Mt 13:52   He said to them, "Therefore every teacher of the law who has been instructed about the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old."

        

When I look back over the fifty years I have known the Lord, I realise that there have been a variety of things over that period that I hadn't known when I first came to Christ. There were things that the church has only more recently become aware of, for example the teaching that the church is the body of Christ, here to continue his work. That came early in that time.

The Charismatic Movement added the awareness that the gifts of the Spirit were for the body to use as Jesus led. A new awareness came about personal prophecy which, for many of us, is now just a normal and natural part of our life in Jesus today. There has been no adding to Scripture, just a becoming aware of it in new ways. These have been the 'new treasure' brought out of God's storehouse to equip us to more fully express His Son on the earth.

 

But there have still been the ‘old treasures' things known for centuries, the value of reading His word, the importance of prayer, worship, witness and so on. At the time of the Reformation came a ‘new treasure' in the form of an awareness of ‘justification by faith.' In the earliest centuries of the Church came ‘new treasures' of understanding about the Trinity and of the person of Christ, things which we today take for granted. But crucially, when the kingdom of God came through Jesus, a whole new understanding came, which is what so much of the New Testament is about. 'New treasures' indeed!