Mark Clark [00:00:00]:
Hey, everyone. Mark here. Welcome to the Mark Clark podcast. I am super excited you are on this journey with us through this eight week series based on the problem of God, both a sermon series that I did, but also the book. So if you're interested in this ten chapters, go over to Amazon on all these massive questions that we ask the Bible. Evil and suffering, hell that we're talking about today. Science, the exclusivity of the church, hypocrisy in the church. All of these questions are all in that book, so hopefully those will be helpful to you.
Mark Clark [00:00:28]:
And today's topic is hell. And so it's one that maybe you could listen to, share with a friend, go out for coffee, discuss this one. This one's super important, really. Many people in our culture find this topic repulsive. And so that's what we're gonna talk about. Is it actually repulsive? It's crucial to understand what Jesus taught about hell, why it matters, and then we're gonna explore issues of justice, the nature of heaven and hell, our cultural beliefs, and how they shape our understanding of all this. So this isn't an easy conversation, but it is an important one. So hopefully you enjoy this episode, share it with some friends.
Mark Clark [00:00:59]:
Also, for any of these episodes, it actually helps a lot when you go and review this podcast. So go over and do a review on the Apple podcast and give it a review and say, hey, this is great, and five stars or whatever it is that you think. Okay, let's dive in. I'm super glad you guys are part of this journey. The topic today is hell. All right, now some of you, here's what we got to understand. This might be. Might be the most touchy of subjects.
Mark Clark [00:01:26]:
Now, here's the shift we're making starting this week in this series, the problem of God. In the first three weeks, we dealt with what scholars call evidential questions. We dealt with science in history. All right? We talked about the philosophical, scientific, historical reasons why Christianity is legit. We talked about science, talked about God's existence. We talked about the Christ myth in the Bible, a lot of history, a lot of kind of study around science and technical evidential questions. Now we make a shift to what scholars call moralistic questions, meaning this is the stuff that just you don't like. It goes against your gut.
Mark Clark [00:02:00]:
And that's what the next five weeks is, is that it repulses you to actually believe in. Next week, we're talking about sex. And so you don't like the biblical concept of sex or how christians talk about sex or think about sex or do sex, evil and suffering. The idea of the hypocrisy of the church, how we burned witches and killed people. And then there's this one hell, which might be maybe the most relevant out of all the moralistic questions that we're gonna deal with. This is the question on everyone's mind. If you sit down with your buddy at a pub and you go, listen, I'm gonna argue that Christianity is legitimate. He might say to you, you know what? Okay, cool.
Mark Clark [00:02:36]:
I get it. The science thing, I'm in. I get it. Even suffering, okay, you got a good answer for that. I understand that. Okay. I understand philosophically, it makes sense. The hypocrisy of the church might not have been what it.
Mark Clark [00:02:46]:
And then you say, okay, I'm in. And then you go, okay, one more thing, though. Hell that exists, it's real. He's going, check, please. I'm out. Because I don't want to believe in this. And so here's what I'm going to ask you to do, because it raises all these massive questions, right? And these are the questions that we're gonna hit today. These questions about, is it just.
Mark Clark [00:03:11]:
I thought God was all loving. Why would hell have to last forever? What's the nature of hell? Is it actually people burning and suffering and being tortured? Why does God send people that? All these questions we're gonna deal with. But just give me time. Cause this is the kind of sermon you're gonna. Maybe if you're new and exploring Christianity, this is the kind of one where you're gonna wanna stand up and leave halfway through because it's gonna sound crazy, what I'm saying. Just let me get to the end and then we can chat. I. All right.
Mark Clark [00:03:38]:
Because what we want to do is be able to question our questions, doubt our doubts, and understand that there might be things in our mind that we believe about the world and about the universe and about God and about the Bible that isn't actually true. And then secondly, we want to be able to be self aware that you and I. See. Here's the issue. A guy named Peter Kreff said this. Of all the doctrines in Christianity, hell is probably the most difficult to defend, the most burdensome to believe, and the first to be abandoned. Charles Darwin abandoned his christian faith. He said this, I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity be true.
Mark Clark [00:04:15]:
For if so, plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my father, brother, and almost all my friends, will be everlastingly punished. This is a damnable doctrine. And so here's what you and I got to understand. This isn't just some kind of hypothetical question for me. This is my family. I've told you, I didn't grow up in the church. My family doesn't even believe in Christianity. My grandfather's the only Christian in my home.
Mark Clark [00:04:39]:
And so what we got in my family. So you've got to understand that when it comes to this question, this isn't hypothetical for me. This is very real. And so, as cs Lewis said, and I would totally agree with him, he says there is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this if it lay in my power. And this is how we're going to explore. It has the full support of scripture and especially of Jesus own words, and it has always been held by Christendom, and it has the support of reason. So that's what we're going to talk about. Now.
Mark Clark [00:05:08]:
Here was my first encounter with hell. My family sent me up to get rid of me for three weeks at a christian camp when I was nine years old. My parents divorced when I was about eight, and then my grandfather sent me up to christian summer camp. So I'd never been exposed to anything Christian in my life. I went up there and they ran me really tired. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, every chapel around the campfire was really nice and calm, and it was cool, and it was all about the love of God and how God likes you and Jonah, stories about getting spit out of whales and stuff. I was like, this is cool. And then all of a sudden, they came to Friday night, which I later heard they called Turner burn night and Friday night.
Mark Clark [00:05:43]:
Once we're all tired, we got by the fire and they said, now, here's what you got to understand. If you don't do that, if you don't believe in hell, if you don't believe in Jesus. And then there's the fire, and the guy, like, squirted gasoline on it went. And he goes, that will be you. Is that what you want? We're all like, hundred percent conversion rate that night, all right, every kid came to Christ. Counselors were repenting, making sure, locking it in, coming to Jesus, all right? That was the reality of it. Now, they could have told me to believe in the marshmallow man at that point, and I would have. Because the reality is, and here's what you've got to understand, the misnomer is that Christianity is a bad rep because it tries to drive hell as a fear doctrine to fear people into relationship with Jesus.
Mark Clark [00:06:24]:
And what we're going to find out is it doesn't really work. It never produces actual disciples of Jesus law, long term, long obedience in the same direction. Kind of disciples of Jesus. If you're only motivated by hell, motivated by fear and hell and suffering and torture, you're never going to be in the long run. And every kid I knew who came to Jesus based on that premise alone, not because they loved God, not because they treasured Jesus, not because they wanted a life of joy and passion in him, but just because they were afraid of this. They all fell away in the end. Because this does not motivate people in the long term to actually believe in Jesus. That's not why I'm explaining it to you.
Mark Clark [00:07:03]:
I'm explaining it to you and raising this question because I know what's on our minds is something we're not gonna embrace Christianity if it's actually true. And the first thing we've got to understand is that it's a Jesus thing. And what I mean by that is Christianity. There's a lot of people who come at Christianity and go, I like Jesus. All right? Madonna likes Jesus. Justin Timberlake likes Jesus. They all have t shirts. Jesus is my homeboy.
Mark Clark [00:07:27]:
Our culture, even downtown Calgary, Vancouver, Langley, Surrey, whatever. You talk to regular Joe in the coffee shop, they say they like Jesus. They like his morals, they like his teachings. I was listening to Deepak Chopra, who's a new age thinker, and I was watching him on a television show, and he said, you know, all these christians ranting on about the wrath of God and God being angry and God judging, they don't understand. The real summary of Jesus Christ is the sermon on the mount. That's what Jesus is about. He's not about all this other stuff. He's about the sermon on the mount.
Mark Clark [00:08:01]:
He's about. And of course, what's in his mind is, love your neighbor, turn the cheek, golden rule. And I'm like, oh, my interesting Deepak trophy. You've never actually read the sermon on the mount, have you? Because it's in the sermon on the mount where hell is the central idea. Listen to Jesus in the sermon on the mount, supposedly the central teachings where he doesn't like to talk about bad things. But I say to you, everyone who's angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the counsel. And whoever says, you fool will be liable to the hell of fire.
Mark Clark [00:08:35]:
That's Matthew, chapter five, verse 22. Later on, if your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body get thrown into hell. This is. So here's what we've got to understand. First, this is a teaching that's not even clear in the Bible until you get to Jesus.
Mark Clark [00:09:06]:
So people who want to, skeptics who want to come and say the old testament, it's so nasty and mean and wrathful and angry, give me the New Testament because it's loving and it's Jesus and it's soft. You don't understand. If it's true that the love and the mercy of God ratchets up in the New Testament, then it's also true that the wrath of God ratchets up in the New Testament as well, because you don't even get the doctrine of hell until you get to Jesus. Jesus is almost exclusively the one that actually talks about hell. And so it's a Jesus thing. That's the first thing we have to understand. So if you like Jesus and you don't like hell, you've got to now ask yourself a question. Why? And that's the second point we got to talk about.
Mark Clark [00:09:47]:
We have to be self aware of our alternate beliefs. And what I mean by that is you don't just come into this question as a blank slate of information saying, I don't like hell just because hell is not a good idea, and I'm right about everything. The reason you don't like the idea of hell is because you already been convinced of other ideas and values from your just let's be self aware. You live in Canada. You belong to a democratic country. You're probably educated. You're a westerner. You've sat around the dinner table.
Mark Clark [00:10:18]:
You've had education. You've been watching CNN and Fox News and media, and you drive by billboards. There's a worldview that's been constructed for you. Every time you watch Grey's anatomy, every time you listen to Howard Stern, there is a worldview being constructed for you. You, that has a whole bunch of assumptions about the universe, God, yourself, humankind, reality. And all of them make you either warm to the idea of hell or actually say, you know what? I don't like the idea of hell at all. And you've got to be self aware. You at least have to be self aware to understand, what are your alternate beliefs that you bring to this question? This week, we did a staff retreat.
Mark Clark [00:10:55]:
We were up at Rockridge. One of the things was, we got in two lines as a staff, and we walked, and you would get a different partner, and you'd answer a two minute question. One of the questions was, if you could ask God one question, what would it be? And immediately, without even thinking, I looked at my partner and I said, why does hell have to be so long? I don't understand why it couldn't just last for a certain amount of time and then be done with it. Why is hell? And this wasn't even because I was preaching on hell. I didn't figure that out until the next day. I plan ahead. Don't worry. And so the reality is, it's like, why did this question bubble up in me that I would actually say I don't like? There's something about this that I don't like.
Mark Clark [00:11:34]:
Why? Let me tell you why. What I have to be honest with when I come to this question and why I naturally don't want it to be true. My father passed away when I was 15 years old. He was 47. He died of lung cancer. He didn't know Jesus. My grandfather, who I went, flew back and did his funeral a few months ago. 98 years old, he died.
Mark Clark [00:11:54]:
He didn't know Jesus, my family member. I mean, we're talking about, these are. This is my father, my biological dad, my grandfather, like the kind, the people who, when I look in my kids eyes, I can see them. If the doctrine of hell is real, then my father is there, my grandfather is there. I can't. I can't. There's no use saying they're not. If I want to take the words of Jesus as real, if I want to take the Bible as an authority in my life rather than whatever worldview I can just come up with in my mind, this is a very real question.
Mark Clark [00:12:28]:
And honestly, it makes me. Me doubt, and it makes me wonder, and it makes me tremble, and it should. You, too. And so this is a real question for me. And I. And that's why I see I have this alternate belief over here that I don't want it to be true. And so I move away from it. But I gotta be honest with it.
Mark Clark [00:12:52]:
I gotta be honest with why I come to the question and immediately want to get away from it. It's because it's my family. It's because it's my dad. What are the things in your life that have created alternate beliefs that shade you away from this question being true. You got to dig down deep and figure out what those are. Here's a third thing. To say that hell is not so much a doubt as much as it's a repulsion for most of us. It's not like you can quantify that hell doesn't exist.
Mark Clark [00:13:18]:
It's not like quantum mechanics. It's not like a historical thing that you can go in and say, I don't believe in hell because of this or because of this or because of this. You don't believe in hell because you're repulsed by it, because it. It doesn't feel right. But here's what's dangerous about that. What feels right and good is not the best way to figure out what's true and what is right about the universe. You know that just because you're repelled by an idea doesn't make it false. There's a lot of things in life that don't feel good, but they're the right things.
Mark Clark [00:13:50]:
I don't know if you've ever fired anyone. Firing people's not fun. The first time I fired anyone. I'm a lover, right? I like to talk, and I like to talk a lot of. So when you fire someone, you're kind of not allowed to talk a lot because there's, like, legal things at stake. But I'm in the room, and it's like, you're fired. And all I want to start doing is going, now, let me tell you why. And what are we going to do? And, hey, I want to be friends.
Mark Clark [00:14:11]:
Let's go for coffee tonight, and da da da da. Let's chat. Let's chat it up. That's what I want to do. But all you can do is go. You're fired. Why? And so what happens is people, what are you talking about? And they get angry and they get mad, and they leave. And all I want to do is now it doesn't feel good to fire people, but sometimes it's the right thing to do.
Mark Clark [00:14:31]:
Right? And then what about the flip side? There's some things in life that feel amazing. Adultery. I was watching the founder of www.adultery.com, and he was talking about how adultery is amazing. It's fun. It's a thrill ride. You get all kinds of different. You romantic, you get connected. And no one should put the restraints on themselves not to sleep with whomever they want.
Mark Clark [00:15:03]:
We need to embrace this as a culture and leave all our old past where you just marry one person and stay with them. What kind of slavery do you want to live in adultery is fun and everyone should try it. But no, it feels good to commit adultery. But nobody would say it's right. No culture would say it's right. Because it feels good doesn't make it right. And when something feels wrong, it doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong, it just means you don't like it. But that's not a logical reason not to believe it.
Mark Clark [00:15:37]:
So you've got to push in now and go, what are the reasons that I actually have denied this in my life? So first thing is it's a repulsion. It's not even necessarily a doubt. So question why you have the repulsion, because that doesn't necessarily mean that it's not true. Secondly, here's the object now, these are the four objections to hell that I had to work through when I became a Christian, when I was 1718 years old, and the objections that are on people's minds. The first one is that it's a repulsion, I don't like it. The second doubt is that hell is unjust. Right. Hell is unjust.
Mark Clark [00:16:08]:
That's the objection that people have on the ground. It's not just for God to punish people. We live a certain. The punishment doesn't fit the crime. We live a certain certain lifestyle, we live it for a certain amount of time and then God punishes people. Here's what we've got to understand. The problem with this kind of thinking is that when you get outside of the western world, people don't think like that because the rest of the world, and I've said this before many times, but the rest of the world deals with real life where take, see, you and I sit around and we say it's not right for God to judge people in hell. It's not right for.
Mark Clark [00:16:42]:
But that really is because you and I sit around at Starbucks and drink lattes and we're all comfortable in our air conditioned homes and our heated homes, driving our nice cars, and we like to wax eloquently as we read Kierkegaard on what God is allowed to do and what God is not allowed to do. But you go into 90% of the world who doesn't have that luxury, who? The village in Africa or the Middle east or India, where somebody, a group of Mendez just came in and took ten year old girls and put them into sex slavery and killed the women. And then you go and ask those families, oh, don't worry about it, here's what God's going to do. In the end, universalism is true because that's more palatable to the western mind. Everybody's going to go to heaven in the end. Isn't that the better way to think of God? Ask the guy who just lost a ten year old daughter to sex slavery and his wife to murder and torture. Don't worry about it. All those guys that got set free, and they'll never see any kind of worldly justice.
Mark Clark [00:17:40]:
Don't worry. We're all going to be singing Kumbaya together in heaven and holding hands. You think they lose a moment of sleep over the idea that a just God will bring judgment on those men? See, that's how the rest of the world lives. Now, the question is, see, most cultures, they would say, I won't worship God unless there's judgment, unless God is going to bring judgment down on wrongdoing, on the Hitlers and the Stalins and the Mussolinis and the rapists and the murderers. You're telling me God's not going to bring any justice to them, then that God is not worth worshiping? But somewhere we flip it because we live. Here's what Miroslav Volf said. He's a philosopher, lived in Croatia, watched family and friends murdered and killed. He said this.
Mark Clark [00:18:28]:
It takes the quiet of a suburban home for the birth of the thesis of God's refusal to judge. In a scorched land soaked in the blood of the innocent, it will invariably die. And as one watched it die, one will do well to reflect about many other pleasant captivities of the liberal mind. The idea that we could just sit and judge, that God is going to judge, that we're not going to take that idea, we're not going to take that doctrine for ourselves. Everyone goes to heaven in the end. Listen, ask, um. Ask a muslim and a jew how excited they are that everyone's just going to go to heaven when they die. And all the grandparents and the friends and the history that they lost their lives fighting for truth and monotheism and election, and the idea that this land wasn't yours and I'm going to fight.
Mark Clark [00:19:18]:
Don't worry, everyone. We're all just going to be in heaven. Don't worry about all that stuff that your parents died for. It was all false anyway. God's just going to bring everybody to heaven. Ask people who actually live in the midst of pain and awfulness. But it does take a suburban life to come up with the idea that hell would somehow be unjust. And here's my point.
Mark Clark [00:19:37]:
Think about the presupposition that you have. Think about the assumption that you have that hell would be unjust and just push back against it for a second and recognize that. Be very careful when you read the Bible and it says something that you don't like, you have to understand what the beautiful part of this is. As christians we come under the Bible and the authority of it, right? Last week I talked about why the Bible is legitimate, why scholars look in at the gospels and they go, the gospels just ring true. There's not, see skeptics come at the Gospels and they're like, you know, you can't take this in authority in your life because it was just made up by the early church. And then you actually read the gospels and you're like, if the early church made this stuff up, they did an awful job because they look dumb every single time. The early church, if Peter made up Christianity and just wrote it down, he looks like an idiot half the time Peter does. And Jesus, you don't write down the kinds of things that you write about the gospels have about Jesus because you're trying to prove to everybody that he's God.
Mark Clark [00:20:29]:
So 1 minute you're like, jesus is God, Jesus is God. And the next minute someone walks up to him and goes, hey, do you know when you're coming back? He goes, I don't have a clue. And they're like, but don't you know everything? Aren't you omniscient? He goes, oh yeah, I made the world. So when are you coming back? I don't know. The father knows. Don't put that in there. It's going to confuse everybody. He's on the cross, he says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? After 16 chapters of arguing that he is God, why is he talking to himself? Don't confuse everybody putting in that nonsense.
Mark Clark [00:21:04]:
Don't let women be the first ones. Don't put in counterproductive content. Don't do the things. And the gospel writers just go, oh, by the way, that's just how it happened. It's just what he said. He walks into a town and he drowns 2000 pigs, throws demons into them. He drank like he doesn't like drown them like this. The demons go in and drowns them.
Mark Clark [00:21:25]:
And don't put that in there because all the people who love animals are going to be mad at Jesus. Don't put that in there. It makes them look bad. Don't put them in the garden saying, if you could take this cup from me, I wish you would because I'm terrified and I'm sweating blood right now. That's not how heroes die. Heroes are like William Wallace and they go to bat and they never blink, but they put it in there and you look it up and every scholar goes, this is not whitewashed. This is not mythology. This is like, this just happened like this.
Mark Clark [00:21:54]:
Now, you take an authority like that and you go, okay, now I'm reading this Bible and it's informing me that hell's an idea. Just is an idea. The wrath of God's an idea. Here's why I don't have the luxury to just turn away from it and say, no, it's not. Because here's what should terrify you. You and I are such a product of our cultural moment. Be very careful to not be such a product of your cultural moment that you deny something that's been an authority for 2000 years. See, Christianity connects itself to this metanarrative which transcends every cultural moment.
Mark Clark [00:22:27]:
So we tap into, we say, here's what gets to define truth. Here's the great thing about that. Here's the freeing part. Now, you get to think, not in your matrix of a 21st century Canadian educated the way you are. See, listen to this. And I've given this illustration before. My grandmother, when I would go over to her house, she. We would all agree our grandparents say the craziest stuff, right? Like, our grandparents say stuff.
Mark Clark [00:22:50]:
Some of you are like, what are you talking about? It's like, yeah, that's you, right? So I'd go over to my grandparents house and I'm like, I'm lucky I didn't bring my friend of another race, grandma cheapers. What are you saying? We all know our grandparents said crazy stuff, believed crazy stuff because they were raised in a different era where people actually like value. Like today. Like, my grandma would be like, holding buttons and making sure she kept a hold of elastics. I'm like, who cares? I'll just go buy 1000 at Costco. It's like, yeah, but you don't have money. That's okay. Credit card.
Mark Clark [00:23:27]:
It's just a different game. Now. Here's the reality, though. If you are such a product of your cultural moment, one day you and I are going to be our grandparents and we're going to believe stuff that our grandkids and our great grandkids are going to look at us right now. The things that you think are cutting edge, the things that you think are cool, your great grandkids are going to look at you and go, they're nuts. Don't go talk to Grandpa. He's gone off. He believes X.
Mark Clark [00:23:55]:
And it's like, why does he believe x, man? Because he was watching the news in 2017, and that's what they. That's how they talked. That's what they believed. Be very careful that you don't let your cultural moment overtake something that actually transcends culture. And that's what, as a Christian, you've got to submit to. You've got to go, okay? I have to be self aware enough to know that the Bible actually is my authority right now. And so maybe, just maybe, our cultural moment is not the preeminent decider on what is right and just for the cosmos. Now, thirdly, here's another objection.
Mark Clark [00:24:31]:
Isn't hell overkill? And what I mean by that is, some people look at hell and they say it's absolute overkill. A person lives and sins for 80 years, and then they get punished forever. But here's what you and I have to understand, that a punishment is not based on how long it takes for someone to commit a crime. A punishment is based on the weightiness of the crime. What I mean is, it could take you 7 seconds to murder someone. You don't go to jail for 7 seconds. You go to jail for life. Or sometimes we take your life.
Mark Clark [00:25:02]:
Why? Because you murdered a person. So here's the scale. Because there is a scale of essence. And what you and I, as a culture do is we punish people based on the sin against some kind of value, integrity, personage, and essence of the person being sinned against. Now, here's what I mean. If I'm driving in my car and I hit a cat on the way home today, all right, praise God. Let's say I hit a cat and a neighbor walks out and we see a dead cat on the ground, what is that neighbor gonna say? They're gonna go, oh, man, you killed a cat. And I'm like, yeah, kind of tried to.
Mark Clark [00:25:38]:
Cause they're demons. All right? If you've been around village, me and cats don't work out very well. So demon cat got hit by my car. I didn't mean to kill the demon cat, but it's dead. Is that guy gonna call the cops? Yes or no? No, it's a dead cat. Sorry. Shoot. Can I bury in your backyard? Done.
Mark Clark [00:26:00]:
Now, tomorrow, I'm driving, and I hit a person. 20 years old. Bam. On the ground. Dead neighbor comes out. What are we gonna do? Is he gonna call the cops? Probably. Probably not. Just gonna let me go.
Mark Clark [00:26:14]:
Hey, let's not talk about this. Let's put him in your backyard right not gonna happen. Not gonna happen. I hit, I drive over a spider, that guy's not even coming out. Cuz it don't matter because every creature has a value and they're all on a scale. And what we gotta understand is when you say to yourself, but I sinned for 80 years, ergo I shouldn't go to hell forever. You're missing the point. That the person you're sinning against.
Mark Clark [00:26:46]:
See, here's the thing. My kids, they sin all the time. And the reality is, my six year old recently was sitting at the table, I'm like, eat carrots. And she's like, I'm not eating carrots, dad. I eat what I want. I'm like, zah, all right. I'm like, okay, you're going up to your bedroom. And my wife says it's got to be the same amount of minutes that they're all as old as they are.
Mark Clark [00:27:06]:
So I don't know. In my world, I'm like, 40 minutes. She's like, she's six. You get six minutes. So boom, put her on her little Barbie chair, shut the door, click. Six minutes. I wait, she cries. Now, why? Because she offended me.
Mark Clark [00:27:22]:
I'm her father, right? They only call me father, right? None of this daddy nonsense. You call me father, all right? Around the dinner table. Yes, father. All right, now you offended father. You get six minutes. If you did something to your sister, I'd probably say, knock it off. Why? Because she offended an authority that has an essence and a value in relationship to her that is different. And the weightiness of the crime is based on that.
Mark Clark [00:27:46]:
See, here's the issue. First, you offend an infinite eternal person like God, who is the weightiest. The punishment, actually, for it to be just has to be measured out based on that scale. Ergo, it's forever. But secondly, here's the assumption. The assumption when you say someone sinned for 80 years, and then they go on and they say, is that they stop sinning when they go to hell. But the reality is, is over and over again, the stories that Jesus tells about hell. Luke 16, he tells the story of, about a guy who goes to heaven and a guy who goes to hell, and the one in heaven can't get over to hell, and the one in hell can't get over to heaven.
Mark Clark [00:28:19]:
And the reality is, the fascinating part that scholars point out is the guy who lives in hell never asks to get out of hell and go over to heaven. He's sinning, and he continues to sin in hell, and he continues to do the one thing that would keep him there forever, which is not believe in Jesus as lord, savior, and treasure of his life. There's no indicator that he stops sinning. This sin continues. And so you and I have to understand that it's an ongoing thing that we did based on our free will, and it's not a free will decision that happened once. It's not like you get a test and you say, heaven or hell. See if that was the case. That's like kids around the campfire, heaven or hell? Who's gonna go, I want hell? Nobody.
Mark Clark [00:29:01]:
They're gonna say, okay, if this is an option, heaven. But the reality is, it doesn't work like that. It's actually way more gracious than that. It's that every day you get up, you get that choice. Every decision you make in life is that choice. Every decision you make when you stand up from these seats and leaves either gets you on a trajectory toward heaven or a trajectory where you're actually denying Jesus. And when you deny Jesus enough in life, hell is simply the eternal echo of that decision that you made a million times in your life. It's not just once.
Mark Clark [00:29:31]:
It's not just you came to church one time and you got something and you denied it or you took it. It's not that you went to camp and you heard it and you denied it or you took it. It's when you wake up tomorrow morning when God, by his grace, lets the sun come up on you. That's another day for you to make a decision toward Jesus and not away from him. But if you continue to make the decision away from him, hell is where you end up. Da Carson puts it this way. Hell is not a place where people are consigned because they were pretty good people who didn't believe the right stuff for their 80 years. They're consigned there first and foremost because they defy their maker and want to be at the center of the universe.
Mark Clark [00:30:08]:
Hell is not filled with people who've already repented. Only God isn't gentle enough or good enough to let them out. It's filled with people who, for eternity, still want to be the center of the universe. What is God to do? If he says it doesn't matter to him, then God is no longer a God. To be admired for him to act in any way in the face of such blatant. Any other way in the face of such blatant defiance would be to reduce God himself. This is what he does. He allows.
Mark Clark [00:30:31]:
It's the great GK testers and said, hell is the great monument to human freedom, where sooner or later God just says, okay, I'll let you do what you want to do. You don't want me part of your life, then I'm not going to be part of your life. Here's the fourth question before we wrap up, and I'll pray for us. The fourth question is, isn't hell a torture chamber? Lots of people come at hell and they say, I can't believe in hell because it's torture. It's fire. It's Jesus. Of course. He used the image of fire weeping and gnashing of teeth, utter darkness.
Mark Clark [00:30:57]:
Here's what you and I have to understand. When Jesus, when the Bible talks like that, it's apocalyptic language. It's metaphorical language. All right? The Bible has this genre called apocalyptic, which is basically, you go to Ezekiel, you go to Isaiah, you go to all the Old Testament prophets. They talked about fire, because fire in the Bible is an image of God's judgment. It's not necessarily a literal image. It's a metaphorical image of a meaning of a purpose. It's a pointer toward the kind of psychological, emotional, spiritual darkness and judgment that is going to fall on a person.
Mark Clark [00:31:31]:
Nt Wright puts it this way. He says, the different layers of meaning and vision literature of this type demand to be heard in their fullness, not flattened out into a single level of meaning. If this had been noted a century ago, biblical scholarship could have been spared many false trails. Apocalyptic language uses complex and highly colored metaphors in order to describe one event in terms of another. Indeed, it is not easy to see what better language system could have been chosen. The metaphorical language of apocalyptic invests history with theological meaning. Here's the difference. You read junior Tolkien differently than you read the newspaper.
Mark Clark [00:32:03]:
If I sit down, I'm reading my daughter right now, my eleven year old daughter, lord of the Rings. All right, so we're going through that thing, and there's orcs, all right? These, like, with their teeth, and they kill people. There's the Nazgul, these dark riders who ride the horses and fire out of their face, all right? Now, if I'm sitting there reading it, she's like, dad, are these things real? I'd be like, yeah, totally. They're real. She ain't gonna sleep. The Nazgul can come in and get you at night, honey. Now, if I can't make the switch in my brain to go, I'm reading a fantasy literature right now. And when I read fantasy literature, it's not like I'm reading the newspaper.
Mark Clark [00:32:39]:
So what does it mean then? See, every single symbol, every idea is actually pointing toward a reality. And here's the difference. This is what Tim Keller says. He says all descriptions and depictions of heaven and hell in the Bible are symbolic and metaphorical. Each metaphor suggests one aspect of the experience of hell. For example, fire tells us of the disintegration, while darkness tells us of the isolation. Having said that does not at all imply that heaven or hell themselves are metaphors. And that's a key distinction.
Mark Clark [00:33:06]:
They're very much realities, but all language about them is elusive, metaphorical, impartial. See, the minute, if I'm talking to my buddy at the coffee shop and he says, so is fire literal? Are people going to actually burn? I sometimes say, well, based on the genre, probably not of literature, probably not in the same way that Hebrews says that God is an all consumer consuming fire, he's not literally a fireball. In the same way where Jesus in revelation 19 comes down and he has a sword coming out of his mouth, he probably doesn't actually have like a short between his teeth. Like, hey, everyone, how are you doing? I'm glad to be back. That's not how it works. In the same way that Jesus in revelation four and five is a lamb, you're not going to get to heaven. And Jesus has 4ft and hooves and a woolly coat, all of these are pictures and images. So then people go, oh, phew, good, there's no fire.
Mark Clark [00:33:58]:
And it's like, whoa, hold on a second. That's not what I'm saying. Because the symbol is pointing to something that might be worse. See, here's the reality. Symbols are very powerful things. If I have a, if you, if I, if I. If you're walking along a mall and you see a little yellow stand and it has a guy slipping, right? And you know, okay, I can't go near that. You might look at that picture and go, well, that looks brutal, that looks difficult.
Mark Clark [00:34:27]:
That looks like it would hurt that man mid slip. But then you actually come by five minutes later and slip on it and crack your head. What's worse, the reality is worse than the picture. When, when we think of. I used to, growing up in Ontario, there was those green boxes and there was that guy getting electrocuted on them, like. And I used to stay away from the green box because while the picture was bad, the reality was way worse. See, symbols in the Bible are pointing you towards something that's far worse. See, fire is all we could come up with because we think of God's judgment.
Mark Clark [00:35:03]:
Listen, if I just said to you, here's a wedding ring, it's just a symbol. Don't worry about it. And it's just a wedding, so, okay, who cares? It's just a symbol. I'm walking around, a hot girl comes up to me in the mall, oh, this? No, don't worry about it. It's just a symbol. That's not the way it works. Is my marriage more or less than my ring? Is it more or less than my ring? It's more. It's deeper, it's more profound.
Mark Clark [00:35:34]:
The ring is just a pointer. It can't really capture it. And so here's the essence of what I want to say to you, whether there's actual fire in hell or not. Listen, the point of it is Jesus is saying, weeping and gnashing of teeth, fire worm never dies. Listen to me. It's the worst. It's the worst. You would not want your worst enemy to go there.
Mark Clark [00:35:59]:
It's isolation and separation. And Jesus gives this image in Luke 16 where he's telling the story of the guy who separated from heaven. And the guy cries out and he says, so you see, here's the question. Why is hell the way it is? Why the agony? Why the suffering? Why the pain? That's the question that goes, why did God make it like this? Right there, there's an assumption. He didn't make it like that. It's naturally like that. And here's what I mean. In Matthew 25, Jesus says, when he's giving the sheep and the goats, he says, goats, you will go to depart from me.
Mark Clark [00:36:37]:
I never knew you. And then he says, you will go to fire and so on. And then he says, the place that was prepared for the devil and his angels. Here's what you and I have to understand. Hell was never made for people to go there. It was made for the devil and his angels to be judged there. So what is it then? It's. Here's what naturally hell is.
Mark Clark [00:36:59]:
You remove the one person in the universe who gives you. See, every good thing that you have in life comes from God. He's the source of it. Sex, art, water, music, air, warmth. Every good gift comes from God to you. So then Jesus tells the story of a guy, and he says, can you send someone to just drop water? Just give me just a drop of water. And they say, sorry, can't. Why? Because you've removed the one person in the universe who would give you water or joy or sex or art or music.
Mark Clark [00:37:37]:
And so here's the reality of what hell is. You take away the one who provides the common graces of your life, of course that's gonna be the reality of it. So Cs Lewis puts it this way, there is no other way to the happiness for which we were made. Good things as well as bad are caught by a kind of infection. If you want to get warm, you must stand near the fire. If you want to be wet, you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to or even into the thing that has them. They're not a sort of prize which God just hands out to anyone.
Mark Clark [00:38:14]:
They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very center of reality. If you're close to it, the spray will wet you. If you're not, you will remain dry. Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever? Once a man is separated from God, what can he do but wither and die? See, here's the reality. If you choose a million times in your life to say, I don't want anything to do with God, this is where it goes. Hell is the place where that goes. That isolation, that separation, that suffering, that anxiety. But it's you, it's not him.
Mark Clark [00:38:48]:
It's the ultimate reality of thy will be done. Right? There's only two things that are going to happen. You're going to say to God, thy will be done. Or God's going to say to you, your will be done. That's it. That's the see, hell is the place where the lie in the garden that we can live without God is showing to be false. You can't live with it. You can't.
Mark Clark [00:39:05]:
It turns out you can't because every good and beautiful thing came from him. But hell is the place where God goes. Goes like, we're parents. So when my kids are small, I force my will upon them, don't I? Like, literally, my kid goes to touch something. I'm like, don't. They're like, why? Cause you're gonna die. It's like kids, when they're young, are just constructed to try to kill themselves at all times, right? They'll just grab knives and be like, hey, can I use this? It's like, no, my kids would have if I just let them do whatever they want. Yesterday my kids like, can I have ice? I'm like, it's eight in the morning.
Mark Clark [00:39:40]:
Yeah, but I know we can have ice cream, we can have candy, we can have sour kids. If I just let them go, they'd be have diabetes and be dead by 30. But it's our job at that point to say, no, I'm going to protect you. I'm going to protect you. But when my kids are 25, what do I got to do? At that point? I got to say, you're free, man. It's your will. It's not mine. That's what good parenting is.
Mark Clark [00:40:05]:
God at some point looks at all of us and goes, what do you want? You want to get away from me? Fine. This is the great monument to that. But here's the reality. No one is a disciple of Jesus long term, in a loving, amazing way, by running away from hell. Here's what you got to do. The beauty of understanding hell is that it shows you what God. What it costs God to actually buy you and purchase you the value that you have. See, if you eliminate hell from your doctrine, what you don't understand is what Jesus went through for you on the cross when he said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He's getting cut off and separated from God in that moment.
Mark Clark [00:40:48]:
He's going through hell so that you don't have to. He took it on himself. That's how valuable you are to him. And you take that away. You don't understand your value. You don't understand your intrinsic worth. You don't understand the depth of suffering that God himself actually went through to purchase you back. You get a sentimental God who just does some stuff.
Mark Clark [00:41:13]:
He likes everybody. He's like some old uncle who just likes to play checkers and play in the garden. He's not mad at anybody. He doesn't have any anger at all. But he does have anger. But Jesus took it on for you. That's what the cross is. He took on the hell that you and I deserve so that not one person listening to this right now, not one person who just heard everything I just said or half of what I just said actually has to go there.
Mark Clark [00:41:39]:
You put your faith in Jesus, who went there for you, who took the wrath on himself for you and then rose again to give you life. Here's my fear that the reason you won't believe in this is because you're stuck in your alternate beliefs and you think that's really freedom. And you say, I don't want to look old fashioned. I don't want to actually accept a doctrine that makes me look. That's your slavery. You're just reading the teleprompter of a culture that's telling you what you're supposed to believe and not believe and what is acceptable and not acceptable, this thing has to shake us. I spoke at a funeral yesterday, right at the end. And after the whole thing was over, it was for a 24 year old kidde.
Mark Clark [00:42:20]:
I looked at this packed room of a thousand people, and I just said, listen, his life needs to scandalize you. If you're sitting here and you don't know anything about Jesus, everything about this kid's life, that he trusted Christ with his life, not because it was sentimentally true, but because it actually made sense, it was rational, it was reasonable, it was logical. And he gave his life to Jesus and lived for him. And if you're sitting here and you just think it's good to come to a funeral and cry a little bit and go home and forget about it, you've got to let his life disrupt you, let it keep you awake tonight and ask the question, if he really believed this stuff, why don't I? If he really lived this stuff, why don't I? And don't just get up and leave and forget about it. That's something I'm never going to believe because it sounds crazy. The authority of Jesus actually compels us to get scandalized by it. Confront your own doubts. Be skeptical of your own skepticism.
Mark Clark [00:43:12]:
Open yourself up to actually God might be speaking to you through even this weird, odd, repulsive doctrine of your own value and worth in the eyes of God. This is what he did for you. Let me pray for us, Father. It's not easy to understand all the time why you do certain things the way you do them. But as Theos talked about, it is it has the support of scripture, it has the support of Jesus history, and even logic and reason. I pray you would move and do your work among us, and let us listen and have the courage to respond and believe and trust in Jesus and all you've done for us. In your good name we pray. Amen.