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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The enemy comes with his wounding, haunting words, and I stand behind my advocate Christ the Lord. He gives me more words, better words, truer words.
Christ isn’t preached in his glory but in his ignominy, his utter shame, degradation, and desolation.
Christ is joy and sweetness to a broken heart. Christ is a lover of poor sinners, and such a lover that He gave Himself for us.
God doesn’t permit me to write you off regardless of who you are or what you may have done. Nor does he allow you to dismiss me because I might not fit your image of a vessel of God’s mercy.
Justice and love are united in God, and we see this most clearly in Jesus on the cross. There, both God's hatred toward sin and compassion for the world come together.
We are meant to serve in love both our neighbor in need as well as the neighbor who doesn’t think they need us.
Before the Fall the waters were one dimensional—they gave life. After the Fall, another dimension is added. The waters kill/drown and they give life. This becomes the New Testament language of Baptism.
God will keep his promises, but how he keeps them is often quite surprising.
The Psalms do anything but present a sugar-coated presentation of the Christian life. In fact, they are decidedly real about the missed expectations we face so often.
In his last novel, Islands in the Stream, Hemingway shows us what we get when we look to nature for ultimate truth: death.
Cliché preaching may be symptomatic of shallow, consumerist culture, perpetuating a problem rather than the solution.
The point is that the whole lot was wicked. And so were the Galatian Christians. And so are we.