The Fulness Of Time

Scripture: Galatians 4:1-7

Luke 4:14-21

"...when the time was right, God sent his Son,

and a woman gave birth to him.

His Son obeyed the Law,

so he could set us free from the Law,

and we could become God's children."

Galatians 4:4,5 (Contemporary English Version)

The arrival of the year 2000 has made us all the more aware of the passage of time. Our anxiety over the so-called millennium bug has been relieved & we aren't quite sure whether the potential catastrophe was real or imagined. I read recently that "it is man who is about the business of calendars & clocks, but the God in whom we place our hope is timeless and altogether trustworthy." We can have the confidence that Jesus is the Lord of time & eternity .Although we celebrate his birth in the counting of years, we know that he is the Word who was with God and is God and that he was made flesh & has lived among us.

We also know that although he is the Ancient of Days, in his earthly ministry he had a keen sense of timing as he came into this world to free us from our sins. This was true because he had a mission. He had come to seek and to save the lost and to give himself as a ransom for many . As he sought to do the Father's will he was fully trusting him to reveal that will. "I and the Father are one" he declared. Many people had called God Father, but the relationship between Jesus the Son & God the Father was unique, a relationship that both astonished and angered his critics. When he was criticized for healing on the Sabbath - they called it working - he countered by saying, "My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working." For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own father, making himself equal to God."

Clearly, the enemies of Jesus understood something that the false cults and liberal Christians aren't willing to admit, that is that Jesus was making himself equal to God. Liberals will accept that Jesus was a great teacher, possibly the greatest , certainly a religious genius, but he claimed to be more than that. We cannot call ourselves Christians if we do not recognize that Jesus is fully God and fully man. On the other hand, false teachers, claiming to follow Jesus' teachings will agree that he is the Son of God, but a son, they say, cannot be greater than his father. Once more, the enemies of Jesus, although they accused him of blasphemy in making himself equal to God, nevertheless understood what he was saying. They understood what he was teaching, but rejected both him & his teaching. The false prophets of today don't reject him but totally distort his teaching to suit their needs.

Listen to these words of Jesus and you can understand why he created such a stir. We are continuing to look at his healing on the Sabbath: (John 5:19-20)

"I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can only do what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, to your amazement he will show him even greater things than these."

This means that at all times Jesus was synchronized with the Father. He was never hurried nor did he waste time. He told his parents when they found him among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions, "Why were you looking for me , didn't you know that I must be about my Father's business ? " Once again, .there was a sense of urgency but he still found time to be with the Father in order to know and to do his will. " Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest " , he told his disciples , for so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to rest." " Come apart before you fall apart," is a good maxim for us today. Notes and proper timing are important in music and that includes the rests. " I would rather burn out than rust out. " sounds heroic but our Lord wants neither. He wants us to be in tune with him, in step with him as Jesus was.

Jesus, we have seen, knew the Father's will but he always kept in step with him. "My time has not come." he told his mother when she seemed to be suggesting that he do something about the lack of wine at a wedding feast. And even when his forthright teaching drew the ire of his enemies, John tells us that "no one seized him because his time had not come."

But later as he predicts his own death he tells his disciples. " The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified ...(for) unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds" (John 12:23) And finally, in the Garden of Gethsemane when he finds his disciples sleeping. "Are you still sleeping and resting ? Enough ! The hour has come. Look, the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us go ! Here comes my betrayer ! " (Mark 14:41,42)

He grew up as any other Jewish boy and participated fully in the rich Hebrew heritage. He no doubt helped his carpenter father and , as the first born, would have family responsibilities. It is significant that even as he hung upon the cross, he made arrangements for his grieving mother to be entrusted to the care of the beloved disciple John. Mary could have been a widow at this point & although Jesus' brothers & sisters are mentioned at other places in the gospels, they appear to be absent at the crucifixion. When they are mentioned , they do not seem to be sympathetic to his cause. John notes that even his own brothers did not believe in him. Before the feast at Jerusalem, they urge him to show himself to the world. His answer is still that the right time had not come.

With his keen sense of timing, Jesus deliberately chose the moment for him to reveal himself. As far as the people were concerned, this would take place where he grew up. Luke tells us that the eyes of everyone in that Nazareth synagogue were fastened upon this home town preacher as he stood up to read. "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour."

He created quite a stir and appears to have the attention and the admiration of every one present." All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. Isn't this Joseph's son? " they asked. But on this occasion & throughout his ministry, Jesus knew what was in their hearts, for as John tells us in his gospel, " no one had to tell him what people were like. He already knew." (2;24,25) Nothing came as a surprise for our Lord, because he was the Lord of history. As some have pointed out, history itself, is "his story" The ominous millennium bug created anxiety for us due to the lack of foresight in representing dates with six digits instead of eight but could the timing & the perceived crisis be of the Lord ? We can only guess. Once again, the business of clocks & calendars is a human invention, but the choosing of a reference point in the birth of Christ is inspired by God. This is most certainly Scriptural . Paul expresses it this way in his letter to the Galatians: "When the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.' Or the Contemporary English Version puts it this way: "...when the time was right, God sent his Son,

and a woman gave birth to him.

His Son obeyed the Law,

so he could set us free from the Law,

and we could become God's children."

Charles Dickens began one of his novels with the words "it was the best of times and it was the worst of times" and that apparently contradictory statement could equally well describe the time of Christ. Gone was the former glory of David & Solomon. God's chosen people had seemingly missed the point of what true religion was all about. They had reduced it all to a list of rules and regulations, but the needs of the masses were being ignored. Jesus denounced this hypocrisy.

" You experts in the law , woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift a finger to help them.."(Luke 11:46)

That was clearly the religion of the self righteous Saul of Tarsis but oh, the change that Christ made in his life! He told the Philippians, that "whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ....compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things, I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ. "(Philippians 3:7,8) And he told Titus that " when the kindness and love of God our Saviour appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things that we have done, but because of his mercy."

Paul understood the importance of God's redemption in Christ for he experienced it in his own conversion. That's why he wrote that...

"...when the time was right, God sent his Son, and a woman gave birth to him.

His Son obeyed the Law, so he could set us free from the Law, and we could become God's children."

The time was right when Jesus came for a number of reasons. He was born a Jew and participated fully in the richness of the Hebrew legacy. He was born in a land that was subjugated to the power of Rome and he was born in an era when Greek language and thought were dominant. Also consider how Paul, who would become the chief spokesperson for the Christian faith was uniquely equipped for this task.(1) He was Jewish & sat under the teaching of Gamaliel .(2) He knew Greek, the language that would be used in preaching , and (3) he was a Roman citizen who would ultimately appear before Caesar to proclaim the good news in the heart of the Empire.

After his dramatic encounter with Jesus on the Damascus Road, the Lord appeared to a disciple name Ananias and commanded him minister to Paul. "Go," he said, "this man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name." (Acts 9:15,16)

Jesus came at the right time, or in what the King James Version calls the "fulness of time." We have seen how he was constantly in touch with the Father and fully aware of the right time. His opponents accused him of breaking the law by healing on the Sabbath but in actual fact he was fulfilling the law, and by his total obedience to the Father, he has freed us from the law. As Paul exclaims in Ephesians 2:8-10 , "it is by grace that (we) have been saved, through faith - and that not from (ourselves), it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."

What does all of this have to say to us, who are living in this year of his grace 2000 ? Perhaps, in the words of Dickens, we could say that these are the worst of times and the best of times. Let's look , first of all at...

THE DARK SIDE

Have you noticed in the media the lack of wholesome entertainment ? Comedy, it seems , has to be dirty to be funny. Violence & pornography are the stock in trade of the entertainment industry. Oh, there are the bright spots in what seems to be a moral & cultural waste land but we still find it all very depressing.

And what about the real world ? The Bible condemns homosexuality but it is not considered to be politically correct for us to criticize another's life style. People who take a stand on the issue, are branded homophobic. New words pop up in our vocabulary .For example "bisexual" that used to describe earthworms is now applied to people. And now the term " sexual orientation" has entered our vocabulary. We used to think of two genders namely: male & female, but now there is confusion.

In the midst of this confusion, religion and notably Christianity is branded as the culprit. Intolerance, that is not accepting one's lifestyle is the greatest sin- although that word too is usually replaced by "character flaws" or weaknesses that we can usually overcome if we work on it..

And while we grapple with these issues in the western world ,we remain almost totally unaware of what is happening elsewhere. For example, there have been more people martyred for their faith in the twentieth century than in all of the nineteen preceding centuries. If you want some idea of the enormity of the problem, I suggest that you read Their Blood Cries Out by Paul Marshall . It's not easy reading but it tends to jolt us out of our complacency. But you say, "this is all very depressing, isn't there a ...

A BRIGHT SIDE ?" Yes, there is. Despite the persecution I spoke of, in China alone, in 1996 the communist government estimated that there were 25 million Christians. But some mission groups give estimates of over a hundred million. And some of these Christians actually expect persecution and the opportunity to suffer for their faith. They know that the power of the gospel is so great that it overcomes all obstacles. In fact, world evangelism, is one of the indications of the end times. Jesus said that , " this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world, as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." (Matthew 24:14) I spoke of the undesirable features in the media & the Internet is a notable example, but ,on the other hand, I am amazed at the Christian witness that can be found on line. My friend Don Lamont, formerly pastor of Wakaw Baptist Church has entered this arena, for as he states on his web site, that this is where people are looking for answers. We must be there to provide those answers.

We should not be surprised at the rapid increase of evil in the world , for

both the dark & the bright sides are spoken of in Revelation 12:11,12 where we read that " God's martyrs overcame Satan " by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death. Therefore rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them ! But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you ! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short."

In the light of all of this, it is important for us to know what time it is, not in the sense of setting dates for Christ's return, but having confidence in God as Sovereign & totally in control of things.

Paul speaks of the need of understanding the present time and goes on to say that "the hour has come for (us) to wake up from (our) slumber, for our salvation is nearer than when we first believed." (Romans 13:11)

The early Christians were viewed as an insignificant minority but with their confidence in the power of God, they turned the world upside down. Jesus warned his disciples that in this world they would have trouble - the King James Version says tribulation, but then he encourages them & us to take heart or be of good cheer for he has overcome the world (John 16:33)

I mentioned Paul's mentor Gamaliel who counseled the authorities as to their dealings with the Christians. He cites the case of a man named Theudas , who "claimed to be somebody". Four hundred men rallied to him. He was killed , all his followers were dispersed, and it all came to nothing. Leave them alone. If this activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop it; you will only find yourselves fighting against God." (Acts 5:11 ff)

Well, it's 2000 years later and what was thought to be merely a sect of Judaism is a worldwide faith. Oh yes, Satan is still trying to destroy us, but his days are numbered.

We will not only survive but we will conquer. Paul exclaims that we are more than conquerors through him who loved us and absolutely nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." I invite you to take hold of that marvelous promise & to go forth into the year 2000 & beyond with your confidence in the living God.

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