Faith Forward 2026 Pt. 3 - Pastor Greg Addison - March 15, 2026

Ministering to the heart of Western Arkansas's River Valley for over 165 years, welcome to Chapter and First, the Bible Teaching Ministry of Fort Smith's First Baptist Church.

You'll find sermons and teachings from Pastor Greg, our ministry staff, and guest speakers.

Thank you for listening.

And so what I want to do is talk to you just for a minute about the primacy of the gospel.

See, that's what we've been reading about.

Even though we've been reading the Old Testament, just as Josh reminded us, we've talked about from the very beginning, God gave that promise of hope that one day He would send that Redeemer.

And where we find ourselves in our chronological reading here in the beginning of the book of Deuteronomy is the children of Israel, you know, they went, they were escaped from and were led out of Egypt.

They came up to the Jordan River, as we talked about a couple of weeks ago.

The people didn't have enough faith to go in.

They failed.

God judged them that that generation of adults would wander for 40 years because of their lack of faith.

We would train up the next generation to have faith in the Lord, and we'd come back to the river and do it again, and that's where they are now.

They've come back and they're ready to do it again.

And here in the beginning of Deuteronomy, God is using Moses to teach the people and prepare them.

Now, in this conversation, as we read earlier, Moses made a mistake during that journey that God had told him, you will not be able to go into the land.

And we'll talk about that again in a moment.

But here, as Moses is preparing, think about his heart.

Man, that land sounds awesome, and man, they brought those grapes back, and God has promised that.

And I want to go.

Can you imagine all that Moses had been through as a leader to lead them out and to be right there on the banks, and he doesn't get to go in.

And so here we find ourselves in a reading from this week in Deuteronomy chapter 3, where we find out just how much Moses is struggling with not being allowed to go in.

Deuteronomy 3 · chapter mention

And so he explains, in the midst of all this thing that he's doing, and all of this preparation and everything else, the Bible says that in verse 23, he is Moses is talking to the people, so he's telling them his heart and what's happened.

He says, At that time I beg the Lord, Lord God, you have begun to show your greatness and your power to your servant, for what God is there in heaven or earth who can perform deeds and mighty acts like yours.

Only the God of creation who can make science work with this kind of dependability and logic could be the God who does that.

And so Moses is telling them, I ask the Lord, please let me cross over and see the beautiful land on the other side of the Jordan, that good hill country and Lebanon.

But the Lord was angry with me on account of you and would not listen to me.

And the Lord said to me, That's enough.

Do not speak to me again about this matter.

Now, how many of you have parents?

You remember saying that?

Don't ask me again.

I'm tired of hearing that.

That's how often Moses had asked.

He's pleading before God.

And you think, man, that's kind of harsh.

Why would God be that harsh with Moses that he clearly loves?

Now he's not being ugly to Moses, so he tells Moses, look, go up to the top of Mount Piscah.

He leads him to a particular overlook, and he says, Look to the west, the north, the south, and the east, and sit with your own eyes.

For you will not cross this Jordan River, but commission Joshua and encourage and strengthen him, for he will cross over ahead of the people and enable them to inherit this land that you will see that I'm showing you.

Now, what was this moment?

Let's go back and be reminded of this moment.

Turn with me in your Bibles to Numbers 20.

And as you know, earlier in their journeys, they had come to a spot where they had gotten out of water.

There was no water, and all the people whining and complaining, you know, we don't have any water and all that.

And so God tells them, Come to this rock, and I want you to strike this rock, and water will come on.

And Moses did that, and it was great.

Well, on down the road, they come to this spot again where there is not any water, and they've run out of water.

And here's what the people are saying.

You're in verse 6.

I'm just going to give you a little run-up for the context.

There was no water for the community, so they assembled against Moses and Aaron.

The people quarreled with Moses and said, If only we had perished when our brothers perished before the Lord.

Why have you brought the Lord's assembly into this wilderness for us and our livestock?

Why have you led us up from Egypt to bring us to this evil place?

There's no grain.

There's no figs.

There's no pomegranates.

I mean, you can hear them whining, right?

And then they're griping and complaining, and it says they've come against Moses.

And Moses is hearing all this.

So here in verse 6 is what God does.

Then Moses and Aaron went from the presence of the assembly to the doorway of the tent of meeting.

They fell down with their faces to the ground, and the glory of the Lord appeared to them.

And the Lord spoke to Moses, and he says, Take the staff and assemble the community.

And so Moses is thinking, well, here we go again.

You and your brother Aaron are to speak to the rock while they watch.

Speak to the rock.

Now hit it again.

So very specific instruction.

Speak to the rock, and it will yield its water, and you will bring out water for them from the rock and provide drink for the community and their livestock.

So Moses took the staff from the Lord's presence, just as God commanded him, and Moses and Aaron summoned the assembly in front of the rock.

And now you can imagine all the people complaining.

They're still griping, they're not standing there silent, they're mumbling, they're arguing, they're shouting stuff at them, and all.

I mean, it's bad.

And Moses and Aaron, when they get them there, Moses said to them, and you can imagine this, he just gets frustrated.

Listen, you rebels, must we bring water out of this rock for you?

Then Moses raised his hand and struck the rock twice with his staff, so that a great amount of water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank.

But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, Because you did not trust me, because you did not trust me to show my holiness in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this assembly into the land I have given them.

These are the waters of Meribah, where the Israelites quarreled with the Lord and he showed his holiness to them.

Now this just seems like a fascinating story.

Why is he so harsh with Moses and what's going on here?

Well, I want you to know this is about the gospel.

And so the first thing I want you to think about is the primacy of the gospel.

The most important thing we do is share the gospel.

It is important that we do that.

And God is in this moment trying to create a plan of the gospel.

Listen, this moment is so significant, it's told five times in the Old Testament scriptures here.

I mean, he comes back to it and he reminds them of it, and it goes over again.

It's told again in Psalms 106 what happened.

And then in 1 Corinthians chapter 10, God uses the illustration of Jesus as the rock that the water of life comes forward.

1 Corinthians 10 · chapter mention

And so in this moment, what you see that as God is creating in all of these moments with the children of Israel, his plan of the gospel, just as we saw that illustrated here, God was weaving all that together and creating that gospel.

And God knew that one day to the churches in the city of Corinth, he would use this moment as an illustration to teach them how to be saved.

And in that moment, Moses broke the picture of the gospel.

That's why God's so significant.

This is so significant to him.

That's why he responds in this way with Moses.

That's why you have this sense of an overly harsh discipline.

God's not being harsh with him as a person.

What God is doing is setting a standard for the gospel, and the most important thing we do is the gospel.

That's why we do things like this.

That's why we give invitations at the end of the service.

That's why we've been on television since 1953.

That's why we're planting a campus.

That's why we go to all these schools.

That's why we do all of these things because the most important, the singular most important thing that we do is share the gospel.

There is no hope outside of Jesus and God's promise of redemption.

See, that's an amen right there.

We have to be in a position where we understand the vital importance of the gospel.

God highlights this story over and over and over so that we understand this is all about Jesus coming to die on the cross, to pay the price for our sins, to be raised again in salvation, and to accomplish God's plan of salvation.

We are not a church without the gospel.

We're just a group.

We are not, as individuals, we are not saved.

We do not have life without having placed our faith in Jesus Christ as our Savior.

We don't have a mission or a purpose as a people if it is not to share the gospel, to cling to the gospel, to proclaim the gospel, to every one of us be a part of the gospel.

And in modern life, it's so easy with all the distractions and the things that come at us to forget that we have one singular purpose and dependence, and that is the gospel.

It's the gospel.

And when you get a moment like this and you're arrested in this moment, God intends in telling this story to grab our attention and for us to understand its significance.

All throughout these stories, just the readings of this last week or ten days alone.

You think about the moment where the serpents are all over the camp and people are dying, and they tell Moses, you take a staff, a wooden staff, and you put a serpent, an image of a serpent on that.

And if people will look to that, they will be saved.

That's an Old Testament picture of Jesus.

The image is very clear.

The certain serpent is the one who tempted Adam and Eve, as we saw that illustration this morning.

And it's on a staff, on a stick of wood, on a pole.

That's a picture of the cross on which Jesus hung.

And Jesus died for our sins.

And the picture is if you will look to that and believe in it, you'll be saved.

You don't have to be crucified as Jesus will be, but if you will look to that and believe, you'll be saved.

And in fact, in the New Testament, Jesus refers specifically to that story because of its fame and reminds them, listen, that's what that was about.

And if you believe in God's plan of redemption, and he referred to himself, and he even said, if I be lifted up on that illustration of that pole being lifted up and sin being defeated, Jesus said, If I am lifted up, now I've heard pastors talk about that and say, well, that means we praise the name of Jesus.

That's not what Jesus is saying.

He is saying, if I am hung on a cross, if I am lifted up on a cross and die for your sins, I will draw all people to me.

You think about how many other illustrations there are.

We read about the cities of refuge again, and we studied that last summer and how they are a picture of salvation and what a person must do if they have been caught in this moment and they need the protection of the city of refuge.

It's there whether they choose it or not.

But in faith, they have to turn and go and present themselves to the city of refuge to be saved.

And that's the that is the gospel that we're proclaiming, and so it's important to understand the message of the gospel.

Again, Josh gave this beautiful picture this morning of exactly what it looks like.

And so, truth number two is the message of the gospel.

It is in this passage of Scripture, just like it is in John 3.16.

In 1 Corinthians 10, as I mentioned a moment ago, he is using this illustration and he says, Jesus is the rock, and the water of life flowed out of the rock.

Water is a picture of life.

In fact, Jesus tells a person who is searching, I am the living water.

Water is a picture of life.

You can't live without water.

Now I know as Baptists we think you can't live without food.

That's just who we are.

But you can go weeks without food.

Three days at the most without water.

Our bodies, its primary composition is water.

There's water everywhere.

We're water.

And so we need water, and when you see God doing a miracle with water, like he did and illustrated this morning with that, it is a picture of the sustenance of life.

And that's why in Exodus 17, when they come to that first rock, God says, strike the rock, because it's a picture of Jesus dying for our sins, being struck for our sins.

The Bible uses that image often and uses that phrase.

He was struck for our sins.

He was broken for our sins.

When we take the Lord's Supper, this is my body which is broken for you.

In 1 Peter, by his stripes we are healed.

Just as Josh described that this morning, the the beating of Jesus and the physical humiliation that he went through and all of that, that's the picture of striking the rock.

But the Bible says that Jesus died once for our sins.

Once.

And now we come the second time to the rock, and God is very specific in his rebuke of Moses.

He says, Because you have not believed enough to uphold my holiness before Israel, then you're not going to see the land.

You see, he's breaking that picture of the gospel.

Here's the picture of the gospel from that story.

Jesus is the rock.

Water is the sustenance of life.

The first time was his body broken for us.

The second time you speak to the rock, because Jesus doesn't have to be crucified again.

Even though we live in 2026, Jesus died once and for all for all of our sins, for the sins of the world.

And when you come to Jesus to make him your Savior, what you do now is just like with the serpent and just like the city of refuge and all those other examples, you come and you cry out to the Lord and believe in him.

You don't have to watch Jesus be crucified again.

He did it once and for all.

The Bible says in the book of Romans, if you will confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

And so God is making a very beautiful picture that lines up exactly with the serpent and the city of refuge and those other things.

When you come to Jesus and place your faith in him, you are coming as a matter of faith in your mind, in your heart, you are recognizing that you are a sinner and that your sin must be punished, just as we saw beautifully illustrated in those balloons.

We are dead in our sins.

The Bible says, for the wages of sin is death.

But Jesus, when he died on that cross and he rose again conquering death and sin to offer us new life, if you will come to him and you will confess with your mouth, that's a beautiful word picture that says, you will take your life, everything you've been, you are, and you ever will be, and you give it all to Jesus.

And he will save you.

Not because I said it, not because Josh had cool experiments, but because God has stated in the Word of God that He will save you if you call out to Him.

That's why this was such a significant moment for Moses.

And it's an incredible lesson for us that the primacy of what we do is share the only hope for mankind, and that is salvation through Jesus as our Lord.

Truth number three then becomes very easy.

First, if you've never trusted Christ as your Savior, give your life to Him.

Give your life to Him.

In a moment, we'll have a time where I'll pray and God's people will be singing.

And if you want to be saved, it's a moment for us to share with you, man, this is a time for you to give your life to Christ.

If you're already saved, the call to us is to uphold the standard of the gospel.

It's a significant matter our handling of the gospel.

We need to share it correctly, but we need to share it often.

We have a lot of folks in the modern world, they get all uptight about arguing what the gospel is and whether we do it or not, and they never tell anyone about Jesus.

The world around us is dying and going to hell.

Just like the people with the serpents or the people under judgment needed the city of refuge.

All of us need the salvation that only comes through Jesus.

And if you've never trusted Jesus as your Savior, we want to invite you to be saved.

Church family, what we want to do is we don't want to make the same mistake that Moses made.

Again, God judged him and he said, You'll not enter the land because of what?

Because you did not believe and did not hold up my holiness to the people.

Now, what does that mean?

First of all, it means Moses, I know you're frustrated and I know you're angry with all that, but listen to me.

You've got to believe that I'm going to get us there.

And Moses, you've got to believe in what I'm doing.

And you've got to stand up for what I'm doing and be obedient to what I'm doing because you believe I am God and I am at work.

Listen, we need to share the gospel like we believe that Jesus saves.

We need to do ministry and serve and give and pray and all those things like we believe Jesus saves.

We need to act like we believe the gospel saves people.

And then he says, you've not upheld the holiness.

Now listen, we know that God is holy, and we know that God is perfect and righteous, and there's no sin and no wrong.

That's why he must judge sin.

But listen, he's being more specific here than just the idea of God's holiness.

Because God is holy, because God cannot sin, because God is righteous, because of all those things, when he promises to save, he must, by his own honor as holy God, meet his promise.

He had promised to provide for his people.

He had told Moses he was going to provide for his people.

He was continually providing for his people.

And what God wanted them to do is know that they could come to him instead of griping and complaining, call out to him, and he would provide because he had promised.

By his holiness he would meet his promise.

And so we need to live and we need to share in a way that we believe God, as holy God, will never back away from his promise to save.

If we're not sharing the gospel, why are we not sharing the gospel?

Well, I'm afraid, I don't know the answer.

Somebody asked me a question, somehow I'm gonna mess it up.

It's all about you.

Our belief should be that Jesus saves.

Listen, you just share Jesus, you can't mess it up.

The Holy Spirit will fix it.

That's what he does, and people will be saved.

You step out in faith and you share.

If you're not sure how to share, then you just repeat what I say in the invitation every week so that I have downloaded it by row into your brain.

You know how to share the gospel.

Let's share.

A beautiful illustration with all the science and all of that, and the layers of that I just deeply love.

Because it's not just telling the story, but as you watch all that science work appropriately and work all the time, and it works every time.

And he's standing up here with the music and all of that, and it's all timed out, and it all works like it's supposed to.

Why?

Because God is the creator of the universe and he has ordered it to work.

It is an intelligent design to it, and it works and it proves that God is God.

Every time you see it, it calls to us and tells us that God is God.

And once we know who He is, we can come to Him for His plan of salvation.

And if you've never trusted Christ as your Savior, I'm going to invite you to make a decision this morning.

Whether you're watching online or by television or you're here in the service, listen, we're going to have a moment, I'm going to pray, and then we're going to stand and sing, and it's just a testimony of salvation.

If you want to be saved, we have ministers here at the head of our aisles.

Deacons will help us.

You come and give your life to Christ.

If you are concerned about walking down the aisle in front of all these folks, then just meet us after the service.

That's fine too.

I'll be out in the lobby area out there after the service is over.

We'll be out there, several of us.

Listen, the invitation doesn't end when the music does.

The invitation is just to remind you, leave here different than you were when you came in.

Give your life to Jesus.

If you're saved as you begin to sing, I want you to sing this testimony to let folks know Jesus saved me and he saves.

But I want you to be thinking about your love list.

You think about what we've talked about, the significance of the gospel.

And I want you to just pray for somebody on your love list as we're singing and worshiping.

Let's sing, pray, believe, leave here like we believe Jesus saves.

Lord, we love you and we thank you for this moment.

I praise you for this weekend.

All the kids and families and teachers and schools that we're able to touch today in partnership with Josh.

We thank you for all our volunteers and everybody that helped.

Pastor Eli, Pastor Matt, their leadership, all they've done to help.

Lord, we just pray you'll use that to take the gospel to people who need the hope of Jesus.

The love and forgiveness that Jesus brings.

This morning, we've shared the gospel online, in person, here in the room, and all of that.

And Lord, we pray that you will use that to draw people to you, to help them look at Jesus on the cross.

To speak out and ask you to save them so that Jesus as the rock can bring them the living water of life.

And Lord, I pray that you'll stir us as a church even more than we are now.

Stir us to share the gospel like we believe Jesus saves.

It's in his name we pray, and all God's people said, Let's stand and sing.

Let's worship him and thank him for salvation.

And if you need Jesus, you come.

If you'd like for us to pray with you, you come.

We pray this message has been a blessing to you and helped to strengthen your walk with Jesus.

Please know we want to minister to you and pray for you.

Send an email to contact us at fsfbc.org and let us pray for you and help you in any way we can.

Thank you for listening to chapter and first, the Bible teaching ministry of Fort Smith First Baptist Church.