HELL: ISN'T THE GOD OF CHRISTIANITY AN ANGRY JUDGE?

HELL: ISN'T THE GOD OF CHRISTIANITY AN ANGRY JUDGE? By Tim Keller Text: Luke 16:19 31 Topic: A look at the necessity of the doctrine of hell Big Idea: The Christian understanding of hell is crucial for understanding your own heart, for living at peace in the world, and for knowing the love of God. 2009 Christianity Today International PreachingToday.com

Sermon Outline: Introduction One of the things that troubles people most about Christianity is the Christian teaching that God is a judge who consigns people to hell. Basically the objection goes like this: "How can you possibly reconcile the concept of judgment and hell with the idea of a loving God? They just don't go together." I believe the Christian understanding of hell is crucial for understanding your own heart, for living at peace in the world, and for knowing the love of God. Hell is crucial for understanding your own heart. First of all, understanding hell is crucial to understanding your own heart. The parable in Luke 16:19 31 has two characters: a rich man and a poor man. One of the things that commentators have pointed out for years is that this is the only parable in which a character the poor man has a proper name. You would think the other character the rich man would have a name. But he doesn't. The contrast is deliberate. The rich man was probably not an atheist or a pagan, but rather a man who would have prayed to the God of the Bible and obeyed the laws of the God of the Bible. Why no name? In verse 25, Abraham says to the rich man, "Remember that in your lifetime you had your good things the things that you built your life on." For many years philosophers have talked about the summum bonum the highest good of your life. The rich man's highest good was his status and wealth. These had been the basis for his identity, and now that he is dead and they no longer exist, there is no "him" left. Illustration: Søren Kierkegaard, the great Danish philosopher, wrote a book called Sickness Unto Death. In it he wrestles with the definition of sin, which he defines as building your identity on anything but God. The traditional definition of sin is breaking God's law. While Kierkegaard agrees that breaking God's law is wrong, he wonders whether that's a sufficient definition. 2

Consider the Pharisees. Their self-worth was based on their morality and their religiosity, but in the end, they were building their identity on something other than God. If you take a good thing and make it an ultimate thing, you are placing your hope in something other than God. This misplaced focus is what starts a spiritual fire in your heart. That's what the metaphor for fire is about. But you ask, "What are you talking about 'starts a fire'?" The act of turning good things into ultimate things is like an addiction and all addictions lead to internal and external devastation, isolation, and denial. This is the fire of which the Bible speaks. Illustration: Keller quotes a line from the animated film The Iron Giant: "Souls don't die. Souls can't die." He's right, of course. That's what the Bible says. After death the soul and your personal consciousness go on forever. Every single person, religious or irreligious, moral or immoral, is addicted to grounding his or her identity in something other than God, and the human soul goes on forever. What does this mean for us in life and death? Illustration: C. S. Lewis puts the two together and offers an answer. He writes that if Christianity's assertion that we are going to go on forever is false, there are a good many things not worth bothering about. But if it's true, and my bad temper or my jealousy are gradually getting worse, such attributes would be absolute hell in a million years. You see, it's not a question of whether God sends us "to hell." In every one of us there is something growing up which will be hell unless it is nipped in the bud. Illustration: Whenever he describes hell, C. S. Lewis says that its doors are locked from the inside. It's insanity. Our text confirms this understanding of hell. Just look at the insanity how out of touch with reality people are while they are in hell. Commentators have long noted that the rich man in the parable is astonishingly blind. He is in denial, filled with blame-shifting. Notice something else: The rich man does not ask to get out of hell; he tries to get Lazarus in hell. He strongly insinuates that God didn't give him enough information. When he asks Lazarus to go to his five brothers to warn them about hell, he is subtly hinting that he didn't get enough information. He even seems to say, "It's not so bad. I really don't want to be up there with you, Lazarus. I just want a break for a moment. That's all." 3

Let me sum up my thoughts: Hell is a freely-chosen identity based on something else other than God that goes on forever. But even while you disintegrate, you refuse to admit what hell is. There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says in the end, "Thy will be done." Seeing myself as a spiritual addict apart from the intervening grace of God has been very important. It is crucial for any addict to know how to deal with what's going on in his or her life. As Christians, we spend most of our lives watching the fires start to come up, and we just blow on them. But to know what is really going on, though, we will want to extinguish the flames entirely. So, have you got a core identity a name based in what God has done for you in Jesus? Or are you just a businessman or businesswoman or artist or mother or father? Hell is crucial for living at peace in the world. Secondly, without the doctrine of hell I don't think you can really live at peace in this world. Or, to put it another way, the doctrine of hell is a great way to live at peace in this world. There are many people who are afraid that if you believe in a God of judgment and the doctrine of hell, you will have disdain for classes of people that you will oppress and make war and marginalize other. In some ways this objection is understandable, but it certainly does not understand what the Bible says about hell at all. As we've seen already, hell is not something imposed by God in violence. In fact, I find verse 25 of our text intriguing. When Abraham looks down from heaven into hell and speaks to this rich man, he calls him "son." There is a real sadness, a sense of tragedy, to his words. Anyone who believes the Bible looks with great sadness at people who are on their way to the fire of hell. Not if we understand what hell is like. Illustration: Returning to the charge that a belief in hell only gives birth to oppression and division, Keller turns to Miroslav Volf's Exclusion and Embrace. Volf, who observed the horrors of war and division in Croatia, writes that the only resource he knows that is powerful enough to pacify the human heart's desire for justice, while at the same time can keep people from getting sucked into a cycle of blood and vengeance, is to say there is a God who will put everything right. 4

Hell is crucial for knowing the love of God. Finally, the doctrine of hell is necessary for knowing the love of God. "Wait a minute," you say. "The whole idea of a God of judgment seems opposed to the idea of a God of love." But you're wrong, with all due respect. Look at the end of our passage. What does the rich man ask of Abraham? He wants a miracle. He wants Lazarus to rise from the dead and warn the rich man's brothers. But Abraham says the miracle would never work. Fear of hell and damnation will never change the fundamental structures of a human heart. But what is the fire? Self-centeredness. Self-absorption. Me, me, me, rather than you. When you scare people with thoughts of hell, they won't end up being good for goodness sake or for God's sake, for his pleasure. They're just going to be good for their own sake. It's just more selfishness! So what will change the fundamental structures of the heart? Love. Radical, unconditional love is the only thing that will take our mistrustful, in-denial, conniving little hearts and shock them into a whole new way of living and being. But where are we going to get that kind of love that changes our heart? Jesus tells us indirectly in our text. Is the possible resurrection of Lazarus supposed to make us think of Jesus? Is his resurrection enough to live in a manner that will keep us out of hell? No! Jesus points out that the key is knowing why he died which is shown in the writings of Moses and the Prophets, the law. The Lord made him a guilt offering, and by the results of his suffering, God is satisfied. You do not know how much Jesus loves you unless you know how much he suffered. What did he suffer on the cross? Illustration: Keller offers an illustration from the preaching of David Martyn Lloyd-Jones' that imagines a man paying his friend's bill. The friend has no idea how to respond until he knows just how great the debt was. As Lloyd-Jones says, "Until I know how much he paid, I don't know whether to shake his hand or fall down on the ground and kiss his feet." 5

Sermon Transcript Introduction One of the things that troubles people most about Christianity is the Christian teaching that God is a judge who consigns people to hell. Basically the objection goes like this: "How can you possibly reconcile the concept of judgment and hell with the idea of a loving God? They just don't go together." What do we say to their concern? When people ask what I believe about hell, one of the things I have said over the years is, "Well, one thing I believe is that the biblical imagery of hell-fire is probably metaphorical." Immediately the person says, "Whew!" But then I add, "I think it's metaphorical for something probably infinitely worse than fire." Then they say, "Huh?" I believe the Christian understanding of hell is crucial for understanding your own heart, for living at peace in the world, and for knowing the love of God. I know these three things seem very counterintuitive, so let me explain. Hell is crucial for understanding your own heart. First of all, understanding hell is crucial to understanding your own heart. The parable in Luke 16:19 31 has two characters: a rich man and a poor man. One of the things that commentators have pointed out for years is that this is the only parable in which a character the poor man has a proper name. If you look at all the rest of Jesus' parables, no one has a proper name assigned to them except this poor man named Lazarus. If one character has a name, you would think the other character the rich man would have a name. But he doesn't. In this parable there is a named character and a nameless character, and the contrast is deliberate. Let's focus on the rich man for a moment. He was probably not an atheist or a pagan. At that time in Israel, most rich people would have believed in the God of the Bible. This man would have prayed to the God of the Bible and obeyed the laws of the God of the Bible. But here he is in hell, without a name. Why? In verse 25, Abraham says to the rich man, "Remember that in your lifetime you had your good things the things that you built your life on." For many years philosophers have talked about the summum bonum the highest good of your life. What is your highest good? What is the thing you really live for? What is your ultimate value? What is that which gives meaning to your life? What is it that gives you a sense of who you are? Whatever your best thing is the highest thing with the ultimate value that is what gives you an identity. The rich man in the parable had his good things he had his good things. Notice the use of the past tense. Status and wealth had been the basis for his identity, and now that the status and wealth are gone, there is no "him" left. He was a rich man, or he was nothing. Without his wealth, he is gone. He is nameless. When you take away his ultimate thing his wealth and status he has no identity. 6

Søren Kierkegaard, the great Danish philosopher, wrote a book called Sickness unto Death. In it he wrestles with the definition of sin, which he defines as building your identity on anything but God. The traditional definition of sin is breaking God's law. While Kierkegaard agrees that breaking God's law is wrong, he wonders whether that's a sufficient definition. His reason is the Pharisees. Let me paraphrase what Kierkegaard says: The Pharisees follow the law fastidiously, yet they're lost. Why? The Pharisees serve as their own Savior and Lord to earn their own salvation. They try to put God in the position where, because they are so good, God has to bless them, answer their prayers, give them a good life, and take them to heaven. But when Pharisees try to earn their own salvation by observing the law, they are actually building their identity not on God, but on their moral performance. Their self-worth is based on their morality and their religiosity, and it destroys their character. Why? Because, as Kierkegaard defines it, what they are doing is a sin. They are building their identity on anything besides God. They are turning good things into ultimate things. I think Kierkegaard was being radically biblical when he came up with his definition for sin. More specifically, I think he was influenced by the thoughts of Romans 6. Kierkegaard points out that if you take a good thing and make it an ultimate thing if you look at anything in this life and say, "If I have that, then I have importance and value, and if I don't have that, I am nothing" you are placing your hope in something other than God. If you look at money, your career, your talents, or your looks; if you look at your relationship with your parents or your children; if you look at power, approval, comfort, or control; if you look at any of these things and make them more fundamental to your significance and security than the love and knowledge of God, then though you may believe in the God of the Bible, pray to the God of the Bible, even obey the laws of the God of the Bible, your faith, the justification of your life, the roots of your identity, what you really worship, is something other than God. This misplaced focus is what starts a spiritual fire in your heart. That's what the metaphor for fire is about. But you ask, "What are you talking about 'starts a fire'?" Think about it for a moment. We know a lot about the internal and external devastation of addiction. Disintegration happens, because as the addiction grows stronger, you need more and more of the addictive substance to get more and more of a kick, a high, a sense of satisfaction. So, you do everything you can to get more of the addictive substance. That's disintegration. Another part of addiction is isolation. You have to lie and defend yourself. You are always blaming everyone and everything else for your problems. You say, "Nobody understands me, and everybody's against me!" Another part of addiction is denial an inability to see what's really happening. You get more and more out of touch with reality. Since most of you look like you're older than ten years old, you may not have seen the animated film The Iron Giant. But I would suggest you watch it, because it's maybe the best animated movie I've ever seen. There's a part in the film where the Iron Giant says, "Souls 7

don't die. Souls can't die." He's right, of course. That's what the Bible says. After death the soul and your personal consciousness go on forever. Now, if both Kierkegaard and The Iron Giant are right that is, that every single person, religious or irreligious, moral or immoral, is addicted to grounding his or her identity in something other than God, and that the human soul goes on forever what does that mean? C. S. Lewis puts the two together and offers an answer. He writes that Christianity's assertion that we are going to go on forever is either true or false. He then goes on to write that if I'm only going to live eighty years or so, there are a good many things not worth bothering about. But that changes if I'm going to go on living forever. Perhaps my bad temper or my jealousy are gradually getting worse so gradually that the increase in my lifetime will not be very noticeable. But it might be absolute hell in a million years. In fact, if Christianity is true, hell is precisely the correct term for it. Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others, but you are still distinct from it. You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it. But there may come a day when you can no longer do so. Then there will be no "you" left to criticize or even to enjoy the mood. It will just be the grumble itself, going on forever like a machine. You see, it's not a question of whether God sends us "to hell." In every one of us there is something growing up which will be hell unless it is nipped in the bud. All of this is the "fire." Think about fire for a moment. As you watch a log in the fire, it's falling apart. Now think about your life. It's one thing to love a career, but if you build your identity on a career and something goes wrong with it, you feel worthless. You want to throw yourself off a bridge. That's disintegration. It's okay to love somebody or to want to be loved but if you build your entire identity on that and there's a problem in your relational life, you won't just be hurt and wounded like everyone else. You'll be devastated. You'll feel worthless, and you'll want to throw yourself off a bridge. Your good things enslave you. They start to disintegrate you. They start to isolate you. When something gets in the way of them, instead of just being afraid, you're paralyzed. Instead of just being angry, you're implacably bitter. Instead of being despondent, you endlessly hate yourself forever and ever. This is the "fire." Do you not see it in yourself? Do you not see where it's going? Whenever he describes hell, C. S. Lewis says that its doors are locked from the inside. That's the whole idea behind hell. It's like an addiction. While you say, "This isn't very good," you then add, "but I can't imagine being somewhere else." That's hell. It breeds a certain kind of insanity. Our text confirms this understanding of hell. Just look at the insanity of those in hell how out of touch with reality they are. Commentators have long noted that the rich man in the parable is astonishingly blind. He is in denial, filled with blame-shifting. Notice that even though Lazarus is in heaven and the rich man is in hell, the rich man is still ordering Lazarus around. He still wants Lazarus to come and cool his tongue. He still expects him to be a servant. 8

Notice something else: He strongly insinuates that God didn't give him enough information. When he asks Lazarus to go to his five brothers to warn them about hell, he is subtly hinting that he didn't get enough information. Notice one final thing: The rich man does not ask to get out of hell; he tries to get Lazarus in hell. He actually says: It's not so bad. I really don't want to be up there with you, Lazarus. But would you please just send somebody down here to give me a little bit of a break? Let me sum up my thoughts: Hell is a freely-chosen identity based on something else other than God that goes on forever. But even while you disintegrate, you refuse to admit what hell is. You think that it is God who cast you in hell, but it is a self-chosen identity. There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in hell choose it. Without that self choice, it wouldn't be hell. Let me offer a point of application on how understanding the nature of hell has been incredibly important to me. Seeing myself as a spiritual addict apart from the intervening grace of God has been very important. It is crucial for any addict to know how to deal with what's going on in his or her life. An addict has to see the seriousness of it all. As Christians, we spend most of our lives watching the fires start to come up, and we just blow on them. That's basically it! We simply say, "I've got to deal with that." To know what is really going on, though, we will want to extinguish the flames entirely. Who are you really? Have you got a core identity a name based in what God has done for you in Jesus? A name based in being a child of the King, in the mission of getting to the new heavens and new earth? Or are you just a businessman or businesswoman? Are you just an artist, a mother, a father? Are you willing to look as deep into yourself as this doctrine is calling you to look? Without the doctrine of hell, I don't think you can really understand your own heart. Hell is crucial for living at peace in the world. Secondly, without the doctrine of hell I don't think you can really live at peace in this world. Or, to put it another way, the doctrine of hell is a great way to live at peace in this world. There are many people who are afraid that if you believe in a God of judgment and the doctrine of hell, you will have disdain for classes of people that you will be oppressive. In an article for The Nation, Wendy Kaminer mentioned an interview she had with Rick Warren, pastor and author of The Purpose-Driven Life. While Wendy liked Warren personally, she still said this to say about his beliefs: "[His faith] is inherently divisive. At the end of the day, non-christians, however devout, are lost. What are the prospects of equal citizenship for those of us damned by our refusal to be born again?" What she's saying is, "You can't treat us as equal citizens if you think we're lost and have been judged and we're damned. You're going to oppress us. You're going to disdain us. You're going to feel that it's okay to marginalize us." 9

In some ways this objection is understandable, but it certainly does not understand what the Bible says about hell at all. As we've seen already, hell is not something imposed by God in violence. In fact, I find verse 25 of our text intriguing as have many other commentators. When Abraham looks down from heaven into hell and speaks to this rich man this absolutely-out-of-touch-with-reality man notice what he calls him: "Son." Commentators say there is pathos in Abraham's use of this word a real sadness, a sense of tragedy. Anyone who believes the Bible looks with great sadness at people who are on their way to the fire of hell. There is no sense in which we would disdain those who are going not if we understand what hell is like. Consider what Miroslav Volf shares in his book Exclusion and Embrace. As a Croatian, Volf had first-hand experience with the terrible violence in the Balkans. He saw people locked in a cycle of vengeance and retaliation for years and years. But in his book he says that the cycle of retaliation was not fueled by a belief in a God of judgment. It was fueled by a lack of belief in a God of judgment. He writes: "If God were not angry at injustice, that God would not be worthy of worship. The only means of prohibiting all recourse to violence by ourselves is to insist that judgment is legitimate only when it comes from God. My thesis, that the practice of nonviolence requires a belief in divine vengeance, will be unpopular with many, but it takes the quiet of a suburban home to believe that human nonviolence results from a belief in God's refusal to judge. In a land soaked in the blood of the innocent, it will invariably die with other pleasant captivities of the liberal mind." Volf is saying that if you've talked to people who have seen their homes burned, their family members killed and raped, how are you going to keep them from picking up the sword and being sucked into the cycle of violence and retaliation? What are you going to say? Are you going to say, "Well, you know, violence doesn't solve anything?" Not only will such moralizing not touch their hearts, it shows no concern for justice. Anybody who has been wronged says justice has to be done. Volf says the only resource he knows that is powerful enough to pacify the human heart's desire for justice, while at the same time can keep people from getting sucked into a cycle of blood and vengeance, is to say there is a God who will put everything right. If you don't believe in a God like that, you will pick up the sword. Volf writes that the only resource strong enough to help Croatians live in peace on earth is a belief in a God of judgment. Hell is crucial for knowing the love of God. Finally, the doctrine of hell is necessary for knowing the love of God. "Wait a minute," you say. "This is the worst idea of all! The whole idea of a God of judgment seems opposed to the idea of a God of love." But you're wrong, with all due respect. Look at the end of our passage. What does the rich man ask of Abraham? He asks for his five brothers. He says: I want a miracle. Send Lazarus back. If Lazarus suddenly came up out of the ground in front of the five brothers, that would be a spectacular miracle. If Lazarus was resurrected, surely the five brothers would say, "It's Lazarus! There is a hell! I better live a good life, because I don't want to go to hell!" But 10

Abraham tells the rich man that approach will never work. Fear of hell and damnation will never change the fundamental structures of a human heart. The fear of hell will never keep you out of it. It won't put out the fire. Again, what is the fire? What's wrong with you and me? What's wrong with the world? Selfcenteredness. Self-absorption. Me, me, me, rather than you. That's what's wrong. So when you scare people when people say, "I better be good because of fear of hell and damnation" they won't end up being good for goodness sake or for God's sake, for his pleasure. They're just going to be good for their own sake. It's just more selfishness! It might be moral selfishness, but it's still selfishness. Not only that, but they're also going to use God, saying, "If I live a good enough life, God will have to give me the things that I'm basing my identity on. He will have to give me success, a family, the man or woman of my dreams, and heaven." In other words, God will still be nothing more than a means to an end to get the things upon which they are building their identity. Thus getting moral, going to church, reading the Bible all done out of fear of hell will just turn up the flames. They will just rearrange the selfishness and the pride and the evil of their hearts. If fear won't change the fundamental structures of the heart, what will? Love. Radical, unconditional love is the only thing that will take our mistrustful, in-denial, conniving little hearts and shock them into a whole new way of living and being. And where are we going to get that kind of love that changes our heart? Jesus tells us indirectly in our text. The rich man says, "If my brothers could just see a sign, then everything would be okay." But as we've noted, Abraham says no to this approach. His refusal to do so is supposed to make you think of something. Didn't Jesus rise from the dead? But is even that enough to believe? No! The key is to know why Jesus died which is shown in the writings of Moses and the Prophets. It was God's will to crush Jesus. As Isaiah points out, we looked upon Jesus, and we were appalled. He was disfigured beyond human appearance, and his form was marred beyond human likeness. The Lord made him a guilt offering, and by the results of his suffering, God is satisfied. You do not know how much Jesus loves you unless you know how much he suffered. What did he suffer on the cross? I think of David Martyn Lloyd-Jones' sermon illustration that has helped me for years. He said I should imagine that a friend comes to see me and says, "Hey, I was at your house the other day and a bill came due. You weren't there, so I paid it." How should I respond? The answer is I have no idea how to respond until I know how big the bill was. Was it just a postage charge? Twenty cents or so? If so, you would say, "Thank you." But what if it was ten years of back taxes? What if it was an enormous debt? As Lloyd-Jones says, "Until I know how much he paid, I don't know whether to shake his hand or fall down on the ground and kiss his feet." This is why I believe that hell is crucial for knowing the love of God. 11

For Your Reflection Personal growth: How has this sermon fed your own soul? Skill growth: What did this sermon teach you about how to preach? Exegesis and exposition: Highlight the paragraphs in this sermon that helped you better understand Scripture. How does the sermon model ways you could provide helpful biblical exposition for your hearers? Theological Ideas: What biblical principles in this sermon would you like to develop in a sermon? How would you adapt these ideas to reflect your own understanding of Scripture, the Christian life, and the unique message that God is putting on your heart? Outline: How would you improve on this outline by changing the wording, or by adding or subtracting points? Application: What is the main application of this sermon? What is the main application of the message you sense God wants you to bring to your hearers? Illustrations: Which illustrations in this sermon would relate well with your hearers? Which cannot be used with your hearers, but they suggest illustrations that could work with your hearers? Credit: Do you plan to use the content of this sermon to a degree that obligates you to give credit? If so, when and how will you do it? 12