While driving through West Texas, a New Yorker tourist stopped for gasoline at a run-down old station. From a corner of the building there hung a rope, with a sign above it, reading: “Weather rope.” The visitor asked the proprietor how a rope could help forecast the weather. “Well,” replied the old man, “If the rope swings back and forth, we know its windy. If it’s wet we know that its rainy. If it’s frozen stiff we know that its cold. And if its gone, then we know that there is a tornado.”
That may be the West Texas method of weather forecasting, but there appear to be better ways. And the best way to learn about the current conditions of spiritual things, it is good to keep a copy of the Bible close at hand. There has never failed a single promise or prophecy of the Word of God – not one! And what it declares about our particular moment is just as accurate as fulfilled prophecy. In fact, it can tell us about things which we cannot see with the naked eye or naked intellect. It reveals what God sees in our hearts and souls. Some of those Biblical statements are rather general, but some are almost painfully explicit. Different prophecies and revelations are like different kinds of paintings: One artist paints a wonderful watercolor, and we know exactly what he is depicting. But the style reflects the subject in general, sometimes blurry way. Then another artist reproduces the same scene, using oils or pen and ink. It’s almost as if he painted or drew every pine-needle individually.
The case of the scripture before us, Paul gives us a watercolor. The colors are dark, and he doesn’t mention any names or dates, but we know exactly what he is saying. We look around us today and we see tens of thousands who have turned their ears away from the truth, and focused their hearing on nothing better than fables. “Timothy, in light of this fact, it is essential that you and all your spiritual progeny diligently, explicitly, forcefully, lovingly, and earnestly preach the unadulterated Word of God.” The Bible says nothing about dramatizing the message of God – putting it into the form of a play or show. We are not commanded to sing it, or mime it, or debate it, or to make movies about it. There may not be anything overtly sinful about doing these things, but we have no commission. We are commanded over and over to preach the Word. And sometimes – often – that means paring the truth of God down to its bare bones – its skeletal frame. We are to preach the word, in order to prevent the spreading of fables. And the richest soil for the sprouting of fables is in children and childish hearts. I have heard it dozens of times, and I heard it again a few days ago. When someone dramatizes a Bible story and presents it to kids, those kids will picture or learn things which are not a true reflection of the Bible. They learn the dramatization; they learn a fuzzy, indistinct form of a Bible story; but not the Bible. And often, very often, those children prefer the dramatized word to the inspired Word.
When someone believes a fable, that believer comes to believe something which may be completely unbelievable. And when this occurs that misdirected believer, in reality, becomes an unbeliever in regard to the truth. To believe the truth proves a person to be a “believer.” To believe the unbelievable makes a person an “unbeliever.” “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up; that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.” If someone, refuses to believe on Christ, he proves himself to be an “unbeliever.” “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.” “Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life; he that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.” “Whosever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.” When someone believes the truth he is a “believer.” But to believe a lie makes a person an “unbeliever.”
As an example, some people believe that God will not judge them for their sins.
Their faith in this fable renders them unbelievers. God has vividly demonstrated that He will not ignore anybody’s sin. He judged Noah and Moses, David and Abraham for their sins. There was a couple who were members of the Lord’s first church. We have their names given to us in the Book of Acts – they are actual history. They plotted together to deceive their church, forgetting that the Lord knows everything. After repeating – reiterating – their lies, the Lord judged them with immediate death. When Moses disobeyed the Lord, perhaps unthinkingly, he was forbidden to enjoy the promised land. He had been authorized to work a miracle and to provide Israel with drinking water in the desert. God gave him explicit directions, but caught up in his own emotions, he forgot the directions, and the Lord punished him for his sin. If the Lord judges his own people, how shall they escape who love not the Lord? How shall any man escape if he neglects the Lord’s great salvation (Hebrews 2:3)? Even though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not go unpunished (Proverbs 11:28)>
It is this belief – that God will not keep His promises – that levees interest on the wages of sin. The Lord has promised that “the wages of sin is death,” and the reference is to eternal death. People continue in sin, because they don’t believe that the Lord will keep His word. But God has said that unless we repent of our sins before Him, we shall all reap those wages. Yet most of humanity refuses to repent, because we don’t believe the declaration of God. Mankind as a whole doesn’t believe that God has the AUTHORITY to judge us. Our neighbors don’t believe that Jehovah has the CAPABILITY to judge us for our sins. They don’t believe that God has the WILL to judge us. They think Jehovah is nothing more than an indolent, wishy-washy parent, who will bow to our every whim.
Years ago, when the United States was a more God-fearing place than it is today…. Years ago an unbelieving farmer wrote an letter to the editor of his local newspaper. He said, “I have tried an experiment this year with a field of mine. I first plowed and prepared that field on a Sunday early in the spring. Later I planted it on another Sunday, and I fertilized it on another Sunday. Everything that I’ve done to that field has been done on a Sunday. And the crop, which I harvested on Sunday, has proven to be the best on my farm. That crop is better than any crop produced in this region. I have made more money this October than I have ever made before. I therefore conclude that all this talk about God is a lot of bologna.” That unbelieving farmer didn’t get the editorial response the was expecting. The managing editor of the paper merely replied: “God doesn’t always settle his accounts in October.”
Unbelievers believe the most unbelievable things, because they are predisposed to believe fables.
Some unbelievers believe there is no Hell and there is no Lake of Fire.
But to disbelieve in Hell is like trying to put out the sun by blinking our eyes. People may say they disbelieve because no one has ever been there and come back to tell us about it. Of this they are wilfully ignorant, because the Lord Jesus has told us of just such a man. He is described in Luke 16, where we are even given the man’s name. Once again this is history – the man is a historical person. No single person in the Bible spoke more about Hell than the Lord Jesus. And this is appropriate, because no one knows the place better than He. He created it; He ignited its fire; He darkened the light and He created the echo its chamber. It will be some people’s Jesus, who shall say, “Depart from me ye cursed into everlasting fire.”
Someone says, “But I don’t believe that God would be MEAN enough to do something like that.” You should put it another way: You should say, “I don’t believe that God would be JUST enough to cast people into Hell.” You should say, “I don’t believe that God would be HONEST enough; or God enough.” If you believe in fables, you might has well believe some really good ones. If God can’t be trusted enough to keep His promises about Hell, then He can’t be trusted about Heaven. Your problem is not with God, it is with the God which your imagination has created.
The Bible clearly describes Hell and the components which make it up. It is made up of some sort of literal fire, although it isn’t fueled by natural gas or chunks of tamarack. It may not be the kind of flame which we are used to today, but it will be just as hot – if not hotter. Christ describes it as “unquenchable fire.” Some fires can be smothered with the very fuel on which it loves to feast. But the fires of Hell will never be stopped or slowed. The Lake of Fire will be a place of absolute darkness – despite the flames which are there. Hell has gates, and at least for the time-being, it is surrounded by some sort of special moat. It appears that some corners of Hell will be more torturous than other corners. And the keys of death and hell hang upon the waistband of the only One who can save sinners from its flames. If a person chooses believe things other than these things about Hell, then he is an “unbeliever.”
Some unbelievers believe that belief in Jesus satisfies God.
Some of these people quote John 3:16 and other great Bible verses. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” This kind of unbeliever may believe in regular church attendance. These people may be church-reared people, who attended Sunday School, learning their catechism. They believe there was a man named “Jesus,” who was born in Bethlehem and who lived in Nazareth. They believe this Jesus was born of a virgin on December 25 in the year 1. They believe He went about doing good, healing the sick, raising the dead and paying peoples taxes. They believe He gathered twelve disciples around Him and started a church. They believe He was arrested, crucified, died, was buried, but arose from the grave. They “believe in Jesus.”
But they are still unbelievers because their faith falls short of God’s definition of a true “believer.” And they don’t believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, whom the Bible reveals. Earlier we read John 8:30-59 – did you hear the message? In John 5 Christ Jesus healed a man of some sort of paralysis. Under the sovereign direction of God, it “happened” to be on the Jewish Sabbath. Several highly religious people ignored the miracle, focusing on the day in which it was performed, and they went on to call Christ a “sinner” for abusing the Sabbath. Apparently for those people, holy days are for either doing nothing – or perhaps for doing evil. In reply, the Lord Jesus began to discuss the fact that He, as the Son of God, had every right to work miracles – even on the Sabbath. Christ said, “
I have greater witness than that of John: for the works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me. And the Father himself, which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me. Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape. And ye have not his word abiding in you: for whom he hath sent, him ye believe not. Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.” Those rebellious Jews had the choice to believe that the Son of God stood before them, and that He could heal the sick, or they could believe the lies already residing in their own hearts. They refused to trust Him and walked away as unbelievers. Like hundreds of millions of people today, they believed some things, but not the important things. They were “unbelieving believers.”
Many unbelievers believe that personal morality and obedience are sufficient to cover sin.
Children are especially prone to believe in fables and fantasies, and that kind of faith is a part of what proves them to be children. Paul once wrote, “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” But it is another characteristic of children to bluntly recognize facts, when their parents often don’t. How many times have parents been embarrassed by their children openly speaking the truth? “That lady is really old.” “That man stinks.” Often those children hit the nail on the head. A preacher once asked a little girl, “What you we have to do to go to Heaven?” In her misguided ignorance, she said, “We have to be good.” He responded, “How good?” and she replied, “Awfully, awfully, awfully good.” “Are you that good?” “On no, nobody is that good.” It is true. Nobody is that good – able to stand in their own righteousness before the righteous God. Only an unbeliever can believe he is good enough, in his own morality or righteousness, for Jehovah.
Obedience to God doesn’t cover sins; rather it does just the opposite. The study of morality, whether in ourselves or in others, is like turning on a light – it just illustrates or accentuates our failures. Merriam Webster defines morality as “beliefs about what is right behavior and what is wrong behavior. the degree to which something is right and good; the moral goodness or badness of something.” Not even a secular dictionary says that morality PRODUCES righteousness, goodness or even good behavior. Morality is a set of rules by which to live. BIBLICAL morality is nothing less than a declaration of Biblical law.
And the New Testament has much to say about the law. “By the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.” “Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.” “What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. “By the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.” “Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator. Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.”
The law is insufficient to carry anyone to God and to believe otherwise is to believe the unbelievable. And to believe the unbelievable is to be an unbeliever.
I have the commission to preach the Word of God, to douse the fires of this world’s fables.
My commission is to authoritatively tell you all that there is only one remedy for sin. The fires of Hell can be extinguished only by the blood of the lovely Son of God. And more specifically, it is the blood He shed while substituting for a criminal, hanging on cross.
My commission is to tell you that if you will repent, turning from your sins and sinfulness… That if you will turn to that same Saviour, believing that he died specifically for your sins … If you will receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour … Then here and now, you may have complete and final forgiveness and the cleansing of all your sin. It was for this purpose that Jesus died, and for this purpose the Gospel is preached.