Ambassadors For The Reconciling God - [2 Corinthians 5:16-21]

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Well, I'm thankful for the opportunity to be here tonight. I'm thankful that Mike gave me another opportunity to teach, and this time, not on sexual purity.
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I think you'll all be getting enough of that the next couple of weeks. But you know what?
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I'm thankful because I hear stories about this church. I'm thankful that people here have a passion for the gospel, and that people are faithfully proclaiming it week in and week out.
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However, whether you faithfully preach the gospel every day, or if you've never preached the gospel, you need to be reminded by God's word why he's left you here.
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If you're a believer here today, God could have saved you and brought you to heaven, but he's left you here for a reason.
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And that reason isn't, first and foremost, so you can have perfect theology. Theology is important, don't get me wrong.
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Don't pick up the stones yet. But you're going to have perfect theology in heaven.
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There's one reason, one of the reasons God's left us here is so that we can be his witnesses, so we can be his ambassadors.
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So tonight's message, the Apostle Paul is going to give us four motives, motivations, for why he preaches the gospel, and why you must preach the gospel as well.
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So turn your Bibles to 2 Corinthians chapter 5. We look at verses 16 through 21.
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And while you're turning, let's just look at what's going on, give a little context for where we're at. This is the fourth letter written by the
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Apostle Paul to the church in Corinth. Two of them in the Bible, two of them outside of the
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Bible. But these are all pastoral letters that were written to this church. In the first three, he's really dealing with a lot of sin, as we're learning about in the morning, 1
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Corinthians. He's correcting some sinful behaviors. He's addressing those things. And all throughout, in the midst of those things, and even here in 2
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Corinthians, as he's dealing with attacks from false apostles and false teachers, attacking him and his credibility as an apostle.
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All throughout these letters, the Apostle Paul is centered on this aspect of the gospel.
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In 1 Corinthians chapter 9, he talks about, woe was me if I preach not the gospel. So we can tell by the
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Apostle Paul's life that the gospel and evangelism was at the heart of everything he was doing.
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And so here, in tonight's text, we're going to see the Apostle Paul's heart for evangelism.
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And I believe you'll be encouraged why you should, and motivated why you should, preach the gospel.
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Let's get into our text, verse 16. Therefore, from now on, we recognize no one according to the flesh.
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Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet we know him in this way no longer.
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Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature. The old things have passed away.
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Behold, new things have come. Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.
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Namely, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not counting the trespasses against them.
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And he has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us.
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We beg you, on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
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The first motivation the Apostle Paul gives for preaching the gospel is, you know
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Christ and you know him in truth. Verse 16, he says it this way. Therefore, from now on, we recognize no one according to the flesh.
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Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet we know him in this way no longer.
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The Apostle Paul knew Christ on a fleshly level. He saw his ministry before he was saved as a
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Pharisee and he saw him, and his impression of him was, he's a false Messiah.
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He has a foolish message. And when he was crucified, he thought, this man is cursed by God.
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Because Deuteronomy says, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. And yet, then after God saved him on the
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Damascus Road, what changed? He started to know Christ for who he really was.
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He saw him not as this cursed man, but as Lord, Savior, Messiah.
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In the same way, he started off 16 saying, I don't look at others in that same way.
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In the same way that I used to have a false perspective on Christ, and now I know him in truth, now
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I look at people differently too, as a result of that. He doesn't look at externals.
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He doesn't look at, oh, what job does he have? What race is he? When the
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Apostle Paul got saved, he looked at people differently. He looked at them and said, do these people know Christ?
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I know Christ. In truth, do they know Jesus? Do they know that Jesus is the only way?
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And here in the face of these false teachers and apostles, who looked merely at externals,
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Paul says, I don't care about social status, wealth, race, job. Now that I know
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Christ as Savior and Lord, I care about others coming to know Christ. And he was motivated to preach the gospel to them.
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Think about you, before God saved you. You're a believer here tonight. How did you think about Christ?
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How'd you think about other people? And then once God saved you, how did that change the way you thought about Christ?
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Pretty dramatic, pretty different. You know, for you here tonight, you know
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Christ if you're a believer. And you also know people at work, at school, at the gym, maybe even in a church group, in a fellowship group.
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And those people don't know Christ for who he really is. I mean, there's all sorts of things that people say about him.
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Oh, he's a good teacher. Or they'll say he's a false teacher. Or they'll say, well, yeah,
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Jesus is a way, but not the way. And sadly, those people are deceived, just like the apostle
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Paul was. And because you have come to know Christ, his forgiveness and love, you must be motivated to reach out to others who don't know him.
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The first motivation to preach the gospel is you know Christ and you know him in truth.
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The second motivation to preach the gospel is you are a new creature with a new master. Verse 17 says it this way.
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Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature. The old things have passed away.
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Behold, new things have come. Since Paul knows Christ as Lord, since he's come to know him in truth, he's now, as a result of that, he's now a new creature.
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New in Christ. Before, he didn't care about preaching the gospel. When he was a Pharisee, he didn't care about going out and seeking and saving the lost.
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Yes, he was religious, but he didn't have a passion to teach people about Christ, to teach them the gospel.
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But now, he's a new creature in Christ. He's a new creation. And he has new desires with that.
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Homer A. Kent says, the believer is different, for the new elements have been added. The new master rules one's life, and one's outlook is different.
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Spiritual matters become crucial, where once the sinner was dead to them. When you're dead in trespasses and sins, you aren't worrying about the lady checking you out at the check stand, about whether or not she's gonna spend eternity in hell without Christ.
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You didn't care about that. But now that you've come to know Christ, you have a different motivation.
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As a believer, you have a new focus in life. That focus, it's not, let's go change the culture, let's go get political now for Jesus.
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That motivation is to serve your new master, who's gracious, who's loving, who's redeemed you.
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And knowing what it's like to be a new creation, since you've experienced his love, you've experienced his forgiveness, you then have a passion to go and proclaim the gospel.
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Proclaim that there's forgiveness of sins, that there's newness of life in Christ Jesus, because of his perfect life, death, and resurrection.
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Just a word of caution here, this is not a new you as in an addition to you.
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The new creature, it's something new. A lot of people wanna say, well, I became a
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Christian, but there's no change in my life. Apostle Paul didn't say this, he says, I'm a new creature, I'm a new creation.
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Yes, there's still remaining aspects of sin, but there must be a change. And that's what happened in the
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Apostle Paul's life, dramatically different. Do you see people as Jesus sees them?
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Do you see people through the lens of eternity, as the Apostle Paul did? Or are you still looking at them from a fleshly, from the old way, as you used to?
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We need to see Jesus as he sees them, lost in need of a savior. The first motivation to preach the gospel is you know
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Christ and truth about him. The second motivation to preach the gospel is you are a new creature with a new master.
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The third motivation to preach the gospel is you are entrusted with a message of reconciliation.
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I love the way Apostle Paul starts us off in verse 18. Right after he just got talking about the new creation, he says, verse 18, now, all these things are from God.
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I think the Apostle Paul understands that God is the one who saves. He says, first and foremost,
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God is the one who brings us about this new creation, this new creature, the old things passing away.
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This is a work of God, not the sinner's work. This wasn't my work, God saved me, in other words.
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And what happened, he said, these things are from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.
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Namely, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. You know, Paul's not teaching universalism.
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I don't think Paul's a universalist. In fact, all the scripture and Paul's teachings, he teaches the very opposite, that there's actually people on their way to hell.
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Many, in fact. He's not saying that God was reconciling, saving every single person ever.
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What he is saying is that God was in Christ, reconciling not just Jews, not just a certain group of Gentiles, that actually
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God was saving people from every tribe, tongue, and nation through Christ. But this beckons the question, how does
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God save the sinner? Well, first of all, it's by the will of God.
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It's by God's sovereign decree. And notice, it's not you that's reconciling the sinner.
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The apostle Paul doesn't say, it's up to you now. Go out, convert people. It's up to you now. You know,
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Mike, go convert people. It's God who's reconciling the sinner.
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How? In and through Christ. This is the amazing truth of scripture. You know, there's all these false gods that we learn about, but what
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God is there? What false God out there goes after his people? From the garden onward, man's been running away from God.
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And God, through Christ, is running after the sinner, seeking and saving those who are lost, his bride.
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It is at the very nature of the scripture the nature of who God is. God is, by nature, a savior. And that's what separates him from all these false gods out there, who just wanna be, who are either indifferent or they need to be begged somehow or another to somehow appease one form or another.
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God is, by nature, a savior. Don't you wanna be on the same mission as God in that regard?
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How does this happen? Secondly, first, by the will of God. Second, by reconciliation.
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Christ came down and he proclaimed that in him, there's reconciliation. Man is at enmity with God.
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When you're dead in your trespasses and sins, you weren't a friend of God, you were his enemy. You were at enmity with God and he's at enmity with you.
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Paul says it this way in Romans 5 .10, for while you were enemies, you were reconciled to God through the death of his son.
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You know, as you start to read Paul's letters, you start seeing this idea of reconciliation come up over and over and over again.
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So that was at the core of, he experienced that reconciliation from being an enemy of the cross to now being a beloved son, to being in the kingdom.
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And that just motivated him throughout his life. John MacArthur says it this way about reconciliation.
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The terms always portray God as the reconciler and sinners as the one reconciled.
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Since it was human sin that ruptured the relationship between God and man.
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Paul was reconciled to God. And then as a result of that, he was given the ministry of reconciliation.
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Verse 19 says the word of reconciliation. In other words, he's saying, in my conversion, God gave me this ministry.
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What is it? Preach the gospel. Preach the message of reconciliation. The third way that God saves the sinner is by the act of forgiveness.
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You know, I think a lot of people today may think sin's just not a big deal and God just kind of, oh, he just erases the sin.
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It's no big deal. If that was the case, God wouldn't have sent his son. Verse 19 says that God was not counting their trespasses against them.
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Or 21, he made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf. That's amazing truth of the gospel.
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That although you were the one who contributed sin, Jesus contributes a perfect life.
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Perfect life of obedience, even to the cross. And this act of forgiveness is really by substitution.
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The substitutionary life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ goes to the cross in place of the sinner.
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You sin, I sin, we deserve hell, destruction. We deserve God's judgment.
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And instead of it being poured out on you and on me, it gets poured out on Christ on the cross.
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In other words, God forgives sinners by placing or imputing your sin to Christ on the cross and imputing his righteousness to you.
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That's how he forgives. And that's an amazing truth of the gospel. The substitutionary life, death, and resurrection.
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The righteousness of Christ imputed. You've all been entrusted with this message.
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This wasn't just some thing for Apostle Paul. It's easy to read and go, oh cool, that's Paul's mission.
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Now what's mine, Lord? No. You've been entrusted with the message of the gospel.
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Entrusted. You know, we talk about financial stewardship and other things. You've been, you're a steward of the gospel.
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And since reconciliation is by the will of God, you never have to ask yourself, is it
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God's will for me to share the gospel with my neighbor? Maybe you've ever prayed this prayer.
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You know, Lord, I don't know if I should share the gospel with this person, but if it's your will for me to share it with them, just have them come up, run, fall down on their knees begging and say,
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Zach, what do I gotta do to be saved? Oh, it didn't happen, okay, good. I guess it wasn't your will,
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Lord. So, and I'm sure, you know, we kind of joke, but I'm sure, I know
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I have and I'm sure you have prayed a similar type prayer. Well, you know, Lord, if it's your will, open the right door.
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Since it's the will of God for you to preach the gospel, you should never say, well, you know, I just wasn't led.
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Or, you know, I didn't have peace about it. It wasn't the right time. There's an urgency in the gospel.
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And the reality is, you know, there may have been a friend or a family member that you didn't preach the gospel to and they died.
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You thought, you know, maybe next Christmas I'll share the gospel with them. And they died in a car accident or cancer, whatever the case.
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And it'd be easy for me to get up here and just hammer you guys and go, you know, you're blowing it. You're not sharing the gospel.
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What's wrong with you? You know, there's good news in that regard. Because the good news is that, because even though you haven't been faithful always to perfectly evangelize, there's one who has.
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And that was Jesus Christ. He never once missed an opportunity. He was perfectly obedient to preach the gospel.
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And because of that, when God sees you, even though you've fallen short, he sees you through Christ.
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He sees you through Jesus's perfect evangelism, as if you were perfectly evangelizing.
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And since that's where you are positionally, and Mike talked about this this morning, since that's where you are positionally, it's time to walk in a manner worthy.
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The gospel, the good news is, even though you've fallen short, Jesus has it. So it's time to repent of those sayings and then also to ask
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God to strengthen you. The gospel should motivate you to preach the gospel because you're seen here.
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You should be motivated to get there in your walk, in your Christian walk. The first motivation to preach the gospel is you know
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Christ and truth. The second motivation is you are a new creature with a new master.
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The third motivation to preach the gospel is you are entrusted with the message of reconciliation. The fourth motivation to preach the gospel is you are given an ambassadorship to the king of all kings.
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Apostle Paul says in verse 20, therefore we are ambassadors for Christ. What is an ambassador?
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You know, today we have ambassadors, right? United States, we have ambassadors in all foreign lands. And they go and they represent our government, our president, our
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Congress. And in Apostle Paul's day, they had ambassadors as well.
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An ambassador would go into a foreign land and they would represent the king. And they'd go with the king's message.
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They wouldn't go with their own message, they would go with the king's message and speak for him as if he was there.
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And Paul is saying, and here this is kind of the summary of where we've been in 16 through 19. He's just kind of summing it up in this, in being, he's saying, you know, because I know
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Christ, because I'm a new creation in Christ, I'm reconciled, I'm brought near to God through Christ, I'm now his ambassador and I go with my king's message.
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And when the Apostle Paul went and preached, he didn't preach his own message. He didn't change it. He didn't go with just what he thought would be good.
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He didn't do it for his own gain, like a lot of the false prophets and false teachers were doing, false apostles.
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But he went and he preached as if it was Christ himself preaching. He preached the same message that Christ preached.
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You know, here at BBC as a believer, you have been given as well an ambassadorship to the king of all kings, to King Jesus.
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And you're to preach his message. And you don't get to pick the message.
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It's Jesus's message. In Mark 1 15, Jesus says, the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God's at hand, therefore repent and believe the gospel.
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And if you watch the life of his disciples, they went with that same message, proclaiming
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Christ as Messiah, Christ as the risen savior. And in response to what he has done, you must repent and believe.
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You know, today we kind of want to add and take away. It's like some sort of math equation, the gospel.
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We just subtract what we don't like and add what we want. You know, we either get on the extreme of, you know,
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God just loves you, has a wonderful plan for your life, or you go the full other extreme. It's just like, you're going to burn in hell.
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And just, you know, beat people down with hell all the time. We just need to be faithful to the message of the gospel.
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You can't remove the sharp edges. You know, recently there's a tsunami in Japan, hit
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Japan and where we live, there's this big scare, middle of the night, fire department got called. There's tsunami coming.
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I'm like, we're 10 miles away from the water. We're up on a mountain, you know? But there's all this panic because there's potential danger.
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You know, and there's people that got woken up who live by the beach. Warning, tsunami is coming.
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Be careful. I mean, would you not call someone? You know, that person's sleeping.
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I don't want to offend them. Tsunami's coming, but you know, they might get upset. They may not like me.
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You know, my boss, he was really upset that the guy called him. He's like, you know, it wasn't a big deal. Can't believe that guy called me and woke me up.
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But the reality is we have to warn people. There's a warning in the gospel message as well.
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If you don't heed this message, there's judgment coming. Jesus has gone to the cross.
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He's paid it all for those who repent and believe. But if you reject that message, there is coming judgment.
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There's a warning. People need to hear about Christ.
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They don't need to hear about Christ necessarily. They need to hear Christ. His message preached.
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When you preach the gospel, it is as if God is preaching through you. I love how
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Paul, so Paul says this in Romans 10, verses 14 through 15. He says, in these questions, he asks, how will they call on him in whom they have not believed?
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How will they believe in him whom they have not heard? They don't hear
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Jesus. How will they believe in him? He goes on to say, how will they hear without a preacher?
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Someone's gotta preach it, someone. And how will they preach unless they are sent? Just as it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things.
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You know, in those days, you'd be part of a kingdom. And maybe the kingdom that you're in was at war with another.
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And there's a war going on. And a messenger would come running or writing and saying, good news, the king's won.
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We've won the battle. The enemy's defeated. We've won. That's good news.
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Wouldn't you then wanna spread that news? And that message would just spread throughout the land. The battle's won.
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And that's that picture of how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things. When you preach the gospel faithfully, the gospel news spreads.
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Not everyone gets saved through it, but it's the means through which God uses to save people.
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And in that same way, you would wanna spread the news, the good news. Unbelievers must hear
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Christ's message for it is the message that God uses to save. It is the means to the end of God's sovereign, free grace.
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When's the last time you begged someone to be reconciled to God? You ever done that?
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You ever just begged someone, please repent. Please believe, trust in Jesus.
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Well, here in our text, the apostle Paul did. He said, in talking about being an ambassador, he says, we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
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You know, the apostle Paul, as he said in verse 18, it's all of God. God is the one who saves.
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The only way that the dead man rises is if God gives him life and raises him from spiritual deadness to newness of life.
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It is a sovereign work of God. And I'm pretty confident, could be wrong, but I'm pretty confident the apostle
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Paul had a good understanding of salvation, had a good understanding of sovereign salvation.
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And yet, what does he say? He says he begs people. You know, you'd think maybe he's kind of out there.
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You know, he's just, he thinks it's all about him and what he can do to win the soul. Yet he begs people.
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Be reconciled to God. You know, last Saturday night, I had the opportunity, one of the men that God's brought into my life to disciple back in California.
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He's 19 years old. He's this college, he's in college. He's this big guy, you know, kind of a man's man, lifts weights, you know.
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And in this last year, he got saved. God saved him, his family, him and his whole family, Catholic, very faithful to the
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Catholic church. And God opened his eyes to the truth. He thought his whole life he was a good person. And God showed him how desperately wicked he really was and how in need of a savior he was.
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In a Bible study on Thursday night, he was home for his spring break. And he was saying, man, it just kills me that my family is on their way to hell right now.
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My parents, my brother, they're a really close knit family. They don't know the gospel.
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They don't know Jesus for who he really is. And so last Saturday night, we had an opportunity, my wife and I went over, we had dinner, you know, had fun, ate dinner.
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And then it was just time to preach the gospel, time to talk with these people. His dad is one of my clients that I train, one of my personal trainer, you know.
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And part of my livelihood is coming from him. And I just remember, because it's, you know, and we'll find out later, even for the
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Apostle Paul, it's not necessarily easy to preach the gospel. It's intimidating. I remember just praying in my mind going, you know,
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Lord, even if the dad never trains with me ever again, if I can preach the gospel, it's worth it.
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Because that's the power of God unto salvation. And so God gave this amazing opportunity to sit down with the whole family, mom, dad, older brother, and just unfold the gospel to them.
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Tell them about this risen savior who came and lived the life that they can never live, who is perfectly obedient to the
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Father, where they had fallen short, and how he had gone to the cross and actually endured
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God's full wrath in place of sinners. And then was raised from the grave so that those who would repent and trust in him, that if they would repent and trust in him, could have newness of life.
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And I just unpacked the gospel. And Ian, I remember big Ian, big broad shoulders, tough guy, had tears in his eyes saying, mom, dad, to his older brother, please listen to Zach, listen to the gospel.
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I believed the same way you guys believed my whole life until a year ago. And I was on my way to hell.
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Sad part, the dad's response to that was, no, you weren't. You've always been a good boy. And that's just heartbreaking because the hardness of his heart to think that he was good enough to get to heaven without perfect righteousness.
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But Ian, I wasn't gonna say his name, but oh, well, too late now. You know,
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Ian, he got what the apostle Paul is saying. I beg, he pleaded with his family.
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And he knows that it's only, it's gonna be only by a work of God's sovereign grace to save them, to make the dead men rise.
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And yet he still begged. What about you? Apostle Paul has given us four motivations.
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First one, first motivation to preach the gospel because you know Christ. Second motivation to preach the gospel because you are a new creature with a new master.
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The third motivation, you are entrusted with the message of reconciliation. The fourth motivation to preach the gospel because you are given an ambassadorship to the king of all kings.
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And in closing tonight, I want us to flip to Ephesians chapter six because it's easy to look at the apostle
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Paul and go, well, of course it was easy for him. He's the apostle. He, you know, how many people did
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God use the apostle Paul to evangelize, to preach the gospel to? I mean, we just see in the book of Acts, there's hundreds, if not thousands of people getting saved through his faithful evangelism.
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And yet, was it easy for him? Is it easy for you at work, at school, everyday life to preach the gospel?
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It's not. And so there's here in light of that, you know, if you are faithful, if you are faithfully preaching the gospel regularly, or if you've never done it, apostle
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Paul's words here, it's really a prayer. Verse 19 through 20 should be your prayer.
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And it should be mine as well. Verse 19 says this, and pray on my behalf that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel for which
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I'm an ambassador in chains, that in proclaiming it, I may speak boldly as I ought to speak.
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Apostle Paul is saying to the Ephesian church, pray for me. I need boldness to go and preach the gospel.
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Everyone here in this room, including myself, you all need boldness to go preach the gospel.
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But you should be motivated by who you are in Christ. Because you know him in truth, because he's transformed you.
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You are a new creation with a new focus in life. It's no longer about you. It's no longer about your agenda.
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It's about his kingdom. It's about proclaiming Christ, the risen savior. You must be motivated because God reconciles sinners through the proclamation of the gospel.
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And what an honor. You should be motivated. The king of all kings. Imagine if President Obama said, hey, would you be my ambassador to China or some other land?
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It'd be a great honor. Imagine this.
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If King Jesus stood before you and said, will you be my ambassador to this fallen world?
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In the pages of scripture, this message here in 2 Corinthians, Paul gives to the Corinthian churches, you've been given an ambassadorship.
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What an honor. What a privilege to serve your king in this way. Scripture says you're a pilgrim and a sojourner in this land.
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We're in a foreign land. We're awaiting home in heaven. And what an honor to serve our king.
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What an honor you have to serve your king as an ambassador for the gospel. Let's pray.
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Heavenly Father, Lord, I just confess for me and I know for these people,
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Lord, that we don't always faithfully preach your gospel. We don't always look at people as we ought to through the lens of eternity, whether they are on their way to hell or whether they know you.
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And Father, I just pray for these people here that we would have a greater passion to seek and save the lost, a greater be motivated all the more to go and faithfully proclaim the gospel, to not be afraid, to not be ashamed, to have courage and boldness, even with tears in our eyes to proclaim this message of reconciliation, that enemies can be reconciled to their
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God through the blood of Christ, through his perfect life, through his death and his resurrection.
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Please encourage these people. Encourage me as well, Lord, through your truth, may we apply it to our lives.
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May we go forth this week and every week proclaiming the gospel, unashamed, proudly, recognizing what a privilege we have to be an ambassador to our