“This psalm is an invitation to come to God not only in substance, as are all others, but also in form and manner.  The best way to lift the mind up to God is to acknowledge and ponder past blessings.  The setting forth of past blessings is the guarantee of future ones, and the gifts received in the past offer the confidence of receiving them.  [But on] the contrary, the total sinking of the mind away from God down to hell consists in forgetting or failing to take note of goods received.

Martin Luther, Works, Volume 10

We will be having our annual church service and picnic in Meewasin Park, 10:00am.

Church Council has decided that King of Glory will again register as a team for the Scotiabank Aids Walk For Life on September 10.  We (and friends, family) can all be team members.  Please Sign on as a team member and/or pledge/donate on line at “Scotiabank AIDS Walk Saskatoon 2017”.  Our team is “King of Glory Lutheran Church” and team leader is “Michael Poellet”.  All money raised will go directly to support people who are infected by, affected by, and at the risk Of HIC, HCV, and other blood borne pathogens.  Registration starts at 12:30 at the Roxy Theatre on 320 20th Street West.  The walk will be from about 1:30-2:30 p.m. with speeches and refreshments afterwards.

The Psalms have been the Jewish hymn and prayer book since the time of King David.  Certainly, they functioned this way at the time of Jesus in the temple and in the synagogue.  Even today, the first 150 hymns in Evangelical Lutheran Worship (our hymnbook) are psalms.

Luther in the Preface to his translation of the Psalms says the Psalter contains the whole Bible in a nutshell and can therefore “be called a mini-Bible” for “it shows the manner and practice” of our relationship to God, the world, and ourselves.  In his commentary on Psalm 119 Luther notes how the Psalms comfort us in our “spiritual struggle,” teaching us “not only to know and understand, but also to experience how right, how true, how sweet, how lovely, how mighty, how comforting God’s Word is, wisdom beyond all wisdom.”

The Bible study this year will look at the various genres, forms, and styles of Psalms, how the Psalms reflect Hebrew poetry, and take a closer look at some of the Psalms, such as Psalm 23, that have shaped and formed the spiritual life and worship of the church and synagogue.  Please join us at Pastor Michael’s home, 1010 Duke Street.  We meet at 7:30pm the first and third Thursdays of the month.

“…those who are led by the Spirit of God are flexible in mind and thinking.  The right hand of God leads them wonderfully where they neither think nor want to go, but above all thought.  And when they are led in this way, the will of God seems to go against them sharply and displeasingly and almost desperately.  However, in this leading they show themselves as humbly resigned and enduring all things in faith, and even when they may have been most harshly tested, then they begin to learn how good this will has been, even though hidden, and even misunderstood when it was being fulfilled.”

Lectures on Roman

“…the presumption of righteousness is the dregs of all the evils and the sin of all the sins of the world.  For all other sins and vices can be corrected, or at least prohibited by by the punishment of the magistrate.  But this sin, each man’s personal presumption of his own righteousness, peddles itself as the height of religion and sanctity, because it is impossible for the nonspiritual man to judge rightly about this issue.  Therefore this disease is the highest and greatest empire of the devil in the whole universe….”

Lectures on Galatians, Vol. 26 Luther’s Works

“A counterfeit faith is one that hears about God, Christ, and all the mysteries of the incarnation and redemption, one that also grasps what it hears and can speak beautifully about it; and yet only a mere opinion and a vain hearing remain, which leave nothing in the heart but a hollow sound about the Gospel, concerning which there is a great deal of chatter.  In fact, this is not faith at all; for it neither renews or changes the heart.  It does not produce a new man, but leaves him in his former opinion and way of life.  This is a very pernicious faith, and it would be better not to have it.  A moral philosopher is better than such a hypocrite with such a faith.”

Lectures on Galatian, 1535 (Works, Vol. 26, p. 269)

Saturday

On Friday, the nailing and the cutting-down of God.

On Sunday, the rising up.

What happened on Saturday?

Brenden Kenelly

“Why do Augustine and the Holy Fathers, in their disputations and teachings, refer back to Holy Scripture as the primary principles of truth, and use their light and power to enlighten and strengthen their own darkness and weakness? Through this example they indeed teach that the divine words are more certain and clear than those of all men, even their own words, so that the words of men need be corrected, proven, completed and strengthened by Scripture and not these by the words of men. […] How godlessly perverse are we indeed that we should wish not to learn Holy Scripture learnt through itself and its own spirit but instead through the words of men, in contrast to all the Fathers?”

In a time when populations are being displaced by war and famine, when economic stagnation results in fewer government services, with a potential environmental crisis looming over the world, one can note the rise of a harsher attitude towards the poor, the sick, the unemployed, and the dispossessed.

Scripture (Wisdom: 2) also noted this very human temptation and gives voice to it before condemning it in the last verse:

“10 Let us oppress the righteous poor man [they say]; let us not spare the widow or regard the gray hairs of the aged. 11 But let our might be our law of right, for what is weak proves itself to be useless. 12 “Let us lie in wait for the righteous man, because he is inconvenient to us and opposes our actions; he reproaches us for sins against the law, and accuses us of sins against our training. 13 He professes to have knowledge of God, and calls himself a child of the Lord. 14 He became to us a reproof of our thoughts; 15 the very sight of him is a burden to us, because his manner of life is unlike that of others, and his ways are strange. 16 We are considered by him as something base, and he avoids our ways as unclean; he calls the last end of the righteous happy, and boasts that God is his father. 17 Let us see if his words are true, and let us test what will happen at the end of his life; 18 for if the righteous man is God’s child, he will help him, and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries. 19 Let us test him with insult and torture, so that we may find out how gentle he is, and make trial of his forbearance. 20 Let us condemn him to a shameful death, for, according to what he says, he will be protected.” 21 Thus they reasoned, but they were led astray, for their wickedness blinded them….”