If you try and build a church with old people you can not do it. Neither can you sew new patch on an old garment and expect it to hold. The patch will last but the garment or cloth around it will fall apart slowly, and even detach itself because of thread quality of the old fabric and not the new. Well how do you know this is so, well a year ago or so I found my self mending bed sheets. First I tried just making a simple seam at the hole. Only for it to tear somewhere else. Then I tried adding fabric only to find the fabric might hold in one spot but it did not guarantee to make any other spot last. Simply put it been bear then wasting my time mending to replace the sheet all together. Yet the point is unless something is made new just making a patch is only temporary, it something that will not last.

The value of the Old Testament is often lost to those that first learn to follow Jesus without knowledge of the Old Testament. It takes time to develop a love for the Old Testament if you are a New Testament convert. Upon examing the laws of the Old Testament alone could make a New Testament convert shy away if they think that obedience to the old is necessary for salvation. Yet Christ taught to obey Him. The law only proved no one was perfect. It was impossible to obey all of the religious law. Even Abraham before the law did not obey the law in the garden of Eden of one spouse. Yet the morality in the New Testament clearly teaches one man and one woman joined in marriage. Some will say custom of the day. Yet one examines Abraham’s morality and put it beside Sodom and Gomorrah. After doing a double take on this thought what evil was really lurking in Sodom and Gomorrah that was not in Abraham life style. King David had this same issue, what in his life style was different then Sodom and Gomorrah. Yet God did correct him on some of his behavior even publicly.

Jesus did not come to call the righteous but the sinner. The righteous already knew the healing power of faith in God. The lost knew not the healing power of faith. Yet to begin with Old Testament faith among the unlearned or uneducated is like pouring new wine in new wine skin. Starting with freshness of faith to retain all that is available. To pour new wine into old skin would only cause it to break. To burst. You can not make old faith, and turn into new. The first time you learned something from God’s word and knew what was said was true, that is when faith began and not before. The first point of contact with God was the first time you receive truth about God. Most never remember that point. Christ for Old Testament believers should be extension of faith of prophesy fulfilled with his birth and waiting on the promise. For a new believer it should be the new wine or a new drink from Heaven above to knowledge of a deeper faith in God. Old Testament should only be enhancement of the New Testament faith upon belief. It is reading the Old Testament and realizing how old faith in God really is and that faith in Christ is only the promise received from Old Testament. That Christ is older then the New Testament.

Cornelius a man of faith grabbed hold of Christianity, not because he never believed but because God shown favor to reveal the Messiah to Him. To reveal truth of the New covenant. To understand we are a new creature in Christ upon faith, before or after belief in who Christ is. Repentance being already to the righteous like Cornelius, but faith in the coming had not been received until the Gospel was shared.

Every time we receive the truth of prophecy, the truth of the past, the truth of the future, it is the beginning not the end of faith. It is a new understanding of God’s enduring promise, that His word is true. One can not expect Old Testament believer to stop believing in God of the Old Testament to embrace faith only in Christ Jesus. Paul preached he used words God and Christ Jesus more then once when writing. To emphasis the need for both yet they are one.

When God ministers to the heart of a believer a new truth it often gives an extra swing to their step. It is part of the filling of the Holy Spirit. If you only teach from one angle of scripture all you life, or read it from only one angle you only see the grace from perhaps only the believers side, yet if you read it from different perspectives the dawning of light from a different angle should only enhance faith to encourage to press on, knowing those you share with have that same hope you do.

Faith in Christ was never to take away from the Jewish faith, just the law of legalism without meaning to give one’s life freedom without consequences. There is consequence of having sin in a believers life. Christ set us free from sin by paying the price, yet his resurrection brough hope to all believers. A hope of heaven was what Jesus gave to the lost world.

How is the Holy Spirit empowering the believer today should be our question after laying the foundation of salvation for faith to bloom and become new. The hope of eternal life through Christ Jesus laid, and pressing forward to hope of seeing the return of Christ. The hope of laying not dead works of the law, but works of a continual faith. A faith that blossom with each new day one receives from the food table of the Lord.

Dear Heavenly Father let us feast on your word daily with truth and hope of tomorrow. Knowing your word builds upon the past, present and future of each and every believer. In Jesus precious name, Amen.