This sermon explores the concept of being God's ambassadors, tasked with the mission of reconciling people with God, and seeks to understand how to effectively embody and communicate this role.
We have been in this series called “Chameleon,” where we have spent some time looking into scripture and learning what it looks like to stand out on behalf of Christ. Last week we said God decided to choose us, call us out of the darkness around us and bring us into His glorious light. Not so that we could simply stay there and bask in the radiant light of Christ all by ourselves, but rather to reach those who are still stuck in the darkness.
He has saved us, not just for our own benefit but also for the benefit of others. That we might be “ambassadors” of the most High King and bring glory to His name.
The website JobHero submits this as the job description of an ambassador: “Ambassadors represent the policies and interests of their home countries around the world. This is the highest-ranking diplomatic position, requiring the ambassador to attend and host events with foreign leaders and representatives while promoting their home nation’s policies abroad. An ambassador typically lives in a foreign country for an extended period of time and has varied day-to-day duties.”
Today, I believe God wants to show us more specifically who He has called us to be on this earth AND what to say when we have opportunities to call people out of their darkness and into His light.
Church, if you do not receive anything else God desires to say today, know this: that He has called us to be AMBASSADORS for Christ! We are called to the highest position, for an extended period of time, to represent the interests of our King to all the nations of the world.
What an amazing assignment and calling...and of course the next most important question is, “How do I do that?” “What exactly does that look like in my life?” “What does this all mean!?!”
He has called us to be AMBASSADORS for Christ!
I want to invite you to turn with me to our main passage of scripture that we will be spending time in today, 2 Corinthians 5:18-21 which says: “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has 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 had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
This is Paul writing after he just finished telling his readers that anyone who belongs to Christ is a “new creation” in verse 17. He continues on, starting in verse 18 by saying, “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation...”
I want to pause right here for a few moments, because I want us to understand one thing in particular from what Paul is saying. People will experience revival through our ability to reconcile with each other. Here is what I mean: it is going to be very difficult to bring those around us into a relationship with Christ if they only see broken relationships in our lives. If all a broken world sees is more brokenness, anger, and division then what incentive is there to consider a change?
Jesus himself even talks about the importance of reconciliation in the Sermon on the Mount.
In Matthew 5:23 He says, “If you are presenting a sacrifice at the altar in the Temple and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, leave your sacrifice there at the altar. Go and be reconciled to that person. Then come and offer your sacrifice to God.”
You see, I believe that God has provided Jesus as a model for what reconciliation looks like ... View this full sermon with PRO Premium
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