The Israelite God was different from all the other gods, thus, the worship of Yahweh differed from that of all other gods.
David finally found the truth that it was not his seed of kingship but the promise made to Abraham that made him holy. From that, David refused to be moved and wrote this Psalm by the necessity of the Spirit as the assurance of faith. The law never made a man holy, not even one as robust as David; yet faith did this great thing without lifting a finger.
Today, the longing for cultural Christianity on both the left and the right hearkens back to an older version of Christendom that was a mixed blessing for the church in the western world. The cultural mediation of Christian views on created order has certainly benefitted the civilization we’ve inherited. But the gospel itself isn’t something that can be reduced to cultural mediation either. Instead, the gospel as a message stands apart from all human accomplishments and achievements, no matter how beneficial they might be.

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Isaiah 11:1-10 provides us with an Advent text capturing the beauty, excitement and reality of both the first coming of the Messiah and the second coming.
Paul argues that now as the Messiah has come and has achieved what the entire Hebrew Bible (i.e., the Old Testament) has been moving toward, the Scriptures can be read as an open book.
The problem is not that we are unrepentant. The problem is our contrition is too small.
We might not appreciate that God chooses to save us by his word alone, but our discomfort doesn’t make the promise any less effective.
Advent draws us to the Lord who comes. We might even say that Advent really does begin in creation as the Father through His Eternal Word breathes His Spirit over the depths of darkness and calls into existence that the culmination of things that are not.
Isaiah 2:1-5... is a beautiful eschatological prophecy focusing on the era of peace that comes along with the coming of the LORD.
Could it be that the root of not asking is not believing, either in the power, or worse, the graciousness of the Lord to address the issue that lies before us?
In many ways [this text] brings to mind Judgement Day and the separation of the sheep from the goats when Christ the King comes to take His treasured possession home to be with Him in the courts of everlasting life.
The epistle text from Colossians 1 declares how the great drama of redemption and human history ends.
These last words of the Old Testament Scriptures prepare us for the incarnation and beyond.
The Gospel outpaces all would-be and eventually fleeting identity-makers and brings in the truth of a renewed-in-Christ humanity.
Jesus offer us this vision of violence not so we might be drawn into it but so we might be drawn through it to come closer to Him.