A Holy Confidence
A sermon brought forth from 1 Chronicles 16:8-17 and Philippians 1:1-18a preached on Matt 22, 2022
David’s song sets us up for these famous first words from Philippians. Paul is off to the same start King David was when the Israelites brought the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem. The first King of Israel, Saul, had made a mess and mockery of Israel’s God-worship. The first thing King David does after taking the throne is to pick up all the strewn pieces of his people’s broken story and give them back to God. King David hoped that with his people’s hearts realigned in right relationship with God, God would look upon them with favor and re-build the old but enduring covenant He once made with their ancestor, Moses.
God was the Architect of their salvation; the One who long ago began a good work in them would bring it to completion.
Do you remember the scene in the movie Sister Act where Whoopi Goldberg’s character, Sister Mary Clarence, is tasked with directing the church choir—all nuns? At the first rehearsal, she discovers that she has her work cut out for her. One of the nuns has a powerful voice but needs to be brought down out of the rafters. Some others just mutter along.
There’s another one, Sister Mary Catherine, who Mary Clarence noticed was lip-syncing, so she brings her to the front. She wants to hear her by herself. Sister Mary Catherine opens her mouth, and this small, hesitant, and nervous voice barely emerges. She’s asked to try again. Sister Mary Catherine starts in with the same small voice, and Sister Mary Clarence reaches in to shake her midsection, sure that there’s a bigger voice within this unassuming nun that no one knows about, not even her. And it surfaces—this full, confident, complete voice is shaken loose. She always had it, but never knew it was there. She needed someone to come along to shake the unsure out of her.
From the first notes of his letter, the Apostle Paul is out to shake the unsure out of the faithful in Philippi. Christ Jesus is the Architect of our Salvation, the One who determines himself to do a good work in his faithful people, and Christ is here to take whatever in them is timid, ambivalent, and held back, and liberate it, set it loose from all their prisons—first, from their self-imposed ones. Christ has set them free from every contraint, release what’s locked up and held in, and delivered them into a life established in joy, that their being may no longer be theirs to manage or control, but Christ’s to have and use for His purposes.
God is the Architect of their salvation, and ours; the One who long ago began a good work in them would bring it to completion. I wonder if Paul taught the Philippians the words of confident and holy praise that King David had sung:
“Give praise to the LORD, proclaim his name; make known among the nations what he has done. Sing to him, sing praise to him; tell of all his wonderful acts.”
Paul lived a set-free existence even as he wrote these words from a Roman prison. He was behind bars once again, this time for preaching the Gospel. But Paul was a caged bird who kept singing. He never lost his voice, and he refused to let anyone take it from him.
Philippians is Paul’s happiest letter, and his happiness is infectious. We hear his joy in these first dozen and half verses. Paul is out to get the joy he knows inside of us. He’s determined to get the languages of joy and love within us.
God is the Architect of our salvation; He planned all the inner workings of creation, including our inner workings, and He will sustain them. You can imprison the messenger, but you can’t imprison the Message. There is no containing or managing God.
Paul mentions being lynched—or nearly so, by a religious mob who flogged him and threw him in a Roman prison. He avoided death by pleading citizenship. He had escaped worse: he survived when his boat capsized during a storm at sea. He was headed to Rome; when he arrived, he was thrown in prison for two years. Still imprisoned, still uncertain of what his future held, he looked back and declared “what happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel.”
A prison is a place meant to pull its captives apart. What held Paul together throughout his time in chains was his confidence that there was nothing anyone could do to rob him of his Christ-confidence, or the completeness he knew of and held to even in broken circumstances. Chains could not keep the man from singing—and with a loud, self-assured, and joyous voice that Christ had coaxed out of him.
I wonder how many times Paul sang the same words of praise King David had long ago:
“Look to the Lord and His strength; seek His face always.”
Christ is still building his people, and the One who began a good work in us will bring it to completion. God is the Architect of our salvation; the One who long ago began a good work in us and will bring it to completion. This means there are no incompletes. There are times when we aren’t making progress in our spiritual lives, when we feel incomplete, unfinished, or distressed by our shortcomings. In those seasons, we can remember and be confident in God’s promise and provision. Present conditions cannot hold us from the joy of knowing Christ and the joy Christ takes in knowing us. That’s what makes for holy confidence.
God is at work within our incompleteness, and He will finish what He’s begun. That’s the joy and saving truth of the Gospel.
“He who began a good work in us will carry it to completion on the day of Christ.”
At the same time, it’s our responsibility, just as it was the Philippians’, to cooperate with God so that the work may be completed. God’s grace puts us to work, it keeps us growing. God through Christ wants to shake the unsure out of us.
Take some moments to consider the places you’ve been, the beauty you’ve experienced, the ways you have changed and grown, and the ways you’ve suffered and still survived. Through all of it, you are here. Many of those circumstances and seasons we did not choose for ourselves. Some others we did, though we couldn’t have imagined what they would bring. God has brought you through all of them to this moment. Your life is God’s accomplishment; not despite the difficult seasons, but because of them.
Paul was quite certain that he would die in that Roman prison. Faced with the question of which was better, to live or to die, he knew that he would remain and that his life would continue for the sake of the progress of the Gospel and joy in the faith that comes from it, so Paul committed himself to their growth, to pray for people struggling from whatever it is that kept them from God, and encouraging others along in their spiritual journeys until Christ was formed within them. God is our way-maker. God is the Architect of our salvation; the One who long ago began a good work in us and will bring it to completion.
From the first notes of his letter, the Apostle Paul is out to shake the unsure out of the faithful in Philippi. Had Paul brought the praises of King David with him to the faithful in Philippi:
“Do not touch my anointed ones; do my prophets no harm. Sing to the LORD, all the earth; proclaim his salvation day after day.”
What needs to be shaken alive and coaxed out of us, so that we might gain a full, confident, complete voice—the voice we always had? What’s locked up within us that could be set free to proclaim the Gospel with one strong voice—loud, confident, and complete? God through Christ wants to shake the unsure out of us. Then God in Christ will fill us with the laughter of heaven and be our joy. It will not be His blessings or the innumerable gifts of His grace that will be our joy, but Christ Himself, and Christ alone.
God is the Architect of our salvation, our way-maker; the One who long ago began a good work in us and will bring it to completion.
All praises to the One who made it all and finds it beautiful! Alleluia! Amen.