Gospel Ambassadors
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Introduction
Introduction
We are wrapping up our series on Ephesians today. We started this five months ago, back in February, and during that first message, we laid out the reason why we embarked on this journey: as the church, you were not meant to stay right where you are, spiritually. You were meant to grow deeper and wider in your relationship with Jesus, in your knowledge of him and his word, and in your love for others. The best thing we can do to reach our region with the gospel of Jesus is to cultivate healthy, mature, passionate followers who multiply their faith wherever they go.
My heart is that this letter inspires our church. I don’t just want you to be a Christian who goes to church and prays some prayers and tries to be nice to others. Christianity is not a philosophy, it’s not a lifestyle, it’s not ritualistic mysticism. If it were, then all of this would be about you, a mere human, could elevate your mind, your body, your spirit, to be better than others, to reach “heaven” through your doing.
In our membership packet, we ask everyone how Jesus has changed their lives. And some of the responses we have received are amazing, and others are eye-opening. Because for many, Jesus is a standard to be met—now that I’m a Christian, I just try to be nice person and do better than I did before. For others, Jesus is a worldview; I have a better life now because I do the right things and I have a group of people around me who do right things and believe the right things. And you still might believe that. I have found in my time as a pastor that “old habits die hard,” as they say. Jesus may still be a sort of mysterious figurehead, a talisman of good fortune and right living .
But I will say this every Sunday if I have to for the rest of my days, every opportunity I get: Jesus is so much more than that. And when your relationship with Jesus truly begins, when you let him lead and you find your every joy and comfort and hope in him, it’s time to expand your imagination a bit. You now live as one who was dead—everything you cared about, everything you lived for, everything you thought was important and meaningful and worth being about, dead—and you have now been made alive. That life was sleeping compared to the awakening you find in Jesus. The kind of inheritance you hoped for, the kind of freedom you longed for, peanuts compared to the heavenly kingdom brought to you by Christ.
So Church, here’s my question and challenge to you: going forward from here, what would it look like to have this sort of heavenly possibility at your fingertips every day? What would it take to have that in your life? And if you could have that, wouldn’t you want to tell every living soul about it? Keep those questions in mind as we finish up Paul’s last few words.
PRAY
Be Jesus
Be Jesus
19 Pray also for me, that the message may be given to me when I open my mouth to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel. 20 For this I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I might be bold enough to speak about it as I should.
Paul asks for pray that he might have enough boldness to speak publically and confidently about the mystery of the gospel, which is that we do not rise to meet heaven, but heaven descends to meet us. And since every human design centers around building towers of achievement to our glory, to outshine God and become gods ourselves, this mystery is, as Paul coins elsewhere, foolishness to some and a stumbling block to others. But Paul wants, for the rest of his life, to be about nothing but this message of a God seeks after you and confronts you and dwells with you here and now. He is not a God of expectation, but a God of grace. He is not a God of subjugation, but of submission. He is not a God for men or Jews or masters, but a God for the lost and least, the sinners and sufferers.
And it’s that message that lands Paul in prison. He says right here, he is in chains. He’s basically waiting out the rest of his life on house arrest—Paul, the adventurous missionary who took Jesus’ words seriously, to be a witness of Christ to the ends of the earth (which, at the time, was where Paul went), is now a prisoner. But Paul doesn’t ask for freedom, he doesn’t ask for his rights to share his faith. That wouldn’t be a win for Paul. The win for Paul is to never give up being an ambassador of Jesus.
Church, this needs to be our win. To live out our days as ambassadors of Jesus.
What does that mean, to be an ambassador? If you are an ambassador to another country, what does that mean? It means you, everything about you, represents everything about your country to those you meet. If you are an American ambassador and you are loud and boisterous and rude, the assumption will be that every American is loud and boisterous and rude. And if you are quiet and gentle and gullible, or whatever, same thing, everything about you defines what it means to be “American.” If that’s the case, then who you choose as your ambassador matters.
You have been selected for this role, not to represent America, but to represent Jesus. Now I’ve heard this before, specifically in more culturally conservative contexts: you represent Jesus, so behave! It’s typically a behavior oriented threat toward children, and as a kid, it was effective. But it was a bit faulty. What would Jesus do? Well, he wouldn’t speak out of turn in class, that’s for sure! Jesus would always clear his place at the dinner table! Jesus would always walk in a single file line! Jesus would never drive over the speed limit!
Behavior oriented ambassadors. is that what Paul was talking about?
When Paul speaks of being an ambassador, he means he wants to be Jesus wherever he goes. Was Jesus most concerned about how he behaved? He was most concerned about how he loved. He was concerned for others. Jesus had compassion for broken and messed up people. Jesus was not concerned about his celebrity status; he spent time with children, lepers, gentile women, Samaritans, tax collectors, every cultural pariah you could think of, Jesus was a friend of sinners. A friend. Jesus was arrested and killed for bringing heaven to earth.
How will you “be Jesus” to your world? It’s not about how you are persecuted for your beliefs, it’s how you embody the person and work of Christ.
Be Encouraged
Be Encouraged
21 Tychicus, our dearly loved brother and faithful servant in the Lord, will tell you all the news about me so that you may be informed. 22 I am sending him to you for this very reason, to let you know how we are and to encourage your hearts.
Paul sends this letter, right here, to the church in Ephesus, because he wants them to know how he’s doing, that he hasn’t given up his trust in Jesus, no matter the cost, and he wants them to keep going too. This is an encouragement letter from their founder.
You don’t do this alone. This is why we have DNA groups. This is why we have FOLLOW mentoring. This is why we have elders and a church network. It’s because faith is a shared thing, not a self thing. Your relationship with Jesus is personal, but it is not private. You need each other.
Following Jesus is hard. And it’s not because the rituals are hard; I think many people who “quit Jesus” today do so because they’ve grown tired of the expectations of their church liturgy or whatever—that’s not what I mean. Following Jesus means denying yourself and taking up your cross. It means loving others when our first impulse is to love ourselves. It means sacrifice, it means peace, it means a greater awareness of the spiritual battle that tries to pin you down and discourage you from that whole dying to self thing. You need others around you to encourage you with their stories of God’s faithfulness. To hear your struggles and love on you and be there for you as you go. Be an encourager, and be encouraged.
Be in Love
Be in Love
23 Peace to the brothers and sisters, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 24 Grace be with all who have undying love for our Lord Jesus Christ.
Church, this last statement tells you everything you need to know about what Christianity is all about. Grace be with all who have undying love for Jesus. Grace, the gift of all gifts. Rescue from sin, favor and love and acceptance that you do not earn or deserve. Patience and compassion and full-throated welcome into the kingdom of God. Grace is what it’s all about. Grace does not look at what you’ve done or how important you are, Grace does not take into account who your family was or how much money you have. To quote Paul in his letter,
8 For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift—
The moment you believe you deserve God’s grace is the moment you start living apart from it. It is not earned, it is given. And it’s given to those whose love for Jesus is undying.
This tells me that the sustaining force of your faith is not your earthly status before men, it’s not how successful you were doing church or doing life. It’s your relationship with Jesus. All of this will fade. Your money, your influence, your physical appeal, all of that will pass away well before you do. Your legacy lasts is found only in your love for Jesus and his love for you.
It’s this love that expands our vision of what could be. Your body is mortal, this building is temporary, but love never fades.