Sunday Morning, December 8, 2019 AM

Let's go to the Lord in prayer together. Father, I thank you for the opportunity this season to reflect upon the gift of your son,

Jesus Christ, that you, in knowing our frame, that we are but dust, sent forth your everlasting son, who took upon himself human flesh, took upon himself our dust, to be fully

God and fully man for our Lord and Savior. I thank you,

Father, that you have given us your son and that you have given us to him. I thank you that he, even now, reigns at your right hand, the dust of earth at the right hand of heaven.

I thank you that you have given us this opportunity, this season, to reflect on what it means that you did not leave us in our sin and our shame, you did not leave us without hope, but you sent your son,

Jesus Christ, into the world to be our Savior and to be our

Lord. Thank you for so clearly revealing yourself in your son, so fully revealing yourself in your son,

Jesus Christ. I thank you for exalting him to your right hand.

I thank you for giving us many promises that focus our hope, that assure us of victory, that constitute our peace in this world.

And I pray now that as we look at your word, that you would show us Christ, that we would follow him, that we would be molded to him and bring you glory in this world.

We pray these things for the sake of Christ, the one with whom you are well -pleased, amen. If I should open your

Bibles and turn with me to Galatians chapter four, Galatians chapter four, and we will spend our time, this

Christmas season, this Sunday and the next two, as the Lord wills here in this passage, considering the truths of Christmas.

We're going to read a larger portion than the verse that will prove our focus, but everything we're going to talk about this week and in the coming weeks is focused on this singular truth, this pinnacle truth,

God sent forth his son. God sent forth his son.

Those words are in Galatians 4, 4, but I would like us to read a larger portion than that.

So if you would, please stand with me and I will begin reading in Galatians 3 in verse 21.

And I will read through verse seven of Galatians 4. So I'll begin reading

Galatians 3 verse 21. This is the word of the

Lord. Is the law then contrary to the promises of God?

May it never be. For if a law had been given, which was able to impart life, then righteousness would indeed have been based on law.

But the scripture has shut up everyone under sin so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.

But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, being shut up to the faith, which was later to be revealed.

Therefore, the law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ so that we may be justified by faith.

But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor for you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.

For all of you who are baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's descendants, heirs according to promise.

Now I say, as long as the heir is a child, he does not differ at all from a slave, although he is owner of everything, but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by the father.

So also we, while we were children, were held in bondage under the elemental things of the world.

But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law.

So that he might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.

Because you are sons, God has sent forth the spirit of his son into our hearts crying,

Abba, father. Therefore, you are no longer a slave, but a son.

And if a son, then an heir through God. This is the word of the

Lord, you may be seated. There are a variety of passages that we could read and meditate on for Christmas.

Different passages that I could select to preach from. And we have spent some time in the gospels.

And I think in Isaiah as well, if I remember, there's several prophecies in the Old Testament that would lead us to consider the glories of the birth of Christ.

Certainly thinking about the stories in Matthew and Luke that are very traditional, that no doubt we'll be reading together as a church family and as individual families.

There's of course, the amazing passage in John chapter one about how the word became flesh.

We could even go to the book of Revelation and think about Christmas from Revelation.

And consider why it is that we should indeed have dragons in our nativity scenes, at least one.

But this season, I think we'll take our cues from Galatians four and verse four.

This is indeed the message of Christmas, is it not? God sent forth his son. What a great way to summarize what it is that we're celebrating.

Why it is that we feast? Why it is that we decorate? Why do we sing?

Why do we celebrate? Why does everything change in terms of our scheduling?

Why do we invite people over to our houses that we normally never invite to our houses except at this time of year?

Why would we do things in terms of giving and service that we would never do except at this time of year?

All of it really revolves around these five words. God sent forth his son.

And it is fitting that we would spend a good percentage of our year, every year, reminding ourselves that God has sent forth his son.

Now in Galatians chapter four, we have a central truth that I've been repeating over and over again.

Hopefully we'll have that memorized by the end of today. Hopefully we'll have the verse memorized before Christmas, Galatians four, four.

But you're going to notice that there is a central truth there in verse four and three, three adorning truths.

Listen to verse four once more. But when the fullness of the time came,

God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law.

So God sent forth his son. That's the central truth. And there are three ministering truths to that master truth.

The first that we're going to look at this morning is when the fullness of the time came.

When the fullness of the time came, God sent forth his son in time.

The second truth is that God sent forth his son in the flesh.

He was born of a woman. And then thirdly,

God sent forth his son under the law. He was born under the law.

He sent him in hope of our salvation. So first of all, we're going to talk about time.

That God sent forth his son when the fullness of the time came, he sent forth his son.

This gives us some opportunity to reflect on God's timing versus our timing.

God's timing versus our timing. And this is a

Christmas theme. The timing of God. A time is a major theme in the

Christmas story. It was in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus.

While they were there, the days were accomplished for her to give birth. The message of the angels for today in the city of David, there has been born for you a savior who was

Christ the Lord. Later on, Herod secretly called the Magi and determined from them the exact time the star had appeared.

There was a time in which God sent forth his son. Why that time? Why that time?

Why not another time? This is often the question that we ask not about Christmas, but about our own lives.

But our own circumstances. God doesn't seem to call ahead and schedule.

He doesn't send word that he's planning for a major sickness to afflict us or a major crisis to happen in our family.

We don't get to sit down with God beforehand and schedule out a couple of months where things will be tough so we can get ready for it beforehand.

That God is God's timing versus our timing, our sense of time versus his sense of time.

What we're going to review in the Christmas story from Galatians 4, 4 is that Christ was born in the fullness of the times, in the fullness of the time because it was

God's decision for then. It was God's plan for Christ to be born then.

It was God's arrangement for Christ to be born then. It was in the sovereignty of God that the fullness of the time came and his son was born, that he sent forth his son.

How do we do with God's timing? Do we trust his timing?

Do we wait well for his timing?

Do we submit to his timing? Can we give praise to God for his timing?

Can we give thanks to the sovereign God for his timing?

Well, notice God sent forth his son. He sent him forth when the fullness of the time came.

What can we say about this? First of all, we should note that God sent forth his son in the fullness of an opportune time.

It was a good time to send forth his son. Why now?

Why during the reign of Caesar Augustus? Why now? Why in the time of the

Roman Empire? Why not a different time? The time in which Christ came forth was a unique time in history, of course, but think about Paul's own words in the letter of Galatians.

He's talked about already in the earlier parts of the letter how he traveled from Arabia to Damascus.

He could travel from Jerusalem to Syria. He could travel to Cilicia. He could travel all over the region of Galatia, preaching and planting churches.

That's a lot of world travel for the ancient Near East. That Paul could make it from one place to the other and go to all these different locations that he could freely communicate with all these different people from all these different regions.

How is it that he was able to immediately find purchase with these people, that he could talk with them and have common ground with them to even have conversations at all, to proclaim the gospel and establish the truths of who

Christ is? What an amazing time in which Paul lived. What an amazing time into which

God sent forth his son. Why was this time so opportune?

Because of the peace of Rome. The time into which

God sent forth his son was near the beginning of hundreds of years of Roman stability.

It was Caesar Augustus himself who had declared the Pax Romana, the peace of Rome. How was this peace achieved?

By the very first full -time military, the Roman army that was paid for by high taxation.

Remember that a census was taken of the inhabited earth so that all the world would be taxed.

Why was Joseph taxed? To help support the

Roman army. Why do you need a Roman army? To keep the peace. How do you get the

Roman army from one end of the empire to the other? Good roads, which also you gotta pay taxes for.

So in a time where there was great peace, as Roman army policed the world and kept things generally peaceable, needing good roads to get from here to there, the roads and the boats of commerce, because it was a prosperous time, a peaceful time, the roads and the boats of commerce became the highways and shipping lanes for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

What a perfect opportunity. But also not just the peace of Rome, but the language of Greece.

The language of Greece. How could this gospel be so effectively preached throughout such a large empire?

Alexander the Great conquered the world with such a speed that it was only his decline and death that outpaced his conquering of the world.

He did all to bring, he could, the culture of Hellas, the culture of Greece to all the world, making a

Hellenistic culture wherein people could understand what you were talking about, not only because the language of Greek was spread throughout the whole empire before Rome, but also the culture itself was spread throughout the whole

Roman empire. And so before Rome came along, there was a trade language established that everybody in the

Roman empire knew and could converse freely in. The Jews took advantage of this time and they translated the

Old Testament into the common language, Koine Greek, common Greek, the low -class

Greek, not the highfalutin language, but the language of the common people. They translated the

Old Testament as 70 scribes, it was said, translated the Old Testament into Greek at Alexandria, 70 of them, which is why it's called the

Septuagint, the 70. So imagine at this time, the time into which

God sent forth his son was a time of peace, a time of easy travel, a time in which a common language was shared empire -wide, a time in which the

Holy Scriptures had been translated into the language of the common people when we're far more accessible.

But also it was an opportune time because of the continuing outworking of the favor of Persia, Rome, Greece, before Greece, there was

Persia. Because of what happened under Cyrus and Darius and Xerxes with the likes of Ezra and Zerubbabel and Joshua and Esther and Mordecai and Daniel, the

Jews, by the grace of God, enjoyed a favored status with the Persians. Their race was defended against genocide.

Their temple and their city was protected and rebuilt by imperial sanction and imperial funds.

Many of the Jews returned to the land, but many also stayed abroad within the Persian Empire where they had formed the synagogue system where at least 10

Jewish men would come together and by their tithes, by their tents, they could support a rabbi.

They would gather together and read the Holy Scriptures and teach the truths of God.

And so, as we would hear later on in the book of Acts, Moses is read throughout the empire.

Means the Holy Scriptures that were wise to make Timothy, wise to help

Timothy come to salvation in Jesus Christ, those Holy Scriptures were throughout the Roman Empire, having been translated into the language of the common people in an empire that was at peace with a good road system, everyone primed and ready for the coming gospel of Jesus Christ.

And why was it that the Jews were scattered throughout Persia? Why was it that the

Jews had synagogues throughout the whole Greek and then Roman Empire? Why were they so scattered?

Why were there outposts of scripture reading going on in the time of the birth of Christ throughout the whole empire because of the agency of Babylon?

It's important to reflect on that. It was God's judgment on his people through Babylon that had scattered them, that had exiled them from their land.

I think when you think of the peace of Rome and the language of Greece, the favor of Persia and the agency of Babylon, it is no wonder at all that Daniel's prophecies, which began in Babylonian days, look forward past these four ultimately temporary and failed kingdoms to the indestructible eternal kingdom of Christ.

It turns out that these four world kingdoms, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome, were just the advanced team for the real deal.

They were merely the movers. They were the janitors. They were the school teachers. They were the street builders.

They were the security guards for getting everything arranged for the enthronement of Christ and the advancement of his kingdom.

See, that's how God deals with time. We often will have conversations.

I just hope it's the right opportunity. It sounds good. I wonder if it's the right timing.

And we deal with time like we're some sort of passive hunter, hunkered down, waiting, hoping that there's opportunity to take a good shot.

That's not the way that God deals with time. God is not man. God is not only the architect of creation.

He is the shepherd of history. And God shepherds the course of history into the fold of his purpose.

And that fold is Christ -shaped. He organized world history to make an opportune time into which to send his son.

Say, well, God didn't need to do any of that. Yes, that's true. God is free to accomplish his will without the use of primary or secondary means, the confessions tell us.

Yes, absolutely. He could have just snapped the equivalent of his almighty fingers and brought to pass everything just the way that he wanted it.

And yet he arranges things in such a way for the spread of his truth to the fame of his son.

Jesus Christ came, wrote Calvin, when the time which had been ordained by the providence of God was seasonable and fit.

And so in the fullness of the time, when the fullness of the time came,

God sent forth his son the best opportunity, the opportunity which he himself had crafted.

Now, what else might we recognize about the fullness of the time? Well, it's a very specific time, is it not?

It is the fullness of the time. It's not just any old time. It's not that God could have sent him at a different time, but it's a particular time.

It was time to fulfill his promises. It was time to fulfill the many prophecies about the coming of Messiah.

Paul had been thinking a lot about fulfilled prophecies and how they resolve in Christ. We hear that in Galatians 3, 16 through 18.

He says, now the promises were spoken to Abraham. That's a long time ago.

It's a long time ago since before Paul is here writing, over 2000 years prior to the time that Paul is writing this down, the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed.

He does not say, and to seeds, plural, as referring to many, but rather to one, and to your seed, that is

Christ. So the promises were spoken to Abraham by the word of the

Lord in Genesis. And these promises were given to Abraham and to his seed.

And Paul points out that word is singular, by the way. Heaven and earth may pass away, but the words of God don't pass away.

Even the smallest stroke of the letter will not pass away until all has been fulfilled.

It matters the way in which the word is spelled, is how specific and special each word of God in the scriptures are.

So, and to your seed, that is Christ. What I'm saying is this, the law, which came 430 years later, does not invalidate a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to nullify the promise.

Not only is every word exactly the way that God wants it in his scriptures, but every single word is an agreement.

This part does not do away with this part. There is not a contradiction. They're not in competition.

For if the inheritance, he says, is based on law, inheritance, speaking about an heir, a son who would receive what

God has promised. For if the inheritance is based on law, it is no longer based on a promise. That word again, promise.

But God has granted it to Abraham by means of a promise. So Paul is dealing with the

Galatians, and he is trying to help them fight some false teaching.

The false teaching that had come to the region of Galatia was simply this, that Jesus Christ indeed is the

Messiah. He indeed is the Savior. He is fully God, and he is fully man.

And there is only one Savior for the world, and that is Jesus Christ. So far, so good.

And this is the way it is with false teaching. Much that is said are things that we could all say a hearty amen to.

And we can say amen and amen and amen until something is dropped in after many amens that we should say, oh, hang on a second.

Wait, wait, that part isn't in agreement with the rest of scripture. And the part that was added by the false teachers in Galatia was this.

Because Jesus Christ is the Jewish Messiah, the Gentiles have to be

Jewish in order to be saved. And how do you become Jewish if you're a

Gentile? Well, you have to be circumcised. You have to go through the process of being circumcised before you can be

Jewish. And then, and then, all the blessings of the Jewish Messiah are yours.

And this was essentially the problem in Galatia. Now, that sounds very minor indeed.

Everything else that they were saying was in perfect agreement with the teachings coming from Paul and the official teaching of the

Jerusalem church. Everything else was in agreement, but that one part was different. How important is one little part?

Well, Paul says in Galatians chapter one, it says in verse six,

I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting him, deserting Christ, who has called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel, which is really not another, but only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

But even if we were an angel from heaven and should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed as we have said before.

So I say now again, if any man is preaching you a gospel contrary to what you have received, he is to be accursed, anathema, cut off from God.

For am I now seeking the favor of men or of God, or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men,

I would not be a bondservant of Christ. Paul says that one little thing, and he goes on to explain it in detail what he's after.

This is that one little thing, adding it to the gospel makes it not a gospel. It makes good news, bad news.

It makes salvation condemnation by adding this one little ingredient.

Why? Because it changes something very important. It changes salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone to it's salvation by grace through faith in Christ.

And all we did was just drop the word alone. It's so repetitive. But therein lies the difference because we can add all sorts of things into saved by grace through faith in Christ.

We can add all sorts of things in there and things have been added in there. In the fine print, but all that fine print and all those little footnotes are washed away, copy paper white by alone, alone, alone.

And Galatians 2 .16 makes it very clear.

It's by faith alone. Now, Paul is writing to these

Galatians and he is saying, he's giving them a

Christmas application. I don't want you to look at circumcision or anything else and add it to the gospel.

Why not? Why not? Because all of the promises have been fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

The inheritance is not based on law, the law of having to be circumcised, but it's based upon promise.

And as Paul would point out in Romans, the promise was given before Abraham ever was circumcised.

And so Paul wants them to pay attention to who Christ is, that in the fullness of the time,

God sent forth his son to fulfill all of these promises. And this is the son in whom they are to trust.

Now, some of these prophecies that he gives, some of these promises that we have in the scriptures, most of them refer to some particular aspect about his person or his work.

We have even very specific prophecies about Christ. For instance, in Psalm 22, that he would be crucified on a cross, a prophecy given a thousand years before crucifixion was a method of torturous death.

We have all kinds of promises in the Old Testament that in the fullness of the time are fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

And that's who Paul wants the Galatians to pay attention to. Now, notice he says, in the end of chapter three, he says, if you belong to Christ, then you are

Abraham's descendants, heirs according to promise, because the promises to Abraham were about Christ.

Now, if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's descendants and it's according to promise, not according to circumcision.

You see, he says, it's not according to the works that you may do, but it's according to what

Christ has done in fulfilling the promises. And if you belong to Christ, you are Abraham's descendants, whether you're circumcised or not.

Why is that so? Because when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth his son and fulfilled the promises.

And these were promises that took a long time to fulfill. Took a long time to fulfill.

Now, when you talk 2000 years, God made the promises to Abraham, 2000 years before they were fulfilled. That's a long time to wait.

Of course, God made promises to Abraham in his own lifetime that took decades to fulfill.

And there were many times that we found Abraham waiting and wondering and struggling. What about the promises about the

Messiah for many, many generations, waiting for the promises to be fulfilled.

But Peter says the Lord is not slack as some count slackness. God is not slow to keep his promises as we would count slowness, as we would think of time.

We would be very, very upset with people in our lives if they kept their promises on the timeline that God keeps his promises.

We would question their integrity. We might call them liars outright. We would not trust their word anymore if they kept promises on the same timeline that God keeps his promises.

But God is not a man. And he always keeps his promises. He has made promises to deliver.

He has made promises to heal. He has made promises to put an end to the devil's lies.

He has made promises to put all things into subjection to Christ's feet. He has made many, many promises.

And when does he bring them to pass? When does he fulfill them in the fullness of the time as he counts fullness?

When he says it's time. Speaking of time, what kind of a time was it into which

Christ came? It was an opportune time. It was a time in which the prophecies were to be fulfilled.

I'm gonna skip down to point four. Don't worry, we'll save the rest for later.

The time into which he came was a time of conflict. It was a time of conflict.

And it may be the case that we really do have too little appreciation for the timing of Christ's birth in terms of the spiritual war being waged.

We talk about all the benefits of the time into which Christ was born and the time into which

God sent forth his son because of the world empires preparing the way for him. But that doesn't mean that it was easy.

It doesn't mean that everything was peaceable and hunky -dory. We ought to tense.

We ought to tense when we listen to the Christmas story. We ought to be a little worried when we hear of the long journey a very pregnant

Mary had to make. And we know Joseph had a difficult time finding a place for Mary to give birth to Jesus.

We can comprehend the dangers of exposure to mother and child and the act of giving birth. We could calculate the high rates of mortality for especially first -time mothers and infants in the ancient

Near East. And just from the physical side, the time into which God sent forth his son is fraught with all kinds of problems and dangers.

The spiritual conflict was far more direct, I would think. We hear about spiritual conflict in Galatians.

Obviously, Paul is in conflict with false preachers, even angels, fallen angels who would preach a false gospel.

He is concerned that the Galatians are being bewitched by false teaching.

What about the spiritual conflict at Christ's birth? And this is where we have the Christmas story from Revelation chapter 12.

Revelation chapter 12. This is not the Christmas story that we normally tell.

Revelation 12, verses one through five. A great sign appeared in heaven. A woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet and on her head, a crown of 12 stars.

It's not really Mary, it's Mary, but it's referring to Israel. The Messiah would come forth from the

Jews. Verse two, and she was with child and she cried out being in labor and in pain to give birth.

Then another sign appeared in heaven. And behold, a great red dragon having seven heads and 10 horns and on his heads were seven diadems.

Is anybody confused as to who that is? The other day we were,

Emmett's not in here, but we were driving with, we were down in Ada and driving around with Becca's aunt and we were talking about this and that.

And the subject of dragons came up. Oh, we were talking about eagles, how they were the king of the skies, the king of the birds.

And how that's an image that we find is a lion's the king of the beasts and a dragon's the king of the snakes and so on.

And Emmett says, are dragons real? Said, yes, son, dragons are real, absolutely.

And his tail swept away a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth.

Remember that a third of the angels rebelled along with Satan. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth.

Notice how all the conflict in the universe has been collapsed to this. Satan and the demons cast down.

Satan, right before the birth of Christ, ready to devour all of the conflict of the universe collapsed into this moment.

And she gave birth to a son, a male child who was to rule all the nations with a rod of iron.

Are we confused as to who that might be? We know who that is, that is Christ.

And her child was caught up to God and to his throne. In the medieval paintings, they have an infant baby ascending to the throne.

No, all of time is collapsed into this one moment of conflict. Her child grew up and was full of the grace and the wisdom of God.

And her child grew up and lived a perfectly righteous life. And her child grew up and was perfectly satisfying to his heavenly father.

And he died upon the cross for the sins of his people. And he was raised again the third day.

And that he was ascended to the right hand of the father as king of kings and Lord of lords, the ruler of the kings of the earth.

He was caught up to God and to his throne because he is the ruler. And guess who was left hungry?

Serpent didn't get to eat, did he? He failed and Christ succeeded.

And reading on down in Revelation 12 and following, though the dragon was very angry at his failures and he went to war against the church through Roman and Jewish persecution and all that has followed, he was unable to eradicate us.

The gates of Hades will not prevail against the church Christ builds. And the full countless number of the redeemed are seen gathered around the throne not so long after this passage.

And they're around the lamb in victory. While those who oppose the child and those who oppose the child and his people and even drank their blood are destroyed in God's judgments.

How's that for a Christmas story? Christ was born into a time of conflict.

A time of conflict to come and save us. Sometimes I think we wonder why then?

Why not a different time? When we think about God's timing, we should think about Christmas, how in the fullness of the time

God sent forth his son. When we question God's timing in our own lives, why now or why not later?

Why does it have to be this way? To strengthen our faith, we need to remember

God's timing at Christmas. He sent forth his son in the fullness of the time.

This ought to comfort those of us who are mourning.

This ought to strengthen us who are waiting. I think it certainly should humble us who are posturing.

You ever heard of the phrase time management? That's a very, and I agree with the response of being responsible and using your time wisely, but management is a word that comes from the

Latin, the word for hand, and it was later turned into a word that talked about leading around horses and training horses.

And sometimes we get the idea that we are time managers, that we can lead time around like someone would train a horse.

That we can manipulate the time and we can control the time and we're in charge of our time.

And let's just remember, let's just remember who has it all in hand.

It's not us. God is the time manager. And he has given us time to be stewards of, but we are certainly not the ones in charge of it and yanking it around.

In the fullness of the time, God sent forth his son. Pray that it will strengthen you and encourage your faith.

Let's pray. Father, I thank you for the time you've given us in your word. And there's much more to say, much more to give you glory for and to rejoice in.

Father, we thank you that you not only give us the nativity scenes in the

Bible where we consider the persons involved, Mary, Joseph, shepherds, wise men, a dragon, angels, the center of all of the scene, your son,

Jesus Christ, but you also give us not just nativity scenes, but the ornamentation to the whole story, the beautiful aspects of it.

And this is certainly one of them. Father, that you're in charge of the times, that you are controlling them and that you're arranging them for our good and for your glory.

Help us to trust you as we go through this season and please remind us as we celebrate your son and the time into which you sent him that you are in charge and that we can trust you.

Help us to rest in you and in your sovereignty. We pray these things for Christ's sake. Amen.