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Sermon on Hell (page two)

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After all, we live in the 21st century. I don’t think people living in the 1200’s or in the 1400’s or in the sixteenth century at the time of the Reformation or even as recently as the 1800’s would have avoided the subject of hell quite the way we would.

  But times change. Up until recently, mankind has understood that God is a righteous Judge and that if we’re talking in terms of final judgment, God is the Judge and we’re in the prisoners’ box as it were. We’re the ones who are on trial and we have to justify ourselves to God. Up until recently I think that was the understanding of the relationship between God and the human race.

  But not now. Now it’s reversed. Now God is on trial. And we’re the judge.

  Just look at what we can achieve with our technology! We have built in the western world an amazing civilization unparalleled in the history of the human race for its resources, its riches, its know-how. We’re about to clone human beings. We’ve arrived. We have no need of God. So God, if there be such a being (so think modern people), will have to do a good job or we won’t buy into it. He’s the one who is in the prisoner’s box. He’s the one who is on trial, and we are the judge.

  So anyone who preaches about hell, today, faces an uphill battle, even when he’s preaching to the converted. It seems far-fetched to think of judgment at the hands of a holy God. “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty.” It is easier to sing that than it is to believe that the Lord God Almighty really is a righteous Judge.

  For me, hell is a simple question. The whole question of hell is settled for me right at the beginning, before we even get started into the whole discussion, by the fact that I am a Christian. What does that mean?

  It means I am a follower of Christ. I am a disciple. He is the one who instructs me. I learn from Christ.

  Submitting to Christ’s teaching is based on a prior understanding that Christ, this man whose life is described in the New Testament by people who knew Him quite intimately—that this man is God, that God has become Man without ceasing to be God.

  Once you arrive at the conclusion that Jesus is fully divine at the same time that He is fully human, that God is walking on this earth and therefore when you come to Jesus you are coming to God —well, that sort of settles the whole matter. In fact, it settles all matters, doesn't it? Because if Jesus is speaking to us of eternal truth, who better to understand that eternal truth than Jesus who is God Himself?

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