"Doctrine Matters: Response and Eternal
Destiny"
January 6, 2008
Pastor Phil Stevenson
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Date: Jan. 6, 2008
Sermon Title: Doctrine Matters: Response and Eternal Destiny
Text: Selected Texts
WEFC
Introduction:
This morning we come to the end of our sermon series which we have entitled Doctrine Matters. So what? So what do we do with all this doctrine, all this information, all this revelation that God has given us? What is the whole point of all of this teaching we have brought before you these past 3 months? In other words, what’s the bottom line for us and for our culture? And what’s at stake in grasping all of this?
By way of introduction and before I turn to our denomination’s proposed statement of faith to answer those questions let me summarize my motivations in preaching this series of messages on Doctrine Matters by way of several verses from Hosea and an illustration. I have wanted to ignite within us a passion for doctrinal truth because knowledge and understanding of God and His ways are absolutely essential for the protection and the enjoyment of our lives. Let me show you this first from Hosea.
Hosea 4:6, 10-11, 14c; 5:4b; 6:3,6. These verses point to the danger of being intoxicated with the world and its idolatry and forsaking the knowledge of God. God desires steadfast love and knowledge of Him. It will protect us from the snares of the world and falling away into whoredom and ruin instead of blessings and enlightenment.
Now let me illustrate my motivation. I want us to enjoy God and all His truth. My intention has only been to whet our appetite for all the delicacies that are found in knowing and understanding God. My hope has simply been to enlarge our appetites for God. I’ve wanted to make you hungry for God. Like when you walk into the house where your Thanksgiving Feast has been prepared. You smell the magnificent aromas coming from the kitchen, the mixture of freshly baked rolls and the Turkey that has been cooking for hours. These aromas fill the house. You see the sweet potatoes and the mashed potatoes and the dressing and the scalloped corn dish you love so much, and the calico bean dish that you’ve just recently discovered. And then on the desert table you see pumpkin pie, and the pecan pie and chocolate brownies. Suddenly your mind is overcome with sensory overload sight, smell, and taste are about to converge to create an overwhelming sense of joy and excitement about eating. It’s this appetite that motivates you to sit and feast.
My hope is that turning our thinking toward the great doctrines of our faith fosters that kind of an appetite for knowing and studying the nature of God, His salvation, and the persons and works of His Son and His Spirit and all the other great doctrines of the faith. God has placed an appetite for truth in all of our hearts. The revelation that God has given us about Him, His character, his purposes, us, our nature and need, the future events to come, all this should cause us to hunger for a greater appetite for truth and motivate us to do whatever it takes to avoid that which would rob us of such a feast and instead do whatever it takes to obtain such a feast.
The danger of our current post-modern climate is that truth has become relative. There is no feast with distinct flavors. According to post-modernity, everything has the same flavor. How bland and unappealing is that?! Who wants to sit down to every meal knowing that everything you eat will taste the same. Where is the distinction between flavors and aromas anymore? When will someone stand up as say Yuck!! Islam tastes horrible! Judaism is just insufficient to really satisfy! Mormonism is not the real flavor! It sure looks good on the outside but really it tastes like plastic!! Would someone please pass me the Christianity that is filled with flavor and nutrition for my soul.
This is what I desire for all of us. This is why doctrine matters so much. It should ignite within us an impassioned hunger for God and His truth so that we might be protected from the idolatry that would lead us into destruction and misery and instead lead us into the joy of life, being satisfied with God.
So what’s the bottom line in all of this doctrine? Where does it lead and what’s at stake? Here is where I want to turn to our denomination’s proposed doctrinal statement one more time and see what we as a church believe to be the answer to these questions. The last statement of our church’s proposed doctrinal statement is entitled Response and Eternal Destiny. All of this doctrine should lead us to a response because what’s at stake is an eternal destiny. So, first…
1. What should our response be?
“We believe that God commands everyone everywhere to believe the gospel by turning to Him in repentance and receiving the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Turn to God in repentance and believe the Gospel. Believe, understand with your mind but also embrace with all your heart, the great news of God’s love and grace extended to each of us, that even though we have lived in rebellion against him, steeped in our own self-centeredness and sin, He has sent His one and only Son to take our place by bearing the punishment of the cross and then rising again that we might no longer be enslaved to sin but can live in a right and holy relationship with God beginning now and lasting for eternity. Understand and embrace the reality that the Holy Spirit of God is at work right now in your life to convict you of sin and lead you into faith and trust in Jesus Christ. This belief requires us to turn in repentance from depending on ourselves to completely depending on Jesus Christ.
Let me give you some texts that verify this statement, familiar to many of you but hear them again:
Romans 5:8 God demonstrates his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.
Eph. 2:8-9 It is by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
John 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.
Rom. 6:23 For the wages of sin is death but the free gift of God is eternal in Jesus Christ our Lord.
John 6:29 This is the work of God that you believe in Him whom he has sent.
What’s the nature of this true belief?
Not just standing on the outside looking in and agreeing that the food looks great. Not mental assent- James 2 says that the Demons believe. They have a mental assent. They have a head knowledge and understanding who Jesus Christ is. On numerous times in the gospels they acknowledged publicly and openly that Jesus was the Christ. But this did not mean that their response was acceptable before God.
True belief is not just agreeing that Jesus looks good, that he’s probably able to save us and that what He did on the cross was probably a satisfactory sacrifice for our sins. There is much more to true belief than just knowing doctrine in your head.
Neither is true belief acting like you love and trust Jesus. Just like enjoying a Thanksgiving feast is not going through all the preparations of making the meal and even sitting down at the meal and rejoicing over the banquet feast that is in front of us, but not eating it. This would be like religious ritual. Jesus was very critical of the Scribes and Pharisees who knew all the right answers and who would go through the motions of all the right actions. Yet Jesus called them for what they were whitewashed tombs, looking all clean and good on the outside but filled with death on the inside. True belief is a whole lot more than just going to church, even reading your Bible and praying like you’re supposed to. If there is no heart involved, no passion, no love, no obedience, no submission and transformation, no repentance there’s probably no true belief.
True Belief is eating and enjoying and gaining nourishment from the meal. It’s accepting the invitation to come to the thanksgiving banquet feast and then pulling up your chair to the table and then joining in the feast by sinking your fork into the turkey and the mashed potatoes and gravy and putting it in your mouth and savoring the flavors and swallowing. It’s taking all that nutrition and flavor and savoring and absorbing it into your body and gaining every ounce of pleasure and energy and health from it. It’s saying no to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and old stale potato chips and settling for nothing less than the best. It’s the radical changing of affections and loyalties of the heart.
What does it look like?
It starts very simply by talking to God. This is what is so profound about starting an eternal relationship with God. All you have to do is admit your sin-that you have settled for less than what God has prepared for you. And then ask God to do what you haven’t been able to do, ask Him to give you the Holy Spirit so that your appetite will change and that you will look only to Him for your spiritual life. That life comes through Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ died in your place, in my place so that we might not have to die. The world is poison. Jesus is life. When we receive Jesus we receive life because He has taken the poison in our place. God forgives us for our sin because Jesus has taken our place. Ask Him to forgive you and accept Jesus’ dying on the cross as your payment. From now on we can and must rely daily on the nourishment of the truth that the Holy Spirit will give us. We live the rest of our lives learning to enjoy every course to its fullest. This is the response that is required to all of this doctrine that we have been exposed to over the last several weeks. And if you have never done this, take the time right today and do it, because MUCH is at stake.
2. What’s at stake in how we respond?
For those who believe: We believe that God will raise the dead bodily and judge the world assigning… the believer Eternal blessedness and joy with the Lord in the new heaven and the new earth.*
Often when we begin to think about Heaven we think about what will be there. We envision streets of gold, heavenly creatures beyond anything we know, like seraphim and cherubim that Isaiah talks about in Is. 6 and the four living creatures that John talks about in Rev. 4. We try to imagine the emerald looking throne, around which there is a rainbow and from which come flashes of lightning and peals of thunder. (Rev. 4) What lies in store for us to experience is truly beyond our wildest imaginations. I believe one of the reasons we will need new resurrected bodies is because the sensory overload of all that we would see and experience would literally blow our minds. I’m sure that in this state we do not have the capacity to take in all the glories of heaven.
But there’s more to Heaven than just what will be new and beyond our comprehension. Part of what makes heaven so glorious is the shedding of all that hinders and distracts us from a true comprehension of God. There are some wonderful descriptions of the things that will not be in heaven. Probably the most familiar description is found in Rev. 21:3-4. All that is evil, all that is painful, all that we struggle with, all that is disappointing and dysfunctional will be removed. From the mundane to the extremely painful. (broken water pipes & broken cars to broken marriages and broken dreams) Every tear will be wiped away.
Sam Storm has attempted to describe the scope of the absence of all that would hinder with this descriptive list:
The joy of entering Heaven will not just be the joy of being rid of all that has hinders us from comprehending Christ but it will be that prospect of an infinite growth in treasuring Christ. It will be a truly glorious adventure testing out our new bodies, being bedazzled by our surroundings, rejoicing in the reunions of loved ones, but these will pale in comparison to being totally caught up in the worship and the wonder of seeing Jesus face to face. Everything about Heaven will point to the wonder of Christ and the wonder of God’s grace and mercy and love and kindness and wisdom and power as displayed through the work of Jesus Christ.
Surely we will be overwhelmed with joy at the sights and sounds and smells and tastes and touches. Every one of our senses will be exploding with excitement. But that excitement will be over the fact that Christ has purchased all of this for us, that He alone is worthy of worship. Look at 7:9-12. Our excitement will be in the wonder of God and his magnificence. We will immediately be drawn into a place of complete and absolute humility. We will gain our first glimpse of clarity about who God is and who we are and the distance will cause us to fall flat on our faces in awe of His glory, perfection, and holiness and then in the same moment I believe we will be moved to awe at his kindness, love, and mercy that He would choose us to be his children. It will be an incredible, indescribable moment. And what it will do is thrust us, literally launch us into an eternal pursuit and exploration of treasuring Christ. Jesus Christ will become the absolute premier object of our affections. Our greatest joy will be treasuring and growing in the knowledge of God. As we explore and know God in all his character and greatness more deeply, the more we come to love Him. The more we come to love him the more joy and satisfaction we will experience. As we experience this pure joy, the more we will desire to know Him, the more we know the more we will love, the more we love, the more joy; the more joy, the more desire to know. And on and on it will go for an eternity of endless, ever-increasing joy and growth in treasuring Christ.
This is what is available for all who truly believe and turn to Jesus in repentance. But…
For those who do not believe: Condemnation and an eternal conscious punishment. We believe that God will raise the dead bodily and judge the world, assigning the unbeliever to condemnation and eternal conscious punishment
I used to think that what made Hell so horrible was the absence of God. Hell in my mind was a place where all the grace and mercy and kindness that exists in God’s presence is removed because of His absence. But that is not what the Bible would have us to understand about Hell. What we need to understand about Hell Is that it’s not just the absence of God’s grace, mercy, and kindness that makes Hell such a frightening place but it is the presence of God in all His anger and wrath. The same thing that makes Heaven so glorious is the same thing that makes Hell so terrifying, it is the presence of God.
I admit that it’s hard for me to understand completely but God is filled with fury and wrath toward those who rebel against him. There is no getting away from it as you read the Bible. God is a God of great judgment and anger. From Genesis to Revelation we have a God who deals severely, and I don’t hesitate to say, ruthlessly with sin. He will not and cannot allow sin to go unpunished. What’s at stake is His glory, his reputation, his holiness, his untarnishable character. Everything in Him, to Him, through Him, for Him, from Him, within Him is infinitely perfect, true, accurate, right, just, fair, pure, unadulterated, and uncontaminated. Therefore, any act of rebellion against His will, any act of pride that confronts His sovereignty, any destruction of that which He has deemed holy is a sin demanding an infinite punishment because His will is infinitely best, His sovereignty is infinitely powerful, and His holiness is infinitely pure. It is from this basis that God deals so severely with sin and those who will not repent of their sin.
There’s no one in the Bible who speaks more graphically and more directly about the destiny of the unbeliever and Hell than Jesus. The many descriptions Jesus uses are metaphors and attempts of describing the indescribable.
In Matt. 8:12 he describes this place as outer darkness, a place where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Hell will have the sensation of being a place where there is no light. The oppression of darkness is so heavy that there is a sense of utter aloneness, to the point of continual weeping and gnashing or grinding of teeth. In Hell any Light of God’s presence will be absent. There will be no light of grace, or mercy, or kindness or patience anymore. There will be nothing to deter people from their miserable plight. It will be forever before them. God will be present only in his righteous punishment reminding Hell’s residents of their lost opportunity to repent.
In Matt. 18:8-9, Jesus warns us to take seriously the damning effects of sin in our lives. Hell is described as an eternal fire. In the parable of the weeds in Matt 13 Jesus uses the same metaphor to describe the destination of those who are sinful and lawbreakers. “The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all lawbreakers and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
It’s hard to imagine a more painful experience than being burned. Many of us have had the slight burns, spilling boiling hot water on our bodies, stepping on a coal with bare feet as we walk the beach. We shudder at the pain of someone caught in fire. Purposefully, Jesus uses these words to describe the anguish and painful horror of Hell. John in Rev. 14 says that this experience of fire creates an endless torment where there is no experience of rest, day or night.
I remember the experience of spilling boiling hot water over the back of my hand in Hong Kong about 18 years ago. The only way I could sleep is if I kept my hand in a bowl of ice water. As soon as I removed my hand I awoke. And that was just the aftermath of the burn not the constant experience of a burn.
The descriptions of Hell being a lake of fire, an eternal fire, a place of torment with fire and sulfur, the intent of the Bible is to describe for us a place of utter anguish and suffering and pain.
Hell is also described as a place of punishment. Jesus said the goats of Matt. 25 would be sent to an eternal punishment for their lack of ministering to the least of Jesus’ brothers. Paul, in 2 Thess. 1:5-9 says that God will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty and of his power.” The horror of Hell is an eternal punishment. There will be a sense of hopelessness and utter defeat. There will be no mercy, only condemnation.
And in all of this we have not even described the most horrible aspect of Hell, which is its duration. That which is most horrible about Hell is the fact that it is eternal. It never ends. Forever and ever there is utter darkness, gnashing of teeth, torment as if being burned severely, utter destruction, an eternal state of death and punishments for sins committed that require the full extension of God’s wrath. Again I am trying to give you the full force of this doctrine so that we can be reminded again of what is at stake for those who do not respond in true belief.
Conclusion:
We must keep this doctrine of response and eternal destiny in the forefront of our minds often. This should be one of our great motivations for missions. Millions and Millions of people are perishing because they have no understanding of these doctrines. They’ve never tasted the gourmet food of the Bible. It’s all very bland and tasteless. They’ve settled for less that what is appetizing for their nutrition. Whole nations are perishing. One of the great implications of feasting on the doctrines of the Christian faith is that we should never become fat and lazy but we should be more deeply motivated to go, to share, to teach, and to disciple people of all the nations.
*My gratitude goes to Sam Storm for influencing my convictions regarding what Heaven will be like. His book, One Thing, and his presentation on Jonathon Edward’s view of Heaven at the 300th Anniversary celebration of Edward’s birthday conducted by Desiring God Ministries were of particular help.
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