Pastor's Ponderings: Bible Study on Paul’s letter to the Galatians 3:15-22 (February 3, 2025)

February 3, 2025:  Monday Bible Study on Paul’s letter to the Galatians 3:15-22

Monday morning greetings to all of you who are on this email to do this morning's Bible Study.

On Sunday at American, we had our congregational meeting. We approved the program budget with a small decrease in the overall budget for 2025. We also elected our new Congregational Council. Our first council meeting will be after church on Sunday, in my office. We will also install the new council that morning at worship. I hope that you will be able to be with us at the worship service that morning. I thank God for the Gospel Music Group and their wonderful talents. Jeff, our drummer, and vocalists Annette, Melody, Debbie, Holly, Jeremiah, and Joanna. The Bell Choir begins their work on their new Easter music in the next several weeks. Our members' commitment to ring their bells is amazing. I am the director, but without the talents of Holly, Annette, Tricia, Gail, Jared, Fyn, and Melody we could not have the bells ringing at our worship. We have welcomed 2 new members in the last two months too.  Welcome to Cathy and Gerri. Life continues at American, and we all need to be thankful to God for our small congregation's vitality, and for His call on all of our lives to witness to the Gospel, and offer our support of our time, talents, and resources for the work of Christ's church at American.

Today we move to Galatians 3:15-22. A quick read of this passage reveals exactly how complicated, Paul, a former Pharisee could be as he unwound the complications between the law of Moses, and the Grace we all know through Jesus Christ.

In more modern terms, and you may have experienced this in the life of your family at the very difficult time of arranging for celebrations of life (funerals) for them. If everything is not stated clearly in legal documents, directing the family to arrange for the deceased's wishes in their celebration of life, the family is likely to not see eye to eye on what they each think their family member would have wanted for the service. In today's reading it is a similar situation with regards to law and grace. Paul tells the reader of this letter, that God did spell out want He wanted in black and white. And now, the agitators who are present with the Galatian community are really trying to insert their own agendas in this congregation's life. Instead of the freedom in Christ which Paul had previously indicated, these people wanted instead to create strong ethnic ties, which included circumcision as the way in which the community of believers must be filled. Gentiles getting circumcised was how these Gentiles must become members of the Galatian Church. It is here that you and I must remember that God's original covenant with Abraham was based on Abraham's faith, not the law. Paul says that placing such a measure as keeping the law as how outsiders might join the Galatians' Church is taking the law, which Paul now understands is only an interim move by God to maintain His children until the fullness of God's grace is revealed in Jesus Christ. Therefore, it is belief that is required by God as the means of becoming part of His Christian Children. Is it any wonder that the Jews who wanted the Law to be in a position of primacy, help us to know that in some ways today, we can get caught doing the same thing in our modern-day faith communities, failing to be open to all people who believe.  In recent decades in the ELCA Lutheran Church we have been through these conversations and through representative national assemblies, have come much closer to inclusivity for all people who believe in Christ as their Lord and Savior. If we still look to the Old Testament for our guide in being community, we, like the interlopers who wanted the primacy of the law above all else, will discover, time and again, that as Paul tells us, we are set free from the burden of earning our way before God, and instead can only come to righteousness through our faith in Jesus Christ.  No person could ever be the mediator of the one family that was to be created through Abraham, not even Moses. One family, which Abraham was promised, must depend on something more than obedience to the Law. God saw righteous for Abraham and all who would follow through belief, not through the Law of Moses which followed. The completion of God's intent to save His created children, was only through the Messiah, Jesus Christ. He alone is the means by which all of us will be received in God's Heaven, through faith alone, revealed to us in God's Word, and held in our lives by the Love of the Spirit.

May God bless your life today and always.

In Christ's love, Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Old Testament bible study of Psalm 5 (January 30, 2025)

January 30, 2024:  Thursday Bible Study on Psalm 5

My dear friends in Christ,

I hope that you have been praying for the victims of that terrible plane and helicopter crash in Washington D.C. last night.  There are 67 deaths, which includes the jet crew and the military men flying that Black Hawk Helicopter.  May the LORD of Light hold all of these victims' families in His care, bringing to them the comfort of the Resurrection along with the hope the Spirit places in our very lives every day.  Quick reminder.  Friday Foodies of Faith tomorrow at Cheddars at 11:30 AM, and Sunday's Congregational Meeting starts at 8:30 AM with carry-in food at 8:00 AM in the narthex.  I hope that I will see all of you who are members there.

If the 5th Psalm does anything, it helps us to see the need for reaching out to the authority of our Father in Heaven, in order to place the cares of our hearts, and to call for justice for those who stand against the children of the Covenant.  The appeal here could be from the King (David) when things are not going well and there are all kinds of intrigue around him as people work to displace others, either by failing to tell the truth, or by taking some other kind of action which threatens the person is who appealing to that highest authority to help, calling for the justice and recompense for brokenness and sinfulness to be caught up in God's judgement.  Obviously, David, the likely writer of this 5th Psalm, had grave concerns over how things for his kingship, and for the king's people, including himself, were going. We do however need to be aware that there is a kind of genuine faithfulness on the part of the Psalmist, who is hoping that God will respond to this appeal.  The writer must be aware that getting even is not how this all works.  This Psalm is the turning over of all of those concerns the Psalmist, or King, or victim might feel for getting even. )revenge(  In the case of this Psalmist, the desire for God's Justice is that God is the God of Truth, Light, and Love, the constant defender, and therefore, is always willing to make the enemies of the faithful pay the price for their actions, bringing His justice to play to create the world for which the Psalmist (David) is asking.  This Psalm is an indication of what faith is about, trusting that the LORD will always do what is right for those who are faithful.  Of course, the ways which God chooses to use, may not always fit with the requests of the Psalmist, or perhaps it would be better to say, that they may not fit by time, action, and the immediacy of punishment for which every victim is looking  Will it be a natural outcome of the perpetrator's choices, or will it appear as if they are really doing great and benefiting from their choice throughout their lives, with the faithful requests for justice being fulfilled after the death of the enemy of God's faithful community?  At its end, this Psalm calls upon God to be faithful as He has always been, causing the faithful to rejoice and sing their praises of the LORD, knowing that God is always the shield and protector of His faithful ones.

There are some really good things for us to remember here in this Psalm.  First, we should never use God's justice as the means of fulfilling our personal means of getting even.  Second, we should always know that God is going to protect us in His way, His time, with the very best consequence that could have resulted from that enemies' faulted actions which brought harm to the lives of God's faithful ones.  Third, we must always offer our praise and thanksgiving to God, restating the tenets of our faith with voices and choices made to help us be the LORD'S servants in all things, and at all times.

Next week we head into Psalm 6.   Thanks for being with me this morning.

In Christ's love, Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Bible Study on Paul’s letter to the Galatians 3:10-14 (January 28, 2025)

January 28, 2025:  Tuesday Bible Study on Paul’s letter to the Galatians 3:10 - 14

May the blessing and compassion of our Lord Jesus Christ fill your life.

A quick reminder is that Friday we will be eating out with the Foodies of Faith at Cheddars at 11:30AM. Call the office if you want to join our group.  Sunday is our annual congregational meeting at 8:30AM preceded by carry-in brunch items at 8AM. This meeting is for members to set our program budgets and to elect Council members for this year.

Though it may seem cold these days here in the desert, Jesse and I experienced at least 6 days of our twelve-day trip in temperatures below freezing. On the roads we saw many trucks that had slid off the road or crashed on the road in the storm that came right after we had driven through on our way to Michigan. Those trucks and cars certainly must have caused terrible traffic tie ups on the four lane interstates on which we traveled. They blocked the traffic from getting through to where it was headed. To put it simply in today's reading from Galatians, the law was just such a block, according to Paul, preventing the Jews who tried to live by that law which was brought to them by Moses from God. The law's purpose was to build and maintain a community made up of a wide variety of groups, from the Hebrews of Egypt to the wilderness tribes which joined them on their journey to the promised land. It was God's intent that these widely different communities could come together in unity. As we know from the OT, there were constant issues between the people, with Hebrews being drawn in to the worship of a golden calf. But this covenant with God became the foundation of the Jewish Torah, and the way in which Jews and Gentiles must live in order to be right with God under the Torah. But Paul, a former Pharisee, ignores all of the Jewish law for being right with God, and moves immediately to claiming that it is only by faith and trust in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, just as Abraham had done, with his faith being reconned to him as righteousness.  It may well be that it was only because Paul was such an authority in the law that this view of how the Spirit gifts people with faith, and that by faith, through Jesus Christ, being right with God is possible. The language that the law was a curse and a block to the elect of God, the Jews, necessarily drew people to Christ who bore the burden/block of the curse of the law, paying the price with his perfect life, making it possible for everyone, Jews and Gentiles alike, to be made right with God through faith.  Just as the wreckers and cranes cleared the blockages on the freeways of the snowstorm area of our country, Christ also cleared the burden of the curse of the law by completing it with His sacrifice and death.

I know that this seems to be a quite short study on this passage, but clear thinking makes this passage a quick read when we come to understand that Paul tells us that God is the one who replaced the failure of the law in the face of human sin, with the sacrifice of the one true lamb, His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and just as God told Abraham that he would carry this faith into the world to all people, Christ brought to reality, the means by which this could happen, and is still happening.

With love in Christ, Pastor Kim