FORWARD - Pastor Greg Addison - December 7, 2025

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.

As we head into this Christmas season, we enjoy this season, but also we're excited about 2026 as we move in.

And so I want to share with you and really cast some vision for something that we did at our family meeting a couple of weeks ago as we were looking forward to 2026.

I am very, very excited about next year and about what God is doing and going to do in our midst.

So I'm doing a couple of things that we have not done in my tenure here yet as pastor.

And so next year we have, you'll see on the screen there, our theme for 2026.

So we're going to have a theme for the whole year.

It's going to call us to things, excite us about things, motivate us, and the theme is forward.

Now we love this idea.

First of all, it is a it is an active concept.

It is motion, it is strength, it is moving, it's looking ahead.

It's just a great picture forward.

It's also a significant Bible word.

It's a great word in one of the key passages in the New Testament.

And I want to just share with you a moment this morning about next year and about what it means for us to go forward.

And then I'm going to tell you one of the ways that we're going to try to do that.

If you'll turn with me in your Bibles to Philippians chapter 3, we have just excerpted this scripture down to capture this thought of forward for us this morning.

Philippians 3 · chapter mention

And I'm trying to find it.

Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians, right?

So here we are in Philippians chapter 3.

Philippians 3 · chapter mention

Verse 8 says this.

Paul in the middle of this discourse is talking about how he is striving to know Jesus more.

This is Paul at the end of his life, not the beginning.

At the end of his ministry, not the beginning.

He's achieved traveling the known world, planning churches on multiple mission trips, and yet he still says this.

More than that, I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord.

Now you think about that statement for just a minute.

Paul who's done everything.

Paul who's planted churches, Paul's preaching, all the letters in the New Testament.

He is writing scripture under the direction of the Holy Spirit.

He is giving instruction to churches that we now follow as churches even down through the quarters of time.

And he says, I have counted everything as a loss for the surpassing value of knowing Christ.

Because of him, I have suffered the loss of all things and consider them garbage or filth, so that I may gain Christ.

Now he's already got Jesus, right?

I mean he's already saved, he's already serving the church, he's already deepened his walk, he's already got all those things going, and yet here he is saying, I count all things as lost, so that I can gain Jesus.

Brothers, I, Paul, do not consider myself to have taken hold of it.

Of what?

Of that surpassing value of the knowledge of Christ Jesus.

As much as he knows is and preached and everything else, he says, I still don't think like I have all the Jesus that I could have.

One thing I do, forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead.

I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God's heavenly call in Christ Jesus.

And then he continues to say in verse 15, therefore, because of that truth, because he's not achieved, because of the surpassing value of Jesus, because he wants more, because he's pressing ahead, he says this, therefore, all who are mature should think this way.

And if you think differently about anything, God will reveal this also to you.

In other words, this is the definition of being a mature Christian, pursuing what lies ahead.

And so here's three concepts I just want to give you this morning, and then we'll break these down and we'll pursue these and allow these to motivate us throughout the year of 2026.

The first truth is this: Jesus saved me for so much more than I yet understand.

I mean, how in the world the surpassing knowledge of Jesus?

Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega.

Jesus, the Bible says in John 1, was the Word, and in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

In Philippians chapter 2, just a prior chapter, the Bible tells us that every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

And then he says this in chapter 2.

He says, we are to work out that knowledge of our salvation with fear and trembling.

There is so much more about Jesus to know.

There is so much magnitude to who he is as the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, the Alpha and the Omega, the Word of God who was there at the beginning and who will be there for all of eternity.

All of who Jesus is, that surpassing value of the knowledge of Jesus Christ, there is never a point where you graduate and get your PhD in Jesus.

There's too much.

There's too much.

He is too much.

His power is too much, his person is too much, his grace is too much, his love is too much.

I mean, we spend all of our lives pursuing the value of knowing Jesus, and there is no end to that journey.

There is no bottom to that well, there is no top to that mountain.

The pastor where I grew up used to say this all the time.

He said, I don't know how much Jesus you have, but you have all the Jesus that you want.

And we should want more Jesus.

And there is never a point where you get all of him.

That ought to excite us about what lies ahead.

Excite us about what could be in front of us.

How much more can we know Jesus?

How much more can we walk with him?

How much more can we learn from him?

How much more can we be close with him?

How much more can we sense his presence?

How much more can he use us to impact the river valley and the people around us?

He has saved us for so much more than I yet even understand.

Truth number two, I must always be straining forward.

This version says reaching.

Another version I really love says straining.

It's this idea of I'm giving all I've got to get there.

You think of the context multiple times, Paul said, I am forgetting what's behind.

Everything that's behind me, it doesn't count.

There's so much more ahead.

I am not going to cling to what was back here.

I am straining forward for the surpassing value of knowing Jesus.

Because there's so much more he doesn't yet understand.

And so we want to be moving forward.

We want to encourage each other with the excitement of there's more Jesus that we can have in our lives.

There's more Jesus we can have in our church.

There's more impact from God working through us.

We want to strive towards that.

We want to challenge each other in our spiritual growth to step out in faith and strain more forward for Jesus.

As a church, we want to be excited and motivated by that vision of more and strain forward.

We can pray more, we can study more, we can love more, we can share more, we can invite more, we can reach more, we can do more.

Not in some, you know, cowboy movie with the horses, and we're whipping the horses to move ahead.

No.

It is Jesus calling us to more with that vision of who He is.

And there's so much more.

And we want to reach more.

I don't want to be stuck with the amount of Jesus that I have.

I want more.

And finally, this is the very definition of Christian maturity.

This is what it means.

In fact, Paul says, therefore, because Jesus has died for more for us, and because we don't want to rest on our laurels and we want to move forward and see what's ahead, then Paul says, therefore, because of those truths, this is the result.

This is Christian maturity.

And listen to the superlatives.

All of us, this is Christian maturity.

There's no window or space between straining for more and Christian maturity.

It is the definition of being a mature Christian that I am striving for more, that my mindset is reaching forward, that I want to know more about Jesus.

As Paul says in this passage, the power of his resurrection, the surpassing value of knowing Jesus.

The more I know Jesus, the more I want to know more.

That's literally what he's saying.

And then he says, this if you think differently than this, then God will reveal that to you in your life.

So the Christian life, literally, maturing in Christ, is literally, this is what I know about Jesus, and he shares more, and I want to go more.

And if I get stuck not wanting more, then he reveals to me in my life, hey Greg, you've settled there, and I'm not going to let you settle there.

I'm going to stir you to go forward.

Now, in that vein, we'll unpack that all throughout the year and we'll let it excite us and motivate us.

But in that vein, I want to share with you what we're going to do, one of the things we'll do for 2026.

We are going to take the journey of the year as a church family, and we are going to study together the entire Bible in a chronological fashion.

So here's the question: Who was Habakkuk?

And when did he do his thing?

I was at a men's conference one time, and the pastor, who was a guest preacher at our men's conference in our church, he told everybody it was like a big wild game dinner thing and all that, and then he comes up to preach at the end, and so our guys are all in that mode, and you know, and they're full of jerky and all kinds of stuff, and he says, Turn with me and your Bibles to Habakkuk, and all the guys start laughing.

And he said, Wait a minute, you're gonna get to heaven one day and you're gonna meet Habakkuk, and he's gonna go, Hey, how did you like my book?

And you're you're not gonna know unless you turn your Bible to Habakkuk, right?

So, where does it go?

Where does it fit?

Who in the world's Nahum?

And how do you get a name like that?

I'm trying to get our daughter to name her new son who'll be born in the spring, our second grandson.

I think, I think Nahum is a great name.

I think she ought to name him Nahum, right?

Uh and so it's just, you know, where does it all fit in?

How does it all work together?

And so rather than reading it the way it is now, right now your scripture is structured basically like a library.

And the books are put in sections of the same types of books: history books, poetry books, prophecy books, the gospels are put together, uh, the book of Acts, and then you have these letters of Paul.

Well, how does it all work together?

So, what this study does is it takes all those books like Nahum and Philippians or whatever, and as you're reading through the story of Scripture, it puts them in the right place chronologically.

And so you start in Genesis, and very quickly you stick Job in there because that's the oldest, most scholars believe that's the oldest book of the Bible.

And then you keep reading through that and you get into the uh the stories of the kingdom, and you start putting in prophets and you start doing all that, and you begin to see how those prophecies point to Jesus, and then you get to the gospels, and then when you get to the book of Acts, and Paul starts going on mission trips, you take Philippians and Colossians and Timothy and all that, and you stick them in there where they fit, and now you begin to understand this is literally how it unfolded.

And so you're gonna we're gonna do this together as a church.

So here's what will happen: you'll have daily readings, and you'll, and I'll talk more about that in a minute.

You'll have two to four chapters a day.

It's not homework, it's not like it's gonna be difficult.

You can do this.

And so we're gonna read, read, read, read that week, and then on Sunday, I'm going to preach from the reading of the previous week.

And so we'll be unpacking what we read and catching everybody up and walk through that.

Now it's going to be a normal sermon, normal preaching.

I'm not just going to be doing like some lecture and here's all the things that happened.

But we'll be pulling key events from that week, and as we do that, all 52 weeks, we will walk through together the journey of the church.

Now it begins on January 1.

You have your reading plan, and then you'll start reading each day and goes through.

Now, here's what we're going to do.

Matt and I have prayed through and looked at a lot of different versions of this study.

And we have landed on one called the Bible recap plan.

Now, it's been exciting as I've mentioned this around the church.

A lot of our folks have done this and they really like it.

Why did we choose this one?

We chose this one because it's very accessible and easy to follow and has lots of resources to keep you on track.

Now, here's the one thing I want you to hear me say.

We are not studying a book.

We are studying the book.

We're not reading something that somebody else wrote.

There's nothing wrong with that, but that's not what this study is.

We are reading what God wrote in his word.

So you will have a reading plan and we'll post them everywhere.

We'll have bookmarks.

We have set up out here in the lobby area in that little reading room.

We call our reading room there.

It is now the Bible recap room.

And you can get resources in there.

We've got big timelines we're posting in there so you can see where all of this stuff happens and how it all fits in, and get books and get resources and do all of that.

We're going to do everything we can do to encourage everyone through this.

Now, here is a journal, and this will be a good illustration of what you're going to do.

You're going to read your chapters and then you're going to journal how you do that.

This journal you can use if you want to.

They're available for$10 over there.

We're not selling them or making a profit or anything.

We're just trying to make it convenient.

Alright?

And if you can see what this looks like is a big old white empty page with some lines on it.

It's just like your brew journal.

It's very simple, similar.

You have the passages that you're going to read at the top of the page, a couple of question prompts, and then you're going to make notes just like you did in your brew journal.

You are studying the Word of God, and we are doing this together.

Now, let me talk to you about how this works.

So you can do this, or you can get bookmarks, or we're posting on social media everywhere in the world.

We'll have what the chapters are for that week and what the chapters are for that day.

So it's not hard for you to find it.

You can do it whatever is the most comfortable way for you to do it.

But we're going to be walking through these and we're going to do this, and in 52 weeks, we will study the entire word of God in a chronological fashion.

It's pretty incredible.

Now, uh, here's what my uh there's a lot of ways to stay engaged with this.

And I know that some people are excited, and some people are going, man, 365 days a year.

I never made 365 days.

Well, let me tell you what, I had never made 365 days either.

It makes you feel better.

Like, how's this going to work?

I told uh I told the teachers when we met and talked about it, here's my journey in this.

My wife has done this this year and she's on track.

My daughter and her husband have done this.

They're on track.

I've talked to several people in the church who have done this, and they said, man, it's easy to work through.

I've talked to some pastors of churches where they've done this and how they work through that.

As I'm working through this, I've never done a study this long.

If you think about my studies between four to six weeks because I usually get bored after four to six weeks.

And if I'm bored, y'all are really bored, right?

So it's hard.

But here's what I've got the part of my brain as a pastor over here that thinks it's our job to reach people, it's our job to bring people in.

Part of what I do is remove barriers so it's easy to come in and become a part of the church and to get in the flow of things.

And if we've put some big long thing in front of that, sometimes it's intimidate.

Well, I can't catch up with what they're doing.

Or here's what also happens: you start reading and you get involved and you miss a few days, and then you go, eh, I missed a few days.

I'm not gonna know what they're doing this week, and then you miss a few more days, and you just think, well, it's just easier not to go.

I mean, I just missed it, and I'll catch up later, but I'm just not, and then we just sort of slide back.

In fact, when I met with the Sunday school teachers, one of them just said out loud what we were all thinking.

Pastor, you know they're not gonna do this, don't you?

And I said, Yeah, I know that.

I I wouldn't have done it when I was sitting out there either.

You see, that barrier thing is a real thing.

We don't mean to, and I'm not being critical, but it's just part of life.

Life gets busy, and and I get out of rhythm of it, and then I think, oh, I can't catch up, and I'm gone.

The other part of my brain is this.

One of those trips back and forth to Memphis to see my mom, some guy cuts me off, and I'm thinking about the joke I made and the song Here I Am stuck on I-40 behind a wreck or whatever.

On Thanksgiving Day, when my daughter and son-in-law Corey and Killy and our grandson were going to Memphis, it took them, I think they were stuck behind a wreck for three hours.

It took them like four and a half hours to get from Little Rock to Memphis.

You get in those moments and you think, man, you know, I may end up in heaven today.

And in one of those deals, I thought, I was working through this, I was struggling over the barrier of it and all that.

And then I thought, you know, when I get to heaven, Jesus is going to ask me this.

Greg, I gave you the honor and the responsibility of being a part of a great church.

What did you do with it?

Greg, I allowed you to be a part of the church family at Fort Smith Baptist Church, First Baptist, Fort Smith Baptist Church here, and I made you the shepherd, and I gave you the responsibility of that, and I called you to preach the word and teach the word.

How did you teach them?

Did you teach them my whole word?

And at that point, that part of my brain overwhelmed the other part, and I said, you know, I'm at least going to be able to tell Jesus, we had the opportunity to do this as a church.

I placed this in front of our people.

We had the chance to grow, we had the chance to do this.

And so, in that part of that, then I looked at and talked to these other folks about how do you do it, how do you stay on track, how do you not get lost, how do you keep bringing people in.

And so there's a couple of things I just want to give you practically.

The first thing is this do not let anyone make you feel guilty for missing a day.

That is not involved in this at all.

It is not that I've had a secret meeting with the deacons and they're going to show up at supper on your house, randomly knock on your door.

Did you do your reading this week?

Okay, nobody's doing that.

We're encouraging each other through this.

One of the beauties of doing it as a church family is we're encouraging each other in this walk.

So it's all positive.

There's no negative, there's no legalism, there's no chewing on anybody.

We are encouraging each other in this journey.

And here's the deal.

I mean, you just think about this for a minute.

What could God do with our church if 70% of our church family got through 70% of it together?

Now that'll light you fire, won't it?

I'm telling you, we move forward if that's happening.

So I'm gonna take the wins.

Amen.

You with me?

We're gonna take the wins.

And on a Sunday morning, listen, if you get half of them red, but you're here most of the time on Sunday mornings and we've walked through this together, we will have elevated the knowledge of all of us in the Word of God as we walk through this.

So there is no negative, there's no recrimination, there's no legalism.

We're encouraging each other in this journey, right?

This is all about Jesus.

There's more Jesus than we even yet know.

And that's what we're doing.

And so there's a lot of tools.

And one reason we like this, because there's a lot of tools.

This reading plan is simple, it's not overwhelming.

It's also easy to do a lot of things, and we'll keep walking through these, but they're very simple.

For example, they're uh on your on your Bible app, like we all got the U version thing on our Bible on our phones and on our iPads.

If you go on there and you go to reading plans, this reading plan is on there.

So if you forget your journal and you're on vacation or a business trip or some kind of a deal, you just whip out your phone, hit your app, and there you go.

I mean it's all right there.

There is a podcast for the Bible teacher that wrote this, and it's about seven minutes or so a day.

It averages about seven minutes a day, and the teacher goes through what the readings were for that day.

And so if you don't have 20 minutes or you think you don't have 20 minutes to read your four chapters or whatever, when you get in your car to go to Walmart, because everybody who lives in Arkansas goes to Walmart twice a day.

And so on your way to Walmart, seven minutes there and seven minutes back, and you've caught up.

If you miss an entire week, you can listen to five days of seven minutes capturing that in 30 minutes.

Is that awesome?

Like it's this is not hard.

Here's the other deal.

If you get lost and you miss a week, don't worry about catching up.

Just pick up where you are and keep going.

It's not like you miss that much.

I mean, that's a big thick book.

You miss a few days, just pick up where you are and move on.

Somebody will tell you about it.

Listen to the podcast, catch up.

It's all easy, right?

I mean, you can get there.

Do not make this difficult.

Also, here's what my wife taught us, and then I have since learned, a couple of ladies in the church told me they also do something similar.

She gets up in the morning, she gets on her.

I get up in the morning and I drink coffee and I'm looking for like Pop-Tars and stuff.

Janet gets up and gets on her recumbent bike and exercises.

But everybody knows she's way more spiritual than I am anyway.

So she gets on her recumbent bike, she takes her Bible, puts her pass, puts it right there in the front, starts pedaling, puts on her phone, and listens to it while she's reading it.

And she's got two forms.

If you just hit the button on the on the U version on the Bible page, it'll read it to you.

Now, she's really smart.

She speeds up to 1.25.

You can speed it up.

I have to slow it down to 0.5.

Make sure I keep it.

But there's so many easy ways to do this and do your reading.

And those are perfectly good ways to do this because this is a survey through Scripture, and we are walking through the narrative of Scripture chronologically.

Also, the podcast is great, and then some of our guys, uh, Trey and Maverick, and then they have several of our members get on there with them on their Seat to Street podcast, which picks up from the sermon and just does application for the week after that Sunday.

And so I encourage you to listen to that.

There's some great conversations on there.

And so there are so many ways to do that.

I would encourage you to get a reading group, get some of your buddies and hold each other accountable and have some fun with it.

And whoever gets the most days done, everybody else has to buy their coffee or whatever it is and just make it fun.

Get you a discipleship group out of your Sunday school class, a study group, or some of your friends, and just do it together and meet once a week or once every other week or something, and just chat through what you're doing.

We're starting small groups out in our Chaffee campus, and so they'll be meeting after church to do some things out there.

Now, let me say about Sunday school.

Some Sunday school classes will do this, and some Sunday school classes will not.

They'll keep doing what they're doing.

And listen to the pastor, it is awesome what our Sunday school classes are doing, and we have given them the freedom to do what they do in Sunday school because there's so much more to the mechanism of Sunday school than what the lesson is.

It's taking care of each other, it's speaking to each other's life, it's serving each other.

And we have great Sunday school classes.

If you're not in one, you need to be in one.

And so some of them will do it, and some of them will not do it, and that's perfectly great because our Sunday school classes do exactly what they're supposed to do, and that's serve each other and take care of each other and be the body of Christ.

And so we love them.

So do not go up to your teacher and say, How come we're not doing that?

I'm gonna respond to that question if you go ask them that.

Okay?

I mean, it's great what they're doing, and we want them to do what they're doing, and some will and some won't.

You can go get in your Sunday school class and find a few of your buddies and do it yourself.

Pastor, what if I'm already in some other study or reading plan?

That's fine.

Do both.

Do you have enough Jesus?

How many spy novels or romance novels did you read last year?

A few more chapters than gonna hurt you, right?

I mean, it's just not that hard.

Listen to it in the car while you're driving, going to work or school or whatever.

It's easy to do.

And so we want everybody to do this and be a part.

Now, let me tell you why.

Let me just walk through some spiritual principles about why before we close.

This is about straining forward.

This is about reaching forward for that surpassing value of the knowledge of Christ Jesus.

So here's just some thoughts.

There's a ton of these, but here's just a few.

First is a deeper understanding of Scripture beyond mere knowledge.

This is not a class, and we're not getting information, so at Thanksgiving next year, when you and your family play a trivia game, you're gonna win the Bible trivia deal.

This is about growing closer to Jesus.

This is about that surpassing value of the knowledge of Christ.

And as you read through the scripture and you walk through why God wrote that and what's going on there and the context of that verse, it's gonna give you more than just knowledge.

You're gonna have an understanding of what God is doing and what he's trying to teach and how it works.

It's gonna deepen our understanding, and every person that I've talked to has done this, has said that.

That it deepens their understanding of how this flow is going in Scripture.

The second thing is this: it will give you a deeper love for Jesus when we see that the overarching work of God is to reach mankind.

It'll change your life.

By reading through in this fashion every chapter and every page, you will find out that God's plan for redemption is on every page of Scripture.

As old school preachers used to say, every page of Scripture drips with the blood of Jesus.

You will be in awe as you work through the narrative of this, the extent to which God goes to try to reach us in his mercy and grace.

It is incredible.

You read, God reached out and we sinned, God reached out and we sinned, God reached out and we sinned, God reached out and we sinned, God reached out and we sinned, and we keep messing it up and we keep sinning, and God never stops reaching for us.

It will overwhelm you in a deeper way than you've ever seen before, the magnitude of the statement that Jesus said, For God so loved the world that he gave his only son.

He never stops, he never quits.

He pursues us in his mercy and grace, he promises salvation, he promises Jesus, he teaches us the Lamb of God, he teaches us through the man in the Old Testament, he teaches us through all of these pictures, he teaches us through the tabernacle, he teaches us through the temple, he calls to us through the prophets and through the preachers and all of that.

He proves that Jesus came.

The prophecies of Jesus' birth are overwhelmingly fulfilled in the birth of Jesus.

You see the magnitude of who Jesus is and the way he loves and the way he reaches out and the way he calls, and he went to the cross and he died for our sins and he rose again.

And as you read through the book of Acts, it's incredible.

The resurrection power of Jesus imbued in the church through the power of the Holy Spirit, and it literally rocks the world with the gospel.

And he never stops.

You read about the church in Paul's letter to the churches, and it is all about the gospel, and it is all about reaching people with the gospel, and it is all about evangelizing, and it is all about sharing, and then you read in the revelation when Jesus comes to John and he reveals himself again and he says, John, this is what it's all about, and this is what I'm going to do, just like I promised.

And it will alter the fabric of your life when you begin to see the repetitive overarch of God reaching down to man with the promise of redemption.

It'll change how we think and see.

It'll give us a stronger faith in Scripture.

Forty plus authors written over hundreds and hundreds of years in multiple different languages and cultures in different countries, and all of that comes together with one incredible theme, with Jesus as the hero solving the problem of sin and redeeming mankind and reconnecting him to our Heavenly Father.

Man, it'll change your view of Scripture.

It'll give you a hunger for Scripture like you cannot imagine.

Just a couple other thoughts.

It will stir a hunger in your life like you can't believe.

As I've been prepping this, as I've just been sitting and watching my wife and daughter and everybody go through it, you run into these incredible moments of scripture.

I mean, you run into these people that you never heard of, and there's one verse about them or three verses about them, but there's something dramatic in that.

You have these stories of God's intervention.

You have these descriptions of faith, you have these incredible promise verses.

They're woven all throughout.

And if we don't take time to just blow through it once, you will miss so much.

This past week in the businessman's luncheon.

I preached a sermon for the first time, probably in my ministry that I can remember, on the man uh Enoch.

Now I know about Enoch.

People know about Enoch.

You comment about Enoch.

I've given an illustration about Enoch, but I've never preached a whole sermon on Enoch.

And I'm working through this and I'm going, all throughout Scripture are these incredible moments.

And so that's recorded on chapter and verse, if you want to hear about it and kind of stir your thought about, man, the scripture is filled with all these things.

I remember when my son, who's left-handed and he was young, and we were trying to get our kids interested in scripture, and I'm reading through the book of Judges, and I'm just blowing through there, and I come across this guy named Ehud, who's a left-handed judge.

Now, how cool is that?

And my son loves swords and knives and Peter Pan and Zorro and knights and all of that.

And Ahud goes in and he kills the evil king with a knife.

Like at this point, I'm thinking my son is hooked.

And then the scripture tells us that the king was so fat.

I expected more of a reaction right there.

The king was so fat he stuck the knife in him and left the knife in the fat rolls so that he died and bled to death.

Okay, you tell me an eight-year-old boy doesn't want to read his Bible now.

You know what I'm saying?

I mean, you read about the guy that killed a lion in the pit on a snowy day.

You read about the guy that when Paul was preaching, he was sitting in a window in the upper room of the house where he's preaching, he fell out and died right in the middle of church.

I mean, you know, the old preacher joke, his name was Eutychus.

You think that's a terrible name, but they'd say, well, Eutychus too, if you fell out of a window and died in church.

There are so many incredible things in Scripture.

There are details and stories like the Ark and Noah and all of that.

I was playing with my grandson this past weekend, and we got out our Noah, and he loves amenals.

He calls them amenals.

He loves amenals.

And we're playing with aminals, and it's so cute.

Here's a giraffe comes out of the ark, and this is, he couldn't say the word giraffe, and so when they were teaching this, so they taught him the noises that animal makes.

So a horse is a neigh, and a cow is a moo, and a sheep is a bah, and a chicken is a cockadoodle-doo.

What sound does a giraffe make?

Well, in the Addison family, a giraffe goes, and so he pulls it out and goes, bomber, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Yeah, and so we're playing with all the animals, and I'm starting to teach him about all the animals.

And then the door, he's having trouble fitting on.

I said, Let bomber help with the door.

You know why?

Because God shut the door.

Is that awesome?

The ark is a picture of salvation, protecting us through the judgment of God.

And when Adam and his family went in, God shut the door.

Man, we're gonna miss stuff if we don't plow through.

There is so much richness in the Word of God.

And finally, we're gonna learn apologetics, the matter.

Apologetics is a great word.

It comes from the same root.

You get apologize and some other words.

And what it means is we understand, we have knowledge.

The Bible says in the New Testament, Peter wrote that we should always be ready to give an answer for the hope that is in us.

We should always be prepared with an answer from the Word of God.

Here's the deal: apologetics is not an exercise in intellectual knowledge.

It is not an exercise for which you get a master's degree or some other thing.

The Bible says, again, Peter said, be ready to give an answer or an explanation or an apologetic understanding for the hope that is in you.

Right?

Theology matters because it applies on Tuesday and Thursday night and Sunday mornings and in the doctor's office and in your workplace and in the locker room at school and in your family.

It applies and it helps us understand what God is trying to get us to understand about ourselves, about Him, about life.

As you're reading through your journal, one of the questions that it asks that you pray before you get ready goes like this.

Lord, help me see anything I misunderstand or have wrong about you as I read this passage.

Apologetics is about I understand the questions of life and how God has spoken into them.

Let me just give you some examples.

We have a lot of questions today about the role of Israel and the view of Israel, and I mentioned that a couple of times because it's a huge deal in our culture.

You have a whole vein of Christianity that they refuse to deal with Jewish people because they think they killed Jesus and they're not whatever.

Listen, that just shows you need apologetic studying that matters.

Because in today's world, we have to make decisions about what we're doing with Israel and how we view that and the Middle East and end times, and the nation of Israel is God's chosen people.

He used to bring our Jesus that saved us into the world.

And all of this anti-Semitism that we see rocking our country and on college campuses and everywhere else, it's sin, it's wrong.

Because those are God's chosen people, and there are promises in Scripture that still have not been fulfilled for the nation of Israel and will be fulfilled in the nation of Israel.

And when you began to watch and walk through God's incredible plan to bring Jesus into the world and calling Abraham and all that he went through in the nation of Israel, and then even when they walked away from God and how he dealt with them in grace, and how he dealt with them in judgment and correction and in grace and forgiveness, and still stuck with his plan to bring Jesus into the world.

And our faith is rooted in Israel.

In Jesus who came as the Lamb of God, the picture and the tabernacle and the temple and all of those things and our salvation.

And we need to understand how to deal with that in our culture.

In our culture today, there's a lot of argument in the church work about how people are saved and what is the nature of free will and God's sovereignty and how does all that work together.

And here's not, I'm not trying to get in that this morning, but we make decisions in life about that.

You have some people who feel like God's already chosen who goes to heaven and hell, and then you have other people who will get in bloodletting screaming matches about defending the free will of God, and they have never once in their life shared the gospel with a lost person.

It's just wrong.

And here's what happens: when you go through the overarch of scripture, and God is reaching out, and God is reaching out, and God has promised a Messiah, and God is reaching out, and man fail God, and God continue to reach, and man fail God, and God continue to reach, and man fail God, and God continue to reach, and he continued to promise Jesus, and he brought Jesus into the world, and he died for our sins, and he rose again.

And you see the church explode in evangelism, it's the power of God into salvation over and over and over and over in every page of Scripture.

It will change your perspective of sharing the gospel.

Whatever you choose as your theology, you may choose.

There is no option not to be advancing the gospel.

And when you see the overarching scripture that God is constantly reaching down to man, He will drive us evangelistically in ways that you can't imagine.

It will help you historically to understand the truth of Scripture.

Man, I get so sick and tired of watching people turn Esther into a love story.

I mean, you really don't know anything about history if you think that's a love story.

I mean, I'm gonna try to be a little elegant here, but it is a horrible, earth-shatteringly terrible moment in history where God's people are being destroyed, and there's a plot to take them out and do genocide as a nation, and the ruler of the known world is one of the most evil rulers in all of history.

Everybody loves, you know, movies about the Spartans and all of that, and the 300 Spartans and all of that.

Did you know the king that massacred them is the king in the book of Esther?

If you don't know where it fits in history, you don't understand that.

And then you really don't understand.

People throw out this verb, God raised you up for such a time as this, and God raised you up for such a time as this.

She literally risks her life for the Jewish people presenting herself to this evil, horrible, wretched despot who is a pagan that did unspeakable things that we can't even describe in church.

And she stepped out in faith, in the promise of God, and believing that God was using his people to bring the Redeemer, and she stepped into that moment so that God could use her.

Okay, it's a different story now, isn't it?

It's not a Hallmark movie anymore.

It is a person who has stepped out in faith, and God has used it in a way that we can't even imagine.

And you don't get that if you don't put it in context and understand whatever.

There's all kinds of stories like that all through Scripture.

And there are these rich, incredible applications.

And so when you hear someone now say, You were raised up for such a time as this, that is an incredibly powerful call to make a choice of faith to serve the Lord.

And we learn apologetics that matter in life and help us see life from a biblical perspective.

Why?

Because Paul said Christian maturity is straining forward for the surpassing value of knowing Christ our Lord.

I want you to bow your heads as we close this morning.

I'm going to ask a couple of things.

Number one, if you've never accepted Christ as your Savior, I have gone on and on this morning about the love of God and His never stopping reaching out to you with grace.

I want you to know if you've never accepted Christ as your Savior, God has you here today for no other purpose than to hear the gospel that Jesus loves you and He died to save you.

The moment I'm going to pray, God's people are going to stand and sing and a testimony of the grace and love of God.

And if you need to be saved, I want to invite you to come.

We have men at the head of our aisles.

You come.

Nobody's going to manipulate you.

None of that.

We just want to pray with you.

We want to help you in that journey.

If you have questions, we want to answer them.

We want to share with you the promises of God.

Listen, if it's a longer conversation than that, that's fine.

We won't keep you all afternoon.

We'll set up a meeting.

We'll spend some time together.

If you need Matt, me, Dave, whoever, Jacob, we're all here for you.

We want to take this journey with you.

If you need to be saved, we want to invite you to give your life to Jesus.

The next thing is, church family, I want to encourage you.

I hope this is exciting to you.

I hope, even with the intimidating part of it, I hope it's exciting.

I hope you get thrilled with it.

I want you to just make a commitment today.

Tell the Lord that you are open to doing this and to talk to you about it.

Just tell him, I'm ready to listen.

Light a fire, give me a hunger, give me an interest exciting if you want me to do this.

And let God speak to you.

Make that commitment to be open to the Lord.

And third, listen, if you need a church home, you've been visiting, we've got a lot of visitors.

If you need a church home, listen, we want to be the kind of place where you can grow in your faith and we can support you.

And we'd love for you to take this journey with us.

We'd love for you to move forward with us.

We'd love for you to take this study with us.

We'd love for you to get involved in a Sunday school class and meet some folks that you can encourage each other in this journey in a more personal way.

If you'd like to join our church, come and ask, or I'll be out in the lobby afterwards, come and ask.

It's very simple to join our church.

We sit down and we just have a meeting with you.

It's very personal, it's very easy.

Get to know each other.

And we just want to make sure that you know Jesus as your Savior.

And that's and answer any questions you have about the church.

It's not hard to join, but we'd love for you to be a part of our family and take this journey with us.

You come down the aisle or come see me after the service is over.

And we'll set up a meeting and we'll walk with you and either Matt or I'll sit down.

And we'll help you become a part of this journey with us.

I'm going to pray, God's people are going to sing, and we'll invite you to come.

Lord, we love you and we thank you for salvation.

You're here, you speak to hearts.

I pray you'll give people a freedom to respond.

In Jesus' name we pray, and all God's people say.

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 at First Baptist Church.