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