Sermon for July 3: "The Winnowing Fork" (Luke 3:15-20)

Please be in prayer for our service on Sunday as we consider the difficult doctrine of eternal judgment. To be sure, our culture dislikes being motivated by fear. After all, fear seems too instinctual to be a reasonable guide. It opens the door to being manipulated.

Having said that, we've known from the beginning of time that fear is useful. Even Aesop's fables warned of the fates of those who were lazy. And parents use fear tactics with their children in warning them: "don't do 'this' or 'that' because it will hurt you."

To be sure, it's good to teach our children not to be scared of certain things: shadows, for instance.

But what if fear is a divinely given motivation for avoiding certain potential realities? What if our actions do have consequences and not all of these consequences end up being good?

Consider the fact that Jesus, himself, knew there was something to fear: eternal hell (Mark 9:43-48; Luke 12:4-5). Jesus warns us to fear hell, the day of judgment (Matt 11:24; 25:31-46), spoke of condemnation (Matt 12:37; John 3:18), and portrayed hell in shocking terms (Matt 13:49-50; 18:9; Luke 16:24). And so does his forerunner, John the Baptist (Luke 3:1-18).

In other words, the doctrine of hell is crucial for faithful Christian witness. As Kevin DeYoung and others have written, the belief that there is something worse than death is the "ballast for our ministry boats."

As DeYoung argues, Hell is not our guiding light; it doesn't set the direction for everything in the Christian faith. No, the gospel of Jesus Christ does. Neither is hell the faith-wheel which steers the ship, nor the wind that powers us along, nor the sails that captures the Spirit's breeze. However, hell isn't unimportant to this vessel called the church. Its our ballast (weights, usually put underneath in the middle of the boat, which are used to keep the ship stable in the water). Without ballast, the boat will not sit correctly. It will veer off course or be tossed from side to side. Ballast keeps the boat balanced.

So if we lose the doctrine of hell (through neglect, shame, or unbelief), we can count on this: the ship (church) will drift. The cross will be stripped of propitiation, our preaching will lose its urgency, and our evangelism to the world will no longer center on calling people to repentance and faith.

No wonder John the Baptist was so urgent in warning the multitudes and Herod of the one who would come with the "winnowing fork" in his hand. Eternity hangs in the balance. Are we chaff or wheat?