A poll was taken a few years ago about American’s beliefs in heaven and hell. Now, polls are just polls, and you can take this for whatever you think it’s worth, but according to this poll, seventy-two percent of Americans believe in heaven, but only fifty-eight percent of Americans believe in hell.
To me, that’s interesting. I think it says something about us as human beings, or at least as Americans. Apparently, there are a lot of people who believe in heaven, but who don’t believe in hell.
It’s understandable, in a couple of ways. For one
thing, if we believe in hell, then we have believe that there are people who
actually go there. That means that we have to deal with the possibility
that we, or people we know, might go there.
We don’t like to think about that. I don’t like to
think about it. Now, as we’ve said
before, and as we’re going to talk about again in a little bit, we are saved by
our faith in Jesus Christ and by God’s love and grace and mercy. So if
you believe in Jesus Christ as the Savior, you don’t have to worry about
hell. You won’t be there.
But do you know people who will? Or at least, do you
know people who might be? Do you know people who have not accepted Jesus
as the Savior? Or at least, do you know people who you’re not sure have
accepted Jesus as the Savior? I think you probably do. I do.
And some of them are nice people, or at least they seem like it to me.
Some of them are people who don’t break the law and don’t cause trouble
and even are willing to help others. And I don’t like to think that they
may be going to hell. And you probably
don’t like to think that, either.
And that brings us to another reason people tend not to
believe in hell. They say that, after all, God is love. We’re told that over and over again in the
Bible, that God is love. And a loving God would never send people to
hell. So, either hell must not exist or
there must not be anybody who actually goes there.
That’s not how Jesus treated it. Jesus treated hell
as a reality. He treated hell as a real
place where real people went. Now, just as with heaven, we don’t know if
we’re supposed to take the descriptions of hell literally. Just as there
may not literally be streets paved with gold in heaven, there may not literally
be a lake of fire in hell. Or there may be. But just as we know heaven will be an awesome
place because it’s the place God is, we know hell will be a terrible place
because it’s the place where God is not.
Think
about how Jesus described hell in our reading from Luke today. Jesus
described hell as a place of constant torment.
He describes it as a place of agony. He describes the man who’s
there as being so miserable that he would love for someone to just give him the
slightest bit of relief, even just for a couple of seconds.
And not only that, this is something that lasts for
eternity. The way Jesus describes it in our reading from Luke, there’s no
escape from hell. Abraham, in Jesus’ story, says there is great chasm
between heaven and hell, that no one from hell can get to heaven and that no
one in heaven can go and help the people in hell even if they want to. It
just cannot be done.
This is not the only time Jesus talked about hell as a real
place. In Matthew, Jesus repeatedly references hell. He references it in another place in Luke,
too. Jesus describes hell over and over again as a place of darkness,
where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
So whatever hell is, Jesus
described it as a terrible place. It’s a place of constant torment. It’s a place where people are in agony.
It’s a place of constant darkness and tears. Jesus most definitely treated hell as a real
place where real people go if they do not believe.
But that still leaves the
question: why would a loving God send people to hell? And the
answer, I believe, is that God doesn’t. God does not send people to
hell. God allows people to make choices,
and those choices have consequences. We make a choice to accept Jesus as
the Savior. Or, we make a choice not
to. And there are consequences for both
of those choices.
In Jesus’ story from Luke, when
the rich man realized that there was no salvation for him, he begs Abraham to
send Lazarus from heaven to earth to warn his brothers. Abraham
refuses. He says that the man’s brothers
already have the words of Moses and the prophets, and if his brothers won’t
listen to those words, they won’t listen even if someone rises from the dead.
And of course, those words
Jesus attributes to Abraham turn out to be true. God the Father raised
Jesus from the dead. And many still did
not believe. And many continue not to
believe today.
In our reading from John, Jesus
explained how this works. Now, we love to read John Three, Sixteen: “For God so
loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him
shall not perish but have eternal life.” And sometimes we’ll go on and
read John Three, Seventeen: “For God did
not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world
through him.” But too often, that’s where we stop. And if we stop there, we don’t get the
complete picture of how this works.
John Three,
Eighteen is what gives a more complete picture. It says, “Whoever
believes in the Son is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands
condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and
only Son.”
The reason God
did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world is because the world
was already condemned. All of us.
We were all condemned because, as the Apostle Paul writes in Romans
Three, we have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Every one
of us.
So, God sent
the divine Son into this condemned world. And God did, indeed send the
Son into the world to save the world. Whoever does believe in Jesus
Christ shall not perish. They shall have
everlasting life. That is something God did out of love. Out of God’s incredible love, Jesus Christ
was sacrificed to give us the chance for salvation. And all we need to do
is make the choice believe in Jesus Christ as the Savior and accept the
salvation he offers.
All we need to
do is make that choice. But of course, there’s another choice
available--it would not be a choice if that was not the case. We can also
make the choice to not believe. We can
not believe in Jesus Christ as the Savior.
We can refuse the salvation he offers.
That’s not the
choice God wants us to make, of course. But God allows us to make
it. God allows us to reject salvation,
to in effect choose hell over heaven, if that’s what we want to do. I’m
sure God is sad when we make that choice, but God allows us to make it.
But here’s the
good news: God has not given up on people. It literally is true
where there’s life, there’s hope. As long as we’re alive, there’s the
chance that we’ll change, that we’ll make a different choice. As long as
we’re still on earth, we can still make the choice to believe. We can still make the choice to accept
salvation. We can still make the choice to choose heaven over hell.
That’s why God
created the church. Not just this church--all Christian churches.
God created the church to continue the work of Jesus. God created
the church to spread the gospel, the good news, to every person on earth.
God created the church to help people make a different choice, to make
the choice to believe, to accept salvation through Jesus Christ. God
created the church to help people choose heaven over hell.
So, think
about those people you know who don’t believe in Jesus Christ as the Savior, or
whom you’re not sure have accepted Jesus Christ as the Savior. Is there
something you could do about it? We’re
all supposed to, you know, or at least to try.
Jesus says to all of his disciples, “Go and make disciples of all nations...teaching
them to obey everything I have commanded you.”
What could you
do? What could I do? Could you
talk to them about faith? Could you invite them to a worship
service? Could you reach out through
social media, or through an email, or even by making a phone call? Could
you share God’s word and show God’s love to someone? What could we do?
It’s important
that we keep trying. We won’t reach everyone. Jesus himself did not reach everyone.
There were times when Jesus was talking to someone and they did not want
to hear it. They were not interested.
But Jesus kept trying. And we
need to keep trying, too. Again, I’m not
asking you to go half-way around the world and be a missionary. If God’s
calling you to do that, great. We’ll do
what we can to help you. But sometimes
your mission field is the guy next door.
Sometimes your mission field is the woman across the street.
Sometimes your mission field is someone in your own family.
Again, we need
to keep trying. We won’t always succeed.
But if we believe in Jesus, we need to believe in the things Jesus said.
Jesus clearly believed in hell, and Jesus believed it was a terrible
place. It’s a place I wouldn’t want my
worst enemy to go to, much less my friends.
If you and I
believe in Jesus Christ as the Savior, we don’t have to worry about going to
hell. But if you know people who don’t believe or if you’re not sure,
please do what you can to bring them home. It’s what Jesus told us to
do. It’s the loving thing to do. In fact, their eternal lives depend on it.
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