Pastor's Ponderings: Old Testament bible study of Psalm 19 (May 29, 2025)

May 29, 2025:  Thursday Bible Study on Psalm 19

Good morning, dear friends in Christ. It is a rare cloudy morning, which always seems to make it easier to sleep in when the sun isn't beating through the house windows. I am excited about Sunday's meal after the Gospel Music service. We will have over 40 people with us for hamburgers, bratwurst, veggie burgers, and hot dogs. This will be one of our largest after-service meals in a long time. I know that it is supposed to be rainy, but I have contingency plans for getting the meat all BBQed and ready for Sunday's meal. You can pay at the table you sit at or put it in an envelope marked BBQ during the offering. See you there.

Today we are in the 19th Psalm as we continue to move through the Book of Songs which encompass all the emotions, both joys and struggles, while giving praise to God, or lamenting a broken relationship with God, and of course, much more. David begins this Psalm with a section of praises to God and His creation. Indicating that the way that God has put things in place, they will inevitably run the course for which they have been created, that is, everyone but people. who know the importance of their relationship with God but often don't live with the inevitability of living only to please God. Yes, we are talking about sin! If we follow Psalm 18 as we read 19, we discover that unfaithfulness is part of every one of our lives at one time or another, sometimes every day. But there is something else that happens in all of this. As Christians we often try to rationalize what we have done or are doing. Probably the most common of these kinds of things, is when a spouse, who have promised one another, and have promised God to live lives of commitment and devotion to one another from the time that their wedding vows are spoken. In my first parish I had a husband who came to me, confessing his unfaithfulness to his wife. He had a very loving spouse, two beautiful children who were as sweet as they could be, but for some reason he was really struggling with ending this extra marital relationship. I told him that he really needed to get this situation taken care of in his life, giving up the outside relationship and recommitting to his wife and family. Continuing to maintain this outside of marriage relationship might well place him in jeopardy with God, especially since he was unrepentant about it. To this day, now some 36+ years later, I do not know how that all turned out in his life. However, every person of faith in Jesus Christ knows the price Christ paid for our sin and brokenness, and that in all that His purpose was to give every child of God an opportunity for forgiveness, life with God, and Salvation. Yet, we still find it very difficult to leave our sin, and to renew our relationship of righteousness with God through Christ. We can't do it on our own, we must have the Holy Spirit working in us to help us come around to where we belong. This Psalm helps us to see the great difference between God's commitments to all His creation, and our, all too often, lack of commitment and failure to find the strength and courage to turn to God rather than away from God. David knows all about this. He took this journey with Bathsheba and paid the price for his forbidden love in the loss of their child. But like us, the Spirit of God informed David too, charging him to know his place in the face of God's righteousness and judgement. This is a good Psalm for us to read many times in our lives. It is filled with praise for God and His right ways, challenging its author, David, and us, to struggle with choices that go against God's right ways, and ultimately coming home to God and doing what is right, and good, and just in this two-way relationship between God the creator and His children.

Thank you for giving me this opportunity to guide you through the Psalms, and to do this study for the first time in my 40-year ministry for the Gospel.

With the Love of Christ, Pastor Kim