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When Nice People Face God · Pastor John Piper's answers

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  Speaker 1: Well, all of us have tasted revenge, getting back at others,
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  Speaker 1: getting even, as we call it, hopefully we don't know
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  Speaker 1: that feeling well, but we all know it. But what
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  Speaker 1: about perfect justice? What does that feel like? And what
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  Speaker 1: does that look like? It's one of the more challenging
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  Speaker 1: topics on the podcast, talking about how to rightly appreciate
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  Speaker 1: eternal judgment and to appreciate it with our affections, especially
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  Speaker 1: when we're talking about the judgment of just ordinary people
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  Speaker 1: that we rub shoulders with on the subway or on
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  Speaker 1: the plane or on the bus. Today on ask Pastor John,
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  Speaker 1: when the nicest unbeliever that you know faces God? A
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  Speaker 1: young man writes in with this question Pastor John, as
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  Speaker 1: a Calvinist, seminarian and a Christian hedonist, I wrestle with
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  Speaker 1: God's ultimate purpose in predestining vessels of wrath. My core
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  Speaker 1: question is this, does God's plan, which includes hell, bring
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  Speaker 1: him the most possible glory he could receive? I struggle
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  Speaker 1: to understand why go God would create vessels for damnation,
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  Speaker 1: especially since he takes no pleasure in their end, unless
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  Speaker 1: it is for the sake of a greater display of
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  Speaker 1: his glory. Would God be more glorified by saving everyone,
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  Speaker 1: or is there a golden ratio of saves two condemned
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  Speaker 1: that perfectly displays the full spectrum of his character, justice
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  Speaker 1: and mercy, wrath and grace. As a Calvinist that cannot
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  Speaker 1: appeal to human free will is the ultimate reason. This
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  Speaker 1: leads me to believe the only motivator must be God's
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  Speaker 1: passion for his glory. But as a Christian hedonist, how
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  Speaker 1: am I to be glad in this?
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  Speaker 2: I'm going to focus on that last question, especially given
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  Speaker 2: the existence of eternal conscious torment. Can a Christian hedonist
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  Speaker 2: can a human being be glad about that? And one
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  Speaker 2: of the reasons I feel a burden to at least
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  Speaker 2: try to answer this question is my concern that many
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  Speaker 2: Christians can be so influenced by the spirit of the
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  Speaker 2: Age that they reject watershed biblical teachings, and that this
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  Speaker 2: causes almost everything else that they look at in the
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  Speaker 2: Bible to be skewed because they are looking at it
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  Speaker 2: through a compromised lens. Three of the watershed doctrines that
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  Speaker 2: I would mention are one the centrality of God in
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  Speaker 2: his own purposes for the universe, that he does all
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  Speaker 2: things for the display of His glory. A second one
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  Speaker 2: would be the existence of Hell as everlasting, conscious torment
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  Speaker 2: for those who did not believe on Christ. And the
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  Speaker 2: third I would mention is the fact that in our
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  Speaker 2: personal conversion to Christ, God is ultimate and decisive, not man.
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  Speaker 2: Man does not have ultimate self determination, only God does.
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  Speaker 2: I find that most people who profess Christian faith but
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  Speaker 2: resist one or more of those three Watershed doctrines and
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  Speaker 2: others look at a text text after text in the
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  Speaker 2: Bible through a distorted lens. If you reject one of those,
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  Speaker 2: everything gets skewed. Issue after issue in the Bible is
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  Speaker 2: given a slant in a man centered way if those
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  Speaker 2: doctrines are rejected or resisted. And so that's one of
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  Speaker 2: the reasons I feel like I should at least try
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  Speaker 2: and do my best to answer this question about Hell.
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  Speaker 2: One way to put it would be can we should
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  Speaker 2: we be glad that God has planned that unbelievers will
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  Speaker 2: suffer in hell forever? Now? The key passage of scripture
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  Speaker 2: that answers this question is Revelation chapter eighteen and nineteen.
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  Speaker 2: Babylon represents in these chapters the sinful City, the center
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  Speaker 2: of unbelief and opposition to God. God brings his judgment
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  Speaker 2: on her. He devastates her the wicked city. She is
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  Speaker 2: laid waste in a terrible judgment from God. And then
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  Speaker 2: comes the command to God's people and goes like this,
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  Speaker 2: rejoice over her, oh Heaven, and you saints and apostles
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  Speaker 2: and prophets, for God has given judgment for you against her.
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  Speaker 2: After this, I heard what seemed to be a loud
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  Speaker 2: voice of a great multitude in heaven crying out, Hallelujah.
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  Speaker 2: Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, for
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  Speaker 2: his judgments are true and just. For He has judged
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  Speaker 2: the great prostitute who corrupted the earth with her immorality,
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  Speaker 2: and has avenged on her the blood of his servants. More,
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  Speaker 2: they cried out, Hallelujah. The smoke from her goes up
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  Speaker 2: forever and ever. And then you connect that with the
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  Speaker 2: same wording in Revelation fourteen eleven, which is describing the
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  Speaker 2: final judgment and the lake of fire like this, the
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  Speaker 2: smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and
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  Speaker 2: they have no rest day or night, these worshipers of
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  Speaker 2: the beast. So this is eternal conscious torment as an
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  Speaker 2: extension of the judgment on Babylon, and the response of
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  Speaker 2: God's people in that day is to be rejoicing and hallelujah.
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  Speaker 2: The joy is not in the suffering of persons as
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  Speaker 2: an end in itself. The rejoicing explicitly in these texts
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  Speaker 2: is over God's judgment, like Psalm ninety seven eight, where
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  Speaker 2: it says Zion hears and is glad, and the daughters
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  Speaker 2: of Judah rejoice because of your judgments, O Lord. In
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  Speaker 2: other words, because of the manifestation that when all is
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  Speaker 2: said and done, you are just God, You are just righteous, holy,
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  Speaker 2: Your righteousness is fulfilled, your holiness is vindicated, your infinite
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  Speaker 2: worth is made plain to all those who scorned it.
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  Speaker 2: The fact that God's final judgment is going to be
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  Speaker 2: perfectly just and holy and righteous, and that we are
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  Speaker 2: going to be made perfect, we ourselves, who are not
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  Speaker 2: yet perfect at all. We are going to be made
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  Speaker 2: perfect so that we can see it for what it
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  Speaker 2: really is and feel it, feel it as we ought
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  Speaker 2: to feel it. That's one of the reasons Christians do
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  Speaker 2: not take judgment into our own hands. Now. We do
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  Speaker 2: not feel vindictive toward our adversaries. On the contrary, Jesus said,
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  Speaker 2: love your enemies do good to those who hate you,
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  Speaker 2: Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you.
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  Speaker 2: We are to weep with those who weep. We're to
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  Speaker 2: pray for the loss and that they would be converted
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  Speaker 2: to Christ. We long for their salvation. We are to
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  Speaker 2: join Paul in the tears that he shed over the
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  Speaker 2: perishing enemies of the cross. In Romans nine to two
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  Speaker 2: and Philippines three eighteen, he was a weeping apostle. Vengeance
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  Speaker 2: belongs to God, not to us. We are not yet
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  Speaker 2: suited in our sinful state. We are not yet suited
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  Speaker 2: to join God God in his judgment. Only when we
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  Speaker 2: are perfected and given His eyes can we no longer
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  Speaker 2: see in a glass darkly and be able to rightly
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  Speaker 2: rejoice over God's judgment on those who have rejected Him
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  Speaker 2: as we ought. In Lamentations three thirty three, Even God,
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  Speaker 2: it says, does not afflict from his heart or grieve
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  Speaker 2: the children of men. That's very strange, and you have
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  Speaker 2: to ponder this a long time. It seems to me
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  Speaker 2: that God has the ability to see suffering the suffering
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  Speaker 2: of those he judges through a narrow lens, and when
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  Speaker 2: he looks through the narrow lens and focuses on the suffering.
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  Speaker 2: Pity is what he feels it pities the suffering considered
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  Speaker 2: by itself. And then he opens the lens, the broad lens,
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  Speaker 2: takes everything from eternity to eternity into account, and rejoices
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  Speaker 2: in his judgments as righteous and just and holy. And
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  Speaker 2: I suspect he will perfect that same ability in us
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  Speaker 2: in due time, and then we'll be able to rejoice
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  Speaker 2: over His judgments, including hell, without being cruel or sadistic
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  Speaker 2: or pitiless. One of the things that makes it so
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  Speaker 2: hard for us, I think, to feel the rightness of
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  Speaker 2: eternal conscious torment is that God is so small in
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  Speaker 2: our understanding and our affections. We can't feel, as we ought,
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  Speaker 2: the outrage and the indignity and the criminality and the
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  Speaker 2: abhorrent evil of treating God as if he were no
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  Speaker 2: more than and the carpet on our floor, which is
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  Speaker 2: the way ninety nine percent of human beings treat him,
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  Speaker 2: it seems. Try to imagine this, What would the judgment
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  Speaker 2: day look like? What might it look like when the
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  Speaker 2: true greatness and infinite worth and beauty of the creator
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  Speaker 2: of the universe and the redeemer through Jesus are revealed,
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  Speaker 2: and every manifestation of his goodness comes to light, along
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  Speaker 2: with a lifetime of ingratitude and neglect and resistance and
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  Speaker 2: trivializing disregard which most people have in treating him that way,
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  Speaker 2: it will be plain on that day that he sustained,
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  Speaker 2: for example, about one hundred thousand safe takeoffs and landings
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  Speaker 2: of commercial flights every day, day, day, year after year,
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  Speaker 2: with scarcely a single accident. In what does he get?
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  Speaker 2: Almost nobody thanks God for safe lendings and safe takeoffs.
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  Speaker 2: He causes the sun to rise on thirty thousand days
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  Speaker 2: of the average American life with almost no thanks. He
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  Speaker 2: sustains the infrastructure of thousands of days so that food
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  Speaker 2: can arrive at our stores, and electricity and gas and
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  Speaker 2: water arrives in our houses and gets no thanks. He
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  Speaker 2: has sustained three billion heartbeats for every eighty year old
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  Speaker 2: like me on the planet, and six hundred and thirty
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  Speaker 2: million breaths with a diaphragm that he worked, not you.
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  Speaker 2: You didn't ever tell your diaphragm to do anything. And
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  Speaker 2: this list could be multiplied, this little teeny list of
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  Speaker 2: ben and if it could be multiplied, hundreds of times over.
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  Speaker 2: And my guess is, and I say it with trembling,
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  Speaker 2: nobody on that last day, not the nicest unbeliever you
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  Speaker 2: ever knew. We'll expect anything but hell. When all is revealed,
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  Speaker 2: shame will cover our faces except for one thing. We
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  Speaker 2: have taken refuge under the blood of Jesus.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, very sobering the fact that God's final judgment is
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  Speaker 1: going to be perfectly just and holy and righteous, and
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  Speaker 1: that we are going to be made perfect. We are
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  Speaker 1: souls who are not yet perfect at all. We are
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  Speaker 1: going to be made perfect so that we can see
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  Speaker 1: it for what it really is and feel it, really
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  Speaker 1: feel it as we ought to feel it. Quote a
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  Speaker 1: new capacity in us to rejoice in God's final judgment,
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  Speaker 1: not because we delight sadistically in the suffering of others
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  Speaker 1: or enjoy revenge, but because God's justice, his holiness, is righteousness,
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  Speaker 1: and his infinite worth will be perfectly vindicated, which is
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  Speaker 1: why we are called to love our enemies and pray
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  Speaker 1: for the loss, and share the gospel now as we
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  Speaker 1: looked at last time. Indeed, the world's hatred for God
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  Speaker 1: and his son is often expressed by just ignoring God
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  Speaker 1: and ignoring Christ. But we do sometimes get a glimpse
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  Speaker 1: of the open hostility too in our Bible reading today.
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  Speaker 1: As particular, is what I'm thinking of in Luke twenty
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  Speaker 1: in the Parable of the Wicked Tenants. Interesting timing with
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  Speaker 1: this episode and our Bible reading and the Navigator's Bible
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  Speaker 1: reading plan Luke twenty the Parable the Wicked Tenants, you
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  Speaker 1: can see the animosity between the world and God and
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  Speaker 1: his son in that parable. Thank you for listening. You
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  Speaker 1: may be thinking of any number of many related topics. Now,
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  Speaker 1: isn't this life too short to determine the eternal destiny
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  Speaker 1: of immortal isn't it unfair for eternity to be based
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  Speaker 1: on just a few decades of life in this world.
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  Speaker 1: We've looked at that too, as specially on book on
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  Speaker 1: page three sixty. That whole section has a lot of
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  Speaker 1: interesting topics on these questions about the eternal judgment, its purpose,
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  Speaker 1: and divine fairness. As you think through this topic, we're
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  Speaker 1: back at next time to talk to Christians Hurting Christians,
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  Speaker 1: Christians who are suffering God uses suffering in our lives,
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  Speaker 1: to wean our hearts off this world so that we
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  Speaker 1: can find greater comforts in God himself. That's how it's
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  Speaker 1: supposed to work, but often that's not how it works.
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  Speaker 1: At first. Pain may first drive us to anger, bitterness,
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  Speaker 1: or confusion. And next time, when suffering crushes our faith,
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  Speaker 1: I'm Tony Rank. We'll see you back here on Thursday.