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I take the task of feeding you spiritually very seriously. I realize that the sermons and the teaching that you receive on a weekly basis this year will determine how equipped and how balanced you are in the future. And so every once in a while I stop and look through my past sermons to see if there is a particular subject that I have been lax upon. Every preacher has his candystick: that area of the scripture that intrigues him and so that he tends to lean towards. For some it is salvation, for others it is the typology of the Old Testament. For some it is soul winning or prophecy or faith or holiness. I have tried to identify some of the subjects of which I preach on often. I lean toward the use of numbers in scripture and prophecy because the subjects fascinate me. Jesus name baptism and the Oneness of God tend to creep into every sermon and through one stretch last year people mentioned that I never failed to mention the power of Jesus' name baptism somewhere in a service for several months. I also enjoy preaching about praise and worship.

This sermon is about hell. It was impressed upon my heart after looking over my sermons for this past year. I have not preached on hell in over a year and a half. I am not alone. In reading and studying for this sermon I came across some frightening statistics. In a recent study done by the religious section of USA Today, they found that hell is rarely the subject of sermons in America today. In fact in a study of Catholic, Protestant, and Evangelical churches, only a tiny fraction of the ministers EVER mentioned hell. The trend the past few years has been to preach "feel good" sermons that leave the listener with a feeling of security and comfort. My Father-in-law began as a young preacher 40 years ago with only four sermons. One of them was entitled "Hell's hot and Jesus is mad." Such preaching would quickly be denounced by today's church goers. I can remember as a kid praying for the preacher to quit preaching so that I could get to the altar and repent: that's how hot they preached it, but today hell has become a figment of our imagination, something that seems too unrealistic, too Halloweenish, too fanciful to be real. To quote Los Angeles area preacher E.V. Hill in the study in USA Today: "The popular conception is that God is too good to allow a hell." Therefore Americans have pushed the thought out of their minds. In the minds of many, Hell has frozen over.

But Hell has not frozen over in reality, and it is a real place! I can't scare you today, so I'm not going to try, all of the horror movies and violence on the television has already desensitized you to such tactics. Hell is not a fantasy place dreamed up by preachers to scare church goers. It is not a horror story by a writer wanting a blockbuster hit for this October. It is not a byword to express how much you care or don't care about something. Hell is a real place, and the vast majority of our information on hell comes from the most frequent preacher on hell that ever lived: Jesus Christ!

That's right: Jesus Christ! We have recorded in scripture, 1,870 verses that Jesus spoke. Thirteen percent of them have to do with hell. In other words, Jesus spoke on hell more than any other subject. He returned to it again and again. Rarely a sermon went by that He did not mention the anguish that awaited for those who went there. We have 32 parables or stories recorded that Jesus used to teach spiritual concepts. Over half are about hell and eternal judgment. "Gehenna" the strongest word for hell in the Greek is found in scripture twelve times. Jesus used it all but one of those times. The question that every preacher must ask themselves sooner or later is "is Jesus pleased with my preaching?" "If He has entrusted me to reach the multitudes, then how does my preaching compare with His?" If Jesus, Himself, were to preach in our pulpit every Sunday what would be the most frequent subject!? According to the scripture, that most frequent subject would be hell and eternal judgment! In America, 73% believe in a literal hell, but only 6% think that they are in danger of going there! Few have any idea what they must do to escape the fires of hell. That mindset is a result of a lack of preaching about what to Jesus was a constant passion. Let's look at what insight Jesus gave us about hell:

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Jesus used a man being cast out of a wedding feast because he did not wear the proper garment as a parable of salvation. The man was cast "outside" the feast and into a place of torment. Hell is not a party. It is not a place where people will be able to sin freely without a conscience. There will be no party and there will be no time for talking to others. The pain will be so great that it will only be outdone by the remembrance of every time you chose to walk away from the truth of the scriptures and the loving hand of Jesus Christ. If you want to party eternity away, then you want to go to heaven! Hell is "outside of the Father's blessing" but for those who are saved, there will be a wedding feast unlike any you have ever seen! Sin has a pleasure "for a season." But living for God causes you to rejoice for eternity! There will be no blessings in hell and no second chances. The rich man in Hell in Luke 16 cried out in torment for God to allow him to go back and tell his brothers that they did not want to come there. But he could not return to the land of living. Hell is final. It is outside the ability to choose your destiny. It is outside the blessings and mercy of God.

The term used by Jesus for hell, "Gehenna" refers to the valley of Hinnom which was a deep gorge outside of Jerusalem's walls. It was the place where trash and debris was carried out of the city and burned. Pagan and idol worshippers also strangely chose the site to worship. The fires that burned the waste never ceased day and night. Hell is like that valley. Those who refuse to be of use to the kingdom of God will go there. Jesus said that when salt loses it savor, it is thrown out. Hell is God's garbage dump for those who refuse to obey Him.

In many of the parables, hell is presented as a place of bondage. In the parable of the wheat and tares, the tares were bound together and then tossed into the fire. There is no escape and there is no time off for good behavior. It is an eternal loss of all freedom and choice. In the parable of the unforgiving steward, the king bound the man hand and foot and threw him into prison. The devil does not send anyone to hell, God does. It is the eternal prison sentence of rejecting Jesus Christ!

It is often translated in the King James Version as a "bottomless pit." It is a terrible place of depth. When Jesus cast the legion of demons out of the demoniac of the Gadarenes, the devils begged Jesus not to cast them into the deep or the "abyss." Even devils do not want to go to hell. They would rather go into pigs, or an ocean, or anywhere else but to hell. They know what horrible place it is. The sad thing is that hell is a growing pit. Isaiah said:

Hell was originally created only for the devil and his angels, but because so many men have chosen to sin against God and not live for Him, hell has had to undertake a building project. The three reasons given why hell has had to get bigger are sobering: because of people's lack of knowledge, they are famished or hungry, and because they are dying of thirst. That is, people are going to hell at an alarming rate because of the lack of people preaching the truth, lack of the Word of God (the Bread), and a lack of the Spirit of God (the living water)!

Jesus said that those who were cast there were cast into a place of darkness. Job described it as

Jude said that those who allowed their "appetites" and own desires to be their gods are those "for whom the blackest darkness has been reserved forever" (Jude 1:13). Hell is the worst darkness that you have ever experienced.

Three times in our text, Jesus described hell as the place "where their worm dieth not; and the fire is not quenched." This describes the two-fold torment of hell. "Their worm" refers to the inward torment of your mind, and the fire refers to the physical torment. You will remember in vivid detail every sermon that you ever heard and every time that God's Spirit drew you and you rejected it. You will remember every time that you had an opportunity to choose right and yet chose bitterness or your own way. Your "worm" or memory will be the worst part of hell!

This is the most familiar description of hell. Hell will be unquenchable and excruciating eternal fire. David said it like this:

Isaiah referred to the same valley as Jesus when he talked about hell:

"Tophet" literally means "fireplace" and it was the nickname for the valley of refuse, Gehenna, that Jesus used as an analogy of hell. Hell is like a fireplace already prepared. It has been built and is ready. The breath of God kindles the fire. Isaiah asked "who can dwell with the consuming fire" (Isaiah 33:14)? Nahum asked "who can withstand God's wrath . . . poured out like fire" (Nahum 1:6)? It was God who rained down fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah because of their wickedness and Jude, the Lord's brother said that those people perished as an example of eternal punishment (Jude 1:7)! The only difference is that in hell, you will have a glorified body that cannot die. It will feel the continual pain of the fire and yet not be able to escape. Hell is a horrible place of fire! It goes beyond even what we can imagine! Whatever it takes, you do NOT want to go to hell!

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I do not want you to misunderstand His message: Jesus did not preach on hell because He liked to condemn or scare people. In fact one day He had preached in a city that did not receive His message and as He and His disciples were walking toward the next city, James and John asked Him if He was going to call fire down from heaven to destroy those that had rejected Him at this time:

Thank God that He does not reject us the first time that we repel His loving Spirit! Jesus knew that as long as those people were alive, there was hope that they might be saved. So then, if Jesus came that men might be saved, then why did He preach on the subject of hell so often? Because He knew that there would one day come a day in every man's life where they reached a place of accountability for their actions. Either at their death or at the end of time, there is coming a day of reckoning. It will be a day where you will stand before God and give an account of all that you have done and that you have not done. For those who are unrighteous, hell will be there eternal resting place! It was love that drove Jesus to teach on hell ten times more than heaven. He knew that the gods of this world would try to blind people to the reality of hell! And so He constantly reminded them that Hell was a horrible place of torment that no one wants to go! Our text today would very likely be the words of Jesus' sermon today if He were physically behind this pulpit:

If Jesus was preaching today He would tell you that Hell is a place that you want to avoid at all costs! He said if your hand would cause you to go to hell, then it would be better for you to cut it off than to go to hell with two good hands. Nothing that this world has to offer that looks so appealing and that attracts your attention and begs for you to drag it into your life is worth going to hell over! Jesus would tell you that if it is your feet that is the problem that it would be better to cut one off than go to hell! Can I tell you that there is no place on earth worth going and no road of sin worth traveling that would cause you to go to hell! If Jesus were preaching, He would tell you that it would be better to pluck out your eyes than view things that would defile your spirit and soul and cause you to go to hell! He would have tears in His eyes as He spoke to you about the scriptures and "little sins" in your life! We tend to focus on the immediate detriment of sin upon our life, but what about the eternal? The scriptures are very clear: liars will have their part in the lake of fire; it is the final home of those who choose to live sexually immoral. I Corinthians 6:9-10 goes on to state that slanderers, boasters, crooks, and wicked people will go there. Paul stated the idolaters -- anyone who puts anything before the will of God in their life, whether it be houses, land, family, money, sex, sport, leisure and travel, position and authority, or the past -- will find themselves there. In Galatians, Paul went on to say that those who sow discord, those who have fits of jealousy and fits of rage, and those who are governed by selfish ambitions are going to hell. And then there is the third group of hell-bound people mentioned in scripture, the hypocrites. Those who boast about the power of God in their life while they commit sin in secret. Those who have a form of Godliness but deny the full power of God in their life. Those who call Him "Lord" with their mouths but do not do the things that He says. The scripture very clearly portrays those people's destination: a fiery lake called Hell. The truth is we need a savior much more than we tend to confess! And if that savior was here, he would beg you -- plead with you -- You do not want to go to hell! And you do not have to go to hell because a way of escape has been provided through the work of Calvary! But you must do something to miss hell. Doing absolutely nothing will not save you! Just saying that you believe in Jesus Christ will not in itself save you. James 2:19 says that "the devils also believe... in one God... and tremble" but they will all be eternally lost! There is a pastor of a large church in the west, Carlton Pearson, that has taken that verse and begun to preach to his church that Satan and the devils will be saved. He preaches that you can live like you want to and as long as you believe that Jesus Christ is your personal saviour, then you will be saved from the fiery pit of hell! And since that scripture says that the devils believe, then they must be saved. Most Christians in America today don't go that far, but they do believe very similar in that if you just mentally believe on Jesus Christ, then you are saved: to them there is little danger of them being lost. If there was not a great danger of you being lost, then Jesus and Peter and Paul and Jude and Isaiah would not have preached about it! The other scripture that we read for our text clearly states what you must do to miss hell!

Jesus Christ's return is very soon. And when He comes, it will be too late to miss the fiery judgment of hell. He will bring everlasting destruction on those who "obey not the gospel!" To miss hell, you must obey the gospel! Therefore two questions become ones of utmost importance: "What is the gospel of Jesus Christ?, and "How can I obey it?" The answer to the first question, "What is the gospel of Jesus Christ?" is found in the first part of I Corinthians 15:

So the "gospel" of Jesus Christ is the death, burial, and the resurrection. The next question then must be "What must I do to OBEY the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ?" What is the proper response to the story of the gospel? The answer is found in Acts chapter 2. The Holy Ghost had just been poured out and Peter had preached a sermon on the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ -- the Gospel.

They asked "what shall we do?" In other words, "what can we do in response to the gospel that we have heard?" "How can we OBEY the gospel?" And Peter answered them with a three step plan that corresponds perfectly to the three part gospel of Jesus Christ. "Repent," or, in other words, turn from your sins and ask God forgiveness thereby "dying to your sinful ways." "Be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ" putting your old man into a watery grave with Jesus Christ. And "receive the gift of the Holy Ghost," and experience the resurrection power within your own life through the "new birth" experience. Was Peter off in His doctrine? No, Philip preached the same message in Acts chapter 8. Paul preached the same message in Acts chapter 19. The scriptures elsewhere agree. Talking about repentance, Paul said "I die daily" (I Corinthians 15:31). Colossians 2:11-12 says that we are buried with Christ through water baptism in His name! Titus 3:5 states that we are "regenerated" or brought back to life through the infilling of the Holy Ghost! To miss hell, we must obey the Gospel of Jesus Christ! We must repent, and be baptized in the name of Jesus, and receive the precious Holy Ghost! By doing so we are "saving ourselves from this untoward generation! It takes more than mental belief to escape hell, but you can escape the fires of judgment today! Hear Jesus Christ's message today: whatever you've got to let go of to be saved, whether it be lusts of the flesh or past bitterness, you DO NOT want to go to a place called hell!

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Let me close with the scariest point about hell. Our text in II Thessalonians said that Jesus Christ would take those who had not obeyed the Gospel and, at His second coming, punish them with "everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord." Theologians of today have taken this scripture and twisted it until many people believe that God will not be in hell. The word translated "presence" here is a Greek word that literally means "face." That is the scripture actually reads "everlasting destruction from the 'face' of the Lord." The term "face" is used in scripture to represent the full revelation of who God is. Paul said that we see through a glass darkly now, but one day we will see Him "face to face." That is, we will see all of God that there is to see and we will know Him and all things about Him even though right now we cannot fathom all of God. Time and time in scripture we find the commandment that we are to "seek His face." That is we are to grow closer to God and find out more about Him and please Him more. Those who choose to live in sin and reject God's plan of salvation and will are said to have had the "face of God turned from them." or will have "God hide His face from them." The prophet Isaiah said it like this:

You see, many people can't fathom that a God who loved them enough to come and die for them would allow them to go to hell. But in reality, God can't fathom why you would reject His love that you would not want to obey His plan of salvation! In fact, when you choose to live in your sins and not do a thing about them, God will "hide His face to you." Jesus said "if you love me, keep my commandments." Why? Because in His words are eternal life and eternal escape from a place called hell.

What is the point preacher? The point is that God's presence WILL be in hell. David put this truth in a song:

God WILL be in hell, and you will be able to feel Him. But His face will be turned from you. You will experience God without mercy. He will be a God of judgment only. Hell will be an eternity in the presence of God without experiencing His love.

But today, He is reaching out with mercy and not judgment! You can experience the loving Spirit of God wrapping His arms around you! But if you wait too late, then you will have to experience the presence of God reaching out only with judgment because of your rejection of His love. But you have an opportunity to experience heaven! Heaven will be the presence of God in love only without judgment! And that is the fate that Jesus wants you to choose! His face is toward you today! In fact, if Jesus was preaching, you would see His eyes upon you, asking you to come and pray. To bring Him anything in your life that is impure and unclean and to ask Him to forgive you! If Jesus was preaching today, you would see His face upon you asking you to obey His Gospel by being baptized in Jesus' name! If Jesus were preaching today, He would tell you the same thing that He told His disciples: tarry until you receive the power of the Holy Ghost! You need it! There is nothing in this world worth holding onto in light of going to hell or missing heaven! If Jesus was preaching today, He would try to get across to every saint of God in this place, the importance of the message of truth that we have received! We must tell others of what they must do to miss this horrible fate. We must be like Jude who said that He wanted to "pull them out of the fire." We must speak up with boldness and love and reach our world! If not, then they have a grim fate. We must let Jesus preach through our words and our lives!

In case you did not notice, Jesus is preaching today. I have not preached my own agenda or what I would have preferred, but have preached exactly what Jesus Christ would have if He were here. And He IS here, and His Spirit is drawing people today! Jesus Christ has preached. How will you respond?