Good morning. We start in a new and last chapter in the book that we've been on. The title of today's lesson is An Ambassador for Christ. And of course, if we're born again by the blood of Christ, we are called to be an ambassador for Christ. Our verse is second. We haven't handed these out, have we? And you're not gonna be able to find them. Let's see, it's not here. It's up there. Yeah, you go in my office, go in, look back right in the middle, you'll see the stack of these. Thank you. Miss Brynn will be able to find them. She might bring the whole cabinet in here, but she'll find them. Nah, just kidding, she'll find them. But our verse is 2 Corinthians 5 and 20. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ as though God did beseech you by us, we pray you in Christ's stead be ye reconciled to God. As an overview of the lesson, I think everybody probably has a pretty good grasp on what an ambassador is. An ambassador represents his leader in a foreign land. And Christ has given us the privilege of representing Him here on this earth. He has given us privileged access to Him, a powerful defense against the attacks of our adversary, and the ability to accomplish our assignment. If Christ gives us an assignment, whatever it is, whatever God asks us to do, along with that will come the ability to do that. And you can look at somebody else and you say, well, I can't do what they do. Well, that's fine because God didn't ask you to do it. He asked them to do it. But if he asks you to do it, he will give you the ability to do that. Lesson theme, our assignment as the Lord's ambassador is to go and preach the gospel to all nations. Our time is limited, so with all haste, we must fulfill the one assignment to which we are all called. All of us are called to be ambassadors. We are called to do different things to fulfill that, but we are all called to be ambassadors. As a way of the outline, we'll go ahead and give you those, just to give you some idea of what we're going to be talking about be the ambassador's access we have an authorized access and we have an available access the ambassador's adversary the adversary's attack and the ambassador's defense the ambassador's assignment go therefore and go preach and the ambassador's address he has a temporary address on earth but his permanent address is in heaven Now that you have your outlines there, you have the verse with you now, 2 Corinthians 5, 20, we'll read that again as you're reading along with there. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us, we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God. So when a president searches for an ambassador in the United States or the United States or certain qualifications that that he looks for, and probably different qualifications for different countries that he would be sending them to. But what qualifies us to be an ambassador for Christ? Well, Paul gives that to us in the next verse, 2 Corinthians 5, 21 says, For he hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. You see, we weren't born with a qualification to be an ambassador for Christ. But when we were born again, we received that qualification because we were given the righteousness of God. And that's what qualifies us. There's no Christian that's not qualified to be an ambassador for Christ. An ambassador represents his leader in a foreign land, as we said, and it's a privilege for us to do that for Christ. Now, yesterday, we had the privilege of being an ambassador for Christ, going out with the bus ministry, and putting door hangers out, telling people we're going to be coming into the neighborhood, and tried to pick up. some people on the bus and that that was a privilege to be able to do that and we're going to send out some letters there are some places that are restricted you can't go into so we're going to send out some letters to those places and try to get some more bus riders if they agree to ride we can go in and get them but we can't go in and ask them that makes it a little difficult but that's what we are to do we are to find ways to be an ambassador for Christ As I said, it's a privileged access to him, and that gives us a powerful defense against the attacks of the adversary. So, moving on down to number one. Well, I had that verse there and didn't give it to you, but I've already read it now. And where's that at? Okay. I've got something out of order there. But number one, the ambassador's access. By representing his leader and his country, an ambassador has privileges that most people do not. A diplomat's privileges are based on the principle of, and here it is, extraterritoriality. That's the first time I've ever said that word out loud. I said it in my mind when I was studying this, and I don't really know why they give it to us, but it just simply means that his privileges are somewhere else. He don't have those privileges here, but when he goes to that country, he has certain privileges. This principle used in international law includes the guarantee that people living in foreign countries remain under the authority of their own governments. So like I said, and we'll go over, let's just go ahead and go over those four things here. Diplomats cannot be arrested for any reason. Their families usually share this exemption. It's called diplomatic immunity. Their residences, papers, and effects cannot be searched or seized. Their personal belongings cannot be taxed by the country in which they serve. And diplomats, their families, and their staffs enjoy complete freedom of worship. So many of these things they enjoy when they're in that foreign land. When they come back home, of course, they can't be arrested if they do something here. But hopefully they don't do anything that they need to be arrested for. But we have some of these same privileges as ambassadors for Christ. So how do we access the authorized access? The ambassador has high priority access to information people because he is authorized. Some people say, well, I don't understand this, I don't understand that, but we can learn it because we have the Holy Spirit in us, so we have the ability to access what God wants us to know out of the Word of God. He's been specially chosen and appointed by the leader of the country to take on that responsibility. In the United States, the president appoints all ambassadors. They then must be approved by the Senate. And then once they are approved by the Senate, they're sent to that foreign country. And this concept accurately applies to us as ambassadors as well. John 15, 16, you have not chosen me, but I have chosen you. And ordained you that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain. And whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you. So when we come to the realization that we're lost sinners, and we receive Christ as Savior, we are chosen then to be an ambassador for Him. And many people, and I'm sure you've heard the phrase, they're searching for this place in the world and they say, I'm searching for myself. And if you really think about it, in a way it's silly, but When our minds doesn't really know what's going on and we get confused and we get off track, maybe we really do, we need to take account of ourselves and see just who we are and what we need to be doing. You hear the phrase, I'm trying to find out who I am. Well, every Christian that has the word of God available to them should know their place in the world. You are an ambassador for God. Too many Christians are spending their time trying to get their life right in order to start serving God. God says, serve me and I, God, will put your life in order. Even Christians, people that are saved, they want to say, okay, now I'm going to get I'm saved but I got to get this straight and this straight and this straight and this straight and then I'll be ready to serve God God says serve me and I'll straighten this out and I'll straighten this out and I'll straighten this out and I'll straighten this out but we want to get it in reverse if you're not serving God your life will always be out of order if you're not serving God there will always be something in your life that's out of order Many times when a Christian says, I can't do this or I can't do that, they should have a sign hanging from their neck saying, out of order. When we refuse to serve God as God's children, I'm not talking about somebody that God, that the Holy Spirit does not reside in, somebody that has yet to come to the understanding of repentance and ask God to save them, but I'm talking about somebody that has been saved by Christ They have the Holy Spirit to help them understand the word of God. When they don't serve God, they're out of order. You've seen it on TV shows, I'm sure. If you've been unfortunate enough to be part of a court trial, whether on the good side or bad side or in the audience, and you hear the judge pound the gavel and say, you're out of order. Well, God is trying to tell us if we're not serving him, we are out of order. An official ambassador can convey special messages from the leader he represents. He sometimes carries a diplomatic pouch with a special seal. I've got one right here. It says, Holy Bible. This is a diplomatic pouch with a special seal. And this is what we are to convey to the people that we are here to be ambassadors to. The ambassador protects that message and is faithful to deliver it. Now, how long do you think someone would remain an ambassador for the U.S. if they never delivered the president's message? Not very long. They wouldn't stay in there the whole time that that president was in office and never deliver what he was supposed to tell that foreign country. He'd bring them back home and put somebody else out there. As authorized representatives of the Lord Jesus Christ, we're commissioned to carry his message to the people of this world. Paul was committed to the message of God in a very personal way and shared that message with all who crossed his path. And in your outlines, you have 1 Timothy 1.11. According to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust, God is trusting us. He trusted Paul. He is entrusting us with the gospel of the blessed God. And in Romans 16, 25, now to him that is of power to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ. Now, when Paul says my gospel, that's what he means, the preaching of Jesus Christ. But it is to establish you according to that preaching, according to the word of God. We are to establish ourself in the word of God, and then we are to convey that message of the word of God to this lost and dying world. So how do we, where do we get that from? We have an available access And an ambassador has privileged access to his leader, his own king or president, whatever nationality he may be. Almost any time, the ambassador can request a meeting with the president. Something's going on in that country. He conveyed the message. Maybe they didn't receive that message too well. He has to get back in touch with the president. And he does that. And he has access. This is urgent. And he gets access to the president. And then the leader may summon the ambassador for a special meeting. Maybe he has information for that ambassador. He may call him in to give him a face-to-face message so he can take it back to that foreign country. It's a blessed truth that we always have access to our King. We can always access Christ. We never have to set up an appointment, wait online. We never get a busy signal. We never have to leave a voicemail. We never have to play phone tag. Christ is always available for us and he gives us again the wonderful privilege to pray without ceasing we can always pray to God Hebrews 4 15 16 there in your outline for we have not in high priests which cannot be touched with the feeling of of our infirmities but as in all points tempted like as we are yet without sin let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in the time of need now we're not coming boldly to the throne of grace and say God you're supposed to answer my prayer and I deserve for you that you well we don't deserve it but we're saved We have the Holy Spirit living in us and He has made us, give us the righteousness of Christ so we have the access to come to Him. What the word of God here saying Hebrews is not that we come boldly because we're just supposed to be brazen But we're to come boldly because we know that we have access and we know we can get an answer So it's not you know You ask favors of somebody and sometimes you may talk yourself out of asking a favor of that person Because you know, they'll never do it. I just won't ask them you never have to say that with God God will always answer your prayer We have constant access to the throne of grace. The Lord has authorized us for his work and he is always available to give us what we need to carry out this mission. Christian martyrs who face horrible persecution for the Lord could have never remained faithful if they didn't have that access. Just think about Paul when he was in prison and he was writing many of the epistles, much of the Bible that we read today, Paul wrote from a prison cell. And if he didn't have access to God and have the knowledge that God was still in control, he wouldn't have been able to do that. He didn't do that because he possessed some great physical, mental ability within himself, but he did it because the Holy Spirit helped him to do that. Many martyrs that we studied, I guess a couple or three years ago now, We learned how that they were imprisoned, how they were a trick to come in. And so we just want you to tell us what you've been doing or tell us, explain to us why you're disagreeing with us. And then of course they would arrest them and burn them at the stake or whatever death that may have happened to them. But when they were awaiting, when they were in prison, they had access to the throne of God. Prison bars could not stop that access. God was just as available to them in their confinement as He was in the days when they served Him freely. No matter how dark the hour is, we can always come to our King. Some ambassadors fail in their mission because they don't maintain that communication. We have to maintain communication with God. If we're not praying to God, how are we to understand? How are we to know? If we're not reading God's word, how are we to... We have to have that communication to know what direction to go in, what we're supposed to do, how to overcome a problem, how to overcome the adversary. We may fail in other things, but we must not fail to stay close in touch with our Lord. Because if you fail in that, you're going to fail in other areas. You may get by in some areas, But you're going to utterly fail in some if you don't stay in touch with Christ. And then number two, the ambassador's adversary. It's not always easy to live in a foreign country. If we're extending the length of time, sometimes in some countries they have struggles with some of the people in that country, that they don't want us there, or I'm sure there's some ambassadors that come to the United States, that there's groups of people in the United States, they don't want them here. And there's difficulties, language, adapting to the food, adapting to the culture, and many times when you go into a foreign country, if you're supposed to be an ambassador for another country, you better understand their culture, because you can make them mad very quickly, by doing or saying the wrong thing, by making the wrong hand gesture even. You have to understand the culture. And the ambassador has to adjust to all these. And in hostile countries, the ambassador has determined adversaries. They're very antagonistic to them. Like I said, they just don't want them there. But as ambassadors for Christ, we have a very powerful adversary as well. the adversaries attack. This is probably a very familiar verse of scripture, but in your outline there, 1 Peter 5 and 8. Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary, the devil, is a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour. As an illustration, in 1898 in East Africa, When East Africa was an English colony, they were building a railroad through there, and two lions became man-hungry. In other words, they weren't killing to eat, they were just killing to kill. And for months, every day, they would kill one of the workers. They completely brought a halt to the work building the railroad. And finally, a man named Colonel J.H. Patterson was put in charge, and he was able to kill the lions. And I didn't know this, but there's actually, these lions are actually in, I think it's Chicago, yes, the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. This is a picture of one of the lions that they killed. And I know, if your mind's like mine, When you say, OK, there's two man-eating lions out there, you're looking for a male lion, ain't you? But if you know how lions work, the males don't do anything. They just lay around. And the females, they go out and find the food. So actually, the two lions were female lions. But when you're dead, you're dead. It don't matter if you've got a big hairy mane or not. You've still got them teeth and claws. So it was very difficult to work, do the work that they were trying to do. If we belong to Christ, the devil cannot get our souls, but he can seek to ruin our lives and our effectiveness in the land where we work. Our adversary's greatest goals is for us to conform to this world. Satan doesn't have to kill us, he just won't want us to do anything for God. When he's very smart to the effect of martyrs, and we may still come to that point yet again, and we still do in some countries, but he doesn't want to kill a bunch of Christians and then cause an uprising, draw everybody closer to God again. No, he just wants you to not do anything to start with. By blending in with the world, we lose the distinction maintained by a true follower of Christ. Even an ambassador, when they go to a foreign country, if they get too familiar with the country, if they stay too long, many times they lose the reason that they're there, that they are an ambassador for the United States. Or if it's from China and they're here in the United States, maybe they lose the what they're there for, that they're an ambassador to China and they're working for China. And so when we send ambassadors out, the US should always be first and foremost in their mind over the country that they're in. But what happens is they get comfortable where they are. They begin, in some cases, liking the situation where they are. They have, again, they have great privileges where they are. So their goal instead of portraying what the U.S. wants to portray to the leaders of that country, their goal becomes to do whatever is necessary to remain ambassador because it's good. It's a good life. And there are many privileges. And you have to afford ambassadors that privilege to enable them to do their job. But being comfortable is not what they're there for. Being comfortable is not what we are here for. We are here to be ambassadors for Christ. Our first duty as ambassadors of Christ is to seek the lost and communicate Christ's offer of salvation to them. It's not to get members in the church. It's to get people in the church and to go outside the church and tell people the offer of salvation that God wants them to know about. We must stay on task and not get distracted from our purpose. 1 John 2, 15 to 16 in your outline. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life is not of the Father, but of this world. Now the devil wants us to love this world but we can only represent the father and accurately display his holiness and love if we are separated from the world. You're in the world but you're not of the world and we cannot allow the comforts of this world to hinder us from spreading the gospel. And then B, we have the ambassador's defense. So how can we fight such a powerful enemy as Satan? What is our defense against conforming to this world? How can we maintain a holy life for the Lord? Romans 12, one and two. I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service, and be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is a good and acceptable and perfect will of God. so let's look at that first verse we read that I beseech you therefore brethren by the mercy of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice wholly acceptable unto God which is your reasonable service now let's look at one certain word in that verse that you present your bodies a living sacrifice now Who can tell me another way to pronounce that word? Becky? Present, right? It's also present. So, we are to present the gospel as a present. That is our job. God has given us something to give to other people. Now, a few years ago, Somebody gave me two ladders. They gave me a six foot step ladder and about a 14 or 16 foot extension ladder, brand new, top of the line, whatever the number is, 3A rating, whatever, the best, really the best there was. And so, let's just say that I've got these two ladders and I give John one. Maybe John won't get up on a ladder. I don't need to get up on one anymore either. But I still got two ladders. So I get one of John. And John goes out, you know, a few weeks later, a year later, whatever. And he goes to get that ladder, and it's gone. So he sees me in a few days. He says, you know that ladder you gave me? He said, I can't find it. It's gone. Somebody took it. Oh, I got it. I needed it. I'll give it back to you when I'm done with it. and tell what we're doing with God? God, you give me salvation and I'm supposed to give it to others but I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna, not right now. I just wanna give it to them right now. No, we're supposed to give it away. It's supposed to be a present. If I give John that ladder, that's John's ladder. It's not my ladder anymore. See, God, we're reborn. We're born again. God give us new life. God owns us. and we are to live for Him. Presenting our body as a living sacrifice means surrendering our wills to His will. This is our reasonable service. Those who say, it's my body and I'll choose what to do with it are being unreasonable. Transforming and renewing our minds is the next step. We can accomplish by filling our minds with God's word and shunning things which take our minds and hearts away from him. So we'll pick up right there next week. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for all you mean to bless. Thank you, Lord, most of all for salvation, Lord. And Lord, I pray, Lord, that you would help us to live for you, Lord, that you would help us to be your ambassador, and Lord, that we would look to you for guidance, Lord, and the ability to do that. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.