Doctrine of Eternal Retribution

If you have your Bibles this morning, will you turn in them with me to Luke chapter 16, verse 19. Luke chapter 16, verse number 19. My subject, the doctrine of eternal retribution, the endless separation of God from man in eternity, is as natural and logical as that one and one make two. God has not created us monstrosities nor mechanical robots. He has made us with knowledge, with emotion, with will. He has given us, most of all, the greatest gift of all his wonderful creation, the dignity of humanity, the God -likeness that makes us free moral agents with the ability to exercise our will. We do not act of constraint. We do what we want to do. We do not have to follow him, nor need we obey his commands if we desire not to do so. But what God does is merely to abide by our decisions. And if we choose of our own free will to live separated from God in this life, then our God merely abides by our decision and allows us to live continually and endlessly without him, separated from him into eternity in the next life. It is merely the outgrowth of an eternal decision. And so you do not merely decide for time alone. For God does not act merely in the empirical realm. You decide an eternal issue as well when you ask the question, what will I do with Jesus Christ? For God allows you to continue, if that be your choice, to live separated from him through eternity as you have willingly done in this life. Nothing could be more normal. Nothing more logical. And yet it has been the focal point of discussion and criticism and skepticism by people throughout the ages of time. I wonder if we do not really believe it or if we do not really choose to disbelieve it. Whether we believe it or don't want to believe it or do believe it really doesn't alter the fact at all. The fact that we used to think moon, the moon was made of green cheese or whatever we thought it was made of, did not alter the chemical makeup of that planet whatsoever. Jesus, the master authority on this as well as every subject, has declared for us what I think is the ultimate teaching in the New Testament regarding the doctrine of eternal separation from God and man, the reality of a place called hell. Now Jesus was the master everything. He was the master philosopher, the master teacher, the master storyteller, and he knew that one good illustration was worth a hundred sermons. And always with staccato -like precision, he would insert into the profound spiritual truth he who was the word of God had come to convey with wonderful illustrations, homilies, parables, made -up stories to illustrate a truth. But I want you to remember that no parable in the word of God ever contained a proper name. I do not believe that the story of the rich man who went to hell and the poor man who went to heaven, here recorded, is a made -up parable. I believe it is a true story. Jesus gives a proper name. They say that the man's name, the poor man, was Divey. We know that the rich man's name was Lazarus. No, that's the poor man. The rich man's name, the story says, was Divey. Now Lazarus was a proper name. It was a very common name in Jesus' day. But it was a very specific name. And I submit to you that either of two things is true. Jesus Christ was a liar when he said that there was a man named Lazarus when there was not a man named Lazarus. And he is therefore a sinner and totally disqualified from being my Savior and a fake and a phony from the beginning or it is a true story one of the two must be true and if it is a true story then it is the most shocking and alarming warning in the word of God for men to flee from the wrath of God to come. Now in the grammatical construction of this sentence it literally reads like this there was a certain man which was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day and there was a certain beggar Lazarus by name which was laid at his gate full of swords. He does not merely say there was a man named Lazarus as the old English translation says but literally there was a certain man comma Lazarus by name comma and he continues to give double impetus to the veracity and validity of the fact that he is telling a true story with a true point about a true man. Now he says this man this poor man was laid at the gate of the rich man and his body was filled with sores desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table nor were the dogs came and licked his sores and it came to the fast that the beggar died and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died and was buried and in hell he lift up his eyes being in torments and seeth Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom and he cried and said father Abraham this is the only prayer in the bible that was prayed to a saint incidentally and it wasn't answered father Abraham have mercy on me and send Abraham Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue for I am tormented in this flame but Abraham said son remember thou in thy lifetime received thy good things and likewise Lazarus evil things but now he is comforted and thou art tormented and beside all this between us and you there is a great gulf fix so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot neither can they pass to us that would come from thence. This is the picture. A very rich man lives in a fallacial estate. He is rich. He is politically influential. He is clothed in purple and fine linen. Purple is a sign of royalty. He was the spiritual leader of his people. A religious man. Therefore he was also the political leader. An influential man. A rich man. A good man. A good man. Because outside of his gate he allowed a beggar to live. The dogs licked his sword. The healing power of their saliva was a bomb to his open cancerous sword. His rich friends tossed him money. He literally existed on the handouts from the rich man and his friends. He didn't have to allow him to live there. He didn't have to let him stay. He could have moved him away. But he was a benevolent and a kind and good man. Now one can almost hear the stamping of the feet of beautiful thoroughbred horses in the stable. You can almost see the servants running to and fro as he has served quail on toast and the finest sherbets from Egypt. Yonder comes the servant at his every beck and call as he lays in his beautiful starched linen shirt. One morning as he awakes the sun comes in through the window and seems to be in his eyes. He turns and wakes early and he goes out and starts to take his morning walk and he notices that his old friend, old, what's his name, whatever his name was that used to live there, is now gone. And so he calls one of the guards. They come and bury him with the rest of the garbage from the morning pickup. Perhaps he thought a moment. Perhaps he's better off now. Or did he? Did he know of eternal things? Of one thing we are sure, he was not prepared for eternal things. Because the Bible tells us that the poor man, while he went to heaven, the rich man went to hell. The poor man did not go to heaven because he was poor. He went to heaven for the only reason that people have ever gone to heaven. Because his faith was in the future coming of one whose redemptive power, the death of the innocent for the guilty, would provide him salvation. The rich man did not go to hell because he was rich. There's nothing wrong with a man being rich. it is not money that is the root of all evil to the contrary the bible says it is the love of money that is the root of all evil and god giveth the power to get wealth how i thank god for men of financial ability with whom god has entrusted the ability and the power and the talent to get and gain wealth and use it for the kingdom of god for the glory of god you cannot take it with you but you can certainly send it up ahead of time invested in the work of god through jesus christ we're going to get that pulpit fixed one of these sundays or no other reason why now the rich man has died he is in hell the second man the poor man has likewise died and he in heaven in hell the rich man learns some lessons too late for himself but not for us i point your attention to them number one he learns the reality of hell this is one of the most controversial subjects in the bible most people don't really believe in hell i cannot see they say how a good god would send a man to hell let me ask you a question what would the kind of a god you could believe in do with this kind of human stain the fearful the unbelieving the abominable the murderer the whoremonger the sorcerer the idolater the liar shall all have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone which is the second death my own common sense dictates to me that our god is not going to run the next life with less sense and order than we run this life we do not we have our jails do we not do we place the newborn babies in with a terminal cancer patient do we give the men the same advancements who obey the laws as those who do not do we allow men who are diseased to walk with those who are well to the men who break the laws and those who keep the laws do they progress in the same way do we not separate good from evil in this life do you think that our god is going to run the next life with less sense than we've run this one don't you think that he who has created us who has given us the good sense to know how to separate right from wrong evil from good is going to run the next life with any less sense than we've run this one there's not our own common sense dictated i can see it all now we all die and go to heaven you see a good god wouldn't send anybody to hell so everybody goes to heaven regardless of how they've lived the unbeliever the scoundrel the skunk the reprobate the pimp the pervert the prostitute the purveyor the profligate all of them the discards the rejects from the one -way street of life they just all die and go to heaven god was just a big practical joker he really didn't mean it after all there was nothing to the cross his son died in ignominy it was all a tragic mistake and christ made a fool of himself when he died looking for the apocalyptic descend of the kingdom of god as albert weiser said and he died in futility and frustration and knew that he wasn't the savior after all he was all a sham all a mistake he was out of his mind you and i are fools for following god and believing in christ there's nothing to it we're all going to heaven anyway all right now we've been in heaven a few million years and we're walking down the streets of glory and i hear boom boom and rattle and the windows are shaking and i say what's that and somebody says well uh khrushchev and hitler are up here and they're having a little game of war over there around saint peter's boulevard you see everybody goes to heaven well a few years later go uh a few years go by and and i hear a siren go off and someone says run for your life what's that well it's the nine o 'clock curfew you have to get off the street the rapists are up here and the murderers are up here and the scoundrels are up here it's not safe in the streets of glory you see everybody goes to heaven god will certainly not run the next life with less common sense than we have run this with it is the most normal thing in the world that good and evil are and endlessly shall be separated the one from the other i believe in eternal retribution i believe it because the college from which i graduated taught me to believe it i believe it because the great soul winners of all time the men that god has mightily used to shake nations for god have taught it and preached it and believed it I believe it because my society teaches it, because my common sense dictates it. I believe it because the Word of God says it far more than it speaks of heaven. But I believe it mainly this morning because Him who was the greatest gentleman who ever lived, who could not lie because He was the truth, incarnate in human flesh, Jesus Christ Himself said, and in hell, in hell He settled once and for all the question of its reality. He found out, did the rich man, about the certainty of hell. Now He found out another thing. He found out the crowd going to hell. You say, well, preacher, I can understand that what we call the riffraff may not make it through the gates of glory. But after all, aren't most people good people? I guess five or six people to whom I've spoken of Christ this week have all said the same thing to me. A barber said it to me this week. A man at a grocery store said it to me this week. Well, preacher, it really doesn't matter which church you go to. So far, so good. What really counts is that we all do the best we can. Aren't we just supposed to live up and do as well as we can? The Bible says that all of our righteousness, all of our goodnesses, all of our moral attributes, all of the clubs to which we belong, all of the social graces we display, all of the beneficial acts we have committed, all of them together, all the money we've given to the church, all the wonderful things we have done, piled up together, apart from the redemptive blood of Christ on the cross, are in the sight of God as rags unwound from a dead Old Testament court. Filthy, stinking rags in God's sight. You and I are moral leopards. We are totally depraved. We are as dead as this wood. And this dead piece of pulpit wood could no more produce a beautiful flower than the dead condition of an unregenerate heart can produce any good work to commend himself to God. That, thank God, is why we sing of amazing grace. Grace means what he did for me. Work means what I, therefore, have done for him. And he says, By grace are ye saved through faith. You can be baptized and homogenized and sanforized and pasteurized. You can live in the baptistry until you grow web feet and waddle like a duck and scales and swim like a fish. You can join the Methodists and the Church of Christ and the Presbyterians and the Baptists and the whole outfit and go to hell unless you have believed with personal, committing, life -transforming faith in the power of the blood of Jesus Christ. Listen again. But the liar and the unbeliever and the idolater and the sorcerer. You say, Preacher, I'm not a whoremonger. If you're not a born -again child of God, the Bible calls you an unbeliever. You say, Well, Preacher, I'm surely not an adulterer, but you're an unbeliever. You say, Pastor, I'm not a worker of witchcraft or a sorcerer. I'm not an idolater, but you're an unbeliever. I'm not a liar or a drunkard, but you're an unbeliever. And it is the sin of unbelief that damns and dooms and sins men to God, into eternity without God. We are the recipients, the objects of divine love. God in Christ came seeking. In loving kindness, Jesus came, my soul and mercy, to reclaim and from the depths of sin and shame, He lifted me. I had nothing to do with the lifting. I had no contributing part in the grace of God. He did it for me. And if I have failed to exercise the God -given prerogative that is the divine equalizer of every member of the human race, the ability to believe, to exercise saving faith toward God, then what God does is to simply abide by the decision of my will, my willing decision to reject Him and live apart from Him and allow me to continue to reject Him and live apart from Him on into eternity, into the next life. He found out about the certainty of hell, the crowd going to hell, and he found another thing about the character of hell. What kind of a place is it? Well, I know what you mean. Is it really fire? Well, frankly, I don't know. I'll tell you something a whole lot better than that. I never intend to find out. I'll say this. Listen closely. If God in Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit of God, was trying the best he could to communicate with my limited, finite mind how awful it was to be eternally separated from God. If he could find no way to communicate how awful life without God eternally is, then he had to make up something, and use an illustration that I could comprehend, understanding that flame on the body is the worst pain the mind can comprehend, and the body can know. If he just made that up as an illustration of what hell really is, then you haven't made it better. You've made it worse. If that's just a symbol of what it's really like, tell me in the dear Lord's name what is it really like. Now listen. Don't hold me to this. I don't have any scripture. I'm going to give you my personal opinion. I'm not even sure of that. But it could be. I submit to you the possibility that hell could be not in the depth of this earth, but in eternity. It could be in outer space. Three reasons. Number one, it is a bottomless pit. There is some place where men can fall and fall, and for the endless eons of eternity, go farther and farther away from the God they have willingly rejected, and never stop going, never stop falling. They say it is the most awesome experience of all to tumble without any sense of balance, no gravitational direction over and over through space. Secondly, it is a place of powerful heat. It is a place where there is terrific pain. Now the scientists tell us that when objects begin to fall, tremendous heat is generated. They've gone to great stress, and a Ph .D. at Oklahoma University and our church in Oklahoma City will be here, our personal guests and friends next Sunday who help design the material for the right stress, for reentry, etc., on these things they send all into outer space. The tremendous heat that is generated, could that be the description of hell as a man falls through space? One other possibility. It is a place of outer darkness. How dark would it be to go beyond sun, beyond moon, and planet, on and on and on and on and on, and never stop going? Could it possibly be? Indeed, as I said, don't pin me down. I merely raise it as a possibility that hell is an outer space. And one other thing I would use to bear out the genuineness of that possibility. God says when we come to him, oh, glorious God, when we come to Jesus Christ, he takes our sins, he puts them behind our backs, he buries them as far from us as the east is from the west, and hallelujah, remembers them no more. He doesn't even remember yesterday's sins. You come to him as a Christian and say, Lord, you remember that terrible sin I've been fighting, that thing I told you about yesterday? If God spoke back to you, he'd say, no, I don't remember. What are you talking about? He doesn't remember them. Thank God. They're as far from him those forgiven, confessed sins as east is from west. How far is west from east and east from west? Now, bear me out. If our unconfessed, our confessed forgiven sins under the blood of Christ are that far away from God, how far are our sins away from him in eternity that are unconfessed to him that hates sin so? Where will they be? Where will we be bearing them in our own spirit and being. The last word is this. He found out, because the Bible infers to me, that the redeemed cannot see into hell, but that those in hell can see the pleasures and joys that they're missing in heaven. That he found out too late for himself the cross that would have saved him from hell. The unsatisfied desires. He still remembered. Said, remember, remember, remember. Throughout hell, he still had his memory. Remember the opportunity you had? Remember the day the preacher gave an invitation? Remember the time you came to service? Others were saved and you scoffed? Others were converted and you rejected Christ? Remember, remember. Every studded door from every clanking cell of the penitentiary of the damned, forever and every gleeful eyed imp and every demon, and every power of darkness glaring and gleeing and cheering and jeering forever, forever, forever, forever, forever. And he could remember the chances that he had. He said, send Lazarus, that old sore Lazarus, to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue. I am tormented in this flame. How much water can a man hold on the tip of his finger? But it should have been a taste. Glory! Could have been a touch of paradise for a drop of water on the finger of a sore man. I expect that he remembered. Oh, I heard something about that beggar carpenter. There was some story about a carpenter, a Nazarene that rose from the dead and life was in him. Oh, yes, they nailed him to the city garbage dump. They buried him out there with a commoner. You mean to tell me that that was God's love gift to the world? You mean to tell me it was by that cross that I missed eternal life? He found out, I can imagine, too late, about a cross that would have saved him from hell. And what of you? They say that Gypsy Smith, the famous preacher, was starting across a bridge with some of his people. The army, they used to say, a route step marched to break the cadence because the rhythm of the thing would break down a bridge, but they didn't do it. As they walked across, it gave way. The rare presence of mind of horses and chariots all caved in. A young, strong, gypsy boy picked up his little mother and threw her into the water, way aside from the falling animals and debris, dove in under her and tried to rescue her out of the flood. She fought it out of her mind, as people do, and tragic circumstances lost all comprehension, and fought and kicked and screamed. He had to let her go. He got her again. The third time, still, she rejected him. He had to let her go down the swollen stream to her death. Gypsy Smith, in his book, said that they buried seven gypsies in a mass open grave. And when that boy came by, he slipped by before strong arms could keep him from so doing and raised the dead body of that mother out of that grave and kissed her on the cheeks and said, Mama, I would have saved you. Why did you fight me? Why didn't you let me? Mother, I would have saved you. Why did you fight me? I do not believe that when you and I stand before God and hear, depart from me, you cursed, I never knew you. I do not believe Jesus will fold his arms and stand and hear and laugh and say, I told you so. No, but with a broken heart, I believe he will show you the ribbon side and the cursed hand, the thorn -crowned brow and say, oh, sinner, college student, junior high, grade school boy, businessman, mother, dad, wife, why didn't you come that day? I would have saved you. I would have saved you. I would have saved you. If only you would have come. Why didn't you come and let me save you that day? I do not know how many people died in Houston, Texas last night. How many shall ere this day has run its course? But I guarantee you that you and I, that any of us could be in that number. Are you right with God? Are you ready to meet the Lord? Have you been saved as the blood of Jesus Christ through faith from your heart made you his own dear child? Or are you lost? I wouldn't walk out that back door just saying, well, I'm a Methodist. We don't do it this way. Or I'm a Church of Christ. that's all I need, or I'm a Baptist, my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame, not church or ordinance or theology, but I wholly lean on Jesus' name. That's what we mean when we sing, just as I am without one single plea. My hope, my righteousness, my plea is only that thy blood was shed for me. If you have never been to Calvary, if you've never had an honest, genuine experience with God, dear friend, today, where you have put your faith in the shed blood of Christ and trust that and only that, exclusively, eternally, endlessly that, for your lifelong and eternal soul salvation.

Luke 16:19 Luke 16 · chapter mention