Title: It’s Personal-Too Many Questions
Place: BLCC
Date: 9/17/17
Text: John 1.43-49
CT: We are to know Him.
[Screen 1]
FAS: While staying alone in her convent, an 85-year-old Catholic nun got trapped inside a broken elevator for four nights and three days. She tried pushing the inside elevator door, but the electricity went off. She had her cell phone with her, but there wasn't a signal. Fortunately, she had carried a jar of water, some celery sticks, and a few cough drops into the elevator.
At first she said to herself, This can't happen! But then she decided to turn her elevator into a personal prayer retreat. "It was either panic or pray," she later told an interviewer for CNN. She started viewing the experience as a "gift." "I believe that God's presence was my strength and my joy—really," she said. "I felt God's presence almost immediately. I felt like he provided the opportunity for a closer relationship."
LS: Would we take being trapped in an elevator as a gift from God. Maybe that is what we all need if it gets us closer to God?
Starting a 4-week series today. In this series I am going to try and show what an adult who decides to follow Christ goes through to get there. I am talking about someone who truly follows Jesus, who makes Him first in their life and gives it all to him. My goal for this series is to bring anyone who is hanging on the edge on over to following Jesus. This may sound a bit arrogant on my part. You are not going to come to Jesus unless you are ready. I understand that. But maybe you are more ready than you think.
You probably have some good reasons why you are not following Jesus. I am not going to tell you that you are crazy and these reasons you have don’t need to be dealt with. There are many reasons people give for not following Jesus.
Here are a few reasons you may give me if we got together to discuss your salvation.
Too much suffering…How could I follow someone who allows such bad things to happen all over the world.
Know too many Christians…Don’t know if I want to be like them.
Raised in a different religious upbringing.
What about all the other religions? Aren’t they good and can get us to heaven? I don’t know if I could follow this Jesus as the only way to God stuff.
My family doesn’t buy into this Jesus stuff. Am I going to tell them they are all wrong? Am I going to tell uncle Bob and aunt Sue they are wrong.
Maybe you just don’t care. You have no desire to follow Christ. Just don’t feel the need.
So maybe I am being a bit naïve thinking I could change your mind on all these issues and get you to become a Christian and follow Christ.
But don’t get me wrong you have some big questions to get answered. You can’t ignore them.
Then something happens and these questions don’t seem so important. A tragedy comes into your life. It hits and the questions don’t seem quite so big anymore.
It becomes personal.
Huge obstacles to God get small all of a sudden.
God becomes larger and you may even find yourself talking to him or at least fussing at Him.
It gets personal.
You may even start to read the Bible because someone said you should.
Wish we all did more of that.
You start to develop a relationship with God. For some reason there is a tension there that makes you push back against God, but yet you can’t push Him completely away.
Lets look at it this way.
Going to talk to married men first. Do you remember why you didn’t want to get married? [Screen 2]
Freedom
Commitment
Money
Other married people.
Too young
What if I meet someone else afterwards?
How many of you work through these and get them out of the way before you give in and got married. [Screen 3]
SEX. No wait a minute. [Screen 4]
LOVE. You met somebody. No longer were talking about marriage you had someone to marry. It gets real personal.
All the obstacles get real small. You want to marry this person who meets all the things you ever dreamed of…
That’s what happens when we become Christians. It becomes personal and obstacles we have keeping us from following shrink.
Ladies…Why would a woman want a baby. It is dangerous, it messes with your body, and it takes over your life. But something takes over and shrinks all the obstacles keeping you from having a baby. It is “your” baby. It’s worth it.
It’s personal.
You have got to keep your objections to Christianity. They won’t go away but they will get smaller and smaller.
Once a person embraces Jesus the obstacles to following Jesus shrink down to nothing. They fall in love with the Savior.
Let’s go to scripture and see what it has to show us on this. [Screen 5]
John 1.43-49. This is as Jesus is adding people to his group of disciples.
43 The next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Finding Philip, he said to him, “Follow me.” Philip had seen enough of Jesus to know he was ready to follow Him. [Screen 6]
44 Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida. [Screen 7]
45 Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”
Now Nathaniel was skeptical .He was like most of us. He questioned everything. This guy couldn’t be the one Moses was talking about. That was hundreds of years ago. He didn’t put much stock in what Philip was saying. [Screen 8]
46 “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Nathanael asked.
Nazareth was a low down place where nothing was happening. In the first century it had a bad reputation. Philip kind of blew it when he said Nazareth was where Jesus was from.
It would be like if your cousin had colon cancer and you try to tell everyone you just found a person who could cure it. He was from Buzzard Roost. You know down close to Frogtown
Philip could have messed up and tried to argue with Nathaniel about Nazareth but he didn’t. He said. [Screen 9]
“Come and see,” said Philip. Come and see. That is the best thing we can say to anyone seeking salvation. Come and see.
If you have a lot of obstacles to Christianity you will love this next scripture. It confirms that there is a lot of doubt that needs to be dealt with in the Bible.
[Screen 10]
47 When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, “Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.” Jesus has to be thinking here comes a guy who is not going to buy some fake story. Here comes a guy who shoots straight. Here comes a guy who will see through any foolery. But Nathaniel asks Jesus a very important question.
[Screen 11]
48 “How do you know me?” Nathanael asked. How do you know me?
Whoa. Nathaniel just asked the most important question he could ask. He asked Jesus how he knew him. [Screen 12]
Jesus answered, “I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.”
It became personal for Nathaniel. Jesus was not a category, a theory or something he didn’t know. Jesus knew his name and it was personal now. [Screen 13]
49 Then Nathanael declared, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel.”
It became very personal for Nathaniel. He became a follower of Jesus even with all the questions he had about Nazareth and Jesus. The questions became small and not important as he became close to Jesus.
That is what rational adults do when they decide to follow Jesus.
[Screen 14]
1. The Bible
2. Suffering
3. Miracles
4. Other religions
5. Family
What is most important to God? What did Jesus tell us God wanted? When we know this it changes all we may believe. Jesus tells us in [Screen 15] Matthew 22.37:
This is in red.
Love…Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
It doesn’t begin by getting your questions answered.
You love him with your heart and soul first. Then you can love Him with your mind.
[Screen 16]
1. The Bible
2. Suffering
3. Miracles
4. Other religions
5. Family
It’s Personal.
Our questions get smaller.
Like Nathaniel we don’t worry about where Jesus is from. We worry that He knows us.
It’s personal. It is very real.
Love relationship.
It’s personal.
Your Heavenly Father wants you to know Him more than he wants you to know the answers to all your questions.
He wants you to love Him more than you want to have the answers to your questions answered.
Isn’t that what you want from other people. Don’t you want them to love you before they know all the answers about you? This is God’s divine nature in us. It should help us understand where God is coming from. God wants us to love Him.
If I have all the answers about you God, but don’t truly know you I just have a bunch of info about you and not a relationship. [Screen 17}
It has to be personal.
It has to be a relationship. This gets us past all the questions we may have about Christianity. The questions will shrink or disappear, as we become closer to God.
I want you to pray this prayer to God. This won’t make you a Christian. You have to be baptized and truly follow, but it is a good place to start.
Heavenly Father. I want to know you more than I want to know the answers to my questions.
If you can be known I want to know you and have a personal relationship with you.
That is a request your heavenly father can’t wait to answer.
In time, your questions will go away or get smaller and smaller until they no longer rule what you’re thinking.
It begins when you invite Him to make it personal.
Thank you God for making it personal.
Give us the courage to keep it personal.
Help us to know who you are… Our Heavenly Father.
More than we want to get answers about you.
He sent his Son to take our sins.
How much more could he love you?
Bibliography
Stanley, Andy; It’s Personal; A New Approach; North Point
