Pastor Rick's Daily Hope

Guest (Male): Are heaven and hell real places, and what are they like? Today on Pastor Rick's Daily Hope, the Bible teaching ministry of Rick Warren, we continue his series called Eternal Realities: Heaven and Hell. In these lessons, Rick shares what the Bible says about heaven and hell and how you can be absolutely certain you'll go to heaven. And now, here's part two of a message called The Reality of Hell.

Rick Warren: There's one other eternal reality we need to cover before we can actually look at the text today, and that is this: there's no second chance after you die. You get to choose where you're going to spend eternity, but you have to choose now while you're alive, not after you're dead. In other words, I can't walk out this door my way and then say, "Oh, by the way, I don't like this. I want to go back over here." No, God says, "I gave you an entire lifetime to make the right decision, and you didn't take it. You kept putting it off, putting it off, putting it off. I gave you an entire lifetime."

So, there is no halfway house between heaven and hell. There's no little intermediate state, no limbo, no purgatory. I know many of you were raised Catholic; purgatory is not in the Bible. The word is not even there. It's not a Bible idea. It's not something Jesus or God taught; it's something that was created 800 years ago in the Middle Ages. Purgatory is not even in the Bible. In fact, Catholics don't even believe it anymore. Pope John Paul II stated in a very public way that purgatory was not a real place. And Pope Benedict let the newest catechism of the Catholic Church go without the word purgatory being in there anymore. They've taken it out. Why? Because it's not in the Bible. It's a theory that was created during the Middle Ages.

Now, Jesus, when he was dying on the cross, there was a guy next to him who had been a criminal his entire life. This guy had done only bad his entire life. On his last seconds, he has a deathbed conversion, and he's dying on the cross next to Jesus. He says to Jesus, "Lord, remember me when you come into paradise." That's all he knew about salvation: Jesus can save me. He didn't know all the doctrines, he didn't know all the fancy words, he didn't know all the background behind it. He just said yes to Jesus. And Jesus looks at him and says, "Well, you're going to have to spend about a year in purgatory." No, that's not at all what he said. Jesus looks at the guy next to him and he goes, "Today you'll be with me in paradise." Boom, that's it.

What does it take to get into heaven? You say yes to Jesus Christ. He says today—not next week, not next month, not in three or four years while people pray for you and hope you get out of limbo. No, he says today. The moment you die, you either go straight to heaven or you go straight to hell, and it's a choice here on earth. God has done everything to make sure you get into heaven, and we're going to talk about that. The Bible says to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. The Bible says it like this, here on the screen: "They will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous will go into eternal life." The reality is there are two places.

Friends, this is so important because what we're talking about today has your eternal destiny. Now, maybe some other time when I've been preaching, you've used it for good nap time. This would not be a good week to take a nap because your eternal destiny depends on this one. I want everybody to be absolutely certain when we finish here today that when you go out, you know without a shadow of a doubt you're going to heaven. There's every reason you can settle that issue today. So, I want you to listen as if your life depends on it.

Next week, we're going to talk about heaven, but today I want to ask four questions: Why does hell exist? What is it like? How do I avoid it (that's the important one)? And what do I do once I know all of this? First, why does hell exist? There are two fundamental reasons. You might write this down. The first is because sin and evil exist. Now, there are some people who want to deny the existence of evil, and they think that actually the world is full of people and we're basically good—that human beings are fundamentally by nature unselfish, always kind, always good, and always thinking about others.

I want to say to you, have you turned on your television? Have you picked up a newspaper? Do you listen to the radio? You might want to just travel with me on one of my world trips because the world is filled with broken relationships, broken promises, rape, abuse, murder, child molestation, all kinds of evil. Terrorism, people who strap bombs onto themselves—the world is filled with evil. It's all around you. We pick up the newspaper and we read about young, beautiful coeds, student body presidents of their colleges, who this week were shot randomly. Friends, that's evil. We read about people, little children picked up on the street and sold into sex trafficking. That's evil.

Fundamentally, the Bible teaches that it is my nature to not think about you. It's my nature to be selfish, and it is your nature to be selfish. You think about you more than anybody else. You're not naturally thinking: what's best for other people, what's best for the world, what does God want me to do? You're thinking about what do I want to do, what's easy, what's convenient, what would I like to do? Now, maybe if you lived 75 years ago in a little house on the prairie on a farm, you might think that people are basically good. But with all the media around us today, we know that the world is filled with evil, and evil things happen, and it happens all of the time.

What was true in Noah's day is still true today. Notice this verse up here on the screen in Genesis chapter 8:5 and 6, it says this: "The Lord observed that the extent of people's wickedness and he saw all their thoughts were consistently and totally evil. And he, that's God, was sorry that he had ever made them. He was sorry that he made the human race, and it broke his heart." God looked down on the world in Noah's day and he goes, "Man, what a mess they've made of this. What they do to themselves, what they do to each other, what they do to the planet that I gave them. They've really made a mess of this. They've really screwed it up."

And that is the way God feels today, and it says it broke his heart. Did you know that God has emotions? Of course he does. In fact, the reason you have emotions is because God made you in his image. The reason you have the ability to feel, the reason you have the ability for your heart to be broken is because God is an emotional God, and you were made in his image. When God looks at all the things that are done in the world that are wrong and bad and evil, it breaks God's heart. When people say to me, "Where is God when people get molested and people are abused and people are betrayed? And where is God with the rape and the murder and the world's terrorism and crime?" I'll tell you what he's doing: he's weeping. He's grieving. He's brokenhearted.

You say, "Well, why doesn't he just stop it?" Oh, he could. God could eliminate all the evil in the world just like that—just get rid of all of us. Where do you think it comes from? It comes from our poor choices. You're not telling me you've always made every decision right that's never hurt anybody else. No, we hurt each other. Now, God gave us a free will, and that is our greatest gift; it's also our worst curse because we don't always make wise choices. While God gave us this free ability to choose right or wrong, good or bad, evil or righteousness, he gives us this choice because we're created in his image. He gave us the free will.

We often choose the wrong thing, and as a result, people get hurt intentionally and unintentionally. Now, God could take away all the sin, all the suffering, all the sickness, and all the evil in the world just like that. All he has to do is take away your free will and mine too. Now, why does God give us a free will? I'll tell you why: because he wanted you to choose to love him, not be forced to love him. You see, it's not real love if you're forced to do it. If you are forced to love me, it's not real love. If I'm forced to love you, it's not real love. Love is only love if you can choose not to love, and God gives you the free choice.

You don't have to love God. You don't have to trust God. You don't have to obey God. You don't have to follow in the ways. You don't have to fulfill the purpose he created for you. You can make your life a total mess. Why did God do that? Because he wants us to choose to love him. He wants us to choose to do right. God wanted a family that would live with him forever, and he wanted to produce a race of tested individuals who voluntarily chose to love and do the right thing. That can't be possible unless we're allowed to do the wrong thing. So, it is our greatest blessing and our greatest curse. It still breaks God's heart today when we hurt ourselves, when we hurt other people, when we hurt the planet that he's put us on.

Now, you need to understand that God allows sin on earth simply for this choice so you have a choice. But he does not allow any sin in heaven. Heaven is a perfect place. There are no imperfections in heaven. It is completely perfect, so there's no sin there. Now, that raises an important problem. Heaven is a perfect place, and that means only perfect people get to go there. Otherwise, if God let imperfect people come in with their selfishness and their sin and their sorrows and all of their sickness, then it would be just like earth. It wouldn't be heaven anymore. I don't want to go to a heaven where Hitler can do his thing, or Pol Pot can do his thing, or a rapist or a genocider can do their thing. No, I want to go to heaven where it's perfect and we're away from all of that.

So, only perfect people get to go there. Now, that's a problem because I'm not perfect, and neither are you. David asks this question in the book of Psalms. In Psalm 15:1 and 2, David says, "Lord, who may enter your holy tent?" Now, "holy tent" is just a euphemism, an analogy for coming into your presence. It's heaven. "Lord, who may live on your holy mountain?" And here's the condition: "Only those who are completely blameless and innocent and those who always do what is right." I don't know about you, but I don't fit that category. I am not blameless, I am not innocent, I do not do what is always right. So, I got a problem. There's not a snowball's chance of me getting into heaven unless God comes up with Plan B because heaven is perfect, and I stopped batting a thousand about age one.

And by the way, you did, too. The Bible says we've all blown it; we've all sinned. Everybody, we don't live measure up to our own standards, much less God's. And so there has to be a place for evil to go in eternity. If I'm made to last forever and I'm not perfect, then I've got to have another place to go to. There is sin and there is evil in the world. Now, there's a second reason for hell, and that's because God is holy and just. He is holy, that means he is perfect, he cannot sin himself. And he's just, that means he believes in justice; he settles the score. He always does the right thing.

The Bible says that one day God is going to balance the books. God is going to bring justice to the world, and God is going to right the wrongs, and he's going to settle the score, and he's going to even the odds, and he's going to balance the books. Now, I don't know if you've noticed this or not, but have you noticed that life is unfair? What if you'd been born in Darfur? Was it fair that you were born in America and somebody else was born in Darfur? That's not really that fair, is it? And I don't know if you've noticed this or not, but people get away with all kinds of stuff on earth—bad stuff. In fact, people get away with murder on earth. Life is not fair.

I don't know if you've noticed this or not, but bad things often happen to good people, and good things often happen to bad people. People who cheat and steal and lie and rob their entire lives often become enormously successful and they get away literally with murder, while other people who try to do the right thing and live the right way, things don't work out in their lives all the time. Life is not fair. And David said in the Psalms, he said, "I would have despaired if I hadn't believed in the goodness of God." In other words, looking at the world, if I just looked at it and go, "Whoa, this is not fair. People do bad things and get away with it, and people do good things and don't get rewarded for it." If I didn't believe that one day God's going to settle the score, that God is just, he's going to tip the scales and he's going to even it all out and there will be repayment in justice, it just wouldn't be right.

Solomon talks about this. He complains. He says God is holy and just, but yet he says in Ecclesiastes 8 these words: "I thought about the things that are done in the world, a world where some people have power and others have to suffer under them." Oh man, have I seen that as I've traveled around the world. I've seen a lot of places where evil people have the power and other people suffer as a result. He says, "Yes, I've seen the wicked buried and in their graves, but on the way back from the cemetery, people praise them in the very city where they did their evil." It says, what's wrong with that picture? He says it's useless.

And then he says this: "Why do people commit crimes so readily? Because crime is not punished quickly enough." In other words, here on earth, you do something bad, you can often get away with it. Crime is not punished quickly enough. He said a sinner may commit a hundred crimes and still live. He says that's just not right. I mean, what would it be like if Stalin and Mao and Hitler, who gassed six million Jews, showed up in heaven? There'd be something wrong with heaven. What if bin Laden showed up in heaven after telling everybody go blow themselves up to help kill other people? One day God is going to settle the score.

Let me show you some verses here on the screen. The Bible says this: "For the Lord is coming to judge the earth. He will judge the nations fairly and with truth." And by the way, he's the only one who can judge fairly because he's impartial. The Bible says this in 2 Thessalonians chapter 1: "God will do what is right. God is a righteous God, that means he always does what is right. And he will bring suffering on those who make you suffer, and he'll give relief to you who suffer as well. And he will do this when the Lord Jesus appears from heaven to punish those who reject God, who say, 'I'm going to be my own God, I'm going to run my own life. I don't need God, I'm going to go my way, not Jesus' way,' to punish those who reject God and who do not obey the good news about our Lord Jesus."

"They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction separated from the presence of the Lord." Now notice that last phrase: "separated from the presence of the Lord." That's the number one characteristic of hell: separated from the presence of the Lord. People don't realize how bad that is because we have the Lord's presence here. You see, here on earth, even when I reject God, he still shows me grace. I mean, I could be going out here totally ignoring God, and I get all kinds of gifts from God because everything you have in your life's a gift from God. The air you breathe, that's a gift from God. The water you drink, that's a gift from God. Your heart beating, that's a gift from God.

Everything you have in your life is a gift of God's grace. So even people who don't know the Lord experience God's grace every single day of their life. Your health is a gift from God. Your brain is a gift from God. The weather is a gift from God. Life is a gift from God. Everything you have on this planet is because of God's grace. So we don't know what it means to live without God's grace. We don't really know that because everything God does in your life, he does because he loves you and he's showing you grace at that moment. Now, he says one day I'm going to settle the score, and you may be thinking, "Hey, that's great. All the people who hurt me, go get them, Lord." There's only one problem: I'm involved, too. Notice the next verse here on the screen. 2 Corinthians 5:10 says, "We will all stand before Christ to be judged." In other words, not just my enemies. We will each receive whatever we deserve for the good or the evil that we have done in our bodies.

Why does hell exist? Because sin and evil exist and because God is holy and just. Now, what is hell like? Well, it's really hard to explain because we don't have the human experience to explain it. It's kind of like trying to explain the internet to an ant. If you had never eaten or seen a piece of pizza, how would you explain it? And so it's really kind of hard. Now, Jesus actually talked more about hell than he did about heaven. But what is hell like? You know, sometimes you hear these guys preaching on hell on television. I call them the hellfire and brimstone, and they're yelling and they're sweating. And when you listen to them, you kind of think like they want people to go there. I'm going, what's with that?

I don't want anybody to go to hell, and God certainly doesn't want anybody to go to hell. Jesus doesn't want anybody to go to hell; that's why he died on the cross. That's how much he considered it important. So this is not something that you're happy about. You certainly don't have to yell about it. But what is hell like? Well, the Bible describes it as a place of torment. In fact, here on the screen, Matthew 8, you've heard about this: "In darkness they will cry out and grit their teeth in pain." And of course, your image of hell, and the Bible talks about this, it says fire and things like this. But you know what the worst part is? You write this down: hell is total separation from God. That's the worst thing about it. It means I'm totally apart from God's love, totally apart from God's grace. Total separation from God.

1 Corinthians 16:22 says this: "If anyone does not love the Lord, let him be separated from God, lost forever." In other words, here it is: if I go through my entire life saying, "I don't want God in my life on earth." If I don't want God in my life on earth, why in the world would I want to spend eternity with him? I mean, why would I change my mind? Why would I say I want to live without God on earth, but I want to live with God in heaven? That doesn't make sense. God says, "You get to choose. You want to live with me or live without me?"

Guest (Male): That was such an encouraging message from Pastor Rick, and now to encourage us more, here's Rick with a letter from one of our listeners.

Rick Warren: I want to say thanks to all of you who are supporting Daily Hope ministry with your financial gifts and with your prayers. I know you appreciate these notes that I get from people around the world as much as I do. Let me just share one with you from a woman named Anna, who is an elementary school principal. And she just wrote this: "Dear Pastor Rick, I became a principal in an elementary school at the age of 25. I'm now 42. Now, we've had Rick Warren Bible series and studies at our church during the summers, and I always enjoyed them so much, and I've invited many friends and relatives to visit our church.

A couple years ago, I began to share your devotion, Daily Hope, with all of my staff members each morning. See, she's a principal, she's sharing this with her staff. She said, "I've seen their growth in God, I've seen the transformation in their lives and characters over these past years, and I'm amazed at the Lord's love and mercy. Now, it doesn't mean that we haven't struggled with issues such as death and depression and disappointments and illness, things like that. However, we have had our eyes on God during all of the things that have come against us, and this has made a difference. I pray with them during our staff meetings to give thanks. So Pastor Rick, I just want to thank you for following God's call, even though you go through struggles and life problems just like we all do. God is with you. May the Lord continue to bless you and your beautiful family. May he continue to bless you with wisdom and discernment so that you're able to share your gift with all of us. Blessings, Anna."

Well, Anna, God bless you. Thanks for writing. I love getting these letters, and you actually encouraged me. And I love the fact that as a principal, you're sharing the broadcast and you're sharing the devotionals with your staff. This makes you a partner in this ministry. And I thank you for doing that, and I want to encourage everyone else who's listening: find somebody that you can share the good news with. Tell them about Daily Hope. God bless you.

Guest (Male): Please join us next time as we look into God's word for our daily hope. This program is sponsored by Pastor Rick's Daily Hope and your generous financial support.