Guardians of the Gospel: Committed to Communicate God's Gospel!
Called to Commitment: Taking Your Spiritual Life to the Next Level! • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 39:55
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Welcome
Welcome
Good Morning! I’m Pastor Wayne and I’d like to welcome you all to the gathering of Ephesus Baptist Church.
It’s nice to see so your smiling faces. If you are visiting with us this morning, please know that you are surrounded by some pretty amazing people. Ephesus is an active faith community on a mission with Jesus.
We don’t all share the same story; in fact, we come from many different paths. But here, we are one people giving our all to love God, love others, proclaim Jesus, and make disciples in our generation.
We have a connect card in the pew in front of you. I invite you to take one and fill it out! Please be sure to include your name, email, and address. If you have prayer needs, you can let us know about those as well.
I promise our prayer team will lift you up soon. You can place those cards in the offering plate when it comes around.
Scripture Memory
Scripture Memory
Call on Elizabeth to recite the verse
20 “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.
Opening Scripture Reading
Opening Scripture Reading
1 I will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and ever.
2 Every day I will bless you and praise your name forever and ever.
3 Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable.
4 One generation shall commend your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts.
5 On the glorious splendor of your majesty, and on your wondrous works, I will meditate.
6 They shall speak of the might of your awesome deeds, and I will declare your greatness.
7 They shall pour forth the fame of your abundant goodness and shall sing aloud of your righteousness.
8 The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
9 The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made.
10 All your works shall give thanks to you, O Lord, and all your saints shall bless you!
11 They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom and tell of your power,
12 to make known to the children of man your mighty deeds, and the glorious splendor of your kingdom.
13 Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures throughout all generations. The Lord is faithful in all his words and kind in all his works.
14 The Lord upholds all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down.
15 The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season.
16 You open your hand; you satisfy the desire of every living thing.
17 The Lord is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works.
18 The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.
19 He fulfills the desire of those who fear him; he also hears their cry and saves them.
20 The Lord preserves all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy.
21 My mouth will speak the praise of the Lord, and let all flesh bless his holy name forever and ever.
Series Review
Series Review
Good Morning,
In a few minutes we are going to have the incredible opportunity to partake of the Lord’s Table together as we commune with our God and with each other as family!
But before we do we are going to look at another key commitment of the Christian life.
The last few weeks we have been looking at a few key commitments of the Christian life that have the potential to take our spiritual lives to a higher level of maturity.
The commitments we looked at so far include.
1. Being Armed and Dangerous: Committed to Conceal God’s Word in Our Hearts!
1. Being Armed and Dangerous: Committed to Conceal God’s Word in Our Hearts!
From Psalm 119, we discussed how we are to treasure and value God’s Word. How we are to seek to memorize and meditate upon it daily. How we are to be devoted to God’s Word.
2. Sitting at the Lord’s Feet: Committed to Celebrate God’s Son!
2. Sitting at the Lord’s Feet: Committed to Celebrate God’s Son!
From Luke 10, we learned that genuine worship at the feet of Jesus will far outweigh a lifetime of religious “busy work.” We discovered that we should seek to celebrate Jesus everyday in every way!
3. Finding Strength Together: Committed to Connect to God’s People!
3. Finding Strength Together: Committed to Connect to God’s People!
Last week, God showed us from Hebrews 10, that we should find strength in each other. We learned that, as God’s Church, we are family and that we belong together. God called us to be a people committed to connect to His family!
Introduction:
Introduction:
Today, God is going to remind us from His Holy Word of our calling to be the Guardians of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
I love the marvel movie series “Guardians of the Galaxy.” It is about a rag tag bunch of space pirates and assassins who go to great lengths to protect the galaxy from devastating cosmic threats of a powerful orb.
It is about a bunch of cosmic criminals turned unsung heroes. The Guardians of the Galaxy summon up every bit of their collective strength to guard the galaxy from dangerous evils.
When you think about it, we are a lot like these Guardians!
They are cosmic criminals. They were pirates and assassins. They stole and murdered for a living.
We are cosmic criminals. We plundered the righteousness and holiness of God when we began to play with the dangers of sin. When sin consumed us we became murderers and destroyers of God’s created order.
They saw a dangerous evil that had the potential to destroy everything.
We clearly see the results of sin around us everyday. Even those who don’t believe in God, see some of the dangers of the sins of men.
They summoned all of their strength to put an end to the dangerous threats by becoming heroes, rather than villians. They overcame the evil and were forgiven of their crimes.
We....................Well, that is where the comparison stops because we were found to be dead in our trespasses and sin.
1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins
2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—
3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
There was no way for us to save the universe. We couldn’t even save ourselves. We were lost in space, drifting toward an eternal oblivion in Hell.
Utterly hopeless. We had lost our great battle. We became the evil. We became by nature children of wrath, the wrath of God.
But God intervened on our behalf. He became the Hero of all Heroes!
4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,
5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—
6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,
9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
We were lost, dead in our trespasses and sin!
By His grace, God made us alive together with Christ!
It was His gift to us! We didn’t deserve it, and we could not earn it! We have no place whatsoever to boast!
If we accept His gift, we are His! He has recreated us to walk in good works. Primarily the good works of the Gospel!
We, brothers and sisters, have been recreated and repurposed to be the Guardians of the Gospel!
Today we are going to be primarily in 2 Cor. 5:17-20. If you have your Bibles, then make your way there now!
2 Corinthians is in the New Testament, past the Gospels and sandwiched between 1 Corinthians and Galatians!
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation;
19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.
20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
Our passage presents us with three powerful truths this morning that point us toward the fourth commitment Scripture calls us to this morning: We have to be committed to communicate God’s Gospel.
Three ways the Gospel Transforms Us!
1. Reconciliation brings Re-Creation.
1. Reconciliation brings Re-Creation.
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation;
Paul was a changed man! Once a persecutor of the church, now an ambassador for Christ! God had changed him at the Damascus Road. Paul explains that change in terms of reconciliation.
He repeated the Greek terms for “reconcile” and “reconciliation” (katallasso/katallage) five times in our passage.
Paul has spoke a lot of the doctrine of Justification throughout his ministry, but he always adds reconciliation on top of it as a sweet topping of sorts.
Justification is a term used in the courts of law which means to acquit or to declare righteous.
A judge may acquit an accused person without ever befriending them. He just announces the verdict, not guilty.
The accused hardly expects to be treated to lunch with the judge, and probably hopes that he will never see him again.
Reconciliation goes a step further.
The judge enters into a personal relationship with the accused. God, our judge, is the one who has been wronged, He is the one sinned against.
God does not simply drop the charges against us. God gives himself to us in friendship. This investment is accomplished at an unspeakable cost due to the extreme nature of our offense.
Reconciliation assumes hurtful relationships, abandonment, and hatred.
Commentator David Garland summed up the idea of reconciliation well when he said.
Sin incurs God’s holy wrath, so it could not be treated lightly or swept under the rug. God can never be reconciled to sin, but God does not turn away from sinners in disgust and leave them to their just desserts. Instead, while humans were still in open revolt, God acted in love (Rom 5:8) { but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.} to bring the hostility to an end and to bring about peace. This peace is not simply a cessation of hostilities or an uneasy truce. It refers to the mending of the broken relationship that results from God justifying us (making us right) through faith and changing us from enemies to friends.
Garland, David E. 2 Corinthians. Vol. 29. The New American Commentary. Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1999.
Reconciliation brings Re-Creation. We are recreated into a new creation. We go from enemy to friend! In Christ, our whole being, value system, and behavior are changed through conversion.
Paul’s assumption is that being in Christ should bring about a radical change in a person’s life.
Reconciliation Brings Re-Creation
How we see God changes.
How we see ourselves changes.
How we see others changes
2. Re-Creation brings Responsibility.
2. Re-Creation brings Responsibility.
18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation;
19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.
God has given us a new responsibility. A ministry of reconciliation.
As those who have been recreated through reconciliation, we have the privilege to minister that same reconciliation to others.
Paul uses the noun “ministry” (diakonia) in verse 18 to describe this gift God has given us in re-creation. It is the same word we get servant or deacon from.
Some believe that the use of this term in early Christian tradition stemmed from the ministry of Jesus at the Last supper.
The ministry of reconciliation involves more than simply explaining to others what God has done in Christ.
It calls us to commit to communicate God’s Gospel by becoming an active reconciler ourselves.
Like Christ, we are to enter into the midst of human trouble to bring harmony out of chaos, reconciliation out of estrangement, and love in the place of hate.
We have been reconciled to God! We have been re-created and re-purposed with a new responsibility. We have been given the ministry of reconciliation.
3. Our Responsibility is fulfilled by serving as Guardians of the Gospel.
3. Our Responsibility is fulfilled by serving as Guardians of the Gospel.
20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
Our proclamation is actually a part of God’s reconciling activity. We proclaim God’s reconciliation with both our words and behavior.
Like the Guardians of the Galaxy, we must go where danger is most evident, resentments are most inflamed, and wounds are most abundant.
Now don’t misunderstand this: God has not asked us to make people feel good about themselves and their relationship to God.
He has called us to effect a real peace through the message of reconciliation, the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Our responsibility is to always point to something beyond ourselves. We are to point them to what God has done in Christ, not to what we are doing for Christ.
Our amazingly gracious God sends us out as His ambassadors to bring peace into a war torn world.
An ambassador makes the case for the one who sent him. He proclaims, appeals, entreats, and urges.
An ambassador represented a nation or kingdom in communication with other nations.
He makes the case for the one who sent him. He proclaims, appeals, entreats, and urges the nations to be reconciled.
When we speak the message of reconciliation, it will be as though God were making his appeal directly through us.
Rather than speaking directly to the nations of earth, God ordained that we, as his human spokespersons, would speak for Him.
The church is called by God to be a reconciling force. The Guardians of the Gospel of Peace.
This requires us to adopt the status of a servant and to be active in the ministry of helping and healing, of reconciling a lost world back to their God.
This happens when we pray for others, when we speak out against evils like abortion, and when we gather as God’s church and proclaim His Gospel through Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
But it mostly occurs when we get up every morning determined to fight the good fight. When we arm ourselves with the armor of Christ.
It happens as we live out our daily lives always seeking ways we can minister to others, ways we can be a blessing to others in the name of Christ.
It happens as we guard the gospel message of reconciliation and minister that gospel into the hearts of those who are in desperate need of being reconciled to God!
After all, God loves them, otherwise there would be no need for us to be His ambassadors. He wants to provide reconciliation to His people. We have all the tools we need, we just need to do what we have been told!
Listen to the words of my favorite preacher, Charles Spurgeon.
So, then, there is war between man and God. It seems preposterous that man should be in arms against his God, but it is all too sadly true. Shall the gnat contend with the flame? Shall an insect fight against an angel? Even this would not be so absurd as for man, who is utterly insignificant, to make war with God who is infinite; man, who is but as the ephemera of an hour, to enter into the lists against the dread, eternal, and almighty God. Accursed was that hour in which our first mother put forth her hand to take the forbidden fruit. From that moment war began between man and his Maker; and from the Garden of Eden right on until new man has been an enemy of God: mid although God has constantly returned good for evil, and is still the God of love and condescension, yet has man continued to fight against him, and there still is war between heaven and earth. Otherwise, there would be no need for ambassadors between God and men. This would be proof enough that a state of war prevails. But, alas! in our own hearts we bear, each one of us, sad proofs of the enmity of man and God; and we see, besides, in our fellow-men, ten thousand sorrowful instances which prove that they have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God, and are not the friends of the great Friend of man.
Conclusion:
Rise up you saints of God, you Guardians of the Gospel. We have been given a message and ministry of reconciliation. We have a vast people before us in need of our message and ministry.
Our mission requires that we give our all to love God, love others, proclaim Jesus, and make disciples.
Our Total Mission = Total Participation + Total Proclamation.
13 For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
14 How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?
15 And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”
Our Hymn of Invitation this morning is
Just As I Am,
Hymn No. 307
23 For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread,
24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
27 Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord.
28 Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.
29 For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.
30 That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.
31 But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged.