The Seven Last Words Of A Dying Church.

By John Stallings


Did you know the first cars built in the early 1900s didn't have rear-view mirrors? 

Drivers might carry a little hand mirror so occasionally they could see what was behind them. The first car reported to have a rear view mirror was in 1914 at The Indianapolis 500. The reason was the driver couldn’t find a mechanic to ride with him to watch the traffic behind.

On the windshields of most cars today hangs what we have come to think of as an indispensable devise. We call it the rear-view mirror & most of us wouldn’t dream of driving without it.

In Isaiah’s time, there were no rear - view mirrors or cars to put them in but he had some important words from God for the people of Israel about looking behind them.

Remember not ye the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness & rivers in the desert. Ish.43:18-19.

In Isaiah’s time God’s people were stuck in the past & the past can be a trap when we linger over it. Israel was constantly re-living their glory days when God delivered their ancestors from slavery in Egypt & brought them into the Promised Land.

Those days were gone.

Now they were captive in Babylon, about 600 miles from home. Those miles seemed like an impossible barrier to them & though they knew God had done great things in the past they weren’t expecting great things now.

Isaiah’s words must have shocked the people. Was he saying to forget their rich history? It’s good to cherish the past & even some traditions. After all our generation isn’t the first generation & the folk who lived before us weren’t stupid. There were great & valuable things in Israel’s past & there are great things in our past & we’d be fools to ignore or forget them. Not only that, a person without a past is like a person with no memory. A person with no memory of the past is a person who doesn’t know who he/she is. So it’s critical to have a past & cherish that past.

Isaiah isn’t talking about totally wiping the past from memory, but rather he’s talking about “living in the past.” We sometimes call these people “nostalgia freaks.” They romanticize the past & not only that they falsify the past. Did you ever notice that time puts a halo on things? In looking back we tend to forget the bad & remember mostly the good. We create a past that never was. Would anyone want to go back to a time when people didn’t have vaccinations, inoculations or something as simple as aspirin? I don’t think so. We should have a past, cherish our past but never try to live in it.

I traveled as an evangelist for many years & I learned that many churches are totally preoccupied with the past. They aren’t interested in new & innovative ways of doing things; they are spending their lives looking in their rear-view mirrors. If you were to suggest a new idea to them you’d hear their favorite phrase, the last seven words of a dying church;

  WE'VE NEVER DONE IT THAT WAY BEFORE.” That statement drips with nostalgia, & the most destructive kind; not just respecting the past but totally living there in every way possible. It’s a battle about time. Leaders will encourage their people to move forward while the people want to preserve who they’ve been. It’s virtually impossible to have church unity when we can’t even agree on which era we’re living in.

Churches will disagree about the songs they should sing. Some want to sing from the song book & some want to sing choruses off the wall or a screen. The difference will be methodological or technological. Maybe it’s going from an overhead slide projector to a video projector, making up 30 years in three. Yet many churches fight “holy wars” over slight changes like this & accusations will fly that the church is becoming worldly when all they’ve done is move from words to picture images. To some people you’re now moving at the speed of light.

Memories aren’t intended to provide us with an alternative reality in which we can hide from present challenges. Memories are intended to be fuel for future faith. God is telling Israel through Isaiah, & He’s also telling us, that He is doing something worth living for right now & it’s happening right in front of our eyes. The tragedy is that we may not even see it.


Though a rear-view mirror is an extremely valuable thing, the little mirror takes up only about 5% of the windshield. What would happen if you spent 75% of your driving time looking through it? You’d get lost, hurt or possibly killed. That is why Isaiah is telling Israel to forget the former things.

Some people have been captured by the past. The past is a seductress that can tempt us to leave the present & forfeit our future. Living in the past can be intoxicating. The further from the past the better we remember it-----but not the clearer. Important details are lost with the passage of time & in the final analysis, what we remember never existed. That’s why it’s so dangerous to look back, with a hankering to go back.

Look in the mirror. What do you see? Nowhere do we look at the present but see the past more than our mirror experience. We don’t have a distortion of sight when we see ourselves in the mirror but a distortion of time. We’re not as much seeing a different body as we are seeing a different time. That conviction that we still look pretty much the same is a conscious or subconscious desire for a different time. When church people say those seven deadly words—WE’VE NEVER DONE IT THAT WAY BEFORE- they are saying in essence they want to time- travel back to how things used to be. They see the past as the present, the present as the future & the future as the past, & wait for the good old days to return.

The next thing a past- dweller will do is attempt to keep others in their “time-place” & then you have tremendous conflict. People want to keep their children as they remembered them yet they also want them to mature. Our child’s determination to move into their future forces us to relinquish the past & step into the present. It’s a sobering realization to see that little baby has finally grown up.

In the book of Ezra chapter 3 there’s a very interesting passage. God’s people were in the process of rebuilding the Temple. The foundation had been laid & the psalmist began to lead the people in celebration.

“Then all the people gave a great shout praising the Lord because the foundation of the Temple had been laid. Many of the priests, Levites & other leaders remembered the first Temple & they wept aloud when they saw the new Temples foundation. The others however were shouting for joy. The joyful shouting & the weeping mingled together in a loud commotion that could be heard far in the distance."

Those who were looking back were weeping, those who were looking forward rejoicing.

God is leading us forward not backwards. When Jesus asks us to follow Him he’s talking about time as much as place. But His invitation is pregnant with promise;

I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. They are plans for good & not disaster, to give you a future & a hope. In those days when you pray I will listen. If you look for me in earnest you will find me when you see me.
I will be found by you’ says the Lord.Ish.29:11-13

Suppose you were competing in a 100 meter race. What would happen if when the gun fired & you bolted out of the box, you slipped & then you looked back at the box to see why you slipped? What would happen? Most likely that one instant you looked back would cost you the race.

Or suppose you were running a 400 meter race & you positioned yourself beside a runner known for his speed. When the gun was fired, you thought you saw the runner beside you starting falsely but there was no indication from the officials it was true. Would you turn to argue with the officials about it? If you did you’d probably lose the race.

It’s clear that you only have one chance of wining the race & that is to forget what previously happened & simply pursue the goal. The same is true in the Christian life. If we’re going to press on in a great sense we must forget what lies behind so that there will be nothing hindering us as we stretch toward the goal. To be preoccupied with the past can only be an unfortunate, debilitating distraction that could very well keep us from finishing the race.

We don’t want to get hung up in our past accomplishments. We don’t want to be hindered by our past mistakes or sins as long as they’re under the Blood of Jesus. We must minimize distractions.

Listen to Hebrews 12:1,--Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight & the sin which doth so easily beset (entangle) us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto the Jesus the author & finisher of our faith……

Are you fixing your eyes on Jesus? Are you running well? Are you pressing toward the goal? Run Christian & don’t look back or you’ll be like Lot’s wife, frozen in time.


JESUS IS WAITING AT THE FINISH LINE.


Blessings,

John