What has happened to the church of today? We have gone from being sensitive to the Holy Spirit to being ’seeker-sensitive’ where we can not offend in fear of scaring off converts. We have replaced truth with agends and the Truth with marketing and demographics. We now say new buzzwords in order not to offend but we imply that the new buzzwords usher in ‘the new thing’ that Solomon counteracts this thinking when he said in Ecclesiastes 1:9-10 that these things were done before and will be done again after we die.
How many times have we used Isaiah 43 to imply that the latest greatest ‘move of God’ or the latest and greatest Christian trend is ‘the new thing’. When one reads the Isaiah text, one has to realize that the ‘new thing’ was applied to a Godless generation that had never experienced a breakthrough of deliverance before. However, the root of the sovereigh power behind this ‘new thing’ is the same God who is the same yesterday, today, and forevermore. The application in various moves may be different and therefore appear new. However, the same Holy Spirit, God, and Jesus imparted blessings on his people. It’s not a new thing, just another form of a manifestation from the same God who came down on his people in times past and will come down on his people in the future.
Have we feared ‘offending’ anybody in fear of persecution, death, loss of income, power, position and prestige to the point where we become non-offensive as possible? This Gospel of Jesus Christ offended alot of people. It offended governmental leaders to the point of stoning and beheading God’s messengers. It offended church leaders to the point where they crucified Jesus. It offended govermental leaders to the point where they want to pass laws prohibiting evangelism and deem the Bible as ‘hate speech’. It offended church leaders to the point where disagreement of compromise causes many forums posts posted at many well known Christian Internet sites to be removed and megapastors suing their dissenters to shut them up because the truth of ‘agenda as truth’ was exposed.
Excellent observation. You are absolutely correct that when God says He’s doing a new thing, it doesn’t mean He is doing something He never did before. Rather, it means just what you said…that He is perhaps doing something done before but new to those particular generation/peoples.
I believe 2 Tim. 4:3-4
has become far more relevant of late. Doctrine, as such, seems to have fallen on hard times as a means of conveying biblical truth. The “Death, Burial and Resurrection Only” crowd have come to completely ignored Heb. 5:11
– 6:3 and so the “sheep” starve on such milky fare. “Let us go on…” is an ignored concept as the concern for “unity” supercedes any concern for truth. There has developed a dubious ability to so wrap the doctrines of sovereign grace in language that is non-confrontational that Arminianism rests easy in such presence and semi-Pelagianism, long held, may comfortably look the other way. The Supreme Courts land grab, may be the undoing of many mega-churches so that concerns for pensions, new sanctuary seating and building additions may be relegated to history. Perhaps with such concerns put aside, we may return to the weightier matters of doctrinal truth and evangelism may once again be directed toward building up Christ’s church rather than building improvements and the need for fresh sheep to be sheered for their support.