The Fate of Sinners

Posted on by korgrocker

“Don’t let me suffer the fate of sinners. Don’t condemn me along with murderers. Their hands are dirty with evil schemes, and they constantly take bribes. But I am not like that; I live with integrity. So redeem me and show me mercy. Now I stand on solid ground, and I will publicly praise the Lord.”
Psalm 26:9-12 NLT

David asked the Lord to spare him from “the fate of sinners”. In David’s society, people who committed crimes suffered some form of punishment. Leviticus 24 lays out some examples of punishments for lawbreakers, who committed crimes such as blasphemy, murder, theft, and injury, where we read the punishment was “a fracture for a fracture, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” (Leviticus 24:20). Stoning was usually used for capital offences. But in the Psalm 26 context, David appeared to be considering behavioural issues – “their hands are dirty with evil schemes and they constantly take bribes”. There was in those days, and still is today, a level of moral lassitude that falls just below the radar of a definition of being a crime but is sin nevertheless. Jesus brought such behaviour to the fore in Matthew 5:21-22, “You have heard that our ancestors were told, ‘You must not murder. If you commit murder, you are subject to judgment.’ But I say, if you are even angry with someone, you are subject to judgment! If you call someone an idiot, you are in danger of being brought before the court. And if you curse someone, you are in danger of the fires of hell“. The problem for humans in all generations is that sin in God’s eyes can only be discerned by Him. So David cried out to the Lord to not let him suffer the fate of sinners because “It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31).‭‭

But what is the fate of sinners? The Old Testament, pre-Jesus, belief was that when someone died they went to a place called Sheol. Faced with the fabricated evidence that Joseph had died as the result of an attack by a wild animal, we read of his father Jacob’s reaction in Genesis 37:35, “Then all his sons and daughters attempted to console him, but he refused to be comforted and said, “I will go down to Sheol (the place of the dead) in mourning for my son.” And his father wept for him”. Both good and bad people went there and it seemed to be some sort of holding area for departed spirits. David also believed that the wicked ended up in Sheol. Psalm 9:17, “The wicked will turn to Sheol (the nether world, the place of the dead), Even all the nations who forget God”. So David and his generation would have no doubts about “the fate of sinners”. Jacob considered Sheol to be a place of mourning, but little was written about what it would be like until Jesus came, and provided some teaching. But one thought spans all the Biblical scriptures, and that is that after a person died, they went to a place of conscious existence, and there are hints that there were degrees of comfort there, depending on whether or not the person had led a good or bad life in God’s eyes beforehand.

In Luke 16 Jesus told the story of a Rich Man and a beggar called Lazarus. Some claim that this was a parable, but Jesus offered no explanation and the story was not about a natural environment that people could relate to, such as sheep and arable farming. It was a statement of fact presented in a way that fitted in with Jewish thought at that time. Basically, the Rich Man had a good life and ended up in Sheol (Hades in the Greek) where he found a place of torment. We can refer to it as “hell” because it was hot – we read, “The rich man shouted, ‘Father Abraham, have some pity! Send Lazarus over here to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue. I am in anguish in these flames'” (Luke 16:24). So there was communication of sorts with the other compartment in Sheol where the poor man went when he died. We can call this place heaven, because Abraham was there. In the next two verses we read, “But Abraham said to him, ‘Son, remember that during your lifetime you had everything you wanted, and Lazarus had nothing. So now he is here being comforted, and you are in anguish. And besides, there is a great chasm separating us. No one can cross over to you from here, and no one can cross over to us from there'”. 

The New Testament belief is based on the Rich Man and Lazarus story, in that people who have died end up in a place of conscious existence, depending on how they lived their natural lives. Believers end up in a place Jesus called Paradise (Luke 23:43). Unbelievers end up in a place of torment that appeared to be another compartment in Hades. Jesus introduced another name for this place – Gehenna, a Greek word used in Mark 9:45. But Hades or Sheol, the Biblical view is consistent with David’s fear about the “fate of sinners”. One place of conscious existence divided into two compartments – paradise (a preview of Heaven) or Gehenna (a preview of hell).  

And then the story gets tragic and sombre. One day all these souls in Hades will be resurrected and judged, as we read in Revelation 20:13, “And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, and death and Hades (the realm of the dead) surrendered the dead who were in them; and they were judged and sentenced, every one according to their deeds”. Thankfully, believers will already have been resurrected by this time and will be living with the Lord in Heaven. 2 Corinthians 5:7-8, “For we live by believing and not by seeing. Yes, we are fully confident, and we would rather be away from these earthly bodies, for then we will be at home with the Lord”. 1 Thessalonians 4 provides further details. 

David called out to the Lord to save him from “the fate of sinners” and he could do that because he walked with integrity and was redeemed by the Lord. Through his faith in the Lord I’m sure that we believers will probably have the opportunity of speaking with him one day. But we mustn’t rest on our laurels because there is a society full of people who, like lemmings, are rushing headlong to the wrong place. I keep banging on, I know, about reaching out to the lost, but these are serious times. Every day on my prayer walks I ask God beforehand to lead me to opportunities where I can share His message of hope. We don’t know if the next seed we plant might be in the heart of another Billy Graham.

Dear Father God. You are the only true righteous and holy God, full of grace and love. Lead us we pray to those who are perishing in their sins, so that we can share about all You have done for us. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Grave Thoughts

Posted on by korgrocker

“No wonder my heart is glad, and I rejoice. My body rests in safety. For you will not leave my soul among the dead or allow your holy one to rot in the grave. You will show me the way of life, granting me the joy of your presence and the pleasures of living with you forever.”
Psalm 16:9-11 NLT

David was in a good place, assured of God’s presence in his life, assured for his future beyond the grave, and experiencing spiritual blessings with a “glad heart” and “the joy of [His] presence”. 

David also had a prophetic glimpse of what was to come, when Jesus came to this world. We fast forward to when Paul and Barnabas were in Antioch and Paul was preaching in the local synagogue with a message entwining Jewish history with the message of salvation through Jesus, their Messiah. Paul referred to Psalm 16:10 and then explained why David’s prophesy was for Someone else. He said, “Another psalm explains it more fully: ‘You will not allow your Holy One to rot in the grave.’ This is not a reference to David, for after David had done the will of God in his own generation, he died and was buried with his ancestors, and his body decayed. No, it was a reference to someone else—someone whom God raised and whose body did not decay” (Acts 13:35-37). In those years before Christ, I wonder what the Jews made of David’s statement, because they would have been there when David died and was buried, and his body decayed in the tomb like anyone else’s did. Come to that, I wonder what the Jews today, who don’t believe Jesus was the Messiah, make of this prophesy.

David wasn’t fearful of death, because he was totally secure in his relationship with God, and because of that he was assured that God would look after him beyond the grave. The Hebrews believed that after death, a person’s soul ended up in the Place of the Dead, or Sheol. But David faithfully believed that God wouldn’t let his soul stay there because he was looking forward to “the pleasures of living with [God] forever”. 

We Christian pilgrims needn’t be afraid of death either because we have been promised that we will spend eternity with Jesus. We will migrate from this evil world, with all its sin and wickedness, into a place of God’s glory, a place of holiness and purity. Jesus said, as we know so well,  “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Yes, our physical bodies will be left behind on Planet Earth, where they will eventually be subsumed back to their constituent parts, one way or another, but our souls will live forever in the presence of the Lord. Jesus said to His disciples, and by association to us as well, “Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am”(John 14:1-3). Jesus never told a lie, because he was the perfect sinless Man, so He would not have said something that was untrue. 

We pilgrims trust in the Lord. What David prophesised about the Holy One’s body came to pass on the first Easter Sunday and the tomb is empty. There is no body rotting away there. No tell tale bones. And in front of witnesses, that Body rose up into the heavens before them, as we read in Acts 1:9, “After saying this, he was taken up into a cloud while they were watching, and they could no longer see him”. We have faith that there is a Man with a resurrected body in Heaven just now, busily preparing our new home. Like David, we believers won’t find ourselves in the Place of the Dead either after we die. Sheol (or Hades in the Greek) is the place for souls that don’t know Jesus, There is no point in them being in Heaven because it is a place that they know nothing about, a place where they cannot enter because of their unconfessed sins, a place of torment as they mull over their missed opportunity.

For most people, those who don’t know Jesus, the reality of the Place of the Dead should inspire “grave thoughts” indeed, but it needn’t be that way. We pray for our unsaved friends and family, that they too will know the “joy of [His] presence”. 

Dear Heavenly Father. Thank You for Jesus, the Holy One anticipated by David all those years before he was born. We pray for our families that they too will come to know Him. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.