Full Transcript

Welcome to Share the Word. In this podcast, Paul not only speaks about the significance of Christ’s death and the perspective we hold about our temporary time on this earth, but also draws focus on the Great Commission and our role and responsibility to share the good news and the gospel. Let’s get started. Second Corinthians chapter 5, part 2. Ambassadors. A national election just concluded in the U.S. recently, as I’m writing this, and a new administration will be assuming power in January.

Between now and then, the president-elect and his transition team have one very important job to do, and that’s to fill all kinds of positions for the incoming administration, about 4,000 actually. I’ve been seeing on the news the last couple days several of the first appointments announced, top-level jobs. One that I found interesting, I’m going to watch this going forward, is Mike Huckabee to be ambassador to Israel. Obviously, Israel is in the midst of the thorny problems in the Middle East always. Lately, the war in Gaza to their south, attacks coming against them from Hezbollah terror group that’s occupying Lebanon on their northern border, as well as escalating threats from Iran. Many Christians who take the Bible literally wonder if the attacks of these enemies on Israel could well start a spreading war, West versus East, which may have serious implications for biblical prophecy.

Hey, but that’s another lesson for another day. But what particularly caught my eye about Huckabee’s appointment is that before he got into public service and became a national player in the Republican Party, he was a pastor in Bible-believing churches in Arkansas from 1980 to 1992. Contemporary of mine. I’m very interested to see now what Ambassador Huckabee is going to do with his Christian worldview representing the United States interests in the Middle East. We’re going to talk about an ambassador’s crucial role in a few moments because the Apostle Paul says so in the second half of chapter five. In the first part of this chapter, Paul’s been describing the eternal perspective he always tried to keep, something he wanted always in the forefront of his mind.

He constantly reminded himself that his life on this planet, while in his physical body, was a temporary thing. It was passing, and that what lay ahead in heaven was much more important, as well as eternal and permanent. That eternal perspective is one thing that enabled Paul to weather all the difficulties and suffering he endured. Held up against eternity, though, he said, he considered them to be momentary and light affliction. And this eternal perspective also helped him keep his focus on what was most important right now, and that was accomplishing the ministry assignments Jesus had given him, doing things now that actually would make a difference extending into eternity. For him, that was spreading the gospel, planting and overseeing new churches, preparing a next generation of Christian leaders, vital work, and this is what his life was all about.

One big reason he considered it important enough to suffer for, he gets to in verses 10 and 11 in our chapter where he writes, For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may be recompensed, paid back, for the deeds done in this body, according to what we have done, whether it’s good or bad. So then, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade men. We talked before on Share the Word about the judgment seat of Christ, sometimes called the Bema Seat Judgment. This will be an evaluation of Christians’ lives by the Lord Jesus once our lives are over. It’s not a judgment deciding anyone’s salvation, anyone’s eternal destination. It’s not a judgment regarding sin at all.

We learned in Romans that for Christians, Jesus already died and paid for our sins. They were judged by God at the cross. All who are in Christ by faith have already been justified, declared innocent in God’s eyes, and the righteousness of Christ has been applied to us. We’ll never be called to account for our sins unless the cross of Christ was not enough, and it was enough. That’s the good news. What Paul is referring to here is the future evaluation over what Christians have done with their lives since they accepted Christ.

In another more detailed passage we’ve already covered in 1 Corinthians 3, Paul says our lives as Christians then, whatever they amounted to here in this lifetime, will be tested. Did we spend them foolishly or wisely on selfish, pretty meaningless pursuits or things that Christ values, worthily or unworthily? It will be an evaluation to determine rewards or lack of rewards. Christians who spend their lives serving Christ’s interests faithfully will be commended on that day, the Bible says, and seriously rewarded in heaven. That’s going to happen. At the end of our life’s race, there will be an award ceremony, and Paul said this reality he kept in the front of his mind, and it’s why he persuaded others in his words.

I’m not sure if he meant it’s why he kept after sharing the gospel, that is, trying to persuade other people to believe it, or if he meant trying to persuade other Christians like the Corinthians and like us to take our calling seriously too. Probably some of both. In the following verses, Paul again punches back at the false apostles who had come to Corinth to discredit him and to spread their false gospel. I think he’s again parodying one of their insults when he says, If we are out of our mind, as some say, it is for God; but it is Christ’s love that compels us. Sometimes Christians who take Jesus’ message and the Great Commission seriously do come across as religious fanatics to those who don’t understand their passion about it. That Paul guy, from what we’ve heard, he’s a little over the top, man.

He’s gone over the deep end. He’s a little unbalanced. They must have been saying things like that about the Apostle Paul. And his response to that was, Christ’s love shown to him compels him to do what he does. And then in verse 15, he makes a statement that would be very hard to top as a life verse for a Christian when he says, And he died for all, Jesus that is, that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died and rose again on their behalf. After what Jesus has done for me, shouldn’t I live my life for him?

Paul is saying. To Paul, that was not nuts, not insane, as he was being accused of being kind of crazy. It was only what should follow, what was right, and it should seem right to all of us who appreciate and understand God’s grace in our lives too. Then Paul goes on, So from now on, we regard no one from a worldly point of view, though once we regarded even Christ in this way, but we no longer do. At one point in his life, Paul looked down on Jesus and his followers too. He thought they were way off base too, maybe crazy too, just as many now considered him.

But his perspective has completely changed. He has completely changed. Why? Because as he says in verse 17, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away; behold, new things have come. Nothing proves the truth of the gospel better than seeing the life of someone who’s believed into Christ turned around and completely transformed, just as Saul of Tarsus did a 180 and became the apostle Paul.

I love when someone well known comes to Christ and isn’t shy about letting the world know that. An example of that not long ago is a person called Kat Von D. She was a very well-known tattoo artist on the West Coast. Her bad girl image, along with her good looks, her personality, her artistic abilities, landed her on her own TV show called LA Ink. Lots of younger people were fascinated with her, and part of that fascination, unfortunately, was her interest in the occult, witchcraft, dark stuff. I was surprised and glad to learn not long ago that Kat had become a Christian.

She actually posted on her Instagram account video of her profession of faith and her baptism, and she announced that she had destroyed her books on the occult, her tarot cards, etc. I saw her on a podcast just recently talking about her faith in Christ now and the changes that have come into her life. I heard her say how sorry she was for having misled young followers for years, meaning her fans, and that’s why she wanted to post that public baptism and testimony online. And then she said, and I’m quoting her, Things I once found attractive, I now find disgusting. It’s like I didn’t even have to put any effort in stopping certain behaviors. One day, you realize you no longer have a desire for things that God says are unclean.

Praise God, the Holy Spirit for this transformation. That’s what Paul means exactly when he says, Old things pass away, new things come. Praise God, for real. Paul gets to the big idea versus I want to focus on most, starting at verse 18 and running to the end of the chapter, where he writes, Now all of these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their wrongs against them, 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. We beg you, on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

He made Him who knew no sin, that is Jesus, to become sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God through Him. Before Jesus returned to heaven after His resurrection, He left His disciples with a commission. He apparently gave them these instructions several times in different words on different occasions, because Luke was told Jesus charged His followers, You shall be My witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth, while the apostle John records Jesus saying, As the Father sent Me into the world, I am now sending you into the world. And Matthew records Jesus’ commission, Go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.

Now, the apostle Paul here summarizes Jesus’ commission to his followers in our chapter like this: He has committed to us the ministry of reconciliation; therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, just as though God were making His appeal through us. Being an ambassador is an important and sometimes crucial job, as I said at the outset. Times of crisis, an ambassador becomes our government’s official mouthpiece. They’re the intermediary who conveys the vital messages. When the U.S. ambassador speaks, he speaks with all the authority of the United States government. Understand, this is how the apostle Paul saw himself, and furthermore says we should see ourselves.

We are God’s ambassadors, he says. The vital message to be conveyed is the gospel, the official information about how human beings can be reconciled to their Creator. When we share the gospel message, we are acting as God’s mouthpieces. We are conveying the message of the highest importance to mankind on behalf of our sovereign, the word about how sinful human beings can be reconciled to Him and pass from being under His judgment to being forgiven and accepted into His family. I read some sad statistics several years ago that said only about one out of ten Christians share their faith with others, which of course means nine out of ten don’t. Some never once.

Looking inside that finding, the researchers said that of those, the 90% who don’t, about six out of ten of them were largely apathetic. In other words, if you asked them why they never shared what they believed about Jesus with others, you’d probably get a blank stare or an answer like, You know, I really never think about it. I can’t help but believe these are merely cultural Christians, people for whom the checkbox on the hospital admission form saying Christian sounds closer to them than Muslim or Hindu or none of the above.

It’s just hard for me to imagine someone who’s really a follower of Christ and who understands what that means, that doesn’t think about whether their friends or coworkers or family members or neighbors understand the gospel of Christ, which leaves another 30% or so about that number who do profess to be Christians and who do care where others stand with Christ, but nevertheless still don’t share their faith. Why do you think that is so? That’s what I’d like to explore with you in our last few moments. One piece of it is that many of us are hindered by fear. What exactly are we afraid of? I’m not talking about physical fear, probably, unless you’re in China or maybe a radical Muslim country with zero religious freedoms.

So for most of us, we’re talking about intimidation or psychological fear. The Bible says that God has not given us that kind of fear, but rather a spirit of power and love and self-discipline. And it also says that perfect love casts fear out. In other words, our love and concern for other people should override the fear that we feel of rejection or being thought a religious fanatic or whatever we fear. So when we have an opportunity to share what Christ means to us, that door swings open in conversations, we have to decide at that moment to yield to the spirit of fear or to the spirit of God who lives in us as believers and who will empower us. We have to decide whether we will love the person and care about their soul more than we care about our own immediate psychological comfort.

I’m not minimizing this. I know this struggle is real. It’s real for me. I’ve always been a non-confrontational kind of person, but I also hate cold water. What’s that have to do with this? I hate jumping in a pool.

I’m the last person when we go to the pool or into the ocean. But sometimes I have to just say, Shut up to the wrong voice in my head, jump in, splash. And you know what? I’m still here. Nothing drastic happened. I’ve had to do the same thing with speaking out for Christ when I’m uncomfortable or don’t know how the person will react too.

Listen to this prayer of the early Christians when the enemies of Christ tried their best to intimidate them. And now, Lord, behold their threatening, and grant unto your servants that with all boldness we may speak your word. So whisper that prayer when this happens: Lord, give me boldness and jump into that conversation. Another contributing cause is that some of us are deluded into inaction. And what’s the delusion? Thinking evangelism, which just means sharing your faith story, is someone else’s job.

Thinking evangelism is not my gift. But as we’ve already seen, Christ commissioned his followers to share the gospel with everyone after he died. And as Paul reminds us here in 2 Corinthians 5, he’s committed to us the word of reconciliation. Consequently, we are ambassadors for Christ. The word of reconciliation means the message of what God has done in Christ to make our reconciliation with him possible. Listening further to Kat on that podcast, by the way, remember she’s a pretty new Christian.

She was so sorry for how she had, through her example, led others astray. But she also did not feel like she’s the right person yet to lead people to Christ. You know what? The truth is, she is. The reason it is so important to get past this delusion of it’s not me, I can’t do it, is because there are people in and around our lives that may never meet a bona fide, highly gifted evangelist. Those around us are likely to have to settle for us as the messenger.

We may well be the Christian God has positioned to share the gospel with them, and that God is counting on to do our best at that, to share what believing into Christ means and how it’s affected our lives, closely related to that. Many Christians are kind of paralyzed by the fear of thinking, I’m inept. I just wouldn’t know what to begin or how to say it, or when I talk to my friends, what if they ask me a hard question, you know? I’ve heard many people use this excuse. It’s understandable, but it’s certainly a solvable thing. First Peter 3:15 says, Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that you have.

God says, Get prepared. You know how you would prepare for an important job interview, how you’d explain who you are, your experiences, how you would feel you could help their company, and so on. Same thing. Take some time, think it through, and become prepared. Sharing your own testimony is a great way to start. But I’m going to post sometime soon on our website a way I’ve explained the gospel to people once I knew they were interested in finding out what I actually believed.

But there are many approaches to this. You could also Google four spiritual laws or the Romans Road for examples of some simple ways to explain who Jesus is and why we all need Him. If you can explain to someone why you love your favorite sports team or how to make your favorite recipe, you can learn how to explain the simple biblical ideas someone needs to understand to believe into Jesus and be saved. Let me mention one more, and this is silenced by a defiled conscience. I hope you understand this one. We did an episode not long ago around the importance of a good conscience.

I think it was episode 116. In our chapter here at verse 11, Paul writes, Since we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade people. What we are is plain to God, and I hope it’s also plain to your conscience. What Paul is saying is that as he was trying to persuade people of the truth, he realized how they saw him would heavily influence how they received the truth or the message. You’ve undoubtedly heard the old saying, What you are is speaking so loudly I cannot hear what you say. If you’re afraid someone you need to share the gospel with is a person who would never listen to you because they would say inside, Wait a minute, you of all people now are going to talk to me about being a Christian?

That’s what I mean by being silenced by a defiled conscience. The only answer to this is to confess our failures to God and then have the courage to clear our conscience with that other person who might not be taking our faith seriously. This is a very important step, so I would refer you back to that episode, I think it is 116, from 1 Corinthians chapter 8, to learn about clearing your conscience. If there’s something going on in your life that would plug the ears of someone to the gospel, it’s high time to straighten that out. Just the act of going back and clearing your conscience with them will itself be a powerful witness of the sincerity of your faith. Joe Aldrich, in his great book Lifestyle Evangelism, recounts a legend.

It’s clearly an imaginary story, but it’s thought-provoking. It’s about what could have happened after Jesus finished his mission of salvation and returned to heaven from earth. He, still bearing the marks in his body from the cruelty of the cross, is approached by the angel Gabriel in this legend and says, Master, you suffered terribly down there for sinful mankind. Jesus simply answers, Yes. And then Gabriel hesitatingly asks, Do they know all about what you have done for them, how much you love them? No, replied Jesus, not yet.

Right now only a handful of my followers in Israel know about this. Gabriel was perplexed. Then what have you done to let everybody know about your love for them and your sacrifice on Calvary? Jesus said, Well, I’ve asked Peter and James and John and the rest of my true followers to go and tell other people all about it, who will in turn go and tell more people, and so on and so on. And in time, the good news will spread to the farthest reaches of the earth. Ultimately, all mankind will have heard about my life and death and what it means for them.

Gabriel frowned, unable to hide his skepticism. He knew too well what poor stuff men are made of. Yes, Lord, he said, but what if Peter and John and the others grow weary? What if the people who come after them fail and forget? And what if, as time goes on, people just don’t tell others anymore? Have you made any other plan?

And Jesus answered, I haven’t. I am counting on them. I’m unaware of any other contingency plan as well. He’s counting on us who’ve experienced his grace and forgiveness. He’s committed to us, Paul writes here, the message of reconciliation. And now we, in this generation, we are his ambassadors.

This is Paul for Share the Word. Thanks, Paul. Jesus is counting on each and every one of us to continue what he commanded the apostles to do: share the good news of the gospel. In this podcast, Paul brings out the important points that so many allow fear to stop them from sharing the faith. For me, it changed when I realized that all I had to do was start the conversation with one question and trust that the Holy Spirit would take it from there. What’s your question?

Do you have one? Are you the one in ten who are bringing people to Christ, or are you part of the other nine who shy away from trying? From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.