Hebrews 2:14-18 14 Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— 15 and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. 16 For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. 17 For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. 18 Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.
- For the past several weeks we have been working with the issues in the Apostle’s creed. We have had an opportunity to explore our understanding of who God is. We have explored our understanding of who Jesus is and last week we looked at the Holy Spirit.
- Today we’ll look at perhaps the most controversial phrase in the Apostles’ Creed…. Please turn to page 881 in our hymnal as we look again at the Apostles Creed. — we will also look at page 882 to see another version of the Apostles’ Creed.
- 881-foot note: descended into Hell
- 882 – he descended to the dead
- So, what is it and what does it mean?
- Some background:
- The Apostle’s Creed came into being about 400AD as the church searched for an understanding who Jesus was.
- The phrase “descended into hell or descended into the dead” comes about as the church wanted to be certain that Jesus – the Christ actually died the same death as all human beings. The two different phrases come about because of translations from Hebrew and Greek.
- In the late 1700s, the phrase became less used because it was considered redundant.
- But today the phrase is important for us to understand.
- Let me ask you some questions: What does the word Hell mean to you? (ask congregation)
- Fire and brimstone
- Place of the dead.
- Punishment for sin
- Where Satan is
- God’s final judgement
- Eternal torture
- Etc!
- The phrase we’re looking at today—“He descended into Hell”—comes right in the middle of the paragraph on Jesus—which we look at each week. Jesus died and Jesus was resurrected!
- On the surface, this seems a bit odd—particularly when we think of hell as we often tend to—as the place of fiery punishment for the really bad and evil people….
- When we think of Hell, we tend to think of the eternal consequence chosen by folks like Hitler, Charles Manson or Bin Laden—despots and tyrants, abusers, pedophiles, pimps and murderers.
- We tend to think of Hell as the very last place that Jesus—the Only One Who ever lived Perfectly and Loved Unconditionally—would ever go….
- It is certainly true that if Jesus went to Hell, it wouldn’t be because he deserved to be there.
- But I want to suggest to you that no one is in Hell because God has sent them there…. Jesus is clear that God doesn’t want anyone to go to hell.
- That’s why Jesus came, so that none of us would have to live in hell now or later.
- 2 Peter 3:9 says God isn’t willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
- Perhaps the most famous verse in the whole Bible John 3:16 makes clear that God is so consumed with love for the whole world that Jesus came into the world so that whoever would believe in him would not perish but have eternal life.
- The very next verse—John 3:17 says, “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world but save the world through him.”
- So, the first thing we need to understand is that whatever else Hell is or isn’t, Hell is not a place where God ever sends anyone. Ponder this – God does not send people to hell!
- Anyone who lives in Hell lives there because they have chosen it.
- You could say, “Pastor Dick, why would anyone choose Hell?”
- Based on what I’ve observed in more than 80 years of life and more than two decades of ministry, people choose hell whenever they say to God, “Leave me alone. I don’t want anything to do with You, with your purposes or your patterns for Life. I don’t need anybody else to be God for me. I can be god for myself, thank you very much.”
- And sadly, despite God’s constant appeal, people choose in hundreds of different ways to repeatedly reject God and God’s purposes and pursue with reckless abandon being their own god—doing what they want to do when they want to do it and all else be damned.
- And what is sad but predictable is that eventually they wind up living right smack in the middle of hell. I’m not even talking about eternally. Their life is a living hell.
- I’m talking about here and now—the brokenness, the pain, the utter emptiness of human self-addiction.
- It is a living hell for them….
- Tell some stories from the Mission – the curse of addictions, the life sucking use of drugs – which causes the men at the Mission to lose everything.
- I think the reason we tend to not regularly use the phrase descended into hell, comes down to the fact that we believe in what is essential in the redemptive work of God in Christ is adequately captured in the phrases on either side of this phrase.
- We affirm Jesus Christ was “crucified, dead and buried” and that “on the third day he rose from the dead.”
- The fact that we don’t currently tend to include the phrase, descended into Hell, doesn’t mean that we don’t believe it teaches some essential truths. It just means we think those essential things are already embedded in those other phrases….
- Several years ago, I was at the Holy Cross Abbey, a Franciscan Monastery, in Berryville VA, I asked one of the priests, Why do we say that Jesus descended into Hell? The response was something that I had not thought of or had seen in any of my searching. God is a God of second chances and many more chances. By Jesus going into Hell or being with the dead, God, through Jesus, gave even the dead a second chance to repent and change their rejection of God. Hell is not about constant torment. Hell is about the absence of the desire of people to follow God and have life.
- By Jesus returning from the dead, God shows us that death does not have the last word.
- More about that soon.
- It’s about the clear gospel truth that there is no place untouched or unoccupied by Jesus’ salvation. According to Romans 8, absolutely nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. This clear Scripture says, “What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35, 37-39)
- While there’s nothing in there about Jesus descending into Hell, this Romans Scripture makes it crystal clear that nothing, including Death, can separate us from the Love of God in Christ Jesus.
- There’s no place where Jesus isn’t—no hell, no pit, no place of despondency Jesus has not occupied and ultimately redeemed…. Perhaps what the early Church was trying to get at with “He descended to the dead, or to Hades” was this liberating, essential Truth: Jesus—the Human Face of God—died. It wasn’t a hoax—the Roman soldiers knew their work. Their jobs, at times their lives, depended on the fact that everybody they took off a Roman Cross was a corpse. The whole point of being executed on a Cross was to be a public deterrent to rejecting Caesar as Lord.
- When the Church was deciding what essential, foundational truths about Jesus needed to be named, the fact that Jesus descended to the dead or to hell was crucial because it meant that He died.
- This was so crucial because whatever the Incarnate God has experienced has been redeemed. Think about it.
- What ISIS had going for it—the whole thing every self-appointed despot has going for them is the greatest threat of all to us humans: “If you don’t do what we say, we’ll kill you.”
- That was the Roman Empire’s threat in the time of Jesus.
- It’s every attempted Empire’s threat since, because the worst thing we can think of is Death.
- Picture this: When Jesus dies, when he descends to the dead or to Hades, He walks into that impregnable Castle of fear and lies the Devil maintains. He breaks down the front door and walks into the lowest dungeon we can imagine. When he gets to the bottom, he turns and walks out because Death could not hold him!
- This seemingly little thought about Christ descending actually exposes our greatest fear as a temporary, impotent threat.
- When Jesus breathed His last, when he descended to the dead,
- JESUS KILLED DEATH.
- He served notice that a funeral was needed, but it wasn’t his— he’s the one who came walking out of the grave Sunday morning.
- The funeral that was in order was death’s funeral. In Jesus dying, death lost, and Hope won.
- As we often accurately say, Jesus’ takedown of death meant that from that moment forward, the worst thing would never be the last thing.
- This is what Paul wrote to young Timothy on the eve of Paul’s death in 2 Timothy 1:9-10: “God is the one who saved and called us with a holy calling.
- This wasn’t based on what we have done, but it was based on his own purpose and grace that he gave us in Christ Jesus before time began.
- Now his grace is revealed through the appearance of our savior, Christ Jesus. He destroyed death and brought life and immortality into clear focus through the good news.”
- We need to ask some reflective questions:
- What if hell itself is aimed at working out God’s liberating purposes?
- What if God’s hope is that those in hell will finally come to understand the darkness of living for self and in rebellion to God, so that they will cry out, even from hell, “Lord Jesus, be merciful to me a sinner”?
- C. S. Lewis seems to suggest this view in his wonderful little book The Great Divorce. In it he notes that the doors of hell are “locked from the inside.”
- The story tells of a busload of people in hell who journey to heaven and are given the opportunity to yield and stay in heaven, but one by one they choose to return to hell rather than live in the light of God’s will.
- Lewis notes, “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’”
- May we be those who say to God, daily, “Thy will be done.”
- Hebrews 2:14-18 14 Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— 15 and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. 16 For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. 17 For this reason he had to be made like them,[a] fully human in everyway, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. 18 Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.
- Thanks be to God!
- Dick