Well, we're going to be reading a passage that gives the foundations for all of those glorious promises we've been singing. It's Galatians chapter 4, and I will be reading verses 4 through 7. So it's kind of breaking into a paragraph, but... It says, But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying out, Abba, Father. Therefore, you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ. Father, we thank you for your word, and I pray that you would enable me to faithfully preach it, and for each one of us to grow in our joy of the incredible salvation that you have wrought on our behalf. In Jesus' name, amen. You may be seated. A few years ago, Focus on the Family shared a story about God's providences to work in both the difficult as well as the beautiful events of life. And we often celebrate the beautiful providences and miss God's hand in the painful ones. What I want to share with you this morning is God is just as much at work in both. This story took place on January 10, 1948. A Hungarian immigrant named Marcel Sternberger regularly commuted from the suburbs into New York City, but on this particular day, just on a whim, he decided to do something that was totally out of character for him. He took the morning off, visited a friend in Brooklyn, and then later that afternoon, he boarded a Manhattan-bound subway to his office, and here is the story in his own words. He said, the car was crowded and there seemed to be no chance of a seat, but just as I entered, a man sitting by the door suddenly jumped up to leave and I slipped into the empty place. I've been living in New York long enough not to start conversations with strangers, but being a photographer, I have the peculiar habit of analyzing people's faces, and I was struck by the features of the passenger on my left. He was probably in his late 30s, and when he glanced up, his eyes seemed to have a hurt expression in them. He was reading a Hungarian language newspaper, and something prompted me to say in Hungarian, I hope you don't mind if I glance at your paper. The man seemed surprised to be addressed in his native language, but he answered politely, you may read it now. I'll have time later on. During the half hour ride to town, we had quite a conversation. He said his name was Bela Poskin, a law student when World War II started. He had been put into a German labor battalion and sent to the Ukraine. Later, he was captured by the Russians and put to work burying the German dead. After the war, he covered hundreds of miles on foot until he reached his home in Debrecen, a large city in Eastern Hungary. I myself knew Debrecen quite well, and we talked about it for a while. Then he told me the rest of his story. When he went to the apartment, once occupied by his father, mother, brother, and sisters, he found strangers living there. Then he went upstairs to the apartment that he and his wife once had. It was also occupied by strangers. None of them had ever heard of his family. As he was leaving, full of sadness, a boy ran after him, calling, "'Posken bachi.'" Posken bachi, that means Uncle Posken. The child was the son of some old neighbors of his. He went to the boy's home and talked to his parents. Your whole family is dead, they told him. The Nazis took them and your wife to Auschwitz. With that news, Poskin gave up all hope of ever seeing his wife alive again. A few days later, too heartsick to remain any longer in Hungary, he set out again on foot, stealing across border after border until he reached Paris. He managed to immigrate to the United States in October 1947, just three months before I met him. All the time, because I know the rest of the story. All the time he had been talking, I kept thinking that somehow his story seemed familiar. A young woman whom I had met recently at the home of friends had also been from Dresden. She had been sent to Auschwitz. From there, she had been transferred to work on a German munitions factory. Her relatives had been killed. Later, she was liberated by the Americans and was brought here in the first boatload of displaced persons in 1946. Her story had moved me so much that I had written down her address and phone number intending to invite her to meet my family and thus help relieve the terrible emptiness in her life. It seemed impossible, that there could be any connection between these two people. But as I neared the station, I fumbled Anxiously, in my address book, I asked him what I hoped was a casual voice. Was your wife's name Maria? He turned pale. Yes, he answered. How did you know? He looked as if he were about to faint. I said, let's get off the train. I took him by the arm at the next station, led him to a phone booth. He stood there like a man in a trance. While I dialed her phone number, it seemed hours before Maria Posken answered. Later, I learned her room was alongside the telephone, but she was in the habit of never answering it because she had so few friends and the calls were always for someone else. This time, however, there was no one else at home, and after letting it ring a while, she responded. When I heard her voice at last, I told her who I was and asked her to describe her husband. She seemed surprised at the question, but gave me a description. But I asked her where she had lived in Debrecen. She told me the address. Asking her to hold the line, I turned to Posken and said, did you and your wife live on such and such a street? Yes, Bella exclaimed. He was white as a sheet and trembling. Try to be calm, I urged him. Something miraculous is about to happen to you. Here, take this telephone and talk to your wife. He nodded his head in mute bewilderment, his eyes bright with tears. He took the receiver, listened a moment. Listened a moment to his wife's voice, then suddenly cried, this is Bella, this is Bella. He began to mumble hysterically. Seeing that the poor fellow was so excited he couldn't talk coherently, I took the receiver from his shaking hands. Stay where you are, I told Maria, who also sounded hysterical. I'm sending your husband to you. We'll be there in a few minutes. Bella was crying like a baby, saying over and over again. It is my wife, it is my wife. At first I thought I had better accompany Paskin, lest the man should faint from excitement, but I decided that this was a moment no stranger should intrude. Putting Paskin into a taxi cab, I directed the driver to take him to Maria's address, paid the fare, and said goodbye. " Now, I'm not going to read any of the rest of the story, but I do want to focus on the providences that were mentioned thus far. What on earth led him, for the first time, the only time in his life, to go off schedule and take this train? He was a very, very scheduled man. And what led him to slip into the seat beside Poskin or to talk to him when he never talked to strangers? And if you read the whole story, you'll realize there was just a whole bunch of details that are just miraculous when you think about it. And yet they didn't hear any voices from God. They didn't have any strange feelings of guidance. It was purely providence that led them on this. And yet it was no less God's leading. From hindsight, we see God's story everywhere in the story, God's hand everywhere in the story. Painful providences that look like setbacks were actually absolutely necessary for the end result to happen. And the same is true of the Advent story. Now, we call this a sweet story, but if you were Joseph or Mary, you probably would think this is anything but sweet. It didn't feel very sweet to them at all. Joseph lived with false accusations for the rest of his life, and Jesus himself was falsely accused of being born out of wedlock. Shame was heaped on them. Joseph had to leave his carpentry business, losing his income at the worst possible time, right when they needed to move. It was necessary for Jesus, though, to be born in Bethlehem. The census forced a 70-mile journey during the ninth month of pregnancy. You pregnant moms know riding on a donkey for 90 miles, that does not sound, 70 miles, that does not sound very fun. It would have been a tough trip. And then when they got there, every inn was full. They couldn't even get into a home requiring that Jesus be born in a stable designed for animals. But when we look at it from hindsight, we see that everything that looked like divine mistiming was actually divine precision. It was necessary to fulfill many prophecies that Jesus would be, for example, a Nazarene and yet be born in Bethlehem. And there's more. Another prophecy required that Jesus come out of Egypt. How did God orchestrate that? Well, it was by having these sincere wise men who wanted to find out Jesus. Where is this king born? Well, the most logical place to go is to go to Herod. But Herod is paranoid as all get out, and he does not want somebody to replace him. And so his intent is to kill the baby, Jesus. He sends them to find the baby. When they don't report back, he goes and kills all of the children two years old and under in the Bethlehem region, and that too is a prophecy. Jeremiah 31.15 says, a voice was heard in Ramah. Lamentation, weeping, great warm mourning. Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted because they are no more. God orchestrated Jesus to receive opposition from the time of his birth and on. It was an important part of his being our savior. And of course, the royal significance of Rama is also important. This in turn resulted in Joseph, Mary, and Jesus having to flee to Egypt, a now 110-mile trek. And they've got, you know, new baby that they're going to be traveling with. You moms know that's going to be inconvenient. But that too was symbolic of the purposes of Christ's kingdom because he, as a representative of the new Israel, was prophesied to be in Egypt and to come up out of Egypt just like Israel did. Now, if you were in the shoes of Joseph and Mary, how would you have reacted? I think it would be very easy for us to feel sorry for ourselves with all of the bad providences that had happened. I think it would be very easy. After all, they were homeless for quite some time. And I think those are the kinds of questions that test our maturity a whole lot more than a theological exam in a seminary would. These are the real-life situations that test us. Now, granted, there were some beautiful providences that were mixed in with the painful ones as well. There was God's guidance. There were the angels. I'm sure they rejoiced at the absolutely perfect timing of the wise men giving them gold, frankincense, and myrrh, because that money, the funds would have helped them over the next years and tidied them over. But we tend to focus on the beautiful providences like those and ignore the providences we cited earlier. Often it takes hindsight for tears of anguish to become tears of joy. And that's why Romans 8.28 and Ephesians 1 are so important. God predestines not only the outcomes, he predestines the entire process. And this morning, we're just going to look at three simple points. You're not used to three-point sermons for your pastor, but we're going to get one this morning. I've already blown it, though, by giving an introduction so long it could have been a sermon, right? Okay, point one is that God has a perfect timetable, even if it doesn't look that way. And you can see that in the phrase, when the fullness of time had come. That's verse four. There was a fullness of time for his birth, There was a fullness of time for his death. There is a fullness of time for everything that God does, including the sale of a home, the loss of a job, Nate's car window being broken in, bashed in, health issues coming up, like, you know, the musicians being sick, a breakdown of a car. Yet God times all of those things. Dr. Joel Hunter once said, The Bible clearly teaches that one moment not only follows another, but one moment builds on another toward a planned purpose or end. There is nothing in history that does not contribute to God's plan. Triumphs and disappointments alike shape us. When I did my personal timeline, I think it was back in the year 2000, I was blown away. Just the act of going through this exercise made me realize that some of the events in my childhood that I thought were meaningless, wretched, painful events were absolutely necessary to form me for the person that God has made me to be. Of course, there is no such thing as a meaningless event, but sometimes it seems meaningless at the time. the sovereign foundations that you had no control over as a child, the house you were born into. They all have a purpose, and it does no good to get bitter over painful past events. Now this concept of fullness of time for every event has been fascinating for me for a long time. I think one of the probably the funnest adventures that got us going, even on the Providential History Festival way back, was reading R.J. Rushdooney's World History Notes. It's not his greatest book, but when I read through that for the first time in my life, I began to see how the broad expanses of history need to be interpreted in a providential way. I began to see, for example, how necessary it was for the barbarians to overrun the Roman Empire, how necessary it was for the plowshare to be invented right at the time that it was invented. Now, prior to those notes, history courses just seemed like a long, boring list of irrelevant, isolated facts, one fact after another. And after reading those notes, I started asking when I would read history, why did that event happen? What purpose did God have in that? And it began opening my eyes to recognize God's hand beautifully orchestrating events. Now, I'll still acknowledge the vast majority of historical events. I have no clue what God's purpose was, right? But it made me realize more and more, yes, there is a meaning to history. two historians that you might want to listen to sometime, Steve Wilkins. I don't agree with everything that he has to say, but when he does his history lectures, they're absolutely spellbinding. The way that he weaves theology, history, economics, he weaves practical ethics, all kinds of things together. It's just wonderful to listen to. Another guy, and unfortunately he's a two kingdom guy, but Dr. Robert Godfrey at Westminster Seminary. I love listening to his lectures because he makes history come alive by seeing what is God's purpose in this history. I think we need to begin looking at history that way. Anyway, that's what Paul is saying in this passage. There was a building up moment upon moment of numerous historical events to prepare for the incarnation. And the word fullness, it's just the Greek word pleroma, It's used of things like a bread basket getting completely full with bread, you know. But here he applies it to time, time being filled up. And here's the point. God not only created things, he created capacities. So in Genesis 1, he created things and then he commanded them to be filled, right? So he created capacities, whether land, people, or time, and it requires patience to wait for God's timing the capacities being filled. Prophecy works the same way. Fulfillment is cumulative. Thousands of prior events fill up the moment when prophecy comes true. And I would say, just by way of application, the same is true of your life. Preparatory stages are not wasted stages, no matter how painful they may be. Covenant succession itself, I think, requires patience way beyond our lifetime. What you do now, though, matters, even when results seem delayed. Our labors in the Lord are not in vain. That is a promise of God. They all contribute to God's purposes in history. Now, before Christ's birth, God used even sinful tyrants to prepare the way. For example, Roman tyranny built roads all over the empire, which all of the apostles used to spread the gospel really fast. They had guards guarding people from bandits. They guarded the seas so that they could travel on ship freely. Pirates wouldn't take them. When Greece took over with their empire, they established a universal language, and that had helped to spread of the gospel. Jewish dispersion, as painful as that was, meant that there were Jewish synagogues in almost every hamlet, which were perfect launching pads for the gospel. So God did not waste any of those events. And I think of my Grandpa Kaiser, who was drafted into the German army and trained for the advance guard during World War I. And during training, his shoulder went out of joint over and over and over again. They finally just booted him into the kitchen, but he couldn't even lift a sack of flour without his shoulder going out of joint, so they kicked him out of the army. Well, later he discovered if it hadn't been for that shoulder going out of joint, which was so frustrating, he would have died. There was not a single one in his whole unit who survived. So I would not be alive if it was not for that dislocated shoulder. And yet it was a part of God's accumulation of difficulties and joys to produce blessings in the future. And there were other bad things that forced him to immigrate to Canada. Looking back on it, we can see God's hand all the way through that. even through the tragedies. For example, he would not have been motivated to move to Canada if it had not been for the tragedies, may have gotten in trouble in Nazi Germany. Instead, he came to Canada and my parents have told me of time after time when tiny little events in grandpa and grandma's life became absolutely necessary for my parents to go to the mission field. So, when you're tempted to get frustrated in a traffic jam, Be convinced that that traffic jam is part of God's filling up his purposes in your life, your history. It's working together for your good. Let me read Ecclesiastes 3, 1 through 8. And actually, before I read that, let me point out that prior to this passage, Solomon had pointed out that the person who's not walking right with the Lord does not see meaning in anything. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, right? It's just vain. But in Ecclesiastes 3, 1 through 8, it's a totally different perspective of the person who walks by faith. It says, to everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven, a time to be born and a time to die, okay, a time to plant and a time to pluck what is planted, time to kill and a time to heal, a time to break down, a time to build up, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to gain and a time to lose, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to sew, a time to keep silence and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time of war and a time of peace. If all things are working together for your good, then it's impossible for God to make a mistake in timing. Impossible. The events you now view as frustrating may be God's proverbial Greece or Rome, not good in themselves, but being used to prepare you where the outcome is good. So trust his timing. Learn to humble yourself under the Almighty's hand. Now, it doesn't mean you should be passive. We're gonna be seeing later, we have to be very active in planning and preparing and working, but we have to take dominion. But trust his timing as you do your best to move forward. Okay, the second point, we're gonna go faster, is that we need to trust God's sovereign initiative. God never reacts to anything. He doesn't react to chaos, to bad people, to things that have supposedly messed up his plans. He always takes the initiative. It says, God sent forth his son. This was planned, promised, timed, and empowered. Perfect timing requires perfect control. It was a planned act promised in Genesis 3.15, timed to the very year in Daniel 9. So either history is governed by God's sovereignty or it's governed by chance. There is no third option. R.J. Rushduni put it this way. Because our age is so thoroughly humanistic, it is in rebellion against predestination, which is simply the assertion of God's sovereignty, government, and control. Humanism insists that man must be in control, and socialism and communism, as well as scientific planning, psychological controls, and other attempts of man to control man and nature, are simply assertions of predestination by man. The only alternative to the doctrine of predestination is the assertion of the reign of total chance, of meaninglessness and brute factuality. The real issue is what kind of predestination we shall have, predestination by God or predestination by man. Shall we accept God's eternal decree, his total planning, or will we submit to man's total planning, man's dream of playing God and planner over all creation? And I think God's sovereignty is demonstrated all over the Advent story. If this universe has meaning, then it's not a universe of chance events. Those are your only options. Either God is sovereign and everything that happens to you has meaning and purpose, or chance rules, and no event has meaning. When God commands us to plan, he's not commanding us to invent the future, to predestine the future, to control the future, because we can't. We must plan, but biblical planning needs to be sensitive to what God is doing, getting on board with his sovereign initiative, and then submitting when he changes our plans. So we've looked at two points. Christmas story is a story of perfect timing, even though it didn't look like it. Christmas story is a story of perfect sovereign initiative on God's part, even though it didn't look like it. Third point is that God's plan for your future is perfect, even when it doesn't look like it. Now, you might feel like God has ruined your life. for some reason or another. This doesn't look perfect at all, but it is a perfect plan. It's not just an issue of timing and power, it's an issue of wisdom and goodness. The plan for Joseph, Mary, and many generations after them is stated succinctly in verses four through five. When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his woman, born God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to, and here's the purpose clause, to redeem those who are under the law that we might receive the adoption of sons, and because you are sons, God has sent forth the spirit of his son into your hearts, crying out, Abba, Father. Therefore, you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ. Now, that's an incredible plan, okay? He had to be man, to represent us to God, and so in some way, he had to be related to the human race, so it says he's born of a woman, but he had to be God to represent God to us, and so this indicates that he had existence prior to the birth of Jesus as the second person of the Trinity. God sent forth his son. He existed before he was made of the woman. He came down from heaven into the incarnation. But how Jesus was born of the woman had landmines written all over it that needed to be avoided as well. If He inherited a sin nature from Adam, and all humans inherit a sin nature from Adam, don't they, then He couldn't be our Savior. Our Savior would have to be perfect. So how could He be truly a man without inheriting a sin nature? Well, you women will get a kick out of this. But the sin nature, according to the patriarchal system of the Bible, is not inherited through the woman. It's inherited through the man. You can blame us, right? And so God took her egg. It says, literally, if you look at the margin for the word born, the father is not involved. It says he was made from the woman. So God took her egg, so Jesus is flesh of her flesh, and through her, Jesus became related to humanity. But God provided the missing genetic material by a creative act. So half of his DNA was created out of nothing. But if Jesus was to represent us, he had to be born under the law, under its requirements, as well as under its curse, so that he could bear the curse for us. God had to walk a very fine line to make Jesus our Savior. where you would expect a father to be mentioned as beginning, none is mentioned, it just mentions God the Father, right? Jesus had to be the God-man, and his humanity had to be undefiled. And the more you meditate on the whole subject of the incarnation, and this passage is just a tiny condensed version of it, you realize it was a perfect plan. Our whole future is tied up with Jesus being the culmination of a perfect plan. It's through his sonship that we can be adopted as sons and daughters. It's by our union with him that we can receive the Spirit, verse 6. Be made heir of all things, verse 7. And when you study all that's involved, it's just astounding. It may have seemed very, very odd at the time that God was doing all of these things, but it was good. God's timing was perfect, His sovereign initiative was perfect, and His plan was perfect. R.J. Rushduni says, time and history, therefore, have meaning because they were created in terms of God's perfect and totally comprehensive plan. Every blade of grass, every sparrow's fall, the very hairs of our head, all are comprehended and governed by God's eternal decree, and all have meaning in terms of it. The humanist faces a meaningless world in which he must strive to create and establish meaning. The Christian accepts a world which is totally meaningful and in which every event moves in terms of God's predestined purpose. And when man accepts God as his Lord and Christ as his Savior, every event works together for good to him because he is now in harmony with that meaning and destiny, Romans 8.28. And that quote was from page eight of his Biblical Philosophy of History, which is probably my second favorite of all of Rushduni's books, very, very easy to read. But back to point three, do you view everything in your life as meaningful? That perspective, I think, helps to fuel gratitude and joy, yes, even in the midst of suffering. It can enable you to fulfill Paul's admonition to be thankful in all things and to rejoice in the Lord always. And again, I say rejoice. And by the way, you can have that joy of faith while weeping. The two can be compatible, so it's not like you can't be having tears of sorrow as well as joy at the same time. Even the painful and sad events should be seen as part of God's good timing, his sovereign initiative, his perfect plan for you. And if in those three ways God is for you, who could be against you? Amen? Let's pray. Father, I thank you that you are indeed for us. I thank you for the story of the incarnation. I thank you for the reminders of your providences in our lives that we sometimes complain about are really intended for our good. Help us, Father, to have a perspective that enables us to rejoice in all things and to be thankful in all things. We bless you, Father, that you can bring good out of evil, that you can bring joyous occasions out of painful occasions, and I pray that you would do so in the lives of each of these, your people. Bless them, I pray, with your grace, with your spirit, with the overflow of your promises. In Jesus' name, amen.