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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f28744aa7429cf1fc49520ed131e7c9d.pdf
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Confidence
Scripture: Isaiah 54:1-10; Philippians 1:1-18
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
January 18, 1998
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Confidence is a very common word used to describe the level of trust one has in
oneself, in another, in the truth of a claim or reality of a situation. The word, as so
many words in our English vocabulary, stems from the Latin: The prefix con,
meaning with and fidere meaning trust. To live with confidence is to live with
trust.
Trust in what?
A variety of answers are possible.
One may have self-confidence in regard to one’s ability to perform one’s task or to
negotiate some difficult feat. One may have confidence in one’s favorite team. In
Green Bay, confidence runs high in the Packers only one week away from
America’s Holy Sunday. One may have confidence in the people with whom one
works, one’s spouse, one’s family. Obviously, one may have confidence in the
goodness and mercy of God.
But I want us to think about confidence more generally today at the top of
another year. I want to think about confidence as a fundamental attitude over
against the whole of one’s life, life itself and the attitude we share together as a
faith community.
Those who study human development point to the critical importance of
fundamental trust as the foundation for a healthy adjustment to life. Trust not
with a specific object attached to it, but trust as a basic orientation to life and
reality. Studies in child development tell us nothing is more important for the
nurturing of an infant through the earliest experience than the creation of a
secure and loving environment in which the infant, the child, learns to trust.
We know it is so. We know it is true for ourselves and we see it borne out in those
around us. Healthy, whole, fruitful, productive people are marked by confidence;
they live with trust.
Where does it come from?
© Grand Valley State University
�Confidence
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
If one learns very early to trust or not, it must be passed on from generation to
generation. But, where did it begin and on what is it based?
Certainly trust in life’s goodness and ultimate meaningfulness is not obvious from
simple observation of the human experience. Life is fragile, full of peril, haunted
by tragedy. Experience is mixed. When one stops to think about it, trust cannot
rise from experience. Concrete experience can often be the acid that eats away at
trust. As I said at Christmas, children love fairy tales because, while filled with
danger and darkness, things turn out all right and the good folk live happily ever
after. But, it is not so in life - any honest appraisal will in the end reveal human
experience as mixed.
Still, there is something in us that goes on, picks up again, trusts again. And this
is true of religious people and those who practice no religious faith consciously.
Let me suggest that for the religious consciously and the non-religious
unconsciously, confidence is rooted in trust in the goodness and mercy of God that at the heart and center of reality is God Who is for us, for life.
Let me point you to the morning lessons which speak of confidence rooted in
God.
Second Isaiah, as we call the unknown prophet of chapters 40-55, sings of an
eternal covenant of peace to the exiles of Judah living in Babylon. They were on
the edge of despair thinking their God of covenant, Yahweh, had abandoned
them, or had been overruled by the gods of the mighty Babylonian Empire. But
the prophet begins to preach to them, interprets their experience and tells them
stories of their past and encourages them to trust that God will yet deliver them.
They will go home!
He begins the poem recorded in chapter 54 with a call to the barren one to sing;
she who was barren will birth many children. Therefore, the tent must be
enlarged, the curtains stretched out, the stakes strengthened, the cords
lengthened, for "You will spread out."
The allusion to the barren woman would not be lost on these exiles. Who was the
classic barren one in Israel’s past? Sarah, of course.
You have heard me claim many times that Genesis 11:30 is a critical watershed in
the biblical narrative. The first eleven chapters of Genesis record the repeated
failure of humankind to live into the intention of the Creator and then God tries a
new strategy - choosing one family in order to bless eventually all families of the
earth. And how does God begin?
With Sarah, who is barren.
© Grand Valley State University
�Confidence
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
And not only Sarah, but Rebekah and Rachel and Hannah. The prophet of the
exiles played on the memory of his people to remind them that precisely in
barrenness, God acts to effect fruitfulness.
And then, if that is not enough to trigger the rebirth of trust, he reminds them in
verse nine of Noah. Out of the devastation of the Flood, God placed a rainbow in
the sky as a sign of God’s promise that never again would the earth be destroyed.
God’s faithfulness to Creation was signed with the rainbow. The Covenant with
Noah preceded the covenant with Abraham and Sarah. With Abraham and Sarah,
God sealed a Covenant of Grace with a particular family with the intention of
reaching all families, but with Noah, the covenant promise embraced the whole
Creation.
Would not that story remind Israel that Yahweh was no tribal deity limited to
their homeland, but the One Eternal God, Creator of all?
Stories. They are the stuff of human confidence. When trust wears thin, we tell a
story of what God has done and we find our confidence renewed that God will
give us a future.
Stories of faith. Remember and trust; trust God.
Paul was a son of Israel and when he experienced the blinding vision on the Road
to Damascus, he came to believe Jesus was indeed the Messiah, the anointed one
through whom God was effecting that universal intention of the covenant of
Grace sealed with Abraham and Sarah.
We noted that last week; the secret hidden long ages with God was now being
manifest. Paul was amazed and transformed. Now there would be no longer, as
he wrote to the Galatians, Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, but all one
in Christ Jesus. And, he adds, if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s
offspring, heirs according to the promise.
No more barriers dividing humankind;
No more hostility,
No more outsiders and insiders.
Thus transformed, the former persecutor of the people of the Way became the
passionate Apostle of grace, the grace of God that is as wide as the whole human
family.
One of the ancient cities to which he took the story of God’s grace was Philippi,
where a congregation was formed, a community with whom Paul had his most
intimate relationship. There was a deep love affair between Paul and the
Philippian congregation as is evident from his letter to that church.
© Grand Valley State University
�Confidence
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
That letter begins with a rather extended thanksgiving - thanksgiving to God for
this people who had stayed in touch with him and provided for his needs. Now in
prison awaiting trial in the Imperial Court of Rome, Paul writes to express his
deep affection for this people who joined him in a partnership in the Gospel. And
in the midst of his expression of gratitude, he writes,
I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you
will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.
Here the confidence has a specific object - that the work of grace begun among
this people by God will be brought to completion. That confidence is, however,
based on Paul’s fundamental trust in God - the God of the beginning is the God
Who will be at the ending.
Once again we find that Paul’s specific confidence is rooted in that basic
confidence in God. Paul’s confidence was not based on experience; he was in
prison. He would die for his faith. But, the particular circumstance did not
dislodge Paul’s confidence. Indeed, he writes, the circumstance of imprisonment
had actually resulted in an increase in the witness to the Gospel.
I want you to know, beloved, that what has happened to me has actually
helped to spread the gospel.
The Imperial Guard received Paul’s witness; others gained confidence through
Paul’s imprisonment and bore their witness with greater boldness, and even,
what might have defeated a lesser person, some took advantage of Paul’s
imprisonment to further their own rival point of view. But, says Paul, so what?
Christ is preached.
I rejoice.
What lies behind this remarkable grace? Is it not Paul’s confidence that God is at
work in what seems the most adverse circumstances?
Confidence - a very great gift; a healthy way to live and engage life. Living with
such trust, Paul rested easily. This restless, passionate Apostle who traveled the
ancient world as a man with a mission of eternal significance found inner serenity
as he contemplated the turn of events because, through it all, he trusted God.
That was the bedrock of his life.
Telling Paul’s story does for me what the prophet telling the stories of Abraham
and Sarah and Noah did for the exiles in Babylon. Faith is renewed, trust restored
when we remember - remember the stories of those who have gone on before us.
There was a lovely celebration here last Sunday. There was joy. We have been
through deep waters, but can we not say with Paul that what has happened to us
has actually resulted in the furtherance of this work of grace? Is that not the
© Grand Valley State University
�Confidence
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
wonder of it all - that the challenge and the struggle have positioned us with new
freedom and joy to find our way to the embodiment of God’s grace here for the
healing of persons?
I could go back over the years to the times this text has been used here watershed moments when we were challenged to move out in a new dimension of
faith. Always the ground was the God Who has begun a good work here and
surely will not let it languish, but will bring it to completion.
Confidence. It is a gift. It is the way to live freely, fruitfully, because it is a life
rooted in God and the trust that God is for us. God will go with us, will keep us
and will finally bring us home.
All will be well. You can trust that, not because things work out, but because God
is God.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e6e1d45af7daf1bb63a3b1c79c73bee4.mp3
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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English
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Sound
Text
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
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Event
Epiphany II
Scripture Text
Isaiah 54:2-3, Philippians 1:6
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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KII-01_RA-0-19980118
Date
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1998-01-18
Title
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Confidence
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Sound
Format
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on January 18, 1998 entitled "Confidence", on the occasion of Epiphany II, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaiah 54:2-3, Philippians 1:6.
All Will Be Well
Fundamental Trust
Grace
Love at the Core of the Universe