04/06/25 Praise Service

AS WE GATHER There is a hymn that refers to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, calling it an “old, old story” (“I Love to Tell the Story” by Arabella Katherine Hankey, 1834–1911). The fact that God’s plan of salvation began thousands of years ago, and that the Bible is the record of events in ancient history, does not mean that old equals irrelevant. Today, God says through His prophet Isaiah, “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old” (Isaiah 43:18). But before you throw away your old Bible, your old catechism, or your old hymnal, listen up! “Behold, I am doing a new thing; . . . do you not perceive it?” (v. 19). In the pattern of the exodus of old and the deliverance from the Babylonian captivity of old, and as “the old rugged cross” of Christ made His resurrection from the dead possible, the “new thing” of God’s doing today is all about freeing you from the slavery of sin, death, boredom, worry, and fear; re-creating you “that I may be His own and live under Him in His kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness” (explanation of the Second Article of the Apostles’ Creed, Small Catechism); renewing your life today by the forgiveness of your sins and in the sure and certain hope of new bodies for old in the new creation that awaits, as that old hymn concludes,

And when in scenes of glory I sing the new, new song,

’Twill be the old, old story That I have loved so long.

I love to tell the story; ’Twill be my theme in glory

To tell the old, old story Of Jesus and His love.