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.
Josephus does not tell us that Christianity is true, and Christians do not need Josephus to tell them that Christ is risen. But Christianity makes claims about things that happened in public history under identifiable rulers, priests, and governors. For that reason, testimony from outside the church matters.

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Over the next few months, I invite you to join me in looking at what the Bible and the Lutheran Confessions have to say about the subject of worship through the lens of language.
Brothers, the rich and diverse education you have received has more than adequately prepared you for the ministry of temptation to which you have been called.
But on the mountain in Galilee, where we encounter a very different side of God, doubts overtake us. Why?
This story is all-too-common, and illustrates a key dynamic driving the youth out of church.
Imagine a church's mission statement is: "You Don't Have to Fake It Till You Make It." That is, you walk into church and an usher hands you a bulletin
There is an unfortunate, but familiar pilgrimage that entirely too many have taken—servants who have offered strong confession and service in the pure Gospel, but who then have doctrinally gone astray.
In this evil generation we’re all in the dark about something. We’re all inevitably overcome by the darkness of sin and death.
If you want to find God, he’s hiding in plain sight. Christ is in the very things that we would never select as a vessel befitting divinity.
We spend the first nine months of our lives in utter darkness. There are no tiny fluorescent bulbs beaming from the ceiling of the womb, no fetal flashlights, not even a pinprick of illumination.
For many, there are days when they’re as excited about going to work on Sunday morning as you are about going to work on Monday morning.
The term Gospel came to mean a new kind of proclamation so that the Law and the new doctrine [Gospel] are distinguished in such a way that the new doctrine gains primary influence.
Really, once you’ve heard and believed the Gospel, the goal now is to learn more and more about the law of God, so that you can mature into a commandment-keeping, law-loving, obedient disciple of Jesus. Right?