i'll be trying to blame on it It's good to be back in Los Angeles.

I just landed about three hours ago.

And I don't know how that happened, but we got some mix up and then we got a flight that was delayed.

I actually thought I wasn't going to be here, but the Lord did some amazing things and we landed, got a ride, and here I am.

This is the only clean shirt I have, which is why it matches the one on the screen.

Uh, what a trip, what a journey.

We've got a very special weekend, and so I got to get right into it, and you'll hear more about our trip later.

But if you have a Bible with you on your phone, whatever it is you're following, tracking with Matthew 25 and Luke 16, two passages, Matthew 25, Luke 16, as we bring this series to a close.

But it's a very important one because we have a lot of people around all of our campuses making quite an important decision this weekend.

And it's one that will forever change them.

So I started thinking, I read this not too long ago, the Coopers, husband and wife, were shown into the dentist's office where Mr.

Cooper made it clear that he was in a big hurry.

I don't know if you think about dentists, but the dentist is the one place I hate to go.

And I will avoid it for as long as I can.

So the Coopers go into the dentist's office.

Mr.

Cooper makes it clear he's in a big hurry.

He says, no fancy stuff, doctor.

No gas or needles or any of that, just pull the tooth and get it over with.

And the dentist says, I wish more of my patients were as stoical as you.

Now which tooth is it?

Mr.

Cooper turned to his wife and said, open your mouth, honey.

It's funny how someone else's pain doesn't really bother us that much.

At least it's not as much as our own.

And I'm not sure anyone likes pain.

I think some of us tolerate it, yeah, but I don't think anybody really enjoys it.

But when I was growing up in East Tennessee, it seemed that every sermon I heard was on sin and hell, torture and pain.

I mean, I was terrified.

That's the kind of church I grew up in.

I thought God was sitting up in heaven waiting for me to do something wrong so that he could drop the hammer.

And I was terrified of everything.

I was terrified of God, of sin, of hell, of judgment.

And I served God in those days primarily out of fear, not out of love.

I didn't understand that yet.

I was just terrified.

I had a fear of judgment and retribution.

And I was told and taught that if I didn't obey God all the time and do the right thing all the time, that I was going to straight to hell when I died.

And I was going to be there with Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot and every other evil person.

And the one thing I knew with certainty was that hell was a horrible place, a place to be avoided, a place of...

torment and suffering for all of eternity.

So it lasted for all of eternity, which is a long time, a place of fire and darkness, a place of endless falling, a bottomless pit.

I remember one of our youth pastors took us to a theme park called Carol Wins.

It's kind of like the Disneyland of the Southeast.

And we rode this roller coaster back in the day.

It was one of the first roller coasters to do the flip, you know, upside down.

Now they're everywhere now, but it was one of the first ones.

And you trek up this tall part of the roller coaster, this tall section, and then you just free fall for a long time.

And I remember our youth pastor taking advantage of this experience, telling us that hell was like this roller coaster, and the feeling that you get when you're descending, you know, how you just get, you know, it's just an emptiness.

He said, think of having that for all of eternity, and that's what hell is like.

So you can understand why I grew up in a church where I was terrified of God, judgment, hell, and everything else.

The good news is, as I got older, I started struggling with this whole idea, and I thought, how could a good and loving God take any pleasure in punishing people like this for all of eternity?

How could God possibly, the God I've learned about in Sunday school, a good, merciful, and kind God, how could this God possibly do this kind of thing?

And then the other thing I started thinking about as I got older was that how could finite offenses require infinite retribution?

How could finite offenses, because we all sin, but where's the crime and the punishment?

Whatever happened to the punishment fitting the crime?

And since I live on an average, what, 75 to 80 years, and then I got to be punished by God in darkness and pain and suffering and torment for all of eternity.

Then there was this other realization.

And I started doing a comparison on the words and adjectives or the descriptions of both heaven and hell.

And I learned that they were similar.

So if heaven is everlasting, then hell has to be everlasting too, because the same words are used to describe both.

The same Greek word expressing time is used to describe both.

So you can't say that one is temporary and the other is eternal.

Either they're both eternal or both temporary or neither exists.

The other thing is if heaven is so wonderful that no ear has heard, no eye has seen the majestic and wonder of heaven, then you'd have to apply the same thing to hell that neither eye has seen nor ear has heard of how horrible and awful this place called hell really is because they're exact in time and intensity.

I had some pastors telling me when I was in my twenties, when I started asking these questions, I would say, or they would say to me that don't worry, Pastor Jeff, the symbols of hell are just symbols.

But then on the other hand, they would tell me the imagery associated with heaven, they're just metaphors, but the metaphors are used because you can't possibly describe how wonderful and awesome heaven really is.

So then I would fire back and say, well, if that's true of heaven, is that also true of hell?

If metaphors are used, isn't it true that the intensity and pain is far beyond what we could ever understand or the words could describe?

I was usually met with silence.

after I came back with that question.

It wasn't until I went to seminary and I began to understand the doctrine of hell and what was really going on.

And the first thing I realized, and we got to move quickly here, is that Jesus taught more on hell than any other teachers in both the Old and New Testaments combined.

And basically, here's what he said about it quickly.

Number one, Jesus said that hell was eternal fire and punishment and the final abode of angels and human beings who reject God.

That's who goes.

Second, he uses the word Gehenna, which is a word to describe a valley outside of the walls of Jerusalem, which I walked through this past summer when I was in Jerusalem.

It's a valley where they take all the garbage out of the city and they burn it.

And the smoke is said to rise forever and ever because there's always something on fire.

But it's also a place where you take the dead bodies of criminals who remain unclaimed by their families.

or whose families cannot afford to bury them, you would put it in this fire.

And again, that's the valley of Gehenna.

So Jesus takes the word Gehenna, translated in our Bible as hell, and says, this is the kind of thing hell will be.

It will be things burning, things that are destroyed.

It is an eternal ruin.

There's no good thing.

Everything here is not useful, but useless.

3 and Mark chapter 9 verse 43, Jesus speaks of a person going to hell and he describes it like this.

He says, it's a place where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.

These are Jesus' words, not mine.

So in this passage, Jesus is referring to maggots that live on the corpses in a garbage heap.

So when all the flesh is consumed, the maggots die.

So Jesus is saying that the spiritual decomposition of hell.

never ends, and that's why the worm does not die.

It is the ruin of the spirit and the soul as well as the flesh.

Now, why did Jesus, the Lord of love and author of grace, speak of hell in such blood-curdling language?

In fact, in Matthew chapter 10 verse 28, Jesus said, don't be afraid of the one who can kill the body.

Rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

So this is a time when Christians were being tortured, sawn in half, flayed and burned alive.

Jesus says, this is a picnic compared to what hell will be like for those whose destination is hell.

That it is a place of physical and spiritual misery, never before experienced.

It's disintegration without annihilation.

So you never go out of existence.

It's ruin without death.

So.

How are we to understand all of this?

And I want to talk to you openly and honestly about hell.

I don't want to, I want to talk about it logically, not dramatically, although sometimes logic does lead to...

a drama because it is in the final words of Matthew 25 that Jesus addresses this topic.

But there's no way we can completely understand it unless we're given context of what Jesus believes and what he taught about hell.

Because ready or not, hell is coming.

So I want to answer four questions and I've got a short amount of time to do it.

Number one, is hell real?

Number two, what is hell really like?

Number three, who goes to hell?

And four, what are the signs that you're headed in that direction?

Now, if I'm headed on that road, I'd want to know, wouldn't you?

I'd want to change directions.

Now, we've already covered one inadvertently.

We've already said that hell is real.

It's real because Jesus said it's real, and he's the way, the truth, and the light.

What he says is true, and in no uncertain terms, he says that it's a real place.

In fact, again, You can't say that heaven is real and hell is not because the same type of language is used for both.

So Jesus says it's as real as heaven.

If you discount one, you've got to discount the other.

And then in Matthew 25, the end of this chapter, he says in verse 46, then they will go to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.

So both are eternal.

They last forever.

Second, let's move on to the second question then.

What is hell really like?

Well, we're told it's a place of fire and darkness.

Now, the same youth pastor that told me hell was like the roller coaster when you drop, drop, drop, and you never hit the bottom.

He said, imagine putting your hand on a hot stove, but you can't take it away.

That's what hell is like.

So imagine hell is a place of fire and darkness.

Yes, it is true.

These are metaphors.

However, when metaphors are used, It's because they fall short of the literal truth.

So the fact that fire and darkness are not literal brings no comfort whatsoever.

It just means that the reality is far worse than the image or words could ever communicate.

The same is true of heaven, which makes us glad, right?

The metaphor, the symbols, they fall way short of the wonder and the beauty and the majesty of what heaven will be like.

But...

The same is true when we speak of hell this way, which means it should serve as a warning that it's far worse than anything that we could ever read or anything that Jesus could communicate in a language we would understand.

So the question then is, what are the symbols of fire and darkness?

What do they represent?

And it's very simple.

The longer you study, the more it all comes together.

These are vivid ways to describe what happens when we lose the presence of God.

When you're outside of the presence of God, you have darkness, isolation, and fire represents disintegration or ruin.

So what would happen if you think about it?

What would happen if you today are isolated?

You become isolated.

Let's say somebody puts you in solitary confinement for the rest of your life.

Now, what would happen to you?

What would happen if there were no people around to talk to, no community, no love anymore, which is what the soul wants more than anything else?

No friendship, no intimacy, no touch, no companionship.

What do you think that life would be like?

When I lived in New Zealand, I would often go over to Honolulu to visit a church pastored by Wayne Cadero.

So a lot of us young men would go over to see why this was the fastest growing church in America in the 90s.

And every time we flew in, the pilot would tilt the wing and he would mention the island of Malakai or Malakai.

Malachi is an island of 72 Hansen's disease patients, lepers, that a Catholic priest, Father Joseph Damien, left Belgium to go and minister specifically to the lepers on this island.

And he was so compassionate toward these lepers, he knew that leprosy was not the worst thing they experienced, that the worst thing they experienced was the lack of love, lack of touch, lack of intimacy.

So Father Joseph Damien ...

believed that God had called him to go and minister to these patients.

So he not only went to share the gospel, and by the way, all of them ended up receiving Christ, he also shared his life.

He refused to isolate himself.

He loved them.

He touched them.

He hugged them.

And over time, he too contracted leprosy.

And when he died, he was such a hero in Belgium that the Belgium government demanded that the people of Malakahi allow his body to be buried in Belgium.

But they refused and said, no way.

He is a hero to us.

He is our friend, our father, our companion.

They finally came to some kind of a compromise.

They actually cut off the right arm of Joseph Damien, and it was buried in Malachi, because that's the arm extended to love.

So the point I'm making is you cannot live without people, community, love, intimacy, touch.

In fact, there's a movement now to strike solitary confinement away from our prison system in the United States because they're defining it as cruel and unusual punishment.

They say that solitary confinement creates and sustains psychiatric syndromes, hallucinations, panic attacks, paranoia, diminished impulse control, hypersensitivity, hypersensitivity to external stimulation, difficulty thinking, concentrating, remembering, loss of control, anxiety, depression, anger, and ultimately self-mutilation.

And the reason is because you were not created for that kind of an environment.

And when you're put in that kind of environment, you will begin to disintegrate, not only the flesh, but the spirit and the soul.

Now, imagine removing yourself from all of that.

Now, imagine removing yourself from all the beauty and the wonder.

of the oceans and the mountains and the constellations and food and water and land and animals.

The very reason the creation was created was so that you and I could enjoy God's creative genius.

In fact, come on now, when do you feel most alive in your life other than worship?

You feel most alive when you are connecting with God's creative genius.

You're like the ocean.

When you go to the ocean, when you go to the mountains, when you go on a hike, it's an amazing thing.

It's almost like you and the created order were meant to be together.

And when you're apart, there's disintegration.

I remember when I was a little boy, I really wanted to go fishing with my father.

My father would always take my older brother, and it really made me sad.

And finally, I talked my father into letting me go.

He said, you can go and watch, but you can't fish.

I guess I wasn't old enough yet.

So my father, my older brother caught, and my older brother didn't like the fact that I was even there.

And they caught maybe five or six trout out of this old river stream called Valley Forge River.

And they brought the fish over, and I guess you string them up, and they put them right there in the water.

They were halfway in, halfway out.

And my father asked if I would just watch them.

But even then, as a boy, I had a tender heart.

And I saw these little fish gasping for air.

Then it seemed they were doing very well.

and I knew later they were going to be cooked and eaten anyway, so I thought it was my job to rescue them, so I just kind of shoved them out in the water just a little bit to get, you know, they can't breathe out of the water, and I pushed them out, and I pushed them a little too far, and then they started floating downstream, and my father and my older brother saw them and recognized that the fish they had caught, and I was reprimanded, and I was threatened, and they told me I would never go fishing again, which...

To me, I didn't really care because fish should not suffer like that.

So here's the, obviously, here's the point I'm making.

The fish were suffering because they were isolated from everything that brings life and vitality.

They were separated from their habitat.

And as a result, they began to experience disintegration.

Apart from water, the habitat for which they were made, they began to fall apart.

Our habitat.

whether we're willing to admit it or not, is the presence of God.

And if you are removed from this domain, you're like a fish out of water.

You will feel like you're suffocating, that you cannot breathe, that the essence of your life has been taken from you, that you've become unhinged.

In Acts chapter 17, Paul says, for in him we live and move and have our being.

As some of your own points have said, we are his offspring.

Psalm 24, the earth is the Lord's everything in it.

The world, all who live in it.

He founded it upon the seas, established it upon the water.

Psalm 1611, you make known to me the path of life.

You will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

The point is that all of your life, joy, pleasure, fellowship, favor, meaning, all of the things that you're looking for are found in God.

Now, you may not know that, but if you are alienated from God completely, I mean, on this earth, nobody's completely alienated because He sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

But as soon as you are separated, imagine if it's possible.

If you are separated, if you were placed into a realm where God's presence is not affected, then where there is no God, there can be no good thing.

Where there is no God, there can be no good thing.

In humanity, when God is completely shoved out, like during the Holocaust, the result is Auschwitz, Ravensbrück.

Evil untold, when God is completely shoved out, when you are isolated and excluded from God, the God that brings life, that breathes air into your lungs and vitality.

then you will start to disintegrate.

The soul will be in ruin.

2 Thessalonians 1.9 says they will be punished with eternal destruction forever separated from the Lord and from his glorious power.

If it's God who holds all things together and you're separated from God who holds all things together, then you and everything around you will begin to disintegrate.

So separation from God and his provisions and blessings.

I don't think you realize.

And I don't think people in the world realize how much of the blessings in their life originate, come from God.

Without God, there's no love.

There's no fellowship.

There's no community.

So separation from God and his provisions and blessings forever is the reality to which all these symbols point.

So when Jesus speaks of being destroyed in hell, by the way, he uses the Greek word apolumi.

Apolumi does not mean annihilation.

It means ruin.

It means uselessness, that you lose purpose.

When he uses Gehenna, when he talks about the maggots, when he talks about the worm that never dies, he's simply saying that if God completely, if you are living in a place where God completely withdraws his presence, then your own body will begin to lose its strength and beauty.

There will be no sense of coherence.

It will begin to break into...

into its constituent parts.

It will disintegrate your soul, your spirit.

So what is a ruined human soul?

It doesn't cease to exist.

Remember, the soul is non-material.

Do you hear me?

Your soul is not material.

So if your soul is not material, how can you destroy it?

You cannot.

You were built to last.

Think about that for a moment.

And I've shared this with many of the agnostics and atheists in my debates in New Zealand and Australia.

I've simply asked them the question.

See, if you think you're only matter, then your brain is just part of matter.

There's no spirit.

There's no soul.

But once you affirm that there's a supernatural world, once you affirm there's a spirit or a soul, you're acknowledging that you're never going to die because you cannot destroy non-matter.

It is something you know that you are more than your body and you're thankful, right?

So what is it then?

In hell, the soul does not cease to exist, but rather becomes completely incapable of all the things a human soul is for.

Reasoning, feeling, choosing, loving, giving, receiving, all of those things and perpetual wonder.

In this world, all of humanity, even those who've turned away from God, are still supported by kindly providence or common graces.

In Acts chapter 14, in the past, he let all nations go their own way, yet he has not left himself without testimony.

He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons.

He provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy.

So even those who rebel against God continue to enjoy many of the things associated with God's provision and him holding all things together.

However, if we were to lose God's supportive presence, the result is hell.

Hell is simply the absence of God and therefore all good things.

So that means that hell, stay with me, hell is ultimately God's fairest and worst punishment.

He can allow a person to experience.

Wait a minute, how so?

Hell is a rejection of God or the failure to pursue God, a demand for independence from him.

So think about this for a moment.

Why is there so much pain and suffering in our world?

Is it because of God?

Or is it because of our insistence in living independently from him?

God is good.

But man insists on going his own way.

99.9% of the pain, suffering, and evil in this world is a result of man living independently from God and therefore independently from each other.

I was just in Zimbabwe.

I still can't get over the fact of the level of poverty in Zimbabwe.

And the reason is they are one of the richest nations in the world.

Gold, iron, copper, diamond.

They found another...

Seven mile wide diamond mine.

Lithium.

They are rich.

But the leaders live independently from God and therefore independently from each other.

They have no care or concern about the people in the nation of Zimbabwe.

They are self-centered, narcissistic.

And as a result, the kind of attitude that lives apart from God causes disintegration among the people.

That's the reason we say that the church is the hope of the world.

Because only when Christ followers take Christ to the world.

Can culture be transformed from hell into heaven, into mercy and grace and compassion?

So let's answer the question then.

What is hell then?

Here's what hell is.

It's God actively giving us up to what we have freely chosen to go our own way, be our own master, be the captain of our own soul in order to get away from him and his control.

It is God banishing us to the regions we have.

desperately tried to get into all of our lives.

God is allowing you the ultimate ramifications of your ultimate free will decision to live apart from him.

If the thing you want most in your life is worship and to be with God and the beauty of his holiness, that's what you're going to get for all eternity.

If the thing you want most is to be your own master, to escape the holiness of God.

If that's what you want, to get away from the presence of God, because you are bitter about the reality that you owe God your very life.

If you want to get away from God, escape God, and you spend your entire life doing exactly that, then in the words of C.S.

Lewis, when God looks at you in eternity, he says, okay, then not my will, but yours be done.

Those who seek God will find him.

Those who resist God and seek their own independence from him.

will be rewarded with the thing they want most.

God is intent on giving you the desires of your heart, either his presence and everything associated with it or away from his presence and everything associated with that.

So hell is real, one.

Hell is separation from God, two.

Who goes there?

And then we're gonna add one here.

What are the signs that you're headed in that direction?

Let's talk about who goes there first.

Now.

Two quick passages.

Jesus tells a parable in Luke 16 that before we can understand Matthew 25, we have to understand Luke 16.

I'm going to read it to you.

This is Jesus' own words, okay?

So Jesus says this about hell.

He tells a story, verse 19.

There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day.

So Jesus is telling us something about this man.

First of all, Purple is the color of royalty, so he has power and position.

And fine linen is the, how do we say this?

How can we describe?

So he didn't go to Target to get his underwear, you know, five for $15.

Fine linen describes the underwear of people who are wealthy.

So he's got Calvin Klein or whatever else you people wear.

And he lived in luxury every day.

This is a phrase that means his whole mission every day when he got up was focused on himself.

What great thing can I experience today?

It's about my food, my clothing.

What am I going to get from today?

At his gate was laid.

Notice there's a passive tense here.

So this guy is so poor, he can't even walk to the gate of the palatial gate of the rich man's home to beg for what he's going to beg for.

He had to have some people carry him and put him there.

And he was a beggar named Lazarus, we're told, covered with sores.

longing to eat what fell from the rich man's table.

So in the days of Jesus, you would have a meal and you would have three types of bread.

You would have a bread that you would eat.

You'd also have a lesser grain, a type of barley bread that you would cleanse the dirt and the grease and grime after.

It's kind of like their napkins, okay?

So if you're wealthy, you have the bread that you eat, a higher grain.

The lesser grain was what?

They didn't have knives, forks, and spoons.

They ate like we did in East Tennessee.

Still do today.

You just grab whatever you can before somebody else gets it.

And then you take the lesser grain and you wipe your hands and you throw that under the table.

And that is what the dogs are given.

Well, this is the type of bread the poor man Lazarus is begging for.

And the Bible says that even the dogs came and licked his running sores.

But then in verse 22, Jesus says, The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham's side.

Some of your translations will say Abraham's bosom.

And the point there is, number one, Angels are God's ministering servants and they do a lot on behalf of God.

According to Matthew 18, one of their responsibilities is to watch over your children.

But another responsibility they have is when you die, they escort, they carry your soul into the presence of God.

The reason it's called Abraham's side is because it's believed that Abraham is with God.

So if you're with Abraham, you're with God too.

The rich man also died and was buried in Hades where he was in torment.

He looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side.

So he called to him, Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water.

and cool my tongue because I'm in agony in this fire.

So whatever the symbolism is, it's so bad that even one drop of water would emit some kind of relief.

But Abraham replied, Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he's comforted here and you are in agony.

And besides all this, between us and you, a great chasm has been set in place so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.

And then look at verse 27.

He answered, then I beg you, Father, send Lazarus to my family, for I have five brothers.

Let him warn them so that they will not also come to this place of torment.

Abraham replied, they have Moses and the prophets.

Let them listen to them.

Now, when you're reading a parable, or some scholars believe this is not a parable at all, because we're given the names of the people.

Some scholars believe this is an actual happening that Jesus is relating to his audience.

But the most...

intriguing thing about this parable or story is that notice the man does not ask, I mean, if I'm talking, if I'm talking to God, if I'm talking to father Abraham, or if I'm talking, whoever I'm talking to, and I'm in Hades or hell, I'm not going to be asking for one drop of water.

I'm going to say, get me out of this place and get me out of here now.

But he never asked for that.

In fact, He urges Abraham to send a messenger to go warn his still living brothers about the reality of hell.

This is not compassion.

This is blame shifting.

He's suggesting to Abraham that he did not have enough information while he was living.

And if he could tell his brothers, they too would not come and join him.

Abraham's response is very forceful.

He says they have Moses and the prophets.

In other words, They've got all the information they need.

It's not a lack of information.

It's a matter of the will.

Abraham is saying forcefully that you have enough information all of your life.

You just choose not to pursue it.

But there's no repentance.

There's no saying by the rich man, oh, I'm so sorry for what I've done.

I'd like to go over and be with Abraham now.

I repent of my sin.

None of that.

It's just like, you put me here, but there's no desire to be with God.

In fact, he does cry out for mercy, but the time for mercy has ended.

Now, you do know that is true about God.

Every time you hear a sermon like this, God has just extended mercy to you.

Every time you see sunshine and rain and the mountains and the oceans and the streams, God is extending mercy to you.

Every time you see the beauty of his creation.

Man, we were in Zimbabwe, and yeah, we did a lot of work, but I saw some incredible creatures.

Incredible creatures.

Here's one right here.

This was the scariest one of all.

I think we have a photo right there.

He's not here tonight, so I can get away with that.

Seriously, though, we saw some elephants, just amazing creatures in God's creation.

We saw some lions.

These lions were intimidating.

Every time I see a lion, I think, okay, stay in the car, stay in the car.

We saw Victoria Falls, and no matter how many times I see Victoria Falls, it is more beautiful every time.

Now, here's the point.

Every time you feel a sense of wonder and a sense of beyond in your life, God is extending his mercy to you.

Every time you feel convicted of your own sin, God is extending mercy.

Every time you attend a funeral and you know, There's something beyond God is extending his mercy to you.

Every time you feel an overwhelming need to thank somebody for some experience of your life, God is extending his mercy to you every single day of your life.

He reaches down to you in love, compelling you to submit to the one who holds all things together and to live your life for a purpose greater than yourself.

But if you refuse, God will, listen now, God will allow you.

your greatest desire, which is to live apart from him.

Hell then is simply one's freely chosen path that goes on forever and ever.

To deny God by word or by deed.

Now that's important to say that.

Because there are those who by word say they believe, but by deed are Christian atheists.

They live as though God does not exist.

They may claim that God exists, but they don't live in a way that shows that God's sovereign will over their lives is a reality.

They come to a fork in the road when they're either going to go their own way or do what they know God tells them to do.

They're going to go their own way.

They may say they're a believer.

They may say they claim that Christ is real.

But the way they live their lives does not look anything like the word of God.

It's a matter of the will.

Who goes to hell then?

Those who choose to live independently from God.

He's going to give you the desires of your heart.

If you desire him, he's going to give himself to you for all of eternity.

If you desire independence, he's going to give you independence.

But where there is no God, there could be no good thing.

Now, finally, what are some of the signs that you're headed that way?

One, you resent God's control over your life.

You resent the fact that you owe God anything, which is why you have a hard time spending any time with him in prayer.

You find church worship and prayer is an inconvenience.

You're always thinking about something else you could be doing and you would rather do.

You resent the fact that God has that hold on your life.

You resent the fact that God claims sovereignty over your...

Money.

You detest God's claim over every area of your life.

You claim that God is not giving you enough information or you might believe.

But primarily, and we had to do all of that to explain Matthew 25.

Primarily, you know you're on that road when you have little to no compassion, pity, mercy for those who are less fortunate.

And your primary passion is to get your own need met every single day.

Now we can understand Matthew 25 and bring the series to a close.

Because Jesus says, when the Son of Man comes, verse 31, in all his glory and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne.

And all the nations will be gathered before him.

And he will separate the people one from another.

As the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

And he will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

And then he describes the ones on the left and the right.

The ones...

who fed the hungry, the ones who gave drink to the thirsty, the ones who invited the stranger in, the one who gave clothes to those who needed clothing, those who visited the sick, those who visited those in prison.

Those are the ones that are the sheep and that will be given and escorted into eternal life.

But in verse 41, he says, Daniel say to those on the left, depart from me, you who are cursed into the eternal fire.

prepared for the devil and his angels.

For I was hungry, you gave me nothing to eat.

Thirsty, gave me nothing to drink.

Stranger, you didn't invite me in.

I need to close, you did not clothe me.

And then in verse 46, then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.

Now, is anybody else struggling with something?

If you take Matthew 25 on its own, you're going to be thinking, whoa, this is salvation by works.

Right?

Wait a minute.

I thought salvation is by grace through faith.

But this seems to be that if you don't do this, this, and this, you're going to go to hell.

In the parables, we have what is known as cause and effect.

How many times have you heard me say that?

There are many cause and effect passages in the New Testament.

Let me read one to you in Matthew 6.

For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly father will also forgive you.

But if you do not forgive others their sins, your father will not forgive you yours.

How many of you in the room have somebody that you've not forgiven.

All of you.

Does that mean you're going to hell?

Well, what's the point here?

The point is cause and effect.

For the person who truly understands the grace, mercy, and forgiveness of Christ, that will be a person who tries their best to live in a posture of forgiveness.

Sometimes you'll get it right.

Sometimes you'll get it wrong.

So what's the point then?

The point is that the person who truly understands the kingdom of God, whose heart has been changed, By the provision of the gospel, that person may not always get it right, but they will start to have mercy and compassion and pity for the less fortunate.

That's how you know that a church is operating within the will of God.

That's how you know a person has been changed by the gospel.

They have a heart to help those who are in need.

Now, when I was in the slums of Nairobi, we visited houses and I'm telling you what it felt like hell because those houses, they have No air, no heating, no cooling.

They're like little metal tin roof boxes, and they're like 100 degrees.

We go into these houses, and we sit, and we talk to these families.

And there was a little boy seated beside me.

Stella was there, and Stella said to him, his name was Christopher.

And they do this in every house visit we visited.

They always ask the little boy, little girl, what do you want to be?

What do you want to do?

And for most of them, their hopes and dreams do not go beyond the slums.

But Christopher was different.

She said to little Christopher, Christopher, what do you want to be when you grow up?

And he looked at me and he said, I want, and he didn't know who I was.

And he had no idea where we were from, but he looked at me and he said, I want to be a past.

And man, I saw that.

And you know what I did?

Stella, I'm his sponsor.

Stella's good.

She's good.

And Robin and I decided we're going to make sure this little boy becomes a pastor.

Let me tell you something.

Is hell real?

Yes, Jesus affirmed it so.

What is hell like?

Separation from God, giving you the fullest ramification of what you've wanted all your life.

Who goes to hell?

Those who choose either by word or deed to live apart from God.

And what are the telltale signs that you're on the road to hell?

No compassion, no love, no care, no concern, no mercy for the less fortunate.

Every day you get up, your primary thoughts about what you're going to get for yourself that day.

So you have one of two options.

If you don't want to go to hell, the first thing you have to do, and we like to say it like this, RSVP.

God sends every single one of you an invitation to come into the kingdom.

You don't have to be perfect.

You're not going to ever be sinless.

But what you do say is you say, God, I've been living for myself and I'm going to repent today and I'm going to live for you.

That's the R.

And then the S is to say you're simply sorry for trying to live independently from him because you depend on him for everything.

Your life is contingent on God holding all things together.

And then you're going to verbalize your trust in Christ to forgive you of your sins because He took your sins on the cross, past, present, future.

And when somebody tells me I can't believe in a God who would send people to hell, I always like to say, this is the God who took hell on himself so you wouldn't have to go.

Took hell on himself.

All the punishment, all the wrath you and I deserve, he emptied out on his own son so it would not have to be emptied out on you.

Say you're sorry for thinking you could live independent from God and pee.

Plunge your past.

And that's what you're going to see this weekend.

Over 100 people on all our campuses are going to say, I'm dying to my old way so that I can be resurrected to my new.

The only people, the only people who go to hell are the ones who want to, are the ones who want to.

I don't want to be with God.

I want to be my own man.

I want to live independently.

And God will look at you and say, okay, not my will, yours be done.

Father, thank you for the truth of the gospel, the power of the gospel.

And I pray in Christ's name, as we come together in this time and place right now, that if there's even one person in this room that has never repented, said they're sorry, verbalized their trust and plunged their past, today would be the day.

This would be the hour.

Father, we know in our hearts who we are, that we have lived apart from you, that we demand isolation, that we want to do what we want to do and never submit to the reality that there is one who holds all things together.

But that same one who holds all things together in a moment in time, in an instant, will forgive us of all our sins and our rebellion and invite us in.

And as you send that invitation, I pray that eyes would be opened, hearts would be softened.

And today would be a day that there would be many who would get off the road that leads to destruction and ruin and get onto the path that leads to life.

In Christ's name, everybody said amen.

We hope you enjoyed today's message.

If you decided to follow Jesus or just want a little more information about this walk with Jesus, I want to encourage you to go to oneandall.church.com and so that way we can help you along this journey.

We have a couple resources for you for your walk with Christ and one of them is the daily podcast and you can listen to it wherever you listen to podcasts whether it be Spotify or Apple Music and it's just a two to three minute daily devotional so you can have time with Jesus and reflect upon your day.

The second one is is our conversations podcast.

This is where we get to sit down with our speakers, authors, theologians and just get to dive deeper into Christianity.

you can watch those on our YouTube channel.

And we'll end as we always do with one hope, one life in Christ.