What's New?

For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.” (Acts 17:21)

We live in a culture today that would make the people of Athens look like girl scouts when it comes to the obsession with news. Just a couple of generations ago, dad would send Rover out to get the morning paper and read it during breakfast, then listen to Walter Cronkite over dinner for half an hour, and that was the extent of his news. He spent the rest of his day actually doing something. When I read the verse above, my first thought is, “Hey, man, get a job!”

When Ted Turner started CNN, the whole world thought he was out of his mind. No one was going to listen to the news for 24 hours a day. Today we have multiple stations devoted to “nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.” I was watching one of them recently, and between the “screen in a screen” and scrolling news tickers, there were seven different news stories bombarding my senses at the same time. Multiply that by each of the dozens of news agencies and by the 24 hours in the day, and it will drive you crazy trying to keep up. We can “tweet” the day’s activities of thousands of our “friends” to get mountains of useless information to feed our passion for something new. We can get updates sent to our cell phones for every event on earth (standard text message rates apply). Yet it seems the more information we get, the less knowledgeable we are about things that really matter like God and his word.

Solomon asked the fabled question: “Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new?” (Ecclesiastes 1:10). He then answered his own question in the rest of the verse: “it hath been already of old time, which was before us.” He uttered the famous truth in this passage that there is nothing new under the sun. Yet mankind is obsessed with the new. From the Garden of Eden, man has been infected with the disease of “secret information”. Satan led our first parents into sin by promising them they would “…be as gods, knowing good and evil.” He convinced them that God was “holding out on them” and not keeping them in the loop on all they needed to know. Since then, this disease of the insatiable desire for gossip and “scoop” has plagued mankind. With modern technology, the wildfire has been lit, and the disease will eventually be terminal. Satan will use this power in the tribulation to hold the world in his grip of bondage.

Solomon said there is nothing new under the sun. He did not know about the only thing that is really new because Jesus had not yet come to die for our sins. When we trust him as our Saviour, dwells in us, and we are now, “…seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:6). That is not under the sun, it is above it. “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” (II Corinthians 5:17) As a Christian, you already possess the only thing that is really new – a new man in Christ. Everything else in your life that is new will someday be old – your car, your house, your new suit of clothes, and most disturbingly, your body. Someday, God will “make all things new” (Revelation 21:5). Until then, take the good “news” of the gospel to everyone you come in contact with. The only thing you have that is truly new is the only thing the world needs – Jesus. Go ahead and keep up with the flood of other news (as best you can). God does not counsel us to stick our heads in the sand and ignore the world we live in. But people need to know Jesus first. Gossip and news flash and scoop comes later. Without him, nothing else makes sense, and nothing else matters.