Is This Life Too Short to Determine Our Eternal Destiny?
00:00:00.000 | Well, we Protestants don't believe in any transitional place of reform between earth
00:00:09.400 | and heaven.
00:00:10.400 | There is no purgatory.
00:00:11.960 | It's appointed for man to die once, and immediately after his physical death comes
00:00:16.440 | the eternal verdict.
00:00:18.160 | And in light of that comes this question.
00:00:20.600 | Is it fair for the soul's eternal destiny to be irreversibly determined by the mere
00:00:26.160 | span of 70 years of life in this world?
00:00:30.000 | This question comes from a listener named Sean.
00:00:32.680 | It's something that he himself was asked as a pushback.
00:00:36.360 | "Hello Pastor John, thank you for this podcast.
00:00:38.320 | I was recently asked this question.
00:00:41.200 | What kind of silly God determines the eternal future of a soul based on the span of only
00:00:46.160 | one lifetime?
00:00:47.720 | This seems fundamentally out of balance to many.
00:00:50.800 | How would you help me answer this objection from Scripture?"
00:00:54.640 | I would begin and end by saying that God's judgment is not silly, but infinitely serious.
00:01:07.320 | And I would look for some indication behind that word silly that my friend is at least
00:01:16.360 | a little bit open to the possibility that what the Bible teaches may prove spectacularly
00:01:24.240 | true and make his own assessment of silliness a great problem for him.
00:01:31.200 | Is he open to that?
00:01:33.320 | And if I discern that he is willing to listen, then I would try to help him see how the Bible
00:01:40.880 | shows that it is perfectly just for God to condemn a person to eternal suffering, not
00:01:49.840 | just on the basis of 70 years of sinning, but five seconds of sinning.
00:01:56.440 | From his standpoint, the problem is much more serious than he thinks it is.
00:02:02.800 | Or to use his words, the maker of the universe is much sillier than he thinks he is.
00:02:11.720 | One more comment about attitude, and this is a big deal because Paul makes a big deal
00:02:16.520 | out of it in Romans 9.
00:02:17.960 | Jesus makes a big deal out of it when he wouldn't answer the question of those who wouldn't
00:02:22.800 | tell the truth to him.
00:02:24.720 | One more comment about attitude.
00:02:27.840 | God can handle our questions.
00:02:30.440 | He can handle our frustrations.
00:02:33.080 | He can handle our being utterly baffled.
00:02:36.760 | He can handle our confusion.
00:02:41.120 | He can handle our being at an utter loss to understand his ways.
00:02:46.000 | What God does not tolerate is an attitude of condemnation toward God himself, an attitude
00:02:54.400 | that writes him off even before we understand his nature or his action.
00:03:01.300 | To such a person, Paul says in Romans 9.20, "Who are you, O man?" to answer back to God.
00:03:06.720 | He would say, "Who are you to call God silly?"
00:03:10.880 | The problem is not the questioner's perplexity.
00:03:16.040 | That's understandable.
00:03:17.600 | We're not God.
00:03:18.600 | We're just human.
00:03:20.740 | His ways are often above our ways.
00:03:23.760 | The problem is an attitude of being unteachable, self-sufficient.
00:03:29.880 | So let me make three brief exegetical observations, text observations, and then offer a principle
00:03:39.160 | that I hope will help.
00:03:40.920 | First, Romans 5.18 says, Paul says, "As one trespass led to condemnation for all men,"
00:03:50.600 | that's a pretty amazing statement, "so one act of righteousness leads to justification
00:03:56.740 | in life for all men."
00:03:58.140 | This is why I said that the issue is more serious than 70 years of sinning resulting
00:04:04.520 | in eternal condemnation.
00:04:05.920 | The issue is five seconds.
00:04:07.800 | That's how long it took Adam and Eve to be condemned with the whole human race.
00:04:17.080 | Treason against the all-wise God, the all-powerful Creator, the Sustainer of the universe, that
00:04:25.600 | brief act of treason resulted in the corruption of the entire race so that all of us are guilty
00:04:33.720 | in our sin, and we know we are.
00:04:37.680 | Even the man who says God is silly knows it in his deep down consciousness.
00:04:44.720 | We know that because of what we have become in our corruption, we deserve punishment.
00:04:50.760 | That's observation number one.
00:04:52.460 | Number two, James 2.10 says, "Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become
00:05:00.720 | accountable of all of it."
00:05:02.880 | And again, one sin makes us culpable of the whole law, and James explains why in the next
00:05:11.000 | verse.
00:05:12.000 | He says, "Because he," we're dealing with God here, "he who said, 'Do not commit adultery,'
00:05:18.000 | is also the one who said all the other commandments," or, "Do not murder."
00:05:23.280 | If you do not commit adultery, but you do murder, you have become a transgressor of
00:05:29.120 | the law.
00:05:30.120 | It's the person behind the law whom you're offending, that's the issue here, not how
00:05:35.040 | many of these you offend against.
00:05:37.720 | In other words, the issue is not the quantification of sins or the quantification of the years
00:05:46.320 | of sinning.
00:05:47.840 | The issue is the vast difference between us as sinners and the infinite greatness of the
00:05:54.760 | person we're sinning against.
00:05:57.200 | More on that in just a minute.
00:05:59.040 | Third exegetical comment from Galatians 3.10.
00:06:01.960 | "All who rely upon the law are under a curse, for it is written, 'Cursed be everyone who
00:06:10.000 | does not abide in all things written in the book of the law to do them.'"
00:06:17.160 | So from the biblical standpoint, as we stand before our Creator, we are obliged to do everything
00:06:23.680 | he says.
00:06:25.000 | Not 99% of it, but everything.
00:06:27.840 | And if we do not abide in all the things written in the book of the law, we're under a divine
00:06:32.960 | curse.
00:06:35.240 | And I would encourage my friend at this point, indeed I would plead with him, not to exalt
00:06:43.840 | himself above Scripture and call God silly, but to humble himself at least under the possibility
00:06:52.440 | that because of his sin with all the rest of us, he is in great peril as he talks to
00:06:59.880 | God.
00:07:01.400 | So here's the principle I said I would mention, and I would commend it for his consideration.
00:07:07.960 | Any offense, any dishonor against an infinitely worthy, an infinitely valuable, an infinitely
00:07:16.720 | dignified, an infinitely beautiful being is an infinite sin and deserves an infinite punishment.
00:07:27.920 | If the only way to measure the seriousness of sin and the seriousness of punishment was
00:07:36.280 | the time it took to sin and the time it took to punish, then eternal hell maybe would be
00:07:45.280 | an overreaction.
00:07:47.080 | But neither human nor divine justice operates that way.
00:07:53.120 | It takes five seconds to kill a man.
00:07:57.840 | I'm talking about if I were to kill a man.
00:08:01.000 | Five seconds.
00:08:02.000 | It takes five seconds to kill a man.
00:08:04.160 | And I would be locked up—well, I'm too old, but say a 20-year-old kills a man in five
00:08:09.980 | seconds.
00:08:10.980 | He'd be locked up for 50 years.
00:08:13.840 | And I did a little math.
00:08:15.880 | That's 378 billion times more punishment than the five seconds took to murder.
00:08:22.440 | We all know that time is not what measures the grievousness of a sin.
00:08:28.800 | Otherwise, it takes five seconds to kill, you'd be in jail for five seconds.
00:08:33.280 | Go out.
00:08:34.280 | Everybody knows it doesn't work that way.
00:08:36.160 | It's a—I'm tempted to say—silly question.
00:08:39.960 | But I don't think so.
00:08:42.080 | It's serious.
00:08:43.080 | A lot hangs on it.
00:08:45.360 | The grievousness and heinousness of sin rises to its infinite proportions not because of
00:08:53.640 | the extent of time covered in the act of sin, but by the one whom we are sinning against,
00:09:01.800 | the dishonor we are bringing upon an infinitely honorable being.
00:09:07.560 | If you dishonor a toad, you're not very guilty.
00:09:11.360 | I stomped on a toad when I was a teenager, and I felt a little bad, but not much.
00:09:17.280 | If you dishonor a man, you're very guilty.
00:09:21.920 | If you dishonor God, you are infinitely guilty, because he's infinitely worthy of every millisecond
00:09:31.600 | of worship in your life.
00:09:33.460 | If you don't give it, you multiply the storehouse of wrath.
00:09:39.700 | And who can measure such an offense?
00:09:43.700 | Well, God can, and he is just.
00:09:46.700 | Amen.
00:09:47.700 | That's the very, very high price of five seconds of treason against the Creator of
00:09:53.460 | the universe.
00:09:54.460 | Well said, Pastor John.
00:09:55.460 | That was very heavy.
00:09:56.460 | Thank you.
00:09:57.460 | And thanks for listening and making the podcast part of your week.
00:10:00.740 | You can subscribe to our audio feeds and search our past episodes in our archive, even reach
00:10:04.060 | us by email with a question of your own, even tricky questions that you hear from people
00:10:08.100 | as they attempt to undermine the gospel, which seems to be what we fielded in this APJ today.
00:10:15.620 | You can do all of those things through our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:10:21.860 | Well in Matthew 5, 16, Jesus says we should let our light shine before men so that the
00:10:27.660 | world can see our good works and glorify God.
00:10:31.280 | But in Matthew 6, verse 1, Jesus says that we should not practice our works in public
00:10:36.740 | to be seen by others.
00:10:38.860 | So we'll end the week asking this question.
00:10:41.540 | So should we Instagram our good works or not?
00:10:44.400 | The question is made especially interesting in light of Matthew 5, 16 and Matthew 6, 1
00:10:49.220 | and the apparent tension with those two texts.
00:10:53.540 | That's next.
00:10:54.540 | That's Friday.
00:10:55.540 | I'm your host Tony Ranke and we'll see you then.
00:10:56.300 | Bye.
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