Ambassadors for Christ

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Transcript:

We’re going to turn to Ephesians chapter 6 for just a moment. I had planned on preaching on this last Sunday night, but the possibility of flooding had other ideas. And so we’re going to look at this passage tonight, which is, can I say coincidence?

I don’t believe in coincidence. But interesting that we would talk about being ambassadors for Christ on a night that we’re also going to talk about this missionary couple. Ephesians chapter 6, we’re going to start in verse 18.

Paul writes to the church at Ephesus and says, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the spirit and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints. And for me that utterance may be given to me that I may open my mouth boldly. He’s talking to the church at Ephesus and saying, pray with all prayer and supplication for all the saints.

Remember one another and remember those in churches that are elsewhere. Remember those who are close by. Remember those who are far away.

Pray for your brothers and sisters in Christ. He says in verse 19, And for me, that other ones may be given to me. Pray for me that God will give me the words that I need to speak as he’s out on his missionary journeys. Pray for me that God will give me the words to speak that I may open my mouth boldly.

And I can attest to you that sometimes God gives the preacher the words to speak and we’re not always bold about opening our mouths with it. Sometimes it can be uncomfortable to preach the word of God that he’s laid on our hearts, and sometimes we just cower away from it. And so he says, not only pray that God would give me the words to speak, but also pray that I would open my mouth and speak them with boldness and with conviction to make known the mystery of the gospel.

The gospel is a mystery to the world. We don’t just figure it out by our own intellect. Everything about the gospel is contrary to the way the rest of the world works.

In this world, you know, there’s exchange, there’s give and take. And so the natural man assumes that in order to be at peace with God, in order to have sins forgiven, in order to be assured a place in heaven especially, that we have to do something for God. That we have to earn our way there.

That’s just the way our minds work because that’s the way the world works. And yet God says, on the other hand, there’s nothing we can do to earn or deserve salvation. It’s a free gift given by his grace, by his goodness, without regard for our merit.

And that is totally foreign to human thinking. And so the idea that Jesus did everything, that God did everything, is completely foreign to the way we think. And so he says the gospel, that I may make known the mystery of the gospel, that I may take this thing that is a mystery and make it known to people.

And that’s all of our job, isn’t it? It’s all of our job as believers in Christ. It’s not just Paul’s as an apostle. It’s not just mine as a preacher.

It’s all of our job as Christians to make known the mystery of the gospel. He says, speaking of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in bonds. Now that’s an interesting picture there too.

Because usually, you know, you think of an ambassador, you see the pictures on TV, either on shows, or you might see them on the news, and they’re at a state dinner in white tie, and they wear the big sash, and they’re just right up there. These are big, important people. The idea of an ambassador in bonds.

The idea of an ambassador who’s chained up like a slave. You know what? We are bound to our sovereign, are we not?

And he calls himself an ambassador in bonds, that therein I may speak boldly as I ought to speak. and when you realize your only job as an ambassador, your only job as an ambassador is to do what you’re told and to speak what you’re told to speak. It should humble us but it should also take some of the pressure off.

Hey, my only job here is to do what he tells me to. I don’t have to figure all of this out. I just need to do what I’m told.

But I love this picture that we’re given of an ambassador because we forget sometimes how important it is to share the gospel. Really, it’s not just incidental to what we do. It’s our whole job here as believers.

Not just as the Apostle Paul, the Apostle. Not just as missionaries like we’re talking about Brother and Sister Franks. Not just me as a pastor.

Brother Shank as a pastor. Brother Dacus as a deacon. It’s all of our job because we carry the title of Christian.

We are all ambassadors in bonds. and we need to remember that sometimes that our whole reason, our whole it’s central to our entire purpose here on earth to make known the mystery of the gospel. And so I want to share three things with you just very briefly and then we’ll be done with the message part of the evening.

Three things that we need to remember about being ambassadors for Christ. First of all, an ambassador, what do they do? They are the official representative of their sovereign. An ambassador, when they speak on behalf of their their king, their government, whatever you want to call it, whoever is the sovereign of their country, when they speak on their behalf, they speak with authority, and they represent them.

It’s a little harder for us to imagine because we are, as near as I could tell when I checked at six o’clock today, we are still a republic. So it’s a little harder for us to imagine, but if we think about our British friends, when they send an ambassador, when they send an ambassador to the United States. That ambassador represents Queen Elizabeth II.

As a matter of fact, I figured out about a year ago, that’s why they don’t send ambassadors between Britain and Canada, or Britain and Australia, or Canada and Australia. All of the places where she’s queen, they send high commissioners, because how could a sovereign send an ambassador to themselves? And so they have basically ambassadors, but they don’t call it that.

But for that ambassador, they represent the queen. Or one day they’ll represent a king. They represent, technically, the interests of the sovereign.

As ambassadors for Christ, we represent him, his will, his interests, his pronouncements. Those are the things that we speak and represent. Not ourselves, not what we want to do.

If an ambassador starts representing, hey, this is what I want to do to the other country, to the host country, and they have no regard for what the king who sent them said, they get sent back home pretty quickly. It is our job first and foremost here on earth as ambassadors for Christ to be the representative of our sovereign. You hear people say, I’ve heard people say occasionally to somebody who’s just a little too narrow-minded about the scriptures, well, you just think you’re God’s representative on earth, don’t you?

Well, we kind of all are. That’s not a boastful thing about me. I’m Jared, God’s representative on earth.

I’m a Christian and we are God’s representatives on earth do we fall way short of that? yeah we do that’s our job is to represent him and to represent him well that’s why Jesus told his disciples in the book of Matthew you’re the salt of the earth but if a salt has lost its savor wherewith shall it be salted it’s thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and to be trodden underfoot of men you’re the light of the world a city that is set on a hill cannot be hid neither do they light a candle and put it under a bushel but on a candlestick and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. He says this, Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

That’s job one of an ambassador. We need to live in such a way that we represent him. We need to teach in such a way that we represent him.

Second of all, an ambassador lives in a foreign country without adopting its ways. We were talking about various things on the drive home this morning and talking about my time in Arkansas. And they knew it and I knew it.

I was still an Oakey. And I loved Arkansas. I loved my time there.

I loved where I lived. I especially loved the people that I got to serve and serve alongside of. But I was Oakey through and through.

And so I used to say and still say that I was in Arkansas but not of Arkansas. if that makes any sense at all. You know what?

When we send an ambassador, if the United States sends an ambassador, say, to Saudi Arabia, now there might be state occasions where they need to do things the Saudi Arabians do. If they start acting more like a Saudi Arabian than they do an American, that’s going to raise some eyebrows because they’re supposed to be of us and representing us. And that, I mean, Saudi Arabia is just a wide contrast there.

That’s true of any country. We send them there to represent us, not to become one of the people we sent them to. Sometimes the ambassador has to ingratiate themselves to the world they live in, but not become part of it.

And we’re told as Christians that we’re to be in this world and not of it. We represent Christ to the world, not necessarily the other way around. And it’s far too easy to live as ambassadors in this world to this country, if we can say it that way, and think I’m just going to adopt the ways of the host country.

Folks, our citizenship. Let’s never forget this, and please don’t take this as an anti-American thing because I love this country and I’m thrilled to death that God allowed me to be born here, reading a book on our Constitution that Brother Shank lent to me and just makes me even prouder of the country that we have. And yet, make no mistake, ultimately our citizenship and our loyalty is to a higher kingdom.

The book of Philippians says, it says our conversation is in heaven. You look a little deeper at that word conversation in the Greek, it means citizenship. We’re citizens of a higher kingdom.

And we’re sent to represent Him here on earth. We are to represent Him here on earth and here in this world without adopting the ways of this world. That’s why He tells us in Romans, not to be conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our mind that we may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

We should be in the world. We hear it said all the time. It’s almost cliche.

We should be in the world but not of the world. And third of all is ambassadors. An ambassador loves and longs to return to his home country.

Loves and longs to return to his home country. Think about Benjamin Franklin. And I will tell you that he did some good things and he said some good things, but he’s not one that I’m going to hold up to you as a paragon of Christian virtue.

In his personal life, there was a lot left to be desired. But he was one of our earliest diplomats, one of our earliest ambassadors from this country, when he was sent, I believe, under George Washington as our ambassador to France. And from what I can tell from history, he may have fallen into that category.

He adopted the French ways, lived too much. He loved his time in France and he lived it up, but when it came right down to it, when he was needed, he came back to America because he loved this country first and foremost. This is the country he poured his heart and soul into. And that should be the attitude of an ambassador.

We can enjoy where we’re assigned. We can love the people we’re called to serve amongst, but our first love, our first priority, our first loyalty has to be to the country that we were sent from. As believers, we know where that is.

It’s that higher kingdom. Our first loyalty is to that higher kingdom, and our desire should be that at the end of our service, we return to that higher kingdom. We get to return to our master, and there should be everything we do should be tinged with a longing to return to him and hear, well done, thou good and faithful servant, at the end of our service as his ambassador.

I got to visit with a dear friend on Friday. She and her husband, who went on to be with the Lord back in December, those two prayed for me. Folks, those two lifted me up at a time in my life when I didn’t even have the energy to pray for myself when I was just too beaten down.

And I love those two dearly. It’s the first time I’ve seen her in over a year. I wasn’t able to go back to the funeral. But we talked about this and talked about his legacy and talked about what he meant to me and especially what he meant to her.

I mean, they’d been married, I think, 59 years. And one of the things I told her is that as I’ve traveled around in ministry and I’ve been in different places and I wasn’t on staff, but I’ve been at Southgate for a number of years. And then I went on staff in Bethany and met wonderful people there and not sat and meet wonderful people at Southgate.

Met incredible people there. And then at Blanchard and Norman, kind of back and forth there in Fayetteville. And then here, I’ve met some of the most wonderful people.

And then God calls you somewhere else. Whether you’re a pastor or not, God may call you somewhere else. God may call you to another town.

God may call you to another church. People get reassigned to heaven. And people that I’ve served with and have loved, they’re now in Texas.

and they’re at different churches in Oklahoma and they’re back in Arkansas and they’re here and they’re in Georgia and they’re in Nebraska and Louisiana. And I just think to myself, it will never again, I said to her, it will never again be like it was. We can look back at any time where we were serving with wonderful people and say we will never all be together again like we were in the same place, in the same time with the same people.

And you can get to a point where your heart just longs for those people that you loved and you served with, your Christian brothers and sisters. And I told her that’s one thing that I’m looking forward to about heaven, probably more than anything except being with Jesus for eternity, is knowing that all of us, the people I love at Lindsay, and people I love, not that ladies and gentlemen I’m in a hurry to get there. I still believe I have work to do here.

But one day, the people that I love from Lindsay, and the people that I love from Southgate, and from Bethany, and from Fayetteville, and from Blanchard and Norman, and people I went to church with as a child, and all these people that I’ve, and the people that I worked with at the school, and folks, just all the brothers and sisters that I’ve known and loved, that we will be together for the rest of eternity, fellowshipping together, and with Jesus Christ, fellowshipping with Him together, and we’ll never have to say goodbye again. And we’ll never have to think that we’ll never be like it was. Because ladies and gentlemen, we’ll get to spend time in our home country loving Christ and loving one another.

That’s something I look forward to. I didn’t understand that 10 years ago. I’d hear older people speak of longing for heaven and I just thought, I don’t want to go yet.

I’m still not quite ready to go. But I understand more as the years go by why people feel that way. We should have a longing to return to our home country.

And if we’re not looking, if we’re not doing our work as ambassadors, If we’re not fulfilling our job description as ambassadors with one eye on the home country, then we’re not going to have the right perspective on what we’re doing in the host country.