New Song Content
Every year we have a “Missions Sunday” at our church, and every year I try to find a song that will fit in with missions that isn’t He Reigns by the Newsboys (nothing wrong with the song… don’t @ me).
There aren’t many songs written about taking the gospel to the nations. So, we decided to try and write one. New Song was not originally a song about taking the gospel to the nations. Still, I remember very vividly sitting by the piano and singing through some melodies and the last line of the first verse coming to be:
Your Kingdom is coming to every nation and tribe.
This is straight from the Scriptures in the Great Commission. It is mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 28: Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
As John Piper says, we believe that “missions exist because worship doesn’t.” We want to be more than a church that sings songs of worship. We want to be a people that live lives of worship, including being a part of God’s global movement of His Kingdom coming.
We want to see people get saved. We want to be a part of a movement that takes the gospel to the ends of the earth. We long to see new worshipers singing a new song to the God that saved them. We know that the only hope for a lost and dying world is the good news that their sins are forgiven, and that grace is real!
There is hope in a gospel that raises the spiritually dead to eternal life. There is hope in “hearts of stone” coming back to life (Ezekiel 11:19). Our God is in the business of saving and resurrecting.
The reality is that we are all born singing a “song of worship.” The problem is that our song has a sour tune and a damning melody. We are born worshiping... The problem is that we are worshiping the wrong things.
The wrong things can be good, but given the wrong level of priority in our hearts, they can become idols. There is only one God worthy of all of our worship. The gospel comes in and hijacks our worship and rightly aims it at Jesus. So, we can proclaim, New song, we will sing a new song, we know that our sin’s gone, You have paid it all.”
Our “new song” extends from salvation when our tune changes and refers to our fresh experiences of God’s grace. We breathe in God’s grace every week and breathe out His praise when we gather with the saints on a Sunday.
We have a new song to sing because we are redeemed by the blood of Jesus, and we have a “new song” to take to the world so that the hearts of stone are coming back to life is a mission that we get to be a part of.
