August 25, 2024
Heaven, Hell, and Everything In Between
- Matt Nickoson
Sermon Notes
“The children didn’t know if men had come to hurt or help, so they refused the ones who could save them. Might that story be a parable for humanity? The overarching message of the Bible is God’s relentless pursuit of his family.” - Max Lucado, What Happens Next: A Traveler’s Guide Through the End of This Age
Luke 16:19-21 NIV
“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.”
Luke 16:22-23 NIV
“The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side.”
Luke 16:24 NIV
“So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’”
Luke 16:25 NIV
“But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony.”
Luke 16:26 NIV
“And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’”
Luke 16:19 NASB 1995
“Now there was a rich man, and he habitually dressed in purple and fine linen, joyously living in splendor every day.”
Euphrainó (similar to English: euphoria) - properly, having a merry outlook because of feeling the sense of victory ("inner triumph").
1 Timothy 6:10 NIV
For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.
What happens when I die?
Those who love and follow Jesus will be in paradise awaiting the final judgment into Heaven.
Hebrews 9:27 NIV
Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment,
Luke 23:43 NIV
Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
2 Corinthians 5:6-8 NIV
Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. For we live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.
Those who refuse and reject Christ will be in Hades awaiting their final judgment into Hell.
Luke 16:23a NIV
“In Hades, where he was in torment…”
How long will the intermediate state last?
Matthew 25:45-46 NIV
“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
Can someone change after they are dead?
Luke 16:26 NIV
“‘And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’”
“I appreciate (Howard) Rutledge’s openness in ‘In the Presence of Mine Enemy’ where he describes the inner resources (or lack of them) from which he drew in those arduous days when life seemed so intolerable. During those longer periods of enforced reflection it became so much easier to separate the important from the trivial, the worthwhile from the waste. For example, in the past, I usually worked or played hard on Sundays and had no time for church. For years Phyllis [his wife] had encouraged me to join the family at church. She never nagged or scolded—she just kept hoping. But I was too busy, too preoccupied, to spend one or two short hours a week thinking about the really important things. Now the sights and sounds and smells of death were all around me. My hunger for spiritual food soon outdid my hunger for a steak.” — Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World
“Now I wanted to know about that part of me that will never die. Now I wanted to talk about God and Christ and the church. But in Heartbreak [the name POWs gave their prison camp] solitary confinement, there was no pastor, no Sunday-School teacher, no Bible, no hymnbook, no community of believers to guide and sustain me. I had completely neglected the spiritual dimension of my life. It took prison to show me how empty life is without God. It took the pressure of a POW camp to show Rutledge that there was a center to his private world that he had been neglecting virtually all of his life.” — Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World
Luke 16:27-28 NIV
“He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’”
Luke 16:29 NIV
“Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’”
Luke 16:30 NIV
“‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’”
Luke 16:31 NIV
“He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”
"God loves you, God is on your side, He is coming after you. He is relentless." - Eugene Peterson