God is Not Ashamed of Us.

I. Intro: Carry On

There are many strange sports in our world, but few are stranger than the Finnish sport of wife carrying. In this sport, a man hoists his female partner (usually his wife) over his shoulders and then attempts to run through an obstacle course.

There are several ways the man can carry his wife: a traditional piggy-back carry; a fireman’s carry in which the man holds his wife over his shoulder; or the Estonian carry, in which the wife hangs upside down off the man’s back with her legs around his shoulders. The sights of this contest get pretty strange pretty quickly, as a man with a woman hanging off his back tries to climb over fences, swim through pools, and speed around corners.

It’s a bizarre sight seeing these men race while bearing the burden of their wives on their back. Wife carrying contests are bizarre because the husbands are bearing such an unwieldy burden while they run. It just doesn’t make sense to run a race with someone hanging off your back. If you wanted to run in a regular race, you would never do it with a person hanging off your back. Instead, you would get rid of the burden.

Most of us don’t go through our everyday lives with another person hanging off our backs. It would be crazy to do that. But we do go through our lives with burdens. All of us have burdens. And some of the biggest burdens we carry are caused by the questions that plague us and keep us from having any peace. Questions such as: Do I live up to God’s expectations? Are people who rebel against God living life however they desire and getting away with it? Am I alone because God’s presence doesn’t really make a difference in my life? Why do I feel like God is on my back?

We may not recognize it, but these questions weigh us down. They haunt us and keep us from living the life that God wants us to live. And sometimes, we even feel like God is the one who is burdening us and holding us back.

While we may not realize it, we often start to ask these burdensome questions about whether God is careless or clueless or useless or speechless because we have faulty ideas and assumptions about who God is. We need to shed these burdens so that we can move into the life God wants us to live. And as we experience four statements from Scripture that tell us what God is not, we’ll be able to answer some of our big questions about God – questions like: Is God ashamed? Is He clueless? Is He useless? Is He speechless?

We begin today with the question of whether God is ashamed of us. And as we discover one thing God is not, we’ll get a clear answer to that question that will free us from one of the biggest burdens in our lives. Let’s get started.

II. Background

The book of Hebrews reads much like a sermon, and it unfolds around the theme of how Jesus is our High Priest. This was a new concept to Jewish listeners at the time: for thousands of years, they had a system of one high priest entering into God’s presence and asking for forgiveness for their sins. Now, the author of Hebrews wanted to help them see how Jesus allows us to come into God’s presence and relate to God in an intimate relationship with Him. They (and we) no longer need someone to talk to God for us.

In chapter 11, the sermon takes a long aside as it focuses on what faith looks like in light of this connection with God that Jesus makes possible. This chapter is full of pictures of faith from Old Testament characters. And amid this listing of what we could call the Faith Hall of Fame, we find an incredible statement of something that God is not.

III. Explanation [Read Hebrews 11:13-16.]

Hebrews 11 recalls the stories of some of the great heroes of faith. But amid the tales of Noah and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph, there’s an aside that describes some of the common traits shared by all of these people. And in our passage today, we see that one of the common traits these people shared was suffering. They did not receive everything God had promised them during their lifetimes. They never had a true homeland, because possessing the Promised Land was either a future reality or in process for them. And because they felt like aliens and strangers, they longed for heaven. Their faith led them to live in a reality beyond themselves.

This description of faith is compelling, and it makes for a great sermon. But think about what these heroes of our faith must have felt like during their stories. God promised them great things, but they never saw these promises fully come to fruition.

For example, God told Abraham he would be the father of a great nation – and then Abraham had to wait until he was 100 years old to have his first child. God gave Joseph dreams of how he would rule over his family – and then Joseph spent more than a decade in slavery and then in jail. Not receiving the things promised meant that they had to spend many years in the pain of waiting and wondering if God really meant what He said. And in this pain, these people probably had questions. We certainly would have. In their hardest moments, they probably wondered whether God really cared about them or if He had forgotten them. Alone in a jail cell, in the dark of the night, in the hidden places of their hearts. And even when they trusted God’s heart, they might have wondered if God was too busy or too preoccupied and had become careless about fulfilling the promise He had made them. In other words, they probably asked, “Is God ashamed of me?”

This question resonates in our hearts, as well. We have heard all the sermons about God, but sometimes our circumstances lead us to wonder if God really, truly cares about us. We may not be in a jail cell, we may not be actively waiting for a baby to be born, but we have questions that whisper in our hearts as well. And even in the moments when we believe God does care, the state of our world and the state of our lives makes us wonder if God has carelessly forgotten us or overlooked us amid everything else He is doing. This emotional question of whether God is careless rattles around in all of our hearts and souls. It makes us wonder if God couldn’t care less about us or if He is even ashamed of us.

But in the face of this huge question, the author of Hebrews makes a stunning statement – one that applied to the heroes of faith in Hebrews 11 and that applies just as much to us as well. These people weren’t perfect, just like we aren’t perfect, but they were trying to live by faith and follow God. And of these imperfect but sincere people, the writer of Hebrews said, “Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them” (v. 16). The lesson that the author of Hebrews takes from the stories of these imperfect but sincere heroes of faith is, to use His words, that God is not ashamed to be called our God.

V. Application

We know that God cares about us and that He will not forget or overlook us because God is not ashamed to be called our God. He claims us gladly as His people.

When we look at ourselves honestly, we see many reasons that God could be ashamed of us. We’re proud like Joseph was. We’re deceitful like Abraham was. We’re manipulative like Jacob was. We have fits of rage, as Moses did. We’re sinful and selfish. We give up in tough times. We can be hooligans. When we look at ourselves honestly, we sometimes become ashamed of ourselves and wonder how God could ever care about us. Even those of us who are sincere about following God is imperfect.

But the God, who sees every bit of sin and selfishness in us, claims us. The God who sees us give up when things get hard is preparing a homeland for us so that we don’t have to be aliens or strangers anymore. Our Creator claims us. God is not ashamed to be called our God.

Not only is God not ashamed to be called our God – He reaches out to us to claim us so that we can be His children. That’s what the cross is all about: Jesus died a shameful death to provide a way for us to have a relationship with God in which shame has no say and no sway. The God who is unashamed became shamed, so we no longer live subject to shame.

This truth has huge implications in our lives. No longer do we have to live under shame from ourselves or anyone else. God is not a God who shames us for what we’ve done or thought or said. Our faith in God tells us that God has faith in us. He hasn’t given up on us or turned His back on us or forgotten us. Instead, He calls us into great things like what the people in this chapter did, believing that we can be heroes of faith just like they were. God is not embarrassed by you, and God is not ashamed to be your Father.

VI. Optional Illustration:

She’s With Me

Fourth-grader Kennedy Corpus wanted to skip school, but she had a good reason. She wanted to see President Barack Obama speak. During the town-hall meeting, Kennedy’s father stood up to ask a question, and during the question, he mentioned that his daughter had skipped school to come to the event. Obama’s response was to ask, “Do you need me to write a note?” Observers laughed, but the President was serious. So he tore a corner off of one of his sheets of notes and wrote, “To Kennedy’s teacher: Please excuse Kennedy’s absence. She’s with me.” After signing the note, the President stepped off the stage to hand the note to a shocked fourth-grade girl. Kennedy’s summation of the event was pretty simple: “It was like the best thing ever.”

[Tip: If possible or desired, find a clip from the news story about this incident.]

Imagine what this girl felt like when she received a note from the President of the United States excusing her from school. She must have felt important and noticed and valuable because the President said, “She’s with me.”

If you have ever felt like you couldn’t live up to God’s expectations, you need to hear God speaking to you today and saying, “She’s with me. He’s with me.” He is not ashamed. He has not forgotten us. He is not embarrassed by us. He does not leave us. God claims us as His children because God is not ashamed to be called our God.

VII. Closing

Some of you have listened to this entire sermon, and in the back of your mind, there’s a small voice that’s saying: not you. Everyone else, God is not ashamed of. But you, you’re different. God is embarrassed by you. He doesn’t even like you.

Here’s a tough truth: You’re not that special. You are the ONLY person in the history of the world that God has ever been ashamed of. The people in the Hall of Faith in Hebrews were no better than you or me, but also no worse. We’re all candidates for God’s shame, but He made way for everyone to be claimed by Him.

Henri Nouwen once said that there were three lies of identity:

“I am what I have,

I am what I do,

I am what other people say or think about me.”

Because God loves us, we can counter these lies with three truths:

God has given me everything I have,

I can only do anything because of Jesus, and

I am what God says about me.

And God says He is not ashamed of you.

No matter your circumstances, God is not ashamed of you. No matter your success, God is not ashamed of you. No matter your struggles, God is not ashamed of you. Your Creator claims you. You are loved by the God who is love. You are remembered and not forgotten. God chooses to identify with you. God is not ashamed to be called your God.