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In our text in 2 Corinthians we find Paul using a unique word to describe the church and the ministry. That word is "ambassador." It's a very specific word and yet we tend to read over it quickly and not realize the full implication of what that word is saying to us.

Ambassadors were a common practice in Paul's time of Caesars and rulers and they are still a common practice today. The word means exactly what we think of today. And ambassador is someone who is sent into another country to represent the king in that foreign land. Today, almost every major foreign country has an ambassador of the United States. If you were to travel to say, France, you would find that there is already someone else there working for the President. After the United States of America was formed in the late 1700s, Benjamin Franklin spent many years as an Ambassador to the country of France. He represented the great United States in that country and spoke for our leaders and policies.

One of the chief functions of an ambassador is to represent the king in that foreign land. Through the ambassador, the people of the foreign country can discern the will and desires of our king. The king is revealed to the people of that distant land through his ambassador.

Being a diplomatic and political word, it may sound strange for "ambassador" to represent the people of God, but if you think a moment, it's very appropriate. God has always chosen to have a people that represent Him on this earth. Man was originally created so that God could have a companion and friend. Adam was created so that God would not be lonely and would have someone else in the universe with which He has something in common. Understanding the Oneness of God helps to reveal to us why God loves us so much. There is no one else besides Him. He truly is the only One. And the angels were created to serve Him as His servants. For this God to have someone with which to fellowship, He would have to create someone with some common grounds. The King of Kings would not have His loneliness fulfilled by His servants the angels, so He formed a creation that was made in His own image. He made man like Himself with emotions and desires like His own. And for this creation to have a common ground with the Creator of the universe, man would have to have his own world to rule and have dominion over. And so the earth and the Garden of Eden was created -- not as an afterthought -- but so that man could have a kingdom to rule and therefore have a point of fellowship with the Supreme ruler.

But man failed at ruling his kingdom, and when he sinned he transferred that authority to the devil. And it took God coming in flesh and paying the price of man's sin on Calvary to have the rulership of the world to be transferred to God. God is now the ruler of the world, but it is still a foreign country to Him. His home is heaven. Earth was supposed to be man's domain. That God would redeem man from the price of sin by coming and dying on a cross, reveals to us how much He the relationship with you and I means to Him! It was obviously important enough to die for! His relationship with you was important enough to come and save you! We should never take for granted our relationship with God. Sometimes I think that we take it much too lightly. But is a privilege to have a relationship with God Almighty, but it's important to God because what good is it being a God who will stick closer than a brother, and not having a friend to prove that to? What good would it be to be all loving and merciful and not have an object to bestow that love and mercy upon? You and I are very important to God; that's why He is so interested in our lives!

But not all men know Him now, so we find throughout scripture that God always chose a man or a woman or a people to represent Him to the earth. Abraham was called out of his idolatry to be an ambassador of God on the earth. His descendants, the Jewish people, were chosen to reveal the glory of the King of Kings to this earth! They were ambassadors sent by God to show the world His power and thoughts.

And now that the Jewish people have rejected Him, God has chosen the born-again, Spirit-filled church to be the "called out ones." We are now the ambassadors of God on this earth. Peter wrote about that when he said -- and I'm going to read it in the NIV:

Like Abraham, we are citizens of heaven. Like the old song says, "this world is not my home, I'm just a passing through!" But God does not beam us up as soon as we come to Him and are saved, but He allows us to live in everyday, life situations among the ungodly. That's because you are a chosen people that God has marked to be His ambassadors. You represent the King of Kings on this earth! You are to "show forth His praises!" If people are going to get a revelation of how great our God is, it will be through how you represent Him to them! If people are going to get a revelation of what our God can do for them, it will come through them seeing your representation and presentation of the King of Kings! Jesus Christ is not bodily coming back to this earth until the Rapture of the church by which time it will be too late for those on the earth during Grace to be saved. If they are going to be saved, then you and I are the only Jesus that they will have seen in bodily form! That's why the scriptures say that the church is the "body of Christ." That's why Paul wrote that we are "ambassadors of Christ." Getting saved is more than just about getting to heaven, but with it comes a heavy responsibility to represent heaven on earth! We tend to think about church being something that only affects our spiritual man, but I believe that the Spirit of God wants to change and affect positively our daily living, our speech, our manners, our thoughts, our habits, our work ethic, our emotions, our personalities, our actions, our friends, our life choices, and everything else about our life. Why? Because we are ambassadors of Christ and therefore everything about us is a reflection to others about our God!

I've known people with a brash attitude that had the Holy Ghost and were baptized in the name of Jesus and knew the Bible and were jerks. There attitude was "I'm saved, so I can say what I want and have whatever attitude that I want." They may have been born again, but they haven't allowed God to make them a new creature. They have forgotten that God intended for them to be an ambassador of His cause to others. But I've seen some Christians, who frankly if I hadn't already had a relationship with Christ and knew better, I would have been turned off of Christianity because of the way they represented it. They may have had the Holy Ghost and been going to church, but their attitude stunk, the gossiped and back stabbed people with their mouths, and they were lazy and rude. I've known some spouses who didn't live for God because of the way they saw Christianity lived in front of them, and I can't say that I blame them. If how their spouses acted was all I knew of Christianity, then I wouldn't have wanted it either!

You are an ambassador of Christ. Not just in a prayer meeting or when you are at church, but at your work, at home, when on duty, when off duty. You represent Christ to this world. How accurately do they see the king in your life!? If you lie and cheat people at work, don't expect people to be too interested in your "god." But if you will allow God to transform the way you act in your marriage and in your family and in your work and everywhere, you will win people to God! The Apostle Paul said:

Paul knew that you will never win people to a God that they can't see in you. You'll never win somebody to serving God in a way that you yourself are not willing to serve. Therefore your life is an example of either how to or how to not serve Christ. And your life impacts this world either positively or negatively. There's a responsibility that comes with living for Him because not only are we born again, we are called to be ambassadors of Christ, representing the King of Kings in this world!

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In our other text, we read a somewhat familiar passage about Jesus' dealing with people at the judgment. We read where God will say to those who make into eternal life:

There are six things mentioned there: hunger, and the giving of meat; thirst, and the giving of drink, stranger, and the taking in and welcoming of; naked, and the clothing given; sickness, and visiting them; prison, and coming their aid. And then we read where God will say to those who are eternally lost these same six things but in the negative:

There are wonderful principles in this text about serving others, and at first glance, you may have wondered what these two scriptures have to do with our subject of being an "ambassador." But when you begin to study it, they have quite a lot in common. And Ambassador represents the king. But they also have the job to properly welcome and take care of their king when he is visiting that faraway country. If the President of the United States wants to visit France, then the ambassador of France must arrange all the details and warmly welcome the President on his arrival and take care of every little thing while he is in the country. That's another of the responsibilities of the ambassador.

Literally, our text in Matthew 25 is an indictment against the Jewish people. It would be an outrage for a king to visit a country and be hungry and not be fed; to be thirsty and not be given something good to drink. Can you imagine the hullabaloo that would arise if our President were to be in a foreign country and get sick and yet the ambassador to that country not arrange to give him medical treatment? Or for him to be cast into prison and the officials placed in that country not to rush to his side? That's unheard of because everyone knows that you treat a king differently than that.

And yet this behavior mentioned in Matthew 25 is exactly what they did to Jesus Christ. He was the King of Kings who was hungry for a move of God to shake their generation, but they refused to feed His hunger and allow themselves to be changed by His visitation! He was a King who was thirsty for righteousness to fill the earth, but they refused to give of themselves to Him and, in the Israelites, the thirst of God went unfulfilled. He came in a stranger to humanity: someone different than any human being that had ever lived before because He was God become flesh, and yet despite the mercy and the miracles, they refused to take Him in and accept Him and His doctrines. He entered into this world a king and worthy of the finest garments, and yet He came naked and did not clothe Himself, but left it up to them whether or not they would place the royal robes upon Him and let Him be the king of their life. Not only did they refuse to place the royal robes upon Him in their life, but they placed such robes on Him only to mock Him and then stripped all clothing off of Him and allowed Him to depart from this world, in the same way that He entered: naked! They didn't treat Him with the dignity that He deserved. He was the King of Kings and yet they were poor ambassadors to welcoming Him to this world.

The only physical sickness of Jesus Christ that I can find in scripture was caused by having to wrestle with submitting to the perfect will of God. We find as He prayed, the stress of making His flesh submit to such a task caused blood vessels to break and His sweat became as great drops of blood, and yet while He dealt with the sickness of sin, those who were against Him plotted to kill Him, and those who were for Him weren't even spiritually awake enough to realize what was happening or to keep their eyes open to pray with Him! And then when He was arrested, we find that rather than coming with Him and visiting Him, that all of the disciples fled and Peter eventually came to see Him, only to curse Him to His face and deny that He had ever knew Him!

They were to be God's ambassadors, welcoming their King into this world and yet they couldn't find room for Him in the inn at His birth, nor room for Him in their hearts at His ministry. In every possible way, the Jews failed at welcoming and taking care of the King of Kings during His visit. As ambassadors, they were miserable failures.

But before we rear back and blast them, it would be good to stop and ask of ourselves "How good of a welcoming ambassador have we been to Jesus?" Jesus promised us "I will not leave you orphans, I will come to you" and come to us He has. I'm preaching to people that have receive the Spirit of God and who routinely are visited by Jesus in Spirit form in our services. What a blessing! But before we throw stones at the Jews, we might ought to ask ourselves how good a welcoming ambassador that we have been to Him in our life!

The Jews did not feed Him when He was hungry, so I ask you "have we given Him the meat that He hungers for?"

We find in John chapter 4, the story of Jesus and the woman at the well. To most of you, this story is familiar, but I want to remind you of something that we tend to not focus on. Jesus was alone with the woman because his disciples had gone into the city to buy meat. They were all hungry. After Jesus talked to the woman and the whole city came to hear the Gospel preached, the disciples showed up with the food and said:

Jesus said "my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work." What does Jesus hunger for? Souls. People hearing about the Word of God. People's lives being touched. If you want to feed your king, then you must reach out to a lost and dying world and show them the life that comes from Jesus Christ!

The Jews did not fulfill Jesus' thirst, and so I ask you "have we quenched His thirst?"

In the same story of John chapter 4, we find Jesus asking the woman for a drink of water. When she responds to Him, Jesus makes an interesting statement:

Catch this: Jesus only asked for a drink, to get around to her thirst issue. And so a simple but profound principle springs forth: we fulfill His thirst by drinking ourselves! When our thirst is quenched, then so is His. Because His thirst is for us to drink! Jesus never ends up with a glass of water in the story of John 4. His "thirst" was just so that He could bring truth to the multitudes.

So if I fulfill His thirst by drinking freely myself, then I must ask myself: "have I been drinking from His well of living water?" Too many people try to fulfill their spiritual thirst by drinking from other sources. God forbid that Christians would turn to the cess pool of sin to drink daily! On the Cross, Jesus said "I thirst," and they gave Him vinegar to drink. That was exactly what they had been drinking spiritually because traditions of men are a sour and poor substitute for the real gift of God flowing from the wells of salvation. What do you give Him to drink!? It is determined by what well you have been drinking from! How good an ambassador have you been? Have you fulfilled the King's thirst for people to drink from His well?

And what robe does Jesus wear in your life? Have you placed the robes of royalty upon Him and ushered Him to the throne of your life? Or does He wear the robes of an outcast, who is not really comfortable in your day to day living? Or does He have the get up of a servant because the only time He is active in your life is when you need Him to do something for you? What garment do you permit Jesus to wear in your life? What kind of ambassador have you been? Does Jesus feel a stranger to your life because He gets the feeling that He's not really welcome to do as He desires in your life, or is He at home in your plans and dreams!? Do you take Him in until His ways are no longer unfamiliar and strange, or does He remain an "outsider" to your lifestyle!? What kind of ambassador are you to the King of Kings in your life? Can He call you friend? or would He just be a casual acquaintance. Do you instantly realize His voice, or does it take a while to recognize that is He who is speaking? Is He a stranger or a close friend? How have you treated this King of Kings in your life?

What about God's sicknesses; how do you respond to them? The only time that I can find God sick is when people are lukewarm spiritually. He said:

The verb for "spit" or "spue" here literally means "to vomit." Lukewarm Christians literally make God sick. Something becomes lukewarm by being removed from the heat. Christians who only focus on God on Sundays or service days will always be lukewarm Christians because they are heated up on the weekend, and then cool off gradually! To stay on fire for God, you've got to allow the Holy Ghost to touch you everyday, continually! You can't just live for God two days out of the week and expect to be red hot! But if you do the will of God every day, week in and week out, you will never have a problem staying on fire for Him! If you live in the fire, you will never cool off! So what kind of ambassador have you been? Do the things that make God sick, make you sick, or do you care less about what He has an issue with?

And what about prison? Like the disciples, you will go through a time in your life when it will seem that God is locked up. Let me say this: if Jesus seems locked up in your life and you haven't done it to Him, then there is a good reason for why He is allowing Himself to be bound. He could have wiped out those guards in the Garden of Gethsemane with a snap of His fingers. Jesus could have called down ten thousand angels to deliver Him from the cross. It wasn't the nails that held Him there, but rather His love and purpose and mercy!

There will be times that it will seem that God is not acting like God in your life. There will be times where God will allow Himself to not work the miraculous in your life because He is accomplishing something great through not doing the supernatural. And it's in those times that we do not understand and it's easy to get frustrated and quit. Because it seems like God has failed us, but God has not failed us, He just knows that His death on the cross will accomplish more than a supernatural jail break. The disciples didn't understand, but now we can say looking back "thank God that He didn't get off of the cross!" His submission and lack of supernatural activity accomplished more for us than the disciples were able to understand at that moment.

And so there will be times when it seems as if God is bound in your life. The Apostle Paul who at one time broke open jail cells by his praise finds himself locked securely in a Roman jail cell. He didn't understand, but now looking back, we can find that the letters and books that he wrote while in there have impacted more people than his preaching did! The Apostle Paul healed the sick, and yet he got sick. Epaproditus got sick and almost died and God did not allow the Apostle Paul to heal him. We forget about all of that. We forget that God sometimes chooses not to deliver or to heal but if it seems that God is bound in your life, then understand that God has a great purpose in it! You heard the testimony of Bro. Patrick a few weeks ago where he said that God used his heart condition to get him to a place where he needed to be in the spirit. And then you heard him say "thank God for heart attacks." There are times when more of God's will is accomplished by Him doing nothing rather than a miracle.

But the key to remember is that if you are to make it through victorious, you must guard your attitude and behavior when God is in prison. Peter cursed Jesus to His face in prison. But we must remain faithful to God even when we don't understand why He's doing or not doing something! God is smarter than us. Some of His greatest gifts are truly unanswered prayers. If you pray and God doesn't do something immediately, then keep trusting God no matter what happens, it could be that one day you would look back and realize that if God had done the supernatural and the miracle, that it would have been detrimental or kept you from a mighty blessing along the way!

And so how good an ambassador are we? When God is bound, do we still remain faithful and come to Him and worship? Peter found out that it's hard to worship a bound God, but not if you realize that there is a bigger picture of what God is trying to do! I'm preaching about being an ambassador for Christ! So when He comes into our lives, how well do we receive Him and welcome Him! According to Matthew 25, we will be judged at the judgment not only based upon our salvation, but how good an ambassador that we have been to the King of Kings!

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We are ambassadors for Christ. That means that we represent Him. That means that we must welcome Him into our lives and respond properly to Him. But there is a third responsibility for an ambassador. An ambassador does the work of the king to others. He acts and ministers on behalf of the King.

In Matthew 25, we find that the righteous will ask Jesus a question:

And then in turn, the eternally lost will ask Him a question:

"Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me." This scripture doesn't make sense until you realize that God sees people as they could be, not as they actually are. When God sees a beggar, He sees someone who could be a possessor of the riches of glory! When God sees a sinner, He sees someone who could be forgiven and one day rule in righteousness as a king and priest with Himself! When God sees someone destroyed by sin, He sees a life that could be put back together by His great mercy and power! And so He said "as you do unto the least of these, you do unto me!" Even the most filthiest, down and out of humanity was intended in the perfect will of God to be a part of the Body of Christ! So a principle emerges that the way you best become an Ambassador for Christ is to minister to others as if they were Christ. And so I close this message by reminding you that we are a good ambassador for Christ by doing the very things for others that Israel did not do for Christ.

If they are hungry, we must feed them.

This world is starving for spiritual food and truth. They need the nourishment of God's Word which is our daily bread. If we don't give them truth and God's Word, then they will die spiritually. And so if you are to be a good ambassador, you must be willing to feed this world spiritually. If they die from a lack of spiritual nourishment, then God will hold us responsible.

Immediately, almost every one of you thought "I don't have enough knowledge of the Word of God to feed anyone." It's time you stopped hiding behind that flimsy excuse. Do you remember the story of the feeding of the five thousand? One little boy had a sack lunch of some bread and few fish. That wasn't a whole lot, but because the boy was willing to place what he did have in the hands of Jesus and allow Jesus to break it, then the boy was able to feed five thousand men plus the women and the children!

One day we will be judged on whether or not we fed the hungry multitude of this world. If you say "well I only have a little to offer" and hide it away, then you will stand in judgment and your excuse will not hold up! But even if you only have very little to offer, if you will place it in God's hands and allow Him to break it and multiply it, then it will be enough! We must feed the hungry by giving of the Word and blessings of God that we have and allowing Him to use it!

In John 7, we find that Jesus' water illustrations were talking about the Holy Ghost:

You can quench the thirsty by being so full of the Holy Ghost that it sloshes over on people throughout your life. How is your Holy Ghost well today? Is it running on empty, or is it like David who said "my cup runneth over!?" You've got a mandate from heaven to stay full to the brim with the Holy Ghost!

Many of them are strangers to Godly living, but we must take them in.

We must not change our message, but we must be willing to make those who are not familiar with the ways of God comfortable. A simple word of explanation helps people be more at ease in our services. Going out of your way to be friendly to our guests. To show them that we are real people. Just because they may be strangers to God's Spirit moving freely, doesn't mean that we should just throw them in alone!

They are spiritually naked, we must clothe them.

Salvation is still the key! When sin entered the world, God clothed the shame of sin on Adam and Eve with a blood sacrifice; it still takes that today. We are not trying to get a crowd for a crowd's sake. We are not trying to implement more programs just so we can say we run such and such. It's still about people repenting of their sins, and being baptized in the name of Jesus, and being filled with the Holy Ghost. It's still about people developing a personal relationship with God. Sin has left them spiritually naked, but we must help clothe them. Get a burden to teach someone a Bible study. Get a burden for the lost! It's our duty as God's ambassador!

They are sick, so we must visit them.

People come to our church with real issues and problems for which you and I may not have the solution. But we must still listen and care and pray with them and help them. We are His ambassador. They should feel compassion from us and we should be genuinely interested in their ups and downs. The old saying is true: "people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." It might take a while to get around to teaching them about salvation. They might first have to see God meet other needs, before they are convinced that God will forgive their sins. They should find out that God cares about even the small things from us!

They are bound in prison, and so we must come to them.

This world is bound in chains and addictions and generational curses so that they do not think that it is even possible for them to be free. We must go to them. We must teach them about the chain-breaking power of God. And most importantly, we must show them that freedom giving power through our own battles!

We are ambassadors for Jesus Christ! The responsibility of revealing Him to this world lies upon our shoulders! If we could hear the spiritual cry of this world, it would be the cry of the Greeks of the feast in John 12:21: "sir, we wish to see Jesus." May we be such an ambassador of Christ that when the world looks at us, they see Him!