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The Descent Into Gloom – Part 1 of 2

Running to Win / Erwin Lutzer
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July 18, 2024 1:00 am

The Descent Into Gloom – Part 1 of 2

Running to Win / Erwin Lutzer

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July 18, 2024 1:00 am

What happens after unbelievers die? From Genesis to Revelation, we see glimpses of what the afterlife is like. In this message, Pastor Lutzer distinguishes between the grave, “Sheol” as the place of the dead, and hell. As we uncover what it is like to die without personal faith in Jesus Christ, we’ll discover no one is in hell—yet.

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Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.

Surprise! No one is in hell today. Hades is where unbelievers go when they die. And one day, Hades will be thrown into hell. Today, the Bible's teaching about the ultimate fate of those who never trusted Christ for salvation. Will this be your fate?

Please stay with us. 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, today's message on One Minute After You Die will not be sweetness and light. In fact, there may not be a less appealing title for a message than The Descent into Gloom.

Well, Dave, thank you so much for pointing that out. When I chose that title, it was because I wanted to be accurate. So I didn't choose the title so that people would necessarily feel good, but that they would feel realistic when it came to their eternal fate.

And for many people, death will lead into gloom. Let me ask you a question. Are you blessed as a result of the ministry of Running to Win?

Would you consider becoming an endurance partner? That's someone who stands with us regularly with their prayers and their gifts. And at the end of this message, I'm going to be giving you some info. But meanwhile, I want you to listen carefully, because your eternal destiny is at stake depending on what you do with the only one who can rescue us from our sins, and that is Jesus.

Death. What a topic, what a subject to speak about. If you came to the church this morning, you'll notice that the sermon topic is The Descent into Gloom. Some people looked at that and they said, that's not a very good sermon topic.

Imagine visitors coming and that's what they get, a descent into gloom. But you know, it's my responsibility as a minister not only to speak about happy topics, sometimes I need to speak about those that give us a great deal of consternation. It's not my responsibility to always speak on those things that make us leave happy, happy, happy.

Sometimes we have to leave very sober. And as a result of that, we will be speaking about such things as heaven and hell in this coming series, primarily on things that have to do with heaven, what it's going to be like to have a resurrected body and all of the things that we can possibly know about the other side in this life as found in the scriptures. But today's message is going to be on Hades and shield, words like that. And then in the future, I will be speaking on the topic of hell.

My desire will be to make heaven look so appealing that some of us are hardly going to be able to wait to get there, but also to make hell so fearful that those who do not know Christ as savior will realize that it only makes sense to believe in someone who can save them from the wrath to come. Number of years ago here in the city, I was asked to take a funeral. That happens frequently to ministers. I did not know the family. I went to the funeral home and the son said to me, I want you to know that we are not religious. We don't believe in God.

The only reason you're here is because some member of the family thought that a minister should be present. He said, quote, anything that you say will not be too short. I said to him, why is it that you want it to be so short?

Well, he said, we feel uncomfortable because we do not believe in God. So I made a deal with him. I said, look, I'll tell you what, I will be brief, but, but I said, I do need to have the opportunity to tell you what I think about death in general and Christ in particular.

So he reluctantly agreed. Let me ask you a question today. What do you think that man who was in that elegant casket, what do you think he was experiencing at the time when we met together for that funeral? What happened to him one minute after he died?

That's a very good question and that's the one that we are going to try to answer today. Now I have to begin by saying that I know that we are not this man's judge. Before God, he stands or falls, but let us suppose that he was an unbeliever just as his son told us he was. What happens after unbelievers die? You know, Betty Eadie in her book, Embraced by the Light, spoke about entering into another realm where there is light and where there is a being who will accept you, where there is a recognition that at the end of the day, we are not sinners anyway, and that we are worthy to be embraced by this being. I want you to know that if you've read that book, that being, whatever it is, is not the Lord Jesus Christ.

That is not a biblical view of death. So what we want to do today is to do a word study. Now in order to do that, I hope that you brought your Bibles with you. You know, here at the Moody Church, if you're visiting, you need to know that we do encourage people to bring their Bibles, to open the text so that they can see the passages along with us. And I hope that you are ready to do that.

We shall turn only to a few really because we don't have time to look at all that we could look at. But I want to begin by a word study of the Hebrew word sheol, S-H-E-O-L, sheol. Now that word occurs 65 times in the Old Testament in the King James Version. Now get this because it will explain some of the confusion that exists regarding the nether world. In the King James Version, 31 times it is translated hell, 31 times the grave, and three times the pit. This has led to the view that many people think that people who die today without Christ are in hell.

Well, as you shall see as this message progresses, I disagree with that. I do not believe that they are in hell. They are in a place called sheol, or as we shall see, the New Testament would call it Hades.

We must distinguish sheol from hell and sheol from the grave. There are some well-meaning people who say, well, you know, it means just the grave. Well, it certainly means the grave. It includes the grave, but it is much more than that. It is the world of dead men's spirits.

That's what it really refers to. In fact, the Hebrews had a perfectly good word, which would mean grave, but they used it very infrequently. They preferred sheol, which includes the grave. It includes death, but it is also a world where spirits, human spirits congregate. Now take your Bibles and turn to Job chapter 26, for example. Job chapter 26, and I shall read very briefly verses 5 and 6 of Job chapter 26. You'll notice that the prophet Job, who was actually a righteous man, not a prophet in the classic sense of the word, he was speaking and he says these words.

The departed spirits tremble under the waters and their inhabitants. Naked is sheol before him and Abaddon has no covering. Now let me point out that many translations like the New American Standard do not translate sheol. They simply transliterate the word as it is in Hebrew and let it stand. That's why my translation, wherever the word sheol occurs in those 65 instances, is simply referred to as sheol.

It is not translated at all. That probably was wise. Then the context enables us to know the meaning of the word. But notice the departed spirits tremble. Naked is sheol before him. Obviously there's activity in the world to come.

Let's look at Isaiah chapter 14 verse 9. Sheol from beneath is excited over you to meet you when you come. It arouses for you the spirits of the dead, all the leaders of the earth. It raises all the kings of the nations from their thrones. There again, sheol, first of all, is a shadowy world in which human spirits gather after the person has died here on earth.

Let me give you a second observation regarding the use of this word. You can be united with your relatives in sheol. It is a place where people meet. For example, in Genesis 49 verse 33, it says that Jacob went down into sheol and was gathered with his people. Some people think that means that they just went to the same cemetery together, but I think the clear implication is that there was some meeting on the other side. Even Abraham in Genesis 15 verse 15 was assured that he would go down to his fathers in peace. So in the Old Testament, you know that there was life beyond the grave, the activities of human spirits.

Now all these have been somewhat negative. Is there any indication in the Bible that there were some who anticipated a life of bliss on the other side? I won't turn to the passage, but you can write it down if you're taking notes. Psalm 73 verses 23 to 25. Nevertheless, I am continually with thee.

Thou hast holded me by thy right hand. Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel and afterward receive me to glory, said Asaph. So Asaph believed that he would be, and he did not understand heaven as we do, but he would be in glory with God. So one can be united in the world to come with your friends, and you can also be united with God.

Let me give you another observation. There are indications in the Bible that Sheol has different regions, that it has different regions. We know that because the wicked and the righteous both go into Sheol.

That's why some people think that it refers only to the grave, but we know that it means more than the grave. It has to do with what lies on the other side, and we have accounts for example of Jacob who was a righteous man goes into Sheol, but the sons of Korah who rebelled, the rebellious ones who were against God, they also go into Sheol. So this made the ancient rabbis come to a conclusion that was I think very biblical as we shall see. They said since Sheol has two different kinds of inhabitants, Sheol also then must have two different compartments.

It must have two different regions, and the Bible does speak about the lower regions of Sheol in some of the texts and passages. David says God will redeem me from the power of Sheol. Now the whole idea that there are two classes of people in the world to come, the righteous and the wicked, is expressly stated in the book of Daniel, and this is one of the clearest verses in all the Old Testament about the belief that the Old Testament saints had regarding a future life. It says in Daniel chapter 12 verse 2, many who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, some to everlasting life and others to everlasting shame and contempt.

They will awake, but you have two different resurrections because you have two different classes of people, therefore you have two different places where they go when they die. Now when you study all the passages, and of course I gave you only two or three because we simply could not possibly begin to look at all the texts, what you discover in the Old Testament is that the curtain to the afterlife is opened just a little bit. We don't see everything that we would like to see. We do see that there are those who intended and hope to go to glory, but you also find a lot of depressing comments about this place called Sheol which supposedly is under the earth, though we know not where it is. But when you get to the New Testament, that's when suddenly the floodlights come on. The curtain is opened and now we begin to see very clearly what lies on the other side, both for the righteous and for the wicked.

And so for this reason, I want us now to turn to the New Testament. The Old Testament used the word Sheol, and that's the place where the both the righteous and the wicked entered, and where we have every indication that there were two compartments. In the New Testament now, you have the word Hades, and Hades is translated in the King James Version. Also in places, it's translated hell, and that adds to the confusion because people think Hades is hell. Well, Hades is not hell, as we shall see. And that's why most translations of the Bible, like mine, the New American Standard, now wherever the word Hades occurs, at least in most instances, it simply lets the word stand as Hades, untranslated.

And that probably is good because it helps us make these necessary distinctions. With that background now, Luke chapter 16. Luke chapter 16.

This is surely one of the clearest passages in all the Bible as to what it is like to die without faith in Jesus Christ. As I mentioned to you in another context, Jesus told this story to show that the fortunes of the rich and the poor might be reversed on the other side of death because he was speaking to Pharisees who loved money, it says. And in verse 14 of Luke 16, they were scoffing at him because they loved money. And he had been talking about the need to be faithful with the funds that God has given to us. And in order for Jesus to explain to these people that it's possible to be rich in this world and poor in the world to come, he told this story. Verse 19. Now there was a certain rich man and he habitually dressed in purple and fine linen, gaily living in splendor every day.

Can't you just see him? It would be a man that the artist would like to paint, a man of opulence and riches. The contrast is in verse 20. A certain poor man named Lazarus was laid at his gate covered with sores and longing to be fed with the crumbs which were falling from the rich man's table.

Beside, even the dogs were coming and licking his sores. How poor can you get? Now it came about that the poor man died and was carried away by angels into Abraham's bosom and the rich man also died and was buried. And in Hades, now that's the translation of the word in the Old Testament, sheol. Hades equals sheol.

It's the difference between Hebrew and Greek. And in Hades he lifted up his eyes being in torment and saw Abraham far away and Lazarus in his bosom and he cried out saying, Father Abraham have mercy on me and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue for I am in agony in this flame. But Abraham said, child remember during your life you received good things and likewise Lazarus bad things but now he is being comforted here and you are in agony.

And you know beside this between us and you there is a great chasm fixed in order that those who wish to come from over here to you may not be able and none may cross over from there to us. And he said then I beg you father that you send him to my father's house for I have five brothers that he may warn them lest they also come to this place of torment. But Abraham said well they have Moses and the prophets let them hear them. No father Abraham but if someone goes to them from the dead they will repent. But he said to them if they do not listen to Moses and the prophets neither will they be persuaded if someone rises from the dead. What a story.

It's a true story. What a picture of life on the other side of the grave. What I'd like to do now is to give you several descriptions that will help us to uncover what it is like to die without personal faith in Jesus Christ. First of all number one notice that this man was fully conscious memory speaking pain bliss verse 24 send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off my tongue for I am in agony in this flame. You realize of course that Hades is a place of unmet desires. Here's a man who is in torment he's thirsty of course and what he would like to do is to at least have a drop of water put on his tongue.

But no water was given to him. Can you imagine those who are alcoholics with that insatiable desire for alcoholism? And now suddenly they find themselves in a region where they scream for a drop of alcohol and none is given to them because they are in the world to come.

They have heightened desires but those heightened desires must have necessity remain on the field just a constant burning without being satisfied. Here's someone who in this life is on heroin. Heroin is his God he will kill for heroin he will steal for it.

He will do all that he possibly can to get another fix and suddenly he's in a realm where he has these desires and the desires are there and they are growing but there is no heroin in Hades there is nothing nothing he can do to deaden the pain. Now let's go back to that funeral that I was asked to take here in the city of Chicago. I remember the funeral home I won't mention it to you but it's just a couple of miles north of here. I remember going there and because the man was well known and apparently he had made millions of dollars in the shipping industry as I discovered later he not only was in a very elegant casket but I had to find a place to park and so I drove around finding that place to park. 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 receive 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 27 then I beg you father that you send him that is Lazarus to my father's house for I have five brothers that he may warn them lest they come to this place of torment well my friend you're certainly going to have to listen to running to win next time so that you hear the end of this message and why it is that the man who found himself in Hades believed that his judgment was just sobering let me ask you a question which I frequently have asked you have you as a listener benefited from the ministry of running to win if the answer is yes it's because people just like you have invested in this ministry and many of you perhaps have never given for the first time others of you have faithfully supported this ministry here's what I'd like to challenge you to do would you consider becoming an endurance partner that's someone who stands with us regularly with their prayers and their gifts of course the amount that you give is entirely your decision you need more info go to rtwoffer.com that's rtwoffer.com and when you're there click on the endurance partner button that's rtwoffer.com click on the endurance partner button or you can call us at 1-888-218-9337 meanwhile from my heart to yours may I thank you genuinely for your prayers for your interest in our ministry and I hope again that you will call other people and invite them to listen to this series because we desire to get the gospel of Jesus Christ to as many as possible meanwhile consider becoming an endurance partner you can write to us at running to win 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard Chicago Illinois 60614 running to win comes to you from the Moody Church in Chicago next time more from Luke chapter 16 on the awful hopelessness ahead for those who reject the gospel thanks for listening for pastor Erwin Lutzer this is Dave McAllister running to win is sponsored by the Moody Church
Whisper: medium.en / 2024-07-18 02:10:09 / 2024-07-18 02:18:50 / 9

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