What did you learn from last week’s sermon, “Eternal Darkness” ?
Q1: Faithful evangelism is the Christian message that a sinner can be saved from what?
Q2: What are 3 progressive things that will inevitably happen to an unbeliever?
Q3: What will happen to someone who tells a believer wrongly about hell or any other matter that God has spoken on?
Q4: Did Jesus speak about hell more than the prophets and apostles?
Q5: Is God present in hell?
Q6: What is the Greek word for hell?
Q7: You will be alive, awake, and conscious somewhere in 100 years. Where will that be?
Sermon Summary & Answers
Faithful evangelism is the Christian message that a sinner can be saved from……………..something.
Pastor Wilson posed the question, “saved from what?” To find the true answer to the question, he took us through Romans 1:21-32 so that we could see what happens to a natural man outside of salvation (the darkness of unbelief). We see evil things happening in a predictable and progressively declining path of consequences.
- Unbridled lusts – broken homes and lives
- Degrading passions – unnatural behaviors (deviant sex) with a due penalty (sickness)
- Depraved mind – unclear or confused thinking, crippled with indecision
All of these horrible temporal things are simply warning signs that we are storing up wrath (due punishment in hell) in the day of wrath (when we die and are judged). All of these warning signs are a call to repentance – admit the wrong and turn as far away from it as you can so that you can ULTIMATELY BE SAVED FROM THE WRATH OF ALMIGHTY GOD. That is what we are saved from.
What is this wrath? Hell.
Mark 9:42-50 shows us dire consequences for leading other believers astray on anything God has talked about, and Jesus spoke a lot about hell. He talked about it more than the prophets and apostles. He really didn’t want anyone to go there because the horrors revealed there are more than the human mind could conceive. Pastor Wilson took a moment to recap just how “off” Christians are feeding the message of hell to believers today. In the 1800 and early 1900s, hell-fire-and-brimstone preachers screamed a message of “man is bad, and God is mad.” That message has not survived into our time. Today we hear the neo-evangelical message of “man is not bad and God can’t be mad at us or send us to hell.” I hear all the time, “God doesn’t hate.” Well, “and Esau I hated (Malachi 1:3).” Now no one even thinks about hell or has any dread of it. There are even wimpier messages out there like, “hell is an absence of God.” God is not absent from hell. Hell is His design, and He will be there in all of His wrath of eternal torment. The sinner in hell will wish for God to be gone from hell. God is never absent from anything. Even the worst suffering in this life is still suffering under the merciful and restraining grace of God.
Revelation 21:6-7 and Matthew 25:41 see Jesus promising hell as a consequence for the darkness of unbelief. Hell is the Greek word “Gehenna.” It refers to the Valley of Hinnom (2 Chronicles 28:1-4 and Leviticus 20:1-5). 20-year-old King Ahaz filled this valley (just outside Jerusalem) with huge carved idols. Here they worshiped these idols by burning their male sons alive. God told Moses that anyone doing this will go to hell. This valley became Jerusalem’s trash dump, and it was always on fire (that never went out – unquenchable). Hell’s torment is something that we just don’t want to think about when it comes to someone we know. However, we also have to know that even if God sends someone to hell, He is just in doing so. Jesus always offers the warning, but He also provides the antidote – Himself. You just have to believe and obey.
Christians cannot stumble over the message of hell! We have to tell the truth of hell so that people know what they are being saved from – the wrath of Almighty God.
“You can live forever, or you can die forever! Jesus Christ, the Son of God invites you to be saved from this eternal darkness!”
Pastor Steve Wilson
“If you’ve never thought about it before, think about it now! Ask yourself, not where am I going to be next week, or next month, because you don’t know (James 4:14-16). You might guess, and you might be correct in your guess. But ask yourself this question today: where am I going to be in a hundred years from now? You will be somewhere, and you’ll be conscious. You’ll be awake. You will either be with the damned, or you will be in the state where joy never ends, and felicity (intense happiness) is never dampened, where the beautiful vision of the loveliness of Christ will be before your eyes every second, and where you will gaze upon Him forever. If it takes an eye, an arm, or a leg, make sure you are there – and not in hell.”
R. C. Sproul
Did you find this quiz and sermon summary helpful? Log on to gccbg.com/blog each week for the latest Q&A. Jessica will send the link out in the Midweek church emails. I’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions. Please email me at thepew@gccbg.com.
Answers:
- God’s wrath – which is hell
- Unbridled lusts, degrading passions, depraved mind
- They risk being thrown into hell (Mark 9:42-50)
- Yes
- Yes
- Gehenna
- Heaven or hell
