Lessons from the Cross Pt. 2- Pastor Greg Addison - March 24, 2024

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, Jake.

Choir Orchestra.

I want to uh thank those who have been counting for us this morning, and I have a number for you.

Would you like to hear?

Okay, total of 463 votes.

Uh the motion passes 345 votes to 94 no's and 24 abstains.

That breaks down to 75% yes, 20% no, and 5% abstain.

So, church family, again, I want to thank you first and foremost for doing all of that well over the last month.

You have been incredible, and so give the Lord a hand.

And now the work will begin to flesh out that strategy and to begin to work through that.

The first step will begin in April after Easter as we start to go through our Faith Forward emphasis, as you saw in the motion this morning.

Uh, we'll work to uh begin to uh sell the mission house, but we also will work towards our Faith Forward offering in the last three Sundays in April that will help us know kind of the pace of how we begin to move forward.

But again, church family, most importantly, you have been wonderful through that journey.

You have done it wonderfully, you have prayed, you have asked questions, you've participated, and so thank you for who you are.

For the few minutes that we have, I want to left, I want to uh talk to you about heaven.

Last week we talked about hell, and I promised that this week we'd talk about heaven.

So I want you to turn with me in your Bibles to Revelation chapter 21, and I'm going to remind you that in our our run-up to Easter, um, what we have been doing is starting with this picture of Jesus and the two thieves on the cross.

Revelation 21 · chapter mention

Now, why are we talking about heaven and hell?

Because the gospel is about eternity.

Certainly is it, it is about life now, but it is about eternity.

And we talked about last week the sure judgment that comes because of sin.

But also for those who have trusted Christ as their Savior, there is the reality of heaven as well.

As we took the Lord's Supper, we read that verse at the end, it says, as often as we do this worship, service, and time of taking the Lord's Supper, we are proclaiming the Lord's death, the gospel, until he comes back, which is the promise of the gospel.

And we are reunited with our Savior for an eternity in heaven.

And so let's look at that today.

I want to remind you quickly of this moment that we started, and we'll we looked at it last week.

We'll look at it again today and then again next week.

There, Jesus goes to the cross.

Let's go back to the passage with the three thieves, please.

And let's look at those verses and be reminded of them quickly.

Um, two others, criminals, were also led away to be executed with Jesus.

And when they arrived at the place called the skull, they crucified him there, along with the criminals, one on the right and one on the left.

Then Jesus spoke from the cross and he said, Father, forgive them, because they do not know what they are doing.

And below him, at the foot of the cross, they divided his clothes and cast lots.

And the people who were watching, standing there, and even the leaders kept scoffing Jesus.

He saved others, let him save himself, if this is God's Messiah, the chosen one.

The soldiers also mocked him.

They came offering him sour wine to drink, and they said, If you're the king of the Jews, save yourself.

They put an inscription that's a mocking, another mocking thing above his head on the cross, and it says, This is the king of the Jews.

And here in the midst of this moment, the Bible describes one of the criminals hanging there, began to yell insults at Jesus.

Aren't you the Messiah?

Save yourself and us.

But the other criminal on the other side, who is watching all of this unfold, who is watching Jesus go through this experience, and as he begins to face the reality of his death, the guilt of the life that he has lived as a criminal, and the fear of what's going to happen to him after he breathes his last breath.

He looks at Jesus after watching who Jesus is and how he has done all of this experience.

And he recognizes that Jesus must be the Messiah.

And he calls out to him.

He begins by rebuking the other man.

He says, Don't you even fear God?

Since you and I, we deserve what's happening to us.

Right?

We are punished because we're getting back what we deserve for the things we did.

But this man has done nothing wrong.

And then, because of that fear of what happens to him after he dies, because of that judgment that he knows he is a sinner and deserves to have, here's what he says: Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.

And Jesus promises him in that moment's moment of repentance, I assure you today you will be with me in paradise.

One of the things I love about that moment is when that man calls out to Jesus, you learn that there are no magic words or incantation that are necessary for you to call out to Jesus as your Savior.

It is a matter of the heart, it is the matter of repentance, it is recognizing who Jesus is, it is recognizing your own sin, and it is recognizing that Jesus is on that cross on purpose to be our Savior.

And he calls out in anguish as he is hanging on that cross after saying, I deserve to be here because of my sin.

Jesus, I understand that you are God, and this is going to be different for you.

Please remember me when you come into your kingdom.

And Jesus promises him salvation and an eternity spent in heaven.

Just as sure as a judgment for our sin results in a real and eternal hell, as we saw last week, when you have placed your faith in Jesus Christ and you call out to him as your Savior, there is a real and sure place that we often refer to as heaven where you will spend an eternity with him.

And Jesus promised that man the promise, that promise of heaven.

You're there in Revelation 21, and I want you to look with me and see just for a moment about this picture of heaven.

As you know, John has been getting this instruction from the beginning of the book in chapter 1, the Bible says he was instructed to write down what he sees.

And as he is given this revelation, that's why the book is called The Revelation.

It is this revelation of end times, of heaven, of what happens for all of eternity, he is writing this down as well.

And he says in verse 21, after chapter 21, after describing in chapter 20 what that judgment in hell looks like and what its result is, he says in verse 1 of 21, then I saw a new heaven and a new earth.

For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea no longer existed.

I also saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband.

Well, he is painting a picture that is breathtakingly beautiful.

It's incredible.

I'll never forget the moment when I saw Janet come down the aisle.

The most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.

I mean, incredible in that moment.

I love being a pastor and standing here at the aisle in front of a wedding service.

And when I look out of the corner of my eye at that groom when those doors open in the back and his bride comes down, what an incredible, incredible moment it is.

I heard one guy, it's funny how grooms react.

I was standing there one next to one groom and he goes, Oh my gosh.

I heard another guy, he just went, Oh.

I mean, he was just overwhelmed with the sight of his bride.

And you have this incredible moment of joy that this time and what the angel and the messenger to John is trying to compute for him, get his brain to process to get is the incredible joy of this moment when God and his people are put together forever for all of eternity.

And the best way he knows to get our finite minds to understand this is to pick this moment, which is one of the greatest moments in every person's life.

And he describes it with all of the emotion and joy that he can possibly put into it.

The Bible says in verse 3, then I heard a loud voice from the throne look, God's dwelling is with humanity, and he will live with them.

They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

Death will no longer exist.

Grief, crying, and pain will exist no longer because the previous things have passed away.

Then the one seated on the throne said, Look, I am making everything new.

He also said, Write, because these words are faithful and they are true.

And he said, To me it is done.

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.

I will give water as a gift to the thirsty from the spring of life.

The victor will inherit these things, and I will be his God, and he will be my son.

But, and then he reiterates the message from the last chapter.

The cowards, unbelievers, vile, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their share will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.

And you see here, he puts back into juxtaposition again the judgment for sin that everyone faces.

But when you know Christ as your Savior, you are redeemed.

His resurrection changes everything for all of eternity.

And when you know him as your Savior, you are redeemed and given the sure promise of the reality of heaven where you will spend an eternity, as he says, with him as our God and us as his people.

Here, there are weeks that we could do, and at some point I'll come back and do a whole sermon series on heaven because we need to know and understand that heaven is the sure promise of God.

Christians have the freedom and the joy of living in light of an eternity because our fear of judgment and death should be taken away because of Jesus the life giver.

And we are looking forward to being with him in eternity.

But just for the few moments that I have right here, I just want you to understand and see what it means to know Jesus, the Messiah, as your Savior, that your future and your eternity are redeemed.

That the promise and hope of salvation is not just here in this life, and it is incredible to know that in this life, Jesus walks with us.

He never forgives us.

You are never alone.

He is always with you.

You are forgiven.

You have purpose in life.

But too many times we don't spend enough time thinking about the reality of what heaven means for us.

We do at funeral services for someone we know, but then we go about our life and we just do it whatever we do, and we don't have this calling of eternity that tells us, man, we are God's people.

And the Redeemer means we're going to spend an eternity with Him.

Let me give you a quick definition of heaven.

Just an easy way for you to get this in your mind.

It is a redeemed place prepared by our Redeemer for His redeemed people.

It is a redeemed place prepared by our Redeemer for His redeemed people.

Well, let me give you just a couple of thoughts as we move towards an invitation in just a moment.

What does that mean, a redeemed place?

A redeemed place.

Well, we know what the Bible teaches us.

We know that we understand that He created everything, and that's described for us in the book of Genesis, and it was beautiful and it was good, and it was made in lushness and beauty.

It was created by the Creator God, and it was so wonderful.

Every time he created something, he said, This is good.

The creator God was pleased with what he had created for us.

And then we know as you read through Genesis chapter 3 that Adam and Eve chose to sin, and sin comes into our world, and it mars our world, and it mars us, and it creates the reality of that judgment we talked about last week.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

The Bible teaches us that the fullness of God is still reflected in the earth and in creation, but now it groans almost like labor pains under the weight and the struggle of sin.

And what the Bible now tells us is that when eternity begins, what happens is God redeems the earth.

He changes it and he restores it and redeems it back to everything as creator God he had created it to be.

Now, Satan doesn't want us to live in light of eternity.

He doesn't want the call of eternity to be there for us.

He doesn't want us to understand how incredibly powerful God is to redeem his creation or how wonderful it is going to be in the future.

So he creates all these stupid lies and things that people get that cloud the beauty of what heaven is.

We get dumb ideas like little angels and flying around with wings and wearing diapers and sitting on clouds and playing harps and all this kind of stuff that just ridicules the reality of how incredibly eternity is going to be, right?

So here's what you get.

Don't ever think that heaven is some ethereal thing and we're just kind of floating around in some disembodied sort of whatever and all this kind of thing.

No, no, no.

It is real.

And God redeems us and he redeems his earth.

Look what the Bible says in the very beginning of this chapter, verse 1.

I saw a new heaven and a new earth.

For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea no longer existed.

I also saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband.

And so what we understand right here is that what God does is he remakes, redeems, and restores his creation.

We're actually going to live here again, but it's not going to be broken like it is now.

It's going to be fabulous and it's going to be wonderful.

And the earth is going to be redeemed as God changes it and turns it back into his original design for how wonderful it was going to be.

It is filled with more and no-mores.

Because he redeems it, because he removes sin, because he changes all of it and makes it as he designed it to be in all of his fullness and power and omniscience and creativity as creator God, he redeems it into the place that he had created it and designed it to be.

As you read through this chapter, you see, first thing that happens because he has removed sin, and because the old has passed away and all things have become new, there's a list of no more.

There's no more death.

We will live for an eternity with Jesus, our Savior.

The author of life will conquer death for all of eternity, and we will be with him alive, and we will be with him alive forever, and there will be no more deaths.

Praise the Lord, I won't have to do any more funerals in heaven.

There'll be no more tears because there's no more sorrow.

There's no more pain.

There's no more sickness.

It is all as God designed it to be.

If you think about the Garden of Eden and how incredible it must have been to walk around in that lush and wonderful place and do what Adam and Eve had some period of time, we don't know how long, but they had time to do that and to farm and make things flourish and see how beautiful it was and walk with God all throughout his creation and be in that relationship with him and see that the Garden of Eden was a real place, just like the earth is still a real place now.

Heaven will be real.

Heaven will be fabulous.

We can't even begin to understand how incredible it is.

But if you go through and look at the moors, you see some of these incredible pictures, rivers that flow with the waters of life.

As you continue to read, if time will allow us, I we don't have time today, but I want to encourage you, just skim through chapter 21 and chapter 2, and let the word of God speak to you.

A breathtakingly beautiful city that is massive in its size.

The river of life running through it, and the tree of life planted on either side of that river.

The streets, the only way he knew to describe the beauty of it was he illustrates it as paved with gold.

It is a breathtaking experience to get a picture of the redeemed place that God is redeeming for his people to live with him forever inside of.

It is a real place to be in heaven.

But also, it is prepared by our Redeemer.

Don't ever miss the fact that Jesus is the one who creates all of this.

Look at what the Bible says.

In verse 2, I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband.

Is that incredible?

Jesus in John 14 tells his disciples, listen, don't be afraid.

If you believe in God, believe in me.

In my father's house or many mansions, and I am going to prepare a place for you.

If Jesus is our Savior as we have worshiped today, that means Jesus' promise to us is to prepare a place for us that is designed by him and all of his power to be the place where we will live with him and he will live with us.

It is prepared because it is personal.

Look at what he says.

God's dwelling is with humanity, and he will live with them.

Is that incredible?

In chapter 22, it says, we'll be face to face with Jesus.

I mean, how can you not be excited about that?

The opportunity to see him up personal and close and be with him.

And you say, what about all those Christians?

Listen, we're going to be there for eternity.

You're going to have plenty of time to spend all the time with Jesus that you could ever want.

You will have all the time that you could ever imagine to worship him and to praise him and to live in this place he's created for you.

And every bit of it reminds you of the incredible love that Jesus had, that he died for us so that we could be there with him.

And it is made and kept in his power.

Just to remind John, when he sees all the beauty of all this, he says, Listen, I, Jesus sitting on the throne, I am making everything new.

Write these words because they are true.

It is done.

I am the Alpha, I am the Omega.

I, Jesus, am in the beginning and the end.

It is his power as creator God, as Almighty God, as the King of kings and the Lord of Lords, who creates heaven and keeps it for us.

Pastor, how do I know I'm gonna get there?

Because it is the Alpha and the Omega who saved you and holds you and will not let anything keep you from being in the place that He's prepared for you.

If you have trusted Him as your Savior.

It is prepared by Him.

Listen, it is so incredible to think about the power of Jesus and the place that He's prepared.

It tells us, this is one of my favorite pictures.

There is no sun or moon and doesn't need to be there because Jesus lights it all.

Can you imagine how beautiful something is?

That Jesus Himself would light it up with all of His majesty of who He is as the creator of God.

Man, light is a powerful thing.

I'm not a really big fan of light in a lot of ways.

A couple of weeks ago, I had to take new headshots.

And I don't like doing that.

I'm not friendly with the camera.

It's not friendly with me.

I met somebody recently a couple weeks ago and they said, Well, you're skinnier than you look on television.

People tell me I have a face for podcasting.

You've heard people say, you know, you've heard the old joke about broke the camera.

I actually broke a camera.

I mean, like I really broke a camera.

We were taking our church.

Remember, we used to do church directories and annuals, and everybody's taking their pictures, and so there we are at first cabot, and we're taking pictures, and you know, they do that like every eight minutes, and they run you through there.

So here we are.

We've got like 10 families lined up in the hall, and they call my family in, and my whole family's there, and they take our family picture, and then they say, Okay, my notes say you're the pastor, and so we need to take your headshot for the website and all that.

So my family goes to the side.

I sit down in front of the camera, the guy goes, click, and the shutter breaks and freezes closed, and the camera broke, and they had to go out and tell all those people they had to go home because pastor broke the camera.

So I literally broke the camera.

I literally did that.

And here I am out here, I'm over here in the thing, and I'm out in front of the church, and I'm taking these pictures, and she's telling me, Oh, that looks great, and she's being encouraging, that looks great, she looks great, oh, that picture looks great, you look great.

And then I see that and I see the impact of all those lights.

Holy cow, I look rough.

Lights are devastating, man.

They show everything, right?

Heaven is so beautiful that Jesus Himself turns the lights on for us to see it all in its glory.

He is the very light of the world we will live in for eternity.

It is a prepared place prepared by our Redeemer for His redeemed people.

This is what should mean the most for us.

When people ask me about stuff as a pastor, they say, Pastor Greg, what's it gonna be like in heaven?

And they want to know, what's this?

Are we gonna do stuff?

Am I gonna know my wife?

Am I gonna know my kids?

Am I gonna do all this?

Well, just let me, in the interest of time, let me answer some things very quickly for you.

There will be dogs, there will not be cats because there's no sin allowed in heaven.

If you're a cat person, we're about to have an invitation and you can come and repent, like to the.

My my daughter and son-in-law are cat people, all right?

I know what I'm talking about.

We're gonna have barbecue ribs for breakfast and lunch, beignets at every meal.

We'll be drinking coffee because God made coffee and the coffee bean.

And we'll be having steaks for dinner every night.

Is that good?

Every now and then to mix it up, he'll catch some perfect catfish out of the river of life, and we'll have fried catfish.

And no one will have calorie or cholesterol problems in heaven.

That answer?

You excited in that?

No, we don't need to know the details like that.

There are details, and there are things we understand, and we know it's a real place, and we know all of those things, but here's the thing that matters the most about heaven.

It is this statement: God's dwelling is with humanity, and he will live with them.

The one who died for you will be with you.

They will be his people, and God himself will be with them.

I want to be in heaven because Jesus is there.

I trust that it'll be fabulous because I trust Jesus.

I know it'll be beautiful because He is beautiful.

And I know it'll be a place that I will want to be because I'm allowed to be there because of what Jesus did for us on the cross.

As we prepare for Easter next week and we talk about the resurrection, I want you to see what it means for us.

Death and hell are real.

But God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him will never perish, but have everlasting life in the place that he has prepared for us.

And if you've never trusted Christ as your Savior, I'm gonna invite you this morning to come and to give your life to him.

Why don't you bow your heads as we close?

We've shared the gospel in song, we've shared it in the picture of Jesus' broken body and shed blood for us on the cross.

We have seen Jesus hanging on the cross between those two men.

We have seen how you cry out to Jesus, you confess your sins, you turn to him as the Savior, and you trust him for your eternity, and he'll save you.

The time has come to make a decision.

And if you've never trusted Christ as your Savior, I'm gonna pray, and God's people are gonna stand and sing, and I'm gonna invite you to come.

Lord, we thank you that your word teaches us that we do not have to guess about eternity.

We can know what will happen.

And I pray this morning, just through your word, through the picture of the Lord's Supper that Jesus gave us to teach, through the picture of our brother who was baptized this morning, if there's someone who needs to know Jesus as their Savior this morning, they'll have the freedom to come and to give their life to him.

That's why we're here today.

It's to tell them about Jesus.

Lord, you know, in obedience to your instruction, we took the Lord's Supper because we're proclaiming his death and his return.

We pray this morning.

Give us the freedom to respond.

It is in Jesus' name we pray, 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's First Baptist Church.