Gratitude Series Pt. 3 - Pastor Greg Addison - November 16, 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.

Thank you, choir and praise team.

What a beautiful song and what a great message as we uh will uh serve the Lord's Supper in just a few moments.

Uh I want to remind you that we've been in a study uh we've been entitled Gratitude, where we've been talking about the character of gratitude that God builds into us as his children.

And we planned as a part of that the Lord's Supper.

And so I pray this week that you uh will take some time and do your brew uh process.

You received those books when you came in.

If you're visiting with us, that's just a simple little acrostic that we use to teach people how to meditate on Scripture.

And so each day, as you have your devotional guide, you will have a verse that you will brew or meditate on each day.

This week, uh and as we uh start the week with the Lord's Supper, this week, all of those scriptures will be on our gratitude for salvation and what salvation means in our lives as believers.

And so it's a particularly strong week, I think, for all of us as we're doing that.

If you're visiting with us, the brew thing is very simple.

I had a conversation with a couple of folks at our Chaffee uh campus this morning about just how that works and working them through that, because this is the first time that they've had an opportunity to do that.

On each day of the booklet, you will have a verse that you're going to meditate on.

And so the brew stands for believe, read and repeat each word and write it down.

So what'll happen is there's a prayer verse that you will pray, and that believe means that we believe God has something to speak to us today as we get into his word.

And it's just that affirmation of faith that God's going to speak to you from his word.

And there's a verse there for you to pray, then you'll get the verse for the day, and you read and repeat that verse over and over.

Read it seven, eight, nine times.

Just take a few minutes and read it over and over and over until it becomes familiar and begins to be a little bit comfortable for you.

And then once that happens, then we're going to slow down and really start meditating.

So you just take each word and you just sort of write down what each word means.

It's just careful reading, just going slow.

There's no magic to it.

There's nothing, you know, you don't have to go, you know, get encyclopedias and stuff.

In fact, on each day, I will take one word or group of words that go together, and I'll just write down for you to give you an example of how simple it is.

And then you take the rest of the words.

And then because we believe God has something to speak to us, we're going to write down at the end what God spoke to you that day.

And I pray this week you'll really do that, uh, especially since we're focused on that incredible gift of salvation.

It is the foundation for all of the gratitude in our lives.

We are so grateful for what God has done for us through Jesus and through salvation in his name.

In fact, we're going to take a minute and just look quickly at a verse today to set up our Lord's Supper.

Uh, and it is uh 1 Peter chapter 2.

1 Peter 2 · chapter mention

Now, the book of 1 Peter is referred to that because Peter was the author, and it was a letter that Peter wrote to Christians who were scattered around, uh, who had been dispersed away from Jerusalem because of uh because of the persecution for Christians.

As they had gone to other places, other cities, they began to be persecuted there as well.

And so he is writing to them to affirm the gift of salvation and to encourage them how to walk with Jesus in those places and in those circumstances.

And in chapter 2, he begins to talk about Jesus as the model for our lives and salvation as the model and motivation for our lives.

Now remember, he's writing to people who've been persecuted, dispersed around the world.

So he begins in chapter two with this idea of Jesus did not ridicule those who ridiculed him.

When he went to the cross, there were all these witnesses who were paid to lie about him and say all these things.

But Jesus did not defend himself, he did not push back against any of that because he knew what he was doing.

He was going to the cross there to die for our sins.

And then in verse 24, it's a great verse to look at.

Here's what Peter says He himself, Jesus, bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that having died to sins we might live for righteousness, you have been healed by his wounds.

And a beautiful picture of salvation there.

Jesus went to the cross to pay the price for our sins.

As we know, all of us have sinned and fallen short of God's glory.

That's why salvation is there for all of us.

Jesus knows and understood from all throughout recorded human history that all of us have sinned, and because of our sin, we physically die, and then we are spiritually judged and have a spiritual death forever.

We are separated from the presence of God.

And so Jesus stepped out of heaven, lived a sinless life.

Jesus, as a man, would have never had to die because there was no judgment attached to him or his life.

And yet he went to the cross voluntarily and there died a death that hadn't had any judgment attached to it, so it could be a substitute for ours.

He rose again, conquering death and sin.

And now when you place your faith in Jesus, you are trusting in what this verse describes, what he did for us on the cross.

Jesus went to the cross, and there he bore our sins.

He didn't just physically die, but he took on our sins, and that death was a judgment for our sins, and he took the full wrath and punishment of God for our sins.

And the tree is the cross.

And then he died and rose again, conquering death and sin.

And when you come to Jesus, you take your life, everything you've been, you are, and you ever will be.

You come to him and you surrender your life to him as Lord and Savior.

And you believe the historical truth and the spiritual reality of what happened.

He really did die on the cross.

He really did raise from the dead.

And you place your trust and faith in what he did.

You believe in that, you surrender your life to him.

His death then pays the price for our sin, and a spiritual exchange occurs.

He pays the price for our sin, and he in turn gives us his righteousness.

So when God looks down out of heaven at us, he sees us through the shed blood and the righteousness of Jesus.

And that's what Peter is saying.

We have been healed by his wounds.

We've been redeemed.

We've been saved.

We've been forgiven.

We've been given a new life in him.

And he says, because of that, Jesus died for us, our sins were paid for.

We are viewed by the Lord through the righteousness of Jesus.

It's been placed on us because of that work of Jesus.

Then we should live for righteousness.

Our life should be different.

We should live a life of gratitude, grateful for the righteousness of Jesus and the payment of our sins.

And now, as a saved person who's been forgiven, it should be my call and my passion to live for Jesus.

To live in that righteousness for which he saved me and paid the price for his blood.

And so when we take the Lord's Supper, that's literally what we're doing.

We are celebrating this verse and we are teaching in yet another way the beauty of salvation.

As you know, the Lord's Supper comes from the Old Testament when the children of Israel were trying to get out of Egypt.

And you know, you've heard the stories of all the plagues and frogs all night and the river, the Nile River ran with blood and all that sort of stuff that went on.

The final plague that God pronounced in judgment on Pharaoh and Egypt for the mistreatment of his children and the sinful rejection of God's plan.

He said, Listen, in this evening, the death angel is going to come and exact judgment on the land.

And so the firstborn child in every home will die.

Unless you sacrifice a lamb.

It's the picture of Jesus, this sacrifice for our sins.

Take the blood of that lamb and you place it on the doorposts of your home.

And when G when the angel comes through and he sees that home protected by the blood sacrifice, it passes over, and so they call it the Passover.

The other thing they did is a part of that lamb, they made a meal and they prepared themselves to leave Egypt because God knew that they would be redeemed through that.

It was an Old Testament picture of New Testament salvation.

It was an Old Testament picture of Jesus.

And that Passover Supper, every element and every part of that was speaking of redemption and salvation and the Messiah who would come to take away our sins.

As John the Baptist, when he baptized Jesus, he said, look, he is the Lamb of God, come to take away the sins of the world.

And Jesus was the fulfillment of that promise.

And so every year the children of Israel would celebrate a worship event they called the Passover Supper, and it was always looking forward to the Messiah who would come.

Before Jesus went to the cross, on his way to the cross, he called his followers together, his disciples, and they had the Passover Supper.

And during that time, Jesus explained to them, I am the fulfillment of this prophecy.

I am going to be on that cross shedding my blood to pay the price for your sins, just as Peter acknowledged.

And Jesus in that moment sort of tweaked the Passover Supper, and it became what we now call the Lord's Supper.

And as we take this Lord's Supper, it is a picture of what Jesus did for us on the cross.

It is an explanation and a worship time for salvation.

Now, as we take the Lord's Supper, please know that this is for Christians.

And so if you're a Christian, you take the Lord's Supper with us.

If you're a member of another church and you are comfortable worshiping with us and taking the Lord's Supper, feel free to do that.

If you feel more comfortable doing that in your home church, that's fine too.

You just worship right along with us.

If you've never been saved, we are so glad you're here to see this picture of salvation and to hear this message.

And at the end of the service, we'll have an opportunity for you to give your life to Jesus and make him the Lord and Savior of your life as well.

Now, in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, Paul is writing a letter here to the churches in the city of Corinth, and they were having some struggles surrounding this Lord's Supper, and they kind of turned it into a party that it was not intended to be.

1 Corinthians 11 · chapter mention

And there were some issues with that.

And so Paul wrote them this letter to explain to them what I've just explained, the importance of the Lord's Supper and its picture of salvation.

And it says in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, beginning in verse 23, for I, Paul, received from the Lord what I, Paul, also delivered to you.

1 Corinthians 11 · chapter mention

That the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and then he explained, This is my body which is for you, or broken for you.

In other words, the bread represents the life of Jesus.

This is my body which is broken for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way, Jesus also took the cup after supper, saying, This cup represents the new covenant that's in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till he comes.

So when we take the Lord's Supper in just a moment, we are proclaiming the gospel.

We are illustrating and sharing with everyone here, people watching us online or on television, that we are proclaiming that Jesus is the Savior, the fulfillment of God's promise, the Lamb of God whose shed blood covers our sin and saves us from judgment.

We are also doing this because we are waiting for Jesus to come.

In the same way in the Old Testament, when they took the Passover Supper, they were waiting on the promised Messiah.

We know the Messiah, Jesus has come, and we are waiting for him to come and take us home to heaven.

And so this is a beautiful picture of gratitude that is in our lives for the salvation that only comes through Jesus.

Now, Paul also explained how to take the Lord's Supper because this is a beautiful time of worship.

We want to do this clean.

So he explains here that if you are taking the Lord's Supper, you should do so in a right relationship with the Lord.

And he says every person should examine themselves and see if there's any unconfessed sin in our lives.

And so in just a moment, I'm going to lead us in a time of prayer.

And as we're doing that, that'll be when our deacons will come and prepare to serve us the Lord's Supper.

But in that prayer time, what you want to do is open your life and your heart to the Holy Spirit and say, listen, if there's any unconfessed sin in my life, I want to deal with it now.

And let God deal with it and confess it and remove it so that you have a free and unhindered presence of God in your life.

You are free to worship fully, to express your gratitude for salvation.

Now, for us as Christians, the price for our sin was paid on the cross and we were saved and forgiven.

But the Bible teaches as we're walking through life, we still have struggles and things we're learning, and we fail temptation here and do that here.

So we have these sins that kind of get in the way of our relationship.

They do not mean we lose our salvation.

They do not mean in any way that salvation has been undone.

But as we are growing to be like Jesus, what happens is he is constantly transforming us into his image, and that is a lifelong process.

So our life is filled with Jesus putting things in and taking things out, putting things in and taking things out as he grows us and transforms us to his image.

And in that journey, there are times we have things get in the way.

We have mistakes and failures that we make.

And what happens as a believer, 1 John chapter 1, tells us this if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

1 John 1 · chapter mention

You see, the covenant that is in his blood.

That means every promise God has ever made is sealed in the blood of Jesus.

God will never break a promise to us because Jesus died for us, and when you know him as your Savior, you enter into a covenant relationship which God will never break as holy God.

And that's why John told us he is faithful and just because that is a part of that covenant relationship.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

And so as a believer, repentance is not something we only do when we get saved, it is a journey of the Christian life.

And so before we take the Lord's Supper, we want to take a minute and just say, Lord, is there anywhere I've messed up?

Is there somewhere I've failed you?

Is there something that I need to do?

Lord, I want to confess that.

And then you rest in that forgiveness that He has promised.

And then we are free and unhindered in our grateful worship as we take the Lord's Supper.

So I want you to bow your heads and just let the Holy Spirit speak to you for a moment.

Whatever it is he points out, he may point out he points it out in love and grace, but he points it out in seriousness and he wants you to deal with it.

So confess that to him right now.

Now I'm going to pray a prayer of thanks, and I'm going to ask the deacons while I'm praying to come and to get in place and prepare to serve us for the Lord's Supper.

Lord, we thank you this morning.

We thank you for salvation in Jesus.

We thank you as we have studied your word.

He shed his blood on the cross for us.

His body was broken for us on the cross.

He gave his life for us.

Not only that, he gave his holiness when he took on our sin and bore our sins on himself on that cross.

Lord, we are so in awe of the grace of salvation.

We know there's nothing we could do to earn it, to make you want to give it to us in any way, shape, or form.

We know it is simply your grace as God and the author of life that you created a means of salvation.

And in your mercy you forgave us.

Lord, today we want to say thank you for salvation.

Thank you for Jesus.

His death, burial, and resurrection for salvation in his name.

And we thank you for the promise and hope of heaven.

It is in your saving name that we pray.

And all God's people said.

Amen.

Gentlemen.

Again, Paul tells us that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread.

And when he had given thanks, he broke it, and he said, This is my body which is broken for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

The Bible says that in the same way, he also took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you again.

Lord, we cannot thank you enough for salvation in Jesus and what it means to us.

It's mind-boggling to think the significance of what it meant that Jesus, in all of his holiness, bore our sins on the tree.

To give up his holiness to cover our sin.

When the essence of our sin is to reject you.

And yet Jesus loved us enough that he went to the cross with our sins.

That he died for us.

That he was broken for us.

That he shed his blood for us.

The sacrifice of what that means, Lord, we are overwhelmed.

But today we are reminded of what Jesus did for us.

Lord, we take this Lord's Supper and we do it to truly proclaim his death.

To proclaim his resurrection and salvation in his name.

And Lord, we pray that you will take great joy from seeing your children come to your house in your name, at your table, to celebrate your gift of salvation.

Lord, we are grateful and we say thank you in the name of Jesus.

It is in his name we pray, and everybody said.

Well, as Peter said in 1 Peter chapter 2, because Jesus did that for us, and because we are healed by his wounds, meaning our sins are forgiven, and we are made whole, and we are given the privilege to be in a relationship with him because of that.

1 Peter 2 · chapter mention

Our call is to live for him, is to live a surrendered life to him because he surrendered his life for us.

If you've Never accepted Christ as your Savior, as I told you at the beginning, you would have an opportunity to make that decision to place your faith in Him.

Listen, we have sung about Jesus and His grace and salvation.

We have illustrated it through the Lord's Supper.

We have read scripture multiple times that speak of the gift of salvation that comes through Jesus.

If you have never trusted Christ as your Savior, whether you're watching online or television or you're here in the room, listen, we do services just like this, just as God's word said, to proclaim his death so you will know how to be saved.

As his word said, we are also proclaiming that he is going to come back again and take us home to be with him forever.

The promise and hope of salvation is a relationship with Jesus now, but a relationship with him for eternity and to live in his presence.

And when we share the gospel, we are not just talking about the death of Jesus, but we are talking about life that comes through Jesus alone.

It is the promise and hope of heaven to know that you can walk with him, to know in your relationship with him, that he is in a covenant relationship with you that is sealed by his shed blood.

He will never break his promise.

He will never leave you, he will never forsake you, and he will come again to take us to spend an eternity with him.

It is the hope and promise and life of salvation.

If you've never given your life to Jesus, we want to invite you to do that.

How do we do that, Pastor?

Well, it's very simple.

The Bible teaches us that in Romans chapter 10.

Romans 10 · chapter mention

Listen, it's not hard to understand.

It may be hard for you to make that decision or to climb over some issue or question in your life, but this is not hard to understand.

The Bible tells us how it works.

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.

Now listen, he didn't say you had to join a church.

He didn't say you had to be baptized.

He didn't say you have to clean up your life, he didn't say you have to deal with anything before you're allowed to get saved.

No.

You take everything you have been, everything you are, and everything you ever will be, and you bring it all to Jesus.

The good, the bad, the ugly, the brokenness, the struggles, the sin, whatever it is, you bring it all to Jesus.

Here's what he says: if you will confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, listen, make no mistake, salvation is not free.

It costs Jesus his life on the cross, and you must surrender your life to Jesus as your Lord.

Confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord.

When you take your life, everything you've been, you are, and you ever will be, and you give it all to Jesus, it is now his and is not yours anymore.

That's why Peter says we're to live for righteousness.

So you come and you surrender your life to him.

Pastor, like really?

Like your whole yes.

I gave my life to Christ when I was a nine and a half-year-old boy.

And when I was a 30-year-old man, God called and said, I'm going to change your career and I'm going to have you be a preacher.

And I said, I don't really want to do that.

And he said, Whose life is it?

Well, I gave it to him when I was nine and a half, and so it was his to do with what he wants.

But, friend, Jesus will do more with your life than you could ever possibly imagine.

He will bless you, he will walk with you, he will use you, he will transform you, he will do things in your life that you cannot imagine because that's who he is and what he does.

You confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord.

And you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead.

This is not some magic thing, it's not some incantation we're doing.

Jesus really physically stepped out of heaven and became a man.

That's the virgin birth that we talk about at Christmas time, that's just a few short weeks away.

He was born of a virgin, so no sin nature was attached to him.

He lived a human man life just like me or the other men in the room, with one exception, Jesus never sinned.

And then, as we said, he went to the cross, he died there, so his death could be a substitute of ours.

He rose again conquering death and sin.

And when you come to Jesus, you surrender your life to him and you believe and trust that that really happened and that he did that for you.

And the spiritual effect of that is that spiritual exchange where you give him your life and your sin and he gives you new life and his resurrection.

If you've never trusted Christ as your Savior, we want to invite you to give your life to Jesus today.

If you're watching somewhere this morning, you can do it right there where you are.

There's no incantation you have to say, there's no special words.

You just bow your head before the Lord and you tell him, Lord, I know I've sinned.

If you need to list some of them, fine.

He knows them all.

If you open your heart to him and you recognize that he sees them and you ask for his forgiveness and you give your life to him and you tell him that you trust him, he'll save you.

He'll save you right there where you are.

This morning, if you've never been saved, and I'm gonna pray, then our people are gonna stand and sing a testimony.

Again, celebrating this salvation.

We'll have ministers ahead of our aisles, we have deacons here to help you.

Listen, we don't arm twist anybody.

We're not emotionally, you know, trying to manipulate you, but let me tell you what, we believe what we preach, what we sing, and what we've shared in the Lord's Supper.

And we want you to know Jesus too.

And so we give this opportunity for you to come.

What happens if I come, Pastor?

Well, I'll be a minister here, we'll talk with you.

If we need to go off somewhere and spend some time, we'll do that.

If we need to schedule an appointment, if you have questions, we'll walk through all those questions with you.

We'll pray with you, we'll give you scripture to stand on.

Listen, we are here just to walk this journey with you, whatever that looks like in your life.

We are doing that because we want you to know Jesus like we know Jesus.

Why don't you bow your heads as we pray this morning?

Lord, we thank you for salvation in Jesus' name and what that means to us in our lives today.

Again, we thank you as we've worshiped in gratitude for salvation through the Lord's Supper today.

And Lord, I pray that all that we've done through song, through the spirit of our church family, and the joy of salvation that's evident in our lives through the movement of the Holy Spirit, through the reading of Scripture, through the taking of the Lord's Supper.

Lord, I pray through all of that that you will draw people to you who need to be saved.

Lord, we plead with you, give them a freedom to respond.

Make yourself known to them.

And we pray this morning for people who will give their lives to Jesus.

We pray this in the saving name of Jesus Christ.

And all God's people said.

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 at the First Baptist Church.