This devotional series is from intriguing new books you’ll want to read. Today’s is by Andy Stanley.

If you have read through the Bible, you may have adopted The Sound of Music approach and started at the very beginning. Generally speaking, a very good place to start. But after a long time, when you finally arrived at Jesus, you experienced this jarring jump from God setting people on fire while his followers trample the wicked under the soles of their feet straight to Christmas!

That’s quite a jump.

Perhaps someone gave you a reading plan or devotional book that included portions of both testaments. A little bit of Old, a little bit of New, a little bit of Old, a little bit of New. That’s how most of Protestant Christianity operates today. Most preachers mix and match Old with New. Most Sunday school teachers do as well. Most reading plans are organized around the blended approach, as are most Christian books, calendars, greeting cards, and, of course, Christian music.

Decades of mixing and matching have resulted in a version of faith filled with leftovers from the covenant Jesus fulfilled and replaced. Old covenant leftovers explain why religious leaders feel it’s their responsibility to rail against the evils in society like an Old Testament prophet. It’s why our song lyrics are filled with invitations for God to fill our buildings. Bad church experiences are almost always related to old covenant remnants. Most bad church experiences are the result of somebody prioritizing a view over a you, something Jesus never did and instructed us not to do either. Self-righteousness and legalism usually stem from an imported approach to holiness. The prosperity gospel is rooted in God’s covenant with Israel rather than the teaching of Jesus. The list goes on and on.