BASH Opening GMJR

BASH GMJR

Introduction

Name and role; greet everyone

Creator

Genesis 1:1 LEB

1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth—

: God’s Presence Defines His People

Give brief introduction to BASH; many of you have been a part of this thing for years in the past, so you know how this works, but some of you haven’t. Either way, I want to kind of put it all out there so you can know what to expect and know exactly what we are about here at First Baptist Puxico and the purpose of us coming together on Wednesday nights during the school year.

Simply put, our purpose here is to glorify God by knowing him and enjoying him…thats it. Now how we intend for that to happen, and more importantly how God intends for that to happen, is through his Word, the Bible.

Holy

He has revealed himself to us by this Word, so then what we want to do hear is simply teach this Word.

Now, I hope, I pray that you guys will listen to what I am saying, but I also want you to notice what I am not saying.

I am NOT saying that our purpose is to try and make you “better people”

I am NOT saying that our purpose is to make you better students

I am even NOT saying that our purpose is to create for you a good group of friends

All of those things usually do surface in some form or fashion when the gospel takes root in a person’s life, but those results are not our purpose

We are passionate about taking this book and telling you what it says because we believe it; it isn’t just a set of do’s and don’t’s; it is God’s revelation of himself to you and me.

Here is why that matters; the Bible says that God is good. It also says that we are not; we are all sinners. And since God is good, that means he has to do what is right. In fact, he is passionate about doing what is right, which means that he has to punish sin; your sin and my sin, everything that falls short of his perfect standard. That is bad news for us...

But the underlying theme of the Bible is this; God made a way of salvation from that punishment by sending his Son Jesus Christ to endure the punishment of sinners in their place so that all who put their faith in him will be saved. That is great news for us...

All of you are either at a place in your life, or getting to a place in your life, where you have to start thinking about your future; what do I want to do? what am I going to be? how am I going to live my life?

These are important things to think about, but I want to be blatantly honest with you; none of it matters if you do not personally know this Jesus whom the Bible proclaims as Lord and Savior.

We are sinners, so all other things being equal, we are headed toward eternal punishment for our sins. We are like a blind man running toward a cliff; unless he changes his course, he is going to run right to his death. In the same way, unless our eyes are opened to the truth of who Jesus is, we work, toil, we accumulate stuff, and run right toward a guaranteed death.

But it doesn’t have to be that way, and this book tells us how, and we want to tell it to you

Overview

So here is how we are going to do that; brother Allen and I will be sharing the teaching duties here. You’ll hear from me more, but we are both going to be involved with this part.

And as far as content, what’s the plan, what are we going to be talking about each week, I’m glad you asked...

As a church we use an acronym to sort of summarize the whole story of the Bible in a clear and concise way. Some of you are probably familiar with it and it is this: G.M.J.R.

God is holy

Man is sinner

Jesus is Savior

Response required

That sums up the message of the Bible. What we want to do is examine all of those truths from the Bible in order to understand what it teaches.

So from now until Thanksgiving we are going to look at a different letter of the acronym GMJR each week. We are going to start in ,, and 3, beginning with G, God, next week, then M, man, the next, and so on.

Once we go through that, we will move to another section of Scripture, specifically , and go through the four truths again as they are shown in that text. And what you will find as we do this is that the Bible tells one unified story…of course there are many details to it that come up in each book, but it is a single story that is far too important to not be told.

GMJR

So what I want to do this week with the time we have left is simply give you guys an overview of this GMJR thing, which in a word, is the gospel, alright?

God

So G, God.

God is first in this acronym because he is most important. And that is probably the understatement of the century. Words cannot do justice to this truth, but God comes first.

Exodus 3:13–14 CSB

13 Then Moses asked God, “If I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what should I tell them?” 14 God replied to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you.”

Exodus 3:13–14 LEB

But Moses said to God, “Look, if I go to the Israelites and I say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they say to me, ‘What is his name?’ then what shall I say to them?” And God said to Moses, “I am that I am.” And he said, “So you must say to the Israelites, ‘I am sent me to you.’ ”

I’m sure you have heard the expression that you don’t want to but the cart before the horse. That’s what we say when someone is getting ahead of themselves. And we say that because order is important. To use a biblical illustration, think about someone who is building a house.

If you spend all the money to build a house, you want it to last. You don’t want to pay all that money and have it fall down in 6 months. So what is the first step to making sure that that doesn’t happen? Make sure it has a solid foundation.

You can use the best tools and materials in the world to build the house, but if its foundation is no good, then the whole thing is no good because its going to come tumbling down.

In the same way, God is the foundation of all things; all creation, all knowledge, all truth, everything. And the reason that this is the case is because God is holy.

That is what points to. Moses asks God his name, and he’s not asking just so he can know what to call God…he’s asking “who are you? what are you like? how can I explain you as God?”

But God has nobody and nothing else he can compare himself to. Its like this: if I ask you “what are you like?” and you know that I am friends with this brother right here, you can say, “well, I am like him, but maybe I am a little more outgoing.”

You can compare yourself. But God can’t do that because he is not like any created thing. He has no beginning and no end. He was not created, nor does he depend on anyone or anything to keep on existing…he is completely other, separate from all that is created.

That is what it means to say that God is holy…so to describe himself in a way we can understand, God can only say “I am who I am.” Simply put, he just is.

So then, that means that everything you see is created by God. Everything has God as it’s source; the sun, the moon, the trees, the animals, and you and me…all of it depends on God for its existence, whether we acknowledge him or not.

So I hope you are starting to see the point; since everything proceeds from God, that means two things

1) the standard for truth, for right and for wrong, is God himself; you can’t just randomly decide something is good or bad, because those are relative terms.

Something can only be good or bad in comparison to a known standard.

2) Salvation, worship, church, this life and the next…have at their center God, not man. You get those two flipped around, then you’ve got it all wrong.

He does not exist for us; we exist for him, specifically to glorify him. And the beautiful thing about it is that when we come to know him as he intended at creation, we find our greatest enjoyment...

That leads us to M, Man is sinner...

Man

Romans 3:23 LEB

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

This here is the very root of our problem…but remember the order of how things work; God comes first.

So the primary reason our sin is a big problem is not because it has terrible results for us—though it does—the primary reason our sin is a big problem is because it is an all out attack on the glory of God.

To understand that, you have to look at the beginning of the Book of Genesis which tells the story of how God created everything. Thats where we are going to spend our time in the coming weeks, for this reason, that it lays the foundation for understanding God, man, Jesus, and the call for a response.

Genesis begins with God as Creator, and he creates everything you see and that you don’t see. It all has its source in him.

But the final and most important part of his creation was man.

Genesis 1:27–28 CSB

27 So God created man in his own image; he created him in the image of God; he created them male and female. 28 God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth.”

Genesis 1:27–28 LEB

27 So God created humankind in his image, in the likeness of God he created him, male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of heaven, and over every animal that moves upon the earth.”

Nothing else in all of creation was made to bear the image of God. Those of you who were in the small group over the summer should remember what this means because we talked about it a lot. To bear God’s image means we represent him on the earth.

That’s the charge given in the verses we just read; God was basically saying “I have given you attributes that reflect my attributes. I have made you my representatives. So as my representatives, rule over the earth.” That is an amazing, really unthinkable privilege.

But remember, more than anything else God is what? Holy, separate and distinct from creation. So then if we were created to represent him, what do you think we are supposed to be? Holy...

Obviously as created things we can’t be holy in the same way as God, but in our bodies and our minds we have been given all that we need in order to reflect his holiness, since that is what he created us to do...

But that’s not what man does; sin entered the world when Adam disobeyed God in the garden of Eden by eating fruit from the one tree that God told him not to eat of. So then death entered the world as the result of sin

In God plainly states that he will not leave the guilty unpunished. And since we are all guilty of sin, we all deserve his punishment, and thats what we are all going to get unless our sin is paid for. And this punishment is eternal, physical torment in hell…thats what the New Testament clearly teaches.

Its what we deserve because we all openly rebel against a good, perfect, holy God...

Which leads us to J, Jesus

Jesus

John 3:16–18 LEB

16 For in this way God loved the world, so that he gave his one and only Son, in order that everyone who believes in him will not perish, but will have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world in order that he should judge the world, but in order that the world should be saved through him. 18 The one who believes in him is not judged, but the one who does not believe has already been judged, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God.

John 3:16–18 ESV

16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

“For God loved the world

We have probably all heard before, but do we really know what it means? What does it mean that God “gave his only Son?”

Well lets look at that. The rest of verse 16 and 17 tells us the result of God giving his son…its so that WHOEVER BELIEVES has eternal life and is saved through the Son, who is Jesus Christ.

So God GIVING his Son is the way which we may be saved.

Remember what we said just a moment ago about man: we are all guilty of sin, we all deserve his punishment, and thats what we are all going to get unless our sin is paid for.

So when it says that God GAVE his only Son, it means that he sent him to pay for our sins by enduring the punishment due to us because of those sins.

Think of it like this: lets pretend you somehow have the sway to borrow billions and billions of dollars from some investor, and you go and blow every penny of it.

The deal you made with the investor is that you would pay back every dollar to him with interest…and if not, you would pay to him your life; you would serve him in hard labor for the rest of your days and you would die a poor death with a debt that you could never pay back.

The judge is there to uphold the law, to make sure that justice is carried out, that wrongdoing is punished; that is the position of God.

Then there is the criminal, the one who has unashamedly broken the law at countless points and is guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt. There is a whole team of witnesses who can attest to all the times that this person has broken the law. That criminal is you and me

So you are there, indentured to the investor, serving out your punishment.

But then comes along some guy who comes to the investor and says “hey, I am going to pay that man’s debt. So that he may go free.”

The investor says “why would you do that? He doesn’t deserve for you to do this? What good is there in him that you would pay such a price?”

And the man responds, “There is no good in him. He doesn’t deserve for me to do this. But I have loved him and my desire is to purchase him out of his affliction.”

That is what Jesus did. He came, lived the perfect life as both fully God and fully man, and he went to the cross where he endured the full wrath of God in punishment sins, even so far as to the point of death...

And who did he do this for? Verse 16, “whoever believes.”

Verse 18 says again, “whoever believes is not condemned,” meaning they are not punished because their debt has been paid by Christ...

How was he able to accomplish this? How could one man pay for the sins of an innumerable number of people, all those who would believe?

Because the one man was more valuable than all the rest put together; he was and is of infinite worth because he is infinitely God.

He had perfect fellowship with the Father in heaven from before the foundation of the world, but he left that perfect comfort for a time to take on flesh and be born as a man, so that he might save a people for himself and restore them to perfect fellowship with God as they were created to have in the first place...

Now the keyword in our verses above is “believe,” which brings us to our last point, R, response.

Response required

Everything I have relayed to you here from Scripture requires a response…you can believe it, or you can reject it, but you can’t be in the middle.

You can’t kinda believe it or kinda not. You can’t maybe be saved or maybe not. So the question is, do you believe? Do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God?

Do you believe that he died for your sins? And if you answer yes, does that belief change how you feel about him? Does it make you love him and want to serve him with everything you have?

If yes, then how do you respond? Jesus tells us in , “Repent and believe in the gospel.”

That means, confess that you are a sinner and that you absolutely need a Savior and trust in Jesus Christ as that Savior...

He said all who come to me I will not turn away, so come to him. Seek him. Believe in him, and you will be saved from eternal punishment, and to eternal life with him.