Matthew 12:34-37
34 “Brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. 35 A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things. 36 But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment. 37 For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”
Please do not stop reading; this title is just a bit of sarcasm. There is no such thing as a politically correct Jesus. That Jesus only exists in the minds of many modern Christians. There are a lot of churches that have stopped using words or phrases like ‘washed in the blood,’ ‘crucifixion,’ ‘hell,’ ‘hell fire,’ and many other kinds of ‘offensive’ phrases. In our mid-week Bible study this week, I pointed out that all too often, we do not mention Hell a lot in our services and our teaching, but that Jesus spoke about Hell a lot. He described Hell, both the physical and mental pain of it.
In Luke 16, when He tells the story of the rich man and Lazarus, in Luke 16:24, we see the rich man’s physical pain.
“Then he cried and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.”
But in verses 27-28, he is mentally tormented that his brother may come to this place as well
“Then he said, ‘I beg you therefore, father, that you would send him to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.’
Hell, we are told, is a place of pain, torment, mental anguish, separation from God, and many other painful things. Jesus came to die for my sins and yours so that we do not have to go to Hell. We can choose eternal life with Him. When we make Hell less horrible, we make His loving act on the cross less gracious and less powerful.
A little earlier in our text (verses 22-24), we see Jesus calling out the hypocrisy of the ‘spiritual’ leaders. They saw Jesus casting out demons, and they accused Him of operating by the power of Beelzebub or Satan. They accuse Jesus of working with Satan! Jesus tells them they are idiots, as they know full well that a divided house cannot stand. But these folks know that; thus, Jesus calls them vipers, snakes, deceivers, and dangerous. They look sleek like a snake, and they are just as deadly.
In verse 35, Jesus makes a comparison to show that these men are evil from the inside. They are dangerous. They looked safe, and they were revered by all around them, but Jesus hated their hypocrisy. He could see what they were truly like inside. He had no respect for them, and He had no issue calling them out.
Sadly, we do not do that anymore. We are more concerned with hurting people’s feelings than being right with God. In doing so, we have watered down the Gospel and cheapened the sacrifice of our Lord and Savior Jesus.
Salvation was that gruesome; God chose crucifixion for a reason; no other execution was this gruesome and this bloody. This took a long, painful time, and it subjected both the one being crucified and the loved one observing it to a lot of pain. We often forget that Jesus hung on the cross for the better part of 6 hours. The Romans knew how to milk death for the maximum amount of intimidation. This is the route God chose to sacrifice Jesus. They had 6,000 years of human history to choose, and they chose this time and this way.
But in our time, evil men, some looking like ‘preachers’ – in nice suits, in lovely buildings, and many leading very large churches – have stopped preaching about the blood, about Hell, about the tribulation and the pain that is coming on the earth. They no longer talk about the holiness and the wrath of God. We forget too often that the same God that knows the number of hairs on your head also rained fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah. The same God that parted the Red Sea also sent venomous snakes that killed thousands and thousands. The same God that sent Jesus to rescue us made Hell for Satan and his angels.
So, let us get back to hell-fire preaching. Hell is still hot. There is a Heaven to gain but also a Hell to shun. The more we appreciate and understand the pain and suffering Jesus went through, the more precious His grace and the more wonderful His offer of salvation.
Sadly, there is still a generation of vipers around who prey on God’s people for their money and use God’s people for their own promotion, to sell their books and conferences. They speak just enough truth to deceive the masses, but they have not fooled God. Too many, looking for hope, have fallen into their spell of ‘good feelings over true repentance.’ They have fallen for ‘get better’ rather than ‘get saved.’ They have been told they are not that bad; they just need a little bit of Jesus, and all will be well.
Hell will be filled with people who went to church and yet missed Jesus. May God help me and others like me to put away the politically correct talk if we do it. People need to know the real Jesus. The one who came as a man, the one who really suffered and really died, was really buried, really resurrected, and is really coming back to JUDGE the whole world. And, yes, there are people who will be going to Hell forever, including the rich man of Luke 16, who is still there and will never get out, never.
Stop watering down or softening the message of the Gospel. We are not good; we are evil to the core, and there is not one shred of goodness in us. Thus, Jesus came to be good for us, to be righteousness for us, and to offer us a way out of Hell. I pray that you have chosen to get out of Hell. I did back in 1981. I was a lost, hell-bound teenager, and I asked Jesus to forgive me and save me. He did! Thank God for hell-fire preachers; run from those who are not.
2 Timothy 3:5-7, “having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away! For of this sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
God bless you,
Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church
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