New is From God

 

New is from God

 

In my years in the church, I have heard one idea expressed again & again: We have to return to the way it was back when. Sometimes that “back when” was weeks or months ago, but sometimes it was years & decades.

 

But when I read the Bible, God tells us more about the new than the old.

 

We are told six times in Psalm to sing a new song to the Lord. In Revelation 5:9 the four creatures & the twenty-four elders sing a new song to the Lamb. In Revelation 14:3 the one hundred forty-four thousand sing a new song to the Lamb.

 

We need to learn to sing new songs to Jesus. We have had conflict over new praise songs or hymns & that does not need to be an issue. We need to sing songs that enable us to truly worship Jesus, but we need to have new songs for a new generation that will come to be saved & enter God’s kingdom.

 

Raise the Roof & Remove the Walls is about singing new songs of worship to Jesus.

 

In Isaiah we are told that God is doing a new thing. We must allow God to reveal to us new truths from the Bible & we must allow God to do new things in our lives as disciples of Jesus & new things in the church which is the body of Christ. We must never be satisfied with what God has done in the past.

 

Raise the Roof & Remove the Walls is about surrendering our lives to Jesus to allow Him to do a new thing in our lives & in His church.

 

In Jeremiah 31:31 God tells His people that He will establish a new covenant with them & in Luke 22:20 Jesus tells His disciples that the new covenant will be established through His blood. Our covenant which was established by God through the shedding of Jesus’ blood is an everlasting covenant that is ours when we surrender our lives to Jesus as our Savior & Lord.

 

Raise the Roof & Remove the Walls is about entering into a new covenant with God through the blood of Jesus.

In Ezekiel 18:31 & 36:26 God promises to give us a new heart & a new spirit. He will replace our old heart which was hardened to God & will replace our old spirit which had been perverted by sin with a heart that is open to God & with the Holy Spirit. According to 2 Corinthians 5:17, this means that we are new creations in Jesus & the old is gone. And that leads, according to Ephesians 4:24, to putting on the new self which is created in the likeness of God in true righteousness & holiness. That empowers us to live in the new way of the Spirit & not according to the old way of the written code, according to Romans 7:6.

 

Raise the Roof & Remove the Walls is about entering into a new covenant with God through Jesus’ blood which enables to be new creations with the old gone.

 

In Matthew 9, when Jesus is confronted over why He & His disciples did not fast, Jesus tells them that you cannot put new wine, the gospel, into old wineskins, the old system of human based traditions. We have put the gospel, the power of salvation to all who believe, into structures that are based in human made traditions. We proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ in new ways to reach a new generation & in new places in the world.

 

Raise the Roof & Remove the Walls is about proclaiming the gospel of Jesus in new ways to reach new people.

 

We are entering a new year. May you experience Jesus in new & fresh ways & make Jesus known to people so they may become new creations in Jesus.

 

Raise the Roof & Remove the Walls,

Joe