Don't Cause Anyone to Stumble

It's great to be with all of you this morning.

I'll just uh add my two cents to what John was saying earlier about the Discover Cahaba Park class.

If you're here and you're a visitor and you didn't sign up, we'd still love to have you.

We'll have nursery available for kids zero to four.

Um and uh is that the right way to say that, I guess, newborn to four.

And uh you can bring any kids older than that, and we should have plenty of lunch.

It'll be right after the service up in the house.

Uh, and it should be short and hopefully sweet.

So if you're here, you weren't planning to come, but you don't have lunch plans, love you to stay, check it out.

Doesn't commit you to anything, but just helps you learn more about the church if maybe one day you're interested in joining.

Mark chapter 9, if you have a Bible, uh turn there.

Mark 9 · chapter mention

I'm gonna pray for us.

And we actually have uh some members of our church who had to take their young son to the emergency room this morning.

I'm gonna pray for him and pray for the sermon as well.

Father, we know that you're real, that you have all power, all control.

Our God is in the heavens, he does all that he pleases.

Why should the nation say, Where is their God?

Lord, you are our healer.

You have all power and ability to heal all our diseases.

Lord, you know all things.

Lord, so I pray for emergency room doctors and nurses to have wisdom.

I pray for complete physical healing of the little one in the emergency room this morning.

And Father, as important as physical healing is, spiritual healing is so much more important.

Because the results are eternal.

So I pray that you would give me wisdom to preach your word effectively, efficiently this morning.

And I pray for everyone listening, spirit-filled wisdom to listen, to receive, to understand, to apply.

And Lord, we pray for spiritual power, spiritual healing.

Heal us of our spiritual diseases, our addictions, our sins, our lust, our worries, our fears, whatever they may be.

We pray all this in Christ's name.

Amen.

Mark chapter 9.

Mark 9 · chapter mention

Have you ever heard the saying?

Maybe you've said it yourself, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.

Anybody ever heard that before?

Sounds like good advice.

Sounds like it's maybe even Christian.

Maybe your grandma told you, but it ain't true.

Because it doesn't work biblically.

Jesus is love incarnate, and yet he said some of the hardest things ever recorded in human history.

I have a personal kind of spiritual principle.

I think I've probably shared it here before, but don't try to be more spiritual than Jesus.

Matthew Henry said, Learn how to say the hardest truths in the softest ways.

Now, the context of this passage we're going to look at this morning is this.

The disciples had been having an argument about who is the greatest.

And Jesus heard them and didn't tell them to stop trying to be great, but he did say, I want to redefine for you what greatness means.

Spiritual greatness is about being willing to serve anyone and everyone, the lowest and the least.

And even picked up a little child, we don't know for sure, but it's highly likely he was in Peter's home, and it would have been one of Peter's children, and said, and back then children were viewed as low on the totem pole.

Right?

Don't speak unless spoken to.

And Jesus said, lowest people in society, you want to be great?

You serve them.

And John, very tender conscious, is listening, and he remembers, hey, Jesus, when we were out doing the mission, we saw another guy.

He was casting out demons in your name, but we told him to stop because he wasn't one of us.

And John probably starts to realize that wasn't the kind of greatness Jesus was after, protecting their elite status.

And Jesus said, You shouldn't have stopped him.

Because anybody that's on Team Jesus, anybody that does the small, you didn't have to cast out demons.

You do the smallest act for Jesus.

Like you give a cup of cold water to somebody in the name of Jesus, you're going to get a heavenly reward.

And part of what Jesus was saying is, maybe the litmus test for my own heart and your own heart, how do you know are you seeking worldly sinful greatness?

Are you seeking godly spiritual greatness?

Is what kind of reward are you looking for?

Are you looking for worldly acclaim and praise?

Are you kind of like, man, that'd be nice, but I don't really care that much about that.

I care about a heavenly reward.

That's how you know when you're living for the right kind of greatness.

And we're just going to pick up right where we left off and keep going in the teaching.

So it's Mark chapter 9, verse 42.

Mark 9:42

Follow along with me.

Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.

And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off.

It is better for you to enter life than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire.

And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off.

It is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell.

And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out.

It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched, for everyone will be salted with fire.

Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again?

Have salt in yourselves, be at peace with one another.

Jesus is saying, Listen, anybody that causes a young, an immature, a humble believer to stumble and fall into sin.

It would be better for you to die a violent death, like have a gigantic rock tied around your neck and then thrown into a deep lake or ocean and drowned, not a pleasant thought, before you could do whatever sin you might do that would cause others to stumble.

It would be better for you to be killed.

A millstone.

They used millstones to grind grain.

And there were some that a human being could use with their hands, but the millstone that he refers to here is so big it had to be dragged or pulled by a donkey.

It's heavy.

And then he gives this metaphor.

And he says, Listen, if there's something that you keep doing sinfully, it'd be better to do whatever it took to stop sinning.

Even if you had to literally chop off your hand, amputate it to quit sinning.

Now, some of y'all are like, this is getting crazy.

I'm going to explain in a minute.

Just hang with me.

Okay.

Now, I'm reading from the ESV, and I know a lot in our congregation use the ESV.

And the ESV, I don't know if you notice in the bulletin, if that's what you're looking at, verses 44 and 46 don't appear.

Okay?

Now, in some manuscripts where they do appear, it's just verse 48 repeated.

So this is kind of a little side note, but this may be the most interesting part for some of you.

What most Orthodox Christians would say they believe is that the original letters that were written down, you want to be a scholar, you call them the original autographs that was written down.

And here's what when Mark, sometime maybe around 65 AD, somewhere in Rome, was writing down, inspired by the Holy Spirit, everything that he could remember hearing from Peter, the gospel of Jesus, what we believe is that was inspired, inerrant, every single word, every single jot and tittle.

If he had been writing in English, we would say every time he crossed a T and every time he dotted an I, that was exactly what the Holy Spirit wanted him to say.

Now here's the problem, though, we don't have that letter.

But here's what we do have we have thousands of copies of that letter from about 200 years later.

And for the most part, they're almost identical.

But there are some small discrepancies like this.

You might find some in, say, Syria that have verses 44 and 46, and they're identical to verse 48.

And then you may have some in Egypt that are a lot older that don't have verse 44, that don't have verse 46.

Now, this is important because sometimes, oh, you can't trust the Bible.

Yes, you can trust the Bible.

Here would be a problem is if we had a lot of manuscripts in Syria and they had a verse that said, Jesus is God.

And you're like, well, that's clear, that's good.

And then we had a bunch of manuscripts over in Egypt from kind of the same time period, and then the exact same verse, it just had one different word.

It said, Jesus is not God, we'd have a massive problem.

But these little tiny discrepancies, they're not like that.

It's just like one verse.

Did it get repeated?

Did it not get repeated?

Does that make sense?

No real doctrine.

That the 99.9% sure you can trust the veracity of the Bible that we have in English that you're holding in your hands.

And you're just like, what about that 0.1%?

It's stuff like this.

Was one verse repeated or not?

It has nothing to do with any type of primary doctrine.

It should not affect your faith at all.

Okay?

So thus ends the seminary lecture.

Let's keep going.

All right.

Verse 45.

Same principle.

And he's going to do it with the eye.

Even if your foot.

Even if your eye.

I mean, as I was studying this this week, I was thinking about what would I rather lose?

Hand, eye, or foot?

I think I'd rather lose the hand.

You know, what if you had to lose one more?

It's not pleasant to think about, is it?

When it gets down to I want to pluck out one of my eyes or chop off one of my feet.

And then verse 48, this is where all the manuscripts agree, this verse did show up here.

Where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.

Now, what's going on here?

The word in verse 47 and the other, like verse 45 as well, were hell.

The literal word there in the Greek is Gehenna.

Gehenna was an actual valley that was south of Jerusalem.

I think it was maybe a little bit southwest.

It was a ravine.

And way back when, thousands of years, before the Israelites had even gotten into the land of Canaan, and there were pagans there, and they worshiped a so-called god called Molech.

And part of what Molech demanded of the people, at least they thought, was child sacrifice.

And this is where they would go to worship this false god and take their little babies and burn them in the fire.

Later, when Israel had settled, but some of the Israelites started to rebel and worship false gods, they started to worship Moloch for a time.

And even Israelites that were supposed to be the people of God would offer their babies in the fire to Moloch.

Godly King Josiah was bringing about a revival, and so part of what he did is he desecrated the area of worship in the ravine, that valley, so nobody would ever do it again.

And what it became is it became basically the sewage dump and the trash heap of the city of Jerusalem.

So all the refuse and all the trash, that's where it went.

And there was a continual fire burning, and there were worms everywhere eating the sewage.

And you say, man, this is not what I was planning on for Sunday morning.

It's what Jesus has for us.

And so it became symbolic of hell where the ungodly would go and eternally live, in a sense, but there would be an unquenchable fire.

In a sense, there would be worms constantly destroying.

Now, verse 49, pretty hard to understand.

Here's my best understanding.

When we think about salt, even today, there's at least two things that salt can do.

We know this.

It can preserve, you know, you rub it into meat if you don't have a refrigeration and it can make the meat last longer.

Or if you want to torture somebody, hopefully none of us do, but see some movies sometimes, you can cut somebody and then you pour salt into the wound, it hurts.

Don't try that at home, kids.

Fire can do at least two things, right?

Similar.

It can refine precious metals.

You put the gold, you put the silver into the fire, the impurities come out, you can scoop them out.

It can purify.

Kind of like preserving, like salt.

But fire can also burn, it can hurt, it can consume, it can destroy.

So what is Jesus saying in verse 49?

Here's my best understanding.

He's saying, pick your pain.

I mean, listen, and a lot of people say things like this today.

If you're talking about uh losing weight, maybe something like that.

It's like, hey, you're either gonna have the pain of discipline or you're gonna have the pain of regret.

Right?

The pain of saying no to the cheesecake and going for the five-mile run, that's pain.

Or don't do that, and you're gonna have joint problems later in life, have that pain.

But you're gonna have pain.

And Jesus is saying, you're gonna have pain in life.

You're gonna have pain because you take my word seriously, you trust me, you obey me, you're willing to amputate things in your life that might hurt, that might cost you, so you can truly follow me.

Or you can say, no, you can just indulge yourself, and you're gonna have pain in the next life that will be unquenchable.

And verse 50.

Salt, another thing that salt does is it's tasty.

Somebody makes some food, it's a little bit bland, pass the salt, please.

Makes it taste better.

And there's something about Christians that are supposed to have a preservative effect on the world.

But we're supposed to have something tasty about us that makes us attractive, that makes people say, What's the hope you have?

I want to know more about this God that you worship.

But if you lose that, it's not good.

And and the salt that they used back then, a lot of times was mixed with impurities.

And there was a way to separate the impurities from the salt.

But the problem was the impurities still looked like salt, but it didn't have any taste and it didn't have any preservative power.

And Jesus is saying, don't be a fake Christian.

One commentator named Brooks said this: a person may have the external appearance of being a disciple, but not the internal properties.

No, three main points of application, and then a fourth.

The first is this don't do anything to cause an immature believer to stumble.

Remember, Jesus holding a little child.

Be the greatest, serve the weakest, the lowest, the most immature, the newest believer.

But he's also talking about John has just confessed, hey, we told that guy to quit casting out demons.

In a sense, Jesus is picking up on these themes.

John, don't do that, man, because if somebody's just doing tiny things like serving a cup of water to somebody, that they get a reward.

So Jesus is saying, there are going to be future rewards for the godly, and there are going to be future negative consequences and results of your sin in this life.

And you want to be very serious.

I mean, the positive is serve the lowly, serve the weak, serve the needy.

The negative is don't do anything to hurt them, to cause them to stumble, to cause them to sin.

And just imagine there was some believer, a real believer in Jesus, out there casting out demons.

And it was working.

And then John, I mean, he's like one of the super disciples, right?

I mean, he's one of the top three, comes by and says, Stop it.

What do you think it did for that guy's faith?

One good.

And Jesus, like, don't do stuff like that, John, that's bad.

I had a friend who was a pastor, and before he was a Christian, he lived a very promiscuous life.

So he knew himself well enough to know that would continue to be a temptation.

He was married, he was a pastor, but I heard him say on numerous occasions, he said, Anytime I've had a tempting thought in that direction, go through my mind, I pray, God, I beg that you would kill me before you would ever let me have an affair on my wife.

It's not a bad prayer.

And that I know he never had an affair on his wife.

James 3:1, not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because those of us who teach will be judged more strictly.

James 3:1

Listen, this is for every Christian, is certainly for the more leadership, responsibility, privileges you have, are there privileges in Christian leadership?

There certainly are.

I'm just gonna let you know a little secret.

If you don't alright, the responsibilities far outweigh the privileges.

Second thing.

Don't do anything.

Point one, don't do anything to make the weak believers, the immature, the humble little believers struggle.

But then Jesus says, you know what?

Don't do anything to make yourself stumble.

Because I think the logic may have gone like this.

Jesus is like, John, don't be out there saying stupid stuff to people, making people stumble.

So, like, okay, I gotta be careful what I say in public.

But you could say, well, when it's just me, I'm by myself.

I can kind of let it hang all, you know, I can be free, baby.

I can be a little loose.

And Jesus says, No, you can't.

Don't even do anything to make yourself stumble.

Now listen, Jesus is not literally teaching amputation.

I got both my hands, both my feet, both my eyes, and best I can tell, all of us do.

And for 2,000 years in church history, virtually every denomination of Christianity agreeing to this, he's not talking about literal physical amputation.

But let me tell you the main way you know, you don't have to look at church history, just look at the text.

Let's imagine you had somebody struggling with kleptomaniac.

They just love to steal things.

They couldn't help themselves, always walking around stealing.

And so they read this and they said, Well, it says, cut off my hand if I'm a kleptomaniac.

So you do it, you cut your left hand off.

You can still be a great kleptomaniac with just one hand.

You say, I struggle with lust, lustful looks, lustful things that I see.

I'm gonna pluck my left eye out.

You can do a lot of lusting with just one eye.

Even the cyclops, could lust, right?

So Jesus is not talking about literal physical amputation, but he is talking about amputating things in your life, and I'm gonna give you a couple examples in just a minute that might almost feel as painful as a physical amputation.

How many of you have seen, well, you don't have to raise your hand, but I wonder, there's a movie that I hadn't seen it in a while, but I remember it being a pretty good movie called 127 Hours.

Anybody ever heard of this?

It's a true story about a man out west, like to hike and rock climb all by himself, and he's kind of doing some climbing and stuff, and an 800, he's all by himself out in the middle of nowhere, 800-pound boulder falls and wedges his left arm at about the elbow down between the side of the cliff.

He's there.

Y'all heard of this?

Okay, true story.

James Franco plays the actor, okay?

I don't know who Aaron, I think, was the real guy's name, but he screaming, hot, nobody's there.

I guess he didn't have a cell phone, maybe before cell phones, okay.

I'm gonna say some bad things about cell phones in a minute, but this will be a good reason to have a cell phone, okay?

After five days by himself, he's out of food, he's out of water, he realizes I'm gonna die.

No, I'm gonna, this is a little graphic, but it's I don't think it's as graphic what Jesus said.

So he decides I'm gonna have to chop my arm off.

All he had was like a little tiny pocket knife, no anesthesia.

So the guy was smart.

I think what he did first is he used some rocks to break the bones because he didn't want to have to saw through the bones.

And then he takes the pocket knife and he saws.

And part of what, I mean, as I'm watching this movie, I mean, I'm I'm like, I'm sweating, you know, I'm like grimming.

And it gets to the part where there's a nerve, there's at least one nerve in there when he's having to cut through the nerve.

And I'm the way that I mean, it was a great movie because I was like wincing.

Like, I can't.

I don't think I could do it.

I'd just be like, I'm going to see Jesus, man.

But then he cut his arm off.

And then he's but he gets back, and now he's married and he has a kid.

But part of what he said is, I had like a vision, and I don't know that this guy's a Christian, but he's like, he was single at this time.

He's like, I had a vision of I was going to be married and have a kid one day, and I loved life so much.

I wanted to find that wife, I wanted to have that kid.

I chopped my arm off.

That's what Jesus is talking about, that you love spiritual life so much, you're willing to do things in life to amputate sin in your life.

So just let me give you some real world examples.

And I'm gonna make them all about this because let's just be honest.

For a lot of us, if I got to get rid of this, it feels like an amputation, doesn't it?

I've known more than one man, even in full-time ministry, that struggles with being addicted to pornography on their phone.

And one guy that I was trying to help, you know, it's like, hey, there's this thing called a covenant eyes browser.

And it blocks what you can go to, and it sends a report to whoever you want it to, your accountability partners, and it'll help you.

And so he got it.

And he did all the right stuff.

And how's it going?

He's like, it's been awesome.

It's I'm set free.

And then I don't know, a few months later, like, hey, everything's still good in that department?

Uh, you know, it's okay.

What do you mean it's okay?

Well, you know, the Covenant Eyes browser is really slow.

And I really like reading ESPN every day, and it's just it's so slow.

So I went back to the Safari browser.

So, yeah, I've struggled a little bit, but you know, wasn't willing to amputate.

Because I want high-speed internet on my phone for ESPN.

I know another guy, and to this day, last time I've seen him, and listen, this guy's, I don't know, probably 40 years old, got a bunch of kids, and he's got old school flip phone.

I don't even know where you can find these anymore, but that's what he's got.

And I don't even have to ask him why.

I know why.

He just said, I'm done.

I I I'm not having any kind of internet access on my phone.

And guess what?

Ain't a problem anymore.

He was willing to amputate.

Full-time Christian minister.

You think he ever gets some funny look, some funny ask?

I'd rather have that and be free than to look cool and normal and be in slavery in secret.

I knew a Christian woman struggling with anxiety, depression.

And listen, I know sometimes this can be clinical and medicine can be involved.

But she had a wise friend, counselor, say, you know what?

Before we go the route of anxiety meds, let's try this.

Get off all social media, full stop.

Because where a lot of this stuff comes from is the comparison game, right?

Everybody else looks more beautiful, they all went to the party, they didn't invite me, what's wrong with me?

I should just go die and eat worms.

So she just said, okay.

She was so desperate, she said, off all social media.

Listen, I'm not saying social media is sin.

Just like I'm not saying an iPhone's sin.

Just like your left hand and your left eye and your left foot's not sin.

But if for your unique struggle you gotta cut it off to be free, it's what, and you know what?

She cut it all off, and guess what?

No meds, and she's like, I ain't struggling anymore.

No more worry, no more depression.

Romans 8.13 talks about killing sin in your life, and John Owen, probably one of the top five greatest theologians since the Bible was written.

Here's probably his most famous phrase: be killing sin, or it will be killing you.

Even as a Christian, guys, it is a fight to the death.

Are you taking it that serious?

Matthew Poole, another reformed commentator, said this: Mortification, that's like a big old English word for killing, mortification of our most beloved and profitable or pleasant or dearest lust.

Now, we tend to use lust today just to talk about sexual sins.

But British guys a couple of hundred years ago, lust was like coveting.

It's anything you want too much.

And what he's saying is, all of us have something that we covet, we want it too much, but it's beloved, it's profitable, it's dear, it's pleasant.

He says, You want to be a real Christian, you want to be a mature Christian, you want to be a growing Christian, you want to be a safe, persevering Christian, you gotta kill it.

Just like you chop your hand off.

Another commentator said, You gotta ruthlessly renounce it.

You notice the phrase in Corinthians, we're taking every thought captive of the obedience of Christ.

That's how you fight sin because it all starts in your mind.

And one guy was reading, what does it mean to take every thought captive of the obedience of Christ?

Is this at the very first tempting thought, I ruthlessly reject it.

I don't play with it a little bit.

I don't even think about it.

The first thought of I could do this or say this or I ruthlessly reject it.

Point three.

First point, don't do anything to cause the weak, the mature to stumble.

Don't do anything to cause yourself to stumble.

And then he brought and says, you know what, don't do anything to cause anybody to stumble.

All Christians, but especially the leaders, you need to be salty in a good way.

That when people taste your life, when they see you and they hear you, there's something attractive and there's something preservative.

That if you're working in the operating room, if you're working in the firehouse, at the mechanic shop, in the schoolroom, in the football locker room, wherever you're working, that when you're there as a Christian, there's something a little bit different.

There's something a little bit more pleasant, more godly.

That doesn't mean everybody becomes a Christian and there's revival.

I mean, that'd be great.

But there's something about your life that's attractive and it's in a small tea, transformative way.

You're a preservative.

I mean, Jesus said, John chapter 13, verse 35, they will know you are Christians by your love, the way you love one another.

John 13:35

They'll know that you're my true disciples by the way you love other Christians.

How are we doing?

So he's saying, guys, quit being jealous, quit being proud, quit being competitive, quit being elitist, quit arguing about who's going to be the greatest and you're not even defining greatness in the right way.

Be humble so that you're attractive to the world.

Now, the fourth point is important to make, okay?

Doesn't necessarily come directly out of this text, but I think you'll understand why I'm making it in just a second, is this you can't do anything to cause yourself to lose salvation.

If this was the only passage of the whole Bible we had, taken out of context, you might think, oh no, if I'm a real Christian and I don't fight sin hard enough, I might die and go to hell.

And there are some denominations, unfortunately, that teach that.

But that is not true.

You have to interpret scripture in light of scripture.

Please, you can keep your finger here and mark if you want to, but flip over to Romans chapter 8.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

Romans chapter 8, many commentators and theologians would say the greatest chapter ever written, period, in the world, Romans chapter 8.

Romans 8 · chapter mention Romans 8 · chapter mention

Could read the whole thing, I want, but I'll just do that.

Just verse 1.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

So it starts with there's no condemnation.

You can't be condemned if you're in Christ, and then skip to the end, and there's no separation.

Verse 38.

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Guys, let me tell you my favorite part of that verse is in verse 39 where it says, Nor anything else in all creation, because guess what?

If I had a fear about losing my salvation, I don't.

But if I did, I wouldn't be worried about like the devil separating me from the love of God.

You know what I'd be worried about separating me from the love of God is me.

My own sin, my own lust, my own pride, my own fear, my sin.

But what this says is nothing in creation.

Owen Stubbs is a created being.

I can't separate myself from the love of God in Christ, even if I wanted to.

Now, biblically speaking, the question is never, did you lose your salvation?

Are you in date?

Because you can't.

But biblically speaking, the question is often, did you ever really have your salvation?

Reverend Barker at Browood used to say, faith that fizzles before the finish was false from the first.

There are many people in the church today and in the church then that are like those salt impurities that maybe externally from a distance look like salt, but the closer you get to know them, they're not real salt.

They don't have the internal properties.

And guys, one of the main ways that you can know that you are a real Christian, not the only way, but one of the main ways you can know that you're a real Christian is if slowly but surely, oftentimes it'll feel like two steps forward, one step back, painfully slowly, but I'm putting to death the deeds of the body.

I'm being conformed to the image of Christ.

I'm being transformed from one degree of glory to the next.

I'm amputating the opportunities to sin in my life.

Now, guys, there's a lot in the Bible that's very clear.

Like you can't lose your salvation.

There are some things that are kind of hard to understand.

Verse 49 and 50, a lot of commentators are like, these are very hard verses to understand.

And then it's like this super long paragraph of like, here's six options.

One guy even said, Here's my best guess.

But there's some things that the Bible is just crystal clear on.

We may not like it, but it's crystal clear.

And Mark Twain wisely said, it's not the stuff in the Bible that I don't understand that bothers me, it's the stuff I do understand.

And let me tell you what's crystal clear in the Bible and this marked passage is this hell is real and hell is eternal.

Hell for those who are not in Christ will be conscious, unremitting, suffering.

And some of you say, well, well, isn't the fire a metaphor?

Isn't the worm a metaphor?

Maybe, but listen, if it's a metaphor, it ain't for nothing nice.

It's not for something less than fire.

It's not for something less than worms.

It's terrifying.

Now many people hate this thought.

Understandably so.

Many Christians hate this thought.

Understandably so.

And they want to believe in purgatory, some kind of middle way that the Bible never talks about.

They want to make up theories of annihilationism that the Bible never speaks of.

But listen, guys, do a thematic study of hell in the Bible.

The Lord Jesus Christ talked about hell more than everybody else put together.

And when he talked about hell, he almost always talked about hell and heaven side by side.

And I think we would all quickly agree, heaven is forever.

Forever and ever and ever and ever.

It's glorious.

But he always puts them side by side, say it's gonna be forever there, forever here.

None of us want to tear down the foreverness of heaven, and we shouldn't tear down the foreverness of hell.

I mean, it's horrifying.

But it's real, it's true, it's unescapable to use the word of Jesus here.

It's unquenchable.

There's no way to escape, there's no way to quench this fire.

Except there is one way, right?

When Jesus Christ was on the cross, three hours of darkness, darkness like that in the Old Testament.

Think about it.

It represented God coming in wrath, God coming in judgment, like he did on the Egyptians when they wouldn't let his people go.

And that's why Jesus screamed out, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

He didn't even call him my father because there was no feeling of the fatherness of God.

And the best understanding, one commentator said, hell came to Calvary that day.

And the wrath and the fury of God against all the sins of all the people that would ever trust in Christ, it burned itself out that day in the heart of Christ.

So that when he died, he could say, It's finished.

Tim Keller made a great point here.

He said, Listen, a lot of people try to take away hell, take away the eternality of hell, because they want to try to make God appear more loving.

But if you try to take away the eternality of hell, you actually make God less loving.

Because then what did Christ suffer for you?

Three hours of physical pain?

That's nothing.

Hanging on to the eternality of hell because it's biblical, it it fully displays the glory, the goodness, the love, and the graciousness of our God.

That the Lord Jesus Christ, as an eternal being, was willing to suffer all the eternal punishment for our souls compacted into three hours.

So sobering.

And guys, here's my last thought as I was studying this and thinking about preaching it.

Jesus is teaching this, and we don't know who all was listening, but we know the twelve was there for sure.

Judas was sitting there listening.

Judas is in hell today.

I wonder if he thinks about this moment.

I should have been quicker to cut off my greed.

And what is incredibly sobering to me personally is to think that in a room this size, it's highly likely that there's somebody that might be hearing these words.

But they got a pet sin and they really love that sin.

And they don't want to repent.

Why would you die?

Lord Jesus, I feel so insufficient.

To preach about the coming judgment, but also to preach about the coming grace, the mercy, the love that you have for us.

Lord, I plead with you, Lord Jesus.

Anyone hearing these words that's not in Christ, that they would come to Christ today.

Give the gift of repentance.

And Lord, I pray for all of us who by your mercy are in Christ.

Grow us up spiritually.

Help us hate sin.

Even when Satan dangles very shiny looking bait in front of our face, help us be wise enough to see the hook.

Give us the grace to hate, to fight sin, not out of duty, not out of legalism, not out of trying to earn anything, but because we are smitten in love with you.

And because you are so much more worthy of our obedience.

We pray all this in Christ's name.

Amen.