Reasoning Through the Bible
Taking a cue from Paul, Reasoning Through the Bible is an expository style walk through the Scriptures that tells you what the Bible says. Reviewing both Old and New Testament books, as well as topical subjects, we methodically teach verse by verse, even phrase by phrase.
We have completed many books of the Bible and offer free lesson plans for teachers. If you want to browse our entire library by book or topic, see our website www.ReasoningThroughTheBible.com.
We primarily do expository teaching but also include a good bit of theology and apologetics. Just like Paul on Mars Hill, Christianity must address both the ancient truths and the questions of the people today. Join Glenn and Steve every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday as they reason with you through the Bible.
Reasoning Through the Bible
S35 || Is Hell Fair? Wrestling with Eternal Punishment and Divine Justice || Ezekiel 31:15 - 32:32 || Session 35
What awaits us beyond the grave? Ezekiel chapters 31-32 pull back the curtain on one of humanity's most profound questions, revealing startling truths about the afterlife that challenge modern assumptions and comfort those seeking justice.
The biblical understanding of death and judgment comes alive as we distinguish between Sheol (the place of the dead) and Hell (the place of eternal punishment). Through prophetic visions, we witness Pharaoh—once worshipped as a deity—stripped of pretense and cast into the same grave awaiting all humanity. The message resonates across millennia: death is the great equalizer, and no amount of wealth, power, or achievement can prevent our ultimate encounter with divine justice.
We tackle the challenging question that has troubled believers and skeptics alike: Is eternal punishment fair? Rather than offering simplistic answers, we explore C.S. Lewis's profound insight that "the door to hell is locked from the inside." Would forcing those who reject God into an eternity of worship truly be merciful? This perspective transforms our understanding of divine justice and human choice.
God's sovereignty over nations emerges as a central theme, with Egypt, Assyria, and other ancient powers falling under divine judgment for their violence, oppression, and treatment of Israel. The pattern raises sobering questions for modern nations: If God judged ancient civilizations, will contemporary powers escape scrutiny? The evidence of Egypt's fall—once the world's wealthiest civilization, now reduced to crumbling hieroglyphics—stands as a testament to divine justice played out across history.
Despite these sobering realities, the message offers profound hope. In a world where justice often seems elusive, we can rest in the assurance that God's perfect judgment awaits—the wicked will be punished, the righteous rewarded, and every knee will ultimately bow before Christ.
Listen now to discover ancient wisdom that speaks directly to our modern anxieties about death, justice, and the ultimate purpose of human existence.
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May God Bless you!! - Glenn and Steve
One of the eternal questions that's plagued mankind for all of its existence is what happens to us after we die. Is there a place of bliss? Is there a place of punishment? Is there a place where the unfairness of this world gets righted, where those that deserve a reward are rewarded and those that deserve punishment are punished? Well, today's passage we're going to find out some of the answers to this. We'll be opening in Ezekiel, chapter 31, towards the last part of the chapter.
Speaker 1:If you've been with us on Reasoning Through the Bible, you'll know that we've been going through Ezekiel and we found here that in these last several chapters God is giving Ezekiel a message about Egypt and Pharaoh. Last time we saw that God was condemning Pharaoh to the underworld for their wickedness and we talked about how even nations are things that God deals with. We will not get away with sin. God deals with it individually and he deals with it corporately in nations, and through these passages it's become clear that God raises up nations and he tears down nations, and he is the one that is in control of the nations of the world. So, starting in verse 15 of Ezekiel 31, he mentions he's going to send Pharaoh to Sheol and he mentions it again in verse 17,. How, verse 17,. They also went down to Sheol.
Speaker 1:Now, here the King James Version uses the word hell, and it really should say Sheol, because hell is a different concept. Here it's just talking about the place of the dead. It's talking in a general term about the grave. Hell is a more specific place for eternal punishment that is ultimately reserved for Satan and his demons, but there are lost people that will end up there. So hell is indeed a real place. It's just not mentioned here. Here it's taught that the Pharaoh in Egypt will go to Sheol, the grave, the place of the dead, and he's going to find other nations there. That was what was clear in this passage. Hell is a very real place. It's a very real concept.
Speaker 1:That is mentioned both in the New Testament and the Old, and some of the passages, for example, that support the idea of hell in the Old Testament include Daniel 12.2. That says this quote many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake. These to everlasting life, but the others to disgrace and everlasting contempt. Unquote. So God, through Daniel, concluded that there is an everlasting glory for those that are with God and an everlasting punishment, everlasting contempt for those that are with God and an everlasting punishment, everlasting contempt for those that are against God. Another passage is Isaiah 66. 24 says, quote then they will go forth and look on the corpses of the men who have transgressed against me, for their worm will not die and their fire will not be quenched, unquote. So the book of Isaiah closes with this idea that there will be everlasting fire, everlasting torment for the wicked people that do not follow the Lord God. So hell is taught in the Old Testament.
Speaker 1:Although the word hell is not there, the concepts, as we've seen, are clearly taught. It's also taught clearly in the New Testament. A couple of places that mention that Revelation 21.8, unbelievers are thrown into the lake of fire. There and, quoting 2 Thessalonians, quote, to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus, these will pay the penalty of eternal destruction. That's again 2 Thessalonians 1, verse 8 and 9.
Speaker 1:So we have passages, old Testament and New, that teach eternal conscious torment for the wicked, the wicked who refuse to bow the knee to the Lord God, refused to bow the knee to the Lord God and because of Ezekiel, chapter 31, and really chapter 32, also supports the idea of a conscious punishment in the afterlife. There is a place called Sheol where people will go that are wicked. There is a place of the dead. It is conscious, and it is a place where God will administer justice. That did not get administered on this earth. All people go somewhere after physical death and these passages support this.
Speaker 1:So, steve, here's a question. Once we bring up this idea of eternal torment, a lot of people don't think that's fair. People think it's a finite life. Why should I endure eternal torment for a finite set of sins? A lot of people find the whole idea of eternal punishment to be abhorrent and I must admit I think if I were given a vote, I wouldn't vote for the existence of hell. But God didn't ask my opinion and he created a place of eternal punishment.
Speaker 1:So here's really the question that comes up Is it fair, is it fair for God to have a place called hell? And the contrary side of that is if we're dealing with the fairness of eternal punishment in hell, you have to answer the other side of the same coin, which is is it fair for God to force people to go be with him in heaven when they don't want to go? There's people on this earth that don't like godly things. They don't want to talk about Christ. They don't want to be around godly people. They don't want to spend an hour a week in church and heaven is going to be 24-hour day church and being around Christian things and godly people, and there's people that don't want that. They don't like that. Is it fair for God to force them to go be in a worship service worshiping Christ for all eternity? So is the idea of heaven and hell fair.
Speaker 2:I think the idea of heaven and hell is real. There's enough material here for us to do a separate topical study on this, because Sheol is mentioned, hell is mentioned. Then there's also the lake of fire that scripture mentions. There's the abyss, so there's these different places that are not heaven. They're not where God is, and I think it would be good for us to go through that, because it's not talked enough or preached enough, but I think we should. It's a real place and when you talk about that, it's a place of fire.
Speaker 2:I think maybe that's some of the things that people object to. Why would God create a place that would be a place of fire where people would just be tormented all the time? Well, when you really get into it and look at it which we will do when we go through our topical study it's just a place that has been reserved for people that don't want to be with God, and just like we have degrees of rewards in Heaven, glen, and just like we have degrees of rewards in heaven, glenn, I think that there's going to be degrees of punishment for the people and that are not going to be with God. So I look forward to being able to do that topical study. If we don't have people understanding what their eternal abode is, if it's not going to be in heaven, then have we really been fair to them?
Speaker 2:Your question is was it fair of God to send people to hell? Well, god doesn't send them there, as you mentioned. They go there on their own because they don't want to be with God and they don't want to have anything to do with God, so they send themselves there. Is it fair on our part if we don't tell people this is where you will spend eternity? So we will discuss that during that topical study as well.
Speaker 2:But the bottom line is, people go to the place that's not with God, wherever that might be, whatever you want to call it, whatever scripture calls it, because they don't want to be with God here, they don't want to have anything to do with him here, and so, no, I don't think it would be a loving God to say, well, I don't care if you don't want to have anything to do with me here, I'm still going to make you be with me for eternity, because I don't think that they would change and I think that they would actually be miserable if they were forced to be with God with somebody that they don't want to be with now.
Speaker 1:I think it was CS Lewis that was quoted as saying the door to hell is locked from the inside. They don't want to go to heaven, they don't want to be around godly things. So towards the end of Ezekiel 31, it talks about Pharaoh and Pharaoh falling. Now you have to understand. Pharaoh was held up to be a god. He was supposed to have been a god that came out of the Nile River. He was supposed to be god on earth. And here the real god is saying that Pharaoh is going to fall. He's going to fall like a tree.
Speaker 1:This is no surprise if we really think about it. All the great men throughout history, and all the great women, for that matter, have all fallen. They all died and went to the grave, just like the poor and the unknown. Everyone is equal in the grave. Everyone is equal in the grave. The money you make and the power you have and the greatness of your achievements will not help you in the grave. Pharaoh thought he was a god, but he died just like everybody else. That's the human condition. That brings us to Ezekiel, chapter 32. Now Ezekiel 32 is the fourth chapter that's dealing with God judging Egypt. So we have more here on Egypt, the language in this chapter very emotional, very descriptive, and it's just very valuable for that purpose. So, steve, can you read the first eight verses of Ezekiel, chapter 32?.
Speaker 2:In the twelfth year, in the twelfth month, on the first of the month, the word of the Lord came to me saying Son of man, take up a lamentation over Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and say to him you compared yourself to a young lion of the nations, yet you are like the monster in the seas and you burst forth in your rivers and muddied the waters with your feet and fouled their rivers.
Speaker 2:Thus says the Lord. God, now I will spread my net over you, with a company of many peoples, and they shall lift you up in my net. I will leave you on the land, I will cast you on the open field and I will cause all the birds of heaven to dwell on you, and I will satisfy the beasts of the whole earth with you. I will lay your flesh on the mountains and fill the valleys with your refuse. I will also make the land drink the discharge of your blood as far as the mountains and the ravines will be full of you. And when I extinguish you, I will cover the heavens and darken their stars. I will cover the sun with the cloud and the moon will not give its light, All the shining lights in the heavens. I will darken over you and will set darkness on your land. Declares the Lord God.
Speaker 1:And this very descriptive passage, the beginning of it. Ezekiel says in the 12th year, 12th month, on the first of the month, ezekiel is always very careful to document the year, month and day that he received these messages and he says God gave a word to me. So this date that he mentions there works out to March 3rd 585 BC. This was two months after the captives found out about the fall of Jerusalem. Now, once again, ezekiel is very clear that he is writing this. The word of the Lord came to me and this is eyewitness testimony. The Bible goes to great lengths to show that this was eyewitness testimony by the people who experienced it, by the people that God spoke to, and it documents these things. We can trust our Bible.
Speaker 1:Then, in verse 2, god continues his lament over the destruction of Pharaoh. God is comparing Pharaoh to a monster of the sea. The Egyptians put a high religious and cultural value on crocodiles, so God is saying here that Pharaoh is just like a crocodile that would muddy up the water and pollute the river. God will cast a net, catch Pharaoh and pull him out of the water. And then, in verse 4, god says he's gonna take this sea creature, cast it out on land where it's gonna die and there it's gonna be eaten by the birds and wild animals. So, steve, who is in control of kings, and nations.
Speaker 2:God, as always, is in control of these nations, and while a crocodile can live outside of water, that's not their natural habitat. Their natural habitat is in the river, where they can keep their skin moist and wet. If they get out of the water for too long periods of time, then they will die and they will perish. They'll dry up. That's the depiction that is given here, that God says I'm going to take you out of your natural element. I'm going to take you up and throw you out on the land and you're not going to be able to go back into the water. You're not going to be going back and being a Pharaoh anymore, and all these other nations that are being used to pull you out in my net. They're going to put you on the land and you're going to cease to exist as being the Pharaoh over Egypt itself.
Speaker 1:God is obviously in control here and he gives this very graphic, emotional description of what he's going to do to Pharaoh. And this is tremendous prophecy, simply because when it was given, pharaoh was this very wealthy, very powerful king, and Egypt had been a wealthy, powerful nation for many centuries. God is in control and he raises up nations and tears them down again. Verse 7 in this description says God will darken the sun and the moon. Now, steve, this reminds me of a specific time in the Egyptians' history where there was darkness on the land. Where was that?
Speaker 2:It was during the 10 plagues of Pharaoh and Moses. Whenever Moses, on behalf of God, was going to Pharaoh at that time and tell him saying let my people go, yahweh says let my people go so that they can go and worship him. And we saw all of that in the Exodus story. Of those 10 plagues, one of them was what was described here of darkness and all of those 10 plagues were God showing and demonstrating that he was in control of these things.
Speaker 1:They put religious value on the Egyptians, god controlling all of these parts of life.
Speaker 1:And systematically, god goes through and says I am going to do this and I'm the one in control of the Nile River, I'm the one in control of the sun.
Speaker 1:So it would think that if a prophet of God were to stand up to Pharaoh and say I'm going to darken the sun again, well, I would think that they would pay attention. But oftentimes we just don't, in this passage, notice how many times God says in there, I will. He is very clearly in control. Here God says I will spread my net over you, I will leave you on the land, I will cast you into an open field, I will cause the birds to dwell on you, and this means the common birds, the carrion birds, the ones who devour dead flesh. So God is very clearly here saying that he is in charge. He's the one making these events happen. It is just amazing to me, steve, that not only back then you'd think that Egypt would have learned their lesson after Moses and the 10 plagues, but even today we don't learn the lesson. God is the one really still today, that is in control of not only personal salvation but nations, is he not, he is.
Speaker 2:And note that all of these nations are being judged here based on what? No-transcript. So what would make you want to think that that has changed today? It hasn't. And we have almost all the nations today that are once again against the nation state of Israel at the time that we're doing this recording. Just like there was judgment on these ancient nations, on how they treated Israel at the time, throughout the history of Israel, over the hundreds of years that they were there, god will not be mocked, god will not be ignored. When we went through Zechariah, what did he say? He said my people are the apple of my eye, talking about the nation of Israel, his people. So there's going to come a time of judgment in the future for the nations, just like there was judgment at this time on Egypt here and all these other nations that the Pharaoh are going to see in Sheol.
Speaker 1:In these chapters he's not only talking about Egypt but, as we've seen, he talks about Tyre, another great nation, great world power, and a double handful of other nations. God is talking about using them for his purposes. He talks about tearing them down to Sheol. He did this to these nations because God sent prophets to all these nations, yet they ignored his commands and he dealt with them. So, Steve, if God did this to nations in the ancient days, will he do it to our nation when we ignore his commands? Are we any different? Or is God asleep? Is he going to deal with nations today that ignore his commands?
Speaker 2:He will deal with the modern day nations and at some point, all the nations are going to recognize Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Messiah of Israel, as the king of all nations. Over in Philippians, chapter two, starting in verse nine, it says For this reason also, God highly exalted him, talking about Jesus Christ, and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God, the Father. So we're talking about these nations that are in Sheol, they're under the earth, and in Philippians, Paul is making it clear that Jesus Christ is going to be acknowledged as being the Messiah, the King. He's going to be the King of Israel and the King of the world, and all nations are going to come. Paul makes it clear that every tongue is going to bow and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. So no, the nations are not going to get away with ignoring God today.
Speaker 2:At some point they're all going to acknowledge who God is, and specifically who Jesus Christ is, and they're going to have to pay an answer for the way that they have treated God's apple of his eye, Israel, and also how they have conducted and treated their own people.
Speaker 2:The leaders of these nations have a divine charge to govern their people and they're going to be judged based upon how they govern the people.
Speaker 2:Did they do it rightly and justly or did they do it in a way of oppression and even to the point that they killed and murdered millions through different ways of famine or oppression or purges or other types of ways? The leaders are going to pay for the ways that they rule and they're going to be judged on that, just like the ones that were being judged in the time of Ezekiel, the ones all throughout history and into the future they're going to be judged as well. So they need to know that and acknowledge that. Maybe if they did, Glenn, they would treat their rulership of their nations a little bit different. But something tells me that they're not going to change because they don't acknowledge who God is. They don't acknowledge who Jesus Christ is. So therefore, they feel they can do what they want to because they are the leader. They don't understand that they're the leader and serve with really the pleasure of God and they have a responsibility to the people.
Speaker 1:In this section. The language here is very blunt, graphic, very emotional. Notice the land will drink the blood. The ravines will be full as far as the mountains, if nothing else. The literature here is very rich and it's just so sad that it's ignored by so many people today. There's so much value in learning these lessons. Back here in Ezekiel, look down at verse 15. Verse 15 says this when I make the land of Egypt a desolation and the land is destitute of that which filled it, then I smite all those who live in it. Then they shall know that I am the Lord here. God says he's going to make Egypt a desolation.
Speaker 1:Egypt was a land that was once very tremendously wealthy. The gold that are found in the tombs there is really incalculable. The leaders of Egypt were the wealthiest people on earth. The engineering feats were tremendous. We still don't know how they built some of the temples that they built. And now that entire culture, although it lasted for at least 2,500 years and was tremendous culture, tremendous achievements by the ancient Egyptians, all that we really know of that culture now is what? The little bits that were inscribed on the walls of some of the tombs that are still left, the only things left of the ancient Egypt culture is a few hieroglyphics on the temple walls, and much of that has crumbled. The nation was made desolate. It was judged by God. Why do we go there today and see what we see? It's because it was judged by God.
Speaker 1:Now, the last part of chapter 32, god speaks of judgment on several more people, groups. He talks in here about Assyria, elam, meshach Tubal, edom says the chiefs of the north and the Sidonians. For all of these he gives a very similar message. There's a pattern here. If you read it, it says many people are going to fall by the sword, they're going to be in shield and these people were guilty of spreading terror on people. So we have here God judging these nations because of the terror they put on their own people and their neighbors, that they're going to fall by the sword and end up in the grave. Verses 21 to 27,.
Speaker 1:When Egypt gets to Sheol, she's going to find other nations there that God has brought down Assyria, elam, meshach Tubal which are all in Asia. Minor History is littered with nations that were once great but fell to the grave because of their pompous and violent cultures. God will not be mocked and of course, all these nations and events are mentioned in Ezekiel are accurate historically, demonstrating the trustworthiness of the scriptures. This is a very sad story. It takes no pleasure for us to read it and it's really no pleasure for God to give the message. But God is holy and righteous and evil will be punished, steve. Can we be confident of that throughout?
Speaker 2:history. That is the one hope I have of the future that there is going to be true justice one day. And I know that it's going to be true because the one that's going to deliver it is going to be the one and true God. He's going to be the one that is going to finally give justice and it's going to be a just sentence of what he gives. So I can take rest in knowing that this justice is going to be done. Scripture tells us vengeance is mine, says the Lord. It's something to be able to rest upon, that you know at some point in time that God will deliver the true justice to these nations and to these leaders that they deserve.
Speaker 1:We can take comfort in knowing that God is in charge and that he is holy and just, and that in the end, the wicked will be punished and the righteous will be rewarded. That brings us to the end of chapter 32. We're going to stop there for today because of time. Tune in back with us next time, because we're going to see more of these amazing things in the book of Ezekiel.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for watching and listening. May God bless you.
