Ambassadors for Christ

Let's open with a word of prayer this morning.

Lord, I just thank You for gathering us together today and on Your day. I mean, every day is Yours, but especially today here we get to gather with other saints and to worship You, the one true God.

Lord, I just ask You to prepare the minds and hearts of everyone in here to receive Your Word clearly and that You allow me to speak with clarity as well and that it's Your words and not mine that are flowing through.

Lord, I just ask that You continue to give a great respite for Pastor Casey and all the work that he's accomplished in the last month to bring to the church, to continue to grow the church to be sanctified more and more and for all of us to be sanctified more and more in Your image.

So we thank You for allowing him that time to do so. Lord, we also, we pray for Ukraine and everything, all the unrest going on there. Most importantly, that You grant repentance.

Grant repentance to Putin, grant repentance to Biden, grant repentance to all of these leaders that are acting so wickedly, not recognizing that You are the King of kings and the Lord not them.

So we ask that You do this and yet we know that whatever happens that You are sovereign, You are in total control and that it's all for Your purposes whatever happens into Your glory.

Your holy and precious name we pray. Amen.

If I asked You to tell me right now what the, what a Christian life is to be marked by, what would You tell me?

I mean, I'm sure you all would have some great answers, right? You'd say, well, it's about holiness or it's about a life full of repentance.

You might even quote Galatians for me, 522, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. And those would all be great answers to give to me. But there's a major one that I think most believers miss.

So our passage for today is 2 Corinthians 5 verses 10 through 21.

This passage has a number of topics that could be exposited. In fact, if I took the proper time to go through this passage, we would be here until about 8 o'clock tonight. Don't worry, I won't do that to you.

I'm glad there's somebody booing about that.

But it would really take several sermons to adequately preach this passage. However, what I want to do today is focus on two main threads that go through this passage.

These threads are braided together inseparably. One thread is our salvation in Christ. We all love to talk about our salvation in Christ. And when we read this passage, we typically look at it and see that thread of our salvation in Christ and being made into new creation. However, there's one other major thread that is woven through this. It's evangelism.

And we often miss that when we're going through this passage.

These two threads, I believe, are tied together so closely and that Paul viewed them as inseparable. And guess how we're then to view them?

Inseparable.

We're to view them the same way that they're written down by God's inspiration and His word.

And so I want you to listen for these two threads as I read through our passage this morning, starting in verse 10. "For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. 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 commending 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 might live 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 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 the 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.

So, in reading this passage, most Christians, again, see this first thread very easy, new creation in Christ. It's all over this passage. And yet, we overlook our duty. How many times did we see the word "therefore" in this passage?

Because you were a new creation in Christ, therefore you do what?

It's evangelize.

Now, obviously, there's a lot of professing Christians who don't evangelize.

I'd venture to say probably the majority in churches across this country, and probably even the majority in this room.

A lot of professing Christians don't evangelize because they're not saved. Let's be honest, right? There's a lot that are false converts filling churches across the country, and they don't evangelize for that reason. There's others that don't evangelize because they believe in some type of ecumenism, which is the idea that, well, as long as they believe in some higher power, they're going to go to the next best place anyway. They're going to go to heaven or the next, you know, whatever level there is.

I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about true believers, why there seems to be a major lack of evangelism.

See, I think it comes down to this. There's a lot of misnomers in church today about evangelism, a lot of misnomers about what it is and who's supposed to be doing it. See, some people believe that evangelism is only for the few people who have that special gift of evangelism.

I know there are people in your church who have the special gift of evangelism, and that is a wonderful thing.

I know some people think that evangelism is merely the job and responsibility of the pastor.

I know there's some who believe that evangelism is only for those who are specially called to it. And there's lots of other reasons for professing Christians to not go out and evangelize on a regular basis.

Are any of these actually true?

Or is it that witnessing to others is the responsibility for every single person who is actually born again?

Right, that's the question here. Is it only for the special few or is it for the special chosen ones which is everyone who is born again? Everyone who is the Holy Spirit that lives within them.

That's the question.

And so, I believe that this passage among many others in the Scriptures say that we are all called to evangelize. Every one of us. And in this passage, we're going to be looking at four main points for this. Number one, the fear of the Lord. Number two, the love of Christ compels us. Number three, the fact that we're a new creation. The Holy Spirit lives within us. And then number four, we are literally given a ministry of reconciliation.

I can't tell you how often I hear people say, "Well, you know what? I just don't know what God has planned for my life." "I don't know what ministry I'm supposed to be involved in."

A ministry of reconciliation is given to every single believer.

You all have a ministry. The greatest ministry there is.

Laid out in this passage for you.

So point number one, knowing the fear of the Lord. This verse, this idea of the fear of the Lord is based on the previous verse, verse 10. "For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil." Now, this verse may conjure up some memories of people when you read Hebrews 9.27. It says, "Every man is appointed once to die, and then judgment." And it's true. Every one of us has an appointment with death.

Every one of us. There's an appointed time that you're going to die. And guess what? Even for those of us who are habitually late to things, you will not be late for this appointment.

It's not become a second sooner or come a second later than what you think.

There's not a single thing you can do to change that appointment that you're going to have with God.

And here's the reality. If you are in Christ Jesus today, you will not be judged.

God the Father will see you covered in the righteousness of his own Son, and you go directly to heaven. Because your judgment already took place 2,000 years ago on the cross.

But for those of you who are not in Christ, you're going to have an appointment that you're not going to like a whole lot.

Now, having said all that, I don't think that's what this verse actually means.

See, for the believer, when we appear before the judgment of Christ, it's not going to be for judgment regarding our deeds. It's not going to be because of all the bad things we've done that we owe a punishment for our crimes. Instead, it's going to be the unveiling of our deeds as a believer. Meaning that, what have you done with your time on this earth?

What have you done with the resources that God has given you?

Christian, how is your walk? These are the questions that are going to be asked of you in front of Christ. Our sins have been paid for, but we're still going to have been accounting for what he's given us.

And so now, in the context of this passage, as we're walking into it, what have you accomplished for the kingdom?

Because in verse 11a, there's one over there of fours. "Knowing the fear of the Lord, we do what?

Persuade others."

This phrase, the fear of the Lord, can be looked at in a number of ways. But I want you to understand something. Fear of the Lord can mean a couple of different things. Fear of the Lord for the believer is reverence for the Lord. I think it's a better rendering for it. And why? Because an unbeliever, should they fear the Lord?

An unbeliever, should they fear the Lord? Oh, you better believe it, right? They better fear the Lord. I mean, the reason why people have walked around with face diapers for the last two years is because they fear death. They know what is happening next, by and large, for most of them. And others just don't have their theology right.

That's a proper fear of the Lord. But for the believer, they don't have that fear anymore, or ought to not have that fear anymore, right? So now, we have a reverence for God because we know what we deserve for our sin, but it is grace and mercy. We're not going to get what we deserve. Instead, we're going to get heaven.

And so, we're going to go through several verses in the Bible. And we're going to talk about this phrase, "Fear the Lord." So, I want us to get a real encapsulation of what this is.

Proverbs, a great book to go to. Proverbs 1.7, "The beginning of knowledge."

"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction."

Proverbs 3.7, "Be not wise in your own eyes, fear the Lord, and turn away from evil."

Proverbs 14.2, "Whoever walks in uprightness fears the Lord, but he who is devious in his ways despises him."

Proverbs 3.7, "Do not be wise in your own eyes, fear the Lord, and depart from evil." Proverbs 8.13, "The fear of the Lord is to hate evil, pride and arrogance in the evil way, and the perverse mouth I hate."

Proverbs 10.27, "The fear of the Lord prolongs days, but the years of the wicked will be shortened."

Proverbs 14.26, "In the fear of the Lord there is strong confidence, and its children will have a place of refuge."

Proverbs 14.27, "The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life, to turn one away from the snares of death." Proverbs 16.6, "In mercy and truth, atonement is provided for iniquity, and by the fear of the Lord one departs from evil."

Proverbs 19.23, "The fear of the Lord leads to life, and he who has it will abide in satisfaction. He will not be visited with evil."

And just when you think I covered every verse about the fear of the Lord, I've only covered a mere smidgen of them.

There's a lot that talks about the fear of the Lord here. And so while these verses from Proverbs and others from Psalms give us a great picture of the fear of the Lord, I think Calvin was writing his commentary when he emphasized the other side of this.

He has according to his commentary, he says the phrase "the Lord" should be viewed by the unbeliever in this passage as the terror of the Lord.

He emphasizes the fear of the Lord from the unbeliever's perspective here, the awaiting eternal wrath of God for those that are not born again.

And so because of this fear of the Lord that we have as reverence, that they have as a true terror, what do we do? Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others.

Do we get the picture of what this passage is really walking into here?

So therefore us as born again believers ought to have a healthy fear of the Lord, a reverence of the Lord, so that we go and tell others about God.

To go tell people that you deserve hell according to your sin, not my words, God's, but yet God provided a way out through his Son.

Furthermore, does this passage say pastors persuade others?

Special evangelists in the congregation persuade others? No.

It says we persuade others.

Every one of us ought to be doing this. And so why do we persuade others? Verse 11b, "But what we are is known to God, and I hope it's also known to your conscience." See, Paul was known by God. How did God know him? I mean, God knew him from before the foundation of the world.

But God knew Paul as Saul first, right? Who was going out and killing Christians, persecuting Christians.

And then Paul met God on the road to Damascus and repented and trusted in Christ.

So God knew who Paul was the same way he knows every one of us in here, wherever we're at. God knew Paul's motives. God knew Paul's integrity. And so this phrase here in this passage where it says, "And I hope it is also known to your conscience," "it might better be rendered as, and I trust it is also known to your conscience," "where Paul is appealing to the Corinthians that Paul has proved himself enough that they know his integrity."

Why is this important? Because Paul is making sure that they know why he evangelized.

We have this evil thing going on in churches today that a lot of people that evangelize in churches, true monks, Southern Baptists, independent and fundamentalist Baptists, and all kinds of other denominations, that a lot of people are evangelizing why, says, "You guys saw me on Wednesday night?" Put another notch in their bill.

Not the right reason for it.

Paul is making this appeal that God knows his heart, the Corinthians ought to know his heart, and the reason why he's evangelizing is because of his love for people. His love for God first, and his love for people.

And so the fact is that the Gospel is shared with Paul. Of course it was with Almighty Christ himself, but that it was shared with him, and so now he's passing it forward, the way we ought to be doing.

And so Paul is appealing to you to witness to the lost the same way that you were witness to at one time.

Verse 12, "We are not commending 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." So this is Paul now talking about this further saying that it's not about him being arrogant or wanting attention in his evangelism. His goal in evangelism is in serving Christ, and then also to encourage us in the same evangelism. Verse 13, "For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God. If we are in our right mind, it is for you."

If Paul and other disciples seem to be overly zealous, now for those of us who do some evangelism,

and Christians who don't do evangelism talk to us, what do they think about us?

You're just really zealous about what you do, right? Why do they think that?

Because they see us doing something that they're not.

And so Paul's making a question, he says, "No, no, no, look. The reason why I look zealous is because I'm doing what I'm called to do."

Maybe the problem is not me being zealous. Maybe it's...

See, I don't even have to say it, do I?

And so he says this because the Corinthian church is watching him, right? As he's going around and evangelizing, they're seeing him. And so he says, "Look, if you see me with a sound mind, I'm doing it for your benefit. If you see me as being overly zealous, it's because of God."

And that's his point here. And so now, as we wrap up this first point, why are we all to evangelize? Number one, it's not about the accolades. It's not about the notch in the belt. It's not about trying to be overly zealous on our own on purpose. It's that we have a healthy fear of the Lord.

And this goes right now into point number two, the love of Christ controls or compels us. Verse 14, "For the love of Christ controls us." So I have to ask the question, what is the love of Christ? How do we define love?

I can tell you, when I go out evangelizing, especially if you run across a homosexual crowd, they're quick to tell you, "Love is love. We can love who we want."

God is love. Jesus is love, right? They throw all these terms out there to which I always ask, "Well, how do you define love?"

Like, for you to say that God loves homosexuals, what is your definition of this?

And so we can go to 1 Corinthians 13, verses 4 through 8 and get an idea, right? "Love is patient and kind. Love is not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It is not insistent in its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It is not rejoicing or wrongdoing, but rejoicing with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends." But this doesn't define love either for us, does it?

It gives us an idea of what attributes there are for somebody who has love.

And so I would submit to you this, that a proper definition of love comes from the Trinity.

The love that was going on between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit from eternity past is how we define love.

And that, when we read in Scripture, God tells us what the greatest manifestation of His love is,

which is what Paul is getting to in this passage. 1 John 4, verses 7 to 11, "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because," what does everyone say? "God is love." This is where everyone gets it from. To which, anytime we read a passage in Scripture, and we want to know what it means, keep reading.

Get the context. Because if you keep going on it says, "In this the love of God was made manifest among us,

that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him." In this is love. Not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the perpetuation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. This is the point. God's love for people is always connected to the cross.

You guys are all good Baptists here. I'm sure you all have John 3.16 memorized. For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son.

God's love for people is connected to the cross.

His greatest manifestation of His love to people is connected by the cross.

And so, why did Christ go on the cross to die?

It was His love. I mean, yeah, all of His other attributes, but what was really on display was His love for sinners.

And so, if Jesus was compelled by love to go to the cross and make His love manifest for sinners to be saved,

what do you think that the love of Christ ought to do for us?

To share it.

To tell people about that same cross that the love is connected to.

So, 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 might live for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was raised. Paul is literally concluding what we just did regarding the gospel. God's love being made manifest on the cross, and in our love, that love should compel us to go tell people about Him.

These verses specifically are talking about Jesus' substitutionary atonement.

Think about this from understanding the gospel more thoroughly. We all understand that Christ died on the cross, was buried and raised again. We understand that that paid the penalty for sin.

But what does that really mean? This is what it is. When a sinner dies, an unrepentant sinner dies, they go directly to hell, eventually to be put in the lake of fire for eternity.

And what's happening there?

It's not the absence of God.

Because God's wrath is being poured out for eternity on unbelievers.

What the cross is, is God's full eternal wrath being poured out on His Son?

Jesus bore the entire eternal weight of sin and punishment of sin on that cross.

And so what Paul's saying is that Christ died for all who died and live a new life. That Christ took that ultimate punishment for you so that you can live.

And so don't miss this. If you are saved today, you don't live for yourself any longer. Because who do we live for?

We live for Christ.

And so now I have to ask the question, if you don't have His love that causes you to want to share Christ with the lost, what's going on in your heart?

And look, I understand, evangelism is not easy, right?

And let's be honest, we have to go out of our comfort zone to evangelize.

We have to get out of this spot and we have to put aside our fear of man, right? Which is a very difficult thing to do, right? What if somebody yells at us? What if somebody curses us out? What if a family member or friend chooses not to talk to us anymore? I mean, these are very real fears. I get it.

And what I hope this passage does though, is it gives us the strength to go out and share anyway.

To know that God's in control.

And that our love for sinners, unrepentant sinners, should vastly outweigh our fear of those same unrepentant sinners.

I think that's what's going on here.

And so if we're not sharing Christ, we're in disobedience.

We need to obey what we are called to do.

And so we are called to evangelize one because of the fear of the Lord, and number two because the love of Christ compels us to do so. And at point number three, we're a new creation, right? I mean, this is the point that everyone sees in this passage. Verse 16, "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." We see Christ different when we're saved than when we're not.

Because we are completely made new. Heart is stone removed and replaced with the heart of flesh. Our mind has been completely changed. We view the entire world 180 degrees different than we viewed it the moment before we got saved. That is who we are as a new creation in Christ.

As one commentator stated, "Once someone is truly born again, we are no longer to associate them with their sinful past, the selves, nor the current sinful flesh." This first relates to the fact that this issue of who Paul and others viewed Christ as. See, before Paul was saved, he viewed Christ as a mere man, a rubble-rouser, who is disrupting the Jewish way of life rather than as God in the flesh.

He gets saved and he's flipped immediately.

And this is us. If we're saved, if you're in Christ, your sins have been separated from you as far as the east is from the rest. And we now, we now see Christ in a completely different light as one who saved us, which should cause us to go out and want to tell others about it.

See, this old has passed away, according to verse 17, "Behold, the new has come." The old Jew has died.

If you're saved, the old Jew is gone, the dead heart gone.

We have a heart that's alive to go out. This is explained brilliantly in Romans 6, verses 3-11. "Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him, for the death he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus." And so as we see in this passage, God by the power of the Holy Spirit living within us gives us new desires.

We want to have, we now have a knowledge of sin that is against God. Right before we come to saving faith in Christ, we sin and we don't care.

And if we get caught, it's a worldly sorrow where I'm sad I got consequences for it.

Versus those who are truly saved and now they recognize that their sins are an affront against God.

That's really one of the keys of Psalm 51 after David committed awful acts with Bathsheba and her deceased husband.

He says, "To you God and you alone have I sinned."

He understood that sin was an affront against Almighty God. And so because the Holy Spirit lives within us, we also want to please God, don't we?

We want to live for him.

And therefore we should want to tell others about him.

Why? Because verse 18 says, "All this is from God who through Christ reconciled us to himself." Now notice this passage, right? I said before there is these threads going back and forth. Paul is continuing to make his case of us being a new creation and telling others. This happens multiple times in this short passage.

So we evangelize because of the fear of the Lord, the love of Christ compels us, and the fact that we are a new creation.

And with these two braided threads, it culminates in point number four. This whole passage comes down to this. We are given a ministry of reconciliation.

Verses 18 and 19, "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 the trespasses against them and entrusting whom?

Us, the message of reconciliation.

Christ separated us from our sins, Psalm 103.

He entrusts us with the message of reconciliation of him. The book of Romans, in fact, gives us the greatest gospel presentation and explanation ever given, answering all objections along the way. If you want to learn how to start evangelizing, start coming to Wednesday night. I know it's happening a lot there. Some good things going on.

But meditate on the book of Romans.

See how Paul lays out the gospel, lays out all these objections with answers. If you know your book of Romans, you will know how to answer anybody anytime.

Paul, when he lays out his book, when he lays out his gospel presentation in Romans, he starts here. Starting in verse eight, "First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you because your faith is proclaimed in all the world. For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I mention you, always in my prayers, asking that somehow by God's will I may now at last succeed in coming to you. For I long to see you, that am I in part to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you. That is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith, both yours and mine. I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that I have often intended to come to you, but thus far have been prevented, in order that I might reap some harvest among you as well as among the rest of the Gentiles. I am under obligation both to the Greeks and the barbarians, both to the wise and the fools. So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome." Paul starts his letter off with this idea of being eager to preach the gospel. Why? Verse 16, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel. This should be all of us. For it is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. The gospel does the work."

Paul says it right out front in the book of Romans. The gospel is what saves, and it's a work of God completely.

Ezekiel 36, verses 25 to 27, we did a great exercise on Wednesday night. And so if you weren't here on Wednesday night, I encourage you to go back and watch the video on this. And understand what salvation is about, because God is the one who changes the heart. This passage here, it says, "I will cleanse you," God speaking, "and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk into my statue to be careful to obey my rules." God is the one who changes the heart.

God does all the work in salvation.

God prepares the person that you're about to talk to. Romans 1 says everybody knows he exists by his creation.

Romans 2 says the moral law is written in her heart, everyone's hearts.

And so we walk up to a person, an unbeliever, they know God exists, despite what they tell you, they know.

The moral law is written in their heart. How many of you have seen cartoons or movies where they depict an angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other?

Right? And they're chirping in the ear of the person as to whether they should make one decision or another.

That is a horrible picture of what is actually spoken of in Scripture, that God built a conscience into every one of us, an absolute standard of right from wrong, to which people know the God that exists and they know they've sinned against him.

God's prepared all that.

He's done literally all the work in salvation for that person, except one. There's one thing that he's made us responsible for out of all the work of salvation.

Are we responsible to change somebody's heart of stone or heart of flesh? No. Do we have any ability whatsoever to coax somebody into salvation?

No. But this is what God has ordained for us, Romans 10, starting in verse 5. "For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandment shall live by them. But the righteousness based on faith says, do not say in your heart who will send it to heaven, that is to bring Christ down, or who will descend into the abyss, that is to bring Christ up from the dead. But what does it say? The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that is the word of faith that we proclaim. Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

For the heart one believes and is justified, and with a mouth one confesses that and is saved. For the scripture says, everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame. For there's no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing as riches in all who call him, for everyone who calls the name of the Lord will be saved. And as Paul so brilliantly does through the book of Romans, he now brings up an objection and then answers it for you. How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed?

How will the unrepentant sinner know?

And how will they believe in him of whom they have never heard?

And how are they to hear without someone preaching?

And me too.

That's us.

God has in all of the working parts of salvation, he has given us one responsibility that we're supposed to carry out faithfully. And it's giving his word.

And how are they to preach unless they are sent?

What's the great commission?

Go there for me, make sense of every nation. Congratulations, you've been commissioned. You've been sent.

As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news.

This is how God views us as believers who are out stepping outside of our comfort zones and witnessing to the lost.

How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news.

And at the end it says, so faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ.

People need to hear Christ. God has commissioned every one of us to go out and tell it.

Really, really simple.

And just in case you think that this is an aberration in scripture, let's turn to Psalm 71, verses 15 to 16.

"My mouth will tell of your righteous acts, of your deeds of salvation all the day, for their number is past my knowledge. With the mighty deeds of the Lord God I will come, I will remind them of your righteousness, yours alone." Psalmist will tell people about God. Psalm 40, verse 10, "I have not hidden your deliverance within my heart. I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation. I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness from the great congregation."

Psalm 145, verses 6 and 7, "They shall speak of the might of your awesome deeds, and I will declare your greatness. They shall pour forth the fame of your abundant goodness, and shall sing aloud of your righteousness."

And the list goes on for that as well. The entire scriptures talk about his people going out and sharing who he is.

Did the Israelites do a good job of that?

Not at all.

And I'm fearful that the New Testament church is following Israel's example. And so verses 18 and 19, which talk about us being given a ministry of reconciliation, all comes down into this verse 20, which is another, "Therefore, therefore we are ambassadors for Christ."

God making his appeal through us, we implore you on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God. So what does the word ambassador mean?

This is a good definition. It's an accredited diplomat sent by a country as its official representative to a foreign country.

So if you think about like the United States ambassador to China, this person is thoroughly vetted by the United States government because they are going to be the mouthpiece of our entire country. That's an ambassador.

We as ambassadors for Christ have been vetted by Christ himself, by the power of the Holy Spirit that lives within us. He has made us that ambassador to a lost nation out there.

He's given you every tool to do so. You know how? Because you got the word of God in front of you. He has given you everything you ever need to be his ambassador.

First Peter 2 verses 9 through 10 says, "You were a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you might proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light."

"Once you were not a people, but now you're God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you've received mercy."

Why? Verse 21, "For our sake he made him who knew no sin, so that in him we might be, for our sake he made him to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." We were literally given Christ's righteousness.

We're vetted, we're ambassadors, and we're given the righteousness of Christ to go out and do this.

And so what does all this mean for us? I think I've made my case. I think Paul has made his case, actually, and I've just given it to you.

But the very next verse, 2 Corinthians 6, as a quick reminder, it was said during Sunday morning school this morning. When we read chapters of the Bible and we see little verse numbers, those are not inspired. Chapter numbers, verse numbers, they were put in about a thousand years ago. So this scripture was meant to be read just straight through, chunks at a time.

There's a break between 2 Corinthians 5 and 2 Corinthians 6 that shouldn't be there.

Because in verse 1 of 2 Corinthians 6, the very next verse, it says this, "Working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For he says, in a favorable time I listen to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you."

Literally, we are working together with Christ in the process of salvation.

We're working together with Christ.

I don't know about you, but that is absolutely mind-blowing to me.

He thinks that highly of us. He does all of salvation except one thing.

Go preach the gospel.

Go talk to people.

While the Father elects Christ purchases and the Holy Spirit seals in the saving of sinners, we are working together with the triune Godhead in this process.

It is astounding to me to think about this, and I get chills every time I read this passage. We have the obligation to share the greatest news there is.

We've all heard the passage, Matthew 28. "Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me."

Go therefore make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age."

This passage, I think, says the word "disciple" instead of "apostles" for a reason.

Because are we all disciples of Christ? If we're saved? Yeah. This is a command that's given to all of us.

And so it's not about your pastor going out and sharing. It's not about the special evangelists going out and sharing. It's about all of us.

And this passage specifically, I want us to understand, when it says "go therefore, make disciples,"

the main verb here is not "go."

People want to say, "Well, the only way I can evangelize is if I go across the world." If I go to an event, or if I go to downtown Winter Garden. Now, those are all good things. And if you're called to do that stuff, do it. It's great. But "go therefore, make disciples," "make" is the action verb there, is that in our everyday lives, so "go" is going as you go. In our everyday lives, make disciples. That means that when you're at work, off the clock, of course, lunchtime, share Christ.

It means that as you go to the grocery store and you're checking out, hand a gospel tract.

It means when you're at the bank and seeing a teller, if you're not doing it online yet,

talk to the teller for a few minutes. It means when you're at a restaurant and you have a server, ask her questions about Christ.

In our everyday lives, we are to be doing this.

So it doesn't mean we've got to go somewhere. It just means that we need to be evangelistically minded as we go about every day of our lives. That's the way that we're supposed to be viewing this.

And so this is what we call the Great Commission.

As one of my friends likes to say, it's not the Great Suggestion.

We're called to go do this. And so how does this look in your lives? How does this look in my life?

I am one of those crazy guys that goes on a street corner and preaches on occasion.

You don't need to do that.

It's in our everyday lives we're handing out gospel tracts to people.

If we have a few extra minutes, get in a conversation with somebody.

When we see big SUVs with their windshield wiper on the back, we might slip a gospel tract as we walk by.

I think God made convertibles so that you throw gospel tracts in them.

I'm just saying. But the point is that this is what evangelistically minded is, is that we're looking for ways to share the gospel with people in any way possible.

What does this mean for us today? Well, it could mean this. How many of us know people who maybe have visited the church once or twice and haven't been back in a long time? Or maybe have said a sinner's prayer?

And you haven't seen in years.

Maybe we ought to call that person up and have a conversation with them.

I know that for every good church like yours is here, there's a hundred bad ones in this immediate area.

How many of you have friends in one of those bad churches where they're withering away?

And yet you could be sharing the gospel with them.

If they're not saved and they're false converts, you're giving them the word that they're not getting where they're sitting every week in a dead church. If they are saved and they're withering away, you have an opportunity to talk to them about the gospel and say, "You know what? I'm learning a whole lot in my church.

I am growing leaps and bounds in my church.

Why don't you come by and visit?" This is how it looks in our lives when we're doing what we're commanded to do. When we're being evangelistically mine and we're being gospel-centered and gospel-oriented,

we have an opportunity to share and share easily.

So on all that, Lord, I thank you so much for gathering us today. And this could be a hard message for some. I get it. This was a hard message for me years ago when I was confronted with a fact by an evangelist named Ray Comfort about not evangelizing.

And so, Lord, I just ask that if there's people in here who are evangelizing faithfully, that you continue that fire in them. And for those of us who are not evangelizing regularly, that you give us the confidence in who you are in your word to go out and share. Give us the fire to go out and tell people about the lost.

And, Lord, give us the confidence knowing that you're sovereign. You control every aspect of salvation. We never have to walk away from a conversation thinking we might have said the wrong thing or didn't do something right because we didn't see them repent. That it's not about us. So take that fear, take that lie away from us, that we have to be the one to affect the change.

Give us the confidence in your word.

Instill it into our minds that we go out and have that confidence in your word, that it will not return void.

Lord, we love you, we love your word.

And we just ask you to continue to grow us in who you are. Your holy and precious name we pray. Amen.