Right on Time!
Advent 2023 • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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· 9 viewsGod's plan to send forth his son was perfectly timed and planned from the very foundation of the world.
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Galatians 4:4-5
Galatians 4:4-5
But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.
Introduction: How many of you have ever used an advent calendar to prepare your children or yourself for Christmas. There are lots of options out there for advent calendars, for example, there is a lego advent calendar where each day there is a tiny lego figure and parts to build a tiny scene related to Christmas.
There is also the wine advent calendar where people can sample a different wine each day until Christmas. (I don’t recommend that one by the way)
There their is the chocolate advent calendar where each day you have a different chocolate treat for each day. The problem with those is that by the third day of advent, most of us would be at Christmas Eve already.
The point of the advent calendar is to help us build up the excitement and anticipation for Christmas day. Some folks don’t need any help with that, by the way. I mean, the day after Christmas, they are posting on social media that there are 364 days until Christmas.
If you have never celebrated Advent before, you may not understand the tradition.
First, the word advent simply means “come into.” We recognize the time in which God send his Son into the world. There is also, a second advent - the time in which Christ shall return.
Some churches have an Advent wreath which is a round evergreen wreath that lays flat on a table and there are 5 candles of different colors placed around the wreath. Each Sunday, a candle is lit adding to the candles that were lit on the previous Sunday.
4 of the candles represent the 4 Sundays leading up to Christmas Eve while the fifth, the white Christ Candle, is lit on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.
Each Sunday is themed like this, Hope, Faith, Joy, and Peace. It serves to remind us of how the people of God waited for the coming of the Messiah.
That brings us to our passage for today.
Paul reminds us that God was right on time when he sent his Son Jesus into this world. God is always on time…never early, and never ever late.
There are no accidents with God. Everything runs according to His time-table.
His Perfect Timing
His Perfect Timing
“When the fullness of time had come...”
It carries the idea that something is full - like a basket. We could translate it as “When the complete time had fully come.”
Galatians 4:4 (MSG)
But when the time arrived that was set by God the Father...
Question: Why do you think God chose to send his Son into the world when he did?
Couldn’t He have sent Jesus to us right after the fall of man when Adam and Eve sinned and were expelled from the garden?
Couldn’t he have sent Jesus into the world right before he destroyed the earth with a global flood? Genesis 6:5-6
The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.
Why didn’t he send Jesus into the world while the descendants of Israel were under the bondage of slavery in Egypt for 430 years?
Or for that matter, why didn’t he wait until now when we have the capability to travel to the ends of the earth by jet easily in a day or to beam a satellite signal around the globe. After all, 65.7% of the world currently have access to the internet and the message could easily be spread to other places by other modern means.
The answer is, I don’t know.
But I want us to consider some things...
First of all, God’s timing is always perfect.
Here is what one of my favorite commentators, Warren Weirsbe, wrote about this matter:
“Historians tell us that the Roman world was in great expectation, waiting for a Deliverer, at the time when Jesus was born. The old religions were dying; the old philosophies were empty and powerless to change men’s lives. Strange new mystery religions were invading the empire. Religious bankruptcy and spiritual hunger were everywhere. God was preparing the world for the arrival of His Son. From the historical point of view, the Roman Empire itself helped prepare the world for the birth of the Saviour. Roads connected city with city, and all cities ultimately with Rome. Roman laws protected the rights of citizens, and Roman soldiers guarded the peace. Thanks to both the Greek and Roman conquests, Latin and Greek were known across the empire. Christ’s birth at Bethlehem was not an accident; it was an appointment: Jesus came in “the fullness of the time.” (And, it is worth noting, that He will come again when the time is ready.)”
Warren W. Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996), 706.
I feel very confident in saying this: God knows what He is doing!
Furthermore, we need to understand this truth, “God does not respond to history; He writes it.” ~ Pastor Terry Trivette
God isn’t in heaven reacting to all the bad things that happen saying, “Oh no, what will do?” The birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus wasn’t something that God through together at the last minute to save the world.
Revelation 13:8 (NKJV)
All who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
His Provision Was Trustworthy
His Provision Was Trustworthy
“God sent fourth his Son, born of woman, born under the law...”
This part of the verse speaks of the incarnation of Christ.
It says God sent forth his Son. If God sent him forth, that means he existed before he came to this earth.
I came from the Father and have come into the world, and now I am leaving the world and going to the Father.”
who, although existing in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, by taking the form of a slave, by being made in the likeness of men.
God dispatched His Son Jesus from heaven on a rescue mission to save lost humanity!
And the Bible is very clear that he has always existed.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
“He was Born of a woman” This speaks of his humanity.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
Conceived of the Holy Spirit, came into this world through the womb of a virgin. He took on flesh and blood. He is the God-Man! 100% God and 100% Man. I don’t understand that kind of math frankly, and I don’t have to because I accept it by faith.
Why did he have to take on a fleshly body? Because he needed to be able to tase death for everyone.
But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.
We don’t want to leave this part out, he was born under the law. He was a Jewish man who grew up in a Jewish home attending a Jewish synagogue learning the Jewish law.
He lived a life of perfection under the demands of the Jewish law and yet, he fulfilled it without error.
He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth.
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
His Purpose was Two-fold
His Purpose was Two-fold
He came to redeem those who were under the law.
Those redeemed from the law are adopted into the family of God.
Redeem here means to set a man free by paying the price.
In the Roman empire, slavery was a very common thing. 60 million by most estimates. A man could purchase a slave in any Roman city, either to keep for himself or to set free.
Jesus paid the price the redeem us in order to set us free from the bondage of the law. However, he didn’t purchase us to make us slaves, he purchased us to make us sons and daughters.
The law exists for several reasons:
Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith.
For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror.
For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
When we are redeemed through trusting in Christ, we receive adoption as sons and daughters.
Adoption is when someone intentionally brings a non-biologically related child into a family by choice. In doing so the adopter bestows legal rights and privileges upon the adoptee.
In a spiritual sense, God has adopted us into His family and has bestowed the benefits of salvation upon us as his children.
And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.
An adopted child of God moves from being enslaved to the law and sin to being a fully privileged member of the family and a joint heir with Christ.
and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.
Let’s understand something, some will say that we are all children of God. And that is true only in the sense that he created us. We become His children through being adopted.
But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
His Plan will be Triumphant
His Plan will be Triumphant
Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
Regardless of what the enemy threw at Jesus, he was playing by God’s playbook.
The Lord of hosts has sworn, saying, “Surely, as I have thought, so it shall come to pass, And as I have purposed, so it shall stand:
Closing: When you turn on your TV today, you are likely going to be reminded that there are 22 shopping days until Christmas.
This time of year, ads often communicate the not-so-subtle message that if you truly love someone, you'll buy expensive gifts for them.
Now it's true that when we love someone we naturally want to give that person gifts or do something special for him or her.
But today's passage shows that the greatest gift ever given wasn't given because the recipients were so loving or deserving. Instead, God's free gift of eternal life in Jesus Christ is given to sinners who rebel against Him.