This is an excerpt from the sixth chapter of Fear Not: How the Gospel Disrupts Our Deepest Anxieties by Luke Kjolhaug (1517 Publishing, 2026).
We draw near because Christ our Mediator has gone where we never could, and he has brought us with him.
The Israelite God was different from all the other gods, thus, the worship of Yahweh differed from that of all other gods.

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We find such a temptation when the devil causes us to question God’s election or predestination of us in “eternity as a past event” (i.e. “eternity-past”).
When we explain away God’s Word, we jettison the reality of our ominous diagnosis in the “Thou shall/shall nots” of the law, and with it the sweet cure in the, “This is My body/blood” of the Gospel.
Jesus takes that burden away in the “I forgive you and them” and gives us His “light” burden.
This story is all-too-common, and illustrates a key dynamic driving the youth out of church.