At Just The Right Time

This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons, or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

Looking Back at Christmas and Looking Ahead to the New Year

Now normally I preach expositionally, but today I thought I would preach topically, and a little bit of fear and trepidation to do that here, but I was very gratified to note that you had a category for topical sermons, miscellaneous, so maybe this will fit into that category.

Okay, I'm going to talk to kids here first. In fact, I'm going to be talking, how many kids have we got, one, two, one, two, three,.

Any more?

PJ, okay, four, five, good. I'm going to be talking, throughout this message. I'm going to be talking to you guys, so you pay attention, okay? Everybody got that? We got eye contact, okay, good. PJ, got eye contact?

Good, all right.

Okay, good.

What month is it today?

Pardon?

February.

Okay, count backwards. Two months, and what month are we at?

Noah?

December, that's right. What is the big thing about December? What do we like to talk about in December? Christmas, yeah, that's right, Christmas. Now, what happens just after Christmas? No, just after, okay, I'll give you a hint, one week after.

New Year's, okay. So this is really interesting. Now, don't be surprised that I'm talking about Christmas. I really think it's a shame that we only sing Christmas carols for just a couple of weeks every year.

I like to sing Christmas carols all year round, and I'll probably lead some Christmas carols in July at our church. So don't be surprised I'm talking about Christmas. Christmas season, you think about it.

What do we do at Christmas? We are focusing on what? Who can tell me, please?

At Christmas, PJ?

Maybe you are.

Birth of Christ, aren't we? We're talking, that's what we're focused on, the birth of Christ. And what do we do in the birth? Okay, so automatically, we're thinking 2 ,000 years backwards, aren't we? We're thinking back.

All the Christmas plays, all the Christmas stories, it takes our mind back. But it's followed immediately by New Year, the new year. And in New Year, what do we do? We start thinking forward. And if you're like me, and you have a day timer, I'm starting to think about my whole year at New Year's, because I get new pages of my day timer and put them in.

I'm one of those guys that doesn't put it all on a little tablet or a phone. And I'm looking ahead to see what my year is going to look like. We start to make, some people make resolutions, and so we're actually looking ahead.

So in this space of a week, we've gone from looking back to looking ahead. And I think from a Christian perspective, this is really appropriate, that we look back and we look ahead at the same time. Because at Christmas, it's the incarnation, which basically means putting on flesh.

God incarnate as a man. God incarnate. God became a man. And leading up to, though, his death and resurrection, which changed world history forever. It changed it in the past, because now we understand it, and it's changed it in the future.

Future is really just history in advance, okay? So that's what really, and I love history. So we're thinking future or in the past, it's all history really. God coming into human life incarnated in flesh, changed history forever.

Whether or not the world acknowledges, it did. But it's not just world history, it's personal history. Your history, my history, was changed forever because of that event 2 ,000 years ago. And so we're looking back, and God steps into the darkness of sin, of our sin.

We can take that in a global sense, but we can take it in a personal sense too. God stepped into this darkness of my sin, of your sin, and he dealt with it on the cross. And what did that do? It offers eternal salvation for all who come to him in faith.

And so that we now have this sure hope in the future. We're looking ahead with a sure hope, and now we have confidence in the future. How many times, if you listen to the news, if all you ever do is listen to the news, listen to social media, if you're like me, watching a lot of stuff on YouTube, and you're listening to what's happening, do you lose confidence in the future?

I had a guy tell me today, I think the Third World War is going to start anytime soon. Well, maybe it will. But is our confidence in that? Or is our confidence in what Christ has done on the cross? Our future confidence.

We should be, of all people, the most positive in our outlook. So looking back, looking forward. So today, I want to actually look at the events that led up to the incarnation, and how those events help us live in the present with an eye to the future.

The Fullness of Time in the Old Testament and the Silent Years

So when we think about living or looking at events that lead up to the incarnation, we automatically think in terms of the Old Testament, don't we? And, but I want, okay, kids, another question here. What was the last book written in the Old Testament?

What's the last book in the Old Testament? Ah, I heard it. Malachi, that's right. How many years before the incarnation, before the birth of Christ, was Malachi written? Anybody, any idea there? How many years, about, approximately?

No, not quite, 650?

400, that's right. Did your mom whisper that in your ear?

Oh, okay.

400 years, about. Now, commentators will call that the 400 silent years. You think of 400 years, that's a long time. It's a long time. And let me put you in a perspective here as to what 400 years might look like to us.

What happened in Canada 400 years ago? Okay, what happened in 1609? Samuel de Champlain founded Quebec City. 1609. I bet you all knew that. What happened in 1611? 1611, come on. Bible scholars. King James Bible was published.

I'm not going to read from the King James, don't worry. What happened in 1611? That's a long time ago. God had promised the Savior throughout the Old Testament. If you read through, I'm sure you guys have done that.

As you go through the Old Testament, all these pictures of Christ, the promised Messiah had been promised for all this time through the Old Testament, but then we had this blank space of 400 years. What happened?

What happened? Was God silent? And you can imagine people starting to think, well, is God really there? Does God exist at all? Is there really going to be salvation or do we have to save ourselves? Lots of question marks.

Where is this God you've been talking about? But God is not just the God of Bible events. He is the God of all of life, including all of history and all political events. Think about that next time you vote.

The Fulness of Time in World History

Galatians 4 .4. But when the fullness of time had come, exactly the right moment, the fullness of time had come. God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law. So all the preliminary historical events had been completed.

It was full. Time was full. God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law. Why was that just the right time? Why wasn't he born just shortly after Malachi was written? Well, let's look at a few historical events.

Shortly after Malachi was written, if you can, in your mind's eye, picture the eastern Mediterranean, about 1 ,600 kilometers northwest of Judea was the country of Macedonia. Now, Acts 16, you read about Macedonia because that's where Paul and his company took the gospel into Europe.

They landed in Macedonia. But at the time of Malachi, there was a king in Macedonia by the name of Philip, and he conquered all the Greek city-states. Macedonia was north of what today we'd call northern Greece, basically.

But it was a country of Macedonia. It wasn't Greece. In fact, Greece was only a collection of independent city-states. And so Philip of Macedonia, he conquered all these city-states and he formed them into a country of itself.

This is the first time it had happened. All those Greek city-states were independent, and if they weren't fighting the Persians or somebody else, they were fighting each other. So Philip of Macedonia created a single country.

Then he got assassinated. And his son took over. What was his son's name?

Who can tell me?

Alexander the Great, that's right. He was a brilliant general. Now, again, if you can, in your mind's eye, get this picture of the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East and the Middle East. Alexander the Great crossed into what today we'd call Turkey, Persian Empire, and he went right through the Persian Empire, down into Egypt, which included Judea at that time, as far as India, up into what we'd call Afghanistan today.

He conquered all that in 11 years. He died in 323 B .C. at the age of 32, 11 years after he'd set out to conquer the Persian Empire. His only son was a baby who was murdered. And so his empire was divided amongst his four generals, and then they all fought over the bits and pieces of the empire.

There was wars, and they got weaker and weaker. Is this from the Bible? Yes, it is. Prophet Daniel talks about kings of the north and the kings of the south. That's the breakup of Alexander's empire. Now, not long after Alexander's death, new power starts to rise, and that's Rome.

Again, look at your imaginary map in your mind, and Rome starts to grow as a world power, and all these weakened successors of Alexander are no longer able to resist this new power, this rising. And so Rome starts to push east and take over the Greek Empire.

And again, read the Prophet Daniel, and you'll read about the rise of Rome. Now, the Romans are known as great engineers and builders. They built a vast network of high-quality roads throughout their whole empire, an efficient postal system.

They cleared the Mediterranean of pirates, and so there was trade and prosperity across the empire. And they ushered in an unprecedented era of relative peace that lasted for almost 200 years. It was called the Pax Romana, the Roman Peace.

And Rome also adopted from Alexander's legacy Greek as the language of learning and commerce throughout the Roman Empire. At the same time, they're in transition internally as they move from a republic to an empire.

And a man named Octavian becomes the first emperor. The Bible gives Octavian another name. Anybody can tell me what his name is in the Bible? Anybody? Caesar Augustus. Were you going to say that, Noah?

Ah, good man. You must have been homeschooled at one time. Sorry. Caesar Augustus. What's Caesar Augustus famous for in the Bible?

Guys?

What did Caesar Augustus do?

Noah, come on.

Chapter 2, verse 1. In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. That's a fancy way of saying taxed. All the world should be registered. A census, in other words, for taxation.

Don't we love that? Taxation. But what did that do? How did God use that? It ensured that the Messiah, Jesus, would be born in the city of Bethlehem so that he would be born in David's line and in David's city in accordance with the prophet Micah.

The second thing that Caesar Augustus was famous for was he's the author of the Pax Romana.

God's Providence in Bethlehem, Herod, and the Magi

Okay.

Why is that important? What does it have to do with God's timing? Well, what's happened in these 400 silent years is that God has set the world stage for the coming of the Messiah, of the Savior. 400 years of silence.

And God ensured that Jesus, he was born amongst his chosen people, Israel, so that he was under the authority of the law of Moses, which was really God's law given through Moses, but that he would not be born in some obscure country that dealt very carefully with its neighbors, very cautious about who it dealt with outside, spoke a language that almost nobody else spoke.

But God ensured that rather than that, the Messiah would be born in a country at the center of a vast empire. And again, look into your mind's eye to that map. Where does Judea sit? At the crossroads of three continents, Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Very narrow strip of land through which several trade routes run from Africa to Asia and across into Europe. So instead of in this obscure little country, it's at the center, basically, of three continents is where he is born.

Common language, common laws, fast and efficient communication system, and a period of relative stability and peace, which had never been there in history before. Unprecedented. So instead of Christianity just being a small Jewish sect, what we find is that when the Romans destroy Jerusalem in AD 70, and later Roman emperors start to persecute Christianity, where do we find the church?

It's scattered throughout the entire empire and beyond. We have the scriptures in thousands of copies starting to be translated into other languages. And so the church is firmly established throughout this whole region because God has set up all the historical and political parameters to make it happen.

And so it was so that the Savior would arrive at exactly the right time, exactly in the fullness of time. Now, if you were a Jew, you're probably sitting there thinking, 400 years, God hasn't done anything.

Where is the Messiah? God was very active. So the Messiah was born at the right time and the right place. But God's timing gets even more interesting in this story. Bethlehem is in the kingdom of whom?

Who is the king over the town of Bethlehem in those days when Jesus is born? No, not your daddy, no. Herod, King Herod. Now, Herod is called, history calls him Herod the Great. So was he a great guy? He was called Herod the Great, but it wasn't because he was a great ruler.

He was actually a great architect and engineer. If you go to Israel today, if you go on all the regular tourist routes, you will see a testament to Herod's great abilities as an engineer. Masada, the Herodium, the Temple Mount, Caesarea Maritima, the great aqueduct are all testaments to his brilliance as an engineer and as an architect.

But of course, we chiefly know Herod as another great, well, I guess it was great in one sense, but it was really wicked, and that was the massacre of the baby boys in Bethlehem,.

Don't we?

Which is what the prophet Jeremiah had predicted. Herod said,. A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted for her children because they are no more.

Jeremiah 31 .15. Now, think about Herod. He's not a Roman, and he's not a Jew. He is an Edomite, descendant of Esau, the oldest son of Isaac and Rebekah, who sold his blessing for a pot of stew. Genesis 25.

So Herod is kin to the Jews, but he's also, he comes from a tribe that is a traditional enemy of the Jews. During the Exodus, Edom denied passage to Israel as they were journeying to the Promised Land.

It wouldn't allow them through their lands, and they were treacherous and unreliable allies. We just read Psalm 60. Upon Edom, I will cast my shoe. That was what God felt about Edom. The entire book of Obadiah is a prophecy against Edom.

So as a young man, Herod spent time in Rome. He knew many of the power brokers. He backed the right ones on this internal struggle as Rome made this transition from a republic to an empire, and including backing of Octavian, Caesar Augustus, the first Roman emperor.

And so Octavian appointed Herod as king of Judea about 30 BC. So about 30 to 32 years later, who shows up at Herod's palace? Wise men, magi. They came to Herod's court, and here's another interesting testimony of God's perfect timing.

So 600 years beforehand, 600 years beforehand, there's a Hebrew captive by the name of Daniel. He's in the court of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, interprets a dream, Daniel chapter 2, and what happens as a reward?

He's put in charge of all the magi. 70 years later, Daniel's an old man. He's still in Babylon, but it's now part of the Persian Empire. They've taken over from the Babylonians, and it's later to be conquered by Alexander the Great.

And so Daniel's given this vision of the 70 weeks of years concerning Messiah. And so it's not too hard to imagine this vision being passed on through successive generations of magi who are reading the signs of the times, who are paying attention to this prophetic timeline.

So we jump forward several hundred years. Let's look at Matthew chapter 2. Matthew chapter 2, verse 1. Now, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men, footnote in your Bible probably says magi, from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, where is he who was born king of the Jews?

For we saw his star when it rose, and we have come to worship him. What's Herod's reaction? Verse 3. When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. I expect that is one of those biblical understatements.

Herod was troubled. Now, hadn't been the king of the Jews for about 600 years. Herod's not a Jew. He's an Edomite. He's been installed by Rome. He's close enough kin to the Jews to have a great respect for their god, and that's why he built the temple, or the temple mount.

He enlarged the Zerubbabel's temple, the second temple, and so he built it in a magnificent structure. But he's superstitious enough to fear any talk of messiahs or kings. From history, we know that Herod was paranoid, paranoid about assassins and rebellions.

He had several of his family killed because he thought they were plotting against him. Even just up before he died, he was changing his will because he wasn't trusting who should be his successor. So a reference to a star was particularly disturbing for an Edomite because about 1400 years before Herod, there's a Moabite king by the name of Balak, and he has called a Mesopotamian prophet out of the Mesopotamian Valley to curse the Israelites who were encamped on the east side of the Jordan River getting ready to go into Canaan.

But if you remember that story from Numbers, God turns that curse around against Israel's enemies. In Numbers 24 .17, Balaam says, I see him, but not now. I behold him, but not near. What was he talking about?

He goes on to say, A star, a star is the sign of divinity. A star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter, a sign of kingship. A scepter shall arise out of Israel. It shall crush the forehead of Moab and break down all the sons of Sheth.

Edom shall be conquered. Seir also. Seir was the name of the chief mountain of Edom. Now, if instead of a local king in place, there had been a Roman governor, he would not have been impressed by any Jewish prophecies.

He would just dismiss them out of hand as mere myths. Wouldn't be interested. But Herod was not a Roman governor. He was an Edomite king. Now, 31 years, about 31 years later, Jesus is arrested by the Jews, and Rome had installed a governor in Judea, and his name was, his name was, who was the most famous Roman governor in the Bible?

Julius Caesar was long dead.

Pardon?

Pilate. Pontius Pilate. Yeah, he almost, I know you had it. Pontius Pilate. He was the Roman governor. Now, he's not interested in stories about Messiah. He just wants to keep order. He has no hesitation about scourging and crucifying anybody who's brought before him.

But it's all in accordance with the prophecies that have been given throughout the Old Testament. Prophecies by David, by Daniel, by Isaiah. We read all about that. And even mockingly, you know, Pilate had the inscription, Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.

He had that inscribed and put on the cross above Jesus' head, and he had it inscribed in three languages. Latin, which is the language of the Romans, Greek, which was the language of the Empire, the language of commerce, and in Aramaic, which was the language of the East, the Semitic languages.

And so he had that, he was mocking, but he didn't realize that what he was doing was he was actually fulfilling what the Magi had said in Herod's court just over 30 years before that. And more than that, what he was in fact saying by putting in the three common languages of the Empire, he was saying that this man was king not just of Nazareth, but of the whole world.

Now, Herod would never have done that. Herod would never have done that. It took a proud Roman to do that. So God's timing was perfect in the birth of Jesus and in his death. We just read from Romans 5, 6.

You see, at just the right time, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. God ensured that in the fullness of time, exactly the right time, Jesus was born as a real man.

He lived a real life at just the right time and place in history. And at just the right time, he died a real death. Not for the worthy, we've already been talking about that earlier in the meeting, but for unworthy, for sinners.

Not just taking the punishment of our sin, but taking sin itself upon us, upon him. Not just the punishment, but the sin itself he took upon himself. And that's so that in Christ we might be declared righteous.

He took the sin upon himself so that there is none for us. We might be declared righteous. 2 Corinthians 5 .21 says, God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

This is the greatest Christmas present of all. This is the great exchange of the cross. He took our sin upon his shoulders and dealt with it, and his righteousness is transferred to us. That's the great exchange of the cross.

That's the power of the cross. That's what we see in baptism. I know you've had baptisms recently, and baptism is really a picture. It's a reenactment of the gospel. Let's just turn back to Romans,.

To Romans 6,.

Starting at verse 3. Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried, therefore, with him by baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

And just skipping down to verse 11. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. So picture baptism. Under the water, the death of the old nature. You're in the water, the washing away of sin.

And then the rising up, resurrected to new life. What a great picture of the gospel. It's a reenactment of the gospel every time we have a baptism. Because we're raised to new life, we're declared righteous, we're adopted as his children, and we're called to live righteously in the present, trusting in his perfect timing, not in just bringing us to that point, but also into the future.

God's timing was perfect at the birth of the Savior and in his death, and it's perfect in our lives as well. It's perfect today in our lives as well. Paul, when he was on Mars Hill in Athens debating with the Greek philosophers in Acts 17, he said, God himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything, and he made from one blood or one man every nation of mankind to live on the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place that they should seek God.

God determined the time and the place that we would be. God's timing was perfect in our birth. Each of us was born at just the right time and the right place with the right parents, with the right siblings, with the right hair color, the right gender.

God determined that ahead of time. He's perfect in the circumstances of our daily lives, even the challenging ones.

Why?

So that we might seek him. So that we might seek him. God's timing is perfect when he calls us home. We've had a lot of seniors at our church who've been called home in the last year or so. And many of them, when they get up to be, especially when they get over 100, which is some of them, they're saying, Lord, why are you leaving me here?

Well, his timing is perfect. And I can tell you the testimony that many of those people have been by living up to over 100 in a nursing home somewhere in some way having God's grace shine through them.

His timing is perfect when he calls us home. See, we have no say in when we're born. We can't determine the length of time that he gives us, but we do have a say in how we live the time that we're in, the time that he gives us.

We have a say in that. And we have a choice. We see it as a gift of God, as we can be enjoyed and to be poured out as a drink offering, as it were, in praise to him and in service to him. Or we can think that God made a mistake.

Do we wish we were born somewhere else? Do we wish we were born at another time? Do we wish we were born as some other person? Then we miss the joy. We miss the joy of the life that he gives us in our time and place.

His timing is perfect in our lives. It's always perfect. What does he call us to do? To embrace it. To embrace the time that he gives us. And not just at Christmastime, not just at New Year's, but every day of the year.

In some ways, every day is Christmas. Every day is New Year. Every day is a new time to embrace what he gives us and to live for his glory. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that your timing is perfect, that your timing was perfect in sending your son, and it was perfect in the death of your son and the resurrection of your son.

It'll be perfect at the end of time when you return, and it's perfect in our lives. You determined who we would be before time began from eternity past. And Lord, help us to embrace that. Help us to take the focus off ourselves and say, why me?

And put the focus on Christ and say, use me, that you'd be glorified in my life. So Lord, help us to live that. Help us to embrace that. Help us to cherish that and help us to seek after Christ and make much of him, glorify him in the time and space that you give us and the circumstances of this present time so that we can look forward to that time when he says, well done, good and faithful servant.

Lord, we thank you, and we look forward to it. We want to give you praise. We want to say we love you and give you glory in our lives because we come to you in Jesus' name.