Vineyard Church | Weekly Update January 3, 2024

Kicking off 2024, I hope your holiday season provided a restful and joyful end to 2023 and a hopeful beginning to 2024…. 2024 holds the promise of an interesting year but also gains custody of the reality that there is nothing new under the sun. Written roughly 2,959 years ago, this passage of scripture can help us begin the New Year with perspective:

 9 History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new. 10 Sometimes people say, “Here is something new!” But actually it is old; nothing is ever truly new. 11 We don’t remember what happened in the past, and in future generations, no one will remember what we are doing now. Ecclesiastes 1:9-11

Found in this passage is reality and warning: reality that can offer hope and stability, and a warning against sensationalism that dovetails into a framework for applying perspective to the events around us. In some ways, this feels like an antiquated denial of our present reality. Technology and communication have increased to the point that information moves so fast and so wide, it is difficult to know where the truth lies. 

Looking at this from an historical perspective, there has not been a generation that hasn’t felt this paradigm. Even though technology advances, and the reach of that technology extends, the fact that we are dealing with something we haven’t seen before does not make the situation new, and in this we can find hope…. And 2024 will give us a fine opportunity to apply this hope.

As a basis for this hope and the beginning of the application of this passage for our new year, we can celebrate that nothing we will face in the coming year has not been faced before. Those that want us to believe that our current reality and the coming events represent a new danger are nothing more than fear peddlers that have an agenda. These fear peddlers are both secular and religious but share one thing in common: they have an agenda, and that agenda is not the unfolding plan of God to bring reconciliation to creation. 

In the religious sphere, we hear these influencers warn of the new dangers of the invasion of culture into our lives, and these warnings conclude two responses that are equally egregiously sinful and antithetical to scripture: isolation and capitulation. Some will use these warnings to build the walls higher and form more layers of protection, forgetting that God is in control and our protection is found in him. Others will turn to compromise, attempting to make Christianity more palatable to culture and thus mitigate the attacks the purveyors of that culture will bring and thus corrupting the Word of God and creating another false religion.

Another way, the way of hope, peace, joy, and love, is found in participation with God in his plan with the foreknowledge that there is nothing new under the sun and that God is on the throne, actively ruling as his plan unfolds. Engaging in his plan does not mean we are complacent with the dangers of invading culture; it means that we engage that culture rather than isolate from it. Also, when the Word of God sets us apart from that culture, we don’t compromise from the pressure we find ourselves under because that pressure is not new and God will sustain us. There is nothing that the enemy of the faith can do that God is not aware of and nothing that hasn’t been seen before in history. We can enter 2024 with the knowledge that the climate is contentious and will likely get more contentious.... But there is nothing new under the sun, and God is at work. Rejecting isolation and compromise, we can accept his invitation to participate in the plan of reconciliation, knowing that the situation will never deteriorate beyond the intentions of God. Armed with this, and knowing how the story ends (spoiler alert, at the end of book, we see God wins), we can rejoice and be glad, this year is a year of the Lord’s intention, and we get to play a part. Happy 2024!

Adam Greenwell
Pastor  |  Billings Vineyard Church
www.BillingsVineyard.org