ASI Scandinavia Convention 2021: Overdue

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ASI Scandinavia

Daniel Pel

The Long-awaited Encounter

Before we go into John chapter 4, but you can already turn there, I want to tell a little experience that I read about not so long ago which really was very speaking to me as to the importance of being timely.

Because as we already sang in the opening song and by the way, thank you to Madison that created that beautiful song for this conference overdue we read about or we sang about how important it is to be aware of the times in which we are living And if we go a little bit back in time, there is an experience that Dwight Moody had in 1871.

Dwight Moody was quite a well-known preacher in the United States of America, and what he experienced showed him how important it is to not wait with giving an appeal for people to follow Jesus.

It was Sunday, October 8, 1871, and the famous evangelist Dwight Moody had just preached to his congregation and he ended his gospel presentation telling the people to go home to consider what had been said and to come back next week and he told them already that he was going to make an appeal the week after for people to give their lives to Jesus and to follow him.

Now as the congregants walked out of the church in Chicago that evening on October the 8th, 1871, the church bells were ringing all through the city and they could hear the fire trucks that were on their way to put out the fires that had just begun in Chicago.

This is well known as the fire of Chicago.

And it was a fire that lasted several days.

A hundred thousand residents were homeless after this huge fire that just ravaged through the city of Chicago.

Moody's church was burnt to the ground and he lost everything except his Bible.

But there was something that troubled him even more than losing his church building.

Because many of the people that he had spoken to on that Sunday he never saw again.

And till his death, Dwight Moody regretted not having made an appeal that evening.

As a matter of fact, this is what he later wrote.

He says, I have never since dared to give an audience a week to think of their salvation.

If they were lost, they might rise up in the judgment against me.

I have never seen that congregation since.

I will never meet those people until I meet them in another world, " he writes.

But I want to tell you of 1 lesson that I learned that night, which I have never forgotten, and that is this.

When I preach, I press Christ upon the people there and then and try to bring them to a decision on the spot.

I would rather have the right hand cut off than to give an audience a week to decide what to do with Jesus.

And as I read that I thought to myself, you know, if it was such a timely moment in 1871, how much more in 2020 or 2021 as we have just moved into the new year.

The time to make a decision for Christ was overdue for the people of Chicago in 1871 and I believe that the world needs to make a decision for Jesus and that time is indeed overdue.

We could say it this way, our world is on fire.

A global pandemic, a devastated economy, natural disasters, uncertainty, yeah, and what's next?

None of us know as we move into this new year.

And if there's a time to be right with God, I think it is now.

And so This is our first message here at ASI.

Our theme is overdue, but I'm not gonna wait with making an appeal to the last message.

The appeal will already be at the end of this 1.

Today's sermon is entitled The Long-Awaited Encounter.

And what we're gonna look at is an encounter that Jesus had with an individual 2, 000 years ago, and then we're going to look at the encounter that Jesus wants to have with you and me today.

And as we look at this story that we're going to start with in John chapter 4, I don't want you to approach the story thinking that you already know it, because this is always the danger when you preach from a familiar text.

When you preach from a familiar text, you go to the text and we have all our preconceived ideas about what the text is going to say because we've read it, after all.

But that's not really how the Bible works.

The Bible is not a book that you just, you know, peruse through and you read it and you then you put it back on the shelf.

I remember once my wife and I we were doing door-to-door work and I met this young man and we're trying to convince him to to study the Bible and and he says to me, he says, I've read that book already, I read it several years ago.

As if you just read the book and you're finished with it.

The Bible is like a diamond And it's like a diamond that when you hold it up in the light, it reflects to every single direction.

And when you twist that diamond, there are new reflections that appear, new colors that we see that we have previously not seen.

And so think about the Bible as that diamond that you hold up in the light.

Think about it, that you twist it and turn it and there are new dimensions about God's character and about your call and about the times in which we're living.

There are new appeals that are being made to you.

That's how we should read the Bible, amen?

We should read the Bible with a great interest to always receive something fresh, something new, something that we've not seen before.

When you read the Bible when you were 15, that's not the same way.

You're not the same person when you're reading the Bible when you're 20 or 25 or 30 or 35.

So you change and the Bible truths are revealed to you in new ways.

I actually just posted this on 1 of my social media yesterday.

I said we need to turn the page because you know think about it everyone is ready to turn the page right everyone wants to move on from 2020 to 2021 everyone wants to turn the page and get get get past 2020 but there are certain things that we cannot change There are certain things that are happening in the world that we do not have any influence over.

But then there are other parts of our life that we absolutely do have control over.

And may I appeal to you in 2021 to turn these pages?

Turn the page and let those pages turn you around.

Let them lead you to repentance and a new commitment to your Savior, Jesus Christ.

Okay, let's go to John chapter 4 and let's look at this story that happened 2, 000 years ago that I believe can speak into our lives today.

John chapter 4 beginning in verse 3, listen to what the Bible says.

He left Judea, talking about Jesus, and departed again to Galilee, but he needed to go through Samaria.

So he came to the city of Samaria, which is called Sikar, near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.

Now Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, therefore being wearied from his journey, sat thus by the well.

A woman of Samaria came to draw water and Jesus said to her, give me a drink.

For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food." Now I believe that this is a long-awaited encounter.

As we talk about this theme of overdue, we could well say that this was a meeting between these 2, Jesus and the Samaritan woman, that was overdue.

It needed to happen and it was within God's providence.

Make no mistake, there's absolutely no coincidence going on here.

Jesus had meticulously timed this long-awaited encounter.

He knew that he was going to meet that woman, that Samaritan woman, at the Jacob's well on this particular occasion.

Actually, this singular story here in John chapter 4 is a picture of the overarching story of Scripture.

God takes the initiative to reveal himself to fallen human beings.

We find this from Genesis all the way to Revelation.

If there's something that is fascinating with the scriptures is that it portrays a God that is always searching for lost humanity from the beginning till the end.

The late John Stott in his classic book, Basic Christianity, he puts it this way.

He says, the human race, now without God, he says, without God initiating contact with the human race, all we would be doing is erecting altars to the unknown God.

And that's taken from the story of Paul when he was in Athens, and he speaks to the people in Athens and he says, you know, he refers to their altar to the unknown gods and John Stott says that's all we would be doing, we would just be erecting altars in our life to the unknown God if God had not revealed himself to us.

He has revealed Himself through His Word and through the prophets and through Jesus Christ.

And He is seeking an encounter with each and every 1 of us.

He is actively seeking an encounter with you right now, even through the preaching of the Word, and through the reading and studying of the Scripture.

Then the woman of Samaria said to him, how is it that you, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman, for Jews have no dealings with Samaritans?

So How is that for like a conversation starter?

Have you ever been in 1 of those conversations that it's not just, it's just not going anywhere?

You know, we have a neighbor where we live.

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The Long-awaited Encounter

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