Do Not Be Ashamed Of The Testimony Of Our Lord

remove ourselves from needing the warning. When we hear Paul say, do not be ashamed of the testimony of the Lord, I think it's very common for us to say, well, I'm not. I'm not. But we kind of wonder what it means to be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord. And so I want us to consider right at the beginning of this, are we so different than Timothy? Do you really or do I really not face temptation to be ashamed of God, to be ashamed of his testimony? You remember when they came out to arrest Jesus, Peter, when they came with their torches, everybody scattered, everyone left except Peter. And Peter said, this isn't going to go down like this. And he whips out his sword and he lops off the ear of the servant of the high priest. And he thinks, we're going to fight. No shame here. I'll go with you even to death were his words just before this event. But what does Jesus do? Jesus picks up the servant's ear.

heals him, puts it back on. And Peter, seeing this, does what? He runs. When he realizes that suffering really has come to him, even though he's just said, I will go with you wherever you go, even unto death. When he was faced with death, all of a sudden, he was ashamed. He followed Jesus at a distance into the city to Jesus' trial. And we're told that he stood outside of the Sanhedrin, warming himself near the fire. And when he's confronted and they say, hey, aren't you one of them? Didn't you follow that guy? Peter says, no. And then a second time he's asked. And more adamantly he says, no. And a third time he's asked and with curses he denies his association to Jesus Christ. And so are we so different than Timothy? Are we so different than Peter? Who need to consider without stiff-arming the warning.

That being ashamed of the testimony of Jesus Christ is something that we all face. Now what does it mean to be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord? When we look at the things that Jesus endured, when we look at the things that Peter ended up enduring, I think when we think of shame, we think too big and too grand. And we neglect the little ways in which each day we demonstrate our shame. about Jesus. We hide. Think of it this way. How easily are you discouraged or disheartened in whatever obedience you offer to God? As a Christian, you say, I'm here. I want to glorify God. And you do things in your life to that end. You want to say, I want to please God. I'm going to do this thing, whatever this thing is. What does it take to make you wonder if what you did was right? How much does it take? A glance at the grocery store?

Whisper in a murmur, comment, people looking and going. Rude comments and all of a sudden we're the ones wondering if we're doing the right thing or whether we should be ashamed of the decisions we've made because we love and we serve Jesus Christ. You have children and you wonder, did we make the right decision? They grow up and you think they've got to go to school. Did we make the right decision? Your husband's a sinner and you submit to him and you wonder. When your sibling or somebody says, I would never be treated like that. Did you make the right decision? You voted for Donald Trump, and you wonder, did I make the right decision? You say no to Pride Month and Alphabet Soup and all the rest, and you wonder, at your place of employment, did I make the right decision? These are the places, just to name a few, where we have to work out our love for Jesus Christ.

or whether we'll be ashamed of him. And it doesn't take much, does it, for us to wonder or for us to start preparing a fallback position for a faithfulness to God that doesn't require us to suffer. And so I don't want you to think of being ashamed of the testimony of Jesus Christ as a theological or a theoretical thing. I think many of us would say, I would love to, maybe not I would love to, but I would hope that if my life was required of me for my faith, or if I had to go to prison for it, I hope that I would be faithful and remain true to him. But I think the reason we think of those things is because the likelihood of it happening is very small, at least nowadays. It may not be the case in years to come.

But at least now, that's not the danger that we face. And yet we're not free of the temptation to be ashamed of Jesus Christ. Whatever it is that you do in your life, decisions that you make, decisions that you've made, if you made them by faith, believing that that's what God would have you do, don't allow the suffering that comes along with those decisions to make you question if God called you to do it. I think too often in our lives, we think suffering is, it's like you got the report card back and you got an F because you're suffering. Somehow you didn't do the work right. You've messed up because hard stuff is happening. Now, it is true that sometimes we suffer because of our sins. But it's not always the case that we suffer because of our sins. Sometimes it's the case that we suffer because we've loved Jesus Christ. And it's important, brothers and sisters, that we not confuse the two and just...

think that suffering in all ways and in every situation is a sign of God's displeasure with us. If that were the case, how can we read the pages of Scripture and hear the accounts of God's people throughout history and have any association with them? Hebrews tells us that of all the suffering that his people endured, at the end of it it says, these were men of whom the world was not worthy. Did they suffer because God was displeased with them? No. They suffered because they loved God. And primarily because they were not ashamed of him. They were happy to be counted along with him. You remember when Jonathan wanted to go into the Philistine camp? Crazy idea. After his dad had said nobody should eat. No food. Jonathan doesn't hear it because he's out taking on the whole Philistine garrison by himself. Now if you were his armor bearer, the guy set to carry his stuff and to live and die according to his decisions, would you want to follow him into that battle?

Here's my plan, guy. What we're going to do is we're going to sneak over on our enemy, just the two of us. And we're going to reveal ourselves to them. We're not even going to try to hide. Here we are. And any sane person would go, we're walking into our death. And why would we do that? And how easy would it be for us to despise someone who would do such a thing? But what does his armor bearer say to him? Is he ashamed of Jonathan? No, he loves Jonathan. And what's he say to him? Do all that's in your heart and I'll go with you. Or David, when he goes to face Goliath, how did David get into that situation exactly? Well, he was too young to go to battle, so he was back.

herding and shepherding the family's animals. And his dad says, go take them some food and bring me a report about your man brothers, the ones who are out there doing the hard manly work. Go take them some food and tell me how things are going. This is how David gets to the battle. And when he hears the things that are being said about his God, he'll have none of it. None of it. A boy in the midst of an army of men, he'll have none of it. Who are these uncircumcised Philistines to defy the living God? Okay, well, Saul says, well, if you're going to go out there and do it, at least wear this armor. Well, David can't wear the armor because it doesn't fit because he's little and they're big. Were his brothers ashamed of him? Oh, they were ashamed of him. Do you remember the things they said to him? He didn't understand. He didn't know. He had no place. But he was the one who was faithful.

He was the one who wasn't ashamed of his God. He was the one who trusted God. Unless you think that this is some sort of a one-off warning, not to be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, Jesus himself said this very thing to us. In Luke 9.26, we read Jesus' words, And so Jesus warns us against this same temptation, but he goes further than saying just being ashamed of me. He says, or my words. When Jesus returns to this earth in his glory, do you want him to be ashamed of you? Isn't that the warning here? Do you consider when he comes back, these are Jesus' words to us, when I come back with my glory, I've come now to die, but when I come back with my glory to establish my rule and reign for all eternity, do you want him at that point to be ashamed of you? Because you previously were ashamed of him. And of course we say, no, I don't want him to be ashamed of me.

then we may not be ashamed of him now. He saved you from your sins, which are many. It's easy for us to enumerate the sins that other people commit, to remember them, to store them up, to keep a record in our minds and our hearts. Do we sin less than those who sin against us? And are our sins less evil in God's sight? Do those who sin against us have more of a need of being saved than we do? Are we righteous and are they unrighteous? No. Even when we're sinned against, even when we sin, we confess with those who sin against us that we have the same need to be saved from our sins. And this one, Jesus Christ, who's come to save us from our sins, says, don't be ashamed of me or my words. He bears with us patiently as we daily slip and stumble in our service to him, not ever doing what we should do.

We think if people around us, if we just understood a little better what God has said or what he's done, it would solve all the problems. And the fact is, it doesn't. Does it? If that's true, then Paul lies when he says, he says, when I sin, I confess that the law is good. Because I do not do what I know I should do. And he doesn't do it from a lack of knowledge. He does it with knowledge. He does what's wicked, what's wrong, what's abhorrent, what he needs saving from. And in that passage in Romans 7 where he's lamenting the conflict and the tension that he lives in as a Christian, at the end of it he exclaims, Wretched man that I am, who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. And the reason I bring this up to us is to say, it's so easy for us to be ashamed of God and look at what he's done for us. I mean really, think of what you're like to live with and to deal with.

Day after day and week after week and year after year and decade after decade and how long God's been merciful to you, bearing with you, and yet we're still tempted to be ashamed of him and his words and we're still very slow to do what he requires of us. And when we do it, we keep a fallback plan or a way to avoid having to follow it through to the end. May it not be that when Jesus returns in his glory, he looks on us with embarrassment because we spent our lives being ashamed of him, who's done so much for us. You think of little children, and little children love their parents. They're happy to hug them. They're happy to kiss them. And then there comes like this age where kids, all of a sudden, they become aware of their surroundings, and then they don't want hugs and kisses anymore from their mommy and daddy. And they stop talking, and they get all like...

Self-contained and stoic. They don't want to be seen with their parents. They don't want to walk with them. I remember when I was a kid, this was very, very true of me. And I remember my mom confronting me about it one time. And she said, are you ashamed to be seen with me? And of course the answer was yes. I couldn't say that. But I realized at that moment how wicked it was of me. And I wasn't a believer and she wasn't either. But we see this in children who become ashamed of their parents. They don't know and they don't understand. They're stupid. We know better. And isn't that what we do with God? Have the parents in those seasons of life stopped loving their children? Have they stopped advocating for them and teaching them and instructing them and disciplining them and praying for them? No. But the children get old enough and big enough to think that they don't need the love and the care and the mercy of their parents and their instruction. They think they're better off on their own. And the result is that they become ashamed of them. And I fear that that's what happens with us.

with regard to God too much. When we're in seasons of vulnerability and of youth and of exposure, we're not ashamed of God because we see our humble surroundings and we go, I need mercy and I need help. I'm a sinner. But when we become stable and when we've grown a little bit and we think that we're covered up and our sins are no longer just out there for everybody to see, This is when we become ashamed of God and the things that he requires of us. Because we think that we know better. What would serve us better? What would be best for us? May it not be that our children would despise us when they think they don't need us anymore. And would it never be that we would despise God thinking that we don't need him. Becoming ashamed of him or his word. And if I could get you to turn away from this temptation.

to be ashamed of Jesus Christ, we would have done something significant, you know. But Paul goes further than that. He says, don't be ashamed of Jesus or me. Or me. At least with Jesus. We look at the perfect Son of God and we go, any shame in me is only my fault. He's never sinned or done anything wrong. He's perfectly righteous and everything he says and does is without the slightest bit of corruption. But Paul, by his own testimony, as the chief of sinners, says, don't be ashamed of Jesus or of me. And it's a bridge too far to go. You want me not only to not be ashamed of Jesus Christ, but to not be ashamed of his people, of his sinners, of his ministers who suffer.

The scripture says that if you strike the shepherd, the sheep will scatter. And why is it that they scatter? It's because they're ashamed. It's the same reason Peter scattered. It's the same reason he went away. And so Paul calls us to something even greater than, and perhaps more difficult than simply not being ashamed of Jesus. He calls us not to be ashamed of the sinful men that have been lifted up to lead us and to care for us. Paul was not naturally, nor Timothy, the kind of man that you'd look up to and say, There's a guy I can get behind. From all accounts, Paul was not a big man. He was not a man of stature or wealth or hand. He wasn't attractive. He was probably small, sickly, with some thorn in his flesh, and near blind. There are places in his letters at the end, you see with what big letters I've written to you myself. There's a reason Paul doesn't write his own letters, and it's because his vision is quite impaired, at least later on in his life.

His whole discourse with the Corinthian church was that they despised him because he wasn't as convincing and didn't have as much of a presence as the super apostles. And so he calls us not only to be unashamed of Jesus, but also of Paul, who is the Lord's prisoner. You know, it's a funny thing in our society. Maybe it's not funny, but it's, I suppose, a bad thing. that there's lots of talk about shame and how it's bad, that shaming people, you know, we shouldn't shame people. Do you think there's any less shame in our society now than there was 50 or 100 years ago? I think there's more shame now than there is. It's just the things that are being shamed have changed. It's not sin and those who give themselves to sin that are shamed anymore. It's those who call out sin and say, no, that's not right. And it's in that instance in our society where you're going to be tempted or pressured to be ashamed of God, Jesus Christ.

Or to be ashamed of those that you're associated with who say, no, because God said no. And so this, in a nutshell, is what cancel culture, if you will, runs on. It's weird. America never used to be a shame-based society. But it's quickly becoming a shame-based society. The problem is we're not ashamed of the right things. We're pressured to be ashamed of Jesus Christ as a Christian. And so in our day, the one with the loudest voice, And the most money and influence puts pressure on his opponents and any who would follow them to be ashamed of the truth. So far as we're able, and most of the time, with regard to people being canceled, I think we should just steer clear of it. Except for when one of God's faithful people and his ministers comes into the crosshairs, that is the time we should not be silent and just sit idly by.

We should come to the aid of those who are suffering and not be ashamed of them. To the extent that they're suffering because of their faithfulness to Jesus Christ, we ought to stand shoulder to shoulder with them. And it's very easy to say, why wouldn't you do that? Here's the reason you don't want to stand with men who are suffering for the sake of the gospel. And it's this, they're not perfect and they've sinned. That's it. That's it. I'll stand with Jesus, but a sinful man? Who's done things and said things that are wicked and wrong? Oh no, I couldn't be found standing with him. And that's why Paul says that we ought to not be ashamed of the gospel or the testimony of our Lord or of him. He disciplines us not to think too highly of ourselves and to think that the only people worth standing for are those who are perfect. No, we're to stand with sinful men and women who love Jesus Christ and who are suffering for his sake. Not because they're perfect, they're not.

And if you went and talked to them, I suspect that they would tell you as much. They, probably better than anyone else, could recount to you their failures. Nevertheless, you're not to be ashamed of them. And so in these situations, it is necessary that we determine the source of people's affliction. As I said earlier, sometimes we suffer because of the result of our sins. And we ought never to stand with someone whose suffering is the result of their sins and justify their suffering. And to endorse it and say, it's a good thing. It doesn't mean we shouldn't love them. It doesn't mean we shouldn't bear with their burdens. But we ought not to justify and say, no, this is a good thing you're suffering for. We have to make a determination about the source of their affliction. But if they're suffering for the gospel, even if they've sinned in other areas, then it's for us to stand with them and to bear the reproach of being known as one of who's numbered among them in God's people. So don't be ashamed of Jesus Christ or his word or his people. And then Paul tells us,

what that will mean for us. But he doesn't just tell us and say, oh yeah, I know it'll be a temptation and that'll be hard. He invites you into it. Do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord or of me, his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel. Join with me. In Calvin's sermon on this text, he says this, and it was helpful to me in perspective, so I'll read it to you. He says, Jesus Christ, who in his own body endured crucifixion, wills that his message be inseparable from suffering it would be good if he were to choose the gospel to be accepted without opposition yes but the scripture must be fulfilled which says he will rule in the midst of his enemies and so there's a cost to following jesus christ and that cost is not some unknown cost that cost will be suffering psalm 73 is devoted to Asaph saying, as a man who loved God, my feet came close to stumbling. My steps had almost slipped. Why? Because I looked with desire, with longing, with envy at the wicked. Why did he look? Why would one of God's people look with envy at the arrogant and the prosperity of the wicked? Why would they want the life of the wicked?

Because it doesn't appear that there's any pain in their death. They're not in trouble as other men are, nor are they plagued like mankind. And isn't that the life we want? Don't we want lives that are not plagued like mankind? We want to live lives that are not in trouble. Asaph knows that the trouble that he endures is because of his love for God. He understands that to be the transaction and the cost. Paul here calls to us to join with him. Timothy, join with me in suffering for the gospel according to the power of God. And so I say these things not to dishearten you or to be morose or discouraging, but to show you that the Christian life is a life filled with hardship and sorrow, filled with it, because this world is no friend of Jesus Christ. And so to be a Christian in this world means to live as a stranger in a foreign land.

To have priorities and commitments and desires and a life that doesn't sync up with loving this world or playing by its rules or prioritizing what it prioritizes. All of that culminates in suffering. It's always been the case with God's people that they'd suffered if they were associated with him. But which one of us has grown up in a society where we suffered for being Christians. I don't know that any of us have suffered, not the way that we read of in the pages of Scripture. We haven't suffered in that way, and that, that's been God's kindness to us. The danger, though, is that when God's merciful in that way to his people, the danger they always face is to forget God and to become, and to think that all the things that they have, they've gotten them themselves, that they don't need God, that they're not dependent on him. And so you remember at the beginning when I said, when we live these, Comfortable lives are these easy lives. Once our shame is gone and we feel as though we have strength, we forget God. There are seasons in our lives where we're more open and receptive to God's instruction and his discipline, his leadership and his guidance, because we feel kind of undergunned. Typically when people are moving toward getting married, they're more willing to have some help.

because they're going, I don't know how this is all going to work, and I think it's going to be hard, and we want it to be good, but I'm not sure. And they're more willing to have help, but six months after they're married, a year after they're married, now they think they've got it all figured out. And the older couples who've been married longer go, we'll see you. We'll see you when you come around again. The troubles will come. Maybe they'll come quickly, and maybe they won't come. I don't know what shape or form they'll take, but the troubles will come. And we can help you now.

from enduring those troubles, but you don't need the help. Same is true when you have a baby. There's a season of willingness to be taught and instructed. But we all have a natural instinct to avoid hard things in life. It's natural for us to not want to suffer. And so this is why Paul here points to the power of God. Join with me in suffering for the gospel according to the power of God. Which is to say, join with me in suffering for the gospel. In God's strength. Because you don't have the strength, none of us have the strength within us to endure life as a Christian if God doesn't sustain us each day. We have no other refuge that will protect us. We have no other place to turn for strength, for a reason to carry on under life's hardships and burdens. 2 Corinthians 12, 9, Paul's recounting his thorn in the flesh.

and how he's prayed and asked God to be merciful to him in removing it. Three times he's asked, Lord, would you remove this thorn in the flesh, this suffering? And what's the Lord's response to him? No. But not just no. His response is this. He said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness. And if we were to supply the articles here, my power, says the Lord, is perfected in your weakness. And when we suffer, our weakness is exposed. It comes on to display. And we don't have the strength in us to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and muscle through it. We may try. Indeed, I think it's what we do. When things get hard, we think, well, I'm just going to redouble my efforts and power through it. How long does that work? You know, I'm almost 40.

In the course of life, I'm a young man, but in this church, I'm probably one of the older ones. I haven't made it this far powering through in my own strength, and I'm not that old. When we suffer, when we endure hardship, we have to rely on the power of God. And the hard thing about it is that you would think that the power of, I think we conceive of the power of God as plucking us up out of our hardships and removing them and putting us into a place of strength and comfort. And it's often not the case. I'd say it's rarely the case that that's the way the power of God enters into our lives. If you suffer as a result of your faith, you need the power of God to suffer and to endure as a Christian. Because suffering is like God's winnowing fork. When suffering comes, it's like he's taking us and he's beating us and stripping away all of our protections, right?

The kernel of wheat is covered by a hull or a shell, a husk. And so the thresher, the man with the big winnowing fork, comes in and he has a pile of wheat. And the only way he can get to the wheat is to separate the wheat from the shell. And so what he does is he inflicts trauma on the wheat. He smacks it and he beats on it. Because it's the only way to get the kernel out. And then once he's smacked on it, what he does is he flips it up in the air. blows the chaff away, it blows the shell away. And you're left with a kernel because it's heavy and it falls back to the ground. And then he smacks on it some more, and then he throws it up in the air, and then he smacks on it some more, and he throws it up in the air. And that is the suffering that Christians endure at the hand of God so that our chaff will be purged out of us. Now, which one of us wants to be a wheat?

A grain of wheat being beat on by the thresher. None of us would choose that, would we? And yet this is how God purifies us and strengthens us. And so when Paul says to Timothy, join with me in suffering for the gospel, he's saying, you will become more holy if you'll do this work. You will grow in your relationship with God if you'll submit to this work. But if you refuse it in shame and you say, that's not for me and I won't do that. Then when the Son of Man returns, he'll be ashamed of you. And so our lives as Christians, to the extent that we follow God, we should not be surprised when suffering follows us. We should not look on one another when one of us is suffering and think, they must deserve it, they must have done something wrong. Not always the case. We ought not to look and think, well, I would have done it better if I were them and I wouldn't have gotten myself into that situation. We ought to be encouraging one another and bearing with one another as,

as God threshes us through our sufferings, and we ought to rely on the power of God as he does it to bear us through it and one day to deliver us from it. In Hebrews 10, we find a passage that's written to people who are suffering and who are struggling and who are ready to be overcome by it, to say that the cost is too great, the suffering is too much, I can't go on. Hebrews 10, 35 and following says, Do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. Do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised. For yet in a very little while, he who is coming will come and will not delay. But my righteous one shall live by faith. And if he shrinks back, My soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of our soul. And so if you can get to doing battle with your shame of Jesus Christ or of his people, you should expect suffering to come. And you ought to see that suffering as the salt that will preserve you.

As the heat that forges metal and makes it strong. This is what we have need of. And none of us would willingly say, sign me up. A little more suffering if I could. But I really am convinced that the suffering that we endure is for our good. So that we might become more like Jesus Christ. And so the question is to us finally is, is that what you want? Do you want to become more like Jesus? Or do you just want to pay lip service to it? The temptation for each of us is to pay lip service to it and to say, I want to become like Jesus, but not in the way that he had to be, that he had to suffer. I would like a crown without a cost. I would like a reward without hardship. The suffering that we endure in this life that Paul invites Timothy to join him in is meant to expose his weakness and his need for God. It's to take someone who may be comfortable and may be stable and say,

Don't prioritize these things in such a way that you forsake the Lord God. God calls you away from those things. Join with us. Join with me. And in the next few verses that we'll study in the weeks to come, we'll see why. This has been the what. Next week, or around two weeks, we'll learn why. Why is it that we should be willing to suffer in the ways that Paul suffered, in the ways that Timothy suffered, or in the ways that we suffer? Why should we be willing to do that? So I'm sorry that we all have to wait two weeks to hear why. But you can read it. It's not written in another language. You can read it and you can see. To sum it up, the reason that we should be willing to suffer and we should be willing to stand with Jesus Christ and not be ashamed of him or his people is because he's been exceedingly good to us. He's been exceedingly good to us. The problems that we have,

with God because of our sin are damning problems. And he's delivered us from them. And so we ought to be willing to suffer as a result of his kindness to us. And that's what we'll study in two weeks. But for now, give attention to your actions and your behaviors and consider, am I ashamed of Jesus Christ when opportunity arises for you to speak of why you do the things that you do? Why you don't do some things. Why you're not available on Sundays to do this or that or the other thing at work or at play. Why you don't speak the way your coworkers do. Why you have children and why they don't behave like the other kids at the park. Why you treat them differently. Why you don't fornicate. Why you don't get drunk. Why you don't lie and cheat and steal. Don't hide your light under a bushel.

If you're willing to serve God because you love him, you ought to be willing to say that, say as much when you're asked or when it's apparent that others aren't doing the same. This is love for our neighbor's willingness to say, I don't fornicate or go out and get drunk and you ought not to either and here's why I don't and why you shouldn't. May God have mercy on us and help us to love him and not be ashamed of him and to build his kingdom because he's been so good to us. Let's pray. Father, you have been good to us. We don't deserve your kindness and your mercy. We do deserve you to be ashamed of us. But we've not served you as we should. We've not loved you. We've not loved your people. We've been quick to justify the distance that we place between us and you and between us and your people. Instead of being quick to give testimony to our love to you, we've been quick to minimize our love for you.

preferring that others would not understand why we do the things we do and maybe just think that we're strange or weird or we've not spoken the way we should. We've not loved you as we should or our neighbors. And we pray that you'd forgive us for the ways that we failed and that you would strengthen us and equip us as we consider the ways that we've been ashamed of you. Help us not to be ashamed of you anymore. If there's suffering that comes to us as a part of our love for you, help us to accept it with faith and with grace. and preserve us through it, we ask. In Jesus' name, amen.