Pastor's Ponderings: Tuesday Bible Study on Acts of the Apostles 7:37-53 (October 28, 2025)

October 28, 2025:  Tuesday Bible Study on Acts 7:37-53

Good morning my dear friends. Please continue to pray for Becky Prasek as she undergoes testing to reach a diagnosis that will help her specialists to plan a course of treatment. It looks now like it may well be a nerve getting too crowded in her spinal column, so pray for great test results for Becky. Please also pray for Mark and Linda Backer who live in Wisconsin. We pray for their health throughout the past six months, and that they will be able to return to Tucson for the winter that can be so brutal up north. Pray too for Liisa and Rudy Mendoza who are helping their friend Itai return to California from the Dakotas where he has been a professor of signing. His brain cancer and its presence in his auditory system cannot tolerate yet another cold winter. We all knew that the peace between Israel and the Gaza Palestinians was tenuous at best. Today Israel will once again break that peace accord and begin bombing in the Gaza Strip. It is interesting how much Stephen's continuing telling of the Hebrews in the wilderness, and how once again their worship of the Temple rather than the LORD whose habitation is beyond human restraints and who has guided them across the ages to the time of Jesus, and then in the time of the new Christian Church in Jerusalem,  and yet through it all the Jews remain disobedient to their God.  We should all note that the tone of Stephen's preaching and revelation of the truth of how the people who God has loved takes a turn in today's passage that becomes aggressive and confrontational with the Sanhedrin. What Stephen comes to at this trial, and because of the leaders' continuing aggression toward those whose faith has been placed in Jesus as the Savior and Messiah, is a place in which the Spirit motivates him to confront the unfaithfulness of these powerful Jews.

Here are the important parts of this rather long continuation of Stephen's homily (message) which ends in his railing against those who have rejected God's only begotten son:

1. Stephen makes it very clear that the Hebrews/Jews have been constantly disobedient and rebellious against the LORD who has blessed them time and again with sheltering and protecting them, even when their very next opportunity to act faithfully is rejected once again for an easier human way to go.

2. The Hebrews/Jews have had the most amazing opportunities to be thankful and joyful in the LORD, and yet even after God's carrying them through the wilderness, and providing the manna and quail and water during their journey, in Moses' absence on Sinai for 40 days they become impatient and insist that Aaron build them an idol of their own making which they are more than prepared to worship. a false god. And here, even though Stephen does not say it directly yet, his inference is that the very same thing has happened with everything the Hebrews/Jews have undertaken to do, including the abject rejection of Jesus Christ, the Messiah of God. As Stephen continues it becomes obvious that the temple itself has become a false god for these people.

3. Stephen strongly insists that the Hebrews/Jews have persistently acted to limit God. And they have come throughout the history of the building of the temple, to worship the temple itself instead of worshiping the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who the temple has been built to honor, rather than contain and restrict God to the Holy of Holies.  The misunderstanding of the Hebrews/Jews about their relationship with God is truly difficult to accept. Of course, the building where we worship, our church at 115 N Tucson Blvd, has, from time to time, been a place where people have treasured the building and faceted glass windows more than the God who they are meant to represent.  The beauty of our worship space, the powerful presence of the temple in Jerusalem, are both meant to draw us close to our God who has done everything for which we could ever have hoped, in this life, and the next! This past Sunday we had the prophetic passage 31:31-34 from the prophet Jeremiah that God would be in our very minds and hearts, and there would no longer be the need for anyone else (human) to teach us the Way. When we worship a thing made of human hands, we are truly limiting our LORD and failing to let His living presence in us take us beyond the things made of human hands. Church buildings are important as we grow and learn and live more deeply in Christ. They are a place which surrounds that learning and growth with the Love of God through the people of faith who surround and encourage our own faith journeys, but as beautiful as our stained glass is, it should never be worshiped as if it is God!  If the day comes to release ourselves from the buildings at American, worship can certainly happen elsewhere, just like the barber shop where American got its start.

4. Stephen charges the leaders of the Sanhedrin of following in the footsteps of their forebears, the people of their heritage, who like them, also rejected, despised, and hated the prophets who the LORD sent to them, and even worse, they arrested, beat, and murdered God's Son who had come to bring Holy Grace and Mercy to God's children AGAIN as a once and for all act of reconciliation!   However, instead of seeing Jesus as the great blessing that he was, they instead saw Him as the enemy of their status, wealth, and power.

Stephen is anger filled as he speaks these words, but he is also filled with grief. What sadness that once again Stephen, an intelligent and compassionate child of Jesus Christ, who is prepared to be servant who would bring timely justice to those who needed food, and whose life was filled with the Spirit and Christ's great Love, and even though it broke Jewish Sabbath Law, what he did never broke the law of God's Love for His children's needs.

With Love in Christ, Pastor Kim        Next Monday the first Martyr.

Pastor's Ponderings: Monday Bible Study on Acts of the Apostles 7:17-36 (October 27, 2025)

October 27, 2025:  Monday Bible Study on Acts 7:17-36

Blessings and Peace be with you this morning in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

As I walk out the door on these cool and crisp mornings I give thanks to God for such beauty and comfort. I must admit that I think my teens don't get it. For them it seems to be just another day of commitments and schoolwork, so I comment every day to them about the wonderful quality of the morning and deep blue of the morning sky. Perhaps it will sink in one of these days. So, I will keep it up until they do get it. In prayers today: Melody and I both spoke with Kandice and Lisa last evening. We had a wonderful time, and Kandice was quite aware of her surroundings, her daily life, and the certainty of what is coming for her in a few days as she is now in hospice care at home. Like all of us, she said “I don't know what it is going to be like.”  I told her that since God is the one in charge of our journey through the gate of death, we can know in faith that it will all be OK and wonderful. That is all any of us can know. Please continue prayers for Teri as she is now at home healing and receiving therapy for the use of her new hip. I have a message out to Pastor Ron and Becky, but I have not heard back from them about how testing and progress is going for Becky as she battles periodic weakness. Pray also for Larry for his continuing recovery from his back surgery. He too is at home. There also seems to be a virus moving around with sore throat and congestion and cough. Josiah has been battling it for over a week now, and we received word yesterday of a church member family who now have it in their home. So far, no one else has picked it up from our Josiah.

Today we continue with Stephen's telling of Hebrew/Jewish history as he stands before the Sanhedrin. It is certainly a history that you and I know even though we are the children of the New Covenant with God through Jesus Christ. It is this story which Stephen is reciting which helps us to see the strength and courage of Stephen's faith. As this part of the Old Covenant story unfolds, Stephen brings us to Moses, and how God used him as a servant of setting his elect people free from their difficult work in Egypt, in bonds to the Pharoah to build the massive monuments at which we marvel even today.  Stephen is letting those who judge him know that he is an orthodox believer in the relationship between God and the Hebrew people, and that everyone in this trial Stephen is standing for should know how God intervenes on behalf of his beloved people. But Stephen also knows that when it comes time to tell the rest of this history of his people, that the reception will be anything but warm and understanding. However, that is not a part of what Stephen is doing at this time. The historian, Josephus, gives us more that we get from the Bible as he recounts the great beauty and brilliance of Moses compared to other children. In this historian's telling, Moses became a great Egyptian general, fought, and won a war in Ethiopia, taking a bride for himself after that victorious conflict. When he answered the LORD'S call to serve and bring the Hebrews out of Egypt to freedom in a promised land, Moses gave up an entire kingdom and the comfort of being a royal, perhaps even reigning in Egypt at some point, to become an enemy of the state, as he brought plagues upon the entire nation to force the Pharaoh to set the Hebrews free.  People do indeed give up important things to answer the call of God on their lives. We are told that Stephen was brilliant, energetic, a gifted speaker, and an advocate for fairness with his people. Martin Luther gave up a career as a lawyer when he capitulated to God's lightening intervention in his life. There is little doubt that Stephen knew in his head and heart what was coming for him, but he remained stalwart in his conviction and faith in Christ. Every one of us who accept Christ as our Lord and Savior has had, or will have, a call from God to witness from our hearts and lives, so that others may come to know the Christ who loves and treasures them too. We will find out that Stephen was a man of the same ilk.

You have the love of Christ, and mine too, Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Old Testament bible study of Psalm 35 (October 23, 2025)

October 23, 2025:  Thursday Bible Study on Old Testament of Psalm 35

Good morning my dear friends in Christ. Today we will continue our study of Psalms. Please continue to pray for Teri who is home following her hip surgery and several weeks in therapy care. Pray for Becky who is recovering with an unknown cause for extreme weakness. Pray for Larry who had throat cancer treatment yesterday. Pray for a different Larry who is at home recovering from back surgery complications. AND give thanks to God for Jeff Keen who did not have the serious issues a first CT seemed to indicate. He is home too.

Today our Psalm Passage indicates that it is OK to ask God to help take care of your enemies, but those enemies must be threatening faith in the LORD, and His work in the world by their words and deeds. That's different than asking God to take care of a person with whom you are arguing about money, or a perceived insult, or because they have called out your own poor behavior. The threat that David speaks of in this Psalm hymn is that all who follow God must be aware of the danger when a leader like David whose faith is true is in danger from enemies who deride his beliefs, everyone who is a believer and faithful is in the very same kind of danger.  I know folks, how do we know? If a person is pulling you down for your faith expression in the world, and they are only looking for the advantage of greater wealth and power, then you can certainly pray to God for His help. Our nation has become so polarized that there are people who hate for no reason. A couple of days ago, our Jesse who is Indigenous and Black in his heritage was walking to the YMCA on the east side from our house. It is about 1 & 1/2 miles. On his way, for the very first time, he had a woman walker leave the sidewalk to avoid being near him. She did not know him; all she saw was the deep beautiful tones of his skin. But our nation and world are full of people who hate for no reason. Imagine being an LGBTQ+ person today, never knowing who around you feel that you are less than human because of your sexual identity, having nothing to do at all with how you are perceived as a person with value and worth.  Such polarization is harmful to everyone, the people who carry it in their lives every moment, and to the ones who are harmed by those perceptions of valuelessness. The truly sad part of this is that many of the people who carry that hate in their lives are Christians, who somehow feel that God must need their help if the world is to be right by their personal standard, and their limited grasp of God's Grace in Jesus Christ.  This Psalm indicates that we really need to rejoice in God's Love for us, because that is what will set us free from feeling the need to strike back! We always need to remember who the only true judge is, our Savior Jesus Christ. We can certainly turn over to Him the burdens of the evil that is aimed at us and others who have truly done nothing to deserve its wrath. I know that this Psalm seems quite harsh, and judgement driven. But this is the wonderful thing about the Psalms, like David, we find ourselves in many life problems, and joys, and there is a Psalm for every one of them. Over the centuries, Jews and Christians have been able to turn to the Psalms when life circumstances pull us down into the pit where everyone struggles to get out. David has been there just like us, just as every faithful person has been many times. It is in our Advocate Christ, that we can be assured that whether we are threatened socially, in our faith, or at the hands of a person who wants us dead God is with us. The other truth of this Psalm is that the one who petitions God must have worked hard to live with integrity. That doesn't mean perfection. It means always being actively involved in this relationship with God, seeking to grow in faith, and to become an example of God's Grace for everyone's life.

Thanks for being with me this morning. With Love in Christ, Pastor Kim