Pastor's Ponderings: Old Testament bible study of Psalm 18:20-50 (May 22, 2025)

May 22, 2025:  Thursday Bible Study on Psalm 18:25-50

Good morning my dear friends in Christ.

Our family just finished attending graduations for our grandchildren yesterday. What a wonderful day, and a massive transition point in their lives as they move on into a new part of their lives. Levi will move into high school next year, and Caleb has been accepted at the fire science academy after two years of pre academy work in the JTED program. Our good friend Logan is off to NAU in the fall to study fire science there. Let's pray for these young people that their new endeavors will bring them success and happiness in their lives. At church this week, we will celebrate our High School Graduates, Caleb and Logan, with a cake reception after worship. Yes, our Gospel Music Group will still rehearse afterward. There will be no bell choir practice this week. Bells will resume on the first Sunday of June after service. Please also remember our coffee and donut hour this Sunday starting at 9AM. We are going to have the opportunity to share in Christ's fellowship with one another before worship begins.

Today we continue in the 18th Psalm with verses 25-50. This part of Psalm 18 is filled with the kind of language that offers praise to God for His constant presence and provision, even in the face of troubling times, which in David's case may have been of his own making. Before David becomes king over Israel, when he is supporting and offering encouragement to King Saul, and, in fact, even at the beginning of his becoming king after Saul, David can claim, as he does in this Psalm, that he has been upright, good, and just in his life as a servant of the then king, and in his trust in God.  In this Psalm David consistently proclaims God as his Rock (my translation says crag). His song to God does not change when David moves from this period of living as a new king who has come to the throne by the power of YHWH. And during that early time in his life David is guided, supported, and nurtured by God's love for him. But like so many who have come to power and live as good people, whose decisions are always based on the goodness, power, and authority of the One who brought them to the place in which they now live and serve God, when we read about David's story we should be amazed at how his life moved forward by God's hand.  David's relationship with God was one of amazing faith and trust in all things. We read that in this Psalm about the presence of God with David that brings him the courage and strength to jump into battle, to scale walls, and to charge into the face of the enemy with trust that God will keep him safe. But like so many who have great success and have come into great power in their lives, David slipped in his devotion to living with such rightness in his life. Instead, he lusted after a woman who was not his to have and arranged for the likely death of a faithful soldier who was the woman's husband, after discovering that this woman was pregnant with David's child. I must tell you that I have seen too many clergy who have fallen from their grace filled ministries out of their loss of direction in their relationship with God. Yes, it’s called sin! And these clergy, who had energy and commitment to their call to serve the Gospel as parish pastor, bishop, and others of previous good character, lost their way in the power and prestige of their God-called ministries.  All too often we both hear it and see it on the news on TV. David lost his way with YHWH, and it is the beginning of more chaos in his life, which will mean greater struggles and less confidence in all his service as king. Yes, there is punishment, but out of David's elicit relationship with Bathsheba, the child of their "love" is taken in death. Scripture tells us that this is God's action. What it does not say is that this child of this affair is punished with separation from God, as some conservative Christians would claim today. I must believe that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ held David's child in His caring presence eternally. It was instead David and Bathsheba who suffered grief, and mostly Scripture sees David as the culprit in all of this. So, David must confess his sin and restore his relationship with YHWH. In our reading today we see that on-going relationship with God, for like us, to whom else can we turn? For David to continue he must repent, and even when he does that he struggles after all of this happens, but he continues to proclaim his faith in God in all things. This is what we see in this large passage in Psalm 18.

Something in this reading which may trouble us, is the language about God's role in the bloody and deadly work that God does through David in combat with David's enemies. But these nations who are in conflict with Israel stand in the way of God's plan and purpose to bring his elect children into His presence, and at the same time to bring other nations beyond Israel into faith in God, with all of this coming to consummation in the life, ministry, suffering, death, and Resurrection of God's only begotten son, Jesus Christ.  The LORD'S workings in life are sometimes very mysterious and difficult for us to understand, but, in faith, with those Christians who have come before us, we trust that Our LORD knows what He is doing, and where He is headed, and that you and I are included in those who are here now, and who will be there in eternity, because the promise of God for us is steadfast!

I hope to see many of you this Sunday at church for coffee and donuts early, and for our graduates' reception after church.

With love in Christ, Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Tuesday Bible Study on Paul’s letter, 1 Thessalonians 5:23-28 (May 20, 2025)

May 20, 2025:  Tuesday Bible Study on Paul’s letter, 1 Thessalonians 5:23-28

Conclusion of the first letter Paul writes to the Thessalonians.

Blessings, Peace, and Joy on this wonderful Tuesday Morning. Now it is afternoon. I just finished a couple of hours arranging for the delegate stay in Las Vegas on the 11th through the 14 of June. We were able to get two nice rooms at a Hilton hotel off the strip, near NLV.  Sharyn and Jesse are our delegates, and of course I am also a voting delegate for the assembly. Keep us in your prayers for travel. Continue to pray for the people in the mid-south, and mid-west as they face another day of likely storms. Please remember to join us after church this Sunday for a graduation reception for Logan and Caleb, and come early for donuts, juice, and coffee at 9AM for a time of fellowship on this last Sunday of the month.

Today we are in the last few verses of Chapter 5 in Paul's first letter to the Thessalonian Christians. Yesterday we read and considered Paul's guidance for how to live as a holy person, both the do’s and the don'ts. Today we have Paul's closing for this first letter, and as he began the first part of this letter with prayer, we find him offering prayers again in these last verses.

Paul commonly wrote about the faithfulness of the one who sent him, and that very same faithfulness of God for every believer. I suspect that we don't start our day giving thanks to God for His faithfulness that goes with each of us through the days of our lives. Perhaps this would be a good addition for our morning and evening prayers! Many of us who are believers find our peace, courage, strength, and abiding love in the Church, where our faith is strengthened every time we gather to be encouraged in the Gospel, and fed with the living presence of Christ in, with, and around our lives in Holy Communion.  Having said all of this, every one of us who are churched must remember that the church is not moved forward by the will of people, that's us, it is moved forward by the all-powerful faithfulness of God Who has sent His Son and provided us with a daily Holy Spirit presence in our every day.  Continuing, when Paul says, and encourages, the Thessalonian Christians to live holy lives, we must understand that such living is only possible because the God who sees us as His greatest treasure, has brought holiness to us through His Son. While still sinners, we are holy through the merit and perfection of Jesus Christ. In Paul's conclusion to this first letter, he looks forward with hope. You and I should always be looking forward with hope too. We can do that because our God who is faithful has a plan for each and every one of us, both as we live this life, and as we come to the glory of God's Heaven when our bodies can no longer carry us in this world.  In the face of all things, we are surrounded by God's faithful love and compassion, which moves us day by day into the hope which is ours in Jesus Christ. In this journey of hope, it may take a lifetime to live in the Peace of Christ which passes all the understanding of this world in which we live. Next week we move on to Paul's second letter to these new Christians in Thessalonica.

With love and hope in all things because of the unsurpassed Grace of God!

Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Monday Bible Study on Paul’s letter, 1 Thessalonians 5:12-22 (May 19, 2025)

May 19, 2025:  Monday Bible Study on Paul’s letter, 1 Thessalonians 5:12-22

Good morning my dear friends and may our LORD'S richest blessing be with you throughout this day and always. Please keep Pastor Ron and Becky in your prayers as they travel to their summer home in Minneapolis. The weather across the plains has been pretty vicious, so let's pray for good travel days filled with renewal and joy for them.  Please also remember to keep Mark and Linda in your prayers. They are now home in Wisconsin for the summer, and they too are in the line of the bad weather that has been brutalizing the mid-west. Please also pray for the families of the victims of the tornados that have been sweeping across our nation nearly every day. Please offer continued prayers for peace in all the places in our world where hatred, greed, and sin have taken nations to war.

This coming Sunday we will honor Logan and Caleb on their graduation from High School. We will have a brief cake reception after service. Congratulations to both of you!

Today we are in the closing part of Paul's first letter. Once again Paul encourages the behavior that identifies who the truly faithful ones are in this fledgling Christian community. Not only are they identified by the words they speak, but also by the joy in Christ that their hearts know in His love, and by their actions. In the Gospels, which are later writings in the New Testament, we hear these very hopes and behaviors that Paul writes to the Thessalonians. (Remember that it was Paul's letters that came first in the New Testament, yes, even before the Gospel writers felt God's call in their lives to record the true record of Christ's life in Israel) Let me say that each one of these suggestions of Paul for the Christians in Thessalonica could be a lengthy sermon.  In this passage Paul speaks for how the teachers of the Good News, who are discerned by the people who listen to them to be teaching and preaching authentic and true representations of the very same truth that Paul brought to them are to be held in esteem for this gift of God in their lives,  Paul talks about this by saying that they should have the highest rank of love.  Paul then moves on to tell the Thessalonians that they should live in peace with one another. We all know that damage that happens when even one person in our midst finds it difficult to be the Love of Christ for their brothers and sisters.

Here, as in the Gospels, we read that the community has a responsibility to lovingly call out that poor behavior which may split the congregation. And this must happen in private when those who guide the community must have "that talk" with a member who is so off the mark. This can only become community information if that change of heart has not filled their life with repentance, forgiveness, and grace. Let us admit that this is tough on both sides when church discipline must intervene to restore the wholeness of Christ to the community of believers. I am thankful that in our congregation this is a rare circumstance.

What we find here is very similar to chapter 5 of the Gospel of Matthew, and its beatitude teachings by Christ, and indeed the failure of the leaders and people of Israel to do this, meant that they would once again find themselves driven from the promised land.  Following is Paul's list of what is right and good and just:

1. Console the downcast.

2. Help the weak.

3. Be sympathetic towards everybody.

4. There should be no revenge between brothers and sisters in Christ.

5. Always find a way to treat everyone you meet with loving kindness and goodness.

6. Always celebrate. (meals, receptions of honor, donut fellowship in Christ)

7. Pray constantly.

8. In everything be thankful. This is God's will for all people, and most especially for we who accept Christ as our Lord and Savior.

9. Don't quench the Spirit, for with Her, all things are possible, even the surprising ones.

10. Don't look down on prophecies, remembering that the only way to discern their truth is to wait to see if they come true. Then you will know.

11. Test everything, holding it up to the glass of Christ's love and forgiveness in all things.

12. If discernment shows Christ's truth and gentle love is present hold it fast in your life and faith journey. However, if in discernment you know Christ's teaching opposes something coming into your life that would seem to be evil, then stay away from it.

This long list is all about what choices and decisions are faced by those who are the children of Jesus Christ. This is how we are called to live, and the journey is Spirit guided, and Redeemer fulfilled through God's only begotten Son, Jesus Christ.

When you have a life question, refer to this list for help.

With the Love of Christ, Pastor Kim