Get the Hell Outta Here! // Ty Gibson

good morning everybody i had an extremely awful and strange experience a number of years ago and it was so strange that i think you may believe that my imagination was getting the best of me in fact i've revisited this experience in my memory a few times and i've thought no that didn't happen but in the moment and for weeks afterward i was absolutely certain that what i experienced was real it was an extremely simple encounter with a man that i knew for a few years and he came to me with an atmosphere of suspicion regarding somebody else i had known for many more years and he spoke words in the form of a suggestion and as soon as he spoke the words which were terrible terrible things that he suggested against this person i had known for years for a split second as he was speaking the words i think i saw a demonic figure for ever so briefly a second flash through this man's countenance in the speaking of suspicious words and i felt a darkness that is difficult to describe the best way i have been able to describe it to myself is that i felt like all the love that is supposed to exist in relationships was kind of evacuated out of that moment i never discovered whether what he was saying to me about this other person was true or not i just knew that in that moment the very speaking of the words of suspicion and gossip against a fellow human being was an extremely evil thing now i know it sounds probably like an exaggeration to describe the mere suggestion of something bad about somebody to be in my words just now extremely evil i mean there are all kinds of other things that are far more evil right i mean certainly we just go through the day navigating through our lives just one time after another uttering words of suggestion against a person and we don't even think twice about it i'm going to suggest to you this morning that the words we speak have the power to open or close doors to good or evil forces that's my premise this morning i'm going to suggest you that our words are so extremely fraught with significance that in the uttering of negativity against a fellow human being especially a brother or sister in your community has the power to attract evil forces who then have access who otherwise would not have access here's how strongly the bible speaks of our words scripture says in james chapter 3 verse 2 that we all stumble in many things that means we all make mistakes don't we would you agree with that we all stumble in many things we we're sinners we sin we do stupid stuff we make mistakes we all do we all stumble in many things you could make a list of all the kinds of mistakes and categories of mistakes that we make as human beings and it's true of all of us if anyone does not stumble in word in what he or she says a fellow human being if anyone does not stumble in word he is a perfect man just feel the gravity of this we all make all kinds of mistakes but if you master this one thing you're perfect the word perfect here in the greek is a word that means mature or adult morally mature i'm going to ask myself the question i'm going to ask you the question are you a are you a moral adult are you am i a relational adult am i navigating my relationships with my family and friends and community in a mature adult-like manner and the passage is suggesting that my maturity is measured by the words i speak about my fellow human beings so the person who doesn't stumble doesn't fail doesn't sin with his or her tongue is a perfect person the scripture says why because that person is able to bridle the whole body i mean if you can get this one thing under control you have mastered that aspect of your life that will give you self-control and mastery and victory in every other area of life this is astounding don't you think there seems to be a kind of hierarchy of sin here what's the hierarchy well the at the pinnacle of the hierarchy is sinning with your tongue by speaking badly of another human being that's about the worst thing you can do and i know you're thinking at this point exactly what i'm thinking want to read this no there's far worse things well keep tracking with me here because what the passage is telling us is fascinating in verse 3 indeed we put bits in horses mouths that they may obey us and we turn their whole body right he's giving an analogy here's an illustration the illustration is that we have a certain kind of apparatus that we attach to a horse's mouth to guide the whole body of the horse the analogy is a very simple and profound one your whole body my whole body my whole life the entire trajectory of my existence will be determined by the way i speak about my fellow human beings that's what the text is telling us and it's astounding and then he gives another example he says look also at ships just imagine a big ocean liner although they are so large and are driven by fierce winds they are turned by a very small rudder wherever the pilot desires so what's the illustration here your whole life and all that your life includes is likened here to a ship on the ocean and there's just one little part of that ship in comparison to the whole ship one little part the rudder will turn and control the direction of the entire ship this is amazing and he's saying your tongue is like this what you say with your tongue what you say with your mouth is exerting a pervasive influence over your whole life i'm going to suggest in a moment that it's exerting a pervasive influence on your whole community your whole world i don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that the most important thing that we ever do as human beings is utter words about someone else positive or negative the passage goes on and says that there's a reason why what we say is so important even so the tongue the tongue is a little member and boasts great things or big things see how great a forest a little fire kindles here's a third illustration a forest fire right we should know something about forest fires here in oregon rather recently what are the two primary characteristics of a forest fire well that fire moves fast and causes a lot of destruction the illustration here is that words spoken about a fellow human being that are adverse words negative words gossiping words untrue words false words words that are spoken adversely against about a fellow human being are like a forest fire in the rapidity with which the words spread and the destruction that is the result you can literally burn a community to the ground by saying negative things about people in that community that's what the scripture is telling us and the tongue he says comparing his own illustration the tongue is a fire the tongue is a fire a world of iniquity the word here world is cosmos as in the entire universe the tongue is a fire it is a universe of iniquity sin wickedness evil all of that on the tip of my tongue on the tip of your tongue the tongue is so set or positioned among our members our hands our feet our eyes our ears and all the other members of our bodies the tongue is so positioned among our other members of our body that it defiles the whole body and sets on fire the course of nature and is set on fire by hell the words i speak are likened to hell now most of you here and viewing online have a particular theology of hell that i also hold and that is that hell is a word in scripture that sometimes is used to describe the utter and complete annihilation or destruction of the incorrigibly wicked the evil people who can't love anymore those who have lived with such habitual self-centeredness that the capacity to love is gone from their souls they're kind of hollowed out of their humanity and have become little more than matter to be burned by the eternal fire that brings about their destruction we don't believe in eternal torment in other words we believe in the annihilation of the wicked but here the word hell is being used in a different kind of way in a metaphoric kind of way your tongue my tongue when you and i speak ill of another human being is likened to the fire of hell and the word hell here is the word gehenna there's another word that occurs in the new testament that is sometimes translated in certain english bibles as hell and that word is hades hades is a word in the greek that just means the grave it is a word that refers to death that's all the word gehenna however is a word in the new testament greek rendering of the word that is of hebrew origin it comes from a place a location a geographic location that was called the valley of hinam named after a particular man in his family with that name who lived in that area we know what james the author of the words we've just read that our tongue can set on fire the fire of gehenna we know that he as a hebrew individual who's writing we know that he has a reference point we know that he's essentially quoting a part of the old testament in order to create the image that he's created for us and that passage is jeremiah chapter 7 and verse 31. you'll be as shocked by this passage as i was because the comparison it makes is pretty chilling here in jeremiah 7 31 god is speaking about the children of israel and a certain aspect of their rebellion and god says they these rebellious israelites have built the high places that's a word that refers to pagan worship altars and systems right they have built the high places of tophet that's a location that's an area specifically a particular mountain they have built the high places of tophit which is in the valley of the sun of hinam and it's those words son of hinam that are translated into the new testament word gehenna the place became known by the word gehenna which is son of hinnam now this is the part that is just absolutely stunning mind-blowing almost more than we can process because god is incriminating the children of israel for building the high places of tophit which is in the valley of the son of hinnam to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire which i did not command god says nor did it come into my heart do you hear what god is saying here god is saying human sacrifice is the farthest thing from my character from my heart from my mind to take your your babies your boys and girls to take your children and to mimic the human sacrifice practices of the surrounding pagan nations who are engaging in this practice god says you're doing something that is foreign to my way of thinking and feeling as god nothing like human sacrifice has ever entered my mind my heart i've not required this of you you are engaging in the most heinous act imaginable now jeremiah is written after moses has written the first five books of the bible and moses comes along and says that the practice of human sacrifice which was common among the pagan nations moses says that human sacrifice is an abomination to god it is the grossest possible evil to take a child and to sacrifice that child you imagine to god to either appease his wrath or to solicit his blessing human sacrifice is the most distorted possible picture of the character of god imaginable it's an abomination to god it doesn't even approximate anything going on in the divine heart and mind nothing like this has ever even come into my heart i would never require such a thing that's what god is saying but here is the historical background to the statement we just read in james james in the new testament is writing something he's saying your tongue my tongue is like the fire of gehenna what james what is the fire of ghana well the fire of gehenna is the fire of child sacrifice human sacrifice gehenna is a valley that became known for that heinous horrific ugly act so that when you come into the new testament gehenna that very location became as it were a continually burning garbage dump right outside jerusalem where all the trash was thrown and the dead bodies of infamous criminals who did things so heinous that they didn't deserve the honor of burial are you tracking with me this is gehenna it is the place where garbage is burned and it is the place where the bodies of people who did such horrible things that they do not deserve the burial of honor in that culture that's gehenna and james is is reaching in to this history and this passage in human sacrifice child sacrifice james is reaching in to this imagery of gehenna to talk about how bad it really is to engage in gossiping words negative words insinuating words against a fellow human being essentially speaking false words about a person is likened by james to engaging in human sacrifice and that's why i engaged in all the build up to this point to to essentially suggest to you that speaking badly of a fellow human being is a far more serious thing than we imagined because we do it so casually all day long that we can't imagine that it could be as bad as say committing murder or having an adulterous affair or embezzling money or i mean make your list make a list of all the various kinds of sins that we commit as human beings make your list and what did james say we all stumble in many things make your list we commit all kinds of sins we fall we fail we make mistakes as human beings james says but then james takes a deep breath and he says i'll tell you however that speaking badly of a fellow human being is about as bad as it gets to which again you and i might respond and say come on james you're exaggerating it can't be that bad except for james says it's so bad that it's like the fire of gehenna it's like the fire of human sacrifice because he says that speaking bad words about a fellow human being is like a fire that moves fast and creates destruction relationships can get to the point where they feel irreparable because of words we speak about one another for a split second as i stood in the presence of of this particular brother that i had known for a few years and he just suggested something horrible about somebody i had known for many more years and in the speaking of the words he immediately pulled it back he spoke the horrific accusation and then said but who knows it might not be true but my mind was already infected with that suspicion there are words that you and i can speak that you can't get back from that's the point that james is making why is it that speaking ill of a fellow human being speaking falsely leveling accusations why is it that uttering suspicion about a fellow human being is so bad that james would say it's in the category of the fire of gehenna and human sacrifice why because it is in fact a form of human sacrifice it is the sacrificing of relationships it is as it were taking a fellow human being and putting them on the altar of your suspicion and destroying their reputation simply because you can so the passage goes on in verse 32 and says therefore behold therefore of course we're all familiar with that grammar in other words this well therefore this cause effect therefore behold the days are coming says the lord when it will be no more called tophit or the valley of the son of hinnam but it will be called the valley of slaughter for they will bury in tophit until there is no room bodies upon bodies upon bodies will be heaped up in piles in that valley to the point where according to this scripture the valley of hinam will earn a kind of reputation in hebrew lore it will become known it will become associated first it will be associated with human sacrifice and then human sacrifice that very practice itself will set in motion events that will be so terrible that jerusalem will experience destruction upon destruction and it will be a place of slaughter and that's what the valley of hinam that is gehenna became it it became almost mythical in the minds of israelites the hebrew people every time they would see that garbage pit right outside their city burning they were reminded of this history ah ah that's the place of human sacrifice that's the place that god pronounced judgment against and then this the corpses of this people will be food for the birds of the heaven and for the beasts of the earth and no one will frighten them away i mean the imagery is just grotesque it's just horrible and it's intentional i mean if i could literally today paint a picture that would cause you and i to be so arrested in our steps that we would say i need to be really careful what i say about anybody then my goal today would be achieved because according to scripture according to god's estimation it's bad it's really bad it's really bad it's like on the level of human sacrifice to put a fellow human being in a false light to build your little situation and your connections with others on the heaped runes of that brother or that sister's body and that's what we're doing isn't it when we speak ill of somebody that's what we're doing we're we're pulling them down in order to lift ourselves up the psychology the dark twisted psychology of gossip is to lower a person's estimation of you so that i can position myself in a higher position with you that's the dark twisted logic of gossip but it backfires because the truth has a way of kind of coming to the surface and character ultimately is known so you and i are called upon by scripture to be patient and to not engage in judging others because here's the fact of the matter you and i can assess any person in any situation and whatever your opinion may be whatever my opinion may be you don't know and i don't know even a fraction of all the factors counter factors that produced what you think you see you have no way of knowing why anybody is doing anything if you see somebody walking with a limp you know that they got injured so be compassionate if somebody's hurting the last thing that they need is to be hurt more deeply by you and i spreading rumors about them so that they are diminished in the eyes of their friends and family and community the scripture goes on and says then i will cause to cease from the cities of judah and from the streets of jerusalem this is amazing me the voice of of mirth and the voice of gladness that's the word mirth we don't use anymore basically the the voice of of of celebration and partying people aren't going to be happy a gloom is going to settle over jerusalem that community is going to have a dark gloominess about it there's not going to be mirth there's not going to be gladness people aren't going to be singing happy songs there's going to be a kind of a kind of general wave of depression over jerusalem the whole area is going to be heavy with falseness and a sense of accusation the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride i mean the happiest thing that happens on earth is when a man and woman fall in love and get married and god is saying even that will be gone from among you people if you keep speaking badly of one another it'll be difficult for people to even fall in love in peace because of the bad things that are being said for the land shall be desolate this is amazing to me the land shall be desolate here's here's what scripture is saying evil actions specifically the evil actions of speaking suspicious words evil actions gradually cause evil outcomes this is easy for us to understand right cause effect evil actions gradually cause evil outcomes that ultimately cause utter destruction that's what jeremiah 7 is telling us did you have any idea i know i didn't have any idea that our words were so consequential how grave how heavy how weighty are your words my words so weighty so grave in fact that the god of the universe says i would like for you to categorize gossip and suspicion and whispering and backbiting i would it's so heavy i would like you god says to categorize speaking badly of your fellow human being i'd like you to put that in the category of human sacrifice if you find yourself repulsed by the idea of human sacrifice and you do don't you do yes no maybe are you repulsed by the idea of human sacrifice you should be god is saying i would like you to be similarly repulsed by gossip in backbiting and suspicious talk and behind the scenes whispers you'll never guess oh let me tell you but let's pray for her evil actions gradually according to jeremiah 7 evil actions are destructive in their outcome then jesus in the new testament this is amazing takes the word gehenna and employs it himself jesus is a hebrew he lives around and at times is ministering in jerusalem he's no doubt now no doubt walked by gehenna that burning garbage pit with the piles of corpses of infamous criminals he's walked by many times he's familiar he knows the history he's read scripture he knows jeremiah 7. he knows the association of gehenna with human sacrifice and jesus comes along knowing all of that history in matthew 5 22 and jesus says whoever says to or about a brother a sister a fellow human being whoever says you fool shall be in danger of gehenna this is your savior talking to you i mean you can do whatever you want with it you can operate on the assumption that speaking ill of somebody couldn't possibly be that bad and yet the lord jesus christ i.e god in the flesh says that adopting this kind of posture this kind of attitude this kind of this kind of yeah toward a fellow human being that that attitude that frame of mind that spirit ah jesus says man you're in a dangerous place you're like right on the precipice of gehenna speaking badly of your fellow human beings is putting you in an extremely dangerous position gehenna level danger is breathing down your neck this is this is your savior talking to you this is jesus c s lewis understands how extremely powerful for good or evil words are and he says that suspicion often creates what it suspects now think this through for a minute there's a prophetic quality to our words well there's a prophetic quality to our actions and our attitudes if you relate for example if you're raising children some of you are parents i'm a parent if you're raising children and if you relate to your child with suspicion i know you're up to no good you're the kind of kid who would do anything if you could get away with it i'll be i'm going to be watching you guess what you said that when he was two now he's 14 and you've been saying it over and over again and your words of suspicion about your own child very well may become a self-fulfilling prophecy because in the act of speaking badly to or about a human being those words are becoming deeply embedded in that person's sense of self if my father if my mother says you're a selfish little brat well that's my dad who said that i got to believe it that's my mom that said that certainly it's true i'm a selfish little and now i'm 14 i'm a selfish big brat i'm exactly what you made me with your words are you tracking with me words are extremely powerful in the book of proverbs solomon says the power of life and death are in the tongue you can literally produce evil outcomes that weren't even coming by simply projecting a atmosphere of suspicion on someone that person could have had no intent whatsoever to be the kind of person that you are suggesting that they are and yet by you suggesting that they are less than they are there's the possibility that they may adopt your opinion of themselves and become less than they would have been by your words by my words now i share with you my little experience i believe that demonic forces preside over gossip i believe that when two human beings are kind of in a huddle or three or five or in a huddle about someone else man let me tell you what she did now of course we're gonna pray for her but before we pray for let me tell you when two or three or five human beings are in a huddle of negativity about another person i think the door is just wide open for demonic forces to flood in and say this is exactly what we want going on and then what social media has become is negativity on steroids social media has become a gossip fest on the scale of cosmological impact on the world right now entire corporations families and nations are in the process of toppling based on what's said on the internet negativity is contagious it's contagious but now that passage about gehenna in jeremiah 7 suggested that evil actions and words produce absolute and utter destruction now i want to suggest to you another concept that is related to what we've just explored and that is simply that the wicked are dead before they die eternally so gehenna which symbolically represents and is sometimes translated in english versions as hell all right gehenna this place of of utter and complete destruction i'm going to suggest to you that those who end up there had a process by which they got there there's not a single human being who will be eternally lost or quote unquote go to hell or end up utterly destroyed in gehenna annihilated and destroyed utterly so that they never exist again not a single human being will be utterly and completely lost by a unilateral decision on the part of god god won't ever lose patience throw up his hands and say you know what time's up i know some of you are in process but i'm just tired of it as long as anybody's in process god is presiding over the process with grace as long as anybody's in process god is presiding over the process the only way a human being is ever irreparably irr irrevocably lost is from the inside probation doesn't close from the outside it closes from the inside changes take place in the psycho-emotional machinery that brings a person to the place where they are literally dead before they die they're destroyed internally before they're utterly destroyed externally c.s lewis describes this process and it's a couple of paragraphs you're going to have to put your brain into this every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you the part of you that chooses the central part of you the part of you that chooses every time you make a choice you're turning that central part of yourself into something a little different than it was before are you tracking with this thinking here every time you make just a micro choice just a micro relational maneuver every time you make a little choice that little choice is becoming a cumulative effect that will have a macro outcome and so he goes on and he says this he says and taking your life as a whole all these little choices taking your life as a whole with all your innumerable choices all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature now he's using heaven and hell as metaphoric for a state of being a psychological emotional relational state of existence and he's saying that choices gradually accumulate to move each of us in one of these two directions you and i are as i've said many many times to myself and to others this is something i repeat to myself often tai you are in a process of becoming da da da whatever it is you're in the process of becoming tai but you're never ever standing still in your basic makeup psychologically emotionally your character is always moving by every choice now watch what he says by every choice taking all of them as a whole you're becoming i'm becoming a heavenly creature a hellish creature watch this and then he describes what it means to be a heavenly creature versus a hellish creature either into a creature that is in harmony with god and with other creatures and with itself in harmony with god others and myself the bible calls this by the way shalom a state of peace in all my relationships with god with others with myself or else here's the alternative into one that is into a creature that is in a state of war and hatred with god and with its fellow creatures and with itself i am either becoming more and more filled with a sense of enmity and hatred and distance from god people and myself or i am becoming more harmonious with god others and myself that's what he's saying to be the one kind of creature the heavenly kind is heaven heaven on earth right here right now now if you're thinking that this is just a bit much do you remember what jesus said he said pray like this our father which art in heaven hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done where what's the rest of it on earth as it is where in heaven so jesus says yeah there's a heavenly kind of way of being on earth that is like social relations occur in heaven to be the one kind of creature is heaven that is it is joy and peace and knowledge and power that's that's the one way of being which is to say that's the one way of making micro choices to have a macro outcome and then to be the other the other kind of creature the hellish kind of creature means madness horror idiocy rage impotence and eternal loneliness and then this each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or to the other you are i am every one of us every moment moving in one of those two directions and what i'm suggesting to you is that the attitude i hold in my heart and the words that i speak with my mouth about my fellow human beings is the single most influential factor that alters my character i'm using a a light word i'm saying i'm suggesting that to you it's it's up for grabs you can believe it or not believe it i think scripture is explicitly telling us that all of us are experiencing what the science is calling neuroplasticity your brain is like silly putty it's constantly in the process of morphing into something that just moments ago it wasn't the mere uttering of a sentence will alter who i am to some small degree leading to major outcomes doing evil things gradually makes a person evil doing evil things gradually makes a person evil and so what i'm saying is that hell is first a condition of character followed by literal eternal annihilation destruction again i am destroyed before i'm destroyed dostoevsky said it this way what is hell and he would like to answer his own question i maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love what is hell hell is a series of small choices that gradually chips away at the fine mechanisms of my emotions until eventually i don't feel anything anymore i don't feel happy i don't feel sad i don't feel hate i don't feel love i'm just hollow i'm empty how do you feel today i don't feel anything today if you find yourself experiencing that kind of detachment from emotion may i urge you that you have an emergency on your hands and you need to do whatever it takes to surround yourself with positive uplifting people who actually care about you and if necessary cut yourself off from toxic relationships that are destroying you if you find that your capacity for love itself is gradually vanishing from your soul you are in the dangerous the most dangerous place a human being can be heaven and hell are states of being that lead to eternal life or eternal death so that when we come to the final destruction of the wicked it is described like this and i think this is probably the most the most chilling and scary thing in scripture right here as the wicked are resurrected of all ages the incorrigibly wicked with no capacity for love and they stand before the great white throne of god and there's god seated on the throne and notice what they feel as they stand before him from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away that's that's a poetic way of saying that as the wicked come up out of the graves and they see god everything in them wants to run from him well there's a whole different group of people who if you read the whole context of the passage are also resurrected and they're standing there too and everything in them is saying finally you're so beautiful please welcome me into your presence there will be people who will feel perfectly at home in the presence of god and then there will be those who will experience maybe the saddest line in scripture speaking of the wicked and there was found no place for them what the world as we know it is ending the new jerusalem is on its way descending to be situated here on earth the righteous and the wicked of all ages every human being who has ever lived is resurrected and is alive at once and for some of those who are resurrected there was found no place for them no place in the whole universe of god no place for them it doesn't say god's ticked and he's gonna lash out at them it says no there's something about them that has placed them so out of harmony with him that they're very character is running against the grain of the universe as god finally wants the universe to be and how does god want the universe to be while the wicked are destroyed according to this passage before they are destroyed and only lovers will live forever the bottom line of scripture is not so much to get ourselves out of hell the bottom line of scripture is to get hell out of us to get the hell out of here out of my thinking out of my feeling out of my words out of my relational dynamics to get the principles of self-serving self-interest out of my heart to be free from everything that would be inclined to put anybody down to put anybody in a false light to negate anybody the universe will be inhabited by people who have learned to love like jesus loves father in heaven thank you thank you for the good god that you are father this this is a heavy word that we have spoken today it's almost more than we're equipped to process i pray god that you would help us to sense in this moment the gravity of our words father cause us to deeply repent of anything that we have said about anybody that would diminish them in any way and give us the grace to become the kind of people who who build up rather than tear down father help us to become the kind of people who who come to love people the way you love people this is our desire this is our prayer in jesus name amen hey thanks so much for watching we hope that message was a blessing to you god's word is powerful it penetrates into our minds into our hearts brings about transformation in every aspect of our lives listen we don't want you to miss any content so again we want to encourage you to click on subscribe and track with the content that's going to be coming out week after week and if you'd like to partner with us in this global ministry of taking the gospel of christ to the whole world we want to invite you to become a partner in this ministry click give and join with us

Channel: Storyline Church

Views: 8,573

Rating: 4.936842 out of 5

Keywords: storyline church, ty gibson, words, gossip

Id: _gPAhflaVEc

Length: 53min 23sec (3203 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 31 2020