Take your Bibles to Galatians chapter four, if you will. Galatians chapter four. We're gonna be looking at verses four and five. Galatians chapter four. Verses four and five. But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that are under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. In the fullness of time, God sent forth His Son. In the next five messages, we're gonna be looking how God orchestrated history to bring about the greatest event that's ever taken place, the incarnation. God becoming flesh and dwelling among us in lowly Bethlehem. What a wonderful, wonderful time of year it is when we think about the birth of our Savior. In these sermons, we're looking to show each one of us how God set the stage of eternity for this great day that you and I celebrate here every year. In this passage of scripture, it says, God brought things together in the fullness of time, in the exact time of the world's history, God sent forth his son. This morning, we're gonna see how God orchestrated history. Tonight, we're gonna look at how God orchestrated the heavens. And we'll look at how the wise men follow the star of Bethlehem. Then we're gonna see how God orchestrated different people's lives to bring about his message of his son's birth. We'll be looking at Zacharias and Elizabeth and how the angel Gabriel had a very special message at a very important time in the life of Zacharias about John the Baptist, the forerunner of the Savior. We're going to look at how God set the stage. You know, so many times in our life we ask ourselves the question, what is God doing? Things go on in your life and you don't see God's hand. but sometimes God is behind the curtains orchestrating the next play, orchestrating the next event that's going to take place. I trust that as we see how God set the world stage today, that you can see how God has set the stage in your life so that you could hear about his son and come to faith in Christ. You remember how you heard about Christ and for that first time it clicked and you realized your role was to place faith in the Savior. And then to see how God has orchestrated your life, how God has led you in life, guided you in life. I said this morning in the 8.30 service that I was a young man raised up in Tennessee my wife in Northern Alabama. How God orchestrates those things is awful hard to figure out. Many of you met your mate maybe in a college and you were from different parts of the country. But God had a way of weaving your lives together to the right point so that now you're living out his will for your lives. And he did that for his son. We're gonna have a word of prayer, and then we're going to see how God orchestrated history to bring about his son. Let's bow our heads for prayer. Heavenly Father, I pray that you'll speak to our hearts from your word. I pray that you'll speak to our hearts from your history. History is his story. It's all about you, God. It's all about your son. I pray that you'd help us to see what you did to bring about the birth of our Savior. Lord, we love you this morning. And we want you to know that we are so thankful for Jesus and what you did for us. And I pray that we would have a greater appreciation for your working in all of our lives And I pray this in Jesus' name, amen. God sent his son. The Bible records about 6,000 years of history on planet earth. Two-thirds of the way in, he sent his son almost 2,000 years ago. Why then You'd think that maybe a week after the fall of Adam, Jesus would have made his way to earth to redeem us all. But God had a plan, and God orchestrated things in that plan so that we today and all of earth could rejoice at the birth of our Savior and know that Jesus Christ has come for our salvation. In Matthew, Lose my voice a little. Matthew chapter 1 verse 17. The Bible says, so the generations from Abraham to David are 14 generations. And from David unto the carrying away of Babylon are 14 generations. And from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are 14 generations. 42 generations are mentioned here. From Abraham to when Jesus Christ would be born. It's a marvelous record of history. History being his story. The Bible tells us the Messiah would be of the descendant of David, of the tribe of Judah. Jesus is called the Lion of the tribe of Judah. Matthew, I hope my voice will last a year. Matthew, it seems like it's going out all of a sudden, huh? Matthew shows the ancestry of Joseph to Abraham. Luke shows the ancestry of Mary, the mother of Jesus, to Adam. John goes back before creation. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He shows the eternity of who Jesus Christ is. Between Malachi and Matthew were 400 silent years. They were silent in prophetic word. They were silent as far as miracles. They were silent as far as prophecy. And yet God was working behind the scenes to bring about the greatest event mankind's history, the birth of his son in Bethlehem. The Babylonian kingdom was still in rule toward the end of the Old Testament. Right before then you had the Assyrian kingdom, They conquered what was called the Northern Kingdom. The 10 tribes of Israel went into captivity of the Assyrians 100 years before the Southern Kingdom, which was Judah. Well, I don't know if water help, but I appreciate it anyway. And so, well, it might help. I sound a little better anyway, don't I? Might as well quit while I'm ahead. The Syrians took the Northern Kingdom. 100 years later, the Babylonians conquered the Southern Kingdom. That's when Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were taken. The Babylonians were conquered by the Medo-Persians, and then it became the Persian Empire. And then it was conquered by the Greeks. Philip of Macedonia had conquered the Greek islands and put them all together. And for the first time, they were under one rule. His son, Alexander, had greater ambitions. And he decided to take the Greek empire far beyond the islands. And he went forth conquering. and he conquered the largest empire the world had ever known as far as a world empire, and that was the Persian Empire. Alexander the Great did that all before he was 33 years of age. He died when he was 33. He died a drunkard's death. He was depressed because there were no more worlds to conquer. He was a great strategist, he was a great warrior. One thing that Alexander did that no other kingdom of this time had done, and that is he made sure that everywhere he conquered, they had one culture, one language, and one faith. He pushed what was called and would be later called Hellenism. Hellenism was simply meaning to make one Greek. The language, the government, and the culture would be all the same. Now this is significant and we'll talk about that in just a little while. When he died, his only two sons had both been murdered before his death. So he had no children to give the Greek Empire too, so it was split between three generals. On one side of Palestine, Israel, was the Ptolemies, and they ruled most of Egypt and into Africa, and that was part of the Greek Empire. To the west of, or to the east of Israel was the Seleucids. And the Seleucids comprised what would be modern day Syria and those nations around Syria. Palestine was in the middle. The Ptolemies and the Seleucids fought each other constantly and they brought that same destruction to Jerusalem every time they passed by. Jerusalem has been destroyed and remade 27 times in history. It was made a pile of rubble upon rubble and they kept rebuilding, kept rebuilding, kept rebuilding. The deeper you dig underneath Jerusalem, the more you see the ancient culture. They had a beautiful temple there. Now there's just the wailing wall. For those of us who made a trip to Israel, you can go down and look at some of the foundation stones that are still there. One of those stones is 43 feet long, eight to 10 feet high, and they say eight foot thick. It is so heavy, modern cranes would have a great difficulty even lifting it. much less putting it in place so tightly together you can't stick a knife in between the rocks. They had built a great culture. These two factions of the Greek empire fighting against each other caused great problems in Palestine. The Ptolemies were kind to those in Palestine. The Seleucids who later conquered the Ptolemy in Egypt and Palestine were not very fond of the Jews and literally tried to stomp them out and kill them off. Antiochus was the king of the Seleucid empire And he had a son, Antiochus Epiphanes, who not only conquered Palestine, but went into their temple, offered a pig on the altar, and scattered pig blood all throughout the temple. And you understand for a Jew, that's totally unclean and unacceptable. It was a historical event of the abomination of desolation that will one day happen according to the book of Revelation and the book of Daniel. And it will happen when the Antichrist and the world leader are ruling and reigning on planet earth. So it was a historical type of a future event that will take place. It was also during this time that the Maccabees arose up in Israel and fought back against the Seleucids, the Maccabees meaning the word hammer, the hammer, and they would fight back rebellious Jews and they won their liberty until the Seleucids were finally conquered by the Romans and so was Palestine as well. And once again, they're serving another nation. It was under the Greek rule that in Egypt 70 scholars took the Old Testament, written in Hebrew, and they translated it into Greek. And so from that came what the Christian New Testament readers, when they read the Old Testament, They were not always reading in Hebrew, they were most likely reading in Greek. The translation, and this translation was very important to everyone. Jesus quoted much of the Old Testament as it was translated into Greek. That's why you have Greek spellings of Hebrew names in the Old Testament, because the Old Testament was translated into Greek. So the spellings are Greek spellings. And that's why when Jesus mentions a name, he's not giving you their Hebrew spelling, he gives you their Greek spelling. This was called the Septuagint. And it means Septuagint because of the 70 scholars. Septuagint means 70. The 70 men. By the way, that's also the number of people they put together to translate the King James Bible. Because they felt like if the Old Testament was done that correctly, they want the New Testament be done that correctly. well. Caesar Augustus was the ruler of Rome when Jesus was born. Caesar Tiberius was the Caesar, the Emperor of Rome, the time of the crucifixion. Herod Agrippa and Herod the Great were the kings during the life of Jesus. And it was Herod the Great who put forth the decree that all the babies throughout Bethlehem and the surrounding area should be killed under two years of age. You'll recall that back in the Old Testament, the Pharaoh tried to put all the babies of the Israelites, and if it was a man child, they would be thrown into the Nile and fed to the crocodiles. Herod, again, tried to kill all the men boys, two years of age and under, because he's trying to kill out the lineage of the Lord Jesus Christ. One of the most tragic things about a baby losing their life or abortion here in America is we not only take a life, we take all the potential of that life. Every plan that God had for that life is laid bare and to waste. And that's what Herod was trying to do is to get away with the royal seed that would bring forth the Messiah, the King of kings and Lord of lords. But Joseph being warned in a dream by an angel of the Lord made his way to Egypt and stayed there until it was safe to come back. And instead of going to Bethlehem, he resided in Nazareth, where Jesus grew up as a child. When the Romans conquered the Greeks, they admired their culture, they liked their government, and they especially were fond of their language. They were impressed about wherever you went throughout the Greek empire, everyone could communicate with each other because no matter what their mother tongue was, they could speak and understand Greek. And that had never happened on the face of the earth. That's one of the reasons why countries did not invade each other often because they could not communicate with the people to see whether they were friend or foe. There was no way of being able to talk with them and communicate with them. In the 400 years of the kingdoms of the world had gone from Babylonian rule to Persian rule, to Greek rule, to Syrian rule under Seleucids, part of the Greek empire, and now to Roman rule, and all of it without hope. There was no hope that government brought. And may I say that government will never bring hope until the millennial reign of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, amen? Our hope is not in the White House. Our hope is in God's house and on the throne of heaven where Jesus resides. And we must always be looking to him. Meanwhile, across this world, religion is coming to sad conclusions. The pagan idolatry of the world has brought no change, no hope, No answered prayers has not bettered society or the world. The religions had fallen on evil days. The people were sick of polytheism and emptiness of their pagan faiths. Polytheism, many, many gods. Remember in the book of Acts, the apostle Paul stands on Mars hills and he's preaching and there's all these statues of their many gods. And there's one entitled the unknown God, lest they insult someone by not putting their deity up there. And the Apostle Paul preaches about the unknown God being the unseen God who created the world and sent his son, the Lord Jesus, to redeem us from our sin. All of this polytheism, when everything's a God, nothing's a God. So it is in India, they say they have a hundred million gods. Everything that crawls, every bug that flies is a different God. I say when you have that many gods, nothing's really a God. And they act and live that way. The temple had been destroyed and later rebuilt, but now it's full of empty ceremony. The priests in Christ's day are corrupt. the Sadducees are secular they embraced Hellenism they want it to go with the flow they're considered the liberals of their day the Sadducees they don't believe in the supernatural they don't believe in miracles they don't believe in angels they have a form of faith but they deny the power thereof and that Scripture tells us things similar to what there is today around us as well. The Pharisees were hypocrites. They wanted everyone to live by the code of Moses, but they themselves could not live by the code of Moses. Jesus said, do what they say, but don't do what they do because they say and do not, they're hypocrites. Why did sepulchers, they were called by God. The Essenes are complete separatists, a group of Jews that believe that the best way to be close to God is to be removed from man. And so they lived in the caves in the wilderness, a very minimalistic lifestyle. Hundreds of years later, it would, from the very same thought of the Essenes would come monks who would live in the monasteries built in the wildest places on top of the highest mountains. And you see these monasteries built all over in the most impossible ways to get to. But they believe by isolating themselves, they become more godly. The Bible talks about it being a religion of taste not, touch not, handle not, which is a show of the flesh, but not after the heart. We are not saved because of what we don't do. We're saved because we trust Christ as our personal savior and what he did for us. The zealots were revolutionaries. They were like the Maccabees. They were constantly fighting the Romans and trying to make God's kingdom on earth. The people were apathetic and hopeless. And into this spiritual vacuum in the world, in the darkest time of history, politically, as far as government and rule, as far as religion, Into this dark time, God chooses to send forth his son, the light of light. Jesus said, I am the light of the world. And Jesus came at a dark time in history. Even the Jews had given up all hope in their religion, realizing that their only hope was that God would one day send the Messiah. And as we'll later see in the series of sermons, in the temple when Jesus came as a boy, eight years of age, there were people in there that were waiting for the promise that God had given his children. Simeon had been told by God that he would live long enough to see the hope of the world. And before he died, he held that hope in his own arms, baby Jesus. God was orchestrating history. God was moving governments around all for the purpose of making the fullness of time so he could send forth his son. The spiritual significance of it, God provided a world language in that the Greeks made sure that everyone in the conquered world understood Greek. Could read it, could write it, could understand it. That's significant because that happens to be the language of the New Testament. The New Testament was written during Roman rule, but it wasn't written in Latin. It was written in Greek. although the Romans had long conquered the Greeks before. But the Romans understood the importance of having a universal language. And they didn't wanna go and scatter throughout the conquered world teaching Latin. Now, little did I know when I went to Bible, or went to high school, I should say, I never understood why anybody would take Latin class. And I never understood why we had fish every Friday. But it's because my Catholic friends, every mass in a Catholic church back then was in Latin. I went with my friend one time since I'd gotten him to come to my church. I went on an off night to his, we were best friends. I did not understand a single thing that was said there. And all I remember is standing up, kneeling, standing up, kneeling, standing up, kneeling, standing up. Some of you were raised that way, you would know that. And I looked at him and I thought, what in the world? And then I was asking him, why is all these statues all over here? What are they for? And I'd see people bowing down to them. And well, it was an eye-opening thing. But see, the Romans adopted the Greek language and they used that even though Latin was their language. But when the Roman Empire ceased, so did their use of Greek. And Greek became a dead language. Now here's the significance of that. Since Greek is a dead language, 2,000 years later, it means the same thing as it did 2,000 years ago. Because only a live language changes. I don't know about you, but there have been many changes in our language and the common expressions even as when I grew up. If I said to a teenager today, that's cool, they wouldn't know that that used to meant that was a pretty good thing to say. Or if you said, that's rad, they'd look at you like, what? I remember when they would say, that's bad, meaning that's good. It gets confusing, doesn't it? And sometimes you want to think twice before you say anything that you used to say. I remember on the Flintstones, they said, we're going to have a gay old time. And I'm thinking, they don't play Flintstones anymore because of that. We're not doing that. There are many expressions we just don't want to say anymore because the meanings of the words are changing and that happens in a live language. But because Greek is a dead language, the same thing a Greek New Testament would read today is the same way it would read back then when it was written. 95% of all the Greek texts and manuscripts in the world in existence today agree with our King James Version, which is based on the Textus Receptus manuscript, which means received text. It's called received text, or it's also called the majority text, because 95% of all the manuscripts in the world agree with it. The other 3% of manuscripts found in Greek manuscripts, and because they're in all different locations, remember copies of copies of copies of copies, and they scattered around the world in all the different languages. But the 3% that come together, one found in Alexandria and the other found in the Vatican. and they spliced them together, Westcott and Hort, to form the very manuscript of which all the modern versions of today come from. It's called the Westcott and Hort. It wasn't a manuscript, it was two of them being spliced together. Those two disagree with themselves 3,000 times in the New Testament, no, the four gospels alone, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. They disagree 3,000 times. but they merged them together to form one. That's the basis of all modern manuscripts. The King James was put together by the 70 scholars, just like we had the Old Testament translated into Greek. And that was 1611 when it came out. I'm not trying to preach on Bible versions. I'm trying to just let you know there's a reason why God had it written in Greek. That's called Koinai Greek. Koinai meaning common, the common Greek of the day. And it was written so that every farmer, every person who could read could pick it up and read it in the Greek language. But then when it was translated in English, they wanted to do the same thing. And so in 1611, you'll have to understand back in those days, not only did people not have a copy of the Bible, most churches did not have a copy of the Bible. Churches at best had what was called legionaries. It means they had portions of scripture. They might have had the book of John or they might have had the book of Romans. They had a portion of scripture and that's all the church had. When the Bible was finally printed so that every church could have one, the Bibles were this long and this wide and that thick. It wasn't one you carried with you. It was one you had at church so you could come to church and hear God's word. One of the reasons there was such a hunger to go to church is because it's the only place you could have read to you the words of God. And now we almost take for granted that we get to carry around a copy. or put it in your phone. But we have so much access to God's Word that they never had. The spiritual significance of one language was to put God's Word in an authoritative way that once written, the words would never change because it's a dead language. Secondly, the Romans What did they bring to the table as far as the gospel is concerned? The Romans were builders, and the Romans built roads that could go all throughout the world. Wherever their empire went, they built roads. If you've been there before, as I have, to Rome and Italy, You can walk on the very roads that the Romans walked on 2,000 years ago. They are square pieces of stone about a foot by a foot and a foot thick. And for hundreds and hundreds of miles, these solid stone roads are still there today. Cars can drive across it, buses can ride over it, people can walk on it, and you're walking on history. It's 2,000 years old. But the Romans built roads, and because of that, the gospel could spread out as never before in the history of the world. So much so, in Acts chapter 17 in Athens, They'll say of Paul, these that have turned the world upside down have come hither also. The apostle Paul made three missionary journeys. When he wasn't traveling by boat, he was traveling by the roads that were built by the Romans. Taking the gospel very quickly through the world. There was a day where you didn't go very often. Some my age, or if you're my age or older, you remember when America did not have an interstate system. You remember a trip to another state was a big ordeal because that road went through every single town and you stopped at every single stop sign, every single red light. And sometimes it might take an hour to get through one big city. But then they started building the interstate system where you can drive right through the middle of a city and never slow down. You can go all around the cities. You can get anywhere you want within quick hours. And so it was with the Romans. They made it possible to get the gospel around. They were the ones who started census for taxation. And that's why that Mary and Joseph had to travel for 10 days on a donkey. And if you're expecting and wanna deliver quickly, try that one. Sit on a donkey for 10 days and you'll give birth about time you get there. And that's what happened to Joseph and Mary. But they brought that about to get them to the city of David because Micah chapter five, verse two says that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. And so God used history to bring all of it together. The practical significance of it is God orchestrated all of history so that you and I would have an opportunity to hear about his son, born in Bethlehem, that came and live a perfect life, to die a substitutionary atonement for my salvation, your salvation, and die for the sins of the world, that all who look to him in faith could be saved. And he orchestrated that, so you could go to heaven, so I could go to heaven, so we could be with Jesus for all eternity. Though we do not deserve it, though our sins would exclude us, but by faith in what Jesus Christ did on the cross, we had our titles written to a home in heaven forever and ever and ever. That's what God orchestrated for you and for me and for the rest of the world. And so he was moving the characters of history around so that in the fullness of time, God would send forth his son. Let me bring it home a little closer. God not only orchestrated world history to bring us the news of his son, but God has orchestrated your history so that you were where you were when you first heard and understood the gospel. He let you listen to that radio program. We had a member of our church, it's been in heaven now for about a dozen years, Godly couple they've been married 70 years at one time. We had four couples married over 70 years in our church And I was talking to him he was a missionary to Mexico for almost 50 years Him him and his wife were raised up in a in a Mormon family and They lived around in Southern, California and And one day he was listening to the radio and it was Charles Fuller, the old time revival fire. Old revival time, I guess it was called. Revival hour, the revival hour, Charles Fuller. And he was listening and he was giving the gospel. And he called his wife in to stop what she's doing, come into the bedroom and listen on the radio. And he said, honey, if what this preacher is saying is true, you and I are lost. And we need Jesus. And they started listening every day to that radio. And about a week later, he said, They turned it off and understood not only were they lost, but they needed to place faith in Jesus Christ to be saved. And we got down on the side of our bed and we both prayed and trusted Christ as our Savior. And by the way, as a result of that, throughout the years, all their family got saved. They had a large family. They all came to faith in Christ. He became a missionary. Other brothers became pastors. It's just an amazing story. But you see, God orchestrated him to listen to that radio program. I remember one of our members saying, working on a construction site and asked to move his boss's truck somewhere. And he moved the boss's truck but the boss was a Christian and he had Christian radio on. And he started listening to that while he's moving his boss's truck. And he got to saying, where's that coming from? And he started listening. And the result of listening to Christian radio, he came to faith in Jesus Christ. Today he's a very active member in our church and God has great things in store for his life. How did God orchestrate your life? So at that moment in your life, you heard the gospel and you understood it for the first time. I was a nine-year-old boy and I understood it for the first time. And I knew I needed Jesus. Maybe you're here this morning, you've never made that decision. I hope God helps you to understand that he orchestrated your presence here this morning because he wanted you to hear. If you're online watching, maybe in a distant state, but you're watching, it's not by accident. If you don't know Christ is your Savior, today is the day of salvation and you can give your heart and life to the Lord Jesus Christ. For those of us who are believers, realize that God not only worked in our life to bring us salvation, but God's working in our life every single day to make us more Christ-like, to bring blessings into our life, to work to orchestrate an abundant life that he promised us. Let's bow our heads for a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, I pray that you will speak to that heart that's not sure, perhaps watching online that doesn't know for sure heaven is their eternal home. I pray that they would reach out in faith and say, Lord, I believe in you. And I trust you as my savior. I'm sorry for my sin. Please save me. Please forgive me. Please take me to heaven when I die. Lord, for those who are believers, I pray, dear Lord, that you would help us to find rest in your perfect will for our lives, knowing you'll lead us, you'll guide us, you'll bless us as we follow your path. Thank you, dear Lord, for today and for this service you've given. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. I hope that tonight you'll come as we look how God orchestrates the heavens for his son. Henry Kim, one of our Korean students, is getting baptized today. So let's watch Henry get baptized. In just a little while, we'll watch Henry get baptized. Let me say, if you're visiting today, we're thrilled to have you. And we have a gift for each visitor. And that will be found at the visitor's reception area. We have a nice gift for you as well as a card, a small expression of our thanks for you being here and being our guest today. And so Henry will get baptized here in just a little while. I'm ready. This is Henry. Henry, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Buried in the likeness of his death, raised in the likeness of his resurrection. Amen. God bless you. You're dismissed. you