The Diplomat
THE DIPLOMAT | Rev. Oluyinka Ahove | October 1, 2017
John 17:14-18
I will use the illustration of the diplomat to explain today’s message. In the university, we were introduced into the origin of law. We will find that many of the values of the law are actually developed from moral principles based on the bible. People don’t ordinarily come up with morality. They come to agree that a set of moral values will guide their life. So the supremacy of law as espoused in the whole of the legal system actually came from the kingdom of God.
So who is a diplomat? These are people or a citizen of the country who are sent to represent that country. So an ambassador is a diplomat. So you as a Christian are a diplomat not to your own country but to another country. So the message today is to challenge us to know we are not of this world even though we are in this world. We have been born into another kingdom and no longer of this world. You are a diplomat from another kingdom to this kingdom. God Himself is a king and every King has a kingdom and He has authority, influence and power in His kingdom. He sets out the rules by which every citizen in that Kingdom has to live by. Every Christian or every believer regardless of your source of origin you are from the Kingdom of God. And it is time for us to begin to live like diplomats. A diplomat in another country knows his mission. When America sends his own people to Nigeria their agenda is to influence Nigerians with American values. When Jesus sent you He said I send you like sheep among wolves so that you can influence the wolves to become lambs. When people defect from Russia for instance they become asylum seekers. All the people God has placed in your life are seeking asylum. You influence them to defect and become a citizen of your own country.
So Jesus prayed that God the Father should not take us out of this world but that He should keep us from evil and that we are not of this world. We are here to bring the values of our own kingdom to bear upon the country of our diplomacy. You need to see yourself as a diplomat to affect and infect that country you have been sent to. The values of your own Kingdom is superior to that of the other country. Many of us are still struggling with our own identity and the kingdom we come from. When a diplomat is not doing what he has not been sent he will be recalled.
When you enter an American embassy the first thing you notice is the order. The grass is well-kept and green and everything is well-kept. What it means is that they have brought their own values to bear in their own environment in another country. IITA run by Americans is so clean and tidy that as children we just loved to visit the place because of the green and well-mown lawn and the paved roads. The thing is that the Americans brought the values of their own nation to bear in Nigeria and that’s why we want to go to America because their values are so captivating.
I remember once that we ran into a pothole inside the Nigerian Embassy in Brussels.i was still admiring the architecture of the city when the car ran into the pothole after going through the gate into the Embassy. Nigeria is 57 and yet people still want to leave. The same way there are many people who have given up hope. Some of them are friends or people we work with. They see no hope for their children or marriage. But we are from a kingdom of hope and peace and there are troubled people around us. Sometimes, America will decide what they will do in UN and nobody can do anything about it. Why is this? It is because they understood the supremacy of the Kingdom they come from.
Every diplomat must report to the headquarters. When a delegate from the church went to a member’s wedding and they met trouble they prayed to His excellence Jesus to take charge. And things were sorted out. Because every diplomat must report back to the headquarters. We must have a kingdom mind-set. A kingdom mindset will understand what Jesus said in Matthew 16:18 asking us to make disciples of Nations. SO we are to affect and make disciples of every one we meet in the sphere where we have influence. You only come to church to know what you have been given by the King and then go out into the world and impact them. You are not to compromise what you have been taught. If you are not working and influencing with the values of your kingdom then you have defected. You are saying the values of the kingdom you have been sent to is superior. So in our kingdom we do not lie or commit adultery etc. If we don’t practicalise the values of our Kingdom in our life then we are slowly defecting to the other kingdom. The problem we have now is that the church has not come to recognize her mission. We have been called not to blend but to be different. A diplomat will not see someone who is about to lose hope and keep quiet. An American will never meet a German and admit that the problem in his own nation is more than the one the German says he has in his own country. Even if the American knows it is true he will never say it to the German. Rather he will paint a captivating picture of His own country.
What picture do you paint of your own Kingdom? People should see you and want to be in your country and through you receive the visa into God’s Kingdom. And the Visa is Jesus. So if we are still pretending about the Kingdom we represent we are not yet started. When a diplomat is about to be sent he is briefed about the vision and the mission of his country to the other country.
The Kingdom is bigger than the church. The church is just a gathering of diplomats where you are briefed and then sent out.
Deuteronomy 6:
The reason He brought you out of the darkness into light is so He can give us the land He swore to our fathers. You are brought in so you can still go out. The mission is out there not inside the church. You are a diplomat from the Kingdom of light to the Kingdom of darkness. The church that will meet your need is the one that will send you out to the world to influence it for the kingdom of God. And this is how we take the Land sworn to our fathers. This is how we expand and extend the rule of the Kingdom of God. So that those who do not know Him will know Him and become Citizens of the Kingdom. We must all carry a mindset of the kingdom and operate the mindset of the kingdom. We say gold of this sinful world is bad but we eat the yam of the same sinful earth. Beloved enough of this spirituality.
There is nothing wrong with being different. In fact, we have been called to be different. We are not called to blend with the world. Jesus says if you love the world then the love of the Father is not in you. How am I living out the values of the Kingdom? Am I talking fear because fear is not a value in the kingdom?
We have been given all that it takes to live above all that the kingdom of darkness can throw at us. You have all that it takes to beat the kingdom of darkness without having to blend. When you truly know who you are and whose you are you will be bold and will not be intimidated by the kingdom of darkness. We just need to live the Kingdom mentality. The kingdom you belong to is a kingdom that will support you. The bible says He that keepeth Israel neither slumbers not sleep. But when you defect the kingdom cannot defend you.
2 Corinthians 5:20 says you are ambassadors for Christ. When you carry this mentality you will find that immunity will work for you. Because diplomats have immunity. There are sickness and disease in the Kingdom we are sent to but we are immune from all these.
1 John 2:15
We are immune as diplomats from all these things which exist in the kingdom we have been sent to. We are not to influence the world with what it has but with what it doesn’t have. I can’t affect the world with lust of the flesh because it already has that. I infect the world with what it does not have. With peace, with love, with grace, with forgiveness. What do you affect the world with? Because what you affect them with is what tells the King whether you are a defector or still a diplomat.
Finally, let’s look at Jesus, our perfect example. The Bible says Jesus went about doing good. That’s what we are supposed to be doing and not sit down and be claiming this is my church or be saying this is our church.
May we not be recalled before our time because our diplomacy is for a time.