We Are Christ's Ambassadors: 2 Corinthians 5:11-21

Please turn in your Bibles to Second Corinthians chapter five.

You're reading verses eleven to twenty one.

Reading God's holy word.

Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others.

But what we are is known to God, and I hope it is known also to your conscience.

We are not committing ourselves to you again, but giving you cause to boast about us, so that you may be able to answer those who boast about outward appearance, and not about what is in the heart.

For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God.

If we are in our right mind, it is for you.

For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this, that one has died for all, therefore all have died.

And he died for all that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was raised.

From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh.

Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

The old has passed away.

Behold, the new has come.

All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.

We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

For our sake he made him to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

This is the reading of God's perfect, powerful, and precious word.

And so we pray and ask the Spirit's help.

Lord, we thank you for this message.

We thank you for your gift of reconciliation.

Spirit of God, would you please fill our minds with truth?

Fill our hearts with the Holy Spirit so that we can take this message to those who need it desperately.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

This morning the title is We Are Christ Ambassadors.

We.

You don't need a reverend in front of your name.

You don't need to go to seminary.

If you're a child of God, you have been called to be an ambassador for Christ.

That's what we're talking about.

That's what we're thinking about this morning.

This message was birthed out of the evangelism class we just finished on Sunday nights in Key Equipping.

A lot of us just spent the last 10 weeks thinking about evangelism.

Evangelism is sharing the gospel with other people who don't know Christ.

We've spent the last 10 weeks thinking and praying, and we've seen God already at work in some powerful ways.

Some of you sitting here right now this morning have come to Christ in the last 10 weeks.

You're new creations.

This gospel is powerful when it's not put on the fringe, but it's in the center of our lives.

This gospel is powerful.

This morning we're going to talk about that.

The Apostle Paul summed it up in our passage, talking about two things primarily: the message of reconciliation and the ministry of reconciliation.

And that is for every Christian.

What does the Bible mean by this word reconciliation?

This would be a good week to take notes.

Some of you have not heard about reconciliation before.

This is a biblical term.

This is a doctrine.

The doctrine of reconciliation presupposes enmity between two parties.

Biblically, that means that all of us are born as enemies of God.

And that God is our enemy.

And I've been a pastor long enough to hear many people tell me I don't think that's true.

I've heard many people tell me this.

I've never quarreled with God.

I'm cool with God.

You just haven't heard the Bible.

The Bible says we were all born as enemies in sin.

Distant, dead in our sins.

That's why we need to hear this.

God is the author of reconciliation.

There's eight verbs in this paragraph, verses 18 to 21, that describe God's gracious initiative, God reconciling, God giving, God appealing to us, God making Christ to be sin for us.

And the list goes on.

Do you know the only thing that we contribute to reconciliation is our sin.

That's the only thing that you and I contribute to reconciliation.

Our sin.

Reconciliation is the establishment of harmony and peace between enemies.

Enemies are reconciled when their hostility ceases and love binds them together.

Romans chapter 5 is one very clear text.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

Listen to what the Bible says about when you were God's enemy.

When I was God's enemy.

For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare die.

But God shows his love for us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Since therefore we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God?

For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, how much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life?

More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Reconciliation is a work which is finished.

It's past tense.

God has already done all the work necessary to make his enemies his friends.

And so what we're looking at initially this morning is the message of reconciliation.

There's three things that we get from this text: a new peace.

If you have your Bibles, just flip over to Romans chapter 5, where I just read.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

Listen to what this says.

The Bible says about this reconciliation.

Therefore, since we have now been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Again, I've been a pastor for a long time.

I've heard many people say, oh, that's great.

I have that peace now.

I feel better.

That's not what he's talking about.

When he says we have now been because we've been now reconciled with God, we have peace.

He's not talking about how you feel inside.

He's not saying, oh, now that I have Christ, I just feel so much better.

That's not what that word means in that context.

What that word means in Romans chapter 5, verse 1, is God says, through the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross, the war between me and you is over.

Romans 5:1

We are now reconciled.

We are friends.

No more war.

No more battle.

Paul says this so many times in the New Testament.

Colossians chapter 1, verse 21.

Colossians 1:21

Once you were alienated from God and you were enemies in your minds.

But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death on the cross to present you holy in his sight without blemish.

And listen to this, wait for it.

And free from accusation.

You could use more of that, couldn't you?

When the enemy accuses you.

When your conscience rises up against you.

Playing that mental video of where you messed up.

What I've done that I regret.

What I've done that I'm ashamed of.

When the flesh wants to bring those back up on the big screens of your mind.

And free us from all accusation because of the blood of Jesus Christ.

Because Christ died on the cross.

We are not only forgiven, but we are reconciled to God the Father.

The accusations are done.

A new peace, but secondly a new creation.

Verse 17.

This is a verse that a lot of us have memorized.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation.

Or she is a new creation.

As I had somebody in my office this week, we were talking about that.

She's a new creation.

Behold, the old is gone.

The new has come.

You're a new creature.

When you come to Jesus Christ in faith and repentance, and you acknowledge him as your Lord and your Savior, you became a new creation.

Praise God.

A.T.

Robertson, Greek scholar, said this is an old word for the act of creating.

God brings about a change in us that is like the act of creation itself.

Did you know that?

Take that in.

Think of what he did in creating the world and the heavens and the earth.

I mean, how powerful was that?

When you come to Christ, the moment you come to Christ, and the Spirit gives you a new heart and a new life, you become a new creation.

A new creation.

The old has gone.

This is in the air is tense in the Greek.

That means there was a definitive change.

There was a point in time.

Every Christian has a point in their life, whether you were four years old or 14 or 40 or 84, it doesn't matter.

When you come to Christ at that very moment, that point of time, the old you is gone, dead, buried, in God's sight.

The new has come.

This is not in the heiress tense.

This is in the perfect tense.

It's something that starts at a point in time and it continues and it keeps continuing.

It doesn't stop.

The new you.

How do you like the new you?

Huh?

Are you liking the new you?

All this is from God, he says.

The Apostle Paul put it differently in Galatians chapter 2, verse 20.

Galatians 2:20

For I have been crucified with Christ.

Yet not I, but Christ now lives in me, and the life I live by live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

That's the new you.

That's what the Bible calls the great exchange.

Christ died for you so that you will now live for him.

The second death, well, let me back up.

There's two deaths what he's talking about in Galatians 2, verse 20.

Galatians 2:20

The death of Christ and the death of you.

This is true for every Christian, no exceptions.

The second death is absolutely dependent on the first death.

Unless Christ died for you, you would never die to your sin.

You would never, you would always be lost in your sin.

He puts it so beautifully in the verse in our text, 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 21.

2 Corinthians 5:21

But God made him who knew no sin, Jesus, to become sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God.

For our sake he did this.

For our sake.

Jesus became what we were.

Sin, so that he might make us what he is.

Righteous in God's sight.

This is the gospel.

The gospel is good news to all who see their sin, who all who flee from their sin, who all come to this Savior Jesus Christ.

This is good news.

We must understand it and we must take it into our hearts.

Jesus says, charge, charge their sin to me.

Charge their sin to me.

I will take the penalty.

Not counting our sins against us.

This is an accounting term that Paul uses.

Not counting our sins against us.

Did you know that was possible?

Did you know that it's possible for God to one day lay down the book of all the record of your sins, to lay it down and say, forgiven, forgotten, covered.

This is the gospel.

The great exchange.

Ezekiel chapter 36 talks about this beautiful concept of God giving us a new heart and a new record.

Ezekiel 36 · chapter mention

He talks about the way that the Holy Spirit comes upon us.

He says the nations, what he will do for the nations, that he will come and give us a new record.

I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries.

I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your unrighteousness and from all your idols.

And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will take away the heart of stone from your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes.

This is almost too much to take in, isn't it?

But it's true.

It's true for every Christian.

Now there are many people who claim to be Christians who aren't Christians.

You know, you're not a Christian if you just say a prayer so you don't go to hell.

That doesn't make you a Christian.

You're not a Christian just because you joined this church.

You're not a Christian just because you have religious experiences.

You're only a Christian when you understand that you were God's enemy.

But because of his love for you, he put down his sword.

He says, I am going to bring you, I'm going to do everything you need me to do to bring you to myself.

And one day you believed that, and one day you repented of your sin.

And one day you came to Christ, and he made you a new creation.

This is the good news.

Philip Hughes, the commentator, says, as it is on him, Christ, that the full force of judgment against our sins has fallen, so it is in him that we find shelter from God's judgment.

Jesus is our ark.

Noah wasn't the only one that had an ark.

Jesus.

He says, Come, come for refuge.

We have a new, we are a new creation.

Thirdly, we have a new mission, a new ministry in our lives.

The passage I just read, chapter 5, verse 11, therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others.

What is it that we persuade others of?

Don't keep going down that path that leads to destruction.

You need to turn and go in this direction.

Because there's a real God and there's a real hell.

And there's a real heaven.

A lot of people today don't know that.

Who's going to tell them?

A lot of our friends don't even go to church.

Who's going to tell them?

Verse 14, for the love of Christ controls us, for the love of Christ compels us.

The love of Jesus is gripping me more and more and more.

I must tell this good news to other people.

Verse 15, that we no longer live for ourselves, but we now live for Jesus.

That's why this morning in your bulletin you have this little cutout we call pick five.

We're asking you, I'm asking you this morning to ask God to show you who are five people that you're pretty sure are not Christians.

And you're going to write their names down, and you're going to maybe keep like I do, I keep it in my Bible so I see it.

Who do you know that's not a Christian?

Who do you know?

You're pretty sure that they they just don't understand this.

Would you make that an offering to God?

And say, I'm I'm going to start praying for these five people.

We had an evangelism class in our church 20 years ago.

That's when we were first introduced to this concept.

I've seen a lot of people come to Christ on this pick five.

Asking you, would you just would you just ask God, who is it?

In my family?

My neighborhood?

My work?

God, would you please save them?

I'm gonna keep praying until you do.

Oh, this new mission that we have.

Something else I have.

This little booklet, it's called Ultimate Questions by John Blanchard.

I have a number of copies just outside the lobby to your left, my left, as you go out.

It's just a great, great book.

What does it mean to be a Christian?

Ultimate questions that people have.

Feel free to pick one up if you would like.

What we're talking about so far in this message is the message of reconciliation.

So we're taking in this gospel, but now we're going to focus in the last moments for the ministry of reconciliation.

One of the authors that we've been reading the last 10 weeks in this evangelism class, Sunday nights, is Becky Pippert.

Becky Pippert is one of the most gifted evangelists I know of.

She's written, she wrote a book back in the day called Out of the Salt Shaker Into the World.

Pretty good title.

Jesus says, You are the salt of the earth.

Well, what good is salt if it's still in the salt shaker?

How do you answer that?

Salt does no good for anybody if it's still in the salt shaker.

Is the salt still in the salt shaker in your life?

Get it out.

Out of the salt shaker, into the world.

This matters what we're talking about this morning.

People are gonna go to heaven or they're gonna go to hell.

And we can't just sit back and say, well, if God wants to save them, God can save them.

That's what too many people do.

The Bible doesn't teach that anywhere.

The Bible says if you understand the message of reconciliation, if you understand what it means to be a sinner saved by the grace of Jesus, and your sins are forgiving, you will take this message to other people.

You'll be part of that mission.

Becky Pippert, the second book we looked at is titled.

Stay salt, she wrote 30 years later, Stay Salt.

Becky says, almost every church, and she travels all over the world, she's traveled all over, literally all over the world for the last 50 years in this ministry of evangelism.

Becky says, virtually every church I go to and visit, they tell me this.

They all say the same thing.

The weakest ministry in our church is evangelism.

The weakest ministry in our church.

Our Christian education is pretty good, our fellowship is pretty good.

You know, this is good, the children's ministry is pretty good, whatever.

Why is that?

Why is that?

Let me just give you a sample of some of these quotes from Becky.

From the moment that Christ's followers received the gift of the Holy Spirit, the world has been impacted by the surge of divine life that began flowing through them.

Matt Brown read about that this morning.

That's happened the day of Pentecost.

They had a new power, a new purpose, a new praise, and a new pouring out of love that turned them in the world upside down.

You know that's factual, that's historical.

Rome was turned upside down within a few centuries by a small group of Christians who believed the good news and were filled with the Holy Spirit, and the world started to change.

And it's changed ever since.

When the promised Holy Spirit came and filled every believer, it was a clear sign that from then on, everyone who named the Jesus, who named the name of Jesus, would receive God's life-changing, empowering Spirit.

This is why the Holy Spirit's role in evangelism is so important.

Because of the Spirit's divine power within us, we can do by the Holy Spirit what we could never do by ourselves.

Knowing that God is the power in evangelism sets us free from fear because evangelism is not something that we do alone.

It's about God empowering us.

When we ask the Holy Spirit to give us boldness and courage and anointing and the power to share the good news, He will.

We do not simply give information when we share the gospel.

By the Spirit's power, we give the Spirit gives power to our words and effectiveness.

It's not our brilliance, it's not our cleverness, it's not our arguments that bring people to Christ.

It's God's Spirit working in us.

It's the Holy Spirit alone who opens blind eyes.

Our lack of dependence on the Spirit's power is perhaps the single most glaring deficiency in the Western Church, especially when compared to the early church or today in the global South.

The early church demonstrated great courage in their witness.

They were bursting at the seams with spiritual power, even while they were experiencing catastrophic consequences for being Christians.

We, on the other hand, today, often shrink back because somebody raises an eyebrow toward us.

Are you convicted like I am?

I mean, how many times have I, you know, we've even stopped?

Well, we don't want to offend them.

Well, the Bible says, make the offense the cross of Jesus Christ, not you.

Don't you be offensive.

But the cross is going to be offensive to people who don't think they need a Savior.

Becky, one last quote from Becky.

Learning how to walk in the Spirit means asking the Spirit to guide us to people that He is seeking.

And then expecting that He will, and He's ready when He does.

The truth is that expectation is rooted in faith, and it is very important for evangelistic fruitfulness.

If we expect little from the Lord, we often get little.

If we expect much, we often ask much, and oftentimes we will receive more than we asked or even imagined.

This is the ministry of reconciliation.

This is not given to the now five pastors on this staff.

This is given to the 600 people who worship with us every Sunday.

This is the ministry that's given to us.

The ministry of reconciliation.

Friends, evangelism cannot be done effectively unless our hearts, our hearts are being stirred by the Holy Spirit and the good news is still good news.

So let me come back to that.

Is the good news getting better for you?

Or are you just kind of like taking it for granted?

No, this, yeah, I'm a Christian.

I'm a Christian.

You know?

He's not going to use you.

He's just not going to use you.

If your heart is half dead, and if you don't have a love for the lost, and you don't see God's missionary heart, you're not going to do much.

This is why he saved us.

To share the news.

People need Christ.

Who's going to tell them if we don't?

Jim Boyce, the Bible commentator, said, talking about being filled with the Holy Spirit that Becky was talking about in the book of Acts, it always refers to proclaiming the message of Christ, being filled with the Spirit.

Being filled with the Spirit in the book of Acts is always taking the message that you know and taking it and declaring it and speaking it to other people.

Jack Miller, my mentor, said this, and we talked about this every single week in the class, I think, evangelism class.

What matters most in evangelism is having the gospel at work in your own life.

It must be changing you by the power of the Holy Spirit in your own life if it's going to mean anything to other people.

I personally believe that's probably the most misunderstood thing about it all in evangelism.

We get this idea that evangelism really comes.

I'm not good at it, I'm not an expert.

I haven't studied enough.

I don't have the silver bullet for evangelism.

No, that's not the way it works.

Jack's right.

The single most important thing in evangelism is what the gospel is doing in your heart.

I believe that.

I think we have more and more people in this church that are believing that.

If you don't believe me, let me give you William Temple.

William Temple said this a long time ago.

No one can possess the Holy Spirit and keep the Spirit to himself.

Where the Holy Spirit is, he flows forth.

If there's no flowing forth, he's not there.

He must be aware, we must be aware of any claim to the fullness of the Holy Spirit, which does not lead to an evangelistic concern and outreach to other people.

We can only drink small gulps as we keep coming, drinking, believing, so that by the mighty operation of the Holy Spirit within us, our little sips are multiplied into a mighty confluence of flowing streams.

Rivers of water will flow out from us to others.

What did Jesus say in John 7 37?

For anyone who is thirsty, let them come to me and drink.

Are you thirsty this morning?

Are you thirsty for Jesus?

Are you thirsty for other people who are thirsty?

Jesus says, Let them come to me, and out of their bellies will flow rivers, not trickles, rivers of living water.

That's what the temple's saying.

This is the spontaneous outflow from a spirit-filled Christian's life to the blessing of others.

But there's no other way to ensure that constant flow except to keep coming back to Jesus and to keep drinking.

It's appropriated by faith.

I have a sense that this is one of the most important sermons I'm going to preach to you.

I just have that sense.

Most churches are dead because the good news is not that good to them.

Most churches are not evangelizing because they're scared.

They say that's not my thing.

Well, I hope we've already abolished that argument.

It's not about you.

It's not about how confident you are.

It's not about how persuasive you are.

Are you learning how to open up to the Holy Spirit so that those rivers of living water will flow more deeply within you and flow out from you?

It's the Spirit who does the work.

It's the Spirit who does the saving.

It's not you, it's not me.

I've never saved anyone.

But sometimes I'm a vessel that he can use.

This is important, my friends.

We've got a John Stott quote.

Let's see if we've got it.

We got that on the slide?

There we go.

If God was to Jesus, He who sent me, then Jesus must be to us, He who sent us.

The church is the community of Jesus who have first been chosen out of the world and then sent back into the world.

In order to qualify for the name church, we must be a community deeply and constantly aware of our sentness and actively loyal to be part of this Christian identity.

May I have the second slide?

Just as the Spirit, just as the Spirit came upon Jesus to equip him for his public ministry, so now the Spirit was to come upon his people to equip them for theirs.

He would impel them to proclaim throughout the world the good news of his salvation.

Salvation is given, to be shared, not kept.

We are Christ's ambassadors.

Isaiah 2 Corinthians 5.20.

God is making his appeal through us.

We implore you to be reconciled to God.

This term ambassador is a technical word, political word, like you would expect today in Washington.

It's somebody who represents a nation, a country, communicating with other nations and countries.

You know what he's saying.

We represent the kingdom of God.

How could that be when we know ourselves?

Because it's not about the vessel, it's about what fills the vessel.

The one who fills the vessel.

Pretty impressive.

There's not a house in D.C.

There's not an ambassador's house in D.C.

that matches the house of God, the temple of God.

You're his ambassador.

I'm his ambassador.

We need to share the good news.

We go in the name of Jesus with his message and his authority by his spirit.

And this is the only way we do this.

One commentator said, it is a remarkable truth that the same God who worked through Christ to achieve reconciliation with us now works through us to announce it.

Who would think of this but God?

Who would do something like this except our great God?

Evangelism in the New Testament is not a single person with their fishing pole out by themselves casting the line.

It's a net.

That's how they fish in the days of Jesus.

It's a big net.

And you know what?

He wants us to put our hands on that net.

We pull this net together.

They're no superstar evangelists.

There's just people that know that they've been saved by grace.

And they want to share the good news with other people.

And they learn how to yield to the Holy Spirit.

Is there something that's blocking that in your life?

Do you have a lot of information in your head about the Bible, but you're not seeing this kind of fruit in your life?

Repent.

Yield to the Spirit.

Say, Lord, I want to make a difference in this world.

Lord, I want to be on mission with you in this world.

Ask Him, invite Him in to show what is getting in the way of the joy of the Lord in your life.

What's getting in the way of a pure life in your heart?

What's getting in the way?

The single most important thing that we do in evangelism is what the Holy Spirit, what the gospel is doing in your heart.

He can use you.

I promise.

But you have to believe that first.

And you believe that by faith.

Because God is that powerful.

And the Holy Spirit is that present.

Is your hand on the net?

The sealed of the Spirit.

Father, we pray now.

You have sent your Son that we might be sons and daughters, and you sent your Spirit that we might have the experience of our sonship.

Holy Spirit, would you please?

Would you please do your work in our hearts as we think about the truth that we've talked about?

As we think about our own lives, Lord, we confess our weakness.

We confess our passivity.

We confess our ambivalence.

We confess.

We confess that we have not been on mission like you have called us to be on mission.

Holy Spirit, make this a church on mission.

We thank you for the many who have come to faith in Christ.

Lord, we pray for many more.

This city needs it.

This world needs it.

Use us for your glory.

King Jesus, we pray.

Amen.