Ambassadors for Christ (1967)
Message from Urbana 67by Francis Steele
"Christians, I am positive that numbers, perhaps hundreds, of you on campus now are living as dull, fearful, unsatisfied; and unsatisfying Christian lives as I did for four years. And oh, dear friends, I plead with you, stop. This kind of life is not necessary any longer, not one second further."
Introduction, by Urbana 67 assistant director Paul Little: "Dr. Francis Steele was a staff-member - one of the early ones - in Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship in Indiana, Michigan, and in Ohio. He served on the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania and was working as an archaeologist in the university museum when I was a student there. God called Fran from the field of archaeology, where he had made some significant discoveries, to become the Home Director of North Africa Mission. For a number of years now God has used him in the lives of many across this country, North Africa, and other countries to communicate the gospel and to present opportunities for evangelism in the Muslim world. He will bring us the message of the evening."
I am told that today students are beset by enormous volumes of knowledge and information and threatened by all kinds of power that this information conveys. And I am told that some students - Christian and non-Christian - are dreadfully upset. We have so much information. We have so much power. But we are so insecure, unsure of ourselves, fearful, and whatnot. You know, this situation reminds me of a group of little toads sitting around a puddle. One of them exerts great energy, spits about three inches into the puddle and--big splash! He has tremendous joy!
"Look what I did!" he says.
This is analogous to our overestimation of our power in comparison with God's. Certainly we have a great deal more information today than we had some years ago. But what we know now in comparison to what God knows makes even our present knowledge insignificant. Do not let the fretting and the confusion and. the fearfulness of the non-Christian today infect your life and dim your vision of God.
Now let us get three things straight as we address ourselves to the subject before us, Ambassadors for Christ: If you are a Christian, you are a witness; you have been called; you are under orders. If you are a Christian, in the biblical sense, if you have received Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord and, by faith in his work upon the cross and glorious resurrection, have been born again into the family of God, you are a witness, you have been called, and you are under orders.
A Witness
Biblically, if you are a Christian, you are a witness. I wish somebody had told me that many, many years ago. I arrived at a university as a Christian, but was not well taught and not even particularly obedient to what I did know to do. I was not a joyful or happy Christian at Cornell University. I knew something about witnessing but I did not know the biblical definition of a witness. I thought that to be a witness (if I "gave myself away," disclosed to them who I was, exposed myself to them as a Christian) for Jesus Christ I had to be prepared to answer any question that any student might raise. And I knew full well that I was not prepared to handle those questions. So I decided to not be a "witness."
I was just kidding myself. The boys in the fraternity knew that I was a Christian. In a very general way I had identified myself personally with Jesus Christ. But I was a Christian who was a negative witness to Jesus Christ. By identifying myself with him genuinely and biblically and paying respect to his name, I was a witness all the while I was at the university. But I was a miserable witness.
Why was I never told years ago that I was inevitably a witness? Why was I told that I had the right to decide whether or not I chose to witness for Jesus Christ? We do not have that option--to be or not to be a witness. Did you know that? All the time you have been there on campus trying to hide from people very modestly or shyly declining to engage in this or that activity, you have been witnessing negatively to Jesus Christ. I did not know that when I was a student.
I thought a witness was a lawyer. No one helped me to distinguish between the two. I think it was Dr. Vance Havner who said: God wants witnesses, not lawyers. Don't argue, testify. Although I did not know the Lord Jesus in a personal way, which would have given me the ability and joy to share him with others, I was a witness. And so are you.
Called
Tonight as one small pebble in the enormous stream of evangelical communication, do not expect to divert the stream that insists on using the word call for a lot of things that are not biblical. There is no biblical justification for the suggestion that you are "called" to a mission society or to a field or to a people or to a type of work. This is not directly a "call." Rather, it is guidance from God. I challenge you to find a verse in scripture which clearly teaches that God calls you as an individual to a mission field, mission society, country, or a people.
In five verses in Matthew 4, two almost similar situations, use two different words to demonstrate the biblical sense of God's call. As he passed by the seaside, Jesus saw two men fishing and he said to them, "Come, follow me." Then, passing further on, he saw two others fishing.
He "called" them. The biblical call is to the person of Jesus Christ. We are called to him. You know, in one sense I think it is quite appropriate to suggest that everybody in this building tonight has been called potentially, because you have heard the gospel from this platform and I am sure that you have been studying it in your Bible studies. So the invitation of God in the person of Jesus Christ has been extended to you. You have been called to give your life to Jesus Christ.
Now if you are not a Christian, if you do not know that you have answered the call of God in Jesus Christ and given yourself to him personally for his salvation through his death and resurrection, then there is only one message for you. That is not a so-called missionary call, but the offer of salvation in the person of Jesus Christ. You must be born again into the family of God; you must accept the summons of the commander-in-chief before you can engage in battle in his army. You must be clear about that.
Let me mention something to you who have not yet answered that call to God's service and to you who have answered it--this answer is your first and last independent decision. (Excuse me if I seem to contradict our dear friends on the platform.) I insist that you do not have any other decisions to make after you have decided for Christ. God invites you in Jesus Christ to give your life to him. When you answer that call your decisions end.
Under Orders
When you answer God's call you are then under orders. From this time on you are to do what God wants you to do. I like that, don't you? I have no fear of giving up liberties, my own puny personal liberties, if it means that I give myself into God's hands. He saw me in my deep distress, he loved me in Jesus Christ, and he called me to himself! By the work of the Holy Spirit, I gave myself into his hands. Now it is his will, not mine; his decisions for me, not my decisions for him.
Is it not better that way? Many of you probably came here convinced that the day of foreign missions is over. Others perhaps wondered if the need for missionaries is rapidly diminishing. Now I must tell you that missions and missionaries are still much needed. Is 'there still a dissenter in the crowd? Or have you been convinced by the testimony of the Word of God and the testimony of the servants of God that there will be need for soldiers until the last battle is won and the war is over and the commander-in-chief himself comes. There is still plenty of need for soldiers.
But what if means and methods change? The message and the messenger blessed of God have always been the same. There never has been a place in the plan of God for promoters of western culture or for perpetuators of alien ecclesiastical or denominational distinctives. Neither freewheeling individualists indifferent to national culture nor inhibited lackeys of a moribund national church can do the job intended for ambassadors of an everlasting kingdom whose message is supracultural, international, and, in fact, eternal. One of the missionaries to France under our board is a splendid Christian, who formerly served his government of South Viet Nam in France. He was released from diplomatic service to join the North Africa Mission. When he came to us, he wrote for our magazine a little article, "I was an Attaché, but now I am an Ambassador for Christ." He is doing a tremendous job for God in France. God's mission work also demands ambassadorship.
The need of mankind is unchanged. Man is alien to God, hostile to his will, and deserving of a holy judgment. And man is incapable of escaping this predicament by his own efforts. The remedy of grace remains the same - personal faith in the Son of God as redeemer and Lord according to the explicit dictation of scripture. So also the means to communicate the gospel of grace is still what it was when Christ first commissioned his disciples long ago: God has chosen to use men to reach men.
But what will shatter our conservative complacency? What must God do to cut the ties, some conscious and most unconscious, which bind us to our private plans, our comfortable situations, and our colorless lives of Christian mediocrity? What do we need to tear away the scales from our eyes so that we can see the world as it truly is - hopelessly lost and doomed to inevitable eternal judgment by a holy God? What do we need to feel the heart anguish of the blessed Savior who wept for stubbornly rebellious people yet steadfastly went to the cross to bear the punishment for their sins? How can this sublimely pure love penetrate the coldness of sterile theology and move us - move us irresistibly into acting out God's will?
Columns of frightening statistics will not do it. Living hearts are rarely moved by dead figures. Pitiful pictures of naked, starving masses will not do it either. The feeble stirrings of an uneasy conscience are quickly stilled by a few dollars for "the cause." Statistical facts about scores of needs are helpful to a limited degree. But they cannot, by themselves, provide an adequate motivation.
Somehow God will have to convey to us an unmistakable consciousness of his awful sovereignty and his indescribably powerful compassion expressed in the matchless person of his blessed Son, so that our hearts and minds and wills will be given unreservedly to him.
Somehow the Holy Spirit will have to transform this mundane world before our eyes into a terrible battlefield for the eternal souls of lost and dying men, where glorious victories can be won for God by those who are willing to plunge in, regardless of the cost, with only one desire - to glorify our precious Lord and Savior.
Here is how one Christian put this in poetry:
Passionately fierce, the voice of God is pleading,
Pleading with men to arm them for the fight.
See how those hands, majestically bleeding
Call us to rout the armies of the night;
Not to the work of sordid, selfish saving
Of our own souls to dwell with Him on high
But to the soldiers splendid, selfless, braving,
Eager to fight for righteousness, and die.
In the light of the spiritual needs of the world and the neglect of the church, what would you consider a mighty work of the Holy Spirit among us during this conference? This is a question I will let you seriously and prayerfully consider. (I have been praying intensely about this for six months.) We have been thrilled by singing together the great hymns of the church. We have had our hearts warmed by magnificent exposition of scripture. We have been stirred by the enthusiasm of exciting reports from the mission fields of the world. We have been stirred. But have we been moved? What must the Holy Spirit be free to do in order to perform his will for the everlasting glory of God the Son in this conference?
May I submit to you that if 1,000 young men and women in this audience, who previously had had no intention to go overseas as missionaries, were led of the Spirit to (1) decide definitely for foreign service, (2) determine to take immediate steps to get to their fields, and (3) persist in this course of action until they reach the place of God's divine appointment, that indeed would be a mighty working of the Holy Spirit here to meet the needs of the world. But let us not settle for a few hundred decision cards soon to get lost in a file drawer somewhere. Let us not have a big group stand on their feet under the emotional spell of the hour and then sit on their hands for the next forty years. Let us expect a great thing from God for his glory and then ask him to do it.
Perhaps it will help our understanding of the biblical concept of ambassadorship if we retrace Paul's experience on the road to Damascus. And perhaps as we expose our hearts to God's Word he can use this experience, through his force which spans the centuries, to lead us to a similar experience.
There are three accounts of Paul's experience. The first, in Acts 9, is the record of the event as it took place. The other two, in Acts 22 and 26, are occasions upon which Paul gave personal testimony to this experience. We will confine ourselves, for the most part, to the third account in Acts 26.
Four things happened here. First, Paul was confronted by the glory of God. (Now that is the necessary place for us all to begin - for both non-Christians and Christians.) Second, he was converted to the God of glory. Third, he was commissioned by the God of grace. And fourth, he committed himself to the grace of God. In this description we find a man, who was not only highly religious but also highly educated, on a mission which he deemed to be in the service of God. He thoroughly knew the Bible of his day; at least he knew it intellectually. He did not understand it, but he had been trained in it in the schools of his day. And he was a zealous man. He was on a mission; stimulated by his idea of what glorified God: the extermination of "heretics," the Christians. As he traveled the road to Damascus, the well-known dramatic experience suddenly took place. Paul was confronted by the glory of God.
Notice especially two aspects of this experience: a light and a voice from heaven. Surely a man as well-trained as Paul appreciated the significance of the light and the voice, because many times in the Old Testament record God had revealed himself to his servants in the same way. The light was a symbol of the holiness of God, of the burning purity of his holiness. The voice identified this physical phenomenon with a person. The light conveyed the character of God; the voice, the authority of God.
So Paul responded as indeed any would have under similar circumstances - by falling flat on his face before this evident manifestation of the God of the universe, the great Jehovah of the Old Testament.
Then the voice from heaven asked a deeply puzzling question, "Why do you persecute me?" Paul was persecuting Christians in order to glorify God. Yet unmistakably the voice of the God of glory asked this question. So his answer, though it seems illogical to us, is easily understandable: "Who are you, Lord?" (v.15 RSV). Then came this tremendous declaration, "I am Jesus whom you are persecuting."
Paul was converted to the God of glory. Here was a man whose whole course of life had been set in one direction - in order to glorify God he would exterminate those Christians. All of a sudden he discovered that the One whom he despised and detested, whose followers he planned to exterminate, was in fact the Lord of glory! This is conversion. Turned all the way around in the opposite direction - converted to God in the presence of the glory of God.
Now please do not misunderstand. It is not necessary for you to pass through an identical experience in every detail to come to the same end. I do not know how God will choose to reveal himself and his glory to you. But I know the source. It is here. If you will expose yourself in expectant faith to this revelation of God in his Word, God will most certainly reveal, himself to you in such power as to leave no doubt whatsoever. God identified himself as "the high and lofty One who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy" as he revealed himself to Isaiah. Although your experience may not in physical details compare recognizably with that of either Paul or Isaiah, it will be identical in its essentials, and that is the place to begin.
Christians, I am positive that numbers, perhaps hundreds, of you on campus now are living as dull, fearful, unsatisfied; and unsatisfying Christian lives as I did for four years. And oh, dear friends, I plead with you, stop. This kind of life is not necessary any longer, not one second further. As God reveals himself and his glory and his authority, he will set things straight. Paul was converted to the God of glory.
Then notice especially in these verses that the initiative, the power, the authority, and the responsibility lies with God to fulfill his purpose. The Lord continued, "But rise and stand upon your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose . . ." I love that word purpose. It is a wonderful word. Stop to think: Certainly God has a purpose for my life. In his infinite wisdom, grace, love, and compassion he has gone to such pains to provide my salvation that it is unthinkable should he riot have a purpose, not just a general purpose, not just to set me in certain category, but to win me into close fellowship so that he can reveal day by day through intimate communion his will for that day.
God has a purpose for your life. And let me assure you that God's plans and purposes for us are far more wonderful than those we set for ourselves. And God's purposes are attainable (you can almost never say that for the goals you set for yourself). Furthermore, God's purposes are perfect because in his infinite wisdom and love he has made you as you are for his will as it is. He wants to bring you and his will together so that you can glorify him and enjoy him forever. This fact gives wonderful comfort and encouragement: "I have appeared to you for this purpose…"
The subject of each of the succeeding verbs is God. God undertakes to perform his purpose in you. He does not just lift you from the ground and dust you off and say, "Well, now, get with it and do the best you can under the circumstances; I am on the sidelines to cheer you on." No foolishness like that! God calls you to himself in love for the fulfillment of his purposes. He desires to offer abundant provision for you.
One of the most marvelous, nearly incomprehensible statements in scripture is that God desires to have fellowship with us. We are told this in John 4:24: "God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth" for the Father seeks such to worship him. He desires fellowship with us. If I neglect, deny, or disobey God's invitation to fellowship, I am displeasing him in addition to hurting myself. God is the subject. "I have appeared to you … to appoint you …" "Appoint" means literally to choose, to select, and to use.
God chooses and makes you a witness (or a servant, in a literal sense) Everything that our brother Mr. Stott has been telling us, from our study in 2 Timothy, about the hardship and servitude of the Christian life is true. But it is glorious servitude, because it is serving him. But it is work. God has appointed us to serve him and to bear witness. We come again to that confusing word "witness." (At least I was confused. And perhaps you are too.) The scripture makes it quite simple. To what should you bear "witness"?
"To the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you" (Acts 26:16 RSV).
What had Paul seen with the eye of faith in that vision of brilliant light greater than the noonday sun? He had seen God. If you have not seen Jesus Christ genuinely and currently, you do not have a witness. You are a witness, but you do not have a witness. Perhaps your initial enthusiasm has grown cold, and you are fearful and easily embarrassed and ashamed. Perhaps you have no witness any longer because you have nothing to say about what you have seen in the past.
We are told sometimes, "Well, you don't have to say anything anyway. It is the silent witness of the Christian person that influences people." Have you ever heard that before? Nonsense! The symbolic witness apart from the verbal witness is at best confusing. And we have here a good illustration of that in visual aids. Look at the flags above the platform. About a dozen of them have a symbolic witness. But their symbolic witness is meaningless without interpretation. Now observe the green flag with the white writing. That one has a verbal witness: "There is no God but Allah. Muhammad is the apostle of God." The Arabs are not ashamed of their belief. Their statement of faith is spelled out explicitly on their national flag. That is a verbal witness. There is no mistake. If you do not have your word to sustain your life, your life is virtually meaningless. But also if your life does not backup your word, there is probably even worse confusion because then both your life and word are meaningless. God said to Paul, I want you to give personal "witness to the things in which you have seen me [past] and to those in which I will appear to you" [in terms of a current experience of Jesus Christ].
May I tell you a story, which probably many of you have already heard, which is an appropriate illustration of this point? There was a young couple, who were mediocre, average Christians. One summer they were invited to a Bible conference. It was tremendous. Bible studies they had never heard before, fellowship in prayer with other Christians, testimonies - the whole atmosphere was terrific. So of course when they got back home, they were simply bubbling over with enthusiasm. They passed on their testimony about the wonderful conference for some months until nearly everybody had heard, and occasions to give their testimony became less frequent. On these rare occasions they found that the details were becoming rusty, so they decided to write it out to make sure they got it straight and not confuse the testimony. On even less frequent occasions they would get it out and read it.
Many years passed and some relatives were visiting from across the country. Conversation got around to religious things, and the couple said, "Oh, did we ever tell you our testimony?" "No, I don't believe you did." "Well," the wife said, "John, would you please go and get our testimony?" So as an obedient husband he trotted off upstairs and searched for it. He came down with a badly mouse-chewed document. "Look dear what the mice have done to our testimony," he said.
That was not a testimony; it was an archive! It should have been buried years before. Their current life did not back up their past genuine experience. But seriously how many of us are trying to live today on an experience that is rapidly becoming so remote that it is nearly lifeless. Under those conditions you are a witness, but you do not have a witness. Yet, even if you have not had the advantage of theological training or Bible training in order to undertake the "ministry of explanation," you have a witness if you have genuinely met with Jesus Christ currently. And do not worry about all the theology professors with their long white beards and the strings of degrees after their names. Not one of them can refute or disprove your genuine, current testimony: "I have seen the Lord. I was with him this morning. He spoke to me through his Word." You have a testimony and a witness. And God undertakes to make that testimony effective. This is his promise.
Now all of this promise was still potential. It was still in prospect because there is one more important point. Paul went on in verse 19 and said, "Wherefore, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient."
I have heard this saying (I wish I could give credit to the source), "If you and I were obedient to one-tenth of what we already know of Scripture, our lives would be utterly different." Sometimes as Christians we are misled into thinking that what we need is more information. Thank God for the Bible studies. But, please do not misunderstand me; I do not think that our primary need is more Bible studies. If we were obedient to what we already know, even one-tenth of it, our lives would be different. Paul said, "I was not disobedient." Notice that in the Greek "obedience" has to do with hearing. The word for obedience is a form of the verb "to hear," with positive reaction; disobedience is "not to hear."
Although I never had the privilege of serving in the navy, I am told that the response of a seaman to an officer is quite important. If you are given a command and say O.K. or something of that nature -- none of that. They have places for people like that. The proper response is "Aye, Aye, Sir" which means, "I have heard and will obey."
That is the response God expects from you and me. On the basis of his revelation of himself, lovingly in Scripture, he expects this response from us, likewise in love: I have heard, understand, and I will perform.
I do not ask, O Lord, a task to do beyond my skill,
I only seek, my God, that know thy perfect will.
Little is much if but the task I do thou shalt appoint,
And so whatever life brings of good or ill,
Give thou to me the will to choose The strength to do, thy will as unto thee.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
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