The Descent Into Gloom – Part 2 of 2

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. In Luke 16, a man cries in pain, begging to be able to contact his loved ones and tell them to repent, lest they join him in suffering a just judgment. The answer?

No. Today, a sober look at a future no one would want if they knew it was coming. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, in your series on One Minute After You Die, we are in Luke chapter 16. Here we see a terrifying picture of life beyond the grave for the unsaved. And you know, Dave, I remember preaching a message about this specifically during missions conference and I pointed out that this man suddenly wants to be a missionary. You remember he says to Abraham, go back, tell my brothers not to come to this place of torment. One of the lessons that that teaches us is that even on the other side, those who are in torment are still human beings with feelings.

This is sobering. I've written a book entitled One Minute After You Die. I hope that you sense the urgency in my voice to get this book into the hands of as many people as possible because their destiny is at stake. And for a gift of any amount, it can be yours. Go to RTWOffer.com.

It's RTWOffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Remember, you will live eternally somewhere. My question, where? Now let's go back to that funeral that I was asked to take here in the city of Chicago. What was he doing when I was trying to find a place to park to find his son and to say some words to his distraught widow? He was in agony, in a flame, and he was not satisfied. That's what happened one minute after he died.

Let's look at a second characteristic, fully conscious, memory speaking, pain, bliss, unmet desire, that tortured conscience. Secondly, his eternal destiny was fixed. His eternal destiny was fixed. Verse 26, when he says, you know, Abraham, please send Lazarus to dip my tongue and bring me some water. Abraham said, child, remember that during your life you received good things and now things are reversed. Verse 26, and beside all this between us and you, there is a great chasm fixed.

And you'll notice we read it a moment ago and no one can cross from one side or the other. That's it. That's it. And so while this man's friends were able to go to lunch afterwards, obviously I was not invited, but that's what they did.

They went for lunch in a restaurant. And while they were able to plan a trip maybe to Europe and to use some of the money that the man left behind, he was in a state, he was in a place of monotony, boredom, and triviality, and there was no way out. The words of Dante, long since forgotten, perhaps came to mind, abandon all hope ye who enter here.

May I emphasize to you that your eternal destiny is fixed in this life, not in the life to come. You cannot reroute your travel plans. You can't arrive and say, well, this is not where I was intending to go and I do not like what is happening here.

Can I at least call an airline and get me a ticket to somewhere else? This is it. Your suitcase is unpacked and this is quote home such as it is. So secondly, eternal destiny was fixed. Thirdly, I think that he believed that his fate was fair and just, fair and just. You'll notice that in Hades, his life was present to him. He begged Abraham to send Lazarus back to his father's house. Let's look at verse 28.

We'll pick it up in verse 27. Then I beg you, father, that you send him that is Lazarus to my father's house. For I five brothers that he may warn them lest they come to this place of torment. Abraham said, well, they have Moses and the prophets.

Let them hear them. But he said, no, father Abraham. But if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent. You say, well, Pastor Luther, what makes you think that he thinks that the consequences of his life were just in this place called Hades? Two reasons why I think that number one, it's interesting that though he complained about the pain, he did not complain about injustice. He did not say, I don't deserve to be here. And I want you to know that throughout all of eternity, those who do not know Christ as savior, I believe will be satisfied that God acted justly.

He acted justly. That will come up more specifically when I actually preach a message on hell. But there's a second reason why I think that. I find this fascinating.

Suddenly this guy who loved his money and who dressed in purple and in splendor every single day and could care less about the world to come. I find that interesting. People go into travel stores, as I frequently have, to buy books on travel.

If you're going to visit a country, study the country, but they don't give that much time a day to the country that they are someday going to be in forever. You know, you find people going to Europe, they're trying to learn the language and yet they are not interested at all in the language of heaven, just human nature. And this man suddenly, suddenly of all things becomes interested in missions. He says, please send somebody to my five brothers that they might repent so that they won't come here. Now finally he gets the message of a missions conference.

Takes a while and it's too late, but he becomes missionary minded. And notice this now, don't overlook the text. It says if someone who goes to them from the dead, they will repent.

Notice this. He knew exactly what needed to be done so that his brothers would not come to the same place of torment. He knew that what they needed was what he did not do. And that was repentance.

I find that remarkable. Don't you feel intrigued by the fact that here's a pagan man who intuitively if he took out the time to examine his own heart would have known even in this world that the way that you avoid the judgment of God is through repentance. He knew that unforgiven sin, unforgiven sin would eventually lead people to the place where he now was. And don't you believe that he now knew that where he would spend eternity should have been his first and utmost priority. There's something else in this text which I find very interesting. Do you notice how natural human compassion is evident in his life? I mean this is startling and I'm going to refer to this again when we talk about heaven and what it's going to be like in the life beyond and all of those things that are going to be coming in future messages.

But I need to point it out very quickly here. He's the same person after he has died as he was before he died. He knows all about his family relationships. He knows that he has five brothers. He could name them. He probably knew their birthdays. All of this information that he had in this life was present to him in the life to come because he's the very same person.

And notice this human compassion. Theologians call it common grace. Even though he is not a believer, wasn't a believer in this life, is a believer now, but it's too late. Even so, he longs that his brothers might not come here. Sometimes unsaved people joke about hell. I've heard it said, well, you know, I'm going there and if I'm going there, I want to go there because that's where some of my friends are going to be. Now, there are some things that you can joke about and those of you who know me well know that I think that there are some things in this life that are funny, but one of them is not hell because I want to tell you today that if you think that, you are very, very foolish.

Notice this man. He is willing to forego meeting his brothers forever if only they will not come to this same place of torment. And I might say here, those of you who kind of play around with where you are going to spend eternity, you make glib comments about going where your friends are.

I'll tell you, you had better get on your knees and do what this man knew his brothers would have to do if they wouldn't come to the same place and that is to repent or you shall likewise perish, shall likewise perish. Now, what about that rich man that I had the privilege of burying in Chicago? The funeral at which I was asked to speak where the young man sarcastically, though very sincerely said, quote, anything that you say will not be too short. He let me know that I was not wanted there, but some shirttail relative that said, you know, surely a preacher should be present. And I guess I was in the phone book.

I'll tell you something. This self-assured young man, what do you think his father would have told me to say at the funeral if only he could have spoken to me and given me instructions what he wanted to be said at that very hour. Can you imagine how different it would have been? He'd have said, Oh, pastor Lutzer warned them that they not come to this same place of torment.

That's what the dad was saying. And the wonderful eulogy that was said, the eulogy was long. Even if the sermon was short, the wonderful eulogy would have mocked this man about all the nice things that were said about him and all the big business deals that he pulled and all the money that he had. What difference did it make at this hour?

None. It rose to mock him. Now there's something else that we must say about Hades. And I've already alluded to it, but now I have to show it to you from the text of scripture. And that is that Hades is not hell. Sheol, that's the Old Testament word for the same place. Remember sheol is not hell.

Hades is not hell. And that's why translations of the Bible that confuse these sometimes are misleading in the implications that they give. Take your Bible now and turn to the book of Revelation chapter 20. It's a passage that we shall have to return to when I speak on the topic of hell. Revelation chapter 20, the great white throne judgment.

I have been pondering this judgment for several weeks because of some other studies that I have been doing and I will certainly preach on this on the message in hell. But notice it says in verse 12, I saw the dead, small and great, standing before the throne. And the books were opened and another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books according to their deeds. And the sea gave up the dead, which were in it. And death and Hades, there's the word, gave up the dead, which were in them. And they were judged every one of them according to their deeds. Verse 14, and death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.

This is the second death. And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. I take the lake of fire to be hell. No one is in hell today. They will be judged personally and individually by God before that happens. But those who die today without saving knowledge of Christ, they are in a place called Hades. I always get questions like this from people. They say, well, you know, is Hades kind of a purgatory?

No, let's clarify that too. A purgatory arose in medieval times because of a misunderstanding of the view of justification by faith. People said to themselves, you know, nobody dies righteous enough to go into heaven because it was believed that people became righteous by participating in the sacraments. And hopefully you had enough righteousness. In fact, they even had theories whereby you could borrow some other peoples who had more than they needed so that you'd get enough to make it.

But people still said, I don't think that I measure up. So the belief came about that people who died who can't go directly to heaven, which was the majority of the people, they would go to purgatory and there they would be purged maybe for 50 years, a thousand years, a million years. But eventually then they would become righteous enough to enter into heaven after the purging was complete. Oh, how thankful I am that we don't have to believe that.

When Martin Luther understood more clearly the doctrine of justification by faith, he understood that people who put faith and trust in Jesus Christ are legally pronounced as righteous as God. And because they are as righteous as God, they can go from this life to the next. You don't have to pass go. You don't have to pay $200. Those of you who used to play Monopoly, you can go directly from this life into the life to come.

No hassle at the border, no need to show complicated IDs. If your name is written in the Lamb's Book of Life, the flight from here to there is direct. One day I was on a radio program and it was a talk show and people were calling asking questions and a woman and my heart went out to her. And I mentioned this because many of you would like to ask the same question and my heart goes out to you as well. She said, my father was a very religious man, but he did not put faith and trust in Christ. She said, I suspect that he is not in heaven.

And then her question was this, is there anything that I can do to get him to where I would really want him to be? And I said, I have some good news and I have some bad news. I'll give you the bad news first and then the good news. The bad news is no, now that your father is dead, his future is irrevocably fixed.

There's nothing that you can do. There is even in Hades, a great chasm fixed so that nobody can go from one area to the other. But I said the good news. When God judges him, God will be meticulously just, meticulously just. He will take into account all the opportunities that your father had to respond to saving faith. If his father was brought up in a non-Christian home, the parents, his parents, all of the blame will be accurately assessed throughout all of his generations.

There will not be one single fact that will be overlooked. And throughout all of eternity, he will admit even as we admit, just and true are thy ways thou king of saints, that God deals justly, justly. Now it's difficult for us to grasp and as I mentioned, we shall have to come back to that theme at another time. What about Lazarus, the man here in this passage of scripture? Well, you know what the Bible teaches is that he went to Abraham's bosom, which now really is paradise or heaven.

And I don't believe that the two are next to one another anymore. When Jesus ascended, he took captives with him. He took those who were redeemed, I believe from the Old Testament to heaven so that people who die today are instantly with Christ in paradise.

Today, you shall be with me in paradise. Yesterday, my wife and I were at a memorial service for a friend of ours, Phil Cornas, whom some of you know. Phil, he really did love God. He really did love God. He came to saving faith in Christ. And even though he was an unrepentant optimist who always believed that the cancer that he was fighting would eventually be beaten, it did not turn out that way. I visited him last week before he died and helped him understand that cancer may be the chariot I said that God will use to take you all the way to heaven.

And he accepted that. And then he died about three or four days later. But just after he slipped into a coma, we discovered this yesterday when friends were standing and telling about his life and paying tribute to his life. They said that after he was in the coma, he shouted, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. And then a short while afterward, he died. We never build theology on experience, but it's entirely possible. It's entirely possible that the reason that he shouted Jesus, though in a coma, was because he saw him.

He saw him. I want you to know today that seeing Christ can happen just that fast. We could die in a moment of time, a heart attack, car accident, a hundred different ways to go. Death is so creative.

It's just got all kinds of different ways. You know what distinguished this rich man and Lazarus was not the fact that the man was rich. You have to understand that Christ point lay in a different direction. He wanted to show that your riches don't help you when you die, but it's not because he was rich. There will be rich people in heaven.

As Jesus makes clear, the great distinction is between those who trust in Christ alone because they recognize that they are sinners and they have recognized that sin is sin and they have repented and they trust him. And those who merrily go on their way thinking, I've got lots of time to figure out where I'm going to go and who cares? You know, one of your great leaders here in America, Benjamin Franklin, friend with Whitfield, as some of you know, good friends. And before he died, Ben Franklin said, you know, Whitfield frequently prayed for my conversion, but he never did see an answer to his prayers. And then he said, why should I believe now?

Soon I shall know what it is like on the other side. And so he drifts into eternity, lost forever because he didn't take Christ seriously. He that believeth on the son is not condemned, but he that believeth not the son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.

So what about you? Where will you be one minute, one minute after you die, paradise or Hades? Let us pray. Our father, we ask in the name of Jesus that you shall graciously do now what only you can do. And that is to cause men and women to examine their hearts, to look deep within, to know where they shall spend eternity. For those who do not know, we pray that in this moment you will grant them the ability to trust Christ as savior. And for those who know you, we pray that their faith in you might be affirmed and help all of us to be witnesses to people while they are alive for after they are dead, it is too late. This is Pastor Lutzer.

Of course, ultimately I have no right to judge Benjamin Franklin. For all we know, he came to saving faith in Christ just before he died. But this much we do know. Unless we are protected from the wrath of God through Jesus Christ as our redeemer and savior, we will experience an eternity that is unimaginable for its horror. That is why I have written a book entitled One Minute After You Die. And that is why it is a great burden on my heart that you receive a copy so that you can enjoy reading it and you can share it with your friends. It will give you a basis of understanding. I remember one widow who told me that she kept this book beside her bed and when she was filled with tears and anxiety and grief, she would pick it up and she would read it.

And one of the reasons she could say that is that there are some chapters in it that do talk about the glories on the other side. The title of the book One Minute After You Die, I hope that you have a pen or pencil handy so that you can write down this info. Here is what you do. Go to RTWOffer.com. Of course RTW offers all one word. RTWOffer.com or pick up the phone and call us at 1-888-218-9337. Once again I am going to give you that contact info. But from my heart to yours, thank you so much for helping us get these messages around the world in 50 different countries and seven different languages. Here is what you do. Go to RTWOffer.com or pick up the phone and call us at 1-888-218-9337. Don't forget the title of the book One Minute After You Die. By the Moody Church.