The Biblical Doctrine of Hell

Transcript

GRM 1203
10/28/2018
The Biblical Doctrine of Hell
Selected Verses
Gil Rugh

We were talking about the great white throne this morning. The last judgement of mankind, the judgement of all unbelievers from all time. And I just want to take a little bit of time to look at a few scriptures with you about the Biblical doctrine of hell and where, maybe, the evangelical church is moving today and then we’re going to have question and answer time. Address some of the questions that have come and you might have. Let me just read you a few comments from a Biblical perspective, a work that was written titled “Hell under Fire.” And these would be men that would hold basically our view on a literal understanding on what the Bible says about hell. But they talk about the erosion that’s taking place and the view of hell even among those who profess to be Bible-believing Christians. We are aware that the world rejects such a concept largely. But they start out this book by noting: “At some point in the 1960’s, hell disappeared. No one could say for certain when this happened. First it was there, then it wasn’t. Different people became aware of the disappearance of hell at different times.” And I’m not reading consecutively. Just jumping from place to place. “A fixture of Christian theology for over 16 centuries, hell went away in a hurry. The abandonment of the traditional doctrine of hell came swiftly, with centuries of Christian conviction quickly swept away in a rush of modern thought and doctrinal transformation.” One church historian put it this way: “Hell disappeared. No one noticed. The sudden disappearance of hell amounts to a theological mystery of sorts. How did a doctrine so centrally enshrined in the system of theology suffer such a wholesale abandonment? What can explain this radical reordering of Christian theology? The answer to this mystery reveals much about the fate of Christianity in the modern world. And warns of greater theological compromises on the horizon. For as the church has been continually reminded, no doctrine stands alone. Each doctrine is embedded in as system of theological conviction and expression. Take out the doctrine of hell, and the entire shape of Christian theology is inevitably altered.”

And as observed, the way we’ve noted, the way this really develops is we don’t begin by denying a basic doctrine like hell. We just little by little begin to ignore it. We realize and we want to reach people. People don’t want to come to church and hear about an eternal hell. So we just decide we won’t talk about it. And pretty soon, we come up with what the Bible says about hell, so we begin to alter our interpretation of Scripture on this matter to fit more with what people will be comfortable with. And then pretty soon we adjust other doctrines that are connected to this. They give a little bit of the history of this. It’s not brand new in the 1960’s that people reject hell, going all the way back to Origen in the 3rd century. He moved away from a literal understanding of the doctrine of hell and teaching on that, began to reinterpret Scripture things they go on. And they’ll mention down through history if you’re interested, you can read more of the book for yourself.

One prominent writer at the end of the 1800’s wrote a book on the life of Christ, but the liberal tendencies there come out. He went so far as to label the traditional doctrine of hell as blasphemy against the merciful God. A man who claims to be evangelical, but he wrote, “Here I declare, and call God to witness, that if the popular doctrine of hell were true, I should be ready to resign all hope. Not only of a shortened, but of any immortality. If their boy I could save not millions, but one simple human soul from what I fear, and superstition, and ignorance, and inveterate hate, slavish letter worship, have dreamed and taught of hell.” He interprets the Bible so literally. He calls it letter worship. And interpreting the Bible literally. Now one observation is, whereas preachers in earlier eras were concerned to save persons from punishment of hell, this man and his like-minded colleagues were determined to save their congregations from the fear of the idea of hell.

Going on through the Victorian times in the 1800’s, you had those like Charles Spurgeon, Alexander McLaren and others. They were faithful to the Scriptures, but there was a growing tide of rejection. And you come down to more recent times. Challenges to the doctrine had come from not just those who weren’t heavily involved in evangelicalism, to the center by the 1980’s, if I can jump ahead here. So evangelicals were engaged in a full scale debate over the existence and nature of hell and its punishments. In 1974, a clear call for reconsideration for the doctrine of hell came from John Wenham, who was a vice president of a theological school in England. He was well known among British evangelicals. And he talked about that modern persons find the traditional doctrine of hell as everlasting punishment to be unacceptable and unbelievable. Thus, theologians have initiated intensive efforts to find alternatives to the teaching of traditional orthodoxy. Twenty years go by, and he became a full blown proponent of conditional immorality. In other words, not everyone is going to live forever. This is a way of going away from an eternal hell. Punishment will not be eternal. Suffering will not be eternal. The only people who will be eternal are those who have been redeemed.

You know, when the drift starts, you never know where it’s going to end up. This is the concerning thing we all ought to have. You take a step off the right path, and now it doesn’t seem so significant to begin with. We’re just not that far apart. So where do you end up? Well, he ends up at this place. “Unending torment speaks to me of sadism, not justice. It is a doctrine which I do not know how to preach without negating the loveliness and glory of God. From the days of Tertullian, early church father, it has been the emphasis of fanatics. It is a doctrine that makes the Inquisition look reasonable. It seems a flight from reality and common sense.” It’s interesting. You read the writings of a person and they just start out with what seems like reasonable serious evaluation and questioning. And another step, before he’s done, he’s in a full blown attack on anybody who teaches a literal doctrine of hell as a fanatic. It’s an attack on the loveliness and glory of God. Then you begin to wonder, am I even dealing with a believer any longer? Maybe what seemed to characterize him early on was not what he really was. It was just truths that he had learned in his mind, but never believed in his heart.

And this man is not an insignificant figure among evangelicals, but even a man with greater influence was John Stott. One of the most important evangelical leaders of the 20th century. Another person who ministered in England, and he began to question and then deny the doctrine of a literal hell. He says, well I won’t read you all that he goes on but, he came to a belief that God wouldn’t sentence anyone to hell. So you begin to believe in the annihilation of the wicked. This is a way, their eternal destruction, their fire that burns forever just means that they’ve been gone forever. And we begin to deny these doctrines. Another man, Clark Pinnock. I first became familiar with Clark Pinnock and his writings in the early 1970’s. He wrote an outstanding book on the inspiration of Scripture. But by the time he moved later in life, he died a few years ago, he seeks, and here’s what this person says about him, “A complete re-ordering of Christian theology.” He now rejected such doctrines as substitutionary atonement, Biblical inerrancy, God’s exhaustive knowledge. He began to adopt the thought that God doesn’t know everything, he only knows everything that can be known. But the decisions that you’ll make tomorrow can’t be known because you haven’t made them yet, so God doesn’t know that. His knowledge of the future is based upon past experience of what happens, and so he can project with good probability what will happen. This man wrote a great book on Biblical inspiration.

And over the years, this is what happens to the doctrines like hell. Well we’re not comfortable with it. I want to go to church and invite my friend to come to Indian Hills with me and lo and behold, Gil’s on Revelation 20. Maybe I’ll wait and invite them until we get to chapter 21. You know, we begin to think we get uncomfortable. People that know us, they’ll say, “You believe in a literal hell? Where God who is love will place people to suffer forever and ever and ever? When at most they sin for 70 or 80 years. And now you’re trying to tell me that for all eternity, they’ll burn and suffer in hell? I just don’t think that’s a God that I can believe in.” So we want to begin to play it down. He is a God of love and I want to talk to you about all the good things he’ll do for you. He’ll make your life more meaningful. He’ll be the God that’s there to meet your needs.

And we begin to create a feel-good psychological Christianity. Why did Christ come? To suffer and die on the cross. So that people could be happier. So that they could have better marriages, more enjoyment. God wants us to, oh wait a minute. Christ came because the wages of sin is death. So my concern for the church today is when we move away from the serious systematic, careful. And I’m not saying Indian Hills is the only church, but this is our goal. This is what the church is about. Truth. And once you abandon the details of Scripture, what are you left with? A general knowledge of what the Bible says. But then error comes in and we say, “Well, yeah God is a God of love. And God is not willing that any should perish. And if He’s an all-sovereign God, He could keep people from perishing.” And we begin to generalize and then our feelings and emotion begin to lead us and we begin to re-do our theology in that line. So the departure of the church in a sound church from truth doesn’t begin by someone saying, “We no longer believe in the inspiration of the Bible. We just ignore it.” One of you shared with me a few years ago you visited a church in another state and afterwards you talked with the pastor. He said, “We’ve made a decision that we’re not going to present the gospel in our Sunday morning services. Because the unbelievers who come aren’t ready for that. And the idea is, we get the unbelievers in by talking about things that will interest them. Then over time, the Word presented in other settings, they’ll come.” But you know what ends up? The unbelievers take over the church. Because the truth is offensive. The God who is a holy God is offensive.

Let me just walk through some Scripture with you on hell. Not because we find it something that we enjoy, but it is a reality and it magnifies the work of Christ. I think Clark Pinnock’s experience, he ends up denying the substitutionary atonement because that’s saying Christ had to come and take our place. One person who claimed to be an evangelical calls it “divine child abuse.” To say Christ punished His Son for our sin. So you begin to walk further and further away from the truth and you begin to realize many of these men were probably never saved in the first place. And so their commitment to truth was just a mental ascent. They had learned the facts, perhaps, growing up, or perhaps in a certain setting they had an emotional experience. But not a real heart transformation. Because can you end up denying the truth of God? Remember what John said. “They went out from us, because they were not really of us. Because if they had been of us, they would have remained with us.” So he said the departure of the truth from those who formerly claimed to be believers in the truth just revealed they were never part of the truth.

Come to Matthew. We’re primarily going to look at Matthew’s gospel. We’ll start in Matthew chapter 3 with John the Baptist. He’s preparing the way for the coming of the Messiah. And what does he say? Chapter 3 of Matthew verse 11, about the coming of the Messiah after him, “He’s mightier than I am,” John said. “I am not worthy to remove His sandals.” Note the end of verse 11, “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” When the Messiah came, they knew He would come and bring the Holy Spirit. They had Ezekiel 36, Jeremiah 31 on the new covenant. “And fire,” because when the Messiah comes, there’s going to be a winnowing judgement. Verse 12, “His winnowing fork is in His hand. He will thoroughly clear His threshing floor.” The picture is in those days where they would winnow the grain, they would throw it up in the air and the wind blow out the lighter chaff and the seed would fall. So you separate the chaff from the seed. “He will gather His wheat into the barn. He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” No doubt, unquenchable fire. There is a seriousness of judgement.

Turn over to Matthew chapter 5 verse 22. Jesus is speaking, we’re in the Sermon on the Mount. People claim to like the Sermon on the Mount. I remember a liberal preacher in town. I was sharing the gospel with him. We disagreed over the Word of God. I shared with him and he said, “I don’t believe that!” That’s the writing of Paul. “I don’t believe that,” that was Peter. I said, “Let’s just stop. Tell me what in the Bible you do believe and then we’ll go from there. He said, “I believe the Sermon on the Mount.” So I went to a passage like this. He says, “Well I don’t believe everything in the Sermon on the Mount.” Look at what Jesus is saying here in verse 21. “You have heard what the ancients were told. ‘You shall not commit murder’ and ‘Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.” They’re talking about the fiery hell here.

Come over to Matthew chapter 8. I have a couple of different lists here. So I want to try to bring the verses together in order. Matthew chapter 8 verse 11, “I say to you that many will come from east and west and recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven; but the sons of the kingdom will be cast into outer darkness.” Two descriptions that get repeated. That hell will be a place of fiery torment. It will be a place of outer darkness. Darkness. If we turned off all the lights, this room would be pitch black. What does that mean? You don’t see anything, the isolation of torment in an eternal hell. It’s outer darkness. “In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” The intensity of the suffering. It’s not that they were burned up and they’re gone. It’s a place of suffering. Jesus speaking here, that was Matthew 8, come to Matthew 13. Look at verse 42, you can go back and read the context when you have time. This is when He comes to sort out the wicked from the righteous and establish His kingdom. And again, at these periods of time, we don’t have separated out the various judgements. Their ultimate destiny is hell. And we’ve seen the various resurrections and judgements, but here is just the blanket separation between the wicked and the righteous, the order and how it will come. “The Son of Man will send forth His angels, they will gather out of His kingdom, the lawless, and will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” This idea that, “Well, we’ll just read into that when they’re cast into the fire.” What does fire do? It burns you up. You’re gone. No they’re not gone. In that furnace of fire they are suffering intensely. In contrast to the righteous who are enjoying the blessing of the kingdom in verse 43. Down in verses 49 and 50 you have the same thing. “So it will be at the end of the age; the angels will come forth and take out the wicked from the righteous, and will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

People say, “Well, I don’t believe what Paul wrote. I don’t believe what Peter wrote. I believe what Jesus said.” Well here’s what He said. Repeatedly. Hell is a place of fiery torment and suffering. Come to chapter 18 verse 8. “If any part of your body leads you into sin, do away with it.” Now I’m obviously not saying cut off her your hands or put out your eyes. At times, you read of people doing fanatical things, but that can’t save you. The point is, it’d be better to enter into life, crippled or lame, than to have two hands and two feet. The end of verse 8 says, “And to be cast into the eternal fire.” “It’d be better,” in the middle of verse 9, “for you to enter into life with one eye than to have two eyes and be cast into the fiery hell.” The eternal fire, the fiery hell. This is the point. They’re concerned. They should be. Your relationship with the living God. The alternative is the fiery hell.

Let’s go to chapter 22 verse 13. Here’s the person who comes into the wedding feast without the right garment. He can’t get in. The garments were provided for the guest by the master of the feast. When one’s found without a wedding garment, he tried to get in improperly. He’s exposed and found out. And, you know, when he’s confronted in verse 12 without the proper clothing, and remember the bride of Christ represents the church who’ll be clothed in the white garments in chapter 19 of Revelation, the man was speechless. Everybody thinks, “Well this is what I would say to God, this is what I would say.” You stand at that awesome judgement seat, and you’d be speechless. “The king said to the servants, ‘Bind him hand and foot and throw him into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’” Hell is a place of outer darkness. We say, “Well all my friends are going to hell.” That may be true. But you won’t be fellowshipping and partying with your friends. It’s a place of outer darkness, of weeping and gnashing of teeth. Everyone intensely involved with their own suffering.

Go over to Matthew 25. We looked at these passages this morning, but in chapter 25 verse 41, “He will say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels;” Those who have rejected God and chosen to follow the devil, join the devil in an eternal hell as we saw in Revelation. Down in verse 46, the same thing. “These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” Could God be any clearer? We may not be able to understand the depths of God’s wrath against sin that necessitated an eternal hell. But we better be careful about denying it, because, “Oh, it’s so awful! I just can’t think of such a thing!” Well, it’s worse than you can think. “Oh well I can think of eternity in God’s heaven because He loves me.” Well, yeah, so do I. But we better think realistically. If you’ve come to trust in Christ, been credited with the righteousness of God through faith in Christ, you have every reason to be anticipating all that He has promised. But we want to be careful that we don’t reject what we don’t like and hold onto what we do like. Because pretty soon, you’ve denied eternal hell and the reality of the wrath of God. You’ve minimized the importance of the death of Christ. So pretty soon you have to explain that away because why would God pour out His wrath on His only Son to be a substitute for us? God doesn’t deal that way!! So we create this picture.

Many years ago, a liberal theologian talked about this picture of God. He’s like this big Cheshire cat in the sky. And you know, we just want Him to be something comfortable, that grandfatherly figure. If you have a grandfather, and a great grandfather, they just overlook everything. I remember telling my dad when he’d start to do things to spoil our kids. I said, “Dad, you never let me get away with that! You didn’t do that!” I know! I like being a grandfather. Now I understand it. And it gets better with the great grandkids. My great grandson, Jack, he doesn’t do anything wrong! My grandkids were more perfect than my kids. But then we begin to create God like this grandfatherly figure. We could go on, there are other verse, but that gives you the idea. We went to the Scripture, so there is an eternal hell. Then people want to ask… Well, I remember being in a discussion with a professor from the university here. We were having lunch together. And he said, “Well what about the people who never hear?” And, you know, we get into that. I know what the Scripture says about those who never hear. But with him, there’s no sense in arguing that. I said, “Look, for our discussion right now, we can leave those who never hear with God and what He chooses to do. The real issue is what will you do? Because you have heard.” You know, sometimes we don’t want to get drawn into a debate with an unbeliever. “What about those who never hear?” I can leave that. What about them? Right now, let’s just leave them with God who will do what is right. Whatever that may be, we can leave that for now. The real issue is, you have heard. I just told you. Now what will you do? You will be accountable. So in our discussion with the unbeliever, we want to be careful about the things we do get in. I don’t want to deny in any way the reality of hell.

And those who never hear the gospel are going to an eternal hell because they are sinners. Romans 1 deals with that. God has revealed the majesty of His person through His creation. But everyone rejects that revelation. There are those that presuppose, “Well there may be people in part of the world who are drawn,” even the evangelist Billy Graham came to espouse such a doctrine. And there are other evangelicals who begin to think, “Well, it’s not what the Scripture says.” Romans 1 says that they all reject it. It takes the intervention of God’s grace.

Alright, maybe ought to break there. Let me open it up. Anybody have anything they would like to ask about? Let me just say something on elders. I’ve had a couple of people ask me personally about how we decide on elders, with us recommending Ray for your consideration of elders. How do we decide when we need a new elder or want to recommend other men for elders? There’s no set pattern. Obviously if the number of elders got down to a low number, what would we say? I would say I wouldn’t want a church of our size to go below 6. Or maybe above 12. I’d like the number substantial enough that there are enough elders that we are getting good input. But not so many we don’t have time for discussion. And it’s just different times. We may periodically just say, “Would you men like to consider the possibility of adding another person to the board of elders?” If they say, “Yes, it would be a good time to consider that,” then we go through the process of starting consideration of whom we might consider. So it’s not necessarily a fixed pattern. Well, we’re going to have one person go off, so we’re going to get another person to fill it. Sometimes a person has stepped off the board for one reason or another, and we’ve not added a person for some time. So looking, you may wonder how in my mind I would think. Well 6, we wouldn’t want to go below 6, unless the Lord didn’t provide enough godly men. But we have more godly men who would be elder qualified than are serving on the board. We don’t want to say, “We only have this number of men.” Those are men that God has appointed to that office at this time. So we trust the Lord to give direction in that. So it’s somewhat subjective in how we pick those names that we’ve talked about or we can talk about if you want.

Question: “Gil as you taught this morning in Revelation, Christ coming back to rule and to judge in Revelation 20. I’ve often been a little bit confused, but I like to look at John chapter 3 verse 17. “For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.” So we have this complimentary or competing themes of judgement and salvation that He provides. Can you help me with that?”

Yes, and that’s a good example of what progressive Revelation does. You see where we read from John the Baptist, when he is introducing the Messiah, “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” But the baptism of the Spirit came in connection with the first coming. We have that start in Acts chapter 2. The baptism with fire still hasn’t happened. Because that’s the winnowing judgement, sifting out those going into the kingdom. So I think what’s happening there is that Christ wasn’t sent into the world at His first coming to bring judgement on the world, He was to bear the judgement for sin. But He will come the second time to bring judgement. So part of that truth begins to get further clarified. So you know, John the Baptist didn’t even understand. Because remember when he goes to prison, he sends his disciples and introduced them. He saw the Holy Spirit come on Christ, remembered descending like a dove, but it didn’t follow through. I said you would bring the Holy Spirit, but you would also bring judgement. But I’m the one who’s being judged and imprisoned. What’s happened? I thought we were going to have the kingdom.

So I think He’s really talking there about, I did not come the first time to bring judgement. But He’ll come the second as Hebrews 9 says, “Not to experience death.” So we start to get clarity and that’s where I think the progressive revelation and the distinguishing now that wasn’t clear through the Old Testament, there is a clarifying, but it will be confusing. Because the separation of the first and second coming. When Christ told Peter He was going to the cross, Peter said, “That’ll never happen to you, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Get behind me, Satan,” because you don’t say Christ was wrong. You can say, “I don’t understand,” but you don’t say He was wrong. You don’t rebuke Christ. So, “Get behind me, Satan.” But even afterwards, Christ has to have a resurrection. At the end of Luke, He explained to them the Scriptures where He had to suffer and die. Ok now we understand that. What’s their question in Acts 1? “Lord, will you at this time establish the kingdom?” Alright now we understand you had to suffer and die, now we can have the kingdom. And so, no, there’ll be progressively more information. Christ doesn’t even give it to them. He says, “You just don’t need to understand when the kingdom will be established.” So He leaves it indefinite again. He doesn’t say, “Well, we’re going to have the church and we’re going to have 2 millennia at least before we have the kingdom. No, you just don’t need to know that now.” So I think that’s what’s going on there. He wasn’t sent into the world to bring judgement, so what John the Baptist was talking about, he put it all together. The first coming and the second coming still wasn’t sorted out.

Thanks for that question. I have some questions that I can address with you. Let me see, I mentioned to you about the numbers and I shared with you about the process and how we would be open to names suggested. If we decide maybe we’ll consider elders, we just ask the elders to make a list of 2-4 men they think would be as far as they think considered for elders. And when we meet together, we’ll ask, “Does somebody have a name for the list? We’ll write that on the board. How many of you had that person on your list?” And if the majority of elders had it, like if 5 of them had that same name on their list. Or if somebody has a different name, we’ll see how many people had that name on their list. And then we’ll decide the top 2, but we may go and talk to those and for whatever reason they may not be open to consider it. If they didn’t think that right now with their schedule, they might be able to take on a responsibility or whatever. They don’t have to give a reason, they just may not feel that’s in the Lord’s plan for them right now. Or the direction He’s taking them. By the same token, if a name’s put up, we ask, “Does anybody think they would not be comfortable proceeding with that person?” They just can indicate that, they don’t have to give a reason. So that’s how we narrow down the names. Again, there are people that are qualified who are not elders. We are blessed with a number of godly men as Ray shared in his testimony. The number of teachers we have, men teaching and ministering. So we trust the Spirit will direct us. Acts chapter 20, Paul says regarding the elders, “The Holy Spirit has appointed you as elders.” So we as elders, as we pray about it and look to the Spirit’s leading, trust the Spirit will lead us to the godly men within the congregation that He is directing for this. And then if He’s leading us, expect those men. And that’s part of it. If we think this man might be one who we think the Spirit is leading us to, but that man doesn’t believe that’s the direction the Lord’s leading him in at this time. So that’s the process that we go through.

Ok. Since I’m talking about elders, how do we make decisions without being legalistic? For example, men on church staff are not to drink alcohol and do certain other things, and that’s true with elders. The Bible says you cannot be drunk, it does not say that you can’t have a glass of wine or certain other things, or like using tobacco. Certain things have come from our past, and I’ve talked about that. There are certain things we ask not to do because they still are issues with a number of believers and they are subjective things. The Bible doesn’t say we have to do them, or not to do them, so we’re not saying you’re more spiritual if you do it or don’t do it. But in the position that you’re being considered for, we think it is better for the clarity of our testimony that we agree not to do that. And periodically, the elders revisit those things to see if we might adjust that. So those are subjective.

When I was in Bible College, they had rules. You couldn’t go to movies. Back in the 1960’s, so some of you are out of the conversation. But you couldn’t go to movies, you couldn’t drink alcoholic beverages, you couldn’t get married before you were a senior. When I got married, Marilyn talked me into marrying her when I was a sophomore. We thought that was the way the Lord was leading us. We even talked to a variety of people, I’ve shared this with you, including Jack Van Impe, who happened to be doing evangelistic meetings in our church in those days, about what he thought. Well I was removed from school. They said, “You cannot continue to attend this school, because you’re breaking the rule.” Some of my friends said, “This isn’t right. That’s legalism.”

But my view was that it’s not legalism. They’re not saying I can’t get married before I’m a senior and be acceptable to the Lord. That would be legalism. They didn’t say I couldn’t be a godly man. They did say I could not be a student at their school. They’re free to set their rules. That’s not legalism, but there are rules and regulations. We do that. We have order and things that we say to do and not do. We ask you not to bring any food and drinks into the auditorium. We don’t say that if you do, you won’t be acceptable to the Lord. No, we just don’t want the mess in the auditorium. So just because there are rules and regulations, doesn’t mean that we’re being legalistic. So that’s the way it is with elders and staff. Elders look at it and say, “Well we think that for our testimony and not having any questions that don’t need to be there, while you are an elder.” Perhaps having a social drink of wine or beer, doesn’t mean a man could not be an elder. It would mean that he would have to agree to not do that while he was an elder. So that’s similar to staff. So we sort out what the Scripture requires, and we try to keep the things that are separate from that as separate. The Bible doesn’t require this, but we do. It’s like being an elder. You have to be able to attend the meetings with some regularity. So some men wouldn’t be able to serve because their schedule doesn’t allow them to attend the meetings in the evening. They might work 4:00-12:00. Well if you can never attend the elder’s meeting, it’s hard for you to serve as an elder. So that kind of thing is subjective. It’s not anything particularly Biblical, but the elders have to meet together to do the business. So that’s a subjective thing we decide, like we decide what time will church meet. Well, we meet at 10 AM on Sunday morning. The Bible doesn’t say you have to do that, but that seems to be a good fitting time for many people and much of the schedule in our society has been adjusted to that in past times but those aren’t legalistic things. We’re not saying that this is what makes you more or less acceptable to the Lord, these are just things for facilitating. So it’s important to keep that out. People, and I’ve shared this, but way back in the days when we first put out parking lot signs, we had some people say, “This church is getting legalistic. Now they’re trying to tell us where we have to park.” And it had nothing to do with saying, “You’re more acceptable to the Lord.” A part of our being acceptable to the Lord is obeying those who have authority over us. That’s set down in Scripture clearly. So we accept that, because not everyone can make the decisions.

Question: “Gil, not to get on a legalistic topic, but we do have Halloween coming up and I’m sure that’s a struggle for some people, so what advice would you give? I think of Philippians 4:8 as an example, but do you have any additional advice?”

We’re going to go onto the next question here. That’s a good question. It comes up with the holidays. The holidays that we have, often come out of Pagan backgrounds and then things get associated with them. Halloween is obviously very Pagan, spirit world oriented. And we have to be careful about it. Not everybody agrees on this. I can say this now, because we took them to the Goodwill. But we used to hang ghosts by our front door. You know, I leave it with a personal decision. Do you think this is too Pagan to go with? I know for some that seems like a cop-out. To me Christmas trees and some of their things that might be associated in their background with Paganism, I guess you have to decide what you think is crossing the line. That’s where I am on something like Halloween. I know it’s a Pagan concept, the danger is those things seem to become more and more reality for people. And that I want to be careful of. It’s like Star Wars, “May the force be with you.” Pretty soon, grownups are acting like there is a force. And there are spiritual forces, and we can understand. Can kids go out trick-or-treating? I can say what we did, but that wouldn’t make it right or wrong. When I was a kid, I did it. And our kids did it. Then I sorted through their candy and picked out what I liked. So you send the little Pagans out to do it for you and then you enjoy it. So I can see the issue on both sides.

To me, I choose to leave it as a personal choice. That’s why we as a church don’t take a formal position on Halloween. It’s amazing how it’s become more of a focused holiday than Christmas! I guess I’m open. We don’t do anything as a church, decorating or anything, for Halloween. Christmas we do. We put the decorations up, and it does become a subjective thing. You can make a case, these things have Pagan backgrounds and associations, we have the days of our week numbered that way. We still haven’t renamed the days of the week so they aren’t connected with Thor or whatever. So some things just become part of the culture and don’t have a strong or religious connection. So that’s where I am on Halloween. We used to, but don’t anymore because we live in a neighborhood without kids, we just turn all the lights off and go sit down in the TV room and act like nobody’s home. But for a while, we did have people come and we kept additional candy, and when they rang the doorbell we gave them candy.

I would want to be careful that I didn’t make that the issue with my neighbors or something. Because you don’t want them to think you’re so strange and against everything. So you have to decide if for your family you’re not comfortable doing it. I think for our church, we have that kind of division. Some of these things are personal division. We have people who are homeschooled, people who send their kids to public school, people who send their kids to Christian school, and they have foundational reasons for it. But I think we allow personal freedom on those decisions. That’s where I am uncomfortable with that. So if someone came and said, “Should we observe Halloween?” I’d probably say, “Well are you comfortable before the Lord doing it?” “Well not really.” Then I’d say, “Don’t do it.” If they say, “I’m not uncomfortable at all. I don’t have any problem.” I’d say, “Well then it is fine.” Whatever is not of faith is sin. So in that sense, there is a subjectivity to some of these things. And some of us have stronger convictions about some things, and some of us have stronger convictions about other things. It’s personal.

When I came here, I shared this. I came from a church where you could not sing in the choir if the women wore lipstick. Because that was drawing attention to their appearance. So everyone in the choir looked like they had died last week. Why do I say that? I’ve got enough trouble. Well I was shocked when I came here. The youth group I attended, nobody went to the prom because we didn’t dance. And I came here, and people’s kids were going to the dances at school. And I said, “Marilyn, did you know so-and so’s kids are going to the dance?” But you know, you stop and think about whether the Bible really says you can’t. So some of these things become about where you are, what your background is, and I’m not promoting dancing. When I was in 4th grade, I took a letter to school and said, “I will not be dancing. We have religious convictions against it.” And my 4th grade teacher, I never forgot it, she said to me, “You will be a wallflower all your life.” She was right. So we can have our personal convictions, but we want to be careful we don’t impose our personal convictions on someone else. At the same time, we want to be careful we don’t excuse sinful behavior and make allowances we shouldn’t. Ok on that note, I didn’t leave anybody out? We’ll have a word of prayer. And we have to go to the dessert social that is a requirement. Even if you don’t eat, you have to pay and sit.

Let’s pray. Thank you, Lord, for your blessings. Thank you, Lord, for your Word, the Truth, and for bringing us together as a family of believers. Lord, we want to honor you with our lives. We want to encourage one another, challenge one another, and help one another to grow. Thank you for the blessings that are ours as we grow together, as we serve you, and as we bring the message of our Savior to a lost and dying city. Thank you for the time of fellowship we enjoy, for the refreshments and fellowship we will now go to enjoy. We pray you’ll bless the week before us. In Christ’s name, Amen.