# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1971_S81 # Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration) reo ee Heer O age MORNING DEVOTIONS There’s a Song in My Heart A New Song Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the message of reconciliation. (2 Corinthians 5:17 to 18 RSV) It is probably a pretty good guess to say that every delegate and every member of our church body has no higher wish than for this to be a week of song — God’s people making melody in their hearts to the Lord. We like to say that the Lutheran Church is a singing church, that we who have come to the Father by grace through faith in Christ, no matter how much musical ability we have, ought always to be men and women with a thrill- ing song in our hearts. It should be a “new song,” for God’s mercies are new every day. “Sing unto the Lord a new song,” says the psalmist. And why? “For He has done marvelous things. His right hand and holy arm have gotten Him the victory.” He lives; He reigns; He rules; He loves; He reconciles — that’s what this con- vention is all about. And that’s why every day this week can and should be a day for singing, not slowly and lugubriously like we handle many of our great chorales, but with a beat and musical idiom that suggest that God has done great things for us and we are glad. But where are all the glad songs men ought to be singing these days? They are not being sung outside the church. Though we've placed men on the moon and thermometers on the sun and have a standard of living undreamed of by our nation’s founders, where is there worldwide exhilaration and exaltation? And in the church too, where are all the glad songs we ought to be singing? The picture today is often of Christians making a dismal noise unto the Lord. There is a popular song some of our young people were singing the other day, a song whose crude words and poor English sug- gest what we are letting happen these days. It goes: Look what they done to my song, Ma, Look what they done to my song. Well, it’s the only thing that I could do half right, Look what they done to my song. But let us together reverse that this week and come by God’s grace to the point where each of us can look the other in the eye and mean it when we say, “There’s a song in my heart.” It’s a new song. I A new song, we know, cannot be sung by “old men” —men old not in point of years of life, but men who, caught in the battle between the flesh and the spirit, permit the old man to hammerlock the new. Paul knew that. In fact, that is what he was saying in effect to the people at Corinth. The Gospel had been a power to these people living in this metropolis, a cesspool of vices of all descriptions. That second journey of Paul’s was the instrument in the hands of the living God to make 81 these people sing. Christ was in their hearts, and they were new people. But soon the old man reared his ugly head. You know the many reasons. But at the center Christ was no longer there. And the song died. It still goes that way today. We know some of the things that smother the genuine song — things like sus- picion, lovelessness, lack of trust, destructive criticism of one another, looking behind every corner for heresy without cause. You name it. And much of the song is gone out of the church, too, wherever men have denied the great truths in which millions of people across the centuries have found great joy. Wherever you have observed things like the denial of the deity of Christ, the Virgin Birth, the miracles of our Lord, where have you seen one note of joyful song added to the ehurch? Wherever Christ is not first and last, the very center, there the song is gone. Take your favorite record, whether a Beethoven sonata or a great chorale, and be- fore you put it on the stereo, drill a hole just an inch from center. You know how it sounds. What scratching and dreadful noise it makes! II You see, only new men can sing a new song. And only God can make men new. And we know how He does it. He does it in Christ by the power of His Spirit. So it is no pious optimism that makes us sing. It is something great and big and basic, something that en- ables us to sing not only in the sunshine, but also at midnight when the sun is gone for a while. What is it that makes a Christian a man of song? Jesus said, “Behold I make all things new.” He said to Nicodemus, “You have to be born again.” He said that when He, Christ, comes into a man’s life, he passes from death to life. He is new. You said it together on Saturday. “A man in Christ is new. His thoughts are new. His understanding is new. His hopes are new. His actions are new. All that he is flies under the ‘newness’ banner. The walls between a man and God and between a man and his fellowman begin to crumble and then collapse. Separating differences are ruined. Ancient rivalries and old struggles for supremacy disappear.” And what describes this newness best of all? A new strength, a new love, a new courage, a new hope? No. Reconciliation, the forgiveness of sins — that’s what makes a man new. It starts in a minor key. Man disobeyed God. He revolted. He is responsible to God, and the wages of a man’s sin is death. Man is judged. Even his nature tells him he is a sinner. Even if sin is not considered a sin against God, it sufaces in relationship to his fellow- man. He knows that he has wronged a brother and that he needs reconciliation if things are to be new and right again. But reconciliation with a fellowman is only partial at best. He needs to be right with God. He needs _peenagenen ta OOS Rena se pon OREN AAMAS IRR TIRANA HED CORON REET SCR OORT AE SE RON LE RITE CIEE NIE AEN ANNO TAREE nee 39 SS EEA ERAS ANE TEN APNA ONIE PCE t TYA rene nenen reanianttecan nee uke uttrtetrmem