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