Category: Devotional

Devotional thoughts for my benefit and yours from here, there, and everywhere

Jesus’ Demands — Fear Him Who Can Destroy Both Soul And Body in Hell (#11)

~ Bob Hayton ~ 4 Comments

Click to orderNote: these are devotional posts based on John Piper’s new book What Jesus Demands from the World.

This post is number 11, because I started the series a while ago. If you like this post, check out the other posts in the series. But most importantly get the book (it’s also available to read online)!

Now, on the heels of demand #10 Rejoice and Leap for Joy, comes a more startling and sobering demand…

Demand #11 — Fear Him Who Can Destroy Both Soul And Body in Hell

And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. (Matthew 10:28)

But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me. (Luke 19:27)

Then he will say to those on his left, “depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” . . . And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. (Matthew 25:41, 46)

The Awful Place Called Hell

It’s fashionable these days to downplay Hell. Many “evangelical” leaders are denying its existence, suggesting it is not eternal, or claiming there is no actual fire in Hell. Some claim it is a state of mind, or that hell is on earth.

In fact, this very Sunday, on Good Morning America, I heard an interview of an influential (former?) evangelical pastor who has changed his mind about hell, claiming it is here on earth, and a mere creation of superstitious man. ABC is going to be dedicating a 20/20 special this Friday to the topic of Hell. I can already guess their conclusions!

Sadly, these same evangelical leaders claim to be following the example of Jesus. But don’t they realize that Jesus didn’t share their view of Hell? Jesus spoke of hell more than anyone else in Scripture.

He refers to it as a terrible place to be feared. A place of “outer darkness” with “weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 8:12). He describes it as a “fiery furnace”, with “unquenchable fire” (Matt. 13:41, Mark 9:44). It is the “eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt. 25:41).

And worst of all, Hell is eternal. Jesus describes it as a place of “eternal punishment”. On this point let me quote John Piper,

This last description–“eternal punishment”–is especially heartrending and fearful because it is contrasted with “eternal life.” “These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” In this contrast we hear the tragedy of loss as well as suffering and endlessness. Just as “eternal life” will be a never-ending experience of pleasure in God’s presence, so “eternal punishment” will be a never-ending experience of misery under God’s wrath (John 3:36; 5:24).

A Passive Hell ?

At this point, many a sincere believer tries to lessen the full effect of this teaching by claiming that Hell is “a mere natural consequence of bad choices”. People do consciously reject God’s free offer of salvation made in the gospel, and this choice does lead to hell. But Piper is quick to point out that such is not the whole story.

People make choices that lead to hell. But it is not the whole truth. Jesus says these choices are really deserving of hell. “Whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to [that is, guilty of, or deserving of] the hell of fire” (Matt. 5:22). That is why he calls hell “punishment” (Matt. 25:46). It is not a mere self-imposed natural consequence (like cigarette smoking leading to lung cancer); it is the penalty of God’s wrath (like a judge sentencing a criminal to hard labor).

The Biblical picture of hell, is of a just God pouring out righteous anger and wrath over sin. God sends people to hell, and Jesus is pictured in Revelation and Isaiah as the One Whose garments get stained with the blood of his enemies as He “tread(s) the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty” (Rev. 19:15b with Is. 63:3 and Rev. 14:20).

Fear, But Don’t Fear

We are to fear God as a holy Judge indeed. So is Jesus calling us to a “life of anxiety that God is angry with us and is ready to punish us at the slightest misstep”? No! Piper highlights the very next few sentences which follow on the heels of Jesus’ admonition to fear God.

. . . Fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows” (Matt. 10:29-31, emphasis added — compare also Luke 12:4-7).

Piper says,

In the same breath Jesus says, “Fear God who casts into hell” and “Do not fear because God is your Father who values you more than the sparrows and knows your smallest need.”. . . How does Jesus mean for us to experience these two truths about God–he is to be feared, and he is to be trusted? It won’t do to simply say that “fear of God” means “reverence for God” rather than “being afraid of him.” That does not fit with the words, “Fear him, who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!” (Luke 12:5) . . . The key is that God himself is the one who removes his wrath from us. Our peace does not come from our removing the God of wrath from our thinking, but from his removing his wrath from us. . . .

The Seriousness of Sin

There is a beautiful encouragement to trust God as a loving Father in this text, but there is also a serious warning about the seriousness of sin. Piper says that this demand of Jesus “teaches us to see sin as more serious than we ever dreamed”. That unforgiven sin leads to hell, makes sin serious indeed.

But I am so prone to excuse my sin, and I suspect you are too. Yet both of us enjoy casting stones at others. The key in appreciating the justness of Hell according to Piper is seeing God as He really is. Let me quote him now.

Therefore, the seriousness of sin arises from what it says about God. God is infinitely worthy and honorable. But sin says the opposite. Sin says that other things are more desirable and more worthy. How serious is this? The seriousness of a crime is determined, in part, by the dignity of the person and the office being dishonored. If the person is infinitely worthy and infinitely honorable and infinitely desirable and holds an office of infinite dignity and authority, then rebuffing him is an infinitely outrageous crime. Therefore it deserves an infinite punishment.

The Place of Fear

For us Christians, especially those of us who are conservative doctrinally, this article has so far been easy. We have applauded it from the peanut gallery. Hell is real, sinners need to fear God and accept the provisions made for them according to the Gospel. Amen.

But if you notice, Jesus is directing his remarks to his disciples. This is plain from both Matthew and Luke’s accounts. So what does this message have to speak to us?

While we don’t need to be continually fearing God as unbelievers, we do need to fear unbelief. Sin is in essence, unbelief. When we disbelieve God’s promises, we give in to the appeal of sin. The demand to fear God, is a call for us to realize how serious sin really is. Let me quote Piper at length on this point.

What then is left to fear? The answer is unbelief. For those who follow Jesus, fearing God means fearing the terrible prospect of not trusting the one who paid such a price for our peace. In other words, one of the means that God uses to keep us peacefully trusting in Jesus is the fear of what God would do to us if we did not believe. The reason we do not live in the discomfort of constant fear is because we believe. That is, we rest in the all sufficient work of Jesus and in our Father’s sovereign care. But at those moments when unbelief tempts us, a holy fear rises and warns us what a foolish thing it would be to distrust the one who loved us and gave his Son to die for our anxiety-free joy.

This message is not popular today. People would rather believe that once they commit to Christ, they are eternally secure and can coast through life. This is not necessarily true, as the abundant Scriptural warnings to persevere and “endure to the end” contest.

What trips up many on this point is that they conclude that if you believe it is potentially possible that you are not sincerely a believer, that you could possibly fall away from the faith (and thereby evidence that you never were a true believer), then the Christian life must just be all about our works. If we really have to fear God in this way, we must be continually depending on our efforts to keep believing.

It is true that some pervert the Biblical doctrine of perseverance into just such an introspective self-effort. But this is a perversion of the true doctrine. Piper says concerning fear: “This is the best effect of fear: It wakens us to our need for help and points us to the all-sufficient Redeemer, Jesus.” A true understanding of the perseverance of the saints will lead one to depend all the more on Jesus as our only sure hope of eternal life. Those who believe themselves beyond the possibility of falling (contrary to 1 Cor. 10:12), can tend to trust on their own work of believing in Christ and are tempted to not cling all the more earnestly to Christ day in and day out. For more on the idea of perseverance, check out these posts I have done on the topic.

So to conclude, we are to fear God because He can destroy us in Hell. Yet at the same time because of Jesus’ blessed sacrifice on our behalf, we don’t have to fear God as a distant and holy Judge, but we can lovingly trust him as a loving and caring Father. All praise to the Lamb for bringing us to God, and giving us such a wonderful relationship with our Heavenly Father.

—See all posts on, the Demands of JesusAddThis Social Bookmark Button

The Kingdom is Coming

~ fundyreformed ~ 5 Comments

Christ is even now on His throne ruling. His global triumph over all evil is surely coming. But the title of this post is not only addressing this wonderful theme.

Kingdom Surge is coming as well. It is a team blog headed up by yours truly which focuses on missions. We have not yet officially launched, but I thought I’d notify you all so you could see some of what I’ve been up to lately.

As we’re assembling posts in preparation of our launch in a couple weeks or so, I thought I’d post some previews. The preview I posted today centers on the glorious theme of Christ’s coming Kingdom victory. Let the words of this sentence fill you with wonder and praise this Sunday morning. May you all be blessed in your various places of worship today.

Before the return of our great King and Savior, Jesus Christ, the gospel will “surge” across the face of the earth, flooding the peoples with the knowledge of the glorious God, a knowledge they were made for, and in which is their eternal life (see John 17:3), but which they lost in the great Fall of Adam.

Powerful Preaching? — A Case Study

~ fundyreformed ~ 23 Comments

One of my favorite posts on this blog, was one I did in March 2006 on fundamentalist preaching: Stomping Toes and Stomping Souls: The Moralistic Bent to Fundamentalist Preaching. The title might overstate my case a little, but the problem is all too real.

Recently, someone posted a smart comment on that post, lamenting that I hadn’t listened to the fundamentalist sermons I heard in college. That is not the first negative comment I’ve received from that post.

It is quite polarizing, in part, I believe, due to the subject matter. Anytime someone attempts to criticize preaching or preachers, he is sure to reap righteous indignation. To an extent, this is admirable.

I may not have come across as humble enough in my first critique on this subject. I do hold strongly to my opinion on this subject, as I believe much damage is being done in the name of “powerful preaching”. In this post, I hope to provide a case study to show what exactly I mean by “moralism”, and what exactly I find problematic with fundamentalist preaching. I would encourage you to read that first post, though, as background for this one.

Thesis

Here is my primary point: preaching that majors on heaping guilt on the hearers in an attempt to motivate them to do better is not “powerful”. It is possibly moralistic, and it is likely carnal. This preaching does more harm than good. Unfortunately it is quite common in fundamentalism, although it can be found in many other circles as well.

Case Study

Here is the passage for our case study: Mark 15:32-42. We will focus on Jesus’ admonition in vs. 38: “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak.” You know the story, Jesus’ disciples had fallen asleep when they should have been praying. Jesus admonishes them to watch and pray. And yet when he returns from another prayer session, he finds the disciples asleep again.

Now let me develop 2 approaches to this passage, which might easily be found in a Sunday morning message. In comparing and contrasting these approaches, I hope my point about moralistic sermons will come home.

A Moralistic Approach

This message would major on the commands “watch and pray”. It would highlight the results of either obeying or disobeying the commands. It would imply that most or all of the listeners have failed miserably in this respect. Based on “the flesh is weak”, the message would set up the listeners to expect to have to struggle in this area. The message would end by calling the listeners to do better and pray more. People might be encouraged to come forward and make decisions to rededicate themselves to fervent prayer, or to confess their failures to pray and vow to change.

This kind of message might be labelled “toe-stomping” or “hard hitting”, as the preacher might very well drive his point home forcefully through screaming, theatrical antics, or tear-jerking illustrations. The listeners would leave the message acutely aware of their guilt and mindful of the preacher’s challenge that they watch and pray much better than they have before.

A Christ-Centered Approach

This message would again stress the commands “watch and pray”. Yet it would also give the fuller context of the passage. The disciples did not watch and pray, whereas Jesus did. Jesus would be shown to be absolutely faithful, whereas even heroes of the Christian faith, the disciples, are seen to be very weak and unfaithful. The message would stress that it is important to watch and pray, as a failure to do so leads to temptation, even as illustrated by the desertion of Christ by these very disciples. Yet the message would stress Christ’s kindhearted response to this lack of faithfulness on the disciples’ part. Rather than harshly rebuking them the second time He found them sleeping, he acknowledged their weakness. He had said the “flesh is weak”.

The message would go on to stress that our very weakness, what makes it so difficult to watch and pray, is that for which Christ died. Jesus knows we are weak, and so Jesus prays for us, even when we don’t. The ultimate victory over temptation is won because Jesus overcame the world, not because we have the innate ability to. We can win, when we depend on Christ and the victory He purchased. The message would end with a call to depend on Christ more in the area of prayer. It would encourage people to trust Jesus and His faithfulness, even as it would call on the hearers to excercise more faith in watching and praying more faithfully.

The message might not be very “hard hitting”, but it would be encouraging and uplifting. The preacher may well get excited as he proclaims Christ’s faithfulness and work on our behalf, but he would be unlikely to scream at or belittle the hearers for their lack of faithfulness in prayer. The listeners would leave the message in a thankful and worshipful state of mind, as they ponder how wonderful is Christ’s faithfulness and work on their behalf, weak and sinful though they be. They would determine to love Christ more and desire to be more faithful in their prayer lives.

I hope this case study proves helpful. I hope that preachers will aim to proclaim the glories and faithfulness of Christ more consistently. We need to realize that in every step of our Christian life we need to trust Jesus more fully. He can help us obey, and it is because of Him that we can. Believers need to be reminded of these truths. They need to be pointed to Christ and encouraged to trust in Him more. They don’t need to have guilt heaped upon them without an offer of hope. There is no hope if I have to depend on my own determination to do better. There is plenty of hope, inexhaustible hope, if I am encouraged to lean on the work Jesus has done for me.

Related Posts

Stomping Toes and Stomping Souls: The Moralistic Bent to Fundamentalist Preaching

Moralism and Christ-less Sermons

Powerful Thoughts on Preaching

Why Go to Church?

~ fundyreformed ~ 13 Comments

I’m back. We returned from a grueling 3000 mile road trip last week. It was fun, but left me worn out. I need a vacation from my vacation!

I realize I haven’t been keeping up with the blog all that much in the past few weeks. I hope to pick the plow back up this week. Unfortunately, when I returned I found out that my sidebars had vanished. Just the WordPress default sidebars are showing, all my customizations just disappeared. Hopefully I’ll be able to restore them soon.

On our trip (we drove to Pensacola, FL to see my sister-in-law graduate, and then to North Canton, OH to visit my brother’s family and my mom), we couldn’t help but notice this unusual sign on Interstate 65 a few miles north of Montgomery, AL.

This sign raises a question: why do we go to church? I, for one, don’t think the answer given on the sign is theologically correct. Before I explain my thoughts, perhaps some of my readers (assuming I still have any…) would like to weigh in on what is wrong with this sign. Or maybe you agree with its basic premise. Please, join the conversation. I’ll be posting my thoughts on this later today or else tomorrow.

Update: Here are my thoughts concerning the sign above:

My beef against the sign is that it seems to imply that one earns brownie points for going to church. If you don’t get those points, you become vulnerable to the Devil. Now it is highly probable that if one is not going to church they also are vulnerable to the devil’s attack, but such is not a direct cause and effect relationship.

Salvation from the devil comes by grace. It is only because of Jesus and His work on the cross that we have a hope of standing against the devil. Going to church and living obediently does not earn us anything. It can provide for greater assurance, and it witnesses to the genuineness of our salvation. If obedience is lacking we should have cause to doubt the legitimacy of our salvation. But in all of this we are to trust in Christ more.

Trusting and believing in Jesus is how we overcome the devil. It is true that he is seeking to devour us and is very real. The way to fight him, however, is not to grit our teeth and determine to go to church more often. Instead it is to find our hope and faith in Jesus and fly to Him for refuge.

Going to church should be something us believers LOVE to do. We should want to meet God and find more grace in the assembly of believers. We go to church because God wants us to (Heb. 10:25), and we want to obey and please Him.

Our hope should not be that we are religious people who go to church. It should not be that we have DONE anything, not good works, baptism, church membership, or even doing the “sinner’s prayer”. Our hope should be that Jesus DID it all for us, and he has caused us to love and trust Jesus alone for our only hope of salvation.

I am sure the people responsible for the sign have every good intention. I have nothing against them. I just think such a sign obscures the gospel message. If you are unsure of what the Biblical gospel is, or if you have been trusting in your own efforts to ward off Satan, please take time to follow the links near the top of my right sidebar, under the title “Good News”.

Thanks to all for the excellent interaction in the comments concerning the question “Why Go to Church?”

A Letter from the Church of Smyrna

~ fundyreformed ~ 1 Comment

I want to briefly encourage you all to read a letter from the modern-day Church of Smyrna. The letter speaks of recent persecution: a German missionary, a local Turkish  pastor and another Turkish Christian were martyred for Christ.  

Read the letter. Be challenged to pray for the persecuted church around the world. Be encouraged to see that God is presently at work redeeming a people for His name from every tongue and tribe. Be convicted of the importance of the gospel. And be shamed for your lack of dedication and committment to the cause of Christ.

May God turn our rightful shame into a determination to risk all for Jesus Christ and for the spreading of the Gospel to all peoples.