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| Order Of Worship (Liturgy) |
GALATIANS 4:4a
(Readings: Galatians 3:15-4:7)
Perfect Timing
Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ…
Pregnancy is a time of expectation.
When you are pregnant, or your wife is pregnant, or your mum is pregnant, you are looking ahead.
You’re waiting!
You see, pregnancy isn’t something that happens for its own sake.
It finds its fulfilment in the birth of a child.
Its purpose is achieved when that baby’s come!
And when baby does come, life’s not the same anymore.
This is especially so if it is the first child.
Then things really change!
Life revolves around that little bundle.
There are feeds and sleeps and nappy changes.
There’s no way you can turn back the clock.
You simply cannot ignore the fact of a baby’s birth.
Yet, that’s exactly what the Galatian churches were trying to do.
They were churches that were made up of mainly converts from paganism.
They had turned from that paganism to faith in Christ Jesus.
But Jews had begun to teach them that that faith was not enough.
They taught them that they had to keep the Old Testament ceremonial law as well.
So they were teaching them that they still had to be circumcised and that they had to keep all those Old Testament festivals – the Sabbaths and new moons and all those annual festivals.
All these things, though, had been fulfilled in Christ Jesus.
They didn’t need to be practiced anymore.
And yet that’s exactly what the Galatians were now believing.
They thought doing those things was what now saved them.
It wasn’t faith alone anymore – it was faith and works.
And really, when you came down to it, there wasn’t really faith in that picture anymore.
It was what you did that made you right with God.
So Paul wrote them this letter.
He told them, in the words of a first aspect to the text … THIS IS THE NEW COVENANT AGE.
Now, once a baby is born, you can’t go back to the old lifestyle.
Even if that lifestyle was fine before the birth.
To try anything like that is only asking for the worst kind of trouble.
In the same way, ever since Jesus came to earth and suffered, died, and was raised from the dead and ascended into heaven, believers cannot go back to the Old Testament ways.
Even if those ways were the way that was God’s will for his people then.
This is what Paul warns the Galatian Christians against.
In chapter 1 he starts his letter with this deep concern.
He says in verse 6 there, “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel – not that there is another one…”
Then he goes on in chapters 2 and 3 to prove this.
And now, in two verses in chapter 4, Paul describes in a nutshell what it is all about.
In verses 4 and 5, he declares, “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.
It doesn’t seem like so many words.
But how much doesn’t it hold?
Turning to the part that is our text this morning shows this.
It consists of the first phrase, “But when the fullness of time had come…”
Congregation, the apostle Paul is quite clear that the coming of Jesus to earth was no haphazard thing.
Jesus didn’t really come to earth just when he felt like it.
He didn’t come here as soon as he possibly could.
He came when the time had fully come.
Think again of the baby being born.
Jesus didn’t come like a baby being born premature.
Nor was he a baby induced two weeks late.
He came as a baby born on time.
He came when the time had fully come.
This gives us an idea of what history is like in God’s hands.
God isn’t a God who needs to wait for an opportune moment to do what he wants.
God is a God who uses history for his own purposes.
Paul wrote of this in his second letter to Timothy.
In chapter 1, the verses 9 and 10, he says that God “has saved us and called us to a holy life – not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace.
“This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Saviour, Christ Jesus…”
So God exists outside of time.
He actually created time and space.
They cannot contain him.
He is the God who is, and who was, and who is to come – all at once!
He is from everlasting to everlasting without being trapped in time like we are.
He moulds and shapes time and history the way our kids use play-dough.
Congregation, God uses history for his purposes.
Indeed, history is God’s spotlight.
Because he uses that history to focus on his Son.
Jesus didn’t come when he came because finally he was able to make it.
God made the time right, and when the time had fully come, Jesus came.
If this is true, however, if Jesus is the focus of world history, shouldn’t he be the focus of our lives as well?
Shouldn’t everything you do be shaped by his coming and dying and rising from the dead?
Shouldn’t all our thoughts and words and actions show the truth of what God has done and what he’s doing?
The Galatians had known that to be true.
But they were influenced by others to deny it.
They let themselves come into a situation where the spotlight wasn’t shining.
In the same way, we also have to keep struggling against being drawn into that darkness.
There are so many distractions which take us away from the place Jesus should have in our lives.
For while every Sunday we’re especially reminded of what God has done in his Son, how many other things aren’t out there?
We have to continually keep focussed.
Don’t be distracted.
Keep under that spotlight!
So we have seen … THIS IS THE NEW COVENANT AGE.
Now let’s consider how … THIS IS THE RIGHT HISTORICAL STAGE.
This is our second aspect.
Congregation, we see God moulding history also when we look at the time when Jesus came.
God had prepared the world for his coming.
For much as Israel was subject to the Roman Empire and hated it vehemently, it served God’s purposes all the more.
Let’s delve into a little of why this was.
It was in the year 27 BC, only a few years before Christ’s birth, that Caesar Augustus became the first Roman Emperor.
He was probably the most powerful man since Nebuchadnezzar.
We know this by the extent of his empire.
It surrounded the Mediterranean Sea.
From the whole of southern Europe, it went into Asia Minor, much of the Middle East, Egypt and Northern Africa.
Soon afterwards it moved across the channel to England.
He finally brought unity and stability to the Roman Empire.
Because of that stability, those living in the Empire experienced peace.
Roads were constructed to link the countries within the Empire.
Roads so well designed and constructed that not only do some of them continue to be used today but others formed the routes for modern highways.
Road travel was relatively safe and easy.
And sea travel across the Mediterranean was also quite safe.
The Greek language was accepted by the entire Empire as the common trading language.
It is like English is in the world today.
For although the peoples then had their own languages many also spoke Greek.
This meant that when the gospel began to spread it moved quickly.
You notice this as you glance through the book of Acts.
Chapter 2 describes Pentecost and the gospel beginning to spread throughout Jerusalem.
But it also says that there were Jews and converts to Judaism from every nation under heaven.
There were Parthians, Medes and Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene, visitors from Rome, and Cretans and Arabs.
All of them heard the gospel in their own tongue.
In Acts 8 Philip spreads the gospel to Samaria and further north of there.
In chapter 11 the gospel goes to Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch.
And from there Paul and his fellow missionaries take it throughout the Empire.
At the close of Acts he reaches Rome, where the church is already.
So even though the gospel is centred upon a man who never went outside his own country, never received formal education, who lived a life of poverty, and who died as the worst of criminals on a cross, within 300 years it had spread and became the official state religion.
And since then it has continued to go throughout the world.
It is now the most influential religion in the world.
God had prepared the world so that the saving message of the gospel would spread quickly.
Jesus Christ came when the time had fully come.
He confirms this with what he says to his disciples just before his ascension into heaven.
For in Acts 1 verse 8 he said, “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
And so we come to a third aspect to the text.
For now we see God’s perfect timing shown as we note … THIS IS ALL KNOWN BY THE SUPREME SAGE.
And what’s a Sage you may wonder?
A Sage is a wise man.
And who else is wiser and more knowing than Jesus Christ, God’s Son?
He knew his life had a specific purpose.
He was moving toward the point in time when that purpose would be fulfilled.
Like the pregnant woman who looks forward to the coming birth and who knows when the time has come, Jesus knew when his time had come.
This is especially clear in the gospel of John.
In chapter 2, Jesus, his mother and his disciples were at a wedding in Cana.
The wine ran out so Mary came to Jesus for help.
Jesus lent a hand with that.
But he particularly pointed out to his mother what he was really here for.
He said to her in verse 4, “Dear woman, why do you involve me?
“My time has not yet come.”
In chapter 7 of John, some people in Jerusalem are waiting to seize Jesus.
But he stays in Galilee at that point.
In verse 6 there he says to his brothers who were trying to persuade him to go to Jerusalem, “You go to the Feast.
“I am not going up to this Feast, because for me the right time has not yet come.”
And then when Jesus goes up to Jerusalem later in that chapter they do try to seize him.
John makes the comment, though, that no one laid a hand on him, because his time hadn’t yet come.
In John 8 a similar thing happens again with the Pharisees, but still no one is able to seize him because his time had not come.
Then in chapter 12, after the triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, some Greeks wanted to see Jesus.
Jesus realised this was a turning point in his life.
He was about to give his life so that also non-Jewish people like these Greeks might become children of God.
He says, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.
“I tell you the truth, 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…”
And he concludes that talk by saying, “Now my heart is troubled and what shall I say?
“‘Father, save me from this hour?
“No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour.
“Father, glorify your name!”
Then we come to the final Passover feast.
There Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper sacrament just before he went to the cross.
There, in John 13 verse 1 it says, “Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father.
“Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love.”
This was also shown in the prayer he prayed before his arrest.
In it Jesus said, “Father, the time has come.
“Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you.
“For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him.
“Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.
“I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do (17:1-4).”
When Jesus died on that cursed cross to save believing sinners from eternal damnation, his time had fully come.
History up until that point had achieved its purpose.
As Leon Morris wrote, “everything was moving to the intended climax.
“Jesus had come for a purpose, and that purpose was to be seen in the cross.”
Congregation, if you have a camera, you know you have to focus it to take good photos.
It doesn’t matter what’s going on around you, there’s only one subject you want to focus on.
If you don’t do that you don’t get the picture.
When you’ve focussed on your subject, everything else becomes a blur.
But that doesn’t matter.
What really matters is clear and sharp in the view finder.
The Bible is God’s camera.
It focuses on the main event.
This is the event that impacts all of history, and indeed it’s the event that dates all of history.
Because this event is the birth, suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ!
The purpose of history before that time was to prepare the world for him.
The purpose of history since then is to explain what his doing and dying means to the whole world.
Congregation, the Galatian church forgot that life could never be the same after Christ’s resurrection.
They forgot they were members of a new covenant.
The shadows were done away with.
The substance had come.
Their focus was blurring.
They were mislead.
They lost sight of Christ.
Let’s not lose focus as they did.
Don’t forget what life is all about!
Dear friend, you must believe that the focus of both history and God’s Word is on Christ!
Do you get the picture?
Amen.
PRAYER:
Let’s pray…
O Most Gracious God, how much aren’t we reminded of how huge you are and how small we are.
You are the One who planned it all.
In your time it was worked out.
And your Son could be the only One to do that.
How much don’t we thank you that he came!
And that’s why we pray now in his Name, Amen.
* As a matter of courtesy please advise Rev. Sjirk Bajema, if you plan to use this sermon in a worship service. Thank-you.
(c) Copyright 2024, Rev. Sjirk Bajema
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