00:00
00:00
00:01
Transcript
1/0
I'd like to say thanks very much
to John and to the session and to Marla and the family for inviting
me and for the hospitality I've had over here. Last time I was
in Charleston, John and I ran the half marathon together, which
gives me very happy memories actually, though I believe not
quite so happy for John if you chat to him afterwards. Harry
mentioned last night that he quite likes the liturgical calendar.
I'm not such a liturgical calendar man myself. The first time I
preached through the so-called Christmas season at my church
in Amber in Pennsylvania, I simply carried on preaching through
the book that I was preaching through anyway. And the Sunday
just before Christmas, I think it was Christmas Eve or the day
before Christmas Eve, the text I preached on was this, Judges
3.31. And after him was Shamgar, the
son of Anath, who killed 600 of the Philistines with an ox
goad. And he also saved Israel. I think I'm the only person in
history who's ever preached an Advent sermon on that text. And
while I can't remember exactly what I said, I do remember that
I did culminate in Christ. That the sermon, even though
it was taken from an apparently random point in the Old Testament,
yet pointed towards the great salvation that we have in Christ. My elders took me aside after
that and told me that from then on I was going to have to preach
Advent series in December, and as a man under authority I've
done that under some protest, but I'm obedient to my elders
on that. But I tell that anecdote first
of all because it has a certain silliness to it, but also because
it is a reminder to us that at the Christmas season there is
a danger that we can isolate the birth of Christ from his
life as a whole. And more than that, that we can
isolate the birth of Christ and the coming of Christ from the
sweep of biblical history as a whole. And what happens when
we do that? Well, there are many things that
happen when we do that, but perhaps one of the most significant is
we end up with a domesticated Christ and a domesticated God.
I think there is a reason why our friends and neighbors are
often very comfortable putting out nativity scenes in their
garden at this time of year, and yet not thinking about God
for any of the other weeks in the year. And that is because
if you just extract the story of Christ's birth from the great
sweep of biblical history, you end up with a sentimentalized
view of Christ and a domesticated view of God. And that's why our
text this morning, though it's a very brief text, I think is
wonderful because in the space of just a few words, it reminds
us that Christ's birth, life, and death cannot be separated
from the great sweep of biblical history that begins in Genesis
1 and ends in Revelation 22. So the text for us this morning,
the text that John has given me, is Galatians 4. But when
the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born
of woman, born under the law. And it's hard to read that text
without continuing, I think, to verse 5. So, though I don't
intend to read, to preach on verse 5, the verse, of course,
continues to redeem those who are under the law so that we
might receive adoption as sons. That text places the coming of
Christ into the grand cosmic sweep of history in a way that
is wonderful and profound. And there are just three things
this morning that I want to draw out from this text. I think it's
perhaps appropriate in an Episcopalian church to have a three-point
sermon. Not able to get all the points starting with the same
letter, but these are the three points. I want us to reflect
upon what it means for God to be sovereign over time. I want
to reflect on what it means for salvation to be an act of the
Trinitarian God. and I want to reflect upon what
it means for salvation to be an act of the incarnate God. All three of those things can
perhaps seem abstract quite often when we address them, particularly
the Trinity. Many Christians, I think, struggle with, well,
we believe in the Trinity, but of what practical benefit is
that? All three of those things, I
think, are true, profoundly true, and should have an immediate
impact upon the way we think and we live as Christians here
and now. So the first thing I want to
look at is God's sovereignty over time. What does that mean?
Well, there's that wonderful little beginning of the text
there, but when the fullness of time had come, God is sovereign
over time and he acts to address human needs, but he does so at
the time that he chooses. God is sovereign over time and
acts to address human needs, but does so at the time he so
chooses. One of the little noted things,
I think, about society, particularly over the last few hundred years,
is the fact that human beings have an increasing mastery over
time. I grew up in a very rural part
of England and in some ways there are still vestiges in the area
where I grew up of what we might call a pre-modern world. Time
where I grew up is to some extent measured by the seasons of the
year. My father was a CPA, a childhood accountant, but almost all of
his clients were farmers. And farmers have lives that are
measured out, regulated by the seasons of the year. For most
of us, of course, that doesn't really apply anymore. We're not
dependent upon the seasons for our work. We're not dependent
upon the seasons for how we live our lives. Technology, the advent
of air conditioning, central heating, electric light, all
of these things have made us more and more masters over what
we do and when we do it. And I think one of the cultural
impacts of that is that it has made us impatient. We've become increasingly impatient. in the way we live our lives. It's not just technology that's
done it, of course. We could think of easy credit,
credit cards. My grandfather used to boast
that he'd never been in debt a day in his life. He was a pretty
poor guy, but he'd never been in debt a day of his life, so
he had to save for anything he had. He had to save in advance
and get it. We don't have to do that anymore. Time is not something that we
use to save up for things. If anything, it's that which
we use to pay for that which we already have. There are other
ways we attempt mastery of time as well. Think of plastic surgery. Nobody, of course, has plastic
surgery, or unless you're on the run from the law, you may
do this, I guess, but nobody typically has plastic surgery
to make themselves look older. People have plastic surgery to
make themselves look younger. It's part of the cult of youth
that we have. And they're all witnesses, I
think, to our attempts to master time. Technology, easy credit,
plastic surgery, the cult of youth, they're all witnesses
to our attempts to master time. And it has an effect on the way
we think even as Christians. But what this text tells us is
this, time is rooted ultimately in God's wisdom, not ours. It
does not matter how impatient we become, time is rooted in
God's decision, not our decisions. Think of it, I hadn't asked John
to set up the order of worship today with Genesis 2 and 3 being
read, but they're a perfect text in some ways as background for
the first point I want to make. There is an awful long time between
Genesis 2 and 3 and Galatians, the events of Galatians 4-4.
There is a lot of time. One of the lessons I think of
scripture is this, we see only a fraction of the divine rationale
for how and why the world is as it is, and why events unfold
as they do. Just think. Think of the human
suffering, the human suffering that takes place between Genesis
3 and Christ's birth in the stable in Jerusalem. Think of Cain and
Abel. Think of the suffering of the
people of Israel in Egypt. Think of the many individual
tragedies that the Old Testament tells us about. The tragedy of
Jonathan, son of Saul. The tragedy of Naboth, the innocent
owner of the vineyard that Ahab decides he wants. Think of the
many prophets who suffered and were martyred. Look at the piety
of the Old Testament. Look at the Psalms. Turn with
me to Psalm 13 and just get a little taste of what the Psalmist is
going through there. There are other Psalms you could
look at. Psalm 88 would be another good one to reflect upon. But
look at Psalm 13. How long, O Lord, will you forget
me forever? How long will you hide your face
from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and of sorrow
in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted
over me? That is a quintessential Old
Testament psalm. The psalmist there is suffering
in their life and in their hearts and crying out to God, a God
who appears not to be listening. A God who appears to be tarrying
far too long in coming to help them. And there can be a temptation,
I think, as we read these, to think, well, God does not care.
God is not in control. And yet the Old Testament also
tells us that God does see and God knows these things. When
the Egyptians are turning the screws on the Israelites at the
start of Exodus, we read that God saw and God knew. God saw
the agony of people, his people, and he knew the agony of his
people. And it raises in our human mind, so why didn't he
act there and then to save them? And the answer comes back, we
don't know. The Book of Job is perhaps the great statement of
this. The Book of Job tells us what?
It tells us, we just don't know. 99% of the rationale for why
God acts and when he chooses to do so. But we know that God
sees the agony of his people. And it impacts him right there
in Genesis 3 verse 10. Isn't that an amazing verse?
After the striking down of Abel and the Lord said, what have
you done? The voice of your brother's blood
is crying to me from the ground. That is passionate language that
is used there. As the Lord looks at what has
been done, the blood of Abel cries to him from the ground.
And yet it is a long time. between Genesis 3 and Galatians
4, 4. Why does God take such a long
time? Well, first of all, we don't know in any ultimate sense.
We can see, I think, the narrowing purpose of God in history. We
see his choice of Abraham. Then we see him choose Isaac
and not Ishmael. We see him choose Israel and
not Esau. We see him guide his people through
the exodus. We see him bringing them into
the promised land. We see him casting them out into
exile again. And we see him bringing a fragment,
a remnant back to the promised land. Until finally, we see the
focus of the line in Judah. And we see the focus of God's
electing purposes coming to settle upon the Lord Jesus Christ, the
son of Mary. We see the how, if you like,
of God's plan. but we do not see the why of
it. And yet this is surely a glorious
verse because it tells us that even though we do not see the
why, yet there is a why in the fullness of time. The scripture
tells us that Christ comes at just the right and appropriate
moment. All of the human agony that had accumulated before the
coming of Christ is important and we should not gloss over
it. And yet we would be wrong to conclude from that that God
does not care. This brings me then to my first
practical application. If God is sovereign over time
and if things are done at the right time rather than necessarily
the time at which we might desire they happen, what does it do?
Well, I think there are a number of practical applications here.
First of all, I think this underlines the importance of God's immutability.
Only our confidence that God does not change can give us the
confidence that God's promises do not change. Though we live
after the coming of Christ, we still live in an era where human
beings are subject, subject to the curse of the fall. Even in
very simple ways. How many people here are 90%
or 100% happy with their jobs? And say to people, if you're
70% happy with your job, that's a really good job. We live with
the curse even in our work lives. If we live long enough, we lose
loved ones. If we live long enough, we come
to appreciate the declining weakness of our own bodies. I gave John
a master class in that in the half marathon just the other
year that he realized that he was no longer the powerhouse
that he had once been. Losing to a much older man, I
have to say, quite humiliating. But life has a tragic quality
to it. And there might be a temptation for us in the midst of the tragedy
to despair. And yet this text tells us in
the fullness of time, God is sovereign over time. God does
not change, his promises do not change as he act to deliver in
Christ, Christ's first coming, so he will deliver his people
at Christ's second coming. The blood of Abel still cries
out to the Lord from the ground. And there will come a day when
justice is not only done for Abel, when justice is seen to
be done for Abel. And that should give us, first
of all, confidence in our daily walk as Christians. Secondly,
related to that, I think we need to understand that it is not
our felt needs which shape God's actions. Our mastery of time,
our easy credit, every message from every commercial you ever
watch tells you that you are the center of the universe. I
want to say this morning, God does not have a special plan
for your life. Now I need to qualify that a little bit. Certainly
God knows each of us individually. He numbers the very hairs of
our heads. But what I am saying is, you are not the meaning of
history. your personal cares and concerns and agonies. The
Lord sees them, they cry out to the Lord. But he has a bigger
plan. He has a bigger plan. That means
he will not change his plan because of the inconveniences and the
difficulties that you face. God has a special plan for Christ
and the church. And that is the important plan
that he has. It is not our felt needs which
shape God's actions. When we cry out to God and ask
Him to act, God will act in a way that reflects His understanding
that everything needs to be done in the fullness of time and not
as an immediate response to our immediate felt needs. And that, I think, is good news.
It should give us confidence. I am far more confident that
history is guided by the nature of God. than I would be if I
thought it was guided by the nature of what I think I need
at this particular moment in time. In the long run, it may
be painful, but ultimately, it will be true and wise that all
things are done according to God's plan. And that's why I
would, again, I'm like a one-string banjo sometimes on this. I think
it's why the Psalms are so important. The Psalms do two things. They
remind us that it is okay to lament before God. And they remind
us that God is ultimately in control and all will be well. Secondly, salvation is an act
of the Trinitarian God. There are various ways, wrong
ways, that we conceive of the action of God in Christ. Some people Some people think
of salvation as well. What you have is, you know, human
beings, they've really crossed God the Father. When Adam fell
in the garden and all of the subsequent disaster that flowed
out of that, man, we've really crossed God the Father and He's
absolutely furious with us. And what we have is the Son,
a friendlier, Person in the Godhead a more likable person who comes
to earth and does this great work and then uses it in a way
to Strong-arm his father to be gracious towards us It's amazing
how often when you chat, even to Christians who've been Christians
for many years, something of that idea comes through. Well,
God the Father's really furious with us. The Son is well disposed
towards us, and He builds up all this great merit through
His work on earth, and He uses that to twist His Father's spiritual
arm, if you like, to be favorable towards us. This text puts that
to death. Puts that idea to death. Why?
Because it's God the Father who sends the Son. In the fullness
of time, God sent. God the Father is the one who
set the whole operation up, we might say. This is not maverick
or rogue action on the part of the Son. God the Father has sent
his Son. It is a distinct revelation of
the incarnation of the very heart and disposition of God himself. So that's one wrong way of conceiving
of salvation. Other people have, throughout
history, some people have suggested, well, what really happens is,
you know, God the Father becomes God the Son, does this great
work, and then becomes God the Spirit who works in our hearts. I had an example of that in class
when I first started teaching at Westminster. I was teaching
the early church class on the Trinity, and a student put up
his hand and said, I think all this Trinity stuff is nonsense.
I just preached on Sunday that God the Father came down and
died on the cross at Calvary. And I said to him, well, if you
preach that, you preach heresy. I've told this anecdote many
times before. I went home that night and I said to my two sons,
okay, boys, how many gods are there? And they said, there is
but one God. And I said, how many persons does this one God
exist? And I always remember they hesitated to answer that.
They looked at each other. as if there was some kind of
trick coming. Because to them, the answer was so obvious, they
were thinking, well, what is going on here? They looked at each
other, and then they said, almost with a question mark at the end,
in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? And I said,
congratulations, boys, you have a better understanding of the
doctrine of God than some students at Westminster Seminary. This
text is a glimpse into the inner being of God. God the Father
sends his Son. God is not undifferentiated one,
he is three. You'll see in the text that Harry
read last night, you'll remember the Holy Spirit comes upon the
Virgin Mary and she conceives. Salvation rightly conceived of
is a work of all of the persons of the Trinity working in perfect
harmony. The Father sends the Son. The
son willingly accepts the task that his father has set before
him. There is no tension between them.
The son is in no way disobeying his father. The son is in no
way forced to go by the father. The inner being of God desires
to see this salvation wrought, and so the father sends the son,
and the son accedes and obeys the father. Philippians 2, he
humbles himself. in his obedience even to death
on a cross. And what does the Spirit do? Well, again, sometimes
even good reformed people have an inadequate view of what the
Spirit does. We think, well, the Father sets
up salvation, the Son accomplishes it, and the Spirit applies it.
There's a lot of truth in that, but it isn't the whole truth.
The Spirit is intimately involved in the work of the Son. When
the time had fully come and the Son is baptized, the Father acknowledges
from heaven, the Spirit descends upon Him in the shape of a dove,
and what are we told in the Gospel of Mark? The Spirit hurls Him
into the wilderness. The Spirit actively drives Christ
out into the wilderness. Even Christ's own incarnate life,
as He makes His way to the cross, is a life lived in dependence
upon the Spirit. The whole of salvation is an
act of the Trinitarian God. When the time would fully come
and God sends his Son, what is that? It is a great revelation
of two things, that God is mysteriously three persons, Father, Son and
Holy Spirit, and that these three are intimately involved in salvation
from its conception to its consummation. How does this have practical
implications. What difference does it make
if you believe the Trinity? Well, the most obvious difference
it makes is you make sense of the Bible in a way that you couldn't
do otherwise. But what are the immediate practical
payoffs of this? Well, I would say above all,
surely it's in our prayer life. You pray differently if you believe
in a Trinitarian God. You can pray with real confidence.
The Bible teaches us that we are united to Christ by the Spirit
and by faith. And to be united to Christ is
to enjoy that communion that Christ himself enjoys with his
Father. United to Christ, what does Christ
say? He says, I no longer, I call
you friends. We are brought into a relation
of intimacy with God. We are adopted, as the text goes
on to tell us, as children of the Most High God. If we have
a Trinitarian faith, we have a rich understanding of how we
immediately relate to the Lord God. Secondly, I think it gives
our prayer life confidence. Why does it give us confidence?
Because we do not pray in a raw form to God as Father. We pray
through Christ. It is only as those in Christ
that we pray to God as Father. I'll talk about this in just
a second. I think this is where the humanity of Christ becomes
important. We pray to God the Father through
Christ. Christ takes our prayers and
he perfects them. Now just think, if you have a
model of salvation, if your imagination is gripped by that first model
of salvation I talked about where God the Father is essentially
not convinced about salvation. And God the Son is continually
trying to persuade him by presenting his work before God the Father
that God the Father should listen and be propitious and gracious
towards the people of God. You can have no confidence. You
can have no confidence praying at that point. You can never
be sure that God the Father will listen to your prayer and answer
it according to his wisdom. But if God the Father and God
the Son are one If God the Father's will and God the Son's will are
perfectly aligned because of their common identity as God,
then we know that that which the Son asks for is simply that
which the Father desires to give Him. How powerful is that prayer? How powerful is the prayer of
the Son who is in complete harmony with His Father? And how powerful
do our prayers become then? when we pray them in and through
Christ to God as our Father. If that isn't practical, if that
isn't a practical implication of the doctrine of the Trinity,
I really don't know what is. There can be nothing more practical
than that. When we come to God our Father in prayer, we don't
have to cajole God into being propitious towards us. We can
have full confidence that God will hear our prayers because
they are presented to him through Christ. And there is nothing
that God the Father desires more than to hear the prayers of his
son and to ask him and to grant him what he asks for. Does it
mean that your prayers are always going to be answered? No. Go
back and read the Psalms. There are cries of agony. There
is a long wait. There is a long wait between
Genesis 3 and Galatians 4. And there is a long wait between
Galatians 4 and Revelation 22. A long and painful wait. But
we can be confident that our prayers, as Christ takes them
up and perfects them and presents them before his father, will
be answered in a way that transcends our wildest imaginations. I love
the last, everybody focuses on the first question of the Heidelberg
Catechism, what is your only hope? But the last question is
beautiful too, what does this little word amen mean? It is
more certain that God hears my prayers. than I am that I desire
what I ask from in the first place. There is a certainty to
prayer that is guaranteed by the fact that God is Trinitarian
in his very being. And that brings me to my final
point. We see here in this text we get
a window into the beauty and the power of the incarnation. Christ is fully God but also
fully human. Christ is truly born of a woman. I mentioned this yesterday, it
was said of Martin Luther that he was mesmerized by the fact
of the Incarnation. He could never get over the idea
of the Incarnation. Those of you who perhaps have
visited Lutheran churches will know that Lutheran churches have
a very different aesthetic to typical Reformed churches. Lutheran
churches can often look very Catholic, but often crucifixes
around. It's a famous painting of Luther pointing, he's in the
pulpit, and he's pointing with a finger to a crucifix hanging
on the wall. And it's a symbolic presentation.
What did Luther do when he preached? He pointed to the incarnate Christ. And Lutheran churches are full
of representations of the incarnate Christ. And if we set aside our
discussions about the second commandment for a moment, Lutherans
do that very intentionally. Because Luther could never get
over how small God had made himself in the incarnation. And crucifixes
were a powerful physical representation to him of that fact. I think
we allow ourselves often to gloss very quickly over what the incarnation
is. The one who creates enters creation. Read Colossians. Christ is head
of creation. He's the one who creates all
things. And yet there he is, as Wesley puts it, our God, contracted
to a span, incomprehensibly made man. Luther could never get over
that, and I would suggest that we should never be able to get
over it either. To use the provocative words
of Kierkegaard, a 19th century Danish theologian, he called
the incarnation the great divine joke. What did he mean by that? He was not being irreverent.
What he meant was, it's so totally unexpected, such a complete reversal. Who would have thought that God
himself would become human, that God himself would become weak
in the person of his son? We're told here, of course, that
he comes not just incarnate. Christ doesn't just come and
take flesh because it's a fun thing to do. Far from it. He
comes under the law. Christ as a human being has the
same kind of status that we have before God. Christ's human nature
is not something that is plastic that he can just reinvent. Christ
comes under authority. Christ comes with particular
specific tasks laid upon him by the Lord. Christ comes, as
Paul tells us, as the second and final Adam. Why does Christ
have to take human nature? Because Adam was human. And Adam
fell. And therefore it is in our flesh
that the problem exists. Romans 5, 1 Corinthians 15. Some people of course will say,
well that was Paul. Paul's overstating it. Look at
the Gospels. The Gospels don't have anything
about Christ as the second Adam. Absolute rubbish. Read the Gospel
of Luke. Read the Gospel of Luke with
a decent commentary, and you will see the amount of Adam language
that is applied to Luke. Ever wondered why Matthew takes
his genealogy back to Abraham? Well, he does that because he
has a particular emphasis upon Jesus as the fulfillment of Jewish
hopes. But Luke takes the genealogy
back to Adam. And he does so, of course, When? Just after Christ has been driven
into the wilderness by the Spirit and tempted by the devil. The
serpent comes and tempts Christ. He resists successfully and then
we're told what? He's the descendant of Adam.
Christ takes flesh because he is the great second Adam and
just, I don't want to go into this at this particular moment,
but this is why debates about the historical nature of Adam
are so important. Galatians 4.4 rests upon the
historical individuality, identity of Adam as the one who represents
humanity to God. Christ comes as the second Adam
to represent God to us. He's God manifest in the flesh.
We get glimpses into the heart of God as we see Christ walking
around Galilee, healing the sick and raising the dead, weeping
at the tomb of Lazarus. We get glimpses into who God
is in himself. And Christ also comes gloriously
to represent us to Christ. practical application of this.
What is the practical application? Well again, confidence in prayer. We are not represented before
God by one who does not know what it is to be human or to
live in a bleak world marred by sin. Christ as incarnate not
only feels the weight of temptation when it comes to him through
Satan himself in the wilderness, But at various points in his
life, he confronts the hard reality of sin, even to the point of
making him weep outside the tomb of his friend Lazarus. A God
is a God who knows, humanly speaking, what it is to lose a friend.
Because he stood outside the tomb of a friend and seen the
havoc that sin has reaped upon this world. Trivial anecdote,
my niece, very attractive young lady, she's now in the Royal
Navy. She will never listen to this sermon, so I can use an
example without catching it later on from her. But before she joined
the Navy, she worked in a dog kennel. And one day, she's giving
the dog back to a man who's come in with his young son, who's
about the same age. And they go out to their car,
and then two minutes later, the father returns. And you know
what he's gonna do. He asks my niece if she'll go
out on a date with his son. His son said, Dad, I like the
look of that girl. can you go and ask her if she'll
go out on a date with me?" And my niece gives the... I was really
proud of her, she gives the answer, she said, I'm not going to date
anybody who hasn't got the backbone to ask me himself. That was a
great answer. But I, you know, what young man
doesn't sympathize with the young guy in that situation? It's always
easier, isn't it, to get somebody else to ask the hard question
and take the rejection for you. We understand, we instinctively
understand what it is to have a mediator who knows what it's
like to be us, and can go and present our case to the one who
holds power. Prayer life. The fact that Christ
is incarnate should turbocharge our prayer life. Meditating upon
the significance of Christ's humanity should be powerful to
us. Hebrews 4.14 says this, Since
then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens,
Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For
we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with
our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted
as we are yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw
near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find
grace to help in time of need. Harry made an amazing point,
did he not, last night in his sermon, when he said, every other
religion teaches that you've got to do something. You've got
to pull yourself up by your bootstraps in order to be acceptable by
God. That is a profound truth. But I would also say, related
to that, there's another thing that makes Christianity so superlative
and so supreme. among world religions, that is,
we are the only religion who has a mediator who knows what
it's like to be us and stands before his father in heaven and
asks his father to grant him only that which the father desires
to grant him in the first place. It was Luther's great breakthrough,
it wasn't, how can I stand before a gracious, how can I stand before
a righteous God? Well, the answer to Luther is,
you cannot. That's the bad news. But the
good news is that there is one who stands there for you. in
your common humanity. So, this text then is incredibly
rich and incredibly practical. What does it teach us? It teaches
us that time is done according to God's time, not ours. We should not allow the slings
and arrows of outrageous fortune, as we experience them, to be
the starting point for understanding how God operates and what his
plan is. There was a lot of agony in the Old Testament, but God
still sent Christ. There is a lot of agony in the
church age, but Christ will come again. And that should give us
confidence as we go through life. And life is, once you get past
the age of 25, 30, life is the law of diminishing returns, isn't
it? You lose friends, you get weaker. Illnesses don't go away
as quickly. Life becomes increasingly painful,
not less painful. So time in God's hand should
give us confidence. Secondly, this text points us
to that most profound of Christian ministries, the Trinity. And
yet if we're honest, many of us think, well, what practical
use is the Trinity? It seems very abstract. Sometimes we use
language that seems rather removed from real life. Yet it's very
important, the Trinity, because on the basis of the Trinity,
we know that salvation is the uniform act of all three persons
of the Godhead, and the Son and the Spirit desire to accomplish
only that which the Father desires to see accomplished. That should
not only reinforce our confidence in God's control of time, but
as I say, it should reinforce our confidence in prayer as well.
And then thirdly, this text points towards the incarnation. What I've said in the first two
points was not glorious enough. Here we have That crowning point. Christ is a human being. A far
superior father to Adam, one would have to say, who even now
sits and intercedes for us. Even now, salvation is an ongoing
act of the Trinitarian God. We are united to Christ by the
Spirit. Christ intercedes for us here
and now. And God the Father hears him
and answers him. Praise God for the glory of the
incarnation, for the glory of the gospel upon which we are
focused this Christmas. Let us pray. O Lord God, we come
before you knowing that our own prayers are fallen and fallible,
knowing, Lord, that in many ways we grieve the Spirit in our thoughts
and our words and our deeds, and yet knowing, Lord, that while
you have not simply passed over those things, you have dealt
with them on the cross of your son, the Lord Jesus Christ. You
do not allow them to stand in the way of you hearing your son's
intercession on our behalf. Lord, we thank you for his work
for us in the past and his work for us here and now. We thank
you, Lord, that it is your delight to hear his prayers on our behalf
and to answer them. And we pray, oh God, that you
would keep us safe in this veil of tears until that day when
your son comes again, there will be a new heaven and a new earth,
and we will stand before you and see you in all of your glory
for all eternity. For we pray this in Jesus' name,
amen.
4 - The Nativity and the Cross
Series 2014 Christmas Conference
| Sermon ID | 125142228318 |
| Duration | 39:39 |
| Date | |
| Category | Conference |
| Bible Text | Galatians 4:4 |
| Language | English |
Documents
Add a Comment
Comments
© Copyright
2026 SermonAudio.