It Is Time

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IMPACT Scandinavia

IMPACT Scandinavia 2012: Plenary Sessions

Daniel Pel

Immune to the Gospel

Joakim Hjortland

IMPACT Scandinavia 2012 Monday Morning Devotional

Derek Morris

IMPACT Scandinavia 2012 Sabbath School

Jeremy Zwiker

IMPACT Scandinavia 2012 Sunday Morning Devotional

Father in heaven we thank you that we can come before you this morning.

We thank you for your Holy Spirit Which you have promised would guide us into all truth And so we ask for his presence right now in our hearts in our minds and may you speak to us each 1 individually and may we discern your voice for I ask this in the precious and almighty name of Jesus and let everyone say amen.

Turn your Bibles to the book of John, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, the fourth gospel book in the Bible, John chapter 1.

That's where we're going to start this morning.

Now you have come to a conference that is called impact impact, Scandinavia and I believe that each of you have come with a desire to be able to Impact people around you you want to impact your friends you want to impact your family you want to impact your colleagues you want to be a ambassador for Christ.

And yet in order for us to impact others, first we ourselves have to be impacted.

And what I want to talk about this morning, what I want to study with you this morning, is how we can be impacted by the gospel.

Not just once, not just twice, but on a day to day experience, a day to day momentarily experience of being impacted by the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And I believe that if you would pour out your heart to me tonight, this morning, that there would be many of you this morning that would recognize that in your life you need to be impacted.

That you are, maybe you are struggling with things that no 1 else knows about, But deep inside you have a longing to walk closer with God.

And there are things in your life that have pushed you away.

And you want to be impacted because you come here and you get inspired.

And yesterday evening we talked about all the city missions and what our church is doing on a global level.

And I'm sure that your heart is burning within you and you want to be involved but at the same time you're thinking to yourself, you know, I need to be impacted.

Yes, I want to be an impact to those around me but first of all, I need to be a deeper, on a deeper level impacted by the message of scripture.

I think many of you will be able to relate to what I will be saying this morning and I want to look at 3 areas when it comes to the impact that God makes on us.

I want to look first of all at the first encounter with Christ.

In other words, the first impact, meeting Jesus.

What I secondly want to look at is how it is so common and so easy to lose that impact.

So we're going to look at getting the impact and we're going to look at losing the impact and then thirdly we're going to look at regaining the impact So meeting Jesus for the first time.

What do we experience that first love that vigor that energy?

But what many times happens in the course of our Christian experience, we lose that and we become immune to the gospel.

And so we want to look at the first encounter with Christ, losing that focus, and then how do we regain and retain that spiritual experience?

These are the 3 areas that we're going to look at this morning.

So we're going to start with that first encounter with Christ, that first love, that encounter with the gospel, and we go to John chapter 1.

John chapter 1 and we're going to read about the experience of Nathaniel.

I just love this story and I pray that we may dig deep into this story and I believe that many of you are going to be able to relate to the experience of the disciple Nathaniel.

The Bible says the following day Jesus wanted to go to Galilee and he found Philip and said to him follow me and follow me that was the invitation to discipleship verse 44 now Philip was from Bethsaida the city of Andrew and Peter so Philip decides to follow Jesus now verse 45 not only does Philip decide to follow Jesus but immediately he is now going to extend this invitation to someone else and that is Nathaniel and this is This is where we really get into our story here.

And a little bit on in the story, we find out that he was sitting under a fig tree.

So I just wanted you to get that mental picture for a moment.

Nathanael is sitting under a fig tree and Philip is looking for him and then he finds his dear friend Nathanel and he comes up to him and listen to what he says.

Philip found Nathanel and said to him, we have found him capital H we have found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote Jesus of Nazareth the son of Joseph Now you need to understand the impact of that statement.

What is he actually saying to Nathanael that is sitting there under that fig tree?

He is saying that they have found the Son of God.

That they have found the promised Messiah, the Savior of the world.

Now, the Jews had been looking forward to the Messiah for hundreds of years.

There had been prophets that had come and gone, and they had written of a coming messiah there was this great anticipation of of of the messiah coming and now philip says to nathaniel you know what nathaniel we found him we found him This was not just some little statement to make, this was revolutionary.

And yet, what does Philip add to that statement?

He says, you know, we have found him, Jesus, what else does he say, of Nazareth.

Now the moment that he puts in that phrase of Nazareth, something is going through the mind of Nathanel.

What is going through the mind of Nathanel?

You know, Nazareth, can anything good come out of Nazareth?

I mean, if we're looking for the Messiah, shouldn't we be looking at the capital like Jerusalem or shouldn't we be looking at some other place?

I mean, certainly the Messiah cannot come out of Nazareth.

Look at Look at his response there in John chapter 1.

Nathanael said to him, Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

Now Nathanael is not saying this in an obnoxious way.

Nathaniel, as a matter of fact, when you look deep at the story, was a sincere seeker for truth.

He is sitting under the fig tree, and there are many things that are going through his mind.

This was a favorite place where he would be.

The desire of ages so beautifully portrays that as Philip comes to Nathanel, Nathanel's at that moment just considering whether or not Jesus is really the Messiah.

And he's going through it in his mind, thinking about the Old Testament prophecies, thinking about the evidence of the ministry of Jesus, and he's thinking to himself, can Jesus really be the promised Messiah?

And so Philip comes and he says, we have found him, we've found him, Jesus of Nazareth.

And, and, and not fully decided in his mind.

Nathaniel answers and said, says, can anything good come out of Nazareth?

He is not quite sure There is still this objection in his mind.

That is the fact can really this be the Messiah?

I mean he comes from Nazareth and Philip responds in such a Remarkable way that by the way if we're gonna learn how to do Evangelism if we're gonna learn how to reach out to people, this answer is just, it blows your mind.

Philip could have sat down next to Nathaniel, And they could have spent the rest of that day talking about the evidence why Jesus could actually come from Nazareth and be the Messiah.

They could have spent the whole day and Philip maybe at the end of the day, Maybe could have removed that argument out of the mind of Nathaniel.

And yet, even if he could remove that objection out of the mind of Nathaniel, would Nathaniel be 1 step closer to his Savior?

And so Philip says to Nathaniel come and See my friends when you reach out to people around you They are gonna have objections against our faith and those objections can be many They can have an objection as to the fact that why is there so much suffering in the world if God is a God of love?

That's a question that you meet many times.

Others can say, well, I don't believe in a resurrection.

Others will say, well I don't understand the Godhead.

There are many objections that people have in which they don't want to make that step to know Jesus because they have those objections.

And what we many times do is we sit down and we stay under the fig tree.

And we try to put God and we analyze Him and we use the scriptures.

And there is a place for this, to study these topics.

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Series

IMPACT Scandinavia 2012: Plenary Sessions

Immune to the Gospel

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Engage

1h 16m

Nothing Undone

34m

Our Message Has a Name

44m

Is God Enough?

1h 11m

There is Hope

Extreme Makeover

59m

The Stress Factor

52m

The Last Words Of Jesus

The Last Words of Jesus- Part 2

37m

Broken but Loved

1h

The Answer Was Created

The Answer Was Created 9

39m

The Plan of Salvation

05 God’s Part Our Part

1h 1m

Plenary

No Need To Fear: The Journey of Ellen Harmon and Samuel Rhodes

1h 1m

Jesus: The Lord of the Sabbath

1h

Sound Doctrine