Pastor Kyle continued in his Sunday sermon series through the Pauline Epistle for the Ephesians, stating that there some very serious responsibilities, pressure and burdens that come on the backend of every major blessing. All of life’s most beautiful and sought after realities come with some very real and very big responsibilities that we do not always realize on the frontend of them. The beauty comes with a burden. Working in the Christian ministry is one of the most privileged blessing in all of life, but ministry is also a calling, and with every calling there is a cost. Ministry comes with a mission, and every mission comes with pain. Christianity is the most blessed reality for all of those who call Jesus Christ, the Lord of their life. Yet , following Christ means taking up our Cross and following Him daily.
While the phrase “take up your Cross daily and follow Jesus” is commonly understood to mean acceptance of some burdensome ministry task, the command to take up the cross is much more than a symbol of the difficulties experienced by humanity. Taking up one's cross and following Jesus is something completely different. Jesus Christ is talking spiritually here about our own cross which we take to Golgotha and die there as we follow him at any price. Our cross is his cross. The cross was an instrument of death. What Jesus is referring to is commitment to Him, even unto death—obedience to the extreme measure and willingness to die in pursuit of obedience. Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it best: “When Jesus Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” Jesus was giving us a word picture of the concept of "death to self." Christianity comes with a cost and a calling. Following Jesus comes with the huge responsibility of being Ambassadors from the kingdom of Christ representing Him to our world.
We thank the Lord Jesus that He represented us to Father God when we were unworthy, undeserving, sinful and deserved to be separate from God and Heaven for all of eternity, but Christ came and lived the sinless life that we should have lived and died the death that we should have died for our many sins. He rose from the grave to conquer sin and death, so that all we had to do was repent and believe in Jesus as our personal Savior and Lord; that we would have the same power from the same God that raised Him from the dead living inside of us. So, the least that we can do is to carry that representation of the Christ to our world. We ask the Lord to help us each day to open our eyes to see, understand and embrace this ambassadorship in each of our lives more and more. And open our hearts that we may respond it His calling and guiding to it.
2 Corinthians 5:11-15 “Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others. But what we are is known to God, and I hope it is known also 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, 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.
No matter how much you love the Lord, there is someone out there in the world that will come to discredit who you are in Christ and what you are doing for the Kingdom of God. The fear of the Lord is a driving force to live out the Gospel of Jesus Christ and key motivator as an Ambassador for Christ in persuading the unsaved to become a repentant Believer, a disciple of Salvation and a redeemed, sanctified Followers; a devout born-again Christian.
Pastor Kyle gave us five keys to representing Christ to others. (1) Representing Jesus as an Ambassador for Christ and the kingdom of God means living with a healthy fear of God: knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others. The Greek word in this passage of Scripture is “phobos”, meaning reverence, respect for authority, rank, and dignity. Proverbs 9:10 says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.” The Greek word for “fear” in this Bible verse is “yir'â” meaning awesome, respect, reverence, or piety.
Slavish (slave to sin) fear is the effect or consequence of guilt; it is the painful apprehension of merited punishment. Romans 6:23 explains, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Fear for the true Believer is not of Hell. The transformed child of God knows beyond any doubt that Jesus already paid for their sins and secured eternity in Heaven, sealed by the Holy Spirit. The fear of Hell has no part in the lives of any redeemed and transformed Believer. Jesus said in Matthew 10:28, “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”
The fear of God that the Apostle Paul speaks to is a reverential fear, as a Christian who has been delivered from Hell; a fear to do well and to please God to the best of your ability while here on planet Earth. One day, all of us will stand before God to give an account of our lives.
Let's continue Pastor Kyle's message on being Ambassadors for Christ in the next post.
In Christ, Brian
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