Review / Introduction:
Judgment is Horrific. (Nahum 2)
- The Battle is going to be horrific. (Nahum 2:1-5)
- The Devastation is going to be horrific. (Nahum 2:6-10)
- The Fall is going to be horrific. (Nahum 2:11-13)
The Truth about Hell
Hell is a Place
Matthew 8:12 - thrown into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Matthew 10:28 - And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
Hell is a Place of Torment...
Revelation 20:15 - And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
Hell is a Place of Torment of Varying Degrees...
Matthew 11:24 - But I tell you that it will be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you.
Hell is a Place of Torment of Varying Degrees that Lasts Forever...
Matthew 25:46 - these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.
Hell is a Place of Torment of Varying Degrees that Lasts Forever which we all Deserve...
Romans 3:23 – for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God
Hell is a Place of Torment of Varying Degrees that Lasts Forever which we all Deserve but God DOES NOT want us going there.
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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Alright, turn in your Bibles with me please.
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To the book of Nahum in the Old Testament.
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Book of Nahum.
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We're in chapter 2 and if you're just visiting with us at Harvest Bible Chapel, we believe in taking a book of the Bible and walking through it a verse at a time.
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Instead of me getting up saying, "Here's what I think you need to hear." We let the Word of God speak for itself.
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Amen?
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And to that end, we are looking over these four weeks at an Old Testament book.
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The book of Nahum.
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This is a book about God's judgment.
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Judgment is God's righteous act of identifying sin and condemning sinners.
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And Nahum is a book all about judgment.
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In the book of Nahum, God was judging a city called Nineveh, which was the capital of Assyria.
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God was judging this city, these people, for two main reasons really that we've seen.
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This is review, but two main reasons.
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One is violence.
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Nineveh was an extremely violent city.
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We talked about that last week.
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brutality with which they treated people.
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And the other reason we saw also from Scripture was Nineveh's pride.
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Nineveh got to the point that, "Who is God?" "We run this show!" And God doesn't tolerate competition.
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And we saw the last two weeks, God's judgment is, first of all, fueled by jealousy.
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Do you know why judgment is coming?
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It's because God cares.
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He loves His people.
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And when He sees His people afflicted, it gets His attention because He loves us.
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And last week we saw that judgment is a response to man's pride.
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The Bible says over and over and over that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.
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So either way, you're going to get God's attention.
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Right?
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You're either going to get grace, or you're going to get opposition.
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And what determines what you get from God is whether you choose to humble yourself, or you live in pride.
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So we're going to be covering Nahum 2 today, and in this chapter you're going to see there's no instruction in this chapter.
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There's no call for repentance.
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This chapter is just a pronouncement of judgment for Nineveh, describing events.
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Actually, when Nahum spoke these, these events didn't happen for three or four decades into the future, but Nahum describes them perfectly.
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History records, even secular history records, that all these things that Nahum was talking about was fulfilled to the letter, to the most minor detail, perfectly fulfilled.
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And there's really only one thing you can say in response to this chapter, and that's the title of today's message.
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Judgment is horrific.
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I chose that word because I couldn't think of a worse one, honestly.
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I'm open for suggestions.
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I could not think of a worse word to describe the judgment of God.
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It's horrific.
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So in this passage, God is talking to Nineveh through Nahum, and if you're taking notes, He says three things.
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First of all, number one, the battle is going to be horrific.
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The battle is going to be horrific.
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There's an upcoming battle, Nineveh.
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Hey, Assyria, I'm judging you.
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I'm bringing punishment.
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There's going to be a battle, and the battle is going to be horrific.
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Look at chapter 2, verse 1.
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It says the scatterer has come up against you.
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Meaning the enemy coming against Nineveh.
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And then look at this.
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Man the ramparts, watch the road, dress for battle, collect all your strength.
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God's mocking them.
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God's like, "Hey, the battle's coming.
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Get ready.
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Get ready.
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You've been so violent and so proud.
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Well, get your fighting shoes on because the enemy's coming.
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You ready?
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You ready?
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Get your people ready!
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God is, He's mocking them.
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It's like a futile call to arms.
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Verse 2, "For the Lord is restoring the majesty of Jacob as the majesty of Israel.
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For plunderers have plundered them and ruined their branches." Just a reminder, just in case you're wondering why God's so fired up about judgment.
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He says it's about Israel.
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Israel's been attacked and plundered, and Israel's going to be restored.
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Alright, verse 3 and 4 talk about the Babylonians that are coming that God's going to use to attack the Ninevites.
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"The shield of His mighty men is red.
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His soldiers are clothed in scarlet.
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The chariots come with flashing metal.
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On the day He musters them, the cypress spears are brandished.
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The chariots race madly through the streets.
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They rush to and fro through the squares.
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They gleam like torches.
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They dart like lightning." So God was mocking Assyria, saying, "Hey, Nineveh, get ready." By the way, He's saying here the Babylonians are ready.
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And it's going to be horrific.
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Verse 5, again, speaking to Assyria, to Nineveh, He remembers His officers.
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They stumble as they go.
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They hasten to the wall.
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The siege tower is set up.
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Again, "Hey, get ready! Hurry up! Get ready!" Because the battle is coming, and the battle is going to be horrific.
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Number two, the devastation is going to be horrific.
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The devastation is going to be horrific.
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The river gates are opened.
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6, the palace melts away. We talked about that back in chapter 1 verse 8. History buffs.
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In 612 BC, the Tigris river flooded and the flood actually broke the wall at Nineveh and the Babylonians poured in and slaughtered the Ninevites. To the point I was reading this week, a secular historian records this event. He says it was so bloody, the flood from the tigers that were rushing through the streets were actually tinted red from all of the blood that was slaughtered by the hands of the Babylonians.
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V. 7 says, "Its mistress is stripped.
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She is carried off.
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Her slave girl is lamenting, moaning like doves, and beating their breasts." What in the world is that talking about?
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He's talking about their God, or more specifically their goddess, which was Ishtar.
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See the Ninevites had this goddess, and the Babylonians when they attacked the city, they carried off the idols, the slave girls.
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Those are the temple prostitutes weeping.
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You see this is a sign of utter defeat.
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God promised this actually back in chapter 1 verse 14.
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was a sign of being conquered when an enemy comes in and runs off with your idols. That's like ultimate defeat, right? Like you're this proud powerful city and like, "Hey, how's it going?" Like, "It's so bad that they stole our gods. Can you believe that? Our gods have been stolen! That's pretty bad. That's a bad day when your gods have been stolen." That's like rock bottom, right? You'll You can imagine, right?
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Okay, thank you both of you.
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Verse eight, "Nineveh is like a pool whose waters run away.
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'Halt!' they cry, but none turns back." You see, Nineveh was sort of like this oasis in the desert.
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And I love this picture because I totally get this picture because now Nineveh is gonna be like, well, he says, "Nineveh is like a pool, waters run away." thought of when I read that? Have you ever seen like an America's Funniest Home videos or something where somebody has one of those big above-ground poles and then somebody comes by and hits it with like their tractor or their Pontiac? What happens right? Whoosh! It just the water just flies everywhere right? And that's the picture that God's using. Not that God used America's Funniest Home videos, but that's the picture here right? When you break a pool the waters just go everywhere and he said that's what's going to happen with Nineveh, when the damage comes, everybody's going to scatter, and there's going to be maybe a couple brave people, they're like, "Wait! Come back! Come back!" And they're not coming back.
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Right? They're not coming back.
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That's the picture here.
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V. 9 "Plunder the silver, plunder the gold, there is no end of the treasure or of the wealth of all precious things." You see, Assyria over the years of their devastation and conquering, They took tons and tons and tons of loot.
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Now they have a ton to take.
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That's what he's saying.
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Oh, you stockpiled your stuff, did you?
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It's going to go faster than it came.
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Plunder.
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In verse 10.
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Put a bracket on verse 10.
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I did.
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The devastation is going to be horrific.
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Here it is.
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Desolate.
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Desolation and ruin.
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Hearts melt.
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and knees tremble, anguish is in all loins, all faces grow pale." Empty, devastated, terrified, traumatized.
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Even with the terrorist attacks we faced in our nation, this is something that even we can barely fathom.
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Just a complete and utter annihilation to the point that the people are just completely traumatized by how horrific the devastation is going to be.
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And then finally, just for this part, don't get excited.
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Number three, the fall is going to be horrific.
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The fall is going to be horrific.
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The fall of Nineveh.
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That's how God concludes this section.
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He says, "Where's the lion's den?
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The feeding place of the young lions, where the lion and lioness went, where his cubs were with none to disturb.
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The lion tore enough for his cubs and strangled prey for his lionesses.
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He filled his caves with prey and his dens with torn flesh.
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He's contrasting the height of Nineveh's power to the depth of Nineveh's defeat.
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He said, "You used to dominate and now you are desolate." And there's a reason all this lion imagery is used.
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Actually, archeology has confirmed this, that that was sort of a symbol for Nineveh's kings.
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Right?
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Just kind of like, you know, the United States has the eagle as a symbol.
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Well, a lot of the Assyrians and Ninevites had the lion because they were proud and mighty and strong.
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And God says, "Yeah, you were just like the lion, weren't you?
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You just went out and you hunted and you tore and you took back to your den and you had this stockpile and none of us like your den and you used to be something.
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Vicious and prosperous but verse 13, the Lord says, "Behold, I am against you," declares the Lord of hosts, "and I will burn your chariots in smoke and the sword shall devour I will cut off your prey from the earth, and the voice of your messengers shall no longer be heard." This is the promise of destruction.
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With the worst sentence any person, any nation, the worst sentence that anybody can ever hear is uttered right here.
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And it's when the Lord says, "I'm against you." We talked about that last week, right?
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Pride.
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What does God say about pride?
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He says, "I'm opposed to pride.
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I'm against you.
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And for God to come to Nineveh and say, "Hey, you bit off more than you can chew this time, because now you have my attention." And right now we're sitting in church in 2018 and we say, "Yeah, wow, wow, God's judgment, it was pretty bad back then, wasn't it?" I mean God's judgment in the Old Testament, it was God's, you know, fiery Old Testament God. It was pretty bad back then, but that's like, that's Old Testament and God's not really like that anymore. Right? Please tell me God's not like that anymore. Actually, the Lord has not changed. And truth be told, when it comes to judgment, if the Bible's true, and I believe that it is.
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When it comes to judgment, the worst is actually yet to come.
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As horrific as this passage is about this city, it's bad.
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It's nothing compared to what's coming.
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Like, well that's certainly not New Testament.
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Well, I would encourage you, Go home and read Paul's letters to the Thessalonians.
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I would encourage you to read Peter's epistles.
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I would encourage you to read Revelation.
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And you know when you do that, you find here's Paul, and here's Peter, and here's John, all speaking of this horrible wrath that is to come.
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This horrible judgment of God that is to come.
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You're like, "Yeah, well those guys were kind of fiery, but not my dear, sweet, precious, calm Mr. Rogers like Jesus, right?" Jesus spoke of God's wrath, or hell, almost twice as much as He spoke of heaven.
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You know, you could take every prophet and preacher, apostle in the Bible, take all of their teaching on judgment and wrath combined, and Jesus still spoke more about judgment and wrath than all of them.
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Combined.
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So maybe in your New Testament fact-checking about judgment, you should read a Gospel or four.
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When we talk about judgment, yes, there's temporal judgment.
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That's what we just read here.
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Temporal judgment.
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Like in Nahum to Nineveh.
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It's on peoples and nations.
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And we see it a lot in the Old Testament.
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You're being punished now for your sin.
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But there's also, the Bible says, there's a final judgment at the end of the age.
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That's Revelation 20 type stuff.
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a series on judgment, we have to talk about hell.
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Because there's nothing more horrific.
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There's nothing that human imagination could come up with that could compare to the reality of what the Bible says, what Jesus said about hell.
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Hell is a real place.
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And real people are really going there.
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You know, in our day, it's been ignored.
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It's been reduced to a fairy tale.
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It's cartoon stuff, right?
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Oh, we see hell on Tom and Jerry, right?
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It's just this like red place and like the devil's in charge.
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Both of those are false according to the Bible, by the way.
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But it's been ignored.
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That's just fairy tale stuff.
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Hell's been trivialized.
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Hell's been trivialized.
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We make the word part of our common vernacular, so it just sort of loses its oomph, right?
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We do it all the time.
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Oh, did you watch the Stanley Cup Finals?
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Oh, that was a hell of a series.
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Just trivialize it, right?
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Did you hear that music?
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That guitar player up here, the good looking guy here, he's a hell of a musician.
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We just trivialize it, right?
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Oh, have you ever been to Stacked across the street?
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Oh, we went there a couple weeks ago, hell of a burger.
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And we just keep throwing that word out and it doesn't mean anything.
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Hell has been ignored, hell has been trivialized, hell has been denied.
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And I wish I could stand here and say hell has been denied by these blatant false prophets who don't like the Bible.
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I wish I could say that, but that's not the problem.
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The problem is there are very popular pastors, preachers, whatever you want to call them, They're very popular.
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I call them false teachers.
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They're very popular within the church.
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These people that proclaim to be pastors and teachers and prophets or whatever, they get up and say, "My God is a God of love and He would never send anyone to hell." And people just swoon over that.
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Oprah Winfrey's like, "Sign me up for that plan." Like, "Oh, my God is a God of love.
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And the idea of hell is so archaic and so Old Testament and so this." And people just fawn over that.
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Do you know why people fawn over that?
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'Cause that's what they wanna hear.
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And do you know what you call it when you make up the God that you wanna worship?
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Do you know what that's called?
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That's called idolatry.
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And what you've done is you've reduced, You've reduced heaven to the participation trophy of life, right?
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We live in the day of participation trophies.
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Hey, it's happened with our foster kids.
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You know, our soccer season was like O and 10, but he got a trophy.
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Why?
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Because you showed up.
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And that's how some people treat heaven.
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Heaven's the ultimate participation trophy.
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Like I'm going to heaven.
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Why are you going to heaven?
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Because everybody goes to heaven.
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Really?
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You don't need to love Christ, you don't need to turn from your sin, you don't need to give a rip about God at all, you just magically get the participation trophy called heaven.
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And you know, when we hear that church, when we hear that again, it's like we're back in the Garden of Eden and we hear the devil's words to Eve directed at us.
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You will not surely die.
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You remember that?
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You will not surely die.
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"You will not surely die." So I'm going to give you the truth about hell, according to the Bible, and I'm going to give it to you in one sentence.
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But I'm going to give you the sentence a piece at a time.
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Okay?
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So jot this down first of all, hell is a place.
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Hell is a place.
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Matthew 8.12, Jesus said, "In that place "There will be weeping and ashing of teeth." Matthew 10.28, Jesus said, "And do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul.
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Rather fear Him, God, who can destroy both soul and body in hell." Hell is a place.
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It's not a construct of the church.
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It's not a scare tactic.
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It's not the boogeyman.
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And not wanting to believe in hell doesn't make it untrue.
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It's a real place, right?
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According to the Bible, it is a place.
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Let's go on with our sentence.
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Hell is a place of torment.
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In one sentence, we're just going to keep adding words.
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Hell is a place of torment.
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It's described as darkness and fire.
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It's described as weeping and gnashing of teeth.
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That's emotion.
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That's pain.
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It's torment.
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The Bible says when an unbeliever dies, his soul goes into hell, which is not the lake of fire yet, but there's a place of torment until the lake of fire, according to what Jesus said in Luke 16.
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The Bible says when Jesus returns and sets up his thousand year kingdom that the Bible talks about cover to cover.
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When Jesus returns and sets up his kingdom, believers are going to receive an eternal body for glory.
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Isn't that good news?
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This is not the thing I'm taking into eternity and I'm thankful for that, amen?
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I am in line for a serious upgrade.
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I don't know why you're laughing, some of you are too.
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(congregation laughing)
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Just saying.
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Hey, look, we're all in the same boat, right?
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We're all in the same boat, we're all wearing out.
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We're all wearing out.
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The Bible says very clearly that this body, it's like a seed put in the ground and we're gonna get this new one, right?
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And this new one is going to be indestructible and it's going to be perfect and we're going to enjoy that for all of eternity.
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But after the thousand years, the Bible says there's the great white throne judgment And unbelievers - this is Revelation 20 - unbelievers get an indestructible body too.
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But their indestructible body is indestructible so that it wouldn't be consumed.
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So that it would suffer forever.
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They receive an eternal body for the lake of fire.
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Revelation 20.15 says, If anyone's name is not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
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Next part of the sentence, "Hell is a place of torment, thirdly, of varying degrees." Did you know that?
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Hell is worse for some people than it is for others.
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Like what determines?
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This is a whole other sermon series, but just for today.
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The Bible says the more you know about the Lord, about the call to repentance, about what it means to receive Jesus, about what Christ has done for you on the cross, and the resurrection, the more you know, and the more you reject, the worse hell is going to be for you.
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Many passages talk about this.
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Here's one, Matthew 11.24, Jesus said, "But I tell you, it will be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you.
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Remember the story of Sodom back in the book of Genesis, a city so wicked that God's like, "Off the map." That's how wicked they were.
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And Jesus said, "Judgment's going to be easier for them "than it is for you who are rejecting me." Why?
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Because Jesus wasn't physically standing and preaching in Sodom the way he was to these people.
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He says, "You know more, you've seen more, "therefore you are accountable for more." You're accountable for more.
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And church, you're accountable for what you know.
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It is an absolutely horrifying thought to think that there are some people sitting here listening to this online that are going to spend eternity separated from God because they refuse to receive the gift that God's given, and we're going to talk about it in a minute.
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But if I can just step away from the emotion of it all, and the pastor's heart and mindset of, if I can just step back and look at it objectively, I can say this, if you have no intention on receiving Christ, okay?
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If you're like, look, my mind's made up, I'm never going to receive Christ, I'm never going to get religious or whatever you people call it, I'm never going to be born again, I have no interest in this, then this is absolutely the worst possible place you can be.
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You should have stayed home.
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because someday you're going to stand before God and you're gonna be like, "I didn't know, I didn't know." And God's gonna say, "Do you remember that Billy Goat looking preacher, June 10th?" That's how I imagine God must think of me.
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But God's going to say, "Do you remember?
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Do you remember you sat there and you laughed at the Billy Goat joke?
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Remember that?
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But he also talked about what my word says about what happens for people that reject my gift, for people that exalt themselves thinking they don't need me.
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Do you remember what he said about that?
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This is the worst place you could be if you have zero intention on receiving Christ.
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And if that's your plan, you shouldn't come back.
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You shouldn't go to any church for fear that you would be exposed to some truth from God's word that you are now accountable for.
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Because the more you know and the more you reject, the Bible says the worst hell is for you.
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Going on with our sentence, "Hell is a place of torment of varying degrees that lasts forever." Matthew 25, look at this, look at this.
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Because this flies in the face of all these false preachers out there, and they're teaching all kinds of things.
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I've read articles, "Hell hath no fury." There's a whole wave of evangelicalism that's doing away with the doctrine of hell.
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And there's even some that are saying, I read this article, like hell's temporary.
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Like you go there and you sort of get your punishment, whatever, but hell's temporary and eventually we all end up in heaven.
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But I want you to look at this verse.
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This is what Jesus said.
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And in light of what Jesus said, does anybody really give a rip what anybody else says?
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I don't.
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Jesus talking about the separation of the sheep and the goats.
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He said these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.
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You have to know that Jesus used the same word here.
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Did you see this?
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Eternal, eternal.
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In other words, hell lasts as long as heaven lasts, according to this statement.
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True or false?
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No, that would be true.
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in 20 some years of being a pastor and all the stuff that I've read and sermons that I've listened to and watched, I have not once, here's something I've never heard, I have never one time heard somebody say, "I believe that heaven is a temporary place." I've never heard that. Yeah, I believe you go to heaven for a while and then, you know, whatever. But I've heard that a lot about hell. Like, Jesus, what do What do you say about that?
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Jesus said, "Punishment is eternal." And, "Heaven, life, is eternal." Same word. It's the same word.
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Hell is endless.
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Other phrases are used in the Bible to describe this.
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It's a place where the worm does not die.
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The fire does not go out.
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Relief is never attained.
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Hell is a place of torment of varying degrees.
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It lasts forever.
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Next phrase in our sentence, "which we all deserve." Which we all deserve.
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Romans 3.23 says, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." We all deserve hell.
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And if you think you don't, then you've called God a liar.
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Because according to His Word, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
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of the glory of God.
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Every one of us are born with a sin nature.
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A self-centered, nobody-tells-me-what-to-do nature.
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And every sin that you've ever committed, every person that you've ever wronged, every time in your life that you knew what God wanted you to do, but you did what you wanted to do anyways, then you have sinned, you have rebelled, You have turned your back on the holy, almighty God, and for that, you and I deserve His judgment.
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We deserve hell.
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All have sinned and fall short.
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It doesn't matter if you're a murderer or if you're a gossip, you've fallen short.
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Who's ready for the good news?
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Here's the good news, last part of our sentence.
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Hell is a place of torment of varying degrees that lasts forever, which we all deserve, but God does not want us going there.
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That's the good news.
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God would be justified to say, "You sinned against me," and ping us straight into hell immediately.
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He would be justified to do that.
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But I love this verse, 2 Peter 3, 9 says, "The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promises.
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some kind of slowness, but is patient towards you." Look at this next phrase, I love this phrase.
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"Not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance." Not wishing that any should perish.
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The worst person you know, whether it's personally or somebody you know of on the media, maybe you have some kind of disdain for some politician or whatever.
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Think of the, in your mind, who is the worst person or the least deserving of anything person.
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The Bible says God doesn't even want that person to perish.
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God wants that person in heaven with him.
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So yes, God is a God of judgment, but God's also a God of love.
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He does not want you going to hell, so he provided a way.
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He provided a way.
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And the way is to turn from your sin and receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.
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Like, why is that the way?
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Why is that the way to avoid hell?
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Because when Jesus was on the cross, He was bearing God's wrath on Himself.
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The wrath that I deserve, the wrath that you deserve.
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When Jesus was on the cross, he stepped in our place.
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He said, "I'll take that, punish me.
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"I'll take that, I'll take the judgment." And when you receive Christ, when you believe that he took God's wrath on himself, God doesn't have any wrath left for you.
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You're not gonna stand before God someday and God say, "Well, I know you received Jesus, "but I'm still mad at you." The Bible says that God is satisfied with Christ's sacrifice on the cross.
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So if you believe in Jesus Christ, if you receive Him, the Bible says you will never face God's judgment.
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Jesus took it on Himself for you.
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Romans 8:1 says, "There is now therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." If you are in Christ, the judge has slammed his gavel down, He has said, "Not guilty." And who's going to overturn that?
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If God says you're not guilty, who's going to come along and overturn that?
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That's why we're big on Jesus around.
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That's why Christian demonstrated in this tub, he died to himself.
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That's why water represents a tomb.
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When he went down there, he said, "I'm dead." When the Christian came up, he said, "I'm identifying with the resurrection of Christ.
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The life I now live is Christ in me and through me.
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I am not my own. I was bought with a price." By the way, if there's somebody that needs to take that step, I've got my clothes and towels still up there.
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You're like, "But I don't have any." That's okay. You'll dry.
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We can stick around. We'll do this.
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See me after service.
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it right here right now it's all set up.
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But in light of how horrific hell is, is that really something you want to put off? Getting serious about the Lord? Is that really something you want to gamble with? You know when people object to the idea of judgment, the idea of hell, it's It's always for the same reason.
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They say, "How can a loving God do something?" You know, it doesn't sound very loving.
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My response to that is, "Hey, hey, hey.
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God's love is not in question.
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What more could God have done than He did?
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Tell me, what more could He have done?
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Though we sinned and rebelled, He took on flesh, He became a man, He lived among us, He was treated shamefully, and he was nailed to a cross, and laid in a borrowed tomb.
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What more could he have done to express his love?
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But somehow when we talk about judgment, God's love is on trial all of a sudden.
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No, no, no.
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His love is not in question.
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What more could he do?
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Because right now, the way that you're living your life right now, I just want you to think of your life, your typical day, your typical week, the way you're living your life, you are preparing yourself.
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You are preparing yourself for eternity.
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Meaning right now, your life, if you're like, "You know what, I love God, I love God's Son, I love God's people, I love God's truth, I love worship." That sounds to me like you're preparing yourself for heaven, because guess what heaven is?
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God's presence, God's people, God's truth, worship.
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But on the other hand, right now if you say, "You know, I really don't want anything to do with God or Jesus or don't really want anything to do with His people, I'm not really crazy about the Bible, I'm not really into worship." Truth is, you would actually be miserable in heaven.
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You'd be miserable in heaven.
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God's going to give you what you want.
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Now it's obvious the choice that God wants you to make, but the question I have for you this morning is what choice have you made?
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You want to choose not to receive Christ?
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You want to choose instead to receive God's judgment?
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I've got a word of warning for you.
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God's judgment is horrific.
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Let's pray.
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Father in heaven, oh Father, if there was any one doctrine from your word that I could wish away, it would be this one, probably exclusively.
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Father, I admit, I confess to you, there is a part of me that just wishes this wasn't true, just...
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not because I'm doubting your sense of justice, I just can't even wrap my brain around how horrible and horrific this kind of judgment is, that people would choose to accept for choosing to embrace your Son, embrace the forgiveness that you've offered in Jesus Christ.
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But Father, Jesus modeled this.
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He warned us.
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He showed that you need to take a serious look at Him, because the alternative is horrific.
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Father, that's simply what we wanted to do today, was take a look at Your Word.
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And I pray that Your Holy Spirit uses Your Word.
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I pray that You charge somebody today.
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You grab somebody and you shook them, that they would take a hard look, get a reality check, that someday we're all going to stand before you.
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And on that day we can either say, "I accepted your son.
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I accepted your gift of eternal life." Or we can say, "I accept your judgment." Father, we thank you for the incredible love that you demonstrated.
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we sang it earlier, more than I deserve, we don't deserve a thing from you.
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You've given us everything.
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For that, Father, we stand and we praise you now.
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In Jesus' name, Amen.
Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
Read Nahum 2
Based on cartoons, jokes, and old myths - what are some unbiblical ideas about hell that you have seen / heard?
Why are more and more people, even in the "evangelical church", denying the doctrine of hell, despite what the Bible says?
Paraphrase Nahum 2 in a sentence or two. Why would such a prophecy about Nineveh be preserved for US in God's Word? Why does God want us to know this?
What was your big "take-away" from this message / passage?
Breakout Questions:
Pray for one another!