I'm Afraid of What They Will Think | Pastor Chris Kouba

Do you want to know the whole story?

Oh this girl.

That's what you're crazy.

This is dating.

This was like how it works.

Our first date was March 28th, and we got engaged on June 28th.

So we got married December of that same year.

So it all happened really fast.

Did we say we've been married 21 years?

Yeah.

21 years old.

Celebrate 21, 21 years.

When I was in college and then our early years of marriage, and I drug her to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and then deployed to Iraq in 2003.

Had two children under the age of three, and that really started to show some cracks in our marriage, I think.

I love my family, um, but I was I was fully engaged in my work.

I was just needing some attention from him, some help from him, just to feel like I could get catch my breath, and that just really wasn't happening.

Just feeling like abandoned.

Um I had a pornography addiction.

Um I was not even getting a clue of what was going on in my house.

So as the man, as the husband, as the father, um, I was not in tune and I was not aware.

I was more concerned with my work than I was with my family.

Um I felt like I was doing what I was supposed to do.

My job.

I got involved with someone online and began um an affair that I knew was wrong.

I mean, this was not anything that I had like planned or anything that I really even wanted for my life.

I knew it wasn't what God wanted for me.

Just I guess I let my guard down enough and I was just kind of like giving up on my faith, just really feeling like a lot of hopelessness and despair.

Pretty much, I guess, lost hope.

Grab your Bibles, open them up with me to Matthew chapter one.

Matthew chapter one is where we're going to spend a little bit of time this morning.

What do you do with your shame?

The word shame in the dictionary is defined like this: a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior.

How do you handle it?

And because of something that maybe you have done, or maybe the actions of somebody else cause your situation to be the one everyone's whispering about.

You know it's wrong to gossip, you know it's wrong to talk about other people.

Let me tell you what's way worse than that is whenever you're the center of everyone else's gossip.

Maybe for some of you, you didn't choose it.

Again, it wasn't something that you set out.

You had a different version and a different picture of what life was going to look like and what life was going to be, and not even choices that you made, but instead what somebody else did.

The way they spent the money, the way they spent their time, the way they reacted in that relationship, it's now caused you shame.

Or maybe some of you, your situation is that one moment, that one event, that one little microcosm of time.

If you could go back, you would totally do it all over again because you had no idea what it would lead to in the future.

We're in a series of messages called behold, and we're looking at the story of Christmas.

And there's this amazing thing that happens over and over and over again in all the different stories of Christmas, where there's these magic, incredible words.

Do not fear.

You see, we're on this side of the story, and so in our minds, it's all about joy and it's all about festive, and it's all about the celebration that is of Christmas.

Yet in the moment when the story of Christmas was mentioned in all the different settings, everyone responded with fear.

And what we are told is that when you behold the one who is being announced, that that cast out all fear.

I want us to look this morning at the person of Joseph.

And what we're gonna see in the story of Joseph is shame is all over the place.

But in the midst of that shame, he is given a word, those magic, unbelievable words, do not fear.

Changes everything.

Matthew chapter 1.

Matthew 1 · chapter mention

Let's begin reading in verse 18.

It says, Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way.

When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.

And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.

But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife.

For that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet.

Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us.

And he called his name Jesus.

The verse that I want to key in on is verse 19.

If there is anything that's going to cause controversy, if there is anything that's going to cause shame, it's an unplanned, unexpected pregnancy.

You might be able to sleep around together and you might be able to have a relationship and other people may not know and other people may not see, but if you all of a sudden get pregnant, guess what?

All bets are off.

Now everybody knows.

And now the rumors start flying, and now the conversations start to chirp.

The Bible tells us that Joseph and Mary were pure in their relationship as they were engaged.

And so you can imagine if all of a sudden now Joseph, who has been pure, gets word from his fiance, hey, I'm pregnant.

You can only imagine where his mind goes.

She's been sleeping around.

Here I thought that I was pursuing a great relationship.

And you can only imagine how much his dreams were shattered in that moment because he had this idea of marrying this woman and being able to have a life together, and before it even launches off of the ground, there's shame.

Just make it go away.

You can imagine the shame that it caused Mary because here she knows the truth, but who's gonna believe her?

And she knows that by saying this, it puts her in a situation to where not only did she not have much significance prior to this, she has even less after the fact.

Can you imagine the family?

Like an announcement is supposed to be an announcement of good news.

Whenever I say, I'm pregnant, there's supposed to be celebrations, there's supposed to be posts, there's supposed to be people that are saying how excited that they are.

In this case, everybody doesn't want to say a word.

Because there's shame everywhere.

I want to talk about some ways to deal with shame.

I want to give you two examples of ways that I would tell you a lot of people, myself included, tend to gravitate towards that I don't want you to do, and I want you to know there's a better way.

And then finally, I want to give you what I believe this passage teaches us about what God wants to do with our shame.

First thing I think that we naturally will lean to when it comes to a shameful situation, whether something we have done or something that's been done to us, as we do this, we cover up and hide.

Cover up and hide.

I mean, I get it.

No one likes it, no one enjoys it.

No one desires for those moments to happen.

And the natural tendency, whenever the word gets out, is to want to cover, is to want to close up, is to want to make sure that no one sees what happened.

This has been the case all the way from the very beginning.

In fact, think back all the way to Adam and Eve.

They were bathed, they were they were made.

God looks at them and he says, You can have all of the world to rule over, you can have all of the fruits and the vegetables and all of the animals to enjoy.

He says, There's just one tree I don't want you to touch.

And the Bible says that the serpent in Genesis chapter 3 begins to come onto the scene.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

He goes up to Eve and he says, Did God really say this?

And here's what happens: she begins to listen to the voice of the Satan, of the serpent, as opposed to listening to the voice of God.

Let me just tell you, the enemy does the same thing today.

He tries to get you to doubt what he's clearly said to be true.

It says that she eats of the fruit she wasn't supposed to, and it says that she stands there and she hands it to her husband, who instead of leading and protecting his wife, he watches it all go down.

And it says that he eats as well.

Fast forward in Genesis chapter 3, verse 8.

Genesis 3:8

Listen to what the Bible says.

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.

And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, Where are you?

And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.

Anytime you see shame, from the very beginning, the response is in the high.

Just cover yourself up.

Don't let anybody see what you did.

Don't let anybody know what happened to you.

Don't let anybody see the pain that it caused.

Don't let anybody know.

What happened.

You just bury it and you act like it never happened.

And if people find out, and if people begin to know what actually did happen, you minimize it, you downplay it, and you basically explain it away.

So that of all things, you never have to deal with it.

Maybe this is what you've been taught.

Maybe this is how your family handled things.

Please hear me.

I get it.

I can tell you whenever I have done things that are against what God wants me to do, when I've done things that I'm not proud of, the last thing that I'm looking forward to is to getting up here and saying, hey, guess what?

This is what I did.

Instead, I just want to kind of cover it up, put some dirt over it, cover up that mound, and just hope you never walk over it.

Here's what the enemy does.

He knows this is the case.

And so what he'll do is he'll begin to whisper into your ear and he'll say things like this.

You know you can't say that, right?

You know you can never actually come clean on that, right?

You're never gonna be accepted if they actually knew who you really are.

You're never gonna be loved if they actually know what you did.

No one's gonna want to hang around you if they knew this is what happened to you.

You see, the enemy knows that there is a great power that he has when you hide.

Because when you hide, guess what?

You become something different than who you really are.

What happens is that you begin to put forward a public persona that is different than your private persona.

You begin to act one way at church, which is different than the way that you feel when you're away from church, or the way that you act when you're away from church.

And the enemy knows that true relationships require that you come clean, that you're honest, that you're real, that you're transparent.

And the enemy knows how powerful that can be when a group of people are willing to admit I'm not perfect and you're not perfect, and instead of us playing keep away, where I keep my junk and you keep your junk, and we just gotta make sure we keep it away from each other, we can instead say, I got junk, but I'm following a guy who knows it all, and he doesn't have any junk.

That is powerful.

So the enemy just wants to convince you, just cover it up and hide.

It says there, Joseph tried to divorce her quietly.

We don't know all the details.

He may have wanted an abortion.

Who knows what that could look like?

Praise God, that's not the route he chose.

That's what they would do today.

Perhaps he wanted to go and just try to figure out a way that he can just kind of say, Hey, so how are you and Mary doing?

Oh, yeah, you know, things kind of fell apart and we kind of grew our separate ways and just kind of have an explanation to just get out of that as fast as you can.

We don't know what he chose to do, but we do know this.

What he wanted to do was just make it go away.

Why?

Because that's a natural response to shame.

Let me tell you another uh way that people deal with shame is they make it your identity.

Make it your identity.

When a moment, an event becomes an identity.

Uh my daughter, uh, she um last year decided that she wanted to be involved in a sport.

She was not signed up for a sport whenever she started off her freshman year, and so she decided that she wanted to be into a sport.

She has some really good friends who were lacrosse players and they were having open tryouts.

And so she decided that she wanted to be on a team so bad that she went and tried out for lacrosse, even though she had never picked up a lacrosse stick ever before in her life up to this point.

And so she goes out and tries out for lacrosse and makes the team.

It helps that it was a no-cut sport, okay?

But still, it doesn't matter.

She made the team, all right?

Now, I don't know if you've ever watched lacrosse before, if you've ever been involved with lacrosse before, but lacrosse is super confusing, right?

It's one of those things that kind of requires you to kind of know a little bit about what you're seeing in order to really understand what is good and what is bad.

There's a lot of uh blowing of the whistle and penalties, and if you don't really know, then it's hard to figure out what's going on.

In fact, to show you this, my wife just a few, she's been playing now for two years.

My wife just a few weeks ago was at a tournament for Kinsey and she was playing lacrosse.

I texted her, said, How's Kinsey doing?

And she said, honestly, I have no idea.

All right.

She's out there a lot, and it seems like she's running around, but I think she's doing great.

Okay, okay, good.

All right, so so I remember whenever Kinse had her game, and I went to it as an event because that's what you do as a dad.

You go to support your daughter.

She's got this new venture, and I'm gonna go to lacrosse, okay?

Sean McDowell, he's here.

Uh his daughters are incredible lacrosse players.

I mean, really, really, really good lacrosse players.

Uh they're so fun to watch to be able to play lacrosse.

And so, Sean, I knew he knew what was going on.

Sean and I are great friends, and so I kind of sat near Sean, just hoping to kind of like maybe osmosis pick up a little bit of what was going on, all right?

And so Kinsey starts playing and she's doing some various things, and Sean all of a sudden goes, Oh, oh, oh, oh my god, oh my goodness.

Oh, you have no idea that move that she just did, how good that is for someone that's never played lacrosse.

And I'm like, Yeah, okay, all right, that's awesome, sweet.

So, so, so what did what did she do again?

I have no idea.

You just were excited, so I'm excited.

And so then the whole rest of the game, he's like, No, and I'm again, I'm I'm kind of we're going back and forth.

I have no idea what she did, but all I know is that Sean thinks it was good, and so therefore I thought it was good, right?

And so all of a sudden things change in that moment.

Like I turned from going to a lacrosse game to support Kinsey to I wanting to be a lacrosse dad like Sean, right?

Because he knew what was going on.

So I sat next to him at all the games.

I'm wearing them out, just like, okay, what is that?

Like, what is going on here?

I'm trying to learn what all the rules are, and I'm trying to learn what all the different aspects are going on.

A couple of weeks into the season, they had like a little booth out front where they were selling the shirts for lacrosse.

And you know what?

I bought the previous two year shirts and I bought every shirt that they had for that year.

You want to know why?

Because I am a lacrosse dad and I want everybody to know it, right?

I mean, I seriously, I began to wear Kingwood lacrosse shirts and I wore it with absolute pride.

Like it was a badge of honor.

My daughter plays lacrosse.

We then I would start watching on a Saturday, and I'm just kind of flipping through the channels, no big deal, not just kind of looking for something to watch.

And you know what?

I had no idea.

They play Girls La Crosse on TV.

I had no clue.

I'd never even noticed it before.

You want to know what I do now?

I stop and I watch.

And I begin to see some of the various things.

And if Kinsey's close by, I'll say something to her, or if she's watching, then I'll say, okay, tell me what you're looking at and seeing.

And we're like watching Girls La Crosse on television.

I remember a few months into this that I was at the grocery store checking out, and somebody comes up to me, and I have my Kingwood lacrosse shirt on, and they begin to ask me questions, telling me that their daughter had played a few years ago, and I started quoting a bunch of stuff Sean said.

I have no idea what it meant, but I said it like I was proud of it, like I had come up with it myself.

A moment turned into an identity, and I was so proud.

I still am.

I'm so proud that my girl is a King Win Lacrosse player and she's good.

I love every bit of it.

I love going to the games, I love wearing the shirts.

And what happened was is because it became my identity, I changed how I spent my money, I changed how I spent my time, I changed how I spent my who I rooted for, what I watched on television, it changed everything about me.

You want to know why?

Because I am a king, I am a king with lacrosse player's dad.

And I love it.

Folks, when a moment and an event becomes an identity, it can be a really good thing.

But if that moment or that event is a negative one, it can be a really bad thing.

Where now all of a sudden that difficult moment has now become a difficult reality.

Where I no longer just did a shameful thing.

I am a shameful person.

I didn't just get a divorce.

I'm a single mom, or I'm a single dad, and all the things that I think negatively that go along with that.

I don't just have doubts and moments of anxiety.

I am.

I don't just have same sex temptations.

The world says that it must be that I have to fight against I am.

And in light of that, I embrace that reality wholeheartedly, and I begin to change my spending patterns, and I begin to change my activities, and I begin to wear it out.

And for some of you, your situation may not be that you're wearing the shirt with a logo all across the chest.

You're just wearing it as an undershirt because that's what you really feel about yourself, but you're projecting something very different.

The problem comes when you do that, is that God didn't make us to live with that identity.

He doesn't say, based upon what you do, this is who you are.

He instead says, based upon what you do, I'm gonna send my son Jesus as the miracle of Christmas into this world.

He's gonna live a perfect, sinless life.

He's gonna die on a cross for your sins, he's gonna raise from the dead, and here's the beautiful exchange that we have the opportunity to be a part of.

Instead of me failing something which makes me a failure, I can say, I know I'm a failure, but I get to live on his identity.

Galatians chapter 2, verse 20.

Galatians 2:20

Listen to this verse.

It says these words I have been crucified with Christ.

It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

There is a reason the book of Ephesians spends three chapters telling you who you are before it goes on to tell you this is what you are to do in light of who you are.

If you only focus on the last half and measure yourself based upon how you do, then you will grade yourself and realize you are not good enough.

But instead, if you spin the beginning and realize you are way worse than you thought, but Jesus is way better than you could have ever imagined.

It allows you to begin to walk with confidence, and I can tell you today I'm a mess.

But Jesus has saved me and it is awesome.

He's changed everything.

And here's what I want you to know He can do the same thing for you.

You see, what he does is he has this beautiful way of rewriting stories so that what feels like the final chapter is only the beginning of what he wants to do.

This is what I want you to see from this text today.

Of what Jesus wants to do with your shame.

Allow God to redeem it.

Allow God to redeem it.

In the story, Joseph is told some pretty devastating news.

News that would immediately cause pain and hurt and confusion would be extremely disorienting.

Besides the personal betrayal, there is the public spectacle that this would lead to.

Matthew chapter 1, let me read it again, verse 19.

Matthew 1 · chapter mention

And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.

That's his idea.

But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, listen to these words, do not fear.

Are some of you afraid that if people find out that you're not going to be able to be accepted?

Are some of you afraid because you feel like this is who you've defined yourself for so long, you don't even know what life is like, thinking about it a different way?

Here's the words that were spoken to Joseph.

Let these words be spoken to you.

Do not fear.

To take Mary as your wife.

For that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

God gives Joseph a vision and tells him to behold what God was going to do.

God has a habit of taking the most unlikely of stories, the most unlikely of people, the most unlikely of situations, and doing something very good with all of those messes.

Genesis 50, verse 20 says, As for you, you meant evil against me.

Genesis 50:20

But God meant it for good.

To bring it out, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they are today.

God ended up using the very thing that was bringing shame to Joseph to be the very means by which he would bring the Savior into the world who would overcome all of our shame in our lives.

We of course know that we don't have the same way of knowing that God's going to use the shame the way that he did for Joseph, but I can assure you of this, because of the person of Jesus, not only does his coming drive out all fear, but it also overcomes all our shame.

Psalm chapter thirty-four, verses four and five.

Let's see how the story ends.

I found myself in Saudi Arabia.

Um I had been there about four months.

Um and I knew something was wrong.

I had found out that there was an affair going on at that point.

I wanted the affair to end, and I had told the man that.

My prayer and my hope is that your restoration is exactly like the Gordon's.

That God would use you and that God would work in you and that God would allow you to experience his grace.

And it has been a bumpy road all along the way, but man, you wouldn't trade it for anything.

Because God is good.

Would you bow your heads and close your eyes all across this room?

And if you're online, do the same thing, please.

Some of you, you need a relationship with Jesus.

I'm telling you, that's that's the first step in all of this is for you to come to the end of yourself and the shame that you have and the identities that you've embraced.

And for you to confess your sins before the Lord, to turn your life over to Him and allow His saving grace to not only provide you forgiveness and mercy, but to change your very identity.

Would you just pray this prayer of faith with me?

If that's you, would you just say these words?

Dear God, I'm tired of living ashamed.

I ask, Father, that you would come into my life, that you would save me from my sins.

I believe you died on a cross for me.

I believe that you rose from the dead, and right now, in this moment, on this day, I give my life to you, to be my Lord and to be my savior.

Would you continue to keep your heads bowed and your eyes closed?

If you're online, there's gonna be a prompt here in just a moment.

I want you to respond by texting the word you see next to the number that's on the screen.

But for those of you in the room, if you just prayed that prayer with me, I want you just to look up and see where the closest person, staff member, is to you, whether they're in the front or whether they're on the sides.

And in just a moment, we're all gonna stand up and I'm gonna ask you to step out from where you are to come forward and to let someone know that you just prayed that prayer of salvation with me.

Others of you need to come and join United City Church.

God is leading you here to make this your church home.

We are not a church of perfect people that are wearing our real identities underneath our projected perfect images.

We instead claim fullheartedly that we are been saved by grace and Jesus is perfect, and he is our story.

If that's the kind of church you want to be a part of, I want to invite you to come and join United City today.

Maybe others need to be baptized like these ones that we saw.

Maybe this is your next step.

Maybe others need prayer.

You need prayer today to shed that label.

You need prayer today to be able to confess that sin.

You need prayer today because you've got a need in your life, in your family, a financial, a medical, a relational need, whatever it may be.

Every week we want to use this as an opportunity to pray with, pray for you.

Father, I pray that you would move in these moments we have left.

Lead people to respond to you.

Give them boldness and give them courage.

And we thank you in advance for what you will do.

In the name of Jesus, I pray.

Amen.

Wow, what an amazing message we got to hear this morning.

I hope the Lord showed himself to you in a fresh, new way.

Hey, if you made a decision today to follow Jesus or a decision for Christ, we would love to process that with you.

And so text the word next to 55498, and someone from our team will be more than happy to reach out and process that with you.

If you missed the message or you missed a note or two and you want to go back, don't worry.

We've got the option for that as well.

It's gonna be available on Spotify as well as Apple Music.

This has been an amazing morning.

We love you guys so much, and we hope to see you next week.

Bye-bye.