Haunted House - Week 2: Heaven & Hell

I hope that you're doing okay this morning.

Man, what a powerful time in worship as we as

we lifted up the name of Jesus. And I want

us to, like I said, I want us to continue

that this morning. We're continuing our series called Haunted House.

And it's a cheeky name, I know, but a haunted house,

you know, has a holy ghost.

Chief talked about last week.

The Holy ghost lives within us and gives us power

and enables us to live lives that are pleasing to

God and effective on the earth. So you are a

walking haunted house, if you will. I don't know if

anybody caught that one last week when we announced the name,

but that's where I was going with it, that you

are a walking haunted house because the Holy Spirit is

in you. Like I don't know, that rubs some people

the wrong way. This is the last thing I know.

My wife's looking at me. This is the last thing

I want to say. Look, that might rub you the

wrong way. Find something more serious to worry about. There

are people dying and going to Hell. We got more

serious things to worry about than ghosts on us. Okay,

I love you, and it's with the help of the

Holy ghost that we are able to discern and understand

God's word. So you walking around filled with the ghosts

is how you live a purposeful life. It's how you

do what God's called you to do. And we certainly

need his help. But today I want to shift our

focus just a bit from right now to the afterlife.

Because in this series Haunted House, we do this series

pretty much yearly. It's called something different every year, but

we always try to talk about and preach directly about

the things that are unseen, the spiritual realm. And anytime

we do that, I told the band, I told the

team this morning. Anytime we put our focus on the

things that are unseen, we start to uncover the schemes

of the enemy. And he really doesn't like that, because

the devil moves in the shadows. In the darkness. Is

his deception his only power, it's his only weapon. It's

his only tool is to be able to deceive. He's

a defeated foe, so he's beaten. All he can do

is try to trick you. And when we begin to

talk about those things, talk about the unseen, I believe

that infuriates the enemy and that causes things powers and

principalities to stir up. And I don't know about you

this week, but I've been pressed this week, not by

physical circumstance, not by things that I can see, but

I've been pressed by the unseen.

And the things that are happening.

In the unseen, and a lot about what we talked

about last month, and all the stuff that happened politically

and with the assassination and all those things, those were

visible manifestations that we caught onto. But I'm telling you

there have been things happening in the unseen far before that,

and even more more things happening in the unseen now.

As the visible things seem to change or even calm down,

the unseen remains stirred up. So it's important for us

to understands why we preach this sermon series every year. Now,

I want to go ahead, as we're talking about Heaven

and Hell today, I want to give you a little disclaimer.

Not every pastor not every preacher gives you a disclaimer

before they preach.

Perhaps they should. I don't know. There's some stuff that

said that maybe we need some more.

Disclaimers, but I'm going to give you one for mind

this morning, This is not a sermon about the end times.

CHIEVE said it multiple times. We're in the end times,

We're in the last days. We've been here for a while, right.

This is not a sermon about the end times. And

nor is this an exhaustive teaching on everything you need

to know and everything you can know about heaven and Hell.

We just don't have time for that in my Biblical

interpretation group. You guys can attest to I could stand

here and teach you that, but it would take a

long time. I would enjoy it, but you may not.

So we're not gonna it's not exhaustive. But you might

have questions, and you may have had questions last week,

and you're probably gonna have questions as we get into

angels and demons next week. You're probably gonna have questions

as we get into spiritual warfare the week after that.

If you have questions, I want you to go to

seastone dot church slash town hall on your phone. Listen

as I'm preaching this morning. If you have a question,

go to seastone dot church slash town hall. You can

imagine if the slide was up there, right, we had

a slide, and everything go on your phone as I'm

speaking to you, as that question comes up, and submit

that question.

We're doing a town hall Q and A service.

Remember we've done that live Q and A from the

stage on December the twenty eighth, on that weird Sunday

in between Christmas and the New Year, we're gonna do

a town hall. So we're gonna answer all all these

questions that we can. So if you have questions throughout

the course of this series and through the next series,

or just in general, if you're on the way home

and you're having a discussion with your husband with your

wife and you're like, I don't know what that means,

and I don't know if Pastor Klay could answer it.

I would love to see him struggle and try submit

the question it's anonymous, and then we will answer those

things on December the twenty eighth.

They'll be Okay, that's gonna be fun. It's gonna be good.

My goal today, though, is just to give us a

biblical starting point. I just wanted to give us a

kind of a foundation to shape our understanding of Heaven

and to shape our understanding of Hell. You know, my

son asked me this this week. He said, why are

you preaching on hell? And I said some because it's real,

because we don't preach about it enough, actually, because we

get stuck in the visible in the scene and we

forget that the unseen matters. And I'm gonna I'm gonna

let you know, I'm gonna reference a lot more scripture

that I'm to read to you.

Okay, So there are.

Gonna be a lot of scriptures thrown out there. If

you're a note taker, you have a field day, you

have plenty of go homework, all right, and you can

go read these scriptures. But we're not gonna read all

of these scriptures together. If you're not a note taker,

you should be. I'm calling myself out too. I mean, look,

you should be. We don't write things down, we forget them.

I just want to give us a starting point here

and our main text it is gonna be out of

First Corinthians, chapter fifteen, and it's not gonna be on

the screen today.

So I hope that you have your Bible. I hope

that you have your app whatever you have.

If you don't, there's like a long standing joke that

if you don't have your Bible, look on with a

real Christian. I'm not saying that, but if that hits

your heart a certain way, bring your Bible next week.

First Corinthians, chapter fifteen, starting in verse nineteen, it says this,

if in Christ we have hope in this life only,

we are.

Of all people most to be pitied. Let's pray.

Father, I thank you for your word, or I thank

you for the way you're speaking and working, and the

way you've already been doing that this morning.

And I thank you for the.

Straightforward nature of your word, and as we get into

it this morning, as we talk about heaven and hell,

as we talk about what those places are and what

they mean and how we should live. In response, God,

I pray that you would work on our hearts, that

we would walk out of here not with more not

just with more information, but or we would walk out

of here with a renewed sense of passion for you

and for your work and for what you called us

to do.

We prayed according to your will and the mighty name

of Jesus.

Amen and Amen. There's a ton we can get out

of this chapter of Corinthians. There's a time you can

get out of Corinthians in general. Paul was writing to

address some specific issues in the Corinthian Church, but they

have these principles that we can pull out that.

Work for us.

But I read this verse nineteen to you first, if

in Christ we have hope in this life, only we

are of all people most to be pitied. It's a

kind of a depressing scripture by itself. We read there

right here. It's a reminder that our hope in Christ

it extends beyond our fleeting moments of this life. And

depending on what you're going through, maybe you felt like

the days have been long, but the years have been short.

It's kind of how I feel that some of these

days feel long and difficult and hard, and it's just

like walking through the mud, but the years seem to

fly by.

This life that we have is it's fleeting, it's short.

And if all, if all Christ had given us was

hope for this fleeting life, then Paul says, we're to

be the most pitied, because what a struggle it is

to just have this life and nothing to look forward

to after. You know, I've always been a right now

kind of preacher anytime, if you can go back all

the times I've ever preached, and I've always been a.

Here's what you need to do today. Right now.

This is what matters, is the moment that we have,

and right now is the only moment we have, and

so it matters the most, but it's not the only

thing that matters.

I've always been a right now preacher.

I always wanted to make that point that we can't

reach backward into the past.

We can't touch it anymore. It's gone.

The future, well, we plan and we aim and we try,

but the future is unreachable for us as well until

we arrive and then it becomes the present. So we

can never really reach the future either. But in the

pursuit of active, real discipleship, I think that we can

lose some of the grander of what Christ has done

for us. Now, hear me, I'm not saying we don't

continue in our practical discipleship. That's what we've been talking

about a lot this year. That's what you're doing in groups,

is what you're doing all across serving on teams. Everything

that we do is active discipleship in the right now.

But sometimes we get so focused on the next thing

we have to do, or we get so focused on well,

I'm here in this moment, we get right close by

to where we are, and we get stuck there when

we forget how amazing what Christ is done for us,

We forget how grand it is to be saved eternally,

not just for this life, but the one to come

that's much much longer, unbelievably so infinite, eternal. There's hope

for your day, there's hope for your tomorrow, and there's

hope for what lies beyond. There was a time where

I think the church at large we were kind of

we were kind of too focused on this right when

we all get to heaven, are we saying that over

and over, I'll fly away? We're talking about. Everything we

were talking about was I'm just ready to get out

of here, right. We spent a lot of years doing that,

and I think now we've swung back in the other direction.

The pendulum has kind of swung and now all we

think about is, well, what right here is what matters,

and the reality is where we should be is somewhere

in the middle. You are not just a citizen of

this country. You're not just a member of this church.

You're not just a member of the church, a heavenly citizen.

We don't want to forget the reward that Christ has

provided for us. And life is tough. Life is just hard.

And I know that you've had maybe you've had this experience.

I know people in this room that have had this experience.

You gave your life to Christ, or you rededicated your

life to Christ and things just got harder. Does that

resonate with anybody? I see some heads maybe that's you

online too. You gave your life to Christ and things

got tougher. If there's only hope for this life, it's

really not that great, is it.

But God gives us more beyond that.

There's not only hope for your situation now, but there's

hope beyond this life to live according to God's word

and to achieve the purpose He's called us to. It's

not easy, and I believe Paul's words here are that

remind of that it's worth it. When things do get tough,

when you do rededicate your life, when you are trying,

when you are trying to get on that right path

and things get harder and the tragedies stack up, that

there is still hope beyond.

So let's talk about heaven again.

We're going to reference a lot of scriptures, but if

you wanted, just a clean definition of Heaven is where

God dwells, and it's the final destination for his people,

for those who believe in him. You know, in Matthew

chapter six, Jesus talks about lay your treasures up in heaven. Right,

we quote that one a lot, a lot of these

scriptures you quote all the time. Lay up your treasures

in heaven where they won't rust and the moth can't

get them and break them down. Heaven is a place

that's supernatural. It's everlasting. There's no decay, there's no trappings

of the temporal world that we live in. Things don't

break down, and there's no evil opposition there. We face

the pressure of the world as our bodies. We're constantly

breaking down. The older you get, the closer you're getting

to the end. Right, you look, not even three years ago,

my knees were so much better than they are now.

And everybody's like rolling their eyes and like.

Yeah, wait till you hit forty so on, well, I know,

like it's so that's a great illustration. Things break down

here on earth. We're not everlasting beings here on earth.

Nothing on this earth lasts, but in heaven it does.

And we also don't there. There's not the pressure of

sin and the pressure of evil and the darkness that

cloaks everything on the earth.

It's not there.

And the lesson we get from Matthew six is that

our hearts follow the things we value the most.

That's why we give financially.

When we put our treasure there, When we put our

treasure in heaven, When we store treasures up there where

they cannot decay, they cannot be stolen, they cannot go away,

then we're really investing in our eternal life, concerning ourselves

with eternal matters over natural matters. It guards our hearts

and it puts our hearts closer to God's heart. So

if we struggle with well, I can't keep my heart guarded.

I can't keep these things from getting in and messing

with me. Well, where is our minds set? Always set

on earth, always set on the heavenly things.

The other thing that heaven.

Is it contains a register of all the saints. Luke

Chapter ten, verse twenty is when Jesus had sent out

the seventy two and they come back to him and

they say, Jesus, this was amazing. We did all these

miracles we healed that lady, and we healed that guy,

and this demon jumped out of that guy, and it

was it was crazy. And Jesus goes, that's awesome. But

the greatest miracle is actually that your names are written

in the Book of Life in heaven. Your name is

registered in heaven. We sing that song about my testimony.

My name is registered in heaven. That's the greatest miracle.

God can do all kinds of miracles, that's the greatest one.

That I have an eternal place to go to with him.

Those that accept Christ and walk accordingly can rest assured

that their place beyond.

The natural course of life is secure.

And this miracle should be valued above all else, and

it should fuel our desire to tell other.

People about Jesus.

If the greatest miracle is that your name is registered

in heaven, why would you not try to get some

other people registered. But that's the greatest miracle. We're always

trying to offer the best. That's the best we can offer.

Heaven is also huge. There's room for all of God's people,

all believers. In John chapter fourteen, verse two, Jesus says,

in my father's house there are many rooms. It's a

place that you have a place there when you accept Jesus,

when you walk according to his word, you have a

place because God's intention has always been. God has always

wanted to be among his people. From the very beginning

in the garden, in the cool of the day, God

would come in and he would walk with the first man.

He always wanted to be there. During the Fall, the

sin separates that God wants to be with us so

badly that he didn't allow the fall to end in

total annihilation, total death. God said, you will surely die,

and then makes a decision to make a way to

deal with that sin so that he can continue getting

close to his creation.

God wants to be with you.

His intention is always want to has always been to

be with his people. And Christ came to make that

way perfect. And Christ has not only made the way,

but he's gone before us to prepare one of those

rooms in the many rooms in the Father's house.

Christ is there now.

In Acts chapter seven, we see the stoning of Stephen,

Stephen the Martyr, and it says that Stephen, full of

the Holy Spirit, looks up and.

Sees Christ at the right hand of the Father.

Now, I think that's an we could preach an entire

series just out of that that one chapter of Acts.

But Christ is there now his resurrection. Christ ascended into heaven,

and now he's reigning as King of kings, at the

right hand of the Father, interceding for you. I might add,

that's another sermon. But Christ praying for you, what an honor.

So in addition to him preparing a place for us,

he went away, and he tells his disciples this before

he ascends. Jesus says, I'm going away so that the

Father will send the Holy Spirit to empower you. That's

what we talked about last week. The Holy Ghost now

is in us and around us, empowering us. So like Stephen,

we should lean on the spirit. It says, he was

full of the Holy Spirit when he looked into heaven

and saw them. We should lean on the spirit to

help us through life and especially through those difficult times.

And heaven was built by God.

Now you might be thinking, well, of course it was,

I mean, who else could build heaven?

But let me die right here.

Second crin Tiens chapter five, Second Corinthians Chapter five, Paul

writes this, for we know that if the tent that

is our earthly home is destroyed. We have a building

from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in

the heavens. For in this tent we've grown longing to

put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed, by putting it on,

we may not be found naked. For while we are

still in this tent, we've grown being burdened. Not that

we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed.

To pen that idea in your head really quick.

Not that we would be unclothed, but we would be

further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed

up by life. He who has prepared for us this

very thing is God, who has given us the spirit

as a guarantee.

So we are all. We are always of good courage.

We know that while we are at home in the body,

we are away from the Lord, for we walk.

By faith, not by sight.

Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather

be away from the body and.

At home with the Lord.

So whether we are at home or away, we make

it our aim to please Him. For we must all

appear before the judgment seed of Christ, so that each

one may receive what is due for what He has

done in the body, whether good or evil. See, God

is established our heavenly home. God sustains our heavenly home.

And with heaven comes a heavenly glorified body. Not that

we would be unclothed, but that we would be further

clothed in the glory, that we.

Would be changed.

The mortal body we have now it's weak, and we

have to endure the pains of being in the weak

mortal body, shackled by sin, subject to the temptations and

the effects of sin, which are death. But God has

given us the Holy Spirit as a guarantee of that reward.

So I think of the Holy Spirit like this Holy

Spirit is our direct connection to Heaven. Holy Spirit is

our guarantee of our heavenly reward. He's like a taste

of heaven every time. It's why we refer to those

moments in the spirit, right when like this morning, when

when you know, the song gets kind of low and

we everybody's just in the moment we're worshiping God, and

we talk about those being in the spirit. Right it's

a taste of heaven. It's a teaser for heaven. But

as we get from right here, from this passage that

what we do in this mortal body still matters, and

there's more of that coming at the end.

So keep that in your mind and this eternal hope.

It's made known to us by Christ, the Word of truth,

and that should bear fruit in our lives. So again,

what you do matters, even though your reward is eternal.

Still this is not going away. It's going to be

further clothed.

Makes sense. That's why we take care of the temple.

And this promise goes all the way back.

If you go to Hebrews chapter eleven, verse ten, it

talks about the promise being made all the way back

to Abraham. God's been working on this forever, and in

heaven all of us will come together. There's a lot

of talk about division and the things that divide.

Us on this earth.

The reason that's such a problem, the reason we hate

that division, the reason there's so much war and strife

and brother against brother and man against father and all

those The reason all those things are so terrible is

because it's the opposite.

Of what God wants.

God desires unity, not just unity in ideas, not just

unity in practice, but unity of his people together with

one another.

Most importantly with him. We see it in Revelation chapter seven.

Heaven doesn't only fulfill that goal of bringing people close

to him, but it also brings his people together as.

One that the natural divisions no longer matter.

If you go to Revelation twenty one, it talks about

the new Heaven and the new Earth, and it says

even the sea, even the oceans, are gone, that even

the natural divisions that seem im impossible to get rid

of will be gone. That unity will be everything. And

I know most people think of heaven. Maybe you came

in thinking about this. When you think of heaven, you

actually thinking of streets of gold, and you're thinking of

pearly gates, and you're.

Thinking of those things.

That's the eventual new Heaven, the new Jerusalem that actually

comes down at the end of time. And to get there,

to be able to enter into that reward, obedience is

the key in the very end, the very end of

the Bible. In Revelation it talks about those who wash

their robes are welcome in the city. We have a

job to do. Still, what we do in our mortal

body matters. Those who accept Christ now access the reward later.

So even as we think about eternity, we have to

remain present. So to sum up heaven really quickly, we

can rightly understand it to be place where the Father

and the Son are, and it's where He will bring

believers after we die after natural death, and we can't

travel to heaven now, but the Holy Spirit has traveled

to us to give us a taste, to give us

the power that we need that comes from heaven. The

Holy Spirit is our direct connection as we walk in

faith continue the work of Christ on the earth. Eventually

there will be a new Heaven and a new Earth,

and that's an end time sermon. I just want you

to understand the concept that there's heaven now, and there's

a heaven, then there's a new thing happening then, and

that will be the final reward for all of God's people.

So now I think it's a very quick overview of heaven.

What about hell. If heaven is the place where God

is bringing his people for ultimate unity, to be close

to Him and to be unified together as one, Hell

is the opposite of that. If we want to just

a one sentence definition of hell, it's just it's the

place of separation from God and there are three biblical

descriptions I want us to just briefly look at, and

my bib andter group is gonna hopefully smile and maybe

go study after this. But three biblical descriptions, two in

the Greek, one in the Hebrew.

The Greek word gehinnah.

Found a lot in a lot of places, especially in

the Gospels. We're gonna read one right here out of

Luke chapter Twelvehinnah is the means the place of punishment.

This is probably what you think of when you think

of hell, this fiery place of punishment and death, and

is terrible. And Luke chapter twelve, starting in verse four,

Jesus says, I tell you, my friends, do not fear

those who can kill the body and after that have

nothing more that they can do. But I warn you

whom to fear, Fear him who, after he has killed,

has the authority to cast into hell. Gehinnah, Yes, I

tell you, fear him. Are not five sparrows sold for

two pennies, and not one of them is forgotten before God?

Why even the hairs on your head are all numbered,

So fear not. You're of more value than many sparrows.

So it's this Gehenna that Jesus refers to. It's also

translated as Tartarus in Second Peter chapter two, same place.

It's what we think of most of the time.

We think about Hell as a concept, and you know,

there's debate among Christians, there's debate among biblical scholars about

whether this is a real place or not.

I don't know.

Jesus is pretty clear fear the one who after he

has killed, has the authority to cast into Hell.

That's written in red.

I literally have it printed out in red because it's

Christ himself saying it.

So I'm not sure where I mean.

I know debates spring up, and there's translation all those things,

but it's really hard for me to get past Jesus

talking about Hell as a real place. So I want

to encourage you this morning if you've been thinking, well,

maybe it's not it's real, and it's not meant to

scare you.

That's not meant to worry you.

But I think if we lose the reality of it,

we forget entirely the point Hell being this fiery place

of punishment after death. Christ understood it. It's clear he

references it. Christ understood it all the New Testament writers

that reference it understood it to be a real place.

Jesus refers to it mostly in the context teaching about

sin and right conduct, which makes sense, so especially from

this Luke Chapter twelve. These verses here we see that

God has the authority ready to send someone there.

After they've died naturally.

But the thrust of that passage, what Jesus is really

teaching there is less about a proper view of hell

and more about a proper view of God. So understanding

here when we talk about hell, it's never for us

to come up with some kind of extravagant understanding of

well this is you know, maybe you've heard the poem

Dante's Inferno, maybe you're familiar with with that that writing

in medieval writing, it's the levels of hell, and there's purgatory,

and then it goes down and the worst centers are

at the bottom. It's a great view into what they

thought about in the medieval times.

But it's not scripture, and it's.

Not really worth it for us to have, Well, I

better not do that, or I'll end up in the

third level of Hell. More than that, we should recognize that, hey,

that's a place I don't want to be.

That's a place that's not meant for me.

And God has given me a way out of that,

and he has the authorities, So maybe I should live

my life according to the one who has that authority.

That's the point we should get. James refers to a

fiery hell in a similar context. He warns the reader

about the dangers of an untamed tongue, just like heaven before.

Most mentions of Hell are wrapped in this teaching about

earthly conduct, about what we do in this body. Another

Greek word that's used hades, the place of the dead.

You're probably familiar with hades. I mean, everybody loves Hercules, right,

we all watch the movies and we all we all,

we all get into that, right. But Hades the Greek

word for the place of the dead, and it seems

to be interchangeable to all. The Biblical writers use Gahinna

and Hades, and they kind of use even Jesus uses

them kind of interchangeably.

It means the same thing.

Those that are dead and don't accept Christ, they're sent

here as a result. Revelation Chapter one. Revelation Chapter one,

starting in verse seventeen, says when I saw him, I

fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid

his right hand on me, saying, fear not. I am

the first and the last, the living one. I died,

and behold, I am alive forevermore. And I have the

keys of Death and Hades. So it is Hades, it

is Hell, it is Gaehinna that Jesus Christ holds the

keys to. He conquered death itself by raising to life.

He conquered Hell, Hades, Gehinna, and the grave. Interesting, I

think when we look in revelation that Hades itself, Death

and Hades.

Itself are thrown into the lake of fire. So bear

with me. I know.

Most of the time when we think about Hell, we

think about we really are thinking about lake of fire,

just like when we think about Heaven we're thinking about

streets of Goal, we think about New Jerusalem.

There's a difference.

Even Hades itself will be thrown into the lake of

fire at the end of time. I'm trying to trust

the one that has that power, the power to throw

Hell itself into a worse hell.

I want to be on God's side, I'm telling you.

So we understand these things differently, but there's still this

clear component of pain suffering fire. All those images. Jesus

himself even speaks about them. But even so, Hades doesn't

hold a candle through the lake of fire. You're supposed

to laugh because that's puney, right, don't tell puns during

hell teaching. Got it, I'm on it. The last way

we see hell described in scripture is in the Hebrew

and the Old Testament word sheol, and she ol means

the grave or the unseen state, and all all the

descriptions of sheol. When we look at this, there's a

lot of that. It's where we get the idea that

hell is beneath us, the hell is below, that's down

comes from the Hebrew ideas she old that it's it's down,

it's grave, it's unseen. It's first used in Deuteronomy thirty two,

and it's used in the context of describing God's anger

towards those who abandon him and turn to idols. So

that's the connection there, that it's not just a regular grave.

But there's this idea that's connected to punishment for going

against God. David uses it many times in the Psalms.

It's it's this description that it's down or it's opposite

from the heavens.

That is more, it's more associated with death.

It's associated with despair, with doom, with terrible feeling. It's

far from where humanity exists now, but it's not so

far that it's separate from God totally. We have many

descriptions where can I go from your presence? Even if

I descend to Shiole, you are there. So I don't

want us to misunderstand that there's This is not a

total separation in the way that the Lake of Fire is,

but it's also it's all it's it's there's another Hebrew

word abadon that's called place of destruction, and Siole and

abdon are often mentioned together, so there is some connection there.

The place of destruction the place of the dead, and.

God promises In Amos, God promises destruction to the Israelites

who have sinned against him. They appear to flee from

God's wrath and they try to get away from God

by digging into Shioli, which is a crazy idea if

you think you can escape the Lord Almighty.

Jonah's prayer and.

The fishes belly in Jonah chapter two, God can hear

the cries of help from Sheol Jonas says, I'm in here,

I am in the depths of Sheol, and God hears

his cry. So there's not a total separation when we're

talking about shole, and it has an appetite a back

chapter two, Sheol has an appetite for death that's never satisfied.

So to sum it up, we can conclude.

That the reality of hell, it's a clearly established New

Testament belief.

So hell is real.

It is a place of punishment, It is connected to death.

It was not intended for you. You were not built for it.

There's a lot of discussion about this right now too,

that well, why did Good God send people to hell?

He's trying to get you out of it. The reality

is is you are going until you accept him. He's

not choosing that. We choose it. We are on our

way there. But God has provided a way out. Sin

committed introduced death into the world, and that death, ultimate death,

would be the final destination of all of us if

it were not for Christ. So let's as the band

gets ready, let's wrap up. Let's go to back to

First Corinthians, chapter fifteen. I read you the depressing one first,

so now let me read you the good part. First Corinthians,

chapter fifteen, starting in verse twenty, we were on our

way to hell Church. But in fact Christ has been

raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who

have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death

by a man, come also the resurrection of the dead.

Phras In Adam all die, So also in Christ all

shall be made alive, but each in his own order.

Christ the first fruits. Then at his coming those who

belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers

the kingdom to God the Father, after destroying every rule

and every authority and power, for he must reign until

he has put all his enemies under his feet. The

last enemy to be destroyed is death. So by that

free will mistake in the garden, by the first man,

he made a choice.

God did not choose it for Adam. God actually gave.

Adam everything else, and Adam chose the one thing he

could not choose. So by that free will mistake, Sin

entered the world and Death began to reign. But it's

corrected by the free will choice of God sending his

only begotten son, that whosoever would believe shall not perish

but have eternal life. It's in light of this truth

that we have to grapple with the details of heaven

and Hell. And again, there are so many things we

could not talk about in this time. So when you

have those questions, go submit them. We want to answer

those questions. Those details are not unimportant. We just didn't

have time for them. But as you learn about it,

as you continue down this journey, we have to look

at those details about out heaven and about Hell in

light of what Christ has done for us. That is

to say, we should not worry more about the details than.

We do our work for Christ.

You can spend the rest of your life trying to

get the details worked out, or you could do the

better thing and know that it's real, know that it's coming,

and do everything you can to make sure people go

to Heaven with you. Heaven should excite you, I can't wait,

and it should incentivize us to run the race. Why

trying to bring everybody with us. Hell shouldn't scare you,

but it should remind you of the magnitude of the

punishment that we are are saved from.

It should give you a better view of God.

Knowing this, all that terribleness, all that death, all that flame,

all that corruption, all that evil.

God, you have provided a way out. So what do

we do with it? Right we? How do we? Again?

I can't get out of my I'm still a right

now preacher. I want to be. I wish that could

be different, but I'm just not. I'm a right now preacher.

So what do we do with this?

Because I need you to go forth today and have

something to do that takes you closer to Jesus and

that helps you bring people.

Along for the experience. So what do we do with it?

We got to remember the bottom line that what we

do in this temporal, temporary body, it matters.

It has eternal implications.

The perishable bodies that we live in now, they're not

thrown away. Remember further clothed, Let's take Paul's last few

words in one Corinthians fifteen.

This is our call to action today, which you stand across.

The room verse Corinthians, chapter fifteen.

These last few verses, starting in fifty four.

I want you to take this and I want you

to run with it. Says when the perishable puts on

the imperishable, when the mortal puts on immortality, then shall

come to pass the saying that is written, death is

swallowed up in victory. Oh death, where is your victory,

Oh death, where is your sting? The sting of death

is sin, and the power of sin is the law.

But thanks be to God who gives us.

The victory through our Lord, Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brothers,

everybody be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of

the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is

not in vain. So we know how this whole thing ends.

The fate of death is certain that death will be

thrown into the lake. Death is going to end, and

without death there can be no sin, and without sin

there is no bondage. And the victory is guaranteed in Christ.

And that truth should inform the way we live our lives.

Right here in the end, our response, what do we

do with this? Our response should first be gratitude, says

but thanks be to God who gives us the victory.

So the first response is gratitude. God has given us

the victory. And because He's done that, we ought to

remain steadfast. If you get nothing else from today, I

want you to walk away with this.

To be steadfast, meaning never giving up.

Hear me, there's hope remain immovable from our purpose and

from our convictions. So we're never given up and we're

never giving in. And then he says, always abound in

the work of the Lord. So we're never given up,

we're never given in, and we're never giving out. Nothing

we do for the Lord is in vain because everything

you do here has eternal implications. The Father set the

plan in motion, and Christ paid the debt, and the

Holy Spirit, our direct connection to Heaven, empowers this while

we remain here, and I want you to know you

can have access to all of that today