“Following Jesus amid Objections: Hell”

(Matthew 13:47-52)

We Must Have Judgment Day

“I can’t believe God would judge people to hell.” So goes the sentiment of most

westerners. Whereas most people do believe in an after-life and they see Hell as

separation from God, according to a 2003 study by Barna Research Group only 31%

believe it is “an actual place of torment and suffering where people’s souls go after

death.”

“Jesus doesn’t teach about Hell. He only talks about loving each other.” On the

contrary, read the Gospels. 70% of what we discover about Hell from the Bible comes

from Jesus’ lessons. Our Lord taught that when He returns, He will “come in the glory of

His Father with His angels; and will then recompense every man according to his deeds”

(Matthew 16:27). In Mark 9:44 Jesus warns that the fire of hell is never quenched.

Matthew 25:41 He calls Hell “eternal.”

Dorothy Sayers warned, “One cannot get rid of it (the concept of a literal Hell)

without tearing the New Testament to tatters. We cannot repudiate Hell without

altogether repudiating Christ.” Tim Keller adds, “If Jesus, the Lord of Love and Author of

Grace spoke about hell more often, and in a more vivid, blood-curdling manner than

anyone else, it must be a crucial truth.”

Ultimately God must be a god of judgment. Only the Western mind born of ease

and tolerance can conceive of a God who sits on the sidelines doing nothing about sin

and call Him “good.”

1
 Miroslav Volf, now theology professor at Yale grew up in war torn Croatia

witnessing horrific violence in the name of religion. In his book, “Exclusion and

Embrace”, he reasons that believing in a just God of judgment is the only way to end the

cycle of cruelty. Listen to his advice:

“In a world of violence it would not be worthy of God not to wield the sword; if
God were not angry at injustice and deception and did not make the final end to
violence God would not be worthy of our worship .... My Thesis that the practice of
nonviolence requires a belief in divine vengeance will be unpopular with many
Christians, especially theologians in the West. To the person inclined to dismiss it, I
suggest imagining that you are delivering a lecture in a war zone ... Among your listeners
are people whose cities and villages have been first plundered, then burned and leveled
to the ground, whose daughters and sisters have been raped, whose fathers and
brothers have had their throats slit. The topic of the lecture: a Christian attitude toward
violence. The thesis: we should not retaliate since God is perfect non-coercive love.
Soon you would discover that it takes the quiet of a suburban home for the birth of the
thesis that human nonviolence corresponds to God's refusal to judge. In a scorched
land, soaked in the blood of the innocent, it will invariably die. And as one watches it
die, one will do well to reflect about many other pleasant captivities of the liberal mind.”

The Values and Value of the Kingdom (13:44-46)

Jesus gave up all for the value of His kingdom (v.44). Imagine you’re one of

Jesus’ disciples. He has just concluded a series of parables describing a Kingdom which

is moving in a purposeful direction to an obvious consummation. Then the Teacher

takes you aside along with the eleven other followers and explains in greater detail the

meaning of the parables. His point is that everyone will be judged by Him. “The Son of

man…will cast them into the furnace of fire; in that place there shall be weeping and

gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 13:42). But there is more He wants to tell the one “who

has ears to hear, let him hear” (v.43b).

2
 Jesus does an extraordinary thing here and on the surface He seems to not only

shift but to grind the gears. In the midst of His Hell talk our Savior tells us about the

value and values of the Kingdom.

“The Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man found

and hid; and from joy over it he goes and sells all that He has, and buys that field.”

“The Kingdom of Heaven” I take to mean the ever-expanding scores of sinners

who find the sweet truth of their deserved judgment placed on the Lord Jesus. When

Jesus speaks of His payment for the Kingdom, I think He is referring to the great cost He

offered up by giving Himself on the cross.

Romans 3:25, 26, “God put Christ forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be
received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine
forbearance he had passed over our former sins; it was to prove at the present time that
he himself is righteous and that he justifies him who has faith in Jesus.”

“God made Christ to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the
righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

“Sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin
in the flesh” (Romans 8:3).

“He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24).

“Christ also died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he
might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18).

Jesus gave up all for what His kingdom values (v.45-46). A subtle alteration

occurs in this next story: “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls,

and upon finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had, and bought

it.”

3
 This time the Kingdom of Heaven is personified and in search of a treasure. In

other words, the kingdom values something—it has an ethos. Securing the “pearl of

great price” is worth the cost of everything the merchant owns.

Dare we think of ourselves as “merchants” who so love the “pearl” that we value

it above all else?

An idol is any desire you value more than Jesus’ kingdom. Do you see what Jesus

is doing? He is answering the profoundest quandary our soul wonders about God. How

can God be loving and just at the same time? By giving His life for the “treasure in a

field” Jesus shows the value He places on His Kingdom—that’s love. And, this priceless

transaction is compelled by a Hell where there is “weeping and gnashing of teeth.” For

Jesus, there is no war between Hell and grace. Justice and mercy have perfectly kissed

in His soul.

Furthermore, because Christ gives His all for the treasure of His ever-expanding

Kingdom, how can we not live by its ethic of valuing Him as the “pearl of great price.”

Our Savior in the same breath says, “I value you more than everything so that

you can value me above all else.” Has a greater offer of freedom from the bondage of

loving created things ever been tendered?

The only alternative to a Kingdom which doesn’t have Christ valuing us as His

greatest trove and us treasuring Him with supreme worth is Hell.

The grandest gift we receive from our God of judgment is the joy of savoring

eternity. We have been freed to value His Kingdom as a treasure worth more than life

itself. Therein we find real purpose and meaning.

4
 If we are to be like Jesus and value Him and His kingdom as He values us and the

Kingdom, we must lose our life to gain life. J. C. Ryle called anything less than such

surrender idolatry.

“Are we honest and sincere in our professed desire to be true Christians? Have
we given up all our idols? Is there no secret sin that we are silently clinging to, and
refusing to give up? Is there no thing or person that we are privately loving more than
Christ and our souls? These are questions that ought to be answered. The true
explanation of the unsatisfactory state of many hearers of the Gospel, is spiritual
idolatry. We need not wonder that John says, ‘Keep yourselves from idols’” (1 John
5:21).

Hell and the Kingdom (13:47-52)

Valuing Jesus as our pearl of great price, because He has valued our soul as His

greatest treasure does something of great wonder to us. Our passions and His

affections ring in splendid harmony. Justice and mercy kiss where His Spirit bears

witness with ours. To us Hell will illicit a blood-earnest witness, exalt Justice and

transform us into students of the Word and culture.

Intensifies our blood-earnestness for winning people through a kingdom heart

(v.47-48). I say “blood-earnestness” because that’s how these fishermen would have

casted their nets. They would have done so as a means for livelihood. Fishing was not

sport, it was life along the Sea of Galilee where men were more profane than polite.

As a youth pastor I discovered the difference between fishing as a sport and

fishing for the sake of hunger. At 24 years of age I challenged our young men to rough it

with me in the Ozark woods of Northern Arkansas. Instead of bringing a cooler of food

for dinner, I decided we’d fish for our supper. Six hungry teenage boys with growling

stomachs motivated a blood-earnest for more than the single, 8 inch sun perch.

5
 A Jesus follower who values Jesus as his pearl of great price will seek to win souls

to the Kingdom with a blood-earnestness. But alas in the Suburbs our churches brim

with Sportsman disciples. We hold our faith in one hand and idols in the other. When

crisis requires both hands which do we drop?

Exalts God’s holiness as the only value determining man’s eternal fate (v.49-50).

The distinction between those cast into the fire from the others is one of character and

justice. “Take out the wicked from among the righteous.”

Interestingly enough, the vast majority of Westerners believe in Heaven though

they don’t think there is a real Hell. Most Americans do not expect to experience Hell

first-hand: just one-half of 1% expects to go to Hell upon their death.

“Weeping and gnashing of teeth”—that’s a vivid description by Jesus of Hell. It

indicates not only physical but also great emotional suffering. Voltaire wrote, “Paradise

was made for tender hearts; hell, for loveless hearts.”

The ultimate judgment according to Jesus will be when He says to those who’ve

not believed in Him, “Depart from me” (Matthew 25:41). Hell is outer and utter

darkness (Matthew 8:12; 22:13; 25:30). Its fire pictures a continual state of

disintegration. Why? It is because God isn’t there.

Life’s clearest truism is that the further we drift from God and the more self-

centered we become the further our soul comes apart. That’s the reason Jesus’ gross

analogy of Hell as bodily decomposition in burning heaps of refuse and unclaimed

corpses outside of the city is the most apt visage of an eternity stricken from God’s

presence (compare Matthew 5:22 and “gehenna” with Mark 9:44 and “their worm is

6
never quenched”). The Sovereign Maker who holds all of creation together (Colossians

1:17) will not be in Hell. Sanity’s glue will be absent and the delicate complexities which

comprise psyches will fall apart. God must be present but He won’t be.

C. S. Lewis pictured Hell as a world locked from the inside. J. I. Packer writes,

“Scripture sees hell as self-chosen . . . Hell appears as God's gesture of respect for

human choice. All receive what they actually chose, either to be with God forever,

worshipping him, or without God forever, worshipping themselves.”

Transforms Jesus followers into “scribes” who use life to speak and live the truth

(v.51-52). Perhaps, more than any other role in Judaism a “scribe” was a perfect blend

of learner and teacher. Scribes gave themselves to learn the Lord’s truth and then

taught them in far less formal settings than did priests. Originally, they were meant to

be “everyday” men.

Ezra was such a man. “This Ezra…was a scribe skilled in the law of Moses…the

hand of the LORD his God was upon him. For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of

the LORD and to practice it, and to teach His statutes and ordinances in Israel” (Ezra 7:6,

10).

Do you hear what Jesus is telling us? His followers who cherish Him above all

else will be transformed by a hope for divine and ultimate justice into passionate, heart-

broken scribes.

The “head of the household” in ancient times led a family which included not

only a man’s own children, but their children as well. Cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces and

nephews—extended family members generally lived in community together.

7
 Because economies were not based on weekly or monthly paychecks, but

primarily were subsistence-based the dispersal of stored goods became a matter of

wisdom and patience—life and death.

Jesus-followers must become people who know the times in which they live.

Because of the reality of Hell and Heaven, we must be “scribes” of our culture to wisely

dole out both “old” and “new.” Yet, never as distant elitists we serve as family

members, part of our community, “one of the guys.” We are to be household heads—

fathers and grandfathers—who have a family heart for those we serve. Listen to the

passion of the Apostle Paul,

“Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade men. For the love of
Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He
died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who
died and rose again on their behalf” (2 Corinthians 5:11, 14-15).

We’ve Already Had Judgment

We have to have an ultimate judgment day because otherwise all those wronged

would be justified in taking up the sword. Without a final Judgment God can never

dissuade the generations of bitter, ethnic violence by claiming, “Vengeance is Mine; I

will repay.”

For those of us in comfort, judgment day tells us that life has an ultimate

purpose. Without the judgment of God, why should we not simply be a standard to

ourselves? We’d be like the main character in Arthur Miller’s play “After the Fall” who

worked his whole life to be a better man. Tim Keller in a sermon from John 12 cites the

forty-something professional filled with emptiness over the possibility that God isn’t

Judge. Miller’s character named “Quentin” cries that life is nothing more than

8
“pointless litigation before an empty bench.” That there is no Judge might feel like it

liberates us, but it will also send us into a spiral of despair. Life has no meaning.

We have to have judgment. But, we can’t. We mustn’t. For if God be Judge He

who looks on the heart will find us wanting.

Keller’s sermon continues and reasons that the beauty and joy of being a Jesus

follower is that we’ve already had our judgment day.

The Heidleberg Confession #52 asks, “What comfort is it to thee that ‘Christ shall
come again to judge the quick and the dead’?”

“Answer: That in all my sorrows and persecutions, with uplifted head I look for
the very same person, who before offered himself for my sake, to the tribunal of God,
and has removed all curse from me, to come as judge from heaven: (a) who shall cast all
his and my enemies into everlasting condemnation, (b) but shall translate me with all his
chosen ones to himself, into heavenly joys and glory.”