The Joy of Serving Christ

A couple of minutes, if you would turn with me to second Corinthians. Second Corinthians chapter five, and maybe we'll sing another song and just stick a couple of minutes here. You know, it's always, every time you hear the response of people who actually obey the great commission in a simple way, it doesn't really matter, but just as an act of obedience to Christ's command, to go into the whole world and take the glorious message of salvation Christ, the grace of God, and to do that at any kind of extended way and just the experience of being a representative of Christ consciously is the most wonderful thing in all the world. The reason for that is that it's a mark of regeneration. It's one of the things that happens to you when God saves you.

Let me read just a short passage here in second Corinthians chapter five. In verse six, I'm reading from the NIV, and they say I'm a little strange to you. All right, therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord. We live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and we prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So we make it our goal to please Him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. But we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ that each one may receive what is do Him for the things done while in the body with a good or worthless. Since then we know what it is to fear the Lord, in other words, we actually care what God thinks about our lives.

As we face the future, it really does matter to us that we're going to stand before Him one day and to present to Him our lives what we've done in our bodies while upon this earth as His followers. He says, since we know the fear of the Lord, we try to persuade men what we are is plain to God. In other words, He knows the truth. He knows what's going on in the hearts. He knows our motivation. He knows everything we do and everything we think. And He says, and I hope it is also plain in your conscience. I hope you understand what our motivation is and why we do what we do. We are not trying to commend ourselves to you again, but we are giving you reason or an opportunity to take pride in us so that you can answer those who take pride in what is seen rather than what is in heart.

Those who were attacking Paul because he had no appearance or success or great wisdom. Yet he said, I hope you understand the truth that you understand what real service to Christ is and what real value in the kingdom of God is. And then he goes on, if we are out of our mind, as those they were accusing him of, if we are out of our mind, it is for the sake of God. If we are in our right mind, it is for you. For Christ's love compels us because we are convinced that one died for all. And he died for all in order of that, for this purpose, that those who live, those who come to faith in Him and experience life in Christ, those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died for them and was raised again.

It is such a wonderful thing for believers to no longer live for themselves, but to live for Christ, to live out their lives motivated by that. So much more fun, it is so much more joyful. I mean, it just fills your life up with such great joy, to live your life for Christ, to actually expend your energy and your resources for Christ and not for yourself. And you know, it is so much easier. I was watching this video of these people worshipping this church. I know something of this church, because Pony, who is kind of the overseer down there, has come to our school, and we have talked at length, and he first began to have anything to do with this little church. It was just a little handful of people, less than a dozen people.

And what changed things was, he began to teach the gospel of grace. He learned the doctrines of grace, and he began to understand about the grace of God and what the gospel really was, that it wasn't just the works of law, but it was the grace of God, and that we serve him out of great gratitude for his grace, and began to teach these doctrines, and how it has affected those people. And I love the freedom that they have to express that, and the closeness that they feel as they worship together. It is something for us that we can lose so easily, because we have so much, we have so many Buddhists, we pile up things to pursue in our lives, new possessions, new pursuits, new hobbies. In fact, we're hunting, always hunting, for something new to boil our lives into.

But none of that, none of that, none of that, will ever fill your hearts with joy. None of you are going to stand before this church, and weak, over how wonderful it is that you've gotten into something new, and it's just the greatest thing in all your life. Now that you've got this new hobby, and new thing that you can spend all your resources on, none of you will be filled with that kind of joy. But when you serve Christ, when you experience this mark of regeneration that you no longer live for yourself, that you live for him who died and rose again on your behalf, and Paul goes on, and listen to this, he says, therefore, we regard no one from a worldly point of view. We don't look at people any longer, but where the world looks at them.

We look at them completely differently now. We look at them through the cross, and he says, though we once regard Christ in this way, we do so no longer, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The Lord is gone, and the newest come, all of us is from God who reconciled us to Himself through Christ, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. In other words, this ministry of reconciliation is that you can go anywhere on this globe, and you can tell people that God is calling them, pleading with them through you. It could be reconciled to Him. In fact, He describes this way, this is the ministry of reconciliation that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them, and He has committed to us the message of reconciliation.

We are therefore Christ ambassadors, though, as though Christ God were making His appeal through us. That's what's so important about this, and the reason it says such deep impact on these people who did it, is this is incarnational evangelism, you know? Incarnational evangelism is not when you drop tracks from an airplane on people in some parts of the world you need to hear the gospel. It's when you go and you flesh out the gospel, that you actually take this message of forgiveness and reconciliation in a person who's been reconciled, someone who's experienced a level of Christ, the forgiveness, that our sins have been forgiven, that the weight of the death of sin that was upon us has been removed, and we are free, and we are reconciled to God.

And we can take this message that the greatest sinner, in fact Paul said, he was the greatest sinner, there's no greater sinner than Paul, who tried to kill Christians and to wipe them out because he hated Christ and everything he preached so much. And so he says, the greatest of sinners has already been saved. So anybody you ever run into is not going to be as great a sinner as Paul, since God has already saved the greatest of sinners, you can be sure that you will never run into anybody, man, woman, boy or girl, who is beyond the power of the gospel as you proclaim it. And if the Holy Spirit in his sovereign grace reaches down into that heart no matter how hard they turn to Christ, they'll receive forgiveness of sins and reconciliation with God.

And in fact to the point that they'll end up calling him father, and they too can begin to dance. They can dance. That's a wonderful thing that believers can dance when they worship, whether it's unthratical doesn't it? And I'm not suggesting that any of you do it and fall down this aisle here. This is much a comfortable place to do that, but if you're ever going to Mexico and you worship in this little church, where they have those kind of hours you probably end up dancing too, as you think about the grace you glory of God that's been poured on your life. I mean, just think about it, one of the amazing things about this to me as these people stood up here, and I thought that this all week as I prayed for them, that this was made up of primarily very much baby Christians.

These are just newborn believers who've been in the faith for less than five years, except for a few of them, the old saints like Linda and Julian, a few others, Holly. They're not wonderful, God put that in their heart and he's done this in their heart. This early in the Christian life may have experienced this joy, and I think Chris is right, they'll never be the same. They'll never stop desiring to be used by God in this way, because this is such a glorious message that we take. And you know what? You are ambassadors to every one of you who've rested your faith in Christ. He's called you to be an ambassador. And he really does. And it's really true that the God of the universe, because he's your father, and just like you fathers know what it's like to have great desires for your children, he has great desires for you that you would come to experience the joy of actually fulfilling this calling that you have of being an ambassador of Jesus Christ.

You know what? In any of you, I know very well, and some of you have shared with me things in your life at different times. I can tell you, it's always true. It's always true without a shadow of a doubt. I could give you, in instance after instance, the greatest joy and enthusiasm I ever hear from you is when you come to me and tell me about an opportunity you had to share Christ with someone. It's always true. It's never the other stuff that fills your heart with deep, profound joy. And so we are so grateful that God allowed these folks to do this, even though they took up my whole preaching time this morning. It was well worth it, and I am so glad that we are ambassadors. I like us to close with a song.

Why don't you come and leave us by a song and we'll sing together. And you could all stand while singing, standing. I wish you would not scatter out in this building. You would have to meet in this building for four weeks or three weeks, actually.