John 3:35-36

35 “The Father loves the Son and has placed all things in His hands. 36 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. Whoever rejects the Son will not see life. Instead, the wrath of God remains on him.”

A few weeks ago, I wrote about our Gracious God, and He is. One of the hardest things to deal with as a Christian and indeed more, I think, as a Pastor, is that we have to teach about the whole person of God and not just about the parts that we like. Everyone loves the ‘loving God’; we all love that God loves us and provides for us. We all love to talk about Heaven, and even when we know that people have not been in any kind of relationship with Jesus, we are apt to say ‘rest in peace’ when they die. No one wants to think of a friend or an acquaintance suffering in Hell; we just don’t want to go there. We try to block it out of our minds.

I think of people who committed suicide, some of them looking for a bit of peace, only to wake up in Hell in a worse state than they would have been living. I think of the men who sang a lot about Hell being a party only to get there and realize there was no joy, no laughter, not even a smile, just torments. I can’t imagine the shock as atheists entered Hell and realized that God is real. I teach about Hell because it is in the Bible; Jesus taught about Hell, and so did many of the writers of the New Testament and the Old Testament.

The Father’s Love, verse 35

This is what we all like to preach about. Jesus’ love. God’s love. Love, love, love, and more love. This makes us feel great. We live in a world where a lot of people do not truly feel loved, and we can see them respond to being loved. God the Father loves Jesus, and he has given all things into His Son’s hands. Jesus created all things.

John 1:1-3 “In the beginning, was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was at the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made.”

Jesus will judge all things one day, and Jesus is the sole author and provider of Salvation, John 14: 1-6. When we share the Gospel, we tell people how much God loves them; we quote John 3:16, Romans 5:8. God showed us His love; He demonstrated His love to us in that while you and I were sinners, Christ died on the cross for us. He, who knew no sin became sin for us. He took my sins and your sins, and He bore our just punishment on the cross. It should have been me nailed to the cross; it should have been me with the sword jabbed into my side; it should have been me with the beatings and the spittle on my face. It should have been me bearing my own sin, but no; God loved me so much that He sent Jesus to be my sin-bearer, and He loved you so much that He sent Jesus to be your sin-bearer. And in Him, when we believe in all He has done for us, we are gifted eternal life by God the Father.

Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

We love the last part of this verse – the gift of eternal life; we get to live forever. And even though we may have to suffer pain and even die here in this life, we have this comforting rest, this soothing salve that we have eternal life in Jesus with God the Father. Soon, none of us that know Jesus will suffer or hurt, our tears will be wiped away, and we shall never worry again.

But any of us that have had loved ones die, especially those that we know did not make any kind of commitment to the Lord that we know of, their memory kind of haunts us. We know that we will never see them again and that they are not in comfort; they are not resting in peace, and they have landed on the wrong side of God’s love, by their own choice.

The Father’s Wrath, verse 36

Man, we do not like to think about that! We love the lovable God. We love the giving God, the one that is nice and kind, gracious and merciful. But we do not like the wrathful God. Many modern churches avoid talking about God’s wrath; they do not mention Hell, and they rarely talk about the cross unless it is Easter. Just last week, my dad mentioned that he had watched a prominent preacher on TV speak for about an hour and never open a Bible. Those that do use the Bible avoid the passages about Hell like the plague. They do not talk about the story of the rich man and Lazarus.

Luke 16:19-25 “There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day: And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table: moreover, the dogs came and licked his sores. And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried; And in hell he lifts up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.

“And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.”

This is one of the clearest teachings from Jesus about Hell. Here the rich man in consciousness has memories and is able to talk; so all of his cognitive functions are good, and he is in torment in flames. By the way, he is still there some 2,000 years later. Some may argue that this was a parable, but one would find it hard to identify one other parable where Jesus used a name. It is very possible that the people listening actually knew both of the main characters. By the way, Abraham was also alive and well, and the rich man knew him even though he had never met Abraham nor seen him.

Further on in the Bible, we run into Revelation 20:11-15:

“And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.”

Here is another very vivid view of Hell and the judgments that will come on those that reject the free (to us), loving gift that Jesus paid for in His own blood – the free offer that God extends to us because He loves us. Well, that is not love, you may say; He is coercing us into salvation. Nothing could be further from the truth. God is not coercing you; He is giving you the choice and the consequences that come with free will.

I read just a day or so ago a quote from C.S. Lewis that basically says there are two kinds of persons on earth – the ones who say to God, ‘Thy Will Be done,’ and the ones to whom God says, ‘Thy Will Be Done.’ Sin has to be paid for. We understand the concept of justice. You and I are sinners. No one that has children ever had to show them a seminar on how to lie, a video on how to rebel, and how to ‘talk back.’ No, these things come naturally because we are all born sinners; it is our nature. Sin requires God’s judgment and justice. So, in His loving way, God sent His son Jesus, who came willingly, by the way, to die for us.

God poured out holy justice on Jesus for sins He did not commit so that He can declare us innocent and give us a righteousness that we do not deserve. God did not send people to Hell; they are born going to Hell. He offers them a way not to go there. If they refuse the way, they have accepted their place in Hell and will be under God’s divine justice, God’s wrath forever. Jesus went freely into captivity, freely into a ‘trial,’ freely up the hill of Golgotha, and allowed mere men to nail Him to the cross, all the while keeping thousands of eager angels at bay.

Matthew 26:53 “Are you not aware that I can call on My Father, and He will at once put at My disposal more than twelve legions of angels?”

This is a hard topic to deal with, but Hell is just as real as Heaven and needs to be talked about. Real people that we know, that we love, that we see every day, that we eat with at lunch and wish a goodnight at the end of each workday are going to go the Hell because they rejected Jesus. That simple and that true. They do not go to Hell because they are sinners; we are all sinners. They go to Hell because they rejected God the Father’s free gift of eternal life.

It is my prayer and my desire that all men respond to God’s grace, but some will only respond to God’s wrath. Lord, help me to be at the edge of Hell trying to give people one last chance, may they have to pass me praying for them not to get there, and may our churches constantly smell of smoke as we camp at the gates of Hell even to rescue just one more from her grasp.

God is a loving and merciful God, but He is also a wrathful God. We cannot have mercy without wrath; a God who has no wrath is not merciful; there is nothing to fear. Only a God capable of wrath can extend mercy. I am under His mercy in Jesus; what about you?

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church

How to Connect with Us

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MississaugaMissionaryBaptistChurch
Online: https://www.mississaugamissionarybaptistchurch.com/ (under construction)
Email: missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca

Matthew 24: 3-14

“Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, ‘Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?” ⁴ And Jesus answered and said to them: ‘Take heed that no one deceives you. ⁵ For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many. ⁶ And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. ⁷ For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. ⁸ All these are the beginning of sorrows.

⁹ Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake. ¹⁰ And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another. ¹¹ Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. ¹² And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. ¹³ But he who endures to the end shall be saved. ¹⁴ And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.'”

If you took the time to read last week’s offer on the Woke Church, I appreciate that. We are surrounded by very large, very rich, and very powerful ministries that appear to be of God, but they are not. The Woke Church, which is a term that covers several churches, is building an earthly kingdom. They are focused on the here and now; they are not preparing people to meet Jesus and to serve Him in eternity in the Millennial Kingdom. A large group of the people that attend these churches are not saved; while they know God in an intellectual way, they do not have a personal and life-changing experience with Jesus as Savior.

The Bible is a great book, and it has some nice things to tell us, even nicer when the pastor twists the context and/or ignores it altogether. There is no judgment; God is the eternal ‘Santa Claus’; He is so ‘in love’ with you that He just could not imagine Heaven without you. Many of the songs in the Woke Church turn God, the Almighty God, into a sniveling ‘boyfriend’ pining away for you. This is blasphemy; God does not need anything or anyone; He is complete. By His grace, He has made a way for sinful men to become a part of His family. But God does not need you, and He does not need me. This is just ridiculous, and it reflects a bloated view of self that is simply not in the Bible.

So, in contrast to last week’s lesson, let us take the same passage and mark the traits of an Awake Church. As we do so, let us first define what an Awake Church is. This church, once again encompassing many local churches all over the world, is actively looking for Jesus to return, actively working on sharing the Gospel in the purity and entirety, deliberately and carefully teaching the Bible, and preparing people to meet Jesus and to be judged by Him. As we explore this text, I hope that you will be able to see if you are in a Woke Church or an Awake Church, and choose wisely.

• Deception, verse 4

The Awake Church takes the command in 2 Timothy 2:15 seriously. The word for ‘rightly divide’ in that verse refers to a butcher cutting up meat. He can carefully and skillfully cut up a cow or a sheep or whatever into the steaks, chops, ribs, etc. He is skilled. He is knowledgeable of the animal and knows what he is doing. A pastor, an evangelist, a missionary, a music minister, and a Sunday School teacher who is involved in any kind of teaching ministry needs to be well skilled in the Bible. They need to be avid readers and students.

I know my dear pastor friends who read through the entire Bible 2 or 3 times a year. Last year, for instance, I read the book of Proverbs only for my devotions. I read it 14 or 15 times in one year. I have another pastor friend who has read through the Bible more than 60 times from different versions, and he is well versed in the Book.

Some may scoff at the idea of the music minister being skilled and schooled in the Bible. But if we are to take our example from the Psalms, a book of 150 songs written by several authors including David, Moses, Asaph and others, we can see that ‘church music’ must, first of all, be Biblical and sound in doctrine. Music was and is the fastest way to teach anything. Every kid’s show will have lots of songs in it to teach whatever they are trying to get across in that episode. I grew up with Sesame Street, and they used songs to teach everything from counting to the alphabet. Songs are the best and most powerful way to teach something; there is a need in the human psyche for songs put there by God. The Awake Church prefers songs that teach accurate doxology, accurate doctrine, not just feel-good platitudes.

The Awake Church refuses to get lazy in the Bible; her ministers and members are always studying, reading, asking, exploring, comparing, and our sermons are exegetical. We explore the context of the verses before, the chapters before, and the whole Book if necessary. We are looking for the root meanings, we have commentaries and Bible word books, we look for definitions, and as we study, we see more and more of the story and the text. The Bible never gets old, and we never get done; we never get to the end. We are always asking the Holy Spirit to show us, open our eyes, and change us first.

In the Awake Church, the Bible is front and center, it is the one source of truth that we can trust, and all other observations must align with it or be rejected. When we immerse ourselves in the Bible’s truths, then it becomes harder to be deceived when false Christs come on the scene. We do not fall for the cheap hell-sent imitators. We know to look for the real Jesus, and we know how He is coming back again.

• Wars and Rumors of War, verse 6-8

What we see today happening in Ukraine is just a part of the end. The Bible calls them ‘birth pains,’ like a woman in labor. My daughter had our little granddaughter just over 4 months ago, and if I recall, she was in labor for more than 12 hours. I have heard of ladies who were in labor for more than 20 hours. Wow, I cannot imagine! Well, the world has been in labor for almost 2,000 years, waiting for Jesus to return. In Romans 8:22, we are told that the whole creation groans for the return of Jesus. Romans was written by Paul in the mid-first century BC. So, for the past 1,900 plus years, the same creation is groaning, awaiting the return of Jesus, her Creator.

Men have been at war forever. Just in the last century, we have seen for the first time more than 1,000,000 die in a war. This was the death toll at the conclusion of WW1; it was supposed to be the war that ended all wars. Well, that did not last long; just 20 or so years later, the world was in WW2, and the carnage there made WW1 look like a schoolyard skirmish. According to World Population Review, the USSR had somewhere in the range of 27,000,000 die in WW2; that is one country. Germany 6,000,000 or so, Japan between 2-3 million, and on we can go. Since then, we have had the Cold War, Vietnam, the Korean Conflict, and a 20+ year war in the Middle East with Iraq and Afghanistan.

The world is at war, and yes, we are moving nearer and nearer to the return of Jesus, but wars are just a part of the human, sinful condition – one that we need Jesus to change.

Now those of us that take prophecy seriously, and we should (about 25% of the Bible is prophecy) get goosebumps when we hear about Russia and war; we see the EU respond and the revised Roman Empire begin to resurge, and we know that the end is nearer than ever before. We can begin to see Daniel’s prophecies come to life and get a sense of urgency to share the Gospel. Jesus is coming back soon.

But the same reaction was there in 1948 when the Awake Churches saw Israel resurge as a nation. The same goosebumps came in 1967 when they retook Jerusalem, and in 2017 when President Trump officially recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and began the building of the American Embassy there. The Awake Churches know that Jerusalem is the center of activity in the Revelation as the Man of Sin and eventually Jesus war over her.

By the way, this pacifist Jesus that the Woke Church presents is a myth. Jesus is at the Head of Heaven’s Armies. He leads the battle; His clothes are covered in blood, and His sword does the killing. We serve a powerful God who can and will go toe-to-toe with the enemy and win. But in verse 8, we are offered a sobering observation; these are just the beginning of sorrows. Go and be about the Kingdom business, win souls, baptize the saved, and teach them to do likewise.

• Hatred for Truth verses 9-10

The Woke Church wants to be loved by the world system, but the Awake Church will be hated. We will be hunted and hurt. We will be imprisoned and maybe even executed for the truth. By the way, the Woke Churches will be our greatest enemies, and woke persons planted in our true churches will try to kill us and weaken us from within. The Woke Church will champion the Man of Sin and follow him. The Awake Churches focus on Jesus and His ways to the exclusion of all else.

The Awake Church prepares her people for persecution; we tell them the truth. Look here in Canada; there are still some pastors being arrested for COVID’ rebellion.’ There are still churches facing thousands of dollars in fines and the like. Those of us that have refused the vaccines or have called into question the motives of our governments are maligned and hated.

Now that the truth of COVID and its origins are coming to light, the focus is now on the war in Europe, and the puppeteers keep going unpunished. But they will hunt down the truth-tellers and silence us. Why? The truth, especially Jesus’s truth, is the only true freedom you will ever have. A person who has Jesus inside in the form of the Holy Spirit is free forever and never alone or abandoned. This person, though weak physically, can handle a lot in Jesus and with Jesus.

But be sure, even here in ‘free’ North America, we who teach, preach, and speak the truth are the enemies of the world that have hoodwinked the vast majority into believing that the governments are the saviours of the world. When the truth is that they are the enemies of all men, and the very idea of the 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution was put there because the godly men that formed it understood the depravity of man and that a people should be sufficiently armed so as to defend themselves against a tyrannical government. In the Christian life, the truth will set you free spiritually, but the same truth will get you imprisoned by the government; just take some time to read history. Or for that matter, read the book of Acts.

• Love Will grow cold, verse 12-14

In the Woke Church, love will become cold and stale. But in the Awake Churches, our love for the Lord and each other will grow and grow. It will become more real, more expressed, and more powerful. We, as we look for the return of Jesus, will want to be more like Him, more loving, more gracious, more kind, more peaceful, more patient, gentler, and on we can go. We in the Awake Churches are preparing a people to meet Jesus and undergo the judgment there. See Romans 14:12, “everyone will give an account of himself to God.” Yes, by the way, you will be judged. Yes, saved people will be judged, and this is further backed up in 2 Corinthians 5:10, “for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ.”

As we approach the end and the return of Jesus, the Awake Churches will fall more and more in love with Jesus. We will adore Him more, worship Him fervently, and honor Him above all else. This, in turn, will help us to love each other more, have more love for the lost, and seek to share His love for them with them.

I know many Awake Churches that still send missionaries all around the world; they are still sending out tracts, sharing the Gospel, praying for the lost, sending money to see people saved, investing in the kingdom of Heaven, and on and on we can go. The Awake Churches do not rest on their proverbial bottoms waiting for Jesus to return; we want Him to find us diligently and lovingly working for the Kingdom when He returns. Jesus was winning souls to the very end of His life – see the thief on the cross – and we should be just as determined and diligent.

Let us examine ourselves and see what kind of church we are a part of. Are we part of a Woke Church, or are we a part of the Awake Churches, those that serve the Lord faithfully and wholeheartedly, looking for our redemption in the sky?

How will your day at the judgment go? I will confess that I am a sinful man that often fails my Lord, but I have also labored to serve Him and pray that I will stay faithful to the end. May He find me actively working for Him and loving Him when the Trumpet sounds. How will He find you?

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church

How to Connect with Us

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MississaugaMissionaryBaptistChurch
Online: https://www.mississaugamissionarybaptistchurch.com/ (under construction)
Email: missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca