JC Disciples
Be An Ambassador for Christ
Reading: 2 Corinthians 5:14-21
"For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again."
"So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 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 men'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."
Good Morning. As you can probably tell I am not pastor Ed or really even a preacher. I am just an unworthy child of God who has been asked to evangelize to you today.
In Ephesians, St. Paul writes "It was he (meaning Christ) who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ."
By the grace of God, my hope and prayer today is that I will help build you up and prepare you for works of service to the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
This morning I want to tell you about my old self and those people who God called and compelled to be His ambassadors in my life.
I was raised in a unique household, my mom is Mexican-American and a devout Roman Catholic. My dad on the other hand is a devout Jew whose grandparents came from Austria. I was raised in the Catholic church, but my parents were wise enough to know that we should learn about my dad's faith. So at a very early age I learned about Passover, Yom-Kipper and Hanukkah in addition to all of those things that the Catholic church teaches. With all of this religious upbringing you might suspect that I would never wander from the narrow path of the Lord, but I did.
As a young man, I learned to recognize a horrible rage that lurked and lived inside of me. That rage was blinding and virtually uncontrollable. Through my rage I committed many horrible acts and sins. In one case I threw one of my sisters across a room. In another case, I deliberately tried to run down an acquaintance with a car. God was there to protect them from any permanent or serious injury.
Some of you might be asking where could such rage come from and why didn't anyone do anything about it? Those are good questions and I asked them myself at the time. As some of you might guess, my family is dysfunctional. I was impressed with the subtle message that emotional outbursts of any kind were not good. I never learned how to deal with my anger and so I suppressed it until it exploded in rage.
At about this same time I began to loss whatever little faith I had in God. I looked at my miserable and disgusting life and wondered where was God. I found the ritual answers and lack of sound Biblical teaching in the Roman Catholic church irritating. The event that drove me out was when the priests and nuns told me that my dad would go to hell because he wasn't a Christian. Of course since they hadn't taught me anything from scripture about God's grace; I assumed that dad's good works would get him into heaven.
I left the church and Christianity. I became an enemy of Christianity. I enjoyed making fun of and tormenting Christians I knew. I enjoyed my "freedom". I decided that the only "sensible" philosophy was Zen Buddhism. One of the reasons I liked it so much was that at its root understanding is that we only have to perfect what we are good at or what we want to be good at. There are no set rules for a good Zen Buddhist, he makes them up as he goes along. This became more and more apparent as I studied Japanese culture and history. I began to model myself after a Japanese samurai.
Part of the system is the idea of perfecting oneself. I tried to change small parts of my behavior. One behavior I wanted to change was my foul mouth. But the harder I tried, the more I failed. And the more I failed, the more I came to realize how helpless I was to change any core behavior in my life. Afterall, if I couldn't change small behaviors how was I going to change the really bad ones. With that realization came depression. And with depression came two suicide attempts. For me it was more honorable to kill myself than to live in the shame of failure.
And even though I had abandoned God years earlier, He had not abandoned me. First my mom and my grandmother continued to pray for me. They prayed that I would come back to the faith. They prayed that God would protect me.
Secondly God sent a Christian man into my life. Chris and I meet because we both had the same hobby, role-playing games. He was the first Christian I really got to know aside from my mom. Chris can easily be described as an evangelical Christian.
For about a year we shared a house together. Can you imagine an evangelical Christian and a Zen Buddhist in the same house? Our mutual friends thought that we would end up killing each other or that Chris wouldn't stick around for longer than a few months. But Chris knew how to reach me. First of all he never hide his faith from me. He got all kinds of Christian magazines, read his bible every day, went to church every Sunday, didn't drink, smoke or curse. All of those things that we think about when we imagine a fundamentalist Christian. He always made sure to leave out his Christian magazines and tracts, which he knew I would read. And I did read them, even though I thought they were stupid. But mostly Chris let me see and share his life.
He had his own problems and issues that he had to deal with. He and his father did not get along very well. Normally this isn't a problem for a 25 year old, unless you work for your father's company. He had a job that was beneath his skill and temperament. But somehow he always had a real joy in his life.
We became friends. And because he was a good friend he would tell me when I had messed up. He answered questions when I had them. And no matter how bad, horrible or stupid I was he never ever stopped loving me. Sometimes his love was kind and gentle; and at other times it was a very tough love. He was and is a true friend - he loved me in my pain.
After graduating from college I went on to my first job. Even though I knew my way wasn't working I continued the lie. And while I learned how to control my rage, through physical activity, it still burned inside of me. I just found new ways to channel my self-destructive behavior. Instead of directly attacking people, I became more manipulative and always looked for ways to get revenge. Anyone who got in my way or interfered with my goals I would find a way to eliminate or neutralize. The lives I have damaged because of my revenge taking is staggering to me.
The funny thing is that all of my non-Christian friends and acquaintances who knew me then would have thought of me as an honorable and upright man. I hide my evil and sinful life very well from them.
Everyone was oblivious to my self-destructive life, except for two Christians. Ben, Terri and I worked together at my first job. Ben and Terri have opposite approaches in how to evangelize to a non-believer. Ben, whom I meet first, is a very direct man.
God knew that I needed someone to point out my sinful life and remind me of the basic truths of Christianity. Ben did that. Ben would challenge me and show me how my life was not working. He told me the Bad News, that God judges by an absolute standard and that if I didn't meet God's standards I would go to hell.
What a devastating concept! That none of us can be good enough for God. Ben did not shy away from the truth of the Bible. He accepted the Bible in its completeness - the good, the bad and the ugly. I hated the idea that I couldn't be good enough for God. I hated him for telling me that. How many of us are willing to be hated for the Truth of the Gospel?
And you will be hated when you tell sinners the Truth of the Gospel. I didn't want to know that I wasn't good enough for God, no sinner wants to know that. The popular secular idea of the day is "I'm OK and Your OK." But if people are OK, then why is becoming increasingly more difficult to commit to a single person for your whole life? Why is it impossible for us to have compassion on the homeless? Why won't we take five minutes to call a bedridden friend instead of planning our vacations, investments, or weekends? Sin. We want to do it our way not God's way.
But Ben, as a Christian who knows all about God's grace, would not leave me hanging on the edge of hell. He told me about the grace which comes through Jesus Christ. Ben pointed out how much God had changed his life. Ben shared his life with me, he told me about why he went to Vietnam. He told me about what he did there and how much he liked the violence of his life there. Ben shared with me how his wife slowly but surely guided him to repentance and God's grace. How many of us are willing to patiently and prayerfully wait for God to change someone's heart?
Ben told me about how Jesus Christ died on the cross for me. I was reminded that if I had been the only sinful person to ever live, Jesus would have come for me and me alone. Then Ben told me how much the blood of Christ can change my life, just like it had changed his life. The pain that I had so long suppressed again became a part of my life. And that is very important because most non-believers suppress their consciences so that they can live with the guilt of knowing that they are not living up to God's standards. We must remind them of that pain and sin in their lives so they will seek out Jesus Christ and the grace he offers. And then Ben was reassigned.
God had prepared my heart and mind for the seed of the Gospel, by sending two men who cleared my heart of the weeds and plowed up my pain. Then Terri entered into my life. She never told me she was a Christian, I just knew it. Terri is a born and bred Lutheran, just like most of you. She gently introduced me to grace and always answered my questions. Terri gave me Luther's Small Catechism the first one I had ever seen. We then talked Luther's Small Catechism. How many of you have a Small Catechism at your workplace? Couldn't you share it with someone who you work with?
As we became friends, she knew that I was in pain and filled with loneliness. So she asked me to come with her to a singles small group Bible study. Which I refused to go to. But Terri was not discouraged, she continued to ask me to come for six months. Terri knew that to be a good fisher of men, patience was an absolute necessity.
She also knew that she would have to bait the hook correctly to get me to go to the Singles Bible Study group. She told me that there were twice as many unattached single women in the group as men. I showed up because of I wanted to meet women, but I stayed because I was welcomed. And they continued to welcome me even though they knew I didn't believe.
Obviously this is where Trudy [my wife] enters the picture. And although Trudy did become my primary source of contact with Christianity, many Christians in that Bible Study group reached out to me. They all nurtured me and feed me by answering my questions and sometimes telling me that they didn't have any answers for my questions. Again they shared their lives with me. They showed me where Christ had made a difference in their own lives.
For almost two years I was a part of that small group Bible study. During that time Trudy read John's Gospel to me many times. I asked hard and sometimes very sarcastic questions. The members of that singles group continued to love me where I was at. When I was wrong they told me I was wrong. I listened because I knew that they had integrity and honesty. I also knew that they wanted only the best for me. Can you nurture and share your life with one person for years to help lead them to Christ?
After a while I knew they were right, the obvious evidence was their own changed lives and the Bible itself, but I only knew it in my head. I still was afraid to commit. I thought I would have to give up so many things I enjoyed like rock-n-roll music, role- playing-games, and sleeping in late on Sundays. But the real reason I was afraid was that I believed I would have to make a leap of faith, quite literally like jumping across the Grand Canyon.
That leap of faith came after being laid off, having the gas turned off at my apartment for a week due to a leak, and the stress of an upcoming interview. That Sunday night, before I was to fly to my interview, I finally submitted myself to God by asking His Son to enter into my life. Immediately I found the peace and comfort that I was looking for all my life. And just like character of Indiana Jones in the movie The Last Crusade, I found out that leaps of faith are always rewarded by God.
The next day I was able to see the world in a whole new light. For the last eight years I can see how God has been cleansing my life and making me into a whole man. My rage is gone and that evil man I use to be is dead! I know that Jesus Christ took on my evil and sin at Cavalry, because He loved me enough to save me. I am a born-again, Spirit filled man who God has made into a new creature for His service. Praise be to God for saving a wretched, worthless man like me.
My message to each of you is to look for people in your lives that you can bring God's grace to. God wants to use your strengths and your weaknesses to reach all those people in your lives who do not know, believe and submit their lives to Jesus Christ. Some of you may be saying to yourself that you don't know how to be an ambassador for Christ. There are ways to learn how to answer this call. The first place to start is to pray to God for guidance and to study God's Word.
God used Chris, Ben, Terri, Trudy and so many others as ambassadors for Christ and that is why I am a Christian today. If they had not answered His call I would be dead today and in hell. Don't forget that. I would be dead today and in hell if Christians had not acted as Christ's ambassadors.
So ask yourself, is Christ's love compelling you to reach out to the people in your world? Do you know that you are Christ's ambassadors and He has committed to you the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Is there someone in your life who needs to be born-again by the Holy Spirit? Be Christ's ambassador for them, before its too late.