talking about? It starts a fire. All right. We know a lot about the devastation of addiction. We know about the inward and outward devastation that addiction reeks. And it consists of things like this. First of all, there's the disintegration that happens in addiction. Because as addiction proceeds, you need more and more of the addictive substance to get less and less of the kick, of the high, of the satisfaction. So you need more and more of the substance, and you do everything to get it, to get less and less and less of the satisfaction. And that leads to disintegration. Another part of addiction is isolation. You have to lie. You have to defend yourself. And of course, you are always blaming everyone else, and you're always blaming everything else for the problems. And you say, nobody understands me, and everybody's against me. And of course, that's all part of denial. There's disintegration, there's isolation, and there's denial, an inability increasingly to see what's really happening, getting more and more and more out of touch with reality. Ah, yes, you know. In fact, everybody probably in this room says, I know. Of course, I know. First hand or second hand, at the most third hand, the devastation of those poor people who get addicted to substances. Ah, but wait. What if the Iron Giant is right? Now, since most of you look like you're older than 10 years old, you may not have seen the movie The Iron Giant. But I would suggest you watch it because it's maybe the best animated movie I've ever seen. I love The Iron Giant. And if you watch The Iron Giant, there's one place where The Iron Giant says, souls don't die. Souls can't die. And of course, if he's right, and that's what the Bible says, is that the soul, after death, goes on forever, your personal consciousness goes on forever. If The Iron Giant is right, and Kierkegaard's right too, that is that every single person, religious or irreligious, moral or immoral, is addicted, as it were, grounding your very identity, taking your very self from something besides God that can never give you the satisfaction that you hope it will give you. If we're addicted, all of us addicted, in the ultimate sense, and our souls go on forever, what does that mean? C.S. Lewis puts the two together and says this. He says, Christianity asserts that we are going to go on forever, and that must either be true or false. Now, there are a good many things which would not be worth bothering about if I were going to live only 80 years or so, but which I had better bother about if I'm going to go on living forever. Perhaps my bad temper or my jealousy are getting worse so gradually that the increase in my lifetime will not be very noticeable. But it might be absolute hell in a million years. In fact, if Christianity is true, hell is the precisely correct technical term for it. Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others, but you are still distinct from it. You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it, but there may come a day when you can no longer do so. Then there will be no you left to criticize or even to enjoy the mood, but just the grumble itself, going on and on forever like a machine. So it's not a question of whether God sends us quote-unquote to hell. In every one of us, there is something growing up which will be hell unless it is nipped in the bud. Fire. You watch a log in the fire, it's falling apart. It's one thing to love a career, but if you build your identity on a career and something goes wrong with it, something's going wrong in your career, you're not just wounded and hurt, which you should be, you're devastated, you're worthless, you feel worthless, you want to throw yourself off a bridge, disintegration. It's okay to love somebody and to order just to want to be loved, but if you build your entire identity on that and there's a problem in your relational life, you won't just be hurt and wounded like everyone, like you should be, but you'll be devastated, you'll feel worthless, you want to throw yourself off a bridge. Your good things enslave you. They're starting to disintegrate you. They're starting to isolate you so that when something gets in the way of them, instead of just being afraid, you're paralyzed. Instead of just being angry, you're implacably bitter. Instead of being despondent, you endlessly hate yourself forever and ever. This is the fire. Do you not see it in yourself? Do you not see where it's going? And most of all, denial. The denial. Now, C.S. Lewis is constantly saying whenever he depicts hell, that the doors of hell are locked from the inside. That's the whole idea behind hell. Because more and more, you would say, I would never, you say, well, this isn't very good. People in the middle of addictions feel like that. This isn't very good. But I can't imagine being somewhere else. And everybody else, nobody understands. It's not as bad as you say. And I can really handle it. That's hell. And that's hell. It's hell. And it's hell. If that's the case, and I think it is, we have confirmation right here in this text. Look at the insanity. Look at the out of touch with reality that characterizes people in hell. Commentators have noted for a long time that the rich man is astonishingly blind and in denial and filled with blame shifting. So, for example, notice that even though here's Lazarus up in heaven, look at where he is. He's in hell. He's still ordering Lazarus around. He still wants Lazarus to come and cool his tongue. He still expects him to be a servant. And notice something else. He does not ask to get out of hell. He just tries to get in. Doesn't ask to get out. And he strongly insinuates that God didn't give him enough information. You know, now go to my five brothers and give them the information. What's that? Hint. Hint. I didn't get enough information. Nobody understands me. And I shouldn't really be here. And besides that, it's not so bad. I really don't want to be up there with all that, you know, you know, all that humbug up there and, you know, whatever you're doing up there. But would you please send somebody down here to give me a little bit of break? Summary. Hell is just a freely chosen identity based on something else besides God going on forever. Hell is just your freely chosen identity based on something else besides God going on forever. Disintegrating, disintegrating, disintegrating, refusing to admit what it is. See? And that's the reason why the idea that you might have in your mind, that people give you in your mind, that God is a God who sort of throws people into hell, you know, he sort of throws them into this, you know, into this pit. And they're climbing up the side saying, please, no, let me out. And God's saying, no, it's too late now. It's hell for you. C.S. Lewis puts it like this. He says, in the long run, the answer to those who object to the doctrine of hell is itself a question. What are you asking God to do? To wipe out past sins and at all costs give them a fresh start? He did on Calvary. To forgive them, but they don't ask for forgiveness. To leave them alone? That's what hell is. There are only two kinds of people in the end. Those who say to God, thy will be done. And those to whom God says in the end, thy will be done. All that are in hell, choose it. Without that self-choice, it wouldn't be hell. Let me also say, just in, you know, as a kind of application of this point, told you it was the longest one, that understanding the nature of hell has been incredibly important to me personally. Seeing myself and you, by the way, as spiritual addicts, apart from the innervating grace of God, all addicts, it's crucial to knowing how to deal with what's going on in your life. You have to see the seriousness of it. You have to see the seriousness. I mean, what you really do as a Christian most of your life is you watch the fires start to come up and then you, that's basically it. You say, I've got to deal with that. And you can deal with the gospel. You deal with it with grace, but it's constantly coming back up again. But it's awfully helpful to know what that is, what that's made of, what will extinguish it. Who are you really? Have you got a core identity, a name based in what God has done for you in Jesus, what God thinks of you in Jesus, based in being a child of the King, based in the mission of getting to the new heavens and new earth. Have you got a fundamental core identity that's there no matter what the circumstances, no matter what happens, no matter what happens, you know who you are. There's a stability. Have you got that? Or are you just a businessman? Are you just a business woman? Are you just an artist? Are you just a mother? Are you just a father? Are you willing to look as deep into yourself as this doctrine is calling you to look? So without the doctrine of hell, you can't really understand, I don't think, your own heart. Secondly, without the doctrine of hell, I don't think you can really live at peace in this world. Or I should put another way to say the doctrine of hell is a great way to do it. You say, what? Yes. Now, I'm going to be real brief about this particular one, because if you were here in the end of August, we actually talked about it and we were looking at Mark chapter 13, this very thing in the second coming of Christ, and yet I can't not treat it under this heading. There are many people who really get afraid that if you believe in a God of judgment and in the doctrine of hell, it means you will disdain classes of people and you will oppress them. So Wendy Kaminer was writing an article last year in The Nation, and she had just had an interview with Rick Warren, who wrote the Purpose Driven Life book, and Wendy Kaminer liked him personally, but still said this about his beliefs. She said that his faith, quote, is inherently divisive. At the end of the day, non-Christians, however devout, are lost. What are the prospects of equal citizenship for those of us damned by our refusal to be born again? What are the prospects of equal citizenship for those of us damned by our unwillingness to be born again? And so what she's saying is, you can't treat us as equal citizens if you think we're lost and been judged and we're damned. You're going to oppress us. You're going to disdain us. You're going to feel that it's all right to marginalize us. Well, see, now this objection, though, again, I could say it's understandable, but it certainly does not understand what the Bible says about hell at all, because as we've seen right here, it's not something imposed by God in violence, is it? In fact, I find it intriguing to me, verse 25, and other commentators have too, that when Abraham looks down from heaven into hell and speaks to this stupid rich man, this absolutely out of touch with reality, still in hell rich man, what does he call him? Does he say, you evil sinner? What does he say? Son. Technon. The commentators say there's pathos here. There's sadness here. There's a sense of tragedy here. Jesus, Abraham, God, anyone who believes the Bible, does not look at people who are on their way to that fire. It's almost impossible to know who exactly is, especially if you understand hell enough to see it in yourself. How are we going to say exactly who's going to get there and who's not? But the point is, even if you did know, there would be no sense in which you would disdain them. Not if you understand this, but besides that, even more so. This objection does not understand what Miroslav Volf said in that fascinating chapter in his book, Exclusion and Embrace, which I quote every year or so, do I not? Because it's so important. Miroslav Volf says, as a Croatian, he had firsthand experience and acquaintance with the terrible violence in the years locked into a cycle of vengeance and retaliation. You did this to us. We're going to do this to you. You did this to us. We're going to do this to you. But he says in his book that the cycle of retaliation is not fueled by a belief in a God of judgment, but it's fueled by a lack of belief in a God of judgment. And he says, and this is remarkable, he says, if God were not angry at injustice, that God would not be worthy of worship. The only means of prohibiting all recourse to violence by ourselves is to insist that judgment is legitimate only when it comes from God. My thesis that the practice of nonviolence requires a belief in divine vengeance will be unpopular with many, but it takes the quiet of a suburban home to believe that human nonviolence results from a belief in God's refusal to judge. In a land soaked in the blood of the innocent, it will invariably die with other pleasant captivities of the liberal mind. Now, here's what he's saying is this. If you've talked to some people who have seen their homes burned and seen their family members killed and raped, how are you going to keep them from picking up the sword and being sucked into the cycle of violence and retaliation? What are you going to say? Are you going to say, well, you know, violence doesn't solve anything. Not only will such moralizing not touch their hearts, but it doesn't, it shows no concern for justice. And anybody who's been wrong like that says justice has to be done. Wolf says the only resource he knows powerful enough to both pacify the human heart's desire for justice. And at the same time, keep us from getting sucked into the, that, that, that cycle of blood and vengeance is to say there is a God and he will put everything right. Everything right. And both says, if you don't think, if you think not believing in God or not believing in a God of judgment is going to keep people from being sucked into the cycle of violence, you're wrong. If you don't believe there is somebody who's going to make everything right, you will pick up the sword and you will get sucked in. And therefore he says, if you don't believe that the doctrine of God's judgment, if you don't believe that that is not a powerful resource for living at peace on earth, you've had a sheltered life. You have not experienced this belief in a God of judgment is crucial. He says about the only thing, only resource strong enough to help me. He was saying as a Croatian live in peace on earth. So how is necessary to understand your heart? Hell is necessary for living in peace on earth. And last of all, the doctrine of hell is necessary for knowing the love of God. Say what? Wait a minute. Somebody said, now this is the worst one of all. You're the whole idea of a God of judgment in hell seems opposed to the idea of a God of love. It's not. You're wrong with all due respects. Look at the end of this passage. What does the rich man ask of Abraham for his brothers, his five brothers? He says, I want a miracle. Send Lazarus back. Now, of course, if Lazarus actually does, you know, they know Lazarus is dead. If Lazarus suddenly comes up out of the ground, you know, in front of the five brothers, that's a miracle. It's a naked, spectacular miracle. Raise somebody. Raising the dead. Can you imagine Lazarus rises up and they go, Oh my gosh, it's Lazarus. There is a hell. What are they going to say? No, of course they're going to say yes. Oh my gosh, I better really live a good life. I don't want to go to hell. Abraham says that will never work. He says they won't be convinced. And that word, by the way, means more than rationality. Of course, they'll be convinced in the sense of, Oh my gosh, I better. I didn't realize it was a hell. Here's a letter from my brother. Oh my gosh. He says, look out. He's going to, it doesn't mean Abraham is saying fear, fear of hell, fear of damnation will never change the fundamental structures of your heart. It won't work. And ironically, fear of hell will never keep you out of it. It won't put out the fire. Well, what is the fire? What's wrong with you and me? What's wrong with us? What's wrong with the world? Self-centeredness, self-absorption, me, me, me, me, rather than you, me over you, me on top of you, me instead of you. That's what's wrong. And when you scare people, when people say, I better be good because of fear of hell, I got to be good because of fear of damnation. Why are they being good? Are they being good for goodness sake? Are they being good for God's sake, just to please him? They're being good for their sake. It's just more selfishness. It's moral selfishness, but it's selfishness. And not only that, are they doing it for God's sake, just to please him, just to delight him? No, they're using God. They're saying, well, if I live a really good enough life, then God will have to give me the things that I'm basing my identity on. Give me success. Give me a family. Give me a man or woman of my dreams. Take me to heaven, all that sort of thing. In other words, God is still the means to an end to get the things you're really building your identity on. And so just to suddenly get really moral and go to church and read your Bible and do all these good things out of fear of hell, you're just turning up the flames. You're kind of rearranging the selfishness and the pride and the evil of your heart inside your moral life. You're jury rigging the evil of your heart to make you a moral person. You're not doing a thing about it. What will change the fundamental structures of the heart? Love. Radical love. Radical, unconditional love is the only thing that will take our mistrustful, in denial, conniving little hearts and shock them into a whole new way of living and being love. Well, where are we going to get that kind of love that changes our heart? Well, Jesus actually tells us indirectly what they say is what this guy says is if I just had a person raised from the dead, a naked miracle, if we've sent that to those guys, then everything would be okay. And Abraham says, no, but you see, that's almost supposed to make you think of something. What is that? Didn't Jesus rise from the dead? Didn't Jesus rise from the dead? Sure. He did. Isn't Jesus rising from the dead enough? No. If Jesus suddenly just blows out the top of the mountain and shows up, that would just create fear. That would just create fears. Oh my gosh, he must be the Lord. What do I have to do? Where do I have to sign? See, how do I avoid hell? Jesus says, no, the key is you have to know why I died. And you know where you find that? Moses and the prophets. You have to find, you have to know why I died in rose. And where is it? What does it say in Moses and the prophets? See, that's the only place you're going to find that love. It's understanding why. And the answer is it was God's will to crush him. So we looked upon him and were appalled. He was disfigured beyond human appearance and his form was marred beyond human likeness for the Lord made him a guilt offering, but the results of his suffering, he will see and be satisfied. You do not know how much Jesus loves you unless you know how much he suffered. What did he suffer on the cross? David Martin, Lloyd Jones, little sermon illustration I read years ago. I forget where, but it's really helped me for years. He said, imagine that a friend of mine comes to see me and says, Hey, I was at your house the other day and a bill came due and you weren't there. So I paid it. And the doctor, David Martin, Lloyd Jones says, well, he says, how should I respond? And the answer is I have no idea how to respond until I know how big that bill was. Was it just a postage due, you know, and he paid another 20 cents or something like that. He would say, well, thank you. But what if the IRS finally found you? What if it was those 10 years of back taxes? You know, what if it was an enormous debt? See, Lloyd Jones says, until I know how much he paid, I don't know whether to shake his hand or fall down on the ground and kiss his feet. What did Jesus Christ actually experienced on the cross? Unless you believe in hell, you will never know how much he loved you. You will never know how much he values you. Your heart will never know unless you believe in hell. He said, why, why did Jesus Christ speak more about hell than anybody else in the Bible put together? Everybody else in the Bible put together did not speak about hell as much as Jesus. Why? Because on the cross, he took it. The fire fell down into his heart. The apostles creed said he descended into hell. You say, what do you mean he descended into hell when he said, father, why have you forsaken me? My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me to lose the love of a friend hurts to lose the love of a spouse hurts more, the deeper and greater the relationship, the more devastating and agonizing the loss of love. And I know this is beyond finding out. But on the cross, when Jesus Christ lost, when the son lost the eternal love of the father, he experienced an agony. He experienced a disintegration. He experienced an isolation infinitely greater than you and I would experience in an eternity in hell. He took the isolation and the disintegration we deserve. He took it on himself. Why? He loves you. And unless you see that he didn't just experience physical pain on the cross or even in some kind of emotional pain on the cross, unless you understand, unless you believe in hell, you'll never know how much he loves you. You'll never know how much he cares. Never. Ironically, people, by getting rid of the idea of judgment and hell, try to make God more loving and they make him less. And if somebody says to me, oh, I believe in God of love. I don't believe in hell. I don't believe in judgment or anything like that. I always say, what did it cost your God to love you? And they say, well, I don't know if it cost him anything. He just loves everybody. If God just loves everybody and it didn't cost him at all, I can I can honor a God like that. I can I can be glad for a God like that. I can. I'm sure it affects me in some ways. But if I want to be transformed, if I want to sense his wild love around me, if I want wonder, love and praise, if I want boldness and humility, if I want transformation, if I want to be able to sing love so amazing, so divine demands my soul, my life, my all. I got to believe in hell. The biblical doctrine of hell, if you don't really understand it or hear about it in pieces, you could twist it to create a pretext for cruelty. But to really read it, to really understand how all of the plot lines of the Bible regarding justice come together on Jesus Christ, who was the judge of the earth, who came not to bring judgment, but to bear judgment and to go to hell for his enemies. If you understand that, if you grasp that, it's going to equip you to live at peace with other people. With God who did this for you and with yourself. Let's pray. And thank you, Father, for granting this deep insight. And that is that through Moses and the prophets, if we can understand why Jesus Christ died and rose and how on the cross he descended into hell and he received that fire that we see beginning in us, but he received that fire. He received the penalty due to us so that by your grace, you can embrace us and pardon us and forgive us and put your spirit in us and put that fire out by making yourself through your Holy Spirit, the center of our lives. Well, that means we're lost in wonder, love and praise. And we pray that that praise and that wonder and that love would begin today as we give ourselves to you, maybe for the first time or flow and wax and grow. As we think about these things through the power of your spirit, we ask that you would apply this to our lives. We ask it in Jesus name. Amen.