What Does Jesus Say About Hell? A Look at Matthew 10
Pastor Keith Roberson preached this one from a stool. He told the room why: “No angry preacher here. That’s why I got a stool — to make sure I don’t do any heavy pacing.”
It got a laugh, but the stool was making a real point before the sermon ever did. Because the topic that morning at New River Church was the hardest one in the Scriptures: hell. Eternal separation from God. And almost everyone in the room had some history with the way that topic has been handled — hell as a means of obedience (“you better obey, or else”), hell as a tool to manipulate people to conversion (“turn or burn”), hell as religious fear-mongering.
Pastor Keith named all of that out loud, and then he set it aside. That is not the heart you find in Scripture, he said. So the plan for the morning was simple: no secular humanist take, no conservative or liberal theologian, no angry preacher. Just the words of Jesus, allowed to care for us, encourage us, and bring truth.
In a message from the BEYOND series called Do Not Perish, Pastor Keith walked through Matthew 10 and the surrounding teaching of Jesus to answer the question honestly: what does Jesus say about hell — and why does he say so much about it?
What this sermon is about
Here is the surprise at the center of the message. Of all the teachers, poets, songwriters, prophets, and apostles in all of Scripture, Jesus taught about hell more than any other person. He had more to say about eternal separation from the Father than anyone else.
Why? Because his purpose in coming was to save us from it.
That single fact reframes the whole subject. Hell, in the mouth of Jesus, is never a weapon. It is the backdrop for a rescue. God is not eager to eternally punish people. He is pleading: come out of it. Come out of darkness and into light with me.
“Do not fear” — three times in one passage
The anchor text is Matthew 10, where Jesus is getting honest with his disciples about the harder parts of following him. You will be hated. You will be persecuted. There will be those who want to harm you for trusting me. (Pastor Keith noted that while we haven’t experienced that kind of persecution here in Franklin, we are not far removed from very recent stories — in Iran and across the earth — of people killed for saying “I will follow Jesus.”)
It’s on the heels of that honesty that Jesus says this:
Matthew 10:26-31 — “So have no fear of them… And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.”
Notice what Pastor Keith pointed out: in this one passage about eternal separation, Jesus says “do not fear” three times. He is talking about the weightiest reality there is, and he is not appealing to terror. He’s saying: be sober, be awake, and come find your home with me. There is a Father so good that he sees every sparrow fall and has numbered the hairs on your head. You have such value, and he is inviting you to be with him.
“God’s not trying to scare people. God’s faithfully reaching to save people. Come home. And church, that’s good news.” — Pastor Keith Roberson
Jesus doesn’t soften the picture, either. In Matthew 25 alone he tells three separate parables about this future reality, with significant language — some “cast into the outer darkness,” where “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth,” some who “go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” These are his words, not a preacher’s. We treasure the grace and mercy of God, and we should — but we also have to stand up under the weight of his righteous glory and holiness.
The bad news that makes the good news good
If you grew up in church, you’ve heard the word gospel — the Greek word for good news. But Pastor Keith made a point that’s easy to skip past: good news isn’t really good news unless you know what the bad news is.
He used a spring break forecast to land it. The high on Tuesday is 33 degrees. That’s the bad news. The good news? That’s the forecast for Duluth, Minnesota — and you live in Franklin, Tennessee, where it’ll be about 76.
So what is our actual bad news? Our default station in life is that we are, from sin, utterly separated from God. From the beginning, humanity has turned its back on him. Romans 1:25 says we “exchanged the glory of the Creator for the creation.” We loved ourselves over the goodness of God, and we’d rather be enslaved to gods of our own fashioning.
And Pastor Keith got specific about what those gods look like in a place like Williamson County. Apart from God, we’ll worship money and set our hopes on what we can acquire. We’ll worship sex, power, influence, popularity, comfort. We’ll even abuse the good gifts — worshiping a spouse as the supreme answer to our loneliness, or turning our kids into little gods by trying to satisfy their every whim. Sports, music, movies, entertainment as our supreme source of joy. And the greatest idol of all is the one in the mirror, where we say: my way.
Every sin, no matter how big or small, is a decision to find our delight and our treasure in something lesser, futile, and empty. It’s so commonplace that we easily forget what Romans 3:10-12 says plainly: we all — preacher included, Keith was clear — have gone astray. “None is righteous, no, not one.” We have all deserved judgment.
What kind of loving God is filled with wrath?
This is where the sermon turned to the question most of us are actually carrying: I can’t believe in a God who sends people to suffer this way. What kind of loving God is filled with wrath?
Pastor Keith’s answer started somewhere unexpected: we all are.
Everyone demands justice, all the time, from the smallest things to the largest. Amazon sends you a package that’s beat to heck, and you demand they fix it. And when you hear the most vile things that happen across the earth — when little girls are trafficked and the person responsible is caught — your blood boils. It should. Where does that demand for justice come from? It comes from being made in the image of a Creator who is perfectly just.
He quoted Rebecca Pippert’s book Hope Has Its Reasons: think how we feel when we see someone we love ravaged by unwise actions or relationships. Do we respond with benign tolerance, the way we might toward strangers? Far from it. “Anger isn’t the opposite of love. Hate is — and the final form of hate is indifference.”
If someone you loved was being harmed, the most hate-filled thing you could do is not care at all. And make no mistake: God is not indifferent about you. You matter. His wrath against sin is not the opposite of his love. It’s the proof of it.
Ezekiel 18:23 — “Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord God, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live?”
God isn’t wringing his hands in delight to separate people from himself. He will, in righteousness, judge that which separated us from him — which is sin. And he is saying: don’t be separated. I’ve made a way.
He endured hell so you wouldn’t have to
Then came the line that reframes everything. Hell isn’t just the measure of our offense against a holy God, Pastor Keith said. It’s actually the measure of how deeply we are loved — because God endured it in order to save us.
“Hell is not just the measure of God’s anger against all sin. It shows how radical he is in love for us. He was willing to endure it voluntarily so that we might be with him.” — Pastor Keith Roberson
On the cross, Jesus’ body was destroyed in the worst possible way — and Pastor Keith said that was a flea bite compared to what was happening to his soul when he cried out that God had forsaken him. He was experiencing hell itself.
“Jesus took our hell. He took our forsakenness. He took our sin — past, present, and future — on himself, separated from the Father, so that you and I don’t have to be.” — Pastor Keith Roberson
Forsakenness is a powerful thing. A stranger says “I never want to see your face again,” and you shrug it off. A father, a mother, a son, a daughter, a friend says it — and you feel that. What did the Son have with the Father, eternally, to then experience the Father turning away? It was hell. And he walked into it on purpose, saying in effect: I’ll stand under my own righteous requirement, and I’ll do it for you.
That’s why John 3:16 has the shape it has: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Not perish. That’s the title of the sermon, and it’s the heart of God.
And Jesus demonstrated it with messy people, over and over. The woman caught in adultery. The woman at the well. The dishonest, the treacherous, the most rejected group of people in his own culture. He never said, “Well, you’re probably going to hell now.” He said: I forgive you. Go and live full. There’s a Father in heaven who will open his heart to you. You’ve made a mess of your life — and you can have your whole life restored, not just now, but forever.
What this means for your week in Franklin
If you take this sermon seriously, four things change about this week.
- Let Jesus reframe the topic for you. If hell has only ever been a club someone swung at you, hear it from Jesus instead: he taught on it more than anyone, and every word of it was rescue, not threat. “Do not fear” — three times.
- Name your version of the exchange. Money, comfort, influence, your kids, the person in the mirror — Romans 1 says we trade the glory of the Creator for created things. Identify the trade you’re most tempted to make, and bring it to God honestly.
- Stop apologizing for wanting justice. That fire in you when you see evil is the image of a just God. Let it point you to the cross, where justice and love met instead of canceling each other out.
- Pray for one person by name. Pastor Keith closed by inviting the church to lift up friends and family who are far from God: “Stir their heart to trust you.” Pick one person this week and ask the Father to call them home.
Watch the full message
The full sermon — “Do Not Perish” from the BEYOND series — is in the video above. We post a new message every Sunday from New River Church in Franklin, TN. Browse our message library for more from the BEYOND series and other recent teaching.
Coming Sunday at New River Church in Franklin, TN
If this message resonated and you’d like to experience worship and community in person, we’d love to have you with us. New River Church meets Sundays at 9:00 AM and 10:45 AM at 1153 Lewisburg Pike in Franklin, TN 37064 — just minutes from downtown Franklin and easy to reach from across Williamson County, Brentwood, and Spring Hill.
You don’t need to dress up. You don’t need a good voice. You don’t need to know much about church or the Bible to come. We’re a community of ordinary people walking through ordinary life, trying to do it together with Jesus at the center. Whether you’ve been a Christian for forty years or you’ve never set foot in a church, you are welcome here.
If you’re new to the area or new to faith, our First Time Guest page walks through everything you need to know before your first visit: parking, what to expect on Sunday morning, what your kids will experience in River Kids, and how to find us when you arrive.
If you’re looking for deeper community beyond Sunday morning, our Community Groups meet across Franklin and the surrounding area throughout the week. Groups are where Sunday morning faith becomes Tuesday afternoon real life.
Whatever you’re carrying right now, you don’t have to carry it alone. There’s a place for you at New River Church in Franklin, Tennessee. Come as you are.
Watch more sermons: newriverfranklin.com/messages Plan your visit: newriverfranklin.com/firsttimeguest Find a group: newriverfranklin.com/groups
📍 New River Church | 1153 Lewisburg Pike, Franklin, TN 37064 | Sundays 9:00 AM & 10:45 AM
