How Could a Loving God Send People to Hell? (Asking for a Friend - Week 3)

In this sermon, Shawn concludes the series "Asking for a Friend" by addressing challenging questions about faith and the doctrine of hell, emphasizing that it's a safe community for inquiry. He highlights the importance of connect groups for fostering relationships and discussing faith openly. 

Shawn explores biblical teachings on hell, explaining that it's a result of rejecting God's grace, and asserts that God's love must encompass justice. Ultimately, he emphasizes that while all have sinned, through Jesus' sacrifice, believers can receive grace and new life, offering hope and redemption.

Transcript

Yeah, we were wrapping up our series this morning that we've called, been asking for a friend. And over the last couple of weeks, we've been looking at some of these questions that maybe we all have and we've wrestled with, but we're a little afraid to ask them because maybe we feel like we should already know the answer to them, or we feel like asking them makes it seem like we lack faith in some areas. And so we just. We maybe veil the question that we have by that term. I'm just asking for a friend, and we've said over the last couple of weeks that we don't want to be a church where you feel like you have to ask for a friend, but that you can actually ask a friend that this is a safe community filled with people who love Jesus and who love you and want to help you find and follow him and wrestle through even some of the hard things that we go through in life and in faith.

And I don't know of a better way to do that than through connect groups. Connect groups are such a fantastic way to do life with other people, to share faith with other people, to wrestle through just life and faith with other people. And so we want every single person who calls Sherwood Oaks home to be a part of a connect group because we believe in the value of this kind of community. And so if you're not connected into a group, we've made it really easy today. After this service, just go straight down the main hallway.

Fellowship hall, we have connect gathering. We'd love to help you find a group. And then men tune in. Men, look at me right now, okay? I'm talking to you for a minute.

Those of us that maybe reject community the most are typically the ones that need it the most. All right, so as you are thinking about a group, or maybe your spouse is wanting to be a part of a group, don't be that guy that's like, do we have to do that? Like, Sunday nights? Really? It's football or Monday nights it's football, or Thursday nights it's football.

Like, do we have to do this? No. Go be a part of a group. Or if you're just looking for a men's group, we've got our men's ministries kicking off on Wednesday night, 06:00 p.m. again down in the fellowship hall, Alan Burress is smoking meat.

I don't even know if there's going to be side dishes. I think it's just going to be more meat. And so come join us for that. 06:00 and let us help you get connected in a group. As I was studying for the sermon today, I came across this line in a book a couple of weeks ago, and it just kind of made me realize the difficulty of this topic.

And here's the line. Of all the doctrines in Christianity, hell is probably the most difficult to defend, the most burdensome to believe, and the first to be abandoned. And it's what we're talking about today. So, God, in this moment, there's a lot that maybe wants to get in the way of what you want us to hear. And so I pray that you will remove those distractions.

I pray, Lord, that the words that I feel like you have given will take root in our hearts. My heart. And if there's anything that is from me, Lord, just help us to forget it. We want to hear you this morning. In Jesus name, amen.

This topic of hell, it makes us uncomfortable, makes me uncomfortable, and I think it does so for a variety of reasons. It makes us think about things that we don't necessarily want to think about. It makes us think about people that we love who maybe passed away before they made a decision to follow Jesus. And we wonder what, what happened? For some of us, we don't like to talk about hell because maybe you grew up in a church that never talked about this.

And so the mystery of the unknown leaves you kind of squirming just a little bit. And maybe you're like, no, that's not my experience. I grew up in a church that only talked about this, and so I'm squirming for a whole other reason. We don't like to talk about this topic. Like, I have never heard anyone in my ministry say, you know what I love about the christian faith?

It's that part about hell, man, that just gives me the warm fuzzies. I just want to be a part of a faith that believes that. No, for a lot of people, the doctrine of hell is not just a stumbling block to Christianity. It's like a roadblock. It keeps them from saying, I want to follow Jesus or I want to believe in this God.

It becomes a deal breaker. In fact, Charles Darwin even wrote in his autobiography that he abandoned his christian faith because of the doctrine of hell. He called it a damnable doctrine and he left faith because of it. I bet we probably know some other people who feel the same way. And so we end up with all of these questions about this topic that we are curious about, but we're afraid to ask because we just don't want to think about it.

But here's the thing. The Bible talks about hell. Jesus talked a lot about hell. In fact, we don't even get a fully formed theology on hell until Jesus comes to the scene. 13% of everything that Jesus taught was about hell.

Half of the stories he told involved hell. And so if the Bible talks about it and Jesus talked about it a lot, then we are going to talk about it as well, even if it makes us uncomfortable. So if you have a Bible or a Bible app that you like to use, turn with me to Luke chapter 16. That's gonna be our text today. Luke, chapter 16.

Our specific question for the day is, how can a loving God send someone to hell? And I wanna respond to this question by looking at maybe a few misconceptions that we have about things like sin and about the nature of God and how these things intersect with this doctrine of hell. For many people, when they think about hell, the image that comes to mind is of this angry, vindictive God who's just like, I kind of imagine just he's flicking people off into this fiery abyss. He's sending them and casting them into this lake of fire because they didn't believe the right stuff or because they didn't make the right choices all the time in their life. And we imagine that as these poor souls are, like, tumbling down into this abyss, they're crying out, no, God, please have mercy on me.

And he's just saying, nope, you had your chance. It's too late now. You're going to suffer for all of eternity as punishment for the things that you did.

I think Jesus, though, tells us a different story. In Luke chapter 16, he paints a different picture, and it's a story that he tells. It's a parable. And so we can't build an entire theology of hell around a story, but I do think that it gives us some insight that might be valuable to us as we talk about this topic today. So, Luke chapter 16, starting in verse 19, Jesus says 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. And so Jesus starts his story by introducing the two characters that are in it. And again, because this is a story, Jesus could have used any name that he wanted to. This isn't necessarily based on any one individual person.

And he's just kind of making this up and so it's significant, the names that he uses. I think that there's maybe some purpose and meaning behind them, names in Jesus day, and even some today, they carry meaning and identity. And so you have this poor beggar named Lazarus, who is covered in sores. His family just kind of brought him and laid him at this stranger's gate to his house. They left him.

And so you have this Mandev who is rejected. His body is riddled with disease. He has no money, no friends, no future. And so it's very interesting that Jesus gives him the name Lazarus, which in Hebrew means whom God has helped. That's his name.

This is his identity, one whom God has helped. And it's ironic, because if you look at his situation, you would not think that this is a guy whom God has helped. If anything, you would think that this. This is a guy that God has absolutely rejected. But by giving him this name, I think that Jesus wants us to connect the dots, that this is a person who has turned his heart towards the Lord, trusted in him, and has found mercy in him.

The second character in our story is simply called a rich man. His name, in Hebrew, it's very interesting. It means a rich man, like, that's it.

And I think it's intentionally shallow.

I think that Jesus is inferring that this man has found his identity and his riches not in the Lord by dressing in purple and fine linen. He wanted to present himself as royalty. He felt that he was self important and selfdevelop sufficient. He lived in luxury and probably was surrounded by servants who met his every need. And I just imagine that every day when this rich man left his house on his way to do business in the city, he had to step over this poor beggar that was laid at the gate of his home.

I think that Jesus is using a contrast here to make his point. And it's a contrast that I want to use to kind of jump off into our first misconception that we have about hell. And it comes down to sin. What is sin? I think oftentimes when we think about sin, we think of it as, like, the bad things that we do, these actions that we take.

But it's actually worse than that. Like, sin is the underlying cause for why we do the things that we do. Our hearts are rebellious against God and his design and how we are to live. God has made known to us what we are to do, how we are to treat one another's. But our sinful heart defies God and goes our own way.

And so sin is choosing our way over God's. And the primary way that we sin, the primary way that I sin is not in the bad things that we do or the good things that we don't do. The primary way that we sin is when we take God off of his throne and we put ourselves on it. When we make ourselves the center of our lives and our universe and we say to God, I'm the king. Now we're going to do things my way, not yours.

I think that's what we see in the rich man in our story. He is dressed in royalty. He is living a life of luxury. Jesus wants us to see that this is a man who is sitting on the throne of his life. He's making the decisions.

He has no care or interest in what God wants. We know from later in the story that he's familiar with the law and the prophets. He's familiar that he should surrender to God, but he doesn't. He knows the scriptures that say to care for the poor and the widow and the orphan and the foreigner. And yet every day he walks over Lazarus, he adds to his pain and his suffering.

He was too self important to stoop down because in his mind and everyone revolved around him.

And so the rich man's sin was not that he was rich, it's that he knew the law, but he had rejected the lawgiver. He knew what he was to do, but he didn't want to do it. He had turned his back on God. He was choosing his own way over his. He had put himself and his riches above God and the people that God cares about.

And so sin is not about our actions. It is about rejecting God and choosing our own way. It is about a heart that is rebellious to the Lord, unwilling to surrender even to the God who created us.

Jesus continues his story. Luke, chapter 16. Starting in verse 22, the time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and he was buried. Did you hear how unceremonious that was?

Lazarus died. The angels came down, swooped him up, carried him up to heaven. The rich man died and he was buried in Hades where he was in torment. He looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. And 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.

Did you notice the reversal? Lazarus is by heaven's side. It's this picture of heaven. HeAven is described and depicted as this place of a great banquet and abundance. It is this mighty feast that people get to enjoy.

But the rich man is now the beggar. He is in the place of Lazarus, who longed to eat from the scraps from his table. And now he's the one who is without. And Jesus taps into this classic literature, and he says that he is in Hades, which is known as this place that is in the realm of the dead. It's this stark contrast between the blessing and the abundant life that Lazarus was experiencing.

And it's telling what the rich man does when he sees Lazarus by his side. He doesn't look at him and he doesn't say, Lazarus, I am so sorry for the way that I treated you, for the way that I looked over you, for the way that I added to your pain. Please forgive me. No. He shows no repentance, no remorse.

And in fact, it's almost as if he expects Lazarus to continue to serve him, even from beyond the grave. He says, send Lazarus to cool my tongue. And so even in this place that is described as torment and agony, he is demanding others to serve him because he is still on the throne. Everything still revolves around him. He is unwilling to acknowledge his sinful heart, and he is continuing in death the way that he lived in life.

In the last words of verse 24, I think it leads to the second misconception about hell that I want us to talk about today. It said, all of the depictions, all of the descriptions about hell, and really even heaven for that matter, they're all metaphors, they're symbols. They're used to describe what hell is like, not what hell is. And so scripture describes hell as being a place of unquenchable fire. Now, think about the qualities of fire.

Fire is destructive. It disintegrates anything in its path. Fire destroys life, and it leaves a place barren of anything good. That is the image of hell. It is a place void of life, and it is full of destruction.

Hell is referred to as a place of utter darkness. James 117 says that every good and perfect gift has come from the father of lights, meaning that everything good that we enjoy in this life is. Is the light of God's grace shining down on us. And so all joy and pleasure, laughter and love, art and music, God is the giver of all of these things for us to enjoy. And so a place that is described as utter darkness is a place void of the light of God, void of God's presence and all of the gifts he has graciously bestowed upon humanity.

It is a place void of meaning and community. And the darkness of hell leaves people feeling isolated and alone.

It's described as a place filled with weeping and gnashing of teeth, pictures of sadness and despair, worry and anxiety.

These are the sobering metaphors and symbols used to describe what hell is like. It is a place that is fully absent of the presence of God and his grace. It is a place where people are left to the very worst of themselves. If heaven is what it's like when God gets his way, hell is what it's like when we get our way. If heaven is a place filled with no more tears, no more pain, no more separation, no more brokenness, then hell is a place filled with tears and pain and separation and brokenness.

If heaven is a place that is filled with love, hell is a place where we are no longer able to experience or receive love. Cs Lewis said, hell is the greatest monument to human freedom. It is filled with people who choose to be their own God, who continue to choose it for all of eternity. It is the trajectory of a soul living a self absorbed, self centered life going on forever. A place void of any goodness or grace, where everyone is only looking out for themselves, fighting for their own way, and their self absorption and backbiting and isolating only grows in the complete absence of God's goodness and his grace.

So the question is, how can a loving God send anyone to a place like that?

Jesus continues the story in verse 25, but Abraham replied, son, 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 of this between us and you, a great chasm has been set in place so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us. Did you notice how Abraham addresses the rich man? He calls him son.

There is compassion for him. It goes back to what Matt said last week in his sermon. God does not want anyone to perish, but for all to come to repentance. God wants all people to turn towards him. And in love he gives us every opportunity to do it.

And so God has compassion on people who choose to reject him. And we know that there are people who will never come to a place in their life where they are willing to say, Lord, your will be done in me. They want to continue to choose their way over God's. They want to continue to put themselves on the throne of their heart, continue to say, I'm the king, you, I make the rules. And there comes a point where God's love must also include his justice.

And we say that God is love, and he is. But it's the other qualities of God's nature that helps us understand what God's love looks like. Like we don't get to define God's love for him. He defines it for us. And part of God's love is revealed in his justice.

And we see God's justice in these two verses. The rich man lived his life rejecting God, adding to the brokenness and pain in the lives of others. And in his justice, God is making right the things that sin made wrong. Even when we see injustice in our world, there is something in us that says that's not right, and we want to make it right. Hell is God making things right.

It is him executing his justice.

One of my trips to Mozambique, Africa, we took a little day trip to this place that was just off the Indian Ocean. It was this port that. That was used for slave trade. And in fact, even today, the place, the auction block, still, there's remnants of it that still exist. And when we went there, we walked into this room that was a part of the fort.

And it was where they would bring people that they had abducted out of their homes, out of their villages. It was filled at times with men and women and children. And they would throw them in this large, open room, and then one by one, they would just pull them out right over to the auction block, buy them, sell them, load them on a ship, forever separating them, oftentimes, from their family, from their community.

And I think that one of the most atrocious outcomes of sin is that we are unable to see the image of God in the eyes of another person.

And it was that sin that allowed practices like the transcontinental slave trade, that allowed Holocaust. But it's also that sin of us unable to see the image of God in another person and only think about ourselves, that continues in the way that we devalue human life today, in the way that we treat others or talk about them or talk to them or judge them as being less than we are.

And as we left that area, we started walking through the nearby village, just kind of learning some history. My friend, who was a missionary, was just kind of filling me in on some of what they were doing there to try to bring and sow seeds of the gospel. And as we were walking down this path through, like, a little garden area, there were two older ladies that came around the corner and started walking towards us. And when they looked up, they saw me and my friend, both white. And they turned and they started running the other way.

And I asked him, why? Why did they start to run? And he said, it's because there is still a fear of white men that resides in these communities because of what happened all of those years ago. This is centuries later. Generations have passed.

And it all made me think, God bring justice to the evil that still makes these women turn and run from white men all of these years later.

And when we think about love and justice through our mostly western eyes, we tend to wonder, how can God be a God of both love and justice? They don't seem compatible. If anything, they seem like maybe they contradict one another. But when I think about the pain that made these women turn and run in fear all of these years later, when I think about the pain that my sin, our sin, has caused in the lives of others, I am wondering, how can a loving God not be a God of justice? How can God be loving without being just?

How can God be loving without being angry at injustice and the deceptions in our world? How can he be loving without holding accountable those who add to broken systems and broken lives? And so we cannot let our western sensibilities rewrite the complexity of God's nature. He is both loving and he is a God of justice. And just because I don't like an aspect of God's character does not mean that it is not a part of who he is or shouldn't be a part of who he is.

The truth is, is that God is not going to change. And so the question is, will I? Will you?

Am I. Are you willing to surrender your will and your way to the God who created you, who loves you, who wants to set your life on a course towards him? Who wants to lead and guide you on the right path? Or do you just want to say, no, my way, not yours?

At the end of the story that Jesus tells, the rich man begs Lazarus to go back and warn and his family, and Abraham says, no. Listen, they have all the same information you did. They know the law. They know that they should surrender. They know the way that they should live.

They know all of these things. It's not that they don't know. It's that they know and they have rejected. They are choosing to live a life apart from God, just like the rich man did. And just like the rich Mandy, God is going to continue to allow them and others to follow the way that they choose, all the way into eternity.

Which is why I believe that God does not send anyone to hell. We choose it. We want to sit on the throne of our life and not submit or surrender to anyone or anything. And hell is where God fully and finally says, okay, I've tried. Let me step out of the way.

And he leaves those who have rejected him to experience the full consequences of their decision. Cs Lewis again puts it really well. He says, there are only two kinds of people, those who say thy will be done to goddess, or those to whom God in the end says, thy will be done. And then he makes this claim. All that are in hell, choose it.

Without that self choice, it wouldn't be hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Meaning that picture of the person who is saying, no, please, it's not true.

They continue to be unwilling to surrender. And the truth about all of us is that we have chosen to go our own way. At one point, every single one of us, we have rejected God and we have told him, no, my will be done, not yours. We have all added to the brokenness and the pain of this world. And the apostle Paul tells us in Romans 323, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Every single one of us. We have this sinful, rebellious heart that lives within us. And the question that we're exploring today is, how can a loving God send someone to hell? But I think it's the wrong question. Like when I consider everything that I know about myself, everything that I know about humanity, all the ways that we have rejected God, we have turned our back on him.

I think the better question is, how could a God of justice allow any single one of us into heaven?

And again, the apostle Paul writes in Romans 623, for the wages of sin is death. This is what we have earned for our rebellion against God, eternal separation from him. Jesus says that hell was prepared for the devil and his angels. But people who choose to follow in Satan's rebellion are going to choose to follow him all the way to the end of where that rebellion leads. But there is good news for us today.

Yes, Paul says, for the wages of sin is death. But read this last part with me. But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. See, the good news of the gospel is that God took on flesh. Jesus became one of us, and he carried all of our guilt, all of our shame, all of the punishment that we deserve for our rebellion.

He carried it all the way to the cross. Jesus took the weight of hell upon himself so that we don't have to. And when we surrender our life to Jesus and we make him Lord. When we say, thy will be done, not mine, we take ourself off the throne, and we give him our rightful place. His rightful place.

We repent and we turn from our old way of life. We follow him, and we don't always get it right, but we're moving in his direction, and our lives begin to bear the fruit of repentance. And we find that in a life in Christ, it's not just about avoiding something. It's about gaining something. It is about gaining joy of following Jesus, the joy of a heart that is fully surrendered to him.

And the gift of grace is that in spite of where we have been, in spite of what we have done, how far we have wandered, no matter how many times we have done our own thing and gone our own way, when we put our faith in Jesus, God rescues us. He redeems us. And we have the promise of spending eternity with him.

This is one of the reasons why I think baptism is such a beautiful picture of the transformation of life. In baptism, we die to ourselves in that watery grave. We say we surrender ourselves over to the lordship of Jesus, that we're no longer going to be pursuing our way, that we're taking ourselves on the throne, off the throne and putting him on it. And when we come up from that watery grave, we have new life. There's grace.

We are forgiven. We are set free. We are filled with the Holy Spirit who gives us the power to walk in this new life. And we are assured of a life with God for the rest of eternity. And we have been able to celebrate 20 baptisms at Sherwood Oak since the beginning of August.

Praise God for that.

We have more today. There's people saying, I am dying to my old self. Because the way of Jesus is better if you're here today and you want to find that new life here and now that leads to eternal life with him. Man, we're ready for you. You can make that decision even today.

We're coming into our time of response. We'll have some people around the room with lanyards that would love to talk with you, pray with you, maybe help you take that decision, make that step. If you are ready to surrender your life to Jesus and say, I'm done doing it my way, I want to start doing it yours. I want to give my life over to you. We want to help you do that.

Even today, we have everything that you need. Even towels. If you want to go home wet, that's fine. We're ready if you are. We're also going to have a time of communion where we remember the price that was paid through the blood of Jesus on the cross that bore hell for us so that we don't have to.

And we're going to invite you as we kind of have a moment of silence. You can come up. We've got boxes at the front of the room at the back. Grab a little cup on one side. It has a piece of bread that helps us remember Jesus body that was given for us on the cross, his blood that was shed.

And as we, we take these emblems, they remind us. They remind us that we have been forgiven and we've been set on a new path. And so take that back to your seat and maybe just spend a few moments reflecting on where you're going and are you surrendered to him and celebrate that even again. You can turn and follow. Or if you just need someone to pray with you, and we would love to do that.

Well, let's spend these next few moments just focus on whatever he is wanting to do in our hearts now. Jesus, we give this time to you and thank you for bearing the weight and the punishment of hell that we deserved so that we could find life in you. Life that starts here and echoes for all of eternity. In Jesus name, amen.

Thank you for listening to this message from Sherwood Oaks Christian Church. Did you know? You can watch all of our video content, both current and past, on our YouTube channel? Visit YouTube.com sherwoodoaks to watch messages, series and complete worship services.