How could Loving God send people to hell?
INTERESTING FACT:
Jesus, who more than anyone reveals the love of God to the world, spoke more about hell than any other person in the Bible.
http://www.cslewisinstitute.org/How_Can_a_Loving_God_Send_People_to_Hell_page1
( LOVING GOD )
– Define our words again
– Included in definition, what the ‘tone’ of the question?
– who is grading who in deciding degree of love
Romans 9:20
20 But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’”[h] 21 Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?
22 What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction?
John 4:16
God is love
God’s love on display (Genesis)
“ It is not good that….”
Knows Adam – better than Adam knows self!
Provides for him, for them
Entire OT :is like a millennia long drama where God continually sends:
Love
Knowledge
Protection
Correction
Forgiveness
Grace – UNDERSERVED love
( SEND )-
first things first ….
Picture the personification of evil….
What does evil look like?
Crimes against weak?
Crimes against children?
Hitlers medical experiments on live people
Nero’s throwing women, children, babies to lions for entertainment????
Stuff we can think about long w/o revulsion
Illus : Genesis 39:9 Joseph’s fear of sinning against God
“How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?”
NOW – picture the antithesis of evil-
PURE GOODNESS
ADD UNIMAGINABLE HOLINESS
God hiding Moses in rock / God is called Tzur Yisrael, “Rock of Israel.”
Moses Glowing – Exodus 34
29 When Moses came d own from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the covenant law in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the Lord. 30 When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant, and they were afraid to come near him.
NOTHING IN COMMON BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL
Revelation 6
15 Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and everyone else, both slave and free, hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains. 16 They called to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us[f] from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! 17 For the great day of their[g] wrath has come, and who can withstand it?”
———-
There is in God’s response, a series of intended double metaphors, double meanings that can be read as God’s double response to two of Moses’s separate requests.
“See there is a place near Me”-Just as in the other great luminous tale of Jacob’s ladder where our wayward patriarch exclaims: “Truly, the Eternal is in this place, and I did not know it!” (Genesis 28:16). The jword for “place,” makom, can be taken both as a name for God and as a description of a place. It is as if HaMakom, “the God of Israel,” answers Moses: “Stand with Me and I will stand with you.”
“Station yourself on the rock”-Here too, there is an intended double meaning. God is called Tzur Yisrael, “Rock of Israel.” This again is a promise of God’s protection and again an image of Moses’s nearness to God.
“I will put you in a cleft of the rock and shield you with My hand”-And at this greatest moment of “closeness,” d’veikut the Chasidim call it, the moment of cleaving to God, becoming all but one with the Creator and Preserver of our lives-at this moment of Oneness, Moses is cradled in God’s hand. And again, there is in this an image of God’s closeness to Moses, and a promise of steadfastness for the Children of Israel.
God’s hands are a recurrent image of God’s steadfast love for Israel. As in the beautiful yet enigmatic lines from Isaiah 49:15-16: “I never could forget you. See, I have engraved you on the palms of My hands, your walls are ever before Me.”
https://reformjudaism.org/shabbat-chol-hamo-eid-pesach-cleft-rock
————
( TO HELL )
Paths – narrow v. wide
Matthew 7:14
13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
Romans 1:18-20 made plain, w/o excuse
Victim ( per the questions tone?) vs. Choice
Example:
Phrase – “Our walk with God”
Vs . a walk away from God
Colossians 2:14
Only acceptable payment
Illus – try paying w/o currency