Pastor's Ponderings: Old Testament bible study of Psalm 54 (May 14, 2026)

May 14, 2026:  Thursday Bible Study on Psalm 54

Blessing and Peace be with you on this warm desert morning. I must admit that it was beautiful at 5AM this morning as I drove Jesse to his work at Handicar. With windows down it was about 75 degrees. I hope that your week is going well, and that your NBA playoff team is still in the running. This week we are studying the 54th Psalm. It holds for us some important messages. Perhaps the most important message is to let God be the one who takes care of a faithful person's detractors and those who think that faith, hope, and love are foolish. What true Christians see is a people, including some congregations, who are looking for power and wealth in their ministries. It is easy to say that it is all for Christ that such endeavors take place, but at whose expense? And usually that kind of ministry is meant to empower the members and the leaders, so that at the expense of all other people, including other styles of Christianity who really do work to keep their focus on the humility of Christ, the Love of Christ, the self-sacrifice of Christ, and the offering to make others’ lives better by ministry in the name of the Savior, come under criticism and attack by those who believe that only they are on the right path in their Christian journeys.

Today in our reading from Psalm 54 we discover that David is truly dependent on God as David faces those who would destroy him out of their own fear and insecurity.

A perfect situation that describes this for David is his relationship with King Saul, who at his beginning as the nation's monarch, was a person of faith and God's kind of justice for those who were his charges in Israel. But over several years, what happened so often was that Saul became less stable in his place as king, and he was indeed afraid, jealous, and hostile toward anyone who the people saw as their next king. In this Psalm David turns to God to help him, and even when he refuses to destroy Saul's reign as king, David refuses to harm Saul even when opportunities arise, which they did two times. Instead, David turns to God for God's action to set this issue right, and that is exactly what happens. (You may read I Samuel 23 and 26 if you would like to expand your understanding of how David behaved, and how Saul responded even when David refrained from harming Saul.)

There are three elements that are important for us to realize in this prayer of David's.

1.       The Appeal to God to listen to the offered Petition.

2.     Rescue Me!

3.     Put my attackers down!

We are probably fine with numbers 1 and 2, but this third one may give us pause to think. It seems like a very radical prayer appeal, yet we see God acting in ways that may make us uncomfortable when our prayers are answered. Remember who God is, he tells Moses that He is to be identified as "I AM". The mind of God is ours to comprehend through the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, yet that is not the fullness of who God is. In the greater picture of God's plan for his creation, and His children, God can certainly act with wrath against those who move to harm the faithful ones. But He may not. That simply means that God will act in the future, and His action may be something we don't even live to see. So that issue here is David's faith and trust in the LORD. Rather than move to bring destruction to Saul on his own, David relies on God to take care of all that needs to be done. It also includes worshiping and honoring God with a person's very life. In fact, it means leaving such actions up to God alone. Through Christ, you and I can be confident that God can, and will, act on our behalf. When we get into Psalm 55 next Thursday, we will see how difficult it can be to fully trust God, especially when our journey gets tough.

God Bless you and keep you every day.

In Christ's love, Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Tuesday Bible Study on Acts of the Apostles 17:1-9 (May 12, 2026)

May 12, 2026:  Tuesday Bible Study on Acts 17:1-9

Good morning, dear friends in Christ. I want to remind you that Sunday worship has been very comfortable. Right now, the coolers are very effective and keep the temperature almost too cool in the Sanctuary on Sunday morning. I also am teaching a Sunday school class this week on "Faith and Civic Life, the well-being of All”. We will meet at 9AM and finish by about 9:45AM. You can certainly come and have a cup of coffee and a donut. Donuts are provided each week for the Sunday school class by Melody and Me. Come and enjoy. This class will be held this week and resumes after we have returned from our sister-in-law's Celebration of Life in Michigan. By the way, I share greetings with you from Pastor Ron and Becky who are home in Eagan and experiencing some wonderful May chilly weather there. We are hoping that we will be able to see them for a quick visit on our return trip from Michigan.

In our reading from the Acts of the Apostles today, 17:1-9, we once again see the pattern that Paul has established for where, and with whom, he will share the Good News of Jesus Christ. He goes to the place with which he is most familiar, the synagogue. There preaching, for three Sabbaths, and as a former pharisee who is an effective debater of the law and history of the Jews, he presents Jesus Christ to all who are present. Like Philippi, Thessalonica is a community where Paul's preaching and teaching finds him and Silas in trouble once again. Though Paul preaches the truth about Christ, the Jews become enraged, because his preaching has not only drawn some Jews to become followers of Christ, but in an even almost strange way, Paul's preaching is really attractive to the women who are present, and to the gentiles who seem to have latched themselves previously to the Jewish faith community because they are drawn to its One God theology.  It is really the gentiles who are converted to Christianity and drawn away from the Jews who cause the Jewish community to erupt with anger at Paul's success. Apparently, the Jews had come to see the gentiles as their proselytes. (soon to be converted to Judaism) Christianity was more attractive to them, particularly the men, who knew that conversion to Judaism would require a circumcision, and that was most certainly the most unattractive part of a gentile conversion for a man into the Jewish faith. Christianity had no such requirement. If you remember it was only those who were of Jewish heritage who needed to be circumcised as a way of dealing with the more conservative converted Jews who had become followers of Jesus Christ in the Jerusalem church. The gentile men had no such requirement. Of course, the Jews, sought to imprison Paul and Silas and others who were with them, and the name that we find in this passage, Jason, must have been a newly Christianized man who was hosting Paul, Silas, and others at his home. When the mobs, organized by the Jews, came to take Paul off to be tried for what they considered heresy, it appears that Paul and Silas were already on their way out of town, and headed to Beroea, and at the encouragement of the converts they fled in the darkness of the night so that they would be safe.  After not finding Paul, and others who had been with him at Jason's home, the mob took Jason, claiming that he was part of a wild group of people who undermined the authority of Rome in their teachings. It appears that Jason and some of the others who were with him were able to post what you and I would call a bond, and they were released. It is well and good for us to realize that what we have come to believe through the calm of Baptism and Sunday School and worship was not so easy for Paul and others who brought Christ as a new presence into the lives of those who did not want their lives, or beliefs, to change.  Over many generations, missionaries found their work to often be dangerous, and sometimes deadly, for their families and themselves. Paul was certainly blessed by God's protection and speed in his journeys for Christ. You and I should never be discouraged because what we believe and share gets rejected. Sometimes within our own families, our faith does not carry any weight, or with our neighbors and friends, but the work of sharing Christ with others must go on if the world is to be shaped with the love and peace of our Savior and Lord. We must thank God for the success of those who had the necessary courage, who faced the risk, like Paul and Silas did.

With the love of Christ for all people, Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Monday Bible Study on Acts of the Apostles 16:25-40 (May 11, 2026)

May 11, 2026:  Monday Bible Study on Acts 16:25-40

Blessings to you on this beautiful morning. Just so you are aware, my sister-in-law's celebration of life has been set for late May. Melody and I, along with two of our sons, will be headed off to Michigan for a journey that we believe will last about two weeks. We will depart early on Sunday, May 24th, and be back not later than Saturday June 6th in time for Gospel Music Sunday and the "Bring your favorites" carry-in potluck on that Sunday. We are hopeful that our journey will include seeing the Backers in Wisconsin, and Pastor Ron and Becky in Eagan outside of Minneapolis. Please pray for God's Speed for us as we travel what will probably be our last journey to Michigan. On Sunday's during our absence, I will provide recorded piano hymn music, and sermons presented on the big screen at church. I will be working on these for the next two weeks.

Today we are in chapter 16 of the Acts of the Apostles. The troublemakers in the city have already come together at the encouragement of the Jews who were troubled by Paul's preaching in the synagogue for three sabbaths. They got a criminal contingent of people together to go after Paul and Silas, and of course, it was the outsiders who were jailed instead of the people who went after them. The good news for Paul and Silas was that they had succeeded in the conversion of a number of wealthy Jews to become believers, and some gentiles to whom they had also spoken. However, this did not seem to have a great impact on their getting thrown into jail and being held with stocks and chains. Next comes a truly amazing miracle. There is an earthquake which freed the men from their stocks and chains. It probably loosened the anchors allowing them to get free. In this whole process, we might think that escape was in the minds of Paul, but apparently, he and Silas had spent the night singing hymns and proclaiming the Gospel's Good News to the other prisoners. The outcome for the prisoners was that Paul convinced them not to run for freedom, but to remain waiting for the jailer to come to their assistance. (perhaps Paul had something else in mind which we will speak to in a few minutes) The jailer prepared to kill himself, confident that his jail charges had all escaped during the quake. Finding that Paul, Silas, and the others were still there, and had not run away, the jailer then finishes setting them free, cares for their wounds, welcomes them into his home, feeds them, and his entire household is then baptized by Paul. It is indeed a little later in Paul's writing that he claims to not know if he baptized anyone during his ministry. But that is another kind of question for later as we study Paul's writing. We don't find out too much more about what happened with the Jailer and his family, but we do know that  when Paul is brought to trial before a judge, the jailer has already discovered that Paul is a Roman citizen (in addition to being a Jew), and he and his party were jailed without a hearing of any kind which was against Roman law.  Upon the jailer's request to set Paul and the others free, the judge chooses the road of least resistance, and at Paul's request, sends Roman representatives to set him and the others free. The next thing that Paul and Silas do is to go to visit Lydia. Perhaps they are telling her who the newest members of the Christian community which she has cared for are. I am certain that Paul and Silas are offering her their thanks and farewells. It doesn't tell us in these passages if Lydia had played any role in getting Paul and Silas free. She was an exceptionally influential woman with her wealth to back her up. That can only be conjecture on our part. What we need to know out of this passage, is that we always need to have faith in God's presence and willingness to be with His faithful ones through Jesus Christ. Though you and I may not always have earthquakes in our lives when we have a special need, other miracles of God's love and grace abound in our lives all the time. Because we are in Christ as His Baptized children, we are also in God and the Spirit, and they are in us, intimately present in every moment of every day. Our relationship with Christ brings us both joy and confidence in His promises to always be present with us, and those who will experience the love of Christ through us. God bless you.

With the Love of Christ, Pastor Kim