ANOTHER ROADBLOCK ON THE WAY TO HELL

MIKE CUNNINGHAM

AUGUST 5, 2007

One of the things I stressed in last week’s message is the responsibility of Christians to forgive those who have sinned against them, just as they have been forgiven by God in Christ Jesus; including folks who repeatedly treat them with despicable contempt. However, I had to conclude my message by saying:

“The time may come when it becomes obvious the person is ignoring your love and forgiveness just as most people want nothing to do with the love of Jesus, and His free offer of forgiveness. If that’s the case, then, in a spirit of deep humility, and because you love the person so very, very much, you may have to say, enough is enough, and sever your relationship with him or her completely, or reduce it to a bare minimum.”

“But not before assuring the person that their well being and the abode in which they will spend eternity, will be in your frequent thoughts and prayers. Let the person know that your love for him or her is so great, that you cannot, nor will you, do anything which will enable them to continue sinning against you, and condemn themselves to an eternal separation from the love of God and of His children.”[i]

And then, early Tuesday morning as I was thinking about the eternal quality of life of people who are enslaved by their sinful anger and who refuse to get rid of it before they die, a very disturbing animated image suddenly flashed through my mind. It only lasted a second or two and seemed like a day-dream. It stayed with me on an off throughout the day and into the next, until several ministerial challenges took center stage.

Nevertheless, that particular mental picture continued to resurface every once in a while. Finally, on Thursday morning as I was recalling the tragic events that occurred on the Interstate 35W B ridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota the previous evening, it has become a constant companion. Allow me to explain.

The August 2^nd update of the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported “the 1,907-foot bridge fell into the Mississippi River and onto runways below. The span was packed with rush hour traffic, and dozens of vehicles fell with the bridge leaving scores of dazed commuters scrambling for their lives.”

“Between 50 and 60 vehicles were on the bridge when it went down shortly after 6 p.m., authorities said. Legions of rescue workers and volunteers swarmed the scene and spent hours sifting through the wreckage in a frantic search for survivors. Many vehicles, including a least one semitrailer were on fire. People were reported to be floundering in the river. Rescuers rushed to help people escape cars trapped in the V-shaped hollow where the bridge caved in.”

As the “ripple effect” expands, the lives of untold numbers of people are being impacted dramatically.  Needless to say there are many questions as to why it happened. Investigations are underway and fingers will no doubt be pointed at someone to blame. Government officials are making all sorts of promises. Politicians are intent on getting as much political mileage out of it as they possibly can. The media and those TV and radio talk show “motor-mouths” are having a field day. Activist atheists are gleefully pounding the tragedy as one more nail in God’s coffin. And those who are directly affected by it are suffering intense sorrow, grief, anxiety, and heartache, as the magnitude of their loss continues to unfold.

I don’t know about you folks, but I seriously doubt if I won’t recall this particular tragedy every time I start to cross a similar bridge in the future, and that’s exactly what our Creator wants everyone to do. Christians today can take comfort in the knowledge that however awful this tragedy truly is, it had been planned and ordained in eternity past by God to occur in our present (Ephesians 1:11; Daniel 4:35)[ii]

Among other things, He intends it to become a merciful blessing, and it will be for all those who pay attention and learn from it. In other words, our Creator speaks to His creatures through such events.

Luke 13:1-3 (AMP) ¹ JUST AT that time there [arrived] some people who informed Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. ² And He replied by saying to them, Do you think that these Galileans were greater sinners than all the other Galileans because they have suffered in this way? ³ I tell you, No; but unless you repent (change your mind for the better and heartily amend your ways, with abhorrence of your past sins); you will all likewise perish and be lost eternally.

Commenting on these verses, William Barclay (Barclay’s Daily Study Bible) wrote that this, “…is the reference to the Galileans whom Pilate murdered in the middle of their sacrifices. As we have seen, Galileans were always liable to get involved in political trouble because they were a highly inflammable people. Just about this time Pilate had been involved in serious trouble. He had decided rightly that Jerusalem needed a new and improved water supply. He proposed to build it and, to finance it with certain Temple monies.

It was a laudable object and a more than justifiable expenditure. But at the very idea of spending Temple monies like that, the Jews were up in arms. When the mobs gathered, Pilate instructed his soldiers to mingle with them, wearing cloaks over their battle dress for disguise. They were instructed to carry cudgels (clubs) rather than swords. At a given signal they were to fall on the mob and disperse them.

This was done, but the soldiers dealt with the mob with a violence far beyond their instructions and a considerable number of people lost their lives. Almost certainly Galileans would be involved in that. We know that Pilate and Herod were at enmity, and only became reconciled after Pilate had sent Jesus to Herod for trial (Lk 23:6-12). It may well be that it was this very incident which provoked that enmity.” Jesus continues in verse four saying:

⁴ Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them—do you think that they were more guilty offenders (debtors) than all the others who dwelt in Jerusalem? ⁵ I tell you, No; but unless you repent (change your mind for the better and heartily amend your ways, with abhorrence of your past sins), you will all likewise perish and be lost eternally.

Commenting on these verses, Barclay writes: “As for the eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell, they are still more obscure. The King James Version uses the word sinners of them also; but, as the margin shows, it should be not sinners but debtors. Maybe we have a clue here. It has been suggested that they had actually taken work on Pilate’s hated aqueducts. If so, any money they earned was due to God and should have been voluntarily handed over, because it had already been stolen from him; and it may well be that popular talk had declared that the tower had fallen on them because of the work they had consented to do.

But Jesus went on to say that if his hearers did not repent they too would perish. What did he mean? One thing is clear–he foresaw and foretold the destruction of Jerusalem, which happened in A.D. 70.

Luke 21:21-24 (AMP) ²¹ Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let those who are inside [the city] get out of it, and let not those who are out in the country come into it; ²² For those are days of vengeance [of rendering full justice or satisfaction], that all things that are written may be fulfilled. ²³ Alas for those who are pregnant and for those who have babies which they are nursing in those days!

For great misery and anguish and distress shall be upon the land and indignation and punishment and retribution upon this people. ²⁴ They will fall by the mouth and the edge of the sword and will be led away as captives to and among all nations; and Jerusalem will be trodden down by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled (completed).

Referring to Jesus, Barclay continues: “He knew well that if the Jews went on with their intrigues, their rebellions, their plottings, their political ambitions, they were simply going to commit national suicide; he knew that in the end Rome would step in and obliterate the nation; and that is precisely what happened. So what Jesus meant was that if the Jewish nation kept on seeking an earthly kingdom and rejecting the kingdom of God they could come to only one end.”

“To put the matter like that leaves, at first sight, a paradoxical situation. It means that we cannot say that individual suffering and sin are inevitably connected but we can say that national sin and suffering are connected. The nation which chooses the wrong ways will in the end suffer for it. But the individual is in very different case. He is not an isolated unit. He is bound up in the bundle of life. Often he may object, and object violently, to the course his nation is taking; but when the consequence of that course comes, he cannot escape being involved in it.”

“The individual is often caught up in a situation which he did not make; his suffering is often not his fault; but the nation is a unit and chooses its own policy and reaps the fruit of it. It is always dangerous to attribute human suffering to human sin; but always safe to say that the nation which rebels against God is on the way to disaster.”

A very, very patient God is speaking through last Wednesday’s and other tragedies such as 911 and the Oklahoma City bombing to individuals and our nation as a whole. A nation which, since 1972 has allowed American mothers to butcher over four hundred million babies living in their womb. An affluent nation in which, millions of people are caught up in the pursuit of pleasures which are taking them further and further from God. A nation in which much of the media and educational system are trying to persuade us that evil is good; as in granting homosexuals the right to marry and raise children. I could go on and on, but I know you have the picture by now.

Whenever I view the video footage of a tragedy in which a lot of lives are lost, I try to visualize the invisible activity also taking place. Being a perennial optimist, I can imagine the spirits of the dead Christians being warmly greeted by Jesus Himself. I can visualize Him grinning from ear to ear, and with His arms outstretched, motion His follower to fly into them. And then I can see Jesus and the joyous spirit of the dead human being ascend further and further up into the sky and out of my sight on their way to the place Jesus has prepared for them.

Now I would like to describe the disturbing animated image which flashed through my mind last Tuesday morning as I was thinking about the eternal quality of life of folks who are caught up and enslaved by their sinful anger or some other grave sin which they will not ask God to forgive them for, and which they refuse to get rid of up until the moment of their death.

The unrecognizable spirit of such a person was silently standing facing me when all of a sudden it was engulfed by a huge fireball. The person’s horrible cry’s of pain was indescribable. A millisecond later the fireball vanished and standing before me was a charred grotesque animated figure which no one would recognize as once having been being a human being, and which no human being would ever want to be associated with. Then, the poor pathetic screaming thing seemed to be whisked away against its will, off into the darkness and out of my sight.

In his famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” Jonathan Edwards described the plight of such people. “Unconverted men walk over the pit of hell on a rotten covering, and there are innumerable places in this covering so weak that they will not hold their weight, and these places are not seen. The arrows of death fly unseen at noonday and the sharpest sight cannot see them.”

You and I know people who want nothing or very little to do with Jesus and His love for sinners. They are wrapped up in themselves and the pursuit of their perceived needs. If we have truly been born anew we will want to forgive them for the often despicable way they have treated us and we will do everything possible to lead them to the Cross of Christ and forgiveness.

I know it’s often very difficult to even want to forgive someone who has hurt you very much. As I said a few weeks ago: “One of the things I suggest we do to help us want to forgive someone is to meditate on the scourging Jesus had to suffer at the hands of the Roman soldiers for every single one of our sins. They whipped His pain racked body so severely, that, according to the ancient historian’s Josephus and Eusebus in their accounts of the martyr’s, revealed His bones and cartilage and deep-seated veins and arteries. Even His intestines and organs were exposed.

The Prophet Isaiah described the end result:

Isaiah 52:14 (NIV) ¹⁴ Just as there were many who were appalled at him– his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man and his form marred beyond human likeness—“

When time is no more, and all human beings are looking back at human history from eternity, the inescapable conclusion they will arrive at is that Hell was a really a very difficult place to get in to. They will be able to see with crystal clear clarity that, among other things, all their personal losses, sorrows, frustrations, disappointments and heart break had been planned and ordained by God to occur in their life in order to divert them from the place of eternal torment and on to the road leading to Paradise. They will be able to see that tragedies such as the bridge were in reality a divine mercy and that it truly was “another roadblock on the way to Hell.”

I pray that every one of you folks who just heard this message, as well as those who may read it later, will, if you haven’t already do so, confess your sins to God and ask Him to forgive you. I also pray that He will add His blessing to my message and use it as “another roadblock on the way to Hell.”

[ii] http://s128601634.onlinehome.us/sermons/into_light.htm