Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2633
“I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Exodus 3:6.
“Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for He has prepared a city for them.”
Hebrews 11:16.
YOU remember, dear Friends, that Paul is writing to the Hebrews concerning Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and he says, “God is not ashamed to be called their God.” Then, when you turn back to our text in Exodus, you find that God was called their God at the burning bush and, oftentimes, on other occasions, He is called the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. We must not forget that at the time when God appeared to Moses, in the desert, in the bush that burned, but was not consumed, the condition of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was very terrible. They were slaves to the Egyptians. They were an oppressed and downtrodden race. Their male children were taken from them and cast into the river. They were entirely in Pharaoh’s hands. They were a degraded people, as all slaves gradually become, and they were unable, of themselves, to rise out of that degradation. Yet, at that very time, God was not ashamed to be called their God! There, with Israel in bondage, Jehovah, whose name is the great I AM—a name which makes all Heaven bright with ineffable Glory—did not disdain to say to Moses, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” I do not wonder that the Apostle should note it as a remarkable thing, that He was not ashamed to be called their God!
I have been looking into this text very earnestly and trying to find out exactly what was the meaning of the Holy Spirit in it, and I think I have discovered a clue in two words which it contains. First, “Therefore.” “Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God”—and next, “for.” “For He has prepared for them a city.” As a door hangs upon two hinges, so my golden text turns upon these two pivots—“therefore” and, “for.”
I. I shall ask you to keep your Bibles open at the 11th of Hebrews, that you may see, first, “THEREFORE.” Therefore God is not ashamed to be called the God of His people. Look at the 18th verse—“These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth” and so on. “Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God.”
To begin with, then, the Lord was not ashamed to be called His people’s God because they had faith in Him. You read here of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob—and then Paul says, “These all died in faith.” If a man believes in God, trusts Him—believes that His promise is true and that He will keep it—believes that God’s command is right and, therefore, ought to be obeyed—God is never ashamed to be called that man’s God. He is not the God of unbelievers, for they act contrary to His will. They set up their own will in opposition to His—many of them even doubt His existence, they deny His power, they distrust His love—and, therefore, He is notcalled their God. But when a man comes to trust God and to accept His Word, from that moment God sees in that man the works of His Grace which are very precious in His eyes, and He is not ashamed to be called that man’s God.
Notice that it is said, “These all died in faith,” so that they did not believe in God for a little while and then become unbelievers, but, throughout the whole of their lives, from the moment when they were called by God’s Grace, they continued to believe Him—they trusted Him till they came to their graves—so that this epitaph is written over the mausoleum where they all lie asleep, “These all died in faith.” Ah, my beloved Brothers and Sisters, it is very easy to say, “I believe,” and to get very enthusiastic over the notion that we have believed. But so to believe as to persevere to the end— thsis the faith which will save the soul! “He that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.” The faith that many waters cannot drown and the fiercest fires cannot burn—the faith that plods on throughout a long and weary life—the faith that labors on, doing whatever service God appoints it. The faith that waits patiently, expecting the time when every promise of God shall be fulfilled to the letter when its hour has come—that is the faith which, if it is in a man, makes him such a man that God is not ashamed to be called his God! I put it to every one of you, have you a faith that will hold on and hold out—not a faith that starts with a fine spurt, but a faith that runs from the starting place to the goal? Some of you, I know, have believed in God these twenty, thirty, forty, or even fifty years. Just before I came to this service, I stood by the bedside of a dear Brother who is the nearest to Job of any man I ever saw, for he is covered from head to foot with blisters—I might almost say, “wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores”—and yet he is as happy as anyone among us, joyful and cheerful as he talks about the time when he shall be “with Christ, which is far better.”