How will others know I am a Christian? The 3 L's on how to be an Ambassador
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Introduction
Introduction
Introduce self
What is chapel?
it’s not another class, this is an opportunity for the Lord to speak to us through His Word
Bring a bible and a notepad to take notes, don’t need to bring your whole backpack in here
This ministry is a church, and under the umbrella of this church the school exists. This room’s main purpose is the Sanctuary for church every Sunday and Wednesday, we want to respect it.
We will have school staff preach as well as other ministers and pastors from our community come and preach. Be sure to listen to them. Do not fall asleep.
When I listen intently, I am showing respect to the preacher, and not only the preacher but to the Lord. Everytime the Word of God is opened, the Lord wants to speak to you, so if you goof off, don’t listen, fall asleep, it is extremely disrespectful. The preachers who come and preach for you prepare weeks in advance and spend hours studying and praying for you, so show them the respect that they deserve, whether its your homeroom teacher or an old timey preacher you’ve never heard of before.
Here is our line up for the next few weeks: Brother Andrew, the Pastor and Superintendent will preach next week, Coach White our Athletic Director will preach the week after that, then Mr. McBrayer our Principal will preach the next week.
The week after that we are having our Back to School Revival and Back to School Bash. So September 13th, 14th, 15th, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday we will have chapel every day, and then that Wednesday night, we will cap it off, we’ll have some games, some music, our guest speaker will speak here wednesday night and he’ll preach one last time.
Our special speaker this year is a guy named Caleb. He is a youth pastor in Las Vegas at an awesome church, he loves Jesus and he loves students and he’s a great preacher so I know he’ll do a great job.
For today, I’m going to give you a message that answers a specific question, and that question is this: How will others know that I am a Christian?
People who may not know us very well personally, should be able to tell that there is something different from us than the rest of the world. We should want other people to know we are Christians right? Why? Because we want to be a witness, or lead people to Jesus. We want others to experience what we have experienced. We want as many people as possible to know Jesus so that they can go to Heaven.
Can I just be honest with yall for a second? This is going to sound really blunt, maybe even almost rude, but there are people out there who are dying and going to Hell. There are people out there who have never put their faith in Christ’s death and resurrection to save them from their sins. It is our job to tell them, to tell them what Christ did for them. This is one of my favorite verses
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.
Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God.
An ambassador is a person who is a representative of a certain country or kingdom, who is sent to a foreign country with a specific mission.
We are representatives of God’s Kingdom. We are ambassadors for Christ.
There’s three ways to do that.
I have 3 L’s from the book of Matthew on how to be an ambassador:
I usually like to stay in one particular passage when I preach and just work through the verses but there’s so many different good passages on this topic we are going to jump around a little bit, but they will all be in the book of Matthew.
1. My Light (Matt. 5:16)
1. My Light (Matt. 5:16)
Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
(Context): In this chapter, Jesus has just started the Sermon on the Mount. This is one of the most famous passages in the New Testament. Even among people who are not Christians, the Sermon on the Mount is considered the greatest moral discourse ever given.
So the specific sermon is three chapters long, but we just want to focus on this verse, can y’all read it with me?
Ready, Begin
Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
What is light? What is the purpose of Light?
The purpose of light is to illuminate, to help you see, especially in the dark.
Y’all ever go to children’s church and sing “this little light of mine”? “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine...” Raise your hand if you ever sang that song. Yeah! Raise your hand if you wanna come up on stage and sing it for us! No just kidding.
So Jesus tells us to let our light shine. What light are we supposed to be shining? Where does this light come from? Well look at the rest of the verse: “that they may see your good works” Your good works. Listen to this this is so cool, one of my favorite parts of this study. In Revelation 21, it says that in Heaven, there is no sun, that we wont need the sun, because God Himself in all His glory bears light, His physical spiritual presence gives off light by Himself. Listen, when you got saved, the Holy Spirit of God came into your heart and now He indwells you, He lives inside of you.
So listen, this light we are supposed to be shining, it’s not our own light. No. Here’s why, the Bible tells us that before salvation we are dark and sinful and separated from God.
For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
So men are inherently dark and evil and wicked and there’s no light within us.
But here’s the awesome part, listen:
Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.
In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
So Jesus is our light literally. When we got saved, when we believed on His death and resurrection to save us from our sin, he instantly came into our hearts and indwells us. So He is in us, therefore we have the light of life within us.
So this light is not our own light, it is Christ’s, its His, His glory, we are merely reflecting that light. The same way that the moon does not give off light on its own, it only reflects the light of the sun, we too are just reflections, reflecting the light of the son.
So how do I do that, how do I let my light shine, how do I reflect the light of Christ? I reflect, or mirror Christ. That’s it. I reflect his life, his character, His Spirit.
I. Live. Like. Christ.
Now this isn’t something I can just force. If you’ve tried living the Christian life for any amount of time and tried to not sin and do everything right, then you know the Christian life is full of failures. We trip and fall everyday, we sin everyday. You can’t just try to muster up enough spiritual strength and pull yourself up by your bootstraps and just “try to be good” and expect to be good.
If Christ is what saved us from the penalty of sin yesterday when we got saved, then Christ is still what saves us from the power of sin today. Let me explain: We believe once you get saved, you’re always saved, you don’t lose your salvation. You got saved from the penalty of sin, whats the penalty of sin, it is Hell. So Christ saved you from the penalty of sin, you’re going to Heaven, don’t have to worry about Hell anymore. Does that mean you should continue in sin and just live however you want? Of course not!
What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?
^^Explain
Okay so how do I overcome the power of sin in my life today? How do I have victory over the power of sin today? It is the same way I have victory over the penalty of sin. It is by faith in Christ. Faith that Christ will live through me.
Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?
John asks a rhetorical question, he asks who is able to overcome the world? Only he that believes on Christ, after he just got done saying “Greater is he who is in me, than he who is in the world.”
So I am trusting in Christ today to help me have victory, today. I’m saying “God, I know if I try to live my life by myself today that I will fall and mess up, but I believe that Christ has the power to live through me and give me victory over my sin today, and I am asking for your help and your power today.”
And the great thing about that is, He will. He will live through you and his Holy Spirit will guide you.
When I finally understood this I was like “poooooofffshhshs” Like mind blown. It made being a Christian so much easier or simpler because now I’m not focused on trying to follow all these rules, I’m simply focused on following Jesus and the rest just falls into place.
Now, does that mean that if I say this prayer everyday and believe everyday that I’ll never sin again? No. Because we are still humans. We are still sinful. But when I do sin, at the root of that sin, is unbelief, but we’ll have to dive deeper into that another time we need to keep moving. The fact of the matter is we will still mess up. Until we get to Heaven. That is when we will be saved from the presence of sin, and we won’t have to worry about sin anymore.
Apply it: I need to reflect the light of Christ by having faith in Him to live through me.
So How can I be an ambassador for Christ? #1 My Light, but #2
2. My Love (Matt 22:37-39)
2. My Love (Matt 22:37-39)
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
(Context): In this chapter, the religious leaders are trying to trap Jesus and accuse Him. The pharisees, saducees, and Herodians all banded together to basically verbally bully Him with questions, but Jesus had an answer every time.
Specifically in this passage these religious leaders try to mislead Jesus and ask Him what the greatest commandment is, and Jesus answers with what is called the Shema.
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
The Shema refers to a couple lines from the book of Deuteronomy that became a daily prayer in Ancient Israelite tradition. It’s the equivalent of the Lord’s prayer (“Our Father in heaven…”) in Christian tradition. The Shema gets its name from the first Hebrew word of the prayer in Deuteronomy 6:4, “Listen, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone.” The English word “listen” renders the Hebrew word shema. In traditional Jewish prayer practice, these lines from Deuteronomy 6:4-5 were combined with other passages from the Torah, and were prayed in the morning and the evening. This prayer has been one of the most influential traditions in Jewish history. The Shema has functioned both as the Jewish pledge of allegiance and a hymn of praise.
So Jesus answered their question with the prayer that they recite every single day. They had become so accustomed to just praying this prayer that they had become numb to it, and forgot the significance of it. Of course they knew they should love the Lord and love people, but because they said it so often they had forgotten the importance and magnitude of it.
One of the core doctrines or teachings of Christianity is love, we should love God and man.
And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
We understand the significance of loving people, but sometimes I think we become like the pharisees and just get used to knowing, and forget about doing.
What is love? Love is not a feeling. No, love is doing something because of what you feel or despite of what you feel. Love is preferring someone over yourself.
Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another;
I heard a preacher say it this way: Love is fighting for the benefit of someone else even if they never see the value or sacrifice of what you did. Love is fighting for the benefit of someone else even if they never see the value or sacrifice of what you did, which is exactly what Jesus did. Jesus came to Earth to willingly die for people that He knew would never even hear about Him. The Bible says He died for the sins of the whole world. He died for those who would never even hear about Him. Better yet, He even died for those who would hear about Him and what He did for them yet they’d still reject Him. He died knowing that people would never hear of Him, He died knowing that people would reject Him.
That is love. Love is not just a feeling. It is action.
This point kind of falls under the previous point, Your Light, because being loving is letting your light shine, because love is a characteristic of Christ. Christ is infinite in all of his characteristics and attributes so he is infinitely loving, that means his love has no end, it is perfect. He loves you unconditionally, meaning there’s nothing that you can do that would make Him love you any more and there’s nothing that you can do that would make Him love you any less.
But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
Christ said He loved us in John 3:16 right.
But then He proved His love for us by doing the action. Love is an action, and the ultimate action of love is dying for someone, and that’s exactly what He did to prove His love to you and me.
Listen to this, Hear me right here: What are you doing to prove your love to your friends, your family, your world, your God?
Are your words empty when you say “I love you”, or are there loving actions that back them up?
The world will know you are a Christian based on how you love, and they’re not just listening to your words, they will mainly be watching your actions.
By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.
Apply it: I need to show Christ’s love to the world by actions, not just words.
So how can I be Christ’s ambassador, #1 my Light, #2 my Love, and #3
3. My Lips (Matt. 28:18-20)
3. My Lips (Matt. 28:18-20)
And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.
(Context): The context of this story is that Jesus was finally tortured, nailed to the cross, died, buried in the tomb for three days, and is now resurrected and has shown Himself to His disciples, and these are the last verses of this book, this is the climax ending of Matthew’s gospel.
He gives them the… what is it called? What are these verses called? The Great Commission, yes. This is Christ’s command for the disciples to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. We are to go and teach all nations.
So look, how can I be an ambassador? How can people around me know that I am a Christian? I can tell them!
This can be one of the most, if not the most intimidating thing to do for some people. Anybody in here consider themselves kinda shy or introverted?
Yeah good job Zain ask all the introverts to raise a hand in public, everyone’s like…
Yeah me too! Naturally, I am an introvert. I used to absolutely hate talking to people. Ask my wife, I switched schools my senior year of high school, and at orientation the first day it was an auditorium kind of like this but a lot bigger, and I walked in from the back and was terrified of how many people I saw so I turned around walked back and just slumped down on the back row and hid from everybody. I was terrified! I only talked to five people in high school, God the Father, Jesus, the Holy Ghost, myself, and occasionally my wife.
So I understand if talking to people terrifies you, especially about a tough topic like religion and Christianity, but it’s what we are commanded to do. We are the tools that God has chosen to use to get his Gospel into the world, how prideful I must be to disobey that command and just do what I want to do. Cause that’s all it is when I don’t witness to people, its pride. It is me choosing what my flesh wants to do rather than what God wants me to do.
Listen, it gets easier. Trust me. The more you talk to people and the more your get out of your comfort zone, the easier it gets.
Just this past weekend we took a group of about 20 teens out to do just this. **Explain what we did and how a group skipped a house where the lady was outside but they went back and gave one to her
The bottom line is that people are dying and going to Hell. Your neighbor down the street may have never put their faith in Jesus, maybe a family member, maybe a friend. If we care about the people around us, we will tell them about Jesus. If we love the people around us, we will tell them about Jesus. How can I say I love you if I do not tell you about Jesus.
Have y’all ever heard someone say the prayer “Lord put someone in our path today that we can be a witness to” or something similar to that. I think thats a fine prayer, in fact I think that’s a good prayer, but I think sometimes we need to get off of our own path and go look for the lost person, rather than just waiting for them to come across our path. Make an effort, make it a point to tell someone about Jesus today, every day, because not everybody knows Him.
Apply it: I need to use every opportunity I can to tell someone about Jesus.
Conclusion
Conclusion
So how will others know I am a Christian? How can I be an ambassador for Christ?
My Light - I need to reflect the light of Christ by having faith in Him to live through me.
2. My Love - I need to show Christ’s love to the world by actions, not just words.
3. My Lips - I need to use every opportunity I can to tell someone about Jesus.
Be an ambassador by Shining your light, showing your love, and using your lips