Heaven AND Hell for Real (click to read pdf bulletin version)
The church readings over the last month have covered the parables of
Jesus in Matthew 13. We heard about the Soils and the Sower with Jesus
explaining to the disciples what each soil meant in relation to hearing the
Word. We heard very short parables like that of the mustard seed and
the pearl of great price. There is also the Parable of the Weeds (13:24-
30) which Jesus likewise explained as requested by the disciples (13:36-
43). Jesus’ story is again about sowing seed and compares the kingdom
to one who plants good seed in his field. As the wheat starts to grow,
the servants notice that weeds are also growing among the crop. The
master of the house tells them that an enemy has done this, yet they are
to let the weeds and wheat grow together until harvest. At that time the
master will tell the reapers to gather the weeds first and bind them into
bundles to be burned, then gather the wheat into his barn.
Jesus interprets his parable as follows:
The Sower (Jesus—the Son of Man)
Good Seed (children of the kingdom: the righteous 13:43)
the Field (the world—not simply the church)
an enemy (the devil—the evil one) who sows
weeds (children of the evil one: causes of sin who practice lawlessness 13:42)
Harvest (end of the age)
Reapers (the angels)
Gathering: reapers gather out weeds into fiery furnace—weeping, gnashing teeth
Shining: the righteous are left to shine like the sun in the Father’s kingdom
When exploring the parables, we noticed how comforting they are to the
disciples. Although the kingdom may start small, it will grow and become a great
plant, producing profound fruit. There will be opposition, but God’s judgment
means the redemption and vindication of his children. Jesus teaches heaven is
for real (which in the parable is pictured as the new earth purged free of evil).
This is great comfort. Jesus’ teaching is also accompanied by great warning.
Jesus mentions (many times) how hell is for real. This is what many today
overlook in the bright but also burning “red letters” of Jesus. Jesus portrays
different destinies at the time of harvest, the shining glory of the children of the
Father in contrast with the fiery destruction where there is weeping and gnashing
of teeth (13:42).
What do we do with the hellfire teaching from the lips of Jesus? To be sure, we are all tempted to make Jesus in our
own image by reinterpreting, or just plain “passing over” what Jesus says. But Jesus’ teaching on judgment was
constant, consistent and emphatic. At this point, I want to quote for you comments on the parable by one of our favorite
Scripture exegetes, N.T. Wright. Instead of me saying the same thing, I want you to hear it from someone like Wright,
who is likewise committed to hear all that Jesus teaches. Jesus did say at the very end of interpreting this parable: “He
who has ears, let him hear” (13:43).
“When we read the awesome judgment scenes in the Bible, it is that combination of attributes we must learn to
see; and this interpretation of the parable is one of those scenes. It’s all too easy to read about evildoers being thrown
into a burning fiery furnace and to conjuer up medieval images of hellfire and damnation. It’s then all to easy to react
against the excesses of some earlier Christian preaching, which tried to frighten people into believing by telling them
they’d fry in hell if they didn’t. {Note from LH: Jesus did, however, indeed use fear as a motivation when He said in Luke
12:4-5: “I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do.
But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear
Him!” It was just that fear was neither Jesus’ only nor primary motivational call.} We might then deny any doctrine of
future judgment at all. Many who have taken this route want to say either that God would never judge or condemn
anyone or that he will postpone the harvest until every single weed has been turned into wheat.
There certainly are caricatures of God and his judgment which we should avoid like the plague. God is not a sadistic
monster who would happily consign most of his beloved, image-bearing creatures to eternal fire. But there are equal and
opposite caricatures we should also be aware of. God is not an indulgent grandparent determined to spoil the youngsters
rotten by letting them do whatever they like and still giving them sweets at the end of the day. We must refuse the
second just as firmly as the first.
Anyone who can’t see that there is such a thing as serious and vicious evil in the world, after all that’s happened in the
twentieth century, and is still happening now in the twenty-first, is simply wearing the wrong spectacles. Anyone who
doesn’t hope and pray that the God who made the world will one day put it to rights is condemning themselves to
regarding the world as, at best, a sick joke. But anyone who supposes that the true and living God, the world’s creator,
can put it to rights without confronting, and defeating, not only ‘evil’ in the abstract but those who have given their lives
and energies to inventing and developing wickedness, profiting from it, luring others into it, and wreaking large-scale
human devastation as a result, is asking for the moon.
This is not to say that only large-scale and obvious wickedness will face God’s judgment. There are, as we have seen,
stern words in the gospels about all of us being judged on every idle word we utter. . . . But … the parable challenged
them to the core, and it should do the same to us.” (Matthew For Everyone Part One, 2004).
Jesus indeed taught that heaven is for real, and often right alongside taught without hesitation or muffling that hell is
for real. Those who have ears, as Jesus says, let them hear. LH
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