Hey, church. So good to be with you. Todd and Brittany have meant so much to us and we've heard so many wonderful things about Trinity Church as you've come and gathered and proclaim Christ in this great city.
I want to speak to you from 2 Corinthians 5, verses 9-21. Why don't we stand in honor of God and His Word and I'll read the text. We start in verse 9.
So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.
Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others. But what we are is known to God and I hope it is also known to your conscience.
We are not commending ourselves to you again, but giving you cause to boast about us so that you may be able to answer those who boast about outward appearance and not about what is in the heart.
For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God. If we are in our right mind, it is for you.
For the love of Christ controls us because we have concluded this, that one has died for all and therefore all have died.
And He died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who for their sake died and was raised.
From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh.
Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard Him thus no longer.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come.
All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.
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.
Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making His appeal through us.
We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
For our sake, He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.
This is the word of the Lord. Amen.
Please be seated.
As a young boy, I grew up in a small western Kentucky city, village called Owensboro,
where my father practiced medicine.
It was provincial and somewhat isolated.
It was a great place to grow up.
But back in Owensboro, if you had asked me of my view of Arabs, no one ever did that.
But if you had, let's just say, if you had.
All Arabs were Muslims and all Arabs didn't like Americans.
Sort of a TV view.
Well, I left Owensboro many years ago.
I joined student ministry, campus ministry,
and I started directing short-term mission programs.
And I ran a program in Tunisia, North Africa, a Muslim nation.
We placed students in homes, Muslim homes, of students who were English majors at the University of Tunis.
And great friendships were formed.
And amazing opportunities to share the gospel.
It was there I discovered the Arab view of Americans.
All Americans were Christians.
And all Americans didn't like Arabs.
Sort of a different TV view.
On that program, I met a young man named Hatem.
Hatem was an English major at the University of Tunis.
And he was a lot of fun.
And a practical joker.
He was always pulling pranks on other students and myself.
And we sort of developed a friendly rivalry.
Hatem, one day, took us to the Muslim beach,
where we could be away from kind of the decadent European beach.
And we're walking along the sand shore.
And I spied this sand bar that was out maybe 100 yards from the shore.
And I said, come on, Hatem, I'm going to race you out to the shore.
You know, I'd been in the middle school swim team.
And he was like, oh, no, I must go take a cigarette.
And I said, okay, well, you go get your nicotine fix.
I'll meet you out there.
Come swim out there.
He said, okay.
Okay, so I start leisurely swimming out to the sandbar.
And suddenly I spy that Hatem, true to form, has dove under me.
And he's going to beat me to the sandbar.
And that is not going to happen.
So I'm shadowing him.
I spied him, of course.
And I'm shadowing him right over.
And he comes up back to me.
And I quick grab him in a choke hold and take him down under.
It was a perfect opportunity.
I dunk him down under the water.
I bring him back.
I'm laughing.
He's sputtering for good measure.
I take him down again.
Bring him back up.
I spin him around.
And it's not Hatem.
It is a very frightened Tunisian who knows that the American has come to kill him personally.
You know, what do you say?
I'm so sorry.
You know, he doesn't speak English.
And he's doing this number away from me.
Eyes as big as saucers.
And suddenly I have this sort of out-of-body experience by looking up on the shore and seeing his extended family of very buff guys.
Not mad yet.
But wondering what in the world has happened to their younger brother.
And so I'm following up stupidly.
We get out of the water.
And I'm, you know, uttering, you know, absurdities.
And you know what I need at this point, right?
None of them speak the language.
I need someone who speaks the language.
I need someone who can kind of explain this case of mistaken identity.
I need someone.
Guess who shows up?
Hatem.
Hey, Hatem, come here.
I grab his arm.
I pull him over.
I explain the situation to Hatem.
Hatem, of course, tears streaming down his face as he tries to choke out the laughter, explains to this family what has happened.
And they think it's hilarious, too.
The young man I never saw again.
He backed up and went to his car in the parking lot.
Never saw him again.
But the family welcomed me in for lunch.
I had a great time in their great big Arab tent.
And Hatem, of course, regaled the people with this story, as I do to this day, that Hatem had become my ambassador.
He showed up speaking the language, explaining the truth so that I might be reconciled and forgiven.
Spared certain harm.
Our passage today, this passage, is about ambassadorship.
That's what it's about.
Let me take a walk through the outline for you in 2 Corinthians 9 through 21, because I want to draw out five marks of the ambassador.
For those of you who are note-takers.
Verses 11 through 15.
Number two, an ambassador's view of people.
Verses 16 through 17.
The ambassador's role in verses 18 through 20.
And an ambassador's view of the world in verse 19.
Finally, an ambassador's understanding of Christ's work in verse 21.
So, first, our motivation.
Now, it will be helped to have your Bible open.
We're just going to go through these sort of line by line.
But notice here that Paul starts off with judgment in verse 9.
Judgment is coming.
And he says that when we understand what's at stake in people's lives, that is when we fear God, we persuade people.
So, judgment is coming, verses 9 and 10.
And therefore, we persuade people in verse 11.
That's the motivation of the ambassador.
We know this is coming.
And so, we know that we must move out in a world that is hostile to the gospel.
Even though they…
And because they don't understand.
Now, at that point, Paul, in verse 11 and 12, it raises this issue of what people might think.
And what people might think of him as he proclaims the gospel.
Notice in verse 12.
We don't proclaim the gospel because we're proud.
In verse 12, Paul was accused of being proud.
And you will be too, of course, if you claim an exclusive truth.
The exclusive truth of Jesus.
Jesus said, I'm the way, the truth, and the life.
And no one comes to the Father except through me.
That's a statement that people don't like and think you're proud.
Or they think you're crazy.
Which is what Paul's talking about in verse 13.
That's what beside ourselves mean.
Paul was responding to the accusations that he was proud and that he was crazy.
But look at why we keep going.
It's that we have concluded something in verse 14.
That Jesus died for all who would repent and come to him.
He would do that out of his great love.
That we know that his death was for their sake in verse 15.
We have concluded that sins can be forgiven.
And reconciliation with God is possible through the death of Jesus.
And that conclusion leads us to an understanding.
We don't live for ourselves.
We step out of our safe worlds.
We tell others the good news.
We try to persuade them.
We don't manipulate.
We don't lie.
We tell the truth.
We persuade.
And that means, brothers and sisters, that means it's almost as important about the way we share as what we share.
Persuasion is Paul's call.
And notice too that at the end of verse 14, Paul states that Jesus was raised.
This is a life-changing conclusion if you've made it.
I was on a panel in Australia of a student conference for the Australian evangelical students.
And it was their yearly training event.
A couple thousand students had gathered.
And the question came to me about why I would do ministry in the Middle East.
So Leanne and I spent 20 years in the Middle East doing ministry as a pastor in Iraq and as a campus minister in Dubai.
And he asked the question like I was crazy.
You know, why in the world would anyone do that?
Right?
I mean, that was how the question came up from the crowd.
Now, of course, there's a lot of ways I can answer that.
But I said, as I often do, well, because I really believe deep in my heart with genuine faith that this man Jesus got up from the dead.
And that changes everything.
And so, because he offers salvation to anyone who will come to him, I want to tell everyone.
Look, brothers and sisters, we're driven to boldness and crazy love because of God's amazing love and what's at stake in people's lives.
It's as if Christians are calling people off the ledge.
Please don't kill yourself.
Please, come back to God our Father.
He will accept you with open arms if you will only repent.
Yesterday I was at a funeral for my aunt.
One of the reasons I came to Boston.
The crowd that gathered was not Christian.
I said the same thing.
I really believe this man got up from the dead and that was the hope of my aunt.
Bottom line.
In verses 11 through 15, we're motivated by the fear of the Lord, the conviction of the truth, and the overwhelming love of God.
It moves us out in mission and evangelism with crazy boldness for others.
Evangelism is the most loving thing you can do to another human being.
That's our motivation.
And this changes how we view people in verses 16 and 17.
Second point.
When we're motivated correctly, Paul says in verse 16, ambassadors view people rightly.
He says, from now on, therefore we regard no one according to the flesh.
Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
The old has passed away.
Behold, the new has come.
So we regard no one according to the flesh.
We reject sinful views of people.
Fleshly views.
Sexist views.
Worldly racist understandings of people.
It's an enormous hindrance in mission, in the church, in evangelism.
But it's our natural tendency.
And this is Paul's point.
He says that even though we viewed Christ that way.
You know, in other words, he's making a point that we viewed Christ with worldly eyes in verse 16.
You know how it is.
People want to say nice things about it.
They find out you're a Christian and they're not a Christian.
And they kind of want to, you know, say something nice about Jesus, accommodating.
Oh, he's a great moral teacher.
Or he was just, he was a very good man.
Or he was a great prophet.
He's not just a man.
He's not just a great teacher or even a prophet.
He's God incarnate.
And anything less curses Christ.
Christ.
And Paul's point is that if we saw Jesus that way, we were much more likely to see other people through worldly eyes.
TV lends views of other people, not the eyes of God.
And of course, Christians walk a tightrope on this, don't we?
We understand that all people are created in the image of God.
C.S. Lewis deals with that so beautifully in The Weight of Glory.
Where he reminds us that every person that has been presented to your senses has the mark of the divine on them.
They're created in the image of God.
And that's why they have value and worth and honor and dignity.
They do that because God's mark is on them.
And so ambassadors strive to love all people.
At the same time, Christians, followers of Christ, understand all people to be sinners.
Not only sinners, but without Christ, enemies of God.
We understand that from Ephesians chapter 2.
So ambassadors avoid worshiping people knowing that every human is fallen and sinful.
Of course, that's just an explanation of the doctrine of the total depravity of man.
Total depravity doesn't mean you're totally sinful, as bad as you ever could possibly be.
It just means that every part of us is tainted by sin.
G.K. Chesterton said,
I don't know why people don't believe in total depravity.
It's the one doctrine we have empirical data for.
Look at the last 5,000 years of human history.
But the most important thing to understand about people is in verse 17.
We understand the potential of divinely created but fallen enemies of God and what they can become.
New creations in Christ.
It's our hope for every person you meet to be restored, to be forgiven, to be redeemed.
Creations in Christ.
And is there any more joy in the world than to see someone turn from darkness into light, to become a new creation?
This can happen in the most surprising ways.
And you know that because you came to Christ in a surprising way.
No matter what, everyone's conversion is a testimony of the grace of God.
Whether you grew up in a Christian home or a rank pagan and discovered Christ in some far-off place.
Neighborhoods, schools, your own family.
New creations in Christ.
My sister, Linda, showed up on my doorstep.
I've been praying for my sister for 20 years.
Hard.
Two divorces.
Successful in business.
She's standing on my front steps, smoking a cigarette.
Throws it down the steps, runs it out.
Okay.
Tell me about this Jesus guy.
Come on in, Linda.
Come on in.
Have a seat.
She said, I don't know.
I used to think it was just a joke, a show.
I didn't think it was real in your life, and I can tell it is.
And after the second divorce, I just, I felt so ashamed of my life.
Just started weeping.
I'm so ashamed.
I said, Linda, let me tell you about the one who came to take away your shame.
Let me tell you about it.
She said, I don't know.
I guess that's why I'm here.
It was why she was here.
I knew why she was there.
And my sister, what, Leanne, 30 years ago, 35 years ago, in our living room, bent her knee to Jesus.
Yesterday, I was with her at this funeral.
You wouldn't believe the transformation.
The godly woman that she is.
The amazing ministry that she has.
The way that God has transformed her into a child of God.
Now, it would have been easy for me to say over those years that there were just too many obstacles in life and in her life for me to reach my sister.
What about you?
Do you know someone you believe would never come to Jesus?
Think they'd be too sinful, too hard-hearted, too isolated, too apathetic, too distant, too broken.
Maybe they look like they have everything they need.
Maybe their lives look better than yours, you think.
Maybe as a believer, you're tempted to think they don't need God.
Don't believe it for a minute.
People, the world around you, Jesus, because he offers something you can't get just by living a good life.
The world does not offer salvation.
Notice, too, that it doesn't just change our view of people here in this text.
It changes our view of the world, which is point three.
So, we looked at the motivation of an ambassador.
We've looked at an ambassador's view of people.
Third point, how we see our role, verses 18 through 21.
Now, Paul says in 18,
All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.
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.
Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as if God was making his appeal through us.
So, if you're a Christian, Paul says in verses 18 and then in 19 and in verse 20,
that we are Christ's ambassadors.
That God is making his appeal through us.
Now, Paul is purposely using the image of ambassador here to make sure we understand our role.
Ambassadors exist.
Their purpose is to deliver a message from a higher authority.
So, according to Paul,
when you sit down for coffee and the spiritual topic comes up,
and spiritual topics come up all the time,
and you should take hold of them,
and you begin to share your faith with a friend about Jesus,
you, get this,
represent the foreign power of the kingdom of God.
That's an astonishing thought.
That blows my mind.
That somehow,
from the throne of God,
through me,
there's this thread that goes to that person.
So, we better get the message right.
Know the message of the gospel.
Ambassadors are not at liberty to change the message.
You can't air condition hell.
Don't try.
Don't nice up the message.
Deliver it as given.
You know, there's so many historical stories of ambassadors
trying to change the message to great harm.
But especially,
and maybe more relevant for most of us,
ambassadors don't leave the message undelivered.
We don't stuff the message in our sock drawer.
That is,
slay your fear of man in evangelism.
The fear of evangelism is the fear of man.
We fear what people think of us.
Awkward is better than silence.
You know, it's said,
I've heard it said often,
that most of the world's Christian population
fear the raised fist.
Here we face and fear the raised eyebrow.
And just by the way,
ambassadors, by definition,
don't live at home.
We are wanderers in the world.
Now, that doesn't mean you need to pack up your family
and move to the Middle East like I did.
It might.
It might mean that.
But I think it means mostly
that we always live a bit uneasy in the world.
We understand that ultimately,
this world is not our home.
And here's our message in verse 20.
Paul models what we say.
It's a bit of a tricky verse.
In the second half of verse 20,
it can first sound like on first reading
that Paul's calling the Corinthians
to be reconciled to God.
Of course, all of us must be reconciled to God.
But they were Christians
for all their problems.
And they had enormous problems.
But for all their problems,
Paul is repeating the message
we shout out with Paul to the world.
This is the message of the ambassador.
We implore you.
We beg you.
On Christ's behalf,
we beg on Christ's behalf, he says,
be reconciled to God.
Our message is,
though your sins have separated you
from a holy God,
you can be reconciled to Him.
So the text is clear.
God is not counting our sins against you.
So when we first got to Dubai
and we started in student ministry,
students started coming to faith
on Muslim campuses.
And it was such a joy.
And this is 20 years ago.
And I thought,
well,
we started these Bible studies on campus
and we need leadership.
So we need to have a leadership.
We need to have leadership gathering.
We're going to gather all the leaders together,
kind of the less younger Christians,
and we're going to train them
how to be leaders.
And so,
so we gathered up about,
you know,
15,
20 leaders.
leaders.
And we met every week
in my living room.
And so,
I started in this training course.
And then I realized,
there's this kid on the front row.
So I called one of our leaders up.
His name was Nissen.
Nissen,
come here.
Listen,
Akil is here.
He's right there on the front row.
He said,
yeah,
he wanted to come.
He thought it looked good on his resume
to,
you know,
have a leadership thing.
And I said,
Akil's a Hindu.
How's he going to lead a Bible study?
You know,
well,
you know,
he's a nice guy.
And actually,
what was going on really was
there was a real cute little Indian girl there
named Shabnita.
Shabnita.
He was interested in Shabnita.
Eventually,
he got married.
But anyhow,
so,
I said,
listen,
tell Akil he can't come.
You know,
this is,
you know,
for about,
and Nissen was,
no,
he's not going to.
So anyhow,
Akil kept,
actually,
Akil turned out to be our most
regular attender
of the leadership week.
And one day,
finally,
it's sort of alarming.
And there's,
you know,
there's security concerns
and stuff like this.
So I said,
Akil,
come on,
I got to talk to you.
He goes,
okay,
I need to talk to you too.
He comes up,
real bright.
And I said,
you go first.
He goes,
I've become a Christian.
And I said,
how'd that happen?
And he said,
well,
I really appreciate the leadership.
But,
you know,
the leadership conference times
and seminar and everything,
but all the students
are excited about the gospel
and they've been telling me
I need to repent of my sins
and put my faith in Jesus alone
and take him as my savior.
And I did last week.
I said,
Akil,
that's great.
He said,
what do you want to talk to me about?
I said,
nothing,
never mind.
Keep coming.
And I called Nissen.
I'm like,
Nissen,
Hindus can keep coming back
if they want to,
I guess.
just listening in.
Hey,
maybe,
maybe you're here like Akil.
You're not a Christian.
And you're just here listening in.
Let me,
let me talk to you just a second.
This is a message for you too
because you need to see yourself
through God's eyes.
You were both divinely created
and yet cut off from God
because of your sin and rebellion.
I love telling my Muslim friends,
that every Christian,
true Christian,
is a convert.
And that means to repent of sin
and put your trust and faith in Christ.
You,
you can see the potential
if you will be reconciled
to a loving God
who has paid the penalty
for your sin.
He offers complete
and total forgiveness to you.
He loves you.
The Bible says,
God will not hold
your sins against you
if you come to Him
in faith and trust.
All that's required of you
is to not try and earn
your way back to God.
You know,
that's a great,
that's a great misunderstanding
about Christianity.
What we repent,
most of all,
when we put our faith
and trust in Jesus
is holding Jesus
at arm's length.
Ultimately,
the sin
that casts us
into what Jesus called
the outer darkness
is the sin
of rejecting Him
as the Savior
of your life.
That's the message
we shout out.
I want to be like Paul.
I want you to be reconciled
to God.
Be reconciled
to God
because you can be.
Well,
we've looked at
the ambassador's motivation,
the ambassador's view
of people
and the ambassador's role,
which brings us
to our fourth point,
how we view the world
in verse 19.
So,
notice in verse 19,
we see how ambassadors
view the world.
Paul expands
the scope
of this great salvation.
He says in verse 19
that God is reconciling
the world,
that is,
anyone in the world
who would come to Him.
It's a universal message,
he's saying.
This was radical.
He means not just Jews,
everybody.
That's what he means here.
It's a message
for all people
in all cultures
at all times.
I know there's
a tendency
to think
that this is a message
for just parts
of the world.
But there are no
barriers to God
in the world.
And it's happening now
in the world.
And we need to see
how our sovereign God
is at work.
work.
So,
when Leanne and I
lived in our villa,
we lived
amid three mosques.
And
they would call out,
they called a prayer
five times a day
with a makeup
in the gulf.
There's a makeup
prayer time,
a six prayer time.
And sometimes,
as we would hear
the call to prayer
reverberate
through our homes,
there would be
a sense of despair.
How can we reach
this culture
with the gospel?
How can we?
But there are
no barriers to God.
On our staff team,
as the staff team
grew
in Dubai,
we had
a young couple
join our team.
And I want to tell
the story of
Nestoran,
who was married
to Yuna,
husband and wife,
from Iran.
They were
Christian believers
and had a great heart
for the Iranian people
in Dubai,
many, many Iranians
in Dubai.
Nestoran
was a young
teenage girl.
She lived
in Tehran.
She'd taken
a shower.
And in the shower,
she heard a voice.
And the voice said,
I'm going to wash
you of your sins.
And she was
not sure what that meant
and what that was.
And so,
she's a good Muslim girl,
never seen a hymn,
never been to a church,
didn't know anything
of the Bible.
She goes to the imam,
her imam,
at her mosque,
and says,
I heard this voice.
And the voice said,
he was going to wash
me of my sins.
Who was that?
And the imam said,
that was Jesus.
He's the only prophet
that talks that away.
Pretty good for an imam,
huh?
So Nestoran said,
thank you.
And she went home.
Same week,
her sister,
confusing name,
her name is Nestorine.
These are real names.
Nestoran,
Nestorine.
her sister,
who has moved
to Amsterdam for work
and has joined a church.
And she's come to faith,
secretly.
She's not told her family.
But one Sunday,
a woman comes up to her
and says,
Nestorine,
I had a dream last night.
It was about you.
I dreamed
that you were sitting
on a bed
talking to two women,
sharing the gospel
with them.
And I think you're
supposed to go home.
And Nestorine said,
I can't go home.
I don't have any money.
And this woman said,
look,
I never remembered
my dreams.
I don't have dreams
as far as I know,
but it was so real.
I went ahead
and bought your ticket.
Nestorine flies home
to Tehran.
She knocks on the door.
Nestorine and her mother
answer the door.
Nestorine says,
I don't know why I'm here.
And Nestorine says,
no, we know why you're here.
You've been in a Christian country,
the Netherlands.
And we've been spoken to
by Jesus
and we want to hear about him.
And so Nestorine
is overjoyed,
but they go sit on the bed
like in the dream.
Nestorine leads
her sister Nestoron
to the Lord.
There are no barriers
to God.
None.
He's the sovereign Lord.
In case you're tempted
to exalt or desire
that kind of story
in your own life,
I should tell you
that their sweet faith
has resulted in insult
and harassment
and separation,
jail,
deportation.
Nestorine
was not able to go
to her sweet mother's
funeral
a couple years ago
even.
What about you?
You see people
from other backgrounds
and think you can't
get to them?
Maybe you see people
of other faith backgrounds
and set aside
any hope
that you might
see them come to faith.
This passage
is why you should be
concerned about missions,
about the Great Commission.
The Great Commission
from Jesus
to go into all the world
and make disciples.
Those people
in the world
who have never
had the opportunity
to hear the gospel message.
Even if they wanted
to be forgiven,
even if they long
to know God,
they wouldn't know
which way to turn.
Well, we've seen
how ambassadors
are motivated by love
with a right view
of people,
a clear understanding
of our role
of ambassadorship
and for all people
worldwide.
And fifth,
and finally,
we understand
what Jesus
has done
in the gospel.
We take hold
of that.
We become students
of the gospel.
The ambassador
must understand,
point five,
God's work
in the message
of the gospel.
Verse 21,
for our sake
he made him
to be sin
who knew no sin
so that in him
we might become
the righteousness
of God.
Now, much ink
has been spilled
on verse 21.
It's about
a significant
theological idea,
that of substitutionary
atonement.
In 24 words,
it's astonishing.
Substitutionary
atonement
is at the heart
of the Christian faith.
To atone,
of course,
means to pay
for something,
pay for sin.
It's a behind-the-scenes
look at what
God did on the cross
where Paul says
Jesus became
sin for us.
He didn't have
just sin
put on his shoulders.
He became sin.
It was placed
in him,
imputed
into Christ
where in his
great love
God took
all the sins
of all
who would repent
and believe
and put them
on his perfect
sinless son
that we might
be forgiven
by God.
Jesus referred
to this
as drinking
the cup
of wrath.
And then
God takes
all who
will repent
and believe
in Jesus
and clothes
us in
Christ's
righteousness
so that
when we're
united
with Christ
and we stand
before him
in judgment
as we looked
at in verses
9 and 10,
he declares
us forgiven
and righteous
as we stand
before him.
I love this
summary of the
gospel
in verse 21.
I want to quote
this.
On the cross
God treated
Christ
as if he
had committed
all the sins
of every sinner
who would ever
believe
so that he
could treat
every believer
as if
they had lived
Christ's
perfect life.
Oh brothers
and sisters
what a promise
that is for us.
It's essential
to see
our righteousness
contrary to
all the other
religions in the
world
come to us
from God.
Our righteousness
comes to us
from God.
It's not
self-righteousness
but a God
given righteousness.
I don't like
self-righteous
people.
I bet you
don't either.
God hates
self-righteous
people.
Those who
think they
can stand
before God
and that
he'll be
impressed
with all
the good
things they've
done.
That's
self-righteousness.
I don't like
self-righteousness
when I see it
in myself.
My own
hypocrisy.
My own
failings
as I
judge
others.
No,
our righteousness
comes from
outside of
us.
Most of the
world of course
thinks you do
that by
yourself.
But the
entire Bible
from Genesis
on points
to the event
Paul's talking
about in
verse 21.
Christ
became sin
for us.
He took
our place.
It's substitutionary
atonement.
He died for
me in my
place.
Christ is
my
substitutionary.
How precious
is that
message to
you?
Does your
heart warm
when you
think about
the gospel
message when
I explain
substitutionary
time?
Does your
heart leap?
Or is it
something, oh
I've heard
that before,
you know,
when's
lunch?
You may
not be a
Christian if
you're not
interested in
the gospel.
Let me ask
another question.
Are you
willing to
give your
life to it?
Are you
willing to
give your
life to the
gospel?
Are you
ready to
die for
it?
My suspicion
is most
of you are.
My suspicion
is day by
day you're
giving your
life, you're
giving your
life away,
that your
life doesn't
make sense
apart from
the gospel.
You're laying
down your
life for the
hope of the
gospel day
by day.
But how
about this?
Final question.
Are you
willing to
call others
to die
for it?
In our
time in the
Middle East
that actually
turned out
to be a
little harder.
I remember
talking to
Asma in
her apartment,
nine-month-old
baby on her
lap.
Asma, you
know, you
understand that
if I baptize
you, there
will be people
who want to
kill you.
Yes, I
know.
Jesus is
worth it.
He's worth
it.
So we
started a
church called
Redeemer in
downtown Dubai.
It grew to
1,500 people.
It was
astonishing.
See the
response?
I was
preaching on
Genesis 22,
the story of
Abraham being
called to
sacrifice Isaac.
And I
explained
substitutionary
atonement.
Right there in
Genesis, first
book of the
Bible,
substitutionary
atonement is
a part of the
whole story that
a ram was
offered as
a substitute.
You know,
when I grew
up, the
whole point of
Genesis 22
and Abraham was
to be like
Abraham.
You're not
like Abraham.
I'm not
either, let
me tell you.
If we're
anyone, we're
Isaac on the
altar.
The knife of
God's justice
hangs rightly
over us.
And our only
hope is that
substitute, that
lamb.
So that when
John the
Baptist saw
Jesus and
said, there
goes the
lamb of
God who
takes away
the sins
of the
world, it
was understood.
Anyhow, that
was what I
was preaching.
At the end
of the
sermon,
Nissen,
faithful
Nissen, who
is now the
director of
the student
ministry in
Dubai, was
leading a
young man up
to me through
the crowd.
And he
says,
Mac, this
is Mohammed.
And he
has just heard
the message of
the gospel really
for the first
time.
And he
would like to
become a
Christian.
And I
said, oh,
Mohammed, that's
wonderful.
He looks down at
my Bible.
He says, is that
a Bible?
Is the one with
all my notes in
it?
I said, in my
heart, oh, I
wish I'd left
this Bible at
home and brought
my cheap Bible.
I said, yeah, so
would you like it?
He said, I would
very much.
I'd give him
my Bible.
I said, you
know, Mohammed,
you may face
persecution for
this.
You need to
understand that.
If you truly
come to faith.
He said, I
know, my
father's an
imam back in
Sudan and he
will kill me.
He didn't
mean maybe.
I mean, he's
not speaking
metaphorically.
By way of
confession,
there's a little
hitch in me.
Maybe we
should wait.
We don't have
to do this.
God's sovereign,
right?
But then,
because long
ago, I
determined that
it's better for
someone to come
to faith in
Christ and live
in forgiveness
even if it's
just for weeks
and meet God
face to face
at the judgment
seat, than for
someone to
reject Jesus,
eke out what
pleasure they can
in the world
and meet God
without forgiveness
forgiveness is
better to be
forgiven.
And so I
said, okay,
listen,
discipled
Muhammad.
He grew in
faith.
He left for
Sudan and we
never heard from
him again.
him.
But like
asthma,
Jesus is
worth it.
It's worth it.
Do you
believe that?
It's part of
our call as
ambassadors to
ensure we
understand the
preciousness of
God's call on the
gospel.
So remember the
five marks of
an ambassador.
Our motivation,
our view of
people, our
grasp of our
role, and our
understanding of
God's love for
people around the
world with a
clear understanding
of the gospel.
Amen?
Amen.
Let me pray.
Lord Jesus,
move us out in
gospel love.
Move us out in
an understanding of
what's at stake.
We thank you,
Lord God, for this
astonishing offer of
your salvation.
Help us in our
view of people.
See them with the
potential that they
can become redeemed
people of God,
your children.
Help us take hold
of our role.
give us a right
view of the
world.
And most of
all, oh Lord
God, give us a
clear understanding
as we talk and
meet with people
about the meaning
of your gospel
and its worth.
in Jesus name we pray
Amen