You are listening to Radical with David Platt, a weekly podcast with sermons and messages from

pastor, author and teacher David Platt.

If you have a bob, and I hope you do, let me invite you to open with me to John Chapter 3.

And while you're turning there, let me encourage you to pull out the notes that are in your worship guide, be a guide for

our time together this morning. I feel like I need to warn you from the beginning of our time together this morning that it's going to be a heavy time in God's word. I think in many ways this sermon should have preceded last week's Last week we came face to face with the question,

do you know for certain? Are you absolutely 100% sure that when you die you will go to heaven I realize that many people and many people in this room

hear that question and think there's a questionable premise behind it.

That premise is that there is a heaven and there is an alternative.

Aye, hell.e. hell.

and there are many people who would look at heaven or hell as more

imaginary or fictional.

Is it really possible that some people in this room will spend an

eternity in a place called heaven? And is it really possible that some people who are in this room will spend an eternity

in a place called hell? And I realized that as soon as I even say that,

that it is culturally inappropriate and really just unacceptable to a lot of people to even suggest

the possibility that hell is a real place and that people will go there. Many people will go there. And I think there's

a lot of reasons why that's unacceptable or inappropriate in a lot of people's eyes and maybe even

in many eyes across this room.

I think the way the church has addressed both heaven and hell in the past has been

abusive in many ways. The way we've talked about heaven

is sitting on clouds with a bunch of harps singing songs.

That is not a biblical picture of heaven.

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