Connecting the Dots at Christmas

Galatians 4:4 ESV

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law,

Have you ever been in a situation in your life where you felt the timing of something was terrible?

I wonder how Mary, a young teenage girl, felt when the angel Gabriel appeared to her with news of her impending pregnancy.

News of pregnancy alone is overwhelming, especially when it's unplanned. Mary, like most women, longed to be a mother, just not now.

Gabriel's news, although glorious, could not have come at a worse time relationally.

How could she convince her soon to be husband Joseph that she had remained faithful and that her pregnancy was of supernatural origin?

News of her pregnancy could not have come at a worse time culturally. Out of wedlock, pregnancy has at various times and degrees been frowned upon by most cultures.

However, Mary lived in a time and culture where such a situation was scandalous. Mary's great news did not produce great joy.

Her pregnancy's poor timing intensified when Caesar Augustus decreed that everyone should return to their hometown for a census. Could he not have made this decree in her first trimester and not during the final month of her last trimester?

Imagine a 60 mile journey without any motor powered means. It is possible she journeyed by donkey. This possibility did not make the journey for this 9 month pregnant mother any easier.

If we focus the camera just on her, the timing of Mary's pregnancy seems terrible. She doesn't complain, but things look awful. However, from God's perspective, the timing was perfect.

What does the expression "fullness of time" mean? In simple laymen's terms, it means; when the time was ripe or when the time was perfect.

Throughout history, God had been whispering, promising, and suggesting that he would send a Savior. This promise of salvation is recorded in the Lord's first post-fall conversation with our first parents, in Genesis 3.

During his conversation, he promised that a Savior would come to earth through the seed of a woman? Now that's mysterious. Only men possess seed!

If you are going to live by faith you will need to make room, lots of room, for mystery. The sovereign Lord of the universe does not operate in predictable patterns.

His works may seem random. No rhyme, or reason to his method yet he is conducting a symphonic masterpiece which will be sung for all of eternity; “Salvation belongs to our God”.

Throughout the Old Testament, God promises a Savior, and Paul says in the fullness of time, in the perfect time, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman.

Christ's coming was at the right time for many reasons.

It was the right time politically for Jesus to be born. When Jesus was born, the Roman Empire, in many ways, was at its zenith, and one of its virtues was that it tended to be tolerant toward religions.

Rome said, "You can exercise your religion with freedom as long as you proclaim that Caesar is god." That worked wonderfully for all groups except for one: the Jewish people.

The Jews were adamant about not worshipping any god except Yahweh, the living God. Resistance to this law brought persecution and even death.

Over time the pragmatic Roman leaders soften this law concerning the Jewish people.

This provision made it possible for Christianity to come into existence as Roman leadership considered Christianity a part of Judaism.

Until the year 70 AD, those practicing Christianity had pretty much complete freedom to proclaim their message, and it was the right time for Christ's good news to be proclaimed.

It was the right time politically because it was a time of relative peace. The assassination of Julius Caesar ignited a civil war, however in 25 BCE, Caesar Augustus ascended to the throne and began a reign of peace that lasted 200 years.

During this time of peace, Rome built roads that enabled the good news about Jesus to travel easily. It was the right time politically for Christ to be born.

It was also the right time culturally for Christ to be born. Alexander the Great had conquered the world into which Jesus had come, and with Alexander's victory Greek culture and Greek language spread throughout the world.

More people in Jesus' world had learned to read than ever before in history. The Greek language was exact, and it is this common tongue language in which Scripture was written.

The aforementioned reasons allowed the good news of Jesus to spread much more quickly than it would have otherwise.

So it was the right time politically and culturally, and it was also the right time spiritually.

Greek philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle had done an excellent job raising questions about the meaning of life.

Someone said that the Greek philosophers plowed the fields of the human heart, and Christ and his followers then sowed the seeds of meaning.

God uses difficult circumstances to accomplish great good in his timing.

It was the perfect time for Christ to be born politically, culturally, and spiritually . and yet it was terrible timing for Mary personally.

Though the Lord’s timing for Mary was terrible she obeyed. She did not let mystery cause her to wonder if God cares but to worship in spite of her circumstances.

Skal Labissiere arrived in Portland, knowing that his playing time would be minimal at best. Yet, reflecting on his path to the NBA, he was not filled with anxiety, but gratitude.

Labissiere knows that he’ll probably just play a few “garbage time” minutes during a blowout, a far cry from the 20 minutes per game he played for his last team.

But here’s his perspective: “Things like this? Playing time? Yeah, it’s frustrating at times, but … after what I’ve been through, believe me, I’m good. God got me to this point, and I still have a ways to go. I’m excited about what’s ahead here.”

Labissiere was alluding to the tragic earthquake in his native Haiti that he experienced as a 13-year-old. The quake caught him unaware on the third floor of his home. He eventually had a wall crash onto his back as he protected his mother from the shifting rubble. It left him unable to walk for weeks.

His family all survived, but they knew his dream of playing NBA basketball would be difficult if he remained in Port-Au-Prince, so his father found a nonprofit that might help a young man with Labissiere’s potential.

Eight months later, he flew to the US to live with local resident Gerald Hamilton and his family in Memphis, Tennessee. The love and support from the Hamiltons gave him the foundation he needed to pursue high school basketball, then college hoops at Kentucky, and eventually the NBA.

Labissiere said the earthquake was an awful event, but he added, “But for me, God used that experience to open doors.”

God uses our choices for his perfect purpose.

Throughout Scripture, we see that God taking people’s choices, even evil ones, and choreographing them for his purposes.

Scripture is replete with stories that substantiate this truth. We see this in Joseph's story, in the book of Esther, and the life of Jesus.

The Bible says in

Proverbs 16:9 ESV

The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.

We plan our course in our heart, but the Lord ultimately determines our steps. Do you believe that God is using your free choices and is fulfilling his destiny through you in His perfect time?

As J.I. Packer, a respected theologian, points out, it is a paradox that we are free in our choices, and yet God sovereignly uses our free choices to achieve his perfect purposes.

It's a paradox that we can't understand with our human minds, but we accept in faith.

It's like light. Light, scientists have said, can appear as a particle, it can appear as a wave, and it seems like a contradiction, yet we accept light in the same way.

We are free in our choices, and yet God is sovereignly shaping history. Such a statement is mysterious but true.

You don't even have to be a person who necessarily believes in God to have God shape your destiny.

For example, Steve Jobs was a person who didn't believe in a personal God but did believe that there was some higher power in the universe; some benevolent power that was shaping life.

Five or six years ago, he gave a graduation speech at Stanford in which he recounted his story of being born to an unwed mother who put him up for adoption—an adoption that almost didn't happen after his biological mother found out his adoptive parents weren't college graduates.

After dropping out of college, Jobs learned about typefaces and took a calligraphy class. Jobs said:

… looking back, dropping out was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out, I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting. Let me give you one example.

Reed College at the time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout campus, every poster, every label, every drawer was beautifully hand-calligraphed.

Because I had dropped out and didn't have time to take the standard classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this.

I learned about sarif and sans sarif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between the different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great.

It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me, and we designed it into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography.

If I had never dropped in on that single college course, the Mac would have never had the multiple typefaces or proportionately spaced fonts.

Since Windows just copied Mac, no personal computer would likely have them. If I had never dropped out, I would never drop in on that calligraphy class, and perhaps personal computers might not have the wonderful typography they do.

It was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very clear looking backward, ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. But you have to trust the dots will somehow connect in the future. You have to trust in something.

You have to trust in something; why not trust in someone. Why not trust in the living God?

God uses our ordinary choices to accomplish his eternal purposes, and he does it in His perfect time. So will you trust him with your life?

There are four types of people who need to respond to this message.

The first group I will call the concierge. You spend your life doing whatever your heart tells us to do. This never-ending emotional roller coaster ride has left you worn-out. Admit today that your heart does not possess the necessary credentials to run our lives. Choose today to live by faith and not by your feelings.

I call our second group, the kings. They spend their life plotting and planning their kingdom. The responsibilities that accompany such responsibilities have left you weary yet too proud to give up control.

You appear to be confident in all you do, yet you always second guess yourself. When you get it right, your highs are high, and when you get it wrong, your lows are well deep dark wells of despair.

You put on a good face because that's what rulers do, but you are exhausted at every level. You need to abdicate the throne and surrender to a King who will genuinely rule our lives for our greater good.

The third group listening today is the cynic. You believe life is random. No rhyme, no reason. You make your own way. You create your own "luck." No higher power at work, only those who work have the power to control their outcome.

Scripture teaches that even the accomplishments of cynics, non-believers, and doubters are the Lord's work. Everyone experiences the Lord's common grace. Don't believe me? You are listening to me today because the God of the Universe is at work in your life to connect you to himself.

The final group listening today are Christians. It's easy looking back on Mary's life to say she made the right decision, but Mary didn't have that benefit.

Someone said, "it's easy to trust God looking backward. I can connect the dots, but it's hard to trust God right now because I don't know what the future holds."

Kierkegaard said, "We understand life looking backward, but we must live it looking forwards, and that's hard."

The way we can trust God looking forward is by looking back to Mary and the Son that she bore, the Son of God, God in human flesh who was once a baby, became a man, and at age 33 died on a Roman cross as a sacrifice for your sins and mine so that we could be forgiven and reconciled to God.

Paul says if God did not spare his one and only Son for you but gave him as a sacrifice for you, how will he not also, along with him, freely give you all things? That's how good God is toward you and me.

So when God speaks to you, probably not through an angel like Gabriel, but perhaps through Scripture, perhaps through circumstance, perhaps through the Spirit just moving in your heart, will you say "Yes, yes, yes," and allow the living God to weave something beautiful in and through your life?