Eternity: Hell (Luke 16:19-31)

Hello, friends.

This is Pastor Creighton.

Thank you for tuning in to Newsong Church's Sermon Podcast.

At Newsong Church, we want to see Jesus lifted high in Port Perry, Ontario, as we worship, grow, and serve.

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This is the holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Luke.

Glory is to you, Lord Christ.

Jesus said, There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen, and who feasted sumptuously every day.

And at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table.

Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores.

The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's side.

The rich man also died, and was buried.

And in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes, and saw Abraham far off, and Lazarus at his side.

And he called out, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.

But Abraham said, Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things.

But now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish.

And besides this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.

And he said, Then I beg you, Father, to send him to my father's house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them lest they also come into this place of torment.

But Abraham said, They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them.

And he said, No, Father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.

He said to him, If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.

This is the gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, Lord Christ.

As I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live.

So let's pray.

God be in my head and in my understanding.

God be in mine eyes and in my looking.

God be in my mouth and in my speaking.

God be in my heart and in my thinking.

God be at my end and in my departing.

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all of our hearts be always pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer.

Amen.

Please be seated.

The dove descending breaks the air with flame of incandescent terror, of which the tongues declare, one's discharge from sin and error.

The only hope or else despair lies in the choice between pyre or pyre, to be redeemed from fire, by fire.

So, dear friends, we've been exploring this topic of eternity over the last number of weeks together.

We've recognized that the Christian life is not something that's aimless.

It has a purpose, it has a goal, it has a destination in mind.

The Christian life is a pilgrimage, and it's a pilgrimage to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

This is God's words, God's way of describing the glorious and blessed union that we are purposed to share with God in Christ as his people, forever and ever, world without end.

We saw this marriage supper, this wedding feast pop up in Isaiah 25 as a feast of victory over sin and death.

We see it in Revelation 19.

Jesus points to it in the institution of his supper when he says, I'll not drink of this cup again until I drink it with you anew in the kingdom.

Those are words of betrothal.

The bridegroom is betrothing himself to his beloved.

Last week we explored heaven, and we saw that heaven is heaven more than anything else because it's where God shares his divine glory and his everlasting life with his creatures.

Heaven is where God has purposed to share himself completely with us, and we find our purpose and our everlasting joy in him, and by sharing in his glory.

But friends, what if?

What if the bridegroom's cup is refused?

What if his love is spurned?

What if instead of sharing in God's everlasting glory, we preferred our own instead?

See, we can't talk about eternity.

We can't take this journey without talking about the very difficult doctrine of hell.

And it is a very difficult doctrine.

I'll tell you, I'm freaked out sometimes by the way that maybe bullhorn preachers on the side of the street, or maybe some televangelists have a way of talking about hell.

There seems to be a way of talking about hell that delights in the idea that they're going to get what's coming to them.

That those people, whoever those people are, are finally going to be put down and we, we're going to share in the good stuff.

That freaks me out.

Because I can't help but think if we talk about hell, how can we not do so without fear and trembling?

How can we not do so without our heart of compassion?

That wells up and wrestles with this very difficult idea.

And it is a difficult idea, no less than C.

S.

Lewis of Chronicles of Narnia fame, right?

One of the perhaps the leading Christian thinker in the last century or so.

He writes that there is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than the doctrine of hell if it lay in my power.

Would we agree with that?

But Lewis doesn't do that.

Lewis is one of the most deep thinkers on this subject, I think, in the last century or so, because he's pulling deeply from the resources and thinking of the church as he lets his sanctified imagination lead us into further reflection.

Why does Lewis refuse to eject the doctrine of hell?

I mean, this is something that's, I think, all too common a move.

It's something difficult, it's something we wrestle with.

In 2003, I read that a research group discovered that 64% of Americans, and you know, Canadians are so much different than Americans, right?

64% of Americans expect to go to heaven when they die, but less than 1% think they might go to hell.

And I think that suggests to us that largely we've made the move that Lewis describes.

We remove this doctrine altogether from what we believe.

Lewis doesn't do that, though.

Why does Lewis hold on to this doctrine?

He says it has the support of Scripture.

First and foremost, God's word bears witness to this reality.

And if we are going to stake our faith on the inspiration and authority of God's word, then we have to take the whole counsel of God's word together.

To be selective is exactly that.

It's to be selective.

Who knows what we're selecting and whether or not it's valid.

If we're going to stake our faith on the integrity of God's word, we have to do so on the whole of God's word.

And Lewis notes that this doctrine has always been held by the Christian Church.

God's word and God's church bears witness to this very difficult doctrine.

I think the number one objection we see to hell is something along these lines.

I think there's many variations of it.

I think it's a profound objection, and it goes something like this: if God is love, which is exactly what the Bible witnesses about God, right?

God is love, he is triune love, he desires to share his love with us.

If God is love, how can a God of love condemn people forever?

Surely that contradicts this idea of hell.

Friends, we're going to wrestle with this doctrine a little bit.

And I hope that in the wrestling, we wrestle with God's word for what it is and not for what we would prefer it to be.

And I hope that in the wrestling we catch a glimpse of the spiritual condition of hell.

And I hope that we don't leave here without a blessed assurance in Christ.

That's my desire for us today.

Can we courageously have a look at this difficult doctrine as we explore eternity together?

Let's have a look at Luke chapter 16.

Luke 16 · chapter mention

Pull out your Bibles, pull out your order of service, and meet me there.

For all the texts that speak to the reality of hell, I've selected this one to speak on because I think more than anything else, it speaks to the spiritual condition of hell.

And that's what we want to gain insight into.

Luke chapter 16, I think, has two halves to it.

Luke 16 · chapter mention

The first half is a narrative half, and the second half is a dialogue, and then I think those two halves break down into two parts each.

There's uh two parts to the narrative, and then there's two parts to the dialogue here.

So I'd like for us to just take this one step at a time and wrestle around with this a little bit together and catch something of God's good news for us today, because I do believe there's good news to be caught here.

Okay, Luke chapter 16, verse 19.

Luke 16:19

This is, first off, I guess we gotta ask, what do we do with this story?

There's debate amongst biblical scholars, is this a historical uh story that Jesus is bearing witness to and the reality of eternity, or is this a parable that Jesus is telling to illustrate a point?

I'm not exactly sure what to do with it.

I'm inclined to think the latter.

But just because it's a parable doesn't mean that our modern minds should just dismiss it.

Oh, it's a made-up story, so no big deal.

No, Jesus wants to communicate to us God's truth, and he does so with a very vivid image, so we ought to take it with great sobriety here.

Okay, verse 19.

Jesus wants to introduce us here to two characters.

Here's the first one.

Verse 19 There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen, and who feasted sumptuously every day.

So here you have a rich man.

Church tradition has ascribed the name dives to this man.

If you've heard this parable described as uh Lazarus and dives, dives is just the uh the Latin term for rich, rich man, right?

It's taken on the character of a proper name, but the idea that this man is not named, I think, is a pretty significant detail.

We'll get into that.

He's a rich man, he's a man of means, man of extravagance, who's clothed in purple, which signals to us that he's got some wealth.

This guy is not, he's not um opposed to throwing around his wealth and buying some of the fanciest clothes he can find.

Purple was the most expensive dye you could find in the first century.

And then fine linen might even just be a humorous detail Jesus wants to include.

It sort of speaks to his undergarments.

It's like this guy was not shopping in the bargain bin, if you know what I mean.

This guy is extravagant and he knows how to indulge.

He's feasted sumptuously every day, multi-course meals, rich food, more and more.

But then we meet our second character.

At this rich man's gate laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table.

Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores, we're told.

So here we meet a poor man, and this poor man is named.

I think that's a significant detail in contrast to the rich man, because there's someone here we're supposed to pay attention to.

There's someone here, perhaps, who's written in the Lamb's Book of Life that we read about in Revelation 20, and it's it's Lazarus.

Lazarus' name means God is my help.

Think about that for a second.

Based on the description so far, if that's what God's help looks like, does any of us really want that for ourselves?

Jeez, thanks very much.

Here's a poor man laying at the gate of this rich man's obviously gated mansion, who desires to be fed with what's fell from the rich man's table.

Okay, the other thing to notice here is he was laid at the rich man's gate.

He doesn't go too lay at the rich man's gate.

He was laid there.

I think that suggests he is so sickly he can't even get himself there.

He can't even, he can't even sit upright to beg.

He was laid there at the gate.

Someone saw Lazarus and had enough pity to say, maybe I can't meet this guy's needs, but I know someone who's socially obligated to do so if he's in close proximity to Lazarus.

So I'm going to take Lazarus and I'm going to lay him at this rich man's gate.

And this fella, this fella is obligated to at least care for Lazarus' essential needs here.

He gets laid at the gate, and he longs for even just a scrap from this table.

Obviously, this rich fella feasts so sumptuously there's more than enough to go around.

But he's not met with any scraps or compassion.

He's met by the dogs who come and lick his sores.

Dogs in the first century were not pets, right?

The idea that uh, I mean, if you've met Freddie, our dog, I know that you love Freddy, and we love Freddie, and when we when we got Freddie and brought him home, we started the first conversation we had was about, okay, where can the dog go and not go?

We both agreed he's not going to go on the couch, and he is definitely not going on the bed.

And now, you know, maybe a year later he takes up half the bed, and that we just lay there talking about what a good boy he is, right?

And that's just the way it works.

That would be inconceivable in the first century.

Dogs, dogs were either scrappers, like Australian dingos, or they were guard dogs.

They had a job to do.

So these are guard dogs, in all likelihood, guarding this rich man's, you know, gated mansion here.

Even these guard dogs have compassion on Lazarus.

This rich man refuses to go meet him at the gate, but the dogs are willing to do that.

Dogs that are supposed to be guarding this place.

I think it suggests that whatever's going on in this rich man's life, his extravagance, his indulgence, his self-importance, his self-centeredness has turned him into a really rather beastly man indeed.

Even the dogs have more compassion than him.

So we've met our two characters, this rich man and Lazarus.

Here's the second part of the narrative.

No funeral mentioned, no grief, no mourners.

Just one day he was lying there not breathing.

And he's carried to Abraham's side.

Why Abraham?

I want to suggest this.

Abraham, in a biblical imagination, in the mind of Jesus' audience, is the paragon, the archetype of righteousness and faithfulness.

Genesis 15 tells us that Abraham believed the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness.

Trusting in the Lord has put Abraham in a right relationship with God.

And I think the fact that Lazarus is met together with Abraham is meant to suggest this: that Lazarus, like Abraham, has put his trust in the Lord.

And having put his trust in the Lord, he's in a right relationship with him.

To use some theological language, he's been justified by his faith alone.

He's been brought to Abraham's side.

If you've got a little footnote there, you might trace it to the bottom.

You might find this very old school word that makes seventh-grade boys laugh.

It's the word bosom.

Great, it makes some of us laugh too, doesn't it?

This word bosom is significant.

It's one's chest, it's what's closest to one's heart in terms of physical proximity.

And in the first century, this was a posture, not so much of embracing like a hug, but a posture of feasting.

You know, the Lord's Supper, maybe we're thinking of the Da Vinci's depiction of the Lord's Supper all sitting around the table on chairs, right?

I mean, that's a very, you know, medieval idea of what that looks like, but it bears very little resemblance to what the reality of the thing was.

The Last Supper was done not at a table of this height, but at a table low to the ground, kind of like this right here.

You know, just as close to the ground as you can get.

And rather than sitting in chairs, everyone reclined by leaning on their arm.

And they would take their other arm and they would take morsels of bread and they would dip it in wine or whatever dippings they had.

And that that's how you feasted.

If you're going to host a feast, everyone was, that meant everyone was in close proximity to one another.

You kind of lied together or arranged so that once head was close to the person, the person on your right, you were quite close to their heart, quite close to their chest.

So if you want to, if you want to talk to that person behind you, you had to lean your head right back and lean it right into their chest.

And that's what John, the beloved disciple, does to Jesus at the Last Supper.

He leans back into Jesus' bosom, his very heart.

Okay, so it's a significant thing here that Lazarus is feasting with Abraham.

We've seen a feast before in eternity.

What feast have we seen?

It's the feast of victory over sin and death in Isaiah 25.

It's the feast of the marriage supper and the lamb of Revelation 19.

Lazarus and Abraham are sharing together in the feast of God's everlasting love and glory.

This is the feast to which they've been invited to, everlasting union with God in Christ.

They've arrived at the destination of their spiritual pilgrimage.

Even so, we read that the rich man also died and was buried.

And in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off, with Lazarus at his side.

This rich man gets buried.

Big funeral, lots of speeches, but how great his parties were, and how incredible his hospitality was.

But he's buried.

He's got that in common with Lazarus.

And he's found in Hades, which is the place of the dead, or hell.

Hebrew, it's Sheol, it's depicted as a pit where one's forgotten and God forsaken.

Jesus often uses the word Gehenna to describe hell.

Gehenna was a literal place outside of Jerusalem.

It was a garbage dump that was lit on fire, perpetually consuming the refuse that was discarded there.

We see a picture of a lake of fire in Revelation chapter 20.

Revelation 20 · chapter mention

Maybe the question is, what do we do with this fire, first and foremost?

Probably our number one picture of hell in our minds.

I'm inclined to agree with Pastor Tim Keller when he writes that virtually all commentators and theologians believe that the biblical images of fire and outer darkness are metaphorical.

What then are the fire and darkness symbols for, is what we ought to ask.

They are vivid ways to describe.

What happens when we lose the presence of God?

Darkness refers to isolation and the fire to the disintegration of being separated from God.

Away from the favor and face of God, we literally, horrifically and endlessly fall apart.

In God, we live and move and have our being.

What happens when we remove ourselves from the source of our life?

This, friends, is the greatest source of torment in hell, no doubt.

Separation from the one who is our life.

So, unlike Lazarus, who trusted in God and found himself at the heavenly banquet, this rich man withdraws his trust from God, lives for his own self-centered, self-indulgent appetites, and finds himself away.

These are two destinations, heavenly feasting in God's presence, and hellish separation from God.

So we come to the second half of this parable.

This rich man makes two requests.

Here's the first one.

This rich man calls out, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.

Seems like a pretty pitiable request, doesn't it?

Maybe it pulls on our heartstrings.

I think it pulls on Lazarus' heartstrings.

But I want us to notice not what this rich man is saying.

I want us to notice what he's not saying.

What is he not saying?

When he sees Lazarus and he sees Abraham, and there they are feasting while he's been separated away from them.

Does he see Lazarus and think to himself, Lazarus?

Does he call out, Lazarus, I was so wrong?

Lazarus, I failed to have any compassion on you.

Lazarus, when you were in your greatest hour of need, I looked the other way.

Lazarus, I long for just an ounce of relief, but what I need more than anything else is your forgiveness.

Is that what the rich man says?

Instead, he says, he doesn't even address Lazarus, does he?

Father Abraham, he says, he's a man of status, you know.

He's a man of means, so he's going to talk to the man of status.

Thank you very much.

Father Abraham, have mercy on me.

Send Lazarus, the errand boy, to dip the end of his finger in water to cool my tongue.

I'm in anguish in this flame.

Don't you get how uncomfortable this is for me?

Let me make it as easy as possible.

Not asking for a barrel, I'm just asking for a drop.

So a reversal has taken place.

And that's what Abraham has to say to this rich man.

Abraham said, Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things, but now he's comforted here, and you are in anguish.

So maybe we want to ask this question based on Abraham's reply.

Does wealth send you to hell?

Does living well mean go to hell?

I don't think it's that simple.

We need to plot a careful course.

We need to bear in mind that Abraham himself was an extremely wealthy man.

What makes the difference here?

I think we need to recognize that wealth comes with risks and liabilities to the soul.

Just this morning I was reading Jesus saying, Only with great difficulty will a rich man enter the kingdom of heaven.

Again I tell you, he says it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.

And then just earlier in Luke 16, Jesus has said this: No slave can serve two masters.

You cannot serve God and money.

And then the Apostle Paul reminds us that the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.

See, this rich man has not gone into agony, gone into torment because he was wealthy.

He's been separated from God because he has let his wealth become his God.

His heart is set on what his wealth can provide for him.

It's what he trusts in the most.

It's what he expects to justify his existence, and now wealth has brought him to its inevitable end.

Maybe this is the occasion for us to ask ourselves, what do I trust in the most?

What do I set up like a god as my ultimate purpose?

Do I trust to justify my existence?

Besides all this, Abraham says, between us and you, a great chasm has been fixed in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.

So we might go, well, how are they talking to each other if there's this enormous chasm?

It's kind of beside the point.

There is a fixedness to our eternal destination.

It is the outcome of a whole life's spiritual trajectory.

It is for this rich man.

His heart has been set away from God, and so he finds himself in eternity set away from God.

Again, Tim Keller writes that hell is simply one's freely chosen path going on forever.

We wanted to get away from God, and God, in his infinite justice, sends us where we wanted to go.

Lewis observes that hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others, but you're still distinct from it.

You may even recognize it in yourself and wish that you could stop it, but there may come a day when you can no longer.

Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood or even enjoy it, but just the grumble itself, going on forever, like a machine.

It is not a question of God sending us to hell.

In each of us there is something growing that will be hell unless it is nipped in the bud.

How does that land on you?

See, I think a simple way of putting this is what Lewis says elsewhere.

He says, the gates of hell are locked from the inside.

This is the outcome of our spiritual trajectory.

Setting ourselves away from God, just as this rich man has, he's found himself away from God.

And he makes this request to send relief, but this request betrays the spiritual condition of this rich man.

He is as self-interested, self-important, self-centered as ever.

The doors of his heart were locked to the love of God and his neighbor.

And now, whether or not he realizes it, so too are the doors of eternity locked to the same.

So here he makes a second request.

I beg of you, Father Abraham, send Lazarus to my father's house, for I have five brothers, so that I may warn them lest they also come into this place of torment.

Send Lazarus to my family.

He'll tell them what's going on here, and then they can be spared.

Maybe we've pondered this request in our own way before.

If God wants us to believe in the reality of heaven, the reality of hell, if God wants us to avoid hell, then why wouldn't he make it abundantly clear?

Why wouldn't he send a saint on a regular basis to bear witness on the nightly news?

Right?

This is what the rich man's asking for.

But Abraham's answer may surprise us.

Abraham says, God has spoken such a word.

Abraham said, They, your family, have Moses and the prophets.

Let them hear them.

Moses and the prophets is shorthand for God's word to us in Scripture.

For us, New Covenant believers, it's taken together with the New Testament.

See, regardless of our preference of how God should address us, God has deemed it wisest to send us his word in his way.

And that's in his word in Scripture.

So Article 6 of our Anglican 39 articles can say that Holy Scripture contains all things necessary to salvation.

See, the problem is not God withholding his message, the problem is our hardness of heart in receiving it.

That's why Psalm 95 warns God's people if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.

Saints, the stakes are too high to turn away from the voice of God addressing us in his word.

But even while the rich man thinks about the well-being of his family, his own heart is still hard to God.

He says, No, Father Abraham, if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.

You're wrong.

I'm right.

Again, D.A.

Carson writes this.

It's an extended quote, but let's think about it.

We are not to think of hell as some place where everybody suddenly sees the truth so clearly that they really wish they could repent and cannot.

If this account, if Luke 16 tells us anything about what it's like in hell, there is still self-justification, self-centeredness.

Hell, I think, in Scripture, is depicted as a place where people go on sinning, go on thinking of themselves as the center of the universe, go on promulgating their own false theology, arguing, if possible, with Abraham and with God Himself.

It is a cycle of endless sin and rebellion, shaking our puny fist in the face of God Almighty, being punished for it, and learning nothing from it forever.

How abysmally tragic is that.

Abraham said to him, if they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.

Now we know the rest of the story, don't we?

We know about Jesus' own friend Lazarus, who shares the name of this character in John chapter 11.

John 11 · chapter mention

But more than that, we know Jesus Christ, who the apostle creed, the apostles' creed says, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.

He descended into hell.

On the third day he rose again from the dead.

See, he rose to bear witness to us.

He is the propitiation, the placation, the putting away of our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.

But notice this line: He descended into hell.

Jesus, through his crucifixion and death, takes the place of the rich man and of all sinners.

Jesus Christ has gone to hell and back for our sake.

Remember on the cross, what does Jesus say among his last words?

I thirst.

Isn't that this rich man's request?

He thirst while he experienced the agony and pains of God forsakenness, having the Father turn his back on him as he bears the sin of the whole world, our sin included, he thirsts.

And then at his death, as his side is pierced, what flows?

Blood and water.

He thirsts so that we don't have to.

Well, what kind of loving God would subject someone to that sort of hell?

Friends, what if it's God Himself on the cross suffering for us?

What does that say about the love of God?

That is a suffering love.

That is a love that knows no bounds.

That is a love that is willing to pay the full cost for our sakes.

In the long answer, C.S.

Lewis writes, the answer to 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 at all cost and to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help?

He has done so on Calvary.

Are you asking God to leave them alone?

Alas, I am afraid that is what he does.

Let's land here.

Hebrews chapter 12, we read, Our God is a consuming fire.

Hebrews 12 · chapter mention

The choice of the Christian pilgrimage into eternity is not, do I or don't I want to experience God's holy fire?

The question is rather this.

When God's holy fire finds me, what gets burned?

I opened up with a quote from T.

S.

Eliot, his poem Little Gidding.

Don't let that give you the impression that I do a lot of poetry.

I don't, but I slogged my way through this with a mentor of mine.

The dove descending breaks the air with flame of incandescent terror, of which the tongues declare one's discharge from sin and error.

This is the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, removing from us sin and error.

Elliot observes that the only hope, or else despair, two sides of the same coin, lie in the choice between pyre or pyre.

Pyres are what you pile up to be burned, to be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment?

Elliot asks.

Love.

Love is the unfamiliar name behind the hands that wove the intolerable shirt of flame, which human power cannot remove.

We only live, only suspire, consumed by either fire or fire.

What's Eliot saying here?

He's saying that the Christian pilgrimage is not one for or against God's holy fire.

It's what gets burned.

When God's holy fire finds me, when it comes for the dross of my sin, do I hand that over and let it be consumed?

Or do I draw it closer to my chest like the rich man?

Because it defines me, because I can't imagine my life without it, and then find myself consumed with it.

See, God's eternal business is not patting us on the head and telling us to be nice boys and girls.

His eternal business is taking self-centered, sin-corrupted creatures created in his image, and through the fires of his holy love forging new resurrection creatures that shine like stars in the heavens in the everlasting glory of God's kingdom.

And so we are plunged into the forges of God's fiery love.

Friends, don't leave without assurance.

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

He invites you to come to him and me to come to him, sinners as we are, to acknowledge our sin and to know his forgiveness, to let the cleansing consumption of God's holy, fiery love do away with the dross of our sin, of our self-importance, of our self-centeredness, of our lack of compassion, and find ourselves purified as we're brought into his heavenly kingdom.

All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me, I will never cast out.

Harden not your hearts.

Come to Jesus, all who are wearied and heavy laden.

He will give you rest for your souls.

Amen.ca slash giving for more information on how to do that.

May God bless you and keep you today and every day.