How Can a Loving God Send People to Hell?

WELCOME

Pastor Chris Paavola:

Thank you, band. Thank you, Ms. Lisa. Thank you, guys, for leading us in worship and reading. It’s good to be with you guys this morning. Good morning. My name is Chris Paavola. I’m the senior pastor here at St. Mark and we are in the middle of this series.

SERIES

Actually, we’re getting close to the end of this series called The Reason For God, where we’re having just a conversation about faith and doubt and man, it’s been an important series. It’s been some hard topics that we’ve talked through, but it’s just been awesome to kind of go through these topics and today we are going to be tackling one of the toughest ones. One of those I was kind of dreading when we started the series. I’m like, man, this is going to be one of those Sundays just because of how much research everything is requiring, but just like how delicate the topic is and how much I want to make sure I’m precise with my words and I don’t misspeak because today we’re talking about this topic of how could a good God send people to hell?

How could a loving God send people to hell? And it’s like this idea of if God is loved like Christians say, then this thing seems so unloving. I think honestly, and it is a great question. It is one that I’ve gotten a lot from Christians and people outside of the Christian faith just asking about this. I’ve talked about it a lot and sometimes when I’ve talked about it, the cameras were rolling, so take a look.

VIDEO

Pastor Chris Paavola: Any honest reading of Jesus’s teaching on the afterlife also include this idea of hell. Just in one of his teachings he says, I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and afterwards can do no more. But I’ll show you whom you should fear. Fear him who after your body has been killed, has authority to throw you into hell. Do you believe that there is a hell yes.

Speaker 1: Reluctantly struggle with it? Don’t like it? Yes.

Speaker 2: No

Speaker 3: I have no opinion.

Speaker 4: Nope.

Speaker 5: No, no.

Speaker 3: I mean, I feel like I have to believe that there’s a hell, there’s a heaven, but I don’t want there to be.

Pastor Chris Paavola: Why do you say that?

Speaker 1: It’s a struggle emotionally, mentally, spiritually at all levels to deal with the word hell.

Speaker 3: I guess it just puts the people who have killed the shooting in Germany that just happened. Now I don’t want them to go to hell, but I hope they change their ways, but they need to be punished almost.

Speaker 1: I trust him that he’s a good God and that he will accomplish justice, which is just as important as being loving.

Speaker 5 : He also has a right to create a world where there are beautiful things like justice. And justice is a beautiful thing until I lay it upon myself.

Speaker 4: I like that a lot because that comes from an assumption of there’s this idea of justice and fairness where people who do good end up in a good place and people who do bad end up in a bad place. I really like that assumption because it makes things easier to be able to say that there’s a heaven, there’s a hell. These are for good people and bad people. So, for me personally, I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think good people always end up in good places. I don’t think bad people. And so, for me, on a practical level, hell doesn’t do anything.

Speaker 1: And my head is like, isn’t there another way? Isn’t there another way to accomplish your goal instead of this place?

Speaker 5: I think the idea of hell is misguided. And I think the,

Pastor Chris Paavola: So, Jesus, is this misguided?

Speaker 5: Here? I mean, no, that’s fine. If he was here and we were talking about this, I’d be like, man, I don’t agree with you. Because I think for me it’s like the idea of punishment. What is it for? What are we trying to accomplish? And from what I know of hell, my probably naive understanding is it is just eternal and I just don’t get that. For me, punishment is about rehabilitation and this seems so black and white and lacking of the idea of what punishment is. For that I would just go, man, I think we need to, I would push back a little bit.

Pastor Chris Paavola: Where do you think it comes from that unless it’s fair, it can’t be true? Aren’t those two separate questions, whether it’s true or not and whether it’s fair or not?

Speaker 2:  In terms of fairness? Yeah, I also don’t agree with that, but I also feel like there are plenty of things that are true that aren’t fair. So, with that logic, I mean I feel like.

Pastor Chris Paavola: There are plenty of things that are true that aren’t fair.

Speaker 3: I agree with that. Yeah.

Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean generally I think the statement is true, but I don’t think it applies in the special context of hell.

Speaker 6: What struck me in this is that he has the authority. It’s the authority piece.

Pastor Chris Paavola: Interesting.

Speaker 6: I went right there. I didn’t even get to the hell part. It was just who is he? Who is he and who am I?

Pastor Chris Paavola: Alright, show of hands, how many of you guys want to see spiky haired? Chris, make a comeback. You could put your hand down now I don’t know if I could pull that off anymore. I mean that was a look. That was a look. I don’t if I could pull that off anymore. I’ll try it, but you guys be honest with me if it doesn’t go well. Yeah, part of the reason I love that clip is obviously we’re dealing with the topic, but that it shows that we can talk about this topic without it descending into a shouting match. It’s fiery and it’s brimstone, but I will not be fiery and brimstone today. That’s going to be the posture of this conversation on faith and doubt. I won’t use a bullhorn today.

I won’t be combative and I would hope the same from you of just like we can be honest about this. We can look at the teachings of Jesus and what the Bible says about this stuff without it devolving into a fight. But that doesn’t mean I’ll be spineless. I mean, I’ll be honest and I’ll be frank about what Jesus says about this idea of hell, but in a sense we’re all just trying to understand what did he say? And that’s just the posture I want for today’s conversation as we talk about this really difficult concept of hell.

SCRIPTURE ON HELL

Now, hell in the Bible, there is not a lack of material with this. I mean it is mentioned everywhere in all sorts of places.

HELL

From the Old Testament on the left side of your Bible to the New Testament on the right side of your Bible, it is mentioned all over the place.     And in the Old Testament, the word that’s most often used is this word, Sheol, Sheol. And it has to do with this place of decay and destruction. It’s a place outside of God’s kingdom. And we’ll get to that in a minute. In the New Testament, they’re speaking Greek, they speak this common Greek called Koine Greek. So, it’s Hellenistic kind of an area and a lot of influence from Greek thought. And so, they use the word Hades because that’s the vernacular. They talk about Hades when you read in scripture. And so, if you’ve ever been, remember high school mythology class Hades and the River Styxs or stuff like that, they’re borrowing language from the world to try to create an understanding of what God is talking about. But the most common, there’s a couple other words like Tartarus and a couple other words that they use to describe hell, but the most common word for hell that is used in the New Testament and that Jesus uses is this word Gahenna.

And Gahenna is actually a location just outside the city of Jerusalem. So. you have this walled city and then outside of the city is this place called Gahenna where they burn trash and it’s a constant fire that never goes out where they burn trash. That’s the imagery that Jesus uses this place outside of the kingdom where trash is burned. And it’s not like when we died that we think there are people who when they died, they go to this a hundred by a hundred yard square foot area where trash was burned. That’s not what we believe, but it’s that he was trying to give us mental images and imagery to understand a heavenly concept or just a divine concept of heaven and hell. And so that’s the image that he used Gahenna. And then so that word Gahenna shows up in all of these different references.

And Jesus, ah, nearly every parable has this illusion to hell or this idea of heaven and hell. He talks about separating sheep and goats. He talks about separating wheat from weeds. He talks about separating good fish and bad fish, but it’s all in reference to this Gahenna, this place when he describes this place, the imagery that he uses is very terrifying.

Then he will say to those on his left, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”

Matthew 25:41

For instance, in Matthew 25, I’m staring at the screen. Nope, you got to click on the No, you got to click on the slide just before that. Otherwise, we’re going to have two layers of text. There you go, it’s now. Click on the next one. There you go, brother. You’re doing great. Alright, so yeah, outer darkness. So outer darkness is this idea of, so we talked about the walled city of Jerusalem. So, he talks about it’s this place outside of the city.

In the city there are torches and lamps outside the city. It is darkness. But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Matthew 8:12

Like in Matthew eight, he says, “the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside into the outer darkness.” And then there’s another imagery that he uses is this idea of weeping and gnashing of teeth.

There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth there, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out.

Luke 13:28

We see in Luke chapter 13, he talks about it’s a place of “weeping and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves will be thrown out.” And this idea of weeping and gnashing of teeth like weeping is like, okay, sorrow and pain, but gnashing of teeth, you get this picture of an animal cowering over it’s prey and it’s starving and other animals come close and it’s gnashing at them. So there’s this idea of scarcity and that really gets to an important point in all this is God is God and what belongs to God is everything that’s good, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentle.

These things belong to God against these things. There is no law and hell is the absence of all that is. So God is here and the absence of God is a place of sorrow and pain and death and destruction and decay and scarcity and it’s like this antithesis of God. It’s like the absence of him. It’s whatever’s antithetical to him. And so that’s really what this weeping and gnashing of teeth kind of alludes to. And then the other one that you see, you hear about and Dantes inferno or depictions in cartoons is this place of eternal fire. Like in Matthew 25, we will say to those on his left, apart from me, you who are cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels and sometimes it’s called an internal fire. Other times Jesus calls it an unquenchable fire.

When we get later on like Peter and Paul, they start talking about it as a fiery furnace or the book of revelation calls it a lake of fire and brimstone. So you hear this and it’s terrifying you guys, this is not a fun concept and you hear this outer darkness weeping and gnashing a teeth eternal fire and you go, are you kidding me? This sounds so sadistic, just so evil. How could a loving God want anyone to go there? I don’t even want people to go there and I’m not God. How could a loving God send people to hell?

HOW CAN A LOVING GOD SEND PEOPLE TO HELL?

And it is a fair, fair question. And if we’re going to answer this question, I think that the best way to answer this question is to unpack some of the words to that premise, some of the words that are baked into the question starting with this idea of loving.

LOVING

HOW CAN A LOVING GOD SEND PEOPLE TO HELL?

When you and I think of the word love, if we weren’t sitting in church and we just thought of the word love and describe it, the thing that would come to mind as like Romeo and Juliets and romcoms and love songs that celebrate just all of the being enraptured, euphoria, feelings of puppy love and all that stuff. And we would think of Valentine’s Day, which by the way is in five days, fellas, you got just a little bit more time. Don’t be the guy in the 14th morning in the morning of the 14th trying to figure out how this one leftover card at Walgreens applies to your wife. That is not a good place to be. So friendly tip, you got five days to go do something. Okay anyway, but that’s what we think of when we think of love. But love this, love is so much more than that kind of puppy love kind of feeling.

Love is also what parents do with their children when they discipline them. Your child doesn’t like that you took their switch away because they didn’t finish their homework or something like that, but that’s what love does. If you didn’t love them, you wouldn’t care. You’d be like whatever. Just go ahead and do it. I don’t care. You wouldn’t discipline them because you didn’t love them, but because you love them, you discipline them. Love is the thing that looks at someone says, I’m going to suffer in your behalf. I’m going to inconvenience myself. I’m going to take on pain in your behalf for your betterment and your improvement and love. Love is this thing that looks at someone says, I love you just the way you are, but I love you too much to leave you that way. I want what’s better for you. I want you to exercise and eat salads and stop smoking.

I want this for you. And love also includes the sense of justice. Justice. We love justice especially for the people we love. If you walk down the street and you saw someone punching your grandma in the stomach or someone punching your child in the stomach, you would go help. You would try to defend that person or whoever, you’d try to defend grandma, but then you’d be calling the police, you’d be calling the principal to come get this kid and put him in detention. They’re fighting my child. You would want justice. You would want the wrong to be punished. This is the part of us that loves in movies when the bad guy loses in the end and the good guy wins and the bad guy gets led away in handcuffs with their tail between their legs because they got beat by the good guy and they have egg on their face.

We liked that. That’s the good feel good movie because we have this innate sense of justice, the wrong being made, right? And what’s interesting about justice is that with justice, the lawbreakers don’t get to decide the penalty. The lawmakers decide the penalty. People outside of the situation look at it and go, okay, well here’s the punishment that fits this crime. So you deface a statue downtown. Well that punishment’s going to be a little bit different than if you just face and destroy the Mona Lisa because it’s a little bit more precious and a little bit more rare. The penalty for stealing a candy bar is going to be less severe than the penalty of stealing the crown jewels, right?

There’s this sense of scale and escalation and who are we to say to God, how dare you dare you set a punishment that severe for damaging something as pure and perfect as the holiness of heaven. Maybe heaven is far more holy than we fear and maybe our sin is far more profane than we secretly hope. But doesn’t God have a right to defend what is his? Of course he does. We can disagree with the punishment, but it’s his to defend and that’s really a different way of thinking. Now I know that doesn’t answer all of this. We’ve got some other questions to go through, but we have to put aside that because God is love. He couldn’t defend the holiness of heaven. God is love.

SEND

HOW CAN A LOVING GOD SEND PEOPLE TO HELL?

God is also just, and those things are sometimes intention with one another and then we get to this word send.

I demonstrated this before, but it bears repeating given the topic that we’re talking about. Most people, and some of you guys will remember this from way back in the day, but most people, we have this idea of heaven and then there’s this idea of hell and we’re born, we live, we die and we either go to heaven or we go to hell. If you can’t see this in the back, sit closer, just get that in there. Sorry, I just had an opportunity. Okay, heaven in hell. This is what most people think life is like. This is what most people think the Bible teaches and it’s wrong. It’s absolutely wrong. And like Americana religiosity, there’s this idea of like, well, when I get here and then they weigh all the good things I did and all the bad things I did and I, oh, I make it.

But you guys know that that’s, we’ve talked about this till I’m blue in the face. It does not depend on how good you are or how bad you are. Scripture says, all who have faith in Jesus will go to heaven and all who deny him will go to hell. That’s it. I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to Father except through me with the heart you believe and confess and are saved. That’s it. Faith, you have been saved by grace through faith. Please, I hope that you guys know that, but also I hope you know that it’s not like you live your life and then you get judged and he sees your faith and he lets you in, oh don’t see faith and he casts you out into the outer darkness with weeping and gnashing of teeth. This is not, not the picture in scripture. Not, not, no. This is the picture in scripture. You’ve got heaven, you’ve got hell, you’re born and you’re destined to die.

You stand condemned already. That’s what Jesus says to one of these pharisees who are confronting him. He says, you reject me. You stand condemned already. All creation is under the curse of sin. It’s the reason we fight. It’s the reason you get sick. It’s the reason you die. It’s evidence that sin has corrupted you. You are under the curse of sin. You are cursed. You are under the curse of sin and you are destined. You are on a collision course, a crash course for an eternity apart from God. This is the picture of scripture and it’s only by the grace of God that anyone who believes in Jesus with their heart and confesses with their mouth that he is Lord risen from the dead is rescued. You don’t need a savior unless he’s saving you from something.

This is the picture we get in scripture and that at any point in your life, if you cry out, God have mercy on me as sinner, you’re saved. But after your death it is very clear. No matter how many times you cry out, have mercy on me, he will not hear because you’ve been cast out into the darkness and the door is locked. This is the picture in scripture and when we pass from hell our path to hell and enter into heaven, it’s like this rescue mission like a helicopter comes in and extricate us from the hostage camp and rescues us in the helicopter hell helicopter and brings us into his eternal presence. Somebody said that in the last service and they heard me say helicopter, and I was like, oh yeah, that’s true. It was no pun intended, but there you go. That’s the picture we get.

And we see this when Jesus is talking about this and Matthew, I’m sorry, and John, he talks about very truly, I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be but has crossed over from death into life. This is the picture in scripture, not this. And so when you look at this, you start to realize that God doesn’t send anyone to hell in a technical sense. Sin has sent you to hell. God sent his son to save you from that sin. If God is sending anything, it’s his son to save you.

It’s a different picture. And then that leads us to this last question of hell.

HELL

HOW CAN A LOVING GOD SEND PEOPLE TO HELL?

Why not just have something else? Why not just have another alternative like we saw in the video? Why is it hell? And in scripture you get this idea that none of us ever cease to exist. Our soul goes on forever. Our body may decay, but you and I will still exist long after the stars and nebula have burnt out. We continue to exist. It’s a question of where. And so what does God do with people who are his enemies?

Then he will say to those on his left, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”

Matthew 25:41

If you remember, earlier we read this verse from Matthew 25, we’ll put up here again, Matthew 25 verse 41. “He’ll say to those on his left depart from me, you who are cursed into the eternal fire, look prepared for the devil and his angels.” Notice Hell is not a place made for you.

You were never meant to go. There was the place he made for you heaven, paradise. And we fell. And then when Jesus leaves and says, I am going to do what to prepare a place for you in my father’s house, the place prepared for you is with him. Hell is a place prepared for the devil and his angels. You can read in the book of Isaiah in the book of Ezekiel, I think it’s the 20th chapter in the 14th chapter respectively, I could be wrong and I have that backwards, but the devil, Lucifer Beelzebub the evil one, the enemy, enemy was in heaven with God and the devil and the angels that he rallied together, revolted, staged a rebellion, a coup against God and God defeated him and cast him out of heaven. Jesus says, I saw the devil fall like lightning from heaven and he banished him outside of God’s kingdom. It’s the sense of a place, absence of God, a place absence of God and God’s presence, outer darkness later it’s called a prison and they’re chained forever in this prison and dominion of darkness. But the king has every right to defend his throne against insurgents and he casts them out in prison. And you and I, when we are born in sin are a part of the rebellion.

We are with the Rebels Army. It’s 100% the picture we get when you look at scripture, this is what Paul is talking about. It says, while you were God’s enemies, while you were God’s enemies, Christ died for you that you might be reconciled them. If Christ dies for us while we’re his enemies, how much more should we live with him? It’s amazing. And so, hell is not a place for you, my friends. It’s a place he wants to rescue you from. Now, I don’t know if I answered that question, but I think I showed you the complexity of that question and I gave you some other things to think about. Now, here’s what I would also say and speaking specifically to the people who are here who are wrestling with this idea of God and you’re hearing this conversation of hell and you’re not a follower of Jesus yet, or if you’re watching online or you’re listening to the podcast later on and you’re hearing this whole topic, I know this is hard.

A few things I would say to you, the picture we get at the end of the day, CS Lewis, the author I talked about last week, he called hell the ultimate monument to human freedom. And it’s this idea that we live our lives with every opportunity to look at God and say, thy will be done to pledge our allegiance to the king, the true king, our loyalty to him. And at the end of our life, God will speak to us. If we continue to reject him, he will speak to us and say, thy will be done. He is giving us the freedom that we wanted. We wanted nothing to do with him. We rejected him. And he says, fine, it’s your choice. We would teach that you can receive the gift of God and I confess him as Lord or you can reject him.

And I know that that’s hard and that Christians haven’t done a very good job in talking about this because this is such a difficult topic. This is so hard. It is not fun. It is not enjoyable. And yet it is so urgent. It’s like talking about cancer. Once the diagnosis comes, do you ignore it? Do you talk about it? And Christians have avoided this topic, and I’m sorry it’s not your fault, it’s ours. And because we’ve avoided this topic now church suddenly has become this country club thing that we do. It becomes this place where we go to sing a couple songs, get a little pep talk for the week and remind ourselves to be good people. And we go out the door. And that’s not what church is. This is a rescue mission. The church doesn’t have a mission. The mission has a church.

God is on a rescue mission to save as many as possible to make heaven full and hell empty. And we exist to do everything we possibly can to save as many as possible. That’s it. And when we go through life pretending like frivolous things are the most important things and we just push this thing that’s lurking in the background, we push it off. How are we supposed to be upset at you for not choosing Jesus when we make it about other things? And I’m sorry because of our actions we have communicated that we’re okay if you go to hell and we’re not. And I’m sorry for that.

There’s a verse I was reading and getting prepared for this message where a guy named John the Baptist was a preparing people for the ministry of Jesus. And all of these people were coming to him and he saw some religious leaders and he looked at them and said, who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? The ax is already at the root of the tree. The winnowing fork is in his hand. The fire has been stoked. Who warned you? And I read that and those words hit me different this week because I realized that for so many of us, because we’ve avoided this topic, no one has warned you, who warned you to flee from the coming wrath. And today I’m owning it. This is a conversation we need to have more often. And today I am pleading with you, warning you to be reconciled with God. Jesus talked about being in dangers of the fires of hell and he came to rescue us. And I would remind you again, if we don’t need safes from something, why do we need a savior at all? We’re just wasting our time playing a game up here unless it’s true.

And if you’re bothered, I say this often, but I’ll say it again in a new light. But if you’re bothered by the idea of people spending an eternity apart from God, if you’re bothered by the idea of hell, might I suggest that you’re closer to the heart of God than you realize because God was so bothered by it?

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

John 3:16

Listen to these words again from John three 16, very, very famous words. But listen again in this context. “God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.” For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

And I’m pleading with you today while there is still time to be reconciled to God because I need to own our shortcomings on this. And just be honest today, let me pray for us

PRAYER

Heavenly Father, first of all, for any of the people in the room who do believe in their heart and confess with their mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord and risen from the dead, we are sorry. We have taken a topic that is obviously very important to you. Your son mince words. He doesn’t avoid the topic. He brings it up again and again and again because we’re in danger.

And God forgive us for making the church something other than this rescue mission to save a dying world. And we pray specifically God for the people in our lives who are outside of your kingdom still, who have not pledged allegiance to you as their king and said, thy will be done and asked for mercy. God please give them the gift of faith. And I pray for anyone right now who’s listening to the sound of my voice who has never done so that you would remind them and show them God that now is the day of their salvation. Give them the gift of faith that they may confess your son as Lord declare you as king and be saved.

We pray all of this in the name of your son Jesus who came to save us. Amen.

QUESTIONS

All right guys, I’m proud of you. This is not a fun topic. You’re like, why did I come to church today? Oh my gosh. And if you’re like a guest, you’re like, is it always like this? No, it’s not. Honestly, this is not a topic we’ve talked about. I think I’ve made that pretty clear. But it’s one we have to be willing to talk about. It’s an objection people have to God and we have. So I’m proud of you. It’s what I’m trying to say. I’m proud of you for having the hard conversation, knowing what we were going to talk about, still getting up and coming to church.

Good for you, good for you. You are equipped today, now to have a hard conversation later because you made the effort to be here today. So, thank you guys so much. Got a bunch of questions from you guys. Lemme ask you your permission. It’s 11:58 am. Do I have your permission to go through a few questions? Is that okay? If you need to leave, you can leave. Okay, I’ll just say that.

Q: Alright. Was Eden once joined with heaven? we would teach that Eden was heaven.

A: It was paradise and then something after the fall, there’s a shift somehow, but we don’t quite know the answer to that.

Q: So, God created hell for Satan in the fallen angels. But if God is all noting he had known that he was preparing hell for humanity?

A: Yeah, I talked about this last week where how could a good God, why would good God make mankind capable of sinning? You can maybe go back and listen to that one where we kind of touched on some of the stuff, but it goes back to relationship. God wants relationship with people and God wants relationship with his angels and that comes at a risk, but it’s a risk he was worth taking. I just saw Miss Kay wearing a chief’s jersey today. Oh, my goodness, we know who you’re cheering for today. Oh, my goodness.

Q: Yeah, so I don’t understand your drawing. What about, and then they get into, what about people who are born with any kind of a mental disability or babies who die stillborn?

A: I would even push further on this, whoever asked this question, what about people in Amazon tribes who never heard the good news of Jesus or never heard the name of Jesus? Are they just doomed no matter what?

There’s a couple of scriptures that talk about this in the book of Acts, book of Romans in Romans that talks about that the evidence of God is all around us, that there’s an evidence of a creator just in creation. And so, we’re without excuse in that regard, but also that we are judged on our own laws. When we’re judged separately. There’s almost like this exemption or this exception that God has. And so, when people grow up never hearing about Jesus, they still have their own laws that govern and God judges them separately and with exception.

My answer to that though is I would rather be judged with mercy than by how well I follow a law. And so, it’s still important to tell people that about Jesus. This doesn’t minimize Jesus in any way to actually, we want people to know mercy and grace as is the case with people with mental disabilities and young babies. First of all, what I would say is faith is not an intellectual sense. Imagine if somebody believed in Jesus all their life and then had a horrible car accident and lost their mental capacity or went into a coma. What happens to their faith then if they can’t? Oh, let’s make it even worse, right before they die or went into a coma and they hit the tree, they cussed right, and they said a naughty word and then they hit the tree and then suddenly the last thing that they did in their life was a sin.

What happens in that scenario? They can’t apologize for that sin. That’s where it’s really important to understand that faith, right? We are saved by grace through faith. It’s not all the good things that you do, it’s not the bad things that you do that save you. It’s faith. Faith that saves you. And faith is more than an intellectual ascent. I have baptized, we baptized babies for this reason, I have baptized people with down syndrome because faith is not just an intellectual ascent or if somebody has faith all their life and then slips into dementia and starts losing their intellectual capacity, it doesn’t mean that faith is gone. Faith is more than an intellectual ascent. This is also why I love baptism because if you struggle with doubt at some point in your life or you do something really heinous and you do a really bad, bad thing, nothing can change this moment when God did this thing.

Baptism is God’s work for you, not your work for God. Because this is a moment where he confers promises on you and says, you are mine. I adopt you. You are my child. Your sins are buried, you are mine. And it does not depend on what I do or fail to do. And so, when it comes to the case of infants and stuff like that, I find great comfort in verses like where John the Baptist leaps in the womb because faith is present even from birth. You were, my God, as scripture talks about that you knew me in my inmost place. And I also think that babies who aren’t baptized or don’t have a chance to hear about Jesus, I think that falls into the category of exemptions. And in that moment, we have to trust a merciful God who said, let the children come to me, a merciful God who said that the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these, that he has his own criteria that that baby is evaluated upon.

And we don’t have any verses that tell us what does or doesn’t happen. I think man would try to manipulate that and try to find loopholes in that. So, we just know, tell people about Jesus, get them baptized and make disciples. All right, there you go. I don’t know if that answers the question, but I think I touched on it at least. Babies and disabilities.

Q: Oh, look at that. Another one, the apostles Creed says Jesus descended into hell.

A: Yes. So, there’s only two sections in scripture that talk about this. After Jesus died, we believe he descended into hell. And then one verse talks about leading a train of triumphal, triumphal procession. So, this train is bound for glory. This train, that’s where that phrase comes from, that he’s setting captives free and leading them in a procession into heaven. That’s one verse. And then the other one talks about he’s declaring freedom. So, does he go down there? Kind of one of our teachings is he goes down there and declares victory. He goes down there and he is like in your face, in your face, whatever he does, his thing, spikes on them, has a cell down there.

So, Jesus celebrated somehow down there and declared victory over the captives and set them free. That’s all we know. And so how it worked into the creed, it’s in there, whatever, but there’s only a couple lines that really talk about it. All right, let me do one more here.

Q: Another one about babies. Yeah, that one I think I touched on this was sent a little bit longer ago. If heaven is so holy, wouldn’t only those who are perfect to get in and everyone else would be in hell heaven, a so holy, they wouldn’t. People who are perfect be the only one to get in. What do you guys think? Yes.

A: Yes. Are you perfect? No. Oh, Jesus. Jesus is perfect. When God looks at you, he says, what’s sin? All I see is my son.

That’s what we believe and that’s why it’s called amazing grace. And yeah, I think that’s pretty much another one. Oh yeah, people before Jesus, what do we do with that? Same thing, right? There’s this idea of faith in the Messiah even before Jesus. And then there’s people outside of that in China in 4,000 BC. What do they do again? They’re judged separately on their own criteria and by God’s standards. Okay guys, good job. We did it. We took on a tough topic. I know you’re not walking out of church being like, woohoo, sugar high. But you did great. You did great. And honestly, this is so important. You guys know this, right? This is so important for us to be able to talk about, remind ourselves of why we do what we do. And I know stuff is going on in your life, but at least this is something critical that we have to keep in mind.

There’s plenty of weeks for us to get a sugar high walking out of here. So two quick announcements. One, we have a Baptism 101 right after the service here. Just meet me in the conference room. If you have any questions about baptism, I’d be happy to talk with you about that, whatever that might be for you. And then second next week, we’re continuing our Reasoning for God series. We’re talking about Hasn science, disprove Christianity. We are going to talk about evolution and the big bang and dinosaurs. It’s going to be awesome. So, I’m excited to have this conversation, but again, you’re making me research a whole lot. These are not easy sermons to put together. So, I will do my best next week to just give a fair description of how the Bible reconciles with all of that kind of stuff. I hope that you guys are able to make it here for that as well. Why don’t you go ahead and stand up and we’ll give you a blessing and we’ll get out the door.

BLESSING

Receive now the blessing of the Lord. The Lord bless you and to keep you if the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord look upon you with his favor and give you his peace. Amen and amen. Thank you, guys for being here. Go have fun watching the Super Bowl and we’ll see you soon.