Pastor Mark Nieting
Matthew 13: 47-52
Bill Gates met God, and God said, “Well, Bill, I’m really confused on this one. I’m not sure whether to send you to Heaven or to Hell. After all, you enormously helped society by putting a computer in almost every home in the world, and yet you created that ghastly Windows. I’m going to do something I’ve never done before. I’m going to let you decide where you want to go.”
Bill Gates said, “What’s the difference between the two?” God said, “It might help you decide if you took a peek at both places. Shall we look at Hell first?”
Bill was amazed. He saw a clean, white sandy beach with clear waters. There were beautiful women and handsome men running around, playing in the water, laughing and frolicking about. The sun was shining and the temperature was perfect. “This is great!” said Bill. “If this is Hell, I can’t wait to see Heaven.”
God said, “OK,” and instantly Bill saw puffy white clouds in a beautiful blue sky, angels drifting about playing harps and singing with people in white robes. It was nice enough, but Bill thought for only a brief moment and rendered his decision. “God, I do believe hell looks a whole lot nicer, so that’s where I’ll go.”
“As you wish,” said God. Two weeks later, God decided to check up on the late billionaire to see how things were going. He found Bill shackled to a wall, screaming amidst the hot flames in a dark cave, being tortured by demons with pitchforks. “How ya doin’, Bill?” asked God. Bill screamed, “This is awful! This is not what I expected at all! What happened to the beach and the beautiful women playing in the water?”
“Oh, that,” said God. “That was the screen saver.”
There’s some terrible theology in that joke, but it reminds us that St. Paul (2 Timothy 3) is very clear about the way a lot of folks both then and now have “set their spiritual screen savers.” He reminds Timothy that the time will come when people will not put up with “sound doctrine,” but they’ll only hear what they want to hear……and I believe that NOW is one of those times.
Talking about hell isn’t normal dinner table conversation for most of us. Warning people about it may relegate us to the “fire-and-brimstone” niche of Christendom. But when we study enough of polling data, it’s very clear that regardless of what Time Magazine says about “hell being dead,” about 75% of Americans believe in heaven…..and about 60% believe in hell and in the reality of the devil who inhabits it. A strong majority of us believe in the actuality of life after death, which I think is an glimpse of the soul that our creator placed in us. But, we get awfully fuzzy about the details; about how we end up in one place, or the other!
Do you know the one single Person in the Bible who talks most about hell? It’s Jesus! It’s Jesus because of He and He alone understands what hell is all about. It’s Jesus because He doesn’t want a single soul to end up going there! It’s Jesus, because HE went there and He lives to warn us about it.
The very first images of hell go back to Old Testament times when a very wicked King of Israel, Ahaz, burned his SONS as human sacrifices to the god Baal in the Valley of Ben Hinnon. It became a horrible, detestable place in the memory of ANY of God’s people! Centuries later….even at the time of Jesus, this valley was the place outside Jerusalem where the garbage was burned; a horrible, smelly, foul, terrible place called Ge hinnon, or Gehenna in Greek.
That’s the word the Bible uses most often for hell. Jesus used that word 11 times: for example, “Do not fear those who kill the body but not the soul, but fear the ONE who can destroy both body and soul in hell. (Gehenna).” It was a horrible place ruled over by Beelzebub, the word the Jews used quite often for the devil. It means “Lord of the flies; Lord of the garbage dump!”
I’ve heard skeptics of Christianity say that if God is good and if God created everything, then how could He even make a place like hell? It’s a valid question, and the answer is important for every Christian to know: Hell wasn’t part of God’s original creation. Heaven was. And so was Eden. Eden was where God walked and talked and visited with His people. In the parable of the sheep and the goats (Mt 25) the King (God) tells the righteous, “Take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you from before the creation of the world.” That’s Eden, it’s “original equipment” in God’s creation! It’s where God created us to be, the place where He could be with us and we could be with Him.
But in the same parable He says to the UNrighteous, “Depart from me….into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” Notice the contrast? “Eternal fire,” as Jesus names hell, was not prepared for people. It was created by God in response to sin; the rebellion of the evil one and, those who have followed him, and it’s as real as heaven is.
I’m not sure when the images of people floating on clouds and plucking on harps came into Christianity, but that wasn’t how Eden was and it’s not how Scripture paints “the new creation” that awaits us. Most of the images Jesus uses to describe the afterlife are metaphors. They’re figurative language. Imagine trying to describe a Boeing 747 jet to a person living 6000 years ago. You’d have to compare it to things they already know: it’s a giant bird, made of metal and filled with people and it can fly and makes huge noises! That’s what the Bible does for heaven…..and that’s what the Bible does for hell: a place of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth and of utter darkness (Mt 12).
There’s a character in literature that helps me understand what Jesus means, a character from JRR Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. It’s “Gollum.” His whole life was about getting one thing, the ring he called…..his “precious.” That’s an interesting word, isn’t it? Something precious SHOULD bring pleasure. It should bring joy…..but ultimately, Gollum’s obsession with his “precious” turns him from what he once was into someone hardly recognizable, someone who lived in perpetual darkness, someone who had no joy whatsoever! Imagine an obsession so severe that even little bits of joy are gone and all that’s left is a slavery to a hunger that can never be satisfied. That’s gnashing of teeth. It’s being cut off from God, cut off from the One who created you, cut off from anything good and all that’s left are the cravings of sin? How can anyone describe that?
Is hell made up of physical fire and brimstone? I don’t think so. Again, I believe that’s imagery from Gehenna. Hell isn’t what happens TO someone, it’s being left completely alone in our sin, cut off from the presence of God who cannot be in the presence of sin, forever. That’s why those “Far Side” cartoons of torture chambers and pitchforks are so misleading. Hell isn’t about being trapped in a place and wishing we could escape from it……it’s being given over to sin so completely that we become our own “Lord of the Garbage Dump,” forever.
It’s an image….and a reality that NO ONE WANTS TO BE A PART OF, EVER, and that’s why Jesus does two things about it: first, He paints a very complete and accurate picture about what COULD happen to a human being and second, He gives up HIS LIFE so that this fate can be prevented.
I know right now a lot of us are thinking how DIFFICULT a subject this is and how horrible it could be for anyone, our friends, our neighbors, our kids, our parents, and even ourselves to end up in hell; it’s then that we begin to get a glimpse into Jesus’ motivation. It’s WHY He put on human clothing and WHY He lived a perfect life in our place and WHY HE HIMSELF was “in” hell, TWICE.
When did that happen, you ask? The first time came as Jesus’ hung on the cross, covered over with the sins of every human being who ever lived: yours and mine included. It was then, for the first and only time in all of eternity that God the Father turned His back on Jesus and Jesus responded with words we recall from Good Friday: My God, My God, WHY have you forsaken me?
Because of what Jesus did, these are words we will never have to repeat!
The second time we repeat in the words of Apostles’ Creed: “He descended into hell.” This is when Jesus went to where the devil has been “chained” and proclaimed HIS VICTORY, victory in which we will share forever! Dear friends, it is because heaven AND hell are real that we exist as a church. It is because people we know are in danger of living eternally without God that HOPE LUTHERAN CHURCH is here. It’s because eternity is at stake that we take our Spirit-given faith seriously…..and to that, the people of God say Amen.
Pray with me: Saving God, give each of us the courage to reach out to others with the Good News of what Jesus has done for them. Their lives….and ours, were not created to live without You. Give us the courage to reach them with His love. Amen.
(Note about starting a new class this morning on “the last things.”)
