What About Heaven And Hell?

What About Heaven And Hell?

Just as each person is destined to die once and after that comes judgment, so also Christ was offered once for all time as a sacrifice to take away the sins of many people. He will come again, not to deal with our sins, but to bring salvation to all who are eagerly waiting for him.

Hebrews 9:27-28

WHAT IF I TOLD YOU I’ve never been to Hawaii, but I believe the beaches are covered with gumdrops and the ocean is made of milk chocolate?

Or what if I told you I’ve never been to Alaska, but I’m sure it doesn’t actually exist? There’s just no way there could be a place that cold.

You’d think I was crazy. You can’t make up what something real is like, and you can’t claim something that’s real doesn’t exist. Well, heaven and hell are real.

Heaven

People tend to think of heaven as a place filled with . . . whatever they want it to be filled with. It’s a never-ending party or vacation, depending on whether you prefer a party or a vacation.

Do you know where we get those ideas about heaven? We make them up. And that’s crazy, because heaven is real. And we don’t have to make up what it’s like, because the Bible tells us the truth about heaven.

Death is not an end for us; it’s a doorway to a new kind of life. We are going to live forever, and heaven is life with God—after we die. You see, God is all about living with us, and he keeps moving closer and closer to us.

In Old Testament times, God established the Tabernacle, and later the Temple, as the places where people could be with him in a special way. But when Jesus was born, God moved right “into the neighborhood” in the person of Jesus. After Jesus’ return to heaven, God moved inside us in the person of the Holy Spirit. When we die, he brings us to heaven to be even closer to him. And at the end of history, God is actually going to bring heaven and earth together. The apostle John describes that in his vision of what is to come:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared. And the sea was also gone. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.

I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, “Look, God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.”^a

So the main point isn’t where heaven is; it’s what it is. Heaven is living with God in eternal life. What is eternal life? Jesus said, when he was talking to God the Father, “This is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”^b Eternal life is life with God.

You can start experiencing it now. And you can experience it fully forever.

I heard a pastor named John Ortberg say, “Heaven does not contain God. God contains heaven.” The apostle John describes it this way: “I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.”^c

In heaven, it will be impossible to avoid God. So if you don’t want to be around God, you won’t want to be in heaven. Heaven is the kind of place where people who want to sin would be miserable. Kind of like a person who is deeply addicted to nicotine having to go for a long dinner to a restaurant where there’s no smoking. If you don’t smoke, that restaurant would be great; it would be a breath of fresh air. But if you’re addicted to smoking, you’d be miserable there.

People think that heaven is this eternal party, and that everyone wants in, but that God is going to keep some people out. But the reality is that heaven is where we live with God, and most people don’t want it. But the amazing thing about God is that he’s inviting everyone in. In fact, he sent Jesus to die to remove our sins so we can get in. And if we say yes to his invitation, he starts working in our lives, moving us toward becoming the kind of people who love him more than sin, who don’t want to sin, and who someday will love being with him in heaven.

Hell

So, what is hell? Hell is the place where God is not.

In this world, in this life, people get to experience some of God’s presence and some of God’s goodness, even if they don’t want to. God made the world and gave us life, and it’s all drenched in his goodness. That’s what love is, and laughter, and sunsets, and the coo of a baby, and a bird soaring across the sky, and the vibrant colors you see in the produce section of the grocery store, and the pleasure you feel in accomplishing a job well done or having sexual intimacy with your spouse.

In this world, in this life, we experience some of God’s presence and God’s goodness. But hell is the place where God and his goodness are not.

In the same way that God’s presence is what makes heaven, heaven, God’s absence is what makes hell, hell.

I want to show you a verse about hell, and it will probably make you uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable. Here it is: “They will be punished with eternal destruction, forever separated from the Lord and from his glorious power.”^d

Why “punished”? Well, because people sin and deserve punishment. We all believe that. If you heard about a guy who committed horrible crimes, and the judge let him go without punishment, that wouldn’t make you happy. You would be upset because you know there should be justice. We have an amazing ability to downplay our sins, but the Bible says they’re worse than we admit, and sin deserves punishment.

God is a fair judge, and he can’t let our sin go without punishment.

God is also love, so he came and died on a cross for us and allowed Jesus to suffer the punishment we deserve for our sins.^e

That uncomfortable verse said “punished,” but did you notice it also said hell is being “separated from the Lord”? That’s what hell is. God’s absence is what makes hell, hell.

People ask, “Would a loving God really send people to hell?” The answer? He doesn’t. God doesn’t send people to hell. People choose to go to hell.

People will be in hell because they chose to be. Because they didn’t want life with God.

The Invitation

But Jesus came to invite people to heaven. He’s inviting everyone.

And once we say yes to God, we become one of the ways God invites people. The Bible says we become God’s “ambassadors.” We’re like citizens of heaven, living on earth, representing God and inviting them to join him in heaven. “We are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, ‘Come back to God!’”^f

God’s offer is to use us for the most important mission in the world; and what an invitation that is!

Now What?

• Read Revelation 21:1-27.
• Every day we’re becoming something—either the kind of person who loves God more and sin less, or the kind of person who loves sin more and God less. We want to become the kind of people who will fit into and love heaven. So what could you do this week to become the kind of person who wants more of God and life with him?
• In heaven, the presence of God will be so great you won’t want to sin and you will want to worship him. Ask God to increasingly transform you into that kind of person, starting now. Pray for an awareness of his presence, for a disdain for sin, and for an overwhelming urge to worship him.