“Odium Theologium”

I want to thank everyone that helps in our music program. You know, in some churches, the musicians are paid and we don’t pay them. They do that as their service for the king of kings and the law of lords. And we truly, truly appreciate it. We’ve had visitors recently who came and just talked about some of the professionalism of the of the different ones that participate in our music program. And I said, yep, that’s all out of their love for the Lord Jesus Christ. And I appreciate your commitment and your faithfulness in that way.

Also, it is commonly known, if you’ve been a member here long, that I oftentimes, I won’t say I always do, but it’s pretty much almost always, that I tend to dress according to the theme of the message. And I’ve already seen some just do this because of my tie, I’m assuming, not because of my black shirt. And when we are looking at the sermon title of Odium Theologium, and as I mentioned this morning, that doesn’t mean stinky theologians, but rather it means a stinky theology or something that creates a sense of stench in the nose or the nostrils of certain people.

Tonight, we are addressing this issue of hell. And it was, Robert Murray McShane, who said to his dear friend as they met on Monday mornings, to Andrew Bonar, that Robert Murray McShane said to Bonar, says, what did you preach on yesterday or last night? And Andrew said, I preached on hell. And Robert Murray McShane said back to him, Did you do it with tears? Well, I can honestly say that there were tears shed as I prepared this message. But also, as I’ve gotten older and closer to the end of my ministry, if I get teary eyed, I lose as much oomph as I want. And so I am not, well, I’m not gonna guarantee that there will not be, especially at the end. However, to say, tonight’s message is extremely important and should be gut-wrenching. But that’s not the way I’m going to actually start, because there was a business that was having a grand opening.

Now, they really had continued the same business for years, but they had just moved to a new location. And there was a grand opening and a friend of the store owner sent flowers because of the occasion. He wanted to help out his old buddy and and so forth. But when the flowers arrived at the new store at the new location, the card read rest in peace. And it was like, oh, no. Is this the wrong card? Is this the wrong group of flowers? Does he want me to go out of business? What is this going on? So the store owner contacted being a bit shocked to the florist and when he got a hold of the florist shop owner and he said, you know, what is going on? And the florist responded and said, sir, I am very, very sorry for the mistake. and we just got the flower arrangements mixed up.

However, can you imagine this? Somewhere there is a funeral taking place and they have flowers with a note that reads, congratulations on your new location. Today, people use RIP that assumes everybody goes to heaven. There is no peace. saith my God to the wicked. And those who die outside of Christ, there is no RIP. There was on Instagram a lady who I made reference to this morning, although I didn’t give the full thing, where she said she was actually downing preachers. And she said, you know, I remember a day when there was a lot of preaching on hell, but I don’t seem to hear a lot about that now. But I think I know why. It’s because when you go to a funeral, how many times do you go to a funeral where the preacher talks about how this person is writhing in pain in hell? Now she was making fun of it because she didn’t believe in hell either. And she said, you know, maybe, just maybe, More of us might believe in hell if they would talk a little bit about it when we’re all thinking that this scoundrel has just gone there. I kind of respond, since I do a lot of public funerals, I had to really rethink that.

Most people do not go to funerals to be preached at, they go to be comforted in the loss of a loved one. And what is the purpose of a funeral service? However, there is the reality, this is the time. And every time that I preach a funeral, I always talk about the reality of death and the reality of judgment and the reality that Christ is the only way to eternal salvation. And so I make sure that those things are clear. But there is some real truth to what that lady had to say. Whatever happened to hell? Modern theology has actually seen a disappearance in hell or of hell.

Dr. Sinclair Ferguson that I referenced this morning and as Brother Tom said will be spoke at Ligonier. He’s a dear friend of Ligonier and was a dear friend of R.C. Sproul. He reminds us that mankind was created for fellowship with God and for eternal glory and original creation. For man to be banished forever into outer darkness with no escape should fill us with a sense of horror. By the way, that’s why we love Dr. Sinclair Ferguson. We all knew that. I did not tell you a thing you didn’t already know and believe. But we don’t always look at it in that perspective. Hell is not the fruit of God’s good creation for mankind, for all of humanity. Hell is but the consequence of rebellion and sin.

Now we can put that in the context of the eternal sovereignty of God, his foreknowledge, and that’s all true. But that was not the original intent of the creation. And it has come about because of the corruption of sin. And if you’re gonna get it right, that is hell and sin and life and death, we need to have some good definitions of those words. Are we gonna go to our current society and culture to get those definitions? Or are we gonna look at the Bible? And again, it is just so true and Steve Lawson is right. What do you know of God authoritatively that you don’t know in the Bible. Now there is general revelation, but how do you even know that that counts for anything except that the Bible says it counts for a little bit? It’s held enough to hold a man without excuse, Romans 1. Or what are we going to talk about as sin?

Well, I asked one time on an Indian reservation, unless there would be a fence, a Native American reservation up in South Dakota, when I asked during the time when I was a teenager, how do you define sin? And a little boy said, well, sin is when you put holy water into the goldfish bowl and you put goldfish water in the place where the holy water is and the priest doesn’t know. what do you do with that on a mission trip? You know, and I said, yeah that’s a sin, but is it really? Well not when you look at the fact of the Bible doesn’t say any of that. And so today we have in modern theology the disappearance of an important doctrine that should strike horror to our souls, and yet We hear it as a curse word. We hear it as a joke. Oh, it’s nothing more than a metaphor.

Recently, there was a podcast by Al Mohler, of which I shared with the people at prayer meeting on March 15, 2024. And under that, it was called Hell and the Balance. I researched that a little bit more because he said some things in there that really got my attention. I found out that he was a contributor to a book entitled, Hell Under Fire. Which I love that title. And it was written by a series of men, Sinclair Ferguson being one of them. And I’m going to use some of their material this evening because it is so important. But hell is in the balance. This doctrine is especially odious. to the modern and post-modern mind. They just don’t like it. I don’t like the idea. It’s a scandal of previous controlling generations that is offensive to modern sensibilities and it is an embarrassment.

Now a word of a man that I might have only quoted one time in my entire ministry, Frederick Schleiermacher, called the doctrine of hell a cultured, developed as a cultured from, cultured despisers of religion. Those who despise the doctrine of hell, it’s a needless thing for our enlightened minds and this progressive generation, really. Well, a word of someone that you may know a little bit more about, but probably didn’t know this, Henry Ward Beecher rejected the old, get this, the old thought of hell with its quote, spiritual barbarism. and the hideous doctrine. It is from Victorian liberals that are Victorian closed minded people and Victorian liberals started to emphasize something that this one you maybe have heard. The universal fatherhood of God. The fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.

Now Dr. J. Sidlow Baxter, well known English Anglican, I had the privilege of hearing him preach and he came to Grace Theological Seminary and he had a whole series on the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man and its abuse. And boy, did he stir up a hornet’s nest. And he wasn’t trying to take it from the liberal aspect of that and downplay the sinfulness of mankind. But he was saying that God is the father of all. And he was kind of coming that from the the Imaja day, the God image that we all bear and that there is a brotherhood of man. You know, what are we supposed to do? We’re supposed to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves. And so he tried. And at the end, all the professors in their classes said, yeah, he didn’t prove that. It is dangerous to lean upon that abominable doctrine. And I was kind of new to theology and studies, and I didn’t get the whole thing. But when you do place it within church history, That was not the beginning, but it was a major thing in the United States of America at the fall and the destruction, the disappearance of the doctrine of hell. But let’s stand out a little bit more.

It was Pope John Paul II, Again, we’re not Catholic, but it’s whatever. We disagree with Roman Catholicism a lot, but we do agree with them. And they historically have believed in a literal hell. That wasn’t one area that we would really find. But John Paul II redefined hell in 1999 at the Vatican. Quote. This is what he wrote. And keep in mind, being the vicar of Christ, this sways the whole Roman Catholic Church. Although I want to preface this by saying, I don’t want you to think that I think that every Roman Catholic believes this. There’s a lot of Roman Catholics don’t believe a lot of the heresy of the Roman Catholic Church. But this is what John Paul II wrote. Hell, quote, hell is not a punishment imposed externally by God. but the condition resulting from attitudes and actions which people adopt in this life. In other words, he declared it to be a condition and not a place. So maybe you’ve heard phrases like hell is here on earth.

Now, I’m gonna pause here, because I’m moving to how this now is gonna come into evangelicalism, which is the broad sense of what we call Christianity today. Your best life now. You know, love wins. That’s how you get there when you have the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man and that hell is a condition of your mind and hell is here on earth. Because what they’re doing is they’re downplaying the use of hell in the Bible and from the words of our Savior. And what they’re doing is making it not a place, because that’s the important thing. And then if you can get it that it’s not a place, but if you think it’s a place, then for how long? And so the eternality of hell. What is hell? Is hell just the absence of God? Or is it a place of active punishment? And then what takes place from that? Previous generations have seen the orthodoxy of hell. They’ve questioned it or they’ve denied it from outside of the faith.

Well, that shouldn’t surprise us that they deny the deity of Christ, eternality. They’re wrong on so many cases. But today, hell is being attacked from within. And these are some of the areas that it goes. Number one, universalism. And so love wins. Everybody eventually gets saved. Now some of this you can kind of get at the beginning of this whole thing called purgatory. You know, now the Roman Catholics and those who believe in hell, purgatory and heaven, there are the really, really bad people. Again, Dante’s Inferno. You know, Judas is at the lowest bottom part. And then it comes up a little bit and you see Hitler and all of that. And then she kind of come back up. But only the really, really, really bad people go there. Dahmer, you know, some others. But then bad people, they need to burn off some of that dross, and that’s what happens in purgatory, and they need more merit, so they’ve created this thing called the Treasury of Merit, and then you can get some merit to these kind of bad people, and then eventually they get to heaven. But what really happens in what has happened more recently in postmodernism is everybody eventually gets merit.

Now, some people, whether you believe in the treasury of merit and the heresy of the Roman Catholic Church, that’s a come and go kind of thing. But eventually, hell will burn off your wickedness and then love wins. I mean, how great, how great is your God? Do you think God is going to be really emphasized by just having some of his creation burn in hell forever and ever? No, we got to have people that eventually they all make it to heaven and we all rejoice together. Now that’s nice in concept. It’s heresy with a stench of the breath of Satan on it. Because our God is a holy God and he receives glory. from people spending eternity in hell. Now those are not real, that’s not the way to make a lot of friends in this world. And you share those things when you’re sharing the gospel, the reality, the wrath of God in that. Oh, I don’t want a God that, well, but God of wrath.

Well, then you don’t want the God of the Bible. Because you know what? My God is a God of wrath. The question is, is he gonna put that wrath on me or upon his son, his provision, so he doesn’t have to put it upon me? Because I’m gonna tell you something, all of mankind deserves the wrath of God. There’s not some that are better than others. It’s not some that have more crustiness of sin and it needs to be dealt with, but we all have it. And if you don’t believe that, then you do not understand grace. Mercy. That’s what we get. It’s called unmerited favor. We don’t deserve it. And yet mankind… But I’m not that bad. We’re going to get to some of those excuses here in a little bit. It is a place. It’s not a condition of the mind. So universalism, we get them all there.

Well, some people can’t quite buy that. And so they say, yeah, you know, I don’t even want to extend that to Hitler. That’s assuming in this day and age of anti-Semitism, you still believe Hitler was a bad guy. You know, you should never have to say that. There’s a lot of, just speaking bluntly, there’s a lot of very dumb people in this world. They deny the Holocaust. What on earth are they thinking? But so they don’t want to extend that maybe to him or to those that are really involved into sexual sin or whatever. So what they do is that you send them to hell and you burn them for a while and then they go into non-existence.

Now, again, there’s probably part of the natural human mind in annihilationism that probably you think, well, that might not be. In fact, it’s some verses almost talk about that, where it talks about, you know, if your eye offend thee or your hand offend thee, you know, and then to be, you know, then to be destroyed in hell. Well, that destroying, it never says you’re consumed. It says you’re eternally being destroyed. I don’t know about you, but you know, we all know the joke, right? Something, ow, but it feels so good after it’s over. That would be annihilationism. When we know there’s an end to the sting. There is no end to an eternal hell. Jesus referred to it as everlasting punishment.

So what are you going to do with that? Universalism, annihilationism, and all of this is brought into because of inclusivism. Everybody is included in the gospel. Those that want to, they just say, you know, all are going to be saved. We got to include everyone. And this addresses the issue, does God send sinners to hell if they never hear the gospel? Have you ever heard people trying to get God off the hook about what about the natives in deepest, darkest Africa? And if they never hear the gospel and God sends them to hell, and here we go, how is that fair? How would it be fair for God to include them when he said, that Jesus Christ is the only way of eternal salvation. If your sense of fairness is worth more than the truthfulness of the very words of Christ, I am the way, the truth, and the life, no man comes unto the Father but by me. Where is there fairness or where is there reality in all of that? And you see, and again, what is fair You never want to go to God and ask for fairness. You go to God and you ask for mercy, for forgiveness. There is a need for repentance. And that’s because of the reality of sin.

Therefore, how do we get to the absence of hell? How do we have the reality of hell is under fire? How can that be when we’ve got centuries of the preaching of the gospel and the reality and the belief of hell? Well, there’s several reasons for that. First of all, and we’ve already referred to it several times, there’s a shift on the doctrine of scripture. And we saw that in liberalism. When I went to seminary, and that wasn’t that long ago, that the inclusion of the whole doctrine, the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy, when the broadness of evangelicalism, that’s one reason why, by the way, I don’t mind using that phrase, evangelicalism, because there have been things that have been fought in the name of evangelicalism that we would firmly believe in. And this is one of them. The doctrine of scripture. that the Bible is the Word of God. It is inerrant. It is inspired. If what it says doesn’t agree with me or with science, I mean with the explosion of the doctrine of evolution in that, and what are we going to believe?

Well I’m going to believe science because I don’t want to look dumb. Well you may look dumb but you’re gonna burn for eternity if you don’t repent of your sins and trust the Bible. Now again it’s gotta be properly interpreted and we know all of that kind of stuff. But Satan’s methodology, remember there’s that verse that says we are not ignorant of Satan’s devices. The Greek there is his strategy. We’re not to be nailed by the fiery darts of the wicked one. And the one he has the biggest arsenal against is the doctrine of scripture. I don’t know why they had it there, but at the academy, the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, they had the, I think it was a facsimile, I’m sure they didn’t have the real one, but the Shroud of Turin. And that’s supposed to really get your attention. I don’t need a shroud that personally I don’t accept anyways. And it could be genuine. I really don’t care. Because I don’t need a shroud to prove to me that Jesus rose from the dead. And they had all this special computerization of the physical body of Christ. We could see what he really looks like. I don’t need to see, because remember what Jesus said, you’re blessed because you see me. But blessed are those who believe without seeing. That’s called faith. That’s what the word of God says. But an awful lot of people, spiritually, are from Missouri and say, you gotta show me.

Well, there’s some things you just can’t be shown that you gotta die, and then it’s too late to repent. And so, There’s a shift on the doctrine of scriptures. Secondly, there is a shift on the orthodoxy and your view of God, of the Trinity. Pastor Ryan just went through all of that and looked at that historically and there’s one reason why that it’s the doctrine of the Trinity and of deity and who God is. There’s a good reason why that is has been brought into question a lot early. Do you think that Satan wants you to get God right? Guaranteed no. We must understand God. He is holy. And and you know, we really will struggle with that. And that’s hard. That’s why I can say that, you know, those that just want to rely upon love or other attributes, they don’t understand that those are in perfect harmony in the revelation now. But what can you tell me authoritatively about a holy God that’s not found in the Bible? Romans 1, it’s enough to hold you without excuse, that is God in creation, but it’s not enough for you to get God right, enough for salvation.

And so the doctrine of scripture, the doctrine of God and all of its entirety. Then there was a shift on the doctrine of divine love. A loving God would never send sinners to hell. but a holy God will, a sovereign God can, and a God who told us he’s gonna do it would be a liar, therefore not God, because God cannot lie, if he didn’t. And so you see, you gotta get God right, and you gotta get the scriptures right, but then if you shift on your concept of love, it was Gerhardus Vos, warned in his theology book years ago against an abstract view on love. And what did liberalism do when it came into the realms of Christianity early in the United States? Love thy neighbor as thyself, the social gospel. I have a friend on Facebook. Sometimes I always got to be kind of careful that if she puts something on there that I don’t want to give anybody a wrong impression of what I believe. And sometimes you got to delete some stuff. I assume it goes away, I don’t know. And I don’t know that if anybody who sends me a message or says something with my name on it, if you all have access to that.

But you need to understand, I do have unsaved friends that I argue with and sometimes on Facebook and do some of these things that I thoroughly disagree with. And she is so overblown on the love of God that she would be probably a universalist and one that just thinks that love wins and a loving God would never send sinners to hell. And yet within the midst of all of that, she totally justifies a baby murder. And it’s just unbelievable how she thinks and does those kinds of things. But when you abstract this concept of love, and what I like to put in is always this, love, for love to exist, love has to have an object. I love animals. I love studying Native American history or Native American things. How about a really cool Indian knife or a Native American knife from in Colorado? See, love’s gotta have an object.

So for God to be a God of love, that’s why it’s so important to believe in the doctrine of the Trinity. Because before there was anything, what did God love? Well, the father loved the son and the spirit and the son loved the father and the spirit and the spirit loves the son and the father. There was an eternal object of love. God loves us. And so it’s got to have an object just to say God is love. That’s true, but loves what? And so when people, yeah, you know, he’s never going to, you know, so what does God love? Does God love sinners? Well, it says he doesn’t all of them. He’s angry with the wicked every day, and so forth. And so love has got, and when you corrupt the view of God and love, and then you properly misunderstand God, and then you try to disregard verses of the Bible, you see right there. So there’s a shift on all of these. That there’s a shift on the view of justice.

Now what this one is, is quite interesting. Is God, would God be just to send every human to hell? Now we’re assuming for sake of argument right now that hell is real and it’s a place. Would God be just? Yeah, it’s not his plan, praise God. But he’d be just. Most people wouldn’t believe that. That’s why there was this shift on from the Pope who influences the thinking of millions of people, and over time, probably billions. Hell is a state of mind, or as the Pope was to talk about, it’s not a punishment imposed upon sinners by God. That has an outward manifest, and I love, I was discussing this with a person at Wright State University once, and a very, very liberal university where I got my undergraduate, and they were trying to justify the precursor of no bail, of what we have today, which is just stupidity. I’m sorry, I can’t think of another word. And they just said, because, well, capital punishment, and we were talking about capital punishment, capital punishment does not discourage murder. And I just looked at him and I said, well, he doesn’t kill anybody else, so there’s a few, it discouraged him. And I don’t know why I gotta put his life as all important over other murderers.

So that’s not a rational statement. murder and death and judgment and punishment. And therefore we shouldn’t spank our children because if you hit a child it will make them want to hit others. I one time told a person not if you hit them hard enough. Not if they know that if you spank them with a sense of reality to it. You see, but that was a shift in this concept of justice, of retribution, of penal reform. You know, Colorado has got a lot of prisons and they’re pretty impressive. And I, you know, I’m going to be a little bit maybe juvenile in this, but I don’t want to go in there. I don’t want to do anything that makes me want to go in there. And now we’re back with the lady who we started off with on Instagram. He just said, if we talked a little bit about more hell and talked about its evils, maybe a few people might say, I don’t want to go there. Where are the sermons of sinners in the hands of an angry God? Where God, as it were, through the preaching of the Word of God, it’s like being in a spider web, just being dangled over the pit of hell. And the cry out for mercy. God, be merciful to me, a sinner. The reality of looking at a bleeding Savior on a cross, bleeding from His feet, from His hands, from His brow, as He hangs there completely without clothing. And the two thieves are just hitting on Him and hitting on Him. And then it’s called grace, mercy, the power of the Spirit of God that works with one and not the other. who helps him, enlightens his mind, and he says, remember me when you come into your kingdom. And God saves him.

Now, is that just? Is that fair? It’s reality, whether you like it or not. And so we have a shift on the concepts of justice, retribution, and as it expresses itself in a penal reform, the lack of bail laws, a lack of justification of the reality of law and offense. And what is sin? Transgression of the. And does our society today give any regard to that philosophically in our legal system? Now you take those tents down. We don’t want you here doing this thing. These are college campuses of Ivy League. I’ll tell you what, I wouldn’t want to go to an Ivy League school personally. They’re a bunch of spoiled kids who cannot think beyond their nose. They have no critical thought skills. They can be led along as a donkey. And they have no regard for law of decency.

Well, you better have that if you’re going to understand God, scriptures, sin and retribution, judgment, justice. That’s why we become all so frustrated with what’s going on in the world today. That’s part of our Christian nature. We become frustrated, especially when we think I can’t change anything. But we need to be aware of what is the ultimate expression of it. And as we just throw up our hands and we want to be quiet and forget about it. And when we think of, and there’s no way I’m going to finish this sermon, but because I’m still on my intro. That’s why my heart breaks for our president.

See, God holds me as a pastor to a high judgment. And we understand that. I think you get that. But God holds Biden, Trump, Bush, Reagan, all of them to a higher judgment because political leaders will be judged by a holy God. And he’s oblivious to it all. And he fights against truth and justice and all of this. That’s why we need this recognition of the sinfulness of mankind. There’s a shift on the psychological worldview that I am the master of my destiny. Frank Sinatra did a lot of damage for the kingdom and for people. And I did it, I’m not gonna sing it, my way. And you went straight to hell because man’s way is not God’s way. Man’s thoughts are not God’s thoughts and you will go to this place that God has made for the devil is angels and all that follow his worldview. Shame, guilt is tending to be banned from the public view. We need to always not make people feel shameful how we talk.

Now, I don’t think you need to purposefully beat people down, but I think you need to be truthful with them. We went to a wolf center, surprise, surprise, surprise, and spent some time in the restrooms. And you know, when you go out West, things, you know, how they identify. They got this one thing with half man, half woman, and then woman, and then man. And the bathroom sometimes, public restrooms are just hilarious because nobody knows what to do with this anymore. unisex and, you know, just whatever. And how many genders are there? That’s 20 some or more. And that just goes in the face of reality and everything else. When we went to this wolf center and I took a picture of if you want to see it, I’ll show it to you. But it just it took a picture and it had two funny beings up there. I wouldn’t even say they were human beings. And it just said at the bottom, whatever.

The psychological worldview of wanting not to cause any sense of guilt or shame or that there’s sinfulness or that there is a, or even discussing it from the public discussion. There’s a shift on the orthodox view of salvation. Sin has been redefined as a lack of self-esteem or an offense to, rather than an offense to a holy God. I’ve already mentioned enough on that. Let me go through one more shift and we’ll kind of bring this to a close and I’ll bend through at least my intro. There’s also been a shift on ecclesiology, the doctrine of the church, how the church is willing to confront these issues. Well, we got to be careful we don’t offend anybody. I like the one person said, if you don’t, if you come to my church and you don’t get offended, then I didn’t do my job. Because it’s not my job to offend. It’s my job to preach the gospel. And the gospel is an offense. And we know historically that is to the Jew first, but also to the Gentile. People don’t want to hear. about abstinence and celibacy until marriage, just on heterosexual, normal aspects of sexuality in the world, let alone all the aberrant, God-hated, declared abominations. If we just say, you need to save yourself until you’re married, people say, well, that’s old-fashioned. No, it’s what God requires.

Now praise God. He knows we’re sinners and people fall into sin. But will most of the people in our day and age ever think that it’s a sin? No. A shift on ecclesiology and seeker-friendly ministries and it affects your evangelism. The marketing of God to our contemporary culture. One man put it this way, today we have an air-conditioned hell to ensure more people go there. Isn’t that terrible? Well, if I die and go to hell, I’ll just have a great time with my buddies. This world has no concept, but that’s the end result when hell is under fire, when people really don’t believe it, or that God is not going to send people there.

Now, that just introduces the whole thing, I’m going to read this quote, but I’ll do it again in a future sermon because it’s way too good. Hell. Is a place. Of cosmic. Waste. God image bearers were not created to go to hell. You see, that’s what people will say. You think God just creates people and send them to hell? No. He created him have fellowship with Him. And they chose to thumb their nose at God and said they wanted to do it, like Frank Sinatra, their way. Hell is a place of cosmic waste. Dense, heavy, place that pulls at the human being. Hell is the dark side of eternity. It is the balance of reality. Jesus preached on these things, and so must we. But who is sufficient on these things? If you don’t have the eternal authoritative, powerful word of God.

Now, we haven’t even gotten into that hell is a real place. Hell is a prepared place. Hell is an eternal place. Hell is the judgment and place of destruction. It is punishment. Hell is the prison for unrepentant sinners. Hell gives up its dead to the lake of fire. The eternal place of the wrath of Almighty God. Hell is not understood because the righteousness of God is not known and what God requires. My brethren, we have a blessed savior who saves us from it in grace and mercy. He gives a public invitation, come, come, and people won’t. But we did, and it wasn’t by your action. You were dead in trespasses and sins. God in mercy enabled you to see and to come. Praise God. A God who loves, a God who saves, but a God who is just and a God who is holy. Well, with that introduction and the weeks ahead, we’ll come back to this and see some specific things about hell, but also about the greatness of our God.

Would you stand with me tonight as we close? Our Father in heaven, We did go through the sermon without a tear. But we have had horror strike our souls, I believe. Father, we should be horrified. We should be filled with appreciation. And may even sound odd, but we should be filled with love to the God who lovingly saved us. Father, give us eyes that we might see you, ourselves, and this world properly. And then may it affect how we live, how we pray, and how our lives will be changed for your glory as we pray these things in Jesus’ name, amen.