Choosing Your Eternal Destiny

Sunday Sermons

Mark Dunagan
02/26/06 - Sunday Evening

Even though some people have desired to remove the doctrine of hell from Christianity, one needs to face up to the fact that the doctrines of heaven and hell both have the full weight of Scripture behind them, especially, of Jesus’ own words. It was He who spoke of the narrow and the broad way (Matthew 7:13-14); the wheat and the chaff, and the unquenchable fire, weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 8:12; 13:42); the place where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched (Mark 9:44);paradise and torment (Luke 16:19:ff); eternal punishment and eternal life (Matthew 25:46). From time to time we hear about new interpretations of hell, such as it is not eternal, or does not really exist and so on. Yet the prevalent images of hell in Scripture are weeping, gnashing of teeth, unquenchable fire, punishment, torment, outer-darkness, an isolation from God and all His blessings. As Lewis notes, “It is quite certain that all these expressions are intended to suggest something unspeakably horrible, and any interpretation which does not face that fact is, I am afraid, out of court from the beginning” (The Problem of Pain p. 125).

The power of choice

“It has been admitted throughout that man has free will and that all gifts to him are therefore two-edged. If the happiness of the creature lies in self-surrender, no one can make that surrender but himself, and he may refuse” (The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis p. 118). “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done’, and those to whom God says, ‘thy will be done’. All that are in Hell, choose it” (The Great Divorce, p. 75). “How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling” (Matthew 23:37); “I gave her time to repent, and she does not want to repent of her immorality” (Revelation 2:21); “They continually mocked the messengers of God, despised His words and scoffed at His prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against His people, until there was no remedy” (2 Chronicles 36:17); “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie” (Romans 1:25); “And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer” (Romans 1:28).

Privation, Exclusion, Banishment

Jesus often spoke of hell as being a place of privation, exclusion, or banishment. As in the parables of the man without a wedding garment (Matthew 22:13 “into the outer darkness”); the foolish virgins (Matthew 25:10 “and the door was shut”; or being excluded from a feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Matthew 8:12 “cast out into the outer darkness”). “You will remember that in the parable (of the sheep and the goats), the saved go to a place prepared for them (‘inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world’, Matthew 25:34), while the damned to to a place never made for men at all (‘Into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels’, Matthew 25:41). To enter heaven is to become more human than you ever succeeded in being in earth; to enter hell, is to be banished from humanity. To be a complete man means to have the passions obedient to the will and the will offered to God (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14)” (The Problem of Pain p. 125).

Locked from the Inside

It is clear that hell is a final destination from which there is no escape (2 Peter 2:9 “to keep the unrighteous under punishment”; Revelation 20:10 “they will be tormented day and night forever and ever”). Yet there is another sense in which one could say that the gates of hell are locked from the inside. I see this happening in people who know the truth but who refuse to repent even when they are staring death in the face. Lewis notes that the envious man does wish to be happy, but he certainly will not even do the first preliminary stages of self-abandonment. “They enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded, and are therefore self-enslaved just as the blessed, forever submitting to obedience, become through all eternity more and more free” (The Problem of Pain, pp. 127-128).

So what do we want God to do?

“In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell is itself a question: ‘What are you asking God to do?’ To wipe out their past sins and , at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does” (p. 128). The truth of the matter is that God has already paid the highest price possible in order to remove the reality of hell from our future, yet with so much mercy, many are still determined to enter that place.

Heaven is not a bribe

“We are afraid that heaven is a bribe, and that if we make it our goal we shall no longer be disinterested. It is not so. Heaven offers nothing that a mercenary soul can desire. It is the safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God (Matthew 5:8), for only the pure in heart want to” (The Problem of Pain, p. 145). Consider the statement, “heaven offers nothing that a mercenary soul can desire”. From time to time we encounter people who seek to turn heaven into something either sensual, such one’s reward is plenty of women, or nothing more than a continuation of some earthly passion. When people say, “I hope I can keep painting there”, or “I hope I can continue my writing or photography pursuits” what they are really saying is that God is not their passion. I believe many people wish that heaven will be a place where God basically leaves them alone to continue something that they really enjoyed here on earth (such as fishing, golf, horseback riding, and so on). If this is what we are presently thinking, then it is a red flag concerning the condition of our spirituality, such means that we presently are valuing something or someone as being far more important to us than God (Matthew 6:33).

“But most people do not desire heaven”

“There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else” (p. 145). What he is saying, is that what men and women everywhere and of every age have desires and striven for, such as fulfillment, happiness, and love, are simply earthly glimpses of heaven. “All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it---tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest—if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself—you would says, ‘Here at last is the thing I was made for’. The thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all” (pp. 145-146). What men think that they will find in drugs, money, a career, or in one illicit relationship after another, is truly only found in heaven (Revelation 21:4). The problem is that many people want to divorce happiness or true love from God, and have the blessings that come from God without a relationship with God.

The First Love

Jesus said to the church in Ephesus, “But I have this against you, that you have left your first love” (Revelation 2:4), yet these Christians were continuing to attend and perform many other Christian duties (2:2). This reveals that one can work very diligently to enter the kingdom of heaven and yet not desire the true reward in heaven, that is, a relationship with God Himself. If we somehow think that heaven will be missing something if it does not contain a certain earthly pleasure or person, then God is not our first love yet or any longer. It is so easy to become sidetracked and give our hearts to lesser loves. It is so easy to stop at the physical level and mistake some earthly thing, like love for family, for a love for God. “Brass is mistaken for gold more easily than clay is” (The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis p. 105). The great mistake that is made by many people is to take something wholesome in this world and substitute it for a relationship with God. “There is one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him. And the higher and mightier it is in the natural order, the more demonic it will be it if rebels. The false religion of lust is baser than the false religion of mother-love (when it is substituted for love for God) or patriotism or art: but lust is less likely to be made into a religion” (p. 106). Lewis noted that every poet and musician and artist, and this would be equally true of the scientist, the scholar, faces the temptation to be drawn away from love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling. There is the temptation to become caught up in one’s own personality and then in nothing but one’s own reputation among other men.

If someone should ask, “Why should God be my first love”, the answer is, “You are God’s first love”, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in what while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8); “We love, because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). “It is not humanity in the abstract that is to be saved, but you, you, the individual reader. Blessed and fortunate creature, your eyes shall behold Him and not another’s. All that you are, sins apart, is destined, if you will let God have His good way, to utter satisfaction. God will look to every soul like its first love because He is its first love. Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you, because you were made for it, made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand” (The Problem of Pain, pp. 147-148).

Eternal Distinctiveness

Pantheism, the idea that everything is God and God is everything and in the end everyone will just be absorbed into the divine, and these concepts, which are behind so many eastern religions, is a religion that is “hopelessly behind the times” (The Problem of Pain p. 150). The truth of the matter is that God created a world of men who are distinct from Him. Even the Son of God, who is eternal and uncreated was still with God in the beginning (John 1:1). Heaven is not a place where we are absorbed, but rather a place where we will remain distinct individuals (Matthew 8:11).

Why the Sacrifice?

If someone asks, “But why must I take up my cross and deny himself to obtain eternal life?” Yet has this same person never realized that God practices the same self-giving and in doing so demonstrates Himself as being truly God? The more selfless that one becomes, the more one demonstrates that they are indeed a man or woman created in God’s image, the more they demonstrate they are indeed a spirit being and a noble creature. The giving of self has always been the mark of greatness (Matthew 20:25-28).

Mark Dunagan/Beaverton Church of Christ/503-644-9017