Would you please turn with me if you brought your Bibles to Revelation chapter 20. We're going to continue this morning with our recent study. We've been overall for months now studying the theme of the last things, what is coming at the end of all of history, how God is going to bring about the conclusion of his great plan for all of history. But in just the last four or five weeks now, we've been specifically studying on the theme of what we know as hell, what that's all about, what it's not. We've looked at the history of how different even leaders in the Christian community have treated this subject and abused and mangled it and twisted it. We've looked at how the world disregards this teaching, the different ways the world disregards it. The last two weeks what we've done is looked at the actual biblical instruction about the nature of hell in terms of what we've called the history of hell, showing the progression of how hell itself is not the single term hell encompasses more than one thing. And we've seen how there's been a progression of that through history. And where we left off last week was we talked about that there is going to come a final transition, a final change. Hell being a created place, as we emphasized, is itself subject to change. And there is one final change coming for hell. We're going to read that again, as we did last week in Revelation 20, starting in verse 11. This is a brief description of the Day of Judgment. This section of scripture is commonly often called the Great White Throne Judgment, in reference to the description of the throne of God on the Day of Judgment. So reading from verse 11, Then I saw a Great White Throne, and I sat upon it. from whose presence earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, the great and before the throne. And books were opened, and another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them. and they were judged, every one of them, according to their deeds. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. What we're going to look at today is this final change that's going to occur for hell, and this is clearly described and implied here in this section in that it's describing that Hades itself, this unseen realm, what we would consider to be the current reality of hell, that place itself is going to be thrown into another place. as it's described here as the Lake of Fire. We're going to talk about the Lake of Fire today. We want to look at what this actually is, what the circumstance of the Lake of Fire is, and what the experience of those individuals that are going to be experiencing the Lake of Fire for all of eternity, what their experience is actually going to be like. Now, I think this goes without saying, but I should say it, and I hope you understand this, that Whatever words I use and choose to describe this reality, they're going to fall somewhat short of what this is really going to be like. The awful reality of the lake of fire, this circumstance that is awaiting those that are judged to be excluded from the presence and purposes of God for all of eternity. It's not, as we've talked about several times, it's not something that I relish talking about in the sense of it's certainly not one of the most enjoyable. It's certainly not going to be pleasant for you to sit here and listen to me for the next 45 minutes to an hour. But there's a reason why the Lord has revealed this to us. There's a reason why. The Lord could easily have done it this way. He's well within His rights to have done so. He could have planned for the Lake of Fire to be the ultimate and final reality for those that are heading in that direction. And he could have left it unrevealed in history. He could have surprised that group on the Day of Judgment. And those of us who will not experience it, it would have been a surprise to us also to see what would be the final disposition of the wicked. But the Lord has chosen to speak to us about that aspect of eternity here in history, here in time, here in our present life circumstances. We talked just a minute at the end last week about the purpose of that, how this teaching, this revelation of the Lake of Fire is meant to warn our hearts, it's meant to shape and mold our hearts' perspective, it's meant to inform us, and it's meant to motivate us. so that we would be more willing than we normally would be in our natural comfort zones to stretch out beyond the boundary of that comfort zone and to share what needs to be shared with those who are on a pathway heading this direction. You know, it's one of those things that we don't know, none of us knows, who is and who ultimately is not going to be assigned their place in the lake of fire. All we do know is that many will be. And all we can tell is that by their present life choices, and by their present life actions and deeds, many are on the pathway that will end at the lake of fire. Now many will thankfully be rescued from that pathway, just like we were all on that pathway, and were rescued from that ourselves. It is up to us to be willing to speak to those who are on that pathway, and the Lord has intended it to be that way. So, with that, let's just launch in, because you know, as uncomfortable as it is, you've heard me say before, and I'll just repeat, and by the way, turn with me if you would to Matthew chapter 25. The bottom line is, we don't have a choice. This is the reality. And because it's the reality, and because God has revealed this reality to us, we have a biblical responsibility and a spiritual responsibility to study it, to learn it, and to understand it, and to be affected and influenced by what God has revealed to us. So let's talk about, first of all, the awful reality of hell. And we're talking here about not the temporary hell, we're talking about eternal hell. When I say temporary, the present experience of hell is temporary. There are people right now, souls, but the hell that they're presently experiencing is a temporary hell. It's not an eternal hell. There will come that day of judgment when hell itself will be cast into this lake of fire, and that is going to be an eternal experience. It's kind of like the difference between, in our criminal justice system, the difference between what we call county jail and state or federal penitentiary. As soon as a person commits a crime, and they're arrested and they're incarcerated. They're not immediately taken into penitentiary. They're taken to county jail. And they are under bonds and restraints. They're not judgment. They're determined to be either guilty or innocent. And if they're guilty and if their crime warrants it, then they're assigned their permanent home in penitentiary, either at eternal hell, the lake of fire, which is different than the present temporary circumstance of hell. Alright, so first of all, let's read from Matthew 25 and verse 41. We've read this verse several times before. I want to re-emphasize it. from one particular aspect. This is one of the descriptions of the Day of Judgment. And we're reading here simply the statement that the Lord Jesus makes at the point of actually pronouncing judgment upon the wicked. And he says this to them. Then he, and this is the Lord Jesus, he will say to those on his left, depart from me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels. Now, there are many awful realities of eternal hell, and we're going to try to cover all of those today. But the first reality that is going to be impossible to swallow by those who hear these words on that day is that it's going to be a final sentence. What I mean by that is simply this. When they hear these words from the Lord Jesus' mouth, there is no further court of appeal. This is it, the final word that God speaks to these individuals. What I mean by that is that when a person is born into this world and begins to grow up and live their life, the Bible describes to us that God begins a relationship with every single person that's ever been created. Every single person that's ever drawn a breath has a relationship with God. Now, what we understand is that that's, at the beginning, for all people, a bad relationship. Not from God's side, but from our side, due to the influence and the effect of sin on our lives. But nevertheless, there's a relationship. God as Creator is relating to us as His creation. And in that relationship, the Bible teaches us that God speaks to us throughout the entire course of our lives. I'm not talking about an audible voice that you can hear. I mean, there are some special circumstances that are recorded in the Scripture where God has on rare occasions spoken audibly to someone who didn't even prior to that event know Him. That's an unusual situation, but the Bible tells us that God is daily, consistently speaking to the hearts and minds of every single person on this earth. One of the ways that he speaks to everyone is not by, as I say, an audible voice, but by them. The Bible says that God is speaking into the hearts and minds of people through every night, When the sun goes down and the stars are obvious in the skies, God is speaking to people's hearts about His awesome majesty in the display of His creation and power and majesty in the heavenlies. God is speaking to people about His reality and His existence just through the creation around us here in this world, let alone the stars in the heavens. And there are many other ways that God speaks to men's heart. He speaks in dreams. He speaks, of course, through the declaration of His word, through His church, and many other ways that God communicates. But there's coming a day for this group of individuals where God is going to speak one sentence to them. And this sentence is this again. Depart from me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels. And at that word angels, these individuals that hear those words will never again, for all of eternity, hear the voice of God. Ever. They will never ever again hear God speak to them in relationship. This is the final sentence of a holy and just God who has been ignored and disregarded for the course of these people's entire life, and rebelled against, and resisted, and dishonored, and He is going to speak one final word to them, which is in essence, depart from me. into this circumstance which I have prepared, and that will be the last communication they ever receive from God. What people don't realize, I'm talking about people in the world, is just how significant of an internal torment that is going to be. People, as I say, have heard God speak to their hearts every single day, whether they recognize it, whether they like it or not. And what happens is people presume upon the voice of God in their lives. People, once that voice is gone, once that voice is silent, once that voice no longer speaks to them, there is going to be this incredible internal void in that person. And that void is going to last forever and ever and ever. And, as I said, it's a judicial sentence, meaning there's no court of appeal. In our court system, once you receive a final sentence and you don't like it, what do you do? You file an appeal. If you don't like that, what do you do again? You file an appeal. If you don't like that, what do you do again? You file an appeal. Until what? Until, potentially, if your appeal keeps getting kicked up levels, eventually it reaches, in our court system, what we call the Supreme Court. Now, what happens if a case is heard at the Supreme Court and the person that is appealing to the Supreme Court doesn't get the answer that they want? Where do they go then? There's nowhere left to go. They have to just deal with it. And of course, on the Day of Judgment, the throne of God, the sentence that the Lord Jesus pronounces, is the final sentence. There is no higher court. This is, of course, the truly Supreme Court of all of creation. all of existence. This will be the last sentence and the last word that these people hear. Beyond that, there are some other awful realities. Let's turn from Matthew back to the book of Revelation and look in chapter 19 for a moment. What I want to do is describe to you briefly three word pictures of this reality of eternal hell. What I mean by word pictures, I think we're all familiar with this. God's book, God's word is filled with what we call word pictures. That's where God uses words to paint a mental image for us. And the reason God does this, and he does it so commonly and so often, and of course the whole book of Revelation is one gigantic word picture, The reason God does this is because spiritual realities are so far greater than what our language is normally able to accommodate in terms of describing what's the reality of this situation. And so God paints pictures which gives us a starting point of grasping the greater spiritual reality. But the word picture is never meant to show us anything about the greater reality. It just gets our hearts and minds started in the right direction. And what God has done is He's given us, and there's actually more than this, but I'm just going to use these three as an example. He's given us three powerful word pictures of hell, eternal hell. And what happens sometimes for believers is that we get hung up on the details of the word picture. What I'm describing to you is, I'm going to call them word pictures, I'm going to identify them as word pictures. What I want you to see is that the reality is not less than the word picture. The word pictures are the lake of fire, it's the one we're most familiar with. But another word picture that the Lord gives is that eternal hell is like a furnace of fire. And then the final one is that the lake of fire or eternal hell is God's universal garbage dump. Let's look at the lake of fire first. We read one reference to that in the book of Revelation already in chapter 20, the scene around the great white throne. We're going to read two others. I'm going to give you three references to the lake of fire. The first one we already read, which is Revelation 20. verses 11, actually I'm going to include verse 10, we started in verse 11. 10 through 15, because verse 10 also mentions the lake of fire. But let's read the two before and after that. Revelation 19, verse 20. And I saw the beast in the kings of the earth and make war against him who sat on a horse and against his army. And the beast was seized. And with him the false prophet who performed the signs in his presence, by which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast. and those who worshipped his image. These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire, which burns with brimstone." Brimstone is just, you know, it's one of those vivid imagery words, and it's kind of poo-pooed nowadays when it's in reference to hell. You know, we even have people making jokes about fire and brimstone preachers, or fire and brimstone preaching. You know, you can disregard it all you want, but the reality is the Bible describes it as fire and brimstone. Now, what is brimstone? Anybody familiar with brimstone? What is that? What is brimstone? Anybody have a brimstone in their backyard? I mean, it's like one of those kind of words we've heard about our whole lives, but we're not that familiar with it. It's a term that was used to describe a sulfurous kind of molten metal burning. All right, so we just read in Revelation 19, then we read earlier Revelation 20. Let's go now to Revelation 21 and read the third use of this word picture, the lake of fire. Verse 21, verse 5 through 8 is what I'll read. And he who sits on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new. And he said, Write, for these words are faithful and true. Then he said to me, It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost. He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God, and he will be my son. But for the cowardly, and unbelieving, and abominable, and murderers, and immoral persons, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death. Alright, now, let me ask you this. Because we don't have any more detail than what you've just heard already this morning about the Lake of Fire. Why is that? Because if you'll get out your concordance and check it out for yourselves, you'll find that this phrase, Lake of Fire, only occurs in three places in the entire Bible. Where are those three places? Revelation 19, Revelation 20, and Revelation 21. It's the only three places this phrase occurs. Now Jesus spoke about hell more than, as you've heard me say, more than any of the other teachers, any of the other prophets, any of the other apostles in the Bible. It was a common theme in his teaching. And he spoke about hell dozens of times publicly, as far as what we have recorded, and probably many more times than that. And yet, in all of his speaking about hell, he never once uses this phrase, the lake of fire. Why? Because what we're dealing with here is a word picture, which means it's a physical... image of familiarity from our life circumstances that conveys a greater spiritual reality than what that physical image actually can encompass. But it's not the only way to describe this reality. There are other ways to describe it, and God chooses many different ways to describe it. We're just going to look at these main three ways. What I want to accomplish with this is this one thing. Don't get hung up on the details of the phrase, lake of fire. Because when you think of lake of fire, what do you actually picture? What do you image? If it's a word picture, what do you think of? Yeah, a lake with some flames on the surface of the lake. Or maybe even the lake itself is flaming. But some kind of liquid fire circumstance. Alright? If the ultimate reality, the ultimate disposition of what is experienced by the wicked forever and ever and ever is that God in a sense took those souls from the shore of this lake and cast them into this lake. And it was of such a nature that they couldn't swim to the shore and get out on their own. Meaning they're held there in that circumstance. Then there are some deeper images that start to communicate to our heart about what this is all about. In other words, it's not about the detail of whether it's a lake, how big the lake is, what the dimensions of the lake, whether the fire is liquid or... because, you know, most fire is not liquid, it's some other substance, you know, it's some other form of energy rather than a liquid. Yet, the detail is not significant. What's important here is the imagery of what this conveys to our hearts about the awful reality of an eternity spent in a circumstance in which, if you were, I mean, just imagine, forget the fire for a moment, if God said your punishment is you're going to spend eternity in a lake that you can't get out of, and you're not on a boat on that lake, you're just in the lake. I mean, we go to lakes to enjoy ourselves, and we go swimming in lakes, but if I said to you, you can never get out, you're there forever, now suddenly that's not a place of enjoyment for you any longer. And now I said, let's add to that, and let's say the whole lake is on fire and tormenting you, and you can't get out of it. Now we're dealing with the kind of imagery that God wants to convey to our hearts. But the fact that it's only mentioned in these three places tells me that it's not a sufficient word picture to tell us everything that we need to understand about this reality. So let's go to the second one. The lake of fire or eternal hell is also described as a furnace of fire. Turn back to Matthew chapter 13. And this is from the teaching of the Lord Jesus. This is the phrase that he more commonly used to describe this reality. Matthew 13. We'll read just a couple of verses. This is from the explanation that the Lord Jesus gave of the parable of the wheat and the tares. And I'll read starting in verse 40. We'll actually read three verses. So just as the tares are gathered up and burned with fire, so shall it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send forth his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all stumbling blocks and those who commit lawlessness, and will throw them into the furnace of fire. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Now, what's the point of similarity between our two word pictures so far? These first two word pictures have one similarity. They're both circumstances that can only be described using some image from our natural life experience, and that is fire. It's something fiery. But here, instead of calling it a lake, it's an entirely different image of fire. This is a furnace of fire. Now, how many of you have had any experience with a furnace? We don't have furnaces as often here. If you've ever lived back east, you've probably had more of an experience of a furnace. Houses back east, generally speaking, or in the far north, generally speaking, all have furnaces. And of course, beyond houses, there are industrial furnaces. This would be more along the lines of an industrial-sized furnace. What we're dealing here is, it's a device. A furnace is a location. It's a specific location with boundaries. It's constructed in such a way as to contain a fire, but it's also constructed in such a way as to allow for whatever fire is started in that furnace to continue to burn. and things are thrown into furnaces in order to burn. And the whole concept of furnace is, generally speaking, they have a doorway in, which is, you know, the person in charge of the furnace opens the door of the furnace and puts whatever fuel he's going to put into that furnace. He puts it in and then shuts the door and locks it. And that's the imagery that's being conveyed here, which is, again, like a lake. It's not called an ocean of fire for a reason. And here the furnace concept conveys the same thing, which is it's limited in its spatial dimensions. This is not something that's going to spill out into the rest of God's creation. It's a very limited place that God has designed to incorporate or to encompass all of the devil and his angels and all of the souls that are going to follow him into this same circumstance, into this furnace. And in terms of our identification with that experience, you know, the idea here is, of course, not that Were the ones at the door throwing fuel into the furnace? The idea is that the fuel of this fire is what? People. It's the fuel of this fire. Now that causes any of us to revolt. There's a natural revulsion. We all are familiar with the horrific circumstance that happened around and part of World War II. We all know about what happened with the Jewish people, what Adolf Hitler did with many of the Jewish people, and the ovens of Auschwitz. We all understand the horror of the possibility of one human being taking another human being and placing them in an oven and killing them by fire. And all of our hearts just immediately, you know, are repelled by that idea. And they should be. I mean, it's a horrible circumstance. But what I want us to understand is this. And next week, Lord willing, I'm going to do one last week on this theme of hell. Next week I want to talk about why God is not at all like Adolf Hitler to have done such a thing as this on the Day of Judgment. But today I'm not so much making any excuses or apologies for the Lord, I'm just describing what He describes as the actual reality of the circumstance. So we're just going to focus on that. What I want us to understand, this is like a gigantic furnace or an oven in which people are going to burn forever and ever. Let's look at the third one, the last of the word pictures. Turn with me if you would to Mark chapter 9. Mark chapter 9. We'll read from verse 43. This passage is, I saved it for last because this is the passage that demonstrates conclusively that all three of these are actually word pictures. And the reality is something greater than this, rather than less, but nevertheless they're word pictures, meaning No one of these, in detail, describes what it's actually going to be like. It just gets our minds heading in the right direction of the awful reality of what it's going to be. Mark 9, reading from verse... We'll start reading verse 42. Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe to stumble, it would be better for him if a heavy millstone hung around his neck, And he'd been cast into the sea. If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than having your two hands to go into hell. into the unquenchable fire. Now, last week we looked at, and actually the last couple of weeks in our history of hell, we looked at the fact that there are different vocabulary words in the scriptures for hell. We looked at two words from the Greek and the Hebrew to describe the current, present, temporary hell that people go into when they deserve to do so at the end of their lives. We saw that those two words were Sheol from the Hebrew and Hades from the Greek. Here the Lord Jesus uses, and this is from His teaching of course, He uses an entirely different word, again in verse, we're reading in verse 43, thank you. The word hell, in verse 43 of Mark 9, is not Hades or Sheol, the word hell here is the word Gehenna. Now I'm going to read on and I'll take a moment to describe what that word is all about. But let me read verse 43 again, substituting that word. If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off, it is better for you to enter life crippled than having two hands to go into Gehenna, into the unquenchable fire, where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched. If your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off, it is better for you to enter life lame than having your two feet to be cast into Gehenna, where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched. If your eye causes you to stumble, throw it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than having two eyes to be cast into Gehenna. where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched." Okay, what we have here is the Lord Jesus is choosing a specific word. He could have used Hades easily to describe this, but he chooses this specific word for a reason, and that's because the word that he chose was very familiar to everybody that he was speaking to at that time. It was a cultural familiarity. How many of you are familiar with what we call, in our society, landfill? Landfill. What is landfill? Landfill is... I used to have a job where I was a milkman and one of the places I delivered milk was at this very ritzy, high economic level neighborhood up at the crest of Sepulveda as it crosses over, you know, where the 405 crosses over to Westwood. And if you're going up across Sepulveda there and you look to your right, there's a very, very hoity-toity neighborhood up there on the hill. And I mean, I couldn't afford to ever dream of getting into that neighborhood in terms of buying a house there. What always used to amuse me about this route that I had as I was delivering milk to these places is my knowledge of the fact that their rich homes were built on a landfill. In other words, their homes were built on a garbage dump. You know, that hill didn't used to be a hill. It used to be a valley. And for years, the city of Los Angeles had all of the garbage trucks trucking away the garbage from people's homes to this valley and dumping them in this valley. And the garbage just kept getting higher and higher. And of course, you know how they do it. There's garbage and then dirt, garbage and then dirt, garbage and then dirt. And pretty soon you have a high class neighborhood to build. Well, that's how we handle garbage. That's not always how we handle garbage. You know, city of Los Angeles, can you imagine how much garbage is produced in the city of Los Angeles on a daily basis? I mean, gazillions of tons of garbage every day. And you got to do something with all that garbage. So, you know, there's lots of hills and valleys here. So someone had a brilliant idea, and it really is a brilliant idea. Let's just make landfill. But in these days, when the Lord Jesus spoke these words, the city of Jerusalem was one of the largest metropolitan cities in the world. There was over a million people that lived in the city of Jerusalem. That was a huge city back then. And they had garbage. They had lots of garbage, just like we have lots of garbage. What they did with their garbage, they didn't make landfill. The idea of actually, let's live on top of our own garbage wasn't particularly appealing to them in those days, like it is to us. What they did was they burned their garbage. So there was a valley outside of the city of Jerusalem, south of Jerusalem, called the Valley of Hinnom. And it was literally Gi Hinnom. Right? And it just became known in the Greek language as it's translated, because they spoke this in Hebrew. In the Greek language it was translated Gi Hinnom. So when the Lord Jesus says this, in Mark chapter 9, I'll just read one of the verses again. At the end of verse 43, he says, to go into Gehenna, into the unquenchable fire, where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched. What is he talking about? He's talking about eternal hell, but he is describing eternal hell as, you know, that garbage dump right outside of the city of Jerusalem. And what the garbage dump outside the city of Jerusalem was actually like was, they did have people carting out garbage to the valley of Hinnom every day. That was their job, to cart the garbage out to the valley of Hinnom from the city of Jerusalem. And when they carted it out there, of course they didn't have to do this every day, they just added to something that was already going. But someone had originally started this garbage pile on fire. Way back in history. And this fire just burned all the time outside the city of Jerusalem. All the time. Day in and day out. The fire never went out. Why? Because there was always fuel for the fire. Every day they brought fresh fuel in today's garbage and they added it to an already burning fire and it just continued to burn. And that's where the meaning of or the significance of this phrase where their worm does not die. Because the reality of the Valley of Hinnom was that while it was on fire, not every single little bit of the dump was on fire. And so what was going on in the other little bits? Well, the worms were eating it. I'm having a hard time writing and talking at the same time here. So I'll stop talking until I write. The worm does not die. Does that mean, because Jesus is talking about eternal hell here, does that mean that in eternal hell there's going to be worms? Track with me here. There's no worms in hell. Is Jesus then mistaken? No, he's painting a word picture for us. What's the word picture? He's saying eternal hell, is God's, just like the Valley of Hinnom served a specific purpose for the city of Jerusalem, to be a repository of the garbage of the city, Gehenna, eternal hell, is God's garbage dump for the entire universe. where God has determined that the souls of angels that fell in rebellion and the souls of men who followed those angels in their rebellion and who refused to acknowledge Him as God over their lives and over this creation and refused to submit to Him and to His appointed King, the Lord Jesus, where they will be ultimately dumped. Forever and ever and ever. Where the fire doesn't go out, where the worms don't stop eating, it's only a place of utter ruin. It's a garbage dump. Alright? So, a good clear picture of what eternal hell is like is not any one of these three by themselves, but the combination of all three of these word pictures. because all three of these taken individually are less than the reality. All three taken together get us started in a direction of understanding what this is going to be like forever and ever and ever. Now, the one thing that is significant, I've noticed, is that all three have one common theme. It's a lake of fire, it's a furnace of fire, and it's a dump where the fire never goes out. So there is a common theme of fire. Is that fire going to be a physical fire or a spiritual fire? I mentioned this briefly last time. I think it's going to be both, not an either or. Why is it going to have a physical component? Well, we're near here. Turn to Matthew chapter 10 for just a moment. We've read this passage before, but let me reemphasize this. I've gotten the basics of what I want to communicate this morning, so I'm going to more briefly now, without a lot of explanation, I'm going to just move through the rest of the outline here. And as I mentioned at the end last week, I'm up here sweating, I'm mopping my brow, it's a hot day, we don't have any air conditioning, these fans are woefully inadequate to keep us cool. Just keep it in perspective with what we're talking about. The heat that we're experiencing is pleasant. Matthew chapter 10 verse 28. Do not fear those who kill the body. but are unable to kill the soul, but rather fear Him," and this is God Himself, "...fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." And the word destroy here, you've heard me emphasize this before, it's not talking about disintegration, utter destruction out of existence. It's talking about utter ruin, to ruin something, to destroy it so that it can no longer fulfill its originally intended purpose, but it continues to exist. Alright? It's like a word picture of that would be like when the Bible describes our lives as being like vessels of the Lord. And some vessels are perfectly crafted to hold and to serve the purposes of the One that created it. Others are like broken pottery that are good for nothing except to be thrown out on the garbage pile. The pottery doesn't cease to exist when it's destroyed. It just is broken and useless forever and ever. So the idea here is, in Matthew 10, 28, is that there is going to be a ruin or destruction of both soul and body in hell. The idea of body, we talked about this a few weeks ago when we were focused on the day of the return of the Lord in which He is going to raise all people from the dead. He is going to raise the righteous for the sake of receiving eternal reward and a glorious resurrected body. But He is also going to give a resurrected body to the wicked. and they're going to be thrown soul and body into the lake of fire, the furnace of fire, the valley of Hinnom or Gehenna on that final day. There's going to be a physical component to the experience of the lake of fire and there's going to be a soul component to the experience of the lake of fire. It's not either or. So is the fire physical or spiritual? I would say it's both. Alright, let's move on. This is described in various places as everlasting. just to establish this point once and forever. In Matthew 25, again, verse 46, and as I said, I'm not going to be turning back and forth, I'm just going to mention these, and you can look these up, you'll have it on the tape if you want to look these up on your own. In Matthew 25, verse 46, this is called an everlasting or eternal fire. How do we know that this is not a fire that's going to burn for a while and then eventually go out? How do we know that? Well, the Lord says everlasting, yes, but you know how it is. Sometimes certain words can be made to mean, you know, well, everlasting, you know, maybe it's just everlasting for a really long period of time, but then it eventually peters out or burns out or stops. Well, bottom line is this. In verse 46 of Matthew 25, the Lord promises to the righteous A promise of what? Everlasting, what are we promised? Everlasting life. And the point is that the Lord uses the same exact word for everlasting to describe both the reward of those who receive everlasting life and the punishment of those who receive everlasting destruction. So the issue is this, it's a simple one, the lake of fire is going to last just as long as we are going to be blessed. in the Kingdom of God in the eternal future. So if one is only for a period of time, the other is only for a period of time. Thankfully they both are going to last forever and ever and ever. Another is in Romans 16.26 God himself describes himself as the eternal God and he uses the exact same Greek word that describes this fire. So God lives forever, the fire will burn forever. So it is an everlasting fire. It's an unquenchable fire. What that means is simply there is no resort for the people that are in this circumstance to ever have hope to put it out. You know, we watch movies, we watch television shows, we read books, where people are put in circumstances of impossible odds. I'm thinking of this one scene from the very first Star Wars movie, where they're caught in the garbage dump of the Death Star, and the walls are closing in on them, and it looks hopeless. But at the very last second, they figure a way out of this hopeless circumstance, and they escape. There's no last resort from the lake of fire. There's no way to put the fire out. It's described as unquenchable. Matthew chapter 3 verse 12 uses the word unquenchable fire to describe hell. And the word that's chosen to describe unquenchable is the Greek word asbeston. Where we get the concept of asbestos. Of course, asbestos is something that can't be burned, and that's a derivative from this concept, which simply means this. This is a fire that can't be put out. It's impossible. It's God's fire. No human being is going to have the resources to stop this from continuing to burn forever and ever. The next, this is described as what the Bible uses a horrible Descriptive, this is another word picture by the way, another descriptive term. This is called Outer Darkness. You guys are all familiar with that biblical phrase? Let's just look at a passage real quick together here. Outer Darkness, Matthew 22, 13. Then the king said to the servants, bind him hand and foot and throw him into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. This is not the only place where outer darkness is mentioned that identifies this, the reality of this lake of fire circumstance. What I want you to understand is this though. Normally, when we think of a lake of fire, that's why I'm saying any one of these word pictures by themselves falls short. That's why we need the combination of the word pictures God has given us. When we normally think of a lake of fire, it may be painful, but one thing a lake of fire would tend to have going for it is what? Light. This is not going to be a light place. It is burning, but it's darkness. This is a dark fire, not a light fire. Now why is that? Why is that important? Because light emanates from God Himself. And any measure of light is an expression of the blessing of God. Any measure of light is an expression of the presence of God. This is outer darkness. And the Bible in various places describes this as not just outer, which implies away from the presence of God, but it is also what we would call utter darkness. Now, I'll just make reference, without turning there, the book of Exodus. Let's see, it's in chapter 10, if you want to look this up later. As one of the ten plagues that God brought upon the nation of Egypt as he was rescuing the children of Israel out of slavery, the ninth plague, the second to last plague, was a plague of darkness over the land of Egypt. And it describes that this darkness that God, it's a physical darkness, but it's a spiritual darkness at the same time. And this darkness that God brought upon Egypt was so great that it says that it was a darkness that could be felt. Meaning, have you ever been in a room that was just completely, utterly pitch black, and you just started to get a taste that the darkness was so prevalent that it was almost tangible, okay? That's just, that's nothing compared to what the Lord is describing here. This is going to be a total and complete absence of the light of God. Now, how many of you guys, be honest with me now, how many of you guys have ever in your lives been afraid of the dark? I mean, you may not be now, but at one point you were. It's a common thing among little children, right? To be afraid of the dark. Why are children afraid of the dark? What's so scary about the dark? Believe me, there's a lot of stuff to be scared about in the dark. The dark represents the absence of God, the absence of His light, the absence of His presence. This is utter and complete, terrifying, tangible darkness. Oppressive, pressing in on every waking moment of this person's consciousness forever and ever and ever kind of darkness. And I'm not exaggerating. I mean, it may sound like I'm, you know, trying to exaggerate here. My one concern is that I'm not conveying the depth of what this is really all about. All right, let me just briefly, because we're near the end of our time today, let me just briefly describe, this is all the circumstance of hell. Let me briefly describe the, and I've talked a little bit about this, but the experience of the person that is in this circumstance forever and ever. Number one, they're going to be conscious. Meaning this person is awake and aware of what's going on to them every moment for all of eternity. They're aware of the present circumstance that they're in, which is a circumstance of torment. Beyond that, there's the torment of the certain knowledge of their future. It's one thing to deal with pain in our lives if we have hope for any reason, medication or just change of circumstances, the hope that I won't have to live with this pain forever. Tomorrow it may be better. Next week or month or year they might discover some new medication to help this pain. I have the hope of improvement. The person that's in this circumstance is not just aware of their present torment, they're also tormented by the reality, the awful reality that it will never improve. And all they can ever, ever, ever, ever look forward to is more of the same. More of the same. The same oppressive circumstance forever and ever. But beyond that, they're also very conscious and aware of the past. They're not just aware of the present, of their suffering, the future, of what is awaiting for them. They're aware of their past. They're very cognizant that people in hell, eternal hell, are going to be very cognizant of their past. In what sense? The accountability for why they're there. God will not allow any person in hell to even for a moment forget That why they're there is they deserve to be there. Why they're there is they have earned their place there. The remembrance of their sins is going to be ever before them. David talked about this as a godly man, as a redeemed man, in Psalm 51 verse 3 where he says, My sins, and this is during the time when he had sinned horribly with Bathsheba, and had murdered her husband, and he was now in a place of repentance to the Lord, and he described in this time of repentance, My sin is ever before me. Meaning, whichever way he turned in his daily life circumstance, all he could remember, all he could think about, all he was cognizant of was his sin and his accountability to God for what he had done. The person in eternal hell is going to have the oppression of the accountability of the sins that have earned them their place in this circumstance forever and ever and ever. And as a result, They're going to be responding to this in a particular way. They're going to be reacting to it. Can you imagine if you were in this circumstance? How would you react? I mean, you're there. You have to do something with this situation. You're a person still. Even though you're a ruined person, you are still a person. How are you going to deal with this circumstance? The Bible says they're going to be responding in two primary ways. They're going to be responding with weeping. and gnashing of teeth. The weeping here is not weeping of repentance. Understand this. It's a weeping of anguish. But they're not crying tears of repentance. I'm sorry, Lord. I really am sorry. Now will you let me out? It's not going to be that. It's going to be that bitter weeping of hatred for their situation and the one that placed them in the situation, but not tears of repentance, but it's going to be never-ending anguish. Have you ever experienced a day, an hour, five minutes of core heart anguish that nearly ripped your heart out of your chest? And how horrible that was to endure for just that short time. That's going to be their reaction forever. without respite, without relief, without end. And not just weeping, they're going to be gnashing their teeth. Gnashing is simply what we call grinding of the teeth. Grinding of the teeth. People are afflicted with this now. Some people, even when they're asleep at night, grind their teeth. What is grinding of the teeth? Where does that come from? What's that all about? I mean, it's a medical, you know, syndrome or whatever. But the bottom line is, it's all about some stress that's not being handled in that person's life, and the frustration that results from that. You know how it is, you get in a frustrating circumstance, you get in a stressful circumstance, you're not able to deal with it in the way that maybe you should be dealing with it, and it creates this reaction in your physical body where you're involuntarily grinding your teeth. These people are going to be in their resurrected bodies in this circumstance grinding their teeth forever and ever and ever in the ultimate frustration of seeing what their life choices and pattern has purchased for them for all of eternity. Now, two last things real quickly. The Bible says that these people are going to be experiencing the ultimate isolation. They are in 2 Thessalonians chapter 1 described as separated forever from the presence of God. But what I want us to understand is that there is another sense in which God is going to actually be present with them. This is one of the great mysteries of this circumstance of eternal hell. God is both present and absent from hell at the same time for all of eternity. In the sense that he's absent, what the Bible is describing is this, the people that are in hell are never going to again enjoy any of what we call fellowship with God. That means relationship where there is blessing, relationship where there is good feelings being exchanged between God and man. But there is not even a possibility of any place existing, theoretically even, where God is not in another sense present. It would be like this. It would be like saying, okay, let's create a universe where God is not there. It's just not possible because the Bible teaches us one of the fundamental declarations of the Christian faith is that God is what we call omnipresent. He is everywhere present. David talked about this in the Psalms where he described in Psalm 139 that even if he were to make his bed in hell itself, Behold, God is there. But God is not there in a fellowship way. God is not there in a pleasant way. God is there to hold these people accountable, because their remembrance of their sins, their accountability for all of eternity, is not something these people are going to want to do for themselves. It's something that's going to be imposed on them by the presence of God. They're going to be aware that He's there, but they're not going to have any comfort from His presence whatsoever. And it will only be the experience and a sense of the jailer who is present with the prisoner, but the prisoner deriving no pleasure whatsoever and no comfort from the presence of that jailer. Now the last thing, and I won't get into detail on this, you just have to trust me on this one. You'll find this in Matthew 11, Luke 20, and Luke 12. The lake of fire circumstance, as horrible as I've described it, is not going to be the same for everybody. There are going to be, just like for us, who are in the presence of God in all of eternity, there are going to be differences in degrees of reward. The Bible teaches very clearly that there's going to be differences in degree of punishment. Why is that? Because God is just, and the punishment for every individual that experiences this for all of eternity will fit the crime. He uses different word pictures to describe this, like some will be beaten with few lashes, and others will be beaten with many lashes. There will be, even in this furnace, in this lake, in this garbage dump, there will be differing experiences of the degree of suffering and torment that is represented in those places. Now, we're going to end there. We'll pray. There's no good way to end this, okay? And as far as comfort level, you know, we could have ended this a lot sooner and never talked about it at all. But let's pray. Let's ask the Lord to use this information that he's chosen to reveal to us to affect our hearts in the way that they should be. Father God. I pray that you would cause us to be a people that live out our lives here on this earth with an awareness and an understanding of eternity and of your plan and your purpose and I pray that this study together these last five, six weeks now, where we have gone out of our way to focus our attention on the eternal punishment of the wicked, that we would be affected by that in the way that you want us to be, we would be motivated in the way that we should be, and I pray, Father, that it would change all of our lives for your godly purpose. And I thank you for your grace in that. And I thank you above all, Lord, for your mercy to each one of us, that this will not be our experience for all of eternity. Thank you, Lord. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. The copyrighted product of Tree of Life Christian Church of Canoga Park, California. 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