1996 SINGLE SERMONS
AMBASSADORS FOR CHRIST
DR. JIM DIXON
AUGUST 11, 1996
2 CORINTHIANS 5:20
One of the most mysterious creatures in all of creation is the individual the Bible calls the Angel of the Lord. This title, the Angel of the Lord, refers to a specific angel. And this is proven by the use of the definite article in the Hebrew. It was the Angel of the Lord who appeared to Abraham. It was the Angel of the Lord who appeared to Jacob and to Joseph and to Gideon. It was the Angel of the Lord who appeared to Moses and to David. It was the Angel of the Lord who appeared in the burning bush. It was the Angel of Lord who led the children of Israel out of bondage in Egypt and through the wilderness .
The Bible sometimes refers to the Angel of the Lord as the Angel of God’s presence. It is said in scripture of the Angel of the Lord that this angel shares the name of God in the Bible. It is clear that the Angel of the Lord wields great power and commands great authority. Sometimes in the Bible, the Angel of the Lord is distinguished from God, and sometimes the Angel of the Lord appears to be synonymous with God.
Now, theologians and Bible scholars today debate who the Angel of the Lord is. Some theologians and some Bible scholars believe that the Angel of the Lord is a theophany, a physical manifestation of God’s presence to the Hebrew people. Other theologians and Bible scholars believe that the Angel of the Lord is a Christophany, a physical manifestation of the second person of the Trinity, a physical manifestation of the presence of Jesus Christ.
In the Old Testament era, some scholars and theologians believe that the Angel of the Lord is simply an angel, but not a normal angel. He is an angel above all angels higher than the archangels and higher than Cherubim and Seraphim, the head of the angelic post. But the truth is nobody knows. Nobody knows exactly who this mysterious creature called the Angel of the Lord is. But this we know. We know that the Angel of the Lord is an ambassador. We know that the Angel of the Lord is an ambassador of heaven because in the Bible the Angel of the Lord is described with the Hebrew word malach. And this Hebrew word means ambassador.
So whenever and wherever the Angel of the Lord appears on earth, the Angel of the Lord is a representative of heaven itself, an ambassador of heaven. Indeed this is true not only of the Angel of the Lord, but this is true of all angels. That’s why the angels in the Bible in the Hebrew are called malachim. They’re all ambassadors. They’re all citizens of heaven. Whenever they appear on earth, it’s as an ambassador of heaven. But here’s the amazing truth. The amazing truth is that the Bible tells us that Christians are like the angels. Christians are also ambassadors. And if you believe in Jesus Christ, if Christ is your Lord and your Savior, if you become a child of God, if you are a son or daughter of God through faith in Jesus Christ, then you too are a citizen of heaven. This world is not your home.
And in this world, you are an ambassador. You are an ambassador of Christ. You are an ambassador of God. You are an ambassador of heaven. And this morning, I want us to examine what that means to say that as Christians we are ambassadors of heaven on earth. It means two things. First of all, it means that we are messengers. To be an ambassador is to be a messenger. Now, this of course, was true of the angels. The word malach not only means ambassador, but it means messenger. This is also true of the Greek word angelos, which is the word from which we get the word angel. It not only means ambassador, but it also means messenger. And this is also true of the word that is used in our passage of scripture for today, in 2 Corinthians 5, where the Apostle Paul says, “We are ambassadors for Christ.” And the word ambassador there is the word presbeuomen. And that word means both ambassador and messenger.
To say that you are an ambassador is to say that you are a messenger. Even in the diplomatic political world of today, oftentimes an ambassador is a messenger from one nation to another, from one government to another. To say that we are ambassadors for Christ means that we are messengers for Christ on this earth. Every Christian, every one of you, takes the name of Christ. We’re called to be a messenger in this world. It’s a serious call.
Now, in February of 1891, a whaling vessel called the Star of the East was sailing off the coast of the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean. And this whaling vessel was searching for whales. And suddenly, on this February day of 1891, they saw a very large sperm whale. They would later discover that the whale was more than 80 feet long and weighed more than 150 metric tons. Now, they sent two boats out to kill the whale and they harpooned the whale, but the whale was not easy to kill. And the tail of the whale came underneath one of the boats and just lifted it off the surface of the ocean and just launched it into the heavens. And the boat came crashing back down. They tried to rescue the men who had been in that boat, but they couldn’t find one man, a man named James Bartley. He was lost at sea. Well, the whale died and they brought the whale alongside the star of the East, and they began to cut the blubber off the whale. And they did this till midnight. And then they went to bed, and the next morning they arose and they used the derrick on the ship to lift the whale up onto the deck of the ship.
Then as they had this giant whale on the deck of the ship, they noticed there was a little twitch in the stomach of the whale, and they cut the stomach on the whale open. To their amazement, there was James Bartley —not lost at sea, but swallowed by the whale. He was alive—he was unconscious, but he was alive. And they managed to revive him.
He was delirious for a period of time, but eventually he became his normal self, and he lived for nine more years. James Bartley lived nine more years, although his hands and his face were bleached white by the acid that was in the whale’s stomach. And for those remaining nine years of his life, from 1891 to the turn of the century in 1900, James Barkley was something of a celebrity. And he was interviewed by scientists all over the world, and he was interviewed by people from the media from virtually every nation.
He was called the modern-day Jonah. But he was not the modern-day Jonah. He was not the modern-day Jonah because he wasn’t like Jonah. You see, James Bartley was not a reluctant messenger. He was not a reluctant messenger. Jonah was the reluctant messenger. Jonah was the called by God to be an ambassador, called by God to take a message of God, a message of heaven, to the people of Nineveh, a message that they were lost, and they needed to repent. A message that the judgment of God was imminent. This was the message God had called Jonah to take. And Jonah didn’t want to do it. He just didn’t care that much about the people in men. And so from the town of Joppa, which is modern day Jaffa, a suburb of Tel Aviv, from that little town, Jonah set sail not for Nineveh but for Tarshish, seeking to escape the will of God.
And that’s why he wound up in the belly of the whale. That’s why he got into all that trouble, because he wasn’t willing to be an ambassador. He wasn’t willing to carry the message that God had given him to carry.
Well, today it is true that in the Christian community around the world, there are hundreds of millions of Jonas. There may be hundreds of Jonas right here in this congregation, people who are reluctant messengers that don’t really want to be ambassadors of heaven on earth and are not really willing to be a messenger for Christ.
And yet the Bible tells us that, as Christians, we have been given a sacred trust. And that sacred trust is called the gospel, literally the old English “godspell,” which means good news—the exact equivalent of the biblical word, the Greek word “euangelion,” which means good news. This is the message that’s been entrusted to you and to me. The gospel, the “euangelion,” the good news, is as angels said to shepherds on a Judean hillside, “I bring you good news of a great joy, which will come to all the people. Unto you is born today in the city of David a savior. And this message of the Savior, this gospel, this good news, we are to take to the people of the world. We’re to take this message to the people if we would be his messengers, if we would be ambassadors.
I don’t know why it is that so many Christians are unwilling to be an ambassador and unwilling to be a messenger. I think sometimes some Christians don’t really believe that people are lost. They don’t really believe that people need to repent. They don’t really believe that the judgment of God is imminent.
And then I think other Christians are kind of afraid and it really has to do with self-esteem. We’re afraid to share the gospel. We’re afraid to be a messenger for fear that we might be rejected. Someone might not approve of us.
And then I think for some Christians it is a matter of priority and we just have our priorities out of whack. And in this busy world, there are so many things in our lives that are more important to us than being a messenger for Christ. And yet, biblically, nothing is more important. I mean, this is the great commission. “You shall be My witnesses. Go ye into all the world and make disciples.” These were the final words on Christ’s lips before He ascended into heaven. “You shall be My witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea Samaria and unto the uttermost parts of the earth.” So the call of Christ is upon us to be ambassadors. And that means, first of all, to be messengers.
And if we’re going to be faithful in this, we’re going to be Sunday school teachers, that we might take the message of Christ to children. We’re going to go into the inner cities. We’re going to work as tutors because we want to take the gospel there and we’re going to share Christ at work as the Holy Spirit leads us. And we’re going to share Christ in our neighborhood. And we’re going to tithe, we’re going to give to the gospel of Christ, that it might go forth to all the nations of the earth.
This word ambassador not only means messenger, but it has a second meaning. It also means to be a representative. To be an ambassador for Christ literally means to represent Christ. This is an incredible privilege. You as a Christian, as a son or daughter of God, actually have the privilege of representing Christ on this earth.
In Vatican City and Rome near St. Peter’s Basilica, there is a man who lives there, and he is called the vicar of Christ. Now, the word vicar has the same Latin root as vicarious. Vicar means a substitute, it means a representative. It means one who takes the place of another. Now, some popes in history have represented Christ faithfully on this earth. And some popes in history have represented only themselves. And what is true of the Popes in the Roman Catholic tradition and in their history is also true of Christians in general. Because biblically, we are all vicars. All of us who believe in Jesus Christ all of us are sons and daughters of God, we are vicars. We are called to represent Christ in this world until He comes again. And when people look at you, they’re supposed to see a little bit of Christ by His grace—a little bit of Christ’s love, a little bit of Christ’s character, a little bit of Christ’s person. You have the privilege of representing Christ on this earth. What an incredible privilege. But it’s the privilege of being an ambassador, a heaven ambassador.
Now, some of us just came back from Israel and in Israel we had a Jewish tour guide. Our group here from the church had a Jewish tour guide. His name was Tony. Tony is a great guy and an excellent tour guide, and he has a lot of knowledge. And he has been a tour guide for 28 years in Israel. And he is really one of the premier tour guides in Israel.
He had led some famous people on tours of Israel, Hollywood type people from Charlton Heston to Frank Sinatra. He’s also led famous church leaders, people like Jerry Falwell, Jim Baker, Chuck Smith. They’ve been led and their groups have been led around Israel by Tony. Tony has also led, through the 28 years, just hundreds and thousands of normal everyday Christians and normal everyday pastors. He’s led them around Israel. And Tony said to me, “I’ve seen the best and I’ve seen the worst of Christianity. I’ve seen the best and I’ve seen the worst of Christian behavior.” And he explained how he had some groups of Christians come from America to Israel and he could barely bear the week. Some of the people were so rude to him and how on rare occasions he’d had to even quit in the middle of the week because Christians were so hard to work.
Now Tony is Jewish and he is not a Christian. He has a lot of respect for Christ and for Christianity. And I can tell that there’s a great struggle in his soul. You can see that, and you can see that God is working there. And you can tell that Tony is trying to come to grips with who Jesus Christ is. And you can tell that there’s a part of him that suspects that maybe Jesus Christ is the Christ, but he’s not quite able yet to take that leap of faith. And of course we pray he will. But what would be the case, what would’ve happened if Tony had only seen the best you gave Christians? I mean, what if for 28 years of being a tour guide, he’d only seen Christ well represented? What would that mean to Tony’s life? God only knows. But you understand the responsibility.
Don’t you understand the privilege and the responsibility we have on this earth to represent Christ? Well, you know, yesterday a young woman came by our house. She was interested in buying Drew’s Jeep. Drew’s going away to college, and he’s selling his CJ-5. And this young woman called and said she wanted to come by and look at the chief because she was interested in him. We said, great. Well, she came by and she brought a young man with her. And I guess he’s a mechanic, at least he’s a guy that knows a lot about automobiles. And I think he might also have been her boyfriend. He began to check Drew’s CJ-5 out, and he got underneath the car and all kinds of stuff. And he got grease all over his hands. He then said to us, he said, you know this car’s got a lot of problems.
He began just building this list. And he made it very clear he wasn’t going to buy the car, but he wanted us to know everything that was wrong with it. And he just kind of went through this list of things wrong with the car. And then he began to explain what we should have done if we had really wanted to sell the Jeep. And then I… you know, I honestly think he was probably right on a lot of the stuff he was saying. Honestly, he was right and he knew what he was talking about. But you know, I mean, we knew the car had problems and that’s why we priced it well, and I was beginning to get frustrated as he was going through this list, you know, and, and I began to… I was about to say to him, “Listen, either buy the car or don’t buy the car, but spare me the lecture.”
I mean, I was about to say that. I was about to get angry. Or, I was angry. I was about to express that anger. I looked down and saw, you know, my t-shirt says, “Fellowship of Christian Athletes,” with a big “Christian” right across my chest. And I thought, wow, you know, I’m not just representing myself, but I’m representing Christ.
Isn’t that always, not only of me, but isn’t it always true of you? I mean, all of you who love Jesus Christ are called by His name. And what a responsibility this is. I mean, there’s a lot of people in this world, and there’s a lot of people right here in South Denver who maybe their only chance to really see Christ is going to be in you. It might be somebody at work, it might be somebody in your neighborhood. But this is the privilege that we have in price as ambassadors, for we are messengers called to take the message of the Gospel of the world.
And we are representatives having the privilege, the awesome privilege, by his grace of actually representing Him to people this morning. So as you come to the table this morning, as ambassadors for Christ, let it be a time when you would commit yourself and consecrate yourself anew to be an ambassador, to be a message, to be a representative. As we come to this table, we’re mindful of the fact that Christ represented us on Calvary’s cross when He died for us. He died for us, and His blood was shed for us. His body broken for us. He represented us on that cross because I deserved it, and so did you, because He died in that place and substitutionary atonement. And now as we come to the table, we come not only with gratitude, thanking Him for dying for us, but we come with renewed commitment and consecration that we would now represent Him faithful in this world, and that we would be messengers for His kingdom, faithful ambassadors. Let’s look to the Lord in prayer.
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