Pastor Bryan Grant | Ambassadors of Christ | August 16, 2026

I uh had been always wanting to go down and actually be with the group, and so finally I went down three weeks ago and I was telling the team this morning, I preach in front of lots of people.

I've done it many, many times.

And as soon as I got into doing uh taking the stick and going through the story, I pretty much forgot how to speak.

I'm like, why can't I remember what I need to say to someone when it literally is like laid out in front of me in colors and they asked questions?

I'm like, that's a great one.

Where's Pat?

I gotta find Pat.

And it was actually a really great experience just to see uh how many people they reach out.

It's it's actually incredible.

I will tell you this Kelowna is hungry.

Kelowna people, Okanagan, they've been to Salmon Arm, they've been to Armstrong.

Kelowna people, people right now are hungry for the truth.

They're hungry for the gospel, they're hungry for something that's real and tangible that they can believe in.

They're hungry for the gospel.

And so it was really great to go out there.

And finally, I got to talk to someone where I remember what I was supposed to say, and all went well.

Good thing they had uh uh someone stand with me to make sure I did it correctly, right?

I'm still learning, I I talk all the time, but evangelism evangelism is not my first boy.

I I look forward to doing this.

You see these people that were on stage, they do it extremely well.

They do it extremely well, they know where God's called them to and they're willing to just lean in and do it.

And so this morning, I'm really thank you so much for sharing.

Thank you for being a part of it.

Thank you for all the team members that are a part of it.

And again, Pastor Brody said, 20% of the church are evangelists.

I know you're here.

And they are looking for people to be able to teach and train to share the gospel.

Amen?

Amen.

So this morning, can you turn with me to 2 Corinthians chapter 5, 17 to 21, and I'm gonna read this and then I'm gonna pray, and then we're gonna go.

2 Corinthians 5 · chapter mention

This is what it said, says in 2 Corinthians 5, 17 to 21.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come, the old is gone, the new is here.

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

That God was reconciling the world, the world to himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against them, and he committed to us the message of reconciliation.

We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.

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

God made him who has no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Let's pray.

Lord, we've heard already what the gospel is, and we want to be able to lean into your word this morning and learn how this is a part of us, how what you've created this for, how the scripture applies to our lives.

So, Lord, just bless this time that we have in Jesus' name.

Amen.

I love the songs that we sang this morning, really tie into the things that we've been speaking about for the last few months, and especially where I want to go this morning.

But I love what Paul says very early into this.

If if anyone is in Christ, in Christ.

We could stop there, we could preach just that in Christ.

What does that mean?

This is when we are in Christ, it means we were reconciled to God.

We were we had distance from God, now we have relationship with God.

We were far, now we're close, we were reconciled, we are in Christ.

Now we see that every country or most countries have uh some kind of ambassador, correct?

Just that's just how it works.

Some countries don't, some have many countries or many ambassadors in those countries, some other countries, but you can't have one without the other.

An ambassador doesn't show up in a foreign country and just freelance and do what he wants to do.

The Canadian ambassador doesn't go to the US or to Poland or to wherever we have in the embassies.

He doesn't go to those places and just say what he wants to say.

He doesn't sit down across from their head of state and say, This is what my opinion is, this is what I want to do.

I think that we should do it this way.

That would be uh that sentence would actually take him and they would just send him back home.

He's not allowed to do that.

But he carries the exact words of the one who sent him.

He carries the exact words of our government that he has to speak the will, the desire, what the government wants.

Nothing added, nothing softened, nothing edited, nothing changed, nothing to make it land nicer, don't hurt the other head of state's feelings.

He goes in and he says what needs to be said on behalf of where they're coming from.

Now I want to start this morning with this there's calling and commitment.

And all of you are called.

All of you are called.

Calling is about who assigned it to you and why.

God initiated the calling.

God wants relationship with you, He wants to be in that relationship.

You are called to His mission.

We saw it with Abraham early in the Bible.

We saw it with the prophets, the disciples, the apostles.

Ultimately, us as Christ followers, that is also us.

You and I, that's our calling.

We are called to be an ambassador of Christ.

Amen?

With me, church?

We are called to be ambassadors of Christ.

Commitment is whether or not you're going to show up for it.

Calling and commitment are two very different things.

An ambassador that never leaves the embassy is not much of an ambassador, not a very good one.

He has to leave and he has to go mingle and he has to go be out with the people and he has to go meet with the heads of state.

The thing about being a believer is that when we give our life to Christ, we are not given a job interview and say, You are now going to be an ambassador of Christ.

It is handed to us.

No one handed us an application and said, Yes, you get this is what you have to do, this is what things are going to be going to have to work through.

God doesn't ask us if we wanted the position, but he does ask us what we're going to do with it.

So an ambassador, their job is to go where that government has been rejected.

Not where the king can't reach.

Our king, God, can reach any one of these people that we see in the community around us.

But he works through us.

The world isn't a place that God can't go, it's a place that has declared separation and independence from him.

This is why we go and we share the gospel.

This is why we go and show people who Christ really is.

And we don't respond to what the gospel calls us by just staying home.

We are being sent into rebel territory.

We're being sent to take ground, to take what God has called us to do.

We are called to build the church but advance his kingdom.

Not Brian's kingdom, not Pastor Brody's kingdom, not Pat's kingdom, but God's kingdom and God's kingdom first.

So we go out and we do what we're called to as believers, as Christ followers, and share the gospel with others.

So when we go out, and as an ambassador, when I speak, I speak the gospel, I speak the truth in love, speak the truth with care, I speak the truth to people, we do it when we open our mouth, God is there to move through us.

Without fail.

God is there to move through us.

What I love about this is this is a picture that Paul is painting for us all the way through this.

I want to tell you where we're going this morning because if we miss this, what you might hear from me is five different points that are separate, but what actually everything I'm gonna share this morning is five, but it actually is just one point that God is leading us towards something.

So this is what the gospel does, first thing.

And as a Christian who's been a Christian for a long time, sometimes I have forgotten this.

The gospel makes new people.

Want you to see something.

This is what the verse doesn't say.

The verse doesn't say that you're improved.

Doesn't say that you're better informed, doesn't say that you're more disciplined, doesn't say that you're wiser, smarter, cooler, doesn't say any of that thing.

It doesn't say that you're more religious, it says that you are new.

Very specifically, God wanted this written just like this.

You are new.

There's two words, two words in the Greek when Paul uses it, and there's two words to describe new in the Greek.

Well, the first one is neos, and it really just means a new and recent change.

The old, the other one that he uses here is called chainos.

It's new in kind, new in quality, different in nature from what was before, unprecedented.

God isn't saying that you're an upgrade, he's saying that you are new.

Something now exists that didn't exist before.

That's the new you.

That's what Jesus did in you when you gave your life to him.

Is you are the new, you are a new creation.

You were made righteous because of what he did on that cross.

We don't wear the coat of righteousness just for certain behaviors.

We are righteous because of what he's done on the cross.

Amen.

We are new.

In Christ here is this absolutely key phrase.

It's not about uh admiration or agreement, it's a language about union with God.

In Christ, as a new creation, we have union with a God.

It's about connection.

Paul is describing what happens to a person here, not just about what they believe, but when someone gives their life to Jesus.

The old way of measuring people, the old separation from God, the old life of sin and death is over, and something new is birthed, and you are changed.

But here's a picture of what the new does.

When someone, I have a passport with me.

My wife indicated that I should not open this, just in case.

But this is a passport.

The moment that I go to another country and I swear allegiance to another country, this passport is useless.

It's canceled.

It's no longer valid, it has no use.

Yes, there's people that have dual citizenship, that's a whole different thing.

It can't be used again in any circumstance if I swear allegiance to another company or another country.

The old way of measuring, the old separation from God, the old citizen ship of death when we give our life to Jesus is completely canceled and something new is issued.

A canceled passport doesn't mean that there was never a debt under the old citizenship, it means someone else has already settled that debt.

So when you give your life to Jesus, you have a whole new passport.

You have a whole new access, you have a whole new life, you have something that changes.

This is why when you talk to someone about Jesus, it matters.

How you actually approach them is not how much you change, but you talk about what Jesus has done.

We approach them.

What does Jesus actually do for a person?

What has Jesus done for you when you share that gospel?

What's that new passport and your life actually mean?

Jesus is not the product on a shelf.

We don't go to Canadian Tire or Walmart and just pick up Jesus off the shelf, we put it in our basket, and we walk out, we pay for it.

That's not what we do.

It's not something that we can produce or that we can sell.

The question is, what does he do to someone?

And this is what he does.

It's not self-help, it's not moral self-improvement, it's not uh it's not another better or bigger community that you get to be a part to.

Jesus does not just renovate a person, he gives you new life, you have a new identity, you are new from the inside out.

That means you are not obligated to sin.

That means that because of what he did on the cross and the newness of life that you have, he has bought you with a price.

That price was paid, and you are under no obligation to sin.

That means you have freedom at any time.

Do we have to walk through some stuff?

Yes.

Do we have to struggle sometimes with things?

Yes.

But God has already purchased freedom for you.

Jesus on that cross.

Amen.

I lost my place.

Let me tell you this: the gospel is God's initiative.

Let's go to 2 Corinthians 5.18.

It says this all this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ.

The answer to the gospel is so often.

If your version of Christianity puts you first, you need to reevaluate your version.

Because it's not you.

It's not you first, it's God first.

It's what he did first.

Now we gotta think about this one.

Everything, all, all of this, all, not some, not a little bit, all of this is from God.

We are reconciled to God because of who he is, not how much I can do.

We are in his new creation.

Everything that we do, the reconciliation is from God.

No human effort, no religiousness, no performance, not from a person cleaning themselves up first.

I've heard that way too many times.

So I'm not, I don't want to get baptized until I'm clean.

No, the Bible says repent and be baptized.

Not print for repent and wait until everything is all good.

You repent and you be baptized.

That's what God's called us to do.

Amen.

We don't come to we've preached about this in this last two months.

We don't come to God when everything is in order, all is well, everything is good.

We come to God when everything is maybe broken and just all over the place.

And He responds.

So we don't reply from human effort or religious performance, not from a person cleaning himself up.

I just said that the matters because who it matters because of who matters first or who moves first.

God is the one that was sinned against because of our sin, but God is the first one to move.

How many of you have been in a TIFF with your spouse or your best friend, someone to see all the no.

When you're in an argument, when Natalie and I are in a discussion, we'll call it a discussion.

If the French makes it out, I know I'm in real trouble.

But if we're in a disagreement and I think she's wrong, and I and she thinks I'm wrong, I'm not gonna say who's usually right.

I'll leave for you to figure that out.

You're all looking at me like it's not you.

But you have a fight like that, and you're in a disagreement, and usually you want the one who offended you to move first.

You don't want to be the one that moves first.

It's a pride issue.

Going back to my wife and telling her that what she said was right and I was wrong may be one of the hardest things that I ever had to do in my entire life.

And I want to say it was only once, but we've been married for a long time.

And in those years, I may have been wrong twice.

One time in 2007, another time in 2014.

I know the dates, they're all on the calendar, I'm just kidding.

It matters who m moves first.

God was the one that was the offended party, but yet he still moved and said to us, Hey, I want to have a relationship with you, and I'm offering all of this.

This is what he's giving you.

I sinned, he has every right to be angry with me.

And yet he says, Brian, I'm your father, I love you, you're forgiven.

That changes, that should change how we approach God in our life and how we share the gospel with people.

Because when so many people carry a picture of God standing like this, with his arms crossed, behind a door, angry, looking stern, just upset with us all the time.

We teach this in our foundations class.

How do we see God?

How we see God matters.

And if you see God as the disciplinarian, you see God as the heavy, as you see God as though I just can't trust him, you're gonna approach him like this.

And let me tell you, based on this, all of this is from God.

Someone like God just doesn't give you something and then take it away because you didn't behave properly.

He gave this to you freely so we can walk in his freedom, walk in who he's called us to be.

And we see this word reconciled, it's a relationship type type of word.

When you see it in scripture, it's between like a husband and a wife that were separated and they're coming back together.

It's not a legal transaction at a distance.

God chose to close the distance on us so that we can have relationship with him.

And this really tells us something really important about the human problem.

It could be about loneliness, could be about emptiness or lack of purpose.

Those are real things.

I'm not saying that they're not, but the human problem that we have is we're separated from God.

There's distance between me and God.

Pastor Brody says all the time uh distance creates distortion.

The further I am from my relationship with God, the worse I'm gonna see everything that happens.

His response to me, his love for me, his care for me, all will look distorted because he's so far away instead of drawing in close.

When we realize that he did everything, all this for us, it changes how we we approach everything.

We look at verse 19 that God has reconciled the world to himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against them.

Thank goodness.

Have you ever heard someone say the good thing I'm not God, especially when they're driving on the road?

I've driven with you, some of you.

Good thing you're not God.

Road rage is a real thing.

But that's the truth.

Not counting sins against them.

I am counting that person's sins against them when they cut me off in traffic.

And I've also made up a bunch of other ones just to prove my point about the kind of person they are, and how dare they drive like that, and they can't see, they're probably you know, all the kinds of things.

I'll make up all kinds of things.

But what we see here is not counting people's sins against them, he's committed to us the message of reconciliation, that's forgiveness, and it's grounded in what Christ did.

When we say in Christ, not in what we do.

So when we carry this gospel, the order of this matters.

We start with what God has done, not what the person has to do to accomplish it.

Because you were presented with the gospel and Jesus changed your life.

The gospel is an announcement before it's an instruction.

We announce who God is, just like we've done since we started this morning.

From Pastor Brody's first words into leading us at the beginning right to the very end, it'll be about an announcement about how great God is.

That's what we do.

Now the question is: who gets to make that announcement?

And that's you.

The church carries the message, and that's you.

So let's work through a couple verses.

I'm gonna start with verse 19.

That God was reconciled the world to himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against him, and he committed to us the message of reconciliation.

God says this, he said, He gave us the ministry of reconciliation and committed to us the message of reconciliation.

These are two different things.

Losing the distinction can actually cause a problem for us.

Ministry of reconciliation is the shape of how our life reflects Jesus.

How you treat people, how you show mercy to someone, how you show grace, how you show forgiveness, how you live.

The message of reconciliation is actually words, the announcement that's been spoken, what these people are doing on the streets.

So we pictured the canceled passport again.

Somebody can walk around with a new passport and never open it.

Never show it at a checkpoint.

The document is real, the citizenship citizenship is changed, they are now met and they know who Jesus is.

Person is standing in a gate, but they can never hear the words.

That this is valid, and you're cleared to come through.

That's our neighbors, that's our jobs, that's the people that are in Kelowna, the community.

So I want to say this your patience with people, your integrity, your honor, how you treat people, your kindness.

We're Canadian, we're very polite.

We like to say please and thank you, most of us.

We like people around the world know Canadians as as being uh being really friendly.

Whenever we go to other places, people, oh, you're Canadian, it's okay.

We appreciate you.

Right?

That's like you living in the country as a citizen, but it's not the same as telling the person next to you that the border is open for you to come in.

We can live for Jesus, and we should.

You should do all that God's called you to do.

You should be kind.

You should be loving.

You should be telling the truth.

You should walk through what God has called you to do, but you have to do it with your mouth open.

I'm challenged in this.

I'm so challenged in this.

It's it would it's easy for me just to talk to people, but when I'm talking about, hey, you know what?

God loves you.

For some reason, it just feels it's like a it's a weight to look like I don't know if I can do that.

It's different.

But I want to be able to tell people that, hey, you give your life to Jesus, this passport takes you through the checkpoint into a place that you never could possibly experience.

You will be free.

You'll know Jesus, you'll know someone who can walk you through the life, give you strength, give you wisdom.

A good life lived around a person is not the same as the good news spoken to them.

I know lots of really great people that are kind and loving but don't know Jesus.

This is what Romans 10, 14 says.

How then can we call on the one they have not believed in?

And how can they believe in the one whom they have not heard?

And how can they live without hearing someone preaching to them?

It takes courage.

Pastor Brody, again, he was really all about correcting me today.

You know what he said?

He said, we don't want to make sure we don't want to guilt people into sharing the gospel, but it takes courage.

And I'm not trying to guilt you into just sharing the gospel with your neighbors.

Right now, Pastor Brian said I had to do it, so I'm gonna, or something bad's gonna happen.

That's not what I want.

What I want you to see through this is the heart of God that He did all of this for you.

Why do we have get to hold it back?

Why do I get to make the decision about who hears the gospel and who doesn't?

You know what?

The best thing about sharing the gospel?

You're not God.

You can't save them.

You can't save people when you share the gospel.

Your one job is just to share the gospel with them.

And do you know that living for God, living with kindness, living with joy, living with peace, living with honor and integrity actually opens up the door for you to be able to show them and speak to them about the gospel?

There's a reason that God lays it out like this about how God's called us to be, so that we can build relationships.

So that when the time comes and you speak the gospel, someone's like, Man, I've seen what your life is like.

And now you can tell them why.

The verse in Romans, it completely rules out any strategy of good deeds alone.

Kindness, generosity, good reputation, those can open the door to hear the gospel, but you still have to speak it.

They can't replace sharing the good news of the gospel.

I'm really challenged by this.

I want to say this really clearly because it's easy for us to hide behind the kindness.

Being a good neighbor, being that hard worker or that encouraging voice feels like enough.

And again, I want you to hear me.

It's good.

Live like that.

Do that, be like that.

But it was never designed to carry the whole weight of the message.

Just being kind is not doesn't, it was not designed that at some point words have to be spoken out loud.

Amen?

Or that door of kindness, that passport that you have that you want to give them, they can never walk through it.

Sometimes we just need to say it.

I think you've heard me say this before that sometimes people need up to seven invitations before they're gonna make their way to church.

Seven.

Don't stop at six.

Keep coming.

The next one is that the gospel calls for a response.

Verse 20 says, Whether we are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us, we implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God.

I love this word, implore.

It's not a word that you hear very often.

You might not have you may read it, but you don't hear it said, it's not neutral, it's not personal, it is urgent.

It's a Greek word behind, used everywhere else for pleading and urgent appeal.

It's not a polite suggestion.

Like the the one of the if you're ever standing on a street and you see someone that might be getting hit by a car, do you gently say, hey, watch out?

No, no, that's okay.

That's not what you do.

You grab them and you pull them back into safety and say, Hey, there was a car coming, why weren't you watching?

And the way Paul is explaining this to us is this is how much he cares for people's souls.

Because the heart of God is to care for people's souls.

We see in verse uh 2 Corinthians 5 11, it says, Paul says, Since then, wow, English is hard, we know what it is to fear the go.

We try to persuade people.

We need to adopt what the heart of God is for people so that when we see them, we care about their souls and we're willing to share the gospel.

God loves people, God wants to see people in his kingdom, he wants to all have opportunity to know him.

And when we work through all these things, there's a particular, there's something that happens that makes it all possible.

It's the cross that makes everything we do possible.

2 Corinthians 5.28 says, God made him who had no sin to be sin for us.

So that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

I love this verse because it kind of keeps the whole message from going a little bit vague.

It would be easy to reduce this down.

I love what he said on his sign, God loves you, but that's not all.

It would be easy to reduce to God loves you, stop there.

That sentence is 100% true.

God does love you, but that's not the gospel by itself.

A judge can still love a guilty man and still sentence him.

Love by itself does not answer what happens to that debt.

We see not counting people's sins against them, it's marked paid, it's not ignored.

Verse 21, where you find who paid it.

Jesus paid that price for us.

I want to, we're just gonna notice this phrase that says this.

It says, in him at the end of that verse.

That's the same language that we heard in verse 17.

If anyone is in Christ, the whole message, right there, closes that loop.

It's not five separate things, it's one thing that leads us to this relationship with God, that informs us, that works through us, that shows God who we are, that shows people who we are because of what Christ has done for us in our own life.

He's offered forgiveness.

We can receive repentance and move forward in what God has called us to.

Can I have the worship team come up?

Are we okay?

God made him who had no sin, so that in him.

Because of who he is in us, he's not giving us tasks to do, he's giving a mission to accomplish.

Saying that the change that you've experienced in your life, he wants other people to see in you and experience that same thing.

So this is what verse 21 claims.

Christ had no sin.

And God made him to be sin for us.

He took the judgment, just like Pat was saying, he stole the end of my message.

Thanks, Pat.

In the place of sinners, the result, those who are in him receive actual righteous standing before God.

You can stand before God clean because of what he did on that cross.

Can you stand with me?

This isn't a spiritual pep talk.

We don't want one of those.

This is an opportunity for us to look at how we approach God differently.

How we approach our faith, how we approach sharing the gospel, our neighbors.

So I want to say it like this: you either have a new passport or you don't.

So maybe there's people in the room that just have never experienced who God is, never committed their life to Christ, don't know, didn't know that you can experience something new and have a whole new identity and actually have access to the kingdom of God.

That passport that you have is expired and a new one is given to you.

So you just want to close your eyes with me, church.

I want to say it like this.

If you're here this morning and you heard from Pat, you heard through the songs, and you don't know Jesus, you've never committed your life to Christ, well, our heads are bowed as a church.

I want to offer up the opportunity right now just to pray a prayer and then connect with one of us after the service.

But if you want to give your life to Jesus for the first time and have that passport renewed and you get to experience all that God has for you, I want you to raise your hand this morning.

I see that hand.

Amen.

I see it.

So those of you that raised your hand this morning, I want you to pray this with me, church, all together.

God, I've been standing at a gate that's been locked.

Today I believe you unlocked it.

You already paid what I owed.

You crossed the distance.

Jesus, I believe you took my place.

I receive that now.

And I'm walking through that gate.

Make me new.

For those of you that committed your life to Christ, I want to say this, just eyes up here.

We want to have the opportunity to connect with you, to be able to put you on the right journey, to give you some discipleship tools, to be able to move your walk with God forward.

And this is an amazing thing.

We celebrate with you this morning.

They gave your life to Jesus.

Now for the rest of you.

When I was praying this morning, I wanted to offer up an encouragement for you.

If this is you and you have the passport, you know Jesus, you've committed your life to him, but you've kind of parked the passport on the shelf.

Maybe it's collecting dust.

I want to challenge you this week.

I'm just gonna close in prayer, but I want to challenge you.

God has speaking to many of you.

I talked to some of you before the service.

There's people that he's encouraging you to share the gospel with.

He's encouraging you to go beyond just living the life into a place where you actually speak the words to someone.

So I'm challenging us, church.

I'm gonna do this as well.

I want you to go to someone you know, you don't know, maybe someone you run into in the street, and I encourage you to just share the gospel with them.

Tell them your story.

Tell them how God saved you.

Tell them, hey man, I see what you're doing here, but relate with them, but connect with them.

But here's the challenge I want you this week to connect with someone that you know God has been pushing you towards engaging with.

And then you can invite them to church.

And do you know what the the benefit of having a great church community is like we are here?

Is that when you invite someone to church, it's not just you.

It's this place that's gonna help you love on that person, help you engage, help you bring in and just understand who they are and get to know them.

It's not just you.

That's why we're here.

This is my challenge.

I would say by a show of hands, who wants to do that, but I don't want to do that this morning.

But I want you in your heart to take this challenge that we are called to do more as a church.

I'm called as Brian, more as Brian, than to just preach the gospel here.

I'm called to go out there and share with people I don't know, maybe I do know, the gospel of Jesus Christ.

To speak the words, to take the life that I've lived, the life that you're living in your jobs and you're with your neighbors, with your family and your friends, and extend that beyond and just speak the words of Jesus into people's hearts.

Amen.

So just let me pray, Lord, you're so good.

Many people in this room will accept this challenge this week to go out.

We ask that your Holy Spirit would go with each person as we know that it will.

That when they open up their mouth, they'll have an opportunity to share your love, what you did on that cross, who, Lord, what you want to accomplish with people, Lord, but they would just have this opportunity to have real conversations, to share the gospel.

It doesn't have to be perfect, it doesn't have to be completely correct, it just needs to be us as a church standing and saying, we're gonna go and we're gonna advance the kingdom of God and share what you've done on that cross with others.

Lord, so we just ask for blessing, Lord, that we are testimonies of things that you've done because of this, Lord, in Jesus' name.

Amen.