Right, we are continuing in our series in the book of Two
Corinthians. We're in chapter 5.
Today and I'm going to be reading verse 11 to 6.
Verse 2. If you've got a Bible, it'd be
great if you. Opened it.
I always say it's. Great to read along with me
because my reading isn't always the best.
So here we go. It's.
Going to come up on the screen. And but yeah.
Please read along with me, it says, Since then we know what it
is to fear the Lord. We try to persuade others.
What we are is plain to God, and I hope it is also plain to your
conscience. We are not trying to commend
ourselves to you again, but I've given you the opportunity to
take pride in us so that you can answer those who take pride in
what is seen rather than what is in the heart.
If we are out of our minds, as some say, it is for 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 therefore all died.
He who died for all, that those, those who live should no longer
live for themselves, but for him who died for them and was raised
again. So from now on we regard no one
for a worldly point of view, though we once regarded Christ
in this way, so do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in
Christ, the new creation has come, the old has gone, the new
is here. All this is from God who
reconciles us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry
of reconciliation. That God was reconciling the
world to Himself through Christ, not counting people sin against
them, and He has committed to thus the ministry of
reconciliation. We.
Therefore are ambassadors, as though God was making his appeal
through us. We implore you on Christ's
behalf be reconciled to God. God made him.
Who? Who had no sin to be sin for us,
so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
As God's coworkers, we urge you not to receive God's grace and
vain. But he says, in the time of my
favour I heard you, and the day of salvation he helped you.
I tell you, now is the time of God's favour now.
Is the day of salvation. Lord Jesus, I thank you, Lord
God, for all that you have done for us.
Lord Jesus, I thank you, Lord God, that Jesus Christ you came
and that today, Lord God, we can declare with you that today is
the day of salvation. Lord Jesus, that you have made
us. You've made a way that we can be
made right with God, that our sin can be dealt with, that we
can have a relationship with you, Lord Jesus.
And I pray, Lord God, that if there's anyone here or anyone
who listens to this Lord Jesus who doesn't know you or is once
knew you and us, turn their back on you, Lord Jesus, I pray, Lord
God, that you would draw them back into relationship with you
once again. Lord Jesus, you came so that we
could have eternal life with you.
And Lord God, I pray that each and everyone of us would, as we
sung in worship, would surrender our lives to you and take hold
with both hands this opportunity to have a life and life with you
eternal. Amen.
So I want to ask you to start
off with what is a Christian? What does it mean to be a
Christian? Now, last time I asked you a
couple of questions and I gave a couple of bad answers.
And so I'm going to give you a couple of bad answers again.
So what does it mean to be a Christian?
These are bad answers. To be a good person, bad answer.
Yeah, exactly. And it another bad, bad answer.
To be a Christian means that you go to church to be a good
Christian. To be a Christian means that you
pray. To be a Christian means you
serve and you give. Now all these things are good.
Now if you, if you are a Christian, we are, we are called
to live to a higher standard. If you are a Christian, we are
called to meet together as the body, to gather, to prioritise
the gathering of the Saints, to come together on Sundays, to
meet together in midweek groups. We're we're asked to do that.
If we're a Christian, we're called to pray, we're called to
seek God, to pray, pray to Jesus.
If we're a Christian, we're called to use our gifts and
talents to serve one another, to give to what Christ is doing.
But that's not what it means to be a Christian.
So to be a Christian, actually a guy called Nicodemus in John
chapter 3 comes to Jesus. And Nicodemus was one of the
most experienced, well known teachers of his day.
And he came to Jesus and he says to Jesus, what must I do to be
saved? Jesus, go on, you tell me, rabbi
to rabbi, teacher to teacher, how do you believe that I
receive the Kingdom of God? How will I have eternal life?
And Jesus answer kind of perplexed him for a bit because
Jesus says you need to be born again.
You need to be born of water and born of the spirit.
And Nicodemus is kind of freaked out by this.
He's like, Jesus, I'm an old man.
That just doesn't work. I can't be born again.
And so Jesus explains to him. He says whoever believes in me
will not perish but have eternal life.
What he's saying is, is if we believe in Jesus, then we are
born again, that we are made new, as Paul says in this
passage here, that we are a new creation.
It's OK. So to be a Christian means to be
born again, which means to believe.
But what does it mean to believe?
I mean, does it mean that I believe that Jesus is king just
as much as I believe that we have a Labour government?
Is that what it means to believe?
Come on, Is that what it means to believe?
No, no, actually Scripture tells us.
Come on, let's have some, let's have some feedback here.
Jesus, Jesus text, doesn't he? He says that if the Bible tells
us that even Satan, even the demons, even the gods of this
world, they know that God is king, that Jesus would go around
to place to place and he'd set people free from demonic
oppression. And the demons, as they'd come
out of these people, they'd cried, Jesus, you are the Son of
God. They knew who he was.
See, Satan knows that Jesus is king.
Satan knows that he is all powerful.
Satan has really good doctrine. He does so that doesn't make us
a Christian. That doesn't mean that we
believe. That's not what Jesus talking
about when he says if you believe in me, you will have
eternal life because we know that Satan and all his demonic
forces at the end of time are we thrown in the fiery lake and
they will have be no more. That's not what it means to be
to believe. And to believe, Scripture tells
us, is not just to acknowledge that Jesus Lord, not just to
acknowledge that he is God, but actually to treasure him, to see
that he is infinitely valuable. To desire to follow him, to
desire to cherish Him and do what He asks us to do.
To give up everything because we've been talking about
already. For him to long to gaze, to be
in the presence of Him, to lay down our rights, to have Him, as
David said, better as one day to realise that better as one day
with him is better than a million days doing something
else. That's what it means to believe.
See Satan, He knows who God is. He knows how much power he has.
He has not submitted to him. He does not follow him.
See, belief is to fall down upon our knees in worship, desiring
nothing but to be with him, to be surrounded, to be satisfied
by the King of all kings. You see, to believe it means to
worship, to believe. You cannot believe without
worshipping, without submitting yourself.
So you can. You can have the best voice, you
can sing the best songs, you can sing to Jesus all day long, but
if you have not submitted yourself to Him, if you do not
follow Him, you're not worshipping.
You're just singing a nice tune, but you're not worshipping Him.
Church. Are you worshippers?
Are you a worshipper? Is anyone a worshipper?
We all got an extra hour in bed and we're all asleep.
We are. We're called to be worshippers.
See the gospel, the gospel, the gospel tell the Bible tells us
the gospel message, the gospel message, which is that Genesis
1, God created everything. He created everything.
Everything we see, everything that we don't see, he created.
And then Genesis 2 and God, God takes this Adama, this soil,
this mud, and he uses it, He moulds it and he makes it into
an atom and he breathes life into it.
And he takes this atom, this man, and he goes and puts him in
a garden paradise, this mountaintop garden paradise.
He places him there and he places this atom as a
representation for all mankind. And he says to Adam, he says to
man, he says, you can choose to follow me, which leads to life,
or you can choose to disobey me. You can choose to live for
yourself, which ultimately leads to death.
And we know the story, don't we? Genesis chapter 3, Adam, man, he
chose, he chose death. He chose death.
He chose to live his own life. He chose to live life without
God as king. And Genesis and the rest of
Genesis all the way to Chapter 11 is about how depraved, how
bad people just keep getting worse and worse and worse and
worse as we keep trying to do things on our own.
And if you're there thinking I could, I would have done things
better if you placed me in a garden paradise, I would have
lived perfectly. No, you wouldn't.
You wouldn't. Don't be deluded if you believe
it for a second, ask if you're married, ask your partner.
You would definitely will not. You would not.
None of us would you see and then Chapter 11 of Genesis, we
read it that God gives us over. So theologians call it a kind of
the great divorce that God gives up.
He says I'm no longer be going to be your God.
I'm not going to be your God, mankind, but straight after
that, because God is good, because he is loving, he picks
two people, Abraham and Sarah, and he says through you I'm
going to create a new nation, a new people.
And he supernaturally births the nation of Israel, the nation of
Israel, which were meant to be a people who God could, could
bring man, woman back to him, a people who he who who would use
to save the world. You see, when we disobeyed, when
Adam disobeyed, when we disobey, there's a chasm caused between
US and God, between him and his goodness that we cannot cross on
our own. And God supernaturally births
into being the nation of Israel to be his way of healing that
rift, of making a way back. But if you read, if you read the
if you read the scriptures, you read the Old Testament, you find
that not only does Israel fail, actually Israel, they need the
saviour just as much as we do. They need a saviour.
They mess up, they don't follow gods.
And so the Old Testament is left with a world in darkness, a
world without hope, a world abandoned, a world without God.
That's you and me. That's where Paul comes in.
He says you were lost. You were once one of Adam's
rebellious race. See, no matter where you were
born, what skin colour you have, we are all the race of Adam.
We are all his race and he Paul says that in Adam all die.
All die but God Hallelujah. But God it says he says in in in
verse 15. He says for Christ his love
compels us because we are convinced that one died for all
and therefore all died and he died for oh, he's talking about
Jesus here, that those who live should no longer live for
themselves, but for him who died for them and was raised again.
You see, we were lost. We were hopeless, we were dead
as Adam's race, but God, but he sent Jesus, Jesus Christ who
died in our place, who died so that we, if we have faith in
him, if we believe in him, he says we died.
If you're a Christian, you have died to your old self, you've
died to Adam's race and now you have been raised again in
Christ. That's why we baptise people,
that's why we baptise them. When we baptise people, we don't
baptise people before they become Christians, we baptise
them after they've become Christians because baptism is a
symbol And that you die to your old self.
The old self that was in Adam is dead and now you are alive again
as Christ raised to life. You are a raised to life and now
you are no longer an Adam but you are in Christ, you are his,
you belong to him. Yes God love to see the
awakening heart. Brilliant.
See Jesus in living the perfect life that none of us could live.
See, death didn't have a claim over him.
Death had no claim over Jesus. But he chose to die.
He chose to surrender his life. Jewish guards, Roman centurions,
nails did not hold him on the cross.
He held himself on the cross. He sacrificed his own life, gave
his own life up so that as Martin Luther called the great
exchange, so that all our dross, all our disobedience, every day
that we live, every moment that we live, not acknowledging Jesus
Christ as King. All of that disobedience was
placed upon him and then his eternal obedience was then
placed upon us. So Paul writes that we are, we
are. He's the the image that we are
now clothed. You are now dressed in Christ.
So you may do things that are wrong.
You may think things that are wrong.
You may sometimes live your day and not acknowledge that Jesus
Christ is king over your life, but that's not who God sees.
God sees the perfect, wonderful, obedient life of Christ clothing
you. You see, if you believe in
Christ, if you follow him, if you've submitted to him as your
Lord and Saviour, you are no longer in Adam, but you are now
in Christ. The old you has gone.
There is a new creation. Christ says.
Paul says God made him, Jesus, who didn't have sin, who didn't,
who had no sin to become sin. Why?
So that you and I through faith could become the righteousness
of God. That's who you are.
I don't know if you feel like that this morning, but if you
are a believer in Christ, if you are his, you are righteous.
You have the righteousness of Christ upon you.
Your life has been exchanged for His.
He goes on and he says therefore, if anyone is in
Christ, the new creation has come, the old has gone, the new
is here. All this is from God who
reconciles us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry
of reconciliation that God was reconciling the world to himself
in Christ, not counting people sin against them.
Do you know, church, that when you mess up, God does not have a
tally chart? You may have messed up this
morning. You had an extra hour to do so
God did not come when you did not come here with God with a
clipboard saying, OK, these are things that you need to repent
of before you can come and enjoy My presence.
He's not counting your sin. There is no guilt.
There is no shame upon you. It is done at the foot of the
cross. See, once you are far off, but
now through faith in Jesus Christ, you are his.
You have unlimited access from not just when you die, you have
unlimited access from the moment you believe to Christ.
You have unlimited access to life as he calls it, life to the
full. See, Christ changed everything
upon the cross and the day that you met him, your life was never
ever going to be the same again. You see, through Jesus Christ
you have freedom, you have forgiveness.
Your guilt and shame is gone. You are adopted into a brand new
family. He calls you a son.
He calls you a child of the King of Kings.
You are as as the New Testament says you are a St which means
you are a holy one. Now that Christ's sacrifice has
been, the guilt is gone. You have forever to enjoy life.
As we looked at last time. We have life with Him and that
is the point of the gospel, to have life with him.
I mean, how amazing is life in Jesus Christ?
Isn't it good? It is so good.
I mean, don't you just like, don't you just love the fact
that Jesus has chosen you, that you are in him?
Don't you just want to tell people about him?
Don't you just want to tell how amazing he is?
How wonderful he is to shout it out from the rooftops that Jesus
Christ is the King and he loves me and he loved you.
He saved me and he can save you as well.
How wonderful it is to know Jesus.
How wonderful. No wonder when we when we become
a Christian, something amazing happens.
We want to tell people some of us are better than that than
others. Some of us are just better
talking than others, full stop. But actually we want to tell
people about Jesus, and that's exactly what Jesus wants.
Is he Jesus? See, Jesus has called, has said
that he is that treasure and that he has called us to go and
tell the world about the treasure that we have.
So that's why Jesus said, now you have received, don't hold
it, but go. You have eternity in your
hearts, don't you keep it there, but tell the world about this
eternity that you have found. He says, He says here that we
are called each and every single one of us that knows Jesus to go
into all the world and be Christ's ambassadors, being the
voice of God, declaring to them that there is a Saviour who
loves them. See, God has promised that the
whole world is going to be changed into His glory.
Hosea, as the waters cover the sea, and as far as I know the
sea is made-up of water, the glory of God will cover the
whole earth. But how?
How is he going to do that? Paul says.
We therefore are Christ's ambassadors, as though God were
making his appeal through US. Who's he making his appeal
through? Through us, Through you and me.
We implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God.
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that we might
become the righteousness of God. As God's Co workers, we urge you
not to receive God's grace in vain.
I mean what does he mean by that?
Receive in in vain? Well the Father to the Father,
the Father Spirit, Son, they have eternity lived in perfect
community. See, they didn't create the
earth, the stars, the planets, the animals, you and me, because
they were lonely. Actually, the Bible teaches us
that God created us because he wanted to have community with
us. He didn't need us, but he wanted
to invite us in to that community.
But because of our sin, because of that chasm, something needs
to be done. And so Jesus comes, his
attorney. Sacrifice makes the way.
God wants a family. Jesus makes a way.
But there's a whole load of people who don't know him.
How are they going to know that Jesus made a way to the Father?
How are they going to know that they need to get to the Father?
We must tell them. How will they know unless
someone tells them how are they here unless someone preaches you
see between this community we've got and being lost as people.
Jesus made a way but to so that they can hear is your mouth.
Your mouth is how people are going to hear everyone point to
your mouth. This is how God is going to save
the world. Now say it.
This is how God is going to save the world. 123 again like you.
Believe it one more time. It's true.
Now I know some of you still don't believe it, but it is
true. This is how God plans to save
the world. Through your mouth.
See here.
His plan is to send us, Paul says as ambassadors.
Ambassadors speak on behalf of the ruler who they came from.
So when you open your mouth, you speak in the name of Jesus.
Don't believe me? Here's Peter.
Peter says, But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy
nation, God's special possession.
You are chosen church. Every single one of you has been
chosen. You are a royal priesthood.
That means you are a ruler with Christ, that you have access to
him. You are holy.
You are set apart. You are special to God.
Why, that you might declare the praises of him who called you
Christ Jesus out of darkness in to wonderful light.
See, Jesus is the light of the world, but he turns around and
he says, you church, you my church are the light of the
world's. See, a Christian is someone who
surrenders their life to King Jesus, who does what he wants
them to do, who pledges their loyalty to him, and then goes
and tells people how amazing he is.
That's what it means to be a Christian, to declare the love,
the wonder that I have been forgiven, that I have been set
free, that Jesus loves me. See, Paul says that we are
ambassadors of Christ. He doesn't say some of you are
ambassadors and some of you aren't.
He doesn't say some of you are cool to open your mouth and tell
people about Jesus and some of you are not.
You guys can cheer them on. No, no, no, he says.
We all are. Actually, Paul wraps it up in
our identity that you are forgiven, that you are free,
that you are a new creation, that you are a declarer of
truth, that you are an ambassador of Christ Jesus.
That's what it means to be a Christian.
See, we are called to be Christ's ambassadors.
And so I want to look at just as we end on how Jesus showed us
how to be ambassadors, how Jesus showed us how to open our mouths
and declare the wonders of who he is.
So if you've got a Bible, just go back a few pages to the book
of John. We're going to be John 4,
Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, if you know the New Testament, John
four. And we're going to look at a
conversation that Jesus has with a woman.
And now there's a there's loads of cultural things that we could
get into why this is such an amazing conversation, but we're
going to leave all that. And but in verse 23, they have
this they're having this conversation about water.
They're having this conversation about worship.
And Jesus says, says to the lady, when they start talking
about worship, he says, yet a time is coming when and has now
come when true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and
in truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks.
You see, before I get into exactly what Jesus, Jesus Jesus
says and how he, this woman is saved, I want you just to notice
here that they've been having this, this conversation of do
you worship on this mountain or do we worship on that mountain?
Our people worship here. You say you should worship
there. And Jesus says a time's coming
without and it's come when that won't matter.
But know this, the Father is seeking worshippers.
So what that means is for us, as we go, as we open our mouth, as
Jesus said for the Great Commission, we don't go alone.
God isn't going here You go church, go and tell the world
about me and good luck. You're on your own now.
No, no, he says, I am with you. Jesus says in the Great
Commission, I am with you, the Father.
You're going, you're speaking. But the Father is the one who is
seeking worshippers. So the lost will be found
because God has ordained that lost people will be found
because he is looking for them and he's not looking for them
like you might look for your keys.
And when you've lost them and you can't find them, he's not
looking for them because he doesn't know.
I have no idea where these people are.
That's not what he's saying. He's like, where are my keys?
Well, I put them down, I can't find them and I no, no, no, He
knows. He knows where the lost people
are. He knows where His chosen sheep
and He sends us to go and get them.
He says in John 10 I have other sheep that are not of of this
sheep pen sheep being Christians, I must bring them in
also. He brings them in through the
cross. They too will listen to my
voice. How do they hear His voice?
Through you speaking? And there shall be 1 flock and 1
shepherd. See when you speak, when you say
words like come and though Jesus.
Why don't you join me at church this weekend?
Christ is speaking through you when you speak.
Dead hearts come to life. When you speak, the lost are
saved. When you speak, the hurting, the
sick, the bound up are free and healed.
Not because there's anything special with your voice.
That's because when you speak, Jesus speaks through you.
Jesus is speaking. You are his ambassadors.
And actually, Jesus will flip it on its head and he says that.
So don't worry when people reject you, when people tease
you, when people hate you for speaking truth, for saying that
you love me, they're not rejecting you, they're rejecting
me. He says they're rejecting me,
they hate me. But between God wanting a family
and Christ making a way is your mouth.
It's your mouth. And as an ambassador, as a
spokesperson for gods, we get the privilege of speaking.
And as we speak, seeing the Holy Spirit move, and as the Holy
Spirit moves, it creates a hunger in those that we're
speaking to that we may get conversations like Nicodemus,
what must I do to be saved? Like this woman we're going to
read who's thirsty, Who's hungry for something more.
So how does Jesus do that? He says, well, he meets this
woman first, doesn't he? But what I want us to notice
right at the beginning of this chapter, it says now he, that's
Jesus had to go through Sumeria. Now if you don't know geography,
Judea is in the South. Galilee, where Jesus spent most
of his time was in the north. In between was Sumeria.
So it says here now we had to go through Sumeria to get to
Galilee. OK.
Or the other way round. I can't remember where he's
going. But anyway, he had to go through
it. Do you know what every other Jew
they went round took a longer trip to go round.
So when it says now we have to go through Sumeria, No, he
didn't. No one else did.
See if he's talking to his disciples one day and saying,
right, we're going for a journey, we have to go through
Sumeria. They'd look at each other and
go, Jesus, No, we don't. No one goes through Sumeria.
We don't like them, they don't like us.
So we don't do it. We don't go through Sumeria.
They don't go. They don't like us, we don't
like them. No one goes through Sumeria.
But but this, this sense this, I have to go through Sumeria.
It's the same language as where, where he says in John 10, I have
sheep, I must bring them in. I must go through Sumeria, I
have sheep, I must bring them in.
See, he says I must go through Sumeria because he had to speak
because there was a woman there who was a lost sheep who he was
going to find. That's why he went through
Sumeria. Just think right now what people
in your life have spoken truth, have spoken love, have spoken
Christ into you. Every single one of them was an
ambassador sent from Christ to you.
Every single one of them was God's voice from him to you.
So that that ambassador might have been in the shape of a mum
or a dad. That might ambassador might have
been in the the shape of a friend or a work colleague or a
a fellow student at school or a complete stranger.
But he sent them to you to be an ambassador to you, because he
loved you, because he wanted you, because through them he was
calling you once a lost sheep, into his family.
And their voice, through their voice, you heard the voice of
the Father. You heard the Holy Spirit
calling you home. So how does he do this for this
woman? Well, Jesus asks her, meets her,
sorry, he asks her for a drink. And then we read in verse 9 it
says the Samaritan woman said to him, you are a Jew and I am a
Samaritan woman. How can you ask for a drink?
That's that kind of stuff. If they don't like each other,
we're different, blah, blah, blah.
It says Jesus answered, if you knew the gift of God and whom it
is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he
would have given you living water.
Sir, the woman said you have nothing to draw with you.
You have a bucket, a cup, you don't have anything.
You know, how are you meant to get this and the water and the
well is deep and I've been prised and lost where I was
where, where can you get this? Where can I get this living
water? Are you greater than our Father
Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did
also his sons and his livestock? Jesus answered, Everyone who
drinks this water will be thirsty again.
But whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst.
Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of
water welling up to eternal life.
See God, He was calling this Samaritan woman, and Jesus was
called to go through Sumeria to find her.
He was called to go through Sumeria, place that wasn't
welcoming, that didn't want him. The Jews were not welcome.
Jesus was not welcome. Let me tell you this.
Jesus isn't welcome in Blackpool.
Eva, Jesus is not welcome here and that's why we go.
Jesus wasn't welcome in Sumeria, but he went because they were
lost sheep in Sumeria. If you read on the next few
verses, it tells us that this woman, after she's speaking to
Jesus, then all of a sudden the Father through the Spirit brings
her alive to Christ. She drops a bucket.
She's forgotten about needing water, and she runs back to the
town and without even knowing it, she becomes an ambassador.
She goes back to the town because she believes in Christ.
She knows who he is. She knows he's the King, and she
wants to automatically, naturally just tell us about
him. And we read in the book of Acts,
the apostles and Philip, they arrive in Sumeria.
And what they find when they get to Sumeria, they find people who
believe in Jesus. They have a church that's ready
to go in Samaria already. And that's because she was
Christ's ambassador, opened her mouth, and through her mouth
many others heard the voice of the Father.
They saw the Spirit at work in them.
See church. We are called to go to places
like Blackpool where Christ is not welcome, He is not welcome.
But just because he is not welcome, that does not mean that
the Father does not have lost sheep there.
Actually, Scripture tells us there are many lost sheep in our
town. There are many lost sheep in
Lytham, St. Anne's, in Poulton, in
Fleetwood, in Poulton, in Wesham, there are many lost
sheep who have not yet come to the shepherd because they have
not heard His voice, because we have not yet spoken to them.
Church. So he is calling you to go, to
be his ambassadors, to lead them to him.
You see, over the next coming weeks and months, we are going
to find ourselves at Wells, not physical wells.
We're going to find ourselves at metaphorical wells where people
will ask, what water do you have?
And we are going to be able to tell them of the water that
quenches all thirsts. We're going to be able to tell
them about the King of Glory, the treasure that we have.
So that's what we've been talking about over the last few
weeks, that we have this treasure locked up in jars of
clay, that we have a God who is far beyond our comprehension,
that He loves us, He chose us, He died for us.
And we don't keep that to ourselves, but we get to share
that Christ has chosen in His sovereign will to use you and me
as His mouthpieces to see many, many, many souls come to glory
to know Him. So here's three questions.
I'm going to end on this church. Do you believe in Jesus?
Do you believe? Is he your Lord?
Is he your Saviour? Have you heard his voice and
responded to him? Have you come to the fountain of
life and given your allegiance to King Jesus alone?
If you haven't, I'm going to give us an opportunity in a
second to do that. But secondly, have you drifted?
Do you know of a time when you did?
You knew the Father's voice, you knew the Shepherd's voice, but
you've been ignoring him of late.
You've stopped listening. Church, I want to give us an
opportunity now to say right God, I mean business.
I'm going to stop ignoring you and whatever you ask me to do,
I'm going to do. I'm going to pledge my
allegiance again to you and follow you.
And thirdly, will you go? Will you go?
Jesus said I have people not of this fault.
I have many people not not yet saved.
We have a big old hall and we want a bigger one.
And there is plenty of space for more people who don't yet know
Jesus. And we are desperate.
We want, we want people to come and join from other churches.
Yeah, we want workers to the harvest, but we're desperate for
people who don't know Jesus to fall in love with him, to come
and see and savour him and like this woman, run back to where
they're from and say, come and meet a man who told me
everything about myself. Come and meet Jesus.
So will you go? Will you be his ambassador?
Will you call people from death to life?
Will you sacrifice your life in the pursuit of others?
Will you go to the Sumerias of this world, to our town where
Christ is not welcome, so that the Father might find lost sheep
through you? As Isaiah said, as he saw the
desperation of this world, his heart wasn't to say someone else
is going to sort this out. You know, as he's in heaven's
throne room, he didn't think, oh, there's people here way
above my pay grade in this place.
No, no, he burst out into the midst of the Father and he said,
here I am, send me. Send me to the lost and the
broken. So I'm going to pray.
And whichever one of them is you, I want you to do business
with gods because we're not coming here to hear a nice
message and sing some nice songs and go out unchanged.
We're here to hear the word of God so that we can go out there
equipped with what we've received.
So Lord Jesus God, if you don't know Jesus, I'm just going to
pray and I'm going to ask you to pray along with me.
So Lord Jesus, God, I admit I've, I've never heard, heard
your voice before, but I recognise that being here,
listening to this message, being amongst your people, that you
are speaking to me, God. And I want to lay my life down
today and follow you God, I surrender all my rights to you,
King Jesus, God, I thank you that you forgive me, that you
accept me. And from this day on, I want to
be yours and yours alone, Amen. And Lord God, for those of us
who are, who have, who have been drifting, who've been wavering,
looking left and right, Lord God, I pray right now that they
would grab hold of you with both hands.
They wouldn't mess around with you any longer being one Step 1
foot in the world and 1 foot out, Lord God, but they would
jump in, as although wonderfully put it last week.
Lord God, we want people who fully 2 feet jump in and say,
Jesus, I'm here for you. And Lord God, I pray that you'd
encourage us. Lord God, where some of us still
don't believe that you could use our mouths, Lord God, you would
help our unbelief. Lord Jesus, and even this week,
even today, you give us opportunities to speak, to be
ambassadors for you, to say words that bring life, to say
words that bring hope in hopeless situations.
Lord Jesus, we commit ourselves to you, and we ask you for your
Kingdom to come and your will to be done.
Amen.