Introduction
On Friday night Kathy and the kids and I drove over to Sam’s Club to pick up the new playground equipment for the church preschool. Many of you know the young man that works there at the exit door. He checks your things and your receipts as you leave, and almost without fail you won’t leave without him telling you to have a blessed day, or God bless you or something to that effect. I took a moment to introduce myself Friday night and ask him where he went to church. It is pretty exciting to watch such a young man on fire for the Lord. I thanked him for his testimony and told him that as a pastor it excites me to see Christian people be so vibrant and ready to be a witness for Christ. As I left, he said, "Brother, keep telling people about Jesus and I will too." Now admittedly he’s not in a Baptist church, but oh how I wish more of us had his great zeal for telling people about Jesus Christ!
This morning we’re continuing our look at 2 Corinthians 5:17-21.
"Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; to wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God. For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."
Remember that last week we began a message titled, "Every Member a Missionary," and said that every member of this church has been called upon by God to be ambassadors for Christ, to be representatives of the kingdom of God, to be missionaries to the people we know and encounter each day of our lives. In the Lord’s commission to His church, He told them to preach the gospel to every creature, to go into every corner of this world and share Jesus with those who have no hope. We’ve come to a place in the history of the Lord’s churches though when God’s people have forsaken their personal responsibility to be ambassadors and have adopted the thinking that they pay the pastor and church staff to share Jesus while they show up and enjoy the services. Oh how we’ve strayed from God’s plan for world evangelism!
Every one of you, whether you’re 15 years old or 50 years old, boy, girl, man or woman has a responsibility to share Christ with the people around you. God has called you to the mission field, a mission field that I can’t labor in. I can’t labor where you work or attend school. I can’t labor at your family reunions or where you hang out. God has called you to that field. You are His representatives to a world that’s racing hard to hell, and how you respond to that call may make the difference in whether those people spend eternity with or without Christ.
I want us to pause for a moment and pray. Before I give you the last two points of this message, I want you to honestly evaluate your own responsiveness to God’s calling on your life to represent Him. Have you been responsive? Are you sharing your faith? I’m going to lead us in a word of prayer, and as I do I want you to pray with me and plead with the Lord to do something great in our midst through the remainder of this message.
I really believe that every one of you who is saved wants to be a better representative for Christ, a better missionary in your mission field. Why do I believe that? Because the Spirit of God that lives in you is the same Spirit that convicted you of your need for Christ and is the same Spirit that is in the world today convicting those who are lost to receive Christ and He’s the same Spirit that leads you to act in obedience to Christ.
In order to be the best ambassador for Christ you can be, we said that first you need to know the Son of God. If you’ve never been saved, you need to enter a relationship with God through His Son Jesus Christ. The Bible says that you have no hope of eternal life outside of Jesus Christ. Without Jesus you are dead in trespasses and sin and are under the condemnation of God and are destined to spend eternity in a devil’s hell. You need to come to Christ in salvation. You need to admit to Him that you have sinned and have fallen short of God’s glory. You need to repent of that sin and trust Christ to save you. TThe wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord!"
Not only do you need to know the Son of God, but also you need to know the heart of God. Missions is the heartbeat of God. He is at work in the world today reconciling a lost humanity to Himself, and He has invited each of us to be a part of that. The natural man resists sharing Christ with other people. Our sinful flesh lies as it tries to control our thoughts and actions when the Spirit of God in us prompts us to proclaim the Savior. Just yesterday, I was speaking to the elderly man who lives behind me. I’ve only spoken with him 3 or 4 times. I was out back working on my rabbit cages and he came over and we got to talking about his health and his past and those sorts of things, and as I listened I know just as sure as I’m standing here that God wanted me to share Christ with that man. The Spirit told me to ask him about his relationship with Christ, but I talked myself out of it. Later in the day I was thinking about this message and was trying to organize the material in my mind when the Lord reminded me of my failure. Here I am telling you to be a better ambassador when I refused to share Christ myself! What was that? It was me allowing my sinful, natural man to win out over the Spirit’s desire within me. God’s heart was beating through me to reach that man, and if I am going to be a better missionary for Christ, then I am going to have to align my heart with God’s.
Now, in addition to these two things, if you want to become a better missionary for Christ...
YOU NEED TO KNOW THE PLAN OF GOD
When Jesus left this earth, He commissioned His church to be actively involved in world missions. In Acts 1:8, He said, "...and you shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth." Our concern today is not the uttermost part of the earth, or Samaria or even Judea. Our concern today is our Jerusalem-it is the place you live, it is your mission field. You might call a missionary to go to Russia, you’d call one to go to Montana, you may call one to go to McKinney, but God’s plan is that you reach the people right where you live.
Look with me at verse 20 of our text. "Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God." You are one of Christ’s ambassadors! You are His missionaries! How is this world being reconciled, led to Christ? Through you! Paul said that it was as though God was pleading with those people through him and the others. "We pray you in Christ’s stead, on His behalf, be reconciled to God."
Don’t you see it? God’s plan is that you be the channel through which He speaks. You know, we’re trying to replace our church sound system. When we lived in Mexia, our church sat outside of town on a highway where a lot of trucks passed by. Occasionally our pastor would be preaching along and really getting into the message when a trucker would pass by and we would pick him up on our sound system. Suddenly when we were supposed to be hearing the preaching of God’s Word, we’d be hearing the trucker. Maybe you’ve been in churches where something like that has happened. It’s very frustrating when we’re trying to preach and the thing is humming, hissing, popping or echoing back at us. It’s frustrating for you when you can’t hear what we’re saying.
"The goal of a church sound system is to provide a singular clarity for one voice during the weekly sermon. While most pastors would object to static and other interference on Sunday mornings, we should realize that God feels that way too."(1)
Like the sound system, your work as ambassadors or missionaries for Christ is to provide a singular and crystal clarity for God’s voice-not ours. You are God’s sound system. You are the medium through which He speaks and works and is trying to reconcile this world. Are you creating frustration because the message is not being heard?
Yesterday when I failed to share Christ, how frustrated God must have been to have been shouting the message of salvation to my neighbor, only to have His sound system, me, short circuit before the message got out. You don’t have to share the gospel like others do. You don’t have to share it like Billy Graham or anybody else. God has chosen you to represent Him and He wants to speak through you to the people you encounter using you just like you are as you grow in your relationship with Him. D.L. Moody once spoke with a woman who didn’t like his method of evangelism. "I don’t really like mine all that much either. What’s yours?" She replied that she didn’t have one. Moody said, "Then I like mine better than yours."(2)
Listen, is God getting His message to the world through you? I’m not asking you to answer whether He is getting it out through me or anyone else-you won’t answer for me, only for yourself.
YOU NEED TO KNOW THE WAY OF GOD
We’ve said that you need to know the Son of God-you can’t represent Christ if you’ve never met Him. You need to know the heart of God-this goes beyond meeting Christ to knowing Christ and knowing His heart’s desire, and that is to reconcile a lost humanity to Himself. You need to know the plan of God. God’s plan is to speak through you, to plead with people through you. One might assume that if you know all of that you would know the way of God, but that’s not necessarily so. I’ve asked people before if they know how to share Christ with others, and too often they’ll say no.
In verse 21, Paul said, "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." There’s the way of God! God, who longs to have a relationship with man, could not because man had sinned against Him. When Adam turned his back on God in the garden, God had to turn His back on man-He could not accept him in his sinful state. But God was not content to leave man in that condition-He provided the means whereby fellowship could be restored. He chose to remove the enmity that stood between Himself and man, and the means He chose to use to remove that enmity was Jesus Christ. God made Jesus Christ the sacrifice for our sin. He knew no sin! He had done nothing wrong! Why did He do it? So that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him! God so loved the world - He so loved you that He gave His only begotten Son to be the payment for your sin so that you might be called the sons of God!
When man’s back was turned to God and God’s back was turned to man, God provided a way that fellowship could be restored. In essence, He turned around to look at man and offered this invitation: I have made a way for you to come back to me. I’m looking at you now with a deep desire to have fellowship with you, but you must receive the payment I made for your sin. If you’ll receive that payment we can have a relationship. If you won’t receive my payment, then you won’t receive me. The hardest part for most people is to hear that they are sinners and to have to admit that they’ve done something wrong, but God won’t budge-the way of salvation is the way of confession and repentance and trust.
That’s the way of God! God’s plan is to share His wonderful message of redemption to man through you. God’s way is not the way of asking Jesus into your heart. That’s a man-made plan of salvation. It sounds cute and simple, but it leaves out repentance and faith. God’s way is not the way of being good or staying faithful. That’s man’s religion and it will leave a person empty and hopeless in the end. God’s way is Jesus Christ, who said, "I am the way, the truth and the life, no man comes to the Father but by me." Sounds foolish to many, and maybe it sounds foolish to you when you try to share it, but there’s nothing foolish about it. In fact, Paul said that "the gospel is the power of God unto salvation!"
Conclusion
Turn with me to Ezekiel 3:17-19.
"Son of man, I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel: therefore hear the word at my mouth, and give them warning from me. When I say unto the wicked, thou shalt surely die; and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life: the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand. Yet if thou warn the wicked, and he turn not from his wickedness, nor from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou has delivered thy soul."
Without giving you a lot of commentary, understand that God had called the prophet Ezekiel to go and preach God’s message to the people of Israel. In verse 17, we see God’s plan has always been the same: "give them warning from me." Ezekiel, you are my microphone, my PA system, plead with them on my behalf. Then we see the way of God. Warn them! Tell them what’s coming and give them my message. Is that not what God has called upon us to do?
But what God says next is what I want us to see. God holds those whom He has called personally responsible for not sharing His message. He holds us personally responsible for not being the means through which He speaks. "When I say to the wicked, thou shalt surely die; and you don’t warn him or speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way to save his life, and he dies in his sin, I’m holding you responsible." When God says to the lost man that he has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and the wages of his sin is death, and that without Christ as his Savior he’ll die in his sin and perish, and we refuse to warn him to lead him to salvation - if that man dies in his sin, then God holds us in part responsible. Could it be that there are people in hell who crossed our paths and we refused to share Christ with them? Is it possible that they are there in part because of us? We don’t like to think so, but the Bible sheds different light on the issue.
He went on to say, if you do warn him and he still refuses, then you have done your part and you are in the clear. You see, it is not your job or mine to get people saved. Our responsibility as ambassadors is to share the message of our King. It is up to them what they want to do with it.
When our ambassadors went to plea with the people of Iraq, whose message did they share? Was it theirs or the message of President Bush? When they shared the message, what determined whether they had done their duty? Sharing the message or for Iraq to cooperate? Surely they would have liked to convince him, but that was up to him. They had fulfilled their duties. Our job as missionaries is much the same. You share the message. They accept or reject it.
What kind of missionary have you been for Christ? Have you been fulfilling your calling? Have you been representing Christ to your Jerusalem or have you been enjoying the vacation here while the natives go to hell? How effective have you been as God’s personal sound system? Is His message getting through loud and clear? Or has He been frustrated by the constant static and interference as your flesh puts God’s desires on the back burner?
"There is a legend which recounts the return of Jesus to glory after His time on earth. Even in heaven He bore the marks of His earthly pilgrimage with its cruel cross and shameful death. The angel Gabriel approached Him and said, "Master, you must have suffered terribly for men down there."
"I did," He said.
"And," continued Gabriel, "do they know all about how you loved them and what you did for them?"
"Oh, no," said Jesus, "not yet. Right now only a handful of people in Palestine know."
Gabriel was perplexed. "Then what have you done," he asked, "to let everyone know about your love for them?"
Jesus said, "I’ve asked Peter, James, John, and a few more friends to tell other people about me. Those who are told will in turn tell other people about me, and my story will be spread to the farthest reaches of the globe. Ultimately, all of mankind will have heard about my life and what I have done."
Gabriel frowned and looked rather skeptical. He knew well what poor stuff men were made of. "Yes," he said, "but what if Peter and James and John grow weary? What if the people who come after them forget? What if way down through the centuries people just donÂ’t tell others about you? Haven’t you made any other plans?"
And Jesus answered, "I haven’t made any other plans. IÂ’m counting on them."
Twenty-one centuries later-He still has no other plan. He’s counting on you and me to continue His work of reconciling the world to Himself, to continue the work so many have faithfully carried out before us. Will we do so well?(3)
Works Cited
1. Fabarez, Michael. Preaching That Changes Lives. (Thomas Nelson Publishers: Nashville. 2002) p. 14
2. Timothy K. Jones. www.sermonillustrations.com
3. Author Unknown
