TheoBros, Live With Spiritual Urgency
Life is short, Hell is forever, and the Gospel is infinitely powerful. Draw your swords TheoBros.
TheoBros, it’s story time.
The Sneer of Death
The Chimbu people poured into our little village of Papua New Guinea. This was my new family walking from the dry, dusty road into a large clearing in their bare feet.
“I have to go outside, honey,” I said to my wife Deb, who had been up at all hours of the night changing our sick daughter’s diapers, trying to get her back to sleep. Mia, our two year-old, was constantly sick while we were in the tribe, a major reason why we’d only be there for a few more months.
Of course, like everything we experienced, we had no idea what was going to happen next and how long I was going to be out. We were learners. All we did was observe and try to predict. My predictions were mostly always wrong, in case you were wondering.
I had about 6 months of the Chimbu language under my belt, so I tried my best to stay covert. Everywhere we went, we always drew enormous crowds.
“Angra! Wakai We!” someone shouted from about fifty yards away. This was a Chimbu greeting that meant, “Brother, good, you’re here!”
The bustling crowd became silent and turned around to see little old me — red faced, nervously smiling. Like a good missionary who had been studying the language and culture, I started shaking hands, and replied, “Wakai we dia.”
Suddenly, I was surrounded by hundreds of eager family members ready to hear my story in their heart language, a language considered one of the most difficult in Papua New Guinea. A language with over 200 verb conjugations. A language that sounds like German on steroids.
Meanwhile, my immediate Chimbu family was carrying a coffin box filled with a young mother who had been slashed to death two days before by a 20 year-old “drug body.” The crying and wailing started. Thousands of men, women, and children took their turns using the faucet nearby to make mud to cover their faces and bodies. They walked over to the coffin to wail in the proximity of the dead, young woman. This is what murder and death look like in the Chimbu, and I was seeing it in its rawest form for the first time.
Before I could even start my story, the men and women who, seconds before, seemed so interested in me, turned and walked quickly to that box to demonstrate their pain to the young woman’s brothers, sisters, mother, and father.
We felt helpless and angry as we watched the dramatic scene play out. My tribal dad writhed and screamed, his sweat, tears, and snot carrying the mud to his neck and chest. The elderly men and women who usually remain so cool, calm, and collected on a normal day are now hoarse as one of them attempts to open the box to feel the corpse.
To them she was a dead sister. To us, another lost Chimbu soul who never had the opportunity to hear the Good News of Jesus Christ…even once. Death happens, but death in an unreached people group is particularly horrific.
It mocks. It sneers. There wasn’t an audible voice, I know, and Satan isn’t omnipresent. But it was like Satan had just gotten up in my face and yelled “Scoreboard!”
Another Chimbu will wake up under the eternal wrath of God in Hell.
Resolved: To Live With Urgency
Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), perhaps the greatest preacher and theologian in the history of America, knew something about the urgency of living for God’s glory in all of life. At age 19, he wrote what he called his “Resolutions.” These were commitments and promises he made to himself and the Lord about the general purpose and orientation of his life.
He wrote in his “Resolutions” about important considerations like time management, relationships, suffering, character, and his spiritual life. Perhaps most stunning were his resolutions about time management:
Resolution #5: Resolved, never to lose one moment of time; but improve it the most profitable way I possibly can.
Resolution #7: Resolved, never to do anything, which I should be afraid to do, if it were the last hour of my life.
Resolution #17: Resolved, that I will live so as I shall wish I had done when I come to die.
Jonathan Edwards’ life was short, he died at the age of 55, but his life was full of ministry, writing, mission work among Native Americans, and husbandhood and fatherhood. Edwards is a reminder that life moves quickly, we all hang on to life by a thread, and we must make the most of our time on the earth.
“Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is (Eph. 5:15-17).”
The Bible doesn’t mince words about Hell. It is a real place of eternal, conscious punishment for those who do not place their faith and trust in the finished work of Jesus Christ.
"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).”
The disciples weren’t to be afraid of those who would persecute them, because, unlike these people, God is able to punish both the soul and the body of those who reject His Son.
“They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might…(2 Thess. 1:9).”
The Thessalonians can count on the fact that those who inflict harm upon them for their faith in Christ will be afflicted eternally by God.
"But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death (Revelation 21:8).”
At the Great White Throne Judgment, after the 1,000 year reign of Christ, all who die apart from Christ will be resurrected one last time to face Christ as judge. They will live in a fiery, burning lake for all of eternity.
Knowing Hell to be a reality for those who rebel against God and His Son, we have plenty of reason to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with urgently.
The Problem
The “Love Wins” doctrine of Rob Bell is alive and kicking. After 10 years, it hasn’t gone away. Instead, it has totally ingratiated itself into our culture’s collective thinking. The idol of self has completely eclipsed the One True God. There is absolutely no fear of God or eternal judgment in the eyes of people around us. There is confusion, malaise, apathy.
Satan doesn’t need to scare or haunt anybody. He merely distracts and entertains.
According to George Barna, just one-half of 1% of Americans expect to go to Hell upon their death. Nearly two-thirds of Americans (64%) believe they will go to Heaven. One in 20 adults (5%) claim they will come back as another life form, while the same proportion (5%) contend they will simply cease to exist.
Jonathan Edwards writes,
“There are a great many in Christian countries who go along all their lifetime toward an eternity, and never believe they are going to eternity before they come to die. In their health they have thought there was no world to come, no such thing as hell, have thought that it was nothing but a mere fiction invented to frighten folk; but when they lay a-dying, they have been as fully convinced of a hell as if they were actually in it.”
Examine Yourself
I urge you to examine yourselves. Consider your own soul. Think about your own eternity. Your life, as the Psalmist says, is a vapor. You are not promised another day, or hour, or minute. As Hebrews says, You will one day die and immediately appear before the Judgment Seat of Christ and give an account of your life. His standard for judgment isn’t your neighbor next door. Your prayers don’t save you, your works don’t save you, your giving doesn’t save you…everything we do is tainted by sin and selfishness. Isaiah says they are like dirty rags. The standard that Christ will hold you to after you die is Himself.
If you want to reach Heaven by your own merits and works, He requires sinless perfection. Unvarnished, unfiltered holiness.
You may say, well, that’s an impossible standard. Who then can possibly go to heaven?
Friend, no one is in Heaven today because he or she was “good.” Because, in God’s point of view, no one is good, but God alone. The reason people are in heaven is because Jesus, God Himself, came to earth as a man, lived perfectly under the law, never sinned, and then died on the cross to pay for the sins of all those who believe in Christ.
John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”
Examine yourselves. Is Christ your only hope for salvation? Is He your Savior and your Lord? Or do you have a backup plan in case this Jesus thing doesn’t work out? If you do have a backup plan, you are still in your sin, and judgment awaits. To be saved today, you must abandon all of your good works and merits and trying, and put all of your hope in the good and finished work of Jesus Christ.
Take the Ship
Death is sobering. It is constant. It’s horrific in Papua New Guinea, and it’s horrific in America. It is a result of the fall of Adam in the garden of Eden. He rebelled against His Maker. And so now, because we are all a part of Adam’s race, we all must die. The curse has fallen on each one of us.
Countless men and women have died through the ages, death was undefeated.
Then there was One.
One with the power of an indestructible life. One who could not be held by death, our Savior, our Hero Jesus. He beat death. He won. He conquered sin and death and resurrected from the grave never to die again. Everyone who puts their faith in Him, they too will resurrect from the grave. You will be born again, not with perishable seed, but imperishable.
For Christians, death has no sting. We do not grieve like the world grieves. Death is graduation.
It is victory.
So we must take risks. We must leave every creature comfort behind and go to foreign fields. We have to stop caring about being liked, being called haters, being labeled extremists, or Bible-thumpers.
Seriously. Who cares? Death is certain. We’ve got a job to do.
We must proclaim the excellencies of the Christ and the reality of Hell to a confused and foggy-minded world. It’s time to live for God and not for yourself. Stand alone on the authority of God’s Word and say, “Let God be true, and all men liars.”
By God’s grace, we can take the ship. We have the upper hand. We stand on high ground. Christ has risen from the dead. Our Lord has won the victory over our greatest enemy already. Walk with the swagger that comes with the promises of God.
Remember what missionary William Carey said? “Expect great things from God, attempt great things for God.”
What about what Charles Spurgeon wrote? “If sinners be damned, at least let them leap to Hell over our dead bodies. And if they perish, let them perish with our arms wrapped about their knees, imploring them to stay. If Hell must be filled, let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one go unwarned and unprayed for.”
And to pastors, perhaps Dr. Steve Lawson said it best “The preacher who refuses to preach on Hell may well be headed there.”
The Bible teaches Hell as a warning to the unsaved and a motivator for the redeemed.
Preach it. Stop running from it. Let it motivate you.
Remember, men at war are single-minded, laser-focused, and undistracted by civilian affairs. They only seek to please their commanding officer.
Life is short, Hell is forever, and the Gospel is infinitely powerful.
Draw your swords, TheoBros.
In Christ,
Justin Bullington