LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1971, Page 81

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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

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